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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Map of Life, by William Edward Hartpole
+Lecky
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Map of Life
+       Conduct and Character
+
+
+Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2008  [eBook #26334]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAP OF LIFE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Martin Pettit, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WORKS BY
+
+The Rt. Hon. W. E. H. LECKY.
+
+
+HISTORY of ENGLAND in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+  Library Edition. 8vo. Vols. I. and II. 1700-1760. 36s. Vols.
+III. and IV. 1760-1784. 36s. Vols. V. and VI. 1784-1793. 36s.
+Vols. VII. and VIII. 1793-1800. 36s.
+  Cabinet Edition. ENGLAND. 7 vols. Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
+IRELAND. 5 vols. Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
+
+The HISTORY of EUROPEAN MORALS from AUGUSTUS to CHARLEMAGNE.
+  2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.
+
+HISTORY of the RISE and INFLUENCE of the
+  SPIRIT of RATIONALISM in EUROPE.
+  2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.
+
+DEMOCRACY and LIBERTY.
+  Library Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 36s.
+  Cabinet Edition. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE: Conduct and Character.
+  Library Edition. 8vo. 10s. 6d.
+  Cabinet Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+POEMS. Fcp. 8vo. 5s.
+
+
+        LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
+   39 Paternoster Row, London, and Bombay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE
+
+Conduct and Character
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
+
+
+     'La vie n'est pas un plaisir ni une douleur, mais une affaire grave
+     dont nous sommes chargés, et qu'il faut conduire et terminer à
+     notre honneur'                           TOCQUEVILLE
+
+New Impression
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Longmans, Green, and Co.
+39 Paternoster Row, London
+New York and Bombay
+1904
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Bibliographical Note.
+
+   _First printed_, _8vo_, _September 1899_. _Reprinted November
+   1899_; _December 1899_; _January 1900 (with corrections)_. _Cabinet
+   Edition_, _Crown 8vo_, _February 1901_. _Reprinted December, 1902_.
+   _July, 1904_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+                                                            PAGE
+
+How far reasoning on happiness is of any use                   1
+The arguments of the Determinist                               2
+The arguments for free will                                    3
+_Securus judicat orbis terrarum_                               5
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Happiness a condition of mind and often confused with
+  the means of attaining it                                    7
+Circumstances and character contribute to it in different
+  degrees                                                      7
+Religion, Stoicism, and Eastern nations seek it mainly by
+ acting on disposition                                         7
+Sensational philosophies and industrial and progressive
+  nations seek it chiefly in improved circumstances            8
+English character                                              8
+Action of the body on happiness                               10
+Influence of predispositions in reasonings on life            12
+Promotion of health by legislation, fashion and self-culture  12
+Slight causes of life failures                                14
+Effects of sanitary reform                                    14
+Diminished disease does not always imply a higher level of
+  health                                                      15
+Two causes depressing health                                  16
+Encroachments on liberty in sanitary legislation              16
+Sanitary education--its chief articles--its possible
+  exaggeration                                                17
+Constant thought about health not the way to attain it        18
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Some general rules of happiness--1. A life full of
+  work.--Happiness should not be the main object of pursuit   19
+Carlyle on Ennui                                              20
+2. Aim rather at avoiding suffering than attaining pleasure   21
+3. The greatest pleasures and pains in spheres accessible to
+  all                                                         22
+4. Importance and difficulty of realising our blessings while
+  they last                                                   24
+Comparison and contrast                                       26
+Content not the quality of progressive societies              27
+The problem of balancing content and the desire for progress  28
+What civilisation can do for happiness                        28
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The relation of morals to happiness.--The Utilitarian
+  justification of virtue insufficient                        30
+Power of man to aim at something different from and higher
+  than happiness                                              32
+General coincidence of duty and happiness                     33
+The creation of unselfish interests one of the chief elements
+  of happiness                                                34
+Burke on a well-ordered life                                  35
+Improvement of character more within our power than
+  improvement of intellect                                    36
+High moral qualities often go with low intellectual power     36
+Dangers attaching to the unselfish side of our nature.--Active
+  charity personally supervised least subject to abuse        37
+Disproportioned compassion                                    38
+Treatment of animals                                          41
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Changes of morals chiefly in the proportionate value attached
+  to different virtues                                        44
+Military, civic, and intellectual virtues                     44
+The mediæval type                                             45
+Modifications introduced by Protestantism                     47
+Bossuet and Louis XIV.                                        48
+Persecution.--Operations at childbirth.--Usury                50
+Every great religion and philosophic system produces or
+  favours a distinct moral type                               51
+Variations in moral judgments                                 51
+Complexity of moral influences of modern times.--The industrial
+  type                                                        53
+Qualified by other influences                                 54
+Unnecessary suffering                                         57
+Goethe's exposition of modern morals                          58
+Morals hitherto too much treated negatively                   59
+Possibility of an over-sensitive conscience                   60
+Increased sense of the obligations of an active life          61
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+In the guidance of life action more important than pure
+  reasoning                                                   62
+The enforcement of active duty now specially needed           62
+Temptations to luxurious idleness                             63
+Rectification of false ideals.--The conqueror                 64
+The luxury of ostentation                                     64
+Glorification of the demi-monde                               66
+Study of ideals                                               67
+The human mind more capable of distinguishing right
+  from wrong than of measuring merit and demerit              67
+Fallibility of moral judgments                                68
+Rules for moral judgment                                      73
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The school of Rousseau considers man by nature wholly
+  good                                                        76
+Other schools maintain that he is absolutely depraved         76
+Exaggerations of these schools                                78
+The restraining conscience distinctively human.--Comparison
+  with the animals                                            79
+Reality of human depravity.--Illustrated by war               81
+Large amount of pure malevolence.--Political crime.--The
+  press                                                       83
+Mendacity in finance                                          85
+The sane view of human character                              86
+We learn with age to value restraints, to expect moderately
+and value compromise                                          86
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Moral compromise a necessity in life.--Statement of Newman    88
+Impossibility of acting on it                                 88
+Moral considerations though the highest must not absorb
+  all others                                                  90
+Truthfulness--cases in which it may be departed from          91
+
+_Moral compromise in war_
+    War necessarily stimulates the malevolent passions and
+      practises deception                                     92
+    Rights of war in early stages of civilisation             93
+    Distinction between Greeks and Barbarians                 94
+    Roman moralists insisted on just causes of war and on
+      formal declaration                                      95
+    Treatment of prisoners.--Combatants and non-combatants    95
+    Treatment of private property                             96
+    Lawful and unlawful methods of conducting war             96
+    Abdication by the soldier of private judgment and free
+      will                                                    98
+    Distinctions and compromises                              99
+    Cases in which the military oath may be broken.--Illegal
+      orders                                                 100
+    Violation of religious obligations.--The Sepoy mutiny    101
+    The Italian conscript.--Fenians in the British army      104
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_Moral compromise in the law_
+    What advocates may and may not do                        108
+    Inevitable temptations of the profession                 109
+    Its condemnation by Swift, Arnold, Macaulay, Bentham     109
+    Its defence by Paley, Johnson, Basil Montagu             110
+    How far a lawyer may support a bad case.--St. Thomas
+      Aquinas and Catholic casuists                          111
+    Sir Matthew Hale.--General custom in England             113
+    Distinction between the etiquette of prosecution and
+      of defence                                             113
+    The case of Courvoisier                                  114
+    Statement of Lord Brougham                               115
+    The license of cross-examination.--Technicalities defeating
+      justice                                                116
+    Advantage of trial by jury                               119
+    Necessity of the profession of advocate                  119
+
+_Moral compromise in politics_
+    Necessity of party                                       120
+    How far conscientious differences should impair party
+      allegiance                                             121
+    Lines of conduct adopted when such differences arise     121
+    Parliamentary obstruction                                123
+    Moral difficulties inseparable from party                124
+    Evil of extreme view of party allegiance.--Government
+      and the Opposition                                     125
+    Relations of members to their constituents               127
+    Votes given without adequate knowledge                   131
+    Diminished power of the private member                   134
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE STATESMAN
+
+Duty of a statesman when the interests and wishes of his
+  nation conflict                                            136
+Nature and extent of political trusteeship                   137
+Temperance questions                                         138
+Legitimate and illegitimate time-serving                     141
+Education questions                                          141
+Inconsistency in politics--how far it should be condemned    147
+The conduct of Peel in 1829 and 1845                         148
+The conduct of Disraeli in 1867                              149
+Different degrees of weight to be attached to party
+  considerations                                             151
+Temptations to war                                           153
+Temptations of aristocratic and of democratic governments    155
+Necessity of assimilating legislation                        157
+Legislation violating contracts.--Irish land legislation     158
+Questions forced into prominence for party objects           164
+The judgment of public servants who have committed
+  indefensible acts                                          165
+The French _coup d'état_ of 1851                             166
+Judgments passed upon it                                     177
+Probable multiplication of _coups d'état_                    182
+Governor Eyre                                                184
+The Jameson raid                                             185
+How statesmen should deal with political misdeeds            190
+The standard of international morals--questions connected
+  with it                                                    191
+The ethics of annexation                                     195
+Political morals and public opinion                          196
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_Moral compromise in the Church_
+    Difficulties of reconciling old formularies with changed
+      beliefs                                                198
+    Cause of some great revolutions of belief.--The Copernican
+      system.--Discovery of Newton                           198
+    The antiquity of the world, of death, and of man         200
+    The Darwinian theory                                     201
+    Comparative mythology.--Biblical criticism.--Scientific
+      habits of thought                                      201
+    General incorporation of new ideas into the Church       204
+    Growth of the sacerdotal spirit                          204
+    The two theories of the Reformation                      205
+    Modern Ritualism                                         210
+    Its various elements of attraction                       211
+    Diversity of teaching has not enfeebled the Church       213
+    Its literary activity.--Proofs that the Church is in
+      touch with educated laymen                             214
+    Its political influence--how far this is a test of
+      vitality                                               218
+    Its influence on education                               219
+    Its spiritual influence                                  220
+    How far clergymen who dissent from parts of its
+      theology can remain within it                          221
+    Newman on a Latitudinarian establishment                 223
+    Obligations imposed on the clergy by the fact of
+      Establishment                                          224
+    Attitude of laymen towards the Church                    225
+    Increasing sense of the relativity of belief             226
+    This tendency strengthens with age                       227
+    The conflict between belief and scepticism               229
+    Power of religion to undergo transformation              229
+    Probable influence of the sacerdotal spirit on the
+      Church                                                 231
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE MANAGEMENT OF CHARACTER
+
+A sound judgment of our own characters essential to moral
+  improvement                                                235
+Analogies between character and taste                        236
+The strongest desire generally prevails, but desires may be
+  modified                                                   238
+Passions and habits                                          239
+Exaggerated regard for the future.--A happy childhood        239
+Choice of pleasures.--Athletic games                         240
+The intellectual pleasures                                   242
+Their tendency to enhance other pleasures.--Importance of
+  specialisation                                             243
+And of judicious selection                                   243
+Education may act specially on the desires or on the will    245
+Modern education and tendencies of the former kind           245
+Old Catholic training mainly of the will.--Its effects       247
+Anglo-Saxon types in the seventeenth century                 248
+Capriciousness of willpower--heroism often succumbs to vice  249
+Courage--its varieties and inconsistencies                   250
+The circumstances of life the school of will.--Its place in
+  character                                                  251
+Dangers of an early competence.--Choice of work              252
+Choice of friends.--Effect of early friendship on character  254
+Mastery of will over thoughts.--Its intellectual importance  255
+Its importance in moral culture                              255
+Great difference among men in this respect                   256
+Means of governing thought                                   258
+The dream power--its great place in life                     258
+Especially in the early stages of humanity                   261
+Moral safety valves--danger of inventing unreal crimes       262
+Character of the English gentleman                           266
+Different ways of treating temptation                        266
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MONEY
+
+Henry Taylor on its relation to character                    268
+Difference between real and professed beliefs about money    268
+Its relation to happiness in different grades of life        269
+The cost of pleasures                                        275
+Lives of the millionaires                                    281
+Leaders of Society                                           284
+The great speculator                                         287
+Expenditure in charity.--Rules for regulating it             288
+Advantages and disadvantages of a large very wealthy class
+  in a nation                                                292
+Directions in which philanthropic expenditure may be best
+  turned                                                     296
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+Its importance and the motives that lead to it               300
+The moral and intellectual qualities it specially demands    302
+Duty to the unborn.--Improvident marriages                   305
+The doctrine of heredity and its consequences                306
+Religious celibacy                                           308
+Marriages of dissimilar types often peculiarly happy         309
+Marriages resulting from a common weakness                   310
+Independent spheres in marriage.--Effect on character        311
+The age of marriage                                          312
+Increased independence of women                              314
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SUCCESS
+
+Success depends more on character than on intellect          316
+Especially that accessible to most men and most conducive
+  to happiness                                               317
+Strength of will, tact and judgment.--Not always joined      317
+Their combination a great element of success                 318
+Good nature                                                  319
+Tact: its nature and its importance                          320
+Its intellectual and moral affinities                        323
+Value of good society in cultivating it.--Newman's description
+  of a gentleman                                             324
+Disparities between merit and success                        326
+Success not universally desired                              326
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TIME
+
+Rebellion of human nature against the essential conditions
+  of life                                                    328
+Time 'the stuff of life'                                     330
+Various ways of treating it                                  330
+Increased intensity of life                                  331
+Sleep                                                        332
+Apparent inequalities of time                                335
+The tenure of life not too short                             337
+Old age                                                      341
+The growing love of rest.--How time should be regarded       341
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE END
+
+Death terrible chiefly through its accessories               343
+Pagan and Christian ideas about it                           344
+Premature death                                              349
+How easily the fear of death is overcome                     351
+The true way of regarding it                                 352
+
+
+
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+One of the first questions that must naturally occur to every writer who
+deals with the subject of this book is, what influence mere discussion
+and reasoning can have in promoting the happiness of men. The
+circumstances of our lives and the dispositions of our characters mainly
+determine the measure of happiness we enjoy, and mere argument about the
+causes of happiness and unhappiness can do little to affect them. It is
+impossible to read the many books that have been written on these
+subjects without feeling how largely they consist of mere sounding
+generalities which the smallest experience shows to be perfectly
+impotent in the face of some real and acute sorrow, and it is equally
+impossible to obtain any serious knowledge of the world without
+perceiving that a large proportion of the happiest lives and characters
+are to be found where introspection, self-analysis and reasonings about
+the good and evil of life hold the smallest place. Happiness, indeed,
+like health, is one of the things of which men rarely think except when
+it is impaired, and much that has been written on the subject has been
+written under the stress of some great depression. Such writers are
+like the man in Hogarth's picture occupying himself in the debtors'
+prison with plans for the payment of the National Debt. There are
+moments when all of us feel the force of the words of Voltaire:
+'Travaillons sans raisonner, c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie
+supportable.'
+
+That there is much truth in such considerations is incontestable, and it
+is only within a restricted sphere that the province of reasoning
+extends. Man comes into the world with mental and moral characteristics
+which he can only very imperfectly influence, and a large proportion of
+the external circumstances of his life lie wholly or mainly beyond his
+control. At the same time, every one recognises the power of skill,
+industry and perseverance to modify surrounding circumstances; the power
+of temperance and prudence to strengthen a naturally weak constitution,
+prolong life, and diminish the chances of disease; the power of
+education and private study to develop, sharpen and employ to the best
+advantage our intellectual faculties. Every one also recognises how
+large a part of the unhappiness of most men may be directly traced to
+their own voluntary and deliberate acts. The power each man possesses in
+the education and management of his character, and especially in the
+cultivation of the dispositions and tendencies which most largely
+contribute to happiness, is less recognised and is perhaps less
+extensive, but it is not less real.
+
+The eternal question of free will and determinism here naturally meets
+us, but on such a subject it is idle to suppose that a modern writer can
+do more than define the question and state his own side. The
+Determinist says that the real question is not whether a man can do
+what he desires, but whether he can do what he does not desire; whether
+the will can act without a motive; whether that motive can in the last
+analysis be other than the strongest pleasure. The illusion of free
+will, he maintains, is only due to the conflict of our motives. Under
+many forms and disguises pleasure and pain have an absolute empire over
+conduct. The will is nothing more than the last and strongest desire; or
+it is like a piece of iron surrounded by magnets and necessarily drawn
+by the most powerful; or (as has been ingeniously imagined) like a
+weathercock, conscious of its own motion, but not conscious of the winds
+that are moving it. The law of compulsory causation applies to the world
+of mind as truly as to the world of matter. Heredity and Circumstance
+make us what we are. Our actions are the inevitable result of the mental
+and moral constitutions with which we came into the world, operated on
+by external influences.
+
+The supporters of free will, on the other hand, maintain that it is a
+fact of consciousness that there is a clear distinction between the Will
+and the Desires, and that although they are closely connected no sound
+analysis will confuse them. Coleridge ingeniously compared their
+relations to 'the co-instantaneous yet reciprocal action of the air and
+the vital energy of the lungs in breathing.'[1] If the will is
+powerfully acted on by the desires, it has also in its turn a power of
+acting upon them, and it is not a mere slave to pleasure and pain. The
+supporters of this view maintain that it is a fact of the plainest
+consciousness that we can do things which we do not like; that we can
+suspend the force of imperious desires, resist the bias of our nature,
+pursue for the sake of duty the course which gives least pleasure
+without deriving or expecting from it any pleasure, and select at a
+given moment between alternate courses. They maintain that when various
+motives pass before the mind, the mind retains a power of choosing and
+judging, of accepting and rejecting; that it can by force of reason or
+by force of imagination bring one motive into prominence, concentrating
+its attention on it and thus intensifying its power; that it has a
+corresponding power of resisting other motives, driving them into the
+background and thus gradually diminishing their force; that the will
+itself becomes stronger by exercise, as the desires do by indulgence.
+The conflict between the will and the desires, the reality of
+self-restraint and the power of Will to modify character, are among the
+most familiar facts of moral life. In the words of Burke, 'It is the
+prerogative of man to be in a great degree a creature of his own
+making.' There are men whose whole lives are spent in willing one thing
+and desiring the opposite, and all morality depends upon the supposition
+that we have at least some freedom of choice between good and evil. 'I
+ought,' as Kant says, necessarily implies 'I can.' The feeling of moral
+responsibility is an essential part of healthy and developed human
+nature, and it inevitably presupposes free will. The best argument in
+its favour is that it is impossible really to disbelieve it. No human
+being can prevent himself from viewing certain acts with an indignation,
+shame, remorse, resentment, gratitude, enthusiasm, praise or blame,
+which would be perfectly unmeaning and irrational if these acts could
+not have been avoided. We can have no higher evidence on the subject
+than is derived from this fact. It is impossible to explain the mystery
+of free will, but until a man ceases to feel these emotions he has not
+succeeded in disbelieving in it. The feelings of all men and the
+vocabularies of all languages attest the universality of the belief.
+
+Newman, in a well-known passage in his 'Apologia,' describes the immense
+effect which the sentence of Augustine, 'Securus judicat orbis
+terrarum,' had upon his opinions in determining him to embrace the
+Church of Rome. The force of this consideration in relation to the
+subject to which Dr. Newman refers does not appear to have great weight.
+It means only that at a time when the Christian Church included but a
+small fraction of the human race; when all questions of orthodoxy or the
+reverse were practically in the hands of the priesthood; when ignorance,
+credulity and superstition were at their height and the habits of
+independence and impartiality of judgment running very low; and when
+every kind of violent persecution was directed against those who
+dissented from the prevailing dogmas,--certain councils of priests found
+it possible to attain unanimity on such questions as the two natures in
+Christ or the relations of the Persons in the Trinity, and to expel from
+the Church those who differed from their views, and that the once
+formidable sects which held slightly different opinions about these
+inscrutable relations gradually faded away. Such an unanimity on such
+subjects and attained by such methods does not appear to me to carry
+with it any overwhelming force. There are, however, a certain number of
+beliefs that are not susceptible of demonstrative proof, and which must
+always rest essentially on the universal assent of mankind. Such is the
+existence of the external world. Such, in my opinion, is the existence
+of a distinction between right and wrong, different from and higher than
+the distinction between pleasure and pain, and subsisting in all human
+nature in spite of great diversities of opinion about the acts and
+qualities that are comprised in either category; and such also is the
+kindred belief in a self-determining will. If men contend that these
+things are mere illusions and that their faculties are not to be
+trusted, it will no doubt be difficult or impossible to refute them; but
+a scepticism of this kind has no real influence on either conduct or
+feeling.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] _Aids to Reflection_, p. 68.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Men continually forget that Happiness is a condition of Mind and not a
+disposition of circumstances, and one of the most common of errors is
+that of confusing happiness with the means of happiness, sacrificing the
+first for the attainment of the second. It is the error of the miser,
+who begins by seeking money for the enjoyment it procures and ends by
+making the mere acquisition of money his sole object, pursuing it to the
+sacrifice of all rational ends and pleasures. Circumstances and
+Character both contribute to Happiness, but the proportionate attention
+paid to one or other of these great departments not only varies largely
+with different individuals, but also with different nations and in
+different ages. Thus Religion acts mainly in the formation of
+dispositions, and it is especially in this field that its bearing on
+human happiness should be judged. It influences, it is true, vastly and
+variously the external circumstances of life, but its chief power of
+comforting and supporting lies in its direct and immediate action upon
+the human soul. The same thing is true of some systems of philosophy of
+which Stoicism is the most conspicuous. The paradox of the Stoic that
+good and evil are so entirely from within that to a wise man all
+external circumstances are indifferent, represents this view of life in
+its extreme form. Its more moderate form can hardly be better expressed
+than in the saying of Dugald Stewart that 'the great secret of
+happiness is to study to accommodate our own minds to things external
+rather than to accommodate things external to ourselves.'[2] It is
+eminently the characteristic of Eastern nations to place their ideals
+mainly in states of mind or feeling rather than in changes of
+circumstances, and in such nations men are much less desirous than in
+European countries of altering the permanent conditions of their lives.
+
+On the other hand, the tendency of those philosophies which treat
+man--his opinions and his character--essentially as the result of
+circumstances, and which aggrandise the influence of the external world
+upon mankind, is in the opposite direction. All the sensational
+philosophies from Bacon and Locke to our own day tend to concentrate
+attention on the external circumstances and conditions of happiness. And
+the same tendency will be naturally found in the most active, industrial
+and progressive nations; where life is very full and busy; where its
+competitions are most keen; where scientific discoveries are rapidly
+multiplying pleasures or diminishing pains; where town life with its
+constant hurry and change is the most prominent. In such spheres men
+naturally incline to seek happiness from without rather than from
+within, or, in other words, to seek it much less by acting directly on
+the mind and character than through the indirect method of improved
+circumstances.
+
+English character on both sides of the Atlantic is an eminently
+objective one--a character in which thoughts, interests and emotions
+are most habitually thrown on that which is without. Introspection and
+self-analysis are not congenial to it. No one can compare English life
+with life even in the Continental nations which occupy the same rank in
+civilisation without perceiving how much less Englishmen are accustomed
+either to dwell upon their emotions or to give free latitude to their
+expression. Reticence and self-restraint are the lessons most constantly
+inculcated. The whole tone of society favours it. In times of great
+sorrow a degree of shame is attached to demonstrations of grief which in
+other countries would be deemed perfectly natural. The disposition to
+dilate upon and perpetuate an old grief by protracted mournings, by
+carefully observed anniversaries, by long periods of retirement from the
+world, is much less common than on the Continent and it is certainly
+diminishing. The English tendency is to turn away speedily from the
+past, and to seek consolation in new fields of activity. Emotions
+translate themselves speedily into action, and they lose something of
+their intensity by the transformation. Philanthropy is nowhere more
+active and more practical, and religion has in few countries a greater
+hold on the national life, but English Protestantism reflects very
+clearly the national characteristics. It, no doubt, like all religions,
+lays down rules for the government of thought and feeling, but these are
+of a very general character. Preeminently a regulator of conduct, it
+lays comparatively little stress upon the inner life. It discourages, or
+at least neglects that minutely introspective habit of thought which the
+confessional is so much calculated to promote, which appears so
+prominently in the writings of the Catholic Saints, and which finds its
+special representation in the mystics and the religious contemplative
+orders. Improved conduct and improved circumstances are to an English
+mind the chief and almost the only measures of progress.
+
+That this tendency is on the whole a healthy one, I, at least, firmly
+believe, but it brings with it certain manifest limitations and somewhat
+incapacitates men from judging other types of character and happiness.
+The part that circumstances play in the formation of our characters is
+indeed very manifest, and it is a humiliating truth that among these
+circumstances mere bodily conditions which we share with the animals
+hold a foremost place. In the long run and to the great majority of men
+health is probably the most important of all the elements of happiness.
+Acute physical suffering or shattered health will more than
+counterbalance the best gifts of fortune, and the bias of our nature and
+even the processes of our reasoning are largely influenced by physical
+conditions. Hume has spoken of that 'disposition to see the favourable
+rather than the unfavourable side of things which it is more happiness
+to possess than to be heir to an estate of 10,000_l._ a year;' but this
+gift of a happy temperament is very evidently greatly due to bodily
+conditions. On the other hand, it is well known how speedily and how
+powerfully bodily ailments react upon our moral natures. Every one is
+aware of the morbid irritability that is produced by certain maladies of
+the nerves or of the brain; of the deep constitutional depression which
+often follows diseases of the liver, or prolonged sleeplessness and
+other hypochondriacal maladies, and which not only deprives men of most
+of their capacity of enjoyment, but also infallibly gives a colour and a
+bias to their reasonings on life; of the manner in which animal passions
+as well as animal spirits are affected by certain well-known conditions
+of age and health. In spite of the 'coelum non animum mutant' of
+Horace, few men fail to experience how different is the range of spirits
+in the limbo-like atmosphere of a London winter and beneath the glories
+of an Italian sky or in the keen bracing atmosphere of the mountain
+side, and it is equally apparent how differently we judge the world when
+we are jaded by a long spell of excessive work or refreshed after a
+night of tranquil sleep. Poetry and Painting are probably not wrong in
+associating a certain bilious temperament with a predisposition to envy,
+or an anæmic or lymphatic temperament with a saintly life, and there are
+well-attested cases in which an acute illness has fundamentally altered
+characters, sometimes replacing an habitual gloom by buoyancy and
+light.[3] That invaluable gift which enables some men to cast aside
+trouble and turn their thoughts and energies swiftly and decisively into
+new channels can be largely strengthened by the action of the will, but
+according to some physiologists it has a well-ascertained physical
+antecedent in the greater or less contractile power of the blood-vessels
+which feed the brain causing the flow of blood into it to be stronger or
+less rapid. If it be true that 'a healthy mind in a healthy body' is the
+supreme condition of happiness, it is also true that the healthy mind
+depends more closely than we like to own on the healthy body.
+
+These are but a few obvious instances of the manner in which the body
+acts upon happiness. They do not mean that the will is powerless in the
+face of bodily conditions, but that in the management of character it
+has certain very definite predispositions to encounter. In reasonings on
+life, even more than on other things, a good reasoner will consider not
+only the force of the opposing arguments, but also the bias to which his
+own mind is subject. To raise the level of national health is one of the
+surest ways of raising the level of national happiness, and in
+estimating the value of different pleasures many which, considered in
+themselves, might appear to rank low upon the scale, will rank high, if
+in addition to the immediate and transient enjoyment they procure, they
+contribute to form a strong and healthy body. No branch of legislation
+is more really valuable than that which is occupied with the health of
+the people, whether it takes the form of encouraging the means by which
+remedies may be discovered and diffused, or of extirpating by combined
+efforts particular diseases, or of securing that the mass of labour in
+the community should as far as possible be carried on under sound
+sanitary conditions. Fashion also can do much, both for good and ill. It
+exercises over great multitudes an almost absolute empire, regulating
+their dress, their education, their hours, their amusements, their food,
+their scale of expenditure; determining the qualities to which they
+principally aspire, the work in which they may engage, and even the form
+of beauty which they most cultivate. It is happy for a nation when this
+mighty influence is employed in encouraging habits of life which are
+beneficial or at least not gravely prejudicial to health. Nor is any
+form of individual education more really valuable than that which
+teaches the main conditions of a healthy life and forms those habits of
+temperance and self-restraint that are most likely to attain it.
+
+With its great recuperative powers Youth can do with apparent impunity
+many things which in later life bring a speedy Nemesis; but on the other
+hand Youth is pre-eminently the period when habits and tastes are
+formed, and the yoke which is then lightly, willingly, wantonly assumed
+will in after years acquire a crushing weight. Few things are more
+striking than the levity of the motives, the feebleness of the impulses
+under which in youth fatal steps are taken which bring with them a
+weakened life and often an early grave. Smoking in manhood, when
+practised in moderation, is a very innocent and probably beneficent
+practice, but it is well known how deleterious it is to young boys, and
+how many of them have taken to it through no other motive than a desire
+to appear older than they are--that surest of all signs that we are very
+young. How often have the far more pernicious habits of drinking, or
+gambling, or frequenting corrupt society been acquired through a similar
+motive, or through the mere desire to enjoy the charm of a forbidden
+pleasure or to stand well with some dissipated companions! How large a
+proportion of lifelong female debility is due to an early habit of tight
+lacing, springing only from the silliest vanity! How many lives have
+been sacrificed through the careless recklessness which refused to take
+the trouble of changing wet clothes! How many have been shattered and
+shortened by excess in things which in moderation are harmless, useful,
+or praiseworthy,--by the broken blood-vessel, due to excess in some
+healthy athletic exercise or game; by the ruined brain overstrained in
+order to win some paltry prize! It is melancholy to observe how many
+lives have been broken down, ruined or corrupted in attempts to realise
+some supreme and unattainable desire; through the impulse of
+overmastering passion, of powerful and perhaps irresistible temptation.
+It is still sadder to observe how large a proportion of the failures of
+life may be ultimately traced to the most insignificant causes and might
+have been avoided without any serious effort either of intellect or
+will.
+
+The success with which medicine and sanitary science have laboured to
+prolong life, to extirpate or diminish different forms of disease and to
+alleviate their consequences is abundantly proved. In all civilised
+countries the average of life has been raised, and there is good reason
+to believe that not only old age but also active, useful, enjoyable old
+age has become much more frequent. It is true that the gain to human
+happiness is not quite as great as might at first sight be imagined.
+Death is least sad when it comes in infancy or in extreme old age, and
+the increased average of life is largely due to the great diminution in
+infant mortality, which is in truth a very doubtful blessing. If extreme
+old age is a thing to be desired, it is perhaps chiefly because it
+usually implies a constitution which gives many earlier years of robust
+and healthy life. But with all deductions the triumphs of sanitary
+reform as well as of medical science are perhaps the brightest page in
+the history of our century. Some of the measures which have proved most
+useful can only be effected at some sacrifice of individual freedom and
+by widespread coercive sanitary regulations, and are thus more akin to
+despotism than to free government. How different would have been the
+condition of the world, and how far greater would have been the
+popularity of strong monarchy if at the time when such a form of
+government generally prevailed rulers had had the intelligence to put
+before them the improvement of the health and the prolongation of the
+lives of their subjects as the main object of their policy rather than
+military glory or the acquisition of territory or mere ostentatious and
+selfish display!
+
+There is, however, some reason to believe that the diminution of disease
+and the prolongation of average human life are not necessarily or even
+generally accompanied by a corresponding improvement in general health.
+'Acute diseases,' says an excellent judge, 'which are eminently fatal,
+prevail, on the contrary, in a population where the standard of health
+is high.... Thus a high rate of mortality may often be observed in a
+community where the number of persons affected with disease is small,
+and on the other hand general physical depression may concur with the
+prevalence of chronic maladies and yet be unattended with a great
+proportion of deaths.'[4] An anæmic population, free from severe
+illness, but living habitually at a low level of health and with the
+depressed spirits and feeble capacity of enjoyment which such a
+condition produces, is far from an ideal state, and there is much reason
+to fear that this type is an increasing one. Many things in modern life,
+among which ill-judged philanthropy and ill-judged legislation have no
+small part, contribute to produce it, but two causes probably dominate
+over all others. The one is to be found in sanitary science itself,
+which enables great numbers of constitutionally weak children who in
+other days would have died in infancy to grow up and marry and propagate
+a feeble offspring. The other is the steady movement of population from
+the country to the towns, which is one of the most conspicuous features
+of modern civilisation. These two influences inevitably and powerfully
+tend to depress the vitality of a nation, and by doing so to lower the
+level of animal spirits which is one of the most essential elements of
+happiness. Whether our improved standards of living and our much greater
+knowledge of sanitary conditions altogether counteract them is very
+doubtful.
+
+In this as in most questions affecting life there are opposite dangers
+to be avoided, and wisdom lies mainly in a just sense of proportion and
+degree. That sanitary reform, promoted by governments, has on the whole
+been a great blessing seems to me scarcely open to reasonable question,
+but many of the best judges are of opinion that it may easily be pushed
+to dangerous extremes. Few things are more curious than to observe how
+rapidly during the past generation the love of individual liberty has
+declined; how contentedly the English race are submitting great
+departments of their lives to a web of regulations restricting and
+encircling them. Each individual case must be considered on its merits,
+and few persons will now deny that the right of adult men and women to
+regulate the conditions of their own work and to determine the risks
+that they will assume may be wisely infringed in more cases than the
+Manchester School would have admitted. At the same time the marked
+tendency of this generation to extend the stringency and area of
+coercive legislation in the fields of industry and sanitary reform is
+one that should be carefully watched. Its exaggerations may in more ways
+than one greatly injure the very classes it is intended to benefit.
+
+A somewhat corresponding statement may be made about individual sanitary
+education. It is, as I have said, a matter of the most vital importance
+that we should acquire in youth the knowledge and the habits that lead
+to a healthy life. The main articles of the sanitary creed are few and
+simple. Moderation and self-restraint in all things--an abundance of
+exercise, of fresh air, and of cold water--a sufficiency of steady work
+not carried to excess--occasional change of habits and abstinence from a
+few things which are manifestly injurious to health, are the cardinal
+rules to be observed. In the great lottery of life, men who have
+observed them all may be doomed to illness, weak vitality, and early
+death, but they at least add enormously to the chances of a strong and
+full life. The parent will need further knowledge for the care of his
+children, but for self-guidance little more is required, and with early
+habits an observance of the rules of health becomes almost instinctive
+and unconscious. But while no kind of education is more transcendently
+important than this, it is not unfrequently carried to an extreme which
+defeats its own purpose. The habit that so often grows upon men with
+slight chronic maladies, or feeble temperament, or idle lives, of making
+their own health and their own ailments the constant subject of their
+thoughts soon becomes a disease very fatal to happiness and positively
+injurious to health. It is well known how in an epidemic the
+panic-stricken are most liable to the contagion, and the life of the
+habitual valetudinarian tends promptly to depress the nerve energy which
+provides the true stamina of health. In the words of an eminent
+physician, 'It is not by being anxious in an inordinate or unduly fussy
+fashion that men can hope to live long and well. The best way to live
+well is to work well. Good work is the daily test and safeguard of
+personal health.... The practical aim should be to live an orderly and
+natural life. We were not intended to pick our way through the world
+trembling at every step.... It is worse than vain, for it encourages and
+increases the evil it attempts to relieve.... I firmly believe one half
+of the confirmed invalids of the day could be cured of their maladies if
+they were compelled to live busy and active lives and had no time to
+fret over their miseries.... One of the most seductive and mischievous
+of errors in self-management is the practice of giving way to inertia,
+weakness and depression.... Those who desire to live should settle this
+well in their minds, that nerve power is the force of life and that the
+will has a wondrously strong and direct influence over the body through
+the brain and the nervous system.'[5]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] _Active and Moral Powers_, ii. 312.
+
+[3] Much curious information on this subject will be found in Cabanis'
+_Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme_.
+
+[4] Kay's _Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes_, p. 75.
+
+[5] Mortimer Granville's _How to Make the Best of Life_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Before entering into a more particular account of the chief elements of
+a happy life it may be useful to devote a few pages to some general
+considerations on the subject.
+
+
+One of the first and most clearly recognised rules to be observed is
+that happiness is most likely to be attained when it is not the direct
+object of pursuit. In early youth we are accustomed to divide life
+broadly into work and play, regarding the first as duty or necessity and
+the second as pleasure. One of the great differences between childhood
+and manhood is that we come to like our work more than our play. It
+becomes to us, if not the chief pleasure, at least the chief interest of
+our lives, and even when it is not this, an essential condition of our
+happiness. Few lives produce so little happiness as those that are
+aimless and unoccupied. Apart from all considerations of right and
+wrong, one of the first conditions of a happy life is that it should be
+a full and busy one, directed to the attainment of aims outside
+ourselves. Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the
+bark of human happiness is most commonly wrecked. If a life of luxurious
+idleness and selfish ease in some measure saves men from the first
+danger, it seldom fails to bring with it the second. No change of scene,
+no multiplicity of selfish pleasures will in the long run enable them
+to escape it. As Carlyle says, 'The restless, gnawing ennui which, like
+a dark, dim, ocean flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian
+deeps, begirdles every human life so guided--is it not the painful cry
+even of that imprisoned heroism?... You ask for happiness. "Oh give me
+happiness," and they hand you ever new varieties of covering for the
+skin, ever new kinds of supply for the digestive apparatus.... Well,
+rejoice in your upholsteries and cookeries if so be they will make you
+"happy." Let the varieties of them be continual and innumerable. In all
+things let perpetual change, if that is a perpetual blessing to you, be
+your portion instead of mine. Incur the prophet's curse and in all
+things in this sublunary world "make yourselves like unto a wheel."
+Mount into your railways; whirl from place to place at the rate of fifty
+or, if you like, of five hundred miles an hour; you cannot escape from
+that inexorable, all-encircling ocean moan of ennui. No; if you could
+mount to the stars and do yacht voyages under the belts of Jupiter or
+stalk deer on the ring of Saturn it would still begirdle you. You cannot
+escape from it; you can but change your place in it without solacement
+except one moment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will continue
+with you till you wisely interpret it and do it or else till the Crack
+of Doom swallow it and you.'[6]
+
+It needs but a few years of life experience to realise the profound
+truth of this passage. An ideal life would be furnished with abundant
+work of a kind that is congenial both to our intellects and our
+characters and that brings with it much interest and little anxiety. Few
+of us can command this. Most men's work is largely determined for them
+by circumstances, though in the guidance of life there are many
+alternatives and much room for skilful pilotage. But the first great
+rule is that we must do something--that life must have a purpose and an
+aim--that work should be not merely occasional and spasmodic, but steady
+and continuous. Pleasure is a jewel which will only retain its lustre
+when it is in a setting of work, and a vacant life is one of the worst
+of pains, though the islands of leisure that stud a crowded,
+well-occupied life may be among the things to which we look back with
+the greatest delight.
+
+Another great truth is conveyed in the saying of Aristotle that a wise
+man will make it his aim rather to avoid suffering than to attain
+pleasure. Men can in reality do very little to mitigate the force of the
+great bereavements and the other graver calamities of life. All our
+systems of philosophy and reasoning are vain when confronted with them.
+Innate temperament which we cannot greatly change determines whether we
+sink crushed beneath the blow or possess the buoyancy that can restore
+health to our natures. The conscious and deliberate pursuit of pleasure
+is attended by many deceptions and illusions, and rarely leads to
+lasting happiness. But we can do very much by prudence, self-restraint
+and intelligent regulation so to manage life as to avoid a large
+proportion of its calamities and at the same time, by preserving the
+affections pure and undimmed, by diversifying interests and forming
+active habits, to combat its tedium and despondency.
+
+Another truth is that both the greatest pleasures and the keenest pains
+of life lie much more in those humbler spheres which are accessible to
+all than on the rare pinnacles to which only the most gifted or the most
+fortunate can attain. It would probably be found upon examination that
+most men who have devoted their lives successfully to great labours and
+ambitions, and who have received the most splendid gifts from Fortune,
+have nevertheless found their chief pleasure in things unconnected with
+their main pursuits and generally within the reach of common men.
+Domestic pleasures, pleasures of scenery, pleasures of reading,
+pleasures of travel or of sport have been the highest enjoyment of men
+of great ambition, intellect, wealth and position. There is a curious
+passage in Lord Althorp's Life in which that most popular and successful
+statesman, towards the close of his long parliamentary life, expressed
+his emphatic conviction that 'the thing that gave him the greatest
+pleasure in the world' was 'to see sporting dogs hunt.'[7] I can myself
+recollect going over a country place with an old member of Parliament
+who had sat in the House of Commons for nearly fifty years of the most
+momentous period of modern English history. If questioned he could tell
+about the stirring scenes of the great Reform Bill of 1832, but it was
+curious to observe how speedily and inevitably he passed from such
+matters to the history of the trees on his estate which he had planted
+and watched at every stage of their growth, and how evidently in the
+retrospect of life it was to these things and not to the incidents of a
+long parliamentary career that his affections naturally turned. I once
+asked an illustrious public man who had served his country with
+brilliant success in many lands, and who was spending the evening of his
+life as an active country gentleman in a place which he dearly loved,
+whether he did not find this sphere too contracted for his happiness.
+'Never for a day,' he answered; 'and in every country where I have been,
+in every post which I have filled, the thought of this place has always
+been at the back of my mind.' A great writer who had devoted almost his
+whole life to one gigantic work, and to his own surprise brought it at
+last to a successful end, sadly observed that amid the congratulations
+that poured in to him from every side he could not help feeling, when he
+analysed his own emotions, how tepid was the satisfaction which such a
+triumph could give him, and what much more vivid gratification he had
+come to take in hearing the approaching steps of some little children
+whom he had taught to love him.
+
+It is one of the paradoxes of human nature that the things that are most
+struggled for and the things that are most envied are not those which
+give either the most intense or the most unmixed joy. Ambition is the
+luxury of the happy. It is sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation
+and distraction of the wretched; but most of those who have trodden its
+paths, if they deal honestly with themselves, will acknowledge that the
+gravest disappointments of public life dwindle into insignificance
+compared with the poignancy of suffering endured at the deathbed of a
+wife or of a child, and that within the small circle of a family life
+they have found more real happiness than the applause of nations could
+ever give.
+
+
+     Look down, look down from your glittering heights,
+       And tell us, ye sons of glory,
+     The joys and the pangs of your eagle flights,
+       The triumph that crowned the story,
+
+     The rapture that thrilled when the goal was won,
+       The goal of a life's desire;
+     And a voice replied from the setting sun,
+       Nay, the dearest and best lies nigher.
+
+     How oft in such hours our fond thoughts stray
+       To the dream of two idle lovers;
+     To the young wife's kiss; to the child at play;
+       Or the grave which the long grass covers!
+
+     And little we'd reck of power or gold,
+       And of all life's vain endeavour,
+     If the heart could glow as it glowed of old,
+        And if youth could abide for ever.
+
+
+Another consideration in the cultivation of happiness is the importance
+of acquiring the habit of realising our blessings while they last. It is
+one of the saddest facts of human nature that we commonly only learn
+their value by their loss. This, as I have already noticed, is very
+evidently the case with health. By the laws of our being we are almost
+unconscious of the action of our bodily organs as long as they are
+working well. It is only when they are deranged, obstructed or impaired
+that our attention becomes concentrated upon them. In consequence of
+this a state of perfect health is rarely fully appreciated until it is
+lost and during a short period after it has been regained. Gray has
+described the new sensation of pleasure which convalescence gives in
+well-known lines:
+
+
+     See the wretch who long has tost
+       On the thorny bed of pain,
+     At length repair his vigour lost
+       And breathe and walk again;
+     The meanest floweret of the vale,
+     The simplest note that swells the gale,
+       The common sun, the air, the skies,
+       To him are opening Paradise.
+
+
+And what is true of health is true of other things. It is only when some
+calamity breaks the calm tenor of our ways and deprives us of some gift
+of fortune we have long enjoyed that we feel how great was the value of
+what we have lost. There are times in the lives of most of us when we
+would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though
+that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.
+Sometimes, indeed, our perception of this contrast brings with it a
+lasting and salutary result. In the medicine of Nature a chronic and
+abiding disquietude or morbidness of temperament is often cured by some
+keen though more transient sorrow which violently changes the current of
+our thoughts and imaginations.
+
+The difference between knowledge and realisation is one of the facts of
+our nature that are most worthy of our attention. Every human mind
+contains great masses of inert, passive, undisputed knowledge which
+exercise no real influence on thought or character till something occurs
+which touches our imagination and quickens this knowledge into
+activity. Very few things contribute so much to the happiness of life as
+a constant realisation of the blessings we enjoy. The difference between
+a naturally contented and a naturally discontented nature is one of the
+marked differences of innate temperament, but we can do much to
+cultivate that habit of dwelling on the benefits of our lot which
+converts acquiescence into a more positive enjoyment. Religion in this
+field does much, for it inculcates thanksgiving as well as prayer,
+gratitude for the present and the past as well as hope for the future.
+Among secular influences, contrast and comparison have the greatest
+value. Some minds are always looking on the fortunes that are above them
+and comparing their own penury with the opulence of others. A wise
+nature will take an opposite course and will cultivate the habit of
+looking rather at the round of the ladder of fortune which is below our
+own and realising the countless points in which our lot is better than
+that of others. As Dr. Johnson says, 'Few are placed in a situation so
+gloomy and distressful as not to see every day beings yet more forlorn
+and miserable from whom they may learn to rejoice in their own lot.'
+
+The consolation men derive amid their misfortunes from reflecting upon
+the still greater misfortunes of others and thus lightening their own by
+contrast is a topic which must be delicately used, but when so used it
+is not wrong and it often proves very efficacious. Perhaps the pleasure
+La Rochefoucauld pretends that men take in the misfortunes of their best
+friends, if it is a real thing, is partly due to this consideration, as
+the feeling of pity which is inspired by some sudden death or great
+trouble falling on others is certainly not wholly unconnected with the
+realisation that such calamities might fall upon ourselves. It is worthy
+of notice, however, that while all moralists recognise content as one of
+the chief ingredients of happiness, some of the strongest influences of
+modern industrial civilisation are antagonistic to it. The whole theory
+of progress as taught by Political Economy rests upon the importance of
+creating wants and desires as a stimulus to exertion. There are
+countries, especially in southern climates, where the wants of men are
+very few, and where, as long as those wants are satisfied, men will live
+a careless and contented life, enjoying the present, thinking very
+little of the future. Whether the sum of enjoyment in such a population
+is really less than in our more advanced civilisation is at least open
+to question. It is a remark of Schopenhauer that the Idyll, which is the
+only form of poetry specially devoted to the description of human
+felicity, always paints life in its simplest and least elaborated form,
+and he sees in this an illustration of his doctrine that the greatest
+happiness will be found in the simplest and even most uniform life
+provided it escapes the evil of ennui. The political economist, however,
+will pronounce the condition of such a people as I have described a
+deplorable one, and in order to raise them his first task will be to
+infuse into them some discontent with their lot, to persuade them to
+multiply their wants and to aspire to a higher standard of comfort, to a
+fuller and a larger existence. A discontent with existing circumstances
+is the chief source of a desire to improve them, and this desire is the
+mainspring of progress. In this theory of life, happiness is sought,
+not in content, but in improved circumstances, in the development of new
+capacities of enjoyment, in the pleasure which active existence
+naturally gives. To maintain in their due proportion in our nature the
+spirit of content and the desire to improve, to combine a realised
+appreciation of the blessings we enjoy with a healthy and well-regulated
+ambition, is no easy thing, but it is the problem which all who aspire
+to a perfect life should set before themselves. _In medio tutissimus
+ibis_ is eminently true of the cultivation of character, and some of its
+best elements become pernicious in their extremes. Thus prudent
+forethought, which is one of the first conditions of a successful life,
+may easily degenerate into that most miserable state of mind in which
+men are perpetually anticipating and dwelling upon the uncertain dangers
+and evils of an uncertain future. How much indeed of the happiness and
+misery of men may be included under those two words, realisation and
+anticipation!
+
+There is no such thing as a Eudæmometer measuring with accuracy the
+degrees of happiness realised by men in different ages, under different
+circumstances, and with different characters. Perhaps if such a thing
+existed it might tend to discourage us by showing that diversities and
+improvements of circumstances affect real happiness in a smaller degree
+than we are accustomed to imagine. Our nature accommodates itself
+speedily to improved circumstances, and they cease to give positive
+pleasure while their loss is acutely painful. Advanced civilisation
+brings with it countless and inestimable benefits, but it also brings
+with it many forms of suffering from which a ruder existence is exempt.
+There is some reason to believe that it is usually accompanied with a
+lower range of animal spirits, and it is certainly accompanied with an
+increased sensitiveness to pain. Some philosophers have contended that
+this is the best of all possible worlds. It is difficult to believe so,
+as the whole object of human effort is to make it a better one. But the
+success of that effort is more apparent in the many terrible forms of
+human suffering which it has abolished or diminished than in the higher
+level of positive happiness that has been attained.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] _Latter-day Pamphlets:_ 'Jesuitism.'
+
+[7] Le Marchant's _Life of Althorp_, p. 143.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Though the close relationship that subsists between morals and happiness
+is universally acknowledged, I do not belong to the school which
+believes that pleasure and pain, either actual or anticipated, are the
+only motives by which the human will can be governed; that virtue
+resolves itself ultimately into well-considered interest and finds its
+ultimate reason in the happiness of those who practise it; that 'all our
+virtues,' as La Rochefoucauld has said, 'end in self-love as the rivers
+in the sea.' Such a proverb as 'Honesty is the best policy' represents
+no doubt a great truth, though it has been well said that no man is
+really honest who is only honest through this motive, and though it is
+very evident that it is by no means an universal truth but depends
+largely upon changing and precarious conditions of laws, police, public
+opinion, and individual circumstances. But in the higher realms of
+morals the coincidence of happiness and virtue is far more doubtful. It
+is certainly not true that the highest nature is necessarily or even
+naturally the happiest. Paganism has produced no more perfect type than
+the profoundly pathetic figure of Marcus Aurelius, while Christianity
+finds its ideal in one who was known as the 'Man of Sorrows.' The
+conscience of Mankind has ever recognised self-sacrifice as the supreme
+element of virtue, and self-sacrifice is never real when it is only the
+exchange of a less happiness for a greater one. No moral chemistry can
+transmute the worship of Sorrow, which Goethe described as the essence
+of Christianity, into the worship of happiness, and probably with most
+men health and temperament play a far larger part in the real happiness
+of their lives than any of the higher virtues. The satisfaction of
+accomplished duty which some moralists place among the chief pleasures
+of life is a real thing in so far as it saves men from internal
+reproaches, but it is probable that it is among the worst men that pangs
+of conscience are least dreaded, and it is certainly not among the best
+men that they are least felt. Conscience, indeed, when it is very
+sensitive and very lofty, is far more an element of suffering than the
+reverse. It aims at an ideal higher than we can attain. It takes the
+lowest view of our own achievements. It suffers keenly from the many
+shortcomings of which it is acutely sensible. Far from indulging in the
+pleasurable retrospect of a well-spent life, it urges men to constant,
+painful, and often unsuccessful effort. A nature that is strung to the
+saintly or the heroic level will find itself placed in a jarring world,
+will provoke much friction and opposition, and will be pained by many
+things in which a lower nature would placidly acquiesce. The highest
+form of intellectual virtue is that love of truth for its own sake which
+breaks up prejudices, tempers enthusiasm by the full admission of
+opposing arguments and qualifying circumstances, and places in the
+sphere of possibility or probability many things which we would gladly
+accept as certainties. Candour and impartiality are in a large degree
+virtues of temperament; but no one who has any real knowledge of human
+nature can doubt how much more pleasurable it is to most men to live
+under the empire of invincible prejudice, deliberately shutting out
+every consideration that could shake or qualify cherished beliefs.
+'God,' says Emerson, 'offers to every mind its choice between truth and
+repose. Take which you please. You can never have both.' One of the
+strongest arguments of natural religion rests upon the fact that virtue
+so often fails to bring its reward; upon the belief that is so deeply
+implanted in human nature that this is essentially unjust and must in
+some future state be remedied.
+
+For such reasons as these I believe it to be impossible to identify
+virtue with happiness, and the views of the opposite school seem to me
+chiefly to rest upon an unnatural and deceptive use of words. Even when
+the connection between virtue and pleasure is most close, it is true, as
+the old Stoics said, that though virtue gives pleasure, this is not the
+reason why a good man will practise it; that pleasure is the companion
+and not the guide of his life; that he does not love virtue because it
+gives pleasure, but it gives pleasure because he loves it.[8] A true
+account of human nature will recognise that it has the power of aiming
+at something which is different from happiness and something which may
+be intelligibly described as higher, and that on the predominance of
+this loftier aim the nobility of life essentially depends. It is not
+even true that the end of man should be to find peace at the last. It
+should be to do his duty and tell the truth.
+
+But while this great truth of the existence of a higher aim than
+happiness should be always maintained, the relations between morals and
+happiness are close and intimate and well worthy of investigation. As
+far as the lower or more commonplace virtues are concerned there can be
+no mistake. It is very evident that a healthy, long and prosperous life
+is more likely to be attained by industry, moderation and purity than by
+the opposite courses. It is very evident that drunkenness and sensuality
+ruin health and shorten life; that idleness, gambling and disorderly
+habits ruin prosperity; that ill-temper, selfishness and envy kill
+friendship and provoke animosities and dislike; that in every
+well-regulated society there is at least a general coincidence between
+the path of duty and the path of prosperity; dishonesty, violence and
+disregard for the rights of others naturally and usually bringing their
+punishment either from law or from public opinion or from both. Bishop
+Butler has argued that the general tendency of virtue to lead to
+happiness and the general tendency of vice to lead to unhappiness prove
+that even in its present state there is a moral government of the world,
+and whatever controversy may be raised about the inference there can at
+least be no doubt about the substantial truth of the facts. Happiness,
+as I have already said, is best attained when it is not the direct or at
+least the main object that is aimed at. A wasted and inactive life not
+only palls in itself but deprives men of the very real and definite
+pleasure that naturally arises from the healthful activity of all our
+powers, while a life of egotism excludes the pleasures of sympathy which
+play so large a part in human happiness. One of the lessons which
+experience most clearly teaches is that work, duty and the discipline of
+character are essential elements of lasting happiness. The pleasures of
+vice are often real, but they are commonly transient and they leave
+legacies of suffering, weakness, or care behind them. The nobler
+pleasures for the most part grow and strengthen with advancing years.
+The passions of youth, when duly regulated, gradually transform
+themselves into habits, interests and steady affections, and it is in
+the long forecasts of life that the superiority of virtue as an element
+of happiness becomes most apparent.
+
+It has been truly said that such words as 'pastime' and 'diversion'
+applied to our pleasures are among the most melancholy in the language,
+for they are the confession of human nature that it cannot find
+happiness in itself, but must seek for something that will fill up time,
+will cover the void which it feels, and divert men's thoughts from the
+conditions and prospects of their own lives. How much of the pleasure of
+Society, and indeed of all amusements, depends on their power of making
+us forget ourselves! The substratum of life is sad, and few men who
+reflect on the dangers and uncertainties that surround it can find it
+even tolerable without much extraneous aid. The first and most vital of
+these aids is to be found in the creation of strong interests. It is one
+of the laws of our being that by seeking interests rather than by
+seeking pleasures we can best encounter the gloom of life. But those
+only have the highest efficiency which are of an unselfish nature. By
+throwing their whole nature into the interests of others men most
+effectually escape the melancholy of introspection; the horizon of life
+is enlarged; the development of the moral and sympathetic feelings
+chases egotistic cares, and by the same paradox that we have seen in
+other parts of human nature men best attain their own happiness by
+absorbing themselves in the pursuit of the happiness of others.
+
+The aims and perspective of a well-regulated life have never, I think,
+been better described than in one of the letters of Burke to the Duke of
+Richmond. 'It is wise indeed, considering the many positive vexations
+and the innumerable bitter disappointments of pleasure in the world, to
+have as many resources of satisfaction as possible within one's power.
+Whenever we concentre the mind on one sole object, that object and life
+itself must go together. But though it is right to have reserves of
+employment, still some one object must be kept principal; greatly and
+eminently so; and the other masses and figures must preserve their due
+subordination, to make out the grand composition of an important
+life.'[9] It is equally true that among these objects the disinterested
+and the unselfish should hold a predominant place. With some this side
+of their activity is restricted to the narrow circle of home or to the
+isolated duties and charities of their own neighbourhood. With others it
+takes the form of large public interests, of a keen participation in
+social, philanthropic, political or religious enterprises. Character
+plays a larger part than intellect in the happiness of life, and the
+cultivation of the unselfish part of our nature is not only one of the
+first lessons of morals but also of wisdom.
+
+Like most other things its difficulties lie at the beginning, and it is
+by steady practice that it passes into a second and instinctive nature.
+The power of man to change organically his character is a very limited
+one, but on the whole the improvement of character is probably more
+within his reach than intellectual development. Time and Opportunity are
+wanting to most men for any considerable intellectual study, and even
+were it otherwise every man will find large tracts of knowledge and
+thought wholly external to his tastes, aptitudes and comprehension. But
+every one can in some measure learn the lesson of self-sacrifice,
+practise what is right, correct or at least mitigate his dominant
+faults. What fine examples of self-sacrifice, quiet courage, resignation
+in misfortune, patient performance of painful duty, magnanimity and
+forgiveness under injury may be often found among those who are
+intellectually the most commonplace!
+
+The insidious growth of selfishness is a disease against which men
+should be most on their guard; but it is a grave though a common error
+to suppose that the unselfish instincts may be gratified without
+restraint. There is here, however, one important distinction to be
+noted. The many and great evils that have sprung from lavish and
+ill-considered charities do not always or perhaps generally spring from
+any excess or extravagance of the charitable feeling. They are much more
+commonly due to its defect. The rich man who never cares to inquire into
+the details of the cases that are brought before him or to give any
+serious thought to the ulterior consequences of his acts, but who is
+ready to give money at any solicitation and who considers that by so
+doing he has discharged his duty, is far more likely to do harm in this
+way than the man who devotes himself to patient, plodding, house to
+house work among the poor. The many men and the probably still larger
+number of women who give up great portions of their lives to such work
+soon learn to trace with considerable accuracy the consequences of their
+charities and to discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy. That
+such persons often become exclusive and one-sided, and acquire a kind of
+professional bent which induces them to subordinate all national
+considerations to their own subject and lose sight of the true
+proportion of things, is undoubtedly true, but it will probably not be
+found with the best workers that such a life tends to unduly intensify
+emotion. As Bishop Butler has said with profound truth, active habits
+are strengthened and passive impressions weakened by repetition, and a
+life spent in active charitable work is quite compatible with much
+sobriety and even coldness of judgment in estimating each case as it
+arises. It is not the surgeon who is continually employed in operations
+for the cure of his patients who is most moved at the sight of
+suffering.
+
+This is, I believe, on the whole true, but it is also true that there
+are grave diseases which attach themselves peculiarly to the unselfish
+side of our nature, and they are peculiarly dangerous because men,
+feeling that the unselfish is the virtuous and nobler side of their
+being, are apt to suffer these tendencies to operate without supervision
+or control. Yet it is hardly possible to exaggerate the calamities that
+have sprung from misjudged unselfish actions. The whole history of
+religious persecution abundantly illustrates it, for there can be
+little question that a large proportion of the persecutors were
+sincerely seeking what they believed to be the highest good of mankind.
+And if this dark page of human history is now almost closed, there are
+still many other ways in which a similar evil is displayed. Crotchets,
+sentimentalities and fanaticisms cluster especially around the unselfish
+side of our nature, and they work evil in many curious and subtle ways.
+Few things have done more harm in the world than disproportioned
+compassion. It is a law of our being that we are only deeply moved by
+sufferings we distinctly realise, and the degrees in which different
+kinds of suffering appeal to the imagination bear no proportion to their
+real magnitude. The most benevolent man will read of an earthquake in
+Japan or a plague in South America with a callousness he would never
+display towards some untimely death or some painful accident in his
+immediate neighbourhood, and in general the suffering of a prominent and
+isolated individual strikes us much more forcibly than that of an
+undistinguished multitude. Few deaths are so prominent, and therefore
+few produce such widespread compassion, as those of conspicuous
+criminals. It is no exaggeration to say that the death of an
+'interesting' murderer will often arouse much stronger feelings than
+were ever excited by the death of his victim; or by the deaths of brave
+soldiers who perished by disease or by the sword in some obscure
+expedition in a remote country. This mode of judgment acts promptly upon
+conduct. The humanitarian spirit which mitigates the penal code and
+makes the reclamation of the criminal a main object is a perfectly
+right thing as long as it does not so far diminish the deterrent power
+of punishment as to increase crime, and as long as it does not place the
+criminal in a better position of comfort than the blameless poor, but
+when these conditions are not fulfilled it is much more an evil than a
+good. The remote, indirect and unrealised consequences of our acts are
+often far more important than those which are manifest and direct, and
+it continually happens that in extirpating some concentrated and
+obtrusive evil, men increase or engender a diffused malady which
+operates over a far wider area. How few, for example, who share the
+prevailing tendency to deal with every evil that appears in Society by
+coercive legislation adequately realise the danger of weakening the
+robust, self-reliant, resourceful habits on which the happiness of
+Society so largely depends, and at the same time, by multiplying the
+functions and therefore increasing the expenses of government, throwing
+new and crushing burdens on struggling industry! How often have
+philanthropists, through a genuine interest for some suffering class or
+people, advocated measures which by kindling, prolonging, or enlarging a
+great war would infallibly create calamities far greater than those
+which they would redress! How often might great outbursts of savage
+crime or grave and lasting disorders in the State, or international
+conflicts that have cost thousands of lives, have been averted by a
+prompt and unflinching severity from which an ill-judged humanity
+recoiled! If in the February of 1848 Louis Philippe had permitted
+Marshal Bugeaud to fire on the Revolutionary mob at a time when there
+was no real and widespread desire for revolution in France, how many
+bloody pages of French and European history might have been spared!
+
+Measures guaranteeing men, and still more women, from excessive labour,
+and surrounding them with costly sanitary precautions, may easily, if
+they are injudiciously framed, so handicap a sex or a people in the
+competition of industry as to drive them out of great fields of
+industry, restrict their means of livelihood, lower their standard of
+wages and comfort, and thus seriously diminish the happiness of their
+lives. Injudicious suppressions of amusements that are not wholly good,
+but which afford keen enjoyment to great masses, seldom fail to give an
+impulse to other pleasures more secret and probably more vicious.
+Injudicious charities, or an extravagant and too indulgent poor law
+administration, inevitably discourage industry and thrift, and usually
+increase the poverty they were intended to cure. The parent who shrinks
+from inflicting any suffering on his child, or withholding from him any
+pleasure that he desires, is not laying the foundation of a happy life,
+and the benevolence which counteracts or obscures the law of nature that
+extravagance, improvidence and vice lead naturally to ruin, is no real
+kindness either to the upright man who has resisted temptation or to the
+weak man whose virtue is trembling doubtfully in the balance. Nor is it
+in the long run for the benefit of the world that superior ability or
+superior energy or industry should be handicapped in the race of life,
+forbidden to encounter exceptional risks for the sake of exceptional
+rewards, reduced by regulations to measures of work and gain intended
+for the benefit of inferior characters or powers.
+
+The fatal vice of ill-considered benevolence is that it looks only to
+proximate and immediate results without considering either alternatives
+or distant and indirect consequences. A large and highly respectable
+form of benevolence is that connected with the animal world, and in
+England it is carried in some respects to a point which is unknown on
+the Continent. But what a strange form of compassion is that which long
+made it impossible to establish a Pasteur Institute in England, obliging
+patients threatened with one of the most horrible diseases that can
+afflict mankind to go--as they are always ready to do--to Paris, in
+order to undergo a treatment which what is called the humane sentiment
+of Englishmen forbid them to receive at home! What a strange form of
+benevolence is that which in a country where field sports are the
+habitual amusement of the higher ranks of Society denounces as criminal
+even the most carefully limited and supervised experiments on living
+animals, and would thus close the best hope of finding remedies for some
+of the worst forms of human suffering, the one sure method of testing
+supposed remedies which may be fatal or which may be of incalculable
+benefit to mankind! Foreign critics, indeed, often go much further and
+believe that in other forms connected with this subject public opinion
+in England is strangely capricious and inconsistent. They compare with
+astonishment the sentences that are sometimes passed for the
+ill-treatment of a woman and for the ill-treatment of a cat; they ask
+whether the real sufferings caused by many things that are in England
+punished by law or reprobated by opinion are greater than those caused
+by sports which are constantly practised without reproach; and they are
+apt to find much that is exaggerated or even fantastic in the great
+popularity and elaboration of some animal charities.[10] At the same
+time in our own country the more recognised field sports greatly trouble
+many benevolent natures. I will here only say that while the positive
+benefits they produce are great and manifest, those who condemn them
+constantly forget what would be the fate of the animals that are
+slaughtered if such sports did not exist, and how little the balance of
+suffering is increased or altered by the destruction of beings which
+themselves live by destroying. As a poet says--
+
+
+     The fish exult whene'er the seagull dies,
+     The salmon's death preserves a thousand flies.
+
+
+On most of these questions the effect on human character is a more
+important consideration than the effect on animal happiness. The best
+thing that legislation can do for wild animals is to extend as far as
+possible to harmless classes a close time, securing them immunity while
+they are producing and supporting their young. This is the truest
+kindness, and on quite other grounds it is peculiarly needed, as the
+improvement of firearms and the increase of population have completely
+altered, as far as man is concerned, the old balance between production
+and destruction, and threaten, if unchecked, to lead to an almost
+complete extirpation of great classes of the animal world. It is
+melancholy to observe how often sensitive women who object to field
+sports and who denounce all experiments on living animals will be found
+supporting with perfect callousness fashions that are leading to the
+wholesale destruction of some of the most beautiful species of birds,
+and are in some cases dependent upon acts of very aggravated cruelty.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Seneca, _De Vita Beata_.
+
+[9] Burke's _Correspondence_, i. 376, 377.
+
+[10] As I am writing these pages I find the following paragraph in a
+newspaper which may illustrate my meaning:--'DOGS' NURSING. A case was
+heard at the Brompton County Court on Friday in which some suggestive
+evidence was given of the medical treatment of dogs. The proprietor of a
+dogs' infirmary at Tattersall's Corner sued Mr. Harding Cox for the
+board and lodging of seven dogs, and the _régime_ was explained. They
+are fed on essence of meat, washed down with port wine, and have as a
+digestive eggs beaten up in milk and arrowroot. Medicated baths and
+tonics are also supplied, and occasionally the animals are treated to a
+day in the country. This course of hygiene necessitated an expenditure
+of ten shillings a week. The defendant pleaded that the charges were
+excessive, but the judge awarded the plaintiff £25. How many hospital
+patients receive such treatment?'--_Daily Express_, February 16, 1897.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The illustrations given in the last chapter will be sufficient to show
+the danger of permitting the unselfish side of human nature to run wild
+without serious control by the reason and by the will. To see things in
+their true proportion, to escape the magnifying influence of a morbid
+imagination, should be one of the chief aims of life, and in no fields
+is it more needed than in those we have been reviewing. At the same time
+every age has its own ideal moral type towards which the strongest and
+best influences of the time converge. The history of morals is
+essentially a history of the changes that take place not so much in our
+conception of what is right and wrong as in the proportionate place and
+prominence we assign to different virtues and vices. There are large
+groups of moral qualities which in some ages of the world's history have
+been regarded as of supreme importance, while in other ages they are
+thrown into the background, and there are corresponding groups of vices
+which are treated in some periods as very serious and in others as very
+trivial. The heroic type of Paganism and the saintly type of
+Christianity in its purest form, consist largely of the same elements,
+but the proportions in which they are mixed are altogether different.
+There are ages when the military and civic virtues--the qualities that
+make good soldiers and patriotic citizens--dominate over all others. The
+self-sacrifice of the best men flows habitually in these channels. In
+such an age integrity in business relations and the domestic virtues
+which maintain the purity of the family may be highly valued, but they
+are chiefly valued because they are essential to the well-being of the
+State. The soldier who has attained to the highest degree the best
+qualities of his profession, the patriot who sacrifices to the services
+of the State his comforts, his ambitions and his life, is the supreme
+model, and the estimation in which he is held is but little lowered even
+though he may have been guilty, like Cato, of atrocious cruelty to his
+slaves, or, like some of the heroes of ancient times, of scandalous
+forms of private profligacy.
+
+There are other ages in which military life is looked upon by moralists
+with disfavour, and in which patriotism ranks very low in the scale of
+virtues, while charity, gentleness, self-abnegation, devotional habits,
+and purity in thought, word and act are pre-eminently inculcated. The
+intellectual virtues, again, which deal with truth and falsehood, form a
+distinct group. The habit of mind which makes men love truth for its own
+sake as the supreme ideal, and which turns aside from all falsehood,
+exaggeration, party or sectarian misrepresentation and invention, is in
+no age a common one, but there are some ages in which it is recognised
+and inculcated as virtue, while there are others in which it is no
+exaggeration to say that the whole tendency of religious teaching has
+been to discourage it. During many centuries the ascetic and purely
+ecclesiastical standard of virtue completely dominated. The domestic
+virtues, though clearly recognised, held altogether a subordinate place
+to what were deemed the higher virtues of the ascetic celibate.
+Charity, though nobly cultivated and practised, was regarded mainly
+through a dogmatic medium and practised less for the benefit of the
+recipient than for the spiritual welfare of the donor.
+
+In the eyes of multitudes the highest conception of a saintly life
+consisted largely if not mainly in complete detachment from secular
+interests and affections. No type was more admired, and no type was ever
+more completely severed from all active duties and all human relations
+than that of the saint of the desert or of the monk of one of the
+contemplative orders. To die to the world; to become indifferent to its
+aims, interests and pleasures; to measure all things by a standard
+wholly different from human happiness, to live habitually for another
+life was the constant teaching of the saints. In the stress laid on the
+cultivation of the spiritual life the whole sphere of active duties sank
+into a lower plane; and the eye of the mind was turned upwards and
+inwards and but little on the world around. 'Happy,' said one saint, 'is
+the mind which sees but two objects, God and self, one of which
+conceptions fills it with a sovereign delight and the other abases it to
+the extremest dejection.'[11] 'As much love as we give to creatures,'
+said another saint, 'just so much we steal from the Creator.'[12] 'Two
+things only do I ask,' said a third,[13] 'to suffer and to die.'
+'Forsake all,' said Thomas à Kempis, 'and thou shalt find all. Leave
+desire and thou shalt find rest.' 'Unless a man be disengaged from the
+affection of all creatures he cannot with freedom of mind attend unto
+Divine things.'
+
+The gradual, silent and half-unconscious modification in the type of
+Morals which took place after the Reformation was certainly not the
+least important of its results. If it may be traced in some degree to
+the distinctive theology of the Protestant Churches, it was perhaps
+still more due to the abolition of clerical celibacy which placed the
+religious teachers in the centre of domestic life and in close contact
+with a large circle of social duties. There is even now a distinct
+difference between the morals of a sincerely Catholic and a sincerely
+Protestant country, and this difference is not so much, as
+controversialists would tell us, in the greater and the less as in the
+moral type, or, in other words, in the different degrees of importance
+attached to different virtues and vices. Probably nowhere in the world
+can more beautiful and more reverent types be found than in some of the
+Catholic countries of Europe which are but little touched by the
+intellectual movements of the age, but no good observer can fail to
+notice how much larger is the place given to duties which rest wholly on
+theological considerations, and how largely even the natural duties are
+based on such considerations and governed, limited, and sometimes even
+superseded by them. The ecclesiastics who at the Council of Constance
+induced Sigismund to violate the safe-conduct he had given, and, in
+spite of his solemn promise, to condemn Huss to a death of fire,[14] and
+the ecclesiastics who at the Diet of Worms vainly tried to induce
+Charles V. to act with a similar perfidy towards Luther, represent a
+conception of morals which is abundantly prevalent in our day. It is no
+exaggeration to say that in Catholic countries the obligation of
+truthfulness in cases in which it conflicts with the interests of the
+Church rests wholly on the basis of honour, and not at all on the basis
+of religion. In the estimates of Catholic rulers no impartial observer
+can fail to notice how their attitude towards the interest of the Church
+dominates over all considerations of public and private morals.
+
+In past ages this was much more the case. The Church filled in the minds
+of men a place at least equal to that of the State in the Roman
+Republic. Men who had made great sacrifices for it and rendered great
+services to it were deemed, beyond all others, the good men, and in
+those men things which we should regard as grossly criminal appeared
+mere venial frailties. Let any one who doubts this study the lives of
+the early Catholic saints, and the still more instructive pages in which
+Gregory of Tours and other ecclesiastical annalists have described the
+characters and acts of the more prominent figures in the secular history
+of their times, and he will soon feel that he has passed into a moral
+atmosphere and is dealing with moral measurements and perspectives
+wholly unlike those of our own day.[15]
+
+In highly civilised ages the same spirit may be clearly traced. Bossuet
+was certainly no hypocrite or sycophant, but a man of austere virtue and
+undoubted courage. He did not hesitate to rebuke the gross profligacy
+of the life of Louis XIV., and although neither he nor any of the other
+Catholic divines of his age seriously protested against the wars of pure
+egotism and ostentation which made that sovereign the scourge of Europe
+and brought down upon his people calamities immeasurably greater than
+the faults of his private life--although, indeed, he has spoken of those
+wars in language of rapturous and unqualified eulogy[16]--he had at
+least the grace to devote a chapter of his 'Politique tirée de
+l'Écriture Sainte' to the theme that 'God does not love war.' But in the
+eyes of Bossuet the dominant fact in the life of Louis XIV. was the
+Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the savage persecution of the
+Huguenots, and this was sufficient to place him among the best of
+sovereigns.[17]
+
+To those who will candidly consider the subject there is nothing in this
+which need excite surprise. The doctrine that the Catholic Church is the
+inspired guide, representing the voice of the Divinity on earth and
+deciding with absolute authority all questions of right and wrong, very
+naturally led to the conviction that nothing which was conducive to its
+interests could be really criminal, and in all departments of morals it
+regulated the degrees of praise and blame. The doctrine which is still
+so widely professed but now so faintly realised, that the first
+essential to salvation is orthodox belief, placed conduct on a lower
+plane of importance than dogma, while the conviction that it is in the
+power of man to obtain absolute certainty in religious belief, that
+erroneous belief is in the eyes of the Almighty a crime bringing with it
+eternal damnation, and that the teacher of heresy is the greatest enemy
+of mankind, at once justified in the eyes of the believer acts which now
+seem the gravest moral aberrations. Many baser motives and elements no
+doubt mingled with the long and hideous history of the religious
+persecutions of Christendom, but in the eyes of countless conscientious
+men this teaching seemed amply sufficient to justify them and to stifle
+all feeling of compassion for the victims. Much the same considerations
+explain the absolute indifference with which so many good men witnessed
+those witch persecutions which consigned thousands of old, feeble and
+innocent women to torture and to death.
+
+Other illustrations of a less tragical kind might be given. Thus in
+cases of child-birth the physician is sometimes placed in the
+alternative of sacrificing the life of the mother or of the unborn
+child. In such cases a Protestant or freethinking physician would not
+hesitate to save the adult life as by far the most valuable. The
+Catholic doctrine is that under such circumstances the first duty of the
+physician is to save the life of the unbaptized child.[18] Large numbers
+of commercial transactions which are now universally acknowledged to be
+perfectly innocent and useful would during a long period have been
+prohibited on account of the Catholic doctrine of usury which condemned
+as sinful even the most moderate interest on money if it was exacted as
+the price of the loan.[19]
+
+Every religious and indeed every philosophical system that has played a
+great part in the history of the world has a tendency either to form or
+to assimilate with a particular moral type, and in the eyes of a large
+and growing number it is upon the excellency of this type, and upon its
+success in producing it, that its superiority mainly depends. The
+superstructure or scaffolding of belief around which it is formed
+appears to them of comparatively little moment, and it is not uncommon
+to find men ardently devoted to a particular type long after they have
+discarded the tenets with which it was once connected. Carlyle, for
+example, sometimes spoke of himself as a Calvinist, and used language
+both in public and private as if there was no important difference
+between himself and the most orthodox Puritans, yet it is very evident
+that he disbelieved nearly all the articles of their creed. What he
+meant was that Calvinism had produced in all countries in which it
+really dominated a definite type of character and conception of morals
+which was in his eyes the noblest that had yet appeared in the world.
+
+'_Above all things_, my brethren, swear not.' If, as is generally
+assumed, this refers to the custom of using profane oaths in common
+conversation, how remote from modern ideas is the place assigned to
+this vice, which perhaps affects human happiness as little as any other
+that can be mentioned, in the scale of criminality, and how curiously
+characteristic is the fact that the vice to which this supremacy of
+enormity is attributed continued to be prevalent during the ages when
+theological influences were most powerful, and has in all good society
+faded away in simple obedience to a turn of fashion which proscribes it
+as ungentlemanly! For a long period Acts condemning it were read at
+stated periods in the churches,[20] and one of these described it as
+likely, by provoking God's wrath, to 'increase the many calamities these
+nations now labour under.' How curiously characteristic is the
+restriction in common usage of the term 'immoral' to a single vice, so
+that a man who is untruthful, selfish, cruel, or intemperate might still
+be said to have led 'a moral life' because he was blameless in the
+relations of the sexes! In the estimates of the character of public men
+the same disproportionate judgment may be constantly found in the
+comparative stress placed upon private faults and the most gigantic
+public crimes. Errors of judgment are not errors of morals, but any
+public man who, through selfish, ambitious, or party motives, plunges or
+helps to plunge his country into an unrighteous or unnecessary war,
+subordinates public interest to his personal ambition, employs himself
+in stimulating class, national, or provincial hatreds, lowers the moral
+standard of public life, or supports a legislation which he knows to
+tend to or facilitate dishonesty, is committing a crime before which, if
+it be measured by its consequences, the gravest acts of mere private
+immorality dwindle into insignificance. Yet how differently in the case
+of brilliant and successful politicians are such things treated in the
+judgment of contemporaries, and sometimes even in the judgments of
+history!
+
+It is, I think, a peculiarity of modern times that the chief moral
+influences are much more various and complex than in the past. There is
+no such absolute empire as that which was exercised over character by
+the State in some periods of Pagan antiquity and by the Church during
+the Middle Ages. Our civilisation is more than anything else an
+industrial civilisation, and industrial habits are probably the
+strongest in forming the moral type to which public opinion aspires.
+Slavery, which threw a deep discredit on industry and on the qualities
+it fosters, has passed away. The feudal system, which placed industry in
+an inferior position, has been abolished, and the strong modern tendency
+to diminish both the privileges and the exclusiveness of rank and to
+increase the importance of wealth is in the same direction. An
+industrial society has its special vices and failings, but it naturally
+brings into the boldest relief the moral qualities which industry is
+most fitted to foster and on which it most largely depends, and it also
+gives the whole tone of moral thinking a utilitarian character. It is
+not Christianity but Industrialism that has brought into the world that
+strong sense of the moral value of thrift, steady industry, punctuality
+in observing engagements, constant forethought with a view to providing
+for the contingencies of the future, which is now so characteristic of
+the moral type of the most civilised nations.
+
+Many other influences, however, have contributed to intensify, qualify,
+or impair the industrial type. Protestantism has disengaged primitive
+Christian ethics from a crowd of superstitious and artificial duties
+which had overlaid them, and a similar process has been going on in
+Catholic countries under the influence of the rationalising and
+sceptical spirit. The influence of dogmatic theology on Morals has
+declined. Out of the vast and complex religious systems of the past, an
+eclectic spirit is bringing into special and ever-increasing prominence
+those Christian virtues which are most manifestly in accordance with
+natural religion and most clearly conducive to the well-being of men
+upon the earth. Philanthropy or charity, which forms the centre of the
+system, has also been immensely intensified by increased knowledge and
+realisation of the wants and sorrows of others; by the sensitiveness to
+pain, by the softening of manners and the more humane and refined tastes
+and habits which a highly elaborated intellectual civilisation naturally
+produces. The sense of duty plays a great part in modern philanthropy,
+and lower motives of ostentation or custom mingle largely with the
+genuine kindliness of feeling that inspires it; but on the whole it is
+probable that men in our day, in doing good to others, look much more
+exclusively than in the past to the benefit of the recipient and much
+less to some reward for their acts in a future world. As long, too, as
+this benefit is attained, they will gladly diminish as much as possible
+the self-sacrifice it entails. An eminently characteristic feature of
+modern philanthropy is its close connection with amusements. There was a
+time when a great philanthropic work would be naturally supported by an
+issue of indulgences promising specific advantages in another world to
+all who took part in it. In our own generation balls, bazaars,
+theatrical or other amusements given for the benefit of the charity,
+occupy an almost corresponding place.
+
+At the same time increasing knowledge, and especially the kind of
+knowledge which science gives, has in other ways largely affected our
+judgments of right and wrong. The mental discipline, the habits of sound
+and accurate reasoning, the distrust of mere authority and of untested
+assertions and traditions that science tends to produce, all stimulate
+the intellectual virtues, and science has done much to rectify the chart
+of life, pointing out more clearly the true conditions of human
+well-being and disclosing much baselessness and many errors in the
+teaching of the past. It cannot, however, be said that the civic or the
+military influences have declined. If the State does not hold altogether
+the same place as in Pagan antiquity, it is at least certain that in a
+democratic age public interests are enormously prominent in the lives of
+men, and there is a growing and dangerous tendency to aggrandise the
+influence of the State over the individual, while modern militarism is
+drawing the flower of Continental Europe into its circle and making
+military education one of the most powerful influences in the formation
+of characters and ideals.
+
+I do not believe that the world will ever greatly differ about the
+essential elements of right and wrong. These things lie deep in human
+nature and in the fundamental conditions of human life. The changes that
+are taking place, and which seem likely to strengthen in the future, lie
+chiefly in the importance attached to different qualities.
+
+What seems to be useless self-sacrifice and unnecessary suffering is as
+much as possible avoided. The strain of sentiment which valued suffering
+in itself as an expiatory thing, as a mode of following the Man of
+Sorrows, as a thing to be for its own sake embraced and dwelt upon, and
+prolonged, bears a very great part in some of the most beautiful
+Christian lives, and especially in those which were formed under the
+influence of the Catholic Church. An old legend tells how Christ once
+appeared as a Man of Sorrows to a Catholic Saint, and asked him what
+boon he would most desire. 'Lord,' was the reply, 'that I might suffer
+most.' This strain runs deeply through the whole ascetic literature and
+the whole monastic system of Catholicism, and outside Catholicism it has
+been sometimes shown by a reluctance to accept the aid of anæsthetics,
+which partially or wholly removed suffering supposed to have been sent
+by Providence. The history of the use of chloroform furnishes striking
+illustrations of this. Many of my readers may remember the French monks
+who devoted themselves to cultivating one of the most pestilential spots
+in the Roman Campagna, which was associated with an ecclesiastical
+legend, and who quite unnecessarily insisted on remaining there during
+the season when such a residence meant little less than a slow suicide.
+They had, as they were accustomed to say, their purgatory upon earth,
+and they remained till their constitutions were hopelessly shattered and
+they were sent to die in their own land. Touching examples might be
+found in modern times of men who, in the last extremes of disease or
+suffering, scrupled, through religious motives, about availing
+themselves of the simplest alleviations,[21] and something of the same
+feeling is shown in the desire to prolong to the last possible moment
+hopeless and agonising disease. All this is manifestly and rapidly
+disappearing. To endure with patience and resignation inevitable
+suffering; to encounter courageously dangers and suffering for some
+worthy and useful end, ranks, indeed, as high as it ever did in the
+ethics of the century, but suffering for its own sake is no longer
+valued, and it is deemed one of the first objects of a wise life to
+restrict and diminish it.
+
+No one, I think, has seen more clearly or described more vividly than
+Goethe the direction in which in modern times the current of morals is
+flowing. His philosophy is a terrestrial philosophy, and the old
+theologians would have said that it allowed the second Table of the Law
+altogether to supersede or eclipse the first. It was said of him with
+much truth that 'repugnance to the supernatural was an inherent part of
+his mind.' To turn away from useless and barren speculations; to
+persistently withdraw our thoughts from the unknowable, the inevitable,
+and the irreparable; to concentrate them on the immediate present and on
+the nearest duty; to waste no moral energy on excessive introspection or
+self-abasement or self-reproach, but to make the cultivation and the
+wise use of all our powers the supreme ideal and end of our lives; to
+oppose labour and study to affliction and regret; to keep at a distance
+gloomy thoughts and exaggerated anxieties; 'to see the individual in
+connection and co-operation with the whole,' and to look upon effort and
+action as the main elements both of duty and happiness, was the lesson
+which he continually taught. 'The mind endowed with active powers, and
+keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the
+worthiest there is on earth.' 'Character consists in a man steadily
+pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.' 'Try to do your
+duty and you will know what you are worth.' 'Piety is not an end but a
+means; a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest
+tranquillity of soul.' 'We are not born to solve the problems of the
+world, but to find out where the problem begins and then to keep within
+the limits of what we can grasp.'
+
+To cultivate sincere love of truth and clear and definite conceptions,
+and divest ourselves as much as possible from prejudices, fanaticisms,
+superstitions, and exaggeration; to take wide, sound, tolerant,
+many-sided views of life, stands in his eyes in the forefront of ethics.
+'Let it be your earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as
+possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and
+reason;' 'remove by plain and honest purpose false, irrelevant and
+futile ideas.' 'The truest liberality is appreciation.' 'Love of truth
+shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in
+everything.'[22]
+
+In the eyes of this school of thought one of the great vices of the old
+theological type of ethics was that it was unduly negative. It thought
+much more of the avoidance of sin than of the performance of duty. The
+more we advance in knowledge the more we shall come to judge men in the
+spirit of the parable of the talents; that is by the net result of their
+lives, by their essential unselfishness, by the degree in which they
+employ and the objects to which they direct their capacities and
+opportunities. The staple of moral life becomes much less a matter of
+small scruples, of minute self-examination, of extreme stress laid upon
+flaws of character and conduct that have little or no bearing upon
+active life. A life of idleness will be regarded with much less
+tolerance than at present. Men will grow less introspective and more
+objective, and useful action will become more and more the guiding
+principle of morals.
+
+In theory this will probably be readily admitted, but every good
+observer will find that it involves a considerable change in the point
+of view. A life of habitual languor and idleness, with no faculties
+really cultivated, and with no result that makes a man missed when he
+has passed away, may be spent without any act which the world calls
+vicious, and is quite compatible with much charm of temper and demeanour
+and with a complete freedom from violent and aggressive selfishness.
+Such a life, in the eyes of many moralists, would rank much higher than
+a life of constant, honourable self-sacrificing labour for the good of
+others which was at the same time flawed by some positive vice. Yet the
+life which seems to be comparatively blameless has in truth wholly
+missed, while the other life, in spite of all its defects, has largely
+attained what should be the main object of a human life, the full
+development and useful employment of whatever powers we possess. There
+are men, indeed, in whom an over-sensitive conscience is even a
+paralysing thing, which by suggesting constant petty and ingenious
+scruples holds them back from useful action. It is a moral infirmity
+corresponding to that exaggerated intellectual fastidiousness which so
+often makes an intellectual life almost wholly barren, or to that
+excessive tendency to look on all sides of a question and to realise the
+dangers and drawbacks of any course which not unfrequently in moments of
+difficulty paralyses the actions of public men. Sometimes, under the
+strange and subtle bias of the will, this excessive conscientiousness
+will be unconsciously fostered in inert and sluggish natures which are
+constitutionally disinclined to effort. The main lines of duty in the
+great relations of life are sufficiently obvious, and the casuistry
+which multiplies cases of conscience and invents unreal and factitious
+duties is apt to be rather an impediment than a furtherance to a noble
+life.
+
+It is probable that as the world goes on morals will move more and more
+in the direction I have described. There will be at the same time a
+steadily increasing tendency to judge moral qualities and courses of
+conduct mainly by the degree in which they promote or diminish human
+happiness. Enthusiasm and self-sacrifice for some object which has no
+real bearing on the welfare of man will become rarer and will be less
+respected, and the condemnation that is passed on acts that are
+recognised as wrong will be much more proportioned than at present to
+the injury they inflict. Some things, such as excessive luxury of
+expenditure and the improvidence of bringing into the world children for
+whom no provision has been made, which can now scarcely be said to enter
+into the teaching of moralists, or at least of churches, may one day be
+looked upon as graver offences than some that are in the penal code.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] St. Francis de Sales.
+
+[12] St. Philip Neri.
+
+[13] St. Teresa.
+
+[14] 'Cum dictus Johannes Hus fidem orthodoxam pertinaciter impugnans,
+se ab omni con ductu et privilegio reddiderit alienum, nec aliqua sibi
+fides aut promissio de jure naturali divino vel humano, fuerit in
+præjudicium Catholicæ fidei observanda.' Declaration of the Council of
+Constance. See Creighton's _History of the Papacy_, ii. 32.
+
+[15] I have collected some illustrations of this in my _History of
+European Morals_, ii. 235-242.
+
+[16] See, e.g. his funeral oration on Marie Thérèse d'Autriche.
+
+[17] See the enthusiastic eulogy of the persecution of the Huguenots in
+his funeral oration on Michel le Tellier. It concludes: 'Épanchons nos
+coeurs sur la piété de Louis; poussons jusqu'au ciel nos acclamations,
+et disons à ce nouveau Constantin, à ce nouveau Théodose, à ce nouveau
+Marcien, à ce nouveau Charlemagne ce que les six cent trente Pères
+dirent autrefois dans le Concile de Chalcédoine: "Vous avez affermi la
+foi; vous avez exterminé les hérétiques; c'est le digne ouvrage de votre
+règne; c'en est le propre caractère. Par vous l'hérésie n'est plus, Dieu
+seul a pu faire cette merveille. Roi du ciel, conservez le roi de la
+terre; c'est le voeu, des Églises; c'est le voeu des Évêques."'
+
+[18] See Migne, _Encyclopédie Théologique_, 'Dict. de Cas de
+Conscience,' art. _Avortement_.
+
+[19] See on this subject my _History of Rationalism_, ii. 250-270, and
+my _Democracy and Liberty_, ii., ch. viii.
+
+[20] 21 James I. c. 20; 19 Geo. II. c. 21. The penalties, however, were
+fines, the pillory, or short periods of imprisonment. The obligation of
+reading the statute in churches was abolished in 1823, but the custom
+had before fallen into desuetude. In 1772 a vicar was (as an act of
+private vengeance) prosecuted and fined for having neglected to read it.
+(_Annual Register_, 1772, p. 115.)
+
+[21] The following beautiful passage from a funeral sermon by Newman is
+an example: 'One should have thought that a life so innocent, so active,
+so holy, I might say so faultless from first to last, might have been
+spared the visitation of any long and severe penance to bring it to an
+end; but in order doubtless to show us how vile and miserable the best
+of us are in ourselves ... and moreover to give us a pattern how to bear
+suffering ourselves, and to increase the merits and to hasten and
+brighten the crown of this faithful servant of his Lord, it pleased
+Almighty God to send upon him a disorder which during the last six years
+fought with him, mastered him, and at length has destroyed him, so far,
+that is, as death now has power to destroy.... It is for those who came
+near him year after year to store up the many words and deeds of
+resignation, love and humility which that long penance elicited. These
+meritorious acts are written in the Book of Life, and they have followed
+him whither he is gone. They multiplied and grew in strength and
+perfection as his trial proceeded; and they were never so striking as at
+its close. When a friend visited him in the last week, he found he had
+scrupled at allowing his temples to be moistened with some refreshing
+waters, and had with difficulty been brought to give his consent; he
+said he feared it was too great a luxury. When the same friend offered
+him some liquid to allay his distressing thirst his answer was the
+same.'--Sermon at the funeral of the Right Rev. Henry Weedall, pp. 19,
+20.
+
+[22] See the excellent little book of Mr. Bailey Saunders, called _The
+Maxims and Reflections of Goethe_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The tendency to regard morals rather in their positive than their
+negative aspects, and to estimate men by the good they do in the world,
+is a healthy element in modern life. A strong sense of the obligation of
+a full, active, and useful life is the best safeguard both of individual
+and national morals at a time when the dissolution or enfeeblement of
+theological beliefs is disturbing the foundations on which most current
+moral teaching has been based. In the field of morals action holds a
+much larger place than reasoning--a larger place even in elucidating our
+difficulties and illuminating the path on which we should go. It is by
+the active pursuit of an immediate duty that the vista of future duties
+becomes most clear, and those who are most immersed in active duties are
+usually little troubled with the perplexities of life, or with minute
+and paralysing scruples. A public opinion which discourages idleness and
+places high the standard of public duty is especially valuable in an age
+when the tendency to value wealth, and to measure dignity by wealth, has
+greatly increased, and when wealth in some of its most important forms
+has become wholly dissociated from special duties. The duties of the
+landlord who is surrounded by a poor and in some measure dependent
+tenantry, the duties of the head of a great factory or shop who has a
+large number of workmen or dependents in his employment, are
+sufficiently obvious, though even in these spheres the tie of duty has
+been greatly relaxed by the growing spirit of independence, which makes
+each class increasingly jealous of the interference of others, and by
+the growing tendency of legislation to regulate all relations of
+business and contracts by definite law instead of leaving them, as in
+the past, to voluntary action. But there are large classes of fortunes
+which are wholly, or almost wholly, dissociated from special and
+definite duties. The vast and ever-increasing multitude whose incomes
+are derived from national, or provincial, or municipal debts, or who are
+shareholders or debenture-holders in great commercial and industrial
+undertakings, have little or no practical control over, or interest in,
+those from whom their fortunes are derived. The multiplication of such
+fortunes is one of the great characteristics of our time, and it brings
+with it grave dangers. Such fortunes give unrivalled opportunities of
+luxurious idleness, and as in themselves they bring little or no social
+influence or position, those who possess them are peculiarly tempted to
+seek such a position by an ostentation of wealth and luxury which has a
+profoundly vulgarising and demoralising influence upon Society. The
+tendency of idleness to lead to immorality has long been a commonplace
+of moralists. Perhaps our own age has seen more clearly than those that
+preceded it that complete and habitual idleness _is_ immorality, and
+that when the circumstances of his life do not assign to a man a
+definite sphere of work it is his first duty to find it for himself. It
+has been happily said that in the beginning of the reign of Queen
+Victoria young men in England who were really busy affected idleness,
+and at the close of the reign young men who are really idle pretend to
+be busy. In my own opinion, a disproportionate amount of English energy
+takes political forms, and there is a dangerous exaggeration in the
+prevailing tendency to combat all social and moral abuses by Acts of
+Parliament. But there are multitudes of other and less obtrusive spheres
+of work adapted to all grades of intellect and to many types of
+character, in which men who possess the inestimable boon of leisure can
+find abundant and useful fields for the exercise of their powers.
+
+The rectification of moral judgments is one of the most important
+elements of civilisation; it is upon this that the possibility of moral
+progress on a large scale chiefly depends. Few things pervert men more
+than the habit of regarding as enviable persons or qualities injurious
+to Society. The most obvious example is the passionate admiration
+bestowed on a brilliant conqueror, which is often quite irrespective of
+the justice of his wars and of the motives that actuated him. This false
+moral feeling has acquired such a strength that overwhelming military
+power almost certainly leads to a career of ambition. Perverted public
+opinion is the main cause. Glory, not interest, is the lure, or at least
+the latter would be powerless if it were not accompanied by the
+former--if the execration of mankind naturally followed unscrupulous
+aggression.
+
+Another and scarcely less flagrant instance of the worship of false
+ideals is to be found in the fierce competition of luxury and
+ostentation which characterises the more wealthy cities of Europe and
+America. It is no exaggeration to say that in a single festival in
+London or New York sums are often expended in the idlest and most
+ephemeral ostentation which might have revived industry, or extinguished
+pauperism, or alleviated suffering over a vast area. The question of
+expenditure on luxuries is no doubt a question of degree which cannot be
+reduced to strict rule, and there are many who will try to justify the
+most ostentatious expenditure on the ground of the employment it gives
+and of other incidental advantages it is supposed to produce. But
+nothing in political economy is more certain than that the vast and
+ever-increasing expenditure on the luxury of ostentation in modern
+societies, by withdrawing great masses of capital from productive
+labour, is a grave economical evil, and there is probably no other form
+of expenditure which, in proportion to its amount, gives so little real
+pleasure and confers so little real good. Its evil in setting up
+material and base standards of excellence, in stimulating the worst
+passions that grow out of an immoderate love of wealth, in ruining many
+who are tempted into a competition which they are unable to support, can
+hardly be overrated. It is felt in every rank in raising the standard of
+conventional expenses, excluding from much social intercourse many who
+are admirably fitted to adorn it, and introducing into all society a
+lower and more material tone. Nor are these its only consequences.
+Wealth which is expended in multiplying and elaborating real comforts,
+or even in pleasures which produce enjoyment at all proportionate to
+their cost, will never excite serious indignation. It is the colossal
+waste of the means of human happiness in the most selfish and most
+vulgar forms of social advertisement and competition that gives a force
+and almost a justification to anarchical passions which menace the
+whole future of our civilisation. It is such things that stimulate class
+hatreds and deepen class divisions, and if the law of opinion does not
+interfere to check them they will one day bring down upon the society
+that encourages them a signal and well-merited retribution.
+
+A more recognised, though probably not really more pernicious example of
+false ideals, is to be found in the glorification of the _demi-monde_,
+which is so conspicuous in some societies and literatures. In a healthy
+state of opinion, the public, ostentatious appearance of such persons,
+without any concealment of their character, in the great concourse of
+fashion and among the notabilities of the State, would appear an
+intolerable scandal, and it becomes much worse when they give the tone
+to fashion and become the centres and the models of large and by no
+means undistinguished sections of Society. The evils springing from this
+public glorification of the class are immeasurably greater than the
+evils arising from its existence. The standard of popular morals is
+debased. Temptation in its most seductive form is forced upon
+inflammable natures, and the most pernicious of all lessons is taught to
+poor, honest, hard-working women. It is indeed wonderful that in
+societies where this evil prevails so much virtue should still exist
+among graceful, attractive women of the shopkeeping and servant class
+when they continually see before them members of their own class, by
+preferring vice to virtue, rising at once to wealth, luxury and
+idleness, and even held up as objects of admiration or imitation.
+
+In judging wisely the characters of men, one of the first things to be
+done is to understand their ideals. Try to find out what kind of men or
+of life; what qualities, what positions seem to them the most desirable.
+Men do not always fully recognise their own ideals, for education and
+the conventionalities of Society oblige them to assert a preference for
+that which may really have no root in their minds. But by a careful
+examination it is usually possible to ascertain what persons or
+qualities or circumstances or gifts exercise a genuine, spontaneous,
+magnetic power over them--whether they really value supremely rank or
+position, or money, or beauty, or intellect, or superiority of
+character. If you know the ideal of a man you have obtained a true key
+to his nature. The broad lines of his character, the permanent
+tendencies of his imagination, his essential nobility or meanness, are
+thus disclosed more effectually than by any other means. A man with high
+ideals, who admires wisely and nobly, is never wholly base though he may
+fall into great vices. A man who worships the baser elements is in truth
+an idolater though he may have never bowed before an image of stone.
+
+The human mind has much more power of distinguishing between right and
+wrong, and between true and false, than of estimating with accuracy the
+comparative gravity of opposite evils. It is nearly always right in
+judging between right and wrong. It is generally wrong in estimating
+degrees of guilt, and the root of its error lies in the extreme
+difficulty of putting ourselves into the place of those whose characters
+or circumstances are radically different from our own. This want of
+imagination acts widely on our judgment of what is good as well as of
+what is bad. Few men have enough imagination to realise types of
+excellence altogether differing from their own. It is this, much more
+than vanity, that leads them to esteem the types of excellence to which
+they themselves approximate as the best, and tastes and habits that are
+altogether incongruous with their own as futile and contemptible. It is,
+perhaps, most difficult of all to realise the difference of character
+and especially of moral sensibility produced by a profound difference of
+circumstances. This difficulty largely falsifies our judgments of the
+past, and it is the reason why a powerful imagination enabling us to
+realise very various characters and very remote circumstances is one of
+the first necessities of a great historian. Historians rarely make
+sufficient allowance for the degree in which the judgments and
+dispositions even of the best men are coloured by the moral tone of the
+time, society and profession in which they lived. Yet it is probable
+that on the whole we estimate more justly the characters of the past
+than of the present. No one would judge the actions of Charlemagne or of
+his contemporaries by the strict rules of nineteenth-century ethics. We
+feel that though they committed undoubted crimes, these crimes are at
+least indefinitely less heinous than they would have been under the
+wholly different circumstances and moral atmosphere of our own day. Yet
+we seldom apply this method of reasoning to the different strata of the
+same society. Men who have been themselves brought up amid all the
+comforts and all the moralising and restraining influences of a refined
+society, will often judge the crimes of the wretched pariahs of
+civilisation as if their acts were in no degree palliated by their
+position. They say to themselves 'How guilty should I have been if I
+had done this thing,' and their verdict is quite just according to this
+statement of the case. They realise the nature of the act. They utterly
+fail to realise the character and circumstances of the actor.
+
+And yet it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the difference between the
+position of such a critic and that of the children of drunken, ignorant
+and profligate parents, born to abject poverty in the slums of our great
+cities. From their earliest childhood drunkenness, blasphemy,
+dishonesty, prostitution, indecency of every form are their most
+familiar experiences. All the social influences, such as they are, are
+influences of vice. As they grow up Life seems to them to present little
+more than the alternative of hard, ill-paid, and at the same time
+precarious labour, probably ending in the poor-house, or crime with its
+larger and swifter gains, and its intervals of coarse pleasure probably,
+though not certainly, followed by the prison or an early death. They see
+indeed, like figures in a dream, or like beings of another world, the
+wealthy and the luxurious spending their wealth and their time in many
+kinds of enjoyment, but to the very poor pleasure scarcely comes except
+in the form of the gin palace or perhaps the low music hall. And in many
+cases they have come into this reeking atmosphere of temptation and vice
+with natures debased and enfeebled by a long succession of vicious
+hereditary influences, with weak wills, with no faculties of mind or
+character that can respond to any healthy ambition; with powerful inborn
+predispositions to evil. The very mould of their features, the very
+shape of their skulls, marks them out as destined members of the
+criminal class. Even here, no doubt, there is a difference between right
+and wrong; there is scope for the action of free will; there are just
+causes of praise and blame, and Society rightly protects itself by
+severe penalties against the crimes that are most natural; but what
+human judge can duly measure the scale of moral guilt? or what
+comparison can there be between the crimes that are engendered by such
+circumstances and those which spring up in the homes of refined and
+well-regulated comfort?
+
+Nor indeed even in this latter case is a really accurate judgment
+possible. Men are born into the world with both wills and passions of
+varying strength, though in mature life the strength or weakness of each
+is largely due to their own conduct. With different characters the same
+temptation, operating under the same external circumstances, has
+enormously different strength, and very few men can fully realise the
+strength of a passion which they have never themselves experienced. To
+repeat an illustration I have already used, how difficult is it for a
+constitutionally sober man to form in his own mind an adequate
+conception of the force of the temptation of drink to a dipsomaniac, or
+for a passionless man to conceive rightly the temptations of a
+profoundly sensual nature! I have spoken in a former chapter of the
+force with which bodily conditions act upon happiness. Their influence
+on morals is not less terrible. There are diseases well known to
+physicians which make the most placid temper habitually irritable;
+give a morbid turn to the healthiest disposition; fill the purest
+mind with unholy thoughts. There are others which destroy the force
+of the strongest will and take from character all balance and
+self-control.[23] It often happens that we have long been blaming a man
+for manifest faults of character till at last suicide, or the disclosure
+of some grave bodily or mental disease which has long been working
+unperceived, explains his faults and turns our blame into pity. In
+madness the whole moral character is sometimes reversed, and tendencies
+which have been in sane life dormant or repressed become suddenly
+supreme. In such cases we all acknowledge that there is no moral
+responsibility, but madness, with its illusions and irresistible
+impulses, and idiocy with its complete suspension of the will and of the
+judgment, are neither of them, as lawyers would pretend, clearly defined
+states, marked out by sharp and well-cut boundaries, wholly distinct
+from sanity. There are incipient stages; there are gradual
+approximations; there are twilight states between sanity and insanity
+which are clearly recognised not only by experts but by all sagacious
+men of the world. There are many who are not sufficiently mad to be shut
+up, or to be deprived of the management of their properties, or to be
+exempted from punishment if they have committed a crime, but who, in the
+common expressive phrase, 'are not all there'--whose eccentricities,
+illusions and caprices are on the verge of madness, whose judgments are
+hopelessly disordered; whose wills, though not completely atrophied, are
+manifestly diseased. In questions of property, in questions of crime, in
+questions of family arrangements, such persons cause the gravest
+perplexity, nor will any wise man judge them by the same moral standard
+as well-balanced and well-developed natures.
+
+The inference to be drawn from such facts is certainly not that there is
+no such thing as free will and personal responsibility, nor yet that we
+have no power of judging the acts of others and distinguishing among our
+fellowmen between the good and the bad. The true lesson is the extreme
+fallibility of our moral judgments whenever we attempt to measure
+degrees of guilt. Sometimes men are even unjust to their own past from
+their incapacity in age of realising the force of the temptations they
+had experienced in youth. On the other hand, increased knowledge of the
+world tends to make us more sensible of the vast differences between the
+moral circumstances of men, and therefore less confident and more
+indulgent in our judgments of others. There are men whose cards in life
+are so bad, whose temptations to vice, either from circumstances or
+inborn character, seem so overwhelming, that, though we may punish, and
+in a certain sense blame, we can scarcely look on them as more
+responsible than some noxious wild beast. Among the terrible facts of
+life none is indeed more terrible than this. Every believer in the wise
+government of the world must have sometimes realised with a crushing or
+at least a staggering force the appalling injustices of life as shown in
+the enormous differences in the distribution of unmerited happiness and
+misery. But the disparity of moral circumstances is not less. It has
+shaken the faith of many. It has even led some to dream of a possible
+Heaven for the vicious where those who are born into the world with a
+physical constitution rendering them fierce or cruel, or sensual, or
+cowardly, may be freed from the nature which was the cause of their
+vice and their suffering upon earth; where due allowance may be made for
+the differences of circumstances which have plunged one man deeper and
+ever deeper into crime, and enabled another, who was not really better
+or worse, to pass through life with no serious blemish, and to rise
+higher and higher in the moral scale.
+
+Imperfect, however, as is our power of judging others, it is a power we
+are all obliged to exercise. It is impossible to exclude the
+considerations of moral guilt and of palliating or aggravating
+circumstances from the penal code, and from the administration of
+justice, though it cannot be too clearly maintained that the criminal
+code is not coextensive with the moral code, and that many things which
+are profoundly immoral lie beyond its scope. On the whole it should be
+as much as possible confined to acts by which men directly injure
+others. In the case of adult men, private vices, vices by which no one
+is directly affected, except by his own free will, and in which the
+elements of force or fraud are not present, should not be brought within
+its range. This ideal, it is true, cannot be fully attained. The
+legislator must take into account the strong pressure of public opinion.
+It is sometimes true that a penal law may arrest, restrict, or prevent
+the revival of some private vice without producing any countervailing
+evil. But the presumption is against all laws which punish the voluntary
+acts of adult men when those acts injure no one except themselves. The
+social censure, or the judgment of opinion, rightly extends much
+further, though it is often based on very imperfect knowledge or
+realisation. It is probable that, on the whole, opinion judges too
+severely the crimes of passion and of drink, as well as those which
+spring from the pressure of great poverty and are accompanied by great
+ignorance. The causes of domestic anarchy are usually of such an
+intimate nature and involve so many unknown or imperfectly realised
+elements of aggravation or palliation that in most cases the less men
+attempt to judge them the better. On the other hand, public opinion is
+usually far too lenient in judging crimes of ambition, cupidity, envy,
+malevolence, and callous selfishness; the crimes of ill-gotten and
+ill-used wealth, especially in the many cases in which those crimes are
+unpunished by law.
+
+It is a mere commonplace of morals that in the path of evil it is the
+first step that costs the most. The shame, the repugnance, and the
+remorse which attend the first crime speedily fade, and on every
+repetition the habit of evil grows stronger. A process of the same kind
+passes over our judgments. Few things are more curious than to observe
+how the eye accommodates itself to a new fashion of dress, however
+unbecoming; how speedily men, or at least women, will adopt a new and
+artificial standard and instinctively and unconsciously admire or blame
+according to this standard and not according to any genuine sense of
+beauty or the reverse. Few persons, however pure may be their natural
+taste, can live long amid vulgar and vulgarising surroundings without
+losing something of the delicacy of their taste and learning to
+accept--if not with pleasure, at least with acquiescence--things from
+which under other circumstances they would have recoiled. In the same
+way, both individuals and societies accommodate themselves but too
+readily to lower moral levels, and a constant vigilance is needed to
+detect the forms or directions in which individual and national
+character insensibly deteriorate.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[23] See Ribot, _Les Maladies de la Volonté_, pp. 92, 116-119.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It is impossible for a physician to prescribe a rational regimen for a
+patient unless he has formed some clear conception of the nature of his
+constitution and of the morbid influences to which it is inclined; and
+in judging the wisdom of various proposals for the management of
+character we are at once met by the initial controversy about the
+goodness or the depravity of human nature. It is a subject on which
+extreme exaggerations have prevailed. The school of Rousseau, which
+dominated on the Continent in the last half of the eighteenth century,
+represented mankind as a being who comes into existence essentially
+good, and it attributed all the moral evils of the world, not to any
+innate tendencies to vice, but to superstition, vicious institutions,
+misleading education, a badly organised society. It is an obvious
+criticism that if human nature had been as good as such writers
+imagined, these corrupt and corrupting influences could never have grown
+up, or at least could never have obtained a controlling influence, and
+this philosophy became greatly discredited when the French Revolution,
+which it did so much to produce, ended in the unspeakable horrors of the
+Reign of Terror and in the gigantic carnage of the Napoleonic wars. On
+the other hand, there are large schools of theologians who represent man
+as utterly and fundamentally depraved, 'born in corruption, inclined to
+evil, incapable by himself of doing good;' totally wrecked and ruined
+as a moral being by the catastrophe in Eden. There are also moral
+philosophers--usually very unconnected with theology--who deny or
+explain away all unselfish elements in human nature, represent man as
+simply governed by self-interest, and maintain that the whole art of
+education and government consists of a judicious arrangement of selfish
+motives, making the interests of the individual coincident with those of
+his neighbours. It is not too much to say that Society never could have
+subsisted if this view of human nature had been a just one. The world
+would have been like a cage-full of wild beasts, and mankind would have
+soon perished in constant internecine war.
+
+It is indeed one of the plainest facts of human nature that such a view
+of mankind is an untrue one. Jealousy, envy, animosities and selfishness
+no doubt play a great part in life and disguise themselves under many
+specious forms, and the cynical moralist was not wholly wrong when he
+declared that 'Virtue would not go so far if Vanity did not keep her
+company,' and that not only our crimes but even many of what are deemed
+our best acts may be traced to selfish motives. But he must have had a
+strangely unfortunate experience of the world who does not recognise the
+enormous exaggeration of the pictures of human nature that are conveyed
+in some of the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and Schopenhauer. They tell us
+that friendship is a mere exchange of interests in which each man only
+seeks to gain something from the other; that most women are only pure
+because they are untempted and regret that the temptation does not come;
+that if we acknowledge some faults it is in order to persuade ourselves
+that we have no greater ones, or in order, by our confession, to regain
+the good opinion of our neighbours; that if we praise another it is
+merely that we may ourselves in turn be praised; that the tears we shed
+over a deathbed, if they are not hypocritical tears intended only to
+impress our neighbours, are only due to our conviction that we have
+ourselves lost a source of pleasure or of gain; that envy so
+predominates in the world that it is only men of inferior intellect or
+women of inferior beauty who are sincerely liked by those about them;
+that all virtue is an egotistic calculation, conscious or unconscious.
+
+Such views are at least as far removed from truth as the roseate
+pictures of Rousseau and St. Pierre. No one can look with an unjaundiced
+eye upon the world without perceiving the enormous amount of
+disinterested, self-sacrificing benevolence that pervades it; the
+countless lives that are spent not only harmlessly and inoffensively but
+also in the constant discharge of duties; in constant and often painful
+labour for the good of others. The better section of the Utilitarian
+school has fully recognised the truth that human nature is so
+constituted that a great proportion of its enjoyment depends on
+sympathy; or, in other words, on the power we possess of entering into
+and sharing the happiness of others. The spectacle of suffering
+naturally elicits compassion. Kindness naturally produces gratitude. The
+sympathies of men naturally move on the side of the good rather than of
+the bad. This is true not only of the things that immediately concern
+us, but also in the perfectly disinterested judgments we form of the
+events of history or of the characters in fiction and poetry. Great
+exhibitions of heroism and self-sacrifice touch a genuine chord of
+enthusiasm. The affections of the domestic circle are the rule and not
+the exception; patriotism can elicit great outbursts of purely unselfish
+generosity and induce multitudes to risk or sacrifice their lives for
+causes which are quite other than their own selfish interests. Human
+nature indeed has its moral as well as its physical needs, and naturally
+and instinctively seeks some object of interest and enthusiasm outside
+itself.
+
+If we look again into the vice and sin that undoubtedly disfigure the
+world we shall find much reason to believe that what is exceptional in
+human nature is not the evil tendency but the restraining conscience,
+and that it is chiefly the weakness of the distinctively human quality
+that is the origin of the evil. It is impossible indeed, with the
+knowledge we now possess, to deny to animals some measure both of reason
+and of the moral sense. In addition to the higher instincts of parental
+affection and devotion which are so clearly developed we find among some
+animals undoubted signs of remorse, gratitude, affection,
+self-sacrifice. Even the point of honour which attaches shame to some
+things and pride to others may be clearly distinguished. No one who has
+watched the more intelligent dog can question this, and many will
+maintain that in some animals, though both good and bad qualities are
+less widely developed than in man, the proportion of the good to the
+evil is more favourable in the animal than in the man. At the same time
+in the animal world desire is usually followed without any other
+restraint than fear, while in man it is largely though no doubt very
+imperfectly limited by moral self-control. Most crimes spring not from
+anything wrong in the original and primal desire but from the
+imperfection of this higher, distinct or superadded element in our
+nature. The crimes of dishonesty and envy, when duly analysed, have at
+their basis simply a desire for the desirable--a natural and inevitable
+feeling. What is absent is the restraint which makes men refrain from
+taking or trying to take desirable things that belong to another.
+Sensual faults spring from a perfectly natural impulse, but the
+restraint which confines the action of that impulse to defined
+circumstances is wanting. Much, too, of the insensibility and hardness
+of the world is due to a simple want of imagination which prevents us
+from adequately realising the sufferings of others. The predatory,
+envious and ferocious feelings that disturb mankind operate unrestrained
+through the animal world, though man's superior intelligence gives his
+desires a special character and a greatly increased scope, and
+introduces them into spheres inconceivable to the animal. Immoderate and
+uncontrolled desires are the root of most human crimes, but at the same
+time the self-restraint that limits desire, or self-seeking, by the
+rights of others, seems to be mainly, though not wholly, the prerogative
+of man.
+
+Considerations of this kind are sufficient to remedy the extreme
+exaggeration of human corruption that may often be heard, but they are
+not inconsistent with the truth that human nature is so far depraved
+that it can never be safely left to develop unimpeded without strong
+legal and social restraint. It is not necessary to seek examples of its
+depravity within the precincts of a prison or in the many instances
+that may be found outside the criminal population of morbid moral taints
+which are often as clearly marked as physical disease. On a large scale
+and in the actions of great bodies of men the melancholy truth is
+abundantly displayed. On the whole Christianity has been far more
+successful in influencing individuals than societies. The mere spectacle
+of a battle-field with the appalling mass of hideous suffering
+deliberately and ingeniously inflicted by man upon man should be
+sufficient to scatter all idyllic pictures of human nature. It was once
+the custom of a large school of writers to attribute unjust wars solely
+to the rulers of the world, who for their own selfish ambitions
+remorselessly sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of their
+subjects. Their guilt has been very great, but they would never have
+pursued the course of ambitious conquest if the applause of nations had
+not followed and encouraged them, and there are no signs that democracy,
+which has enthroned the masses, has any real tendency to diminish war.
+
+In modern times the danger of war lies less in the intrigues of
+statesmen than in deeply seated international jealousies and
+antipathies; in sudden, volcanic outbursts of popular passion. After
+eighteen hundred years' profession of the creed of peace, Christendom is
+an armed camp. Never, or hardly ever, in times of peace had the mere
+preparations of war absorbed so large a proportion of its population and
+resources, and very seldom has so large an amount of its ability been
+mainly employed in inventing and in perfecting instruments of
+destruction. Those who will look on the world without illusion will be
+compelled to admit that the chief guarantees for its peace are to be
+found much less in moral than in purely selfish motives. The financial
+embarrassments of the great nations; their profound distrust of one
+another; the vast cost of modern war; the gigantic commercial disasters
+it inevitably entails; the extreme uncertainty of its issue; the utter
+ruin that may follow defeat--these are the real influences that restrain
+the tiger passions and the avaricious cravings of mankind. It is also
+one of the advantages that accompany the many evils of universal
+service, that great citizen armies who in time of war are drawn from
+their homes, their families, and their peaceful occupations have not the
+same thirst for battle that grows up among purely professional soldiers,
+voluntarily enlisted and making a military life their whole career. Yet,
+in spite of all this, what trust could be placed in the forbearance of
+Christian nations if the path of aggression was at once easy, lucrative
+and safe? The judgments of nations in dealing with the aggressions of
+their neighbours are, it is true, very different from those which they
+form of aggressions by their own statesmen or for their own benefit. But
+no great nation is blameless, and there is probably no nation that could
+not speedily catch the infection of the warlike spirit if a conqueror
+and a few splendid victories obscured, as they nearly always do, the
+moral issues of the contest.
+
+War, it is true, is not always or wholly evil. Sometimes it is
+justifiable and necessary. Sometimes it is professedly and in part
+really due to some strong wave of philanthropic feeling produced by
+great acts of wrong, though of all forms of philanthropy it is that
+which most naturally defeats itself. Even when unjustifiable, it calls
+into action splendid qualities of courage, self-sacrifice, and
+endurance which cast a dazzling and deceptive glamour over its horrors
+and its criminality. It appeals too, beyond all other things, to that
+craving for excitement, adventure, and danger which is an essential and
+imperious element in human nature, and which, while it is in itself
+neither a virtue nor a vice, blends powerfully with some of the best as
+well as with some of the worst actions of mankind. It is indeed a
+strange thing to observe how many men in every age have been ready to
+risk or sacrifice their lives for causes which they have never clearly
+understood and which they would find it difficult in plain words to
+describe.
+
+But the amount of pure and almost spontaneous malevolence in the world
+is probably far greater than we at first imagine. In public life the
+workings of this side of human nature are at once disclosed and
+magnified, like the figures thrown by a magic lantern on a screen, to a
+scale which it is impossible to overlook. No one, for example, can study
+the anonymous press without perceiving how large a part of it is
+employed systematically, persistently and deliberately in fostering
+class, or race, or international hatreds, and often in circulating
+falsehoods to attain this end. Many newspapers notoriously depend for
+their existence on such appeals, and more than any other instruments
+they inflame and perpetuate those permanent animosities which most
+endanger the peace of mankind. The fact that such newspapers are
+becoming in many countries the main and almost exclusive reading of the
+poor forms the most serious deduction from the value of popular
+education. How many books have attained popularity, how many seats in
+Parliament have been won, how many posts of influence and profit have
+been attained, how many party victories have been achieved, by appealing
+to such passions! Often they disguise themselves under the lofty names
+of patriotism and nationality, and men whose whole lives have been spent
+in sowing class hatreds and dividing kindred nations may be found
+masquerading under the name of patriots, and have played no small part
+on the stage of politics. The deep-seated sedition, the fierce class and
+national hatreds that run through European life would have a very
+different intensity from what they now unfortunately have if they had
+not been artificially stimulated and fostered through purely selfish
+motives by demagogues, political adventurers and public writers.
+
+Some of the very worst acts of which man can be guilty are acts which
+are commonly untouched by law and only faintly censured by opinion.
+Political crimes which a false and sickly sentiment so readily condones
+are conspicuous among them. Men who have been gambling for wealth and
+power with the lives and fortunes of multitudes; men who for their own
+personal ambition are prepared to sacrifice the most vital interests of
+their country; men who in time of great national danger and excitement
+deliberately launch falsehood after falsehood in the public press in the
+well-founded conviction that they will do their evil work before they
+can be contradicted, may be met shameless, and almost uncensured, in
+Parliaments and drawing-rooms. The amount of false statement in the
+world which cannot be attributed to mere carelessness, inaccuracy, or
+exaggeration, but which is plainly both deliberate and malevolent, can
+hardly be overrated. Sometimes it is due to a mere desire to create a
+lucrative sensation, or to gratify a personal dislike, or even to an
+unprovoked malevolence which takes pleasure in inflicting pain.
+
+Very often it is intended for purposes of stockjobbing. The financial
+world is percolated with it. It is the common method of raising or
+depreciating securities, attracting investors, preying upon the ignorant
+and credulous, and enabling dishonest men to rise rapidly to fortune.
+When the prospect of speedy wealth is in sight, there are always numbers
+who are perfectly prepared to pursue courses involving the utter ruin of
+multitudes, endangering the most serious international interests,
+perhaps bringing down upon the world all the calamities of war. It is no
+doubt true that such men are only a minority, though it is less certain
+that they would be a minority if the opportunity of obtaining sudden
+riches by immoral means was open to all, and it is no small minority who
+are accustomed to condone these crimes when they have succeeded. It is
+much to be questioned whether the greatest criminals are to be found
+within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on a small scale nearly always
+finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a gigantic scale continually
+escapes. The pickpocket and the burglar seldom fail to meet with their
+merited punishment, but in the management of companies, in the great
+fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic fortunes are
+acquired by the ruin of multitudes and by methods which, though they
+evade legal penalties, are essentially fraudulent. In the majority of
+cases these crimes are perpetrated by educated men who are in possession
+of all the necessaries, of most of the comforts, and of many of the
+luxuries of life, and some of the worst of them are powerfully favoured
+by the conditions of modern civilisation. There is no greater scandal or
+moral evil in our time than the readiness with which public opinion
+excuses them, and the influence and social position it accords to mere
+wealth, even when it has been acquired by notorious dishonesty or when
+it is expended with absolute selfishness or in ways that are positively
+demoralising. In many respects the moral progress of mankind seems to me
+incontestable, but it is extremely doubtful whether in this respect
+social morality, especially in England and America, has not seriously
+retrograded.
+
+In truth, while it is a gross libel upon human nature to deny the vast
+amount of genuine kindness, self-sacrifice and even heroism that exists
+in the world, it is equally idle to deny the deplorable weakness of
+self-restraint, the great force and the widespread influence of purely
+evil passions in the affairs of men. The distrust of human character
+which the experience of life tends to produce is one great cause of the
+Conservatism which so commonly strengthens with age. It is more and more
+felt that all the restraints of law, custom, and religion are essential
+to hold together in peaceful co-operation the elements of society, and
+men learn to look with increasing tolerance on both institutions and
+opinions which cannot stand the test of pure reason and may be largely
+mixed with delusions if only they deepen the better habits and give an
+additional strength to moral restraints. They learn also to appreciate
+the danger of pitching their ideals too high, and endeavouring to
+enforce lines of conduct greatly above the average level of human
+goodness. Such attempts, when they take the form of coercive action,
+seldom fail to produce a recoil which is very detrimental to morals. In
+this, as in all other spheres, the importance of compromise in practical
+life is one of the great lessons which experience teaches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The phrase Moral Compromise has an evil sound, and it opens out
+questions of practical ethics which are very difficult and very
+dangerous, but they are questions with which, consciously or
+unconsciously, every one is obliged to deal. The contrasts between the
+rigidity of theological formulæ and actual life are on this subject very
+great, though in practice, and by the many ingenious subtleties that
+constitute the science of casuistry, many theologians have attempted to
+evade them. A striking passage from the pen of Cardinal Newman will
+bring these contrasts into the clearest light. 'The Church holds,' he
+writes, 'that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for
+the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die
+of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes,
+than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one
+single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no
+one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.'[24]
+
+It is certainly no exaggeration to say that such a doctrine would lead
+to consequences absolutely incompatible with any life outside a
+hermitage or a monastery. It would strike at the root of all
+civilisation, and although many may be prepared to give it their formal
+assent, no human being actually believes it with the kind of belief
+that becomes a guiding influence in life. I have dwelt on this subject
+in another book, and may here repeat a few lines which I then wrote. If
+'an undoubted sin, even the most trivial, is a thing in its essence and
+its consequences so unspeakably dreadful that rather than it should be
+committed it would be better that any amount of calamity which did not
+bring with it sin should be endured, even that the whole human race
+should perish in agonies, it is manifest that the supreme object of
+humanity should be sinlessness, and it is equally manifest that the
+means to this end is the absolute suppression of the desires. To expand
+the circle of wants is necessarily to multiply temptations and therefore
+to increase the number of sins.' No material and intellectual
+advantages, no increase of human happiness, no mitigation of the
+suffering or dreariness of human life can, according to this theory, be
+other than an evil if it adds even in the smallest degree or in the most
+incidental manner to the sins that are committed. 'A sovereign, when
+calculating the consequences of a war, should reflect that a single sin
+occasioned by that war, a single blasphemy of a wounded soldier, the
+robbery of a single hen-coop, the violation of the purity of a single
+woman is a greater calamity than the ruin of the entire commerce of his
+nation, the loss of her most precious provinces, the destruction of all
+her power. He must believe that the evil of the increase of unchastity
+which invariably results from the formation of an army is an
+immeasurably greater calamity than any national or political disasters
+that army can possibly avert. He must believe that the most fearful
+plagues and famines that desolate his land should be regarded as a
+matter of rejoicing if they have but the feeblest and most transient
+influence in repressing vice. He must believe that if the agglomeration
+of his people in great cities adds but one to the number of their sins,
+no possible intellectual or material advantages can prevent the
+construction of cities being a fearful calamity. According to this
+principle every elaboration of life, every amusement that brings
+multitudes together, almost every art, every accession of wealth, that
+awakens or stimulates desires is an evil, for all these become the
+sources of some sins, and their advantages are for the most part purely
+terrestrial.'
+
+Considerations of this kind, if duly realised, bring out clearly the
+insincerity and the unreality of much of our professed belief. Hardly
+any sane man would desire to suppress Bank Holidays simply because they
+are the occasion of a considerable number of cases of drunkenness which
+would not otherwise have taken place. No humane legislator would
+hesitate to suppress them if they produced an equal number of deaths or
+other great physical calamities. This manner of measuring the relative
+importance of things is not incompatible with a general acknowledgment
+of the fact that there are many amusements which produce an amount of
+moral evil that overbalances their advantages as sources of pleasure, or
+of the great truth that the moral is the higher and ought to be the
+ruling part of our being. But the realities of life cannot be measured
+by rigid theological formulæ. Life is a scene in which different kinds
+of interest not only blend but also modify and in some degree
+counterbalance one another, and it can only be carried on by constant
+compromises in which the lines of definition are seldom very clearly
+marked, and in which even the highest interest must not altogether
+absorb or override the others. We have to deal with good principles that
+cannot be pushed to their full logical results; with varying standards
+which cannot be brought under inflexible law.
+
+Take, for example, the many untruths which the conventional courtesies
+of Society prescribe. Some of these are so purely matter of phraseology
+that they deceive no one. Others chiefly serve the purpose of courteous
+concealment, as when they enable us to refuse a request or to decline an
+invitation or a visit without disclosing whether disinclination or
+inability is the cause. Then there are falsehoods for useful purposes.
+Few men would shrink from a falsehood which was the only means of saving
+a patient from a shock which would probably produce his death. No one, I
+suppose, would hesitate to deceive a criminal if by no other means he
+could prevent him from accomplishing a crime. There are also cases of
+the suppression of what we believe to be true, and of tacit or open
+acquiescence in what we believe to be false, when a full and truthful
+disclosure of our own beliefs might destroy the happiness of others, or
+subvert beliefs which are plainly necessary for their moral well-being.
+Cases of this kind will continually occur in life, and a good man who
+deals with each case as it arises will probably find no great difficulty
+in steering his course. But the vague and fluctuating lines of moral
+compromise cannot without grave moral danger be reduced to fixed rules
+to be carried out to their full logical consequences. The immortal pages
+of Pascal are sufficient to show to what extremes of immorality the
+doctrine that the end justifies the means has been pushed by the
+casuists of the Church of which Cardinal Newman was so great an
+ornament.
+
+A large and difficult field of moral compromise is opened out in the
+case of war, which necessarily involves a complete suspension of great
+portions of the moral law. This is not merely the case in unjust wars;
+it applies also, though in a less degree, to those which are most
+necessary and most righteous. War is not, and never can be, a mere
+passionless discharge of a painful duty. It is in its essence, and it is
+a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among
+great masses of men the destructive and combative passions--passions as
+fierce and as malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to
+its death or the tiger springs upon its prey. Destruction is one of its
+chief ends. Deception is one of its chief means, and one of the great
+arts of skilful generalship is to deceive in order to destroy. Whatever
+other elements may mingle with and dignify war, this at least is never
+absent; and however reluctantly men may enter into war, however
+conscientiously they may endeavour to avoid it, they must know that when
+the scene of carnage has once opened these things must be not only
+accepted and condoned, but stimulated, encouraged and applauded. It
+would be difficult to conceive a disposition more remote from the morals
+of ordinary life, not to speak of Christian ideals, than that with which
+the soldiers most animated with the fire and passion that lead to
+victory rush forward to bayonet the foe.
+
+War indeed, which is absolutely indispensable in our present stage of
+civilisation, has its own morals which are very different from those of
+peaceful life. Yet there are few fields in which, through the stress of
+moral motives, greater changes have been effected. In the early stages
+of human history it was simply a question of power. There was no
+distinction between piracy and regular war, and incursions into a
+neighbouring State without provocation and with the sole purpose of
+plunder brought with them no moral blame. To carry the inhabitants of a
+conquered country into slavery; to slaughter the whole population of a
+besieged town; to destroy over vast tracts every town, village and
+house, and to put to death every prisoner, were among the ordinary
+incidents of war. These things were done without reproach in the best
+periods of Greek and Roman civilisation. In many cases neither age nor
+sex was spared![25] In Rome the conquered general was strangled or
+starved to death in the Mamertine prison. Tens of thousands of captives
+were condemned to perish in gladiatorial shows. Julius Cæsar, whose
+clemency has been so greatly extolled, 'executed the whole senate of the
+Veneti; permitted a massacre of the Usipetes and Tencteri; sold as
+slaves 40,000 natives of Genabum; and cut off the right hands of all the
+brave men whose only crime was that they held to the last against him
+their town of Uxellodunum.'[26] No slaughter in history is more terrible
+than that which took place at Jerusalem under the general who was
+called 'the delight of the human race,' and when the last spasm of
+resistance had ceased, Titus sent Jewish captives, both male and female,
+by thousands to the provincial amphitheatres to be devoured by wild
+beasts or slaughtered as gladiators.
+
+Yet from a very early period lines were drawn forming a clear though
+somewhat arbitrary code of military morals. In Greece a broad
+distinction was made between wars with Greek States and with Barbarians,
+the latter being regarded as almost outside the pale of moral
+consideration. It is a distinction which in reality was not very widely
+different from that which Christian nations have in practice continually
+made between wars within the borders of Christendom, and wars with
+savage or pagan nations. Greek, and perhaps still more Roman, moralists
+have written much on the just causes of war. Many of them condemn all
+unjust, aggressive, or even unnecessary wars. Some of them insist on the
+duty of States always endeavouring by conferences, or even by
+arbitration, to avert war, and although these precepts, like the
+corresponding precepts of Christian divines, were often violated, they
+were certainly not without some influence on affairs. It is probably not
+too much to say that in this respect Roman wars do not compare
+unfavourably with those of Christian periods. It is remarkable how large
+a part of the best Christian works on the ethics of war is based on the
+precepts of pagan moralists, and although in antiquity as in modern
+times the real cause of war was often very different from the pretexts,
+the sense of justice in war was as clearly marked in Roman as in most
+Christian periods.[27]
+
+Great stress was laid upon the duty of a formal declaration of war
+preceding hostilities. Polybius mentions the reprobation that was
+attached in Greece to the Ætolians for having neglected this custom. It
+was universal in Roman times, and during the mediæval period the custom
+of sending a challenge to the hostile power was carefully observed. In
+modern times formal declaration of war has fallen greatly into
+desuetude. The hostilities between England and Spain under Elizabeth,
+and the invasion of Germany by Gustavus Adolphus, were begun without any
+such declaration, and there have been numerous instances in later
+times.[28]
+
+The treatment of prisoners has been profoundly modified. Quarter, it is
+true, has been very often refused in modern wars to rebels, to soldiers
+in mutiny, to revolted slaves, to savages who themselves give no
+quarter. It has been often--perhaps generally--refused to irregular
+soldiers like the French Francs-tireurs in the War of 1870, who without
+uniforms endeavoured to defend their homes against invasion. It was long
+refused to soldiers who, having rejected terms of surrender, continued
+to defend an indefensible place, but this severity during the last three
+centuries has been generally condemned. But, on the whole, the treatment
+of the conquered soldier has steadily improved. At one time he was
+killed. At another he was preserved as a slave. Then he was permitted to
+free himself by payment of a ransom; now he is simply kept in custody
+till he is exchanged or released on parole, or till the termination of
+the war. In the latter half of the present century many elaborate and
+beneficent regulations for the preservation of hospitals and the good
+treatment of the wounded have been sanctioned by international
+agreement. The distinction between the civil population and combatants
+has been increasingly observed. As a general rule non-combatants, if
+they do not obstruct the enemy, are subjected to no further injury than
+that of paying war contributions and in other ways providing for the
+subsistence of the invaders. The wanton destruction of private property
+has been more and more avoided. Such an act as the devastation of the
+Palatinate under Louis XIV. would now in a European war be universally
+condemned, though the wholesale destruction of villages in our own
+Indian frontier wars and the methods employed on both sides in the civil
+war in Cuba appear to have borne much resemblance to it. In the
+treatment of merchants the rule of reciprocity which was laid down in
+Magna Charta is largely observed, and the Conference of Brussels in 1874
+pronounced it to be contrary to the laws of war to bombard an
+unfortified town. The great Civil War in America probably contributed
+not a little to raise the standard of humanity in war; for while few
+long wars have been fought with such determination or at the cost of so
+many lives, very few have been conducted with such a scrupulous
+abstinence from acts of wanton barbarity.
+
+Many restrictive rules also have been accepted tending in a small degree
+to mitigate the actual operations of war, and they have had some real
+influence in this direction, though it is not possible to justify the
+military code on any clear principle either of ethics or logic.
+Assassination and the encouragement of assassination; the use of poison
+or poisoned weapons; the violation of parole; the deceptive use of a
+flag of truce or of the red cross; the slaughter of the wounded; the
+infringement of terms of surrender or of other distinct agreements, are
+absolutely forbidden, and in 1868 the Representatives of the European
+Powers assembled at St. Petersburg agreed to abolish the use in war of
+explosive bullets below the weight of 14 ounces, and to forbid the
+propagation in an enemy's country of contagious disease as an instrument
+of war. It laid down the general principle that the object of war is
+confined to disabling the enemy, and that weapons calculated to inflict
+unnecessary suffering, beyond what is required for attaining that
+object, should be prohibited. At the same time explosive shells,
+concealed mines, torpedoes and ambuscades lie fully within the permitted
+agencies of war. Starvation may be employed, and the cutting off of the
+supply of water, or the destruction of that supply by mixing with it
+something not absolutely poisonous which renders it undrinkable. It is
+allowable to deceive an enemy by fabricated despatches purporting to
+come from his own side; by tampering with telegraph messages; by
+spreading false intelligence in newspapers; by sending pretended spies
+and deserters to give him untrue reports of the numbers or movements of
+the troops; by employing false signals to lure him into an ambuscade. On
+the use of the flag and uniform of an enemy for purposes of deception
+there has been some controversy, but it is supported by high military
+authority.[29] The use of spies is fully authorised, but the spy, if
+discovered, is excluded from the rights of war and liable to an
+ignominious death.
+
+Apart from the questions I have discussed there is another class of
+questions connected with war which present great difficulty. It is the
+right of men to abdicate their private judgment by entering into the
+military profession. In small nations this question is not of much
+importance, for in them wars are of very rare occurrence and are usually
+for self-defence. In a great empire it is wholly different. Hardly any
+one will be so confident of the virtue of his rulers as to believe that
+every war which his country wages in every part of its dominions, with
+uncivilised as well as civilised populations, is just and necessary, and
+it is certainly _primâ facie_ not in accordance with an ideal morality
+that men should bind themselves absolutely for life or for a term of
+years to kill without question, at the command of their superiors, those
+who have personally done them no wrong. Yet this unquestioning obedience
+is the very essence of military discipline, and without it the
+efficiency of armies and the safety of nations would be hopelessly
+destroyed. It is necessary to the great interests of society, and
+therefore it is maintained, strengthened by the obligation of an oath
+and still more efficaciously by a code of honour which is one of the
+strongest binding influences by which men can be governed.
+
+It is not, however, altogether absolute, and a variety of distinctions
+and compromises have been made. There is a difference between the man
+who enlists in the army of his own country and a man who enlists in
+foreign service either permanently or for the duration of a single war.
+If a man unnecessarily takes an active part in a struggle between two
+countries other than his own, it may at least be demanded that he should
+be actuated, not by a mere spirit of adventure or personal ambition, but
+by a strong and reasoned conviction that the cause which he is
+supporting is a righteous one. The conduct of a man who enlists in a
+foreign army which may possibly be used against his own country, and who
+at least binds himself to obey absolutely chiefs who have no natural
+authority over him, has been much condemned, but even here special
+circumstances must be taken into account. Few persons I suppose would
+seriously blame the Irish Catholics of the eighteenth century who filled
+the armies of France, Austria, Spain and Naples at a time when
+disqualifying laws excluded them, on account of their religion, from the
+British army and from almost every path of ambition at home. There is
+also perhaps some distinction between the position of a soldier who is
+obliged to serve, and a soldier in a country where enlisting is
+voluntary, and also between the position of an officer who can throw up
+his commission without infringing the law, and a private who cannot
+abandon his flag without committing a grave legal offence. At the
+beginning of the war of the American Revolution some English officers
+left the army rather than serve in a cause which they believed to be
+unrighteous. It was in their full power to do so, but probably none of
+them would have desired that private soldiers who had no legal choice in
+the matter should have followed their example and become deserters from
+the ranks.
+
+There are, however, extreme cases in which the violation of the military
+oath and disobedience to military discipline are justified. More than
+once in French history an usurper or his agent has ordered soldiers to
+coerce or fire upon the representatives of the nation. In such cases it
+has been said 'the conscience of the soldier is the liberty of the
+people,' and the refusal of private soldiers to obey a plainly illegal
+order will be generally though not universally applauded. In all such
+cases, however, there is much obscurity and inconsistency of judgment.
+The rule that the moral responsibility falls exclusively on the person
+who gives the order, and that the private has no voice or
+responsibility, will even here be maintained by some. Ought a private
+soldier to have refused to take part in such an execution as that of the
+Duc d'Enghien, or in the _Coup d'État_ of Napoleon III.? Ought he to
+refuse to fire on a mob if he doubts the legality of the order of his
+superior officer? In such cases there is sometimes a direct conflict
+between the civil and the military law, and there have been instances in
+which a soldier might be punishable before the first for acts which were
+absolutely enforced by the second.[30]
+
+Perhaps the strongest case of justifiable disobedience that can be
+alleged is when a soldier is ordered to do something which involves
+apostasy from his faith, though even here it would be difficult to show,
+in the light of pure reason, that this is a graver thing than to kill
+innocent men in an unrighteous cause. In the Early Church there were
+some soldier martyrs who suffered death because they believed it
+inconsistent with their faith to bear arms, or because they were asked
+to do some acts which savoured of idolatry. The story of the Thebæan
+legion which was said to have been martyred under Diocletian rests on no
+trustworthy authority, but it illustrates the feeling of the Church on
+the subject. Josephus tells how Jewish soldiers refused in spite of all
+punishments to bring earth with the other soldiers for the reparation of
+the Temple of Belus at Babylon. Conflicts between military duty and
+religious duty must have not unfrequently arisen during the religious
+wars of the sixteenth century, and in our own century and in our own
+army there have been instances of soldiers refusing through religious
+motives to escort or protect idolatrous processions in India, or to
+present arms in Catholic countries when the Host was passing. Quaker
+opinions about war are absolutely inconsistent with the compulsory
+service which prevails in nearly all European countries, and religious
+scruples about conscription have been among the motives that have
+brought the Russian Raskolniks into collision with the civil power.
+
+One of the most serious instances of the collision of duties in our time
+is furnished by the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. From the days of Clive,
+Sepoy soldiers have served under the British flag with an admirable
+fidelity, and the Mutiny of Vellore in 1806, which was the one
+exception, was due, like that of 1857, to a belief that the British
+Government were interfering with their faith. Few things in the history
+of the great Mutiny are so touching as the profound belief of the
+English commanders of the Sepoy regiments in the unalterable loyalty of
+their soldiers. Many of them lost their lives through this belief,
+refusing even to the last moment and in spite of all evidence to abandon
+it. They were deceived, and, in the fierce outburst of indignation that
+followed, the conduct of the Sepoy soldiers was branded as the blackest
+and the most unprovoked treachery.
+
+Yet assuredly no charge was less true. Agitators for their own selfish
+purposes had indeed acted upon the troops, but recent researches have
+fully proved that the real as well as the ostensible cause of the Mutiny
+was the greased cartridges. It was believed that the cartridges which
+had been recently issued for the Sepoy regiments were smeared with a
+mixture of cow's fat and pig's fat, one of these ingredients being
+utterly impure in the eyes of the Hindoo, and the other in the eyes of
+the Mussulman. To bite these cartridges would destroy the caste of the
+Hindoo and carry with it the loss of everything that was most dear and
+most sacred to him both in this world and in the next. In the eyes both
+of the Moslem and the Hindoo it was the gravest and the most irreparable
+of crimes, destroying all hopes in a future world, and yet this crime,
+in their belief, was imposed upon them as a matter of military duty by
+their officers. It was as if the Puritan soldiers of the seventeenth
+century had been ordered by their commanders to abjure their hopes of
+salvation and to repudiate and insult the Christian faith.
+
+It is true that the existence of these obnoxious ingredients in the new
+cartridges was solemnly denied, but the sincerity of the Sepoy belief is
+incontestable, and General Anson, the commander-in-chief, having
+examined the cartridges, was compelled to admit that it was very
+plausible.[31] 'I am not so much surprised,' he wrote to Lord Canning,
+'at their objections to the cartridges, having seen them. I had no idea
+they contained, or rather are smeared with such a quantity of grease,
+which looks exactly like fat. After ramming down the ball, the muzzle of
+the musket is covered with it.'
+
+Unfortunately this is not a complete statement of the case. It is a
+shameful and terrible truth that, as far as the fact was concerned, the
+Sepoys were perfectly right in their belief. In the words of Lord
+Roberts, 'The recent researches of Mr. Forrest in the records of the
+Government of India prove that the lubricating mixture used in preparing
+the cartridges was actually composed of the objectionable ingredients,
+cow's fat and lard, and that incredible disregard of the soldiers'
+religious prejudices was displayed in the manufacture of these
+cartridges.'[32] This was certainly not due, as the Sepoys imagined, to
+any desire on the part of the British authorities to destroy caste or to
+prepare the way for the conversion of the Sepoys to Christianity. It was
+simply a glaring instance of the indifference, ignorance and incapacity
+too often shown by British administrators in dealing with beliefs and
+types of character wholly unlike their own. They were unable to realise
+that a belief which seemed to them so childish could have any depth, and
+they accordingly produced a Mutiny that for a time shook the English
+power in India to its very foundation.
+
+The horrors of Cawnpore--which were due to a single man--soon took away
+from the British public all power of sanely judging the conflict, and a
+struggle in which no quarter was given was naturally marked by extreme
+savageness; but in looking back upon it, English writers must
+acknowledge with humiliation that, if mutiny is ever justifiable, no
+stronger justification could be given than that of the Sepoy troops.
+
+Many of my readers will remember an exquisite little poem called 'The
+Forced Recruit,' in which Mrs. Browning has described a young Venetian
+soldier who was forced by the conscription to serve against his
+fellow-countrymen in the Austrian army at Solferino, and who advanced
+cheerfully to die by the Italian guns, holding a musket that had never
+been loaded in his hand. Such a figure, such a violation of military
+law, will claim the sympathy of all, but a very different judgment
+should be passed upon those who, having voluntarily entered an army,
+betray their trust and their oath in the name of patriotism. In the
+Fenian movement in Ireland, one of the chief objects of the conspirators
+was to corrupt the Irish soldiers and break down that high sense of
+military honour for which in all times and in many armies the Irish
+people have been conspicuous. 'The epidemic' [of disaffection], boasts
+a writer who was much mixed in the conspiracies of those times, 'was not
+an affair of individuals, but of companies and of whole regiments. To
+attempt to impeach all the military Fenians before courts martial would
+have been to throw England into a panic, if not to precipitate an
+appalling mutiny and invite foreign invasion.'[33]
+
+I do not quote these words as a true statement. They are, I believe, a
+gross exaggeration and a gross calumny on the Irish soldiers, nor do I
+doubt that most, if not all, the soldiers who may have been induced over
+a glass of whiskey, or through the persuasions of some cunning agitator,
+to take the Fenian oath would, if an actual conflict had arisen, have
+proved perfectly faithful soldiers of the Queen. The perversion of
+morals, however, which looks on such violations of military duty as
+praiseworthy, has not been confined to writers of the stamp of Mr.
+O'Brien. A striking instance of it is furnished by a recent American
+biography. Among the early Fenian conspirators was a young man named
+John Boyle O'Reilly. He was a genuine enthusiast, with a real vein of
+literary talent; in the closing years of his life he won the affection
+and admiration of very honourable men, and I should certainly have no
+wish to look too harshly on youthful errors which were the result of a
+misguided enthusiasm if they had been acknowledged as such. As a matter
+of fact, however, he began his career by an act which, according to
+every sound principle of morality, religion, and secular honour, was in
+the highest degree culpable. Being a sworn Fenian, he entered a regiment
+of hussars, assumed the uniform of the Queen, and took the oath of
+allegiance for the express purpose of betraying his trust and seducing
+the soldiers of his regiment. He was detected and condemned to penal
+servitude, and he at last escaped to America, where he took an active
+part in the Fenian movement. After his death his biography was written
+in a strain of unqualified eulogy, but the biographer has honestly and
+fully disclosed the facts which I have related. This book has an
+introduction written by Cardinal Gibbons, one of the most prominent
+Catholic divines in the United States. The reader may be curious to see
+how the act of aggravated treachery and perjury which it revealed was
+judged by a personage who occupies all but the highest position in a
+Church which professes to be the supreme and inspired teacher of morals.
+Not a word in this Introduction implies that O'Reilly had done any act
+for which he should be ashamed. He is described as 'a great and good
+man,' and the only allusion to his crime is in the following terms: 'In
+youth his heart agonises over that saddest and strangest romance in all
+history--the wrongs and woes of his motherland--that Niobe of the
+Nations. In manhood, because he dared to wish her free, he finds himself
+a doomed felon, an exiled convict, in what he calls himself the Nether
+World.... The Divine faith implanted in his soul in childhood flourished
+there undyingly, pervaded his whole being with its blessed influences,
+furnished his noblest ideals of thought and conduct.... The country of
+his adoption vies with the land of his birth in testifying to the
+uprightness of his life.... With all these voices I blend my own, and in
+their name I say that the world is brighter for having possessed
+him.'[34]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] Newman's _Anglican Difficulties_, p. 190.
+
+[25] See Grotius, _de Jure_, book iii. ch. iv. On the Jewish notions on
+this subject, see Deut. ii. 34; vii. 2, 16; xx. 10-16; Psalm cxxxvii. 9;
+1 Sam. xv. 3. I have collected some additional facts on this subject in
+my _History of European Morals_.
+
+[26] Tyrrell and Purser's _Correspondence of Cicero_, vol. v. p. xlvii.
+
+[27] See Grotius, _de Jure Belli et Pacis_.
+
+[28] Much information on this subject will be found in a remarkable
+pamphlet (said to have been corrected by Pitt) called 'An Enquiry into
+the Manner in which the different wars in Europe have commenced during
+the last two centuries, by the Author of the History and Foundation of
+the Law of Nations in Europe' (1805).
+
+[29] See Tovey's _Martial Law and the Custom of War_, part 2, pp. 13,
+29. A striking instance of the deceptive use of a flag occurred in 1781,
+when the English, having captured St. Eustatius from the Dutch, allowed
+the Dutch flag still to float over its harbour in order that Dutch,
+French, Spanish and American ships which were ignorant of the capture
+might be decoyed into the harbour and seized as prizes. Some writers on
+military law maintain that this was within the rights of war.
+
+[30] See Fitzjames Stephen's _History of the Criminal Law_, i. 205.
+
+[31] Lord Roberts' _Forty-one Years in India_, i. 94.
+
+[32] _Ibid._ p. 431.
+
+[33] _Contemporary Review_, May 1897. Article by William O'Brien, 'Was
+Fenianism ever Formidable?'
+
+[34] Roche's _Life of John Boyle O'Reilly_, with introduction by
+Cardinal Gibbons. Since the publication of this book Cardinal Gibbons
+has written a letter to the _Tablet_ (Dec. 2, 1899), in which he says:
+'I feel it due to myself and the interests of truth to declare that till
+I read Mr. Lecky's criticism I did not know that Mr. O'Reilly had ever
+been a Fenian or a British soldier, or that he had tried to seduce other
+soldiers from their allegiance. In fact, up to this moment, I have never
+read a line of the biography for which I wrote the introduction.... My
+only acquaintance with Mr. O'Reilly's history before he came to America
+was the vague information I had that, for some political offence, the
+exact nature of which I did not learn, he had been exiled from his
+native land to a penal colony, from which he afterwards escaped.'
+
+I gladly accept this assurance of Cardinal Gibbons, though I am
+surprised that he should not have even glanced at the book which he
+introduced, and that he should have been absolutely ignorant of the most
+conspicuous event of the life which, from early youth, he held up to
+unqualified admiration. I regret, too, that he has not taken the
+opportunity of this letter to reprobate a form of moral perversion which
+is widely spread among his Irish co-religionists, and which his own
+words are only too likely to strengthen. It is but a short time since an
+Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament, being accused of once having
+served the Queen as a Volunteer, justified himself by saying that he had
+only worn the coat which was worn by Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Boyle
+O'Reilly; while another Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament, at a
+public meeting in Dublin, and amid the cheers of his audience, expressed
+his hope that in the South African war the Irish soldiers under the
+British flag would fire on the English instead of on the Boers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The foregoing chapter will have shown sufficiently how largely in one
+great and necessary profession the element of moral compromise must
+enter, and will show the nature of some of the moral difficulties that
+attend it. We find illustrations of much the same kind in the profession
+of an advocate. In the interests of the proper administration of justice
+it is of the utmost importance that every cause, however defective, and
+every criminal, however bad, should be fully defended, and it is
+therefore indispensable that there should be a class of men entrusted
+with this duty. It is the business of the judge and of the jury to
+decide on the merits of the case, but in order that they should
+discharge this function it is necessary that the arguments on both sides
+should be laid before them in the strongest form. The clear interest of
+society requires this, and a standard of professional honour and
+etiquette is formed for the purpose of regulating the action of the
+advocate. Misstatements of facts or of law; misquotations of documents;
+strong expressions of personal opinion, and some other devices by which
+verdicts may be won, are condemned; there are cases which an honourable
+lawyer will not adopt, and there are rare cases in which, in the course
+of a trial, he will find it his duty to throw up his brief.
+
+But necessary and honourable as the profession may be, there are sides
+of it which are far from being in accordance with an austere code of
+ideal morals. It is idle to suppose that a master of the art of advocacy
+will merely confine himself to a calm, dispassionate statement of the
+facts and arguments of his side. He will inevitably use all his powers
+of rhetoric and persuasion to make the cause for which he holds a brief
+appear true, though he knows it to be false; he will affect a warmth
+which he does not feel and a conviction which he does not hold; he will
+skilfully avail himself of any mistake or omission of his opponent; of
+any technical rule that can exclude damaging evidence; of all the
+resources that legal subtlety and severe cross-examination can furnish
+to confuse dangerous issues, to obscure or minimise inconvenient facts,
+to discredit hostile witnesses. He will appeal to every prejudice that
+can help his cause; he will for the time so completely identify himself
+with it that he will make its success his supreme and all-absorbing
+object; and he will hardly fail to feel some thrill of triumph if by the
+force of ingenious and eloquent pleading he has saved the guilty from
+his punishment or snatched a verdict in defiance of evidence.
+
+It is not surprising that a profession which inevitably leads to such
+things should have excited scruples among many good men. Swift very
+roughly described lawyers as 'a society of men bred from their youth in
+the art of proving by words, multiplied for the purpose, that white is
+black and black is white, according as they are paid.' Dr. Arnold has
+more than once expressed his dislike, and indeed abhorrence, of the
+profession of an advocate. It inevitably, he maintained, leads to moral
+perversion, involving, as it does, the indiscriminate defence of right
+and wrong, and in many cases the knowing suppression of truth. Macaulay,
+who can hardly be regarded as addicted to the refinements of an
+over-fastidious morality, reviewing the professional rules that are
+recognised in England, asks 'whether it be right that not merely
+believing, but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can
+be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant
+exclamation, by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest
+witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement
+false.' Bentham denounced in even stronger language the habitual method
+of 'the hireling lawyer' in cross-examining an honest but adverse
+witness, and he declared that there is a code of morality current in
+Westminster Hall generically different from the code of ordinary life,
+and directly calculated to destroy the love of veracity and justice. On
+the other hand, Paley recognised among falsehoods that are not lies
+because they deceive no one, the statement of 'an advocate asserting the
+justice or his belief of the justice of his client's cause.' Dr.
+Johnson, in reply to some objections of Boswell, argues at length, but,
+I think, with some sophistry, in favour of the profession. 'You are
+not,' he says, 'to deceive your client with false representations of
+your opinion. You are not to tell lies to the judge, but you need have
+no scruple about taking up a case which you believe to be bad, or
+affecting a warmth which you do not feel. You do not know your cause to
+be bad till the judge determines it.... An argument which does not
+convince yourself may convince the judge, and, if it does convince him,
+you are wrong and he is right.... Everybody knows you are paid for
+affecting warmth for your client, and it is therefore properly no
+dissimulation.' Basil Montagu, in an excellent treatise on the subject,
+urges that an advocate is simply an officer assisting in the
+administration of justice under the impression that truth is best
+elicited, and that difficulties are most effectually disentangled, by
+the opposite statements of able men. He is an indispensable part of a
+machine which in its net result is acting in the real interests of
+truth, although he 'may profess feelings which he does not feel and may
+support a cause which he knows to be wrong,' and although his advocacy
+is 'a species of acting without an avowal that it is acting.'
+
+It is, of course, possible to adopt the principles of the Quaker and to
+condemn as unchristian all participation in the law courts, and although
+the Catholic Church has never adopted this extreme, it seems to have
+instinctively recognised some incompatibility between the profession of
+an advocate and the saintly character. Renan notices the significant
+fact that St. Yves, a saint of Brittany, appears to be the only advocate
+who has found a place in its hagiology, and the worshippers were
+accustomed to sing on his festival 'Advocatus et non latro--Res miranda
+populo.' It is indeed evident that a good deal of moral compromise must
+enter into this field, and the standards of right and wrong that have
+been adopted have varied greatly. How far, for example, may a lawyer
+support a cause which he believes to be wrong? In some ancient
+legislations advocates were compelled to swear that they would not
+defend causes which they thought or discovered to be unjust.[35] St.
+Thomas Aquinas has laid down in emphatic terms that any lawyer who
+undertakes the defence of an unjust cause is committing a grievous sin.
+It is unlawful, he contends, to co-operate with any one who is doing
+wrong, and an advocate clearly counsels and assists him whose cause he
+undertakes. Modern Catholic casuists have dealt with the subject in the
+same spirit. They admit, indeed, that an advocate may undertake the
+defence of a criminal whom he knows to be guilty, in order to bring to
+light all extenuating circumstances, but they contend that no advocate
+should undertake a civil cause unless by a previous and careful
+examination he has convinced himself that it is a just one; that no
+advocate can without sin undertake a cause which he knows or strongly
+believes to be unjust; that if he has done so he is himself bound in
+conscience to make restitution to the party that has been injured by his
+advocacy; that if in the course of a trial he discovers that a cause
+which he had believed to be just is unjust he must try to persuade his
+client to desist, and if he fails in this must himself abandon the
+cause, though without informing the opposite party of the conclusion at
+which he had arrived; that in conducting his case he must abstain from
+wounding the reputation of his neighbour or endeavouring to influence
+the judges by bringing before them misdeeds of his opponent which are
+not connected with and are not essential to the case.[36] As lately as
+1886 an order was issued from Rome, with the express approbation of the
+Pope, forbidding any Catholic, mayor or judge, to take part in a
+divorce case, as divorce is absolutely condemned by the Church.[37]
+
+There have been, and perhaps still are, instances of lawyers
+endeavouring to limit their practice to cases which they believed to be
+just. Sir Matthew Hale is a conspicuous example, but he acknowledged
+that he considerably relaxed his rule on the subject, having found in
+two instances that cases which at the first blush seemed very worthless
+were in truth well founded. As a general rule English lawyers make no
+discrimination on this ground in accepting briefs unless the injustice
+is very flagrant, nor will they, except in very extreme cases, do their
+client the great injury of throwing up a brief which they have once
+accepted. They contend that by acting in this way the administration of
+justice in the long run is best served, and in this fact they find its
+justification.
+
+In the conduct of a case there are rules analogous to those which
+distinguish between honourable and dishonourable war, but they are less
+clearly defined and less universally accepted. In criminal prosecutions
+a remarkable though very explicable distinction is drawn between the
+prosecutor and the defender. It is the etiquette of the profession that
+the former is bound to aim only at truth, neither straining any point
+against the prisoner nor keeping back any fact which is favourable to
+him, nor using any argument which he does not himself believe to be
+just. The defender, however, is not bound, according to professional
+etiquette, by such rules. He may use arguments which he knows to be
+bad, conceal or shut out by technical objections facts that will tell
+against his clients, and, subject to some wide and vague restrictions,
+he must make the acquittal of his client his first object.[38]
+
+Sometimes cases of extreme difficulty arise. Probably the best known is
+the case of Courvoisier, the Swiss valet, who murdered Lord William
+Russell in 1840. In the course of the trial Courvoisier informed his
+advocate, Phillips, that he was guilty of the murder, but at the same
+time directed Phillips to continue to defend him to the last extremity.
+As there was overwhelming evidence that the murder must have been
+committed by some one who slept in the house, the only possible defence
+was that an equal amount of suspicion attached to the housemaid and cook
+who were its other occupants. On the first day of the trial, before he
+knew the guilt of his client from his own lips, Phillips had
+cross-examined the housemaid, who first discovered the murder, with
+great severity and with the evident object of throwing suspicion upon
+her. What course ought he now to pursue? It happened that an eminent
+judge was sitting on the bench with the judge who was to try the case,
+and Phillips took this judge into his confidence, stated privately to
+him the facts that had arisen, and asked for his advice. The judge
+declared that Phillips was bound to continue to defend the prisoner,
+whose case would have been hopeless if his own counsel abandoned him,
+and in defending him he was bound to use all fair arguments arising out
+of the evidence. The speech of Phillips was a masterpiece of eloquence
+under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty. Much of it was devoted
+to impugning the veracity of the witnesses for the prosecution. He
+solemnly declared that it was not his business to say who committed the
+murder, and that he had no desire to throw any imputation on the other
+servants in the house, and he abstained scrupulously from giving any
+personal opinion on the matter; but the drift of his argument was that
+Courvoisier was the victim of a conspiracy, the police having concealed
+compromising articles among his clothes, and that there was no clear
+circumstance distinguishing the suspicion against him from that against
+the other servants.[39]
+
+The conduct of Phillips in this case has, I believe, been justified by
+the preponderance of professional opinion, though when the facts were
+known public opinion outside the profession generally condemned it. Some
+lawyers have pushed the duty of defence to a point which has aroused
+much protest even in their own profession. 'The Advocate,' said Lord
+Brougham in his great speech before the House of Lords in defence of
+Queen Caroline, 'by the sacred duty which he owes his client, knows in
+the discharge of that office but one person in the world--that client
+and none other. To save that client by all expedient means, to protect
+that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to
+himself, is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must
+not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction which
+he may bring upon any other. Nay, separating even the duties of a
+patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, to the
+wind, he must go on, reckless of consequences, if his fate it should
+unhappily be to involve his country in confusion for his client's
+protection.'
+
+This doctrine has been emphatically repudiated by some eminent English
+lawyers, but both in practice and theory the profession have differed
+widely in different courts, times and countries. How far, for example,
+is it permissible in cross-examination to browbeat or confuse an honest
+but timid and unskilful witness; to attempt to discredit the evidence of
+a witness on a plain matter of fact about which he had no interest in
+concealment by exhuming against him some moral scandal of early youth
+which was totally unconnected with the subject of the trial; or, by
+pursuing such a line of cross-examination, to keep out of the
+witness-box material witnesses who are conscious that their past lives
+are not beyond reproach? How far is it right or permissible to press
+legal technicalities as opposed to substantial justice? Probably most
+lawyers, if they are perfectly candid, will agree that these things are
+in some measure inevitable in their profession, and that the real
+question is one of degree, and therefore not susceptible of positive
+definition. There is a kind of mind that grows so enamoured with the
+subtleties and technicalities of the law that it delights in the
+unexpected and unintended results to which they may lead. I have heard
+an English judge say of another long deceased that he had through this
+feeling a positive pleasure in injustice, and one lawyer, not of this
+country, once confessed to me the amusement he derived from breaking the
+convictions of criminals in his state by discovering technical flaws in
+their indictments. There is a class of mind that delights in such cases
+as that of the legal document which was invalidated because the letters
+A.D. were put before the date instead of the formula 'in the year of Our
+Lord,' or that of a swindler who was suffered to escape with his booty
+because, in the writ that was issued for his arrest, by a copyist's
+error the word 'sheriff' was written instead of 'sheriffs,' or that of a
+lady who was deprived of an estate of £14,000 a year because by a mere
+mistake of the conveyancer one material word was omitted from the will,
+although the clearest possible evidence was offered showing the wishes
+of the testator.[40] Such lawyers argue that in will cases 'the true
+question is not what the testator intended to do, but what is the
+meaning of the words of the will,' and that the balance of advantages is
+in favour of a strict adherence to the construction of the sentence and
+the technicalities of the law, even though in particular cases it may
+lead to grave injustice.
+
+It must indeed be acknowledged that up to a period extending far into
+the nineteenth century those lawyers who adopted the most technical view
+of their profession were acting fully in accordance with its spirit.
+Few, if any, departments of English legislation and administration were
+till near the middle of this century so scandalously bad as those
+connected with the administration of the civil and the criminal law, and
+especially with the Court of Chancery. The whole field was covered with
+a network of obscure, intricate, archaic technicalities; useless except
+for the purpose of piling up costs, procrastinating decisions, placing
+the simplest legal processes wholly beyond the competence of any but
+trained experts, giving endless facilities for fraud and for the evasion
+or defeat of justice, turning a law case into a game in which chance and
+skill had often vastly greater influence than substantial merits. Lord
+Brougham probably in no degree exaggerated when he described great
+portions of the English law as 'a two-edged sword in the hands of craft
+and of oppression,' and a great authority on chancery law declared in
+1839 that 'no man, as things now stand, can enter into a chancery suit
+with any reasonable hope of being alive at its termination if he has a
+determined adversary.'[41]
+
+The moral difficulties of administering such a system were very great,
+and in many cases English juries, in dealing with it, adopted a rough
+and ready code of morals of their own. Though they had sworn to decide
+every case according to the law as it was stated to them, and according
+to the evidence that was laid before them, they frequently refused to
+follow legal technicalities which would lead to substantial injustice,
+and they still more frequently refused to bring in verdicts according to
+evidence when by doing so they would consign a prisoner to a savage,
+excessive, or unjust punishment. Some of the worst abuses of the English
+law were mitigated by the perjuries of juries who refused to put them in
+force.
+
+The great legal reforms of the past half-century have removed most of
+these abuses, and have at the same time introduced a wider and juster
+spirit into the practical administration of the law. Yet even now
+different judges sometimes differ widely in the importance they attach
+to substantial justice and to legal technicalities; and even now one of
+the advantages of trial by jury is that it brings the masculine common
+sense and the unsophisticated sense of justice of unprofessional men
+into fields that would otherwise be often distorted by ingenious
+subtleties. It is, however, far less in the position of the judge than
+in the position of an advocate that the most difficult moral questions
+of the legal profession arise. The difference between an unscrupulous
+advocate and an advocate who is governed by a high sense of honour and
+morality is very manifest, but at best there must be many things in the
+profession from which a very sensitive conscience would recoil, and
+things must be said and done which can hardly be justified except on the
+ground that the existence of this profession and the prescribed methods
+of its action are in the long run indispensable to the honest
+administration of justice.
+
+The same method of reasoning applies to other great departments of
+life. In politics it is especially needed. In free countries party
+government is the best if not the only way of conducting public affairs,
+but it is impossible to conduct it without a large amount of moral
+compromise; without a frequent surrender of private judgment and will. A
+good man will choose his party through disinterested motives, and with a
+firm and honest conviction that it represents the cast of policy most
+beneficial to the country. He will on grave occasions assert his
+independence of party, but in the large majority of cases he must act
+with his party even if they are pursuing courses in some degree contrary
+to his own judgment.
+
+Every one who is actively engaged in politics--every one especially who
+is a member of the House of Commons--must soon learn that if the
+absolute independence of individual judgment were pushed to its extreme,
+political anarchy would ensue. The complete concurrence of a large
+number of independent judgments in a complicated measure is impossible.
+If party government is to be carried on, there must be, both in the
+Cabinet and in Parliament, perpetual compromise. The first condition of
+its success is that the Government should have a stable, permanent,
+disciplined support behind it, and in order that this should be attained
+the individual member must in most cases vote with his party. Sometimes
+he must support a measure which he knows to be bad, because its
+rejection would involve a change of government which he believes would
+be a still greater evil than its acceptance, and in order to prevent
+this evil he may have to vote a direct negative to some resolution
+containing a statement which he believes to be true. At the same time,
+if he is an honest man, he will not be a mere slave of party. Sometimes
+a question arises which he considers so supremely important that he will
+break away from his party and endeavour at all hazards to carry or to
+defeat it. Much more frequently he will either abstain from voting, or
+will vote against the Government on a particular question, but only when
+he knows that by taking this course he is simply making a protest which
+will produce no serious political complication. On most great measures
+there is a dissentient minority in the Government party, and it often
+exercises a most useful influence in representing independent opinion,
+and bringing into the measure modifications and compromises which allay
+opposition, gratify minorities, and soften differences. But the action
+of that party will be governed by many motives other than a simple
+consideration of the merits of the case. It is not sufficient to say
+that they must vote for every resolution which they believe to be true,
+for every bill or clause of a bill which they believe to be right, and
+must vote against every bill or clause or resolution about which they
+form an opposite judgment. Sometimes they will try in private to prevent
+the introduction of a measure, but when it is introduced they will feel
+it their duty either positively to support it or at least to abstain
+from protesting against it. Sometimes they will either vote against it
+or abstain from voting at all, but only when the majority is so large
+that it is sure to be carried. Sometimes their conduct will be the
+result of a bargain--they will vote for one portion of a bill of which
+they disapprove because they have obtained from the Government a
+concession on another which they think more important. The nature of
+their opposition will depend largely upon the strength or weakness of
+the Government, upon the size of the majority, upon the degree in which
+a change of ministry would affect the general policy of the country,
+upon the probability of the measure they object to being finally
+extinguished, or returning in another year either in an improved or in a
+more dangerous form. Questions of proportion and degree and ulterior
+consequences will continually sway them. Measures are often opposed, not
+on their own intrinsic merits, but on account of precedents they might
+establish; of other measures which might grow out of them or be
+justified by them.
+
+Not unfrequently it happens that a section of the dominant party is
+profoundly discontented with the policy of the Government on some
+question which they deem of great importance. They find themselves
+incapable of offering any direct and successful opposition, but their
+discontent will show itself on some other Government measure on which
+votes are more evenly divided. Possibly they may oppose that measure.
+More probably they will fail to attend regularly at the divisions, or
+will exercise their independent judgments on its clauses in a manner
+they would not have done if their party allegiance had been unshaken.
+And this conduct is not mere revenge. It is a method of putting pressure
+on the Government in order to obtain concessions on matters which they
+deem of paramount importance. In the same way they will seek to gain
+supporters by political alliances. Few things in parliamentary
+government are more dangerous or more apt to lead to corruption than
+the bargains which the Americans call log-rolling; but it is inevitable
+that a member who has received from a colleague, or perhaps from an
+opponent, assistance on a question which he believes to be of the
+highest importance, will be disposed to return that assistance in some
+case in which his own feelings and opinions are not strongly enlisted.
+
+Then, too, we have to consider the great place which obstruction plays
+in parliamentary government. It constantly happens that a measure to
+which scarcely any one objects is debated at inordinate length for no
+other reason than to prevent a measure which is much objected to from
+being discussed. Measures may be opposed by hostile votes, but they are
+often much more efficaciously opposed by calculated delays, by
+multiplied amendments or speeches, by some of the many devices that can
+be employed to clog the legislative machine. There are large classes of
+measures on which governments or parliaments think it desirable to give
+no opinion, or at least no immediate opinion, though they cannot prevent
+their introduction, and many methods are employed with the real, though
+not avowed and ostensible object of preventing a vote or even a
+ministerial declaration upon them. Sometimes Parliament is quite ready
+to acknowledge the abstract justice of a proposal, but does not think it
+ripe for legislation. In such cases the second reading of the bill will
+probably be accepted, but, to the indignation and astonishment of its
+supporters outside the House, it will be obstructed, delayed or defeated
+in committee with the acquiescence, or connivance, or even actual
+assistance of some of those who had voted for it. Some measures in the
+eyes of some members involve questions of principle so sacred that they
+will admit of no compromise of expediency, but most measures are deemed
+open to compromise and are accepted, rejected, or modified under some of
+the many motives I have described.
+
+All this curious and indispensable mechanism of party government is
+compatible with a high and genuine sense of public duty, and unless such
+a sense at the last resort dominates over all other considerations,
+political life will inevitably decline. At the same time it is obvious
+that many things have to be done from which a very rigid and austere
+nature would recoil. To support a Government when he believes it to be
+wrong, or to oppose a measure which he believes to be right; to connive
+at evasions which are mere pretexts, and at delays which rest upon
+grounds that are not openly avowed,--is sometimes, and indeed not
+unfrequently, a parliamentary duty. A member of Parliament must often
+feel himself in the position of a private in an army, or a player in a
+game, or an advocate in a law case. On many questions each party
+represents and defends the special interests of some particular classes
+in the country. When there are two plausible alternative courses to be
+pursued which divide public opinion, the Opposition is almost bound by
+its position to enforce the merits of the course opposed to that adopted
+by the Government. In theory nothing could seem more absurd than a
+system of government in which, as it has been said, the ablest men in
+Parliament are divided into two classes, one side being charged with the
+duty of carrying on the government and the other with that of
+obstructing and opposing them in their task, and in which, on a vast
+multitude of unconnected questions, these two great bodies of very
+competent men, with the same facts and arguments before them, habitually
+go into opposite lobbies. In practice, however, parliamentary government
+by great parties, in countries where it is fully understood and
+practised, is found to be admirably efficacious in representing every
+variety of political opinion; in securing a constant supervision and
+criticism of men and measures; and in forming a safety valve through
+which the dangerous humours of society can expand without evil to the
+community.
+
+This, however, is only accomplished by constant compromises which are
+seldom successfully carried out without a long national experience.
