Essays and addresses / by Arthur James Balfour. / Balfour, Arthur James Balfour, Earl of, 1848-1930

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ESSAYS AND ADDEESSES 



Printed by R. &* R. Clark, Limited 

FOR 

DAVID DOUGLAS 

LONDON . . . SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT,-AND CO., LIM. 
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ADDRE S SE S 



BY THE RIGHT HON. 



ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR, M.R 

P.K.S., D.C.L. 
(HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE) 



THIRD, AND ENLARGED, EDITION 



EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS 

1905 

(AH rights reserved) 



NOTE TO THIKD EDITION 

THE publisher of the original collection of Essays 
and Addresses has asked me to add to the 
volume the few which have been written since 
its first publication. There is no community of 
subject in the four new additions, but all relate 
to matters of contemporary interest. 

A. J. B, 

WHITTINGEHAME, October 1904, 



PKEFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

THIS volume consists of a certain number of Essays 
and Addresses which have been delivered or written 
during the last eleven years. None of them have 
any relation to party politics except perhaps, to a 
very slight extent, the review of Mr. Morley's 
Cobden. But even in this case it seems to me that 
the changes that have come over current political 
theories since Mr. Cobden's death are so great that 
an estimate of certain particular aspects of his public 
career may be attempted without unduly raising 
controversies in which modern politicians are im- 
mediately concerned. 

There is no bond of connection uniting the various 
Essays which find a place in this collection into 
anything of the nature of an organic whole. The 
second and third, indeed, are so far related that they 
deal with the life and work of two great men of 
vii 



viii PREFACE 

the eighteenth century who were almost exactly 
contemporaries. But the Essay on Berkeley is a 
biographical study : that on Handel in the main 
a critical and aesthetic one. The fourth and fifth 
Essays may both be said, though in different ways, 
to touch on the questions which have been, and are 
being, raised by the application of economic theories 
to political practice. While the sixth and seventh 
differ from the rest in being altogether removed from 
the sphere of ordinary practical interest. Though 
they were written at different periods, and for dif- 
ferent audiences, they probably gain by being read 
together, and in the order in which they appear in 
this volume. 

My thanks are due to the Editors of the various 
journals in which any of these Essays may have 
originally appeared for permission to republish 
them. 



4 CARLTON GARDENS, 
1st March 1893. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

THE PLEASURES OF HEADING .... 1 

BISHOP BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS . . 39 
HANDEL . . . . . . . .111 

COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL . . 185 

POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY . . . 225 

A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS . . . . 241 

THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY .... 283 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . . . . 315 

ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE . 333 

REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE NEW THEORY 

OF MATTER . . . . . . 385 

DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION : A 

STUDY IN POLITICAL CONTROVERSY . 415 



IX 



I 

THE PLEASURES OF READING 1 

IT has probably not been the lot of many of my 
predecessors in the distinguished post to which 
you have elected me, to deliver a Rectorial Address 
under circumstances more adverse to the deliberate 
reflection and the careful preparation which such a 
performance requires. So strongly do I feel the 
extreme difficulty of saying anything worthy of this 
place and of this audience at a time when the daily 
and even hourly calls upon me are incessant, that I 
should have been disposed to defer to a more con- 
venient season my first public appearance amongst you. 
From this, however, I was deterred by one dominant 
consideration ; namely, that if the Rectorial installa- 
tion were deferred till next year, or the year after, 

1 Lord Rector's Address, delivered at St. Andrews University,. 
10th December 1887. 



2 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

I should have no opportunity of meeting those who 
interested themselves in the last Rectorial election. 
In University life, generation succeeds generation 
with such rapidity, that the leaders among the 
students of one year are the departed heroes of the 
next. And I prefer, therefore, even under the some- 
what adverse circumstances which I have indicated, 
to meet those who took a principal part in the 
contest of last November, whether for or against me, 
to all the advantages which my audience might be 
expected to derive from a postponement of my 
Address. 

I will confess to you at the outset that I have 
been much embarrassed in the selection of a subject. 
Not a few of my predecessors have found themselves, 
I should imagine, in a similar difficulty. A Rectorial 
Address might, so I was informed, be about anything. 
But this " anything " is too apt upon further investiga- 
tion to resolve itself into " nothing." Some topics are 
too dull. Some are too controversial. Some interest 
only the few. Some are too great a strain upon the 
speaker who has to prepare them. Some too severely 
tax the patience of the audience which has to listen 
to them. And I confess to have been much perplexed 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 3 

in my search for a topic on which I could say some- 
thing to which you would have patience to listen, or 
on which I might find it profitable to speak. 

One theme, however, there is, not inappropriate to 
the place in which I stand, nor, I hope, unwelcome 
to the audience which I address. The youngest of 
you have left behind that period of youth during 
which it seems inconceivable that any book should 
afford recreation except a story-book. Many of you 
are just reaching the period when, at the end of your 
prescribed curriculum, the whole field and compass 
of literature lies outspread before you ; when, with 
faculties trained and disciplined, and the edge of 
curiosity not dulled or worn with use, you may enter 
at your leisure into the intellectual heritage of the 
centuries. 

Now the question of how to read and what to 
read has of late filled much space in the Daily Papers, 
if it cannot strictly speaking be said to have pro- 
foundly occupied the public mind. But you need be 
under no alarm. I am not going to supply you with 
a new list of the hundred books most worth reading, 
nor am I about to take the world into my confidence 
in respect of my " favourite passages from the best 



4 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

authors." Nor again do I address myself to the pro- 
fessed student, to the fortunate individual with whom 
literature or science is the business as well as the 
pleasure of life. I have not the qualifications which 
would enable me to undertake such a task with the 
smallest hope of success. My theme is humble though 
the audience to whom I desire to speak is large ; for 
I speak to the ordinary reader with ordinary capacities 
and ordinary leisure, to whom reading is, or ought 
to be, not a business but a pleasure ; and my theme 
is the enjoyment, not, mark you, the improvement, 
nor the glory, nor the profit, but the enjoyment, which 
may be derived by such an one from books. 

It is perhaps due to the controversial habits 
engendered by my unfortunate profession, that I find 
no easier method of making my own view clear than 
that of contrasting with it what I regard as an errone- 
ous view held by somebody else : and in the present 
case the doctrine which I shall choose as a foil to my 
own, is one which has been stated with the utmost 
force and directness by that brilliant and distin- 
guished writer, Mr. Frederic Harrison. 1 He has, 
as many of you know, recently given us in a series 
1 Cf. The Choice of Books. 



THE PLEASURES OF BEADING 5 

of excellent essays his opinion on the principles 
which should guide us in the choice of books. 
Against that part of his treatise which is occupied 
with specific recommendations of certain authors 
I have not a word to say. He has resisted all 
the temptations to eccentricity which so easily beset 
the modern critic. Every book which he praises 
deserves his praise, and has long been praised by the 
world at large. I do not, indeed, hold that the 
verdict of the world is necessarily binding on the 
individual conscience. I admit to the full that there 
is an enormous quantity of hollow devotion, of 
withered orthodoxy divorced from living faith, in 
the eternal chorus of praise which goes up from 
every literary altar to the memory of the immortal 
dead. Nevertheless, every critic is bound to recognise, 
as Mr. Harrison recognises, that he must put down 
to individual peculiarity any difference he may have 
with the general verdict of the ages ; he must feel 
that mankind are not likely to be in a conspiracy of 
error as to the kind of literary work which conveys 
to them the highest literary enjoyment, and that in 
such cases at least securus judicat orbis terrarum. 

But it is quite possible to hold that any work 



6 THE PLEASUKES OF READING 

recommended by Mr. Harrison is worth repeated 
reading, and yet to reject utterly the theory of study 
by which these recommendations are prefaced. For 
Mr. Harrison is a ruthless censor. His index expurga- 
torius includes, so far as I can discover, the whole 
catalogue of the British Museum, with the exception 
of a small remnant which might easily be contained 
in about thirty or forty volumes. The vast remainder 
he contemplates with feelings apparently not merely 
of indifference but of active aversion. He surveys 
the boundless and ever-increasing waste of books 
with emotions compounded of disgust and dismay. 
He is almost tempted to say in his haste that the in- 
vention of printing has been an evil one for humanity. 
In the habits of miscellaneous reading, born of a 
too easy access to libraries, circulating and other, he 
sees many soul-destroying tendencies ; and his ideal 
reader would appear to be a gentleman who rejects 
with a lofty scorn all in history that does not pass for 
being first rate in importance, and all in literature 
that is not admitted to be first rate in quality. 

Now I am far from denying that this theory is 
plausible. Of all that has been written it is cer- 
tain that the professed student can master but an 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 7 

infinitesimal fraction. Of that fraction the ordinary 
reader can master but a very small part. What 
advice then can be better than to select for study the 
few masterpieces that have come down to us, and to 
treat as non-existent the huge but undistinguished 
remainder? We are like travellers passing hastily 
through some ancient city filled with memorials of 
many generations and more than one great civilisation. 
Our time is short. Of what may be seen we can 
only see at best but a trifling fragment. Let us then 
take care that we waste none of our precious moments 
upon that which is less than the most excellent. So 
preaches Mr. Frederic Harrison : and when a doctrine 
which put thus may seem not only wise but obvious, 
is further supported by such assertions as that habits 
of miscellaneous reading "close the mind to what is 
spiritually sustaining " by " stuffing it with what is 
simply curious," or that such methods of study are 
worse than no habits of study at all because they 
" gorge and enfeeble " the mind by " excess in that 
which cannot nourish," I almost feel that in venturing 
to dissent from it I may be attacking not merely the 
teaching of common sense but the inspirations of a 
high morality. 



8 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

Yet I am convinced that, for most persons, the 
views thus laid down by Mr. Harrison are wrong, and 
that what he describes, with characteristic vigour, -as 
" an impotent voracity for desultory information " is in 
reality a most desirable, and a not too common form, 
of mental appetite. I have no sympathy whatever 
with the horror he expresses at the " incessant accumu- 
lation of fresh books." I am never tempted to regret 
that Gutenberg was born into the world. I care not 
at all though the " cataract of printed stuff," as Mr. 
Harrison calls it, should flow and still flow on until 
the catalogues of our libraries should make libraries 
themselves. I am prepared indeed, to express sym- 
pathy almost amounting to approbation for any one 
who would check all writing which was not intended 
for the printer. I pay no tribute of grateful 
admiration to those who have oppressed mankind 
with the dubious blessing of the penny post. But 
the ground of the distinction is plain. We are always 
obliged to read our letters, and are sometimes obliged 
to answer them. But who obliges us to wade through 
the piled-up lumber of an ancient library, or to skim 
more than we like off the frothy foolishness poured 
forth in ceaseless streams by our circulating libraries 1 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 9 

Dead dunces do not importune us ; Grub Street does 
not ask for a reply by return of post. Even their 
living successors need hurt no one who possesses the 
very moderate degree of social courage required to 
make the admission that he has not read the last new 
novel or the current number of a fashionable magazine. 
But this is not the view of Mr. Harrison. To him 
the position of any one having free access to a large 
library is fraught with issues so tremendous that, in 
order adequately to describe it, he has to seek for 
parallels in two of the most highly-wrought episodes 
in fiction the Ancient Mariner, becalmed and thirst- 
ing on the tropic ocean : Bunyan's Christian in the 
crisis of spiritual conflict. But there is here, surely, 
some error and some exaggeration. Has miscel- 
laneous reading all the dreadful consequences which 
Mr. Harrison depicts 1 Has it any of them ? His 
declarations about the intellect being " gorged and 
enfeebled " by the absorption of too much informa- 
tion, expresses no doubt with great vigour an analogy, 
for which there is high authority, between the human 
mind and the human stomach ; but surely it is an 
analogy which may be pressed too far. I have often 
heard of the individual whose excellent natural gifts 



10 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

have been so overloaded with huge masses of undi- 
gested and indigestible learning that they have had 
no chance of healthy development. But though I 
have often heard of this personage, I have never met 
him, and I believe him to be mythical. It is true, 
no doubt, that many learned people are dull: but 
there is no indication whatever that they are dull 
because they are learned. True dulness is seldom 
acquired ; it is a natural grace, the manifestations of 
which, however modified by education, remain in 
substance the same. Fill a dull man to the brim 
with knowledge, and he will not become less dull, as 
the enthusiasts for education vainly imagine ; but 
neither will he become duller, as Mr. Harrison appears 
to suppose. He will remain in essence what he always 
has been and always must have been. But whereas 
his dulness would, if left to itself, have been merely 
vacuous, it may have become, under careful cultiva- 
tion, pretentious and pedantic. 

I would further point out to you that, while there 
is no ground in experience for supposing that a keen 
interest in those facts which Mr. Harrison describes 
as "merely curious," has any stupefying effect upon 
the mind, or has any tendency to render it insensible 



THE PLEASUEES OF READING 11 

to the higher things of literature and art, there is 
positive evidence that many of those who have most 
deeply felt the charm of these higher things have 
been consumed by that omnivorous appetite for 
knowledge which excites Mr. Harrison's especial 
indignation. Dr. Johnson, for instance, though deaf 
to some of the most delicate harmonies of verse, was, 
without question, a very great critic. Yet, in Dr. 
Johnson's opinion, literary history, which is for the 
most part composed of facts which Mr. Harrison 
would regard as insignificant, about authors whom 
he would regard as pernicious, was the most delight- 
ful of studies. Again, consider the case of Lord 
Macaulay. Lord Macaulay did everything Mr. 
Harrison says he ought not to have done. From 
youth to age he was continuously occupied in 
"gorging and enfeebling" his intellect, by the 
unlimited consumption of every species of literature, 
from the masterpieces of the age of Pericles, to the 
latest rubbish from the circulating library. It is not 
told of him that his intellect suffered by the process ; 
and, though it will hardly be claimed for him that he 
was a great critic, none will deny that he possessed 
the keenest susceptibilities for literary excellence in 



12 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

many languages and in every form. If Englishmen 
and Scotchmen do not satisfy you, I will take a 
Frenchman. The most accomplished critic whom 
France has produced is, by general admission, St. 
Beuve. His capacity for appreciating supreme 
perfection in literature will be disputed by none ; 
yet the great bulk of his vast literary industry was 
expended upon the lives and writings of authors 
whose lives Mr. Harrison would desire us to for- 
get, and whose writings almost wring from him 
the wish that the art of printing had never been 
discovered. 

I am even bold enough to hazard the conjecture 
(I trust he will forgive me) that Mr. Harrison's life 
may be quoted against Mr. Harrison's theory. I 
entirely decline to believe without further evidence 
that the writings whose vigour of style and of 
thought have been the delight of us all, are the pro- 
duct of his own system. I hope I do him no wrong, 
but I cannot help thinking that, if we knew the truth, 
we should find that he followed the practice of those 
worthy physicians who, after prescribing the most 
abstemious diet to their patients, may be seen par- 
taking freely and, to all appearances, safely of the 



THE PLEASURES OF BEADING 13 

most succulent and the most unwholesome of the 
forbidden dishes. 

It has to be noted that Mr. Harrison's list of the 
books which deserve perusal would seem to indicate 
that, in his opinion, the pleasures to be derived from 
literature are chiefly pleasures of the imagination. 
Poets, dramatists, and novelists form the chief portion 
of the somewhat meagre fare which is specifically 
permitted to his disciples. Now, though I have 
already stated that the list is not one of which any 
person is likely to assert that it contains books which 
ought to be excluded, yet, even from the point of 
view of what may be termed aesthetic enjoyment, the 
field in which we are allowed to take our pleasures 
seems to me unduly restricted. 

Contemporary poetry, for instance, on which Mr. 
Harrison bestows a good deal of hard language, has, 
and must have, for the generation which produces it 
certain qualities not likely to be possessed by any 
other. Charles Lamb has somewhere declared that 
a pun loses all its virtue as soon as the momentary 
quality of the intellectual and social atmosphere in 
which it was born has changed its character. What 
is true of this, the humblest effort of verbal art, is 



14 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

true, in a different measure and degree, of all, even 
of the highest, forms of literature. To some extent 
every work requires interpretation to generations 
who are separated by differences of thought or 
education from the age in which it was originally 
produced. That this is so with every book which 
depends for its interest upon feelings and fashions 
which have utterly vanished, no one will be disposed, 
I imagine, to deny. Butler's Hudibras, for instance, 
which was the delight of a gay and witty society, is to 
me, at least, not unfrequently dull. Of some works, 
no doubt, which made a noise in their day it seems 
impossible to detect the slightest trace of charm. 
But this is not the case with Hudibras. Its merits 
are obvious. That they should have appealed to a 
generation sick of the reign of the " Saints " is pre- 
cisely what we should have expected. But to us, 
who are not sick of the reign of the Saints, they 
appeal but imperfectly. The attempt to reproduce 
artificially the frame of mind of those who first read 
the poem is not only an effort, but is to most people, 
at all events, an unsuccessful effort. What is true of 
Hudibras is true also, though in an inconceivably 
smaller degree, of those great works of imagination 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 15 

which deal with the elemental facts of human char- 
acter and human passion. Yet even on these, time 
does, though lightly, lay his hand. Wherever what 
may be called " historic sympathy " is required there 
will be some diminution of the enjoyment which 
those must have felt who were the poet's contempor- 
aries. We look, so to speak, at the same splendid 
landscape as they, but distance has made it necessary 
for us to aid our natural vision with glasses, and 
some loss of light will thus inevitably be produced, 
and some inconvenience from the difficulty of truly 
adjusting the focus. Of all authors, Homer would, I 
suppose, be thought to suffer least from such draw- 
backs. But yet in order to listen to Homer's accents 
with the ears of an ancient Greek, we must be able, 
among other things, to enter into a view about the 
gods which is as far removed from what we should 
describe as religious sentiment as it is from the frigid 
ingenuity of those later poets who regarded the 
deities of Greek mythology as so many wheels in the 
supernatural machinery with which it pleased them 
to carry on the action of their pieces. If we are to 
accept Mr. Herbert Spencer's views as to the progress 
of our species, changes of sentiment are likely to 



16 THE PLEASUEES OF BEADING 

occur which will even more seriously interfere with 
the world's delight in the Homeric poems. When 
human beings become so nicely " adjusted to their 
environment," that courage and dexterity in battle will 
have become as useless among civic virtues as an old 
helmet is among weapons of war ; when fighting gets 
to be looked upon with the sort of disgust excited in 
us by cannibalism ; and when public opinion shall 
regard a warrior much in the same light that we 
regard a hangman, I do not see how any fragment of 
that vast and splendid literature which depends for 
its interest upon deeds of heroism and the joy of 
battle, is to retain its ancient charm. About these 
remote contingencies, however, I am glad to think 
that neither you nor I need trouble our heads ; and 
if I parenthetically allude to them now, it is merely 
as an illustration of a truth not always sufficiently 
remembered, and as an excuse for those who find in 
the genuine, though possibly second-rate, productions 
of their own age a charm for which they search in 
vain among the mighty monuments of the past. 

But I leave this train of thought, which has 
perhaps already taken me too far, in order to point 
out a more fundamental error, as I think it, which 



THE PLEASUEES OF READING 17 

arises from regarding literature solely from this high 
aesthetic standpoint. The pleasures of imagination 
derived from the best literary models, form without 
doubt the most exquisite portion of the enjoyment 
which we may extract from books ; but they do not 
in my opinion form the largest portion if we take 
into account mass as well as quality in our calculation. 
There is the literature which appeals to the imagina- 
tion or the fancy, some stray specimens of which Mr. 
Harrison will permit us to peruse ; but is there not 
also the literature which satisfies the curiosity ? Is 
this vast storehouse of pleasure to be thrown hastily 
aside because many of the facts which it contains 
are alleged to be insignificant, because the appetite to 
which they minister is said to be morbid ? Consider a 
little. We are here dealing with one of the strongest 
intellectual impulses of rational beings. Animals, 
as a rule, trouble themselves but little about anything 
unless they want either to eat it or to run away from 
it. Interest in, and wonder at, the works of nature 
and the doings of man are products of civilisation, 
and excite emotions which do not diminish, but in- 
crease with increasing knowledge and cultivation. 
Feed them and they grow; minister to them and 
c 



18 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

they will greatly multiply. We hear much indeed 
of what is called "idle curiosity," but I am loth to 
brand any form of curiosity as necessarily idle. Take, 
for example, one of the most singular, but, in this 
age, one of the most universal, forms in which it is 
accustomed to manifest itself : I mean that of an ex- 
haustive study of the contents of the morning and 
evening papers. It is certainly remarkable that any 
person who has nothing to get by it should destroy 
his eyesight and confuse his brain by a conscientious 
attempt to master the dull and doubtful details of 
the European diary daily transmitted to us by " Our 
Special Correspondent." But it must be remembered 
that this is only a somewhat unprofitable exercise of 
that disinterested love of knowledge which mov.es 
men to penetrate the Polar snows, to build up systems 
of philosophy, or to explore the secrets of the remotest 
heavens. It has in it the rudiments of infinite and 
varied delights. It can be turned, and it should be 
turned, into a curiosity for which nothing that has 
been done, or thought, or suffered, or believed, no 
law which governs the world of matter or the world 
of mind, can be wholly alien or uninteresting. 

Truly it is a subject for astonishment that, instead 



THE PLEASUKES OF EEADING 19 

of expanding to the utmost the employment of this 
pleasure-giving faculty, so many persons should set 
themselves to work to limit its exercise by all kinds 
of arbitrary regulations. Some there are, for example, 
who tell us that the acquisition of knowledge is all very 
well, but that it must be useful knowledge, meaning 
usually thereby that it must enable a man to get on 
in a profession, pass an examination, shine in conver- 
sation, or obtain a reputation for learning. But even 
if they mean something higher than this, even if they 
mean that knowledge to be worth anything must 
subserve ultimately if not immediately the material 
or spiritual interests of mankind, the doctrine is one 
which should be energetically repudiated. I admit, 
of course, at once, that discoveries the most apparently 
remote from human concerns have often proved them- 
selves of the utmost commercial or manufacturing 
value. But they require no such justification for 
their existence, nor were they striven for with any 
such object. Navigation is not the final cause of 
astronomy, nor telegraphy of electro-dynamics, nor 
dye-works of chemistry. And if it be true that the 
desire of knowledge for the sake of knowledge was 
the animating motive of the great men who first 



20 THE PLEASUKES OF READING 

wrested her secrets from nature, why should it not 
also be enough for us, to whom it is not given to dis- 
cover, but only to learn as best we may what has been 
discovered by others ? 

Another maxim, more plausible but equally per- 
nicious, is that superficial knowledge is worse than 
no knowledge at all. That " a little knowledge is a 
dangerous thing" is a saying which has now got 
currency as a proverb stamped in the mint of Pope's 
versification ; of Pope, who with the most imperfect 
knowledge of Greek translated Homer, with the most 
imperfect knowledge of the Elizabethan drama edited 
Shakespeare, and with the most imperfect knowledge 
of philosophy wrote the Essay on Man. But what is 
this "little knowledge" which is supposed to be so 
dangerous? What is it "little" in relation tol 
If in relation to what there is to know, then all 
human knowledge is little. If in relation to what 
actually is known by somebody, then we must con- 
demn as "dangerous "the knowledge which Archimedes 
possessed of Mechanics, or Copernicus of Astronomy ; 
for a shilling primer and a few weeks' study will 
enable any student to outstrip in mere information 
some of the greatest teachers of the past. No doubt, 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 21 

that little knowledge which thinks itself to be great, 
may possibly be a dangerous, as it certainly is a most 
ridiculous, thing. We have all suffered under that 
eminently absurd individual who on the strength of 
one or two volumes, imperfectly apprehended by 
himself, and long discredited in the estimation of 
every one else, is prepared to supply you on the 
shortest notice with a dogmatic solution of every 
problem suggested by this "unintelligible world"; 
or the political variety of the same pernicious genus, 
whose statecraft consists in the ready application to 
the most complex question of national interest of some 
high-sounding commonplace which has done weary 
duty on a thousand platforms, and which even in its 
palmiest days was never fit for anything better than 
a peroration. But in our dislike of the individual 
do not let us mistake the diagnosis of his disease. He 
suffers not from ignorance but from stupidity. Give 
him learning and you make him not wise, but only 
mpre pretentious in his folly. 

I say then that so far from a little knowledge 
being undesirable, a little knowledge is all that on 
most subjects any of us can hope to attain, and that, 
as a source not of worldly profit but of personal 



22 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

pleasure, it may be of incalculable value to its pos- 
sessor. But it will naturally be asked, " How are we 
to select from among the infinite number of things 
which may be known those which it is best worth 
while for us to know?" We are constantly being 
told to concern ourselves with learning what is im- 
portant, and not to waste our energies upon what is 
insignificant. But what are the marks by which we 
shall recognise the important, and how is it to be 
distinguished from the insignificant ? A precise and 
complete answer to this question which shall be true 
for all men cannot be given. I am considering 
knowledge, recollect, as it ministers to enjoyment, 
and from this point of view each unit of information 
is obviously of importance in proportion as it in- 
creases the general sum of enjoyment which we 
obtain, or expect to obtain, from knowledge. This, 
of course, makes it impossible to lay down precise 
rules which shall be an equally sure guide to all sorts 
and conditions of men ; for in this, as in other matters, 
tastes must differ, and against real difference of taste 
there is no appeal. 

There is, however, one caution which it may be 
worth your while to keep in view, Do not be per- 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 23 

suaded into applying any general proposition on this 
subject with a foolish impartiality to every kind of 
knowledge. There are those who tell you that it is 
the broad generalities and the far-reaching principles 
which govern the world, which are alone worthy of 
your attention. A fact which is not an illustration 
of a law in the opinion of these persons appears to 
lose all its value. Incidents which do not fit into 
some great generalisation; events which are merely 
picturesque; details which are merely curious they 
dismiss as unworthy the interest of a reasoning being. 
Now even in science this doctrine in its extreme 
form does not hold good. The most scientific of 
men have taken profound interest in the investigation 
of facts from the determination of which they do not 
anticipate any material addition to our knowledge of 
the laws which regulate the Universe. In these 
matters, I need hardly say that I speak wholly 
without authority. But I have always been under 
the impression that an investigation which has cost 
hundreds of thousands of pounds ; which has stirred 
on three occasions the whole scientific community 
throughout the civilised world; on which has been 
expended the utmost skill in the construction of 



24 THE PLEASUEES OF BEADING 

instruments and their application to purposes of 
research (I refer to the attempts made to determine 
the distance of the sun by observations of the transit 
of Venus) would, even if they had been brought to a 
successful issue, have furnished mankind with the 
knowledge of no new astronomical principle. 1 The 
laws which govern the motions of the solar system, 
the proportions which the various elements in that 
system bear to one another, have long been known. 
The distance of the sun itself is known within limits 
of error relatively speaking not very considerable. 
Were the measuring rod we apply to the heavens 
based on an estimate of the sun's distance from the 
earth, which was wrong by (say) 3 per cent, it 
would not to the lay mind seem to affect very 
materially our view either of the distribution of the 
heavenly bodies or of their motions. And yet this 
information, this piece of celestial gossip, would seem 
to have been the chief astronomical result expected 
from the successful prosecution of an investigation 

1 The accurate determination of the velocity of light would 
doubtless be of the greatest importance in Physics. But as regards 
astronomical research, in reference to which the Transit of Venus 
has been principally observed, the illustration in the text seems 
accurate. The amount of possible error is much less than 3 
per cent. 



THE PLEASUEES OF READING 25 

in which whole nations have interested them- 
selves. 

But though no one can, I think, pretend that 
science does not concern itself, and properly concern 
itself, with facts which are not to all appearance 
illustrations of law, it is undoubtedly true that for 
those who desire to extract the greatest pleasure 
from science, a knowledge, however elementary, of 
the leading principles of investigation and the larger 
laws of nature, is the acquisition most to be desired. 
To him who is not a specialist, a comprehension of 
the broad outlines of the universe as it presents itself 
to the scientific imagination is the thing most worth 
striving to attain. But when we turn from science 
to what is rather vaguely called history, the same 
principles of study do not, I think, altogether apply, 
and mainly for this reason ; that while the recogni- 
tion of the reign of law is the chief amongst the 
pleasures imparted by Science, our inevitable ignorance 
makes it the least among the pleasures imparted by 
History. 

It is no doubt true that we are surrounded by 
advisers who tell us that all study of the past is 
barren except in so far as it enables us to determine 



26 THE PLEASUEES OF BEADING 

the principles by which the evolution of human 
societies is governed. How far such an investigation 
has been up to the present time fruitful in results it 
would be unkind to inquire. That it will ever enable 
us to trace with accuracy the course which states and 
nations are destined to pursue in the future, or to 
account in detail for their history in the past, I do not 
in the least believe. We are borne along like travellers 
on some unexplored stream. We may know enough of 
the general configuration of the globe to be sure that 
we are making our way towards the ocean. We may 
know enough, by experience or theory, of the laws 
regulating the flow of liquids, to conjecture how the 
river will behave under the varying influences to 
which it may be subject. More than this we cannot 
know. It will depend largely upon causes which, in 
relation to any laws which we are ever likely to dis- 
cover may properly be called accidental, whether we 
are destined sluggishly to drift among fever-stricken 
swamps, to hurry down perilous rapids, or to glide 
gently through fair scenes of peaceful cultivation. 

But leaving on one side ambitious sociological 
speculations, and even those more modest but hitherto 
more successful investigations into the causes which 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 27 

have in particular cases been principally operative in 
producing great political changes, there are still two 
modes in which we can derive what I may call 
" spectacular " enjoyment from the study of history. 
There is first the pleasure which arises from the 
contemplation of some great historic drama, or some 
broad and well-marked phase of social development. 
The story of the rise, greatness, and decay of a nation 
is like some vast epic which contains as subsidiary 
episodes the varied stories of the rise, greatness, and 
decay of creeds, of parties and of statesmen. The 
imagination is moved by the slow unrolling of this 
great picture of human mutability, as it is moved by 
the contrasted permanence of the abiding stars. The 
ceaseless conflict, the strange echoes of long-forgotten 
controversies, the confusion of purpose, the successes 
in which lay deep the seeds of future evils, the failures 
that ultimately divert the otherwise inevitable danger, 
the heroism which struggles to the last for a cause 
foredoomed to defeat, the wickedness which sides 
with right, and the wisdom which huzzas at the 
triumph of folly fate, meanwhile, amidst this tur- 
moil and perplexity, working silently towards the 
predestined end all these form together a subject 



28 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

the contemplation of which need surely never 
weary. 

But there is yet another and very different species 
of enjoyment to be derived from the records of the 
past, which requires a somewhat different method of 
study in order that it may be fully tasted. Instead 
of contemplating as it were from a distance the larger 
aspects of the human drama, we may elect to move 
in familiar fellowship amid the scenes and actors of 
special periods. We may add to the interest we 
derive from the contemplation of contemporary 
politics, a similar interest derived from a not less 
minute, and probably more accurate, knowledge of 
some comparatively brief passage in the political 
history of the past. We may extend the social circle 
in which we move, a circle perhaps narrowed and 
restricted through circumstances beyond our control, 
by making intimate acquaintances, perhaps even close 
friends, among a society long departed, but which, 
when we have once learnt the trick of it, we may, 
if it so pleases us, revive. 

It is this kind of historical reading which is 
usually branded as frivolous and useless, and persons 
who indulge in it often delude themselves into 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 29 

thinking that the real motive of their investigation 
into bygone scenes and ancient scandals, is philosophic 
interest in an important historical episode, whereas 
in truth it is not the Philosophy which glorifies the 
details, but the details which make tolerable the 
Philosophy. Consider, for example, the case of the 
French Eevolution. The period from the taking of 
the Bastille to the fall of Eobespierre is about the 
same as that which very commonly intervenes between 
two of our general elections. On these comparatively 
few months, libraries have been written. The inci- 
dents of every week are matters of familiar knowledge. 
The character and the biography of every actor in the 
drama has been made the subject of minute study ; 
and by common admission there is no more fascinating 
page in the history of the world. But the interest is 
not what is commonly called philosophic, it is 
personal. Because the Revolution is the dominant 
fact in Modern History, therefore people suppose 
that the doings of this or that provincial lawyer, 
tossed into temporary eminence and eternal infamy 
by some freak of the revolutionary wave, or the 
atrocities committed by this or that mob, half drunk 
with blood, rhetoric, and alcohol, are of transcendent 



30 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

importance. In truth their interest is great, but 
their importance is small. What we are concerned to 
know as students of the philosophy of History is, not 
the character of each turn and eddy in the great 
social cataract, but the manner in which the currents 
of the upper stream drew surely in towards the final 
plunge, and slowly collected themselves after the 
catastrophe again to pursue, at a different level, their 
renewed and comparatively tranquil course. 

Now, if so much of the interest of the French 
Revolution depends upon our minute knowledge of 
each passing incident, how much more necessary is 
such knowledge when we are dealing with the quiet 
nooks and corners of history ; when we are seeking 
an introduction, let us say, into the literary society 
of Johnson, or the fashionable society of Walpole. 
Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without 
intimacy, and no intimacy without interest in trifles 
which I fear Mr. Harrison would describe as " merely 
curious." If we would feel at our ease in any company, 
if we wish to find humour in its jokes, and point in its 
repartees, we must know something of the beliefs and 
the prejudices of its various members, their loves and 
their hates, their hopes and their fears, their maladies, 



THE PLEASUEES OF BEADING 31 

their marriages, and their flirtations. If these things 
are beneath our notice, we shall not be the less quali- 
fied to serve our queen and country, but need make 
no attempt to extract pleasure from one of the most 
delightful departments of literature. 

That there is such a thing as trifling information 
I do not of course question ; but the frame of mind 
in which the reader is constantly weighing the exact 
importance to the universe at large of each circum- 
stance which the author presents to his notice is not 
one conducive to the true enjoyment of a picture 
whose effect depends upon a multitude of slight and 
seemingly insignificant touches, which impress the 
mind often without remaining in the memory. The 
best method of guarding against the danger of reading 
what is useless is to read only what is interesting. A 
truth which will seem a paradox to a whole class of 
readers, fitting objects of our commiseration, who 
may be often recognised by their habit of asking 
some adviser for a list of books, and then marking 
out a scheme of study in the course of which all are 
to be conscientiously perused. These unfortunate 
persons apparently read a book, principally with the 
object of getting to the end of it. They reach the 



32 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

word " Finis " with the same sensation of triumph as 
an Indian feels who strings a fresh scalp to his girdle. 
They are not happy unless they mark by some definite 
performance each step in the weary path of self- 
improvement. To begin a volume and not to finish 
it would be to deprive themselves of this satisfaction ; 
it would be to lose all the reward of their earlier self- 
denial by a lapse from virtue at the end. To skip, 
according to their literary code, is a species of cheat- 
ing ; it is a mode of obtaining credit for erudition on 
false pretences ; a plan by which the advantages of 
learning are surreptitiously obtained by those who 
have not won them by honest toil. But all this is 
quite wrong. In matters literary, works have no 
saving efficacy. He has only half learnt the art of 
reading who has not added to it the even more 
refined accomplishments of skipping and of skim- 
ming ; and the first step has hardly been taken in the 
direction of making literature a pleasure until interest 
in the subject, and not a desire to spare (so to speak) 
the author's feelings, or to accomplish an appointed 
task, is the prevailing motive of the reader. 

I have now reached, not indeed the end of my 
subject, which I have scarcely begun, but the limits 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 33 

inexorably set by the circumstances under which it is 
treated. Yet I am unwilling to conclude without 
meeting an objection to my method of dealing with 
it, which has I am sure been present to the minds of 
not a few who have been good enough to listen to 
me with patience. It will be said that I have ignored 
the higher functions of literature, that I have degraded 
it from its rightful place, by discussing only certain 
ways in which it may minister to the entertainment 
of an idle hour : leaving wholly out of sight its con- 
tributions to what Mr. Harrison calls our " spiritual 
sustenance." Now this is partly because the first of 
these topics and not the second was the avowed 
subject of my address ; but it is partly because I am 
deliberately of opinion that it is the pleasures and 
not the profits, spiritual or temporal, of literature 
which most require to be preached in the ear of the 
ordinary reader. I hold, indeed, the faith that all 
such pleasures minister to the development of much 
that is best in man mental and moral ; but the 
charm is broken and the object lost if the remote 
consequence is consciously pursued to the exclusion 
of the immediate end. It will not, I suppose, be 
denied that the beauties of nature are at least as 
D 



34 THE PLEASURES OF READING 

well qualified to minister to our higher needs as are 
the beauties of literature. Yet we do not say we 
are going to walk to the top of such and such a hill 
in order to drink in "spiritual sustenance." We say 
we are going to look at the view. And I am con- 
vinced that this, which is the natural and simple way 
of considering literature as well as nature, is also the 
true way. The habit of always requiring some re- 
ward for knowledge beyond the knowledge itself, be 
that reward some material prize or be it what is 
vaguely called self-improvement, is one with which I 
confess I have little sympathy, fostered though it is 
by the whole scheme of our modern education. Do 
not suppose that I desire the impossible. I would 
not if I could destroy the examination system. But 
there are times, I confess, when I feel tempted some- 
what to vary the prayer of the poet, and to ask 
whether Heaven has not reserved in pity to this 
much educating generation some peaceful desert of 
literature as yet unclaimed by the crammer or the 
coach ; where it might be possible for the student to 
wander, even perhaps to stray, at his own pleasure ; 
without finding every beauty labelled, every difficulty 
engineered, every nook surveyed, and a professional 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 35 

cicerone standing at every corner to guide each suc- 
ceeding traveller along the same well-worn round. If 
such a wish were granted I would further ask that the 
domain of knowledge thus " neutralised " should be 
the literature of our own country. I grant to the 
full that the systematic study of some literature must 
be a principal element in the education of youth. 
But why should that literature be our own ? Why 
should we brush off the bloom and freshness from 
the works to which Englishmen and Scotchmen most 
naturally turn for refreshment, namely, those written 
in their own language? Why should we associate 
them with the memory of hours spent in weary study ; 
in the effort to remember for purposes of examination 
what no human being would wish to remember for 
any other; in the struggle to learn something, not 
because the learner desires to know it, because he 
desires some one else to know that he knows it? 
This is the dark side of the examination system a 
system necessary and therefore excellent, but one 
which does, through the very efficiency and thorough- 
ness of the drill by which it imparts knowledge, to 
some extent impair the most delicate pleasures by 
which the acquisition of knowledge should be attended. 



36 THE PLEASURES OF HEADING 

How great those pleasures may be I trust there 
are many here who can testify. When I compare 
the position of the reader of to-day with that of his 
predecessor of the sixteenth century, I am amazed at 
the ingratitude of those who are tempted even for a 
moment to regret the invention of printing and the 
multiplication of books. There is now no mood of 
mind to which a man may not administer the appro- 
priate nutriment or medicine at the cost of reaching 
down a volume from his bookshelf. In every de- 
partment of knowledge infinitely more is known, and 
what is known is incomparably more accessible than 
it was to our ancestors. The lighter forms of litera- 
ture, good, bad, and indifferent, which have added so 
vastly to the happiness of mankind, have increased 
beyond powers of computation, nor do I believe that 
there is any reason to think that they have elbowed 
out their more serious and important brethren. It is 
perfectly possible for a man, not a professed student, 
and who only gives to reading the leisure hours of a 
business life, to acquire such a general knowledge of 
the laws of nature and the facts of history that every 
great advance made in either department shall be to 
him both intelligible and interesting; and he may 



THE PLEASURES OF READING 37 

besides have among his familiar friends many a de- 
parted worthy whose memory is embalmed in the 
pages of memoir or biography. All this is ours for 
the asking. All this we shall ask for if only it be 
our happy fortune to love for its own sake the beauty 
and the knowledge to be gathered from books. And 
if this be our fortune, the world may be kind or un- 
kind, it may seem to us to be hastening on the wings 
of enlightenment and progress to an imminent 
millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense 
of insoluble difficulty and irremediable wrong; but 
whatever else it be, so long as we have good health 
and a good library, it can hardly be dull. 



II 

BISHOP BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 1 

I 

BERKELEY'S chief title to fame must always rest on 
his philosophy. It is as a descendant in the true 
line of succession from Locke to the modern schools 
of thought, which are either a development of Locke's 
principles or a reaction against that development, that 
he is, and that he deserves to be, chiefly remembered. 
Yet his life and character had for his contemporaries, 
and may have for us, an interest quite apart from the 
details of metaphysical discussion. We may look at 
him, as they looked at him, not principally as the 
successor of Locke and the predecessor of Hume, as 
the almost impersonal author of a subtle philosophical 
theory, but as the worthy associate of the men who 
rendered the first fifty years of the eighteenth century 
1 National Revieiv, March and April 1883. 



40 BEKKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

illustrious in English literature, as an Irish patriot, 
as an American philanthropist, as a religious contro- 
versialist, as a man of delightful character and con- 
verse, simple, devoted, and unworldly. Though it 
be true, therefore, that philosophy apart Berkeley 
effected little; though he did not write enough to 
rank in the first class among men of letters, nor 
perform enough to be counted a successful man of 
action ; though he was neither a great social power, 
nor a great missionary, nor a great ecclesiastic, it is 
also true that scarce any man of his generation 
touched contemporary life at so many points. In 
reading his not very voluminous works we find 
ourselves not only in the thick of every great contro- 
versy theological, mathematical, and philosophical 
which raged in England during the first half of the 
eighteenth century, but we get glimpses of life in the 
most diverse conditions : in the seclusion of Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, in the best literary and fashionable society 
in London, among the prosperous colonists of Rhode 
Island, among the very far from prosperous peasants 
and squireens of Cork. And all this in the company 
of a man endowed with the subtlest of intellects, lit 
up with a humour the most delicate and urbane. 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 41 

It is not creditable to the piety with which we 
cherish the memory of our literary ancestors, that no 
serious effort should have been made till 120 years 
after Berkeley's death to collect his scattered writings, 
and to place on record all that can be discovered of 
his life. But we may perhaps console ourselves for 
the fact that some valuable material has thus been 
lost beyond recall, by reflecting that the work, though 
begun too late, has at last been admirably carried out. 
Professor Fraser, in his recent edition of Berkeley's 
collected works, has not only provided the philosophic 
student with all the assistance he can possibly require, 
but (which is more to my present purpose) has 
enriched it with a most excellent life of his author. 
Our obligations to him, however, do not end there. 
Since the publication of the life and letters, some new 
biographical details of much interest have come to 
light. Professor Fraser has taken the opportunity, 
afforded him by the issue of the series of "Philo- 
sophic Classics," to insert them in the volume devoted 
to Berkeley, and has thereby earned a new title to 
the gratitude of Berkeley's admirers. In this little 
work Professor Fraser has, with remarkable skill, 
woven into an organic whole much of the material he 



42 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

formerly divided (in the complete edition) between 
the works and the life : so that the reader may now 
obtain an adequate account of the opinions of the 
philosopher, illustrated by the circumstances under 
which those opinions were formed and given to the 
world. This is, without doubt, the proper way to 
obtain a true view of the life and writings of any 
author, and not least of Berkeley. But it unfortun- 
ately presupposes a wider knowledge of philosophical 
subjects than most readers possess or care to acquire : 
and I may, therefore, be doing a service if, by a free 
use of the materials which Professor Fraser hae 
supplied, I can succeed, without lapsing into meta- 
physics, in giving an interesting portrait of one of 
the most interesting figures in our literary history. , 
For few purposes but those of the almanack-maker 
does the period we call the "eighteenth century" 
begin with the year 1701. The precise limits of it 
can, indeed, be hardly determined; and the terms 
which we fix for it must not only be to some Extent 
arbitrary, but must vary according to the point of 
view from which we happen to be considering it. 
Yet, we may say roughly, that for the purposes 
respectively of science, philosophy, and theology, it 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 43 

began (in England at least) with Newton's Principia, 
published in 1687 ; Locke's Essay, published in 1690 ; 
and (let not the reader be shocked at the descent) 
Toland's deistical work, Christianity not Mysterious, 
published in 1696. Trinity College, Dublin, then 
just beginning to recover from the civil wars which 
in Ireland accompanied the Revolution, was pro- 
foundly affected by all three works. With a readi- 
ness to accept new doctrine which has not always 
been shown by academic societies, the Principia and 
the Essay became at once part of the studies of the 
place, and though I do not know whether the 
ponderous " Logics " of Burgersdicius and Smiglecius, 
on which it is alleged that Swift's university career 
so nearly made shipwreck a few years before, 1 were 
discarded from the "curriculum," there can be no 
doubt that the whole current of opinion ran violently 
against scholastic methods, and in favour of Newton's 
physics and Locke's philosophy. As for Toland, the 
effect of his work in Dublin was more violent and, for 
our present purpose, nearly as important. Christianity 
not Mysterious was burnt by the common hangman, 
censured by the Irish Parliament, denounced from 
1 Swift took his degree in 1685, the year of Berkeley's birth. 



44 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

every pulpit in the city, whilst its author, much 
delighted at the turmoil he had raised, found it 
expedient to leave the country. " A sermon against 
his errors was as much expected," says Mr. Hunt, 1 
" as if it had been prescribed in the rubric : and an 
Irish peer gave it as a reason why he had ceased to 
attend church, that once he heard something there 
about his Saviour, Jesus Christ, but now all the dis- 
course was about one John Toland." This took place 
in 1697. In 1700, Berkeley, at the age of fifteen, 
matriculated at Trinity College. 

At the most receptive period of his precocious 
youth he thus found himself plunged in the middle 
stream of eighteenth century thought, already running 
with a full tide though still so near its source. For 
more than thirty years the character of his speculative 
writings turned on questions in debate during the 
period in which he began his first residence at Trinity 
College. His philosophical batteries are always 
directed so as to present a threefold opposition to the 
metaphysics of Locke, certain mathematico-physical 
assumptions which he ascribed to Newton, and the 
theological inferences of the Deists and Free-thinkers. 
1 Religious Thought in England, vol. ii. p. 244. 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 45 

But it must never be forgotten that, in his opposition 
to the new ideas, he did not represent the age that 
was going out, but (though in a peculiar manner) the 
age that was coming in. He was not engaged in the 
last desperate stand made along the old lines, with 
the old argumentative weapons, against invading 
innovations. In so far as he opposed the new con- 
clusions, it was in the spirit of the new premises. 
If he attacked Locke, it was not as a disciple of the 
schoolmen. If he criticised Newton, it was not as a 
disciple of Descartes. And, though his orthodoxy 
was beyond suspicion, we may look through his 
theological writings in vain for that learned discussion 
of dogmatic subtleties which was dear to the seven- 
teenth century, of which his own contemporaries 
produced more than one admirable example, but 
which was on the whole alien to the taste of the 
eighteenth century, whether believing or sceptical, 
whether lay or clerical. It would be a more natural, 
but not a less important error, to suppose that 
Berkeley's habits of thought l anticipated something 
of the spirit of the nineteenth century. He is, as 

1 From all these remarks I exclude the Siris, the work of his last 
years, of which I shall have to speak later. 



46 BEKKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

every one knows, an "idealist": and it might be 
concluded that his speculations had something of 
the imaginative vagueness which characterised the 
idealistic reaction against the shallow rationalism of 
the pre-revolutionary period. But it is not so. 
Berkeley emphatically belonged to his age. The 
same impatience of authority in matters of specula- 
tion, the same passion for clearness and simplicity, 
the same dislike of what was either pedantic on the 
one side or rhetorical on the other, the same desire 
to clothe his thoughts in an agreeable literary dress, 
is found in him as in any French philosopher who 
undertook to acquaint admiring salons with the latest 
phases in the emancipation of reason. His creed, 
indeed, was different, as were his aims, but he 
belonged to the same century, intellectually as well 
as chronologically. 

On these and on other points connected with the 
development of Berkeley's modes of thought, we 
have most interesting evidence in his Commonplace 
Book, first published by Professor Fraser in 1870; 
consisting of miscellaneous notes and memoranda 
entirely connected with his philosophical studies, 
and jotted down, apparently, between the years 



47 

1705-1707, i.e. when Berkeley was little more than 
twenty. That a collection of this kind, never in- 
tended to meet any eyes but those of its author, 
should contain much that is crude and even absurd, 
that there should be frequent repetition and no 
method, is, of course, inevitable. A soliloquy 
from which these characteristics are absent is most 
surely intended to be overheard. To my taste, 
therefore, these defects, if defects they be, only 
add to the vividness, and, therefore, to the interest, 
of the fragment of intellectual autobiography so 
fortunately preserved. We have here, in casual and 
detached utterances, almost the whole substance of 
the philosophy which, in a form exquisitely polished 
and developed, Berkeley afterwards gave to the 
world. But we have much more than this. We are 
allowed to watch all the emotions which, in the mind 
of its author, accompanied the birth of the new Idea. 1 
His hopes, his fears, his good resolutions, his con- 
fidence in the value cff his discovery, his misgivings 
as to its reception, are put before us in the liveliest 
way in notes of almost ejaculatory brevity, or 
fragments of dialogue with imaginary opponents. 

1 i.e. The non-existence of independent matter. 



48 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

"I wonder not," he tells us, 1 "at my sagacity in dis- 
covering the obvious tho' amazing truth ; I rather wonder 
at my stupid inadvertency in not finding it out before 
'tis no witchcraft to see." 

And again 

MEM. That I was distrustful at eight years old, and 
consequently by nature disposed to these new doctrines. 2 

All things in the Scripture which side with the vulgar 
against the learned, side with me also. I side in all 
things with the mob. I know there is a mighty sect of 
men will oppose me, but yet I may expect to be supported 
by those whose minds are not overgrown with madness. 3 

MEM. To be eternally banishing Metaphysics, etc., 
and recalling men to common sense. 4 

My end is not to deliver Metaphysics in a general 
scholastic way, but in some way to accommodate them to 
the sciences, etc. 5 

I abstain from all nourish and powers of words and 
figures, using a great plainness and simplicity of simile, 
having oft found it difficult to understand those that use 
the lofty and Platonic or subtil and scholastic strain. 6 

There are some of the notes which might be 
quoted as being pertinent to the foregoing account of 
Berkeley's frame of mind while at Trinity College. 
Let me add to them a maxim which, fortunately for 
the world, Berkeley only very imperfectly observed, 
viz. : 



Life and Letters, p. 489. 2 Ibid. p. 488. 3 Ibid. p. 420. 
Ibid. p. 445. s I6idt p 482> e jbid. p. 492. 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 49 

N.B. To rein in ye satyrical nature. 1 
And another for which it is strange he should even 
have thought he had any occasion : 

N.B. To use utmost caution not to give least offence 
to the Church or Churchmen. 2 

Possibly, when he penned the last of these 
admonitions to himself, he was thinking of the 
wearisome controversy which arose out of the offence 
given to the too sensitive orthodoxy of Bishop 
Stillingfleet by Locke's doctrine of substance. 

However this may be, Berkeley had no hesitation 
in openly ranging himself with "the Church and 
Churchmen"; for within a very short time of his 
penning the words, namely, in 1709, he took orders, 
and in the same year, at the age of twenty-four, he 
gave to the world his first philosophical book the 
New Theory of Vision. This dealt with but a small 
number of the problems on which, as the Common- 
place Book shows, he had for some time arrived at 
novel and interesting conclusions ; but it was rapidly 
followed by the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), 
which contain what we are in the habit of calling 

1 Life and Letters, p. 483. 

2 Ibid. p. 451. 

E 



50 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

the "Berkeleian Philosophy," in a tolerably complete 
form ; while in the next two years were written the 
dialogue between Hylas and Philonous, which pre- 
sented his early speculations in their final and most 
elaborate shape. 

Before he was twenty-eight, therefore, Berkeley 
had finished the work on which his position in the 
history of philosophy chiefly depends. His life was 
not half run out, and the part which still remained 
to him was not only far more full of incident and 
interest than the few quiet years spent in excogitating 
his new "Principle" in the studious retirement of 
Trinity College, but must have seemed to his con- 
temporaries far more reasonably employed. We, on 
the other hand, shall, perhaps, be rather inclined to 
wonder that a man who had done so much before he 
was thirty, had not done much more by the time he 
was sixty. The precocity of his genius and its com- 
parative barrenness may seem to us almost equal 
matters of surprise. The strangeness of both, how- 
ever, diminishes on reflexion. Philosophy is nearly 
as likely to be done well in early as in later life. It 
needs neither profound knowledge of human nature, 
nor that superficial acquaintance with the ways of 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 51 

mankind which goes by the name of "knowledge of 
the world." It is wholly independent of experience, 
and nearly independent even of book learning. It 
scarcely requires, therefore, for its successful cultiva- 
tion any of the accomplishments, for the full develop- 
ment of which Time is a necessary condition. What 
it demands from its successful votaries is the instinct 
which tells them where, along the line of contemporary 
speculation, that point is to be found from which the 
next advance may best be made, and that speculative 
faculty which is as much a natural gift as an aptitude 
for mathematics or a genius for poetry. Should they 
lack the first of these requisites, they will be left, 
whatever their ability, like Berkeley's contemporaries, 
Clarke and Malebranch, out of the main current of 
thought in a kind of philosophical back-water ; should 
they lack the second, they have made a mistake as to 
their true calling, which neither industry nor learning 
will do anything to remedy. Berkeley possessed 
both gifts. We need not wonder, therefore, that 
like many other philosophers like Hume, Fichte, 
Schelling, and Schopenhauer he produced valuable 
original work at an early age. That he produced so 
little in his maturer years is doubtless due in part to 



52 BEKKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

temperament, and to the distractions of an unsettled 
and wandering life, but it must also be largely 
attributed to the almost total absence of intelligent 
criticism, either from friends or foes, under which 
Berkeley suffered throughout the whole period 
during which such criticism might have roused him 
to make some serious effort to develop or to defend 
the work of his youth. Professor Fraser has given 
us, from unpublished sources, an account of one 
ineffectual effort which Berkeley made to get his 
views discussed by a competent critic. In 1711 his 
friend Sir John Percival, to whom Berkeley had 
applied for information as to the reception of the 
Principles, reported that the book had fallen into Dr. 
Clarke's hands. Clarke, it appears, read it, disagreed 
with it, but refused to give his reasons; and was, 
moreover, alleged to have expressed an opinion that 
Berkeley's labours were " of little use on account of 
tneir abstruseness." Poor Berkeley, who flattered 
himself that his treatise did away with the "chief 
causes of error and difficulty in the sciences," and 
destroyed the "grounds of scepticism, atheism, and 
irreligion," was naturally distressed at a criticism 
which, it must be confessed, came with rather an ill 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 53 

grace from the author of the metaphysical " Demon- 
stration of the Being and Attributes of God." The 
rest of the world has so long and so unanimously said 
of philosophers that their labours are "useless to 
mankind on account of their abstruseness," that 
philosophers should in common decency refrain from 
saying it of each other. 

Berkeley, however, was now to be in a position 
to judge for himself, and at first hand, what the 
world thought of his system. Early in January 1713 
he gave up his academic life in Dublin, and, with the 
manuscript of his unpublished Dialogues in his pocket, 
started for London. He was there only seven months. 
He had the assistance neither of wealth nor of family 
connection, and did not even carry with him, so far 
as we know, any powerful recommendations from his 
native country ; for the reputation of having written 
a book which those who had read it thought useless, 
and those who had not, thought mad, can hardly be 
so esteemed. 1 Yet we find him almost immediately 
received into the intimate society of the Whig men of 
letters, like Steele and Addison, and of the Tory men 

1 It is true, however, that Berkeley alleges that Steele was 
interested in his account of the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
and that Arbuthnot was a convert to the Dialogues. 



