arV1791 
 Soelal merali 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 
 I 
 
 olin,anx 
 
 3 1924 031 177 185 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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LECTURES ON SOCIAL MORALITY. 
 
ffianitrilrge: 
 
 PRINTED BY O, J. CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE umVEESITY PBESS. 
 
,.*,. 
 
 SOCIAL MOEALITY. 
 
 TWENTY-ONE LECTURES 
 
 DELIVEEED IN 
 
 & W^ui'an^xi^ ai C ambriirg^. 
 
 » 
 
 F. D. m:aurice, 
 
 PEOPESBOR OP CASBISTET AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Honiron : 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1872. 
 
 [All Sights reserved.] 
 
THESE LECTUEES, 
 
 ADDRESSED TO YOUNG MEN 
 
 AND DESIGNED SPECIALLY EOE THEIE USB, 
 
 ARE DEDICATED 
 
 TO TWO WHO DID NOT HEAR THEM, 
 
 FOE WHOSE WELL BEING AND WELL DOING, 
 
 DOMESTIC, NATIONAL, HUMAN, 
 
 THE LECTTJEER 
 
 HAS THE DEEPEST EESPONSIBILITY, 
 
 THROUGH WHOM HE HAS LEARNT TO FEEL 
 
 FOE ALL THAT ARE ENGAGED IN THE CONFLICTS OF THEIR AGE, 
 
 WHO HAVE TAUGHT HIM 
 
 HOW POOE, HELPLESS, AND USELESS 
 
 THE LIFE OF A FATHEE ON EARTH WOULD BE 
 
 IF THEEE WEEE NOT A FATHER IN HEAVEN. 
 
 M. M. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 These Lectures, since they are in a great mea- 
 siire Iiistorical, will inevitably suggest to tlie 
 reader the elaborate work on The History of 
 European Morals, which has obtained so much 
 and such deserved celebrity during the last year. 
 Much as I might have learned from Mr Lecky's 
 volumes I detennined not to look at them 
 till I had completed my own task. I might 
 have been tempted to borrow unlawfully from 
 them; I might have confrised my method by 
 frequent attempts to shew wherein it differed 
 from his. I can now read what he has written 
 without either of these dangers, and therefore 
 with all the interest which an author so wise 
 and serious must inspire. I can, however I 
 may dread the comparison, encourage my readers 
 to consider carefuUy his statements and argu- 
 
 62 
 
Viu PREFACE. 
 
 ments even when they axe most at variance with 
 mine. 
 
 With regard to Statements, it will be seen 
 that I am not likely to complain of Mr Lecky 
 for being too severe on practices and notions 
 which have been grafted on Christian Morality 
 and have been supposed to form a part of it. 
 The value of such exposures' — the duty of mak- 
 ing them and of not confining them to those 
 from whose opinions we dissent — I have recog- 
 nized throughout these Lectures. Some will 
 think that I have gone further than Mr Lecky, 
 that I have exhibited the failure of Greek, of 
 Latin, of Teutonic Christianity more conspicu- 
 ously, if in less detail and with far less learning, 
 than he has done. I felt myself bound to do 
 so, because I was asserting a Theological basis 
 for Morality, and because the tendency, it seems 
 to me, in aU these ' Christianities ' has been to 
 devise another basis for it. Mr Lecky not pro- 
 posing this object to himself could afford to be 
 more tolerant of our offences than I have been. 
 
 Tolerance is not what I think any Christian 
 ought to crave for himself or of the Society to 
 ■^hich he belongs. . But looking at the lives of 
 those whom he reverences most as examples of 
 a Christian life, he may ask that they should be 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 allowed to explain what they meant. Such men 
 as Chiysostom, Bernard, Leighton, believed in 
 Christ, not in their Christianity. They com- 
 plained of their own Christianity and of the 
 Christianity of their times, because they believed 
 ia Christ. It seems to me that if I apply this 
 distinction to the case about which I am most 
 interested, I may arrive at a method of treating 
 all opinions which will do greater justice to 
 them and to those who hold them. Mr Lecky 
 claims a right to test Utilitarianism, and all 
 other isms, by their moral effects. At the same 
 time he makes large allowances for the influence 
 of the surrounding atmosphere, and of opinions 
 not included in the ism, in determining the cha- 
 racters of men and their action upon their con- 
 temporaries. Unquestionably I think we ought 
 to reverence a man much more than any System 
 which he boasts of as his, and which cuts him 
 off from other men. But he cannot accept the 
 compliment that he is better than his System. 
 He feels that it has taught him that which 
 makes bim more a man than he would other- 
 wise be, he feels that he is below the standard 
 which it sets before him. Is it not possible to 
 justify this belief of his ; to ask what it is that 
 has made each man's system dear to him, what 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 connects it with his human life, and not with 
 the narrow, selfish tendencies in him, which are 
 inhuman ? May not Epictetus and Marcus Au- 
 relius have perceived something much higher 
 than the word Stoicism can express — an actual 
 governing principle for the life, not a congeries 
 of opinions to be maintained against all chal- 
 lengers ? May not the Humanity which the 
 Comtist dreams of be much more to him than 
 all his Positivism, than all the volumes which 
 set it forth ? Believing that the true centre 
 of Humanity is He whom all Christian teachers 
 and Societies have professed to acknowledge, I 
 must feel their delinquencies more than those 
 of other men, in so far as they have fallen 
 into Inhumanity. In the object of their belief I 
 find the reconciliation of the principles which 
 have been discovered to all the seekers after 
 some maxim for their guidance and the guidance 
 of mankind. 
 
 I do not pretend that I have given an ex- 
 ample in this volume of the method which I 
 perceive to be the right one. But I have aimed 
 at it and so have been prevented from adopting 
 the classification of opinions which Mr Lecky 
 deems satisfactory. I cannot regard the Utili- 
 tarian merely or chiefly as the antagonist of 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 'independent Morality.' He may often speak 
 as if lie were so ; the younger champions of the 
 Sect whose main desire is to trample out every 
 behef which existed in the world before Bentham 
 was born into it, may gladly accept this negative 
 representation of their office. But older de- 
 fenders of Utility, to whom years have brought 
 the philosophic mind — the philosophic mind 
 being I suppose the equitable one — would per- 
 haps be more ready to die for the conviction 
 which they embraced in their childhood than 
 their more passionate allies, because they en- 
 tertain it as a conviction and because they have 
 learnt to reverence the convictions of their neigh- 
 bours as well as their own. If I had no youth- 
 ful recollections which gave me a regard and 
 affection for some of these I should feel simply 
 as a student that I was bound to recognize their 
 contribution as well as that of ' the independent 
 Moralist ' to Moral Science and Moral Practice. 
 
 The watchword 'independent Morality,' 
 though I recognize its worth, and accept it 
 as an heirloom from Dr Whewell, I could never 
 inscribe on my banner. It must always be an 
 awkward one for a writer on Social MoraHty. 
 His subject must continually remind him of 
 dependencies. According to me it begins from 
 
XU PREFACE. 
 
 fixed relations ; we only learn by degrees in 
 what sense and under wliat great limitations 
 independence is possible. I appreciate tbe im- 
 portance of tbe stage in our existence wben 
 this word acquires significance. But I cannot 
 separate it from the obligations to the Nation 
 or from the affections of the Family out of 
 which the Nation is developed. A thoroughly 
 independent Moralist would I conceive be most 
 immoralw 
 
 I should be very ungrateful if I did not 
 confess how much I owe to Sir H. Maine's work 
 on Ancient Law — ^not exactly for suggesting to 
 me the method of this book, but for assuring 
 me that in adopting it I should not depart from 
 the most considerate judgment of men aiming 
 at different objects from mine, and possessing a 
 much wider culture. I can scarcely express 
 how great is my delight that an eminent lawyer 
 should find himself obliged simply by his legal 
 studies to abandon the atomic theory of Society 
 and to accept the fact of Family Existence as 
 its starting-point. I am bound to acquit Sir 
 H. Maine of all responsibility for the conse- 
 quences which I have deduced from his doc- 
 trine; I am equally bound to say how much 
 he has taught me by his own inferences from it. 
 
PREFACE. XIU 
 
 I ouglit to explain some omissions wMch 
 would seem to Mx Lecky very flagrant in the 
 rapid survey of the Moralists from Hobbes to 
 Kant contained in my eighteenth Lecture. He 
 "will ask how such names as Hutcheson, Hartley 
 or Reid can have dropped out of the Hst ? 
 Certainly from no disrespect to them or to 
 Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Condillac, Clarke, 
 Butler, of whom also I have said nothing. I de- 
 liberately meant to omit aU who could be repre- 
 sented either (1) as in any sense theologians, 
 (2) as chiefly psychologists or physiologists. 
 One of these last titles would certainly be given 
 to Hutcheson, Hartley, Reid; their doctrines 
 may have affected Morality, but they are not 
 primarily Social Moralists. Hume earned the 
 name — ^whatever others may be due to him — 
 when he enunciated his doctrine of Utility. 
 As I intended only to select the most charac- 
 teristic assertor of each maxim, I should not 
 have spoken of him as weU as Bentham if I 
 had not desired to shew how essentially dif-^ 
 ferent two opinions may be which a common 
 epithet has confounded. Mr Lecky has also 
 noticed this difference, but he has intimated a 
 preference for the Scotch Sage with which I 
 cannot sympathise. In accordance with the rule 
 
XIV PREFAOE. 
 
 which I laid down for myself I have alluded 
 only to Locke as a writer on Government and 
 Toleration ; only to Kant's Ethical dogma. To 
 connect Morality with Politics and with all 
 social relations has been my wish throughout ; 
 I hope that I may hereafter explain where I 
 discover the link between it and Psychology. 
 I should have made my purpose unintelligible 
 if I had entered upon that question in these 
 Lectures. 
 
 In an Inaugural Lecture — delivered three 
 years ago at Cambridge — I intimated an in- 
 tention of deHvering separate courses of Lec- 
 tures on Casuistry, Moral Philosophy, and 
 Moral Theology. In that design I have per- 
 severed to this extent ; I have treated of the 
 Conscience which I take to be the subject of 
 Casuistry in one set of Lectures, of Social 
 Morality in the present. But Moral Theology 
 has intruded itself into both ; the effort to 
 make that a distinct subject I have found im- 
 practicable. It must be so for any one who 
 discovers beneath the Conscience which testi- 
 fies of our personal existence, beneath alL the 
 order of human Society, a divine foundation*. 
 
 * I have been asked by some who attended my Lectures at 
 Cambridge, as well as by friends elsewhere, to state distinctly 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 whether I accept the account of my opinions and objects which 
 was given a week or two ago in a very popular journal, the 
 PM Mall Gazette. I am sure that if the author of that highly 
 flattering criticism does me the honour to glance at the titles of 
 these Lectures — I cannot ask him to take the trouble of reading 
 any one of them — he will perceive that he is boimd to denounce 
 me as the most immoral of all writers on Morality, supposing 
 his estimate of me to be the true one. He affirms that I have ren- 
 dered into a theological dialect the conceptions of humanity which 
 prevail in our age. I have affirmed that those conceptions of 
 humanity when separated from the old foundation, which is 
 simply, broadly, satisfactorily announced in the formularies that 
 are repeated by children and peasants in all parts of Christen- 
 dom, are narrow, impractical, inhuman. If I am secretly under- 
 mining the doctrine which I appear to assert, I hope there 
 is honesty enongh in each of my hearers — honesty enough in 
 the critic who has bestowed on me such kindly patronage — to 
 say with the old Homeric hero, 'I hate as the gates of Hell 
 the man who says one thing with his lips and hides another in 
 his heart.' 
 
 Cambridge, 
 
 Nov. 22, 1869. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAQE 
 
 Social Morauty ; What it is and how it should be 
 
 Treated . , 1 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 Domestic Moeality. (l) . Parents and Children . 21 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 
 BOMBSTIO MorALITT. (2) HuSBANDS AND "VVlVES . . 42 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 Domestic Morality. (3) Brothers and Sisters . 59 
 
 ' LECTURE V. 
 Domestic Morality. (4) Masters and Servants . 74 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 Family Worship - 89 
 
XVlll ■ .CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 National Morality. (1) Thy Neighbour and Thyself 105 
 
 LECTURE VIIL 
 National Morality. (2) Law 119 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 National Morality. (3) Language . . . ,133 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 National Morality. (4) Government - . . .153 
 
 LECTURE XL 
 National Morality. (5) War 171 
 
 LECTURE XIL 
 National Worship 192 
 
 LECTURE XIII. 
 Universal Morality, (l) The Universal Empire . 210 
 
 LECTURE XIV. 
 Universal Morality. (2) The Universal Family . 227 
 
 LECTURE XV. 
 
 Universal Morality. (3) The Universal Family Sub- 
 ject TO the Universal Empire (Constantinople) . 251 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 LECTURE XVI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 UmvBBSAL Morality. (4) The Univbksal Family a 
 
 Latin Family (Rome) 270 
 
 LECTURE XVIL 
 
 Universal Morality. (5) The Universal and the 
 Individual Morality in Conflict (15th and 16th 
 Centuries) . , 293 
 
 LECTURE XVIIL 
 
 Untvbrsal Morality. (6) Attempts to Deduce the 
 Principles of Human Morality from Observa- 
 tions on Human Nature (17th and 18th Centuries) 320 
 
 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 Universal Morality. (7) The Modern Conception of 
 
 Humanity (19th Century) 350 
 
 LECTURE XX. 
 
 Universal Morality. (8) Demand in the Newest Cir- 
 cumstances for a Divine Ground op Human Life 
 AND Human Morality 371 
 
 LECTURE XXI. 
 Human Worship 397 
 
LECTUKES ON SOCIAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY; WHAT IT IS AFB HOW 
 IT SHOULD BE TREATED. 
 
 I HAVE proposed to deliver a course of lectures on 
 Social Morality. You may ask me what I understand 
 by that phrase. If my sense of it differed from the 
 ordinary sense I would begin by telling you what the 
 difference is. But so far as I know, my sense is the 
 ordinary sense. What that is I think we may ascer- 
 tain if we question different writers on Society and the 
 'manners of Society about their object. If we can dis- 
 cover something which has been common to them all 
 amidst the greatest disagreements of opinion, taste and 
 character, we may conclude that to be the aim of the 
 Social Moralist as such. It might seem most natural 
 to take the earliest of them first. My inclination would 
 be in favour of that method. But the old writers are 
 often said to be obsolete or to deal in book-wisdom, 
 not in practical wisdom. I will begin with one who is 
 open to no such suspicion. 
 
 In the last century a series of Letters appeared of 
 which you have all heard, which some of you may 
 ' M. M. -A. 
 
 Object 
 of this 
 Lecture, 
 
 Chester- 
 field. (1694 
 —1773). 
 
SOCIAL MORALITY 
 
 What he 
 aimed at 
 in his edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Forma- 
 tion of a 
 habit. 
 
 The novels 
 of the last 
 century. 
 
 possibly have read. They were addressed by Lord 
 Chesterfield to his son. They were intended to form 
 the manners of a young man, to cultivate in him the 
 ease and grace which he may have inherited from at 
 least one of his parents. If I said that Lord Chester- 
 field -composed a Code of Manners for his son's use I 
 should mislead you. He would have objected to the 
 word ' Code,' as savouring of legal pedantry. Fonnal 
 rules would not have produced the effect he desired. 
 He would rather set before his pupil examples which 
 were to be imitated or shunned. He had studied these 
 examples in France as well as England ; he possessed 
 clear and keen habits of observation ; he was himself 
 the observed of all observers. For the kind of task 
 which he imposed upon himself no one could be better 
 fitted. The limits of that task were strictly defined. 
 He did not care what it might behove men to do or to 
 be who lay beyond the flaming battlements of 'the 
 world' ; he only troubled himself about that class 
 which, according to his charts, was comprehended with- 
 in 'the world'. In them he sought not merely certain 
 outward acts, but an internal habit, a something which 
 would give to all their doings, words, gestures, even- 
 ness and order. He demanded of them for this end' 
 abstinence from many ways and practices into which if 
 they did not count themselves members of a special 
 circle they might fall. He assumed the existence of a 
 standard to which they ought to be assimilated. Here 
 is Social Morality as illustrated by one of its pro- 
 fessors. 
 
 If we pass from these letters of Chesterfield to some 
 of the very able and elaborate novels which were pro- ' 
 duced in the same century, we are presented with other 
 
CONSIDERED QENERALLY. 
 
 and much more varied pictures of Social Morality. 
 Fielding had probably no access tO' the sacred inclo- 
 sure -within which Chesterfield dwelt. He was a metro- 
 politan Justice of the Peace ; he had known personally 
 something of those who carofi before him in that 
 capacity, much also of the life of ordinary citizens and 
 country squires> of schoolmasters and clergymen. In 
 them, as well as in the servants who waited upon them, 
 and in the highwaymen who were their terror, he 
 discovered different exhibitions! of character, different 
 standards of behaviour, different apprehensions\of justice 
 and injustice, of right and of wrong. In eveiy class 
 there was evidently some standard ; in every one some 
 apprehension of justice and injiustiee, of right and 
 wrong. If these had been absent, the members of 
 such classes could not have been represented in any 
 story ; they would not have been subjects for a work of 
 Art. The novelist does not pretend to try them by 
 any canons of his ; but he makes us feel that they had 
 their canons, and denounced acts which appeared to 
 them a departure from their canons. You see that 
 unlike as Fielding was to Chesterfield, their aim was in 
 this sense similar. It is with a certain disposition or 
 habit or character that both are conversant. You may 
 call it in either. if you please an artificial disposition or 
 habit or character. But it is by some means or other 
 wrought into the man or woman. It becomes his 
 or hers. 
 
 But observations upon one or another portion of 
 English society could not satisfy an age which, however 
 inferior to ours in facilities for locomotion, was yet 
 becoming acquainted with a number of lauds ; an age 
 which was; hearing of the customs, inventions, heredi- 
 
 a2 
 
 Fielding 
 (1707— 
 1754). 
 
 A student 
 of charac- 
 ter. 
 
 Habits of 
 various 
 societies 
 compared^ 
 
SOCIAL MORALITY 
 
 Gold- 
 smith, 
 
 Montes- 
 quieu 
 (1689— 
 1755), 
 
 Lettres 
 
 Persanes, 
 
 1721, 
 
 Esprit des 
 Lois, 1748. 
 
 tary wisdom of China, to which the falling Mogul 
 Empire was disclosing the faiths and languages that 
 had been buried within it. To compare the modes of 
 thinking and belief, fluctuating or permanent, which 
 prevailed in these lands with those of the West, became 
 a favourite occupation of men of letters. They liked 
 to imagine how a cultivated Chinese or Hindoo or 
 Turk or Persian would regard the manners and notions 
 which he met with in England or France. Oliver Gold- 
 smith, in . his Citizen of the World, pursued this line of 
 fancy, noting, in his quiet way, the effect which the 
 follies of his countrymen might produce on a stranger; 
 He was following in the wake of a man more thoroughly 
 cultivated, if not more shrewd,' than himself About 
 a hundred years before Mr Morier published his clever 
 Hajji JBaba in England, the citizens of Paris were 
 excited and chairmed by a set of letters said to be 
 addressed . by a native of Ispahan to his friends, which 
 criticized rather freely not only their external acts, but 
 the conviction or want of conviction, the beliefs or 
 unbeliefs,! out of jwhich the acts arose. The author 
 of the letters,, at first anonymous, proved to be a man 
 of ancient. family, the President of a, Parliament in the 
 South of France,- a learned lawyer as well as an accom- 
 plished and vivacious iwriter. . In a later time, after he 
 had visited England, ithe. President Montesquieu ex- 
 hibited the genius which <.had produced the Persian 
 letters in a work scarcely less -.lively, but more akin to 
 the habits of his profession. His lEsprit des Lois is, or 
 was till lately, on the list of subjects for our Moral 
 Science Tripos. It is, in fact, • a Treatise on Social 
 Morality. There was something Montesquieu' perceived 
 in every country besides the laws, written on ) tables or 
 
CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 parcliineiits ; something besides its different institu- 
 tions, Monarchical, Aristocratical, Republican. There 
 Was a. mind which corresponded to these ; it was fos- 
 tered by them ; in turn it sustained them ; if it was 
 lost they must perish. Whence it came, what accounted 
 for the shapes which it assumed in diverse regions, 
 what influence external circumstances such as climate 
 might have upon it ? — these were important questions 
 about which conjectures might be hazarded. But at 
 all events the facts of such differences could not be 
 dissembled; it must be worthy of any attention that 
 could be bestowed upon it. Montesquieu was hasty in 
 his generalisations ; he often trusted to records which 
 could not endure severe criticism. But the value of his 
 hints to historical enquirers, if they dissent ever so 
 much from his conclusions,, cannot be gainsaid. And 
 immensely different as the wide- observations of Mon- 
 tesquieu are from those of. his friend Chesterfield, there 
 is this likeness between them: they are both occupied 
 with characteristics which are found in men ; let them 
 desire ever so much to note the appearances on the 
 surface of society, those appeararu;es-,poinit to volcanoes 
 which lie beneath it. 
 
 Of such volcanoes some countryinen, and contempo- 
 raries of Montesquieu were beginning' to be conscious- 
 The brilliant Parisian circle in which Chesterfield had 
 moved was adorned by wits who declared that the tra- 
 ditions and maxims of the past were perishing ; priests 
 hovered about it who were deemed the conservators 
 of those maxims and traditions, and were yet in many 
 ways deepening the impression of their weakness which 
 prevailed in it and had descended to other portions 
 of society. There appeared a man, who stood about 
 
 Montes- 
 quieu like 
 Chester- 
 field leads 
 us from 
 the out- 
 wardtothe 
 inward. 
 
SOCIAL MOBALITr 
 
 equally aloof from the wits and the priests, and who 
 denounced in no measured terms those circles that 
 paid alternate homage to either. He was the son of a 
 watchmaker in Geneva. Though he had led a strange 
 life and done acts which amy school or man would have 
 pronounced base— which he felt to be so while he con- 
 fessed them' — ^yet the ■ old Protestant and Republican 
 traditions of his birthplace had taken a mighty hold 
 upon him. Even while he yielded to the impressions 
 of his senses, 'he felt an intense and growing horror for 
 what he regarded as the social 'corruptions of his. day. 
 Even white he described scenes which fostered the 
 voluptuousness 'of cities, he had a passion for the free 
 air of the mountains. Geneva should ; not, he was 
 resolved, 'derive its tone from the French capital; it 
 should be a witness against the tastes, manners, the 
 whole social system of France. Rousseau began to be 
 hailed as the champion of natural and savage life 
 against the civilization of Europe. He used language 
 which justified this description. Yet he also used lan- 
 guage which might lead us to represent him as an 
 imitator of those old Spartans who trampled upon 
 nature, who sought to subdue it by a rigid education. 
 This contradiction is especially apparent in his Emile, 
 a book which has had a very powerful influence in 
 every country of Europe. In it he denounced the 
 schemes of nursery discipline which he thought had 
 destroyed all that was simple and natural in children. 
 He declared that any reformation in society must pro- 
 ceed from a reformation of domestic life. His plans of 
 reformation may often seem to us not less artificial 
 than the practices against which he protests. We may 
 think that a child reared upon his system would hav© 
 
COmiDBRED GENERALLY. 
 
 been extremely deficient in tlie simplicity which he 
 desired to secure for it. Nevertheless, whatever incon- 
 sistencies there might be in his conception of the word 
 Nature or in himself, he spoke to a conviction which 
 was deep in the hearts of thoughtful men — nay, of the 
 whole French people. He shewed them that there was 
 something in their Social Morality which needed to be 
 reformed from its root. 
 
 Whether this reformation of Social Morality came 
 or not, there did. certainly come a dissolution of French 
 Society into itS' elements. How muck Rousseau's 
 "Evangel", especially that contained in his Gontrat 
 Social, aided in producing this result, Mr Carlyle has 
 told us. The French Revolution was a Social Revo- 
 lution in the fullest deepest sense of the words. It 
 was not a change of one kind of government for 
 another; it was a decomposition of the whole body 
 governing and governed ; a change of feeling respecting 
 the relation of classes in the country to each other ; an 
 attempt to overthrow classes altogether. Equality was 
 affirmed to be the basis of Society ; of Society in France 
 because of human , Society ; Frenchmen were equal 
 because men were. 
 
 The Revolution therefore by its very terms rejected 
 local divisions ; it must embrace the world. All parts 
 of Europe felt the shock of it ; there was a vehement 
 delight in the message which it brought ; there was a 
 vehement reaction against it. Here in England the 
 delight was felt in many youthful hearts; the reaction 
 was more conspicuous still. The distinction of classes 
 was reverenced as a sacred protest against the levelling 
 dbctrine; it was exalted above the distinction of 
 Nations. When the universal Republic became a xaor 
 
 The 
 
 PrenchRe- 
 
 volution. 
 
 Not in 
 govern- 
 ments hut 
 
 Cosmo- 
 politics. 
 
SOCIAL MORALITY 
 
 The effects 
 of the Re- 
 volution 
 uponsiich 
 men as 
 Words- 
 worth and 
 Scott. 
 
 TU 
 
 fashion- 
 able 
 novels. 
 
 Lord 
 Byron. 
 
 :versal Empire the worth of that distinction became 
 evident to many who had sympathized in the first 
 proclamation of Cosmopolitism ; the other distinction 
 became less offensive, when orders in the state were 
 contemplated not as an insult to the people but as 
 a defence against tyranny. Nevertheless the Revolution 
 had left its stamp on these early champions as well as 
 on many who had always detested it. Not only such 
 writers as Wordsworth became poets of the poor ; wit- 
 nesses for the sanctity of common life. The novels of 
 Scott, lover of feudalism as he was, shewed a genuine 
 unpatronizing sympathy with human nature in its 
 humblest forms, of which it can scarcely be said that, 
 there were any clear traces in our literature since the 
 time of Shakspere. Evidently the doctrine of the 
 illustrious plowman of his land, ' a man's a man for a' 
 that,' had taken possession of- his mind; courtly influ-' 
 ences might weaken but could not expel it. — There 
 were no doubt fashionable novelists who would gladly 
 have restored the Chesterfield conception of life, and 
 who had admiring readers in the middle class eager for 
 what glimpses they could get about the doings of the 
 highest. Such ambition there will always be in a 
 country like ours, and writers willing, perhaps more or 
 less able, to gratify it. But on the whole the tendency 
 has been in the other dii-ection. Those who have 
 helped us to understand the forms of Society which 
 are found under different conditions in all classes — of 
 which we can ia some measure judge for ourselves — 
 have exercised the greatest influence over us. Even a 
 writer like Lord Byron possessed by the feelings of his 
 own order, not much honouring any other, was listened 
 to not chiefly on that account, but because he showed 
 
CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 that beneath the artificial surface of his circumstances 
 and of his character, there lay springs of terrible passion 
 which belong to the kind, not the class. 
 
 In these instances, different as they are from those 
 I spoke of before, the power of the writer, the interest 
 of the reader, lies in the discovery of a certain character 
 or ^Ooi first doubtless in some individual, but in him as 
 connected with a Society smaller or larger, in him as 
 showing what character makes the Society harmonious 
 or discordant, tenable or untenable. And when we 
 examine how this ^^os becomes known to us, we see 
 that there are certain permanent conditions of Society 
 of which literature has taken account, and which, since 
 the French Eevolution more than in the centuries 
 before it, have distinguished themselves from each 
 other. I think you may perceive that Rousseau's hints 
 (i) about domestic life, (2) about civilization, (3) about 
 a more general human Society than those names sug- 
 gest, indicate three kinds of investigations in most 
 respects unlike each other and yet all clearly falling 
 within the sphere of Social Morality. 
 
 I. There has been a vast amount of writing 
 during the last seventy years on the subject of Edu- 
 cation, the ends at which it should aim, the persons 
 whom it should benefit, the machinery which is avail- 
 able for it. But no part of these discussions has, on 
 the whole, produced so much effect as that which 
 has followed in Eousseap's line, pointing out the de- 
 fects in domestic discipline and the way in which it 
 may be reformed. Very able men have given us the 
 fruits of their experience on this topic; it has espe- 
 cially called forth the quicker and more delicate ob- 
 servation of women, whether mothers themselves, or 
 
 The study 
 or forma- 
 tion of 
 character 
 still as 
 before the 
 aim of all 
 ■writers 
 who have 
 exercised 
 any serious 
 influence. 
 
 Divisions 
 of Social 
 Morality, 
 
 First 
 division. 
 
 Books on 
 Domestic 
 Educa' 
 tion. 
 
10 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY 
 
 The 
 
 Family 
 
 Character. 
 
 TU Do- 
 mestic 
 novel more 
 prized 
 than the 
 Histori- 
 cal. 
 
 The Sensa- 
 tion novel. 
 
 The quiet 
 observer 
 chooses the 
 tame field. 
 
 those who like Miss Edgeworth have performed the 
 part of mothers to sisters, brothers, or strangers. 
 However much .the hints of such teachers have been' 
 directed to methods of intellectual culture, their object 
 has been by one method or another to form a cha- 
 racter ; their chief skill has been shown in tracing the 
 influence of different members of a family on the 
 characters of each other. The Family, small circle 
 as it must be, has been found large enough for the 
 discovery of innumerable varieties of feeling and dis- 
 position, every variety having some tendency to pro- 
 duce another by collision or sympathy. So those who' 
 have begun with the most practical purpose of im- 
 proving household discipline, have also given us clear 
 and vivid pictures of different households which they 
 have seen or imagined. Historical novels have had 
 a certain attraction for us. Brilliant pictures like those 
 in Ivanhoe when painted by an antiquarian who is- 
 also a man of genius, must have an interest even 
 when we suspect them as guides to the true know- 
 ledge of an age. But in general the portion of suet 
 books which is domestic produces by far the most 
 powerful effect. The strictly domestic story has be- 
 come characteristic of our times, not in this country 
 only, but, as far as I can make out, in all coxin tries 
 of Europe. The morality may be of one kind or an- 
 other. The Family' may be merely a ground-plot for 
 the display of sensational incidents. Still these inci- 
 dents are found to be most startling, and therefore 
 most agreeable to those who wish to be startled, when 
 they, are associated with outrages of on6 kind or an- 
 other upon family order. Those who do not want 
 .such stimulants to their own feelings -and fancies, and- 
 
CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 II 
 
 do not hold it an honest trade to mix them for others, 
 have found in the quietest home-life materials for Art. 
 All social harmonies and social contradictions they see 
 may come forth in the relations of fathers and chil- 
 dren, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, masters 
 and servants. There is a certain character they are 
 sure which helps to make a family peaceful or mise- 
 rable — a home out of which blessings or curses may 
 diffuse themselves over the commonwealth. Even those 
 who are impatient of national boundaries as too nar- 
 row, are yet occupying themselves with theories and 
 controversies about the conditions of the family, some 
 of them denouncing our ordinary conceptions of it as 
 antiquated, some reviving most ancient theories re- 
 specting it, some maintaining that all the order of 
 Christendom is due to the difference between its do- 
 mestic forms and that of countries in which polygamy 
 prevails, all its disease amd disorders to the loss of 
 the spirit which should quicken these forms. I am 
 entitled therefore to claim the autherity of the most 
 thoughtful as well as the most popular writers, of all 
 schools , and of both sexes, for the opinion that Do- 
 mestic Morality is mot only, an integral portion of 
 Social Morality, but should be the starting point of 
 any discussion respecting it. They are equally agreed 
 that in treating of this topic our business is not chiefly 
 with acts or modes of conduct,, but with a character or 
 state of mind from which the acts proceed, by which 
 the conduct must be regulated. 
 
 II. . The fierce onslaught of Kousseau upon the 
 Civilization which he found in France, and upon the 
 very name of Civilization — ^his preference for the life 
 of woods — ^was endorsed in the declaration of Rights 
 
 Domestic 
 Morality 
 admitted 
 to ie the 
 first stage 
 of Social 
 Morality. 
 
 Second 
 division. 
 
12 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY 
 
 LECI. I. 
 
 The de- 
 claration 
 of Bights, 
 
 Defenders 
 of Civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Guizot. 
 
 Histoire 
 de la Civi- 
 lisation 
 {Lectures 
 at the Sor- 
 bonne). 
 
 Character- 
 istics of 
 the book. 
 
 which inaugurated the Revolution. For in this de* 
 claration maxims determining what Society ought to 
 be were deduced from a state prior to the existence 
 of Society itself The difficulties and contradictions: 
 of that assumption became every day more palpable; 
 many who embraced Rousseau's doctrine concerning 
 the Sovereignty of the people were industrious in 
 pointing them out. None again have been so much 
 alive to the worth of Civilization, and have been so 
 eager to vindicate it from the charges of Rousseau, as 
 countrymen of his own who have shared in his dis- 
 like of the Ancien Regime. M. Guizot's work, which 
 is so well known in England, and is so conspicuous for 
 its learning and ability, represents the temper of the 
 time in which it was composed. It is speciallj' occu- 
 pied in exhibiting Civilization as the antagonist of 
 Feudalism. Strictly, almost sternly, etymological, M. 
 Guizot makes us feel that ■ the word Civilization points 
 specially to that formation of towns, that develop- 
 ment of cities, which counteracted the solitary in- 
 fluence of the territorial Proprietor in the midst of 
 his land, the barbarism of those who were, in a great 
 measure, adscripti glebw. With a critical knowledge 
 of history to which Montesquieu could make no pre-, 
 tension, he distinguishes the different agencies, legal, 
 personal, ecclesiastical — derived from the traditions of. 
 Rome, from Gothic kings,' from the papal authority, 
 from distinguished men — from the co-operation and 
 clashing of these forces — which brought forth a civic 
 life in modern Europe. He has made us perceive the 
 meaning of this process which was working through 
 so many ages. But he does not disguise from us or 
 from himself that it was a mysterious process, which 
 
CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 13 
 
 it requires an historical instinct to apprehend, which 
 cannot be reduced under formulas now more than 
 it could when the Esprit des Lois was composed. The 
 lights of modern criticism Lave not tended, he shows 
 us, to make Society, or the Manners of Society, more 
 explicable by mere laws or Systems of Government. 
 On the contrary they have helped greatly to perplex 
 the man who has thought that some one clue would 
 guide him through the labyrinth — ^that he could de- 
 termine, for instance,, the condition of Europe, by 
 attributing its blessings or its curses to the influence 
 of the Clergy. They have brought with them bless- 
 ings and curses which the faithful student of Civiliza- 
 tion, according to M. Guizot's notion of it, must equally 
 recognize. 
 
 Mr Buckle's work on Civilization is in most re- 
 spects very imlike Guizot's. At first sight it would 
 seem not to concern my subject,, since he has ex- 
 pressed in more than one or two very decisive sen- 
 tences his opinion, that the further civilization ad- 
 vances, the more will intellectual studies take pre- 
 cedence of moral. Such an opinion is in accordance 
 with one part of the writer's scheme. He had an 
 immense appreciation of statistics; a great confidence 
 that by help of them we may be able to predict in 
 what circumstances certain acts {e.g. homicide or 
 suicide) will be frequent or rare. Now the intellect 
 is no doubt chiefly conversant with such calculations 
 as these; they are scarcely applicable to states of 
 mind or feeling; it may be difficult to discover how 
 these can be indicated by tables. But Mr Buckle 
 insists strongly on the difference between the nations 
 of the East, which bow before the powers of Nature, 
 
 The co- 
 operation 
 and col- 
 lision of 
 various 
 forces pro- 
 ducing a 
 certain 
 manner or 
 character. 
 
 MrBuchle, 
 History of 
 Civiliza- 
 tion in 
 England, 
 VoU.j. 
 and II, 
 1858. 
 
 Reverence 
 for statis- 
 tics. 
 
 Hin sup- 
 posed con- 
 tempt of 
 Morality 
 
H 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY 
 
 LEOT. 1, 
 
 more ver- 
 bal than, 
 real, 
 
 Objection 
 to the word 
 Civil or 
 Political 
 as indicat- 
 ing a de- 
 partment 
 in Social 
 Morality, 
 
 Why the 
 epithet 
 National is 
 more con- 
 venient. 
 
 and those of the West which defy them. That is a 
 state of mind or feeling. Again, he deems it the grand 
 test of a nation's civilization that it loses the dis- 
 position to make war and to persecute for religious 
 opinions. He does therefore in fact connect Ciyiliza.. 
 tion with the formation of an •^Ooi;, or Social Morality^ 
 however he may trace that ^^o? to certain external 
 conditions or suppose it to be produced by certain 
 exercises of intellect. The Morality which he scorned 
 seems to consist of certain maxims. That he did not 
 suppose these to be of much worth, may be accepted 
 as a proof that he demanded a character which he 
 found they could not of themselves produce. He is 
 not therefore to be set down as an exception to our 
 rule. As much as Montesquieu, or Guizot, he supposes 
 Civilization to consist in a certain social manner ; one 
 which cannot be expressed in formal edicts, which must 
 be in the men who compose the society. 
 
 Here then we have another division of Social 
 Morality. "We might call it the Civil or the Political. 
 But useful as both these words are, they are borrowed 
 from countries in which the city had an absorbing 
 importance tha,t does not belong to it in later history. 
 Such cities as Pisa, Milan, Florence, when they first 
 attract attention in Mediaeval History seem as if they 
 might represent Italy, as Athens, Sparta, Thebes re- 
 present ancient Greece. But the Italian of this day 
 will not tolerate that doctrine. He claims to be the 
 member of a nation. London has never stood for 
 England; the most popular writers among contem- 
 porary Frenchmen are careful to shew us that we 
 must study the provinces and not merely Paris ta 
 know what France is, M. Guizot may be right in 
 
CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 15 
 
 opposing . FeudaKsm to- Cirilization ; but no German 
 or Englishman or Spaniard could possibly refuse to 
 regard, feudal institutions as one element in the life 
 of his people. All these considerations seem to shew 
 that the epithet National will be more proper to 
 denote the second branch of Morality, than either 
 Civil or Political would be. If we adopt that we 
 shall be in far less danger of missing the link be- 
 tween this portion of our subject and the first; in less 
 danger of confounding it with the one of which I am 
 about to speak. 
 