+Party must exist. It must be maintained as an essential condition of
+good government, but it must be subordinated to the public interests,
+and in the public interests it must be in many cases suspended. There
+are subjects which cannot be introduced without the gravest danger into
+the arena of party controversy. Indian politics are a conspicuous
+example, and, although foreign policy cannot be kept wholly outside it,
+the dangers connected with its party treatment are extremely great. Many
+measures of a different kind are conducted with the concurrence of the
+two front benches. A cordial union on large classes of questions between
+the heads of the rival parties is one of the first conditions of
+successful parliamentary government. The Opposition leader must have a
+voice in the conduct of business, on the questions that should be
+brought forward, and on the questions that it is for the public interest
+to keep back. He is the official leader of systematic, organised
+opposition to the Government, yet he is on a large number of questions
+their most powerful ally. He must frequently have confidential relations
+with them, and one of his most useful functions is to prevent sections
+of his party from endeavouring to snatch party advantages by courses
+which might endanger public interests. If the country is to be well
+governed there must be a large amount of continuity in its policy;
+certain conditions and principles of administration must be inflexibly
+maintained, and in great national emergencies all parties must unite.
+
+In questions which lie at the heart of party politics, also some amount
+of compromise is usually effected. Debate not only elicits opinions but
+also suggests alternatives and compromises, and very few measures are
+carried by a majority which do not bear clear traces of the action of
+the minority. The line is constantly deflected now on one side and now
+on the other, and (usually without much regard to logical consistency)
+various and opposing sentiments are in some measure gratified. If the
+lines of party are drawn with an inflexible rigidity; and if the
+majority insist on the full exercise of their powers, parliamentary
+government may become a despotism as crushing as the worst autocracy--a
+despotism which is perhaps even more dangerous as the sense of
+responsibility is diminished by being divided. If, on the other hand,
+the latitude conceded to individual opinion is excessive, Parliament
+inevitably breaks into groups, and parliamentary government loses much
+of its virtue. When coalitions of minorities can at any time overthrow a
+ministry, the whole force of Government is lost. The temptation to
+corrupt bargains with particular sections is enormously increased, and
+the declining control of the two front benches will be speedily followed
+by a diminished sense of responsibility, and by the increased influence
+of violent, eccentric, exaggerated opinions. It is of the utmost moment
+that the policy of an Opposition should be guided by its most important
+men, and especially by men who have had the experience and the
+responsibility of office, and who know that they may have that
+responsibility again. But the healthy latitude of individual opinion and
+expression in a party is like most of those things we are now
+considering, a question of degree, and not susceptible of clear and
+sharp definition.
+
+Other questions of a somewhat different nature, but involving grave
+moral considerations, arise out of the relations between a member and
+his constituents. In the days when small boroughs were openly bought in
+the market, this was sometimes defended on the ground of the complete
+independence of judgment which it gave to the purchasing member. Romilly
+and Henry Flood are said to have both purchased their seats with the
+express object of securing such independence. In the political
+philosophy of Burke, no doctrine is more emphatically enforced than that
+a member of Parliament is a representative but not a delegate; that he
+owes to his constituents not only his time and his services, but also
+the exercise of his independent and unfettered judgment; that, while
+reflecting the general cast of their politics, he must never suffer
+himself to be reduced to a mere mouthpiece, or accept binding
+instructions prescribing on each particular measure the course he may
+pursue; that after his election he must consider himself a member of an
+Imperial Parliament rather than the representative of a particular
+locality, and must subordinate local and special interests to the wider
+and more general interests of the whole nation.
+
+The conditions of modern political life have greatly narrowed this
+liberty of judgment. In most constituencies a member can only enter
+Parliament fettered by many pledges relating to specific measures, and
+in every turn of policy sections of his constituents will attempt to
+dictate his course of action. Certain large and general pledges
+naturally and properly precede his election. He is chosen as a supporter
+or opponent of the Government; he avows himself an adherent of certain
+broad lines of policy, and he also represents in a special degree the
+interests and the distinctive type of opinion of the class or industry
+which is dominant in his constituency. But even at the time of election
+he often finds that on some particular question in which his electors
+are much interested he differs from them, though they consent, in spite
+of it, to elect him; and, in the course of a long Parliament, others are
+very apt unexpectedly to arise. Political changes take place which bring
+into the foreground matters which at the time of the election seemed
+very remote, or produce new questions, or give rise to unforeseen party
+combinations, developments, and tendencies. It will often happen that on
+these occasions a member will think differently from the majority of his
+electors, and he must meet the question how far he must sacrifice his
+judgment to theirs, and how far he may use the influence which their
+votes have given him to act in opposition to their wishes and perhaps
+even to their interests. Burke, for example, found himself in this
+position when, being member for Bristol, he considered it his duty to
+support the concession of Free-trade to Ireland, although his
+constituents had, or thought they had, a strong interest in commercial
+restrictions and monopoly. In our own day it has happened that members
+representing manufacturing districts of Lancashire have found themselves
+unexpectedly called upon to vote upon some measure for crippling or
+extending rival manufactures in India; for opening new markets by some
+very dubious aggression in a distant land; or for limiting the child
+labour employed in the local manufacture; and these members have often
+believed that the right course was a course which was exceedingly
+repugnant to great sections of their electors.
+
+Sometimes, too, a member is elected on purely secular issues, but in the
+course of the Parliament one of those fierce, sudden storms of religious
+sentiment, to which England is occasionally liable, sweeps over the
+land, and he finds himself wholly out of sympathy with a great portion
+of his constituency. In other cases the party which he entered
+Parliament to support, pursues, on some grave question, a line of policy
+which he believes to be seriously wrong, and he goes into partial or
+even complete and bitter opposition. Differences of this kind have
+frequently arisen when there is no question of any interested motive
+having influenced the member. Sometimes in such cases he has resigned
+his seat and gone to his electors for re-election. In other cases he
+remains in Parliament till the next election. Each case, however, must
+be left to individual judgment, and no clear, definite, unwavering moral
+line can be drawn. The member will consider the magnitude of the
+disputed question, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of those whom he
+represents; its permanent or transitory character, the amount and
+importance of the majority opposed to his views, the length of time that
+is likely to elapse before a dissolution will bring him face to face
+with his constituents. In matters which he does not consider very urgent
+or important, he will probably sacrifice his own judgment to that of his
+electors, at least so far as to abstain from voting or from pressing his
+own views. In graver matters it is his duty boldly to face unpopularity,
+or perhaps even take the extreme step of resigning his seat.
+
+The cases in which a member of Parliament finds it his duty to support a
+measure which he believes to be positively bad, on the ground that
+greater evils would follow its rejection, are happily not very numerous.
+He can extricate himself from many moral difficulties by sometimes
+abstaining from voting or from the expression of his real opinions, and
+most measures are of a composite character in which good and evil
+elements combine, and may in some degree be separated. In such measures
+it is often possible to accept the general principle while opposing
+particular details, and there is considerable scope for compromise and
+modification. But the cases in which a member of Parliament is compelled
+to vote for measures about which he has no real knowledge or conviction
+are very many. Crowds of measures of a highly complex and technical
+character, affecting departments of life with which he has had no
+experience, relating to the multitudinous industries, interests and
+conditions of a great people, are brought before him at very short
+notice; and no intellect, however powerful, no industry, however great,
+can master them. It is utterly impossible that mere extemporised
+knowledge, the listening to a short debate, the brief study which a
+member of Parliament can give to a new subject, can place him on a real
+level of competence with those who can bring to it a lifelong knowledge
+or experience.
+
+A member of Parliament will soon find that he must select a class of
+subjects which he can himself master, while on many others he must vote
+blindly with his party. The two or three capital measures in a session
+are debated with such a fulness that both the House and the country
+become thoroughly competent to judge them, and in those cases the
+preponderance of argument will have great weight. A powerful ministry
+and a strongly organised party may carry such a measure in spite of it,
+but they will be obliged to accept amendments and modifications, and if
+they persist in their policy their position both in the House and in the
+country will sooner or later be inevitably changed. But a large number
+of measures have a more restricted interest, and are far less widely
+understood. The House of Commons is rich in expert knowledge, and few
+subjects are brought before it which some of its members do not
+thoroughly understand; but in a vast number of cases the majority who
+decide the question are obliged to do so on the most superficial
+knowledge. Very often it is physically impossible for a member to obtain
+the knowledge he requires. The most important and detailed investigation
+has taken place in a committee upstairs to which he did not belong, or
+he is detained elsewhere on important parliamentary business while the
+debate is going on. Even when this is not the case, scarcely any one
+has the physical or mental power which would enable him to sit
+intelligently through all the debates. Every member of Parliament is
+familiar with the scene, when, after a debate, carried on before nearly
+empty benches, the division bell rings, and the members stream in to
+decide the issue. There is a moment of uncertainty. The questions 'Which
+side are we?' 'What is it about?' may be heard again and again. Then the
+Speaker rises, and with one magical sentence clears the situation. It is
+the sentence in which he announces that the tellers for the Ayes or
+Noes, as the case may be, are the Government whips. It is not argument,
+it is not eloquence, it is this single sentence which in countless cases
+determines the result and moulds the legislation of the country. Many
+members, it is true, are not present in the division lobby, but they are
+usually paired--that is to say, they have taken their sides before the
+discussion began; perhaps without even knowing what subject is to be
+discussed, perhaps for all the many foreseen and unforeseen questions
+that may arise during long periods of the session.
+
+It is a strange process, and to a new member who has been endeavouring
+through his life to weigh arguments and evidence with scrupulous care,
+and treat the formation and expression of opinions as a matter of
+serious duty, it is at first very painful. He finds that he is required
+again and again to give an effective voice in the great council of the
+nation, on questions of grave importance, with a levity of conviction
+upon which he would not act in the most trivial affairs of private life.
+No doctor would prescribe for the slightest malady; no lawyer would
+advise in the easiest case; no wise man would act in the simplest
+transactions of private business, or would even give an opinion to his
+neighbour at a dinner party without more knowledge of the subject than
+that on which a member of Parliament is often obliged to vote. But he
+soon finds that for good or evil this system is absolutely indispensable
+to the working of the machine. If no one voted except on matters he
+really understood and cared for, four-fifths of the questions that are
+determined by the House of Commons would be determined by mere fractions
+of its members, and in that case parliamentary government under the
+party system would be impossible. The stable, disciplined majorities
+without which it can never be efficiently conducted would be at an end.
+Those who refuse to accept the conditions of parliamentary life should
+abstain from entering into it.
+
+It is obvious that the one justification of this system is to be found
+in the belief that parliamentary government, as it is worked in England,
+is on the whole a good thing, and that this is the indispensable
+condition of its existence. Probably also with most men it strengthens
+the disposition to support the Government on matters which they do not
+understand and in which grave party issues are not involved. They know
+that these minor questions have at least been carefully examined on
+their merits by responsible men, and with the assistance of the best
+available expert knowledge.
+
+This fact goes far to reconcile us to the tendency to give governments
+an almost complete monopoly in the initiation of legislation which is so
+evident in modern parliamentary life. Much useful legislation in the
+past has been due to private and independent members, but the chance of
+bills introduced by such members ever becoming law is steadily
+diminishing. This is not due to any recognised constitutional change,
+but to the constantly increasing pressure of government business on the
+time of the House, and especially to what is called the twelve o'clock
+rule, terminating debates at midnight.
+
+It is a rule which is manifestly wise, for it limits on ordinary
+occasions the hours of parliamentary work to a period within the
+strength of an average man. Parliamentary government has many dubious
+aspects, but it never appears worse than in the cases which may still
+sometimes be seen when a Government thinks fit to force through an
+important measure by all-night sittings, and when a weary and irritated
+House which has been sitting since three or four in the afternoon is
+called upon at a corresponding hour of the early morning to pronounce
+upon grave and difficult questions of principle, and to deal with the
+serious interests of large classes. The utter and most natural
+incapacity of the House at such an hour for sustained argument; its
+anxiety that each successive amendment should be despatched in five
+minutes; the readiness with which in that tired, feverish atmosphere,
+surprises and coalitions may be effected and solutions accepted, to
+which the House in its normal state would scarcely have listened, must
+be evident to every observer. Scenes of this kind are among the greatest
+scandals of Parliament, and the rule which makes them impossible except
+in the closing weeks of the Session has been one of the greatest
+improvements in modern parliamentary work. But its drawback is that it
+has greatly limited the possibility of private member legislation. It is
+in late and rapid sittings that most measures of this kind passed
+through their final stages, and since the twelve o'clock rule has been
+adopted a much smaller number of bills introduced by private members
+find their way to the statute book.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[35] O'Brien, _The Lawyer_, pp. 169, 170.
+
+[36] _Dictionnaire de Cas de Conscience_, Art. 'Avocat;' Migne,
+_Encyclopédie Théologique_, i. serie, tome xviii.
+
+[37] _Revue de Droit International_, xxi. 615.
+
+[38] See Sir James Stephen's _General View of the Criminal Law of
+England_, pp. 167, 168.
+
+[39] Phillips's defence of his own conduct will be found in a pamphlet
+called 'Correspondence of S. Warren and C. Phillips relating to the
+Courvoisier trial.' It has often been said that Phillips had asserted in
+his speech his full belief in the innocence of his client, but this is
+disproved by the statement of C. J. Tindal, who tried the case, and of
+Baron Parke, who sat on the bench. C. J. Denman also pronounced
+Phillips's speech to be unexceptionable. An able and interesting article
+on this case by Mr. Atlay will be found in the _Cornhill Magazine_, May,
+1897.
+
+[40] See these cases in Warren's _Social and Professional Duties of an
+Attorney_, pp. 128-133, 195, 196.
+
+[41] See the admirable article by Lord Justice Bowen on 'The
+Administration of the Law' in Ward's _Reign of Queen Victoria_, vol. i.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+It is obvious from the considerations that have been adduced in the last
+chapter that the moral limitations and conditions under which an
+ordinary member of Parliament is compelled to work are far from ideal.
+An upright man will try conscientiously, under these conditions, to do
+his best for the cause of honesty and for the benefit of his country,
+but he cannot essentially alter them, and they present many temptations
+and tend in many ways to blur the outlines separating good from evil. He
+will find himself practically pledged to support his party in measures
+which he has never seen and in policies that are not yet developed; to
+vote in some cases contrary to his genuine belief and in many cases
+without real knowledge; to act throughout his political career on many
+motives other than a reasoned conviction of the substantial merits of
+the question at issue.
+
+I have dwelt on the difficult questions which arise when the wishes of
+his constituents are at variance with his own genuine opinions. Another
+and a wider question is how far he is bound to make what he considers
+the interests of the nation his guiding light, and how far he should
+subordinate what he believes to be their interests to their prejudices
+and wishes. One of the first lessons that every active politician has to
+learn is that he is a trustee bound to act for men whose opinions,
+aims, desires and ideals are often very different from his own. No man
+who holds the position of member of Parliament should divest himself of
+this consideration, though it applies to different classes of members in
+different degrees. A private member should not forget it, but at the
+same time, being elected primarily and specially to represent one
+particular element in the national life, he will concentrate his
+attention more exclusively on a narrow circle, though he has at the same
+time more latitude of expressing unpopular opinions and pushing unripe
+and unpopular causes than a member who is taking a large and official
+part in the government of the nation. The opposition front bench
+occupies a somewhat different position. They are the special and
+organised representatives of a particular party and its ideas, but the
+fact that they may be called upon at any time to undertake the
+government of the nation as a whole, and that even while in opposition
+they take a great part in moulding its general policy, imposes on them
+limitations and restrictions from which a mere private member is in a
+great degree exempt. When a party comes into power its position is again
+slightly altered. Its leaders are certainly not detached from the party
+policy they had advocated in opposition. One of the main objects of
+party is to incorporate certain political opinions and the interests of
+certain sections of the community in an organised body which will be a
+steady and permanent force in politics. It is by this means that
+political opinions are most likely to triumph; that class interests are
+most effectually protected. But a Government cannot govern merely in the
+interests of a party. It is a trustee for the whole nation, and one of
+its first duties is to ascertain and respect as far as possible the
+wishes as well as the interests of all sections.
+
+Concrete examples may perhaps show more clearly than abstract statements
+the kind of difficulties that I am describing. Take, for example, the
+large class of proposals for limiting the sale of strong drink by such
+methods as local veto or Sunday closing of public-houses. One class of
+politicians take up the position of uncompromising opponents of the
+drink trade. They argue that strong drink is beyond all question in
+England the chief source of the misery, the vice, the degradation of the
+poor; that it not only directly ruins tens of thousands, body and soul,
+but also brings a mass of wretchedness that it is difficult to overrate
+on their innocent families; that the drunkard's craving for drink often
+reproduces itself as an hereditary disease in his children; and that a
+legislator can have no higher object and no plainer duty than by all
+available means to put down the chief obstacle to the moral and material
+well-being of the people. The principle of compulsion, as they truly
+say, is more and more pervading all departments of industry. It is idle
+to contend that the State which, while prohibiting other forms of Sunday
+trading, gives a special privilege to the most pernicious of all, has
+not the right to limit or to withdraw it, and the legislature which
+levies vast sums upon the whole community for the maintenance of the
+police as well as for poor-houses, prisons and criminal administration,
+ought surely, in the interests of the whole community, to do all that is
+in its power to suppress the main cause of pauperism, disorder and
+crime.
+
+Another class of politicians approach the question from a wholly
+different point of view. They emphatically object to imposing upon
+grown-up men a system of moral restriction which is very properly
+imposed upon children. They contend that adult men who have assumed all
+the duties and responsibilities of life, and have even a voice in the
+government of the country, should regulate their own conduct, as far as
+they do not directly interfere with their neighbours, without legal
+restraint, bearing themselves the consequences of their mistakes or
+excesses. This, they say, is the first principle of freedom, the first
+condition in the formation of strong and manly characters. A poor man,
+who desires on his Sunday excursion to obtain moderate refreshment such
+as he likes for himself or his family, and who goes to the
+public-house--probably in most cases to meet his friends and discuss the
+village gossip over a glass of beer--is in no degree interfering with
+the liberty of his neighbours. He is doing nothing that is wrong;
+nothing that he has not a perfect right to do. No one denies the rich
+man access to his club on Sunday, and it should be remembered that the
+poor man has neither the private cellars nor the comfortable and roomy
+homes of the rich, and has infinitely fewer opportunities of recreation.
+Because some men abuse this right and are unable to drink alcohol in
+moderation, are all men to be prevented from drinking it at all, or at
+least from drinking it on Sunday? Because two men agree not to drink it,
+have they a right to impose the same obligation on an unwilling third?
+Have those who never enter a public-house, and by their position in life
+never need to enter it, a right, if they are in a majority, to close
+its doors against those who use it? On such grounds these politicians
+look with extreme disfavour on all this restrictive legislation as
+unjust, partial and inconsistent with freedom.
+
+Very few, however, would carry either set of arguments to their full
+logical consequences. Not many men who have had any practical experience
+in the management of men would advocate a complete suppression of the
+drink trade, and still fewer would put it on the basis of complete free
+trade, altogether exempt from special legislative restriction. To
+responsible politicians the course to be pursued will depend mainly on
+fluctuating conditions of public opinion. Restrictions will be imposed,
+but only when and as far as they are supported by a genuine public
+opinion. It must not be a mere majority, but a large majority; a steady
+majority; a genuine majority representing a real and earnest desire, and
+especially in the classes who are most directly affected; not a mere
+factitious majority such as is often created by skilful organisation and
+agitation; by the enthusiasm of the few confronting the indifference of
+the many. In free and democratic States one of the most necessary but
+also one of the most difficult arts of statesmanship is that of testing
+public opinion, discriminating between what is real, growing and
+permanent and what is transient, artificial and declining. As a French
+writer has said, 'The great art in politics consists not in hearing
+those who speak, but in hearing those who are silent.' On such questions
+as those I have mentioned we may find the same statesman without any
+real inconsistency supporting the same measures in one part of the
+kingdom and opposing them in another; supporting them at one time
+because public opinion runs strongly in their favour; opposing them at
+another because that public opinion has grown weak.
+
+One of the worst moral evils that grow up in democratic countries is the
+excessive tendency to time-serving and popularity hunting, and the
+danger is all the greater because in a certain sense both of these
+things are a necessity and even a duty. Their moral quality depends
+mainly on their motive. The question to be asked is whether a politician
+is acting from personal or merely party objects or from honourable
+public ones. Every statesman must form in his own mind a conception
+whether a prevailing tendency is favourable or opposed to the real
+interests of the country. It will depend upon this judgment whether he
+will endeavour to accelerate or retard it; whether he will yield slowly
+or readily to its pressure, and there are cases in which, at all hazards
+of popularity and influence, he should inexorably oppose it. But in the
+long run, under free governments, political systems and measures must be
+adjusted to the wishes of the various sections of the people, and this
+adjustment is the great work of statesmanship. In judging a proposed
+measure a statesman must continually ask himself whether the country is
+ripe for it--whether its introduction, however desirable it might be,
+would not be premature, as public opinion is not yet prepared for
+it?--whether, even though it be a bad measure, it is not on the whole
+better to vote for it, as the nation manifestly desires it?
+
+The same kind of reasoning applies to the difficult question of
+education, and especially of religious education. Every one who is
+interested in the subject has his own conviction about the kind of
+education which is in itself the best for the people, and also the best
+for the Government to undertake. He may prefer that the State should
+confine itself to purely secular education, leaving all religious
+teaching to voluntary agencies; or he may approve of the kind of
+undenominational religious teaching of the English School Board; or he
+may be a strong partisan of one of the many forms of distinctly
+accentuated denominational education. But when he comes to act as a
+responsible legislator, he should feel that the question is not merely
+what _he_ considers the best, but also what the parents of the children
+most desire. It is true that the authority of parents is not absolutely
+recognised. The conviction that certain things are essential to the
+children, and to the well-being and vigour of the State, and the
+conviction that parents are often by no means the best judges of this,
+make legislators, on some important subjects, override the wishes of the
+parents. The severe restrictions imposed on child labour; the
+measure--unhappily now greatly relaxed--providing for children's
+vaccination; and the legislation protecting children from ill treatment
+by their parents, are illustrations, and the most extensive and
+far-reaching of all exceptions is education. After much misgiving, both
+parties in the State have arrived at the conclusion that it is essential
+to the future of the children, and essential also to the maintenance of
+the relative position of England in the great competition of nations,
+that at least the rudiments of education should be made universal, and
+they are also convinced that this is one of the truths which perfectly
+ignorant parents are least competent to understand. Hence the system
+which of late years has so rapidly extended of compulsory education.
+
+Many nations have gone further, and have claimed for the State the right
+of prescribing absolutely the kind of education that should be
+permitted, or at least the kind of education which shall be exclusively
+supported by State funds. In England this is not the case. A great
+variety of forms of education corresponding to the wishes and opinions
+of different classes of parents receive assistance from the State,
+subject to the conditions of submitting to certain tests of educational
+efficiency, and to a conscience clause protecting minorities from
+interference with their faith.
+
+A case which once caused much moral heart-burning among good men was the
+endowment, by the State, of Maynooth College, which is absolutely under
+the control of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and intended to educate
+their Divinity students in the Roman Catholic faith. The endowment dated
+from the period of the old Irish Protestant Parliament; and when, on the
+Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it came to an end, it was replaced
+by a large capital grant from the Irish Church Fund, and it is upon the
+interest of that grant that the College is still supported. This grant
+was denounced by many excellent men on the ground that the State was
+Protestant; that it had a definite religious belief upon which it was
+bound in conscience to act; and that it was a sinful apostasy to endow
+out of the public purse the teaching of what all Protestants believe to
+be superstition, and what many Protestants believe to be idolatrous and
+soul-destroying error. The strength of this kind of feeling in England
+is shown by the extreme difficulty there has been in persuading public
+opinion to acquiesce in any form of that concurrent endowment of
+religions which exists so widely and works so well upon the Continent.
+
+Many, again, who have no objection to the policy of assisting by State
+subsidies the theological education of the priests are of opinion that
+it is extremely injurious both to the State and to the young that the
+secular education--and especially the higher secular education--of the
+Irish Catholic population should be placed under their complete control,
+and that, through their influence, the Irish Catholics should be
+strictly separated during the period of their education from their
+fellow-countrymen of other religions. No belief, in my own opinion, is
+better founded than this. If, however, those who hold it find that there
+is a great body of Catholic parents who persistently desire this control
+and separation; who will not be satisfied with any removal of
+disabilities and sectarian influence in systems of common education; who
+object to all mixed and undenominational education on the ground that
+their priests have condemned it, and that they are bound in conscience
+to follow the orders of their priests, and who are in consequence
+withholding from their children the education they would otherwise have
+given them, such men will in my opinion be quite justified in modifying
+their policy. As a matter of expediency they will argue that it is
+better that these Catholics should receive an indifferent university
+education than none at all; and that it is exceedingly desirable that
+what is felt to be a grievance by many honest, upright and loyal men
+should be removed. As a matter of principle, they contend that in a
+country where higher education is largely and variously endowed from
+public sources, it is a real grievance that there should be one large
+body of the people who can derive little or no benefit from those
+endowments. It is no sufficient answer to say that the objection of the
+Catholic parents is in most cases not spontaneous, but is due to the
+orders of their priests, since we are dealing with men who believe it to
+be a matter of conscience on such questions to obey their priests. Nor
+is it, I think, sufficient to argue--as very many enlightened men will
+do--that everything that could be in the smallest degree repugnant to
+the faith of a Catholic has been eliminated from the education which is
+imposed on them in existing universities; that every post of honour,
+emolument and power has been thrown open to them; that for generations
+they gladly followed the courses of Dublin University, and are even now
+permitted by their ecclesiastics to follow those of Oxford and
+Cambridge; that, the nation having adopted the broad principle of
+unsectarian education open to all, no single sect has a right to
+exceptional treatment, though every sect has an undoubted right to set
+up at its own expense such education as it pleases. The answer is that
+the objection of a certain class of Roman Catholics in Ireland is not to
+any abuses that may take place under the system of mixed and
+undenominational education, but to the system itself, and that the
+particular type of education of which alone one considerable class of
+taxpayers can conscientiously avail themselves has only been set up by
+voluntary effort, and is only inadequately and indirectly endowed by
+the State.[42] Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England
+have come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion
+in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as
+the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of
+undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education
+of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant
+one. Primary education has become almost absolutely denominational, and,
+directly or indirectly, a crowd of endowments are given to exclusively
+Catholic institutions. On such grounds, many who entertain the strongest
+antipathy to the priestly control of higher education are prepared to
+advocate an increased endowment of some university or college which is
+distinctly sacerdotal, while strenuously upholding side by side with it
+the undenominational institutions which they believe to be incomparably
+better, and which are at present resorted to not only by all
+Protestants, but also by a not inconsiderable body of Irish Catholics.
+
+Many of my readers will probably come to an opposite conclusion on this
+very difficult question. The object of what I have written is simply to
+show the process by which a politician may conscientiously advocate the
+establishment and endowment of a thing which he believes to be
+intrinsically bad. It is said to have been a saying of Sir Robert
+Inglis--an excellent representative of an old school of extreme but most
+conscientious Toryism--that 'he would never vote one penny of public
+money for any purpose which he did not think right and good.' The
+impossibility of carrying out such a principle must be obvious to any
+one who has truly grasped the nature of representative government and
+the duty of a member of Parliament to act as a trustee for all classes
+in the community. In the exercise of this function every conscientious
+member is obliged continually to vote money for purposes which he
+dislikes. In the particular instance I have just given, the process of
+reasoning I have described is purely disinterested, but of course it is
+not by such a process of pure reasoning that such a question will be
+determined. English and Scotch members will have to consider the effects
+of their vote on their own constituencies, where there are generally
+large sections of electors with very little knowledge of the special
+circumstances of Irish education, but very strong feelings about the
+Roman Catholic Church. Statesmen will have to consider the ulterior and
+various ways in which their policy may affect the whole social and
+political condition of Ireland, while the overwhelming majority of the
+Irish members are elected by small farmers and agricultural labourers
+who could never avail themselves of University education, and who on all
+matters relating to education act blindly at the dictation of their
+priests.
+
+Inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties
+as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it. It would lead
+me too far in a book in which the moral difficulties of politics form
+only one subdivision, to enter into the history of English parties; but
+those who will do so will easily convince themselves that there is
+hardly a principle of political action that has not in party history
+been abandoned, and that not unfrequently parties have come to advocate
+at one period of their history the very measures which at another period
+they most strenuously resisted. Changed circumstances, the growth or
+decline of intellectual tendencies, party strategy, individual
+influence, have all contributed to these mutations, and most of them
+have been due to very blended motives of patriotism and self-interest.
+
+In judging the moral quality of the changes of party leaders, the
+element of time will usually be of capital importance. Violent and
+sudden reversals of policy are never effected by a party without a great
+loss of moral weight; though there are circumstances under which they
+have been imperatively required. No one will now dispute the integrity
+of the motives that induced the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel
+to carry Catholic Emancipation in 1829, when the Clare election had
+brought Ireland to the verge of revolution; and the conduct of Sir
+Robert Peel in carrying the repeal of the Corn Laws was certainly not
+due to any motive either of personal or party ambition, though it may be
+urged with force that at a time when he was still the leader of the
+Protectionist party his mind had been manifestly moving in the direction
+of Free trade, and that the Irish famine, though not a mere pretext, was
+not wholly the cause of the surrender. In each of these cases a ministry
+pledged to resist a particular measure introduced and carried it, and
+did so without any appeal to the electors. The justification was that
+the measure in their eyes had become absolutely necessary to the public
+welfare, and that the condition of politics made it impossible for them
+either to carry it by a dissolution or to resign the task into other
+hands. Had Sir Robert Peel either resigned office or dissolved
+Parliament after the Clare election in 1828, it is highly probable that
+the measure of Catholic Emancipation could not have been carried, and
+its postponement, in his belief, would have thrown Ireland into a
+dangerous rebellion. Few greater misfortunes have befallen party
+government than the failure of the Whigs to form a ministry in 1845. Had
+they done so the abolition of the Corn Laws would have been carried by
+statesmen who were in some measure supported by the Free-trade party,
+and not by statesmen who had obtained their power as the special
+representatives of the agricultural interests.
+
+Another case which in a party point of view was more successful, but
+which should in my opinion be much more severely judged, was the Reform
+Bill of 1867. The Conservative party, under the guidance of Mr.
+Disraeli, defeated Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill mainly on the ground that
+it was an excessive step in the direction of Democracy. The victory
+placed them in office, and they then declared that, as the question had
+been raised, they must deal with it themselves. They introduced a bill
+carrying the suffrage to a much lower point than that which the late
+Government had proposed, but they surrounded it with a number of
+provisions securing additional representation for particular classes and
+interests which would have materially modified its democratic
+character.
+
+But for these safeguarding provisions the party would certainly not have
+tolerated the introduction of such a measure, yet in the face of
+opposition their leader dropped them one by one as of no capital
+importance, and, by a leadership which was a masterpiece of unscrupulous
+adroitness, succeeded in inducing his party to carry a measure far more
+democratic than that which they had a few months before denounced and
+defeated. It was argued that the question must be settled; that it must
+be placed on a permanent and lasting basis; that it must no longer be
+suffered to be a weapon in the hands of the Whigs, and that the Tory
+Reform Bill, though it was acknowledged to be a 'leap in the dark,' had
+at least the result of 'dishing the Whigs.' There is little doubt that
+it was in accordance with the genuine convictions of Disraeli. He
+belonged to a school of politics of which Bolingbroke, Carteret and
+Shelburne, and, in some periods of his career, Chatham, were earlier
+representatives who had no real sympathy with the preponderance of the
+aristocratic element in the old Tory party, who had a decided
+disposition to appeal frankly to democratic support, and who believed
+that a strong executive resting on a broad democratic basis was the true
+future of Toryism. He anticipated to a remarkable degree the school of
+political thought which has triumphed in our own day, though he did not
+live to witness its triumph. At the same time it cannot be denied that
+the Reform Bill of 1867 in the form in which it was ultimately carried
+was as far as possible from the wishes and policy of his party in the
+beginning of the session, and as inconsistent as any policy could be
+with their language and conduct in the session that preceded it.
+
+A parliamentary government chosen on the party system is, as we have
+seen, at once the trustee of the whole nation, bound as such to make the
+welfare of the whole its supreme end, and also the special
+representative of particular classes, the special guardian of their
+interests, aims, wishes, and principles. The two points of view are not
+the same, and grave difficulties, both ethical and political, have often
+to be encountered in endeavouring to harmonise them. It is, of course,
+not true that a party object is merely a matter of place or power, and
+naturally a different thing from a patriotic object. The very meaning of
+party is that public men consider certain principles of government,
+certain lines of policy, the protection and development of particular
+interests, of capital importance to the nation, and they are therefore
+on purely public grounds fully justified in making it a main object to
+place the government of the country in the hands of their party. The
+importance, however, of maintaining a particular party in power varies
+greatly. In many, probably in most, periods of English history a change
+of government means no violent or far-reaching alteration in policy. It
+means only that one set of tendencies in legislation will for a time be
+somewhat relaxed, and another set somewhat intensified; that the
+interests of one class will be somewhat more and those of another class
+somewhat less attended to; that the rate of progress or change will be
+slightly accelerated or retarded. Sometimes it means even less than
+this. Opinions on the two front benches are so nearly assimilated that
+a change of government principally means the removal for a time from
+office of ministers who have made some isolated administrative blunders
+or incurred some individual unpopularity quite apart from their party
+politics. It means that ministers who are jaded and somewhat worn out by
+several years' continuous work, and of whom the country had grown tired,
+are replaced by men who can bring fresher minds and energies to the
+task; that patronage in all its branches having for some years gone
+mainly to one party, the other party are now to have their turn. There
+are periods when the country is well satisfied with the general policy
+of a government but not with the men who carry it on. Ministers of
+excellent principles prove inefficient, tactless, or unfortunate, or
+quarrels and jealousies arise among them, or difficult negotiations are
+going on with foreign nations which can be best brought to a successful
+termination if they are placed in the hands of fresh men, unpledged and
+unentangled by their past. The country wants a change of government but
+not a change of policy, and under such circumstances the task of a
+victorious opposition is much less to march in new directions than to
+mark time, to carry on the affairs of the nation on the same lines, but
+with greater administrative skill. In such periods the importance of
+party objects is much diminished and a policy which is intended merely
+to keep a party in power should be severely condemned.
+
+Sometimes, however, it happens that a party has committed itself to a
+particular measure which its opponents believe to be in a high degree
+dangerous or even ruinous to the country. In that case it becomes a
+matter of supreme importance to keep this party out of office, or, if
+they are in office, to keep them in a position of permanent debility
+till this dangerous project is abandoned. Under such circumstances
+statesmen are justified in carrying party objects and purely party
+legislation much further than in other periods. To strengthen their own
+party; to gain for it the largest amount of popularity; to win the
+support of different factions of the House of Commons, become a great
+public object; and, in order to carry it out, sacrifices of policy and
+in some degree of principle, the acceptance of measures which the party
+had once opposed, and the adjournment or abandonment of measures to
+which it had been pledged, which would once have been very properly
+condemned, become justifiable. The supreme interest of the State is the
+end and the justification of their policy, and alliances are formed
+which under less pressing circumstances would have been impossible, and
+which, once established, sometimes profoundly change the permanent
+character of party politics. Here, as in nearly all political matters,
+an attention to proportion and degree, the sacrifice of the less for the
+attainment of the greater, mark the path both of wisdom and of duty.
+
+The temptations of party politicians are of many kinds and vary greatly
+with different stages of political development. The worst is the
+temptation to war. War undertaken without necessity, or at least without
+serious justification, is, according to all sound ethics, the gravest of
+crimes, and among its causes motives of the kind I have indicated may be
+often detected. Many wars have been begun or have been prolonged in
+order to consolidate a dynasty or a party; in order to give it
+popularity or at least to save it from unpopularity; in order to divert
+the minds of men from internal questions which had become dangerous or
+embarrassing, or to efface the memory of past quarrels, mistakes or
+crimes.[43] Experience unfortunately shows only too clearly how easily
+the combative passions of nations can be aroused and how much popularity
+may be gained by a successful war. Even in this case, it is true, war
+usually impoverishes the country that wages it, but there are large
+classes to whom it is by no means a calamity. The high level of
+agricultural prices; the brilliant careers opened to the military and
+naval professions; the many special industries which are immediately
+stimulated; the rise in the rate of interest; the opportunities of
+wealth that spring from violent fluctuations on the Stock Exchange; even
+the increased attractiveness of the newspapers,--all tend to give
+particular classes an interest in its continuance. Sometimes it is
+closely connected with party sympathies. During the French wars of Anne,
+the facts that Marlborough was a Whig, and that the Elector of Hanover,
+who was the hope of the Whig party, was in favour of the war,
+contributed very materially to retard the peace. A state of great
+internal disquietude is often a temptation to war, not because it leads
+to it directly, but because rulers find a foreign war the best means of
+turning dangerous and disturbing energies into new channels, and at the
+same time of strengthening the military and authoritative elements in
+the community. The successful transformation of the anarchy of the great
+French Revolution into a career of conquest is a typical example.
+
+In aristocratic governments such as existed in England during the
+eighteenth century, temptations to corruption were especially strong. To
+build up a vast system of parliamentary influence by rotten boroughs,
+and, by systematically bestowing honours on those who could control
+them, to win the support of great corporations and professions by
+furthering their interests and abstaining from all efforts to reform
+them, was a chief part of the statecraft of the time. Class privileges
+in many forms were created, extended and maintained, and in some
+countries--though much less in England than on the Continent--the burden
+of taxation was most inequitably distributed, falling mainly on the
+poor.
+
+In democratic governments the temptations are of a different kind.
+Popularity is there the chief source of power, and the supreme tribunal
+consists of numbers counted by the head. The well-being of the great
+mass of the people is the true end of politics, but it does not
+necessarily follow that the opinion of the least instructed majority is
+the best guide to obtaining it. In dwelling upon the temptations of
+politicians under such a system I do not now refer merely to the
+unscrupulous agitator or demagogue who seeks power, notoriety or
+popularity by exciting class envies and animosities, by setting the poor
+against the rich and preaching the gospel of public plunder; nor would
+I dilate upon the methods so largely employed in the United States of
+accumulating, by skilfully devised electoral machinery, great masses of
+voting power drawn from the most ignorant voters, and making use of them
+for purposes of corruption. I would dwell rather on the bias which
+almost inevitably obliges the party leader to measure legislation mainly
+by its immediate popularity, and its consequent success in adding to his
+voting strength. In some countries this tendency shows itself in lavish
+expenditure on public works which provide employment for great masses of
+workmen and give a great immediate popularity in a constituency, leaving
+to posterity a heavy burden of accumulated debt. Much of the financial
+embarrassment of Europe is due to this source, and in most countries
+extravagance in government expenditure is more popular than economy.
+Sometimes it shows itself in a legislation which regards only proximate
+or immediate effects, and wholly neglects those which are distant and
+obscure. A far-sighted policy sacrificing the present to a distant
+future becomes more difficult; measures involving new principles, but
+meeting present embarrassments or securing immediate popularity, are
+started with little consideration for the precedents they are
+establishing and for the more extensive changes that may follow in their
+train. The conditions of labour are altered for the benefit of the
+existing workmen, perhaps at the cost of diverting capital from some
+great form of industry, making it impossible to resist foreign
+competition, and thus in the long run restricting employment and
+seriously injuring the very class who were to have been benefited.
+
+When one party has introduced a measure of this kind the other is under
+the strongest temptation to outbid it, and under the stress of
+competition and through the fear of being distanced in the race of
+popularity both parties often end by going much further than either had
+originally intended. When the rights of the few are opposed to the
+interests of the many there is a constant tendency to prefer the latter.
+It may be that the few are those who have built up an industry; who have
+borne all the risk and cost, who have by far the largest interest in its
+success. The mere fact that they are the few determines the bias of the
+legislators. There is a constant disposition to tamper with even clearly
+defined and guaranteed rights if by doing so some large class of voters
+can be conciliated.
+
+Parliamentary life has many merits, but it has a manifest tendency to
+encourage short views. The immediate party interest becomes so absorbing
+that men find it difficult to look greatly beyond it. The desire of a
+skilful debater to use the topics that will most influence the audience
+before him, or the desire of a party leader to pursue the course most
+likely to be successful in an immediately impending contest, will often
+override all other considerations, and the whole tendency of
+parliamentary life is to concentrate attention on landmarks which are
+not very distant, thinking little of what is beyond.
+
+One great cause of the inconsistency of parties lies in the absolute
+necessity of assimilating legislation. Many, for example, are of opinion
+that the existing tendency to introduce government regulations and
+interferences into all departments is at least greatly exaggerated, and
+that it would be far better if a larger sphere were left to individual
+action and free contract. But if large departments of industry have been
+brought under the system of regulation, it is practically impossible to
+leave analogous industries under a different system, and the men who
+most dislike the tendency are often themselves obliged to extend it.
+They cannot resist the contention that certain legislative protections
+or other special favours have been granted to one class of workmen, and
+that there is no real ground for distinguishing their case from that of
+others. The dominant tendency will thus naturally extend itself, and
+every considerable legislative movement carries others irresistibly in
+its train.
+
+The pressure of this consideration is most painfully felt in the case of
+legislation which appears not simply inexpedient and unwise, but
+distinctly dishonest. In legislation relating to contracts there is a
+clear ethical distinction to be drawn. It is fully within the moral
+right of legislators to regulate the conditions of future contracts. It
+is a very different thing to break existing contracts, or to take the
+still more extreme step of altering their conditions to the benefit of
+one party without the assent of the other, leaving that other party
+bound by their restrictions.
+
+In the American Constitution there is a special clause making it
+impossible for any State to pass any law violating contracts. In
+England, unfortunately, no such provision exists. The most glaring and
+undoubted instance of this kind is to be found in the Irish land
+legislation which was begun by the Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, but which
+has been largely extended by the party that originally most strenuously
+opposed it. Much may no doubt be said to palliate it: agricultural
+depression; the excessive demand for land; the fact that improvements
+were in Ireland usually made by the tenants (who, however, were
+perfectly aware of the conditions under which they made them, and whose
+rents were proportionately lower); the prevalence in some parts of
+Ireland of land customs unsanctioned by law; the existence of a great
+revolutionary movement which had brought the country into a condition of
+disgraceful anarchy. But when all this has been admitted, it remains
+indisputable to every clear and honest mind that English law has taken
+away without compensation unquestionably legal property and broken
+unquestionably legal contracts. A landlord placed a tenant on his farm
+on a yearly tenancy, but if he desired to exercise his plain legal right
+of resuming it at the termination of the year, he was compelled to pay a
+compensation 'for disturbance,' which might amount to seven times the
+yearly rent. A landlord let his land to a farmer for a longer period
+under a clear written contract bearing the government stamp, and this
+contract defined the rent to be paid, the conditions under which the
+farm was to be held, and the number of years during which it was to be
+alienated from its owner. The fundamental clause of the lease distinctly
+stipulated that at the end of the assigned term the tenant must hand
+back that farm to the owner from whom he received it. The law has
+interposed, and determined that the rent which this farmer had
+undertaken to pay shall be reduced by a government tribunal without the
+assent of the owner, and without giving the owner the option of
+dissolving the contract and seeking a new tenant. It has gone further,
+and provided that at the termination of the lease the tenant shall not
+hand back the land to the owner according to the terms of his contract,
+but shall remain for all future time the occupier, subject only to a
+rent fixed and periodically revised, irrespective of the wishes of the
+landlord, by an independent tribunal. Vast masses of property in Ireland
+had been sold under the Incumbered Estates Act by a government tribunal
+acting as the representative of the Imperial Parliament, and each
+purchaser obtained from this tribunal a parliamentary title making him
+absolute owner of the soil and of every building upon it, subject only
+to the existing tenancies in the schedule. No accounts of the earlier
+history of the property were handed to him, for except under the terms
+of the leases which had not yet expired he had no liability for anything
+in the past. The title he received was deemed so indefeasible that in
+one memorable case, where by mistake a portion of the property of one
+man had been included in the sale of the property of another man, the
+Court of Appeal decided that the injustice could not be remedied, as it
+was impossible, except in the case of intentional fraud, to go behind
+parliamentary titles.[44] In cases in which the land was let at low
+rents, and in cases where tenants held under leases which would soon
+expire, the facility of raising the rents was constantly specified by
+the authority of the Court as an inducement to purchasers.
+
+What has become of this parliamentary title? Improvements, if they had
+been made, or were presumed to have been made by tenants anterior to the
+sale, have ceased to be the property of the purchaser, and he has at the
+same time been deprived of some of the plainest and most inseparable
+rights of property. He has lost the power of disposing of his farms in
+the open market, of regulating the terms and conditions on which he lets
+them, of removing a tenant whom he considers unsuitable, of taking the
+land back into his own hands when the specified term of a tenancy had
+expired, of availing himself of the enhanced value which a war or a
+period of great prosperity, or some other exceptional circumstance, may
+have given to his property. He has become a simple rent-charger on the
+land which by inheritance or purchase was incontestably his own, and the
+amount of his rent-charge is settled and periodically revised by a
+tribunal in which he has no voice, and which has been given an absolute
+power over his estate. He bought or inherited an exclusive right. The
+law has turned it into a dual ownership. A tenant right which, when he
+obtained his property, was wholly unknown to the law, and was only
+generally recognised by custom in one province, has been carved out of
+it. The tenant who happened to be in occupation when the law was passed
+can, without the consent of the owner, sell to another the right of
+occupying the farm at the existing rent. In numerous cases this tenant
+right is more valuable than the fee simple of the farm. In many cases a
+farmer who had eagerly begged to be a tenant at a specified rent has
+afterwards gone into the land court and had that rent reduced, and has
+then proceeded to sell the tenant right for a sum much more than
+equivalent to the difference between the two rents. In many cases this
+has happened where there could be no possible question of improvements
+by the tenant. The tenant right of the smaller farms has steadily risen
+in proportion as the rent has been reduced. In many cases, no doubt, the
+excessive price of tenant right may be attributed to the land hunger or
+passion for land speculation so common in Ireland, or to some
+exceptional cause inducing a farmer to give an extravagant price for the
+tenant right of a particular farm. But although in such instances the
+price of tenant right is a deceptive test, the movement, when it is a
+general one, is a clear proof that the reduction of rent did not
+represent an equivalent decline in the marketable value of the land, but
+was simply a gratuitous transfer, by the State, of property from one
+person to another. Having in the first place turned the exclusive
+ownership of the landlord into a simple partnership, the tribunal
+proceeded, in defiance of all equity, to throw the whole burden of the
+agricultural depression on one of the two partners. The law did, it is
+true, reserve to the landlord the right of pre-emption, or in other
+words the right of purchasing the tenant right when it was for sale, at
+a price to be determined by the Court, and thus becoming once more the
+absolute owner of his farm. The sum specified by the Court was usually
+about sixteen years' purchase of the judicial rent. By the payment of
+this large sum he may regain the property which a few years ago was
+incontestably his own, which was held by him under the most secure title
+known to English law, and which was taken from him, not by any process
+of honest purchase, but by an act of simple legislative confiscation.
+
+Whatever palliations of expediency may be alleged, the true nature of
+this legislation cannot reasonably be questioned, and it has established
+a precedent which is certain to grow. The point, however, on which I
+would especially dwell is that the very party which most strongly
+opposed it, and which most clearly exposed its gross and essential
+dishonesty, have found themselves, or believed themselves to be, bound
+not only to accept it but to extend it. They have contended that, as a
+matter of practical politics, it is impossible to grant such privileges
+to one class of agricultural tenants and to withhold it from others. The
+chief pretext for this legislation in its first stages was that it was
+for the benefit of very poor tenants who were incapable of making their
+own bargains, and that the fixity of tenure which the law gave to yearly
+tenants as long as they paid their rents had been very generally
+voluntarily given them by good landlords. But the measure was soon
+extended by a Unionist government to the leaseholders, who are the
+largest and most independent class of farmers, and who held their land
+for a definite time and under a distinct written contract. It is in
+truth much more the shrewder and wealthier farmers than the poor and
+helpless ones that this legislation has chiefly benefited.
+
+Instances of this kind, in which strong expediency or an absolute
+political necessity is in apparent conflict with elementary principles
+of right and wrong, are among the most difficult with which a politician
+has to deal. He must govern the country and preserve it in a condition
+of tolerable order, and he sometimes persuades himself that without a
+capitulation to anarchy, without attacks on property and violations of
+contract, this is impossible. Whether the necessity is as absolute or
+the expediency as rightly calculated as he supposed, may indeed be open
+to much question, but there can be no doubt that most of the English
+statesmen who carried the Irish agrarian legislation sincerely believed
+it, and some of them imagined that they were giving a security and
+finality to the property which was left, that would indemnify the
+plundered landlords. Perhaps, under such circumstances, the most that
+can be said is that wise legislators will endeavour, by encouraging
+purchase on a large scale, gradually to restore the absolute ownership
+and the validity of contract which have been destroyed, and at the same
+time to compensate indirectly--if they cannot do it directly--the former
+owners for that portion of their losses which is not due to merely
+economical causes, but to acts of the legislature that were plainly
+fraudulent.
+
+There are other temptations of a different kind with which party leaders
+have to deal. One of the most serious is the tendency to force questions
+for which there is no genuine desire, in order to restore the unity or
+the zeal of a divided or dispirited party. As all politicians know, the
+desire for an attractive programme and a popular election cry is one of
+the strongest in politics, and, as they also know well, there is such a
+thing as manufactured public opinion and artificially stimulated
+agitation. Questions are raised and pushed, not because they are for the
+advantage of the country, but simply for the purposes of party. The
+leaders have often little or no power of resistance. The pressure of
+their followers, or of a section of their followers, becomes
+irresistible; ill-considered hopes are held out; rash pledges are
+extorted, and the party as a whole is committed. Much premature and
+mischievous legislation may be traced to such causes.
+
+Another very difficult question is the manner in which governments
+should deal with the acts of public servants which are intended for the
+public service, but which in some of their parts are morally
+indefensible. Very few of the great acquisitions of nations have been
+made by means that were absolutely blameless, and in a great empire
+which has to deal with uncivilised or semi-civilised populations acts of
+violence are certain to be not infrequent. Neither in our judgments of
+history nor in our judgments of contemporaries is it possible to apply
+the full stringency of private morals to the cases of men acting in
+posts of great responsibility and danger amid the storms of revolution,
+or panic, or civil war. With the vast interests confided to their care,
+and the terrible dangers that surround them, measures must often be
+taken which cannot be wholly or at least legally justified. On the other
+hand, men in such circumstances are only too ready to accept the
+principle of Macchiavelli and of Napoleon, and to treat politics as if
+they had absolutely no connection with morals.
+
+Cases of this kind must be considered separately and with a careful
+examination of the motives of the actor and of the magnitude of the
+dangers he had to encounter. Allowances must be made for the moral
+atmosphere in which he moved, and his career must be considered as a
+whole, and not only in its peccant parts. In the trial of Warren
+Hastings, and in the judgments which historians have passed on the
+lives of the other great adventurers who have built up the Empire,
+questions of this kind continually arise.
+
+In our own day also they have been very frequent. The _Coup d'état_ of
+the 2nd of December, 1851, is an extreme example. Louis Napoleon had
+sworn to observe and to defend the Constitution of the French Republic,
+which had been established in 1848, and that Constitution, among other
+articles, pronounced the persons of the representatives of the people to
+be inviolable; declared every act of the President which dissolved the
+Assembly or prorogued it, or in any way trammelled it in the exercise of
+its functions, to be high treason, and guaranteed the fullest liberty of
+writing and discussion. 'The oath which I have just taken,' said the
+President, addressing the Assembly, 'commands my future conduct. My duty
+is clear; I will fulfil it as a man of honour. I shall regard as enemies
+of the country all those who endeavour to change by illegal means what
+all France has established.' In more than one subsequent speech he
+reiterated the same sentiments and endeavoured to persuade the country
+that under no possible circumstances would he break his oath or violate
+his conscience, or overstep the limits of his constitutional powers.
+
+What he did is well known. Before daybreak on December 2, some of the
+most eminent statesmen in France, including eighteen members of the
+Chamber, were, by his orders, arrested in their beds and sent to prison,
+and many of them afterwards to exile. The Chamber was occupied by
+soldiers, and its members, who assembled in another place, were marched
+to prison. The High Court of Justice was dissolved by force. Martial
+law was proclaimed. Orders were given that all who resisted the
+usurpation in the streets were at once, and without trial, to be shot.
+All liberty of the press, all liberty of public meeting or discussion,
+were absolutely destroyed. About one hundred newspapers were suppressed
+and great numbers of their editors transported to Cayenne. Nothing was
+allowed to be published without Government authority. In order to
+deceive the people as to the amount of support behind the President, a
+'Consultative Commission' was announced and the names were placarded in
+Paris. Fully half the persons whose names were placed on this list
+refused to serve, but in spite of their protests their names were kept
+there in order that they might appear to have approved of what was
+done.[45] Orders were issued immediately after the _Coup d'état_ that
+every public functionary who did not instantly give in writing his
+adhesion to the new Government should be dismissed. The Préfets were
+given the right to arrest in their departments whoever they pleased. By
+an _ex post facto_ decree, issued on December 8, the Executive were
+enabled without trial to send to Cayenne, or to the penal settlements in
+Africa, any persons who had in any past time belonged to a 'secret
+society,' and this order placed all the numerous members of political
+clubs at the mercy of the Government. Parliament, when it was suffered
+to reassemble, was so organised and shackled that every vestige of free
+discussion for many years disappeared, and a despotism of almost
+Asiatic severity was established in France.
+
+It may be fully conceded that the tragedy of December 4, when for more
+than a quarter of an hour some 3,000 French soldiers deliberately fired
+volley after volley without return upon the unoffending spectators on
+the Boulevards, broke into the houses and killed multitudes, not only of
+men but of women and children, till the Boulevards, in the words of an
+English eye-witness, were 'at some points a perfect shambles,' and the
+blood lay in pools round the trees that fringed them, was not ordered by
+the President, though it remained absolutely unpunished and uncensured
+by him. There is conflicting evidence on this point, but it is probable
+that some stray shots had been fired from the houses, and it is certain
+that a wild and sanguinary panic had fallen upon the soldiers. It is
+possible too, and not improbable, that the stories so generally believed
+in Paris that large batches of prisoners, who had been arrested, were
+brought out of prison in the dead hours of the night and deliberately
+shot by bodies of soldiers, may have been exaggerated or untrue. Maupas,
+who was Préfet of Police, and who must have known the truth, positively
+denied it; but the question what credence should be attached to a man of
+his antecedents who boasted that he had been from the first a leading
+agent in the whole conspiracy may be reasonably asked.[46] Evidence of
+these things, as has been truly said, could scarcely be obtained, for
+the press was absolutely gagged and all possibility of investigation was
+prevented. For the number of those who were transported or forcibly
+expelled within the few weeks after December 2, we may perhaps rely upon
+the historian and panegyrist of the Empire. He computes them at the
+enormous number of 26,500.[47] After the Plébiscite new measures of
+proscription were taken, and, according to Émile Ollivier, one of the
+most enthusiastic and skilful eulogists of the _Coup d'état_, in the
+first months of 1852 there were from 15,000 to 20,000 political
+prisoners in the French prisons.[48] It was by such means that Louis
+Napoleon attained the empire which had been the dream of his life.
+
+Like many, however, of the great crimes of history, this was not without
+its palliations, and a more detailed investigation will show that those
+palliations were not inconsiderable. Napoleon had been elected to the
+presidency by 5,434,226 votes out of 7,317,344 which were given, and
+with his name, his antecedents, and his well-known aspirations, this
+overwhelming majority clearly showed what were the real wishes of the
+people. His power rested on universal suffrage; it was independent of
+the Chamber. It gave him the direction of the army, though he could not
+command it in person, and from the very beginning he assumed an
+independent and almost regal position. In the first review that took
+place after his election he was greeted by the soldiers with cries of
+'Vive Napoléon! Vive l'Empereur!' It was soon proved that the
+Constitution of 1848 was exceedingly unworkable. In the words of Lord
+Palmerston: 'There were two great powers, each deriving its existence
+from the same source, almost sure to disagree, but with no umpire to
+decide between them, and neither able by any legal means to get rid of
+the other.' The President could not dissolve the Chamber, but he could
+impose upon it any ministry he chose. He was himself elected for only
+four years, and he could not be re-elected, while by a most fatuous
+provision the powers of the President and the Chamber were to expire in
+1852 at the same time, leaving France without a government and exposed
+to the gravest danger of anarchy.
+
+The Legislative Assembly, which was elected in May, 1849, was, it is
+true, far from being a revolutionary one. It contained a minority of
+desperate Socialists, it was broken into many factions, and like most
+democratic French Chambers it showed much weakness and inconsistency;
+but the vast majority of its members were Conservatives who had no kind
+of sympathy with revolution, and its conduct towards the President, if
+fairly judged, was on the whole very moderate. He soon treated it with
+contempt, and it was quite evident that there was no national enthusiasm
+behind it. The Socialist party was growing rapidly in the great towns;
+in June, 1849, there was an abortive Socialist insurrection in Paris,
+and a somewhat more formidable one at Lyons. They were easily put down,
+but the Socialists captured a great part of the representation of Paris,
+and they succeeded in producing a wild panic throughout the country. It
+led to several reactionary measures, the most important being a law
+which by imposing new conditions of residence very considerably limited
+the suffrage. This law was presented to the Chamber by the Ministers of
+the President and with his assent, though he subsequently demanded the
+reestablishment of universal suffrage, and made a decree effecting this
+one of the chief justifications of his _Coup d'état_. The restrictive
+law was carried through the Chamber on May 31, 1850, by an immense
+majority, but it was denounced with great eloquence by some of its
+leading members, and it added seriously to the unpopularity of the
+Assembly, and greatly lowered its authority in contending with a
+President whose authority rested on direct universal suffrage. More than
+once he exercised his power of dismissing and appointing ministries
+absolutely irrespective of its votes and wishes, and in each case in
+order to fill all posts of power with creatures of his own. The
+newspapers supporting him continually inveighed against the Chamber, and
+dwelt upon the danger of anarchy to which France would be exposed in
+1852 and upon the absolute necessity of 'a Saviour of Society.' In
+repeated journeys through France, and in more than one military review,
+the President gave the occasion of demonstrations in which the cries of
+'Vive l'Empereur!' were often heard, and which were manifestly intended
+to strengthen him in his conflict with the Chamber.
+
+The man from whom he had most to fear was Changarnier, who since the
+close of 1848 had been commander of the troops in Paris, and whose name,
+though far less popular than that of Napoleon, had much weight with the
+army. He was a man with strong leanings to authority, and was much
+courted by the monarchical parties, but was for some time in decided
+sympathy with Napoleon, from whom, however, in spite of large offers
+that had been made him, he gradually diverged. He issued peremptory
+orders to the troops under his command, forbidding all party cries at
+reviews. He declared in the Chamber that these cries had been 'not only
+encouraged but provoked,' and when the intention of the President to
+prolong his presidency became apparent, he assured Odilon Barrot that he
+was prepared, if ordered by the minister and authorised by the President
+of the Chamber, to anticipate the _Coup d'état_ by seizing and
+imprisoning Louis Napoleon.[49] The President succeeded in removing him
+from his command, and in placing a creature of his own at the head of
+the Paris troops; but though Changarnier acquiesced without resistance
+in his dismissal, he remained an important member of the Assembly; he
+openly declared that his sword was at its service, and if an armed
+conflict broke out it was tolerably certain that he would be its
+representative. The President had an official salary of 48,000
+_l_.--nearly five times as much as the President of the United States.
+The Chamber refused to increase it, though they consented by a very
+small majority, and at the request of Changarnier, to pay his debts.
+
+The demand for a revision of the Constitution, making it possible for
+the President to be re-elected, was rising rapidly through the country,
+and there can be but little doubt that this was generally looked forward
+to as the only peaceful solution, and that it represented the real wish
+of the great majority of the people. Petitions in favour of it, bearing
+an enormous number of signatures, were presented to the Chamber, and the
+overwhelming majority of the Conseils Généraux of which the Deputies
+generally formed part voted for revision. The President did not so much
+petition for it as demand it. In a message he sent to the Chamber, he
+declared that if they did not vote Revision the people would, in 1852,
+solemnly manifest their wishes. In a speech at Dijon, June 1, 1851, he
+declared that France from end to end demanded it; that he would follow
+the wishes of the nation, and that France would not perish in his hands.
+In the same speech he accused the Chamber of never seconding his wishes
+to ameliorate the lot of the people. He at the same time lost no
+opportunity of showing that his special sympathy and trust lay with the
+army, and he singled out with marked favour the colonels of the
+regiments which had shown themselves at the reviews most prominent in
+demonstrations in his favour.[50] The meaning of all this was hardly
+doubtful. Changarnier took up the gauntlet, and at a time when the
+question of Revision was before the Chamber he declared that no soldier
+would ever be induced to move against the law and the Assembly, and he
+called upon the Deputies to deliberate in peace.
+
+The Revision was voted in the Chamber by 446 votes to 278, but a
+majority of three-fourths was required for a constitutional change, and
+this majority was not obtained, and in the disintegrated condition of
+French parties it seemed scarcely likely to be obtained. The Chamber
+was soon after prorogued for about two months, leaving the situation
+unchanged, and the tension and panic were extreme. Out of eighty-five
+Conseils Généraux in France, eighty passed votes in favour of Revision,
+three abstained, two only opposed.
+
+The President had now fully resolved upon a _Coup d'état_, and before
+the Chamber reassembled a new ministry was constituted, St.-Arnaud being
+at the head of the army, and Maupas at the head of the police. His first
+step was to summon the Chamber to repeal the law of May 31 which
+abolished universal suffrage. The Chamber, after much hesitation,
+refused, but only by two votes. The belief that the question could only
+be solved by force was becoming universal, and the bolder spirits in the
+Chamber clearly saw that if no new measure was taken they were likely to
+be helpless before the military party. By a decree of 1848 the President
+of the Chamber had a right, if necessary, to call for troops for its
+protection independently of the Minister of War, and a motion was now
+made that he should be able to select a general to whom he might
+delegate this power. Such a measure, dividing the military command and
+enabling the Chamber to have its own general and its own army, might
+have proved very efficacious, but it would probably have involved France
+in civil war, and the President was resolved that, if the Chamber voted
+it, the _Coup d'état_ should immediately take place. The vote was taken
+on November 17, 1851. St.-Arnaud, as Minister of War, opposed the
+measure on constitutional grounds, dilating on the danger of a divided
+military command, but during the discussion Maupas and Magnan were in
+the gallery of the Chamber, waiting to give orders to St.-Arnaud to call
+out the troops and to surround and dissolve the Chamber if the
+proposition was carried.
+
+It was, however, rejected by a majority of 108, and a few troubled days
+of conspiracy and panic still remained before the blow was struck. The
+state of the public securities and the testimony of the best judges of
+all parties showed the genuineness of the alarm. It was not true, as the
+President stated in the proclamation issued when the _Coup d'état_ was
+accomplished, that the Chamber had become a mere nest of conspiracies,
+and there was a strange audacity in his assertion that he made the _Coup
+d'état_ for the purpose of maintaining the Republic against monarchical
+plots; but it was quite true that the conviction was general that force
+had become inevitable; that the chief doubt was whether the first blow
+would be struck by Napoleon or Changarnier, and that while the evident
+desire of the majority of the people was to re-elect Napoleon, there was
+a design among some members of the Chamber to seize him by force and to
+elect in his place some member of the House of Orleans.[51] On December
+2 the curtain fell, and Napoleon accompanied his _Coup d'état_ by a
+decree dissolving the Chamber, restoring by his own authority universal
+suffrage, abolishing the law of May 31, establishing a state of siege,
+and calling on the French people to judge his action by their vote.
+
+It was certainly not an appeal upon which great confidence could be
+placed. Immediately after the _Coup d'état_, the army, which was wholly
+on his side, voted separately and openly in order that France might
+clearly know that the armed forces were with the President and might be
+able to predict the consequences of a verdict unfavourable to his
+pretensions. When, nearly three weeks later, the civilian Plébiscite
+took place, martial law was in force. Public meetings of every kind were
+forbidden. No newspaper hostile to the new authority was permitted. No
+electioneering paper or placard could be circulated which had not been
+sanctioned by Government officials. The terrible decree that all who had
+ever belonged to a secret society might be sent to die in the fevers of
+Africa was interpreted in the widest sense, and every political society
+or organisation was included in it. All the functionaries of a highly
+centralised country were turned into ardent electioneering agents, and
+the question was so put that the voters had no alternative except for or
+against the President, a negative vote leaving the country with no
+government and an almost certain prospect of anarchy and civil war.
+Under these circumstances 7,500,000 votes were given for the President
+and 500,000 against him.
+
+But after all deductions have been made there can be no real doubt that
+the majority of Frenchmen acquiesced in the new _régime_. The terror of
+Socialism was abroad, and it brought with it an ardent desire for strong
+government. The probabilities of a period of sanguinary anarchy were so
+great that multitudes were glad to be secured from it at almost any
+cost. Parliamentarism was profoundly discredited. The peasant
+proprietary had never cared for it, and the bourgeois class, among whom
+it had once been popular, were now thoroughly scared. Nothing in the
+contemporary accounts of the period is more striking than the
+indifference, the almost amused cynicism, or the sense of relief with
+which the great mass of Frenchmen seem to have witnessed the destruction
+of their Constitution and the gross insults inflicted upon a Chamber
+which included so many of the most illustrious of their countrymen.
+
+We can hardly have a better authority on this point than Tocqueville. No
+one felt more profoundly or more bitterly the iniquity of what had been
+done; but he was under no illusion about the sentiments of the people.
+The Constitution, he says, was thoroughly unpopular. 'Louis Napoleon had
+the merit or the luck to discover what few suspected--the latent
+Bonapartism of the nation.... The memory of the Emperor, vague and
+undefined, but therefore the more imposing, still dwelt like an heroic
+legend in the imaginations of the people.' All the educated, in the
+opinion of Tocqueville, condemned and repudiated the _Coup d'état_.
+'Thirty-seven years of liberty have made a free press and free
+parliamentary discussion necessary to us.' But the bulk of the nation
+was not with them. The new Government, he predicted, 'will last until it
+is unpopular with the mass of the people. At present the disapprobation
+is confined to the educated classes.' 'The reaction against democracy
+and even against liberty is irresistible.'[52]
+
+There is no doubt some exaggeration on both sides of this statement.
+The appalling magnitude of the deportations and imprisonments by the new
+Government seems to show that the hatred went deeper than Tocqueville
+supposed, and on the other hand it can hardly be said that the educated
+classes wholly repudiated what had been done when we remember that the
+French Funds at once rose from 91 to 102, that nearly all branches of
+French commerce made a similar spring,[53] that some twenty generals
+were actively engaged in the conspiracy, and that the great body of the
+priests were delighted at its success. The truth seems to be that the
+property of France saw in the success of the _Coup d'état_ an escape
+from a great danger, while two powerful professions, the army and the
+Church, were strongly in favour of the President. Over the army the name
+of Napoleon exercised a magical influence, and the expedition to Rome
+and the probability that the new government would be under clerical
+guidance were, in the eyes of the Church party, quite sufficient to
+justify what had been done.
+
+Nothing, indeed, in this strange history is more significant than the
+attitude assumed by the special leaders and representatives of the
+Church which teaches that 'it were better for the sun and moon to drop
+from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all of the many millions
+upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal
+affliction goes, than that one soul ... should commit one venial sin,
+should tell one wilful untruth.'[54]
+
+Three illustrious churchmen--Lacordaire, Ravignan and Dupanloup--to
+their immortal honour refused to give any approbation to the _Coup
+d'état_ or to express any confidence in its author. But the latest
+panegyrist of the Empire boasts that they were almost alone in their
+profession. By the advice of the Papal Nuncio and of the leading French
+bishops, the clergy lost no time in presenting their felicitations.
+Veuillot, who more than any other man represented and influenced the
+vast majority of the French priesthood, wrote on what had been done with
+undisguised and unqualified exultation and delight. Even Montalembert
+rallied to the Government on the morrow of the _Coup d'état_. He
+described Louis Napoleon as a Prince 'who had shown a more efficacious
+and intelligent devotion to religious interests than any of those who
+had governed France during sixty years;' and it was universally admitted
+that the great body of the clergy, with Archbishop Sibour at their head,
+were in this critical moment ardent supporters of the new
+government.[55] Kinglake, in a page of immortal beauty, has described
+the scene when, thirty days after the _Coup d'état_, Louis Napoleon
+appeared in Notre Dame to receive, amid all the pomp that Catholic
+ceremonial could give, the solemn blessing of the Church, and to listen
+to the Te Deum thanking the Almighty for what had been accomplished. The
+time came, it is true, when the policy of the priests was changed, for
+they found that Louis Napoleon was more liberal and less clerical than
+they imagined; but in estimating the feelings with which French
+Liberals judge the Church, its attitude towards the perjury and violence
+of December 2 should never be forgotten.
+
+To those who judge the political ethics of the Roman Catholic Church not
+from the deceptive pages of such writers as Newman, but from an
+examination of its actual conduct in the different periods of its
+history, it will appear in no degree inconsistent. It is but another
+instance added to many of the manner in which it regards all acts which
+appear conducive to its interests. It was the same spirit that led a
+Pope to offer public thanks for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and to
+order Vasari to paint the murder of Coligny on the walls of the Vatican
+among the triumphs of the Church. No Christian sovereign of modern times
+has left a worse memory behind him than Ferdinand II. of Naples, who
+received the Pope when he fled to Gaëta in 1848. He was the sovereign
+whose government was described by Gladstone as 'a negation of God.' He
+not only destroyed the Constitution he had sworn to observe, but threw
+into a loathsome dungeon the Liberal ministers who had trusted him. But
+in the eyes of the Pope his services to the Church far outweighed all
+defects, and the monument erected to this 'most pious prince' may be
+seen in one of the chapels of St. Peter's. Every visitor to Paris may
+see the fresco in the Madeleine in which Napoleon I. appears seated
+triumphant on the clouds and surrounded by an admiring priesthood, the
+most prominent and glorified figure in a picture representing the
+history of French Christianity, with Christ above, blessing the work.
+
+It is indeed a most significant fact that in Catholic countries the
+highest moral level in public life is now rarely to be found among those
+who specially represent the spirit and teaching of their Church, and
+much more frequently among men who are unconnected with it, and often
+with all dogmatic theology. How seldom has the distinctively Catholic
+press seriously censured unjust wars, unscrupulous alliances, violations
+of constitutional obligations, unprovoked aggressions, great outbursts
+of intolerance and fanaticism! It is, indeed, not too much to say that
+some of the worst moral perversions of modern times have been supported
+and stimulated by a great body of genuinely Catholic opinion both in the
+priesthood and in the press. The anti-Semite movement, the shameful
+indifference to justice shown in France in the Dreyfus case, and the
+countless frauds, outrages and oppressions that accompanied the
+domination of the Irish Land League are recent and conspicuous examples.
+
+Among secular-minded laymen the _Coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon was, as
+I have said, differently judged. Few things in French history are more
+honourable than the determination with which so many men who were the
+very flower of the French nation refused to take the oath or give their
+adhesion to the new Government. Great statesmen and a few distinguished
+soldiers, with a splendid past behind them and with the prospect of an
+illustrious career before them; men of genius who in their professorial
+chairs had been the centres of the intellectual life of France;
+functionaries who had by laborious and persevering industry climbed the
+steps of their profession and depended for their livelihood on its
+emoluments, accepted poverty, exile and the long eclipse of the most
+honourable ambitions rather than take an oath which seemed to justify
+the usurpation. At the same time, some statesmen of unquestionable
+honour did not wholly and in all its parts condemn it. Lord Palmerston
+was conspicuous among them. Without expressing approval of all that had
+been done, he always maintained that the condition of France was such
+that a violent subversion of an unworkable Constitution and the
+establishment of a strong government had become absolutely necessary;
+that the _Coup d'état_ saved France from the gravest and most imminent
+danger of anarchy and civil war, and that this fact was its
+justification. If it had not been for the acts of ferocious tyranny
+which immediately followed it, his opinion would have been more largely
+shared.
+
+It is probable that the moral character of _Coups d'état_ may in the
+future not unfrequently come into discussion in Europe, as it has often
+done in South America. As the best observers are more and more
+perceiving, parliamentary government worked upon party lines is by no
+means an easy thing, and it seldom attains perfection without long
+experience and without qualities of mind and character which are very
+unequally distributed among the nations of the world. It requires a
+spirit of compromise, patience and moderation; the kind of mind which
+can distinguish the solid, the practical and the well meaning, from the
+brilliant, the plausible and the ambitious, which cares more for useful
+results and for the conciliation of many interests and opinions than for
+any rigid uniformity and consistency of principle; which, while
+pursuing personal ambitions and party aims, can subordinate them on
+great occasions to public interests. It needs a combination of
+independence and discipline which is not common, and where it does not
+exist parliaments speedily degenerate either into an assemblage of
+puppets in the hands of party leaders or into disintegrated,
+demoralised, insubordinate groups. Some of the foremost nations of the
+world--nations distinguished for noble and brilliant intellect; for
+splendid heroism; for great achievements in peace and war--have in this
+form of government conspicuously failed. In England it has grown with
+our growth and strengthened with our strength. We have practised it in
+many phases. Its traditions have taken deep root and are in full harmony
+with the national character. But in the present century this kind of
+government has been adopted by many nations which are wholly unfit for
+it, and they have usually adopted it in the most difficult of all
+forms--that of an uncontrolled democracy resting upon universal
+suffrage. It is becoming very evident that in many countries such
+assemblies are wholly incompetent to take the foremost place in
+government, but they are so fenced round by oaths and other
+constitutional forms that nothing short of violence can take from them a
+power which they are never likely voluntarily to relinquish. In such
+countries democracy tends much less naturally to the parliamentary
+system than to some form of dictatorship, to some despotism resting on
+and justified by a plébiscite. It is probable that many transitions in
+this direction will take place. They will seldom be carried out through
+purely public motives or without perjury and violence. But public
+opinion will judge each case on its own merits, and where it can be
+shown that its results are beneficial and that large sections of the
+people have desired it, such an act will not be severely condemned.
+
+Cases of conflicting ethical judgments of another kind may be easily
+cited. One of the best known was that of Governor Eyre at the time of
+the Jamaica insurrection of 1865. In this case there was no question of
+personal interest or ambition. The Governor was a man of stainless
+honour, who in a moment of extreme difficulty and danger had rendered a
+great service to his country. By his prompt and courageous action a
+negro insurrection was quickly suppressed, which, if it had been allowed
+to extend, must have brought untold horrors upon Jamaica. But the
+martial law which he had proclaimed was certainly continued longer than
+was necessary, it was exercised with excessive severity, and those who
+were tried under it were not merely men who had been taken in arms. One
+conspicuous civilian agitator, who had contributed greatly to stimulate
+the insurrection, and had been, in the opinion of the Governor, its
+'chief cause and origin,' but who, like most men of his kind, had merely
+incited others without taking any direct part himself, was arrested in a
+part of the island in which martial law was not proclaimed, and was
+tried and hanged by orders of a military tribunal in a way which the
+best legal authorities in England pronounced wholly unwarranted by law.
+If this act had been considered apart from the general conditions of the
+island it would have deserved severe punishment. If the services of the
+Governor had been considered apart from this act they would have
+deserved high honours from the Crown. In Jamaica the Governor was fully
+supported by the Legislative Council and the Assembly, but at home
+public opinion was fiercely divided, and the fact that the chief
+literary and scientific men in England took sides on the question added
+greatly to its interest. Carlyle took a leading part in the defence of
+Governor Eyre. John Stuart Mill was the chairman of a committee who
+regarded him as a simple criminal, and who for more than two years
+pursued him with a persistent vindictiveness. As might have been
+expected the one side dwelt solely on his services and the other side on
+his misdeeds. Governor Eyre received no reward for the great service he
+had rendered, and he was involved by his enemies in a ruinous legal
+expenditure, which, however, was subsequently paid by the Government;
+but those who desired to bring him to trial for murder were baffled, for
+the Old Bailey Grand Jury threw out the bill. Public opinion, I think,
+on the whole, approved of what they had done. Most moderate men had come
+to the conclusion that Governor Eyre was a brave and honourable man who
+had rendered great services to the State and had saved countless lives,
+but who, through no unworthy motive and in a time of extreme danger and
+panic, had committed a serious mistake which had been very amply
+expiated.
+
+The more recent events connected with the Jameson raid into the
+Transvaal may also be cited. Of the raid itself there is little to be
+said. It was, in truth, one of the most discreditable as well as
+mischievous events in recent colonial history, and its character was
+entirely unrelieved by any gleam either of heroism or of skill. Those
+who took a direct part in it were duly tried and duly punished. A
+section of English society adopted on this question a disgraceful
+attitude, but it must at least be said in palliation that they had been
+grossly deceived, one of the chief and usually most trustworthy organs
+of opinion having been made use of as an organ of the conspirators.
+
+A more difficult question arose in the case of the statesman who had
+prepared and organized the expedition against the Transvaal. It is
+certain that the actual raid had taken place without his knowledge or
+consent, though when it was brought to his knowledge he abstained from
+taking any step to stop it. It may be conceded also that there were real
+grievances to be complained of. By a strange irony of fate some of the
+largest gold mines of the world had fallen to the possession of perhaps
+the only people who did not desire them; of a race of hunters and
+farmers intensely hostile to modern ideas, who had twice abandoned their
+homes and made long journeys into distant lands in search of solitude
+and space and of a home where they could live their primitive, pastoral
+lives, undisturbed by any foreign element. These men now found their
+country the centre of a vast stream of foreign immigration, and of that
+most undesirable kind of immigration which gold mines invariably
+promote. Their laws were very backward, but the part which was most
+oppressive was that connected with the gold-mining industry which was
+almost entirely in the hands of the immigrants, and it was this which
+made it a main object to overthrow their government. The trail of
+finance runs over the whole story, but it may be acknowledged that,
+although Mr. Rhodes had made an enormous fortune by mining speculations,
+and although he was largely interested as a financier in overturning the
+system of government at Johannesburg, he was not a man likely to be
+actuated by mere love of money, and that political ambition closely
+connected with the opening and the civilisation of Africa largely
+actuated him. Whether the motives of his co-conspirators were of the
+same kind may be open to question. What, however, he did has been very
+clearly established. When holding the highly confidential position of
+Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and being at the same time a Privy
+Councillor of the Queen, he engaged in a conspiracy for the overthrow of
+the government of a neighbouring and friendly State. In order to carry
+out this design he deceived the High Commissioner whose Prime Minister
+he was. He deceived his own colleagues in the Ministry. He collected
+under false pretences a force which was intended to co-operate with an
+insurrection in Johannesburg. Being a Director of the Chartered Company
+he made use of that position, without the knowledge of his colleagues,
+to further the conspiracy. He took an active and secret part in
+smuggling great quantities of arms into the Transvaal, which were
+intended to be used in the rebellion; and at a time when his organs in
+the press were representing Johannesburg as seething with spontaneous
+indignation against an oppressive government, he, with another
+millionaire, was secretly expending many thousands of pounds in that
+town in stimulating and subsidising the rising. He was also directly
+connected with the shabbiest incident in the whole affair, the
+concoction of a letter from the Johannesburg conspirators absurdly
+representing English women and children at Johannesburg as in danger of
+being shot down by the Boers, and urging the British to come at once to
+save them. It was a letter drawn up with the sanction of Mr. Rhodes many
+weeks before the raid, and before any disturbance had arisen, and kept
+in reserve to be dated and used in the last moment for the purpose of
+inducing the young soldiers in South Africa to join in the raid, and of
+subsequently justifying their conduct before the War Office, and also
+for the purpose of being published in the English press at the same time
+as the first news of the raid, in order to work upon English public
+opinion and persuade the English people that the raid, though
+technically wrong, was morally justifiable.[56]
+
+Mr. Rhodes is a man of great genius and influence, and in the past he
+has rendered great services to the Empire. At the same time no
+reasonable judge can question that in these transactions he was more
+blamable than those who were actually punished by the law for taking
+part in the raid--far more blamable than those young officers who were,
+in truth, the most severely punished, and who had been induced to take
+part in it under a false representation of the wishes of the Government
+at home, and a grossly false representation of the state of things at
+Johannesburg. The failure of the raid, and his undoubted complicity
+with its design, obliged Mr. Rhodes to resign the post of Prime Minister
+and his directorship of the Chartered Company, and, for a time at least,
+eclipsed his influence in Africa; but the question confronted the
+Ministers whether these resignations alone constituted a sufficient
+punishment for what he had done.
+
+The question was indeed one of great difficulty. The Government, in my
+opinion, were right in not attempting a prosecution which, in the face
+of the fact that the actual raid had certainly been undertaken without
+the knowledge of Mr. Rhodes, and that the evidence against him was
+chiefly drawn from his own voluntary admissions before the committee of
+inquiry, would inevitably have proved abortive. They were, perhaps,
+right in not taking from him the dignity of Privy Councillor, which had
+been bestowed on him as a reward for great services in the past, and
+which had never in the present reign been taken from anyone on whom it
+had been bestowed. They were right also, I believe, in urging that after
+a long and elaborate inquiry into the circumstances of the raid, and
+after a report in which Mr. Rhodes's conduct had been fully examined and
+severely censured, it was most important for the peace and good
+government of South Africa that the matter should as soon as possible be
+allowed to drop, and the raid and the party animosities it had aroused
+to subside. But what can be thought of the language of a Minister who
+volunteered to assure the House of Commons that in all the transactions
+I have described, Mr. Rhodes, though he had made 'a gigantic mistake,' a
+mistake perhaps as great as a statesman could make, had done nothing
+affecting his personal honour?[57]
+
+The foregoing examples will serve to illustrate the kind of difficulty
+which every statesman has to encounter in dealing with political
+misdeeds, and the impossibility of treating them by the clearly defined
+lines and standards that are applicable to the morals of a private life.
+Whatever conclusions men may arrive at in the seclusion of their
+studies, when they take part in active political life they will find it
+necessary to make large allowances for motives, tendencies, past
+services, pressing dangers, overwhelming expediencies, opposing
+interests. Every statesman who is worthy of the name has a strong
+predisposition to support the public servants who are under him when he
+knows that they have acted with a sincere desire to benefit the Empire.
+This is, indeed, a characteristic of all really great statesmen, and it
+gives a confidence and energy to the public service which in times of
+difficulty and danger are of supreme importance. In such times a
+mistaken decision is usually a less evil than timid, vacillating, or
+procrastinated action, and a wise Minister will go far to defend his
+subordinates if they have acted promptly and with substantial justice in
+the way they believed to be best, even though they may have made
+considerable mistakes, and though the results of their action may have
+proved unfortunate.
+
+But of all forms of prestige, moral prestige is the most valuable, and
+no statesman should forget that one of the chief elements of British
+power is the moral weight that is behind it. It is the conviction that
+British policy is essentially honourable and straightforward, that the
+word and honour of its statesmen and diplomatists may be implicitly
+trusted, and that intrigues and deceptions are wholly alien to their
+nature. The statesman must steer his way between rival fanaticisms--the
+fanaticism of those who pardon everything if it is crowned by success
+and conduces to the greatness of the Empire, and who act as if weak
+Powers and savage nations had no moral rights; and the fanaticism of
+those who always seem to have a leaning against their own country, and
+who imagine that in times of war, anarchy, or rebellion, and in dealings
+with savage or half-savage military populations, it is possible to act
+with the same respect for the technicalities of law, and the same
+invariably high standard of moral scrupulousness, as in a peaceful age
+and a highly civilised country. In the affairs of private life the
+distinction between right and wrong is usually very clear, but it is not
+so in public affairs. Even the moral aspects of political acts can
+seldom be rightly estimated without the exercise of a large, judicial,
+and comprehensive judgment, and the spirit which should actuate a
+statesman should be rather that of a high-minded and honourable man of
+the world than that of a theologian, or a lawyer, or an abstract
+moralist.
+
+In some respects the standard of political morality has undoubtedly
+risen in modern times; but it is by no means certain that in
+international politics this is the case. A true history of the wars of
+the last half of the nineteenth century may well lead us to doubt it,
+and recent disclosures have shown us that in the most terrible of
+them--the Franco-German War of 1870--the blame must be much more equally
+divided than we had been accustomed to believe. Very few massacres in
+history have been more gigantic or more clearly traced to the action of
+a government than those perpetrated by Turkish soldiers in our
+generation, and few signs of the low level of public feeling in
+Christendom are more impressive than the general indifference with which
+these massacres were contemplated in most countries. It was made evident
+that a Power which retains its military strength, and which is therefore
+sought as an ally and feared as an enemy, may do things with impunity,
+and even with very little censure, which in the case of a weak nation
+would produce a swift retribution. Among the minor episodes of
+nineteenth-century history the historian will not forget how soon after
+the savage Armenian massacres the sovereign of one of the greatest and
+most civilised of Christian nations hastened to Constantinople to clasp
+the hand which was so deeply dyed with Christian blood, and then,
+having, as he thought, sufficiently strengthened his popularity and
+influence in that quarter, proceeded to the Mount of Olives, where, amid
+scenes that are consecrated by the most sacred of all memories, and most
+fitted to humble the pride of power and dispel the dreams of ambition,
+he proclaimed himself with melodramatic piety the champion and the
+patron of the Christian faith! How many instances may be culled from
+very modern history of the deliberate falsehood of statesmen; of
+distinct treaty engagements and obligations simply set aside because
+they were inconvenient to one Power, and could be repudiated with
+impunity; of weak nations annexed or plundered without a semblance of
+real provocation! The safety of the weak in the presence of the strong
+is the best test of international morality. Can it be said that, if
+measured by this test, the public morality of our time ranks very high?
+No one can fail to notice with what levity the causes of war with
+barbarous or semi-civilised nations are scrutinised if only those wars
+are crowned with success; how strongly the present commercial policy of
+Europe is stimulating the passion for aggression; how warmly that policy
+is in all great nations supported by public opinion and by the Press.
+
+The questions of morality arising out of these things are many and
+complicated, and they cannot be disposed of by short and simple formulæ.
+How far is a statesman who sees, or thinks he sees, some crushing danger
+from an aggressive foreign Power impending over his country, justified
+in anticipating that danger, and at a convenient moment and without any
+immediate provocation forcing on a war? How far is it his right or his
+duty to sacrifice the lives of his people through humanitarian motives,
+for the redress of some flagrant wrong with which he is under no treaty
+obligation to interfere? How far, if several Powers agree to guarantee
+the integrity of a small Power, is one Power bound at great risk to
+interfere in isolation if its co-partners refuse to do so or are even
+accomplices in a policy of plunder? How far, if the aggression of other
+Powers places his nation at a commercial or other disadvantage in the
+competition of nations, may a statesman take measures which, under
+other circumstances, would be plainly unjustifiable, to guard against
+such disadvantage? With what degrees of punctiliousness, at what cost of
+treasure and of life, ought a nation to resent insults directed against
+its dignity, its subjects and its flag? What is the meaning and what are
+the limits of national egotism and national unselfishness? There is such
+a thing as the comity of nations, and even apart from treaty obligations
+no great nation can pursue a policy of complete isolation, disregarding
+crimes and aggressions beyond its border. On the other hand, the primary
+duty of every statesman is to his own country. His task is to secure for
+many millions of the human race the highest possible amount of peace and
+prosperity, and a selfishness is at least not a narrow one which, while
+abstaining from injuring others, restricts itself to promoting the
+happiness of a vast section of the human race. Sacrifices and dangers
+which a good man would think it his clear duty to accept if they fell on
+himself alone wear another aspect if he is acting as trustee for a great
+nation and for the interests of generations who are yet unborn. Nothing
+is more calamitous than the divorce of politics from morals, but in
+practical politics public and private morals will never absolutely
+correspond. The public opinion of the nation will inevitably inspire and
+control its statesmen. It creates in all countries an ethical code which
+with greater or less perfection marks out for them the path of duty, and
+though a great statesman may do something to raise its level, he can
+never wholly escape its influence. In different nations it is higher or
+lower--in truthfulness and sincerity of diplomacy the variations are
+very great--but it will never be the exact code on which men act in
+private life. It is certainly widely different from the Sermon on the
+Mount.
+
+There is one belief, half unconscious, half avowed, which in our
+generation is passing widely over the world and is practically accepted
+in a very large measure by the English-speaking nations. It is that to
+reclaim savage tribes to civilisation, and to place the outlying
+dominions of civilised countries which are anarchical or grossly
+misgoverned in the hands of rulers who govern wisely and uprightly, are
+sufficient justification for aggression and conquest. Many who, as a
+general rule, would severely censure an unjust and unprovoked war,
+carried on for the purpose of annexation by a strong Power against a
+weak one, will excuse or scarcely condemn such a war if it is directed
+against a country which has shown itself incapable of good government.
+To place the world in the hands of those who can best govern it is
+looked upon as a supreme end. Wars are not really undertaken for this
+end. The philanthropy of nations when it takes the form of war and
+conquest is seldom or never unmixed with selfishness, though strong
+gusts of humanitarian enthusiasm often give an impulse, a pretext, or a
+support to the calculated actions of statesmen. But when wars, however
+selfish and unprovoked, contribute to enlarge the boundaries of
+civilisation, to stimulate real progress, to put an end to savage
+customs, to oppression or to anarchy, they are now very indulgently
+judged even in the many cases in which the inhabitants of the conquered
+Power do not desire the change and resist it strenuously in the field.
+
+In domestic as in foreign politics the maintenance of a high moral
+standard in statesmanship is impossible unless the public opinion of the
+country is in harmony with it. Moral declension in a nation is very
+swiftly followed by a corresponding decadence among its public men, and
+it will indeed be generally found that the standard of public men is apt
+to be somewhat lower than that of the better section of the public
+outside. They are exposed to very special temptations, some of which I
+have already indicated.
+
+The constant habit of regarding questions with a view to party
+advantage, to proximate issues, to immediate popularity, which is
+inseparable from parliamentary government, can hardly fail to give some
+ply to the most honest intellect. Most questions have to be treated more
+or less in the way of compromise; and alliances and coalitions not very
+conducive to a severe standard of political morals are frequent. In
+England the leading men of the opposing parties have happily usually
+been able to respect one another. The same standard of honour will be
+found on both sides of the House, but every parliament contains its
+notorious agitators, intriguers and self-seekers, men who have been
+connected with acts which may or may not have been brought within the
+reach of the criminal law, but have at least been sufficient to stamp
+their character in the eyes of honest men. Such men cannot be neglected
+in party combinations. Political leaders must co-operate with them in
+the daily intercourse and business of parliamentary life--must sometimes
+ask them favours--must treat them with deference and respect. Men who on
+some subjects and at some times have acted with glaring profligacy, on
+others act with judgment, moderation and even patriotism, and become
+useful supporters or formidable opponents. Combinations are in this way
+formed which are in no degree wrong, but which tend to dull the edge of
+moral perception and imperceptibly to lower the standard of moral
+judgment. In the swift changes of the party kaleidoscope the bygone is
+soon forgotten. The enemy of yesterday is the ally of to-day; the
+services of the present soon obscure the misdeeds of the past; and men
+insensibly grow very tolerant not only of diversities of opinion, but
+also of gross aberrations of conduct. The constant watchfulness of
+external opinion is very necessary to keep up a high standard of
+political morality.
+
+Public opinion, it is true, is by no means impeccable. The tendency to
+believe that crimes cease to be crimes when they have a political
+object, and that a popular vote can absolve the worst crimes, is only
+too common; there are few political misdeeds which wealth, rank, genius
+or success will not induce large sections of English society to pardon,
+and nations even in their best moments will not judge acts which are
+greatly for their own advantage with the severity of judgment that they
+would apply to similar acts of other nations. But when all this is
+admitted, it still remains true that there is a large body of public
+opinion in England which carries into all politics a sound moral sense
+and which places a just and righteous policy higher than any mere party
+interest. It is on the power and pressure of this opinion that the high
+character of English government must ultimately depend.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[42] This sentence may appear obscure to English readers. The
+explanation is, that by an ingenious arrangement, devised by Lord
+Beaconsfield, the professors of the Jesuit College in Stephen's Green
+are nearly all made Fellows of the Royal University, those of the Arts
+Faculty receiving 400_l._ a year, and three Medical Fellows 150_l._
+each. By this device the Catholic college has in reality a State
+endowment to the amount of between 6,000_l._ and 7,000_l._ a year. This
+fact considerably reduces the grievance.
+
+[43] See e.g. the death-bed counsels of Henry IV. to his son:--
+
+
+                          'Therefore, my Harry,
+     Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
+     With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
+     May waste the memory of the former days.'
+                         _Henry IV_. Part II. Act IV. Sc. 4.
+
+
+[44] Lord Lanesborough _v._ Reilly.
+
+[45] See Tocqueville's _Memoirs_ (English trans.), ii. 189, Letter to
+the _Times_.
+
+[46] See Maupas, _Mémoires sur le Second Empire_, i. 511, 512. It is
+said that, contrary to the orders of St.-Arnaud, the soldiers, instead
+of immediately shooting all persons in the street who were found with
+arms or constructing or defending a barricade, made many prisoners, and
+it is not clear what became of them. Granier de Cassagnac, however,
+altogether denies the executions on the Champ de Mars (ii. 433).
+
+[47] Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 438.
+
+[48] _L'Empire Libéral_, ii. 526.
+
+[49] _Mémoires d'Odilon Barrot_, iv. 59-61.
+
+[50] _Mémoires d'Odilon Barrot_, iv. 56, 57.
+
+[51] See Lord Palmerston's statements on this subject in Ashley's _Life
+of Palmerston_, ii. 200-211. Tocqueville, however, utterly denies that
+the majority of the Assembly had any sympathy with these views
+(Tocqueville's _Memoirs_ (Eng. trans.), ii. 177). Maupas, in his
+_Mémoires_, gives a very detailed account of the conspiracy on the
+Bonapartist side. It appears that the 'homme de confiance' of
+Changarnier was in his pay.
+
+[52] Tocqueville's _Memoirs_, ii.
+
+[53] Ashley's _Life of Palmerston_, ii. 208.
+
+[54] Newman.
+
+[55] See Ollivier, _L'Empire Libéral_, i. 510-512.
+
+[56] _Second Report of the Select Committee on British South Africa_
+(July, 1897).
+
+[57] _Parliamentary Debates_, July 26, 1897, 1169, 1170.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The necessities for moral compromise I have traced in the army, in the
+law, and in the fields of politics may be found in another form not less
+conspicuously in the Church. The members, and still more the ministers,
+of an ancient Church bound to formularies and creeds that were drawn up
+in long bygone centuries, are continually met by the difficulties of
+reconciling these forms with the changed conditions of human knowledge,
+and there are periods when the pressure of these difficulties is felt
+with more than common force. Such, for example, were the periods of the
+Renaissance and the Reformation, when changes in the intellectual
+condition of Europe produced a widespread conviction of the vast amount
+of imposture and delusion which had received the sanction of a Church
+that claimed to be infallible, the result being in some countries a
+silent evanescence of all religious belief among the educated class,
+even including a large number of the leaders of the Church, and in other
+countries a great outburst of religious zeal aiming at the restoration
+of Christianity to its primitive form and a repudiation of the
+accretions of superstition that had gathered around it. The Copernican
+theory proving that our world is not, as was long believed, the centre
+of the universe, but a single planet moving with many others around a
+central sun, and the discovery, by the instrumentality of the
+telescope, of the infinitesimally small place which our globe occupies
+in the universe, altered men's measure of probability and affected
+widely, though indirectly, their theological beliefs.
+
+A similar change was gradually produced by the Newtonian discovery that
+the whole system of the universe was pervaded by one great law, and by
+the steady growth of scientific knowledge, proving that vast numbers of
+phenomena which were once attributed to isolated and capricious acts of
+spiritual intervention were regulated by invariable, inexorable,
+all-pervasive law. Many of the formularies by which we still express our
+religious beliefs date from periods when comets and eclipses were
+believed to have been sent to portend calamity; when every great
+meteorological change was attributed to some isolated spiritual agency;
+when witchcraft and diabolical possession, supernatural diseases, and
+supernatural cures were deemed indubitable facts: and when accounts of
+contemporary miracles, Divine or Satanic, carried with them no sense of
+strangeness or improbability. It is scarcely surprising that these
+formularies sometimes seem incongruous with an age when the scientific
+spirit has introduced very different conceptions of the government of
+the universe, and when the miraculous, if it is not absolutely
+discredited, is, at least in the eyes of most educated men, relegated to
+a distant past.
+
+The present century has seen some powerful reactions towards older
+religious beliefs, but it has also been to an unusual extent fertile in
+the kind of changes that most deeply affect them. Not many years have
+passed since the whole drama of the world's history was believed to
+have been comprised in the framework of 'Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise
+Regained.' Man appeared in the universe a faultless being in a faultless
+world, but he soon fell from his first estate, and his fall entailed
+world-wide consequences. It introduced into our globe sin, death,
+suffering, disease, imperfection and decay; all the mischievous and
+ferocious instincts and tendencies of man and beast; all the
+multitudinous forms of struggle, terror, anxiety and grief; all that
+makes life bitter to any living being, and, even as the Fathers were
+accustomed to say, the briars and weeds and sterility of the earth.
+Paradise Regained was believed to be indissolubly connected with
+Paradise Lost. The one was the explanation of the other. The one
+introduced the disease, the other provided the remedy.
+
+It is idle to deny that the main outlines of this picture have been
+wholly changed. First came the discovery that the existence of our globe
+stretches far beyond the period once assigned to the Creation, and that
+for countless ages before the time when Adam was believed to have lost
+Paradise, death had been its most familiar fact and its inexorable law;
+that the animals who inhabited it preyed upon and devoured each other as
+at present, their claws and teeth being specially adapted for that
+purpose. Even their half-digested remains have been preserved in fossil.
+
+'Death,' wrote a Pagan philosopher, in sharp contrast to the teaching of
+the Church, 'is a law and not a punishment,' and geology has fully
+justified his assertion.
+
+Then came decisive evidence showing that for many thousands of years
+before his supposed origin man had lived and died upon our globe--a
+being, as far as can be judged from the remains that have been
+preserved, not superior but greatly inferior to ourselves, whose almost
+only art was the manufacture of rude instruments for killing, who
+appears in structure and in life to have approximated closely to the
+lowest existing forms of savage life.
+
+Then came the Darwinian theory maintaining that the whole history of the
+living world is a history of slow and continuous evolution, chiefly by
+means of incessant strife, from lower to higher forms; that man himself
+had in this way gradually emerged from the humblest forms of the animal
+world; that most of the moral deflections which were attributed to the
+apple in Eden are the remains and traditions of the earlier and lower
+stages of his existence. The theory of continuous ascent from a lower to
+a higher stage took the place of the theory of the Fall as the
+explanation of human history. It is a doctrine which is certainly not
+without hope for the human race. It gives no explanation of the ultimate
+origin of things, and it is in no degree inconsistent with the belief
+either in a Divine and Creative origin or in a settled and Providential
+plan. But it is as far as possible removed from the conception of human
+history and human nature which Christendom during eighteen centuries
+accepted as fundamental truth.
+
+With these things have come influences of another kind. Comparative
+Mythology has accumulated a vast amount of evidence, showing how myths
+and miracles are the natural product of certain stages of human
+history, of certain primitive misconceptions of the course of nature;
+how legends essentially of the same kind, though with some varieties of
+detail, have sprung up in many different quarters, and how they have
+migrated and interacted on each other. Biblical criticism has at the
+same time decomposed and analysed the Jewish writings, assigning to them
+dates and degrees of authority very different from those recognised by
+the Church. It has certainly not impaired their significance as records
+of successive developments of religious and moral progress, nor has it
+diminished their value as expressions of the loftiest and most enduring
+religious sentiments of mankind; but in the eyes of a great section of
+the educated world it has deprived them of the authoritative and
+infallible character that was once attributed to them. At the same time
+historical criticism has brought with it severer standards of proof,
+more efficient means of distinguishing the historical from the fabulous.
+It has traced the phases and variations of religions, and the influences
+that governed them, with a fulness of knowledge and an independence of
+judgment unknown in the past, and it has led its votaries to regard in
+these matters a sceptical and hesitating spirit as a virtue, and
+credulity and easiness of belief as a vice.
+
+This is not a book of theology, and I have no intention of dilating on
+these things. It must, however, be manifest to all who are acquainted
+with contemporary thought how largely these influences have displaced
+theological beliefs among great numbers of educated men; how many things
+that were once widely believed have become absolutely incredible; how
+many that were once supposed to rest on the plane of certainty have now
+sunk to the lower plane of mere probability or perhaps possibility. From
+the time of Galileo downwards, these changes have been denounced as
+incompatible with the whole structure of Christian belief. No less an
+apologist than Bishop Berkeley declared that the belief that the date of
+the existence of the world was approximately that which could be deduced
+from the book of Genesis was one of the fundamental beliefs which could
+not be given up.[58] When the traveller Brydone published his travels in
+Sicily in 1773, conjecturing, from the deposits of lava, that the world
+must be much older than the Mosaic cosmogony admitted, his work was
+denounced as subverting the foundations of the Christian faith. The same
+charges were brought against the earlier geologists, and in our own day
+against the early supporters of the Darwinian theory; and many now
+living can remember the outbursts of indignation against those who first
+introduced the principles of German criticism into English thought, and
+who impugned the historical character and the assumed authorship of the
+Pentateuch.
+
+It is not surprising or unreasonable that it should have been so, for it
+is impossible to deny that these changes have profoundly altered large
+portions of the beliefs that were once regarded as essential. One main
+object of a religion was believed to have been to furnish what may be
+called a theory of the universe--to explain its origin, its destiny, and
+the strange contradictions and imperfections it presents. The Jewish
+theory was a very clear and definite one, but it is certainly not that
+of modern science.
+
+Yet few things are more remarkable than the facility with which these
+successive changes have gradually found their places within the
+Established Church, and how little that Church has been shaken by this
+fact. Even the Darwinian theory, though it has not yet passed into the
+circle of fully established truth, is in its main lines constantly
+mentioned with approbation by the clergy of the Church. The theory of
+evolution largely pervades their teaching. The doctrine that the Bible
+was never intended to teach science or scientific facts, and also the
+main facts and conclusions of modern Biblical criticism, have been
+largely accepted among the most educated clergy. Very few of them would
+now deny the antiquity of the world, the antiquity of man, or the
+antiquity of death, or would maintain that the Mosaic cosmogony was a
+true and literal account of the origin of the globe and of man, or would
+very strenuously argue either for the Mosaic authorship or the
+infallibility of the Pentateuch.
+
+And while changes of this kind have been going on in one direction,
+another great movement has been taking place in an opposite one. The
+Church of England was essentially a Protestant Church; though, being
+constructed more than most other Churches under political influences, by
+successive stages of progress, and with a view to including large and
+varying sections of opinion in its fold, it retained, more than other
+Churches, formularies and tenets derived from the Church it superseded.
+The earnest Protestant and Puritan party which dominated in Scotland
+and in the Continental Reformation, and which refused all compromise
+with Rome, had not become powerful in English public opinion till some
+time after the framework of the Church was established. The spirit of
+compromise and conservatism which already characterised the English
+people; the great part which kings and lawyers played in the formation
+of the Church; their desire to maintain in England a single body,
+comprising men who had broken away from the Papacy but who had in other
+respects no great objection to Roman Catholic forms and doctrines, and
+also men seriously imbued with the strong Protestant feeling of Germany
+and Switzerland; the strange ductility of belief and conduct that
+induced the great majority of the English clergy to retain their
+preferments and avoid persecution during the successive changes of Henry
+VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, all assisted in forming a Church
+of a very composite character. Two distinct theories found their place
+within it. According to one school it was simply the pre-Reformation
+Church purified from certain abuses that had gathered around it,
+organically united with it through a divinely appointed episcopacy,
+resting on an authoritative and ecclesiastical basis, and forming one of
+the three great branches of the Catholic Church. According to the other
+school it was one of several Protestant Churches, retaining indeed such
+portions of the old ecclesiastical organisation as might be justified
+from Scripture, but not regarding them as among the essentials of
+Christianity; agreeing with other Protestant bodies in what was
+fundamental, and differing from them mainly on points which were
+non-essential; accepting cordially the principle that 'the Bible and
+the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,' and at the same time
+separated by the gravest and most vital differences from what they
+deemed the great apostasy of Rome.
+
+It was argued on the one hand that in its ecclesiastical and legal
+organisation the Church in England was identical with the Church in the
+reign of Henry VII.; that there had been no breach of continuity; that
+bishops, and often the same bishops, sat in the same sees before and
+after the Reformation; that the great majority of the parochial clergy
+were unchanged, holding their endowments by the same titles and tenures,
+subject to the same courts, and meeting in Convocation in the same
+manner as their predecessors; that the old Catholic services were merely
+translated and revised, and that although Roman usurpations which had
+never been completely acquiesced in had been decisively rejected, and
+although many superstitious novelties had been removed, the Church of
+England was still the Church of St. Augustine; that it had never, even
+in the darkest period, lost its distinct existence, and that
+supernatural graces and sacerdotal powers denied to all schismatics had
+descended to it through the Episcopacy in an unbroken stream. On the
+other hand it was argued that the essential of a true Church lay in the
+accordance of its doctrines with the language of Scripture and not in
+the methods of Church government, and that whatever might be the case in
+a legal point of view, the theory of the unity of the Church before and
+after the Reformation was in a theological sense a delusion. The Church
+under Henry VII. was emphatically a theocracy or ecclesiastical
+monarchy, the Pope, as the supposed successor of the supposed prince of
+the Apostles, being the very keystone of the spiritual arch. Under Henry
+VIII. and Elizabeth the Church of England had become a kind of
+aristocracy of bishops, governed very really as well as theoretically by
+the Crown, totally cut off from what called itself the Chair of Peter,
+and placed under completely new relations with the Catholic Church of
+Christendom. In this space of time Anglican Christianity had discarded
+not only the Papacy but also great part of what for centuries before the
+change had been deemed vitally and incontestably necessary both in its
+theology and in its devotions. Though much of the old organisation and
+many of the old formularies had been retained, its articles, its
+homilies, the constant teaching of its founders, breathed a spirit of
+unquestionable Protestantism. The Church which remained attached to
+Rome, and which held the same doctrines, practised the same devotions,
+and performed the same ceremonies as the English Church under Henry
+VII., professed to be infallible, and it utterly repudiated all
+connection with the new Church of England, and regarded it as nothing
+more than a Protestant schism; while the Church of England in her
+authorised formularies branded some of the central beliefs and devotions
+of the Roman Church as blasphemous, idolatrous, superstitious and
+deceitful, and was long accustomed to regard that Church as the Church
+of Antichrist; the Harlot of the Apocalypse, drunk with the blood of the
+Saints. Each Church during long periods and to the full measure of its
+powers suppressed or persecuted the other.
+
+In the eyes of the Erastian and also in the eyes of the Puritan the
+theory of the spiritual unity of these two bodies, and the various
+sacerdotal consequences that were inferred from it, seemed incredible,
+nor did the first generation of our reformers shrink from communion,
+sympathy and co-operation with the non-episcopal Protestants of the
+Continent. Although they laid great stress on patristic authority, and
+consented--chiefly through political motives--to leave in the
+Prayer-book many things derived from the older Church, yet the High
+Church theory of Anglicanism is much more the product of the
+seventeenth-century divines than of the reformers, just as Roman
+Catholicism is much more akin to the later fathers than to primitive
+Christianity. No one could doubt on what side were the sympathies and
+what were the opinions of Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Jewell and Hooper,
+and what spirit pervades the articles and the homilies. A Church which
+does not claim to be infallible; which owes its special form chiefly to
+the sagacity of statesmen; in which the supreme tribunal, deciding what
+doctrines may be taught by the clergy, is a secular law court; in which
+the bands of conformity are so loose that the tendencies and sentiments
+of the nation give the complexion to the Church, appears in the eyes of
+men of these schools to have no possible right to claim or share the
+authority of the Church of Rome. It rests on another basis. It must be
+justified on other grounds.
+
+These two distinct schools, however, have subsisted in the Church. Each
+of them can find some support in the Prayer-book, and the old orthodox
+High Church school which was chiefly elaborated and which chiefly
+flourished under the Stuarts, has produced a great part of the most
+learned theology of Christendom, and had in its early days little or no
+tendency to Rome. It was exclusive and repellent on the side of
+Nonconformity, and it placed Church authority very high; but the immense
+majority of its members were intensely loyal to the Anglican Church, and
+lived and died contentedly within its pale. There were, however, always
+in that Church men of another kind whose true ideal lay beyond its
+border. Falkland, in a remarkable speech, delivered in 1640, speaks of
+them with much bitterness. 'Some,' he says, 'have so industriously
+laboured to deduce themselves from Rome that they have given great
+suspicion that in gratitude they desire to return thither, or at least
+to meet it half way. Some have evidently laboured to bring in an English
+though not a Roman Popery; I mean not only the outside and dress of it,
+but equally absolute.... Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily false
+if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to
+the preferments of England, and be so absolutely, directly and cordially
+Papists that it is all that 1,500_l._ a year can do to keep them from
+confessing it.'[59]
+
+No wide secession to Rome, however, followed the development of this
+seventeenth-century school, though it played a large part in the
+nonjuror schism, and with the decay of that schism and under the
+latitudinarian tendencies of the eighteenth century it greatly dwindled.
+Since, however, the Tractarian movement, which carried so many leaders
+of the English Church to Rome, men of Roman sympathies and Roman ideals
+have multiplied within the Church to an extraordinary degree. They have
+not only carried their theological pretensions in the direction of Rome
+much further than the nonjurors; they have also in many cases so
+transformed the old and simple Anglican service by vestments and
+candles, and banners and incense, and genuflexions and whispered
+prayers, that a stranger might well imagine that he was in a Roman
+Catholic church. They have put forward sacerdotal pretensions little, if
+at all, inferior to those of Rome. The whole tendency of their
+devotional literature and thought flows in the Roman channel, and even
+in the most insignificant matters of ceremony and dress they are
+accustomed to pay the greater Church the homage of constant imitation.
+
+It would be unjust to deny that there are some real differences. The
+absolute authority and infallibility of the Pope are sincerely
+repudiated as an usurpation, the ritualist theory only conceding to him
+a primacy among bishops. The discipline and submission to ecclesiastical
+authority also, which so eminently distinguish the Roman Church, are
+wholly wanting in many of its Anglican imitators, and at the same time
+the English sense of truth has proved sufficient to save the party from
+the tolerance and propagation of false miracles and of grossly
+superstitious practices so common in Roman Catholic countries. In this
+last respect, however, it is probable that English and American Roman
+Catholics are almost equally distinguished from Catholics in the
+Southern States of Europe and of America. Still, when all this is
+admitted, it can hardly be denied that there has grown up in a great
+section of the English Church a sympathy with Rome and an antipathy to
+Protestantism and to Protestant types of thought and character utterly
+alien to the spirit of the Reformers and to the doctrinal formularies of
+the Church of England.
+
+It is not very easy to form a just estimate of the extent and depth of
+this movement. There are wide variations in the High Church party; the
+extreme men are not the most numerous and certainly very far from the
+ablest, and many influences other than convinced belief have tended to
+strengthen the party. It has been, indeed, unlike the Tractarian party
+which preceded it, remarkably destitute of literary or theological
+ability, and has added singularly little to the large and noble
+theological literature of the English Church. The mere charm of novelty,
+which is always especially powerful in the field of religion, draws many
+to the ritualistic channel, and thousands who care very little for
+ritualistic doctrines are attracted by the music, the pageantry, the
+pictorial beauty of the ritualistic services. Æsthetic tastes have of
+late years greatly increased in England, and the closing of places of
+amusement on Sunday probably strengthens the craving for more attractive
+services. The extreme High Church party has chiefly fostered and chiefly
+benefited by this desire, but it has extended much more widely. It has
+touched even puritanical and non-episcopal bodies, and it is sometimes
+combined with extremely latitudinarian opinions. There is, indeed, a
+type of mind which finds in such services a happy anodyne for
+half-suppressed doubt. Petitions which in their poignant humiliation and
+profound emotion no longer correspond to the genuine feelings of the
+worshipper, seem attenuated and transformed when they are intoned, and
+creeds which when plainly read shock the understanding and the
+conscience are readily accepted as parts of a musical performance.
+Scepticism as well as belief sometimes fills churches. Large classes who
+have no wish to cut themselves off from religious services have lost all
+interest in the theological distinctions which once were deemed
+supremely important and all strong belief in great parts of dogmatic
+systems, and such men naturally prefer services which by music and
+ornament gratify their tastes and exercise a soothing or stimulating
+influence over the imagination.
+
+The extreme High Church party has, however, other elements of
+attraction. Much of its power is due to the new springs of real
+spiritual life and the new forms of real usefulness and charity that
+grew out of its highly developed sacerdotal system and out of the
+semi-monastic confraternities which at once foster and encourage and
+organise an active zeal. The power of the party in acting not only on
+the cultivated classes but also on the poor is very manifest, and it has
+done much to give the Church of England a democratic character which in
+past generations it did not possess, and which in the conditions of
+modern life is supremely important. The multiplication not only of
+religious services but of communicants, and the great increase in the
+interest taken in Church life in quarters where the Ritualist party
+prevail, cannot reasonably be questioned. Its highly ornate services
+draw many into the churches who never entered them before, and they are
+often combined with a familiar and at the same time impassioned style of
+preaching, something like that of a Franciscan friar or a Methodist
+preacher, which is excellently fitted to act upon the ignorant. If its
+clergy have been distinguished for their insubordination to their
+bishops, if they have displayed in no dubious manner a keen desire to
+aggrandise their own position and authority, it is also but just to add
+that they have been prominent for the zeal and self-sacrifice with which
+they have multiplied services, created confraternities, and penetrated
+into the worst and most obscure haunts of poverty and vice.
+
+The result, however, of all this is that the conflicting tendencies
+which have always been present in the Church have been greatly deepened.
+There are to be found within it men whose opinions can hardly be
+distinguished from simple Deism or Unitarianism, and men who abjure the
+name of Protestant and are only divided by the thinnest of partitions
+from the Roman Church. And this diversity exists in a Church which is
+held together by articles and formularies of the sixteenth century.
+
+It might, perhaps, _a priori_ have been imagined that a Church with so
+much diversity of opinion and of spirit was an enfeebled and
+disintegrated Church, but no candid man will attribute such a character
+to the Church of England. All the signs of corporate vitality are
+abundantly displayed, and it is impossible to deny that it is playing an
+active, powerful, and most useful part in English life. Looking at it
+first of all from the intellectual side, it is plain how large a
+proportion of the best intellect of the country is contented, not only
+to live within it, but to take an active part in its ministrations.
+Compare the amount of higher literature which proceeds from clergymen of
+the Established Church with the amount which proceeds from the vastly
+greater body of Catholic priests scattered over the world; compare the
+place which the English clergy, or laymen deeply imbued with the
+teaching of the Church, hold in English literature with the place which
+Catholic priests, or sincere Catholic laymen, hold in the literature of
+France,--and the contrast will appear sufficiently evident. There is
+hardly a branch of serious English literature in which Anglican clergy
+are not conspicuous. There is nothing in a false and superstitious creed
+incompatible with some forms of literature. It may easily ally itself
+with the genius of a poet or with great beauty of style either hortatory
+or narrative. But in the Church of England literary achievement is
+certainly not restricted to these forms. In the fields of physical
+science, in the fields of moral philosophy, metaphysics, social and even
+political philosophy, and perhaps still more in the fields of history,
+its clergy have won places in the foremost rank. It is notorious that a
+large proportion of the most serious criticism, of the best periodical
+writing in England, is the work of Anglican clergymen. No one, in
+enumerating the leading historians of the present century, would omit
+such names as Milman, Thirlwall and Merivale, in the generation which
+has just passed away, or Creighton and Stubbs among contemporaries, and
+these are only eminent examples of a kind of literature to which the
+Church has very largely contributed. Their histories are not specially
+conspicuous for beauty of style, and not only conspicuous for their
+profound learning; they are marked to an eminent degree by judgment,
+criticism, impartiality, a desire for truth, a skill in separating the
+proved from the false or the merely probable. Compare them with the
+chief histories that have been written by Catholic priests. In past ages
+some of the greatest works of patient, lifelong industry in all literary
+history were due to the Catholic priesthood, and especially to members
+of the monastic orders; even in modern times they have produced some
+works of great learning, of great dialectic skill, and of great beauty
+of style; but with scarcely an exception these works bear upon them the
+stamp of an advocate and are written for the purpose of proving a point,
+concealing or explaining away the faults on one side, and bringing into
+disproportioned relief those of the other. No one would look in them for
+a candid estimate of the merits of an opponent or for a full statement
+of a hostile case. Döllinger, who would probably once have been cited as
+the greatest historian the Catholic priesthood had produced in the
+nineteenth century, died under the anathema of his Church; and how large
+a proportion of the best writing in modern English Catholicism has come
+from writers who have been brought up in Protestant universities and who
+have learnt their skill in the Anglican Church!
+
+It is at least one great test of a living Church that the best intellect
+of the country can enter into its ministry, that it contains men who in
+nearly all branches of literature are looked upon by lay scholars with
+respect or admiration. It is said that the number of young men of
+ability who take orders is diminishing, and that this is due, not merely
+to the agricultural depression which has made the Church much less
+desirable as a profession, and indeed in many cases almost impossible
+for those who have not some private fortune; not merely to the
+competitive examination system, which has opened out vast and attractive
+fields of ambition to the ablest laymen,--but also to the wide
+divergence of men of the best intellect from the doctrines of the
+Church, and the conviction that they cannot honestly subscribe its
+articles and recite its formularies. But although this is, I believe,
+true, it is also true that there is no other Church which has shown
+itself so capable of attracting and retaining the services of men of
+general learning, criticism and ability. One of the most important
+features of the English ecclesiastical system has been the education of
+those who are intended for the Church, in common with other students in
+the great national universities. Other systems of education may produce
+a clergy of greater professional learning and more intense and exclusive
+zeal, but no other system of education is so efficacious in maintaining
+a general harmony of thought and tendency between the Church and the
+average educated opinion of the nation.
+
+Take another test. Compare the _Guardian_, which represents better than
+any other paper the opinions of moderate Churchmen, with the papers
+which are most read by the French priesthood and have most influence on
+their opinions. Certainly few English journalists have equalled in
+ability Louis Veuillot, and few papers have exercised so great an
+influence over the clergy of the Church as the _Univers_ at the time
+when he directed it; but no one who read those savagely scurrilous and
+intolerant pages, burning with an impotent hatred of all the progressive
+and liberal tendencies of the time, shrinking from no misrepresentation
+of fact and from no apology for crime if it was in the interest of the
+Church, could fail to perceive how utterly out of harmony it was with
+the best lay thought of France. English religious journalism has
+sometimes, though in a very mitigated degree, exhibited some of these
+characteristics, but no one who reads the _Guardian_, which I suppose
+appeals to a larger clerical public than any other paper, can fail to
+realise the contrast. It is not merely that it is habitually written in
+the style and temper of a gentleman, but that it reflects most clearly
+in its criticism, its impartiality, its tone of thought, the best
+intellectual influences of the time. Men may agree or differ about its
+politics or its theology, but no one who reads it can fail to admit that
+it is thoroughly in touch with cultivated lay opinion, and it is in fact
+a favourite paper of many who care only for its secular aspects.
+
+The intellectual ability, however, included among the ministers of a
+Church, though one test, is by no means a decisive and infallible one of
+its religious life. During the period of the Renaissance, when genuine
+belief in the Catholic Church had sunk to nearly its lowest point, most
+men of literary tastes and talents were either members of the priesthood
+or of the monastic orders. This was not due to any fervour of belief,
+but simply to the fact that the Church at that time furnished almost the
+only sphere in which a literary life could be pursued with comfort,
+without molestation, and with some adequate reward. Much of the literary
+ability found in the English Church is unquestionably due to the
+attraction it offers and the facilities it gives to those who simply
+wish for a studious life. The abolition of many clerical sinecures, and
+the greatly increased activity of clerical duty imposed by contemporary
+opinion, have no doubt rendered the profession less desirable from this
+point of view; but even now there is no other profession outside the
+universities which lends itself so readily to a literary life, and a
+great proportion of the most eminent thinkers and writers in the Church
+of England are eminent in fields that have little or no connection with
+theology.
+
+Other tests of a flourishing Church are needed, but they can easily be
+found. Political power is one test, though it is a very coarse and very
+deceptive one. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the most
+superstitious creeds are often those which exercise the greatest
+political influence, for they are those in which the priesthood acquires
+the most absolute authority. Nor does the decline of superstition among
+the educated classes always bring with it a corresponding decline in
+ecclesiastical influence. There have been instances, both in Pagan and
+Christian times, of a sceptical and highly educated ruling class
+supporting and allying themselves with a superstitious Church as the
+best means of governing or moralising the masses. Such Churches, by
+their skilful organisation, by their ascendency over individual rulers,
+or by their political alliances, have long exercised an enormous
+influence, and in a democratic age the preponderance of political power
+is steadily passing from the most educated classes. At the same time, in
+a highly civilised and perfectly free country, in which all laws of
+religious disqualification and coercion have disappeared, and all
+questions of religion are submitted to perpetual discussion, the
+political power which the Church of England retains at least proves that
+she has a vast weight of genuine and earnest opinion behind her. No
+politician will deny the strength with which the united or greatly
+preponderating influence of the Church can support or oppose a party. It
+has been said by a cynical observer that the three things outside their
+own families that average Englishmen value the most are rank, money, and
+the Church of England, and certainly no good observer will form a low
+estimate of the strength or earnestness of the Church feeling in every
+section of the English people.
+
+Still less can it be denied that the Church retains in a high degree its
+educational influence. For a long period national education was almost
+wholly in its hands, and, since all disqualifications and most
+privileges have been abolished, it still exercises a part in English
+education which excites the alarm of some and the admiration of others.
+It has thrown itself heartily into the new political conditions, and the
+vast number of voluntary schools established under clerical influence,
+and the immense sums that are annually raised for clerical purposes,
+show beyond all doubt the amount of support and enthusiasm behind it. In
+every branch of higher education its clergy are conspicuous, and their
+influence in training the nation is not confined to the pulpit, the
+university, or the school. No candid observer of English life will
+doubt the immense effect of the parochial system in sustaining the moral
+level both of principle and practice, and the multitude, activity, and
+value of the philanthropic and moralising agencies which are wholly or
+largely due to the Anglican Church.
+
+Nor can it be reasonably doubted that the Church has been very
+efficacious in promoting that spiritual life which, whatever opinion men
+may form of its origin and meaning, is at least one of the great
+realities of human nature. The power of a religion is not to be solely
+or mainly judged by its corporate action; by the institutions it
+creates; by the part which it plays in the government of the world. It
+is to be found much more in its action on the individual soul, and
+especially in those times and circumstances when man is most isolated
+from society. It is in furnishing the ideals and motives of individual
+life; in guiding and purifying the emotions; in promoting habits of
+thought and feeling that rise above the things of earth; in the comfort
+it can give in age, sorrow, disappointment and bereavement; in the
+seasons of sickness, weakness, declining faculties, and approaching
+death, that its power is most felt. No one creed or Church has the
+monopoly of this power, though each has often tried to identify it with
+something peculiar to itself. It maybe found in the Catholic and in the
+Quaker, in the High Anglican who attributes it to his sacramental
+system, and in the Evangelical in whose eyes that system holds only a
+very subordinate place. All that need here be said is that no one who
+studies the devotional literature of the English Church, or who has
+watched the lives of its more devout members, will doubt that this life
+can largely exist and flourish within its pale.
+
+The attitude which men who have been born within that Church, but who
+have come to dissent from large portions of its theology, should bear to
+this great instrument of good, is certainly not less perplexing than the
+questions we have been considering in the preceding chapters. The most
+difficult position is, of course, that of those who are its actual
+ministers and who have subscribed its formularies. Each man so situated
+must judge in the light of his own conscience. There is a great
+difference between the case of men who accept such a position in the
+Church though they differ fundamentally from its tenets, and the case of
+men who, having engaged in its service, find their old convictions
+modified or shaken, perhaps very gradually, by the advance of science or
+by more matured thought and study. The stringency of the old form of
+subscription has been much mitigated by an Act of 1865 which substituted
+a general declaration that the subscriber believed in the doctrine of
+the Church as a whole, for a declaration that he believed 'all and
+everything' in the Articles and the Prayer-book. The Church of England
+does not profess to be an infallible Church; it does profess to be a
+National Church representing and including great bodies of more or less
+divergent opinion, and the whole tendency of legal decisions since the
+Gorham case has been to enlarge the circle of permissible opinion. The
+possibility of the National Church remaining in touch with the more
+instructed and intellectual portions of the community depends mainly on
+the latitude of opinion that is accorded to its clergy, and on their
+power of welcoming and adopting new knowledge, and it may reasonably be
+maintained that few greater calamities can befall a nation than the
+severance of its higher intelligence from religious influences.
+
+It should be remembered, too, that on the latitudinarian side the
+changes that take place in the teaching of the Church consist much less
+in the open repudiation of old doctrines than in their silent
+evanescence. They drop out of the exhortations of the pulpit. The
+relative importance of different portions of the religious teaching is
+changed. Dogma sinks into the background. Narratives which are no longer
+seriously believed become texts for moral disquisitions. The
+introspective habits and the stress laid on purely ecclesiastical duties
+which once preponderated disappear. The teaching of the pulpit tends
+rather to the formation of active, useful and unselfish lives; to a
+clearer insight into the great masses of remediable suffering and need
+that still exist in the world; to the duty of carrying into all the
+walks of secular life a nobler and more unselfish spirit; to a habit of
+judging men and Churches mainly by their fruits and very little by their
+beliefs. The disintegration or decadence of old religious beliefs which
+had long been closely associated with moral teaching always brings with
+it grave moral dangers, but those dangers are greatly diminished when
+the change of belief is effected by a gradual transition, without any
+violent convulsion or disruption severing men from their old religious
+observances. Such a transition has silently taken place in England
+among great numbers of educated men, and in some measure under the
+influence of the clergy. Nor has it, I think, weakened the Church. The
+standard of duty among such men has not sunk, but has in most
+departments perceptibly risen: their zeal has not diminished, though it
+flows rather in philanthropic than in purely ecclesiastical channels.
+The conviction that the special dogmas which divided other Protestant
+bodies from the Establishment rested on no substantial basis and have no
+real importance tells in favour of the larger and the more liberal
+Church, and the comprehensiveness which allows highly accentuated
+sacerdotalism and latitudinarianism in the same Church is in the eyes of
+many of them rather an element of strength than of weakness.
+
+Few men have watched the religious tendencies of the time with a keener
+eye than Cardinal Newman, and no man hated with a more intense hatred
+the latitudinarian tendencies which he witnessed. His judgment of their
+effect on the Establishment is very remarkable. In a letter to his
+friend Isaac Williams he says: 'Everything I hear makes me fear that
+latitudinarian opinions are spreading furiously in the Church of
+England. I grieve deeply at it. The Anglican Church has been a most
+useful breakwater against Scepticism. The time might come when you, as
+well as I, might expect that it would be said above, "Why cumbereth it
+the ground?" but at present it upholds far more truth in England than
+any other form of religion would, and than the Catholic Roman Church
+could. But what I fear is that it is _tending_ to a powerful
+Establishment teaching direct error, and more powerful than it has ever
+been; thrice powerful because it does teach error.'[60]
+
+It is, however, of course, evident that the latitude of opinion which
+may be reasonably claimed by the clergy of a Church encumbered with many
+articles and doctrinal formularies is not unlimited, and each man must
+for himself draw the line. The fact, too, that the Church is an
+Established Church imposes some special obligations on its ministers. It
+is their first duty to celebrate public worship in such a form that all
+members of the Church of England may be able to join in it. Whatever
+interpretations may be placed upon the ceremonies of the Church, those
+ceremonies, at least, should be substantially the same. A stranger who
+enters a church which he has never before seen should be able to feel
+that he is certain of finding public worship intelligibly and decently
+performed, as in past generations it has been celebrated in all sections
+of the Established Church. It has, in my opinion, been a gross scandal,
+following a gross neglect of duty, that this primary obligation has been
+defied, and that services are held in English churches which would have
+been almost unrecognisable by the churchmen of a former generation, and
+which are manifest attempts to turn the English public worship into an
+imitation of the Romish Mass. Men have a perfect right, within the
+widest limits, to perform what religious services and to preach what
+religious doctrines they please, but they have not a right to do so in
+an Established Church.
+
+The censorship of opinions is another thing, and in the conditions of
+English life it has never been very effectively maintained. The latitude
+of opinion granted in an Established Church is, and ought to be, very
+great, but it is, I think, obvious that on some topics a greater degree
+of reticence of expression should be observed by a clergyman addressing
+a miscellaneous audience from the pulpit of an Established Church than
+need be required of him in private life or even in his published books.
+
+The attitude of laymen whose opinions have come to diverge widely from
+the Church formularies is less perplexing, and except in as far as the
+recent revival of sacerdotal pretensions has produced a reaction, there
+has, if I mistake not, of late years been a decided tendency in the best
+and most cultivated lay opinion of this kind to look with increasing
+favour on the Established Church. The complete abolition of the
+religious and political disqualifications which once placed its
+maintenance in antagonism with the interests of large sections of the
+people; the abolition of the indelibility of orders which excluded
+clergymen who changed their views from all other means of livelihood;
+the greater elasticity of opinion permitted within its pale; and the
+elimination from the statute-book of nearly all penalties and
+restrictions resting solely upon ecclesiastical grounds,--have all
+tended to diminish with such men the objections to the Church. It is a
+Church which does not injure those who are external to it, or interfere
+with those who are mere nominal adherents. It is more and more looked
+upon as a machine of well-organised beneficence, discharging efficiently
+and without corruption functions of supreme utility, and constituting
+one of the main sources of spiritual and moral life in the community.
+None of the modern influences of society can be said to have superseded
+it. Modern experience has furnished much evidence of the insufficiency
+of mere intellectual education if it is unaccompanied by the education
+of character, and it is on this side that modern education is most
+defective. While it undoubtedly makes men far more keenly sensible than
+in the past to the vast inequalities of human lots, the habit of
+constantly holding out material prizes as its immediate objects, and the
+disappearance of those coercive methods of education which once
+disciplined the will, make it perhaps less efficient as an instrument of
+moral amelioration.
+
+Some habits of thought also, that have grown rapidly among educated men,
+have tended powerfully in the same direction. The sharp contrasts
+between true and false in matters of theology have been considerably
+attenuated. The point of view has changed. It is believed that in the
+history of the world gross and material conceptions of religion have
+been not only natural, but indispensable, and that it is only by a
+gradual process of intellectual evolution that the masses of men become
+prepared for higher and purer conceptions. Superstition and illusion
+play no small part in holding together the great fabric of society.
+'Every falsehood,' it has been said, 'is reduced to a certain
+malleability by an alloy of truth,' and, on the other hand, truths of
+the utmost moment are, in certain stages of the world's history, only
+operative when they are clothed with a vesture of superstition. The
+Divine Spirit filters down to the human heart through a gross and
+material medium. And what is true of different stages of human history
+is not less true of different contemporary strata of knowledge and
+intelligence. In spite of democratic declamation about the equality of
+man, it is more and more felt that the same kind of teaching is not good
+for everyone. Truth, when undiluted, is too strong a medicine for many
+minds. Some things which a highly cultivated intellect would probably
+discard, and discard without danger, are essential to the moral being of
+multitudes. There is in all great religious systems something that is
+transitory and something that is eternal. Theological interpretations of
+the phenomena of outward nature which surround and influence us, and
+mythological narratives which have been handed down to us from a remote,
+uncritical and superstitious past, may be transformed or discredited;
+but there are elements in religion which have their roots much less in
+the reason of man than in his sorrows and his affections, and are the
+expression of wants, moral appetites and aspirations which are an
+essential, indestructible part of his nature.
+
+No one, I think, can doubt that this way of thinking, whether it be
+right or wrong, has very widely spread through educated Europe, and it
+is a habit of thought which commonly strengthens with age. Young men
+discuss religious questions simply as questions of truth or falsehood.
+In later life they more frequently accept their creed as a working
+hypothesis of life; as a consolation in innumerable calamities; as the
+one supposition under which life is not a melancholy anti-climax; as
+the indispensable sanction of moral obligation; as the gratification and
+reflection of needs, instincts and longings which are planted in the
+deepest recesses of human nature; as one of the chief pillars on which
+society rests. The proselytising, the aggressive, the critical spirit
+diminishes. Very often they deliberately turn away their thoughts from
+questions which appear to them to lead only to endless controversy or to
+mere negative conclusions, and base their moral life on some strong
+unselfish interest for the benefit of their kind. In active, useful and
+unselfish work they find the best refuge from the perplexities of belief
+and the best field for the cultivation of their moral nature, and work
+done for the benefit of others seldom fails to react powerfully on their
+own happiness. Nor is it always those who have most completely abandoned
+dogmatic systems who are the least sensible to the moral beauty which
+has grown up around them. The music of the village church, which sounds
+so harsh and commonplace to the worshipper within, sometimes fills with
+tears the eyes of the stranger who sits without, listening among the
+tombs.
+
+It is difficult to say how far the partial truce which has now fallen in
+England over the great antagonisms of belief is likely to be permanent.
+No one who knows the world can be insensible to the fact that a large
+and growing proportion of those who habitually attend our religious
+services have come to diverge very widely, though in many different
+degrees, from the beliefs which are expressed or implied in the
+formularies they use. Custom, fashion, the charm of old associations,
+the cravings of their own moral or spiritual nature, a desire to
+support a useful system of moral training, to set a good example to
+their children, their household, or their neighbours, keep them in their
+old place when the beliefs which they profess with their lips have in a
+great measure ebbed away. I do not undertake to blame or to judge them.
+Individual conscience and character and particular circumstances have,
+in these matters, a decisive voice. But there are times when the
+difference between professed belief and real belief is too great for
+endurance, and when insincerity and half-belief affect seriously the
+moral character of a nation. 'The deepest, nay, the only theme of the
+world's history, to which all others are subordinate,' said Goethe, 'is
+the conflict of faith and unbelief. The epochs in which faith, in
+whatever form it may be, prevails, are the marked epochs in human
+history, full of heart-stirring memories and of substantial gains for
+all after times. The epochs in which unbelief, in whatever form it may
+be, prevails, even when for the moment they put on the semblance of
+glory and success, inevitably sink into insignificance in the eyes of
+posterity, which will not waste its thoughts on things barren and
+unfruitful.'
+
+Many of my readers have probably felt the force of such considerations
+and the moral problems which they suggest, and there have been perhaps
+moments when they have asked themselves the question of the poet--
+
+
+     Tell me, my soul, what is thy creed?
+     Is it a faith or only a need?
+
+
+They will reflect, however, that a need, if it be universally felt when
+human nature is in its highest and purest state, furnishes some basis
+of belief, and also that no man can venture to assign limits to the
+transformations which religion may undergo without losing its essence or
+its power. Even in the field of morals these have been very great,
+though universal custom makes us insensible to the extent to which we
+have diverged from a literal observance of Evangelical precepts. We
+should hardly write over the Savings Bank, 'Take no thought for the
+morrow, for the morrow will take thought for itself,' or over the Bank
+of England, 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' 'How
+hardly shall a rich man enter into the Kingdom of God,' or over the
+Foreign Office, or the Law Court, or the prison, 'Resist not evil,' 'He
+that smiteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also,' 'He
+that taketh away thy coat let him have thy cloak also.' Can it be said
+that the whole force and meaning of such words are represented by an
+industrial society in which the formation of habits of constant
+providence with the object of averting poverty or increasing comfort is
+deemed one of the first of duties and a main element and measure of
+social progress; in which the indiscriminate charity which encourages
+mendicancy and discourages habits of forethought and thrift is far more
+seriously condemned than an industrial system based on the keenest, the
+most deadly, and often the most malevolent competition; in which wealth
+is universally sought, and universally esteemed a good and not an evil,
+provided only it is honestly obtained and wisely and generously used; in
+which, although wanton aggression and a violent and quarrelsome temper
+are no doubt condemned, it is esteemed the duty of every good citizen
+to protect his rights whenever they are unjustly infringed; in which war
+and the preparation for war kindle the most passionate enthusiasm and
+absorb a vast proportion of the energies of Christendom, and in which no
+Government could remain a week in power if it did not promptly resent
+the smallest insult to the national flag?
+
+It is a question of a different kind whether the sacerdotal spirit which
+has of late years so largely spread in the English Church can extend
+without producing a violent disruption. To cut the tap roots of
+priestcraft was one of the main aims and objects of the Reformation,
+and, for reasons I have already stated, I do not believe that the party
+which would re-establish it has by any means the strength that has been
+attributed to it. It is true that the Broad Church party, though it
+reflects faithfully the views of large numbers of educated laymen, has
+never exercised an influence in active Church life at all proportionate
+to the eminence of its leading representatives. It is true also that the
+Evangelical party has in a very remarkable degree lost its old place in
+the Anglican pulpit and in religious literature, though its tenets still
+form the staple of the preaching of the Salvation Army and of most other
+street preachers who exercise a real and widespread influence over the
+poor. But the middle and lower sections of English society are, I
+believe, at bottom, profoundly hostile to priestcraft; and although the
+dread of Popery has diminished, they are very far from being ready to
+acquiesce in any attempt to restore the dominion which their fathers
+discarded.
+
+In one respect, indeed, sacerdotalism in the Anglican Church is a worse
+thing than in the Roman Church, for it is undisciplined and unregulated.
+The history of the Church abundantly shows the dangers that have sprung
+from the Confessional, though the Roman Catholic will maintain that its
+habitually restraining and moralising influence greatly outweighs these
+occasional abuses. But in the Roman Church the practice of confession is
+carried on under the most severe ecclesiastical supervision and
+discipline. Confession can only be made to a celibate priest of mature
+age, who is bound to secrecy by the most solemn oath; who, except in
+cases of grave illness, confesses only in an open church; and who has
+gone through a long course of careful education specially and skilfully
+designed to fit him for the duty. None of these conditions are observed
+in Anglican Confession.
+
+In other respects, indeed, the sacerdotal spirit is never likely to be
+quite the same as in the Roman Church. A married clergy, who have mixed
+in all the lay influences of an English university, and who still take
+part in the pursuits, studies, social intercourse and amusements of
+laymen, are not likely to form a separate caste or to constitute a very
+formidable priesthood. It is perhaps a little difficult to treat their
+pretensions with becoming gravity, and the atmosphere of unlimited
+discussion which envelops Englishmen through their whole lives has
+effectually destroyed the danger of coercive and restrictive laws
+directed against opinion. Moral coercion and the tendency to interfere
+by law on moral grounds with the habits of men, even when those habits
+in no degree interfere with others, have increased. It is one of the
+marked tendencies of Anglo-Saxon democracy, and it is very far from
+being peculiar to, or even specially prominent in, any one Church. But
+the desire to repress the expression of opinions by force, which for so
+many centuries marked with blood and fire the power of mediæval
+sacerdotalism, is wholly alien to modern English nature. Amid all the
+fanaticisms, exaggerations, and superstitions of belief, this kind of
+coercion, at least, is never likely to be formidable, nor do I believe
+that in the most extreme section of the sacerdotal clergy there is any
+desire for it. There has been one significant contrast between the
+history of Catholicism and Anglicanism in the present century. In the
+Catholic Church the Ultramontane element has steadily dominated,
+restricting liberty of opinion, and important tenets which were once
+undefined by the Church, and on which sincere Catholics had some
+latitude of opinion, have been brought under the iron yoke. This is no
+doubt largely due to the growth of scepticism and indifference, which
+have made the great body of educated laymen hostile or indifferent to
+the Church, and have thrown its management mainly into the hands of the
+priesthood and the more bigoted, ignorant and narrow-minded laymen. But
+in the Anglican Church educated laymen are much less alienated from
+Church life, and a tribunal which is mainly lay exercises the supreme
+authority. As a consequence of these conditions, although the sacerdotal
+element has greatly increased, the latitude of opinion within the Church
+has steadily grown.
+
+At the same time, it is difficult to believe that serious dangers do not
+await the Church if the unprotestantising influences that have spread
+within it continue to extend. It is not likely that the nation will
+continue to give its support to the Church if that Church in its main
+tendencies cuts itself off from the Reformation. The conversions to
+Catholicism in England, though probably much exaggerated, have been very
+numerous, and it is certainly not surprising that it should be so. If
+the Church of Rome permitted Protestantism to be constantly taught in
+her pulpits, and Protestant types of worship and character to be
+habitually held up to admiration, there can be little doubt that many of
+her worshippers would be shaken. If the Church of England becomes in
+general what it already is in some of its churches, it is not likely
+that English public opinion will permanently acquiesce in its privileged
+position in the State. If it ceases to be a Protestant Church, it will
+not long remain an established one, and its disestablishment would
+probably be followed by a disruption in which opinions would be more
+sharply defined, and the latitude of belief and the spirit of compromise
+that now characterise our English religious life might be seriously
+impaired.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[58] _Alciphron_, 6th Dialogue.
+
+[59] Nalsons's _Collections_, i. 769, February 9, 1640.
+
+[60] _Autobiography of Isaac Williams_, p. 132. This letter was written
+in 1863.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE MANAGEMENT OF CHARACTER
+
+
+Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and
+management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it
+should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a
+calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the
+self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by
+the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognise his powers for
+good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no
+power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognise that this
+power is not unlimited. Man is like a card-player who receives from
+Nature his cards--his disposition, his circumstances, the strength or
+weakness of his will, of his mind, and of his body. The game of life is
+one of blended chance and skill. The best player will be defeated if he
+has hopelessly bad cards, but in the long run the skill of the player
+will not fail to tell. The power of man over his character bears much
+resemblance to his power over his body. Men come into the world with
+bodies very unequal in their health and strength; with hereditary
+dispositions to disease; with organs varying greatly in their normal
+condition. At the same time a temperate or intemperate life, skilful or
+unskilful regimen, physical exercises well adapted to strengthen the
+weaker parts, physical apathy, vicious indulgence, misdirected or
+excessive effort, will all in their different ways alter his bodily
+condition and increase or diminish his chances of disease and premature
+death. The power of will over character is, however, stronger, or, at
+least, wider than its power over the body. There are organs which lie
+wholly beyond its influence; there are diseases over which it can
+exercise no possible influence, but there is no part of our moral
+constitution which we cannot in some degree influence or modify.
+
+It has often seemed to me that diversities of taste throw much light on
+the basis of character. Why is it that the same dish gives one man keen
+pleasure and to another is loathsome and repulsive? To this simple
+question no real answer can be given. It is a fact of our nature that
+one fruit, or meat, or drink will give pleasure to one palate and none
+whatever to another. At the same time, while the original and natural
+difference is undoubted, there are many differences which are wholly or
+largely due to particular and often transitory causes. Dishes have an
+attraction or the reverse because they are associated with old
+recollections or habits. Habit will make a Frenchman like his melon with
+salt, while an Englishman prefers it with sugar. An old association of
+ideas will make an Englishman shrink from eating a frog or a snail,
+though he would probably like each if he ate it without knowing it, and
+he could easily learn to do so. The kind of cookery which one age or one
+nation generally likes, another age or another nation finds distasteful.
+The eye often governs the taste, and a dish which, when seen, excites
+intense repulsion, would have no such repulsion to a blind man. Every
+one who has moved much about the world, and especially in uncivilised
+countries, will get rid of many old antipathies, will lose the
+fastidiousness of his taste, and will acquire new and genuine tastes.
+The original innate difference is not wholly destroyed, but it is
+profoundly and variously modified.
+
+These changes of taste are very analogous to what takes place in our
+moral dispositions. They are for the most part in themselves simply
+external to morals, though there is at least one conspicuous exception.
+Many--it is to be hoped most--men might spend their lives with full
+access to intoxicating liquors without even the temptation of getting
+drunk. Apart from all considerations of religion, morals, social,
+physical, or intellectual consequences, they abstain from doing so
+simply as a matter of taste. With other men the pleasure of excessive
+drinking is such that it requires an heroic effort of the will to resist
+it. There are men who not only are so constituted that it is their
+greatest pleasure, but who are even born with a craving for drink. In no
+form is the terrible fact of heredity more clearly or more tragically
+displayed. Many, too, who had originally no such craving gradually
+acquire it: sometimes by mere social influence, which makes excessive
+drinking the habit of their circle; more frequently through depression
+or sorrow, which gives men a longing for some keen pleasure in which
+they can forget themselves; or through the jaded habit of mind and body
+which excessive work produces, or through the dreary, colourless,
+joyless surroundings of sordid poverty. Drink and the sensual pleasures,
+if viciously indulged, produce (doubtless through physical causes) an
+intense craving for their gratification. This, however, is not the case
+with all our pleasures. Many are keenly enjoyed when present, yet not
+seriously missed when absent. Sometimes, too, the effect of
+over-indulgence is to vitiate and deaden the palate, so that what was
+once pleasing ceases altogether to be an object of desire. This, too,
+has its analogue in other things. We have a familiar example in the
+excessive novel-reader, who begins with a kind of mental intoxication,
+and who ends with such a weariness that he finds it a serious effort to
+read the books which were once his strongest temptation.
+
+Tastes of the palate also naturally change with age and with the
+accompanying changes of the body. The schoolboy who bitterly repines
+because the smallness of his allowance restricts his power of buying
+tarts and sweetmeats will probably grow into a man who, with many
+shillings in his pocket, daily passes the confectioner's shop without
+the smallest desire to enter it.
+
+It is evident that there is a close analogy between these things and
+that collection of likes and dislikes, moral and intellectual, which
+forms the primal base of character, and which mainly determines the
+complexion of our lives. As Marcus Aurelius said: 'Who can change the
+desires of man?' That which gives the strongest habitual pleasure,
+whether it be innate or acquired, will in the great majority of cases
+ultimately dominate. Certain things will always be intensely
+pleasurable, and certain other things indifferent or repellent, and this
+magnetism is the true basis of character, and with the majority of men
+it mainly determines conduct. By the associations of youth and by other
+causes these natural likings and dislikings may be somewhat modified,
+but even in youth our power is very limited, and in later life it is
+much less. No real believer in free-will will hold that man is an
+absolute slave to his desires. No man who knows the world will deny that
+with average man the strongest passion or desire will prevail--happy
+when that desire is not a vice.
+
+Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great
+task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which
+are most productive of happiness in life. Here, as in most other things,
+opposite exaggerations are to be avoided. There is such a thing as
+looking forward too rigidly and too exclusively to the future--to a
+future that may never arrive. This is the great fault of the
+over-educationist, who makes early life a burden and a toil, and also of
+those who try to impose on youth the tastes and pleasures of the man.
+Youth has its own pleasures, which will always give it most enjoyment,
+and a happy youth is in itself an end. It is the time when the power of
+enjoyment is most keen, and it is often accompanied by such extreme
+sensitiveness that the sufferings of the child for what seem the most
+trivial causes probably at least equal in acuteness, though not in
+durability, the sufferings of a man. Many a parent standing by the
+coffin of his child has felt with bitterness how much of the measure of
+enjoyment that short life might have known has been cut off by an
+injudicious education. And even if adult life is attained, the evils of
+an unhappy childhood are seldom wholly compensated. The pleasures of
+retrospect are among the most real we possess, and it is around our
+childish days that our fondest associations naturally cluster. An early
+over-strain of our powers often leaves behind it lasting distortion or
+weakness, and a sad childhood introduces into the character elements of
+morbidness and bitterness that will not disappear.
+
+The first great rule in judging of pleasures is that so well expressed
+by Seneca: 'Sic præsentibus utaris voluptatibus ut futuris non
+noceas'--so to use present pleasures as not to impair future ones.
+Drunkenness, sensuality, gambling, habitual extravagance and
+self-indulgence, if they become the pleasures of youth, will almost
+infallibly lead to the ruin of a life. Pleasures that are in themselves
+innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main
+object of pursuit.
+
+In starting in life we are apt to attach a disproportionate value to
+tastes, pleasures, and ideals that can only be even approximately
+satisfied in youth, health, and strength. We have, I think, an example
+of this in the immense place which athletic games and out-of-door sports
+have taken in modern English life. They are certainly not things to be
+condemned. They have the direct effect of giving a large amount of
+intense and innocent pleasure, and they have indirect effects which are
+still more important. In so far as they raise the level of physical
+strength and health, and dispel the morbidness of temperament which is
+so apt to accompany a sedentary life and a diseased or inert frame, they
+contribute powerfully to lasting happiness. They play a considerable
+part in the formation of friendships which is one of the best fruits of
+the period between boyhood and mature manhood. Some of them give lessons
+of courage, perseverance, energy, self-restraint, and cheerful
+acquiescence in disappointment and defeat that are of no small value in
+the formation of character, and when they are not associated with
+gambling they have often the inestimable advantage of turning young men
+away from vicious pleasures. At the same time it can hardly be doubted
+that they hold an exaggerated prominence in the lives of young
+Englishmen of the present generation. It is not too much to say that
+among large sections of the students at our Universities, and at a time
+when intellectual ambition ought to be most strong and when the
+acquisition of knowledge is most important, proficiency in cricket or
+boating or football is more prized than any intellectual achievement. I
+have heard a good judge, who had long been associated with English
+University life, express his opinion that during the last forty or fifty
+years the relative intellectual position of the upper and middle classes
+in England has been materially changed, owing to the disproportioned
+place which outdoor amusements have assumed in the lives of the former.
+It is the impression of very competent judges that a genuine love,
+reverence and enthusiasm for intellectual things is less common among
+the young men of the present day than it was in the days of their
+fathers. The predominance of the critical spirit which chills
+enthusiasm, and still more the cram system which teaches young men to
+look on the prizes that are to be won by competitive examinations as the
+supreme end of knowledge, no doubt largely account for this, but much
+is also due to the extravagant glorification of athletic games.
+
+If we compare the class of pleasures I have described with the taste for
+reading and kindred intellectual pleasures, the superiority of the
+latter is very manifest. To most young men, it is true, a game will
+probably give at least as much pleasure as a book. Nor must we measure
+the pleasure of reading altogether by the language of the genuine
+scholar. It is not every one who could say, like Gibbon, that he would
+not exchange his love of reading for all the wealth of the Indies. Very
+many would agree with him; but Gibbon was a man with an intense natural
+love of knowledge, and the weak health of his early life intensified
+this predominant passion. But while the tastes which require physical
+strength decline or pass with age, that for reading steadily grows. It
+is illimitable in the vistas of pleasure it opens; it is one of the most
+easily satisfied, one of the cheapest, one of the least dependent on
+age, seasons, and the varying conditions of life. It cheers the invalid
+through years of weakness and confinement; illuminates the dreary hours
+of the sleepless night; stores the mind with pleasant thoughts, banishes
+ennui, fills up the unoccupied interstices and enforced leisures of an
+active life; makes men for a time at least forget their anxieties and
+sorrows, and if it is judiciously managed it is one of the most powerful
+means of training character and disciplining and elevating thought. It
+is eminently a pleasure which is not only good in itself but enhances
+many others. By extending the range of our knowledge, by enlarging our
+powers of sympathy and appreciation, it adds incalculably to the
+pleasures of society, to the pleasures of travel, to the pleasures of
+art, to the interest we take in the vast variety of events which form
+the great world-drama around us.
+
+To acquire this taste in early youth is one of the best fruits of
+education, and it is especially useful when the taste for reading
+becomes a taste for knowledge, and when it is accompanied by some
+specialisation and concentration and by some exercise of the powers of
+observation. 'Many tastes and one hobby' is no bad ideal to be aimed at.
+The boy who learns to collect and classify fossils, or flowers, or
+insects, who has acquired a love for chemical experiments, who has begun
+to form a taste for some particular kind or department of knowledge, has
+laid the foundation of much happiness in life.
+
+In the selection of pleasures and the cultivation of tastes much wisdom
+is shown in choosing in such a way that each should form a complement to
+the others; that different pleasures should not clash, but rather cover
+different areas and seasons of life; that each should tend to correct
+faults or deficiencies of character which the others may possibly
+produce. The young man who starts in life with keen literary tastes and
+also with a keen love of out-of-door sports, and who possesses the means
+of gratifying each, has perhaps provided himself with as many elements
+of happiness as mere amusements can ever furnish. One set of pleasures,
+however, often kills the capacity for enjoying others, and some which in
+themselves are absolutely innocent, by blunting the enjoyment of better
+things, exercise an injurious influence on character. Habitual
+novel-reading, for example, often destroys the taste for serious
+literature, and few things tend so much to impair a sound literary
+perception and to vulgarise the character as the habit of constantly
+saturating the mind with inferior literature, even when that literature
+is in no degree immoral. Sometimes an opposite evil may be produced.
+Excessive fastidiousness greatly limits our enjoyments, and the
+inestimable gift of extreme concentration is often dearly bought. The
+well-known confession of Darwin that his intense addiction to science
+had destroyed his power of enjoying even the noblest imaginative
+literature represents a danger to which many men who have achieved much
+in the higher and severer forms of scientific thought are subject. Such
+men are usually by their original temperament, and become still more by
+acquired habit, men of strong, narrow, concentrated natures, whose
+thoughts, like a deep and rapid stream confined in a restricted channel,
+flow with resistless energy in one direction. It is by the sacrifice of
+versatility that they do so much, and the result is amply sufficient to
+justify it. But it is a real sacrifice, depriving them of many forms
+both of capacity and of enjoyment.
+
+The same pleasures act differently on different characters, especially
+on the differences of character that accompany difference of sex. I have
+myself no doubt that the movement which in modern times has so widely
+opened to women amusements that were once almost wholly reserved for men
+has been on the whole a good one. It has produced a higher level of
+health, stronger nerves, and less morbid characters, and it has given
+keen and innocent enjoyment to many who from their circumstances and
+surroundings once found their lives very dreary and insipid. Yet most
+good observers will agree that amusements which have no kind of evil
+effect on men often in some degree impair the graces or characters of
+women, and that it is not quite with impunity that one sex tries to live
+the life of the other. Some pleasures, too, exercise a much larger
+influence than others on the general habits of life. It is not too much
+to say that the invention of the bicycle, bringing with it an immense
+increase of outdoor life, of active exercise, and of independent habits,
+has revolutionised the course of many lives. Some amusements which may
+in themselves be but little valued are wisely cultivated as helping men
+to move more easily in different spheres of society, or as providing a
+resource for old age. Talleyrand was not wholly wrong in his reproach to
+a man who had never learned to play whist: 'What an unhappy old age you
+are preparing for yourself!'
+
+I have already mentioned the differences that may be found in different
+countries and ages, in the relative importance attached to external
+circumstances and to dispositions of mind as means of happiness, and the
+tendency in the more progressive nations to seek their happiness mainly
+in improved circumstances. Another great line of distinction is between
+education that acts specially upon the desires, and that which acts
+specially upon the will. The great perfection of modern systems of
+education is chiefly of the former kind. Its object is to make knowledge
+and virtue attractive, and therefore an object of desire. It does so
+partly by presenting them in the most alluring forms, partly by
+connecting them as closely as possible with rewards. The great principle
+of modern moral education is to multiply innocent and beneficent
+interests, tastes, and ambitions. It is to make the path of virtue the
+natural, the easy, the pleasing one; to form a social atmosphere
+favourable to its development, making duty and interest as far as
+possible coincident. Vicious pleasures are combated by the
+multiplication of healthy ones, and by a clearer insight into the
+consequences of each. An idle or inert character is stimulated by
+holding up worthy objects of interest and ambition, and it is the aim
+alike of the teacher and the legislator to make the grooves and channels
+of life such as tend naturally and easily towards good. But the
+education of the will--the power of breasting the current of the desires
+and doing for long periods what is distasteful and painful--is much less
+cultivated than in some periods of the past.
+
+Many things contribute to this. The rush and hurry of modern existence
+and the incalculable multitude and variety of fleeting impressions that
+in the great centres of civilisation pass over the mind are very
+unfavourable to concentration, and perhaps still more to the direct
+cultivation of mental states. Amusements, and the appetite for
+amusements, have greatly extended. Life has become more full. The long
+leisures, the introspective habits, the _vita contemplativa_ so
+conspicuous in the old Catholic discipline, grow very rare. Thoughts and
+interests are more thrown on the external; and the comfort, the luxury,
+the softness, the humanity of modern life, and especially of modern
+education, make men less inclined to face the disagreeable and endure
+the painful.
+
+The starting-point of education is thus silently changing. Perhaps the
+extent of the change is best shown by the old Catholic ascetic training.
+Its supreme object was to discipline and strengthen the will: to
+accustom men habitually to repudiate the pleasurable and accept the
+painful; to mortify the most natural tastes and affections; to narrow
+and weaken the empire of the desires; to make men wholly independent of
+outward circumstances; to preach self-renunciation as itself an end.
+
+Men will always differ about the merits of this system. In my own
+opinion it is difficult to believe that in the period of Catholic
+ascendency the moral standard was, on the whole and in its broad lines,
+higher than our own. The repression of the sensual instincts was the
+central fact in ascetic morals; but, even tested by this test, it is at
+least very doubtful whether it did not fail. The withdrawal from secular
+society of the best men did much to restrict the influences for good,
+and the habit of aiming at an unnatural ideal was not favourable to
+common, everyday, domestic virtue. The history of sacerdotal and
+monastic celibacy abundantly shows how much vice that might easily have
+been avoided grew out of the adoption of an unnatural standard, and how
+often it led in those who had attained it to grave distortions of
+character. Affections and impulses which were denied their healthy and
+natural vent either became wholly atrophied or took other and morbid
+forms, and the hard, cruel, self-righteous fanatic, equally ready to
+endure or to inflict suffering, was a not unnatural result. But
+whatever may have been its failures and its exaggerations, Catholic
+asceticism was at least a great school for disciplining and
+strengthening the will, and the strength and discipline of the will form
+one of the first elements of virtue and of happiness.
+
+In the grave and noble type of character which prevailed in English and
+American life during the seventeenth century, the strength of will was
+conspicuously apparent. Life was harder, simpler, more serious, and less
+desultory than at present, and strong convictions shaped and fortified
+the character. 'It was an age,' says a great American writer, 'when what
+we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive
+materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal
+more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence,
+which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller
+proportion and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and
+estimate of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is
+partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day the English settler on these
+rude shores, having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank
+behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence were strong
+in him, bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age; on
+long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience; on
+endowments of that grave and weighty order which give the idea of
+permanence and come under the general definition of respectability.
+These primitive statesmen, therefore,--Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley,
+Bellingham, and their compeers,--who were elevated to power by the
+early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but
+distinguished by a ponderous sobriety rather than activity of intellect.
+They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of difficulty or peril
+stood up for the welfare of the State like a line of cliffs against a
+tempestuous tide.'[61]
+
+The power of the will, however, even when it exists in great strength,
+is often curiously capricious. History is full of examples of men who in
+great trials and emergencies have acted with admirable and persevering
+heroism, yet who readily succumbed to private vices or passions. The
+will is not the same as the desires, but the connection between them is
+very close. A love for a distant end; a dominating ambition or passion,
+will call forth long perseverance in wholly distasteful work in men
+whose will in other fields of life is lamentably feeble. Every one who
+has embarked with real earnestness in some extended literary enterprise
+which as a whole represents the genuine bent of his talent and character
+will be struck with his exceptional power of traversing perseveringly
+long sections of this enterprise for which he has no natural aptitude
+and in which he takes no pleasure. Military courage is with most men
+chiefly a matter of temperament and impulse, but there have been
+conspicuous instances of great soldiers and sailors who have frankly
+acknowledged that they never lost in battle an intense constitutional
+shrinking from danger, though by the force of a strong will they never
+suffered this timidity to govern or to weaken them. With men of very
+vivid imagination there is a natural tendency to timidity as they
+realise more than ordinary men danger and suffering. On the other hand
+it has often been noticed how calmly the callous, semi-torpid
+temperament that characterises many of the worst criminals enables them
+to meet death upon the gallows.
+
+In courage itself, too, there are many varieties. The courage of the
+soldier and the courage of the martyr are not the same, and it by no
+means follows that either would possess that of the other. Not a few men
+who are capable of leading a forlorn hope, and who never shrink from the
+bayonet and the cannon, have shown themselves incapable of bearing the
+burden of responsibility, enduring long-continued suspense, taking
+decisions which might expose them to censure or unpopularity. The active
+courage that encounters and delights in danger is often found in men who
+show no courage in bearing suffering, misfortune, or disease. In passive
+courage the woman often excels the man as much as in active courage the
+man exceeds the woman. Even in active courage familiarity does much;
+sympathy and enthusiasm play great and often very various parts, and
+curious anomalies may be found. The Teutonic and the Latin races are
+probably equally distinguished for their military courage, but there is
+a clear difference between them in the nature of that courage and in the
+circumstances or conditions under which it is usually most splendidly
+displayed. The danger incurred by the gladiator was far greater than
+that which was encountered by the soldier, but Tacitus[62] mentions
+that when some of the bravest gladiators were employed in the Roman
+army they were found wholly inefficient, as they were much less capable
+than the ordinary soldiers of military courage.
+
+The circumstances of life are the great school for forming and
+strengthening the will, and in the excessive competition and struggle of
+modern industrialism this school is not wanting. But in ethical and
+educational systems the value of its cultivation is often insufficiently
+felt. Yet nothing which is learned in youth is so really valuable as the
+power and the habit of self-restraint, of self-sacrifice, of energetic,
+continuous and concentrated effort. In the best of us evil tendencies
+are always strong and the path of duty is often distasteful. With the
+most favourable wind and tide the bark will never arrive at the harbour
+if it has ceased to obey the rudder. A weak nature which is naturally
+kindly, affectionate and pure, which floats through life under the
+impulse of the feelings, with no real power of self-restraint, is indeed
+not without its charm, and in a well-organised society, with good
+surroundings and few temptations, it may attain a high degree of beauty;
+but its besetting failings will steadily grow; without fortitude,
+perseverance and principle, it has no recuperative energy, and it will
+often end in a moral catastrophe which natures in other respects much
+less happily compounded would easily avoid. Nothing can permanently
+secure our moral being in the absence of a restraining will basing
+itself upon a strong sense of the difference between right and wrong,
+upon the firm groundwork of principle and honour.
+
+Experience abundantly shows how powerfully the steady action of such a
+will can operate upon innate defects, converting the constitutional
+idler into the indefatigably industrious, checking, limiting and
+sometimes almost destroying constitutional irritability and vicious
+passions. The natural power of the will in different men differs
+greatly, but there is no part of our nature which is more strengthened
+by exercise or more weakened by disuse. The minor faults of character it
+can usually correct; but when a character is once formed, and when its
+tendencies are essentially vicious, radical cure or even considerable
+amelioration is very rare. Sometimes the strong influence of religion
+effects it. Sometimes it is effected by an illness, a great misfortune,
+or the total change of associations that follows emigration. Marriage
+perhaps more frequently than any other ordinary agency in early life
+transforms or deeply modifies the character, for it puts an end to
+powerful temptations and brings with it a profound change of habits and
+motives, associations and desires. But we have all of us encountered in
+life depraved natures in which vicious self-indulgence had attained such
+a strength, and the recuperating and moralising elements were so fatally
+weak, that we clearly perceive the disease to be incurable, and that it
+is hardly possible that any change of circumstances could even seriously
+mitigate it. In what proportion this is the fault or the calamity of the
+patient no human judgment can accurately tell.
+
+Few things are sadder than to observe how frequently the inheritance of
+great wealth or even of easy competence proves the utter and speedy ruin
+of a young man, except when the administration of a large property, or
+the necessity of carrying on a great business, or some other propitious
+circumstance provides him with a clearly defined sphere of work. The
+majority of men will gladly discard distasteful work which their
+circumstances do not require; and in the absence of steady work, and in
+the possession of all the means of gratification, temptations assume an
+overwhelming strength, and the springs of moral life are fatally
+impaired. It can hardly be doubted that the average longevity in this
+small class is far less than in that of common men, and that even when
+natural capacity is considerable it is more rarely displayed. To a man
+with a real desire for work such circumstances are indeed of inestimable
+value, giving him the leisure and the opportunities of applying himself
+without distraction and from early manhood to the kind of work that is
+most suited to him. Sometimes this takes place, but much more frequently
+vicious tastes or a simply idle or purposeless life are the result.
+Sometimes, indeed, a large amount of desultory and unregulated energy
+remains, but the serious labour of concentration is shunned and no real
+result is attained. The stream is there, but it turns no mill.
+
+Most men escape this danger through the circumstances of life which make
+serious and steady work necessary to their livelihood, and in the
+majority of cases the kind of work is so clearly marked out that they
+have little choice. When some choice exists, the rule which I have
+already laid down should not be forgotten. Men should choose their work
+not only according to their talents and their opportunities, but also,
+as far as possible, according to their characters. They should select
+the kinds which are most fitted to bring their best qualities into
+exercise, or should at least avoid those which have a special tendency
+to develop or encourage their dominant defects. On the whole it will be
+found that men's characters are much more deeply influenced by their
+pursuits than by their opinions.
+
+The choice of work is one of the great agencies for the management of
+character in youth. The choice of friends is another. In the words of
+Burke, 'The law of opinion ... is the strongest principle in the
+composition of the frame of the human mind, and more of the happiness
+and unhappiness of man reside in that inward principle than in all
+external circumstances put together.'[63] This is true of the great
+public opinion of an age or country which envelops us like an
+atmosphere, and by its silent pressure steadily and almost insensibly
+shapes or influences the whole texture of our lives. It is still more
+true of the smaller circle of our intimacies which will do more than
+almost any other thing to make the path of virtue easy or difficult. How
+large a proportion of the incentives to a noble ambition, or of the
+first temptations to evil, may be traced to an early friendship, and it
+is often in the little circle that gathers round a college table that
+the measure of life is first taken, and ideals and enthusiasms are
+formed which give a colour to all succeeding years. To admire strongly
+and to admire wisely is, indeed, one of the best means of moral
+improvement.
+
+Very much, however, of the management of character can only be
+accomplished by the individual himself acting in complete isolation upon
+his own nature and in the chamber of his own mind. The discipline of
+thought; the establishment of an ascendency of the will over our courses
+of thinking; the power of casting away morbid trains of reflection and
+turning resolutely to other subjects or aspects of life; the power of
+concentrating the mind vigorously on a serious subject and pursuing
+continuous trains of thought,--form perhaps the best fruits of judicious
+self-education. Its importance, indeed, is manifold. In the higher walks
+of intellect this power of mental concentration is of supreme value.
+Newton is said to have ascribed mainly to an unusual amount of it his
+achievements in philosophy, and it is probable that the same might be
+said by most other great thinkers. In the pursuit of happiness hardly
+anything in external circumstances is so really valuable as the power of
+casting off worry, turning in times of sorrow to healthy work, taking
+habitually the brighter view of things. It is in such exercises of will
+that we chiefly realise the truth of the lines of Tennyson:
+
+
+     Oh, well for him whose will is strong,
+     He suffers, but he will not suffer long.
+
+
+In moral culture it is not less important to acquire the power of
+discarding the demoralising thoughts and imaginations that haunt so
+many, and meeting temptation by calling up purer, higher and restraining
+thoughts. The faculty we possess of alternating and intensifying our own
+motives by bringing certain thoughts, or images, or subjects into the
+foreground and throwing others into the background, is one of our chief
+means of moral progress. The cultivation of this power is a far wiser
+thing than the cultivation of that introspective habit of mind which is
+perpetually occupied with self-analysis or self-examination, and which
+is constantly and remorsefully dwelling upon past faults or upon the
+morbid elements in our nature. In the morals which are called minor,
+though they affect deeply the happiness of mankind, the importance of
+the government of thought is not less apparent. The secret of good or
+bad temper is our habitual tendency to dwell upon or to fly from the
+irritating and the inevitable. Content or discontent, amiability or the
+reverse, depend mainly upon the disposition of our minds to turn
+specially to the good or to the evil sides of our own lot, to the merits
+or to the defects of those about us. A power of turning our thoughts
+from a given subject, though not the sole element in self-control, is at
+least one of its most important ingredients.
+
+This power of the will over the thoughts is one in which men differ
+enormously. Thus--to take the most familiar instance--the capacity for
+worry, with all the exaggerations and distortions of sentiment it
+implies, is very evidently a constitutional thing, and where it exists
+to a high degree neither reason nor will can effectually cure it. Such a
+man may have the clearest possible intellectual perception of its
+uselessness and its folly. Yet it will often banish sleep from his
+pillow, follow him with an habitual depression in all the walks of life,
+and make his measure of happiness much less than that of others who with
+far less propitious circumstances are endued by nature with the gift of
+lightly throwing off the past and looking forward with a sanguine and
+cheerful spirit to the future. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the
+different degrees of suffering the same trouble will produce in
+different men, and it is probable that the happiness of a life depends
+much less on the amount of pleasurable or painful things that are
+encountered, than upon the turn of thought which dwells chiefly on one
+or on the other. It is very evident that buoyancy of temperament is not
+a thing that increases with civilisation or education. It is mainly
+physical. It is greatly influenced by climate and by health, and where
+no very clear explanation of this kind can be given it is a thing in
+which different nations differ greatly. Few good observers will deny
+that persistent and concentrated will is more common in Great Britain
+than in Ireland, but that the gift of a buoyant temperament is more
+common among Irishmen than among Englishmen. Yet it co-exists in the
+national character with a strong vein of very genuine melancholy, and it
+is often accompanied by keen sensitiveness to suffering. This
+combination is a very common one. Every one who has often stood by a
+deathbed knows how frequently it will be found that the mourner who is
+utterly prostrated by grief, and whose tears flow in torrents, casts off
+her grief much more completely and much sooner than one whose tears
+refuse to flow and who never for a moment loses her self-command.
+
+But though natural temperament enables one man to do without effort what
+another man with the utmost effort fails to accomplish, there are some
+available remedies that can palliate the disease. Society, travel and
+other amusements can do something, and such words as 'diversion' and
+'distraction' embalm the truth that the chief virtue of many pleasures
+is to divert or distract our minds from painful thoughts. Pascal
+considered this a sign of the misery and the baseness of our nature, and
+he describes as a deplorable spectacle a man who rose from his bed
+weighed down with anxiety and grave sorrow, and who could for a time
+forget it all in the passionate excitement of the chase. But, in truth,
+the possession of such a power--weak and transient though it be--is one
+of the great alleviations of the lot of man. Religion, with its powerful
+motives and its wide range of consolatory and soothing thoughts and
+images, has much power in this sphere when it does not take a morbid
+form and intensify instead of alleviating sorrow; and the steady
+exercise of the will gives us some real and increasing, though
+imperfect, control over the current of our feelings as well as of our
+ideas.
+
+Often the power of dreaming comes to our aid. When we cannot turn from
+some painfully pressing thought to serious thinking of another kind, we
+can give the reins to our imaginations and soon lose ourselves in ideal
+scenes. There are men who live so habitually in a world of imagination
+that it becomes to them a second life, and their strongest temptations
+and their keenest pleasures belong to it. To them 'common life seems
+tapestried with dreams.' Not unfrequently they derive a pleasure from
+imagined or remembered enjoyments which the realities themselves would
+fail to give. They select in imagination certain aspects or portions,
+throw others into the shade, intensify or attenuate impressions,
+transform and beautify the reality of things. The power of filling their
+existence with happy day-dreams is their most precious luxury. They feel
+the full force of the pathetic lines of an Irish poet:[64]
+
+
+     Sweet thoughts, bright dreams my comfort be,
+       I have no joy beside;
+     Oh, throng around and be to me
+       Power, country, fame and bride.
+
+
+To train this side of our nature is no small part of the management of
+character. There is a great sphere of happiness and misery which is
+almost or altogether unconnected with surrounding circumstances, and
+depends upon the thoughts, images, hopes and fears on which our minds
+are chiefly concentrated. The exercise of this form of imagination has
+often a great influence, both intellectually and morally. In childhood,
+as every teacher knows, it is often a distracting influence, and with
+men also it is sometimes an obstacle to concentrated reasoning and
+observation, turning the mind away from sober and difficult thought; but
+there is a kind of dreaming which is eminently conducive to productive
+thought. It enables a man to place himself so completely in other
+conditions of thought and life that the ideas connected with those
+conditions rise spontaneously in the mind. A true and vivid realisation
+of characters and circumstances unlike his own is acquired. The mere
+fact of placing himself in other circumstances and investing himself
+with imaginary powers and functions sometimes suggests possible remedies
+for great human ills, and gives clearer views of the proportions,
+difficulties and conditions of governments and societies. Much discovery
+in science has been due to this power of the imagination to realise
+conditions that are unseen, and the habit or faculty of living other
+lives than our own is scarcely less valuable to the historian, and even
+to the statesman, than to the poet or the novelist or the dramatist. It
+gives the magic touch which changes mere lifeless knowledge into
+realisation.
