self-conquest has nowhere so powerfully manifested itself as in
Puritanism. Nowhere has Puritanism found so adequate an expression as in
the religious organization of the Independents.[402] The modern
Independents have a newspaper, the _Nonnconformist_, written with great
sincerity and ability. The motto, the standard, the profession of faith
which this organ of theirs carries aloft, is: "The Dissidence of Dissent
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion."[403] There is
sweetness and light, and an ideal of complete harmonious human
perfection! One need not go to culture and poetry to find language to
judge it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, supplies language
to judge it, language, too, which is in our mouths every day. "Finally,
be of one mind, united in feeling,"[404] says St. Peter. There is an
ideal which judges the Puritan ideal: "The Dissidence of Dissent and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion!" And religious organizations
like this are what people believe in, rest in, would give their lives
for! Such, I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of
perfection, of having conquered even the plain faults of our animality,
that the religious organization which has helped us to do it can seem to
us something precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it
wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as this. And men have
got such a habit of giving to the language of religion a special
application, of making it a mere jargon, that for the condemnation which
religion itself passes on the shortcomings of their religious
organizations they have no ear; they are sure to cheat themselves and to
explain this condemnation away. They can only be reached by the
criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a language not to be
sophisticated, and resolutely testing these organizations by the ideal
of a human perfection complete on all sides, applies to them.
But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again
failing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to a
harmonious perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of
our animality, which it is the glory of these religious organizations to
have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have often
been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan; it has
been one of their dangers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that
they too much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will not,
however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense. They have often failed
in morality, and morality is indispensable. And they have been punished
for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for his performance.
They have been punished wherein they erred; but their ideal of beauty,
of sweetness and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides,
remains the true ideal of perfection still; just as the Puritan's ideal
of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he did
well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of
the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfection are
rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil,--souls
in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most
humane, were eminent,--accompanying them on their voyage, and think what
intolerable company Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! In the
same way let us judge the religious organizations which we see all
around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have
accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of
human perfection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of
Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never
bring humanity to its true goal. As I said with regard to wealth: Let us
look at the life of those who live in and for it,--so I say with regard
to the religious organizations. Look at the life imaged in such a
newspaper as the _Nonnconformist_,--a life of jealousy of the
Establishment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and
then think of it as an ideal of a human life completing itself on all
sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and
perfection!
Another newspaper, representing, like the _Nonconformist_, one of the
religious organizations of this country, was a short time ago giving an
account of the crowd at Epsom[405] on the Derby day, and of all the vice
and hideousness which was to be seen in that crowd; and then the writer
turned suddenly round upon Professor Huxley, and asked him how he
proposed to cure all this vice and hideousness without religion. I
confess I felt disposed to ask the asker this question: and how do you
propose to cure it with such a religion as yours? How is the ideal of a
life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so narrow, so far
removed from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is the
life of your religious organization as you yourself reflect it, to
conquer and transform all this vice and hideousness? Indeed, the
strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the
clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea of perfection held
by the religious organizations,--expressing, as I have said, the most
widespread effort which the human race has yet made after perfection,--
is to be found in the state of our life and society with these in
possession of it, and having been in possession of it I know not how
many hundred years. We are all of us included in some religious
organization or other; we all call ourselves, in the sublime and
aspiring language of religion which I have before noticed, _children of
God_. Children of God;--it is an immense pretension!--and how are we to
justify it? By the works which we do, and the words which we speak. And
the work which we collective children of God do, our grand centre of
life, our _city_ which we have builded for us to dwell in, is London!
London, with its unutterable external hideousness, and with its internal
canker of _publice egestas, privatim opulentia_,[406]--to use the words
which Sallust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome,--unequalled in the
world! The word, again, which we children of God speak, the voice which
most hits our collective thought, the newspaper with the largest
circulation in England, nay, with the largest circulation in the whole
world, is the _Daily Telegraph_![407] I say that when our religious
organizations--which I admit to express the most considerable effort
after perfection that our race has yet made--land us in no better result
than this, it is high time to examine carefully their idea of
perfection, to see whether it does not leave out of account sides and
forces of human nature which we might turn to great use; whether it
would not be more operative if it were more complete. And I say that the
English reliance on our religious organizations and on their ideas of
human perfection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on
muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth,--mere belief
in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely counteracted by
culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and on drawing the human
race onwards to a more complete, a harmonious perfection.
Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of perfection, its desire
simply to make reason and the will of God prevail, its freedom from
fanaticism, by its attitude towards all this machinery, even while it
insists that it _is_ machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief men do
themselves by their blind belief in some machinery or other,--whether it
is wealth and industrialism, or whether it is the cultivation of bodily
strength and activity, or whether it is a political organization,--or
whether it is a religious organization,--oppose with might and main the
tendency to this or that political and religious organization, or to
games and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrialism, and try
violently to stop it. But the flexibility which sweetness and light
give, and which is one of the rewards of culture pursued in good faith,
enables a man to see that a tendency may be necessary, and even, as a
preparation for something in the future, salutary, and yet that the
generations or individuals who obey this tendency are sacrificed to it,
that they fall short of the hope of perfection by following it; and that
its mischiefs are to be criticized, lest it should take too firm a hold
and last after it has served its purpose.
Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at Paris,--and others have
pointed out the same thing,--how necessary is the present great
movement towards wealth and industrialism, in order to lay broad
foundations of material well-being for the society of the future. The
worst of these justifications is, that they are generally addressed to
the very people engaged, body and soul, in the movement in question; at
all events, that they are always seized with the greatest avidity by
these people, and taken by them as quite justifying their life; and that
thus they tend to harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the
necessity of the movement towards fortune-making and exaggerated
industrialism, readily allows that the future may derive benefit from
it; but insists, at the same time, that the passing generations of
industrialists,--forming, for the most part, the stout main body of
Philistinism,--are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the result of all
the games and sports which occupy the passing generation of boys and
young men may be the establishment of a better and sounder physical type
for the future to work with. Culture does not set itself against the
games and sports; it congratulates the future, and hopes it will make a
good use of its improved physical basis; but it points out that our
passing generation of boys and young men is, meantime, sacrificed.
Puritanism was perhaps necessary to develop the moral fibre of the
English race, Nonconformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical
domination over men's minds and to prepare the way for freedom of
thought in the distant future; still, culture points out that the
harmonious perfection of generations of Puritans and Nonconformists has
been, in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech may be necessary for
the society of the future, but the young lions[408] of the _Daily
Telegraph_ in the meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in his
country's government may be necessary for the society of the future, but
meanwhile Mr. Beales[409]and Mr. Bradlaugh[410] are sacrificed.
Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults; and she has heavily
paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold upon the modern
world. Yet we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweetness of
that beautiful place, have not failed to seize one truth,--the truth
that beauty and sweetness are essential characters of a complete human
perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradition
of Oxford. I say boldly that this our sentiment for beauty and
sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been at
the bottom of our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our opposition
to so many triumphant movements. And the sentiment is true, and has
never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power even in its defeat.
We have not won our political battles, we have not carried our main
points, we have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not
marched victoriously with the modern world; but we have told silently
upon the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which
sap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we have kept up our
own communications with the future. Look at the course of the great
movement which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years ago! It was
directed, as any one who reads Dr. Newman's _Apology_[411] may see,
against what in one word may be called "Liberalism." Liberalism
prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the work of the hour; it was
necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail. The Oxford movement
was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on every shore:--
"Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?"[412]
But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as it really
broke the Oxford movement? It was the great middle-class liberalism,
which had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of
1832,[413] and local self-government, in politics; in the social sphere,
free-trade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large industrial
fortunes; in the religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not say that other and
more intelligent forces than this were not opposed to the Oxford
movement: but this was the force which really beat it; this was the
force which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with; this was the force
which till only the other day seemed to be the paramount force in this
country, and to be in possession of the future; this was the force whose
achievements fill Mr. Lowe[414] with such inexpressible admiration, and
whose rule he was so horror-struck to see threatened. And where is this
great force of Philistinism now? It is thrust into the second rank, it
is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the future. A new power has
suddenly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully,
but which is certainly a wholly different force from middle-class
liberalism; different in its cardinal points of belief, different in its
tendencies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither the legislation
of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-government of
middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition of middle-class
industrialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent and the
Protestantism of middle-class Protestant religion. I am not now praising
this new force, or saying that its own ideals are better; all I say is,
that they are wholly different. And who will estimate how much the
currents of feeling created by Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire
for beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep aversion it
manifested to the hardness and vulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the
strong light it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of
middle-class Protestantism,--who will estimate how much all these
contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined
the ground under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty years, and
has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession? It is in
this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness
conquers, and in this manner long may it continue to conquer!
In this manner it works to the same end as culture, and there is plenty
of work for it yet to do. I have said that the new and more democratic
force which is now superseding our old middle-class liberalism cannot
yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies still to form. We hear
promises of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, reform of
education, and I know not what; but those promises come rather from its
advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify it for
superseding middle-class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it
has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of
well-intentioned friends against whom culture may with advantage
continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human perfection; that this is
_an inward spiritual activity, having for its characters increased
sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy_. Mr.
Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the world of middle-class
liberalism and the world of democracy, but who brings most of his ideas
from the world of middle-class liberalism in which he was bred, always
inclines to inculcate that faith in machinery to which, as we have seen,
Englishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class
liberalism. He complains with a sorrowful indignation of people who
"appear to have no proper estimate of the value of the franchise"; he
leads his disciples to believe--what the Englishman is always too ready
to believe--that the having a vote, like the having a large family, or
a large business, or large muscles, has in itself some edifying and
perfecting effect upon human nature. Or else he cries out to the
democracy,--"the men," as he calls them," upon whose shoulders the
greatness of England rests,"--he cries out to them: "See what you have
done! I look over this country and see the cities you have built, the
railroads you have made, the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes
which freight the ships of the greatest mercantile navy the world has
ever seen! I see that you have converted by your labors what was once a
wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful garden; I know that you have
created this wealth, and are a nation whose name is a word of power
throughout all the world." Why, this is just the very style of laudation
with which Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the middle
classes, and makes such Philistines of them. It is the same fashion of
teaching a man to value himself not on what he _is_, not on his progress
in sweetness and light, but on the number of the railroads he has
constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the
middle classes are told they have done it all with their energy,
self-reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they have done it
all with their hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to put its
trust in achievements of this kind is merely training them to be
Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom they are
superseding; and they, too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to
sit down at the banquet of the future without having on a wedding
garment, and nothing excellent can then come from them. Those who know
their besetting faults, or those who have watched them and listened to
them, or those who will read the instructive account recently given of
them by one of themselves, the _Journeyman Engineer_, will agree that
the idea which culture sets before us of perfection,--an increased
spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness,
increased light, increased life, increased sympathy,--is an idea which
the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the blessedness of the
franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own industrial performances.
Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in
the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are
naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they
are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism.[415]
Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of renovation
applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for
elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the
future,--these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison[416]
and other disciples of Comte,[417]--one of them, Mr. Congreve,[418] is
an old friend of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of publicly
expressing my respect for his talents and character,--are among the
friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr.
Frederic Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural enough
motive; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are
the signal marks of Jacobinism,--its fierceness, and its addiction to
an abstract system. Culture is always assigning to system-makers and
systems a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their friends
like. A current in people's minds sets towards new ideas; people are
dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Philistine ideas,
Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; and some man, some Bentham[419] or
Comte, who has the real merit of having early and strongly felt and
helped the new current, but who brings plenty of narrowness and mistakes
of his own into his feeling and help of it, is credited with being the
author of the whole current, the fit person to be entrusted with its
regulation and to guide the human race.
The excellent German historian of the mythology of Rome, Preller,[420]
relating the introduction at Rome under the Tarquins of the worship of
Apollo, the god of light, healing, and reconciliation, will have us
observe that it was not so much the Tarquins who brought to Rome the new
worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind of the Roman people which
set powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this kind, and away
from the old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way,
culture directs our attention to the natural current there is in human
affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let us rivet our
faith upon any one man and his doings. It makes us see not only his good
side, but also how much in him was of necessity limited and transient;
nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased freedom and of an
ampler future, in so doing.
I remember, when I was under the influence of a mind to which I feel the
greatest obligations, the mind of a man who was the very incarnation of
sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me,
whom America has yet produced,--Benjamin Franklin,--I remember the
relief with which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's
imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new
version of the Book of Job,[421] to replace the old version, the style
of which, says Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less
agreeable. "I give," he continues, "a few verses, which may serve as a
sample of the kind of version I would recommend." We all recollect the
famous verse in our translation: "Then Satan answered the Lord and said:
'Doth Job fear God for nought?'" Franklin makes this: "Does your Majesty
imagine that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere personal
attachment and affection?" I well remember how, when first I read that,
I drew a deep breath of relief and said to myself: "After all, there is
a stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's victorious good sense!" So,
after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern
society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the rulers of our
future, I open the _Deontology._[422] There I read: "While Xenophon was
writing his history and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato
were talking nonsense under pretense of talking wisdom and morality.
This morality of theirs consisted in words; this wisdom of theirs was
the denial of matters known to every man's experience." From the moment
of reading that, I am delivered from the bondage of Bentham! the
fanaticism of his adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the
inadequacy of his mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human
society, for perfection.
Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a system, of
disciples, of a school; with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle,
[423] or Mr. Mill.[424] However much it may find to admire in these
personages, or in some of them, it nevertheless remembers the text: "Be
not ye called Rabbi!" and it soon passes on from any Rabbi. But
Jacobinism loves a Rabbi; it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in
pursuit of a future and still unreached perfection; it wants its Rabbi
and his ideas to stand for perfection, that they may with the more
authority recast the world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture,--
eternally passing onwards and seeking,--is an impertinence and an
offence. But culture, just because it resists this tendency of
Jacobinism to impose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own
along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the
world and Jacobinism itself a service.