 III. The cosmopolitan aspect of the French Revo- 
 lution has seemed to some its most characteristic aspect. 
 The epithet has survived much of the disgrace which 
 attached to it when it was supposed to indicate a con- 
 tempt for national distinctions. The title human, or 
 humane (as it used to be spelt), is open to no such 
 objection. Humanity has been accepted as their favour- 
 ite watchword by a set of philosophers who have devoted 
 themselves most laboriously to the study of the prin- 
 ciples of Society, who even boast that they have founded 
 a new science worthy to be called 'Sociology.' I am 
 not now considering the merits of this somewhat bar- 
 barous name. But I wish you to know that if there is 
 any question as to Mr Buckle's opinion about the dignity 
 of Morality, there is none whatever as to M. Comte's. 
 He does not for a moment postpone morality to the 
 intellect ; the great work of the positivist philosopher, 
 he says, is to make moral considerations predominant 
 over aU other ; the normal state of man according to 
 him is that in which the intellect is subordinated to 
 the heart, I may therefore claim him and his disciples 
 ifis witnesses for that explanation of Social Morality 
 
 Third 
 Division. 
 
 Human 
 Morality. 
 
 The 
 
 Comteist 
 watch- 
 word. 
 
 Sociology. 
 
 Opposition 
 between 
 Mr Buckle 
 and M. 
 Comte as 
 to the su- 
 premacy of 
 the Intel- 
 lect. 
 
i6 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY 
 
 Reverence 
 for Facts, 
 
 Theories 
 only to be 
 eonnulted 
 that we 
 inay appre- 
 ciate Facts 
 
 which I have deduced from so many writers of other 
 schools. I am delighted also to have their authority 
 for recognising human morality as the centre in which 
 both the other departments of Social Morality find their 
 purpose and interpretation. Whether that agreement 
 with them implies that Sociology is the highest of all 
 sciences or the ground of all — ^whether the place I give 
 to Humanity involves me in the Comteist worship of it 
 — we may enquire hereafter. Those questions have no 
 place in a preliminary lecture ; that ought only to fix 
 the nature and object of the investigation on which we 
 are entering. 
 
 But I cannot leave this distinguished school with- 
 out saying that I desire on another ground to be a 
 pupil in it. I wish to examine facts — positive facts 
 if that adjective adds any dignity to the substantive — 
 speculations only so far as they may have been offered 
 for the elucidation of facts. If I speak.,of any theories 
 about the superiority of one form of family life to ano- 
 ther — and I shall quote some weighty remarks of M. 
 Comte on that topic — it is only because I find the fact 
 of our existence in families an indisputable one. If I 
 am obliged to dwell on the difference of social forms in 
 different Nations, it will be for the purpose of illus- 
 trating the fact that we are members of different 
 Nations, and that one Nation cannot fix the form which 
 is suitable for another. If I examine certain specu- 
 lations of different philosophers respecting Human 
 Morality, it is that I may shew how each one of these 
 speculations is valuable as bringing into light Facts 
 concerning our position as members of a Universal 
 Human Society, constituted on a certain principle. In 
 one respect, no doubt, I may seem to differ from M* 
 
CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 17 
 
 Comte and his disciples. The Family is not lost in the 
 Nation, nor the Nation in Human Society. They are 
 coexistent; whereas M. Comte's first theological age 
 gives place to a metaphysical age, and both are merged 
 in the Positive. But I do not think that I am less 
 adhering to facts, more plunging into speculations, be- 
 cause I am not able to adjust my thoughts to this great 
 theory of succession, and only assume the common- 
 places which M. Comte as well as all other persons 
 must recognise. 
 
 Here then I might stop ; for I have sufficiently set 
 forth the course which I propose to follow,, and have 
 justified it by a concurrence of modern authorities and 
 examples. But though I have begun with these, I 
 cannot forget that in this University we confess the 
 dignity of older names and teach you to reverence them. 
 Am. I forsaking their guidance in submission to these 
 newer lights ? I think the books which we ask you to 
 read may answer that question. 
 
 The purpose of Plato's BepuUio has been variously 
 interpreted. Rousseau, with much plausibility, called 
 it a Treatise on Education. No doubt it contains most 
 interesting discussions respecting the methods by which 
 the mind and character of the members of the Com- 
 monwealth are to be formed into harmony with the 
 ends for which it exists, But that the education may 
 be effectual, that we may understand the nature of it, 
 we must learn what the principle of the Commonwealth 
 is. That we may know this we must settle whether 
 Justice is a reality or a fictio^, whether it is only an 
 individual principle or also a Social Principle, whether 
 there can be a Society which does not confess it and is 
 not held together by it. "We are in fact engaged in 
 JI. M. ^ 
 
 LEOI. I. 
 
 Coexist- 
 ence of the 
 different 
 steps of 
 Social Mo- 
 
 The older 
 authori- 
 ties. 
 
 The Ke- 
 public. 
 
 Justice 
 and In- 
 justice. 
 
la- 
 
 SOCIAL MOMALITr 
 
 The So- 
 ciety and 
 the Indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 Aristotle, 
 
 emphati- 
 cally the 
 Ethical 
 Philoso- 
 pher. 
 
 the study of Social Morality. We are seeking to find 
 what the ij^o? of a Sdciety — of Society itself— must be, 
 and how that ^^os can be developed in the citizens of 
 it. The controversies of modern times; the debate 
 between Right and Might, which is carried on so fiercely 
 in the schools and in the worM ; that most difiicult of 
 all problems, how the claims of the Individual and of 
 the Society can be reconciled ; are all here. The mani^ 
 fold experiences of the Greek Republics, the subtlest 
 wisdom of the greatest Greek thinker, are helping us to 
 unravel threads which are spun about our own lives, 
 which are embarrassing statesmen and common men of 
 the 19th century. 
 
 If you pass to Plato's eminent pupil you encounter 
 an intellect of a very different shape and texture from 
 that with which you have just parted ; in some of their 
 leading methods of thought they are so unlike, that the 
 saying has become current, ' The Platonist and the ' 
 Aristotelian can by no possibility understand each 
 other.' But in the point which I am considering now 
 they are alike. One as much as the other would make 
 Morality — Social Morality — consist in habits, in a cha- 
 racter, not in outward acts, still less in formal maxims. 
 The very word ^Go<s which I have used as the most 
 convenient to explain this distinction is specially an 
 Aristotelian word. Considering that Aristotle is reck- 
 oned so great a dogmatist — that he has composed 
 such an Encyclopsedia of studies — it is marvellous how 
 free he is from the temptations of the mere schoolman ; 
 how little he trusts in mere formulas ; how every virtue 
 of which he speaks is only a virtue as it becomes formed. 
 in a man. And if we join the Politics to the Ethics — > 
 as he tells us they must be joined-^we discover that 
 
CONSIDERED OENE RALLY. 
 
 19 
 
 order of Subjects wMcli I am endeavouring to observe. 
 In this respect the comparison of him with Plato, if it 
 is greaitly to his advantage, is for us most instruc- 
 tive. The BepuUic teaches us how the noblest student 
 of Humanity in his eagerniess to grasp the Universal is 
 likely to lose sight of the Particular. In Plato's vast 
 Communism the Family is lost. Aiistotle acknow- 
 ledges it as the very basis of political society ; the rela- 
 tions of the household are the germs of the dififerent 
 forms of government. 
 
 Let no one persuade you then that these great 
 teachers of former ages must be cast aside in order 
 that you may profit by the wider experiences of your 
 own day. Those who are not called to be students 
 may turn their experiences to account ; if members of 
 a University despise the wisdom of the past, the pre- 
 sent will not teach them ; they will carry away a multi- 
 tude of notions from a multitude of schools ; each will 
 trip up the other and make it useless. Plato and 
 Aristotle if you use them rightly will shew you the 
 worthlessness of mere notions, the impossibility of sepa- 
 rating Morality from Life. 
 
 Mr Biickle recals to us the words ' As you would 
 that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise,' 
 and asks triumphantly what they have effected for 
 mankind ? Speaking according to the lessons of the 
 book in which they occur, I should answer, ' Nothing 
 whatever if they are regarded as mere words in a book ; 
 worse than nothing if they are taken as warrants for 
 self-exaltation, as reasons for exalting ourselves as Chris- 
 tians above other men.' The New Testament I need 
 scarcely tell you is occupied from first to last — specially 
 in the Sermon on the Mount — in shewing that acts are 
 
 B2 
 
 His ho- , 
 mage to 
 domestic 
 relations. 
 
 Use of the 
 past to tli£ 
 
 The New 
 Testa- 
 ment, 
 
 Its mcmm 
 that max- 
 ims are 
 
20 
 
 SOCIAL M'ORALITt CONSIDERED GENERALLY. 
 
 LUCI. I. 
 
 eoccept as 
 they point 
 to a cha-i 
 racter 
 which is 
 manifested 
 in acts. 
 
 nothing except as they are fruits of a state, except 
 as they indicate what the man is ; that words are no- 
 thing except as they express a mind or purpose. Nor 
 need I add that it is a Society — a Human Society— in 
 which the preacher of that Sermon assumes that this 
 ri6o<i is to be exhibited. It might have sounded a com- 
 monplace of Divinity to tell you at the beginning of 
 my Lecture that this is what I hold to be the meaning 
 of Social Morality. We have now seen that no other 
 is found to be satisfactory by any persons who have 
 seriously meditated upon it. I might again seem to be 
 merely following the order of the Scripttires in taking 
 the Pamily, the Nation, a Society for all nations and 
 kindreds, as the divisions of my subject. Since upon 
 quite independent grounds that method has recom- 
 mended itself to us, you will not deem it a less sound 
 or desirable one because it has this sanction. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 (1) PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 Makt writers begin -with, considering mankind as a 
 anultitude of units. They ask, How did any number of 
 these units form themselves into a Society? I cannot 
 adopt that method. At my birth I am already in a 
 Society, I am related, at all events, to a father and 
 mother. This relation is the primary fact of my exist- 
 ence. I can contemplate no other facts apart from, it. 
 
 Perhaps you will say, 'For each of us separately 
 that no doubt is true. But we want to consider the 
 world at large.' Well! and to what portion of the 
 world at large is this truth not applicable? In what 
 region do you find a man who is not bom a son, who 
 is not related to a father and mother? It is a fact for 
 me surely, but it is a fact for you and for every man. 
 And if you determine not to take notice of this fact, 
 not to give it precedence of every other, the effect is, 
 that instead of contemplating the world at large you 
 will only contemplate yourself. You will be the unit 
 about which aU events and persons wiU revolve. Each 
 man will regard himself as the ceotre of the universe. 
 
 LEOT. II. 
 
 The two 
 methods of 
 consider- 
 ing So- 
 ciety. 
 
 Conse- 
 quences of 
 each me- 
 thod. 
 
22 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Why the 
 atomic 
 doctrine 
 Tias pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 Authority. 
 
 You will at last come to an understanding — a very im- 
 perfect understanding — ^that eacK must occupy this 
 place in his own. estimation ; you will be forced to con- 
 struct a Society on that hypothesis. 
 
 If, on the other hand, you start from the indisput- 
 able commonplace 'We are sons,' such a way of con- 
 sidering the "Universe is from the first impossible. I 
 cannot be the centre of the circle in which I find my- 
 self, be it as small as it may. I refer myself to another. 
 There is a root below me. There is an Author of my 
 existence. 
 
 If we adhere steadily to this which would strike any 
 one as the true chronological order, some of the greatest 
 difficulties will be taken out of our path; instead of 
 being obliged to invent explanations of social existence, 
 we shall find the explanations lying at our feet. We 
 shall understand at the same time why men have been 
 led to crave for such explanations, and to seek them 
 afar off. The relation exists; there is a manner which 
 answers to the relation, without which it becomes un- 
 tenable, contradictory. But there is a tendency in each 
 of us to break the relation, to lose the manner. We 
 strive to be units, though lay the order in which we are 
 placed we cannot be. How this striving may ultimately 
 become a blessing, ^how it may introduce us to other 
 parts of our sociall order, we shall consider hereafter. 
 At present I must insist that a son cannot be without a 
 father, or a father without a son. To dissolve the rela- 
 tion into its elements is to remake the world. 
 
 As soon as I recognise an Author of my existenoe, I 
 recognise an Authority over me. I do not mean of 
 course that I know anything about the words Author 
 or Auithority; that I understand what binds them to- 
 
PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 23 
 
 gether. But I mean that in the very fa^t of Father- 
 hood Authority is involved, that I learn what it is 
 through my filial relation. I will explain myself by 
 comparing the word Authority with one which lies very 
 near it, which is always in danger of being treated as 
 synonymous with it. 
 
 I have dominion, say over a certain number of acres. 
 There are on those acres dead stock and live stock: 
 ploughs; cattle that are yoked to the ploughs; men 
 that drive the cattlo, All these are included in my 
 dominion. Whilst I look upon them only as in my 
 dominion I make no distinction between them. Dead 
 stock, live stock, animals, men, they are all regarded as 
 belonging to me, instruments for tilling my land. I 
 begin to see a difference between them. I recognise a 
 bond between me and the men who drive the animals. 
 I do not cease to give them orders; but the orders are 
 those of one who has authority, not only of one who 
 has dominion. I may discover that the animals also 
 submit to words rather .than . to force; that a certain 
 authority can be exercised over them.. I become hu- 
 mane to them. I cease, to -be a brute possessing 
 brutes; I am a man directing them. I cannot refer 
 either this sense of fellowship with men or this humane 
 rule over animals to my separate Nature. Yielding to 
 that, I shall merely try to assert dominion; whether I 
 succeed or fail, it will be a battle of physical forces. 
 But I am related to a Father, he is related to me. I 
 cannot destroy that relation, though I try. It brings 
 forth a rnanner in me. If the separate Natture prevails 
 over this relation, there will in all cases be dominion, 
 but no authority; subjection, no obedience; brutality, 
 no manners. . . , , 
 
 Dominion. 
 
 Distinc- 
 tion be- 
 tween 
 them. 
 
 How it 
 affects the 
 treatment 
 of men 
 and other 
 creatures. 
 
24 
 
 DOMESTIC MOBALITT. 
 
 These 
 principles 
 applicable 
 to all times 
 andplaces. 
 
 Can liabits 
 exist with- 
 out Educa- 
 tion? 
 
 In referring Society and the manners which. make 
 Society possible first to this relation, I am' not, you see, 
 resorting to any grand theory. I am merely asking 
 you to take account of facts; of facts which must be 
 wherever men hare lived or do live; of facts which just 
 as much belong to every English household of this 
 year as to those of which you read in any records or 
 legends of the earliest times. Authority and Obedi- 
 ence are as fundamental principles of Society now as they 
 were in any Saturnian age; the demand for them is 
 now as much as ever made first in the family; the 
 seeds of them are there ; the interpretation of them" is 
 there. If you try to explain them by the incidents of 
 a later and more complicated state, you will be always 
 at a loss. You will find something which you cannot 
 account for by any arrangements or conventions : if 
 you seek for it in laws, the laws will drive you back to 
 some primeval order which is implied in them, which 
 they did not create. Proof that this is so I hope to 
 give you before I finish this lecture. First I would 
 make one or two observations which connect what I 
 have said with the lessons of other Moralists. 
 
 The more you study Aristotle's Ethics, the more 
 you will be aware of a difficulty which he, with his cus- 
 tomary honesty, takes no pains to hide. He speaks of 
 certain habits which enable men to fulfil their work as 
 men. Are not theSe habits part of our Nature? What 
 else can they be if they are to be characteristic of our 
 own selves? They cannot come to us from without. 
 They must be internal. And yet they do not spring up 
 in men without education. A most pregnant doubt, 
 worth a hundred clever solutions. We are obliged to 
 face it. Perhaps the Politics of Aristotle, which he 
 
PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 25 
 
 never wished to be separate from Ms Ettics, may give 
 tis a hint about the way of facing it. There, as I told 
 you in my last lecture, be refers us to tbe Family as 
 the underground of all National Institutions. But if 
 that be so, is not Education presumed in these Insti- 
 tutions, presumed in the life of each one of us? The 
 father rrmst educate his child; so far as he has any 
 authority over him that must be an Education'. For 
 what end he educates is a question of immeasurable 
 importance: that there should be some end is inevit- 
 able. He may train his son to mere exercises of brute 
 strength; he may train him to revenge and malice. 
 But, anyhow, we are saved from the necessity of con- 
 sidering the question what any child or man or boy 
 would be if left to himself without education ; because 
 no one is. Each of us has had sufficient indications 
 what he would have become if he had had his own 
 way in any considerable degree ; absolutely to have his 
 own way is not given to child or boy or man. 
 
 Authority then under some conditions Or other 
 • — authority, as distinct from dominion — is implied in 
 the existence of fathers ; its correlative. Obedience, as 
 distinct from mere subjection, is implied in the ex- 
 istence of sons. But I told those who listened to 
 any lectures on the Conscience that Authority has 
 been said to be another name for punishment; Obe- 
 dience another name for the dread of punishment. 
 I shall not repeat the objections which I made to 
 that theory when I noticed it before, I wish you to 
 reflect now that it is the best — ^the only — explanation 
 which can be given of these two words and of all 
 which they express, supposing the fact of the pater- 
 nal and filial relation is overlooked, supposing it is; 
 
 No one 
 without _ 
 Educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Entire 
 
 self-will 
 
 impossible. 
 
 The theory 
 which 
 identifies 
 Authority 
 with Pun' 
 ishment 
 inevitable 
 if the 
 filial rela- 
 tion is not 
 confessed. 
 
-26 
 
 SOMESTIO MORALITY. 
 
 LEQT. II. 
 
 Punish- 
 ment if 
 there is 
 such a 
 relation 
 implies 
 Authority. 
 
 Authority 
 and Rea- 
 son. 
 
 not'tak&ji to lie at the root of human society. Then 
 whatever difficulty there may be in settling who is 
 to be the punisher; whatever difficulty in deciding 
 the offerees which he shall punish, or how his punr 
 ishment shall produce any effect except that of shewr 
 ing how strong he is, and how weak the subject of 
 his punishment is ; I yet frankly admit that the 
 theory must be swallowed whole. The effort may be 
 a difficult one, it may cause some disgust ; but it 
 must be made. On the other hand, if we assupae 
 the fatherly relation — the education which I have said 
 is implied in it will include Punishment as one of 
 its subordinate instruments. The punishment instead 
 of being identical with authority will only have the 
 slightest influence ,so far as the recognition qf Au- 
 thority precedes it,. Obedience instead of being the 
 dread of punishment may be destroyed by that dread ; 
 will only be promoted by punishment so far as dis- 
 obedience is felt to be an irregular disorderly coiv 
 dition which inevitably draws punishment after it. 
 How to temper punishment so that it may be a wit- 
 ness for authority, and may never express mere do- 
 minion-^so that it may foster obedience and not sti- 
 mulate .disobedience — is one of the hardest problems of 
 practical educatioji upon which we cannot too earnestly 
 seek for lighit. 
 
 If it is a maxim .of advaaced Philosophy that Au- 
 thority is identical with Punishment, one cannot won- 
 der that ,it should be proclaimed, as it so often is^ to 
 be the foe of Reason, Suppose parental authority to 
 be, as I have maintained it is, the very ground of 
 Education, we must believe that through it all the 
 faculties and energies which belong to a cjiild are 
 
PARENTS AND OBILDBEN. 
 
 [2f 
 
 developed, ttat wit&out it they would lie dormant. 
 The obedience .of a son is shewn in receiving those 
 influences and impressions from a father's authority 
 which most tend to quicTcen his own activity. No 
 true father wishes his son to present an image of his 
 opinions. He knows that the copy will be probably 
 a caricature ; that an echo conveys the sound not the 
 sense of the original voice. On the other hand, the 
 son whose opinions are most unlike his father's has 
 often learnt most from him; in his latest years he 
 probably discovers how much the father's authority has 
 helped to mould the very convictions which appear to ' 
 separate them. 
 
 I have spoken specially of the father. In him 
 most obviously dwells the authority which stamps 
 itself on the hfe of a man. But the union of the 
 mother's influence with the father's helps to distin- 
 guish authority from dominion; as well as to coun- 
 teract any disposition which there might be in the 
 male parent to demand of his son mere agreement 
 with his conclusions. 'She never can regard a child 
 as a possession ; she never can appeal .exclusively or 
 mainly to his intellect. The authority is not weakr- 
 ened by her co-operation ; it is divested of its inhu- 
 manity; it is made effectual for the whole of the 
 child's existence, not for one section of it. I of course 
 refer most to those cases in which there is co-opera- 
 tion— -in which the two influences are not adverse. 
 Even where they are so, we may clearly discern, by the 
 disorder which the collision produces, what the true 
 order of the household is. 
 
 I can never forget one sentence of Mr Buckle, 
 which I confess I prize above all his statistics and ail 
 
 .LEpi. -ii;. 
 
 Authority 
 does not 
 produce 
 identity of 
 opinions. 
 
 The 
 Mother. 
 
 Effect of 
 her in- 
 fluence. 
 
 Mr 
 
 Bvickle'i 
 
 testimony. 
 
28 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The sense 
 of Succes- 
 sion lead- 
 ing to the 
 sense of 
 Immortali- 
 ty. 
 
 his theories on civilisation. He said that no mere 
 arguments for Immortality had ever had much weight 
 with him, but that when he remembered his mother 
 he could not disbelieve in it. Such a testimony from 
 a man who so greatly exalted the Intellect, who in 
 words at least treated Morality as poor in comparison 
 with it, seems to me of unspeakable worth. It con- 
 tains, as I think, a most pregnant hint concerning the 
 parental relation generally, specially concerning the 
 maternal side of it. I have said that the mother 
 purifies and expands the principle of authority, there- 
 fore gives to the principle of obedience a simpler 
 and higher character. Still more does she impart the 
 true form to that feeling of Succession which this re- 
 lation brings to light ; the feeling which leads the 
 father to rejoice in the prospect of a race. In later 
 times — in developed societies — nay, to a very con- 
 siderable extent in all societies — ^this anticipation he- 
 comes connected with thoughts of what the father 
 shall leave behind him, of what the son shall inherit. 
 The joy of the poor man who has nothing to leave, 
 in the sight or hope of those who shall bear his name 
 in after days, seems to a luxurious age incomprehensible; ;| 
 so much do questions of property in such an age' 
 blend themselves with the domestic felicity which they 
 mar. But, as Mr Buckle felt in his own case, there 
 is something much more direct, more simply human 
 in a mother's thought about the child that shall live 
 after her; one wholly apart from any dream of pes-' 
 session, one that links itself directly with personal im- 
 mortality. That thought communicates itself to the 
 child ; in the strictest sense he inherits it : not through 
 a dogma which she has taught him but through his 
 
PARENTS AND OfflLDEEN. 
 
 29 
 
 sense of a relation to her the thpught becomes one of 
 which he cannot divest himself. 
 
 But if this paternal relation, and this 7]do<; of Au- 
 thority and Obedience which responds to it, are really 
 what I have supposed, must there not be some signs 
 of their effect upon the history of Mankind? Can 
 it be only in particular families where the relation 
 is exhibited amidst great varieties and contradictions 
 that we are to realise the effect? You have a right 
 to make this demand on me. If I cannot meet it satis-^ 
 factorily, I shall admit that my method is a false one ; 
 that I am seeking to detect the rudiments of a Social 
 Morality where they are not to be found. 
 
 Mr Buckle draws a very striking distinction be- 
 tween the Nations which have succumbed to the 
 powers of Nature and those which have risen above 
 them and defied them. He distinguishes also between 
 those which have been the victims of superstitious 
 fancies about the unseen world, and those which have 
 been able to grapple with hard material facts. Sup- 
 pose I found amongst the races whom he has dis- 
 paraged on either of these grounds, instances of a 
 Society which had been shaped and moulded by the 
 authority of the father — whose history and legislation 
 through a number of ages were stamped and pene- 
 trated with it — I might be answered "That is just 
 what we should have expected. Such a race was 
 likely enough to have an inordinate appreciation of 
 domestic bonds, especially to regard with great awe 
 the paternal relation." But guppose the people to 
 whom I referred for my example was the one which 
 had most courageously confronted the powers of Na- 
 ture, and had overcome them, which had shewn the 
 
 Has the 
 Paternal 
 Authority 
 left its 
 mark vpon 
 History! 
 
 Mr 
 
 Buckle's 
 division of 
 Nations. 
 
 The 
 
 Bomans 
 fighters 
 with the 
 
30 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 powers of 
 Nature. 
 
 Has our 
 conception 
 of the Fa- 
 tria Potes- 
 tas heen 
 an exag- 
 gerated 
 one? 
 
 Maine's 
 Ancient 
 Law. 
 
 The Ro- 
 man Law 
 about per- 
 sons as 
 well as 
 property 
 grovmded 
 on the au- 
 thority of 
 the Father. 
 
 most capacity for dealing with material facts — with 
 the prose of existence ; suppose it deserved. Mr Carljle's 
 praise of being an eminently 'thrifty people;' then it 
 might perhaps afford a fair test of my doctrine. You 
 will easily imagine that I am thinking of the Eolnan 
 State, and of the influence which the Fatria Fotestas 
 exercised over its institutions. 
 
 Certainly if we trusted to Our schoolboy im- 
 pressions that would seem a strong case in point. 
 But those impressions may deceive us. Virgil has 
 built Rome upon legends which modern criticism hasi 
 exposed. Why should we attach any worth to his 
 notion that piety to a father had more to do with 
 the foundation or preservation of the city than its 
 fancied Trojan ancestry? Why should the name of 
 fathers given to senators, or of father to the Lord of 
 the Capitol, be more than fictions? why should we 
 endow these names with any significance ? 
 
 I can answer these questions best by referring you 
 to a book containing the ripest modern scholarship 
 applied to the examination of Koman Institutions. 
 Sir H. S. Maine has assuredly no prejudices in favour 
 of the stories which were always suspected, and which 
 our age generally discredits. He has not written on 
 Social Morality, but expressly on Ancient Law. In 
 his exceedingly able book he has discussed at con- 
 siderable length the subject of the Patria PoteStas. 
 What he says about its influence on the latest Ju- 
 risprudence of Kome and of Modern Europe is highly 
 important. What he says about the grounds of it, 
 and the necessity of looking for it in a Society ante- 
 cedent to all legal forms, concerns our present purpos& 
 still more. 
 
PARENTS AND CfflLDSEN. 
 
 31 
 
 One or two short, passages will explain Mr Maine's 
 view of tlie bearing of the Patria Potestas on Roman 
 LaAV : " It may be shewn I think that the Family as 
 held together by the Patria Potestas is the nidus out 
 of which the entire law of Persons has germinated." 
 Maine's Ancient Law, p. 152. 
 
 He expresses this opinion though he has taken 
 pains to shew how much the power of the Father 
 over the person of the Son, which existed at one 
 period, was modified by later legislation or by the 
 force of opinion. " But," he remarks (p. 141)-, though 
 "the power over the person may have been latterly 
 " nominal, the whole tenor of the extant Roman Ju- 
 " risprudence testifies that the father's rights over the 
 " son's Property were exercised to the full extent to 
 "which they were sanctioned by law." The law of 
 Persons, the law of Property, then, were both in the 
 most marvellous way affected by this institution, and 
 the habits of the people as much as either. He 
 goes on: — 
 
 " There is nothing to astonish us in the latitude 
 " of these rights when they first shew themselves. 
 "The ancient law of Rome forbade the Children 
 "under Power to hold property apart from their pa- 
 "rent, or (we should rather say) never contemplated 
 " the possibility of their claiming a second ownership. 
 "The father was entitled to take the whole of the 
 "son's acquisitions, and to enjoy the benefit of his 
 "contracts without being entangled in any compen- 
 " sating liability. So much as this we should expect 
 " from the constitution of the earliest Roman society, 
 "for we can hardly form a notion of the primitive 
 group unless we suppose that its members 
 
 The extent 
 of the au- 
 thority in 
 legal 
 timeSi 
 
 Its basis in 
 ']an earlier 
 .time. 
 
32 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Its diffu- 
 sion over 
 the Roman 
 world. 
 
 The unit 
 of society. 
 
 Contrast 
 between 
 earlier and 
 later con- 
 ceptions. 
 
 " brought their earnings of all kinds into the common 
 " stock, while they were unable to bind it by impro- 
 "yident individual engagements. The true enigma 
 " of the Patria Potestas does not reside here, but in 
 " the slowness with which these privileges of the pa- 
 "rent were curtailed, and in the circumstance that, 
 "before they were seriously diminished, the whole 
 "civilised world was brought within their sphere." 
 pp. 141, 1^2. 
 
 To what does this Institution point, fixed as it 
 was in the heart of the strongest of all common- 
 wealths, the one which has done so much to mould 
 the Society of modern Europe? A longer extract is 
 necessary that you may understand what our author 
 teaches us upon the subject. 
 
 " Archaic Law is full, in eiU its provinces, of the 
 "clearest indications that society in primitive times 
 '' was not what it is jissumed to be at present, a col- 
 " lection of individuals. In fact, and in the view of the 
 "men who composed it, it was an aggregation of fami^, 
 " lies. The contrast may be most forcibly expressed by 
 "saying that the unit of an ancient society was the 
 "Family, of a modern society the Individual, We 
 " must be prepared to find in ancient law all the conse- 
 "quences of this difference. It is so framed as to be 
 "adjusted to a system of small independent corpora^ 
 ■'tions. It is therefore scanty, because it is supple- 
 "mented by the despotic commands of the heads of 
 "households. It is ceremonious, because the trans- 
 " actions to which it pays regard resemble international 
 "concerns much more than the quick play of inter- 
 " course between individuals. Above all it has a pecu- 
 " liarity of which the full importance cannot be shewn 
 
PARENTS AND CBILI>REN. 
 
 33 
 
 " at present. It takes a view of life wholly unlike any 
 
 " wMch appears in developed jurisprudence. Corpora- 
 
 "tions never die, and accordingly primitive law con- 
 
 "siders tlie entities with which it deals, i.e. patriarchal 
 
 " or family groups, as perpetual and inextinguishable. 
 
 " This view is closely allied to the peculiar aspect under 
 
 " which, in very ancient times, moral attributes present 
 
 " themselves. The moral elevation and moral debase- 
 
 " ment of the individual appear to be confounded with, 
 
 " or postponed to, the merits and offences of the group 
 
 " to which the individual belongs. If the- community 
 
 " sins, its guilt is much more than the sum of the of- 
 
 " fences committed by its members; the crime is a corpo- 
 
 " rate act, and extends in its consequences to many more 
 
 "persons than have shared in its actual perpetration. 
 
 " If, on the other hand, the individual is conspicuously 
 
 "guilty, it is his children, his kinsfolk, his tribes-men, 
 
 " or his fellow-citizens, who suffer with him, and some- 
 
 " times for him. It thus happens that the ideas of 
 
 " moral responsibility and retribution often seem to be 
 
 " more clearly realised at very ancient than at more ad- 
 
 " vanced periods, for, as the family group is immortal, 
 
 " and its liability to punishment indefinite, the primi- 
 
 "tive mind is not perplexed by the questions which 
 
 •' become troublesome as soon as the individual is con- 
 
 "ceived as altogether separate from the group. One 
 
 "step in the transition from the ancient and simple 
 
 " view of the matter to the theological or metaphysical 
 
 "explanations of later days is marked by the early 
 
 " Greek notion of an inherited curse. The bequest re- 
 
 " ceived by his posterity from the original criminal was 
 
 "not a liability to punishment, but a liability to the 
 
 " commission of fresh offences which drew with them a 
 
 M. M. C 
 
 The per- 
 manence 
 of corpo- 
 rations de- 
 rived from 
 the family. 
 
 Responsi- 
 hility of 
 the whole 
 family 
 for the 
 offences of 
 each of its 
 memhers. 
 
 The inhei- 
 rited curse. 
 
34 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The as- 
 cending 
 groups. 
 
 The fa- 
 mily, the 
 house, the 
 tribe, the 
 common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Kinship 
 assumed. 
 
 The. qreat 
 revolution. 
 
 " condign retribution; and thus the responsibility of the 
 " family was reconciled with the newer phase of thought 
 " which limited the consequences of crime to the person 
 " of the actual delinquent. * * * * In most of the Greek 
 " states and in Rome there long remained the vestiges 
 "of an ascending series of groups out of which the 
 "State was at first constituted. The Family, House, 
 " and Tribe of the Romans may be taken as the type 
 " of them, and they are so described to us that we can 
 " scarcely help conceiving them as a system of concen- 
 "tric circles, which have gradually expanded from the 
 "same point. The elementary group is the Family, 
 " connected by common subjection to the highest male 
 "ascendant The aggregation of the Families forms 
 "the Gens or House. The aggregation of Houses 
 " makes the Tribe. The aggregation of Tribes consti- 
 "tutes the Commonwealth. Are we at liberty to follow 
 "these indications, and to lay down that the common- 
 " wealth is a collection of persons united by common 
 "descent from the progenitor of an original family? 
 " Of this we may at least be certain, that all ancient 
 "societies regarded themselves as having proceeded 
 " from one original stock, and even laboured under an 
 " incapacity for comprehending any reason except this 
 "for their holding together in political union. The 
 " history of political ideas begins, in fact, with the as- 
 " sumption that kinship in blood is the sole possible 
 "ground of community in political functions; nor iS 
 "there any of those subversions of feeling, which we 
 "term emphatically revolutions, so startling and so 
 " complete as the change which is accomplished when 
 "some other principle — such as that, for instance, of 
 " local contiguity — establishes itself for the first time 
 
PARENTS AND CBILDREN. 
 
 35 
 
 "as the basis of common political action. It may be 
 " aflBrmed then of early commonwealths that their citi- 
 " zens considered all the groups in which they claimed 
 " membership to be founded on common lineage. What 
 " was obviously true of the Family was believed to be 
 "true first of the House, next of the Tribe, lastly of 
 "the State." pp. 126 — 129. 
 
 Sir Harry Maine goes on to explain, as Niebuhr 
 had done, that the supposition of an ancestry was often 
 a gratuitous one, "that men of alien descent were 
 grafted into the original brotherhood," that legal fic- 
 tions were invented to connect the old feelings of kins- 
 paanship with the later principle of ' contiguity in place.' 
 To these remarks I must recur in the second part of 
 these lectures, when I arrive at that period of social 
 development In which Sir H. Maine is most interested, 
 the strictly legal period. I must however give you 
 the words in which he sums up his observations on 
 the Family. 
 
 " The Family then is the type of an archaic society 
 "in all the modifications which it was capable of as- 
 " suming ; but the family here spoken of is not exactly 
 " the family as understood by a modern. In order to 
 "reach the ancient conception we must give to our 
 " modern ideas an important extension and an impor- 
 " tant limitation. We must look on the family as con- 
 " stantly enlarged by the absorption of strangers within 
 "its circle, and we must try to regard the fiction of 
 " adoption as so closely simulating the reality of kin- 
 ," ship that neither law nor opinion makes the slightest 
 ;• difference between a real and an adoptive connexion. 
 " On the other hand, the persons theoretically amalga- 
 ■" mated into a family by their common descent are 
 
 C2 
 
 LECI. II. 
 
 Fictions to 
 
 reconcile 
 
 the family 
 
 conception 
 
 with the 
 
 individual 
 
 one. 
 
 The force 
 of adop- 
 tion. 
 
36 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Authority 
 continues 
 as the land 
 of the com- 
 munity 
 after its 
 extension 
 beyond the 
 circle of 
 hlood re- 
 lations. 
 
 Its effect 
 on juris- 
 prudence. 
 
 Traces of 
 the primi- 
 tive society 
 to be found 
 in all the 
 communi- 
 ties of 
 
 "practically held togetlier by common obedience to 
 " their highest living ascendant, the father, grandfather, 
 "great-grandfather. The patriarchal authority of a 
 " chieftain is as necessary an ingredient in the notion 
 " of the family group as the fact (or assumed fact) of 
 "its having sprung from his loins; and hence we must 
 " understand that if there be any persons who however 
 "truly included in the brotherhood by virtue of their 
 "blood-relationship, have nevertheless de facto with- 
 " drawn themselves from the empire of its ruler, they 
 "are always, in the beginnings of law, considered as 
 " lost to the family. It is this patriarchal aggregate — ; 
 " the modern family thus cut down on one side and ex- 
 " tended on the other — which meets us on the thresh- 
 " old of primitive jurisprudence. Older probably than 
 " the State, the Tribe, and the House, it left traces of 
 "itself on private law long after the House and the 
 "Tribe had been forgotten, and long after consangui- 
 "nity had ceased to be associated with the compositioa 
 " of States. It will be found to have stamped itself on 
 " all the great departments of jurisprudence, and may 
 "be detected, I think, as the true source of many of 
 "their most important and most durable characteristics, 
 "At the outset, the peculiarities of law in its most an- 
 " cient state lead us irresistibly to the conclusion that it 
 "took precisely the same view of the family group 
 " which is taken of individual men by the systems of 
 "rights and duties now prevalent throughout Europe. 
 "There are societies open to our observation at this 
 " very moment whose laws and usages can scarcely he 
 "explained unless. they are supposed never to have 
 "emerged from this primitive condition; but in com- 
 "munities more fortunately circumstanced the fabric of 
 
PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 37 
 
 "jurisprudence fell gradually to pieces, and if we care- 
 " fully observe the disintegration we shall perceive that 
 "it took place principally in those portions of each 
 " system which were most deeply affected by the pri- 
 " mitive conception of the family. In one all-important 
 " instance, that of the Roman law, the change was ef- 
 "fected so slowly, that from epoch to epoch we can 
 " observe the line and direction which it followed, and 
 "can even give some idea of the ultimate result to 
 " which it was tending. And, in pursuing this last in- 
 " quiry, we need not suffer ourselves to be stopped by 
 "the imaginary barrier which separates the modern 
 " from the ancient world. Tor one effect of that mix- 
 "ture of refined Roman law with primitive barbaric 
 "usage, which is known to us by the deceptive name 
 "of feudalism, was to revive many features of archaic 
 "jurisprudence which had died out of the Roman 
 "world, so that the decomposition which had seemed 
 "to be over commenced again, and to some extent is 
 " still proceeding." pp.133 — I3S- 
 
 The more you reflect on these passages, the more 
 you will perceive that what I have assumed for obvious 
 reasons to be the right chronology of our own lives is 
 also the right chronology of human society. Sir H. 
 Maine's opinion upon this subject is very distinctly ex- 
 pressed in an earlier passage which I passed over that I 
 might not distract your thoughts from the evidence con- 
 cerning Roman history, and that I might not take ad- 
 vantage of any apparent confirmation of my statements 
 in the sacred records. 
 