+
+Its effect upon character also is great and various. No one can fail to
+recognise the depraving influence of a corrupt imagination; and the
+corruption may spring, not only from suggestions from without, but from
+those which rise spontaneously in our minds. Nor is even the imagination
+which is wholly pure absolutely without its dangers. It is a well-known
+law of our nature that an excessive indulgence in emotion that does not
+end in action tends rather to deaden than to stimulate the moral nerve.
+It has been often noticed that the exaggerated sentimentality which
+sheds passionate tears over the fictitious sorrows of a novel or a play
+is no certain sign of a benevolent and unselfish nature, and is quite
+compatible with much indifference to real sorrows and much indisposition
+to make efforts for their alleviation. It is, however, no less true, as
+Dugald Stewart says, that the apparent coldness and selfishness of men
+are often simply due to a want of that kind of imagination which enables
+us to realise sufferings with which we have never been brought into
+direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the
+coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the
+management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part
+in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives,
+and breaking the chain of evil or distressing thoughts.
+
+The immense place which the literature of fiction holds in the world
+shows how widely some measure of it is diffused, and how large an amount
+of time and talent is devoted to its cultivation. It is probable,
+however, that it is really stronger in the earlier and uncultivated than
+in the later stages of humanity, as it is more vivid in childhood and in
+youth than in mature life. 'A child,' as an American writer[65] has well
+said, 'can afford to sleep without dreaming; he has plenty of dreams
+without sleep.' The childhood of the world is also eminently an age of
+dreams. There are stages of civilisation in which the dream world blends
+so closely with the world of realities, in which the imagination so
+habitually and so spontaneously transfigures or distorts, that men
+become almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the
+fictitious. This is the true age of myths and legends; and there are
+strata in contemporary society in which something of the same conditions
+is reproduced. 'To those who do not read or write much,' says an acute
+observer, 'even in our days, dreams are much more real than to those who
+are continually exercising the imagination.... Since I have been
+occupied with literature my dreams have lost all vividness and are less
+real than the shadows of the trees; they do not deceive me even in my
+sleep. At every hour of the day I am accustomed to call up figures at
+will before my eyes, which stand out well defined and coloured to the
+very hue of their faces.... The less literary a people the more they
+believe in dreams; the disappearance of superstition is not due to the
+cultivation of reason or the spread of knowledge, but purely to the
+mechanical effect of reading, which so perpetually puts figures and
+aërial shapes before the mental gaze that in time those that occur
+naturally are thought no more of than those conjured into existence by a
+book. It is in far-away country places, where people read very little,
+that they see phantoms and consult the oracles of fate. Their dreams are
+real.'[66]
+
+The last point I would notice in the management of character is the
+importance of what may be called moral safety-valves. One of the most
+fatal mistakes in education is the attempt which is so often made by the
+educator to impose his own habits and tastes on natures that are
+essentially different. It is common for men of lymphatic temperaments,
+of studious, saintly, and retiring tastes, to endeavor to force a
+high-spirited young man starting in life into their own mould--to
+prescribe for him the cast of tastes and pursuits they find most suited
+for themselves, forgetting that such an ideal can never satisfy a wholly
+different nature, and that in aiming at it a kind of excellence which
+might easily have been attained is missed. This is one of the evils
+that very frequently arise when the education of boys after an early age
+is left in the hands of women. It is the true explanation of the fact,
+which has so often been noticed, that children of clergymen, or at least
+children educated on a rigidly austere, puritanical system, so often go
+conspicuously to the bad. Such an education, imposed on a nature that is
+unfit for it, generally begins by producing hypocrisy, and not
+unfrequently ends by a violent reaction into vice. There is no greater
+mistake in education than to associate virtue in early youth with gloomy
+colours and constant restrictions, and few people do more mischief in
+the world than those who are perpetually inventing crimes. In circles
+where smoking, or field sports, or going to the play, or reading novels,
+or indulging in any boisterous games or in the most harmless Sunday
+amusements, are treated as if they were grave moral offences, young men
+constantly grow up who end by looking on grave moral offences as not
+worse than these things. They lose all sense of proportion and
+perspective in morals, and those who are always straining at gnats are
+often peculiarly apt to swallow camels. It is quite right that men who
+have formed for themselves an ideal of life of the kind that I have
+described should steadily pursue it, but it is another thing to impose
+it upon others, and to prescribe it as of general application. By
+teaching as absolutely wrong things that are in reality only culpable in
+their abuse or their excess, they destroy the habit of moderate and
+restrained enjoyment, and a period of absolute prohibition is often
+followed by a period of unrestrained license.
+
+The truth is there are elements in human nature which many moralists
+might wish to be absent, as they are very easily turned in the direction
+of vice, but which at the same time are inherent in our being, and, if
+rightly understood, are essential elements of human progress. The love
+of excitement and adventure; the fierce combative instinct that delights
+in danger, in struggle, and even in destruction; the restless ambition
+that seeks with an insatiable longing to better its position and to
+climb heights that are yet unscaled; the craving for some enjoyment
+which not merely gives pleasure but carries with it a thrill of
+passion,--all this lies deep in human nature and plays a great part in
+that struggle for existence, in that harsh and painful process of
+evolution by which civilisation is formed, faculty stimulated to its
+full development, and human progress secured. In the education of the
+individual, as in the education of the race, the true policy in dealing
+with these things is to find for them a healthy, useful, or at least
+harmless sphere of action. In the chemistry of character they may ally
+themselves with the most heroic as well as with the worst parts of our
+nature, and the same passion for excitement which in one man will take
+the form of ruinous vice, in another may lead to brilliant enterprise,
+while in a third it may be turned with no great difficulty into channels
+which are very innocent.
+
+Take, for example, the case to which I have already referred, of a
+perfectly commonplace boy who, on coming of age, finds himself with a
+competence that saves him from the necessity of work; and who has no
+ambition, literary or artistic taste, love of work, interest in
+politics, religious or philanthropic earnestness, or special talent.
+What will become of him? In probably the majority of cases ruin,
+disease, and an early death lie before him. He seeks only for amusement
+and excitement, and three fatal temptations await him--drink, gambling,
+and women. If he falls under the dominion of these, or even of one of
+them, he almost infallibly wrecks either his fortune or his
+constitution, or both. It is perfectly useless to set before him high
+motives or ideals, or to incite him to lines of life for which he has no
+aptitude and which can give him no pleasure. What, then, can save him?
+Most frequently a happy marriage; but even if he is fortunate enough to
+attain this, it will probably only be after several years, and in those
+years a fatal bias is likely to be given to his life which can never be
+recovered. Yet experience shows that in cases of this kind a keen love
+of sport can often do much. With his gun and with his hunter he finds an
+interest, an excitement, an employment which may not be particularly
+noble, but which is at least sufficiently absorbing, and is not
+injurious either to his morals, his health, or his fortune. It is no
+small gain if, in the competition of pleasures, country pleasures take
+the place of those town pleasures which, in such cases as I have
+described, usually mean pleasures of vice.
+
+Nor is it by any means only in such cases that field sports prove a
+great moral safety-valve, scattering morbid tastes and giving harmless
+and healthy vent to turns of character or feeling which might very
+easily be converted into vice. Among the influences that form the
+character of the upper classes of Englishmen they have a great part,
+and in spite of the exaggerations and extravagances that often accompany
+them, few good observers will doubt that they have an influence for
+good. However much of the Philistine element there may be in the upper
+classes in England, however manifest may be their limitations and their
+defects, there can be little doubt that on the whole the conditions of
+English life have in this sphere proved successful. There are few better
+working types within the reach of commonplace men than that of an
+English gentleman with his conventional tastes, standard of honour,
+religion, sympathies, ideals, opinions and instincts. He is not likely
+to be either a saint or a philosopher, but he is tolerably sure to be
+both an honourable and a useful man, with a fair measure of good sense
+and moderation, and with some disposition towards public duties. A crowd
+of out-of-door amusements and interests do much to dispel his peccant
+humours and to save him from the stagnation and the sensuality that have
+beset many foreign aristocracies. County business stimulates his
+activity, mitigates his class prejudices, and forms his judgment: and
+his standard of honour will keep him substantially right amid much
+fluctuation of opinions.
+
+The reader, from his own experience of individual characters, will
+supply other illustrations of the lines of thought I am enforcing. Some
+temptations that beset us must be steadily faced and subdued. Others are
+best met by flight--by avoiding the thoughts or scenes that call them
+into activity; while other elements of character which we might wish to
+be away are often better treated in the way of marriage--that is by a
+judicious regulation and harmless application--than in the way of
+asceticism or attempted suppression. It is possible for men--if not in
+educating themselves, at least in educating others--to pitch their
+standard and their ideal too high. What they have to do is to recognise
+their own qualities and the qualities of those whom they influence as
+they are, and endeavour to use these usually very imperfect materials to
+the best advantage for the formation of useful, honourable and happy
+lives. According to the doctrine of this book, man comes into the world
+with a free will. But his free will, though a real thing, acts in a
+narrower circle and with more numerous limitations than he usually
+imagines. He can, however, do much so to dispose, regulate and modify
+the circumstances of his life as to diminish both his sufferings and his
+temptations, and to secure for himself the external conditions of a
+happy and upright life, and he can do something by judicious and
+persevering self-culture to improve those conditions of character on
+which, more than on any external circumstances, both happiness and
+virtue depend.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_, ch. xxii.
+
+[62] _Hist._ ii. 35.
+
+[63] Speech on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings.
+
+[64] Davis.
+
+[65] Cable.
+
+[66] Jefferies, _Field and Hedgerow_, p. 242.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MONEY
+
+
+I do not think that I can better introduce the few pages which I propose
+to write on the relations of money to happiness and to character than by
+a pregnant passage from one of the essays[67] of Sir Henry Taylor. 'So
+manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and characters of
+mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in
+his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his
+nature. He who knows like St. Paul both how to spare and how to abound
+has a great knowledge; for if we take account of all the virtues with
+which money is mixed up--honesty, justice, generosity, charity,
+frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices,
+it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and breadth of
+humanity, and a right measure in getting, saving, spending, giving,
+taking, lending, borrowing and bequeathing would almost argue a perfect
+man.'
+
+There are few subjects on which the contrast between the professed and
+the real beliefs of men is greater than in the estimate of money. More
+than any other single thing it is the object and usually the lifelong
+object of human effort, and any accession of wealth is hailed by the
+immense majority of mankind as an unquestionable blessing. Yet if we
+were to take literally much of the teaching we have all heard we should
+conclude that money, beyond what is required for the necessaries of
+life, is far more a danger than a good; that it is the pre-eminent
+source of evil and temptation; that one of the first duties of man is to
+emancipate himself from the love of it, which can only mean from any
+strong desire for its increase.
+
+In this, as in so many other things, the question is largely one of
+degree. No one who knows what is meant by the abject poverty to which a
+great proportion of the human race is condemned will doubt that at least
+such an amount of money as raises them from this condition is one of the
+greatest of human blessings. Extreme poverty means a lifelong struggle
+for the bare means of living; it means a life spent in wretched hovels,
+with insufficient food, clothes and firing, in enforced and absolute
+ignorance; an existence almost purely animal, with nearly all the higher
+faculties of man undeveloped. There is a far greater real difference in
+the material elements of happiness between the condition of such men and
+that of a moderately prosperous artizan in a civilised country than
+there is between the latter and the millionaire.
+
+Money, again, at least to such an amount as enables men to be in some
+considerable degree masters of their own course in life, is also on the
+whole a great good. In this second degree it has less influence on
+happiness than health, and probably than character and domestic
+relations, but its influence is at least very great. Money is a good
+thing because it can be transformed into many other things. It gives
+the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the
+character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It
+saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the
+destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of
+multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to
+intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in
+those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little
+less than physical pain. It gives him and it gives those he loves
+increased chances of life and increased hope of recovery in sickness.
+Few of the pains of penury are more acute than those of a poor man who
+sees his wife or children withering away through disease, and who knows
+or believes that better food or medical attendance, or a surgical
+operation, or a change of climate, might have saved them. Money, too,
+even when it does not dispense with work, at least gives a choice of
+work and longer intervals of leisure. For the very poor this choice
+hardly exists, or exists only within very narrow limits, and from want
+of culture or want of leisure some of their most marked natural
+aptitudes are never called into exercise. With the comparatively rich
+this is not the case. Money enables them to select the course of life
+which is congenial to their tastes and most suited to their natural
+talents, or, if their strongest taste cannot become their work, money at
+least gives them some leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure,
+when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many,
+perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb,
+'are chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to
+oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good
+and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good--but to
+buy time--in other words, life!'
+
+To some men money is chiefly valuable because it makes it possible for
+them not to think of money. Except in the daily regulation of ordinary
+life, it enables them to put aside cares which are to them both
+harassing and distasteful, and to concentrate their thoughts and
+energies on other objects. An assured competence also, however moderate,
+gives men the priceless blessing of independence. There are walks of
+life, there are fields of ambition, there are classes of employments in
+which between inadequate remuneration and the pressure of want on the
+one side, and the facilities and temptations to illicit gain on the
+other, it is extremely difficult for a poor man to walk straight.
+Illicit gain does not merely mean gain that brings a man within the
+range of the criminal law. Many of its forms escape legal and perhaps
+social censure, and may be even sanctioned by custom. A competence,
+whether small or large, is no sure preservative against that appetite
+for gain which becomes one of the most powerful and insatiable of
+passions. But it at least diminishes temptation. It takes away the
+pressure of want under which so many natures that were once
+substantially honest have broken down.
+
+In the expenditure of money there is usually a great deal of the
+conventional, the factitious, the purely ostentatious, but we are here
+dealing with the most serious realities of life. There are few or no
+elements of happiness and character more important than those I have
+indicated, and a small competence conduces powerfully to them. Let no
+man therefore despise it, for if wisely used it is one of the most real
+blessings of life. It is of course only within the reach of a small
+minority, but the number might easily be much larger than it is. Often
+when it is inherited in early youth it is scattered in one or two years
+of gambling and dissipation, followed by a lifetime of regret. In other
+cases it crumbles away in a generation, for it is made an excuse for a
+life of idleness, and when children multiply or misfortunes arrive, what
+was once a competence becomes nothing more than bare necessity. In a
+still larger number of cases many of its advantages are lost because men
+at once adopt a scale of living fully equal to their income. A man who
+with one house would be a wealthy man, finds life with two houses a
+constant struggle. A set of habits is acquired, a scale or standard of
+luxury is adopted, which at once sweeps away the margin of superfluity.
+Riches or poverty depend not merely on the amount of our possessions,
+but quite as much on the regulation of our desires, and the full
+advantages of competence are only felt when men begin by settling their
+scheme of life on a scale materially within their income. When the great
+lines of expenditure are thus wisely and frugally established, they can
+command a wide latitude and much ease in dealing with the smaller ones.
+
+It is of course true that the power of a man thus to regulate his
+expenditure is by no means absolute. The position in society in which a
+man is born brings with it certain conventionalities and obligations
+that cannot be discarded. A great nobleman who has inherited a vast
+estate and a conspicuous social position will, through no fault of his
+own, find himself involved in constant difficulties and struggles on an
+income a tenth part of which would suffice to give a simple private
+gentleman every reasonable enjoyment in life. A poor clergyman who is
+obliged to keep up the position of a gentleman is in reality a much
+poorer man than a prosperous artizan, even though his actual income may
+be somewhat larger. But within the bounds which the conventionalities of
+society imperatively prescribe many scales of expenditure are possible,
+and the wise regulation of these is one of the chief forms of practical
+wisdom.
+
+It may be observed, however, that not only men but nations differ widely
+in this respect, and the difference is not merely that between prudence
+and folly, between forethought and passion, but is also in a large
+degree a difference of tastes and ideals. In general it will be found
+that in Continental nations a man of independent fortune will place his
+expenditure more below his means than in England, and a man who has
+pursued some lucrative employment will sooner be satisfied with the
+competence he has acquired and will gladly exchange his work for a life
+of leisure. The English character prefers a higher rate of expenditure
+and work continued to the end.
+
+It is probable that, so far as happiness depends on money, the happiest
+lot--though it is certainly not that which is most envied--is that of a
+man who possesses a realised fortune sufficient to save him from serious
+money cares about the present and the future, but who at the same time
+can only keep up the position in society he has chosen for himself, and
+provide as he desires for his children, by adding to it a professional
+income. Work is necessary both to happiness and to character, and
+experience shows that it most frequently attains its full concentration
+and continuity when it is professional, or, in other words,
+money-making. Men work in traces as they will seldom work at liberty.
+The compulsory character, the steady habits, the constant emulation of
+professional life mould and strengthen the will, and probably the
+happiest lot is when this kind of work exists, but without the anxiety
+of those who depend solely on it.
+
+It is also a good thing when wealth tends to increase with age. 'Old
+age,' it has been said, 'is a very expensive thing.' If the taste for
+pleasure diminishes, the necessity for comfort increases. Men become
+more dependent and more fastidious, and hardships that are indifferent
+to youth become acutely painful. Beside this, money cares are apt to
+weigh with an especial heaviness upon the old. Avarice, as has been
+often observed, is eminently an old-age vice, and in natures that are in
+no degree avaricious it will be found that real money anxieties are more
+felt and have a greater haunting power in age than in youth. There is
+then the sense of impotence which makes men feel that their earning
+power has gone. On the other hand youth, and especially early married
+life spent under the pressure of narrow circumstances, will often be
+looked back upon as both the happiest and the most fruitful period of
+life. It is the best discipline of character. It is under such
+circumstances that men acquire habits of hard and steady work,
+frugality, order, forethought, punctuality, and simplicity of tastes.
+They acquire sympathies and realisations they would never have known in
+more prosperous circumstances. They learn to take keen pleasure in
+little things, and to value rightly both money and time. If wealth and
+luxury afterwards come in overflowing measure, these lessons will not be
+wholly lost.
+
+The value of money as an element of happiness diminishes rapidly in
+proportion to its amount. In the case of the humbler fortunes, each
+accession brings with it a large increase of pleasure and comfort, and
+probably a very considerable addition to real happiness. In the case of
+rich men this is not the case, and of colossal fortunes only a very
+small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment
+of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost
+is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our
+first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the
+perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces
+of the human mind--the works of human genius that through the long
+course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and
+direct the lives of men, might all be purchased--I do not say by the
+cost of a lady's necklace, but by that of one or two of the little
+stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired
+pedestrian eats his bread and cheese with the appetites with which men
+sit down to some stately banquet; compare the level of spirits at the
+village dance with that of the great city ball whose lavish splendour
+fills the society papers with admiration; compare the charm of
+conversation in the college common room with the weary faces that may be
+often seen around the millionaire's dinner table,--and we may gain a
+good lesson of the vanity of riches. The transition from want to comfort
+brings with it keen enjoyment and much lasting happiness. The transition
+from mere comfort to luxury brings incomparably less and costs
+incomparably more. Let a man of enormous wealth analyse his life from
+day to day and try to estimate what are the things or hours that have
+afforded him real and vivid pleasure. In many cases he will probably say
+that he has found it in his work--in others in the hour spent with his
+cigar, his newspaper, or his book, or in his game of cricket, or in the
+excitement of the hunting-field, or in his conversation with an old
+friend, or in hearing his daughters sing, or in welcoming his son on his
+return from school. Let him look round the splendid adornments of his
+home and ask how many of these things have ever given him a pleasure at
+all proportionate to their cost. Probably in many cases, if he deals
+honestly with himself, he would confess that his armchair and his
+bookshelves are almost the only exceptions.
+
+Steam, the printing press, the spread of education, and the great
+multiplication of public libraries, museums, picture galleries and
+exhibitions have brought the chief pleasures of life in a much larger
+degree than in any previous age within the reach of what are called the
+working classes, while in the conditions of modern life nearly all the
+great sources of real enjoyment that money can give are open to a man
+who possesses a competent but not extraordinary fortune and some
+leisure. Intellectual tastes he may gratify to the full. Books, at all
+events in the great centres of civilisation, are accessible far in
+excess of his powers of reading. The pleasures of the theatre, the
+pleasures of society, the pleasures of music in most of its forms, the
+pleasures of travel with all its variety of interests, and many of the
+pleasures of sport, are abundantly at his disposal. The possession of
+the highest works of art has no doubt become more and more a monopoly of
+the very rich, but picture galleries and exhibitions and the facilities
+of travel have diffused the knowledge and enjoyment of art over a vastly
+wider area than in the past. The power of reproducing works of art has
+been immensely increased and cheapened, and in one form at least the
+highest art has been brought within the reach of a man of very moderate
+means. Photography can reproduce a drawing with such absolute perfection
+that he may cover his walls with works of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da
+Vinci that are indistinguishable from the originals. The standard of
+comfort in mere material things is now so high in well-to-do households
+that to a healthy nature the millionaire can add little to it. Perhaps
+among the pleasures of wealth that which has the strongest influence is
+a country place, especially when it brings with it old remembrances, and
+associations that appeal powerfully to the affections and the
+imagination. More than any other inanimate thing it throws its tendrils
+round the human heart and becomes the object of a deep and lasting
+affection. But even here it will be probably found that this pleasure is
+more felt by the owner of one country place than by the great
+proprietor whose life is spent alternately in several--by the owner of a
+place of moderate dimensions than by the owner of those vast parks which
+can only be managed at great expense and trouble and by much delegated
+supervision, and which are usually thrown open with such liberality to
+the public that they probably give more real pleasure to others than to
+their owners.
+
+Among the special pleasures of the enormously rich the collecting
+passion is conspicuous, and of course a very rich man can carry it into
+departments which men of moderate fortune can hardly touch. In the rare
+case when the collector is a man of strong and genuine artistic taste
+the possession of works of beauty is a thing of enduring pleasure, but
+in general the mere love of collecting, though it often becomes a
+passion almost amounting to a mania, bears very little proportion to
+pecuniary value. The intelligent collector of fossils has as much
+pleasure as the collector of gems--probably indeed more, as the former
+pursuit brings with it a much greater variety of interest, and usually
+depends much more on the personal exertions of the collector. It is
+pleasant, in looking over a geological collection, to think that every
+stone we see has given a pleasure. A collector of Caxtons, a collector
+of large printed or illustrated editions, a collector of first editions
+of famous books, a collector of those editions that are so much prized
+because an author has made in them some blunder which he afterwards
+corrected; a collector of those unique books which have survived as
+rarities because no one thought it worth while to reprint them or
+because they are distinguished by some obsolete absurdity, will
+probably not derive more pleasure, though he will spend vastly more
+money, than the mere literary man who, being interested in some
+particular period or topic, loves to hunt up in old bookshops the
+obscure and forgotten literature relating to it. Much the same thing may
+be said of other tastes. The gratification of a strong taste or hobby
+will always give pleasure, and it makes little difference whether it is
+an expensive or an inexpensive one.
+
+The pleasures of acquisition, the pleasures of possession, and the
+pleasures of ostentation, are no doubt real things, though they act in
+very different degrees on different natures, and some of them much more
+on one sex than on the other. In general, however, they tend to grow
+passive and inert. A state of luxury and splendour is little appreciated
+by those who are born to it, though much if it follows a period of
+struggle and penury. Yet even then the circumstances and surroundings of
+life soon become a second nature. Men become so habituated to them that
+they are accepted almost mechanically and cease to give positive
+pleasure, though a deprivation of them gives positive pain. The love of
+power, the love of society, and--what is not quite the same thing--the
+love of social influence, are, however, much stronger and more enduring,
+and great wealth is largely valued because it helps to give them, though
+it does not give them invariably, and though there are other things that
+give them in an equal or greater degree. To many very rich men some form
+of field sports is probably the greatest pleasure that money affords. It
+at least gives a genuine thrill of unmistakable enjoyment.
+
+Few of the special pleasures of the millionaire can be said to be
+purely selfish, for few are concentrated altogether on himself. His
+great park is usually open to the public. His pictures are lent for
+exhibition or exhibited in his house. If he keeps a pack of hounds
+others hunt with it. If he preserves game to an enormous extent he
+invites many to shoot it, and at his great entertainments it will often
+be found that no one derives less pleasure than the weary host.
+
+At the same time no thinking man can fail to be struck with the great
+waste of the means of enjoyment in a society in which such gigantic sums
+are spent in mere conventional ostentation which gives little or no
+pleasure; in which the best London houses are those which are the
+longest untenanted; in which some of the most enchanting gardens and
+parks are only seen by their owners for a few weeks in the year.
+
+Hamerton, in his Essay on Bohemianism, has very truly shown that the
+rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain
+from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or
+amusement it can give by discarding the forms, the costly
+conventionalities, the social restrictions that encumber and limit it.
+One of the worst tendencies of a very wealthy society is that by the
+mere competition of ostentation the standard of conventional expense is
+raised, and the intercourse of men limited by the introduction of a
+number of new and costly luxuries which either give no pleasure or give
+pleasure that bears no kind of proportion to their cost. Examples may
+sometimes be seen of a very rich man who imagines that he can obtain
+from life real enjoyment in proportion to his wealth and who uses it
+for purely selfish purposes. We may find this in the almost insane
+extravagance of vulgar ostentation by which the parvenu millionaire
+tries to gratify his vanity and dazzle his neighbours; in the wild round
+of prodigal dissipation and vice by which so many young men who have
+inherited enormous fortunes have wrecked their constitutions and found a
+speedy path to an unhonoured grave. They sought from money what money
+cannot give, and learned too late that in pursuing shadows they missed
+the substance that was within their reach.
+
+To the intelligent millionaire, however, and especially to those who are
+brought up to great possessions, wealth is looked on in a wholly
+different light. It is a possession and a trust carrying with it many
+duties as well as many interests and accompanied by a great burden of
+responsibility. Mere pleasure-hunting plays but a small and wholly
+subsidiary part in such lives, and they are usually filled with much
+useful work. This man, for example, is a banker on a colossal scale.
+Follow his life, and you will find that for four days in the week he is
+engaged in his office as steadily, as unremittingly as any clerk in his
+establishment. He has made himself master not only of the details of his
+own gigantic business but of the whole great subject of finance in all
+its international relations. He is a power in many lands. He is
+consulted in every crisis of finance. He is an important influence in a
+crowd of enterprises, most of them useful as well as lucrative, some of
+them distinctively philanthropic. Saturday and Sunday he spends at his
+country place, usually entertaining a number of guests. One other day
+during the hunting season he regularly devotes to his favourite sport.
+His holiday is the usual holiday of a professional man, with rather a
+tendency to abridge than to lengthen it, as the natural bent of his
+thoughts is so strongly to his work that time soon begins to hang
+heavily when he is away from it.
+
+Another man is an ardent philanthropist, and his philanthropy probably
+blends with much religious fervour, and he becomes in consequence a
+leader in the religious world. Such a life cannot fail to be abundantly
+filled. Religious meetings, committees, the various interests of the
+many institutions with which he is connected, the conflicting and
+competing claims of different religious societies, fully occupy his time
+and thoughts, sometimes to the great neglect of his private affairs.
+
+Another man is of a different type. Shy, retiring, hating publicity, and
+not much interested in politics, he is a gigantic landowner, and the
+work of his life is concentrated on the development of his own estate.
+He knows the circumstances of every village, almost of every farm. It is
+his pride that no labourer on his estate is badly housed, that no part
+of it is slovenly or mismanaged or poverty-stricken. He endows churches
+and hospitals, he erects public buildings, encourages every local
+industry, makes in times of distress much larger remissions of rent than
+would be possible for a poorer man, superintends personally the many
+interests on his property, knows accurately the balance of receipts and
+expenditure, takes a great interest in sanitation, in new improvements
+and experiments in agriculture, in all the multifarious matters that
+affect the prosperity of his numerous tenantry. He subscribes liberally
+to great national undertakings, as he considers it one of the duties of
+his position, but his heart is not in such things, and the well-being of
+his own vast estate and of those who live upon it is the aim and the
+work of his life. For a few weeks of the year he exercises the splendid
+and lavish hospitality which is expected from a man in his position, and
+he is always very glad when those weeks are over. He has, however, his
+own expensive hobby, which gives him real pleasure--his yacht, his
+picture gallery, his museum, his collection of wild animals, his
+hothouses or his racing establishment. One or more of these form the
+real amusement of his active and useful life.
+
+A more common type in England is that of the active politician. Great
+wealth and especially great landed property bring men easily into
+Parliament, and, if united with industry and some measure of ability,
+into official life, and public life thus becomes a profession and in
+many cases a very laborious one. There are few better examples of a
+well-filled life and of the skilful management and economy of time than
+are to be found in the lives of some great noblemen who take a leading
+part in politics and preside over important Government departments
+without suffering their gigantic estates to fall into mismanagement, or
+neglecting the many social duties and local interests connected with
+them. Most of their success is indeed due to the wise use of money in
+economising time by trustworthy and efficient delegation. Yet the
+superintending brain, the skilful choice, the personal control cannot
+be dispensed with. In a life so fully occupied the few weeks of pleasure
+which may be spent on a Scotch moor or in a Continental watering-place
+will surely not be condemned.
+
+The economy of time and the elasticity of brain and character such lives
+develop are, however, probably exceeded by another class. Nothing is
+more remarkable in the social life of the present generation than the
+high pressure under which a large number of ladies in great positions
+habitually live. It strikes every Continental observer, for there is
+nothing approaching it in any other European country, and it certainly
+far exceeds anything that existed in England in former generations.
+Pleasure-seeking, combined, however, on a large scale with
+pleasure-giving, holds a much more prominent place in these lives than
+in those I have just described. With not a few women, indeed, of wealth
+and position, it is the all-in-all of life, and in general it is
+probable that women obtain more pleasure from most forms of society than
+men, though it is also true that they bear a much larger share of its
+burdens. There are, however, in this class, many who combine with
+society a truly surprising number and variety of serious interests. Not
+only the management of a great house, not only the superintendence of
+schools and charities and local enterprises connected with a great
+estate, but also a crowd of philanthropic, artistic, political, and
+sometimes literary interests fill their lives. Few lives, indeed, in any
+station are more full, more intense, more constantly and variously
+occupied. Public life, which in most foreign countries is wholly outside
+the sphere of women, is eagerly followed. Public speaking, which in the
+memory of many now living was almost unknown among women of any station
+in English society, has become the most ordinary accomplishment. Their
+object is to put into life from youth to old age as much as life can
+give, and they go far to attain their end. A wonderful nimbleness and
+flexibility of intellect capable of turning swiftly from subject to
+subject has been developed, and keeps them in touch with a very wide
+range both of interests and pleasures.
+
+There are no doubt grave drawbacks to all this. Many will say that this
+external activity must be at the sacrifice of the duties of domestic
+life, but on this subject there is, I think, at least much exaggeration.
+Education has now assumed such forms and attained such a standard that
+usually for many hours in the day the education of the young in a
+wealthy family is in the hands of accomplished specialists, and I do not
+think that the most occupied lives are those in which the cares of a
+home are most neglected. How far, however, this intense and constant
+strain is compatible with physical well-being is a graver question, and
+many have feared that it must bequeath weakened constitutions to the
+coming generation. Nor is a life of incessant excitement in other
+respects beneficial. In both intellectual and moral hygiene the best
+life is that which follows nature and alternates periods of great
+activity with periods of rest. Retirement, quiet, steady reading, and
+the silent thought which matures character and deepens impressions are
+things that seem almost disappearing from many English lives. But lives
+such as I have described are certainly not useless, undeveloped, or
+wholly selfish, and they in a large degree fulfil that great law of
+happiness, that it should be sought for rather in interests than in
+pleasures.
+
+I have already referred to the class who value money chiefly because it
+enables them to dismiss money thoughts and cares from their minds. On
+the whole, this end is probably more frequently attained by men of
+moderate but competent fortunes than by the very rich. This is at least
+the case when they are sufficiently rich to invest their money in
+securities which are liable to no serious risk or fluctuation. A
+gigantic fortune is seldom of such a nature that it does not bring with
+it great cares of administration and require much thought and many
+decisions. There is, however, one important exception. When there are
+many children the task of providing for their future falls much more
+lightly on the very rich than on those of medium fortune.
+
+There is a class, however, who are the exact opposite of these and who
+make the simple acquisition of money the chief interest and pleasure of
+their lives. Money-making in some form is the main occupation of the
+great majority of men, but it is usually as a means to an end. It is to
+acquire the means of livelihood, or the means of maintaining or
+improving a social position, or the means of providing as they think fit
+for the children who are to succeed them. Sometimes, however, with the
+very rich and without any ulterior object, money-making for its own sake
+becomes the absorbing interest. They can pursue it with great advantage;
+for, as has been often said, nothing makes money like money, and the
+possession of an immense capital gives innumerable facilities for
+increasing it. The collecting passion takes this form. They come to care
+more for money than for anything money can purchase, though less for
+money than for the interest and the excitement of getting it.
+Speculative enterprise, with its fluctuations, uncertainties and
+surprises, becomes their strongest interest and their greatest
+amusement.
+
+When it is honestly conducted there is no real reason why it should be
+condemned. On these conditions a life so spent is, I think, usually
+useful to the world, for it generally encourages works that are of real
+value. All that can be truly said is that it brings with it grave
+temptations and is very apt to lower a man's moral being. Speculation
+easily becomes a form of gambling so fierce in its excitement that, when
+carried on incessantly and on a great scale, it kills all capacity for
+higher and tranquil pleasures, strengthens incalculably the temptations
+to unscrupulous gain, disturbs the whole balance of character, and often
+even shortens life. With others the love of accumulation has a strange
+power of materialising, narrowing and hardening. Habits of
+meanness--sometimes taking curious and inconsistent forms, and applying
+only to particular things or departments of life--steal insensibly over
+them, and the love of money assumes something of the character of mania.
+Temptations connected with money are indeed among the most insidious and
+among the most powerful to which we are exposed. They have probably a
+wider empire than drink, and, unlike the temptations that spring from
+animal passion, they strengthen rather than diminish with age. In no
+respect is it more necessary for a man to keep watch over his own
+character, taking care that the unselfish element does not diminish, and
+correcting the love of acquisition by generosity of expenditure.
+
+It is probable that the highest form of charity, involving real and
+serious self-denial, is much more common among the poor, and even the
+very poor, than among the rich. I think most persons who have had much
+practical acquaintance with the dealings of the poor with one another
+will confirm this. It is certainly far less common among those who are
+at the opposite pole of fortune. They have not had the same discipline,
+or indeed the same possibility of self-sacrifice, or the same means of
+realising the pains of poverty, and there is another reason which tends
+not unnaturally to check their benevolence. A man with the reputation of
+great wealth soon finds himself beleaguered by countless forms of
+mendicancy and imposture. He comes to feel that there is a general
+conspiracy to plunder him, and he is naturally thrown into an attitude
+of suspicion and self-defence. Often, though he may give largely and
+generously, he will do so under the veil of strict anonymity, in order
+to avoid a reputation for generosity which will bring down upon him
+perpetual solicitations. If he is an intellectual man he will probably
+generalise from his own experience. He will be deeply impressed with the
+enormous evils that have sprung from ill-judged charity, and with the
+superiority even from a philanthropic point of view of a productive
+expenditure of money.
+
+And in truth it is difficult to overrate the evil effects of injudicious
+charities in discouraging thrift, industry, foresight and self-respect.
+They take many forms; some of them extremely obvious, while others can
+only be rightly judged by a careful consideration of remote
+consequences. There are the idle tourists who break down, in a once
+unsophisticated district, that sense of self-respect which is one of the
+most valuable lessons that early education can give, by flinging pence
+to be scrambled for among the children, or who teach the poor the fatal
+lesson that mendicancy or something hardly distinguishable from
+mendicancy will bring greater gain than honest and continuous work.
+There is the impulsive, uninquiring charity that makes the trade of the
+skilful begging-letter writer a lucrative profession, and makes men and
+women who are rich, benevolent and weak, the habitual prey of greedy
+impostors. There is the old-established charity for ministering to
+simple poverty which draws to its centre all the pauperism of the
+neighbouring districts, depresses wages, and impoverishes the very
+district or class it was intended to benefit. There are charities which
+not only largely diminish the sufferings that are the natural
+consequence and punishment of vice; but even make the lot of the
+criminal and the vicious a better one than that of the hard-working
+poor. There are overlapping charities dealing with the same department,
+but kept up with lavish waste through the rivalry of different religious
+denominations, or in the interests of the officials connected with them;
+belated or superannuated charities formed to deal with circumstances or
+sufferings that have in a large degree passed away--useless, or almost
+useless, charities established to carry out some silly fad or to gratify
+some silly vanity; sectarian charities intended to further ends which,
+in the eyes of all but the members of one sect, are not only useless but
+mischievous; charities that encourage thriftless marriages, or make it
+easy for men to neglect obvious duties, or keep a semi-pauper population
+stationary in employments and on a soil where they can never prosper, or
+in other ways handicap, impede or divert the natural and healthy course
+of industry. Illustrations of all these evils will occur to every
+careful student of the subject. Unintelligent, thoughtless, purely
+impulsive charity, and charity which is inspired by some other motive
+than a real desire to relieve suffering, will constantly go wrong, but
+every intelligent man can find without difficulty vast fields on which
+the largest generosity may be expended with abundant fruit.
+
+Hospitals and kindred institutions for alleviating great unavoidable
+calamities, and giving the sick poor something of the same chances of
+recovery as the rich, for the most part fall under this head. Money will
+seldom be wasted which is spent in promoting kinds of knowledge,
+enterprise or research that bring no certain remuneration proportioned
+to their value; in assisting poor young men of ability and industry to
+develop their special talents; in encouraging in their many different
+forms thrift, self-help and co-operation; in alleviating the inevitable
+suffering that follows some great catastrophe on land or sea, or great
+transitions of industry, or great fluctuations and depressions in class
+prosperity; in giving the means of healthy recreation or ennobling
+pleasures to the denizens of a crowded town. The vast sphere of
+education opens endless fields for generous expenditure, and every
+religious man will find objects which, in the opinion not only of men of
+his own persuasion, but also of many others, are transcendently
+important. Nor is it a right principle that charity should be denied to
+all calamities which are in some degree due to the fault of the
+sufferer, or which might have been averted by exceptional forethought or
+self-denial. Some economists write as if a far higher standard of will
+and morals should be expected among the poor and the uneducated than can
+be found among the rich. Good sense and right feeling will here easily
+draw the line, abstaining from charities that have a real influence in
+encouraging improvidence or vice, yet making due allowance for the
+normal weaknesses of our nature.
+
+In all these ways the very rich can find ample opportunities for useful
+benevolence. It is the prerogative of great wealth that it can often
+cure what others can only palliate, and can establish permanent sources
+of good which will continue long after the donors have passed away. In
+dealing with individual cases of distress, rich men who have neither the
+time nor the inclination to investigate the special circumstances will
+do well to rely largely on the recommendation of others. If they choose
+trustworthy, competent and sensible advisers with as much judgment as
+they commonly show in the management of their private affairs, they are
+not likely to go astray. There never was a period when a larger amount
+of intelligent and disinterested labour was employed in careful and
+detailed examination of the circumstances and needs of the poor. The
+parish clergyman, the district visitor, the agents of the Charity
+Organization Society which annually selects its special cases of
+well-ascertained need, will abundantly furnish them with the knowledge
+they require.
+
+The advantage or disadvantage of the presence in a country of a large
+class of men possessing fortunes far exceeding anything that can really
+administer to their enjoyment is a question which has greatly divided
+both political economists and moralists. The former were long accustomed
+to maintain somewhat exclusively that laws and institutions should be
+established with the object of furthering the greatest possible
+accumulation of wealth, and that a system of unrestricted competition,
+coupled with equal laws, giving each man the most complete security in
+the possession and disposal of his property, was the best means of
+attaining this end. They urged with great truth that, although under
+such a system the inequalities of fortune will be enormous, most of the
+wealth of the very rich will inevitably be distributed in the form of
+wages, purchases, and industrial enterprises through the community at
+large, and that, other things being equal, the richest country will on
+the whole be the happiest. They clearly saw the complete delusion of the
+common assertions that the more millionaires there are in a country the
+more paupers will multiply, and that society is dividing between the
+enormously rich and the abjectly poor. The great industrial communities,
+in which there are the largest number of very wealthy men, are also the
+centres in which we find the most prosperous middle class, and the
+highest and most progressive rates of wages and standards of comfort
+among the poor. Great corruption in many forms no doubt exists in them,
+but it can scarcely be maintained with confidence that the standard of
+integrity is on the whole lower in these than in other countries, and
+they at least escape what in many poor countries is one of the most
+fruitful causes of corruption in all branches of administration--the
+inadequate pay of the servants of the Crown. The path of liberty in the
+eyes of economists of this school is the path of wisdom, and they were
+profoundly distrustful of all legislative attempts to restrict or
+interfere with the course of industrial progress.
+
+In our own generation a somewhat different tendency has manifestly
+strengthened. It has been said that past political economists paid too
+much attention to the accumulation and too little to the distribution of
+wealth. Men have become more sensible to the high level of happiness and
+moral well-being that has been attained in some of the smaller and
+somewhat stagnant countries of Europe, where wealth is more generally
+attained by thrift and steady industry than by great industrial or
+commercial enterprise, in which there are few large fortunes but little
+acute poverty, a low standard of luxury, but a high standard of real
+comfort. The enormous evils that have grown up in wealthy countries, in
+the form of company-mongering, excessive competition, extravagant and
+often vicious luxury, and dishonest administration of public funds, are
+more and more felt, and it is only too true that in these countries
+there are large and influential circles of society in which all
+considerations of character, intellect, or manners seem lost in an
+intense thirst for wealth and for the things that it can give.
+Sometimes we find vast fortunes in countries where there is but little
+enterprise and a very low standard of comfort among the people, and
+where this is the case it is usually due to unequal laws or corrupt
+administration. In the free, democratic, and industrial communities
+great fluctuations and disparities of wealth are inevitable, and some of
+the most colossal fortunes have, no doubt, been made by the evil methods
+I have described. They are, however, only a minority, and not a very
+large one. Like all the great successes of life, abnormal accumulation
+of wealth is usually due to the combination in different proportions of
+ability, character, and chance, and is not tainted with dishonesty. On
+the whole, the question that should be asked is not what a man has, but
+how he obtained it and how he uses it. When wealth is honestly acquired
+and wisely and generously used, the more rich men there are in a country
+the better.
+
+There has probably never been a period in the history of the world when
+the conditions of industry, assisted by the great gold discoveries in
+several parts of the globe, were so favourable to the formation of
+enormous fortunes as at present, and when the race of millionaires was
+so large. The majority belong to the English-speaking race; probably
+most of their gigantic fortunes have been rapidly accumulated, and bring
+with them none of the necessary, hereditary, and clearly defined
+obligations of a great landowner, while a considerable proportion of
+them have fallen to the lot of men who, through their education or early
+habits, have not many cultivated or naturally expensive tastes. In
+England many of the new millionaires become great landowners and set up
+great establishments. In America, where country tastes are less marked
+and where the difficulties of domestic service are very great, this is
+less common. In both countries the number of men with immense fortunes,
+absolutely at their own disposal, has enormously increased, and the
+character of their expenditure has become a matter of real national
+importance.
+
+Much of it, no doubt, goes in simple luxury and ostentation, or in mere
+speculation, or in restoring old and dilapidated fortunes through the
+marriages of rank with money which are so characteristic of our time;
+but much also is devoted to charitable or philanthropic purposes. In
+this, as in most things, motives are often very blended. To men of such
+fortunes, such expenditure, even on a large scale, means no real
+self-sacrifice, and the inducements to it are not always of the highest
+kind. To some men it is a matter of ambition--a legitimate and useful
+ambition--to obtain the enduring and honourable fame which attaches to
+the founder of a great philanthropic or educational establishment.
+Others find that, in England at least, large philanthropic expenditure
+is one of the easiest and shortest paths to social success, bringing men
+and women of low extraction and bad manners into close and frequent
+connection with the recognised leaders of society; while others again
+have discovered that it is the quickest way of effacing the stigma which
+still in some degree attaches to wealth which has been acquired by
+dishonourable or dubious means. Fashion, social ambition, and social
+rivalries are by no means unknown in the fields of charity. There are
+many, however, in whose philanthropy the element of self has no place,
+and whose sole desire is to expend their money in forms that can be of
+most real and permanent benefit to others.
+
+Such men have great power, and, if their philanthropic expenditure is
+wisely guided, it may be of incalculable benefit. I have already
+indicated many of the channels in which it may safely flow, but one or
+two additional hints on the subject may not be useless. Perhaps as a
+general rule these men will find that they can act most wisely by
+strengthening and enlarging old charities which are really good, rather
+than by founding new ones. Competition is the soul of industry, but
+certainly not of charity, and there is in England a deplorable waste of
+money and machinery through the excessive multiplication of institutions
+intended for the same objects. The kind of ambition to which I have just
+referred tends to make men prefer new charities which can be identified
+with their names; the paid officials connected with charities have
+become a large and powerful profession, and their influence is naturally
+used in the same direction; the many different religious bodies in the
+country often refuse to combine, and each desires to have its own
+institutions; and there are fashions in charity which, while they
+greatly stimulate generosity, have too often the effect of diverting it
+from the older and more unobtrusive forms. On the other hand, one of the
+most important facts in our present economical condition is that an
+extraordinary and almost unparalleled development of industrial
+prosperity has been accompanied by extreme and long-continued
+agricultural depression and by a great fall in the rate of interest.
+Wealth in many forms is accumulating with wonderful rapidity, and the
+increased rate of wages is diffusing prosperity among the working
+classes; but those who depend directly or indirectly on agricultural
+rents or on interest of money invested in trust securities have been
+suffering severely, and they comprise some of the most useful,
+blameless, and meritorious classes in the community. The same causes
+that have injured them have fallen with crushing severity on
+old-established institutions which usually derive their income largely
+or entirely from the rent of land or from money invested in the public
+funds. The bitter cry of distress that is rising from the hospitals and
+many other ancient charities, from the universities, from the clergy of
+the Established Church, abundantly proves it.
+
+The preference, however, to be given to old charities rather than to new
+ones is subject to very many exceptions. It does not apply to new
+countries or to the many cases in which changes and developments of
+industry have planted vast agglomerations of population in districts
+which were once but thinly populated, and therefore but little provided
+with charitable or educational institutions. Nor does it apply to the
+many cases in which the circumstances of modern life have called into
+existence new forms of charity, new wants, new dangers and evils to be
+combated, new departments of knowledge to be cultivated. One of the
+greatest difficulties of the older universities is that of providing,
+out of their shrinking endowments, for the teaching of branches of
+science and knowledge which have only come into existence, or at least
+into prominence, long after these universities were established, and
+some of which require not only trained teachers but costly apparatus
+and laboratories. Increasing international competition and enlarged
+scientific knowledge have rendered necessary an amount of technical and
+agricultural education never dreamed of by our ancestors; and the rise
+of the great provincial towns and the greater intensity of provincial
+life and provincial patriotism, as well as the changes that have passed
+over the position both of the working and middle classes, have created a
+genuine demand for educational establishments of a different type from
+the older universities. The higher education of women is essentially a
+nineteenth-century work, and it has been carried on without the
+assistance of old endowments and with very little help from modern
+Parliaments. In the distribution of public funds a class which is wholly
+unrepresented in Parliament seldom gets its fair share; and higher
+education, like most forms of science, like most of the higher forms of
+literature, and like many valuable forms of research, never can be
+self-supporting. There are great branches of knowledge which without
+established endowments must remain uncultivated, or be cultivated only
+by men of considerable private means. Some invaluable curative agencies,
+such as convalescent homes in different countries and climates and for
+different diseases, have grown up in our own generation, as well as some
+of the most fruitful forms of medical research and some of the most
+efficacious methods of giving healthy change and brightness to the lives
+that are most monotonous and overstrained. Every great revolution in
+industry, in population, and even in knowledge, brings with it new and
+special wants, and there are cases in which assisted emigration is one
+of the best forms of charity.
+
+These are but a few illustrations of the directions in which the large
+surplus funds which many of the very rich are prepared to expend on
+philanthropic purposes may profitably go. There is a marked and
+increasing tendency in our age to meet all the various exigencies of
+Society, as they arise, by State aid resting on compulsory taxation. In
+countries where the levels of fortune are such that few men have incomes
+greatly in excess of their real or factitious wants, this method will
+probably be necessary; but many of the wants I have described can be
+better met by the old English method of intelligent private generosity,
+and in a country in which the number of the very rich is so great and so
+increasing, this generosity should not be wanting.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[67] _Notes on Life._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+
+The beautiful saying of Newton, that he felt like a child who had been
+picking up a few pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of undiscovered
+truth, may well occur to any writer who attempts to say something on the
+vast subject of marriage. The infinite variety of circumstances and
+characters affects it in infinitely various ways, and all that can here
+be done is to collect a few somewhat isolated and miscellaneous remarks
+upon it. Yet it is a subject which cannot be omitted in a book like
+this. In numerous cases it is the great turning-point of a life, and in
+all cases when it takes place it is one of the most important of its
+events. Whatever else marriage may do or fail to do, it never leaves a
+man unchanged. His intellect, his character, his happiness, his way of
+looking on the world, will all be influenced by it. If it does not raise
+or strengthen him it will lower or weaken. If it does not deepen
+happiness it will impair it. It brings with it duties, interests,
+habits, hopes, cares, sorrows, and joys that will penetrate into every
+fissure of his nature and modify the whole course of his life.
+
+It is strange to think with how much levity and how little knowledge a
+contract which is so indissoluble and at the same time so momentous is
+constantly assumed; sometimes under the influence of a blinding passion
+and at an age when life is still looked upon as a romance or an idyll;
+sometimes as a matter of mere ambition and calculation, through a desire
+for wealth or title or position. Men and women rely on the force of
+habit and necessity to accommodate themselves to conditions they have
+never really understood or realised.
+
+In most cases different motives combine, though in different degrees.
+Sometimes an overpowering affection for the person is the strongest
+motive and eclipses all others. Sometimes the main motive to marriage is
+a desire to be married. It is to obtain a settled household and
+position; to be relieved from the 'unchartered freedom' and the 'vague
+desires' of a lonely life; to find some object of affection; to acquire
+the steady habits and the exemption from household cares which are
+essential to a career; to perpetuate a race; perhaps to escape from
+family discomforts, or to introduce a new and happy influence into a
+family. With these motives a real affection for a particular person is
+united, but it is not of such a character as to preclude choice,
+judgment, comparison, and a consideration of worldly advantages.
+
+It is a wise saying of Swift that there would be fewer unhappy marriages
+in the world if women thought less of making nets and more of making
+cages. The qualities that attract, fascinate, and dazzle are often
+widely different from those which are essential to a happy marriage.
+Sometimes they are distinctly hostile to it. More frequently they
+conduce to it, but only in an inferior or subsidiary degree. The turn of
+mind and character that makes the accomplished flirt is certainly not
+that which promises best for the happiness of a married life; and
+distinguished beauty, brilliant talents, and the heroic qualities that
+play a great part in the affairs of life, and shine conspicuously in the
+social sphere, sink into a minor place among the elements of married
+happiness. In marriage the identification of two lives is so complete
+that it brings every faculty and gift into play, but in degrees and
+proportions very different from public life or casual intercourse and
+relations. The most essential are often wanting in a brilliant life, and
+are largely developed in lives and characters that rise little, if at
+all, above the commonplace. In the words of a very shrewd man of the
+world: 'Before marriage the shape, the figure, the complexion carry all
+before them; after marriage the mind and character unexpectedly claim
+their share, and that the largest, of importance.'[68]
+
+The relation is one of the closest intimacy and confidence, and if the
+identity of interest between the two partners is not complete, each has
+an almost immeasurable power of injuring the other. A moral basis of
+sterling qualities is of capital importance. A true, honest, and
+trustworthy nature, capable of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, should
+rank in the first line, and after that a kindly, equable, and contented
+temper, a power of sympathy, a habit of looking at the better and
+brighter side of men and things. Of intellectual qualities, judgment,
+tact, and order are perhaps the most valuable. Above almost all things,
+men should seek in marriage perfect sanity, and dread everything like
+hysteria. Beauty will continue to be a delight, though with much
+diminished power, but grace and the charm of manner will retain their
+full attraction to the last. They brighten in innumerable ways the
+little things of life, and life is mainly made up of little things,
+exposed to petty frictions, and requiring small decisions and small
+sacrifices. Wide interests and large appreciations are, in the marriage
+relation, more important than any great constructive or creative talent,
+and the power to soothe, to sympathise, to counsel, and to endure, than
+the highest qualities of the hero or the saint. It is by these alone
+that the married life attains its full measure of perfection.
+
+
+     'Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atrâ
+       Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.'[69]
+
+
+But while this is true of all marriages, it is obvious that different
+professions and circumstances of life will demand different qualities. A
+hard-working labouring man, or a man who, though not labouring with his
+hands, is living a life of poverty and struggle, will not seek in
+marriage a type of character exactly the same as a man who is born to a
+great position, and who has large social and administrative duties to
+discharge. The wife of a clergyman immersed in the many interests of a
+parish; the wife of a soldier or a merchant, who may have to live in
+many lands, with long periods of separation from her husband, and
+perhaps amid many hardships; the wife of an active and ambitious
+politician; the wife of a busy professional man incessantly occupied
+outside his home; the wife of a man whose health or business or habits
+keep him constantly in his house, will each need some special qualities.
+There are few things in which both men and women naturally differ more
+than in the elasticity and adaptiveness of their natures, in their power
+of bearing monotony, in the place which habit, routine, and variety hold
+in their happiness; and in different kinds of life these things have
+very different degrees of importance. Special family circumstances, such
+as children by a former marriage, or difficult and delicate relations
+with members of the family of one partner, will require the exercise of
+special qualities. Such relations, indeed, are often one of the most
+searching and severe tests of the sterling qualities of female
+character.
+
+Probably, on the whole, the best presumption of a successful choice in
+marriage will be found where the wife has not been educated in
+circumstances or ideas absolutely dissimilar from those of her married
+life. Marriages of different races or colours are rarely happy, and the
+same thing is true of marriages between persons of social levels that
+are so different as to entail great differences of manners and habits.
+Other and minor disparities of circumstances between girl life and
+married life will have their effect, but they are less strong and less
+invariable. Some of the happiest marriages have been marriages of
+emancipation, which removed a girl from uncongenial family surroundings,
+and placed her for the first time in an intellectual and moral
+atmosphere in which she could freely breathe. At the same time, in the
+choice of a wife, the character, circumstances, habits, and tone of the
+family in which she has been brought up will always be an important
+element. There are qualities of race, there are pedigrees of character,
+which it is never prudent to neglect. Franklin quotes with approval the
+advice of a wise man to choose a wife 'out of a bunch,' as girls brought
+up together improve each other by emulation, learn mutual self-sacrifice
+and forbearance, rub off their angularities, and are not suffered to
+develop overweening self-conceit. A family where the ruling taste is
+vulgar, where the standard of honour is low, where extravagance and
+self-indulgence and want of order habitually prevail, creates an
+atmosphere which it needs a strong character altogether to escape. There
+is also the great question of physical health. A man should seek in
+marriage rather to raise than to depress the physical level of his
+family, and above all not to introduce into it grave, well-ascertained
+hereditary disease. Of all forms of self-sacrifice hardly any is at once
+so plainly right and so plainly useful as the celibacy of those who are
+tainted with such disease.
+
+There is no subject on which religious teachers have dwelt more than
+upon marriage and the relation of the sexes, and it has been continually
+urged that the propagation of children is its first end. It is strange,
+however, to observe how almost absolutely in the popular ethics of
+Christendom such considerations as that which I have last mentioned have
+been neglected. If one of the most responsible things that a man can do
+is to bring a human being into the world, one of his first and most
+obvious duties is to do what he can to secure that it shall come into
+the world with a sound body and a sane mind. This is the best
+inheritance that parents can leave their children, and it is in a large
+degree within their reach. Immature marriage, excessive child-bearing,
+marriages of near relations, and, above all, marriages with some grave
+hereditary physical or mental disease or some great natural defect, may
+bring happiness to the parents, but can scarcely fail to entail a
+terrible penalty upon their children. It is clearly recognised that one
+of the first duties of parents to their children is to secure them in
+early life not only good education, but also, as far as is within their
+power, the conditions of a healthy being. But the duty goes back to an
+earlier stage, and in marriage the prospects of the unborn should never
+be forgotten. This is one of the considerations which in the ethics of
+the future is likely to have a wholly different place from any that it
+has occupied in the past.
+
+A kindred consideration, little less important and almost equally
+neglected in popular teaching, is that it is a moral offence to bring
+children into the world with no prospect of being able to provide for
+them. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the neglect of
+these two duties has tended to the degradation and unhappiness of the
+world.
+
+The greatly increased importance which the Darwinian theory has given to
+heredity should tend to make men more sensible of the first of these
+duties. In marriage there are not only reciprocal duties between the two
+partners; there are also, more than in any other act of life, plain
+duties to the race. The hereditary nature of insanity and of some forms
+of disease is an indisputable truth. The hereditary transmission of
+character has not, it is true, as yet acquired this position; and there
+is a grave schism on the subject in the Darwinian school. But that it
+exists to some extent few close observers will doubt, and it is in a
+high degree probable that it is one of the most powerful moulding
+influences of life. No more probable explanation has yet been given of
+the manner in which human nature has been built up, and of the various
+instincts and tastes with which we are born, than the doctrine that
+habits and modes of thought and feeling indulged in and produced by
+circumstances in former generations have gradually become innate in the
+race, and exhibit themselves spontaneously and instinctively and quite
+independently of the circumstances that originally produced them.
+According to this theory the same process is continually going on. Man
+has slowly emerged from a degraded and bestial condition. The pressure
+of long-continued circumstances has moulded him into his special type;
+but new feelings and habits, or modifications of old feelings and
+habits, are constantly passing not only into his life but into his
+nature, taking root there, and in some degree at least reproducing
+themselves by the force of heredity in the innate disposition of his
+offspring. If this be true, it gives a new and terrible importance both
+to the duty of self-culture and to the duty of wise selection in
+marriage. It means that children are likely to be influenced not only by
+what we do and by what we say, but also by what we are, and that the
+characters of the parents in different degrees and combinations will
+descend even to a remote posterity.
+
+It throws a not less terrible light upon the miscalculations of the
+past. On this hypothesis, as Mr. Galton has truly shown, it is scarcely
+possible to exaggerate the evil which has been brought upon the world by
+the religious glorification of celibacy and by the enormous development
+and encouragement of the monastic life. Generation after generation,
+century after century, and over the whole wide surface of Christendom,
+this conception of religion drew into a sterile celibacy nearly all who
+were most gentle, most unselfish, most earnest, studious, and religious,
+most susceptible to moral and intellectual enthusiasm, and thus
+prevented them from transmitting to posterity the very qualities that
+are most needed for the happiness and the moral progress of the race.
+Whenever the good and evil resulting from different religious systems
+come to be impartially judged, this consideration is likely to weigh
+heavily in the scale.[70]
+
+Returning, however, to the narrower sphere of particular marriages, it
+may be observed that although full confidence, and, in one sense,
+complete identification of interests, are the characteristics of a
+perfect marriage, this does not by any means imply that one partner
+should be a kind of duplicate of the other. Woman is not a mere weaker
+man; and the happiest marriages are often those in which, in tastes,
+character, and intellectual qualities, the wife is rather the complement
+than the reflection of her husband. In intellectual things this is
+constantly shown. The purely practical and prosaic intellect is united
+with an intellect strongly tinged with poetry and romance; the man whose
+strength is in facts, with the woman whose strength is in ideas; the man
+who is wholly absorbed in science or politics or economical or
+industrial problems and pursuits, with a woman who possesses the talent
+or at least the temperament of an artist or musician. In such cases one
+partner brings sympathies or qualities, tastes or appreciations or kinds
+of knowledge in which the other is most defective; and by the close and
+constant contact of two dissimilar types each is, often insensibly, but
+usually very effectually, improved. Men differ greatly in their
+requirements of intellectual sympathy. A perfectly commonplace
+intellectual surrounding will usually do something to stunt or lower a
+fine intelligence, but it by no means follows that each man finds the
+best intellectual atmosphere to be that which is most in harmony with
+his own special talent.
+
+To many, hard intellectual labour is an eminently isolated thing, and
+what they desire most in the family circle is to cast off all thought of
+it. I have known two men who were in the first rank of science, intimate
+friends, and both of them of very domestic characters. One of them was
+accustomed to do nearly all his work in the presence of his wife, and in
+the closest possible co-operation with her. The other used to
+congratulate himself that none of his family had his own scientific
+tastes, and that when he left his work and came into his family circle
+he had the rest of finding himself in an atmosphere that was entirely
+different. Some men of letters need in their work constant stimulus,
+interest, and sympathy. Others desire only to develop their talent
+uncontrolled, uninfluenced, and undisturbed, and with an atmosphere of
+cheerful quiet around them.
+
+What is true of intellect is also in a large degree true of character.
+Two persons living constantly together should have many tastes and
+sympathies in common, and their characters will in most cases tend to
+assimilate. Yet great disparities of character may subsist in marriage,
+not only without evil but often with great advantage. This is especially
+the case where each supplies what is most needed in the other. Some
+natures require sedatives and others tonics; and it will often be found
+in a happy marriage that the union of two dissimilar natures stimulates
+the idle and inert, moderates the impetuous, gives generosity to the
+parsimonious and order to the extravagant, imparts the spirit of caution
+or the spirit of enterprise which is most needed, and corrects, by
+contact with a healthy and cheerful nature, the morbid and the
+desponding.
+
+Marriage may also very easily have opposite effects. It is not
+unfrequently founded on the sympathy of a common weakness, and when this
+is the case it can hardly fail to deepen the defect. On the whole,
+women, in some of the most valuable forms of strength--in the power of
+endurance and in the power of perseverance--are at least the equals of
+men. But weak and tremulous nerves, excessive sensibility, and an
+exaggerated share of impulse and emotion, are indissolubly associated
+with certain charms, both of manner and character, which are intensely
+feminine, and to many men intensely attractive. When a nature of this
+kind is wedded to a weak or a desponding man, the result will seldom be
+happiness to either party, but with a strong man such marriages are
+often very happy. Strength may wed with weakness or with strength, but
+weakness should beware of mating itself with weakness. It needs the oak
+to support the ivy with impunity, and there are many who find the
+constant contact of a happy and cheerful nature the first essential of
+their happiness.
+
+As it is not wise or right that either partner in marriage should lose
+his or her individuality, so it is right that each should have an
+independent sphere of authority. It is assumed, of course, that there is
+the perfect trust which should be the first condition of marriage and
+also a reasonable judgment. Many marriages have been permanently marred
+because the woman has been given no independence in money matters and is
+obliged to come for each small thing to her husband. In general the less
+the husband meddles in household matters, or the wife in professional
+ones, the better. The education of very young children of both sexes,
+and of girls of a mature age, will fall almost exclusively to the wife.
+The education of the boys when they have emerged from childhood will be
+rather governed by the judgment of the man. Many things will be
+regulated in common; but the larger interests of the family will usually
+fall chiefly to one partner, the smaller and more numerous ones to the
+other.
+
+On such matters, however, generalisations have little value, as
+exceptions are very numerous. Differences of character, age, experience,
+and judgment, and countless special circumstances, will modify the
+family type, and it is in discovering these differences that wisdom in
+marriage mainly consists. The directions in which married life may
+influence character are also very many; but in the large number of cases
+in which it brings with it a great weight of household cares and family
+interests it will usually be found with both partners, but especially
+with the woman, at once to strengthen and to narrow unselfishness. She
+will live very little for herself, but very exclusively for her family.
+On the intellectual side such marriages usually give a sounder judgment
+and a wider knowledge of the world rather than purely intellectual
+tastes. It is a good thing when the education which precedes marriage
+not only prepares for the duties of the married life, but also furnishes
+a fair share of the interests and tastes which that state will probably
+tend to weaken. The hard battle of life, and the anxieties and sorrows
+that a family seldom fails to bring, will naturally give an increased
+depth and seriousness to character. There are, however, natures which,
+though they may be tainted by no grave vice, are so incurably frivolous
+that even this education will fail to influence them. As Emerson says,
+'A fly is as untameable as a hyæna.'
+
+The age that is most suited for marriage is also a matter which will
+depend largely on individual circumstances. The ancients, as is well
+known, placed it, in the case of the man, far back, and they desired a
+great difference of age between the man and the woman. Plato assigned
+between thirty and thirty-five, and Aristotle thirty-seven, as the best
+age for a man to marry, while they would have the girls married at
+eighteen or twenty.[71] In their view, however, marriage was looked
+upon very exclusively from the side of the man and of the State. They
+looked on it mainly as the means of producing healthy citizens, and it
+was in their eyes almost wholly dissociated from the passion of love.
+Montaigne, in one of his essays, has expounded this view with the
+frankest cynicism.[72] Yet few things are so important in marriage as
+that the man should bring into it the freshness and the purity of an
+untried nature, and that the early poetry and enthusiasm of life should
+at least in some degree blend with the married state. Nor is it
+desirable that a relation in which the formation of habits plays so
+large a part should be deferred until character has lost its
+flexibility, and until habits have been irretrievably hardened.
+
+On the other hand there are invincible arguments against marriages
+entered into at an age when neither partner has any real knowledge of
+the world and of men. Only too often they involve many illusions and
+leave many regrets. Some kinds of knowledge, such as that given by
+extended travel, are far more easily acquired before than after
+marriage. Usually very early marriages are improvident marriages, made
+with no sufficient provision for the children, and often they are
+immature marriages, bringing with them grave physical evils. In those
+cases in which a great place or position is to be inherited, it is
+seldom a good thing that the interval of age between the owner and his
+heir should be so small that inheritance will probably be postponed till
+the confines of old age.
+
+Marriages entered into in the decline of life stand somewhat apart from
+others, and are governed by other motives. What men chiefly seek in them
+is a guiding hand to lead them gently down the last descent of life.
+
+On this, as on most subjects connected with marriage, no general or
+inflexible rule can be laid down. Moralists have chiefly dilated on the
+dangers of deferred marriages; economists on the evils of improvident
+marriages. Each man's circumstances and disposition must determine his
+course. On the whole, however, in most civilised countries the
+prevailing tendencies are in the direction of an increased postponement
+of marriage. Among the rich, the higher standard of luxury and
+requirements, the comforts of club life, and also, I think, the
+diminished place which emotion is taking in life, all lead to this,
+while the spread of providence and industrial habits among the poor has
+the same tendency.
+
+A female pen is so much more competent than a masculine one for dealing
+with marriage from the woman's point of view that I do not attempt to
+enter on that field. It is impossible, however, to overlook the marked
+tendency of nineteenth-century civilisation to give women, both married
+and unmarried, a degree of independence and self-reliance far exceeding
+that of the past. The legislation of most civilised countries has
+granted them full protection for their property and their earnings,
+increased rights of guardianship over their children, a wider access to
+professional life, and even a very considerable voice in the management
+of public affairs; and these influences have been strengthened by great
+improvement in female education, and by a change in the social tone
+which has greatly extended their latitude of independent action. For my
+own part, I have no doubt that this movement is, on the whole,
+beneficial, not only to those who have to fight a lonely battle in life,
+but also to those who are in the marriage state. Larger interests, wider
+sympathies, a more disciplined judgment, and a greater power of
+independence and self-control naturally accompany it; and these things
+can never be wholly wasted. They will often be called into active
+exercise by the many vicissitudes of the married life. They will,
+perhaps, be still more needed when the closest of human ties is severed
+by the great Divorce of Death.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[68] _Melbourne Papers_, p. 72.
+
+[69] Tibullus.
+
+[70] Galton's _Hereditary Genius_, pp. 357-8. It may be argued, on the
+other side, that the monasteries consigned to celibacy a great
+proportion of the weaker physical natures, who would otherwise have left
+sickly children behind them. This, and the much greater mortality of
+weak infant life, must have strengthened the race in an age when
+sanitary science was unknown and when external conditions were very
+unfavourable.
+
+[71] _Republic_, Book V. _Politics_, Book VII.
+
+[72] _Livre_ III. Ch. 5.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SUCCESS
+
+
+One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that on the
+whole, and in the great majority of cases, success in life depends more
+on character than on either intellect or fortune. Many brilliant
+exceptions, no doubt, tend to obscure the rule, and some of the
+qualities of character that succeed the best may be united with grave
+vices or defects; but on the whole the law is one that cannot be
+questioned, and it becomes more and more apparent as civilisation
+advances. Temperance, industry, integrity, frugality, self-reliance, and
+self-restraint are the means by which the great masses of men rise from
+penury to comfort, and it is the nations in which these qualities are
+most diffused that in the long run are the most prosperous. Chance and
+circumstance may do much. A happy climate, a fortunate annexation, a
+favourable vicissitude in the course of commerce, may vastly influence
+the prosperity of nations; anarchy, agitation, unjust laws, and
+fraudulent enterprise may offer many opportunities of individual or even
+of class gains; but ultimately it will be found that the nations in
+which the solid industrial virtues are most diffused and most respected
+pass all others in the race. The moral basis of character was the true
+foundation of the greatness of ancient Rome, and when that foundation
+was sapped the period of her decadence began. The solid, parsimonious,
+and industrious qualities of the French peasantry have given their
+country the recuperative force which has enabled its greatness to
+survive the countless follies and extravagances of its rulers.
+
+Character, it may be added, is especially pre-eminent in those kinds and
+degrees of success that affect the greatest numbers of men and influence
+most largely their real happiness--in the success which secures a high
+level of material comfort; which makes domestic life stable and happy;
+which wins for a man the respect and confidence of his neighbours. If we
+have melancholy examples that very different qualities often gain
+splendid prizes, it is still true that there are few walks in life in
+which a character that inspires complete confidence is not a leading
+element of success.
+
+In the paths of ambition that can only be pursued by the few,
+intellectual qualities bear a larger part, and there are, of course,
+many works of genius that are in their own nature essentially
+intellectual. Yet even the most splendid successes of life will often be
+found to be due much less to extraordinary intellectual gifts than to an
+extraordinary strength and tenacity of will, to the abnormal courage,
+perseverance, and work-power that spring from it, or to the tact and
+judgment which make men skilful in seizing opportunities, and which, of
+all intellectual qualities, are most closely allied with character.
+
+Strength of will and tact are not necessarily, perhaps not generally,
+conjoined, and often the first seems somewhat to impair the second. The
+strong passion, the intense conviction, the commanding and imperious
+nature overriding obstacles and defying opposition, that often goes with
+a will of abnormal strength, does not naturally harmonise with the
+reticence of expression, the delicacy of touch and management that
+characterise a man who possesses in a high degree the gift of tact.
+There are circumstances and times when each of these two things is more
+important than the other, and the success of each man will mainly depend
+upon the suitability of his peculiar gift to the work he has to do. 'The
+daring pilot in extremity' is often by no means the best navigator in a
+quiet sea; and men who have shown themselves supremely great in moments
+of crisis and appalling danger, who have built up mighty nations,
+subdued savage tribes, guided the bark of the State with skill and
+courage amid the storms of revolution or civil war, and written their
+names in indelible letters on the page of history, have sometimes proved
+far less successful than men of inferior powers in the art of managing
+assemblies, satisfying rival interests or assuaging by judicious
+compromise old hatreds and prejudices. We have had at least one
+conspicuous example of the difference of these two types in our own day
+in the life of the great founder of German Unity.
+
+Sometimes, however, men of great strength of will and purpose possess
+also in a high degree the gift of tact; and when this is combined with
+soundness of judgment it usually leads to a success in life out of all
+proportion to their purely intellectual qualities. In nearly all
+administrative posts, in all the many fields of labour where the task of
+man is to govern, manage, or influence others, to adjust or harmonise
+antagonisms of race or interests or prejudices, to carry through
+difficult business without friction and by skilful co-operation, this
+combination of gifts is supremely valuable. It is much more valuable
+than brilliancy, eloquence, or originality. I remember the comment of a
+good judge of men on the administration of a great governor who was
+pre-eminently remarkable for this combination. 'He always seemed to gain
+his point, yet he never appeared to be in antagonism with anyone.' The
+steady pressure of a firm and consistent will was scarcely felt when it
+was accompanied by the ready recognition of everything that was good in
+the argument of another, and by a charm of manner and of temper which
+seldom failed to disarm opposition and win personal affection.
+
+The combination of qualities which, though not absolutely incompatible,
+are very usually disconnected, is the secret of many successful lives.
+Thus, to take one of the most homely, but one of the most useful and
+most pleasing of all qualities--good-nature--it will too often be found
+that when it is the marked and leading feature of a character it is
+accompanied by some want of firmness, energy, and judgment. Sometimes,
+however, this is not the case, and there are then few greater elements
+of success. It is curious to observe the subtle, magnetic sympathy by
+which men feel whether their neighbour is a harsh or a kind judge of
+others, and how generally those who judge harshly are themselves harshly
+judged, while those who judge others rather by their merits than by
+their defects, and perhaps a little above their merits, win popularity.
+
+No one, indeed, can fail to notice the effect of good-nature in
+conciliating opposition, securing attachment, smoothing the various
+paths of life, and, it must be added, concealing grave faults. Laxities
+of conduct that might well blast the reputation of a man or a woman are
+constantly forgotten, or at least forgiven, in those who lead a life of
+tactful good-nature, and in the eyes of the world this quality is more
+valued than others of far higher and more solid worth. It is not
+unusual, for example, to see a lady in society, who is living wholly or
+almost wholly for her pleasures, who has no high purpose in life, no
+real sense of duty, no capacity for genuine and serious self-sacrifice,
+but who at the same time never says an unkind thing of her neighbours,
+sets up no severe standard of conduct either for herself or for others,
+and by an innate amiability of temperament tries, successfully and
+without effort, to make all around her cheerful and happy. She will
+probably be more admired, she will almost certainly be more popular,
+than her neighbour whose whole life is one of self-denial for the good
+of others, who sacrifices to her duties her dearest pleasures, her time,
+her money, and her talents, but who through some unhappy turn of temper,
+strengthened perhaps by a narrow and austere education, is a harsh and
+censorious judge of the frailties of her fellows.
+
+It is also a curious thing to observe how often, when the saving gift of
+tact is wanting, the brilliant, the witty, the ambitious, and the
+energetic are passed in the race of life by men who in intellectual
+qualities are greatly their inferiors. They dazzle, agitate, and in a
+measure influence, and they easily win places in the second rank; but
+something in the very exercise of their talents continually trammels
+them, while judgment, tact, and good-nature, with comparatively little
+brilliancy, quietly and unobtrusively take the helm. There is the
+excellent talker who, by his talents and his acquirements, is eminently
+fitted to delight and to instruct, yet he is so unable to repress some
+unseemly jest or some pointed sarcasm or some humorous paradox that he
+continually leaves a sting behind him, creates enemies, destroys his
+reputation for sobriety of thought, and makes himself impossible in
+posts of administration and trust. There is the parliamentary speaker
+who, amid shouts of applause, pursues his adversary with scathing
+invective or merciless ridicule, and who all the time is accumulating
+animosities against himself, shutting the door against combinations that
+would be all important to his career, and destroying his chances of
+party leadership. There is the advocate who can state his case with
+consummate power, but who, by an aggressive manner or a too evident
+contempt for his adversary, or by the over-statement of a good cause,
+habitually throws the minds of his hearers into an attitude of
+opposition. There are the many men who, by ill-timed or too frequent
+levity, lose all credit for their serious qualities, or who by
+pretentiousness or self-assertion or restless efforts to distinguish
+themselves, make themselves universally disliked, or who by their
+egotism or their repetitions or their persistence, or their incapacity
+of distinguishing essentials from details, or understanding the
+dispositions of others, or appreciating times and seasons, make their
+wearied and exasperated hearers blind to the most substantial merits. By
+faults of tact men of really moderate opinions get the reputation of
+extremists; men of substantially kindly natures sow animosities
+wherever they go; men of real patriotism are regarded as mere jesters or
+party gamblers; men who possess great talents and have rendered great
+services to the world sink into inveterate bores and never obtain from
+their contemporaries a tithe of the success which is their due. Tact is
+not merely shown in saying the right thing at the right time and to the
+right people; it is shown quite as much in the many things that are left
+unsaid and apparently unnoticed, or are only lightly and evasively
+touched.
+
+It is certainly not the highest of human endowments, but it is as
+certainly one of the most valuable, for it is that which chiefly enables
+a man to use his other gifts to advantage, and which most effectually
+supplies the place of those that are wanting. It lies on the borderland
+of character and intellect. It implies self-restraint, good temper,
+quick and kindly sympathy with the feelings of others. It implies also a
+perception of the finer shadings of character and expression, the
+intellectual gift which enables a man to place himself in touch with
+great varieties of disposition, and to catch those more delicate notes
+of feeling to which a coarser nature is insensible.
+
+It is perhaps in most cases more developed among women than among men,
+and it does not necessarily imply any other remarkable gift. It is
+sometimes found among both men and women of very small general
+intellectual powers; and in numerous cases it serves only to add to the
+charm of private life and to secure social success. Where it is united
+with real talents it not only enables its possessor to use these talents
+to the greatest advantage; it also often leads those about him greatly
+to magnify their amount. The presence or absence of this gift is one of
+the chief causes why the relative value of different men is often so
+differently judged by contemporaries and by posterity; by those who have
+come in direct personal contact with them, and by those who judge them
+from without, and by the broad results of their lives. Real tact, like
+good manners, is or becomes a spontaneous and natural thing. The man of
+perfectly refined manners does not consciously and deliberately on each
+occasion observe the courtesies and amenities of good society. They have
+become to him a second nature, and he observes them as by a kind of
+instinct, without thought or effort. In the same way true tact is
+something wholly different from the elaborate and artificial attempts to
+conciliate and attract which may often be seen, and which usually bring
+with them the impression of manoeuvre and insincerity.
+
+Though it may be found in men of very different characters and grades of
+intellect, tact has its natural affinities. Seeking beyond all things to
+avoid unnecessary friction, and therefore with a strong leaning towards
+compromise, it does not generally or naturally go with intense
+convictions, with strong enthusiasms, with an ardently impulsive or
+emotional temperament. Nor is it commonly found among men of deep and
+concentrated genius, intensely absorbed in some special subject. Such
+men are often among the most unobservant of the social sides of life,
+and very bad judges of character, though there will frequently be found
+among them an almost childlike unworldliness and simplicity of nature,
+and an essential moderation of temperament which, combined with their
+superiority of intellect, gives them a charm peculiarly their own.
+Tact, however, has a natural affinity to a calm, equable, and
+good-natured temper. It allies itself with a quick sense of opportunity,
+proportion, and degree; with the power of distinguishing readily and
+truly between the essential and the unimportant; with that soundness of
+judgment which not only guides men among the varied events of life, and
+in their estimate of those about them, but also enables them to take a
+true measure of their own capacities, of the tasks that are most fitted
+for them, of the objects of ambition that are and are not within their
+reach.
+
+Though in its higher degrees it is essentially a natural gift, and is
+sometimes conspicuous in perfectly uneducated men, it may be largely
+cultivated and improved; and in this respect the education of good
+society is especially valuable. Such an education, whatever else it may
+do, at least removes many jarring notes from the rhythm of life. It
+tends to correct faults of manner, demeanour, or pronunciation which
+tell against men to a degree altogether disproportioned to their real
+importance, and on which, it is hardly too much to say, the casual
+judgments of the world are mainly formed; and it also fosters moral
+qualities which are essentially of the nature of tact.
+
+We can hardly have a better picture of a really tactful man than in some
+sentences taken from the admirable pages in which Cardinal Newman has
+painted the character of the perfect gentleman.
+
+'It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never
+inflicts pain.... He carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt
+in the minds of those with whom he is cast--all clashing of opinion or
+collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom or resentment;
+his great concern being to make everyone at ease and at home. He has his
+eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle
+towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect
+to whom he is speaking; he guards against unreasonable allusions or
+topics that may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and
+never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems
+to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except
+when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears
+for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who
+interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never
+mean or little in his disputes, never takes an unfair advantage, never
+mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates
+evil which he dare not say out.... He has too much good sense to be
+affronted at insult; he is too busy to remember injuries, and too
+indolent to bear malice.... If he engages in controversy of any kind his
+disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of
+better though less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and
+hack instead of cutting clean.... He may be right or wrong in his
+opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he
+is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find
+greater candour, consideration, indulgence. He throws himself into the
+minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the
+weakness of human nature as well as its strength, its province, and its
+limits.'[73]
+
+I have said at the beginning of this chapter that character bears, on
+the whole, a larger part in promoting success than any other things, and
+that a steady perseverance in the industrial virtues seldom fails to
+bring some reward in the directions that are most conducive to human
+happiness. At the same time it is only too evident that success in life
+is by no means measured by merit, either moral or intellectual. Life is
+a great lottery, in which chance and opportunity play an enormous part.
+The higher qualities are often less successful than the medium and the
+lower ones. They are often most successful when they are blended with
+other and inferior elements, and a large share of the great prizes fall
+to the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the cunning. Probably, however,
+the disparity between merit and success diminishes if we take the larger
+averages, and the fortunes of nations correspond with their real worth
+much more nearly than the fortunes of individuals. Success, too, is far
+from being a synonym for happiness, and while the desire for happiness
+is inherent in all human nature, the desire for success--at least beyond
+what is needed for obtaining a fair share of the comforts of life--is
+much less universal. The force of habit, the desire for a tranquil
+domestic life, the love of country and of home, are often, among really
+able men, stronger than the impulse of ambition; and a distaste for the
+competitions and contentions of life, for the increasing
+responsibilities of greatness, and for the envy and jealousies that
+seldom fail to follow in its trail, may be found among men who, if they
+chose to enter the arena, seem to have every requisite for success. The
+strongest man is not always the most ardent climber, and the tranquil
+valleys have to many a greater charm than the lofty pinnacles of life.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[73] Newman's _Scope and Nature of University Education_, Discourse IX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TIME
+
+
+Considering the countless ages that man has lived upon this globe, it
+seems a strange thing that he has so little learned to acquiesce in the
+normal conditions of humanity. How large a proportion of the melancholy
+which is reflected in the poetry of all ages, and which is felt in
+different degrees in every human soul, is due not to any special or
+peculiar misfortune, but to things that are common to the whole human
+race! The inexorable flight of time; the approach of old age and its
+infirmities; the shadow of death; the mystery that surrounds our being;
+the contrast between the depth of affection and the transitoriness and
+uncertainty of life; the spectacle of the broken lives and baffled
+aspirations and useless labours and misdirected talents and pernicious
+energies and long-continued delusions that fill the path of human
+history; the deep sense of vanity and aimlessness that must sometimes
+come over us as we contemplate a world in which chance is so often
+stronger than wisdom; in which desert and reward are so widely
+separated; in which living beings succeed each other in such a vast and
+bewildering redundance--eating, killing, suffering, and dying for no
+useful discoverable purpose,--all these things belong to the normal lot
+or to the inevitable setting of human life. Nor can it be said that
+science, which has so largely extended our knowledge of the Universe, or
+civilisation, which has so greatly multiplied our comforts and
+alleviated our pains, has in any degree diminished the sadness they
+bring. It seems, indeed, as if the more man is raised above a purely
+animal existence, and his mental and moral powers are developed, the
+more this kind of feeling increases.
+
+In few if any periods of the world's history has it been more
+perceptible in literature than at present. Physical constitution and
+temperament have a vast and a humiliating power of deepening or
+lightening it, and the strength or weakness of religious belief largely
+affects it, yet the best, the strongest, the most believing, and the
+most prosperous cannot wholly escape it. Sometimes it finds its true
+expression in the lines of Raleigh:
+
+
+     Even such is time; which takes in trust
+     Our youth, our joys, and all we have!
+     And pays us nought but age and dust,
+     Which in the dark and silent grave,
+     When we have wandered all our ways,
+     Shuts up the story of our days;
+     And from which grave and earth and dust,
+     The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
+
+
+Sometimes it takes the tone of a lighter melancholy touched with
+cynicism:
+
+
+     La vie est vaine:
+       Un peu d'amour,
+     Un peu de haine,
+       Et puis--bon jour.
+
+     La vie est brève,
+       Un peu d'espoir,
+     Un peu de rêve,
+       Et puis--bon soir.[74]
+
+
+There are few sayings which deserve better to be brought continually
+before our minds than that of Franklin: 'You value life; then do not
+squander time, for time is the stuff of life.' Of all the things that
+are bestowed on men, none is more valuable, but none is more unequally
+used, and the true measurement of life should be found less in its
+duration than in the amount that is put into it. The waste of time is
+one of the oldest of commonplaces, but it is one of those which are
+never really stale. How much of the precious 'stuff of life' is wasted
+by want of punctuality; by want of method involving superfluous and
+repeated effort; by want of measure prolonging things that are
+pleasurable or profitable in moderation to the point of weariness,
+satiety, and extravagance; by want of selection dwelling too much on the
+useless or the unimportant; by want of intensity, growing out of a
+nature that is listless and apathetic both in work and pleasure. Time
+is, in one sense, the most elastic of things. It is one of the commonest
+experiences that the busiest men find most of it for exceptional work,
+and often a man who, under the strong stimulus of an active professional
+life, repines bitterly that he finds so little time for pursuing some
+favourite work or study, discovers, to his own surprise, that when
+circumstances have placed all his time at his disposal he does less in
+this field than in the hard-earned intervals of a crowded life. The art
+of wisely using the spare five minutes, the casual vacancies or
+intervals of life, is one of the most valuable we can acquire. There are
+lives in which the main preoccupation is to get through time. There are
+others in which it is to find time for all that has to be got through,
+and most men, in different periods of their lives, are acquainted with
+both extremes. With some, time is mere duration, a blank, featureless
+thing, gliding swiftly and insensibly by. With others every day, and
+almost every hour, seems to have its distinctive stamp and character,
+for good or ill, in work or pleasure. There are vast differences in this
+respect between different ages of history, and between different
+generations in the same country, between town and country life, and
+between different countries. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle
+of Cathay' is profoundly true, and no traveller can fail to be
+insensible to the difference in the value of time in a Northern and in a
+Southern country. The leisure of some nations seems busier than the work
+of others, and few things are more resting to an overwrought and jaded
+Anglo-Saxon nature than to pass for a short season into one of those
+countries where time seems almost without value.
+
+On the whole there can be little doubt that life in the more civilised
+nations has, in our own generation, largely increased. It is not simply
+that its average duration is extended. This, in a large degree, is due
+to the diminished amount of infant mortality. The improvement is shown
+more conclusively in the increased commonness of vigorous and active old
+age, in the multitude of new contrivances for economising and therefore
+increasing time, in the far greater intensity of life both in the forms
+of work and in the forms of pleasure. 'Life at high pressure' is not
+without its drawbacks and its evils, but it at least means life which is
+largely and fully used.
+
+All intermissions of work, however, even when they do not take the form
+of positive pleasure, are not waste of time. Overwork, in all
+departments of life, is commonly bad economy, not so much because it
+often breaks down health--most of what is attributed to this cause is
+probably rather due to anxiety than to work--as because it seldom fails
+to impair the quality of work. A great portion of our lives passes in
+the unconsciousness of sleep, and perhaps no part is more usefully
+spent. It not only brings with it the restoration of our physical
+energies, but it also gives a true and healthy tone to our moral nature.
+Of all earthly things sleep does the most to place things in their true
+proportions, calming excited nerves and dispelling exaggerated cares.
+How many suicides have been averted, how many rash enterprises and
+decisions have been prevented, how many dangerous quarrels have been
+allayed, by the soothing influence of a few hours of steady sleep!
+'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care' is, indeed, in a
+careworn world, one of the chief of blessings. Its healing and
+restorative power is as much felt in the sicknesses of the mind as in
+those of the body, and, in spite of the authority of Solomon, it is
+probably a wise thing for men to take the full measure of it, which
+undoctored nature demands. The true waste of time of the sluggard is
+not in the amount of natural sleep he enjoys, but in the time idly
+spent in bed when sleep has ceased, and in misplaced and mistimed sleep,
+which is not due to any genuine craving of the body for rest, but simply
+to mental sluggishness, to lack of interest and attention.
+
+Some men have claimed for sleep even more than this. 'The night-time of
+the body,' an ancient writer has said, 'is the day-time of the soul,'
+and some, who do not absolutely hold the old belief that it is in the
+dreams of the night that the Divine Spirit most communicates with man,
+have, nevertheless, believed that the complete withdrawal of our minds
+from those worldly cares which haunt our waking hours and do so much to
+materialise and harden our natures is one of the first conditions of a
+higher life. 'In proportion,' said Swedenborg, 'as the mind is capable
+of being withdrawn from things sensual and corporeal, in the same
+proportion it is elevated into things celestial and spiritual.' It has
+been noticed that often thoughts and judgments, scattered and entangled
+in our evening hours, seem sifted, clarified, and arranged in sleep;
+that problems which seemed hopelessly confused when we lay down are at
+once and easily solved when we awake, 'as though a reason more perfect
+than reason had been at work when we were in our beds.' Something
+analogous to this, it has been contended, takes place in our moral
+natures. 'A process is going on in us during those hours which is not,
+and cannot be, brought so effectually, if at all, at any other time, and
+we are spiritually growing, developing, ripening more continuously while
+thus shielded from the distracting influences of the phenomenal world
+than during the hours in which we are absorbed in them.... Is it not
+precisely the function of sleep to give us for a portion of every day in
+our lives a respite from worldly influences which, uninterrupted, would
+deprive us of the instruction, of the spiritual reinforcements,
+necessary to qualify us to turn our waking experiences of the world to
+the best account without being overcome by them? It is in these hours
+that the plans and ambitions of our external worldly life cease to
+interfere with or obstruct the flow of the Divine life into the
+will.'[75]
+
+Without, however, following this train of thought, it is at least
+sufficiently clear that no small portion of the happiness of life
+depends upon our sleeping hours. Plato has exhorted men to observe
+carefully their dreams as indicating their natural dispositions,
+tendencies, and temptations, and--perhaps with more reason--Burton and
+Franklin have proposed 'the art of procuring pleasant dreams' as one of
+the great, though little recognised, branches of the science of life.
+This is, no doubt, mainly a question of diet, exercise, efficient
+ventilation, and a wise distribution of hours, but it is also largely
+influenced by moral causes.
+
+
+     Somnia quæ mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
+     Nec delubra deum, nec ab æthere numina mittunt,
+     Sed sibi quisque facit.
+
+
+To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright,
+unremorseful life, to cultivate the power of governing by the will the
+current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated
+anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for
+banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a
+little to the unhappiness of many lives.
+
+An analogous branch of self-culture is that which seeks to provide some
+healthy aliment for the waking hours of the night, when time seems so
+unnaturally prolonged, and when gloomy thoughts and exaggerated and
+distempered views of the trials of life peculiarly prevail. Among the
+ways in which education may conduce to the real happiness of man, its
+power of supplying pleasant or soothing thoughts for those dreary hours
+is not the least, though it is seldom or never noticed in books or
+speeches. It is, perhaps, in this respect that the early habit of
+committing poetry--and especially religious poetry--to memory is most
+important.
+
+In estimating the value of those intermissions of labour which are not
+spent in active enjoyment one other consideration may be noted. There
+are times when the mind should lie fallow, and all who have lived the
+intellectual life with profit have perceived that it is often in those
+times that it most regains the elasticity it may have lost and becomes
+most prolific in spontaneous thought. Many periods of life which might
+at first sight appear to be merely unused time are, in truth, among the
+most really valuable.
+
+We have all noticed the curious fact of the extreme apparent
+inequalities of time, though it is, in its essence, of all things the
+most uniform. Periods of pain or acute discomfort seem unnaturally
+long, but this lengthening of time is fortunately not true of all the
+melancholy scenes of life, nor is it peculiar to things that are
+painful. An invalid life with its almost unbroken monotony, and with the
+large measure of torpor that often accompanies it, usually flies very
+quickly, and most persons must have observed how the first week of
+travel, or of some other great change of habits and pursuits, though
+often attended with keen enjoyment, appears disproportionately long.
+Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the
+power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many
+landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are
+not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions,
+and labours follow each other in swift and distinct succession, seems
+the most long, and youth, with its keen susceptibility to impressions,
+appears to move much more slowly than apathetic old age. How almost
+immeasurably long to a young child seems the period from birthday to
+birthday! How long to the schoolboy seems the interval between vacation
+and vacation! How rapid as we go on in life becomes the awful beat of
+each recurring year! When the feeling of novelty has grown rare, and
+when interests have lost their edge, time glides by with an
+ever-increasing celerity. Campbell has justly noticed as a beneficent
+provision of nature that it is in the period of life when enjoyments are
+fewest, and infirmities most numerous, that the march of time seems most
+rapid.
+
+
+     The more we live, more brief appear
+       Our life's succeeding stages,
+     A day to childhood seems a year,
+       And years like passing ages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     When Joys have lost their bloom and breath,
+       And life itself is vapid,
+     Why as we reach the Falls of death
+       Feel we its tide more rapid?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Heaven gives our years of fading strength
+       Indemnifying fleetness;
+     And those of youth a seeming length
+       Proportioned to their sweetness.
+
+
+The shortness of life is one of the commonplaces of literature. Yet
+though we may easily conceive beings with faculties both of mind and
+body adapted to a far longer life than ours, it will usually be found,
+with our existing powers, that life, if not prematurely shortened, is
+long enough. In the case of men who have played a great part in public
+affairs, the best work is nearly always done before old age. It is a
+remarkable fact that although a Senate, by its very derivation, means an
+assembly of old men, and although in the Senate of Rome, which was the
+greatest of all, the members sat for life, there was a special law
+providing that no Senator, after sixty, should be summoned to attend his
+duty.[76] In the past centuries active septuagenarian statesmen were
+very rare, and in parliamentary life almost unknown. In our own century
+there have been brilliant exceptions, but in most cases it will be
+found that the true glory of these statesmen rests on what they had done
+before old age, and sometimes the undue prolongation of their active
+lives has been a grave misfortune, not only to their own reputations,
+but also to the nations they influenced. Often, indeed, while faculties
+diminish, self-confidence, even in good men, increases. Moral and
+intellectual failings that had been formerly repressed take root and
+spread, and it is no small blessing that they have but a short time to
+run their course. In the case of men of great capacities the follies of
+age are perhaps even more to be feared than the follies of youth. When
+men have made a great reputation and acquired a great authority, when
+they become the objects of the flattery of nations, and when they can,
+with little trouble or thought or study, attract universal attention, a
+new set of temptations begins. Their heads are apt to be turned. The
+feeling of responsibility grows weaker; the old judgment, caution,
+deliberation, self-restraint, and timidity disappear. Obstinacy and
+prejudice strengthen, while at the same time the force of the reasoning
+will diminishes. Sometimes, through a failing that is partly
+intellectual, but partly also moral, they almost wholly lose the power
+of realising or recognising new conditions, discoveries and necessities.
+They view with jealousy the rise of new reputations and of younger men,
+and the well-earned authority of an old man becomes the most formidable
+obstacle to improvement. In the field of politics, in the field of
+science, and in the field of military organisation, these truths might
+be abundantly illustrated. In the case of great but maleficent genius
+the shortness of life is a priceless blessing. Few greater curses could
+be imagined for the human race than the prolongation for centuries of
+the life of Napoleon.
+
+In literature also the same law may be detected. A writer's best
+thoughts are usually expressed long before extreme old age, though the
+habit and desire of production continue. The time of repetition, of
+diluted force, and of weakened judgment--the age when the mind has lost
+its flexibility and can no longer assimilate new ideas or keep pace with
+the changing modes and tendencies of another generation--often sets in
+while physical life is but little enfeebled. In this case, it is true,
+the evil is not very great, for Time may be trusted to sift the chaff
+from the wheat, and though it may not preserve the one it will
+infallibly discard the other. 'While I live,' Victor Hugo said with some
+grandiloquence, but also with some justice, 'it is my duty to produce.
+It is the duty of the world to select, from what I produce, that which
+is worth keeping. The world will discharge its duty. I shall discharge
+mine.' At the same time, no one can have failed to observe how much in
+our own generation the long silence of Newman in his old age added to
+his dignity and his reputation, and the same thing might have been said
+of Carlyle if a beneficent fire had destroyed the unrevised manuscripts
+which he wrote or dictated when a very old man.
+
+We are here, however, dealing with great labours, and with men who are
+filling a great place in the world's strife. The decay of faculty and
+will, that impairs power in these cases, is often perceptible long
+before there is any real decay in the powers that are needed for
+ordinary business or for the full enjoyment of life. But the time comes
+when children have grown into maturity, and when it becomes desirable
+that a younger generation should take the government of the world,
+should inherit its wealth, its power, its dignities, its many means of
+influence and enjoyment; and this cannot be fully done till the older
+generation is laid to rest. Often, indeed, old age, when it is free from
+grave infirmities and from great trials and privations, is the most
+honoured, the most tranquil, and perhaps on the whole the happiest
+period of life. The struggles, passions, and ambitions of other days
+have passed. The mellowing touch of time has allayed animosities,
+subdued old asperities of character, given a larger and more tolerant
+judgment, cured the morbid sensitiveness that most embitters life. The
+old man's mind is stored with the memories of a well-filled and
+honourable life. In the long leisures that now fall to his lot he is
+often enabled to resume projects which in a crowded professional life he
+had been obliged to adjourn; he finds (as Adam Smith has said) that one
+of the greatest pleasures in life is reverting in old age to the studies
+of youth, and he himself often feels something of the thrill of a second
+youth in his sympathy with the children who are around him. It is the
+St. Martin's summer, lighting with a pale but beautiful gleam the brief
+November day. But the time must come when all the alternatives of life
+are sad, and the least sad is a speedy and painless end. When the eye
+has ceased to see and the ear to hear, when the mind has failed and all
+the friends of youth are gone, and the old man's life becomes a burden
+not only to himself but to those about him, it is far better that he
+should quit the scene. If a natural clinging to life, or a natural
+shrinking from death, prevents him from clearly realising this, it is at
+least fully seen by all others.
+
+Nor, indeed, does this love of life in most cases of extreme old age
+greatly persist. Few things are sadder than to see the young, or those
+in mature life, seeking, according to the current phrase, to find means
+of "killing time." But in extreme old age, when the power of work, the
+power of reading, the pleasures of society, have gone, this phrase
+acquires a new significance. As Madame de Staël has beautifully said,
+'On dépose fleur à fleur la couronne de la vie.' An apathy steals over
+every faculty, and rest--unbroken rest--becomes the chief desire. I
+remember a touching epitaph in a German churchyard: 'I will arise, O
+Christ, when Thou callest me; but oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very
+weary.'
+
+After all that can be said, most men are reluctant to look Time in the
+face. The close of the year or a birthday is to them merely a time of
+revelry, into which they enter in order to turn away from depressing
+thought. They shrink from what seems to them the dreary truth, that they
+are drifting to a dark abyss. To many the milestones along the path of
+life are tombstones, every epoch being mainly associated in their
+memories with a death. To some, past time is nothing--a closed chapter
+never to be reopened.
+
+
+     The past is nothing, and at last,
+     The future can but be the past.
+
+
+To others, the thought of the work achieved in the vanished years is the
+most real and abiding of their possessions. They can feel the force of
+the noble lines of Dryden:
+
+
+     Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
+     But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
+
+
+He who would look Time in the face without illusion and without fear
+should associate each year as it passes with new developments of his
+nature; with duties accomplished, with work performed. To fill the time
+allotted to us to the brim with action and with thought is the only way
+in which we can learn to watch its passage with equanimity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[74] Monte-Naken.
+
+[75] See _The Mystery of Sleep_, by John Bigelow.
+
+[76] Seneca, _de Brevitate Vitæ_, cap. XX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+'THE END'
+
+
+It is easy to conceive circumstances not widely different from those of
+actual life that would, if not altogether, at least very largely, take
+from death the gloom that commonly surrounds it. If all the members of
+the human race died either before two or after seventy; if death was in
+all cases the swift and painless thing that it is with many; and if the
+old man always left behind him children to perpetuate his name, his
+memory, and his thoughts, Death, though it might still seem a sad thing,
+would certainly not excite the feelings it now so often produces. Of all
+the events that befall us, it is that which owes most of its horror not
+to itself, but to its accessories, its associations, and to the
+imaginations that cluster around it. 'Death,' indeed, as a great stoical
+moralist said, 'is the only evil that can never touch us. When we are,
+death is not. When death comes, we are not.'
+
+The composition of treatises of consolation intended to accustom men to
+contemplate death without terror was one of the favourite exercises of
+the philosophers in the Augustan and in the subsequent periods of Pagan
+Rome. The chapter which Cicero has devoted to this subject in his
+treatise on old age is a beautiful example of how it appeared to a
+virtuous pagan, who believed in a future life which would bring him into
+communion with those whom he had loved and lost on earth, but who at the
+same time recognised this only as a probability, not a certainty.
+"Death," he said, 'is an event either utterly to be disregarded if it
+extinguish the soul's existence, or much to be wished if it convey her
+to some region where she shall continue to exist for ever. One of these
+two consequences must necessarily follow the disunion of soul and body;
+there is no other possible alternative. What then have I to fear if
+after death I shall either not be miserable or shall certainly be
+happy?'
+
+Vague notions, however, of a dim, twilight, shadowy world where the
+ghosts of the dead lived a faint and joyless existence, and whence they
+sometimes returned to haunt the living in their dreams, were widely
+spread through the popular imaginations, and it was as the extinction of
+all superstitious fears that the school of Lucretius and Pliny welcomed
+the belief that all things ended with death--'Post mortem nihil est,
+ipsaque mors nihil.' Nor is it by any means certain that even in the
+school of Plato the thought of another life had a great and operative
+influence on minds and characters. Death was chiefly represented as
+rest; as the close of a banquet; as the universal law of nature which
+befalls all living beings, though the immense majority encounter it at
+an earlier period than man. It was thought of simply as
+sleep--dreamless, undisturbed sleep--the final release from all the
+sorrows, sufferings, anxieties, labours, and longings of life.
+
+
+                             We are such stuff
+     As dreams are made on, and our little life
+     Is rounded with a sleep.[77]
+
+                 The best of rest is sleep,
+     And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
+     Thy death, which is no more.[78]
+
+     To die is landing on some silent shore
+     Where billows never break, nor tempests roar.[79]
+
+
+It is a strange thing to observe to what a height not only of moral
+excellence, but also of devotional fervour, men have arisen without any
+assistance from the doctrine of a future life. Only the faintest and
+most dubious glimmer of such a belief can be traced in the Psalms, in
+which countless generations of Christians have found the fullest
+expression of their devotional feelings, or in the Meditations of Marcus
+Aurelius, which are perhaps the purest product of pagan piety.
+
+As I have already said, I am endeavouring in this book to steer clear of
+questions of contested theologies; but it is impossible to avoid
+noticing the great changes that have been introduced into the conception
+of death by some of the teaching which in different forms has grown up
+under the name of Christianity, though much of it may be traced in germ
+to earlier periods of human development. Death in itself was made
+incomparably more terrible by the notion that it was not a law but a
+punishment; that sufferings inconceivably greater than those of Earth
+awaited the great masses of the human race beyond the grave; that an
+event which was believed to have taken place ages before we were born,
+or small frailties such as the best of us cannot escape, were sufficient
+to bring men under this condemnation; that the only paths to safety were
+to be found in ecclesiastical ceremonies; in the assistance of priests;
+in an accurate choice among competing theological doctrines. At the same
+time the largest and most powerful of the Churches of Christendom has,
+during many centuries, done its utmost to intensify the natural fear of
+death by associating it in the imaginations of men with loathsome images
+and appalling surroundings. There can be no greater contrast than that
+between the Greek tomb with its garlands of flowers, its bright,
+youthful and restful imagery, and the mortuary chapels that may often be
+found in Catholic countries, with their ghastly pictures of the _saved_
+souls writhing in purgatorial flames, while the inscription above and
+the moneybox below point out the one means of alleviating their lot.
+
+
+     Fermati, O Passagiero, mira tormenti.
+     Siamo abbandonati dai nostri parenti.
+     Di noi abbiate pietà, o voi amici cari.
+
+
+This is one side of the picture. On the other hand it cannot be
+questioned that the strong convictions and impressive ceremonies, even
+of the most superstitious faith, have consoled and strengthened
+multitudes in their last moments, and in the purer and more enlightened
+forms of Christianity death now wears a very different aspect from what
+it did in the teaching of mediæval Catholicism, or of some of the sects
+that grew out of the Reformation. Human life ending in the weakness of
+old age and in the corruption of the tomb will always seem a humiliating
+anti-climax, and often a hideous injustice. The belief in the rightful
+supremacy of conscience, and in an eternal moral law redressing the many
+wrongs and injustices of life, and securing the ultimate triumph of good
+over evil; the incapacity of earth and earthly things to satisfy our
+cravings and ideals; the instinctive revolt of human nature against the
+idea of annihilation, and its capacity for affections and attachments,
+which seem by their intensity to transcend the limits of earth and carry
+with them in moments of bereavement a persuasion or conviction of
+something that endures beyond the grave,--all these things have found in
+Christian beliefs a sanction and a satisfaction that men had failed to
+find in Socrates or Cicero, or in the vague Pantheism to which
+unassisted reason naturally inclines.
+
+Looking, however, on death in its purely human aspects, the mourner
+should consider how often in a long illness he wished the dying man
+could sleep; how consoling to his mind was the thought of every hour of
+peaceful rest; of every hour in which the patient was withdrawn from
+consciousness, insensible to suffering, removed for a time from the
+miseries of a dying life. He should ask himself whether these intervals
+of insensibility were not on the whole the happiest in the
+illness--those which he would most have wished to multiply or to
+prolong. He should accustom himself, then, to think of death as
+sleep--undisturbed sleep--the only sleep from which man never wakes to
+pain.
+
+You find yourself in the presence of what is a far deeper and more
+poignant trial than an old man's death--a young life cut off in its
+prime; the eclipse of a sun before the evening has arrived. Accustom
+yourself to consider the life that has passed as a whole. A human being
+has been called into the world--has lived in it ten, twenty, thirty
+years. It seems to you an intolerable instance of the injustice of fate
+that he is so early cut off. Estimate, then, that life as a whole, and
+ask yourself whether, so judged, it has been a blessing or the reverse.
+Count up the years of happiness. Count up the days, or perhaps weeks, of
+illness and of pain. Measure the happiness that this short life has
+given to some who have passed away; who never lived to see its early
+close. Balance the happiness which during its existence it gave to those
+who survived, with the poignancy and the duration of pain caused by the
+loss. Here, for example, is one who lived perhaps twenty-five years in
+health and vigour; whose life during that period was chequered by no
+serious misfortune; whose nature, though from time to time clouded by
+petty anxieties and cares, was on the whole bright, buoyant, and happy;
+who had the capacity of vivid enjoyment and many opportunities of
+attaining it; who felt all the thrill of health and friendship and
+ecstatic pleasure. Then came a change,--a year or two with a crippled
+wing--life, though not abjectly wretched, on the whole a burden, and
+then the end. You can easily conceive--you can ardently desire--a better
+lot, but judge fairly the lights and shades of what has been. Does not
+the happiness on the whole exceed the evil? Can you honestly say that
+this life has been a curse and not a blessing?--that it would have been
+better if it had never been called out of nothingness?--that it would
+have been better if the drama had never been played? It is over now. As
+you lay in his last home the object of so much love, ask yourself
+whether, even in a mere human point of view, this parenthesis between
+two darknesses has not been on the whole productive of more happiness
+than pain to him and to those around him.
+
+It was an ancient saying that 'he whom the gods love dies young,' and
+more than one legend representing speedy and painless death as the
+greatest of blessings has descended to us from pagan antiquity; while
+other legends, like that of Tithonus, anticipated the picture which
+Swift has so powerfully but so repulsively drawn of the misery of old
+age and its infirmities, if death did not come as a release. I have
+elsewhere related an old Irish legend embodying this truth. 'In a
+certain lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands; into the
+first death could never enter, but age and sickness, and the weariness
+of life and the paroxysms of fearful suffering were all known there, and
+they did their work till the inhabitants, tired of their immortality,
+learned to look upon the opposite island as upon a haven of repose. They
+launched their barks upon its gloomy waters; they touched its shore, and
+they were at rest.'[80]
+
+No one, however, can confidently say whether an early death is a
+misfortune, for no one can really know what calamities would have
+befallen the dead man if his life had been prolonged. How often does it
+happen that the children of a dead parent do things or suffer things
+that would have broken his heart if he had lived to see them! How often
+do painful diseases lurk in germ in the body which would have produced
+unspeakable misery if an early and perhaps a painless death had not
+anticipated their development! How often do mistakes and misfortunes
+cloud the evening and mar the beauty of a noble life, or moral
+infirmities, unperceived in youth or early manhood, break out before the
+day is over! Who is there who has not often said to himself as he looked
+back on a completed life, how much happier it would have been had it
+ended sooner? 'Give us timely death' is in truth one of the best prayers
+that man can pray. Pain, not Death, is the real enemy to be combated,
+and in this combat, at least, man can do much. Few men can have lived
+long without realising how many things are worse than death, and how
+many knots there are in life that Death alone can untie.
+
+Remember, above all, that whatever may lie beyond the tomb, the tomb
+itself is nothing to you. The narrow prison-house, the gloomy pomp, the
+hideousness of decay, are known to the living and the living alone. By a
+too common illusion of the imagination, men picture themselves as
+consciously dead,--going through the process of corruption, and aware of
+it; imprisoned with the knowledge of the fact in the most hideous of
+dungeons. Endeavour earnestly to erase this illusion from your mind, for
+it lies at the root of the fear of death, and it is one of the worst
+sides of mediæval and of much modern teaching and art that it tends to
+strengthen it. Nothing, if we truly realise it, is less real than the
+grave. We should be no more concerned with the after fate of our
+discarded bodies than with that of the hair which the hair-cutter has
+cut off. The sooner they are resolved into their primitive elements the
+better. The imagination should never be suffered to dwell upon their
+decay.
+
+Bacon has justly noticed that while death is often regarded as the
+supreme evil, there is no human passion that does not become so powerful
+as to lead men to despise it. It is not in the waning days of life, but
+in the full strength of youth, that men, through ambition or the mere
+love of excitement, fearlessly and joyously encounter its risk.
+Encountered in hot blood it is seldom feared, and innumerable accounts
+of shipwrecks and other accidents, and many episodes in every war, show
+conclusively how calmly honour, duty, and discipline can enable men of
+no extraordinary characters, virtues, or attainments, to meet it even
+when it comes before them suddenly, as an inevitable fact, and without
+any of that excitement which might blind their eyes. If we analyse our
+own feelings on the death of those we love, we shall probably find that,
+except in cases where life is prematurely shortened and much promise cut
+off, pity for the dead person is rarely a marked element. The feelings
+which had long been exclusively concentrated on the sufferings of the
+dying man take a new course when the moment of death arrives. It is the
+sudden blank; the separation from him who is dear to us; the cessation
+of the long reciprocity of love and pleasure,--in a word our own
+loss,--that affects us then. 'A happy release' is perhaps the phrase
+most frequently heard around a death-bed. And as we look back through
+the vista of a few years, and have learned to separate death more
+clearly from the illness that preceded it, the sense of its essential
+peacefulness and naturalness grows upon us. A vanished life comes to be
+looked upon as a day that has past, but leaving many memories behind it.
+
+It is, I think, a healthy tendency that is leading men in our own
+generation to turn away as much as possible from the signs and the
+contemplation of death. The pomp and elaboration of funerals; protracted
+mournings surrounding us with the gloom of an ostentatious and
+artificial sorrow; above all, the long suspension of those active habits
+which nature intended to be the chief medicine of grief, are things
+which at least in the English-speaking world are manifestly declining.
+We should try to think of those who have passed away as they were at
+their best, and not in sickness or in decay. True sorrow needs no
+ostentation, and the gloom of death no artificial enhancement. Every
+good man, knowing the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its
+hour, will make it one of his first duties to provide for those he loves
+when he has himself passed away, and to do all in his power to make the
+period of bereavement as easy as possible. This is the last service he
+can render before the ranks are closed, and his place is taken, and the
+days of forgetfulness set in. In careers of riot and of vice the thought
+of death may have a salutary restraining influence; but in a useful,
+busy, well-ordered life it should have little place. It was not the
+Stoics alone who 'bestowed too much cost on death, and by their
+preparations made it more fearful.'[81] As Spinoza has taught, 'the
+proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live,' and as
+long as he is discharging this task aright he may leave the end to take
+care of itself. The great guiding landmarks of a wise life are indeed
+few and simple; to do our duty--to avoid useless sorrow--to acquiesce
+patiently in the inevitable.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[77] _The Tempest._
+
+[78] _Measure for Measure._
+
+[79] Garth.
+
+[80] _History of European Morals_, i. p. 203. The legend is related by
+Camden.
+
+[81] Bacon.
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Map of Life, by William Edward Hartpole
+Lecky</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Map of Life</p>
+<p>       Conduct and Character</p>
+<p>Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky</p>
+<p>Release Date: August 16, 2008  [eBook #26334]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAP OF LIFE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Martin Pettit,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE MAP OF LIFE</h1>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h4>WORKS BY</h4>
+
+<h3>The Rt. Hon. W. E. H. LECKY.</h3>
+
+<div class="block">
+<p>HISTORY of ENGLAND in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.</p>
+
+<p>Library Edition. 8vo. Vols. I. and II. 1700-1760. 36s. Vols.
+III. and IV. 1760-1784. 36s. Vols. V. and VI. 1784-1793.
+36s. Vols. VII. and VIII. 1793-1800. 36s.</p>
+
+<p>Cabinet Edition. <span class="smcap">England</span>. 7 vols. Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
+<br /><span class="smcap">Ireland</span>. 5 vols. Crown 8vo. 6s. each.</p>
+
+<p>The HISTORY of EUROPEAN MORALS from AUGUSTUS to CHARLEMAGNE.</p>
+
+<p>2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.</p>
+
+<p>HISTORY of the RISE and INFLUENCE of the SPIRIT of RATIONALISM in EUROPE.</p>
+
+<p>2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.</p>
+
+<p>DEMOCRACY and LIBERTY.</p>
+
+<p>Library Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 36s.</p>
+
+<p>Cabinet Edition. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.</p>
+
+<p>THE MAP OF LIFE: Conduct and Character.</p>
+
+<p>Library Edition. 8vo. 10s. 6d.</p>
+
+<p>Cabinet Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.</p>
+
+<p>POEMS. Fcp. 8vo. 5s.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h4>LONGMANS, GREEN, &amp; CO.</h4>
+
+<h4>39 Paternoster Row, London, and Bombay.</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>THE MAP OF LIFE</h1>
+
+<h2><i>CONDUCT AND CHARACTER</i></h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY</h2>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="block">
+<p>'La vie n'est pas un plaisir ni une douleur, mais une affaire grave
+dont nous sommes charg&eacute;s, et qu'il faut conduire et terminer &agrave;
+notre honneur'</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Tocqueville</span></p></div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">NEW IMPRESSION</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.</h3>
+
+<h4>39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON<br />NEW YORK AND BOMBAY<br />1904</h4>
+
+<p class="center">All rights reserved</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><i>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</i>.</h4>
+
+<div class="block">
+<p><i>First printed</i>, <i>8vo</i>, <i>September 1899</i>. <i>Reprinted November
+1899</i>; <i>December 1899</i>; <i>January 1900 (with corrections)</i>. <i>Cabinet
+Edition</i>, <i>Crown 8vo</i>, <i>February 1901</i>. <i>Reprinted December, 1902</i>.
+<i>July, 1904</i></p></div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></h3>
+
+<p>How far reasoning on happiness is of any use<br />
+The arguments of the Determinist<br />
+The arguments for free will<br />
+<i>Securus judicat orbis terrarum</i></p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h3>
+
+<p>Happiness a condition of mind and often confused with the means of attaining it<br />
+Circumstances and character contribute to it in different degrees<br />
+Religion, Stoicism, and Eastern nations seek it mainly by acting on disposition<br />
+Sensational philosophies and industrial and progressive nations seek it chiefly in improved circumstances<br />
+English character<br />Action of the body on happiness<br />
+Influence of predispositions in reasonings on life<br />
+Promotion of health by legislation, fashion and self-culture<br />
+Slight causes of life failures<br />Effects of sanitary reform<br />
+Diminished disease does not always imply a higher level of health<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>Two causes depressing health<br />
+Encroachments on liberty in sanitary legislation<br />
+Sanitary education&mdash;its chief articles&mdash;its possible exaggeration<br />
+Constant thought about health not the way to attain it</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h3>
+
+<p>Some general rules of happiness&mdash;1. A life full of work.&mdash;Happiness should not be the main object of pursuit<br />
+Carlyle on Ennui<br />2. Aim rather at avoiding suffering than attaining pleasure<br />
+3. The greatest pleasures and pains in spheres accessible to all<br />
+4. Importance and difficulty of realising our blessings while they last<br />
+Comparison and contrast<br />Content not the quality of progressive societies<br />
+The problem of balancing content and the desire for progress<br />What civilisation can do for happiness</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h3>
+
+<p>The relation of morals to happiness.&mdash;The Utilitarian justification of virtue insufficient<br />
+Power of man to aim at something different from and higher than happiness<br />
+General coincidence of duty and happiness<br />
+The creation of unselfish interests one of the chief elements of happiness<br />Burke on a well-ordered life<br />
+Improvement of character more within our power than improvement of intellect<br />
+High moral qualities often go with low intellectual power<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>Dangers attaching
+to the unselfish side of our nature.&mdash;Active charity personally supervised least subject to abuse<br />
+Disproportioned compassion<br />Treatment of animals</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h3>
+
+<p>Changes of morals chiefly in the proportionate value attached to different virtues<br />
+Military, civic, and intellectual virtues<br />The medi&aelig;val type<br />
+Modifications introduced by Protestantism<br />Bossuet and Louis XIV.<br />
+Persecution.&mdash;Operations at childbirth.&mdash;Usury<br />
+Every great religion and philosophic system produces or favours a distinct moral type<br />
+Variations in moral judgments<br />
+Complexity of moral influences of modern times.&mdash;The industrial type<br />
+Qualified by other influences<br />Unnecessary suffering<br />Goethe's exposition of modern morals<br />
+Morals hitherto too much treated negatively<br />Possibility of an over-sensitive conscience<br />
+Increased sense of the obligations of an active life</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h3>
+
+<p>In the guidance of life action more important than pure reasoning<br />
+The enforcement of active duty now specially needed<br />Temptations to luxurious idleness <br />
+Rectification of false ideals.&mdash;The conqueror<br />The luxury of ostentation<br />
+Glorification of the demi-monde<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>Study of ideals<br />
+The human mind more capable of distinguishing right from wrong than of measuring merit and demerit<br />
+Fallibility of moral judgments<br />Rules for moral judgment</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h3>
+
+<p>The school of Rousseau considers man by nature wholly good<br />
+Other schools maintain that he is absolutely depraved<br />Exaggerations of these schools<br />
+The restraining conscience distinctively human.&mdash;Comparison with the animals<br />
+Reality of human depravity.&mdash;Illustrated by war<br />
+Large amount of pure malevolence.&mdash;Political crime.&mdash;The press<br />Mendacity in finance<br />
+The sane view of human character<br />
+We learn with age to value restraints, to expect moderately and value compromise</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h3>
+
+<p>Moral compromise a necessity in life.&mdash;Statement of Newman<br />
+Impossibility of acting on it<br />
+Moral considerations though the highest must not absorb all others<br />
+Truthfulness&mdash;cases in which it may be departed from<br /><br />
+<i>Moral compromise in war</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;War necessarily stimulates the malevolent passions and practises deception<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Rights of war in early stages of civilisation<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Distinction between Greeks and Barbarians<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Roman moralists insisted on just causes of war and on formal declaration<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Treatment of prisoners.&mdash;Combatants and non-combatants<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Treatment of private property<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lawful and unlawful methods of conducting war<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Abdication by the soldier of private judgment and free will<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Distinctions and compromises<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cases in which the military oath may be broken.&mdash;Illegal orders<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Violation of religious obligations.&mdash;The Sepoy mutiny<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Italian conscript.&mdash;Fenians in the British army</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h3>
+
+<p><i>Moral compromise in the law</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;What advocates may and may not do<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Inevitable temptations of the profession<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its condemnation by Swift, Arnold, Macaulay, Bentham<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its defence by Paley, Johnson, Basil Montagu<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How far a lawyer may support a bad case.&mdash;St. Thomas Aquinas and Catholic casuists<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sir Matthew Hale.&mdash;General custom in England<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Distinction between the etiquette of prosecution and of defence<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The case of Courvoisier<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Statement of Lord Brougham<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The license of cross-examination.&mdash;Technicalities defeating justice<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Advantage of trial by jury<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Necessity of the profession of advocate</p>
+
+<p><i>Moral compromise in politics</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Necessity of party<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How far conscientious differences should impair party allegiance<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lines of conduct adopted when such differences arise<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Parliamentary obstruction<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Moral difficulties inseparable from party<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Evil of extreme view of party allegiance.&mdash;Government and the Opposition<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Relations of members to their constituents<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Votes given without adequate knowledge<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Diminished power of the private member</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h3>
+
+<h4>THE STATESMAN</h4>
+
+<p>Duty of a statesman when the interests and wishes of his nation conflict<br />
+Nature and extent of political trusteeship<br />Temperance questions<br />
+Legitimate and illegitimate time-serving<br />Education questions<br />
+Inconsistency in politics&mdash;how far it should be condemned<br />
+The conduct of Peel in 1829 and 1845<br />The conduct of Disraeli in 1867<br />
+Different degrees of weight to be attached to party considerations<br />
+Temptations to war<br />Temptations of aristocratic and of democratic governments<br />
+Necessity of assimilating legislation<br />
+Legislation violating contracts.&mdash;Irish land legislation<br />
+Questions forced into prominence for party objects<br />
+The judgment of public servants who have committed indefensible acts<br />
+The French <i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i> of 1851<br />Judgments passed upon it<br />
+Probable multiplication of <i>coups d'&eacute;tat</i><br />Governor Eyre<br />The Jameson raid<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span>How statesmen should deal with political misdeeds<br />
+The standard of international morals&mdash;questions connected with it<br />
+The ethics of annexation<br />Political morals and public opinion</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h3>
+
+<p><i>Moral compromise in the Church</i><br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Difficulties of reconciling old formularies with changed beliefs<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cause of some great revolutions of belief.&mdash;The Copernican system.&mdash;Discovery of Newton<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The antiquity of the world, of death, and of man<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Darwinian theory<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Comparative mythology.&mdash;Biblical criticism.&mdash;Scientific habits of thought<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;General incorporation of new ideas into the Church<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Growth of the sacerdotal spirit<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The two theories of the Reformation<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Modern Ritualism<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its various elements of attraction<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Diversity of teaching has not enfeebled the Church<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its literary activity.&mdash;Proofs that the Church is in touch with educated laymen<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its political influence&mdash;how far this is a test of vitality<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its influence on education<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Its spiritual influence<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;How far clergymen who dissent from parts of its theology can remain within it<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Newman on a Latitudinarian establishment<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Obligations imposed on the clergy by the fact of Establishment<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Attitude of laymen towards the Church<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Increasing sense of the relativity of belief<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This tendency strengthens with age<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The conflict between belief and scepticism<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Power of religion to undergo transformation<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Probable influence of the sacerdotal spirit on the Church</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a></h3>
+
+<h4>THE MANAGEMENT OF CHARACTER</h4>
+
+<p>A sound judgment of our own characters essential to moral improvement<br />
+Analogies between character and taste<br />
+The strongest desire generally prevails, but desires may be modified<br />
+Passions and habits<br />Exaggerated regard for the future.&mdash;A happy childhood<br />
+Choice of pleasures.&mdash;Athletic games<br />The intellectual pleasures<br />
+Their tendency to enhance other pleasures.&mdash;Importance of specialisation<br />
+And of judicious selection<br />Education may act specially on the desires or on the will<br />
+Modern education and tendencies of the former kind<br />
+Old Catholic training mainly of the will.&mdash;Its effects<br />
+Anglo-Saxon types in the seventeenth century<br />
+Capriciousness of willpower&mdash;heroism often succumbs to vice<br />
+Courage&mdash;its varieties and inconsistencies<br />
+The circumstances of life the school of will.&mdash;Its place in character<br />
+Dangers of an early competence.&mdash;Choice of work<br />
+Choice of friends.&mdash;Effect of early friendship on character<br />
+Mastery of will over thoughts.&mdash;Its intellectual importance<br />
+Its importance in moral culture<br />Great difference among men in this respect<br />
+Means of governing thought<br />The dream power&mdash;its great place in life<br />
+Especially in the early stages of humanity<br />
+Moral safety valves&mdash;danger of inventing unreal crimes<br />
+Character of the English gentleman<br />Different ways of treating temptation</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a></h3>
+
+<h4>MONEY</h4>
+
+<p>Henry Taylor on its relation to character<br />
+Difference between real and professed beliefs about money<br />
+Its relation to happiness in different grades of life<br />The cost of pleasures<br />
+Lives of the millionaires<br />Leaders of Society<br />The great speculator<br />
+Expenditure in charity.&mdash;Rules for regulating it<br />
+Advantages and disadvantages of a large very wealthy class in a nation<br />
+Directions in which philanthropic expenditure may be best turned</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a></h3>
+
+<h4>MARRIAGE</h4>
+
+<p>Its importance and the motives that lead to it<br />
+The moral and intellectual qualities it specially demands<br />
+Duty to the unborn.&mdash;Improvident marriages<br />
+The doctrine of heredity and its consequences<br />Religious celibacy<br />
+Marriages of dissimilar types often peculiarly happy<br />
+Marriages resulting from a common weakness<br />
+Independent spheres in marriage.&mdash;Effect on character<br />
+The age of marriage<br />Increased independence of women</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a></h3>
+
+<h4>SUCCESS</h4>
+
+<p>Success depends more on character than on intellect<br />
+Especially that accessible to most men and most conducive to happiness<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span>Strength of will, tact and judgment.&mdash;Not always joined<br />
+Their combination a great element of success<br />Good nature<br />
+Tact: its nature and its importance<br />Its intellectual and moral affinities<br />
+Value of good society in cultivating it.&mdash;Newman's description of a gentleman<br />
+Disparities between merit and success<br />Success not universally desired</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a></h3>
+
+<h4>TIME</h4>
+
+<p>Rebellion of human nature against the essential conditions of life<br />
+Time 'the stuff of life'<br />Various ways of treating it<br />
+Increased intensity of life<br />Sleep<br />Apparent inequalities of time<br />
+The tenure of life not too short<br />Old age<br />The growing love of rest.&mdash;How time should be regarded</p>
+
+<h3><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a></h3>
+
+<h4>THE END</h4>
+
+<p>Death terrible chiefly through its accessories<br />
+Pagan and Christian ideas about it<br />Premature death<br />
+How easily the fear of death is overcome<br />The true way of regarding it</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE MAP OF LIFE</h1>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p>One of the first questions that must naturally occur to every writer who
+deals with the subject of this book is, what influence mere discussion
+and reasoning can have in promoting the happiness of men. The
+circumstances of our lives and the dispositions of our characters mainly
+determine the measure of happiness we enjoy, and mere argument about the
+causes of happiness and unhappiness can do little to affect them. It is
+impossible to read the many books that have been written on these
+subjects without feeling how largely they consist of mere sounding
+generalities which the smallest experience shows to be perfectly
+impotent in the face of some real and acute sorrow, and it is equally
+impossible to obtain any serious knowledge of the world without
+perceiving that a large proportion of the happiest lives and characters
+are to be found where introspection, self-analysis and reasonings about
+the good and evil of life hold the smallest place. Happiness, indeed,
+like health, is one of the things of which men rarely think except when
+it is impaired, and much that has been written on the subject has been
+written under the stress of some great depression. Such writers are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+like the man in Hogarth's picture occupying himself in the debtors'
+prison with plans for the payment of the National Debt. There are
+moments when all of us feel the force of the words of Voltaire:
+'Travaillons sans raisonner, c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie
+supportable.'</p>
+
+<p>That there is much truth in such considerations is incontestable, and it
+is only within a restricted sphere that the province of reasoning
+extends. Man comes into the world with mental and moral characteristics
+which he can only very imperfectly influence, and a large proportion of
+the external circumstances of his life lie wholly or mainly beyond his
+control. At the same time, every one recognises the power of skill,
+industry and perseverance to modify surrounding circumstances; the power
+of temperance and prudence to strengthen a naturally weak constitution,
+prolong life, and diminish the chances of disease; the power of
+education and private study to develop, sharpen and employ to the best
+advantage our intellectual faculties. Every one also recognises how
+large a part of the unhappiness of most men may be directly traced to
+their own voluntary and deliberate acts. The power each man possesses in
+the education and management of his character, and especially in the
+cultivation of the dispositions and tendencies which most largely
+contribute to happiness, is less recognised and is perhaps less
+extensive, but it is not less real.</p>
+
+<p>The eternal question of free will and determinism here naturally meets
+us, but on such a subject it is idle to suppose that a modern writer can
+do more than define the question and state his own side. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>Determinist says that the real question is not whether a man can do
+what he desires, but whether he can do what he does not desire; whether
+the will can act without a motive; whether that motive can in the last
+analysis be other than the strongest pleasure. The illusion of free
+will, he maintains, is only due to the conflict of our motives. Under
+many forms and disguises pleasure and pain have an absolute empire over
+conduct. The will is nothing more than the last and strongest desire; or
+it is like a piece of iron surrounded by magnets and necessarily drawn
+by the most powerful; or (as has been ingeniously imagined) like a
+weathercock, conscious of its own motion, but not conscious of the winds
+that are moving it. The law of compulsory causation applies to the world
+of mind as truly as to the world of matter. Heredity and Circumstance
+make us what we are. Our actions are the inevitable result of the mental
+and moral constitutions with which we came into the world, operated on
+by external influences.</p>
+
+<p>The supporters of free will, on the other hand, maintain that it is a
+fact of consciousness that there is a clear distinction between the Will
+and the Desires, and that although they are closely connected no sound
+analysis will confuse them. Coleridge ingeniously compared their
+relations to 'the co-instantaneous yet reciprocal action of the air and
+the vital energy of the lungs in breathing.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> If the will is
+powerfully acted on by the desires, it has also in its turn a power of
+acting upon them, and it is not a mere slave to pleasure and pain. The
+supporters of this view maintain that it is a fact of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the plainest
+consciousness that we can do things which we do not like; that we can
+suspend the force of imperious desires, resist the bias of our nature,
+pursue for the sake of duty the course which gives least pleasure
+without deriving or expecting from it any pleasure, and select at a
+given moment between alternate courses. They maintain that when various
+motives pass before the mind, the mind retains a power of choosing and
+judging, of accepting and rejecting; that it can by force of reason or
+by force of imagination bring one motive into prominence, concentrating
+its attention on it and thus intensifying its power; that it has a
+corresponding power of resisting other motives, driving them into the
+background and thus gradually diminishing their force; that the will
+itself becomes stronger by exercise, as the desires do by indulgence.
+The conflict between the will and the desires, the reality of
+self-restraint and the power of Will to modify character, are among the
+most familiar facts of moral life. In the words of Burke, 'It is the
+prerogative of man to be in a great degree a creature of his own
+making.' There are men whose whole lives are spent in willing one thing
+and desiring the opposite, and all morality depends upon the supposition
+that we have at least some freedom of choice between good and evil. 'I
+ought,' as Kant says, necessarily implies 'I can.' The feeling of moral
+responsibility is an essential part of healthy and developed human
+nature, and it inevitably presupposes free will. The best argument in
+its favour is that it is impossible really to disbelieve it. No human
+being can prevent himself from viewing certain acts with an indignation,
+shame, remorse, resentment, gratitude, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>enthusiasm, praise or blame,
+which would be perfectly unmeaning and irrational if these acts could
+not have been avoided. We can have no higher evidence on the subject
+than is derived from this fact. It is impossible to explain the mystery
+of free will, but until a man ceases to feel these emotions he has not
+succeeded in disbelieving in it. The feelings of all men and the
+vocabularies of all languages attest the universality of the belief.</p>
+
+<p>Newman, in a well-known passage in his 'Apologia,' describes the immense
+effect which the sentence of Augustine, 'Securus judicat orbis
+terrarum,' had upon his opinions in determining him to embrace the
+Church of Rome. The force of this consideration in relation to the
+subject to which Dr. Newman refers does not appear to have great weight.
+It means only that at a time when the Christian Church included but a
+small fraction of the human race; when all questions of orthodoxy or the
+reverse were practically in the hands of the priesthood; when ignorance,
+credulity and superstition were at their height and the habits of
+independence and impartiality of judgment running very low; and when
+every kind of violent persecution was directed against those who
+dissented from the prevailing dogmas,&mdash;certain councils of priests found
+it possible to attain unanimity on such questions as the two natures in
+Christ or the relations of the Persons in the Trinity, and to expel from
+the Church those who differed from their views, and that the once
+formidable sects which held slightly different opinions about these
+inscrutable relations gradually faded away. Such an unanimity on such
+subjects and attained by such methods does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> appear to me to carry
+with it any overwhelming force. There are, however, a certain number of
+beliefs that are not susceptible of demonstrative proof, and which must
+always rest essentially on the universal assent of mankind. Such is the
+existence of the external world. Such, in my opinion, is the existence
+of a distinction between right and wrong, different from and higher than
+the distinction between pleasure and pain, and subsisting in all human
+nature in spite of great diversities of opinion about the acts and
+qualities that are comprised in either category; and such also is the
+kindred belief in a self-determining will. If men contend that these
+things are mere illusions and that their faculties are not to be
+trusted, it will no doubt be difficult or impossible to refute them; but
+a scepticism of this kind has no real influence on either conduct or
+feeling.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Aids to Reflection</i>, p. 68.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p>Men continually forget that Happiness is a condition of Mind and not a
+disposition of circumstances, and one of the most common of errors is
+that of confusing happiness with the means of happiness, sacrificing the
+first for the attainment of the second. It is the error of the miser,
+who begins by seeking money for the enjoyment it procures and ends by
+making the mere acquisition of money his sole object, pursuing it to the
+sacrifice of all rational ends and pleasures. Circumstances and
+Character both contribute to Happiness, but the proportionate attention
+paid to one or other of these great departments not only varies largely
+with different individuals, but also with different nations and in
+different ages. Thus Religion acts mainly in the formation of
+dispositions, and it is especially in this field that its bearing on
+human happiness should be judged. It influences, it is true, vastly and
+variously the external circumstances of life, but its chief power of
+comforting and supporting lies in its direct and immediate action upon
+the human soul. The same thing is true of some systems of philosophy of
+which Stoicism is the most conspicuous. The paradox of the Stoic that
+good and evil are so entirely from within that to a wise man all
+external circumstances are indifferent, represents this view of life in
+its extreme form. Its more moderate form can hardly be better expressed
+than in the saying of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> Dugald Stewart that 'the great secret of
+happiness is to study to accommodate our own minds to things external
+rather than to accommodate things external to ourselves.'<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It is
+eminently the characteristic of Eastern nations to place their ideals
+mainly in states of mind or feeling rather than in changes of
+circumstances, and in such nations men are much less desirous than in
+European countries of altering the permanent conditions of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the tendency of those philosophies which treat
+man&mdash;his opinions and his character&mdash;essentially as the result of
+circumstances, and which aggrandise the influence of the external world
+upon mankind, is in the opposite direction. All the sensational
+philosophies from Bacon and Locke to our own day tend to concentrate
+attention on the external circumstances and conditions of happiness. And
+the same tendency will be naturally found in the most active, industrial
+and progressive nations; where life is very full and busy; where its
+competitions are most keen; where scientific discoveries are rapidly
+multiplying pleasures or diminishing pains; where town life with its
+constant hurry and change is the most prominent. In such spheres men
+naturally incline to seek happiness from without rather than from
+within, or, in other words, to seek it much less by acting directly on
+the mind and character than through the indirect method of improved
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>English character on both sides of the Atlantic is an eminently
+objective one&mdash;a character in which thoughts,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> interests and emotions
+are most habitually thrown on that which is without. Introspection and
+self-analysis are not congenial to it. No one can compare English life
+with life even in the Continental nations which occupy the same rank in
+civilisation without perceiving how much less Englishmen are accustomed
+either to dwell upon their emotions or to give free latitude to their
+expression. Reticence and self-restraint are the lessons most constantly
+inculcated. The whole tone of society favours it. In times of great
+sorrow a degree of shame is attached to demonstrations of grief which in
+other countries would be deemed perfectly natural. The disposition to
+dilate upon and perpetuate an old grief by protracted mournings, by
+carefully observed anniversaries, by long periods of retirement from the
+world, is much less common than on the Continent and it is certainly
+diminishing. The English tendency is to turn away speedily from the
+past, and to seek consolation in new fields of activity. Emotions
+translate themselves speedily into action, and they lose something of
+their intensity by the transformation. Philanthropy is nowhere more
+active and more practical, and religion has in few countries a greater
+hold on the national life, but English Protestantism reflects very
+clearly the national characteristics. It, no doubt, like all religions,
+lays down rules for the government of thought and feeling, but these are
+of a very general character. Preeminently a regulator of conduct, it
+lays comparatively little stress upon the inner life. It discourages, or
+at least neglects that minutely introspective habit of thought which the
+confessional is so much calculated to promote, which appears so
+prominently in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>writings of the Catholic Saints, and which finds its
+special representation in the mystics and the religious contemplative
+orders. Improved conduct and improved circumstances are to an English
+mind the chief and almost the only measures of progress.</p>
+
+<p>That this tendency is on the whole a healthy one, I, at least, firmly
+believe, but it brings with it certain manifest limitations and somewhat
+incapacitates men from judging other types of character and happiness.
+The part that circumstances play in the formation of our characters is
+indeed very manifest, and it is a humiliating truth that among these
+circumstances mere bodily conditions which we share with the animals
+hold a foremost place. In the long run and to the great majority of men
+health is probably the most important of all the elements of happiness.
+Acute physical suffering or shattered health will more than
+counterbalance the best gifts of fortune, and the bias of our nature and
+even the processes of our reasoning are largely influenced by physical
+conditions. Hume has spoken of that 'disposition to see the favourable
+rather than the unfavourable side of things which it is more happiness
+to possess than to be heir to an estate of 10,000<i>l.</i> a year;' but this
+gift of a happy temperament is very evidently greatly due to bodily
+conditions. On the other hand, it is well known how speedily and how
+powerfully bodily ailments react upon our moral natures. Every one is
+aware of the morbid irritability that is produced by certain maladies of
+the nerves or of the brain; of the deep constitutional depression which
+often follows diseases of the liver, or prolonged sleeplessness and
+other hypochondriacal maladies, and which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> not only deprives men of most
+of their capacity of enjoyment, but also infallibly gives a colour and a
+bias to their reasonings on life; of the manner in which animal passions
+as well as animal spirits are affected by certain well-known conditions
+of age and health. In spite of the 'c&oelig;lum non animum mutant' of
+Horace, few men fail to experience how different is the range of spirits
+in the limbo-like atmosphere of a London winter and beneath the glories
+of an Italian sky or in the keen bracing atmosphere of the mountain
+side, and it is equally apparent how differently we judge the world when
+we are jaded by a long spell of excessive work or refreshed after a
+night of tranquil sleep. Poetry and Painting are probably not wrong in
+associating a certain bilious temperament with a predisposition to envy,
+or an an&aelig;mic or lymphatic temperament with a saintly life, and there are
+well-attested cases in which an acute illness has fundamentally altered
+characters, sometimes replacing an habitual gloom by buoyancy and
+light.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> That invaluable gift which enables some men to cast aside
+trouble and turn their thoughts and energies swiftly and decisively into
+new channels can be largely strengthened by the action of the will, but
+according to some physiologists it has a well-ascertained physical
+antecedent in the greater or less contractile power of the blood-vessels
+which feed the brain causing the flow of blood into it to be stronger or
+less rapid. If it be true that 'a healthy mind in a healthy body' is the
+supreme condition of happiness, it is also true that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> healthy mind
+depends more closely than we like to own on the healthy body.</p>
+
+<p>These are but a few obvious instances of the manner in which the body
+acts upon happiness. They do not mean that the will is powerless in the
+face of bodily conditions, but that in the management of character it
+has certain very definite predispositions to encounter. In reasonings on
+life, even more than on other things, a good reasoner will consider not
+only the force of the opposing arguments, but also the bias to which his
+own mind is subject. To raise the level of national health is one of the
+surest ways of raising the level of national happiness, and in
+estimating the value of different pleasures many which, considered in
+themselves, might appear to rank low upon the scale, will rank high, if
+in addition to the immediate and transient enjoyment they procure, they
+contribute to form a strong and healthy body. No branch of legislation
+is more really valuable than that which is occupied with the health of
+the people, whether it takes the form of encouraging the means by which
+remedies may be discovered and diffused, or of extirpating by combined
+efforts particular diseases, or of securing that the mass of labour in
+the community should as far as possible be carried on under sound
+sanitary conditions. Fashion also can do much, both for good and ill. It
+exercises over great multitudes an almost absolute empire, regulating
+their dress, their education, their hours, their amusements, their food,
+their scale of expenditure; determining the qualities to which they
+principally aspire, the work in which they may engage, and even the form
+of beauty which they most cultivate. It is happy for a nation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> when this
+mighty influence is employed in encouraging habits of life which are
+beneficial or at least not gravely prejudicial to health. Nor is any
+form of individual education more really valuable than that which
+teaches the main conditions of a healthy life and forms those habits of
+temperance and self-restraint that are most likely to attain it.</p>
+
+<p>With its great recuperative powers Youth can do with apparent impunity
+many things which in later life bring a speedy Nemesis; but on the other
+hand Youth is pre-eminently the period when habits and tastes are
+formed, and the yoke which is then lightly, willingly, wantonly assumed
+will in after years acquire a crushing weight. Few things are more
+striking than the levity of the motives, the feebleness of the impulses
+under which in youth fatal steps are taken which bring with them a
+weakened life and often an early grave. Smoking in manhood, when
+practised in moderation, is a very innocent and probably beneficent
+practice, but it is well known how deleterious it is to young boys, and
+how many of them have taken to it through no other motive than a desire
+to appear older than they are&mdash;that surest of all signs that we are very
+young. How often have the far more pernicious habits of drinking, or
+gambling, or frequenting corrupt society been acquired through a similar
+motive, or through the mere desire to enjoy the charm of a forbidden
+pleasure or to stand well with some dissipated companions! How large a
+proportion of lifelong female debility is due to an early habit of tight
+lacing, springing only from the silliest vanity! How many lives have
+been sacrificed through the careless recklessness which refused to take
+the trouble of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> changing wet clothes! How many have been shattered and
+shortened by excess in things which in moderation are harmless, useful,
+or praiseworthy,&mdash;by the broken blood-vessel, due to excess in some
+healthy athletic exercise or game; by the ruined brain overstrained in
+order to win some paltry prize! It is melancholy to observe how many
+lives have been broken down, ruined or corrupted in attempts to realise
+some supreme and unattainable desire; through the impulse of
+overmastering passion, of powerful and perhaps irresistible temptation.
+It is still sadder to observe how large a proportion of the failures of
+life may be ultimately traced to the most insignificant causes and might
+have been avoided without any serious effort either of intellect or
+will.</p>
+
+<p>The success with which medicine and sanitary science have laboured to
+prolong life, to extirpate or diminish different forms of disease and to
+alleviate their consequences is abundantly proved. In all civilised
+countries the average of life has been raised, and there is good reason
+to believe that not only old age but also active, useful, enjoyable old
+age has become much more frequent. It is true that the gain to human
+happiness is not quite as great as might at first sight be imagined.
+Death is least sad when it comes in infancy or in extreme old age, and
+the increased average of life is largely due to the great diminution in
+infant mortality, which is in truth a very doubtful blessing. If extreme
+old age is a thing to be desired, it is perhaps chiefly because it
+usually implies a constitution which gives many earlier years of robust
+and healthy life. But with all deductions the triumphs of sanitary
+reform as well as of medical science are perhaps the brightest page in
+the history<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> of our century. Some of the measures which have proved most
+useful can only be effected at some sacrifice of individual freedom and
+by widespread coercive sanitary regulations, and are thus more akin to
+despotism than to free government. How different would have been the
+condition of the world, and how far greater would have been the
+popularity of strong monarchy if at the time when such a form of
+government generally prevailed rulers had had the intelligence to put
+before them the improvement of the health and the prolongation of the
+lives of their subjects as the main object of their policy rather than
+military glory or the acquisition of territory or mere ostentatious and
+selfish display!</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, some reason to believe that the diminution of disease
+and the prolongation of average human life are not necessarily or even
+generally accompanied by a corresponding improvement in general health.
+'Acute diseases,' says an excellent judge, 'which are eminently fatal,
+prevail, on the contrary, in a population where the standard of health
+is high.... Thus a high rate of mortality may often be observed in a
+community where the number of persons affected with disease is small,
+and on the other hand general physical depression may concur with the
+prevalence of chronic maladies and yet be unattended with a great
+proportion of deaths.'<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> An an&aelig;mic population, free from severe
+illness, but living habitually at a low level of health and with the
+depressed spirits and feeble capacity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> enjoyment which such a
+condition produces, is far from an ideal state, and there is much reason
+to fear that this type is an increasing one. Many things in modern life,
+among which ill-judged philanthropy and ill-judged legislation have no
+small part, contribute to produce it, but two causes probably dominate
+over all others. The one is to be found in sanitary science itself,
+which enables great numbers of constitutionally weak children who in
+other days would have died in infancy to grow up and marry and propagate
+a feeble offspring. The other is the steady movement of population from
+the country to the towns, which is one of the most conspicuous features
+of modern civilisation. These two influences inevitably and powerfully
+tend to depress the vitality of a nation, and by doing so to lower the
+level of animal spirits which is one of the most essential elements of
+happiness. Whether our improved standards of living and our much greater
+knowledge of sanitary conditions altogether counteract them is very
+doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>In this as in most questions affecting life there are opposite dangers
+to be avoided, and wisdom lies mainly in a just sense of proportion and
+degree. That sanitary reform, promoted by governments, has on the whole
+been a great blessing seems to me scarcely open to reasonable question,
+but many of the best judges are of opinion that it may easily be pushed
+to dangerous extremes. Few things are more curious than to observe how
+rapidly during the past generation the love of individual liberty has
+declined; how contentedly the English race are submitting great
+departments of their lives to a web of regulations restricting and
+encircling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> them. Each individual case must be considered on its merits,
+and few persons will now deny that the right of adult men and women to
+regulate the conditions of their own work and to determine the risks
+that they will assume may be wisely infringed in more cases than the
+Manchester School would have admitted. At the same time the marked
+tendency of this generation to extend the stringency and area of
+coercive legislation in the fields of industry and sanitary reform is
+one that should be carefully watched. Its exaggerations may in more ways
+than one greatly injure the very classes it is intended to benefit.</p>
+
+<p>A somewhat corresponding statement may be made about individual sanitary
+education. It is, as I have said, a matter of the most vital importance
+that we should acquire in youth the knowledge and the habits that lead
+to a healthy life. The main articles of the sanitary creed are few and
+simple. Moderation and self-restraint in all things&mdash;an abundance of
+exercise, of fresh air, and of cold water&mdash;a sufficiency of steady work
+not carried to excess&mdash;occasional change of habits and abstinence from a
+few things which are manifestly injurious to health, are the cardinal
+rules to be observed. In the great lottery of life, men who have
+observed them all may be doomed to illness, weak vitality, and early
+death, but they at least add enormously to the chances of a strong and
+full life. The parent will need further knowledge for the care of his
+children, but for self-guidance little more is required, and with early
+habits an observance of the rules of health becomes almost instinctive
+and unconscious. But while no kind of education is more transcendently
+important<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> than this, it is not unfrequently carried to an extreme which
+defeats its own purpose. The habit that so often grows upon men with
+slight chronic maladies, or feeble temperament, or idle lives, of making
+their own health and their own ailments the constant subject of their
+thoughts soon becomes a disease very fatal to happiness and positively
+injurious to health. It is well known how in an epidemic the
+panic-stricken are most liable to the contagion, and the life of the
+habitual valetudinarian tends promptly to depress the nerve energy which
+provides the true stamina of health. In the words of an eminent
+physician, 'It is not by being anxious in an inordinate or unduly fussy
+fashion that men can hope to live long and well. The best way to live
+well is to work well. Good work is the daily test and safeguard of
+personal health.... The practical aim should be to live an orderly and
+natural life. We were not intended to pick our way through the world
+trembling at every step.... It is worse than vain, for it encourages and
+increases the evil it attempts to relieve.... I firmly believe one half
+of the confirmed invalids of the day could be cured of their maladies if
+they were compelled to live busy and active lives and had no time to
+fret over their miseries.... One of the most seductive and mischievous
+of errors in self-management is the practice of giving way to inertia,
+weakness and depression.... Those who desire to live should settle this
+well in their minds, that nerve power is the force of life and that the
+will has a wondrously strong and direct influence over the body through
+the brain and the nervous system.'<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Active and Moral Powers</i>, ii. 312.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Much curious information on this subject will be found in
+Cabanis' <i>Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Kay's <i>Moral and Physical Condition of the Working
+Classes</i>, p. 75.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Mortimer Granville's <i>How to Make the Best of Life</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p>Before entering into a more particular account of the chief elements of
+a happy life it may be useful to devote a few pages to some general
+considerations on the subject.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>One of the first and most clearly recognised rules to be observed is
+that happiness is most likely to be attained when it is not the direct
+object of pursuit. In early youth we are accustomed to divide life
+broadly into work and play, regarding the first as duty or necessity and
+the second as pleasure. One of the great differences between childhood
+and manhood is that we come to like our work more than our play. It
+becomes to us, if not the chief pleasure, at least the chief interest of
+our lives, and even when it is not this, an essential condition of our
+happiness. Few lives produce so little happiness as those that are
+aimless and unoccupied. Apart from all considerations of right and
+wrong, one of the first conditions of a happy life is that it should be
+a full and busy one, directed to the attainment of aims outside
+ourselves. Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the
+bark of human happiness is most commonly wrecked. If a life of luxurious
+idleness and selfish ease in some measure saves men from the first
+danger, it seldom fails to bring with it the second. No change of scene,
+no multiplicity of selfish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> pleasures will in the long run enable them
+to escape it. As Carlyle says, 'The restless, gnawing ennui which, like
+a dark, dim, ocean flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian
+deeps, begirdles every human life so guided&mdash;is it not the painful cry
+even of that imprisoned heroism?... You ask for happiness. "Oh give me
+happiness," and they hand you ever new varieties of covering for the
+skin, ever new kinds of supply for the digestive apparatus.... Well,
+rejoice in your upholsteries and cookeries if so be they will make you
+"happy." Let the varieties of them be continual and innumerable. In all
+things let perpetual change, if that is a perpetual blessing to you, be
+your portion instead of mine. Incur the prophet's curse and in all
+things in this sublunary world "make yourselves like unto a wheel."
+Mount into your railways; whirl from place to place at the rate of fifty
+or, if you like, of five hundred miles an hour; you cannot escape from
+that inexorable, all-encircling ocean moan of ennui. No; if you could
+mount to the stars and do yacht voyages under the belts of Jupiter or
+stalk deer on the ring of Saturn it would still begirdle you. You cannot
+escape from it; you can but change your place in it without solacement
+except one moment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will continue
+with you till you wisely interpret it and do it or else till the Crack
+of Doom swallow it and you.'<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>It needs but a few years of life experience to realise the profound
+truth of this passage. An ideal life would be furnished with abundant
+work of a kind that is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>congenial both to our intellects and our
+characters and that brings with it much interest and little anxiety. Few
+of us can command this. Most men's work is largely determined for them
+by circumstances, though in the guidance of life there are many
+alternatives and much room for skilful pilotage. But the first great
+rule is that we must do something&mdash;that life must have a purpose and an
+aim&mdash;that work should be not merely occasional and spasmodic, but steady
+and continuous. Pleasure is a jewel which will only retain its lustre
+when it is in a setting of work, and a vacant life is one of the worst
+of pains, though the islands of leisure that stud a crowded,
+well-occupied life may be among the things to which we look back with
+the greatest delight.</p>
+
+<p>Another great truth is conveyed in the saying of Aristotle that a wise
+man will make it his aim rather to avoid suffering than to attain
+pleasure. Men can in reality do very little to mitigate the force of the
+great bereavements and the other graver calamities of life. All our
+systems of philosophy and reasoning are vain when confronted with them.
+Innate temperament which we cannot greatly change determines whether we
+sink crushed beneath the blow or possess the buoyancy that can restore
+health to our natures. The conscious and deliberate pursuit of pleasure
+is attended by many deceptions and illusions, and rarely leads to
+lasting happiness. But we can do very much by prudence, self-restraint
+and intelligent regulation so to manage life as to avoid a large
+proportion of its calamities and at the same time, by preserving the
+affections pure and undimmed, by diversifying interests and forming
+active habits, to combat its tedium and despondency.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p><p>Another truth is that both the greatest pleasures and the keenest pains
+of life lie much more in those humbler spheres which are accessible to
+all than on the rare pinnacles to which only the most gifted or the most
+fortunate can attain. It would probably be found upon examination that
+most men who have devoted their lives successfully to great labours and
+ambitions, and who have received the most splendid gifts from Fortune,
+have nevertheless found their chief pleasure in things unconnected with
+their main pursuits and generally within the reach of common men.
+Domestic pleasures, pleasures of scenery, pleasures of reading,
+pleasures of travel or of sport have been the highest enjoyment of men
+of great ambition, intellect, wealth and position. There is a curious
+passage in Lord Althorp's Life in which that most popular and successful
+statesman, towards the close of his long parliamentary life, expressed
+his emphatic conviction that 'the thing that gave him the greatest
+pleasure in the world' was 'to see sporting dogs hunt.'<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> I can myself
+recollect going over a country place with an old member of Parliament
+who had sat in the House of Commons for nearly fifty years of the most
+momentous period of modern English history. If questioned he could tell
+about the stirring scenes of the great Reform Bill of 1832, but it was
+curious to observe how speedily and inevitably he passed from such
+matters to the history of the trees on his estate which he had planted
+and watched at every stage of their growth, and how evidently in the
+retrospect of life it was to these things and not to the incidents of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+long parliamentary career that his affections naturally turned. I once
+asked an illustrious public man who had served his country with
+brilliant success in many lands, and who was spending the evening of his
+life as an active country gentleman in a place which he dearly loved,
+whether he did not find this sphere too contracted for his happiness.
+'Never for a day,' he answered; 'and in every country where I have been,
+in every post which I have filled, the thought of this place has always
+been at the back of my mind.' A great writer who had devoted almost his
+whole life to one gigantic work, and to his own surprise brought it at
+last to a successful end, sadly observed that amid the congratulations
+that poured in to him from every side he could not help feeling, when he
+analysed his own emotions, how tepid was the satisfaction which such a
+triumph could give him, and what much more vivid gratification he had
+come to take in hearing the approaching steps of some little children
+whom he had taught to love him.</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the paradoxes of human nature that the things that are most
+struggled for and the things that are most envied are not those which
+give either the most intense or the most unmixed joy. Ambition is the
+luxury of the happy. It is sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation
+and distraction of the wretched; but most of those who have trodden its
+paths, if they deal honestly with themselves, will acknowledge that the
+gravest disappointments of public life dwindle into insignificance
+compared with the poignancy of suffering endured at the deathbed of a
+wife or of a child, and that within the small circle of a family life
+they have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> found more real happiness than the applause of nations could
+ever give.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Look down, look down from your glittering heights,</div>
+<div class="i1">And tell us, ye sons of glory,</div>
+<div>The joys and the pangs of your eagle flights,</div>
+<div class="i1">The triumph that crowned the story,</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div>The rapture that thrilled when the goal was won,</div>
+<div class="i1">The goal of a life's desire;</div>
+<div>And a voice replied from the setting sun,</div>
+<div class="i1">Nay, the dearest and best lies nigher.</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div>How oft in such hours our fond thoughts stray</div>
+<div class="i1">To the dream of two idle lovers;</div>
+<div>To the young wife's kiss; to the child at play;</div>
+<div class="i1">Or the grave which the long grass covers!</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div>And little we'd reck of power or gold,</div>
+<div class="i1">And of all life's vain endeavour,</div>
+<div>If the heart could glow as it glowed of old,</div>
+<div class="i1">And if youth could abide for ever.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Another consideration in the cultivation of happiness is the importance
+of acquiring the habit of realising our blessings while they last. It is
+one of the saddest facts of human nature that we commonly only learn
+their value by their loss. This, as I have already noticed, is very
+evidently the case with health. By the laws of our being we are almost
+unconscious of the action of our bodily organs as long as they are
+working well. It is only when they are deranged, obstructed or impaired
+that our attention becomes concentrated upon them. In consequence of
+this a state of perfect health is rarely fully appreciated until it is
+lost and during a short<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> period after it has been regained. Gray has
+described the new sensation of pleasure which convalescence gives in
+well-known lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>See the wretch who long has tost</div>
+<div class="i1">On the thorny bed of pain,</div>
+<div>At length repair his vigour lost</div>
+<div class="i1">And breathe and walk again;</div>
+<div>The meanest floweret of the vale,</div>
+<div>The simplest note that swells the gale,</div>
+<div class="i1">The common sun, the air, the skies,</div>
+<div class="i1">To him are opening Paradise.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And what is true of health is true of other things. It is only when some
+calamity breaks the calm tenor of our ways and deprives us of some gift
+of fortune we have long enjoyed that we feel how great was the value of
+what we have lost. There are times in the lives of most of us when we
+would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though
+that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.
+Sometimes, indeed, our perception of this contrast brings with it a
+lasting and salutary result. In the medicine of Nature a chronic and
+abiding disquietude or morbidness of temperament is often cured by some
+keen though more transient sorrow which violently changes the current of
+our thoughts and imaginations.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between knowledge and realisation is one of the facts of
+our nature that are most worthy of our attention. Every human mind
+contains great masses of inert, passive, undisputed knowledge which
+exercise no real influence on thought or character till something occurs
+which touches our imagination and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> quickens this knowledge into
+activity. Very few things contribute so much to the happiness of life as
+a constant realisation of the blessings we enjoy. The difference between
+a naturally contented and a naturally discontented nature is one of the
+marked differences of innate temperament, but we can do much to
+cultivate that habit of dwelling on the benefits of our lot which
+converts acquiescence into a more positive enjoyment. Religion in this
+field does much, for it inculcates thanksgiving as well as prayer,
+gratitude for the present and the past as well as hope for the future.
+Among secular influences, contrast and comparison have the greatest
+value. Some minds are always looking on the fortunes that are above them
+and comparing their own penury with the opulence of others. A wise
+nature will take an opposite course and will cultivate the habit of
+looking rather at the round of the ladder of fortune which is below our
+own and realising the countless points in which our lot is better than
+that of others. As Dr. Johnson says, 'Few are placed in a situation so
+gloomy and distressful as not to see every day beings yet more forlorn
+and miserable from whom they may learn to rejoice in their own lot.'</p>
+
+<p>The consolation men derive amid their misfortunes from reflecting upon
+the still greater misfortunes of others and thus lightening their own by
+contrast is a topic which must be delicately used, but when so used it
+is not wrong and it often proves very efficacious. Perhaps the pleasure
+La Rochefoucauld pretends that men take in the misfortunes of their best
+friends, if it is a real thing, is partly due to this consideration, as
+the feeling of pity which is inspired by some sudden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> death or great
+trouble falling on others is certainly not wholly unconnected with the
+realisation that such calamities might fall upon ourselves. It is worthy
+of notice, however, that while all moralists recognise content as one of
+the chief ingredients of happiness, some of the strongest influences of
+modern industrial civilisation are antagonistic to it. The whole theory
+of progress as taught by Political Economy rests upon the importance of
+creating wants and desires as a stimulus to exertion. There are
+countries, especially in southern climates, where the wants of men are
+very few, and where, as long as those wants are satisfied, men will live
+a careless and contented life, enjoying the present, thinking very
+little of the future. Whether the sum of enjoyment in such a population
+is really less than in our more advanced civilisation is at least open
+to question. It is a remark of Schopenhauer that the Idyll, which is the
+only form of poetry specially devoted to the description of human
+felicity, always paints life in its simplest and least elaborated form,
+and he sees in this an illustration of his doctrine that the greatest
+happiness will be found in the simplest and even most uniform life
+provided it escapes the evil of ennui. The political economist, however,
+will pronounce the condition of such a people as I have described a
+deplorable one, and in order to raise them his first task will be to
+infuse into them some discontent with their lot, to persuade them to
+multiply their wants and to aspire to a higher standard of comfort, to a
+fuller and a larger existence. A discontent with existing circumstances
+is the chief source of a desire to improve them, and this desire is the
+mainspring of progress. In this theory of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> life, happiness is sought,
+not in content, but in improved circumstances, in the development of new
+capacities of enjoyment, in the pleasure which active existence
+naturally gives. To maintain in their due proportion in our nature the
+spirit of content and the desire to improve, to combine a realised
+appreciation of the blessings we enjoy with a healthy and well-regulated
+ambition, is no easy thing, but it is the problem which all who aspire
+to a perfect life should set before themselves. <i>In medio tutissimus
+ibis</i> is eminently true of the cultivation of character, and some of its
+best elements become pernicious in their extremes. Thus prudent
+forethought, which is one of the first conditions of a successful life,
+may easily degenerate into that most miserable state of mind in which
+men are perpetually anticipating and dwelling upon the uncertain dangers
+and evils of an uncertain future. How much indeed of the happiness and
+misery of men may be included under those two words, realisation and
+anticipation!</p>
+
+<p>There is no such thing as a Eud&aelig;mometer measuring with accuracy the
+degrees of happiness realised by men in different ages, under different
+circumstances, and with different characters. Perhaps if such a thing
+existed it might tend to discourage us by showing that diversities and
+improvements of circumstances affect real happiness in a smaller degree
+than we are accustomed to imagine. Our nature accommodates itself
+speedily to improved circumstances, and they cease to give positive
+pleasure while their loss is acutely painful. Advanced civilisation
+brings with it countless and inestimable benefits, but it also brings
+with it many forms of suffering from which a ruder existence is exempt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+There is some reason to believe that it is usually accompanied with a
+lower range of animal spirits, and it is certainly accompanied with an
+increased sensitiveness to pain. Some philosophers have contended that
+this is the best of all possible worlds. It is difficult to believe so,
+as the whole object of human effort is to make it a better one. But the
+success of that effort is more apparent in the many terrible forms of
+human suffering which it has abolished or diminished than in the higher
+level of positive happiness that has been attained.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>Latter-day Pamphlets:</i> 'Jesuitism.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Le Marchant's <i>Life of Althorp</i>, p. 143.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p>Though the close relationship that subsists between morals and happiness
+is universally acknowledged, I do not belong to the school which
+believes that pleasure and pain, either actual or anticipated, are the
+only motives by which the human will can be governed; that virtue
+resolves itself ultimately into well-considered interest and finds its
+ultimate reason in the happiness of those who practise it; that 'all our
+virtues,' as La Rochefoucauld has said, 'end in self-love as the rivers
+in the sea.' Such a proverb as 'Honesty is the best policy' represents
+no doubt a great truth, though it has been well said that no man is
+really honest who is only honest through this motive, and though it is
+very evident that it is by no means an universal truth but depends
+largely upon changing and precarious conditions of laws, police, public
+opinion, and individual circumstances. But in the higher realms of
+morals the coincidence of happiness and virtue is far more doubtful. It
+is certainly not true that the highest nature is necessarily or even
+naturally the happiest. Paganism has produced no more perfect type than
+the profoundly pathetic figure of Marcus Aurelius, while Christianity
+finds its ideal in one who was known as the 'Man of Sorrows.' The
+conscience of Mankind has ever recognised self-sacrifice as the supreme
+element of virtue,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> and self-sacrifice is never real when it is only the
+exchange of a less happiness for a greater one. No moral chemistry can
+transmute the worship of Sorrow, which Goethe described as the essence
+of Christianity, into the worship of happiness, and probably with most
+men health and temperament play a far larger part in the real happiness
+of their lives than any of the higher virtues. The satisfaction of
+accomplished duty which some moralists place among the chief pleasures
+of life is a real thing in so far as it saves men from internal
+reproaches, but it is probable that it is among the worst men that pangs
+of conscience are least dreaded, and it is certainly not among the best
+men that they are least felt. Conscience, indeed, when it is very
+sensitive and very lofty, is far more an element of suffering than the
+reverse. It aims at an ideal higher than we can attain. It takes the
+lowest view of our own achievements. It suffers keenly from the many
+shortcomings of which it is acutely sensible. Far from indulging in the
+pleasurable retrospect of a well-spent life, it urges men to constant,
+painful, and often unsuccessful effort. A nature that is strung to the
+saintly or the heroic level will find itself placed in a jarring world,
+will provoke much friction and opposition, and will be pained by many
+things in which a lower nature would placidly acquiesce. The highest
+form of intellectual virtue is that love of truth for its own sake which
+breaks up prejudices, tempers enthusiasm by the full admission of
+opposing arguments and qualifying circumstances, and places in the
+sphere of possibility or probability many things which we would gladly
+accept as certainties. Candour and impartiality are in a large degree
+virtues of temperament;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> but no one who has any real knowledge of human
+nature can doubt how much more pleasurable it is to most men to live
+under the empire of invincible prejudice, deliberately shutting out
+every consideration that could shake or qualify cherished beliefs.
+'God,' says Emerson, 'offers to every mind its choice between truth and
+repose. Take which you please. You can never have both.' One of the
+strongest arguments of natural religion rests upon the fact that virtue
+so often fails to bring its reward; upon the belief that is so deeply
+implanted in human nature that this is essentially unjust and must in
+some future state be remedied.</p>
+
+<p>For such reasons as these I believe it to be impossible to identify
+virtue with happiness, and the views of the opposite school seem to me
+chiefly to rest upon an unnatural and deceptive use of words. Even when
+the connection between virtue and pleasure is most close, it is true, as
+the old Stoics said, that though virtue gives pleasure, this is not the
+reason why a good man will practise it; that pleasure is the companion
+and not the guide of his life; that he does not love virtue because it
+gives pleasure, but it gives pleasure because he loves it.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> A true
+account of human nature will recognise that it has the power of aiming
+at something which is different from happiness and something which may
+be intelligibly described as higher, and that on the predominance of
+this loftier aim the nobility of life essentially depends. It is not
+even true that the end of man should be to find peace at the last. It
+should be to do his duty and tell the truth.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>But while this great truth of the existence of a higher aim than
+happiness should be always maintained, the relations between morals and
+happiness are close and intimate and well worthy of investigation. As
+far as the lower or more commonplace virtues are concerned there can be
+no mistake. It is very evident that a healthy, long and prosperous life
+is more likely to be attained by industry, moderation and purity than by
+the opposite courses. It is very evident that drunkenness and sensuality
+ruin health and shorten life; that idleness, gambling and disorderly
+habits ruin prosperity; that ill-temper, selfishness and envy kill
+friendship and provoke animosities and dislike; that in every
+well-regulated society there is at least a general coincidence between
+the path of duty and the path of prosperity; dishonesty, violence and
+disregard for the rights of others naturally and usually bringing their
+punishment either from law or from public opinion or from both. Bishop
+Butler has argued that the general tendency of virtue to lead to
+happiness and the general tendency of vice to lead to unhappiness prove
+that even in its present state there is a moral government of the world,
+and whatever controversy may be raised about the inference there can at
+least be no doubt about the substantial truth of the facts. Happiness,
+as I have already said, is best attained when it is not the direct or at
+least the main object that is aimed at. A wasted and inactive life not
+only palls in itself but deprives men of the very real and definite
+pleasure that naturally arises from the healthful activity of all our
+powers, while a life of egotism excludes the pleasures of sympathy which
+play so large a part in human happiness. One of the lessons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> which
+experience most clearly teaches is that work, duty and the discipline of
+character are essential elements of lasting happiness. The pleasures of
+vice are often real, but they are commonly transient and they leave
+legacies of suffering, weakness, or care behind them. The nobler
+pleasures for the most part grow and strengthen with advancing years.
+The passions of youth, when duly regulated, gradually transform
+themselves into habits, interests and steady affections, and it is in
+the long forecasts of life that the superiority of virtue as an element
+of happiness becomes most apparent.</p>
+
+<p>It has been truly said that such words as 'pastime' and 'diversion'
+applied to our pleasures are among the most melancholy in the language,
+for they are the confession of human nature that it cannot find
+happiness in itself, but must seek for something that will fill up time,
+will cover the void which it feels, and divert men's thoughts from the
+conditions and prospects of their own lives. How much of the pleasure of
+Society, and indeed of all amusements, depends on their power of making
+us forget ourselves! The substratum of life is sad, and few men who
+reflect on the dangers and uncertainties that surround it can find it
+even tolerable without much extraneous aid. The first and most vital of
+these aids is to be found in the creation of strong interests. It is one
+of the laws of our being that by seeking interests rather than by
+seeking pleasures we can best encounter the gloom of life. But those
+only have the highest efficiency which are of an unselfish nature. By
+throwing their whole nature into the interests of others men most
+effectually escape the melancholy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> introspection; the horizon of life
+is enlarged; the development of the moral and sympathetic feelings
+chases egotistic cares, and by the same paradox that we have seen in
+other parts of human nature men best attain their own happiness by
+absorbing themselves in the pursuit of the happiness of others.</p>
+
+<p>The aims and perspective of a well-regulated life have never, I think,
+been better described than in one of the letters of Burke to the Duke of
+Richmond. 'It is wise indeed, considering the many positive vexations
+and the innumerable bitter disappointments of pleasure in the world, to
+have as many resources of satisfaction as possible within one's power.
+Whenever we concentre the mind on one sole object, that object and life
+itself must go together. But though it is right to have reserves of
+employment, still some one object must be kept principal; greatly and
+eminently so; and the other masses and figures must preserve their due
+subordination, to make out the grand composition of an important
+life.'<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> It is equally true that among these objects the disinterested
+and the unselfish should hold a predominant place. With some this side
+of their activity is restricted to the narrow circle of home or to the
+isolated duties and charities of their own neighbourhood. With others it
+takes the form of large public interests, of a keen participation in
+social, philanthropic, political or religious enterprises. Character
+plays a larger part than intellect in the happiness of life, and the
+cultivation of the unselfish part of our nature is not only one of the
+first lessons of morals but also of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p><p>Like most other things its difficulties lie at the beginning, and it is
+by steady practice that it passes into a second and instinctive nature.
+The power of man to change organically his character is a very limited
+one, but on the whole the improvement of character is probably more
+within his reach than intellectual development. Time and Opportunity are
+wanting to most men for any considerable intellectual study, and even
+were it otherwise every man will find large tracts of knowledge and
+thought wholly external to his tastes, aptitudes and comprehension. But
+every one can in some measure learn the lesson of self-sacrifice,
+practise what is right, correct or at least mitigate his dominant
+faults. What fine examples of self-sacrifice, quiet courage, resignation
+in misfortune, patient performance of painful duty, magnanimity and
+forgiveness under injury may be often found among those who are
+intellectually the most commonplace!</p>
+
+<p>The insidious growth of selfishness is a disease against which men
+should be most on their guard; but it is a grave though a common error
+to suppose that the unselfish instincts may be gratified without
+restraint. There is here, however, one important distinction to be
+noted. The many and great evils that have sprung from lavish and
+ill-considered charities do not always or perhaps generally spring from
+any excess or extravagance of the charitable feeling. They are much more
+commonly due to its defect. The rich man who never cares to inquire into
+the details of the cases that are brought before him or to give any
+serious thought to the ulterior consequences of his acts, but who is
+ready to give money at any solicitation and who considers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> that by so
+doing he has discharged his duty, is far more likely to do harm in this
+way than the man who devotes himself to patient, plodding, house to
+house work among the poor. The many men and the probably still larger
+number of women who give up great portions of their lives to such work
+soon learn to trace with considerable accuracy the consequences of their
+charities and to discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy. That
+such persons often become exclusive and one-sided, and acquire a kind of
+professional bent which induces them to subordinate all national
+considerations to their own subject and lose sight of the true
+proportion of things, is undoubtedly true, but it will probably not be
+found with the best workers that such a life tends to unduly intensify
+emotion. As Bishop Butler has said with profound truth, active habits
+are strengthened and passive impressions weakened by repetition, and a
+life spent in active charitable work is quite compatible with much
+sobriety and even coldness of judgment in estimating each case as it
+arises. It is not the surgeon who is continually employed in operations
+for the cure of his patients who is most moved at the sight of
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p>This is, I believe, on the whole true, but it is also true that there
+are grave diseases which attach themselves peculiarly to the unselfish
+side of our nature, and they are peculiarly dangerous because men,
+feeling that the unselfish is the virtuous and nobler side of their
+being, are apt to suffer these tendencies to operate without supervision
+or control. Yet it is hardly possible to exaggerate the calamities that
+have sprung from misjudged unselfish actions. The whole history of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>religious persecution abundantly illustrates it, for there can be
+little question that a large proportion of the persecutors were
+sincerely seeking what they believed to be the highest good of mankind.