54 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

of letters, like Swift and Arbuthnot. He was engaged 
to write in the Guardian. Pope presented him with 
a copy of a "very ingenious new poem," Windsor 
Forest. He went to Court, he was introduced to 
ministers and statesmen, and finally obtained an 
appointment as chaplain to a special embassy of Lord 
Peterborough. 

The foundation of this rapid success was doubtless 
due to Berkeley's extraordinary charm of manner. 
The effect of this on all who met him seems to have 
been instantaneous and lasting. The words in which 
Atterbury recorded his first impression of him are 
almost as well known as the line in which Pope 
attributes to him "every virtue under heaven." Less 
well known, but equally characteristic, is the anecdote 
which records that he had to escape by stratagem 
from the hospitality of Wilton, so unwilling was 
Lord Pembroke to be deprived of the pleasures of his 
society. But it may be doubted whether any charm 
of character or manner would, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, have so soon produced its natural fruits, 
even though its possessor had enjoyed in addition 
the reputation of having written a book which nobody 
could understand. The explanation is rather to be 



BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 55 

sought in the fact that while his nationality gained 
Berkeley an introduction through his countrymen, 
Steele and Swift, into the best literary society of the 
day, the best literary society had, in relation to the 
best society of other kinds, a position in Queen Anne's 
time which it has never exactly occupied either before 
or since. Lord Macaulay would have us believe 1 
that this was due to the fact that after the Kevolu- 
tion statesmen felt the growing necessity of appealing 
to public opinion outside the walls of Parliament, and, 
at a time when debates were conducted with closed 
doors, could only do so by means of the press: so 
that, as a natural consequence, men of letters ceased 
to be merely the objects of their patronage, and 
became their allies and their associates. That this 
explanation partly accounts for the facts I am far 
from denying, but that it does so only in part is clear 
from the circumstance that the alleged cause existed 
long after the alleged consequence had disappeared. 
In. the time of Walpole, who valued this kind of 
assistance so highly that he is said to have spent 
50,000 in ten years to secure it, there was no 
privileged literary circle of any consequence, and no 
1 Essay on Addison. 



56 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

men of letters received high political appointments. 
Moreover, while in the preceding period a writer so 
useful to ministers, as, for example, Defoe, was paid 
for his services in hard cash, and not either in posts 
of distinction or in social consideration, it would be 
hard, I think, to show that there was more than a 
very general connection between the political writings 
and the politico-social successes of such men as Prior, 
Addison, or even Swift. Prior began the diplomatic 
career, in which he finally became ambassador and 
plenipotentiary, in 1690; but I am not aware that 
he contributed anything but verses to party contro- 
versy, except some numbers of the Examiner in 1710. 
Addison's political writings are a mere fraction of his 
works ; and if the places and pensions which he at 
various times obtained are to be considered as a 
payment for them, it must at all events be admitted 
that they were a payment conducted on very strange 
principles. He had received a pension and had been 
made under-secretary before writing anything political 
at all. A single pamphlet in defence of the war was 
followed by his appointment to the Irish Chief 
Secretaryship. From the time the Whigs went out 
in 1710, till they came in again on the death of 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 57 

the Queen, he wrote, I believe, but one political 
pamphlet besides the Whig Examiner and the Whig 
Examiner he discontinued just when the Tory 
Examiner, in Swift's hands, became most formidable. 
There never was a time when his party was more in 
need of a powerful pen than during this season of 
their adversity ; but Addison devoted almost all his 
energies during it to purely literary work, and did 
his best to dissuade Steele from taking a different 
course. Yet so far were his friends from thinking 
that they had reason to complain of his remissness, 
that on their return to office, they immediately re- 
appointed him to the Irish Chief Secretaryship. The 
services which Swift's pen did to his party, it would, 
indeed, be difficult to overrate. But no one can 
doubt that, from whatever motives the Tory Ministers 
began to receive him into a flattering intimacy, they 
continued to do so not because they wanted to buy 
him as a writer, but because they valued him as an 
adviser, and loved him as a friend. 

The main cause, therefore, of the unique position 
of men of letters in the first quarter of the last 
century, is to be found, I believe, not in any law of 
social evolution, but in a mere coincidence in the 



58 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

coincidence, namely, of two men, both in the very 
first rank of literary ability, both entirely devoid 
of literary jealousy, both zealous and disinterested 
friends to their literary brethren, both combining 
great independence with the rarest social gifts, and 
both ready to do political as well as literary work 
in the coincidence (I say) of two such men existing 
together at a time when the leaders of both political 
parties were eminently qualified to appreciate their 
excellences. When we speak of the men of letters 
in the age of Queen Anne, we are usually thinking 
principally of Addison and "his little senate," of 
Swift and the Scriblerus Club; the rest were "Grub 
Street," and suffered neither a better nor a worse fate 
under Queen Anne than under the first Georges. 
My contention is that the explanation of the un- 
exampled influence of the former is to be found, not 
in the mere fact that the statesmen of that day 
desired to secure the services of writers capable of 
producing The Freeholder or The Conduct of the Allies, 
but in the fact that men like Addison and Swift were 
contemporaries of men like Somers and Halifax, 
Oxford and Bolingbroke. 

However this may be, and I have perhaps paused 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 59 

too long over a question which is but indirectly 
connected with my subject, there is no doubt that 
Berkeley greatly profited by the state of things he 
found existing in London. Neither then, nor at any 
other time, did he mix himself up in party contro- 
versy. In ecclesiastical matters he was apparently a 
moderate High Churchman, in politics a moderate 
Tory. But at a time when both ecclesiastical and 
political party feeling ran very high, his interests 
seem always to have centred in other, broader, and 
perhaps less practical, issues; and he therefore 
associated on perfectly easy terms with men whose 
difference of opinion debarred them from associating 
on perfectly easy terms with each other. If this 
circumstance prevented him being an actor in the 
stormy politics of the period, it enabled him to be 
an impartial spectator of more than one scene 
interesting in our literary history. At Easter 1713, 
Addison's tragedy of Cato was acted for the first 
time. Most people know Macaulay's lively account 
of this celebrated "first night," though comparatively 
few know anything else about what was, according 
to Voltaire, the first "regular" tragedy that had 
ever been brought on the English stage. The success 



60 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

of the play, so far as success may be measured by 
applause, was certain from the first. For in the then 
condition of politics, everybody was determined to 
find in it a political intention ; and as neither party 
would permit the other to appropriate to itself the 
fine sentiments with which its speeches abounded, 
Whig and Tory clapped against one another in noisy 
but undiscriminating emulation. Pope tells us how 
the author " sweated behind the scenes with concern 
to find the applause proceeded more from the hand 
than the head " ; and Berkeley writes that he " was 
present with Mr. Addison and a few more friends in 
a side box, where we had a table and two or three 
flasks of Burgundy and Champagne, with which the 
author (who is a very sober man) thought it necessary 
to support his spirits. . . . Lord Harley, who sat 
in the box next us, was observed to clap as loud as 
any in the house all the time of the play." 1 The 
picture is amusing, and the testimony to Addison's 
habitual sobriety is interesting on account of the 
accusation of intemperance which has been brought 
against him. 

1 Bishop Hurd amusingly remarks, in his note to Cato : ' ' While 
the present humour of idolising Shakespeare continues, no quarter 
will be given to this poem." 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 61 

From another letter which Professor Fraser has 
brought to light, and which I cannot resist quoting, 
we learn that in March Berkeley breakfasted with 
Addison and Swift at the lodgings of the latter. 
This incident (which is not mentioned, I believe, in 
the Journal to Stella) is interesting, as throwing 
light on the relations of two eminent men, whose 
friendship was sometime sorely strained, but never 
quite broken, by political differences. 

"I breakfasted," says Berkeley, "with him [i.e. with 
Addison] at Dr. Swift's lodgings in Bury Street. His 
coming when I was there, and the good temper which he 
showed, I construed as a sign of the approaching coalition 
of parties. Dr. Swift is admired by both Steele and 
Addison, and I think him one of the best-natured and 
most agreeable men in the world." 

The prophecy suggested in this extract had more 
of charity in it than of foresight. Not many months 
had passed before "the best-natured man in the 
world " was gibbeting Steele in The Importance of the 
"Guardian" considered. In little more than a year 
Swift was an exile in his native land, and the Tory 
chiefs were either imprisoned or were flying for their 
lives. 

Before this wreck of all his hopes Swift was able 



62 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

to do for Berkeley one of the many kindnesses which, 
in the days of his power, he conferred on his literary 
brethren. He got him appointed chaplain to the 
special embassy of which the celebrated Lord Peter- 
borough was the head. The service he thus did his 
friend was greater than may at first appear. In 
the last century, travelling meant something more 
than hurrying through picture galleries, staring at 
churches, and seeing a little of everything in foreign 
countries except their inhabitants. But while its 
advantages were greater, so also was its cost. A 
man, without introductions or powerful connections, 
could not enjoy its full benefits ; and a man without 
money, or the assistance of those who had money, 
could scarcely hope to enjoy them at all. Under 
these circumstances, there were two methods by 
which a poor man might obtain direct knowledge of 
foreign society or foreign art. He might become 
companion, probably tutor, to some richer person, or 
he might obtain an appointment on some embassy. 
Addison, Gray, Adam Smith, are examples of the 
first method; Locke and Hume of the second. 
Berkeley enjoyed both. In 1713-14, as chaplain to 
Lord Peterborough's mission, from 1716-20, as tutor 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 63 

to the son of Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, he travelled 
on the Continent under favourable circumstances, 
visiting France, Italy, and Sicily. 

It is not necessary to pause over his wanderings. 
Of part of them we have a very full record in a 
journal which has been preserved, and which Pro- 
fessor Fraser has, for the first time, rendered 
accessible. From this it is easy to discern the spirit 
in which he wandered through Italy and Sicily, 
lingering with delight in what he describes, in an 
admirable letter to Pope, as the " romantic " scenery 
of Ischia, or penetrating into the little-known recesses 
of Calabria. He does not indulge largely in historical 
or political reflections, nor are his pages loaded with 
classical reminiscences, though these are not wanting ; 
but he notes the external aspect of the country and 
its inhabitants, the character of the agriculture, of 
the scenery, and, even more particularly, of the 
architecture. He is, besides, a keen scientific 
investigator. He sent home to Arbuthnot, and 
Arbuthnot communicated to the Royal Society, an 
excellent account of an ascent of Vesuvius during an 
eruption. He inquired with great care, though with 
no very conclusive result, into the phenomena of 



64 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTEES 

Tarantism i.e. into the effects that were supposed 
to follow the bite of the Tarantula ; and he made a 
collection of the flora of Sicily. All this has for us 
now only a biographical interest; and even if the 
second part of the Principles of Human Knowledge, 
which he wrote in Sicily, and which was lost at sea, 
had been preserved, it may be doubted whether much 
of permanent value would have been added to what 
we know of his philosophy from other sources. But 
it cannot be doubted that the effect of his travels 
on Berkeley himself was great, and that when he 
returned to England at the end of 1720, he brought 
back from the Continent a knowledge of men and 
things, and a cultivated sensibility to the beauties of 
nature and art, which have left permanent traces in 
his writings. 

The inner connection of the events which occurred 
in the three years immediately succeeding his return 
home are, at first sight, difficult to discover. But 
the events themselves are easily told. He arrived in 
England during the very crisis of the South Sea 
mania. This, and what else he saw of the condition 
of society, startled him into writing an Essay towards 
the Prevention of the Ruin of Great Britain, of which it 



BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 65 

is sufficient to say here that it is one of those energetic 
protests against national vices to which no nation, 
standing gravely in need of it, would be likely to 
pay much attention. This done, and acquaintance 
renewed with the survivors among his old literary 
friends, he seems to have laid himself out for ecclesi- 
astical preferment. The architectural knowledge 
acquired in Italy recommended him to the archi- 
tectural Lord Burlington, through whose influence 
he became chaplain to the Duke of Grafton, then 
just appointed Lord -Lieutenant of Ireland. The 
post seems to have been little to Berkeley's liking, 
But if, as is probable, he accepted it as a step to one 
more congenial to his tastes, he certainly succeeded 
better than his friend Swift, who had occupied a 
similar position with similar hopes many years 
before, but with no better reward than the living of 
Laracor. The more fortunate Berkeley was ap- 
pointed, in rapid succession, by his College to several 
lectureships, and by the Lord-Lieutenant to a living 
and two deaneries. The deanery of Dromore, on 
account of some legal obstacle, he seems never to 
have enjoyed. With regard to the deanery of Derry 
there were no such difficulties. But he had no sooner 
F 



66 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

entered into undisturbed possession of it than he 
astonished his friends by expressing the most ardent 
wish to leave it, in order to execute a scheme for the 
conversion of America. 

It certainly seems strange at first sight that 
Berkeley should thus for some years have sought 
ecclesiastical preferment with no other apparent 
object than to resign it as soon as it was obtained. 
But the fact seems to be that during those years his 
scheme of life underwent a complete change. Doubt- 
less, he returned, after his long wanderings, anxious 
for a settled home and determinate work, and with 
the intention of finding these in the ordinary develop- 
ment of a clerical career. But the spectacle of the 
corrupt society of the early Georgian period, rendered 
more repulsive by the shameless fraud and avarice 
that accompanied the South Sea speculation, shocked 
his unaccustomed gaze. He conceived a profound 
dislike of a civilisation eaten into, and, as he believed, 
fatally undermined, by idleness, self-indulgence, and 
irreligion. He turned, as others in a like position 
have turned, to a younger and a more hopeful society 
across the ocean. There gradually grew up in his 
mind the strange but fascinating dream of a missionary 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 67 

college, which should be a centre of civilisation to 
the rising Empire in the West. His imagination 
filled itself with the vision of a learned and devout 
company of friends, far removed from luxury and 
the snares which beset the search for wealth, devoting 
themselves, under the serene skies of Bermuda, to the 
instruction of native Americans, who were in their turn 
to teach their brethren on the mainland those truths 
of Christian morality which in Europe men continued 
to profess, but had long ceased to value. If, however, 
the vision was to become a reality, the first and most 
important step was to convince a sceptical age of his 
own unselfish belief in its possibility. And it may 
well have seemed to Berkeley that, as a means towards 
attaining this end, he could not do better than obtain 
that ecclesiastical preferment which he had probably 
originally sought from other and more ordinary motives. 
A missionary scheme which would have received scant 
attention while advocated by a literary clergyman of 
no established position, unsupported by any powerful 
connection, might wear a very different complexion 
when promoted by a dean who was prepared to 
sacrifice his deanery to assist it. A man who was 
not only ready, but anxious to give up two thousand 



68 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

a year at home in order to get a hundred a year in 
the middle of the Atlantic, might be visionary, but 
must certainly be disinterested ; and Berkeley knew 
well enough that in order to get people to believe in 
his scheme, it was first necessary to make them 
believe in himself. 

If this was his object, it must be admitted that, 
in the first instance at least, it was thoroughly 
attained. His unrivalled powers of personal persua- 
sion were unsparingly used to further his cause. 
Every one knows the anecdote narrated by Warton, 
on the authority of Lord Bathurst, which tells how 
the members of the Scriblerus Club agreed to rally 
Berkeley on his project, how, after hearing all that 
they had to say, he asked to be heard in his turn, 
and how the eloquence of the philanthropic philo- 
sopher so moved them, that those who came to scoff 
remained to subscribe. The story, though strange, 
may be believed, since we have it on no less evidence 
than the Statute Book, that he performed the far 
more amazing feat of obtaining a grant of money 
(20,000) from the State, and this at a time when 
Sir Robert Walpole was responsible for its finances. 
Nobody was more surprised at such a result than Sir 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 69 

Robert himself, who attributed it, and with good 
reason, not to the merits of the project, but to the 
persuasive powers of the projector. These were, in 
truth, used without stint. The King's Court at St. 
James's and the Princes' Court at Leicester Fields, the 
world of letters and the world of fashion, as well as 
every individual member of the House of Commons, 
were canvassed on behalf of the scheme, and with 
such effect that, as we have seen, the nation promised 
money, the King granted a charter, Walpole himself 
subscribed, Bermuda became the fashion, and even 
Bolingbroke talked of emigrating, not in a missionary 
capacity, to Berkeley's ideal island. 

Yet the scheme seems now so impracticable, that 
we may well wonder how any single person, let alone 
the representatives of a whole nation, could be found 
to support it. In order that religion and learning 
might flourish in America, the seeds of them were to 
be cast in some rocky islets severed from America 
by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean. In 
order that the inhabitants of the mainland and of 
the West Indian colonies might equally benefit by 
the new university, it was to be placed in such a 
position that neither could conveniently reach it. In 



70 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

order that no taint of luxury should corrupt its morals, 
it was to be removed far from every source of wealth 
and every centre of industry to a place where, as 
Berkeley flattered himself, there was no more lucrative 
occupation possible than that of making straw hats. 
It was to spring from no natural want, it was to 
follow no natural growth, it was to be thrown as it 
were from without to a population which had never 
expressed any desire for it, and in whom a desire 
was not likely to be excited by a gift which, however 
valuable in itself, was presented to them for the first 
time in so singular and so inconvenient a shape. 

Berkeley, it may be observed, was not moved to 
adopt his scheme by any such Utopian views, either 
of the European colonists or the native Americans, 
as became fashionable on the Continent at a later 
period of the century. He did not believe that a 
society which, by force of circumstances, was free 
from the vices incident to an ancient and complex 
civilisation was therefore virtuous ; nor yet that in 
hordes of ignorant savages was to be found the 
perfect and uncorrupted work of Nature. On the 
contrary, in the curious pamphlet in which he re- 
commended his project to the public, he expressly 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 71 

mentions the "avarice, the licentiousness, the cold- 
ness in the practice of religion, and the aversion from 
propagating it," of which the colonists on the main- 
land were accused ; and tells us that " no part of the 
Gentile world are so inhuman and barbarous as the 
savage Americans, whose chief employment and 
delight consist in cruelty and revenge." But he 
certainly believed that in the New World there was 
not only the largest, but also the most hopeful field 
for missionary effect. Society there might be corrupt, 
but it was not, like society in Europe, grown old in 
corruption. The native Indians might be ignorant 
and brutal, but " if they were unimproved by educa- 
tion, they were also unencumbered with that rubbish 
of superstition and prejudice which is the effect of a 
wrong one." He imagined that if only the religion 
and learning of the Old World, purified from its 
pedantry and its vice, could be brought to bear on 
the New while this was yet young and plastic, the 
eyes of posterity might be gladdened by the sight of 
a new Golden Age ; and he bursts into a strain of 
almost prophetic rapture as, in vigorous verses, he 
describes the new Arts and new Empire, " not such 
as Europe breeds in her decay," which were to 



72 BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

rise in the West, the "last and noblest" birth of 
Time. 

Eeflections such as these suggested, we may be 
sure, the main outlines of his scheme. The character 
of its details was probably due to his special idiosyn- 
crasies. Ten years before, in one of his papers in 
the Guardian, he had drawn a picture of University 
life as it might be, as it had been, perhaps, to him, 
but as it certainly was not, in his day, to the majority 
of students. The same vision haunted his declining 
years. And doubtless, while still in the prime of 
life, a project which should enable him to further 
the interests of a continent, while holding himself 
aloof, in academic retirement, from the noise, the 
dust, and the contamination of the struggling multi- 
tude, had, as it might well have, irresistible fascina- 
tion. But this was not all. His fancy lingered 
lovingly over the picture drawn by poets and 
travellers of the scenery in the western isles. With 
Ischia and Sicily still fresh in his recollection, he 
dwelt on the orange-groves and cedars, the cloudless 
skies, and the perpetual spring which were to be 
found in Bermuda. He even dreamed of rearing 
amid these natural beauties collegiate buildings, 



BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTEES 73 

which his architectural knowledge should render not 
unworthy of their setting. 

The vision, it must be owned, was a fascinating one ; 
but it was never to be realised, even in the smallest 
particular. Fortunately, as I hold, for Berkeley, his 
scheme was not even tried sufficiently to show its 
incurable vices. In pursuance of his mission, he 
left England, it is true, in 1728 with his newly- 
married wife, but he never reached Bermuda. In 
Rhode Island, where he arrived after a long 
and tedious passage, he waited, perhaps with dim- 
inishing belief in his own plans, for the funds 
which never came. Sir Robert Walpole had been 
forced by an unexpected vote to promise a sum of 
twenty thousand pounds, but there was nothing to 
force him to pay it. " If you put the question to me 
as a Minister," he said, "I can assure you that the 
money shall most undoubtedly be paid as soon as 
suits public convenience; but if you ask me as a 
friend whether Dean Berkeley shall continue in 
America expecting the payment of 20,000, I advise 
him by all means to return to Europe." 

To Europe accordingly Berkeley returned. Of 
Bermuda we hear no more. But he long retained a 



74 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

lively interest in the colony in which for nearly three 
years he had, as it were by accident, found a home. 
To Yale and to Harvard colleges he sent, soon after 
his arrival in England, a gift of books ; and to the 
former he left his farm near Newport (the scenery of 
which he has so exquisitely described in Aldpliron) 
for the perpetual sustentation of three scholarships. 
The foundation exists, I believe, to the present day, 
and has not only served the purpose for which it 
was immediately founded, but has aided the education 
of some of those who have most earnestly devoted 
themselves to raising the condition of the North 
American Indians. This is the only contribution 
which Berkeley has made to the cause for which he 
left England ; and it is, perhaps, the most per- 
manent and important result of an enterprise begun 
with vast aims and lofty hopes, the record of which 
remains, indeed, a splendid testimony to the personal 
charm, to the self-forgetful zeal, to the disinterested 
benevolence of its author ; but also a standing proof 
of how little in the region of action these high 
qualities avail, dissociated from the practical instinct 
which distinguishes between what does and what does 
not deserve to be attempted. 



II 



IF Berkeley's journey to America did not materially 
further the object for which it was undertaken, it 
was not, on the other hand, wholly barren of results. 
During the three years of enforced but agreeable 
leisure which he spent in Ehode Island, he composed 
the longest, and, in his own lifetime, the most con- 
sidered of all his writings Alciphron, vr the Minute 



This work a series of seven dialogues directed 
against the Deists contains Berkeley's chief polemical 
contribution to the great religious controversy of his 
generation. During the thirty-seven years that in- 
tervened between the publication of Toland's Chris- 
tianity not Mysterious and that of Akiphron, this con- 
troversy had never flagged. But, though the points 
in debate are not widely removed from those which 
profoundly stir men's interests now, they are just 
sufficiently removed to make the discussion of them 



76 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

empty and unsatisfactory to modern ears. Objections 
to revealed religion founded upon textual criticism, 
history, and science, were put then as they are put 
now, but they were put and answered by men to 
whom criticism, history, and science, in the modern 
use of those terms, were practically unknown. The 
consequence of this has been that, with the one 
exception of Butler's Analogy, the merely argumenta- 
tive part of that voluminous controversy has lost all 
but a historic interest, and only those fragments of 
it can now be read with pleasure which are pre- 
served from neglect by their purely literary merits. 

This is hard upon the Deists ; for, whatever may 
have been the intrinsic strength of their arguments, 
it is generally admitted that all the wit (to say 
nothing of the learning) was on the side of their 
opponents. Their writings are now antiquated, but 
they were always dull ; and there is scarcely a single 
piece deliberately intended to further their distinctive 
opinions which can now be read with any sort of 
satisfaction. The fact is remarkable. In an age in 
which so large a proportion of the best literary work, 
whether in prose or verse, was satirical ; in which 
even those who, like Gray and Akenside, would least 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 77 

have desired to be remembered as satirists seemed to 
write with unwonted ease and vigour when they 
trespassed on satiric ground, it is strange that no one 
could be found able and willing to retaliate in kind 
on the attacks of Swift, Steele, Bentley, and Berkeley. 
Even Pope, whose Essay on Man was mainly founded 
on the writings of one Deist and the conversations 
of another, has nothing but sneers for the "smart 
freethinker," and took occasion to pillory their most 
considerable authors in the Dunciad ; while Shaf tes- 
bury, though he loudly recommended the use of 
ridicule as a cure for " enthusiasm " and "supersti- 
tion," was, unfortunately, denied by nature the gifts 
necessary for supplementing his precepts by his 
example. It was not till Deism had been trans- 
planted from its original home to the more congenial 
soil of France, that the balance was redressed. 
Voltaire, who added little to the argumentative 
armoury of Collins, Tindal, and the rest, for the 
first time succeeded in making infidelity amusing, 
while, unlike his English predecessors, he met with 
nothing in the field of literature deserving the name 
of resistance. 

Berkeley, it will be recollected, had been interested 



78 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

from his earliest Dublin days in the Deistic contro- 
versy. The very title pages of his Principles of 
Human Knowledge, and of the Dialogue of Hylas and 
Philonous, proclaimed the fact that his philosophic 
speculations were intended as a remedy for " Scepti- 
cism," "Atheism," and "Irreligion." But he soon found 
that his remedy, whatever might be its intrinsic value, 
was scarcely adapted for general use. Ordinary men 
were not prepared to admit that a Deity was necessary 
because matter was impossible. In the Guardian he 
accordingly adopted a more popular style, well suited 
to readers who knew little of theology and nothing of 
metaphysics, but who required to be reminded that 
religion had some claims to the gratitude and rever- 
ence of mankind, and that the pretensions of those 
who attacked it provided no measure of their merits. 
Who, then, were these enemies of religion ? By 
their opponents they were not unfrequently described 
as persons who, in matters practical, were of relaxed 
morals, and in matters speculative might be called 
almost indifferently Deists, freethinkers, and atheists. 
Yet nothing is more certain than that Shaftesbury, 
for instance, and Collins, were perfectly respectable 
members of society, and that while all the more 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 79 

important writers on the unorthodox side would have 
repudiated the name of atheist, Shaftesbury, at least, 
made ardent and, doubtless, sincere professions of 
Theism. Are we then to attribute the language of 
the orthodox party to the mere heat and prejudice 
of controversy? In part, I think, we must. The 
almost incredible coarseness with which, under cover 
of a learned tongue, men of learning and piety had 
in preceding ages not unfrequently conducted their 
disputes, was in the eighteenth century greatly 
mitigated. But the practice of exaggerating the 
errors of an opponent, in order to gibbet them with 
more effect, prevailed to a serious extent. The High 
Churchman was denounced as a Papist. The Low, 
or (as we should now say) Broad Churchman, was 
denounced as a Latitudinarian ; the Latitudinarian 
was denounced as a Socinian ; the Socinian as a Deist 
the Deist as an atheist. But, admitting all this, it 
must be remembered that it would be most unjust to 
estimate the controversial moderation of the orthodox 
divines in the first half of the last century, by a bare 
comparison of their language with the official 
utterances of their opponents. Berkeley, especially, 
can never be understood, unless we keep in mind that 



80 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

he interpreted the text of Shaftesbury, Collins, and 
Mandeville by the light of the social facts of his own 
day. The Deist movement did not appear to him as 
it does to us, in the form of a certain number of 
treatises directed against the received theology, for 
the most part tedious, of slight literary merit, con- 
taining nothing either to agitate or instruct the 
modern reader, and predestined, in England at least, 
to bear little permanent fruit. In his view, these were 
rather the more prominent and public signs of a wide- 
spread attack on religion, conducted orally on much 
more extreme lines, and with great and growing 
success. He believed in the existence of freethink- 
ing clubs, where those who, in their published writings 
were content to advocate Deism, professed in private 
to demonstrate that no Deity could possibly exist. 
He believed that Society was honeycombed with a 
religious scepticism, not arising from any disinterested 
pursuit of truth, but from mere libertinism in thought, 
at once the effect and the cause of libertinism in 
conduct ; and he traced a direct connection between 
the relaxed morality of the Georgian era and the 
contemptous tone towards Christianity rendered 
fashionable by the Deistical writers. 



BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTEES 81 

The consequence of this is that, while his con- 
temporary, Butler, addresses himself entirely to pro- 
ducing a convincing reply to the formal arguments of 
the freethinkers, Berkeley seeks also to attack them 
on what we may term their social side. His strokes 
are aimed not only at Shaftesbury and Collins, but 
at the Coffee-house infidels; the would-be men of 
fashion, who thought that there was no greater proof 
of enlightenment than to sneer at Christianity, or of 
wit than to cut jokes on a parson. He is never 
weary of dilating on the pretentious ignorance of 
these gentlemen. 

" Who," says Euphranor (one of the orthodox speakers 
in Alciphron], " are these profound and learned men that 
of late years have demolished the whole fabric which 
philosophers, lawgivers, and divines have been erecting 
for so many ages ? " 

Lysicles (the infidel man of fashion), hearing these 
words, smiled, and said that he believed Euphranor had 
figured to himself philosophers in square caps and long 
gowns ; but, thanks to these happy times, the reign of 
pedantry is over. " Our philosophers," said he, " are of a 
different kind from those awkward students. ... I will 
undertake a lad of fourteen, bred in the modern way, 
shall make a better figure and be more considered in any 
drawing-room than one of four-and-twenty, who hath lain 
by a long time at school or college. He shall say better 

G 



82 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

things, in a better manner, and be more liked by good 
judges." 

Euphranor. "Whence doth he pick up all this im- 
provement 1 " 

Crito (ironically). " Where our grave ancestors would 
never have looked for it in a drawing-room, a coffee- 
house, a chocolate-house, at the tavern or groom porters." 

And so forth. 

To us, who are directly acquainted with nothing 
but the literary remains of the controversy, the laugh 
seems so clearly to be on the side of Orthodoxy, 
that we have some difficulty in recollecting that to 
Berkeley and Berkeley's contemporaries the fact must 
have seemed exactly reversed. The " raillery " which 
Shaftesbury recommended as the test of truth was, 
in society, freely employed against "priestcraft" in 
general, and the clergy of the Established Church in 
particular ; who, when not denounced as bigots, were 
ridiculed as musty pedants. 

" I have often observed," says Crito, " that the Free- 
thinking sect run into two faults of conversation, declaim- 
ing and bantering, just as the tragic or comic humour 
prevails. Sometimes they work themselves into a high 
passion, and are frightened at spectres of their own rais- 
ing. In those fits every country curate passes for an 
inquisitor. At other times they aifect a sly, facetious 
manner, expressing little, insinuating much, and upon the 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 83 

whole seeming to divert themselves with the subject and 
their adversaries." "Can no method be found," he ex- 
claims in a later dialogue, " to free them from the terror 
of that fierce and bloody animal, an English parson 1 " 

Arguments may be refuted, but "who," it has 
been asked, "can answer a sneer?" Berkeley in 
Alciphron attempted to answer both the arguments 
and the sneer. It was this double object which 
probably induced him to employ the most difficult of 
all forms of composition to manage with effect the 
Dialogue. He had already, it is true, used it with 
extraordinary skill in the region of pure exposition. 
The three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous 
have never in their peculiar style been equalled in 
English; they will, I suppose, never be surpassed. 
Yet what reader, anxious rather to get at the sub- 
stance of Berkeley's doctrine, than to spend his time 
over a literary luxury, would not prefer to these 
admirable conversations the straightforward state- 
ment contained in the Principles of Human Knowledge ? 
But in the case of Alciphron, its author pursued a 
more complex end. There dialogue was not merely 
one of the two possible forms by which his aim could 
be reached ; it was the only possible form. It was 



84 BEKKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

only by bringing his opponents actually on the stage, 
by dramatising their conversation, by exhibiting the 
weaknesses of their character as well as the errors of 
their logic, that his intention could be accomplished 
in all its fulness. T6 my thinking, Berkeley was 
wonderfully successful. Mr. Leslie Stephen, indeed, 
declares Alciphron to be the "least admirable of all 
its author's admirable works." But I cannot help 
thinking that this excellent critic, in forming his 
judgment, was thinking rather of what he desired to 
find in the book, than of what its author desired to 
put into it. It may at once be granted that Alciphron 
is not, like the Analogy, a great original contribution 
to theology. Many portions of it are now wholly 
antiquated; many other portions contain arguments 
which have since, by frequent repetition, become 
the mere commonplaces of apologetics. But there 
remains more than one admirable application 
of Berkeley's peculiar philosophy to the theory 
of religion; there remain the slight but exquisite 1 
descriptions of incident and scenery which form 
the setting of the piece; and there remains, above 
all, the literary skill displayed in the dramatic and 
polemical elements of the dialogue and in the art 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 85 

with which these are woven together into an organic 
whole. 

It was an inevitable defect in the structure of the 
piece that, as all the varieties of the genus Free- 
thinker are represented in it by two persons, unity 
of character cannot be sustained throughout the 
seven dialogues. Nothing, for instance, can make 
it natural for Lysicles, the freethinking man of 
pleasure, who says in one place 

For my part, I find no fault with the Universities; 
all I know is that I had the spending of three hundred 
pounds a year in one of them, and think it the cheer- 
fullest time of my life. As for their books and style, I 
had not leisure to mind them 

nothing, I say, can make it natural for such a man to 
quote, as he does in another dialogue, Spinoza and 
Hobbes, and to argue about the metaphysical doc- 
trine of substance. But this is a trifling defect. A 
far more serious charge has been brought against 
Berkeley by Sir James Mackintosh, and, more 
recently, by Professor Fowler in his excellent 
biography of Shaftesbury, to the effect that, in the 
third dialogue and elsewhere, the latter has been 
treated with gross unfairness. I admit at once that 



86 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

Professor Fowler is right in saying that Berkeley 
does not examine Shaftesbury's doctrines in the spirit 
" which befits one philosopher examining the works 
of another." But I cannot admit that, in Sir James 
Mackintosh's phrase, he "sinks to the level of a 
railing polemic." 

Shaftesbury is not, to me at least, an attractive 
writer. His constant efforts to figure simultaneously 
as a fine gentleman and a fine writer, are exceedingly 
irritating ; and the very moderate success which has 
attended his efforts in the latter character, suggests 
the doubt, justified by his general style, whether he 
can really have shone in the former. His pretensions 
to taste are quite unjustified by what we know of 
his opinions. Like most of his contemporaries he 
despised Gothic architecture, yet he saw nothing 
to admire in Wren ; while he theorised about 
painting till he persuaded himself that the merits of 
a picture were wholly independent of its colouring. 
At the same time it must be acknowledged that 
eminent authorities have found in him distinguished 
merits. Mr. Leslie Stephen tells us, that "on the 
rude stock of commonplace Whiggism he grafted 
accomplishments strange to most of his countrymen." 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 87 

He reminded Warburton of Plato, and has been so 
fortunate as to remind Professor Fowler of Marcus 
Aurelius. Moreover, by writers on Moral Philosophy 
he is naturally and properly regarded as a moral 
philosopher who occupies an important position in 
the history of ethical speculation as the predecessor 
of Butler and Hutcheson, the originator of a new 
method of procedure in moral inquiries. 

But Berkeley, it must be recollected, regarded the 
author of the Characteristics from a very different 
point of view. He was not concerned with the 
ethical system, which may with more or less success 
be extracted from these very unsystematic essays; 
nor yet with the hints contained in them, which have 
in other hands become important in the history of 
thought. His interest in Shaftesbury's writings was 
practical, not speculative. He looked at them not as 
"one philosopher examining the works of another," 
but as a man profoundly interested in the actual 
condition of religious thought must look at a book 
by which that condition was powerfully affected. 
It was the general tendency of the theological parts 
of the Characteristics, therefore, and not the special 
doctrines which might be supported by isolated 



88 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

passages in them, that moved him to attack Shaftes- 
bury : and I do not think that the account he gives 
of that tendency, though perhaps one-sided, is justly 
chargeable with gross unfairness. If, however, it be 
alleged that Berkeley has, for controversial purposes, 
credited Shaftesbury with holding opinions which the 
latter has distinctly repudiated : I reply that Shaftes- 
bury has no right to complain of any critic who 
appeals from specific statements in his writings to 
their general animus, since he himself has never 
scrupled to make professions of respect for theological 
dogmas which we know him to have held in contempt. 
I cannot admit, therefore, that Berkeley is guilty 
nearly to the full extent of the charge made against 
him ; and I must also point out that, if I read his 
character aright, and if the account I have given of 
his intentions in writing Aldphron be true, Shaftes- 
bury must, of all writers, have been the one he found 
most difficult to treat in a spirit of perfect charity. 
Berkeley, partly from a natural feeling of esprit de 
corps, and partly from a higher motive, strongly 
objected to the tone adopted towards the clergy in 
some sections of society. Shaftesbury speaks of 
them with all the airs of superiority which a "free 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 89 

writer " and a wit in those days thought himself 
justified in using towards "pedants" and "bigots." 
Berkeley was weighed down with a sense of the 
wickedness and corruptions of his generation. 
Shaftesbury's creed was a shallow optimism. 
Berkeley, intent upon the regeneration of the lowest 
and most brutal of mankind, felt keenly that the 
forces arrayed on the side of virtue were all too weak 
as they stood ; and that they did but a small service 
to morality who, by undermining a belief in a system 
of future rewards and punishments, "while they 
extolled the beauty of virtue, attempted to lessen her 
dower." 1 Shaftesbury, on the other hand, strong in 
the possession of 10,000 a year, and a feeble 
constitution, really talks sometimes as if virtue was 
mainly an object of aesthetic sensibility ; certain on 
its own merits to be appreciated by gentlemen of 
"taste and breeding," but sadly injured, from the 
point of view of Art, by superfluous references to 
Heaven and Hell. 

Nor was Berkeley's opposition to the sentiment of 
the elder author likely to be softened by admiration 
for his style. In Alciphron he levels more than one 

1 Essay in the Guardian, 



90 BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

sarcasm at it ; and it must be admitted that Shaf tes- 
bury's laborious struggles after an "easy way" of 
writing, his vulgar affectation of refinement, his 
strange experiments in search of the sublime, and the 
pedantic trifling which does duty in his writings for 
"raillery and humour," were not likely to be more 
agreeable to a man of Berkeley's literary taste, than 
were Shaftesbury's opinions to a man of Berkeley's 
religious convictions. 

Two years after the appearance of Aldphron 
occurred the last great change in the external circum- 
stances of its author. He was appointed to the 
Bishopric of Cloyne, through the influence of Queen 
Caroline. This remarkable woman, wife of George 
II., and by far the most distinguished Queen Consort 
England has ever possessed, not content with being, 
next to Walpole, the greatest political power in the 
country, amused her leisure hours by dabbling in all 
the theological and philosophical controversies of the 
period. Berkeley, in the days when he was canvass- 
ing for his Bermuda scheme, had been obliged to 
discuss in her presence, and presumably for her 
amusement, his philosophical tenets with Clarke, not, 
as he pathetically observed, because he loved Courts, 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 91 

but because he loved America. Clarke himself, till 
his' death in 1729, was constantly in her society, 
and but for his scruples respecting the Athanasian 
doctrine of the Trinity, which permitted him, 
apparently, to hold a rectory but not to accept a 
bishopric, would long before, through her favour, have 
obtained high ecclesiastical preferment. Butler, who 
a little later than this succeeded to Clarke's position 
with the Queen, was by her recommendation raised 
to the See of Bristol. When I add that she caused 
the whole of the controversy between Clarke and 
Leibnitz to pass through her hands, it will be seen 
that few persons not philosophers have ever taken 
a keener or more practical interest in the philosophy 
of their day. How far she was really competent, by 
study or natural aptitude, for such inquiries, it is hard 
to say. She was supposed, perhaps on insufficient 
evidence, to be unsettled, if not unorthodox, in her 
religious convictions. If so, it is possible that, like 
many others in similar circumstances, she was driven 
to investigation, for which she was perfectly unfitted, 
by the hope of there finding an anodyne for an 
unquiet spirit. Horace Walpole, 1 who represents 

1 "The Bishop of Durham (Chandler) is dead : he is succeeded 



92 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

the social tradition respecting her, declares that she 
was incapable of understanding Butler's Analogy. 
Clarke, on the other hand, professed a high admira- 
tion for her philosophic capacity. The evidence of 
neither witness is very satisfactory. Clarke was too 
good a courtier to be a very good judge; while 
Walpole and his set would certainly be unwilling to 
believe that any one, much less any woman, least of 
all any Queen, could find a meaning in abstract 
arguments which they themselves had never taken 
the trouble to understand. However this may be, it 
is unquestionably to her enlightened patronage that 
the Churches of England and Ireland owed the two 
most distinguished bishops of the eighteenth century. 
The appointment of Berkeley is the more creditable, 
since he had nothing but his merits to recommend 
him, and was quite unprovided with any of the 
ordinary titles to Irish ecclesiastical preferment. 
If he belonged to either Party in the State, he was a 
Tory; and in Tories who were not Jacobites the 

by Butler of Bristol, a metaphysic author, much patronised by the 
late Queen. She never could make my father read his book, and 
which she certainly did not understand herself : he told her his 
religion was fixed, and that he did not want to change" or improve 
it." Walpole to Mann, 



BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 93 

Government saw little either to love or to fear. He 
was wholly unfitted by taste, character, and abilities, 
for carrying out the political functions sometimes so 
strangely associated with the Episcopal office in 
Ireland. And, besides all this, he had powerful 
enemies near the person of the Queen ; for Hoadley, 
her favourite bishop, and Lord Hervey, her favourite 
courtier, liked neither him nor his writings, which, 
indeed, it must be owned, they were very little fitted 
to comprehend. 

Berkeley's eighteen years of recluse life in his 
diocese of Cloyne give little material to the bio- 
grapher. It was a period marked by declining health 
and increasing infirmities, loss of friends and of 
children ; nor was there anything in the condition of 
public affairs, either in England or in Ireland, to 
lighten the burden of these private afflictions. Yet 
he seems to have been on the whole not unhappy. 
The glimpses we get of his home life are not very 
numerous, but they are attractive ; the studious 
retirement which he loved he could indulge in to his 
heart's content; and though disease and advancing 
years had sapped the natural energy of his character, 
he could still on occasion show something of the old 



94 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

fire. We find him, for instance, in 1745, when the 
Pretender was on his march to Derby, and when fears 
were naturally entertained lest Ireland should catch 
the contagion of rebellion from the sister island, 
writing thus to Dean Gervais : 

Our Militia have been arrayed, that is, sworn : but, 
alas ! we want not oaths, we want muskets. I have 
bought up all I could get, and provided horses and arms, 
for four and twenty of the Protestants of Cloyne, which 
with a few men, etc. 

Two episodes there are, however, in these un- 
eventful years, to which more particular allusion 
must be made: the publication of the Querist 
(1735-37) and the Tar Water enthusiasm, which 
followed soon after. 

The Querist, as my readers are probable aware, is, 
to all intents and purposes, an essay on the social 
state of Ireland thrown into the form of a series of 
questions. Of all the mass of literature which has 
been devoted to the distresses of that distressful 
country, this is probably the most original. Its form 
alone would seem to distinguish it from every other 
production of a similar kind. It consists of 595 
interrogatories, averaging three or four lines in 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 95 

length, and entirely without connecting passages. 
Sustained eloquence under these conditions is clearly 
out of the question. It is difficult to understand by 
what literary arts such a production can even be 
made readable. Yet readable it certainly is ; and not 
only readable, but impressive. Berkeley has, in 
truth, chosen his instrument with remarkable skill. 
He was enabled by its peculiarities to give his 
argument on certain rather dry subjects banks, for 
instance, and paper currency with a brevity which 
no other form of literary composition would have 
permitted, and a force which in no other form could 
have been excelled ; while his opinions on the state 
of the nation lose nothing either by the conciseness 
with which they are expressed, or the interrogatory 
form into which they are thrown. Paragraphs 
like these, for example, serve Berkeley's purpose 
as well as a whole page of sensational descrip- 
tion : 

19. Whether the bulk of our Irish peasantry are not 
kept from thriving by that cynical content in dirt and 
beggary which they possess to a degree beyond any other 
in Christendom ? 

456. Whether it be not certain that the matrons of 
this forlorn country send out a greater proportion of its 



96 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

wealth for fine apparel than any other females on the 
whole surface of this terraqueous globe 1 

106. Whether the dirt, famine, and nakedness of the 
bulk of our people might not be remedied, even though 
we had no foreign trade ? 

132. Whether there be upon earth any Christian or 
civilised people so beggarly wretched, and destitute, as the 
common Irish ? 

133. Whether, nevertheless, there is any other people 
whose wants may be more easily supplied from home ? 

Many of the "queries" are, it must be added, 
enlivened by Berkeley's peculiar turn of irony ; for 
example : 

111. Whether the women (of Ireland) may not sew, 
spin, weave, embroider, sufficiently for the embellishment 
of their persons, and even enough to raise envy in each other, 
without being beholden to foreign countries ? 

330. What right an eldest son hath to the worst 
education ? 

405. Whether an expense in building and improve- 
ment doth not remain at home, pass to the heir, and 
adorn the public 1 And whether any of these things can be 
said of claret ? 

Yet this method of writing was not without its 
dangers. It lent itself with unfortunate facility to 
the intellectual habits which increasing infirmities 
were bringing on Berkeley. As in Siris, of which I 
shall presently speak, there are hints and adumbra- 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 97 

tions of a new philosophy strangely tacked on to 
reflections upon a new medicine; so in the Querist 
there are fragments of a new political economy mixed 
up with schemes for the social regeneration of Ireland. 
And it is, I think, clear that in both cases the 
fragmentary methods of exposition were in part chosen 
because the ideas to be expounded, though fruitful 
and original, and though in other hands they have 
since received a fuller development, were, in the 
minds of their author, themselves fragmentary and 
ill-compacted. Take, as an example of this, Berkeley's 
opinion upon what is called the " mercantile theory " 
of commerce the theory which taught that a nation 
is benefited by a foreign trade in proportion as that 
trade brought money or bullion into the country. 
This absurd doctrine is absolutely exploded in the 
Querist, it is demonstrated to be wrong in theory 
and wrong in practice ; yet some of the queries 
(e.g. 161-2) seem to assume its truth. Again, 
nothing can be more explicit than Berkeley's proof 
that, for currency purposes, notes and gold may 
perform exactly the same function. Yet so great is 
his hatred of the doctrine that money is a source of 
wealth that, though anxious to increase the amount 
H 



98 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

of the circulation in the country, he is unwilling to 
increase the amount of gold, and seems almost to 
hold that, though notes may be a substitute for coin, 
coin is not a substitute for notes. 1 

My business, however, is not with Berkeley's 
political economy, any more than with his philosophy, 
but rather with the temper and qualities of the man 
himself ; and if we would see how these make them- 
selves felt in the treatment of the Irish problem, let 
us compare the Querist with Swift's tracts on Ireland 
which appeared in the preceding decade. In their 
diagnosis of the diseases under which that unhappy 
country was suffering, these two eminent friends 
agreed with each other, and with the majority of 
subsequent observers. The idleness, squalor, and 
poverty of the " native Irish," the absence of manu- 
factures, the ignorance and extravagance of the gentry, 
their want of care for the real interests of their 
tenantry and their country, these are topics common 
to both. It is when they set themselves to make 
straight the crooked ways that the difference between 
them appears. Berkeley tells his countrymen that 
the remedy for the evils under which they suffer lies, 
1 Cf.. Querist, 227, 283. 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 99 

in the main, in their own hands. Let the upper 
classes give up a stupid and tasteless extravagance. 
Let their women buy fewer silks and laces, and their 
men drink less claret. Let luxury be checked, if 
need be, by sumptuary laws. Let the " standard of 
comfort" of the peasantry be raised, and thereby 
something done to destroy their lazy contentment in 
an existence more squalid and wretched than that of 
the savage Americans. Let manufacturing enterprise 
be stimulated by an improved currency, an improved 1 
machinery of credit, and by the increase of a home 
demand for home products. But let nobody imagine 
that any good was done by sitting down and 
complaining of the tyranny of England. Though it 
were true that England had hampered their commerce 
and destroyed their woollen trade, yet nations 
had flourished, and were nourishing, whose external 
trade was insignificant. England and Ireland were 
one nation, and what was good for the part was good 
for the whole. If Englishmen had forgotten this 
truth as regards Irishmen, let not Irishmen forget it 
either as regards Englishmen or as regards each other. 
Foreign commerce was not necessary to the solid well- 
being of the country. But it was necessary that the 



100 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

manufacturers of the North should not be jealous of 
the manufacturers of the South; that the landlord 
should not suppose that he could be prosperous 
when the tenantry was squalid and miserable; 
that the Protestant minority should not suppose 
that they could be rich and nourishing when 
the Eoman Catholic majority were poor and 
oppressed. 

Whatever may be thought of Berkeley's specific 
proposal, it will not be denied that he treated his 
subject in the spirit of true patriotism and sound 
wisdom. So did not Swift. He detested Ireland ; he 
never called himself an Irishman ; he would never have 
set foot in Ireland could he have avoided it. But if he 
was an Irishman by the visitation of Heaven, he was 
a partisan by the very necessity of his nature. As a 
Tory, he hated the Whigs. As an Anglican, he hated 
both the Irish Eoman Catholics and the Irish 
Presbyterians. As a member of the Lower House of 
Convocation, he hated the Bishops. As a member of 
the dominant race he would doubtless have hated the 
native population had they been formidable enough 
to provoke any sentiment stronger than a pitying 
contempt. And so, when compelled to become an 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 101 

Irishman, it was inevitable that he should also become 
an Irish patriot. 

Irish patriotism took the form then, as it has often 
done since, not so much of helping Ireland as of 
thwarting England ; and, doubtless, the task of thwart- 
ing England was doubly agreeable to Swift because 
England meant primarily the Whig Ministry and the 
commercial classes, who were at once the chief support 
of the Whigs and the greatest curse to Ireland. Like 
Berkeley, he recommended his countrymen to consume 
their own manufactures ; not like Berkeley, because 
he thought it would benefit the Irish, but because he 
hoped it might hurt the English. But in the famous 
controversy respecting "Wood's halfpence," he 
went much farther. All the arts, legitimate and 
illegitimate, of the most accomplished political 
pamphleteer that ever lived were used to inflame 
the passions of the people against the attempt of the 
English Government to give them, not anything 
injurious, not even anything indifferent, but some- 
thing they were urgently in need of. Swift, as 
every one knows, triumphed. One Lord-Lieutenant 
had to resign ; another had to yield. The Govern- 
ment had to put up with a loss of credit. The 



102 BEEKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

country had to put up with the loss of a much- 
wanted currency. Angry feeling was roused on all 
sides, and so far as I know, no good was done to any 
human being. Now, I am far from denying that, in 
the course he thus took, Swift was partly animated 
by a disinterested hatred of the monstrous injustice 
to which Ireland was habitually subjected by England. 
What I wish to point out is that, while he belongs to 
the large class of Irish politicians whose chief public 
motive is a desire to avenge the wrongs of their 
country, Berkeley belongs to the very small class 
whose first desire is to remedy her woes. 

Their respective claims on the general gratitude 
were acknowledged as might have been expected. 
Berkeley, who in single-minded sincerity had pointed 
out the true course of national improvement, lived 
unknown and died unlamented by the mass of his 
countrymen; even in his own neighbourhood and 
among his own people, the memory of him did not 
long survive his departure. Swift pursued a different 
course and underwent a different fate. If he did not 
love the people among whom he was compelled to 
live, at least he hated their enemies. Though he did 
nothing to mitigate their sufferings, he embodied and 



BEKKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 103 

gave effect to their passions. Therefore he became 
the idol of the mob. Their pathetic fidelity never 
wavered through his years of inaction, sickness, and 
idiocy. His death was an occasion of public mourning, 
and his memory still lives as that of one of Ireland's 
greatest patriots. 

Soon after Berkeley had published the last instal- 
ment of the Querist, his thoughts were drawn from 
the general and chronic miseries of the country to the 
acute calamities of his own district. The terrible 
winter of 1739-40 was followed by famine, the famine 
was followed by disease, and Berkeley's mind was 
actively turned towards the discovery of expedients 
for mitigating both these evils. It so happened that 
his American experience had made him acquainted 
with tar water, i.e. water containing the soluble 
constituents of tar. With characteristic enthusiasm 
he now took up the idea that this simple medicine 
was, if not a cure, at least a palliation for most of the 
physical ills to which flesh is heir. He dosed himself, 
his children, and his neighbours with it. He inves- 
tigated the best method of making and administering 
it. He induced his friend Prior to assist in advertis- 
ing its merits ; and he recommended it to the world 



104 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

in the most singular treatise which has probably ever 
proceeded from the pen of an Anglican divine. Siris, 
as it is called, was written when its author was 
occupied half in treating his sick, and half in the lofty, 
but somewhat vague speculations dear to him in his 
later years. The book accordingly takes its whole 
character from these strangely-assorted sources of 
inspiration. It begins by enumerating the diseases 
for which tar water may be successfully prescribed ; 
and few inventors of quack remedies, I should 
imagine, have presumed further upon the public 
credulity than did Berkeley, in all good faith, when 
he published this imposing catalogue. Consumption, 
erysipelas, ulcers, dropsy, asthma, pleurisy, gout, 
fevers, small-pox, and all inflammations, are some of 
the maladies which this panacea was expected to cure. 
Little more than a third of the treatise, however, is 
devoted to this wondrous drug. By a rapid transi- 
tion at the end of the 119th section, Berkeley leaves 
tar water and plunges into chemistry ; from chemistry 
he ascends easily to physics ; from physics to meta- 
physics ; from metaphysics to theology ; so that when 
the astonished reader reaches the end of the book he 
finds that he has, step by step, been led from the 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 105 

purely utilitarian, if not vulgar, topics with which it 
began, to the airiest heights of mystical philosophy. 

The destiny of Siris has been as remarkable as are 
its contents. It had an immediate success far exceed- 
ing that of any other of its author's works. Horace 
Walpole wrote about this time : " We are now mad 
about the water, on the publication of a book written 
by Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. The book 
contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity ; 
however, all the women read it and understand it no 
more than if it were intelligible. A man came into 
an apothecary's shop the other day : ' Do you sell 
tar water?' 'Tar water?' replied the apothecary, 
' why, I sell nothing else ! ' " Three editions were 
called for in the year of its publication ; two more 
soon followed. It was translated into French and 
into German. The remedy it recommended became 
the fashion, and the doctors trembled for their 
monopoly. Since then, times have changed. Tar 
water, so suddenly elevated to the dignity of a 
universal medicine, has again sunk to the position of 
the humblest drug in the Pharmacopeia. But the 
philosophy of the book, which before was only 
rendered palatable by its medicine, has now found 



106 / BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

admirers for its own sake. In the speculations of 
Siris, later thinkers have seen not only a development 
of its author's early philosophy, but an anticipation of 
systems which have not even yet received their final 
expression. As in his youthful writings Berkeley is 
the teacher of Hume, so in those of his declining 
years he is regarded as the forerunner of the 
speculative movement of which a reaction against 
Hume was the most notable cause. Without discuss- 
ing this question at length, I may say that while the 
actual value of these metaphysical fragments have, in 
my judgment, been exaggerated, their biographical 
interest is very great. They show a remarkable 
development in the philosopher, though not a develop- 
ment which has been of much value to philosophy. 
Berkeley's early work is distinguished not only by 
the admirable qualities of originality, lucidity, and 
subtlety, but by a less excellent characteristic, which 
I can only describe as a certain thinness of treatment. 
At the time when he produced these immortal 
speculations he had read little, and felt little. No 
experience of the weary entanglement of concrete 
facts had yet suggested to him that a perfect solution 
of the problem of the universe is beyond our reach. 



BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 107 

He easily exaggerated, therefore, the scope of his 
discovery, and his youthful self-confidence found no 
difficulty in believing that, by a simple correction in 
our theory of perception, all puzzles would be 
unravelled and all mysteries made plain. Very 
different was his attitude of mind when, richer by 
thirty years of experience and study, he gave to the 
world the fragments of his later Philosophy ; and the 
difference is perceptible on the most cursory com- 
parison of his works at the two dates. In the 
Principles of Human Knowledge its author found little 
occasion to mention previous systems, except to 
express his dissent from them. In Siris the appeal 
to authority is so persistent as sometimes to become 
almost wearisome. In the Three Dialogues he designs, 
so he informs us, "plainly to demonstrate the reality 
and perfection of human knowledge." In Siris he 
tells us that "with respect to the universe of things 
we, in this mortal state, are like men educated in 
Plato's cave," and that " we must be satisfied to make 
the best of those glimpses within our reach." The 
earlier works are remarkable for the easy confidence 
of their reasoning, the clearness and definiteness of 
their conclusions. In Siris there is little that deserves 



108 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

the name of argument, and its teaching is mystic and 
ill-defined. It is as if by the same intellectual light, 
which in his youth he had concentrated with such 
admirable results on a restricted area, he strove, in 
his later years, to explore the vast and shadowy spaces 
in which the sages of the ancient world had vainly 
sought for Absolute Truth, but found that the rays 
which formerly yielded such definite images now 
showed only in faint and doubtful outline the eternal 
framework on which, as Berkeley thought, is reared 
the fleeting world of sense. 

It is rather, therefore, the spirit in which Siris is 
written, than its direct teaching, which appeals to the 
sympathy of the modern reader. Its fragmentary 
character, its uncritical wealth of erudition, the crude- 
ness of its science, and the incompleteness of its 
philosophy, are easily forgiven, on account of its 
suggestiveness, the large toleration it displays towards 
widely -different modes of thought, and a certain 
quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence 
alien both to the literature and the life of the 
eighteenth century. The whole book is, in truth, 
an anachronism. It draws its inspiration sometimes 
from the Neo-platonists, sometimes, even, from the 






BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 109 

alchemists, while sometimes it foreshadows meta- 
physical systems still in process of formation. But 
if its mystical speculations were not in harmony with 
an age taught by Voltaire and Hume, neither were 
such reflections as the following likely to suit the taste 
of a nation governed by Walpole or Newcastle : 

Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much 
meditated upon God, the human soul, and the summum 
bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will 
most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry 
statesman. 

By utterances such as these Berkeley spiritually 
severed himself from a generation not much given to 
meditation at least in his fashion either upon God, 
the soul, or the summum lonum. But his work in it 
was nearly done. The last years at Cloyne were 
overshadowed by increasing infirmities and domestic 
losses. Less and less able for business, anxious only 
for repose, he turned again to his early dream of a 
life spent in academic retirement. Though it does 
not appear that he had Oxford friends, he had seen 
Oxford many years before, and the external aspect of 
the place (in 1752 much the best part of it) had 
lingered in his memory as that of a spot where such 



110 BERKELEY'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

a dream might well be fulfilled. Thither, accordingly, 
he removed. The change of air seemed at first to 
benefit him. He was able to superintend the re- 
publication of some of his earlier works, and was in 
better health than he had been for some years. But 
the end came suddenly. On the 14th of January 
1753, in the midst of his family, without warning and 
without pain, he passed away : leaving behind him 
writings which will perpetuate his fame as one of the 
most admirable of English philosophers, and the 
memory of a character not, I think, to be surpassed 
in individuality, or in charm, by any recorded in the 
history of English men of letters. 



Ill 

HANDEL 1 

IN the year 1784 was celebrated in Westminster 
Abbey, with a pomp and circumstance hitherto un- 
known in musical history, a festival in honour of the 
centenary of Handel's birth. He had then been laid 
a quarter of a century among the poets and heroes of 
his adopted country. His memory was still fresh 
among us. Many were living who had seen and 
known him, who had heard him at the organ con- 
ducting his oratorios, and who kept alive, amid a 
younger generation of musicians, the traditions of his 
style and the recollections of his fame. No great 
figure had in the meanwhile risen to fill the space left 
empty in the English world of music by his death. 
It is true that a musical revolution was in progress, 
1 Edinburgh Review, January 1887, 



112 HANDEL 

that old things were passing away, and that the first 
promise of new artistic developments, undreamed of 
in the first half of the eighteenth century, might be 
detected by discerning eyes. But it was the first 
promise only. In 1784 Haydn had not visited 
England, nor, indeed, produced his most considerable 
works outside the limits of chamber music. Mozart 
was known here chiefly as a youthful prodigy ; the 
sun of Beethoven had not yet risen above the horizon ; 
Bach, who had never been known in England, was for 
a space forgotten even in Germany; and Handel's 
music represented to the majority of our countrymen 
the culminating point to which the art had as yet 
reached or could, perhaps, be expected to attain. 

Since that day a hundred years and more have 
passed, years fertile in masterpieces of musical crea- 
tion. Fashions have changed; tastes have altered. 
In music, not less than in poetry and painting, each 
generation desires to have, and insists on having, that 
which best suits its moods, which most effectually 
appeals to the special quality of its emotions : and 
this universal principle of change, which makes it 
necessary that the artistic productions of every age, 
be they better or be they worse, shall at least be 



HANDEL 1 1 3 

different from those of the preceding one, has been in 
the case of music supplemented by other causes which 
have made the process of alteration one not of change 
merely, but also of growth. For music alone among 
her sister arts has profited by the material develop- 
ment of society and the progress of mechanical 
invention ; music alone has been able in any import- 
ant respect to multiply the methods by which she 
moves the imagination of mankind. In poetry and 
in painting, the work of every age and of every man 
of genius will doubtless be distinguished by its 
characteristic note. Yet, however differently used, 
the artistic resources of a poet or a painter to-day are 
not materially greater than those which a poet or a 
painter of the sixteenth or seventeenth century had 
at his command. "We cannot flatter ourselves that 
we know more of colouring than Titian, or of versifi- 
cation than Milton. We could not teach drawing to 
Michael Angelo, nor rhythm to Shakespeare. In 
music the case is otherwise. Since the death of 
Handel there has not only been a remarkable de- 
velopment of musical form, an increased freedom in 
the use of harmonic resources, and a prodigious 
growth both in the art of instrumentation and in the 
I 



114 HANDEL 

variety of instruments, but the modern musician has 
at his command far better players, far larger orches- 
tras, and far more powerful choirs, than his prede- 
cessors ; so that the pettiest composer of the year 
eighteen hundred and eighty-six is able to produce 
effects of which Handel and Bach never dreamed, and 
may employ methods of which they were utterly 
ignorant. 

Thus it comes about that we are divided from the 
great musical creations of bygone times by more than 
the inevitable veil which, talk as we may of the 
immortality of genius, does always somewhat alter, 
and must, in some cases, dim our perception of the 
artistic work of the generations which have preceded 
us. Whatever be the language in which these may 
speak, whether that of poetry, of painting, or of 
music, their voices come to us across the centuries 
with something, be it ever so little, of a foreign 
accent. But in the case of music, their language has 
not merely a somewhat unfamiliar turn, it is in 
certain important respects imperfectly developed; 
and the ideas it expresses are necessarily limited with 
its limitations. So it comes about that the man of 
average musical cultivation is incomparably more 



HANDEL 115 

dependent on modern productions than the man of 
average literary cultivation. Go back a century and 
a quarter, and take the year 1760, the one which 
followed Handel's death : how poverty-stricken would 
our libraries be if all the literary works of imagination 
which appeared before that date were suddenly 
destroyed, if our earliest playwright was Sheridan 
our earliest poet Goldsmith, our earliest master of 
prose Dr. Johnson ! It is not merely the student 
who would suffer by such a catastrophe, the whole 
educated world would lose an important fraction of 
its daily literary food. But with music the case is 
otherwise. The largest portion of the works of even 
the great musicians before the date I have named 
have either perished beyond hope of recovery, or 
slumber in their original manuscript undisturbed on 
the shelves of our libraries and museums. And it 
would, I think, be rash to say that, with the excep- 
tion of Handel and Bach, there is a single composer 
whose most important works are the familiar com- 
panions of the ordinary musical amateur. Now, 
therefore, that we have just celebrated the bi-centen- 
ary of Handel's birth with more than the magnificence 
which distinguished the celebration of the centenary, 



116 HANDEL 

it is a fitting time to ask how far the musical experi- 
ence of the century, which is thus, as I have shown, 
relatively of far greater importance than a similar 
experience in the case of letters or painting, has 
modified the verdict which our great-grandfathers 
passed on their adopted countrymen. It is worth 
inquiring what is the amount of our debt to him ; 
what it is that he did which none had done before 
him ; and how far what he has done has been better 
done by those who have come after. 

Before going into this question, it may be worth 
while to remind the reader of the principal dates in 
Handel's artistic career. 

Handel, born in 1685, in Lower Saxony, was the 
son of a doctor already past middle life. The father 
knew nothing, and cared nothing, for music. The 
child showed that early and inevitable inclination 
towards it which has distinguished so many great 
composers. He was designed for the law, but in the 
conflict which ensued between the plans of the father 
and the tastes of the son, the latter finally prevailed, 
and the young Handel commenced his musical educa- 
tion at the age of seven, under Zachau, organist of 
Halle Cathedral. Here he acquired all that was to 



HANDEL 117 

be learned in the great Organ School, and there was 
even a moment when he appears to have contemplated 
taking an organist's place at Liibeck, in which case 
Bach might have had a rival on his own ground. 
According to the story, he was prepared to accept all 
the conditions attaching to the post except that of 
marrying his predecessor's daughter; and, if this 
anecdote be^true, it is perhaps owing to the absence 
of charm in this young lady that he has left us opera 
and oratorio instead of organ music and mass. 

As events actually turned out, Italy (which he 
visited after an important stay at Hamburg) was des- 
tined to have nearly as large a share in the f ormation 
of his style as Germany. He visited it in 1706 ; was 
received with open arms in Eome, Naples, and Venice ; 
made acquaintance with Corelli and A. Scarlatti; 
composed two oratorios and two operas ; and learned 
all that was taught in what was still the great centre 
of art education in Europe. 

Strong in this combination of Italian and German 
art, Handel came to England in 1710, and a few 
weeks afterwards produced the opera "Rinaldo," 
which has never been surpassed, either by its author 
or any one else, in the particular style of opera 



118 HANDEL 

composition which prevailed in the first half of the 
eighteenth century. 

A composer of operas he remained in the main for 
more than twenty-five years, but he early showed his 
genius for that peculiar form of art in which he has 
never been excelled, i.e. writing for chorus. The 
Utrecht and other Te Deums, the Utrecht Jubilate 
(1713), the Chandos Anthems (1718), Esther (1719), 
and Acis and Galatea (1720), contain the promise, and 
more than the promise, of what he was destined 
ultimately to accomplish. These last works were 
composed while Handel was acting as chapel-master 
to the Duke of Chandos. It is interesting, by the 
way, to note the extraordinary liberality with which 
musical artists, especially in England, were treated in 
the earlier part of the last century. Handel received 
in pensions from the Crown no less a sum than .500 
a year. For the composition of " Esther " he received 
.2000. Buononcini, in like manner, is said to have 
received a present of 5000 and a pension of 500 
from Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough. Eighty 
years later, Beethoven, the spoiled darling of the 
Austrian aristocracy, received, at the height of his 
fame, a pension of about 140, and 50 for the 



HANDEL 119 

greatest of his works. The fact is not less striking 
if we compare the treatment received respectively by 
men of letters during the same period and by 
musicians. In Handel's time, as we all know, litera- 
ture, not less than art, depended as much on the 
patronage of the great as on the favour of the public ; 
yet I cannot recall any instance in which a man of 
letters, however distinguished, received either from 
the Crown, or from the nobility, anything at all 
approaching the sums which were lavished upon 
Handel, and upon Buononcini. 

In 17 20 was started a Society destined profoundly 
to affect the future of Handel's career. The Royal 
Academy of Music was founded in order to promote, 
on the most magnificent scale, the performances of 
Italian opera. Handel was appointed its conductor ; 
Buononcini and Ariosti aided him in the work of 
composition. For some time matters went smoothly 
enough ; but the jealousies which arose between the 
Society and its conductor, between the rival com- 
posers, and between the rival singers, soon produced 
a degree of discord fatal to that unity of action 
without which continuous success was impossible. 
Handel broke with the Society, and set up, first in 



120 HANDEL 

1729, in partnership with Heidegger; afterwards (in 
1734) on his own account. The results of such a 
proceeding are what might easily have been antici- 
pated. Few have been the places, and brief the 
periods, in which the opera has been able to support 
itself on any considerable scale in entire independence 
either of private munificence or State subvention. 
London, as readers of Colley Gibber's Apology are 
aware, could with difficulty in the early part of 
the last century support two playhouses. A scheme, 
therefore, which required that it should support two 
opera-houses was foredoomed from the first to dis- 
astrous failure. It did not require the unprecedented 
success of the " Beggars' Opera " to destroy its exotic 
rival ; that rival was predestined to destruction, had 
Gay never written, nor Pepusch composed. Handel 
became bankrupt in 1737, and in the same year was 
struck down by paralysis. Health and fortune alike 
deserted him, and so low had he sunk that to rise 
again might have seemed impossible. But, in truth, 
what appeared to be the end of his career was, so 
far as posterity is concerned, almost the beginning of 
it. He had before this period composed at intervals 
three oratorios, besides "Acis and Galatea," and 



HANDEL 121 

"Alexander's Feast." To oratorio he now almost 
exclusively devoted himself. In the fourteen years 
succeeding his bankruptcy he produced the whole of 
that immortal series (with the exception of "Esther," 
" Deborah," and " Athaliah ") by which his name is 
for ever rendered illustrious. And although he did 
little in the way of original compositions after he was 
attacked by cataract in 1752, his musical activity 
never ceased. He continued, amid growing fame 
and increasing prosperity, to conduct his oratorios 
until the very end. The end came in 1759, only a 
week after he attended a performance of the "Messiah." 
He died on the day before Easter Sunday at his house 
in Brook Street, at the age of seventy-four. 

So lived and so died this great artist. That his 
life was one of ceaseless production, that he contri- 
buted, more than any musician of his time, to the 
delight of his generation, is praise that will be 
grudged him by none. But what is impartial criti- 
cism to say of his work in its larger aspects ? How 
far did he improve upon the art of his predecessors 1 
How far did he smooth the path of progress for 
those who were to come after him ? Has he, for an 
age familiar with the masterpieces of Beethoven, 



122 HANDEL 

Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Wagner, any but an 
historic interest ? 

In answer to these questions it must, I think, be 
admitted, in the first place, that he cannot be said to 
have aided the advance of music in the same degree, or 
even in the same sense, as some other of the great 
composers I have named. We can assert with confi- 
dence that without Haydn we should not have the 
Mozart we know; that without Mozart we should 
not have the Beethoven we know ; and that without 
Beethoven the whole musical history of the nineteenth 
century would have been utterly different from what 
it is. No such proposition can be advanced respecting 
Handel. In England, he left behind him some 
humble imitators, who were more successful in steal- 
ing his phrases than in catching his inspiration, but 
he left no school. On the Continent he did even 
less. His works form, as it were, a monument, 
solitary and colossal, raised at the end of some blind 
avenue from which the true path of advance has 
already branched; a monument which, stately and 
splendid though it be, is not the vestibule through 
which art has passed to the discovery and exploration 
of new regions of beauty. 



HANDEL 123 

Intimately connected with this peculiarity is 
another, deserving of notice in the same connection. 
Handel was not, as regards the technical method of 
producing musical effects, in any sense a great inno- 
vator; as regards form, he rather exhausted the 
possibilities of those already in use than added to 
their number. Consider, for example, his overtures. 
Delightful and spirited as these are, admirably as 
they are contrived not, indeed, like modern over- 
tures, to give a kind of foretaste of the drama which 
is to follow, but to attune the minds of the audience 
to its opening scenes, they are, with rare exceptions, 
framed on one unvarying model. For more than 
fifty years he was content to preface opera and 
oratorio alike with the kind of introduction that was 
in fashion when, as a youth of nineteen, he wrote his 
first opera at Hamburg; and the overtures to the 
"Messiah" and to "Samson," however in other 
respects superior, did not differ in form from those 
with which, two generations previously, Lulli had 
delighted the Court of Louis XIV. 

Similar observations may be made respecting his 
operas. They were, no doubt, by very much the 
best works of their kind which had ever been pro- 



124 HANDEL 

duced. Many of the airs which they contain are 
still familiar to us; many more deserve to be so; 
and, even when divorced from their dramatic setting, 
may continue to give exquisite delight. But on the 
whole it would, I suppose, be true to say that after 
expending for more than thirty years his time, his 
money, his health, and his unequalled genius, on the 
cultivation of the Italian opera, he left it richer, 
indeed, by innumerable masterpieces, but in other 
respects very much where he found it fettered, 
that is, by endless conditions, imposed not so much 
to satisfy the requirements of dramatic propriety as 
to moderate the rivalries of competing singers. 

It seems at first sight strange that any man of 
genius should have patiently submitted to rules 
which, from the point of view of art, were perfectly 
arbitrary. The explanation is, no doubt, to be found 
in the circumstance that up to the middle of the 
eighteenth century (speaking very roughly) the 
orchestra was a mere adjunct to the voice, and that 
the revolution, which seems in these later times to 
have made the voice a mere adjunct to the orchestra, 
had not even begun. The modern composer for the 
stage sometimes writes as if singers were a necessary 



HANDEL 125 

evil which have, no doubt, to be endured in order to 
carry on the dramatic dialogue, but which need to 
be treated with no sort of consideration. If this be 
a fault in one direction, a point on which I offer no 
opinion, the early composers of Italian opera fell, or 
were driven, into the opposite one. They lived at a 
time when the powers of execution possessed by 
performers on every instrument (except, it is said, 
the trumpet) were very inferior to those which are 
now common, but when the voice was cultivated with 
an assiduity and a success which have never since 
been rivalled. The composers could thus command 
inimitable technical skill in their singers; but the 
singers required in their turn a degree and a kind of 
consideration which has never before or since been 
asked or received by the interpreters of a work of 
genius from its creator. 

Thus Handel, in most of his operas, not only 
observed the elaborate system of rules which were 
contrived to ensure that, while each singer should 
have sufficient scope to display his talent, no singer 
should have too much, but wrote his music with a 
special view to the particular aptitudes of the various 
members of his staff. It is, I believe, possible to 



126 HANDEL 

discover, by a mere examination of his score, not 
only what was the compass of each performer, but 
what was his peculiar excellence or weakness, and in 
what part of the register lay his best and most effec- 
tive notes. We are told that when Cuzzoni and 
Faustina were performing together at his theatre, 
when all London was divided as to their merit : when 
the strife so engendered rose to a pitch of bitterness 
which, even in the age of Walpole and Pulteney, 
surpassed the rage of political parties, the composer 
so nicely balanced the roles of the competing singers, 
contrived with so much skill to give to each exactly 
equal opportunities for display, and, even when he 
caused them to sing together in a duet, managed to 
provide them with parts so precisely alike in promin- 
ence and interest, that even the jealousy of rival 
artists and rival women could not accuse him of 
partiality. But however much we may admire the 
ease with which art so trammelled could move, we 
can no longer be seduced by the voice of a Farinelli 
or a Faustina into forgetting that the trammels are 
there. Therefore it is that the Italian opera of 
Handel's time is dead beyond all hope of revival, 
even in this age of revivals. No modern audience 



HANDEL 127 

would tolerate it, even if modern singers could be 
found to render it; and this, be it observed, not 
because the music is old-fashioned, not because our 
ears are tuned to richer orchestration or a different 
flow of melody, though these things be true, but 
because the composers of that day were compelled 
by the tyranny of circumstances to cast their thoughts 
in a shape which even a genius like Handel's could 
not render immortal. 

For this it would be unfair to blame the composer. 
The greatest works which the world has seen have 
not been dedicated to an unknown posterity, but 
have been produced to satisfy the daily needs of 
their age, and have, therefore, of necessity conformed 
to the tastes, and usually to the fashion and the 
prejudices, of the period which gave them birth. So 
it was with Handel's operas; and, without doubt, 
but for two accidental circumstances, it is to the 
production of operas that he would have mainly 
devoted himself, to the infinite loss of posterity, 
even to the very end of his career. These two 
circumstances were the rivalries and quarrels 
already adverted to, which made it impossible 
profitably to perform operas, and the observance 



128 HANDEL 

of Lent, which made it possible profitably to per- 
form oratorios. The debt which all the arts owe to 
the Church is infinite; but, perhaps, the heaviest 
liabilities have been incurred by music. It was the 
liturgies of the Church which supplied the inspiration 
of all the greatest compositions down to comparatively ^ 
recent times ; it was Church choirs which supplied / 
the musical training ; it was Church funds which sup- 
plied the necessary endowments. Slight, indeed, would 
be our musical heritage if all was subtracted from it 
which had been written for the Church, or by those whom 
the Church had helped to teach or to support. These 
benefits to art were due to the positive action of the 
Church. That Handel devoted himself exclusively 
in his later years to oratorio is due to its negative 
action. During Lent, operas were discontinued, and 
it was mainly through the accidental advantage thus 
given to oratorio in the "struggle for existence," that 
they were able to contend successfully against their 
more showy rivals. We owe, therefore, "Israel in 
Egypt," the "Messiah," "Semele," and "Hercules," 
to liturgical observance less directly, but not less 
really, than the " Missa Papae Marcelli," the " Passion, 
according to St. Matthew," or the "Mass in D." 



HANDEL 129 

Judging by the light of posthumous criticism, it 
may seem strange that Handel should not have left 
the opera till the opera had to all intents and purposes 
left him, and that he did not devote himself to oratorio 
till his theatrical speculations had finally broken down. 
It is no doubt true that nowhere in Europe had the 
experiment of oratorio, i.e. of dramatic pieces with- 
out dramatic action, been tried as a popular enter- 
tainment ; that it would have been folly to have em- 
barked on such a speculation without full assurance of 
its success ; and that Handel seems to have embarked 
on it as soon as, by repeated experiment, he was con- 
vinced that such assurance had been obtained. But it 
must be acknowledged that he was not easily convinced. 
Note the stages through which these experiments 
passed. "Esther," the first English oratorio, was 
written for a private patron, and for private perform- 
ance. " Acis " had the same origin about the same 
time. Both were written at a period when there 
was no Italian opera in London, and when therefore, 
Handel had no other outlet for his dramatic talents. 
For more than ten years after this the composer, 
entirely occupied with operas, neither added to the 
number of his oratorios, nor caused those which he 
K 



130 HANDEL 

had already finished to be performed. And even 
then, though sinking to the lowest ebb of fortune, it 
was due to external influences rather than to his 
own spontaneous impulse that he began slowly and 
cautiously to turn his creative energies in what nov 
seems to us their natural direction. The first in- 
cidents which led to this were some private perform- 
ances of "Esther" by the children of the Chapel 
Eoyal, with action and scenery. This led to a desire 
for a representation of the same oratorio, by the 
same performers and in the same way, at the Opera 
House. But here, fortunately, the Bishop of London 
stepped in. He was ready to allow the children of 
the chapel to sing, but not to act. In so doing, he 
no doubt conceived himself to be furthering the 
interests of propriety, if not of morality ; but he 
was, in reality, furthering with far more decisive 
effect the interests of art. It is not wholly im- 
possible that, but for his intervention, Handel would 
have aimed at the production of a form of oratorio 
which, in accordance with tradition, would differ 
little from opera, except in the choice of subject, the 
somewhat greater freedom of construction, and in 
the greater prominence given to chorus. In so 



HANDEL 131 

doing he would, as I shall presently show, have 
forfeited his deep claim to our gratitude as a musical 
innovator. His later works would have borne to his 
earlier very much the same relation that Racine's 
"Athalie" bears to his "Iphigenie." They would 
have been more edifying, but not in any artistic 
quality essentially different or superior. How slowly 
Handel reconciled himself to the idea of oratorio, 
as he himself has taught us to understand the term, 
is further proved, if further proof be wanting, by the 
fact that the first public performance of "Acis" (not 
given, it may be noted, until Handel was driven to 
it in order to forestall an impudent attempt at musical 
piracy), was represented without action, indeed, but 
with appropriate scenery, costumes, and decorations. 
This, however, was a theatrical hybrid that necessarily 
remained barren. It was a compromise which could 
not last, and accordingly, in the next year, we see 
him in "Deborah" and "Athaliah," finally accepting 
oratorio as a form of entertainment by which he 
might appeal to the public as he had before appealed 
to them by opera. 

Such were the slow gradations of success by which 
Handel was, as it were, reluctantly forced to devote 



132 HANDEL 

the full strength of his matured genius to the exclu- 
sive production of that class of works which are for 
ever connected with his name, and of which he ^as, 
perhaps, as much the inventor as, in this world of 
slow development, any one is the inventor of anything. 
Antiquarians, it is true, trace the pedigree of the 
oratorio to the year 1600. They tell us that the 
first oratorio was composed by Cavaliere, that the 
name originated in the accidental circumstance that 
the first performance took place in the oratory of St. 
Maria, in Vallicella, and they further define this 
particular form of art for us as a sacred poem, of a 
dramatic or allegoric character, sung by voices in solo 
and chorus with orchestral accompaniment. 

All this is true, is interesting, and is important. 
But there is a certain danger that in laying stress on 
this particular set of historical facts we should forget 
circumstances not less true, not less interesting, and 
even more important to the proper comprehension of 
what was artistically new in Handel's work. In this 
case, as in others, we have to be careful lest the 
history of the name should divert our attention from 
the history of the thing. 

Now, what distinguished the oratorio of the early 



HANDEL 133 

seventeenth century from the opera of the same date 
was not the character of the music, but the character 
of the subject. Both were sung, and both were 
acted ; both consisted of the same succession of airs 
and recitative, occasionally varied in the same way by 
slight choruses. The difference between them lay in 
the fact that the theme of one was sacred, that of the 
other secular, and it consisted in this fact alone. But 
this is not a circumstance of the slightest interest, 
artistically speaking, nor does it in the slightest 
degree indicate the real difference between Handel's 
English oratorios and his Italian operas. If any one 
entertains a doubt on the point let him consider in 
what categories he would respectively place Handel's 
Italian work, " Resurrezione," and " Hercules." The 
first is indistinguishable in form from " Einaldo " ; 
the second is indistinguishable in form from " Samson." 
But the first is sacred, the second is secular. The 
first, therefore, would, and the second would not, be 
usually called an oratorio. I venture to think that 
this terminology, however much in accordance with 
usage, lays stress upon the wrong set of facts. It 
draws attention to the subject of the words, not to 
the character of the music, to the theme selected by 



134 HANDEL 

the librettist, and not to its treatment by the com- 
poser. Now, whether we think it worth whjfc to 
depart from the ordinary usage of words or not, we 
shall do well to bear in mind that while the oratorio 
was, no doubt, in its inception essentially sacred, 
secular dramas have been successfully treated after 
the manner of oratorios; and that while the first 
oratorios were intended to be acted, the vital char- 
acteristic of the perfected oratorio is that it is neither 
acted, nor is, indeed, in most cases, by any possibility 
capable of being acted. 

A little consideration will show that this peculi- 
arity is all-important. Of the three possible ways 
in which a written drama can be presented to an 
audience, namely, as a play, as an opera, or as an 
oratorio, the opera has, and in Handel's time had 
to a much greater extent than now, characteristic 
weaknesses from which the others are free. In its 
attempt to re-enforce the emotions produced by 
acting, through the aid of those produced by music, 
both the acting and the music suffer. For the whole 
raison d'etre of acting is that it sufficiently resembles 
nature to produce, with the aid of a little good-will 
on the part of the spectators, a sense of reality. It 



HANDEL 135 

is this sense of reality, and this alone, which makes 
an acted play more effective than a recited one. But 
if the actors, instead of rendering the emotions of the 
characters they represent, are occupied mainly in 
rendering the music of the composer, if they have 
to carry on their ordinary conversations in recitative, 
and mark the critical situations by the delivery of an 
aria, illusion becomes impossible. Even the most 
perfect acting and the most realistic scenery require 
some allowances, and can only be accepted by the aid 
of certain tacit conventions ; but it is too great a 
strain to put upon our powers of self-deception to ask 
us to accept as true to nature ladies and gentlemen 
who make love in elaborate duets or die in the 
execution of a trill. No doubt, in recent times a 
successful effort has been made to diminish these 
objections by throwing the chief musical interest into 
the orchestra, and by altogether preventing the per- 
formers from stopping the action of the drama by the 
execution of set pieces of music ; but in Handel's age 
such a device would have been impossible, if for no 
other reason yet because the orchestra of those times 
was utterly unfit to bear the weight of so heavy a 
responsibility. 



136 HANDEL / 

If in opera the music impaired the verisimilitude 
of the acting, it is not less true that acting limited 
the variety of the music. Before the instrumental 
revolution of the last hundred and fifty years, the 
most powerful musical effects, without comparison, 
which the musician could command were produced 
by the chorus ; and the use of choruses was strictly 
limited both by dramatic convention and by stage 
necessities. So that in Handel's case we have the 
extraordinary absurdity of the greatest master of 
choral effect the world has ever seen restricted to the 
composition of recitatives and airs, only here and 
there relieved by the meagre and trifling choruses per- 
mitted by the rules and practice of the Italian opera. 

In giving up the attempt to combine dramatic 
music with dramatic representation, the oratorio 
freed itself at once from all these absurdities, and all 
these limitations. It ceased to be acting marred by 
singing ; it became recitation glorified by music ; and 
this gave it another advantage, of which it is necessary 
to take note. The story of a drama written for the 
stage, or framed on the model of those that are so 
written, is necessarily given in the words of the 
various dramatis personce; in this respect differing 



HANDEL 137 

from a piece written in the epic, narrative, or de- 
scriptive form. But this difference, vital as it is 
when we are dealing with plays or poems, loses all 
importance in the case of oratorios. It is superfluous 
to distinguish an oratorio like " Samson," in which 
everything is sung by personages in the story, 
Delilah, Manoah, Israelitish women, and so forth, 
from one like " Israel in Egypt," in which there are 
no personages at all, but only a series of descriptions. 
You may, if you please, call one dramatic and the 
other epic, but the distinction is here immaterial. 
Both consist essentially of a connected series of inci- 
dents stated in words, and interpreted by music. 
And provided the incidents be of a kind which lend 
themselves to such interpretation, provided they be 
sufficiently connected to give unity, sufficiently con- 
trasted to give variety, and at the same time fairly 
co-ordinated into an artistic whole, the librettist 
need trouble himself no more about the possibilities 
of stage representation than he need about the unities 
of time and place. 

But the superiority of the oratorio over its 
dramatic rival as an " art form " is not more decisive 
than its superiority over its Church rivals, the Passion 



138 HANDEL 

and the Mass. We must not be misled in this matter 
by the splendour of the music associated with these 
names ; for it is not the music I am discussing, but 
the use to which the music has been put; the 
" poetic form " to which it has been wedded. Now 
the libretto of a Passion music was simply a Mediaeval 
miracle play born out of due season. It had all the 
limitations which arise from the fact that it dealt 
with only one subject in only one way, added to all 
the limitations due to the circumstance that its 
object was not aesthetic, but devotional, that it was 
intended to promote, not pleasure, but edification. 
It is impossible but that the music with which it was 
associated should suffer from these disadvantages ; 
that it has so suffered may be inferred from the fact 
that it has been (comparatively speaking) seldom set 
by musicians of genius, that of all the sittings there 
is but one in which posterity takes much interest, 
and that to do full justice to this one we have to 
remember that it must be judged from the point of 
view of a religious ceremony in which the audience 
were expected to take a part. 

Observations not wholly dissimilar may be made 
respecting the Mass as a theme for musical treatment. 



HANDEL 139 

If intended for use in church it can only be regarded 
as an accessory to the most solemn act of Christian 
worship, and must necessarily be interrupted by 
those parts of the service which are not sung by the 
choir. If intended for the concert-room it can only 
be considered as a sacred cantata on a somewhat 
extended scale, of which the succession of ideas, 
however consecrated by usage, has been determined 
by liturgical and not by artistic considerations. 

The oratorio, then, stands pre-eminent, at least in 
the infancy of orchestration, among all the modes in 
which music may be wedded to dramatic poetry. It, 
and it alone, gives the musician the utmost latitude 
in the choice of his subject, and in the employment 
of his resources. It is Handel's glory to have per- 
ceived its capabilities, and to have developed them 
in a manner undreamed of by his predecessors, and 
unsurpassed by even the greatest of his successors. 
He brought to this task a peculiar combination of 
gifts. His long connection with the operatic stage 
had brought to perfection the dramatic genius and 
the inexhaustible flow of melody which he inherited 
from Nature. He was able to combine this with a 
power of choral composition already exercised in the 



\ 



140 HANDEL 



great series of "Chandos Anthems," in the various 
settings of the " Te Deum," and in other compositions 
for the Church, and which, in its kind, has never 
since been approached. All that was great in opera, 
all that was great in Church music, together with 
much that stage limitations excluded from the first, 
and religious feeling from the second, thus united to 
adorn dramatic narratives, which, however indifferent 
as literature, were seldom deficient in powerful situa- 
tions well fitted for musical treatment. 1 

It is not necessary here to dwell at length on the 
characteristics which, as we are told so often and so 
truly, distinguish his style, especially in choruses. 

1 Handel has, indeed, been, on the whole, fortunate in the 
pieces he has set. Some of them were by the most distinguished 
men of letters of his own and the preceding age. Not to mention 
the cantatas composed to words by Milton and Dryden, Pope is 
said to have written "Esther"; Gay wrote "Acis"; Congreve 
wrote "Semele"; "Athaliah" was based on Racine; and the 
text of " Samson " is Milton spoiled. From names like these it is 
something of a descent to go to Mr. Jennens and Dr. Morell. But 
even Mr. Jennens, and Dr. Morell, and a clergyman of the name 
of Miller, who surpassed even these in the art of sinking in poetry, 
though they were far from being either tolerable versifiers or 
tolerable playwrights, knew something of their business. They 
supplied a certain number of incidents, described in a certain 
quantity of doggrel, wisely leaving it to the composer to furnish 
the genius and the imagination. Accordingly, they produced not 
unsuccessful librettos, when better men might, perhaps, have only 
succeeded in giving us not unsuccessful poems. 



HANDEL 141 

The grandeur, the contrapuntal learning, the 
ingenuity with which that learning is concealed, the 
melodious smoothness of the part-writing, and the 
extreme simplicity of the means often employed to 
produce the most striking effects, all these are 
familiar qualities of a familiar composer, on which it 
would be wearisome to dilate, unless with an amount 
of technical discussion and illustration wholly out 
of place in this essay. Yet criticism should have 
something to say without lapsing into the platitudes 
of eulogistic commonplace on the one side, or into 
minute and, to most readers, dry and tedious com- 
mentary on the other. It is not, perhaps, very easy 
to say it, and it is not rendered much easier on this 
occasion by the fact that the writer of these pages is 
obliged to confess to a degree of affectionate devotion 
to the great composer which it is not possible, or I 
had almost even said, which it is not desirable, that 
the majority of readers should show. Yet, as it is 
permissible to feel for living personalities a degree of 
regard not nicely apportioned to the number and 
quality of their virtues, as we may have a tenderness 
even for their shortcomings, a lurking affection even 
for their very weaknesses, the same latitude of tolera- 



] 42 HANDEL 

tion must now and again be granted us in another 
sphere. In art as well as in life we must sometimes 
be allowed to feel that the native splendour of what is 
best in any man's work illumines, though with a bor- 
rowed glow, those parts which are less excellent, 
without being too constantly reminded that the glow 
is borrowed. In art as well as in life it must be 
given us sometimes to judge as lovers, and not with 
the chill impartiality of mere intimate acquaintance. 

A sentiment of this kind need not, we may hope, 
impair the worth of criticism unless the critic is 
rendered by it incapable of separating what is 
personal in his estimate, from that which is universal, 
unless it induces him to try and impose on the world 
in general the results of his own idiosyncrasies as if 
they were the products of tastes in which he might 
expect the rest of mankind to share. From this 
danger I shall endeavour to guard myself; and, in 
order that my readers may feel reassured on the 
point, I hasten to acknowledge that if, as is probable, 
they are only restrained by the respect inspired by 
a great name from saying that Handel is not 
unfrequently simple even to the verge, or beyond 
the verge, of commonplace, I agree with them, even 



HANDEL 143 

though to me he is never tame. If they think that 
Handel was frequently content to use again and yet 
again phrases originally invented, perhaps, by others, 
then worn threadbare through constant iteration by 
himself, I admit it to be true, though to me they 
seem always fresh. And if they further desire to 
point out that Handel had certain tricks for producing 
some of his great choral effects, striking, no doubt, 
and characteristically simple, but still of a kind from 
which time and repetition have removed all the 
novelty and much of the charm, again I agree, 
though they still charm me. 

The truth is that, to every genius there is a 
characteristic weakness, a defect to which it naturally 
leans, and into which, in those inevitable moments 
when inspiration flags, it is apt to subside. With 
Handel this bias was towards melodious and facile, 
though always vigorous, commonplace : as with Bach, it 
was towards a crabbed and somewhat ungrateful treat- 
ment of his materials. And in this, as in some other 
respects, the external circumstances of the two great 
contemporaries favoured their original differences. 
Handel wrote to please the public by whom he lived. 
Engaged, on his own behalf or on that of others, as 



144 HANDEL 

the manager of those musical enterprises for which 
he was also the composer, he necessarily failed in the 
first of these capacities unless he was popular in the 
second. Nor was the public which had to be attracted 
either large in numbers or constant in taste. " The 
town," as I have said, could scarcely, at the best, 
support two playhouses. It could not, even with 
the aid of enormous private subventions, support two 
opera-houses. And, as the audiences at Drury Lane 
deserted Vanbrugh and Congreve for the pantomime, 
so the audience at the Haymarket deserted Handel 
and Buononcini for the "Beggars' Opera." Handel, 
therefore, is in the same category as the majority of 
great creative geniuses. He was obliged to please 
his own age ; he might please posterity if he could. 
Bach, on the other hand, belongs to the smaller, 
and, on the whole, perhaps, not more fortunate class, 
whose contemporary public is so limited that, as 
regards most of their work, they may almost be said 
to have had only themselves to please. While Handel 
was struggling with the administrative difficulties of 
the London opera, Bach was organist of Leipsic. 
There it was that he produced his greatest works, 
and collected round him a devoted and admiring 



HANDEL 145 

body of pupils. But from the public he neither 
desired anything nor got anything. It was his 
business to compose a certain number of sacred 
cantatas for the festivals of the Church, and he 
composed them. It was the business of the worthy 
burghers of Leipsic to listen to them, and they 
listened to them. There is no evidence that the 
great composer ever sought to excite their enthusi- 
astic appreciation, and there is every evidence to 
prove that he never obtained it. He laboured at art 
for art's sake, with all the good, and some, perhaps, 
of the evil results that not uncommonly attend that 
operation; and he has had his appropriate reward. 
He is, what Handel has never been, nor would 
ever perhaps have desired to be, above all things, 
an artist's artist; one who enjoys chiefly the ad- 
miration of experts, but enjoys that in overflowing 
measure. 

There is one other criticism on Handel's work 
more often explicitly avowed, though not, perhaps, 
so often felt as those to which I have alluded, which 
I notice only that I may express my own emphatic 
dissent from it. We are frequently told that Handel 
is not original. If by this is meant that he freely 
L 



146 HANDEL 

used the tags and commonplaces that were the 
common property of the musicians of his day, or 
that some of his instrumental slow movements, for 
instance, show in every note of them unmistakable 
signs of the influence of Corelli, it is no doubt true, 
though not very interesting or important. But more 
than this is usually implied, if it is not actually 
stated. We are given to understand that his un- 
acknowledged robberies from contemporaries and 
predecessors were of a kind and magnitude which 
must seriously affect our estimate of him, both as an 
honest man and as an original genius. In support 
of this indictment, recent investigators have drawn 
up so formidable a catalogue of these borrowed 
treasures, that at first sight it would almost appear 
as if Handel rather compiled music than composed 
it ; and that his works were due not so much to his 
own natural inspiration as to the assiduous piecing 
together of the fragments of other men's labours. 
Now, the actual facts on which this theory rests I 
take to be these : After excluding from the list of 
mis-appropriations those examples in which the re- 
semblance is too shadowy, or the alleged plagiarism l 

1 For instance, the alleged imitation in the chorus "Hear, 



HANDEL 147 

too improbable to make them adequate foundations 
of any judgment adverse to his fame, there un- 
doubtedly remains embedded in his mightiest 
creations a large quantity of material borrowed 
principally from his own earlier writings, but to no 
inconsiderable extent from the writings of other 
musicians also. This re -use of old materials is of 
the most varying degree of importance. Sometimes 
it merely consists in the employment of a fugue 
subject which had exercised the ingenuity or stimu- 
lated the imagination of composers for the preceding 
two hundred years ; e.g. the series of four ascending 
and descending notes which Handel has used in the 
" Horse and his Rider," and in the " Hallelujah 
Chorus" ("Messiah"), and elsewhere, and which 
Byrd, nearly two hundred years previously, set to 
the words, " Non nobis Domine." Of this species of 
plagiarism, no one, even superficially acquainted with 
the practice of musicians in the fifteenth, sixteenth, 

Jacob's God " of a chorus by Stradella. I may here take note of 
the singular anxiety of critics to discover Handelian plagiarisms. 
The excellent article on Handel, for instance, in the Dictionary 
of Music accuses him of stealing the subject of "Wretched 
Lovers " from Bach's forty-eight preludes and fugues. The first 
set of the latter was published in 1722, the former was written 
in 1720. 



I 



148 HANDEL 



seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, will see any- 
thing to wonder at or to criticise. But, again, 
sometimes it consists in the working up, perhaps, 
into some great chorus, material, his own or borrowed, 
which had formerly served a less august and stately 
purpose. Interesting examples are to be found in 
the use made of the Italian chamber duet in the 
chorus " Wretched Lovers " ; in the use made of the 
ground base to an air in the tenth Chandos Anthem, 
in the rolling, oceanic accompaniment of the chorus, 
" The waters overwhelmed them " (" Israel ") ; in the 
use made of the theme of the quick movement in 
one of the violin sonatas as the subject of the 
triumphant choral fugue, "Live, live for ever" 
(" Solomon ") ; in the use made of the opening move- 
ment of the fourth organ concerto in the accompani- 
ment to a chorus in "Alcina"; and (to turn to 
similar adaptations made from other men's works) 
of the use made of the introductory phrase in Urio's 
" Te Deum " in the chorus, " David his ten thousands 
slew" ("Saul"). Again, it may consist in the 
appropriation of large fragments of earlier works, 
by himself or other people, and their employment 
unaltered, or nearly unaltered, as episodes in new 



HANDEL 149 

compositions of his own. See, for example, a chorus 
of Astorga's, embedded as it were in "Then shall 
they know" ("Samson"); and a chorus by Urio, 
developed into " Our fainting courage " (" Saul "). 
Finally, it may consist in the simple transference, 
with or without an alteration of the words, of a piece 
of music from one composition to another. Thus he 
is said to have appropriated the (to say the truth, 
somewhat dry) chorus, " Egypt was glad " (" Israel"), 
from an organ -piece by Kerl, without the altera- 
tion of a note; and thus he introduced, without 
modification, into "Deborah," much of the music 
which had previously done service in the Coronation 
Anthems, and in the Passion music. 

This, then, is an outline of the facts. How are 
we to interpret them 1 It will be noted that in the 
above rude classification I have lumped together, as 
if they were of the same kind, the robberies which 
Handel, like Bach, made from himself, and the 
robberies which he made at the expense of other- 
people. The truth is that, aesthetically and artisti- 
cally, I do not say morally, they are of the same kind. 
His method of working appears to have been this : 
He composed with extraordinary, even preternatural, 



150 HANDEL 

rapidity, after relatively long intervals of unpro- 
ductive repose. If the dates given in his MSS. are 
to be taken as indicating the whole time spent on the 
completion of the work, we have to suppose that the 
"Messiah," for instance, took only twenty-four days ; 
"Hercules" only twenty-nine days; "Semele" only 
thirty-one days ; and " Judas " only thirty-three days, 
and so of the others. Doubtless, some time may 
in certain cases have been occupied in filling in 
the score after the day set down as the final one of 
composition; doubtless, also, the work must have 
been incubating and maturing long before he put 
pen to paper. During this period, and during the 
heat and fervour of actual composition, it would 
seem that he took his materials where he could find 
them, with a serene indifference as to whether they 
were old or new, his own or other people's, the work 
of a composer long since dead, or the newest growth 
of his own inexhaustible genius. Rarely, therefore, 
unless in the case of a pikce d'occasion, do these 
borrowed pieces bear the marks of being foisted into 
their places to save the composer trouble, or to 
cover a momentary failure of inspiration; in the 
great majority of cases (I do not say in all) the 



HANDEL 151 

appropriated ideas seem only then to have found the 
setting and the use for which Nature originally 
intended them, when Handel impressed them into 
his service. 1 They are wanderers, which have at 
last reached their home, migrating souls, which, 
not till then, have found their fitting and perfect 
embodiment. 

This, I apprehend, indicates the test which we 
ought to apply in forming a judgment on the 
artistic merits of a plagiarism. If the borrowed 
fragment shows like the marble capitol of a Cor- 
inthian column built into the brickwork of a Medi- 
aeval wall, the theft is a mistake; and mistakes 
are crimes, indeed, the only crimes recognised in 
the jurisprudence of art. But if it not only fits 
harmoniously into the new structure, but shows 
there for the first time its latent capabilities of 
beauty or of grandeur, then, whatever judgment 
we may pass on the morality of the plagiarist, 

1 So much is this the case that the able, learned, and enthu- 
siastic biographer of Handel, Mr. Rockstro, so well known for 
his labours in musical history and criticism, actually founds on it 
a theory that Urio made his " Te Deum " out of fragments of 
Handel, instead of vice versd. The theory will hardly hold water. 
That it should ever have been advanced is a proof, if proof be 
wanting, of the proposition advanced in the text. 



152 HANDEL 

the plagiarism, as I conceive, stands justified at 
the bar of criticism. To suppose, indeed, that 
the originality of a work like " Israel in Egypt " 
is affected by any amount of such plagiarism as 
I have described seems to me to ignore the essence 
of that in which creative originality consists. Of 
all Handel's works, none perhaps owe less than 
the "Messiah," and none owe more than "Israel," 
to the labours of other composers. Of these two 
immortal creations it is hard to say which is the 
most perfect. But there can be no doubt, as I 
think, not only that "Israel" is the one most 
characteristically Handelian, but that it stands out 
amid all creations of the last century, whether of 
poets, painters, or musicians, unique in its un- 
borrowed majesty. To suppose that any amount 
of laborious grubbing among the scattered MSS. 
of forgotten musicians can shake a conclusion like 
this, if in other respects it be well founded, is as 
rational as to suppose that, by dint of sedulous in- 
quiry, we could mete out the glory of having built St. 
Paul's among the quarrymen who provided the 
materials. 

But, it will be said, the question of morality 



HANDEL 153 

still remains. It cannot be right for a great 
writer to appropriate the work of a small one, 
and at the same time wrong for a small one to 
appropriate the work of a great one. Bare justice 
requires that a common rule should apply to both. 

I will not venture on a full discussion of the 
casuistical problem thus raised. An interesting 
chapter remains to be written on the history of 
"private property in thought." When this is 
accomplished, it will become clear, I believe, that 
while, at the revival of learning and before it, 
the unwritten code regulating such matters was 
so lax that it was by no means considered necessary 
to acknowledge even direct quotations, the monopoly 
has become stricter and stricter down to our own 
time. And it will also be found that some of the 
greatest and most original geniuses Shakespeare, 
for instance, and Moliere have distinguished them- 
selves by the readiness with which they have made 
use of other men's inventions. Among such is 
Handel ; and with regard to him, and before 
finally dismissing this topic, I will only make 
two further observations. The first is, that he 
does not himself seem to have regarded it as ,a 



> 



154 HANDEL 



thing to be ashamed of. Among the most astonish- 
ing feats of appropriation which are laid to his 
charge is the wholesale transference of large frag- 
ments of a " Magnificat " by an obscure musician 
of the name of Erba, to the score of "Israel in 
Egypt." Now, one of the only two copies of this 
" Magnificat " known to exist is in Handel's hand- 
writing, and is preserved among his manuscripts 
at Buckingham Palace. But what is the history 
of these manuscripts? They are by no means 
casual chips from his musical workshop, scraped 
together from holes and corners, and arranged for 
the first time after his death. On the contrary, 
Handel himself, always sedulous of his fame, set 
the greatest store by them. He intended leaving 
them to his amanuensis, the elder Smith. He 
quarrelled with Smith and then proposed to leave 
them to the University of Oxford. He and Smith 
afterwards became reconciled, and he reverted to 
his original intentions. If, therefore, we are to 
believe that in employing Erba's materials he was 
committing what he considered, or what, in his 
opinion, others might consider, a breach of morality, 
we must suppose him to be guilty of the extra- 



HANDEL 155 

ordinary folly of leaving the evidence of his mis- 
demeanour in a convenient and carefully -preserved 
shape among the papers on which he relied for the 
honourable perpetuation of his memory. And we 
must further suppose that he could venture to 
quarrel with a man so intimately acquainted with 
all the secrets, and according to the hypothesis, 
the discreditable secrets, of his method, as was 
Smith ; and that, with the fate of Buononcini before 
his eyes, in a country which possessed its share 
of learned musicians, 1 and where Handel possessed 
more than his share of open enemies and jealous 
friends, he was prepared to risk reputation and 
livelihood at once in order to save himself a few 
hours' extra exertion. 

My second observation is this. If the main 
objection to robbery consists in the fact that the 
victim of the robbery is injured by it, Handel's 
appropriation of the music of his predecessors would 
seem to be innocent, if not meritorious. So far 
from their being injured by it in the quarter in 
which injury was alone possible, namely, their 

1 Among the most learned of whom was Pepusch, whom 
Handel had ousted at Canons, and who had compiled the 
" Beggars' Opera," which ruined Handel's operatic speculations. 



156 HANDEL 

reputation, it is not too much to say that their 
whole reputation is entirely founded on it. Who 
would take the slightest interest in Urio if Handel 
had not condescended to use his " Te Deum" in 
"Saul" and in the "Dottingen"? Who would 
ever have heard of Erba if Handel had not im- 
mortalised him by introducing parts of his " Magni- 
ficat" into "Israel"? The truth is that Handel 
has not cheated them out of their due meed of fame, 
he has cheated them into it. And I apprehend that 
if this were made a preliminary condition of all 
literary or artistic pilfering, the art of plagiarism 
would not in all probability be extensively practised 
or grossly abused. 

From this long parenthesis on the nature and 
extent of Handel's debts to other composers, rendered 
necessary by the tone and temper, rather perhaps 
than by the direct assertions of some contemporary 
criticism, I turn to the more grateful task of dwell- 
ing for a moment on the nature and extent of our 
debts to him. And perhaps, if I had to describe his 
special and transcendent merit in a few words, I 
should say that it consisted in his unequalled power 
of using chorus to express every shade of definite 



HANDEL 157 

dramatic emotion. And in this connection I do not 
think sumcient attention has been paid to the 
astonishing range which Handel attempted to cover 
in his choral compositions, or to the success which 
attended his efforts. Other composers, though 
surely not many, have equalled him in the dramatic 
treatment of the solo voice. One other man has 
equalled him in the easy and admirable mastery of 
choral technique. But no man has equalled him, 
scarcely any man has tried to equal him, in the free 
application of chorus to every dramatic purpose, and 
to the delineation of every human emotion which 
language is capable of describing. Before his time, 
and to no small extent since, chorus writing on a 
grand scale was reserved almost exclusively for the 
service of the Church. It was used, with scarcely an 
exception, as the vehicle of devotion and as the 
handmaid of liturgical observance, an august and 
splendid function, but one, from the very nature of 
the case, circumscribed and limited. No art, indeed, 
has exhausted, or will ever exhaust, the possibilities 
of religious feeling. But no art has consented to 
confine its efforts to the expression of religious 
feeling alone. Sooner or later, each has sought 



158 HANDEL 

new worlds to conquer, and, so far as regards music, 
with which alone we are now concerned, it is to 
Handel that we owe the most convincing proof that 
the greatest resources of chorus could find a use out- 
side the limits of Passion music, Anthem, and Mass, 
in the vast and varied field of secular emotion. 

It will perhaps be said that, after all, most of 
Handel's oratorios are sacred, and that in such works 
as "Samson," "Solomon," "Joshua," and " Jephtha," 
whose subject is taken from Bible history, as well as 
in those like " Theodora," " Alexander Balus," and 
"Judas Maccabseus," where the story is distinctly 
"edifying," he has limited himself to the sphere of 
religion almost as closely as if he had written only 
for the Church. But this is not so. Even of the 
"Messiah," it would not be accurate to say that it is 
religious in the same sense (though doubtless it is so 
in as true a sense) as the Mass in B minor. A Mass, 
like all other music that is or may be used for 
ecclesiastical purposes, is in the main intended to 
give heightened expression to the religious feelings 
of the individual believers engaged in a common act 
of worship. The "Messiah," on the other hand, is a 
drama, though a drama unique in its kind. While 



HANDEL 159 

it might be too much to say that worship is absolutely 
excluded from it, since it incidentally contains, not 
prayer, indeed, but praise, yet worship is in no sense 
its object, but, as in the case of other dramas, the 
presentation of a series of facts, external to the 
audience, united into an artistic and organic whole. 
But, though a drama, it is not an historic drama. 
If it touches, when necessary, on such historical 
events, as, for instance, the Nativity, it does so only 
in their most generalised and symbolic form, not as 
events in a chronological narrative. Its theme is 
nothing less than the New Dispensation, as under- 
stood and accepted by Christendom; and only 
familiarity, I think, blinds us to the singularity of 
the subject, and the skill with which it has been 
treated by librettist and composer (if, indeed, these 
are, in this case, to be distinguished). The dangers 
of the subject, artistically speaking, are obvious. 
The composer, with such a theme to deal with, might 
have been tempted to set to music a theological 
system ; he might even have had the perversity to 
make his system controversial, and given, in ad- 
mirable counterpoint, his special views on justifica- 
tion by faith and baptismal regeneration. Handel 



160 HANDEL 

committed no such error. 1 The work is perfect, not 
merely in its separate parts, but it is perfect as a 
whole. Everywhere the emotional side proper for 
musical treatment has been kept before the hearer ; 
and, through the admirable selection of the words, 
the theme has not unfrequently risen to heights 
where Handel's strength of wing, and his perhaps 
alone, has been able to follow it. Few even of the 
greatest among poets, musicians, and (since the 
Revised Version, we may now add) scholars, have 
succeeded in touching the words of our English 
Bible without rushing on disaster. That which they 
have found strong they have too often left feeble. 
That which they have found sublime they have not 
seldom left ridiculous. Of -Handel, and of Handel 



1 Dogma, it may be noted, must necessarily receive musical 
exposition in every setting of the Mass : and it is one of the ob- 
jections to that portion of the liturgy being used as, to all intents 
and purposes, a musical libretto. In Mr. Poole's excellent little 
Life of Each he informs us that in the Creed of the B minor Mass 
the Union of the Divine and the human nature in Christ is repre- 
sented by " a canon first in unison then in the fourth below." It 
is not impossible. The history of literature and art sufficiently 
proves that in the way of conceits nothing is impossible. But if 
it be so, the fact is sufficient to show how unfitted the subject is 
to be treated musically. We presume that, if Bach had been re- 
quired to treat musically the doctrines of the Trinity, he would 
have done it in a canon, three in one, at the unison. 