 " The effect of the evidence derived from compara- 
 "tive jurisprudence is to establish that view of the 
 " primeval condition of the human race which is known 
 
 modem 
 Europe. 
 
 GotMcfeu- 
 dalism 
 linking it- 
 self to the 
 maxims of 
 Roman 
 Society. 
 
 The gene- 
 ral and 
 particular 
 chronology 
 not at 
 variance. 
 
38 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The Patri- 
 archal 
 origin of 
 society. 
 
 Attempt to 
 
 represent 
 
 it as a. 
 
 merely 
 
 Semitic 
 
 doctrine. 
 
 .The evi- 
 dence for 
 it in the 
 institu- 
 tions of all 
 lands. 
 
 The theory 
 accords 
 with obvi- 
 , ous facts. 
 
 "as the Patriarchal Theory. There is no doubt, of 
 "course, that this theory was originally based on the 
 " Scriptural history of the Hebrew patriarchs in Lower 
 "Asia; but, as has been explained already, its con- 
 '' nexion with Scripture rather militated than otherwise 
 " against its reception as a complete theory, since the 
 " majority of the inquirers who till recently addressed 
 " themselves with most earnestness to the colligation 
 " of social phenomena, were either influenced by the 
 " strongest prejudice against Hebrew antiquities or by 
 " the strongest desire to construct their system without 
 " the assistance of religious records. Even now there 
 " is perhaps a disposition to undervalue these accounts, 
 " or rather to decline generalising from them, as forming 
 " part of the traditions of a Semitic people. It is to be 
 " noted, however, that the legal testimony comes nearly 
 " exclusively from the institutions of societies belonging 
 "to the Indo-European stock, the Romans, Hindoos, 
 "and Sckvonians supplying the greater part of it; and 
 "indeed the difficulty, at the present stage of the 
 "inquiry, is to know where to stop, to say of what 
 " races of men it is not allowable to lay down that the 
 " society in^ which they are united was originally organ- 
 "ised on the patriarchal model." pp. 122, 123. 
 
 Of this (so-called) patriarchal theory I have said 
 nothing, because I wished to rest my case on the evi- 
 dence of facts with which we are all familiar. Those 
 facts, as I may try to shew you hereafter, help to 
 explain some of the legal fictions of which Sir H. 
 Maine speaks, for they tell us why of necessity the rela- 
 tions of the family must interpenetrate the later order 
 of the Nation, and impress their own character upon it. 
 
 Leaving these more general remarks, much as they 
 
PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 39 
 
 concern our subject, and recurring to the particular 
 Poman Institution about which we first consulted Sir 
 H. Maine, I think he has made it clear that the conclu- 
 sions suggested by our ordinary reading will endure 
 strict investigation. Virgil was not mistaken in his 
 belief that the ground of his nation's stability lay in 
 the reverence for fathers; that the authority of the 
 Consul rested ultimately on his authority ; the obedi- 
 ence of the soldier on the obedience of the child. The 
 power of the Roman over material things must be 
 traced to the same source. It does not appear that 
 any peculiarities in the atmosphere of Rome enabled 
 those who dwelt in it to make roads and drain marshes. 
 The habit of obedience, grounded upon a personal rela- 
 tion, made them victorious over things, victorious over 
 the men who wanting that obedience stooped to things. 
 It is deh'ghtful to find a court poet still retaining his 
 interest in the growth of vines and the assemblies of 
 bees : it is more delightful to find him still hoping for 
 the restoration of manners in Romans through the 
 revived recollection of the sacredness which they once 
 attached to the paternal name. 
 
 Sir H. Maine laments his inability to trace as accu- 
 rately as he would wish the alterations in the Patria 
 Potestas in its different periods ; how it was modified 
 by laws or circumstances or opinions. Such a historical 
 survey, were it possible, would I believe throw a clear 
 light upon that distinction on which I have insisted 
 between Authority and Dominion. To the paternal 
 authority Rome owed its strength and freedom. The 
 claim of paternal Dominion resulted in Imperial Ty- 
 ranny. In the third part of these lectures I shall have 
 much to say respecting the influence of the paternal 
 
 Virgil's in- 
 stinct con- 
 firmed by 
 scientific 
 enquiries. 
 
 The con- 
 quests over 
 material 
 obstacles 
 must he 
 referred to 
 the same 
 cause. 
 
 Parental 
 authority 
 the bless- 
 ing; pa- 
 rental do- 
 minion the 
 curse of 
 Rome. 
 
40 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITT. 
 
 Tlve mo- 
 ther beside 
 the father. 
 
 Another 
 instance of 
 the Patria 
 Potestas. 
 
 Zarca and 
 JFedalma. 
 
 relations and the Authority which assumed it as its 
 foundation upon th« manners of the modem world. 
 Here I will only observe that though the institutions of 
 Rome especially testify to the Authority of the father 
 or his Dominion, the influence of the mother is never 
 forgotten in its most characteristic legends, in its most 
 trusftworthy records. They shew how deeply the most 
 masculine of all Societies was indebted to the female 
 for the preservation, because for the softening and the 
 humanizing of its strength ; how much the degradation 
 of the female was involved in its degradation. 
 
 "While I speak of this combined influence on the 
 most organic of all commonwealths I am reminded of a 
 poem which turns on the destiny of the most inorganic 
 of all tribes. You will guess that I allude to the 
 Spanish Gypsy of George Eliot. That remarkable and 
 beautiful drama has been represented by some of its 
 critics as an extravagant testimony to the influence of 
 Race in overcoming the effects of education, in breaking 
 the chains of a passionate attachment. To me it reads 
 much more as a testimony to the might of paternal 
 authority. With what admirable truth the struggle of 
 Fedalma against that might is told ; how every feeling 
 that is deepest as well as tenderest rebels against the 
 inexorable command of the outcast and prisoner who 
 claims her as his daughter; most of you well know. 
 But the victory was complete. The lover is given up. 
 for Zarca; the heart-broken girl undertakes the task of 
 which she despairs. 
 
 " Father, my soul is weak, the mist of tears 
 
 Still rises to my eyes and hides the goal 
 
 "Which to your undimmed sight is clear and changeless. 
 
 But if I cannot plant resolve on hope, 
 
PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 
 
 41 
 
 It -will stand firm on oertainty of woe. 
 I choose the ill that is moat like to end 
 With my poor being. Hopes have precarious life. 
 They are oft blighted, withered, snapped^ sheer off 
 In -vigorous growth and turned to rottenness. 
 But faithfulness can feed on suffering 
 And knows no disappointment. Trust in me! 
 If it were needed, this poor trembling hand 
 Should grasp the torch— strive not to let it fall, 
 Though it were burning down close to my flesh. 
 No beacon lighted yet; through the damp dark 
 I should stiU hear the cry of gasping swimmers. 
 Father, I will be true!" 
 
 Spanish Gypsy, Book m. p. 2S3. 
 
 That is certainly the sublime of obedience, scarcely 
 conceivable in a Roman son, possible perhaps for the 
 daughter of a Gypsy. Beneath the profound melan- 
 choly of this passage and of the whole poem, I cannot 
 but fancy I see a glimmering of promise. It may be 
 that abject races, which cannot rise to a new life 
 through the influence of Joint Stock Companies and 
 competitive Examinations, may yet have seeds in them 
 which a domestic culture might call forth. It may be 
 that races perishing in a worn-out civilization may 
 awake at the stern summons of a father's voice coming 
 to thena softened and deepened through notes of femi- 
 nine devotion and self-sacrifice. 
 
 Hopes for 
 fallen and 
 fallivg 
 races. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 (2) HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 Inferences 
 from the 
 method 
 pursued in 
 the last 
 lecture as 
 to the sub- 
 ject of this. 
 
 It would be commonly said that the filial relation is 
 one of necessity, the conjugal relation one of choice. 
 We find ourselves in one, we may enter or not into the 
 other. That mode of speaking is inevitable if we begin 
 the study of society from the units wbich compose 
 it. I have given you my reasons for choosing another 
 method, 
 
 A mass of separate human units never has existed ; 
 why should we imagine it to exist ? It is all important 
 for men to discover that they, are distinct persons; 
 therefore I would strive to ascertain when and how 
 they make the discovery; I would not anticipate it. 
 If I pursue the chronological method it seems right to 
 put the fact of sonship before all others ; that dating 
 from the hour of birth. But the relation of a man to a 
 woman is presumed in that fact ; it might fairly dis- 
 pute for the first place in our enquiry. I am bound to 
 give it the second. 
 
 Do I then exclude the distinction to which I have 
 alluded? Do I deny choice as an element in this 
 union ? Are all the affections which lead to it, which 
 have formed a principal subject for the song as well as 
 
HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 43 
 
 for the prose of Europe, to be lost in the dead fact of 
 a material or of a legal fellowship? The more we 
 contemplate marriage as a primary institution of 
 society — the more we remind ourselves that without it 
 society could not be — ^the greater will be our reverence 
 for the affections which lead to it and are implied in it ; 
 the less we shall be inclined to resolve it into any 
 brutal instincts, or into any artificial arrangements. 
 
 This relation is always in peril from the senti- 
 mentalist and from the legalist. The first dwells on 
 the fact, the undoubted fact, that without attachment 
 between the parties who enter into it there is no true 
 marriage. He proceeds to the assumption that choice 
 is the ground of it. Therefore all bonds are accounted 
 hardships ; that the union may be perfect, those who 
 have formed it must be at liberty to dissolve it when- 
 ever they please. Such a doctrine the Law-giver de- 
 clares to be subversive of Society. The union of 
 husband and wife exists, he afiirms, by his permission. 
 There is a Nature which he cannot fight against, which 
 he may be obliged to tolerate. Marriage he claims as 
 his ; he pronounces what is to be called marriage, what 
 is unworthy of the name. Such language sounds 
 plausible ; it provokes a vehement reaction. ' Can 
 you bind us in one by your decrees if there is nothing 
 within to bind us V Again Sentiment is in the ascend- 
 ant. Compromises are very ineffectual. You cannot 
 have a little law and a little- sentiment. That experi- 
 ment is as fatal to the true conjugiwm as either 
 extreme. 
 
 For this relation, like the paternal relation, is not 
 the creation of formal Law ; but is implied in it, lies 
 beneath it, must be recognised and adopted by it so 
 
 Marriage 
 a primary 
 institute of 
 society. 
 
 The senti- 
 mental and 
 the legal 
 concep- 
 tions of it. 
 
 Theprotest 
 of each 
 against the 
 other. 
 
 The rela- 
 tion as- 
 sumed in 
 Law. 
 
44 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 It implies 
 Trust. 
 
 The senti- 
 mental 
 creed not 
 one of 
 Trust hut 
 of separate 
 enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 soon as it comes into existence. It is a Eelation; 
 therefore neither is it the creation of the persons who 
 enter into it. This phrase truly expresses the fact. 
 They enter into it. All the inward feelings which 
 attract them to it do not determine its nature ; that is 
 determined before. But without the attraction they 
 cannot in any degree understand the relation ; it is for 
 them as though it were not. There must be in each 
 the sense of incompleteness without the other; the 
 belief of each in the other; the dependence of each 
 upon the other ; not of the weak upon the strong 
 more than of the strong upon the weak. So that 
 Trust is engendered, which becomes as essential a part 
 of the domestic ^^o? as the Authority and Obedience 
 which are demanded by the relation of father and 
 child, without which the Family cannot subsist. The 
 Choice and Affection of which the sentimentalist speaks 
 are involved in this Trust. Unless there is choice and 
 affection upon each side, it loses its name and becomes 
 a nonentity. But the choice and affection are not, as in 
 the creed of the sentimentalist, the gratification of a 
 separate instinct ; choice meaning a mere passive sub- 
 mission to an overpowering impulse ; affection having 
 very little respect to its object, being chiefly prized for 
 its reflex operation upon the person who cherishes it. 
 This Trust is not impatient of Law as a restraint. It 
 welcomes Law as a check upon the vagrant inclinations 
 which would undermine it. 
 
 There is no Trust like that which is expressed and 
 fostered by the conjugal relation. But it diffuses 
 itself from that through all the household ; the authority 
 and obedience, though they have another root, cannot 
 be separated from it— derive their chief strength from 
 
HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 45 
 
 it. From the family it goes forth into the nation. It 
 manifests itself in friendships between members of the 
 same sex. It enters into all the intercourse of life; 
 where it is wanting, society becomes an intolerable lie. 
 Clever men try to build up polities on suspicion and 
 distrust. If they can but make men sufficiently on the 
 watch against each other, the highest ends of civilisa- 
 tion, they think, will be accomplished. But the Babels 
 ■ which are compacted with this mortar fall down. For 
 the needs of trade — even for the needs of that most 
 subtle complicated machinery which is brought to per- 
 fection on the Bourse or Stock Exchange of the most 
 refined cities in the world — you ask for Credit. Credit 
 is found to be a most sensitive plant, liable to expand 
 and contract in different circumstances for the most 
 mysterious reasons. The importance of possessing it, 
 the miseries which may ensue if it is weak, are no 
 securities that it may not utterly wither. Practical 
 men must learn to translate their refined word into the 
 older monosyllable Trust. They must ask elsewhere 
 than among moneyed men how Trust is to be kept 
 alive. They may trace the earliest seeds of it, as well 
 as the secret of their growth and decay, to the homes 
 of nobles, of shopkeepers, of peasants. 
 
 I wish you to remember that I am speaking of no 
 bygone period, but of our own England — of this 19th 
 century. Civilisation does not throw off the family; 
 the blessing or the curse of it penetrates every comer 
 of the most artificial society. Look at the Manage d, 
 la Mode of Hogarth. Meditate on that ghastly break- 
 fast table which is the preparation for all the Tragedy 
 that follows; The great painter of English Social 
 Morality has told you there the history of commercial 
 
 Credit anA 
 Trust. 
 
 Tlie dis- 
 trust of 
 trade lias 
 its root 
 in the 
 home. 
 
 The Ma- 
 riage. a la 
 Mode. 
 
46 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. HI. 
 
 The 
 Greeks. 
 
 The wit- 
 ness of the 
 Iliad re- 
 specting 
 the sanc- 
 tity of the 
 marriage 
 vow. 
 
 failures, of political distrust and baseness, as well as of 
 domestic infelicity. But when we have thoroughly 
 assured ourselves that none of these lessons are obsolete, 
 none of them inapplicable to our own "age, it is then 
 useful to travel back that we may see whether this 
 conjugal relation has only to do with Great Britain or 
 with Christendom — whether if we overlook it or treat 
 it as of secondary significance, we can understand any^ 
 society, any literature. 
 
 We are wont to speak of Greek Society as pre- 
 eminently that in which individual force and energy 
 made themselves felt, of Greek Literature and Art as 
 containing the clearest and highest conception of 
 sensuous beauty. Everything there, it might be con- 
 cluded, was adverse to the kind of fellowship and 
 restraint upon taste and appetite which is implied in 
 any relation, especially in this relation. Let us see 
 how the case stands. 
 
 What light the Iliad throws upon the order and 
 manners of a time preceding the strictly historical time, 
 Bishop Thirlwall and Mr Grote have told us. "We 
 knew before how much it had connected itself in the 
 minds of Greeks with the thought of an enduring con- 
 flict between their tribes and the monarchies of Asia, 
 how Alexander felt that he was fulfilling the lessons 
 with which the song of his childhood had inspired him. 
 But the discoveries of scholars cannot make us indif- 
 ferent to that which lies upon the surface of the story, 
 for every one who reads it. The later Greek, though 
 he may have accepted Homer as a prophet of the 
 destiny of his race, must have accepted him still more 
 as a witness 'how his ancestors regarded the marriage 
 vow — how they, deemed the defence of it the sign and 
 
m/SSANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 47 
 
 pledge of the fellowship of their tribes with each other, 
 the reason and the bond of a common enterprise. Had 
 the Ehapsodist preached to us on this subject his words 
 would never have lasted to this day or have left an 
 impression upon any day. He is no preacher ; he 
 simply presents us with clear pictures of human life 
 under various aspects — now favourable, now unfavour- 
 able to his heroes. They do evil deeds, and avow them. 
 Agamemnon says openly that he likes the daughter of 
 the priest as well as Clytemnestra. Nevertheless no 
 poem in the world does so much homage to the hearth 
 and the home and especially to wives as this poem. 
 Amidst the clatter of spear and shields, in the Greek 
 ships or the Trojan city, they are never forgotten. 
 The reader is impressed before he is aware of it with 
 the conviction that the Greek manners must have been 
 mainly created by the conjugal relation, that the weak- 
 ness and corruption of their manners may be merely 
 traced to the violation of it. 
 
 That the other great narrative poem of this period, 
 whether the author of it was the same or not, bears the 
 same impress, no one can doubt for a moment who con- 
 siders the plot of it, the heroine of it, the wanderings 
 and the final reward of Odysseus. He may have be- 
 come, as Mr Tennyson imagines, weary of Ithaca when 
 he arrived there. He may have longed for the sight of 
 other cities and other men. But home and the wife 
 were, as far as the Greek poet knew, the ultimate goal 
 of his thoughts and affections. 
 
 If these poems bear a true witness, the union of the 
 husband and the wife was the ground of Greek Society ; 
 whatever was healthy, graceful, refined in the Greek 
 people, might be traced. back to. it; that which was 
 
 The Greek 
 manners 
 determined 
 hy this 
 relation. 
 
 The' 
 Odyssey. 
 
48 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Influence 
 of Mar- 
 riage on 
 political 
 life. 
 
 The art 
 
 tistic 
 
 temper. 
 
 The ad- 
 vanced 
 period. 
 
 vain, gross and false in them was connected with out- 
 rages upon it. And we cannot but perceive the influ- 
 ence of this relation upon their institutions. The 
 order of the Greek commonwealths was not like the 
 order of that great city whicli we were considering in 
 the last lecture. Authority is not what we first thint 
 of in them, though authority was there, though it made 
 itself felt in manifold ways ; the authority of descent 
 the authority of intellect. But the elements of taste 
 and affection, those which are so prominent in the Mar- 
 riage relation, and are always trying to become supreme 
 in it, present themselves to us in the various forms o1 
 these societies, in the changes which they underwent, 
 We feel that we are in a world where choice will 
 always be asserting itself — where perhaps very hard 
 chains of law will be forged to restrain it. If again we 
 examine the qualities of the Greek Intellect or Imagi- 
 nation, we find ourselves in the presence of a facultj 
 curiously combining the masculine and feminine quali 
 ties; aiming at that perfect balance between the passive 
 or receptive, and the active or creative temper, betweei 
 the individual and the universal, which constitutes the 
 complete artist ; liable of course to great excesses or 
 either side, especially to a predominance of the senses 
 over the man who should rule thein. We can see how 
 these tendencies would work with and' against thoS( 
 which we are wont to describe as moral or ethical ; hov 
 the political institutions which combined both elementi 
 would affect them and be affected by them. Whei 
 the aesthetic faculties had reached their highest poin 
 in the Ionian race and had given birth to the marvel 
 lous works for which Athens in the age of Pericles wa 
 glorious, the most earnest thinkers reverted to thi 
 
MUSBANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 49 
 
 marriage relation as the most radical and precious of 
 all for the life of their people, as that which was most 
 in peril from their new and higher civilisation. ' The 
 Agamemnon of ^schylus is an entirely different man 
 from the Agamemnon of Homer. The age of sombre 
 reflection has succeeded to the age of sunny" observa- 
 tion. Yet the bond of wedlock is the subject of the 
 play as it was of the narrative poem. And it is not the 
 progress of guilty love which a modem artist might 
 have described that the Greek Dramatist sets before us. 
 It is the tragedy of the broken relation, of the venge- 
 ance on the ' husband, of the vengeance on the adul- 
 terers, of the furies that tormented the matricide, which 
 appealed to the Greek mind and conscience. Yet I do . 
 not mean that here more than in the earlier poetry 
 there is a formal didactic morality. It is the morality 
 of life, the morality of a man who read the legends of 
 past days by the light which fell upon them from the 
 experience of his own. He had not to translate the 
 dialect of the heroic ages into that of the later age ; he 
 understood that the same relations existed in both; 
 that they were permanent ; that the breaches of them 
 were Tragedies for every period and every countiy. 
 
 The moral effect of such compositions as these, 
 so filled with the ^ sense of an order which would 
 assert itself, which no one could violate with impunity, 
 must have been exceedingly salutary to a people so 
 possessed as the Athenians were with thoughts: of 
 self-government, so open to the suggestion that there 
 was no Law which they did not establish or might 
 not alter. It is in this way that the force of those 
 relationships which precede the Law of States made 
 itself felt as the protector of Law; there was that 
 M. M. D 
 
 The mo- 
 rality of 
 the plays 
 not didac- 
 tic but 
 living. 
 
 The effect 
 on the 
 Greeks of 
 an order 
 which they 
 did not 
 create. 
 
so 
 
 'DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Mono- 
 gamy. 
 
 Not a 
 Alediaval 
 nor even 
 a Christen- 
 dom Jnsti- 
 tution. 
 
 which evidently was not formed by decrees or assem- 
 blies; it was the very bond which seemed so closely 
 associated with preference and self-will. On the other 
 hand, as the Greek came to look down upon the 
 wife, to regard the marriage bond as merely a legal 
 one, to seek elsewhere for the gratification of his 
 tastes and appetites, there was a corresponding loss 
 of the sense o*f political order, an ever-increasing 
 opinion that it stood in words and conventions which 
 cleverer words, conventions established by a stronger 
 force, could overthrow. 
 
 There is one important topic connected with the 
 Greek idea of marriage which I have no right to pass 
 over. M. Comte speaks of Monogamy as a blessing 
 which we have derived from the Middle Ages. Me- 
 diaeval Christendom was no doubt engaged in a great 
 and enduring conflict with a faith which accepted 
 and endorsed Polygamy, no doubt it associated the 
 opposite institution with its own faith. But to con- 
 fine Monogamy within the Christian Age is to pervert 
 History. Your classical books tell you of many moral 
 corruptions ; they do not exhibit, either in Greece or 
 Italy, Societies in which Polygamy prevailed. I am 
 desirous that you should notice that fact and medi- 
 tate upon it — not the less desirous because it may sug- 
 gest another to you. ' Our classical books, so called, 
 do not give us indications of such a state ; our sacred 
 books do.' That is an observation which you must 
 needs make and which may often puzzle you. I can- 
 not discuss the relation of Husband and Wife properly 
 if I leave it unexamined. 
 
 You will understand that I am not now con- 
 cerned with the Mosaic law, how far it restrained or 
 
HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 51 
 
 did not restrain Polygamy. All questions into which 
 formal Law enters belong to a later part of this 
 course. Still less is it my business to notice the 
 times of David and Solomon, though they may pre- 
 sent important points for our reflection, when I en- 
 quire into the influence of Law and personal govern- 
 ment upon each other. What interests us here is that 
 ante-legal or patriarchal condition of 'which Sir H. 
 Maine finds the traces in Ancient Law, and for the lead- 
 ing characteristics of which he refers us to the Book of 
 Genesis. He does not mention Polygamy 3,mong those 
 characteristics. No one can say that it is necessarily 
 involved in the patriarchal order; stiU we all feel 
 that it is a conspicuous incident in the lives of 
 Abraham and of Jacob. The discovery of that fact 
 did not much affect the commentators on the Scrip- 
 tures before the Reformation; they could resolve all 
 the events which they read of in the previous time 
 into figures or types of what was to be in a more 
 advanced time. The Protestant schools grew to be 
 impatient of allegories, studious of the letter. To 
 them these examples became perplexing. They ex- 
 plained them away as they could. Milton scandal- 
 ised his Puritan contemporaries by the consistency 
 with which he accepted them as warrants for Polygamy 
 in the Christian Age. He was, as Mr Wordsworth 
 has remarked, a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; he breathed 
 the spirit of the Old Testament; it^ domestic, if not 
 its national, forms had a strange attraction for him. 
 The elevation and purity of his character made his 
 doctrine harmless for himself; they could not hinder 
 him from doing a great injury to the book which 
 ■pras so precious in his eyes. A history which is 
 
 D2 
 
 The pa- 
 triarchal 
 Polygamy. 
 
 How it 
 was dealt 
 with by 
 commen- 
 tators on 
 Scripture 
 before and 
 since the 
 Reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 Milton's 
 defence of 
 Polygamy. 
 
52 
 
 DOMESTIO MORALITY. 
 
 LE€T. III. 
 
 Thepracti- 
 cal use of 
 these nar- 
 ratives. 
 
 Their 
 sincerity. 
 
 strikingly progressive became stereotyped. A set o 
 men whose great worth to us consists in their 'bein^ 
 the most ordinary specimens of the race were elevatec 
 into heroes ; what is still worse, the very idea of i 
 divine education of the race through these specimens 
 of it was practically annulled. Milton has increasec 
 his manifold claims upon our gratitude by affording 
 us the most illustrious example of a perverted method 
 which one moment treats these records as exceptional]} 
 sacred, the next as affording models which all mer 
 may follow. We justify the true meaning of boti 
 opinions and reconcile them, if we suppose that thej 
 are lesson books for mankind, teaching by experiment 
 what is incompatible with the order of human ex- 
 istence, gradually discovering the principles which are 
 at the root of it. 
 
 Looked at in this way the patriarchal story may 
 be (I conceive has been), more profitable than any 
 other in making readers aware of the confusions 
 which Polygamy must introduce into every family 
 circle; nay, in shewing them how incompatible it is 
 with the existence of a family. We find in these 
 records the absence of any effort to make out a case 
 for the patriarchs. There are in them no doubt 
 pastoral pictures which artists of after times have 
 delighted to dwell upon. There are, besides these, 
 acts of brutal violence such as are most likely to 
 occur in the lives of real shepherds; but which are 
 altogether disagreeable to those who prefer Arcadian 
 shepherds. The tenderness of Jacob for Eachel is 
 exquisitely beautiful ; along with it we have the quar- 
 rels of the sisters, his own partiality and the effects 
 of it upon his children. That which I observed as 
 
HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 S3 
 
 a remarkable feature of the Homeric legends is even 
 more conspicuous in the patriarchal histories. There 
 is no talk about morality; no dogmas about that 
 which ought not to be ; but a narrative, revealing in 
 acts what could be only imperfectly enunciated in 
 words, even if the time had come for enunciating it. 
 We may hail with great delight the Hellenic free- 
 dom from the mischiefs of Polygamy. But Pales- 
 tine, not Greece, has made us feel the mischiefs of 
 it, has enabled us to perceive by what unseen pro- 
 cesses, and under what living teacher, Greece must 
 have attained to her exemption from its curses. 
 Under what living teacher I say ; for those who 
 have supposed that Greece owed this or any other 
 blessing to Hebrew traditions are obliged in the first 
 place to interpolate history with fancies, and secondly 
 to deny the testimony of Scripture that there is one 
 Lord over all nations. 
 
 M. Comte has assuredly, then, no right to credit 
 the middle ages with the chief and most effectual 
 testimony on behalf of Monogamy. What he means 
 doubtless is that chivalry involved a reverence and 
 worship of women, which cannot be paralleled, though 
 there may be many foretastes of it, in the ancient 
 world. That worship, as a counteraction of the Maho- 
 metan tendency to degrade women into servants or 
 instruments of a tyrant's pleasure, was of inestimable 
 worth. But the abuses of the Courts of Love to 
 which M, Comte points as proofs that the mediaeval 
 Church — or as he calls it. Theology — ^was unable to 
 vindicate the purity of the household, grew out of 
 this worship; in this instance, as in every other, the 
 idolater degraded the object . of his idolatry, The 
 
 How any 
 people have 
 become 
 Monoga- 
 mic. 
 
 The 
 
 mediaval 
 
 chivalry. 
 
54 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The rela- 
 tion de- 
 stroyed by 
 the at- 
 tempts to 
 glorify 
 either sex 
 to the dis- 
 parage- 
 ment of 
 the other. 
 
 The 
 
 Mormon 
 
 Polygamy. 
 
 Thelessons 
 which it 
 contains 
 for Ameri- 
 can and 
 other 
 Christians, 
 
 superiority of the sex waS asserted; its dignity wa 
 undermined. Why it must be so I think you ma; 
 gather from the hints which I have brought togethe 
 in this lecture. The relation of the man and womai 
 which is expressed in marriage, the dependence o 
 each upon the other, is lost in the attempt to exal 
 either at the expense of the other. Separate then 
 that you may glorify the strength of the man or th( 
 tenderness of the woman, — the strength and the tender 
 ness depart, either because the strength becomes bruta 
 and the tenderness imbecility, or because the strengtl 
 apes the tenderness and the tenderness the strength 
 Proclaim their union, not as the result of any systen 
 but as involved in the Order of the Universe, as im 
 plicitly confessed by every society which has not beei 
 given over to brutality — and you may hope to see th< 
 meaning of the union better understood, the contra 
 dictions of it more thoroughly exposed by every fresl 
 light that is thrown on past ages or on the present age 
 There are some who tremble when they hear of th( 
 attempts to found a new Polygamy in the West undei 
 the shadow of Christian civilisation. I apprehend sue! 
 a spectacle may be of the greatest service to Christiai 
 civilisation if it is turned to right account. Let th( 
 Polygamy of the Mormons be presented to us in th< 
 most favourable light by the most impartial observers 
 Let it be declared as loudly as you please that thost 
 who are adopted as wives by any distinguished prophei 
 are content with their position, even proud of it*. Stil 
 there is no question whatever that the position is on( 
 of servitude; that the women are used to perfom 
 
 • (1871.) Becent occurrences apparently make this conoesBioi 
 quite unnecessary. 
 
BUSBANDS AND WIVES. 
 
 55 
 
 certain works for their masters. If tlie civilised Chris- 
 tians have understood that to be the position of the 
 one wife ; if they have had no higher conception of the 
 marriage relation — it is good for them to behold the 
 full development of their own principle, to see how 
 much more perfectly it may be realised if the form 
 which they have deemed sacred is abandoned. It may 
 be a startling discovery; it may shake all their surface 
 morality. But it may drive them to ask for the ground 
 on which their morality rests; to see whether it has 
 been created by social conventions, or is itself at the 
 very basis of society. Clearly the States by mere force 
 have not been able to put down Mormonism*. Most 
 thankful we should be that they have not. By giv- 
 ing up Slavery, by overthrowing the horrors which it 
 introduced- into the marriage relation — horrors with 
 which nothing in the worst records of Polygamy 
 can be compared — ^they have borne the true witness 
 against Mormonism. Keforming their own civilisa- 
 tion, they have taken the true course for protecting 
 themselves against • any attempt^ organic or inorganic, 
 to graft the Oriental civilisation upon it. Repenting 
 of the blasphemy which led them to plead the divine 
 authority for making women into far worse than chat- 
 tels, they have done what they could to vindicate 
 the true Scripture idea, that the man cannot be 
 without the woman nor the woman without the man 
 if there is a Lord in whom they are one. 
 
 Against every notion of the subjection of women 
 to Force that doctrine has borne, and does bear, the 
 
 * (1871.) I do not alter this sentence ; apparently it is not ' mere 
 force ' ; but law working with a growing discontent in the victims of 
 Hormou fyrouily which is threatening a change in their institutions. 
 
 PECI. nil 
 
 The protest 
 against the 
 Subjection 
 of women 
 to Force. 
 
56 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The Mar- 
 liageunion 
 determines 
 the rela- 
 tion of the 
 sexes to 
 each other. 
 
 Single life 
 a reflection 
 of the mar- 
 ried life. 
 
 most weighty testimony. Wherever Christians have 
 adopted that theory of subjection, they may have 
 quoted the Bible glibly in its defence, but they have 
 known in their hearts that they were fighting against 
 the Bible. All civilisation, so far as it has been Chris- 
 tian, has been at war with the doctrine ; every return 
 to it has been a relapse into barbarism. But the 
 proclamation of the independence of women is not a 
 counteraction of it — is, I believe, another road to it. 
 That is an attempt to deny the physical order, under 
 pretence of asserting a moral order; it ends in an in- 
 vasion of one as much as the other. There will be 
 perpetual alternations of slavery on both sides : slavish 
 submission to the attractions of the weak, slavish sub- 
 mission to the force of the strong; until we look upon 
 the relation of Marriage as that which expresses and 
 embodies the principle of the union of the sexes, thejr 
 necessary dependence upon each other. No statistics 
 can in the least affect that position. In any given 
 community there may be preponderance of males or 
 females. Thousands of causes may make it the duty 
 of numbers in either to prefer a single life to a mar- 
 ried one. But there will be in the single man the 
 habit of reverence, of chivalry, the desire to learn from 
 women what they can teach much better than men; 
 there will be in the single woman the grace and dignity 
 which belongs to the wife; many of the gifts and 
 qualities which are seen in the highest form in the 
 mother; always a willingness to receive from men 
 what they better than women can impart. Every one 
 has seen such approximations to this state of things, 
 such proofs that it is what makes life useful, beautiful, 
 human, that he may well join with M. Comte in 
 
SUSBAN^DS AND WIVES. 
 
 57 
 
 The idola- 
 try of 
 women. 
 
 exclaiming against boisterous self-assertion on either 
 side as disorderly and injurious. He may join with the 
 same writer likewise in his earnest protests against the 
 licence of Divorce which some European countries have 
 sanctioned, and which Milton — ^logically I think — con- 
 nected with his defence of Polygamy. For these services 
 we owe the French Philosopher great thanks, because 
 he is maintaining a very ancient principle which, as he 
 rightly says, the anarchy of our times has disturbed. 
 When he seeks to build the worship of women on a 
 positive foundation, he is maintaining a very ancient 
 practice — one into which men in all ages and under 
 various impulses have fallen; one which has been 
 largely developed in our time; one which may be a 
 needful protest against tendencies to brutalise instead 
 of to deify the female sex; but which will vanish 
 along with them to its great blessing whenever the 
 true order of human life is fully recognised. 
 
 Any consideration of the legal status of women, 
 about which we have heard so much in recent contro- 
 versies, would be manifestly out of place in such a 
 lecture as this. I would however make this remark. 
 The perfect Trust which I have maintained to be im- 
 plied in the relation of husband and wife, would be 
 wrongly appealed to by those who oppose any measures 
 for protecting the distinct property of women unless 
 they are willing to base all legislation upon this trust. 
 It is Trust of each in the other ; it cannot be demanded 
 of one' more than of the other. Where the true i^^o? 
 prevails, any rules about property will be unnecessary ; 
 the cry for rules is an intimation that it does not pre- 
 vail. The moralist, if he enters into the region of 
 positive law, must take care that he maintains his own j 'property 
 
 Maxims 
 respecting 
 
^g 
 
 jbOMESTio Morality. 
 
 LEOT. III. 
 
 and the 
 laws which 
 regulate it, 
 cannot be 
 immediate- 
 ly deduced 
 from the 
 principles 
 of Domes- 
 tic Moral- 
 ity. 
 
 ground. He affirms the existence of a relation which 
 the Lawgiver can neither establish nor ignore. He 
 does not pronounce what regulations may be needful 
 for the defence of Property where the relation has been 
 forgotten. But if he is silent on this point, he is not 
 indifferent to it. Property wants the help of the 
 Kelation, though the Relation can dispense with the 
 Property. When Trust vanishes from the Fatnily, 
 commercial men may feel their need of it — may seek 
 for it eagerly — but they will not find it*. 
 
 * I would earnestly advise my readers to study a pamphlet "On 
 the Education and Employment of Women," hy Mrs George Butler. 
 He will see how much I am indebted to it; how feebly I have repeated 
 some of the sentiments which are beautifully and powerfully ex- 
 pressed ia it. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 (3) BROTHERS 12^1) SISTHRS. 
 
 If I had thought that bright and beautiful pictures of 
 domestic life would enable you best to enter into the 
 subject of my last lecture, I might have found them in 
 our English writers of poetry and prose. I deliberately 
 left them for such a dark and terrible tragedy as that of 
 the Agamemnon. For I would not have you think of 
 relations as if they were — what some seem to consider 
 them — the ornaments and embellishments of our exist- 
 ence ; additions on the whole, though with many draw- 
 backs, to the sum of its happiness. It is of relations as 
 the core of human society that I speak, as implied not 
 only in its well-being but in its very being. If we do 
 not take account of those societies in which we must 
 exist, we shall attach a very disproportionate value to 
 those in which we may exist. The Class and the Club 
 will be superlatively precious and dear as the Family, is 
 lost out of sight. Men will recognise themselves more 
 and more by their badges and colours when they cease 
 to care about the ties of blood. So with all our talk 
 about the greatest happiness of the greatest number, 
 the number to which we attach any real importance 
 
 Danger of 
 treating 
 Relations 
 as if they 
 were not 
 involved in 
 our exist- 
 ence. 
 
 What the 
 greatest 
 nurriber 
 means 
 
6o 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 when the 
 Family is 
 forgotten. 
 
 Houses 
 cannot he 
 disregard- 
 ed by the 
 historical 
 critic. 
 