+And if this dark page of human history is now almost closed, there are
+still many other ways in which a similar evil is displayed. Crotchets,
+sentimentalities and fanaticisms cluster especially around the unselfish
+side of our nature, and they work evil in many curious and subtle ways.
+Few things have done more harm in the world than disproportioned
+compassion. It is a law of our being that we are only deeply moved by
+sufferings we distinctly realise, and the degrees in which different
+kinds of suffering appeal to the imagination bear no proportion to their
+real magnitude. The most benevolent man will read of an earthquake in
+Japan or a plague in South America with a callousness he would never
+display towards some untimely death or some painful accident in his
+immediate neighbourhood, and in general the suffering of a prominent and
+isolated individual strikes us much more forcibly than that of an
+undistinguished multitude. Few deaths are so prominent, and therefore
+few produce such widespread compassion, as those of conspicuous
+criminals. It is no exaggeration to say that the death of an
+'interesting' murderer will often arouse much stronger feelings than
+were ever excited by the death of his victim; or by the deaths of brave
+soldiers who perished by disease or by the sword in some obscure
+expedition in a remote country. This mode of judgment acts promptly upon
+conduct. The humanitarian spirit which mitigates the penal code and
+makes the reclamation of the criminal a main object is a perfectly
+right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> thing as long as it does not so far diminish the deterrent power
+of punishment as to increase crime, and as long as it does not place the
+criminal in a better position of comfort than the blameless poor, but
+when these conditions are not fulfilled it is much more an evil than a
+good. The remote, indirect and unrealised consequences of our acts are
+often far more important than those which are manifest and direct, and
+it continually happens that in extirpating some concentrated and
+obtrusive evil, men increase or engender a diffused malady which
+operates over a far wider area. How few, for example, who share the
+prevailing tendency to deal with every evil that appears in Society by
+coercive legislation adequately realise the danger of weakening the
+robust, self-reliant, resourceful habits on which the happiness of
+Society so largely depends, and at the same time, by multiplying the
+functions and therefore increasing the expenses of government, throwing
+new and crushing burdens on struggling industry! How often have
+philanthropists, through a genuine interest for some suffering class or
+people, advocated measures which by kindling, prolonging, or enlarging a
+great war would infallibly create calamities far greater than those
+which they would redress! How often might great outbursts of savage
+crime or grave and lasting disorders in the State, or international
+conflicts that have cost thousands of lives, have been averted by a
+prompt and unflinching severity from which an ill-judged humanity
+recoiled! If in the February of 1848 Louis Philippe had permitted
+Marshal Bugeaud to fire on the Revolutionary mob at a time when there
+was no real and widespread desire for revolution in France, how many
+bloody<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> pages of French and European history might have been spared!</p>
+
+<p>Measures guaranteeing men, and still more women, from excessive labour,
+and surrounding them with costly sanitary precautions, may easily, if
+they are injudiciously framed, so handicap a sex or a people in the
+competition of industry as to drive them out of great fields of
+industry, restrict their means of livelihood, lower their standard of
+wages and comfort, and thus seriously diminish the happiness of their
+lives. Injudicious suppressions of amusements that are not wholly good,
+but which afford keen enjoyment to great masses, seldom fail to give an
+impulse to other pleasures more secret and probably more vicious.
+Injudicious charities, or an extravagant and too indulgent poor law
+administration, inevitably discourage industry and thrift, and usually
+increase the poverty they were intended to cure. The parent who shrinks
+from inflicting any suffering on his child, or withholding from him any
+pleasure that he desires, is not laying the foundation of a happy life,
+and the benevolence which counteracts or obscures the law of nature that
+extravagance, improvidence and vice lead naturally to ruin, is no real
+kindness either to the upright man who has resisted temptation or to the
+weak man whose virtue is trembling doubtfully in the balance. Nor is it
+in the long run for the benefit of the world that superior ability or
+superior energy or industry should be handicapped in the race of life,
+forbidden to encounter exceptional risks for the sake of exceptional
+rewards, reduced by regulations to measures of work and gain intended
+for the benefit of inferior characters or powers.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p><p>The fatal vice of ill-considered benevolence is that it looks only to
+proximate and immediate results without considering either alternatives
+or distant and indirect consequences. A large and highly respectable
+form of benevolence is that connected with the animal world, and in
+England it is carried in some respects to a point which is unknown on
+the Continent. But what a strange form of compassion is that which long
+made it impossible to establish a Pasteur Institute in England, obliging
+patients threatened with one of the most horrible diseases that can
+afflict mankind to go&mdash;as they are always ready to do&mdash;to Paris, in
+order to undergo a treatment which what is called the humane sentiment
+of Englishmen forbid them to receive at home! What a strange form of
+benevolence is that which in a country where field sports are the
+habitual amusement of the higher ranks of Society denounces as criminal
+even the most carefully limited and supervised experiments on living
+animals, and would thus close the best hope of finding remedies for some
+of the worst forms of human suffering, the one sure method of testing
+supposed remedies which may be fatal or which may be of incalculable
+benefit to mankind! Foreign critics, indeed, often go much further and
+believe that in other forms connected with this subject public opinion
+in England is strangely capricious and inconsistent. They compare with
+astonishment the sentences that are sometimes passed for the
+ill-treatment of a woman and for the ill-treatment of a cat; they ask
+whether the real sufferings caused by many things that are in England
+punished by law or reprobated by opinion are greater than those caused
+by sports which are constantly practised without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> reproach; and they are
+apt to find much that is exaggerated or even fantastic in the great
+popularity and elaboration of some animal charities.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> At the same
+time in our own country the more recognised field sports greatly trouble
+many benevolent natures. I will here only say that while the positive
+benefits they produce are great and manifest, those who condemn them
+constantly forget what would be the fate of the animals that are
+slaughtered if such sports did not exist, and how little the balance of
+suffering is increased or altered by the destruction of beings which
+themselves live by destroying. As a poet says&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>The fish exult whene'er the seagull dies,</div>
+<div>The salmon's death preserves a thousand flies.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On most of these questions the effect on human character is a more
+important consideration than the effect on animal happiness. The best
+thing that legislation can do for wild animals is to extend as far as
+possible to harmless classes a close time, securing them immunity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> while
+they are producing and supporting their young. This is the truest
+kindness, and on quite other grounds it is peculiarly needed, as the
+improvement of firearms and the increase of population have completely
+altered, as far as man is concerned, the old balance between production
+and destruction, and threaten, if unchecked, to lead to an almost
+complete extirpation of great classes of the animal world. It is
+melancholy to observe how often sensitive women who object to field
+sports and who denounce all experiments on living animals will be found
+supporting with perfect callousness fashions that are leading to the
+wholesale destruction of some of the most beautiful species of birds,
+and are in some cases dependent upon acts of very aggravated cruelty.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Seneca, <i>De Vita Beata</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Burke's <i>Correspondence</i>, i. 376, 377.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> As I am writing these pages I find the following paragraph
+in a newspaper which may illustrate my meaning:&mdash;'<span class="smaller">DOGS' NURSING</span>. A case
+was heard at the Brompton County Court on Friday in which some
+suggestive evidence was given of the medical treatment of dogs. The
+proprietor of a dogs' infirmary at Tattersall's Corner sued Mr. Harding
+Cox for the board and lodging of seven dogs, and the <i>r&eacute;gime</i> was
+explained. They are fed on essence of meat, washed down with port wine,
+and have as a digestive eggs beaten up in milk and arrowroot. Medicated
+baths and tonics are also supplied, and occasionally the animals are
+treated to a day in the country. This course of hygiene necessitated an
+expenditure of ten shillings a week. The defendant pleaded that the
+charges were excessive, but the judge awarded the plaintiff &pound;25. How
+many hospital patients receive such treatment?'&mdash;<i>Daily Express</i>,
+February 16, 1897.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p>The illustrations given in the last chapter will be sufficient to show
+the danger of permitting the unselfish side of human nature to run wild
+without serious control by the reason and by the will. To see things in
+their true proportion, to escape the magnifying influence of a morbid
+imagination, should be one of the chief aims of life, and in no fields
+is it more needed than in those we have been reviewing. At the same time
+every age has its own ideal moral type towards which the strongest and
+best influences of the time converge. The history of morals is
+essentially a history of the changes that take place not so much in our
+conception of what is right and wrong as in the proportionate place and
+prominence we assign to different virtues and vices. There are large
+groups of moral qualities which in some ages of the world's history have
+been regarded as of supreme importance, while in other ages they are
+thrown into the background, and there are corresponding groups of vices
+which are treated in some periods as very serious and in others as very
+trivial. The heroic type of Paganism and the saintly type of
+Christianity in its purest form, consist largely of the same elements,
+but the proportions in which they are mixed are altogether different.
+There are ages when the military and civic virtues&mdash;the qualities that
+make good soldiers and patriotic citizens&mdash;dominate over all others. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>self-sacrifice of the best men flows habitually in these channels. In
+such an age integrity in business relations and the domestic virtues
+which maintain the purity of the family may be highly valued, but they
+are chiefly valued because they are essential to the well-being of the
+State. The soldier who has attained to the highest degree the best
+qualities of his profession, the patriot who sacrifices to the services
+of the State his comforts, his ambitions and his life, is the supreme
+model, and the estimation in which he is held is but little lowered even
+though he may have been guilty, like Cato, of atrocious cruelty to his
+slaves, or, like some of the heroes of ancient times, of scandalous
+forms of private profligacy.</p>
+
+<p>There are other ages in which military life is looked upon by moralists
+with disfavour, and in which patriotism ranks very low in the scale of
+virtues, while charity, gentleness, self-abnegation, devotional habits,
+and purity in thought, word and act are pre-eminently inculcated. The
+intellectual virtues, again, which deal with truth and falsehood, form a
+distinct group. The habit of mind which makes men love truth for its own
+sake as the supreme ideal, and which turns aside from all falsehood,
+exaggeration, party or sectarian misrepresentation and invention, is in
+no age a common one, but there are some ages in which it is recognised
+and inculcated as virtue, while there are others in which it is no
+exaggeration to say that the whole tendency of religious teaching has
+been to discourage it. During many centuries the ascetic and purely
+ecclesiastical standard of virtue completely dominated. The domestic
+virtues, though clearly recognised, held altogether a subordinate place
+to what were deemed the higher virtues of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> ascetic celibate.
+Charity, though nobly cultivated and practised, was regarded mainly
+through a dogmatic medium and practised less for the benefit of the
+recipient than for the spiritual welfare of the donor.</p>
+
+<p>In the eyes of multitudes the highest conception of a saintly life
+consisted largely if not mainly in complete detachment from secular
+interests and affections. No type was more admired, and no type was ever
+more completely severed from all active duties and all human relations
+than that of the saint of the desert or of the monk of one of the
+contemplative orders. To die to the world; to become indifferent to its
+aims, interests and pleasures; to measure all things by a standard
+wholly different from human happiness, to live habitually for another
+life was the constant teaching of the saints. In the stress laid on the
+cultivation of the spiritual life the whole sphere of active duties sank
+into a lower plane; and the eye of the mind was turned upwards and
+inwards and but little on the world around. 'Happy,' said one saint, 'is
+the mind which sees but two objects, God and self, one of which
+conceptions fills it with a sovereign delight and the other abases it to
+the extremest dejection.'<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> 'As much love as we give to creatures,'
+said another saint, 'just so much we steal from the Creator.'<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> 'Two
+things only do I ask,' said a third,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> 'to suffer and to die.'
+'Forsake all,' said Thomas &agrave; Kempis, 'and thou shalt find all. Leave
+desire and thou shalt find rest.' 'Unless a man be disengaged from the
+affection of all creatures he cannot with freedom of mind attend unto
+Divine things.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p><p>The gradual, silent and half-unconscious modification in the type of
+Morals which took place after the Reformation was certainly not the
+least important of its results. If it may be traced in some degree to
+the distinctive theology of the Protestant Churches, it was perhaps
+still more due to the abolition of clerical celibacy which placed the
+religious teachers in the centre of domestic life and in close contact
+with a large circle of social duties. There is even now a distinct
+difference between the morals of a sincerely Catholic and a sincerely
+Protestant country, and this difference is not so much, as
+controversialists would tell us, in the greater and the less as in the
+moral type, or, in other words, in the different degrees of importance
+attached to different virtues and vices. Probably nowhere in the world
+can more beautiful and more reverent types be found than in some of the
+Catholic countries of Europe which are but little touched by the
+intellectual movements of the age, but no good observer can fail to
+notice how much larger is the place given to duties which rest wholly on
+theological considerations, and how largely even the natural duties are
+based on such considerations and governed, limited, and sometimes even
+superseded by them. The ecclesiastics who at the Council of Constance
+induced Sigismund to violate the safe-conduct he had given, and, in
+spite of his solemn promise, to condemn Huss to a death of fire,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> and
+the ecclesiastics who at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> Diet of Worms vainly tried to induce
+Charles V. to act with a similar perfidy towards Luther, represent a
+conception of morals which is abundantly prevalent in our day. It is no
+exaggeration to say that in Catholic countries the obligation of
+truthfulness in cases in which it conflicts with the interests of the
+Church rests wholly on the basis of honour, and not at all on the basis
+of religion. In the estimates of Catholic rulers no impartial observer
+can fail to notice how their attitude towards the interest of the Church
+dominates over all considerations of public and private morals.</p>
+
+<p>In past ages this was much more the case. The Church filled in the minds
+of men a place at least equal to that of the State in the Roman
+Republic. Men who had made great sacrifices for it and rendered great
+services to it were deemed, beyond all others, the good men, and in
+those men things which we should regard as grossly criminal appeared
+mere venial frailties. Let any one who doubts this study the lives of
+the early Catholic saints, and the still more instructive pages in which
+Gregory of Tours and other ecclesiastical annalists have described the
+characters and acts of the more prominent figures in the secular history
+of their times, and he will soon feel that he has passed into a moral
+atmosphere and is dealing with moral measurements and perspectives
+wholly unlike those of our own day.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>In highly civilised ages the same spirit may be clearly traced. Bossuet
+was certainly no hypocrite or sycophant, but a man of austere virtue and
+undoubted courage. He did not hesitate to rebuke the gross profligacy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+of the life of Louis XIV., and although neither he nor any of the other
+Catholic divines of his age seriously protested against the wars of pure
+egotism and ostentation which made that sovereign the scourge of Europe
+and brought down upon his people calamities immeasurably greater than
+the faults of his private life&mdash;although, indeed, he has spoken of those
+wars in language of rapturous and unqualified eulogy<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>&mdash;he had at
+least the grace to devote a chapter of his 'Politique tir&eacute;e de
+l'&Eacute;criture Sainte' to the theme that 'God does not love war.' But in the
+eyes of Bossuet the dominant fact in the life of Louis XIV. was the
+Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the savage persecution of the
+Huguenots, and this was sufficient to place him among the best of
+sovereigns.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>To those who will candidly consider the subject there is nothing in this
+which need excite surprise. The doctrine that the Catholic Church is the
+inspired guide, representing the voice of the Divinity on earth and
+deciding with absolute authority all questions of right and wrong, very
+naturally led to the conviction that nothing which was conducive to its
+interests could be really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> criminal, and in all departments of morals it
+regulated the degrees of praise and blame. The doctrine which is still
+so widely professed but now so faintly realised, that the first
+essential to salvation is orthodox belief, placed conduct on a lower
+plane of importance than dogma, while the conviction that it is in the
+power of man to obtain absolute certainty in religious belief, that
+erroneous belief is in the eyes of the Almighty a crime bringing with it
+eternal damnation, and that the teacher of heresy is the greatest enemy
+of mankind, at once justified in the eyes of the believer acts which now
+seem the gravest moral aberrations. Many baser motives and elements no
+doubt mingled with the long and hideous history of the religious
+persecutions of Christendom, but in the eyes of countless conscientious
+men this teaching seemed amply sufficient to justify them and to stifle
+all feeling of compassion for the victims. Much the same considerations
+explain the absolute indifference with which so many good men witnessed
+those witch persecutions which consigned thousands of old, feeble and
+innocent women to torture and to death.</p>
+
+<p>Other illustrations of a less tragical kind might be given. Thus in
+cases of child-birth the physician is sometimes placed in the
+alternative of sacrificing the life of the mother or of the unborn
+child. In such cases a Protestant or freethinking physician would not
+hesitate to save the adult life as by far the most valuable. The
+Catholic doctrine is that under such circumstances the first duty of the
+physician is to save the life of the unbaptized child.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> Large numbers
+of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>commercial transactions which are now universally acknowledged to be
+perfectly innocent and useful would during a long period have been
+prohibited on account of the Catholic doctrine of usury which condemned
+as sinful even the most moderate interest on money if it was exacted as
+the price of the loan.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>Every religious and indeed every philosophical system that has played a
+great part in the history of the world has a tendency either to form or
+to assimilate with a particular moral type, and in the eyes of a large
+and growing number it is upon the excellency of this type, and upon its
+success in producing it, that its superiority mainly depends. The
+superstructure or scaffolding of belief around which it is formed
+appears to them of comparatively little moment, and it is not uncommon
+to find men ardently devoted to a particular type long after they have
+discarded the tenets with which it was once connected. Carlyle, for
+example, sometimes spoke of himself as a Calvinist, and used language
+both in public and private as if there was no important difference
+between himself and the most orthodox Puritans, yet it is very evident
+that he disbelieved nearly all the articles of their creed. What he
+meant was that Calvinism had produced in all countries in which it
+really dominated a definite type of character and conception of morals
+which was in his eyes the noblest that had yet appeared in the world.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Above all things</i>, my brethren, swear not.' If, as is generally
+assumed, this refers to the custom of using profane oaths in common
+conversation, how remote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> from modern ideas is the place assigned to
+this vice, which perhaps affects human happiness as little as any other
+that can be mentioned, in the scale of criminality, and how curiously
+characteristic is the fact that the vice to which this supremacy of
+enormity is attributed continued to be prevalent during the ages when
+theological influences were most powerful, and has in all good society
+faded away in simple obedience to a turn of fashion which proscribes it
+as ungentlemanly! For a long period Acts condemning it were read at
+stated periods in the churches,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> and one of these described it as
+likely, by provoking God's wrath, to 'increase the many calamities these
+nations now labour under.' How curiously characteristic is the
+restriction in common usage of the term 'immoral' to a single vice, so
+that a man who is untruthful, selfish, cruel, or intemperate might still
+be said to have led 'a moral life' because he was blameless in the
+relations of the sexes! In the estimates of the character of public men
+the same disproportionate judgment may be constantly found in the
+comparative stress placed upon private faults and the most gigantic
+public crimes. Errors of judgment are not errors of morals, but any
+public man who, through selfish, ambitious, or party motives, plunges or
+helps to plunge his country into an unrighteous or unnecessary war,
+subordinates public interest to his personal ambition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> employs himself
+in stimulating class, national, or provincial hatreds, lowers the moral
+standard of public life, or supports a legislation which he knows to
+tend to or facilitate dishonesty, is committing a crime before which, if
+it be measured by its consequences, the gravest acts of mere private
+immorality dwindle into insignificance. Yet how differently in the case
+of brilliant and successful politicians are such things treated in the
+judgment of contemporaries, and sometimes even in the judgments of
+history!</p>
+
+<p>It is, I think, a peculiarity of modern times that the chief moral
+influences are much more various and complex than in the past. There is
+no such absolute empire as that which was exercised over character by
+the State in some periods of Pagan antiquity and by the Church during
+the Middle Ages. Our civilisation is more than anything else an
+industrial civilisation, and industrial habits are probably the
+strongest in forming the moral type to which public opinion aspires.
+Slavery, which threw a deep discredit on industry and on the qualities
+it fosters, has passed away. The feudal system, which placed industry in
+an inferior position, has been abolished, and the strong modern tendency
+to diminish both the privileges and the exclusiveness of rank and to
+increase the importance of wealth is in the same direction. An
+industrial society has its special vices and failings, but it naturally
+brings into the boldest relief the moral qualities which industry is
+most fitted to foster and on which it most largely depends, and it also
+gives the whole tone of moral thinking a utilitarian character. It is
+not Christianity but Industrialism that has brought into the world that
+strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> sense of the moral value of thrift, steady industry, punctuality
+in observing engagements, constant forethought with a view to providing
+for the contingencies of the future, which is now so characteristic of
+the moral type of the most civilised nations.</p>
+
+<p>Many other influences, however, have contributed to intensify, qualify,
+or impair the industrial type. Protestantism has disengaged primitive
+Christian ethics from a crowd of superstitious and artificial duties
+which had overlaid them, and a similar process has been going on in
+Catholic countries under the influence of the rationalising and
+sceptical spirit. The influence of dogmatic theology on Morals has
+declined. Out of the vast and complex religious systems of the past, an
+eclectic spirit is bringing into special and ever-increasing prominence
+those Christian virtues which are most manifestly in accordance with
+natural religion and most clearly conducive to the well-being of men
+upon the earth. Philanthropy or charity, which forms the centre of the
+system, has also been immensely intensified by increased knowledge and
+realisation of the wants and sorrows of others; by the sensitiveness to
+pain, by the softening of manners and the more humane and refined tastes
+and habits which a highly elaborated intellectual civilisation naturally
+produces. The sense of duty plays a great part in modern philanthropy,
+and lower motives of ostentation or custom mingle largely with the
+genuine kindliness of feeling that inspires it; but on the whole it is
+probable that men in our day, in doing good to others, look much more
+exclusively than in the past to the benefit of the recipient and much
+less to some reward for their acts in a future world. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> long, too, as
+this benefit is attained, they will gladly diminish as much as possible
+the self-sacrifice it entails. An eminently characteristic feature of
+modern philanthropy is its close connection with amusements. There was a
+time when a great philanthropic work would be naturally supported by an
+issue of indulgences promising specific advantages in another world to
+all who took part in it. In our own generation balls, bazaars,
+theatrical or other amusements given for the benefit of the charity,
+occupy an almost corresponding place.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time increasing knowledge, and especially the kind of
+knowledge which science gives, has in other ways largely affected our
+judgments of right and wrong. The mental discipline, the habits of sound
+and accurate reasoning, the distrust of mere authority and of untested
+assertions and traditions that science tends to produce, all stimulate
+the intellectual virtues, and science has done much to rectify the chart
+of life, pointing out more clearly the true conditions of human
+well-being and disclosing much baselessness and many errors in the
+teaching of the past. It cannot, however, be said that the civic or the
+military influences have declined. If the State does not hold altogether
+the same place as in Pagan antiquity, it is at least certain that in a
+democratic age public interests are enormously prominent in the lives of
+men, and there is a growing and dangerous tendency to aggrandise the
+influence of the State over the individual, while modern militarism is
+drawing the flower of Continental Europe into its circle and making
+military education one of the most powerful influences in the formation
+of characters and ideals.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that the world will ever greatly differ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> about the
+essential elements of right and wrong. These things lie deep in human
+nature and in the fundamental conditions of human life. The changes that
+are taking place, and which seem likely to strengthen in the future, lie
+chiefly in the importance attached to different qualities.</p>
+
+<p>What seems to be useless self-sacrifice and unnecessary suffering is as
+much as possible avoided. The strain of sentiment which valued suffering
+in itself as an expiatory thing, as a mode of following the Man of
+Sorrows, as a thing to be for its own sake embraced and dwelt upon, and
+prolonged, bears a very great part in some of the most beautiful
+Christian lives, and especially in those which were formed under the
+influence of the Catholic Church. An old legend tells how Christ once
+appeared as a Man of Sorrows to a Catholic Saint, and asked him what
+boon he would most desire. 'Lord,' was the reply, 'that I might suffer
+most.' This strain runs deeply through the whole ascetic literature and
+the whole monastic system of Catholicism, and outside Catholicism it has
+been sometimes shown by a reluctance to accept the aid of an&aelig;sthetics,
+which partially or wholly removed suffering supposed to have been sent
+by Providence. The history of the use of chloroform furnishes striking
+illustrations of this. Many of my readers may remember the French monks
+who devoted themselves to cultivating one of the most pestilential spots
+in the Roman Campagna, which was associated with an ecclesiastical
+legend, and who quite unnecessarily insisted on remaining there during
+the season when such a residence meant little less than a slow suicide.
+They had, as they were accustomed to say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> their purgatory upon earth,
+and they remained till their constitutions were hopelessly shattered and
+they were sent to die in their own land. Touching examples might be
+found in modern times of men who, in the last extremes of disease or
+suffering, scrupled, through religious motives, about availing
+themselves of the simplest alleviations,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> and something of the same
+feeling is shown in the desire to prolong to the last possible moment
+hopeless and agonising disease. All this is manifestly and rapidly
+disappearing. To endure with patience and resignation inevitable
+suffering; to encounter courageously dangers and suffering for some
+worthy and useful end, ranks, indeed, as high as it ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> did in the
+ethics of the century, but suffering for its own sake is no longer
+valued, and it is deemed one of the first objects of a wise life to
+restrict and diminish it.</p>
+
+<p>No one, I think, has seen more clearly or described more vividly than
+Goethe the direction in which in modern times the current of morals is
+flowing. His philosophy is a terrestrial philosophy, and the old
+theologians would have said that it allowed the second Table of the Law
+altogether to supersede or eclipse the first. It was said of him with
+much truth that 'repugnance to the supernatural was an inherent part of
+his mind.' To turn away from useless and barren speculations; to
+persistently withdraw our thoughts from the unknowable, the inevitable,
+and the irreparable; to concentrate them on the immediate present and on
+the nearest duty; to waste no moral energy on excessive introspection or
+self-abasement or self-reproach, but to make the cultivation and the
+wise use of all our powers the supreme ideal and end of our lives; to
+oppose labour and study to affliction and regret; to keep at a distance
+gloomy thoughts and exaggerated anxieties; 'to see the individual in
+connection and co-operation with the whole,' and to look upon effort and
+action as the main elements both of duty and happiness, was the lesson
+which he continually taught. 'The mind endowed with active powers, and
+keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the
+worthiest there is on earth.' 'Character consists in a man steadily
+pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.' 'Try to do your
+duty and you will know what you are worth.' 'Piety is not an end but a
+means; a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest
+tranquillity of soul.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> 'We are not born to solve the problems of the
+world, but to find out where the problem begins and then to keep within
+the limits of what we can grasp.'</p>
+
+<p>To cultivate sincere love of truth and clear and definite conceptions,
+and divest ourselves as much as possible from prejudices, fanaticisms,
+superstitions, and exaggeration; to take wide, sound, tolerant,
+many-sided views of life, stands in his eyes in the forefront of ethics.
+'Let it be your earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as
+possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and
+reason;' 'remove by plain and honest purpose false, irrelevant and
+futile ideas.' 'The truest liberality is appreciation.' 'Love of truth
+shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in
+everything.'<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the eyes of this school of thought one of the great vices of the old
+theological type of ethics was that it was unduly negative. It thought
+much more of the avoidance of sin than of the performance of duty. The
+more we advance in knowledge the more we shall come to judge men in the
+spirit of the parable of the talents; that is by the net result of their
+lives, by their essential unselfishness, by the degree in which they
+employ and the objects to which they direct their capacities and
+opportunities. The staple of moral life becomes much less a matter of
+small scruples, of minute self-examination, of extreme stress laid upon
+flaws of character and conduct that have little or no bearing upon
+active life. A life of idleness will be regarded with much less
+tolerance than at present. Men will grow less introspective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> and more
+objective, and useful action will become more and more the guiding
+principle of morals.</p>
+
+<p>In theory this will probably be readily admitted, but every good
+observer will find that it involves a considerable change in the point
+of view. A life of habitual languor and idleness, with no faculties
+really cultivated, and with no result that makes a man missed when he
+has passed away, may be spent without any act which the world calls
+vicious, and is quite compatible with much charm of temper and demeanour
+and with a complete freedom from violent and aggressive selfishness.
+Such a life, in the eyes of many moralists, would rank much higher than
+a life of constant, honourable self-sacrificing labour for the good of
+others which was at the same time flawed by some positive vice. Yet the
+life which seems to be comparatively blameless has in truth wholly
+missed, while the other life, in spite of all its defects, has largely
+attained what should be the main object of a human life, the full
+development and useful employment of whatever powers we possess. There
+are men, indeed, in whom an over-sensitive conscience is even a
+paralysing thing, which by suggesting constant petty and ingenious
+scruples holds them back from useful action. It is a moral infirmity
+corresponding to that exaggerated intellectual fastidiousness which so
+often makes an intellectual life almost wholly barren, or to that
+excessive tendency to look on all sides of a question and to realise the
+dangers and drawbacks of any course which not unfrequently in moments of
+difficulty paralyses the actions of public men. Sometimes, under the
+strange and subtle bias of the will, this excessive conscientiousness
+will be unconsciously fostered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> in inert and sluggish natures which are
+constitutionally disinclined to effort. The main lines of duty in the
+great relations of life are sufficiently obvious, and the casuistry
+which multiplies cases of conscience and invents unreal and factitious
+duties is apt to be rather an impediment than a furtherance to a noble
+life.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that as the world goes on morals will move more and more
+in the direction I have described. There will be at the same time a
+steadily increasing tendency to judge moral qualities and courses of
+conduct mainly by the degree in which they promote or diminish human
+happiness. Enthusiasm and self-sacrifice for some object which has no
+real bearing on the welfare of man will become rarer and will be less
+respected, and the condemnation that is passed on acts that are
+recognised as wrong will be much more proportioned than at present to
+the injury they inflict. Some things, such as excessive luxury of
+expenditure and the improvidence of bringing into the world children for
+whom no provision has been made, which can now scarcely be said to enter
+into the teaching of moralists, or at least of churches, may one day be
+looked upon as graver offences than some that are in the penal code.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> St. Francis de Sales.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> St. Philip Neri.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> St. Teresa.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> 'Cum dictus Johannes Hus fidem orthodoxam pertinaciter
+impugnans, se ab omni con ductu et privilegio reddiderit alienum, nec
+aliqua sibi fides aut promissio de jure naturali divino vel humano,
+fuerit in pr&aelig;judicium Catholic&aelig; fidei observanda.' Declaration of the
+Council of Constance. See Creighton's <i>History of the Papacy</i>, ii. 32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> I have collected some illustrations of this in my <i>History
+of European Morals</i>, ii. 235-242.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> See, e.g. his funeral oration on Marie Th&eacute;r&egrave;se
+d'Autriche.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> See the enthusiastic eulogy of the persecution of the
+Huguenots in his funeral oration on Michel le Tellier. It concludes:
+'&Eacute;panchons nos c&oelig;urs sur la pi&eacute;t&eacute; de Louis; poussons jusqu'au ciel
+nos acclamations, et disons &agrave; ce nouveau Constantin, &agrave; ce nouveau
+Th&eacute;odose, &agrave; ce nouveau Marcien, &agrave; ce nouveau Charlemagne ce que les six
+cent trente P&egrave;res dirent autrefois dans le Concile de Chalc&eacute;doine: "Vous
+avez affermi la foi; vous avez extermin&eacute; les h&eacute;r&eacute;tiques; c'est le digne
+ouvrage de votre r&egrave;gne; c'en est le propre caract&egrave;re. Par vous l'h&eacute;r&eacute;sie
+n'est plus, Dieu seul a pu faire cette merveille. Roi du ciel, conservez
+le roi de la terre; c'est le v&oelig;u, des &Eacute;glises; c'est le v&oelig;u des
+&Eacute;v&ecirc;ques."'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> See Migne, <i>Encyclop&eacute;die Th&eacute;ologique</i>, 'Dict. de Cas de
+Conscience,' art. <i>Avortement</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> See on this subject my <i>History of Rationalism</i>, ii.
+250-270, and my <i>Democracy and Liberty</i>, ii., ch. viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> 21 James I. c. 20; 19 Geo. II. c. 21. The penalties,
+however, were fines, the pillory, or short periods of imprisonment. The
+obligation of reading the statute in churches was abolished in 1823, but
+the custom had before fallen into desuetude. In 1772 a vicar was (as an
+act of private vengeance) prosecuted and fined for having neglected to
+read it. (<i>Annual Register</i>, 1772, p. 115.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> The following beautiful passage from a funeral sermon by
+Newman is an example: 'One should have thought that a life so innocent,
+so active, so holy, I might say so faultless from first to last, might
+have been spared the visitation of any long and severe penance to bring
+it to an end; but in order doubtless to show us how vile and miserable
+the best of us are in ourselves ... and moreover to give us a pattern
+how to bear suffering ourselves, and to increase the merits and to
+hasten and brighten the crown of this faithful servant of his Lord, it
+pleased Almighty God to send upon him a disorder which during the last
+six years fought with him, mastered him, and at length has destroyed
+him, so far, that is, as death now has power to destroy.... It is for
+those who came near him year after year to store up the many words and
+deeds of resignation, love and humility which that long penance
+elicited. These meritorious acts are written in the Book of Life, and
+they have followed him whither he is gone. They multiplied and grew in
+strength and perfection as his trial proceeded; and they were never so
+striking as at its close. When a friend visited him in the last week, he
+found he had scrupled at allowing his temples to be moistened with some
+refreshing waters, and had with difficulty been brought to give his
+consent; he said he feared it was too great a luxury. When the same
+friend offered him some liquid to allay his distressing thirst his
+answer was the same.'&mdash;Sermon at the funeral of the Right Rev. Henry
+Weedall, pp. 19, 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> See the excellent little book of Mr. Bailey Saunders,
+called <i>The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p>The tendency to regard morals rather in their positive than their
+negative aspects, and to estimate men by the good they do in the world,
+is a healthy element in modern life. A strong sense of the obligation of
+a full, active, and useful life is the best safeguard both of individual
+and national morals at a time when the dissolution or enfeeblement of
+theological beliefs is disturbing the foundations on which most current
+moral teaching has been based. In the field of morals action holds a
+much larger place than reasoning&mdash;a larger place even in elucidating our
+difficulties and illuminating the path on which we should go. It is by
+the active pursuit of an immediate duty that the vista of future duties
+becomes most clear, and those who are most immersed in active duties are
+usually little troubled with the perplexities of life, or with minute
+and paralysing scruples. A public opinion which discourages idleness and
+places high the standard of public duty is especially valuable in an age
+when the tendency to value wealth, and to measure dignity by wealth, has
+greatly increased, and when wealth in some of its most important forms
+has become wholly dissociated from special duties. The duties of the
+landlord who is surrounded by a poor and in some measure dependent
+tenantry, the duties of the head of a great factory or shop who has a
+large number of workmen or dependents in his employment, are
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>sufficiently obvious, though even in these spheres the tie of duty has
+been greatly relaxed by the growing spirit of independence, which makes
+each class increasingly jealous of the interference of others, and by
+the growing tendency of legislation to regulate all relations of
+business and contracts by definite law instead of leaving them, as in
+the past, to voluntary action. But there are large classes of fortunes
+which are wholly, or almost wholly, dissociated from special and
+definite duties. The vast and ever-increasing multitude whose incomes
+are derived from national, or provincial, or municipal debts, or who are
+shareholders or debenture-holders in great commercial and industrial
+undertakings, have little or no practical control over, or interest in,
+those from whom their fortunes are derived. The multiplication of such
+fortunes is one of the great characteristics of our time, and it brings
+with it grave dangers. Such fortunes give unrivalled opportunities of
+luxurious idleness, and as in themselves they bring little or no social
+influence or position, those who possess them are peculiarly tempted to
+seek such a position by an ostentation of wealth and luxury which has a
+profoundly vulgarising and demoralising influence upon Society. The
+tendency of idleness to lead to immorality has long been a commonplace
+of moralists. Perhaps our own age has seen more clearly than those that
+preceded it that complete and habitual idleness <i>is</i> immorality, and
+that when the circumstances of his life do not assign to a man a
+definite sphere of work it is his first duty to find it for himself. It
+has been happily said that in the beginning of the reign of Queen
+Victoria young men in England who were really busy affected idleness,
+and at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> the close of the reign young men who are really idle pretend to
+be busy. In my own opinion, a disproportionate amount of English energy
+takes political forms, and there is a dangerous exaggeration in the
+prevailing tendency to combat all social and moral abuses by Acts of
+Parliament. But there are multitudes of other and less obtrusive spheres
+of work adapted to all grades of intellect and to many types of
+character, in which men who possess the inestimable boon of leisure can
+find abundant and useful fields for the exercise of their powers.</p>
+
+<p>The rectification of moral judgments is one of the most important
+elements of civilisation; it is upon this that the possibility of moral
+progress on a large scale chiefly depends. Few things pervert men more
+than the habit of regarding as enviable persons or qualities injurious
+to Society. The most obvious example is the passionate admiration
+bestowed on a brilliant conqueror, which is often quite irrespective of
+the justice of his wars and of the motives that actuated him. This false
+moral feeling has acquired such a strength that overwhelming military
+power almost certainly leads to a career of ambition. Perverted public
+opinion is the main cause. Glory, not interest, is the lure, or at least
+the latter would be powerless if it were not accompanied by the
+former&mdash;if the execration of mankind naturally followed unscrupulous
+aggression.</p>
+
+<p>Another and scarcely less flagrant instance of the worship of false
+ideals is to be found in the fierce competition of luxury and
+ostentation which characterises the more wealthy cities of Europe and
+America. It is no exaggeration to say that in a single festival in
+London<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> or New York sums are often expended in the idlest and most
+ephemeral ostentation which might have revived industry, or extinguished
+pauperism, or alleviated suffering over a vast area. The question of
+expenditure on luxuries is no doubt a question of degree which cannot be
+reduced to strict rule, and there are many who will try to justify the
+most ostentatious expenditure on the ground of the employment it gives
+and of other incidental advantages it is supposed to produce. But
+nothing in political economy is more certain than that the vast and
+ever-increasing expenditure on the luxury of ostentation in modern
+societies, by withdrawing great masses of capital from productive
+labour, is a grave economical evil, and there is probably no other form
+of expenditure which, in proportion to its amount, gives so little real
+pleasure and confers so little real good. Its evil in setting up
+material and base standards of excellence, in stimulating the worst
+passions that grow out of an immoderate love of wealth, in ruining many
+who are tempted into a competition which they are unable to support, can
+hardly be overrated. It is felt in every rank in raising the standard of
+conventional expenses, excluding from much social intercourse many who
+are admirably fitted to adorn it, and introducing into all society a
+lower and more material tone. Nor are these its only consequences.
+Wealth which is expended in multiplying and elaborating real comforts,
+or even in pleasures which produce enjoyment at all proportionate to
+their cost, will never excite serious indignation. It is the colossal
+waste of the means of human happiness in the most selfish and most
+vulgar forms of social advertisement and competition that gives a force
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> almost a justification to anarchical passions which menace the
+whole future of our civilisation. It is such things that stimulate class
+hatreds and deepen class divisions, and if the law of opinion does not
+interfere to check them they will one day bring down upon the society
+that encourages them a signal and well-merited retribution.</p>
+
+<p>A more recognised, though probably not really more pernicious example of
+false ideals, is to be found in the glorification of the <i>demi-monde</i>,
+which is so conspicuous in some societies and literatures. In a healthy
+state of opinion, the public, ostentatious appearance of such persons,
+without any concealment of their character, in the great concourse of
+fashion and among the notabilities of the State, would appear an
+intolerable scandal, and it becomes much worse when they give the tone
+to fashion and become the centres and the models of large and by no
+means undistinguished sections of Society. The evils springing from this
+public glorification of the class are immeasurably greater than the
+evils arising from its existence. The standard of popular morals is
+debased. Temptation in its most seductive form is forced upon
+inflammable natures, and the most pernicious of all lessons is taught to
+poor, honest, hard-working women. It is indeed wonderful that in
+societies where this evil prevails so much virtue should still exist
+among graceful, attractive women of the shopkeeping and servant class
+when they continually see before them members of their own class, by
+preferring vice to virtue, rising at once to wealth, luxury and
+idleness, and even held up as objects of admiration or imitation.</p>
+
+<p>In judging wisely the characters of men, one of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> first things to be
+done is to understand their ideals. Try to find out what kind of men or
+of life; what qualities, what positions seem to them the most desirable.
+Men do not always fully recognise their own ideals, for education and
+the conventionalities of Society oblige them to assert a preference for
+that which may really have no root in their minds. But by a careful
+examination it is usually possible to ascertain what persons or
+qualities or circumstances or gifts exercise a genuine, spontaneous,
+magnetic power over them&mdash;whether they really value supremely rank or
+position, or money, or beauty, or intellect, or superiority of
+character. If you know the ideal of a man you have obtained a true key
+to his nature. The broad lines of his character, the permanent
+tendencies of his imagination, his essential nobility or meanness, are
+thus disclosed more effectually than by any other means. A man with high
+ideals, who admires wisely and nobly, is never wholly base though he may
+fall into great vices. A man who worships the baser elements is in truth
+an idolater though he may have never bowed before an image of stone.</p>
+
+<p>The human mind has much more power of distinguishing between right and
+wrong, and between true and false, than of estimating with accuracy the
+comparative gravity of opposite evils. It is nearly always right in
+judging between right and wrong. It is generally wrong in estimating
+degrees of guilt, and the root of its error lies in the extreme
+difficulty of putting ourselves into the place of those whose characters
+or circumstances are radically different from our own. This want of
+imagination acts widely on our judgment of what is good as well as of
+what is bad. Few men have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> enough imagination to realise types of
+excellence altogether differing from their own. It is this, much more
+than vanity, that leads them to esteem the types of excellence to which
+they themselves approximate as the best, and tastes and habits that are
+altogether incongruous with their own as futile and contemptible. It is,
+perhaps, most difficult of all to realise the difference of character
+and especially of moral sensibility produced by a profound difference of
+circumstances. This difficulty largely falsifies our judgments of the
+past, and it is the reason why a powerful imagination enabling us to
+realise very various characters and very remote circumstances is one of
+the first necessities of a great historian. Historians rarely make
+sufficient allowance for the degree in which the judgments and
+dispositions even of the best men are coloured by the moral tone of the
+time, society and profession in which they lived. Yet it is probable
+that on the whole we estimate more justly the characters of the past
+than of the present. No one would judge the actions of Charlemagne or of
+his contemporaries by the strict rules of nineteenth-century ethics. We
+feel that though they committed undoubted crimes, these crimes are at
+least indefinitely less heinous than they would have been under the
+wholly different circumstances and moral atmosphere of our own day. Yet
+we seldom apply this method of reasoning to the different strata of the
+same society. Men who have been themselves brought up amid all the
+comforts and all the moralising and restraining influences of a refined
+society, will often judge the crimes of the wretched pariahs of
+civilisation as if their acts were in no degree palliated by their
+position. They say to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> themselves 'How guilty should I have been if I
+had done this thing,' and their verdict is quite just according to this
+statement of the case. They realise the nature of the act. They utterly
+fail to realise the character and circumstances of the actor.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the difference between the
+position of such a critic and that of the children of drunken, ignorant
+and profligate parents, born to abject poverty in the slums of our great
+cities. From their earliest childhood drunkenness, blasphemy,
+dishonesty, prostitution, indecency of every form are their most
+familiar experiences. All the social influences, such as they are, are
+influences of vice. As they grow up Life seems to them to present little
+more than the alternative of hard, ill-paid, and at the same time
+precarious labour, probably ending in the poor-house, or crime with its
+larger and swifter gains, and its intervals of coarse pleasure probably,
+though not certainly, followed by the prison or an early death. They see
+indeed, like figures in a dream, or like beings of another world, the
+wealthy and the luxurious spending their wealth and their time in many
+kinds of enjoyment, but to the very poor pleasure scarcely comes except
+in the form of the gin palace or perhaps the low music hall. And in many
+cases they have come into this reeking atmosphere of temptation and vice
+with natures debased and enfeebled by a long succession of vicious
+hereditary influences, with weak wills, with no faculties of mind or
+character that can respond to any healthy ambition; with powerful inborn
+predispositions to evil. The very mould of their features, the very
+shape of their skulls, marks them out as destined members of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> the
+criminal class. Even here, no doubt, there is a difference between right
+and wrong; there is scope for the action of free will; there are just
+causes of praise and blame, and Society rightly protects itself by
+severe penalties against the crimes that are most natural; but what
+human judge can duly measure the scale of moral guilt? or what
+comparison can there be between the crimes that are engendered by such
+circumstances and those which spring up in the homes of refined and
+well-regulated comfort?</p>
+
+<p>Nor indeed even in this latter case is a really accurate judgment
+possible. Men are born into the world with both wills and passions of
+varying strength, though in mature life the strength or weakness of each
+is largely due to their own conduct. With different characters the same
+temptation, operating under the same external circumstances, has
+enormously different strength, and very few men can fully realise the
+strength of a passion which they have never themselves experienced. To
+repeat an illustration I have already used, how difficult is it for a
+constitutionally sober man to form in his own mind an adequate
+conception of the force of the temptation of drink to a dipsomaniac, or
+for a passionless man to conceive rightly the temptations of a
+profoundly sensual nature! I have spoken in a former chapter of the
+force with which bodily conditions act upon happiness. Their influence
+on morals is not less terrible. There are diseases well known to
+physicians which make the most placid temper habitually irritable; give
+a morbid turn to the healthiest disposition; fill the purest mind with
+unholy thoughts. There are others which destroy the force of the
+strongest will and take from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> character all balance and
+self-control.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> It often happens that we have long been blaming a man
+for manifest faults of character till at last suicide, or the disclosure
+of some grave bodily or mental disease which has long been working
+unperceived, explains his faults and turns our blame into pity. In
+madness the whole moral character is sometimes reversed, and tendencies
+which have been in sane life dormant or repressed become suddenly
+supreme. In such cases we all acknowledge that there is no moral
+responsibility, but madness, with its illusions and irresistible
+impulses, and idiocy with its complete suspension of the will and of the
+judgment, are neither of them, as lawyers would pretend, clearly defined
+states, marked out by sharp and well-cut boundaries, wholly distinct
+from sanity. There are incipient stages; there are gradual
+approximations; there are twilight states between sanity and insanity
+which are clearly recognised not only by experts but by all sagacious
+men of the world. There are many who are not sufficiently mad to be shut
+up, or to be deprived of the management of their properties, or to be
+exempted from punishment if they have committed a crime, but who, in the
+common expressive phrase, 'are not all there'&mdash;whose eccentricities,
+illusions and caprices are on the verge of madness, whose judgments are
+hopelessly disordered; whose wills, though not completely atrophied, are
+manifestly diseased. In questions of property, in questions of crime, in
+questions of family arrangements, such persons cause the gravest
+perplexity, nor will any wise man judge them by the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> moral standard
+as well-balanced and well-developed natures.</p>
+
+<p>The inference to be drawn from such facts is certainly not that there is
+no such thing as free will and personal responsibility, nor yet that we
+have no power of judging the acts of others and distinguishing among our
+fellowmen between the good and the bad. The true lesson is the extreme
+fallibility of our moral judgments whenever we attempt to measure
+degrees of guilt. Sometimes men are even unjust to their own past from
+their incapacity in age of realising the force of the temptations they
+had experienced in youth. On the other hand, increased knowledge of the
+world tends to make us more sensible of the vast differences between the
+moral circumstances of men, and therefore less confident and more
+indulgent in our judgments of others. There are men whose cards in life
+are so bad, whose temptations to vice, either from circumstances or
+inborn character, seem so overwhelming, that, though we may punish, and
+in a certain sense blame, we can scarcely look on them as more
+responsible than some noxious wild beast. Among the terrible facts of
+life none is indeed more terrible than this. Every believer in the wise
+government of the world must have sometimes realised with a crushing or
+at least a staggering force the appalling injustices of life as shown in
+the enormous differences in the distribution of unmerited happiness and
+misery. But the disparity of moral circumstances is not less. It has
+shaken the faith of many. It has even led some to dream of a possible
+Heaven for the vicious where those who are born into the world with a
+physical constitution rendering them fierce or cruel, or sensual, or
+cowardly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> may be freed from the nature which was the cause of their
+vice and their suffering upon earth; where due allowance may be made for
+the differences of circumstances which have plunged one man deeper and
+ever deeper into crime, and enabled another, who was not really better
+or worse, to pass through life with no serious blemish, and to rise
+higher and higher in the moral scale.</p>
+
+<p>Imperfect, however, as is our power of judging others, it is a power we
+are all obliged to exercise. It is impossible to exclude the
+considerations of moral guilt and of palliating or aggravating
+circumstances from the penal code, and from the administration of
+justice, though it cannot be too clearly maintained that the criminal
+code is not coextensive with the moral code, and that many things which
+are profoundly immoral lie beyond its scope. On the whole it should be
+as much as possible confined to acts by which men directly injure
+others. In the case of adult men, private vices, vices by which no one
+is directly affected, except by his own free will, and in which the
+elements of force or fraud are not present, should not be brought within
+its range. This ideal, it is true, cannot be fully attained. The
+legislator must take into account the strong pressure of public opinion.
+It is sometimes true that a penal law may arrest, restrict, or prevent
+the revival of some private vice without producing any countervailing
+evil. But the presumption is against all laws which punish the voluntary
+acts of adult men when those acts injure no one except themselves. The
+social censure, or the judgment of opinion, rightly extends much
+further, though it is often based on very imperfect knowledge or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>realisation. It is probable that, on the whole, opinion judges too
+severely the crimes of passion and of drink, as well as those which
+spring from the pressure of great poverty and are accompanied by great
+ignorance. The causes of domestic anarchy are usually of such an
+intimate nature and involve so many unknown or imperfectly realised
+elements of aggravation or palliation that in most cases the less men
+attempt to judge them the better. On the other hand, public opinion is
+usually far too lenient in judging crimes of ambition, cupidity, envy,
+malevolence, and callous selfishness; the crimes of ill-gotten and
+ill-used wealth, especially in the many cases in which those crimes are
+unpunished by law.</p>
+
+<p>It is a mere commonplace of morals that in the path of evil it is the
+first step that costs the most. The shame, the repugnance, and the
+remorse which attend the first crime speedily fade, and on every
+repetition the habit of evil grows stronger. A process of the same kind
+passes over our judgments. Few things are more curious than to observe
+how the eye accommodates itself to a new fashion of dress, however
+unbecoming; how speedily men, or at least women, will adopt a new and
+artificial standard and instinctively and unconsciously admire or blame
+according to this standard and not according to any genuine sense of
+beauty or the reverse. Few persons, however pure may be their natural
+taste, can live long amid vulgar and vulgarising surroundings without
+losing something of the delicacy of their taste and learning to
+accept&mdash;if not with pleasure, at least with acquiescence&mdash;things from
+which under other circumstances they would have recoiled. In the same
+way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> both individuals and societies accommodate themselves but too
+readily to lower moral levels, and a constant vigilance is needed to
+detect the forms or directions in which individual and national
+character insensibly deteriorate.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> See Ribot, <i>Les Maladies de la Volont&eacute;</i>, pp. 92, 116-119.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p>It is impossible for a physician to prescribe a rational regimen for a
+patient unless he has formed some clear conception of the nature of his
+constitution and of the morbid influences to which it is inclined; and
+in judging the wisdom of various proposals for the management of
+character we are at once met by the initial controversy about the
+goodness or the depravity of human nature. It is a subject on which
+extreme exaggerations have prevailed. The school of Rousseau, which
+dominated on the Continent in the last half of the eighteenth century,
+represented mankind as a being who comes into existence essentially
+good, and it attributed all the moral evils of the world, not to any
+innate tendencies to vice, but to superstition, vicious institutions,
+misleading education, a badly organised society. It is an obvious
+criticism that if human nature had been as good as such writers
+imagined, these corrupt and corrupting influences could never have grown
+up, or at least could never have obtained a controlling influence, and
+this philosophy became greatly discredited when the French Revolution,
+which it did so much to produce, ended in the unspeakable horrors of the
+Reign of Terror and in the gigantic carnage of the Napoleonic wars. On
+the other hand, there are large schools of theologians who represent man
+as utterly and fundamentally depraved, 'born in corruption, inclined to
+evil, incapable by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>himself of doing good;' totally wrecked and ruined
+as a moral being by the catastrophe in Eden. There are also moral
+philosophers&mdash;usually very unconnected with theology&mdash;who deny or
+explain away all unselfish elements in human nature, represent man as
+simply governed by self-interest, and maintain that the whole art of
+education and government consists of a judicious arrangement of selfish
+motives, making the interests of the individual coincident with those of
+his neighbours. It is not too much to say that Society never could have
+subsisted if this view of human nature had been a just one. The world
+would have been like a cage-full of wild beasts, and mankind would have
+soon perished in constant internecine war.</p>
+
+<p>It is indeed one of the plainest facts of human nature that such a view
+of mankind is an untrue one. Jealousy, envy, animosities and selfishness
+no doubt play a great part in life and disguise themselves under many
+specious forms, and the cynical moralist was not wholly wrong when he
+declared that 'Virtue would not go so far if Vanity did not keep her
+company,' and that not only our crimes but even many of what are deemed
+our best acts may be traced to selfish motives. But he must have had a
+strangely unfortunate experience of the world who does not recognise the
+enormous exaggeration of the pictures of human nature that are conveyed
+in some of the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and Schopenhauer. They tell us
+that friendship is a mere exchange of interests in which each man only
+seeks to gain something from the other; that most women are only pure
+because they are untempted and regret that the temptation does not come;
+that if we acknowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> some faults it is in order to persuade ourselves
+that we have no greater ones, or in order, by our confession, to regain
+the good opinion of our neighbours; that if we praise another it is
+merely that we may ourselves in turn be praised; that the tears we shed
+over a deathbed, if they are not hypocritical tears intended only to
+impress our neighbours, are only due to our conviction that we have
+ourselves lost a source of pleasure or of gain; that envy so
+predominates in the world that it is only men of inferior intellect or
+women of inferior beauty who are sincerely liked by those about them;
+that all virtue is an egotistic calculation, conscious or unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Such views are at least as far removed from truth as the roseate
+pictures of Rousseau and St. Pierre. No one can look with an unjaundiced
+eye upon the world without perceiving the enormous amount of
+disinterested, self-sacrificing benevolence that pervades it; the
+countless lives that are spent not only harmlessly and inoffensively but
+also in the constant discharge of duties; in constant and often painful
+labour for the good of others. The better section of the Utilitarian
+school has fully recognised the truth that human nature is so
+constituted that a great proportion of its enjoyment depends on
+sympathy; or, in other words, on the power we possess of entering into
+and sharing the happiness of others. The spectacle of suffering
+naturally elicits compassion. Kindness naturally produces gratitude. The
+sympathies of men naturally move on the side of the good rather than of
+the bad. This is true not only of the things that immediately concern
+us, but also in the perfectly disinterested judgments we form of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+events of history or of the characters in fiction and poetry. Great
+exhibitions of heroism and self-sacrifice touch a genuine chord of
+enthusiasm. The affections of the domestic circle are the rule and not
+the exception; patriotism can elicit great outbursts of purely unselfish
+generosity and induce multitudes to risk or sacrifice their lives for
+causes which are quite other than their own selfish interests. Human
+nature indeed has its moral as well as its physical needs, and naturally
+and instinctively seeks some object of interest and enthusiasm outside
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>If we look again into the vice and sin that undoubtedly disfigure the
+world we shall find much reason to believe that what is exceptional in
+human nature is not the evil tendency but the restraining conscience,
+and that it is chiefly the weakness of the distinctively human quality
+that is the origin of the evil. It is impossible indeed, with the
+knowledge we now possess, to deny to animals some measure both of reason
+and of the moral sense. In addition to the higher instincts of parental
+affection and devotion which are so clearly developed we find among some
+animals undoubted signs of remorse, gratitude, affection,
+self-sacrifice. Even the point of honour which attaches shame to some
+things and pride to others may be clearly distinguished. No one who has
+watched the more intelligent dog can question this, and many will
+maintain that in some animals, though both good and bad qualities are
+less widely developed than in man, the proportion of the good to the
+evil is more favourable in the animal than in the man. At the same time
+in the animal world desire is usually followed without any other
+restraint than fear, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> in man it is largely though no doubt very
+imperfectly limited by moral self-control. Most crimes spring not from
+anything wrong in the original and primal desire but from the
+imperfection of this higher, distinct or superadded element in our
+nature. The crimes of dishonesty and envy, when duly analysed, have at
+their basis simply a desire for the desirable&mdash;a natural and inevitable
+feeling. What is absent is the restraint which makes men refrain from
+taking or trying to take desirable things that belong to another.
+Sensual faults spring from a perfectly natural impulse, but the
+restraint which confines the action of that impulse to defined
+circumstances is wanting. Much, too, of the insensibility and hardness
+of the world is due to a simple want of imagination which prevents us
+from adequately realising the sufferings of others. The predatory,
+envious and ferocious feelings that disturb mankind operate unrestrained
+through the animal world, though man's superior intelligence gives his
+desires a special character and a greatly increased scope, and
+introduces them into spheres inconceivable to the animal. Immoderate and
+uncontrolled desires are the root of most human crimes, but at the same
+time the self-restraint that limits desire, or self-seeking, by the
+rights of others, seems to be mainly, though not wholly, the prerogative
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>Considerations of this kind are sufficient to remedy the extreme
+exaggeration of human corruption that may often be heard, but they are
+not inconsistent with the truth that human nature is so far depraved
+that it can never be safely left to develop unimpeded without strong
+legal and social restraint. It is not necessary to seek examples of its
+depravity within the precincts of a prison<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> or in the many instances
+that may be found outside the criminal population of morbid moral taints
+which are often as clearly marked as physical disease. On a large scale
+and in the actions of great bodies of men the melancholy truth is
+abundantly displayed. On the whole Christianity has been far more
+successful in influencing individuals than societies. The mere spectacle
+of a battle-field with the appalling mass of hideous suffering
+deliberately and ingeniously inflicted by man upon man should be
+sufficient to scatter all idyllic pictures of human nature. It was once
+the custom of a large school of writers to attribute unjust wars solely
+to the rulers of the world, who for their own selfish ambitions
+remorselessly sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of their
+subjects. Their guilt has been very great, but they would never have
+pursued the course of ambitious conquest if the applause of nations had
+not followed and encouraged them, and there are no signs that democracy,
+which has enthroned the masses, has any real tendency to diminish war.</p>
+
+<p>In modern times the danger of war lies less in the intrigues of
+statesmen than in deeply seated international jealousies and
+antipathies; in sudden, volcanic outbursts of popular passion. After
+eighteen hundred years' profession of the creed of peace, Christendom is
+an armed camp. Never, or hardly ever, in times of peace had the mere
+preparations of war absorbed so large a proportion of its population and
+resources, and very seldom has so large an amount of its ability been
+mainly employed in inventing and in perfecting instruments of
+destruction. Those who will look on the world without illusion will be
+compelled to admit that the chief guarantees for its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> peace are to be
+found much less in moral than in purely selfish motives. The financial
+embarrassments of the great nations; their profound distrust of one
+another; the vast cost of modern war; the gigantic commercial disasters
+it inevitably entails; the extreme uncertainty of its issue; the utter
+ruin that may follow defeat&mdash;these are the real influences that restrain
+the tiger passions and the avaricious cravings of mankind. It is also
+one of the advantages that accompany the many evils of universal
+service, that great citizen armies who in time of war are drawn from
+their homes, their families, and their peaceful occupations have not the
+same thirst for battle that grows up among purely professional soldiers,
+voluntarily enlisted and making a military life their whole career. Yet,
+in spite of all this, what trust could be placed in the forbearance of
+Christian nations if the path of aggression was at once easy, lucrative
+and safe? The judgments of nations in dealing with the aggressions of
+their neighbours are, it is true, very different from those which they
+form of aggressions by their own statesmen or for their own benefit. But
+no great nation is blameless, and there is probably no nation that could
+not speedily catch the infection of the warlike spirit if a conqueror
+and a few splendid victories obscured, as they nearly always do, the
+moral issues of the contest.</p>
+
+<p>War, it is true, is not always or wholly evil. Sometimes it is
+justifiable and necessary. Sometimes it is professedly and in part
+really due to some strong wave of philanthropic feeling produced by
+great acts of wrong, though of all forms of philanthropy it is that
+which most naturally defeats itself. Even when unjustifiable, it calls
+into action splendid qualities of courage,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> self-sacrifice, and
+endurance which cast a dazzling and deceptive glamour over its horrors
+and its criminality. It appeals too, beyond all other things, to that
+craving for excitement, adventure, and danger which is an essential and
+imperious element in human nature, and which, while it is in itself
+neither a virtue nor a vice, blends powerfully with some of the best as
+well as with some of the worst actions of mankind. It is indeed a
+strange thing to observe how many men in every age have been ready to
+risk or sacrifice their lives for causes which they have never clearly
+understood and which they would find it difficult in plain words to
+describe.</p>
+
+<p>But the amount of pure and almost spontaneous malevolence in the world
+is probably far greater than we at first imagine. In public life the
+workings of this side of human nature are at once disclosed and
+magnified, like the figures thrown by a magic lantern on a screen, to a
+scale which it is impossible to overlook. No one, for example, can study
+the anonymous press without perceiving how large a part of it is
+employed systematically, persistently and deliberately in fostering
+class, or race, or international hatreds, and often in circulating
+falsehoods to attain this end. Many newspapers notoriously depend for
+their existence on such appeals, and more than any other instruments
+they inflame and perpetuate those permanent animosities which most
+endanger the peace of mankind. The fact that such newspapers are
+becoming in many countries the main and almost exclusive reading of the
+poor forms the most serious deduction from the value of popular
+education. How many books have attained popularity, how many seats in
+Parliament have been won, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> many posts of influence and profit have
+been attained, how many party victories have been achieved, by appealing
+to such passions! Often they disguise themselves under the lofty names
+of patriotism and nationality, and men whose whole lives have been spent
+in sowing class hatreds and dividing kindred nations may be found
+masquerading under the name of patriots, and have played no small part
+on the stage of politics. The deep-seated sedition, the fierce class and
+national hatreds that run through European life would have a very
+different intensity from what they now unfortunately have if they had
+not been artificially stimulated and fostered through purely selfish
+motives by demagogues, political adventurers and public writers.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the very worst acts of which man can be guilty are acts which
+are commonly untouched by law and only faintly censured by opinion.
+Political crimes which a false and sickly sentiment so readily condones
+are conspicuous among them. Men who have been gambling for wealth and
+power with the lives and fortunes of multitudes; men who for their own
+personal ambition are prepared to sacrifice the most vital interests of
+their country; men who in time of great national danger and excitement
+deliberately launch falsehood after falsehood in the public press in the
+well-founded conviction that they will do their evil work before they
+can be contradicted, may be met shameless, and almost uncensured, in
+Parliaments and drawing-rooms. The amount of false statement in the
+world which cannot be attributed to mere carelessness, inaccuracy, or
+exaggeration, but which is plainly both deliberate and malevolent, can
+hardly be overrated. Sometimes it is due to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> mere desire to create a
+lucrative sensation, or to gratify a personal dislike, or even to an
+unprovoked malevolence which takes pleasure in inflicting pain.</p>
+
+<p>Very often it is intended for purposes of stockjobbing. The financial
+world is percolated with it. It is the common method of raising or
+depreciating securities, attracting investors, preying upon the ignorant
+and credulous, and enabling dishonest men to rise rapidly to fortune.
+When the prospect of speedy wealth is in sight, there are always numbers
+who are perfectly prepared to pursue courses involving the utter ruin of
+multitudes, endangering the most serious international interests,
+perhaps bringing down upon the world all the calamities of war. It is no
+doubt true that such men are only a minority, though it is less certain
+that they would be a minority if the opportunity of obtaining sudden
+riches by immoral means was open to all, and it is no small minority who
+are accustomed to condone these crimes when they have succeeded. It is
+much to be questioned whether the greatest criminals are to be found
+within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on a small scale nearly always
+finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a gigantic scale continually
+escapes. The pickpocket and the burglar seldom fail to meet with their
+merited punishment, but in the management of companies, in the great
+fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic fortunes are
+acquired by the ruin of multitudes and by methods which, though they
+evade legal penalties, are essentially fraudulent. In the majority of
+cases these crimes are perpetrated by educated men who are in possession
+of all the necessaries, of most of the comforts, and of many of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>luxuries of life, and some of the worst of them are powerfully favoured
+by the conditions of modern civilisation. There is no greater scandal or
+moral evil in our time than the readiness with which public opinion
+excuses them, and the influence and social position it accords to mere
+wealth, even when it has been acquired by notorious dishonesty or when
+it is expended with absolute selfishness or in ways that are positively
+demoralising. In many respects the moral progress of mankind seems to me
+incontestable, but it is extremely doubtful whether in this respect
+social morality, especially in England and America, has not seriously
+retrograded.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, while it is a gross libel upon human nature to deny the vast
+amount of genuine kindness, self-sacrifice and even heroism that exists
+in the world, it is equally idle to deny the deplorable weakness of
+self-restraint, the great force and the widespread influence of purely
+evil passions in the affairs of men. The distrust of human character
+which the experience of life tends to produce is one great cause of the
+Conservatism which so commonly strengthens with age. It is more and more
+felt that all the restraints of law, custom, and religion are essential
+to hold together in peaceful co-operation the elements of society, and
+men learn to look with increasing tolerance on both institutions and
+opinions which cannot stand the test of pure reason and may be largely
+mixed with delusions if only they deepen the better habits and give an
+additional strength to moral restraints. They learn also to appreciate
+the danger of pitching their ideals too high, and endeavouring to
+enforce lines of conduct greatly above the average level of human
+goodness. Such attempts, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> they take the form of coercive action,
+seldom fail to produce a recoil which is very detrimental to morals. In
+this, as in all other spheres, the importance of compromise in practical
+life is one of the great lessons which experience teaches.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p>The phrase Moral Compromise has an evil sound, and it opens out
+questions of practical ethics which are very difficult and very
+dangerous, but they are questions with which, consciously or
+unconsciously, every one is obliged to deal. The contrasts between the
+rigidity of theological formul&aelig; and actual life are on this subject very
+great, though in practice, and by the many ingenious subtleties that
+constitute the science of casuistry, many theologians have attempted to
+evade them. A striking passage from the pen of Cardinal Newman will
+bring these contrasts into the clearest light. 'The Church holds,' he
+writes, 'that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for
+the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die
+of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes,
+than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one
+single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no
+one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.'<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is certainly no exaggeration to say that such a doctrine would lead
+to consequences absolutely incompatible with any life outside a
+hermitage or a monastery. It would strike at the root of all
+civilisation, and although many may be prepared to give it their formal
+assent, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> human being actually believes it with the kind of belief
+that becomes a guiding influence in life. I have dwelt on this subject
+in another book, and may here repeat a few lines which I then wrote. If
+'an undoubted sin, even the most trivial, is a thing in its essence and
+its consequences so unspeakably dreadful that rather than it should be
+committed it would be better that any amount of calamity which did not
+bring with it sin should be endured, even that the whole human race
+should perish in agonies, it is manifest that the supreme object of
+humanity should be sinlessness, and it is equally manifest that the
+means to this end is the absolute suppression of the desires. To expand
+the circle of wants is necessarily to multiply temptations and therefore
+to increase the number of sins.' No material and intellectual
+advantages, no increase of human happiness, no mitigation of the
+suffering or dreariness of human life can, according to this theory, be
+other than an evil if it adds even in the smallest degree or in the most
+incidental manner to the sins that are committed. 'A sovereign, when
+calculating the consequences of a war, should reflect that a single sin
+occasioned by that war, a single blasphemy of a wounded soldier, the
+robbery of a single hen-coop, the violation of the purity of a single
+woman is a greater calamity than the ruin of the entire commerce of his
+nation, the loss of her most precious provinces, the destruction of all
+her power. He must believe that the evil of the increase of unchastity
+which invariably results from the formation of an army is an
+immeasurably greater calamity than any national or political disasters
+that army can possibly avert. He must believe that the most fearful
+plagues<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> and famines that desolate his land should be regarded as a
+matter of rejoicing if they have but the feeblest and most transient
+influence in repressing vice. He must believe that if the agglomeration
+of his people in great cities adds but one to the number of their sins,
+no possible intellectual or material advantages can prevent the
+construction of cities being a fearful calamity. According to this
+principle every elaboration of life, every amusement that brings
+multitudes together, almost every art, every accession of wealth, that
+awakens or stimulates desires is an evil, for all these become the
+sources of some sins, and their advantages are for the most part purely
+terrestrial.'</p>
+
+<p>Considerations of this kind, if duly realised, bring out clearly the
+insincerity and the unreality of much of our professed belief. Hardly
+any sane man would desire to suppress Bank Holidays simply because they
+are the occasion of a considerable number of cases of drunkenness which
+would not otherwise have taken place. No humane legislator would
+hesitate to suppress them if they produced an equal number of deaths or
+other great physical calamities. This manner of measuring the relative
+importance of things is not incompatible with a general acknowledgment
+of the fact that there are many amusements which produce an amount of
+moral evil that overbalances their advantages as sources of pleasure, or
+of the great truth that the moral is the higher and ought to be the
+ruling part of our being. But the realities of life cannot be measured
+by rigid theological formul&aelig;. Life is a scene in which different kinds
+of interest not only blend but also modify and in some degree
+counterbalance one another, and it can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> only be carried on by constant
+compromises in which the lines of definition are seldom very clearly
+marked, and in which even the highest interest must not altogether
+absorb or override the others. We have to deal with good principles that
+cannot be pushed to their full logical results; with varying standards
+which cannot be brought under inflexible law.</p>
+
+<p>Take, for example, the many untruths which the conventional courtesies
+of Society prescribe. Some of these are so purely matter of phraseology
+that they deceive no one. Others chiefly serve the purpose of courteous
+concealment, as when they enable us to refuse a request or to decline an
+invitation or a visit without disclosing whether disinclination or
+inability is the cause. Then there are falsehoods for useful purposes.
+Few men would shrink from a falsehood which was the only means of saving
+a patient from a shock which would probably produce his death. No one, I
+suppose, would hesitate to deceive a criminal if by no other means he
+could prevent him from accomplishing a crime. There are also cases of
+the suppression of what we believe to be true, and of tacit or open
+acquiescence in what we believe to be false, when a full and truthful
+disclosure of our own beliefs might destroy the happiness of others, or
+subvert beliefs which are plainly necessary for their moral well-being.
+Cases of this kind will continually occur in life, and a good man who
+deals with each case as it arises will probably find no great difficulty
+in steering his course. But the vague and fluctuating lines of moral
+compromise cannot without grave moral danger be reduced to fixed rules
+to be carried out to their full logical consequences. The immortal pages
+of Pascal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> are sufficient to show to what extremes of immorality the
+doctrine that the end justifies the means has been pushed by the
+casuists of the Church of which Cardinal Newman was so great an
+ornament.</p>
+
+<p>A large and difficult field of moral compromise is opened out in the
+case of war, which necessarily involves a complete suspension of great
+portions of the moral law. This is not merely the case in unjust wars;
+it applies also, though in a less degree, to those which are most
+necessary and most righteous. War is not, and never can be, a mere
+passionless discharge of a painful duty. It is in its essence, and it is
+a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among
+great masses of men the destructive and combative passions&mdash;passions as
+fierce and as malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to
+its death or the tiger springs upon its prey. Destruction is one of its
+chief ends. Deception is one of its chief means, and one of the great
+arts of skilful generalship is to deceive in order to destroy. Whatever
+other elements may mingle with and dignify war, this at least is never
+absent; and however reluctantly men may enter into war, however
+conscientiously they may endeavour to avoid it, they must know that when
+the scene of carnage has once opened these things must be not only
+accepted and condoned, but stimulated, encouraged and applauded. It
+would be difficult to conceive a disposition more remote from the morals
+of ordinary life, not to speak of Christian ideals, than that with which
+the soldiers most animated with the fire and passion that lead to
+victory rush forward to bayonet the foe.</p>
+
+<p>War indeed, which is absolutely indispensable in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> present stage of
+civilisation, has its own morals which are very different from those of
+peaceful life. Yet there are few fields in which, through the stress of
+moral motives, greater changes have been effected. In the early stages
+of human history it was simply a question of power. There was no
+distinction between piracy and regular war, and incursions into a
+neighbouring State without provocation and with the sole purpose of
+plunder brought with them no moral blame. To carry the inhabitants of a
+conquered country into slavery; to slaughter the whole population of a
+besieged town; to destroy over vast tracts every town, village and
+house, and to put to death every prisoner, were among the ordinary
+incidents of war. These things were done without reproach in the best
+periods of Greek and Roman civilisation. In many cases neither age nor
+sex was spared!<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> In Rome the conquered general was strangled or
+starved to death in the Mamertine prison. Tens of thousands of captives
+were condemned to perish in gladiatorial shows. Julius C&aelig;sar, whose
+clemency has been so greatly extolled, 'executed the whole senate of the
+Veneti; permitted a massacre of the Usipetes and Tencteri; sold as
+slaves 40,000 natives of Genabum; and cut off the right hands of all the
+brave men whose only crime was that they held to the last against him
+their town of Uxellodunum.'<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> No slaughter in history is more terrible
+than that which took place at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>Jerusalem under the general who was
+called 'the delight of the human race,' and when the last spasm of
+resistance had ceased, Titus sent Jewish captives, both male and female,
+by thousands to the provincial amphitheatres to be devoured by wild
+beasts or slaughtered as gladiators.</p>
+
+<p>Yet from a very early period lines were drawn forming a clear though
+somewhat arbitrary code of military morals. In Greece a broad
+distinction was made between wars with Greek States and with Barbarians,
+the latter being regarded as almost outside the pale of moral
+consideration. It is a distinction which in reality was not very widely
+different from that which Christian nations have in practice continually
+made between wars within the borders of Christendom, and wars with
+savage or pagan nations. Greek, and perhaps still more Roman, moralists
+have written much on the just causes of war. Many of them condemn all
+unjust, aggressive, or even unnecessary wars. Some of them insist on the
+duty of States always endeavouring by conferences, or even by
+arbitration, to avert war, and although these precepts, like the
+corresponding precepts of Christian divines, were often violated, they
+were certainly not without some influence on affairs. It is probably not
+too much to say that in this respect Roman wars do not compare
+unfavourably with those of Christian periods. It is remarkable how large
+a part of the best Christian works on the ethics of war is based on the
+precepts of pagan moralists, and although in antiquity as in modern
+times the real cause of war was often very different from the pretexts,
+the sense of justice in war was as clearly marked in Roman as in most
+Christian periods.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p><p>Great stress was laid upon the duty of a formal declaration of war
+preceding hostilities. Polybius mentions the reprobation that was
+attached in Greece to the &AElig;tolians for having neglected this custom. It
+was universal in Roman times, and during the medi&aelig;val period the custom
+of sending a challenge to the hostile power was carefully observed. In
+modern times formal declaration of war has fallen greatly into
+desuetude. The hostilities between England and Spain under Elizabeth,
+and the invasion of Germany by Gustavus Adolphus, were begun without any
+such declaration, and there have been numerous instances in later
+times.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>The treatment of prisoners has been profoundly modified. Quarter, it is
+true, has been very often refused in modern wars to rebels, to soldiers
+in mutiny, to revolted slaves, to savages who themselves give no
+quarter. It has been often&mdash;perhaps generally&mdash;refused to irregular
+soldiers like the French Francs-tireurs in the War of 1870, who without
+uniforms endeavoured to defend their homes against invasion. It was long
+refused to soldiers who, having rejected terms of surrender, continued
+to defend an indefensible place, but this severity during the last three
+centuries has been generally condemned. But, on the whole, the treatment
+of the conquered soldier has steadily improved. At one time he was
+killed. At another he was preserved as a slave. Then he was permitted to
+free himself by payment of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> a ransom; now he is simply kept in custody
+till he is exchanged or released on parole, or till the termination of
+the war. In the latter half of the present century many elaborate and
+beneficent regulations for the preservation of hospitals and the good
+treatment of the wounded have been sanctioned by international
+agreement. The distinction between the civil population and combatants
+has been increasingly observed. As a general rule non-combatants, if
+they do not obstruct the enemy, are subjected to no further injury than
+that of paying war contributions and in other ways providing for the
+subsistence of the invaders. The wanton destruction of private property
+has been more and more avoided. Such an act as the devastation of the
+Palatinate under Louis XIV. would now in a European war be universally
+condemned, though the wholesale destruction of villages in our own
+Indian frontier wars and the methods employed on both sides in the civil
+war in Cuba appear to have borne much resemblance to it. In the
+treatment of merchants the rule of reciprocity which was laid down in
+Magna Charta is largely observed, and the Conference of Brussels in 1874
+pronounced it to be contrary to the laws of war to bombard an
+unfortified town. The great Civil War in America probably contributed
+not a little to raise the standard of humanity in war; for while few
+long wars have been fought with such determination or at the cost of so
+many lives, very few have been conducted with such a scrupulous
+abstinence from acts of wanton barbarity.</p>
+
+<p>Many restrictive rules also have been accepted tending in a small degree
+to mitigate the actual operations of war, and they have had some real
+influence in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> direction, though it is not possible to justify the
+military code on any clear principle either of ethics or logic.
+Assassination and the encouragement of assassination; the use of poison
+or poisoned weapons; the violation of parole; the deceptive use of a
+flag of truce or of the red cross; the slaughter of the wounded; the
+infringement of terms of surrender or of other distinct agreements, are
+absolutely forbidden, and in 1868 the Representatives of the European
+Powers assembled at St. Petersburg agreed to abolish the use in war of
+explosive bullets below the weight of 14 ounces, and to forbid the
+propagation in an enemy's country of contagious disease as an instrument
+of war. It laid down the general principle that the object of war is
+confined to disabling the enemy, and that weapons calculated to inflict
+unnecessary suffering, beyond what is required for attaining that
+object, should be prohibited. At the same time explosive shells,
+concealed mines, torpedoes and ambuscades lie fully within the permitted
+agencies of war. Starvation may be employed, and the cutting off of the
+supply of water, or the destruction of that supply by mixing with it
+something not absolutely poisonous which renders it undrinkable. It is
+allowable to deceive an enemy by fabricated despatches purporting to
+come from his own side; by tampering with telegraph messages; by
+spreading false intelligence in newspapers; by sending pretended spies
+and deserters to give him untrue reports of the numbers or movements of
+the troops; by employing false signals to lure him into an ambuscade. On
+the use of the flag and uniform of an enemy for purposes of deception
+there has been some controversy, but it is supported by high <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>military
+authority.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> The use of spies is fully authorised, but the spy, if
+discovered, is excluded from the rights of war and liable to an
+ignominious death.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the questions I have discussed there is another class of
+questions connected with war which present great difficulty. It is the
+right of men to abdicate their private judgment by entering into the
+military profession. In small nations this question is not of much
+importance, for in them wars are of very rare occurrence and are usually
+for self-defence. In a great empire it is wholly different. Hardly any
+one will be so confident of the virtue of his rulers as to believe that
+every war which his country wages in every part of its dominions, with
+uncivilised as well as civilised populations, is just and necessary, and
+it is certainly <i>prim&acirc; facie</i> not in accordance with an ideal morality
+that men should bind themselves absolutely for life or for a term of
+years to kill without question, at the command of their superiors, those
+who have personally done them no wrong. Yet this unquestioning obedience
+is the very essence of military discipline, and without it the
+efficiency of armies and the safety of nations would be hopelessly
+destroyed. It is necessary to the great interests of society, and
+therefore it is maintained, strengthened by the obligation of an oath
+and still more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>efficaciously by a code of honour which is one of the
+strongest binding influences by which men can be governed.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, however, altogether absolute, and a variety of distinctions
+and compromises have been made. There is a difference between the man
+who enlists in the army of his own country and a man who enlists in
+foreign service either permanently or for the duration of a single war.
+If a man unnecessarily takes an active part in a struggle between two
+countries other than his own, it may at least be demanded that he should
+be actuated, not by a mere spirit of adventure or personal ambition, but
+by a strong and reasoned conviction that the cause which he is
+supporting is a righteous one. The conduct of a man who enlists in a
+foreign army which may possibly be used against his own country, and who
+at least binds himself to obey absolutely chiefs who have no natural
+authority over him, has been much condemned, but even here special
+circumstances must be taken into account. Few persons I suppose would
+seriously blame the Irish Catholics of the eighteenth century who filled
+the armies of France, Austria, Spain and Naples at a time when
+disqualifying laws excluded them, on account of their religion, from the
+British army and from almost every path of ambition at home. There is
+also perhaps some distinction between the position of a soldier who is
+obliged to serve, and a soldier in a country where enlisting is
+voluntary, and also between the position of an officer who can throw up
+his commission without infringing the law, and a private who cannot
+abandon his flag without committing a grave legal offence. At the
+beginning of the war of the American Revolution some English officers
+left the army rather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> than serve in a cause which they believed to be
+unrighteous. It was in their full power to do so, but probably none of
+them would have desired that private soldiers who had no legal choice in
+the matter should have followed their example and become deserters from
+the ranks.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, extreme cases in which the violation of the military
+oath and disobedience to military discipline are justified. More than
+once in French history an usurper or his agent has ordered soldiers to
+coerce or fire upon the representatives of the nation. In such cases it
+has been said 'the conscience of the soldier is the liberty of the
+people,' and the refusal of private soldiers to obey a plainly illegal
+order will be generally though not universally applauded. In all such
+cases, however, there is much obscurity and inconsistency of judgment.
+The rule that the moral responsibility falls exclusively on the person
+who gives the order, and that the private has no voice or
+responsibility, will even here be maintained by some. Ought a private
+soldier to have refused to take part in such an execution as that of the
+Duc d'Enghien, or in the <i>Coup d'&Eacute;tat</i> of Napoleon III.? Ought he to
+refuse to fire on a mob if he doubts the legality of the order of his
+superior officer? In such cases there is sometimes a direct conflict
+between the civil and the military law, and there have been instances in
+which a soldier might be punishable before the first for acts which were
+absolutely enforced by the second.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the strongest case of justifiable disobedience<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> that can be
+alleged is when a soldier is ordered to do something which involves
+apostasy from his faith, though even here it would be difficult to show,
+in the light of pure reason, that this is a graver thing than to kill
+innocent men in an unrighteous cause. In the Early Church there were
+some soldier martyrs who suffered death because they believed it
+inconsistent with their faith to bear arms, or because they were asked
+to do some acts which savoured of idolatry. The story of the Theb&aelig;an
+legion which was said to have been martyred under Diocletian rests on no
+trustworthy authority, but it illustrates the feeling of the Church on
+the subject. Josephus tells how Jewish soldiers refused in spite of all
+punishments to bring earth with the other soldiers for the reparation of
+the Temple of Belus at Babylon. Conflicts between military duty and
+religious duty must have not unfrequently arisen during the religious
+wars of the sixteenth century, and in our own century and in our own
+army there have been instances of soldiers refusing through religious
+motives to escort or protect idolatrous processions in India, or to
+present arms in Catholic countries when the Host was passing. Quaker
+opinions about war are absolutely inconsistent with the compulsory
+service which prevails in nearly all European countries, and religious
+scruples about conscription have been among the motives that have
+brought the Russian Raskolniks into collision with the civil power.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most serious instances of the collision of duties in our time
+is furnished by the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. From the days of Clive,
+Sepoy soldiers have served under the British flag with an admirable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+fidelity, and the Mutiny of Vellore in 1806, which was the one
+exception, was due, like that of 1857, to a belief that the British
+Government were interfering with their faith. Few things in the history
+of the great Mutiny are so touching as the profound belief of the
+English commanders of the Sepoy regiments in the unalterable loyalty of
+their soldiers. Many of them lost their lives through this belief,
+refusing even to the last moment and in spite of all evidence to abandon
+it. They were deceived, and, in the fierce outburst of indignation that
+followed, the conduct of the Sepoy soldiers was branded as the blackest
+and the most unprovoked treachery.</p>
+
+<p>Yet assuredly no charge was less true. Agitators for their own selfish
+purposes had indeed acted upon the troops, but recent researches have
+fully proved that the real as well as the ostensible cause of the Mutiny
+was the greased cartridges. It was believed that the cartridges which
+had been recently issued for the Sepoy regiments were smeared with a
+mixture of cow's fat and pig's fat, one of these ingredients being
+utterly impure in the eyes of the Hindoo, and the other in the eyes of
+the Mussulman. To bite these cartridges would destroy the caste of the
+Hindoo and carry with it the loss of everything that was most dear and
+most sacred to him both in this world and in the next. In the eyes both
+of the Moslem and the Hindoo it was the gravest and the most irreparable
+of crimes, destroying all hopes in a future world, and yet this crime,
+in their belief, was imposed upon them as a matter of military duty by
+their officers. It was as if the Puritan soldiers of the seventeenth
+century had been ordered by their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>commanders to abjure their hopes of
+salvation and to repudiate and insult the Christian faith.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the existence of these obnoxious ingredients in the new
+cartridges was solemnly denied, but the sincerity of the Sepoy belief is
+incontestable, and General Anson, the commander-in-chief, having
+examined the cartridges, was compelled to admit that it was very
+plausible.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> 'I am not so much surprised,' he wrote to Lord Canning,
+'at their objections to the cartridges, having seen them. I had no idea
+they contained, or rather are smeared with such a quantity of grease,
+which looks exactly like fat. After ramming down the ball, the muzzle of
+the musket is covered with it.'</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately this is not a complete statement of the case. It is a
+shameful and terrible truth that, as far as the fact was concerned, the
+Sepoys were perfectly right in their belief. In the words of Lord
+Roberts, 'The recent researches of Mr. Forrest in the records of the
+Government of India prove that the lubricating mixture used in preparing
+the cartridges was actually composed of the objectionable ingredients,
+cow's fat and lard, and that incredible disregard of the soldiers'
+religious prejudices was displayed in the manufacture of these
+cartridges.'<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> This was certainly not due, as the Sepoys imagined, to
+any desire on the part of the British authorities to destroy caste or to
+prepare the way for the conversion of the Sepoys to Christianity. It was
+simply a glaring instance of the indifference, ignorance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> and incapacity
+too often shown by British administrators in dealing with beliefs and
+types of character wholly unlike their own. They were unable to realise
+that a belief which seemed to them so childish could have any depth, and
+they accordingly produced a Mutiny that for a time shook the English
+power in India to its very foundation.</p>
+
+<p>The horrors of Cawnpore&mdash;which were due to a single man&mdash;soon took away
+from the British public all power of sanely judging the conflict, and a
+struggle in which no quarter was given was naturally marked by extreme
+savageness; but in looking back upon it, English writers must
+acknowledge with humiliation that, if mutiny is ever justifiable, no
+stronger justification could be given than that of the Sepoy troops.</p>
+
+<p>Many of my readers will remember an exquisite little poem called 'The
+Forced Recruit,' in which Mrs. Browning has described a young Venetian
+soldier who was forced by the conscription to serve against his
+fellow-countrymen in the Austrian army at Solferino, and who advanced
+cheerfully to die by the Italian guns, holding a musket that had never
+been loaded in his hand. Such a figure, such a violation of military
+law, will claim the sympathy of all, but a very different judgment
+should be passed upon those who, having voluntarily entered an army,
+betray their trust and their oath in the name of patriotism. In the
+Fenian movement in Ireland, one of the chief objects of the conspirators
+was to corrupt the Irish soldiers and break down that high sense of
+military honour for which in all times and in many armies the Irish
+people have been conspicuous. 'The epidemic' [of disaffection], boasts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+a writer who was much mixed in the conspiracies of those times, 'was not
+an affair of individuals, but of companies and of whole regiments. To
+attempt to impeach all the military Fenians before courts martial would
+have been to throw England into a panic, if not to precipitate an
+appalling mutiny and invite foreign invasion.'<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>I do not quote these words as a true statement. They are, I believe, a
+gross exaggeration and a gross calumny on the Irish soldiers, nor do I
+doubt that most, if not all, the soldiers who may have been induced over
+a glass of whiskey, or through the persuasions of some cunning agitator,
+to take the Fenian oath would, if an actual conflict had arisen, have
+proved perfectly faithful soldiers of the Queen. The perversion of
+morals, however, which looks on such violations of military duty as
+praiseworthy, has not been confined to writers of the stamp of Mr.
+O'Brien. A striking instance of it is furnished by a recent American
+biography. Among the early Fenian conspirators was a young man named
+John Boyle O'Reilly. He was a genuine enthusiast, with a real vein of
+literary talent; in the closing years of his life he won the affection
+and admiration of very honourable men, and I should certainly have no
+wish to look too harshly on youthful errors which were the result of a
+misguided enthusiasm if they had been acknowledged as such. As a matter
+of fact, however, he began his career by an act which, according to
+every sound principle of morality, religion, and secular honour,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> was in
+the highest degree culpable. Being a sworn Fenian, he entered a regiment
+of hussars, assumed the uniform of the Queen, and took the oath of
+allegiance for the express purpose of betraying his trust and seducing
+the soldiers of his regiment. He was detected and condemned to penal
+servitude, and he at last escaped to America, where he took an active
+part in the Fenian movement. After his death his biography was written
+in a strain of unqualified eulogy, but the biographer has honestly and
+fully disclosed the facts which I have related. This book has an
+introduction written by Cardinal Gibbons, one of the most prominent
+Catholic divines in the United States. The reader may be curious to see
+how the act of aggravated treachery and perjury which it revealed was
+judged by a personage who occupies all but the highest position in a
+Church which professes to be the supreme and inspired teacher of morals.
+Not a word in this Introduction implies that O'Reilly had done any act
+for which he should be ashamed. He is described as 'a great and good
+man,' and the only allusion to his crime is in the following terms: 'In
+youth his heart agonises over that saddest and strangest romance in all
+history&mdash;the wrongs and woes of his motherland&mdash;that Niobe of the
+Nations. In manhood, because he dared to wish her free, he finds himself
+a doomed felon, an exiled convict, in what he calls himself the Nether
+World.... The Divine faith implanted in his soul in childhood flourished
+there undyingly, pervaded his whole being with its blessed influences,
+furnished his noblest ideals of thought and conduct.... The country of
+his adoption vies with the land of his birth in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>testifying to the
+uprightness of his life.... With all these voices I blend my own, and in
+their name I say that the world is brighter for having possessed
+him.'<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Newman's <i>Anglican Difficulties</i>, p. 190.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> See Grotius, <i>de Jure</i>, book iii. ch. iv. On the Jewish
+notions on this subject, see Deut. ii. 34; vii. 2, 16; xx. 10-16; Psalm
+cxxxvii. 9; 1 Sam. xv. 3. I have collected some additional facts on this
+subject in my <i>History of European Morals</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Tyrrell and Purser's <i>Correspondence of Cicero</i>, vol. v.
+p. xlvii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> See Grotius, <i>de Jure Belli et Pacis</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Much information on this subject will be found in a
+remarkable pamphlet (said to have been corrected by Pitt) called 'An
+Enquiry into the Manner in which the different wars in Europe have
+commenced during the last two centuries, by the Author of the History
+and Foundation of the Law of Nations in Europe' (1805).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> See Tovey's <i>Martial Law and the Custom of War</i>, part 2,
+pp. 13, 29. A striking instance of the deceptive use of a flag occurred
+in 1781, when the English, having captured St. Eustatius from the Dutch,
+allowed the Dutch flag still to float over its harbour in order that
+Dutch, French, Spanish and American ships which were ignorant of the
+capture might be decoyed into the harbour and seized as prizes. Some
+writers on military law maintain that this was within the rights of
+war.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See Fitzjames Stephen's <i>History of the Criminal Law</i>, i.
+205.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Lord Roberts' <i>Forty-one Years in India</i>, i. 94.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 431.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Contemporary Review</i>, May 1897. Article by William
+O'Brien, 'Was Fenianism ever Formidable?'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Roche's <i>Life of John Boyle O'Reilly</i>, with introduction
+by Cardinal Gibbons. Since the publication of this book Cardinal Gibbons
+has written a letter to the <i>Tablet</i> (Dec. 2, 1899), in which he says:
+'I feel it due to myself and the interests of truth to declare that till
+I read Mr. Lecky's criticism I did not know that Mr. O'Reilly had ever
+been a Fenian or a British soldier, or that he had tried to seduce other
+soldiers from their allegiance. In fact, up to this moment, I have never
+read a line of the biography for which I wrote the introduction.... My
+only acquaintance with Mr. O'Reilly's history before he came to America
+was the vague information I had that, for some political offence, the
+exact nature of which I did not learn, he had been exiled from his
+native land to a penal colony, from which he afterwards escaped.'
+</p><p>
+I gladly accept this assurance of Cardinal Gibbons, though I am
+surprised that he should not have even glanced at the book which he
+introduced, and that he should have been absolutely ignorant of the most
+conspicuous event of the life which, from early youth, he held up to
+unqualified admiration. I regret, too, that he has not taken the
+opportunity of this letter to reprobate a form of moral perversion which
+is widely spread among his Irish co-religionists, and which his own
+words are only too likely to strengthen. It is but a short time since an
+Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament, being accused of once having
+served the Queen as a Volunteer, justified himself by saying that he had
+only worn the coat which was worn by Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Boyle
+O'Reilly; while another Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament, at a
+public meeting in Dublin, and amid the cheers of his audience, expressed
+his hope that in the South African war the Irish soldiers under the
+British flag would fire on the English instead of on the Boers.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p>The foregoing chapter will have shown sufficiently how largely in one
+great and necessary profession the element of moral compromise must
+enter, and will show the nature of some of the moral difficulties that
+attend it. We find illustrations of much the same kind in the profession
+of an advocate. In the interests of the proper administration of justice
+it is of the utmost importance that every cause, however defective, and
+every criminal, however bad, should be fully defended, and it is
+therefore indispensable that there should be a class of men entrusted
+with this duty. It is the business of the judge and of the jury to
+decide on the merits of the case, but in order that they should
+discharge this function it is necessary that the arguments on both sides
+should be laid before them in the strongest form. The clear interest of
+society requires this, and a standard of professional honour and
+etiquette is formed for the purpose of regulating the action of the
+advocate. Misstatements of facts or of law; misquotations of documents;
+strong expressions of personal opinion, and some other devices by which
+verdicts may be won, are condemned; there are cases which an honourable
+lawyer will not adopt, and there are rare cases in which, in the course
+of a trial, he will find it his duty to throw up his brief.</p>
+
+<p>But necessary and honourable as the profession may be, there are sides
+of it which are far from being in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> accordance with an austere code of
+ideal morals. It is idle to suppose that a master of the art of advocacy
+will merely confine himself to a calm, dispassionate statement of the
+facts and arguments of his side. He will inevitably use all his powers
+of rhetoric and persuasion to make the cause for which he holds a brief
+appear true, though he knows it to be false; he will affect a warmth
+which he does not feel and a conviction which he does not hold; he will
+skilfully avail himself of any mistake or omission of his opponent; of
+any technical rule that can exclude damaging evidence; of all the
+resources that legal subtlety and severe cross-examination can furnish
+to confuse dangerous issues, to obscure or minimise inconvenient facts,
+to discredit hostile witnesses. He will appeal to every prejudice that
+can help his cause; he will for the time so completely identify himself
+with it that he will make its success his supreme and all-absorbing
+object; and he will hardly fail to feel some thrill of triumph if by the
+force of ingenious and eloquent pleading he has saved the guilty from
+his punishment or snatched a verdict in defiance of evidence.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising that a profession which inevitably leads to such
+things should have excited scruples among many good men. Swift very
+roughly described lawyers as 'a society of men bred from their youth in
+the art of proving by words, multiplied for the purpose, that white is
+black and black is white, according as they are paid.' Dr. Arnold has
+more than once expressed his dislike, and indeed abhorrence, of the
+profession of an advocate. It inevitably, he maintained, leads to moral
+perversion, involving, as it does, the indiscriminate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>defence of right
+and wrong, and in many cases the knowing suppression of truth. Macaulay,
+who can hardly be regarded as addicted to the refinements of an
+over-fastidious morality, reviewing the professional rules that are
+recognised in England, asks 'whether it be right that not merely
+believing, but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can
+be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant
+exclamation, by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest
+witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement
+false.' Bentham denounced in even stronger language the habitual method
+of 'the hireling lawyer' in cross-examining an honest but adverse
+witness, and he declared that there is a code of morality current in
+Westminster Hall generically different from the code of ordinary life,
+and directly calculated to destroy the love of veracity and justice. On
+the other hand, Paley recognised among falsehoods that are not lies
+because they deceive no one, the statement of 'an advocate asserting the
+justice or his belief of the justice of his client's cause.' Dr.
+Johnson, in reply to some objections of Boswell, argues at length, but,
+I think, with some sophistry, in favour of the profession. 'You are
+not,' he says, 'to deceive your client with false representations of
+your opinion. You are not to tell lies to the judge, but you need have
+no scruple about taking up a case which you believe to be bad, or
+affecting a warmth which you do not feel. You do not know your cause to
+be bad till the judge determines it.... An argument which does not
+convince yourself may convince the judge, and, if it does convince him,
+you are wrong and he is right....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> Everybody knows you are paid for
+affecting warmth for your client, and it is therefore properly no
+dissimulation.' Basil Montagu, in an excellent treatise on the subject,
+urges that an advocate is simply an officer assisting in the
+administration of justice under the impression that truth is best
+elicited, and that difficulties are most effectually disentangled, by
+the opposite statements of able men. He is an indispensable part of a
+machine which in its net result is acting in the real interests of
+truth, although he 'may profess feelings which he does not feel and may
+support a cause which he knows to be wrong,' and although his advocacy
+is 'a species of acting without an avowal that it is acting.'</p>
+
+<p>It is, of course, possible to adopt the principles of the Quaker and to
+condemn as unchristian all participation in the law courts, and although
+the Catholic Church has never adopted this extreme, it seems to have
+instinctively recognised some incompatibility between the profession of
+an advocate and the saintly character. Renan notices the significant
+fact that St. Yves, a saint of Brittany, appears to be the only advocate
+who has found a place in its hagiology, and the worshippers were
+accustomed to sing on his festival 'Advocatus et non latro&mdash;Res miranda
+populo.' It is indeed evident that a good deal of moral compromise must
+enter into this field, and the standards of right and wrong that have
+been adopted have varied greatly. How far, for example, may a lawyer
+support a cause which he believes to be wrong? In some ancient
+legislations advocates were compelled to swear that they would not
+defend causes which they thought or discovered to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> unjust.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> St.
+Thomas Aquinas has laid down in emphatic terms that any lawyer who
+undertakes the defence of an unjust cause is committing a grievous sin.
+It is unlawful, he contends, to co-operate with any one who is doing
+wrong, and an advocate clearly counsels and assists him whose cause he
+undertakes. Modern Catholic casuists have dealt with the subject in the
+same spirit. They admit, indeed, that an advocate may undertake the
+defence of a criminal whom he knows to be guilty, in order to bring to
+light all extenuating circumstances, but they contend that no advocate
+should undertake a civil cause unless by a previous and careful
+examination he has convinced himself that it is a just one; that no
+advocate can without sin undertake a cause which he knows or strongly
+believes to be unjust; that if he has done so he is himself bound in
+conscience to make restitution to the party that has been injured by his
+advocacy; that if in the course of a trial he discovers that a cause
+which he had believed to be just is unjust he must try to persuade his
+client to desist, and if he fails in this must himself abandon the
+cause, though without informing the opposite party of the conclusion at
+which he had arrived; that in conducting his case he must abstain from
+wounding the reputation of his neighbour or endeavouring to influence
+the judges by bringing before them misdeeds of his opponent which are
+not connected with and are not essential to the case.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> As lately as
+1886 an order was issued from Rome, with the express approbation of the
+Pope, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>forbidding any Catholic, mayor or judge, to take part in a
+divorce case, as divorce is absolutely condemned by the Church.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>There have been, and perhaps still are, instances of lawyers
+endeavouring to limit their practice to cases which they believed to be
+just. Sir Matthew Hale is a conspicuous example, but he acknowledged
+that he considerably relaxed his rule on the subject, having found in
+two instances that cases which at the first blush seemed very worthless
+were in truth well founded. As a general rule English lawyers make no
+discrimination on this ground in accepting briefs unless the injustice
+is very flagrant, nor will they, except in very extreme cases, do their
+client the great injury of throwing up a brief which they have once
+accepted. They contend that by acting in this way the administration of
+justice in the long run is best served, and in this fact they find its
+justification.</p>
+
+<p>In the conduct of a case there are rules analogous to those which
+distinguish between honourable and dishonourable war, but they are less
+clearly defined and less universally accepted. In criminal prosecutions
+a remarkable though very explicable distinction is drawn between the
+prosecutor and the defender. It is the etiquette of the profession that
+the former is bound to aim only at truth, neither straining any point
+against the prisoner nor keeping back any fact which is favourable to
+him, nor using any argument which he does not himself believe to be
+just. The defender, however, is not bound, according to professional
+etiquette, by such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> rules. He may use arguments which he knows to be
+bad, conceal or shut out by technical objections facts that will tell
+against his clients, and, subject to some wide and vague restrictions,
+he must make the acquittal of his client his first object.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sometimes cases of extreme difficulty arise. Probably the best known is
+the case of Courvoisier, the Swiss valet, who murdered Lord William
+Russell in 1840. In the course of the trial Courvoisier informed his
+advocate, Phillips, that he was guilty of the murder, but at the same
+time directed Phillips to continue to defend him to the last extremity.
+As there was overwhelming evidence that the murder must have been
+committed by some one who slept in the house, the only possible defence
+was that an equal amount of suspicion attached to the housemaid and cook
+who were its other occupants. On the first day of the trial, before he
+knew the guilt of his client from his own lips, Phillips had
+cross-examined the housemaid, who first discovered the murder, with
+great severity and with the evident object of throwing suspicion upon
+her. What course ought he now to pursue? It happened that an eminent
+judge was sitting on the bench with the judge who was to try the case,
+and Phillips took this judge into his confidence, stated privately to
+him the facts that had arisen, and asked for his advice. The judge
+declared that Phillips was bound to continue to defend the prisoner,
+whose case would have been hopeless if his own counsel abandoned him,
+and in defending him he was bound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> to use all fair arguments arising out
+of the evidence. The speech of Phillips was a masterpiece of eloquence
+under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty. Much of it was devoted
+to impugning the veracity of the witnesses for the prosecution. He
+solemnly declared that it was not his business to say who committed the
+murder, and that he had no desire to throw any imputation on the other
+servants in the house, and he abstained scrupulously from giving any
+personal opinion on the matter; but the drift of his argument was that
+Courvoisier was the victim of a conspiracy, the police having concealed
+compromising articles among his clothes, and that there was no clear
+circumstance distinguishing the suspicion against him from that against
+the other servants.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>The conduct of Phillips in this case has, I believe, been justified by
+the preponderance of professional opinion, though when the facts were
+known public opinion outside the profession generally condemned it. Some
+lawyers have pushed the duty of defence to a point which has aroused
+much protest even in their own profession. 'The Advocate,' said Lord
+Brougham in his great speech before the House of Lords in defence of
+Queen Caroline, 'by the sacred duty which he owes his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> client, knows in
+the discharge of that office but one person in the world&mdash;that client
+and none other. To save that client by all expedient means, to protect
+that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to
+himself, is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must
+not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction which
+he may bring upon any other. Nay, separating even the duties of a
+patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, to the
+wind, he must go on, reckless of consequences, if his fate it should
+unhappily be to involve his country in confusion for his client's
+protection.'</p>
+
+<p>This doctrine has been emphatically repudiated by some eminent English
+lawyers, but both in practice and theory the profession have differed
+widely in different courts, times and countries. How far, for example,
+is it permissible in cross-examination to browbeat or confuse an honest
+but timid and unskilful witness; to attempt to discredit the evidence of
+a witness on a plain matter of fact about which he had no interest in
+concealment by exhuming against him some moral scandal of early youth
+which was totally unconnected with the subject of the trial; or, by
+pursuing such a line of cross-examination, to keep out of the
+witness-box material witnesses who are conscious that their past lives
+are not beyond reproach? How far is it right or permissible to press
+legal technicalities as opposed to substantial justice? Probably most
+lawyers, if they are perfectly candid, will agree that these things are
+in some measure inevitable in their profession, and that the real
+question is one of degree, and therefore not susceptible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> of positive
+definition. There is a kind of mind that grows so enamoured with the
+subtleties and technicalities of the law that it delights in the
+unexpected and unintended results to which they may lead. I have heard
+an English judge say of another long deceased that he had through this
+feeling a positive pleasure in injustice, and one lawyer, not of this
+country, once confessed to me the amusement he derived from breaking the
+convictions of criminals in his state by discovering technical flaws in
+their indictments. There is a class of mind that delights in such cases
+as that of the legal document which was invalidated because the letters
+A.D. were put before the date instead of the formula 'in the year of Our
+Lord,' or that of a swindler who was suffered to escape with his booty
+because, in the writ that was issued for his arrest, by a copyist's
+error the word 'sheriff' was written instead of 'sheriffs,' or that of a
+lady who was deprived of an estate of &pound;14,000 a year because by a mere
+mistake of the conveyancer one material word was omitted from the will,
+although the clearest possible evidence was offered showing the wishes
+of the testator.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Such lawyers argue that in will cases 'the true
+question is not what the testator intended to do, but what is the
+meaning of the words of the will,' and that the balance of advantages is
+in favour of a strict adherence to the construction of the sentence and
+the technicalities of the law, even though in particular cases it may
+lead to grave injustice.</p>
+
+<p>It must indeed be acknowledged that up to a period<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> extending far into
+the nineteenth century those lawyers who adopted the most technical view
+of their profession were acting fully in accordance with its spirit.
+Few, if any, departments of English legislation and administration were
+till near the middle of this century so scandalously bad as those
+connected with the administration of the civil and the criminal law, and
+especially with the Court of Chancery. The whole field was covered with
+a network of obscure, intricate, archaic technicalities; useless except
+for the purpose of piling up costs, procrastinating decisions, placing
+the simplest legal processes wholly beyond the competence of any but
+trained experts, giving endless facilities for fraud and for the evasion
+or defeat of justice, turning a law case into a game in which chance and
+skill had often vastly greater influence than substantial merits. Lord
+Brougham probably in no degree exaggerated when he described great
+portions of the English law as 'a two-edged sword in the hands of craft
+and of oppression,' and a great authority on chancery law declared in
+1839 that 'no man, as things now stand, can enter into a chancery suit
+with any reasonable hope of being alive at its termination if he has a
+determined adversary.'<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>The moral difficulties of administering such a system were very great,
+and in many cases English juries, in dealing with it, adopted a rough
+and ready code of morals of their own. Though they had sworn to decide
+every case according to the law as it was stated to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> them, and according
+to the evidence that was laid before them, they frequently refused to
+follow legal technicalities which would lead to substantial injustice,
+and they still more frequently refused to bring in verdicts according to
+evidence when by doing so they would consign a prisoner to a savage,
+excessive, or unjust punishment. Some of the worst abuses of the English
+law were mitigated by the perjuries of juries who refused to put them in
+force.</p>
+
+<p>The great legal reforms of the past half-century have removed most of
+these abuses, and have at the same time introduced a wider and juster
+spirit into the practical administration of the law. Yet even now
+different judges sometimes differ widely in the importance they attach
+to substantial justice and to legal technicalities; and even now one of
+the advantages of trial by jury is that it brings the masculine common
+sense and the unsophisticated sense of justice of unprofessional men
+into fields that would otherwise be often distorted by ingenious
+subtleties. It is, however, far less in the position of the judge than
+in the position of an advocate that the most difficult moral questions
+of the legal profession arise. The difference between an unscrupulous
+advocate and an advocate who is governed by a high sense of honour and
+morality is very manifest, but at best there must be many things in the
+profession from which a very sensitive conscience would recoil, and
+things must be said and done which can hardly be justified except on the
+ground that the existence of this profession and the prescribed methods
+of its action are in the long run indispensable to the honest
+administration of justice.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p><p>The same method of reasoning applies to other great departments of
+life. In politics it is especially needed. In free countries party
+government is the best if not the only way of conducting public affairs,
+but it is impossible to conduct it without a large amount of moral
+compromise; without a frequent surrender of private judgment and will. A
+good man will choose his party through disinterested motives, and with a
+firm and honest conviction that it represents the cast of policy most
+beneficial to the country. He will on grave occasions assert his
+independence of party, but in the large majority of cases he must act
+with his party even if they are pursuing courses in some degree contrary
+to his own judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Every one who is actively engaged in politics&mdash;every one especially who
+is a member of the House of Commons&mdash;must soon learn that if the
+absolute independence of individual judgment were pushed to its extreme,
+political anarchy would ensue. The complete concurrence of a large
+number of independent judgments in a complicated measure is impossible.
+If party government is to be carried on, there must be, both in the
+Cabinet and in Parliament, perpetual compromise. The first condition of
+its success is that the Government should have a stable, permanent,
+disciplined support behind it, and in order that this should be attained
+the individual member must in most cases vote with his party. Sometimes
+he must support a measure which he knows to be bad, because its
+rejection would involve a change of government which he believes would
+be a still greater evil than its acceptance, and in order to prevent
+this evil he may have to vote a direct negative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> to some resolution
+containing a statement which he believes to be true. At the same time,
+if he is an honest man, he will not be a mere slave of party. Sometimes
+a question arises which he considers so supremely important that he will
+break away from his party and endeavour at all hazards to carry or to
+defeat it. Much more frequently he will either abstain from voting, or
+will vote against the Government on a particular question, but only when
+he knows that by taking this course he is simply making a protest which
+will produce no serious political complication. On most great measures
+there is a dissentient minority in the Government party, and it often
+exercises a most useful influence in representing independent opinion,
+and bringing into the measure modifications and compromises which allay
+opposition, gratify minorities, and soften differences. But the action
+of that party will be governed by many motives other than a simple
+consideration of the merits of the case. It is not sufficient to say
+that they must vote for every resolution which they believe to be true,
+for every bill or clause of a bill which they believe to be right, and
+must vote against every bill or clause or resolution about which they
+form an opposite judgment. Sometimes they will try in private to prevent
+the introduction of a measure, but when it is introduced they will feel
+it their duty either positively to support it or at least to abstain
+from protesting against it. Sometimes they will either vote against it
+or abstain from voting at all, but only when the majority is so large
+that it is sure to be carried. Sometimes their conduct will be the
+result of a bargain&mdash;they will vote for one portion of a bill of which
+they disapprove because they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> have obtained from the Government a
+concession on another which they think more important. The nature of
+their opposition will depend largely upon the strength or weakness of
+the Government, upon the size of the majority, upon the degree in which
+a change of ministry would affect the general policy of the country,
+upon the probability of the measure they object to being finally
+extinguished, or returning in another year either in an improved or in a
+more dangerous form. Questions of proportion and degree and ulterior
+consequences will continually sway them. Measures are often opposed, not
+on their own intrinsic merits, but on account of precedents they might
+establish; of other measures which might grow out of them or be
+justified by them.</p>
+
+<p>Not unfrequently it happens that a section of the dominant party is
+profoundly discontented with the policy of the Government on some
+question which they deem of great importance. They find themselves
+incapable of offering any direct and successful opposition, but their
+discontent will show itself on some other Government measure on which
+votes are more evenly divided. Possibly they may oppose that measure.
+More probably they will fail to attend regularly at the divisions, or
+will exercise their independent judgments on its clauses in a manner
+they would not have done if their party allegiance had been unshaken.
+And this conduct is not mere revenge. It is a method of putting pressure
+on the Government in order to obtain concessions on matters which they
+deem of paramount importance. In the same way they will seek to gain
+supporters by political alliances. Few things in parliamentary
+government are more dangerous or more apt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> lead to corruption than
+the bargains which the Americans call log-rolling; but it is inevitable
+that a member who has received from a colleague, or perhaps from an
+opponent, assistance on a question which he believes to be of the
+highest importance, will be disposed to return that assistance in some
+case in which his own feelings and opinions are not strongly enlisted.</p>
+
+<p>Then, too, we have to consider the great place which obstruction plays
+in parliamentary government. It constantly happens that a measure to
+which scarcely any one objects is debated at inordinate length for no
+other reason than to prevent a measure which is much objected to from
+being discussed. Measures may be opposed by hostile votes, but they are
+often much more efficaciously opposed by calculated delays, by
+multiplied amendments or speeches, by some of the many devices that can
+be employed to clog the legislative machine. There are large classes of
+measures on which governments or parliaments think it desirable to give
+no opinion, or at least no immediate opinion, though they cannot prevent
+their introduction, and many methods are employed with the real, though
+not avowed and ostensible object of preventing a vote or even a
+ministerial declaration upon them. Sometimes Parliament is quite ready
+to acknowledge the abstract justice of a proposal, but does not think it
+ripe for legislation. In such cases the second reading of the bill will
+probably be accepted, but, to the indignation and astonishment of its
+supporters outside the House, it will be obstructed, delayed or defeated
+in committee with the acquiescence, or connivance, or even actual
+assistance of some of those who had voted for it. Some measures in the
+eyes of some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> members involve questions of principle so sacred that they
+will admit of no compromise of expediency, but most measures are deemed
+open to compromise and are accepted, rejected, or modified under some of
+the many motives I have described.</p>
+
+<p>All this curious and indispensable mechanism of party government is
+compatible with a high and genuine sense of public duty, and unless such
+a sense at the last resort dominates over all other considerations,
+political life will inevitably decline. At the same time it is obvious
+that many things have to be done from which a very rigid and austere
+nature would recoil. To support a Government when he believes it to be
+wrong, or to oppose a measure which he believes to be right; to connive
+at evasions which are mere pretexts, and at delays which rest upon
+grounds that are not openly avowed,&mdash;is sometimes, and indeed not
+unfrequently, a parliamentary duty. A member of Parliament must often
+feel himself in the position of a private in an army, or a player in a
+game, or an advocate in a law case. On many questions each party
+represents and defends the special interests of some particular classes
+in the country. When there are two plausible alternative courses to be
+pursued which divide public opinion, the Opposition is almost bound by
+its position to enforce the merits of the course opposed to that adopted
+by the Government. In theory nothing could seem more absurd than a
+system of government in which, as it has been said, the ablest men in
+Parliament are divided into two classes, one side being charged with the
+duty of carrying on the government and the other with that of
+obstructing and opposing them in their task, and in which, on a vast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+multitude of unconnected questions, these two great bodies of very
+competent men, with the same facts and arguments before them, habitually
+go into opposite lobbies. In practice, however, parliamentary government
+by great parties, in countries where it is fully understood and
+practised, is found to be admirably efficacious in representing every
+variety of political opinion; in securing a constant supervision and
+criticism of men and measures; and in forming a safety valve through
+which the dangerous humours of society can expand without evil to the
+community.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is only accomplished by constant compromises which are
+seldom successfully carried out without a long national experience.
+Party must exist. It must be maintained as an essential condition of
+good government, but it must be subordinated to the public interests,
+and in the public interests it must be in many cases suspended. There
+are subjects which cannot be introduced without the gravest danger into
+the arena of party controversy. Indian politics are a conspicuous
+example, and, although foreign policy cannot be kept wholly outside it,
+the dangers connected with its party treatment are extremely great. Many
+measures of a different kind are conducted with the concurrence of the
+two front benches. A cordial union on large classes of questions between
+the heads of the rival parties is one of the first conditions of
+successful parliamentary government. The Opposition leader must have a
+voice in the conduct of business, on the questions that should be
+brought forward, and on the questions that it is for the public interest
+to keep back. He is the official leader of systematic, organised
+opposition to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>Government, yet he is on a large number of questions
+their most powerful ally. He must frequently have confidential relations
+with them, and one of his most useful functions is to prevent sections
+of his party from endeavouring to snatch party advantages by courses
+which might endanger public interests. If the country is to be well
+governed there must be a large amount of continuity in its policy;
+certain conditions and principles of administration must be inflexibly
+maintained, and in great national emergencies all parties must unite.</p>
+
+<p>In questions which lie at the heart of party politics, also some amount
+of compromise is usually effected. Debate not only elicits opinions but
+also suggests alternatives and compromises, and very few measures are
+carried by a majority which do not bear clear traces of the action of
+the minority. The line is constantly deflected now on one side and now
+on the other, and (usually without much regard to logical consistency)
+various and opposing sentiments are in some measure gratified. If the
+lines of party are drawn with an inflexible rigidity; and if the
+majority insist on the full exercise of their powers, parliamentary
+government may become a despotism as crushing as the worst autocracy&mdash;a
+despotism which is perhaps even more dangerous as the sense of
+responsibility is diminished by being divided. If, on the other hand,
+the latitude conceded to individual opinion is excessive, Parliament
+inevitably breaks into groups, and parliamentary government loses much
+of its virtue. When coalitions of minorities can at any time overthrow a
+ministry, the whole force of Government is lost. The temptation to
+corrupt bargains with particular sections is enormously increased,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> and
+the declining control of the two front benches will be speedily followed
+by a diminished sense of responsibility, and by the increased influence
+of violent, eccentric, exaggerated opinions. It is of the utmost moment
+that the policy of an Opposition should be guided by its most important
+men, and especially by men who have had the experience and the
+responsibility of office, and who know that they may have that
+responsibility again. But the healthy latitude of individual opinion and
+expression in a party is like most of those things we are now
+considering, a question of degree, and not susceptible of clear and
+sharp definition.</p>
+
+<p>Other questions of a somewhat different nature, but involving grave
+moral considerations, arise out of the relations between a member and
+his constituents. In the days when small boroughs were openly bought in
+the market, this was sometimes defended on the ground of the complete
+independence of judgment which it gave to the purchasing member. Romilly
+and Henry Flood are said to have both purchased their seats with the
+express object of securing such independence. In the political
+philosophy of Burke, no doctrine is more emphatically enforced than that
+a member of Parliament is a representative but not a delegate; that he
+owes to his constituents not only his time and his services, but also
+the exercise of his independent and unfettered judgment; that, while
+reflecting the general cast of their politics, he must never suffer
+himself to be reduced to a mere mouthpiece, or accept binding
+instructions prescribing on each particular measure the course he may
+pursue; that after his election he must consider himself a member of an
+Imperial Parliament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> rather than the representative of a particular
+locality, and must subordinate local and special interests to the wider
+and more general interests of the whole nation.</p>
+
+<p>The conditions of modern political life have greatly narrowed this
+liberty of judgment. In most constituencies a member can only enter
+Parliament fettered by many pledges relating to specific measures, and
+in every turn of policy sections of his constituents will attempt to
+dictate his course of action. Certain large and general pledges
+naturally and properly precede his election. He is chosen as a supporter
+or opponent of the Government; he avows himself an adherent of certain
+broad lines of policy, and he also represents in a special degree the
+interests and the distinctive type of opinion of the class or industry
+which is dominant in his constituency. But even at the time of election
+he often finds that on some particular question in which his electors
+are much interested he differs from them, though they consent, in spite
+of it, to elect him; and, in the course of a long Parliament, others are
+very apt unexpectedly to arise. Political changes take place which bring
+into the foreground matters which at the time of the election seemed
+very remote, or produce new questions, or give rise to unforeseen party
+combinations, developments, and tendencies. It will often happen that on
+these occasions a member will think differently from the majority of his
+electors, and he must meet the question how far he must sacrifice his
+judgment to theirs, and how far he may use the influence which their
+votes have given him to act in opposition to their wishes and perhaps
+even to their interests. Burke, for example, found himself in this
+position when, being member for Bristol, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>considered it his duty to
+support the concession of Free-trade to Ireland, although his
+constituents had, or thought they had, a strong interest in commercial
+restrictions and monopoly. In our own day it has happened that members
+representing manufacturing districts of Lancashire have found themselves
+unexpectedly called upon to vote upon some measure for crippling or
+extending rival manufactures in India; for opening new markets by some
+very dubious aggression in a distant land; or for limiting the child
+labour employed in the local manufacture; and these members have often
+believed that the right course was a course which was exceedingly
+repugnant to great sections of their electors.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, too, a member is elected on purely secular issues, but in the
+course of the Parliament one of those fierce, sudden storms of religious
+sentiment, to which England is occasionally liable, sweeps over the
+land, and he finds himself wholly out of sympathy with a great portion
+of his constituency. In other cases the party which he entered
+Parliament to support, pursues, on some grave question, a line of policy
+which he believes to be seriously wrong, and he goes into partial or
+even complete and bitter opposition. Differences of this kind have
+frequently arisen when there is no question of any interested motive
+having influenced the member. Sometimes in such cases he has resigned
+his seat and gone to his electors for re-election. In other cases he
+remains in Parliament till the next election. Each case, however, must
+be left to individual judgment, and no clear, definite, unwavering moral
+line can be drawn. The member will consider the magnitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> of the
+disputed question, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of those whom he
+represents; its permanent or transitory character, the amount and
+importance of the majority opposed to his views, the length of time that
+is likely to elapse before a dissolution will bring him face to face
+with his constituents. In matters which he does not consider very urgent
+or important, he will probably sacrifice his own judgment to that of his
+electors, at least so far as to abstain from voting or from pressing his
+own views. In graver matters it is his duty boldly to face unpopularity,
+or perhaps even take the extreme step of resigning his seat.</p>
+
+<p>The cases in which a member of Parliament finds it his duty to support a
+measure which he believes to be positively bad, on the ground that
+greater evils would follow its rejection, are happily not very numerous.
+He can extricate himself from many moral difficulties by sometimes
+abstaining from voting or from the expression of his real opinions, and
+most measures are of a composite character in which good and evil
+elements combine, and may in some degree be separated. In such measures
+it is often possible to accept the general principle while opposing
+particular details, and there is considerable scope for compromise and
+modification. But the cases in which a member of Parliament is compelled
+to vote for measures about which he has no real knowledge or conviction
+are very many. Crowds of measures of a highly complex and technical
+character, affecting departments of life with which he has had no
+experience, relating to the multitudinous industries, interests and
+conditions of a great people, are brought before him at very short
+notice; and no intellect, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>however powerful, no industry, however great,
+can master them. It is utterly impossible that mere extemporised
+knowledge, the listening to a short debate, the brief study which a
+member of Parliament can give to a new subject, can place him on a real
+level of competence with those who can bring to it a lifelong knowledge
+or experience.</p>
+
+<p>A member of Parliament will soon find that he must select a class of
+subjects which he can himself master, while on many others he must vote
+blindly with his party. The two or three capital measures in a session
+are debated with such a fulness that both the House and the country
+become thoroughly competent to judge them, and in those cases the
+preponderance of argument will have great weight. A powerful ministry
+and a strongly organised party may carry such a measure in spite of it,
+but they will be obliged to accept amendments and modifications, and if
+they persist in their policy their position both in the House and in the
+country will sooner or later be inevitably changed. But a large number
+of measures have a more restricted interest, and are far less widely
+understood. The House of Commons is rich in expert knowledge, and few
+subjects are brought before it which some of its members do not
+thoroughly understand; but in a vast number of cases the majority who
+decide the question are obliged to do so on the most superficial
+knowledge. Very often it is physically impossible for a member to obtain
+the knowledge he requires. The most important and detailed investigation
+has taken place in a committee upstairs to which he did not belong, or
+he is detained elsewhere on important parliamentary business while the
+debate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> is going on. Even when this is not the case, scarcely any one
+has the physical or mental power which would enable him to sit
+intelligently through all the debates. Every member of Parliament is
+familiar with the scene, when, after a debate, carried on before nearly
+empty benches, the division bell rings, and the members stream in to
+decide the issue. There is a moment of uncertainty. The questions 'Which
+side are we?' 'What is it about?' may be heard again and again. Then the
+Speaker rises, and with one magical sentence clears the situation. It is
+the sentence in which he announces that the tellers for the Ayes or
+Noes, as the case may be, are the Government whips. It is not argument,
+it is not eloquence, it is this single sentence which in countless cases
+determines the result and moulds the legislation of the country. Many
+members, it is true, are not present in the division lobby, but they are
+usually paired&mdash;that is to say, they have taken their sides before the
+discussion began; perhaps without even knowing what subject is to be
+discussed, perhaps for all the many foreseen and unforeseen questions
+that may arise during long periods of the session.</p>
+
+<p>It is a strange process, and to a new member who has been endeavouring
+through his life to weigh arguments and evidence with scrupulous care,
+and treat the formation and expression of opinions as a matter of
+serious duty, it is at first very painful. He finds that he is required
+again and again to give an effective voice in the great council of the
+nation, on questions of grave importance, with a levity of conviction
+upon which he would not act in the most trivial affairs of private life.
+No doctor would prescribe for the slightest malady; no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> lawyer would
+advise in the easiest case; no wise man would act in the simplest
+transactions of private business, or would even give an opinion to his
+neighbour at a dinner party without more knowledge of the subject than
+that on which a member of Parliament is often obliged to vote. But he
+soon finds that for good or evil this system is absolutely indispensable
+to the working of the machine. If no one voted except on matters he
+really understood and cared for, four-fifths of the questions that are
+determined by the House of Commons would be determined by mere fractions
+of its members, and in that case parliamentary government under the
+party system would be impossible. The stable, disciplined majorities
+without which it can never be efficiently conducted would be at an end.
+Those who refuse to accept the conditions of parliamentary life should
+abstain from entering into it.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that the one justification of this system is to be found
+in the belief that parliamentary government, as it is worked in England,
+is on the whole a good thing, and that this is the indispensable
+condition of its existence. Probably also with most men it strengthens
+the disposition to support the Government on matters which they do not
+understand and in which grave party issues are not involved. They know
+that these minor questions have at least been carefully examined on
+their merits by responsible men, and with the assistance of the best
+available expert knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>This fact goes far to reconcile us to the tendency to give governments
+an almost complete monopoly in the initiation of legislation which is so
+evident in modern parliamentary life. Much useful legislation in the
+past<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> has been due to private and independent members, but the chance of
+bills introduced by such members ever becoming law is steadily
+diminishing. This is not due to any recognised constitutional change,
+but to the constantly increasing pressure of government business on the
+time of the House, and especially to what is called the twelve o'clock
+rule, terminating debates at midnight.</p>
+
+<p>It is a rule which is manifestly wise, for it limits on ordinary
+occasions the hours of parliamentary work to a period within the
+strength of an average man. Parliamentary government has many dubious
+aspects, but it never appears worse than in the cases which may still
+sometimes be seen when a Government thinks fit to force through an
+important measure by all-night sittings, and when a weary and irritated
+House which has been sitting since three or four in the afternoon is
+called upon at a corresponding hour of the early morning to pronounce
+upon grave and difficult questions of principle, and to deal with the
+serious interests of large classes. The utter and most natural
+incapacity of the House at such an hour for sustained argument; its
+anxiety that each successive amendment should be despatched in five
+minutes; the readiness with which in that tired, feverish atmosphere,
+surprises and coalitions may be effected and solutions accepted, to
+which the House in its normal state would scarcely have listened, must
+be evident to every observer. Scenes of this kind are among the greatest
+scandals of Parliament, and the rule which makes them impossible except
+in the closing weeks of the Session has been one of the greatest
+improvements in modern parliamentary work. But its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> drawback is that it
+has greatly limited the possibility of private member legislation. It is
+in late and rapid sittings that most measures of this kind passed
+through their final stages, and since the twelve o'clock rule has been
+adopted a much smaller number of bills introduced by private members
+find their way to the statute book.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> O'Brien, <i>The Lawyer</i>, pp. 169, 170.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Dictionnaire de Cas de Conscience</i>, Art. 'Avocat;' Migne,
+<i>Encyclop&eacute;die Th&eacute;ologique</i>, i. serie, tome xviii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Revue de Droit International</i>, xxi. 615.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> See Sir James Stephen's <i>General View of the Criminal Law
+of England</i>, pp. 167, 168.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Phillips's defence of his own conduct will be found in a
+pamphlet called 'Correspondence of S. Warren and C. Phillips relating to
+the Courvoisier trial.' It has often been said that Phillips had
+asserted in his speech his full belief in the innocence of his client,
+but this is disproved by the statement of C. J. Tindal, who tried the
+case, and of Baron Parke, who sat on the bench. C. J. Denman also
+pronounced Phillips's speech to be unexceptionable. An able and
+interesting article on this case by Mr. Atlay will be found in the
+<i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, May, 1897.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> See these cases in Warren's <i>Social and Professional
+Duties of an Attorney</i>, pp. 128-133, 195, 196.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> See the admirable article by Lord Justice Bowen on 'The
+Administration of the Law' in Ward's <i>Reign of Queen Victoria</i>, vol. i.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p>It is obvious from the considerations that have been adduced in the last
+chapter that the moral limitations and conditions under which an
+ordinary member of Parliament is compelled to work are far from ideal.
+An upright man will try conscientiously, under these conditions, to do
+his best for the cause of honesty and for the benefit of his country,
+but he cannot essentially alter them, and they present many temptations
+and tend in many ways to blur the outlines separating good from evil. He
+will find himself practically pledged to support his party in measures
+which he has never seen and in policies that are not yet developed; to
+vote in some cases contrary to his genuine belief and in many cases
+without real knowledge; to act throughout his political career on many
+motives other than a reasoned conviction of the substantial merits of
+the question at issue.</p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt on the difficult questions which arise when the wishes of
+his constituents are at variance with his own genuine opinions. Another
+and a wider question is how far he is bound to make what he considers
+the interests of the nation his guiding light, and how far he should
+subordinate what he believes to be their interests to their prejudices
+and wishes. One of the first lessons that every active politician has to
+learn is that he is a trustee bound to act for men whose <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>opinions,
+aims, desires and ideals are often very different from his own. No man
+who holds the position of member of Parliament should divest himself of
+this consideration, though it applies to different classes of members in
+different degrees. A private member should not forget it, but at the
+same time, being elected primarily and specially to represent one
+particular element in the national life, he will concentrate his
+attention more exclusively on a narrow circle, though he has at the same
+time more latitude of expressing unpopular opinions and pushing unripe
+and unpopular causes than a member who is taking a large and official
+part in the government of the nation. The opposition front bench
+occupies a somewhat different position. They are the special and
+organised representatives of a particular party and its ideas, but the
+fact that they may be called upon at any time to undertake the
+government of the nation as a whole, and that even while in opposition
+they take a great part in moulding its general policy, imposes on them
+limitations and restrictions from which a mere private member is in a
+great degree exempt. When a party comes into power its position is again
+slightly altered. Its leaders are certainly not detached from the party
+policy they had advocated in opposition. One of the main objects of
+party is to incorporate certain political opinions and the interests of
+certain sections of the community in an organised body which will be a
+steady and permanent force in politics. It is by this means that
+political opinions are most likely to triumph; that class interests are
+most effectually protected. But a Government cannot govern merely in the
+interests of a party. It is a trustee for the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> nation, and one of
+its first duties is to ascertain and respect as far as possible the
+wishes as well as the interests of all sections.</p>
+
+<p>Concrete examples may perhaps show more clearly than abstract statements
+the kind of difficulties that I am describing. Take, for example, the
+large class of proposals for limiting the sale of strong drink by such
+methods as local veto or Sunday closing of public-houses. One class of
+politicians take up the position of uncompromising opponents of the
+drink trade. They argue that strong drink is beyond all question in
+England the chief source of the misery, the vice, the degradation of the
+poor; that it not only directly ruins tens of thousands, body and soul,
+but also brings a mass of wretchedness that it is difficult to overrate
+on their innocent families; that the drunkard's craving for drink often
+reproduces itself as an hereditary disease in his children; and that a
+legislator can have no higher object and no plainer duty than by all
+available means to put down the chief obstacle to the moral and material
+well-being of the people. The principle of compulsion, as they truly
+say, is more and more pervading all departments of industry. It is idle
+to contend that the State which, while prohibiting other forms of Sunday
+trading, gives a special privilege to the most pernicious of all, has
+not the right to limit or to withdraw it, and the legislature which
+levies vast sums upon the whole community for the maintenance of the
+police as well as for poor-houses, prisons and criminal administration,
+ought surely, in the interests of the whole community, to do all that is
+in its power to suppress the main cause of pauperism, disorder and
+crime.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>Another class of politicians approach the question from a wholly
+different point of view. They emphatically object to imposing upon
+grown-up men a system of moral restriction which is very properly
+imposed upon children. They contend that adult men who have assumed all
+the duties and responsibilities of life, and have even a voice in the
+government of the country, should regulate their own conduct, as far as
+they do not directly interfere with their neighbours, without legal
+restraint, bearing themselves the consequences of their mistakes or
+excesses. This, they say, is the first principle of freedom, the first
+condition in the formation of strong and manly characters. A poor man,
+who desires on his Sunday excursion to obtain moderate refreshment such
+as he likes for himself or his family, and who goes to the
+public-house&mdash;probably in most cases to meet his friends and discuss the
+village gossip over a glass of beer&mdash;is in no degree interfering with
+the liberty of his neighbours. He is doing nothing that is wrong;
+nothing that he has not a perfect right to do. No one denies the rich
+man access to his club on Sunday, and it should be remembered that the
+poor man has neither the private cellars nor the comfortable and roomy
+homes of the rich, and has infinitely fewer opportunities of recreation.
+Because some men abuse this right and are unable to drink alcohol in
+moderation, are all men to be prevented from drinking it at all, or at
+least from drinking it on Sunday? Because two men agree not to drink it,
+have they a right to impose the same obligation on an unwilling third?
+Have those who never enter a public-house, and by their position in life
+never need to enter it, a right, if they are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> in a majority, to close
+its doors against those who use it? On such grounds these politicians
+look with extreme disfavour on all this restrictive legislation as
+unjust, partial and inconsistent with freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Very few, however, would carry either set of arguments to their full
+logical consequences. Not many men who have had any practical experience
+in the management of men would advocate a complete suppression of the
+drink trade, and still fewer would put it on the basis of complete free
+trade, altogether exempt from special legislative restriction. To
+responsible politicians the course to be pursued will depend mainly on
+fluctuating conditions of public opinion. Restrictions will be imposed,
+but only when and as far as they are supported by a genuine public
+opinion. It must not be a mere majority, but a large majority; a steady
+majority; a genuine majority representing a real and earnest desire, and
+especially in the classes who are most directly affected; not a mere
+factitious majority such as is often created by skilful organisation and
+agitation; by the enthusiasm of the few confronting the indifference of
+the many. In free and democratic States one of the most necessary but
+also one of the most difficult arts of statesmanship is that of testing
+public opinion, discriminating between what is real, growing and
+permanent and what is transient, artificial and declining. As a French
+writer has said, 'The great art in politics consists not in hearing
+those who speak, but in hearing those who are silent.' On such questions
+as those I have mentioned we may find the same statesman without any
+real inconsistency supporting the same measures in one part of the
+kingdom and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> opposing them in another; supporting them at one time
+because public opinion runs strongly in their favour; opposing them at
+another because that public opinion has grown weak.</p>
+
+<p>One of the worst moral evils that grow up in democratic countries is the
+excessive tendency to time-serving and popularity hunting, and the
+danger is all the greater because in a certain sense both of these
+things are a necessity and even a duty. Their moral quality depends
+mainly on their motive. The question to be asked is whether a politician
+is acting from personal or merely party objects or from honourable
+public ones. Every statesman must form in his own mind a conception
+whether a prevailing tendency is favourable or opposed to the real
+interests of the country. It will depend upon this judgment whether he
+will endeavour to accelerate or retard it; whether he will yield slowly
+or readily to its pressure, and there are cases in which, at all hazards
+of popularity and influence, he should inexorably oppose it. But in the
+long run, under free governments, political systems and measures must be
+adjusted to the wishes of the various sections of the people, and this
+adjustment is the great work of statesmanship. In judging a proposed
+measure a statesman must continually ask himself whether the country is
+ripe for it&mdash;whether its introduction, however desirable it might be,
+would not be premature, as public opinion is not yet prepared for
+it?&mdash;whether, even though it be a bad measure, it is not on the whole
+better to vote for it, as the nation manifestly desires it?</p>
+
+<p>The same kind of reasoning applies to the difficult<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> question of
+education, and especially of religious education. Every one who is
+interested in the subject has his own conviction about the kind of
+education which is in itself the best for the people, and also the best
+for the Government to undertake. He may prefer that the State should
+confine itself to purely secular education, leaving all religious
+teaching to voluntary agencies; or he may approve of the kind of
+undenominational religious teaching of the English School Board; or he
+may be a strong partisan of one of the many forms of distinctly
+accentuated denominational education. But when he comes to act as a
+responsible legislator, he should feel that the question is not merely
+what <i>he</i> considers the best, but also what the parents of the children
+most desire. It is true that the authority of parents is not absolutely
+recognised. The conviction that certain things are essential to the
+children, and to the well-being and vigour of the State, and the
+conviction that parents are often by no means the best judges of this,
+make legislators, on some important subjects, override the wishes of the
+parents. The severe restrictions imposed on child labour; the
+measure&mdash;unhappily now greatly relaxed&mdash;providing for children's
+vaccination; and the legislation protecting children from ill treatment
+by their parents, are illustrations, and the most extensive and
+far-reaching of all exceptions is education. After much misgiving, both
+parties in the State have arrived at the conclusion that it is essential
+to the future of the children, and essential also to the maintenance of
+the relative position of England in the great competition of nations,
+that at least the rudiments of education should be made universal, and
+they are also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> convinced that this is one of the truths which perfectly
+ignorant parents are least competent to understand. Hence the system
+which of late years has so rapidly extended of compulsory education.</p>
+
+<p>Many nations have gone further, and have claimed for the State the right
+of prescribing absolutely the kind of education that should be
+permitted, or at least the kind of education which shall be exclusively
+supported by State funds. In England this is not the case. A great
+variety of forms of education corresponding to the wishes and opinions
+of different classes of parents receive assistance from the State,
+subject to the conditions of submitting to certain tests of educational
+efficiency, and to a conscience clause protecting minorities from
+interference with their faith.</p>
+
+<p>A case which once caused much moral heart-burning among good men was the
+endowment, by the State, of Maynooth College, which is absolutely under
+the control of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and intended to educate
+their Divinity students in the Roman Catholic faith. The endowment dated
+from the period of the old Irish Protestant Parliament; and when, on the
+Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it came to an end, it was replaced
+by a large capital grant from the Irish Church Fund, and it is upon the
+interest of that grant that the College is still supported. This grant
+was denounced by many excellent men on the ground that the State was
+Protestant; that it had a definite religious belief upon which it was
+bound in conscience to act; and that it was a sinful apostasy to endow
+out of the public purse the teaching of what all Protestants believe to
+be superstition, and what many Protestants believe to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> be idolatrous and
+soul-destroying error. The strength of this kind of feeling in England
+is shown by the extreme difficulty there has been in persuading public
+opinion to acquiesce in any form of that concurrent endowment of
+religions which exists so widely and works so well upon the Continent.</p>
+
+<p>Many, again, who have no objection to the policy of assisting by State
+subsidies the theological education of the priests are of opinion that
+it is extremely injurious both to the State and to the young that the
+secular education&mdash;and especially the higher secular education&mdash;of the
+Irish Catholic population should be placed under their complete control,
+and that, through their influence, the Irish Catholics should be
+strictly separated during the period of their education from their
+fellow-countrymen of other religions. No belief, in my own opinion, is
+better founded than this. If, however, those who hold it find that there
+is a great body of Catholic parents who persistently desire this control
+and separation; who will not be satisfied with any removal of
+disabilities and sectarian influence in systems of common education; who
+object to all mixed and undenominational education on the ground that
+their priests have condemned it, and that they are bound in conscience
+to follow the orders of their priests, and who are in consequence
+withholding from their children the education they would otherwise have
+given them, such men will in my opinion be quite justified in modifying
+their policy. As a matter of expediency they will argue that it is
+better that these Catholics should receive an indifferent university
+education than none at all; and that it is exceedingly desirable that
+what is felt to be a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>grievance by many honest, upright and loyal men
+should be removed. As a matter of principle, they contend that in a
+country where higher education is largely and variously endowed from
+public sources, it is a real grievance that there should be one large
+body of the people who can derive little or no benefit from those
+endowments. It is no sufficient answer to say that the objection of the
+Catholic parents is in most cases not spontaneous, but is due to the
+orders of their priests, since we are dealing with men who believe it to
+be a matter of conscience on such questions to obey their priests. Nor
+is it, I think, sufficient to argue&mdash;as very many enlightened men will
+do&mdash;that everything that could be in the smallest degree repugnant to
+the faith of a Catholic has been eliminated from the education which is
+imposed on them in existing universities; that every post of honour,
+emolument and power has been thrown open to them; that for generations
+they gladly followed the courses of Dublin University, and are even now
+permitted by their ecclesiastics to follow those of Oxford and
+Cambridge; that, the nation having adopted the broad principle of
+unsectarian education open to all, no single sect has a right to
+exceptional treatment, though every sect has an undoubted right to set
+up at its own expense such education as it pleases. The answer is that
+the objection of a certain class of Roman Catholics in Ireland is not to
+any abuses that may take place under the system of mixed and
+undenominational education, but to the system itself, and that the
+particular type of education of which alone one considerable class of
+taxpayers can conscientiously avail themselves has only been set up by
+voluntary effort, and is only inadequately and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>indirectly endowed by
+the State.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England have
+come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion in Ireland
+is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as the trend of
+Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of
+undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education
+of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant
+one. Primary education has become almost absolutely denominational, and,
+directly or indirectly, a crowd of endowments are given to exclusively
+Catholic institutions. On such grounds, many who entertain the strongest
+antipathy to the priestly control of higher education are prepared to
+advocate an increased endowment of some university or college which is
+distinctly sacerdotal, while strenuously upholding side by side with it
+the undenominational institutions which they believe to be incomparably
+better, and which are at present resorted to not only by all
+Protestants, but also by a not inconsiderable body of Irish Catholics.</p>
+
+<p>Many of my readers will probably come to an opposite conclusion on this
+very difficult question. The object of what I have written is simply to
+show the process by which a politician may conscientiously advocate the
+establishment and endowment of a thing which he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>believes to be
+intrinsically bad. It is said to have been a saying of Sir Robert
+Inglis&mdash;an excellent representative of an old school of extreme but most
+conscientious Toryism&mdash;that 'he would never vote one penny of public
+money for any purpose which he did not think right and good.' The
+impossibility of carrying out such a principle must be obvious to any
+one who has truly grasped the nature of representative government and
+the duty of a member of Parliament to act as a trustee for all classes
+in the community. In the exercise of this function every conscientious
+member is obliged continually to vote money for purposes which he
+dislikes. In the particular instance I have just given, the process of
+reasoning I have described is purely disinterested, but of course it is
+not by such a process of pure reasoning that such a question will be
+determined. English and Scotch members will have to consider the effects
+of their vote on their own constituencies, where there are generally
+large sections of electors with very little knowledge of the special
+circumstances of Irish education, but very strong feelings about the
+Roman Catholic Church. Statesmen will have to consider the ulterior and
+various ways in which their policy may affect the whole social and
+political condition of Ireland, while the overwhelming majority of the
+Irish members are elected by small farmers and agricultural labourers
+who could never avail themselves of University education, and who on all
+matters relating to education act blindly at the dictation of their
+priests.</p>
+
+<p>Inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties
+as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it. It would lead
+me too far in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> book in which the moral difficulties of politics form
+only one subdivision, to enter into the history of English parties; but
+those who will do so will easily convince themselves that there is
+hardly a principle of political action that has not in party history
+been abandoned, and that not unfrequently parties have come to advocate
+at one period of their history the very measures which at another period
+they most strenuously resisted. Changed circumstances, the growth or
+decline of intellectual tendencies, party strategy, individual
+influence, have all contributed to these mutations, and most of them
+have been due to very blended motives of patriotism and self-interest.</p>
+
+<p>In judging the moral quality of the changes of party leaders, the
+element of time will usually be of capital importance. Violent and
+sudden reversals of policy are never effected by a party without a great
+loss of moral weight; though there are circumstances under which they
+have been imperatively required. No one will now dispute the integrity
+of the motives that induced the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel
+to carry Catholic Emancipation in 1829, when the Clare election had
+brought Ireland to the verge of revolution; and the conduct of Sir
+Robert Peel in carrying the repeal of the Corn Laws was certainly not
+due to any motive either of personal or party ambition, though it may be
+urged with force that at a time when he was still the leader of the
+Protectionist party his mind had been manifestly moving in the direction
+of Free trade, and that the Irish famine, though not a mere pretext, was
+not wholly the cause of the surrender. In each of these cases a ministry
+pledged to resist a particular <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>measure introduced and carried it, and
+did so without any appeal to the electors. The justification was that
+the measure in their eyes had become absolutely necessary to the public
+welfare, and that the condition of politics made it impossible for them
+either to carry it by a dissolution or to resign the task into other
+hands. Had Sir Robert Peel either resigned office or dissolved
+Parliament after the Clare election in 1828, it is highly probable that
+the measure of Catholic Emancipation could not have been carried, and
+its postponement, in his belief, would have thrown Ireland into a
+dangerous rebellion. Few greater misfortunes have befallen party
+government than the failure of the Whigs to form a ministry in 1845. Had
+they done so the abolition of the Corn Laws would have been carried by
+statesmen who were in some measure supported by the Free-trade party,
+and not by statesmen who had obtained their power as the special
+representatives of the agricultural interests.</p>
+
+<p>Another case which in a party point of view was more successful, but
+which should in my opinion be much more severely judged, was the Reform
+Bill of 1867. The Conservative party, under the guidance of Mr.
+Disraeli, defeated Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill mainly on the ground that
+it was an excessive step in the direction of Democracy. The victory
+placed them in office, and they then declared that, as the question had
+been raised, they must deal with it themselves. They introduced a bill
+carrying the suffrage to a much lower point than that which the late
+Government had proposed, but they surrounded it with a number of
+provisions securing additional representation for particular classes and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>interests which would have materially modified its democratic
+character.</p>
+
+<p>But for these safeguarding provisions the party would certainly not have
+tolerated the introduction of such a measure, yet in the face of
+opposition their leader dropped them one by one as of no capital
+importance, and, by a leadership which was a masterpiece of unscrupulous
+adroitness, succeeded in inducing his party to carry a measure far more
+democratic than that which they had a few months before denounced and
+defeated. It was argued that the question must be settled; that it must
+be placed on a permanent and lasting basis; that it must no longer be
+suffered to be a weapon in the hands of the Whigs, and that the Tory
+Reform Bill, though it was acknowledged to be a 'leap in the dark,' had
+at least the result of 'dishing the Whigs.' There is little doubt that
+it was in accordance with the genuine convictions of Disraeli. He
+belonged to a school of politics of which Bolingbroke, Carteret and
+Shelburne, and, in some periods of his career, Chatham, were earlier
+representatives who had no real sympathy with the preponderance of the
+aristocratic element in the old Tory party, who had a decided
+disposition to appeal frankly to democratic support, and who believed
+that a strong executive resting on a broad democratic basis was the true
+future of Toryism. He anticipated to a remarkable degree the school of
+political thought which has triumphed in our own day, though he did not
+live to witness its triumph. At the same time it cannot be denied that
+the Reform Bill of 1867 in the form in which it was ultimately carried
+was as far as possible from the wishes and policy of his party in the
+beginning of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> session, and as inconsistent as any policy could be
+with their language and conduct in the session that preceded it.</p>
+
+<p>A parliamentary government chosen on the party system is, as we have
+seen, at once the trustee of the whole nation, bound as such to make the
+welfare of the whole its supreme end, and also the special
+representative of particular classes, the special guardian of their
+interests, aims, wishes, and principles. The two points of view are not
+the same, and grave difficulties, both ethical and political, have often
+to be encountered in endeavouring to harmonise them. It is, of course,
+not true that a party object is merely a matter of place or power, and
+naturally a different thing from a patriotic object. The very meaning of
+party is that public men consider certain principles of government,
+certain lines of policy, the protection and development of particular
+interests, of capital importance to the nation, and they are therefore
+on purely public grounds fully justified in making it a main object to
+place the government of the country in the hands of their party. The
+importance, however, of maintaining a particular party in power varies
+greatly. In many, probably in most, periods of English history a change
+of government means no violent or far-reaching alteration in policy. It
+means only that one set of tendencies in legislation will for a time be
+somewhat relaxed, and another set somewhat intensified; that the
+interests of one class will be somewhat more and those of another class
+somewhat less attended to; that the rate of progress or change will be
+slightly accelerated or retarded. Sometimes it means even less than
+this. Opinions on the two front benches are so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> nearly assimilated that
+a change of government principally means the removal for a time from
+office of ministers who have made some isolated administrative blunders
+or incurred some individual unpopularity quite apart from their party
+politics. It means that ministers who are jaded and somewhat worn out by
+several years' continuous work, and of whom the country had grown tired,
+are replaced by men who can bring fresher minds and energies to the
+task; that patronage in all its branches having for some years gone
+mainly to one party, the other party are now to have their turn. There
+are periods when the country is well satisfied with the general policy
+of a government but not with the men who carry it on. Ministers of
+excellent principles prove inefficient, tactless, or unfortunate, or
+quarrels and jealousies arise among them, or difficult negotiations are
+going on with foreign nations which can be best brought to a successful
+termination if they are placed in the hands of fresh men, unpledged and
+unentangled by their past. The country wants a change of government but
+not a change of policy, and under such circumstances the task of a
+victorious opposition is much less to march in new directions than to
+mark time, to carry on the affairs of the nation on the same lines, but
+with greater administrative skill. In such periods the importance of
+party objects is much diminished and a policy which is intended merely
+to keep a party in power should be severely condemned.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, however, it happens that a party has committed itself to a
+particular measure which its opponents believe to be in a high degree
+dangerous or even ruinous to the country. In that case it becomes a
+matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> of supreme importance to keep this party out of office, or, if
+they are in office, to keep them in a position of permanent debility
+till this dangerous project is abandoned. Under such circumstances
+statesmen are justified in carrying party objects and purely party
+legislation much further than in other periods. To strengthen their own
+party; to gain for it the largest amount of popularity; to win the
+support of different factions of the House of Commons, become a great
+public object; and, in order to carry it out, sacrifices of policy and
+in some degree of principle, the acceptance of measures which the party
+had once opposed, and the adjournment or abandonment of measures to
+which it had been pledged, which would once have been very properly
+condemned, become justifiable. The supreme interest of the State is the
+end and the justification of their policy, and alliances are formed
+which under less pressing circumstances would have been impossible, and
+which, once established, sometimes profoundly change the permanent
+character of party politics. Here, as in nearly all political matters,
+an attention to proportion and degree, the sacrifice of the less for the
+attainment of the greater, mark the path both of wisdom and of duty.</p>
+
+<p>The temptations of party politicians are of many kinds and vary greatly
+with different stages of political development. The worst is the
+temptation to war. War undertaken without necessity, or at least without
+serious justification, is, according to all sound ethics, the gravest of
+crimes, and among its causes motives of the kind I have indicated may be
+often detected. Many wars have been begun or have been prolonged in
+order to consolidate a dynasty or a party; in order to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> give it
+popularity or at least to save it from unpopularity; in order to divert
+the minds of men from internal questions which had become dangerous or
+embarrassing, or to efface the memory of past quarrels, mistakes or
+crimes.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Experience unfortunately shows only too clearly how easily
+the combative passions of nations can be aroused and how much popularity
+may be gained by a successful war. Even in this case, it is true, war
+usually impoverishes the country that wages it, but there are large
+classes to whom it is by no means a calamity. The high level of
+agricultural prices; the brilliant careers opened to the military and
+naval professions; the many special industries which are immediately
+stimulated; the rise in the rate of interest; the opportunities of
+wealth that spring from violent fluctuations on the Stock Exchange; even
+the increased attractiveness of the newspapers,&mdash;all tend to give
+particular classes an interest in its continuance. Sometimes it is
+closely connected with party sympathies. During the French wars of Anne,
+the facts that Marlborough was a Whig, and that the Elector of Hanover,
+who was the hope of the Whig party, was in favour of the war,
+contributed very materially to retard the peace. A state of great
+internal disquietude is often a temptation to war, not because it leads
+to it directly, but because rulers find a foreign war the best means of
+turning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> dangerous and disturbing energies into new channels, and at the
+same time of strengthening the military and authoritative elements in
+the community. The successful transformation of the anarchy of the great
+French Revolution into a career of conquest is a typical example.</p>
+
+<p>In aristocratic governments such as existed in England during the
+eighteenth century, temptations to corruption were especially strong. To
+build up a vast system of parliamentary influence by rotten boroughs,
+and, by systematically bestowing honours on those who could control
+them, to win the support of great corporations and professions by
+furthering their interests and abstaining from all efforts to reform
+them, was a chief part of the statecraft of the time. Class privileges
+in many forms were created, extended and maintained, and in some
+countries&mdash;though much less in England than on the Continent&mdash;the burden
+of taxation was most inequitably distributed, falling mainly on the
+poor.</p>
+
+<p>In democratic governments the temptations are of a different kind.
+Popularity is there the chief source of power, and the supreme tribunal
+consists of numbers counted by the head. The well-being of the great
+mass of the people is the true end of politics, but it does not
+necessarily follow that the opinion of the least instructed majority is
+the best guide to obtaining it. In dwelling upon the temptations of
+politicians under such a system I do not now refer merely to the
+unscrupulous agitator or demagogue who seeks power, notoriety or
+popularity by exciting class envies and animosities, by setting the poor
+against the rich and preaching the gospel of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>public plunder; nor would
+I dilate upon the methods so largely employed in the United States of
+accumulating, by skilfully devised electoral machinery, great masses of
+voting power drawn from the most ignorant voters, and making use of them
+for purposes of corruption. I would dwell rather on the bias which
+almost inevitably obliges the party leader to measure legislation mainly
+by its immediate popularity, and its consequent success in adding to his
+voting strength. In some countries this tendency shows itself in lavish
+expenditure on public works which provide employment for great masses of
+workmen and give a great immediate popularity in a constituency, leaving
+to posterity a heavy burden of accumulated debt. Much of the financial
+embarrassment of Europe is due to this source, and in most countries
+extravagance in government expenditure is more popular than economy.
+Sometimes it shows itself in a legislation which regards only proximate
+or immediate effects, and wholly neglects those which are distant and
+obscure. A far-sighted policy sacrificing the present to a distant
+future becomes more difficult; measures involving new principles, but
+meeting present embarrassments or securing immediate popularity, are
+started with little consideration for the precedents they are
+establishing and for the more extensive changes that may follow in their
+train. The conditions of labour are altered for the benefit of the
+existing workmen, perhaps at the cost of diverting capital from some
+great form of industry, making it impossible to resist foreign
+competition, and thus in the long run restricting employment and
+seriously injuring the very class who were to have been benefited.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>When one party has introduced a measure of this kind the other is under
+the strongest temptation to outbid it, and under the stress of
+competition and through the fear of being distanced in the race of
+popularity both parties often end by going much further than either had
+originally intended. When the rights of the few are opposed to the
+interests of the many there is a constant tendency to prefer the latter.
+It may be that the few are those who have built up an industry; who have
+borne all the risk and cost, who have by far the largest interest in its
+success. The mere fact that they are the few determines the bias of the
+legislators. There is a constant disposition to tamper with even clearly
+defined and guaranteed rights if by doing so some large class of voters
+can be conciliated.</p>
+
+<p>Parliamentary life has many merits, but it has a manifest tendency to
+encourage short views. The immediate party interest becomes so absorbing
+that men find it difficult to look greatly beyond it. The desire of a
+skilful debater to use the topics that will most influence the audience
+before him, or the desire of a party leader to pursue the course most
+likely to be successful in an immediately impending contest, will often
+override all other considerations, and the whole tendency of
+parliamentary life is to concentrate attention on landmarks which are
+not very distant, thinking little of what is beyond.</p>
+
+<p>One great cause of the inconsistency of parties lies in the absolute
+necessity of assimilating legislation. Many, for example, are of opinion
+that the existing tendency to introduce government regulations and
+interferences into all departments is at least greatly exaggerated, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+that it would be far better if a larger sphere were left to individual
+action and free contract. But if large departments of industry have been
+brought under the system of regulation, it is practically impossible to
+leave analogous industries under a different system, and the men who
+most dislike the tendency are often themselves obliged to extend it.
+They cannot resist the contention that certain legislative protections
+or other special favours have been granted to one class of workmen, and
+that there is no real ground for distinguishing their case from that of
+others. The dominant tendency will thus naturally extend itself, and
+every considerable legislative movement carries others irresistibly in
+its train.</p>
+
+<p>The pressure of this consideration is most painfully felt in the case of
+legislation which appears not simply inexpedient and unwise, but
+distinctly dishonest. In legislation relating to contracts there is a
+clear ethical distinction to be drawn. It is fully within the moral
+right of legislators to regulate the conditions of future contracts. It
+is a very different thing to break existing contracts, or to take the
+still more extreme step of altering their conditions to the benefit of
+one party without the assent of the other, leaving that other party
+bound by their restrictions.</p>
+
+<p>In the American Constitution there is a special clause making it
+impossible for any State to pass any law violating contracts. In
+England, unfortunately, no such provision exists. The most glaring and
+undoubted instance of this kind is to be found in the Irish land
+legislation which was begun by the Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, but which
+has been largely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>extended by the party that originally most strenuously
+opposed it. Much may no doubt be said to palliate it: agricultural
+depression; the excessive demand for land; the fact that improvements
+were in Ireland usually made by the tenants (who, however, were
+perfectly aware of the conditions under which they made them, and whose
+rents were proportionately lower); the prevalence in some parts of
+Ireland of land customs unsanctioned by law; the existence of a great
+revolutionary movement which had brought the country into a condition of
+disgraceful anarchy. But when all this has been admitted, it remains
+indisputable to every clear and honest mind that English law has taken
+away without compensation unquestionably legal property and broken
+unquestionably legal contracts. A landlord placed a tenant on his farm
+on a yearly tenancy, but if he desired to exercise his plain legal right
+of resuming it at the termination of the year, he was compelled to pay a
+compensation 'for disturbance,' which might amount to seven times the
+yearly rent. A landlord let his land to a farmer for a longer period
+under a clear written contract bearing the government stamp, and this
+contract defined the rent to be paid, the conditions under which the
+farm was to be held, and the number of years during which it was to be
+alienated from its owner. The fundamental clause of the lease distinctly
+stipulated that at the end of the assigned term the tenant must hand
+back that farm to the owner from whom he received it. The law has
+interposed, and determined that the rent which this farmer had
+undertaken to pay shall be reduced by a government tribunal without the
+assent of the owner, and without giving the owner the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> option of
+dissolving the contract and seeking a new tenant. It has gone further,
+and provided that at the termination of the lease the tenant shall not
+hand back the land to the owner according to the terms of his contract,
+but shall remain for all future time the occupier, subject only to a
+rent fixed and periodically revised, irrespective of the wishes of the
+landlord, by an independent tribunal. Vast masses of property in Ireland
+had been sold under the Incumbered Estates Act by a government tribunal
+acting as the representative of the Imperial Parliament, and each
+purchaser obtained from this tribunal a parliamentary title making him
+absolute owner of the soil and of every building upon it, subject only
+to the existing tenancies in the schedule. No accounts of the earlier
+history of the property were handed to him, for except under the terms
+of the leases which had not yet expired he had no liability for anything
+in the past. The title he received was deemed so indefeasible that in
+one memorable case, where by mistake a portion of the property of one
+man had been included in the sale of the property of another man, the
+Court of Appeal decided that the injustice could not be remedied, as it
+was impossible, except in the case of intentional fraud, to go behind
+parliamentary titles.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> In cases in which the land was let at low
+rents, and in cases where tenants held under leases which would soon
+expire, the facility of raising the rents was constantly specified by
+the authority of the Court as an inducement to purchasers.</p>
+
+<p>What has become of this parliamentary title? <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>Improvements, if they had
+been made, or were presumed to have been made by tenants anterior to the
+sale, have ceased to be the property of the purchaser, and he has at the
+same time been deprived of some of the plainest and most inseparable
+rights of property. He has lost the power of disposing of his farms in
+the open market, of regulating the terms and conditions on which he lets
+them, of removing a tenant whom he considers unsuitable, of taking the
+land back into his own hands when the specified term of a tenancy had
+expired, of availing himself of the enhanced value which a war or a
+period of great prosperity, or some other exceptional circumstance, may
+have given to his property. He has become a simple rent-charger on the
+land which by inheritance or purchase was incontestably his own, and the
+amount of his rent-charge is settled and periodically revised by a
+tribunal in which he has no voice, and which has been given an absolute
+power over his estate. He bought or inherited an exclusive right. The
+law has turned it into a dual ownership. A tenant right which, when he
+obtained his property, was wholly unknown to the law, and was only
+generally recognised by custom in one province, has been carved out of
+it. The tenant who happened to be in occupation when the law was passed
+can, without the consent of the owner, sell to another the right of
+occupying the farm at the existing rent. In numerous cases this tenant
+right is more valuable than the fee simple of the farm. In many cases a
+farmer who had eagerly begged to be a tenant at a specified rent has
+afterwards gone into the land court and had that rent reduced, and has
+then proceeded to sell the tenant right for a sum much more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> than
+equivalent to the difference between the two rents. In many cases this
+has happened where there could be no possible question of improvements
+by the tenant. The tenant right of the smaller farms has steadily risen
+in proportion as the rent has been reduced. In many cases, no doubt, the
+excessive price of tenant right may be attributed to the land hunger or
+passion for land speculation so common in Ireland, or to some
+exceptional cause inducing a farmer to give an extravagant price for the
+tenant right of a particular farm. But although in such instances the
+price of tenant right is a deceptive test, the movement, when it is a
+general one, is a clear proof that the reduction of rent did not
+represent an equivalent decline in the marketable value of the land, but
+was simply a gratuitous transfer, by the State, of property from one
+person to another. Having in the first place turned the exclusive
+ownership of the landlord into a simple partnership, the tribunal
+proceeded, in defiance of all equity, to throw the whole burden of the
+agricultural depression on one of the two partners. The law did, it is
+true, reserve to the landlord the right of pre-emption, or in other
+words the right of purchasing the tenant right when it was for sale, at
+a price to be determined by the Court, and thus becoming once more the
+absolute owner of his farm. The sum specified by the Court was usually
+about sixteen years' purchase of the judicial rent. By the payment of
+this large sum he may regain the property which a few years ago was
+incontestably his own, which was held by him under the most secure title
+known to English law, and which was taken from him, not by any process
+of honest purchase, but by an act of simple legislative confiscation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p><p>Whatever palliations of expediency may be alleged, the true nature of
+this legislation cannot reasonably be questioned, and it has established
+a precedent which is certain to grow. The point, however, on which I
+would especially dwell is that the very party which most strongly
+opposed it, and which most clearly exposed its gross and essential
+dishonesty, have found themselves, or believed themselves to be, bound
+not only to accept it but to extend it. They have contended that, as a
+matter of practical politics, it is impossible to grant such privileges
+to one class of agricultural tenants and to withhold it from others. The
+chief pretext for this legislation in its first stages was that it was
+for the benefit of very poor tenants who were incapable of making their
+own bargains, and that the fixity of tenure which the law gave to yearly
+tenants as long as they paid their rents had been very generally
+voluntarily given them by good landlords. But the measure was soon
+extended by a Unionist government to the leaseholders, who are the
+largest and most independent class of farmers, and who held their land
+for a definite time and under a distinct written contract. It is in
+truth much more the shrewder and wealthier farmers than the poor and
+helpless ones that this legislation has chiefly benefited.</p>
+
+<p>Instances of this kind, in which strong expediency or an absolute
+political necessity is in apparent conflict with elementary principles
+of right and wrong, are among the most difficult with which a politician
+has to deal. He must govern the country and preserve it in a condition
+of tolerable order, and he sometimes persuades himself that without a
+capitulation to anarchy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> without attacks on property and violations of
+contract, this is impossible. Whether the necessity is as absolute or
+the expediency as rightly calculated as he supposed, may indeed be open
+to much question, but there can be no doubt that most of the English
+statesmen who carried the Irish agrarian legislation sincerely believed
+it, and some of them imagined that they were giving a security and
+finality to the property which was left, that would indemnify the
+plundered landlords. Perhaps, under such circumstances, the most that
+can be said is that wise legislators will endeavour, by encouraging
+purchase on a large scale, gradually to restore the absolute ownership
+and the validity of contract which have been destroyed, and at the same
+time to compensate indirectly&mdash;if they cannot do it directly&mdash;the former
+owners for that portion of their losses which is not due to merely
+economical causes, but to acts of the legislature that were plainly
+fraudulent.</p>
+
+<p>There are other temptations of a different kind with which party leaders
+have to deal. One of the most serious is the tendency to force questions
+for which there is no genuine desire, in order to restore the unity or
+the zeal of a divided or dispirited party. As all politicians know, the
+desire for an attractive programme and a popular election cry is one of
+the strongest in politics, and, as they also know well, there is such a
+thing as manufactured public opinion and artificially stimulated
+agitation. Questions are raised and pushed, not because they are for the
+advantage of the country, but simply for the purposes of party. The
+leaders have often little or no power of resistance. The pressure of
+their followers, or of a section of their followers, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>becomes
+irresistible; ill-considered hopes are held out; rash pledges are
+extorted, and the party as a whole is committed. Much premature and
+mischievous legislation may be traced to such causes.</p>
+
+<p>Another very difficult question is the manner in which governments
+should deal with the acts of public servants which are intended for the
+public service, but which in some of their parts are morally
+indefensible. Very few of the great acquisitions of nations have been
+made by means that were absolutely blameless, and in a great empire
+which has to deal with uncivilised or semi-civilised populations acts of
+violence are certain to be not infrequent. Neither in our judgments of
+history nor in our judgments of contemporaries is it possible to apply
+the full stringency of private morals to the cases of men acting in
+posts of great responsibility and danger amid the storms of revolution,
+or panic, or civil war. With the vast interests confided to their care,
+and the terrible dangers that surround them, measures must often be
+taken which cannot be wholly or at least legally justified. On the other
+hand, men in such circumstances are only too ready to accept the
+principle of Macchiavelli and of Napoleon, and to treat politics as if
+they had absolutely no connection with morals.</p>
+
+<p>Cases of this kind must be considered separately and with a careful
+examination of the motives of the actor and of the magnitude of the
+dangers he had to encounter. Allowances must be made for the moral
+atmosphere in which he moved, and his career must be considered as a
+whole, and not only in its peccant parts. In the trial of Warren
+Hastings, and in the judgments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> which historians have passed on the
+lives of the other great adventurers who have built up the Empire,
+questions of this kind continually arise.</p>
+
+<p>In our own day also they have been very frequent. The <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> of
+the 2nd of December, 1851, is an extreme example. Louis Napoleon had
+sworn to observe and to defend the Constitution of the French Republic,
+which had been established in 1848, and that Constitution, among other
+articles, pronounced the persons of the representatives of the people to
+be inviolable; declared every act of the President which dissolved the
+Assembly or prorogued it, or in any way trammelled it in the exercise of
+its functions, to be high treason, and guaranteed the fullest liberty of
+writing and discussion. 'The oath which I have just taken,' said the
+President, addressing the Assembly, 'commands my future conduct. My duty
+is clear; I will fulfil it as a man of honour. I shall regard as enemies
+of the country all those who endeavour to change by illegal means what
+all France has established.' In more than one subsequent speech he
+reiterated the same sentiments and endeavoured to persuade the country
+that under no possible circumstances would he break his oath or violate
+his conscience, or overstep the limits of his constitutional powers.</p>
+
+<p>What he did is well known. Before daybreak on December 2, some of the
+most eminent statesmen in France, including eighteen members of the
+Chamber, were, by his orders, arrested in their beds and sent to prison,
+and many of them afterwards to exile. The Chamber was occupied by
+soldiers, and its members, who assembled in another place, were marched
+to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>prison. The High Court of Justice was dissolved by force. Martial
+law was proclaimed. Orders were given that all who resisted the
+usurpation in the streets were at once, and without trial, to be shot.
+All liberty of the press, all liberty of public meeting or discussion,
+were absolutely destroyed. About one hundred newspapers were suppressed
+and great numbers of their editors transported to Cayenne. Nothing was
+allowed to be published without Government authority. In order to
+deceive the people as to the amount of support behind the President, a
+'Consultative Commission' was announced and the names were placarded in
+Paris. Fully half the persons whose names were placed on this list
+refused to serve, but in spite of their protests their names were kept
+there in order that they might appear to have approved of what was
+done.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> Orders were issued immediately after the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> that
+every public functionary who did not instantly give in writing his
+adhesion to the new Government should be dismissed. The Pr&eacute;fets were
+given the right to arrest in their departments whoever they pleased. By
+an <i>ex post facto</i> decree, issued on December 8, the Executive were
+enabled without trial to send to Cayenne, or to the penal settlements in
+Africa, any persons who had in any past time belonged to a 'secret
+society,' and this order placed all the numerous members of political
+clubs at the mercy of the Government. Parliament, when it was suffered
+to reassemble, was so organised and shackled that every vestige of free
+discussion for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> many years disappeared, and a despotism of almost
+Asiatic severity was established in France.</p>
+
+<p>It may be fully conceded that the tragedy of December 4, when for more
+than a quarter of an hour some 3,000 French soldiers deliberately fired
+volley after volley without return upon the unoffending spectators on
+the Boulevards, broke into the houses and killed multitudes, not only of
+men but of women and children, till the Boulevards, in the words of an
+English eye-witness, were 'at some points a perfect shambles,' and the
+blood lay in pools round the trees that fringed them, was not ordered by
+the President, though it remained absolutely unpunished and uncensured
+by him. There is conflicting evidence on this point, but it is probable
+that some stray shots had been fired from the houses, and it is certain
+that a wild and sanguinary panic had fallen upon the soldiers. It is
+possible too, and not improbable, that the stories so generally believed
+in Paris that large batches of prisoners, who had been arrested, were
+brought out of prison in the dead hours of the night and deliberately
+shot by bodies of soldiers, may have been exaggerated or untrue. Maupas,
+who was Pr&eacute;fet of Police, and who must have known the truth, positively
+denied it; but the question what credence should be attached to a man of
+his antecedents who boasted that he had been from the first a leading
+agent in the whole conspiracy may be reasonably asked.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> Evidence of
+these things, as has been truly said, could scarcely be obtained, for
+the press was absolutely gagged and all possibility of investigation was
+prevented. For the number of those who were transported or forcibly
+expelled within the few weeks after December 2, we may perhaps rely upon
+the historian and panegyrist of the Empire. He computes them at the
+enormous number of 26,500.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> After the Pl&eacute;biscite new measures of
+proscription were taken, and, according to &Eacute;mile Ollivier, one of the
+most enthusiastic and skilful eulogists of the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i>, in the
+first months of 1852 there were from 15,000 to 20,000 political
+prisoners in the French prisons.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> It was by such means that Louis
+Napoleon attained the empire which had been the dream of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Like many, however, of the great crimes of history, this was not without
+its palliations, and a more detailed investigation will show that those
+palliations were not inconsiderable. Napoleon had been elected to the
+presidency by 5,434,226 votes out of 7,317,344 which were given, and
+with his name, his antecedents, and his well-known aspirations, this
+overwhelming majority clearly showed what were the real wishes of the
+people. His power rested on universal suffrage; it was independent of
+the Chamber. It gave him the direction of the army, though he could not
+command it in person, and from the very beginning he assumed an
+independent and almost regal position. In the first review that took
+place after his election he was greeted by the soldiers with cries of
+'Vive Napol&eacute;on! Vive <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>l'Empereur!' It was soon proved that the
+Constitution of 1848 was exceedingly unworkable. In the words of Lord
+Palmerston: 'There were two great powers, each deriving its existence
+from the same source, almost sure to disagree, but with no umpire to
+decide between them, and neither able by any legal means to get rid of
+the other.' The President could not dissolve the Chamber, but he could
+impose upon it any ministry he chose. He was himself elected for only
+four years, and he could not be re-elected, while by a most fatuous
+provision the powers of the President and the Chamber were to expire in
+1852 at the same time, leaving France without a government and exposed
+to the gravest danger of anarchy.</p>
+
+<p>The Legislative Assembly, which was elected in May, 1849, was, it is
+true, far from being a revolutionary one. It contained a minority of
+desperate Socialists, it was broken into many factions, and like most
+democratic French Chambers it showed much weakness and inconsistency;
+but the vast majority of its members were Conservatives who had no kind
+of sympathy with revolution, and its conduct towards the President, if
+fairly judged, was on the whole very moderate. He soon treated it with
+contempt, and it was quite evident that there was no national enthusiasm
+behind it. The Socialist party was growing rapidly in the great towns;
+in June, 1849, there was an abortive Socialist insurrection in Paris,
+and a somewhat more formidable one at Lyons. They were easily put down,
+but the Socialists captured a great part of the representation of Paris,
+and they succeeded in producing a wild panic throughout the country. It
+led to several reactionary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>measures, the most important being a law
+which by imposing new conditions of residence very considerably limited
+the suffrage. This law was presented to the Chamber by the Ministers of
+the President and with his assent, though he subsequently demanded the
+reestablishment of universal suffrage, and made a decree effecting this
+one of the chief justifications of his <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i>. The restrictive
+law was carried through the Chamber on May 31, 1850, by an immense
+majority, but it was denounced with great eloquence by some of its
+leading members, and it added seriously to the unpopularity of the
+Assembly, and greatly lowered its authority in contending with a
+President whose authority rested on direct universal suffrage. More than
+once he exercised his power of dismissing and appointing ministries
+absolutely irrespective of its votes and wishes, and in each case in
+order to fill all posts of power with creatures of his own. The
+newspapers supporting him continually inveighed against the Chamber, and
+dwelt upon the danger of anarchy to which France would be exposed in
+1852 and upon the absolute necessity of 'a Saviour of Society.' In
+repeated journeys through France, and in more than one military review,
+the President gave the occasion of demonstrations in which the cries of
+'Vive l'Empereur!' were often heard, and which were manifestly intended
+to strengthen him in his conflict with the Chamber.</p>
+
+<p>The man from whom he had most to fear was Changarnier, who since the
+close of 1848 had been commander of the troops in Paris, and whose name,
+though far less popular than that of Napoleon, had much weight with the
+army. He was a man with strong leanings to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> authority, and was much
+courted by the monarchical parties, but was for some time in decided
+sympathy with Napoleon, from whom, however, in spite of large offers
+that had been made him, he gradually diverged. He issued peremptory
+orders to the troops under his command, forbidding all party cries at
+reviews. He declared in the Chamber that these cries had been 'not only
+encouraged but provoked,' and when the intention of the President to
+prolong his presidency became apparent, he assured Odilon Barrot that he
+was prepared, if ordered by the minister and authorised by the President
+of the Chamber, to anticipate the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> by seizing and
+imprisoning Louis Napoleon.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> The President succeeded in removing him
+from his command, and in placing a creature of his own at the head of
+the Paris troops; but though Changarnier acquiesced without resistance
+in his dismissal, he remained an important member of the Assembly; he
+openly declared that his sword was at its service, and if an armed
+conflict broke out it was tolerably certain that he would be its
+representative. The President had an official salary of 48,000
+<i>l</i>.&mdash;nearly five times as much as the President of the United States.