HANDEL 161 

only can we say that the most splendid inspirations 
of Hebrew poetry gain an added glory from his 
music, and that thousands exist for whom passages 
of Scripture which have for eighteen centuries been 
very near the heart of Christendom acquire a yet 
deeper meaning, a yet more spiritual power, through 
the strains with which his genius has inseparably 
associated them. 

But if the "Messiah," though undoubtedly a 
religious work, is to be thus distinguished artistically 
from those great ecclesiastical compositions to which 
choral writers had chiefly devoted themselves ; still 
more widely separated from such are the bulk of 
Handel's oratorios, whether their subjects are 
borrowed from the Bible or not. It is true that 
magnificent religious music is to be found in most of 
them ; but it is, on the face of it, introduced in 
obedience to the dramatic necessities of the situation, 
and is found side by side with music very different 
in character, but scarcely less magnificent, devoted 
to the praise of Baal, of Dagon, of Moloch, of Sesach, 
of Mithra, of Venus, and of other heathen deities 
(for Handel's Pantheon was large ! ), interspersed 
with much love-making and even more fighting. 

M 



162 HANDEL 

The historic causes, I had almost said the historic 
accidents, to which we owe the great bulk of 
Handel's choral work not intended for ecclesiastical 
purposes, have been already explained. But the 
spontaneous origin of "Esther" and of "Acis" 
shows that he did not devote himself to unacted 
choral drama from necessity till he had first tried 
his hand at it from choice ; while we may, perhaps, 
conjecture, from the solitary and, at the time, un- 
successful experiment of "Israel," that he was pre- 
pared to go even farther than he did in the use 
of chorus had he found a public ready to follow him. 
To our eternal loss, it was not to be. The sheer 
grandeur of the unbroken choral series in which 
Handel described the most thrilling and impressive 
of national episodes, was too severe a strain upon the 
patience of a London public in the reign of George 
II. to be often repeated ; and even down to a com- 
paratively recent date it has been found necessary to 
relieve the audience and spoil the work by the intro- 
duction of a few adapted airs. 

But we need not forget what we have, in vain 
speculations as to what under happier circumstances 
we might possibly have obtained. Let any who 



HANDEL 163 

desire to form a judgment on this subject run over, 
as a preliminary exercise, the following list of twenty 
choruses. I have paired the first eighteen according 
to similarity of subject, so that different modes of 
treating like themes may be compared : (1) " Envy, 
eldest born of hell " (" Saul "), " Oh, calumny " (" Alex- 
ander Balus"). (2) "Hear, Jacob's God" ("Sam- 
son"), "Immortal Lord" ("Deborah"). (3) "Oh, 
Baal" ("Deborah"), "Ye tutelar gods" ("Bel- 
shazzar"). (4) "Crown with festal pomp "("Her- 
cules"), "From the censer" ("Solomon"). (5) 
"Wanton god of amorous fire" ("Hercules"), "Let 
no rash intruder" ("Solomon"). (6) "Righteous 
Heaven beholds their guilt" ("Susannah"), "By 
slow degrees the wrath of God" (" Belshazzar "). 
(7) "Tyrants now no more" ("Hercules"), "Mourn, 
ye afflicted children" ("Judas"). (8) "We never 
will bow down" ("Judas"), "Ye sons of Israel" 
("Joshua"). (9) "Fixed in his everlasting seat" 
("Samson"), "When his loud voice" ("Jephtha"). 
(10) "Draw the tear" ("Solomon"), "He saw the 
lovely youth " (" Theodora "). 

Let the reader further recollect that this list 
excludes the whole body of his compositions for the 



164 HANDEL 

Church ; that it contains nothing from " Israel," and 
nothing from the " Messiah " ; that such master- 
pieces of descriptive and dramatic chorus -writing 
as are contained in " Acis and Galatea," "Alex- 
ander's Feast," " St. Cecilia's Day," " Semele," and 
other oratorios, find no place in it ; and he will have 
convincing proof that variety and originality are as 
remarkable characteristics of Handel's choral com- 
position as, by common consent, simplicity and 
grandeur are allowed to be. 

Our first impression, perhaps, of the composer's 
choral style is that, putting aside music of a strictly 
religious kind, it lends itself most easily to the ex- 
pression of popular sentiment in all its massive 
directness. A nation's mourning or a nation's triumph, 
national thanksgiving, national worship, the din of 
battle and the song of victory, these may seem the 
subjects best suited to the large canvas and the broad 
touch of the Handelian manner. Yet this would, 
perhaps, be a rash judgment unless we can show that 
he fell short of success in dealing with subjects and 
situations of a different kind. Love, which occupies 
a large space in Handel's as in all other dramatic 
narrative, and which is dragged into his Biblical 



HANDEL 165 

oratorios in a manner which not seldom verges, 
according to modern ideas, on the ludicrous, naturally 
falls, as a rule, to be treated by the single voice or in 
duet. But the three choruses I have already quoted, 
"Draw the tear from hopeless love," "May no rash 
intruder," and "Wanton god of amorous fire," 
absolutely diverse as they are both in sentiment 
and musical treatment, are a sufficient proof that 
the writer of "Love in her eyes sits playing," and 
of "Where e'er you walk," could, when he so 
desired it, throw as much passion into his choruses 
as he could into his solos. Again, what could 
be more perfect than the manner in which the 
composer of " Israel in Egypt " has caught the 
pastoral note in "Acis and Galatea"? The task 
was far from an easy one. With rare exceptions 
it may be asserted that every poem of the last 
century, in so far as it is either pastoral or mytho- 
logical, is certain to be frigid and artificial, and 
almost certain to be intolerably dull. Gay's poem 
was both pastoral and mythological. Yet, as 
treated by Handel, so far is it from being either 
frigid or dull, that there is not a frigid or a dull 
thing in it. The unhappy loves of Nymph and 



166 HANDEL 

Shepherd are portrayed with a tender sentiment, 
from which the tragic note is yet carefully excluded. 
The "Monster Polypheme," grotesque and yet ter- 
rible, is not only drawn in both characters with admir- 
able skill, but plays his part as villain of the piece 
with no undue or discordant emphasis, while the 
whole drama is acted against a pastoral background, 
so fresh and delicious, so like the country on a breezy 
summer-day, and so unlike the country as it was 
portrayed in the fashionable pastorals of that period, 
that it is manifestly not from such sources that 
Handel drew his inspiration. 

In extreme contrast to the pastoral charm of 
" Acis," at the other end of the dramatic scale, we 
find the composer attempting tasks of not less 
difficulty with not less success. To take a single 
example. There is no incident of Biblical, or, 
indeed, of any other, narrative more charged with 
dramatic meaning than the interruption of Bel- 
shazzar's feast by the mystic writing on the wall. 
But it is not one specially suited for musical treat- 
ment, particularly for musical treatment unassisted 
by action and scenic effect. If the reader will 
glance at the way Handel has dealt with the 



HANDEL 167 

problem, keeping in mind that he had to trust 
entirely to the imagination of his audience to supply 
the stage properties; that the parts of "Belshazzar 
the king, his lords, his wives, and his concubines," 
were taken by gentlemen and ladies in ordinary 
evening dress; that the Babylonian banqueting -hall 
was represented by the benches of a concert-room ; 
that the writing, ominous of impending doom, 
though talked about, could not, from the nature of 
the case, be represented ; keeping in mind, above all, 
that Handel had it not in his power to help himself 
out of the difficulty by any of the orchestral devices 
open to a modern composer; and it will, I think, 
be felt that his genius has exhausted the utmost 
possibilities offered by the materials which he had 
at his command. At the end of the first act the 
scene opens. The desecration of the sacred vessels 
taken from the temple at Jerusalem is protested 
against in a chorus of admirable and solemn dignity, 
supposed to be sung by captive Jews ; and, on Bel- 
shazzar's stubborn refusal to yield on this point to 
their protest or the entreaties of his mother, the 
stroke of inevitable retribution is foretold in the 
great chorus, "By slow degrees the wrath of God," 



168 HANDEL 

which closes the act. In the middle of the second act 
we are given the sequel of the scene. The wild revel, 
vigorously rendered in the chorus " Ye tutelar gods," 
and in the drinking song of Belshazzar, "Let the 
deep bowl," reaches its riotous culmination. Then 
suddenly is seen the hand tracing on the wall, in 
unknown characters, the decree of fate. The horror 
of the king, the confusion among the guests, the 
instantaneous change from the half-drunken gaiety of 
the revellers to a terror the more awful because its 
cause is mysterious and supernatural, are rendered in 
the chorus of Babylonian courtiers which follows, 
with a force not surpassed in simple strength even by 
the narrative as it occurs in the Book of Daniel. 

I have now said perhaps enough to vindicate the 
claim put forward a few pages back on behalf of the 
great composer, that the variety and dramatic force 
of the effects which he obtained by the use of chorus 
are as remarkable and unique as are their simplicity 
and grandeur. But let it not be inferred from the 
insistence with which I have spoken of his choruses, 
either that his airs and recitatives are other than of 
supreme excellence or that his choruses can be with 
advantage considered as independent and isolated 



HANDEL 169 

compositions, apart from the setting in which Handel 
originally placed them. The truth is that no musician 
who has ever lived, not Mozart nor Schubert, has 
been endowed by nature with a more copious, fluent, 
and delightful gift of melody than he. The aria,, 
indeed, suffers more quickly from the touch of Time 
than the less fragile structure of chorus or symphony. 
It wears less well, in part, no doubt, because it was 
in many cases originally written as much to display 
the agility of the singer as the genius of the com- 
poser. Yet, make what abatement we choose from 
the enduring merit of Handel's compositions for 
the solo voice, either on account of their old-fashioned 
and somewhat formal arrangement into a, first part, a 
second part, and a da capo ; or on account of the well- 
worn " divisions " and turns of phrase, characteristic, 
indeed, of the age, but most of all characteristic of a 
composer who, with all his originality, never sought 
for a new device when an old one would serve his 
purpose; enough will still remain to justify us in 
ranking him among the very greatest masters of song 
that the world has seen. In his airs and accompanied 
recitatives, in spite of a manner which here and there 
verges on mannerism, how he plays at will over the 



170 HANDEL 

whole gamut of human passion ! From triumph to 
despair, from love to frantic fury and desperation, 
for whatever purpose it may be required, his power 
of using melody with dramatic force is rarely found 
wanting. 

One quality of emotion, and, as I think, one only, 
is but faintly and imperfectly represented in his 
writings ; though, unfortunately, perhaps, for his 
fame, it is the one most valued in modern art. To 
describe this with accuracy, nay, to describe it at 
all, is scarcely possible. Even to indicate vaguely its 
nature is not easy; since music, not literature, has 
been its chief exponent, and for these fine shades of 
sentiment language scarcely provides a terminology 
of sufficient delicacy and precision. Pathos hardly 
renders it ; for though it can hardly be cheerful, it 
need be impregnated with no more than the faintest 
and most luxurious flavour of melancholy. There 
is in it something indirect, ambiguous, complex. 
Though in itself positive enough, it is, perhaps, most 
easily described by negatives. It is not grief, nor 
joy, nor despair, nor merriment. It is no simple 
emotion struck direct out of the heart by the shock 
of some great calamity or some unlooked-for good 



HANDEL 171 

fortune. If it suggests, as it often does, an un- 
satisfied longing, it is a longing vague and far off 
which reaches towards no defined or concrete object. 
It is the product and the delight of a highly-wrought 
civilisation, but of a civilisation restless and tormented, 
neither contented with its destiny nor at peace with 
itself. Its greatest exponent has been Beethoven, 
and, if I am to illustrate its character by an example, 
the example I should select would, perhaps, be the 
third movement of his ninth symphony. 

Now it must at once be conceded that Handel's 
genius is but faintly tinged with this special emotional 
colour. He was an unrivalled master of direct and 
simple sentiment ; of love, fear, triumph, mourning ; 
of patriotism untroubled by scruples, and of religion 
that knows no doubts. But he was in no sense 
modern. He no more anticipated a succeeding age in 
the character of the emotions to which he sought to 
give expression than in the technical methods which 
he employed to express them. To many this may 
seem matter of regret. With some it is undoubtedly 
the cause why Handel's work arouses in them but a 
cold and imperfect sympathy. Yet for my own part 
I cannot wish it otherwise. To each stage in the 



172 HANDEL 

long development of art there is an appropriate glory. 
I do not grudge it to those who are the first heralds 
of a new order of things, in whose work is visible the 
earliest flush of a fresh artistic dawn. But it is not 
for them that I feel disposed to reserve my enthusiasm. 
It is for those who have brought to the highest per- 
fection a style which, because perfected, must have 
been probably in the main inherited, who have 
pressed out of it every possibility of excellence that 
it contained, and who leave to their successors, if 
these must need attempt the same task, no alternative 
but to perform it worse. Of such was Handel. And 
rather than lament that, living in the first half of the 
eighteenth century, he did not anticipate the peculiar 
triumphs of the nineteenth, let us with more reason 
wonder at what he succeeded in accomplishing. 
Among the many excellent qualities of the early 
Georgian epoch spiritual fervour has never yet been 
reckoned. Yet in the age of Voltaire and of Hume, 
Handel produced the most profoundly religious music 
which the world has yet known. Among the many 
delightful qualities of its literature, sublimity has 
not hitherto been counted. Yet in the age of Pope 
and of Swift Handel conceived works whose austere 



HANDEL 173 

grandeur has never been surpassed. This is an 
astonishing fact. We should have expected, judging 
from analogy, that the music of that period would 
have shown excellent, if somewhat artificial, work- 
manship ; that it would never have aspired to 
dangerous heights, or been apt to fall below a certain 
and by no means contemptible level ; that it would 
have kept within rather narrow limits, but that 
inside those limits it would have been admirable. 
And, indeed, these things are true of much of 
Handel's work and of that of his contemporaries. 
But what we should never have anticipated is that 
at the very moment that Pope was producing the 
most finished of his satires, music should have been 
performed in London which, in the qualities of 
imagination and sublimity, we cannot parallel in the 
literary world without going back to "Paradise Lost." 
An attempt has been made to claim Handel as an 
Englishman, and no doubt he was so more truly 
than Gluck and Cherubini were Frenchmen. But 
though by choice, by tastes, by formal adoption, and 
by prolonged residence he was a British subject, yet, 
as Hanover was the country of his birth, and as 
Germany and Italy were his teachers, it would seem 



174 HANDEL 

as if the part which England played in the story of 
his career was reduced to the comparatively humble 
one of paying his pensions during life and raising 
monuments to him after death. Something more 
than this, however, remains to be said. The develop- 
ment of genius, as of everything else, depends as 
much upon what it is now the fashion to call 
" environment " as upon its innate capabilities. Had 
Handel's lot been cast, as it might so easily have 
been, at some German Court ; had he been organist 
at Hamburg, or capellmeister at Dresden, the greatest 
work of his life would in all probability never have 
been accomplished. Operas, concertos, harpsichord 
suites, church cantatas, and Passion music we should 
doubtless have had, as indeed we have them now. 
But "Israel," the "Messiah," "Samson," the im- 
mortal series of oratorios, secular and sacred, which 
gave him his peculiar and undivided glory would, so 
far as we can judge, never have been produced. To 
be sure, it might be maintained that England's claim 
to having encouraged the production of oratorio is 
the somewhat negative one of having declined to 
listen any more to opera. But this is only a part o 
the truth, and the least favourable part. While in 



HANDEL 175 

France oratorio has always proved a feeble and 
unhealthy exotic, England has been its natural home. 
Throughout the century and a half that have elapsed 
since "Esther" was first publicly performed in London, 
it has been largely with a view to the English market 
that the great German masters have written their 
choral compositions in this style. The libretto of 
the " Creation " was a translation from the English ; 
the published score was half subscribed for in Eng- 
land, and it was performed in England within two 
years of its completion. Beethoven's "Mount of 
Olives," though the libretto has never suited English 
taste, was performed here as soon as the Eroica 
symphony by the same composer, which was first 
produced in Germany the same year. Spohr's " Last 
Judgment" was produced at the Norwich Festival. 
Mendelssohn's "Elijah" was written for, and first 
performed at, Birmingham ; and it may be said gener- 
ally that while other German masterpieces have too 
often conquered the public taste in this country by 
slow degrees and after long delays, oratorio has fre- 
quently taken it by storm. This, then, is England's 
claim to a share in the glories of Handel's achieve- 
ments. And the claim is no slight one. If he learned 



176 HANDEL 

elsewhere all that the great organ school of Germany 
and the theatrical and instrumental schools of Italy 
could teach him, it was here, and here only, that he 
obtained or could have obtained a full opportunity 
of putting the combined lessons in practice; here, 
and here only, was there a public ready to accept for 
its entertainment something that was neither Church 
cantata nor secular opera, but which united into a far 
more admirable whole the diverse excellences of both. 
In the criticism which I have here attempted of 
Handel's work I have refrained intentionally from 
alluding, except in the most casual manner, to his 
great contemporary, Sebastian Bach. This somewhat 
difficult act of self-denial was not performed without 
a motive. Nature herself seems to suggest a parallel ; 
for never before nor since has she given to one genera- 
tion two musicians whose work is hewn on so grand 
a scale. Yet this particular process of comparison, 
inevitable as soon as Bach began to be really under- 
stood, has been almost wholly unprofitable. When 
it has been said that they were born in the same 
country, and in the same year ; that they shared the 
sterling virtues of the German midde class of that 
day; that they absorbed, and used with incompar- 



HANDEL 177 

able effect, all the musical learning of their age; 
that they both had quick tempers ; and that both 
lost their sight, their points of likeness are well- 
nigh exhausted. The contrasts between them, on the 
other hand, are almost too deep to be instructive. 
The things to be compared are too disparate to be 
comparable. Both, indeed, spoke the same musical 
language. With both counterpoint and fugue were 
the easiest and most familiar means of conveying 
their meaning. It could not be otherwise. A modern 
musician learns with weariness the contrapuntal rules, 
and laboriously contrives a fugue which shall satisfy 
their requirements. But he writes in a dead language. 
His composition is not so much an inspiration as an 
exercise. Not improbably it is a very meritorious 
exercise. But it carries on the face of it the stamp 
of imitation, and it bears the same relation to a fugue 
of Bach's that a copy of Latin hexameters bears to a 
book of the ^neid. What, however, is almost impos- 
sible now was almost inevitable before the middle of 
the last century. In those days musicians thought 
in counterpoint ; nor did they ever seem more spon- 
taneous, or more securely in possession of the appro- 
priate vehicle for communicating their thoughts, than 

N 



178 HANDEL 

when they employed a form which in the hands of 
their modern successors is apt to seem pedantic, rigid, 
and intractable. 

But though, from the mere fact of their being 
contemporaries, Handel and Bach thus inevitably 
employed the same idiom, the uses to which they 
put it were wide as the poles asunder. Their genius 
was utterly different. Their modes of thought were 
even opposed. And this it is which makes a com- 
parison of their respective merits useless, if indeed it 
does not, by turning critics into partisans, make it 
positively pernicious. The truth is, that we are here 
brought face to face not with a question of taste, but 
a question of tastes. It would be as reasonable to try 
and determine which was the more admirable poet, 
Shakespeare or Homer, Milton or Dante. Where 
both have reached supreme excellence in styles which 
are utterly different, but which all must admit to be 
great, who is to pronounce judgment? Each man 
will, doubtless, have his cherished predilection, but 
who will attempt to impose it on mankind 1 Those 
who are the most devoted to one will, perhaps, be 
the readiest to acknowledge that they could ill afford 
to spare the other. 



HANDEL 179 

It is singular to note how fate, which endowed 
both these great men so richly and yet so differently, 
after starting them apparently on the same track, 
contrived to make (except in the few particulars I 
have mentioned) their outward circumstances as 
diverse as their artistic leanings. Bach never 
travelled beyond his native country. Handel made 
a protracted musical progress through Italy, and 
finally settled in England. Bach married twice, 
and had twenty children. Handel died unmarried. 
Bach remained the most German of Germans. Handel 
became a naturalised Englishman. Bach's most 
important position was that of " cantor " in a not very 
considerable German town; Handel, mixing with 
courtiers and nobles, reigned without a musical rival 
in Great Britain and Ireland, his fame spreading far 
beyond their limits, and (as a composer) surpassing that 
of Bach himself even in Bach's own city. This differ- 
ence in their destinies prevailed even beyond the grave. 
Bach passed away almost unnoticed, and his memory 
seemed to perish with him. His wife died in want. 
His daughter lived to be the object of public charity. 
His works were scattered, and some of them have 
hopelessly disappeared. His grave was desecrated, 



180 HANDEL 

and he lies in a nameless and forgotten tomb. Far other 
to the honour of his adopted country be it said was 
the fate of Handel. He died full of fame and honour, 
mourned by the nation whose hospitality he had for 
so many years enjoyed. His body was laid to rest 
in the Abbey, among the poets whose works he had 
so often illustrated, and whose genius he had more 
than equalled ; and there, from that day to this, have 
been heard, at no distant intervals, strains which he 
bequeathed -to us for our delight. His works, religi- 
ously preserved, were given before the century closed 
to the world in the most magnificent edition which, 
I suppose, till then had been issued in any country 
of the compositions of any master. And almost at 
the very time when Mozart was painfully piecing 
together, at Leipsic, the half-forgotten and wholly 
neglected score of the poor remains of Bach's motetts, 
the first centenary of Handel's birth was being cele- 
brated at Westminster with a splendour till then 
unrivalled in musical history. 

Time has done much to redress the balance. Side 
by side the two great names will live as marking, in 
different ways, but with equal lustre, the culminating 
point of one phase of musical development. The 



HANDEL 181 

history of art, and assuredly the history of musical 
art, does not repeat itself. As one kind of tree 
succeeds another with inevitable sequence in the 
virgin forests of America, so has each generation its 
peculiar artistic growth, which after-ages may admire, 
but which they cannot reproduce without a conscious 
and but half-effectual effort of imitation. The years 
that have elapsed since "Israel," the "Messiah," and 
the " Mass in B " were first given to the world, have 
been fruitful in musical revolutions, which make it 
impossible that we should ever see anything like them 
again. Handel and Bach themselves, if they returned 
to earth, neither could nor would produce works in 
any way resembling, possibly not equalling, their 
former masterpieces. Yet, though (as musical 
chronology goes) these masterpieces are old, they are 
not yet antiquated. In some respects we are probably 
more capable of appreciating them than the audiences 
for whom they were in the first instance written; 
and Time, which has raised them up no rivals in their 
own kind, has not as yet materially dulled their 
charm. Will this be always so ? Will the year 1985 
see a Handel tricentenary as successful and as truly 
popular as the bicentenary of 1885, or the (so-called) 



182 HANDEL 

centenary of 1784 ? Or will his music by that time 
have sunk into the purely honorary dignity of an 
historic curiosity, to be discussed learnedly, to be 
treated reverently, to be heard in public not at all 1 

It is hard to say. Literary immortality is an 
unsubstantial fiction devised by literary artists for 
their own especial consolation. It means, at the 
best, an existence prolonged through an infinitesimal 
fraction of that infinitesimal fraction of the world's 
history during which man has played his part upon 
it. And, during this fraction of a fraction, what, 
or rather how many things, does it mean ? A work 
of genius begins by appealing to the hearts of men ; 
moving their fancy, warming their imagination, enter- 
ing into their inmost life. In this period immortality 
is still young ; and life really means living. But this 
condition of things has never yet endured. What at 
first was the delight of nations declines by slow but 
inevitable gradation into the luxury, or the business, 
or even the vanity of a few. What once spoke in 
accents understood by all is now painfully spelt out 
by a small band of scholars. What was once read 
for pleasure is now read for curiosity. It becomes 
"an interesting illustration of the taste of a bygone 



HANDEL 183 

age," a " remarkable proof of such and such a theory 
of aesthetics." " It still repays perusal by those who 
have sufficient historic sympathy to look at it from 
the proper point of view," and so on. The love of 
those who love it best is largely alloyed with an 
interest which is half antiquarian and half scientific, 
It is no longer Tithonus in his radiant youth, gazed 
at with the passion-lit eyes of Luna, but Tithonus in 
extremest age reported on as a most remarkable and 
curious case by a Committee of the Eoyal College of 
Physicians. 

It may be thought, perhaps, that on one or two 
names in literature is conferred, not merely the 
privilege of never dying, but the privilege of never 
growing old. I will not discuss a point so remote 
from my present theme. We cannot, unfortunately, 
obtain a return of the number of persons who are as 
familiar with Homer's Greek as a dweller on the sea- 
board of the ^Egean in the tenth century B.C., nor of 
the proportion of those possessing that accomplish- 
ment who use it with a like confiding simplicity, 
unmoved in their credulous enjoyment of the poetic 
narrative by the clamour of contending critics, or the 
accumulated scepticism of thirty centuries. Let it 



184 HANDEL 

be granted, then, for the sake of argument, that 
Homer is gifted with eternal youth, but let none 
expect a like destiny for even the greatest among 
musicians. Physical decay slowly despoils us of the 
masterpieces of painting. Artistic evolution will even 
more surely despoil us of the masterpieces of music. 
Let us, then, rejoice that we live in an age to whose 
ears the sublimest creations of the modern imagination, 
in the only art which owes nothing to antiquity, have 
not yet grown flat and unprofitable ; that we are not 
driven to rake painfully among the ashes of the past 
in order to detect some faint traces of that fire of 
inspiration which once dazzled the world ; that for 
us " Israel " and the " Messiah " are still " immortal," 
because they live in our affections, not because they 
lie in honourable sepulture upon the shelves of our 
museums. 



IV 
COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 1 

MR. MORLEY'S long-expected volumes are the last 
and most important addition to the literature, 
already of considerable extent, which is devoted, 
more or less directly, to elucidating the life and 
work of Cobden. The writings and speeches of 
this distinguished public man, supplemented by 
the biographical notices of friends and disciples, 
have for some time placed at the disposal of the 
public very sufficient material for estimating his 
character; and probably the estimate, whatever it 
may have been, will not be changed in any im- 
portant particular by the information contained in 
the new biography. Nevertheless this work is far 
from being a superfluous addition to recent history. 
1 Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1882. 



186 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

It does not supply us indeed with the same kind 
of literary enjoyment which Mr. Trevelyan has 
provided for us in his Life of Macaulay. Nor 
ought we to expect it. Cobden does not furnish 
any material for a biographer like that of which 
Mr. Trevelyan had made such admirable use, 
for though effective both as a writer and speaker, 
he is never by any chance brilliant. Nor, again, 
need any one seek in Cobden's correspondence for 
new lights upon the character and motives of his 
contemporaries. Except during the negotiations 
which preceded the French Treaty, he had few 
opportunities of confidential intercourse with other 
statesmen and party leaders : and he was not per- 
haps of a temperament to make much use even of 
the opportunities which he had ; so that' his observa- 
tions on individuals or parties do not, as a rule, 
illustrate any person's character but his own. 
Nevertheless, in spite of these inevitable defi- 
ciencies, a book which gives us Cobden's political 
opinions, not as they appear full dressed in his 
speeches and pamphlets, but as they are to be found 
freely expressed in his familiar correspondence, 
must be both important and interesting. And 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 187 

this Mr. Morley has certainly provided for us. 
The selections from a voluminous correspondence 
seem to be excellently made. And Mr. Morley has 
taken care that his own opinions, while sufficiently 
enunciated, shall not occupy an unduly large share 
of space : a reticence for which his readers may be 
the more grateful, since, during the composition of 
his work, he would seem, from his occasional 
utterances, to have been in a frame of mind much 
more suited to the pamphleteer than to the historian. 
Cobden's career, if interesting for no other 
reason, would be so for this, that it differs in 
outline is framed, so to speak, on a different plan 
from that of every other man who has risen to 
eminence in English political life. It was unusual 
in its commencement, in its course, and in its 
culmination. Most men desirous of a share in the 
direction of public affairs regard a Parliamentary 
seat as the first, and a certain measure of Parlia- 
mentary success as the second, requisite for giving 
practical effect to their political creed; while they 
look to office as the most effective instrument for 
turning the power which they may so obtain to the 
best account. 



188 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

If this be the normal course of an English 
statesman, Cobden's course was abnormal in every 
particular. His political importance depended 
upon causes among which position in the House of 
Commons was the smallest. The most triumphant 
moment of his public life the day on which the 
Bill repealing the Corn Laws received the Eoyal 
assent occurred before he had sat through a whole 
Parliament; and it is doubtful whether it would 
have occurred a day later, or if he would Jhave had 
a title to a smaller share in the result, had he never 
been a member of Parliament at all. Similar 
observations, though with considerable qualification, 
might be made respecting his career generally. 
Throughout his life he was always more concerned 
in advancing some special object or in enforcing 
some single idea than in taking a varied part in 
the complex business of government ; and therefore 
it was that he did not regard either Parliament 
or office as essential instruments for carrying out 
his purposes. Office might too easily become a 
restraint; Parliament could not be more than a 
superior "stump "from which the favourite opinion 
might be advocated. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 189 

Cobden therefore must be looked on rather as 
a political missionary than as a statesman, as an 
agitator rather than as an administrator. But he 
was, for the particular objects he had in view, and 
for the particular audiences he had to address, the 
most effective of missionaries and the greatest of 
agitators. Mr. Morley puts him in this respect 
second to O'Connell, but in truth it is impossible 
to draw a comparison between them. O'Connell 
Avould have been as powerless among the middle 
class of Lancashire and the West Eiding as Cobden 
would have been among the excitable peasantry of 
Ireland. All large audiences are moved more through 
their feelings than their reason. But an English 
multitude differs from an Irish one in preferring 
that appeals to its feelings should at least have the 
external appearance of argument; and in the art 
of making such appeals Cobden was a master who 
has never been surpassed. 

The most superficially striking fact about this 
career of political propagandism is the very different 
measure of success which it met with in its first 
and in its second part. It is not too much perhaps 
to say that the Cobden of 1850-60 owed the greater 



190 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

part of his authority in the national councils to the 
reputation acquired by the Cobden of 1841-46. 
Men listened with respect to the untiring advocate 
of peace and disarmament because he was the same 
man who had so effectually preached against "mono- 
polies." But they listened without conviction, and 
he preached without success. In 1845 Sir Louis 
Malet is able to describe him, not very accurately 
indeed, but without any glaring absurdity, as the 
" tribune of the people." Ten years had not elapsed 
before he sank from being the tribune of the people 
to being the unpopular adherent of a small and 
powerless sect, wholly unable to influence the 
course of events, and scarcely able to obtain a 
hearing except in the House of Commons, an 
assembly which Cobden ungratefully declared to 
be "packed" in the interests of that class whom 
he regarded it as his special mission to oppose. 

This striking change, which reached its dramatic 
climax in 1857, when the so-called Manchester 
School was for an instant deprived of political 
existence, deserves explanation. It cannot be 
said that the general arguments in favour of peace 
and disarmament were either more difficult to 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 191 

understand or appealed to feebler motives than the 
arguments in favour of cheap bread. Both the one 
and the other were primarily (I do not say ex- 
clusively) directed to plain and obvious feelings of 
self-interest a mode of persuasion of which Cobden 
always had the highest opinion. 1 Neither is it the 
fact that the advocates showed less zeal and less 
courage on the second occasion than on the first; 
for the zeal of the "Peace Party" was great, and 
their courage beyond all praise. Nor yet can it 
be alleged that their criticism on the prevailing 
policy was right between 1840 and 1850, and 
wholly wrong between 1850 and 1860, since few 
will, I suppose, be found prepared to defend in its 
entirety the foreign policy of the Liberal and 
Coalition Ministries during those years. 

Mr. Bright, in 1857, when his party collapsed, 
offered an explanation indeed, two explanations 
of the problem. The first 2 he saw in the "ignor- 
ance, scurrility, selfishness, ingratitude, and all the 
unpleasant qualities that every honest politician 
must meet with" when he "does his duty;" while 
the second is given in the following sentence, 
1 Vol. ii. p. 115. 2 Ibid. p. 194. 



192 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

which I extract from a letter to Cobden of that 
date: 1 "In the sudden break-up of 'the school' 
of which we have been the chief professors, we 
may learn how far we have been, and are, ahead 
of the public opinion of our time. We purpose not 
to make a trade of politics ; " and so on. 

Some less simple explanation, however, seems to 
be required than that " the school " was honest and 
enlightened, while other people were "ignorant, 
scurrilous, selfish, and ungrateful." Politicians, 
following this example, need never find any diffi- 
culty in placing their conduct in an interesting 
light, whatever view the public may happen to 
take of it. Are they the popular favourites? 
Then are they the representatives, the tribunes, 
of the people, and speak almost with the voice of 
inspiration. Does the people burn them in effigy 1 ? 
It is a sign and measure of the extent to which 
they are ahead of the public opinion of their time. 

The people's voice is odd, 
It is, and it is not, the voice of God. 

With all deference, then, to the high authorities on 
the other side, it appears to me that the principal 

1 Vol. ii. p. 194. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 193 

causes of the profound divergence between the 
general feeling and the opinions of Cobden and his 
colleagues during the last fourteen years of his life, 
are to be found in the peculiar conditions of the 
period in which they began their public life con- 
ditions which, themselves transient and exceptional, 
have yet profoundly and perhaps permanently 
affected the course of English politics. 

In ordinary times and under ordinary circum- 
stances there is no reason why the line of political 
"cleavage" should in any way coincide with the 
difference between the manufacturing and the agri- 
cultural interest. The fact that one man has his 
property invested in land and farm-buildings, and 
another in plant and machinery, does not in the 
nature of things supply a sufficient reason for their 
belonging to different political parties. The period, 
however, when Cobden first took interest in public 
affairs, was in this respect not ordinary. The very 
imperfect representation of the great manufacturing 
centres, which it was the chief and perhaps the only 
merit of the first Eeform Bill to have remedied, left 
a certain soreness even after it had disappeared. 
When to the memory of this former grievance was 
o 



194 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

added the consciousness of an existing wrong when 
it was shown that in the interests of the class who 
had too long retained an undue share of political 
power, laws were in force which favoured their 
material prosperity at the expense of those very 
persons who had just been admitted to a full share 
of Parliamentary influence it is evident that the 
conditions existed under which ordinary party war- 
fare might be complicated by a struggle between 
the manufacturers and agriculturalists, or, as Cobden 
chose to put it, between the middle classes and the 
aristocracy. These were facts which the philosophic 
Radicals (who to a certain extent prepared the way 
for their more robust brethren of the Manchester 
School) were perfectly ready to demonstrate. Their 
politics made them dislike the landlords, their 
political economy made them dislike the Corn Laws, 
and they were ready to supply any amount of 
abstract reasoning in favour of a policy which 
might impoverish the one by destroying the other. 
Abstract reasoning, however, though not to be 
despised as an ally, is by itself the feeblest of 
political forces. If Protection had embraced the 
whole circle of our industries, or if it had been used 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 195 

to keep up the price of anything but the necessaries 
of life, fragments of it might have survived to this 
day, in spite of all the demonstrations in the world. 
But it so happened that the great change in our 
fiscal system in the direction of Free Trade had 
already begun in the pre-Eeform period under Lord 
Liverpool, and had not begun with agriculture. It 
was inevitable, therefore, that the manufacturers 
should ask why Parliament in dealing with the articles 
they produced should legislate in favour of the 
consumer, while in dealing with the articles they 
consumed it should legislate in favour of the pro- 
ducer; and this question, though not more difficult 
to answer, became much more difficult to ignore 
when commerce was declining, poor-rates rising, and 
wheat cost seventy-seven shillings a quarter. 

The interest of all this, so far as Cobden is 
concerned, lies in the fact that instead of entering 
into political life merely as a member of one of the 
two great political parties, he entered it to fight a 
manufacturer's, or as he called it, a middle -class 
battle, against " aristocratic monopolists," with argu- 
ments drawn from an abstract science. These 
circumstances modified profoundly, and, as I think, 



196 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

perniciously, the whole course of his public life. 
They fostered the habit of regarding all political 
controversies as controversies between classes; so 
that (among other evil effects) to all the bitternesses 
which arise from political disagreement was added 
all the bitternesses which arise from real or imaginary 
social divisions. They induced him to rate too 
highly the importance of purely economic considera- 
tions in deciding questions of general policy, and 
to misinterpret or ignore some of the most powerful 
and by no means the most contemptible, motives by 
which the history of nations is influenced. They 
were, perhaps, the real causes of the un-English 
character attributed to his school of statesmanship 
by Mr. Disraeli, and which Mr. Bright, while he con- 
fessed to it, characteristically claimed as an indica- 
tion of its superior honesty and public spirit. 

Those who are desirous to observe how these 
causes conspired together to warp Cobden's political 
speculations, may note his theory of "the aristo- 
cracy," a theory almost as important in his political 
system as is the law of gravitation in astronomy. 
Mr. Morley appears entirely to share his hero's 
views on this subject, and his two volumes through- 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 197 

out presuppose a version of the drama of English 
history, according to which a selfish, unscrupulous, 
and feudal aristocracy figures sometimes as the villain, 
and sometimes as the fool of the piece, alternately 
coercing, robbing, and corrupting a weak but 
estimable middle class. "Selfish," "insolent," 
"corrupt," "depraved," "prejudiced," "stupid," "viru- 
lent," "unscrupulous," "hypocritical," "unprincipled," 
are some of the expressions Mr. Morley is impelled 
to employ, in order to do justice to his own and 
his friend's views of landlords and aristocrats, pro- 
tectionist or otherwise ; and though Cobden is more 
moderate in his language, he is scarcely more reason- 
able in his opinions. We are not, it must be re- 
membered, dealing now with the rhetorical devices 
the " violations of good taste and kind feeling " 
which Cobden said x he found necessary in order 
that audiences which declined to come merely to be 
instructed might be " excited, flattered, and pleased " ; 
nor yet with the outbursts of that irritable in- 
tolerance, which, as displayed by one member of 
the school, so strangely remind Mr. Morley 2 
of the "wrath of an ancient prophet." We are 
1 Vol. i. p. 194. 2 Ibid. p. 207. 



198 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

concerned with a theory which was gravely held by 
the leaders of the "Manchester School," which 
modified all their political judgments and supplied 
them with a key to all the mysteries of comtempor- 
ary politics. According to this the population of 
England might be divided, not only socially but for 
all political purposes, into three classes upper, 
middle, and lower. The interests of the middle and 
lower classes were identical, and were both opposed 
to the interests of the upper class. Nevertheless it 
was the upper class which governed the country. It 
refused to admit any members of the other classes 
to a share in the direction of affairs. It liked large 
armaments, because they supported the younger 
children of landlords. It liked war, because war 
justifies large armaments. It liked an active foreign 
policy, because that always conduces to war. Its 
very existence was a standing violation of the 
"principles of political economy." 

This singular theory was probably derived in 
part from the doctrinaire school of political econo- 
mists, who having divided the produce of agriculture 
into rent, profit, and wages, and having asserted, 
truly enough, that rent as defined by them was not 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 199 

earned either by labour or abstinence, were apt to 
regard its existence as an economic accident, un- 
fortunately taken advantage of by a small and not 
very useful portion of the community. It is evident, 
also, that Cobden's views on this subject were 
largely influenced by his own strong class feeling. 
He chose to regard the manufacturers as a distinct 
" order " in the State, and he chose to regard " the 
aristocracy " as another and rival "order." One of 
his early aspirations 1 was to see the commercial 
classes "become the De Medicis, Fuggers, and De 
Witts of England, instead of glorying in being the 
toadies of a clodpole aristocracy only less enlightened 
than themselves." And many years later he ex- 
pressed, in not less polished language, vehement 
indignation against the manufacturers of Manchester, 
who declined to be represented by so valiant a 
defender of their " order " as Mr. John Bright. 2 

The principal cause, however, of Cobden's "class 
theory" of English politics is, I believe, to be 
found in the Corn Law controversy and at first 
sight the circumstances of this struggle might 
seem to supply not only a sufficient motive, but 
1 Vol. i. p. 194. 2 Ibid. p. 197. 



200 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

an adequate justification of it. For while there 
could be no doubt that the leaders of the Protec- 
tionists were landlords, it was also true that their 
interests were involved in maintaining the pro- 
tective system, while the interests of the urban 
portion of the community lay on the whole in its 
abolition. Here, if anywhere, might seem to 
exist a state of things which would justify the 
epithets of which I gave above an imperfect, 
though sufficient catalogue. 

In truth, however, a sober examination of the 
facts of English politics, between the formation of 
the League and the abolition of the Corn Laws, is 
quite sufficient to show that the government of 
England was not then, any more than at previous 
periods of our history, aristocratic in any proper 
sense of that term, and that the class whom Cobden 
chose to describe as the aristocracy, were not open 
to the charges of unscrupulous selfishness which it 
pleased him and his school frequently to bring 
against them. 

It is absurd to ascribe corrupt motives to large 
bodies of men, merely because the economic theories 
they adopt are in accordance with their own in- 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 201 

terests. No one doubts the purity of Cobden's 
motives in promoting the Corn Law agitation. 
Yet Cobden not only believed that the profits of 
his ordinary business would be greatly augmented 
by the changes he advocated, but went out of his 
way to speculate in town land, on the ground 
that its value must rise as soon as the tax on 
bread was abolished. It may be said that the 
motives of the Protectionists were liable to suspicion 
because their theories were not only favourable to 
themselves, but were manifestly false. But at this 
moment the vast majority of the civilised world 
advocate false economic theories of precisely the 
same kind; and of that majority, the great 
majority imagine those theories to be to their 
own advantage. The civilised world may possibly 
be foolish : but not, surely, unscrupulous and 
hypocritical. Why are the English landlords of 
1845 to be described in harsher language than the 
English manufacturers of 1821, or the French, 
American, German, Russian, Canadian, and Aus- 
tralian manufacturers of 1881 ? Their error may be 
a proof of stupidity, but if it be, the stupidity is too 
general to excite either surprise or indignation. 



202 COBDEX AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

In truth, however, it was hardly open to 
Cobden to charge the Protectionists with stupidity. 
Though not, so far as appears, a very profound 
political economist himself, he was of opinion that 
political economy was more difficult of compre- 
hension than any of the "exact sciences." Which 
of the exact sciences he had mastered (unless 
phrenology be one) Mr. Morley does not, so far 
as I recollect, inform us. But at all events the 
majority of mankind cannot be expected to under- 
stand the exact sciences, and are not to be de- 
scribed as selfishly foolish when they fail to 
do so. 

But Cobden committed a much more serious 
error than that of merely misjudging the motives 
of his political opponents : he misjudged their 
political position. When he represented the Corn 
Laws as examples of the pernicious class legislation, 
which, together with wars and armaments, we 
owed to the fact that we have long been governed 
by a "feudal aristocracy," he used language 
admirably suited indeed to further his agitation, 
but not at all fitted to encourage, either in himself 
or his hearers, a true perception of the facts. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 203 

In the first place it is as certain as anything in 
hypothetical history can be, that Corn Laws would 
have existed in England, however property in land 
had happened to be distributed. If the soil had 
been owned in small lots, protection would have 
been demanded, and given, as surely as it was 
under the actual circumstances; but it would not 
have been so easily removed. Cobden, as we have 
seen, shared to the full the dislike of his school to 
large landed properties. In this he was ungrateful. 
It was the existence of large landed properties that 
ensured and accelerated the great triumph of his life. 
Does any one imagine that any important minority 
of a peasant proprietary would have been converted 
to the doctrine of Free Trade? Or that any 
minority at all would have supported a bill cal- 
culated to reduce them by thousands to beggary 
and ruin? Owing to the existence of a "feudal 
aristocracy" those most permanently, if not most 
deeply, interested in the continuance of a tax on 
bread were few; they were not united; and the 
question to them was not one of life and death. 
Had the soil been parcelled out among small owners, 
all these conditions would have been reversed. 



204 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

The country would have been arrayed against the 
towns, powerful, perhaps overwhelming in numbers, 
entirely of one mind, undisturbed by any knowledge 
of the "exact sciences," and determined by hard 
necessity to fight to the last. How, and at what 
cost, would such a struggle have ended ? 

In the second place, it cannot be doubted that the 
Protectionist landlords, so far from fighting, as 
Cobden would say, solely for their "order," repre- 
sented the middle classes of the counties as faithfully 
as did Cobden and the leaders of the League the 
middle classes of the towns. That the landlords 
have ever in English history constituted, in any 
accurate sense of the term, a political aristocracy, is 
indeed a pure illusion. An aristocracy is a class 
which governs independently of, and if need be in 
opposition to, public opinion. There has never been 
any such government in this country. It is not of 
course denied that in England the owners of the 
soil have been a powerful body ; nor should I dispute 
the fact that the same public opinion from which, 
in the main, they derived their power may possibly 
have in some cases permitted it to be used, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, for purposes more to their 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 205 

advantage than to that of the community at large. 
It can hardly be otherwise. The government which 
does not occasionally sacrifice a general advantage 
feebly coveted to the wishes of a class powerfully 
expressed, has yet to be discovered. But this 
disease is incident to all forms of government by 
public opinion. Whatever the nominal form of such 
government may be, whether it be called republican 
or monarchical, whether it has a less or a more re- 
stricted suffrage, there will always be classes in it 
whose members have greater power than any equal 
number of its other citizens taken at random. These 
classes may consist of landowners or millowners, 
journalists or wirepullers. Their power may be 
exercised on the whole for good, or on the whole for 
evil. It may arise from temporary or from enduring 
causes. It may be obtained by historical accident, by 
intrigue, by merit, by utility to a faction or by obse- 
quiousness to a mob. But however it be acquired, or 
however it be used, it is certain to exist. It must be 
observed, indeed, that this class power is of very 
different kinds. It may belong to a class in its cor- 
porate capacity, acting as a united body. Such is 
the power of the railway "interest" or of the "Irish 



206 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

vote." It may belong to a class because the in- 
dividuals composing that class, or many of them, are 
possessed of special sources of influence, as, for 
example, editors of newspapers or large employers 
of labour; or it may belong to a class, because 
its members, possessing leisure, local position, or 
some other quality which commends them as fitting 
candidates to the constituencies, are largely chosen as 
the exponents of public opinion, or of some important 
section of public opinion. Cobden too often forgot 
the extent to which the class whom he chose to 
describe as "the aristocracy" obtained their power 
in this third or derivative manner. He was by this 
initial mistake constantly led into errors of judgment 
regarding the nature of the political forces with 
which he had to deal. During the continuance of 
the Corn Law controversy, this was of small moment. 
It added greatly to the force and point of his 
rhetoric to represent the hated "monopoly" as 
imposed by the power, and retained in the interests, 
of a small, a selfish, and a wealthy minority; and 
the opinion, though absurd, led to no practical incon- 
veniences. But when this question was disposed of, 
his theory led him sometimes into strange mistakes. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 207 

In 1848 he feared a war with France 1 owing to the 
" natural repugnance on the part of our Government, 
composed as it is entirely of the aristocracy, to go on 
cordially with a republic." In the next year we 
find him writing to Mr. Bright, 2 "I wish to abate 
the power of the aristocracy in their strongholds. 
Our enemy is subtle and powerful," etc. By 1852, 
however, a propos of the Militia Bill, he began some- 
what more clearly to recognise that wickedness and 
folly were not confined entirely to high places. " All 
the aristocratic parties," he says, 3 " are in favour of 
more armaments. Our business is to try and make 
the people of a different opinion. I am more and 
more convinced that we have much to do with the 
public, before we can, with any sense or usefulness, 
quarrel with this or that aristocratic party." The 
next year, this not very recondite fact seems to be 
clearly apprehended. " Before you and I," he writes, 4 
" find fault with the Whig chiefs, let us ask ourselves 
candidly whether the country at large is in favour of 
any other policy than that which has been pursued 
by the aristocracy, Whig and Tory, for the last 

1 Vol. ii. p. 17. 2 Ibid. p. 57. 

3 Ibid. p. 114. 4 Ibid. p. 132. 



208 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

century and a half." Yet when the crash came in 
1857, the hardly learnt truth is forgotten. Cobden 
was unable to believe that the middle classes and " the 
aristocracy " could honestly agree to differ with him. 
Some other explanation had to be sought for the 
total collapse of the Manchester School, and that 
explanation he found in the degradation of the class 
in whom he had been accustomed to put his trust. 
Prompted by the same spirit of enlightened charity 
which suggested the statement 1 that the wickedness 
and folly of unnecessary wars could not be avoided, 
because without the expenditure on "wars and 
armaments" the "aristocracy could not endure," 2 

1 Vol. ii. p. 362 (respecting the China War of 1860). 

- In reference to this favourite accusation of the Manchester 
School, it may interest the reader to note (1) that Mr. Morley 
tells us (vol. ii. p. 444) that in 1864 "the supreme control of 
peace and war was finally taken out of the hands of the old terri- 
torial oligarchy;" (2) that he is of opinion (vol. ii. p. 378) 
that the "Liberal awakening" which "placed Mr. Gladstone in 
power, with Mr. Bright himself for the most popular and 
influential of his colleagues," put the country in a condition to deal 
properly with the expenditure on armaments, which could not be 
done in 1862 owing to "the ignorance and flunkeyism of the 
middle classes ; " (3) that the army and navy estimates are now 
(1882) bigger than ever. I may confess that I used to believe 
that the stupid calumny to which I allude in the text was an 
invention unscrupulously used for party purposes. I must 
sincerely apologise for this silent injustice, which had its origin 
in the fact that the theory in question seemed to be too foolish to 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 209 

he suggests a not less wicked but even more con- 
temptible reason for the adherence of the "middle 
classes" to the policy of the "upper." As the latter 
are, according to Cobden's theory, influenced by 
greed of money, so the former are influenced by 
subservience to rank The manufacturers of Man- 
chester who presumed to turn out Mr. Bright are 1 
"base snobs," who "kick away the ladder" by which 
they have risen to prosperity, and their action is 
characterised 2 as "a display of snobbishness and 
ingratitude." A friend makes a failure in seconding 
the Address. Upoji which Cobden writes : 3 " I have 
never known a manufacturing representative put 
into a cocked hat and breeches and ruffles, with a 
sword by his side, to make a speech for Government, 
without having his head turned by the feathers and 
frippery. Generally they give way to a paroxysm 
of snobbery, and go down on their bellies, and throw 
dust on their heads, and fling dirt at the prominent 
men of their own order." 

It is some comfort to think that in this dark 

be credited by men of sense and education. I gladly yield to the 

conclusive evidence to the contrary which is furnished by the 
private correspondence of Mr. Cobden. 

1 P. 197. 2 P. 198. 3 P. 198. 



210 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

picture of the meanness of " the only class (as 
Cobden said 1 ) from whose action in his time any 
beneficial changes were to be expected," some brighter 
spots are to be found. Prone as the middle classes 
are to be 2 " timid and servile " to the " feudal 
governing class," yet in one favoured spot more 
masculine qualities are still to be found among them. 
In August 1857, shortly after his rejection for 
Manchester, Mr. Bright was elected for Birmingham. 
The people of Birmingham, it is reassuring to learn, 3 
are "honest and independent," and "free from aristo- 
cratic snobbery." 

We could have, I think, no more striking example 
than this of the extent to which Cobden's judgment 
of men was perverted by his inveterate habit of 
looking at every question from the point of view 
of class divisions. Making all allowance for the 
irritation caused by a crushing defeat not very 
philosophically endured, is there not something very 
foolish, and I had almost said a little vulgar, in thus 
attributing the catastrophe to the overmastering 
influence of the meanest and vulgarest of motives? 
Grant that Lord Palmerston was entirely in the 
1 P. 390. 2 P. 396. P. 199. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 211 

wrong about the China War; grant that the com- 
bination of parties which forced him to dissolve was 
entirely in the right; is the theory credible, is it 
even plausible, which represents the political forces 
which sent him back to office after the general 
election, as being the infamous cupidity of one section 
of the community and the contemptible meanness 
of another? Is it impossible that for some, even 
for most political purposes, social divisions should be 
neglected 1 Is it impossible that the general opinion of 
all classes should be swayed by one set of motives ? Is 
it impossible that those motives should be respectable ? 

In all this the influence of the fact that Cobden's 
early political battles really were class contests is 
sufficiently apparent. The other circumstance I 
pointed out, namely, that those battles were fought 
for commercial objects and on economic grounds, had 
even more effect on the character and influence of the 
opinions which he spent the latter portion of his life 
in advocating. 

Some lady, in 1852, remarked that Cobden's policy 
never rose beyond a "bagman's millennium." This 
observation, uttered in private, and in the freedom 
of conversation, was not untrue for an epigram, and 



212 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTEK SCHOOL 

was both more just and more charitable than some 
of the judgments (by no means epigrammatic) which 
in these volumes Mr. Morley has written down, 
printed, corrected for the press, and published. His 
comments on the observation are in these terms : : 

This was the clever way among the selfish and insolent 
of saying, that the ideal which Cobden cherished was 
comfort for the mass, not luxury for the few. He knew 
much better than they (i.e. the class " whose lives are one 
long course of indolence, dilettantism, and sensuality ") 2 
that material comfort is, as little as luxury, the highest 
satisfaction of man's highest capacities, but he could well 
afford to scorn the demand for fine ideals of life on the 
lips of a class who were starving the workers of the 
country in order to save their own rents. 

Mr. Morley is angry but confused. The second 
sentence of his criticism shows that he understands 
the nature of the complaint urged by the " insolent 
and selfish" against Cobden's views of national 
policy ; so that the first sentence must be regarded 
as a deliberate perversion of it. As for the last 
clause, it is as impossible to see why Cobden should 
scorn a demand which he knew to be just because he 
objected to the lips which uttered it, as to discover 
1 Vol. i. p. 207. 2 Ibid. p. 206. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 213 

how, in 1852, six years after the abolition of the 
Corn Laws, it was possible " to save rents by starving 
the workers of the country." 

What, then, was the policy of which it is so dan- 
gerous to hint disapprobation 1 ? Cobden's admirers 
sometimes talk as if he was the discoverer of the fact 
that war is expensive, that when it is unnecessary it 
is not only expensive but wicked, and that the nation 
which does that which is expensive and wicked is 
certain to suffer both in purse and morals. His 
opponents, on the other hand, sometimes represent 
him as advocating peace under all circumstances and 
under every provocation ; or, as it is called, "peace at 
any price." As a matter of fact he did something 
more important than preach the commonplaces for 
which the first applaud him, and something less 
absurd than support the paradox which the second 
lay to his charge. It is true that these last seem 
almost justified by the impartial and universal dis- 
approval with which Cobden regarded everything 
which could by any possibility promote what he 
called " the military spirit." He not only thought 
that every modern war in which this country has 
ever been engaged was wholly indefensible, but he 



214 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

regarded with the darkest suspicion every instru- 
ment by which war, whether offensive or defensive, 
could by any possibility be carried on. He wished to 
cut down the army and the navy ; he objected to 
the militia; he attacked the volunteers; and he 
vehemently disapproved of every fortification scheme 
that was proposed. 