 Theirplace 
 in the epic 
 and the 
 drama. 
 
 will be after all a very small one. The greatest number 
 for wbicii we sball care will be that which uses our 
 shibboleths, which favours our sect. If we can persuade 
 the greatest number to identify their greatest happiness 
 with those shibboleths and that sect we shall pay it 
 honour ; if the greatest number should have some other 
 conception of happiness we shall regard it with as 
 much contempt as the most exclusive haters of the 
 common herd. 
 
 My object is therefore to lead you away from what 
 seems to me an utterly false method of estimating 
 human beings ; that which proceeds upon the principle 
 of counting heads. I find men and women in families. 
 I do not find that in practice we can overlook or ignore 
 this fact. I do not see why we should try to overlook 
 or ignore it in theory. History, I perceive, takes great 
 note of it ; more not less since it has become critical. 
 Families and houses appear very considerable items in 
 our most recent books ; their effect for good or for evil 
 upon the course of events in every land, is admitted 
 with greater clearness just as our observations become 
 more exact. The stock in trade of the sensation novel- 
 ist consists in flagrant outrages that have been com- 
 mitted against them ; these it is supposed will stimu- 
 late the jaded appetite of fashionable readers more 
 than incidents of any other kind. The contrast be- 
 tween these stories and those of the early or the later 
 Greek ages to which I adverted in my last lecture is 
 sufficiently striking. There was clear, free, living 
 description in the first ; no fever, no violent excitement 
 of any kind. There was deep reflection in the second ; 
 but the stories Vfhich were chosen by the dramatist 
 were familiar to his audience, there were no starts and 
 
BROTBERS AND SISTERS. 
 
 6l 
 
 surprises in them ; everyliliing to solemnise the mind, 
 not to agitate .and distract it. Yet both had this like- 
 ness to the wonderment-maker of our times. Violations 
 of domestic relationships supplied to both their most 
 characteristic subjects. The legend of ^gisthus and 
 Clytemnestra, of Orestes and his sister, was one that 
 every Athenian knew. The poet sought for the mean- 
 ing of it ; traced the different steps in the story ; saw 
 how past acts had contributed to the crime ; what after 
 acts were the avengers of it ; so left to all generations 
 a witness how the relations which men and women trifle 
 with are the ground of their existence ; how social 
 order is subverted when they are set at nought. Let it 
 be admitted, nay let it be strongly proclaimed, that the 
 poet was producing a work of art, not a sermon about 
 the marriage bond. Because it was a sincere work of 
 art, because he looked into the spirit of facts and did 
 not try to twist them for the sake of any conclusion, 
 therefore this testimony to domestic morality, as some- 
 thing deeper than all maxims of moralists, as implied in 
 the very constitution of the world, came out of his 
 tragedy. 
 
 A precisely similar testimony with regard to another 
 relation, that of which I proposed to speak this morn- 
 ing, is borne by that Greek Trilogy which concerns the 
 destiny of CEdipus. That story too, even when treated 
 by the greatest genius, could have had none of the 
 effect of surprise on those who witnessed the representa- 
 tion of it. Every incident was famihar to them ; they 
 would have resented any wilful variation from the 
 tradition of their childhood. But here the culminating 
 point in the misery of the house is the fall of the two 
 brothers. That rested in the Greek imagination as the 
 
 The le- 
 gends not 
 for the ear 
 or the eye, 
 hut jor tlie 
 heart. 
 
 The story 
 of CEdipus. 
 
62 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Eteocles 
 and Poly- 
 nices. 
 
 The man- 
 ner spe- 
 cially be- 
 longing to 
 each rela- 
 tion is 
 demanded 
 hy every 
 other. 
 
 result of the previous confusions ; as the sigin that the 
 foundations of the Theban city were broken up and 
 could only be restored by the death of both the rivals. 
 Most exquisitely indeed is the horror relieved — most 
 beautifully is the lesson of it deepened — by the devotion 
 of the sister to that brother whose body the king's 
 edict had condemned to lie unburied ; by hef belief in 
 a primitive and everlasting ordinance which none im- 
 posed by a mortal could repeal. Art required both 
 sides of the picture, and Art was faithful to fact in 
 presenting both. Through them, not contemplated 
 separately but together, we apprehend the ij^o? which 
 the relation of brothers and sisters developes. 
 
 When I spoke of Authority and Obedience as that 
 part of the domestic character which is involved in the . 
 relation of Father to Son, I took pains to shew you 
 that what we learn from that relation, what ceases to 
 have any meaning when the sense of that relation is 
 lost, is nevertheless not confined to it. When I spoke 
 of Trust as the characteristic quality of the conjugal 
 relation, I did not the least question that without Trust 
 there could be no real authority in the parent, no real 
 obedience in the child. The parallel observation that 
 there may be an obedience in the Wife, an authority in 
 the Husband, I cared less to insist upon, lest I should 
 be supposed to plead for the sort of subjection by which 
 some earnest philosophers are scandalised. But having 
 once maintained that obedience, instead of being ano- 
 ther name for Slavery, is incompatible with it, is the 
 one defence against it, I need have no hesitation in 
 using the old language respecting the wife and in 
 believing that it denotes a state of feeling which is 
 elevating not degrading to her. So in passing to the 
 
BROTHERS ANB SISTERS. 
 
 63 
 
 relation of brotlier and sister, I may most fully admit 
 that Trust belongs to the very essence of it, that with- 
 out Trust it becomes a huge contradiction. I may 
 admit also that Primogeniture often confers an autho- 
 rity of brother over brother ; that the difference of Sex, 
 and other differences, often lead sisters to acknowledge 
 an authority in brothers. I may hold that this autho- 
 rity, however liable to abuse and whatever false deduc- 
 tions may be made from it, is an important and healthy 
 element in Social Morality. But yet I may still look 
 for some quality which shall be distinctive of this rela- 
 tion as Authority is of the paternal, as Trust is of the 
 conjugal, some quality which shall be its contribution 
 to the domestic life, and through the domestic life to 
 the life of the most expanded Societies. The story of 
 (Edipus, with its beauty and its horrors, fixes the name 
 which we may give to this brotherly and sisterly ^^0?. 
 If I call it the ^^09 of Consanguinity, I may seem to 
 choose a legal and technical name. But my object is 
 now as in the former instances to shew what primitive 
 and domestic principle is hidden under legal and tech- 
 nical names, determines their signification, expands as 
 well as limits their application. 
 
 When I speak of Consanguinity I of course acknow- 
 ledge a physical fact, I assume that fact as inseparable 
 irom any principle which may be involved in it. What 
 I affirm is, that in human beings this physical fact is 
 .connected with a fixed relation, and that in this rela- 
 tion a certain habit or manner is implied. It is im- 
 plied in the relation, not artificially attached to it by 
 certain later conventions. Where it is lost the relation 
 is denied; Society if it is more than a collection of 
 brute$ is subverted, 
 
 Trust in- 
 dispertsablt 
 to the brO' 
 therly re- 
 lations. 
 
 The TJBos 
 of consan- 
 guinity. 
 
 It is the 
 distinctive, 
 ly frater- 
 nalchafac- 
 ter. 
 
64 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 liECT. IV. 
 
 The radi- 
 cal princi- 
 ple sur- 
 vives a- 
 midst all 
 
 and deve- 
 
 The gran- 
 deur of the 
 brotherly 
 relation. 
 
 This sense of Consanguinity implies primarily the 
 acknowledgment of a common origin; not necessa- 
 rily the relation both to a father and mother, but un- 
 doubtedly to one. It is capable of very great exten- 
 sion ; as Sir H. Maine has told us, it may be imagined 
 when it does not exist. Yet the developements of it 
 through any degrees of cousinhood ; the dreams of it in 
 a remote age ; the counterfeits of it by legal adoption ; 
 never really interfere with the first and pure form of it. 
 In the most complicated Societies the brother and 
 sister still retain their dignity and position. They are 
 not lost in any tables of descent; families which can 
 trace no descent feel this bond as firm, as imperishable, 
 as those which are most conspicuous for their quarter- 
 ings. The significance of the relation, its enormous 
 influence, the monstrous rebellions against it, may be 
 learnt better perhaps in the household of a peasant 
 than of a prince. Yet it is more in the last than all 
 possessions, all titles, all expectations. What homage 
 is paid to it concerns nations more than all the circum- 
 stances of their outward destiny, than the wisdom or 
 folly of any Legislature or any Administration. 
 
 I use that language begging you ^o meditate upon 
 it. At first it may sound strange ; then you may deem 
 it the flattest of commonplaces. I would rather you 
 rested in the latter opinion. It is a commonplace, and 
 may become a very flat one if we make it flat. It may 
 also rise to an alarming height before each one of us, 
 as he thinks within himself — ' In this relation I am or 
 ' I have been. What has been its importance to me ; 
 'how have I fulfilled it?' No one who seriously asks 
 himself these questions every day will doubt that this 
 Consanguinity has been a mighty power for him ; whe- 
 
BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 
 
 65 
 
 ther he has turned it to a good or a bad account, it has 
 been more to him than all the controversies in all the 
 schools of philosophy, in all the diets of kingdoms 
 or consistories of churchmen. 
 
 In every English household of our day we may 
 study this relation ; we may trace its effects upon our 
 national society. But you may study it also in the 
 Hindoo village of the present and of former- ages. You 
 will be presented with the most startling phenomena 
 concerning it as you read the history of the Ottoman 
 Empire; the brothers' murders which were necessary 
 to consolidate it and to preserve. the succession. There 
 is no monarchy of Christendom which does not teem 
 with illustrations of it. Aristocracy in all its aspects 
 brings us back to the primacy of brothers as well as 
 their conflicts with each other. You have signs wher- 
 ever you look that what concerns you more than the 
 outward economy of the world, equally concerns all 
 people in all parts of the world. The lessons of the 
 Dramatist are graven on the records of mankind. The 
 frightfulness of Incest, the temptation of brothers, for 
 the sake of dominion, to lift themselves up against each 
 other with a ferocity to which there is no parallel in 
 the quarrels of mere neighbours, the way in which, 
 amidst all these outrages upon it, the common blood as- 
 serts itself, the triumph of the human relation over the 
 savage instincts which set it at nought — the triumph 
 won by feminine weakness and devotion — these truths 
 could only be illustrated by fiction because Sophocles 
 had realised the force of them in the actual history of 
 his land. 
 
 No land indeed afforded such a witness of them as 
 that one in which democratic institutions had esta- 
 M. M. E 
 
 LBOT. IV. 
 
 When we 
 aretostudy 
 its nature 
 and influ- 
 ence. 
 
 The lesson 
 books to be 
 found in 
 every age 
 and coun- 
 try. 
 
 Literatwe 
 a witness 
 to facts. 
 
66 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Greek de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 The foes to 
 consangui- 
 nity. 
 
 blished themselves, in whicli the claim of wit and talent 
 to rule was most intensely felt. Why should one man 
 have possessions jather than another; exercise autho- 
 rity more than another? Not in virtue of brute 
 strength, that was a barbarian's notion of power; the 
 man could subdue creatures that were vastly bigger 
 than himself, provided with beaks or talons that he 
 had not. For he had an inward art, a craft that was 
 not theirs. By that same art or craft he could prevail 
 over the stupider, if they were the more bulky, parts of 
 mankind ; he could overcome the apparent force of the 
 Persians, in whose land, he was Settled ; he could bring 
 his own countrymen to bow before him, to confess his 
 supremacy. It was a mighty persuasion; how many 
 encouragements there were in the experience of the 
 past, ia what he saw around him, to make it good ! 
 What a restless desire for dominion and conquest it 
 created ! How sure it was to find its way into the 
 heart of families, to make the clever or cunning brother 
 feel that he might overreach one older and less viva- 
 cious, might perhaps displace him in his inheritance or 
 his father's affection ! Why should there be anything 
 in a family but this strife of intellect, this struggle for 
 predominance ? There it encountered the troublesome 
 antagonist, the sense of consanguinity. The feeling of 
 rivalry, the passion for dominion, did not dwell alone 
 in these members of the household, who seemed to 
 stand all on the same level, whom so many circum- 
 stances seemed to point out as equals. They might be 
 equals but they were kinsmen. Which recollection 
 was to be the stronger ? The struggle was often deadly 
 between them ; often the passion for independence 
 triumphed ; often all thoughts of kin were cast to the 
 
BE0TBER8 AND SISTERS. 
 
 67 
 
 winds. "WTiat were they ? Why should clever men be 
 bound by them 1 They were gossamer threads ; a child's 
 knife might cut them in twain. But then again what 
 strength there was in these invisible threads? How 
 they wound themselves about the hearts of those who 
 were most impatient of them ! How when they went 
 forth on their cruise of independence, in the search for 
 worlds where they might have their own way and not 
 be checked by old associations, .the old associations 
 came back. Neither seas and mountains, nor the sight 
 of new men, nor the hearing of new tongues, succeeded 
 in 'dissolving the old spell. The family, the tribe, 
 reappeared in the untrodden soil; the names, the 
 customs that had belonged to the hearth and house- 
 hold, drove out those which they found, or, blending 
 with them, transformed them. It was the glory of the 
 Greek in his native home to assert his independence 
 and superiority. Is it not his glory in the new land to 
 assert his Doric or Ionic derivation ; to shew what it is 
 to be one of- a race 1 
 
 See how Consanguinity works in those who give 
 the greatest signs that they are determined to have 
 a way of their own, that they are born to be founders 
 of Societies! Their zeal to be independent becomes 
 the instrument of asserting relationship. So soon as 
 they begin to found Societies they acknowledge a So- 
 ciety which was founded for them. 
 
 Amidst all the whirl of events in the Greek cities, 
 amidst all social strifes and schemes of legislation, 
 speeches of rhetoricians, theories of philosophers, we 
 cannot then forget the brother and sister. Turn to a 
 histoiy which is free from these interests; one in 
 which law and policy have not yet appeared. Con- 
 
 e2 
 
 The per- 
 manence of 
 it in the 
 most rest- 
 less races. 
 
 How it 
 works in 
 the foun- 
 dation of 
 new so- 
 cieties. 
 
 The He- 
 brew re- 
 cords. 
 
68 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Isaac avd 
 Ishmael. 
 
 Esau and 
 Jacob. 
 
 sider that book of Genesis to which I referred last 
 week for its illustration of the marriage relation, as 
 well as of the effects of polygamy in confusing it. 
 There you have another and much simpler exhibition 
 of the brotherly relation. Simpler but not the least 
 more flattering. Free from the impediments of law, 
 from the social complexities of later days, you have 
 the family life, especially in these aspects of it, clearly 
 set before you. I leave critics to discourse about 
 documents, what their value is, or whence they 
 come. I merely take what I find, I know not what 
 omissions or alterations could convert it into a more 
 instructive commentary on ancient life or on modern 
 life ; on the smallest commonwealth of classical Greece, 
 or on the greatest democratical community of the 
 western world. 
 
 In the house of Abraham we have an indica- 
 tion — little more than an indication — of the strifes 
 which might arise between brothers like Isaac and 
 Ishmael, with a common father, with hostile mothers, 
 one a concubine. After the separation and the es- 
 tablishment of one as the head of an Arab tribe 
 or horde, the sense of a common blood brings them 
 togethet at their father's grave; amidst all the con- 
 flicts of after ages the old tie of Ishmaelite to Israelite 
 is never forgotten. 
 
 Far more distinct and vivid is the picture of the 
 relations between Esau and Jacob. The plain man 
 with his tendency to craft and cowardice, the genial 
 hunter full of outspoken affection and hatred, have 
 reappeared in every age, have been claimed as re- 
 presentative figures in every region of the earth. 
 Amidst the strifes of characters so opposite, each de- 
 
BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 
 
 69 
 
 sirous of dominion, eacli connecting it with a father's 
 blessing, there is still the mightiest sense of consangui- 
 nity. They plot against each other, and they em- 
 brace ; the name of the father about whose favour 
 they dispute, and his grave, are still meeting-points 
 for the Edomite chieftain and the heir of the Cove- 
 nant. 
 
 Then follows the story which has had such power 
 over the minds of children and adults, a story full 
 of fierce passions and wild deeds, but exhibiting the 
 sense of a common blood, in those who are taking 
 a crafty and brutal revenge for the seduction of their 
 sister, even in those who are punishing their father's 
 partiahty by casting their brother into a pit. The 
 sense of relationship is conspicuous in the oppressors 
 as well as in the victim. It goes with him into the 
 prison and into Pharaoh's palace; it is awakened in 
 them by a punishment which appears to have no 
 connexion with the crime. Of course I accept the 
 story like that of the patriarchal polygamy as the 
 genuine record of a divine Education. But since it 
 is the education of men with the coarsest natures, 
 as little disposed as any could be to fraternal sym- 
 pathies, it illustrates the ordinary history and ex- 
 perience of mankind more completely than any other 
 can. In this case as in the one I considered the last 
 week, if I accept the Scripture narrative at all, I 
 must accept it as teaching how Greeks or any human 
 beings were enabled to rise above their own selfish 
 tendencies and prepossessions and to become capable 
 of any .Social Morality, I may shew you in a sub- 
 sequent lecture that their own apprehensions upon the 
 subject, if very different from those of the Hebrews, 
 
 Joseph and 
 Ms bre- 
 thren. 
 
 An illus- 
 tration of 
 ordinary 
 domestic 
 antipa- 
 thies and 
 sympa- 
 thies. 
 
70 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Wider 
 notions of 
 brotlier- 
 hood not to 
 be consi- 
 dered here. 
 
 Strictness 
 of the 
 Greeh and 
 Jewish 
 conception. 
 
 were not different in this respect ; both traced human 
 relationships to a divine origin. 
 
 I have dwelt much on the word Consanguinity 
 in this lecture in connexion with the brotherly re- 
 lation. We shall hear in due time of trade brother- 
 hoods, of religious brotherhoods and sisterhoods, of a 
 universal brotherhood. We shall have to enquire into 
 the force of language which has been so widely dif- 
 fused throughout Christendom. But we must not an- 
 tedate these enquiries. We may weaken our belief 
 in the reality of the domestic bond, if we introduce 
 more general thoughts prematurely. I have purposely 
 taken my illustrations from two countries which we 
 are wont to consider specially exclusive; from the 
 family of Abraham, with its Covenant and its special 
 rite ; from the Hellenic race, the very name of which 
 marks it as antagonist to the Barbarian. Whatever 
 principles might be hereafter developed in the history 
 of either or both of these peoples it is important to 
 remember that consanguinity bore for each of them 
 its most direct and obvious signification. There might 
 be a temptation sometimes to extend it, sometimes to 
 contract it. But the thought of an actual brotherhood 
 was assumed in the existence of the Jewish tribes, and 
 was never obliterated. We know from a familiar story 
 that the Greek disputed the right of a Macedonian 
 monarch to attend the Olympic festival, because the 
 purity of his blood was suspected. 
 
 I do not wish you to forget the connexion between 
 brotherhood in its most limited and in its most com- 
 prehensive sense. I wish you to preserve the, feeling 
 of that connexion. I shall have to shew you what 
 modem Europe has lost by turning a word into a 
 
BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 
 
 n 
 
 metaphor whicli should have represented the greatest 
 reality. That is my reason for deferring the consi- 
 deration of this use of the word till we can find 
 some substantial ground for it. But there is one 
 remark which I must make in this place. Fraternity 
 has in later days been closely associated with Equality. 
 We have seen from the history of the Greek republics, 
 as well as from the simple patriarchal narrative, how 
 naturally the thought of Equality springs out of this 
 household relation, and what was in the earliest times 
 the restraint upon it. There is a sense of equality in 
 brothers which there never can be between fathers 
 and sons ; which only starts up artificially, when the 
 feeling of the relation has been enfeebled, between 
 husbands and wives. Brothers are to be the founders 
 of new households, perhaps of new cities and common- 
 wealths. Among them appear all distinctions of tem- 
 per, taste, intellect. One has this claim, one that, 
 to superiority. The common English household ex- 
 plains the working of these influences ; Greek factions 
 were the result of them. Equality is asserted in 
 them — Equality is disturbed by them. Fraternity 
 comes in partly to soften the cry for equality, partly 
 to make the fulfilment of it possible. The compe- 
 tition of interests is checked as the sense of the rela- 
 tionship is strengthened; with the sense of the rela- 
 tionship comes also the feeling of distinct powers which 
 each may put forth for the help not the overthrow 
 of the other, of distinct vocations to which each may 
 devote himself, and so may make the destiny of the 
 whole family more complete. 
 
 That is a very simple statement of what you all 
 have in some degree experienced — ^the statement of 
 
 Equality 
 and Fra- 
 ternity. 
 
 The con- 
 flict be-! 
 tween the 
 two ideas. 
 
 Thefellow- 
 ship of 
 brothers. 
 
72 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Competi- 
 tion. 
 
 Civiliza- 
 tion not 
 the cause 
 of disor- 
 ders be- 
 tween bro- 
 thers. 
 
 a principle, as I think, of the profoundest importance 
 and the most unlimited extent I dare not tell you 
 how much I feel that competition, which some deem 
 the great sign of social advancement, the great help 
 to modern learning, is threatening the existence of 
 Society, is undermining knowledge. Yet I have no 
 dream of checking it by artificial expedients. I shall 
 endeavour to shew you hereafter how it becomes 
 associated with that consciousness of a distinct life, 
 which I believe cannot be too vigorous in a man, 
 without which nations must perish. It is the bro- 
 therly relation in which I find the true antidote to 
 the destructive tendency of competition, the true vin- 
 dication of all in it that is sound and healthful. His- 
 tory bears that witness to us ; may each of us realise it 
 for himself! 
 
 That we may do this, I have given you . in the 
 patriarchal records evidence enough that the conten- 
 tions of brothers are not produced by the circumstances 
 of civilization ; that to wish those circumstances away 
 for the sake of obtaining a more affectionate brotherly 
 intercourse, is in the last degree idle and ungrateful, 
 In the household stripped bare of all arts, luxuries, 
 refinements, there are rivalries, hatreds — the impulses 
 that lead to fratricide. But learn the other part of 
 the lesson also. These rivalries, hatreds, impulses to 
 fratricide, are all rebellions against an established 
 order, are all violations of a relation in which we 
 actually exist. You may call them natural if you 
 please ; as I have said again and again I do not 
 complain of that word. But if so submission to Na- 
 ture means ceasing to be men; the choice of an in- 
 human state. 
 
BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 
 
 n 
 
 And whilst I am most anxious not to charge any 
 improvements or progressive developements of Social 
 Life v/ith evils which become apparent in its earliest 
 stages, I must also repeat the maxim that every step 
 onwards is a blessing or a curse, according as the first 
 steps are securely taken. The craving for ownership, 
 for dominion, is that which distracts the household. 
 Whether that is turned into a healthy craving, or 
 becomes the seed of all mischief to him who cherishes 
 it, and to aU with whom he is brought into contact, 
 depends upon the question whether it is harmonized 
 with the feeling of relationship, or whether it tramples 
 that down. If the desire of possession and rule is 
 stronger in any man than the sense of brotherhood, 
 he may be a tyrant or a slave; or both in one. He 
 in whom the sense of brotherhood is uppermost may be 
 a sufferer and a victim, but he will help to preserve 
 Society from destruction. 
 
 Bnt what 
 civiliza- 
 tion shall 
 be is deter- 
 mined by 
 the degree 
 in which 
 these dis- 
 orders pre- 
 vail in the 
 family or 
 the order 
 conquers 
 them. 
 
LEOT. V. 
 
 The Do- 
 mestic In- 
 stitution. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 (4) MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 
 
 A PHRASE was heard very frequently in the Southern 
 States of America when Slavery prevailed there. It 
 was called a Domestic Institution. No arguments of 
 those who aimed at the abolition of Slavery were so 
 powerful as this language of its defenders in causing 
 it to be regarded with disgust and loathing. For 
 those who listened to it knew — those who uttered it 
 could not be ignorant — what kind of domestic Mo- 
 rality was associated with the legal dogma that the 
 negro was the chattel of his Master, and ought to be 
 dealt with as other chattels were. All relations of 
 father and child, of husband and wife, of brother and 
 sister, were thrown into the wildest confusion by the 
 practice which that tenet sanctioned. It was no ques- 
 tion of colour or race. The white was more degraded 
 by the presence of this anomaly in his household than 
 the black. For the honour of his skin, for the dignity 
 of his parentage, he had need to demand at any price 
 a deliverance from it. 
 
 But now that that deliverance has been effected — 
 now that we have no excuse for speaking harshly of 
 any southern planter or of his apologists — it may be 
 
MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 
 
 75 
 
 right for our own sakes to consider what this plea 
 meant. An expression does not gain such currency 
 as this gained, if there is not some foundation for it. 
 We were often reminded by slaveholders that there 
 are servants in most English households. We were 
 asked whether the only difference between these ser- 
 vants and slaves is that they receive certain wages, 
 and that they may at their pleasure change one master 
 for another. We were urged to consider that "this 
 "privilege has its attendant disadvantages; that the 
 "affection of the hireling is often far less than that 
 " of the Slave who has grown up, , who has perhaps 
 "been born on his Master's Estate, who has never 
 "known himself in any other character than as at- 
 "tached to him. There is no doubt," it was said, 
 " some difference in the independence of a man who 
 "lets himself out for a time, and one who is trans- 
 "fen-ed altogether to an owner. But it is a question 
 " of degree not of kind. Money settles in what posi- 
 "tion either the Slave or the so-called Servant shall 
 " stand to his Master. Money is more clearly and 
 "distinctly required as the bond of union in the lat- 
 "ter case than in the former." Reference was also 
 made to history. " The Greek Republics which were 
 "most democratical, in which the sense of Equality 
 "was most predominant, recognised Slavery. It was 
 "no offspring of Monarchy. It was intimately asso- 
 "ciated with the sense of Freedom and Citizenship. 
 "The Greek felt what he was, what he ought to be, 
 "when he contemplated the difference between his 
 "race and the races that were merely animal. Was 
 "not the slave like the Son, a part of the Roman 
 " Family ? Finally, what can be said of that Society 
 
 Wherein 
 does the 
 servant 
 differ from 
 the slave ? 
 
 Arguments 
 for the 
 second. 
 
 The Greeh, 
 the Raman, 
 the Jew, 
 all slave- 
 holders. 
 
1^ 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The 
 Greeks. 
 
 Aristotle. 
 
 The do- 
 minion of 
 the intel- 
 lect over 
 the ani- 
 mal. 
 
 " which Christians believe to have been divinely set 
 "apart, divinely organised?" 
 
 No questions are more pertinent to our present 
 subject than these ; I should conceive I was treating 
 the subject of Domestic Morality most carelessly if 
 I passed them over or only offered loose and general 
 answers to them. I will try to examine them in the 
 light of history. I hope I shall not shrink from ap- 
 plying the lessons of the past with all strictness to our 
 own practices. I will take the Greeks first, since the 
 most careful and systematic of their writers on Social 
 Morality has handled this topic and has given us a 
 kind of help in the investigation of it which we shall 
 scarcely find anywhere else. 
 
 Aristotle, as I have observed already, begins his 
 Politics from the Family Relations. Amongst these 
 he includes that of Master and Servant. He accepts 
 in the fullest sense the Greek faith about Slavery ; he 
 sustains it by his own arguments; he shews how 
 thoroughly his mind was penetrated by it. There 
 was a supremacy due to Intellect, i.e. to the man 
 over the animal. The Greek clearly possesses this 
 supremacy. However it came to him, it is his; he 
 must assert it. He can rule. He must shew that he 
 The position has often been maintained since; 
 
 can. 
 
 it has been applied to other races than the Hellenic; 
 it has never been more vigorously asserted or in more 
 various modes of speech than in our own day. But 
 I am not aware that Aristotle's reasonings have ever 
 been improved, that anything has been added to them, 
 except a little violence of temper into which he was 
 seldom betrayed. He had a thorough mastery of him- 
 self and of his doctrine. It was not with him a 
 
MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 
 
 77 
 
 rebellion against some other; it was a calm deliberate 
 assertion of what he perceived to be a fact, and of 
 an inference from that fact which appeared to him 
 inevitable. 
 
 According to this doctrine certain men should be 
 instruments, organs, through which certain other men 
 effect their purposes. There should be no genuine dif- 
 ference, as I observed in my lecture on the paternal 
 Relation, between the plough and him who drives the 
 plough, between the apparatus for cooking and the 
 cook. But is there no difference between them in 
 Aristotle's estimation? Assuredly the widest. For the 
 servant is part of the Family, if ever so subordinate 
 a part.. There is a relation between the Master and 
 the Servant; a relation which is afterwards to be 
 unfolded in the civic order. Because this relation 
 becomes associated with those of which we have spo- 
 ken already, the slave rises unawares from a pos- 
 session, an instrument, into a man. His position may 
 be justified by his animal 'tendencies. He may be 
 marked for servitude. He may be deemed incapable 
 of rule. But however incredible it may be, he is re- 
 lated to the ruler; that bond between them must not 
 be denied. 
 
 ' Mmt not he ;' you will say perhaps, ' in the theory 
 of a Philosopher.' By no means; the philosopher's 
 theory would permit that it should be denied. It is 
 the philosopher's faithful study of facts which sur- 
 mounts his theory, which compels him to confess what 
 his theory would contradict. But no philosopher and 
 no plain man could force any Master to admit the 
 slave as one of his relations ; could hinder him from 
 saymg 'He is my property. I have won him with 
 
 What such 
 a doctrine 
 should m- 
 volve. 
 
 Why it 
 does not 
 involve 
 this. 
 
 Aristotle's 
 theory 
 overcome 
 by his re- 
 verence for 
 fact. 
 
78 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 How far 
 the Greek 
 precedent 
 availedfor 
 the modern 
 slave- 
 holder. 
 
 my sword. I have purchased him with my money.' 
 That assuredly would be said ; it was the ordinary 
 tendency of every man to say it. All the ' circum- 
 stances of his position, all the lessons of his wisest 
 counsellors, seemed to point it out as the most rea- 
 sonable language. What proved it unreasonable? Sim- 
 ply that fact of the most ancient, of the most modern, 
 experience that the language which is applied to one 
 part of the family will gradually be applied to the 
 whole of it. The belief in Property will become the 
 absorbing belief in the mind of the Father; it will 
 convert his authority over his Son into mere Dominion. 
 It -will be a question between the husband and the 
 wife which shall have dominion over the other ; notions 
 of Property will regulate their union. Brothers will 
 view their relation in the same aspect; it will be a 
 struggle which shall possess most of that which the 
 father leaves. Here is the test of the two principles. 
 They will be always fighting in every man to what- 
 ever Society he belongs ; democratical, aristocratical, 
 monarchica,l. If he admits the principle of Property in 
 any case to be the ground of his connexion with one of 
 his own race, that principle becomes predominant in 
 his whole life ; if the domestic feeling is stronger in 
 him than the feeling of possession, that will work itself 
 out in him till it leavens his thoughts of every one with 
 whom he is brought into contact. 
 
 I take Aristotle then as expounding to us the 
 conditions and the contradictions of Greek Society, 
 and as foretelling what would be the conditions and 
 contradictions of Society in all lands. The American 
 who said that the acknowledgment of Equality did not 
 overcome — could not overcome — in him the contempt 
 
MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 
 
 79 
 
 of an inferior race, that -the fact of inferiority was 
 stronger than any theory, had a precedent for his 
 'statement in the experiences of the Hellenic races, 
 and in the most enlightened commentaries upon those 
 experiences. The American -vvho spoke of Slavery as 
 a Domestic Institution might also turn with much 
 profit and hope of confirmation for his doctrine to 
 the same source. Only then he would encounter the 
 discovery — :of which he could also supply abundant 
 illustrations from his own age and land — ^that Do- 
 mestic life must either subdue Slavery or be subdued 
 by it. 
 
 The Eoman Family may teach us more on this 
 subject than the Greek, not through philosophers, but 
 through the acknowledged facts of the history. The 
 Son, as you know, was in the family as a Servant ; 
 he had need of emancipation before he could rise 
 to his proper rights as a Citizen. The/Slave was in 
 the Family, and might also be emancipated, might 
 become a Citizen. Here was in a strict sense a 
 Domestic Institution. What was the effect of it? 
 That question cannot be answered by an appeal to 
 one set of facts. There are two opposite sets of facts 
 each resting on clear evidence. In one of the debates 
 on West Indian Slavery in the House of Commons, 
 when Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton had proposed a reso- 
 lution declaring it to be incompatible with Christi- 
 anity, Mr Canning appealed to the Sixth Satire of 
 Juvenal as shewing what the Slavery of the Koman 
 Empire was when Christianity appeared in the midst 
 of it. He quoted that speech of the Roman Matron 
 which ends with the well-known line. 
 
 Sic volo, sic jubeo ; stet pro ratione volttntas. 
 
 The Ro- 
 man slave. 
 
 Mr Ca/n- 
 ning^s ap- 
 peal to 
 Juvenal. 
 
8o 
 
 DOMESTia MORALITY. 
 
 What it 
 proves^ 
 
 This Sa- 
 tire does 
 not refer 
 only or 
 chiefly to 
 slaves. 
 
 The other 
 class of 
 facts. 
 
 The He- 
 brew slave. 
 
 Well ! that speech points to one class of facts quite 
 indisputable ; there might be the most reckless tyranny 
 exercised over the person of the slave. If Mr Can- 
 ning's respect for his audience and for the public 
 opinion of England had permitted him to adduce other 
 passages from the same Satire, he might have shewn 
 what an utter decay and overthrow of domestic life 
 generally was co-existent with this violence. He might 
 have proved that the saying 'omnia Romce venalia' 
 was illustrated by the son plotting for his father's 
 death, the wife for the husband's, the brother for 
 the brother's. But when we have wearied ourselves 
 with looking into those dreadful records, it is some 
 refreshment to recollect that the body of Roman freed- 
 men, not to speak of those special instances of the 
 class which we have been wont to connect with very 
 graceful portions of Latin literature, bear witness to 
 an influence of the other kind — to an elevation of the 
 servant, not a degradation of the son. I am not con- 
 sidering how far Legislation contributed to either re- 
 sult. I am maintaining that the Roman State could 
 not have existed, that Law would have perished alto- 
 gether, if family Relations had not counteracted the 
 mere money power; asserting for the slaves a place 
 among Romans and men. 
 
 But undoubtedly the Society of Palestine was a 
 more favourite argument with the supporters of Slavery, 
 in the Southern States of America, than that of Greece 
 or of Rome. Had it not a sacred even more than a 
 classical sanction? What I said on the subject of 
 Polygamy in a former Lecture makes any formal answer 
 to this question unnecessary. But I am glad to speak 
 of it in connexion with the phrase 'Domestic Institution.' 
 
MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 
 
 8i 
 
 We have seen how thoroughly the order of the Jewish 
 Commonwealth was laid in Domestic Institutions, or, 
 to use a less ambitious phrase, in the Family. All its 
 after Legislation is only intelligible when this ground is 
 assumed for it. The highest promise to the Family of 
 Abraham was that through it aU the families of the 
 earth should be blessed. However slight a meaning 
 might be attached to that promise by those who ac- 
 cepted it and spoke of it as the Israelite privilege, this 
 at least was an inevitable deduction from it. All 
 captives in war, all slaves purchased with money, came 
 inta the circle of the children of the Covenant ; their 
 condition might be comparatively ignominious; they 
 could not be treated as mere animals. They were in a 
 very practical as well as formal sense members of the 
 Family. The legislators and prophets of Israel in 
 general encouraged the slaughter of enemies in war, 
 discouraged the taking of them as prizes to enrich the 
 Conqueror. They dreaded, no doubt, the multiplica- 
 tion of Slaves; they saw the peril in which it would 
 involve the native Society. But all bondsmen, how- 
 ever they might be claimed and dealt with as the 
 property of particular householders, came — in that very 
 character — ^under the cognisance of the whole Common- 
 wealth ; could not be excluded from its protection. 
 The Master and Slave stood of necessity in a relation 
 to each other; Property in this as in all cases did 
 homage to the Uelation ; not the Eolation to the Pro- 
 perty. I do not mean that the lust of Property rebel- 
 led against this Eolation less among the Jews than 
 among the other peoples of the earth.' That Eebellion 
 is most conspicuous throiigh their whole history. Every 
 age exhibited some fr«sh instance of it. Every prophet 
 
 ffe was 
 emphati- 
 cally a 
 member of 
 thefamily. 
 
 The dread 
 of captives 
 charac- 
 teristie of 
 Jewish 
 patriots. 
 
 The prin- 
 ciple of 
 Jewish 
 society. 
 
82 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 lis over- 
 throw. 
 
 Inferences 
 from those 
 statements. 
 
 Modem 
 ^avery not 
 inherited 
 from the 
 old world 
 or the mid- 
 dle ages. 
 
 lifted up his voice against it, saw in the prevalence of 
 it the ruin of the land. In the final days of the Com- 
 monwealth the maxims of Property subdued all others ; 
 the religion became mainly a calculation of Profits and 
 Losses ; Mammon was worshipped in the Temple and 
 in the comers of streets as the true Lord of Heaven and 
 Earth. It did not signify much then whether the 
 servant was bought or hired ; whether he was or was 
 not esteemed a part of the Family. For what is the 
 Family in a Society of that kind? What man feels 
 that he is related to any other ? 
 
 If these observations are true, the supporters of 
 modern Slavery had an unquestionable right to claim 
 for it a Latin, an Hellenic, or a Hebrew ancestry. They 
 had a right to say that it was in Greece, in Rome, 
 in Judea a Domestic Institution. The resemblance 
 might have been pushed further. It might have been 
 shewn that the disorder of the Modern Nations, like 
 the disorder of the ancient, was inseparably connected 
 with the disposition to treat men as property ; that the 
 order of the Modem Nations, like the order of the 
 Ancient Nations, has always manifested itself in its 
 struggle against this disposition, in a victory over it. 
 These historical parallels may be of great profit to us. 
 But if we try to prove that we have inherited Slavery 
 either from the old world or from the middle ages, the 
 most notorious facts confute us. The Slavery in our 
 West India Islands, and in what were our colonies on 
 the American Continent, had not the faintest con- 
 nexion with the ancient Serfdom of Europe. It cannot 
 be traced, as we like to trace our abuses, to feudal 
 or papal traditions. It is of Protestant birth; it be- 
 longs to the Trade age. Men of iigh intelligence may 
 
MASTMRS ANH SERVANTS. 
 