+The Chamber refused to increase it, though they consented by a very
+small majority, and at the request of Changarnier, to pay his debts.</p>
+
+<p>The demand for a revision of the Constitution, making it possible for
+the President to be re-elected, was rising rapidly through the country,
+and there can be but little doubt that this was generally looked forward
+to as the only peaceful solution, and that it represented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> the real wish
+of the great majority of the people. Petitions in favour of it, bearing
+an enormous number of signatures, were presented to the Chamber, and the
+overwhelming majority of the Conseils G&eacute;n&eacute;raux of which the Deputies
+generally formed part voted for revision. The President did not so much
+petition for it as demand it. In a message he sent to the Chamber, he
+declared that if they did not vote Revision the people would, in 1852,
+solemnly manifest their wishes. In a speech at Dijon, June 1, 1851, he
+declared that France from end to end demanded it; that he would follow
+the wishes of the nation, and that France would not perish in his hands.
+In the same speech he accused the Chamber of never seconding his wishes
+to ameliorate the lot of the people. He at the same time lost no
+opportunity of showing that his special sympathy and trust lay with the
+army, and he singled out with marked favour the colonels of the
+regiments which had shown themselves at the reviews most prominent in
+demonstrations in his favour.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> The meaning of all this was hardly
+doubtful. Changarnier took up the gauntlet, and at a time when the
+question of Revision was before the Chamber he declared that no soldier
+would ever be induced to move against the law and the Assembly, and he
+called upon the Deputies to deliberate in peace.</p>
+
+<p>The Revision was voted in the Chamber by 446 votes to 278, but a
+majority of three-fourths was required for a constitutional change, and
+this majority was not obtained, and in the disintegrated condition of
+French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> parties it seemed scarcely likely to be obtained. The Chamber
+was soon after prorogued for about two months, leaving the situation
+unchanged, and the tension and panic were extreme. Out of eighty-five
+Conseils G&eacute;n&eacute;raux in France, eighty passed votes in favour of Revision,
+three abstained, two only opposed.</p>
+
+<p>The President had now fully resolved upon a <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i>, and before
+the Chamber reassembled a new ministry was constituted, St.-Arnaud being
+at the head of the army, and Maupas at the head of the police. His first
+step was to summon the Chamber to repeal the law of May 31 which
+abolished universal suffrage. The Chamber, after much hesitation,
+refused, but only by two votes. The belief that the question could only
+be solved by force was becoming universal, and the bolder spirits in the
+Chamber clearly saw that if no new measure was taken they were likely to
+be helpless before the military party. By a decree of 1848 the President
+of the Chamber had a right, if necessary, to call for troops for its
+protection independently of the Minister of War, and a motion was now
+made that he should be able to select a general to whom he might
+delegate this power. Such a measure, dividing the military command and
+enabling the Chamber to have its own general and its own army, might
+have proved very efficacious, but it would probably have involved France
+in civil war, and the President was resolved that, if the Chamber voted
+it, the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> should immediately take place. The vote was taken
+on November 17, 1851. St.-Arnaud, as Minister of War, opposed the
+measure on constitutional grounds, dilating on the danger of a divided
+military command, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>during the discussion Maupas and Magnan were in
+the gallery of the Chamber, waiting to give orders to St.-Arnaud to call
+out the troops and to surround and dissolve the Chamber if the
+proposition was carried.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, rejected by a majority of 108, and a few troubled days
+of conspiracy and panic still remained before the blow was struck. The
+state of the public securities and the testimony of the best judges of
+all parties showed the genuineness of the alarm. It was not true, as the
+President stated in the proclamation issued when the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> was
+accomplished, that the Chamber had become a mere nest of conspiracies,
+and there was a strange audacity in his assertion that he made the <i>Coup
+d'&eacute;tat</i> for the purpose of maintaining the Republic against monarchical
+plots; but it was quite true that the conviction was general that force
+had become inevitable; that the chief doubt was whether the first blow
+would be struck by Napoleon or Changarnier, and that while the evident
+desire of the majority of the people was to re-elect Napoleon, there was
+a design among some members of the Chamber to seize him by force and to
+elect in his place some member of the House of Orleans.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> On December
+2 the curtain fell, and Napoleon accompanied his <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> by a
+decree dissolving the Chamber, restoring by his own authority universal
+suffrage, abolishing the law of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> May 31, establishing a state of siege,
+and calling on the French people to judge his action by their vote.</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly not an appeal upon which great confidence could be
+placed. Immediately after the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i>, the army, which was wholly
+on his side, voted separately and openly in order that France might
+clearly know that the armed forces were with the President and might be
+able to predict the consequences of a verdict unfavourable to his
+pretensions. When, nearly three weeks later, the civilian Pl&eacute;biscite
+took place, martial law was in force. Public meetings of every kind were
+forbidden. No newspaper hostile to the new authority was permitted. No
+electioneering paper or placard could be circulated which had not been
+sanctioned by Government officials. The terrible decree that all who had
+ever belonged to a secret society might be sent to die in the fevers of
+Africa was interpreted in the widest sense, and every political society
+or organisation was included in it. All the functionaries of a highly
+centralised country were turned into ardent electioneering agents, and
+the question was so put that the voters had no alternative except for or
+against the President, a negative vote leaving the country with no
+government and an almost certain prospect of anarchy and civil war.
+Under these circumstances 7,500,000 votes were given for the President
+and 500,000 against him.</p>
+
+<p>But after all deductions have been made there can be no real doubt that
+the majority of Frenchmen acquiesced in the new <i>r&eacute;gime</i>. The terror of
+Socialism was abroad, and it brought with it an ardent desire for strong
+government. The probabilities of a period of sanguinary anarchy were so
+great that multitudes were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> glad to be secured from it at almost any
+cost. Parliamentarism was profoundly discredited. The peasant
+proprietary had never cared for it, and the bourgeois class, among whom
+it had once been popular, were now thoroughly scared. Nothing in the
+contemporary accounts of the period is more striking than the
+indifference, the almost amused cynicism, or the sense of relief with
+which the great mass of Frenchmen seem to have witnessed the destruction
+of their Constitution and the gross insults inflicted upon a Chamber
+which included so many of the most illustrious of their countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>We can hardly have a better authority on this point than Tocqueville. No
+one felt more profoundly or more bitterly the iniquity of what had been
+done; but he was under no illusion about the sentiments of the people.
+The Constitution, he says, was thoroughly unpopular. 'Louis Napoleon had
+the merit or the luck to discover what few suspected&mdash;the latent
+Bonapartism of the nation.... The memory of the Emperor, vague and
+undefined, but therefore the more imposing, still dwelt like an heroic
+legend in the imaginations of the people.' All the educated, in the
+opinion of Tocqueville, condemned and repudiated the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i>.
+'Thirty-seven years of liberty have made a free press and free
+parliamentary discussion necessary to us.' But the bulk of the nation
+was not with them. The new Government, he predicted, 'will last until it
+is unpopular with the mass of the people. At present the disapprobation
+is confined to the educated classes.' 'The reaction against democracy
+and even against liberty is irresistible.'<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p><p>There is no doubt some exaggeration on both sides of this statement.
+The appalling magnitude of the deportations and imprisonments by the new
+Government seems to show that the hatred went deeper than Tocqueville
+supposed, and on the other hand it can hardly be said that the educated
+classes wholly repudiated what had been done when we remember that the
+French Funds at once rose from 91 to 102, that nearly all branches of
+French commerce made a similar spring,<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> that some twenty generals
+were actively engaged in the conspiracy, and that the great body of the
+priests were delighted at its success. The truth seems to be that the
+property of France saw in the success of the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> an escape
+from a great danger, while two powerful professions, the army and the
+Church, were strongly in favour of the President. Over the army the name
+of Napoleon exercised a magical influence, and the expedition to Rome
+and the probability that the new government would be under clerical
+guidance were, in the eyes of the Church party, quite sufficient to
+justify what had been done.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, indeed, in this strange history is more significant than the
+attitude assumed by the special leaders and representatives of the
+Church which teaches that 'it were better for the sun and moon to drop
+from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all of the many millions
+upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal
+affliction goes, than that one soul ... should commit one venial sin,
+should tell one wilful untruth.'<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>Three illustrious churchmen&mdash;Lacordaire, Ravignan and Dupanloup&mdash;to
+their immortal honour refused to give any approbation to the <i>Coup
+d'&eacute;tat</i> or to express any confidence in its author. But the latest
+panegyrist of the Empire boasts that they were almost alone in their
+profession. By the advice of the Papal Nuncio and of the leading French
+bishops, the clergy lost no time in presenting their felicitations.
+Veuillot, who more than any other man represented and influenced the
+vast majority of the French priesthood, wrote on what had been done with
+undisguised and unqualified exultation and delight. Even Montalembert
+rallied to the Government on the morrow of the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i>. He
+described Louis Napoleon as a Prince 'who had shown a more efficacious
+and intelligent devotion to religious interests than any of those who
+had governed France during sixty years;' and it was universally admitted
+that the great body of the clergy, with Archbishop Sibour at their head,
+were in this critical moment ardent supporters of the new
+government.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> Kinglake, in a page of immortal beauty, has described
+the scene when, thirty days after the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i>, Louis Napoleon
+appeared in Notre Dame to receive, amid all the pomp that Catholic
+ceremonial could give, the solemn blessing of the Church, and to listen
+to the Te Deum thanking the Almighty for what had been accomplished. The
+time came, it is true, when the policy of the priests was changed, for
+they found that Louis Napoleon was more liberal and less clerical than
+they imagined; but in estimating the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> feelings with which French
+Liberals judge the Church, its attitude towards the perjury and violence
+of December 2 should never be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>To those who judge the political ethics of the Roman Catholic Church not
+from the deceptive pages of such writers as Newman, but from an
+examination of its actual conduct in the different periods of its
+history, it will appear in no degree inconsistent. It is but another
+instance added to many of the manner in which it regards all acts which
+appear conducive to its interests. It was the same spirit that led a
+Pope to offer public thanks for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and to
+order Vasari to paint the murder of Coligny on the walls of the Vatican
+among the triumphs of the Church. No Christian sovereign of modern times
+has left a worse memory behind him than Ferdinand II. of Naples, who
+received the Pope when he fled to Ga&euml;ta in 1848. He was the sovereign
+whose government was described by Gladstone as 'a negation of God.' He
+not only destroyed the Constitution he had sworn to observe, but threw
+into a loathsome dungeon the Liberal ministers who had trusted him. But
+in the eyes of the Pope his services to the Church far outweighed all
+defects, and the monument erected to this 'most pious prince' may be
+seen in one of the chapels of St. Peter's. Every visitor to Paris may
+see the fresco in the Madeleine in which Napoleon I. appears seated
+triumphant on the clouds and surrounded by an admiring priesthood, the
+most prominent and glorified figure in a picture representing the
+history of French Christianity, with Christ above, blessing the work.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>It is indeed a most significant fact that in Catholic countries the
+highest moral level in public life is now rarely to be found among those
+who specially represent the spirit and teaching of their Church, and
+much more frequently among men who are unconnected with it, and often
+with all dogmatic theology. How seldom has the distinctively Catholic
+press seriously censured unjust wars, unscrupulous alliances, violations
+of constitutional obligations, unprovoked aggressions, great outbursts
+of intolerance and fanaticism! It is, indeed, not too much to say that
+some of the worst moral perversions of modern times have been supported
+and stimulated by a great body of genuinely Catholic opinion both in the
+priesthood and in the press. The anti-Semite movement, the shameful
+indifference to justice shown in France in the Dreyfus case, and the
+countless frauds, outrages and oppressions that accompanied the
+domination of the Irish Land League are recent and conspicuous examples.</p>
+
+<p>Among secular-minded laymen the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> of Louis Napoleon was, as
+I have said, differently judged. Few things in French history are more
+honourable than the determination with which so many men who were the
+very flower of the French nation refused to take the oath or give their
+adhesion to the new Government. Great statesmen and a few distinguished
+soldiers, with a splendid past behind them and with the prospect of an
+illustrious career before them; men of genius who in their professorial
+chairs had been the centres of the intellectual life of France;
+functionaries who had by laborious and persevering industry climbed the
+steps of their profession and depended for their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> livelihood on its
+emoluments, accepted poverty, exile and the long eclipse of the most
+honourable ambitions rather than take an oath which seemed to justify
+the usurpation. At the same time, some statesmen of unquestionable
+honour did not wholly and in all its parts condemn it. Lord Palmerston
+was conspicuous among them. Without expressing approval of all that had
+been done, he always maintained that the condition of France was such
+that a violent subversion of an unworkable Constitution and the
+establishment of a strong government had become absolutely necessary;
+that the <i>Coup d'&eacute;tat</i> saved France from the gravest and most imminent
+danger of anarchy and civil war, and that this fact was its
+justification. If it had not been for the acts of ferocious tyranny
+which immediately followed it, his opinion would have been more largely
+shared.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the moral character of <i>Coups d'&eacute;tat</i> may in the
+future not unfrequently come into discussion in Europe, as it has often
+done in South America. As the best observers are more and more
+perceiving, parliamentary government worked upon party lines is by no
+means an easy thing, and it seldom attains perfection without long
+experience and without qualities of mind and character which are very
+unequally distributed among the nations of the world. It requires a
+spirit of compromise, patience and moderation; the kind of mind which
+can distinguish the solid, the practical and the well meaning, from the
+brilliant, the plausible and the ambitious, which cares more for useful
+results and for the conciliation of many interests and opinions than for
+any rigid uniformity and consistency of principle; which, while
+pursuing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> personal ambitions and party aims, can subordinate them on
+great occasions to public interests. It needs a combination of
+independence and discipline which is not common, and where it does not
+exist parliaments speedily degenerate either into an assemblage of
+puppets in the hands of party leaders or into disintegrated,
+demoralised, insubordinate groups. Some of the foremost nations of the
+world&mdash;nations distinguished for noble and brilliant intellect; for
+splendid heroism; for great achievements in peace and war&mdash;have in this
+form of government conspicuously failed. In England it has grown with
+our growth and strengthened with our strength. We have practised it in
+many phases. Its traditions have taken deep root and are in full harmony
+with the national character. But in the present century this kind of
+government has been adopted by many nations which are wholly unfit for
+it, and they have usually adopted it in the most difficult of all
+forms&mdash;that of an uncontrolled democracy resting upon universal
+suffrage. It is becoming very evident that in many countries such
+assemblies are wholly incompetent to take the foremost place in
+government, but they are so fenced round by oaths and other
+constitutional forms that nothing short of violence can take from them a
+power which they are never likely voluntarily to relinquish. In such
+countries democracy tends much less naturally to the parliamentary
+system than to some form of dictatorship, to some despotism resting on
+and justified by a pl&eacute;biscite. It is probable that many transitions in
+this direction will take place. They will seldom be carried out through
+purely public motives or without perjury and violence. But public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+opinion will judge each case on its own merits, and where it can be
+shown that its results are beneficial and that large sections of the
+people have desired it, such an act will not be severely condemned.</p>
+
+<p>Cases of conflicting ethical judgments of another kind may be easily
+cited. One of the best known was that of Governor Eyre at the time of
+the Jamaica insurrection of 1865. In this case there was no question of
+personal interest or ambition. The Governor was a man of stainless
+honour, who in a moment of extreme difficulty and danger had rendered a
+great service to his country. By his prompt and courageous action a
+negro insurrection was quickly suppressed, which, if it had been allowed
+to extend, must have brought untold horrors upon Jamaica. But the
+martial law which he had proclaimed was certainly continued longer than
+was necessary, it was exercised with excessive severity, and those who
+were tried under it were not merely men who had been taken in arms. One
+conspicuous civilian agitator, who had contributed greatly to stimulate
+the insurrection, and had been, in the opinion of the Governor, its
+'chief cause and origin,' but who, like most men of his kind, had merely
+incited others without taking any direct part himself, was arrested in a
+part of the island in which martial law was not proclaimed, and was
+tried and hanged by orders of a military tribunal in a way which the
+best legal authorities in England pronounced wholly unwarranted by law.
+If this act had been considered apart from the general conditions of the
+island it would have deserved severe punishment. If the services of the
+Governor had been considered apart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> from this act they would have
+deserved high honours from the Crown. In Jamaica the Governor was fully
+supported by the Legislative Council and the Assembly, but at home
+public opinion was fiercely divided, and the fact that the chief
+literary and scientific men in England took sides on the question added
+greatly to its interest. Carlyle took a leading part in the defence of
+Governor Eyre. John Stuart Mill was the chairman of a committee who
+regarded him as a simple criminal, and who for more than two years
+pursued him with a persistent vindictiveness. As might have been
+expected the one side dwelt solely on his services and the other side on
+his misdeeds. Governor Eyre received no reward for the great service he
+had rendered, and he was involved by his enemies in a ruinous legal
+expenditure, which, however, was subsequently paid by the Government;
+but those who desired to bring him to trial for murder were baffled, for
+the Old Bailey Grand Jury threw out the bill. Public opinion, I think,
+on the whole, approved of what they had done. Most moderate men had come
+to the conclusion that Governor Eyre was a brave and honourable man who
+had rendered great services to the State and had saved countless lives,
+but who, through no unworthy motive and in a time of extreme danger and
+panic, had committed a serious mistake which had been very amply
+expiated.</p>
+
+<p>The more recent events connected with the Jameson raid into the
+Transvaal may also be cited. Of the raid itself there is little to be
+said. It was, in truth, one of the most discreditable as well as
+mischievous events in recent colonial history, and its character was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+entirely unrelieved by any gleam either of heroism or of skill. Those
+who took a direct part in it were duly tried and duly punished. A
+section of English society adopted on this question a disgraceful
+attitude, but it must at least be said in palliation that they had been
+grossly deceived, one of the chief and usually most trustworthy organs
+of opinion having been made use of as an organ of the conspirators.</p>
+
+<p>A more difficult question arose in the case of the statesman who had
+prepared and organized the expedition against the Transvaal. It is
+certain that the actual raid had taken place without his knowledge or
+consent, though when it was brought to his knowledge he abstained from
+taking any step to stop it. It may be conceded also that there were real
+grievances to be complained of. By a strange irony of fate some of the
+largest gold mines of the world had fallen to the possession of perhaps
+the only people who did not desire them; of a race of hunters and
+farmers intensely hostile to modern ideas, who had twice abandoned their
+homes and made long journeys into distant lands in search of solitude
+and space and of a home where they could live their primitive, pastoral
+lives, undisturbed by any foreign element. These men now found their
+country the centre of a vast stream of foreign immigration, and of that
+most undesirable kind of immigration which gold mines invariably
+promote. Their laws were very backward, but the part which was most
+oppressive was that connected with the gold-mining industry which was
+almost entirely in the hands of the immigrants, and it was this which
+made it a main object to overthrow their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> government. The trail of
+finance runs over the whole story, but it may be acknowledged that,
+although Mr. Rhodes had made an enormous fortune by mining speculations,
+and although he was largely interested as a financier in overturning the
+system of government at Johannesburg, he was not a man likely to be
+actuated by mere love of money, and that political ambition closely
+connected with the opening and the civilisation of Africa largely
+actuated him. Whether the motives of his co-conspirators were of the
+same kind may be open to question. What, however, he did has been very
+clearly established. When holding the highly confidential position of
+Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and being at the same time a Privy
+Councillor of the Queen, he engaged in a conspiracy for the overthrow of
+the government of a neighbouring and friendly State. In order to carry
+out this design he deceived the High Commissioner whose Prime Minister
+he was. He deceived his own colleagues in the Ministry. He collected
+under false pretences a force which was intended to co-operate with an
+insurrection in Johannesburg. Being a Director of the Chartered Company
+he made use of that position, without the knowledge of his colleagues,
+to further the conspiracy. He took an active and secret part in
+smuggling great quantities of arms into the Transvaal, which were
+intended to be used in the rebellion; and at a time when his organs in
+the press were representing Johannesburg as seething with spontaneous
+indignation against an oppressive government, he, with another
+millionaire, was secretly expending many thousands of pounds in that
+town in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> stimulating and subsidising the rising. He was also directly
+connected with the shabbiest incident in the whole affair, the
+concoction of a letter from the Johannesburg conspirators absurdly
+representing English women and children at Johannesburg as in danger of
+being shot down by the Boers, and urging the British to come at once to
+save them. It was a letter drawn up with the sanction of Mr. Rhodes many
+weeks before the raid, and before any disturbance had arisen, and kept
+in reserve to be dated and used in the last moment for the purpose of
+inducing the young soldiers in South Africa to join in the raid, and of
+subsequently justifying their conduct before the War Office, and also
+for the purpose of being published in the English press at the same time
+as the first news of the raid, in order to work upon English public
+opinion and persuade the English people that the raid, though
+technically wrong, was morally justifiable.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Rhodes is a man of great genius and influence, and in the past he
+has rendered great services to the Empire. At the same time no
+reasonable judge can question that in these transactions he was more
+blamable than those who were actually punished by the law for taking
+part in the raid&mdash;far more blamable than those young officers who were,
+in truth, the most severely punished, and who had been induced to take
+part in it under a false representation of the wishes of the Government
+at home, and a grossly false representation of the state of things at
+Johannesburg.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> The failure of the raid, and his undoubted complicity
+with its design, obliged Mr. Rhodes to resign the post of Prime Minister
+and his directorship of the Chartered Company, and, for a time at least,
+eclipsed his influence in Africa; but the question confronted the
+Ministers whether these resignations alone constituted a sufficient
+punishment for what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>The question was indeed one of great difficulty. The Government, in my
+opinion, were right in not attempting a prosecution which, in the face
+of the fact that the actual raid had certainly been undertaken without
+the knowledge of Mr. Rhodes, and that the evidence against him was
+chiefly drawn from his own voluntary admissions before the committee of
+inquiry, would inevitably have proved abortive. They were, perhaps,
+right in not taking from him the dignity of Privy Councillor, which had
+been bestowed on him as a reward for great services in the past, and
+which had never in the present reign been taken from anyone on whom it
+had been bestowed. They were right also, I believe, in urging that after
+a long and elaborate inquiry into the circumstances of the raid, and
+after a report in which Mr. Rhodes's conduct had been fully examined and
+severely censured, it was most important for the peace and good
+government of South Africa that the matter should as soon as possible be
+allowed to drop, and the raid and the party animosities it had aroused
+to subside. But what can be thought of the language of a Minister who
+volunteered to assure the House of Commons that in all the transactions
+I have described, Mr. Rhodes, though he had made 'a gigantic mistake,' a
+mistake perhaps as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> great as a statesman could make, had done nothing
+affecting his personal honour?<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>The foregoing examples will serve to illustrate the kind of difficulty
+which every statesman has to encounter in dealing with political
+misdeeds, and the impossibility of treating them by the clearly defined
+lines and standards that are applicable to the morals of a private life.
+Whatever conclusions men may arrive at in the seclusion of their
+studies, when they take part in active political life they will find it
+necessary to make large allowances for motives, tendencies, past
+services, pressing dangers, overwhelming expediencies, opposing
+interests. Every statesman who is worthy of the name has a strong
+predisposition to support the public servants who are under him when he
+knows that they have acted with a sincere desire to benefit the Empire.
+This is, indeed, a characteristic of all really great statesmen, and it
+gives a confidence and energy to the public service which in times of
+difficulty and danger are of supreme importance. In such times a
+mistaken decision is usually a less evil than timid, vacillating, or
+procrastinated action, and a wise Minister will go far to defend his
+subordinates if they have acted promptly and with substantial justice in
+the way they believed to be best, even though they may have made
+considerable mistakes, and though the results of their action may have
+proved unfortunate.</p>
+
+<p>But of all forms of prestige, moral prestige is the most valuable, and
+no statesman should forget that one of the chief elements of British
+power is the moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> weight that is behind it. It is the conviction that
+British policy is essentially honourable and straightforward, that the
+word and honour of its statesmen and diplomatists may be implicitly
+trusted, and that intrigues and deceptions are wholly alien to their
+nature. The statesman must steer his way between rival fanaticisms&mdash;the
+fanaticism of those who pardon everything if it is crowned by success
+and conduces to the greatness of the Empire, and who act as if weak
+Powers and savage nations had no moral rights; and the fanaticism of
+those who always seem to have a leaning against their own country, and
+who imagine that in times of war, anarchy, or rebellion, and in dealings
+with savage or half-savage military populations, it is possible to act
+with the same respect for the technicalities of law, and the same
+invariably high standard of moral scrupulousness, as in a peaceful age
+and a highly civilised country. In the affairs of private life the
+distinction between right and wrong is usually very clear, but it is not
+so in public affairs. Even the moral aspects of political acts can
+seldom be rightly estimated without the exercise of a large, judicial,
+and comprehensive judgment, and the spirit which should actuate a
+statesman should be rather that of a high-minded and honourable man of
+the world than that of a theologian, or a lawyer, or an abstract
+moralist.</p>
+
+<p>In some respects the standard of political morality has undoubtedly
+risen in modern times; but it is by no means certain that in
+international politics this is the case. A true history of the wars of
+the last half of the nineteenth century may well lead us to doubt it,
+and recent disclosures have shown us that in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> most terrible of
+them&mdash;the Franco-German War of 1870&mdash;the blame must be much more equally
+divided than we had been accustomed to believe. Very few massacres in
+history have been more gigantic or more clearly traced to the action of
+a government than those perpetrated by Turkish soldiers in our
+generation, and few signs of the low level of public feeling in
+Christendom are more impressive than the general indifference with which
+these massacres were contemplated in most countries. It was made evident
+that a Power which retains its military strength, and which is therefore
+sought as an ally and feared as an enemy, may do things with impunity,
+and even with very little censure, which in the case of a weak nation
+would produce a swift retribution. Among the minor episodes of
+nineteenth-century history the historian will not forget how soon after
+the savage Armenian massacres the sovereign of one of the greatest and
+most civilised of Christian nations hastened to Constantinople to clasp
+the hand which was so deeply dyed with Christian blood, and then,
+having, as he thought, sufficiently strengthened his popularity and
+influence in that quarter, proceeded to the Mount of Olives, where, amid
+scenes that are consecrated by the most sacred of all memories, and most
+fitted to humble the pride of power and dispel the dreams of ambition,
+he proclaimed himself with melodramatic piety the champion and the
+patron of the Christian faith! How many instances may be culled from
+very modern history of the deliberate falsehood of statesmen; of
+distinct treaty engagements and obligations simply set aside because
+they were inconvenient to one Power,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> and could be repudiated with
+impunity; of weak nations annexed or plundered without a semblance of
+real provocation! The safety of the weak in the presence of the strong
+is the best test of international morality. Can it be said that, if
+measured by this test, the public morality of our time ranks very high?
+No one can fail to notice with what levity the causes of war with
+barbarous or semi-civilised nations are scrutinised if only those wars
+are crowned with success; how strongly the present commercial policy of
+Europe is stimulating the passion for aggression; how warmly that policy
+is in all great nations supported by public opinion and by the Press.</p>
+
+<p>The questions of morality arising out of these things are many and
+complicated, and they cannot be disposed of by short and simple formul&aelig;.
+How far is a statesman who sees, or thinks he sees, some crushing danger
+from an aggressive foreign Power impending over his country, justified
+in anticipating that danger, and at a convenient moment and without any
+immediate provocation forcing on a war? How far is it his right or his
+duty to sacrifice the lives of his people through humanitarian motives,
+for the redress of some flagrant wrong with which he is under no treaty
+obligation to interfere? How far, if several Powers agree to guarantee
+the integrity of a small Power, is one Power bound at great risk to
+interfere in isolation if its co-partners refuse to do so or are even
+accomplices in a policy of plunder? How far, if the aggression of other
+Powers places his nation at a commercial or other disadvantage in the
+competition of nations, may a statesman take measures which, under
+other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> circumstances, would be plainly unjustifiable, to guard against
+such disadvantage? With what degrees of punctiliousness, at what cost of
+treasure and of life, ought a nation to resent insults directed against
+its dignity, its subjects and its flag? What is the meaning and what are
+the limits of national egotism and national unselfishness? There is such
+a thing as the comity of nations, and even apart from treaty obligations
+no great nation can pursue a policy of complete isolation, disregarding
+crimes and aggressions beyond its border. On the other hand, the primary
+duty of every statesman is to his own country. His task is to secure for
+many millions of the human race the highest possible amount of peace and
+prosperity, and a selfishness is at least not a narrow one which, while
+abstaining from injuring others, restricts itself to promoting the
+happiness of a vast section of the human race. Sacrifices and dangers
+which a good man would think it his clear duty to accept if they fell on
+himself alone wear another aspect if he is acting as trustee for a great
+nation and for the interests of generations who are yet unborn. Nothing
+is more calamitous than the divorce of politics from morals, but in
+practical politics public and private morals will never absolutely
+correspond. The public opinion of the nation will inevitably inspire and
+control its statesmen. It creates in all countries an ethical code which
+with greater or less perfection marks out for them the path of duty, and
+though a great statesman may do something to raise its level, he can
+never wholly escape its influence. In different nations it is higher or
+lower&mdash;in truthfulness and sincerity of diplomacy the variations are
+very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> great&mdash;but it will never be the exact code on which men act in
+private life. It is certainly widely different from the Sermon on the
+Mount.</p>
+
+<p>There is one belief, half unconscious, half avowed, which in our
+generation is passing widely over the world and is practically accepted
+in a very large measure by the English-speaking nations. It is that to
+reclaim savage tribes to civilisation, and to place the outlying
+dominions of civilised countries which are anarchical or grossly
+misgoverned in the hands of rulers who govern wisely and uprightly, are
+sufficient justification for aggression and conquest. Many who, as a
+general rule, would severely censure an unjust and unprovoked war,
+carried on for the purpose of annexation by a strong Power against a
+weak one, will excuse or scarcely condemn such a war if it is directed
+against a country which has shown itself incapable of good government.
+To place the world in the hands of those who can best govern it is
+looked upon as a supreme end. Wars are not really undertaken for this
+end. The philanthropy of nations when it takes the form of war and
+conquest is seldom or never unmixed with selfishness, though strong
+gusts of humanitarian enthusiasm often give an impulse, a pretext, or a
+support to the calculated actions of statesmen. But when wars, however
+selfish and unprovoked, contribute to enlarge the boundaries of
+civilisation, to stimulate real progress, to put an end to savage
+customs, to oppression or to anarchy, they are now very indulgently
+judged even in the many cases in which the inhabitants of the conquered
+Power do not desire the change and resist it strenuously in the field.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p><p>In domestic as in foreign politics the maintenance of a high moral
+standard in statesmanship is impossible unless the public opinion of the
+country is in harmony with it. Moral declension in a nation is very
+swiftly followed by a corresponding decadence among its public men, and
+it will indeed be generally found that the standard of public men is apt
+to be somewhat lower than that of the better section of the public
+outside. They are exposed to very special temptations, some of which I
+have already indicated.</p>
+
+<p>The constant habit of regarding questions with a view to party
+advantage, to proximate issues, to immediate popularity, which is
+inseparable from parliamentary government, can hardly fail to give some
+ply to the most honest intellect. Most questions have to be treated more
+or less in the way of compromise; and alliances and coalitions not very
+conducive to a severe standard of political morals are frequent. In
+England the leading men of the opposing parties have happily usually
+been able to respect one another. The same standard of honour will be
+found on both sides of the House, but every parliament contains its
+notorious agitators, intriguers and self-seekers, men who have been
+connected with acts which may or may not have been brought within the
+reach of the criminal law, but have at least been sufficient to stamp
+their character in the eyes of honest men. Such men cannot be neglected
+in party combinations. Political leaders must co-operate with them in
+the daily intercourse and business of parliamentary life&mdash;must sometimes
+ask them favours&mdash;must treat them with deference and respect. Men who on
+some subjects and at some times<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> have acted with glaring profligacy, on
+others act with judgment, moderation and even patriotism, and become
+useful supporters or formidable opponents. Combinations are in this way
+formed which are in no degree wrong, but which tend to dull the edge of
+moral perception and imperceptibly to lower the standard of moral
+judgment. In the swift changes of the party kaleidoscope the bygone is
+soon forgotten. The enemy of yesterday is the ally of to-day; the
+services of the present soon obscure the misdeeds of the past; and men
+insensibly grow very tolerant not only of diversities of opinion, but
+also of gross aberrations of conduct. The constant watchfulness of
+external opinion is very necessary to keep up a high standard of
+political morality.</p>
+
+<p>Public opinion, it is true, is by no means impeccable. The tendency to
+believe that crimes cease to be crimes when they have a political
+object, and that a popular vote can absolve the worst crimes, is only
+too common; there are few political misdeeds which wealth, rank, genius
+or success will not induce large sections of English society to pardon,
+and nations even in their best moments will not judge acts which are
+greatly for their own advantage with the severity of judgment that they
+would apply to similar acts of other nations. But when all this is
+admitted, it still remains true that there is a large body of public
+opinion in England which carries into all politics a sound moral sense
+and which places a just and righteous policy higher than any mere party
+interest. It is on the power and pressure of this opinion that the high
+character of English government must ultimately depend.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> This sentence may appear obscure to English readers. The
+explanation is, that by an ingenious arrangement, devised by Lord
+Beaconsfield, the professors of the Jesuit College in Stephen's Green
+are nearly all made Fellows of the Royal University, those of the Arts
+Faculty receiving 400<i>l.</i> a year, and three Medical Fellows 150<i>l.</i>
+each. By this device the Catholic college has in reality a State
+endowment to the amount of between 6,000<i>l.</i> and 7,000<i>l.</i> a year. This
+fact considerably reduces the grievance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See e.g. the death-bed counsels of Henry IV. to his son:&mdash;</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i10">'Therefore, my Harry,</div>
+<div>Be it thy course to busy giddy minds</div>
+<div>With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,</div>
+<div>May waste the memory of the former days.'</div>
+<div class="i10"><i>Henry IV</i>. Part II. Act IV. Sc. 4.</div>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Lord Lanesborough <i>v.</i> Reilly.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> See Tocqueville's <i>Memoirs</i> (English trans.), ii. 189,
+Letter to the <i>Times</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> See Maupas, <i>M&eacute;moires sur le Second Empire</i>, i. 511, 512.
+It is said that, contrary to the orders of St.-Arnaud, the soldiers,
+instead of immediately shooting all persons in the street who were found
+with arms or constructing or defending a barricade, made many prisoners,
+and it is not clear what became of them. Granier de Cassagnac, however,
+altogether denies the executions on the Champ de Mars (ii. 433).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 438.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>L'Empire Lib&eacute;ral</i>, ii. 526.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>M&eacute;moires d'Odilon Barrot</i>, iv. 59-61.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>M&eacute;moires d'Odilon Barrot</i>, iv. 56, 57.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> See Lord Palmerston's statements on this subject in
+Ashley's <i>Life of Palmerston</i>, ii. 200-211. Tocqueville, however,
+utterly denies that the majority of the Assembly had any sympathy with
+these views (Tocqueville's <i>Memoirs</i> (Eng. trans.), ii. 177). Maupas, in
+his <i>M&eacute;moires</i>, gives a very detailed account of the conspiracy on the
+Bonapartist side. It appears that the 'homme de confiance' of
+Changarnier was in his pay.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Tocqueville's <i>Memoirs</i>, ii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Ashley's <i>Life of Palmerston</i>, ii. 208.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Newman.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> See Ollivier, <i>L'Empire Lib&eacute;ral</i>, i. 510-512.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Second Report of the Select Committee on British South
+Africa</i> (July, 1897).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>Parliamentary Debates</i>, July 26, 1897, 1169, 1170.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p>The necessities for moral compromise I have traced in the army, in the
+law, and in the fields of politics may be found in another form not less
+conspicuously in the Church. The members, and still more the ministers,
+of an ancient Church bound to formularies and creeds that were drawn up
+in long bygone centuries, are continually met by the difficulties of
+reconciling these forms with the changed conditions of human knowledge,
+and there are periods when the pressure of these difficulties is felt
+with more than common force. Such, for example, were the periods of the
+Renaissance and the Reformation, when changes in the intellectual
+condition of Europe produced a widespread conviction of the vast amount
+of imposture and delusion which had received the sanction of a Church
+that claimed to be infallible, the result being in some countries a
+silent evanescence of all religious belief among the educated class,
+even including a large number of the leaders of the Church, and in other
+countries a great outburst of religious zeal aiming at the restoration
+of Christianity to its primitive form and a repudiation of the
+accretions of superstition that had gathered around it. The Copernican
+theory proving that our world is not, as was long believed, the centre
+of the universe, but a single planet moving with many others around a
+central sun, and the discovery, by the instrumentality of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> the
+telescope, of the infinitesimally small place which our globe occupies
+in the universe, altered men's measure of probability and affected
+widely, though indirectly, their theological beliefs.</p>
+
+<p>A similar change was gradually produced by the Newtonian discovery that
+the whole system of the universe was pervaded by one great law, and by
+the steady growth of scientific knowledge, proving that vast numbers of
+phenomena which were once attributed to isolated and capricious acts of
+spiritual intervention were regulated by invariable, inexorable,
+all-pervasive law. Many of the formularies by which we still express our
+religious beliefs date from periods when comets and eclipses were
+believed to have been sent to portend calamity; when every great
+meteorological change was attributed to some isolated spiritual agency;
+when witchcraft and diabolical possession, supernatural diseases, and
+supernatural cures were deemed indubitable facts: and when accounts of
+contemporary miracles, Divine or Satanic, carried with them no sense of
+strangeness or improbability. It is scarcely surprising that these
+formularies sometimes seem incongruous with an age when the scientific
+spirit has introduced very different conceptions of the government of
+the universe, and when the miraculous, if it is not absolutely
+discredited, is, at least in the eyes of most educated men, relegated to
+a distant past.</p>
+
+<p>The present century has seen some powerful reactions towards older
+religious beliefs, but it has also been to an unusual extent fertile in
+the kind of changes that most deeply affect them. Not many years have
+passed since the whole drama of the world's history was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>believed to
+have been comprised in the framework of 'Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise
+Regained.' Man appeared in the universe a faultless being in a faultless
+world, but he soon fell from his first estate, and his fall entailed
+world-wide consequences. It introduced into our globe sin, death,
+suffering, disease, imperfection and decay; all the mischievous and
+ferocious instincts and tendencies of man and beast; all the
+multitudinous forms of struggle, terror, anxiety and grief; all that
+makes life bitter to any living being, and, even as the Fathers were
+accustomed to say, the briars and weeds and sterility of the earth.
+Paradise Regained was believed to be indissolubly connected with
+Paradise Lost. The one was the explanation of the other. The one
+introduced the disease, the other provided the remedy.</p>
+
+<p>It is idle to deny that the main outlines of this picture have been
+wholly changed. First came the discovery that the existence of our globe
+stretches far beyond the period once assigned to the Creation, and that
+for countless ages before the time when Adam was believed to have lost
+Paradise, death had been its most familiar fact and its inexorable law;
+that the animals who inhabited it preyed upon and devoured each other as
+at present, their claws and teeth being specially adapted for that
+purpose. Even their half-digested remains have been preserved in fossil.</p>
+
+<p>'Death,' wrote a Pagan philosopher, in sharp contrast to the teaching of
+the Church, 'is a law and not a punishment,' and geology has fully
+justified his assertion.</p>
+
+<p>Then came decisive evidence showing that for many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> thousands of years
+before his supposed origin man had lived and died upon our globe&mdash;a
+being, as far as can be judged from the remains that have been
+preserved, not superior but greatly inferior to ourselves, whose almost
+only art was the manufacture of rude instruments for killing, who
+appears in structure and in life to have approximated closely to the
+lowest existing forms of savage life.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the Darwinian theory maintaining that the whole history of the
+living world is a history of slow and continuous evolution, chiefly by
+means of incessant strife, from lower to higher forms; that man himself
+had in this way gradually emerged from the humblest forms of the animal
+world; that most of the moral deflections which were attributed to the
+apple in Eden are the remains and traditions of the earlier and lower
+stages of his existence. The theory of continuous ascent from a lower to
+a higher stage took the place of the theory of the Fall as the
+explanation of human history. It is a doctrine which is certainly not
+without hope for the human race. It gives no explanation of the ultimate
+origin of things, and it is in no degree inconsistent with the belief
+either in a Divine and Creative origin or in a settled and Providential
+plan. But it is as far as possible removed from the conception of human
+history and human nature which Christendom during eighteen centuries
+accepted as fundamental truth.</p>
+
+<p>With these things have come influences of another kind. Comparative
+Mythology has accumulated a vast amount of evidence, showing how myths
+and miracles are the natural product of certain stages of human
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>history, of certain primitive misconceptions of the course of nature;
+how legends essentially of the same kind, though with some varieties of
+detail, have sprung up in many different quarters, and how they have
+migrated and interacted on each other. Biblical criticism has at the
+same time decomposed and analysed the Jewish writings, assigning to them
+dates and degrees of authority very different from those recognised by
+the Church. It has certainly not impaired their significance as records
+of successive developments of religious and moral progress, nor has it
+diminished their value as expressions of the loftiest and most enduring
+religious sentiments of mankind; but in the eyes of a great section of
+the educated world it has deprived them of the authoritative and
+infallible character that was once attributed to them. At the same time
+historical criticism has brought with it severer standards of proof,
+more efficient means of distinguishing the historical from the fabulous.
+It has traced the phases and variations of religions, and the influences
+that governed them, with a fulness of knowledge and an independence of
+judgment unknown in the past, and it has led its votaries to regard in
+these matters a sceptical and hesitating spirit as a virtue, and
+credulity and easiness of belief as a vice.</p>
+
+<p>This is not a book of theology, and I have no intention of dilating on
+these things. It must, however, be manifest to all who are acquainted
+with contemporary thought how largely these influences have displaced
+theological beliefs among great numbers of educated men; how many things
+that were once widely believed have become absolutely incredible; how
+many that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> were once supposed to rest on the plane of certainty have now
+sunk to the lower plane of mere probability or perhaps possibility. From
+the time of Galileo downwards, these changes have been denounced as
+incompatible with the whole structure of Christian belief. No less an
+apologist than Bishop Berkeley declared that the belief that the date of
+the existence of the world was approximately that which could be deduced
+from the book of Genesis was one of the fundamental beliefs which could
+not be given up.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> When the traveller Brydone published his travels in
+Sicily in 1773, conjecturing, from the deposits of lava, that the world
+must be much older than the Mosaic cosmogony admitted, his work was
+denounced as subverting the foundations of the Christian faith. The same
+charges were brought against the earlier geologists, and in our own day
+against the early supporters of the Darwinian theory; and many now
+living can remember the outbursts of indignation against those who first
+introduced the principles of German criticism into English thought, and
+who impugned the historical character and the assumed authorship of the
+Pentateuch.</p>
+
+<p>It is not surprising or unreasonable that it should have been so, for it
+is impossible to deny that these changes have profoundly altered large
+portions of the beliefs that were once regarded as essential. One main
+object of a religion was believed to have been to furnish what may be
+called a theory of the universe&mdash;to explain its origin, its destiny, and
+the strange contradictions and imperfections it presents. The Jewish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+theory was a very clear and definite one, but it is certainly not that
+of modern science.</p>
+
+<p>Yet few things are more remarkable than the facility with which these
+successive changes have gradually found their places within the
+Established Church, and how little that Church has been shaken by this
+fact. Even the Darwinian theory, though it has not yet passed into the
+circle of fully established truth, is in its main lines constantly
+mentioned with approbation by the clergy of the Church. The theory of
+evolution largely pervades their teaching. The doctrine that the Bible
+was never intended to teach science or scientific facts, and also the
+main facts and conclusions of modern Biblical criticism, have been
+largely accepted among the most educated clergy. Very few of them would
+now deny the antiquity of the world, the antiquity of man, or the
+antiquity of death, or would maintain that the Mosaic cosmogony was a
+true and literal account of the origin of the globe and of man, or would
+very strenuously argue either for the Mosaic authorship or the
+infallibility of the Pentateuch.</p>
+
+<p>And while changes of this kind have been going on in one direction,
+another great movement has been taking place in an opposite one. The
+Church of England was essentially a Protestant Church; though, being
+constructed more than most other Churches under political influences, by
+successive stages of progress, and with a view to including large and
+varying sections of opinion in its fold, it retained, more than other
+Churches, formularies and tenets derived from the Church it superseded.
+The earnest Protestant and Puritan party which dominated in Scotland
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> in the Continental Reformation, and which refused all compromise
+with Rome, had not become powerful in English public opinion till some
+time after the framework of the Church was established. The spirit of
+compromise and conservatism which already characterised the English
+people; the great part which kings and lawyers played in the formation
+of the Church; their desire to maintain in England a single body,
+comprising men who had broken away from the Papacy but who had in other
+respects no great objection to Roman Catholic forms and doctrines, and
+also men seriously imbued with the strong Protestant feeling of Germany
+and Switzerland; the strange ductility of belief and conduct that
+induced the great majority of the English clergy to retain their
+preferments and avoid persecution during the successive changes of Henry
+VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, all assisted in forming a Church
+of a very composite character. Two distinct theories found their place
+within it. According to one school it was simply the pre-Reformation
+Church purified from certain abuses that had gathered around it,
+organically united with it through a divinely appointed episcopacy,
+resting on an authoritative and ecclesiastical basis, and forming one of
+the three great branches of the Catholic Church. According to the other
+school it was one of several Protestant Churches, retaining indeed such
+portions of the old ecclesiastical organisation as might be justified
+from Scripture, but not regarding them as among the essentials of
+Christianity; agreeing with other Protestant bodies in what was
+fundamental, and differing from them mainly on points which were
+non-essential; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>accepting cordially the principle that 'the Bible and
+the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,' and at the same time
+separated by the gravest and most vital differences from what they
+deemed the great apostasy of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>It was argued on the one hand that in its ecclesiastical and legal
+organisation the Church in England was identical with the Church in the
+reign of Henry VII.; that there had been no breach of continuity; that
+bishops, and often the same bishops, sat in the same sees before and
+after the Reformation; that the great majority of the parochial clergy
+were unchanged, holding their endowments by the same titles and tenures,
+subject to the same courts, and meeting in Convocation in the same
+manner as their predecessors; that the old Catholic services were merely
+translated and revised, and that although Roman usurpations which had
+never been completely acquiesced in had been decisively rejected, and
+although many superstitious novelties had been removed, the Church of
+England was still the Church of St. Augustine; that it had never, even
+in the darkest period, lost its distinct existence, and that
+supernatural graces and sacerdotal powers denied to all schismatics had
+descended to it through the Episcopacy in an unbroken stream. On the
+other hand it was argued that the essential of a true Church lay in the
+accordance of its doctrines with the language of Scripture and not in
+the methods of Church government, and that whatever might be the case in
+a legal point of view, the theory of the unity of the Church before and
+after the Reformation was in a theological sense a delusion. The Church
+under Henry VII. was emphatically a theocracy or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>ecclesiastical
+monarchy, the Pope, as the supposed successor of the supposed prince of
+the Apostles, being the very keystone of the spiritual arch. Under Henry
+VIII. and Elizabeth the Church of England had become a kind of
+aristocracy of bishops, governed very really as well as theoretically by
+the Crown, totally cut off from what called itself the Chair of Peter,
+and placed under completely new relations with the Catholic Church of
+Christendom. In this space of time Anglican Christianity had discarded
+not only the Papacy but also great part of what for centuries before the
+change had been deemed vitally and incontestably necessary both in its
+theology and in its devotions. Though much of the old organisation and
+many of the old formularies had been retained, its articles, its
+homilies, the constant teaching of its founders, breathed a spirit of
+unquestionable Protestantism. The Church which remained attached to
+Rome, and which held the same doctrines, practised the same devotions,
+and performed the same ceremonies as the English Church under Henry
+VII., professed to be infallible, and it utterly repudiated all
+connection with the new Church of England, and regarded it as nothing
+more than a Protestant schism; while the Church of England in her
+authorised formularies branded some of the central beliefs and devotions
+of the Roman Church as blasphemous, idolatrous, superstitious and
+deceitful, and was long accustomed to regard that Church as the Church
+of Antichrist; the Harlot of the Apocalypse, drunk with the blood of the
+Saints. Each Church during long periods and to the full measure of its
+powers suppressed or persecuted the other.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p><p>In the eyes of the Erastian and also in the eyes of the Puritan the
+theory of the spiritual unity of these two bodies, and the various
+sacerdotal consequences that were inferred from it, seemed incredible,
+nor did the first generation of our reformers shrink from communion,
+sympathy and co-operation with the non-episcopal Protestants of the
+Continent. Although they laid great stress on patristic authority, and
+consented&mdash;chiefly through political motives&mdash;to leave in the
+Prayer-book many things derived from the older Church, yet the High
+Church theory of Anglicanism is much more the product of the
+seventeenth-century divines than of the reformers, just as Roman
+Catholicism is much more akin to the later fathers than to primitive
+Christianity. No one could doubt on what side were the sympathies and
+what were the opinions of Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Jewell and Hooper,
+and what spirit pervades the articles and the homilies. A Church which
+does not claim to be infallible; which owes its special form chiefly to
+the sagacity of statesmen; in which the supreme tribunal, deciding what
+doctrines may be taught by the clergy, is a secular law court; in which
+the bands of conformity are so loose that the tendencies and sentiments
+of the nation give the complexion to the Church, appears in the eyes of
+men of these schools to have no possible right to claim or share the
+authority of the Church of Rome. It rests on another basis. It must be
+justified on other grounds.</p>
+
+<p>These two distinct schools, however, have subsisted in the Church. Each
+of them can find some support in the Prayer-book, and the old orthodox
+High Church<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> school which was chiefly elaborated and which chiefly
+flourished under the Stuarts, has produced a great part of the most
+learned theology of Christendom, and had in its early days little or no
+tendency to Rome. It was exclusive and repellent on the side of
+Nonconformity, and it placed Church authority very high; but the immense
+majority of its members were intensely loyal to the Anglican Church, and
+lived and died contentedly within its pale. There were, however, always
+in that Church men of another kind whose true ideal lay beyond its
+border. Falkland, in a remarkable speech, delivered in 1640, speaks of
+them with much bitterness. 'Some,' he says, 'have so industriously
+laboured to deduce themselves from Rome that they have given great
+suspicion that in gratitude they desire to return thither, or at least
+to meet it half way. Some have evidently laboured to bring in an English
+though not a Roman Popery; I mean not only the outside and dress of it,
+but equally absolute.... Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily false
+if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to
+the preferments of England, and be so absolutely, directly and cordially
+Papists that it is all that 1,500<i>l.</i> a year can do to keep them from
+confessing it.'<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p>No wide secession to Rome, however, followed the development of this
+seventeenth-century school, though it played a large part in the
+nonjuror schism, and with the decay of that schism and under the
+latitudinarian tendencies of the eighteenth century it greatly dwindled.
+Since, however, the Tractarian movement,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> which carried so many leaders
+of the English Church to Rome, men of Roman sympathies and Roman ideals
+have multiplied within the Church to an extraordinary degree. They have
+not only carried their theological pretensions in the direction of Rome
+much further than the nonjurors; they have also in many cases so
+transformed the old and simple Anglican service by vestments and
+candles, and banners and incense, and genuflexions and whispered
+prayers, that a stranger might well imagine that he was in a Roman
+Catholic church. They have put forward sacerdotal pretensions little, if
+at all, inferior to those of Rome. The whole tendency of their
+devotional literature and thought flows in the Roman channel, and even
+in the most insignificant matters of ceremony and dress they are
+accustomed to pay the greater Church the homage of constant imitation.</p>
+
+<p>It would be unjust to deny that there are some real differences. The
+absolute authority and infallibility of the Pope are sincerely
+repudiated as an usurpation, the ritualist theory only conceding to him
+a primacy among bishops. The discipline and submission to ecclesiastical
+authority also, which so eminently distinguish the Roman Church, are
+wholly wanting in many of its Anglican imitators, and at the same time
+the English sense of truth has proved sufficient to save the party from
+the tolerance and propagation of false miracles and of grossly
+superstitious practices so common in Roman Catholic countries. In this
+last respect, however, it is probable that English and American Roman
+Catholics are almost equally distinguished from Catholics in the
+Southern States of Europe and of America.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> Still, when all this is
+admitted, it can hardly be denied that there has grown up in a great
+section of the English Church a sympathy with Rome and an antipathy to
+Protestantism and to Protestant types of thought and character utterly
+alien to the spirit of the Reformers and to the doctrinal formularies of
+the Church of England.</p>
+
+<p>It is not very easy to form a just estimate of the extent and depth of
+this movement. There are wide variations in the High Church party; the
+extreme men are not the most numerous and certainly very far from the
+ablest, and many influences other than convinced belief have tended to
+strengthen the party. It has been, indeed, unlike the Tractarian party
+which preceded it, remarkably destitute of literary or theological
+ability, and has added singularly little to the large and noble
+theological literature of the English Church. The mere charm of novelty,
+which is always especially powerful in the field of religion, draws many
+to the ritualistic channel, and thousands who care very little for
+ritualistic doctrines are attracted by the music, the pageantry, the
+pictorial beauty of the ritualistic services. &AElig;sthetic tastes have of
+late years greatly increased in England, and the closing of places of
+amusement on Sunday probably strengthens the craving for more attractive
+services. The extreme High Church party has chiefly fostered and chiefly
+benefited by this desire, but it has extended much more widely. It has
+touched even puritanical and non-episcopal bodies, and it is sometimes
+combined with extremely latitudinarian opinions. There is, indeed, a
+type of mind which finds in such services a happy anodyne for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+half-suppressed doubt. Petitions which in their poignant humiliation and
+profound emotion no longer correspond to the genuine feelings of the
+worshipper, seem attenuated and transformed when they are intoned, and
+creeds which when plainly read shock the understanding and the
+conscience are readily accepted as parts of a musical performance.
+Scepticism as well as belief sometimes fills churches. Large classes who
+have no wish to cut themselves off from religious services have lost all
+interest in the theological distinctions which once were deemed
+supremely important and all strong belief in great parts of dogmatic
+systems, and such men naturally prefer services which by music and
+ornament gratify their tastes and exercise a soothing or stimulating
+influence over the imagination.</p>
+
+<p>The extreme High Church party has, however, other elements of
+attraction. Much of its power is due to the new springs of real
+spiritual life and the new forms of real usefulness and charity that
+grew out of its highly developed sacerdotal system and out of the
+semi-monastic confraternities which at once foster and encourage and
+organise an active zeal. The power of the party in acting not only on
+the cultivated classes but also on the poor is very manifest, and it has
+done much to give the Church of England a democratic character which in
+past generations it did not possess, and which in the conditions of
+modern life is supremely important. The multiplication not only of
+religious services but of communicants, and the great increase in the
+interest taken in Church life in quarters where the Ritualist party
+prevail, cannot reasonably be questioned. Its highly ornate services
+draw many into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> churches who never entered them before, and they are
+often combined with a familiar and at the same time impassioned style of
+preaching, something like that of a Franciscan friar or a Methodist
+preacher, which is excellently fitted to act upon the ignorant. If its
+clergy have been distinguished for their insubordination to their
+bishops, if they have displayed in no dubious manner a keen desire to
+aggrandise their own position and authority, it is also but just to add
+that they have been prominent for the zeal and self-sacrifice with which
+they have multiplied services, created confraternities, and penetrated
+into the worst and most obscure haunts of poverty and vice.</p>
+
+<p>The result, however, of all this is that the conflicting tendencies
+which have always been present in the Church have been greatly deepened.
+There are to be found within it men whose opinions can hardly be
+distinguished from simple Deism or Unitarianism, and men who abjure the
+name of Protestant and are only divided by the thinnest of partitions
+from the Roman Church. And this diversity exists in a Church which is
+held together by articles and formularies of the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>It might, perhaps, <i>a priori</i> have been imagined that a Church with so
+much diversity of opinion and of spirit was an enfeebled and
+disintegrated Church, but no candid man will attribute such a character
+to the Church of England. All the signs of corporate vitality are
+abundantly displayed, and it is impossible to deny that it is playing an
+active, powerful, and most useful part in English life. Looking at it
+first of all from the intellectual side, it is plain how large<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> a
+proportion of the best intellect of the country is contented, not only
+to live within it, but to take an active part in its ministrations.
+Compare the amount of higher literature which proceeds from clergymen of
+the Established Church with the amount which proceeds from the vastly
+greater body of Catholic priests scattered over the world; compare the
+place which the English clergy, or laymen deeply imbued with the
+teaching of the Church, hold in English literature with the place which
+Catholic priests, or sincere Catholic laymen, hold in the literature of
+France,&mdash;and the contrast will appear sufficiently evident. There is
+hardly a branch of serious English literature in which Anglican clergy
+are not conspicuous. There is nothing in a false and superstitious creed
+incompatible with some forms of literature. It may easily ally itself
+with the genius of a poet or with great beauty of style either hortatory
+or narrative. But in the Church of England literary achievement is
+certainly not restricted to these forms. In the fields of physical
+science, in the fields of moral philosophy, metaphysics, social and even
+political philosophy, and perhaps still more in the fields of history,
+its clergy have won places in the foremost rank. It is notorious that a
+large proportion of the most serious criticism, of the best periodical
+writing in England, is the work of Anglican clergymen. No one, in
+enumerating the leading historians of the present century, would omit
+such names as Milman, Thirlwall and Merivale, in the generation which
+has just passed away, or Creighton and Stubbs among contemporaries, and
+these are only eminent examples of a kind of literature to which the
+Church<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> has very largely contributed. Their histories are not specially
+conspicuous for beauty of style, and not only conspicuous for their
+profound learning; they are marked to an eminent degree by judgment,
+criticism, impartiality, a desire for truth, a skill in separating the
+proved from the false or the merely probable. Compare them with the
+chief histories that have been written by Catholic priests. In past ages
+some of the greatest works of patient, lifelong industry in all literary
+history were due to the Catholic priesthood, and especially to members
+of the monastic orders; even in modern times they have produced some
+works of great learning, of great dialectic skill, and of great beauty
+of style; but with scarcely an exception these works bear upon them the
+stamp of an advocate and are written for the purpose of proving a point,
+concealing or explaining away the faults on one side, and bringing into
+disproportioned relief those of the other. No one would look in them for
+a candid estimate of the merits of an opponent or for a full statement
+of a hostile case. D&ouml;llinger, who would probably once have been cited as
+the greatest historian the Catholic priesthood had produced in the
+nineteenth century, died under the anathema of his Church; and how large
+a proportion of the best writing in modern English Catholicism has come
+from writers who have been brought up in Protestant universities and who
+have learnt their skill in the Anglican Church!</p>
+
+<p>It is at least one great test of a living Church that the best intellect
+of the country can enter into its ministry, that it contains men who in
+nearly all branches of literature are looked upon by lay scholars with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+respect or admiration. It is said that the number of young men of
+ability who take orders is diminishing, and that this is due, not merely
+to the agricultural depression which has made the Church much less
+desirable as a profession, and indeed in many cases almost impossible
+for those who have not some private fortune; not merely to the
+competitive examination system, which has opened out vast and attractive
+fields of ambition to the ablest laymen,&mdash;but also to the wide
+divergence of men of the best intellect from the doctrines of the
+Church, and the conviction that they cannot honestly subscribe its
+articles and recite its formularies. But although this is, I believe,
+true, it is also true that there is no other Church which has shown
+itself so capable of attracting and retaining the services of men of
+general learning, criticism and ability. One of the most important
+features of the English ecclesiastical system has been the education of
+those who are intended for the Church, in common with other students in
+the great national universities. Other systems of education may produce
+a clergy of greater professional learning and more intense and exclusive
+zeal, but no other system of education is so efficacious in maintaining
+a general harmony of thought and tendency between the Church and the
+average educated opinion of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>Take another test. Compare the <i>Guardian</i>, which represents better than
+any other paper the opinions of moderate Churchmen, with the papers
+which are most read by the French priesthood and have most influence on
+their opinions. Certainly few English journalists have equalled in
+ability Louis Veuillot, and few papers have exercised so great an
+influence over the clergy of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> the Church as the <i>Univers</i> at the time
+when he directed it; but no one who read those savagely scurrilous and
+intolerant pages, burning with an impotent hatred of all the progressive
+and liberal tendencies of the time, shrinking from no misrepresentation
+of fact and from no apology for crime if it was in the interest of the
+Church, could fail to perceive how utterly out of harmony it was with
+the best lay thought of France. English religious journalism has
+sometimes, though in a very mitigated degree, exhibited some of these
+characteristics, but no one who reads the <i>Guardian</i>, which I suppose
+appeals to a larger clerical public than any other paper, can fail to
+realise the contrast. It is not merely that it is habitually written in
+the style and temper of a gentleman, but that it reflects most clearly
+in its criticism, its impartiality, its tone of thought, the best
+intellectual influences of the time. Men may agree or differ about its
+politics or its theology, but no one who reads it can fail to admit that
+it is thoroughly in touch with cultivated lay opinion, and it is in fact
+a favourite paper of many who care only for its secular aspects.</p>
+
+<p>The intellectual ability, however, included among the ministers of a
+Church, though one test, is by no means a decisive and infallible one of
+its religious life. During the period of the Renaissance, when genuine
+belief in the Catholic Church had sunk to nearly its lowest point, most
+men of literary tastes and talents were either members of the priesthood
+or of the monastic orders. This was not due to any fervour of belief,
+but simply to the fact that the Church at that time furnished almost the
+only sphere in which a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>literary life could be pursued with comfort,
+without molestation, and with some adequate reward. Much of the literary
+ability found in the English Church is unquestionably due to the
+attraction it offers and the facilities it gives to those who simply
+wish for a studious life. The abolition of many clerical sinecures, and
+the greatly increased activity of clerical duty imposed by contemporary
+opinion, have no doubt rendered the profession less desirable from this
+point of view; but even now there is no other profession outside the
+universities which lends itself so readily to a literary life, and a
+great proportion of the most eminent thinkers and writers in the Church
+of England are eminent in fields that have little or no connection with
+theology.</p>
+
+<p>Other tests of a flourishing Church are needed, but they can easily be
+found. Political power is one test, though it is a very coarse and very
+deceptive one. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the most
+superstitious creeds are often those which exercise the greatest
+political influence, for they are those in which the priesthood acquires
+the most absolute authority. Nor does the decline of superstition among
+the educated classes always bring with it a corresponding decline in
+ecclesiastical influence. There have been instances, both in Pagan and
+Christian times, of a sceptical and highly educated ruling class
+supporting and allying themselves with a superstitious Church as the
+best means of governing or moralising the masses. Such Churches, by
+their skilful organisation, by their ascendency over individual rulers,
+or by their political alliances, have long exercised an enormous
+influence, and in a democratic age the preponderance of political<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> power
+is steadily passing from the most educated classes. At the same time, in
+a highly civilised and perfectly free country, in which all laws of
+religious disqualification and coercion have disappeared, and all
+questions of religion are submitted to perpetual discussion, the
+political power which the Church of England retains at least proves that
+she has a vast weight of genuine and earnest opinion behind her. No
+politician will deny the strength with which the united or greatly
+preponderating influence of the Church can support or oppose a party. It
+has been said by a cynical observer that the three things outside their
+own families that average Englishmen value the most are rank, money, and
+the Church of England, and certainly no good observer will form a low
+estimate of the strength or earnestness of the Church feeling in every
+section of the English people.</p>
+
+<p>Still less can it be denied that the Church retains in a high degree its
+educational influence. For a long period national education was almost
+wholly in its hands, and, since all disqualifications and most
+privileges have been abolished, it still exercises a part in English
+education which excites the alarm of some and the admiration of others.
+It has thrown itself heartily into the new political conditions, and the
+vast number of voluntary schools established under clerical influence,
+and the immense sums that are annually raised for clerical purposes,
+show beyond all doubt the amount of support and enthusiasm behind it. In
+every branch of higher education its clergy are conspicuous, and their
+influence in training the nation is not confined to the pulpit, the
+university, or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> school. No candid observer of English life will
+doubt the immense effect of the parochial system in sustaining the moral
+level both of principle and practice, and the multitude, activity, and
+value of the philanthropic and moralising agencies which are wholly or
+largely due to the Anglican Church.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can it be reasonably doubted that the Church has been very
+efficacious in promoting that spiritual life which, whatever opinion men
+may form of its origin and meaning, is at least one of the great
+realities of human nature. The power of a religion is not to be solely
+or mainly judged by its corporate action; by the institutions it
+creates; by the part which it plays in the government of the world. It
+is to be found much more in its action on the individual soul, and
+especially in those times and circumstances when man is most isolated
+from society. It is in furnishing the ideals and motives of individual
+life; in guiding and purifying the emotions; in promoting habits of
+thought and feeling that rise above the things of earth; in the comfort
+it can give in age, sorrow, disappointment and bereavement; in the
+seasons of sickness, weakness, declining faculties, and approaching
+death, that its power is most felt. No one creed or Church has the
+monopoly of this power, though each has often tried to identify it with
+something peculiar to itself. It maybe found in the Catholic and in the
+Quaker, in the High Anglican who attributes it to his sacramental
+system, and in the Evangelical in whose eyes that system holds only a
+very subordinate place. All that need here be said is that no one who
+studies the devotional literature of the English Church, or who has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+watched the lives of its more devout members, will doubt that this life
+can largely exist and flourish within its pale.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude which men who have been born within that Church, but who
+have come to dissent from large portions of its theology, should bear to
+this great instrument of good, is certainly not less perplexing than the
+questions we have been considering in the preceding chapters. The most
+difficult position is, of course, that of those who are its actual
+ministers and who have subscribed its formularies. Each man so situated
+must judge in the light of his own conscience. There is a great
+difference between the case of men who accept such a position in the
+Church though they differ fundamentally from its tenets, and the case of
+men who, having engaged in its service, find their old convictions
+modified or shaken, perhaps very gradually, by the advance of science or
+by more matured thought and study. The stringency of the old form of
+subscription has been much mitigated by an Act of 1865 which substituted
+a general declaration that the subscriber believed in the doctrine of
+the Church as a whole, for a declaration that he believed 'all and
+everything' in the Articles and the Prayer-book. The Church of England
+does not profess to be an infallible Church; it does profess to be a
+National Church representing and including great bodies of more or less
+divergent opinion, and the whole tendency of legal decisions since the
+Gorham case has been to enlarge the circle of permissible opinion. The
+possibility of the National Church remaining in touch with the more
+instructed and intellectual portions of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>community depends mainly on
+the latitude of opinion that is accorded to its clergy, and on their
+power of welcoming and adopting new knowledge, and it may reasonably be
+maintained that few greater calamities can befall a nation than the
+severance of its higher intelligence from religious influences.</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered, too, that on the latitudinarian side the
+changes that take place in the teaching of the Church consist much less
+in the open repudiation of old doctrines than in their silent
+evanescence. They drop out of the exhortations of the pulpit. The
+relative importance of different portions of the religious teaching is
+changed. Dogma sinks into the background. Narratives which are no longer
+seriously believed become texts for moral disquisitions. The
+introspective habits and the stress laid on purely ecclesiastical duties
+which once preponderated disappear. The teaching of the pulpit tends
+rather to the formation of active, useful and unselfish lives; to a
+clearer insight into the great masses of remediable suffering and need
+that still exist in the world; to the duty of carrying into all the
+walks of secular life a nobler and more unselfish spirit; to a habit of
+judging men and Churches mainly by their fruits and very little by their
+beliefs. The disintegration or decadence of old religious beliefs which
+had long been closely associated with moral teaching always brings with
+it grave moral dangers, but those dangers are greatly diminished when
+the change of belief is effected by a gradual transition, without any
+violent convulsion or disruption severing men from their old religious
+observances. Such a transition has silently taken place in England<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+among great numbers of educated men, and in some measure under the
+influence of the clergy. Nor has it, I think, weakened the Church. The
+standard of duty among such men has not sunk, but has in most
+departments perceptibly risen: their zeal has not diminished, though it
+flows rather in philanthropic than in purely ecclesiastical channels.
+The conviction that the special dogmas which divided other Protestant
+bodies from the Establishment rested on no substantial basis and have no
+real importance tells in favour of the larger and the more liberal
+Church, and the comprehensiveness which allows highly accentuated
+sacerdotalism and latitudinarianism in the same Church is in the eyes of
+many of them rather an element of strength than of weakness.</p>
+
+<p>Few men have watched the religious tendencies of the time with a keener
+eye than Cardinal Newman, and no man hated with a more intense hatred
+the latitudinarian tendencies which he witnessed. His judgment of their
+effect on the Establishment is very remarkable. In a letter to his
+friend Isaac Williams he says: 'Everything I hear makes me fear that
+latitudinarian opinions are spreading furiously in the Church of
+England. I grieve deeply at it. The Anglican Church has been a most
+useful breakwater against Scepticism. The time might come when you, as
+well as I, might expect that it would be said above, "Why cumbereth it
+the ground?" but at present it upholds far more truth in England than
+any other form of religion would, and than the Catholic Roman Church
+could. But what I fear is that it is <i>tending</i> to a powerful
+Establishment teaching direct error, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> more powerful than it has ever
+been; thrice powerful because it does teach error.'<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is, however, of course, evident that the latitude of opinion which
+may be reasonably claimed by the clergy of a Church encumbered with many
+articles and doctrinal formularies is not unlimited, and each man must
+for himself draw the line. The fact, too, that the Church is an
+Established Church imposes some special obligations on its ministers. It
+is their first duty to celebrate public worship in such a form that all
+members of the Church of England may be able to join in it. Whatever
+interpretations may be placed upon the ceremonies of the Church, those
+ceremonies, at least, should be substantially the same. A stranger who
+enters a church which he has never before seen should be able to feel
+that he is certain of finding public worship intelligibly and decently
+performed, as in past generations it has been celebrated in all sections
+of the Established Church. It has, in my opinion, been a gross scandal,
+following a gross neglect of duty, that this primary obligation has been
+defied, and that services are held in English churches which would have
+been almost unrecognisable by the churchmen of a former generation, and
+which are manifest attempts to turn the English public worship into an
+imitation of the Romish Mass. Men have a perfect right, within the
+widest limits, to perform what religious services and to preach what
+religious doctrines they please, but they have not a right to do so in
+an Established Church.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p><p>The censorship of opinions is another thing, and in the conditions of
+English life it has never been very effectively maintained. The latitude
+of opinion granted in an Established Church is, and ought to be, very
+great, but it is, I think, obvious that on some topics a greater degree
+of reticence of expression should be observed by a clergyman addressing
+a miscellaneous audience from the pulpit of an Established Church than
+need be required of him in private life or even in his published books.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of laymen whose opinions have come to diverge widely from
+the Church formularies is less perplexing, and except in as far as the
+recent revival of sacerdotal pretensions has produced a reaction, there
+has, if I mistake not, of late years been a decided tendency in the best
+and most cultivated lay opinion of this kind to look with increasing
+favour on the Established Church. The complete abolition of the
+religious and political disqualifications which once placed its
+maintenance in antagonism with the interests of large sections of the
+people; the abolition of the indelibility of orders which excluded
+clergymen who changed their views from all other means of livelihood;
+the greater elasticity of opinion permitted within its pale; and the
+elimination from the statute-book of nearly all penalties and
+restrictions resting solely upon ecclesiastical grounds,&mdash;have all
+tended to diminish with such men the objections to the Church. It is a
+Church which does not injure those who are external to it, or interfere
+with those who are mere nominal adherents. It is more and more looked
+upon as a machine of well-organised beneficence, discharging efficiently
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>without corruption functions of supreme utility, and constituting
+one of the main sources of spiritual and moral life in the community.
+None of the modern influences of society can be said to have superseded
+it. Modern experience has furnished much evidence of the insufficiency
+of mere intellectual education if it is unaccompanied by the education
+of character, and it is on this side that modern education is most
+defective. While it undoubtedly makes men far more keenly sensible than
+in the past to the vast inequalities of human lots, the habit of
+constantly holding out material prizes as its immediate objects, and the
+disappearance of those coercive methods of education which once
+disciplined the will, make it perhaps less efficient as an instrument of
+moral amelioration.</p>
+
+<p>Some habits of thought also, that have grown rapidly among educated men,
+have tended powerfully in the same direction. The sharp contrasts
+between true and false in matters of theology have been considerably
+attenuated. The point of view has changed. It is believed that in the
+history of the world gross and material conceptions of religion have
+been not only natural, but indispensable, and that it is only by a
+gradual process of intellectual evolution that the masses of men become
+prepared for higher and purer conceptions. Superstition and illusion
+play no small part in holding together the great fabric of society.
+'Every falsehood,' it has been said, 'is reduced to a certain
+malleability by an alloy of truth,' and, on the other hand, truths of
+the utmost moment are, in certain stages of the world's history, only
+operative when they are clothed with a vesture of superstition. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+Divine Spirit filters down to the human heart through a gross and
+material medium. And what is true of different stages of human history
+is not less true of different contemporary strata of knowledge and
+intelligence. In spite of democratic declamation about the equality of
+man, it is more and more felt that the same kind of teaching is not good
+for everyone. Truth, when undiluted, is too strong a medicine for many
+minds. Some things which a highly cultivated intellect would probably
+discard, and discard without danger, are essential to the moral being of
+multitudes. There is in all great religious systems something that is
+transitory and something that is eternal. Theological interpretations of
+the phenomena of outward nature which surround and influence us, and
+mythological narratives which have been handed down to us from a remote,
+uncritical and superstitious past, may be transformed or discredited;
+but there are elements in religion which have their roots much less in
+the reason of man than in his sorrows and his affections, and are the
+expression of wants, moral appetites and aspirations which are an
+essential, indestructible part of his nature.</p>
+
+<p>No one, I think, can doubt that this way of thinking, whether it be
+right or wrong, has very widely spread through educated Europe, and it
+is a habit of thought which commonly strengthens with age. Young men
+discuss religious questions simply as questions of truth or falsehood.
+In later life they more frequently accept their creed as a working
+hypothesis of life; as a consolation in innumerable calamities; as the
+one supposition under which life is not a melancholy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>anti-climax; as
+the indispensable sanction of moral obligation; as the gratification and
+reflection of needs, instincts and longings which are planted in the
+deepest recesses of human nature; as one of the chief pillars on which
+society rests. The proselytising, the aggressive, the critical spirit
+diminishes. Very often they deliberately turn away their thoughts from
+questions which appear to them to lead only to endless controversy or to
+mere negative conclusions, and base their moral life on some strong
+unselfish interest for the benefit of their kind. In active, useful and
+unselfish work they find the best refuge from the perplexities of belief
+and the best field for the cultivation of their moral nature, and work
+done for the benefit of others seldom fails to react powerfully on their
+own happiness. Nor is it always those who have most completely abandoned
+dogmatic systems who are the least sensible to the moral beauty which
+has grown up around them. The music of the village church, which sounds
+so harsh and commonplace to the worshipper within, sometimes fills with
+tears the eyes of the stranger who sits without, listening among the
+tombs.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to say how far the partial truce which has now fallen in
+England over the great antagonisms of belief is likely to be permanent.
+No one who knows the world can be insensible to the fact that a large
+and growing proportion of those who habitually attend our religious
+services have come to diverge very widely, though in many different
+degrees, from the beliefs which are expressed or implied in the
+formularies they use. Custom, fashion, the charm of old associations,
+the cravings of their own moral or spiritual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> nature, a desire to
+support a useful system of moral training, to set a good example to
+their children, their household, or their neighbours, keep them in their
+old place when the beliefs which they profess with their lips have in a
+great measure ebbed away. I do not undertake to blame or to judge them.
+Individual conscience and character and particular circumstances have,
+in these matters, a decisive voice. But there are times when the
+difference between professed belief and real belief is too great for
+endurance, and when insincerity and half-belief affect seriously the
+moral character of a nation. 'The deepest, nay, the only theme of the
+world's history, to which all others are subordinate,' said Goethe, 'is
+the conflict of faith and unbelief. The epochs in which faith, in
+whatever form it may be, prevails, are the marked epochs in human
+history, full of heart-stirring memories and of substantial gains for
+all after times. The epochs in which unbelief, in whatever form it may
+be, prevails, even when for the moment they put on the semblance of
+glory and success, inevitably sink into insignificance in the eyes of
+posterity, which will not waste its thoughts on things barren and
+unfruitful.'</p>
+
+<p>Many of my readers have probably felt the force of such considerations
+and the moral problems which they suggest, and there have been perhaps
+moments when they have asked themselves the question of the poet&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Tell me, my soul, what is thy creed?</div>
+<div>Is it a faith or only a need?</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They will reflect, however, that a need, if it be universally felt when
+human nature is in its highest and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> purest state, furnishes some basis
+of belief, and also that no man can venture to assign limits to the
+transformations which religion may undergo without losing its essence or
+its power. Even in the field of morals these have been very great,
+though universal custom makes us insensible to the extent to which we
+have diverged from a literal observance of Evangelical precepts. We
+should hardly write over the Savings Bank, 'Take no thought for the
+morrow, for the morrow will take thought for itself,' or over the Bank
+of England, 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' 'How
+hardly shall a rich man enter into the Kingdom of God,' or over the
+Foreign Office, or the Law Court, or the prison, 'Resist not evil,' 'He
+that smiteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also,' 'He
+that taketh away thy coat let him have thy cloak also.' Can it be said
+that the whole force and meaning of such words are represented by an
+industrial society in which the formation of habits of constant
+providence with the object of averting poverty or increasing comfort is
+deemed one of the first of duties and a main element and measure of
+social progress; in which the indiscriminate charity which encourages
+mendicancy and discourages habits of forethought and thrift is far more
+seriously condemned than an industrial system based on the keenest, the
+most deadly, and often the most malevolent competition; in which wealth
+is universally sought, and universally esteemed a good and not an evil,
+provided only it is honestly obtained and wisely and generously used; in
+which, although wanton aggression and a violent and quarrelsome temper
+are no doubt condemned, it is esteemed the duty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> every good citizen
+to protect his rights whenever they are unjustly infringed; in which war
+and the preparation for war kindle the most passionate enthusiasm and
+absorb a vast proportion of the energies of Christendom, and in which no
+Government could remain a week in power if it did not promptly resent
+the smallest insult to the national flag?</p>
+
+<p>It is a question of a different kind whether the sacerdotal spirit which
+has of late years so largely spread in the English Church can extend
+without producing a violent disruption. To cut the tap roots of
+priestcraft was one of the main aims and objects of the Reformation,
+and, for reasons I have already stated, I do not believe that the party
+which would re-establish it has by any means the strength that has been
+attributed to it. It is true that the Broad Church party, though it
+reflects faithfully the views of large numbers of educated laymen, has
+never exercised an influence in active Church life at all proportionate
+to the eminence of its leading representatives. It is true also that the
+Evangelical party has in a very remarkable degree lost its old place in
+the Anglican pulpit and in religious literature, though its tenets still
+form the staple of the preaching of the Salvation Army and of most other
+street preachers who exercise a real and widespread influence over the
+poor. But the middle and lower sections of English society are, I
+believe, at bottom, profoundly hostile to priestcraft; and although the
+dread of Popery has diminished, they are very far from being ready to
+acquiesce in any attempt to restore the dominion which their fathers
+discarded.</p>
+
+<p>In one respect, indeed, sacerdotalism in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>Anglican Church is a worse
+thing than in the Roman Church, for it is undisciplined and unregulated.
+The history of the Church abundantly shows the dangers that have sprung
+from the Confessional, though the Roman Catholic will maintain that its
+habitually restraining and moralising influence greatly outweighs these
+occasional abuses. But in the Roman Church the practice of confession is
+carried on under the most severe ecclesiastical supervision and
+discipline. Confession can only be made to a celibate priest of mature
+age, who is bound to secrecy by the most solemn oath; who, except in
+cases of grave illness, confesses only in an open church; and who has
+gone through a long course of careful education specially and skilfully
+designed to fit him for the duty. None of these conditions are observed
+in Anglican Confession.</p>
+
+<p>In other respects, indeed, the sacerdotal spirit is never likely to be
+quite the same as in the Roman Church. A married clergy, who have mixed
+in all the lay influences of an English university, and who still take
+part in the pursuits, studies, social intercourse and amusements of
+laymen, are not likely to form a separate caste or to constitute a very
+formidable priesthood. It is perhaps a little difficult to treat their
+pretensions with becoming gravity, and the atmosphere of unlimited
+discussion which envelops Englishmen through their whole lives has
+effectually destroyed the danger of coercive and restrictive laws
+directed against opinion. Moral coercion and the tendency to interfere
+by law on moral grounds with the habits of men, even when those habits
+in no degree interfere with others, have increased. It is one of the
+marked tendencies of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> Anglo-Saxon democracy, and it is very far from
+being peculiar to, or even specially prominent in, any one Church. But
+the desire to repress the expression of opinions by force, which for so
+many centuries marked with blood and fire the power of medi&aelig;val
+sacerdotalism, is wholly alien to modern English nature. Amid all the
+fanaticisms, exaggerations, and superstitions of belief, this kind of
+coercion, at least, is never likely to be formidable, nor do I believe
+that in the most extreme section of the sacerdotal clergy there is any
+desire for it. There has been one significant contrast between the
+history of Catholicism and Anglicanism in the present century. In the
+Catholic Church the Ultramontane element has steadily dominated,
+restricting liberty of opinion, and important tenets which were once
+undefined by the Church, and on which sincere Catholics had some
+latitude of opinion, have been brought under the iron yoke. This is no
+doubt largely due to the growth of scepticism and indifference, which
+have made the great body of educated laymen hostile or indifferent to
+the Church, and have thrown its management mainly into the hands of the
+priesthood and the more bigoted, ignorant and narrow-minded laymen. But
+in the Anglican Church educated laymen are much less alienated from
+Church life, and a tribunal which is mainly lay exercises the supreme
+authority. As a consequence of these conditions, although the sacerdotal
+element has greatly increased, the latitude of opinion within the Church
+has steadily grown.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, it is difficult to believe that serious dangers do not
+await the Church if the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>unprotestantising influences that have spread
+within it continue to extend. It is not likely that the nation will
+continue to give its support to the Church if that Church in its main
+tendencies cuts itself off from the Reformation. The conversions to
+Catholicism in England, though probably much exaggerated, have been very
+numerous, and it is certainly not surprising that it should be so. If
+the Church of Rome permitted Protestantism to be constantly taught in
+her pulpits, and Protestant types of worship and character to be
+habitually held up to admiration, there can be little doubt that many of
+her worshippers would be shaken. If the Church of England becomes in
+general what it already is in some of its churches, it is not likely
+that English public opinion will permanently acquiesce in its privileged
+position in the State. If it ceases to be a Protestant Church, it will
+not long remain an established one, and its disestablishment would
+probably be followed by a disruption in which opinions would be more
+sharply defined, and the latitude of belief and the spirit of compromise
+that now characterise our English religious life might be seriously
+impaired.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Alciphron</i>, 6th Dialogue.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Nalsons's <i>Collections</i>, i. 769, February 9, 1640.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Autobiography of Isaac Williams</i>, p. 132. This letter was
+written in 1863.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MANAGEMENT OF CHARACTER</h3>
+
+<p>Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and
+management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it
+should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a
+calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the
+self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by
+the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognise his powers for
+good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no
+power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognise that this
+power is not unlimited. Man is like a card-player who receives from
+Nature his cards&mdash;his disposition, his circumstances, the strength or
+weakness of his will, of his mind, and of his body. The game of life is
+one of blended chance and skill. The best player will be defeated if he
+has hopelessly bad cards, but in the long run the skill of the player
+will not fail to tell. The power of man over his character bears much
+resemblance to his power over his body. Men come into the world with
+bodies very unequal in their health and strength; with hereditary
+dispositions to disease; with organs varying greatly in their normal
+condition. At the same time a temperate or intemperate life, skilful or
+unskilful regimen, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>physical exercises well adapted to strengthen the
+weaker parts, physical apathy, vicious indulgence, misdirected or
+excessive effort, will all in their different ways alter his bodily
+condition and increase or diminish his chances of disease and premature
+death. The power of will over character is, however, stronger, or, at
+least, wider than its power over the body. There are organs which lie
+wholly beyond its influence; there are diseases over which it can
+exercise no possible influence, but there is no part of our moral
+constitution which we cannot in some degree influence or modify.</p>
+
+<p>It has often seemed to me that diversities of taste throw much light on
+the basis of character. Why is it that the same dish gives one man keen
+pleasure and to another is loathsome and repulsive? To this simple
+question no real answer can be given. It is a fact of our nature that
+one fruit, or meat, or drink will give pleasure to one palate and none
+whatever to another. At the same time, while the original and natural
+difference is undoubted, there are many differences which are wholly or
+largely due to particular and often transitory causes. Dishes have an
+attraction or the reverse because they are associated with old
+recollections or habits. Habit will make a Frenchman like his melon with
+salt, while an Englishman prefers it with sugar. An old association of
+ideas will make an Englishman shrink from eating a frog or a snail,
+though he would probably like each if he ate it without knowing it, and
+he could easily learn to do so. The kind of cookery which one age or one
+nation generally likes, another age or another nation finds distasteful.
+The eye often governs the taste, and a dish which, when seen, excites<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+intense repulsion, would have no such repulsion to a blind man. Every
+one who has moved much about the world, and especially in uncivilised
+countries, will get rid of many old antipathies, will lose the
+fastidiousness of his taste, and will acquire new and genuine tastes.
+The original innate difference is not wholly destroyed, but it is
+profoundly and variously modified.</p>
+
+<p>These changes of taste are very analogous to what takes place in our
+moral dispositions. They are for the most part in themselves simply
+external to morals, though there is at least one conspicuous exception.
+Many&mdash;it is to be hoped most&mdash;men might spend their lives with full
+access to intoxicating liquors without even the temptation of getting
+drunk. Apart from all considerations of religion, morals, social,
+physical, or intellectual consequences, they abstain from doing so
+simply as a matter of taste. With other men the pleasure of excessive
+drinking is such that it requires an heroic effort of the will to resist
+it. There are men who not only are so constituted that it is their
+greatest pleasure, but who are even born with a craving for drink. In no
+form is the terrible fact of heredity more clearly or more tragically
+displayed. Many, too, who had originally no such craving gradually
+acquire it: sometimes by mere social influence, which makes excessive
+drinking the habit of their circle; more frequently through depression
+or sorrow, which gives men a longing for some keen pleasure in which
+they can forget themselves; or through the jaded habit of mind and body
+which excessive work produces, or through the dreary, colourless,
+joyless surroundings of sordid poverty. Drink and the sensual pleasures,
+if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> viciously indulged, produce (doubtless through physical causes) an
+intense craving for their gratification. This, however, is not the case
+with all our pleasures. Many are keenly enjoyed when present, yet not
+seriously missed when absent. Sometimes, too, the effect of
+over-indulgence is to vitiate and deaden the palate, so that what was
+once pleasing ceases altogether to be an object of desire. This, too,
+has its analogue in other things. We have a familiar example in the
+excessive novel-reader, who begins with a kind of mental intoxication,
+and who ends with such a weariness that he finds it a serious effort to
+read the books which were once his strongest temptation.</p>
+
+<p>Tastes of the palate also naturally change with age and with the
+accompanying changes of the body. The schoolboy who bitterly repines
+because the smallness of his allowance restricts his power of buying
+tarts and sweetmeats will probably grow into a man who, with many
+shillings in his pocket, daily passes the confectioner's shop without
+the smallest desire to enter it.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that there is a close analogy between these things and
+that collection of likes and dislikes, moral and intellectual, which
+forms the primal base of character, and which mainly determines the
+complexion of our lives. As Marcus Aurelius said: 'Who can change the
+desires of man?' That which gives the strongest habitual pleasure,
+whether it be innate or acquired, will in the great majority of cases
+ultimately dominate. Certain things will always be intensely
+pleasurable, and certain other things indifferent or repellent, and this
+magnetism is the true basis of character, and with the majority of men
+it mainly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>determines conduct. By the associations of youth and by other
+causes these natural likings and dislikings may be somewhat modified,
+but even in youth our power is very limited, and in later life it is
+much less. No real believer in free-will will hold that man is an
+absolute slave to his desires. No man who knows the world will deny that
+with average man the strongest passion or desire will prevail&mdash;happy
+when that desire is not a vice.</p>
+
+<p>Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great
+task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which
+are most productive of happiness in life. Here, as in most other things,
+opposite exaggerations are to be avoided. There is such a thing as
+looking forward too rigidly and too exclusively to the future&mdash;to a
+future that may never arrive. This is the great fault of the
+over-educationist, who makes early life a burden and a toil, and also of
+those who try to impose on youth the tastes and pleasures of the man.
+Youth has its own pleasures, which will always give it most enjoyment,
+and a happy youth is in itself an end. It is the time when the power of
+enjoyment is most keen, and it is often accompanied by such extreme
+sensitiveness that the sufferings of the child for what seem the most
+trivial causes probably at least equal in acuteness, though not in
+durability, the sufferings of a man. Many a parent standing by the
+coffin of his child has felt with bitterness how much of the measure of
+enjoyment that short life might have known has been cut off by an
+injudicious education. And even if adult life is attained, the evils of
+an unhappy childhood are seldom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> wholly compensated. The pleasures of
+retrospect are among the most real we possess, and it is around our
+childish days that our fondest associations naturally cluster. An early
+over-strain of our powers often leaves behind it lasting distortion or
+weakness, and a sad childhood introduces into the character elements of
+morbidness and bitterness that will not disappear.</p>
+
+<p>The first great rule in judging of pleasures is that so well expressed
+by Seneca: 'Sic pr&aelig;sentibus utaris voluptatibus ut futuris non
+noceas'&mdash;so to use present pleasures as not to impair future ones.
+Drunkenness, sensuality, gambling, habitual extravagance and
+self-indulgence, if they become the pleasures of youth, will almost
+infallibly lead to the ruin of a life. Pleasures that are in themselves
+innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main
+object of pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>In starting in life we are apt to attach a disproportionate value to
+tastes, pleasures, and ideals that can only be even approximately
+satisfied in youth, health, and strength. We have, I think, an example
+of this in the immense place which athletic games and out-of-door sports
+have taken in modern English life. They are certainly not things to be
+condemned. They have the direct effect of giving a large amount of
+intense and innocent pleasure, and they have indirect effects which are
+still more important. In so far as they raise the level of physical
+strength and health, and dispel the morbidness of temperament which is
+so apt to accompany a sedentary life and a diseased or inert frame, they
+contribute powerfully to lasting happiness. They play a considerable
+part in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> formation of friendships which is one of the best fruits of
+the period between boyhood and mature manhood. Some of them give lessons
+of courage, perseverance, energy, self-restraint, and cheerful
+acquiescence in disappointment and defeat that are of no small value in
+the formation of character, and when they are not associated with
+gambling they have often the inestimable advantage of turning young men
+away from vicious pleasures. At the same time it can hardly be doubted
+that they hold an exaggerated prominence in the lives of young
+Englishmen of the present generation. It is not too much to say that
+among large sections of the students at our Universities, and at a time
+when intellectual ambition ought to be most strong and when the
+acquisition of knowledge is most important, proficiency in cricket or
+boating or football is more prized than any intellectual achievement. I
+have heard a good judge, who had long been associated with English
+University life, express his opinion that during the last forty or fifty
+years the relative intellectual position of the upper and middle classes
+in England has been materially changed, owing to the disproportioned
+place which outdoor amusements have assumed in the lives of the former.
+It is the impression of very competent judges that a genuine love,
+reverence and enthusiasm for intellectual things is less common among
+the young men of the present day than it was in the days of their
+fathers. The predominance of the critical spirit which chills
+enthusiasm, and still more the cram system which teaches young men to
+look on the prizes that are to be won by competitive examinations as the
+supreme end of knowledge, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> doubt largely account for this, but much
+is also due to the extravagant glorification of athletic games.</p>
+
+<p>If we compare the class of pleasures I have described with the taste for
+reading and kindred intellectual pleasures, the superiority of the
+latter is very manifest. To most young men, it is true, a game will
+probably give at least as much pleasure as a book. Nor must we measure
+the pleasure of reading altogether by the language of the genuine
+scholar. It is not every one who could say, like Gibbon, that he would
+not exchange his love of reading for all the wealth of the Indies. Very
+many would agree with him; but Gibbon was a man with an intense natural
+love of knowledge, and the weak health of his early life intensified
+this predominant passion. But while the tastes which require physical
+strength decline or pass with age, that for reading steadily grows. It
+is illimitable in the vistas of pleasure it opens; it is one of the most
+easily satisfied, one of the cheapest, one of the least dependent on
+age, seasons, and the varying conditions of life. It cheers the invalid
+through years of weakness and confinement; illuminates the dreary hours
+of the sleepless night; stores the mind with pleasant thoughts, banishes
+ennui, fills up the unoccupied interstices and enforced leisures of an
+active life; makes men for a time at least forget their anxieties and
+sorrows, and if it is judiciously managed it is one of the most powerful
+means of training character and disciplining and elevating thought. It
+is eminently a pleasure which is not only good in itself but enhances
+many others. By extending the range of our knowledge, by enlarging our
+powers of sympathy and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> appreciation, it adds incalculably to the
+pleasures of society, to the pleasures of travel, to the pleasures of
+art, to the interest we take in the vast variety of events which form
+the great world-drama around us.</p>
+
+<p>To acquire this taste in early youth is one of the best fruits of
+education, and it is especially useful when the taste for reading
+becomes a taste for knowledge, and when it is accompanied by some
+specialisation and concentration and by some exercise of the powers of
+observation. 'Many tastes and one hobby' is no bad ideal to be aimed at.
+The boy who learns to collect and classify fossils, or flowers, or
+insects, who has acquired a love for chemical experiments, who has begun
+to form a taste for some particular kind or department of knowledge, has
+laid the foundation of much happiness in life.</p>
+
+<p>In the selection of pleasures and the cultivation of tastes much wisdom
+is shown in choosing in such a way that each should form a complement to
+the others; that different pleasures should not clash, but rather cover
+different areas and seasons of life; that each should tend to correct
+faults or deficiencies of character which the others may possibly
+produce. The young man who starts in life with keen literary tastes and
+also with a keen love of out-of-door sports, and who possesses the means
+of gratifying each, has perhaps provided himself with as many elements
+of happiness as mere amusements can ever furnish. One set of pleasures,
+however, often kills the capacity for enjoying others, and some which in
+themselves are absolutely innocent, by blunting the enjoyment of better
+things, exercise an injurious influence on character.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> Habitual
+novel-reading, for example, often destroys the taste for serious
+literature, and few things tend so much to impair a sound literary
+perception and to vulgarise the character as the habit of constantly
+saturating the mind with inferior literature, even when that literature
+is in no degree immoral. Sometimes an opposite evil may be produced.
+Excessive fastidiousness greatly limits our enjoyments, and the
+inestimable gift of extreme concentration is often dearly bought. The
+well-known confession of Darwin that his intense addiction to science
+had destroyed his power of enjoying even the noblest imaginative
+literature represents a danger to which many men who have achieved much
+in the higher and severer forms of scientific thought are subject. Such
+men are usually by their original temperament, and become still more by
+acquired habit, men of strong, narrow, concentrated natures, whose
+thoughts, like a deep and rapid stream confined in a restricted channel,
+flow with resistless energy in one direction. It is by the sacrifice of
+versatility that they do so much, and the result is amply sufficient to
+justify it. But it is a real sacrifice, depriving them of many forms
+both of capacity and of enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>The same pleasures act differently on different characters, especially
+on the differences of character that accompany difference of sex. I have
+myself no doubt that the movement which in modern times has so widely
+opened to women amusements that were once almost wholly reserved for men
+has been on the whole a good one. It has produced a higher level of
+health, stronger nerves, and less morbid characters, and it has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> given
+keen and innocent enjoyment to many who from their circumstances and
+surroundings once found their lives very dreary and insipid. Yet most
+good observers will agree that amusements which have no kind of evil
+effect on men often in some degree impair the graces or characters of
+women, and that it is not quite with impunity that one sex tries to live
+the life of the other. Some pleasures, too, exercise a much larger
+influence than others on the general habits of life. It is not too much
+to say that the invention of the bicycle, bringing with it an immense
+increase of outdoor life, of active exercise, and of independent habits,
+has revolutionised the course of many lives. Some amusements which may
+in themselves be but little valued are wisely cultivated as helping men
+to move more easily in different spheres of society, or as providing a
+resource for old age. Talleyrand was not wholly wrong in his reproach to
+a man who had never learned to play whist: 'What an unhappy old age you
+are preparing for yourself!'</p>
+
+<p>I have already mentioned the differences that may be found in different
+countries and ages, in the relative importance attached to external
+circumstances and to dispositions of mind as means of happiness, and the
+tendency in the more progressive nations to seek their happiness mainly
+in improved circumstances. Another great line of distinction is between
+education that acts specially upon the desires, and that which acts
+specially upon the will. The great perfection of modern systems of
+education is chiefly of the former kind. Its object is to make knowledge
+and virtue attractive, and therefore an object of desire. It does so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+partly by presenting them in the most alluring forms, partly by
+connecting them as closely as possible with rewards. The great principle
+of modern moral education is to multiply innocent and beneficent
+interests, tastes, and ambitions. It is to make the path of virtue the
+natural, the easy, the pleasing one; to form a social atmosphere
+favourable to its development, making duty and interest as far as
+possible coincident. Vicious pleasures are combated by the
+multiplication of healthy ones, and by a clearer insight into the
+consequences of each. An idle or inert character is stimulated by
+holding up worthy objects of interest and ambition, and it is the aim
+alike of the teacher and the legislator to make the grooves and channels
+of life such as tend naturally and easily towards good. But the
+education of the will&mdash;the power of breasting the current of the desires
+and doing for long periods what is distasteful and painful&mdash;is much less
+cultivated than in some periods of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Many things contribute to this. The rush and hurry of modern existence
+and the incalculable multitude and variety of fleeting impressions that
+in the great centres of civilisation pass over the mind are very
+unfavourable to concentration, and perhaps still more to the direct
+cultivation of mental states. Amusements, and the appetite for
+amusements, have greatly extended. Life has become more full. The long
+leisures, the introspective habits, the <i>vita contemplativa</i> so
+conspicuous in the old Catholic discipline, grow very rare. Thoughts and
+interests are more thrown on the external; and the comfort, the luxury,
+the softness, the humanity of modern life, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>especially of modern
+education, make men less inclined to face the disagreeable and endure
+the painful.</p>
+
+<p>The starting-point of education is thus silently changing. Perhaps the
+extent of the change is best shown by the old Catholic ascetic training.
+Its supreme object was to discipline and strengthen the will: to
+accustom men habitually to repudiate the pleasurable and accept the
+painful; to mortify the most natural tastes and affections; to narrow
+and weaken the empire of the desires; to make men wholly independent of
+outward circumstances; to preach self-renunciation as itself an end.</p>
+
+<p>Men will always differ about the merits of this system. In my own
+opinion it is difficult to believe that in the period of Catholic
+ascendency the moral standard was, on the whole and in its broad lines,
+higher than our own. The repression of the sensual instincts was the
+central fact in ascetic morals; but, even tested by this test, it is at
+least very doubtful whether it did not fail. The withdrawal from secular
+society of the best men did much to restrict the influences for good,
+and the habit of aiming at an unnatural ideal was not favourable to
+common, everyday, domestic virtue. The history of sacerdotal and
+monastic celibacy abundantly shows how much vice that might easily have
+been avoided grew out of the adoption of an unnatural standard, and how
+often it led in those who had attained it to grave distortions of
+character. Affections and impulses which were denied their healthy and
+natural vent either became wholly atrophied or took other and morbid
+forms, and the hard, cruel, self-righteous fanatic, equally ready to
+endure or to inflict<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> suffering, was a not unnatural result. But
+whatever may have been its failures and its exaggerations, Catholic
+asceticism was at least a great school for disciplining and
+strengthening the will, and the strength and discipline of the will form
+one of the first elements of virtue and of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>In the grave and noble type of character which prevailed in English and
+American life during the seventeenth century, the strength of will was
+conspicuously apparent. Life was harder, simpler, more serious, and less
+desultory than at present, and strong convictions shaped and fortified
+the character. 'It was an age,' says a great American writer, 'when what
+we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive
+materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal
+more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence,
+which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller
+proportion and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and
+estimate of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is
+partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day the English settler on these
+rude shores, having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank
+behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence were strong
+in him, bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age; on
+long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience; on
+endowments of that grave and weighty order which give the idea of
+permanence and come under the general definition of respectability.
+These primitive statesmen, therefore,&mdash;Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley,
+Bellingham, and their compeers,&mdash;who were elevated to power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> by the
+early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but
+distinguished by a ponderous sobriety rather than activity of intellect.
+They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of difficulty or peril
+stood up for the welfare of the State like a line of cliffs against a
+tempestuous tide.'<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>The power of the will, however, even when it exists in great strength,
+is often curiously capricious. History is full of examples of men who in
+great trials and emergencies have acted with admirable and persevering
+heroism, yet who readily succumbed to private vices or passions. The
+will is not the same as the desires, but the connection between them is
+very close. A love for a distant end; a dominating ambition or passion,
+will call forth long perseverance in wholly distasteful work in men
+whose will in other fields of life is lamentably feeble. Every one who
+has embarked with real earnestness in some extended literary enterprise
+which as a whole represents the genuine bent of his talent and character
+will be struck with his exceptional power of traversing perseveringly
+long sections of this enterprise for which he has no natural aptitude
+and in which he takes no pleasure. Military courage is with most men
+chiefly a matter of temperament and impulse, but there have been
+conspicuous instances of great soldiers and sailors who have frankly
+acknowledged that they never lost in battle an intense constitutional
+shrinking from danger, though by the force of a strong will they never
+suffered this timidity to govern or to weaken them. With men of very
+vivid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> imagination there is a natural tendency to timidity as they
+realise more than ordinary men danger and suffering. On the other hand
+it has often been noticed how calmly the callous, semi-torpid
+temperament that characterises many of the worst criminals enables them
+to meet death upon the gallows.</p>
+
+<p>In courage itself, too, there are many varieties. The courage of the
+soldier and the courage of the martyr are not the same, and it by no
+means follows that either would possess that of the other. Not a few men
+who are capable of leading a forlorn hope, and who never shrink from the
+bayonet and the cannon, have shown themselves incapable of bearing the
+burden of responsibility, enduring long-continued suspense, taking
+decisions which might expose them to censure or unpopularity. The active
+courage that encounters and delights in danger is often found in men who
+show no courage in bearing suffering, misfortune, or disease. In passive
+courage the woman often excels the man as much as in active courage the
+man exceeds the woman. Even in active courage familiarity does much;
+sympathy and enthusiasm play great and often very various parts, and
+curious anomalies may be found. The Teutonic and the Latin races are
+probably equally distinguished for their military courage, but there is
+a clear difference between them in the nature of that courage and in the
+circumstances or conditions under which it is usually most splendidly
+displayed. The danger incurred by the gladiator was far greater than
+that which was encountered by the soldier, but Tacitus<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> mentions
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> when some of the bravest gladiators were employed in the Roman
+army they were found wholly inefficient, as they were much less capable
+than the ordinary soldiers of military courage.</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances of life are the great school for forming and
+strengthening the will, and in the excessive competition and struggle of
+modern industrialism this school is not wanting. But in ethical and
+educational systems the value of its cultivation is often insufficiently
+felt. Yet nothing which is learned in youth is so really valuable as the
+power and the habit of self-restraint, of self-sacrifice, of energetic,
+continuous and concentrated effort. In the best of us evil tendencies
+are always strong and the path of duty is often distasteful. With the
+most favourable wind and tide the bark will never arrive at the harbour
+if it has ceased to obey the rudder. A weak nature which is naturally
+kindly, affectionate and pure, which floats through life under the
+impulse of the feelings, with no real power of self-restraint, is indeed
+not without its charm, and in a well-organised society, with good
+surroundings and few temptations, it may attain a high degree of beauty;
+but its besetting failings will steadily grow; without fortitude,
+perseverance and principle, it has no recuperative energy, and it will
+often end in a moral catastrophe which natures in other respects much
+less happily compounded would easily avoid. Nothing can permanently
+secure our moral being in the absence of a restraining will basing
+itself upon a strong sense of the difference between right and wrong,
+upon the firm groundwork of principle and honour.</p>
+
+<p>Experience abundantly shows how powerfully the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> steady action of such a
+will can operate upon innate defects, converting the constitutional
+idler into the indefatigably industrious, checking, limiting and
+sometimes almost destroying constitutional irritability and vicious
+passions. The natural power of the will in different men differs
+greatly, but there is no part of our nature which is more strengthened
+by exercise or more weakened by disuse. The minor faults of character it
+can usually correct; but when a character is once formed, and when its
+tendencies are essentially vicious, radical cure or even considerable
+amelioration is very rare. Sometimes the strong influence of religion
+effects it. Sometimes it is effected by an illness, a great misfortune,
+or the total change of associations that follows emigration. Marriage
+perhaps more frequently than any other ordinary agency in early life
+transforms or deeply modifies the character, for it puts an end to
+powerful temptations and brings with it a profound change of habits and
+motives, associations and desires. But we have all of us encountered in
+life depraved natures in which vicious self-indulgence had attained such
+a strength, and the recuperating and moralising elements were so fatally
+weak, that we clearly perceive the disease to be incurable, and that it
+is hardly possible that any change of circumstances could even seriously
+mitigate it. In what proportion this is the fault or the calamity of the
+patient no human judgment can accurately tell.</p>
+
+<p>Few things are sadder than to observe how frequently the inheritance of
+great wealth or even of easy competence proves the utter and speedy ruin
+of a young man, except when the administration of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> large property, or
+the necessity of carrying on a great business, or some other propitious
+circumstance provides him with a clearly defined sphere of work. The
+majority of men will gladly discard distasteful work which their
+circumstances do not require; and in the absence of steady work, and in
+the possession of all the means of gratification, temptations assume an
+overwhelming strength, and the springs of moral life are fatally
+impaired. It can hardly be doubted that the average longevity in this
+small class is far less than in that of common men, and that even when
+natural capacity is considerable it is more rarely displayed. To a man
+with a real desire for work such circumstances are indeed of inestimable
+value, giving him the leisure and the opportunities of applying himself
+without distraction and from early manhood to the kind of work that is
+most suited to him. Sometimes this takes place, but much more frequently
+vicious tastes or a simply idle or purposeless life are the result.
+Sometimes, indeed, a large amount of desultory and unregulated energy
+remains, but the serious labour of concentration is shunned and no real
+result is attained. The stream is there, but it turns no mill.</p>
+
+<p>Most men escape this danger through the circumstances of life which make
+serious and steady work necessary to their livelihood, and in the
+majority of cases the kind of work is so clearly marked out that they
+have little choice. When some choice exists, the rule which I have
+already laid down should not be forgotten. Men should choose their work
+not only according to their talents and their opportunities, but also,
+as far as possible, according to their characters.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> They should select
+the kinds which are most fitted to bring their best qualities into
+exercise, or should at least avoid those which have a special tendency
+to develop or encourage their dominant defects. On the whole it will be
+found that men's characters are much more deeply influenced by their
+pursuits than by their opinions.</p>
+
+<p>The choice of work is one of the great agencies for the management of
+character in youth. The choice of friends is another. In the words of
+Burke, 'The law of opinion ... is the strongest principle in the
+composition of the frame of the human mind, and more of the happiness
+and unhappiness of man reside in that inward principle than in all
+external circumstances put together.'<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> This is true of the great
+public opinion of an age or country which envelops us like an
+atmosphere, and by its silent pressure steadily and almost insensibly
+shapes or influences the whole texture of our lives. It is still more
+true of the smaller circle of our intimacies which will do more than
+almost any other thing to make the path of virtue easy or difficult. How
+large a proportion of the incentives to a noble ambition, or of the
+first temptations to evil, may be traced to an early friendship, and it
+is often in the little circle that gathers round a college table that
+the measure of life is first taken, and ideals and enthusiasms are
+formed which give a colour to all succeeding years. To admire strongly
+and to admire wisely is, indeed, one of the best means of moral
+improvement.</p>
+
+<p>Very much, however, of the management of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>character can only be
+accomplished by the individual himself acting in complete isolation upon
+his own nature and in the chamber of his own mind. The discipline of
+thought; the establishment of an ascendency of the will over our courses
+of thinking; the power of casting away morbid trains of reflection and
+turning resolutely to other subjects or aspects of life; the power of
+concentrating the mind vigorously on a serious subject and pursuing
+continuous trains of thought,&mdash;form perhaps the best fruits of judicious
+self-education. Its importance, indeed, is manifold. In the higher walks
+of intellect this power of mental concentration is of supreme value.
+Newton is said to have ascribed mainly to an unusual amount of it his
+achievements in philosophy, and it is probable that the same might be
+said by most other great thinkers. In the pursuit of happiness hardly
+anything in external circumstances is so really valuable as the power of
+casting off worry, turning in times of sorrow to healthy work, taking
+habitually the brighter view of things. It is in such exercises of will
+that we chiefly realise the truth of the lines of Tennyson:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Oh, well for him whose will is strong,</div>
+<div>He suffers, but he will not suffer long.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In moral culture it is not less important to acquire the power of
+discarding the demoralising thoughts and imaginations that haunt so
+many, and meeting temptation by calling up purer, higher and restraining
+thoughts. The faculty we possess of alternating and intensifying our own
+motives by bringing certain thoughts, or images, or subjects into the
+foreground<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> and throwing others into the background, is one of our chief
+means of moral progress. The cultivation of this power is a far wiser
+thing than the cultivation of that introspective habit of mind which is
+perpetually occupied with self-analysis or self-examination, and which
+is constantly and remorsefully dwelling upon past faults or upon the
+morbid elements in our nature. In the morals which are called minor,
+though they affect deeply the happiness of mankind, the importance of
+the government of thought is not less apparent. The secret of good or
+bad temper is our habitual tendency to dwell upon or to fly from the
+irritating and the inevitable. Content or discontent, amiability or the
+reverse, depend mainly upon the disposition of our minds to turn
+specially to the good or to the evil sides of our own lot, to the merits
+or to the defects of those about us. A power of turning our thoughts
+from a given subject, though not the sole element in self-control, is at
+least one of its most important ingredients.</p>
+
+<p>This power of the will over the thoughts is one in which men differ
+enormously. Thus&mdash;to take the most familiar instance&mdash;the capacity for
+worry, with all the exaggerations and distortions of sentiment it
+implies, is very evidently a constitutional thing, and where it exists
+to a high degree neither reason nor will can effectually cure it. Such a
+man may have the clearest possible intellectual perception of its
+uselessness and its folly. Yet it will often banish sleep from his
+pillow, follow him with an habitual depression in all the walks of life,
+and make his measure of happiness much less than that of others who with
+far less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> propitious circumstances are endued by nature with the gift of
+lightly throwing off the past and looking forward with a sanguine and
+cheerful spirit to the future. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the
+different degrees of suffering the same trouble will produce in
+different men, and it is probable that the happiness of a life depends
+much less on the amount of pleasurable or painful things that are
+encountered, than upon the turn of thought which dwells chiefly on one
+or on the other. It is very evident that buoyancy of temperament is not
+a thing that increases with civilisation or education. It is mainly
+physical. It is greatly influenced by climate and by health, and where
+no very clear explanation of this kind can be given it is a thing in
+which different nations differ greatly. Few good observers will deny
+that persistent and concentrated will is more common in Great Britain
+than in Ireland, but that the gift of a buoyant temperament is more
+common among Irishmen than among Englishmen. Yet it co-exists in the
+national character with a strong vein of very genuine melancholy, and it
+is often accompanied by keen sensitiveness to suffering. This
+combination is a very common one. Every one who has often stood by a
+deathbed knows how frequently it will be found that the mourner who is
+utterly prostrated by grief, and whose tears flow in torrents, casts off
+her grief much more completely and much sooner than one whose tears
+refuse to flow and who never for a moment loses her self-command.</p>
+
+<p>But though natural temperament enables one man to do without effort what
+another man with the utmost effort fails to accomplish, there are some
+available<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> remedies that can palliate the disease. Society, travel and
+other amusements can do something, and such words as 'diversion' and
+'distraction' embalm the truth that the chief virtue of many pleasures
+is to divert or distract our minds from painful thoughts. Pascal
+considered this a sign of the misery and the baseness of our nature, and
+he describes as a deplorable spectacle a man who rose from his bed
+weighed down with anxiety and grave sorrow, and who could for a time
+forget it all in the passionate excitement of the chase. But, in truth,
+the possession of such a power&mdash;weak and transient though it be&mdash;is one
+of the great alleviations of the lot of man. Religion, with its powerful
+motives and its wide range of consolatory and soothing thoughts and
+images, has much power in this sphere when it does not take a morbid
+form and intensify instead of alleviating sorrow; and the steady
+exercise of the will gives us some real and increasing, though
+imperfect, control over the current of our feelings as well as of our
+ideas.</p>
+
+<p>Often the power of dreaming comes to our aid. When we cannot turn from
+some painfully pressing thought to serious thinking of another kind, we
+can give the reins to our imaginations and soon lose ourselves in ideal
+scenes. There are men who live so habitually in a world of imagination
+that it becomes to them a second life, and their strongest temptations
+and their keenest pleasures belong to it. To them 'common life seems
+tapestried with dreams.' Not unfrequently they derive a pleasure from
+imagined or remembered enjoyments which the realities themselves would
+fail to give. They select in imagination certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> aspects or portions,
+throw others into the shade, intensify or attenuate impressions,
+transform and beautify the reality of things. The power of filling their
+existence with happy day-dreams is their most precious luxury. They feel
+the full force of the pathetic lines of an Irish poet:<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Sweet thoughts, bright dreams my comfort be,</div>
+<div class="i1">I have no joy beside;</div>
+<div>Oh, throng around and be to me</div>
+<div class="i1">Power, country, fame and bride.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To train this side of our nature is no small part of the management of
+character. There is a great sphere of happiness and misery which is
+almost or altogether unconnected with surrounding circumstances, and
+depends upon the thoughts, images, hopes and fears on which our minds
+are chiefly concentrated. The exercise of this form of imagination has
+often a great influence, both intellectually and morally. In childhood,
+as every teacher knows, it is often a distracting influence, and with
+men also it is sometimes an obstacle to concentrated reasoning and
+observation, turning the mind away from sober and difficult thought; but
+there is a kind of dreaming which is eminently conducive to productive
+thought. It enables a man to place himself so completely in other
+conditions of thought and life that the ideas connected with those
+conditions rise spontaneously in the mind. A true and vivid realisation
+of characters and circumstances unlike his own is acquired. The mere
+fact of placing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> himself in other circumstances and investing himself
+with imaginary powers and functions sometimes suggests possible remedies
+for great human ills, and gives clearer views of the proportions,
+difficulties and conditions of governments and societies. Much discovery
+in science has been due to this power of the imagination to realise
+conditions that are unseen, and the habit or faculty of living other
+lives than our own is scarcely less valuable to the historian, and even
+to the statesman, than to the poet or the novelist or the dramatist. It
+gives the magic touch which changes mere lifeless knowledge into
+realisation.</p>
+
+<p>Its effect upon character also is great and various. No one can fail to
+recognise the depraving influence of a corrupt imagination; and the
+corruption may spring, not only from suggestions from without, but from
+those which rise spontaneously in our minds. Nor is even the imagination
+which is wholly pure absolutely without its dangers. It is a well-known
+law of our nature that an excessive indulgence in emotion that does not
+end in action tends rather to deaden than to stimulate the moral nerve.
+It has been often noticed that the exaggerated sentimentality which
+sheds passionate tears over the fictitious sorrows of a novel or a play
+is no certain sign of a benevolent and unselfish nature, and is quite
+compatible with much indifference to real sorrows and much indisposition
+to make efforts for their alleviation. It is, however, no less true, as
+Dugald Stewart says, that the apparent coldness and selfishness of men
+are often simply due to a want of that kind of imagination which enables
+us to realise sufferings with which we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> never been brought into
+direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the
+coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the
+management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part
+in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives,
+and breaking the chain of evil or distressing thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The immense place which the literature of fiction holds in the world
+shows how widely some measure of it is diffused, and how large an amount
+of time and talent is devoted to its cultivation. It is probable,
+however, that it is really stronger in the earlier and uncultivated than
+in the later stages of humanity, as it is more vivid in childhood and in
+youth than in mature life. 'A child,' as an American writer<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> has well
+said, 'can afford to sleep without dreaming; he has plenty of dreams
+without sleep.' The childhood of the world is also eminently an age of
+dreams. There are stages of civilisation in which the dream world blends
+so closely with the world of realities, in which the imagination so
+habitually and so spontaneously transfigures or distorts, that men
+become almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the
+fictitious. This is the true age of myths and legends; and there are
+strata in contemporary society in which something of the same conditions
+is reproduced. 'To those who do not read or write much,' says an acute
+observer, 'even in our days, dreams are much more real than to those who
+are continually exercising the imagination.... Since I have been
+occupied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> with literature my dreams have lost all vividness and are less
+real than the shadows of the trees; they do not deceive me even in my
+sleep. At every hour of the day I am accustomed to call up figures at
+will before my eyes, which stand out well defined and coloured to the
+very hue of their faces.... The less literary a people the more they
+believe in dreams; the disappearance of superstition is not due to the
+cultivation of reason or the spread of knowledge, but purely to the
+mechanical effect of reading, which so perpetually puts figures and
+a&euml;rial shapes before the mental gaze that in time those that occur
+naturally are thought no more of than those conjured into existence by a
+book. It is in far-away country places, where people read very little,
+that they see phantoms and consult the oracles of fate. Their dreams are
+real.'<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>The last point I would notice in the management of character is the
+importance of what may be called moral safety-valves. One of the most
+fatal mistakes in education is the attempt which is so often made by the
+educator to impose his own habits and tastes on natures that are
+essentially different. It is common for men of lymphatic temperaments,
+of studious, saintly, and retiring tastes, to endeavor to force a
+high-spirited young man starting in life into their own mould&mdash;to
+prescribe for him the cast of tastes and pursuits they find most suited
+for themselves, forgetting that such an ideal can never satisfy a wholly
+different nature, and that in aiming at it a kind of excellence which
+might easily have been attained is missed. This is one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> of the evils
+that very frequently arise when the education of boys after an early age
+is left in the hands of women. It is the true explanation of the fact,
+which has so often been noticed, that children of clergymen, or at least
+children educated on a rigidly austere, puritanical system, so often go
+conspicuously to the bad. Such an education, imposed on a nature that is
+unfit for it, generally begins by producing hypocrisy, and not
+unfrequently ends by a violent reaction into vice. There is no greater
+mistake in education than to associate virtue in early youth with gloomy
+colours and constant restrictions, and few people do more mischief in
+the world than those who are perpetually inventing crimes. In circles
+where smoking, or field sports, or going to the play, or reading novels,
+or indulging in any boisterous games or in the most harmless Sunday
+amusements, are treated as if they were grave moral offences, young men
+constantly grow up who end by looking on grave moral offences as not
+worse than these things. They lose all sense of proportion and
+perspective in morals, and those who are always straining at gnats are
+often peculiarly apt to swallow camels. It is quite right that men who
+have formed for themselves an ideal of life of the kind that I have
+described should steadily pursue it, but it is another thing to impose
+it upon others, and to prescribe it as of general application. By
+teaching as absolutely wrong things that are in reality only culpable in
+their abuse or their excess, they destroy the habit of moderate and
+restrained enjoyment, and a period of absolute prohibition is often
+followed by a period of unrestrained license.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p><p>The truth is there are elements in human nature which many moralists
+might wish to be absent, as they are very easily turned in the direction
+of vice, but which at the same time are inherent in our being, and, if
+rightly understood, are essential elements of human progress. The love
+of excitement and adventure; the fierce combative instinct that delights
+in danger, in struggle, and even in destruction; the restless ambition
+that seeks with an insatiable longing to better its position and to
+climb heights that are yet unscaled; the craving for some enjoyment
+which not merely gives pleasure but carries with it a thrill of
+passion,&mdash;all this lies deep in human nature and plays a great part in
+that struggle for existence, in that harsh and painful process of
+evolution by which civilisation is formed, faculty stimulated to its
+full development, and human progress secured. In the education of the
+individual, as in the education of the race, the true policy in dealing
+with these things is to find for them a healthy, useful, or at least
+harmless sphere of action. In the chemistry of character they may ally
+themselves with the most heroic as well as with the worst parts of our
+nature, and the same passion for excitement which in one man will take
+the form of ruinous vice, in another may lead to brilliant enterprise,
+while in a third it may be turned with no great difficulty into channels
+which are very innocent.</p>
+
+<p>Take, for example, the case to which I have already referred, of a
+perfectly commonplace boy who, on coming of age, finds himself with a
+competence that saves him from the necessity of work; and who has no
+ambition, literary or artistic taste, love of work, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>interest in
+politics, religious or philanthropic earnestness, or special talent.
+What will become of him? In probably the majority of cases ruin,
+disease, and an early death lie before him. He seeks only for amusement
+and excitement, and three fatal temptations await him&mdash;drink, gambling,
+and women. If he falls under the dominion of these, or even of one of
+them, he almost infallibly wrecks either his fortune or his
+constitution, or both. It is perfectly useless to set before him high
+motives or ideals, or to incite him to lines of life for which he has no
+aptitude and which can give him no pleasure. What, then, can save him?
+Most frequently a happy marriage; but even if he is fortunate enough to
+attain this, it will probably only be after several years, and in those
+years a fatal bias is likely to be given to his life which can never be
+recovered. Yet experience shows that in cases of this kind a keen love
+of sport can often do much. With his gun and with his hunter he finds an
+interest, an excitement, an employment which may not be particularly
+noble, but which is at least sufficiently absorbing, and is not
+injurious either to his morals, his health, or his fortune. It is no
+small gain if, in the competition of pleasures, country pleasures take
+the place of those town pleasures which, in such cases as I have
+described, usually mean pleasures of vice.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it by any means only in such cases that field sports prove a
+great moral safety-valve, scattering morbid tastes and giving harmless
+and healthy vent to turns of character or feeling which might very
+easily be converted into vice. Among the influences that form the
+character of the upper classes of Englishmen they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> have a great part,
+and in spite of the exaggerations and extravagances that often accompany
+them, few good observers will doubt that they have an influence for
+good. However much of the Philistine element there may be in the upper
+classes in England, however manifest may be their limitations and their
+defects, there can be little doubt that on the whole the conditions of
+English life have in this sphere proved successful. There are few better
+working types within the reach of commonplace men than that of an
+English gentleman with his conventional tastes, standard of honour,
+religion, sympathies, ideals, opinions and instincts. He is not likely
+to be either a saint or a philosopher, but he is tolerably sure to be
+both an honourable and a useful man, with a fair measure of good sense
+and moderation, and with some disposition towards public duties. A crowd
+of out-of-door amusements and interests do much to dispel his peccant
+humours and to save him from the stagnation and the sensuality that have
+beset many foreign aristocracies. County business stimulates his
+activity, mitigates his class prejudices, and forms his judgment: and
+his standard of honour will keep him substantially right amid much
+fluctuation of opinions.</p>
+
+<p>The reader, from his own experience of individual characters, will
+supply other illustrations of the lines of thought I am enforcing. Some
+temptations that beset us must be steadily faced and subdued. Others are
+best met by flight&mdash;by avoiding the thoughts or scenes that call them
+into activity; while other elements of character which we might wish to
+be away are often better treated in the way of marriage&mdash;that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> is by a
+judicious regulation and harmless application&mdash;than in the way of
+asceticism or attempted suppression. It is possible for men&mdash;if not in
+educating themselves, at least in educating others&mdash;to pitch their
+standard and their ideal too high. What they have to do is to recognise
+their own qualities and the qualities of those whom they influence as
+they are, and endeavour to use these usually very imperfect materials to
+the best advantage for the formation of useful, honourable and happy
+lives. According to the doctrine of this book, man comes into the world
+with a free will. But his free will, though a real thing, acts in a
+narrower circle and with more numerous limitations than he usually
+imagines. He can, however, do much so to dispose, regulate and modify
+the circumstances of his life as to diminish both his sufferings and his
+temptations, and to secure for himself the external conditions of a
+happy and upright life, and he can do something by judicious and
+persevering self-culture to improve those conditions of character on
+which, more than on any external circumstances, both happiness and
+virtue depend.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Hawthorne's <i>Scarlet Letter</i>, ch. xxii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Hist.</i> ii. 35.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Speech on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Davis.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Cable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Jefferies, <i>Field and Hedgerow</i>, p. 242.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>MONEY</h3>
+
+<p>I do not think that I can better introduce the few pages which I propose
+to write on the relations of money to happiness and to character than by
+a pregnant passage from one of the essays<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> of Sir Henry Taylor. 'So
+manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and characters of
+mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in
+his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his
+nature. He who knows like St. Paul both how to spare and how to abound
+has a great knowledge; for if we take account of all the virtues with
+which money is mixed up&mdash;honesty, justice, generosity, charity,
+frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices,
+it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and breadth of
+humanity, and a right measure in getting, saving, spending, giving,
+taking, lending, borrowing and bequeathing would almost argue a perfect
+man.'</p>
+
+<p>There are few subjects on which the contrast between the professed and
+the real beliefs of men is greater than in the estimate of money. More
+than any other single thing it is the object and usually the lifelong
+object of human effort, and any accession of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> wealth is hailed by the
+immense majority of mankind as an unquestionable blessing. Yet if we
+were to take literally much of the teaching we have all heard we should
+conclude that money, beyond what is required for the necessaries of
+life, is far more a danger than a good; that it is the pre-eminent
+source of evil and temptation; that one of the first duties of man is to
+emancipate himself from the love of it, which can only mean from any
+strong desire for its increase.</p>
+
+<p>In this, as in so many other things, the question is largely one of
+degree. No one who knows what is meant by the abject poverty to which a
+great proportion of the human race is condemned will doubt that at least
+such an amount of money as raises them from this condition is one of the
+greatest of human blessings. Extreme poverty means a lifelong struggle
+for the bare means of living; it means a life spent in wretched hovels,
+with insufficient food, clothes and firing, in enforced and absolute
+ignorance; an existence almost purely animal, with nearly all the higher
+faculties of man undeveloped. There is a far greater real difference in
+the material elements of happiness between the condition of such men and
+that of a moderately prosperous artizan in a civilised country than
+there is between the latter and the millionaire.</p>
+
+<p>Money, again, at least to such an amount as enables men to be in some
+considerable degree masters of their own course in life, is also on the
+whole a great good. In this second degree it has less influence on
+happiness than health, and probably than character and domestic
+relations, but its influence is at least very great. Money is a good
+thing because it can be transformed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> into many other things. It gives
+the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the
+character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It
+saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the
+destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of
+multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to
+intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in
+those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little
+less than physical pain. It gives him and it gives those he loves
+increased chances of life and increased hope of recovery in sickness.
+Few of the pains of penury are more acute than those of a poor man who
+sees his wife or children withering away through disease, and who knows
+or believes that better food or medical attendance, or a surgical
+operation, or a change of climate, might have saved them. Money, too,
+even when it does not dispense with work, at least gives a choice of
+work and longer intervals of leisure. For the very poor this choice
+hardly exists, or exists only within very narrow limits, and from want
+of culture or want of leisure some of their most marked natural
+aptitudes are never called into exercise. With the comparatively rich
+this is not the case. Money enables them to select the course of life
+which is congenial to their tastes and most suited to their natural
+talents, or, if their strongest taste cannot become their work, money at
+least gives them some leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure,
+when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many,
+perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb,
+'are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to
+oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good
+and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good&mdash;but to
+buy time&mdash;in other words, life!'</p>
+
+<p>To some men money is chiefly valuable because it makes it possible for
+them not to think of money. Except in the daily regulation of ordinary
+life, it enables them to put aside cares which are to them both
+harassing and distasteful, and to concentrate their thoughts and
+energies on other objects. An assured competence also, however moderate,
+gives men the priceless blessing of independence. There are walks of
+life, there are fields of ambition, there are classes of employments in
+which between inadequate remuneration and the pressure of want on the
+one side, and the facilities and temptations to illicit gain on the
+other, it is extremely difficult for a poor man to walk straight.
+Illicit gain does not merely mean gain that brings a man within the
+range of the criminal law. Many of its forms escape legal and perhaps
+social censure, and may be even sanctioned by custom. A competence,
+whether small or large, is no sure preservative against that appetite
+for gain which becomes one of the most powerful and insatiable of
+passions. But it at least diminishes temptation. It takes away the
+pressure of want under which so many natures that were once
+substantially honest have broken down.</p>
+
+<p>In the expenditure of money there is usually a great deal of the
+conventional, the factitious, the purely ostentatious, but we are here
+dealing with the most serious realities of life. There are few or no
+elements<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> of happiness and character more important than those I have
+indicated, and a small competence conduces powerfully to them. Let no
+man therefore despise it, for if wisely used it is one of the most real
+blessings of life. It is of course only within the reach of a small
+minority, but the number might easily be much larger than it is. Often
+when it is inherited in early youth it is scattered in one or two years
+of gambling and dissipation, followed by a lifetime of regret. In other
+cases it crumbles away in a generation, for it is made an excuse for a
+life of idleness, and when children multiply or misfortunes arrive, what
+was once a competence becomes nothing more than bare necessity. In a
+still larger number of cases many of its advantages are lost because men
+at once adopt a scale of living fully equal to their income. A man who
+with one house would be a wealthy man, finds life with two houses a
+constant struggle. A set of habits is acquired, a scale or standard of
+luxury is adopted, which at once sweeps away the margin of superfluity.
+Riches or poverty depend not merely on the amount of our possessions,
+but quite as much on the regulation of our desires, and the full
+advantages of competence are only felt when men begin by settling their
+scheme of life on a scale materially within their income. When the great
+lines of expenditure are thus wisely and frugally established, they can
+command a wide latitude and much ease in dealing with the smaller ones.</p>
+
+<p>It is of course true that the power of a man thus to regulate his
+expenditure is by no means absolute. The position in society in which a
+man is born brings with it certain conventionalities and obligations
+that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>cannot be discarded. A great nobleman who has inherited a vast
+estate and a conspicuous social position will, through no fault of his
+own, find himself involved in constant difficulties and struggles on an
+income a tenth part of which would suffice to give a simple private
+gentleman every reasonable enjoyment in life. A poor clergyman who is
+obliged to keep up the position of a gentleman is in reality a much
+poorer man than a prosperous artizan, even though his actual income may
+be somewhat larger. But within the bounds which the conventionalities of
+society imperatively prescribe many scales of expenditure are possible,
+and the wise regulation of these is one of the chief forms of practical
+wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>It may be observed, however, that not only men but nations differ widely
+in this respect, and the difference is not merely that between prudence
+and folly, between forethought and passion, but is also in a large
+degree a difference of tastes and ideals. In general it will be found
+that in Continental nations a man of independent fortune will place his
+expenditure more below his means than in England, and a man who has
+pursued some lucrative employment will sooner be satisfied with the
+competence he has acquired and will gladly exchange his work for a life
+of leisure. The English character prefers a higher rate of expenditure
+and work continued to the end.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that, so far as happiness depends on money, the happiest
+lot&mdash;though it is certainly not that which is most envied&mdash;is that of a
+man who possesses a realised fortune sufficient to save him from serious
+money cares about the present and the future,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> but who at the same time
+can only keep up the position in society he has chosen for himself, and
+provide as he desires for his children, by adding to it a professional
+income. Work is necessary both to happiness and to character, and
+experience shows that it most frequently attains its full concentration
+and continuity when it is professional, or, in other words,
+money-making. Men work in traces as they will seldom work at liberty.
+The compulsory character, the steady habits, the constant emulation of
+professional life mould and strengthen the will, and probably the
+happiest lot is when this kind of work exists, but without the anxiety
+of those who depend solely on it.</p>
+
+<p>It is also a good thing when wealth tends to increase with age. 'Old
+age,' it has been said, 'is a very expensive thing.' If the taste for
+pleasure diminishes, the necessity for comfort increases. Men become
+more dependent and more fastidious, and hardships that are indifferent
+to youth become acutely painful. Beside this, money cares are apt to
+weigh with an especial heaviness upon the old. Avarice, as has been
+often observed, is eminently an old-age vice, and in natures that are in
+no degree avaricious it will be found that real money anxieties are more
+felt and have a greater haunting power in age than in youth. There is
+then the sense of impotence which makes men feel that their earning
+power has gone. On the other hand youth, and especially early married
+life spent under the pressure of narrow circumstances, will often be
+looked back upon as both the happiest and the most fruitful period of
+life. It is the best discipline of character. It is under such
+circumstances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> that men acquire habits of hard and steady work,
+frugality, order, forethought, punctuality, and simplicity of tastes.
+They acquire sympathies and realisations they would never have known in
+more prosperous circumstances. They learn to take keen pleasure in
+little things, and to value rightly both money and time. If wealth and
+luxury afterwards come in overflowing measure, these lessons will not be
+wholly lost.</p>
+
+<p>The value of money as an element of happiness diminishes rapidly in
+proportion to its amount. In the case of the humbler fortunes, each
+accession brings with it a large increase of pleasure and comfort, and
+probably a very considerable addition to real happiness. In the case of
+rich men this is not the case, and of colossal fortunes only a very
+small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment
+of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost
+is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our
+first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the
+perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces
+of the human mind&mdash;the works of human genius that through the long
+course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and
+direct the lives of men, might all be purchased&mdash;I do not say by the
+cost of a lady's necklace, but by that of one or two of the little
+stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired
+pedestrian eats his bread and cheese with the appetites with which men
+sit down to some stately banquet; compare the level of spirits at the
+village dance with that of the great city ball whose lavish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> splendour
+fills the society papers with admiration; compare the charm of
+conversation in the college common room with the weary faces that may be
+often seen around the millionaire's dinner table,&mdash;and we may gain a
+good lesson of the vanity of riches. The transition from want to comfort
+brings with it keen enjoyment and much lasting happiness. The transition
+from mere comfort to luxury brings incomparably less and costs
+incomparably more. Let a man of enormous wealth analyse his life from
+day to day and try to estimate what are the things or hours that have
+afforded him real and vivid pleasure. In many cases he will probably say
+that he has found it in his work&mdash;in others in the hour spent with his
+cigar, his newspaper, or his book, or in his game of cricket, or in the
+excitement of the hunting-field, or in his conversation with an old
+friend, or in hearing his daughters sing, or in welcoming his son on his
+return from school. Let him look round the splendid adornments of his
+home and ask how many of these things have ever given him a pleasure at
+all proportionate to their cost. Probably in many cases, if he deals
+honestly with himself, he would confess that his armchair and his
+bookshelves are almost the only exceptions.</p>
+
+<p>Steam, the printing press, the spread of education, and the great
+multiplication of public libraries, museums, picture galleries and
+exhibitions have brought the chief pleasures of life in a much larger
+degree than in any previous age within the reach of what are called the
+working classes, while in the conditions of modern life nearly all the
+great sources of real enjoyment that money can give are open to a man
+who possesses a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> competent but not extraordinary fortune and some
+leisure. Intellectual tastes he may gratify to the full. Books, at all
+events in the great centres of civilisation, are accessible far in
+excess of his powers of reading. The pleasures of the theatre, the
+pleasures of society, the pleasures of music in most of its forms, the
+pleasures of travel with all its variety of interests, and many of the
+pleasures of sport, are abundantly at his disposal. The possession of
+the highest works of art has no doubt become more and more a monopoly of
+the very rich, but picture galleries and exhibitions and the facilities
+of travel have diffused the knowledge and enjoyment of art over a vastly
+wider area than in the past. The power of reproducing works of art has
+been immensely increased and cheapened, and in one form at least the
+highest art has been brought within the reach of a man of very moderate
+means. Photography can reproduce a drawing with such absolute perfection
+that he may cover his walls with works of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da
+Vinci that are indistinguishable from the originals. The standard of
+comfort in mere material things is now so high in well-to-do households
+that to a healthy nature the millionaire can add little to it. Perhaps
+among the pleasures of wealth that which has the strongest influence is
+a country place, especially when it brings with it old remembrances, and
+associations that appeal powerfully to the affections and the
+imagination. More than any other inanimate thing it throws its tendrils
+round the human heart and becomes the object of a deep and lasting
+affection. But even here it will be probably found that this pleasure is
+more felt by the owner of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> one country place than by the great
+proprietor whose life is spent alternately in several&mdash;by the owner of a
+place of moderate dimensions than by the owner of those vast parks which
+can only be managed at great expense and trouble and by much delegated
+supervision, and which are usually thrown open with such liberality to
+the public that they probably give more real pleasure to others than to
+their owners.</p>
+
+<p>Among the special pleasures of the enormously rich the collecting
+passion is conspicuous, and of course a very rich man can carry it into
+departments which men of moderate fortune can hardly touch. In the rare
+case when the collector is a man of strong and genuine artistic taste
+the possession of works of beauty is a thing of enduring pleasure, but
+in general the mere love of collecting, though it often becomes a
+passion almost amounting to a mania, bears very little proportion to
+pecuniary value. The intelligent collector of fossils has as much
+pleasure as the collector of gems&mdash;probably indeed more, as the former
+pursuit brings with it a much greater variety of interest, and usually
+depends much more on the personal exertions of the collector. It is
+pleasant, in looking over a geological collection, to think that every
+stone we see has given a pleasure. A collector of Caxtons, a collector
+of large printed or illustrated editions, a collector of first editions
+of famous books, a collector of those editions that are so much prized
+because an author has made in them some blunder which he afterwards
+corrected; a collector of those unique books which have survived as
+rarities because no one thought it worth while to reprint them or
+because they are distinguished by some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> obsolete absurdity, will
+probably not derive more pleasure, though he will spend vastly more
+money, than the mere literary man who, being interested in some
+particular period or topic, loves to hunt up in old bookshops the
+obscure and forgotten literature relating to it. Much the same thing may
+be said of other tastes. The gratification of a strong taste or hobby
+will always give pleasure, and it makes little difference whether it is
+an expensive or an inexpensive one.</p>
+
+<p>The pleasures of acquisition, the pleasures of possession, and the
+pleasures of ostentation, are no doubt real things, though they act in
+very different degrees on different natures, and some of them much more
+on one sex than on the other. In general, however, they tend to grow
+passive and inert. A state of luxury and splendour is little appreciated
+by those who are born to it, though much if it follows a period of
+struggle and penury. Yet even then the circumstances and surroundings of
+life soon become a second nature. Men become so habituated to them that
+they are accepted almost mechanically and cease to give positive
+pleasure, though a deprivation of them gives positive pain. The love of
+power, the love of society, and&mdash;what is not quite the same thing&mdash;the
+love of social influence, are, however, much stronger and more enduring,
+and great wealth is largely valued because it helps to give them, though
+it does not give them invariably, and though there are other things that
+give them in an equal or greater degree. To many very rich men some form
+of field sports is probably the greatest pleasure that money affords. It
+at least gives a genuine thrill of unmistakable enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>Few of the special pleasures of the millionaire can be said to be
+purely selfish, for few are concentrated altogether on himself. His
+great park is usually open to the public. His pictures are lent for
+exhibition or exhibited in his house. If he keeps a pack of hounds
+others hunt with it. If he preserves game to an enormous extent he
+invites many to shoot it, and at his great entertainments it will often
+be found that no one derives less pleasure than the weary host.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time no thinking man can fail to be struck with the great
+waste of the means of enjoyment in a society in which such gigantic sums
+are spent in mere conventional ostentation which gives little or no
+pleasure; in which the best London houses are those which are the
+longest untenanted; in which some of the most enchanting gardens and
+parks are only seen by their owners for a few weeks in the year.</p>
+
+<p>Hamerton, in his Essay on Bohemianism, has very truly shown that the
+rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain
+from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or
+amusement it can give by discarding the forms, the costly
+conventionalities, the social restrictions that encumber and limit it.
+One of the worst tendencies of a very wealthy society is that by the
+mere competition of ostentation the standard of conventional expense is
+raised, and the intercourse of men limited by the introduction of a
+number of new and costly luxuries which either give no pleasure or give
+pleasure that bears no kind of proportion to their cost. Examples may
+sometimes be seen of a very rich man who imagines that he can obtain
+from life real enjoyment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> in proportion to his wealth and who uses it
+for purely selfish purposes. We may find this in the almost insane
+extravagance of vulgar ostentation by which the parvenu millionaire
+tries to gratify his vanity and dazzle his neighbours; in the wild round
+of prodigal dissipation and vice by which so many young men who have
+inherited enormous fortunes have wrecked their constitutions and found a
+speedy path to an unhonoured grave. They sought from money what money
+cannot give, and learned too late that in pursuing shadows they missed
+the substance that was within their reach.</p>
+
+<p>To the intelligent millionaire, however, and especially to those who are
+brought up to great possessions, wealth is looked on in a wholly
+different light. It is a possession and a trust carrying with it many
+duties as well as many interests and accompanied by a great burden of
+responsibility. Mere pleasure-hunting plays but a small and wholly
+subsidiary part in such lives, and they are usually filled with much
+useful work. This man, for example, is a banker on a colossal scale.
+Follow his life, and you will find that for four days in the week he is
+engaged in his office as steadily, as unremittingly as any clerk in his
+establishment. He has made himself master not only of the details of his
+own gigantic business but of the whole great subject of finance in all
+its international relations. He is a power in many lands. He is
+consulted in every crisis of finance. He is an important influence in a
+crowd of enterprises, most of them useful as well as lucrative, some of
+them distinctively philanthropic. Saturday and Sunday he spends at his
+country place, usually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> entertaining a number of guests. One other day
+during the hunting season he regularly devotes to his favourite sport.
+His holiday is the usual holiday of a professional man, with rather a
+tendency to abridge than to lengthen it, as the natural bent of his
+thoughts is so strongly to his work that time soon begins to hang
+heavily when he is away from it.</p>
+
+<p>Another man is an ardent philanthropist, and his philanthropy probably
+blends with much religious fervour, and he becomes in consequence a
+leader in the religious world. Such a life cannot fail to be abundantly
+filled. Religious meetings, committees, the various interests of the
+many institutions with which he is connected, the conflicting and
+competing claims of different religious societies, fully occupy his time
+and thoughts, sometimes to the great neglect of his private affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Another man is of a different type. Shy, retiring, hating publicity, and
+not much interested in politics, he is a gigantic landowner, and the
+work of his life is concentrated on the development of his own estate.
+He knows the circumstances of every village, almost of every farm. It is
+his pride that no labourer on his estate is badly housed, that no part
+of it is slovenly or mismanaged or poverty-stricken. He endows churches
+and hospitals, he erects public buildings, encourages every local
+industry, makes in times of distress much larger remissions of rent than
+would be possible for a poorer man, superintends personally the many
+interests on his property, knows accurately the balance of receipts and
+expenditure, takes a great interest in sanitation, in new improvements
+and experiments in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> agriculture, in all the multifarious matters that
+affect the prosperity of his numerous tenantry. He subscribes liberally
+to great national undertakings, as he considers it one of the duties of
+his position, but his heart is not in such things, and the well-being of
+his own vast estate and of those who live upon it is the aim and the
+work of his life. For a few weeks of the year he exercises the splendid
+and lavish hospitality which is expected from a man in his position, and
+he is always very glad when those weeks are over. He has, however, his
+own expensive hobby, which gives him real pleasure&mdash;his yacht, his
+picture gallery, his museum, his collection of wild animals, his
+hothouses or his racing establishment. One or more of these form the
+real amusement of his active and useful life.</p>
+
+<p>A more common type in England is that of the active politician. Great
+wealth and especially great landed property bring men easily into
+Parliament, and, if united with industry and some measure of ability,
+into official life, and public life thus becomes a profession and in
+many cases a very laborious one. There are few better examples of a
+well-filled life and of the skilful management and economy of time than
+are to be found in the lives of some great noblemen who take a leading
+part in politics and preside over important Government departments
+without suffering their gigantic estates to fall into mismanagement, or
+neglecting the many social duties and local interests connected with
+them. Most of their success is indeed due to the wise use of money in
+economising time by trustworthy and efficient delegation. Yet the
+superintending brain, the skilful choice, the personal control<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> cannot
+be dispensed with. In a life so fully occupied the few weeks of pleasure
+which may be spent on a Scotch moor or in a Continental watering-place
+will surely not be condemned.</p>
+
+<p>The economy of time and the elasticity of brain and character such lives
+develop are, however, probably exceeded by another class. Nothing is
+more remarkable in the social life of the present generation than the
+high pressure under which a large number of ladies in great positions
+habitually live. It strikes every Continental observer, for there is
+nothing approaching it in any other European country, and it certainly
+far exceeds anything that existed in England in former generations.
+Pleasure-seeking, combined, however, on a large scale with
+pleasure-giving, holds a much more prominent place in these lives than
+in those I have just described. With not a few women, indeed, of wealth
+and position, it is the all-in-all of life, and in general it is
+probable that women obtain more pleasure from most forms of society than
+men, though it is also true that they bear a much larger share of its
+burdens. There are, however, in this class, many who combine with
+society a truly surprising number and variety of serious interests. Not
+only the management of a great house, not only the superintendence of
+schools and charities and local enterprises connected with a great
+estate, but also a crowd of philanthropic, artistic, political, and
+sometimes literary interests fill their lives. Few lives, indeed, in any
+station are more full, more intense, more constantly and variously
+occupied. Public life, which in most foreign countries is wholly outside
+the sphere of women, is eagerly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>followed. Public speaking, which in the
+memory of many now living was almost unknown among women of any station
+in English society, has become the most ordinary accomplishment. Their
+object is to put into life from youth to old age as much as life can
+give, and they go far to attain their end. A wonderful nimbleness and
+flexibility of intellect capable of turning swiftly from subject to
+subject has been developed, and keeps them in touch with a very wide
+range both of interests and pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>There are no doubt grave drawbacks to all this. Many will say that this
+external activity must be at the sacrifice of the duties of domestic
+life, but on this subject there is, I think, at least much exaggeration.
+Education has now assumed such forms and attained such a standard that
+usually for many hours in the day the education of the young in a
+wealthy family is in the hands of accomplished specialists, and I do not
+think that the most occupied lives are those in which the cares of a
+home are most neglected. How far, however, this intense and constant
+strain is compatible with physical well-being is a graver question, and
+many have feared that it must bequeath weakened constitutions to the
+coming generation. Nor is a life of incessant excitement in other
+respects beneficial. In both intellectual and moral hygiene the best
+life is that which follows nature and alternates periods of great
+activity with periods of rest. Retirement, quiet, steady reading, and
+the silent thought which matures character and deepens impressions are
+things that seem almost disappearing from many English lives. But lives
+such as I have described are certainly not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>useless, undeveloped, or
+wholly selfish, and they in a large degree fulfil that great law of
+happiness, that it should be sought for rather in interests than in
+pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the class who value money chiefly because it
+enables them to dismiss money thoughts and cares from their minds. On
+the whole, this end is probably more frequently attained by men of
+moderate but competent fortunes than by the very rich. This is at least
+the case when they are sufficiently rich to invest their money in
+securities which are liable to no serious risk or fluctuation. A
+gigantic fortune is seldom of such a nature that it does not bring with
+it great cares of administration and require much thought and many
+decisions. There is, however, one important exception. When there are
+many children the task of providing for their future falls much more
+lightly on the very rich than on those of medium fortune.</p>
+
+<p>There is a class, however, who are the exact opposite of these and who
+make the simple acquisition of money the chief interest and pleasure of
+their lives. Money-making in some form is the main occupation of the
+great majority of men, but it is usually as a means to an end. It is to
+acquire the means of livelihood, or the means of maintaining or
+improving a social position, or the means of providing as they think fit
+for the children who are to succeed them. Sometimes, however, with the
+very rich and without any ulterior object, money-making for its own sake
+becomes the absorbing interest. They can pursue it with great advantage;
+for, as has been often said, nothing makes money like money, and the
+possession of an immense<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> capital gives innumerable facilities for
+increasing it. The collecting passion takes this form. They come to care
+more for money than for anything money can purchase, though less for
+money than for the interest and the excitement of getting it.
+Speculative enterprise, with its fluctuations, uncertainties and
+surprises, becomes their strongest interest and their greatest
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>When it is honestly conducted there is no real reason why it should be
+condemned. On these conditions a life so spent is, I think, usually
+useful to the world, for it generally encourages works that are of real
+value. All that can be truly said is that it brings with it grave
+temptations and is very apt to lower a man's moral being. Speculation
+easily becomes a form of gambling so fierce in its excitement that, when
+carried on incessantly and on a great scale, it kills all capacity for
+higher and tranquil pleasures, strengthens incalculably the temptations
+to unscrupulous gain, disturbs the whole balance of character, and often
+even shortens life. With others the love of accumulation has a strange
+power of materialising, narrowing and hardening. Habits of
+meanness&mdash;sometimes taking curious and inconsistent forms, and applying
+only to particular things or departments of life&mdash;steal insensibly over
+them, and the love of money assumes something of the character of mania.
+Temptations connected with money are indeed among the most insidious and
+among the most powerful to which we are exposed. They have probably a
+wider empire than drink, and, unlike the temptations that spring from
+animal passion, they strengthen rather than diminish with age.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> In no
+respect is it more necessary for a man to keep watch over his own
+character, taking care that the unselfish element does not diminish, and
+correcting the love of acquisition by generosity of expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the highest form of charity, involving real and
+serious self-denial, is much more common among the poor, and even the
+very poor, than among the rich. I think most persons who have had much
+practical acquaintance with the dealings of the poor with one another
+will confirm this. It is certainly far less common among those who are
+at the opposite pole of fortune. They have not had the same discipline,
+or indeed the same possibility of self-sacrifice, or the same means of
+realising the pains of poverty, and there is another reason which tends
+not unnaturally to check their benevolence. A man with the reputation of
+great wealth soon finds himself beleaguered by countless forms of
+mendicancy and imposture. He comes to feel that there is a general
+conspiracy to plunder him, and he is naturally thrown into an attitude
+of suspicion and self-defence. Often, though he may give largely and
+generously, he will do so under the veil of strict anonymity, in order
+to avoid a reputation for generosity which will bring down upon him
+perpetual solicitations. If he is an intellectual man he will probably
+generalise from his own experience. He will be deeply impressed with the
+enormous evils that have sprung from ill-judged charity, and with the
+superiority even from a philanthropic point of view of a productive
+expenditure of money.</p>
+
+<p>And in truth it is difficult to overrate the evil effects of injudicious
+charities in discouraging thrift, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>industry, foresight and self-respect.
+They take many forms; some of them extremely obvious, while others can
+only be rightly judged by a careful consideration of remote
+consequences. There are the idle tourists who break down, in a once
+unsophisticated district, that sense of self-respect which is one of the
+most valuable lessons that early education can give, by flinging pence
+to be scrambled for among the children, or who teach the poor the fatal
+lesson that mendicancy or something hardly distinguishable from
+mendicancy will bring greater gain than honest and continuous work.
+There is the impulsive, uninquiring charity that makes the trade of the
+skilful begging-letter writer a lucrative profession, and makes men and
+women who are rich, benevolent and weak, the habitual prey of greedy
+impostors. There is the old-established charity for ministering to
+simple poverty which draws to its centre all the pauperism of the
+neighbouring districts, depresses wages, and impoverishes the very
+district or class it was intended to benefit. There are charities which
+not only largely diminish the sufferings that are the natural
+consequence and punishment of vice; but even make the lot of the
+criminal and the vicious a better one than that of the hard-working
+poor. There are overlapping charities dealing with the same department,
+but kept up with lavish waste through the rivalry of different religious
+denominations, or in the interests of the officials connected with them;
+belated or superannuated charities formed to deal with circumstances or
+sufferings that have in a large degree passed away&mdash;useless, or almost
+useless, charities established to carry out some silly fad or to gratify
+some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> silly vanity; sectarian charities intended to further ends which,
+in the eyes of all but the members of one sect, are not only useless but
+mischievous; charities that encourage thriftless marriages, or make it
+easy for men to neglect obvious duties, or keep a semi-pauper population
+stationary in employments and on a soil where they can never prosper, or
+in other ways handicap, impede or divert the natural and healthy course
+of industry. Illustrations of all these evils will occur to every
+careful student of the subject. Unintelligent, thoughtless, purely
+impulsive charity, and charity which is inspired by some other motive
+than a real desire to relieve suffering, will constantly go wrong, but
+every intelligent man can find without difficulty vast fields on which
+the largest generosity may be expended with abundant fruit.</p>
+
+<p>Hospitals and kindred institutions for alleviating great unavoidable
+calamities, and giving the sick poor something of the same chances of
+recovery as the rich, for the most part fall under this head. Money will
+seldom be wasted which is spent in promoting kinds of knowledge,
+enterprise or research that bring no certain remuneration proportioned
+to their value; in assisting poor young men of ability and industry to
+develop their special talents; in encouraging in their many different
+forms thrift, self-help and co-operation; in alleviating the inevitable
+suffering that follows some great catastrophe on land or sea, or great
+transitions of industry, or great fluctuations and depressions in class
+prosperity; in giving the means of healthy recreation or ennobling
+pleasures to the denizens of a crowded town. The vast sphere of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>education opens endless fields for generous expenditure, and every
+religious man will find objects which, in the opinion not only of men of
+his own persuasion, but also of many others, are transcendently
+important. Nor is it a right principle that charity should be denied to
+all calamities which are in some degree due to the fault of the
+sufferer, or which might have been averted by exceptional forethought or
+self-denial. Some economists write as if a far higher standard of will
+and morals should be expected among the poor and the uneducated than can
+be found among the rich. Good sense and right feeling will here easily
+draw the line, abstaining from charities that have a real influence in
+encouraging improvidence or vice, yet making due allowance for the
+normal weaknesses of our nature.</p>
+
+<p>In all these ways the very rich can find ample opportunities for useful
+benevolence. It is the prerogative of great wealth that it can often
+cure what others can only palliate, and can establish permanent sources
+of good which will continue long after the donors have passed away. In
+dealing with individual cases of distress, rich men who have neither the
+time nor the inclination to investigate the special circumstances will
+do well to rely largely on the recommendation of others. If they choose
+trustworthy, competent and sensible advisers with as much judgment as
+they commonly show in the management of their private affairs, they are
+not likely to go astray. There never was a period when a larger amount
+of intelligent and disinterested labour was employed in careful and
+detailed examination of the circumstances and needs of the poor. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+parish clergyman, the district visitor, the agents of the Charity
+Organization Society which annually selects its special cases of
+well-ascertained need, will abundantly furnish them with the knowledge
+they require.</p>
+
+<p>The advantage or disadvantage of the presence in a country of a large
+class of men possessing fortunes far exceeding anything that can really
+administer to their enjoyment is a question which has greatly divided
+both political economists and moralists. The former were long accustomed
+to maintain somewhat exclusively that laws and institutions should be
+established with the object of furthering the greatest possible
+accumulation of wealth, and that a system of unrestricted competition,
+coupled with equal laws, giving each man the most complete security in
+the possession and disposal of his property, was the best means of
+attaining this end. They urged with great truth that, although under
+such a system the inequalities of fortune will be enormous, most of the
+wealth of the very rich will inevitably be distributed in the form of
+wages, purchases, and industrial enterprises through the community at
+large, and that, other things being equal, the richest country will on
+the whole be the happiest. They clearly saw the complete delusion of the
+common assertions that the more millionaires there are in a country the
+more paupers will multiply, and that society is dividing between the
+enormously rich and the abjectly poor. The great industrial communities,
+in which there are the largest number of very wealthy men, are also the
+centres in which we find the most prosperous middle class, and the
+highest and most progressive rates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> of wages and standards of comfort
+among the poor. Great corruption in many forms no doubt exists in them,
+but it can scarcely be maintained with confidence that the standard of
+integrity is on the whole lower in these than in other countries, and
+they at least escape what in many poor countries is one of the most
+fruitful causes of corruption in all branches of administration&mdash;the
+inadequate pay of the servants of the Crown. The path of liberty in the
+eyes of economists of this school is the path of wisdom, and they were
+profoundly distrustful of all legislative attempts to restrict or
+interfere with the course of industrial progress.</p>
+
+<p>In our own generation a somewhat different tendency has manifestly
+strengthened. It has been said that past political economists paid too
+much attention to the accumulation and too little to the distribution of
+wealth. Men have become more sensible to the high level of happiness and
+moral well-being that has been attained in some of the smaller and
+somewhat stagnant countries of Europe, where wealth is more generally
+attained by thrift and steady industry than by great industrial or
+commercial enterprise, in which there are few large fortunes but little
+acute poverty, a low standard of luxury, but a high standard of real
+comfort. The enormous evils that have grown up in wealthy countries, in
+the form of company-mongering, excessive competition, extravagant and
+often vicious luxury, and dishonest administration of public funds, are
+more and more felt, and it is only too true that in these countries
+there are large and influential circles of society in which all
+considerations of character, intellect, or manners seem lost in an
+intense thirst for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> wealth and for the things that it can give.
+Sometimes we find vast fortunes in countries where there is but little
+enterprise and a very low standard of comfort among the people, and
+where this is the case it is usually due to unequal laws or corrupt
+administration. In the free, democratic, and industrial communities
+great fluctuations and disparities of wealth are inevitable, and some of
+the most colossal fortunes have, no doubt, been made by the evil methods
+I have described. They are, however, only a minority, and not a very
+large one. Like all the great successes of life, abnormal accumulation
+of wealth is usually due to the combination in different proportions of
+ability, character, and chance, and is not tainted with dishonesty. On
+the whole, the question that should be asked is not what a man has, but
+how he obtained it and how he uses it. When wealth is honestly acquired
+and wisely and generously used, the more rich men there are in a country
+the better.</p>
+
+<p>There has probably never been a period in the history of the world when
+the conditions of industry, assisted by the great gold discoveries in
+several parts of the globe, were so favourable to the formation of
+enormous fortunes as at present, and when the race of millionaires was
+so large. The majority belong to the English-speaking race; probably
+most of their gigantic fortunes have been rapidly accumulated, and bring
+with them none of the necessary, hereditary, and clearly defined
+obligations of a great landowner, while a considerable proportion of
+them have fallen to the lot of men who, through their education or early
+habits, have not many cultivated or naturally expensive tastes. In
+England<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> many of the new millionaires become great landowners and set up
+great establishments. In America, where country tastes are less marked
+and where the difficulties of domestic service are very great, this is
+less common. In both countries the number of men with immense fortunes,
+absolutely at their own disposal, has enormously increased, and the
+character of their expenditure has become a matter of real national
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>Much of it, no doubt, goes in simple luxury and ostentation, or in mere
+speculation, or in restoring old and dilapidated fortunes through the
+marriages of rank with money which are so characteristic of our time;
+but much also is devoted to charitable or philanthropic purposes. In
+this, as in most things, motives are often very blended. To men of such
+fortunes, such expenditure, even on a large scale, means no real
+self-sacrifice, and the inducements to it are not always of the highest
+kind. To some men it is a matter of ambition&mdash;a legitimate and useful
+ambition&mdash;to obtain the enduring and honourable fame which attaches to
+the founder of a great philanthropic or educational establishment.
+Others find that, in England at least, large philanthropic expenditure
+is one of the easiest and shortest paths to social success, bringing men
+and women of low extraction and bad manners into close and frequent
+connection with the recognised leaders of society; while others again
+have discovered that it is the quickest way of effacing the stigma which
+still in some degree attaches to wealth which has been acquired by
+dishonourable or dubious means. Fashion, social ambition, and social
+rivalries are by no means unknown in the fields of charity. There are
+many, however, in whose <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>philanthropy the element of self has no place,
+and whose sole desire is to expend their money in forms that can be of
+most real and permanent benefit to others.</p>
+
+<p>Such men have great power, and, if their philanthropic expenditure is
+wisely guided, it may be of incalculable benefit. I have already
+indicated many of the channels in which it may safely flow, but one or
+two additional hints on the subject may not be useless. Perhaps as a
+general rule these men will find that they can act most wisely by
+strengthening and enlarging old charities which are really good, rather
+than by founding new ones. Competition is the soul of industry, but
+certainly not of charity, and there is in England a deplorable waste of
+money and machinery through the excessive multiplication of institutions
+intended for the same objects. The kind of ambition to which I have just
+referred tends to make men prefer new charities which can be identified
+with their names; the paid officials connected with charities have
+become a large and powerful profession, and their influence is naturally
+used in the same direction; the many different religious bodies in the
+country often refuse to combine, and each desires to have its own
+institutions; and there are fashions in charity which, while they
+greatly stimulate generosity, have too often the effect of diverting it
+from the older and more unobtrusive forms. On the other hand, one of the
+most important facts in our present economical condition is that an
+extraordinary and almost unparalleled development of industrial
+prosperity has been accompanied by extreme and long-continued
+agricultural depression and by a great fall in the rate of interest.
+Wealth in many forms is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>accumulating with wonderful rapidity, and the
+increased rate of wages is diffusing prosperity among the working
+classes; but those who depend directly or indirectly on agricultural
+rents or on interest of money invested in trust securities have been
+suffering severely, and they comprise some of the most useful,
+blameless, and meritorious classes in the community. The same causes
+that have injured them have fallen with crushing severity on
+old-established institutions which usually derive their income largely
+or entirely from the rent of land or from money invested in the public
+funds. The bitter cry of distress that is rising from the hospitals and
+many other ancient charities, from the universities, from the clergy of
+the Established Church, abundantly proves it.</p>
+
+<p>The preference, however, to be given to old charities rather than to new
+ones is subject to very many exceptions. It does not apply to new
+countries or to the many cases in which changes and developments of
+industry have planted vast agglomerations of population in districts
+which were once but thinly populated, and therefore but little provided
+with charitable or educational institutions. Nor does it apply to the
+many cases in which the circumstances of modern life have called into
+existence new forms of charity, new wants, new dangers and evils to be
+combated, new departments of knowledge to be cultivated. One of the
+greatest difficulties of the older universities is that of providing,
+out of their shrinking endowments, for the teaching of branches of
+science and knowledge which have only come into existence, or at least
+into prominence, long after these universities were established, and
+some of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> which require not only trained teachers but costly apparatus
+and laboratories. Increasing international competition and enlarged
+scientific knowledge have rendered necessary an amount of technical and
+agricultural education never dreamed of by our ancestors; and the rise
+of the great provincial towns and the greater intensity of provincial
+life and provincial patriotism, as well as the changes that have passed
+over the position both of the working and middle classes, have created a
+genuine demand for educational establishments of a different type from
+the older universities. The higher education of women is essentially a
+nineteenth-century work, and it has been carried on without the
+assistance of old endowments and with very little help from modern
+Parliaments. In the distribution of public funds a class which is wholly
+unrepresented in Parliament seldom gets its fair share; and higher
+education, like most forms of science, like most of the higher forms of
+literature, and like many valuable forms of research, never can be
+self-supporting. There are great branches of knowledge which without
+established endowments must remain uncultivated, or be cultivated only
+by men of considerable private means. Some invaluable curative agencies,
+such as convalescent homes in different countries and climates and for
+different diseases, have grown up in our own generation, as well as some
+of the most fruitful forms of medical research and some of the most
+efficacious methods of giving healthy change and brightness to the lives
+that are most monotonous and overstrained. Every great revolution in
+industry, in population, and even in knowledge, brings with it new and
+special wants, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> there are cases in which assisted emigration is one
+of the best forms of charity.</p>
+
+<p>These are but a few illustrations of the directions in which the large
+surplus funds which many of the very rich are prepared to expend on
+philanthropic purposes may profitably go. There is a marked and
+increasing tendency in our age to meet all the various exigencies of
+Society, as they arise, by State aid resting on compulsory taxation. In
+countries where the levels of fortune are such that few men have incomes
+greatly in excess of their real or factitious wants, this method will
+probably be necessary; but many of the wants I have described can be
+better met by the old English method of intelligent private generosity,
+and in a country in which the number of the very rich is so great and so
+increasing, this generosity should not be wanting.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> <i>Notes on Life.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>MARRIAGE</h3>
+
+<p>The beautiful saying of Newton, that he felt like a child who had been
+picking up a few pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of undiscovered
+truth, may well occur to any writer who attempts to say something on the
+vast subject of marriage. The infinite variety of circumstances and
+characters affects it in infinitely various ways, and all that can here
+be done is to collect a few somewhat isolated and miscellaneous remarks
+upon it. Yet it is a subject which cannot be omitted in a book like
+this. In numerous cases it is the great turning-point of a life, and in
+all cases when it takes place it is one of the most important of its
+events. Whatever else marriage may do or fail to do, it never leaves a
+man unchanged. His intellect, his character, his happiness, his way of
+looking on the world, will all be influenced by it. If it does not raise
+or strengthen him it will lower or weaken. If it does not deepen
+happiness it will impair it. It brings with it duties, interests,
+habits, hopes, cares, sorrows, and joys that will penetrate into every
+fissure of his nature and modify the whole course of his life.</p>
+
+<p>It is strange to think with how much levity and how little knowledge a
+contract which is so indissoluble and at the same time so momentous is
+constantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> assumed; sometimes under the influence of a blinding passion
+and at an age when life is still looked upon as a romance or an idyll;
+sometimes as a matter of mere ambition and calculation, through a desire
+for wealth or title or position. Men and women rely on the force of
+habit and necessity to accommodate themselves to conditions they have
+never really understood or realised.</p>
+
+<p>In most cases different motives combine, though in different degrees.
+Sometimes an overpowering affection for the person is the strongest
+motive and eclipses all others. Sometimes the main motive to marriage is
+a desire to be married. It is to obtain a settled household and
+position; to be relieved from the 'unchartered freedom' and the 'vague
+desires' of a lonely life; to find some object of affection; to acquire
+the steady habits and the exemption from household cares which are
+essential to a career; to perpetuate a race; perhaps to escape from
+family discomforts, or to introduce a new and happy influence into a
+family. With these motives a real affection for a particular person is
+united, but it is not of such a character as to preclude choice,
+judgment, comparison, and a consideration of worldly advantages.</p>
+
+<p>It is a wise saying of Swift that there would be fewer unhappy marriages
+in the world if women thought less of making nets and more of making
+cages. The qualities that attract, fascinate, and dazzle are often
+widely different from those which are essential to a happy marriage.
+Sometimes they are distinctly hostile to it. More frequently they
+conduce to it, but only in an inferior or subsidiary degree. The turn of
+mind and character that makes the accomplished flirt is certainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> not
+that which promises best for the happiness of a married life; and
+distinguished beauty, brilliant talents, and the heroic qualities that
+play a great part in the affairs of life, and shine conspicuously in the
+social sphere, sink into a minor place among the elements of married
+happiness. In marriage the identification of two lives is so complete
+that it brings every faculty and gift into play, but in degrees and
+proportions very different from public life or casual intercourse and
+relations. The most essential are often wanting in a brilliant life, and
+are largely developed in lives and characters that rise little, if at
+all, above the commonplace. In the words of a very shrewd man of the
+world: 'Before marriage the shape, the figure, the complexion carry all
+before them; after marriage the mind and character unexpectedly claim
+their share, and that the largest, of importance.'<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+<p>The relation is one of the closest intimacy and confidence, and if the
+identity of interest between the two partners is not complete, each has
+an almost immeasurable power of injuring the other. A moral basis of
+sterling qualities is of capital importance. A true, honest, and
+trustworthy nature, capable of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, should
+rank in the first line, and after that a kindly, equable, and contented
+temper, a power of sympathy, a habit of looking at the better and
+brighter side of men and things. Of intellectual qualities, judgment,
+tact, and order are perhaps the most valuable. Above almost all things,
+men should seek in marriage perfect sanity, and dread everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> like
+hysteria. Beauty will continue to be a delight, though with much
+diminished power, but grace and the charm of manner will retain their
+full attraction to the last. They brighten in innumerable ways the
+little things of life, and life is mainly made up of little things,
+exposed to petty frictions, and requiring small decisions and small
+sacrifices. Wide interests and large appreciations are, in the marriage
+relation, more important than any great constructive or creative talent,
+and the power to soothe, to sympathise, to counsel, and to endure, than
+the highest qualities of the hero or the saint. It is by these alone
+that the married life attains its full measure of perfection.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atr&acirc;</div>
+<div class="i2">Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.'<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But while this is true of all marriages, it is obvious that different
+professions and circumstances of life will demand different qualities. A
+hard-working labouring man, or a man who, though not labouring with his
+hands, is living a life of poverty and struggle, will not seek in
+marriage a type of character exactly the same as a man who is born to a
+great position, and who has large social and administrative duties to
+discharge. The wife of a clergyman immersed in the many interests of a
+parish; the wife of a soldier or a merchant, who may have to live in
+many lands, with long periods of separation from her husband, and
+perhaps amid many hardships; the wife of an active and ambitious
+politician; the wife of a busy professional man <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>incessantly occupied
+outside his home; the wife of a man whose health or business or habits
+keep him constantly in his house, will each need some special qualities.
+There are few things in which both men and women naturally differ more
+than in the elasticity and adaptiveness of their natures, in their power
+of bearing monotony, in the place which habit, routine, and variety hold
+in their happiness; and in different kinds of life these things have
+very different degrees of importance. Special family circumstances, such
+as children by a former marriage, or difficult and delicate relations
+with members of the family of one partner, will require the exercise of
+special qualities. Such relations, indeed, are often one of the most
+searching and severe tests of the sterling qualities of female
+character.</p>
+
+<p>Probably, on the whole, the best presumption of a successful choice in
+marriage will be found where the wife has not been educated in
+circumstances or ideas absolutely dissimilar from those of her married
+life. Marriages of different races or colours are rarely happy, and the
+same thing is true of marriages between persons of social levels that
+are so different as to entail great differences of manners and habits.