But behind all this criticism of war and warlike 
expenditure there lay a theory of the British Empire 
which, if accepted, would go far to account for 
Cobden's views respecting armaments, but which the 
English people did not accept in Cobden's lifetime, 
and do not accept now. It was this fundamental 
divergence which rendered it inevitable that his 
reiterated attacks on the military policy of successive 
governments should fail of their effect, and made the 
best-founded objections liable to a natural suspicion 
that they rested on presuppositions with which his 
hearers could not agree. Cobden's view of the 
external relations of our Empire was purely com- 
mercial and economic ; in the language of the " selfish 
and insolent," the view of a bagman. " He delighted," 
says Mr. Morley, 1 "in such businesslike statements 
1 Vol. i. p. 98. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 215 

as that the cost of the Mediterranean Squadron, in 
proportion to the amount of trade which it was 
professedly employed to protect, was as though a 
merchant should find that his traveller's expenses for 
escort alone were to amount to 6s. 8d. in the 
pound on the amount of his sales." In something 
of the same spirit he estimated the value of our 
foreign possessions. In order to be worth keeping 
they must pay, and pay in a manner as easily 
demonstrable as the profits of a bank or the yield 
of a mine. Not only must they pay, but it must 
be shown that they would not pay as well if they 
belonged to somebody else; and on this point 
Cobden was not easy to convince. The author of 
the Commercial Treaty with France was of opinion 
that the manufacturers of Manchester exhibited a 
melancholy ignorance 1 of the principles of Free 
Trade when they viewed with alarm the possibility 
of India passing to another, and, as he must have 
known, a protectionist power. "Now that the 
trade of Hindostan," he says, 2 "is thrown open to 
all the world on equal terms, what exclusive advan- 
tage can we derive to compensate for all the trouble, 
1 Vol. ii. p. 214. 2 Ibid. p. 206. 



216 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

cost, and risk of ruling over such a people ? " And 
again : l " Under the regime of Free Trade Canada is 
not a whit more ours than the United States." In- 
spired by these opinions, he would have seen India go 
with pleasure, the colonies without regret. They 
cost money to defend; and we got nothing for the 
privilege of defending them but commercial advan- 
tages which we should equally possess if they had to 
defend themselves. 

Now I do not mean to discuss the effect which 
the loss of our Indian and colonial possessions would 
have on our trade, though I think Cobden underrated 
and greatly underrated it ; nor yet the evil con- 
sequences of severance to the dependencies them- 
selves, which Cobden denied or left out of account. 
The interesting point is to note how apt he was to 
ignore for himself, and to misinterpret in others, 
every view of the Empire which was not exclusively 
commercial. To him our vast and scattered 
dominions appeared to be an ill -constructed fabric, 
built at the cost of much innocent blood and much 
ill-spent treasure, and which, having been originally 
contrived in obedience to a mistaken theory of trade, 
1 Vol. ii. p. 42. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 217 

was not worth the trouble of keeping in repair now 
that that theory had been finally exploded. The 
same deficient sympathy and insight which prevented 
him seeing any cause for the Napoleonic wars but 
the selfish ambition of the "ruling class," or any 
result of them but continental complications and 
a crushing debt, made him regard the motives which 
induce ordinary Englishmen obstinately to cling to 
the responsibilities of Empire as consisting of an 
uninstructed love of gain or a vulgar greed of 
territory. He may have been right in thinking that 
the weight of imperial responsibilities will become a 
burden too heavy to be borne. It may be true that 
the sceptre of dominion is doomed at no distant date 
to slide from our failing grasp. We may be destined, 
from choice or from necessity, to shut ourselves up 
within the four seas; and it is not absolutely im- 
possible, though in the highest degree improbable, 
that even under these conditions our Board of Trade 
Returns may be such as to delight the heart of a 
Chancellor of the Exchequer. But no man is fit to 
estimate the consequences of these changes who 
attempts to estimate them solely and exclusively by 
figures. The sentiments with which an Englishman 



218 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

regards the English Empire are neither a small nor an 
ignoble part of the feelings which belong to him as a 
member of the commonwealth. If therefore that 
Empire is destined to dissolve, and with it all the 
associations by which it is surrounded; if we in 
these islands are henceforth to turn our gaze solely 
inwards upon ourselves and our local affairs ; if we 
are to have no relations with foreigners, or with 
men of our own race living on other continents, 
except those which may be adequately expressed by 
double entry and exhibited in a ledger ; we may be 
richer or poorer for the change, but it is folly to 
suppose that we shall be richer or poorer only. An 
element will be withdrawn from our national life 
which, if not wholly free from base alloy, we can 
yet ill afford to spare ; and which none, at all events, 
can be competent to criticise unless, unlike Mr. Cobden, 
they first show themselves capable of understanding it. 
If Cobden's views on questions of foreign and 
colonial policy were somewhat narrowed by his too 
strictly economic view of our external relations, it 
was only natural that his views on all questions 
connected with land should be somewhat warped by 
his aversion to the class who owned so much of it. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 219 

One of the most amusing instances of this is a 
proposal he makes l for settling the Irish land diffi- 
culty by applying to it the law of succession as it 
exists in France. Many strange remedies have been 
proposed for the agrarian ills of that unhappy country : 
some strange ones have been adopted ; but surely no 
one before or since has professed to see the salvation 
of Ireland in the slow but indefinite multiplication of 
squireens. It was not, however, to large landlords in 
Ireland only that he objected. He professed to 
think 2 that a "feudal governing class" (as by a bold 
misuse of terms he was accustomed to describe them) 
"exists only in violation of sound principles of 
political economy." But he left no very clear account 
of what he meant by the statement. If, as might be 
conjectured, he was alluding to the restrictions (for 
the most part imaginary) on the sale and transfer of 
land, which are due to settlement and entail, it is 
sufficient to remark that no class owes its existence or 
its power to the continuance of these restrictions : if 
he meant anything else, it is difficult to see what 
political economy has to do with the matter. The 
inquiry, however, is not very important. Cobden 
1 Vol. ii. p. 28. 2 Ibid. p. 369. 



220 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

was not the first, nor will he be the last statesman 
who imagines that in yielding to his political or social 
dislikes he does honour to political economy ; and the 
particular form which the process of self-deception 
took in his case is not now of much interest even 
from a purely biographical point of view. 

Much, then, as there is to admire in his hero, a 
perusal of the new material Mr. Morley has provided 
us with does not, I think, dissipate the impression 
that the eulogies of some of his disciples are excessive 
and overstrained. Cobden was an honest, an able, 
and a useful public man, but not, I think, as his 
admirers claim for him, either a great politician or a 
great political philosopher. He was prevented from 
being the first by the mental peculiarity which made 
him a serviceable ally only when (as he says himself 1 ) 
he was advancing some "defined and simple principle" ; 
a limitation which, whatever its compensating advan- 
tages may be, is an effectual bar to the highest suc- 
cess in a career which requires in those who pursue it 
a power of dealing not only with principles, but like- 
wise with an infinity of practical problems which are 
neither "defined" nor "simple." He was, on the 
1 Vol. i. p. 369. 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 221 

other hand, prevented from being a great political 
philosopher, if by no other causes, still by the circum- 
stances of his early life. His education, pursued 
with admirable energy while he was immersed in the 
business of clerk and commercial traveller, was not, 
and perhaps could not be, of the kind best suited to 
counteract the somewhat narrowing influences which, 
as I have pointed out, surrounded his early political 
career. His radicalism from the first was the radi- 
calism of a class, and such in all essentials it remained 
to the end. His lack of the historic sense was not 
compensated by any great scientific or speculative 
power. Much as he saw to disapprove of in the 
existing condition of England, he never framed a 
large and consistent theory of the methods by which 
it was to be improved. Outside the narrow bounds 
of the economics of trade he had political projects, 
but no coherent political system ; so that if he was 
too theoretical to make a good minister of state, he 
was too fragmentary and inconsistent to make a 
really important theorist. For example, there was 
no expectation which he more confidently cherished 
than the amiable one that Free Trade would lead, 
and lead soon, to general peace. Yet there was no 



222 COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 

practical reform which, towards the end of his life, he 
more desired to see carried into effect than an altera- 
tion in international law which should free private 
property from liability to capture at sea. This was 
(need I say?) resisted, in his opinion, only by a 
" selfish aristocracy." Yet had it been adopted, Free 
Trade would, for this country at least, have lost its 
most pacific virtues. These obviously consist in the 
fact that Free Trade enormously increases the in- 
direct cost of hostilities : and it is plain that if the 
proposed alteration in the laws of maritime warfare 
is to be recommended at all, it is to be recommended 
on the ground that, in the case of a maritime power, 
it destroys the indirect cost altogether. Again, he 
was shocked to see the English peasant "divorced" as 
the phrase is, "from the soil," or, in plain English, 
tilling the land for weekly wages. But he bore with 
the greatest composure the not less painful fact that 
the pitman is divorced from the mine, and the opera- 
tive from the mill. He had plenty of schemes for 
getting rid of large landowners, but none, so far as I 
know, for abolishing large manufacturers. He seems 
to have been sensitive morbidly sensitive to the 
more or less imaginary social distinctions which, as 



COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTEE SCHOOL 223 

he thought, separated the landowner from the capi- 
talist ; yet never to have perceived the very real and 
substantial differences by which the capitalist is 
divided from the operative. We can hardly regret 
these theoretical imperfections in a system which prob- 
ably would not have been better for being more logical. 
In any case, the only accusation that could be brought 
against him is that he did not rise superior to the 
ordinary radicalism of the day. Let those who are 
inclined to take a severer view of the narrowness, 
prejudice, and inconsistency which in some degree 
marred his career as a whole, not only call to mind 
the great qualities by which these shortcomings were 
accompanied, but also recollect how happily his 
defects conspired with his merits to render him a 
fitting instrument for carrying out the inevitable 
change in our fiscal policy which was the most 
important work of his public life, and with which his 
name will for ever be connected. 



V 
POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 1 

POLITICAL economy is somewhat at a discount. 
Those who preach its doctrines scarcely speak with 
their old assurance, neither do they who listen, listen 
with the old respect. Ancient heresies, long thought 
to have been dead and buried, are beginning to revive. 
New heresies are daily springing into life. Every 
sign seems to portend that at a time when, of all 
others, problems are pressing for solution, in dealing 
with which we must be largely guided by economic 
science, the guide itself is in public estimation becom- 
ing seriously discredited. Some of you may have 
read the not very agreeable memoirs which that not 
very agreeable woman, Miss Martineau, has left of 

1 A Non-Party Lecture delivered before the Manchester Athe- 
naeum. National Review, May 1885. 

Q 



226 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

herself. If so, you will probably recollect the fame 
and profit which her series of political economy tales 
brought her some fifty years ago. You will recollect 
how she became a literary lion of the first magnitude, 
how edition after edition of the tales were sold offj 
how high officials furnished her with information and 
Cabinet Ministers besought her aid. Great is the 
difference between 1885 and 1833. Let no aspirant 
for such noisy honours seek them any more by this 
road. Much work may, indeed, be done in the field 
of political economy; work in the accumulation of 
facts ; work in their reduction to law ; work in 
popularising the results attained. But the most 
successful labourers in these departments need no 
longer expect to dictate terms to their publishers or 
be asked to dine by the President of the Board of 
Trade. He may consider himself fortunate if the 
world will consent to accept the results of his labour 
for nothing, and if he does not hear his science rele- 
gated to Saturn by a responsible Minister of the 
Crown. 

What are the causes which have produced this 
change in the public mind, how far is it justified, and 
what attitude ought we ourselves to take up towards 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 227 

it? Such is the problem which I should wish to 
consider with you to-day, and no more important 
problem, believe me, confronts the statesman who 
desires to face the larger issues of contemporary 
politics. 

I pass lightly over the superficial causes which 
have aided in producing this economic eclipse. Such, 
for example, is the unpopularity which in society the 
third-rate exponent of economic orthodoxy has always 
aroused, and which you may see exemplified in more 
than one character in the fiction which was contem- 
porary with the most flourishing days of that science. 
The professed political economist, who had a cut-and- 
dried formula for every occasion, who solved all social 
questions by a frigid calculation, who habitually 
talked as if everything good in the world was pro- 
duced by the accumulation of wealth and everything 
bad by the multiplication of children, appeared to 
our fathers, as, did he still flourish with all his pris- 
tine vigour, he would doubtless appear to us, to be 
something of a prig and a great deal of a bore. No 
dexterity of treatment, no literary skill, will make 
political economy amusing; nor will the average of 
mankind ever take delight in studies which require 



228 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

abstract thought or concentrated attention. When, 
therefore, a set of persons appeared, neither very 
original nor very learned, who would not permit a 
new tax or an amendment of the poor laws to be 
discussed in the lobby of the House of Commons or 
round a dinner-table without reproducing, with all 
the arrogance of conscious orthodoxy, some abstract 
train of reasoning borrowed from greater men than 
themselves, they and their science were naturally 
looked upon as socially intolerable. 

This by itself was a comparatively small misfortune. 
A far greater one one of which we have not yet felt 
the full effects is the hostility which the claims of 
political economy have aroused in the breasts of the 
working-classes on the Continent. To many of them 
it appears, not as a political science, but as a political 
device; not as a reasoned body of truth, but as a 
plausible tissue of sophistries, invented in the interests 
of capital to justify the robbery of labour. It is true 
that no such prejudice, though it exists sporadically, 
is prevalent in this island ; but we may, I think, 
detect a faint echo of it in the suspicion with which 
it is regarded by some, and the indifference with 
which it is regarded by others among those who 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 229 

profess more especially to be the guardians of the 
interests of the working -classes. And it is this 
suspicion and indifference, too largely shared by lead- 
ing politicians on both sides, of which I desire to 
investigate the causes. 

Of course, it may be maintained that the principal 
and all-sufficient cause of which we are in search is 
to be found in the shortcomings of political economy 
itself. It may be alleged that its premises are 
arbitrary, its conclusions unproved, its teachings of 
too remote and abstract a character to be any suf- 
ficient guide in the conduct of public affairs. This 
contention I do not mean here to dispute. To dis- 
pute it effectively would require a survey of the 
whole field of political economy a restatement and 
justification of all its principal doctrines. Such a 
task I need not say that I have no intention of under- 
taking. I shall here assume, for the sake of argu- 
ment, that political economy is to be accepted as true 
in the same sense that other sciences are accepted as 
true that is, not blindly and irrevocably, but subject 
to revision and development; and that it is to be 
regarded as a guide in the same way that other 
sciences are regarded as guides, that is, with a due 



230 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

recognition of the fact that the complexity of nature 
never quite corresponds with the artificial simplicity 
of our premises, and that in proportion as the corre- 
spondence is imperfect, the result of our reasoning 
must in practice be applied with caution. The first 
cause, then, which I take note of, for the undue 
depreciation under which political economy is at this 
moment suffering, is the undue appreciation in which 
it was held in the last generation. That generation 
the one preceding 1860 was emphatically the genera- 
tion of economic reform. It saw the new Poor Law 
established, the whole system of national taxation 
remodelled, and the Corn Laws abolished. Coin- 
cidently with this it saw an immense increase in the 
wealth and prosperity of the country, partly due to 
these changes, still more due to the development of 
railways' and the opening up of new countries rich in 
agricultural and mineral resources. What wonder 
that the science, under whose auspices so much of 
this had been done, was estimated at its full, nay, at 
more than its full value ; that the habitual distrust of 
theory was for a moment lulled to rest in the Anglo- 
Saxon mind, and that others besides Mr. Cobden 
prophesied the rapid and triumphant spread of Free 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 231 

Trade doctrines throughout the civilised world. The 
most stolidly practical were reconciled to abstract 
principles which, as they supposed, gave them an 
elastic revenue and an unshackled trade : the least 
educated could understand the meaning and merits 
of cheap bread. 

But no science can become popular with impunity. 
The mere fact that it is quoted on hustings, that its 
doctrines, more or less misunderstood, are used as 
political weapons ; and that its conclusions, more or 
less garbled, are valued not so much because they are 
true as because they suit the momentary necessities 
of party warfare, refracts in countless ways the dry 
light in which it should be viewed. The side against 
whom it makes will decry it; their opponents will 
laud it to the skies ; and the praise which is shouted 
from one set of platforms will probably be not less 
unintelligent than the blame shouted back from 
another. 

Not less unintelligent, and even more injurious to 
the cause of truth. For as soon as any body of 
doctrine becomes the watchword of a party or a sect, 
it is certain to be used with the most confident assur- 
ance by multitudes who have the most imperfect 



232 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

apprehension of the true grounds of the opinions they 
are expressing. In default of reasons they quote 
authorities. A dictum of Smith, Kicardo, or Mill is 
supposed to supply a rule of faith against which there 
is no appeal. A standard of orthodoxy is set up, to 
deviate from which is heresy, and political economy 
ceases to be a living science, and petrifies into an 
unchanging creed. From these causes has proceeded 
the reaction against economic teaching, which has been 
slowly gaining ground since 1860. Some have been 
repelled by the ignorant dogmatism and the narrow 
formalism which so often usurped the name of science. 
Others have been shaken in their faith by the rejec- 
tion both of the theory and the practice of Free 
Trade by foreign countries ; a still larger number 
have felt themselves injured by the operation of Free 
Trade in our own. While its friends have thus been 
cooled in their allegiance, its enemies have multiplied 
in number and increased in courage ; and all those 
who saw in the accepted truths of political economy 
an obstacle to some project of their own, have been 
encouraged to attack it openly or by implication. 

It is the first of these evils which it most behoves 
those of us who hold that the study of economic 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 233 

facts is a necessary preliminary to any judicious 
treatment of some of the most important problems of 
the day to remedy as far as in us lies. The true, if 
obvious, antidote to the disgust excited by the 
extravagant claims put forward on behalf of political 
economy, is to reduce those claims within strictly 
reasonable limits. Now what are those limits 1 Two 
there are, constantly violated, and sometimes by the 
greatest economic authorities, to which I would 
specially draw your attention. The first depends on 
the fact that political economy is a science, and as 
such deals in strictness only with laws of nature, and 
not with the rules of conduct or policy which may be 
founded on those laws. The second depends on a 
fact (too often forgotten) that the science of political 
economy, dealing as it does with only a few of the 
complex facts of life, cannot on most questions supply 
the politician with adequate grounds for framing his 
policy. Take an example. We constantly hear it 
said that the doctrine of laissez-faire the doctrine 
which forbids State interference, and which asserts 
that all social questions should be solved by the un- 
restricted play of free competition, is a truth of 
political economy. Now I hold, first, that this is not 



234 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

a truth of political economy ; and, secondly, that 
political economy by itself cannot furnish grounds f or 
deciding whether it is a truth at all. It is not a 
truth of political economy, for it is not a scientific 
truth, but a maxim, sound or unsound, belonging to 
the art of politics. No doubt the grounds for accept- 
ing or rejecting it must be, and are, largely drawn 
from a consideration of economic laws, but in itself 
it is not an economic law, but a practical precept. 
It has no more claim to be regarded as a part of 
political economy than the recommendation not to 
throw yourself out of a second-floor window is a part 
of the science of mutually gravitating bodies. Do 
not think that the distinction here drawn is a mere 
subtlety. I am convinced that the neglect of it by 
many of the masters of the science, and by almost all 
their disciples, has done much to prejudice men's 
minds against economic reasoning. A political econo- 
mist, as such, has no business to be a politician. 
However strong his convictions may be, however 
much his own inclinations may tempt him to the 
advocacy of any particular mode of social organisation, 
he should rigidly abstain, in his investigation of the 
laws of wealth, from loading his pages with any 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 235 

practical propaganda. Science is of no party. It 
seeks no object, selfish or unselfish, good or bad. It 
is unmoved by any emotion : it feels no pity, nor is 
it stirred by any wrong. Its sole aim is the investiga- 
tion of truth and the discovery of law, wholly indif- 
ferent to the use to which those investigations and 
those discoveries may afterwards be put. 

But this is not the only reason, nor even the chief 
reason, why I object to the fusion, or rather the con- 
fusion, of the art of politics with the science of 
political economy. Another and a more cogent one 
is to be found in the fact that, as I have said, many 
of the most important considerations which should 
determine a political decision lie altogether outside 
the field with which an economist is at liberty to deal. 
The economist investigates only the laws regulating 
the production, exchange, and distribution of wealth ; 
and in order to get this problem within a manageable 
compass, in order to avoid being confronted with 
calculations of hopeless complexity, he usually assumes 
that the human beings who produce, exchange, and 
consume, are actuated by no other motive than that 
of securing, under a regime of free competition, as 
large a share as possible of this wealth for themselves. 



236 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

The politician, on the other hand, who has to decide 
what course should be pursued, not in the abstract 
world of science but in the concrete world of fact, 
cannot so limit his views. He has to provide, in so 
far as in him lies, for the spiritual and material well- 
being of the real human being, not of the imaginary 
wealth producer and wealth consumer which science 
is obliged to assume ; and knowing this, knowing that 
man does not live by bread alone, but is a creature of 
infinite variety living in a most complicated world, he 
can seldom decide any practical problem on purely 
economic grounds. 

So far I have been occupied in conveying a not 
unneeded warning to those who, like myself, accept 
(speaking generally) the teaching of political economy : 
let me, in conclusion, make an even more earnest 
appeal to those who repudiate its lessons. They are 
to be found, not merely among those who are repelled 
by the difficulties and technicalities of the study; 
not merely among those who confident in what 
they call their practical knowledge that is, their 
knowledge of the details necessary for the conduct of 
their own particular business are contemptuous of all 
speculation; not merely among those who dislike 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 237 

the theory because, on purely selfish grounds, they 
first dislike the conclusions which rightly or wrongly 
are based upon it ; but among those who are most 
zealous and most disinterested in their efforts for the 
general welfare. Burning with a desire to remedy 
the ills they see on every side, these philanthropists 
are impatient of a science which is apt to beget a wise 
if chilling scepticism as to the efficacy of short cuts 
to universal happiness. Eager to employ in the 
redress of wrongs the most powerful machinery at 
their disposal, viz. that of State interference, they 
resent the criticism to which political economy has 
subjected the grounds on which plan after plan of 
State interference has been recommended to the 
public. Glowing themselves with a generous en- 
thusiasm, they are repelled, partly by the hypothesis 
of universal selfishness on which political economy 
for reasons to which I have already adverted appears 
to proceed, partly by the cold and unfeeling manner 
in which science dissects and analyses facts, warm and 
palpitating with the hopes, fears, and sufferings of a 
whole civilisation. That these prejudices, though 
partly justified by errors of treatment on the part of 
political economists, rest in the main upon a mere 



238 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

confusion of thought whose nature I have already 
indicated, I need not stop to prove. It is only 
necessary to say a word on the evils they are likely 
to produce. I am not here to advocate any particular 
system of economic doctrine. There is no question 
concerning either the method or the results of 
political economy which I for one am not prepared 
to consider open, provided the critic can show that 
he really understands the doctrine he is attacking, 
and is not, as commonly happens, merely laying hold 
of some incautious expression of Bicardo, or Mill, or 
whoever it may be, and laboriously refuting what 
never was, or has long ceased to be, a received 
opinion. I plead not for any special scientific doctrine, 
but for the application to social phenomena of 
scientific methods. Nor has there ever been a time 
when, in my judgment, this was more required than 
it is now. Society is becoming more and more 
sensitive to the evils which exist in its midst ; more 
and more impatient of their continued existence. In 
itself this is wholly good ; but, in order that good 
may come of it, it behoves us to walk warily. It is, 
no doubt, better for us to apply appropriate remedies 
to our diseases than to put our whole trust in the 



POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 239 

healing powers of nature. But it is better to put our 
trust in the healing powers of nature than to poison 
ourselves straight off by swallowing the contents of 
the first phial presented to us by any self-constituted 
physician. And such self-constituted physicians are 
about and in large numbers gentlemen who think 
that they pay Providence a compliment by assuming 
that for every social ill there is a speedy and effectual 
specific lying to hand ; who regard it as impious to 
believe that there may be chronic diseases of the body 
politic as well as of any other body, or that Heaven 
will not hasten to bless the first heroic remedy which 
it pleases them in their ignorance to apply. It is 
true that without enthusiasm nothing will be done. 
But it is also true that without knowledge nothing 
will be done well. Philanthropic zeal supplies 
admirable motive power, but makes a very indifferent 
compass ; and of two evils it is better, perhaps, that 
our ship shall go nowhere than that it shall go wrong, 
that it should stand still than that it should run upon 
the rocks. As, therefore, nature knows nothing of 
good intentions, rewarding and punishing not motives 
but actions; as things are what they are, describe 
them as we may, and their consequences will be what 



240 POLITICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 

they will be, prophesy of them as we choose ; it 
behoves us at this time of all others to approach the 
consideration of impending social questions in the 
spirit of scientific inquiry, and to be impartial 
investigators of social facts before we become zealous 
reformers of social wrongs. 



VI 
A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 1 

THERE is no more interesting characteristic of ordin- 
ary social and political speculation than the settled 
belief that there exists a natural law or tendency 
governing human affairs by which, on the whole, 
and in the long run, the general progress of our 
race is ensured. I do not know that any very 
precise view is entertained as to the nature of this 
law or tendency, its mode of operation, or its 
probable limits; but it is understood to be estab- 
lished, or at least indicated, by the general course 
of History, and to be in harmony with modern 
developments of the doctrine of Evolution. 

The argument from History usually presents 
itself somewhat in this form. Man, it is said, has 

1 Lord Rector's Address, delivered at Glasgow University, 
November 26, 1891. 



242 A FRAGMENT ON PKOGRESS 

been working out his destiny through countless 
generations, and from the first epoch of which 
any record has survived, down to our own day, 
his course, though subject to many mutations, has, 
in the main, been one of steady and enormous 
improvement. Fix your eyes, indeed, upon one 
race, or one age, and you may have to admit that 
there have been long periods during which there 
has been no movement, or a movement only of 
retrogression. But the torpor that has paralysed 
one branch of the human family has been balanced 
by the youthful vigour of another ; now one nation, 
and now another, may have led the van, but the van 
itself has been ever pressing forward; and though 
there have been periods in the world's history 
when it may well have seemed to the most sanguine 
observers that the powers that make for progress 
were exhausted, that culture was giving place to 
barbarism, and civil order to unlettered anarchy, 
time and the event have shown that such prophets 
were wrong, and out of the wreck of the old order 
a new order has always arisen more perfect and 
more full of promise than that which it replaced. 
The argument seems seductive ; yet in the 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 243 

absence of any established law underlying this 
empirical generalisation, it has after all but little 
value. For the same facts can without difficulty 
be stated so as to suggest precisely the opposite 
conclusion. A survey of the world, it may be 
replied, shows us a vast number of savage com- 
munities, apparently at a stage of culture not pro- 
foundly different from that which prevailed among 
prehistoric man during geological epochs which, 
estimated by any historical standard, are immensely 
remote. History, again, tells us of successive civilisa- 
tions which have been born, have for a space thriven 
exceedingly, and have then miserably perished. And 
as it shows us samples of death and decay, so it 
shows us samples of growth arrested, and, as far as 
we can tell, permanently arrested, at some particular 
stage of development. What is there in all this to 
indicate that a nation or group of nations, which 
happens to be under observation during its period of 
energetic growth, is either itself to be an exception 
to this common law, or is of necessity to find in 
some other race an heir fitted for the task of carry- 
ing on its work? Progressive civilisation is no 
form of indestructible energy which, if repressed 



244 A FKAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

here must needs break out there, if refused embodi- 
ment in one shape must needs show itself in another. 
It is a plant of tender habit, difficult to propagate, 
not difficult to destroy, that refuses to flourish except 
in a soil which is not to be found everywhere, nor 
at all times, nor even, so far as we can see, neces- 
sarily to be found at all. 

I conceive, therefore, that those who look forward 
to a period of continuous and, so to speak, inevitable 
progress, are bound to assign some more solid reason 
for their convictions than a merely empirical survey 
of the surface lessons of history. They must find 
some tendencies deep-rooted in the nature of things 
which may be trusted gradually to work out the 
desired result. And this, to do them justice, they 
have not been slow to attempt. Two such causes, or 
groups of causes, have been assigned which deserve 
special consideration, the one eminently character- 
istic of the second half of the nineteenth century, the 
other not less characteristic of the latter half of the 
eighteenth. The former, or biological, relies on the 
gradual improvement both of the human and of the 
social organism through the continued operation of 
those laws by which evolution in general has been 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 245 

effected. The latter relies on the spread of enlighten- 
ment, the dissipation of prejudice, the conscious 
application to social problems of unfettered criticism, 
the deliberate reconstruction of the whole social fabric 
upon rational principles. These two theories are not, 
of course, mutually exclusive ; since, for example, no 
evolutionist would deny that the intentional adapta- 
tion of institutions to foreseen results must play a 
part possibly a large part in the development of a 
social and rational animal. Nevertheless, the two 
ways of estimating the history of the past and 
attacking the problem of the future, differ profoundly 
both in the letter and in the spirit, and they require, 
therefore, separate treatment at our hands. 

Now, no one, I conceive, will be found to-day 
anxious to dispute the proposition that the same laws 
which have operated in the organic world of animals 
and plants may have had much, and must have had 
something, to do with moulding the destiny of man. 
In dealing with the causes which ages before the 
dawn of history produced the various physical and 
mental qualities of the different races of the world, 
we are no doubt necessarily reduced to dim con- 
jecture. But we can hardly be wrong in supposing 



246 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

that, during the vast period in which a blind struggle 
with the forces of nature and with each other, was 
the main occupation of men, and when defeat in either 
contest meant death, the weeding out of unfit in- 
dividuals and unfit institutions was an active agency 
in shaping the characteristics of humanity, as it still 
is in shaping those of the lower animals. We may 
conceive without difficulty, indeed we can hardly 
refuse to believe that the " natural man " man (that 
is) as he is born into the world as distinguished from 
man as he afterwards makes himself and is made by 
his surroundings, might thus by elimination and 
selection undergo a process of profound modification ; 
that in dexterity of muscle and, still more, in power 
of brain an enormous improvement might easily take 
place ; and even that special aptitudes for social life, 
involving, of course, an innate predisposition to accept 
a morality without which social life is impossible, 
might be bred into the physical organisation of the 
most successful races. But this particular cause of 
progress has, we can scarcely doubt, lost most of its 
strength. Nay, if certain theorists are right, and it 
requires the unsparing slaughter of all the inferior 
members of a species to maintain its effectiveness at 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 247 

its normal level, to preserve the speed of the^antelope 
undiminished and the sight of the eagle undimmed, 
then we can hardly refuse our support to the view 
that the general improvement of the race may in 
some respects lead to a deterioration in the natural 
constitution of the individual. Humanity, civilisation, 
progress itself, must have a tendency to mitigate the 
harsh methods by which Nature has wrought out the 
variety and the perfection of organic life. And how- 
ever much man as he is ultimately moulded by the 
social forces surrounding him may gain, man as he is 
born into the world must somewhat lose ; the loss in 
the quality of the raw material being thus a deduction, 
it may be even a large deduction, to be set off against 
the advantages obtained by better processes of 
manufacture. 

It has, however, been thought by many that there 
are biological causes at work which may compensate, 
and more than compensate, the kind of loss produced 
by the greatly diminished efficiency of elimination 
and selection. The majority of naturalists have held, 
and I suppose still hold, that modifications in the 
physical structure of animals produced during life 
may be transmitted to their offspring, and that by 



248 A FRAGMENT ON PEOGRESS 

the cumulative effect of such changes, profound 
alterations may gradually be made in the character- 
istics of a species. And there is one systematic 
philosopher 1 of our own day who has applied this 
principle so persistently in every department of his 
theory of Man, that were it to be upset, it is scarcely 
too much to say that his Ethics, his Psychology, and 
his Anthropology would all tumble to the ground 
with it. Yet this doctrine has for many years been 
questioned by a great English authority, 2 and, as 
many of you are aware, it has been directly contro- 
verted by one of the most eminent living German 
biologists. This is not the occasion, and assuredly I 
am not the person, to attempt to sum up the argu- 
ment or to pronounce upon the merits of this interest- 
ing controversy. For my present purpose it will be 
enough if I remind you that Weisman's conclusions 
are largely based on the extreme difficulty of conceiv- 
ing any possible theory of heredity by which the 
transmission of acquired qualities could be accounted 
for; on the relative simplicity and plausibility of his 
own theory of heredity, according to which the 
transmission would be impossible ; and on the absence 
1 Mr. Herbert Spencer. 2 Mr. F. Galton. 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 249 

of any conclusive proof that the transmission has 
ever taken place. It may no doubt be objected (I 
do not say rightly objected) to such a line of argu- 
ment, that even the simplest explanations of heredity 
are so mysterious, and involve so large an element of 
unverifiable hypothesis, that it is rash to lay too 
much stress on the difference in these respects which 
may exist between one speculation and another ; that 
evidence from experience cannot at most be said to 
prove more than that many qualities patiently ac- 
quired by generation after generation do not seem, as 
a matter of fact, to have become hereditary ; while as 
a matter of theory, qualities which are undoubtedly 
hereditary can seldom if ever be shown to have been 
originally acquired. 

I cannot but think, however, that even in this 
qualified form the lessons to be learned from the 
discussion are full of interest from our present point 
of view. We have got into the habit of thinking 
that the efforts at progress made by each generation 
may not only bear fruit for succeeding ones, in the 
growth of knowledge, the bettering of habits and 
institutions, and the increase of wealth, but that 
there may also be a process, so to speak, of physio- 



250 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

logical accumulation, by which the dexterities painfully 
learned by the fathers shall descend as inherited 
aptitudes to the sons, and not merely the manu- 
factured man man as he makes himself and is 
made by his surroundings, but the natural man 
also, may thus go through a course of steady and 
continuous improvement. It now seems, I think, 
probable, that not in this more than in other cases 
is biology necessarily optimist. For as it has long 
been known that the causes by which species have 
been modified are not inconsistent .with an immobility 
of type lasting through geological epochs; as it is 
also known that these causes may lead to what we 
call deterioration as well as to what we call improve- 
ment; as it is impossible to believe that selection 
and elimination can play any very important part 
in the further development of civilised man ; so now 
the gravest doubts have been raised as to whether 
there are any other physiological causes in operation 
by which that development is likely to be secured. 

If this be so we must regard the raw material, 
as I have called it, of civilisation as being now, in 
all probability, at its best, and henceforth for the 
amelioration of mankind we must look to the perfec- 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGKESS 251 

tion of manufacture. But do not let any one suppose 
that the possible results of manufacture are insigni- 
ficant. Doubtless they are strictly conditioned by 
the quality of the stuff that has to be worked on. 
Doubtless this quality differs essentially in each of 
the great families of mankind. They have emerged 
from the dim workshop where the rough machinery 
of nature has, in remotest ages, wrought into each 
its inalienable heritage of natural gifts and aptitudes ; 
and by these must the character and limits of 
their development in part be determined. But let 
us not found more upon this truth than it will bear. 
In our social and political speculations we are surely 
apt to think too much of ethnology, and too little 
of history. Sometimes from a kind of idleness, 
sometimes from a kind of pride, sometimes because 
the " principles of heredity " is now always on our 
lips, we frequently attribute to differences of blood 
effects which are really due to differences of surround- 
ings. "We note, and note correctly, the varying 
shades of national character; and proceed to put 
them down, often most incorrectly, to variations in 
national descent. The population of one district is 
Teutonic, and therefore it does this ; the population 



252 A FKAGMENT ON PEOGKESS 

of the other district is Celtic, and therefore it does 
that. A Jewish strain explains one peculiarity ; a 
Greek strain explains another; and so on. Con- 
jectures like these appear to be of the most dubious 
value. We know by experience that a nation may 
suddenly blaze out into a splendour of productive 
genius, of which its previous history gave but faint 
promise, and of which its subsequent history shows 
but little trace ; some great crisis in its fate may 
stamp upon a race marks which neither lapse of time 
nor change of circumstance seem able wholly to 
efface; and empires may rise from barbarism to 
civilisation and sink again from civilisation into 
barbarism, within periods so brief that we may take 
it as certain, whatever be our opinion as to the 
transmission of acquired faculties, that no hereditary 
influence has had time to operate. Now, if the 
differences between the same nation at different 
times are thus obviously not due to differences in 
inherited qualities, is it not somewhat rash to drag 
in hypothetical differences in inherited qualities to 
account for the often slighter peculiarities of tempera- 
ment by which communities of different descent may 
be distinguished? Are we not often attributing to 



A FEAGMENT ON PEOGEESS 253 

heredity what is properly due to education, and credit- 
ing Nature with what really is the work of Man 1 

So far, then, we have arrived at the double con- 
clusion that, while there is, to say the least, no suffi- 
cient ground for expecting that our descendants will 
be provided by Nature with better " organisms " than 
our own, it is nevertheless not impossible to suppose 
that they may be able to provide themselves with a 
much more commodious " environment." And this is 
not on the face of it wholly unsatisfactory ; for if, on 
the one hand, it seems to forbid us to indulge in visions 
of a millennium in which there shall not only be a 
new heaven and a new earth, but also a new variety of 
the human race to enjoy them ; on the other hand it 
permits us to hope that the efforts of successive 
generations may so improve the surroundings into 
which men are born that the community of the far 
future may be as much superior to us as we are to 
our barbarian ancestors. 

Our expectations, however, that any such hope 
will be realised must depend largely on the efficiency 
which we are justified in attributing to the " efforts 
of successive generations "must depend, in other 
words, on the value we are disposed to attach to the 



254 A FKAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

second or " rational " theory of progress which I men- 
tioned earlier in this paper. This theory assumes 
that every community, at least every self-governing 
community, holds its fate in its hands, and is itself 
the intelligent arbiter of its own destiny. Its efforts 
may be as immediately and as effectively directed to 
the work of promoting progress as the efforts of a 
navvy to the work of raising a weight. What is to 
be done is clear; how to do it may easily be discovered : 
nothing more, therefore, is required to attain success 
but strenuous and single-minded endeavour. Unfor- 
tunately the world is not made on so simple a plan, 
nor is the problem to be dealt with one in ele- 
mentary mechanics : so complex is it indeed that I 
could not attempt on such an occasion even roughly to 
formulate it in its entirety. But the most cursory 
observation will show that in many cases endeavour is 
not enough, even when endeavour is made. Consider, 
for instance, the case of Art. Mr. Spencer cherishes 
the belief that his "fully evolved" man will spend much 
more time in aesthetic enjoyment than our toil-worn 
generation is permitted to do. I hope he may. But 
what art is he going to enjoy ? Leisure and fashion 
will produce audiences and spectators. We know of 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 255 

nothing that will produce musicians or painters : and 
I sometimes fear that if Mr. Spencer's " fully evolved 
man" ever comes into being, he will not only find 
perfect " harmony with his environment " intolerably 
tedious, but will be in the humiliating position of 
having to depend for his higher pleasures on the 
Poetry and Painting of his " imperfectly evolved " 
forefathers, whose harmony with their environment 
was, perhaps, fortunately for the cause of Art, not 
quite so perfect as his own. 

Consider, again, the case of Knowledge. Growth 
in Knowledge, like productiveness in Art, can hardly, 
so far as its direct consequences are concerned, do 
otherwise than subserve the cause of progress. But, 
unlike productiveness in Art, it would seem to be 
under some kind of control. It is true, no doubt, 
that the greatest achievements in discovery, like the 
greatest creations of the imagination, depend largely 
upon individual genius ; depend, that is, upon some- 
thing which is, and which will probably remain, 
wholly accidental and incalculable. Nevertheless a 
community which, individually or collectively, was 
sufficiently interested in the matter, might apparently 
be as certain of having an annual output of scientific 



256 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

research and industrial invention, as a farmer is of 
growing an annual crop of wheat or barley; and, 
within limits, this is probably the fact. I would only 
note that the presupposed appetite for scientific 
knowledge and the demand for industrial invention, 
have been rare in the history of the world ; that 
advanced civilisations have existed without them, 
and that we certainly do not know enough of the 
causes by which they have been produced to enable 
us to say with any assurance that they will persist in 
places where they are now to be found, or arise in 
places from which they are now absent. But granting 
their existence, may we assume that knowledge will 
grow without limit ? In an age distinguished for its 
scientific progress, and in the presence of some by 
whom that progress has been largely promoted, I 
scarcely dare suggest a doubt on such a question. 
Indeed, with regard to one aspect of it, I feel no 
doubt. Unquestionably mankind will be able to 
cultivate the field of scientific discovery to all time 
without exhausting it. But is it so certain that they 
will be able indefinitely to extend it? Industrial 
invention need never cease. But will our general 
theory of the material Universe again undergo any 



A FKAGMENT ON PROGRESS 257 

revolution comparable to that which it has undergone 
in the last four hundred years? It is at least un- 
certain. We seem indeed even at this moment to 
stand on the verge of some great co-ordination of the 
energies of nature, and to be perhaps within a 
measurable distance of comprehending the cause of 
gravitation and the character of that ethereal medium 
which is the vehicle of Light, Magnetism, and 
Electricity. Yet though this be true, it is also true 
that in whatever direction we drive our explorations 
we come upon limits we cannot, as it seems to me, 
hope to overpass. Consider, for example, the case of 
Astronomy the region of investigation in which the 
results already obtained are, perhaps, in some respects 
the most unexpected and the most impressive. Far- 
reaching as they seem, the theories dealing with the 
constitution, movements, and evolution of the heavenly 
bodies, are all, without exception, ultimately based 
upon terrestrial analogies and upon laws of which in 
some of their manifestations we have terrestrial ex- 
perience. If these fail us, we are, and must remain, per- 
fectly helpless. Supposing it to be true, for instance, 
that the proper motion of the stars cannot in many cases 
be reasonably attributed to gravitation. Does it not 



258 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

seem almost certain that we are here in presence of a 
force on which we can never experiment, and whose 
laws we shall never be able to determine 1 Again, in 
Physics, the admirable results which have been at- 
tained, blind us sometimes to the fact that where we 
have been successful has been in the case of phenomena 
which, though in their reality they can never be di- 
rectly perceived, are nevertheless analogous to objects 
of sensible experience, which can therefore be readily if 
not adequately imagined, and about which hypotheses 
can be made simple enough to be treated mathematic- 
ally. No man will ever see what goes on in a gas, or 
know by direct vision how ether behaves. But we can 
all of us think of a collision or a vibration, and a few 
of us can deal with them by calculation. But observe 
how rapidly the difficulty of comprehension increases 
as soon as sensible analogies begin to fail, as they do 
in the case of many electric and magnetic phenomena ; 
and how quickly the difficulty becomes an impossibility 
when, as in the case of the most important organic 
processes, the operations to be observed are too 
minute ever to be seen and too complex ever to be 
calculated. It is no imperfection in our instruments 
which here foils us. It is an incurable imperfection 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 259 

in ourselves. Our senses are very few and very im- 
perfect. They were not, unfortunately, evolved for 
purposes of research. And though we may well 
stand amazed at the immense scientific structure 
which Mankind have been able to raise on the meagre 
foundations afforded by their feeble sense-perceptions, 
we can hardly hope to see it added to without limit. 
Nor is the time necessarily as far distant as we some- 
times think, when we may be reduced either to 
elaborating the details of that which in outline is 
known already, or to framing dim conjectures about 
that which cannot scientifically be known at all. 

These passing doubts, however, as to the future 
triumphs of Art and Science, be they well or ill 
founded, need not, it may be said, affect our estimate 
of the results which in other departments of human 
activity may be expected to flow from the " efforts of 
successive generations," made through the machinery 
by which alone in its collective capacity the community 
can make a deliberate attempt at progress I mean 
the State. It is unnecessary to remind you what 
immense expectations have been, and are, based upon 
State action. We are all familiar with that numer- 
ous class who see in political changes the main interest 



260 A FKAGMENT ON PKOGRESS 

of the Past, and their main hopes for the Future ; 
who, if asked what they mean by Progress, will tell 
you Eef orm ; and if asked what they mean by Reform, 
will tell you, " An alteration of the State Constitu- 
tion," and if asked why they desire an alteration of 
the State Constitution, will tell you, "In order to carry 
on more rapidly and effectively the work of Progress." 
For this view ordinary History is, no doubt, partly 
responsible. Such history is largely employed in 
giving an account of the mode in which political 
institutions have from time to time been modified to 
suit the changing wishes or the changing needs of the 
community, or of some portion of it. It is full of 
accounts of violent and often sanguinary disputes, in 
the decision of which the two sides held at the time, 
and the historian has held after them, that the most 
important interests of the community were involved. 
Yet, if this proposition is true at all, it is certainly not 
true in the sense in which it is commonly accepted. 
Consider, for instance, how different has been the 
political history, and yet how similar is the social con- 
dition, of Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, 
and Belgium. Though these five nations do not for 
the most part speak the same language, nor profess 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 261 

the same religion, nor claim the same ancestry; though 
the events by which they have been moulded, and 
the institutions by which they have been governed, 
are apparently widely dissimilar ; yet their culture is 
at this moment practically identical ; their ideas form 
a common stock ; the social questions they have to 
face are the same; and such differences as exist in 
the material condition and wellbeing of their popula- 
tions are unquestionably due more to the economic 
differences in their position, climate, and natural 
advantages, than to the decisions at which they may 
have from time to time arrived on the various political 
controversies by which their peoples have been so 
bitterly divided. We cannot, of course, conclude 
from this that political action or inaction has no 
effect upon the broad stream of human progress ; still 
less that it may not largely determine for good or for 
evil the course of its smaller eddies and subsidiary 
currents. All that we are warranted in saying is 
that, as a matter of fact, the differences in the 
political history of these five communities, however 
interesting to the historian, nay, however important 
at the moment to the happiness of the populations 
concerned, are, if estimated by the scale we are at 



262 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

this moment applying to human affairs, almost 
negligible; and that it must be in connection with 
the points wherein their political systems agree that the 
importance of those systems is principally to be 
found. 

Nor need this conclusion seem strange or paradoxi- 
cal. For great as are the recent changes which have 
taken place in Western civilisation, they have been 
almost entirely due to scientific discoveries, to in- 
dustrial inventions, to commercial enterprise, to the 
occupation by Europeans of new Continents, to the 
slow and in the main consequential modification of our 
beliefs, ideas, and governing conceptions. But to these 
great causes of movement the State, in the cases to 
which I have referred, has contributed little but the ex- 
ternal conditions under which individual effort has been 
able to operate unhindered conditions consisting for 
the most part in a tolerable degree of security, and a 
tolerable degree of freedom ; and the great political 
movements with which the historian chiefly concerns 
himself must be regarded as symptoms, rather than as 
causes, of the vital changes which have taken place. 

I hold, then, that the actual uses to which political 
action within the community has been, and is being, 



A FEAGMENT ON PROGRESS 2G3 

put are in the main rather negative than positive. 
Such action does not to any great extent supply the 
causes which advance the world, it only provides the 
conditions under which the world may be advanced. 
Even those, however, who agree with this estimate of 
what in fact has commonly happened in the recent 
past, might hold, and in many cases do hold, that 
much more than this may be made to happen in the 
future. It is admitted, they might say, that the 
destiny of each generation is, to an almost incalculable 
degree, determined by the social conditions in the 
midst of which it is born. It is admitted that these 
conditions are principally the handiwork of man him- 
self. It is admitted that no instrument at our com- 
mand is more powerful than the collective action of 
the community. Why not, then, employ it to create 
the environment by which the progress we desire may 
be hastened and ensured ? 

Now to answer this question we must know both 
whether the community whose intervention is invoked 
has the requisite knowledge, and whether, if so, it has 
also the power to turn this knowledge to account. 

It is curious that the first of these problems hardly 
seems to have presented itself to whole schools of 



264 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

political thinkers who flourished at the end of the 
last century, and the beginning of this. According 
to their view, an acquaintance with the "Law of 
Nature " was enough, and the " Law of Nature " 
could be understood by all who brought to its study 
an unprejudiced mind. This remarkable doctrine 
even now survives to an astonishing extent ; and 
there are still plenty of excellent gentlemen who 
appear to be exclusively preoccupied with the task 
of making the opinion of the community, or what 
passes for such, act rapidly and effectively on the 
administrative machine; never supposing, apparently, 
that if it could be made to act rapidly and effectively 
there could be any doubts as to what it ought to do. 
And yet there is no sign that sociology, or even the 
limited department of it concerned with politics, exists 
or ever will exist except in the shape of a certain 
number of valuable empirical maxims, and a few very 
wide and not very trustworthy generalisations. The 
science has been planned out by some very able 
philosophers, much as a prospective watering-place 
is planned out by a speculative builder. But the 
streets, the squares, the theatres, and the piers of 
this scientific city have so far no existence except in 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 265 

imagination nor are they likely soon to be con- 
structed. Much indeed of what commonly figures 
as the theory of Politics has nothing, properly 
speaking, to do with Sociology at all. The whole 
tribe of Utopias; the innumerable theories deduced 
from the abstract rights or moral obligations of 
individuals or communities; all speculations which 
concern themselves, not with explaining what is, but 
with telling us what ought to be, are, however admir- 
able and useful, wholly alien to Science in the sense 
in which that word is here used. Such speculations 
have had, and are having, for good and for evil, 
important political effects ; they are therefore among 
the phenomena which political science must- co- 
ordinate and explain : but they are no more con- 
tributions to that science than an earthquake is a 
contribution to Geology. 

Other investigations, commonly and not incorrectly 
considered as contributions to Political Knowledge, 
such as those which deal with Constitutional History 
and Constitutional Law, stand in a different category. 
Their business is to discover and classify political facts 
of great significance and interest. They ought, there- 
fore, it would seem, to be valuable preliminaries to 



266 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

the construction of a Science of Politics. Yet, as they 
are usually conducted, it may be doubted whether 
they do not obscure rather than illustrate its problems. 
They bring into undue prominence certain kinds of 
fact ; they wholly ignore other kinds of fact at least 
as material to a true understanding of the real play of 
social laws. For them the legal and theoretical at- 
tributes of each' organ in the body politic, the forms 
and fictions of exoteric politics, are the main subjects 
of interest, and supply the only principles of classi- 
fication ; while the ever- varying social forces which 
successively work through the same constitutional 
mechanism, and which give to the latter its chief 
significance, are comparatively neglected. That this 
should be so is perhaps inevitable. For while it is easy, 
with the lawyers, to analyse the documents, or the 
precedents on which are based the legal and constitu- 
tional powers of every governing element in a State ; 
while it is not difficult, with the historians, to trace 
the formal growth and gradual transformation of these 
various elements through successive generations, the 
difficulty of any systematic inquiry into the essential 
sequences of social phenomena are great, and perhaps 
on any large scale insuperable. We are apt to be 



A FKAGMENT ON PROGRESS 267 

misled in this matter by a false scientific analogy. 
We often talk, and sometimes think, as if its political 
constitution was to the State what its anatomical con- 
formation is to the living animal : and as if therefore 
we might argue from " structure "to " function " with 
the same degree of assurance in the one case as we 
habitually do in the other. But there is little 
analogy between the two. The trite comparison 
between a community and an organism is doubtless 
suggestive, and may be useful. But it can only be 
employed in security by those who remember that 
among the organs through which the vital energies 
of society act, and by which they are conditioned, 
those whose character is described in constitutional 
text-books, and whose growth is traced in constitu- 
tional histories, are among the least interesting, and 
the least important. 

If I desired to illustrate the consequences which 
follow upon forgetfulness of these truths, I might 
remind you of the absurd controversies, dear to the 
debating societies of two generations ago, and not 
perhaps quite forgotten in some political clubs even 
now, on the relative merits of various abstract forms 
of government Monarchical, Republican, Aristocratic, 



268 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

Democratic, and so forth. But let me take a less 
crude form of the same kind of error. We are 
all of us prone to regard a political institution, for 
instance, a representative chamber, as a machine 
whose character can be adequately expressed by 
defining its legal constitution. When we have 
mastered this, when we know the qualification of 
its electors, its legislative powers, its relation to other 
bodies in the State, and so forth, we conceive our- 
selves to have mastered its theory, and to be qualified 
to pronounce an opinion on the way it will work in 
practice. But, in truth, we have only mastered a 
certain modicum of constitutional law ; and Constitu- 
tional law may (as I have said), be in some respects, 
an obstacle rather than an aid, to the construction of 
Political Science. The second is concerned with 
the reality of things, the first with their form. The 
subject-matter of one is Natural law, of the other 
Statute law. The assumed line between the theory of 
the political machine and its practical working, either 
cannot be drawn at all, or cannot be drawn at the place 
where legal definition and enactment end. No statute, 
for example, provides or could provide that a popular 
assembly shall work through a few large and well- 



A FEAGMENT ON PKOGRESS 269 

disciplined parties, rather than through a number of 
small and independent groups. Yet its habits in this 
respect are incomparably more important than any- 
thing in its formal constitution. No statute provides 
or could provide that the representatives composing it 
shall, on the whole, be elected from among those who 
do not regard politics as a means of making money. 
Yet the habits of the electorate in this respect are 
incomparably more important than any mere question 
of the franchise. On the other hand, the constitu- 
tion of most representative assemblies does assume 
that the units who elect and the units who are elected 
shall, as among themselves, possess equal fractions of 
political power : and, accordingly, the law is careful 
to draw no distinction between them. But here, 
again, Law is no guide to fact. Legal equality has 
no necessary connection with political equivalence, 
and the most cursory observations, not of constitu- 
tional forms, but of the realities of life, show that 
organisation is the inevitable accompaniment of elec- 
toral institutions, and that organisation, from the 
very nature of the case, is absolutely incompatible 
with uniformity. 

All this goes to show that we are not yet in 



270 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

possession of anything deserving the name of 
political science ; that the intrinsic difficulties of 
creating one are almost insurmountable ; and that 
in most cases those who attempt the task employ 
methods essentially arbitrary, and predestined from 
the beginning to be unfruitful. But though it may 
well seem doubtful whether a complete science of 
politics (and a fortiori of sociology) will ever exist, it 
is quite certain that if it ever does exist it must be 
confined to a small body of experts. Is there the 
slightest probability that in their hands it could ever 
produce the practical results which many persons 
hope for? It may be doubted. An acquaintance 
with the laws of nature does not always, nor even 
commonly, carry with it the means of controlling 
them. Knowledge is seldom power. And a soci- 
ologist so coldly independent of the social forces 
among which he lived as thoroughly to understand 
them, would, in all probability, be as impotent to 
guide the evolution of a community as an astronomer 
to modify the orbit of a comet. 

It might indeed at first sight appear that while 
the astronomer has no means of intervening in the 
affairs of the star, it is always open to the sociologist 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 271 

to appeal to the reason of the community of which 
he is a member. But this view depends, I think, 
on an erroneous view of the influence which reason- 
ing has or can have on the course of human affairs. 
To hear some people talk, one would suppose that 
the successful working of social institutions depended 
as much upon cool calculation as the management 
of a Joint Stock Bank : that from top to bottom, 
and side to side, it was a mere question of political 
arithmetic ; and that the beliefs, the affections, the 
passions and the prejudices of Mankind were to be 
considered in no other light than as obstacles in the 
path of progress, which it was the business of the poli- 
tician to destroy or to elude. This is a natural and, 
perhaps in some respects, a beneficial illusion. Move- 
ment, whether of progress or of retrogression, can 
commonly be brought about only when the sentiments 
opposing it have been designedly weakened or have 
suffered a natural decay. In this destructive process, 
and in any constructive process by which it may be 
followed, reasoning, often very bad reasoning, bears, 
at least in Western communities, a large share as cause, 
a still larger share as symptom ; so that the clatter of 
contending argumentation is often the most striking 



272 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

accompaniment of interesting social changes. Its posi- 
tion, therefore, and its functions in the social organism, 
are frequently misunderstood. People fall instinctively 
into the habit of supposing that, as it plays a con- 
spicuous part in the improvement or deterioration of 
human institutions, it therefore supplies the very basis 
on which they may be made to rest, the very mould to 
which they ought to conform ; and they naturally con- 
clude that we have only got to reason more and to 
reason better, in order speedily to perfect the whole 
machinery by which human felicity is to be secured. 