 83 
 
 plagiarize from the Greeks and apply their doctrine of 
 the dominion of intellect over brute force to the case of 
 the white and the negro. But they know that the 
 white stooped to the brutality of the negro in the act of 
 capturing him ; increased his brutality in the process of 
 holding him; found his interest in warring against 
 intellect in those whom he possessed ; therefore gradu- 
 ally lost all feeling of the difference between Intellect 
 and mere force in himself. Let us make all possible 
 excuses for those who purchased slaves or received 
 them by inheritance ; but the arguments from reason 
 and religion must be regarded as altogether ex post 
 facto. The spirit of Trade, the desire for Property, 
 must be credited with the origin of the traffic, with the 
 maintenance of it, with the resistance to every proposal 
 for abolishing or even mitigating it. I wish you to 
 remember this, not because I am anxious to escape the 
 force of those arguments of the Slaveholders to which I 
 have referred, but because I feel how strong they are 
 still. They have survived the extinction of the laws 
 and customs which they were first invoked to defend. 
 The statement that the hireling servant, whether in 
 the household, the farm, or the factory, may be as little 
 regarded as any one who is bought and sold, is one 
 which we cannot afford to disregard. It is strictly true. 
 It points to a tendency which is in all of us — a 
 tendency very little affected by theories concerning 
 Government — ^not touched by any of the contrivances 
 or comforts of modem civilization — strengthened ra- 
 ther than weakened by the mercantile dogmas which 
 have supplanted the old feudal dogmas. The habit 
 of regarding separate possession as the basis of So- 
 ciety, as the end which all Society exists to secure, 
 
 F 2 
 
 It is strict- 
 ly the 
 creature of 
 trade. 
 
 Force of 
 the old 
 arguments 
 for slavery 
 against 
 ourselves. 
 
84 
 
 BOMESTie MORALITT. 
 
 Wages do 
 not affect 
 the rela- 
 tion be- 
 tween 
 
 master and 
 servant. 
 
 The two 
 modes of 
 owing this 
 social evil. 
 
 Service as- 
 sumed in 
 our com- 
 mon speech 
 to be noble. 
 
 leads directly to the expressions which we hear 
 so often: "I have paid the fellow for j his services; 
 what more can he ask of mel" That is, in other 
 words, " Between me and him there is no relation ; the 
 only bond between us is that which money has created." 
 That is the feeling on the master's side. And the 
 servant's of necessity corresponds to it. "I owe him 
 nothing ; he has had my work out of me. What more 
 have I to do with him 1" 
 
 There are men, generous and noble men, who listen 
 indignantly and impatiently to this kind of discourse : 
 who think it is increasing, whom it fills with apprehen- 
 sions of that which must be coming upon a Societj 
 where it prevails. To them the obvious, the only 
 remedy for it seems a proclamation that the terms 
 Master and Servant are grounded upon a false and un- 
 righteous assumption ; that they ought to be banishec 
 from the vocabulary of true citizens and well-constitutec 
 societies. I respect their feeling ; I share their terrors 
 I utterly dissent from their conclusion. It seems to m( 
 that what we want is not a repudiation of service as in 
 human, but a much profounder reverence for it ; not at 
 assertion that all have a right to rule, but far rather i 
 conviction that every one is bound to serve, and maj 
 claim service as his highest privilege. 
 
 I am uttering no paradox. I am merely affirming 
 that our ordinary speech is not treacherous and hypo 
 critical speech. We talk of military Service as honour 
 able. The rulers of the land are those whom we cal 
 the Queen's Ministers. Of course we may mean no 
 thing by these words. We may mean nothing by an; 
 of our words. They may all be merely counters whicl 
 we pass off upon one another without attaching thi 
 
MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 
 
 85 
 
 least value to them. But suppose for an instant that 
 we are not doing this — that all our commonest expres- 
 sions are not impostures — ^in that case it would not be 
 at all necessary or desirable to get rid of these names ; 
 no one would be elevated, every one would suffer, by 
 the loss of them. Indeed, what good do we ever obtain 
 by unmaking facts, or by determining that we will not 
 .recognise them? Men will direct others in the doing 
 of certain works, will teach others certain lessons. Men 
 will ask to be directed both in their works and in their 
 thoughts. The only result of saying " It ought not to 
 be so ; there should be no master and servant," is that 
 some will exercise dominion because they can do it, that 
 others wiU be submissive because they cannot help it. 
 That is to say, the condition of owner and slave will be 
 substituted for the relation of Master and Servant, 
 
 When we come to speak of the Legal or National 
 State we shall find an explanation of Equality very 
 different from this, much more satisfactory. At present 
 we are in the domestic region, that region in which 
 Manners are formed, from which we learn what Manners 
 are. The ground of these cannot be Self- Assertion ; 
 that tends to brutalise Manners ; that is always threat- 
 ening Social Intercourse. Deference, courtesy, observa- 
 tion of the feelings of those with whom we live, these 
 habits are cultivated by the interdependency of the 
 members of a household, by what I have described as 
 the inevitable duplicity of every relation. But this 
 manner — this essential p&rt of the domestic ^0o?-^ 
 attains its highest development when there is a recipro- 
 cal reverence between the Master and the Servant ; it 
 is shattered to pieces when that reverence is destroyed. 
 Do not suppose that I have any amlrepem^ about 
 
 Oonse- 
 quence of 
 rejecting 
 the notion 
 of Service. 
 
 How Man- 
 ners de- 
 pend wpon 
 it. 
 
86 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Changes in 
 circum- 
 stances do 
 not affect 
 the pri- 
 mary con- 
 ditions of 
 Society, 
 
 All of us 
 Servants 
 and Mas- 
 ters. 
 
 Import- 
 ance of re- 
 collecting 
 that fact. 
 
 a condition of Clanship, or that I wish Saxons to become 
 Celts. My principle is good for nothing if it depends 
 upon social accidents, if it is not as valid for those who 
 pay wages as for those who claim the fealty of vassals.' 
 Family Kelations last on through all changes ; I claim 
 the Relation of Master and Servant as one of these, as 
 overshadowed and interpreted by the relationships of 
 blood and in turn protecting them from the perils ta 
 which they are at every moment exposed. I rejoice ir^ 
 all those facts which prove that the Servant has a legal 
 status; that he has as much claim against his Master' 
 in the courts as his Master has against him. But t 
 am sure that neither his position nor his Master's is 
 made a pleasant or even a tolerable one by these' 
 arrangements. I am sure that unless they learn that 
 reverence for each other which neither feudal bonds' 
 nor legal securities can create, they will become more 
 and more enemies to each other, and the enmity will 
 spread from that relation to all others till the entire' 
 Household is infected with it. A full discovery of the 
 reasons which make Service venerable, which render 
 the ambition to rule only moral, only human, when it 
 means ambition to serve — must be reserved for a sub" 
 sequent part of these Lectures. But if I have giveif 
 you a hint how much that doctrine, strange as it sounds- 
 has been recognised in our language and in every 
 modern language — I must follow up that hint by re- 
 minding you that every one of you will be called to 
 some position in which he will be both Servant and 
 Master, in which he will be under authority, in which 
 he will have some under his authority. What your 
 lives shall be, what good or mischief you will do to 
 your country — will depend mainly upon the question 
 
MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 
 
 how you understand this position, what you suppose to 
 he the nature of this authority. Just so far as you 
 forget that the position involves a relation — just so far 
 as you confound the Authority with Dominion — your 
 manners will become brutalised, just so far you will 
 help to brutalise all with whom in any capacity you 
 are associated. I will not go through a host of in- 
 stances. I win take one which will illustrate the whole 
 Subject and its bearing upon the most modern practice. 
 Some of you may become civil or military servants in 
 British India. You will have native servants under 
 you. You wiU be tempted as others have been before you, 
 to think of those servants as members of an inferior 
 race. You will not of course call them 'Niggers' as 
 some have done. You will not disgrace our Education 
 here so much as to exhibit that stupid ignorance. But 
 without resorting to any of the epithets which stamp 
 vulgarity upon all who condescend to them, you may 
 be tempted to say, " We have a right to treat these 
 " people as brutes, for in many ways they shew them- 
 " selves to be so." Understand that they have a brutal 
 nature in them as you have a brutal nature in you. If 
 you speak to the brutal nature in them— if you assume 
 that there is nothing else in them but that — ^you will 
 cultivate it in yourselves. The distance between them 
 and you of which you boast will diminish at every 
 moment. You will sink to their level. It is only to 
 the force which your country wields that you will 
 appeal for the preservation of your superiority. And 
 that force you wiU be weakening. Your treatment of 
 the natives wiU be doing more to shake it than a 
 hundred blunders in legislation. For the manners of 
 men affect men more than the acts of Councils or the 
 
 WOT. v.. 
 
 Native ser- 
 vants in 
 India. 
 
 The plea 
 for iru- 
 tality tO' 
 wards 
 them. 
 
 The test of 
 power to 
 rule. 
 
88 
 
 DOMESTIC MOBALITT. 
 
 LEOT. V, 
 
 decrees of Judges. If England reigns by Force, her 
 reign must come to a speedy end. If she reigns by 
 Justice and Gentleness, you her sons must shew forth 
 those qualities in your acts. No one will believe in. 
 them because we talk about them, because our News- 
 papers say that the world ought to admire us for them. 
 By our fruits we shall be known and judged. By our 
 conduct to Servants it will be shewn whether we are 
 fit to be Masters, or whether we must sink into Servants 
 of Servants. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 FAMILY WORSHIP. 
 
 We have now considered the different Eelations of the 
 Fiamily, including among them, for the reasons which 
 I stated in my last Lecture, that of Master and Ser- 
 vant. What shall we call these Eelations? If I said 
 they were artificial you would denounce my language 
 as monstrous. Supposing it were possible to treat Ser- 
 vice as a mere arrangement — supposing it were not 
 an outrage upon our deepest convictions to describe 
 Marriage by that name — ^it becomes merely ridiculous 
 when it is applied to Fatherhood or Brotherhood. No 
 wonder then that men have been wont to speak of the 
 relations and the affections which correspond to them 
 as Natural. But we have found great difficulties in 
 the use of this epithet. Eousseau's confusions — ^those 
 against which his successors have most protested — arose 
 from his belief that Domestic reformation meant a 
 return to Nature. Every exercise of the parental 
 authority involves a restraint upon certain natural 
 inclinations of the son ; every exercise of obedience by 
 him implies a restraint upon inclinations of his own 
 nature. The plea for the dissolution of the conjugal 
 bond, on some other ground than infidelity to it, is 
 
 liEOT. VI. 
 
 Family 
 Relations, 
 are they to 
 be called 
 Natural! 
 
 Objections 
 to the 
 name. 
 
90 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 Theologi- 
 cal expla- 
 nations of 
 facts. 
 
 Are they 
 chiefly 
 physical 
 facts of 
 which 
 these ex- 
 planations 
 are offered? 
 
 Why do 
 not men 
 
 that the husband or the wife finds it an inconvenient 
 check upon the impulses of nature. It is a natural 
 impulse which leads every brother to tear asunder the 
 tie of Consanguinity. It is natural for the Master to 
 beat his servant, for the servant to run away from his 
 Master. These are not verbal puzzles; they cannot 
 be removed by an explanation of terms. They belong 
 to the practice of Life. They have presented them- 
 selves to each new age. Each age has been obliged to 
 consider what they mean. 
 
 M. Gomte tells us that in the infancy of the world 
 men sought for theological explanations of facts which 
 they could not understand. How long that infancy 
 continued, when it terminated, or whether the majority 
 of us are still in it, are questions of considerable interest, 
 upon which many of M. Comte's readers complain that 
 he has not given them sufficient light. Perhaps we 
 should gain some if we considered more seriously what 
 were the facts which came most home to men in this 
 infantine stage, and of which they had most need to 
 demand an interpretation. No doubt those who were 
 liable to tempests at sea, to earthquakes, to inundations 
 of rivers, to alternations of rain and sunshine, would be 
 glad to know whence the blessings or the calamities 
 which they experienced from any of these accidents 
 proceeded. No doubt we may gather up their guesses 
 and conclusions in the general formula, that they re- 
 ferred natural events to a supernatural origin. So 
 we may account for the varieties of worship in different 
 regions ; the phenomena being different we may assume 
 that the agents to whom they were ascribed would be 
 different. 
 
 But why ascribe these phenomena to living agents 
 
PAMILT WORSHIP. 
 
 91 
 
 at all? Why look at all beyond the tempest or the 
 earthquake, the sunshine or the rain? If men bow 
 down to powers above themselves these are the powers. 
 And such would assuredly be the tendency of men, 
 such is their tendency now as much as ever it was. 
 What counteracts this tendency? There are other 
 facts more precious, more important than these, of 
 which they must get at the meaning if they can. They 
 are sons, brothers, husbands ; these relations are more 
 serious to them than the tempests and the earthquakes; 
 affect them more than the sun and the rain. They 
 are with them at all times; at all times there is a 
 disposition to cast them off. To be rid of this order 
 is impossible ; yet every father, son, husband, wife, 
 brother, sister, master, servant can produce an effect 
 upon it which he can not produce upon the fall of the 
 rain or the heat of the sun. It was not then an im- 
 pulse of mere curiosity which led men to ask what 
 these relations signified, how they were upheld. The 
 demand becomes inevitable for any people who have 
 perceived their worth, who have become aware of the 
 perils to which they are exposed. 
 
 Moreover these relations explain in the most simple 
 and direct way how this enquiry is suggested to men. 
 You may say with Virgil that the man is happy who 
 has been able to know the causes of things ; you may 
 say with Hume that the man is a fool who thinks he 
 can know anything about causes. But Virgil's fehcity 
 imphes the existence of Civilization and Philosophy, 
 Hume's denunciation is supposed to imply a special 
 maturity in Civilization and Philosophy. When you 
 say that men in the infantine stage enquired into the 
 causes of things, you have to beg a law of Nature to 
 
 worship 
 the phe- 
 nomena 
 merely f 
 
 The facts 
 of human 
 life. 
 
 The exist- 
 ence of , 
 fatherhood 
 ex/plains 
 better than 
 ' a Law of 
 Natv/re ' 
 why men 
 enter upon 
 these en- 
 quiries. 
 
92 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The human 
 interest in 
 natural 
 objects. 
 
 Homer's 
 Mytho- 
 logy, 
 
 account for their doing it ; then afterwards to shew 
 that the law of Nature was either high Art, or that 
 it deceived those who yielded to it. On the other hand, 
 if we go so far as to admit that a child or a man has 
 a father, we may, without attributing to him any wise 
 or vain desire to understand the cause of volcanoes 
 or of rain, confess that he must own a cause of himself, 
 or if the word Cause is disagreeable, an Author, or if 
 you would rather not say Author, then Parent ; the 
 word with which we started is just as good for my 
 purpose as any we can substitute for it. 
 
 My position is that instead of conjuring with ' a 
 ' law of Nature ' which is itself either a theological or 
 metaphysical phrase — and a very treacherous one which- 
 ever it is — we may understand from an obvious con- 
 dition of our existence how we are led to look beyond 
 ourselves that we may account for what we are. We 
 cannot help it if we try. We have fathers, we have 
 ancestors. And since it is also notorious that we make 
 guesses when we have no means of arriving at certainty 
 about the origin of phenomena in the outward world, 
 the next questions would be 'Which kind of guess 
 prompts the other?' 'Which kind of guess has been 
 on the whole most interesting to human beings?' 
 ' Which is most nearly associated with their manners 
 and their social progress ? ' 
 
 For the answers to those questions I would point 
 you to some facts which are not less important subjects 
 of reflection because every schoolboy is acquainted 
 with them. What strikes you as the characteristic of 
 Homer's Mythology ? How was it connected with the 
 life of Greece? You hear of Zeus the Cloud Com- 
 peller ; you hear of Poseidon the Lord of the S^a. 
 
fAMILY WORSHIP. 
 
 93 
 
 You hear of Phoebus who sends his invisible arrows 
 into the midst of the hosts, striking sheep and mules 
 and at last men. You hear of Hephaistos the great 
 Mechanician. Have you arrived at the secret of the 
 worship yet ? Let us try by a comparison. 
 
 There have appeared lately some exceedingly in- 
 teresting translations of Vedic hymns by an eminent 
 Oriental scholar. They are, he thinks, some of the 
 most ancient compositions in the world. Through his 
 version we can discover that they have much poetic 
 merit ; we may assume on his testimony that there is 
 much more in them which our ignorance makes us 
 incompetent to appreciate. These Hymns are addressed 
 chiefly to the Winds, or to some of the great Powers 
 and Energies of the outward world. Hereafter Mr 
 Max Miiller foretells they will be carefully studied by 
 Scholars. Since the Language in which they are written 
 is older than the Greek — since we are assured that the 
 knowledge of it would contribute more than anything 
 else to throw light upon the Greek forms and inflec- 
 tions — our children or our children's children instead 
 of neglecting these may add to them an acquaintance 
 with Sanscrit. Should that event occur, do you 
 imagine that any ordinary human being will care for 
 these hymns as hundreds of thousands in aU ages and 
 countries have cared for the Homeric Poems ? I be- 
 heve no Sanscrit scholar, however devoted to his work, 
 however inclined to exalt the genius of these Vedic 
 Songs, would for a moment cherish such a dream. And 
 why not? Is this Mythology more grotesque, more 
 ahen from our habits of thinking, than the Homeric 
 mythology? The Winds are about us as they were 
 
 Is it de- 
 rived from 
 Nature f 
 The Vedic 
 
 Why they 
 are less in- 
 teresting 
 to us than 
 the Greek 
 Songs. 
 
04 
 
 DOMESTW MORALITY, 
 
 Relations 
 on earth 
 and above. 
 
 Personifi- 
 cations 
 and per- 
 sons. 
 
 Influence 
 of the Ho- 
 menc le- 
 
 about the writers of these Hymns. Where are Zeus 
 and Phoebus and Hephaistps ? 
 
 The grand diiFerence is this. The Homeric Poems 
 are poems concerning the relations of men with each 
 other. And being such, they are Poems concerning 
 the relations of men with the Gods and their relations 
 with each other. The Father and the Child, the Hus- 
 band and the Wife, the Brother and Sister, the Master 
 and the Servant are there, the names belong to those 
 who inhabit this earth, to those who dwell on Olympus. 
 One of these may gather the clouds together, another' 
 may raise the tempest, another may send the pestilence, 
 another may forge armour for heroes. But they are 
 persons, they take_. account of human interests ; they 
 form a Society; they have Manners and Habits, as 
 those have who form human Societies. 
 
 You have learnt perhaps to call these ' personifica- 
 tions.' Do not let a word cheat you of a broad simple 
 fact. Personifications belong to a later period ; when 
 that theological infancy of which we are told had long 
 passed away. Pope personified with great skill and 
 effect in the Rape of the Lock ; but he introduced sad 
 confusion when he tried the same process in his trans- 
 lation of Homer. His original did not personify at 
 all. He described living persons, whether in this world 
 or any other; not shadows, not abstractions. There- 
 fore it is that his voice has been heard in generations 
 far removed from his own, in countries utterly unlike 
 any which he ever saw, among people possessed by 
 Hebrew and Christian convictions. The effect of his 
 mythology on the literature of such peoples can never 
 be forgotten, No more serious poets surely are to be 
 found in the world than Dante and Milton ; the one a 
 
FAMILY WORSBIP. 
 
 95 
 
 Catholic theologian of the middle ages, the other a stern 
 Puritan. Yet the legends of Greece have coloured the 
 Inferno, the Hymn on the Nativity, Oomus, Paradise 
 Lost, even the purely Hebrew drama of Samson 
 Agonistes. In the last century the talk about Apollo 
 and the Muses became a foolish affectation. But Goethe 
 and Wordsworth, in their Iphigenia and Laodamia, 
 shewed how living the thoughts connected with the 
 Greek mythology still are; how closely associated with 
 human affections and relations. 
 
 I accept most thankfully any helps which learned 
 men can afford us respecting the localities and circum- 
 stances which have given shape and colour to these 
 legends, respecting the use or abuse of words which 
 may explain the names of particular divinities. Still 
 I am convinced that the simplest way of considering 
 them is also the deepest. The Hero is the son or 
 descendant of a God. He attributes himself to a 
 divine Ancestor. His House has become one, for a 
 God has called it forth. The founder of a race, the 
 builder of a City has a divine progenitor. Is the 
 founder Poseidon ? That, you will say, is because the 
 chief came across the sea, because he introduced some 
 arts or customs from a foreign land. Very possibly. 
 But a man cannot think of his ancestor as derived from 
 the unfruitful ocean. He must speak of Poseidon; of 
 one more like him than the waves through which his 
 oars and sails make a pathway. Let the horse be 
 brought over the seas ; a man brings it, a man tames 
 it. The man has been taught to bring it, and to tame 
 it ; how ? — By some other horse ? or by some one more 
 highly endowed than he is with the art and wisdom 
 which is emphatically man's 1 Let it be the olive which 
 
 LEOI. Ti;. 
 
 gendg on 
 the litera' 
 ture of the 
 modem 
 world. 
 
 The He- 
 roes and 
 Gods. 
 
 The Horse, 
 the Olive, 
 the Lyre. 
 
96 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 ArU 
 
 coarse and 
 fine. 
 
 Courage 
 and wis- 
 dom. 
 
 Warnings 
 against the 
 confidence 
 of heroes 
 
 is introduced. But it is the culture of tlie olive that 
 we want ; it is the knowledge of the way to use the 
 fruit when the fruit is gathered. The man who has 
 that has a skiU which the olives did not impart. Who 
 did ? The Lyre is a wonderful instrument. To ask who 
 made the instrument is something. But to ask who 
 brought those sounds out of it which speak to the 
 human ear, who brought the harmony out of it which 
 speaks to the human heart, that is a deeper question. 
 There may be a wild kind of music in the vEolian 
 harp; it may impart a certain pleasure to those who 
 can associate with it the music that has been poured 
 out from human lips, that has been drawn forth by 
 human fingers. But those lips, those fingers suggest a 
 Teacher. The artist cannot have learnt from the winds, 
 though it may be that his instructor also plays upon the 
 'winds, uses them as his instruments. You have here 
 not the fruits of an infantine conception; far rather 
 the roots out of which those fruits are produced. The 
 hero feels in himself an insight and a foresight; a 
 capacity for overcoming that which encounters him in 
 the shape of brute force ; a courage to endure and to 
 defy. He is sure that these were not derived to him 
 from the things which he observes, from the animals 
 which he bends to his purposes. They must have been 
 derived to him from ^ome one who is a sharer in these 
 faculties, in this courage. He only holds his heroism 
 on the acknowledgment of the source from which it 
 flows. He is inclined to appropriate it; to say *I 
 'have it,' as if it were his own ; to play with it or do 
 violence with it. Then there come to him all those 
 rebukes of which Greek poetry is so full ; those warn- 
 ings that if he is a master, he is also a servant ; that 
 
FAMILY WORSHIP. 
 
 97 
 
 if he is related to a God he must not presume on the 
 relation. Lessons of this kind come forth in legend 
 after legend; but they all presum^e that the relation 
 exists ; the outrage is only possible because there is 
 that which can be outraged. 
 
 M. Comte would of course have been able to ex- 
 plain, some of his successors may inform us, when and 
 how this early stage of thought ceased; when in the 
 proper order of developement men learnt that their arts 
 and wisdom were their own or were caught from the 
 things with which they held converse. I have no 
 doubt that such a time did come to the Greeks, that it 
 has come to most people on the earth. Whether it has 
 been a time of progress or of declension, a time of 
 discovery or of hard System which stifles discovery, we 
 may consider hereafter. But if you would read Homer 
 with a real living interest, if you would find out what 
 he felt and thought and believed, you must observe 
 that it is not chiefly the vicissitudes in the outward 
 world, keen and clear as was his eye for them, which 
 he refers to the Gods. It is the courage of Diomed, 
 the wisdom of Odysseus, the authority over the host in 
 Agamemnon, which they impart. These are the heroi- 
 cal qualities, and they are ascribed to some in whom 
 they dwell more perfectly, whom they must more 
 thoroughly characterise. 
 
 Again, as I observed before, the relations of the 
 ■Heroes to their wives and children correspond to rela- 
 tions between those from whom they are said to 
 descend. There is a family in the superior world as 
 well as in the lower. Here we at once find ourselves 
 among the perplexities of the mythology; here begin 
 the particulars in the legends which offend us, 
 M.M. ** 
 
 LBOT. VI. 
 
 in their 
 gifts or iie' 
 their birth. 
 
 The loss of 
 this wor- 
 ship. 
 
 The 
 
 Moral 
 qualities 
 the special- 
 ly divine 
 qualities. 
 
 Mixture 
 of human 
 anomalies 
 with the 
 
98 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 divine 
 order. 
 
 Mixture of 
 physical 
 phenomena 
 with the 
 sameorder. 
 
 Concep- 
 tions of the 
 Gods as 
 images of 
 mortal life. 
 
 The Pla- 
 tonic Pro- 
 test. 
 
 Relation of Marriage is that on which the Greek dwelt 
 most ; the invasions of its sanctity were those to which 
 he was most tempted. The acknowledgments of its 
 dignity along with the violations of it reappear in the 
 celestial region. They blend with obseivations on 
 nature; the disturbances in earth or sky where the 
 Gods are supposed to rule recal to men the disturb- 
 ances in households, the confusion of plans and pur- 
 poses in them. Fables rise out of both; each con- 
 tributes an element, the human being always the pre- 
 dominant. The visible object would never suggest 
 thoughts, if there were not the nearer commentary 
 upon it. As that becomes more muddled by the dis- 
 cords in families, by the craving for independence, the 
 outward world presents the likenesses of these ; then 
 those who preside over it are either contemplated as 
 avengers of these discords, or as affording examples to 
 justify them. I avoid as far as possible all reference to 
 those points of the mythology which assume the exist- 
 ence of laws or national Institutions, and seek to 
 account for them. It is with the domestic aspect of the 
 fables that I am concerned. That aspect of it called 
 forth the indignant animadversions of Plato in the 
 BepubUc. The Gods he said were treated by Homer, 
 not as patterns of what men should be, but as the 
 images of what they are. A hint of deep and far 
 spreading significance, touching the very heart of the 
 subject. But Homer has his truth as well as Plato, 
 one which his critic could not appreciate. He felt that 
 domestic relations were in some sense divine relations. 
 If the divine could become practically what Plato felt 
 it must be in principle, the archetype of the human, 
 would these relations be extinguished in communism,? 
 
FAMILY- WORSHIP. 
 
 99 
 
 Might not the Homeric anticipations be fulfilled? 
 Might it not be shewn in what sense they are diyine 1 
 
 When I was speaking of Roman life in connexion 
 with the Patria Potestas, I could not avoid an allusion 
 to the household gods or to the Jupiter of the Capitol ; 
 so curiously do they illustrate the union of the domestic 
 with the civil order of the Commonwealth, so strikingly 
 do they mark the characteristic distinction between 
 the Greek and Latin habits of thought. That subject 
 properly belongs to the present Lecture. As no wor- 
 ship became more strictly political than the Roman in 
 the best and the worst sense of that word — as it will be 
 necessary hereafter to point out with some care what I 
 mean by this best and worst sense — I am anxious to 
 remind you that the foundations of it were, what Virgil 
 has proclaimed them to be, domestic. There is no pre- 
 tence in this case for speaking about Powers in Nature 
 or over N'ature. Jupiter became the air to the Roman 
 when he had ceased to acknowledge any force in the 
 name, when it had nearly lost all significance for him. 
 Nearly lost, for it remained to him a terror still. There 
 might be loud noises in the air ■ there might be ex- 
 plosions of pent up air. They might have something 
 to do with acts done on earth — done in the households 
 of the city. Dire superstition, an intense craving for 
 magical powers and Babylonian numbers, was, so Gib- 
 bon confesses, characteristic of the period when scepti- 
 cism about the gods had become general. But till that 
 time came, Jupiter was assuredly the father of the 
 city ; the authority of particular fathers had its support 
 in his authority. That was not enough. Each house- 
 hold must have its own Penates. There must be a 
 divine superintendence over each hearth. Since we 
 
 G2 
 
 Borne. 
 
 Jupiter 
 not a 
 power in 
 the air. 
 
 What 
 happened 
 when he 
 v)as re- 
 duced to 
 that. 
 
 The 
 Sousehold 
 
100 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 The formal 
 Priesthood 
 does not 
 obliterate 
 the origi- 
 nal Family 
 JForship, 
 
 General 
 Inference. 
 
 only know Rome in its national period, it is impossible 
 to separate this religion from that which was of a 
 formal and legal character. In the earliest legends of 
 the city, Numa appears as the establisher of sacerdotal 
 institutions, of a prescribed worship. But the outlines 
 of a domestic worship are traceable in the priestly 
 system when it was most developed — -just as Mr Maine 
 has traced the outlines of a domestic order in the Juris- 
 prudence. The paternal relation to the Latin, like the 
 conjugal to the Greek, was felt always to have its 
 ground in one which was more radical, more universal ; 
 which was Divine yet essentially humain. But it is 
 impossible not to perceive that the word 'Divine' 
 being connected in the Roman mind with that relation 
 which speaks of Authority, acquired a grandeur and 
 awfulness which it could scarcely vindicate among the 
 Greeks. With them it was, at all events, continually 
 in danger from familiarity and grossness. How likely, 
 on the other hand, the reverence for authority was to 
 be exchanged for the dread of Dominion in the celestial 
 as in the terrestrial region, we may easily conjecture. 
 But that subject cannot be fully illustrated till we 
 arrive at the third part of this course. 
 
 If we consider either the Latin or the Greek wor- 
 ship, then, we are forced to the conclusion that their 
 apprehensions of the divine arose from no study of the 
 external world — its blessings or its curses, its fixed 
 forms or its incessant changes — but from the human 
 relationships in which the inhabitants of each country 
 found themselves. That relation of which they most 
 realised the worth was that which linked itself most 
 directly to the belief of a divine relation which corre- 
 sponded to it, of some divine person who had appointed 
 
FAMILY WORSHIP. 
 
 101 
 
 it and could uphold it. When the sense of the do- 
 mestic fellowship became weak — when it gave way, — 
 then indeed the weight of the external world became 
 overwhelming ; then, whether its powers were contem- 
 plated in themselves, or were associated with names 
 and persons, it might become a field for the exercise of 
 demoniacal caprice, which men might try to divert by 
 skill or by sacrifices but which must ultimately pre- 
 vail : Death being obviously the great Daemon of all 
 that to which all the rest did homage* And since he 
 could not be for any long time kept off by arts or pro- 
 pitiated by offerings, the aspect of the universe was 
 hideous enough; the temptation to forget as long as for- 
 getfulness was possible nearly irresistible. With rela- 
 tionships is associated Memory and Anticipation ; with 
 them the thought of immortality is intertwined. The 
 Death Power cannot have called them into beingi 
 
 But there is, you observe, a perpetual tendency in 
 both these Nations to identify the Ancestor with the 
 God. The Hero must trace his lineage back till it is 
 lost somewhere ; not in a cloud surely, but in a Person, 
 whether he dwells in a cloud or not. And that Person 
 must in some way have been in a relation to a human 
 creature; else the Hero cannot connect himself with 
 the world below as well as with that above. The House 
 must have had a founder; how he came to found it 
 must be explained ; the explanation is here too a union 
 with some mortal. We say at once " these are legends ; 
 they involve all the dangers which Plato pointed out. 
 The Gods do acts which for man are unlawful." When 
 we pass to the patriarchal history of the Israelites we 
 are conscious at once of an amazing difference. Abram 
 is no hero. He is an ordinary shepherd. He claims 
 
 The De- 
 mons no 
 longer do- 
 mestic, but 
 Ministers 
 of Death. 
 
 The 
 
 Hebrew 
 
 History. 
 
 the Pa- 
 triarch 
 simply a 
 mortal, 
 
102 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 hut the 
 root of a 
 family. 
 
 In what 
 sense the 
 family has 
 a Divine 
 origin. 
 
 How 
 Theology 
 explains 
 Mytho- 
 logy. 
 
 Separation 
 of the 
 mythical 
 elements. 
 
 no divine birth. His parentage on both sides is care- 
 fully recorded. Nor ha,s he any distant ancestor -who 
 boasts to be different from other men. Is he then 
 unlike those we have spoken of in that the Family is 
 to be of less worth to him ? Is his worship to be con- 
 nected with the Sun or the Stars, not with that 1 He 
 is led to observe, we are told, the number of the stars. 
 But it is that he may be encouraged to hope for a 
 progeny as numerous. Every thought that is awakened 
 in him has to do with a Family. He lives in a Family; 
 is never safe beyond the limits of it. But there is an 
 Awakener of his thoughts. There is One who leads 
 him to dwell on the mystery of birth ; to feel and 
 understand how he is related to those who are about 
 him, how he will be related to those who shall come 
 after him. According to the book of Genesis the God 
 of all the families of the earth, the God who has made 
 not heroes but man in His own image, calls out this 
 particular man to know Him as his Ruler and Guide, 
 the Ruler and Guide of those who shall come after him, 
 the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. 
 
 That I hold to be the difference between Theology 
 and Mythology as they present themselves to us in this 
 first stage of our inquiries. Accepting the belief that 
 the God of all families does reveal Himself to men 
 through the relations of the family I can appreciate the 
 mythology which recognises that belief, I can value 
 every conception which men have formed about a union 
 between the human and divine. I can see why those 
 conceptions must become false when they assume the 
 human as the, ground of the divine. It might drive 
 one into, madness to fancy that generations of men in 
 the countries which have left most mark, of .themselves 
 
FAMILY WORSHIP. 
 
 103 
 
 ott History have been living upon a lie ; have been 
 thinking their best thoughts and doing their best 
 acts on the strength of a lie. It is worse than mad- 
 ness to fall in love with lies ; to say they are so pretty 
 that we cannot part with them, to suppose that we 
 have no means of testing the gold and the alloy. We 
 hive no means of determining in any man's case how 
 much he has in him of gold or of alloy ; it is assuming 
 the throne of the supreme judge to attempt that dis- 
 crimination. But we may exercise very clear and 
 satisfactory discrimination for our own guidance if we 
 will reflect that we are members of families as much 
 as Greeks or Latins or Hebrews were; that the domestic 
 relations signify as much to us as they did to any men 
 of former generations ; that what our manners shall 
 her — savage or human — depends primarily on the use 
 which we make of them, on the life which we lead in 
 them. I do not know when the theological age — 
 according to the Oomtist definition of theology — termi- 
 nated : if my definition of it is the right one, I believe 
 it will terminate whenever men set at naught the 
 authority of fathers and the obedience of sons, the 
 trust of husbands and wives, the respect of brothers 
 and sisters for each other, the honour of the master for 
 the servant, of the servant for the master. In despond- 
 ing moods one may dream that a worship based upon 
 our own conceptions and likings — a worship which be- 
 cause we invent it for ourselves wiU represent our 
 lowest thoughts and confirm and deepen those in us — 
 may conquer all that has struggled with it, all that has 
 borne witness to us of a Life which is higher than our 
 own. But when we are in our right minds we know 
 that this cannot be. The more steadfastly and earnestly, 
 
 WhatfoU 
 lows the 
 termina- 
 tion of the 
 theological 
 period. 
 
104 
 
 DOMESTIC MORALITY. 
 
 we labour, as the Comtists bid us do, for the progress 
 of Humanity — the more we agree with them that all 
 interests are subordinate to moral interests — the more 
 we recognise an order in the Universe before which all 
 di-scords must at last disappear — the more will the 
 Worship to which domestic Relations have led the way 
 — ^the Worship which seeks for a ground of Humanity 
 beneath itself — expel the s.uperstitions into which vul- 
 gar men and philosophers equally are betrayed when 
 they make gods of their own and bow down before them. 
 I have not spckken in this Lecture of any forms or 
 modes of worship. The diversities of these belong to 
 a later period than that with which we are occupied. 
 But it is impossible not to connect Sacrifice with the 
 domestic age, as well as with those which are to follow. 
 One of the darkest of domestic tragedies blends, as I 
 had before occasion to remark, with the Greek concep- 
 tion of Sacrifice. No offering but that of a daughter 
 could propitiate the power that kept the fleet at Aulis. 
 Though that legend manifestly belongs to a time of 
 Kings and Laws, still it suggests the thought that the 
 Gods reckoned a child a more precious offering than 
 any animal could be. Under that most frightful of all 
 perversions was hidden a conviction which would ulti- 
 mately become the profoundest for social life and 
 morality. The story of Abraham's offering indicates the 
 right desire and the wrong mode of expressing it which 
 were working together in the patriarch's mind, as well as 
 the process by which they were separated. So considered 
 it is a commentary on the records of other nations; 
 it enables us to understand by what practical methods 
 the belief that a living Sacrifice is of more worth than 
 a dead one, may have been imparted to them. 
 
NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECTURE Vn. 
 
 THY NEIGHBOUR AND THYSELF, 
 
 I ENTER to-day on the second Division of my Course. 
 You will not, I hope, misunderstand the subject of it. 
 I am not leaving the plain highway of Morality that I 
 may discourse of the special Morality which belongs to 
 Kings and Tetrarchs, to Ministers of State, or to mem- 
 bers of Parliaments. You and I are members of cer- 
 tain families. So are we also members of a certain 
 nation. One is just as much a fact of our lives as the 
 other. We are Englishmen as we are sons and brothers. 
 What it means to be an Englishman, what Manners are 
 demanded of us because we bear that name, we are 
 to enquire. 
 