+Other and minor disparities of circumstances between girl life and
+married life will have their effect, but they are less strong and less
+invariable. Some of the happiest marriages have been marriages of
+emancipation, which removed a girl from uncongenial family surroundings,
+and placed her for the first time in an intellectual and moral
+atmosphere in which she could freely breathe. At the same time, in the
+choice of a wife, the character, circumstances, habits, and tone of the
+family in which she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> has been brought up will always be an important
+element. There are qualities of race, there are pedigrees of character,
+which it is never prudent to neglect. Franklin quotes with approval the
+advice of a wise man to choose a wife 'out of a bunch,' as girls brought
+up together improve each other by emulation, learn mutual self-sacrifice
+and forbearance, rub off their angularities, and are not suffered to
+develop overweening self-conceit. A family where the ruling taste is
+vulgar, where the standard of honour is low, where extravagance and
+self-indulgence and want of order habitually prevail, creates an
+atmosphere which it needs a strong character altogether to escape. There
+is also the great question of physical health. A man should seek in
+marriage rather to raise than to depress the physical level of his
+family, and above all not to introduce into it grave, well-ascertained
+hereditary disease. Of all forms of self-sacrifice hardly any is at once
+so plainly right and so plainly useful as the celibacy of those who are
+tainted with such disease.</p>
+
+<p>There is no subject on which religious teachers have dwelt more than
+upon marriage and the relation of the sexes, and it has been continually
+urged that the propagation of children is its first end. It is strange,
+however, to observe how almost absolutely in the popular ethics of
+Christendom such considerations as that which I have last mentioned have
+been neglected. If one of the most responsible things that a man can do
+is to bring a human being into the world, one of his first and most
+obvious duties is to do what he can to secure that it shall come into
+the world with a sound body and a sane mind. This is the best
+inheritance that parents<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> can leave their children, and it is in a large
+degree within their reach. Immature marriage, excessive child-bearing,
+marriages of near relations, and, above all, marriages with some grave
+hereditary physical or mental disease or some great natural defect, may
+bring happiness to the parents, but can scarcely fail to entail a
+terrible penalty upon their children. It is clearly recognised that one
+of the first duties of parents to their children is to secure them in
+early life not only good education, but also, as far as is within their
+power, the conditions of a healthy being. But the duty goes back to an
+earlier stage, and in marriage the prospects of the unborn should never
+be forgotten. This is one of the considerations which in the ethics of
+the future is likely to have a wholly different place from any that it
+has occupied in the past.</p>
+
+<p>A kindred consideration, little less important and almost equally
+neglected in popular teaching, is that it is a moral offence to bring
+children into the world with no prospect of being able to provide for
+them. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the neglect of
+these two duties has tended to the degradation and unhappiness of the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>The greatly increased importance which the Darwinian theory has given to
+heredity should tend to make men more sensible of the first of these
+duties. In marriage there are not only reciprocal duties between the two
+partners; there are also, more than in any other act of life, plain
+duties to the race. The hereditary nature of insanity and of some forms
+of disease is an indisputable truth. The hereditary transmission of
+character has not, it is true, as yet acquired this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>position; and there
+is a grave schism on the subject in the Darwinian school. But that it
+exists to some extent few close observers will doubt, and it is in a
+high degree probable that it is one of the most powerful moulding
+influences of life. No more probable explanation has yet been given of
+the manner in which human nature has been built up, and of the various
+instincts and tastes with which we are born, than the doctrine that
+habits and modes of thought and feeling indulged in and produced by
+circumstances in former generations have gradually become innate in the
+race, and exhibit themselves spontaneously and instinctively and quite
+independently of the circumstances that originally produced them.
+According to this theory the same process is continually going on. Man
+has slowly emerged from a degraded and bestial condition. The pressure
+of long-continued circumstances has moulded him into his special type;
+but new feelings and habits, or modifications of old feelings and
+habits, are constantly passing not only into his life but into his
+nature, taking root there, and in some degree at least reproducing
+themselves by the force of heredity in the innate disposition of his
+offspring. If this be true, it gives a new and terrible importance both
+to the duty of self-culture and to the duty of wise selection in
+marriage. It means that children are likely to be influenced not only by
+what we do and by what we say, but also by what we are, and that the
+characters of the parents in different degrees and combinations will
+descend even to a remote posterity.</p>
+
+<p>It throws a not less terrible light upon the miscalculations of the
+past. On this hypothesis, as Mr. Galton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> has truly shown, it is scarcely
+possible to exaggerate the evil which has been brought upon the world by
+the religious glorification of celibacy and by the enormous development
+and encouragement of the monastic life. Generation after generation,
+century after century, and over the whole wide surface of Christendom,
+this conception of religion drew into a sterile celibacy nearly all who
+were most gentle, most unselfish, most earnest, studious, and religious,
+most susceptible to moral and intellectual enthusiasm, and thus
+prevented them from transmitting to posterity the very qualities that
+are most needed for the happiness and the moral progress of the race.
+Whenever the good and evil resulting from different religious systems
+come to be impartially judged, this consideration is likely to weigh
+heavily in the scale.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>Returning, however, to the narrower sphere of particular marriages, it
+may be observed that although full confidence, and, in one sense,
+complete identification of interests, are the characteristics of a
+perfect marriage, this does not by any means imply that one partner
+should be a kind of duplicate of the other. Woman is not a mere weaker
+man; and the happiest marriages are often those in which, in tastes,
+character, and intellectual qualities, the wife is rather the complement
+than the reflection of her husband. In intellectual things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> this is
+constantly shown. The purely practical and prosaic intellect is united
+with an intellect strongly tinged with poetry and romance; the man whose
+strength is in facts, with the woman whose strength is in ideas; the man
+who is wholly absorbed in science or politics or economical or
+industrial problems and pursuits, with a woman who possesses the talent
+or at least the temperament of an artist or musician. In such cases one
+partner brings sympathies or qualities, tastes or appreciations or kinds
+of knowledge in which the other is most defective; and by the close and
+constant contact of two dissimilar types each is, often insensibly, but
+usually very effectually, improved. Men differ greatly in their
+requirements of intellectual sympathy. A perfectly commonplace
+intellectual surrounding will usually do something to stunt or lower a
+fine intelligence, but it by no means follows that each man finds the
+best intellectual atmosphere to be that which is most in harmony with
+his own special talent.</p>
+
+<p>To many, hard intellectual labour is an eminently isolated thing, and
+what they desire most in the family circle is to cast off all thought of
+it. I have known two men who were in the first rank of science, intimate
+friends, and both of them of very domestic characters. One of them was
+accustomed to do nearly all his work in the presence of his wife, and in
+the closest possible co-operation with her. The other used to
+congratulate himself that none of his family had his own scientific
+tastes, and that when he left his work and came into his family circle
+he had the rest of finding himself in an atmosphere that was entirely
+different. Some men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> of letters need in their work constant stimulus,
+interest, and sympathy. Others desire only to develop their talent
+uncontrolled, uninfluenced, and undisturbed, and with an atmosphere of
+cheerful quiet around them.</p>
+
+<p>What is true of intellect is also in a large degree true of character.
+Two persons living constantly together should have many tastes and
+sympathies in common, and their characters will in most cases tend to
+assimilate. Yet great disparities of character may subsist in marriage,
+not only without evil but often with great advantage. This is especially
+the case where each supplies what is most needed in the other. Some
+natures require sedatives and others tonics; and it will often be found
+in a happy marriage that the union of two dissimilar natures stimulates
+the idle and inert, moderates the impetuous, gives generosity to the
+parsimonious and order to the extravagant, imparts the spirit of caution
+or the spirit of enterprise which is most needed, and corrects, by
+contact with a healthy and cheerful nature, the morbid and the
+desponding.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage may also very easily have opposite effects. It is not
+unfrequently founded on the sympathy of a common weakness, and when this
+is the case it can hardly fail to deepen the defect. On the whole,
+women, in some of the most valuable forms of strength&mdash;in the power of
+endurance and in the power of perseverance&mdash;are at least the equals of
+men. But weak and tremulous nerves, excessive sensibility, and an
+exaggerated share of impulse and emotion, are indissolubly associated
+with certain charms, both of manner and character, which are intensely
+feminine, and to many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> men intensely attractive. When a nature of this
+kind is wedded to a weak or a desponding man, the result will seldom be
+happiness to either party, but with a strong man such marriages are
+often very happy. Strength may wed with weakness or with strength, but
+weakness should beware of mating itself with weakness. It needs the oak
+to support the ivy with impunity, and there are many who find the
+constant contact of a happy and cheerful nature the first essential of
+their happiness.</p>
+
+<p>As it is not wise or right that either partner in marriage should lose
+his or her individuality, so it is right that each should have an
+independent sphere of authority. It is assumed, of course, that there is
+the perfect trust which should be the first condition of marriage and
+also a reasonable judgment. Many marriages have been permanently marred
+because the woman has been given no independence in money matters and is
+obliged to come for each small thing to her husband. In general the less
+the husband meddles in household matters, or the wife in professional
+ones, the better. The education of very young children of both sexes,
+and of girls of a mature age, will fall almost exclusively to the wife.
+The education of the boys when they have emerged from childhood will be
+rather governed by the judgment of the man. Many things will be
+regulated in common; but the larger interests of the family will usually
+fall chiefly to one partner, the smaller and more numerous ones to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>On such matters, however, generalisations have little value, as
+exceptions are very numerous. Differences of character, age, experience,
+and judgment, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>countless special circumstances, will modify the
+family type, and it is in discovering these differences that wisdom in
+marriage mainly consists. The directions in which married life may
+influence character are also very many; but in the large number of cases
+in which it brings with it a great weight of household cares and family
+interests it will usually be found with both partners, but especially
+with the woman, at once to strengthen and to narrow unselfishness. She
+will live very little for herself, but very exclusively for her family.
+On the intellectual side such marriages usually give a sounder judgment
+and a wider knowledge of the world rather than purely intellectual
+tastes. It is a good thing when the education which precedes marriage
+not only prepares for the duties of the married life, but also furnishes
+a fair share of the interests and tastes which that state will probably
+tend to weaken. The hard battle of life, and the anxieties and sorrows
+that a family seldom fails to bring, will naturally give an increased
+depth and seriousness to character. There are, however, natures which,
+though they may be tainted by no grave vice, are so incurably frivolous
+that even this education will fail to influence them. As Emerson says,
+'A fly is as untameable as a hy&aelig;na.'</p>
+
+<p>The age that is most suited for marriage is also a matter which will
+depend largely on individual circumstances. The ancients, as is well
+known, placed it, in the case of the man, far back, and they desired a
+great difference of age between the man and the woman. Plato assigned
+between thirty and thirty-five, and Aristotle thirty-seven, as the best
+age for a man to marry, while they would have the girls married at
+eighteen or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> twenty.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> In their view, however, marriage was looked
+upon very exclusively from the side of the man and of the State. They
+looked on it mainly as the means of producing healthy citizens, and it
+was in their eyes almost wholly dissociated from the passion of love.
+Montaigne, in one of his essays, has expounded this view with the
+frankest cynicism.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> Yet few things are so important in marriage as
+that the man should bring into it the freshness and the purity of an
+untried nature, and that the early poetry and enthusiasm of life should
+at least in some degree blend with the married state. Nor is it
+desirable that a relation in which the formation of habits plays so
+large a part should be deferred until character has lost its
+flexibility, and until habits have been irretrievably hardened.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand there are invincible arguments against marriages
+entered into at an age when neither partner has any real knowledge of
+the world and of men. Only too often they involve many illusions and
+leave many regrets. Some kinds of knowledge, such as that given by
+extended travel, are far more easily acquired before than after
+marriage. Usually very early marriages are improvident marriages, made
+with no sufficient provision for the children, and often they are
+immature marriages, bringing with them grave physical evils. In those
+cases in which a great place or position is to be inherited, it is
+seldom a good thing that the interval of age between the owner and his
+heir should be so small that inheritance will probably be postponed till
+the confines of old age.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p><p>Marriages entered into in the decline of life stand somewhat apart from
+others, and are governed by other motives. What men chiefly seek in them
+is a guiding hand to lead them gently down the last descent of life.</p>
+
+<p>On this, as on most subjects connected with marriage, no general or
+inflexible rule can be laid down. Moralists have chiefly dilated on the
+dangers of deferred marriages; economists on the evils of improvident
+marriages. Each man's circumstances and disposition must determine his
+course. On the whole, however, in most civilised countries the
+prevailing tendencies are in the direction of an increased postponement
+of marriage. Among the rich, the higher standard of luxury and
+requirements, the comforts of club life, and also, I think, the
+diminished place which emotion is taking in life, all lead to this,
+while the spread of providence and industrial habits among the poor has
+the same tendency.</p>
+
+<p>A female pen is so much more competent than a masculine one for dealing
+with marriage from the woman's point of view that I do not attempt to
+enter on that field. It is impossible, however, to overlook the marked
+tendency of nineteenth-century civilisation to give women, both married
+and unmarried, a degree of independence and self-reliance far exceeding
+that of the past. The legislation of most civilised countries has
+granted them full protection for their property and their earnings,
+increased rights of guardianship over their children, a wider access to
+professional life, and even a very considerable voice in the management
+of public affairs; and these influences have been strengthened by great
+improvement in female education, and by a change in the social tone
+which has greatly extended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> their latitude of independent action. For my
+own part, I have no doubt that this movement is, on the whole,
+beneficial, not only to those who have to fight a lonely battle in life,
+but also to those who are in the marriage state. Larger interests, wider
+sympathies, a more disciplined judgment, and a greater power of
+independence and self-control naturally accompany it; and these things
+can never be wholly wasted. They will often be called into active
+exercise by the many vicissitudes of the married life. They will,
+perhaps, be still more needed when the closest of human ties is severed
+by the great Divorce of Death.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <i>Melbourne Papers</i>, p. 72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Tibullus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Galton's <i>Hereditary Genius</i>, pp. 357-8. It may be argued,
+on the other side, that the monasteries consigned to celibacy a great
+proportion of the weaker physical natures, who would otherwise have left
+sickly children behind them. This, and the much greater mortality of
+weak infant life, must have strengthened the race in an age when
+sanitary science was unknown and when external conditions were very
+unfavourable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> <i>Republic</i>, Book V. <i>Politics</i>, Book VII.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> <i>Livre</i> III. Ch. 5.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>SUCCESS</h3>
+
+<p>One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that on the
+whole, and in the great majority of cases, success in life depends more
+on character than on either intellect or fortune. Many brilliant
+exceptions, no doubt, tend to obscure the rule, and some of the
+qualities of character that succeed the best may be united with grave
+vices or defects; but on the whole the law is one that cannot be
+questioned, and it becomes more and more apparent as civilisation
+advances. Temperance, industry, integrity, frugality, self-reliance, and
+self-restraint are the means by which the great masses of men rise from
+penury to comfort, and it is the nations in which these qualities are
+most diffused that in the long run are the most prosperous. Chance and
+circumstance may do much. A happy climate, a fortunate annexation, a
+favourable vicissitude in the course of commerce, may vastly influence
+the prosperity of nations; anarchy, agitation, unjust laws, and
+fraudulent enterprise may offer many opportunities of individual or even
+of class gains; but ultimately it will be found that the nations in
+which the solid industrial virtues are most diffused and most respected
+pass all others in the race. The moral basis of character was the true
+foundation of the greatness of ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> Rome, and when that foundation
+was sapped the period of her decadence began. The solid, parsimonious,
+and industrious qualities of the French peasantry have given their
+country the recuperative force which has enabled its greatness to
+survive the countless follies and extravagances of its rulers.</p>
+
+<p>Character, it may be added, is especially pre-eminent in those kinds and
+degrees of success that affect the greatest numbers of men and influence
+most largely their real happiness&mdash;in the success which secures a high
+level of material comfort; which makes domestic life stable and happy;
+which wins for a man the respect and confidence of his neighbours. If we
+have melancholy examples that very different qualities often gain
+splendid prizes, it is still true that there are few walks in life in
+which a character that inspires complete confidence is not a leading
+element of success.</p>
+
+<p>In the paths of ambition that can only be pursued by the few,
+intellectual qualities bear a larger part, and there are, of course,
+many works of genius that are in their own nature essentially
+intellectual. Yet even the most splendid successes of life will often be
+found to be due much less to extraordinary intellectual gifts than to an
+extraordinary strength and tenacity of will, to the abnormal courage,
+perseverance, and work-power that spring from it, or to the tact and
+judgment which make men skilful in seizing opportunities, and which, of
+all intellectual qualities, are most closely allied with character.</p>
+
+<p>Strength of will and tact are not necessarily, perhaps not generally,
+conjoined, and often the first seems somewhat to impair the second. The
+strong passion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> the intense conviction, the commanding and imperious
+nature overriding obstacles and defying opposition, that often goes with
+a will of abnormal strength, does not naturally harmonise with the
+reticence of expression, the delicacy of touch and management that
+characterise a man who possesses in a high degree the gift of tact.
+There are circumstances and times when each of these two things is more
+important than the other, and the success of each man will mainly depend
+upon the suitability of his peculiar gift to the work he has to do. 'The
+daring pilot in extremity' is often by no means the best navigator in a
+quiet sea; and men who have shown themselves supremely great in moments
+of crisis and appalling danger, who have built up mighty nations,
+subdued savage tribes, guided the bark of the State with skill and
+courage amid the storms of revolution or civil war, and written their
+names in indelible letters on the page of history, have sometimes proved
+far less successful than men of inferior powers in the art of managing
+assemblies, satisfying rival interests or assuaging by judicious
+compromise old hatreds and prejudices. We have had at least one
+conspicuous example of the difference of these two types in our own day
+in the life of the great founder of German Unity.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, however, men of great strength of will and purpose possess
+also in a high degree the gift of tact; and when this is combined with
+soundness of judgment it usually leads to a success in life out of all
+proportion to their purely intellectual qualities. In nearly all
+administrative posts, in all the many fields of labour where the task of
+man is to govern, manage, or influence others, to adjust or harmonise
+antagonisms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> of race or interests or prejudices, to carry through
+difficult business without friction and by skilful co-operation, this
+combination of gifts is supremely valuable. It is much more valuable
+than brilliancy, eloquence, or originality. I remember the comment of a
+good judge of men on the administration of a great governor who was
+pre-eminently remarkable for this combination. 'He always seemed to gain
+his point, yet he never appeared to be in antagonism with anyone.' The
+steady pressure of a firm and consistent will was scarcely felt when it
+was accompanied by the ready recognition of everything that was good in
+the argument of another, and by a charm of manner and of temper which
+seldom failed to disarm opposition and win personal affection.</p>
+
+<p>The combination of qualities which, though not absolutely incompatible,
+are very usually disconnected, is the secret of many successful lives.
+Thus, to take one of the most homely, but one of the most useful and
+most pleasing of all qualities&mdash;good-nature&mdash;it will too often be found
+that when it is the marked and leading feature of a character it is
+accompanied by some want of firmness, energy, and judgment. Sometimes,
+however, this is not the case, and there are then few greater elements
+of success. It is curious to observe the subtle, magnetic sympathy by
+which men feel whether their neighbour is a harsh or a kind judge of
+others, and how generally those who judge harshly are themselves harshly
+judged, while those who judge others rather by their merits than by
+their defects, and perhaps a little above their merits, win popularity.</p>
+
+<p>No one, indeed, can fail to notice the effect of good-nature in
+conciliating opposition, securing attachment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> smoothing the various
+paths of life, and, it must be added, concealing grave faults. Laxities
+of conduct that might well blast the reputation of a man or a woman are
+constantly forgotten, or at least forgiven, in those who lead a life of
+tactful good-nature, and in the eyes of the world this quality is more
+valued than others of far higher and more solid worth. It is not
+unusual, for example, to see a lady in society, who is living wholly or
+almost wholly for her pleasures, who has no high purpose in life, no
+real sense of duty, no capacity for genuine and serious self-sacrifice,
+but who at the same time never says an unkind thing of her neighbours,
+sets up no severe standard of conduct either for herself or for others,
+and by an innate amiability of temperament tries, successfully and
+without effort, to make all around her cheerful and happy. She will
+probably be more admired, she will almost certainly be more popular,
+than her neighbour whose whole life is one of self-denial for the good
+of others, who sacrifices to her duties her dearest pleasures, her time,
+her money, and her talents, but who through some unhappy turn of temper,
+strengthened perhaps by a narrow and austere education, is a harsh and
+censorious judge of the frailties of her fellows.</p>
+
+<p>It is also a curious thing to observe how often, when the saving gift of
+tact is wanting, the brilliant, the witty, the ambitious, and the
+energetic are passed in the race of life by men who in intellectual
+qualities are greatly their inferiors. They dazzle, agitate, and in a
+measure influence, and they easily win places in the second rank; but
+something in the very exercise of their talents continually trammels
+them, while judgment, tact,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> and good-nature, with comparatively little
+brilliancy, quietly and unobtrusively take the helm. There is the
+excellent talker who, by his talents and his acquirements, is eminently
+fitted to delight and to instruct, yet he is so unable to repress some
+unseemly jest or some pointed sarcasm or some humorous paradox that he
+continually leaves a sting behind him, creates enemies, destroys his
+reputation for sobriety of thought, and makes himself impossible in
+posts of administration and trust. There is the parliamentary speaker
+who, amid shouts of applause, pursues his adversary with scathing
+invective or merciless ridicule, and who all the time is accumulating
+animosities against himself, shutting the door against combinations that
+would be all important to his career, and destroying his chances of
+party leadership. There is the advocate who can state his case with
+consummate power, but who, by an aggressive manner or a too evident
+contempt for his adversary, or by the over-statement of a good cause,
+habitually throws the minds of his hearers into an attitude of
+opposition. There are the many men who, by ill-timed or too frequent
+levity, lose all credit for their serious qualities, or who by
+pretentiousness or self-assertion or restless efforts to distinguish
+themselves, make themselves universally disliked, or who by their
+egotism or their repetitions or their persistence, or their incapacity
+of distinguishing essentials from details, or understanding the
+dispositions of others, or appreciating times and seasons, make their
+wearied and exasperated hearers blind to the most substantial merits. By
+faults of tact men of really moderate opinions get the reputation of
+extremists; men of substantially kindly natures sow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> animosities
+wherever they go; men of real patriotism are regarded as mere jesters or
+party gamblers; men who possess great talents and have rendered great
+services to the world sink into inveterate bores and never obtain from
+their contemporaries a tithe of the success which is their due. Tact is
+not merely shown in saying the right thing at the right time and to the
+right people; it is shown quite as much in the many things that are left
+unsaid and apparently unnoticed, or are only lightly and evasively
+touched.</p>
+
+<p>It is certainly not the highest of human endowments, but it is as
+certainly one of the most valuable, for it is that which chiefly enables
+a man to use his other gifts to advantage, and which most effectually
+supplies the place of those that are wanting. It lies on the borderland
+of character and intellect. It implies self-restraint, good temper,
+quick and kindly sympathy with the feelings of others. It implies also a
+perception of the finer shadings of character and expression, the
+intellectual gift which enables a man to place himself in touch with
+great varieties of disposition, and to catch those more delicate notes
+of feeling to which a coarser nature is insensible.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps in most cases more developed among women than among men,
+and it does not necessarily imply any other remarkable gift. It is
+sometimes found among both men and women of very small general
+intellectual powers; and in numerous cases it serves only to add to the
+charm of private life and to secure social success. Where it is united
+with real talents it not only enables its possessor to use these talents
+to the greatest advantage; it also often leads those about him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> greatly
+to magnify their amount. The presence or absence of this gift is one of
+the chief causes why the relative value of different men is often so
+differently judged by contemporaries and by posterity; by those who have
+come in direct personal contact with them, and by those who judge them
+from without, and by the broad results of their lives. Real tact, like
+good manners, is or becomes a spontaneous and natural thing. The man of
+perfectly refined manners does not consciously and deliberately on each
+occasion observe the courtesies and amenities of good society. They have
+become to him a second nature, and he observes them as by a kind of
+instinct, without thought or effort. In the same way true tact is
+something wholly different from the elaborate and artificial attempts to
+conciliate and attract which may often be seen, and which usually bring
+with them the impression of man&oelig;uvre and insincerity.</p>
+
+<p>Though it may be found in men of very different characters and grades of
+intellect, tact has its natural affinities. Seeking beyond all things to
+avoid unnecessary friction, and therefore with a strong leaning towards
+compromise, it does not generally or naturally go with intense
+convictions, with strong enthusiasms, with an ardently impulsive or
+emotional temperament. Nor is it commonly found among men of deep and
+concentrated genius, intensely absorbed in some special subject. Such
+men are often among the most unobservant of the social sides of life,
+and very bad judges of character, though there will frequently be found
+among them an almost childlike unworldliness and simplicity of nature,
+and an essential moderation of temperament which, combined with their
+superiority of intellect,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> gives them a charm peculiarly their own.
+Tact, however, has a natural affinity to a calm, equable, and
+good-natured temper. It allies itself with a quick sense of opportunity,
+proportion, and degree; with the power of distinguishing readily and
+truly between the essential and the unimportant; with that soundness of
+judgment which not only guides men among the varied events of life, and
+in their estimate of those about them, but also enables them to take a
+true measure of their own capacities, of the tasks that are most fitted
+for them, of the objects of ambition that are and are not within their
+reach.</p>
+
+<p>Though in its higher degrees it is essentially a natural gift, and is
+sometimes conspicuous in perfectly uneducated men, it may be largely
+cultivated and improved; and in this respect the education of good
+society is especially valuable. Such an education, whatever else it may
+do, at least removes many jarring notes from the rhythm of life. It
+tends to correct faults of manner, demeanour, or pronunciation which
+tell against men to a degree altogether disproportioned to their real
+importance, and on which, it is hardly too much to say, the casual
+judgments of the world are mainly formed; and it also fosters moral
+qualities which are essentially of the nature of tact.</p>
+
+<p>We can hardly have a better picture of a really tactful man than in some
+sentences taken from the admirable pages in which Cardinal Newman has
+painted the character of the perfect gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>'It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never
+inflicts pain.... He carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt
+in the minds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> of those with whom he is cast&mdash;all clashing of opinion or
+collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom or resentment;
+his great concern being to make everyone at ease and at home. He has his
+eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle
+towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect
+to whom he is speaking; he guards against unreasonable allusions or
+topics that may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and
+never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems
+to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except
+when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears
+for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who
+interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never
+mean or little in his disputes, never takes an unfair advantage, never
+mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates
+evil which he dare not say out.... He has too much good sense to be
+affronted at insult; he is too busy to remember injuries, and too
+indolent to bear malice.... If he engages in controversy of any kind his
+disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of
+better though less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and
+hack instead of cutting clean.... He may be right or wrong in his
+opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he
+is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find
+greater candour, consideration, indulgence. He throws himself into the
+minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the
+weakness of human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> nature as well as its strength, its province, and its
+limits.'<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have said at the beginning of this chapter that character bears, on
+the whole, a larger part in promoting success than any other things, and
+that a steady perseverance in the industrial virtues seldom fails to
+bring some reward in the directions that are most conducive to human
+happiness. At the same time it is only too evident that success in life
+is by no means measured by merit, either moral or intellectual. Life is
+a great lottery, in which chance and opportunity play an enormous part.
+The higher qualities are often less successful than the medium and the
+lower ones. They are often most successful when they are blended with
+other and inferior elements, and a large share of the great prizes fall
+to the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the cunning. Probably, however,
+the disparity between merit and success diminishes if we take the larger
+averages, and the fortunes of nations correspond with their real worth
+much more nearly than the fortunes of individuals. Success, too, is far
+from being a synonym for happiness, and while the desire for happiness
+is inherent in all human nature, the desire for success&mdash;at least beyond
+what is needed for obtaining a fair share of the comforts of life&mdash;is
+much less universal. The force of habit, the desire for a tranquil
+domestic life, the love of country and of home, are often, among really
+able men, stronger than the impulse of ambition; and a distaste for the
+competitions and contentions of life, for the increasing
+responsibilities of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> greatness, and for the envy and jealousies that
+seldom fail to follow in its trail, may be found among men who, if they
+chose to enter the arena, seem to have every requisite for success. The
+strongest man is not always the most ardent climber, and the tranquil
+valleys have to many a greater charm than the lofty pinnacles of life.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Newman's <i>Scope and Nature of University Education</i>,
+Discourse IX.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>TIME</h3>
+
+<p>Considering the countless ages that man has lived upon this globe, it
+seems a strange thing that he has so little learned to acquiesce in the
+normal conditions of humanity. How large a proportion of the melancholy
+which is reflected in the poetry of all ages, and which is felt in
+different degrees in every human soul, is due not to any special or
+peculiar misfortune, but to things that are common to the whole human
+race! The inexorable flight of time; the approach of old age and its
+infirmities; the shadow of death; the mystery that surrounds our being;
+the contrast between the depth of affection and the transitoriness and
+uncertainty of life; the spectacle of the broken lives and baffled
+aspirations and useless labours and misdirected talents and pernicious
+energies and long-continued delusions that fill the path of human
+history; the deep sense of vanity and aimlessness that must sometimes
+come over us as we contemplate a world in which chance is so often
+stronger than wisdom; in which desert and reward are so widely
+separated; in which living beings succeed each other in such a vast and
+bewildering redundance&mdash;eating, killing, suffering, and dying for no
+useful discoverable purpose,&mdash;all these things belong to the normal lot
+or to the inevitable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> setting of human life. Nor can it be said that
+science, which has so largely extended our knowledge of the Universe, or
+civilisation, which has so greatly multiplied our comforts and
+alleviated our pains, has in any degree diminished the sadness they
+bring. It seems, indeed, as if the more man is raised above a purely
+animal existence, and his mental and moral powers are developed, the
+more this kind of feeling increases.</p>
+
+<p>In few if any periods of the world's history has it been more
+perceptible in literature than at present. Physical constitution and
+temperament have a vast and a humiliating power of deepening or
+lightening it, and the strength or weakness of religious belief largely
+affects it, yet the best, the strongest, the most believing, and the
+most prosperous cannot wholly escape it. Sometimes it finds its true
+expression in the lines of Raleigh:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Even such is time; which takes in trust</div>
+<div>Our youth, our joys, and all we have!</div>
+<div>And pays us nought but age and dust,</div>
+<div>Which in the dark and silent grave,</div>
+<div>When we have wandered all our ways,</div>
+<div>Shuts up the story of our days;</div>
+<div>And from which grave and earth and dust,</div>
+<div>The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Sometimes it takes the tone of a lighter melancholy touched with
+cynicism:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>La vie est vaine:</div>
+<div class="i1">Un peu d'amour,</div>
+<div>Un peu de haine,</div>
+<div class="i1">Et puis&mdash;bon jour.</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span><div>La vie est br&egrave;ve,</div>
+<div class="i1">Un peu d'espoir,</div>
+<div>Un peu de r&ecirc;ve,</div>
+<div class="i1">Et puis&mdash;bon soir.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are few sayings which deserve better to be brought continually
+before our minds than that of Franklin: 'You value life; then do not
+squander time, for time is the stuff of life.' Of all the things that
+are bestowed on men, none is more valuable, but none is more unequally
+used, and the true measurement of life should be found less in its
+duration than in the amount that is put into it. The waste of time is
+one of the oldest of commonplaces, but it is one of those which are
+never really stale. How much of the precious 'stuff of life' is wasted
+by want of punctuality; by want of method involving superfluous and
+repeated effort; by want of measure prolonging things that are
+pleasurable or profitable in moderation to the point of weariness,
+satiety, and extravagance; by want of selection dwelling too much on the
+useless or the unimportant; by want of intensity, growing out of a
+nature that is listless and apathetic both in work and pleasure. Time
+is, in one sense, the most elastic of things. It is one of the commonest
+experiences that the busiest men find most of it for exceptional work,
+and often a man who, under the strong stimulus of an active professional
+life, repines bitterly that he finds so little time for pursuing some
+favourite work or study, discovers, to his own surprise, that when
+circumstances have placed all his time at his disposal he does less in
+this field than in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>hard-earned intervals of a crowded life. The art
+of wisely using the spare five minutes, the casual vacancies or
+intervals of life, is one of the most valuable we can acquire. There are
+lives in which the main preoccupation is to get through time. There are
+others in which it is to find time for all that has to be got through,
+and most men, in different periods of their lives, are acquainted with
+both extremes. With some, time is mere duration, a blank, featureless
+thing, gliding swiftly and insensibly by. With others every day, and
+almost every hour, seems to have its distinctive stamp and character,
+for good or ill, in work or pleasure. There are vast differences in this
+respect between different ages of history, and between different
+generations in the same country, between town and country life, and
+between different countries. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle
+of Cathay' is profoundly true, and no traveller can fail to be
+insensible to the difference in the value of time in a Northern and in a
+Southern country. The leisure of some nations seems busier than the work
+of others, and few things are more resting to an overwrought and jaded
+Anglo-Saxon nature than to pass for a short season into one of those
+countries where time seems almost without value.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole there can be little doubt that life in the more civilised
+nations has, in our own generation, largely increased. It is not simply
+that its average duration is extended. This, in a large degree, is due
+to the diminished amount of infant mortality. The improvement is shown
+more conclusively in the increased commonness of vigorous and active old
+age,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> in the multitude of new contrivances for economising and therefore
+increasing time, in the far greater intensity of life both in the forms
+of work and in the forms of pleasure. 'Life at high pressure' is not
+without its drawbacks and its evils, but it at least means life which is
+largely and fully used.</p>
+
+<p>All intermissions of work, however, even when they do not take the form
+of positive pleasure, are not waste of time. Overwork, in all
+departments of life, is commonly bad economy, not so much because it
+often breaks down health&mdash;most of what is attributed to this cause is
+probably rather due to anxiety than to work&mdash;as because it seldom fails
+to impair the quality of work. A great portion of our lives passes in
+the unconsciousness of sleep, and perhaps no part is more usefully
+spent. It not only brings with it the restoration of our physical
+energies, but it also gives a true and healthy tone to our moral nature.
+Of all earthly things sleep does the most to place things in their true
+proportions, calming excited nerves and dispelling exaggerated cares.
+How many suicides have been averted, how many rash enterprises and
+decisions have been prevented, how many dangerous quarrels have been
+allayed, by the soothing influence of a few hours of steady sleep!
+'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care' is, indeed, in a
+careworn world, one of the chief of blessings. Its healing and
+restorative power is as much felt in the sicknesses of the mind as in
+those of the body, and, in spite of the authority of Solomon, it is
+probably a wise thing for men to take the full measure of it, which
+undoctored nature demands. The true waste of time of the sluggard is
+not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> in the amount of natural sleep he enjoys, but in the time idly
+spent in bed when sleep has ceased, and in misplaced and mistimed sleep,
+which is not due to any genuine craving of the body for rest, but simply
+to mental sluggishness, to lack of interest and attention.</p>
+
+<p>Some men have claimed for sleep even more than this. 'The night-time of
+the body,' an ancient writer has said, 'is the day-time of the soul,'
+and some, who do not absolutely hold the old belief that it is in the
+dreams of the night that the Divine Spirit most communicates with man,
+have, nevertheless, believed that the complete withdrawal of our minds
+from those worldly cares which haunt our waking hours and do so much to
+materialise and harden our natures is one of the first conditions of a
+higher life. 'In proportion,' said Swedenborg, 'as the mind is capable
+of being withdrawn from things sensual and corporeal, in the same
+proportion it is elevated into things celestial and spiritual.' It has
+been noticed that often thoughts and judgments, scattered and entangled
+in our evening hours, seem sifted, clarified, and arranged in sleep;
+that problems which seemed hopelessly confused when we lay down are at
+once and easily solved when we awake, 'as though a reason more perfect
+than reason had been at work when we were in our beds.' Something
+analogous to this, it has been contended, takes place in our moral
+natures. 'A process is going on in us during those hours which is not,
+and cannot be, brought so effectually, if at all, at any other time, and
+we are spiritually growing, developing, ripening more continuously while
+thus shielded from the distracting influences of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>phenomenal world
+than during the hours in which we are absorbed in them.... Is it not
+precisely the function of sleep to give us for a portion of every day in
+our lives a respite from worldly influences which, uninterrupted, would
+deprive us of the instruction, of the spiritual reinforcements,
+necessary to qualify us to turn our waking experiences of the world to
+the best account without being overcome by them? It is in these hours
+that the plans and ambitions of our external worldly life cease to
+interfere with or obstruct the flow of the Divine life into the
+will.'<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p>
+
+<p>Without, however, following this train of thought, it is at least
+sufficiently clear that no small portion of the happiness of life
+depends upon our sleeping hours. Plato has exhorted men to observe
+carefully their dreams as indicating their natural dispositions,
+tendencies, and temptations, and&mdash;perhaps with more reason&mdash;Burton and
+Franklin have proposed 'the art of procuring pleasant dreams' as one of
+the great, though little recognised, branches of the science of life.
+This is, no doubt, mainly a question of diet, exercise, efficient
+ventilation, and a wise distribution of hours, but it is also largely
+influenced by moral causes.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Somnia qu&aelig; mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,</div>
+<div>Nec delubra deum, nec ab &aelig;there numina mittunt,</div>
+<div>Sed sibi quisque facit.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright,
+unremorseful life, to cultivate the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> power of governing by the will the
+current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated
+anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for
+banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a
+little to the unhappiness of many lives.</p>
+
+<p>An analogous branch of self-culture is that which seeks to provide some
+healthy aliment for the waking hours of the night, when time seems so
+unnaturally prolonged, and when gloomy thoughts and exaggerated and
+distempered views of the trials of life peculiarly prevail. Among the
+ways in which education may conduce to the real happiness of man, its
+power of supplying pleasant or soothing thoughts for those dreary hours
+is not the least, though it is seldom or never noticed in books or
+speeches. It is, perhaps, in this respect that the early habit of
+committing poetry&mdash;and especially religious poetry&mdash;to memory is most
+important.</p>
+
+<p>In estimating the value of those intermissions of labour which are not
+spent in active enjoyment one other consideration may be noted. There
+are times when the mind should lie fallow, and all who have lived the
+intellectual life with profit have perceived that it is often in those
+times that it most regains the elasticity it may have lost and becomes
+most prolific in spontaneous thought. Many periods of life which might
+at first sight appear to be merely unused time are, in truth, among the
+most really valuable.</p>
+
+<p>We have all noticed the curious fact of the extreme apparent
+inequalities of time, though it is, in its essence, of all things the
+most uniform. Periods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> of pain or acute discomfort seem unnaturally
+long, but this lengthening of time is fortunately not true of all the
+melancholy scenes of life, nor is it peculiar to things that are
+painful. An invalid life with its almost unbroken monotony, and with the
+large measure of torpor that often accompanies it, usually flies very
+quickly, and most persons must have observed how the first week of
+travel, or of some other great change of habits and pursuits, though
+often attended with keen enjoyment, appears disproportionately long.
+Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the
+power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many
+landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are
+not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions,
+and labours follow each other in swift and distinct succession, seems
+the most long, and youth, with its keen susceptibility to impressions,
+appears to move much more slowly than apathetic old age. How almost
+immeasurably long to a young child seems the period from birthday to
+birthday! How long to the schoolboy seems the interval between vacation
+and vacation! How rapid as we go on in life becomes the awful beat of
+each recurring year! When the feeling of novelty has grown rare, and
+when interests have lost their edge, time glides by with an
+ever-increasing celerity. Campbell has justly noticed as a beneficent
+provision of nature that it is in the period of life when enjoyments are
+fewest, and infirmities most numerous, that the march of time seems most
+rapid.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>The more we live, more brief appear</div>
+<div class="i1">Our life's succeeding stages,</div>
+<div>A day to childhood seems a year,</div>
+<div class="i1">And years like passing ages.</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div>When Joys have lost their bloom and breath,</div>
+<div class="i1">And life itself is vapid,</div>
+<div>Why as we reach the Falls of death</div>
+<div class="i1">Feel we its tide more rapid?</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i2">*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;*</div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div>Heaven gives our years of fading strength</div>
+<div class="i1">Indemnifying fleetness;</div>
+<div>And those of youth a seeming length</div>
+<div class="i1">Proportioned to their sweetness.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The shortness of life is one of the commonplaces of literature. Yet
+though we may easily conceive beings with faculties both of mind and
+body adapted to a far longer life than ours, it will usually be found,
+with our existing powers, that life, if not prematurely shortened, is
+long enough. In the case of men who have played a great part in public
+affairs, the best work is nearly always done before old age. It is a
+remarkable fact that although a Senate, by its very derivation, means an
+assembly of old men, and although in the Senate of Rome, which was the
+greatest of all, the members sat for life, there was a special law
+providing that no Senator, after sixty, should be summoned to attend his
+duty.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> In the past centuries active septuagenarian statesmen were
+very rare, and in parliamentary life almost unknown. In our own century
+there have been brilliant exceptions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> but in most cases it will be
+found that the true glory of these statesmen rests on what they had done
+before old age, and sometimes the undue prolongation of their active
+lives has been a grave misfortune, not only to their own reputations,
+but also to the nations they influenced. Often, indeed, while faculties
+diminish, self-confidence, even in good men, increases. Moral and
+intellectual failings that had been formerly repressed take root and
+spread, and it is no small blessing that they have but a short time to
+run their course. In the case of men of great capacities the follies of
+age are perhaps even more to be feared than the follies of youth. When
+men have made a great reputation and acquired a great authority, when
+they become the objects of the flattery of nations, and when they can,
+with little trouble or thought or study, attract universal attention, a
+new set of temptations begins. Their heads are apt to be turned. The
+feeling of responsibility grows weaker; the old judgment, caution,
+deliberation, self-restraint, and timidity disappear. Obstinacy and
+prejudice strengthen, while at the same time the force of the reasoning
+will diminishes. Sometimes, through a failing that is partly
+intellectual, but partly also moral, they almost wholly lose the power
+of realising or recognising new conditions, discoveries and necessities.
+They view with jealousy the rise of new reputations and of younger men,
+and the well-earned authority of an old man becomes the most formidable
+obstacle to improvement. In the field of politics, in the field of
+science, and in the field of military organisation, these truths might
+be abundantly illustrated. In the case of great but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> maleficent genius
+the shortness of life is a priceless blessing. Few greater curses could
+be imagined for the human race than the prolongation for centuries of
+the life of Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>In literature also the same law may be detected. A writer's best
+thoughts are usually expressed long before extreme old age, though the
+habit and desire of production continue. The time of repetition, of
+diluted force, and of weakened judgment&mdash;the age when the mind has lost
+its flexibility and can no longer assimilate new ideas or keep pace with
+the changing modes and tendencies of another generation&mdash;often sets in
+while physical life is but little enfeebled. In this case, it is true,
+the evil is not very great, for Time may be trusted to sift the chaff
+from the wheat, and though it may not preserve the one it will
+infallibly discard the other. 'While I live,' Victor Hugo said with some
+grandiloquence, but also with some justice, 'it is my duty to produce.
+It is the duty of the world to select, from what I produce, that which
+is worth keeping. The world will discharge its duty. I shall discharge
+mine.' At the same time, no one can have failed to observe how much in
+our own generation the long silence of Newman in his old age added to
+his dignity and his reputation, and the same thing might have been said
+of Carlyle if a beneficent fire had destroyed the unrevised manuscripts
+which he wrote or dictated when a very old man.</p>
+
+<p>We are here, however, dealing with great labours, and with men who are
+filling a great place in the world's strife. The decay of faculty and
+will, that impairs power in these cases, is often perceptible long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+before there is any real decay in the powers that are needed for
+ordinary business or for the full enjoyment of life. But the time comes
+when children have grown into maturity, and when it becomes desirable
+that a younger generation should take the government of the world,
+should inherit its wealth, its power, its dignities, its many means of
+influence and enjoyment; and this cannot be fully done till the older
+generation is laid to rest. Often, indeed, old age, when it is free from
+grave infirmities and from great trials and privations, is the most
+honoured, the most tranquil, and perhaps on the whole the happiest
+period of life. The struggles, passions, and ambitions of other days
+have passed. The mellowing touch of time has allayed animosities,
+subdued old asperities of character, given a larger and more tolerant
+judgment, cured the morbid sensitiveness that most embitters life. The
+old man's mind is stored with the memories of a well-filled and
+honourable life. In the long leisures that now fall to his lot he is
+often enabled to resume projects which in a crowded professional life he
+had been obliged to adjourn; he finds (as Adam Smith has said) that one
+of the greatest pleasures in life is reverting in old age to the studies
+of youth, and he himself often feels something of the thrill of a second
+youth in his sympathy with the children who are around him. It is the
+St. Martin's summer, lighting with a pale but beautiful gleam the brief
+November day. But the time must come when all the alternatives of life
+are sad, and the least sad is a speedy and painless end. When the eye
+has ceased to see and the ear to hear,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> when the mind has failed and all
+the friends of youth are gone, and the old man's life becomes a burden
+not only to himself but to those about him, it is far better that he
+should quit the scene. If a natural clinging to life, or a natural
+shrinking from death, prevents him from clearly realising this, it is at
+least fully seen by all others.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, indeed, does this love of life in most cases of extreme old age
+greatly persist. Few things are sadder than to see the young, or those
+in mature life, seeking, according to the current phrase, to find means
+of "killing time." But in extreme old age, when the power of work, the
+power of reading, the pleasures of society, have gone, this phrase
+acquires a new significance. As Madame de Sta&euml;l has beautifully said,
+'On d&eacute;pose fleur &agrave; fleur la couronne de la vie.' An apathy steals over
+every faculty, and rest&mdash;unbroken rest&mdash;becomes the chief desire. I
+remember a touching epitaph in a German churchyard: 'I will arise, O
+Christ, when Thou callest me; but oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very
+weary.'</p>
+
+<p>After all that can be said, most men are reluctant to look Time in the
+face. The close of the year or a birthday is to them merely a time of
+revelry, into which they enter in order to turn away from depressing
+thought. They shrink from what seems to them the dreary truth, that they
+are drifting to a dark abyss. To many the milestones along the path of
+life are tombstones, every epoch being mainly associated in their
+memories with a death. To some, past time is nothing&mdash;a closed chapter
+never to be reopened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>The past is nothing, and at last,</div>
+<div>The future can but be the past.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To others, the thought of the work achieved in the vanished years is the
+most real and abiding of their possessions. They can feel the force of
+the noble lines of Dryden:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,</div>
+<div>But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He who would look Time in the face without illusion and without fear
+should associate each year as it passes with new developments of his
+nature; with duties accomplished, with work performed. To fill the time
+allotted to us to the brim with action and with thought is the only way
+in which we can learn to watch its passage with equanimity.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Monte-Naken.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> See <i>The Mystery of Sleep</i>, by John Bigelow.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Seneca, <i>de Brevitate Vit&aelig;</i>, cap. <span class="smaller">XX</span>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>'THE END'</h3>
+
+<p>It is easy to conceive circumstances not widely different from those of
+actual life that would, if not altogether, at least very largely, take
+from death the gloom that commonly surrounds it. If all the members of
+the human race died either before two or after seventy; if death was in
+all cases the swift and painless thing that it is with many; and if the
+old man always left behind him children to perpetuate his name, his
+memory, and his thoughts, Death, though it might still seem a sad thing,
+would certainly not excite the feelings it now so often produces. Of all
+the events that befall us, it is that which owes most of its horror not
+to itself, but to its accessories, its associations, and to the
+imaginations that cluster around it. 'Death,' indeed, as a great stoical
+moralist said, 'is the only evil that can never touch us. When we are,
+death is not. When death comes, we are not.'</p>
+
+<p>The composition of treatises of consolation intended to accustom men to
+contemplate death without terror was one of the favourite exercises of
+the philosophers in the Augustan and in the subsequent periods of Pagan
+Rome. The chapter which Cicero has devoted to this subject in his
+treatise on old age is a beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> example of how it appeared to a
+virtuous pagan, who believed in a future life which would bring him into
+communion with those whom he had loved and lost on earth, but who at the
+same time recognised this only as a probability, not a certainty.
+"Death," he said, 'is an event either utterly to be disregarded if it
+extinguish the soul's existence, or much to be wished if it convey her
+to some region where she shall continue to exist for ever. One of these
+two consequences must necessarily follow the disunion of soul and body;
+there is no other possible alternative. What then have I to fear if
+after death I shall either not be miserable or shall certainly be
+happy?'</p>
+
+<p>Vague notions, however, of a dim, twilight, shadowy world where the
+ghosts of the dead lived a faint and joyless existence, and whence they
+sometimes returned to haunt the living in their dreams, were widely
+spread through the popular imaginations, and it was as the extinction of
+all superstitious fears that the school of Lucretius and Pliny welcomed
+the belief that all things ended with death&mdash;'Post mortem nihil est,
+ipsaque mors nihil.' Nor is it by any means certain that even in the
+school of Plato the thought of another life had a great and operative
+influence on minds and characters. Death was chiefly represented as
+rest; as the close of a banquet; as the universal law of nature which
+befalls all living beings, though the immense majority encounter it at
+an earlier period than man. It was thought of simply as
+sleep&mdash;dreamless, undisturbed sleep&mdash;the final release from all the
+sorrows, sufferings, anxieties, labours, and longings of life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i12">We are such stuff</div>
+<div>As dreams are made on, and our little life</div>
+<div>Is rounded with a sleep.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div class="i6">The best of rest is sleep,</div>
+<div>And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st</div>
+<div>Thy death, which is no more.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a></div>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<div>To die is landing on some silent shore</div>
+<div>Where billows never break, nor tempests roar.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is a strange thing to observe to what a height not only of moral
+excellence, but also of devotional fervour, men have arisen without any
+assistance from the doctrine of a future life. Only the faintest and
+most dubious glimmer of such a belief can be traced in the Psalms, in
+which countless generations of Christians have found the fullest
+expression of their devotional feelings, or in the Meditations of Marcus
+Aurelius, which are perhaps the purest product of pagan piety.</p>
+
+<p>As I have already said, I am endeavouring in this book to steer clear of
+questions of contested theologies; but it is impossible to avoid
+noticing the great changes that have been introduced into the conception
+of death by some of the teaching which in different forms has grown up
+under the name of Christianity, though much of it may be traced in germ
+to earlier periods of human development. Death in itself was made
+incomparably more terrible by the notion that it was not a law but a
+punishment; that sufferings inconceivably greater than those of Earth
+awaited the great masses of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> human race beyond the grave; that an
+event which was believed to have taken place ages before we were born,
+or small frailties such as the best of us cannot escape, were sufficient
+to bring men under this condemnation; that the only paths to safety were
+to be found in ecclesiastical ceremonies; in the assistance of priests;
+in an accurate choice among competing theological doctrines. At the same
+time the largest and most powerful of the Churches of Christendom has,
+during many centuries, done its utmost to intensify the natural fear of
+death by associating it in the imaginations of men with loathsome images
+and appalling surroundings. There can be no greater contrast than that
+between the Greek tomb with its garlands of flowers, its bright,
+youthful and restful imagery, and the mortuary chapels that may often be
+found in Catholic countries, with their ghastly pictures of the <i>saved</i>
+souls writhing in purgatorial flames, while the inscription above and
+the moneybox below point out the one means of alleviating their lot.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Fermati, O Passagiero, mira tormenti.</div>
+<div>Siamo abbandonati dai nostri parenti.</div>
+<div>Di noi abbiate piet&agrave;, o voi amici cari.</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is one side of the picture. On the other hand it cannot be
+questioned that the strong convictions and impressive ceremonies, even
+of the most superstitious faith, have consoled and strengthened
+multitudes in their last moments, and in the purer and more enlightened
+forms of Christianity death now wears a very different aspect from what
+it did in the teaching of medi&aelig;val Catholicism, or of some of the sects
+that grew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> out of the Reformation. Human life ending in the weakness of
+old age and in the corruption of the tomb will always seem a humiliating
+anti-climax, and often a hideous injustice. The belief in the rightful
+supremacy of conscience, and in an eternal moral law redressing the many
+wrongs and injustices of life, and securing the ultimate triumph of good
+over evil; the incapacity of earth and earthly things to satisfy our
+cravings and ideals; the instinctive revolt of human nature against the
+idea of annihilation, and its capacity for affections and attachments,
+which seem by their intensity to transcend the limits of earth and carry
+with them in moments of bereavement a persuasion or conviction of
+something that endures beyond the grave,&mdash;all these things have found in
+Christian beliefs a sanction and a satisfaction that men had failed to
+find in Socrates or Cicero, or in the vague Pantheism to which
+unassisted reason naturally inclines.</p>
+
+<p>Looking, however, on death in its purely human aspects, the mourner
+should consider how often in a long illness he wished the dying man
+could sleep; how consoling to his mind was the thought of every hour of
+peaceful rest; of every hour in which the patient was withdrawn from
+consciousness, insensible to suffering, removed for a time from the
+miseries of a dying life. He should ask himself whether these intervals
+of insensibility were not on the whole the happiest in the
+illness&mdash;those which he would most have wished to multiply or to
+prolong. He should accustom himself, then, to think of death as
+sleep&mdash;undisturbed sleep&mdash;the only sleep from which man never wakes to
+pain.</p>
+
+<p>You find yourself in the presence of what is a far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> deeper and more
+poignant trial than an old man's death&mdash;a young life cut off in its
+prime; the eclipse of a sun before the evening has arrived. Accustom
+yourself to consider the life that has passed as a whole. A human being
+has been called into the world&mdash;has lived in it ten, twenty, thirty
+years. It seems to you an intolerable instance of the injustice of fate
+that he is so early cut off. Estimate, then, that life as a whole, and
+ask yourself whether, so judged, it has been a blessing or the reverse.
+Count up the years of happiness. Count up the days, or perhaps weeks, of
+illness and of pain. Measure the happiness that this short life has
+given to some who have passed away; who never lived to see its early
+close. Balance the happiness which during its existence it gave to those
+who survived, with the poignancy and the duration of pain caused by the
+loss. Here, for example, is one who lived perhaps twenty-five years in
+health and vigour; whose life during that period was chequered by no
+serious misfortune; whose nature, though from time to time clouded by
+petty anxieties and cares, was on the whole bright, buoyant, and happy;
+who had the capacity of vivid enjoyment and many opportunities of
+attaining it; who felt all the thrill of health and friendship and
+ecstatic pleasure. Then came a change,&mdash;a year or two with a crippled
+wing&mdash;life, though not abjectly wretched, on the whole a burden, and
+then the end. You can easily conceive&mdash;you can ardently desire&mdash;a better
+lot, but judge fairly the lights and shades of what has been. Does not
+the happiness on the whole exceed the evil? Can you honestly say that
+this life has been a curse and not a blessing?&mdash;that it would have been
+better if it had never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> been called out of nothingness?&mdash;that it would
+have been better if the drama had never been played? It is over now. As
+you lay in his last home the object of so much love, ask yourself
+whether, even in a mere human point of view, this parenthesis between
+two darknesses has not been on the whole productive of more happiness
+than pain to him and to those around him.</p>
+
+<p>It was an ancient saying that 'he whom the gods love dies young,' and
+more than one legend representing speedy and painless death as the
+greatest of blessings has descended to us from pagan antiquity; while
+other legends, like that of Tithonus, anticipated the picture which
+Swift has so powerfully but so repulsively drawn of the misery of old
+age and its infirmities, if death did not come as a release. I have
+elsewhere related an old Irish legend embodying this truth. 'In a
+certain lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands; into the
+first death could never enter, but age and sickness, and the weariness
+of life and the paroxysms of fearful suffering were all known there, and
+they did their work till the inhabitants, tired of their immortality,
+learned to look upon the opposite island as upon a haven of repose. They
+launched their barks upon its gloomy waters; they touched its shore, and
+they were at rest.'<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p>
+
+<p>No one, however, can confidently say whether an early death is a
+misfortune, for no one can really know what calamities would have
+befallen the dead man if his life had been prolonged. How often does it
+happen that the children of a dead parent do things or suffer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> things
+that would have broken his heart if he had lived to see them! How often
+do painful diseases lurk in germ in the body which would have produced
+unspeakable misery if an early and perhaps a painless death had not
+anticipated their development! How often do mistakes and misfortunes
+cloud the evening and mar the beauty of a noble life, or moral
+infirmities, unperceived in youth or early manhood, break out before the
+day is over! Who is there who has not often said to himself as he looked
+back on a completed life, how much happier it would have been had it
+ended sooner? 'Give us timely death' is in truth one of the best prayers
+that man can pray. Pain, not Death, is the real enemy to be combated,
+and in this combat, at least, man can do much. Few men can have lived
+long without realising how many things are worse than death, and how
+many knots there are in life that Death alone can untie.</p>
+
+<p>Remember, above all, that whatever may lie beyond the tomb, the tomb
+itself is nothing to you. The narrow prison-house, the gloomy pomp, the
+hideousness of decay, are known to the living and the living alone. By a
+too common illusion of the imagination, men picture themselves as
+consciously dead,&mdash;going through the process of corruption, and aware of
+it; imprisoned with the knowledge of the fact in the most hideous of
+dungeons. Endeavour earnestly to erase this illusion from your mind, for
+it lies at the root of the fear of death, and it is one of the worst
+sides of medi&aelig;val and of much modern teaching and art that it tends to
+strengthen it. Nothing, if we truly realise it, is less real than the
+grave. We should be no more concerned with the after fate of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> our
+discarded bodies than with that of the hair which the hair-cutter has
+cut off. The sooner they are resolved into their primitive elements the
+better. The imagination should never be suffered to dwell upon their
+decay.</p>
+
+<p>Bacon has justly noticed that while death is often regarded as the
+supreme evil, there is no human passion that does not become so powerful
+as to lead men to despise it. It is not in the waning days of life, but
+in the full strength of youth, that men, through ambition or the mere
+love of excitement, fearlessly and joyously encounter its risk.
+Encountered in hot blood it is seldom feared, and innumerable accounts
+of shipwrecks and other accidents, and many episodes in every war, show
+conclusively how calmly honour, duty, and discipline can enable men of
+no extraordinary characters, virtues, or attainments, to meet it even
+when it comes before them suddenly, as an inevitable fact, and without
+any of that excitement which might blind their eyes. If we analyse our
+own feelings on the death of those we love, we shall probably find that,
+except in cases where life is prematurely shortened and much promise cut
+off, pity for the dead person is rarely a marked element. The feelings
+which had long been exclusively concentrated on the sufferings of the
+dying man take a new course when the moment of death arrives. It is the
+sudden blank; the separation from him who is dear to us; the cessation
+of the long reciprocity of love and pleasure,&mdash;in a word our own
+loss,&mdash;that affects us then. 'A happy release' is perhaps the phrase
+most frequently heard around a death-bed. And as we look back through
+the vista of a few years, and have learned to separate death more
+clearly from the illness that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>preceded it, the sense of its essential
+peacefulness and naturalness grows upon us. A vanished life comes to be
+looked upon as a day that has past, but leaving many memories behind it.</p>
+
+<p>It is, I think, a healthy tendency that is leading men in our own
+generation to turn away as much as possible from the signs and the
+contemplation of death. The pomp and elaboration of funerals; protracted
+mournings surrounding us with the gloom of an ostentatious and
+artificial sorrow; above all, the long suspension of those active habits
+which nature intended to be the chief medicine of grief, are things
+which at least in the English-speaking world are manifestly declining.
+We should try to think of those who have passed away as they were at
+their best, and not in sickness or in decay. True sorrow needs no
+ostentation, and the gloom of death no artificial enhancement. Every
+good man, knowing the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its
+hour, will make it one of his first duties to provide for those he loves
+when he has himself passed away, and to do all in his power to make the
+period of bereavement as easy as possible. This is the last service he
+can render before the ranks are closed, and his place is taken, and the
+days of forgetfulness set in. In careers of riot and of vice the thought
+of death may have a salutary restraining influence; but in a useful,
+busy, well-ordered life it should have little place. It was not the
+Stoics alone who 'bestowed too much cost on death, and by their
+preparations made it more fearful.'<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> As Spinoza has taught, 'the
+proper study of a wise man is not how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> to die but how to live,' and as
+long as he is discharging this task aright he may leave the end to take
+care of itself. The great guiding landmarks of a wise life are indeed
+few and simple; to do our duty&mdash;to avoid useless sorrow&mdash;to acquiesce
+patiently in the inevitable.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> <i>The Tempest.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> <i>Measure for Measure.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Garth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> <i>History of European Morals</i>, i. p. 203. The legend is
+related by Camden.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Bacon.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAP OF LIFE***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Map of Life, by William Edward Hartpole
+Lecky
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Map of Life
+       Conduct and Character
+
+
+Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2008  [eBook #26334]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAP OF LIFE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Martin Pettit, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+WORKS BY
+
+The Rt. Hon. W. E. H. LECKY.
+
+
+HISTORY of ENGLAND in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
+  Library Edition. 8vo. Vols. I. and II. 1700-1760. 36s. Vols.
+III. and IV. 1760-1784. 36s. Vols. V. and VI. 1784-1793. 36s.
+Vols. VII. and VIII. 1793-1800. 36s.
+  Cabinet Edition. ENGLAND. 7 vols. Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
+IRELAND. 5 vols. Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
+
+The HISTORY of EUROPEAN MORALS from AUGUSTUS to CHARLEMAGNE.
+  2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.
+
+HISTORY of the RISE and INFLUENCE of the
+  SPIRIT of RATIONALISM in EUROPE.
+  2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.
+
+DEMOCRACY and LIBERTY.
+  Library Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 36s.
+  Cabinet Edition. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 12s.
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE: Conduct and Character.
+  Library Edition. 8vo. 10s. 6d.
+  Cabinet Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
+
+POEMS. Fcp. 8vo. 5s.
+
+
+        LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
+   39 Paternoster Row, London, and Bombay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE
+
+Conduct and Character
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
+
+
+     'La vie n'est pas un plaisir ni une douleur, mais une affaire grave
+     dont nous sommes charges, et qu'il faut conduire et terminer a
+     notre honneur'                           TOCQUEVILLE
+
+New Impression
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Longmans, Green, and Co.
+39 Paternoster Row, London
+New York and Bombay
+1904
+
+All rights reserved
+
+Bibliographical Note.
+
+   _First printed_, _8vo_, _September 1899_. _Reprinted November
+   1899_; _December 1899_; _January 1900 (with corrections)_. _Cabinet
+   Edition_, _Crown 8vo_, _February 1901_. _Reprinted December, 1902_.
+   _July, 1904_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+                                                            PAGE
+
+How far reasoning on happiness is of any use                   1
+The arguments of the Determinist                               2
+The arguments for free will                                    3
+_Securus judicat orbis terrarum_                               5
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Happiness a condition of mind and often confused with
+  the means of attaining it                                    7
+Circumstances and character contribute to it in different
+  degrees                                                      7
+Religion, Stoicism, and Eastern nations seek it mainly by
+ acting on disposition                                         7
+Sensational philosophies and industrial and progressive
+  nations seek it chiefly in improved circumstances            8
+English character                                              8
+Action of the body on happiness                               10
+Influence of predispositions in reasonings on life            12
+Promotion of health by legislation, fashion and self-culture  12
+Slight causes of life failures                                14
+Effects of sanitary reform                                    14
+Diminished disease does not always imply a higher level of
+  health                                                      15
+Two causes depressing health                                  16
+Encroachments on liberty in sanitary legislation              16
+Sanitary education--its chief articles--its possible
+  exaggeration                                                17
+Constant thought about health not the way to attain it        18
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Some general rules of happiness--1. A life full of
+  work.--Happiness should not be the main object of pursuit   19
+Carlyle on Ennui                                              20
+2. Aim rather at avoiding suffering than attaining pleasure   21
+3. The greatest pleasures and pains in spheres accessible to
+  all                                                         22
+4. Importance and difficulty of realising our blessings while
+  they last                                                   24
+Comparison and contrast                                       26
+Content not the quality of progressive societies              27
+The problem of balancing content and the desire for progress  28
+What civilisation can do for happiness                        28
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The relation of morals to happiness.--The Utilitarian
+  justification of virtue insufficient                        30
+Power of man to aim at something different from and higher
+  than happiness                                              32
+General coincidence of duty and happiness                     33
+The creation of unselfish interests one of the chief elements
+  of happiness                                                34
+Burke on a well-ordered life                                  35
+Improvement of character more within our power than
+  improvement of intellect                                    36
+High moral qualities often go with low intellectual power     36
+Dangers attaching to the unselfish side of our nature.--Active
+  charity personally supervised least subject to abuse        37
+Disproportioned compassion                                    38
+Treatment of animals                                          41
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Changes of morals chiefly in the proportionate value attached
+  to different virtues                                        44
+Military, civic, and intellectual virtues                     44
+The mediaeval type                                             45
+Modifications introduced by Protestantism                     47
+Bossuet and Louis XIV.                                        48
+Persecution.--Operations at childbirth.--Usury                50
+Every great religion and philosophic system produces or
+  favours a distinct moral type                               51
+Variations in moral judgments                                 51
+Complexity of moral influences of modern times.--The industrial
+  type                                                        53
+Qualified by other influences                                 54
+Unnecessary suffering                                         57
+Goethe's exposition of modern morals                          58
+Morals hitherto too much treated negatively                   59
+Possibility of an over-sensitive conscience                   60
+Increased sense of the obligations of an active life          61
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+In the guidance of life action more important than pure
+  reasoning                                                   62
+The enforcement of active duty now specially needed           62
+Temptations to luxurious idleness                             63
+Rectification of false ideals.--The conqueror                 64
+The luxury of ostentation                                     64
+Glorification of the demi-monde                               66
+Study of ideals                                               67
+The human mind more capable of distinguishing right
+  from wrong than of measuring merit and demerit              67
+Fallibility of moral judgments                                68
+Rules for moral judgment                                      73
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The school of Rousseau considers man by nature wholly
+  good                                                        76
+Other schools maintain that he is absolutely depraved         76
+Exaggerations of these schools                                78
+The restraining conscience distinctively human.--Comparison
+  with the animals                                            79
+Reality of human depravity.--Illustrated by war               81
+Large amount of pure malevolence.--Political crime.--The
+  press                                                       83
+Mendacity in finance                                          85
+The sane view of human character                              86
+We learn with age to value restraints, to expect moderately
+and value compromise                                          86
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Moral compromise a necessity in life.--Statement of Newman    88
+Impossibility of acting on it                                 88
+Moral considerations though the highest must not absorb
+  all others                                                  90
+Truthfulness--cases in which it may be departed from          91
+
+_Moral compromise in war_
+    War necessarily stimulates the malevolent passions and
+      practises deception                                     92
+    Rights of war in early stages of civilisation             93
+    Distinction between Greeks and Barbarians                 94
+    Roman moralists insisted on just causes of war and on
+      formal declaration                                      95
+    Treatment of prisoners.--Combatants and non-combatants    95
+    Treatment of private property                             96
+    Lawful and unlawful methods of conducting war             96
+    Abdication by the soldier of private judgment and free
+      will                                                    98
+    Distinctions and compromises                              99
+    Cases in which the military oath may be broken.--Illegal
+      orders                                                 100
+    Violation of religious obligations.--The Sepoy mutiny    101
+    The Italian conscript.--Fenians in the British army      104
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_Moral compromise in the law_
+    What advocates may and may not do                        108
+    Inevitable temptations of the profession                 109
+    Its condemnation by Swift, Arnold, Macaulay, Bentham     109
+    Its defence by Paley, Johnson, Basil Montagu             110
+    How far a lawyer may support a bad case.--St. Thomas
+      Aquinas and Catholic casuists                          111
+    Sir Matthew Hale.--General custom in England             113
+    Distinction between the etiquette of prosecution and
+      of defence                                             113
+    The case of Courvoisier                                  114
+    Statement of Lord Brougham                               115
+    The license of cross-examination.--Technicalities defeating
+      justice                                                116
+    Advantage of trial by jury                               119
+    Necessity of the profession of advocate                  119
+
+_Moral compromise in politics_
+    Necessity of party                                       120
+    How far conscientious differences should impair party
+      allegiance                                             121
+    Lines of conduct adopted when such differences arise     121
+    Parliamentary obstruction                                123
+    Moral difficulties inseparable from party                124
+    Evil of extreme view of party allegiance.--Government
+      and the Opposition                                     125
+    Relations of members to their constituents               127
+    Votes given without adequate knowledge                   131
+    Diminished power of the private member                   134
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE STATESMAN
+
+Duty of a statesman when the interests and wishes of his
+  nation conflict                                            136
+Nature and extent of political trusteeship                   137
+Temperance questions                                         138
+Legitimate and illegitimate time-serving                     141
+Education questions                                          141
+Inconsistency in politics--how far it should be condemned    147
+The conduct of Peel in 1829 and 1845                         148
+The conduct of Disraeli in 1867                              149
+Different degrees of weight to be attached to party
+  considerations                                             151
+Temptations to war                                           153
+Temptations of aristocratic and of democratic governments    155
+Necessity of assimilating legislation                        157
+Legislation violating contracts.--Irish land legislation     158
+Questions forced into prominence for party objects           164
+The judgment of public servants who have committed
+  indefensible acts                                          165
+The French _coup d'etat_ of 1851                             166
+Judgments passed upon it                                     177
+Probable multiplication of _coups d'etat_                    182
+Governor Eyre                                                184
+The Jameson raid                                             185
+How statesmen should deal with political misdeeds            190
+The standard of international morals--questions connected
+  with it                                                    191
+The ethics of annexation                                     195
+Political morals and public opinion                          196
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_Moral compromise in the Church_
+    Difficulties of reconciling old formularies with changed
+      beliefs                                                198
+    Cause of some great revolutions of belief.--The Copernican
+      system.--Discovery of Newton                           198
+    The antiquity of the world, of death, and of man         200
+    The Darwinian theory                                     201
+    Comparative mythology.--Biblical criticism.--Scientific
+      habits of thought                                      201
+    General incorporation of new ideas into the Church       204
+    Growth of the sacerdotal spirit                          204
+    The two theories of the Reformation                      205
+    Modern Ritualism                                         210
+    Its various elements of attraction                       211
+    Diversity of teaching has not enfeebled the Church       213
+    Its literary activity.--Proofs that the Church is in
+      touch with educated laymen                             214
+    Its political influence--how far this is a test of
+      vitality                                               218
+    Its influence on education                               219
+    Its spiritual influence                                  220
+    How far clergymen who dissent from parts of its
+      theology can remain within it                          221
+    Newman on a Latitudinarian establishment                 223
+    Obligations imposed on the clergy by the fact of
+      Establishment                                          224
+    Attitude of laymen towards the Church                    225
+    Increasing sense of the relativity of belief             226
+    This tendency strengthens with age                       227
+    The conflict between belief and scepticism               229
+    Power of religion to undergo transformation              229
+    Probable influence of the sacerdotal spirit on the
+      Church                                                 231
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE MANAGEMENT OF CHARACTER
+
+A sound judgment of our own characters essential to moral
+  improvement                                                235
+Analogies between character and taste                        236
+The strongest desire generally prevails, but desires may be
+  modified                                                   238
+Passions and habits                                          239
+Exaggerated regard for the future.--A happy childhood        239
+Choice of pleasures.--Athletic games                         240
+The intellectual pleasures                                   242
+Their tendency to enhance other pleasures.--Importance of
+  specialisation                                             243
+And of judicious selection                                   243
+Education may act specially on the desires or on the will    245
+Modern education and tendencies of the former kind           245
+Old Catholic training mainly of the will.--Its effects       247
+Anglo-Saxon types in the seventeenth century                 248
+Capriciousness of willpower--heroism often succumbs to vice  249
+Courage--its varieties and inconsistencies                   250
+The circumstances of life the school of will.--Its place in
+  character                                                  251
+Dangers of an early competence.--Choice of work              252
+Choice of friends.--Effect of early friendship on character  254
+Mastery of will over thoughts.--Its intellectual importance  255
+Its importance in moral culture                              255
+Great difference among men in this respect                   256
+Means of governing thought                                   258
+The dream power--its great place in life                     258
+Especially in the early stages of humanity                   261
+Moral safety valves--danger of inventing unreal crimes       262
+Character of the English gentleman                           266
+Different ways of treating temptation                        266
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MONEY
+
+Henry Taylor on its relation to character                    268
+Difference between real and professed beliefs about money    268
+Its relation to happiness in different grades of life        269
+The cost of pleasures                                        275
+Lives of the millionaires                                    281
+Leaders of Society                                           284
+The great speculator                                         287
+Expenditure in charity.--Rules for regulating it             288
+Advantages and disadvantages of a large very wealthy class
+  in a nation                                                292
+Directions in which philanthropic expenditure may be best
+  turned                                                     296
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+Its importance and the motives that lead to it               300
+The moral and intellectual qualities it specially demands    302
+Duty to the unborn.--Improvident marriages                   305
+The doctrine of heredity and its consequences                306
+Religious celibacy                                           308
+Marriages of dissimilar types often peculiarly happy         309
+Marriages resulting from a common weakness                   310
+Independent spheres in marriage.--Effect on character        311
+The age of marriage                                          312
+Increased independence of women                              314
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SUCCESS
+
+Success depends more on character than on intellect          316
+Especially that accessible to most men and most conducive
+  to happiness                                               317
+Strength of will, tact and judgment.--Not always joined      317
+Their combination a great element of success                 318
+Good nature                                                  319
+Tact: its nature and its importance                          320
+Its intellectual and moral affinities                        323
+Value of good society in cultivating it.--Newman's description
+  of a gentleman                                             324
+Disparities between merit and success                        326
+Success not universally desired                              326
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TIME
+
+Rebellion of human nature against the essential conditions
+  of life                                                    328
+Time 'the stuff of life'                                     330
+Various ways of treating it                                  330
+Increased intensity of life                                  331
+Sleep                                                        332
+Apparent inequalities of time                                335
+The tenure of life not too short                             337
+Old age                                                      341
+The growing love of rest.--How time should be regarded       341
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE END
+
+Death terrible chiefly through its accessories               343
+Pagan and Christian ideas about it                           344
+Premature death                                              349
+How easily the fear of death is overcome                     351
+The true way of regarding it                                 352
+
+
+
+
+THE MAP OF LIFE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+One of the first questions that must naturally occur to every writer who
+deals with the subject of this book is, what influence mere discussion
+and reasoning can have in promoting the happiness of men. The
+circumstances of our lives and the dispositions of our characters mainly
+determine the measure of happiness we enjoy, and mere argument about the
+causes of happiness and unhappiness can do little to affect them. It is
+impossible to read the many books that have been written on these
+subjects without feeling how largely they consist of mere sounding
+generalities which the smallest experience shows to be perfectly
+impotent in the face of some real and acute sorrow, and it is equally
+impossible to obtain any serious knowledge of the world without
+perceiving that a large proportion of the happiest lives and characters
+are to be found where introspection, self-analysis and reasonings about
+the good and evil of life hold the smallest place. Happiness, indeed,
+like health, is one of the things of which men rarely think except when
+it is impaired, and much that has been written on the subject has been
+written under the stress of some great depression. Such writers are
+like the man in Hogarth's picture occupying himself in the debtors'
+prison with plans for the payment of the National Debt. There are
+moments when all of us feel the force of the words of Voltaire:
+'Travaillons sans raisonner, c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie
+supportable.'
+
+That there is much truth in such considerations is incontestable, and it
+is only within a restricted sphere that the province of reasoning
+extends. Man comes into the world with mental and moral characteristics
+which he can only very imperfectly influence, and a large proportion of
+the external circumstances of his life lie wholly or mainly beyond his
+control. At the same time, every one recognises the power of skill,
+industry and perseverance to modify surrounding circumstances; the power
+of temperance and prudence to strengthen a naturally weak constitution,
+prolong life, and diminish the chances of disease; the power of
+education and private study to develop, sharpen and employ to the best
+advantage our intellectual faculties. Every one also recognises how
+large a part of the unhappiness of most men may be directly traced to
+their own voluntary and deliberate acts. The power each man possesses in
+the education and management of his character, and especially in the
+cultivation of the dispositions and tendencies which most largely
+contribute to happiness, is less recognised and is perhaps less
+extensive, but it is not less real.
+
+The eternal question of free will and determinism here naturally meets
+us, but on such a subject it is idle to suppose that a modern writer can
+do more than define the question and state his own side. The
+Determinist says that the real question is not whether a man can do
+what he desires, but whether he can do what he does not desire; whether
+the will can act without a motive; whether that motive can in the last
+analysis be other than the strongest pleasure. The illusion of free
+will, he maintains, is only due to the conflict of our motives. Under
+many forms and disguises pleasure and pain have an absolute empire over
+conduct. The will is nothing more than the last and strongest desire; or
+it is like a piece of iron surrounded by magnets and necessarily drawn
+by the most powerful; or (as has been ingeniously imagined) like a
+weathercock, conscious of its own motion, but not conscious of the winds
+that are moving it. The law of compulsory causation applies to the world
+of mind as truly as to the world of matter. Heredity and Circumstance
+make us what we are. Our actions are the inevitable result of the mental
+and moral constitutions with which we came into the world, operated on
+by external influences.
+
+The supporters of free will, on the other hand, maintain that it is a
+fact of consciousness that there is a clear distinction between the Will
+and the Desires, and that although they are closely connected no sound
+analysis will confuse them. Coleridge ingeniously compared their
+relations to 'the co-instantaneous yet reciprocal action of the air and
+the vital energy of the lungs in breathing.'[1] If the will is
+powerfully acted on by the desires, it has also in its turn a power of
+acting upon them, and it is not a mere slave to pleasure and pain. The
+supporters of this view maintain that it is a fact of the plainest
+consciousness that we can do things which we do not like; that we can
+suspend the force of imperious desires, resist the bias of our nature,
+pursue for the sake of duty the course which gives least pleasure
+without deriving or expecting from it any pleasure, and select at a
+given moment between alternate courses. They maintain that when various
+motives pass before the mind, the mind retains a power of choosing and
+judging, of accepting and rejecting; that it can by force of reason or
+by force of imagination bring one motive into prominence, concentrating
+its attention on it and thus intensifying its power; that it has a
+corresponding power of resisting other motives, driving them into the
+background and thus gradually diminishing their force; that the will
+itself becomes stronger by exercise, as the desires do by indulgence.
+The conflict between the will and the desires, the reality of
+self-restraint and the power of Will to modify character, are among the
+most familiar facts of moral life. In the words of Burke, 'It is the
+prerogative of man to be in a great degree a creature of his own
+making.' There are men whose whole lives are spent in willing one thing
+and desiring the opposite, and all morality depends upon the supposition
+that we have at least some freedom of choice between good and evil. 'I
+ought,' as Kant says, necessarily implies 'I can.' The feeling of moral
+responsibility is an essential part of healthy and developed human
+nature, and it inevitably presupposes free will. The best argument in
+its favour is that it is impossible really to disbelieve it. No human
+being can prevent himself from viewing certain acts with an indignation,
+shame, remorse, resentment, gratitude, enthusiasm, praise or blame,
+which would be perfectly unmeaning and irrational if these acts could
+not have been avoided. We can have no higher evidence on the subject
+than is derived from this fact. It is impossible to explain the mystery
+of free will, but until a man ceases to feel these emotions he has not
+succeeded in disbelieving in it. The feelings of all men and the
+vocabularies of all languages attest the universality of the belief.
+
+Newman, in a well-known passage in his 'Apologia,' describes the immense
+effect which the sentence of Augustine, 'Securus judicat orbis
+terrarum,' had upon his opinions in determining him to embrace the
+Church of Rome. The force of this consideration in relation to the
+subject to which Dr. Newman refers does not appear to have great weight.
+It means only that at a time when the Christian Church included but a
+small fraction of the human race; when all questions of orthodoxy or the
+reverse were practically in the hands of the priesthood; when ignorance,
+credulity and superstition were at their height and the habits of
+independence and impartiality of judgment running very low; and when
+every kind of violent persecution was directed against those who
+dissented from the prevailing dogmas,--certain councils of priests found
+it possible to attain unanimity on such questions as the two natures in
+Christ or the relations of the Persons in the Trinity, and to expel from
+the Church those who differed from their views, and that the once
+formidable sects which held slightly different opinions about these
+inscrutable relations gradually faded away. Such an unanimity on such
+subjects and attained by such methods does not appear to me to carry
+with it any overwhelming force. There are, however, a certain number of
+beliefs that are not susceptible of demonstrative proof, and which must
+always rest essentially on the universal assent of mankind. Such is the
+existence of the external world. Such, in my opinion, is the existence
+of a distinction between right and wrong, different from and higher than
+the distinction between pleasure and pain, and subsisting in all human
+nature in spite of great diversities of opinion about the acts and
+qualities that are comprised in either category; and such also is the
+kindred belief in a self-determining will. If men contend that these
+things are mere illusions and that their faculties are not to be
+trusted, it will no doubt be difficult or impossible to refute them; but
+a scepticism of this kind has no real influence on either conduct or
+feeling.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] _Aids to Reflection_, p. 68.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Men continually forget that Happiness is a condition of Mind and not a
+disposition of circumstances, and one of the most common of errors is
+that of confusing happiness with the means of happiness, sacrificing the
+first for the attainment of the second. It is the error of the miser,
+who begins by seeking money for the enjoyment it procures and ends by
+making the mere acquisition of money his sole object, pursuing it to the
+sacrifice of all rational ends and pleasures. Circumstances and
+Character both contribute to Happiness, but the proportionate attention
+paid to one or other of these great departments not only varies largely
+with different individuals, but also with different nations and in
+different ages. Thus Religion acts mainly in the formation of
+dispositions, and it is especially in this field that its bearing on
+human happiness should be judged. It influences, it is true, vastly and
+variously the external circumstances of life, but its chief power of
+comforting and supporting lies in its direct and immediate action upon
+the human soul. The same thing is true of some systems of philosophy of
+which Stoicism is the most conspicuous. The paradox of the Stoic that
+good and evil are so entirely from within that to a wise man all
+external circumstances are indifferent, represents this view of life in
+its extreme form. Its more moderate form can hardly be better expressed
+than in the saying of Dugald Stewart that 'the great secret of
+happiness is to study to accommodate our own minds to things external
+rather than to accommodate things external to ourselves.'[2] It is
+eminently the characteristic of Eastern nations to place their ideals
+mainly in states of mind or feeling rather than in changes of
+circumstances, and in such nations men are much less desirous than in
+European countries of altering the permanent conditions of their lives.
+
+On the other hand, the tendency of those philosophies which treat
+man--his opinions and his character--essentially as the result of
+circumstances, and which aggrandise the influence of the external world
+upon mankind, is in the opposite direction. All the sensational
+philosophies from Bacon and Locke to our own day tend to concentrate
+attention on the external circumstances and conditions of happiness. And
+the same tendency will be naturally found in the most active, industrial
+and progressive nations; where life is very full and busy; where its
+competitions are most keen; where scientific discoveries are rapidly
+multiplying pleasures or diminishing pains; where town life with its
+constant hurry and change is the most prominent. In such spheres men
+naturally incline to seek happiness from without rather than from
+within, or, in other words, to seek it much less by acting directly on
+the mind and character than through the indirect method of improved
+circumstances.
+
+English character on both sides of the Atlantic is an eminently
+objective one--a character in which thoughts, interests and emotions
+are most habitually thrown on that which is without. Introspection and
+self-analysis are not congenial to it. No one can compare English life
+with life even in the Continental nations which occupy the same rank in
+civilisation without perceiving how much less Englishmen are accustomed
+either to dwell upon their emotions or to give free latitude to their
+expression. Reticence and self-restraint are the lessons most constantly
+inculcated. The whole tone of society favours it. In times of great
+sorrow a degree of shame is attached to demonstrations of grief which in
+other countries would be deemed perfectly natural. The disposition to
+dilate upon and perpetuate an old grief by protracted mournings, by
+carefully observed anniversaries, by long periods of retirement from the
+world, is much less common than on the Continent and it is certainly
+diminishing. The English tendency is to turn away speedily from the
+past, and to seek consolation in new fields of activity. Emotions
+translate themselves speedily into action, and they lose something of
+their intensity by the transformation. Philanthropy is nowhere more
+active and more practical, and religion has in few countries a greater
+hold on the national life, but English Protestantism reflects very
+clearly the national characteristics. It, no doubt, like all religions,
+lays down rules for the government of thought and feeling, but these are
+of a very general character. Preeminently a regulator of conduct, it
+lays comparatively little stress upon the inner life. It discourages, or
+at least neglects that minutely introspective habit of thought which the
+confessional is so much calculated to promote, which appears so
+prominently in the writings of the Catholic Saints, and which finds its
+special representation in the mystics and the religious contemplative
+orders. Improved conduct and improved circumstances are to an English
+mind the chief and almost the only measures of progress.
+
+That this tendency is on the whole a healthy one, I, at least, firmly
+believe, but it brings with it certain manifest limitations and somewhat
+incapacitates men from judging other types of character and happiness.
+The part that circumstances play in the formation of our characters is
+indeed very manifest, and it is a humiliating truth that among these
+circumstances mere bodily conditions which we share with the animals
+hold a foremost place. In the long run and to the great majority of men
+health is probably the most important of all the elements of happiness.
+Acute physical suffering or shattered health will more than
+counterbalance the best gifts of fortune, and the bias of our nature and
+even the processes of our reasoning are largely influenced by physical
+conditions. Hume has spoken of that 'disposition to see the favourable
+rather than the unfavourable side of things which it is more happiness
+to possess than to be heir to an estate of 10,000_l._ a year;' but this
+gift of a happy temperament is very evidently greatly due to bodily
+conditions. On the other hand, it is well known how speedily and how
+powerfully bodily ailments react upon our moral natures. Every one is
+aware of the morbid irritability that is produced by certain maladies of
+the nerves or of the brain; of the deep constitutional depression which
+often follows diseases of the liver, or prolonged sleeplessness and
+other hypochondriacal maladies, and which not only deprives men of most
+of their capacity of enjoyment, but also infallibly gives a colour and a
+bias to their reasonings on life; of the manner in which animal passions
+as well as animal spirits are affected by certain well-known conditions
+of age and health. In spite of the 'coelum non animum mutant' of
+Horace, few men fail to experience how different is the range of spirits
+in the limbo-like atmosphere of a London winter and beneath the glories
+of an Italian sky or in the keen bracing atmosphere of the mountain
+side, and it is equally apparent how differently we judge the world when
+we are jaded by a long spell of excessive work or refreshed after a
+night of tranquil sleep. Poetry and Painting are probably not wrong in
+associating a certain bilious temperament with a predisposition to envy,
+or an anaemic or lymphatic temperament with a saintly life, and there are
+well-attested cases in which an acute illness has fundamentally altered
+characters, sometimes replacing an habitual gloom by buoyancy and
+light.[3] That invaluable gift which enables some men to cast aside
+trouble and turn their thoughts and energies swiftly and decisively into
+new channels can be largely strengthened by the action of the will, but
+according to some physiologists it has a well-ascertained physical
+antecedent in the greater or less contractile power of the blood-vessels
+which feed the brain causing the flow of blood into it to be stronger or
+less rapid. If it be true that 'a healthy mind in a healthy body' is the
+supreme condition of happiness, it is also true that the healthy mind
+depends more closely than we like to own on the healthy body.
+
+These are but a few obvious instances of the manner in which the body
+acts upon happiness. They do not mean that the will is powerless in the
+face of bodily conditions, but that in the management of character it
+has certain very definite predispositions to encounter. In reasonings on
+life, even more than on other things, a good reasoner will consider not
+only the force of the opposing arguments, but also the bias to which his
+own mind is subject. To raise the level of national health is one of the
+surest ways of raising the level of national happiness, and in
+estimating the value of different pleasures many which, considered in
+themselves, might appear to rank low upon the scale, will rank high, if
+in addition to the immediate and transient enjoyment they procure, they
+contribute to form a strong and healthy body. No branch of legislation
+is more really valuable than that which is occupied with the health of
+the people, whether it takes the form of encouraging the means by which
+remedies may be discovered and diffused, or of extirpating by combined
+efforts particular diseases, or of securing that the mass of labour in
+the community should as far as possible be carried on under sound
+sanitary conditions. Fashion also can do much, both for good and ill. It
+exercises over great multitudes an almost absolute empire, regulating
+their dress, their education, their hours, their amusements, their food,
+their scale of expenditure; determining the qualities to which they
+principally aspire, the work in which they may engage, and even the form
+of beauty which they most cultivate. It is happy for a nation when this
+mighty influence is employed in encouraging habits of life which are
+beneficial or at least not gravely prejudicial to health. Nor is any
+form of individual education more really valuable than that which
+teaches the main conditions of a healthy life and forms those habits of
+temperance and self-restraint that are most likely to attain it.
+
+With its great recuperative powers Youth can do with apparent impunity
+many things which in later life bring a speedy Nemesis; but on the other
+hand Youth is pre-eminently the period when habits and tastes are
+formed, and the yoke which is then lightly, willingly, wantonly assumed
+will in after years acquire a crushing weight. Few things are more
+striking than the levity of the motives, the feebleness of the impulses
+under which in youth fatal steps are taken which bring with them a
+weakened life and often an early grave. Smoking in manhood, when
+practised in moderation, is a very innocent and probably beneficent
+practice, but it is well known how deleterious it is to young boys, and
+how many of them have taken to it through no other motive than a desire
+to appear older than they are--that surest of all signs that we are very
+young. How often have the far more pernicious habits of drinking, or
+gambling, or frequenting corrupt society been acquired through a similar
+motive, or through the mere desire to enjoy the charm of a forbidden
+pleasure or to stand well with some dissipated companions! How large a
+proportion of lifelong female debility is due to an early habit of tight
+lacing, springing only from the silliest vanity! How many lives have
+been sacrificed through the careless recklessness which refused to take
+the trouble of changing wet clothes! How many have been shattered and
+shortened by excess in things which in moderation are harmless, useful,
+or praiseworthy,--by the broken blood-vessel, due to excess in some
+healthy athletic exercise or game; by the ruined brain overstrained in
+order to win some paltry prize! It is melancholy to observe how many
+lives have been broken down, ruined or corrupted in attempts to realise
+some supreme and unattainable desire; through the impulse of
+overmastering passion, of powerful and perhaps irresistible temptation.
+It is still sadder to observe how large a proportion of the failures of
+life may be ultimately traced to the most insignificant causes and might
+have been avoided without any serious effort either of intellect or
+will.
+
+The success with which medicine and sanitary science have laboured to
+prolong life, to extirpate or diminish different forms of disease and to
+alleviate their consequences is abundantly proved. In all civilised
+countries the average of life has been raised, and there is good reason
+to believe that not only old age but also active, useful, enjoyable old
+age has become much more frequent. It is true that the gain to human
+happiness is not quite as great as might at first sight be imagined.
+Death is least sad when it comes in infancy or in extreme old age, and
+the increased average of life is largely due to the great diminution in
+infant mortality, which is in truth a very doubtful blessing. If extreme
+old age is a thing to be desired, it is perhaps chiefly because it
+usually implies a constitution which gives many earlier years of robust
+and healthy life. But with all deductions the triumphs of sanitary
+reform as well as of medical science are perhaps the brightest page in
+the history of our century. Some of the measures which have proved most
+useful can only be effected at some sacrifice of individual freedom and
+by widespread coercive sanitary regulations, and are thus more akin to
+despotism than to free government. How different would have been the
+condition of the world, and how far greater would have been the
+popularity of strong monarchy if at the time when such a form of
+government generally prevailed rulers had had the intelligence to put
+before them the improvement of the health and the prolongation of the
+lives of their subjects as the main object of their policy rather than
+military glory or the acquisition of territory or mere ostentatious and
+selfish display!
+
+There is, however, some reason to believe that the diminution of disease
+and the prolongation of average human life are not necessarily or even
+generally accompanied by a corresponding improvement in general health.
+'Acute diseases,' says an excellent judge, 'which are eminently fatal,
+prevail, on the contrary, in a population where the standard of health
+is high.... Thus a high rate of mortality may often be observed in a
+community where the number of persons affected with disease is small,
+and on the other hand general physical depression may concur with the
+prevalence of chronic maladies and yet be unattended with a great
+proportion of deaths.'[4] An anaemic population, free from severe
+illness, but living habitually at a low level of health and with the
+depressed spirits and feeble capacity of enjoyment which such a
+condition produces, is far from an ideal state, and there is much reason
+to fear that this type is an increasing one. Many things in modern life,
+among which ill-judged philanthropy and ill-judged legislation have no
+small part, contribute to produce it, but two causes probably dominate
+over all others. The one is to be found in sanitary science itself,
+which enables great numbers of constitutionally weak children who in
+other days would have died in infancy to grow up and marry and propagate
+a feeble offspring. The other is the steady movement of population from
+the country to the towns, which is one of the most conspicuous features
+of modern civilisation. These two influences inevitably and powerfully
+tend to depress the vitality of a nation, and by doing so to lower the
+level of animal spirits which is one of the most essential elements of
+happiness. Whether our improved standards of living and our much greater
+knowledge of sanitary conditions altogether counteract them is very
+doubtful.
+
+In this as in most questions affecting life there are opposite dangers
+to be avoided, and wisdom lies mainly in a just sense of proportion and
+degree. That sanitary reform, promoted by governments, has on the whole
+been a great blessing seems to me scarcely open to reasonable question,
+but many of the best judges are of opinion that it may easily be pushed
+to dangerous extremes. Few things are more curious than to observe how
+rapidly during the past generation the love of individual liberty has
+declined; how contentedly the English race are submitting great
+departments of their lives to a web of regulations restricting and
+encircling them. Each individual case must be considered on its merits,
+and few persons will now deny that the right of adult men and women to
+regulate the conditions of their own work and to determine the risks
+that they will assume may be wisely infringed in more cases than the
+Manchester School would have admitted. At the same time the marked
+tendency of this generation to extend the stringency and area of
+coercive legislation in the fields of industry and sanitary reform is
+one that should be carefully watched. Its exaggerations may in more ways
+than one greatly injure the very classes it is intended to benefit.
+
+A somewhat corresponding statement may be made about individual sanitary
+education. It is, as I have said, a matter of the most vital importance
+that we should acquire in youth the knowledge and the habits that lead
+to a healthy life. The main articles of the sanitary creed are few and
+simple. Moderation and self-restraint in all things--an abundance of
+exercise, of fresh air, and of cold water--a sufficiency of steady work
+not carried to excess--occasional change of habits and abstinence from a
+few things which are manifestly injurious to health, are the cardinal
+rules to be observed. In the great lottery of life, men who have
+observed them all may be doomed to illness, weak vitality, and early
+death, but they at least add enormously to the chances of a strong and
+full life. The parent will need further knowledge for the care of his
+children, but for self-guidance little more is required, and with early
+habits an observance of the rules of health becomes almost instinctive
+and unconscious. But while no kind of education is more transcendently
+important than this, it is not unfrequently carried to an extreme which
+defeats its own purpose. The habit that so often grows upon men with
+slight chronic maladies, or feeble temperament, or idle lives, of making
+their own health and their own ailments the constant subject of their
+thoughts soon becomes a disease very fatal to happiness and positively
+injurious to health. It is well known how in an epidemic the
+panic-stricken are most liable to the contagion, and the life of the
+habitual valetudinarian tends promptly to depress the nerve energy which
+provides the true stamina of health. In the words of an eminent
+physician, 'It is not by being anxious in an inordinate or unduly fussy
+fashion that men can hope to live long and well. The best way to live
+well is to work well. Good work is the daily test and safeguard of
+personal health.... The practical aim should be to live an orderly and
+natural life. We were not intended to pick our way through the world
+trembling at every step.... It is worse than vain, for it encourages and
+increases the evil it attempts to relieve.... I firmly believe one half
+of the confirmed invalids of the day could be cured of their maladies if
+they were compelled to live busy and active lives and had no time to
+fret over their miseries.... One of the most seductive and mischievous
+of errors in self-management is the practice of giving way to inertia,
+weakness and depression.... Those who desire to live should settle this
+well in their minds, that nerve power is the force of life and that the
+will has a wondrously strong and direct influence over the body through
+the brain and the nervous system.'[5]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] _Active and Moral Powers_, ii. 312.
+
+[3] Much curious information on this subject will be found in Cabanis'
+_Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme_.
+
+[4] Kay's _Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes_, p. 75.
+
+[5] Mortimer Granville's _How to Make the Best of Life_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Before entering into a more particular account of the chief elements of
+a happy life it may be useful to devote a few pages to some general
+considerations on the subject.
+
+
+One of the first and most clearly recognised rules to be observed is
+that happiness is most likely to be attained when it is not the direct
+object of pursuit. In early youth we are accustomed to divide life
+broadly into work and play, regarding the first as duty or necessity and
+the second as pleasure. One of the great differences between childhood
+and manhood is that we come to like our work more than our play. It
+becomes to us, if not the chief pleasure, at least the chief interest of
+our lives, and even when it is not this, an essential condition of our
+happiness. Few lives produce so little happiness as those that are
+aimless and unoccupied. Apart from all considerations of right and
+wrong, one of the first conditions of a happy life is that it should be
+a full and busy one, directed to the attainment of aims outside
+ourselves. Anxiety and Ennui are the Scylla and Charybdis on which the
+bark of human happiness is most commonly wrecked. If a life of luxurious
+idleness and selfish ease in some measure saves men from the first
+danger, it seldom fails to bring with it the second. No change of scene,
+no multiplicity of selfish pleasures will in the long run enable them
+to escape it. As Carlyle says, 'The restless, gnawing ennui which, like
+a dark, dim, ocean flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and Stygian
+deeps, begirdles every human life so guided--is it not the painful cry
+even of that imprisoned heroism?... You ask for happiness. "Oh give me
+happiness," and they hand you ever new varieties of covering for the
+skin, ever new kinds of supply for the digestive apparatus.... Well,
+rejoice in your upholsteries and cookeries if so be they will make you
+"happy." Let the varieties of them be continual and innumerable. In all
+things let perpetual change, if that is a perpetual blessing to you, be
+your portion instead of mine. Incur the prophet's curse and in all
+things in this sublunary world "make yourselves like unto a wheel."
+Mount into your railways; whirl from place to place at the rate of fifty
+or, if you like, of five hundred miles an hour; you cannot escape from
+that inexorable, all-encircling ocean moan of ennui. No; if you could
+mount to the stars and do yacht voyages under the belts of Jupiter or
+stalk deer on the ring of Saturn it would still begirdle you. You cannot
+escape from it; you can but change your place in it without solacement
+except one moment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will continue
+with you till you wisely interpret it and do it or else till the Crack
+of Doom swallow it and you.'[6]
+
+It needs but a few years of life experience to realise the profound
+truth of this passage. An ideal life would be furnished with abundant
+work of a kind that is congenial both to our intellects and our
+characters and that brings with it much interest and little anxiety. Few
+of us can command this. Most men's work is largely determined for them
+by circumstances, though in the guidance of life there are many
+alternatives and much room for skilful pilotage. But the first great
+rule is that we must do something--that life must have a purpose and an
+aim--that work should be not merely occasional and spasmodic, but steady
+and continuous. Pleasure is a jewel which will only retain its lustre
+when it is in a setting of work, and a vacant life is one of the worst
+of pains, though the islands of leisure that stud a crowded,
+well-occupied life may be among the things to which we look back with
+the greatest delight.
+
+Another great truth is conveyed in the saying of Aristotle that a wise
+man will make it his aim rather to avoid suffering than to attain
+pleasure. Men can in reality do very little to mitigate the force of the
+great bereavements and the other graver calamities of life. All our
+systems of philosophy and reasoning are vain when confronted with them.
+Innate temperament which we cannot greatly change determines whether we
+sink crushed beneath the blow or possess the buoyancy that can restore
+health to our natures. The conscious and deliberate pursuit of pleasure
+is attended by many deceptions and illusions, and rarely leads to
+lasting happiness. But we can do very much by prudence, self-restraint
+and intelligent regulation so to manage life as to avoid a large
+proportion of its calamities and at the same time, by preserving the
+affections pure and undimmed, by diversifying interests and forming
+active habits, to combat its tedium and despondency.
+
+Another truth is that both the greatest pleasures and the keenest pains
+of life lie much more in those humbler spheres which are accessible to
+all than on the rare pinnacles to which only the most gifted or the most
+fortunate can attain. It would probably be found upon examination that
+most men who have devoted their lives successfully to great labours and
+ambitions, and who have received the most splendid gifts from Fortune,
+have nevertheless found their chief pleasure in things unconnected with
+their main pursuits and generally within the reach of common men.
+Domestic pleasures, pleasures of scenery, pleasures of reading,
+pleasures of travel or of sport have been the highest enjoyment of men
+of great ambition, intellect, wealth and position. There is a curious
+passage in Lord Althorp's Life in which that most popular and successful
+statesman, towards the close of his long parliamentary life, expressed
+his emphatic conviction that 'the thing that gave him the greatest
+pleasure in the world' was 'to see sporting dogs hunt.'[7] I can myself
+recollect going over a country place with an old member of Parliament
+who had sat in the House of Commons for nearly fifty years of the most
+momentous period of modern English history. If questioned he could tell
+about the stirring scenes of the great Reform Bill of 1832, but it was
+curious to observe how speedily and inevitably he passed from such
+matters to the history of the trees on his estate which he had planted
+and watched at every stage of their growth, and how evidently in the
+retrospect of life it was to these things and not to the incidents of a
+long parliamentary career that his affections naturally turned. I once
+asked an illustrious public man who had served his country with
+brilliant success in many lands, and who was spending the evening of his
+life as an active country gentleman in a place which he dearly loved,
+whether he did not find this sphere too contracted for his happiness.
+'Never for a day,' he answered; 'and in every country where I have been,
+in every post which I have filled, the thought of this place has always
+been at the back of my mind.' A great writer who had devoted almost his
+whole life to one gigantic work, and to his own surprise brought it at
+last to a successful end, sadly observed that amid the congratulations
+that poured in to him from every side he could not help feeling, when he
+analysed his own emotions, how tepid was the satisfaction which such a
+triumph could give him, and what much more vivid gratification he had
+come to take in hearing the approaching steps of some little children
+whom he had taught to love him.
+
+It is one of the paradoxes of human nature that the things that are most
+struggled for and the things that are most envied are not those which
+give either the most intense or the most unmixed joy. Ambition is the
+luxury of the happy. It is sometimes, but more rarely, the consolation
+and distraction of the wretched; but most of those who have trodden its
+paths, if they deal honestly with themselves, will acknowledge that the
+gravest disappointments of public life dwindle into insignificance
+compared with the poignancy of suffering endured at the deathbed of a
+wife or of a child, and that within the small circle of a family life
+they have found more real happiness than the applause of nations could
+ever give.
+
+
+     Look down, look down from your glittering heights,
+       And tell us, ye sons of glory,
+     The joys and the pangs of your eagle flights,
+       The triumph that crowned the story,
+
+     The rapture that thrilled when the goal was won,
+       The goal of a life's desire;
+     And a voice replied from the setting sun,
+       Nay, the dearest and best lies nigher.
+
+     How oft in such hours our fond thoughts stray
+       To the dream of two idle lovers;
+     To the young wife's kiss; to the child at play;
+       Or the grave which the long grass covers!
+
+     And little we'd reck of power or gold,
+       And of all life's vain endeavour,
+     If the heart could glow as it glowed of old,
+        And if youth could abide for ever.
+
+
+Another consideration in the cultivation of happiness is the importance
+of acquiring the habit of realising our blessings while they last. It is
+one of the saddest facts of human nature that we commonly only learn
+their value by their loss. This, as I have already noticed, is very
+evidently the case with health. By the laws of our being we are almost
+unconscious of the action of our bodily organs as long as they are
+working well. It is only when they are deranged, obstructed or impaired
+that our attention becomes concentrated upon them. In consequence of
+this a state of perfect health is rarely fully appreciated until it is
+lost and during a short period after it has been regained. Gray has
+described the new sensation of pleasure which convalescence gives in
+well-known lines:
+
+
+     See the wretch who long has tost
+       On the thorny bed of pain,
+     At length repair his vigour lost
+       And breathe and walk again;
+     The meanest floweret of the vale,
+     The simplest note that swells the gale,
+       The common sun, the air, the skies,
+       To him are opening Paradise.
+
+
+And what is true of health is true of other things. It is only when some
+calamity breaks the calm tenor of our ways and deprives us of some gift
+of fortune we have long enjoyed that we feel how great was the value of
+what we have lost. There are times in the lives of most of us when we
+would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though
+that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.
+Sometimes, indeed, our perception of this contrast brings with it a
+lasting and salutary result. In the medicine of Nature a chronic and
+abiding disquietude or morbidness of temperament is often cured by some
+keen though more transient sorrow which violently changes the current of
+our thoughts and imaginations.
+
+The difference between knowledge and realisation is one of the facts of
+our nature that are most worthy of our attention. Every human mind
+contains great masses of inert, passive, undisputed knowledge which
+exercise no real influence on thought or character till something occurs
+which touches our imagination and quickens this knowledge into
+activity. Very few things contribute so much to the happiness of life as
+a constant realisation of the blessings we enjoy. The difference between
+a naturally contented and a naturally discontented nature is one of the
+marked differences of innate temperament, but we can do much to
+cultivate that habit of dwelling on the benefits of our lot which
+converts acquiescence into a more positive enjoyment. Religion in this
+field does much, for it inculcates thanksgiving as well as prayer,
+gratitude for the present and the past as well as hope for the future.
+Among secular influences, contrast and comparison have the greatest
+value. Some minds are always looking on the fortunes that are above them
+and comparing their own penury with the opulence of others. A wise
+nature will take an opposite course and will cultivate the habit of
+looking rather at the round of the ladder of fortune which is below our
+own and realising the countless points in which our lot is better than
+that of others. As Dr. Johnson says, 'Few are placed in a situation so
+gloomy and distressful as not to see every day beings yet more forlorn
+and miserable from whom they may learn to rejoice in their own lot.'
+
+The consolation men derive amid their misfortunes from reflecting upon
+the still greater misfortunes of others and thus lightening their own by
+contrast is a topic which must be delicately used, but when so used it
+is not wrong and it often proves very efficacious. Perhaps the pleasure
+La Rochefoucauld pretends that men take in the misfortunes of their best
+friends, if it is a real thing, is partly due to this consideration, as
+the feeling of pity which is inspired by some sudden death or great
+trouble falling on others is certainly not wholly unconnected with the
+realisation that such calamities might fall upon ourselves. It is worthy
+of notice, however, that while all moralists recognise content as one of
+the chief ingredients of happiness, some of the strongest influences of
+modern industrial civilisation are antagonistic to it. The whole theory
+of progress as taught by Political Economy rests upon the importance of
+creating wants and desires as a stimulus to exertion. There are
+countries, especially in southern climates, where the wants of men are
+very few, and where, as long as those wants are satisfied, men will live
+a careless and contented life, enjoying the present, thinking very
+little of the future. Whether the sum of enjoyment in such a population
+is really less than in our more advanced civilisation is at least open
+to question. It is a remark of Schopenhauer that the Idyll, which is the
+only form of poetry specially devoted to the description of human
+felicity, always paints life in its simplest and least elaborated form,
+and he sees in this an illustration of his doctrine that the greatest
+happiness will be found in the simplest and even most uniform life
+provided it escapes the evil of ennui. The political economist, however,
+will pronounce the condition of such a people as I have described a
+deplorable one, and in order to raise them his first task will be to
+infuse into them some discontent with their lot, to persuade them to
+multiply their wants and to aspire to a higher standard of comfort, to a
+fuller and a larger existence. A discontent with existing circumstances
+is the chief source of a desire to improve them, and this desire is the
+mainspring of progress. In this theory of life, happiness is sought,
+not in content, but in improved circumstances, in the development of new
+capacities of enjoyment, in the pleasure which active existence
+naturally gives. To maintain in their due proportion in our nature the
+spirit of content and the desire to improve, to combine a realised
+appreciation of the blessings we enjoy with a healthy and well-regulated
+ambition, is no easy thing, but it is the problem which all who aspire
+to a perfect life should set before themselves. _In medio tutissimus
+ibis_ is eminently true of the cultivation of character, and some of its
+best elements become pernicious in their extremes. Thus prudent
+forethought, which is one of the first conditions of a successful life,
+may easily degenerate into that most miserable state of mind in which
+men are perpetually anticipating and dwelling upon the uncertain dangers
+and evils of an uncertain future. How much indeed of the happiness and
+misery of men may be included under those two words, realisation and
+anticipation!
+
+There is no such thing as a Eudaemometer measuring with accuracy the
+degrees of happiness realised by men in different ages, under different
+circumstances, and with different characters. Perhaps if such a thing
+existed it might tend to discourage us by showing that diversities and
+improvements of circumstances affect real happiness in a smaller degree
+than we are accustomed to imagine. Our nature accommodates itself
+speedily to improved circumstances, and they cease to give positive
+pleasure while their loss is acutely painful. Advanced civilisation
+brings with it countless and inestimable benefits, but it also brings
+with it many forms of suffering from which a ruder existence is exempt.
+There is some reason to believe that it is usually accompanied with a
+lower range of animal spirits, and it is certainly accompanied with an
+increased sensitiveness to pain. Some philosophers have contended that
+this is the best of all possible worlds. It is difficult to believe so,
+as the whole object of human effort is to make it a better one. But the
+success of that effort is more apparent in the many terrible forms of
+human suffering which it has abolished or diminished than in the higher
+level of positive happiness that has been attained.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] _Latter-day Pamphlets:_ 'Jesuitism.'
+
+[7] Le Marchant's _Life of Althorp_, p. 143.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Though the close relationship that subsists between morals and happiness
+is universally acknowledged, I do not belong to the school which
+believes that pleasure and pain, either actual or anticipated, are the
+only motives by which the human will can be governed; that virtue
+resolves itself ultimately into well-considered interest and finds its
+ultimate reason in the happiness of those who practise it; that 'all our
+virtues,' as La Rochefoucauld has said, 'end in self-love as the rivers
+in the sea.' Such a proverb as 'Honesty is the best policy' represents
+no doubt a great truth, though it has been well said that no man is
+really honest who is only honest through this motive, and though it is
+very evident that it is by no means an universal truth but depends
+largely upon changing and precarious conditions of laws, police, public
+opinion, and individual circumstances. But in the higher realms of
+morals the coincidence of happiness and virtue is far more doubtful. It
+is certainly not true that the highest nature is necessarily or even
+naturally the happiest. Paganism has produced no more perfect type than
+the profoundly pathetic figure of Marcus Aurelius, while Christianity
+finds its ideal in one who was known as the 'Man of Sorrows.' The
+conscience of Mankind has ever recognised self-sacrifice as the supreme
+element of virtue, and self-sacrifice is never real when it is only the
+exchange of a less happiness for a greater one. No moral chemistry can
+transmute the worship of Sorrow, which Goethe described as the essence
+of Christianity, into the worship of happiness, and probably with most
+men health and temperament play a far larger part in the real happiness
+of their lives than any of the higher virtues. The satisfaction of
+accomplished duty which some moralists place among the chief pleasures
+of life is a real thing in so far as it saves men from internal
+reproaches, but it is probable that it is among the worst men that pangs
+of conscience are least dreaded, and it is certainly not among the best
+men that they are least felt. Conscience, indeed, when it is very
+sensitive and very lofty, is far more an element of suffering than the
+reverse. It aims at an ideal higher than we can attain. It takes the
+lowest view of our own achievements. It suffers keenly from the many
+shortcomings of which it is acutely sensible. Far from indulging in the
+pleasurable retrospect of a well-spent life, it urges men to constant,
+painful, and often unsuccessful effort. A nature that is strung to the
+saintly or the heroic level will find itself placed in a jarring world,
+will provoke much friction and opposition, and will be pained by many
+things in which a lower nature would placidly acquiesce. The highest
+form of intellectual virtue is that love of truth for its own sake which
+breaks up prejudices, tempers enthusiasm by the full admission of
+opposing arguments and qualifying circumstances, and places in the
+sphere of possibility or probability many things which we would gladly
+accept as certainties. Candour and impartiality are in a large degree
+virtues of temperament; but no one who has any real knowledge of human
+nature can doubt how much more pleasurable it is to most men to live
+under the empire of invincible prejudice, deliberately shutting out
+every consideration that could shake or qualify cherished beliefs.
+'God,' says Emerson, 'offers to every mind its choice between truth and
+repose. Take which you please. You can never have both.' One of the
+strongest arguments of natural religion rests upon the fact that virtue
+so often fails to bring its reward; upon the belief that is so deeply
+implanted in human nature that this is essentially unjust and must in
+some future state be remedied.
+
+For such reasons as these I believe it to be impossible to identify
+virtue with happiness, and the views of the opposite school seem to me
+chiefly to rest upon an unnatural and deceptive use of words. Even when
+the connection between virtue and pleasure is most close, it is true, as
+the old Stoics said, that though virtue gives pleasure, this is not the
+reason why a good man will practise it; that pleasure is the companion
+and not the guide of his life; that he does not love virtue because it
+gives pleasure, but it gives pleasure because he loves it.[8] A true
+account of human nature will recognise that it has the power of aiming
+at something which is different from happiness and something which may
+be intelligibly described as higher, and that on the predominance of
+this loftier aim the nobility of life essentially depends. It is not
+even true that the end of man should be to find peace at the last. It
+should be to do his duty and tell the truth.
+
+But while this great truth of the existence of a higher aim than
+happiness should be always maintained, the relations between morals and
+happiness are close and intimate and well worthy of investigation. As
+far as the lower or more commonplace virtues are concerned there can be
+no mistake. It is very evident that a healthy, long and prosperous life
+is more likely to be attained by industry, moderation and purity than by
+the opposite courses. It is very evident that drunkenness and sensuality
+ruin health and shorten life; that idleness, gambling and disorderly
+habits ruin prosperity; that ill-temper, selfishness and envy kill
+friendship and provoke animosities and dislike; that in every
+well-regulated society there is at least a general coincidence between
+the path of duty and the path of prosperity; dishonesty, violence and
+disregard for the rights of others naturally and usually bringing their
+punishment either from law or from public opinion or from both. Bishop
+Butler has argued that the general tendency of virtue to lead to
+happiness and the general tendency of vice to lead to unhappiness prove
+that even in its present state there is a moral government of the world,
+and whatever controversy may be raised about the inference there can at
+least be no doubt about the substantial truth of the facts. Happiness,
+as I have already said, is best attained when it is not the direct or at
+least the main object that is aimed at. A wasted and inactive life not
+only palls in itself but deprives men of the very real and definite
+pleasure that naturally arises from the healthful activity of all our
+powers, while a life of egotism excludes the pleasures of sympathy which
+play so large a part in human happiness. One of the lessons which
+experience most clearly teaches is that work, duty and the discipline of
+character are essential elements of lasting happiness. The pleasures of
+vice are often real, but they are commonly transient and they leave
+legacies of suffering, weakness, or care behind them. The nobler
+pleasures for the most part grow and strengthen with advancing years.
+The passions of youth, when duly regulated, gradually transform
+themselves into habits, interests and steady affections, and it is in
+the long forecasts of life that the superiority of virtue as an element
+of happiness becomes most apparent.
+
+It has been truly said that such words as 'pastime' and 'diversion'
+applied to our pleasures are among the most melancholy in the language,
+for they are the confession of human nature that it cannot find
+happiness in itself, but must seek for something that will fill up time,
+will cover the void which it feels, and divert men's thoughts from the
+conditions and prospects of their own lives. How much of the pleasure of
+Society, and indeed of all amusements, depends on their power of making
+us forget ourselves! The substratum of life is sad, and few men who
+reflect on the dangers and uncertainties that surround it can find it
+even tolerable without much extraneous aid. The first and most vital of
+these aids is to be found in the creation of strong interests. It is one
+of the laws of our being that by seeking interests rather than by
+seeking pleasures we can best encounter the gloom of life. But those
+only have the highest efficiency which are of an unselfish nature. By
+throwing their whole nature into the interests of others men most
+effectually escape the melancholy of introspection; the horizon of life
+is enlarged; the development of the moral and sympathetic feelings
+chases egotistic cares, and by the same paradox that we have seen in
+other parts of human nature men best attain their own happiness by
+absorbing themselves in the pursuit of the happiness of others.
+
+The aims and perspective of a well-regulated life have never, I think,
+been better described than in one of the letters of Burke to the Duke of
+Richmond. 'It is wise indeed, considering the many positive vexations
+and the innumerable bitter disappointments of pleasure in the world, to
+have as many resources of satisfaction as possible within one's power.
+Whenever we concentre the mind on one sole object, that object and life
+itself must go together. But though it is right to have reserves of
+employment, still some one object must be kept principal; greatly and
+eminently so; and the other masses and figures must preserve their due
+subordination, to make out the grand composition of an important
+life.'[9] It is equally true that among these objects the disinterested
+and the unselfish should hold a predominant place. With some this side
+of their activity is restricted to the narrow circle of home or to the
+isolated duties and charities of their own neighbourhood. With others it
+takes the form of large public interests, of a keen participation in
+social, philanthropic, political or religious enterprises. Character
+plays a larger part than intellect in the happiness of life, and the
+cultivation of the unselfish part of our nature is not only one of the
+first lessons of morals but also of wisdom.
+
+Like most other things its difficulties lie at the beginning, and it is
+by steady practice that it passes into a second and instinctive nature.
+The power of man to change organically his character is a very limited
+one, but on the whole the improvement of character is probably more
+within his reach than intellectual development. Time and Opportunity are
+wanting to most men for any considerable intellectual study, and even
+were it otherwise every man will find large tracts of knowledge and
+thought wholly external to his tastes, aptitudes and comprehension. But
+every one can in some measure learn the lesson of self-sacrifice,
+practise what is right, correct or at least mitigate his dominant
+faults. What fine examples of self-sacrifice, quiet courage, resignation
+in misfortune, patient performance of painful duty, magnanimity and
+forgiveness under injury may be often found among those who are
+intellectually the most commonplace!
+
+The insidious growth of selfishness is a disease against which men
+should be most on their guard; but it is a grave though a common error
+to suppose that the unselfish instincts may be gratified without
+restraint. There is here, however, one important distinction to be
+noted. The many and great evils that have sprung from lavish and
+ill-considered charities do not always or perhaps generally spring from
+any excess or extravagance of the charitable feeling. They are much more
+commonly due to its defect. The rich man who never cares to inquire into
+the details of the cases that are brought before him or to give any
+serious thought to the ulterior consequences of his acts, but who is
+ready to give money at any solicitation and who considers that by so
+doing he has discharged his duty, is far more likely to do harm in this
+way than the man who devotes himself to patient, plodding, house to
+house work among the poor. The many men and the probably still larger
+number of women who give up great portions of their lives to such work
+soon learn to trace with considerable accuracy the consequences of their
+charities and to discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy. That
+such persons often become exclusive and one-sided, and acquire a kind of
+professional bent which induces them to subordinate all national
+considerations to their own subject and lose sight of the true
+proportion of things, is undoubtedly true, but it will probably not be
+found with the best workers that such a life tends to unduly intensify
+emotion. As Bishop Butler has said with profound truth, active habits
+are strengthened and passive impressions weakened by repetition, and a
+life spent in active charitable work is quite compatible with much
+sobriety and even coldness of judgment in estimating each case as it
+arises. It is not the surgeon who is continually employed in operations
+for the cure of his patients who is most moved at the sight of
+suffering.
+
+This is, I believe, on the whole true, but it is also true that there
+are grave diseases which attach themselves peculiarly to the unselfish
+side of our nature, and they are peculiarly dangerous because men,
+feeling that the unselfish is the virtuous and nobler side of their
+being, are apt to suffer these tendencies to operate without supervision
+or control. Yet it is hardly possible to exaggerate the calamities that
+have sprung from misjudged unselfish actions. The whole history of
+religious persecution abundantly illustrates it, for there can be
+little question that a large proportion of the persecutors were
+sincerely seeking what they believed to be the highest good of mankind.
+And if this dark page of human history is now almost closed, there are
+still many other ways in which a similar evil is displayed. Crotchets,
+sentimentalities and fanaticisms cluster especially around the unselfish
+side of our nature, and they work evil in many curious and subtle ways.
+Few things have done more harm in the world than disproportioned
+compassion. It is a law of our being that we are only deeply moved by
+sufferings we distinctly realise, and the degrees in which different
+kinds of suffering appeal to the imagination bear no proportion to their
+real magnitude. The most benevolent man will read of an earthquake in
+Japan or a plague in South America with a callousness he would never
+display towards some untimely death or some painful accident in his
+immediate neighbourhood, and in general the suffering of a prominent and
+isolated individual strikes us much more forcibly than that of an
+undistinguished multitude. Few deaths are so prominent, and therefore
+few produce such widespread compassion, as those of conspicuous
+criminals. It is no exaggeration to say that the death of an
+'interesting' murderer will often arouse much stronger feelings than
+were ever excited by the death of his victim; or by the deaths of brave
+soldiers who perished by disease or by the sword in some obscure
+expedition in a remote country. This mode of judgment acts promptly upon
+conduct. The humanitarian spirit which mitigates the penal code and
+makes the reclamation of the criminal a main object is a perfectly
+right thing as long as it does not so far diminish the deterrent power
+of punishment as to increase crime, and as long as it does not place the
+criminal in a better position of comfort than the blameless poor, but
+when these conditions are not fulfilled it is much more an evil than a
+good. The remote, indirect and unrealised consequences of our acts are
+often far more important than those which are manifest and direct, and
+it continually happens that in extirpating some concentrated and
+obtrusive evil, men increase or engender a diffused malady which
+operates over a far wider area. How few, for example, who share the
+prevailing tendency to deal with every evil that appears in Society by
+coercive legislation adequately realise the danger of weakening the
+robust, self-reliant, resourceful habits on which the happiness of
+Society so largely depends, and at the same time, by multiplying the
+functions and therefore increasing the expenses of government, throwing
+new and crushing burdens on struggling industry! How often have
+philanthropists, through a genuine interest for some suffering class or
+people, advocated measures which by kindling, prolonging, or enlarging a
+great war would infallibly create calamities far greater than those
+which they would redress! How often might great outbursts of savage
+crime or grave and lasting disorders in the State, or international
+conflicts that have cost thousands of lives, have been averted by a
+prompt and unflinching severity from which an ill-judged humanity
+recoiled! If in the February of 1848 Louis Philippe had permitted
+Marshal Bugeaud to fire on the Revolutionary mob at a time when there
+was no real and widespread desire for revolution in France, how many
+bloody pages of French and European history might have been spared!
+
+Measures guaranteeing men, and still more women, from excessive labour,
+and surrounding them with costly sanitary precautions, may easily, if
+they are injudiciously framed, so handicap a sex or a people in the
+competition of industry as to drive them out of great fields of
+industry, restrict their means of livelihood, lower their standard of
+wages and comfort, and thus seriously diminish the happiness of their
+lives. Injudicious suppressions of amusements that are not wholly good,
+but which afford keen enjoyment to great masses, seldom fail to give an
+impulse to other pleasures more secret and probably more vicious.
+Injudicious charities, or an extravagant and too indulgent poor law
+administration, inevitably discourage industry and thrift, and usually
+increase the poverty they were intended to cure. The parent who shrinks
+from inflicting any suffering on his child, or withholding from him any
+pleasure that he desires, is not laying the foundation of a happy life,
+and the benevolence which counteracts or obscures the law of nature that
+extravagance, improvidence and vice lead naturally to ruin, is no real
+kindness either to the upright man who has resisted temptation or to the
+weak man whose virtue is trembling doubtfully in the balance. Nor is it
+in the long run for the benefit of the world that superior ability or
+superior energy or industry should be handicapped in the race of life,
+forbidden to encounter exceptional risks for the sake of exceptional
+rewards, reduced by regulations to measures of work and gain intended
+for the benefit of inferior characters or powers.
+
+The fatal vice of ill-considered benevolence is that it looks only to
+proximate and immediate results without considering either alternatives
+or distant and indirect consequences. A large and highly respectable
+form of benevolence is that connected with the animal world, and in
+England it is carried in some respects to a point which is unknown on
+the Continent. But what a strange form of compassion is that which long
+made it impossible to establish a Pasteur Institute in England, obliging
+patients threatened with one of the most horrible diseases that can
+afflict mankind to go--as they are always ready to do--to Paris, in
+order to undergo a treatment which what is called the humane sentiment
+of Englishmen forbid them to receive at home! What a strange form of
+benevolence is that which in a country where field sports are the
+habitual amusement of the higher ranks of Society denounces as criminal
+even the most carefully limited and supervised experiments on living
+animals, and would thus close the best hope of finding remedies for some
+of the worst forms of human suffering, the one sure method of testing
+supposed remedies which may be fatal or which may be of incalculable
+benefit to mankind! Foreign critics, indeed, often go much further and
+believe that in other forms connected with this subject public opinion
+in England is strangely capricious and inconsistent. They compare with
+astonishment the sentences that are sometimes passed for the
+ill-treatment of a woman and for the ill-treatment of a cat; they ask
+whether the real sufferings caused by many things that are in England
+punished by law or reprobated by opinion are greater than those caused
+by sports which are constantly practised without reproach; and they are
+apt to find much that is exaggerated or even fantastic in the great
+popularity and elaboration of some animal charities.[10] At the same
+time in our own country the more recognised field sports greatly trouble
+many benevolent natures. I will here only say that while the positive
+benefits they produce are great and manifest, those who condemn them
+constantly forget what would be the fate of the animals that are
+slaughtered if such sports did not exist, and how little the balance of
+suffering is increased or altered by the destruction of beings which
+themselves live by destroying. As a poet says--
+
+
+     The fish exult whene'er the seagull dies,
+     The salmon's death preserves a thousand flies.
+
+
+On most of these questions the effect on human character is a more
+important consideration than the effect on animal happiness. The best
+thing that legislation can do for wild animals is to extend as far as
+possible to harmless classes a close time, securing them immunity while
+they are producing and supporting their young. This is the truest
+kindness, and on quite other grounds it is peculiarly needed, as the
+improvement of firearms and the increase of population have completely
+altered, as far as man is concerned, the old balance between production
+and destruction, and threaten, if unchecked, to lead to an almost
+complete extirpation of great classes of the animal world. It is
+melancholy to observe how often sensitive women who object to field
+sports and who denounce all experiments on living animals will be found
+supporting with perfect callousness fashions that are leading to the
+wholesale destruction of some of the most beautiful species of birds,
+and are in some cases dependent upon acts of very aggravated cruelty.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Seneca, _De Vita Beata_.
+
+[9] Burke's _Correspondence_, i. 376, 377.
+
+[10] As I am writing these pages I find the following paragraph in a
+newspaper which may illustrate my meaning:--'DOGS' NURSING. A case was
+heard at the Brompton County Court on Friday in which some suggestive
+evidence was given of the medical treatment of dogs. The proprietor of a
+dogs' infirmary at Tattersall's Corner sued Mr. Harding Cox for the
+board and lodging of seven dogs, and the _regime_ was explained. They
+are fed on essence of meat, washed down with port wine, and have as a
+digestive eggs beaten up in milk and arrowroot. Medicated baths and
+tonics are also supplied, and occasionally the animals are treated to a
+day in the country. This course of hygiene necessitated an expenditure
+of ten shillings a week. The defendant pleaded that the charges were
+excessive, but the judge awarded the plaintiff L25. How many hospital
+patients receive such treatment?'--_Daily Express_, February 16, 1897.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The illustrations given in the last chapter will be sufficient to show
+the danger of permitting the unselfish side of human nature to run wild
+without serious control by the reason and by the will. To see things in
+their true proportion, to escape the magnifying influence of a morbid
+imagination, should be one of the chief aims of life, and in no fields
+is it more needed than in those we have been reviewing. At the same time
+every age has its own ideal moral type towards which the strongest and
+best influences of the time converge. The history of morals is
+essentially a history of the changes that take place not so much in our
+conception of what is right and wrong as in the proportionate place and
+prominence we assign to different virtues and vices. There are large
+groups of moral qualities which in some ages of the world's history have
+been regarded as of supreme importance, while in other ages they are
+thrown into the background, and there are corresponding groups of vices
+which are treated in some periods as very serious and in others as very
+trivial. The heroic type of Paganism and the saintly type of
+Christianity in its purest form, consist largely of the same elements,
+but the proportions in which they are mixed are altogether different.
+There are ages when the military and civic virtues--the qualities that
+make good soldiers and patriotic citizens--dominate over all others. The
+self-sacrifice of the best men flows habitually in these channels. In
+such an age integrity in business relations and the domestic virtues
+which maintain the purity of the family may be highly valued, but they
+are chiefly valued because they are essential to the well-being of the
+State. The soldier who has attained to the highest degree the best
+qualities of his profession, the patriot who sacrifices to the services
+of the State his comforts, his ambitions and his life, is the supreme
+model, and the estimation in which he is held is but little lowered even
+though he may have been guilty, like Cato, of atrocious cruelty to his
+slaves, or, like some of the heroes of ancient times, of scandalous
+forms of private profligacy.
+
+There are other ages in which military life is looked upon by moralists
+with disfavour, and in which patriotism ranks very low in the scale of
+virtues, while charity, gentleness, self-abnegation, devotional habits,
+and purity in thought, word and act are pre-eminently inculcated. The
+intellectual virtues, again, which deal with truth and falsehood, form a
+distinct group. The habit of mind which makes men love truth for its own
+sake as the supreme ideal, and which turns aside from all falsehood,
+exaggeration, party or sectarian misrepresentation and invention, is in
+no age a common one, but there are some ages in which it is recognised
+and inculcated as virtue, while there are others in which it is no
+exaggeration to say that the whole tendency of religious teaching has
+been to discourage it. During many centuries the ascetic and purely
+ecclesiastical standard of virtue completely dominated. The domestic
+virtues, though clearly recognised, held altogether a subordinate place
+to what were deemed the higher virtues of the ascetic celibate.
+Charity, though nobly cultivated and practised, was regarded mainly
+through a dogmatic medium and practised less for the benefit of the
+recipient than for the spiritual welfare of the donor.
+
+In the eyes of multitudes the highest conception of a saintly life
+consisted largely if not mainly in complete detachment from secular
+interests and affections. No type was more admired, and no type was ever
+more completely severed from all active duties and all human relations
+than that of the saint of the desert or of the monk of one of the
+contemplative orders. To die to the world; to become indifferent to its
+aims, interests and pleasures; to measure all things by a standard
+wholly different from human happiness, to live habitually for another
+life was the constant teaching of the saints. In the stress laid on the
+cultivation of the spiritual life the whole sphere of active duties sank
+into a lower plane; and the eye of the mind was turned upwards and
+inwards and but little on the world around. 'Happy,' said one saint, 'is
+the mind which sees but two objects, God and self, one of which
+conceptions fills it with a sovereign delight and the other abases it to
+the extremest dejection.'[11] 'As much love as we give to creatures,'
+said another saint, 'just so much we steal from the Creator.'[12] 'Two
+things only do I ask,' said a third,[13] 'to suffer and to die.'
+'Forsake all,' said Thomas a Kempis, 'and thou shalt find all. Leave
+desire and thou shalt find rest.' 'Unless a man be disengaged from the
+affection of all creatures he cannot with freedom of mind attend unto
+Divine things.'
+
+The gradual, silent and half-unconscious modification in the type of
+Morals which took place after the Reformation was certainly not the
+least important of its results. If it may be traced in some degree to
+the distinctive theology of the Protestant Churches, it was perhaps
+still more due to the abolition of clerical celibacy which placed the
+religious teachers in the centre of domestic life and in close contact
+with a large circle of social duties. There is even now a distinct
+difference between the morals of a sincerely Catholic and a sincerely
+Protestant country, and this difference is not so much, as
+controversialists would tell us, in the greater and the less as in the
+moral type, or, in other words, in the different degrees of importance
+attached to different virtues and vices. Probably nowhere in the world
+can more beautiful and more reverent types be found than in some of the
+Catholic countries of Europe which are but little touched by the
+intellectual movements of the age, but no good observer can fail to
+notice how much larger is the place given to duties which rest wholly on
+theological considerations, and how largely even the natural duties are
+based on such considerations and governed, limited, and sometimes even
+superseded by them. The ecclesiastics who at the Council of Constance
+induced Sigismund to violate the safe-conduct he had given, and, in
+spite of his solemn promise, to condemn Huss to a death of fire,[14] and
+the ecclesiastics who at the Diet of Worms vainly tried to induce
+Charles V. to act with a similar perfidy towards Luther, represent a
+conception of morals which is abundantly prevalent in our day. It is no
+exaggeration to say that in Catholic countries the obligation of
+truthfulness in cases in which it conflicts with the interests of the
+Church rests wholly on the basis of honour, and not at all on the basis
+of religion. In the estimates of Catholic rulers no impartial observer
+can fail to notice how their attitude towards the interest of the Church
+dominates over all considerations of public and private morals.
+
+In past ages this was much more the case. The Church filled in the minds
+of men a place at least equal to that of the State in the Roman
+Republic. Men who had made great sacrifices for it and rendered great
+services to it were deemed, beyond all others, the good men, and in
+those men things which we should regard as grossly criminal appeared
+mere venial frailties. Let any one who doubts this study the lives of
+the early Catholic saints, and the still more instructive pages in which
+Gregory of Tours and other ecclesiastical annalists have described the
+characters and acts of the more prominent figures in the secular history
+of their times, and he will soon feel that he has passed into a moral
+atmosphere and is dealing with moral measurements and perspectives
+wholly unlike those of our own day.[15]
+
+In highly civilised ages the same spirit may be clearly traced. Bossuet
+was certainly no hypocrite or sycophant, but a man of austere virtue and
+undoubted courage. He did not hesitate to rebuke the gross profligacy
+of the life of Louis XIV., and although neither he nor any of the other
+Catholic divines of his age seriously protested against the wars of pure
+egotism and ostentation which made that sovereign the scourge of Europe
+and brought down upon his people calamities immeasurably greater than
+the faults of his private life--although, indeed, he has spoken of those
+wars in language of rapturous and unqualified eulogy[16]--he had at
+least the grace to devote a chapter of his 'Politique tiree de
+l'Ecriture Sainte' to the theme that 'God does not love war.' But in the
+eyes of Bossuet the dominant fact in the life of Louis XIV. was the
+Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the savage persecution of the
+Huguenots, and this was sufficient to place him among the best of
+sovereigns.[17]
+
+To those who will candidly consider the subject there is nothing in this
+which need excite surprise. The doctrine that the Catholic Church is the
+inspired guide, representing the voice of the Divinity on earth and
+deciding with absolute authority all questions of right and wrong, very
+naturally led to the conviction that nothing which was conducive to its
+interests could be really criminal, and in all departments of morals it
+regulated the degrees of praise and blame. The doctrine which is still
+so widely professed but now so faintly realised, that the first
+essential to salvation is orthodox belief, placed conduct on a lower
+plane of importance than dogma, while the conviction that it is in the
+power of man to obtain absolute certainty in religious belief, that
+erroneous belief is in the eyes of the Almighty a crime bringing with it
+eternal damnation, and that the teacher of heresy is the greatest enemy
+of mankind, at once justified in the eyes of the believer acts which now
+seem the gravest moral aberrations. Many baser motives and elements no
+doubt mingled with the long and hideous history of the religious
+persecutions of Christendom, but in the eyes of countless conscientious
+men this teaching seemed amply sufficient to justify them and to stifle
+all feeling of compassion for the victims. Much the same considerations
+explain the absolute indifference with which so many good men witnessed
+those witch persecutions which consigned thousands of old, feeble and
+innocent women to torture and to death.
+
+Other illustrations of a less tragical kind might be given. Thus in
+cases of child-birth the physician is sometimes placed in the
+alternative of sacrificing the life of the mother or of the unborn
+child. In such cases a Protestant or freethinking physician would not
+hesitate to save the adult life as by far the most valuable. The
+Catholic doctrine is that under such circumstances the first duty of the
+physician is to save the life of the unbaptized child.[18] Large numbers
+of commercial transactions which are now universally acknowledged to be
+perfectly innocent and useful would during a long period have been
+prohibited on account of the Catholic doctrine of usury which condemned
+as sinful even the most moderate interest on money if it was exacted as
+the price of the loan.[19]
+
+Every religious and indeed every philosophical system that has played a
+great part in the history of the world has a tendency either to form or
+to assimilate with a particular moral type, and in the eyes of a large
+and growing number it is upon the excellency of this type, and upon its
+success in producing it, that its superiority mainly depends. The
+superstructure or scaffolding of belief around which it is formed
+appears to them of comparatively little moment, and it is not uncommon
+to find men ardently devoted to a particular type long after they have
+discarded the tenets with which it was once connected. Carlyle, for
+example, sometimes spoke of himself as a Calvinist, and used language
+both in public and private as if there was no important difference
+between himself and the most orthodox Puritans, yet it is very evident
+that he disbelieved nearly all the articles of their creed. What he
+meant was that Calvinism had produced in all countries in which it
+really dominated a definite type of character and conception of morals
+which was in his eyes the noblest that had yet appeared in the world.
+
+'_Above all things_, my brethren, swear not.' If, as is generally
+assumed, this refers to the custom of using profane oaths in common
+conversation, how remote from modern ideas is the place assigned to
+this vice, which perhaps affects human happiness as little as any other
+that can be mentioned, in the scale of criminality, and how curiously
+characteristic is the fact that the vice to which this supremacy of
+enormity is attributed continued to be prevalent during the ages when
+theological influences were most powerful, and has in all good society
+faded away in simple obedience to a turn of fashion which proscribes it
+as ungentlemanly! For a long period Acts condemning it were read at
+stated periods in the churches,[20] and one of these described it as
+likely, by provoking God's wrath, to 'increase the many calamities these
+nations now labour under.' How curiously characteristic is the
+restriction in common usage of the term 'immoral' to a single vice, so
+that a man who is untruthful, selfish, cruel, or intemperate might still
+be said to have led 'a moral life' because he was blameless in the
+relations of the sexes! In the estimates of the character of public men
+the same disproportionate judgment may be constantly found in the
+comparative stress placed upon private faults and the most gigantic
+public crimes. Errors of judgment are not errors of morals, but any
+public man who, through selfish, ambitious, or party motives, plunges or
+helps to plunge his country into an unrighteous or unnecessary war,
+subordinates public interest to his personal ambition, employs himself
+in stimulating class, national, or provincial hatreds, lowers the moral
+standard of public life, or supports a legislation which he knows to
+tend to or facilitate dishonesty, is committing a crime before which, if
+it be measured by its consequences, the gravest acts of mere private
+immorality dwindle into insignificance. Yet how differently in the case
+of brilliant and successful politicians are such things treated in the
+judgment of contemporaries, and sometimes even in the judgments of
+history!
+
+It is, I think, a peculiarity of modern times that the chief moral
+influences are much more various and complex than in the past. There is
+no such absolute empire as that which was exercised over character by
+the State in some periods of Pagan antiquity and by the Church during
+the Middle Ages. Our civilisation is more than anything else an
+industrial civilisation, and industrial habits are probably the
+strongest in forming the moral type to which public opinion aspires.
+Slavery, which threw a deep discredit on industry and on the qualities
+it fosters, has passed away. The feudal system, which placed industry in
+an inferior position, has been abolished, and the strong modern tendency
+to diminish both the privileges and the exclusiveness of rank and to
+increase the importance of wealth is in the same direction. An
+industrial society has its special vices and failings, but it naturally
+brings into the boldest relief the moral qualities which industry is
+most fitted to foster and on which it most largely depends, and it also
+gives the whole tone of moral thinking a utilitarian character. It is
+not Christianity but Industrialism that has brought into the world that
+strong sense of the moral value of thrift, steady industry, punctuality
+in observing engagements, constant forethought with a view to providing
+for the contingencies of the future, which is now so characteristic of
+the moral type of the most civilised nations.
+
+Many other influences, however, have contributed to intensify, qualify,
+or impair the industrial type. Protestantism has disengaged primitive
+Christian ethics from a crowd of superstitious and artificial duties
+which had overlaid them, and a similar process has been going on in
+Catholic countries under the influence of the rationalising and
+sceptical spirit. The influence of dogmatic theology on Morals has
+declined. Out of the vast and complex religious systems of the past, an
+eclectic spirit is bringing into special and ever-increasing prominence
+those Christian virtues which are most manifestly in accordance with
+natural religion and most clearly conducive to the well-being of men
+upon the earth. Philanthropy or charity, which forms the centre of the
+system, has also been immensely intensified by increased knowledge and
+realisation of the wants and sorrows of others; by the sensitiveness to
+pain, by the softening of manners and the more humane and refined tastes
+and habits which a highly elaborated intellectual civilisation naturally
+produces. The sense of duty plays a great part in modern philanthropy,
+and lower motives of ostentation or custom mingle largely with the
+genuine kindliness of feeling that inspires it; but on the whole it is
+probable that men in our day, in doing good to others, look much more
+exclusively than in the past to the benefit of the recipient and much
+less to some reward for their acts in a future world. As long, too, as
+this benefit is attained, they will gladly diminish as much as possible
+the self-sacrifice it entails. An eminently characteristic feature of
+modern philanthropy is its close connection with amusements. There was a
+time when a great philanthropic work would be naturally supported by an
+issue of indulgences promising specific advantages in another world to
+all who took part in it. In our own generation balls, bazaars,
+theatrical or other amusements given for the benefit of the charity,
+occupy an almost corresponding place.
+
+At the same time increasing knowledge, and especially the kind of
+knowledge which science gives, has in other ways largely affected our
+judgments of right and wrong. The mental discipline, the habits of sound
+and accurate reasoning, the distrust of mere authority and of untested
+assertions and traditions that science tends to produce, all stimulate
+the intellectual virtues, and science has done much to rectify the chart
+of life, pointing out more clearly the true conditions of human
+well-being and disclosing much baselessness and many errors in the
+teaching of the past. It cannot, however, be said that the civic or the
+military influences have declined. If the State does not hold altogether
+the same place as in Pagan antiquity, it is at least certain that in a
+democratic age public interests are enormously prominent in the lives of
+men, and there is a growing and dangerous tendency to aggrandise the
+influence of the State over the individual, while modern militarism is
+drawing the flower of Continental Europe into its circle and making
+military education one of the most powerful influences in the formation
+of characters and ideals.
+
+I do not believe that the world will ever greatly differ about the
+essential elements of right and wrong. These things lie deep in human
+nature and in the fundamental conditions of human life. The changes that
+are taking place, and which seem likely to strengthen in the future, lie
+chiefly in the importance attached to different qualities.
+
+What seems to be useless self-sacrifice and unnecessary suffering is as
+much as possible avoided. The strain of sentiment which valued suffering
+in itself as an expiatory thing, as a mode of following the Man of
+Sorrows, as a thing to be for its own sake embraced and dwelt upon, and
+prolonged, bears a very great part in some of the most beautiful
+Christian lives, and especially in those which were formed under the
+influence of the Catholic Church. An old legend tells how Christ once
+appeared as a Man of Sorrows to a Catholic Saint, and asked him what
+boon he would most desire. 'Lord,' was the reply, 'that I might suffer
+most.' This strain runs deeply through the whole ascetic literature and
+the whole monastic system of Catholicism, and outside Catholicism it has
+been sometimes shown by a reluctance to accept the aid of anaesthetics,
+which partially or wholly removed suffering supposed to have been sent
+by Providence. The history of the use of chloroform furnishes striking
+illustrations of this. Many of my readers may remember the French monks
+who devoted themselves to cultivating one of the most pestilential spots
+in the Roman Campagna, which was associated with an ecclesiastical
+legend, and who quite unnecessarily insisted on remaining there during
+the season when such a residence meant little less than a slow suicide.
+They had, as they were accustomed to say, their purgatory upon earth,
+and they remained till their constitutions were hopelessly shattered and
+they were sent to die in their own land. Touching examples might be
+found in modern times of men who, in the last extremes of disease or
+suffering, scrupled, through religious motives, about availing
+themselves of the simplest alleviations,[21] and something of the same
+feeling is shown in the desire to prolong to the last possible moment
+hopeless and agonising disease. All this is manifestly and rapidly
+disappearing. To endure with patience and resignation inevitable
+suffering; to encounter courageously dangers and suffering for some
+worthy and useful end, ranks, indeed, as high as it ever did in the
+ethics of the century, but suffering for its own sake is no longer
+valued, and it is deemed one of the first objects of a wise life to
+restrict and diminish it.
+
+No one, I think, has seen more clearly or described more vividly than
+Goethe the direction in which in modern times the current of morals is
+flowing. His philosophy is a terrestrial philosophy, and the old
+theologians would have said that it allowed the second Table of the Law
+altogether to supersede or eclipse the first. It was said of him with
+much truth that 'repugnance to the supernatural was an inherent part of
+his mind.' To turn away from useless and barren speculations; to
+persistently withdraw our thoughts from the unknowable, the inevitable,
+and the irreparable; to concentrate them on the immediate present and on
+the nearest duty; to waste no moral energy on excessive introspection or
+self-abasement or self-reproach, but to make the cultivation and the
+wise use of all our powers the supreme ideal and end of our lives; to
+oppose labour and study to affliction and regret; to keep at a distance
+gloomy thoughts and exaggerated anxieties; 'to see the individual in
+connection and co-operation with the whole,' and to look upon effort and
+action as the main elements both of duty and happiness, was the lesson
+which he continually taught. 'The mind endowed with active powers, and
+keeping with a practical object to the task that lies nearest, is the
+worthiest there is on earth.' 'Character consists in a man steadily
+pursuing the things of which he feels himself capable.' 'Try to do your
+duty and you will know what you are worth.' 'Piety is not an end but a
+means; a means of attaining the highest culture by the purest
+tranquillity of soul.' 'We are not born to solve the problems of the
+world, but to find out where the problem begins and then to keep within
+the limits of what we can grasp.'
+
+To cultivate sincere love of truth and clear and definite conceptions,
+and divest ourselves as much as possible from prejudices, fanaticisms,
+superstitions, and exaggeration; to take wide, sound, tolerant,
+many-sided views of life, stands in his eyes in the forefront of ethics.
+'Let it be your earnest endeavour to use words coinciding as closely as
+possible with what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine, and
+reason;' 'remove by plain and honest purpose false, irrelevant and
+futile ideas.' 'The truest liberality is appreciation.' 'Love of truth
+shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in
+everything.'[22]
+
+In the eyes of this school of thought one of the great vices of the old
+theological type of ethics was that it was unduly negative. It thought
+much more of the avoidance of sin than of the performance of duty. The
+more we advance in knowledge the more we shall come to judge men in the
+spirit of the parable of the talents; that is by the net result of their
+lives, by their essential unselfishness, by the degree in which they
+employ and the objects to which they direct their capacities and
+opportunities. The staple of moral life becomes much less a matter of
+small scruples, of minute self-examination, of extreme stress laid upon
+flaws of character and conduct that have little or no bearing upon
+active life. A life of idleness will be regarded with much less
+tolerance than at present. Men will grow less introspective and more
+objective, and useful action will become more and more the guiding
+principle of morals.
+
+In theory this will probably be readily admitted, but every good
+observer will find that it involves a considerable change in the point
+of view. A life of habitual languor and idleness, with no faculties
+really cultivated, and with no result that makes a man missed when he
+has passed away, may be spent without any act which the world calls
+vicious, and is quite compatible with much charm of temper and demeanour
+and with a complete freedom from violent and aggressive selfishness.
+Such a life, in the eyes of many moralists, would rank much higher than
+a life of constant, honourable self-sacrificing labour for the good of
+others which was at the same time flawed by some positive vice. Yet the
+life which seems to be comparatively blameless has in truth wholly
+missed, while the other life, in spite of all its defects, has largely
+attained what should be the main object of a human life, the full
+development and useful employment of whatever powers we possess. There
+are men, indeed, in whom an over-sensitive conscience is even a
+paralysing thing, which by suggesting constant petty and ingenious
+scruples holds them back from useful action. It is a moral infirmity
+corresponding to that exaggerated intellectual fastidiousness which so
+often makes an intellectual life almost wholly barren, or to that
+excessive tendency to look on all sides of a question and to realise the
+dangers and drawbacks of any course which not unfrequently in moments of
+difficulty paralyses the actions of public men. Sometimes, under the
+strange and subtle bias of the will, this excessive conscientiousness
+will be unconsciously fostered in inert and sluggish natures which are
+constitutionally disinclined to effort. The main lines of duty in the
+great relations of life are sufficiently obvious, and the casuistry
+which multiplies cases of conscience and invents unreal and factitious
+duties is apt to be rather an impediment than a furtherance to a noble
+life.
+
+It is probable that as the world goes on morals will move more and more
+in the direction I have described. There will be at the same time a
+steadily increasing tendency to judge moral qualities and courses of
+conduct mainly by the degree in which they promote or diminish human
+happiness. Enthusiasm and self-sacrifice for some object which has no
+real bearing on the welfare of man will become rarer and will be less
+respected, and the condemnation that is passed on acts that are
+recognised as wrong will be much more proportioned than at present to
+the injury they inflict. Some things, such as excessive luxury of
+expenditure and the improvidence of bringing into the world children for
+whom no provision has been made, which can now scarcely be said to enter
+into the teaching of moralists, or at least of churches, may one day be
+looked upon as graver offences than some that are in the penal code.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] St. Francis de Sales.
+
+[12] St. Philip Neri.
+
+[13] St. Teresa.
+
+[14] 'Cum dictus Johannes Hus fidem orthodoxam pertinaciter impugnans,
+se ab omni con ductu et privilegio reddiderit alienum, nec aliqua sibi
+fides aut promissio de jure naturali divino vel humano, fuerit in
+praejudicium Catholicae fidei observanda.' Declaration of the Council of
+Constance. See Creighton's _History of the Papacy_, ii. 32.
+
+[15] I have collected some illustrations of this in my _History of
+European Morals_, ii. 235-242.
+
+[16] See, e.g. his funeral oration on Marie Therese d'Autriche.
+
+[17] See the enthusiastic eulogy of the persecution of the Huguenots in
+his funeral oration on Michel le Tellier. It concludes: 'Epanchons nos
+coeurs sur la piete de Louis; poussons jusqu'au ciel nos acclamations,
+et disons a ce nouveau Constantin, a ce nouveau Theodose, a ce nouveau
+Marcien, a ce nouveau Charlemagne ce que les six cent trente Peres
+dirent autrefois dans le Concile de Chalcedoine: "Vous avez affermi la
+foi; vous avez extermine les heretiques; c'est le digne ouvrage de votre
+regne; c'en est le propre caractere. Par vous l'heresie n'est plus, Dieu
+seul a pu faire cette merveille. Roi du ciel, conservez le roi de la
+terre; c'est le voeu, des Eglises; c'est le voeu des Eveques."'
+
+[18] See Migne, _Encyclopedie Theologique_, 'Dict. de Cas de
+Conscience,' art. _Avortement_.
+
+[19] See on this subject my _History of Rationalism_, ii. 250-270, and
+my _Democracy and Liberty_, ii., ch. viii.
+
+[20] 21 James I. c. 20; 19 Geo. II. c. 21. The penalties, however, were
+fines, the pillory, or short periods of imprisonment. The obligation of
+reading the statute in churches was abolished in 1823, but the custom
+had before fallen into desuetude. In 1772 a vicar was (as an act of
+private vengeance) prosecuted and fined for having neglected to read it.
+(_Annual Register_, 1772, p. 115.)
+
+[21] The following beautiful passage from a funeral sermon by Newman is
+an example: 'One should have thought that a life so innocent, so active,
+so holy, I might say so faultless from first to last, might have been
+spared the visitation of any long and severe penance to bring it to an
+end; but in order doubtless to show us how vile and miserable the best
+of us are in ourselves ... and moreover to give us a pattern how to bear
+suffering ourselves, and to increase the merits and to hasten and
+brighten the crown of this faithful servant of his Lord, it pleased
+Almighty God to send upon him a disorder which during the last six years
+fought with him, mastered him, and at length has destroyed him, so far,
+that is, as death now has power to destroy.... It is for those who came
+near him year after year to store up the many words and deeds of
+resignation, love and humility which that long penance elicited. These
+meritorious acts are written in the Book of Life, and they have followed
+him whither he is gone. They multiplied and grew in strength and
+perfection as his trial proceeded; and they were never so striking as at
+its close. When a friend visited him in the last week, he found he had
+scrupled at allowing his temples to be moistened with some refreshing
+waters, and had with difficulty been brought to give his consent; he
+said he feared it was too great a luxury. When the same friend offered
+him some liquid to allay his distressing thirst his answer was the
+same.'--Sermon at the funeral of the Right Rev. Henry Weedall, pp. 19,
+20.
+
+[22] See the excellent little book of Mr. Bailey Saunders, called _The
+Maxims and Reflections of Goethe_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The tendency to regard morals rather in their positive than their
+negative aspects, and to estimate men by the good they do in the world,
+is a healthy element in modern life. A strong sense of the obligation of
+a full, active, and useful life is the best safeguard both of individual
+and national morals at a time when the dissolution or enfeeblement of
+theological beliefs is disturbing the foundations on which most current
+moral teaching has been based. In the field of morals action holds a
+much larger place than reasoning--a larger place even in elucidating our
+difficulties and illuminating the path on which we should go. It is by
+the active pursuit of an immediate duty that the vista of future duties
+becomes most clear, and those who are most immersed in active duties are
+usually little troubled with the perplexities of life, or with minute
+and paralysing scruples. A public opinion which discourages idleness and
+places high the standard of public duty is especially valuable in an age
+when the tendency to value wealth, and to measure dignity by wealth, has
+greatly increased, and when wealth in some of its most important forms
+has become wholly dissociated from special duties. The duties of the
+landlord who is surrounded by a poor and in some measure dependent
+tenantry, the duties of the head of a great factory or shop who has a
+large number of workmen or dependents in his employment, are
+sufficiently obvious, though even in these spheres the tie of duty has
+been greatly relaxed by the growing spirit of independence, which makes
+each class increasingly jealous of the interference of others, and by
+the growing tendency of legislation to regulate all relations of
+business and contracts by definite law instead of leaving them, as in
+the past, to voluntary action. But there are large classes of fortunes
+which are wholly, or almost wholly, dissociated from special and
+definite duties. The vast and ever-increasing multitude whose incomes
+are derived from national, or provincial, or municipal debts, or who are
+shareholders or debenture-holders in great commercial and industrial
+undertakings, have little or no practical control over, or interest in,
+those from whom their fortunes are derived. The multiplication of such
+fortunes is one of the great characteristics of our time, and it brings
+with it grave dangers. Such fortunes give unrivalled opportunities of
+luxurious idleness, and as in themselves they bring little or no social
+influence or position, those who possess them are peculiarly tempted to
+seek such a position by an ostentation of wealth and luxury which has a
+profoundly vulgarising and demoralising influence upon Society. The
+tendency of idleness to lead to immorality has long been a commonplace
+of moralists. Perhaps our own age has seen more clearly than those that
+preceded it that complete and habitual idleness _is_ immorality, and
+that when the circumstances of his life do not assign to a man a
+definite sphere of work it is his first duty to find it for himself. It
+has been happily said that in the beginning of the reign of Queen
+Victoria young men in England who were really busy affected idleness,
+and at the close of the reign young men who are really idle pretend to
+be busy. In my own opinion, a disproportionate amount of English energy
+takes political forms, and there is a dangerous exaggeration in the
+prevailing tendency to combat all social and moral abuses by Acts of
+Parliament. But there are multitudes of other and less obtrusive spheres
+of work adapted to all grades of intellect and to many types of
+character, in which men who possess the inestimable boon of leisure can
+find abundant and useful fields for the exercise of their powers.
+
+The rectification of moral judgments is one of the most important
+elements of civilisation; it is upon this that the possibility of moral
+progress on a large scale chiefly depends. Few things pervert men more
+than the habit of regarding as enviable persons or qualities injurious
+to Society. The most obvious example is the passionate admiration
+bestowed on a brilliant conqueror, which is often quite irrespective of
+the justice of his wars and of the motives that actuated him. This false
+moral feeling has acquired such a strength that overwhelming military
+power almost certainly leads to a career of ambition. Perverted public
+opinion is the main cause. Glory, not interest, is the lure, or at least
+the latter would be powerless if it were not accompanied by the
+former--if the execration of mankind naturally followed unscrupulous
+aggression.
+
+Another and scarcely less flagrant instance of the worship of false
+ideals is to be found in the fierce competition of luxury and
+ostentation which characterises the more wealthy cities of Europe and
+America. It is no exaggeration to say that in a single festival in
+London or New York sums are often expended in the idlest and most
+ephemeral ostentation which might have revived industry, or extinguished
+pauperism, or alleviated suffering over a vast area. The question of
+expenditure on luxuries is no doubt a question of degree which cannot be
+reduced to strict rule, and there are many who will try to justify the
+most ostentatious expenditure on the ground of the employment it gives
+and of other incidental advantages it is supposed to produce. But
+nothing in political economy is more certain than that the vast and
+ever-increasing expenditure on the luxury of ostentation in modern
+societies, by withdrawing great masses of capital from productive
+labour, is a grave economical evil, and there is probably no other form
+of expenditure which, in proportion to its amount, gives so little real
+pleasure and confers so little real good. Its evil in setting up
+material and base standards of excellence, in stimulating the worst
+passions that grow out of an immoderate love of wealth, in ruining many
+who are tempted into a competition which they are unable to support, can
+hardly be overrated. It is felt in every rank in raising the standard of
+conventional expenses, excluding from much social intercourse many who
+are admirably fitted to adorn it, and introducing into all society a
+lower and more material tone. Nor are these its only consequences.
+Wealth which is expended in multiplying and elaborating real comforts,
+or even in pleasures which produce enjoyment at all proportionate to
+their cost, will never excite serious indignation. It is the colossal
+waste of the means of human happiness in the most selfish and most
+vulgar forms of social advertisement and competition that gives a force
+and almost a justification to anarchical passions which menace the
+whole future of our civilisation. It is such things that stimulate class
+hatreds and deepen class divisions, and if the law of opinion does not
+interfere to check them they will one day bring down upon the society
+that encourages them a signal and well-merited retribution.
+
+A more recognised, though probably not really more pernicious example of
+false ideals, is to be found in the glorification of the _demi-monde_,
+which is so conspicuous in some societies and literatures. In a healthy
+state of opinion, the public, ostentatious appearance of such persons,
+without any concealment of their character, in the great concourse of
+fashion and among the notabilities of the State, would appear an
+intolerable scandal, and it becomes much worse when they give the tone
+to fashion and become the centres and the models of large and by no
+means undistinguished sections of Society. The evils springing from this
+public glorification of the class are immeasurably greater than the
+evils arising from its existence. The standard of popular morals is
+debased. Temptation in its most seductive form is forced upon
+inflammable natures, and the most pernicious of all lessons is taught to
+poor, honest, hard-working women. It is indeed wonderful that in
+societies where this evil prevails so much virtue should still exist
+among graceful, attractive women of the shopkeeping and servant class
+when they continually see before them members of their own class, by
+preferring vice to virtue, rising at once to wealth, luxury and
+idleness, and even held up as objects of admiration or imitation.
+
+In judging wisely the characters of men, one of the first things to be
+done is to understand their ideals. Try to find out what kind of men or
+of life; what qualities, what positions seem to them the most desirable.
+Men do not always fully recognise their own ideals, for education and
+the conventionalities of Society oblige them to assert a preference for
+that which may really have no root in their minds. But by a careful
+examination it is usually possible to ascertain what persons or
+qualities or circumstances or gifts exercise a genuine, spontaneous,
+magnetic power over them--whether they really value supremely rank or
+position, or money, or beauty, or intellect, or superiority of
+character. If you know the ideal of a man you have obtained a true key
+to his nature. The broad lines of his character, the permanent
+tendencies of his imagination, his essential nobility or meanness, are
+thus disclosed more effectually than by any other means. A man with high
+ideals, who admires wisely and nobly, is never wholly base though he may
+fall into great vices. A man who worships the baser elements is in truth
+an idolater though he may have never bowed before an image of stone.
+
+The human mind has much more power of distinguishing between right and
+wrong, and between true and false, than of estimating with accuracy the
+comparative gravity of opposite evils. It is nearly always right in
+judging between right and wrong. It is generally wrong in estimating
+degrees of guilt, and the root of its error lies in the extreme
+difficulty of putting ourselves into the place of those whose characters
+or circumstances are radically different from our own. This want of
+imagination acts widely on our judgment of what is good as well as of
+what is bad. Few men have enough imagination to realise types of
+excellence altogether differing from their own. It is this, much more
+than vanity, that leads them to esteem the types of excellence to which
+they themselves approximate as the best, and tastes and habits that are
+altogether incongruous with their own as futile and contemptible. It is,
+perhaps, most difficult of all to realise the difference of character
+and especially of moral sensibility produced by a profound difference of
+circumstances. This difficulty largely falsifies our judgments of the
+past, and it is the reason why a powerful imagination enabling us to
+realise very various characters and very remote circumstances is one of
+the first necessities of a great historian. Historians rarely make
+sufficient allowance for the degree in which the judgments and
+dispositions even of the best men are coloured by the moral tone of the
+time, society and profession in which they lived. Yet it is probable
+that on the whole we estimate more justly the characters of the past
+than of the present. No one would judge the actions of Charlemagne or of
+his contemporaries by the strict rules of nineteenth-century ethics. We
+feel that though they committed undoubted crimes, these crimes are at
+least indefinitely less heinous than they would have been under the
+wholly different circumstances and moral atmosphere of our own day. Yet
+we seldom apply this method of reasoning to the different strata of the
+same society. Men who have been themselves brought up amid all the
+comforts and all the moralising and restraining influences of a refined
+society, will often judge the crimes of the wretched pariahs of
+civilisation as if their acts were in no degree palliated by their
+position. They say to themselves 'How guilty should I have been if I
+had done this thing,' and their verdict is quite just according to this
+statement of the case. They realise the nature of the act. They utterly
+fail to realise the character and circumstances of the actor.
+
+And yet it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the difference between the
+position of such a critic and that of the children of drunken, ignorant
+and profligate parents, born to abject poverty in the slums of our great
+cities. From their earliest childhood drunkenness, blasphemy,
+dishonesty, prostitution, indecency of every form are their most
+familiar experiences. All the social influences, such as they are, are
+influences of vice. As they grow up Life seems to them to present little
+more than the alternative of hard, ill-paid, and at the same time
+precarious labour, probably ending in the poor-house, or crime with its
+larger and swifter gains, and its intervals of coarse pleasure probably,
+though not certainly, followed by the prison or an early death. They see
+indeed, like figures in a dream, or like beings of another world, the
+wealthy and the luxurious spending their wealth and their time in many
+kinds of enjoyment, but to the very poor pleasure scarcely comes except
+in the form of the gin palace or perhaps the low music hall. And in many
+cases they have come into this reeking atmosphere of temptation and vice
+with natures debased and enfeebled by a long succession of vicious
+hereditary influences, with weak wills, with no faculties of mind or
+character that can respond to any healthy ambition; with powerful inborn
+predispositions to evil. The very mould of their features, the very
+shape of their skulls, marks them out as destined members of the
+criminal class. Even here, no doubt, there is a difference between right
+and wrong; there is scope for the action of free will; there are just
+causes of praise and blame, and Society rightly protects itself by
+severe penalties against the crimes that are most natural; but what
+human judge can duly measure the scale of moral guilt? or what
+comparison can there be between the crimes that are engendered by such
+circumstances and those which spring up in the homes of refined and
+well-regulated comfort?
+
+Nor indeed even in this latter case is a really accurate judgment
+possible. Men are born into the world with both wills and passions of
+varying strength, though in mature life the strength or weakness of each
+is largely due to their own conduct. With different characters the same
+temptation, operating under the same external circumstances, has
+enormously different strength, and very few men can fully realise the
+strength of a passion which they have never themselves experienced. To
+repeat an illustration I have already used, how difficult is it for a
+constitutionally sober man to form in his own mind an adequate
+conception of the force of the temptation of drink to a dipsomaniac, or
+for a passionless man to conceive rightly the temptations of a
+profoundly sensual nature! I have spoken in a former chapter of the
+force with which bodily conditions act upon happiness. Their influence
+on morals is not less terrible. There are diseases well known to
+physicians which make the most placid temper habitually irritable;
+give a morbid turn to the healthiest disposition; fill the purest
+mind with unholy thoughts. There are others which destroy the force
+of the strongest will and take from character all balance and
+self-control.[23] It often happens that we have long been blaming a man
+for manifest faults of character till at last suicide, or the disclosure
+of some grave bodily or mental disease which has long been working
+unperceived, explains his faults and turns our blame into pity. In
+madness the whole moral character is sometimes reversed, and tendencies
+which have been in sane life dormant or repressed become suddenly
+supreme. In such cases we all acknowledge that there is no moral
+responsibility, but madness, with its illusions and irresistible
+impulses, and idiocy with its complete suspension of the will and of the
+judgment, are neither of them, as lawyers would pretend, clearly defined
+states, marked out by sharp and well-cut boundaries, wholly distinct
+from sanity. There are incipient stages; there are gradual
+approximations; there are twilight states between sanity and insanity
+which are clearly recognised not only by experts but by all sagacious
+men of the world. There are many who are not sufficiently mad to be shut
+up, or to be deprived of the management of their properties, or to be
+exempted from punishment if they have committed a crime, but who, in the
+common expressive phrase, 'are not all there'--whose eccentricities,
+illusions and caprices are on the verge of madness, whose judgments are
+hopelessly disordered; whose wills, though not completely atrophied, are
+manifestly diseased. In questions of property, in questions of crime, in
+questions of family arrangements, such persons cause the gravest
+perplexity, nor will any wise man judge them by the same moral standard
+as well-balanced and well-developed natures.
+
+The inference to be drawn from such facts is certainly not that there is
+no such thing as free will and personal responsibility, nor yet that we
+have no power of judging the acts of others and distinguishing among our
+fellowmen between the good and the bad. The true lesson is the extreme
+fallibility of our moral judgments whenever we attempt to measure
+degrees of guilt. Sometimes men are even unjust to their own past from
+their incapacity in age of realising the force of the temptations they
+had experienced in youth. On the other hand, increased knowledge of the
+world tends to make us more sensible of the vast differences between the
+moral circumstances of men, and therefore less confident and more
+indulgent in our judgments of others. There are men whose cards in life
+are so bad, whose temptations to vice, either from circumstances or
+inborn character, seem so overwhelming, that, though we may punish, and
+in a certain sense blame, we can scarcely look on them as more
+responsible than some noxious wild beast. Among the terrible facts of
+life none is indeed more terrible than this. Every believer in the wise
+government of the world must have sometimes realised with a crushing or
+at least a staggering force the appalling injustices of life as shown in
+the enormous differences in the distribution of unmerited happiness and
+misery. But the disparity of moral circumstances is not less. It has
+shaken the faith of many. It has even led some to dream of a possible
+Heaven for the vicious where those who are born into the world with a
+physical constitution rendering them fierce or cruel, or sensual, or
+cowardly, may be freed from the nature which was the cause of their
+vice and their suffering upon earth; where due allowance may be made for
+the differences of circumstances which have plunged one man deeper and
+ever deeper into crime, and enabled another, who was not really better
+or worse, to pass through life with no serious blemish, and to rise
+higher and higher in the moral scale.
+
+Imperfect, however, as is our power of judging others, it is a power we
+are all obliged to exercise. It is impossible to exclude the
+considerations of moral guilt and of palliating or aggravating
+circumstances from the penal code, and from the administration of
+justice, though it cannot be too clearly maintained that the criminal
+code is not coextensive with the moral code, and that many things which
+are profoundly immoral lie beyond its scope. On the whole it should be
+as much as possible confined to acts by which men directly injure
+others. In the case of adult men, private vices, vices by which no one
+is directly affected, except by his own free will, and in which the
+elements of force or fraud are not present, should not be brought within
+its range. This ideal, it is true, cannot be fully attained. The
+legislator must take into account the strong pressure of public opinion.
+It is sometimes true that a penal law may arrest, restrict, or prevent
+the revival of some private vice without producing any countervailing
+evil. But the presumption is against all laws which punish the voluntary
+acts of adult men when those acts injure no one except themselves. The
+social censure, or the judgment of opinion, rightly extends much
+further, though it is often based on very imperfect knowledge or
+realisation. It is probable that, on the whole, opinion judges too
+severely the crimes of passion and of drink, as well as those which
+spring from the pressure of great poverty and are accompanied by great
+ignorance. The causes of domestic anarchy are usually of such an
+intimate nature and involve so many unknown or imperfectly realised
+elements of aggravation or palliation that in most cases the less men
+attempt to judge them the better. On the other hand, public opinion is
+usually far too lenient in judging crimes of ambition, cupidity, envy,
+malevolence, and callous selfishness; the crimes of ill-gotten and
+ill-used wealth, especially in the many cases in which those crimes are
+unpunished by law.
+
+It is a mere commonplace of morals that in the path of evil it is the
+first step that costs the most. The shame, the repugnance, and the
+remorse which attend the first crime speedily fade, and on every
+repetition the habit of evil grows stronger. A process of the same kind
+passes over our judgments. Few things are more curious than to observe
+how the eye accommodates itself to a new fashion of dress, however
+unbecoming; how speedily men, or at least women, will adopt a new and
+artificial standard and instinctively and unconsciously admire or blame
+according to this standard and not according to any genuine sense of
+beauty or the reverse. Few persons, however pure may be their natural
+taste, can live long amid vulgar and vulgarising surroundings without
+losing something of the delicacy of their taste and learning to
+accept--if not with pleasure, at least with acquiescence--things from
+which under other circumstances they would have recoiled. In the same
+way, both individuals and societies accommodate themselves but too
+readily to lower moral levels, and a constant vigilance is needed to
+detect the forms or directions in which individual and national
+character insensibly deteriorate.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[23] See Ribot, _Les Maladies de la Volonte_, pp. 92, 116-119.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It is impossible for a physician to prescribe a rational regimen for a
+patient unless he has formed some clear conception of the nature of his
+constitution and of the morbid influences to which it is inclined; and
+in judging the wisdom of various proposals for the management of
+character we are at once met by the initial controversy about the
+goodness or the depravity of human nature. It is a subject on which
+extreme exaggerations have prevailed. The school of Rousseau, which
+dominated on the Continent in the last half of the eighteenth century,
+represented mankind as a being who comes into existence essentially
+good, and it attributed all the moral evils of the world, not to any
+innate tendencies to vice, but to superstition, vicious institutions,
+misleading education, a badly organised society. It is an obvious
+criticism that if human nature had been as good as such writers
+imagined, these corrupt and corrupting influences could never have grown
+up, or at least could never have obtained a controlling influence, and
+this philosophy became greatly discredited when the French Revolution,
+which it did so much to produce, ended in the unspeakable horrors of the
+Reign of Terror and in the gigantic carnage of the Napoleonic wars. On
+the other hand, there are large schools of theologians who represent man
+as utterly and fundamentally depraved, 'born in corruption, inclined to
+evil, incapable by himself of doing good;' totally wrecked and ruined
+as a moral being by the catastrophe in Eden. There are also moral
+philosophers--usually very unconnected with theology--who deny or
+explain away all unselfish elements in human nature, represent man as
+simply governed by self-interest, and maintain that the whole art of
+education and government consists of a judicious arrangement of selfish
+motives, making the interests of the individual coincident with those of
+his neighbours. It is not too much to say that Society never could have
+subsisted if this view of human nature had been a just one. The world
+would have been like a cage-full of wild beasts, and mankind would have
+soon perished in constant internecine war.
+
+It is indeed one of the plainest facts of human nature that such a view
+of mankind is an untrue one. Jealousy, envy, animosities and selfishness
+no doubt play a great part in life and disguise themselves under many
+specious forms, and the cynical moralist was not wholly wrong when he
+declared that 'Virtue would not go so far if Vanity did not keep her
+company,' and that not only our crimes but even many of what are deemed
+our best acts may be traced to selfish motives. But he must have had a
+strangely unfortunate experience of the world who does not recognise the
+enormous exaggeration of the pictures of human nature that are conveyed
+in some of the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and Schopenhauer. They tell us
+that friendship is a mere exchange of interests in which each man only
+seeks to gain something from the other; that most women are only pure
+because they are untempted and regret that the temptation does not come;
+that if we acknowledge some faults it is in order to persuade ourselves
+that we have no greater ones, or in order, by our confession, to regain
+the good opinion of our neighbours; that if we praise another it is
+merely that we may ourselves in turn be praised; that the tears we shed
+over a deathbed, if they are not hypocritical tears intended only to
+impress our neighbours, are only due to our conviction that we have
+ourselves lost a source of pleasure or of gain; that envy so
+predominates in the world that it is only men of inferior intellect or
+women of inferior beauty who are sincerely liked by those about them;
+that all virtue is an egotistic calculation, conscious or unconscious.
+
+Such views are at least as far removed from truth as the roseate
+pictures of Rousseau and St. Pierre. No one can look with an unjaundiced
+eye upon the world without perceiving the enormous amount of
+disinterested, self-sacrificing benevolence that pervades it; the
+countless lives that are spent not only harmlessly and inoffensively but
+also in the constant discharge of duties; in constant and often painful
+labour for the good of others. The better section of the Utilitarian
+school has fully recognised the truth that human nature is so
+constituted that a great proportion of its enjoyment depends on
+sympathy; or, in other words, on the power we possess of entering into
+and sharing the happiness of others. The spectacle of suffering
+naturally elicits compassion. Kindness naturally produces gratitude. The
+sympathies of men naturally move on the side of the good rather than of
+the bad. This is true not only of the things that immediately concern
+us, but also in the perfectly disinterested judgments we form of the
+events of history or of the characters in fiction and poetry. Great
+exhibitions of heroism and self-sacrifice touch a genuine chord of
+enthusiasm. The affections of the domestic circle are the rule and not
+the exception; patriotism can elicit great outbursts of purely unselfish
+generosity and induce multitudes to risk or sacrifice their lives for
+causes which are quite other than their own selfish interests. Human
+nature indeed has its moral as well as its physical needs, and naturally
+and instinctively seeks some object of interest and enthusiasm outside
+itself.