Surely this is a great delusion. A community 
founded upon argument would soon be a community 
no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent 
elements. Think of the thousand ties most subtly 
woven out of common sentiments, common tastes, 
common beliefs, nay, common prejudices, by which 
from our very earliest childhood we are all bound 
unconsciously but indissolubly together into a com- 
pacted whole. Imagine these to be suddenly loosed 
and their places taken by some judicious piece of 
reasoning on the balance of advantage, which, after 
making all proper deductions, still remains to the 
credit of social life. Imagine nicely adjusting our 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 273 

loyalty and our patriotism to the standard of a 
calculated utility. Imagine us severally suspending 
our adhesion to the Ten Commandments until we have 
leisure and opportunity to decide between the rival 
and inconsistent philosophies which contend for the 
honour of establishing them ! These things we may 
indeed imagine if we please. Fortunately, we shall 
never see them. Society is founded and from the 
nature of the human beings which constitute it, must, 
in the main, be always founded not upon criticism 
but upon feelings and beliefs, and upon the customs 
and codes by which feelings and beliefs are, as it were, 
fixed and rendered stable. And even where these 
harmonise so far as we can judge with sound reason, 
they are in many cases not consciously based on 
reasoning ; nor is their fate necessarily bound up with 
that of the extremely indifferent arguments by which, 
from time to time, philosophers, politicians, and I 
will add divines, have thought fit to support them. 

This view may, perhaps, be readily accepted in 
reference, for instance, to Oriental civilisation; but 
to some it may seem paradoxical when applied to the 
free constitutions of the West. Yet, after all, it 
supplies the only possible justification, I will not say 



274 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

for Democratic Government only, but for any Govern- 
ment whatever based on public opinion. If the 
business of such a Government was to deal with 
the essential framework of society as an engineer 
deals with the wood and iron out of which he con- 
structs a bridge, it would be as idiotic to govern by 
household suffrage as to design the Forth Bridge by 
household suffrage. Indeed, it would be much more 
idiotic, because, as we have seen, sociology is far more 
difficult than engineering. But, in truth, there is no 
resemblance between the two cases. We habitually 
talk as if a self-governing or free community was 
one which managed its own affairs. In strictness, 
no community manages its own affairs, or by any 
possibility could manage them. It manages but a 
narrow fringe of its affairs, and that in the main by 
deputy. It is only the thinnest surface layer of law 
and custom, belief and sentiment, which can either be 
successfully subjected to destructive treatment, or 
become the nucleus of any new growth a fact which 
explains the apparent paradox that so many of our 
most famous advances in political wisdom are nothing 
more than the formal recognition of our political 
impotence. 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 275 

Examples of this paradox from the history of 
economic legislation will at once suggest themselves 
to all. But consider an illustration which in this 
connection may not seem so familiar, drawn from 
the theory of toleration. 

As we are all aware, this theory was never accepted, 
unless now and then by the persecuted minority, 
until quite recent times. It is doubtless one of the 
most valuable empirical maxims of modern politics. 
Yet the reasons given for it are usually bad. Some 
will tell you, oblivious of the most patent facts of 
history, that persecution is always unsuccessful. 
Others appear to assume that there is an inherent and 
inalienable right possessed by every human being to 
hold and to propagate what opinions he pleases a 
doctrine which cannot be held practically in an 
absolute form, or logically in a limited one. Others 
again, with more reason, point out that the persecutor 
never can be quite sure he is right ; that new truths 
have constantly been unpopular in their first 
beginnings ; and that if every modification of received 
beliefs or customs is to be destroyed as soon as it is 
born, progress becomes impossible. 

This is all very true. But it is far from going to 



276 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

the root of the matter. Persecution is only an 
attempt to do that overtly and with violence, which 
the community is, in self-defence, perpetually doing 
unconsciously and in silence. In many societies 
variation of belief is practically impossible. In other 
societies it is permitted only along certain definite 
lines. In no society that has ever existed, or could 
be conceived as existing, are opinions equally free (in 
the scientific sense of the term, not the legal) to develop 
themselves indifferently in all directions. The con- 
stant pressure of custom ; the effects of imitation, of 
education, and of habit ; the incalculable influence of 
man on man, produce a working uniformity of con- 
viction more effectually than the gallows and the 
stake, though without the cruelty, and with far more 
than the wisdom that have usually been vouchsafed 
to official persecutors. Though the production of 
such a community of ideas as is necessary to make 
possible community of life, the encouragement of 
useful novelties, the destruction of dangerous eccen- 
tricities, are thus among the undertakings which, 
according to modern notions, the State dare scarcely 
touch, or touches not at all, this is not because these 
things are unimportant, but because, though among 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 277 

the most important of our affairs, we no longer think 
we can manage them. 

It would seem, then, that in all States, and not 
least in those which are loosely described as self- 
governing, the governmental action which can ever 
be truly described as the conscious application of 
appropriate means to the attainment of fully-com- 
prehended ends, must, in comparison with the totality 
of causes affecting the development of the community, 
be extremely insignificant in amount. As a matter 
of fact, it has, in the recent past, been in the main 
confined to questions of administration and finance, 
or to the removal, sometimes, no doubt, by revolu- 
tionary means, of antiquated and vexatious restric- 
tions. Far more than this may, of course, be 
attempted. It is quite possible to conceive an 
absolute government with a taste for social experi- 
ments. It is quite possible, though not so easy, to 
conceive a popular government in which the strength 
of custom and tradition shall have been seriously 
weakened by criticism or other causes, and where the 
sentiments which usually support what is, begin, by 
a kind of inverted conservatism, to nourish and give 
strength . to some ideal of what ought to be. Com- 



278 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

munities so situated are in a condition of unstable 
equilibrium. They are in danger of far-reaching 
changes. It is not asserted that the result of such 
changes must be unsuccessful, only that it is beyond 
our powers of calculation. The new condition of 
things would be a political parallel to what breeders 
and biologists call in natural history a "sport." Such 
"sports" do not often survive; still less often do 
they flourish and multiply. It can only be by a rare 
and happy accident that either in the social or the 
physical world they constitute a stable and permanent 
variety. 

We are therefore driven to the conclusion that, 
as our expectations of limitless progress for the race 
cannot depend upon the blind operation of the laws 
of heredity, so neither can they depend upon the 
deliberate action of national governments. Such 
examination as we can make of the changes which 
have taken place during the relatively minute fraction 
of history with respect to which we have fairly full 
information, shows that they have been caused by a 
multitude of variations, often extremely small, made 
in their surroundings by individuals whose objects, 
though not necessarily selfish, have often had no 



A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 279 

intentional reference to the advancement of the 
community at large. But we have no scientific 
ground for suspecting that the stimulus to these 
individual efforts must necessarily continue'; we 
know of no law by which, if they do continue, they 
must needs be co-ordinated for a common purpose or 
pressed into the service of the common good. We 
cannot estimate their remoter consequences ; neither 
can we tell how they will act and re-act upon one 
another, nor how they will in the long run affect 
morality, religion, and other fundamental elements 
of human society. The future of the race is thus 
encompassed with darkness : no faculty of calculation 
that we possess, no instrument that we are likely to 
invent, will enable us to map out its course, or 
penetrate the secret of its destiny. It is easy, no 
doubt, to find in the clouds which obscure our path 
what shapes we please : to see in them the promise 
of some millennial paradise, or the threat of endless 
and unmeaning travel through waste and perilous 
places. But in such visions the wise man will put 
but little confidence : content, in a sober and cautious 
spirit, with a full consciousness of his feeble powers 
of foresight, and the narrow limits of his activity, to 



280 A FRAGMENT ON PEOGRESS 

deal as they arise with the problems of his own 

generation. 



In thinking over the criticisms which this hasty 
survey of an immense subject might possibly provoke, 
two in particular seem to require some special notice 
on my part. To the first I plead guilty at once. It 
will be objected that of many statements the proof 
is not given at all, or is but barely indicated ; that 
no notice has been taken of many obvious objections, 
and that the treatment of the most important topics 
has been so meagre that what I have said rather 
resembles the syllabus of a course of lectures than a 
lecture complete in itself. All this is perfectly true ; 
and I can only urge in palliation that, as I could not 
deliver a series of Rectorial Addresses, what I had to 
say must either have been compressed, as I have 
endeavoured to compress it, or not be said at all; 
and further, that I had the good fortune to speak to 
an audience who might be trusted to fill up the 
lacunae which I had been compelled to leave. 

The second criticism is of a different kind, and to 
this I do not plead guilty. I shall be told, indeed I 
have already been told, that the treatment of the 



A FRAGMENT OX PROGRESS 281 

subject was unsuited to the occasion, and to the age 
of many among my audience ; that it was calculated 
to chill youthful enthusiasm, and to check youthful 
enterprise. Now I quite agree that it would be a 
melancholy result of our meeting if any single 
member of this assembly left it with a lower view of 
the intrinsic worth of human endeavour. But I do 
not believe this is likely to be the case. It is true 
that, as I think, there is nothing in what we know 
of the earthly prospects of humanity fitted fully to 
satisfy human aspirations. It is true that, as I think, 
much optimistic speculation about the future is quite 
unworthy the consideration of serious men. It is 
true that, as I think, the light-hearted manner in 
which many persons sketch out their ideas of a re- 
constructed society exhibits an almost comic igno- 
rance of our limited powers of political calculation. 

But I do not believe that these opinions are likely, 
either in reason or in fact, to weaken the springs of 
human effort. The best efforts of mankind have 
never been founded upon the belief in an assured 
progress towards a terrestrial millennium : if for no 
other reason because the belief itself is quite modern. 
Patriotism and public zeal have not in the past, and 



282 A FRAGMENT ON PROGRESS 

do not now, require any such aliment. True we do 
not know, as our fathers before us have not known, 
the hidden laws by which in any State the private 
virtues of its citizens, their love of knowledge, the 
energy and disinterestedness of their civic life, their 
reverence for the past, their caution, their capacity 
for safely working free institutions, may be main- 
tained and fostered. But we do know that no State 
where these qualities have flourished has ever perished 
from internal decay ; and we also know that it is 
within our power, each of us in his own sphere, to 
practise them ourselves, and to encourage them in 
others. As men of action, we want no more than 
this. Of this no speculation can deprive us. And I 
doubt whether any of us will be less fitted to face 
with a wise and cheerful courage the problems of our 
age and country, if reflection should induce us to rate 
somewhat lower than is at present fashionable, either 
the splendours of our future destiny, or the facility 
with which these splendours may be attained. 



VII 
THE EELIGION OF HUMANITY 1 

THE word Positivism, as used by us to-day, I under- 
stand to carry with it no special reference to the 
peculiarities of Comte's system, to his views on the 
historic evolution of thought, to his classification of 
the sciences, to his theories of sociology, or to those 
curious schemes of polity and ritual contained in his 
later writings, which have tried the fidelity of his 
disciples and the gravity of his critics. I rather 
suppose the word to be used in a wider sense. I take 
it to mean that general habit or scheme of thought 
which, on its negative side, refuses all belief in any- 
thing beyond phenomena and the laws connecting 
them, and on its positive side attempts to find in the 

1 An Address delivered at the Church Congress, Manchester, 
October 1888. 



284 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

"worship of humanity," or, as some more soberly 
phrase it, in the " service of man," a form of religion 
unpolluted by any element of the supernatural. 

Now I do not propose here to discuss the negative 
side of this creed. Those who confidently assert, as 
do the Positivists, that there is one set of things 
which we can know and do know, and another set of 
things which we do not know and can never know, 
evidently suppose themselves to be in possession of 
some valid criterion of knowledge. How far this 
supposition is in their case legitimate, I have 
endeavoured elsewhere to discuss from my own point 
of view, in a book the title of which has attracted 
more interest than the contents. I do not mean to 
refer to the subject here. What I have now to say 
relates solely to what may be called the religious 
element in Positivism, and its adequacy to meet the 
highest needs of beings such as we are, placed in a 
world such as ours. 

Some will deny at the outset that the term religion 
can ever be appropriately used of a creed which has 
nothing in it of the supernatural. It is a question of 
words, and, like all questions of words, a question 
of convenience. In my judgment the convenience 



THE EELIGION OF HUMANITY 285 

varies in this case with the kind of investigation in 
which we happen to be engaged. If we are con- 
sidering religions from their dogmatic side, as systems 
of belief, to be distinguished as such both from ethics 
and from science, no doubt it would be absurd to 
describe Positivism, which allows no beliefs except 
such' as are either scientific or ethical, as having any 
religious element at all. So considered it is a nega- 
tion of all religion. But if, on the other hand, we 
are considering religion not merely from the outside, 
as a system of propositions, stating what can be 
known of man's relations to a supernatural power, 
and the rules of conduct to be framed thereon, but 
from the inside, as consisting of acts of belief pene- 
trated with religious emotion, then I think it would 
be unfair to deny that some such emotion may centre 
round the object of Positivist cult, and that if it does 
so it is inconvenient to refuse to describe it as a 
religion. 

It is doubtless unnecessary for me to dwell upon 
this double aspect of every religion, and of every 
system of belief which aspires to be a substitute for 
religion. For many purposes it may be enough to 
regard religion as a mere collection of doctrines and 



286 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

precepts. It is often enough when we are dealing 
with its history, or its development; with the 
criticism of documents or the evidence of dogmas. 
But when we are dealing not merely with the evolu- 
tion of religion or its truth, but with its function 
among us men here and now, we are at least as much 
concerned with the living emotions of the religious 
consciousness as with the framework of doctrine, on 
which no doubt they ultimately depend for their 
consistency and permanence. 

Now, as it is certain that there may be super- 
naturalism without religious feeling, so we need not 
deny that there may be something of the nature of 
religious feeling without supernaturalism. The Deists 
of the last century accepted the argument from 
design. The existence of the world showed in their 
view that there must have been a First Cause. The 
character of the world showed that this First Cause 
was intelligent and benevolent. They thus provided 
themselves with the dogmatic basis of a religion, 
which, however inadequate, nevertheless has been 
and still is a real religion to vast numbers of men. 
But to the thinkers of whom I speak this theory was 
never more than a speculative belief. The chain of 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 287 

cause and effect required a beginning, and their theory 
of a First Cause provided one. The idea of an 
infinitely complex but orderly universe appeared by 
itself to be unsatisfactory, if not unintelligible, so 
they rounded it off with a God. Yet, while the 
savage who adores a stone, for no better reason than 
that it has an odd shape, possesses a religion though 
a wretched and degraded one, the Deists of whom I 
speak had nothing more than a theology, though of 
a kind only possible in a comparatively advanced 
community. 

While there may thus be a speculative belief in 
the supernatural, which through the absence of 
religious feeling does not in the full sense of the 
word amount to a religion, there may be religious 
feeling divorced from any belief in the supernatural. 
It is indeed obvious that such feeling must be limited. 
To the variety and compass of the full religious con- 
sciousness it can, from the very nature of the case, 
never attain. The spectacle of the Starry Heavens 
may inspire admiration and awe, but cannot be said, 
except by way of metaphor, to inspire love and 
devotion. Humanity may inspire love and devotion, 
but does not, in ordinarily-constituted minds, inspire 



288 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

either admiration or awe. If we wish to find these 
and other religious feelings concentrated on one 
object, transfusing and vivifying the bare precepts of 
morality, the combining power must be sought for in 
the doctrines of Supernatural Eeligion. 

It might be said in reply, that while some of the 
feelings associated with a supernatural theology are 
doubtless absent from the "religion of humanity," 
these have purpose and significance chiefly in relation 
to the doctrine of a future life, and to those persons, 
therefore, who see no ground for believing in the 
possibility of any such life, seem necessarily meaning- 
less or mischievous. Here, then, is the point where 
I desire to join issue. The belief in a future state 
is one of the most striking I will not say the 
most important differences between positive and 
supernatural religion. It is one upon which no 
agreement or compromise is possible. It admits of 
no gradations of no less or more. It is true, or it is 
false. And my purpose is to contribute one or two ob- 
servations towards a qualitative estimate of the imme- 
diate gain or loss to some of the highest interests of 
mankind, which would follow upon a substitution of 
the Positivist for the Christian theory on the subject. 



THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 289 

I say a qualitative estimate, because it is not easy 
to argue about a quantitative estimate in default of a 
kind of experience in which we are at present wholly 
deficient. The religion of humanity, divorced from 
any other religion, is professed by but a small and, 
in many respects, a peculiar sect. The cultivation of 
emotions at high tension towards humanity, deliber- 
ately dissociated from the cultivation of religious 
feeling towards God, has never yet been practised on 
a large scale. We have so far had only laboratory 
experiments. There has been no attempt to manu- 
facture in bulk. And even if it had been otherwise, 
the conclusion to be drawn must for a long time have 
remained doubtful. For the success of such attempts 
greatly depends on the character of the social medium 
in which they are carried on ; and if, as I should 
hope, the existing social medium is favourable to the 
growth of philanthropic feelings, its character is 
largely due to the action of Christianity. It re- 
mains to be proved whether, if Christianity were 
destroyed, a "religion of humanity" could long 
maintain for itself the atmosphere in which alone 
it could permanently nourish. 

I make no attempt, then, to estimate the magnitude 
U 



290 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

of the gain or loss which the destruction of a belief 
in Providence and a future life would entail upon 
mankind. I merely endeavour to characterise one 
or two of the elements of which that gain or loss would 
be composed. 

But in doing so I do not propose to count, or at 
least to consider, the feelings of satisfaction, or the 
reverse, with which, according to their temper or 
their creed, individuals may contemplate their per- 
sonal destiny after death. My present business is 
with thoughts and emotions of a wider reference, and 
among these I count the effect which the belief that 
physical dissolution is not the destruction of con- 
sciousness, that death lets down the curtain at the 
end of the act not at the end of the piece, has upon 
the mood in which we survey the darker aspects of 
the world in which we live. 

I. To say that the doctrine of Immortality pro- 
vides us with a ready-made solution of the problem 
of evil, is of course absurd. If there be a problem, 
it is insoluble. Nevertheless there can be no doubt 
that it may profoundly modify the whole attitude of 
mind in which we are able to face the insistent facts 
of sin, suffering, and misery. I am no pessimist. I 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 291 

do not profess to weigh against one another the 
sorrows and the joys of humanity, and to conclude 
that it had been better for us had we never been 
born. Let any one try to perform such a calculation 
in his own case (about which he may be presumed 
to have exceptional sources of information) ; let him, 
in the same spirit of unimpassioned inquiry in which 
he would carry on any other piece of scientific 
measurement, attempt to estimate how much of his 
life has been above and how much below that neutral 
line which represents the precise degree of wellbeing 
at which existence is neither a blessing nor a curse, 
and he will henceforth treat with derision all attempts 
to perform the same operation for the human race. 

But though this be so, yet the sense of misery 
unrelieved, of wrongs unredressed, of griefs beyond 
remedy, of failure without hope, of physical pain so 
acute that it seems the one overmastering reality in a 
world of shadows, of mental depression so deadly 
that it welcomes physical pain itself as a relief 
these, and all the crookednesses and injustices of a 
crooked and unjust world, may well overload our 
spirits and shatter the springs of our energies, if to 
this world only we must restrict our gaze. For thus 



292 THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 

narrowed the problem is hopeless. Let us dream 
what dreams we please about the future ; let us paint 
it in hues of our own choosing ; let us fashion for 
ourselves a world in which war has been abolished, 
disease mitigated, poverty rooted out; in which 
justice and charity determine every relation in life, 
and we shall still leave untouched a residue of irre- 
mediable ills separation, decay, weariness, death. 
This distant and doubtful millennium has its dark 
shadows : and then how distant and doubtful it is ! 
The most intrepid prophet dare hardly say with 
assurance whether the gorgeous mountain shapes to 
which we are drifting be cloud or solid earth. And 
while the future happiness is doubtful, the present 
misery is certain. Nothing that humanity can enjoy 
in the future will make up for what it has suffered 
in the past : for those who will enjoy are not the 
same as those who have suffered : one set of persons 
is injured, another set will receive compensation. 

Now I do not wish to be guilty of any exaggera- 
tion. It may freely be conceded that many persons 
exist to whom the knowledge that there are wrongs 
to be remedied is a stimulus to remedying them, and 
is nothing more ; who can abstract their minds from 



THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 293 

everything but the work in hand, and remain, like 
an experienced doctor, wholly undisturbed by the 
sufferings of those whom they are endeavouring to 
relieve. But I am not sure that this class is common, 
or is getting commoner. The sensitiveness to social 
evils is increasing, and it is good that it should in- 
crease. But the good is not unmixed. In proportion 
as the general sympathy gets wider, as the social 
imagination gets more comprehensive and more 
responsive, so will the number of those increase 
who according to their temper either rush frantically 
to the first quack remedy that presents itself, or, too 
clear-sighted to be sanguine, but not callous enough 
to be indifferent, yield themselves bondsmen to a 
sceptical despair. For the first of these classes I 
know not that anything can be done. There is no 
cure for stupidity. But for the second, the faith 
that what we see is but part, and a small part, of a 
general scheme which will complete the destiny, not 
merely of humanity, but (which is a very different 
thing) of every man, woman, and child born into the 
world, has supplied, and may again supply, consola- 
tion and encouragement, energy and hope. 

II. It is true that we are sometimes told that a 



294 THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 

system by which rewards and punishments are 
annexed in another world, to the practice of virtue 
or of vice in this one, appeals to the baser side of 
human nature. And comparisons are drawn between 
religions which appeal to such sanctions, and religions 
which do not, entirely to the disadvantage of the 
former. But this opinion, which lends itself naturally 
to much easy rhetorical treatment, is open to more 
than one objection. In the first place, it mistakes 
the position which the doctrine of future retribution 
holds in Christian theology, a position which, though 
real and important, is nevertheless a subordinate one 
in the hierarchy of religious motives. On this I do 
not further dwell, since it obviously falls beyond the 
limit of my present subject. But in the second 
place, it seems altogether to mistake the true posi- 
tion of rational self-love in any sound scheme of 
practical morality. 

Conceive for one moment what an infinitely better 
and happier world it would be if every action in it 
were directed by a reasonable desire for the agent's 
happiness ! Excess of all kinds, drunkenness and 
its attendant ills, would vanish; disease would be 
enormously mitigated ; nine-tenths of the petty vexa- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 295 

tions which embitter domestic life would be smoothed 
away ; the competition for wealth would be lessened, 
for wealth would be rated at no more than the 
quantity of pleasure which it is capable of purchasing 
for its possessor ; the sympathetic emotions would be 
sedulously cultivated, as among those least subject 
to weariness and satiety; while self-sacrifice itself 
would be practised as the last refinement of a judicious 
luxury. 

Now, love of self thus understood, we should be 
right in ranking infinitely lower among springs of 
action than the love of God or the love of man. But 
we should assuredly be utterly wrong in confounding 
it with self-indulgence, of which it is usually the 
precise opposite, or in describing it as in any respect 
base and degraded. The world suffers not because 
it has too much of it, but because it has too little ; 
not because it displaces higher motives, but because 
it is itself habitually displaced by lower ones. But 
though this be so, yet it must sometimes happen, 
however rarely, that rational love of self conflicts with 
the disinterested love of man, if results in this world 
alone be taken into account. It is only if we are 
permitted to assume another phase of existence in 



296 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

direct moral relation with this one, that the contra- 
diction between these guiding principles of conduct 
can be solved certainly and universally in a higher 
harmony. 

It is true that hopes are held out to us that a 
judicious manipulation of the latent forces of public 
opinion may supply us with a very efficient substitute 
for Heaven and Hell, and may provide a method by 
which any action disagreeable to the community shall 
be made so intolerable to its perpetrator, that a perfect 
accord will be produced between individual and public 
interests. Now I am far indeed from asserting that 
this scheme (which oddly enough meets with especial 
favour from those who find something unworthy of 
the highest morality in the ordinary doctrine of 
future retribution) is wholly chimerical. The effect 
which the opinion of his habitual associates has upon 
the ordinary man, who is neither a hero nor a scoundrel, 
is almost limitless : and though I do not know that 
their approval has been able as yet to give its object 
a foretaste of Heaven, their disapproval may, without 
doubt, be so organised as to supply its victim with a 
very sufficient anticipation of Hell. But is this a 
power which any sober man desires to see indefinitely 



THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 297 

increased and placed in irresponsible hands ? Is there 
the slightest possibility that its operation would be 
limited to questions of morals ? Would it not inevit- 
ably trespass upon individual freedom in neutral 
matters ? Would it not crush out every germ of that 
" tendency to variation " which is the very basis of 
development ? and can we seriously regard it as an 
improvement in the scheme of the universe that 
Infinite Justice and Infinite Mercy should be dethroned 
for the purpose of putting in their place an apotheo- 
sised Mrs. Grundy ? 

Dismissing, then, this substitute for future retribu- 
tion as a remedy more dangerous than the disease, 
let us take stock of the position in which practical 
morality is left by the abolition of a future life. I 
have sketched for you what the world might be if it 
were governed solely by reasonable self-love ; and a 
comparison between this picture and the reality 
should satisfy any one how feeble a motive self-love 
is compared with the work which it has to perform. 
In this lies the explanation of a fact which, strangely 
enough, has been used as an argument to show the 
worthlessness of Christianity as an instrument for 
moralising the world. How comes it, say these 



298 THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 

objectors, that in the ages when (as they read history) 
the sufferings and joys of eternity were present with 
special vividness to the mind of Christendom, more 
effect was not produced upon the lives of men ; that 
licentiousness and devotion so often went hand in 
hand; that the terrors of Hell and the hopes of 
Heaven were powerless to stay the hand of violence 
and oppression? The answer is, that then, as now, 
the conviction that happiness lies along one road and 
misery along another, is seldom adequate to deter- 
mine the path of the traveller. He will choose the 
wrong way, knowing it to be the wrong way, and 
well assured in his moments of reflection that he is 
doing not merely what he knows to be wicked, but 
what he knows to be inexpedient. Surely, however, 
this is not only conformable to the facts of human 
nature, but to the doctrines of Christianity. If the 
practice of the noblest conduct is a fruit that can 
spring from the enlightened desire for happiness, 
then have theologians in all ages been notably mis- 
taken. But it is not so. However closely in theory 
the actions prescribed by self-love may agree with 
those prescribed by benevolence, no man has ever 
succeeded in performing them from the former motive 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 299 

alone. No conviction, for instance, that unselfishness 
" pays " has ever made any man habitually and suc- 
cessfully unselfish. To promote the happiness of 
others solely as a means to our own, may be, and is, 
a perfectly logical and reasonable policy, but it is not 
a policy which human beings are capable of pursuing : 
and, as experience shows that the love of self must 
be barren unless merged in the love of others, so 
does the Church teach that rarely can this love of 
others be found in its highest perfection unless associ- 
ated with the love of God. These three great 
principles great, but not co-equal, distinct in them- 
selves, harmonious in the actions they prescribe, 
gaining strength from a combination often so intimate 
as to defy analysis, are yet, even in combination, 
insufficient to control the inordinate ambitions, desires, 
and passions over which they are de jure, but seldom 
de facto, the unquestioned rulers. How, then, are they 
dealt with by the Positivist creed 1 The love of self 
is directly weakened as a motive to virtue by the 
abolition of supernatural sanctions in another life. 
The love of others is indirectly weakened by the possi- 
bility of conflict between it and the love of self. 
The love of God is summarily suppressed. Surely 



300 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

those who can contemplate this result with equa- 
nimity must either be very indifferent to the triumph 
of morality, very ignorant of human nature, or very 
sanguine about the issues of the struggle between the 
opposing forces of good and evil. 

III. In considering, however, the effect of any 
creed on human actions, it is a great though a common 
error to limit our view to the bare substance of the 
morality it advocates, or to the direct method by 
which moral action is to be produced. Scarcely less 
important is the manner in which it presents the 
results of human effort to the imagination of men. 
The question, Is life worth living ? when it is not a 
mere exclamation of weariness and satiety, means or 
should mean, Is there any object worth striving for, 
not merely as a matter of duty, but for its intrinsic 
greatness ? Can we look at the labours of man from 
any point of view which shall satisfy, not the 
conscience merely, but also the imagination 1 For if 
not, if the best we can say of life is that, though 
somewhat lacking in meaning, yet where circumstances 
are propitious, it is not otherwise than agreeable, 
then assuredly in our moments of reflection it would 
not seem worth living ; and the more we contemplate 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 301 

it as a whole, the more we raise ourselves above the 
distractions of the passing moment, the less worth 
living will it seem. 

This, I apprehend, would not be denied by any 
Positivist, but he would claim for his creed that it 
had an ideal object, vast enough to absorb the whole 
energies of mankind, and splendid enough to satisfy 
its highest aspirations. In the work of building up 
a perfected humanity, every one may bear a part. 
None indeed can do much, yet all may do something. 
During his brief journey from nothingness to nothing- 
ness, each man may add his pebble to the slowly- 
rising foundations of an ideal world, content to pass 
into eternal darkness if he has hastened by a moment 
the advent of the golden age which, though he will 
not live to see it, yet must surely come. 

Though personally I prefer a system under which 
we may share the millennium to which we are invited 
to contribute, I should be the last to deny that 
conduct thus inspired has much in it that appeals to 
the highest imagination. But though the ideal is 
grand, is it also " positive " ? I have never been able 
to discover that there is any foundation in the known 
laws of nature for these flattering anticipations, or for 



302 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

any confident expectation that if perfection be attain- 
able we are in the right way to attain it. Consider 
for a moment the complexity of human affairs : our 
ignorance of the laws which govern the growth of 
societies; the utter inadequacy of any power of 
calculation that we possess to apply with confidence 
our knowledge of those laws (such as it is) to the 
guidance of the contending forces by which the social 
organisation is moved. The man who would sacrifice 
the good of the next generation for the greater good 
of the generation next but one is a fool. He neglects 
an age of which he may know a little, for the sake of 
an age respecting which he can know nothing. He 
might, if he pleased, stumble along in the twilight ; 
he prefers to adventure himself in the blackness of 
utter night. Yet what is a generation in the history 
of man? Nothing. And we, who cannot be sure 
whether our efforts will benefit or injure our grand- 
children, are quietly to assume that we are in the 
way to contribute to the fortunes of the remotest 
representatives of the human race. 

It will perhaps be said that if we do our best, all 
these things shall be added unto us ; and that, without 
conscious contrivance on our part we shall be gently 



THE EELIGION OF HUMANITY 303 

led towards the final consummation by that modern 
Providence the principle of Evolution. But I have 
never been fortunate enough to persuade myself that 
evolution, in so far as it is a scientific doctrine, pro- 
mises all or any of these good things. I am aware 
that occasionally evolutionists also find themselves 
among the prophets ; and I take it that some of these 
anticipations are conceived in the spirit of prophecy 
rather than in that of natural philosophy. But what 
guidance in this matter is actually given us by science ? 
We are taught that the successive developments of 
species have not been along one main channel, but 
in countless branching streams, like those that inter- 
sect the delta of some great river. We also know 
that at some point or other on the way towards the 
development of a higher intelligence all these streams 
but one have been checked. The progenitors of man, 
and they alone, would seem to have hit off the 
precise line of flow, which could produce an Aristotle 
or a Newton. But because man, more fortunate than 
his cousins, has got thus far, is his future progress to 
be indefinite ? If he differs from the animals only in 
degree, will not his fate only differ from theirs in 
degree also 1 He too will reach a point, if he has not 



304 THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 

reached it already, beyond which no variation will 
bring with it increased intellectual grasp, increased 
vigour of imagination, increased moralisation of will, 
increased capacity for social life. Nor does it seem 
to me that the study of history leads us to more 
encouraging results. There, too, progress has not 
been along one line of descent. Eaces and nations 
have in turn taken up the burden of advancing 
civilisation, borne it for a certain space, found it too 
heavy for them, and have laid it wearily down. 
Many peoples have degenerated, many have become 
stationary, and I am wholly at a loss to know why 
we the group of Western nations and we alone, 
may hope to escape the common destiny of man. 

If we, then, regard the Universe in which we have 
to live as a mere web of connected phenomena, 
created for no object, informed by no purpose, 
stamped with no marks of design other than those 
which can be imitated by Natural Selection, I see no 
ground for the faith that all honest effort will work 
together for the production of a regenerate man and 
a perfected society. Such a conclusion cannot be 
drawn from the notion of God, for by hypothesis 
there is no God. It cannot be drawn from any 



THE KELIGION OF HUMANITY 305 

general survey of the plan on which the world is 
framed, or of the end for which it is constructed : 
for the world is framed on no plan, nor is it con- 
structed to carry out any end. It cannot be drawn 
from a consideration of the histories of individual 
species or nations, for the inference to be drawn 
from these is that Nature has set bounds beyond 
which no alteration brings with it any sensible 
improvement. It cannot be deduced from what we 
know of man, for we have no knowledge of man more 
certain than that he is powerless consciously to bend 
towards the attainment of any remote ideal, forces 
whose interaction he is powerless to calculate or to 
comprehend. To me, therefore, it seems that the 
"positive" view of the world must needs end in a 
chilling scepticism concerning the final worth of 
human effort, which can hardly fail to freeze and 
paralyse the warmest enthusiasm and the most 
zealous energy. 

IV. But I do not think that its effects in starving 
what I may perhaps be allowed to call the "moral 
imagination " end here. There are some who hold 
that the wider range of vision given to us by history 
and science has diminished the credibility of a religion 



306 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

which comparative theology tells us is only one 
among thousands that have nourished on a planet of 
which astronomy tells us that it is only one among 
indefinite millions scattered through limitless space. 
For my own part, the conclusion I draw from these 
undoubted facts is precisely the opposite one. Comte 
was, I think, well advised when, in his later writings, 
he discouraged research into matters remote from 
obvious human interest, on the ground that such 
research is inimical to the progress of the Positive 
faith. Not Christianity, but Positivism, shrinks and 
pales in the light of increasing knowledge. For, 
while the Positive faith professes to base itself upon 
science, its emotions centre in humanity, and we are 
therefore treated to the singular spectacle of a religion 
in which each great advance in the doctrines which 
support it dwarfs still further the dignity of the 
object for which it exists. For what is man, con- 
sidered merely as a natural object among other 
natural objects 1 Time was when the fortunes of 
his tribe were enough to exhaust the energies and to 
bound the imagination of the primitive sage. The 
gods' peculiar care, the central object of an attendant 
universe, that for which the sun shone and the dew 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 307 

fell, to which the stars in their courses ministered, it 
drew its origin in the past from divine ancestors, and 
might by divine favour be destined to an indefinite 
existence of success and triumph in the future. 

These ideas represent no early stage in human 
thought, but we have left them far behind. The 
family, the tribe, the nation, are no longer enough to 
absorb our interests. Man, past, present, and future, 
lays claim to our devotion. What, then, can we say 
of him 1 

Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to 
teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, 
the heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very 
existence is an accident, his story a brief and dis- 
creditable episode in the life of one of the meanest 
of the planets. Of the combination of causes which 
first converted a piece or pieces of unorganised jelly 
into the living progenitors of humanity, science 
indeed, as yet, knows nothing. It is enough that 
from such beginnings Famine, Disease, and Mutual 
Slaughter, fit nurses of the future lord of creation, 
have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race 
with conscience enough to know that it is vile, and 
intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. 



308 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

We survey the past and see that its history is of 
blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, 
of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We 
sound the future, and learn that after a period, long 
compared with the individual life, but short indeed 
compared with the divisions of time open to our 
investigation, the energies of our system will decay, 
the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, 
tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race 
which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man 
will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will 
perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this 
obscure corner has for a brief space broken the con- 
tented silence of the Universe, will be at rest. 
Matter will know itself no longer. Imperishable 
monuments and immortal deeds, death itself, and 
love stronger than death, will be as though they had 
never been. Nor will anything that remains be 
better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, 
devotion, and suffering of man have striven through 
countless generations to effect. 

Now this Positivist eschatology, like any other 
eschatology, need of course have little obvious or 
direct bearing on the great mass of ordinary every- 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 309 

day interests and emotions. It need not overshadow 
every thought and action of him who accepts it, any 
more than the knowledge that death must come some 
time, and may come soon, thrusts itself obtrusively 
into the business and enjoyment of the average man. 
But this does not mean that its influence can be dis- 
regarded. One of the objects of the "religion of 
humanity," and it is an object beyond all praise, is 
to stimulate the imagination till it lovingly embraces 
the remotest fortunes of the whole human family. 
But in proportion as this end is successfully attained, 
in proportion as we are taught by this or any other 
religion to neglect the transient and the personal, 
and to count ourselves as labourers for that which is 
universal and abiding, so surely must the increasing 
range which science is giving to our vision over the 
times and spaces of the material universe, and the 
decreasing importance of the place which man is seen 
to occupy in it, strike coldly on our moral imagina- 
tion, if so be that the material universe is all we have 
to do with. It is no answer to say that scientific 
discovery cannot alter the moral law, and that so 
long as the moral law is unchanged our conduct need 
be modified by no opinions as to the future destiny 



310 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

of this planet or its inhabitants. This contention, 
whether true or not, is irrelevant. All developed 
religions, and all philosophies which aspire to take 
the place of religion, Lucretius as well as St. Paul, 
give us some theory as to the destiny of man and his 
relation to the sum of things. My contention is that 
every such religion and every such philosophy, so 
long as it insists on regarding man as merely a 
phenomenon among phenomena, a natural object 
among other natural objects, is condemned by science 
to failure as an effective stimulus to high endeavour. 
Love, pity, and endurance it may indeed leave with 
us : and this is well. But it so dwarfs and im- 
poverishes the ideal end of human effort, that though 
it may encourage us to die with dignity, it hardly 
permits us to live with hope. 

I have now endeavoured briefly to indicate certain 
salient points in which, as I think, Positivism must, 
even within the limits of mundane experience, prove 
inferior as a moralising agent to Christianity. Of 
the inmost essence of Christianity, of the doctrines 
dealing with the personal relations between God and 
man, in which it differs not merely from Positivism, 
but from all other forms of religion, I have said little. 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 311 

For Positivism, not Christianity, is my subject, and 
over this region of religious consciousness Positivism 
claims no sway. I have contented myself with 
inquiring which of these two is in truth the better 
" religion of humanity " ; which is the religion most 
fitted, in the face of advancing knowledge, to con- 
centrate in the service of man those high emotions 
and far-reaching hopes from which the moral law, 
as a practical system, draws nourishment and strength. 
That such a method of treatment is essentially incom- 
plete is of course obvious. It arbitrarily isolates, and 
exclusively deals with, but a small fraction of the ques- 
tion at issue between supernaturalism and naturalism. 
It leaves out of account the greatest question of 
all namely, the question of comparative proof, and 
directs attention only to the less august problem of 
comparative advantage. Such a limitation of treat- 
ment would in any case be imposed by the character 
of the occasion, but I am not sure that it is not in- 
trinsically useful. A philosophy of belief, I do not 
mean of religious belief, exclusively or even princi- 
pally, but of all belief, has yet to be constructed. I 
do not know that its foundations are yet laid ; nor 
are they likely to be laid by Positivist thinkers, on 



312 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

whose minds it does not for the most part seem yet 
to have dawned that such a philosophy is in any way 
required. Until some progress is made in this work 
I must adhere to an opinion which I have elsewhere 
defended, that much current controversy about the 
possibility of miracles, about the evidence for design, 
about what is commonly, though very absurdly, 
described as the "conflict between science and 
religion," can at best be only provisional. But when 
the time comes at which mankind shall have attained 
some coherent method of testing the validity of those 
opinions respecting the natural and the spiritual 
worlds on which in their best moments they desire 
to act, then I hazard the guess, since to guesses we 
are at present confined, that adaptation to the moral 
wants and aspirations of humanity will not be re- 
garded as wholly alien to the problems over which 
so many earnest minds are at present disquieting 
themselves in vain. 

But even apart from the question of relative proof, 
it may be said that the comparison between Chris- 
tianity and Positivism has been very incompletely 
worked out. This is true, but let it be noted that 
the incompleteness of treatment is unfavourable, not 



THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 313 

to Positivism, but to Christianity. We have com- 
pared Positivism where it is thought to be strongest, 
with Christianity where it is thought to be weakest. 
And if the result of the comparison even there has 
been unfavourable to Positivism, how will the account 
stand if every element in Christianity be taken into 
consideration 1 ? The "religion of humanity" seems 
specially fitted to meet the tastes of that compara- 
tively small and prosperous class, who are unwilling 
to leave the dry bones of Agnosticism wholly un- 
clothed with any living tissue of religious emotion, 
and who are at the same time fortunate enough to be 
able to persuade themselves that they are contributing, 
or may contribute, by their individual efforts to the 
attainment of some great ideal for mankind. But what 
has it to say to the more obscure multitude who are 
absorbed, and wellnigh overwhelmed, in the constant 
struggle with daily needs and narrow cares ; who 
have but little leisure or inclination to consider the 
precise role they are called on to play in the great 
drama of " humanity," and who might in any case be 
puzzled to discover its interest or its importance 1 
Can it assure them that there is no human being so 
insignificant as not to be of infinite worth in the eyes 



314 THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY 

of Him who created the Heavens, or so feeble but 
that his action may have consequence of infinite 
moment long after this material system shall have 
crumbled into nothingness ? Does it offer consolation 
to those who are in grief, hope to those who are 
bereaved, strength to the weak, forgiveness to the 
sinful, rest to those who are weary and heavy laden ? 
If not, then, whatever be its merits, it is no rival to 
Christianity. It cannot penetrate and vivify the 
inmost life of ordinary humanity. There is in it no 
nourishment for ordinary human souls, no comfort 
for ordinary human sorrow, no help for ordinary 
human weakness. Not less than the crudest irre- 
ligion does it leave us men divorced from all com- 
munion with God, face to face with the unthinking 
energies of nature which gave us birth, and into 
which, if supernatural religion be indeed a dream, we 
must after a few fruitless struggles be again resolved. 



VIII 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1 

I FEEL that a speaker who has to address such an 
audience as the present on such a subject as "The 
Nineteenth Century" is bound to begin with an 
explanation which shall serve also as an apology. It 
is quite evident that even the most summary survey 
of so vast a theme could never be compressed within 
the compass of a single speech. Its various aspects 
have been parcelled put among the distinguished 
lecturers to whom the programme of this August 
meeting has been entrusted, and I am not foolish 
enough to suppose that I can give you beforehand, 
and, as it were, by way of preface, the quintessence 
of that which they will have to tell you in detail. 
Let it be therefore understood that my presence 

1 Inaugural Address, Cambridge University Local Lectures, 
delivered on August 2, 1900. 



316 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

here is rather ceremonial than educational. My 
business is not so much to lecture as tp open a 
course of lectures. I do not aspire to provide you 
with a survey or a criticism of any single phase of 
thought or action which has rendered the last 
hundred years memorable. I have neither moral to 
draw nor lesson to teach. My observations will be 
more in the nature of a conversation than of ordered 
narrative or reasoned discourse ; and I trust that if 
any think it worth while to criticise what I have to 
say, their criticism will conform to the lax and 
charitable canons by which alone conversation 
should be judged. 

My prescribed theme, then, is the Nineteenth 
Century. What is the nineteenth century I I do 
not mean to raise the controversy as to when the 
nineteenth century ends and the twentieth begins ; 
a question, the eager discussion of which affords a 
striking proof of the aphorism that the pleasures of 
investigation do not lie so much in the acquisition of 
truth as in its pursuit. My inquiry aims at a 
different mark, and somewhat expanded it comes to 
this: When we isolate a century for particular 
consideration, what kind of period have we in our 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 317 

minds? The negative answer at all events seems 
plain. It is seldom, except by accident, exactly a 
hundred years. Moreover, it is seldom, except by 
accident, precisely the same period for two aspects 
of what we loosely but conveniently call the same 
century. Nature does not exhibit her uniformity 
by any pedantic adherence to the decimal system ; 
and if we insist on substituting rigid and arbitrary 
divisions of historical time for natural ones, half the 
significance of history will be lost for us. 

For example, if we had to put our fingers on the 
date which, in matters political, divided the last 
century from the present, we might for England 
choose the declaration of war with France in the 
last days of 1793 ; for France the assembling of the 
States General in 1789; for the United States of 
America, the declaration of Independence or the 
Peace of Versailles. For the corresponding event in 
literary history we might, perhaps, fix the publication 
of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as the dawn of the new 
period for the English-speaking peoples; and it 
may be Chateaubriand's Gnie du Christianisme, in 
1802, for the beginning in France. Science is 
cosmopolitan : and in dealing with it we may 



318 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

eliminate the particularities of race and language. 
But even in the case of science, the different centuries, 
if they are to be spoken of as separate entities, must 
not be too rigidly defined. Some gentle violence 
must be done to chronology if epochs are to be 
profitably distinguished ; and I imagine that those 
who are qualified to speak on such subjects (which 
I am not) would regard Laplace's Mdcanique Celeste 
(though not completed till 1825) as the culminat- 
ing performance of the old century ; the theories 
of Young and Dalton as belonging essentially to the 
new. 

Granting that a procedure of this kind is desirable 
if we are usefully to sum up the achievements of a 
particular epoch, it nevertheless remains true that no 
mere process of summation can quite explain the 
impression which different epochs produce on us. 
We cannot, by cataloguing mental characteristics or 
describing face and figure, convey the impression of 
a human personality ; neither can we by a parallel 
process justify our sentiments about a century. Yet 
most of us have them. " The reason why we cannot 
tell, but only this we know full well," some centuries 
please us and some do not. It so happens, for 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 319 

example, that I dislike the seventeenth century and 
like the eighteenth. I do not pretend to justify my 
taste. Perhaps it is that there is a kind of unity 
and finish about the eighteenth century wanting to 
its predecessor. Perhaps I am prejudiced against 
the latter by my dislike of its religious wars, which 
were more than half political, and its political wars, 
which were more than half religious. In any case 
the matter is quite unimportant. What is more to 
our present purpose is to ask, whether the nineteenth 
century yet presents itself to any of us sufficiently as 
a whole to suggest any sentiment of the kind I have 
just illustrated. I confess that, for my own part, it 
does not. Of that part of it with which most of us 
are alone immediately acquainted say the last third 
I feel I can in this connection say nothing. We 
are too much of it to judge it. The two remaining 
thirds, on the other hand, seem to me so different 
that I cannot criticise them together : and if I am to 
criticise them separately I acknowledge at once that 
it is the first third and not the second that engages 
my sympathies. There are those, I am aware, who 
think that the great Eeform Bill was the beginning 
of wisdom. Very likely they are right. But this is 



320 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

not a question of right but a question of personal 
predilection, and from that point of view the middle 
third of the nineteenth century does not, I acknow- 
ledge, appeal to me. It is probably due to the 
natural ingratitude which we are apt to feel towards 
our immediate predecessors. But I justify it to 
myself by saying that it reminds me too much of 
Landseer's pictures and the revival of Gothic ; that 
I feel no sentiment of allegiance towards any of the 
intellectual dynasties which then held sway; that 
neither the thin lucidity of Mill nor the windy 
prophesyings of Carlyle, neither Comte nor yet 
Newman, were ever able to arouse in me the 
enthusiasm of a disciple : that I turn with pleasure 
from the Corn Law squabbles to the great War; 
from Thackeray and Dickens to Scott and Miss 
Austen, even from Tennyson and Browning to 
Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley. 

Observations like these, however, are rather in 
the nature of individual fancies than impersonal or 
" objective " criticisms, and I hasten to consider 
whether, apart altogether from likes and dislikes, 
there is any characteristic note which distinguishes 
this century from any that has gone before it. 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 321 

On this point I range myself with those who find 
this characteristic note in the Growth of Science. 
In the last hundred years the world has seen great 
wars, great national and social upheavals, great 
religious movements, great economic changes. Litera- 
ture and Art have had their triumphs, and have 
permanently enriched the intellectual inheritance of 
our race. Yet, large as is the space which subjects 
like these legitimately fill in our thoughts, much as 
they will occupy the future historian, it is not among 
them that I seek for the most important and the most 
fundamental differences which separate the present 
from preceding ages. Eather is this to be found in 
the cumulative products of scientific research, to 
which no other period offers a precedent or a parallel. 
No single discovery, it may be, can be compared 
in its results to that of Copernicus. No single 
discoverer can be compared in genius to Newton. 
But in their total effects, the advances made by the 
nineteenth century are not to be matched. The 
difficulty is not so much to find the departments of 
knowledge which are either entirely new or have 
suffered complete reconstruction, but to find the 
departments of knowledge in which no such revolu- 

Y 



322 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

tionary change has taken place. Classical scholarship, 
the political history of certain limited periods, abstract 
mechanics, astronomy, in so far as it depends on 
abstract mechanics can this list be very greatly 
lengthened 1 I hardly think so. And if not, con- 
sider how vast must be the regions first effectuously 
conquered for knowledge during the period under 
discussion. 

But not only is this surprising increase of know- 
ledge new, but the use to which it has been put is 
new also. The growth of industrial invention is not 
a fact we are permitted to forget ; we do, however, 
sometimes forget how much of it is due to a close 
connection between theoretic knowledge and its 
utilitarian application, which in its degree is altogether 
unexampled in the history of mankind. It was 
dreamed of in the speculations of poet-philosophers 
like Bacon ; here and there it has been sporadically 
exemplified. Thus surgery must, I suppose, have 
always depended largely on anatomy, navigation upon 
astronomy, telescope-making upon optics, and so on. 
But, speaking broadly, it was not till the present 
century that the laboratory and the workshop were 
brought into intimate connection; that the man of 



THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 323 

practice began humbly to wait on the man of theory ; 
that the man of practice even discovered that a 
little theory would do him no irretrievable damage 
in the prosecution of his business. 

I suppose that at this moment if we were allowed 
a vision of the embryonic forces which are predestined 
most potently to affect the future of mankind, we 
should have to look for them, not in the legislature, 
nor in the press, nor on the platform, not in the 
schemes of practical statesmen, nor the dreams of 
political theorists, but in the laboratories of scientific 
students whose names are but little in the mouths of 
men, who cannot themselves forecast the results of 
their own labours, and whose theories could scarce 
be understood by those whom they will chiefly 
benefit. 

I need hardly say that I do not propose, even in 
the rudest outline, to attempt any sketch of our 
gains from this most fruitful union between science 
and invention. I may, however, permit myself one 
parenthetic remark on an aspect of it which is likely 
more and more to thrust itself unpleasantly upon 
our attention. 

Marvellous as is the variety and ingenuity of 



324 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

modern industrial methods, they almost all depend, 
in the last resort, upon our supply of useful power, 
and our supply of useful power is principally pro- 
vided for us by methods which, so far as I 
can see, have altered not at all in principle, and 
strangely little in detail, since the days of Watt. 
Coal, as we all know, is the chief reservoir of energy 
from which the world at present draws; and from 
which we in this country must always draw. But 
our main contrivance for utilising it is the steam- 
engine ; and by its essential nature the steam-engine 
is extravagantly wasteful ; so that when we are told, 
as if it was something to be proud of, that this is the 
age of steam, we may admit the fact, but can hardly 
share the satisfaction. Our coalfields as we know 
too well are limited. We certainly cannot increase 
them ; the boldest legislator would hesitate to limit 
their employment for purposes of domestic industry ; 
so that the only possible alternative is to economise 
our method of consuming them. And for this there 
would indeed seem to be a sufficiency of room. Let 
a second Watt arise ; let him bring into general use 
some mode of extracting energy from fuel which 
shall only waste 80 per cent of it and lo ! your 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 325 

coalfields, as sources of power, are doubled at 
once! 

The hope seems a modest one, but apparently we 
are not yet in sight of its fulfilment ; and therefore 
it is that we must qualify the satisfaction with which, 
at the end of the century, we contemplate the 
unbroken course of its industrial triumphs. We 
have, in truth, been little better than brilliant spend- 
thrifts. Every new invention seems to throw a new 
strain upon the vast, but not illimitable, resources of 
nature. We dissipate in an hour what it required a 
a thousand years to accumulate. Sooner or later the 
stored-up resources of the world will be exhausted. 
Humanity, having used or squandered its capital, 
will thenceforward have to depend upon such current 
income as can be derived from the diurnal heat of 
the sun and the rotation of the earth, till, in the 
sequence of the ages, these also begin to fail. With 
such remote speculations we are not now concerned : 
it is enough for us to take note how rapidly the 
prodigious progress of recent discovery has increased 
the drain upon the natural wealth of old manufac- 
turing countries, and especially of Great Britain; 
and at the same time frankly to recognise that it is 



326 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

only by new inventions that the collateral evils of 
old inventions can be mitigated ; that to go back is 
impossible; that our only hope lies in a further 
advance. 

After all, however, it is not necessarily the 
material and obvious results of scientific discoveries 
which are of the deepest interest. They have 
effected changes more subtle and perhaps less obvious, 
which are at least as worthy of our consideration, 
and are at least as unique in the history of the 
civilised world. 

No century has seen so great a change in our 
intellectual apprehension of the world in which we 
live. If we could construct an imaginary conversa- 
tion between a man of science who lived a century 
ago and one who lived two centuries ago say 
between Priestley, who died in 1804, and Hooke, 
who died in 1703 we should, I think, represent 
the interlocutors as addressing one another, so to 
speak, on equal terms. Though discoveries which 
have subsequently proved to be of the most far- 
reaching importance had been made in the interval, 
these had as yet effected no great revolution in 
general modes of thought. Indeed it may be 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 327 

suspected that the earlier philosopher would have 
been in some respects nearer to the moderns than 
the later. But leap over another hundred years, 
and imagine Priestley conversing with any of the 
gentlemen who have promised to take part in the 
proceedings we are inaugurating to-day, and a very 
different state of affairs would then present itself. 
It is not merely that this century has witnessed a 
prodigious and unexampled growth in our stock of 
knowledge ; for new knowledge might accumulate 
without end, and yet do no more than fill in, without 
materially changing, the outline already traced by the 
old. Something much more important than this has 
happened. Our whole point of view has altered. 
The mental framework in which we arrange the 
separate facts in the world of men and things is 
quite a new framework. The spectacle of the 
universe presents itself now in a wholly changed 
perspective : we not only see more but we see 
differently. 

The revolution is comparable to that other revolu- 
tion produced by the joint effect of the heliocentric 
hypothesis already referred to and the discovery of 
America. But it is surely far greater. Columbus 



328 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

and Copernicus gave an extraordinary extension to 
our conception of the world in space. The one 
showed how much larger was the habitable globe 
than we had conceived it; the other showed how 
much smaller was the place occupied by it in the 
general scheme of things. But in this century we 
have done much more than this. We have, in the 
first place, profoundly modified our whole conception 
of the world in time. Duration has for us, if not a 
new meaning, at least a new content. All the 
theories of change which now hold the field, whether 
they be applicable to suns and planets, or to geological 
strata, or to the succession of living organisms, or to 
their life history, or to the growth of social institu- 
tions, or to the pre-documentary history of man, are 
either the creation of this century or have first 
become common property during this century. Docu- 
mentary history itself has greatly altered its scope 
and methods. It is, therefore, not too much to say 
that for us in the year nineteen hundred the world, 
considered as a pageant slowly unrolling itself 
through the ages, is a wholly different world from 
that which presented itself to the imagination of our 
grandfathers a hundred years ago; I am not even 



THE XIXETEEXTH CEXTUBY 329 

snre that it would be too much to say that in this 
particular we differ more from them than they 
differed from the Babylonians. 

Bat this is not all The discoveries in physics 
and in chemistry which have borne their share in 
thus re-creating for us the evolution of the past are 
in process of giving us quite new ideas as to the 
inner nature of that material Whole of which the 
worlds traversing space are but an insignificant part. 