 There is, you all know, an English manner which 
 some affect. Foreigners call it the John Bull manner. 
 It consists — first, in boasts of our' doings, our courage, 
 our power of ruling, our justice ; secondly, in contempt 
 for the customs, haljits, traditions of other peoples, in 
 denunciations of their cowardice, or feebleness, or in- 
 justice. The more obtrusive and vulgar forms of this 
 insolence are so ridiculous, that every cultivated En- 
 .glishmen is ashamed when he meets with them. But 
 
 LEOT. VII. 
 
 National 
 Morality 
 Common 
 Morality, 
 
 The John 
 
 Bun 
 
 Manner. 
 
Io6 
 
 NATIONAL MOEALITT. 
 
 The 
 
 foreign 
 
 Manner. 
 
 The 
 
 National 
 
 Manner. 
 
 though he may not display it, he may be conscious 
 that he has it within him ; he may detect himself in 
 acts of intolerance and unfairness to those who have 
 grown up in practices different from his own ; he may 
 find that he is secretly giving himself credit for virtues 
 which perhaps are not visible in his conduct, excusing 
 himself for faults which are far too visible. In revenge, 
 he not unfrequently makes a violent effort to divest 
 himself of his native qualities. Whatever is British 
 becomes offensive to him. French manners, German 
 manners, how much better they are than those of his 
 stupid countrymen ! He imitates what he adraires ; 
 every one observes how awkwardly the new drapery 
 sits on him ; to what artifices he is driven that he may 
 adjust the folds of it to his figure. And after all he 
 does not rid himself of that which he inherited from 
 his fathers, of that which was planted in him by his 
 education. It cleaves fast to him. It betrays itself 
 in his efforts to hide it or to throw it off. 
 
 Where is the escape from these two opposite dangers 
 which yet lie so near to one another, which are likely 
 to attack the very same person at different stages of 
 his life? I believe it lies in an increased reverence 
 for our position as members of a nation, in a more 
 earnest purpose to understand that position and fully 
 to realise it. If I count it an unspeakable blessing for 
 myself to be the citizen of a nation, I must count it an 
 unspeakable blessing for every man. If I, being an 
 Englishman, desire to be thoroughly an Englishman, 
 I must respect every Frenchman who strives to be 
 thoroughly a Frenchman, every German who strives 
 to be thoroughly a German. I must learn more of the 
 worth and grandeur of his position, the more I esti- 
 
THY NEIGBBOTfR AND THYSELF. 
 
 107 
 
 mate the worth and grandeur of my own. I cannot 
 shift my colours to please him. I shall honour him 
 for not shifting his colours to please me. If I retain 
 my distinctive characteristics, he may learn something 
 from me. If he retains his, I may learn from him. 
 Parting with them, we become useless to each other, 
 we run in each other's way ; neither brings in his quota 
 to the common treasure of humanity. 
 
 When I insist upon this fact as an aU important 
 one in my existence that I am not merely the member 
 of a certain family, that I am also the member of a 
 nation, I am no doubt taking up an exclusive position. 
 That position has been given me. I cannot deny that 
 my country has boundaries ; that my speech is not the 
 speech of Spaniards or Frenchmen or Italians ; that my 
 laws are in many respects different from theirs ; that 
 I am under a Queen who is not their Queen. But 
 this very exclusiveness forbids the desire that their 
 national features should be the same as ours. I abdi- 
 cate all right to determine what is best for those who 
 have their own battles to fight, their own ground to 
 maintain. 
 
 When we use this language about Nations or the 
 distinction of Nations, we are often encountered by a 
 question and answer both delivered in that lofty 
 oracular _ tone which is so alarming to quiet men. 
 "And pray, Sir, what is a Nation? 7 take it to be 
 a mere collection of Individuals. You of course have 
 some mystical conception tibout its nature and essence." 
 It is a great satisfaction to me that I can entirely 
 accept this definition. I want no addition to it, mys- 
 tical or other. I only want to know what a collection 
 of Individuals is. In a former course of Lectures I 
 
 How far 
 an exclu- 
 sive one. 
 
 An autho- 
 ritative 
 definition. 
 
io8 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The value 
 of it. 
 
 A hoy 
 findint! out 
 himself, 
 
 and also 
 craving for 
 neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 The 
 School. 
 
 spoke of the word 'I ' as one which specially concerned 
 a student in my department. It encountered the 
 student in every department ; but none seemed disposed 
 to investigate it. Important as this word was, I could 
 not pretend that its force is at once recognised by 
 those who use it most frequently. There is a time in 
 a life in which it is not used. A child speaks of itself 
 in the third person. Slowly, as Mr Tennyson reminded 
 us in some very striking lines, the self-consciousness is 
 awakened. The complete awakening is reserved for 
 a later period. There begins to be a restlessness in 
 the son, in the brother, of a family. He does not like 
 to admit that he is only a son or a brother. The 
 wisdom of the parent is shewn in his treatment of these 
 indications. If he merely indulges them the family 
 life is destroyed. If he crushes them the child is - 
 dwarfed; it is not in the way to become more than 
 a child. As long as the boy abides under the parental 
 roof the discipline continues in the same hands. It 
 is very hard indeed to combine the old habit with the 
 new craving for independence. Yet it is not merely 
 a craving for independence. With that is mixed the 
 craving for a wider Society than that of brothers and 
 sisters. There are perhaps cousins not far off. They 
 form a distinct household, their ways are not exactly 
 the same as those in which he has grown up. There 
 is the hint of another fellowship. That is not enough. 
 Why should not the boy or girl find friends among 
 those who are called neighhotirs? Evidently these two 
 feelings — that of personal distinctness, of self-assertion, 
 and that of desire for wider intercourse, seemingly 
 hostile are closely allied. One cannot be gratified 
 without the other. In the School they are in some 
 
THY NEIGHBOUR AND THYSELF. 
 
 109 
 
 way adjusted. In the School each boy or girl must 
 be treated not as the member of a certain household, 
 but as the member of a new community in which all 
 are equals, or if not equals are arranged according to 
 no maxims of kinsmanship. Each one brings certain 
 recollections, traditions, instincts, which others do not 
 share in, which are perhaps discovered, perhaps care- 
 fully concealed, but which are felt to be incongruous 
 elements in the new atmosphere. Mr Trench intro- 
 duces his amusing Realities of Irish Life with an 
 account of his own school experiences at Armagh. 
 They illustrate curiously the transition from one stage 
 of hfe to the other. He is solemnly warned by an ex- 
 perienced adviser when he first enters the school never 
 to answer any one of his comrades who questions him 
 about the names of his sisters ; he is to intimate sig- 
 nificantly that he is too wise to make any such an- 
 nouncements. He follows this advice and is thrashed 
 by a bigger boy for his reticence. He is soon involved 
 in all the new school interests, learns to regard the 
 Master as a common enemy, takes part in a barring 
 out, and so forth. This narrative Mr Trench rightly 
 considers an artistical prologue to the drama that 
 follows; that being intended to exhibit the combina- 
 tion and conflict of clannish sympathies in a clannish 
 people with the sense of a Law that does or should 
 deal with all persons impartially; which may be claimed 
 as a protector or repulsed as an enemy. 
 
 The Lectures of last term will have shewn you how 
 the particular household and the particular school 
 illustrate the relation between domestic and national 
 life generally. Mr Maine tells us that Ancient Law 
 implies a State previous to its establishment — the unit 
 
 Irish expe- 
 riences. 
 
 The new 
 Unit. 
 
no 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The old 
 and the 
 new trying 
 to combine. 
 
 Fiction 
 and Fact. 
 
 of Society in that State being not the Individual but 
 the Family. There comes a time, he says, when the 
 new principle intrudes itself. Law as Law assumes 
 Contiguity of place not Kinsmanship, as the ground of 
 Social existence. Law as Law treats each man as a 
 distinct person, not one as responsible for another. The 
 change from the first of these conditions to the second 
 is so amazing, so mysterious, that Mr Maine can only 
 speak of it as one of the greatest of Revolutions. How 
 it takes place he does not attempt to explain ; that 
 it has taken place before any Community can be de- 
 scribed as legal or National' he is sure. He is equally 
 sure, and the observation puzzles him still more, that 
 when there is the fullest, acknowledgment of the new 
 unit the old unit cannot be forgotten. They wind 
 themselves curiously into one web ; legal fictions are 
 needful to make them appear compatible; yet some- 
 how they are compatible ; you cannot take either away 
 without causing the Society to crumble. It is seldom 
 that a legal antiquary so frankly, so modestly, exposes 
 his diflSculties ; when they are exposed, how they help 
 us to understand our own difficulties, those which meet 
 us in every day's experience ! We belong to households, 
 we belong to a nation. How to reconcile the positions 
 is often a perplexity. We may try fictions to make 
 them harmonise, as the lawyers do. But there must be 
 a harmony between them which is not fictitious, since 
 it is suicide to part with either. The formation of a 
 manner which shall not be utterly unsocial, utterly 
 destructive of Society, depends upon their fellowship. 
 
 To form that manner, to establish that fellowship, 
 we must distinctly admit that two-fold principle of a 
 National or Legal Society which Mr Maine has set 
 
THY NEIGEBOUR AND THYSELF. 
 
 Ill 
 
 forth. No description of it can be better than his. 
 The two elements. Contiguity in place, individual dis- 
 tinctness, constitute it. Or to translate that language 
 into Saxon, " my neighbour and myself;" these are the 
 factors which I must take account of, if I want to know 
 what I mean when I claim to be the member of a City 
 or State. Supposing I forget either, I forget the other. 
 I cease to recognise the distinctness or worth of my 
 neighbour, if I do not recognise my own ; I cease to 
 recognise my own distinctness and worth, if I do not 
 recognise his. 
 
 You see how admirable that account of a nation is 
 which our lofty critic gave us ; how foolish I should 
 have been if I had demurred to it. England, France, 
 Germany, Spain, is a Collection of Individuals. That 
 is just what makes it so hard to maintain an England 
 or a France, a Germany or a Spain. How came this 
 Collection into this menagerie or this Jardin des 
 Plantes ? Who brought it together ? These creatures 
 have great powers of injuring each other — claws, talons, 
 hoofs of a veiy alarming kind. Who are their keepers ? 
 What arts of taming do they practise? These are 
 questions which History has to answer; which press 
 very heavily upon the Social Moralist. He is often 
 disposed to cut them short with an answer of this kind : 
 "There can be no Society until this Individuality is 
 "extinguished. It is the unsocial principle; the im- 
 " moral principle. Men cannot behave to each other as 
 "they ought while each is striving to assert himself" 
 There is great plausibility in that statement. I shall 
 have to shew you in these Lectures — still more in those 
 of my next division — how many have adopted it, and 
 what schemes they have devised for giving effect to it. 
 
 Tlve two 
 maxims. 
 
 A collec-i 
 Hon of 
 Indivi- 
 duals a 
 dangerous 
 collection. 
 
112 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LBCT. Til, 
 
 The Na- 
 tion de- 
 mands the 
 Indivi- 
 dual, the 
 Indivi- 
 dual the 
 Nation. 
 
 Reference 
 to the 
 German 
 Egotist, 
 
 The 
 
 French be- 
 coming 
 conscious 
 of indivi- 
 dual life. 
 
 But I adhere to the definition which has been forced on 
 me. I maintain that a Nation is a Collection of Indi- 
 viduals ; that there can be no Nation, if those who 
 compose it are not Individuals. Conversely, I affirm 
 that there will be no Individuals in the full sense of 
 that word, where there is not a Nation in the full sense 
 of that word. 
 
 I approached this subject from the other side in my 
 lectures on Casuistry. I was then speaking of an 
 eminent philosopher belonging to the end of the last 
 century and the early part of this — Johann Gottlieb 
 Fichte. I described him, par excellence, as the egotis- 
 tical philosopher; the philosopher of individuality. I 
 said that he was also the philosopher who had most 
 practically, most vehemently, maintained the freedom 
 of Germany — ^its right to a national existence. It 
 seemed to me that the one part of his belief explained 
 the other ; that he could not have been the assertor of 
 Individuality, if he had not been the defender of his 
 nation. If he had not striven to raise his countrymen 
 out of the condition in which he found them plunged, 
 he could not have asserted that which he had accepted 
 as the only maxim for his own life. I explained to 
 you why I said this. Fichte had found that he might 
 read many books, study many sciences, but that unless 
 he was a living person the books would be dead letters 
 to him, the sciences would become sciolism. To be a 
 man, to know that he was a man, was the first condi- 
 tion of understanding what he learnt about men, even 
 what he learnt about things. Therefore when he beard 
 the cry of Frenchmen to be owned as men at the Revo- 
 lution, he felt it as an electric shock through his 
 whole being. That was what he wanted, that was 
 
TEY NEIQEBOUR AND THYSELF. 
 
 113 
 
 ■what every German ■wanted. If each of them made 
 that demand, the student ■would become an actual 
 student, the soldier ■would become an actual soldier. 
 He could listen, therefore, to the French message about 
 the rights of man; ■whencesoever it came, it was true ; 
 it belonged to him and his people. But then follo'wed 
 a fearful interpretation of it. Germans -were not to be 
 Germans; they were to be a portion of a French 
 Empire. To be men, they must part with their own 
 distinctness; their own memories; their own hopes. 
 This was the universal right ; to be individuals no 
 longer ! Why that was just what he had complained of 
 before ! He had said, " We are members of certain 
 "faculties; we are doctors, we are lawyers, we are 
 " soldiers ; we are not individuals." And now the 
 preachers' of freedom appear under a leader, who has 
 converted them into a set of wonderful machines — 
 still instinct however with a living force, because they 
 have the sense of being Frenchmen— to force this doc- 
 trine upon us. Thus was the truth brought home to 
 him, " We are not yet a collection of Individuals, we 
 " are only a collection of Atoms. If we could become 
 "a collection of Individuals, we might cast off this 
 " accursed yoke. And why may we not become so ? If 
 " we once discover that we are Germans — if a German 
 " heart can be put into us — we shall indeed become a 
 " collection, not of dead creatures determined by some 
 "force frsm without, but of individuals quickened by a 
 " fire within ; therefore able to move together, to move 
 " irresistibly." 
 
 That these were not only the thoughts of a recluse 
 in a solitary chamber; that they penetrated into the 
 halls of science^ into the hovel, into the palace ; that 
 JI.M. H 
 
 The 
 French 
 trampling 
 out the 
 lifebf other 
 peoples. 
 
 Shall they 
 extinguish 
 its} 
 
 The re- 
 vival of the 
 present. 
 
114 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The re- 
 vival of tlie 
 past. 
 
 they called a people again into existence ; that a 
 new army arose out of the corpse of the old, uttering 
 in acts the mind of a people ; that the French Goliath 
 fell beneath the sling and the stone of the peasant 
 warrior — this I had occasion to tell you before ; the 
 lesson I had then to teach compelled me to speak of 
 these facts if it were only in passing. I must repeat 
 them now, for I fear they are almost forgotten by this 
 generation. I fear that amidst the revived worship of 
 organisation, which has its meaning and worth — when 
 it is not worshipped — they are scarcely believed. Some 
 of us can remember the kindling eye, the trembling 
 voice of old men who partook in the inspiration of 
 those days ; how they testified that then the past and 
 the future were linked together ; that they knew what 
 their country had been ; that amidst the greatest dis- 
 appointments they could- still contemplate what it was 
 to be. 
 
 For that is a point on which I would insist, since it 
 greatly concerns our subject, and relieves the statement 
 which I have adopted from Sir H. Maine of some ap- 
 parent difficulties. With the revival of individual life 
 all the traditional beliefs of Germans revived also. The ■ 
 sense of the present did not obliterate the past, but call- 
 ed it out of the tomb. Those who talk about progress 
 in our day measure their steps by the forgetfulness of 
 all which they leave behind. These Germans realised 
 their progress by their lively memory of their ances- 
 tors. They were one people with those who listened 
 to Luther at Wittenberg, with those who overthrew 
 the host of Varus. It was no sentimental admiration 
 of other days ; it was the sense of communion with 
 them; the conviction that a people lives on through 
 
THr NEIGHBOUR AND TBYSELF. 
 
 "S 
 
 generations ; that it is not Progress but Slavery which 
 severs one generation from any which has preceded 
 it. Here is that immortality which Sir H. Maine con- 
 nects with the Family making itself felt in the period 
 which he affirms to stand on the other principles of 
 neighbourhood and individual distinctness. 
 
 Nevertheless nothing is truer than that these prin- 
 ciples made themselves manifest in the awakening of 
 Germany, make themselves manifest in the awakening 
 of every people to national consciousness. Each man 
 in such a crisis feels himself to be a man, therefore feels 
 his neighbour to be a man. He cannot help reverencing 
 himself because he has learnt to reverence his neigh- 
 bour. He cannot help reverencing his neighbotir be- 
 cause he has learnt to reverence himself The ' 1 ' and 
 the 'Thou' stand out confronting each other, making 
 each other intelligible. There can be no account given 
 of tliose wonderful moments of revival which is so true, 
 so satisfactory, as this. The songs of patriots express 
 it, the deeds of patriots express it. For an instant — it 
 may be only for an instant — -jealousies, discontent, mur- 
 murings about precedence are suspended. They may — 
 they will — all appear again ; but that instant wherein 
 the leader exercises authority and the soldier pays 
 willing obedience, where there is a trust of man in man, 
 wherein Neighbourhood assumes the likeness of Con- 
 sanguinity, wherein all are glad to serve, and yet the 
 Master establishes his right to rule — ^that instant is 
 felt to be the one which determines what a nation is 
 intended to be, what it may become. 
 
 There is a sad counterpart to this German story in 
 the records of another Nation. I must refer to it be- 
 cause that Nation was even more than Germany linked 
 
 h2 
 
 The Fami- 
 ly rising 
 with the 
 Nation. 
 
 The Crisis 
 of a peo- 
 ple's reno- 
 vation 
 explainsits 
 history. 
 
 ^pain. 
 
ii6 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The hope 
 of what it 
 might do 
 foT itself. 
 
 Inference 
 drawn 
 from the 
 progress 
 and issue 
 of the 
 Peninsular 
 War, 
 
 with the thoughts and hopes of England at the same 
 time, and because the history of its fortunes and mis- 
 fortunes has done more than anything to excite in us 
 a distrust of individual energy, a confidence in mere 
 organisation. Before the dry bones in Germany began 
 to move, before they rose up a great army, Spain had 
 proclaimed itself independent of the same oppressor, 
 had invoked the co- operation of England. The heart 
 of our people responded to the call; the stirs of life in 
 a Southern race kindled our Northern blood. "Words- 
 worth sung 
 
 The power of Armies is a visible thing, 
 Formal and circumscribed in time and space, 
 But who the limits of that power can trace 
 vWhioh.a brave people into light can bring, 
 Or hide at will — for freedom combating 
 By just revenge inflamed? 
 
 Ahi reply the despatches of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, the history of Sir "William Napier, the limits of 
 that power can be all too easily defined : the revenge, 
 savage enough, was indeed there ; the combat for free- 
 dom was weak, capricious, interrupted by the vulgarest 
 disputes, the meanest suspicions. And the " formal and 
 circumscribed" power of armies, on the other hand, 
 proved that it could effect the liberation which the so- 
 called patriots only attempted. Can we resist that 
 argument, if we exalt facts above theory ? I do not 
 wish to underrate the worth of discipline. I look upon 
 it as a divine gift to Nations, without which no other 
 gift will be of much worth. But I entirely deny that 
 the errors of the Spaniards at that time were any evi- 
 dence that Individual Life is not a more precious, a 
 paore essential endowment of a Nation, even than that. 
 
TEY NEIGHBOUR AND THYSELF. 
 
 117 
 
 Indeed, I know of no history wliich establishes this 
 position so triumphantly. Individuality had been most 
 laboriously extinguished in the Spanish people by those 
 rulers, civil and ecclesiastical, to whom they had bowed 
 before Joseph Buonaparte ever visited their land. 
 They had been taught that Individual Death was the 
 very highest perfection of the Saint ; they had felt it 
 to be the chief comfort of the sinner. For such a people 
 to become a Collection of Individuals was the hardest 
 thing conceivable. The throes of birth were terrible ; 
 the result might be at the time a miserable abortion. 
 Yet that struggle may have been a' preparation for 
 better days ; the Spaniards may remember the times 
 of old, instead of merely trying to make all things new. 
 They may learn that the best manner of 'chivalry may 
 be revived in the 19th century, without any of the 
 fantasies which Cervantes shewed to be the caricature 
 and debasement of it. Not arrogant self-assertion, but 
 that self-assertion which is sustained by a man's respect 
 for his Neighbour, may come forth to make laws living, 
 not mere letters on paper. Years of degradation and 
 despotism may yet teach lessons to a noble race which 
 they could not learn from any foreign allies, however 
 well organized and successful. 
 
 I have used these words " thy neighbour and thy- 
 self" because they express better and more simply than 
 any that I know the meaning of a Nation's existence ; 
 the ri6o<; which must keep it alive, , You know whence 
 the language comes. Its connection with other lessons, 
 borrowed from the same source, I shall not consider in 
 this lecture. But I would observe to you that the 
 Revolution which Sir H. Maine supposes must precede 
 the passage from the Family condition to the legal or 
 
 The Infer- 
 ence not 
 justified 
 hut con- 
 futed }nf 
 facts. 
 
 Title of the 
 
 Lecture 
 
 explained. 
 
Ii8 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 Passage of 
 the Jew 
 out of pa- 
 triarch- 
 al to na- 
 tional ex- 
 istence. 
 
 National is described in the Scriptures with a precision 
 and minuteness which one cannot find any where else. 
 The Patriarchal Horde does not emerge into a Nation 
 till it has passed through a period of oppression and 
 slavery. Deliverance is inscribed upon its Law, is made 
 the very foundation of it. The recollection of ances- 
 tors and relations enters into every part of it. We 
 hear the suspicious murmurings of a people unused to 
 individual freedom. But there is a moment in which 
 they awaken, like the Germans of later days, to life and 
 liberty and song. 
 
 Note. 1871. A Lecture touching on the Germany and France of 
 1813 must suggest reoolleotions of the great events which have occurred 
 in the years since it was published. If I saw in these events a reversal 
 or correction of the inferences which I deduced from the earlier I 
 should refer to them ; as I do not, it is tetter to let them wait for the 
 commentary of fifty years hence. 
 
LECTURE Vni. 
 
 LAW. 
 
 I SPOKE ia the last Lecture of the School as the pass- 
 age out of domestic life into the life of neighbourhood, 
 which is also the individual or personal life. A line 
 from George Herbert, -which I quoted in a former 
 course, defines this transition, "Then Schoolmasters 
 deliver us to Laws." The school is the preparation 
 for National Life. When we contemplate men in a 
 Nation, we contemplate them as under a Law. The 
 expressions are interchangeable. 
 
 Under a Law, you observe; that is the marvel 
 we have to consider. There may be a great many 
 theories about the making or unmaking or remaking 
 of laws; who are to be the agents in making or 
 unmaking or remaking; what principals employ the 
 agents. But apart from all these disputes, there is for 
 each of you and for me this fact. We find a Law; it 
 claims us as its subjects; we learn by degrees that we 
 are subject to it. That is a very great discovery. We 
 are slow in arriving at it; veiy slow in confessing the 
 full force of it. Just so far as it is brought home to 
 me I know that I am a distinct person; that I must 
 answer for myself; that you cannot answer for me. I 
 perceive also that each of you is a distinct person; 
 that each of you must answer for himself. 
 
 LEOT. Tin. 
 
 A Nation 
 implies a 
 Law. 
 
 The Law 
 given to us. 
 
 The 
 
 acknow- 
 ledgment 
 of it, 
 
120 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 Wherein 
 Law and 
 Morality 
 are oppo- 
 sed to each 
 other. 
 
 On what 
 compul- 
 sion must 
 1 1 tell me 
 that. 
 
 That is the effect of Law ; that effect warrants me 
 va. connecting it with Social Morality. If you recollect 
 the principles which I laid down in my first Lecture, 
 and which appeared to be recognised by writers of the 
 most opposite opinions, you may suppose that I have 
 nothing to do with Law ; that Law and Morality stand 
 wholly apart from each other. For I said that the 
 Moralist is primarily occupied with a certain State or 
 Character; only with acts as they exhibit a character. 
 And I think, as most people think, that Law is chiefly 
 concerned with Acts, that it cannot undertake the task 
 of forming the character from which acts proceed. It 
 forbids murder and robbery; if it tries to produce good 
 temper or charity it wiU try in vain. I will go a step 
 further. If it tries to make us just it will try in 
 vain. Justice, as we shall find, is nearer of kin to 
 Law than Charity is. But Justice, like Charity, is a 
 Disposition or Habit; and of Dispositions and Habits 
 the Law cannot take cognisance. The Lawgiver 
 may find good habits to be very necessary. He may 
 enquire earnestly how they can be formed. He will 
 certainly be compelled to own that he cannot form 
 them. 
 
 I find myself under a Law, A Law, what is that? 
 I have been used to hear commands from a Parent. I 
 have learnt to recognise his authority over me, to dis^ 
 tinguish it from Force. When he tried to compel me 
 by force I could resist. His authority was a subtler 
 thing. I did not know exactly with what weapon to 
 strive against that. But here is no parent. It is a 
 command which has issued from I know not where. Ha 
 Vs'ho repeats it to me, he who enforces it upon me, does 
 not pretend that he has invented it. He assures me 
 
LAW. 
 
 121 
 
 that he has not; that he is as much bound by it as I 
 am. He has the same faciUties — probably much greater 
 facilities for breaking it than I have. He says he mtist 
 not break it. What is this must not? 
 
 When BeUario, the jurist of Padua, sent the most 
 charming of messengers to represent him at Venice in 
 the great cause of Shylock against Antonio, she said, 
 having heard of the bond. 
 
 Then must the Jew be merciful. 
 A harsh voice answered, 
 
 On what compulsion must I? tell me that. 
 
 And Portia, after making her splendid speech on the 
 quality of mercy, admitted in her legal character that 
 Antonio must pay the penalty, that the State of Venice 
 would not be safe if Covenants were not observed to the 
 letter^ Here is the true faith of a legal, commercial 
 Community, Such as Venice was, There is an Obliga- 
 tion upon each individual of the State ; there is an 
 Obligation upon the State itself. Nothing can break 
 or set aside either. Against the most popular and 
 beloved citizen it must be maintained, in favour of the 
 most detested. The position is all the stronger, be- 
 cause it comes forth in a poetical legend, not in a legal 
 treatise. Shakspere adopted it; for it was the only 
 maxim upon which English Society, in the days of 
 Elizabeth, could stand. 
 
 Very mysterious assuredly this sense of Law is. It 
 breaks through such prejudices as those which sur- 
 rounded the person of the Jew in the middle ages. It 
 sets at nought the dignity of birth, the advantages of 
 position. It mocks even the ecclesiastical indulgences 
 which appealed to a power above Law. 
 
 I cannot ex- 
 
 Portia and 
 Shylock. 
 
 The bond 
 cannot be 
 evaded. 
 
122 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. Till. 
 
 The Law 
 above 
 Christian 
 and Jew. 
 
 The condi- 
 tion of a 
 State to 
 exalt Law 
 above its 
 own plea- 
 sure. 
 
 plain it away by any philosophical phrases. T can 
 merely bid you take notice of the facts. They are, you 
 see, vulgar facts. I have purposely dwelt upon the 
 commercial character of Venice, that you may connect 
 this authority of Law. with the incidents of property. 
 It springs out of no dreams of sentiment; rather, it 
 scatters all such dreams. A bond! a contract! what a 
 commonplace thing that is. Very commonplace, re- 
 ferring, in this case, to a loan by one merchant to 
 another; enforced by the penalty of a pound of flesh. 
 But the loan did not create the reverence for the Law 
 which protects it; the penalty did not create it. The 
 loan could not have been, the penalty would have been 
 nothing, but for the'sense in the mind of Christian and 
 Jew that there was a Law, that it was mightier than 
 both. 
 
 Now no sort of moral sympathy was produced 
 either in Christian or Jew by this Law. The Christian 
 did not spit on the Jew less for it, did not call him 
 less foul names for it. The Jew did not hate the 
 Christian less for it, did not the less desire to ruin 
 either his faith or him. Nevertheless the Law spoke 
 to both; threatened both; protected both. Each had 
 an interest in twisting it; the Christians being in the 
 ascendant had the power to twist it. Still they bowed 
 to it. The Jew feeling himself a proscribed man could 
 yet evoke the Law of the very people which proscribed 
 him. They might interpret it falsely, they might 
 exalt force against it; but if they did they were over- 
 throwing their State; that State stood by Law, meant 
 the triumph of Law over force. 
 
 Therefore though this mighty and mysterious Law 
 is incapable of moulding the mind or character of any 
 
LAW. 
 
 123 
 
 individual, it has this faculty. It makes him feelthat 
 he is tied and bound, that, whether he likes it or not, 
 there is a yoke over him to which his neck must adjust 
 itself. There is an obligation upon him; no other word 
 but that expresses his position; he can substitute no 
 other for it. 'Why am I obliged? Why may I not 
 have my own way? Who obliges me?' All these 
 questions I may ask. And I may find answers to them, 
 such as these: 'It is the will of a Majority of those 
 among whom I am dwelling.' Yes! and supposing the 
 Majority should agree to dispense with all Law; should 
 say, 'We will have nothing to do with it,' what then? 
 There would be an Anarchy. Just so. And if in the 
 midst of that Anarchy some two or three should pro- 
 claim the dignity of Law, and should say, 'We at least 
 will obey it,' those one or two would constitute a State, 
 and till the Majority joined with them, the Majority 
 would be no State at all. You may say again, 'The 
 penalty of violating the Law leads me to observe it.' 
 Possibly; but who attached the penalty to the Law? 
 who keeps it attached,? If the majority do not choose 
 to enforce the penalty, as in the case I have supposed, 
 what will the penalty avail for any individual? We 
 may go round and round in this circle; we shall find 
 that at last we take for granted the Law, and an obli- 
 gation in us to keep the law; that neither the Will of 
 the Majority nor any terrors for transgression mean 
 anything unless I assume something which governs the 
 Will of the Majority, something which it as well as 
 every individual can transgress. 
 
 Looking at Law simply as Law its action upon the 
 members of a Nation is this. It makes each of them 
 aware of an obligation; it makes each of them aware 
 
 Individual 
 obligation. 
 
 Ground 
 of it. 
 
 The Ma- 
 jority very 
 mightyand 
 very feeble. 
 
 Penalties 
 nothing 
 without 
 jLaw. 
 
 Law sim- 
 ply as Law. 
 
124 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. Till. 
 
 Why it 
 cannot he 
 considered 
 alone. 
 
 Its effect 
 on rela- 
 tions. 
 
 The new 
 sense of 
 separate 
 and com- 
 mon obli- 
 gation. 
 
 that there is a line which he has an inclination to pass 
 over, and which he is not to pass over'; it awakens in 
 him the feeling of a wrong which he may do to another, 
 of a wrong which another may do to him. Taken by 
 itself Law awakens me to these convictions ; that is its 
 office. But law cannot be taken by itself It finds me 
 one of a family. It is unable to dissolve any of the 
 relations in which I exist before I became aware of its 
 claims. All of us to whom the Law speaks are Sons. 
 It does not add anything to the affection of the Son for 
 the Father, or the Father for the Son. It cannot call 
 forth an affection which does not exist. But it stamps 
 an 6bligation upon the Relation. There is something 
 which every son owes to his father and mother because 
 they are his father and mother. So again, it stamps an 
 obligation on Marriage. It does not form the union; 
 it cannot beget any trust in those who are united. 
 But it guards every Marriage-bed. It denounces 
 Adultery. The movement onwards into the age of 
 Law — revolution as it. is — yet gives all that preceded it 
 a sanction. The Law takes under its care not only me 
 and my neighbour, but all the conditions under which 
 it finds me and my neighbour. 
 
 The change even in. this respect is very great, the 
 progress very remarkable, though it seems to be only 
 the ratification of that which was already established. 
 It is one thing for a man to feel a tie to his parent or 
 his wife; it is quite another to contemplate that tie as 
 one for his neighbour. The relation is not only for his 
 household; it is for a multitude of households. And 
 yet how clearly the individuality of Law makes itself 
 manifest. Each man is taken apart from every other. 
 Each one is met with a 'Thou.' The Law is over 
 
LAW. 
 
 125 
 
 families, but it is addressed to every one who hears it 
 separately, without reference to his ancestors or his 
 descendants. The corporate feeling descends upon the 
 Law, as Sir H. Maine has shewn so admirably, from the 
 House; the Law accepts the legacy with some awk- 
 wardness; but its own formula excludes all participa- 
 tion in responsibilities, recognises each one as the doer 
 of his own acts and the sufferer from them. 
 
 Does the Law then only confirm that which was 
 already to some extent characteristic of the Family? 
 
 I. With respect to human Life it introduces what 
 must be called an altogether new conception, though one 
 which does not really clash with older conceptions, but 
 unfolds and deepens them. The life of the child, of the 
 sister, of the wife, is bound up with the life of the father, 
 of the brother, of the husband ; the kinsman has a difii- 
 culty in contemplating it except as the life of a kins- 
 man. The life of his ox, or his sheep, is also precious 
 in his eyes ; he may claim the power of taking it away 
 for the food of his own household; but it is surely more 
 precious than that of an invader from any other house- 
 hold. He has not yet learnt to distinguish the life of 
 a man as such from the life of another animal. Both 
 are contemplated domestically, if I may so speak. It 
 is difficult to express oneself with perfect accuracy; as 
 it is difficult to distinguish the streaks of dawn from the 
 light of the risen sun. But there is a clear difference 
 between the sense of the sacredness of a man's life, in a 
 legal and in a merely patriarchal community. The 
 difference arises from the growth of a consciousness 
 that a man is not accidentally but essentially different 
 from a beast ; that men form a Society of which beasts 
 are not a part. There may on this account be often 
 
 The corpo- 
 rate feeling 
 does not 
 oversha- 
 dow the 
 indivi- 
 dual. 
 
 Effect of 
 Law qn 
 the rever- 
 ence for 
 human 
 life. 
 
 The dis- 
 tinction of 
 the man 
 from the 
 animal. 
 
126 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 Character. 
 
 Property. 
 
 les^ of humanity to animals in the more developed than 
 in the more primitive Society; the Arab's care for his 
 horse may be an example to those who have a sense of 
 legal bonds to which he is a stranger. Apparent^nay 
 real — retrogressions may accompany a veritable pro- 
 gress; they should not hinder us from recognising the 
 distinction of the human life from the animal life as 
 one of the greatest of all the blessings which Law con- 
 fers on us. 
 
 2. As each man is brought forth into distinct pro- 
 minence by the Law it becomes evident that he needs 
 protection for something besides his bodily life. He 
 has a reputation which may be injured; words can in- 
 flict a wound upon him as well as swords. That is a 
 subject which we shall have to consider more particu- 
 larly in the next lecture. I advert to, it here because 
 it denotes very remarkably what kind of advancement 
 it is which I am describing. Each man acquires an 
 importance in himself. Each man is obliged to recog- 
 nise the importance of his neighbour to himself An 
 injury to character falls into the circle of positive acts 
 of which the Law takes cognisance. Its function is not 
 the least to mould a man's character but it can decree 
 that his neighbour shall not interfere with this more 
 than with his visible possessions. 
 
 3. The last sentence reminds me that I have not 
 yet spoken of that which is in some respects the most 
 important topic connected with the legal or national 
 state as distinguished from the domestic. How can I 
 dare to speak of Property in these terms when I have 
 already treated of Life, — emphatically of human life? 
 I use this language precisely because I wish you to be 
 aware of the transcendent superiority of Life to Pro- 
 
LAW. 
 
 127 
 
 perty, and because there is the greatest fear that you 
 may lose this feeling altogether if I am not careful in 
 poititing to you how Law and Property are related to 
 each other and what position Property assumes in the 
 crisis of Society which I am now examining. 
 
 Two observations have presented themselves to us 
 in the lectures on Domestic Morality: one is that Pro- 
 perty in its strict sense does not exist in the Family, 
 that there is a common stock, which is vested in the 
 father and is only dispersed among the children when 
 the family is broken up; the other is that a craving for 
 separate possession may be always traced among the 
 members of a family and is the chief interruption of 
 their fellowship. Now the Law by its primary condi- 
 tion of treating each man as separately responsible, 
 though it cannot destroy the family relations, though it 
 cannot more than to a certain point disturb the custom 
 of succession or inheritance which it finds, yet does 
 unquestionably give an altogether new weight to Pro- 
 perty, does ratify the disposition of each man to say 
 'This is mine.' A Law attempting to create Commu- 
 nism or assuming Communism as its basis is a contra- 
 diction in terms. It must recognise separate ownership ; 
 it must forbid each man to interfere with that which his 
 ijeighbour owns. 
 
 This truth has impressed itself deeply upon the 
 Citizens of Nations and the Rulers of Nations. With 
 it has been combined the observation — ^brought home 
 to them by accumulated evidence — ^that questions of 
 Property are those which disturb, more than most 
 others, the peace and order of a Community, tend 
 specially to provoke assaults upon the life or reputation 
 of its members. The inference seemed natural, 'The 
 
 The Fami- 
 ly Stock. 
 
 Law mxut 
 admit se- 
 parate 
 ownership. 
 
128 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 liECT. VIII. 
 
 The owner 
 tormenting 
 the Law- 
 giver, 
 
 Will the 
 interest 
 in Proper- 
 ty cause 
 laws to be 
 obeyed? 
 