+
+If we look again into the vice and sin that undoubtedly disfigure the
+world we shall find much reason to believe that what is exceptional in
+human nature is not the evil tendency but the restraining conscience,
+and that it is chiefly the weakness of the distinctively human quality
+that is the origin of the evil. It is impossible indeed, with the
+knowledge we now possess, to deny to animals some measure both of reason
+and of the moral sense. In addition to the higher instincts of parental
+affection and devotion which are so clearly developed we find among some
+animals undoubted signs of remorse, gratitude, affection,
+self-sacrifice. Even the point of honour which attaches shame to some
+things and pride to others may be clearly distinguished. No one who has
+watched the more intelligent dog can question this, and many will
+maintain that in some animals, though both good and bad qualities are
+less widely developed than in man, the proportion of the good to the
+evil is more favourable in the animal than in the man. At the same time
+in the animal world desire is usually followed without any other
+restraint than fear, while in man it is largely though no doubt very
+imperfectly limited by moral self-control. Most crimes spring not from
+anything wrong in the original and primal desire but from the
+imperfection of this higher, distinct or superadded element in our
+nature. The crimes of dishonesty and envy, when duly analysed, have at
+their basis simply a desire for the desirable--a natural and inevitable
+feeling. What is absent is the restraint which makes men refrain from
+taking or trying to take desirable things that belong to another.
+Sensual faults spring from a perfectly natural impulse, but the
+restraint which confines the action of that impulse to defined
+circumstances is wanting. Much, too, of the insensibility and hardness
+of the world is due to a simple want of imagination which prevents us
+from adequately realising the sufferings of others. The predatory,
+envious and ferocious feelings that disturb mankind operate unrestrained
+through the animal world, though man's superior intelligence gives his
+desires a special character and a greatly increased scope, and
+introduces them into spheres inconceivable to the animal. Immoderate and
+uncontrolled desires are the root of most human crimes, but at the same
+time the self-restraint that limits desire, or self-seeking, by the
+rights of others, seems to be mainly, though not wholly, the prerogative
+of man.
+
+Considerations of this kind are sufficient to remedy the extreme
+exaggeration of human corruption that may often be heard, but they are
+not inconsistent with the truth that human nature is so far depraved
+that it can never be safely left to develop unimpeded without strong
+legal and social restraint. It is not necessary to seek examples of its
+depravity within the precincts of a prison or in the many instances
+that may be found outside the criminal population of morbid moral taints
+which are often as clearly marked as physical disease. On a large scale
+and in the actions of great bodies of men the melancholy truth is
+abundantly displayed. On the whole Christianity has been far more
+successful in influencing individuals than societies. The mere spectacle
+of a battle-field with the appalling mass of hideous suffering
+deliberately and ingeniously inflicted by man upon man should be
+sufficient to scatter all idyllic pictures of human nature. It was once
+the custom of a large school of writers to attribute unjust wars solely
+to the rulers of the world, who for their own selfish ambitions
+remorselessly sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of their
+subjects. Their guilt has been very great, but they would never have
+pursued the course of ambitious conquest if the applause of nations had
+not followed and encouraged them, and there are no signs that democracy,
+which has enthroned the masses, has any real tendency to diminish war.
+
+In modern times the danger of war lies less in the intrigues of
+statesmen than in deeply seated international jealousies and
+antipathies; in sudden, volcanic outbursts of popular passion. After
+eighteen hundred years' profession of the creed of peace, Christendom is
+an armed camp. Never, or hardly ever, in times of peace had the mere
+preparations of war absorbed so large a proportion of its population and
+resources, and very seldom has so large an amount of its ability been
+mainly employed in inventing and in perfecting instruments of
+destruction. Those who will look on the world without illusion will be
+compelled to admit that the chief guarantees for its peace are to be
+found much less in moral than in purely selfish motives. The financial
+embarrassments of the great nations; their profound distrust of one
+another; the vast cost of modern war; the gigantic commercial disasters
+it inevitably entails; the extreme uncertainty of its issue; the utter
+ruin that may follow defeat--these are the real influences that restrain
+the tiger passions and the avaricious cravings of mankind. It is also
+one of the advantages that accompany the many evils of universal
+service, that great citizen armies who in time of war are drawn from
+their homes, their families, and their peaceful occupations have not the
+same thirst for battle that grows up among purely professional soldiers,
+voluntarily enlisted and making a military life their whole career. Yet,
+in spite of all this, what trust could be placed in the forbearance of
+Christian nations if the path of aggression was at once easy, lucrative
+and safe? The judgments of nations in dealing with the aggressions of
+their neighbours are, it is true, very different from those which they
+form of aggressions by their own statesmen or for their own benefit. But
+no great nation is blameless, and there is probably no nation that could
+not speedily catch the infection of the warlike spirit if a conqueror
+and a few splendid victories obscured, as they nearly always do, the
+moral issues of the contest.
+
+War, it is true, is not always or wholly evil. Sometimes it is
+justifiable and necessary. Sometimes it is professedly and in part
+really due to some strong wave of philanthropic feeling produced by
+great acts of wrong, though of all forms of philanthropy it is that
+which most naturally defeats itself. Even when unjustifiable, it calls
+into action splendid qualities of courage, self-sacrifice, and
+endurance which cast a dazzling and deceptive glamour over its horrors
+and its criminality. It appeals too, beyond all other things, to that
+craving for excitement, adventure, and danger which is an essential and
+imperious element in human nature, and which, while it is in itself
+neither a virtue nor a vice, blends powerfully with some of the best as
+well as with some of the worst actions of mankind. It is indeed a
+strange thing to observe how many men in every age have been ready to
+risk or sacrifice their lives for causes which they have never clearly
+understood and which they would find it difficult in plain words to
+describe.
+
+But the amount of pure and almost spontaneous malevolence in the world
+is probably far greater than we at first imagine. In public life the
+workings of this side of human nature are at once disclosed and
+magnified, like the figures thrown by a magic lantern on a screen, to a
+scale which it is impossible to overlook. No one, for example, can study
+the anonymous press without perceiving how large a part of it is
+employed systematically, persistently and deliberately in fostering
+class, or race, or international hatreds, and often in circulating
+falsehoods to attain this end. Many newspapers notoriously depend for
+their existence on such appeals, and more than any other instruments
+they inflame and perpetuate those permanent animosities which most
+endanger the peace of mankind. The fact that such newspapers are
+becoming in many countries the main and almost exclusive reading of the
+poor forms the most serious deduction from the value of popular
+education. How many books have attained popularity, how many seats in
+Parliament have been won, how many posts of influence and profit have
+been attained, how many party victories have been achieved, by appealing
+to such passions! Often they disguise themselves under the lofty names
+of patriotism and nationality, and men whose whole lives have been spent
+in sowing class hatreds and dividing kindred nations may be found
+masquerading under the name of patriots, and have played no small part
+on the stage of politics. The deep-seated sedition, the fierce class and
+national hatreds that run through European life would have a very
+different intensity from what they now unfortunately have if they had
+not been artificially stimulated and fostered through purely selfish
+motives by demagogues, political adventurers and public writers.
+
+Some of the very worst acts of which man can be guilty are acts which
+are commonly untouched by law and only faintly censured by opinion.
+Political crimes which a false and sickly sentiment so readily condones
+are conspicuous among them. Men who have been gambling for wealth and
+power with the lives and fortunes of multitudes; men who for their own
+personal ambition are prepared to sacrifice the most vital interests of
+their country; men who in time of great national danger and excitement
+deliberately launch falsehood after falsehood in the public press in the
+well-founded conviction that they will do their evil work before they
+can be contradicted, may be met shameless, and almost uncensured, in
+Parliaments and drawing-rooms. The amount of false statement in the
+world which cannot be attributed to mere carelessness, inaccuracy, or
+exaggeration, but which is plainly both deliberate and malevolent, can
+hardly be overrated. Sometimes it is due to a mere desire to create a
+lucrative sensation, or to gratify a personal dislike, or even to an
+unprovoked malevolence which takes pleasure in inflicting pain.
+
+Very often it is intended for purposes of stockjobbing. The financial
+world is percolated with it. It is the common method of raising or
+depreciating securities, attracting investors, preying upon the ignorant
+and credulous, and enabling dishonest men to rise rapidly to fortune.
+When the prospect of speedy wealth is in sight, there are always numbers
+who are perfectly prepared to pursue courses involving the utter ruin of
+multitudes, endangering the most serious international interests,
+perhaps bringing down upon the world all the calamities of war. It is no
+doubt true that such men are only a minority, though it is less certain
+that they would be a minority if the opportunity of obtaining sudden
+riches by immoral means was open to all, and it is no small minority who
+are accustomed to condone these crimes when they have succeeded. It is
+much to be questioned whether the greatest criminals are to be found
+within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on a small scale nearly always
+finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a gigantic scale continually
+escapes. The pickpocket and the burglar seldom fail to meet with their
+merited punishment, but in the management of companies, in the great
+fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic fortunes are
+acquired by the ruin of multitudes and by methods which, though they
+evade legal penalties, are essentially fraudulent. In the majority of
+cases these crimes are perpetrated by educated men who are in possession
+of all the necessaries, of most of the comforts, and of many of the
+luxuries of life, and some of the worst of them are powerfully favoured
+by the conditions of modern civilisation. There is no greater scandal or
+moral evil in our time than the readiness with which public opinion
+excuses them, and the influence and social position it accords to mere
+wealth, even when it has been acquired by notorious dishonesty or when
+it is expended with absolute selfishness or in ways that are positively
+demoralising. In many respects the moral progress of mankind seems to me
+incontestable, but it is extremely doubtful whether in this respect
+social morality, especially in England and America, has not seriously
+retrograded.
+
+In truth, while it is a gross libel upon human nature to deny the vast
+amount of genuine kindness, self-sacrifice and even heroism that exists
+in the world, it is equally idle to deny the deplorable weakness of
+self-restraint, the great force and the widespread influence of purely
+evil passions in the affairs of men. The distrust of human character
+which the experience of life tends to produce is one great cause of the
+Conservatism which so commonly strengthens with age. It is more and more
+felt that all the restraints of law, custom, and religion are essential
+to hold together in peaceful co-operation the elements of society, and
+men learn to look with increasing tolerance on both institutions and
+opinions which cannot stand the test of pure reason and may be largely
+mixed with delusions if only they deepen the better habits and give an
+additional strength to moral restraints. They learn also to appreciate
+the danger of pitching their ideals too high, and endeavouring to
+enforce lines of conduct greatly above the average level of human
+goodness. Such attempts, when they take the form of coercive action,
+seldom fail to produce a recoil which is very detrimental to morals. In
+this, as in all other spheres, the importance of compromise in practical
+life is one of the great lessons which experience teaches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The phrase Moral Compromise has an evil sound, and it opens out
+questions of practical ethics which are very difficult and very
+dangerous, but they are questions with which, consciously or
+unconsciously, every one is obliged to deal. The contrasts between the
+rigidity of theological formulae and actual life are on this subject very
+great, though in practice, and by the many ingenious subtleties that
+constitute the science of casuistry, many theologians have attempted to
+evade them. A striking passage from the pen of Cardinal Newman will
+bring these contrasts into the clearest light. 'The Church holds,' he
+writes, 'that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for
+the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die
+of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes,
+than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one
+single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no
+one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.'[24]
+
+It is certainly no exaggeration to say that such a doctrine would lead
+to consequences absolutely incompatible with any life outside a
+hermitage or a monastery. It would strike at the root of all
+civilisation, and although many may be prepared to give it their formal
+assent, no human being actually believes it with the kind of belief
+that becomes a guiding influence in life. I have dwelt on this subject
+in another book, and may here repeat a few lines which I then wrote. If
+'an undoubted sin, even the most trivial, is a thing in its essence and
+its consequences so unspeakably dreadful that rather than it should be
+committed it would be better that any amount of calamity which did not
+bring with it sin should be endured, even that the whole human race
+should perish in agonies, it is manifest that the supreme object of
+humanity should be sinlessness, and it is equally manifest that the
+means to this end is the absolute suppression of the desires. To expand
+the circle of wants is necessarily to multiply temptations and therefore
+to increase the number of sins.' No material and intellectual
+advantages, no increase of human happiness, no mitigation of the
+suffering or dreariness of human life can, according to this theory, be
+other than an evil if it adds even in the smallest degree or in the most
+incidental manner to the sins that are committed. 'A sovereign, when
+calculating the consequences of a war, should reflect that a single sin
+occasioned by that war, a single blasphemy of a wounded soldier, the
+robbery of a single hen-coop, the violation of the purity of a single
+woman is a greater calamity than the ruin of the entire commerce of his
+nation, the loss of her most precious provinces, the destruction of all
+her power. He must believe that the evil of the increase of unchastity
+which invariably results from the formation of an army is an
+immeasurably greater calamity than any national or political disasters
+that army can possibly avert. He must believe that the most fearful
+plagues and famines that desolate his land should be regarded as a
+matter of rejoicing if they have but the feeblest and most transient
+influence in repressing vice. He must believe that if the agglomeration
+of his people in great cities adds but one to the number of their sins,
+no possible intellectual or material advantages can prevent the
+construction of cities being a fearful calamity. According to this
+principle every elaboration of life, every amusement that brings
+multitudes together, almost every art, every accession of wealth, that
+awakens or stimulates desires is an evil, for all these become the
+sources of some sins, and their advantages are for the most part purely
+terrestrial.'
+
+Considerations of this kind, if duly realised, bring out clearly the
+insincerity and the unreality of much of our professed belief. Hardly
+any sane man would desire to suppress Bank Holidays simply because they
+are the occasion of a considerable number of cases of drunkenness which
+would not otherwise have taken place. No humane legislator would
+hesitate to suppress them if they produced an equal number of deaths or
+other great physical calamities. This manner of measuring the relative
+importance of things is not incompatible with a general acknowledgment
+of the fact that there are many amusements which produce an amount of
+moral evil that overbalances their advantages as sources of pleasure, or
+of the great truth that the moral is the higher and ought to be the
+ruling part of our being. But the realities of life cannot be measured
+by rigid theological formulae. Life is a scene in which different kinds
+of interest not only blend but also modify and in some degree
+counterbalance one another, and it can only be carried on by constant
+compromises in which the lines of definition are seldom very clearly
+marked, and in which even the highest interest must not altogether
+absorb or override the others. We have to deal with good principles that
+cannot be pushed to their full logical results; with varying standards
+which cannot be brought under inflexible law.
+
+Take, for example, the many untruths which the conventional courtesies
+of Society prescribe. Some of these are so purely matter of phraseology
+that they deceive no one. Others chiefly serve the purpose of courteous
+concealment, as when they enable us to refuse a request or to decline an
+invitation or a visit without disclosing whether disinclination or
+inability is the cause. Then there are falsehoods for useful purposes.
+Few men would shrink from a falsehood which was the only means of saving
+a patient from a shock which would probably produce his death. No one, I
+suppose, would hesitate to deceive a criminal if by no other means he
+could prevent him from accomplishing a crime. There are also cases of
+the suppression of what we believe to be true, and of tacit or open
+acquiescence in what we believe to be false, when a full and truthful
+disclosure of our own beliefs might destroy the happiness of others, or
+subvert beliefs which are plainly necessary for their moral well-being.
+Cases of this kind will continually occur in life, and a good man who
+deals with each case as it arises will probably find no great difficulty
+in steering his course. But the vague and fluctuating lines of moral
+compromise cannot without grave moral danger be reduced to fixed rules
+to be carried out to their full logical consequences. The immortal pages
+of Pascal are sufficient to show to what extremes of immorality the
+doctrine that the end justifies the means has been pushed by the
+casuists of the Church of which Cardinal Newman was so great an
+ornament.
+
+A large and difficult field of moral compromise is opened out in the
+case of war, which necessarily involves a complete suspension of great
+portions of the moral law. This is not merely the case in unjust wars;
+it applies also, though in a less degree, to those which are most
+necessary and most righteous. War is not, and never can be, a mere
+passionless discharge of a painful duty. It is in its essence, and it is
+a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among
+great masses of men the destructive and combative passions--passions as
+fierce and as malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to
+its death or the tiger springs upon its prey. Destruction is one of its
+chief ends. Deception is one of its chief means, and one of the great
+arts of skilful generalship is to deceive in order to destroy. Whatever
+other elements may mingle with and dignify war, this at least is never
+absent; and however reluctantly men may enter into war, however
+conscientiously they may endeavour to avoid it, they must know that when
+the scene of carnage has once opened these things must be not only
+accepted and condoned, but stimulated, encouraged and applauded. It
+would be difficult to conceive a disposition more remote from the morals
+of ordinary life, not to speak of Christian ideals, than that with which
+the soldiers most animated with the fire and passion that lead to
+victory rush forward to bayonet the foe.
+
+War indeed, which is absolutely indispensable in our present stage of
+civilisation, has its own morals which are very different from those of
+peaceful life. Yet there are few fields in which, through the stress of
+moral motives, greater changes have been effected. In the early stages
+of human history it was simply a question of power. There was no
+distinction between piracy and regular war, and incursions into a
+neighbouring State without provocation and with the sole purpose of
+plunder brought with them no moral blame. To carry the inhabitants of a
+conquered country into slavery; to slaughter the whole population of a
+besieged town; to destroy over vast tracts every town, village and
+house, and to put to death every prisoner, were among the ordinary
+incidents of war. These things were done without reproach in the best
+periods of Greek and Roman civilisation. In many cases neither age nor
+sex was spared![25] In Rome the conquered general was strangled or
+starved to death in the Mamertine prison. Tens of thousands of captives
+were condemned to perish in gladiatorial shows. Julius Caesar, whose
+clemency has been so greatly extolled, 'executed the whole senate of the
+Veneti; permitted a massacre of the Usipetes and Tencteri; sold as
+slaves 40,000 natives of Genabum; and cut off the right hands of all the
+brave men whose only crime was that they held to the last against him
+their town of Uxellodunum.'[26] No slaughter in history is more terrible
+than that which took place at Jerusalem under the general who was
+called 'the delight of the human race,' and when the last spasm of
+resistance had ceased, Titus sent Jewish captives, both male and female,
+by thousands to the provincial amphitheatres to be devoured by wild
+beasts or slaughtered as gladiators.
+
+Yet from a very early period lines were drawn forming a clear though
+somewhat arbitrary code of military morals. In Greece a broad
+distinction was made between wars with Greek States and with Barbarians,
+the latter being regarded as almost outside the pale of moral
+consideration. It is a distinction which in reality was not very widely
+different from that which Christian nations have in practice continually
+made between wars within the borders of Christendom, and wars with
+savage or pagan nations. Greek, and perhaps still more Roman, moralists
+have written much on the just causes of war. Many of them condemn all
+unjust, aggressive, or even unnecessary wars. Some of them insist on the
+duty of States always endeavouring by conferences, or even by
+arbitration, to avert war, and although these precepts, like the
+corresponding precepts of Christian divines, were often violated, they
+were certainly not without some influence on affairs. It is probably not
+too much to say that in this respect Roman wars do not compare
+unfavourably with those of Christian periods. It is remarkable how large
+a part of the best Christian works on the ethics of war is based on the
+precepts of pagan moralists, and although in antiquity as in modern
+times the real cause of war was often very different from the pretexts,
+the sense of justice in war was as clearly marked in Roman as in most
+Christian periods.[27]
+
+Great stress was laid upon the duty of a formal declaration of war
+preceding hostilities. Polybius mentions the reprobation that was
+attached in Greece to the AEtolians for having neglected this custom. It
+was universal in Roman times, and during the mediaeval period the custom
+of sending a challenge to the hostile power was carefully observed. In
+modern times formal declaration of war has fallen greatly into
+desuetude. The hostilities between England and Spain under Elizabeth,
+and the invasion of Germany by Gustavus Adolphus, were begun without any
+such declaration, and there have been numerous instances in later
+times.[28]
+
+The treatment of prisoners has been profoundly modified. Quarter, it is
+true, has been very often refused in modern wars to rebels, to soldiers
+in mutiny, to revolted slaves, to savages who themselves give no
+quarter. It has been often--perhaps generally--refused to irregular
+soldiers like the French Francs-tireurs in the War of 1870, who without
+uniforms endeavoured to defend their homes against invasion. It was long
+refused to soldiers who, having rejected terms of surrender, continued
+to defend an indefensible place, but this severity during the last three
+centuries has been generally condemned. But, on the whole, the treatment
+of the conquered soldier has steadily improved. At one time he was
+killed. At another he was preserved as a slave. Then he was permitted to
+free himself by payment of a ransom; now he is simply kept in custody
+till he is exchanged or released on parole, or till the termination of
+the war. In the latter half of the present century many elaborate and
+beneficent regulations for the preservation of hospitals and the good
+treatment of the wounded have been sanctioned by international
+agreement. The distinction between the civil population and combatants
+has been increasingly observed. As a general rule non-combatants, if
+they do not obstruct the enemy, are subjected to no further injury than
+that of paying war contributions and in other ways providing for the
+subsistence of the invaders. The wanton destruction of private property
+has been more and more avoided. Such an act as the devastation of the
+Palatinate under Louis XIV. would now in a European war be universally
+condemned, though the wholesale destruction of villages in our own
+Indian frontier wars and the methods employed on both sides in the civil
+war in Cuba appear to have borne much resemblance to it. In the
+treatment of merchants the rule of reciprocity which was laid down in
+Magna Charta is largely observed, and the Conference of Brussels in 1874
+pronounced it to be contrary to the laws of war to bombard an
+unfortified town. The great Civil War in America probably contributed
+not a little to raise the standard of humanity in war; for while few
+long wars have been fought with such determination or at the cost of so
+many lives, very few have been conducted with such a scrupulous
+abstinence from acts of wanton barbarity.
+
+Many restrictive rules also have been accepted tending in a small degree
+to mitigate the actual operations of war, and they have had some real
+influence in this direction, though it is not possible to justify the
+military code on any clear principle either of ethics or logic.
+Assassination and the encouragement of assassination; the use of poison
+or poisoned weapons; the violation of parole; the deceptive use of a
+flag of truce or of the red cross; the slaughter of the wounded; the
+infringement of terms of surrender or of other distinct agreements, are
+absolutely forbidden, and in 1868 the Representatives of the European
+Powers assembled at St. Petersburg agreed to abolish the use in war of
+explosive bullets below the weight of 14 ounces, and to forbid the
+propagation in an enemy's country of contagious disease as an instrument
+of war. It laid down the general principle that the object of war is
+confined to disabling the enemy, and that weapons calculated to inflict
+unnecessary suffering, beyond what is required for attaining that
+object, should be prohibited. At the same time explosive shells,
+concealed mines, torpedoes and ambuscades lie fully within the permitted
+agencies of war. Starvation may be employed, and the cutting off of the
+supply of water, or the destruction of that supply by mixing with it
+something not absolutely poisonous which renders it undrinkable. It is
+allowable to deceive an enemy by fabricated despatches purporting to
+come from his own side; by tampering with telegraph messages; by
+spreading false intelligence in newspapers; by sending pretended spies
+and deserters to give him untrue reports of the numbers or movements of
+the troops; by employing false signals to lure him into an ambuscade. On
+the use of the flag and uniform of an enemy for purposes of deception
+there has been some controversy, but it is supported by high military
+authority.[29] The use of spies is fully authorised, but the spy, if
+discovered, is excluded from the rights of war and liable to an
+ignominious death.
+
+Apart from the questions I have discussed there is another class of
+questions connected with war which present great difficulty. It is the
+right of men to abdicate their private judgment by entering into the
+military profession. In small nations this question is not of much
+importance, for in them wars are of very rare occurrence and are usually
+for self-defence. In a great empire it is wholly different. Hardly any
+one will be so confident of the virtue of his rulers as to believe that
+every war which his country wages in every part of its dominions, with
+uncivilised as well as civilised populations, is just and necessary, and
+it is certainly _prima facie_ not in accordance with an ideal morality
+that men should bind themselves absolutely for life or for a term of
+years to kill without question, at the command of their superiors, those
+who have personally done them no wrong. Yet this unquestioning obedience
+is the very essence of military discipline, and without it the
+efficiency of armies and the safety of nations would be hopelessly
+destroyed. It is necessary to the great interests of society, and
+therefore it is maintained, strengthened by the obligation of an oath
+and still more efficaciously by a code of honour which is one of the
+strongest binding influences by which men can be governed.
+
+It is not, however, altogether absolute, and a variety of distinctions
+and compromises have been made. There is a difference between the man
+who enlists in the army of his own country and a man who enlists in
+foreign service either permanently or for the duration of a single war.
+If a man unnecessarily takes an active part in a struggle between two
+countries other than his own, it may at least be demanded that he should
+be actuated, not by a mere spirit of adventure or personal ambition, but
+by a strong and reasoned conviction that the cause which he is
+supporting is a righteous one. The conduct of a man who enlists in a
+foreign army which may possibly be used against his own country, and who
+at least binds himself to obey absolutely chiefs who have no natural
+authority over him, has been much condemned, but even here special
+circumstances must be taken into account. Few persons I suppose would
+seriously blame the Irish Catholics of the eighteenth century who filled
+the armies of France, Austria, Spain and Naples at a time when
+disqualifying laws excluded them, on account of their religion, from the
+British army and from almost every path of ambition at home. There is
+also perhaps some distinction between the position of a soldier who is
+obliged to serve, and a soldier in a country where enlisting is
+voluntary, and also between the position of an officer who can throw up
+his commission without infringing the law, and a private who cannot
+abandon his flag without committing a grave legal offence. At the
+beginning of the war of the American Revolution some English officers
+left the army rather than serve in a cause which they believed to be
+unrighteous. It was in their full power to do so, but probably none of
+them would have desired that private soldiers who had no legal choice in
+the matter should have followed their example and become deserters from
+the ranks.
+
+There are, however, extreme cases in which the violation of the military
+oath and disobedience to military discipline are justified. More than
+once in French history an usurper or his agent has ordered soldiers to
+coerce or fire upon the representatives of the nation. In such cases it
+has been said 'the conscience of the soldier is the liberty of the
+people,' and the refusal of private soldiers to obey a plainly illegal
+order will be generally though not universally applauded. In all such
+cases, however, there is much obscurity and inconsistency of judgment.
+The rule that the moral responsibility falls exclusively on the person
+who gives the order, and that the private has no voice or
+responsibility, will even here be maintained by some. Ought a private
+soldier to have refused to take part in such an execution as that of the
+Duc d'Enghien, or in the _Coup d'Etat_ of Napoleon III.? Ought he to
+refuse to fire on a mob if he doubts the legality of the order of his
+superior officer? In such cases there is sometimes a direct conflict
+between the civil and the military law, and there have been instances in
+which a soldier might be punishable before the first for acts which were
+absolutely enforced by the second.[30]
+
+Perhaps the strongest case of justifiable disobedience that can be
+alleged is when a soldier is ordered to do something which involves
+apostasy from his faith, though even here it would be difficult to show,
+in the light of pure reason, that this is a graver thing than to kill
+innocent men in an unrighteous cause. In the Early Church there were
+some soldier martyrs who suffered death because they believed it
+inconsistent with their faith to bear arms, or because they were asked
+to do some acts which savoured of idolatry. The story of the Thebaean
+legion which was said to have been martyred under Diocletian rests on no
+trustworthy authority, but it illustrates the feeling of the Church on
+the subject. Josephus tells how Jewish soldiers refused in spite of all
+punishments to bring earth with the other soldiers for the reparation of
+the Temple of Belus at Babylon. Conflicts between military duty and
+religious duty must have not unfrequently arisen during the religious
+wars of the sixteenth century, and in our own century and in our own
+army there have been instances of soldiers refusing through religious
+motives to escort or protect idolatrous processions in India, or to
+present arms in Catholic countries when the Host was passing. Quaker
+opinions about war are absolutely inconsistent with the compulsory
+service which prevails in nearly all European countries, and religious
+scruples about conscription have been among the motives that have
+brought the Russian Raskolniks into collision with the civil power.
+
+One of the most serious instances of the collision of duties in our time
+is furnished by the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. From the days of Clive,
+Sepoy soldiers have served under the British flag with an admirable
+fidelity, and the Mutiny of Vellore in 1806, which was the one
+exception, was due, like that of 1857, to a belief that the British
+Government were interfering with their faith. Few things in the history
+of the great Mutiny are so touching as the profound belief of the
+English commanders of the Sepoy regiments in the unalterable loyalty of
+their soldiers. Many of them lost their lives through this belief,
+refusing even to the last moment and in spite of all evidence to abandon
+it. They were deceived, and, in the fierce outburst of indignation that
+followed, the conduct of the Sepoy soldiers was branded as the blackest
+and the most unprovoked treachery.
+
+Yet assuredly no charge was less true. Agitators for their own selfish
+purposes had indeed acted upon the troops, but recent researches have
+fully proved that the real as well as the ostensible cause of the Mutiny
+was the greased cartridges. It was believed that the cartridges which
+had been recently issued for the Sepoy regiments were smeared with a
+mixture of cow's fat and pig's fat, one of these ingredients being
+utterly impure in the eyes of the Hindoo, and the other in the eyes of
+the Mussulman. To bite these cartridges would destroy the caste of the
+Hindoo and carry with it the loss of everything that was most dear and
+most sacred to him both in this world and in the next. In the eyes both
+of the Moslem and the Hindoo it was the gravest and the most irreparable
+of crimes, destroying all hopes in a future world, and yet this crime,
+in their belief, was imposed upon them as a matter of military duty by
+their officers. It was as if the Puritan soldiers of the seventeenth
+century had been ordered by their commanders to abjure their hopes of
+salvation and to repudiate and insult the Christian faith.
+
+It is true that the existence of these obnoxious ingredients in the new
+cartridges was solemnly denied, but the sincerity of the Sepoy belief is
+incontestable, and General Anson, the commander-in-chief, having
+examined the cartridges, was compelled to admit that it was very
+plausible.[31] 'I am not so much surprised,' he wrote to Lord Canning,
+'at their objections to the cartridges, having seen them. I had no idea
+they contained, or rather are smeared with such a quantity of grease,
+which looks exactly like fat. After ramming down the ball, the muzzle of
+the musket is covered with it.'
+
+Unfortunately this is not a complete statement of the case. It is a
+shameful and terrible truth that, as far as the fact was concerned, the
+Sepoys were perfectly right in their belief. In the words of Lord
+Roberts, 'The recent researches of Mr. Forrest in the records of the
+Government of India prove that the lubricating mixture used in preparing
+the cartridges was actually composed of the objectionable ingredients,
+cow's fat and lard, and that incredible disregard of the soldiers'
+religious prejudices was displayed in the manufacture of these
+cartridges.'[32] This was certainly not due, as the Sepoys imagined, to
+any desire on the part of the British authorities to destroy caste or to
+prepare the way for the conversion of the Sepoys to Christianity. It was
+simply a glaring instance of the indifference, ignorance and incapacity
+too often shown by British administrators in dealing with beliefs and
+types of character wholly unlike their own. They were unable to realise
+that a belief which seemed to them so childish could have any depth, and
+they accordingly produced a Mutiny that for a time shook the English
+power in India to its very foundation.
+
+The horrors of Cawnpore--which were due to a single man--soon took away
+from the British public all power of sanely judging the conflict, and a
+struggle in which no quarter was given was naturally marked by extreme
+savageness; but in looking back upon it, English writers must
+acknowledge with humiliation that, if mutiny is ever justifiable, no
+stronger justification could be given than that of the Sepoy troops.
+
+Many of my readers will remember an exquisite little poem called 'The
+Forced Recruit,' in which Mrs. Browning has described a young Venetian
+soldier who was forced by the conscription to serve against his
+fellow-countrymen in the Austrian army at Solferino, and who advanced
+cheerfully to die by the Italian guns, holding a musket that had never
+been loaded in his hand. Such a figure, such a violation of military
+law, will claim the sympathy of all, but a very different judgment
+should be passed upon those who, having voluntarily entered an army,
+betray their trust and their oath in the name of patriotism. In the
+Fenian movement in Ireland, one of the chief objects of the conspirators
+was to corrupt the Irish soldiers and break down that high sense of
+military honour for which in all times and in many armies the Irish
+people have been conspicuous. 'The epidemic' [of disaffection], boasts
+a writer who was much mixed in the conspiracies of those times, 'was not
+an affair of individuals, but of companies and of whole regiments. To
+attempt to impeach all the military Fenians before courts martial would
+have been to throw England into a panic, if not to precipitate an
+appalling mutiny and invite foreign invasion.'[33]
+
+I do not quote these words as a true statement. They are, I believe, a
+gross exaggeration and a gross calumny on the Irish soldiers, nor do I
+doubt that most, if not all, the soldiers who may have been induced over
+a glass of whiskey, or through the persuasions of some cunning agitator,
+to take the Fenian oath would, if an actual conflict had arisen, have
+proved perfectly faithful soldiers of the Queen. The perversion of
+morals, however, which looks on such violations of military duty as
+praiseworthy, has not been confined to writers of the stamp of Mr.
+O'Brien. A striking instance of it is furnished by a recent American
+biography. Among the early Fenian conspirators was a young man named
+John Boyle O'Reilly. He was a genuine enthusiast, with a real vein of
+literary talent; in the closing years of his life he won the affection
+and admiration of very honourable men, and I should certainly have no
+wish to look too harshly on youthful errors which were the result of a
+misguided enthusiasm if they had been acknowledged as such. As a matter
+of fact, however, he began his career by an act which, according to
+every sound principle of morality, religion, and secular honour, was in
+the highest degree culpable. Being a sworn Fenian, he entered a regiment
+of hussars, assumed the uniform of the Queen, and took the oath of
+allegiance for the express purpose of betraying his trust and seducing
+the soldiers of his regiment. He was detected and condemned to penal
+servitude, and he at last escaped to America, where he took an active
+part in the Fenian movement. After his death his biography was written
+in a strain of unqualified eulogy, but the biographer has honestly and
+fully disclosed the facts which I have related. This book has an
+introduction written by Cardinal Gibbons, one of the most prominent
+Catholic divines in the United States. The reader may be curious to see
+how the act of aggravated treachery and perjury which it revealed was
+judged by a personage who occupies all but the highest position in a
+Church which professes to be the supreme and inspired teacher of morals.
+Not a word in this Introduction implies that O'Reilly had done any act
+for which he should be ashamed. He is described as 'a great and good
+man,' and the only allusion to his crime is in the following terms: 'In
+youth his heart agonises over that saddest and strangest romance in all
+history--the wrongs and woes of his motherland--that Niobe of the
+Nations. In manhood, because he dared to wish her free, he finds himself
+a doomed felon, an exiled convict, in what he calls himself the Nether
+World.... The Divine faith implanted in his soul in childhood flourished
+there undyingly, pervaded his whole being with its blessed influences,
+furnished his noblest ideals of thought and conduct.... The country of
+his adoption vies with the land of his birth in testifying to the
+uprightness of his life.... With all these voices I blend my own, and in
+their name I say that the world is brighter for having possessed
+him.'[34]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] Newman's _Anglican Difficulties_, p. 190.
+
+[25] See Grotius, _de Jure_, book iii. ch. iv. On the Jewish notions on
+this subject, see Deut. ii. 34; vii. 2, 16; xx. 10-16; Psalm cxxxvii. 9;
+1 Sam. xv. 3. I have collected some additional facts on this subject in
+my _History of European Morals_.
+
+[26] Tyrrell and Purser's _Correspondence of Cicero_, vol. v. p. xlvii.
+
+[27] See Grotius, _de Jure Belli et Pacis_.
+
+[28] Much information on this subject will be found in a remarkable
+pamphlet (said to have been corrected by Pitt) called 'An Enquiry into
+the Manner in which the different wars in Europe have commenced during
+the last two centuries, by the Author of the History and Foundation of
+the Law of Nations in Europe' (1805).
+
+[29] See Tovey's _Martial Law and the Custom of War_, part 2, pp. 13,
+29. A striking instance of the deceptive use of a flag occurred in 1781,
+when the English, having captured St. Eustatius from the Dutch, allowed
+the Dutch flag still to float over its harbour in order that Dutch,
+French, Spanish and American ships which were ignorant of the capture
+might be decoyed into the harbour and seized as prizes. Some writers on
+military law maintain that this was within the rights of war.
+
+[30] See Fitzjames Stephen's _History of the Criminal Law_, i. 205.
+
+[31] Lord Roberts' _Forty-one Years in India_, i. 94.
+
+[32] _Ibid._ p. 431.
+
+[33] _Contemporary Review_, May 1897. Article by William O'Brien, 'Was
+Fenianism ever Formidable?'
+
+[34] Roche's _Life of John Boyle O'Reilly_, with introduction by
+Cardinal Gibbons. Since the publication of this book Cardinal Gibbons
+has written a letter to the _Tablet_ (Dec. 2, 1899), in which he says:
+'I feel it due to myself and the interests of truth to declare that till
+I read Mr. Lecky's criticism I did not know that Mr. O'Reilly had ever
+been a Fenian or a British soldier, or that he had tried to seduce other
+soldiers from their allegiance. In fact, up to this moment, I have never
+read a line of the biography for which I wrote the introduction.... My
+only acquaintance with Mr. O'Reilly's history before he came to America
+was the vague information I had that, for some political offence, the
+exact nature of which I did not learn, he had been exiled from his
+native land to a penal colony, from which he afterwards escaped.'
+
+I gladly accept this assurance of Cardinal Gibbons, though I am
+surprised that he should not have even glanced at the book which he
+introduced, and that he should have been absolutely ignorant of the most
+conspicuous event of the life which, from early youth, he held up to
+unqualified admiration. I regret, too, that he has not taken the
+opportunity of this letter to reprobate a form of moral perversion which
+is widely spread among his Irish co-religionists, and which his own
+words are only too likely to strengthen. It is but a short time since an
+Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament, being accused of once having
+served the Queen as a Volunteer, justified himself by saying that he had
+only worn the coat which was worn by Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Boyle
+O'Reilly; while another Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament, at a
+public meeting in Dublin, and amid the cheers of his audience, expressed
+his hope that in the South African war the Irish soldiers under the
+British flag would fire on the English instead of on the Boers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The foregoing chapter will have shown sufficiently how largely in one
+great and necessary profession the element of moral compromise must
+enter, and will show the nature of some of the moral difficulties that
+attend it. We find illustrations of much the same kind in the profession
+of an advocate. In the interests of the proper administration of justice
+it is of the utmost importance that every cause, however defective, and
+every criminal, however bad, should be fully defended, and it is
+therefore indispensable that there should be a class of men entrusted
+with this duty. It is the business of the judge and of the jury to
+decide on the merits of the case, but in order that they should
+discharge this function it is necessary that the arguments on both sides
+should be laid before them in the strongest form. The clear interest of
+society requires this, and a standard of professional honour and
+etiquette is formed for the purpose of regulating the action of the
+advocate. Misstatements of facts or of law; misquotations of documents;
+strong expressions of personal opinion, and some other devices by which
+verdicts may be won, are condemned; there are cases which an honourable
+lawyer will not adopt, and there are rare cases in which, in the course
+of a trial, he will find it his duty to throw up his brief.
+
+But necessary and honourable as the profession may be, there are sides
+of it which are far from being in accordance with an austere code of
+ideal morals. It is idle to suppose that a master of the art of advocacy
+will merely confine himself to a calm, dispassionate statement of the
+facts and arguments of his side. He will inevitably use all his powers
+of rhetoric and persuasion to make the cause for which he holds a brief
+appear true, though he knows it to be false; he will affect a warmth
+which he does not feel and a conviction which he does not hold; he will
+skilfully avail himself of any mistake or omission of his opponent; of
+any technical rule that can exclude damaging evidence; of all the
+resources that legal subtlety and severe cross-examination can furnish
+to confuse dangerous issues, to obscure or minimise inconvenient facts,
+to discredit hostile witnesses. He will appeal to every prejudice that
+can help his cause; he will for the time so completely identify himself
+with it that he will make its success his supreme and all-absorbing
+object; and he will hardly fail to feel some thrill of triumph if by the
+force of ingenious and eloquent pleading he has saved the guilty from
+his punishment or snatched a verdict in defiance of evidence.
+
+It is not surprising that a profession which inevitably leads to such
+things should have excited scruples among many good men. Swift very
+roughly described lawyers as 'a society of men bred from their youth in
+the art of proving by words, multiplied for the purpose, that white is
+black and black is white, according as they are paid.' Dr. Arnold has
+more than once expressed his dislike, and indeed abhorrence, of the
+profession of an advocate. It inevitably, he maintained, leads to moral
+perversion, involving, as it does, the indiscriminate defence of right
+and wrong, and in many cases the knowing suppression of truth. Macaulay,
+who can hardly be regarded as addicted to the refinements of an
+over-fastidious morality, reviewing the professional rules that are
+recognised in England, asks 'whether it be right that not merely
+believing, but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can
+be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant
+exclamation, by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest
+witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement
+false.' Bentham denounced in even stronger language the habitual method
+of 'the hireling lawyer' in cross-examining an honest but adverse
+witness, and he declared that there is a code of morality current in
+Westminster Hall generically different from the code of ordinary life,
+and directly calculated to destroy the love of veracity and justice. On
+the other hand, Paley recognised among falsehoods that are not lies
+because they deceive no one, the statement of 'an advocate asserting the
+justice or his belief of the justice of his client's cause.' Dr.
+Johnson, in reply to some objections of Boswell, argues at length, but,
+I think, with some sophistry, in favour of the profession. 'You are
+not,' he says, 'to deceive your client with false representations of
+your opinion. You are not to tell lies to the judge, but you need have
+no scruple about taking up a case which you believe to be bad, or
+affecting a warmth which you do not feel. You do not know your cause to
+be bad till the judge determines it.... An argument which does not
+convince yourself may convince the judge, and, if it does convince him,
+you are wrong and he is right.... Everybody knows you are paid for
+affecting warmth for your client, and it is therefore properly no
+dissimulation.' Basil Montagu, in an excellent treatise on the subject,
+urges that an advocate is simply an officer assisting in the
+administration of justice under the impression that truth is best
+elicited, and that difficulties are most effectually disentangled, by
+the opposite statements of able men. He is an indispensable part of a
+machine which in its net result is acting in the real interests of
+truth, although he 'may profess feelings which he does not feel and may
+support a cause which he knows to be wrong,' and although his advocacy
+is 'a species of acting without an avowal that it is acting.'
+
+It is, of course, possible to adopt the principles of the Quaker and to
+condemn as unchristian all participation in the law courts, and although
+the Catholic Church has never adopted this extreme, it seems to have
+instinctively recognised some incompatibility between the profession of
+an advocate and the saintly character. Renan notices the significant
+fact that St. Yves, a saint of Brittany, appears to be the only advocate
+who has found a place in its hagiology, and the worshippers were
+accustomed to sing on his festival 'Advocatus et non latro--Res miranda
+populo.' It is indeed evident that a good deal of moral compromise must
+enter into this field, and the standards of right and wrong that have
+been adopted have varied greatly. How far, for example, may a lawyer
+support a cause which he believes to be wrong? In some ancient
+legislations advocates were compelled to swear that they would not
+defend causes which they thought or discovered to be unjust.[35] St.
+Thomas Aquinas has laid down in emphatic terms that any lawyer who
+undertakes the defence of an unjust cause is committing a grievous sin.
+It is unlawful, he contends, to co-operate with any one who is doing
+wrong, and an advocate clearly counsels and assists him whose cause he
+undertakes. Modern Catholic casuists have dealt with the subject in the
+same spirit. They admit, indeed, that an advocate may undertake the
+defence of a criminal whom he knows to be guilty, in order to bring to
+light all extenuating circumstances, but they contend that no advocate
+should undertake a civil cause unless by a previous and careful
+examination he has convinced himself that it is a just one; that no
+advocate can without sin undertake a cause which he knows or strongly
+believes to be unjust; that if he has done so he is himself bound in
+conscience to make restitution to the party that has been injured by his
+advocacy; that if in the course of a trial he discovers that a cause
+which he had believed to be just is unjust he must try to persuade his
+client to desist, and if he fails in this must himself abandon the
+cause, though without informing the opposite party of the conclusion at
+which he had arrived; that in conducting his case he must abstain from
+wounding the reputation of his neighbour or endeavouring to influence
+the judges by bringing before them misdeeds of his opponent which are
+not connected with and are not essential to the case.[36] As lately as
+1886 an order was issued from Rome, with the express approbation of the
+Pope, forbidding any Catholic, mayor or judge, to take part in a
+divorce case, as divorce is absolutely condemned by the Church.[37]
+
+There have been, and perhaps still are, instances of lawyers
+endeavouring to limit their practice to cases which they believed to be
+just. Sir Matthew Hale is a conspicuous example, but he acknowledged
+that he considerably relaxed his rule on the subject, having found in
+two instances that cases which at the first blush seemed very worthless
+were in truth well founded. As a general rule English lawyers make no
+discrimination on this ground in accepting briefs unless the injustice
+is very flagrant, nor will they, except in very extreme cases, do their
+client the great injury of throwing up a brief which they have once
+accepted. They contend that by acting in this way the administration of
+justice in the long run is best served, and in this fact they find its
+justification.
+
+In the conduct of a case there are rules analogous to those which
+distinguish between honourable and dishonourable war, but they are less
+clearly defined and less universally accepted. In criminal prosecutions
+a remarkable though very explicable distinction is drawn between the
+prosecutor and the defender. It is the etiquette of the profession that
+the former is bound to aim only at truth, neither straining any point
+against the prisoner nor keeping back any fact which is favourable to
+him, nor using any argument which he does not himself believe to be
+just. The defender, however, is not bound, according to professional
+etiquette, by such rules. He may use arguments which he knows to be
+bad, conceal or shut out by technical objections facts that will tell
+against his clients, and, subject to some wide and vague restrictions,
+he must make the acquittal of his client his first object.[38]
+
+Sometimes cases of extreme difficulty arise. Probably the best known is
+the case of Courvoisier, the Swiss valet, who murdered Lord William
+Russell in 1840. In the course of the trial Courvoisier informed his
+advocate, Phillips, that he was guilty of the murder, but at the same
+time directed Phillips to continue to defend him to the last extremity.
+As there was overwhelming evidence that the murder must have been
+committed by some one who slept in the house, the only possible defence
+was that an equal amount of suspicion attached to the housemaid and cook
+who were its other occupants. On the first day of the trial, before he
+knew the guilt of his client from his own lips, Phillips had
+cross-examined the housemaid, who first discovered the murder, with
+great severity and with the evident object of throwing suspicion upon
+her. What course ought he now to pursue? It happened that an eminent
+judge was sitting on the bench with the judge who was to try the case,
+and Phillips took this judge into his confidence, stated privately to
+him the facts that had arisen, and asked for his advice. The judge
+declared that Phillips was bound to continue to defend the prisoner,
+whose case would have been hopeless if his own counsel abandoned him,
+and in defending him he was bound to use all fair arguments arising out
+of the evidence. The speech of Phillips was a masterpiece of eloquence
+under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty. Much of it was devoted
+to impugning the veracity of the witnesses for the prosecution. He
+solemnly declared that it was not his business to say who committed the
+murder, and that he had no desire to throw any imputation on the other
+servants in the house, and he abstained scrupulously from giving any
+personal opinion on the matter; but the drift of his argument was that
+Courvoisier was the victim of a conspiracy, the police having concealed
+compromising articles among his clothes, and that there was no clear
+circumstance distinguishing the suspicion against him from that against
+the other servants.[39]
+
+The conduct of Phillips in this case has, I believe, been justified by
+the preponderance of professional opinion, though when the facts were
+known public opinion outside the profession generally condemned it. Some
+lawyers have pushed the duty of defence to a point which has aroused
+much protest even in their own profession. 'The Advocate,' said Lord
+Brougham in his great speech before the House of Lords in defence of
+Queen Caroline, 'by the sacred duty which he owes his client, knows in
+the discharge of that office but one person in the world--that client
+and none other. To save that client by all expedient means, to protect
+that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to
+himself, is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must
+not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction which
+he may bring upon any other. Nay, separating even the duties of a
+patriot from those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, to the
+wind, he must go on, reckless of consequences, if his fate it should
+unhappily be to involve his country in confusion for his client's
+protection.'
+
+This doctrine has been emphatically repudiated by some eminent English
+lawyers, but both in practice and theory the profession have differed
+widely in different courts, times and countries. How far, for example,
+is it permissible in cross-examination to browbeat or confuse an honest
+but timid and unskilful witness; to attempt to discredit the evidence of
+a witness on a plain matter of fact about which he had no interest in
+concealment by exhuming against him some moral scandal of early youth
+which was totally unconnected with the subject of the trial; or, by
+pursuing such a line of cross-examination, to keep out of the
+witness-box material witnesses who are conscious that their past lives
+are not beyond reproach? How far is it right or permissible to press
+legal technicalities as opposed to substantial justice? Probably most
+lawyers, if they are perfectly candid, will agree that these things are
+in some measure inevitable in their profession, and that the real
+question is one of degree, and therefore not susceptible of positive
+definition. There is a kind of mind that grows so enamoured with the
+subtleties and technicalities of the law that it delights in the
+unexpected and unintended results to which they may lead. I have heard
+an English judge say of another long deceased that he had through this
+feeling a positive pleasure in injustice, and one lawyer, not of this
+country, once confessed to me the amusement he derived from breaking the
+convictions of criminals in his state by discovering technical flaws in
+their indictments. There is a class of mind that delights in such cases
+as that of the legal document which was invalidated because the letters
+A.D. were put before the date instead of the formula 'in the year of Our
+Lord,' or that of a swindler who was suffered to escape with his booty
+because, in the writ that was issued for his arrest, by a copyist's
+error the word 'sheriff' was written instead of 'sheriffs,' or that of a
+lady who was deprived of an estate of L14,000 a year because by a mere
+mistake of the conveyancer one material word was omitted from the will,
+although the clearest possible evidence was offered showing the wishes
+of the testator.[40] Such lawyers argue that in will cases 'the true
+question is not what the testator intended to do, but what is the
+meaning of the words of the will,' and that the balance of advantages is
+in favour of a strict adherence to the construction of the sentence and
+the technicalities of the law, even though in particular cases it may
+lead to grave injustice.
+
+It must indeed be acknowledged that up to a period extending far into
+the nineteenth century those lawyers who adopted the most technical view
+of their profession were acting fully in accordance with its spirit.
+Few, if any, departments of English legislation and administration were
+till near the middle of this century so scandalously bad as those
+connected with the administration of the civil and the criminal law, and
+especially with the Court of Chancery. The whole field was covered with
+a network of obscure, intricate, archaic technicalities; useless except
+for the purpose of piling up costs, procrastinating decisions, placing
+the simplest legal processes wholly beyond the competence of any but
+trained experts, giving endless facilities for fraud and for the evasion
+or defeat of justice, turning a law case into a game in which chance and
+skill had often vastly greater influence than substantial merits. Lord
+Brougham probably in no degree exaggerated when he described great
+portions of the English law as 'a two-edged sword in the hands of craft
+and of oppression,' and a great authority on chancery law declared in
+1839 that 'no man, as things now stand, can enter into a chancery suit
+with any reasonable hope of being alive at its termination if he has a
+determined adversary.'[41]
+
+The moral difficulties of administering such a system were very great,
+and in many cases English juries, in dealing with it, adopted a rough
+and ready code of morals of their own. Though they had sworn to decide
+every case according to the law as it was stated to them, and according
+to the evidence that was laid before them, they frequently refused to
+follow legal technicalities which would lead to substantial injustice,
+and they still more frequently refused to bring in verdicts according to
+evidence when by doing so they would consign a prisoner to a savage,
+excessive, or unjust punishment. Some of the worst abuses of the English
+law were mitigated by the perjuries of juries who refused to put them in
+force.
+
+The great legal reforms of the past half-century have removed most of
+these abuses, and have at the same time introduced a wider and juster
+spirit into the practical administration of the law. Yet even now
+different judges sometimes differ widely in the importance they attach
+to substantial justice and to legal technicalities; and even now one of
+the advantages of trial by jury is that it brings the masculine common
+sense and the unsophisticated sense of justice of unprofessional men
+into fields that would otherwise be often distorted by ingenious
+subtleties. It is, however, far less in the position of the judge than
+in the position of an advocate that the most difficult moral questions
+of the legal profession arise. The difference between an unscrupulous
+advocate and an advocate who is governed by a high sense of honour and
+morality is very manifest, but at best there must be many things in the
+profession from which a very sensitive conscience would recoil, and
+things must be said and done which can hardly be justified except on the
+ground that the existence of this profession and the prescribed methods
+of its action are in the long run indispensable to the honest
+administration of justice.
+
+The same method of reasoning applies to other great departments of
+life. In politics it is especially needed. In free countries party
+government is the best if not the only way of conducting public affairs,
+but it is impossible to conduct it without a large amount of moral
+compromise; without a frequent surrender of private judgment and will. A
+good man will choose his party through disinterested motives, and with a
+firm and honest conviction that it represents the cast of policy most
+beneficial to the country. He will on grave occasions assert his
+independence of party, but in the large majority of cases he must act
+with his party even if they are pursuing courses in some degree contrary
+to his own judgment.
+
+Every one who is actively engaged in politics--every one especially who
+is a member of the House of Commons--must soon learn that if the
+absolute independence of individual judgment were pushed to its extreme,
+political anarchy would ensue. The complete concurrence of a large
+number of independent judgments in a complicated measure is impossible.
+If party government is to be carried on, there must be, both in the
+Cabinet and in Parliament, perpetual compromise. The first condition of
+its success is that the Government should have a stable, permanent,
+disciplined support behind it, and in order that this should be attained
+the individual member must in most cases vote with his party. Sometimes
+he must support a measure which he knows to be bad, because its
+rejection would involve a change of government which he believes would
+be a still greater evil than its acceptance, and in order to prevent
+this evil he may have to vote a direct negative to some resolution
+containing a statement which he believes to be true. At the same time,
+if he is an honest man, he will not be a mere slave of party. Sometimes
+a question arises which he considers so supremely important that he will
+break away from his party and endeavour at all hazards to carry or to
+defeat it. Much more frequently he will either abstain from voting, or
+will vote against the Government on a particular question, but only when
+he knows that by taking this course he is simply making a protest which
+will produce no serious political complication. On most great measures
+there is a dissentient minority in the Government party, and it often
+exercises a most useful influence in representing independent opinion,
+and bringing into the measure modifications and compromises which allay
+opposition, gratify minorities, and soften differences. But the action
+of that party will be governed by many motives other than a simple
+consideration of the merits of the case. It is not sufficient to say
+that they must vote for every resolution which they believe to be true,
+for every bill or clause of a bill which they believe to be right, and
+must vote against every bill or clause or resolution about which they
+form an opposite judgment. Sometimes they will try in private to prevent
+the introduction of a measure, but when it is introduced they will feel
+it their duty either positively to support it or at least to abstain
+from protesting against it. Sometimes they will either vote against it
+or abstain from voting at all, but only when the majority is so large
+that it is sure to be carried. Sometimes their conduct will be the
+result of a bargain--they will vote for one portion of a bill of which
+they disapprove because they have obtained from the Government a
+concession on another which they think more important. The nature of
+their opposition will depend largely upon the strength or weakness of
+the Government, upon the size of the majority, upon the degree in which
+a change of ministry would affect the general policy of the country,
+upon the probability of the measure they object to being finally
+extinguished, or returning in another year either in an improved or in a
+more dangerous form. Questions of proportion and degree and ulterior
+consequences will continually sway them. Measures are often opposed, not
+on their own intrinsic merits, but on account of precedents they might
+establish; of other measures which might grow out of them or be
+justified by them.
+
+Not unfrequently it happens that a section of the dominant party is
+profoundly discontented with the policy of the Government on some
+question which they deem of great importance. They find themselves
+incapable of offering any direct and successful opposition, but their
+discontent will show itself on some other Government measure on which
+votes are more evenly divided. Possibly they may oppose that measure.
+More probably they will fail to attend regularly at the divisions, or
+will exercise their independent judgments on its clauses in a manner
+they would not have done if their party allegiance had been unshaken.
+And this conduct is not mere revenge. It is a method of putting pressure
+on the Government in order to obtain concessions on matters which they
+deem of paramount importance. In the same way they will seek to gain
+supporters by political alliances. Few things in parliamentary
+government are more dangerous or more apt to lead to corruption than
+the bargains which the Americans call log-rolling; but it is inevitable
+that a member who has received from a colleague, or perhaps from an
+opponent, assistance on a question which he believes to be of the
+highest importance, will be disposed to return that assistance in some
+case in which his own feelings and opinions are not strongly enlisted.
+
+Then, too, we have to consider the great place which obstruction plays
+in parliamentary government. It constantly happens that a measure to
+which scarcely any one objects is debated at inordinate length for no
+other reason than to prevent a measure which is much objected to from
+being discussed. Measures may be opposed by hostile votes, but they are
+often much more efficaciously opposed by calculated delays, by
+multiplied amendments or speeches, by some of the many devices that can
+be employed to clog the legislative machine. There are large classes of
+measures on which governments or parliaments think it desirable to give
+no opinion, or at least no immediate opinion, though they cannot prevent
+their introduction, and many methods are employed with the real, though
+not avowed and ostensible object of preventing a vote or even a
+ministerial declaration upon them. Sometimes Parliament is quite ready
+to acknowledge the abstract justice of a proposal, but does not think it
+ripe for legislation. In such cases the second reading of the bill will
+probably be accepted, but, to the indignation and astonishment of its
+supporters outside the House, it will be obstructed, delayed or defeated
+in committee with the acquiescence, or connivance, or even actual
+assistance of some of those who had voted for it. Some measures in the
+eyes of some members involve questions of principle so sacred that they
+will admit of no compromise of expediency, but most measures are deemed
+open to compromise and are accepted, rejected, or modified under some of
+the many motives I have described.
+
+All this curious and indispensable mechanism of party government is
+compatible with a high and genuine sense of public duty, and unless such
+a sense at the last resort dominates over all other considerations,
+political life will inevitably decline. At the same time it is obvious
+that many things have to be done from which a very rigid and austere
+nature would recoil. To support a Government when he believes it to be
+wrong, or to oppose a measure which he believes to be right; to connive
+at evasions which are mere pretexts, and at delays which rest upon
+grounds that are not openly avowed,--is sometimes, and indeed not
+unfrequently, a parliamentary duty. A member of Parliament must often
+feel himself in the position of a private in an army, or a player in a
+game, or an advocate in a law case. On many questions each party
+represents and defends the special interests of some particular classes
+in the country. When there are two plausible alternative courses to be
+pursued which divide public opinion, the Opposition is almost bound by
+its position to enforce the merits of the course opposed to that adopted
+by the Government. In theory nothing could seem more absurd than a
+system of government in which, as it has been said, the ablest men in
+Parliament are divided into two classes, one side being charged with the
+duty of carrying on the government and the other with that of
+obstructing and opposing them in their task, and in which, on a vast
+multitude of unconnected questions, these two great bodies of very
+competent men, with the same facts and arguments before them, habitually
+go into opposite lobbies. In practice, however, parliamentary government
+by great parties, in countries where it is fully understood and
+practised, is found to be admirably efficacious in representing every
+variety of political opinion; in securing a constant supervision and
+criticism of men and measures; and in forming a safety valve through
+which the dangerous humours of society can expand without evil to the
+community.
+
+This, however, is only accomplished by constant compromises which are
+seldom successfully carried out without a long national experience.
+Party must exist. It must be maintained as an essential condition of
+good government, but it must be subordinated to the public interests,
+and in the public interests it must be in many cases suspended. There
+are subjects which cannot be introduced without the gravest danger into
+the arena of party controversy. Indian politics are a conspicuous
+example, and, although foreign policy cannot be kept wholly outside it,
+the dangers connected with its party treatment are extremely great. Many
+measures of a different kind are conducted with the concurrence of the
+two front benches. A cordial union on large classes of questions between
+the heads of the rival parties is one of the first conditions of
+successful parliamentary government. The Opposition leader must have a
+voice in the conduct of business, on the questions that should be
+brought forward, and on the questions that it is for the public interest
+to keep back. He is the official leader of systematic, organised
+opposition to the Government, yet he is on a large number of questions
+their most powerful ally. He must frequently have confidential relations
+with them, and one of his most useful functions is to prevent sections
+of his party from endeavouring to snatch party advantages by courses
+which might endanger public interests. If the country is to be well
+governed there must be a large amount of continuity in its policy;
+certain conditions and principles of administration must be inflexibly
+maintained, and in great national emergencies all parties must unite.
+
+In questions which lie at the heart of party politics, also some amount
+of compromise is usually effected. Debate not only elicits opinions but
+also suggests alternatives and compromises, and very few measures are
+carried by a majority which do not bear clear traces of the action of
+the minority. The line is constantly deflected now on one side and now
+on the other, and (usually without much regard to logical consistency)
+various and opposing sentiments are in some measure gratified. If the
+lines of party are drawn with an inflexible rigidity; and if the
+majority insist on the full exercise of their powers, parliamentary
+government may become a despotism as crushing as the worst autocracy--a
+despotism which is perhaps even more dangerous as the sense of
+responsibility is diminished by being divided. If, on the other hand,
+the latitude conceded to individual opinion is excessive, Parliament
+inevitably breaks into groups, and parliamentary government loses much
+of its virtue. When coalitions of minorities can at any time overthrow a
+ministry, the whole force of Government is lost. The temptation to
+corrupt bargains with particular sections is enormously increased, and
+the declining control of the two front benches will be speedily followed
+by a diminished sense of responsibility, and by the increased influence
+of violent, eccentric, exaggerated opinions. It is of the utmost moment
+that the policy of an Opposition should be guided by its most important
+men, and especially by men who have had the experience and the
+responsibility of office, and who know that they may have that
+responsibility again. But the healthy latitude of individual opinion and
+expression in a party is like most of those things we are now
+considering, a question of degree, and not susceptible of clear and
+sharp definition.
+
+Other questions of a somewhat different nature, but involving grave
+moral considerations, arise out of the relations between a member and
+his constituents. In the days when small boroughs were openly bought in
+the market, this was sometimes defended on the ground of the complete
+independence of judgment which it gave to the purchasing member. Romilly
+and Henry Flood are said to have both purchased their seats with the
+express object of securing such independence. In the political
+philosophy of Burke, no doctrine is more emphatically enforced than that
+a member of Parliament is a representative but not a delegate; that he
+owes to his constituents not only his time and his services, but also
+the exercise of his independent and unfettered judgment; that, while
+reflecting the general cast of their politics, he must never suffer
+himself to be reduced to a mere mouthpiece, or accept binding
+instructions prescribing on each particular measure the course he may
+pursue; that after his election he must consider himself a member of an
+Imperial Parliament rather than the representative of a particular
+locality, and must subordinate local and special interests to the wider
+and more general interests of the whole nation.
+
+The conditions of modern political life have greatly narrowed this
+liberty of judgment. In most constituencies a member can only enter
+Parliament fettered by many pledges relating to specific measures, and
+in every turn of policy sections of his constituents will attempt to
+dictate his course of action. Certain large and general pledges
+naturally and properly precede his election. He is chosen as a supporter
+or opponent of the Government; he avows himself an adherent of certain
+broad lines of policy, and he also represents in a special degree the
+interests and the distinctive type of opinion of the class or industry
+which is dominant in his constituency. But even at the time of election
+he often finds that on some particular question in which his electors
+are much interested he differs from them, though they consent, in spite
+of it, to elect him; and, in the course of a long Parliament, others are
+very apt unexpectedly to arise. Political changes take place which bring
+into the foreground matters which at the time of the election seemed
+very remote, or produce new questions, or give rise to unforeseen party
+combinations, developments, and tendencies. It will often happen that on
+these occasions a member will think differently from the majority of his
+electors, and he must meet the question how far he must sacrifice his
+judgment to theirs, and how far he may use the influence which their
+votes have given him to act in opposition to their wishes and perhaps
+even to their interests. Burke, for example, found himself in this
+position when, being member for Bristol, he considered it his duty to
+support the concession of Free-trade to Ireland, although his
+constituents had, or thought they had, a strong interest in commercial
+restrictions and monopoly. In our own day it has happened that members
+representing manufacturing districts of Lancashire have found themselves
+unexpectedly called upon to vote upon some measure for crippling or
+extending rival manufactures in India; for opening new markets by some
+very dubious aggression in a distant land; or for limiting the child
+labour employed in the local manufacture; and these members have often
+believed that the right course was a course which was exceedingly
+repugnant to great sections of their electors.
+
+Sometimes, too, a member is elected on purely secular issues, but in the
+course of the Parliament one of those fierce, sudden storms of religious
+sentiment, to which England is occasionally liable, sweeps over the
+land, and he finds himself wholly out of sympathy with a great portion
+of his constituency. In other cases the party which he entered
+Parliament to support, pursues, on some grave question, a line of policy
+which he believes to be seriously wrong, and he goes into partial or
+even complete and bitter opposition. Differences of this kind have
+frequently arisen when there is no question of any interested motive
+having influenced the member. Sometimes in such cases he has resigned
+his seat and gone to his electors for re-election. In other cases he
+remains in Parliament till the next election. Each case, however, must
+be left to individual judgment, and no clear, definite, unwavering moral
+line can be drawn. The member will consider the magnitude of the
+disputed question, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of those whom he
+represents; its permanent or transitory character, the amount and
+importance of the majority opposed to his views, the length of time that
+is likely to elapse before a dissolution will bring him face to face
+with his constituents. In matters which he does not consider very urgent
+or important, he will probably sacrifice his own judgment to that of his
+electors, at least so far as to abstain from voting or from pressing his
+own views. In graver matters it is his duty boldly to face unpopularity,
+or perhaps even take the extreme step of resigning his seat.
+
+The cases in which a member of Parliament finds it his duty to support a
+measure which he believes to be positively bad, on the ground that
+greater evils would follow its rejection, are happily not very numerous.
+He can extricate himself from many moral difficulties by sometimes
+abstaining from voting or from the expression of his real opinions, and
+most measures are of a composite character in which good and evil
+elements combine, and may in some degree be separated. In such measures
+it is often possible to accept the general principle while opposing
+particular details, and there is considerable scope for compromise and
+modification. But the cases in which a member of Parliament is compelled
+to vote for measures about which he has no real knowledge or conviction
+are very many. Crowds of measures of a highly complex and technical
+character, affecting departments of life with which he has had no
+experience, relating to the multitudinous industries, interests and
+conditions of a great people, are brought before him at very short
+notice; and no intellect, however powerful, no industry, however great,
+can master them. It is utterly impossible that mere extemporised
+knowledge, the listening to a short debate, the brief study which a
+member of Parliament can give to a new subject, can place him on a real
+level of competence with those who can bring to it a lifelong knowledge
+or experience.
+
+A member of Parliament will soon find that he must select a class of
+subjects which he can himself master, while on many others he must vote
+blindly with his party. The two or three capital measures in a session
+are debated with such a fulness that both the House and the country
+become thoroughly competent to judge them, and in those cases the
+preponderance of argument will have great weight. A powerful ministry
+and a strongly organised party may carry such a measure in spite of it,
+but they will be obliged to accept amendments and modifications, and if
+they persist in their policy their position both in the House and in the
+country will sooner or later be inevitably changed. But a large number
+of measures have a more restricted interest, and are far less widely
+understood. The House of Commons is rich in expert knowledge, and few
+subjects are brought before it which some of its members do not
+thoroughly understand; but in a vast number of cases the majority who
+decide the question are obliged to do so on the most superficial
+knowledge. Very often it is physically impossible for a member to obtain
+the knowledge he requires. The most important and detailed investigation
+has taken place in a committee upstairs to which he did not belong, or
+he is detained elsewhere on important parliamentary business while the
+debate is going on. Even when this is not the case, scarcely any one
+has the physical or mental power which would enable him to sit
+intelligently through all the debates. Every member of Parliament is
+familiar with the scene, when, after a debate, carried on before nearly
+empty benches, the division bell rings, and the members stream in to
+decide the issue. There is a moment of uncertainty. The questions 'Which
+side are we?' 'What is it about?' may be heard again and again. Then the
+Speaker rises, and with one magical sentence clears the situation. It is
+the sentence in which he announces that the tellers for the Ayes or
+Noes, as the case may be, are the Government whips. It is not argument,
+it is not eloquence, it is this single sentence which in countless cases
+determines the result and moulds the legislation of the country. Many
+members, it is true, are not present in the division lobby, but they are
+usually paired--that is to say, they have taken their sides before the
+discussion began; perhaps without even knowing what subject is to be
+discussed, perhaps for all the many foreseen and unforeseen questions
+that may arise during long periods of the session.
+
+It is a strange process, and to a new member who has been endeavouring
+through his life to weigh arguments and evidence with scrupulous care,
+and treat the formation and expression of opinions as a matter of
+serious duty, it is at first very painful. He finds that he is required
+again and again to give an effective voice in the great council of the
+nation, on questions of grave importance, with a levity of conviction
+upon which he would not act in the most trivial affairs of private life.
+No doctor would prescribe for the slightest malady; no lawyer would
+advise in the easiest case; no wise man would act in the simplest
+transactions of private business, or would even give an opinion to his
+neighbour at a dinner party without more knowledge of the subject than
+that on which a member of Parliament is often obliged to vote. But he
+soon finds that for good or evil this system is absolutely indispensable
+to the working of the machine. If no one voted except on matters he
+really understood and cared for, four-fifths of the questions that are
+determined by the House of Commons would be determined by mere fractions
+of its members, and in that case parliamentary government under the
+party system would be impossible. The stable, disciplined majorities
+without which it can never be efficiently conducted would be at an end.
+Those who refuse to accept the conditions of parliamentary life should
+abstain from entering into it.
+
+It is obvious that the one justification of this system is to be found
+in the belief that parliamentary government, as it is worked in England,
+is on the whole a good thing, and that this is the indispensable
+condition of its existence. Probably also with most men it strengthens
+the disposition to support the Government on matters which they do not
+understand and in which grave party issues are not involved. They know
+that these minor questions have at least been carefully examined on
+their merits by responsible men, and with the assistance of the best
+available expert knowledge.
+
+This fact goes far to reconcile us to the tendency to give governments
+an almost complete monopoly in the initiation of legislation which is so
+evident in modern parliamentary life. Much useful legislation in the
+past has been due to private and independent members, but the chance of
+bills introduced by such members ever becoming law is steadily
+diminishing. This is not due to any recognised constitutional change,
+but to the constantly increasing pressure of government business on the
+time of the House, and especially to what is called the twelve o'clock
+rule, terminating debates at midnight.
+
+It is a rule which is manifestly wise, for it limits on ordinary
+occasions the hours of parliamentary work to a period within the
+strength of an average man. Parliamentary government has many dubious
+aspects, but it never appears worse than in the cases which may still
+sometimes be seen when a Government thinks fit to force through an
+important measure by all-night sittings, and when a weary and irritated
+House which has been sitting since three or four in the afternoon is
+called upon at a corresponding hour of the early morning to pronounce
+upon grave and difficult questions of principle, and to deal with the
+serious interests of large classes. The utter and most natural
+incapacity of the House at such an hour for sustained argument; its
+anxiety that each successive amendment should be despatched in five
+minutes; the readiness with which in that tired, feverish atmosphere,
+surprises and coalitions may be effected and solutions accepted, to
+which the House in its normal state would scarcely have listened, must
+be evident to every observer. Scenes of this kind are among the greatest
+scandals of Parliament, and the rule which makes them impossible except
+in the closing weeks of the Session has been one of the greatest
+improvements in modern parliamentary work. But its drawback is that it
+has greatly limited the possibility of private member legislation. It is
+in late and rapid sittings that most measures of this kind passed
+through their final stages, and since the twelve o'clock rule has been
+adopted a much smaller number of bills introduced by private members
+find their way to the statute book.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[35] O'Brien, _The Lawyer_, pp. 169, 170.
+
+[36] _Dictionnaire de Cas de Conscience_, Art. 'Avocat;' Migne,
+_Encyclopedie Theologique_, i. serie, tome xviii.
+
+[37] _Revue de Droit International_, xxi. 615.
+
+[38] See Sir James Stephen's _General View of the Criminal Law of
+England_, pp. 167, 168.
+
+[39] Phillips's defence of his own conduct will be found in a pamphlet
+called 'Correspondence of S. Warren and C. Phillips relating to the
+Courvoisier trial.' It has often been said that Phillips had asserted in
+his speech his full belief in the innocence of his client, but this is
+disproved by the statement of C. J. Tindal, who tried the case, and of
+Baron Parke, who sat on the bench. C. J. Denman also pronounced
+Phillips's speech to be unexceptionable. An able and interesting article
+on this case by Mr. Atlay will be found in the _Cornhill Magazine_, May,
+1897.
+
+[40] See these cases in Warren's _Social and Professional Duties of an
+Attorney_, pp. 128-133, 195, 196.
+
+[41] See the admirable article by Lord Justice Bowen on 'The
+Administration of the Law' in Ward's _Reign of Queen Victoria_, vol. i.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+It is obvious from the considerations that have been adduced in the last
+chapter that the moral limitations and conditions under which an
+ordinary member of Parliament is compelled to work are far from ideal.
+An upright man will try conscientiously, under these conditions, to do
+his best for the cause of honesty and for the benefit of his country,
+but he cannot essentially alter them, and they present many temptations
+and tend in many ways to blur the outlines separating good from evil. He
+will find himself practically pledged to support his party in measures
+which he has never seen and in policies that are not yet developed; to
+vote in some cases contrary to his genuine belief and in many cases
+without real knowledge; to act throughout his political career on many
+motives other than a reasoned conviction of the substantial merits of
+the question at issue.
+
+I have dwelt on the difficult questions which arise when the wishes of
+his constituents are at variance with his own genuine opinions. Another
+and a wider question is how far he is bound to make what he considers
+the interests of the nation his guiding light, and how far he should
+subordinate what he believes to be their interests to their prejudices
+and wishes. One of the first lessons that every active politician has to
+learn is that he is a trustee bound to act for men whose opinions,
+aims, desires and ideals are often very different from his own. No man
+who holds the position of member of Parliament should divest himself of
+this consideration, though it applies to different classes of members in
+different degrees. A private member should not forget it, but at the
+same time, being elected primarily and specially to represent one
+particular element in the national life, he will concentrate his
+attention more exclusively on a narrow circle, though he has at the same
+time more latitude of expressing unpopular opinions and pushing unripe
+and unpopular causes than a member who is taking a large and official
+part in the government of the nation. The opposition front bench
+occupies a somewhat different position. They are the special and
+organised representatives of a particular party and its ideas, but the
+fact that they may be called upon at any time to undertake the
+government of the nation as a whole, and that even while in opposition
+they take a great part in moulding its general policy, imposes on them
+limitations and restrictions from which a mere private member is in a
+great degree exempt. When a party comes into power its position is again
+slightly altered. Its leaders are certainly not detached from the party
+policy they had advocated in opposition. One of the main objects of
+party is to incorporate certain political opinions and the interests of
+certain sections of the community in an organised body which will be a
+steady and permanent force in politics. It is by this means that
+political opinions are most likely to triumph; that class interests are
+most effectually protected. But a Government cannot govern merely in the
+interests of a party. It is a trustee for the whole nation, and one of
+its first duties is to ascertain and respect as far as possible the
+wishes as well as the interests of all sections.
+
+Concrete examples may perhaps show more clearly than abstract statements
+the kind of difficulties that I am describing. Take, for example, the
+large class of proposals for limiting the sale of strong drink by such
+methods as local veto or Sunday closing of public-houses. One class of
+politicians take up the position of uncompromising opponents of the
+drink trade. They argue that strong drink is beyond all question in
+England the chief source of the misery, the vice, the degradation of the
+poor; that it not only directly ruins tens of thousands, body and soul,
+but also brings a mass of wretchedness that it is difficult to overrate
+on their innocent families; that the drunkard's craving for drink often
+reproduces itself as an hereditary disease in his children; and that a
+legislator can have no higher object and no plainer duty than by all
+available means to put down the chief obstacle to the moral and material
+well-being of the people. The principle of compulsion, as they truly
+say, is more and more pervading all departments of industry. It is idle
+to contend that the State which, while prohibiting other forms of Sunday
+trading, gives a special privilege to the most pernicious of all, has
+not the right to limit or to withdraw it, and the legislature which
+levies vast sums upon the whole community for the maintenance of the
+police as well as for poor-houses, prisons and criminal administration,
+ought surely, in the interests of the whole community, to do all that is
+in its power to suppress the main cause of pauperism, disorder and
+crime.
+
+Another class of politicians approach the question from a wholly
+different point of view. They emphatically object to imposing upon
+grown-up men a system of moral restriction which is very properly
+imposed upon children. They contend that adult men who have assumed all
+the duties and responsibilities of life, and have even a voice in the
+government of the country, should regulate their own conduct, as far as
+they do not directly interfere with their neighbours, without legal
+restraint, bearing themselves the consequences of their mistakes or
+excesses. This, they say, is the first principle of freedom, the first
+condition in the formation of strong and manly characters. A poor man,
+who desires on his Sunday excursion to obtain moderate refreshment such
+as he likes for himself or his family, and who goes to the
+public-house--probably in most cases to meet his friends and discuss the
+village gossip over a glass of beer--is in no degree interfering with
+the liberty of his neighbours. He is doing nothing that is wrong;
+nothing that he has not a perfect right to do. No one denies the rich
+man access to his club on Sunday, and it should be remembered that the
+poor man has neither the private cellars nor the comfortable and roomy
+homes of the rich, and has infinitely fewer opportunities of recreation.
+Because some men abuse this right and are unable to drink alcohol in
+moderation, are all men to be prevented from drinking it at all, or at
+least from drinking it on Sunday? Because two men agree not to drink it,
+have they a right to impose the same obligation on an unwilling third?
+Have those who never enter a public-house, and by their position in life
+never need to enter it, a right, if they are in a majority, to close
+its doors against those who use it? On such grounds these politicians
+look with extreme disfavour on all this restrictive legislation as
+unjust, partial and inconsistent with freedom.
+
+Very few, however, would carry either set of arguments to their full
+logical consequences. Not many men who have had any practical experience
+in the management of men would advocate a complete suppression of the
+drink trade, and still fewer would put it on the basis of complete free
+trade, altogether exempt from special legislative restriction. To
+responsible politicians the course to be pursued will depend mainly on
+fluctuating conditions of public opinion. Restrictions will be imposed,
+but only when and as far as they are supported by a genuine public
+opinion. It must not be a mere majority, but a large majority; a steady
+majority; a genuine majority representing a real and earnest desire, and
+especially in the classes who are most directly affected; not a mere
+factitious majority such as is often created by skilful organisation and
+agitation; by the enthusiasm of the few confronting the indifference of
+the many. In free and democratic States one of the most necessary but
+also one of the most difficult arts of statesmanship is that of testing
+public opinion, discriminating between what is real, growing and
+permanent and what is transient, artificial and declining. As a French
+writer has said, 'The great art in politics consists not in hearing
+those who speak, but in hearing those who are silent.' On such questions
+as those I have mentioned we may find the same statesman without any
+real inconsistency supporting the same measures in one part of the
+kingdom and opposing them in another; supporting them at one time
+because public opinion runs strongly in their favour; opposing them at
+another because that public opinion has grown weak.
+
+One of the worst moral evils that grow up in democratic countries is the
+excessive tendency to time-serving and popularity hunting, and the
+danger is all the greater because in a certain sense both of these
+things are a necessity and even a duty. Their moral quality depends
+mainly on their motive. The question to be asked is whether a politician
+is acting from personal or merely party objects or from honourable
+public ones. Every statesman must form in his own mind a conception
+whether a prevailing tendency is favourable or opposed to the real
+interests of the country. It will depend upon this judgment whether he
+will endeavour to accelerate or retard it; whether he will yield slowly
+or readily to its pressure, and there are cases in which, at all hazards
+of popularity and influence, he should inexorably oppose it. But in the
+long run, under free governments, political systems and measures must be
+adjusted to the wishes of the various sections of the people, and this
+adjustment is the great work of statesmanship. In judging a proposed
+measure a statesman must continually ask himself whether the country is
+ripe for it--whether its introduction, however desirable it might be,
+would not be premature, as public opinion is not yet prepared for
+it?--whether, even though it be a bad measure, it is not on the whole
+better to vote for it, as the nation manifestly desires it?
+
+The same kind of reasoning applies to the difficult question of
+education, and especially of religious education. Every one who is
+interested in the subject has his own conviction about the kind of
+education which is in itself the best for the people, and also the best
+for the Government to undertake. He may prefer that the State should
+confine itself to purely secular education, leaving all religious
+teaching to voluntary agencies; or he may approve of the kind of
+undenominational religious teaching of the English School Board; or he
+may be a strong partisan of one of the many forms of distinctly
+accentuated denominational education. But when he comes to act as a
+responsible legislator, he should feel that the question is not merely
+what _he_ considers the best, but also what the parents of the children
+most desire. It is true that the authority of parents is not absolutely
+recognised. The conviction that certain things are essential to the
+children, and to the well-being and vigour of the State, and the
+conviction that parents are often by no means the best judges of this,
+make legislators, on some important subjects, override the wishes of the
+parents. The severe restrictions imposed on child labour; the
+measure--unhappily now greatly relaxed--providing for children's
+vaccination; and the legislation protecting children from ill treatment
+by their parents, are illustrations, and the most extensive and
+far-reaching of all exceptions is education. After much misgiving, both
+parties in the State have arrived at the conclusion that it is essential
+to the future of the children, and essential also to the maintenance of
+the relative position of England in the great competition of nations,
+that at least the rudiments of education should be made universal, and
+they are also convinced that this is one of the truths which perfectly
+ignorant parents are least competent to understand. Hence the system
+which of late years has so rapidly extended of compulsory education.
+
+Many nations have gone further, and have claimed for the State the right
+of prescribing absolutely the kind of education that should be
+permitted, or at least the kind of education which shall be exclusively
+supported by State funds. In England this is not the case. A great
+variety of forms of education corresponding to the wishes and opinions
+of different classes of parents receive assistance from the State,
+subject to the conditions of submitting to certain tests of educational
+efficiency, and to a conscience clause protecting minorities from
+interference with their faith.
+
+A case which once caused much moral heart-burning among good men was the
+endowment, by the State, of Maynooth College, which is absolutely under
+the control of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and intended to educate
+their Divinity students in the Roman Catholic faith. The endowment dated
+from the period of the old Irish Protestant Parliament; and when, on the
+Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it came to an end, it was replaced
+by a large capital grant from the Irish Church Fund, and it is upon the
+interest of that grant that the College is still supported. This grant
+was denounced by many excellent men on the ground that the State was
+Protestant; that it had a definite religious belief upon which it was
+bound in conscience to act; and that it was a sinful apostasy to endow
+out of the public purse the teaching of what all Protestants believe to
+be superstition, and what many Protestants believe to be idolatrous and
+soul-destroying error. The strength of this kind of feeling in England
+is shown by the extreme difficulty there has been in persuading public
+opinion to acquiesce in any form of that concurrent endowment of
+religions which exists so widely and works so well upon the Continent.
+
+Many, again, who have no objection to the policy of assisting by State
+subsidies the theological education of the priests are of opinion that
+it is extremely injurious both to the State and to the young that the
+secular education--and especially the higher secular education--of the
+Irish Catholic population should be placed under their complete control,
+and that, through their influence, the Irish Catholics should be
+strictly separated during the period of their education from their
+fellow-countrymen of other religions. No belief, in my own opinion, is
+better founded than this. If, however, those who hold it find that there
+is a great body of Catholic parents who persistently desire this control
+and separation; who will not be satisfied with any removal of
+disabilities and sectarian influence in systems of common education; who
+object to all mixed and undenominational education on the ground that
+their priests have condemned it, and that they are bound in conscience
+to follow the orders of their priests, and who are in consequence
+withholding from their children the education they would otherwise have
+given them, such men will in my opinion be quite justified in modifying
+their policy. As a matter of expediency they will argue that it is
+better that these Catholics should receive an indifferent university
+education than none at all; and that it is exceedingly desirable that
+what is felt to be a grievance by many honest, upright and loyal men
+should be removed. As a matter of principle, they contend that in a
+country where higher education is largely and variously endowed from
+public sources, it is a real grievance that there should be one large
+body of the people who can derive little or no benefit from those
+endowments. It is no sufficient answer to say that the objection of the
+Catholic parents is in most cases not spontaneous, but is due to the
+orders of their priests, since we are dealing with men who believe it to
+be a matter of conscience on such questions to obey their priests. Nor
+is it, I think, sufficient to argue--as very many enlightened men will
+do--that everything that could be in the smallest degree repugnant to
+the faith of a Catholic has been eliminated from the education which is
+imposed on them in existing universities; that every post of honour,
+emolument and power has been thrown open to them; that for generations
+they gladly followed the courses of Dublin University, and are even now
+permitted by their ecclesiastics to follow those of Oxford and
+Cambridge; that, the nation having adopted the broad principle of
+unsectarian education open to all, no single sect has a right to
+exceptional treatment, though every sect has an undoubted right to set
+up at its own expense such education as it pleases. The answer is that
+the objection of a certain class of Roman Catholics in Ireland is not to
+any abuses that may take place under the system of mixed and
+undenominational education, but to the system itself, and that the
+particular type of education of which alone one considerable class of
+taxpayers can conscientiously avail themselves has only been set up by
+voluntary effort, and is only inadequately and indirectly endowed by
+the State.[42] Slowly and very reluctantly governments in England
+have come to recognise the fact that the trend of Catholic opinion
+in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as
+the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of
+undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education
+of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant
+one. Primary education has become almost absolutely denominational, and,
+directly or indirectly, a crowd of endowments are given to exclusively
+Catholic institutions. On such grounds, many who entertain the strongest
+antipathy to the priestly control of higher education are prepared to
+advocate an increased endowment of some university or college which is
+distinctly sacerdotal, while strenuously upholding side by side with it
+the undenominational institutions which they believe to be incomparably
+better, and which are at present resorted to not only by all
+Protestants, but also by a not inconsiderable body of Irish Catholics.
+
+Many of my readers will probably come to an opposite conclusion on this
+very difficult question. The object of what I have written is simply to
+show the process by which a politician may conscientiously advocate the
+establishment and endowment of a thing which he believes to be
+intrinsically bad. It is said to have been a saying of Sir Robert
+Inglis--an excellent representative of an old school of extreme but most
+conscientious Toryism--that 'he would never vote one penny of public
+money for any purpose which he did not think right and good.' The
+impossibility of carrying out such a principle must be obvious to any
+one who has truly grasped the nature of representative government and
+the duty of a member of Parliament to act as a trustee for all classes
+in the community. In the exercise of this function every conscientious
+member is obliged continually to vote money for purposes which he
+dislikes. In the particular instance I have just given, the process of
+reasoning I have described is purely disinterested, but of course it is
+not by such a process of pure reasoning that such a question will be
+determined. English and Scotch members will have to consider the effects
+of their vote on their own constituencies, where there are generally
+large sections of electors with very little knowledge of the special
+circumstances of Irish education, but very strong feelings about the
+Roman Catholic Church. Statesmen will have to consider the ulterior and
+various ways in which their policy may affect the whole social and
+political condition of Ireland, while the overwhelming majority of the
+Irish members are elected by small farmers and agricultural labourers
+who could never avail themselves of University education, and who on all
+matters relating to education act blindly at the dictation of their
+priests.
+
+Inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties
+as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it. It would lead
+me too far in a book in which the moral difficulties of politics form
+only one subdivision, to enter into the history of English parties; but
+those who will do so will easily convince themselves that there is
+hardly a principle of political action that has not in party history
+been abandoned, and that not unfrequently parties have come to advocate
+at one period of their history the very measures which at another period
+they most strenuously resisted. Changed circumstances, the growth or
+decline of intellectual tendencies, party strategy, individual
+influence, have all contributed to these mutations, and most of them
+have been due to very blended motives of patriotism and self-interest.
+
+In judging the moral quality of the changes of party leaders, the
+element of time will usually be of capital importance. Violent and
+sudden reversals of policy are never effected by a party without a great
+loss of moral weight; though there are circumstances under which they
+have been imperatively required. No one will now dispute the integrity
+of the motives that induced the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel
+to carry Catholic Emancipation in 1829, when the Clare election had
+brought Ireland to the verge of revolution; and the conduct of Sir
+Robert Peel in carrying the repeal of the Corn Laws was certainly not
+due to any motive either of personal or party ambition, though it may be
+urged with force that at a time when he was still the leader of the
+Protectionist party his mind had been manifestly moving in the direction
+of Free trade, and that the Irish famine, though not a mere pretext, was
+not wholly the cause of the surrender. In each of these cases a ministry
+pledged to resist a particular measure introduced and carried it, and
+did so without any appeal to the electors. The justification was that
+the measure in their eyes had become absolutely necessary to the public
+welfare, and that the condition of politics made it impossible for them
+either to carry it by a dissolution or to resign the task into other
+hands. Had Sir Robert Peel either resigned office or dissolved
+Parliament after the Clare election in 1828, it is highly probable that
+the measure of Catholic Emancipation could not have been carried, and
+its postponement, in his belief, would have thrown Ireland into a
+dangerous rebellion. Few greater misfortunes have befallen party
+government than the failure of the Whigs to form a ministry in 1845. Had
+they done so the abolition of the Corn Laws would have been carried by
+statesmen who were in some measure supported by the Free-trade party,
+and not by statesmen who had obtained their power as the special
+representatives of the agricultural interests.
+
+Another case which in a party point of view was more successful, but
+which should in my opinion be much more severely judged, was the Reform
+Bill of 1867. The Conservative party, under the guidance of Mr.
+Disraeli, defeated Mr. Gladstone's Reform Bill mainly on the ground that
+it was an excessive step in the direction of Democracy. The victory
+placed them in office, and they then declared that, as the question had
+been raised, they must deal with it themselves. They introduced a bill
+carrying the suffrage to a much lower point than that which the late
+Government had proposed, but they surrounded it with a number of
+provisions securing additional representation for particular classes and
+interests which would have materially modified its democratic
+character.
+
+But for these safeguarding provisions the party would certainly not have
+tolerated the introduction of such a measure, yet in the face of
+opposition their leader dropped them one by one as of no capital
+importance, and, by a leadership which was a masterpiece of unscrupulous
+adroitness, succeeded in inducing his party to carry a measure far more
+democratic than that which they had a few months before denounced and
+defeated. It was argued that the question must be settled; that it must
+be placed on a permanent and lasting basis; that it must no longer be
+suffered to be a weapon in the hands of the Whigs, and that the Tory
+Reform Bill, though it was acknowledged to be a 'leap in the dark,' had
+at least the result of 'dishing the Whigs.' There is little doubt that
+it was in accordance with the genuine convictions of Disraeli. He
+belonged to a school of politics of which Bolingbroke, Carteret and
+Shelburne, and, in some periods of his career, Chatham, were earlier
+representatives who had no real sympathy with the preponderance of the
+aristocratic element in the old Tory party, who had a decided
+disposition to appeal frankly to democratic support, and who believed
+that a strong executive resting on a broad democratic basis was the true
+future of Toryism. He anticipated to a remarkable degree the school of
+political thought which has triumphed in our own day, though he did not
+live to witness its triumph. At the same time it cannot be denied that
+the Reform Bill of 1867 in the form in which it was ultimately carried
+was as far as possible from the wishes and policy of his party in the
+beginning of the session, and as inconsistent as any policy could be
+with their language and conduct in the session that preceded it.
+
+A parliamentary government chosen on the party system is, as we have
+seen, at once the trustee of the whole nation, bound as such to make the
+welfare of the whole its supreme end, and also the special
+representative of particular classes, the special guardian of their
+interests, aims, wishes, and principles. The two points of view are not
+the same, and grave difficulties, both ethical and political, have often
+to be encountered in endeavouring to harmonise them. It is, of course,
+not true that a party object is merely a matter of place or power, and
+naturally a different thing from a patriotic object. The very meaning of
+party is that public men consider certain principles of government,
+certain lines of policy, the protection and development of particular
+interests, of capital importance to the nation, and they are therefore
+on purely public grounds fully justified in making it a main object to
+place the government of the country in the hands of their party. The
+importance, however, of maintaining a particular party in power varies
+greatly. In many, probably in most, periods of English history a change
+of government means no violent or far-reaching alteration in policy. It
+means only that one set of tendencies in legislation will for a time be
+somewhat relaxed, and another set somewhat intensified; that the
+interests of one class will be somewhat more and those of another class
+somewhat less attended to; that the rate of progress or change will be
+slightly accelerated or retarded. Sometimes it means even less than
+this. Opinions on the two front benches are so nearly assimilated that
+a change of government principally means the removal for a time from
+office of ministers who have made some isolated administrative blunders
+or incurred some individual unpopularity quite apart from their party
+politics. It means that ministers who are jaded and somewhat worn out by
+several years' continuous work, and of whom the country had grown tired,
+are replaced by men who can bring fresher minds and energies to the
+task; that patronage in all its branches having for some years gone
+mainly to one party, the other party are now to have their turn. There
+are periods when the country is well satisfied with the general policy
+of a government but not with the men who carry it on. Ministers of
+excellent principles prove inefficient, tactless, or unfortunate, or
+quarrels and jealousies arise among them, or difficult negotiations are
+going on with foreign nations which can be best brought to a successful
+termination if they are placed in the hands of fresh men, unpledged and
+unentangled by their past. The country wants a change of government but
+not a change of policy, and under such circumstances the task of a
+victorious opposition is much less to march in new directions than to
+mark time, to carry on the affairs of the nation on the same lines, but
+with greater administrative skill. In such periods the importance of
+party objects is much diminished and a policy which is intended merely
+to keep a party in power should be severely condemned.
+
+Sometimes, however, it happens that a party has committed itself to a
+particular measure which its opponents believe to be in a high degree
+dangerous or even ruinous to the country. In that case it becomes a
+matter of supreme importance to keep this party out of office, or, if
+they are in office, to keep them in a position of permanent debility
+till this dangerous project is abandoned. Under such circumstances
+statesmen are justified in carrying party objects and purely party
+legislation much further than in other periods. To strengthen their own
+party; to gain for it the largest amount of popularity; to win the
+support of different factions of the House of Commons, become a great
+public object; and, in order to carry it out, sacrifices of policy and
+in some degree of principle, the acceptance of measures which the party
+had once opposed, and the adjournment or abandonment of measures to
+which it had been pledged, which would once have been very properly
+condemned, become justifiable. The supreme interest of the State is the
+end and the justification of their policy, and alliances are formed
+which under less pressing circumstances would have been impossible, and
+which, once established, sometimes profoundly change the permanent
+character of party politics. Here, as in nearly all political matters,
+an attention to proportion and degree, the sacrifice of the less for the
+attainment of the greater, mark the path both of wisdom and of duty.
+
+The temptations of party politicians are of many kinds and vary greatly
+with different stages of political development. The worst is the
+temptation to war. War undertaken without necessity, or at least without
+serious justification, is, according to all sound ethics, the gravest of
+crimes, and among its causes motives of the kind I have indicated may be
+often detected. Many wars have been begun or have been prolonged in
+order to consolidate a dynasty or a party; in order to give it
+popularity or at least to save it from unpopularity; in order to divert
+the minds of men from internal questions which had become dangerous or
+embarrassing, or to efface the memory of past quarrels, mistakes or
+crimes.[43] Experience unfortunately shows only too clearly how easily
+the combative passions of nations can be aroused and how much popularity
+may be gained by a successful war. Even in this case, it is true, war
+usually impoverishes the country that wages it, but there are large
+classes to whom it is by no means a calamity. The high level of
+agricultural prices; the brilliant careers opened to the military and
+naval professions; the many special industries which are immediately
+stimulated; the rise in the rate of interest; the opportunities of
+wealth that spring from violent fluctuations on the Stock Exchange; even
+the increased attractiveness of the newspapers,--all tend to give
+particular classes an interest in its continuance. Sometimes it is
+closely connected with party sympathies. During the French wars of Anne,
+the facts that Marlborough was a Whig, and that the Elector of Hanover,
+who was the hope of the Whig party, was in favour of the war,
+contributed very materially to retard the peace. A state of great
+internal disquietude is often a temptation to war, not because it leads
+to it directly, but because rulers find a foreign war the best means of
+turning dangerous and disturbing energies into new channels, and at the
+same time of strengthening the military and authoritative elements in
+the community. The successful transformation of the anarchy of the great
+French Revolution into a career of conquest is a typical example.
+
+In aristocratic governments such as existed in England during the
+eighteenth century, temptations to corruption were especially strong. To
+build up a vast system of parliamentary influence by rotten boroughs,
+and, by systematically bestowing honours on those who could control
+them, to win the support of great corporations and professions by
+furthering their interests and abstaining from all efforts to reform
+them, was a chief part of the statecraft of the time. Class privileges
+in many forms were created, extended and maintained, and in some
+countries--though much less in England than on the Continent--the burden
+of taxation was most inequitably distributed, falling mainly on the
+poor.
+
+In democratic governments the temptations are of a different kind.
+Popularity is there the chief source of power, and the supreme tribunal
+consists of numbers counted by the head. The well-being of the great
+mass of the people is the true end of politics, but it does not
+necessarily follow that the opinion of the least instructed majority is
+the best guide to obtaining it. In dwelling upon the temptations of
+politicians under such a system I do not now refer merely to the
+unscrupulous agitator or demagogue who seeks power, notoriety or
+popularity by exciting class envies and animosities, by setting the poor
+against the rich and preaching the gospel of public plunder; nor would
+I dilate upon the methods so largely employed in the United States of
+accumulating, by skilfully devised electoral machinery, great masses of
+voting power drawn from the most ignorant voters, and making use of them
+for purposes of corruption. I would dwell rather on the bias which
+almost inevitably obliges the party leader to measure legislation mainly
+by its immediate popularity, and its consequent success in adding to his
+voting strength. In some countries this tendency shows itself in lavish
+expenditure on public works which provide employment for great masses of
+workmen and give a great immediate popularity in a constituency, leaving
+to posterity a heavy burden of accumulated debt. Much of the financial
+embarrassment of Europe is due to this source, and in most countries
+extravagance in government expenditure is more popular than economy.
+Sometimes it shows itself in a legislation which regards only proximate
+or immediate effects, and wholly neglects those which are distant and
+obscure. A far-sighted policy sacrificing the present to a distant
+future becomes more difficult; measures involving new principles, but
+meeting present embarrassments or securing immediate popularity, are
+started with little consideration for the precedents they are
+establishing and for the more extensive changes that may follow in their
+train. The conditions of labour are altered for the benefit of the
+existing workmen, perhaps at the cost of diverting capital from some
+great form of industry, making it impossible to resist foreign
+competition, and thus in the long run restricting employment and
+seriously injuring the very class who were to have been benefited.
+
+When one party has introduced a measure of this kind the other is under
+the strongest temptation to outbid it, and under the stress of
+competition and through the fear of being distanced in the race of
+popularity both parties often end by going much further than either had
+originally intended. When the rights of the few are opposed to the
+interests of the many there is a constant tendency to prefer the latter.
+It may be that the few are those who have built up an industry; who have
+borne all the risk and cost, who have by far the largest interest in its
+success. The mere fact that they are the few determines the bias of the
+legislators. There is a constant disposition to tamper with even clearly
+defined and guaranteed rights if by doing so some large class of voters
+can be conciliated.
+
+Parliamentary life has many merits, but it has a manifest tendency to
+encourage short views. The immediate party interest becomes so absorbing
+that men find it difficult to look greatly beyond it. The desire of a
+skilful debater to use the topics that will most influence the audience
+before him, or the desire of a party leader to pursue the course most
+likely to be successful in an immediately impending contest, will often
+override all other considerations, and the whole tendency of
+parliamentary life is to concentrate attention on landmarks which are
+not very distant, thinking little of what is beyond.
+
+One great cause of the inconsistency of parties lies in the absolute
+necessity of assimilating legislation. Many, for example, are of opinion
+that the existing tendency to introduce government regulations and
+interferences into all departments is at least greatly exaggerated, and
+that it would be far better if a larger sphere were left to individual
+action and free contract. But if large departments of industry have been
+brought under the system of regulation, it is practically impossible to
+leave analogous industries under a different system, and the men who
+most dislike the tendency are often themselves obliged to extend it.
+They cannot resist the contention that certain legislative protections
+or other special favours have been granted to one class of workmen, and
+that there is no real ground for distinguishing their case from that of
+others. The dominant tendency will thus naturally extend itself, and
+every considerable legislative movement carries others irresistibly in
+its train.
+
+The pressure of this consideration is most painfully felt in the case of
+legislation which appears not simply inexpedient and unwise, but
+distinctly dishonest. In legislation relating to contracts there is a
+clear ethical distinction to be drawn. It is fully within the moral
+right of legislators to regulate the conditions of future contracts. It
+is a very different thing to break existing contracts, or to take the
+still more extreme step of altering their conditions to the benefit of
+one party without the assent of the other, leaving that other party
+bound by their restrictions.
+
+In the American Constitution there is a special clause making it
+impossible for any State to pass any law violating contracts. In
+England, unfortunately, no such provision exists. The most glaring and
+undoubted instance of this kind is to be found in the Irish land
+legislation which was begun by the Ministry of Mr. Gladstone, but which
+has been largely extended by the party that originally most strenuously
+opposed it. Much may no doubt be said to palliate it: agricultural
+depression; the excessive demand for land; the fact that improvements
+were in Ireland usually made by the tenants (who, however, were
+perfectly aware of the conditions under which they made them, and whose
+rents were proportionately lower); the prevalence in some parts of
+Ireland of land customs unsanctioned by law; the existence of a great
+revolutionary movement which had brought the country into a condition of
+disgraceful anarchy. But when all this has been admitted, it remains
+indisputable to every clear and honest mind that English law has taken
+away without compensation unquestionably legal property and broken
+unquestionably legal contracts. A landlord placed a tenant on his farm
+on a yearly tenancy, but if he desired to exercise his plain legal right
+of resuming it at the termination of the year, he was compelled to pay a
+compensation 'for disturbance,' which might amount to seven times the
+yearly rent. A landlord let his land to a farmer for a longer period
+under a clear written contract bearing the government stamp, and this
+contract defined the rent to be paid, the conditions under which the
+farm was to be held, and the number of years during which it was to be
+alienated from its owner. The fundamental clause of the lease distinctly
+stipulated that at the end of the assigned term the tenant must hand
+back that farm to the owner from whom he received it. The law has
+interposed, and determined that the rent which this farmer had
+undertaken to pay shall be reduced by a government tribunal without the
+assent of the owner, and without giving the owner the option of
+dissolving the contract and seeking a new tenant. It has gone further,
+and provided that at the termination of the lease the tenant shall not
+hand back the land to the owner according to the terms of his contract,
+but shall remain for all future time the occupier, subject only to a
+rent fixed and periodically revised, irrespective of the wishes of the
+landlord, by an independent tribunal. Vast masses of property in Ireland
+had been sold under the Incumbered Estates Act by a government tribunal
+acting as the representative of the Imperial Parliament, and each
+purchaser obtained from this tribunal a parliamentary title making him
+absolute owner of the soil and of every building upon it, subject only
+to the existing tenancies in the schedule. No accounts of the earlier
+history of the property were handed to him, for except under the terms
+of the leases which had not yet expired he had no liability for anything
+in the past. The title he received was deemed so indefeasible that in
+one memorable case, where by mistake a portion of the property of one
+man had been included in the sale of the property of another man, the
+Court of Appeal decided that the injustice could not be remedied, as it
+was impossible, except in the case of intentional fraud, to go behind
+parliamentary titles.[44] In cases in which the land was let at low
+rents, and in cases where tenants held under leases which would soon
+expire, the facility of raising the rents was constantly specified by
+the authority of the Court as an inducement to purchasers.
+
+What has become of this parliamentary title? Improvements, if they had
+been made, or were presumed to have been made by tenants anterior to the
+sale, have ceased to be the property of the purchaser, and he has at the
+same time been deprived of some of the plainest and most inseparable
+rights of property. He has lost the power of disposing of his farms in
+the open market, of regulating the terms and conditions on which he lets
+them, of removing a tenant whom he considers unsuitable, of taking the
+land back into his own hands when the specified term of a tenancy had
+expired, of availing himself of the enhanced value which a war or a
+period of great prosperity, or some other exceptional circumstance, may
+have given to his property. He has become a simple rent-charger on the
+land which by inheritance or purchase was incontestably his own, and the
+amount of his rent-charge is settled and periodically revised by a
+tribunal in which he has no voice, and which has been given an absolute
+power over his estate. He bought or inherited an exclusive right. The
+law has turned it into a dual ownership. A tenant right which, when he
+obtained his property, was wholly unknown to the law, and was only
+generally recognised by custom in one province, has been carved out of
+it. The tenant who happened to be in occupation when the law was passed
+can, without the consent of the owner, sell to another the right of
+occupying the farm at the existing rent. In numerous cases this tenant
+right is more valuable than the fee simple of the farm. In many cases a
+farmer who had eagerly begged to be a tenant at a specified rent has
+afterwards gone into the land court and had that rent reduced, and has
+then proceeded to sell the tenant right for a sum much more than
+equivalent to the difference between the two rents. In many cases this
+has happened where there could be no possible question of improvements
+by the tenant. The tenant right of the smaller farms has steadily risen
+in proportion as the rent has been reduced. In many cases, no doubt, the
+excessive price of tenant right may be attributed to the land hunger or
+passion for land speculation so common in Ireland, or to some
+exceptional cause inducing a farmer to give an extravagant price for the
+tenant right of a particular farm. But although in such instances the
+price of tenant right is a deceptive test, the movement, when it is a
+general one, is a clear proof that the reduction of rent did not
+represent an equivalent decline in the marketable value of the land, but
+was simply a gratuitous transfer, by the State, of property from one
+person to another. Having in the first place turned the exclusive
+ownership of the landlord into a simple partnership, the tribunal
+proceeded, in defiance of all equity, to throw the whole burden of the
+agricultural depression on one of the two partners. The law did, it is
+true, reserve to the landlord the right of pre-emption, or in other
+words the right of purchasing the tenant right when it was for sale, at
+a price to be determined by the Court, and thus becoming once more the
+absolute owner of his farm. The sum specified by the Court was usually
+about sixteen years' purchase of the judicial rent. By the payment of
+this large sum he may regain the property which a few years ago was
+incontestably his own, which was held by him under the most secure title
+known to English law, and which was taken from him, not by any process
+of honest purchase, but by an act of simple legislative confiscation.
+
+Whatever palliations of expediency may be alleged, the true nature of
+this legislation cannot reasonably be questioned, and it has established
+a precedent which is certain to grow. The point, however, on which I
+would especially dwell is that the very party which most strongly
+opposed it, and which most clearly exposed its gross and essential
+dishonesty, have found themselves, or believed themselves to be, bound
+not only to accept it but to extend it. They have contended that, as a
+matter of practical politics, it is impossible to grant such privileges
+to one class of agricultural tenants and to withhold it from others. The
+chief pretext for this legislation in its first stages was that it was
+for the benefit of very poor tenants who were incapable of making their
+own bargains, and that the fixity of tenure which the law gave to yearly
+tenants as long as they paid their rents had been very generally
+voluntarily given them by good landlords. But the measure was soon
+extended by a Unionist government to the leaseholders, who are the
+largest and most independent class of farmers, and who held their land
+for a definite time and under a distinct written contract. It is in
+truth much more the shrewder and wealthier farmers than the poor and
+helpless ones that this legislation has chiefly benefited.
+
+Instances of this kind, in which strong expediency or an absolute
+political necessity is in apparent conflict with elementary principles
+of right and wrong, are among the most difficult with which a politician
+has to deal. He must govern the country and preserve it in a condition
+of tolerable order, and he sometimes persuades himself that without a
+capitulation to anarchy, without attacks on property and violations of
+contract, this is impossible. Whether the necessity is as absolute or
+the expediency as rightly calculated as he supposed, may indeed be open
+to much question, but there can be no doubt that most of the English
+statesmen who carried the Irish agrarian legislation sincerely believed
+it, and some of them imagined that they were giving a security and
+finality to the property which was left, that would indemnify the
+plundered landlords. Perhaps, under such circumstances, the most that
+can be said is that wise legislators will endeavour, by encouraging
+purchase on a large scale, gradually to restore the absolute ownership
+and the validity of contract which have been destroyed, and at the same
+time to compensate indirectly--if they cannot do it directly--the former
+owners for that portion of their losses which is not due to merely
+economical causes, but to acts of the legislature that were plainly
+fraudulent.
+
+There are other temptations of a different kind with which party leaders
+have to deal. One of the most serious is the tendency to force questions
+for which there is no genuine desire, in order to restore the unity or
+the zeal of a divided or dispirited party. As all politicians know, the
+desire for an attractive programme and a popular election cry is one of
+the strongest in politics, and, as they also know well, there is such a
+thing as manufactured public opinion and artificially stimulated
+agitation. Questions are raised and pushed, not because they are for the
+advantage of the country, but simply for the purposes of party. The
+leaders have often little or no power of resistance. The pressure of
+their followers, or of a section of their followers, becomes
+irresistible; ill-considered hopes are held out; rash pledges are
+extorted, and the party as a whole is committed. Much premature and
+mischievous legislation may be traced to such causes.
+
+Another very difficult question is the manner in which governments
+should deal with the acts of public servants which are intended for the
+public service, but which in some of their parts are morally
+indefensible. Very few of the great acquisitions of nations have been
+made by means that were absolutely blameless, and in a great empire
+which has to deal with uncivilised or semi-civilised populations acts of
+violence are certain to be not infrequent. Neither in our judgments of
+history nor in our judgments of contemporaries is it possible to apply
+the full stringency of private morals to the cases of men acting in
+posts of great responsibility and danger amid the storms of revolution,
+or panic, or civil war. With the vast interests confided to their care,
+and the terrible dangers that surround them, measures must often be
+taken which cannot be wholly or at least legally justified. On the other
+hand, men in such circumstances are only too ready to accept the
+principle of Macchiavelli and of Napoleon, and to treat politics as if
+they had absolutely no connection with morals.
+
+Cases of this kind must be considered separately and with a careful
+examination of the motives of the actor and of the magnitude of the
+dangers he had to encounter. Allowances must be made for the moral
+atmosphere in which he moved, and his career must be considered as a
+whole, and not only in its peccant parts. In the trial of Warren
+Hastings, and in the judgments which historians have passed on the
+lives of the other great adventurers who have built up the Empire,
+questions of this kind continually arise.
+
+In our own day also they have been very frequent. The _Coup d'etat_ of
+the 2nd of December, 1851, is an extreme example. Louis Napoleon had
+sworn to observe and to defend the Constitution of the French Republic,
+which had been established in 1848, and that Constitution, among other
+articles, pronounced the persons of the representatives of the people to
+be inviolable; declared every act of the President which dissolved the
+Assembly or prorogued it, or in any way trammelled it in the exercise of
+its functions, to be high treason, and guaranteed the fullest liberty of
+writing and discussion. 'The oath which I have just taken,' said the
+President, addressing the Assembly, 'commands my future conduct. My duty
+is clear; I will fulfil it as a man of honour. I shall regard as enemies
+of the country all those who endeavour to change by illegal means what
+all France has established.' In more than one subsequent speech he
+reiterated the same sentiments and endeavoured to persuade the country
+that under no possible circumstances would he break his oath or violate
+his conscience, or overstep the limits of his constitutional powers.
+
+What he did is well known. Before daybreak on December 2, some of the
+most eminent statesmen in France, including eighteen members of the
+Chamber, were, by his orders, arrested in their beds and sent to prison,
+and many of them afterwards to exile. The Chamber was occupied by
+soldiers, and its members, who assembled in another place, were marched
+to prison. The High Court of Justice was dissolved by force. Martial
+law was proclaimed. Orders were given that all who resisted the
+usurpation in the streets were at once, and without trial, to be shot.
+All liberty of the press, all liberty of public meeting or discussion,
+were absolutely destroyed. About one hundred newspapers were suppressed
+and great numbers of their editors transported to Cayenne. Nothing was
+allowed to be published without Government authority. In order to
+deceive the people as to the amount of support behind the President, a
+'Consultative Commission' was announced and the names were placarded in
+Paris. Fully half the persons whose names were placed on this list
+refused to serve, but in spite of their protests their names were kept
+there in order that they might appear to have approved of what was
+done.[45] Orders were issued immediately after the _Coup d'etat_ that
+every public functionary who did not instantly give in writing his
+adhesion to the new Government should be dismissed. The Prefets were
+given the right to arrest in their departments whoever they pleased. By
+an _ex post facto_ decree, issued on December 8, the Executive were
+enabled without trial to send to Cayenne, or to the penal settlements in
+Africa, any persons who had in any past time belonged to a 'secret
+society,' and this order placed all the numerous members of political
+clubs at the mercy of the Government. Parliament, when it was suffered
+to reassemble, was so organised and shackled that every vestige of free
+discussion for many years disappeared, and a despotism of almost
+Asiatic severity was established in France.
+
+It may be fully conceded that the tragedy of December 4, when for more
+than a quarter of an hour some 3,000 French soldiers deliberately fired
+volley after volley without return upon the unoffending spectators on
+the Boulevards, broke into the houses and killed multitudes, not only of
+men but of women and children, till the Boulevards, in the words of an
+English eye-witness, were 'at some points a perfect shambles,' and the
+blood lay in pools round the trees that fringed them, was not ordered by
+the President, though it remained absolutely unpunished and uncensured
+by him. There is conflicting evidence on this point, but it is probable
+that some stray shots had been fired from the houses, and it is certain
+that a wild and sanguinary panic had fallen upon the soldiers. It is
+possible too, and not improbable, that the stories so generally believed
+in Paris that large batches of prisoners, who had been arrested, were
+brought out of prison in the dead hours of the night and deliberately
+shot by bodies of soldiers, may have been exaggerated or untrue. Maupas,
+who was Prefet of Police, and who must have known the truth, positively
+denied it; but the question what credence should be attached to a man of
+his antecedents who boasted that he had been from the first a leading
+agent in the whole conspiracy may be reasonably asked.[46] Evidence of
+these things, as has been truly said, could scarcely be obtained, for
+the press was absolutely gagged and all possibility of investigation was
+prevented. For the number of those who were transported or forcibly
+expelled within the few weeks after December 2, we may perhaps rely upon
+the historian and panegyrist of the Empire. He computes them at the
+enormous number of 26,500.[47] After the Plebiscite new measures of
+proscription were taken, and, according to Emile Ollivier, one of the
+most enthusiastic and skilful eulogists of the _Coup d'etat_, in the
+first months of 1852 there were from 15,000 to 20,000 political
+prisoners in the French prisons.[48] It was by such means that Louis
+Napoleon attained the empire which had been the dream of his life.
+
+Like many, however, of the great crimes of history, this was not without
+its palliations, and a more detailed investigation will show that those
+palliations were not inconsiderable. Napoleon had been elected to the
+presidency by 5,434,226 votes out of 7,317,344 which were given, and
+with his name, his antecedents, and his well-known aspirations, this
+overwhelming majority clearly showed what were the real wishes of the
+people. His power rested on universal suffrage; it was independent of
+the Chamber. It gave him the direction of the army, though he could not
+command it in person, and from the very beginning he assumed an
+independent and almost regal position. In the first review that took
+place after his election he was greeted by the soldiers with cries of
+'Vive Napoleon! Vive l'Empereur!' It was soon proved that the
+Constitution of 1848 was exceedingly unworkable. In the words of Lord
+Palmerston: 'There were two great powers, each deriving its existence
+from the same source, almost sure to disagree, but with no umpire to
+decide between them, and neither able by any legal means to get rid of
+the other.' The President could not dissolve the Chamber, but he could
+impose upon it any ministry he chose. He was himself elected for only
+four years, and he could not be re-elected, while by a most fatuous
+provision the powers of the President and the Chamber were to expire in
+1852 at the same time, leaving France without a government and exposed
+to the gravest danger of anarchy.
+
+The Legislative Assembly, which was elected in May, 1849, was, it is
+true, far from being a revolutionary one. It contained a minority of
+desperate Socialists, it was broken into many factions, and like most
+democratic French Chambers it showed much weakness and inconsistency;
+but the vast majority of its members were Conservatives who had no kind
+of sympathy with revolution, and its conduct towards the President, if
+fairly judged, was on the whole very moderate. He soon treated it with
+contempt, and it was quite evident that there was no national enthusiasm
+behind it. The Socialist party was growing rapidly in the great towns;
+in June, 1849, there was an abortive Socialist insurrection in Paris,
+and a somewhat more formidable one at Lyons. They were easily put down,
+but the Socialists captured a great part of the representation of Paris,
+and they succeeded in producing a wild panic throughout the country. It
+led to several reactionary measures, the most important being a law
+which by imposing new conditions of residence very considerably limited
+the suffrage. This law was presented to the Chamber by the Ministers of
+the President and with his assent, though he subsequently demanded the
+reestablishment of universal suffrage, and made a decree effecting this
+one of the chief justifications of his _Coup d'etat_. The restrictive
+law was carried through the Chamber on May 31, 1850, by an immense
+majority, but it was denounced with great eloquence by some of its
+leading members, and it added seriously to the unpopularity of the
+Assembly, and greatly lowered its authority in contending with a
+President whose authority rested on direct universal suffrage. More than
+once he exercised his power of dismissing and appointing ministries
+absolutely irrespective of its votes and wishes, and in each case in
+order to fill all posts of power with creatures of his own. The
+newspapers supporting him continually inveighed against the Chamber, and
+dwelt upon the danger of anarchy to which France would be exposed in
+1852 and upon the absolute necessity of 'a Saviour of Society.' In
+repeated journeys through France, and in more than one military review,
+the President gave the occasion of demonstrations in which the cries of
+'Vive l'Empereur!' were often heard, and which were manifestly intended
+to strengthen him in his conflict with the Chamber.
+
+The man from whom he had most to fear was Changarnier, who since the
+close of 1848 had been commander of the troops in Paris, and whose name,
+though far less popular than that of Napoleon, had much weight with the
+army. He was a man with strong leanings to authority, and was much
+courted by the monarchical parties, but was for some time in decided
+sympathy with Napoleon, from whom, however, in spite of large offers
+that had been made him, he gradually diverged. He issued peremptory
+orders to the troops under his command, forbidding all party cries at
+reviews. He declared in the Chamber that these cries had been 'not only
+encouraged but provoked,' and when the intention of the President to
+prolong his presidency became apparent, he assured Odilon Barrot that he
+was prepared, if ordered by the minister and authorised by the President
+of the Chamber, to anticipate the _Coup d'etat_ by seizing and
+imprisoning Louis Napoleon.[49] The President succeeded in removing him
+from his command, and in placing a creature of his own at the head of
+the Paris troops; but though Changarnier acquiesced without resistance
+in his dismissal, he remained an important member of the Assembly; he
+openly declared that his sword was at its service, and if an armed
+conflict broke out it was tolerably certain that he would be its
+representative. The President had an official salary of 48,000
+_l_.--nearly five times as much as the President of the United States.
+The Chamber refused to increase it, though they consented by a very
+small majority, and at the request of Changarnier, to pay his debts.
+
+The demand for a revision of the Constitution, making it possible for
+the President to be re-elected, was rising rapidly through the country,
+and there can be but little doubt that this was generally looked forward
+to as the only peaceful solution, and that it represented the real wish
+of the great majority of the people. Petitions in favour of it, bearing
+an enormous number of signatures, were presented to the Chamber, and the
+overwhelming majority of the Conseils Generaux of which the Deputies
+generally formed part voted for revision. The President did not so much
+petition for it as demand it. In a message he sent to the Chamber, he
+declared that if they did not vote Revision the people would, in 1852,
+solemnly manifest their wishes. In a speech at Dijon, June 1, 1851, he
+declared that France from end to end demanded it; that he would follow
+the wishes of the nation, and that France would not perish in his hands.
+In the same speech he accused the Chamber of never seconding his wishes
+to ameliorate the lot of the people. He at the same time lost no
+opportunity of showing that his special sympathy and trust lay with the
+army, and he singled out with marked favour the colonels of the
+regiments which had shown themselves at the reviews most prominent in
+demonstrations in his favour.[50] The meaning of all this was hardly
+doubtful. Changarnier took up the gauntlet, and at a time when the
+question of Revision was before the Chamber he declared that no soldier
+would ever be induced to move against the law and the Assembly, and he
+called upon the Deputies to deliberate in peace.
+
+The Revision was voted in the Chamber by 446 votes to 278, but a
+majority of three-fourths was required for a constitutional change, and
+this majority was not obtained, and in the disintegrated condition of
+French parties it seemed scarcely likely to be obtained. The Chamber
+was soon after prorogued for about two months, leaving the situation
+unchanged, and the tension and panic were extreme. Out of eighty-five
+Conseils Generaux in France, eighty passed votes in favour of Revision,
+three abstained, two only opposed.
+
+The President had now fully resolved upon a _Coup d'etat_, and before
+the Chamber reassembled a new ministry was constituted, St.-Arnaud being
+at the head of the army, and Maupas at the head of the police. His first
+step was to summon the Chamber to repeal the law of May 31 which
+abolished universal suffrage. The Chamber, after much hesitation,
+refused, but only by two votes. The belief that the question could only
+be solved by force was becoming universal, and the bolder spirits in the
+Chamber clearly saw that if no new measure was taken they were likely to
+be helpless before the military party. By a decree of 1848 the President
+of the Chamber had a right, if necessary, to call for troops for its
+protection independently of the Minister of War, and a motion was now
+made that he should be able to select a general to whom he might
+delegate this power. Such a measure, dividing the military command and
+enabling the Chamber to have its own general and its own army, might
+have proved very efficacious, but it would probably have involved France
+in civil war, and the President was resolved that, if the Chamber voted
+it, the _Coup d'etat_ should immediately take place. The vote was taken
+on November 17, 1851. St.-Arnaud, as Minister of War, opposed the
+measure on constitutional grounds, dilating on the danger of a divided
+military command, but during the discussion Maupas and Magnan were in
+the gallery of the Chamber, waiting to give orders to St.-Arnaud to call
+out the troops and to surround and dissolve the Chamber if the
+proposition was carried.
+
+It was, however, rejected by a majority of 108, and a few troubled days
+of conspiracy and panic still remained before the blow was struck. The
+state of the public securities and the testimony of the best judges of
+all parties showed the genuineness of the alarm. It was not true, as the
+President stated in the proclamation issued when the _Coup d'etat_ was
+accomplished, that the Chamber had become a mere nest of conspiracies,
+and there was a strange audacity in his assertion that he made the _Coup
+d'etat_ for the purpose of maintaining the Republic against monarchical
+plots; but it was quite true that the conviction was general that force
+had become inevitable; that the chief doubt was whether the first blow
+would be struck by Napoleon or Changarnier, and that while the evident
+desire of the majority of the people was to re-elect Napoleon, there was
+a design among some members of the Chamber to seize him by force and to
+elect in his place some member of the House of Orleans.[51] On December
+2 the curtain fell, and Napoleon accompanied his _Coup d'etat_ by a
+decree dissolving the Chamber, restoring by his own authority universal
+suffrage, abolishing the law of May 31, establishing a state of siege,
+and calling on the French people to judge his action by their vote.
+
+It was certainly not an appeal upon which great confidence could be
+placed. Immediately after the _Coup d'etat_, the army, which was wholly
+on his side, voted separately and openly in order that France might
+clearly know that the armed forces were with the President and might be
+able to predict the consequences of a verdict unfavourable to his
+pretensions. When, nearly three weeks later, the civilian Plebiscite
+took place, martial law was in force. Public meetings of every kind were
+forbidden. No newspaper hostile to the new authority was permitted. No
+electioneering paper or placard could be circulated which had not been
+sanctioned by Government officials. The terrible decree that all who had
+ever belonged to a secret society might be sent to die in the fevers of
+Africa was interpreted in the widest sense, and every political society
+or organisation was included in it. All the functionaries of a highly
+centralised country were turned into ardent electioneering agents, and
+the question was so put that the voters had no alternative except for or
+against the President, a negative vote leaving the country with no
+government and an almost certain prospect of anarchy and civil war.
+Under these circumstances 7,500,000 votes were given for the President
+and 500,000 against him.
+
+But after all deductions have been made there can be no real doubt that
+the majority of Frenchmen acquiesced in the new _regime_. The terror of
+Socialism was abroad, and it brought with it an ardent desire for strong
+government. The probabilities of a period of sanguinary anarchy were so
+great that multitudes were glad to be secured from it at almost any
+cost. Parliamentarism was profoundly discredited. The peasant
+proprietary had never cared for it, and the bourgeois class, among whom
+it had once been popular, were now thoroughly scared. Nothing in the
+contemporary accounts of the period is more striking than the
+indifference, the almost amused cynicism, or the sense of relief with
+which the great mass of Frenchmen seem to have witnessed the destruction
+of their Constitution and the gross insults inflicted upon a Chamber
+which included so many of the most illustrious of their countrymen.
+
+We can hardly have a better authority on this point than Tocqueville. No
+one felt more profoundly or more bitterly the iniquity of what had been
+done; but he was under no illusion about the sentiments of the people.
+The Constitution, he says, was thoroughly unpopular. 'Louis Napoleon had
+the merit or the luck to discover what few suspected--the latent
+Bonapartism of the nation.... The memory of the Emperor, vague and
+undefined, but therefore the more imposing, still dwelt like an heroic
+legend in the imaginations of the people.' All the educated, in the
+opinion of Tocqueville, condemned and repudiated the _Coup d'etat_.
+'Thirty-seven years of liberty have made a free press and free
+parliamentary discussion necessary to us.' But the bulk of the nation
+was not with them. The new Government, he predicted, 'will last until it
+is unpopular with the mass of the people. At present the disapprobation
+is confined to the educated classes.' 'The reaction against democracy
+and even against liberty is irresistible.'[52]
+
+There is no doubt some exaggeration on both sides of this statement.
+The appalling magnitude of the deportations and imprisonments by the new
+Government seems to show that the hatred went deeper than Tocqueville
+supposed, and on the other hand it can hardly be said that the educated
+classes wholly repudiated what had been done when we remember that the
+French Funds at once rose from 91 to 102, that nearly all branches of
+French commerce made a similar spring,[53] that some twenty generals
+were actively engaged in the conspiracy, and that the great body of the
+priests were delighted at its success. The truth seems to be that the
+property of France saw in the success of the _Coup d'etat_ an escape
+from a great danger, while two powerful professions, the army and the
+Church, were strongly in favour of the President. Over the army the name
+of Napoleon exercised a magical influence, and the expedition to Rome
+and the probability that the new government would be under clerical
+guidance were, in the eyes of the Church party, quite sufficient to
+justify what had been done.
+
+Nothing, indeed, in this strange history is more significant than the
+attitude assumed by the special leaders and representatives of the
+Church which teaches that 'it were better for the sun and moon to drop
+from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all of the many millions
+upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal
+affliction goes, than that one soul ... should commit one venial sin,
+should tell one wilful untruth.'[54]
+
+Three illustrious churchmen--Lacordaire, Ravignan and Dupanloup--to
+their immortal honour refused to give any approbation to the _Coup
+d'etat_ or to express any confidence in its author. But the latest
+panegyrist of the Empire boasts that they were almost alone in their
+profession. By the advice of the Papal Nuncio and of the leading French
+bishops, the clergy lost no time in presenting their felicitations.
+Veuillot, who more than any other man represented and influenced the
+vast majority of the French priesthood, wrote on what had been done with
+undisguised and unqualified exultation and delight. Even Montalembert
+rallied to the Government on the morrow of the _Coup d'etat_. He
+described Louis Napoleon as a Prince 'who had shown a more efficacious
+and intelligent devotion to religious interests than any of those who
+had governed France during sixty years;' and it was universally admitted
+that the great body of the clergy, with Archbishop Sibour at their head,
+were in this critical moment ardent supporters of the new
+government.[55] Kinglake, in a page of immortal beauty, has described
+the scene when, thirty days after the _Coup d'etat_, Louis Napoleon
+appeared in Notre Dame to receive, amid all the pomp that Catholic
+ceremonial could give, the solemn blessing of the Church, and to listen
+to the Te Deum thanking the Almighty for what had been accomplished. The
+time came, it is true, when the policy of the priests was changed, for
+they found that Louis Napoleon was more liberal and less clerical than
+they imagined; but in estimating the feelings with which French
+Liberals judge the Church, its attitude towards the perjury and violence
+of December 2 should never be forgotten.
+
+To those who judge the political ethics of the Roman Catholic Church not
+from the deceptive pages of such writers as Newman, but from an
+examination of its actual conduct in the different periods of its
+history, it will appear in no degree inconsistent. It is but another
+instance added to many of the manner in which it regards all acts which
+appear conducive to its interests. It was the same spirit that led a
+Pope to offer public thanks for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and to
+order Vasari to paint the murder of Coligny on the walls of the Vatican
+among the triumphs of the Church. No Christian sovereign of modern times
+has left a worse memory behind him than Ferdinand II. of Naples, who
+received the Pope when he fled to Gaeta in 1848. He was the sovereign
+whose government was described by Gladstone as 'a negation of God.' He
+not only destroyed the Constitution he had sworn to observe, but threw
+into a loathsome dungeon the Liberal ministers who had trusted him. But
+in the eyes of the Pope his services to the Church far outweighed all
+defects, and the monument erected to this 'most pious prince' may be
+seen in one of the chapels of St. Peter's. Every visitor to Paris may
+see the fresco in the Madeleine in which Napoleon I. appears seated
+triumphant on the clouds and surrounded by an admiring priesthood, the
+most prominent and glorified figure in a picture representing the
+history of French Christianity, with Christ above, blessing the work.
+
+It is indeed a most significant fact that in Catholic countries the
+highest moral level in public life is now rarely to be found among those
+who specially represent the spirit and teaching of their Church, and
+much more frequently among men who are unconnected with it, and often
+with all dogmatic theology. How seldom has the distinctively Catholic
+press seriously censured unjust wars, unscrupulous alliances, violations
+of constitutional obligations, unprovoked aggressions, great outbursts
+of intolerance and fanaticism! It is, indeed, not too much to say that
+some of the worst moral perversions of modern times have been supported
+and stimulated by a great body of genuinely Catholic opinion both in the
+priesthood and in the press. The anti-Semite movement, the shameful
+indifference to justice shown in France in the Dreyfus case, and the
+countless frauds, outrages and oppressions that accompanied the
+domination of the Irish Land League are recent and conspicuous examples.
+
+Among secular-minded laymen the _Coup d'etat_ of Louis Napoleon was, as
+I have said, differently judged. Few things in French history are more
+honourable than the determination with which so many men who were the
+very flower of the French nation refused to take the oath or give their
+adhesion to the new Government. Great statesmen and a few distinguished
+soldiers, with a splendid past behind them and with the prospect of an
+illustrious career before them; men of genius who in their professorial
+chairs had been the centres of the intellectual life of France;
+functionaries who had by laborious and persevering industry climbed the
+steps of their profession and depended for their livelihood on its
+emoluments, accepted poverty, exile and the long eclipse of the most
+honourable ambitions rather than take an oath which seemed to justify
+the usurpation. At the same time, some statesmen of unquestionable
+honour did not wholly and in all its parts condemn it. Lord Palmerston
+was conspicuous among them. Without expressing approval of all that had
+been done, he always maintained that the condition of France was such
+that a violent subversion of an unworkable Constitution and the
+establishment of a strong government had become absolutely necessary;
+that the _Coup d'etat_ saved France from the gravest and most imminent
+danger of anarchy and civil war, and that this fact was its
+justification. If it had not been for the acts of ferocious tyranny
+which immediately followed it, his opinion would have been more largely
+shared.
+
+It is probable that the moral character of _Coups d'etat_ may in the
+future not unfrequently come into discussion in Europe, as it has often
+done in South America. As the best observers are more and more
+perceiving, parliamentary government worked upon party lines is by no
+means an easy thing, and it seldom attains perfection without long
+experience and without qualities of mind and character which are very
+unequally distributed among the nations of the world. It requires a
+spirit of compromise, patience and moderation; the kind of mind which
+can distinguish the solid, the practical and the well meaning, from the
+brilliant, the plausible and the ambitious, which cares more for useful
+results and for the conciliation of many interests and opinions than for
+any rigid uniformity and consistency of principle; which, while
+pursuing personal ambitions and party aims, can subordinate them on
+great occasions to public interests. It needs a combination of
+independence and discipline which is not common, and where it does not
+exist parliaments speedily degenerate either into an assemblage of
+puppets in the hands of party leaders or into disintegrated,
+demoralised, insubordinate groups. Some of the foremost nations of the
+world--nations distinguished for noble and brilliant intellect; for
+splendid heroism; for great achievements in peace and war--have in this
+form of government conspicuously failed. In England it has grown with
+our growth and strengthened with our strength. We have practised it in
+many phases. Its traditions have taken deep root and are in full harmony
+with the national character. But in the present century this kind of
+government has been adopted by many nations which are wholly unfit for
+it, and they have usually adopted it in the most difficult of all
+forms--that of an uncontrolled democracy resting upon universal
+suffrage. It is becoming very evident that in many countries such
+assemblies are wholly incompetent to take the foremost place in
+government, but they are so fenced round by oaths and other
+constitutional forms that nothing short of violence can take from them a
+power which they are never likely voluntarily to relinquish. In such
+countries democracy tends much less naturally to the parliamentary
+system than to some form of dictatorship, to some despotism resting on
+and justified by a plebiscite. It is probable that many transitions in
+this direction will take place. They will seldom be carried out through
+purely public motives or without perjury and violence. But public
+opinion will judge each case on its own merits, and where it can be
+shown that its results are beneficial and that large sections of the
+people have desired it, such an act will not be severely condemned.
+
+Cases of conflicting ethical judgments of another kind may be easily
+cited. One of the best known was that of Governor Eyre at the time of
+the Jamaica insurrection of 1865. In this case there was no question of
+personal interest or ambition. The Governor was a man of stainless
+honour, who in a moment of extreme difficulty and danger had rendered a
+great service to his country. By his prompt and courageous action a
+negro insurrection was quickly suppressed, which, if it had been allowed
+to extend, must have brought untold horrors upon Jamaica. But the
+martial law which he had proclaimed was certainly continued longer than
+was necessary, it was exercised with excessive severity, and those who
+were tried under it were not merely men who had been taken in arms. One
+conspicuous civilian agitator, who had contributed greatly to stimulate
+the insurrection, and had been, in the opinion of the Governor, its
+'chief cause and origin,' but who, like most men of his kind, had merely
+incited others without taking any direct part himself, was arrested in a
+part of the island in which martial law was not proclaimed, and was
+tried and hanged by orders of a military tribunal in a way which the
+best legal authorities in England pronounced wholly unwarranted by law.
+If this act had been considered apart from the general conditions of the
+island it would have deserved severe punishment. If the services of the
+Governor had been considered apart from this act they would have
+deserved high honours from the Crown. In Jamaica the Governor was fully
+supported by the Legislative Council and the Assembly, but at home
+public opinion was fiercely divided, and the fact that the chief
+literary and scientific men in England took sides on the question added
+greatly to its interest. Carlyle took a leading part in the defence of
+Governor Eyre. John Stuart Mill was the chairman of a committee who
+regarded him as a simple criminal, and who for more than two years
+pursued him with a persistent vindictiveness. As might have been
+expected the one side dwelt solely on his services and the other side on
+his misdeeds. Governor Eyre received no reward for the great service he
+had rendered, and he was involved by his enemies in a ruinous legal
+expenditure, which, however, was subsequently paid by the Government;
+but those who desired to bring him to trial for murder were baffled, for
+the Old Bailey Grand Jury threw out the bill. Public opinion, I think,
+on the whole, approved of what they had done. Most moderate men had come
+to the conclusion that Governor Eyre was a brave and honourable man who
+had rendered great services to the State and had saved countless lives,
+but who, through no unworthy motive and in a time of extreme danger and
+panic, had committed a serious mistake which had been very amply
+expiated.
+
+The more recent events connected with the Jameson raid into the
+Transvaal may also be cited. Of the raid itself there is little to be
+said. It was, in truth, one of the most discreditable as well as
+mischievous events in recent colonial history, and its character was
+entirely unrelieved by any gleam either of heroism or of skill. Those
+who took a direct part in it were duly tried and duly punished. A
+section of English society adopted on this question a disgraceful
+attitude, but it must at least be said in palliation that they had been
+grossly deceived, one of the chief and usually most trustworthy organs
+of opinion having been made use of as an organ of the conspirators.
+
+A more difficult question arose in the case of the statesman who had
+prepared and organized the expedition against the Transvaal. It is
+certain that the actual raid had taken place without his knowledge or
+consent, though when it was brought to his knowledge he abstained from
+taking any step to stop it. It may be conceded also that there were real
+grievances to be complained of. By a strange irony of fate some of the
+largest gold mines of the world had fallen to the possession of perhaps
+the only people who did not desire them; of a race of hunters and
+farmers intensely hostile to modern ideas, who had twice abandoned their
+homes and made long journeys into distant lands in search of solitude
+and space and of a home where they could live their primitive, pastoral
+lives, undisturbed by any foreign element. These men now found their
+country the centre of a vast stream of foreign immigration, and of that
+most undesirable kind of immigration which gold mines invariably
+promote. Their laws were very backward, but the part which was most
+oppressive was that connected with the gold-mining industry which was
+almost entirely in the hands of the immigrants, and it was this which
+made it a main object to overthrow their government. The trail of
+finance runs over the whole story, but it may be acknowledged that,
+although Mr. Rhodes had made an enormous fortune by mining speculations,
+and although he was largely interested as a financier in overturning the
+system of government at Johannesburg, he was not a man likely to be
+actuated by mere love of money, and that political ambition closely
+connected with the opening and the civilisation of Africa largely
+actuated him. Whether the motives of his co-conspirators were of the
+same kind may be open to question. What, however, he did has been very
+clearly established. When holding the highly confidential position of
+Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and being at the same time a Privy
+Councillor of the Queen, he engaged in a conspiracy for the overthrow of
+the government of a neighbouring and friendly State. In order to carry
+out this design he deceived the High Commissioner whose Prime Minister
+he was. He deceived his own colleagues in the Ministry. He collected
+under false pretences a force which was intended to co-operate with an
+insurrection in Johannesburg. Being a Director of the Chartered Company
+he made use of that position, without the knowledge of his colleagues,
+to further the conspiracy. He took an active and secret part in
+smuggling great quantities of arms into the Transvaal, which were
+intended to be used in the rebellion; and at a time when his organs in
+the press were representing Johannesburg as seething with spontaneous
+indignation against an oppressive government, he, with another
+millionaire, was secretly expending many thousands of pounds in that
+town in stimulating and subsidising the rising. He was also directly
+connected with the shabbiest incident in the whole affair, the
+concoction of a letter from the Johannesburg conspirators absurdly
+representing English women and children at Johannesburg as in danger of
+being shot down by the Boers, and urging the British to come at once to
+save them. It was a letter drawn up with the sanction of Mr. Rhodes many
+weeks before the raid, and before any disturbance had arisen, and kept
+in reserve to be dated and used in the last moment for the purpose of
+inducing the young soldiers in South Africa to join in the raid, and of
+subsequently justifying their conduct before the War Office, and also
+for the purpose of being published in the English press at the same time
+as the first news of the raid, in order to work upon English public
+opinion and persuade the English people that the raid, though
+technically wrong, was morally justifiable.[56]
+
+Mr. Rhodes is a man of great genius and influence, and in the past he
+has rendered great services to the Empire. At the same time no
+reasonable judge can question that in these transactions he was more
+blamable than those who were actually punished by the law for taking
+part in the raid--far more blamable than those young officers who were,
+in truth, the most severely punished, and who had been induced to take
+part in it under a false representation of the wishes of the Government
+at home, and a grossly false representation of the state of things at
+Johannesburg. The failure of the raid, and his undoubted complicity
+with its design, obliged Mr. Rhodes to resign the post of Prime Minister
+and his directorship of the Chartered Company, and, for a time at least,
+eclipsed his influence in Africa; but the question confronted the
+Ministers whether these resignations alone constituted a sufficient
+punishment for what he had done.
+
+The question was indeed one of great difficulty. The Government, in my
+opinion, were right in not attempting a prosecution which, in the face
+of the fact that the actual raid had certainly been undertaken without
+the knowledge of Mr. Rhodes, and that the evidence against him was
+chiefly drawn from his own voluntary admissions before the committee of
+inquiry, would inevitably have proved abortive. They were, perhaps,
+right in not taking from him the dignity of Privy Councillor, which had
+been bestowed on him as a reward for great services in the past, and
+which had never in the present reign been taken from anyone on whom it
+had been bestowed. They were right also, I believe, in urging that after
+a long and elaborate inquiry into the circumstances of the raid, and
+after a report in which Mr. Rhodes's conduct had been fully examined and
+severely censured, it was most important for the peace and good
+government of South Africa that the matter should as soon as possible be
+allowed to drop, and the raid and the party animosities it had aroused
+to subside. But what can be thought of the language of a Minister who
+volunteered to assure the House of Commons that in all the transactions
+I have described, Mr. Rhodes, though he had made 'a gigantic mistake,' a
+mistake perhaps as great as a statesman could make, had done nothing
+affecting his personal honour?[57]
+
+The foregoing examples will serve to illustrate the kind of difficulty
+which every statesman has to encounter in dealing with political
+misdeeds, and the impossibility of treating them by the clearly defined
+lines and standards that are applicable to the morals of a private life.
+Whatever conclusions men may arrive at in the seclusion of their
+studies, when they take part in active political life they will find it
+necessary to make large allowances for motives, tendencies, past
+services, pressing dangers, overwhelming expediencies, opposing
+interests. Every statesman who is worthy of the name has a strong
+predisposition to support the public servants who are under him when he
+knows that they have acted with a sincere desire to benefit the Empire.
+This is, indeed, a characteristic of all really great statesmen, and it
+gives a confidence and energy to the public service which in times of
+difficulty and danger are of supreme importance. In such times a
+mistaken decision is usually a less evil than timid, vacillating, or
+procrastinated action, and a wise Minister will go far to defend his
+subordinates if they have acted promptly and with substantial justice in
+the way they believed to be best, even though they may have made
+considerable mistakes, and though the results of their action may have
+proved unfortunate.
+
+But of all forms of prestige, moral prestige is the most valuable, and
+no statesman should forget that one of the chief elements of British
+power is the moral weight that is behind it. It is the conviction that
+British policy is essentially honourable and straightforward, that the
+word and honour of its statesmen and diplomatists may be implicitly
+trusted, and that intrigues and deceptions are wholly alien to their
+nature. The statesman must steer his way between rival fanaticisms--the
+fanaticism of those who pardon everything if it is crowned by success
+and conduces to the greatness of the Empire, and who act as if weak
+Powers and savage nations had no moral rights; and the fanaticism of
+those who always seem to have a leaning against their own country, and
+who imagine that in times of war, anarchy, or rebellion, and in dealings
+with savage or half-savage military populations, it is possible to act
+with the same respect for the technicalities of law, and the same
+invariably high standard of moral scrupulousness, as in a peaceful age
+and a highly civilised country. In the affairs of private life the
+distinction between right and wrong is usually very clear, but it is not
+so in public affairs. Even the moral aspects of political acts can
+seldom be rightly estimated without the exercise of a large, judicial,
+and comprehensive judgment, and the spirit which should actuate a
+statesman should be rather that of a high-minded and honourable man of
+the world than that of a theologian, or a lawyer, or an abstract
+moralist.
+
+In some respects the standard of political morality has undoubtedly
+risen in modern times; but it is by no means certain that in
+international politics this is the case. A true history of the wars of
+the last half of the nineteenth century may well lead us to doubt it,
+and recent disclosures have shown us that in the most terrible of
+them--the Franco-German War of 1870--the blame must be much more equally
+divided than we had been accustomed to believe. Very few massacres in
+history have been more gigantic or more clearly traced to the action of
+a government than those perpetrated by Turkish soldiers in our
+generation, and few signs of the low level of public feeling in
+Christendom are more impressive than the general indifference with which
+these massacres were contemplated in most countries. It was made evident
+that a Power which retains its military strength, and which is therefore
+sought as an ally and feared as an enemy, may do things with impunity,
+and even with very little censure, which in the case of a weak nation
+would produce a swift retribution. Among the minor episodes of
+nineteenth-century history the historian will not forget how soon after
+the savage Armenian massacres the sovereign of one of the greatest and
+most civilised of Christian nations hastened to Constantinople to clasp
+the hand which was so deeply dyed with Christian blood, and then,
+having, as he thought, sufficiently strengthened his popularity and
+influence in that quarter, proceeded to the Mount of Olives, where, amid
+scenes that are consecrated by the most sacred of all memories, and most
+fitted to humble the pride of power and dispel the dreams of ambition,
+he proclaimed himself with melodramatic piety the champion and the
+patron of the Christian faith! How many instances may be culled from
+very modern history of the deliberate falsehood of statesmen; of
+distinct treaty engagements and obligations simply set aside because
+they were inconvenient to one Power, and could be repudiated with
+impunity; of weak nations annexed or plundered without a semblance of
+real provocation! The safety of the weak in the presence of the strong
+is the best test of international morality. Can it be said that, if
+measured by this test, the public morality of our time ranks very high?
+No one can fail to notice with what levity the causes of war with
+barbarous or semi-civilised nations are scrutinised if only those wars
+are crowned with success; how strongly the present commercial policy of
+Europe is stimulating the passion for aggression; how warmly that policy
+is in all great nations supported by public opinion and by the Press.
+
+The questions of morality arising out of these things are many and
+complicated, and they cannot be disposed of by short and simple formulae.
+How far is a statesman who sees, or thinks he sees, some crushing danger
+from an aggressive foreign Power impending over his country, justified
+in anticipating that danger, and at a convenient moment and without any
+immediate provocation forcing on a war? How far is it his right or his
+duty to sacrifice the lives of his people through humanitarian motives,
+for the redress of some flagrant wrong with which he is under no treaty
+obligation to interfere? How far, if several Powers agree to guarantee
+the integrity of a small Power, is one Power bound at great risk to
+interfere in isolation if its co-partners refuse to do so or are even
+accomplices in a policy of plunder? How far, if the aggression of other
+Powers places his nation at a commercial or other disadvantage in the
+competition of nations, may a statesman take measures which, under
+other circumstances, would be plainly unjustifiable, to guard against
+such disadvantage? With what degrees of punctiliousness, at what cost of
+treasure and of life, ought a nation to resent insults directed against
+its dignity, its subjects and its flag? What is the meaning and what are
+the limits of national egotism and national unselfishness? There is such
+a thing as the comity of nations, and even apart from treaty obligations
+no great nation can pursue a policy of complete isolation, disregarding
+crimes and aggressions beyond its border. On the other hand, the primary
+duty of every statesman is to his own country. His task is to secure for
+many millions of the human race the highest possible amount of peace and
+prosperity, and a selfishness is at least not a narrow one which, while
+abstaining from injuring others, restricts itself to promoting the
+happiness of a vast section of the human race. Sacrifices and dangers
+which a good man would think it his clear duty to accept if they fell on
+himself alone wear another aspect if he is acting as trustee for a great
+nation and for the interests of generations who are yet unborn. Nothing
+is more calamitous than the divorce of politics from morals, but in
+practical politics public and private morals will never absolutely
+correspond. The public opinion of the nation will inevitably inspire and
+control its statesmen. It creates in all countries an ethical code which
+with greater or less perfection marks out for them the path of duty, and
+though a great statesman may do something to raise its level, he can
+never wholly escape its influence. In different nations it is higher or
+lower--in truthfulness and sincerity of diplomacy the variations are
+very great--but it will never be the exact code on which men act in
+private life. It is certainly widely different from the Sermon on the
+Mount.
+
+There is one belief, half unconscious, half avowed, which in our
+generation is passing widely over the world and is practically accepted
+in a very large measure by the English-speaking nations. It is that to
+reclaim savage tribes to civilisation, and to place the outlying
+dominions of civilised countries which are anarchical or grossly
+misgoverned in the hands of rulers who govern wisely and uprightly, are
+sufficient justification for aggression and conquest. Many who, as a
+general rule, would severely censure an unjust and unprovoked war,
+carried on for the purpose of annexation by a strong Power against a
+weak one, will excuse or scarcely condemn such a war if it is directed
+against a country which has shown itself incapable of good government.
+To place the world in the hands of those who can best govern it is
+looked upon as a supreme end. Wars are not really undertaken for this
+end. The philanthropy of nations when it takes the form of war and
+conquest is seldom or never unmixed with selfishness, though strong
+gusts of humanitarian enthusiasm often give an impulse, a pretext, or a
+support to the calculated actions of statesmen. But when wars, however
+selfish and unprovoked, contribute to enlarge the boundaries of
+civilisation, to stimulate real progress, to put an end to savage
+customs, to oppression or to anarchy, they are now very indulgently
+judged even in the many cases in which the inhabitants of the conquered
+Power do not desire the change and resist it strenuously in the field.
+
+In domestic as in foreign politics the maintenance of a high moral
+standard in statesmanship is impossible unless the public opinion of the
+country is in harmony with it. Moral declension in a nation is very
+swiftly followed by a corresponding decadence among its public men, and
+it will indeed be generally found that the standard of public men is apt
+to be somewhat lower than that of the better section of the public
+outside. They are exposed to very special temptations, some of which I
+have already indicated.
+
+The constant habit of regarding questions with a view to party
+advantage, to proximate issues, to immediate popularity, which is
+inseparable from parliamentary government, can hardly fail to give some
+ply to the most honest intellect. Most questions have to be treated more
+or less in the way of compromise; and alliances and coalitions not very
+conducive to a severe standard of political morals are frequent. In
+England the leading men of the opposing parties have happily usually
+been able to respect one another. The same standard of honour will be
+found on both sides of the House, but every parliament contains its
+notorious agitators, intriguers and self-seekers, men who have been
+connected with acts which may or may not have been brought within the
+reach of the criminal law, but have at least been sufficient to stamp
+their character in the eyes of honest men. Such men cannot be neglected
+in party combinations. Political leaders must co-operate with them in
+the daily intercourse and business of parliamentary life--must sometimes
+ask them favours--must treat them with deference and respect. Men who on
+some subjects and at some times have acted with glaring profligacy, on
+others act with judgment, moderation and even patriotism, and become
+useful supporters or formidable opponents. Combinations are in this way
+formed which are in no degree wrong, but which tend to dull the edge of
+moral perception and imperceptibly to lower the standard of moral
+judgment. In the swift changes of the party kaleidoscope the bygone is
+soon forgotten. The enemy of yesterday is the ally of to-day; the
+services of the present soon obscure the misdeeds of the past; and men
+insensibly grow very tolerant not only of diversities of opinion, but
+also of gross aberrations of conduct. The constant watchfulness of
+external opinion is very necessary to keep up a high standard of
+political morality.
+
+Public opinion, it is true, is by no means impeccable. The tendency to
+believe that crimes cease to be crimes when they have a political
+object, and that a popular vote can absolve the worst crimes, is only
+too common; there are few political misdeeds which wealth, rank, genius
+or success will not induce large sections of English society to pardon,
+and nations even in their best moments will not judge acts which are
+greatly for their own advantage with the severity of judgment that they
+would apply to similar acts of other nations. But when all this is
+admitted, it still remains true that there is a large body of public
+opinion in England which carries into all politics a sound moral sense
+and which places a just and righteous policy higher than any mere party
+interest. It is on the power and pressure of this opinion that the high
+character of English government must ultimately depend.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[42] This sentence may appear obscure to English readers. The
+explanation is, that by an ingenious arrangement, devised by Lord
+Beaconsfield, the professors of the Jesuit College in Stephen's Green
+are nearly all made Fellows of the Royal University, those of the Arts
+Faculty receiving 400_l._ a year, and three Medical Fellows 150_l._
+each. By this device the Catholic college has in reality a State
+endowment to the amount of between 6,000_l._ and 7,000_l._ a year. This
+fact considerably reduces the grievance.
+
+[43] See e.g. the death-bed counsels of Henry IV. to his son:--
+
+
+                          'Therefore, my Harry,
+     Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
+     With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
+     May waste the memory of the former days.'
+                         _Henry IV_. Part II. Act IV. Sc. 4.
+
+
+[44] Lord Lanesborough _v._ Reilly.
+
+[45] See Tocqueville's _Memoirs_ (English trans.), ii. 189, Letter to
+the _Times_.
+
+[46] See Maupas, _Memoires sur le Second Empire_, i. 511, 512. It is
+said that, contrary to the orders of St.-Arnaud, the soldiers, instead
+of immediately shooting all persons in the street who were found with
+arms or constructing or defending a barricade, made many prisoners, and
+it is not clear what became of them. Granier de Cassagnac, however,
+altogether denies the executions on the Champ de Mars (ii. 433).
+
+[47] Granier de Cassagnac, ii. 438.
+
+[48] _L'Empire Liberal_, ii. 526.
+
+[49] _Memoires d'Odilon Barrot_, iv. 59-61.
+
+[50] _Memoires d'Odilon Barrot_, iv. 56, 57.
+
+[51] See Lord Palmerston's statements on this subject in Ashley's _Life
+of Palmerston_, ii. 200-211. Tocqueville, however, utterly denies that
+the majority of the Assembly had any sympathy with these views
+(Tocqueville's _Memoirs_ (Eng. trans.), ii. 177). Maupas, in his
+_Memoires_, gives a very detailed account of the conspiracy on the
+Bonapartist side. It appears that the 'homme de confiance' of
+Changarnier was in his pay.
+
+[52] Tocqueville's _Memoirs_, ii.
+
+[53] Ashley's _Life of Palmerston_, ii. 208.
+
+[54] Newman.
+
+[55] See Ollivier, _L'Empire Liberal_, i. 510-512.
+
+[56] _Second Report of the Select Committee on British South Africa_
+(July, 1897).
+
+[57] _Parliamentary Debates_, July 26, 1897, 1169, 1170.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+The necessities for moral compromise I have traced in the army, in the
+law, and in the fields of politics may be found in another form not less
+conspicuously in the Church. The members, and still more the ministers,
+of an ancient Church bound to formularies and creeds that were drawn up
+in long bygone centuries, are continually met by the difficulties of
+reconciling these forms with the changed conditions of human knowledge,
+and there are periods when the pressure of these difficulties is felt
+with more than common force. Such, for example, were the periods of the
+Renaissance and the Reformation, when changes in the intellectual
+condition of Europe produced a widespread conviction of the vast amount
+of imposture and delusion which had received the sanction of a Church
+that claimed to be infallible, the result being in some countries a
+silent evanescence of all religious belief among the educated class,
+even including a large number of the leaders of the Church, and in other
+countries a great outburst of religious zeal aiming at the restoration
+of Christianity to its primitive form and a repudiation of the
+accretions of superstition that had gathered around it. The Copernican
+theory proving that our world is not, as was long believed, the centre
+of the universe, but a single planet moving with many others around a
+central sun, and the discovery, by the instrumentality of the
+telescope, of the infinitesimally small place which our globe occupies
+in the universe, altered men's measure of probability and affected
+widely, though indirectly, their theological beliefs.
+
+A similar change was gradually produced by the Newtonian discovery that
+the whole system of the universe was pervaded by one great law, and by
+the steady growth of scientific knowledge, proving that vast numbers of
+phenomena which were once attributed to isolated and capricious acts of
+spiritual intervention were regulated by invariable, inexorable,
+all-pervasive law. Many of the formularies by which we still express our
+religious beliefs date from periods when comets and eclipses were
+believed to have been sent to portend calamity; when every great
+meteorological change was attributed to some isolated spiritual agency;
+when witchcraft and diabolical possession, supernatural diseases, and
+supernatural cures were deemed indubitable facts: and when accounts of
+contemporary miracles, Divine or Satanic, carried with them no sense of
+strangeness or improbability. It is scarcely surprising that these
+formularies sometimes seem incongruous with an age when the scientific
+spirit has introduced very different conceptions of the government of
+the universe, and when the miraculous, if it is not absolutely
+discredited, is, at least in the eyes of most educated men, relegated to
+a distant past.
+
+The present century has seen some powerful reactions towards older
+religious beliefs, but it has also been to an unusual extent fertile in
+the kind of changes that most deeply affect them. Not many years have
+passed since the whole drama of the world's history was believed to
+have been comprised in the framework of 'Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise
+Regained.' Man appeared in the universe a faultless being in a faultless
+world, but he soon fell from his first estate, and his fall entailed
+world-wide consequences. It introduced into our globe sin, death,
+suffering, disease, imperfection and decay; all the mischievous and
+ferocious instincts and tendencies of man and beast; all the
+multitudinous forms of struggle, terror, anxiety and grief; all that
+makes life bitter to any living being, and, even as the Fathers were
+accustomed to say, the briars and weeds and sterility of the earth.
+Paradise Regained was believed to be indissolubly connected with
+Paradise Lost. The one was the explanation of the other. The one
+introduced the disease, the other provided the remedy.
+
+It is idle to deny that the main outlines of this picture have been
+wholly changed. First came the discovery that the existence of our globe
+stretches far beyond the period once assigned to the Creation, and that
+for countless ages before the time when Adam was believed to have lost
+Paradise, death had been its most familiar fact and its inexorable law;
+that the animals who inhabited it preyed upon and devoured each other as
+at present, their claws and teeth being specially adapted for that
+purpose. Even their half-digested remains have been preserved in fossil.
+
+'Death,' wrote a Pagan philosopher, in sharp contrast to the teaching of
+the Church, 'is a law and not a punishment,' and geology has fully
+justified his assertion.
+
+Then came decisive evidence showing that for many thousands of years
+before his supposed origin man had lived and died upon our globe--a
+being, as far as can be judged from the remains that have been
+preserved, not superior but greatly inferior to ourselves, whose almost
+only art was the manufacture of rude instruments for killing, who
+appears in structure and in life to have approximated closely to the
+lowest existing forms of savage life.
+
+Then came the Darwinian theory maintaining that the whole history of the
+living world is a history of slow and continuous evolution, chiefly by
+means of incessant strife, from lower to higher forms; that man himself
+had in this way gradually emerged from the humblest forms of the animal
+world; that most of the moral deflections which were attributed to the
+apple in Eden are the remains and traditions of the earlier and lower
+stages of his existence. The theory of continuous ascent from a lower to
+a higher stage took the place of the theory of the Fall as the
+explanation of human history. It is a doctrine which is certainly not
+without hope for the human race. It gives no explanation of the ultimate
+origin of things, and it is in no degree inconsistent with the belief
+either in a Divine and Creative origin or in a settled and Providential
+plan. But it is as far as possible removed from the conception of human
+history and human nature which Christendom during eighteen centuries
+accepted as fundamental truth.
+
+With these things have come influences of another kind. Comparative
+Mythology has accumulated a vast amount of evidence, showing how myths
+and miracles are the natural product of certain stages of human
+history, of certain primitive misconceptions of the course of nature;
+how legends essentially of the same kind, though with some varieties of
+detail, have sprung up in many different quarters, and how they have
+migrated and interacted on each other. Biblical criticism has at the
+same time decomposed and analysed the Jewish writings, assigning to them
+dates and degrees of authority very different from those recognised by
+the Church. It has certainly not impaired their significance as records
+of successive developments of religious and moral progress, nor has it
+diminished their value as expressions of the loftiest and most enduring
+religious sentiments of mankind; but in the eyes of a great section of
+the educated world it has deprived them of the authoritative and
+infallible character that was once attributed to them. At the same time
+historical criticism has brought with it severer standards of proof,
+more efficient means of distinguishing the historical from the fabulous.
+It has traced the phases and variations of religions, and the influences
+that governed them, with a fulness of knowledge and an independence of
+judgment unknown in the past, and it has led its votaries to regard in
+these matters a sceptical and hesitating spirit as a virtue, and
+credulity and easiness of belief as a vice.
+
+This is not a book of theology, and I have no intention of dilating on
+these things. It must, however, be manifest to all who are acquainted
+with contemporary thought how largely these influences have displaced
+theological beliefs among great numbers of educated men; how many things
+that were once widely believed have become absolutely incredible; how
+many that were once supposed to rest on the plane of certainty have now
+sunk to the lower plane of mere probability or perhaps possibility. From
+the time of Galileo downwards, these changes have been denounced as
+incompatible with the whole structure of Christian belief. No less an
+apologist than Bishop Berkeley declared that the belief that the date of
+the existence of the world was approximately that which could be deduced
+from the book of Genesis was one of the fundamental beliefs which could
+not be given up.[58] When the traveller Brydone published his travels in
+Sicily in 1773, conjecturing, from the deposits of lava, that the world
+must be much older than the Mosaic cosmogony admitted, his work was
+denounced as subverting the foundations of the Christian faith. The same
+charges were brought against the earlier geologists, and in our own day
+against the early supporters of the Darwinian theory; and many now
+living can remember the outbursts of indignation against those who first
+introduced the principles of German criticism into English thought, and
+who impugned the historical character and the assumed authorship of the
+Pentateuch.
+
+It is not surprising or unreasonable that it should have been so, for it
+is impossible to deny that these changes have profoundly altered large
+portions of the beliefs that were once regarded as essential. One main
+object of a religion was believed to have been to furnish what may be
+called a theory of the universe--to explain its origin, its destiny, and
+the strange contradictions and imperfections it presents. The Jewish
+theory was a very clear and definite one, but it is certainly not that
+of modern science.
+
+Yet few things are more remarkable than the facility with which these
+successive changes have gradually found their places within the
+Established Church, and how little that Church has been shaken by this
+fact. Even the Darwinian theory, though it has not yet passed into the
+circle of fully established truth, is in its main lines constantly
+mentioned with approbation by the clergy of the Church. The theory of
+evolution largely pervades their teaching. The doctrine that the Bible
+was never intended to teach science or scientific facts, and also the
+main facts and conclusions of modern Biblical criticism, have been
+largely accepted among the most educated clergy. Very few of them would
+now deny the antiquity of the world, the antiquity of man, or the
+antiquity of death, or would maintain that the Mosaic cosmogony was a
+true and literal account of the origin of the globe and of man, or would
+very strenuously argue either for the Mosaic authorship or the
+infallibility of the Pentateuch.
+
+And while changes of this kind have been going on in one direction,
+another great movement has been taking place in an opposite one. The
+Church of England was essentially a Protestant Church; though, being
+constructed more than most other Churches under political influences, by
+successive stages of progress, and with a view to including large and
+varying sections of opinion in its fold, it retained, more than other
+Churches, formularies and tenets derived from the Church it superseded.
+The earnest Protestant and Puritan party which dominated in Scotland
+and in the Continental Reformation, and which refused all compromise
+with Rome, had not become powerful in English public opinion till some
+time after the framework of the Church was established. The spirit of
+compromise and conservatism which already characterised the English
+people; the great part which kings and lawyers played in the formation
+of the Church; their desire to maintain in England a single body,
+comprising men who had broken away from the Papacy but who had in other
+respects no great objection to Roman Catholic forms and doctrines, and
+also men seriously imbued with the strong Protestant feeling of Germany
+and Switzerland; the strange ductility of belief and conduct that
+induced the great majority of the English clergy to retain their
+preferments and avoid persecution during the successive changes of Henry
+VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, all assisted in forming a Church
+of a very composite character. Two distinct theories found their place
+within it. According to one school it was simply the pre-Reformation
+Church purified from certain abuses that had gathered around it,
+organically united with it through a divinely appointed episcopacy,
+resting on an authoritative and ecclesiastical basis, and forming one of
+the three great branches of the Catholic Church. According to the other
+school it was one of several Protestant Churches, retaining indeed such
+portions of the old ecclesiastical organisation as might be justified
+from Scripture, but not regarding them as among the essentials of
+Christianity; agreeing with other Protestant bodies in what was
+fundamental, and differing from them mainly on points which were
+non-essential; accepting cordially the principle that 'the Bible and
+the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,' and at the same time
+separated by the gravest and most vital differences from what they
+deemed the great apostasy of Rome.
+
+It was argued on the one hand that in its ecclesiastical and legal
+organisation the Church in England was identical with the Church in the
+reign of Henry VII.; that there had been no breach of continuity; that
+bishops, and often the same bishops, sat in the same sees before and
+after the Reformation; that the great majority of the parochial clergy
+were unchanged, holding their endowments by the same titles and tenures,
+subject to the same courts, and meeting in Convocation in the same
+manner as their predecessors; that the old Catholic services were merely
+translated and revised, and that although Roman usurpations which had
+never been completely acquiesced in had been decisively rejected, and
+although many superstitious novelties had been removed, the Church of
+England was still the Church of St. Augustine; that it had never, even
+in the darkest period, lost its distinct existence, and that
+supernatural graces and sacerdotal powers denied to all schismatics had
+descended to it through the Episcopacy in an unbroken stream. On the
+other hand it was argued that the essential of a true Church lay in the
+accordance of its doctrines with the language of Scripture and not in
+the methods of Church government, and that whatever might be the case in
+a legal point of view, the theory of the unity of the Church before and
+after the Reformation was in a theological sense a delusion. The Church
+under Henry VII. was emphatically a theocracy or ecclesiastical
+monarchy, the Pope, as the supposed successor of the supposed prince of
+the Apostles, being the very keystone of the spiritual arch. Under Henry
+VIII. and Elizabeth the Church of England had become a kind of
+aristocracy of bishops, governed very really as well as theoretically by
+the Crown, totally cut off from what called itself the Chair of Peter,
+and placed under completely new relations with the Catholic Church of
+Christendom. In this space of time Anglican Christianity had discarded
+not only the Papacy but also great part of what for centuries before the
+change had been deemed vitally and incontestably necessary both in its
+theology and in its devotions. Though much of the old organisation and
+many of the old formularies had been retained, its articles, its
+homilies, the constant teaching of its founders, breathed a spirit of
+unquestionable Protestantism. The Church which remained attached to
+Rome, and which held the same doctrines, practised the same devotions,
+and performed the same ceremonies as the English Church under Henry
+VII., professed to be infallible, and it utterly repudiated all
+connection with the new Church of England, and regarded it as nothing
+more than a Protestant schism; while the Church of England in her
+authorised formularies branded some of the central beliefs and devotions
+of the Roman Church as blasphemous, idolatrous, superstitious and
+deceitful, and was long accustomed to regard that Church as the Church
+of Antichrist; the Harlot of the Apocalypse, drunk with the blood of the
+Saints. Each Church during long periods and to the full measure of its
+powers suppressed or persecuted the other.
+
+In the eyes of the Erastian and also in the eyes of the Puritan the
+theory of the spiritual unity of these two bodies, and the various
+sacerdotal consequences that were inferred from it, seemed incredible,
+nor did the first generation of our reformers shrink from communion,
+sympathy and co-operation with the non-episcopal Protestants of the
+Continent. Although they laid great stress on patristic authority, and
+consented--chiefly through political motives--to leave in the
+Prayer-book many things derived from the older Church, yet the High
+Church theory of Anglicanism is much more the product of the
+seventeenth-century divines than of the reformers, just as Roman
+Catholicism is much more akin to the later fathers than to primitive
+Christianity. No one could doubt on what side were the sympathies and
+what were the opinions of Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Jewell and Hooper,
+and what spirit pervades the articles and the homilies. A Church which
+does not claim to be infallible; which owes its special form chiefly to
+the sagacity of statesmen; in which the supreme tribunal, deciding what
+doctrines may be taught by the clergy, is a secular law court; in which
+the bands of conformity are so loose that the tendencies and sentiments
+of the nation give the complexion to the Church, appears in the eyes of
+men of these schools to have no possible right to claim or share the
+authority of the Church of Rome. It rests on another basis. It must be
+justified on other grounds.
+
+These two distinct schools, however, have subsisted in the Church. Each
+of them can find some support in the Prayer-book, and the old orthodox
+High Church school which was chiefly elaborated and which chiefly
+flourished under the Stuarts, has produced a great part of the most
+learned theology of Christendom, and had in its early days little or no
+tendency to Rome. It was exclusive and repellent on the side of
+Nonconformity, and it placed Church authority very high; but the immense
+majority of its members were intensely loyal to the Anglican Church, and
+lived and died contentedly within its pale. There were, however, always
+in that Church men of another kind whose true ideal lay beyond its
+border. Falkland, in a remarkable speech, delivered in 1640, speaks of
+them with much bitterness. 'Some,' he says, 'have so industriously
+laboured to deduce themselves from Rome that they have given great
+suspicion that in gratitude they desire to return thither, or at least
+to meet it half way. Some have evidently laboured to bring in an English
+though not a Roman Popery; I mean not only the outside and dress of it,
+but equally absolute.... Nay, common fame is more than ordinarily false
+if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to
+the preferments of England, and be so absolutely, directly and cordially
+Papists that it is all that 1,500_l._ a year can do to keep them from
+confessing it.'[59]
+
+No wide secession to Rome, however, followed the development of this
+seventeenth-century school, though it played a large part in the
+nonjuror schism, and with the decay of that schism and under the
+latitudinarian tendencies of the eighteenth century it greatly dwindled.
+Since, however, the Tractarian movement, which carried so many leaders
+of the English Church to Rome, men of Roman sympathies and Roman ideals
+have multiplied within the Church to an extraordinary degree. They have
+not only carried their theological pretensions in the direction of Rome
+much further than the nonjurors; they have also in many cases so
+transformed the old and simple Anglican service by vestments and
+candles, and banners and incense, and genuflexions and whispered
+prayers, that a stranger might well imagine that he was in a Roman
+Catholic church. They have put forward sacerdotal pretensions little, if
+at all, inferior to those of Rome. The whole tendency of their
+devotional literature and thought flows in the Roman channel, and even
+in the most insignificant matters of ceremony and dress they are
+accustomed to pay the greater Church the homage of constant imitation.
+
+It would be unjust to deny that there are some real differences. The
+absolute authority and infallibility of the Pope are sincerely
+repudiated as an usurpation, the ritualist theory only conceding to him
+a primacy among bishops. The discipline and submission to ecclesiastical
+authority also, which so eminently distinguish the Roman Church, are
+wholly wanting in many of its Anglican imitators, and at the same time
+the English sense of truth has proved sufficient to save the party from
+the tolerance and propagation of false miracles and of grossly
+superstitious practices so common in Roman Catholic countries. In this
+last respect, however, it is probable that English and American Roman
+Catholics are almost equally distinguished from Catholics in the
+Southern States of Europe and of America. Still, when all this is
+admitted, it can hardly be denied that there has grown up in a great
+section of the English Church a sympathy with Rome and an antipathy to
+Protestantism and to Protestant types of thought and character utterly
+alien to the spirit of the Reformers and to the doctrinal formularies of
+the Church of England.
+
+It is not very easy to form a just estimate of the extent and depth of
+this movement. There are wide variations in the High Church party; the
+extreme men are not the most numerous and certainly very far from the
+ablest, and many influences other than convinced belief have tended to
+strengthen the party. It has been, indeed, unlike the Tractarian party
+which preceded it, remarkably destitute of literary or theological
+ability, and has added singularly little to the large and noble
+theological literature of the English Church. The mere charm of novelty,
+which is always especially powerful in the field of religion, draws many
+to the ritualistic channel, and thousands who care very little for
+ritualistic doctrines are attracted by the music, the pageantry, the
+pictorial beauty of the ritualistic services. AEsthetic tastes have of
+late years greatly increased in England, and the closing of places of
+amusement on Sunday probably strengthens the craving for more attractive
+services. The extreme High Church party has chiefly fostered and chiefly
+benefited by this desire, but it has extended much more widely. It has
+touched even puritanical and non-episcopal bodies, and it is sometimes
+combined with extremely latitudinarian opinions. There is, indeed, a
+type of mind which finds in such services a happy anodyne for
+half-suppressed doubt. Petitions which in their poignant humiliation and
+profound emotion no longer correspond to the genuine feelings of the
+worshipper, seem attenuated and transformed when they are intoned, and
+creeds which when plainly read shock the understanding and the
+conscience are readily accepted as parts of a musical performance.
+Scepticism as well as belief sometimes fills churches. Large classes who
+have no wish to cut themselves off from religious services have lost all
+interest in the theological distinctions which once were deemed
+supremely important and all strong belief in great parts of dogmatic
+systems, and such men naturally prefer services which by music and
+ornament gratify their tastes and exercise a soothing or stimulating
+influence over the imagination.
+
+The extreme High Church party has, however, other elements of
+attraction. Much of its power is due to the new springs of real
+spiritual life and the new forms of real usefulness and charity that
+grew out of its highly developed sacerdotal system and out of the
+semi-monastic confraternities which at once foster and encourage and
+organise an active zeal. The power of the party in acting not only on
+the cultivated classes but also on the poor is very manifest, and it has
+done much to give the Church of England a democratic character which in
+past generations it did not possess, and which in the conditions of
+modern life is supremely important. The multiplication not only of
+religious services but of communicants, and the great increase in the
+interest taken in Church life in quarters where the Ritualist party
+prevail, cannot reasonably be questioned. Its highly ornate services
+draw many into the churches who never entered them before, and they are
+often combined with a familiar and at the same time impassioned style of
+preaching, something like that of a Franciscan friar or a Methodist
+preacher, which is excellently fitted to act upon the ignorant. If its
+clergy have been distinguished for their insubordination to their
+bishops, if they have displayed in no dubious manner a keen desire to
+aggrandise their own position and authority, it is also but just to add
+that they have been prominent for the zeal and self-sacrifice with which
+they have multiplied services, created confraternities, and penetrated
+into the worst and most obscure haunts of poverty and vice.