Differences of quality, once thought ultimate, are 
constantly being resolved into differences of motion 
or configuration. What were once regarded as 
things are now known to be movements. Phenomena 
apparently so wide apart as light, radiant heat, and 
electricity are, as it is unnecessary to remind you, 
now recognised as substantially identical The 
arrangement of atoms in the molecule, not less than 
their intrinsic nature, produces the characteristic 
attributes of the compound. The atom itself has 
been pulverised, and speculation is forced to admit 
as a possibility that even the chemical elements 
themselves may be no more than varying arrange- 
ments of a common substance. Plausible attempts 
have been made to reduce the physical universe, 



330 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

with its infinite variety, its glory of colour and of 
form, its significance, and its sublimity, to one 
homogeneous medium, in which there are no distinc- 
tions to be discovered but distinction of movement 
or of stress ; and although no such hypothesis can, I 
suppose, be yet accepted, the gropings of physicists 
after this, or some other not less audacious unifica- 
tion, must finally, I think, be crowned with success. 

The change of view which I have endeavoured to 
indicate is purely scientific, but its consequences 
cannot be confined to science. How will they 
manifest themselves in other regions of human 
activity in Literature, in Art, in Religion? The 
subject is one rather for the lecturer on the twentieth 
century than for the lecturer on the nineteenth. I 
at least cannot endeavour to grapple with it. But 
before concluding, I will ask one question about it 
and hazard one prophecy. My question relates to 
Art. We may, I suppose, say that artistic feeling 
constantly expresses itself in the vivid presentation 
of sensuous fact and its remote emotional suggestion. 
Will it in time be dulled by a theory of the world 
which carries with it no emotional suggestion, which 
is perpetually merging the sensuous fact in its 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 331 

physical explanation, whose main duty indeed it is to 
tear down the cosmic scene-painting and expose the 
scaffolding and wheelwork by which the world of 
sense-perception is produced 1 I do not know. I do 
not hazard a conjecture. But the subject is worth 
consideration. 

So much for my question. My prophecy relates 
to religion. We have frequently seen in the history 
of thought that any development of the mechanical 
conception of the physical world gives an impulse to 
materialistic speculation. Now, if the goal to which, 
consciously or unconsciously, the modern physicist is 
pressing, be ever reached, the mechanical view of 
things will receive an extension and a completeness 
never before dreamed of. There would then in 
truth be only one natural science, namely, physics ; 
and only one kind of explanation, namely, the 
dynamic. If any other science claimed a separate 
existence it could only be because its work was as 
yet imperfectly performed, because it had not as yet 
pressed sufficiently far its analysis of cause and effect. 
Would this conception, in its turn, foster a new and 
refined materialism 1 For my own part I conjecture 
that it would not. I believe that the very complete- 



332 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

ness and internal consistency of such a view of the 
physical world would establish its inadequacy. The 
very fact that within it there seemed no room for 
Spirit would convince mankind that Spirit must be 
invoked to explain it. I know not how the theoretic 
reconciliation will be effected ; for I mistrust the 
current philosophical theories upon the subject. But 
that in some way or other future generations will, 
each in its own way, find a practical modus vivendi 
between the natural and the spiritual I do not 
doubt at all; and if, a hundred years hence, some 
lecturer, whose parents are not yet born, shall 
discourse to your successors in this place on the 
twentieth century, it may be that he will note the 
fact that, unlike their forefathers, men of his time 
were no longer disquieted by the controversies once 
suggested by that well-worn phrase "the conflict 
between Science and Eeligion." 



IX 

ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE 
TRADE 

IN the following paper I propose to discuss some of 
the more fundamental economic questions which (as 
I think) require consideration on the part of those 
who desire to arrive at a sober and unprejudiced 
estimate of our fiscal policy. The present controversy 
has brought into existence, or at least into notice, 
masses of statistical information, official and un- 
official ; the documentary flood is rising, and for some 
time to come is not likely to diminish. But in order 
that the volume of facts thus provided should in- 
struct and not merely overwhelm us, it is necessary 
to consider it in the light of theories and principles, 
always, of course, open to revision in the light of 
experience, but without the provisional use of which 
experience itself can utter no intelligible oracles. 
It may be as well to premise that I approach the 



334 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

subject from the free trade point of view: though 
the free trade is perhaps not always that which passes 
for orthodox in the House of Commons or on the 
platform. There is indeed a real danger of the 
controversy degenerating into an unprofitable battle 
of watch-words, behind which there is nothing de- 
serving to be called independent reflection at all. 
Popular disputation insists on labels, and likes its 
labels old. It therefore divides the world, for 
purposes of fiscal controversy, into protectionists and 
free traders. Those who are protectionists are 
assumed to be protectionists after the manner of Lord 
George Bentinck. Those who are free traders are 
assumed to be free traders after the manner of Mr. 
Cobden. Does a man question the dogma that taxa- 
tion must always be for revenue? Then evidently 
he hankers after the fiscal system of 1841 and a 
twenty-shilling duty on corn. Does he admire the 
tariff reforms of sixty years ago 1 Then evidently 
he regards the simple and unqualified doctrine of 
" free trade " as so fundamental in its character, so 
universal in its application, so capable of exact ex- 
pression, that every conclusion to which it logically 
leads must be accepted without hesitation or reserve. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FEEE TRADE 335 

I am a " free trader," but not, it must be acknow- 
ledged, precisely after this pattern. 

I 

1. That there may indeed be a collision between 
free trade and greater issues is easily seen if we 
reflect that an ideal world, from a narrowly economic 
point of view, would be one in which capital and 
labour would flow without hindrance to the places 
where profits were greatest and wages highest. 
Under the stress of economic forces they would 
immediately adjust themselves to a position of 
temporary equilibrium, as the ocean adjusts its 
level under the force of gravity. Such a system, 
were it possible, would certainly be one of "free 
trade" in the fullest sense of that much-abused 
term, and under it the wealth -producing capacities 
of mankind would be all that free trade can make 
them. 

2. But this perfect fluidity of capital and labour, 
however excellent its other consequences, would 
evidently be inconsistent with national life as we 
understand it. Nations could not be maintained, at 
least in their present shape, except through the 



336 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

accumulated effect of the various causes which in 
their sum total make up what may be called 
" economic friction," just as the continents on which 
they live are only prevented by cohesion and 
mechanical friction from merging in the ocean by 
which they are surrounded. It is because mankind 
are largely ruled by custom, are fond of home and 
country, cannot easily acquire new aptitudes and new 
languages, cannot migrate without cost and risk, that 
labour is not "fluid." And though certain kinds of 
capital are really fluid, yet as a whole capital also is 
"viscous"; and partly because much of it is in a 
shape which cannot easily be moved or cannot be 
moved at all ; partly because business channels are 
changed slowly and with difficulty ; partly because, 
when the owner of the capital has to superintend its 
employment, he may, like other workers, be reluctant 
to change his home and his country, it also flows 
but gradually to the places where, under a system of 
" free trade " as above described, it would find its 
most profitable employment. 

3. Nations, as we know them, are therefore 
economically possible only because, for various 
reasons, mankind are both unable and unwilling to 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 337 

turn the natural resources of the world to the best 
economic account. It is the partial immobility of 
capital and labour to which this result is due, which 
makes it necessary for economists to distinguish 
between the theory of international and the theory 
of internal trade. And though the "countries" 
which figure in economic treatises as the units 
between which international trade takes place, are 
not necessarily identical with the "countries" which 
are the subject of international law, the fact remains 
that these last the actual nations into which the 
world is parcelled out would never have come into 
being, and could never be maintained as they are, but 
at the cost of something which, from the point of 
view of pure free trade theory, must be regarded as 
economic waste. And inasmuch as they are thus a 
standing violation of cosmopolitan free trade (as 
above defined), it is not surprising that in their 
efforts at self-preservation they have not felt them- 
selves bound to consider only arguments drawn from 
cosmopolitan economics. They have taken into 
account, not always wisely, something more than the 
present pecuniary interest of individual consumers 
and producers, they have recognised that the state 
z 



338 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

is something more than the individuals composing 
it at any one time, and that not only is it irrational 
to suppose that what is good for the wealth-producing 
capacity of the world must necessarily be good for 
each particular state, but that quite certainly it is not. 
4. This last proposition would have been accepted 
by Adam Smith; and so far as I know would be 
denied by no economist of repute. But there is 
nevertheless a widespread idea that what is economi- 
cally "natural" as opposed to what is artificial or 
state contrived, is probably expedient, and that at 
least the burden of proof lies with those who take 
a different view. This theory, which belongs to a 
somewhat antiquated mode of thought, is, I think, 
incorrect. Each suggested example of state inter- 
ference, in this or any other sphere of activity, has of 
course to make good its claim to acceptance. But it 
would be a most singular coincidence if (for example) 
every "natural " cause which promoted the easy flow 
of capital and labour from area to area, should also 
promote the interests of particular nations, the 
number of whose population and the character of 
whose commerce are largely founded upon the partial 
immobility of these very partners in production. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 339 

5. There is no doubt a better argument against 
state intervention in matters of trade than any to be 
extracted from the a priori social theories so fashion- 
able in the eighteenth century an argument based 
on a deep-seated distrust of the competence of 
Legislatures. Adam Smith, for example, held much 
the same opinion of kings and parliaments as some 
persons do of doctors. He did not doubt that tonics 
might be found to invigorate national commerce, but 
he did most gravely doubt whether the authorised 
practitioners would find them. This, however, is 
hardly an assumption on which we can proceed in 
these days of Factory legislation, Housing legisla- 
tion, compulsory Education, Inspection of Mines, and 
Mercantile Marine Acts. Parliament can hardly 
assume its own incompetence as a fundamental 
axiom, however plausible this may appear as a work- 
ing hypothesis. Having recognised the general truth 
that there is no pre-established harmony between 
economic world interests and national well-being, we 
seem required to abandon the laisser faire position as 
absolute dogma, and to accept provisionally the view 
that the character of our fiscal policy should vary 
with varying circumstances, and that we have no 



340 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

right whatever to regard any plan as perfect merely 
because it is simple, unartificial, and, above all, 

familiar. 

II 

6. The plan we should adopt must evidently 
depend upon the end we wish to secure, upon the 
kind of state we desire to create or to maintain. 
Without considering the motives which have from 
time to time dominated the fiscal policy of other 
countries, it is only necessary here to say that so 
far as Great Britain is concerned, the contest which 
came to an end in 1846 was, in its inner reality, 
not a fight over an economic theory, but a struggle 
between two opposing ideals supported by two rival 
interests. Was the country to become more and 
more a manufacturing community 1 or was agriculture 
to be maintained, at whatever cost, in its ancient 
predominance, with all the social and economic con- 
sequences which were, or were thought to be, in- 
volved in such an attempt ? 

7. The country decided (in my opinion rightly) 
in favour of the first of these alternatives. Its 
benefits, to be sure, have not been unmixed ; but it 
has this conclusive argument in its favour that a 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 341 

predominantly agricultural Britain could never have 
supported the men or furnished the money required 
for her imperial mission. 

It must, however, be remembered that this " manu- 
facturing ideal " can only be made tolerable, indeed 
can only be realised, if two conditions are satisfied : 
(a) that inasmuch as conditions of climate render it 
obligatory to import many of our luxuries, and condi- 
ditions of population and manufacture render it 
obligatory to import many of our necessaries, a large 
export trade is necessary in order that these things 
shall be paid for; (b) that sufficient capital shall 
always be forthcoming for home investment in order 
that this end may be attained, and employment pro- 
vided for our growing urban population. 

8. These corollaries which flow from the adoption 
of the manufacturing ideal in a country situated like 
Great Britain suggested no anxious thought to fiscal 
reformers fifty or sixty years ago. They made, 
indeed, two mistakes, neither of which (as I shall 
show more in detail presently) would, perhaps, have 
greatly mattered without the other. They failed to 
foresee that the world would reject free trade, and 
they failed to take full account of the commercial 



342 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

possibilities of the British Empire. If they had been 
right on the first point, if free trade had indeed 
become a universal creed, no controversy about our 
commercial relations with any fiscally independent 
community could possibly have arisen. If, on the 
other hand, they had succeeded in giving us Imperial 
free trade, the protective tendencies of foreign 
nations would in the long run have been but of 
secondary importance. The double error has estab- 
lished insular free trade with its inevitable limitations, 
and left us bearing all the burden, but enjoying only 
half the advantages, which should attach to Empire. 
9. It must, I think, be accounted a misfortune 
that the views of the great tariff reformers were thus 
restricted. The most momentous, perhaps the most 
permanent, victory for free trade was won when, 
rather on national than on economic grounds, inter- 
state tariffs were forbidden in the United States. I 
know not whether sixty years since a like victory 
might have been won for the same cause within the 
limits of the British Empire. In any case, the 
attempt was neither made nor dreamed of, and future 
efforts in that direction can, under altered conditions, 
be only gradual and tentative. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 343 

10. However this may be, we must now accept 
the fact that while our own free trade is rather 
insular than imperial, the most advanced of our com- 
mercial rivals are not only protectionist now, but in 
varying measure are going to remain so. Other 
nations have in the past accepted the principle of 
free trade; none have consistently adhered to it. 
Irrespective of race, of polity, and of material circum- 
stances, every other fiscally independent community 
whose civilisation is of the western type has deliber- 
ately embraced, in theory if not in practice, the pro- 
tectionist system. 1 Young countries and old countries, 
rich countries and poor countries, large countries and 
small countries, free countries and absolutist countries, 
all have been moved by the same arguments to adopt 
the same economic ideal. In circumstances so little 
foreseen we are driven to ask whether a fiscal system 
suited to a free trade nation in a world of free traders, 
remains suited in every detail to a free trade nation in a 



III 

11. As already stated, I approach this question as 
a free trader, i.e. with the desire to promote free 

1 Ikcept perhaps Holland. 



344 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

trade as far as contemporary circumstances permit. 
I throw no doubt on the free trade theory when 
expressed with due limitations. It tells us that 
international free trade promotes wealth, because it 
conduces to an international division of labour. Each 
country is enabled to turn its industrial capabilities 
to the best account ; to purchase what it wants but 
cannot produce, or wants but cannot produce except 
at a relative disadvantage, by the export of those 
commodities for the production of which it is in a 
position of relative advantage. This system, there- 
fore, tends to secure that each country does most 
what it does best, and buys what it needs at the 
least possible cost. 

1 2. There can, I think, be no question that, speak- 
ing broadly, this is the best way of securing for the 
world the largest immediate results for international 
commerce and industry. It is by no means equally 
certain that it secures for each separate nation the 
maximum of well-being ; nor even (under conceivable 
conditions respecting the flow of capital and labour) 
the maximum of wealth. Moreover, the majority of 
economists hold (I think rightly) that it may some- 
times sacrifice the future to the present, and delay 



ECONOMIC NOTES -ON INSULAE FREE TRADE 345 

what might ultimately have proved to be the most 
productive distribution of capital and labour. 

13. It is not, however, with these qualifications 
of the doctrine of universal free trade that we are 
now principally concerned. Our business is with 
the only free trade which we are ever likely to see ; 
namely, free trade in some nations limited by protec- 
tion in others. Of this partial free trade we may say 
in general, that its merits must be accepted with all 
the reserves already mentioned, and with this one in 
addition that under conceivable circumstances free 
trade may not save a nation from suffering more by 
the adoption of a protective policy by its neighbours 
than do those neighbours themselves, nor even from 
being worse off than it would have been had it never 
pursued a free trade policy at all. 

IV 

14. In what way then can this take place, what 
is the precise nature of the injury done to a free 
trade country by the adoption of protection by its 
neighbours 1 Presumably such a country bears its 
share in the general economic loss which the wide- 
spread adoption of a bad fiscal system inflicts on the 



346 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

world at large. Does it in addition suffer any special 
loss? 

This is, in other words, to ask what is the special 
value to a free trade country of open markets. That 
our whole national policy implies their value is plain 
enough. We negotiate strenuously to maintain those 
that exist ; there are some for which we should 
assuredly fight. It would be commonly admitted 
that the absorption by a protective nation of any 
rich rion- protective area with which we had com- 
mercial dealings would produce not merely a 
temporary -disturbance of our trade, but a sensible 
diminution of our permanent gains. 

15. If this be true, it is of course because any 
check to our export trade is injurious. But why is 
it injurious ? From the consumer's point of view, at 
least, it would seem that it is only what we import 
that matters. And in a sense that is so. But since 
the fortunes of the import trade are indissolubly 
united with those of the export, it may well happen 
that though the exporting manufacturer is the first 
to feel the pinch of hostile tariffs, it is the importing 
consumer who ultimately suffers. 

16. Consider, for example, a simple case. Suppose 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 347 

that an island, which had shaped its industrial system 
on the Cobdenite model, found itself confronted by 
a world in which every other state adopted an 
extreme form of protection. What would be the 
consequence of such a situation to the island itself, 
and in a less degree to other countries ? The answer 
to this question must, I conceive, vary according to 
the economic characteristics which we choose to 
attribute to our imaginary example. 

17. Take for consideration three variations of the 
problem. Let us assume, in the first place, that the 
productive capacity of our imaginary island is small 
in amount, and restricted in range; and further, 
that it can neither grow nor manufacture anything 
which cannot, with the help of protection, be grown 
or manufactured at a profit in the protective countries. 
In such circumstances I conceive that the fiscal policy 
of these countries would completely ruin it ; and that 
they would suffer but little in the process. This case 
I may parenthetically observe is not unlike that of 
our own colony of Barbadoes, where, according to the 
Commission of 1900, nothing could be produced but 
sugar sugar, which under the then prevailing system 
of bounties, could scarce be sold except at a loss. 



348 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

18. An economic area so situated is helpless. 
Having founded its industrial system on a free trade 
basis, having encouraged the growth of population 
and the investment of capital, in the belief that it 
could readily purchase what it needed by the sale of 
its exports, it discovers that, by no fault of its own, 
nor through any operation of nature, this sale is 
becoming more and more difficult ; that only by the 
reduction of profits and wages can it be temporarily 
continued; and that finally it becomes impossible. 
Capital either flies to happier regions or is lost; 
labour either emigrates or sinks to savagery, and 
unless other help arrives our island returns to the 
state of nature from which it had surely been better 
that it had never emerged. 

19. This represents, of course, an extreme case of 
economic dependence. Let us now consider one of 
the opposite type. Assume that our imaginary 
island is of vast extent, enjoying consequently great 
varieties of climates, with a population small com- 
pared to its food-producing area, and with natural 
resources fitted to minister to all their needs. Such 
a country finding its exports gradually diminished 
by growing foreign tariffs, would, no doubt, suffer 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FEEE TRADE 349 

some economic loss. But it will be very differently 
situated from Barbadoes. Though it will have to 
manufacture at home much that it hitherto imported, 
though capital and labour would be diverted into 
channels which, at least for a time, would be less 
advantageous than those through which they had 
hitherto flowed, yet in the long run the condition of 
such a country would, I conceive, not be seriously 
worse than if it had been permitted by its neighbours 
to pursue its industrial development along free trade 
lines. Though the markets of the world might be 
closed to it by protection, its own would not be 
seriously insufficient. Domestic free trade would be 
enough. 

V 

20. But now take a third case. Let us assume 
our imaginary island to be rich in mineral resources, 
and adequately provided with capital and labour, 
but to possess no striking advantages over other 
areas, no natural monopoly in respect of the things 
it was best fitted to produce. Let us further suppose 
that owing to the law known to economists as that 
of "diminishing returns," it could not find food 
within its own limits for a growing population, 



350 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

except at rapidly increasing cost, and that therefore 
free trade and industrial expansion involved increas- 
ing dependence on external areas of food supply. 

21. Now, what would happen to a country thus 
naturally endowed, and thus industrially organised, 
if it found itself confronted with a universal system 
of augmenting tariffs? As an economic example it 
stands between our first case and our second. Which 
does it most resemble 1 

It cannot be doubted, I think, that though it 
could never find itself in the position of Barbadoes 
it would not only be incomparably worse off than 
the larger area of our second supposition, but worse 
off than it would have been had it never adopted 
the free trade policy, the advantage of which it has 
lost through the protective policy of its neighbour. 

From the very nature of the case free trade 
requires open markets somewhere. If the free trade 
country is large enough and varied enough, the open 
markets within its own territory may, as we have 
just seen, be sufficient. They will not be sufficient 
if the character and capabilities of the country are 
limited in such a way that, while large imports are 
a vital necessity, the exports required to pay for 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FEEE TRADE 351 

them are not of a kind which other nations all, by 
hypothesis, protectionist are obliged to take. 

22. I imagine that in the conditions supposed, the 
free trade island would be compelled to change the 
character of its industries so as to find the weakest 
spot in the protective barrier. Each change would 
probably involve a double loss, the loss of part of 
the capital and skill devoted to the abandoned 
industry, and the loss due to the fact that the new 
industry was presumably less remunerative than the 
old. Each change would also, by supposition, be 
sooner or later foiled by some corresponding augmenta- 
tion of the hostile tariffs. When all Avas got out of 
this industrial rearrangement which it was capable 
of giving, the free trade island would have no resource 
but to purchase its imports by lowering prices to the 
point at which it became possible to force its manu- 
factures through the tariff obstacles by which its 
exports were impeded. If no diminution of profits 
or wages enabled such a point to be reached, the 
island would no longer be able to support its existing 
population ; nor would any equilibrium be attained 
until, at the cost of much suffering, it was reduced 
to the position of being self-sufficient producing, 



352 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FEEE TRADE 

that is to say, within its own area, all that it con- 
sumed however little soil, climate, and mineral 
resources lent themselves to such a policy. 

23. It may perhaps be objected that this imaginary 
case is not instructive even as a hypothesis, since 
the protective countries would never be so foolish as 
to injure their own export trade by impoverishing, 
and perhaps ruining, a good customer. They 
might do it in cases like Barbadoes where the 
amounts involved were small. But plain considera- 
tions of self-interest would seemingly forbid so 
suicidal a policy where the amounts involved were 
large. 

But are the considerations of self-interest so plain 1 
However sound be the economic doctrine on which 
they depend, it is not one which easily appeals to 
protectionists. They would not be protectionists if 
it did. What they look to are the immediate and 
obvious consequences which are assumed to flow 
from high tariffs; and in the supposed case the 
obvious consequences are exactly what they desire. 
They would be so eminently satisfied with the 
successful "protection of Home Markets" and the 
weakening of a commercial competitor, that the more 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAK FREE TRADE 353 

obscure causation of the counter-stroke which protec- 
tion delivered against their own exporters would 
leave them unmoved. Here, indeed, if anywhere, 
the appeal to history should surely be conclusive. 
We have countless records of fiscal arrangements by 
which one nation has sought to benefit its commerce 
at the cost of another. Can a single example of the 
reverse process be produced? Has there ever been 
a nation which modified the commercial policy to 
which it was otherwise inclined, lest it should cripple 
the trade of a dangerous rival, who happened also 
to be an important customer ? I trow not. 1 

VI 

24. Among the three variations of our original 
supposition we are clearly most concerned with the 
last. The industrial characteristics with which in 
that case we credited our imaginary community, are 
precisely those actually possessed by Great Britain. 
Why then, it may be asked, does Great Britain not 

1 It must be remembered that it need not be the protective 
policy of country B which directly and obviously makes it im- 
possible for free trade country A to pay for B's exports. The 
direct cause might be protection in country C, through which A 
used to pay its debts to B, but can so pay no longer. 

2A 



354 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

suffer all the ills with which our hypothetical island 
was threatened 1 That it does not is manifest. We 
imagined a free trade country completely environed 
by a wall of protection ; a wall high enough to make 
export first difficult and then impossible. We inferred 
that it would find imports first costly and then un- 
attainable. In actual fact we see Britain hampered 
indeed by foreign tariffs, yet able, in spite of them, 
to carry on an export trade which, if it does not 
increase as we might wish, yet increases rather than 
diminishes, and an import trade of unexampled 
magnitude. 

25. In what then resides the difference between 
the two cases ? In three separate particulars. 

(a) Foreign countries owe us a great deal of money, 

the interest of which they pay by means of 
imports into the United Kingdom. 1 

(b) Large areas still remain which are not protected 

at all. 

1 Under the first head I do not refer to freights or commissions. 
These it is more convenient to treat as payment, not for exported 
capital, but exported services. They should be classed with the 
payments for ordinary material exports, such as textiles or hard- 
wares. At present we are concerned with the interest on foreign 
loans, and the profits on commercial undertakings abroad, paid 
to persons inhabiting this country. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAK FREE TRADE 355 

(c) Existing protected areas are not completely 
protected. 

It is these three causes, and these alone, which 
prevent this country undergoing the fate which, in 
the third example, befell the hypothetical island. 
Each, therefore, deserves careful consideration. 

VII 

26. As regards the national income from foreign 
investments, it has to be observed that while it 
must always be better for the inhabitants of any 
country to own capital than not to own it, it is 
better that the capital they own should be earning 
a profit at home, than that it should be earning the 
same profit abroad. If, indeed, there is no further 
room at home for the employment of capital, then, 
no doubt, it will be far better for all concerned that 
the overflow of wealth should be turned to account 
elsewhere than that it should run to waste. On 
the other hand, if capital which goes abroad might 
have increased the effective demand for British 
labour, its expatriation is pro tanto a loss to the 
labourer and the nation, if not to the capitalist 
himself. 



356 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FEEE TRADE 

27. Now it seems clear that in many cases this 
expatriation of capital can be, and is, encouraged by 
foreign protective tariffs. The imposition of a pro- 
tective duty upon any article of British manufacture 
has of course the double effect of discouraging its 
production here, and encouraging its production 
in the protectionist country say Belgium. The 
popular free trade account of what happens in con- 
sequence is that, on the one hand, the English manu- 
facturer and artisan are injured by the diversion 
of industry into some other, and presumably less 
profitable, branch of British industry ; on the other, 
the Belgian consumer is mulcted in order to find a 
profit for the Belgian manufacturer. It is the latter, 
therefore, alone who profits by the transaction. All 
the rest are losers, though the British loss, so far as 
this particular industry is concerned, is confined to 
that part of it which supplied Belgium, and does not 
affect its success either in the home or in neutral 
markets. 

28. But this is by no means what necessarily 
happens. It is assumed apparently that the British 
manufacturer adheres to his country and changes his 
business. Bnt he may choose the other alternative. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 357 

He may adhere to his business and (qua manufacturer) 
change his country. He may transfer, that is to say, 
all that is transferable of his capital to Belgium; 
engage there, under the shield of protection, in the 
very industry from which foreign protection had 
driven him at home, and possibly complete not only 
in neutral but in British markets with his unprotected 
countrymen. It is, I think, manifest that if this 
should happen the fiscal arrangements of Belgium 
will have destroyed some invested British capital 
and some acquired British skill ; will have directly 
injured the British workman and the Belgian con- 
sumer ; will have directly benefited the British con- 
sumer; will have directly benefited the Belgian 
workman and the English capitalist engaged in the 
Belgian industry ; will have (if the capitalist con- 
tinues to spend his profits at home) indirectly 
benefited England by increasing her foreign revenue ; 
and will have indirectly injured her industries by 
giving them a subsidised rival. Without attempting 
to set out these various losses and gains in a national 
balance-sheet (which would, of course, show different 
results for each concrete case), it is, I think, plain 
that foreign investments of this description are by 



358 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAE FREE TRADE 

no means the unmixed benefit which some people 
appear to suppose. 

29. We may, however, reasonably hope that the 
great bulk of our investments abroad are not of this 
character ; but have been on the whole of advantage 
both to foreigners and to ourselves. It must not, 
however, be forgotten that the magnitude of these 
investments is due rather to the fact that we were 
first in the industrial field, than to the intrinsic 
merit of our fiscal system. Not every country which 
adopts free trade is destined to possess a large surplus 
of available capital, nor even to retain at home all 
the capital it requires for domestic use. 

VIII 

30. The second advantage which the actual Great 
Britain possesses over its hypothetical counterpart is 
to be found in the large portion of the earth's surface 
where protective tariffs are still, to all intents and 
purposes, unknown. These free trade areas consist 
either of countries which are protective in theory 
but not in practice, where the absence of manufac- 
tures makes importation an imperative though 
unwelcome need (e.g. the States of South America 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 359 

and the small non-manufacturing States of Europe) ; 
or of countries whose tariff systems have, through 
historical circumstances, become more or less subject 
to international control (e.g. Turkey and China) ; 
or of the Dependencies, Crown Colonies, and Pro- 
tectorates of the British Empire. 

31. Of the first it need only be said that so far 
they add to the neutral markets of the world not 
because they will, but because they must. They 
are not converts to the cult of free trade, though 
under the stress of necessity they obey its precepts. 
It rests not with us, but with circumstances depend- 
ing upon the general movement of industry, and 
the character of their own internal resources, to 
determine how long they will thus remain fiscally 
" orthodox " against their wishes. 

32. Our position in respect to the second and 
third class is very different. Here, it is neither the 
compulsion of economic need, nor the persuasive 
force of economic argument, which enables us to 
retain open markets for our manufactures. It is in 
the last resort on military power that our diplomatic 
rights in some of these regions, and our territorial 
rights in others, essentially depend. Without it 



360 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

they would ultimately lapse ; and sooner or later 
these areas would become absorbed by one or other 
of the great protective powers, and their markets be 
lost to us for ever. When we reflect how necessary 
these are to the full success of insular free trade, 
and remember how in many cases they have been 
originally won, and how in all cases they are now 
maintained, I marvel that small armaments, small 
responsibilities, a small empire, and a large external 
trade should ever have been considered as harmoni- 
ous elements in one political ideal. 

33. If we look to the future of these various 
classes of non- protective areas, there seems no 
probability of their increase; while industrial 
changes, political accidents, and international com- 
plications may at any time diminish them. The 
agricultural states who, if they had any manufactures 
to protect, would hasten to protect them, may in 
process of time become " industrialised." The 
expansion of the Empire has, broadly speaking, 
reached its limits. The countries whose markets 
are, by diplomatic arrangement, equally open to all 
the world, may, in whole or in part, fall under the 
control of some predominant protectionist Power. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 361 

In many directions, therefore, there is a possibility 
of losing free trade territories. In none does there 
seem any probability of gaining them ; and it is 
therefore to the development of their wealth, not 
the increase of their size, that we must look for any 
improvement in the opportunities they offer to our 
enterprise. 

IX 

34. The third reason which prevents Britain from 
suffering the full penalty which might and would 
befall a free trade community in a completely pro- 
tectionist world is that tariffs, even in the most 
protectionist countries, are not absolutely exclusive. 
In some of those countries, and for some of our main 
industries, indeed, no loophole is permitted. Yet on 
the whole there is a large import into the protected 
area of the commercial world ; protectionist nations 
and protectionist colonies are still our most important 
customers. 

35. In order, however, to form an exact estimate 
of our industrial relation to those communities, we 
have to consider not merely what is, but what is to 
be. The tendency of trade, not its momentary 



362 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

position, is what chiefly concerns us. And this 
gives food for thought. 

36. It is, I think, clear that our export trade, 
which should, other things remaining the same, have 
grown with our growth and with the yet more rapid 
growth of some of our customers, has, in fact, done 
neither one nor the other. Absolutely it may have 
increased, but its rate of increase has on the whole 
seriously diminished ; in some important departments 
no increase is perceptible, in others there are 
symptoms of decay. 

37. The cause of this is commonly set down to 
the "industrialisation" of the world. How, it is 
asked, can we expect to provide foreign nations with 
ever-increasing quantities of our manufactures, since 
they have learned, at our feet, so amply to provide 
for themselves ? Britain had formerly an undisputed 
primacy in the industrial world; she has it no 
longer ; she could not hope to have it. But, after 
all, the roots of this great change lie deep in the 
nature of things ; why complain of the inevitable 1 

38. But this argument is wide of the mark. No 
complaint is made of the relative growth in wealth, 
population, and prosperity of other nations. This 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 363 

ought, on the contrary, to be a matter of rejoicing. 
We might expect l on the free trade theory to gain, 
not to lose by it. It should increase, not diminish, 
the rate at which we get richer; and the tide of 
international commerce ought to flow, not merely 
without slackening, but in a volume proportionate to 
the growing numbers and wealth of the different 
populations to which it ministers. 

If neither this nor anything like this is happening, 
it is not simply because " in the nature of things " 
and by the operation of some inevitable law it is 
impossible ; but because it has been made impossible 
by the operation of hostile tariffs. 2 National in- 
dustries have not been allowed to become mutually 
supplementary ; they have been compelled to become 
mutually exclusive. Fiscal contrivances have forced 
them out of co-operative into competitive channels. 3 

1 Though not with absolute certainty. 

2 The Board of Trade estimate the ad valorem equivalent of 
the duties levied on our principal exports (i.e. the result of apply- 
ing the tariff of each country in turn to the exports of British 
manufactures to all destinations) to be in the case of Russia, 
131 per cent; of the U.S.A., 73 per cent; of Austria-Hungary, 
35 per cent ; of France, 34 per cent ; of Italy, 27 per cent ; of 
Germany, 25 per cent ; of Canada, 16 per cent; of Belgium, 13 
per cent ; of New Zealand, 9 per cent ; of Australia, 6 per cent ; 
of the South African Customs Union, 6 per cent. 

3 I do not, of course, mean that under a system of international 



364 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

39. That this is the true theory, on ordinary free 
trade principles, of what is now taking place, it 
seems to me impossible to deny. But there are two 
circumstances accompanying the diminishing rate of 
increase in our export trade by which some observers 
are greatly consoled. 

They say, in the first place, that if we are losing 
our predominance in foreign markets, the home 
market is making corresponding gains. They say, in 
the second place, that if our staple industries are 
stationary or retrograde, this is more than made up 
for by the variety of goods we now manufacture for 
the foreign consumer. From neither circumstance 
can I derive much satisfaction. These are precisely 
the signs which would accompany the struggle of a 
free trade country so to modify its industries as to 
pierce the barrier of foreign tariffs. They are pre- 
sumably, therefore, in part the consequences of 
protection. If so, the industrial changes in which 
they consist must surely involve an economic loss. 
It would be impossible to hold a version of the free 
trade theory so perverse as one which assumed that 

free trade there would have been no competition between indus- 
trial nations ; but only that there would have been much less 
competition and much more co-operation. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 365 

while any artificial diversion of industry due to home 
protection must necessarily be pernicious, the foreign 
protectionist accidentally confers upon us a benefit 
which we cannot confer upon ourselves ! 

X 

40. A closer examination of the details of our 
export returns in no way allays the anxiety which 
theoretical considerations thus suggest. If we 
exclude coal from the sum of our exports, still 
more if we also exclude machinery, there are warn- 
ings not only of a diminution relative to population, 
but of a diminution absolute. 

Now what moral, if any, is to be drawn from this 
result ? 

I do not press the consideration that by exporting 
coal we are lessening our national assets though 
this is both true and important. Nor yet do I 
think much illumination is thrown upon the subject 
by describing coal as "raw material." This is a 
phrase which easily lends itself to misconstruction . 
and if by raw material is meant material whose 
value is not due in any considerable measure to the 
expenditure of capital and labour, then coal is not 



366 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

raw material at all. Much labour and much capital 
has to be expended before what is stored in the seam 
becomes fit for the furnace. 

41. It is not these considerations which make it 
desirable, in considering the condition of our export 
trade, to put coal, machinery, and ships in a class 
by themselves. The true ground of the distinction 
is to be found in the fact that these commodities 
foster in an especial degree the competition of foreign 
protected manufactures. Though they may swell 
our exports now, they must therefore tend to 
diminish them hereafter ; and we can hardly regard 
the very same phenomenon as at once an indication 
of prosperity and a cause of decline. 

42. But why (it may be asked) is the export of 
coal and machinery more pernicious to the future of 
free trade than that of other British articles used 
abroad, either as instruments or materials in the 
production of tariff-protected goods 1 

43. In truth it is a matter of degree. And it 
may readily be admitted that in most cases foreign 
protection is but little assisted by these contributory 
exports. If we did not provide them others would, 
and almost as cheaply. They constitute, therefore, 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FKEE TRADE 367 

rather a symptom of the disease than an aggravation 
of it. Indeed, from one point of view the more we 
export the constituent elements of the protected 
manufacture, the less its protection injures us. If 
we imagine an extreme case in which all the con- 
stituent elements were exported, and nothing was 
left to the protectionist country but to fit them 
together, it is manifest that protection would be 
little more than a name. 

When, however, our exports are of articles in the 
production of which we hold a privileged position, 
when they are necessary to the foreign protected 
manufacturer, and when their value is small compared 
with the total value of the final result to which they 
contribute, the case is different. Such exports do 
more than mark the development of protective tariffs ; 
they add to their effect. And, therefore, it is that 
we may, or rather must, look otherwise upon coal 
and machinery than we do upon the manufactured 
and half -manufactured goods which constitute the 
rest of our outward-bound trade. 



368 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

XI 

44. If, then, an examination of the quantity and 
character of our exports to tariff-protected countries 
confirm the unsatisfactory conclusion which theory 
independently suggests, we have to ask ourselves 
whether there is reason to anticipate any improve- 
ment in the future. Are we to be permitted to take 
our fair share in the growing industrial labours of 
the world, and to reap our fair share of their reward ; 
or is our position going to worsen relatively to that 
of other nations, or even to worsen absolutely ? 

45. I see no satisfactory symptoms. The highly 
developed industrial countries, like Germany, America, 
and France, give no sign of any wish to relax their 
protectionist system. The less developed protec- 
tionist communities, like Russia and some of our 
self-governing colonies, are busily occupied in build- 
ing up protected interests within their borders a 
process which is doubtless costly to them, but is not 
on that account the less injurious to us. 

46. Nor has it, I think, been sufficiently noted 
that the injury in these cases is, or tends to become, 
a double one. The effect of any artificial stimulus 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 369 

to manufacturers in a country like the United States 
of America, or Eussia, or Canada, is to ante-date the 
period when their food supplies will be required for 
internal consumption. Protection of manufactures 
diverts the supply of capital and labour from agri- 
culture to manufactures. It diminishes the relative 
number of those who grow corn, and increases the 
relative number of those who eat it without growing 
it. To us, who not only wish to export manufactures 
but to import food, or (if you prefer it) who have 
to export manufactures largely because we have to 
import food, this may become a serious matter ; and 
in the interests of cheap bread, it is eminently 
desirable that the produce of the wheat-growing 
areas available for exportation should be kept at the 
highest possible level. 

XII 

47. So far I have only dealt with the injury 
inflicted on a free trade country by protectionist 
neighbours through the restriction of markets, the 
consequent loss of some of the capital and skill by 
which those markets were formerly supplied, and the 
diversion of industry into presumably less profitable 
2B 



370 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

channels. There is, however, another kind of injury 
which tariffs, working in alliance with modern 
methods of trade combination, may inflict upon 
national enterprise, on which something still requires 
to be said. 

48. In the popular presentation of the free trade 
case, it is usually argued that howsoever differential 
tariffs may foster the production of any articles 
intended for domestic consumption, the country 
imposing them cripples its power of competing, with 
that article, in outside markets. Clearly the manu- 
facturer in the protectionist country (so runs the 
argument) can have no advantages apart from tariffs 
for the production for the home market of the pro- 
tected article, otherwise protection would have been 
superfluous. His position, therefore, in the neutral 
markets would in any case be worse than that of 
the rival against whom he is protected. But it is 
still further worsened by the general operation of 
protection which raises the cost of living and there- 
fore, it is urged, of production, in the protectionist 
country. From this it seemingly follows that the 
free trade manufacturer must always have a double 
advantage one natural and one artificial over his 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 371 

protected rival; so that his predominance is fully 
secured in neutral markets, and a fortiori in his own. 

49. The argument is good as far as it goes, but it 
omits (among many other things) to notice the in- 
direct effort of a contrivance which has only recently 
been adopted on any considerable scale. 

Put shortly, the contrivance is this : In a country 
where protective duties render outside interference 
in some industry (say steel) exceedingly difficult, 
the steel manufacturers combine to fix the home price 
at a level, which may vary from time to time, but 
is always well above the cost of production. So far 
the case does not differ from any other trade combina- 
tion to raise prices, and protection only facilitates 
the operation by limiting to a single country the 
number of persons whose consent is necessary to 
make the combination effective. 

Its further effects, those with which we are here 
alone concerned, show themselves only when the 
combination makes the export of their protected 
manufactures play into their general scheme of 
profit- making. 

50. Now there are three things which it is pecu- 
liarly difficult for a manfacturer or combination of 



372 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

manufacturers to do, and at the same time peculiarly 
desirable. 

The first is to run their works evenly that is to 
say, without undue pressure at one period, without 
dismissing workmen and leaving plant unused at 
another. 

The second is to design their works on the scale 
which shall secure the greatest economy of produc- 
tion which, in the language of political economy, 
shall take the utmost advantage of the "law of 
increasing returns." 

The third is to secure a footing in foreign markets 
which are already occupied. 

51. Now, in the attainment of all these objects, 
any manufacturer or combination of manufacturers 
who have, with the help of protection, obtained a 
command of their home market, are at an immense 
advantage compared with their rivals in a free trade 
country. 

The unprotected manufacturer is compelled either 
to restrict his plant to a point well within what may 
sometimes be required of it, or, in ordinary times, to 
leave it partially idle. Even a small excess of supply 
may lower the price of his goods out of all proper- 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 373 

tion ; and if it does, he not only loses heavily in 
respect to this small margin of over-production, but 
in respect of his whole output. 

Now, there is no reason to expect that the plant 
erected to meet an average demand would reach the 
exact size most conducive to economy of manufacture. 
Should it prove to do so it could only be by accident. 
Neither is it practicable to arrange that the plant 
shall always be kept working full time. If it is, 
there must evidently be recurrent periods, during 
which over-production, with the consequent evils just 
described, must inevitably take place. 

52. Such is the ordinary position of the manu- 
facturer under free trade. Compare with it the 
position of his protected rival, who controls his home 
markets. To him the dangers of over-production 
appear in their most benignant form. If the home 
demand slackens, compelling him, if he desires to 
maintain prices, to limit home supply, he has a way 
of escape not open to his less favoured brother. 
Instead of closing works, dismissing hands, and 
running machinery on half time, he may hope that 
the markets benevolently opened to him by free 
trade countries may enable him to dispose of his 



374 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

surplus abroad, at prices no doubt lower, often 
very much lower, than the prices which his quasi- 
monopoly enables him to obtain at home, but 
at prices which nevertheless make the double 
transaction, domestic and foreign, renumerative as a 
whole. 

53. Why, it may be asked, is no similar policy 
open to the manufacturer in a free trade country? 
Because free trade makes it difficult for him to obtain 
control of his home markets ; and because, unless he 
has this control, it is difficult for him to fix two 
prices, a low foreign and a high domestic one. If he 
attempts it he will be undersold in the home market 
by his rivals, or even, if the divergence of price 
exceed the double cost of carriage, by himself ! His 
own goods will be re-imported. He will become his 
own most dangerous competitor. 1 

It is worthy of note that in theory it is not only 
possible that the foreign prices charged by the 
quasi -monopolist should be less than the home 

1 There are, indeed, exceptional cases, where, even in a free 
trade country, a monopoly can be established and where no re- 
importation is possible certain shipping combinations provide a 
concrete illustration. Here no distinction can be drawn between 
free trade and protection. 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAE FREE TRADE 375 

prices, but even that they should be less than the 
cost of production. And it has often been so in 
practice. Foreign steel, for instance, has been sold 
in this country at a price for which no English 
manufacturer could produce it or foreign manufac- 
turer either, without the double aid of combination 
and protection. 

54. But why (it may be asked) should any free 
trader object to such a proceeding 1 After all, what 
it comes to is that the German consumer is amiable 
enough to make a handsome present to the British 
consumer and sometimes to the British manufacturer. 
Why should either the British consumer or the 
British manufacturer reject it ? I was told the other 
day of a shipbuilder who was able to obtain contracts 
solely because he had secured a consignment of 
German steel at a price lower than it could possibly 
have cost either to a British or a German iron- 
master. Why should we refuse to our shipping 
trade a bounty which the Germans are so generously 
anxious to confer ? 

55. The question is a pertinent one ; yet I think 
the answer is conclusive. There is a utilitarian 
objection, as well as a sentimental one, to a form of 



376 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

competition which most persons would instinctively 
regard as unfair. 

In the first place, it disorganises industry. The 
manufacturing capitalist when investing his money 
in costly plant, has, in any case, many risks to run 
new discoveries, new inventions, new fashions. 
Add to these his loss, actual or anticipated, through 
the operation of foreign protection, and his burden 
becomes insensibly increased. But add yet again 
the further uncertainty and the further loss due to 
the system I have just been describing, and he is 
overweighted indeed. Will the hostile combination 
keep together long enough to ruin him 1 ? Can his 
credit stand the strain ? It is worth while holding 
on in the face of certain loss and possible ruin? 
These are questions which the leaders of the 
threatened industry cannot but ask. And surely the 
mere fact that they have to be asked must shatter 
that buoyant energy which is the very soul of 
successful enterprise. 

56. This is serious; but this is not all. The 
" unprotected " manufacturer is not only attacked at 
home but abroad. He, perhaps, possesses what may 
be described as the "good -will" of some neutral 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 377 

market. He has, in other words, a clientele whom 
he has served well, and who, under ordinary con- 
ditions of trade, would never have deserted him. 
Suddenly, under the trust system, through no fault 
of his own, -nor through any shortcoming of his 
staff or plant, he finds himself undersold. It is true 
that the power of underselling will last no longer 
than the ring whose monopoly has made it possible. 
It is also true that in some trades, though only in 
some, there is nothing so evanescent as these com- 
mercial conspiracies. Yet, however short-lived they 
may be, they have probably lasted long enough to 
destroy a valuable asset ; and if his business survives 
at all, it will only be by slow and laborious stages 
that it can reconquer territory reft from it in a day 
by a tariff-protected combination. 

XIII 

57. I have now said enough to indicate the grounds 
of my difference with our commercial optimists. At 
first sight their case seems a good one. Judged by 
all available tests, both the total wealth and the 
diffused well-being of the country are greater than 
they have ever been. We are not only rich and 



378 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

prosperous in appearance, but also, I believe, in 
reality. I can find no evidence that we are " living 
on our capital," though in some respects we may be 
investing it badly. Why then, it is asked, do we 
trouble ourselves to disturb a system which has 
been so fruitful in happy results ? 

58. I will not take up the barren challenge 
contained in the last phrase, or add to the profitless 
and inconclusive dispute as to whether the growth 
in our prosperity is due to a good financial system, 
and the still greater growth in the recent prosperity 
of some other nation has been reached in spite of a 
bad one. The point to which I desire to direct 
attention is a different one. I ask the optimists 
to study tendencies the dynamics not the statics 
of trade and manufactures. The ocean we are 
navigating is smooth enough, but where are we 
being driven by its tides'? Does either theory or 
experience provide any consolatory answer to this 
question ? Consider some of the points on which I 
have commented in these notes : the injury which 
foreign protection is calculated to inflict on a free 
trade country ; its need for open markets : the 
threatened contraction of existing free trade areas; 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 379 

the increasing severity of tariffs in protectionist 
areas ; the building up of vested protected interests 
in new countries, which may be discouraged now, 
but not hereafter ; the effect of this protection on our 
future corn-supply ; the uncertainty and loss which 
tariff-protected trusts are inflicting, and may here- 
after inflict, upon British capital invested in Britain. 

59. One and all of these evils, actual and pro- 
spective, are due to protection. The man who says 
that their cumulative effect is so small as to be 
negligible, can hardly describe himself as a " free 
trader " at least he can attach but a very small 
value to free trade. The man who, admitting their 
reality, does not anticipate their increase, has (it 
seems to me) not learned the lesson which theory 
and experience agree in teaching. The man who 
admits their present reality and the probability of 
their increase, and yet is too contentedly prosperous 
even to consider whether any mitigation is practi- 
cable, appears little short of reckless. 

XIV 

60. I cannot accept any of these positions. It 
seems to me clear that we are bound to seek for some 



380 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

mitigation ; and that only in one direction can we 
hope to find it. 

The source of all the difficulty being protective 
tariffs imposed by fiscally independent communities, 
it is plain that we can secure no concession in the 
direction of a freer exchange, except by negotiation, 
and that our negotiators can but appeal to self- 
interest or, in the case of our colonies, to self-interest 
and sentiment combined. 

Now, on the free trade theory self-interest should 
have prevented these tariffs being originally im- 
posed. But it did not; and if argument failed 
before powerful vested interests were created, it is 
hardly likely to be effective now. 

The only alternative is to do to foreign nations 
what they always do to each other, and instead of 
appealing to economic theories in which they wholly 
disbelieve, to use fiscal inducements which they 
thoroughly understand. We, and we alone, among 
the nations are unable to employ this means of 
persuasion, not because in our hands it need be 
ineffectual, but because in obedience to "principle" 
we have deliberately thrown it away. 

61. The " principle " to which we pay this strangely 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 381 

incongruous tribute is, of course, the principle of 
" free trade." But what a curious view of free trade 
it implies. The object which these fiscal induce- 
ments are intended to attain is increased free trade 
and nothing else; yet simply because the "fiscal 
inducement " may, if it fails of its effect but not other- 
wise, involve duties not required for revenue purposes, 
or in certain cases even carry with it some element 
of protection to home industries, we are to turn away 
from it as from an accursed thing. 

62. This seems to me, and has always seemed to 
me, extraordinarily foolish. It is certainly quite 
inconsistent with rational free trade. There is one, 
and only one, standard by which we can measure 
the free trade merits of any policy, and that is the 
degree to which it promotes free trade. This to be 
sure is as near a tautology as anything well can be, 
yet seemingly there are free traders to whom it 
presents itself as heresy, if not as paradox. They 
regard the maxim " thou shalt not tax except for 
revenue" not as the concise description of a fiscal 
ideal, but as a moral imperative of binding force. 
In their judgment it admits of no qualification or 
exception. It is, in school jargon,. " universal " and 



382 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 

" necessary," and could you prove to them that by 
risking the imposition of the most trifling protective 
tariff at home, it was possible to secure the greatest 
relaxation of protective tariffs abroad, they would 
only answer that we must not do evil that good may 
come of it ! 

63. This attitude of mind seems to be absurd. 
I hold myself to be in harmony with the true spirit 
of free trade when I plead for freedom to negotiate 
that freedom of exchange may be increased. This 
freedom to negotiate, like all other freedoms, may, 
of course, be abused. But are we therefore in a mood 
of irrational modesty to declare ourselves unfitted to 
enjoy it? I think myself that it ought not to be 
difficult to devise a method of turning it to most 
useful account. But were I proved to be wrong, 
my opinion on the fundamental question would 
remain unchanged. Where we fail others may 
succeed. It cannot be right for a country with 
free trade ideals to enter into competition with 
protectionist rivals, self -deprived of the only instru- 
ment by which their policy can conceivably be 
modified. The first and most essential object of our 
national efforts should be to get rid of the bonds in 



ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 383 

which we have gratuitously entangled ourselves. 
The precise manner in which we should use our 
regained liberty is an important, yet after all only 
a secondary issue. What is fundamental is that our 
liberty should be regained. 



EXPORTS TO PROTECTED AND UNPROTECTED MARKETS OF 
ALL ARTICLES OF BRITISH PRODUCTION, EXCEPT COAL, 
MACHINERY, AND SHIPS 



Year. 


All 
Countries. 


Principal 
Protected 
Foreign 
Countries. 


Principal 
Protected 
Colonies 
(Victoria and 
Canada). 


All other 
Countries 
and 
Colonies. 


India. 


VALUE 




Thousand . 


Thousand . 


Thousand . 


Thousand . 


Thousand . 


1880 
1890 
1900 
1902 


205,423 
228,100 
224,364 
231,216 


87,124 
89,416 
80,906 
76,667 


11,498 
13,497 
12,879 
14,859 


106,801 
125,187 
130,579 
139,690 


29,278 
31,349 
27,784 
29,742 


PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION 




Per cent. 


Per cent. 


Per cent. 


Per cent. 


Per cent. 


1880 
1890 
1900 
1902 


100-0 

100-0 
100-0 
100-0 


42-4 
39-2 
36'1 
33-2 


5-6 
5-9 
57 
6-4 


52-0 
54-9 
58-2 
60-4 


14-3 

13-7 

12-4 
12-9 



384 ECONOMIC NOTES ON INSULAR FREE TRADE 



II 





Value of 


Year. 


Exports of British 
Produce, except Coal, 
Machinery, and Ships. 


Ditto per head of 
Population. 




Thousand . 





1881 


215,277 


6'2 


1886 


193,186 


5-3 


1891 


213,270 


5-6 


1896 


208,931 


5-3 


1901 


222,726 


5-4 



Note. The years selected are those for which the decennial 
census is in each case first available, and the years falling mid- 
way between them. 



REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE NEW 
THEORY OF MATTER 1 



THE meetings of the British Association have for the 
most part been held in crowded centres of population, 
where our surroundings never permit us to forget, 
were such forgetfulness in any case possible, how 
close is the tie that binds modern science to modern 
industry, the abstract researches of the student to the 
labours of the inventor and the mechanic. This, no 
doubt, is as it should be. The interdependence of 
theory and practice cannot be ignored without inflict- 
ing injury on both ; and he is but a poor friend to 
either who undervalues their mutual co-operation. 
Yet, after all, since this great Society exists for 

1 Presidential Address delivered before the British Association at 
Cambridge, August 17, 1904. 

2C 



386 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

the advancement of science, it is well that now and 
again we should choose our place of gathering in 
some spot where science rather than its applications, 
knowledge, not utility, are the ends to which research 
is primarily directed. 

If this be so, surely no happier selection could have 
been made than the quiet courts of this ancient 
University. For here, if anywhere, we tread the 
classic ground of physical discovery. Here, if any- 
where, those who hold that physics is the true 
scientia scientiarum, the root of all the sciences 
which deal with inanimate nature, should feel them- 
selves at home. For, unless I am led astray by too 
partial an affection for my own University, there is 
nowhere to be found, in any corner of the world, a 
spot with which have been connected, either by their 
training in youth, or by the labours of their maturer 
years, so many men eminent as the. originators of 
new and fruitful physical conceptions. I say nothing 
of Bacon, the eloquent prophet of a new era ; nor of 
Darwin, the Copernicus of Biology ; for my subject 
to-day is not the contributions of Cambridge to the 
general growth of scientific knowledge. I am con- 
cerned rather with the illustrious line of physicists 



BY THE NEW THEOEY OF MATTER 387 

who have learned or taught within a few hundred 
yards of this building ; a line stretching from Newton 
in the seventeenth century, through Cavendish in the 
eighteenth, through Young, Stokes, Maxwell, in the 
nineteenth, through Kelvin, who embodies an epoch 
in himself, down to Kayleigh, Larmor, J. J. Thomson, 
and the scientific school centred in the Cavendish 
Laboratory, whose physical speculations bid fair to 
render the closing years of the old century and the 
, opening years of the new as notable as the greatest 
which have preceded them. 