 Sir C. W. 
 Bilkers 
 Greater 
 Britain, 
 Vol. I. 
 Chapter on 
 Lynch 
 Law, 
 
 main function of Law must be to grapple with these 
 questions; to devise means for preventing the holders 
 of Property and the seekers of Property from coming 
 into collision with each other; to settle their disputes 
 when they arise.' And when Legislators have found 
 themselves defeated in their experiments for these pur- 
 poses, even in those which seemed best contrived — 
 suggested by the experience of practical men as well 
 as the wisdom of Philosophers — they have begun to 
 think, 'Law after all wants some support besides its 
 own authority; whence must the support come?' The 
 most popular answer has been, 'It must come from a 
 sense in the holders of Property and the seekers of 
 Property, of that which is for their own interest. If 
 they perceive that they will devise reasonable laws; 
 they will know where it is best to dispense with Law.' 
 All this sounds very plausible. I do not say that it is 
 only plausible. But you observe that it changes our 
 position altogether. We thought Law was to guard 
 Property; to protect men from invading each other's 
 Property. Now it appears that Property is to guard 
 Law. The feelings, or if you will the intellectual per- 
 ceptions, of men about what it is good for them to have 
 and good' for their neighbours to have are to prescribe 
 what the Law shall be. I venture to think that those 
 very facts which would be appealed to in favour of this, 
 doctrine directly confute it. The latest experience that 
 I know of is that of the gold-diggers in California. The 
 story is told at considerable length on the authority of 
 an eye-witness in a chapter of Sir 0, Dilke's Greater 
 Britain. I wish you would read that chapter and con- 
 sider it carefully. It shews unquestionably that a set 
 of reckless vagabonds who had come from every country 
 
LAW. 
 
 129 
 
 to seek for property, aud who committed the most fero- 
 cious acts agaittst each other in order to ohtain it, wete 
 at first restrained by an extemporised Lynch Law, and 
 at last became an, orderly Society. Can we itifer from 
 these facts that the lust of gold suggests the policy of 
 confining the lust within certain bounds? or may we 
 rather conclude with Sir C. Dilke that a few people 
 having the sense of Law derived from the traditions of 
 a 'law-governed' Community were able at last to awe at 
 multitude of ruffians much stronger than themselves, — 
 were able to call forth in the very people who were to 
 be restrained — and whom mere force could not over- 
 come, — ^the sense of an order which they must not 
 transgress? Looked at in the last aspect I know of no 
 recent record w'hich is so cheering, none which throws 
 a more brilliant light upon the testimonies and the 
 beliefs of other days. 
 
 Turn back, for instance, from these recent facts to 
 that splendid fiction of which I spoke before, a fiction 
 embodying the principle that is hidden in a great many 
 facts. The faith of Shylock in law — even a law which 
 was to be administered by the Courts of Venice — 
 strikes me as magnificent; it proves him to be the 
 member of a race which, more than any other, has 
 borne witness of Law, has diffused the reverence for 
 Law through the Nations of the West. He is sure 
 that Law must somehow prevail; he recognises in a 
 Christian who expounds it honestly "a Daniel come to 
 judgment." If that had been all, his character would 
 be not ignominious but subKme. What makes it igno- 
 minious ? He regards Law only as an instrument for 
 securing his property. He is not without family affec- 
 tion, but he cannot separate his ducats from his daugh- 
 
 M. M. I 
 
 LBOT. VIII. 
 
 Law con- 
 quering 
 the craving 
 for Posses- 
 sion. 
 
 The Jew's 
 grandeur. 
 
130 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 His base- 
 ness. 
 
 Law 
 
 making a 
 man aware 
 of his CO- 
 vetousness. 
 
 The terrors 
 of Law 
 
 ter. There is the reverse of the medal; there is the 
 mean Mammon worshipper. The two tempers may- 
 dwell in the same man ; because there is a deadly war 
 within him; because hostile principles are struggling 
 for the mastery of him. But the craving for Property 
 will never beget reverence for Law. And the Law, 
 instead of fostering his covetousness, will make the 
 man conscious of it, will make him know how much it 
 interferes with his submission to that which in his 
 heart he Honours most. 
 
 4. That is another of those great functions which 
 Law performs for morality — functions all the more 
 valuable because they prove how utterly unable it is to 
 make us moral. The Law, taking each of us apart, 
 treating each man as an individual, brings him to per- 
 ceive what there is in that very individuality which 
 leads him to struggle with it, to be at war with Society. 
 He wants something for himself; he wants something 
 which is his neighbour's. The Law which forbids him 
 to meddle with another's property shews him that he 
 has a wish to meddle with it, leads him to doubt if that 
 wish can be separated from himself. That makes Law 
 so terrible — not its punishment for any specific trans-', 
 gression which he need not incur, which he could easily 
 endure ; but the detection in him of that which appears 
 to be hopelessly at variance with the condition under 
 which he does exist and must exist. The sense of 
 obligation to his neighbour ends in the discovery of an 
 intense dislike to the obligation, of a passionate longing 
 to be free from it ; while at the same time he eagerly 
 insists that his neighbour is obliged to him ; he must 
 have the forfeit of his bond. 
 
 Were this the only effect of Law, or were there 
 
LAW. 
 
 131 
 
 nothing to qualify it, we might shrink from the na- 
 tional State as from one that only lays upon us a heavy 
 burden of which in the earlier stages of life we had no 
 experience. No doubt each step as we advance does 
 make us more aware of that which we have to lift ; this 
 stage teaches us that the heaviest weight which a man 
 has to bear is himself. That is surely a ha,rd lesson if 
 there comes with it no promise of a way in which he 
 may throw off himself. He has had hints upon that 
 subject in his previous experience. Each family rela- 
 tion has said to him something about the possibility of 
 losing himself in another ; has taught him that he only 
 realises a blessing when he confers it. This remem- 
 brance is not enough for his present growth; his per- 
 sonal distinctness has been discovered to him ; he 
 cannot merely fall back upon domestic sympathies. 
 But they may remain to illuminate the new road which 
 he has entered ; there may still be a way, by which he 
 can lose bimself and so find himself. 
 
 In the mean time the Law does not only bring to 
 him the conviction that there is something wrong in 
 him ; something very close to him, a part of himself, if 
 not his very self, from which he needs to be emanci- 
 pated. There can be no Wrong if there is not a Eight ; 
 he cannot be unjust to his neighbour or his neighbour 
 to him, if there is not some justice which is over them 
 both. The sense of being under a Law forces that 
 belief upon us. We may explain it away afterwards. 
 Philosophers may shew us that we have been misled in 
 the use of the word 'justice,' or that it can be resolved 
 into elements altogether unlike those of which we have 
 supposed it to consist. For this we must be prepared. 
 But though the explanation may remove the impression 
 
 1 2 
 
 LECT. VIII. 
 
 and its 
 blessing. 
 
 Wrong 
 and Bight. 
 
 The Law 
 though it 
 only prohi- 
 hits wrong 
 acts, makes 
 me con- 
 scious of a 
 
132 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 night 
 which is 
 over my- 
 self. 
 
 Obligation 
 
 above 
 
 Sentiment. 
 
 which. Law has made upon us, that is the impression. 
 That is what it has made upon all nations. When 
 they have been submissive to this Law it has been 
 because they took it to be what they called just, when 
 they have protested against it they have named it un- 
 just. "Wise men may expose the folly of this vulgar 
 speech ; but that it is of this kind wherever nations 
 exist, there is no question. That fact is all I am con- 
 cerned with at present. I am considering the opera- 
 tion of Law upon us; if its operation is to deceive us, 
 still I am bound to notice the deception. Many acts 
 may be deemed wrong in one place which are not 
 deemed wrong in another; many acts maybe praised 
 here which are blamed there. But the epithets are 
 given, the praise and blame are bestowed. "Ah, but 
 perhaps wrongly." Perhaps so; but you are resorting 
 to the very word which you wish to banish from our 
 discourse. 
 
 Justice has unquestionably a relation to Law which 
 mercy or charity has not. But as I said at the begin- 
 ning of this Lecture, that Law could as little produce 
 habits of Justice as habits of Mercy, so I say at the end 
 of it that there is a sense in which the formula of Law 
 may be applied to Mercy. ' Then must the Jew be 
 merciful' was Portia's language. She spoke as a 
 woman, doubtless, but the phraseology of her adopted 
 character suited well with her own. She felt that 
 there is an obligation to shew mercy. I do not imagine 
 we shall ever shew much if we think otherwise. Senti- 
 ment is but a weak support for one part of morality or 
 another. It must rest at last on a Command. Whence 
 that Command ^ssues, why it must enjoin Mercy, is a 
 question for a future Lecture. 
 
LECTURE IX, 
 
 LANGUAGE. 
 
 You have heard doubtless many jokes about the 
 name which we give to the Council of our Nation. 
 It is a place for talk. Mr Carlyle calls it the great 
 National Palaver. 
 
 It may be well for those who are members of this 
 assembly to reflect on such remarks. They may make 
 Parliament a place for talking, not for doing. We who 
 are not members of it, though greatly interested in its 
 proceedings, shall be wiser perhaps if we remember that 
 Speech need not degenerate into Talk; that it may 
 express individual convictions and beliefs, that it ought 
 to be the bond of intercourse and communion between 
 citizens. If the obvious derivation of Parliament is the 
 right one, I can think of no fitter word to denote a 
 body which ought to collect the thought of a people 
 and to make it effectual. I gladly avail myself of that 
 Etymology to introduce the subject of which I propose 
 to spekk this morning. The first characteristic of a 
 Nation is that it has a Law. The second is that it has 
 a Language. What the Law has to do with the Moral- 
 ity of a Nation I enquired last week. What its Lan- 
 guage has to do with its Morality I propose to consider 
 now. 
 
 Parlia- 
 ment,isita 
 contem/pt- 
 ible title I 
 
 Speech the 
 sign of a 
 Nation, 
 
134 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The pri- 
 mitive 
 speech. 
 
 The legin- 
 nings of 
 articula- 
 tion. 
 
 The subject belongs strictly to this branch of my 
 subject. The distinction of Nations is represented by 
 the distinction of Languages. All attempts to over- 
 throw the distinction of Nations have been accom- 
 panied by attempts to introduce some common lan- 
 guage which shall efface the national language. The 
 use of Latin in the Middle ages, the diffusion of French 
 in the age of Louis XIV. indicates the weakening of 
 nations. Both subjects will come before us again in 
 this Lecture. 
 
 I am not inviting you to enter upon any philologi- 
 cal questions. Experiments to ascertain what is the 
 primitive language of the earth may be as clumsy as 
 that which Herodotus attributes to Psammetichus, as 
 much grounded upon fallacious preconceptions as those 
 which M. Max Miiller has exposed, as promising as any 
 which lie or any one endowed with the like learning 
 has inaugurated. But there is for all of us one un- 
 doabted primitive language; that which our lips first 
 utter, that which we first understand when it comes 
 from the lips of others. Whatever may be believed 
 about former ages it is this which bears witness to 
 hidden springs in ourselves, to hidden springs in our 
 neighbours. I recur to that word on which I have 
 dwelt so much in the last two Lectures, for it is through 
 Language that we begin to apprehend the force of it. 
 We have been gradually finding words to denote our 
 kinsmen ; words for things which we have or which we 
 want ; words to denote that in any person or any thing 
 which attracts us or repels us ; words for acts that we 
 do or for impressions that we receive ; words that de- 
 clare whence we are coming or whither we are going ; 
 words that link other words together. These, succeed- 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 135 
 
 mg the cries, the mere acrrj/Ma Kvv^tjfiara, as" Herodotus 
 calls them, of pure infancy, may shape themselves into 
 sentences without waiting for any syntax to decide how 
 they shall succeed each other. The syntax is extempo- 
 rised, it is determined by imitation of what is heard 
 without or by some inward impulse before the rules of 
 it are acquired by rote or are fixed in us by custom. 
 All this might be merely a peculiar family jargon, cer- 
 tain signs of intelligence between the brother or sister, 
 the mother and child. But others not of the family 
 appear. They utter this same kind of speech, they 
 give a sense to that which they hear from us. Some- 
 how or other all who dwell within that circle, larger or 
 smaller, which we call a neighbourhood speak — not in 
 the same tones and inflections of voice, not always in 
 the same order, — ^yet on the whole the same words ; we 
 know what they mean or at least a little of What they 
 mean ; they know what we mean more or less. It is 
 the same with those who come from any city, London, 
 Liverpool or Exeter, not strictly in our neighbourhood. 
 It is so with women as well as men ; with children as 
 well as with the full grown. We are not the least sur- 
 prised that it is so. We are surprised when we meet 
 with a child or man who is dumb. We are surprised 
 when the sound of some foreign tongue reaches our ears 
 for the first time. But that we should be able to make 
 ourselves intelligible to any about us, that they should 
 be able to make themselves intelligible to us ; this does 
 not astonish us at all ; we are angry if we cannot exer- 
 cise either of those rights which seem so natural to us, 
 so inherent in us. It appears a hardship, almost an 
 injury, if people address us in our own tongue without 
 ^making their intention evident to us ; we are inclined 
 
 The 
 
 strange 
 
 discovery. 
 
 The power 
 
 of vmder- 
 
 standing 
 
 and 
 
 making 
 
 ourselves 
 
 wnderstood- 
 
 claimed as 
 
 natural. 
 
136 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 How we 
 learn to 
 regard it 
 as a mar- 
 vel. 
 
 Painful 
 methods o^ 
 learning. 
 
 The good 
 fruits of 
 tlie pain. 
 
 to call theia naturally or wilfully stupid if we cannot 
 make our intention evident to them. 
 
 So it was ■n'hen we were young, I am not at all 
 sure that we cease to claim the same right to under- 
 stand and to be understood when we grow old. But 
 we have probably passed through some experiences 
 which make us far less hopeful as to our power of 
 establishing these rights. We have not understood 
 those who have spoken to us in very clear beautiful 
 English. We have not been able to make very intel- 
 ligent persons understand us. Both experiences may 
 have been strange and irritating to us at the time ; 
 they may have given rise to painful reflections after- 
 wards on the defects in thought or expression, or in 
 something deeper than both, which interfered both 
 with our apprehension of what our fellow-citizens 
 meant, and with our faculty of discovering our meaning 
 to them. But there should be another result besides 
 that, one quite as salutary and more consolatory. The 
 power of communicating thoughts instead of being re- 
 garded any longer as an ordinary treasure should be 
 accepted as an amazing gift. A man who has never 
 suffered from a bad digestion scarcely knows that there 
 is a digestion. Those who have never been asthmatic 
 scarcely believe in respiration. Dyspepsia and short 
 breathing bring a man to confess that the organs which 
 receive food and inhale air do hot exist merely in 
 books of physiology or pathology; that they are real. 
 
 He who has mistaken others, through preoccupation 
 with his own conceits, will feel with especial keenness 
 the delight of receiving a flash of light from some book 
 which he had passed by, some man whom he had re- 
 garded with indifference. He who has been mistaken 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 137 
 
 by others will accept the slightest recognition from 
 them with grateful astonishment. And when he strips 
 off the rags of vanity which may cleave to his thank- 
 fulness he will regard the possession of a common 
 speech much as one just escaped from a sick chamber 
 regards the common air. He does not despise it be- 
 cause it is breathed by weary day-labourers and jaded 
 artizans. That is its charm. Like Faust passing from 
 his pedant-haunted demon-haunted study to the as- 
 sembly of peasants on the Easter Morning, he cries 
 " I am a man, I dare to be one." 
 
 You must not suppose that I am demanding this 
 discipline of you, any more than our Medical Professors 
 would wish you to learn by bodUy weakness or de- 
 rangement the truth of their teaching. I hope much 
 that you may learn to appreciate the worth of your 
 national language at a far less cost ; though those who 
 have incurred this may consider the compensation an 
 ample one. The Morality which I associate with the 
 speaking of a language is very ordinary Morality in- 
 deed, it may be fitly called dame-school Morality. 
 Only the dame is England, and we all, young and old, 
 men, women. Ministers of State, Lawyers^ Merchants, 
 Divines, Professors, Students, are sitting on the same 
 forms, repeating the same lessons, threatened by the 
 same rod, encouraged by the same smile. 
 
 An illustrious man, John Locke, laid it down in his 
 Essay on Government, that there was, at some time or 
 other, in some place or other, a compact between Eulers 
 and those whom they were to rule, which determined 
 on what conditions they should rule, under what cir- 
 cumstances they should cease to rule. Practical people 
 have enquired anxiously in what time or at what place 
 
 The 
 
 Dame's 
 
 School. 
 
 The ori- 
 ginal Con- 
 tract. 
 
138 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. IX. 
 
 Is not lan- 
 guage it- 
 self such a 
 Contract? 
 
 the Compact was made, whether any ancient MS. con- 
 tains any record or trace of it. Charters, they say, 
 there are of great, interest and validity, written on 
 durable parchment, declaring certain acts to be viola- 
 tions of the obligation which rulers owe to their sub- 
 jects. But these are all subsequent to the birth of 
 Society ; they are written in known words ; they pre- 
 sume the existence of rulers. The earlier compact 
 which called them into existence, where is that? 
 These questions have been felt to be very puzzling. 
 Sir H. Maine pronounces Locke's conception to be ut- 
 terly ' unhistorical.' So I am afraid it is. Yet one is 
 unwilling to believe that a writer so averse from fictions 
 as Locke was, composed a fiction upon so serious a sub- 
 ject with no basis of fact. He was a truth-loving, a 
 truth-speaking man. Had he not the sense of a com- 
 pact which binds men to speak the truth to each other, 
 not to practise frauds upon each other ? Such a com- 
 pact I hold there is — not limited by the technical terms 
 ' rulers and ruled,' but extending to all the inhabitants 
 of a land; the ground of all other compacts that can be 
 made between them. In the ancient transfers of land 
 there might be a visible sign, that A gave a certain 
 possession to B and to his heirs, for some consideration 
 which he received. But these signs were accompanied 
 by words. If the words had one meaning for the ven- 
 dor, another for the purchaser, the compact was a frau- 
 dulent one ; it was no compact at all. The sincerity of 
 words, the strict significance of words, therefore is im- 
 plied in all such transactions. A covenant not to lie is 
 implied in the language of every people under heaven. 
 "You have indeed brought us to our ABC" some 
 one will exclaim. "A very grand philosophy which 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 139 
 
 bids us abstain from telling lies !" Very grand I think, 
 the foundation of a Moral Science and also the climax 
 of it. Holding that opinion strongly, I wish to know 
 how the lesson may be made effectual. A good parent 
 of course desires above all things that his child should 
 not utter a falsehood; there is no offence which he 
 treats with so much solemnity. But the mere general 
 precept, the mere punishment for the special act, will 
 avail very little; if he trusts to precepts or punish- 
 ments, — if the first are merely formal or the last vin- 
 dictive, — he may make cowards who will be continually 
 lying. Only a resolute sincerity in his own acts, a 
 punctual observance of his own promises even in trivial 
 points to his children, can cause them to appreciate 
 veracity. They have a reverence for his words, but 
 they will not learn at once to reverence words as such. 
 Children are great actors and romancers. They are apt 
 to twist their words like their other playthings into 
 irregular shapes, to dress them in grotesque costumes, 
 sometimes in haste or violence or from mere wanton- 
 ness to break them as they do their dolls. To cultivate 
 respect for them should be a primary object, but the 
 cultivation will proceed slowly amidst many obstacles. 
 In societies which are merely patriarchal lying is only 
 ie\t to be an offence against the members of the Clan. 
 Dean Ramsay relates a story of a devoted Highlander 
 in 1745 who perjured himself enormously to save his 
 Chieftain's life, and who, being asked how he coiild 
 venture on such a crime, answered at once that 'he 
 had rather trust his ain soul to the Almighty than his 
 Master's body to those scoundrels.' Such a curious 
 compound of faith and falsehood could certainly find I 
 no parallel in the most, authentic record of patriarchal j 
 
 The do- 
 mestic dis- 
 cipline for 
 the preven- 
 tion and 
 cure of 
 falsehood 
 most im- 
 portant, 
 but only 
 prepara- 
 tory. 
 
 In a patri- 
 archal so- 
 ciety false- 
 hood only 
 
140 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 felt as an 
 offence 
 against the 
 members 
 of it. 
 
 Or in 
 covenants 
 about spe- 
 cial acts. 
 
 Words 
 acquire a 
 new force 
 when per- 
 sonal re- 
 sponsibili- 
 ty begins. 
 
 life which we possess. But that honest story tells us 
 that both Abram and his son, faithful in their tents, 
 lied through fear of personal danger when they went 
 down into Egypt, and so exposed their wives to the 
 greatest peril. Jacob again was perpetually trifling 
 with truth. If we accept these as records of a Divine 
 Education, nothing can be more instructive to a parent 
 than the hint that all who are in the infantine stage, 
 not yet brought within the bonds of law, must be led 
 to the discernment of the wrong by the misery which 
 follows it. But there is no anticipation of the time 
 when lying will be presented to him who utters it as 
 the evil which undermine s his own life and makes social 
 life impossible. 
 
 So soon as members of different households have 
 transactions with each other, even if they are kinsmen, 
 words will begin to assert their power and sacredness. 
 The words in these transactions appear to derive their 
 worth from the objects to which they refer. 'These 
 cattle belong to my herd, those to yours,' ' you shall not 
 interfere with mine, I will not interfere with yours.' 
 Such promises acquire a still higher sanctity, especially 
 in an Eastern country, when they are about springs of 
 water which may be common to two households and 
 which either may close. They reach the highest point 
 of all when they concern the marriages of daughters, 
 or places of burial. But a time comes when words are 
 felt to be more sacred than things. I do not say more 
 sacred than persons, — but sacred because they express 
 bonds between persons, which there cannot be between 
 things or between persons and things. That is the 
 great sign that men are beginning to look upon them- 
 selves as members of a Nation. A Nation — I am not 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 141 
 
 speaking too strongly — is held together by words. A 
 certain portion of land, larger or smaller, is included 
 within its domain. But this land may be increased 
 or diminished. If the whole of it is supposed to be 
 Vested in the Ruler or Chief of the land, yet it will be 
 divided into various properties which this and that man 
 will claim as his. These possessions then cannot be 
 the ground or witness of the fellowship between the 
 inhabitants of the land. They separate one from 
 another, they may be the occasion of numerous dis- 
 putes. Words must be the media of all intercourse 
 between the disputants. And thus that those words 
 should represent — ^not things but — ^the purpose of him 
 who speaks them, that his neighbours should be able 
 through them to judge of his purpose, becomes the 
 great demand of the citizen. "We often speak of the 
 Greeks as specially cunning, of the crafty Odysseus as 
 the typical specimen of a Greek. But the Greeks had 
 in their earliest ages, of which we have any record, 
 the keenest sense of civic life, and Achilles gave full 
 expression to that sense when he declared that he hated 
 as the gates of Hell the man who spoke one thing with 
 his lips, and hid another in his heart. Even in days 
 when we suppose that the standard of veracity had 
 become anything but exalted among the Athenians, 
 Euripides could not put into the mouth of Hippolytus 
 the sentence, 'The tongue has sworn but the mind 
 is unsworn,' without subjecting himself to the bitterest 
 taunts of his comic , foe, taunts which he was sure that 
 his countrymen, whatever their own practice might be, 
 would endorse. 
 
 The language ascribed to Hippolytus is the ancient 
 form of that doctrine of mental reservation which has 
 
 Words 
 represent 
 not things ' 
 but pur- 
 poses. 
 
 Greek 
 sense of a 
 falsehood 
 as an act 
 of inciviB- 
 me. 
 
 Mental 
 Reserva- 
 tion, who 
 
142 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY.. 
 
 were its 
 defenders ? 
 
 Lying 
 always 
 
 ■ deemed 
 pardonable 
 and tolera- 
 
 ■ hie by 
 those who 
 are care- 
 less about 
 national 
 life. 
 
 had so wide a diffusion in Modern Europe, and which 
 is often accepted under another name by those who 
 repudiate it when they associate it with a 'certain 
 religious system. I allude to it because I wish you 
 to observe that this doctrine sprang up and flourished 
 and was sanctioned by skilful casuists, among those 
 who despised national life, who treated it as a low, 
 almost as an accursed thing — to be endured and turned 
 to account like all other evils — but which ought to be 
 trampled upon by the priesthood unless it could be 
 reduced into their servant. All who form this concep- 
 tion of a Nation, whatever creed they may profess, will 
 also be bound by a higher logical necessity than they 
 are themselves aware of to treat veracity — that is to 
 say, the conformity of language to the purpose of him 
 who uses it — as a cheap and secondary virtue which it 
 will be often a merit for higher ends to part with. 
 Nor, if I read history aright, has there ever been in 
 any country a revival of horror and disgust for false- 
 hood which has not been accompanied by a revival of 
 belief in the sanctity of the Nation's life and the lan- 
 guage which is the expression of it. I do not say for a 
 moment that any creed commands a man to lie, or 
 encourages him to lie. And I am convinced that a 
 man who, is penetrated with the feeling of his obliga- 
 tions as the citizen of a Nation, will find in his creed, 
 let it bear what name it will, the strongest warnings 
 against lying. But I hold also that if under any 
 temptation we part with the feeling of those obliga- 
 tions, we shall turn our creed, whatever it- be, into an 
 excuse for lying. It will be removed from the cata- 
 logue of deadly into the catalogue of venial sins. I 
 know not what priest or congregation of priests re- 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 143 
 
 ceived authority to draw up either of those catalogues, 
 but I do know that a lie brings death into the con- 
 science %nd heart of every English citizen, and that he 
 must continue in that death unless there is some one 
 higher than any priest or congregation of priests who 
 will raise him out of it. 
 
 We are thus better able to perceive what we owe 
 to some great men of different lands whose names are 
 familiar to us. The Italian may delight to speak of 
 Dante as a politician, as a theologian, as a lover ; may 
 feel that not from one of those characters separately, 
 but from all united, his poetry derives its ;power; that 
 he could not have been a poet if he had not first and 
 chiefiy been a struggling, suffering man. All this he 
 may see and testify; still I think the greatest debt 
 he owes to the Fljorentine is that which we can least 
 appreciate — the unfolding of the hidden powers of 
 that- speech which belonged not to the School or the 
 Church, but to the Italian as an Italian. The stem, 
 even savage, hatred of insincerity • and untruth which 
 worked in the heart of the* singer, which led him to 
 believe that the deepest doom was for those who had 
 been in the highest places on earth, even for those who 
 exercised 'an authority that he deemeid divine — this 
 hatred was linked inseparably not only with his pa- 
 triotism, but with his reverence for the native words, 
 with his awe of perverting them to any base or treach- 
 erous signification. 
 
 If we pass from him to a man who, not much after 
 his time, did a work for our land, of a not less wonder- 
 ful kind though demanding far less genius, we shall 
 see the same truth in another aspect. John Wycliffe 
 was a great Schoolman,, hpnoured.in Oxford, honoured 
 
 LECT. IX. 
 
 Bante 
 the re- 
 storer of 
 his peopled 
 
 Wycliffe. 
 
144 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 First a 
 Schoolman 
 then an 
 English- 
 man. 
 
 in foreign cities, in Prague especially, for his subtlety 
 in disputation, and for his defence of Realism, which 
 ■was identified in his mind with a belief that what we 
 speak of and think of is not shadow but substance. He 
 mio-ht have argued for ever on that thesis, and might 
 have left us to this day in doubt whether he was not 
 bringing us among shadows, whether some of his oppo- 
 nents were not at least as good witnesses for what is 
 substantial as he was. But the great Logician was led 
 to care for the English soil on which he was bom ; to 
 see among those who met him when he came out of his 
 rooms in Balliol not quiddities or entities but living 
 human beings ; to discover that of the same blood with 
 them was the Prince who for awhile patronized him in 
 London, were the peasants to whom he preached at 
 Lutterworth. He perceived that the English tongue 
 which all these spoke to each other was as sacred a 
 tongue as the Latin. It was not framed merely for the 
 purpose of buying and selling any more than that was, 
 though it might serve such purposes as the Latin had 
 done when Cicero and Caesar conversed in it. Accord- 
 ingly he believed that the language of the English 
 people was not less fit than the language of the Latin 
 people, was more fit than the language of the Latin 
 schools — for expressing the deepest truths that could be 
 uttered. A translation such as his, however imperfect 
 it was and he may have felt it to be, yet was the 
 greatest work for English citizens tha,t had yet been 
 accomplished; the surest foundation of an English 
 Literature. It was a consecration of the words which 
 peasants were continually speaking — a witness to them 
 that those words had a truth in them which they bad 
 no business to twist to any temporary convenience. 
 
 His 
 
 Transla- 
 tion. 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 145 
 
 That witness was so much the more powerful because 
 Wycliffe had beeu for years in battle with the Friars, 
 iespecially on these two grounds, that they exalted their 
 obedience to a foreign prince above their duty to the 
 English king and law, and that they trifled with words 
 or substituted for words mere pictures and images 
 addressed to the senses. He was, in the strictest sense, 
 the asserter of a national Morality in connection with a 
 national language. 
 
 I have not used any of the customary phrases about 
 Wycliffe, — such as that he was the Morning Star of the 
 Reformation, — not only because they do not concern 
 my purpose, but because I believe they mislead us 
 respecting the real point of his resemblance to the great 
 German Reformer. Between him and Luther lay a 
 most important century, which made a huge chasm 
 between refined and cultivated men of the different 
 nations and those clowns with whom Wycliffe claimed 
 fellowship. The day of the Schoolman had gone down, 
 the day of the scholar had risen. Latin had shaken off, 
 to a great extent, its mediaeval dress, and had striven 
 easily or awkwardly to walk about in such robes as it 
 wore in the reign of Augustus ; Greek had fled from 
 Constantinople, now become Ottoman, into the West. 
 To study the speech, the literature, the art of Greece 
 became the passion of Italians. Medicean Princes — 
 sometimes eminent Popes — seemed as if they would 
 inaugurate a Commonwealth of letters in connexion 
 with, or- as a substitute for, the Catholic Church. Ger- 
 mans caught the infection. Earnest students of the 
 new lore, as well as of Hebrew, appeared to the great 
 scandal and terror of many of the monks, but often 
 supported by the smiles of the higher Ecclesiastics. 
 M. M. K 
 
 LECT. IX. 
 
 Its connec- 
 tion with 
 his hostili- 
 ty to the 
 emissaries 
 from Italy. 
 
 The rela- 
 tion of 
 Wycliffe to 
 Luther not 
 a secta- 
 rian one. 
 
 The fif- 
 teenth 
 century a 
 reaction 
 against na- 
 tive km- 
 guages. 
 
146 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Monk 
 and the 
 College 
 Teacher. 
 
 Emiihati- 
 cally a 
 German. 
 
 Only in Bohemia, where Wycliffe's words had been 
 
 heard, and Huss had left disciples to wreak their wrath 
 
 upon his murderers, was there a vehement national 
 
 movement against ecclesiastic domination mixed with 
 
 vehement contempt for the new, or as it was deemed 
 
 by the Hussites the old, Pagan learning. It was 
 
 amongst such circumstances, utterly unlike those which 
 
 had surrounded our countryman, that the Saxon monk 
 
 appeared. He found himself in a Germany divided 
 
 into a number of electorates, secular and spiritual, 
 
 feebly combined under an Emperor who could not 
 
 resist the brigands in his own land and yet was 
 
 expected to prove himself the centre of European 
 
 politics. Luther, occupied with Aristotle and Aquinas 
 
 in his lecture-room, — occupied with intense agonies of 
 
 conscience in his own chamber — seemed as far removed 
 
 as a man could well be from any of those general 
 
 interests which affected the throne of the Caesars, or 
 
 the seat of the successors of St Peter. But as he more 
 
 than any one was to prove that a man who would be 
 
 truly an individual must be intensely national, who 
 
 would be truly national must be vehemently individual, 
 
 so he was also to prove that the ancient learning which 
 
 threatened to extinguish the dialects of the particular 
 
 nations could be effectively used only by one who loved 
 
 one of these dialects better than the Latin, which had 
 
 become a half native — never a mother — tongue to him ; 
 
 better even than the Greek and Hebrew which he 
 
 welcomed as containing divine treasures that the Latin 
 
 had debased. Germans therefore exalt Luther as the 
 
 preserver and restorer of their proper speech. And 
 
 with the preservation of this speech was associated an 
 
 intense horror of the notion that words might be turned 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 147 
 
 into falsehoods at the pleasure of men. Words, Luther 
 said, were not dead things, they had hands and feet. 
 It is the notion of them as dead things which makes us 
 fancy we may use them as we like. When they con- 
 front us as living powers, we dare not trifle with them. 
 
 It may seem to you that this very phrase "words" 
 is an ambiguous and deceitful one. Do I mean by 
 reverence for words, reverence for letters, reverence for 
 print 1 I will answer you by referring to the instances 
 which I have given you already. 
 
 There are no writings, except the sacred writings, 
 which Dante honoured so much as Virgil's. None, he 
 said, had done so much for the cultivation of his mind ; 
 he delighted to think that his own Italian, if it were 
 ever so unlike the Latin which he read and respected 
 in the schools, was the offspring of that in which the 
 Mantuan had conversed. Yes, had conversed; for it 
 was impossible to shut up Virgil in the Georgics or the 
 jEneid. He was a man. He had spoken to Dante. 
 There had been a real hearty intercourse between 
 them. So by no idle fiction, but because the old poet 
 had been in truth the guide of the younger one through 
 dark way^ till he had the glimpse of a higher light, 
 Virgil becomes lovingly and personally associated with 
 a poem which embodies the highest conceptions about 
 the world visible and invisible that the Catholic Church 
 had cherished. 
 
 Do you say that this was owing to the imagination 
 of a great poet ? Wycliffe was no poet ; was emphati- 
 cally prosaic. But he inwardly believed that he was 
 bringing before the priests, the nobles, the farmers, the 
 mechanics of Great Britain not a version of certain 
 Hebrew letters which Isaiah or Jeremiah had written 
 
 K2 
 
 Are words 
 chiefly in 
 books ! 
 
 Virgil and 
 Dante. 
 
 Theyspeak 
 together as 
 Friends. 
 
 The 
 Jewish 
 preachers 
 in Eng- 
 land 
 
148 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 and in 
 Germany. 
 
 A national 
 life needful 
 to a na- 
 tional edu- 
 cation. 
 
 down, but that these old prophet? were speaking to his 
 countrymen just as directly as they spoke to the priests, 
 the nobles, and the farmers, the mechanics of Palestine, 
 on subjects in which both were equally interested. 
 
 With Luther this was even more remarkably the 
 case. Apostles and Prophets were for him never men 
 of another age ; they belonged to his own ; they de- 
 nounced the princes at Worms, the cardinals in Rome. 
 The word which they spoke was to him an everlasting 
 word ; one which applied to the circumstances of every 
 period. It was his vocation to speak that word, not 
 merely to preserve it in letters whether Greek or 
 German. 
 
 So men felt at the time of the Reformation when 
 they were inspired with the conviction that they were 
 Germans or Englishmen. So I think they must feel 
 again if they are to care for that which is contained in 
 English or German books. What treasures, some cry, 
 may we not open to our boys and girls in the highest 
 classes and' the lowest! what information respecting 
 Science and Art; respecting Morals and Politics and 
 Religion, and all the other topics on which Newspapers 
 deliver their oracles ! By all means make these trea- 
 sures accessible to them. Call human spirits out of the 
 vasty deep of ignorance and brutality. But will they 
 come when you do call ? Not at the bidding of any 
 letters. Only if a living voice is heard speaking from 
 the letters. Only if it is felt to be the voice of a spirit 
 mightier than their own. Nor will that Morality 
 which I believe is cultivated by a common Language be 
 at all apparent amongst us merely through the charms 
 of print. Reading and writing may come as Dogberry 
 thought they did by Nature, or as we suppose by black- 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 149 
 
 boards and spelling-books ; in neither case will they of 
 themselves teach us not to lie. 
 
 The Educational Reformers who say, "Give us in 
 your schools things not words," will fully assent to this 
 proposition. They desire to bring their pupils face to 
 face with facts ; not to let mere descriptions be a veil 
 between them. It is an honest desire ; but I do not 
 see how the neglect of words which express what we 
 mean, what we are, can make us truthful. I believe 
 we need to teach words much more, much better, than 
 wq have done ; to make our countrymen feel how they 
 touch the core of our nation's existence and of our own. 
 You have the privilege of studying other languages be- 
 sides your own. Prize it greatly for the sake of your 
 own. Prize it that you may enter more thoroughly 
 into the speech which you share with every English 
 peasant. The old languages are national languages. 
 They express the strength and life of great nations. 
 They enable us to think more of the mystery of words 
 than we are apt to do when we are merely using them 
 for the occasions of every-day life. Still we are all as I 
 said in a Dame's school. We are all learning to speak 
 English. The hardest blows we receive are for the 
 solecisms and false concords which we have each our 
 special temptation to commit. Heavy punishments 
 descend upon us when we use words not to express 
 thoughts but to disguise them ; when we change the 
 mother tongue for the cant of a particular circle. I do 
 not mean that each profession must not have its own 
 nomenclature. There are forms of speech used in each 
 of the Lecture-rooms of this University which are out 
 of place in any other. Still our work in a University 
 is to subordinate all peculiar forms of culture to a com- 
 
 Cryof 
 ' things not 
 words.' 
 
 Other lan-^ 
 guages 
 precious 
 for the 
 sake of our 
 own. 
 
 Technicai^^ 
 phraseo- 
 logy. 
 
ISO 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 A man of 
 Ms word. 
 
 Duty of 
 English- 
 men to 
 ' their lan- 
 
 " English- 
 
 speaking 
 
 lands." 
 
 nion end, to find some centre towards which all lines of 
 thought converge. That is what we mean when we 
 speak of Universities as Institdtions for the Nation. 
 In like manner the greatest lesson which we want in 
 the business of life is to be according to the good old 
 expression, "men of our word." He who is that as 
 Merchant, Lawyer, Divine, fulfils his function; he may 
 often prize silence much more than speech; but his 
 speech will be worth listening to, his country will be 
 the better for it. 
 