+
+The result, however, of all this is that the conflicting tendencies
+which have always been present in the Church have been greatly deepened.
+There are to be found within it men whose opinions can hardly be
+distinguished from simple Deism or Unitarianism, and men who abjure the
+name of Protestant and are only divided by the thinnest of partitions
+from the Roman Church. And this diversity exists in a Church which is
+held together by articles and formularies of the sixteenth century.
+
+It might, perhaps, _a priori_ have been imagined that a Church with so
+much diversity of opinion and of spirit was an enfeebled and
+disintegrated Church, but no candid man will attribute such a character
+to the Church of England. All the signs of corporate vitality are
+abundantly displayed, and it is impossible to deny that it is playing an
+active, powerful, and most useful part in English life. Looking at it
+first of all from the intellectual side, it is plain how large a
+proportion of the best intellect of the country is contented, not only
+to live within it, but to take an active part in its ministrations.
+Compare the amount of higher literature which proceeds from clergymen of
+the Established Church with the amount which proceeds from the vastly
+greater body of Catholic priests scattered over the world; compare the
+place which the English clergy, or laymen deeply imbued with the
+teaching of the Church, hold in English literature with the place which
+Catholic priests, or sincere Catholic laymen, hold in the literature of
+France,--and the contrast will appear sufficiently evident. There is
+hardly a branch of serious English literature in which Anglican clergy
+are not conspicuous. There is nothing in a false and superstitious creed
+incompatible with some forms of literature. It may easily ally itself
+with the genius of a poet or with great beauty of style either hortatory
+or narrative. But in the Church of England literary achievement is
+certainly not restricted to these forms. In the fields of physical
+science, in the fields of moral philosophy, metaphysics, social and even
+political philosophy, and perhaps still more in the fields of history,
+its clergy have won places in the foremost rank. It is notorious that a
+large proportion of the most serious criticism, of the best periodical
+writing in England, is the work of Anglican clergymen. No one, in
+enumerating the leading historians of the present century, would omit
+such names as Milman, Thirlwall and Merivale, in the generation which
+has just passed away, or Creighton and Stubbs among contemporaries, and
+these are only eminent examples of a kind of literature to which the
+Church has very largely contributed. Their histories are not specially
+conspicuous for beauty of style, and not only conspicuous for their
+profound learning; they are marked to an eminent degree by judgment,
+criticism, impartiality, a desire for truth, a skill in separating the
+proved from the false or the merely probable. Compare them with the
+chief histories that have been written by Catholic priests. In past ages
+some of the greatest works of patient, lifelong industry in all literary
+history were due to the Catholic priesthood, and especially to members
+of the monastic orders; even in modern times they have produced some
+works of great learning, of great dialectic skill, and of great beauty
+of style; but with scarcely an exception these works bear upon them the
+stamp of an advocate and are written for the purpose of proving a point,
+concealing or explaining away the faults on one side, and bringing into
+disproportioned relief those of the other. No one would look in them for
+a candid estimate of the merits of an opponent or for a full statement
+of a hostile case. Doellinger, who would probably once have been cited as
+the greatest historian the Catholic priesthood had produced in the
+nineteenth century, died under the anathema of his Church; and how large
+a proportion of the best writing in modern English Catholicism has come
+from writers who have been brought up in Protestant universities and who
+have learnt their skill in the Anglican Church!
+
+It is at least one great test of a living Church that the best intellect
+of the country can enter into its ministry, that it contains men who in
+nearly all branches of literature are looked upon by lay scholars with
+respect or admiration. It is said that the number of young men of
+ability who take orders is diminishing, and that this is due, not merely
+to the agricultural depression which has made the Church much less
+desirable as a profession, and indeed in many cases almost impossible
+for those who have not some private fortune; not merely to the
+competitive examination system, which has opened out vast and attractive
+fields of ambition to the ablest laymen,--but also to the wide
+divergence of men of the best intellect from the doctrines of the
+Church, and the conviction that they cannot honestly subscribe its
+articles and recite its formularies. But although this is, I believe,
+true, it is also true that there is no other Church which has shown
+itself so capable of attracting and retaining the services of men of
+general learning, criticism and ability. One of the most important
+features of the English ecclesiastical system has been the education of
+those who are intended for the Church, in common with other students in
+the great national universities. Other systems of education may produce
+a clergy of greater professional learning and more intense and exclusive
+zeal, but no other system of education is so efficacious in maintaining
+a general harmony of thought and tendency between the Church and the
+average educated opinion of the nation.
+
+Take another test. Compare the _Guardian_, which represents better than
+any other paper the opinions of moderate Churchmen, with the papers
+which are most read by the French priesthood and have most influence on
+their opinions. Certainly few English journalists have equalled in
+ability Louis Veuillot, and few papers have exercised so great an
+influence over the clergy of the Church as the _Univers_ at the time
+when he directed it; but no one who read those savagely scurrilous and
+intolerant pages, burning with an impotent hatred of all the progressive
+and liberal tendencies of the time, shrinking from no misrepresentation
+of fact and from no apology for crime if it was in the interest of the
+Church, could fail to perceive how utterly out of harmony it was with
+the best lay thought of France. English religious journalism has
+sometimes, though in a very mitigated degree, exhibited some of these
+characteristics, but no one who reads the _Guardian_, which I suppose
+appeals to a larger clerical public than any other paper, can fail to
+realise the contrast. It is not merely that it is habitually written in
+the style and temper of a gentleman, but that it reflects most clearly
+in its criticism, its impartiality, its tone of thought, the best
+intellectual influences of the time. Men may agree or differ about its
+politics or its theology, but no one who reads it can fail to admit that
+it is thoroughly in touch with cultivated lay opinion, and it is in fact
+a favourite paper of many who care only for its secular aspects.
+
+The intellectual ability, however, included among the ministers of a
+Church, though one test, is by no means a decisive and infallible one of
+its religious life. During the period of the Renaissance, when genuine
+belief in the Catholic Church had sunk to nearly its lowest point, most
+men of literary tastes and talents were either members of the priesthood
+or of the monastic orders. This was not due to any fervour of belief,
+but simply to the fact that the Church at that time furnished almost the
+only sphere in which a literary life could be pursued with comfort,
+without molestation, and with some adequate reward. Much of the literary
+ability found in the English Church is unquestionably due to the
+attraction it offers and the facilities it gives to those who simply
+wish for a studious life. The abolition of many clerical sinecures, and
+the greatly increased activity of clerical duty imposed by contemporary
+opinion, have no doubt rendered the profession less desirable from this
+point of view; but even now there is no other profession outside the
+universities which lends itself so readily to a literary life, and a
+great proportion of the most eminent thinkers and writers in the Church
+of England are eminent in fields that have little or no connection with
+theology.
+
+Other tests of a flourishing Church are needed, but they can easily be
+found. Political power is one test, though it is a very coarse and very
+deceptive one. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the most
+superstitious creeds are often those which exercise the greatest
+political influence, for they are those in which the priesthood acquires
+the most absolute authority. Nor does the decline of superstition among
+the educated classes always bring with it a corresponding decline in
+ecclesiastical influence. There have been instances, both in Pagan and
+Christian times, of a sceptical and highly educated ruling class
+supporting and allying themselves with a superstitious Church as the
+best means of governing or moralising the masses. Such Churches, by
+their skilful organisation, by their ascendency over individual rulers,
+or by their political alliances, have long exercised an enormous
+influence, and in a democratic age the preponderance of political power
+is steadily passing from the most educated classes. At the same time, in
+a highly civilised and perfectly free country, in which all laws of
+religious disqualification and coercion have disappeared, and all
+questions of religion are submitted to perpetual discussion, the
+political power which the Church of England retains at least proves that
+she has a vast weight of genuine and earnest opinion behind her. No
+politician will deny the strength with which the united or greatly
+preponderating influence of the Church can support or oppose a party. It
+has been said by a cynical observer that the three things outside their
+own families that average Englishmen value the most are rank, money, and
+the Church of England, and certainly no good observer will form a low
+estimate of the strength or earnestness of the Church feeling in every
+section of the English people.
+
+Still less can it be denied that the Church retains in a high degree its
+educational influence. For a long period national education was almost
+wholly in its hands, and, since all disqualifications and most
+privileges have been abolished, it still exercises a part in English
+education which excites the alarm of some and the admiration of others.
+It has thrown itself heartily into the new political conditions, and the
+vast number of voluntary schools established under clerical influence,
+and the immense sums that are annually raised for clerical purposes,
+show beyond all doubt the amount of support and enthusiasm behind it. In
+every branch of higher education its clergy are conspicuous, and their
+influence in training the nation is not confined to the pulpit, the
+university, or the school. No candid observer of English life will
+doubt the immense effect of the parochial system in sustaining the moral
+level both of principle and practice, and the multitude, activity, and
+value of the philanthropic and moralising agencies which are wholly or
+largely due to the Anglican Church.
+
+Nor can it be reasonably doubted that the Church has been very
+efficacious in promoting that spiritual life which, whatever opinion men
+may form of its origin and meaning, is at least one of the great
+realities of human nature. The power of a religion is not to be solely
+or mainly judged by its corporate action; by the institutions it
+creates; by the part which it plays in the government of the world. It
+is to be found much more in its action on the individual soul, and
+especially in those times and circumstances when man is most isolated
+from society. It is in furnishing the ideals and motives of individual
+life; in guiding and purifying the emotions; in promoting habits of
+thought and feeling that rise above the things of earth; in the comfort
+it can give in age, sorrow, disappointment and bereavement; in the
+seasons of sickness, weakness, declining faculties, and approaching
+death, that its power is most felt. No one creed or Church has the
+monopoly of this power, though each has often tried to identify it with
+something peculiar to itself. It maybe found in the Catholic and in the
+Quaker, in the High Anglican who attributes it to his sacramental
+system, and in the Evangelical in whose eyes that system holds only a
+very subordinate place. All that need here be said is that no one who
+studies the devotional literature of the English Church, or who has
+watched the lives of its more devout members, will doubt that this life
+can largely exist and flourish within its pale.
+
+The attitude which men who have been born within that Church, but who
+have come to dissent from large portions of its theology, should bear to
+this great instrument of good, is certainly not less perplexing than the
+questions we have been considering in the preceding chapters. The most
+difficult position is, of course, that of those who are its actual
+ministers and who have subscribed its formularies. Each man so situated
+must judge in the light of his own conscience. There is a great
+difference between the case of men who accept such a position in the
+Church though they differ fundamentally from its tenets, and the case of
+men who, having engaged in its service, find their old convictions
+modified or shaken, perhaps very gradually, by the advance of science or
+by more matured thought and study. The stringency of the old form of
+subscription has been much mitigated by an Act of 1865 which substituted
+a general declaration that the subscriber believed in the doctrine of
+the Church as a whole, for a declaration that he believed 'all and
+everything' in the Articles and the Prayer-book. The Church of England
+does not profess to be an infallible Church; it does profess to be a
+National Church representing and including great bodies of more or less
+divergent opinion, and the whole tendency of legal decisions since the
+Gorham case has been to enlarge the circle of permissible opinion. The
+possibility of the National Church remaining in touch with the more
+instructed and intellectual portions of the community depends mainly on
+the latitude of opinion that is accorded to its clergy, and on their
+power of welcoming and adopting new knowledge, and it may reasonably be
+maintained that few greater calamities can befall a nation than the
+severance of its higher intelligence from religious influences.
+
+It should be remembered, too, that on the latitudinarian side the
+changes that take place in the teaching of the Church consist much less
+in the open repudiation of old doctrines than in their silent
+evanescence. They drop out of the exhortations of the pulpit. The
+relative importance of different portions of the religious teaching is
+changed. Dogma sinks into the background. Narratives which are no longer
+seriously believed become texts for moral disquisitions. The
+introspective habits and the stress laid on purely ecclesiastical duties
+which once preponderated disappear. The teaching of the pulpit tends
+rather to the formation of active, useful and unselfish lives; to a
+clearer insight into the great masses of remediable suffering and need
+that still exist in the world; to the duty of carrying into all the
+walks of secular life a nobler and more unselfish spirit; to a habit of
+judging men and Churches mainly by their fruits and very little by their
+beliefs. The disintegration or decadence of old religious beliefs which
+had long been closely associated with moral teaching always brings with
+it grave moral dangers, but those dangers are greatly diminished when
+the change of belief is effected by a gradual transition, without any
+violent convulsion or disruption severing men from their old religious
+observances. Such a transition has silently taken place in England
+among great numbers of educated men, and in some measure under the
+influence of the clergy. Nor has it, I think, weakened the Church. The
+standard of duty among such men has not sunk, but has in most
+departments perceptibly risen: their zeal has not diminished, though it
+flows rather in philanthropic than in purely ecclesiastical channels.
+The conviction that the special dogmas which divided other Protestant
+bodies from the Establishment rested on no substantial basis and have no
+real importance tells in favour of the larger and the more liberal
+Church, and the comprehensiveness which allows highly accentuated
+sacerdotalism and latitudinarianism in the same Church is in the eyes of
+many of them rather an element of strength than of weakness.
+
+Few men have watched the religious tendencies of the time with a keener
+eye than Cardinal Newman, and no man hated with a more intense hatred
+the latitudinarian tendencies which he witnessed. His judgment of their
+effect on the Establishment is very remarkable. In a letter to his
+friend Isaac Williams he says: 'Everything I hear makes me fear that
+latitudinarian opinions are spreading furiously in the Church of
+England. I grieve deeply at it. The Anglican Church has been a most
+useful breakwater against Scepticism. The time might come when you, as
+well as I, might expect that it would be said above, "Why cumbereth it
+the ground?" but at present it upholds far more truth in England than
+any other form of religion would, and than the Catholic Roman Church
+could. But what I fear is that it is _tending_ to a powerful
+Establishment teaching direct error, and more powerful than it has ever
+been; thrice powerful because it does teach error.'[60]
+
+It is, however, of course, evident that the latitude of opinion which
+may be reasonably claimed by the clergy of a Church encumbered with many
+articles and doctrinal formularies is not unlimited, and each man must
+for himself draw the line. The fact, too, that the Church is an
+Established Church imposes some special obligations on its ministers. It
+is their first duty to celebrate public worship in such a form that all
+members of the Church of England may be able to join in it. Whatever
+interpretations may be placed upon the ceremonies of the Church, those
+ceremonies, at least, should be substantially the same. A stranger who
+enters a church which he has never before seen should be able to feel
+that he is certain of finding public worship intelligibly and decently
+performed, as in past generations it has been celebrated in all sections
+of the Established Church. It has, in my opinion, been a gross scandal,
+following a gross neglect of duty, that this primary obligation has been
+defied, and that services are held in English churches which would have
+been almost unrecognisable by the churchmen of a former generation, and
+which are manifest attempts to turn the English public worship into an
+imitation of the Romish Mass. Men have a perfect right, within the
+widest limits, to perform what religious services and to preach what
+religious doctrines they please, but they have not a right to do so in
+an Established Church.
+
+The censorship of opinions is another thing, and in the conditions of
+English life it has never been very effectively maintained. The latitude
+of opinion granted in an Established Church is, and ought to be, very
+great, but it is, I think, obvious that on some topics a greater degree
+of reticence of expression should be observed by a clergyman addressing
+a miscellaneous audience from the pulpit of an Established Church than
+need be required of him in private life or even in his published books.
+
+The attitude of laymen whose opinions have come to diverge widely from
+the Church formularies is less perplexing, and except in as far as the
+recent revival of sacerdotal pretensions has produced a reaction, there
+has, if I mistake not, of late years been a decided tendency in the best
+and most cultivated lay opinion of this kind to look with increasing
+favour on the Established Church. The complete abolition of the
+religious and political disqualifications which once placed its
+maintenance in antagonism with the interests of large sections of the
+people; the abolition of the indelibility of orders which excluded
+clergymen who changed their views from all other means of livelihood;
+the greater elasticity of opinion permitted within its pale; and the
+elimination from the statute-book of nearly all penalties and
+restrictions resting solely upon ecclesiastical grounds,--have all
+tended to diminish with such men the objections to the Church. It is a
+Church which does not injure those who are external to it, or interfere
+with those who are mere nominal adherents. It is more and more looked
+upon as a machine of well-organised beneficence, discharging efficiently
+and without corruption functions of supreme utility, and constituting
+one of the main sources of spiritual and moral life in the community.
+None of the modern influences of society can be said to have superseded
+it. Modern experience has furnished much evidence of the insufficiency
+of mere intellectual education if it is unaccompanied by the education
+of character, and it is on this side that modern education is most
+defective. While it undoubtedly makes men far more keenly sensible than
+in the past to the vast inequalities of human lots, the habit of
+constantly holding out material prizes as its immediate objects, and the
+disappearance of those coercive methods of education which once
+disciplined the will, make it perhaps less efficient as an instrument of
+moral amelioration.
+
+Some habits of thought also, that have grown rapidly among educated men,
+have tended powerfully in the same direction. The sharp contrasts
+between true and false in matters of theology have been considerably
+attenuated. The point of view has changed. It is believed that in the
+history of the world gross and material conceptions of religion have
+been not only natural, but indispensable, and that it is only by a
+gradual process of intellectual evolution that the masses of men become
+prepared for higher and purer conceptions. Superstition and illusion
+play no small part in holding together the great fabric of society.
+'Every falsehood,' it has been said, 'is reduced to a certain
+malleability by an alloy of truth,' and, on the other hand, truths of
+the utmost moment are, in certain stages of the world's history, only
+operative when they are clothed with a vesture of superstition. The
+Divine Spirit filters down to the human heart through a gross and
+material medium. And what is true of different stages of human history
+is not less true of different contemporary strata of knowledge and
+intelligence. In spite of democratic declamation about the equality of
+man, it is more and more felt that the same kind of teaching is not good
+for everyone. Truth, when undiluted, is too strong a medicine for many
+minds. Some things which a highly cultivated intellect would probably
+discard, and discard without danger, are essential to the moral being of
+multitudes. There is in all great religious systems something that is
+transitory and something that is eternal. Theological interpretations of
+the phenomena of outward nature which surround and influence us, and
+mythological narratives which have been handed down to us from a remote,
+uncritical and superstitious past, may be transformed or discredited;
+but there are elements in religion which have their roots much less in
+the reason of man than in his sorrows and his affections, and are the
+expression of wants, moral appetites and aspirations which are an
+essential, indestructible part of his nature.
+
+No one, I think, can doubt that this way of thinking, whether it be
+right or wrong, has very widely spread through educated Europe, and it
+is a habit of thought which commonly strengthens with age. Young men
+discuss religious questions simply as questions of truth or falsehood.
+In later life they more frequently accept their creed as a working
+hypothesis of life; as a consolation in innumerable calamities; as the
+one supposition under which life is not a melancholy anti-climax; as
+the indispensable sanction of moral obligation; as the gratification and
+reflection of needs, instincts and longings which are planted in the
+deepest recesses of human nature; as one of the chief pillars on which
+society rests. The proselytising, the aggressive, the critical spirit
+diminishes. Very often they deliberately turn away their thoughts from
+questions which appear to them to lead only to endless controversy or to
+mere negative conclusions, and base their moral life on some strong
+unselfish interest for the benefit of their kind. In active, useful and
+unselfish work they find the best refuge from the perplexities of belief
+and the best field for the cultivation of their moral nature, and work
+done for the benefit of others seldom fails to react powerfully on their
+own happiness. Nor is it always those who have most completely abandoned
+dogmatic systems who are the least sensible to the moral beauty which
+has grown up around them. The music of the village church, which sounds
+so harsh and commonplace to the worshipper within, sometimes fills with
+tears the eyes of the stranger who sits without, listening among the
+tombs.
+
+It is difficult to say how far the partial truce which has now fallen in
+England over the great antagonisms of belief is likely to be permanent.
+No one who knows the world can be insensible to the fact that a large
+and growing proportion of those who habitually attend our religious
+services have come to diverge very widely, though in many different
+degrees, from the beliefs which are expressed or implied in the
+formularies they use. Custom, fashion, the charm of old associations,
+the cravings of their own moral or spiritual nature, a desire to
+support a useful system of moral training, to set a good example to
+their children, their household, or their neighbours, keep them in their
+old place when the beliefs which they profess with their lips have in a
+great measure ebbed away. I do not undertake to blame or to judge them.
+Individual conscience and character and particular circumstances have,
+in these matters, a decisive voice. But there are times when the
+difference between professed belief and real belief is too great for
+endurance, and when insincerity and half-belief affect seriously the
+moral character of a nation. 'The deepest, nay, the only theme of the
+world's history, to which all others are subordinate,' said Goethe, 'is
+the conflict of faith and unbelief. The epochs in which faith, in
+whatever form it may be, prevails, are the marked epochs in human
+history, full of heart-stirring memories and of substantial gains for
+all after times. The epochs in which unbelief, in whatever form it may
+be, prevails, even when for the moment they put on the semblance of
+glory and success, inevitably sink into insignificance in the eyes of
+posterity, which will not waste its thoughts on things barren and
+unfruitful.'
+
+Many of my readers have probably felt the force of such considerations
+and the moral problems which they suggest, and there have been perhaps
+moments when they have asked themselves the question of the poet--
+
+
+     Tell me, my soul, what is thy creed?
+     Is it a faith or only a need?
+
+
+They will reflect, however, that a need, if it be universally felt when
+human nature is in its highest and purest state, furnishes some basis
+of belief, and also that no man can venture to assign limits to the
+transformations which religion may undergo without losing its essence or
+its power. Even in the field of morals these have been very great,
+though universal custom makes us insensible to the extent to which we
+have diverged from a literal observance of Evangelical precepts. We
+should hardly write over the Savings Bank, 'Take no thought for the
+morrow, for the morrow will take thought for itself,' or over the Bank
+of England, 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,' 'How
+hardly shall a rich man enter into the Kingdom of God,' or over the
+Foreign Office, or the Law Court, or the prison, 'Resist not evil,' 'He
+that smiteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also,' 'He
+that taketh away thy coat let him have thy cloak also.' Can it be said
+that the whole force and meaning of such words are represented by an
+industrial society in which the formation of habits of constant
+providence with the object of averting poverty or increasing comfort is
+deemed one of the first of duties and a main element and measure of
+social progress; in which the indiscriminate charity which encourages
+mendicancy and discourages habits of forethought and thrift is far more
+seriously condemned than an industrial system based on the keenest, the
+most deadly, and often the most malevolent competition; in which wealth
+is universally sought, and universally esteemed a good and not an evil,
+provided only it is honestly obtained and wisely and generously used; in
+which, although wanton aggression and a violent and quarrelsome temper
+are no doubt condemned, it is esteemed the duty of every good citizen
+to protect his rights whenever they are unjustly infringed; in which war
+and the preparation for war kindle the most passionate enthusiasm and
+absorb a vast proportion of the energies of Christendom, and in which no
+Government could remain a week in power if it did not promptly resent
+the smallest insult to the national flag?
+
+It is a question of a different kind whether the sacerdotal spirit which
+has of late years so largely spread in the English Church can extend
+without producing a violent disruption. To cut the tap roots of
+priestcraft was one of the main aims and objects of the Reformation,
+and, for reasons I have already stated, I do not believe that the party
+which would re-establish it has by any means the strength that has been
+attributed to it. It is true that the Broad Church party, though it
+reflects faithfully the views of large numbers of educated laymen, has
+never exercised an influence in active Church life at all proportionate
+to the eminence of its leading representatives. It is true also that the
+Evangelical party has in a very remarkable degree lost its old place in
+the Anglican pulpit and in religious literature, though its tenets still
+form the staple of the preaching of the Salvation Army and of most other
+street preachers who exercise a real and widespread influence over the
+poor. But the middle and lower sections of English society are, I
+believe, at bottom, profoundly hostile to priestcraft; and although the
+dread of Popery has diminished, they are very far from being ready to
+acquiesce in any attempt to restore the dominion which their fathers
+discarded.
+
+In one respect, indeed, sacerdotalism in the Anglican Church is a worse
+thing than in the Roman Church, for it is undisciplined and unregulated.
+The history of the Church abundantly shows the dangers that have sprung
+from the Confessional, though the Roman Catholic will maintain that its
+habitually restraining and moralising influence greatly outweighs these
+occasional abuses. But in the Roman Church the practice of confession is
+carried on under the most severe ecclesiastical supervision and
+discipline. Confession can only be made to a celibate priest of mature
+age, who is bound to secrecy by the most solemn oath; who, except in
+cases of grave illness, confesses only in an open church; and who has
+gone through a long course of careful education specially and skilfully
+designed to fit him for the duty. None of these conditions are observed
+in Anglican Confession.
+
+In other respects, indeed, the sacerdotal spirit is never likely to be
+quite the same as in the Roman Church. A married clergy, who have mixed
+in all the lay influences of an English university, and who still take
+part in the pursuits, studies, social intercourse and amusements of
+laymen, are not likely to form a separate caste or to constitute a very
+formidable priesthood. It is perhaps a little difficult to treat their
+pretensions with becoming gravity, and the atmosphere of unlimited
+discussion which envelops Englishmen through their whole lives has
+effectually destroyed the danger of coercive and restrictive laws
+directed against opinion. Moral coercion and the tendency to interfere
+by law on moral grounds with the habits of men, even when those habits
+in no degree interfere with others, have increased. It is one of the
+marked tendencies of Anglo-Saxon democracy, and it is very far from
+being peculiar to, or even specially prominent in, any one Church. But
+the desire to repress the expression of opinions by force, which for so
+many centuries marked with blood and fire the power of mediaeval
+sacerdotalism, is wholly alien to modern English nature. Amid all the
+fanaticisms, exaggerations, and superstitions of belief, this kind of
+coercion, at least, is never likely to be formidable, nor do I believe
+that in the most extreme section of the sacerdotal clergy there is any
+desire for it. There has been one significant contrast between the
+history of Catholicism and Anglicanism in the present century. In the
+Catholic Church the Ultramontane element has steadily dominated,
+restricting liberty of opinion, and important tenets which were once
+undefined by the Church, and on which sincere Catholics had some
+latitude of opinion, have been brought under the iron yoke. This is no
+doubt largely due to the growth of scepticism and indifference, which
+have made the great body of educated laymen hostile or indifferent to
+the Church, and have thrown its management mainly into the hands of the
+priesthood and the more bigoted, ignorant and narrow-minded laymen. But
+in the Anglican Church educated laymen are much less alienated from
+Church life, and a tribunal which is mainly lay exercises the supreme
+authority. As a consequence of these conditions, although the sacerdotal
+element has greatly increased, the latitude of opinion within the Church
+has steadily grown.
+
+At the same time, it is difficult to believe that serious dangers do not
+await the Church if the unprotestantising influences that have spread
+within it continue to extend. It is not likely that the nation will
+continue to give its support to the Church if that Church in its main
+tendencies cuts itself off from the Reformation. The conversions to
+Catholicism in England, though probably much exaggerated, have been very
+numerous, and it is certainly not surprising that it should be so. If
+the Church of Rome permitted Protestantism to be constantly taught in
+her pulpits, and Protestant types of worship and character to be
+habitually held up to admiration, there can be little doubt that many of
+her worshippers would be shaken. If the Church of England becomes in
+general what it already is in some of its churches, it is not likely
+that English public opinion will permanently acquiesce in its privileged
+position in the State. If it ceases to be a Protestant Church, it will
+not long remain an established one, and its disestablishment would
+probably be followed by a disruption in which opinions would be more
+sharply defined, and the latitude of belief and the spirit of compromise
+that now characterise our English religious life might be seriously
+impaired.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[58] _Alciphron_, 6th Dialogue.
+
+[59] Nalsons's _Collections_, i. 769, February 9, 1640.
+
+[60] _Autobiography of Isaac Williams_, p. 132. This letter was written
+in 1863.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE MANAGEMENT OF CHARACTER
+
+
+Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and
+management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it
+should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a
+calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the
+self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by
+the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognise his powers for
+good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no
+power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognise that this
+power is not unlimited. Man is like a card-player who receives from
+Nature his cards--his disposition, his circumstances, the strength or
+weakness of his will, of his mind, and of his body. The game of life is
+one of blended chance and skill. The best player will be defeated if he
+has hopelessly bad cards, but in the long run the skill of the player
+will not fail to tell. The power of man over his character bears much
+resemblance to his power over his body. Men come into the world with
+bodies very unequal in their health and strength; with hereditary
+dispositions to disease; with organs varying greatly in their normal
+condition. At the same time a temperate or intemperate life, skilful or
+unskilful regimen, physical exercises well adapted to strengthen the
+weaker parts, physical apathy, vicious indulgence, misdirected or
+excessive effort, will all in their different ways alter his bodily
+condition and increase or diminish his chances of disease and premature
+death. The power of will over character is, however, stronger, or, at
+least, wider than its power over the body. There are organs which lie
+wholly beyond its influence; there are diseases over which it can
+exercise no possible influence, but there is no part of our moral
+constitution which we cannot in some degree influence or modify.
+
+It has often seemed to me that diversities of taste throw much light on
+the basis of character. Why is it that the same dish gives one man keen
+pleasure and to another is loathsome and repulsive? To this simple
+question no real answer can be given. It is a fact of our nature that
+one fruit, or meat, or drink will give pleasure to one palate and none
+whatever to another. At the same time, while the original and natural
+difference is undoubted, there are many differences which are wholly or
+largely due to particular and often transitory causes. Dishes have an
+attraction or the reverse because they are associated with old
+recollections or habits. Habit will make a Frenchman like his melon with
+salt, while an Englishman prefers it with sugar. An old association of
+ideas will make an Englishman shrink from eating a frog or a snail,
+though he would probably like each if he ate it without knowing it, and
+he could easily learn to do so. The kind of cookery which one age or one
+nation generally likes, another age or another nation finds distasteful.
+The eye often governs the taste, and a dish which, when seen, excites
+intense repulsion, would have no such repulsion to a blind man. Every
+one who has moved much about the world, and especially in uncivilised
+countries, will get rid of many old antipathies, will lose the
+fastidiousness of his taste, and will acquire new and genuine tastes.
+The original innate difference is not wholly destroyed, but it is
+profoundly and variously modified.
+
+These changes of taste are very analogous to what takes place in our
+moral dispositions. They are for the most part in themselves simply
+external to morals, though there is at least one conspicuous exception.
+Many--it is to be hoped most--men might spend their lives with full
+access to intoxicating liquors without even the temptation of getting
+drunk. Apart from all considerations of religion, morals, social,
+physical, or intellectual consequences, they abstain from doing so
+simply as a matter of taste. With other men the pleasure of excessive
+drinking is such that it requires an heroic effort of the will to resist
+it. There are men who not only are so constituted that it is their
+greatest pleasure, but who are even born with a craving for drink. In no
+form is the terrible fact of heredity more clearly or more tragically
+displayed. Many, too, who had originally no such craving gradually
+acquire it: sometimes by mere social influence, which makes excessive
+drinking the habit of their circle; more frequently through depression
+or sorrow, which gives men a longing for some keen pleasure in which
+they can forget themselves; or through the jaded habit of mind and body
+which excessive work produces, or through the dreary, colourless,
+joyless surroundings of sordid poverty. Drink and the sensual pleasures,
+if viciously indulged, produce (doubtless through physical causes) an
+intense craving for their gratification. This, however, is not the case
+with all our pleasures. Many are keenly enjoyed when present, yet not
+seriously missed when absent. Sometimes, too, the effect of
+over-indulgence is to vitiate and deaden the palate, so that what was
+once pleasing ceases altogether to be an object of desire. This, too,
+has its analogue in other things. We have a familiar example in the
+excessive novel-reader, who begins with a kind of mental intoxication,
+and who ends with such a weariness that he finds it a serious effort to
+read the books which were once his strongest temptation.
+
+Tastes of the palate also naturally change with age and with the
+accompanying changes of the body. The schoolboy who bitterly repines
+because the smallness of his allowance restricts his power of buying
+tarts and sweetmeats will probably grow into a man who, with many
+shillings in his pocket, daily passes the confectioner's shop without
+the smallest desire to enter it.
+
+It is evident that there is a close analogy between these things and
+that collection of likes and dislikes, moral and intellectual, which
+forms the primal base of character, and which mainly determines the
+complexion of our lives. As Marcus Aurelius said: 'Who can change the
+desires of man?' That which gives the strongest habitual pleasure,
+whether it be innate or acquired, will in the great majority of cases
+ultimately dominate. Certain things will always be intensely
+pleasurable, and certain other things indifferent or repellent, and this
+magnetism is the true basis of character, and with the majority of men
+it mainly determines conduct. By the associations of youth and by other
+causes these natural likings and dislikings may be somewhat modified,
+but even in youth our power is very limited, and in later life it is
+much less. No real believer in free-will will hold that man is an
+absolute slave to his desires. No man who knows the world will deny that
+with average man the strongest passion or desire will prevail--happy
+when that desire is not a vice.
+
+Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great
+task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which
+are most productive of happiness in life. Here, as in most other things,
+opposite exaggerations are to be avoided. There is such a thing as
+looking forward too rigidly and too exclusively to the future--to a
+future that may never arrive. This is the great fault of the
+over-educationist, who makes early life a burden and a toil, and also of
+those who try to impose on youth the tastes and pleasures of the man.
+Youth has its own pleasures, which will always give it most enjoyment,
+and a happy youth is in itself an end. It is the time when the power of
+enjoyment is most keen, and it is often accompanied by such extreme
+sensitiveness that the sufferings of the child for what seem the most
+trivial causes probably at least equal in acuteness, though not in
+durability, the sufferings of a man. Many a parent standing by the
+coffin of his child has felt with bitterness how much of the measure of
+enjoyment that short life might have known has been cut off by an
+injudicious education. And even if adult life is attained, the evils of
+an unhappy childhood are seldom wholly compensated. The pleasures of
+retrospect are among the most real we possess, and it is around our
+childish days that our fondest associations naturally cluster. An early
+over-strain of our powers often leaves behind it lasting distortion or
+weakness, and a sad childhood introduces into the character elements of
+morbidness and bitterness that will not disappear.
+
+The first great rule in judging of pleasures is that so well expressed
+by Seneca: 'Sic praesentibus utaris voluptatibus ut futuris non
+noceas'--so to use present pleasures as not to impair future ones.
+Drunkenness, sensuality, gambling, habitual extravagance and
+self-indulgence, if they become the pleasures of youth, will almost
+infallibly lead to the ruin of a life. Pleasures that are in themselves
+innocent lose their power of pleasing if they become the sole or main
+object of pursuit.
+
+In starting in life we are apt to attach a disproportionate value to
+tastes, pleasures, and ideals that can only be even approximately
+satisfied in youth, health, and strength. We have, I think, an example
+of this in the immense place which athletic games and out-of-door sports
+have taken in modern English life. They are certainly not things to be
+condemned. They have the direct effect of giving a large amount of
+intense and innocent pleasure, and they have indirect effects which are
+still more important. In so far as they raise the level of physical
+strength and health, and dispel the morbidness of temperament which is
+so apt to accompany a sedentary life and a diseased or inert frame, they
+contribute powerfully to lasting happiness. They play a considerable
+part in the formation of friendships which is one of the best fruits of
+the period between boyhood and mature manhood. Some of them give lessons
+of courage, perseverance, energy, self-restraint, and cheerful
+acquiescence in disappointment and defeat that are of no small value in
+the formation of character, and when they are not associated with
+gambling they have often the inestimable advantage of turning young men
+away from vicious pleasures. At the same time it can hardly be doubted
+that they hold an exaggerated prominence in the lives of young
+Englishmen of the present generation. It is not too much to say that
+among large sections of the students at our Universities, and at a time
+when intellectual ambition ought to be most strong and when the
+acquisition of knowledge is most important, proficiency in cricket or
+boating or football is more prized than any intellectual achievement. I
+have heard a good judge, who had long been associated with English
+University life, express his opinion that during the last forty or fifty
+years the relative intellectual position of the upper and middle classes
+in England has been materially changed, owing to the disproportioned
+place which outdoor amusements have assumed in the lives of the former.
+It is the impression of very competent judges that a genuine love,
+reverence and enthusiasm for intellectual things is less common among
+the young men of the present day than it was in the days of their
+fathers. The predominance of the critical spirit which chills
+enthusiasm, and still more the cram system which teaches young men to
+look on the prizes that are to be won by competitive examinations as the
+supreme end of knowledge, no doubt largely account for this, but much
+is also due to the extravagant glorification of athletic games.
+
+If we compare the class of pleasures I have described with the taste for
+reading and kindred intellectual pleasures, the superiority of the
+latter is very manifest. To most young men, it is true, a game will
+probably give at least as much pleasure as a book. Nor must we measure
+the pleasure of reading altogether by the language of the genuine
+scholar. It is not every one who could say, like Gibbon, that he would
+not exchange his love of reading for all the wealth of the Indies. Very
+many would agree with him; but Gibbon was a man with an intense natural
+love of knowledge, and the weak health of his early life intensified
+this predominant passion. But while the tastes which require physical
+strength decline or pass with age, that for reading steadily grows. It
+is illimitable in the vistas of pleasure it opens; it is one of the most
+easily satisfied, one of the cheapest, one of the least dependent on
+age, seasons, and the varying conditions of life. It cheers the invalid
+through years of weakness and confinement; illuminates the dreary hours
+of the sleepless night; stores the mind with pleasant thoughts, banishes
+ennui, fills up the unoccupied interstices and enforced leisures of an
+active life; makes men for a time at least forget their anxieties and
+sorrows, and if it is judiciously managed it is one of the most powerful
+means of training character and disciplining and elevating thought. It
+is eminently a pleasure which is not only good in itself but enhances
+many others. By extending the range of our knowledge, by enlarging our
+powers of sympathy and appreciation, it adds incalculably to the
+pleasures of society, to the pleasures of travel, to the pleasures of
+art, to the interest we take in the vast variety of events which form
+the great world-drama around us.
+
+To acquire this taste in early youth is one of the best fruits of
+education, and it is especially useful when the taste for reading
+becomes a taste for knowledge, and when it is accompanied by some
+specialisation and concentration and by some exercise of the powers of
+observation. 'Many tastes and one hobby' is no bad ideal to be aimed at.
+The boy who learns to collect and classify fossils, or flowers, or
+insects, who has acquired a love for chemical experiments, who has begun
+to form a taste for some particular kind or department of knowledge, has
+laid the foundation of much happiness in life.
+
+In the selection of pleasures and the cultivation of tastes much wisdom
+is shown in choosing in such a way that each should form a complement to
+the others; that different pleasures should not clash, but rather cover
+different areas and seasons of life; that each should tend to correct
+faults or deficiencies of character which the others may possibly
+produce. The young man who starts in life with keen literary tastes and
+also with a keen love of out-of-door sports, and who possesses the means
+of gratifying each, has perhaps provided himself with as many elements
+of happiness as mere amusements can ever furnish. One set of pleasures,
+however, often kills the capacity for enjoying others, and some which in
+themselves are absolutely innocent, by blunting the enjoyment of better
+things, exercise an injurious influence on character. Habitual
+novel-reading, for example, often destroys the taste for serious
+literature, and few things tend so much to impair a sound literary
+perception and to vulgarise the character as the habit of constantly
+saturating the mind with inferior literature, even when that literature
+is in no degree immoral. Sometimes an opposite evil may be produced.
+Excessive fastidiousness greatly limits our enjoyments, and the
+inestimable gift of extreme concentration is often dearly bought. The
+well-known confession of Darwin that his intense addiction to science
+had destroyed his power of enjoying even the noblest imaginative
+literature represents a danger to which many men who have achieved much
+in the higher and severer forms of scientific thought are subject. Such
+men are usually by their original temperament, and become still more by
+acquired habit, men of strong, narrow, concentrated natures, whose
+thoughts, like a deep and rapid stream confined in a restricted channel,
+flow with resistless energy in one direction. It is by the sacrifice of
+versatility that they do so much, and the result is amply sufficient to
+justify it. But it is a real sacrifice, depriving them of many forms
+both of capacity and of enjoyment.
+
+The same pleasures act differently on different characters, especially
+on the differences of character that accompany difference of sex. I have
+myself no doubt that the movement which in modern times has so widely
+opened to women amusements that were once almost wholly reserved for men
+has been on the whole a good one. It has produced a higher level of
+health, stronger nerves, and less morbid characters, and it has given
+keen and innocent enjoyment to many who from their circumstances and
+surroundings once found their lives very dreary and insipid. Yet most
+good observers will agree that amusements which have no kind of evil
+effect on men often in some degree impair the graces or characters of
+women, and that it is not quite with impunity that one sex tries to live
+the life of the other. Some pleasures, too, exercise a much larger
+influence than others on the general habits of life. It is not too much
+to say that the invention of the bicycle, bringing with it an immense
+increase of outdoor life, of active exercise, and of independent habits,
+has revolutionised the course of many lives. Some amusements which may
+in themselves be but little valued are wisely cultivated as helping men
+to move more easily in different spheres of society, or as providing a
+resource for old age. Talleyrand was not wholly wrong in his reproach to
+a man who had never learned to play whist: 'What an unhappy old age you
+are preparing for yourself!'
+
+I have already mentioned the differences that may be found in different
+countries and ages, in the relative importance attached to external
+circumstances and to dispositions of mind as means of happiness, and the
+tendency in the more progressive nations to seek their happiness mainly
+in improved circumstances. Another great line of distinction is between
+education that acts specially upon the desires, and that which acts
+specially upon the will. The great perfection of modern systems of
+education is chiefly of the former kind. Its object is to make knowledge
+and virtue attractive, and therefore an object of desire. It does so
+partly by presenting them in the most alluring forms, partly by
+connecting them as closely as possible with rewards. The great principle
+of modern moral education is to multiply innocent and beneficent
+interests, tastes, and ambitions. It is to make the path of virtue the
+natural, the easy, the pleasing one; to form a social atmosphere
+favourable to its development, making duty and interest as far as
+possible coincident. Vicious pleasures are combated by the
+multiplication of healthy ones, and by a clearer insight into the
+consequences of each. An idle or inert character is stimulated by
+holding up worthy objects of interest and ambition, and it is the aim
+alike of the teacher and the legislator to make the grooves and channels
+of life such as tend naturally and easily towards good. But the
+education of the will--the power of breasting the current of the desires
+and doing for long periods what is distasteful and painful--is much less
+cultivated than in some periods of the past.
+
+Many things contribute to this. The rush and hurry of modern existence
+and the incalculable multitude and variety of fleeting impressions that
+in the great centres of civilisation pass over the mind are very
+unfavourable to concentration, and perhaps still more to the direct
+cultivation of mental states. Amusements, and the appetite for
+amusements, have greatly extended. Life has become more full. The long
+leisures, the introspective habits, the _vita contemplativa_ so
+conspicuous in the old Catholic discipline, grow very rare. Thoughts and
+interests are more thrown on the external; and the comfort, the luxury,
+the softness, the humanity of modern life, and especially of modern
+education, make men less inclined to face the disagreeable and endure
+the painful.
+
+The starting-point of education is thus silently changing. Perhaps the
+extent of the change is best shown by the old Catholic ascetic training.
+Its supreme object was to discipline and strengthen the will: to
+accustom men habitually to repudiate the pleasurable and accept the
+painful; to mortify the most natural tastes and affections; to narrow
+and weaken the empire of the desires; to make men wholly independent of
+outward circumstances; to preach self-renunciation as itself an end.
+
+Men will always differ about the merits of this system. In my own
+opinion it is difficult to believe that in the period of Catholic
+ascendency the moral standard was, on the whole and in its broad lines,
+higher than our own. The repression of the sensual instincts was the
+central fact in ascetic morals; but, even tested by this test, it is at
+least very doubtful whether it did not fail. The withdrawal from secular
+society of the best men did much to restrict the influences for good,
+and the habit of aiming at an unnatural ideal was not favourable to
+common, everyday, domestic virtue. The history of sacerdotal and
+monastic celibacy abundantly shows how much vice that might easily have
+been avoided grew out of the adoption of an unnatural standard, and how
+often it led in those who had attained it to grave distortions of
+character. Affections and impulses which were denied their healthy and
+natural vent either became wholly atrophied or took other and morbid
+forms, and the hard, cruel, self-righteous fanatic, equally ready to
+endure or to inflict suffering, was a not unnatural result. But
+whatever may have been its failures and its exaggerations, Catholic
+asceticism was at least a great school for disciplining and
+strengthening the will, and the strength and discipline of the will form
+one of the first elements of virtue and of happiness.
+
+In the grave and noble type of character which prevailed in English and
+American life during the seventeenth century, the strength of will was
+conspicuously apparent. Life was harder, simpler, more serious, and less
+desultory than at present, and strong convictions shaped and fortified
+the character. 'It was an age,' says a great American writer, 'when what
+we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive
+materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal
+more. The people possessed by hereditary right the quality of reverence,
+which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller
+proportion and with a vastly diminished force in the selection and
+estimate of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is
+partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day the English settler on these
+rude shores, having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank
+behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence were strong
+in him, bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age; on
+long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-coloured experience; on
+endowments of that grave and weighty order which give the idea of
+permanence and come under the general definition of respectability.
+These primitive statesmen, therefore,--Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley,
+Bellingham, and their compeers,--who were elevated to power by the
+early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but
+distinguished by a ponderous sobriety rather than activity of intellect.
+They had fortitude and self-reliance, and in time of difficulty or peril
+stood up for the welfare of the State like a line of cliffs against a
+tempestuous tide.'[61]
+
+The power of the will, however, even when it exists in great strength,
+is often curiously capricious. History is full of examples of men who in
+great trials and emergencies have acted with admirable and persevering
+heroism, yet who readily succumbed to private vices or passions. The
+will is not the same as the desires, but the connection between them is
+very close. A love for a distant end; a dominating ambition or passion,
+will call forth long perseverance in wholly distasteful work in men
+whose will in other fields of life is lamentably feeble. Every one who
+has embarked with real earnestness in some extended literary enterprise
+which as a whole represents the genuine bent of his talent and character
+will be struck with his exceptional power of traversing perseveringly
+long sections of this enterprise for which he has no natural aptitude
+and in which he takes no pleasure. Military courage is with most men
+chiefly a matter of temperament and impulse, but there have been
+conspicuous instances of great soldiers and sailors who have frankly
+acknowledged that they never lost in battle an intense constitutional
+shrinking from danger, though by the force of a strong will they never
+suffered this timidity to govern or to weaken them. With men of very
+vivid imagination there is a natural tendency to timidity as they
+realise more than ordinary men danger and suffering. On the other hand
+it has often been noticed how calmly the callous, semi-torpid
+temperament that characterises many of the worst criminals enables them
+to meet death upon the gallows.
+
+In courage itself, too, there are many varieties. The courage of the
+soldier and the courage of the martyr are not the same, and it by no
+means follows that either would possess that of the other. Not a few men
+who are capable of leading a forlorn hope, and who never shrink from the
+bayonet and the cannon, have shown themselves incapable of bearing the
+burden of responsibility, enduring long-continued suspense, taking
+decisions which might expose them to censure or unpopularity. The active
+courage that encounters and delights in danger is often found in men who
+show no courage in bearing suffering, misfortune, or disease. In passive
+courage the woman often excels the man as much as in active courage the
+man exceeds the woman. Even in active courage familiarity does much;
+sympathy and enthusiasm play great and often very various parts, and
+curious anomalies may be found. The Teutonic and the Latin races are
+probably equally distinguished for their military courage, but there is
+a clear difference between them in the nature of that courage and in the
+circumstances or conditions under which it is usually most splendidly
+displayed. The danger incurred by the gladiator was far greater than
+that which was encountered by the soldier, but Tacitus[62] mentions
+that when some of the bravest gladiators were employed in the Roman
+army they were found wholly inefficient, as they were much less capable
+than the ordinary soldiers of military courage.
+
+The circumstances of life are the great school for forming and
+strengthening the will, and in the excessive competition and struggle of
+modern industrialism this school is not wanting. But in ethical and
+educational systems the value of its cultivation is often insufficiently
+felt. Yet nothing which is learned in youth is so really valuable as the
+power and the habit of self-restraint, of self-sacrifice, of energetic,
+continuous and concentrated effort. In the best of us evil tendencies
+are always strong and the path of duty is often distasteful. With the
+most favourable wind and tide the bark will never arrive at the harbour
+if it has ceased to obey the rudder. A weak nature which is naturally
+kindly, affectionate and pure, which floats through life under the
+impulse of the feelings, with no real power of self-restraint, is indeed
+not without its charm, and in a well-organised society, with good
+surroundings and few temptations, it may attain a high degree of beauty;
+but its besetting failings will steadily grow; without fortitude,
+perseverance and principle, it has no recuperative energy, and it will
+often end in a moral catastrophe which natures in other respects much
+less happily compounded would easily avoid. Nothing can permanently
+secure our moral being in the absence of a restraining will basing
+itself upon a strong sense of the difference between right and wrong,
+upon the firm groundwork of principle and honour.
+
+Experience abundantly shows how powerfully the steady action of such a
+will can operate upon innate defects, converting the constitutional
+idler into the indefatigably industrious, checking, limiting and
+sometimes almost destroying constitutional irritability and vicious
+passions. The natural power of the will in different men differs
+greatly, but there is no part of our nature which is more strengthened
+by exercise or more weakened by disuse. The minor faults of character it
+can usually correct; but when a character is once formed, and when its
+tendencies are essentially vicious, radical cure or even considerable
+amelioration is very rare. Sometimes the strong influence of religion
+effects it. Sometimes it is effected by an illness, a great misfortune,
+or the total change of associations that follows emigration. Marriage
+perhaps more frequently than any other ordinary agency in early life
+transforms or deeply modifies the character, for it puts an end to
+powerful temptations and brings with it a profound change of habits and
+motives, associations and desires. But we have all of us encountered in
+life depraved natures in which vicious self-indulgence had attained such
+a strength, and the recuperating and moralising elements were so fatally
+weak, that we clearly perceive the disease to be incurable, and that it
+is hardly possible that any change of circumstances could even seriously
+mitigate it. In what proportion this is the fault or the calamity of the
+patient no human judgment can accurately tell.
+
+Few things are sadder than to observe how frequently the inheritance of
+great wealth or even of easy competence proves the utter and speedy ruin
+of a young man, except when the administration of a large property, or
+the necessity of carrying on a great business, or some other propitious
+circumstance provides him with a clearly defined sphere of work. The
+majority of men will gladly discard distasteful work which their
+circumstances do not require; and in the absence of steady work, and in
+the possession of all the means of gratification, temptations assume an
+overwhelming strength, and the springs of moral life are fatally
+impaired. It can hardly be doubted that the average longevity in this
+small class is far less than in that of common men, and that even when
+natural capacity is considerable it is more rarely displayed. To a man
+with a real desire for work such circumstances are indeed of inestimable
+value, giving him the leisure and the opportunities of applying himself
+without distraction and from early manhood to the kind of work that is
+most suited to him. Sometimes this takes place, but much more frequently
+vicious tastes or a simply idle or purposeless life are the result.
+Sometimes, indeed, a large amount of desultory and unregulated energy
+remains, but the serious labour of concentration is shunned and no real
+result is attained. The stream is there, but it turns no mill.
+
+Most men escape this danger through the circumstances of life which make
+serious and steady work necessary to their livelihood, and in the
+majority of cases the kind of work is so clearly marked out that they
+have little choice. When some choice exists, the rule which I have
+already laid down should not be forgotten. Men should choose their work
+not only according to their talents and their opportunities, but also,
+as far as possible, according to their characters. They should select
+the kinds which are most fitted to bring their best qualities into
+exercise, or should at least avoid those which have a special tendency
+to develop or encourage their dominant defects. On the whole it will be
+found that men's characters are much more deeply influenced by their
+pursuits than by their opinions.
+
+The choice of work is one of the great agencies for the management of
+character in youth. The choice of friends is another. In the words of
+Burke, 'The law of opinion ... is the strongest principle in the
+composition of the frame of the human mind, and more of the happiness
+and unhappiness of man reside in that inward principle than in all
+external circumstances put together.'[63] This is true of the great
+public opinion of an age or country which envelops us like an
+atmosphere, and by its silent pressure steadily and almost insensibly
+shapes or influences the whole texture of our lives. It is still more
+true of the smaller circle of our intimacies which will do more than
+almost any other thing to make the path of virtue easy or difficult. How
+large a proportion of the incentives to a noble ambition, or of the
+first temptations to evil, may be traced to an early friendship, and it
+is often in the little circle that gathers round a college table that
+the measure of life is first taken, and ideals and enthusiasms are
+formed which give a colour to all succeeding years. To admire strongly
+and to admire wisely is, indeed, one of the best means of moral
+improvement.
+
+Very much, however, of the management of character can only be
+accomplished by the individual himself acting in complete isolation upon
+his own nature and in the chamber of his own mind. The discipline of
+thought; the establishment of an ascendency of the will over our courses
+of thinking; the power of casting away morbid trains of reflection and
+turning resolutely to other subjects or aspects of life; the power of
+concentrating the mind vigorously on a serious subject and pursuing
+continuous trains of thought,--form perhaps the best fruits of judicious
+self-education. Its importance, indeed, is manifold. In the higher walks
+of intellect this power of mental concentration is of supreme value.
+Newton is said to have ascribed mainly to an unusual amount of it his
+achievements in philosophy, and it is probable that the same might be
+said by most other great thinkers. In the pursuit of happiness hardly
+anything in external circumstances is so really valuable as the power of
+casting off worry, turning in times of sorrow to healthy work, taking
+habitually the brighter view of things. It is in such exercises of will
+that we chiefly realise the truth of the lines of Tennyson:
+
+
+     Oh, well for him whose will is strong,
+     He suffers, but he will not suffer long.
+
+
+In moral culture it is not less important to acquire the power of
+discarding the demoralising thoughts and imaginations that haunt so
+many, and meeting temptation by calling up purer, higher and restraining
+thoughts. The faculty we possess of alternating and intensifying our own
+motives by bringing certain thoughts, or images, or subjects into the
+foreground and throwing others into the background, is one of our chief
+means of moral progress. The cultivation of this power is a far wiser
+thing than the cultivation of that introspective habit of mind which is
+perpetually occupied with self-analysis or self-examination, and which
+is constantly and remorsefully dwelling upon past faults or upon the
+morbid elements in our nature. In the morals which are called minor,
+though they affect deeply the happiness of mankind, the importance of
+the government of thought is not less apparent. The secret of good or
+bad temper is our habitual tendency to dwell upon or to fly from the
+irritating and the inevitable. Content or discontent, amiability or the
+reverse, depend mainly upon the disposition of our minds to turn
+specially to the good or to the evil sides of our own lot, to the merits
+or to the defects of those about us. A power of turning our thoughts
+from a given subject, though not the sole element in self-control, is at
+least one of its most important ingredients.
+
+This power of the will over the thoughts is one in which men differ
+enormously. Thus--to take the most familiar instance--the capacity for
+worry, with all the exaggerations and distortions of sentiment it
+implies, is very evidently a constitutional thing, and where it exists
+to a high degree neither reason nor will can effectually cure it. Such a
+man may have the clearest possible intellectual perception of its
+uselessness and its folly. Yet it will often banish sleep from his
+pillow, follow him with an habitual depression in all the walks of life,
+and make his measure of happiness much less than that of others who with
+far less propitious circumstances are endued by nature with the gift of
+lightly throwing off the past and looking forward with a sanguine and
+cheerful spirit to the future. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the
+different degrees of suffering the same trouble will produce in
+different men, and it is probable that the happiness of a life depends
+much less on the amount of pleasurable or painful things that are
+encountered, than upon the turn of thought which dwells chiefly on one
+or on the other. It is very evident that buoyancy of temperament is not
+a thing that increases with civilisation or education. It is mainly
+physical. It is greatly influenced by climate and by health, and where
+no very clear explanation of this kind can be given it is a thing in
+which different nations differ greatly. Few good observers will deny
+that persistent and concentrated will is more common in Great Britain
+than in Ireland, but that the gift of a buoyant temperament is more
+common among Irishmen than among Englishmen. Yet it co-exists in the
+national character with a strong vein of very genuine melancholy, and it
+is often accompanied by keen sensitiveness to suffering. This
+combination is a very common one. Every one who has often stood by a
+deathbed knows how frequently it will be found that the mourner who is
+utterly prostrated by grief, and whose tears flow in torrents, casts off
+her grief much more completely and much sooner than one whose tears
+refuse to flow and who never for a moment loses her self-command.
+
+But though natural temperament enables one man to do without effort what
+another man with the utmost effort fails to accomplish, there are some
+available remedies that can palliate the disease. Society, travel and
+other amusements can do something, and such words as 'diversion' and
+'distraction' embalm the truth that the chief virtue of many pleasures
+is to divert or distract our minds from painful thoughts. Pascal
+considered this a sign of the misery and the baseness of our nature, and
+he describes as a deplorable spectacle a man who rose from his bed
+weighed down with anxiety and grave sorrow, and who could for a time
+forget it all in the passionate excitement of the chase. But, in truth,
+the possession of such a power--weak and transient though it be--is one
+of the great alleviations of the lot of man. Religion, with its powerful
+motives and its wide range of consolatory and soothing thoughts and
+images, has much power in this sphere when it does not take a morbid
+form and intensify instead of alleviating sorrow; and the steady
+exercise of the will gives us some real and increasing, though
+imperfect, control over the current of our feelings as well as of our
+ideas.
+
+Often the power of dreaming comes to our aid. When we cannot turn from
+some painfully pressing thought to serious thinking of another kind, we
+can give the reins to our imaginations and soon lose ourselves in ideal
+scenes. There are men who live so habitually in a world of imagination
+that it becomes to them a second life, and their strongest temptations
+and their keenest pleasures belong to it. To them 'common life seems
+tapestried with dreams.' Not unfrequently they derive a pleasure from
+imagined or remembered enjoyments which the realities themselves would
+fail to give. They select in imagination certain aspects or portions,
+throw others into the shade, intensify or attenuate impressions,
+transform and beautify the reality of things. The power of filling their
+existence with happy day-dreams is their most precious luxury. They feel
+the full force of the pathetic lines of an Irish poet:[64]
+
+
+     Sweet thoughts, bright dreams my comfort be,
+       I have no joy beside;
+     Oh, throng around and be to me
+       Power, country, fame and bride.
+
+
+To train this side of our nature is no small part of the management of
+character. There is a great sphere of happiness and misery which is
+almost or altogether unconnected with surrounding circumstances, and
+depends upon the thoughts, images, hopes and fears on which our minds
+are chiefly concentrated. The exercise of this form of imagination has
+often a great influence, both intellectually and morally. In childhood,
+as every teacher knows, it is often a distracting influence, and with
+men also it is sometimes an obstacle to concentrated reasoning and
+observation, turning the mind away from sober and difficult thought; but
+there is a kind of dreaming which is eminently conducive to productive
+thought. It enables a man to place himself so completely in other
+conditions of thought and life that the ideas connected with those
+conditions rise spontaneously in the mind. A true and vivid realisation
+of characters and circumstances unlike his own is acquired. The mere
+fact of placing himself in other circumstances and investing himself
+with imaginary powers and functions sometimes suggests possible remedies
+for great human ills, and gives clearer views of the proportions,
+difficulties and conditions of governments and societies. Much discovery
+in science has been due to this power of the imagination to realise
+conditions that are unseen, and the habit or faculty of living other
+lives than our own is scarcely less valuable to the historian, and even
+to the statesman, than to the poet or the novelist or the dramatist. It
+gives the magic touch which changes mere lifeless knowledge into
+realisation.
+
+Its effect upon character also is great and various. No one can fail to
+recognise the depraving influence of a corrupt imagination; and the
+corruption may spring, not only from suggestions from without, but from
+those which rise spontaneously in our minds. Nor is even the imagination
+which is wholly pure absolutely without its dangers. It is a well-known
+law of our nature that an excessive indulgence in emotion that does not
+end in action tends rather to deaden than to stimulate the moral nerve.
+It has been often noticed that the exaggerated sentimentality which
+sheds passionate tears over the fictitious sorrows of a novel or a play
+is no certain sign of a benevolent and unselfish nature, and is quite
+compatible with much indifference to real sorrows and much indisposition
+to make efforts for their alleviation. It is, however, no less true, as
+Dugald Stewart says, that the apparent coldness and selfishness of men
+are often simply due to a want of that kind of imagination which enables
+us to realise sufferings with which we have never been brought into
+direct contact, and that once this power of realisation is acquired, the
+coldness is speedily dispelled. Nor can it be doubted that in the
+management of thought, the dream power often plays a most important part
+in alleviating human suffering; illuminating cheerless and gloomy lives,
+and breaking the chain of evil or distressing thoughts.
+
+The immense place which the literature of fiction holds in the world
+shows how widely some measure of it is diffused, and how large an amount
+of time and talent is devoted to its cultivation. It is probable,
+however, that it is really stronger in the earlier and uncultivated than
+in the later stages of humanity, as it is more vivid in childhood and in
+youth than in mature life. 'A child,' as an American writer[65] has well
+said, 'can afford to sleep without dreaming; he has plenty of dreams
+without sleep.' The childhood of the world is also eminently an age of
+dreams. There are stages of civilisation in which the dream world blends
+so closely with the world of realities, in which the imagination so
+habitually and so spontaneously transfigures or distorts, that men
+become almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the
+fictitious. This is the true age of myths and legends; and there are
+strata in contemporary society in which something of the same conditions
+is reproduced. 'To those who do not read or write much,' says an acute
+observer, 'even in our days, dreams are much more real than to those who
+are continually exercising the imagination.... Since I have been
+occupied with literature my dreams have lost all vividness and are less
+real than the shadows of the trees; they do not deceive me even in my
+sleep. At every hour of the day I am accustomed to call up figures at
+will before my eyes, which stand out well defined and coloured to the
+very hue of their faces.... The less literary a people the more they
+believe in dreams; the disappearance of superstition is not due to the
+cultivation of reason or the spread of knowledge, but purely to the
+mechanical effect of reading, which so perpetually puts figures and
+aerial shapes before the mental gaze that in time those that occur
+naturally are thought no more of than those conjured into existence by a
+book. It is in far-away country places, where people read very little,
+that they see phantoms and consult the oracles of fate. Their dreams are
+real.'[66]
+
+The last point I would notice in the management of character is the
+importance of what may be called moral safety-valves. One of the most
+fatal mistakes in education is the attempt which is so often made by the
+educator to impose his own habits and tastes on natures that are
+essentially different. It is common for men of lymphatic temperaments,
+of studious, saintly, and retiring tastes, to endeavor to force a
+high-spirited young man starting in life into their own mould--to
+prescribe for him the cast of tastes and pursuits they find most suited
+for themselves, forgetting that such an ideal can never satisfy a wholly
+different nature, and that in aiming at it a kind of excellence which
+might easily have been attained is missed. This is one of the evils
+that very frequently arise when the education of boys after an early age
+is left in the hands of women. It is the true explanation of the fact,
+which has so often been noticed, that children of clergymen, or at least
+children educated on a rigidly austere, puritanical system, so often go
+conspicuously to the bad. Such an education, imposed on a nature that is
+unfit for it, generally begins by producing hypocrisy, and not
+unfrequently ends by a violent reaction into vice. There is no greater
+mistake in education than to associate virtue in early youth with gloomy
+colours and constant restrictions, and few people do more mischief in
+the world than those who are perpetually inventing crimes. In circles
+where smoking, or field sports, or going to the play, or reading novels,
+or indulging in any boisterous games or in the most harmless Sunday
+amusements, are treated as if they were grave moral offences, young men
+constantly grow up who end by looking on grave moral offences as not
+worse than these things. They lose all sense of proportion and
+perspective in morals, and those who are always straining at gnats are
+often peculiarly apt to swallow camels. It is quite right that men who
+have formed for themselves an ideal of life of the kind that I have
+described should steadily pursue it, but it is another thing to impose
+it upon others, and to prescribe it as of general application. By
+teaching as absolutely wrong things that are in reality only culpable in
+their abuse or their excess, they destroy the habit of moderate and
+restrained enjoyment, and a period of absolute prohibition is often
+followed by a period of unrestrained license.
+
+The truth is there are elements in human nature which many moralists
+might wish to be absent, as they are very easily turned in the direction
+of vice, but which at the same time are inherent in our being, and, if
+rightly understood, are essential elements of human progress. The love
+of excitement and adventure; the fierce combative instinct that delights
+in danger, in struggle, and even in destruction; the restless ambition
+that seeks with an insatiable longing to better its position and to
+climb heights that are yet unscaled; the craving for some enjoyment
+which not merely gives pleasure but carries with it a thrill of
+passion,--all this lies deep in human nature and plays a great part in
+that struggle for existence, in that harsh and painful process of
+evolution by which civilisation is formed, faculty stimulated to its
+full development, and human progress secured. In the education of the
+individual, as in the education of the race, the true policy in dealing
+with these things is to find for them a healthy, useful, or at least
+harmless sphere of action. In the chemistry of character they may ally
+themselves with the most heroic as well as with the worst parts of our
+nature, and the same passion for excitement which in one man will take
+the form of ruinous vice, in another may lead to brilliant enterprise,
+while in a third it may be turned with no great difficulty into channels
+which are very innocent.
+
+Take, for example, the case to which I have already referred, of a
+perfectly commonplace boy who, on coming of age, finds himself with a
+competence that saves him from the necessity of work; and who has no
+ambition, literary or artistic taste, love of work, interest in
+politics, religious or philanthropic earnestness, or special talent.
+What will become of him? In probably the majority of cases ruin,
+disease, and an early death lie before him. He seeks only for amusement
+and excitement, and three fatal temptations await him--drink, gambling,
+and women. If he falls under the dominion of these, or even of one of
+them, he almost infallibly wrecks either his fortune or his
+constitution, or both. It is perfectly useless to set before him high
+motives or ideals, or to incite him to lines of life for which he has no
+aptitude and which can give him no pleasure. What, then, can save him?
+Most frequently a happy marriage; but even if he is fortunate enough to
+attain this, it will probably only be after several years, and in those
+years a fatal bias is likely to be given to his life which can never be
+recovered. Yet experience shows that in cases of this kind a keen love
+of sport can often do much. With his gun and with his hunter he finds an
+interest, an excitement, an employment which may not be particularly
+noble, but which is at least sufficiently absorbing, and is not
+injurious either to his morals, his health, or his fortune. It is no
+small gain if, in the competition of pleasures, country pleasures take
+the place of those town pleasures which, in such cases as I have
+described, usually mean pleasures of vice.
+
+Nor is it by any means only in such cases that field sports prove a
+great moral safety-valve, scattering morbid tastes and giving harmless
+and healthy vent to turns of character or feeling which might very
+easily be converted into vice. Among the influences that form the
+character of the upper classes of Englishmen they have a great part,
+and in spite of the exaggerations and extravagances that often accompany
+them, few good observers will doubt that they have an influence for
+good. However much of the Philistine element there may be in the upper
+classes in England, however manifest may be their limitations and their
+defects, there can be little doubt that on the whole the conditions of
+English life have in this sphere proved successful. There are few better
+working types within the reach of commonplace men than that of an
+English gentleman with his conventional tastes, standard of honour,
+religion, sympathies, ideals, opinions and instincts. He is not likely
+to be either a saint or a philosopher, but he is tolerably sure to be
+both an honourable and a useful man, with a fair measure of good sense
+and moderation, and with some disposition towards public duties. A crowd
+of out-of-door amusements and interests do much to dispel his peccant
+humours and to save him from the stagnation and the sensuality that have
+beset many foreign aristocracies. County business stimulates his
+activity, mitigates his class prejudices, and forms his judgment: and
+his standard of honour will keep him substantially right amid much
+fluctuation of opinions.
+
+The reader, from his own experience of individual characters, will
+supply other illustrations of the lines of thought I am enforcing. Some
+temptations that beset us must be steadily faced and subdued. Others are
+best met by flight--by avoiding the thoughts or scenes that call them
+into activity; while other elements of character which we might wish to
+be away are often better treated in the way of marriage--that is by a
+judicious regulation and harmless application--than in the way of
+asceticism or attempted suppression. It is possible for men--if not in
+educating themselves, at least in educating others--to pitch their
+standard and their ideal too high. What they have to do is to recognise
+their own qualities and the qualities of those whom they influence as
+they are, and endeavour to use these usually very imperfect materials to
+the best advantage for the formation of useful, honourable and happy
+lives. According to the doctrine of this book, man comes into the world
+with a free will. But his free will, though a real thing, acts in a
+narrower circle and with more numerous limitations than he usually
+imagines. He can, however, do much so to dispose, regulate and modify
+the circumstances of his life as to diminish both his sufferings and his
+temptations, and to secure for himself the external conditions of a
+happy and upright life, and he can do something by judicious and
+persevering self-culture to improve those conditions of character on
+which, more than on any external circumstances, both happiness and
+virtue depend.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[61] Hawthorne's _Scarlet Letter_, ch. xxii.
+
+[62] _Hist._ ii. 35.
+
+[63] Speech on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings.
+
+[64] Davis.
+
+[65] Cable.
+
+[66] Jefferies, _Field and Hedgerow_, p. 242.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+MONEY
+
+
+I do not think that I can better introduce the few pages which I propose
+to write on the relations of money to happiness and to character than by
+a pregnant passage from one of the essays[67] of Sir Henry Taylor. 'So
+manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and characters of
+mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in
+his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his
+nature. He who knows like St. Paul both how to spare and how to abound
+has a great knowledge; for if we take account of all the virtues with
+which money is mixed up--honesty, justice, generosity, charity,
+frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices,
+it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and breadth of
+humanity, and a right measure in getting, saving, spending, giving,
+taking, lending, borrowing and bequeathing would almost argue a perfect
+man.'
+
+There are few subjects on which the contrast between the professed and
+the real beliefs of men is greater than in the estimate of money. More
+than any other single thing it is the object and usually the lifelong
+object of human effort, and any accession of wealth is hailed by the
+immense majority of mankind as an unquestionable blessing. Yet if we
+were to take literally much of the teaching we have all heard we should
+conclude that money, beyond what is required for the necessaries of
+life, is far more a danger than a good; that it is the pre-eminent
+source of evil and temptation; that one of the first duties of man is to
+emancipate himself from the love of it, which can only mean from any
+strong desire for its increase.
+
+In this, as in so many other things, the question is largely one of
+degree. No one who knows what is meant by the abject poverty to which a
+great proportion of the human race is condemned will doubt that at least
+such an amount of money as raises them from this condition is one of the
+greatest of human blessings. Extreme poverty means a lifelong struggle
+for the bare means of living; it means a life spent in wretched hovels,
+with insufficient food, clothes and firing, in enforced and absolute
+ignorance; an existence almost purely animal, with nearly all the higher
+faculties of man undeveloped. There is a far greater real difference in
+the material elements of happiness between the condition of such men and
+that of a moderately prosperous artizan in a civilised country than
+there is between the latter and the millionaire.
+
+Money, again, at least to such an amount as enables men to be in some
+considerable degree masters of their own course in life, is also on the
+whole a great good. In this second degree it has less influence on
+happiness than health, and probably than character and domestic
+relations, but its influence is at least very great. Money is a good
+thing because it can be transformed into many other things. It gives
+the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the
+character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It
+saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the
+destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of
+multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to
+intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in
+those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little
+less than physical pain. It gives him and it gives those he loves
+increased chances of life and increased hope of recovery in sickness.
+Few of the pains of penury are more acute than those of a poor man who
+sees his wife or children withering away through disease, and who knows
+or believes that better food or medical attendance, or a surgical
+operation, or a change of climate, might have saved them. Money, too,
+even when it does not dispense with work, at least gives a choice of
+work and longer intervals of leisure. For the very poor this choice
+hardly exists, or exists only within very narrow limits, and from want
+of culture or want of leisure some of their most marked natural
+aptitudes are never called into exercise. With the comparatively rich
+this is not the case. Money enables them to select the course of life
+which is congenial to their tastes and most suited to their natural
+talents, or, if their strongest taste cannot become their work, money at
+least gives them some leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure,
+when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many,
+perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb,
+'are chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to
+oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good
+and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good--but to
+buy time--in other words, life!'
+
+To some men money is chiefly valuable because it makes it possible for
+them not to think of money. Except in the daily regulation of ordinary
+life, it enables them to put aside cares which are to them both
+harassing and distasteful, and to concentrate their thoughts and
+energies on other objects. An assured competence also, however moderate,
+gives men the priceless blessing of independence. There are walks of
+life, there are fields of ambition, there are classes of employments in
+which between inadequate remuneration and the pressure of want on the
+one side, and the facilities and temptations to illicit gain on the
+other, it is extremely difficult for a poor man to walk straight.
+Illicit gain does not merely mean gain that brings a man within the
+range of the criminal law. Many of its forms escape legal and perhaps
+social censure, and may be even sanctioned by custom. A competence,
+whether small or large, is no sure preservative against that appetite
+for gain which becomes one of the most powerful and insatiable of
+passions. But it at least diminishes temptation. It takes away the
+pressure of want under which so many natures that were once
+substantially honest have broken down.
+
+In the expenditure of money there is usually a great deal of the
+conventional, the factitious, the purely ostentatious, but we are here
+dealing with the most serious realities of life. There are few or no
+elements of happiness and character more important than those I have
+indicated, and a small competence conduces powerfully to them. Let no
+man therefore despise it, for if wisely used it is one of the most real
+blessings of life. It is of course only within the reach of a small
+minority, but the number might easily be much larger than it is. Often
+when it is inherited in early youth it is scattered in one or two years
+of gambling and dissipation, followed by a lifetime of regret. In other
+cases it crumbles away in a generation, for it is made an excuse for a
+life of idleness, and when children multiply or misfortunes arrive, what
+was once a competence becomes nothing more than bare necessity. In a
+still larger number of cases many of its advantages are lost because men
+at once adopt a scale of living fully equal to their income. A man who
+with one house would be a wealthy man, finds life with two houses a
+constant struggle. A set of habits is acquired, a scale or standard of
+luxury is adopted, which at once sweeps away the margin of superfluity.
+Riches or poverty depend not merely on the amount of our possessions,
+but quite as much on the regulation of our desires, and the full
+advantages of competence are only felt when men begin by settling their
+scheme of life on a scale materially within their income. When the great
+lines of expenditure are thus wisely and frugally established, they can
+command a wide latitude and much ease in dealing with the smaller ones.
+
+It is of course true that the power of a man thus to regulate his
+expenditure is by no means absolute. The position in society in which a
+man is born brings with it certain conventionalities and obligations
+that cannot be discarded. A great nobleman who has inherited a vast
+estate and a conspicuous social position will, through no fault of his
+own, find himself involved in constant difficulties and struggles on an
+income a tenth part of which would suffice to give a simple private
+gentleman every reasonable enjoyment in life. A poor clergyman who is
+obliged to keep up the position of a gentleman is in reality a much
+poorer man than a prosperous artizan, even though his actual income may
+be somewhat larger. But within the bounds which the conventionalities of
+society imperatively prescribe many scales of expenditure are possible,
+and the wise regulation of these is one of the chief forms of practical
+wisdom.
+
+It may be observed, however, that not only men but nations differ widely
+in this respect, and the difference is not merely that between prudence
+and folly, between forethought and passion, but is also in a large
+degree a difference of tastes and ideals. In general it will be found
+that in Continental nations a man of independent fortune will place his
+expenditure more below his means than in England, and a man who has
+pursued some lucrative employment will sooner be satisfied with the
+competence he has acquired and will gladly exchange his work for a life
+of leisure. The English character prefers a higher rate of expenditure
+and work continued to the end.
+
+It is probable that, so far as happiness depends on money, the happiest
+lot--though it is certainly not that which is most envied--is that of a
+man who possesses a realised fortune sufficient to save him from serious
+money cares about the present and the future, but who at the same time
+can only keep up the position in society he has chosen for himself, and
+provide as he desires for his children, by adding to it a professional
+income. Work is necessary both to happiness and to character, and
+experience shows that it most frequently attains its full concentration
+and continuity when it is professional, or, in other words,
+money-making. Men work in traces as they will seldom work at liberty.
+The compulsory character, the steady habits, the constant emulation of
+professional life mould and strengthen the will, and probably the
+happiest lot is when this kind of work exists, but without the anxiety
+of those who depend solely on it.
+
+It is also a good thing when wealth tends to increase with age. 'Old
+age,' it has been said, 'is a very expensive thing.' If the taste for
+pleasure diminishes, the necessity for comfort increases. Men become
+more dependent and more fastidious, and hardships that are indifferent
+to youth become acutely painful. Beside this, money cares are apt to
+weigh with an especial heaviness upon the old. Avarice, as has been
+often observed, is eminently an old-age vice, and in natures that are in
+no degree avaricious it will be found that real money anxieties are more
+felt and have a greater haunting power in age than in youth. There is
+then the sense of impotence which makes men feel that their earning
+power has gone. On the other hand youth, and especially early married
+life spent under the pressure of narrow circumstances, will often be
+looked back upon as both the happiest and the most fruitful period of
+life. It is the best discipline of character. It is under such
+circumstances that men acquire habits of hard and steady work,
+frugality, order, forethought, punctuality, and simplicity of tastes.
+They acquire sympathies and realisations they would never have known in
+more prosperous circumstances. They learn to take keen pleasure in
+little things, and to value rightly both money and time. If wealth and
+luxury afterwards come in overflowing measure, these lessons will not be
+wholly lost.
+
+The value of money as an element of happiness diminishes rapidly in
+proportion to its amount. In the case of the humbler fortunes, each
+accession brings with it a large increase of pleasure and comfort, and
+probably a very considerable addition to real happiness. In the case of
+rich men this is not the case, and of colossal fortunes only a very
+small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment
+of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost
+is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our
+first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the
+perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces
+of the human mind--the works of human genius that through the long
+course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and
+direct the lives of men, might all be purchased--I do not say by the
+cost of a lady's necklace, but by that of one or two of the little
+stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired
+pedestrian eats his bread and cheese with the appetites with which men
+sit down to some stately banquet; compare the level of spirits at the
+village dance with that of the great city ball whose lavish splendour
+fills the society papers with admiration; compare the charm of
+conversation in the college common room with the weary faces that may be
+often seen around the millionaire's dinner table,--and we may gain a
+good lesson of the vanity of riches. The transition from want to comfort
+brings with it keen enjoyment and much lasting happiness. The transition
+from mere comfort to luxury brings incomparably less and costs
+incomparably more. Let a man of enormous wealth analyse his life from
+day to day and try to estimate what are the things or hours that have
+afforded him real and vivid pleasure. In many cases he will probably say
+that he has found it in his work--in others in the hour spent with his
+cigar, his newspaper, or his book, or in his game of cricket, or in the
+excitement of the hunting-field, or in his conversation with an old
+friend, or in hearing his daughters sing, or in welcoming his son on his
+return from school. Let him look round the splendid adornments of his
+home and ask how many of these things have ever given him a pleasure at
+all proportionate to their cost. Probably in many cases, if he deals
+honestly with himself, he would confess that his armchair and his
+bookshelves are almost the only exceptions.
+
+Steam, the printing press, the spread of education, and the great
+multiplication of public libraries, museums, picture galleries and
+exhibitions have brought the chief pleasures of life in a much larger
+degree than in any previous age within the reach of what are called the
+working classes, while in the conditions of modern life nearly all the
+great sources of real enjoyment that money can give are open to a man
+who possesses a competent but not extraordinary fortune and some
+leisure. Intellectual tastes he may gratify to the full. Books, at all
+events in the great centres of civilisation, are accessible far in
+excess of his powers of reading. The pleasures of the theatre, the
+pleasures of society, the pleasures of music in most of its forms, the
+pleasures of travel with all its variety of interests, and many of the
+pleasures of sport, are abundantly at his disposal. The possession of
+the highest works of art has no doubt become more and more a monopoly of
+the very rich, but picture galleries and exhibitions and the facilities
+of travel have diffused the knowledge and enjoyment of art over a vastly
+wider area than in the past. The power of reproducing works of art has
+been immensely increased and cheapened, and in one form at least the
+highest art has been brought within the reach of a man of very moderate
+means. Photography can reproduce a drawing with such absolute perfection
+that he may cover his walls with works of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da
+Vinci that are indistinguishable from the originals. The standard of
+comfort in mere material things is now so high in well-to-do households
+that to a healthy nature the millionaire can add little to it. Perhaps
+among the pleasures of wealth that which has the strongest influence is
+a country place, especially when it brings with it old remembrances, and
+associations that appeal powerfully to the affections and the
+imagination. More than any other inanimate thing it throws its tendrils
+round the human heart and becomes the object of a deep and lasting
+affection. But even here it will be probably found that this pleasure is
+more felt by the owner of one country place than by the great
+proprietor whose life is spent alternately in several--by the owner of a
+place of moderate dimensions than by the owner of those vast parks which
+can only be managed at great expense and trouble and by much delegated
+supervision, and which are usually thrown open with such liberality to
+the public that they probably give more real pleasure to others than to
+their owners.
+
+Among the special pleasures of the enormously rich the collecting
+passion is conspicuous, and of course a very rich man can carry it into
+departments which men of moderate fortune can hardly touch. In the rare
+case when the collector is a man of strong and genuine artistic taste
+the possession of works of beauty is a thing of enduring pleasure, but
+in general the mere love of collecting, though it often becomes a
+passion almost amounting to a mania, bears very little proportion to
+pecuniary value. The intelligent collector of fossils has as much
+pleasure as the collector of gems--probably indeed more, as the former
+pursuit brings with it a much greater variety of interest, and usually
+depends much more on the personal exertions of the collector. It is
+pleasant, in looking over a geological collection, to think that every
+stone we see has given a pleasure. A collector of Caxtons, a collector
+of large printed or illustrated editions, a collector of first editions
+of famous books, a collector of those editions that are so much prized
+because an author has made in them some blunder which he afterwards
+corrected; a collector of those unique books which have survived as
+rarities because no one thought it worth while to reprint them or
+because they are distinguished by some obsolete absurdity, will
+probably not derive more pleasure, though he will spend vastly more
+money, than the mere literary man who, being interested in some
+particular period or topic, loves to hunt up in old bookshops the
+obscure and forgotten literature relating to it. Much the same thing may
+be said of other tastes. The gratification of a strong taste or hobby
+will always give pleasure, and it makes little difference whether it is
+an expensive or an inexpensive one.
+
+The pleasures of acquisition, the pleasures of possession, and the
+pleasures of ostentation, are no doubt real things, though they act in
+very different degrees on different natures, and some of them much more
+on one sex than on the other. In general, however, they tend to grow
+passive and inert. A state of luxury and splendour is little appreciated
+by those who are born to it, though much if it follows a period of
+struggle and penury. Yet even then the circumstances and surroundings of
+life soon become a second nature. Men become so habituated to them that
+they are accepted almost mechanically and cease to give positive
+pleasure, though a deprivation of them gives positive pain. The love of
+power, the love of society, and--what is not quite the same thing--the
+love of social influence, are, however, much stronger and more enduring,
+and great wealth is largely valued because it helps to give them, though
+it does not give them invariably, and though there are other things that
+give them in an equal or greater degree. To many very rich men some form
+of field sports is probably the greatest pleasure that money affords. It
+at least gives a genuine thrill of unmistakable enjoyment.
+
+Few of the special pleasures of the millionaire can be said to be
+purely selfish, for few are concentrated altogether on himself. His
+great park is usually open to the public. His pictures are lent for
+exhibition or exhibited in his house. If he keeps a pack of hounds
+others hunt with it. If he preserves game to an enormous extent he
+invites many to shoot it, and at his great entertainments it will often
+be found that no one derives less pleasure than the weary host.
+
+At the same time no thinking man can fail to be struck with the great
+waste of the means of enjoyment in a society in which such gigantic sums
+are spent in mere conventional ostentation which gives little or no
+pleasure; in which the best London houses are those which are the
+longest untenanted; in which some of the most enchanting gardens and
+parks are only seen by their owners for a few weeks in the year.
+
+Hamerton, in his Essay on Bohemianism, has very truly shown that the
+rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain
+from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or
+amusement it can give by discarding the forms, the costly
+conventionalities, the social restrictions that encumber and limit it.
+One of the worst tendencies of a very wealthy society is that by the
+mere competition of ostentation the standard of conventional expense is
+raised, and the intercourse of men limited by the introduction of a
+number of new and costly luxuries which either give no pleasure or give
+pleasure that bears no kind of proportion to their cost. Examples may
+sometimes be seen of a very rich man who imagines that he can obtain
+from life real enjoyment in proportion to his wealth and who uses it
+for purely selfish purposes. We may find this in the almost insane
+extravagance of vulgar ostentation by which the parvenu millionaire
+tries to gratify his vanity and dazzle his neighbours; in the wild round
+of prodigal dissipation and vice by which so many young men who have
+inherited enormous fortunes have wrecked their constitutions and found a
+speedy path to an unhonoured grave. They sought from money what money
+cannot give, and learned too late that in pursuing shadows they missed
+the substance that was within their reach.
+
+To the intelligent millionaire, however, and especially to those who are
+brought up to great possessions, wealth is looked on in a wholly
+different light. It is a possession and a trust carrying with it many
+duties as well as many interests and accompanied by a great burden of
+responsibility. Mere pleasure-hunting plays but a small and wholly
+subsidiary part in such lives, and they are usually filled with much
+useful work. This man, for example, is a banker on a colossal scale.
+Follow his life, and you will find that for four days in the week he is
+engaged in his office as steadily, as unremittingly as any clerk in his
+establishment. He has made himself master not only of the details of his
+own gigantic business but of the whole great subject of finance in all
+its international relations. He is a power in many lands. He is
+consulted in every crisis of finance. He is an important influence in a
+crowd of enterprises, most of them useful as well as lucrative, some of
+them distinctively philanthropic. Saturday and Sunday he spends at his
+country place, usually entertaining a number of guests. One other day
+during the hunting season he regularly devotes to his favourite sport.
+His holiday is the usual holiday of a professional man, with rather a
+tendency to abridge than to lengthen it, as the natural bent of his
+thoughts is so strongly to his work that time soon begins to hang
+heavily when he is away from it.
+
+Another man is an ardent philanthropist, and his philanthropy probably
+blends with much religious fervour, and he becomes in consequence a
+leader in the religious world. Such a life cannot fail to be abundantly
+filled. Religious meetings, committees, the various interests of the
+many institutions with which he is connected, the conflicting and
+competing claims of different religious societies, fully occupy his time
+and thoughts, sometimes to the great neglect of his private affairs.
+
+Another man is of a different type. Shy, retiring, hating publicity, and
+not much interested in politics, he is a gigantic landowner, and the
+work of his life is concentrated on the development of his own estate.
+He knows the circumstances of every village, almost of every farm. It is
+his pride that no labourer on his estate is badly housed, that no part
+of it is slovenly or mismanaged or poverty-stricken. He endows churches
+and hospitals, he erects public buildings, encourages every local
+industry, makes in times of distress much larger remissions of rent than
+would be possible for a poorer man, superintends personally the many
+interests on his property, knows accurately the balance of receipts and
+expenditure, takes a great interest in sanitation, in new improvements
+and experiments in agriculture, in all the multifarious matters that
+affect the prosperity of his numerous tenantry. He subscribes liberally
+to great national undertakings, as he considers it one of the duties of
+his position, but his heart is not in such things, and the well-being of
+his own vast estate and of those who live upon it is the aim and the
+work of his life. For a few weeks of the year he exercises the splendid
+and lavish hospitality which is expected from a man in his position, and
+he is always very glad when those weeks are over. He has, however, his
+own expensive hobby, which gives him real pleasure--his yacht, his
+picture gallery, his museum, his collection of wild animals, his
+hothouses or his racing establishment. One or more of these form the
+real amusement of his active and useful life.
+
+A more common type in England is that of the active politician. Great
+wealth and especially great landed property bring men easily into
+Parliament, and, if united with industry and some measure of ability,
+into official life, and public life thus becomes a profession and in
+many cases a very laborious one. There are few better examples of a
+well-filled life and of the skilful management and economy of time than
+are to be found in the lives of some great noblemen who take a leading
+part in politics and preside over important Government departments
+without suffering their gigantic estates to fall into mismanagement, or
+neglecting the many social duties and local interests connected with
+them. Most of their success is indeed due to the wise use of money in
+economising time by trustworthy and efficient delegation. Yet the
+superintending brain, the skilful choice, the personal control cannot
+be dispensed with. In a life so fully occupied the few weeks of pleasure
+which may be spent on a Scotch moor or in a Continental watering-place
+will surely not be condemned.
+
+The economy of time and the elasticity of brain and character such lives
+develop are, however, probably exceeded by another class. Nothing is
+more remarkable in the social life of the present generation than the
+high pressure under which a large number of ladies in great positions
+habitually live. It strikes every Continental observer, for there is
+nothing approaching it in any other European country, and it certainly
+far exceeds anything that existed in England in former generations.
+Pleasure-seeking, combined, however, on a large scale with
+pleasure-giving, holds a much more prominent place in these lives than
+in those I have just described. With not a few women, indeed, of wealth
+and position, it is the all-in-all of life, and in general it is
+probable that women obtain more pleasure from most forms of society than
+men, though it is also true that they bear a much larger share of its
+burdens. There are, however, in this class, many who combine with
+society a truly surprising number and variety of serious interests. Not
+only the management of a great house, not only the superintendence of
+schools and charities and local enterprises connected with a great
+estate, but also a crowd of philanthropic, artistic, political, and
+sometimes literary interests fill their lives. Few lives, indeed, in any
+station are more full, more intense, more constantly and variously
+occupied. Public life, which in most foreign countries is wholly outside
+the sphere of women, is eagerly followed. Public speaking, which in the
+memory of many now living was almost unknown among women of any station
+in English society, has become the most ordinary accomplishment. Their
+object is to put into life from youth to old age as much as life can
+give, and they go far to attain their end. A wonderful nimbleness and
+flexibility of intellect capable of turning swiftly from subject to
+subject has been developed, and keeps them in touch with a very wide
+range both of interests and pleasures.
+
+There are no doubt grave drawbacks to all this. Many will say that this
+external activity must be at the sacrifice of the duties of domestic
+life, but on this subject there is, I think, at least much exaggeration.
+Education has now assumed such forms and attained such a standard that
+usually for many hours in the day the education of the young in a
+wealthy family is in the hands of accomplished specialists, and I do not
+think that the most occupied lives are those in which the cares of a
+home are most neglected. How far, however, this intense and constant
+strain is compatible with physical well-being is a graver question, and
+many have feared that it must bequeath weakened constitutions to the
+coming generation. Nor is a life of incessant excitement in other
+respects beneficial. In both intellectual and moral hygiene the best
+life is that which follows nature and alternates periods of great
+activity with periods of rest. Retirement, quiet, steady reading, and
+the silent thought which matures character and deepens impressions are
+things that seem almost disappearing from many English lives. But lives
+such as I have described are certainly not useless, undeveloped, or
+wholly selfish, and they in a large degree fulfil that great law of
+happiness, that it should be sought for rather in interests than in
+pleasures.
+
+I have already referred to the class who value money chiefly because it
+enables them to dismiss money thoughts and cares from their minds. On
+the whole, this end is probably more frequently attained by men of
+moderate but competent fortunes than by the very rich. This is at least
+the case when they are sufficiently rich to invest their money in
+securities which are liable to no serious risk or fluctuation. A
+gigantic fortune is seldom of such a nature that it does not bring with
+it great cares of administration and require much thought and many
+decisions. There is, however, one important exception. When there are
+many children the task of providing for their future falls much more
+lightly on the very rich than on those of medium fortune.
+
+There is a class, however, who are the exact opposite of these and who
+make the simple acquisition of money the chief interest and pleasure of
+their lives. Money-making in some form is the main occupation of the
+great majority of men, but it is usually as a means to an end. It is to
+acquire the means of livelihood, or the means of maintaining or
+improving a social position, or the means of providing as they think fit
+for the children who are to succeed them. Sometimes, however, with the
+very rich and without any ulterior object, money-making for its own sake
+becomes the absorbing interest. They can pursue it with great advantage;
+for, as has been often said, nothing makes money like money, and the
+possession of an immense capital gives innumerable facilities for
+increasing it. The collecting passion takes this form. They come to care
+more for money than for anything money can purchase, though less for
+money than for the interest and the excitement of getting it.
+Speculative enterprise, with its fluctuations, uncertainties and
+surprises, becomes their strongest interest and their greatest
+amusement.
+
+When it is honestly conducted there is no real reason why it should be
+condemned. On these conditions a life so spent is, I think, usually
+useful to the world, for it generally encourages works that are of real
+value. All that can be truly said is that it brings with it grave
+temptations and is very apt to lower a man's moral being. Speculation
+easily becomes a form of gambling so fierce in its excitement that, when
+carried on incessantly and on a great scale, it kills all capacity for
+higher and tranquil pleasures, strengthens incalculably the temptations
+to unscrupulous gain, disturbs the whole balance of character, and often
+even shortens life. With others the love of accumulation has a strange
+power of materialising, narrowing and hardening. Habits of
+meanness--sometimes taking curious and inconsistent forms, and applying
+only to particular things or departments of life--steal insensibly over
+them, and the love of money assumes something of the character of mania.
+Temptations connected with money are indeed among the most insidious and
+among the most powerful to which we are exposed. They have probably a
+wider empire than drink, and, unlike the temptations that spring from
+animal passion, they strengthen rather than diminish with age. In no
+respect is it more necessary for a man to keep watch over his own
+character, taking care that the unselfish element does not diminish, and
+correcting the love of acquisition by generosity of expenditure.
+
+It is probable that the highest form of charity, involving real and
+serious self-denial, is much more common among the poor, and even the
+very poor, than among the rich. I think most persons who have had much
+practical acquaintance with the dealings of the poor with one another
+will confirm this. It is certainly far less common among those who are
+at the opposite pole of fortune. They have not had the same discipline,
+or indeed the same possibility of self-sacrifice, or the same means of
+realising the pains of poverty, and there is another reason which tends
+not unnaturally to check their benevolence. A man with the reputation of
+great wealth soon finds himself beleaguered by countless forms of
+mendicancy and imposture. He comes to feel that there is a general
+conspiracy to plunder him, and he is naturally thrown into an attitude
+of suspicion and self-defence. Often, though he may give largely and
+generously, he will do so under the veil of strict anonymity, in order
+to avoid a reputation for generosity which will bring down upon him
+perpetual solicitations. If he is an intellectual man he will probably
+generalise from his own experience. He will be deeply impressed with the
+enormous evils that have sprung from ill-judged charity, and with the
+superiority even from a philanthropic point of view of a productive
+expenditure of money.
+
+And in truth it is difficult to overrate the evil effects of injudicious
+charities in discouraging thrift, industry, foresight and self-respect.
+They take many forms; some of them extremely obvious, while others can
+only be rightly judged by a careful consideration of remote
+consequences. There are the idle tourists who break down, in a once
+unsophisticated district, that sense of self-respect which is one of the
+most valuable lessons that early education can give, by flinging pence
+to be scrambled for among the children, or who teach the poor the fatal
+lesson that mendicancy or something hardly distinguishable from
+mendicancy will bring greater gain than honest and continuous work.
+There is the impulsive, uninquiring charity that makes the trade of the
+skilful begging-letter writer a lucrative profession, and makes men and
+women who are rich, benevolent and weak, the habitual prey of greedy
+impostors. There is the old-established charity for ministering to
+simple poverty which draws to its centre all the pauperism of the
+neighbouring districts, depresses wages, and impoverishes the very
+district or class it was intended to benefit. There are charities which
+not only largely diminish the sufferings that are the natural
+consequence and punishment of vice; but even make the lot of the
+criminal and the vicious a better one than that of the hard-working
+poor. There are overlapping charities dealing with the same department,
+but kept up with lavish waste through the rivalry of different religious
+denominations, or in the interests of the officials connected with them;
+belated or superannuated charities formed to deal with circumstances or
+sufferings that have in a large degree passed away--useless, or almost
+useless, charities established to carry out some silly fad or to gratify
+some silly vanity; sectarian charities intended to further ends which,
+in the eyes of all but the members of one sect, are not only useless but
+mischievous; charities that encourage thriftless marriages, or make it
+easy for men to neglect obvious duties, or keep a semi-pauper population
+stationary in employments and on a soil where they can never prosper, or
+in other ways handicap, impede or divert the natural and healthy course
+of industry. Illustrations of all these evils will occur to every
+careful student of the subject. Unintelligent, thoughtless, purely
+impulsive charity, and charity which is inspired by some other motive
+than a real desire to relieve suffering, will constantly go wrong, but
+every intelligent man can find without difficulty vast fields on which
+the largest generosity may be expended with abundant fruit.
+
+Hospitals and kindred institutions for alleviating great unavoidable
+calamities, and giving the sick poor something of the same chances of
+recovery as the rich, for the most part fall under this head. Money will
+seldom be wasted which is spent in promoting kinds of knowledge,
+enterprise or research that bring no certain remuneration proportioned
+to their value; in assisting poor young men of ability and industry to
+develop their special talents; in encouraging in their many different
+forms thrift, self-help and co-operation; in alleviating the inevitable
+suffering that follows some great catastrophe on land or sea, or great
+transitions of industry, or great fluctuations and depressions in class
+prosperity; in giving the means of healthy recreation or ennobling
+pleasures to the denizens of a crowded town. The vast sphere of
+education opens endless fields for generous expenditure, and every
+religious man will find objects which, in the opinion not only of men of
+his own persuasion, but also of many others, are transcendently
+important. Nor is it a right principle that charity should be denied to
+all calamities which are in some degree due to the fault of the
+sufferer, or which might have been averted by exceptional forethought or
+self-denial. Some economists write as if a far higher standard of will
+and morals should be expected among the poor and the uneducated than can
+be found among the rich. Good sense and right feeling will here easily
+draw the line, abstaining from charities that have a real influence in
+encouraging improvidence or vice, yet making due allowance for the
+normal weaknesses of our nature.
+
+In all these ways the very rich can find ample opportunities for useful
+benevolence. It is the prerogative of great wealth that it can often
+cure what others can only palliate, and can establish permanent sources
+of good which will continue long after the donors have passed away. In
+dealing with individual cases of distress, rich men who have neither the
+time nor the inclination to investigate the special circumstances will
+do well to rely largely on the recommendation of others. If they choose
+trustworthy, competent and sensible advisers with as much judgment as
+they commonly show in the management of their private affairs, they are
+not likely to go astray. There never was a period when a larger amount
+of intelligent and disinterested labour was employed in careful and
+detailed examination of the circumstances and needs of the poor. The
+parish clergyman, the district visitor, the agents of the Charity
+Organization Society which annually selects its special cases of
+well-ascertained need, will abundantly furnish them with the knowledge
+they require.
+
+The advantage or disadvantage of the presence in a country of a large
+class of men possessing fortunes far exceeding anything that can really
+administer to their enjoyment is a question which has greatly divided
+both political economists and moralists. The former were long accustomed
+to maintain somewhat exclusively that laws and institutions should be
+established with the object of furthering the greatest possible
+accumulation of wealth, and that a system of unrestricted competition,
+coupled with equal laws, giving each man the most complete security in
+the possession and disposal of his property, was the best means of
+attaining this end. They urged with great truth that, although under
+such a system the inequalities of fortune will be enormous, most of the
+wealth of the very rich will inevitably be distributed in the form of
+wages, purchases, and industrial enterprises through the community at
+large, and that, other things being equal, the richest country will on
+the whole be the happiest. They clearly saw the complete delusion of the
+common assertions that the more millionaires there are in a country the
+more paupers will multiply, and that society is dividing between the
+enormously rich and the abjectly poor. The great industrial communities,
+in which there are the largest number of very wealthy men, are also the
+centres in which we find the most prosperous middle class, and the
+highest and most progressive rates of wages and standards of comfort
+among the poor. Great corruption in many forms no doubt exists in them,
+but it can scarcely be maintained with confidence that the standard of
+integrity is on the whole lower in these than in other countries, and
+they at least escape what in many poor countries is one of the most
+fruitful causes of corruption in all branches of administration--the
+inadequate pay of the servants of the Crown. The path of liberty in the
+eyes of economists of this school is the path of wisdom, and they were
+profoundly distrustful of all legislative attempts to restrict or
+interfere with the course of industrial progress.
+
+In our own generation a somewhat different tendency has manifestly
+strengthened. It has been said that past political economists paid too
+much attention to the accumulation and too little to the distribution of
+wealth. Men have become more sensible to the high level of happiness and
+moral well-being that has been attained in some of the smaller and
+somewhat stagnant countries of Europe, where wealth is more generally
+attained by thrift and steady industry than by great industrial or
+commercial enterprise, in which there are few large fortunes but little
+acute poverty, a low standard of luxury, but a high standard of real
+comfort. The enormous evils that have grown up in wealthy countries, in
+the form of company-mongering, excessive competition, extravagant and
+often vicious luxury, and dishonest administration of public funds, are
+more and more felt, and it is only too true that in these countries
+there are large and influential circles of society in which all
+considerations of character, intellect, or manners seem lost in an
+intense thirst for wealth and for the things that it can give.
+Sometimes we find vast fortunes in countries where there is but little
+enterprise and a very low standard of comfort among the people, and
+where this is the case it is usually due to unequal laws or corrupt
+administration. In the free, democratic, and industrial communities
+great fluctuations and disparities of wealth are inevitable, and some of
+the most colossal fortunes have, no doubt, been made by the evil methods
+I have described. They are, however, only a minority, and not a very
+large one. Like all the great successes of life, abnormal accumulation
+of wealth is usually due to the combination in different proportions of
+ability, character, and chance, and is not tainted with dishonesty. On
+the whole, the question that should be asked is not what a man has, but
+how he obtained it and how he uses it. When wealth is honestly acquired
+and wisely and generously used, the more rich men there are in a country
+the better.
+
+There has probably never been a period in the history of the world when
+the conditions of industry, assisted by the great gold discoveries in
+several parts of the globe, were so favourable to the formation of
+enormous fortunes as at present, and when the race of millionaires was
+so large. The majority belong to the English-speaking race; probably
+most of their gigantic fortunes have been rapidly accumulated, and bring
+with them none of the necessary, hereditary, and clearly defined
+obligations of a great landowner, while a considerable proportion of
+them have fallen to the lot of men who, through their education or early
+habits, have not many cultivated or naturally expensive tastes. In
+England many of the new millionaires become great landowners and set up
+great establishments. In America, where country tastes are less marked
+and where the difficulties of domestic service are very great, this is
+less common. In both countries the number of men with immense fortunes,
+absolutely at their own disposal, has enormously increased, and the
+character of their expenditure has become a matter of real national
+importance.
+
+Much of it, no doubt, goes in simple luxury and ostentation, or in mere
+speculation, or in restoring old and dilapidated fortunes through the
+marriages of rank with money which are so characteristic of our time;
+but much also is devoted to charitable or philanthropic purposes. In
+this, as in most things, motives are often very blended. To men of such
+fortunes, such expenditure, even on a large scale, means no real
+self-sacrifice, and the inducements to it are not always of the highest
+kind. To some men it is a matter of ambition--a legitimate and useful
+ambition--to obtain the enduring and honourable fame which attaches to
+the founder of a great philanthropic or educational establishment.
+Others find that, in England at least, large philanthropic expenditure
+is one of the easiest and shortest paths to social success, bringing men
+and women of low extraction and bad manners into close and frequent
+connection with the recognised leaders of society; while others again
+have discovered that it is the quickest way of effacing the stigma which
+still in some degree attaches to wealth which has been acquired by
+dishonourable or dubious means. Fashion, social ambition, and social
+rivalries are by no means unknown in the fields of charity. There are
+many, however, in whose philanthropy the element of self has no place,
+and whose sole desire is to expend their money in forms that can be of
+most real and permanent benefit to others.
+
+Such men have great power, and, if their philanthropic expenditure is
+wisely guided, it may be of incalculable benefit. I have already
+indicated many of the channels in which it may safely flow, but one or
+two additional hints on the subject may not be useless. Perhaps as a
+general rule these men will find that they can act most wisely by
+strengthening and enlarging old charities which are really good, rather
+than by founding new ones. Competition is the soul of industry, but
+certainly not of charity, and there is in England a deplorable waste of
+money and machinery through the excessive multiplication of institutions
+intended for the same objects. The kind of ambition to which I have just
+referred tends to make men prefer new charities which can be identified
+with their names; the paid officials connected with charities have
+become a large and powerful profession, and their influence is naturally
+used in the same direction; the many different religious bodies in the
+country often refuse to combine, and each desires to have its own
+institutions; and there are fashions in charity which, while they
+greatly stimulate generosity, have too often the effect of diverting it
+from the older and more unobtrusive forms. On the other hand, one of the
+most important facts in our present economical condition is that an
+extraordinary and almost unparalleled development of industrial
+prosperity has been accompanied by extreme and long-continued
+agricultural depression and by a great fall in the rate of interest.
+Wealth in many forms is accumulating with wonderful rapidity, and the
+increased rate of wages is diffusing prosperity among the working
+classes; but those who depend directly or indirectly on agricultural
+rents or on interest of money invested in trust securities have been
+suffering severely, and they comprise some of the most useful,
+blameless, and meritorious classes in the community. The same causes
+that have injured them have fallen with crushing severity on
+old-established institutions which usually derive their income largely
+or entirely from the rent of land or from money invested in the public
+funds. The bitter cry of distress that is rising from the hospitals and
+many other ancient charities, from the universities, from the clergy of
+the Established Church, abundantly proves it.
+
+The preference, however, to be given to old charities rather than to new
+ones is subject to very many exceptions. It does not apply to new
+countries or to the many cases in which changes and developments of
+industry have planted vast agglomerations of population in districts
+which were once but thinly populated, and therefore but little provided
+with charitable or educational institutions. Nor does it apply to the
+many cases in which the circumstances of modern life have called into
+existence new forms of charity, new wants, new dangers and evils to be
+combated, new departments of knowledge to be cultivated. One of the
+greatest difficulties of the older universities is that of providing,
+out of their shrinking endowments, for the teaching of branches of
+science and knowledge which have only come into existence, or at least
+into prominence, long after these universities were established, and
+some of which require not only trained teachers but costly apparatus
+and laboratories. Increasing international competition and enlarged
+scientific knowledge have rendered necessary an amount of technical and
+agricultural education never dreamed of by our ancestors; and the rise
+of the great provincial towns and the greater intensity of provincial
+life and provincial patriotism, as well as the changes that have passed
+over the position both of the working and middle classes, have created a
+genuine demand for educational establishments of a different type from
+the older universities. The higher education of women is essentially a
+nineteenth-century work, and it has been carried on without the
+assistance of old endowments and with very little help from modern
+Parliaments. In the distribution of public funds a class which is wholly
+unrepresented in Parliament seldom gets its fair share; and higher
+education, like most forms of science, like most of the higher forms of
+literature, and like many valuable forms of research, never can be
+self-supporting. There are great branches of knowledge which without
+established endowments must remain uncultivated, or be cultivated only
+by men of considerable private means. Some invaluable curative agencies,
+such as convalescent homes in different countries and climates and for
+different diseases, have grown up in our own generation, as well as some
+of the most fruitful forms of medical research and some of the most
+efficacious methods of giving healthy change and brightness to the lives
+that are most monotonous and overstrained. Every great revolution in
+industry, in population, and even in knowledge, brings with it new and
+special wants, and there are cases in which assisted emigration is one
+of the best forms of charity.
+
+These are but a few illustrations of the directions in which the large
+surplus funds which many of the very rich are prepared to expend on
+philanthropic purposes may profitably go. There is a marked and
+increasing tendency in our age to meet all the various exigencies of
+Society, as they arise, by State aid resting on compulsory taxation. In
+countries where the levels of fortune are such that few men have incomes
+greatly in excess of their real or factitious wants, this method will
+probably be necessary; but many of the wants I have described can be
+better met by the old English method of intelligent private generosity,
+and in a country in which the number of the very rich is so great and so
+increasing, this generosity should not be wanting.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[67] _Notes on Life._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+
+The beautiful saying of Newton, that he felt like a child who had been
+picking up a few pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of undiscovered
+truth, may well occur to any writer who attempts to say something on the
+vast subject of marriage. The infinite variety of circumstances and
+characters affects it in infinitely various ways, and all that can here
+be done is to collect a few somewhat isolated and miscellaneous remarks
+upon it. Yet it is a subject which cannot be omitted in a book like
+this. In numerous cases it is the great turning-point of a life, and in
+all cases when it takes place it is one of the most important of its
+events. Whatever else marriage may do or fail to do, it never leaves a
+man unchanged. His intellect, his character, his happiness, his way of
+looking on the world, will all be influenced by it. If it does not raise
+or strengthen him it will lower or weaken. If it does not deepen
+happiness it will impair it. It brings with it duties, interests,
+habits, hopes, cares, sorrows, and joys that will penetrate into every
+fissure of his nature and modify the whole course of his life.
+
+It is strange to think with how much levity and how little knowledge a
+contract which is so indissoluble and at the same time so momentous is
+constantly assumed; sometimes under the influence of a blinding passion
+and at an age when life is still looked upon as a romance or an idyll;
+sometimes as a matter of mere ambition and calculation, through a desire
+for wealth or title or position. Men and women rely on the force of
+habit and necessity to accommodate themselves to conditions they have
+never really understood or realised.
+
+In most cases different motives combine, though in different degrees.
+Sometimes an overpowering affection for the person is the strongest
+motive and eclipses all others. Sometimes the main motive to marriage is
+a desire to be married. It is to obtain a settled household and
+position; to be relieved from the 'unchartered freedom' and the 'vague
+desires' of a lonely life; to find some object of affection; to acquire
+the steady habits and the exemption from household cares which are
+essential to a career; to perpetuate a race; perhaps to escape from
+family discomforts, or to introduce a new and happy influence into a
+family. With these motives a real affection for a particular person is
+united, but it is not of such a character as to preclude choice,
+judgment, comparison, and a consideration of worldly advantages.
+
+It is a wise saying of Swift that there would be fewer unhappy marriages
+in the world if women thought less of making nets and more of making
+cages. The qualities that attract, fascinate, and dazzle are often
+widely different from those which are essential to a happy marriage.
+Sometimes they are distinctly hostile to it. More frequently they
+conduce to it, but only in an inferior or subsidiary degree. The turn of
+mind and character that makes the accomplished flirt is certainly not
+that which promises best for the happiness of a married life; and
+distinguished beauty, brilliant talents, and the heroic qualities that
+play a great part in the affairs of life, and shine conspicuously in the
+social sphere, sink into a minor place among the elements of married
+happiness. In marriage the identification of two lives is so complete
+that it brings every faculty and gift into play, but in degrees and
+proportions very different from public life or casual intercourse and
+relations. The most essential are often wanting in a brilliant life, and
+are largely developed in lives and characters that rise little, if at
+all, above the commonplace. In the words of a very shrewd man of the
+world: 'Before marriage the shape, the figure, the complexion carry all
+before them; after marriage the mind and character unexpectedly claim
+their share, and that the largest, of importance.'[68]
+
+The relation is one of the closest intimacy and confidence, and if the
+identity of interest between the two partners is not complete, each has
+an almost immeasurable power of injuring the other. A moral basis of
+sterling qualities is of capital importance. A true, honest, and
+trustworthy nature, capable of self-sacrifice and self-restraint, should
+rank in the first line, and after that a kindly, equable, and contented
+temper, a power of sympathy, a habit of looking at the better and
+brighter side of men and things. Of intellectual qualities, judgment,
+tact, and order are perhaps the most valuable. Above almost all things,
+men should seek in marriage perfect sanity, and dread everything like
+hysteria. Beauty will continue to be a delight, though with much
+diminished power, but grace and the charm of manner will retain their
+full attraction to the last. They brighten in innumerable ways the
+little things of life, and life is mainly made up of little things,
+exposed to petty frictions, and requiring small decisions and small
+sacrifices. Wide interests and large appreciations are, in the marriage
+relation, more important than any great constructive or creative talent,
+and the power to soothe, to sympathise, to counsel, and to endure, than
+the highest qualities of the hero or the saint. It is by these alone
+that the married life attains its full measure of perfection.
+
+
+     'Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atra
+       Lumen, et in solis tu mihi turba locis.'[69]
+
+
+But while this is true of all marriages, it is obvious that different
+professions and circumstances of life will demand different qualities. A
+hard-working labouring man, or a man who, though not labouring with his
+hands, is living a life of poverty and struggle, will not seek in
+marriage a type of character exactly the same as a man who is born to a
+great position, and who has large social and administrative duties to
+discharge. The wife of a clergyman immersed in the many interests of a
+parish; the wife of a soldier or a merchant, who may have to live in
+many lands, with long periods of separation from her husband, and
+perhaps amid many hardships; the wife of an active and ambitious
+politician; the wife of a busy professional man incessantly occupied
+outside his home; the wife of a man whose health or business or habits
+keep him constantly in his house, will each need some special qualities.
+There are few things in which both men and women naturally differ more
+than in the elasticity and adaptiveness of their natures, in their power
+of bearing monotony, in the place which habit, routine, and variety hold
+in their happiness; and in different kinds of life these things have
+very different degrees of importance. Special family circumstances, such
+as children by a former marriage, or difficult and delicate relations
+with members of the family of one partner, will require the exercise of
+special qualities. Such relations, indeed, are often one of the most
+searching and severe tests of the sterling qualities of female
+character.
+
+Probably, on the whole, the best presumption of a successful choice in
+marriage will be found where the wife has not been educated in
+circumstances or ideas absolutely dissimilar from those of her married
+life. Marriages of different races or colours are rarely happy, and the
+same thing is true of marriages between persons of social levels that
+are so different as to entail great differences of manners and habits.
+Other and minor disparities of circumstances between girl life and
+married life will have their effect, but they are less strong and less
+invariable. Some of the happiest marriages have been marriages of
+emancipation, which removed a girl from uncongenial family surroundings,
+and placed her for the first time in an intellectual and moral
+atmosphere in which she could freely breathe. At the same time, in the
+choice of a wife, the character, circumstances, habits, and tone of the
+family in which she has been brought up will always be an important
+element. There are qualities of race, there are pedigrees of character,
+which it is never prudent to neglect. Franklin quotes with approval the
+advice of a wise man to choose a wife 'out of a bunch,' as girls brought
+up together improve each other by emulation, learn mutual self-sacrifice
+and forbearance, rub off their angularities, and are not suffered to
+develop overweening self-conceit. A family where the ruling taste is
+vulgar, where the standard of honour is low, where extravagance and
+self-indulgence and want of order habitually prevail, creates an
+atmosphere which it needs a strong character altogether to escape. There
+is also the great question of physical health. A man should seek in
+marriage rather to raise than to depress the physical level of his
+family, and above all not to introduce into it grave, well-ascertained
+hereditary disease. Of all forms of self-sacrifice hardly any is at once
+so plainly right and so plainly useful as the celibacy of those who are
+tainted with such disease.
+
+There is no subject on which religious teachers have dwelt more than
+upon marriage and the relation of the sexes, and it has been continually
+urged that the propagation of children is its first end. It is strange,
+however, to observe how almost absolutely in the popular ethics of
+Christendom such considerations as that which I have last mentioned have
+been neglected. If one of the most responsible things that a man can do
+is to bring a human being into the world, one of his first and most
+obvious duties is to do what he can to secure that it shall come into
+the world with a sound body and a sane mind. This is the best
+inheritance that parents can leave their children, and it is in a large
+degree within their reach. Immature marriage, excessive child-bearing,
+marriages of near relations, and, above all, marriages with some grave
+hereditary physical or mental disease or some great natural defect, may
+bring happiness to the parents, but can scarcely fail to entail a
+terrible penalty upon their children. It is clearly recognised that one
+of the first duties of parents to their children is to secure them in
+early life not only good education, but also, as far as is within their
+power, the conditions of a healthy being. But the duty goes back to an
+earlier stage, and in marriage the prospects of the unborn should never
+be forgotten. This is one of the considerations which in the ethics of
+the future is likely to have a wholly different place from any that it
+has occupied in the past.
+
+A kindred consideration, little less important and almost equally
+neglected in popular teaching, is that it is a moral offence to bring
+children into the world with no prospect of being able to provide for
+them. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the neglect of
+these two duties has tended to the degradation and unhappiness of the
+world.
+
+The greatly increased importance which the Darwinian theory has given to
+heredity should tend to make men more sensible of the first of these
+duties. In marriage there are not only reciprocal duties between the two
+partners; there are also, more than in any other act of life, plain
+duties to the race. The hereditary nature of insanity and of some forms
+of disease is an indisputable truth. The hereditary transmission of
+character has not, it is true, as yet acquired this position; and there
+is a grave schism on the subject in the Darwinian school. But that it
+exists to some extent few close observers will doubt, and it is in a
+high degree probable that it is one of the most powerful moulding
+influences of life. No more probable explanation has yet been given of
+the manner in which human nature has been built up, and of the various
+instincts and tastes with which we are born, than the doctrine that
+habits and modes of thought and feeling indulged in and produced by
+circumstances in former generations have gradually become innate in the
+race, and exhibit themselves spontaneously and instinctively and quite
+independently of the circumstances that originally produced them.
+According to this theory the same process is continually going on. Man
+has slowly emerged from a degraded and bestial condition. The pressure
+of long-continued circumstances has moulded him into his special type;
+but new feelings and habits, or modifications of old feelings and
+habits, are constantly passing not only into his life but into his
+nature, taking root there, and in some degree at least reproducing
+themselves by the force of heredity in the innate disposition of his
+offspring. If this be true, it gives a new and terrible importance both
+to the duty of self-culture and to the duty of wise selection in
+marriage. It means that children are likely to be influenced not only by
+what we do and by what we say, but also by what we are, and that the
+characters of the parents in different degrees and combinations will
+descend even to a remote posterity.
+
+It throws a not less terrible light upon the miscalculations of the
+past. On this hypothesis, as Mr. Galton has truly shown, it is scarcely
+possible to exaggerate the evil which has been brought upon the world by
+the religious glorification of celibacy and by the enormous development
+and encouragement of the monastic life. Generation after generation,
+century after century, and over the whole wide surface of Christendom,
+this conception of religion drew into a sterile celibacy nearly all who
+were most gentle, most unselfish, most earnest, studious, and religious,
+most susceptible to moral and intellectual enthusiasm, and thus
+prevented them from transmitting to posterity the very qualities that
+are most needed for the happiness and the moral progress of the race.
+Whenever the good and evil resulting from different religious systems
+come to be impartially judged, this consideration is likely to weigh
+heavily in the scale.[70]
+
+Returning, however, to the narrower sphere of particular marriages, it
+may be observed that although full confidence, and, in one sense,
+complete identification of interests, are the characteristics of a
+perfect marriage, this does not by any means imply that one partner
+should be a kind of duplicate of the other. Woman is not a mere weaker
+man; and the happiest marriages are often those in which, in tastes,
+character, and intellectual qualities, the wife is rather the complement
+than the reflection of her husband. In intellectual things this is
+constantly shown. The purely practical and prosaic intellect is united
+with an intellect strongly tinged with poetry and romance; the man whose
+strength is in facts, with the woman whose strength is in ideas; the man
+who is wholly absorbed in science or politics or economical or
+industrial problems and pursuits, with a woman who possesses the talent
+or at least the temperament of an artist or musician. In such cases one
+partner brings sympathies or qualities, tastes or appreciations or kinds
+of knowledge in which the other is most defective; and by the close and
+constant contact of two dissimilar types each is, often insensibly, but
+usually very effectually, improved. Men differ greatly in their
+requirements of intellectual sympathy. A perfectly commonplace
+intellectual surrounding will usually do something to stunt or lower a
+fine intelligence, but it by no means follows that each man finds the
+best intellectual atmosphere to be that which is most in harmony with
+his own special talent.
+
+To many, hard intellectual labour is an eminently isolated thing, and
+what they desire most in the family circle is to cast off all thought of
+it. I have known two men who were in the first rank of science, intimate
+friends, and both of them of very domestic characters. One of them was
+accustomed to do nearly all his work in the presence of his wife, and in
+the closest possible co-operation with her. The other used to
+congratulate himself that none of his family had his own scientific
+tastes, and that when he left his work and came into his family circle
+he had the rest of finding himself in an atmosphere that was entirely
+different. Some men of letters need in their work constant stimulus,
+interest, and sympathy. Others desire only to develop their talent
+uncontrolled, uninfluenced, and undisturbed, and with an atmosphere of
+cheerful quiet around them.
+
+What is true of intellect is also in a large degree true of character.
+Two persons living constantly together should have many tastes and
+sympathies in common, and their characters will in most cases tend to
+assimilate. Yet great disparities of character may subsist in marriage,
+not only without evil but often with great advantage. This is especially
+the case where each supplies what is most needed in the other. Some
+natures require sedatives and others tonics; and it will often be found
+in a happy marriage that the union of two dissimilar natures stimulates
+the idle and inert, moderates the impetuous, gives generosity to the
+parsimonious and order to the extravagant, imparts the spirit of caution
+or the spirit of enterprise which is most needed, and corrects, by
+contact with a healthy and cheerful nature, the morbid and the
+desponding.
+
+Marriage may also very easily have opposite effects. It is not
+unfrequently founded on the sympathy of a common weakness, and when this
+is the case it can hardly fail to deepen the defect. On the whole,
+women, in some of the most valuable forms of strength--in the power of
+endurance and in the power of perseverance--are at least the equals of
+men. But weak and tremulous nerves, excessive sensibility, and an
+exaggerated share of impulse and emotion, are indissolubly associated
+with certain charms, both of manner and character, which are intensely
+feminine, and to many men intensely attractive. When a nature of this
+kind is wedded to a weak or a desponding man, the result will seldom be
+happiness to either party, but with a strong man such marriages are
+often very happy. Strength may wed with weakness or with strength, but
+weakness should beware of mating itself with weakness. It needs the oak
+to support the ivy with impunity, and there are many who find the
+constant contact of a happy and cheerful nature the first essential of
+their happiness.
+
+As it is not wise or right that either partner in marriage should lose
+his or her individuality, so it is right that each should have an
+independent sphere of authority. It is assumed, of course, that there is
+the perfect trust which should be the first condition of marriage and
+also a reasonable judgment. Many marriages have been permanently marred
+because the woman has been given no independence in money matters and is
+obliged to come for each small thing to her husband. In general the less
+the husband meddles in household matters, or the wife in professional
+ones, the better. The education of very young children of both sexes,
+and of girls of a mature age, will fall almost exclusively to the wife.
+The education of the boys when they have emerged from childhood will be
+rather governed by the judgment of the man. Many things will be
+regulated in common; but the larger interests of the family will usually
+fall chiefly to one partner, the smaller and more numerous ones to the
+other.
+
+On such matters, however, generalisations have little value, as
+exceptions are very numerous. Differences of character, age, experience,
+and judgment, and countless special circumstances, will modify the
+family type, and it is in discovering these differences that wisdom in
+marriage mainly consists. The directions in which married life may
+influence character are also very many; but in the large number of cases
+in which it brings with it a great weight of household cares and family
+interests it will usually be found with both partners, but especially
+with the woman, at once to strengthen and to narrow unselfishness. She
+will live very little for herself, but very exclusively for her family.
+On the intellectual side such marriages usually give a sounder judgment
+and a wider knowledge of the world rather than purely intellectual
+tastes. It is a good thing when the education which precedes marriage
+not only prepares for the duties of the married life, but also furnishes
+a fair share of the interests and tastes which that state will probably
+tend to weaken. The hard battle of life, and the anxieties and sorrows
+that a family seldom fails to bring, will naturally give an increased
+depth and seriousness to character. There are, however, natures which,
+though they may be tainted by no grave vice, are so incurably frivolous
+that even this education will fail to influence them. As Emerson says,
+'A fly is as untameable as a hyaena.'
+
+The age that is most suited for marriage is also a matter which will
+depend largely on individual circumstances. The ancients, as is well
+known, placed it, in the case of the man, far back, and they desired a
+great difference of age between the man and the woman. Plato assigned
+between thirty and thirty-five, and Aristotle thirty-seven, as the best
+age for a man to marry, while they would have the girls married at
+eighteen or twenty.[71] In their view, however, marriage was looked
+upon very exclusively from the side of the man and of the State. They
+looked on it mainly as the means of producing healthy citizens, and it
+was in their eyes almost wholly dissociated from the passion of love.
+Montaigne, in one of his essays, has expounded this view with the
+frankest cynicism.[72] Yet few things are so important in marriage as
+that the man should bring into it the freshness and the purity of an
+untried nature, and that the early poetry and enthusiasm of life should
+at least in some degree blend with the married state. Nor is it
+desirable that a relation in which the formation of habits plays so
+large a part should be deferred until character has lost its
+flexibility, and until habits have been irretrievably hardened.
+
+On the other hand there are invincible arguments against marriages
+entered into at an age when neither partner has any real knowledge of
+the world and of men. Only too often they involve many illusions and
+leave many regrets. Some kinds of knowledge, such as that given by
+extended travel, are far more easily acquired before than after
+marriage. Usually very early marriages are improvident marriages, made
+with no sufficient provision for the children, and often they are
+immature marriages, bringing with them grave physical evils. In those
+cases in which a great place or position is to be inherited, it is
+seldom a good thing that the interval of age between the owner and his
+heir should be so small that inheritance will probably be postponed till
+the confines of old age.
+
+Marriages entered into in the decline of life stand somewhat apart from
+others, and are governed by other motives. What men chiefly seek in them
+is a guiding hand to lead them gently down the last descent of life.
+
+On this, as on most subjects connected with marriage, no general or
+inflexible rule can be laid down. Moralists have chiefly dilated on the
+dangers of deferred marriages; economists on the evils of improvident
+marriages. Each man's circumstances and disposition must determine his
+course. On the whole, however, in most civilised countries the
+prevailing tendencies are in the direction of an increased postponement
+of marriage. Among the rich, the higher standard of luxury and
+requirements, the comforts of club life, and also, I think, the
+diminished place which emotion is taking in life, all lead to this,
+while the spread of providence and industrial habits among the poor has
+the same tendency.
+
+A female pen is so much more competent than a masculine one for dealing
+with marriage from the woman's point of view that I do not attempt to
+enter on that field. It is impossible, however, to overlook the marked
+tendency of nineteenth-century civilisation to give women, both married
+and unmarried, a degree of independence and self-reliance far exceeding
+that of the past. The legislation of most civilised countries has
+granted them full protection for their property and their earnings,
+increased rights of guardianship over their children, a wider access to
+professional life, and even a very considerable voice in the management
+of public affairs; and these influences have been strengthened by great
+improvement in female education, and by a change in the social tone
+which has greatly extended their latitude of independent action. For my
+own part, I have no doubt that this movement is, on the whole,
+beneficial, not only to those who have to fight a lonely battle in life,
+but also to those who are in the marriage state. Larger interests, wider
+sympathies, a more disciplined judgment, and a greater power of
+independence and self-control naturally accompany it; and these things
+can never be wholly wasted. They will often be called into active
+exercise by the many vicissitudes of the married life. They will,
+perhaps, be still more needed when the closest of human ties is severed
+by the great Divorce of Death.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[68] _Melbourne Papers_, p. 72.
+
+[69] Tibullus.
+
+[70] Galton's _Hereditary Genius_, pp. 357-8. It may be argued, on the
+other side, that the monasteries consigned to celibacy a great
+proportion of the weaker physical natures, who would otherwise have left
+sickly children behind them. This, and the much greater mortality of
+weak infant life, must have strengthened the race in an age when
+sanitary science was unknown and when external conditions were very
+unfavourable.
+
+[71] _Republic_, Book V. _Politics_, Book VII.
+
+[72] _Livre_ III. Ch. 5.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SUCCESS
+
+
+One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that on the
+whole, and in the great majority of cases, success in life depends more
+on character than on either intellect or fortune. Many brilliant
+exceptions, no doubt, tend to obscure the rule, and some of the
+qualities of character that succeed the best may be united with grave
+vices or defects; but on the whole the law is one that cannot be
+questioned, and it becomes more and more apparent as civilisation
+advances. Temperance, industry, integrity, frugality, self-reliance, and
+self-restraint are the means by which the great masses of men rise from
+penury to comfort, and it is the nations in which these qualities are
+most diffused that in the long run are the most prosperous. Chance and
+circumstance may do much. A happy climate, a fortunate annexation, a
+favourable vicissitude in the course of commerce, may vastly influence
+the prosperity of nations; anarchy, agitation, unjust laws, and
+fraudulent enterprise may offer many opportunities of individual or even
+of class gains; but ultimately it will be found that the nations in
+which the solid industrial virtues are most diffused and most respected
+pass all others in the race. The moral basis of character was the true
+foundation of the greatness of ancient Rome, and when that foundation
+was sapped the period of her decadence began. The solid, parsimonious,
+and industrious qualities of the French peasantry have given their
+country the recuperative force which has enabled its greatness to
+survive the countless follies and extravagances of its rulers.
+
+Character, it may be added, is especially pre-eminent in those kinds and
+degrees of success that affect the greatest numbers of men and influence
+most largely their real happiness--in the success which secures a high
+level of material comfort; which makes domestic life stable and happy;
+which wins for a man the respect and confidence of his neighbours. If we
+have melancholy examples that very different qualities often gain
+splendid prizes, it is still true that there are few walks in life in
+which a character that inspires complete confidence is not a leading
+element of success.
+
+In the paths of ambition that can only be pursued by the few,
+intellectual qualities bear a larger part, and there are, of course,
+many works of genius that are in their own nature essentially
+intellectual. Yet even the most splendid successes of life will often be
+found to be due much less to extraordinary intellectual gifts than to an
+extraordinary strength and tenacity of will, to the abnormal courage,
+perseverance, and work-power that spring from it, or to the tact and
+judgment which make men skilful in seizing opportunities, and which, of
+all intellectual qualities, are most closely allied with character.
+
+Strength of will and tact are not necessarily, perhaps not generally,
+conjoined, and often the first seems somewhat to impair the second. The
+strong passion, the intense conviction, the commanding and imperious
+nature overriding obstacles and defying opposition, that often goes with
+a will of abnormal strength, does not naturally harmonise with the
+reticence of expression, the delicacy of touch and management that
+characterise a man who possesses in a high degree the gift of tact.
+There are circumstances and times when each of these two things is more
+important than the other, and the success of each man will mainly depend
+upon the suitability of his peculiar gift to the work he has to do. 'The
+daring pilot in extremity' is often by no means the best navigator in a
+quiet sea; and men who have shown themselves supremely great in moments
+of crisis and appalling danger, who have built up mighty nations,
+subdued savage tribes, guided the bark of the State with skill and
+courage amid the storms of revolution or civil war, and written their
+names in indelible letters on the page of history, have sometimes proved
+far less successful than men of inferior powers in the art of managing
+assemblies, satisfying rival interests or assuaging by judicious
+compromise old hatreds and prejudices. We have had at least one
+conspicuous example of the difference of these two types in our own day
+in the life of the great founder of German Unity.
+
+Sometimes, however, men of great strength of will and purpose possess
+also in a high degree the gift of tact; and when this is combined with
+soundness of judgment it usually leads to a success in life out of all
+proportion to their purely intellectual qualities. In nearly all
+administrative posts, in all the many fields of labour where the task of
+man is to govern, manage, or influence others, to adjust or harmonise
+antagonisms of race or interests or prejudices, to carry through
+difficult business without friction and by skilful co-operation, this
+combination of gifts is supremely valuable. It is much more valuable
+than brilliancy, eloquence, or originality. I remember the comment of a
+good judge of men on the administration of a great governor who was
+pre-eminently remarkable for this combination. 'He always seemed to gain
+his point, yet he never appeared to be in antagonism with anyone.' The
+steady pressure of a firm and consistent will was scarcely felt when it
+was accompanied by the ready recognition of everything that was good in
+the argument of another, and by a charm of manner and of temper which
+seldom failed to disarm opposition and win personal affection.
+
+The combination of qualities which, though not absolutely incompatible,
+are very usually disconnected, is the secret of many successful lives.
+Thus, to take one of the most homely, but one of the most useful and
+most pleasing of all qualities--good-nature--it will too often be found
+that when it is the marked and leading feature of a character it is
+accompanied by some want of firmness, energy, and judgment. Sometimes,
+however, this is not the case, and there are then few greater elements
+of success. It is curious to observe the subtle, magnetic sympathy by
+which men feel whether their neighbour is a harsh or a kind judge of
+others, and how generally those who judge harshly are themselves harshly
+judged, while those who judge others rather by their merits than by
+their defects, and perhaps a little above their merits, win popularity.
+
+No one, indeed, can fail to notice the effect of good-nature in
+conciliating opposition, securing attachment, smoothing the various
+paths of life, and, it must be added, concealing grave faults. Laxities
+of conduct that might well blast the reputation of a man or a woman are
+constantly forgotten, or at least forgiven, in those who lead a life of
+tactful good-nature, and in the eyes of the world this quality is more
+valued than others of far higher and more solid worth. It is not
+unusual, for example, to see a lady in society, who is living wholly or
+almost wholly for her pleasures, who has no high purpose in life, no
+real sense of duty, no capacity for genuine and serious self-sacrifice,
+but who at the same time never says an unkind thing of her neighbours,
+sets up no severe standard of conduct either for herself or for others,
+and by an innate amiability of temperament tries, successfully and
+without effort, to make all around her cheerful and happy. She will
+probably be more admired, she will almost certainly be more popular,
+than her neighbour whose whole life is one of self-denial for the good
+of others, who sacrifices to her duties her dearest pleasures, her time,
+her money, and her talents, but who through some unhappy turn of temper,
+strengthened perhaps by a narrow and austere education, is a harsh and
+censorious judge of the frailties of her fellows.
+
+It is also a curious thing to observe how often, when the saving gift of
+tact is wanting, the brilliant, the witty, the ambitious, and the
+energetic are passed in the race of life by men who in intellectual
+qualities are greatly their inferiors. They dazzle, agitate, and in a
+measure influence, and they easily win places in the second rank; but
+something in the very exercise of their talents continually trammels
+them, while judgment, tact, and good-nature, with comparatively little
+brilliancy, quietly and unobtrusively take the helm. There is the
+excellent talker who, by his talents and his acquirements, is eminently
+fitted to delight and to instruct, yet he is so unable to repress some
+unseemly jest or some pointed sarcasm or some humorous paradox that he
+continually leaves a sting behind him, creates enemies, destroys his
+reputation for sobriety of thought, and makes himself impossible in
+posts of administration and trust. There is the parliamentary speaker
+who, amid shouts of applause, pursues his adversary with scathing
+invective or merciless ridicule, and who all the time is accumulating
+animosities against himself, shutting the door against combinations that
+would be all important to his career, and destroying his chances of
+party leadership. There is the advocate who can state his case with
+consummate power, but who, by an aggressive manner or a too evident
+contempt for his adversary, or by the over-statement of a good cause,
+habitually throws the minds of his hearers into an attitude of
+opposition. There are the many men who, by ill-timed or too frequent
+levity, lose all credit for their serious qualities, or who by
+pretentiousness or self-assertion or restless efforts to distinguish
+themselves, make themselves universally disliked, or who by their
+egotism or their repetitions or their persistence, or their incapacity
+of distinguishing essentials from details, or understanding the
+dispositions of others, or appreciating times and seasons, make their
+wearied and exasperated hearers blind to the most substantial merits. By
+faults of tact men of really moderate opinions get the reputation of
+extremists; men of substantially kindly natures sow animosities
+wherever they go; men of real patriotism are regarded as mere jesters or
+party gamblers; men who possess great talents and have rendered great
+services to the world sink into inveterate bores and never obtain from
+their contemporaries a tithe of the success which is their due. Tact is
+not merely shown in saying the right thing at the right time and to the
+right people; it is shown quite as much in the many things that are left
+unsaid and apparently unnoticed, or are only lightly and evasively
+touched.
+
+It is certainly not the highest of human endowments, but it is as
+certainly one of the most valuable, for it is that which chiefly enables
+a man to use his other gifts to advantage, and which most effectually
+supplies the place of those that are wanting. It lies on the borderland
+of character and intellect. It implies self-restraint, good temper,
+quick and kindly sympathy with the feelings of others. It implies also a
+perception of the finer shadings of character and expression, the
+intellectual gift which enables a man to place himself in touch with
+great varieties of disposition, and to catch those more delicate notes
+of feeling to which a coarser nature is insensible.
+
+It is perhaps in most cases more developed among women than among men,
+and it does not necessarily imply any other remarkable gift. It is
+sometimes found among both men and women of very small general
+intellectual powers; and in numerous cases it serves only to add to the
+charm of private life and to secure social success. Where it is united
+with real talents it not only enables its possessor to use these talents
+to the greatest advantage; it also often leads those about him greatly
+to magnify their amount. The presence or absence of this gift is one of
+the chief causes why the relative value of different men is often so
+differently judged by contemporaries and by posterity; by those who have
+come in direct personal contact with them, and by those who judge them
+from without, and by the broad results of their lives. Real tact, like
+good manners, is or becomes a spontaneous and natural thing. The man of
+perfectly refined manners does not consciously and deliberately on each
+occasion observe the courtesies and amenities of good society. They have
+become to him a second nature, and he observes them as by a kind of
+instinct, without thought or effort. In the same way true tact is
+something wholly different from the elaborate and artificial attempts to
+conciliate and attract which may often be seen, and which usually bring
+with them the impression of manoeuvre and insincerity.
+
+Though it may be found in men of very different characters and grades of
+intellect, tact has its natural affinities. Seeking beyond all things to
+avoid unnecessary friction, and therefore with a strong leaning towards
+compromise, it does not generally or naturally go with intense
+convictions, with strong enthusiasms, with an ardently impulsive or
+emotional temperament. Nor is it commonly found among men of deep and
+concentrated genius, intensely absorbed in some special subject. Such
+men are often among the most unobservant of the social sides of life,
+and very bad judges of character, though there will frequently be found
+among them an almost childlike unworldliness and simplicity of nature,
+and an essential moderation of temperament which, combined with their
+superiority of intellect, gives them a charm peculiarly their own.
+Tact, however, has a natural affinity to a calm, equable, and
+good-natured temper. It allies itself with a quick sense of opportunity,
+proportion, and degree; with the power of distinguishing readily and
+truly between the essential and the unimportant; with that soundness of
+judgment which not only guides men among the varied events of life, and
+in their estimate of those about them, but also enables them to take a
+true measure of their own capacities, of the tasks that are most fitted
+for them, of the objects of ambition that are and are not within their
+reach.
+
+Though in its higher degrees it is essentially a natural gift, and is
+sometimes conspicuous in perfectly uneducated men, it may be largely
+cultivated and improved; and in this respect the education of good
+society is especially valuable. Such an education, whatever else it may
+do, at least removes many jarring notes from the rhythm of life. It
+tends to correct faults of manner, demeanour, or pronunciation which
+tell against men to a degree altogether disproportioned to their real
+importance, and on which, it is hardly too much to say, the casual
+judgments of the world are mainly formed; and it also fosters moral
+qualities which are essentially of the nature of tact.
+
+We can hardly have a better picture of a really tactful man than in some
+sentences taken from the admirable pages in which Cardinal Newman has
+painted the character of the perfect gentleman.
+
+'It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never
+inflicts pain.... He carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt
+in the minds of those with whom he is cast--all clashing of opinion or
+collision of feeling, all restraint or suspicion or gloom or resentment;
+his great concern being to make everyone at ease and at home. He has his
+eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle
+towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect
+to whom he is speaking; he guards against unreasonable allusions or
+topics that may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and
+never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems
+to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except
+when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears
+for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who
+interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never
+mean or little in his disputes, never takes an unfair advantage, never
+mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates
+evil which he dare not say out.... He has too much good sense to be
+affronted at insult; he is too busy to remember injuries, and too
+indolent to bear malice.... If he engages in controversy of any kind his
+disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of
+better though less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and
+hack instead of cutting clean.... He may be right or wrong in his
+opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he
+is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find
+greater candour, consideration, indulgence. He throws himself into the
+minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the
+weakness of human nature as well as its strength, its province, and its
+limits.'[73]
+
+I have said at the beginning of this chapter that character bears, on
+the whole, a larger part in promoting success than any other things, and
+that a steady perseverance in the industrial virtues seldom fails to
+bring some reward in the directions that are most conducive to human
+happiness. At the same time it is only too evident that success in life
+is by no means measured by merit, either moral or intellectual. Life is
+a great lottery, in which chance and opportunity play an enormous part.
+The higher qualities are often less successful than the medium and the
+lower ones. They are often most successful when they are blended with
+other and inferior elements, and a large share of the great prizes fall
+to the unscrupulous, the selfish, and the cunning. Probably, however,
+the disparity between merit and success diminishes if we take the larger
+averages, and the fortunes of nations correspond with their real worth
+much more nearly than the fortunes of individuals. Success, too, is far
+from being a synonym for happiness, and while the desire for happiness
+is inherent in all human nature, the desire for success--at least beyond
+what is needed for obtaining a fair share of the comforts of life--is
+much less universal. The force of habit, the desire for a tranquil
+domestic life, the love of country and of home, are often, among really
+able men, stronger than the impulse of ambition; and a distaste for the
+competitions and contentions of life, for the increasing
+responsibilities of greatness, and for the envy and jealousies that
+seldom fail to follow in its trail, may be found among men who, if they
+chose to enter the arena, seem to have every requisite for success. The
+strongest man is not always the most ardent climber, and the tranquil
+valleys have to many a greater charm than the lofty pinnacles of life.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[73] Newman's _Scope and Nature of University Education_, Discourse IX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TIME
+
+
+Considering the countless ages that man has lived upon this globe, it
+seems a strange thing that he has so little learned to acquiesce in the
+normal conditions of humanity. How large a proportion of the melancholy
+which is reflected in the poetry of all ages, and which is felt in
+different degrees in every human soul, is due not to any special or
+peculiar misfortune, but to things that are common to the whole human
+race! The inexorable flight of time; the approach of old age and its
+infirmities; the shadow of death; the mystery that surrounds our being;
+the contrast between the depth of affection and the transitoriness and
+uncertainty of life; the spectacle of the broken lives and baffled
+aspirations and useless labours and misdirected talents and pernicious
+energies and long-continued delusions that fill the path of human
+history; the deep sense of vanity and aimlessness that must sometimes
+come over us as we contemplate a world in which chance is so often
+stronger than wisdom; in which desert and reward are so widely
+separated; in which living beings succeed each other in such a vast and
+bewildering redundance--eating, killing, suffering, and dying for no
+useful discoverable purpose,--all these things belong to the normal lot
+or to the inevitable setting of human life. Nor can it be said that
+science, which has so largely extended our knowledge of the Universe, or
+civilisation, which has so greatly multiplied our comforts and
+alleviated our pains, has in any degree diminished the sadness they
+bring. It seems, indeed, as if the more man is raised above a purely
+animal existence, and his mental and moral powers are developed, the
+more this kind of feeling increases.
+
+In few if any periods of the world's history has it been more
+perceptible in literature than at present. Physical constitution and
+temperament have a vast and a humiliating power of deepening or
+lightening it, and the strength or weakness of religious belief largely
+affects it, yet the best, the strongest, the most believing, and the
+most prosperous cannot wholly escape it. Sometimes it finds its true
+expression in the lines of Raleigh:
+
+
+     Even such is time; which takes in trust
+     Our youth, our joys, and all we have!
+     And pays us nought but age and dust,
+     Which in the dark and silent grave,
+     When we have wandered all our ways,
+     Shuts up the story of our days;
+     And from which grave and earth and dust,
+     The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.
+
+
+Sometimes it takes the tone of a lighter melancholy touched with
+cynicism:
+
+
+     La vie est vaine:
+       Un peu d'amour,
+     Un peu de haine,
+       Et puis--bon jour.
+
+     La vie est breve,
+       Un peu d'espoir,
+     Un peu de reve,
+       Et puis--bon soir.[74]
+
+
+There are few sayings which deserve better to be brought continually
+before our minds than that of Franklin: 'You value life; then do not
+squander time, for time is the stuff of life.' Of all the things that
+are bestowed on men, none is more valuable, but none is more unequally
+used, and the true measurement of life should be found less in its
+duration than in the amount that is put into it. The waste of time is
+one of the oldest of commonplaces, but it is one of those which are
+never really stale. How much of the precious 'stuff of life' is wasted
+by want of punctuality; by want of method involving superfluous and
+repeated effort; by want of measure prolonging things that are
+pleasurable or profitable in moderation to the point of weariness,
+satiety, and extravagance; by want of selection dwelling too much on the
+useless or the unimportant; by want of intensity, growing out of a
+nature that is listless and apathetic both in work and pleasure. Time
+is, in one sense, the most elastic of things. It is one of the commonest
+experiences that the busiest men find most of it for exceptional work,
+and often a man who, under the strong stimulus of an active professional
+life, repines bitterly that he finds so little time for pursuing some
+favourite work or study, discovers, to his own surprise, that when
+circumstances have placed all his time at his disposal he does less in
+this field than in the hard-earned intervals of a crowded life. The art
+of wisely using the spare five minutes, the casual vacancies or
+intervals of life, is one of the most valuable we can acquire. There are
+lives in which the main preoccupation is to get through time. There are
+others in which it is to find time for all that has to be got through,
+and most men, in different periods of their lives, are acquainted with
+both extremes. With some, time is mere duration, a blank, featureless
+thing, gliding swiftly and insensibly by. With others every day, and
+almost every hour, seems to have its distinctive stamp and character,
+for good or ill, in work or pleasure. There are vast differences in this
+respect between different ages of history, and between different
+generations in the same country, between town and country life, and
+between different countries. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle
+of Cathay' is profoundly true, and no traveller can fail to be
+insensible to the difference in the value of time in a Northern and in a
+Southern country. The leisure of some nations seems busier than the work
+of others, and few things are more resting to an overwrought and jaded
+Anglo-Saxon nature than to pass for a short season into one of those
+countries where time seems almost without value.
+
+On the whole there can be little doubt that life in the more civilised
+nations has, in our own generation, largely increased. It is not simply
+that its average duration is extended. This, in a large degree, is due
+to the diminished amount of infant mortality. The improvement is shown
+more conclusively in the increased commonness of vigorous and active old
+age, in the multitude of new contrivances for economising and therefore
+increasing time, in the far greater intensity of life both in the forms
+of work and in the forms of pleasure. 'Life at high pressure' is not
+without its drawbacks and its evils, but it at least means life which is
+largely and fully used.
+
+All intermissions of work, however, even when they do not take the form
+of positive pleasure, are not waste of time. Overwork, in all
+departments of life, is commonly bad economy, not so much because it
+often breaks down health--most of what is attributed to this cause is
+probably rather due to anxiety than to work--as because it seldom fails
+to impair the quality of work. A great portion of our lives passes in
+the unconsciousness of sleep, and perhaps no part is more usefully
+spent. It not only brings with it the restoration of our physical
+energies, but it also gives a true and healthy tone to our moral nature.
+Of all earthly things sleep does the most to place things in their true
+proportions, calming excited nerves and dispelling exaggerated cares.
+How many suicides have been averted, how many rash enterprises and
+decisions have been prevented, how many dangerous quarrels have been
+allayed, by the soothing influence of a few hours of steady sleep!
+'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care' is, indeed, in a
+careworn world, one of the chief of blessings. Its healing and
+restorative power is as much felt in the sicknesses of the mind as in
+those of the body, and, in spite of the authority of Solomon, it is
+probably a wise thing for men to take the full measure of it, which
+undoctored nature demands. The true waste of time of the sluggard is
+not in the amount of natural sleep he enjoys, but in the time idly
+spent in bed when sleep has ceased, and in misplaced and mistimed sleep,
+which is not due to any genuine craving of the body for rest, but simply
+to mental sluggishness, to lack of interest and attention.
+
+Some men have claimed for sleep even more than this. 'The night-time of
+the body,' an ancient writer has said, 'is the day-time of the soul,'
+and some, who do not absolutely hold the old belief that it is in the
+dreams of the night that the Divine Spirit most communicates with man,
+have, nevertheless, believed that the complete withdrawal of our minds
+from those worldly cares which haunt our waking hours and do so much to
+materialise and harden our natures is one of the first conditions of a
+higher life. 'In proportion,' said Swedenborg, 'as the mind is capable
+of being withdrawn from things sensual and corporeal, in the same
+proportion it is elevated into things celestial and spiritual.' It has
+been noticed that often thoughts and judgments, scattered and entangled
+in our evening hours, seem sifted, clarified, and arranged in sleep;
+that problems which seemed hopelessly confused when we lay down are at
+once and easily solved when we awake, 'as though a reason more perfect
+than reason had been at work when we were in our beds.' Something
+analogous to this, it has been contended, takes place in our moral
+natures. 'A process is going on in us during those hours which is not,
+and cannot be, brought so effectually, if at all, at any other time, and
+we are spiritually growing, developing, ripening more continuously while
+thus shielded from the distracting influences of the phenomenal world
+than during the hours in which we are absorbed in them.... Is it not
+precisely the function of sleep to give us for a portion of every day in
+our lives a respite from worldly influences which, uninterrupted, would
+deprive us of the instruction, of the spiritual reinforcements,
+necessary to qualify us to turn our waking experiences of the world to
+the best account without being overcome by them? It is in these hours
+that the plans and ambitions of our external worldly life cease to
+interfere with or obstruct the flow of the Divine life into the
+will.'[75]
+
+Without, however, following this train of thought, it is at least
+sufficiently clear that no small portion of the happiness of life
+depends upon our sleeping hours. Plato has exhorted men to observe
+carefully their dreams as indicating their natural dispositions,
+tendencies, and temptations, and--perhaps with more reason--Burton and
+Franklin have proposed 'the art of procuring pleasant dreams' as one of
+the great, though little recognised, branches of the science of life.
+This is, no doubt, mainly a question of diet, exercise, efficient
+ventilation, and a wise distribution of hours, but it is also largely
+influenced by moral causes.
+
+
+     Somnia quae mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
+     Nec delubra deum, nec ab aethere numina mittunt,
+     Sed sibi quisque facit.
+
+
+To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright,
+unremorseful life, to cultivate the power of governing by the will the
+current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated
+anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for
+banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a
+little to the unhappiness of many lives.
+
+An analogous branch of self-culture is that which seeks to provide some
+healthy aliment for the waking hours of the night, when time seems so
+unnaturally prolonged, and when gloomy thoughts and exaggerated and
+distempered views of the trials of life peculiarly prevail. Among the
+ways in which education may conduce to the real happiness of man, its
+power of supplying pleasant or soothing thoughts for those dreary hours
+is not the least, though it is seldom or never noticed in books or
+speeches. It is, perhaps, in this respect that the early habit of
+committing poetry--and especially religious poetry--to memory is most
+important.
+
+In estimating the value of those intermissions of labour which are not
+spent in active enjoyment one other consideration may be noted. There
+are times when the mind should lie fallow, and all who have lived the
+intellectual life with profit have perceived that it is often in those
+times that it most regains the elasticity it may have lost and becomes
+most prolific in spontaneous thought. Many periods of life which might
+at first sight appear to be merely unused time are, in truth, among the
+most really valuable.
+
+We have all noticed the curious fact of the extreme apparent
+inequalities of time, though it is, in its essence, of all things the
+most uniform. Periods of pain or acute discomfort seem unnaturally
+long, but this lengthening of time is fortunately not true of all the
+melancholy scenes of life, nor is it peculiar to things that are
+painful. An invalid life with its almost unbroken monotony, and with the
+large measure of torpor that often accompanies it, usually flies very
+quickly, and most persons must have observed how the first week of
+travel, or of some other great change of habits and pursuits, though
+often attended with keen enjoyment, appears disproportionately long.
+Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the
+power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many
+landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are
+not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions,
+and labours follow each other in swift and distinct succession, seems
+the most long, and youth, with its keen susceptibility to impressions,
+appears to move much more slowly than apathetic old age. How almost
+immeasurably long to a young child seems the period from birthday to
+birthday! How long to the schoolboy seems the interval between vacation
+and vacation! How rapid as we go on in life becomes the awful beat of
+each recurring year! When the feeling of novelty has grown rare, and
+when interests have lost their edge, time glides by with an
+ever-increasing celerity. Campbell has justly noticed as a beneficent
+provision of nature that it is in the period of life when enjoyments are
+fewest, and infirmities most numerous, that the march of time seems most
+rapid.
+
+
+     The more we live, more brief appear
+       Our life's succeeding stages,
+     A day to childhood seems a year,
+       And years like passing ages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     When Joys have lost their bloom and breath,
+       And life itself is vapid,
+     Why as we reach the Falls of death
+       Feel we its tide more rapid?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Heaven gives our years of fading strength
+       Indemnifying fleetness;
+     And those of youth a seeming length
+       Proportioned to their sweetness.
+
+
+The shortness of life is one of the commonplaces of literature. Yet
+though we may easily conceive beings with faculties both of mind and
+body adapted to a far longer life than ours, it will usually be found,
+with our existing powers, that life, if not prematurely shortened, is
+long enough. In the case of men who have played a great part in public
+affairs, the best work is nearly always done before old age. It is a
+remarkable fact that although a Senate, by its very derivation, means an
+assembly of old men, and although in the Senate of Rome, which was the
+greatest of all, the members sat for life, there was a special law
+providing that no Senator, after sixty, should be summoned to attend his
+duty.[76] In the past centuries active septuagenarian statesmen were
+very rare, and in parliamentary life almost unknown. In our own century
+there have been brilliant exceptions, but in most cases it will be
+found that the true glory of these statesmen rests on what they had done
+before old age, and sometimes the undue prolongation of their active
+lives has been a grave misfortune, not only to their own reputations,
+but also to the nations they influenced. Often, indeed, while faculties
+diminish, self-confidence, even in good men, increases. Moral and
+intellectual failings that had been formerly repressed take root and
+spread, and it is no small blessing that they have but a short time to
+run their course. In the case of men of great capacities the follies of
+age are perhaps even more to be feared than the follies of youth. When
+men have made a great reputation and acquired a great authority, when
+they become the objects of the flattery of nations, and when they can,
+with little trouble or thought or study, attract universal attention, a
+new set of temptations begins. Their heads are apt to be turned. The
+feeling of responsibility grows weaker; the old judgment, caution,
+deliberation, self-restraint, and timidity disappear. Obstinacy and
+prejudice strengthen, while at the same time the force of the reasoning
+will diminishes. Sometimes, through a failing that is partly
+intellectual, but partly also moral, they almost wholly lose the power
+of realising or recognising new conditions, discoveries and necessities.
+They view with jealousy the rise of new reputations and of younger men,
+and the well-earned authority of an old man becomes the most formidable
+obstacle to improvement. In the field of politics, in the field of
+science, and in the field of military organisation, these truths might
+be abundantly illustrated. In the case of great but maleficent genius
+the shortness of life is a priceless blessing. Few greater curses could
+be imagined for the human race than the prolongation for centuries of
+the life of Napoleon.
+
+In literature also the same law may be detected. A writer's best
+thoughts are usually expressed long before extreme old age, though the
+habit and desire of production continue. The time of repetition, of
+diluted force, and of weakened judgment--the age when the mind has lost
+its flexibility and can no longer assimilate new ideas or keep pace with
+the changing modes and tendencies of another generation--often sets in
+while physical life is but little enfeebled. In this case, it is true,
+the evil is not very great, for Time may be trusted to sift the chaff
+from the wheat, and though it may not preserve the one it will
+infallibly discard the other. 'While I live,' Victor Hugo said with some
+grandiloquence, but also with some justice, 'it is my duty to produce.
+It is the duty of the world to select, from what I produce, that which
+is worth keeping. The world will discharge its duty. I shall discharge
+mine.' At the same time, no one can have failed to observe how much in
+our own generation the long silence of Newman in his old age added to
+his dignity and his reputation, and the same thing might have been said
+of Carlyle if a beneficent fire had destroyed the unrevised manuscripts
+which he wrote or dictated when a very old man.
+
+We are here, however, dealing with great labours, and with men who are
+filling a great place in the world's strife. The decay of faculty and
+will, that impairs power in these cases, is often perceptible long
+before there is any real decay in the powers that are needed for
+ordinary business or for the full enjoyment of life. But the time comes
+when children have grown into maturity, and when it becomes desirable
+that a younger generation should take the government of the world,
+should inherit its wealth, its power, its dignities, its many means of
+influence and enjoyment; and this cannot be fully done till the older
+generation is laid to rest. Often, indeed, old age, when it is free from
+grave infirmities and from great trials and privations, is the most
+honoured, the most tranquil, and perhaps on the whole the happiest
+period of life. The struggles, passions, and ambitions of other days
+have passed. The mellowing touch of time has allayed animosities,
+subdued old asperities of character, given a larger and more tolerant
+judgment, cured the morbid sensitiveness that most embitters life. The
+old man's mind is stored with the memories of a well-filled and
+honourable life. In the long leisures that now fall to his lot he is
+often enabled to resume projects which in a crowded professional life he
+had been obliged to adjourn; he finds (as Adam Smith has said) that one
+of the greatest pleasures in life is reverting in old age to the studies
+of youth, and he himself often feels something of the thrill of a second
+youth in his sympathy with the children who are around him. It is the
+St. Martin's summer, lighting with a pale but beautiful gleam the brief
+November day. But the time must come when all the alternatives of life
+are sad, and the least sad is a speedy and painless end. When the eye
+has ceased to see and the ear to hear, when the mind has failed and all
+the friends of youth are gone, and the old man's life becomes a burden
+not only to himself but to those about him, it is far better that he
+should quit the scene. If a natural clinging to life, or a natural
+shrinking from death, prevents him from clearly realising this, it is at
+least fully seen by all others.
+
+Nor, indeed, does this love of life in most cases of extreme old age
+greatly persist. Few things are sadder than to see the young, or those
+in mature life, seeking, according to the current phrase, to find means
+of "killing time." But in extreme old age, when the power of work, the
+power of reading, the pleasures of society, have gone, this phrase
+acquires a new significance. As Madame de Stael has beautifully said,
+'On depose fleur a fleur la couronne de la vie.' An apathy steals over
+every faculty, and rest--unbroken rest--becomes the chief desire. I
+remember a touching epitaph in a German churchyard: 'I will arise, O
+Christ, when Thou callest me; but oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very
+weary.'
+
+After all that can be said, most men are reluctant to look Time in the
+face. The close of the year or a birthday is to them merely a time of
+revelry, into which they enter in order to turn away from depressing
+thought. They shrink from what seems to them the dreary truth, that they
+are drifting to a dark abyss. To many the milestones along the path of
+life are tombstones, every epoch being mainly associated in their
+memories with a death. To some, past time is nothing--a closed chapter
+never to be reopened.
+
+
+     The past is nothing, and at last,
+     The future can but be the past.
+
+
+To others, the thought of the work achieved in the vanished years is the
+most real and abiding of their possessions. They can feel the force of
+the noble lines of Dryden:
+
+
+     Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
+     But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.
+
+
+He who would look Time in the face without illusion and without fear
+should associate each year as it passes with new developments of his
+nature; with duties accomplished, with work performed. To fill the time
+allotted to us to the brim with action and with thought is the only way
+in which we can learn to watch its passage with equanimity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[74] Monte-Naken.
+
+[75] See _The Mystery of Sleep_, by John Bigelow.
+
+[76] Seneca, _de Brevitate Vitae_, cap. XX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+'THE END'
+
+
+It is easy to conceive circumstances not widely different from those of
+actual life that would, if not altogether, at least very largely, take
+from death the gloom that commonly surrounds it. If all the members of
+the human race died either before two or after seventy; if death was in
+all cases the swift and painless thing that it is with many; and if the
+old man always left behind him children to perpetuate his name, his
+memory, and his thoughts, Death, though it might still seem a sad thing,
+would certainly not excite the feelings it now so often produces. Of all
+the events that befall us, it is that which owes most of its horror not
+to itself, but to its accessories, its associations, and to the
+imaginations that cluster around it. 'Death,' indeed, as a great stoical
+moralist said, 'is the only evil that can never touch us. When we are,
+death is not. When death comes, we are not.'
+
+The composition of treatises of consolation intended to accustom men to
+contemplate death without terror was one of the favourite exercises of
+the philosophers in the Augustan and in the subsequent periods of Pagan
+Rome. The chapter which Cicero has devoted to this subject in his
+treatise on old age is a beautiful example of how it appeared to a
+virtuous pagan, who believed in a future life which would bring him into
+communion with those whom he had loved and lost on earth, but who at the
+same time recognised this only as a probability, not a certainty.
+"Death," he said, 'is an event either utterly to be disregarded if it
+extinguish the soul's existence, or much to be wished if it convey her
+to some region where she shall continue to exist for ever. One of these
+two consequences must necessarily follow the disunion of soul and body;
+there is no other possible alternative. What then have I to fear if
+after death I shall either not be miserable or shall certainly be
+happy?'
+
+Vague notions, however, of a dim, twilight, shadowy world where the
+ghosts of the dead lived a faint and joyless existence, and whence they
+sometimes returned to haunt the living in their dreams, were widely
+spread through the popular imaginations, and it was as the extinction of
+all superstitious fears that the school of Lucretius and Pliny welcomed
+the belief that all things ended with death--'Post mortem nihil est,
+ipsaque mors nihil.' Nor is it by any means certain that even in the
+school of Plato the thought of another life had a great and operative
+influence on minds and characters. Death was chiefly represented as
+rest; as the close of a banquet; as the universal law of nature which
+befalls all living beings, though the immense majority encounter it at
+an earlier period than man. It was thought of simply as
+sleep--dreamless, undisturbed sleep--the final release from all the
+sorrows, sufferings, anxieties, labours, and longings of life.
+
+
+                             We are such stuff
+     As dreams are made on, and our little life
+     Is rounded with a sleep.[77]
+
+                 The best of rest is sleep,
+     And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
+     Thy death, which is no more.[78]
+
+     To die is landing on some silent shore
+     Where billows never break, nor tempests roar.[79]
+
+
+It is a strange thing to observe to what a height not only of moral
+excellence, but also of devotional fervour, men have arisen without any
+assistance from the doctrine of a future life. Only the faintest and
+most dubious glimmer of such a belief can be traced in the Psalms, in
+which countless generations of Christians have found the fullest
+expression of their devotional feelings, or in the Meditations of Marcus
+Aurelius, which are perhaps the purest product of pagan piety.
+
+As I have already said, I am endeavouring in this book to steer clear of
+questions of contested theologies; but it is impossible to avoid
+noticing the great changes that have been introduced into the conception
+of death by some of the teaching which in different forms has grown up
+under the name of Christianity, though much of it may be traced in germ
+to earlier periods of human development. Death in itself was made
+incomparably more terrible by the notion that it was not a law but a
+punishment; that sufferings inconceivably greater than those of Earth
+awaited the great masses of the human race beyond the grave; that an
+event which was believed to have taken place ages before we were born,
+or small frailties such as the best of us cannot escape, were sufficient
+to bring men under this condemnation; that the only paths to safety were
+to be found in ecclesiastical ceremonies; in the assistance of priests;
+in an accurate choice among competing theological doctrines. At the same
+time the largest and most powerful of the Churches of Christendom has,
+during many centuries, done its utmost to intensify the natural fear of
+death by associating it in the imaginations of men with loathsome images
+and appalling surroundings. There can be no greater contrast than that
+between the Greek tomb with its garlands of flowers, its bright,
+youthful and restful imagery, and the mortuary chapels that may often be
+found in Catholic countries, with their ghastly pictures of the _saved_
+souls writhing in purgatorial flames, while the inscription above and
+the moneybox below point out the one means of alleviating their lot.
+
+
+     Fermati, O Passagiero, mira tormenti.
+     Siamo abbandonati dai nostri parenti.
+     Di noi abbiate pieta, o voi amici cari.
+
+
+This is one side of the picture. On the other hand it cannot be
+questioned that the strong convictions and impressive ceremonies, even
+of the most superstitious faith, have consoled and strengthened
+multitudes in their last moments, and in the purer and more enlightened
+forms of Christianity death now wears a very different aspect from what
+it did in the teaching of mediaeval Catholicism, or of some of the sects
+that grew out of the Reformation. Human life ending in the weakness of
+old age and in the corruption of the tomb will always seem a humiliating
+anti-climax, and often a hideous injustice. The belief in the rightful
+supremacy of conscience, and in an eternal moral law redressing the many
+wrongs and injustices of life, and securing the ultimate triumph of good
+over evil; the incapacity of earth and earthly things to satisfy our
+cravings and ideals; the instinctive revolt of human nature against the
+idea of annihilation, and its capacity for affections and attachments,
+which seem by their intensity to transcend the limits of earth and carry
+with them in moments of bereavement a persuasion or conviction of
+something that endures beyond the grave,--all these things have found in
+Christian beliefs a sanction and a satisfaction that men had failed to
+find in Socrates or Cicero, or in the vague Pantheism to which
+unassisted reason naturally inclines.
+
+Looking, however, on death in its purely human aspects, the mourner
+should consider how often in a long illness he wished the dying man
+could sleep; how consoling to his mind was the thought of every hour of
+peaceful rest; of every hour in which the patient was withdrawn from
+consciousness, insensible to suffering, removed for a time from the
+miseries of a dying life. He should ask himself whether these intervals
+of insensibility were not on the whole the happiest in the
+illness--those which he would most have wished to multiply or to
+prolong. He should accustom himself, then, to think of death as
+sleep--undisturbed sleep--the only sleep from which man never wakes to
+pain.
+
+You find yourself in the presence of what is a far deeper and more
+poignant trial than an old man's death--a young life cut off in its
+prime; the eclipse of a sun before the evening has arrived. Accustom
+yourself to consider the life that has passed as a whole. A human being
+has been called into the world--has lived in it ten, twenty, thirty
+years. It seems to you an intolerable instance of the injustice of fate
+that he is so early cut off. Estimate, then, that life as a whole, and
+ask yourself whether, so judged, it has been a blessing or the reverse.
+Count up the years of happiness. Count up the days, or perhaps weeks, of
+illness and of pain. Measure the happiness that this short life has
+given to some who have passed away; who never lived to see its early
+close. Balance the happiness which during its existence it gave to those
+who survived, with the poignancy and the duration of pain caused by the
+loss. Here, for example, is one who lived perhaps twenty-five years in
+health and vigour; whose life during that period was chequered by no
+serious misfortune; whose nature, though from time to time clouded by
+petty anxieties and cares, was on the whole bright, buoyant, and happy;
+who had the capacity of vivid enjoyment and many opportunities of
+attaining it; who felt all the thrill of health and friendship and
+ecstatic pleasure. Then came a change,--a year or two with a crippled
+wing--life, though not abjectly wretched, on the whole a burden, and
+then the end. You can easily conceive--you can ardently desire--a better
+lot, but judge fairly the lights and shades of what has been. Does not
+the happiness on the whole exceed the evil? Can you honestly say that
+this life has been a curse and not a blessing?--that it would have been
+better if it had never been called out of nothingness?--that it would
+have been better if the drama had never been played? It is over now. As
+you lay in his last home the object of so much love, ask yourself
+whether, even in a mere human point of view, this parenthesis between
+two darknesses has not been on the whole productive of more happiness
+than pain to him and to those around him.
+
+It was an ancient saying that 'he whom the gods love dies young,' and
+more than one legend representing speedy and painless death as the
+greatest of blessings has descended to us from pagan antiquity; while
+other legends, like that of Tithonus, anticipated the picture which
+Swift has so powerfully but so repulsively drawn of the misery of old
+age and its infirmities, if death did not come as a release. I have
+elsewhere related an old Irish legend embodying this truth. 'In a
+certain lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands; into the
+first death could never enter, but age and sickness, and the weariness
+of life and the paroxysms of fearful suffering were all known there, and
+they did their work till the inhabitants, tired of their immortality,
+learned to look upon the opposite island as upon a haven of repose. They
+launched their barks upon its gloomy waters; they touched its shore, and
+they were at rest.'[80]
+
+No one, however, can confidently say whether an early death is a
+misfortune, for no one can really know what calamities would have
+befallen the dead man if his life had been prolonged. How often does it
+happen that the children of a dead parent do things or suffer things
+that would have broken his heart if he had lived to see them! How often
+do painful diseases lurk in germ in the body which would have produced
+unspeakable misery if an early and perhaps a painless death had not
+anticipated their development! How often do mistakes and misfortunes
+cloud the evening and mar the beauty of a noble life, or moral
+infirmities, unperceived in youth or early manhood, break out before the
+day is over! Who is there who has not often said to himself as he looked
+back on a completed life, how much happier it would have been had it
+ended sooner? 'Give us timely death' is in truth one of the best prayers
+that man can pray. Pain, not Death, is the real enemy to be combated,
+and in this combat, at least, man can do much. Few men can have lived
+long without realising how many things are worse than death, and how
+many knots there are in life that Death alone can untie.
+
+Remember, above all, that whatever may lie beyond the tomb, the tomb
+itself is nothing to you. The narrow prison-house, the gloomy pomp, the
+hideousness of decay, are known to the living and the living alone. By a
+too common illusion of the imagination, men picture themselves as
+consciously dead,--going through the process of corruption, and aware of
+it; imprisoned with the knowledge of the fact in the most hideous of
+dungeons. Endeavour earnestly to erase this illusion from your mind, for
+it lies at the root of the fear of death, and it is one of the worst
+sides of mediaeval and of much modern teaching and art that it tends to
+strengthen it. Nothing, if we truly realise it, is less real than the
+grave. We should be no more concerned with the after fate of our
+discarded bodies than with that of the hair which the hair-cutter has
+cut off. The sooner they are resolved into their primitive elements the
+better. The imagination should never be suffered to dwell upon their
+decay.
+
+Bacon has justly noticed that while death is often regarded as the
+supreme evil, there is no human passion that does not become so powerful
+as to lead men to despise it. It is not in the waning days of life, but
+in the full strength of youth, that men, through ambition or the mere
+love of excitement, fearlessly and joyously encounter its risk.
+Encountered in hot blood it is seldom feared, and innumerable accounts
+of shipwrecks and other accidents, and many episodes in every war, show
+conclusively how calmly honour, duty, and discipline can enable men of
+no extraordinary characters, virtues, or attainments, to meet it even
+when it comes before them suddenly, as an inevitable fact, and without
+any of that excitement which might blind their eyes. If we analyse our
+own feelings on the death of those we love, we shall probably find that,
+except in cases where life is prematurely shortened and much promise cut
+off, pity for the dead person is rarely a marked element. The feelings
+which had long been exclusively concentrated on the sufferings of the
+dying man take a new course when the moment of death arrives. It is the
+sudden blank; the separation from him who is dear to us; the cessation
+of the long reciprocity of love and pleasure,--in a word our own
+loss,--that affects us then. 'A happy release' is perhaps the phrase
+most frequently heard around a death-bed. And as we look back through
+the vista of a few years, and have learned to separate death more
+clearly from the illness that preceded it, the sense of its essential
+peacefulness and naturalness grows upon us. A vanished life comes to be
+looked upon as a day that has past, but leaving many memories behind it.
+
+It is, I think, a healthy tendency that is leading men in our own
+generation to turn away as much as possible from the signs and the
+contemplation of death. The pomp and elaboration of funerals; protracted
+mournings surrounding us with the gloom of an ostentatious and
+artificial sorrow; above all, the long suspension of those active habits
+which nature intended to be the chief medicine of grief, are things
+which at least in the English-speaking world are manifestly declining.
+We should try to think of those who have passed away as they were at
+their best, and not in sickness or in decay. True sorrow needs no
+ostentation, and the gloom of death no artificial enhancement. Every
+good man, knowing the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its
+hour, will make it one of his first duties to provide for those he loves
+when he has himself passed away, and to do all in his power to make the
+period of bereavement as easy as possible. This is the last service he
+can render before the ranks are closed, and his place is taken, and the
+days of forgetfulness set in. In careers of riot and of vice the thought
+of death may have a salutary restraining influence; but in a useful,
+busy, well-ordered life it should have little place. It was not the
+Stoics alone who 'bestowed too much cost on death, and by their
+preparations made it more fearful.'[81] As Spinoza has taught, 'the
+proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live,' and as
+long as he is discharging this task aright he may leave the end to take
+care of itself. The great guiding landmarks of a wise life are indeed
+few and simple; to do our duty--to avoid useless sorrow--to acquiesce
+patiently in the inevitable.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[77] _The Tempest._
+
+[78] _Measure for Measure._
+
+[79] Garth.
+
+[80] _History of European Morals_, i. p. 203. The legend is related by
+Camden.
+
+[81] Bacon.
+
+
+
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