Now what is the task which these men, and their 
illustrious fellow-labourers out of all lands, have set 
themselves to accomplish 1 To what end led these 
" new and fruitful physical conceptions " to which I 
have just referred ? It is often described as the dis- 
covery of the "laws connecting phenomena." But 
this is certainly a misleading, and in my opinion a 
very inadequate account of the subject. To begin 
with, it is not only inconvenient, but confusing, to 
describe as " phenomena " things which do not appear, 
which never have appeared, and which never can 
appear, to beings so poorly provided as ourselves with 
the apparatus of sense-perception. But apart from 



388 KEFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

this, which is a linguistic error too deeply rooted to 
be easily exterminated, is it not most inaccurate in 
substance to say that a knowledge of Nature's laws is 
all we seek when investigating Nature ? The physicist 
looks for something more than what by any stretch 
of language can be described as " co-existences " and 
"sequences." between so-called "phenomena." He 
seeks for something deeper than the laws connecting 
possible objects of experience. His object is physical 
reality ; a reality which may or may not be capable oi 
direct perception ; a reality which is in any case in- 
dependent of it ; a reality which constitutes the 
permanent mechanism of that physical universe with 
which our immediate empirical connection is so slight 
and so deceptive. That such a reality exists, though 
philosophers have doubted, is the unalterable faith of 
science ; and were that faith per impossible to perish 
under the assaults of critical speculation, science, as men 
of science usually conceive it, would perish likewise. 

If this be so, if one of the tasks of science, and 
more particularly of physics, is to frame a conception 
of the physical universe in its inner reality, then any 
attempt to compare the different modes in which, at 
different epochs of scientific development, this intel- 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER . 389 

lectual picture has been drawn, cannot fail to suggest 
questions of the deepest interest. True, I am pre- 
cluded from dealing with such of these questions 
as are purely philosophical by the character of this 
occasion ; and with such of them as are purely 
scientific by my own incompetence. But some there 
may be sufficiently near the dividing line to induce 
the specialists who rule by right on either side of it, 
to view with forgiving eyes any trespasses into their 
legitimate domain which I may be tempted, during 
the next few minutes, to commit. 

Let me then endeavour to compare the outlines of 
two such pictures, of which the first may be taken to 
represent the views prevalent towards the end of the 
eighteenth century; a little more than a hundred 
years from the publication of Newton's Principia, 
and, roughly speaking, about midway between that 
epoch-making date and the present moment. I 
suppose that if at that period the average man 
of science had been asked to sketch his general 
conception of the physical universe, he would prob- 
ably have said that it essentially consisted of various 
sorts of ponderable matter, scattered in different 
combinations through space, exhibiting most varied 



390 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

aspects under the influence of chemical affinity 
and temperature, but through every metamorphosis 
obedient to the laws of motion, always retaining its 
mass unchanged, and exercising at all distances a 
force of attraction on other material masses, accord- 
ing to a simple law. To this ponderable matter he 
would (in spite of Rumford) have probably added 
the so called "imponderable " heat, then often ranked 
among the elements ; together with the two " electrical 
fluids," and the corpuscular emanations supposed to 
constitute light. 

In the universe as thus conceived, the most im- 
portant forms of action between its constituents was 
action at a distance ; the principle of the conservation 
of energy was, in any general form, undreamed of ; 
electricity and magnetism, though already the subjects 
of important investigation, played no great part in the 
Whole of things ; nor was a diffused ether required 
to complete the machinery of the universe. 

Within a few months, however, of the date as- 
signed from these deliverances of our hypothetical 
physicist, came an addition to this general con- 
ception of the world, destined profoundly to modify 
it. About a hundred years ago Young opened, 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 391 

or re -opened, the great controversy which finally 
established the undulatory theory of light, and with 
it a belief in an interstellar medium by which 
undulations could be conveyed. But this discovery 
involved much more than the substitution of a theory 
of light which was consistent with the facts, for one 
which was not ; since here was the first authentic 
introduction 1 into the scientific world-picture of a 
new and prodigious constituent a constituent which 
has altered, and is still altering, the whole balance 
(so to speak) of the composition. Unending space, 
thinly strewn with suns and satellites, made or in 
the making, supplied sufficient material for the 
mechanism of the heavens as conceived by Laplace. 
Unending space filled with a continuous medium was 
a very different affair, and gave promise of strange 
developments. It could not be supposed that the 
ether, if its reality were once admitted, existed only 
to convey through interstellar regions the vibrations 
which happen to stimulate the optic nerve of man. 
Invented originally to fulfil this function, to this it 
could never be confined. And accordingly, as every 

1 The hypothesis of an ether was, of course, not new. But 
before Young and Fresnel it cannot be said to have been 
established. 



392 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

one now knows, things which, from the point of view 
of sense-perception, are as distinct as light and radiant 
heat ; and things to which sense -perception makes 
no response, like the electric waves of wireless 
telegraphy, 1 intrinsically differ, not in kind, but in 
magnitude alone. 

This, however, is not all, nor nearly all. If we 
jump over the century which separates 1804 from 
1904, and attempt to give in outline the world-picture 
as it now presents itself to some leaders of contem- 
porary speculation, we shall find that in the interval 
it has been modified, not merely by such far-reaching 
discoveries as the atomic and molecular composition of 
ordinary matter, the kinetic theory of gases, and the 
laws of the conservation and dissipation of energy ; 
but by the more and more important part which 
electricity and the ether occupy in any representa- 
tion of ultimate physical reality. 

Electricity was no more to the natural philosophers 
in the year 1700 than the hidden cause of an insigni- 
ficant phenomenon. 2 It was known, and had long 

1 First known through the theoretical work of Maxwell and 
the experiments of Herz. 

2 The modern history of electricity begins with Gilbert, but I have 
throughout confined my observations to the post- Newtonian period. 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 393 

been known, that such things as amber and glass, 
when " electrified " by friction, could be made to 
attract light objects brought into their neighbour- 
hood. Yet it was about fifty years before the effects 
of electricity were perceived in the thunderstorm. 
It was about a hundred years before it was detected 
in the form of a current. It was about a hundred 
and twenty years before it was connected with 
magnetism; about one hundred and seventy years 
before it was connected with light and ethereal 
radiation. 

But to-day there are those who regard gross 
matter, the matter of everyday experience, as the 
mere appearance of which electricity is the physical 
basis : who think that the elementary atom of the 
chemist, itself far beyond the limits of direct per- 
ception, is but a connected system of monads or 
sub-atoms which are not electrified matter, but are 
electricity itself ; that these systems differ in the 
number of monads which they contain, in their 
arrangement, and in their motion relative to each 
other and to the ether ; that on these differences, 
and on these differences alone, depend the various 
qualities of what have hitherto been regarded as 



394 KEFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

indivisible and elementary atoms ; and that while in 
most cases these atomic systems maj 7 maintain their 
equilibrium for periods which, compared with such 
astronomical processes as the cooling of a sun, may 
seem almost eternal, they are not less obedient to 
the law of change than the everlasting heavens 
themselves. 

But if gross matter be a grouping of atoms, and 
if atoms be systems of electrical monads, what are 
electrical monads? It may be that, as Professor 
Larmor has suggested, they are but a modification 
of the universal ether, a modification roughly com- 
parable to a knot in a medium which is inextensible, 
incompressible, and continuous. But whether this 
final unification be accepted or not, it is certain that 
these monads cannot be considered apart from the 
ether. It is on their interaction with the ether that 
their qualities depend and without the ether an 
electric theory of matter is impossible. 

Surely we have here a very extraordinary revolu- 
tion. Two centuries ago electricity seemed but a 
scientific toy. It is now thought by many to con- 
stitute the reality of which matter is but the sensible 
expression. It is but a century ago that the title of 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 395 

an ether to a place among the constituents of the 
universe was authentically established. It seems 
possible now that it may be the stuff out of which 
that universe is wholly built. Nor are the collateral 
inferences associated with this view of the physical 
world less surprising. It used, for example, to be 
thought that mass was an original property of 
matter : neither capable of explanation nor requiring 
it ; in its nature essentially unchangeable, suffering 
neither augmentation nor diminution under the 
stress of any forces to which it could be subjected ; 
unalterably attached to each material fragment, 
howsoever much that fragment might vary in its 
appearance, its bulk, its chemical or its physical 
condition. 

But if the new theories be accepted, these views 
must be revised. Mass is not only explicable, it is 
actually explained. So far from being an attribute 
of matter considered in itself, it is due, as I have 
said, to the relation between the electrical monads 
of which matter is composed and the ether in which 
they are bathed. So far from being unchangeable, 
it changes, when moving at very high speeds, with 
every change in its velocity. 



396 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

Perhaps, however, the most impressive alteration 
in our picture of the universe required by these new 
theories is to be sought in a different direction. We 
have all, I suppose, been interested in the generally 
accepted views as to the origin and development of 
suns with their dependent planetary systems; and 
the gradual dissipation of the energy which during 
this process of concentration has largely taken the 
form of light and radiant heat. Follow out the 
theory to its obvious conclusions, and it becomes 
plain that the stars now visibly incandescent are 
those in mid -journey between the nebulae from 
which they sprang and the frozen darkness to which 
they are predestined. What, then, are we to think 
of the invisible multitude of the heavenly bodies 
in which this process has been already completed? 
According to the ordinary view we should suppose 
them to be in a state where all possibilities of internal 
movement were exhausted. At the temperature of 
interstellar space their constituent elements would 
be solid and inert; chemical action and molecular 
movement would be alike impossible, and their ex- 
hausted energy could obtain no replenishment unless 
they were suddenly rejuvenated by some celestial 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 397 

collision, or travelled into other regions warmed by 
newer suns. 

This view must, however, be profoundly modified 
if we accept the electric theory of matter. We can 
then no longer hold that if the internal energy of a 
sun were as far as possible converted into heat either 
by its contraction under the stress of gravitation, or 
by chemical reactions between its elements or by any 
other inter-atomic force; and that were the heat so 
generated to be dissipated (as in time it must be), 
through infinite space, its whole energy would be 
exhausted. On the contrary, the amount thus lost 
would be absolutely insignificant compared with what 
remained stored up within the separate atoms. The 
system in its corporate capacity would become bank- 
rupt the wealth of its individual constituents would 
be scarcely diminished. They would lie side by side, 
without movement, without chemical affinity yet 
each one, howsoever inert in its external relations, 
the theatre of violent motions, and of powerful in- 
ternal forces. 

Or put the same thought in another form : 
when the sudden appearance of some new star in 
the telescopic field gives notice to the astronomer that 



398 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

he, and, perhaps, in the whole universe, he alone, is 
witnessing the conflagration of a world; the tre- 
mendous forces by which this far-off tragedy is being 
accomplished must surely move his awe. Yet not 
only would the members of each separate atomic 
system pursue their relative course unchanged, while 
the atoms themselves were thus riven violently apart 
in flaming vapour, but the forces by which such a 
world is shattered are really negligible compared with 
those by which each atom of it is held together. 

In common, therefore, with all other living things 
we seem to be practically concerned chiefly with 
the feebler forces of Nature, and with energy in its 
least powerful manifestations. Chemical affinity and 
cohesion are on this theory no more than the slight 
residual effects of the internal electrical forces which 
keep the atom in being. Gravitation, though it be 
the shaping force which concentrates nebulae into 
organised systems of suns and satellites, is trifling 
compared with the attractions and repulsions with 
which we are familiar between electrically charged 
bodies; while these again sink into insignificance 
beside the attractions and repulsions between the 
electric monads themselves. The irregular molecular 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 399 

movements which constitute heat, on which the very 
possibility of organic life seems absolutely to hang, 
and in whose transformations applied science is at 
present so largely concerned, cannot rival the kinetic 
energy stored within the molecules themselves. This 
prodigious mechanism seems outside the range of our 
immediate interests. We live, so to speak, merely 
on its fringe. It has for us no promise of . utilitarian 
value. It will not drive our mills ; we cannot harness 
it to our trains. Yet not less on that account does it 
stir the intellectual imagination. The starry heavens 
have, from time immemorial, moved the worship or 
the wonder of mankind. But if the dust beneath 
our feet be indeed compounded of innumerable 
systems, whose elements are ever in the most rapid 
motion, yet retain through uncounted ages their 
equilibrium unshaken, we can hardly deny that the 
marvels we directly see are not more worthy of 
admiration than those which recent discoveries have 
enabled us dimly to surmise. 

II 

Now whether the main outlines of the world- 
picture which I have just imperfectly presented to 



400 INFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

you be destined to survive, or whether in their turn 
they are to be obliterated by some new drawing on 
the scientific palimpsest, all will, I think, admit that 
so bold an attempt to unify physical nature, excites 
feelings of the most acute intellectual gratification. 
The satisfaction it gives is almost aesthetic in its 
intensity and quality. We feel the same sort of 
pleasurable shock as when from the crest of some 
melancholy pass we first see far below us the sudden 
glories of plain, river, and mountain. Whether 
indeed this vehement sentiment in favour of a simple 
universe has any theoretical justification, I will not 
venture to pronounce. There is no a priori reason 
that I know of for expecting that the material world 
should be a modification of a single medium, rather 
than a composite structure built out of sixty or 
seventy elementary substances, eternal and eternally 
different. Why, then, should we feel content with 
the first hypothesis and not with the second 1 ? Yet 
so it is. Men of science have always been restive 
under the multiplication of entities. They have 
eagerly watched for any sign that the different 
chemical elements own a common origin, and are all 
compounded out of some primordial substance. Nor 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 401 

for my part do I think such instincts should be 
ignored. John Mill, if I rightly remember, was 
contemptuous of those who saw any difficulty in 
accepting the doctrine of "action at a distance." So 
far as observation and experiment can tell us, bodies 
do actually influence each other at a distance ; and 
why should they not ? Why seek to go behind 
experience in obedience to some h priori sentiment 
for which no argument can be adduced 1 So reasoned 
Mill, and to his reasoning I have no reply. Never- 
theless, we cannot forget that it was to Faraday's 
obstinate disbelief in " action at a distance " that we 
owe some of the crucial discoveries on which both 
our electric industries and the electric theory of 
matter are ultimately founded. While at this very 
moment physicists, however baffled in the quest for 
an explanation of gravity, refuse altogether to content 
themselves with the belief, so satisfying to Mill, that 
it is a simple and inexplicable property of masses 
acting on each other across space. 

These obscure intimations about the nature of 

reality deserve, I think, more attention than has yet 

been given to them. That they exist is certain; 

that they modify the indifferent impartiality of pure 

2 D 



402 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

empiricism can hardly be denied. The common 
notion that he who would search out the secrets 
of Nature must humbly wait on experience, obedient 
to its slightest hint, is but partly true. This may 
be his ordinary attitude ; but now and again it 
happens that observation and experiment are not 
treated as guides to be meekly followed, but as 
witnesses to be broken down in cross-examination. 
Their plain message is disbelieved, and the investi- 
gating judge does not pause until a confession in 
harmony with his preconceived ideas has, if possible, 
been wrung from their reluctant evidence. 

This proceeding needs neither explanation nor 
defence in those cases where there is an apparent 
contradiction between the utterances of experience 
in different connections. Such contradictions must 
of course be reconciled, and science cannot rest until 
the reconciliation is effected. The difficulty only 
arises when experience apparently says one thing 
and scientific instinct persists in saying another. 
Two such cases I have already mentioned ; others 
will easily be found by those who care to seek. 
What is the origin of this instinct, and what its 
value ; whether it be a mere prejudice to be brushed 



BY THE NEW THEOKY OF MATTER 403 

aside, or a clue which no wise man would disdain to 
follow, I cannot now discuss. For other questions 
there are, not new, yet raised in an acute form by 
these most modern views of matter, on which I 
would ask your indulgent attention for yet a few 
moments. 

Ill 

That these new views diverge violently from those 
suggested by ordinary observation is plain enough. 
No scientific education is likely to make us, in our 
unreflective moments, regard the solid earth on which 
we stand, or the organised bodies with which our 
terrestrial fate is so intimately bound up, as consist- 
ing wholly of electric monads very sparsely scattered 
through the spaces which these fragments of matter 
are, by a violent metaphor, described as "occupying." 
Not less plain is it that an almost equal divergence 
is to be found between these new theories and that 
modification of the common-sense view of matter 
with which science has in the main been content to 
work. 

What was this modification of common-sense 1 It 
is roughly indicated by an old philosophic distinction 



404 INFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

drawn between what were called the " primary " and 
the " secondary " qualities of matter. The primary 
qualities, such as shape and mass, were supposed 
to possess an existence quite independent of the 
observer ; and so far the theory agreed with common- 
sense. The secondary qualities, on the other hand, 
such as warmth and colour, were thought to have no 
such independent existence ; being, indeed, no more 
than the resultants due to the action of the primary 
qualities on our organs of sense -perception; and 
here, no doubt, common -sense and theory parted 
company. 

You need not fear that I am going to drag you 
into the controversies with which this theory is 
historically connected. They have left abiding traces 
on more than one system of philosophy. They are 
not yet solved. In the course of them the very 
possibility of an independent physical universe has 
seemed to melt away under the solvent powers of 
critical analysis." But with all this I am not now 
concerned. I do not propose to ask what proof we 
have that an external world exists, or how, if it does 
exist, we are able to obtain cognisance of it. These 
may be questions very proper to be asked by philo- 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 405 

sophy ; but they are not proper questions to be asked 
by science. For, logically, they are antecedent to 
physical science, and we must reject the sceptical 
answers to both of them before any such science 
becomes possible at all. My present purpose requires 
me to do no more than observe that, be this theory 
of the primary and secondary qualities of matter 
good or bad, it is the one on which, as a matter of 
fact, science has in the main proceeded. It was with 
matter thus conceived that Newton experimented. 
To it he applied his laws of motion ; of it he pre- 
dicated universal gravitation. Nor was the case 
greatly altered when science became as much pre- 
occupied with the movements of molecules as it was 
with those of planets. For molecules and atoms, 
whatever else might be said of them, were at least 
pieces of matter, and, like other pieces of matter, 
possessed those " primary " qualities supposed to be 
characteristic of all matter, whether found in large 
masses or in small. 

But the electric theory which we have been con- 
sidering carries us into a new region altogether. It 
does not confine itself to accounting for the secondary 
qualities by the primary, or the behaviour of matter 



406 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

in bulk by the behaviour of matter in atoms; it 
analyses matter, whether molar or molecular, into 
something which is not matter at all. The atom is 
now no more than the relatively vast theatre of 
operations in which minute monads perform their 
orderly evolutions ; while the monads themselves are 
not regarded as units of matter, but as units of elec- 
tricity ; so that matter is not merely explained, but 
is explained away. 

Now the point to which I desire to call attention 
is not to be sought in the great divergence between 
matter as thus conceived by the physicist and matter 
as the ordinary man supposes himself to knew it, 
between matter as it is perceived and matter as it 
really is, but to the fact that the first of these two 
quite inconsistent views is wholly based on the 
second. 

This is surely something of a paradox. We claim 
to found all our scientific opinions on experience ; 
and the experience on which we found our theories 
of the physical universe is our sense-perception of that 
universe. That is experience ; and in this region of 
belief there is no other. Yet the conclusions which 
thus profess to be entirely founded upon experience 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 407 

are to all appearance fundamentally opposed to it ; 
our knowledge of reality is based upon illusion, and 
the very conceptions we use in describing it to others, 
or in thinking of it ourselves, are abstracted from 
anthropomorphic fancies, which science forbids us to 
believe and Nature compels us to entertain. 

We here touch the fringe of a series of problems 
with which inductive logic ought to deal ; but which 
that most unsatisfactory branch of philosophy has 
systematically ignored. This is no fault of men of 
science. They are occupied in the task of making 
discoveries, not in that of analysing the fundamental 
presuppositions which the very possibility of making 
discoveries implies. Neither is it the fault of tran- 
scendental metaphysicians. Their speculations flourish 
on a different level of thought : their interest in a 
philosophy of nature is lukewarm; and howsoever 
the questions in which they are chiefly concerned be 
answered, it is by no means certain that the answers 
will leave the humbler difficulties at which I have 
hinted either nearer to or further from a solution. 
But though men of science and idealists stand ac- 
quitted, the same can hardly be said of empirical 
philosophers. So far from solving the problem in- 



408 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

volved in the attempt to extract knowledge from 
experience, they seem scarcely to have understood 
that there was any such problem to be solved. Led 
astray by a misconception to which I have already 
referred ; believing that science was concerned only 
with (so-called) " phenomena," that it had done all 
that it could be asked to do if it accounted for the 
sequence of our individual sensations, that it was 
concerned only with the " laws of nature," and not 
with the inner character of physical reality ; dis- 
believing, indeed, that any such physical reality does 
in truth exist ; it has never felt called upon seriously 
to consider what are the actual methods by which 
science attains its results, and how those methods 
are to be justified. If any one, for example, will 
take up Mill's logic, with its "sequences and co- 
existences between phenomena," its " method of 
difference," its "method of agreement," and the rest : 
if he will then compare the actual doctrines of 
science with this version of the mode in which those 
doctrines have been arrived at, he will soon be con- 
vinced of the exceedingly thin intellectual fare which 
has so often been served out to us under the imposing 
title of Inductive Theory. 






BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 409 

There is an added emphasis given to these reflec- 
tions by a train of thought which has long interested 
me, though I acknowledge that it never seems to 
have interested any one else. Observe, then, that in 
order of logic sense-perceptions supply the premises 
from which we draw all our knowledge of the physical 
world. It is they which tell us there is a physical 
world; it is on their authority that we learn its 
character. But in order of causation they are effects 
due (in part) to the constitution of our organs of 
sense. What we see depends not merely on what 
there is to be seen, but on our eyes. What we hear 
depends not merely on what there is to hear, but on 
our ears. Now, eyes and ears, and all the mechanism 
of perception, have, according to accepted views, been 
evolved in us and our brute progenitors by the slow 
operation of natural selection. And what is true of 
sense-perception is of course also true of the intellec- 
tual powers which enable us to erect upon the frail 
and narrow platform which sense-perception provides, 
the proud fabric of the sciences. 

Now natural selection only works through utility. 
It encourages aptitudes useful to their possessor or 
his species in the struggle for existence, and, for a 



410 KEFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

similar reason, it is apt to discourage useless apti- 
tudes, however interesting they may be from other 
points of view, because, being useless, they are prob- 
ably burdensome. 

But it is certain that our powers of sense-percep- 
tion and of calculation were fully developed ages 
before they were effectively employed in searching 
out the secrets of physical reality for our discoveries 
in this field are the triumphs but of yesterday. The 
blind forces of Natural Selection which so admirably 
simulate design when they are providing for a present 
need, possess no power of prevision ; and could never, 
except by accident, have endowed mankind, while in 
the making, with a physiological or mental outfit 
adapted to the higher physical investigations. So 
far as natural science can tell us, every quality of 
sense or intellect which does not help us to fight, to 
eat, and to bring up children, is but a by-product of 
the qualities which do. Our organs of sense-percep- 
tion were not given us for purposes of research ; nor 
was it to aid us in meting out the heavens or dividing 
the atom that our powers of calculation and analysis 
were evolved from the rudimentary instincts of the 
animal. 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 411 

It is presumably due to these circumstances that 
the beliefs of all mankind about the material sur- 
roundings in which it dwells are not only imperfect 
but fundamentally wrong. It may seem singular that 
down to, say, five years ago, our race has, without 
exception, lived and died in a world of illusions ; 
and that its illusions, or those with which we are here 
alone concerned, have not been about things remote 
or abstract, things transcendental or divine, but about 
what men see and handle, about those " plain matters 
of fact" among which common- sense daily moves 
with its most confident step and most self-satisfied 
smile. Presumably, however, this is either because 
too direct a vision of physical reality was a hindrance,, 
not a help, in the struggle for existence, because 
falsehood was more useful than truth, or else 
because with so imperfect a material as living tissue 
no better results could be attained. But if this 
conclusion be accepted, its consequences extend to 
other organs of knowledge beside those of percep- 
tion. Not merely the senses but the intellect must 
be judged by it ; and it is hard to see why evolution, 
which has so lamentably failed to produce trustworthy 
instruments for obtaining the raw material of experi- 



412 REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED 

ence, should be credited with a larger measure of 
success in its provision of the physiological arrange- 
ments which condition reason in its endeavours to 
turn experience to account. 

Considerations like these, unless I have compressed 
them beyond the limits of intelligibility, do undoubt- 
edly suggest a certain inevitable incoherence in any 
general scheme of thought which is built out of 
materials provided by natural science alone. Extend 
the boundaries of knowledge as you may ; draw how 
you will the picture of the universe; reduce its 
infinite variety to the modes of a single space-filling 
ether; re -trace its history to the birth of existing 
atoms ; show how under the pressure of gravitation 
they became concentrated into nebulae, into suns, and 
all the host of heaven; how, at least in one small 
planet, they combined to form organic compounds ; 
how organic compounds became living things ; how 
living things, developing along many different lines, 
gave birth at last to one superior race ; how from 
this race arose, after many ages, a learned handful, 
who looked round on the world which thus blindly 
brought them into being, and judged it, and knew it 
for what it was : perform (I say) all this, and though 



BY THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 413 

you may indeed have attained to science, in nowise 
will you have attained to a self-sufficing system of 
beliefs. One thing at least will remain, of which this 
long-drawn sequence of causes and effects gives no 
satisfying explanation ; and that is knowledge itself. 
Natural science must ever regard knowledge as the 
product of irrational conditions, for in the last resort 
it knows no others. It must always regard know- 
ledge as rational, or else science itself disappears. In 
addition, therefore, to the difficulty of extracting from 
experience beliefs which experience contradicts, we 
are confronted with the difficulty of harmonising the 
pedigree of our beliefs with their title to authority. 
The more successful we are in explaining their origin, 
the more doubt we cast upon their validity. The 
more imposing seems the scheme of what we know, 
the more difficult it is to discover by what ultimate 
criteria we claim to know it. 

Here, however, we touch the frontier beyond which 
physical science possesses no jurisdiction. If the 
obscure and difficult region which lies beyond is to 
be surveyed and made accessible, philosophy, not 
science, must undertake the task. It is no business 
of this Society. We meet here to promote the cause 



414 THE NEW THEORY OF MATTER 

of knowledge in one of its great divisions ; we shall 
not help it by confusing the limits which usefully 
separate one division from another. It may perhaps 
be thought that I have disregarded my own precept ; 
that I have wilfully overstepped the ample bounds 
within which the searchers into Nature carry on their 
labours. If it be so, I can only beg your forgiveness. 
My first desire has been to rouse in those who, like 
myself, are no specialists in physics, the same absorb- 
ing interest which I feel in what is surely the most far- 
reaching speculation about the physical universe which 
has ever claimed experimental support ; and if in so 
doing I have been tempted to hint my own personal 
opinion, that as natural Science grows it leans more, 
not less upon a teleological interpretation of the uni- 
verse, even those who least agree may perhaps be 
prepared to pardon. 



XI 

DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION : 
A STUDY IN POLITICAL CONTROVERSY 1 

You long ago called my attention to a 

pamphlet 2 by Dr. Clifford, as representing, in 
their most typical form, the controversial methods 
employed by the opponents of the Education Bill 
during their autumn campaign. Their methods, 
though they may have found admirers, have found 
no imitators in the House of Commons. But I 
concur with you in thinking that they are not 
on that account without their importance; and if 
they deserve examination, as perhaps they do, 
certainly no more characteristic example could be 
selected than the series of letters which you have 

1 A Letter to a Correspondent, 1902. 

2 The Fight against the Education Bill. By Dr. John Clifford. 
National Reform Union Pamphlets. 



416 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

brought to my notice. The author is an acknow- 
ledged leader among the militant section of political 
Nonconformists. His intervention in this contro- 
versy has received enthusiastic approval from eminent 
authorities on his own side of the question. His 
pamphlet has been circulated by hundreds of 
thousands. It has supplied the text of innumerable 
sermons. It must be studied, so at least says a 
distinguished member of the House of Commons, by 
all who would understand the Nonconformist attitude 
at the present moment. It has been described as 
"able and luminous," "full of knowledge, argument, 
and experience," "exhibiting superb ability." If 
even half these laudations are deserved, it can 
hardly be counted a waste of time to devote a few 
pages to the consideration of so important a 
masterpiece. 

The first thing that strikes us in glancing through 
the sixty-two closely printed pages of Dr. Clifford's 
pamphlet, is that the author seems preoccupied more 
with politics than with either religion or education. 
The keen eyes of the divine have penetrated a 
conspiracy so far hidden from mere lay politicians. 
" The State (he tells us) is in danger " ; our " primary 



DE. CLIFFOED ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 417 

and elementary rights are threatened " ; our " birth- 
right as British citizens " is at stake ; " it is a battle 
for life " ; and so on, and so on, with an exuberance 
of rhetoric that outruns quotation. If religion is 
concerned in the matter at all, it is religion in 
relation to politics. Dr. Clifford has apparently per- 
suaded himself that he is wielding what Dr. Parker 
called his " desperate sword " in a contest after the 
manner of the seventeenth century. His pages are 
picturesque with the names of Charles I. and Laud ; 
Hampden and Pym; Strafford, Milton, Algernon 
Sidney, and James II. Nay, finding even the 
seventeenth century too poor in appropriate illustra- 
tion, he gravely assures us that resistance to the Bill 
is " the defence of the pass of a political Thermopylae." 
Nor is this perilous state of affairs to be regarded as 
the unpremeditated consequence of an insufficiently 
considered measure. Far from it. The authors of 
the scheme are not so much bunglers as conspira- 
tors ; and the scheme itself, says this perspicacious 
observer, is a deliberate attack on British Liberty, 
long since contrived by " resolute and even desperate 
men." 

Now what is the basis on which Dr. Clifford has 
2E 



418 DK. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

erected the fantastic theory thus fantastically 
described? It rests, if I rightly understand him, 
upon these two propositions, both demonstrably 
false : (1) that in future the whole cost of denomina- 
tional schools is to be paid by the public ; (2) that in 
future the whole control of education is to be left to 
the clergy. Let us give each . of these statements in 
turn a moment's consideration, in the light of the 
actual provisions of the Education Bill. (I refer to 
the Bill as it stood when Dr. Clifford's pamphlet was 
published, with such modifications as had at that 
time been indicated by the Government.) 

According to Dr. Clifford "the whole cost (of the 
Voluntary Schools) falls upon the taxpayer and the 
ratepayer." If this means what it says, and what no 
doubt 99 out of 100 of Dr. Clifford's readers suppose 
it to mean, it is, of course, a misstatement. The 
denominations contribute a capital sum in the shape 
of buildings, which Dr. Clifford himself puts at 
15,000,000, which is probably more nearly 
25,000,000, and undertake the repairs and the 
necessary alterations in the schools of which the 
public has the use. 

The statement should therefore not be " the whole 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 419 

maintenance of denominational schools is provided 
by the public," but "the cost of denominational 
schools is in part provided by the public and in part 
provided by the denomination." But what then? 
It has always been so from the first moment that 
the State concerned itself with education. It is so 
now. The change proposed in the Bill is in this 
respect one of degree not of kind, and, whether right 
or wrong, involves no alteration of principle. 

If, however, it is untrue, as it most certainly is, 
that the whole cost of Voluntary Schools is left to 
the State, what are we to say of the second branch 
of the argument, that " the whole control is left to 
the clergy " 1 Dr. Clifford is, of course, perfectly 
aware that there are two replies to his contention, 
each of which by itself would seem to be sufficient. 
It is not true (in the first place) that the whole 
control is left to the clergy, since a third of the 
managers will represent undenominational bodies, 
and of the remaining two-thirds the majority will 
presumably be laymen. It is not true (in the second 
place) that the managers have the "whole manage- 
ment " of the school, if management is equivalent 
(as for the purpose of this argument it must be) to 



420 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

control ; since, like the " managers " of an industrial 
concern, or the managers under a large School Board, 
they take their orders, as regards the larger part of 
their functions, from a superior authority, which has 
nothing denominational about it, and from which, in 
many cases, the clergy are by statute excluded. But 
he has his own methods of meeting these arguments. 
The representative third is in his eyes not only use- 
less but worse than useless; it is an "irritating 
fraud." His constitutional studies have apparently 
convinced him that in an assembly where the 
majority govern, a dissentient minority is a negli- 
gible quantity. Were this theory sound, what an 
Arcadian existence would be that of the leader of 
the House of Commons ! But, in truth, the theory 
is absurd : and if it were not absurd, would bring 
some of Dr. Clifford's friends within reach of his 
lash. They have suggested that the proportions 
established by the Bill should be reversed, that the 
representative element on the managing body should 
be two-thirds, the denominational element but one- 
third of the whole. Are we then to apply Dr. 
Clifford's canons of criticism to this arrangement 1 ? 
Are we to suppose that a third is an important 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 421 

fraction of a board of management when it is com- 
posed of Dr. Clifford's opponents, but is scarce worth 
consideration when it consists of his friends'? Or 
are we to imagine that those who make this sugges- 
tion deliberately intend to compel voluntary schools 
to accept a system which they know to be an 
" irritating fraud " ? 

In truth the question is one of degree. The Bill, 
in giving a third to the representative managers, 
is unquestionably giving something substantial. 
Whether it is giving enough is a matter for argu- 
ment; nor can the cause be decided until we take 
account of the whole system of school government 
provided by the Bill, of which "management," in the 
technical sense, is but a fragment, and from the point 
of view of secular instruction, by far the least 
important fragment. For be it remembered that the 
dominant element in the proposed system of school 
government is not, in any class of elementary schools, 
the body of managers, but the education authority, 
i.e. the popularly elected town and county councils; 
and their control, should the Bill become law, would 
seem as strong as an Act of Parliament can make it. 
The education authority are to " have the control of 



422 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

all secular instruction in public elementary schools 
throughout their area " (Clause 6) : the managers of 
voluntary schools are to "carry out any directions 
of the local education authority as to the secular 
instruction to be given in the school" (Clause 8). 
But to Dr. Clifford all this is nothing. The words 
are "unreal words." They embody "sheer decep- 
tion." Yet, can this be so? Under the Bill, the 
education authority may determine (so far as secular 
education is concerned) what is to be taught ; how it 
is to be taught ; when it is to be taught. They may 
decide on the number of teachers, and on their salary. 
They may veto their appointment, and require their 
dismissal. They control the expenditure, not only 
of all the money provided by themselves, but of all 
the money provided by the State. And yet we are 
gravely assured that their authority is so faint and 
illusory that Dr. Clifford, who does not usually 
appear deficient in imagination, finds himself quite 
unable to form any "vivid picture" of that wherein 
it consists ! 

But if the representative body endowed with these 
powers have thus no control over education, who, in 
Dr. Clifford's opinion, has? Why, the body whom 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 423 

he sometimes describes as the clergy, and sometimes 
as the priests. "Who elect the teachers? The 
clergy. What educates 1 The atmosphere. Whose 
is the atmosphere? The clergy create it. The 
clergy guard it against foreign elements" (page 9). 
The denominational majority on the body of managers 
gives to the clergy "the control of all the school 
does, and all the school says, and all the school 
can be." 

I commend the passage from which these phrases 
are extracts as a happy specimen of Dr. Clifford's 
controversial method. He is, of course, perfectly 
aware that the persons who elect the teachers are 
the managers : that among the managers the laity 
will be always in a majority, and in most cases, 
I suppose, as five to one : that of these five, there 
is no certainty that more than three will belong to 
the denomination : that of these three, there is no 
certainty that any will side with the parson. 1 To a 
person with Dr. Clifford's knowledge of the English 
laity, however, such considerations are quite without 

1 I may note, in passing, Dr. Clifford's consistency. When he 
is dealing with the case of representative managers, a minority of 
one-third is an "irritating fraud." The parson in minority of 
one-sixth is an all-powerful tyrant. 



424 DK. CLIFFORD ON KELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

weight. To him it seems manifest that the parson 
will control the other denominational managers ; that 
the denominational managers will control the whole 
managing body ; that the managing body will elect 
the schoolmaster; the schoolmaster will create the 
" atmosphere " of the school ; that the " atmosphere " 
of the school must be its " supreme formative force " 
(page 8) ; that its " supreme formative force " will 
"control its whole education, secular as well as 
religious " (page 8). Therefore, by irresistible in- 
ference, the schools will become a mere branch of the 
Church, with the parson in supreme command the 
parson, who is but one-sixth of a body, which, even 
when unanimous, cannot appoint a teacher if the 
education authority question his capacity cannot 
retain him for an hour, if, on secular grounds, the 
educational authority object cannot use a secular 
book without its approval, or spend a shilling of 
public money without its consent. If the " resolute 
and desperate men" who are responsible for this 
Bill could contrive no tyranny more formidable than 
this, they are but bungling imitators of Laud and 
Strafford ; and it was hardly necessary for their 
discomfiture to evoke the blessed memory of Pym, 



DE. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 425 

Hampden, Cromwell, Milton, Sidney or even of 

-7 

Leonidas. 

There is, however, one matter which seems to 
disturb Dr. Clifford's equanimity even more violently 
than the anticipated loss of our civil and religious 
liberty, and that is the method by which this 
disastrous revolution is to be brought about. It is 
bad enough that the yoke of the clergy should be 
riveted round our necks by a scheme which associates 
with them, in the management of our schools, a large 
number of laymen ! It is bad enough that the con- 
trol of the people over the education of their children 
should be destroyed by a scheme which for the 
first time in our history makes purely representative 
bodies responsible for secular instruction ! But, 
"worst of all, this prodigious work of reaction and 
ruin " (page 23) is attempted to be carried out by an 
" action as mean and despicable as it is unauthorised, 
as unconstitutional as it is tricky and scandalous " 
which is Dr. Clifford's amiable method of expressing 
his objection to a Parliament dealing with education, 
which was elected when public attention was absorbed 
by the South African War. " If we wish to find any- 
thing resembling this breach of constitutional law we 



426 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

must go back to the days of Sir Eobert Walpole " 
(page 25). Dr. Clifford has certainly discovered a 
novelty in constitutional law : I suspect him of dis- 
covering some novelties in English history. " The 
days of Robert Walpole " is a phrase with a fine 
ring about it. It harmonises admirably with Dr. 
Clifford's general style, Yet I am hardly unchari- 
table in suspecting him of talking at random on the 
history of the eighteenth century, when he quite 
evidently talks at random on the history of the 
nineteenth. He has only to consider the case of the 
Corn Laws of 1846, of the Irish Land Act of 1881, 
of the Home Rule Bill of 1886 (two of which he 
mentions) in order to see that the political party 
of which he is so distinguished a member, has never 
shrunk from supporting or proposing changes which, 
though far more violent in their character than those 
contained in the present Bill, were either not before 
the electorate when the Parliament dealing with 
them was chosen, or being before the electorate, 
were not approved by it. 

It must not, however, be supposed that the ex- 
cursions into the region of pure politics, and con- 
stitutional law, represent all that Dr. Clifford has to 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 427 

tell on the subject of the Education Bill. The 
subject has also a moral aspect, it touches questions 
of conscience, and to these, as befits a minister of 
religion, he devotes much of his attention. 

On the whole, Dr. Clifford takes a gloomy view 
of the part which conscience plays in our national 
affairs. He and his friends indeed are in good case. 
They are (in his own words) " earnest men, speaking 
in the austere tones of invincible conviction " (page 
14). But he has doubts about the nation at large, 
and I fear that he has worse than doubts about me. 

I do not quite know what I have done to earn this 
ill opinion, unless it be that when a Nonconformist 
deputation, in which Dr. Clifford took part, were 
occupied in expressing their conscientious objections 
to the Education Bill, I am alleged to have shown 
surprise. I think it quite possible ; for I certainly 
felt it. But Dr. Clifford is in error as to its cause. 
I never doubted that he, and those for whom he has 
a right to speak, resemble other people in possessing 
a conscience. I am ready to take his word for it 
that they are superior to other people in their resolve 
to obey it. It was neither the existence nor the 
activity of his conscience that surprised me, but the 



428 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

discovery of what it forbade, and even more of what 
it permitted. I have regretfully to add that the 
surprise, under both heads, has grown rather than 
diminished since the occasion on which I had the 
pleasure of meeting him. 

Conscience, in Dr. Clifford's case, forbids, as I 
understand it, the payment of rates towards schools 
in which there is denominational teaching. 1 I asked 
Dr. Clifford's deputation at the time I may repeat 
the question now why conscience should forbid the 
payment of rates towards this object, and yet permit 
the payment of taxes ? Is there not a certain over- 
subtlety of distinction in this ruling which, if I may 
say so without offence either to Dr. Clifford or the 
Jesuits, is almost Jesuitical 1 Can we seriously 
believe in this pre-established correspondence between 
the frontier which eternally separates right from 
wrong, and the transient line which technically dis- 
tinguishes local from national taxation ? To my 
rough Protestant perception such a doctrine has a 
perilous resemblance to the worst forms of casuistry ; 
and I am by no means reassured by the only defence 

1 Tliis is implied rather than stated in the pamphlet ; but it 
contains phrases which, taken in connection with the general con- 
text, seem capable of no other interpretation. 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 429 

of it with which (so far as I can discern) he supplies 
us namely, that subsequent to 1870 the Noncon- 
formists paid taxes as part of a " compromise," and 
that they have been " protesting " ever since (pp. 19 
and 20). 

But this does not solve the old difficulty ; it only 
adds a new one. " Principles " (as Dr. Clifford 
observes with truth, if not with absolute novelty) 
"do not change" (p. 18), and if any contribution out 
of public funds towards schools where denominational 
religion is taught be intrinsically immoral, it must 
be immoral whatever be the particular name by 
which the funds are known ; and, being intrinsically 
immoral, should not, one would think, seem a proper 
subject of compromise to persons of " fully informed 
and ever active conscience" (p. 15). But why is it 
immoral ? Inexpedient it may possibly be ; un- 
necessary it may possibly be ; it may err in degree ; 
it may be oppressive by excess ; but why is it wrong ? 
Why does it, in Dr. Clifford's opinion, involve " the 
violation of the intrinsic rights of the human con- 
science " (p. 17) ? The reason, I understand, is to be 
found in the principle, which Dr. Clifford occasionally 
propounds as if it were axiomatic, namely, that it 



430 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

is so essentially unjust to make any one pay for 
teaching with which he does not happen to agree, 
that resistance, even to illegality, is permissible to 
prevent it. 

If this be the moral principle underlying Dr. 
Clifford's diatribes, it is perhaps worth observing that 
not in the Voluntary Schools, but in the Board 
Schools of Scotland and England is it most directly 
and obviously violated. For in Voluntary Schools 
it is, at all events, plain that religious teaching is at 
least in part paid for by the denomination to 
which the school belongs. It would, in my opinion, 
indeed, be hard to show that the contribution of 
the denomination will not be, according to any fair 
apportionment, sufficient to pay for that fraction of 
the teaching which is devoted to religion. This 
may be disputed ; but what cannot be disputed is, 
that while in all denominational schools the denomina- 
tion will pay something, in Scottish Board Schools 
the whole cost of education, religious and secular, 
denominational and undenominational, falls upon the 
public ; and that therefore, unless the principles of 
universal morality stop at the Tweed, the Scottish 
ratepayer (to say nothing of the contributing tax- 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 431 

payer of the United Kingdom), who does not happen 
to agree with the religion taught, is, on Dr. Clifford's 
theory, subjected to a "galling injustice" (p. 16), 
is deprived of the " primary rights of citizenship " 
(p. 15); nay, has not the '.'full and free use of his 
own soul" (p. 15). Yet, strangely enough, in spite 
of it all, Scotchmen are still perverse enough to 
think their educational system not wholly inconsistent 
with liberty, with justice, and with the rights of 
conscience; and though they may entertain some 
doubt as to the exact meaning of the phrase " free 
use of his own soul," no Scotchman, I am confident, 
will admit that Dr. Clifford enjoys this privilege, but 
that he does not. 

To do Dr. Clifford justice, his approval of the 
Scotch School Board system is of the coldest descrip- 
tion. On the other hand, his praises of the English 
School Board system are enthusiastic even to extra- 
vagance. We must therefore ask whether this is in 
closer harmony with his views of immutable justice : 
whether this, any more than the Scotch system, 
avoids making men pay for the teaching of opinions 
with which they disagree. In most English Board 
Schools religion is taught. In many Board Schools 



432 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

it is taught in a way which, to my thinking, is 
excellent. But though it is satisfactory to me, 
indeed because it is satisfactory to me, it can hardly 
at the same time be satisfactory to the atheist, the 
agnostic, the Jew, the Unitarian, or the Roman 
Catholic. Are these classes unrepresented among 
the ratepayers'? Assuredly not. Do they pay 
nothing towards the cost of Board Schools? Evi- 
dently they do. Then must we not conclude that 
"the schools of the nation," "the schools of the 
people," " the schools of the democracy " (p. 34) are 
conducted on a system " involving a violation of the 
intrinsic rights of human conscience" (p. 17) 
unless, indeed, we are to suppose that the classes 
referred to have either no conscience or no rights 1 

Perhaps it will be said by way of excuse, if not of 
answer, that School Board education, even when 
religious, is at least "undenominational." But this 
is quite beside our present point. The ratepayer or 
taxpayer, required to pay for teaching in which he 
does not believe, is not likely to be consoled by the 
information that this teaching is not embodied in 
any formula which the Board of Education or the 
courts of law regard as " distinctive of any particular $ 



DR. CLIFFORD ON. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 433 

creed." What goes by the name of "undenomina- 
tional religion " is not a body of doctrine about which 
men agree, distilled over, by the theological dexterity - 
of the School Boards, from the various creeds about 
which men differ. It is, on the contrary, a varying 
body of beliefs, capable of formulation in a thousand 
different ways, but always erring in the opinion of 
some, either by excess, or by defect, or by both. 
How comes it that a system which obliges these 
objectors to pay for such teaching out of the rates, 
can obtain the enthusiastic support of conscientious 
persons like Dr. Clifford ? 

The reply the only reply which I can discover in 
Dr. Clifford's pages (see p. 18) is that Board Schools 
are " conducted on exclusively national principles," 
that u the man who pays a School Board rate has a 
citizen's full share in the management and adminis- 
tration of the schools" (p. 18), and that therefore no 
grievance exists, and no moral law is violated. 

But on this it may be observed that the fact is 
untrue, and that if it were true it would none the 
less be irrelevant. It is not the case that the rate- 
payer, qm ratepayer, has "a citizen's full share in 
the management of Board Schools." He has in 
2F 



434 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

Scotland. He has not in England ; since whatever 
may be his views about religious teaching, his liberty 
of action is restricted by the Cowper-Temple clause, 
to which I understand Dr. Clifford is deeply attached. 
But supposing it were otherwise, what matters it to 
our present purpose ? The moral principle Dr. 
Clifford asks us to affirm is, that a man's conscience 
is outraged if he is required to pay for teaching of 
which he sincerely disapproves. How is he bettered 
by the fact that the persons who commit the outrage 
are neither priests nor parliaments, but local rate- 
payers ; or, that if he can contrive to get a majority 
of the School Board on his side, he will be able, in 
his turn, to outrage the conscience of somebody else ? 
This possibility may perhaps console the man but 
what becomes of the principle 1 

To do Dr. Clifford justice, I believe that he is 
occasionally visited by an uneasy sense of this 
difficulty. A man must be much beclouded by 
political passions before he can swallow, quite with- 
out wincing, the doctrine that we are deprived of 
" the divinest gift to us men the unfettered use of 
our own souls," if Parliament interferes with the 
teaching of "beliefs and opinions," but not if the 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 435 

School Board interferes. 1 And although Dr. Clifford 
seems quite explicitly to commit himself to this 
view, I gather that what in his heart he really 
desires is, not a scheme under which the persons 
who pay the rate may settle by a majority vote 
what religion is to be taught, which is the Scotch 
plan ; nor a scheme under which the ratepayer may 
settle what religion is to be taught, subject to certain 
arbitrary (though possibly convenient) Parliamentary 
limitations, which is the English plan ; but a system 
which excludes all religious education whatever. 
"The only position," he says, "which Parliament 
can take with justice is that of rigidly restricting 
itself to its own plane of secular, non-credal, non- 
ecclesiastical, but intensely ethical teaching" (page 
17). His ideal elementary school would seem to be 
a purely secular institution. 

He would, it is true, admit the teaching of the 
Bible, but only if it be used as an instrument of 
purely " literary and ethical " education, and because 
the study of it may enable us the better to 

1 Compare "Opinions and beliefs . . . are outside . . . the 
jurisdiction of Parliament," on page 21, with "My contention is 
that those who pay for the schools should settle what is to be taught 
in them, even though it be the Presbyterian catechism," on page 61. 



436 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

understand " Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and 
Burns," and is therefore "necessary for a full secular 
education" (p. 61). It is apparently to be treated 
as a collection of elegant extracts and edifying 
maxims. The sixth commandment may be taught, 
for, taken by itself, this is simply a moral pronounce- 
ment. The first commandment, on the other hand, 
must be treated only as " literature " ; for manifestly 
it has a theological implication. Of the two precepts 
which contain " all the Law and the Prophets," the 
second may be taught, but not the first. The Lord's 
Prayer may be used as an introduction to Burns, but 
not as the outpouring of the spirit of man to his 
Maker. According to Dr. Clifford, Parliament would 
be going beyond its functions in teaching, at the 
cost of public funds, that man lias a Maker. 

Now it is certainly the case that " plain Scripture 
instruction" is not the simple matter that many 
good people seem to suppose. But surely it were 
better not to attempt it at all than to attempt it in 
this fashion. If every religious implication in the 
Old and New Testament is to be ignored, it seems 
hardly worth while asking the children of this 
country to spend five hours a week in the study of 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 437 

the Bible even though it " has found its way so 
largely into " the writings of " Shakespeare, Milton, 
Wordsworth, and Burns" (page 61). When the 
English people showed unmistakably that they wished 
the Bible to be taught, at the public cost, in our 
elementary schools, they meant no such nonsensical 
doctrine as this. They were not moved by the fact 
that much of the Bible is excellent literature. They 
gave no countenance to the futile effort to eliminate 
its theology from its ethics. They required the Bible 
to be retained in our educational system, because 
they saw in it the source of the religion in which 
they believed ; and for that reason, and no other, 
desired their children to be brought up in the 
knowledge of it. 

This, however, is not the view of Dr. Clifford. He 
wishes to secularise State-given education and so 
far would seem, if not to be right, at least to be con- 
sistent. But why does he stop there? He would 
forbid the State to teach religion. He would 
require it to teach ethics. Wherefore this invidious 
difference 1 Religion is riot the only thing about 
which men and ratepayers conscientiously quarrel. 
And if there is any distinction to be drawn, between 



438 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

compelling a conscientiously objecting ratepayer to 
pay for religious teaching from which he may with- 
draw his child, and compelling him to pay for 
training in morals and manners from which he may 
not, I confess the latter seems to me, though much 
the rarer case, to be, when it occurs, by far the 
harder. Short, then, of .making it purely voluntary 
on the part of the ratepayer to provide education, 
and of the parent to use it, I am driven to the 
melancholy conclusion that Dr. Clifford's conscience 
can never be at rest and yet, oddly enough, he, 
of all men, is of opinion that "compulsion is the 
root principle of national education " ! (page 36). 
Elsewhere, to be sure, he observes that there is "a 
solidarity among liberties" (page 21). Each, that 
is to say, is necessary to all. Unfortunately he 
forgets, when propounding this attractive maxim, 
that the very pamphlet in which it appears would 
become mere foolishness if it were to be taken 
seriously. If every ratepayer is to enjoy the liberty 
of refusing his money to school teaching which he 
dislikes, and every parent is to enjoy the liberty of 
keeping his child from a school of which he dis- 
approves, what becomes of Dr. Clifford's national 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 439 

system of education 1 If they are not to enjoy these 
liberties, what becomes of Dr. Clifford's theory of 
civil and religious freedom ? 

Now, it may be said that these observations show 
only that Dr. Clifford suffers from confusion of 
thought, not from a perverted conscience. I entirely 
agree. The abstract questions raised in any thorough- 
going discussion of the relations which ought to 
subsist between the community and the individual, 
whether in the matter of education or anything else, 
are not easy of solution, and when Dr. Clifford, who 
never appears to have given them much considera- 
tion, applies to them his characteristic methods of 
rhetorical dogmatism, he naturally gets into trouble. 

This need not surprise us. What does move my 
wonder is, not that a party pamphleteer should con- 
tradict himself and confuse his readers when he 
discusses theories of political ethics, but that a divine 
who talks so much about his conscience should be so 
apparently indifferent to the less abstruse virtues of 
accuracy and charity. His misstatements of fact 
are truly amazing. But isolated misstatements, 
however numerous, would by themselves be un- 
important. It is the use to which they are put 



440 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

which renders them culpable. This Education Bill, 
like its predecessors, touches, and must touch, the 
question of religion; it touches, that is to say, the 
subject which of all others raises the strongest 
passions and the bitterest differences the subject 
in relation to which new issues are peculiarly apt 
to be obscured by old. catchwords, the subject on 
which men are most easily tempted to confuse the 
promptings of prejudice with the voice of conscience. 
Here then is the touchstone whereby to distinguish the 
scrupulous from the unscrupulous controversialist; 
and can it be denied that, tried by this standard, 
Dr. Clifford is found lamentably wanting? We 
may easily forgive loose logic and erratic history : 
strong language about political opponents is too 
common to excite anything but a passing regret : 
but surely it was unnecessary to irritate sectarian 
susceptibilities and inflame theological animosities, 
in order to direct the volume of prejudice thus 
created against a measure which does so much to 
remedy the very evils of which Dr. Clifford's clients 
complain. 

I have often wondered how a man of Dr. Clifford's 
high character and position can sink to methods like 



DK. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 441 

these, and I am disposed to find the explanation 
in the fact that he is the unconscious victim of his 
own rhetoric. Whatever may have been the case 
originally, he is now the slave, not the master, of 
his style ; and his style is unfortunately one which 
admits neither of measure nor of accuracy. Distor- 
tion and exaggeration are of its very essence. If he 
has to speak of our pending differences, acute no 
doubt, but not unprecedented, he must needs compare 
them to the great Civil War. If he has to describe 
a deputation of Nonconformist ministers presenting 
their case to the leader of the House of Commons, 
nothing less will serve him as a parallel than Luther's 
appearance before the Diet of Worms. If he has 
to indicate that, as sometimes happens in the case 
of a deputation, the gentlemen composing it firmly 
believed in the strength of their own case, this can- 
not be done at a smaller rhetorical cost than by 
describing them as "earnest men speaking in the 
austere tones of invincible conviction." The follies, 
or, if you please, the worse than follies, of a few 
parsons become " typical of the whole situation." A 
measure which requires that the control of the clergy 
over secular education shall be withdrawn, and their 



442 DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

control over religious education be qualified, becomes 
a plan for " putting the rule of the priests on the 
British people." While every provision to which 
Dr. Clifford objects is forthwith denounced as an 
invasion either of our civil liberties or of our rights 
of conscience ; fortunate if, finding its critic in a 
moment of rare benevolence, it escapes the double 
condemnation. 

It would be unkind to require moderation or 
accuracy from any one to whom such modes of 
expression have evidently become a second nature. 
Nor do I wish to judge Dr. Clifford harshly. He 
must surely occasionally find his method embarrass- 
ing even to himself. In looking over the catalogue 
of epithets with which he has assailed the Education 
Bill and its authors, I find myself wondering on 
what linguistic resources he would draw had he to 
describe the Gunpowder Plot or the Massacre of 
St. Bartholomew. The ear gets wearied with this 
unrelenting scream ; the palate jaded with these 
perpetual stimulants. And though one of Dr. 
Clifford's warmest admirers has invented in his 
honour the verb to " Cliffordise," I am, for my part, 
doubtful whether the style thus happily described 



DR. CLIFFORD ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 443 

is likely, even among the least critical members of 
the community, to produce more than a passing 
perturbation. Some there may be who think that, 
if a thing be said often enough, it must be true ; if 
it be said loud enough, it must be important. But 
we may hope that these are riot in a majority ; and, 
until they are, the controversial methods which Dr. 
Clifford has so abundantly exemplified can win no 
permanent success. 



THE END 



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