 Let us not think that we can ever make our Ensr- 
 lish more dainty by mixing with it foreign phrases or 
 slang phrases. They do not merely separate us from 
 the great writers of other days, from Swift and Addi- 
 son, from Taylor and Milton, from Hooker and Shake- 
 speare. They also introduce an element of untruth 
 into the feelings and habits of our own time. Lan- 
 guage is vital and growing, capable of continually send- 
 ing out new shoots ; but the grafting from other stocks 
 is always perilous ; we shall generally adopt what least 
 deserves to be adopted ; we shall derive our borrowed 
 phrases from the worst sources. The vulgar tongue is 
 never vulgar in the bad sense. The peculiar tongue 
 which coxcombs exchange for it is essentially vulgar if 
 by that adjective we mean coarse, ill conditioned, in- 
 coherent. 
 
 You will not suppose from anything I have said 
 that I am exalting English speech above other speech ; 
 or am dreaming that it is ever to become a universal 
 speech. It makes me tremble when any one speaks of 
 that possibility. When I come to the last division of 
 my subject I may shew you that there was a justifica- 
 tion of the attempt to make Latin a universal Lan- 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 ISI 
 
 guage, greatly as I rejoice that the different dialects of 
 modern Europe rose up to confound it. The diffusioii 
 of French through all the courts and countries of Eu- 
 rope led I think to the death of the continental nations; 
 the revival of a native Literature among Germans was 
 the beginning of renovation: still I dare mot say that 
 French does not possess some qualities for general use 
 which none of our northern tongues can claim. Instead 
 of wishing that English should contest the honour with 
 it I can think of no fate that would be worse for her. 
 The lust of Imperialism is far too strong in us already. 
 Nothing will counteract it more than the recollection 
 that our Language is a national possession ; that only 
 as such does it bind us to the past, that only as such 
 does it help to maintain the veracity of which we boast, 
 and of which our boasting is too likely to deprive us. 
 We have indications in the presence of Celtic tongues 
 close to us, in Wales, in Scotland, in Ireland, that what- 
 ever powers the English speech may be endued with, 
 its power of exterminating the rivals of which it is most 
 suspicious is limited by laws which we cannot alter. 
 What the limits are we cannot know. Those senti- 
 mental persons who wish that the Welsh should talk 
 Welsh because it is a beautiful old language ■v*hen they 
 are minded to talk English, are doing it seems to me a 
 very vain thing. It may be, as experienced people tell 
 us, that the coexistence of the two forms of speech 
 leads to prevarication and falsehood ; that witnesses in 
 a Court of Justice have time to consider and invent 
 evidence while the interpreter is translating. If so, to 
 make the language stand on its feet when it is falling 
 
 Est propter vitam vivendi perdere eausas ; 
 the final and highest aim of language being truth, you 
 
 LBCT. IX. 
 
 Latin and 
 French 
 both more > 
 Jit to be 
 universal 
 languages 
 than ours. 
 
 The Saxon 
 and the 
 Celtic 
 tongues. 
 
 A lan- 
 guage can- 
 not be kept 
 alive by 
 artificial 
 props. 
 
IS2 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The 
 
 oriental 
 
 tongues. 
 
 Speech 
 may he 
 silver if ■ 
 not gold. 
 
 are losing that end that you may gratify your fancy of 
 preserving one. If it can live it will live; if not a 
 greater than you has sentenced it. 
 
 In India we have had lessons quite as remarkable 
 which may either minister to our vanity or check it 
 as we receive them. English has undoubtedly made 
 mighty way through our arms, our administration and 
 our schools. But Englishmen have been taught that 
 they are face to face with languages of which their own 
 has been a younger sister if not the offspring. A lite- 
 rature has been discovered to them which had existed 
 for generations among the darker races when their fa- 
 thers knew scarcely the use of the commonest tools. 
 These are surely reasons for something better than self- 
 exaltation ; reasons for hoping that we have been per- 
 mitted to educate nations which are to have a great 
 future of their own, a future far better than their past 
 but which will not be unmindful of that. May we 
 prize that high calling and despise all miserable am- 
 bition for the spread of our speech or our power which 
 stands in its way. And we have a calling at home, 
 that which I must once and again tell you is the most 
 difficult of all, the call to speak the truth, the whole 
 truth, nothing but the truth. We have been made 
 trustees of a glorious Language because we are citizens 
 of a glorious Nation. That I may end where I began, 
 a Parliament may easily become a mere place for talk- 
 ing, if we whom it represents are merely talkers. If 
 the speech of each of us is sincere and manly the col- 
 lective speech will not be frivolous and false. 
 
LECTURE X. 
 
 GOVERNMENT. 
 
 A Law, I have said, appeals to the individual man, 
 makes him aware that he is an individual. It is only 
 another way of expressing the same fact to say that 
 Law makes each man aware of his responsibility. To 
 feel myself an individual — a distinct living person — is 
 to feel myself responsible for my acts. They are mine ; 
 I can shift them on no one else. 
 
 But to whom am I responsible? Since the sense 
 of having neighbours is awakened at the same time 
 with the sense of being an individual, I might say 
 generally I am responsible to my neighbours ; to each 
 of them, to all of them. The particular neighbour 
 whom 1 injure may make me understand that he holds 
 me responsible to him. Then he is said to take the 
 law into his own hands. Or my neighbours may meet 
 together and call me to account before them. Then 
 they are said to pronounce or execute the law upon 
 me. So that I am driven back upon this word Law. 
 Unless I assume a Law I cannot recognize a meaning 
 either in the personal vengeance or the general sen- 
 tence. Law lies beneath each. It is to a belief of the 
 authority of Law in me that both appeal. 
 
 LECT. Y. 
 
 Law and 
 Responsi- 
 iility ticin 
 C07icqi- 
 tiom. 
 
154 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. X. 
 
 Law mocks 
 those who 
 mock it. 
 
 Loyalty, 
 
 The Law 
 demands 
 adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 Forms of 
 Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 We must keep this thought steadily in our minds. 
 It will be often slipping away from us. We say to 
 ourselves 'Law, what is Law? Why do you talk to me 
 of its might ? It only means this.' ' It only means 
 that.' When we examine what it only means we find 
 the answer is 'Law.' The three letters may be ex- 
 changed for a ponderous polysyllable, or a troop of 
 polysyllables. But we cheat ourselves in the process. 
 We shew that we are very learned, that we cannot 
 speak the common language. But the power of Law, 
 the terror of Law remains for us ; just as if we were 
 not wiser than other men, and were not armed with 
 any polysyllables. 
 
 Is Law then a mere dark Abstraction? Surely 
 not. If it makes me feel my own personality, if it 
 reminds me that my neighbours are persons, I cannot 
 be content with abstractions. I ask who administers 
 or executes the Law ? I ask whom does the Law 
 command me to obey? Here begins that manner or 
 habit which the name of Loyalty so happily describes. 
 That denotes the sentiment which I cherish — which a 
 nation cherishes — for certain persons whom it associ-' 
 ates with Law, who represent the Law to it. They 
 save it from becoming a hard letter. They connect it 
 with living acts. It must be connected with these if it 
 is to have any living force, although the connection is 
 always a perilous one, is always threatening to make 
 Law the servant of those whoni it should rule. 
 
 I propose to consider this question in reference to 
 the different forms of Government which we are wont 
 to describe by the names Monarchy, Aristocracy, Demo- 
 cracy, as well as to that blending of these forms which 
 is implied in the Order of many countries, but which 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 155 
 
 we suppose to be peculiarly characteristic of our own. 
 In a society -where each of these forms prevails I believe 
 Loyalty in its strictest sense may exist; in each of them 
 it is exposed to certain special dangers. 
 
 The sense of Loyalty is often supposed to attach 
 itself almost exclusively to a Monarch. We speak of 
 the loyalty of our Cavaliers to Charles I., of the loyalty 
 of the Scotch Highlanders to Charles Edward. The 
 Roundheads and the Whigs we say have other claims 
 to our reverence but it is not this. I think the Cava- 
 liers and the Highlanders were loyal to these Stuart 
 princes ; and that their loyalty is entitled to our sin- 
 cere respect. If I examine the feeling of either I find 
 it to be no doubt in great part personal ; that is to say 
 they always asked for a man to whom they should pay 
 homage, they could never contemplate law as law. But 
 in both cases there was a sense of reverence for laW 
 underlying the personal attachment. If the Cavalier 
 had not looked upon Charles I. as embodying and 
 representing a law which had lasted for generations, 
 his fidelity would often have been shaken by what he 
 heard and experienced of the monarch's untruthfulness. 
 He could forget that, — he could clothe his master with 
 all splendid and beautiful qualities of soul and body — 
 because he associated him with a certain right which 
 was not absorbed in him, which belonged to the past 
 and the future. In such men as Hyde and Falkland 
 this law became the conscious and paramount object of 
 reverence. Charles was to them little more than the 
 expression of it. But in the military Cavalier who had 
 none of their learning, to whom they would have 
 seemed mere formalists, the same feeling was uncon- 
 sciously at work. Take away the Law and what was 
 
 Is Loyalty 
 
 merely 
 
 personal! 
 
 In all cases 
 Loyalty 
 implies the 
 union of a 
 Person 
 with an 
 order or a 
 Right. 
 
IS6 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The King 
 against the 
 King. 
 
 Loyalty 
 turning to 
 regicide. 
 
 The peril 
 of Loyalty 
 
 implied in it and Charles would have shrivelled into 
 nothing. With the Clansman of Scotland this was not 
 equally the case. He had never risen to the appre- 
 hension of Law. He was still in the patriarchal stage 
 of existence. Yet his devotion is entitled to the name 
 of Loyalty because it was a prophecy of Law ; the 
 particular person belonged to a line with which the 
 Highlander associated a certain right to govern. He 
 resented the intrusion of a Stranger into the throne 
 as he would the intrusion of a robber into his home- 
 stead. 
 
 The Eoundhead and the Whig resisted the Mon- 
 arch for the sake of the Law. For a long time during 
 the civil war the Parliamentary forces fought in the 
 name of the King against the King. They could not 
 give him up because they beheld the Majesty of the 
 Law in him. Cromwell and his soldiers proclaimed 
 such language to be a fiction. A fiction no doubt it 
 had become. But the endurance of it by men of par- 
 ticularly stern and vigorous minds showed that it ex- 
 pressed a very deep truth to them. When it had lost 
 its power, when the Monarch and the Law had been 
 absolutely divorced from each other, it was scarcely 
 possible that any result should follow but that which 
 did follow. Men trained to the reverence for Law said 
 ' there must be a Law — which can pass sentence upon 
 every man.' Milton with his stern conception of the 
 awfulness of Law, of its celestial origin, could rejoice in 
 a death which seemed to him the vindication of it ; his 
 intense belief in the government of a King of Kings, 
 hindered him from perceiving what a shock Law itself 
 suffered in that experiment to assert it. 
 
 This instance, contemplated on all sides, may shew 
 
GO VERNMENT. 
 
 157 
 
 better than any other how Loyalty links itself to the 
 person of a man, and yet how suicidal it becomes 
 ■whenever it tries to exalt the man above the Law. 
 Loyalty may be exercised mosif simply and directly 
 towards one man or one woman. Nearly all of us 
 drop naturally into language which indicates that con- 
 viction. But it is just as true that Loyalty so exercised 
 is always liable to lose its meaning, to be false to its 
 etymology. And whenever that result is reached 
 there will be some crisis which restores the word to 
 its proper significance or which ends in the anarchy 
 of a land. 
 
 Some of the greatest assertions of the dignity and 
 ascendency of Law have been made by the nobles of 
 our land. The most familiar of all examples, the 
 winning of Magna Charta, is for us at least the most 
 instructive. It was an act of apparent rebellion ; it 
 was in the strictest sense an act of Loyalty. John had 
 been disloyal. He had undermined the foundations of 
 his own authority; he had behaved as if choice and 
 self-will were the ground of it. Those who represented 
 the old families of the Nation, — those who kept alive 
 the tradition of its permanence — said that that could 
 not be. It was a subversion of Royalty to rend it 
 asunder from Law. 
 
 Think again of the complaints which have been 
 made so often and so truly against Aristocracies; those 
 for instance first deep, then loud, which were heard in 
 France before the Revolution. On what did they turn? 
 On the claim of the nobles to be a " privileged order," 
 that is to be exempted from the conditions and re- 
 straints of the Law which bound other men. Those 
 who raised the cry might sometimes covet the same 
 
 in Mon- 
 archy. 
 
 Defence 
 of Law by 
 an Aristo- 
 cracy. 
 
 Violation 
 of Law ly 
 an Aristo- 
 cracy. 
 
iS8 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 Govern- 
 ment and 
 Privilege 
 not syn- 
 onymous 
 6ut hostile 
 words. 
 
 Democra- 
 tic Loyal- 
 
 Perils to 
 Loyalty in 
 u Demo- 
 cracy. 
 
 exemptions. Nevertheless it was and must always be 
 a righteous one. It must always ascend from the* 
 inner heart of a people. Privilege has no sort of 
 connection with Government. It is the foe of Govern- 
 ment. If a Government is in the hands of an Aris- 
 tocracy it is an act of Loyalty to that Government to 
 insist that those who administer it shall have no ex- 
 emption from the burdens of other citizens, no indul- 
 gences for their transgressions. These pretences to 
 exemption and indulgence destroyed the nobility of 
 France and at last France itself. 
 
 If this force is given to the word Loyalty, there can 
 be no reason why a democratic Society should not be a 
 strictly loyal Society. The members of such a society 
 may confess the supremacy of Law over them one and 
 all ; they may be loyal, to the Judges who declare what 
 the law is; to the particular Magistrates who enforce 
 it in any district; to the general Magistrate, what- 
 ever be his name, who is the acknowledged head of 
 the Commonwealth. Such Loyalty may be diffused 
 through a Society. It may be a perpetual curb upon 
 the hist of dominion and the lust of gain ; a security 
 that the interests of the present shall not cause the 
 past or the future to be forgotten; a guarantee of 
 history and of letters. 
 
 But on the other hand a Democracy has its own 
 special motives to be disloyal. Does not the Law 
 proceed from its mouth? Does not the Law bow at 
 last to its will ? If the multitude breaks through the 
 cobwebs which bind it, where are the spiders that can 
 preserve or refit those cobwebs? Have not we been 
 proclaimed sovereigns? Are not Judges, Magistrates, 
 Presidents, merely our ministers to be disposed of as 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 159 
 
 we list? Such language sounds strictly democratical. 
 Those who utter it would say if they were accused of 
 disloyalty, "To what do we owe loyalty but to the 
 people's voice ? Are not they — that is to say, are not 
 we — masters?" I apprehend that there is an answer 
 to this language ; that first Anarchy, then Despotism 
 has been always the answer to it. 
 
 Do I present these facts to you that I may deduce 
 Pope's moral from them : 
 
 " For forms of GoTemment let fools contest, 
 That which is best administered is best"? 
 
 No ! That couplet like many others in the Essay on 
 Man contains, it seems to me, a mixture of the poet's 
 admirable common sense with the philosophical strut 
 and political ambition of Bolingbroke who inspired 
 his song. Pope, I doubt not, had been tormented as 
 well by noisy talkers about divine rights, as by classical 
 pedants who vaunted republican heroes. The dis- 
 courses of both seemed to him weary, flat, and un- 
 profitable. His friend who had a scheme for com- 
 bining opposite parties against the administration of 
 Sir Robert Walpole had a different reason for de- 
 nouncing the special theories which held them apart. 
 When such opposite feelings enter into the composition 
 of a maxim there wiU almost necessarily be something 
 in it by which we may profit, something of which we 
 must beware. It is true that there are very foolish 
 contests about forms of government. It is not true 
 that we can settle all questions between them by 
 saying that any one of them will answer if it is well 
 administered. That may be either an arid platitude 
 or a falsehood. It is a platitude to say that if a Mon- 
 archy, an Aristocracy, or a Democracy is well adminis- 
 
 Pope's 
 dictnm 
 requim 
 careful ex- 
 amination. 
 
i6o 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 That form 
 which is 
 not meant 
 for a coun- 
 try cannot 
 be well ad- 
 ministered 
 in it. 
 
 Example. 
 
 A citizen 
 of the 
 United 
 States re- 
 turning 
 from his 
 travels. 
 
 tered it is the best form of Government. That is 
 merely to affirm that whatever country is well go- 
 verned is well governed. It is a falsehood to affirm that 
 a Monarchy, an Aristocracy, or Democracy is equally 
 adapted to every country ; that any country under 
 any one of these forms would be equally well 
 administered. The principle which I think Pope would 
 have expressed in some clear exquisite sentence if he 
 had not been perverted by a passion for epigram and 
 by the affectations of his friend is that those who 
 dispute about forms of Government are not aware that 
 the forms are determined for them; that the forms 
 affect their arguments and are not the least affected by 
 them. Their minds have been moulded by the order 
 under which they have grown up ; they may be de- 
 formers or reformers, but they must confess a form 
 which they wish to break or renew before they are 
 either. They may labour that that form shall be well 
 and not ill administered. To argue about the ad- 
 vantage of some other is child's play not men's work. 
 That doctrine I deem very important to National 
 Morality; I will endeavour to illustrate it. 
 
 Most citizens of the United States who have the 
 means of travelling visit the different cities of Europe. 
 They must hear in them many arguments in favour of 
 Monarchy and Aristocracy. They may sometimes pos- 
 sibly be struck with points in which the administration 
 of States on the Continent — even of our island — is 
 superior to their own. Suppose an inhabitant of Boston 
 or New York returning with the impression of these 
 arguments or of these observations strong upon him — 
 suppose some particular weakness, either in his insti- 
 tutions or in those who administered them, to be 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 i6r 
 
 brought strongly home to him on his arrival — he may 
 reflect, I think with great advantage, on Pope's first 
 line. He may say to himself : " Well ! whether I see 
 " or not at this moment the force of the arguments 
 " for a republic which I learnt by heart in my child- 
 " hood — ^whether or not they have been shaken by what 
 " I have heard elsewhere — this land is my land, these 
 " institutions are the institutions which I have received 
 " from my fathers. ' For forms of government let fools 
 " contest,' I will not be troubled by wise saws or modern 
 "instances. My life, my education has been moulded 
 "into this form. "Whatever it may be for others it is 
 "good for jne." If the second line should occur to 
 him, if he should be tempted to say : " Yes, but I see 
 " many faults in the administration of my country. Is 
 " it not a safe rule that 'that which is best administered 
 " is best' 1 " he will be bound to answer himself again : 
 " On that point too I can decide nothing. I have not 
 "the faculty of comparing administrations. But cer- 
 " tainly, this land of mine will not be rightly adminis- 
 " tered upon some other principle^than its own. There 
 " must be some compass to steer the vessel by. If we 
 "lose the compass I may talk about the management 
 "of it as 'I please. It will drift away, I know not 
 "whither." As the result of which consideration he 
 would, I hope, resolve to labour that he might under- 
 stand the form of his government better than he had 
 ever done; that he might struggle for it more stead- 
 fastly ; that so he might correct whatever he saw was 
 faulty and inconsistent in the administration of it. 
 Such a man I should deem a loyal man; loyal to 
 something better than the conclusions of his intellect, 
 which are always liable to fluctuations ; loyal to what he 
 KM, L 
 
 His doubts 
 and Ms 
 determina- 
 tion. 
 
 The genu- 
 ine loyalty 
 implied in 
 it. 
 
l62 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The aboli- 
 tion of 
 Slavery a 
 grand act 
 of Loyalty, 
 
 A young 
 State 
 should he 
 as tenaci- 
 ous of its 
 Institu- 
 tions as an 
 old one. 
 
 perceived to be the principles of his Nation's existence 
 and therefore those with which the life and thoughts of 
 an American citizen ought to be in harmony. 
 
 What I am saying is no imagination. It is on this 
 principle that the most admirable citizens of the United 
 States have been recently acting. They found an in- 
 stitution among them which did not exist among us 
 their progenitors, or in the other States of Europe. 
 We taunted them with it. We made it an excuse 
 for denouncing their form of Government. They list- 
 ened, sometimes with displeasure, sometimes in silence. 
 But they did not abandon their form because they 
 found a practical anomaly among them from which 
 other countries might be exempt. They declared that 
 it was an anomaly ; that loyalty to their land, to 
 its form of Government, demanded the removal of it. 
 Amidst all difficulties, against all oppositions of inter- 
 ests in one part of the land and another, they main- 
 tained their doctrine. The will of the multitude gave 
 way before the convictions of a few; the worship of 
 the dollar before the willingness of men and women, 
 of young and old, to sacrifice their money and their 
 lives, and lives which were dearer than their own, to 
 purify their land from an abomination. They did 
 purify it, and a great Republic has held forth a 
 spectacle for us to wonder at, an example to make 
 us ashamed. 
 
 I dwell with more interest and satisfaction upon 
 this instance of true loyalty to the form of Government 
 established in a land because the youth of the American 
 States might be so easily pleaded, has been so often 
 pleaded, as a reason why they need not be faithful to 
 the lessons of their fathers, to the order which they 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 •163 
 
 have inherited, why they may consider all questions 
 about Governments as open questions to be settled by 
 the balance of reasoning or authority in favour of one 
 or the other. I hold it a high honour to Americans 
 that they had not been misled by these plausible sug- 
 gestions. Some of them may, no doubt, be convinced 
 that Democracy, as such, has proved itself to be the 
 only tolerable form of Government for the Universe. 
 But I hope and believe that those who hold this intel- 
 lectual persuasion most strongly do not rely wholly or 
 chiefly upon it. If they do I fear they will after all be 
 poor citizens, not ready, like those who shed their blood 
 in the war, to give themselves up for their country. 
 Loyalty I am persuaded is deeper in them, as it should 
 be in all of us, than any judgments of the understand- 
 ing which are liable to continual shocks and vicissi- 
 tudes. Loyalty may bring them into fellowship with 
 the commonest dwellers on their soil. Suppose these 
 had the information or the faculty for applying it 
 which would enable them honestly to accept the 
 proofs and conclusions of learned men, would that do 
 them as much good^would it as much elevate their 
 hearts as the thought, ' Here we were born ; here are 
 the graves of those who went before us ; they won this 
 order for us ; we will not let it perish or be corrupted'? 
 That distinction I would apply with rigour to our 
 own case. Sir William Blackstone, the accomplished 
 and popular Jurist of the last century, told first his 
 pupils at Oxford — then the people of England gene- 
 rally — that we possess a machine called a Constitution; 
 the various parts of which fit so curiously and marvel- 
 lously into each other, as to make qne wonder how it 
 should ever be out of order. 'There are great merits 
 
 L2 
 
 Poverty of 
 mere intel- 
 lectual 
 conclu- 
 sions. 
 
 Loyalty 
 for a peo- 
 ple not for 
 a select 
 class. 
 
 The En- 
 glish Con- 
 stitution 
 according 
 to Black- 
 stone. 
 
1 64 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The same 
 Constitu- 
 tion ac- 
 cording to 
 Pentham. 
 
 ' but also considerable defects in a Monarchy. But we 
 ' have a monarchy the defects of which are remedied, 
 'the merits of which are developed by an Aristocracy. 
 'An Aristocracy has also great excellencies and some 
 ' weak points. But we have a House of Commons- as 
 'well as a House of Lords. That House exhibits the 
 'most perfect kind of Democracy supplementing what 
 ' is not found in Monarchy and Aristocracy, preventing 
 'them each from being too strong for the other.' Ee- 
 commended by the legal knowledge and graceful style 
 of Justice Blackstone how could such a theory as this 
 fail to charm the people whom it pronounces so much 
 more fortunate than all others upon the earth ? How 
 could they help extolling the wisdom of the ancestors 
 who had contrived such a machine, or feeling some 
 considerable self-congratulation that it was still at work 
 among themselves, that they perhaps were in their own 
 way contributing to move or at any rate grease its 
 wheels ? A young man appeared in the University in 
 which Blackstone was lecturing, who instead of echoing 
 his admiration of this exquisite piece of machinery, 
 gave his reasons for thinking that it could accomplish 
 nothing ; that the action of one part of it must always 
 be interfering with the action of every other ; that al- 
 together a clumsier invention had never been produced 
 in the world. That was the doctrine of Mr Jeremy 
 Bentham's Fragment on Government, the first of a long 
 series of works which were to illustrate the same po- 
 sition ; though in later times Mr Bentham was quite as 
 busy in constructing what should be an efficient scheme 
 of government and legislation as in demonstrating the 
 feebleness and incoherencies of that which he had 
 been commanded to admire. 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 165 
 
 Many of us can remember wlien these conflicting 
 theories were first presented to us; how very clever and 
 exact the arrangements of the Constitution seemed to 
 us when they were described by the Judge, how they 
 crumbled to pieces before our eyes — ^how absurd we 
 deemed them — when they were dissected by the critic. 
 And then as we got a slight glimpse into the records of 
 the past, how they appeared to make in favour of the 
 censor, to prove the dogmas of the eulogist untenable ! 
 We could not find those wise ancestors who had com- 
 posed this finely balanced Constitution. We heard of 
 a number of opposing influences which had produced 
 laws and repealed them, of men who had aimed at 
 usurpations and had resisted them. We could sympa- 
 thise with one or other of these influences, we could 
 complain of this or that man ; but where was any ela- 
 borate scheme for adjusting one part of a government 
 to another ? In what workshop was that perfect fabric 
 devised which had been handed down to us and which 
 we were to cherish ? Mr Bentham certainly was a Vul- 
 can ; we could see his forges at work ; we could ex- 
 amine the engine which was produced in them. Had 
 he not an excuse for telling us that all who preceded 
 him were mere bunglers, mainly occupied in gratifying 
 some interest of their own or of their masters ? 
 
 I certainly should for myself have acquiesced in this 
 conclusion if I had been forced to choose between the 
 opinions of Judge Blackstone and Mr Bentham. But 
 it struck some of us, that perhaps we were not driven 
 to this alternative. We began to think that if our 
 Constitution in Sovereign, Lords and Commons was 
 worthy of the honour that was demanded for it, to 
 treat it. as a clever machine was scarcely the right way 
 
 LECT. X. 
 
 Effect of 
 the two 
 doctrines. 
 
 History 
 apparently 
 decisive 
 against the 
 first. 
 
 Must 
 either be 
 accepted? 
 
166 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 A Consti- 
 tution in a 
 Nation as 
 it is in a 
 man's 
 body. 
 
 of paying it honour. That was to glorify the ingenuity 
 of a particular expounder. We need not rob him of 
 any praise that he has earned by his cleverness. But 
 as I have had occasion to observe before, a man does 
 not find the Constitution of his own body in a medical 
 treatise ; he learns what it is, either by the enjoyment 
 of regular health or by fits of gout and diseases of the 
 lungs. He has a certain state of body different from 
 that of his neighbours in some points as well as one in 
 its essentials resembling theirs. But to be contem- 
 plating it as if it were outside of him, instead of doing 
 what he can to preserve its order and cure its disorders, 
 is scarcely judicious. If we applied this analogy, it 
 seemed to us that we might accept all the facts of his- 
 tory which had shaken our faith in Judge Blackstone's 
 perfect scheme, — we might even admit all that Mr 
 Bentham told us about its practical failures, — and yet 
 might retain our loyalty to it as the Constitution that 
 had been from generation to generation proving itself 
 to be ours. We should have no occasion then to credit 
 our ancestors with any grand architectural genius. , We 
 should credit them with just what we found they had 
 done ; with their efforts successful or unsuccessful to re- 
 move confusions which they discovered ; with the errors 
 or insincerities by which they made the confusions 
 greater. We should learn from their wisdom, and 
 therefore should not be enslaved by their opinions ; we 
 should -profit by their righteous acts, and not copy 
 them in circumstances to which they did not apply. 
 
 I have spoken of Blackstone's and Bentham's con- 
 tests about the form of our Government. In the pre- 
 sent day our propensity is rather to ' accept Pope's 
 second line — to resolve Government into Administra- 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 167 
 
 tion. For instance, it has been maintained by a very 
 ingenious writer that 'the Cabinet' which constitutes 
 the centre of what is popularly called 'The Admini- 
 stration' really absorbs the Monarchy of England; that 
 the person whom we call Monarch is merely an orna- 
 mental appendage to this Cabinet ; not useless, because 
 the imagination of common people asks for pictures 
 and gewgaws, cannot altogether dispense with them, 
 but useful in that way only. Such an opinion is not 
 only plausible ; to those who contemplate Government 
 merely as an instrument for securing certain external 
 advantages to the inhabitants of a country, in any 
 given period, as having no relation to the past or the 
 future, it must be irresistible. That it is possible for 
 a man — quite an ordinary man — not to contemplate it 
 in this way, I can perhaps shew you best if I give you 
 the experience of a person whom I once knew, nearly 
 in the words in which he reported it to me : " I was a 
 '.' boy," he said, " in the time of the Regency. I was told 
 "about the fopperies of the Prince and his profligacy. 
 " I was taught to despise the one and hate the other. 
 " I was bred to admire Milton for his republicanism as 
 "well as his poetry; to connect them together. I 
 "learnt that Washington was one of the worthiest be- 
 " cause the simplest of heroes. Whatever cultivation 
 " was given to my imagination was of this sort. That 
 " is to say, the capacity for taking an interest in any 
 " kind of shows was not developed in me. I never have 
 "been able to cultivate it in myself, though I have 
 "sometimes longed for it. My dislike of George IV. 
 "and his court has deepened with fresh knowledge; 
 "my reverence for Milton and Washington. I have 
 " seen nothing of courts, I have lived chiefly with those 
 
 Monarchy 
 treated as 
 a merely 
 ornament- 
 al a'ppend- 
 age to 
 Govern- 
 ment, 
 
 The expe- 
 rience of 
 an En- 
 glishman 
 educatedin 
 republic- 
 anism re- 
 specting - 
 
1 68 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The in- 
 fluence of 
 Aristocra- 
 cy upon all 
 persons in 
 this land. 
 
 " who detest them. Aud yet I am convinced that not 
 " the outside of my mind — not my fancy, which is as 
 " dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage — ^but my 
 "inmost convictions, my way of considering all those 
 " subjects which affect and interest me most, would be 
 " utterly different if I had not been brought up under a 
 "Monarchy. I have watched — from a distance — the 
 " changes of Cabinets and have been anything but in- 
 " different to them ; but I am certain that the States- 
 " men in past ages or present whom I reverence most 
 " for gifts or for honesty are not to me — cannot be to 
 "me — what the Sovereign is, even if the temporary 
 "possessor of the throne were not one whom I had 
 " cause to honour for personal merits. The Sovereign 
 " connects me with other times as well as my own ; the 
 " Statesman may help to do that, if he is the counsellor 
 " of the Sovereign ; on no other terms." The words of 
 an anonymous witness are worth very little, except as 
 they correspond to something in those who hear them. 
 I have quoted them because I think there is something 
 that corresponds to them in you, and because the cir- 
 cumstances and education of my friend make him a 
 crucial test of the way in which the monarchical part of 
 our Constitution acts upon those who have no intellec- 
 tual, no sentimental, prepossessions in favour of it. 
 
 But at this time you will perhaps hear less about 
 this part of our Government than about its Aristocra- 
 tical element. You will be present at many discussions 
 upon the desirableness of " a second Chamber." Do you 
 really suppose that such arguments, if they are ever so 
 cleverly conducted, will advance one step the settle- 
 ment of the question whether England is or is not to 
 have a nobility ? I remember to have heard a distin- 
 
GOVERNMENT. 
 
 169 
 
 guished man not many years dead, a Judge in one of 
 our Equity Courts, expressing his opinion of Lord Rus- 
 sell's Life of Moore. " An amusing book," the Judge 
 said: "I do not dislike the poet. He was a terrible 
 "tuft-hunter no doubt. But what man or woman or 
 " child in England, Ireland, or Scotland has a right to 
 " cast a stone at him for that ? There is not one of us, 
 "you know, that can keep himself from falling down 
 " and worshipping a lord whenever he has the oppor- 
 " tunity." One laughed of course at the extravagance 
 of this dictum. The speaker's own practice was I doubt 
 not a refutation of it. But there must be something in 
 such a remark which we cannot afford to forget. So 
 acute an observer would not have pointed this out as 
 our temptation, if it were not one into which we are all 
 likely to fall. If that is so, there must be more in the 
 existence of an Aristocracy than those have discovered 
 who discuss the utility or the mischievousness of a 
 second Chamber. For evil or for good it has penetrated 
 into our social life ; it affects our Social Morality. For 
 evil certainly if it begets a base flunkeyism. But can 
 you cure that by abolishing the Institution which has 
 been an excuse for it ? The disease may take a hun- 
 dred forms, may be called forth by the most different 
 objects. See whether you cannot counteract it by 
 nourishing the temper of which it is the grovelling 
 counterfeit. If you are loyal to the family sympathies 
 which an Aristocracy represents — if you remember that 
 you too have fathers and ancestors, let them be of 
 what rank or reputation they may, whom it is in your 
 power to honour or to disgrace — you will find that an 
 hereditary Chamber, whatever legislative functions it 
 may exercise, need not depress, may do much to ele- 
 
 The cure of 
 Flunkey- 
 ism: 
 
170 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The House 
 of Com- 
 mons. 
 
 What do 
 our Repre- 
 sentatives 
 represent ? 
 
 vate, your national and therefore your individual life. 
 The members of it may have temptations to which we 
 are not exposed. If we are loyal to our common coun- 
 try we may find that what unites patrician and ple- 
 beian is stronger than that which separates them. 
 
 I am not likely, as a Plebeian, to forget that part of 
 our Government which stands in closest connexion with 
 ourselves. Of course I desire that it should be what it 
 professes to be, that it should faithfully represent the 
 mind of the English people. But that it may do this, 
 there must be a mind to represent. Every one of us 
 may be helping to form that mind. If we have any 
 function here, thaif is our function. Our business is 
 not to set England above other countries ; to foster 
 any national conceit. We are not to maintain that 
 Nations are only good and true when they have a 
 Sovereign and a House of Peers, and a House of Com- 
 mons. But since this is the form of Government under 
 which we have been nurtured, which has moulded the 
 thoughts of us and our fathers, our loyalty to it will be 
 the best security that we honour the institutions and 
 desire the growth of every other Nation. Our judg- 
 ments are apt to be arrogant, because we see but a 
 little way. The hills that surround us and protect us 
 may shut out the prospect beyond them. But when 
 we reflect how much those hills are above us, how 
 many generations have dwelt under the shadow of 
 them, and have welcomed the sun as it rose behind 
 them, humbler thoughts will take possession of us, 
 We shall begin to understand that there may be other 
 regions which lie under the shadow of their own hills, 
 which are enlightened by the same sun. 
 
LECTURE XI. 
 
 WAR. 
 
 Law, Language, Government ; all these it will be ad- 
 mitted have a certain worth. No one will say that a 
 Nation can exist without them. Few will say that 
 they are not precious to the Individual. But War — 
 dare I speak of that as good either for the Nation or 
 the Individual? 
 
 We do speak of it as good for both. The history 
 pf a Nation is often said to be in a great measure the 
 history of its wars. Some of the most conspicuous 
 individuals of every Nation have been its warriors. 
 Artists and Poets choose them for their subjects. If 
 we attribute that preference to a Pagan instinct, we 
 are reminded that the books of Moses speak of war 
 as well as the books of Somer; that Joshua and 
 David fought as well as Miltiades and Alexander. 
 If War is said to be the relic of an uncivilized age, we 
 ask ourselves why it has called forth most enthusiasm 
 amongst the people of Europe, which boasts to be most 
 civilized, most to have outgrown old superstitions ? 
 If it is pronounced irreligious, the question suggests 
 itself why religion has produced so many wars ? If it 
 is said to be the produce of an Aristocratical rule, we 
 
 Conflict of 
 feelings re- 
 sp_ectin^ 
 war. ^^^ 
 
172 
 
 NATIONAL MOBALITT. 
 
 LEOT. XI. 
 
 Peace has 
 its own 
 brutality 
 andits^own 
 curse. 
 
 Danger of 
 denounc- 
 ing War 
 vaguely 
 and rheto- 
 rically. 
 
 can point to a number of instances in whicli Trade has 
 been the great motive of it. If, as some of us were 
 taugbt in the Evenings at Hmne, War is mischievous 
 because it is costly as ■well as cruel, the children who 
 learnt that lesson, the mothers who taught it, have 
 discovered that speculations may be as costly as battles, 
 that cruelties may be perpetrated by the ledger as well 
 as the sword. If there have been in our day righteous 
 and burning denunciations of the crimes of the Camp, 
 there have been protests as righteous and as burn- 
 ing against the crimes which are engendered by a long 
 peace. 
 
 It behoves us therefore to approach this subject 
 thoughtfully. I might earn a cheap reputation for 
 Morality by speaking to you of war as essentially and 
 inevitably immoral, by affirming that it never had any 
 good work to do in the world, or that it never can 
 have any to do in the times to come. I believe that 
 if I did so I should tempt you to great insincerity; 
 I should lead you to think an admiration wrong in 
 principle which you nevertheless cherish, and feel 
 that you cannot help cherishing. I should teach you 
 to think that the profession of a Soldier could not 
 be a right and honest one ; so if you engage in it, or 
 if your friends engage in it, you will assist in making 
 it for yourselves and them what you account it to , 
 be. The confusion and mischief of that notion I hold 
 to be incalculable. I mean therefore to shew you 
 what I deem to be the morality of War, what its 
 immorality. 
 
 I must begin by repudiating certain apologies that 
 are often made for it. The first is this. 'Well, all 
 ' you say against war as unchristian, or impolitic, may 
 
WAR. 
 
 i;3 
 
 ' be true. But it is a necessary evil.' Were I to use 
 this language I should tell you at once that a chair 
 of Moral Philosophy is an absurdity and a delusion. 
 Robbery, Murder, Adultery, are facts as much as War 
 is a fact. If the fact that there have been wars makes 
 them necessary, Eobbery, Murder, and Adultery are 
 also necessary. Calling them so — ^if by necessary I 
 mean that I am not to labour that they should be pun- 
 ished as transgressions — I affirm that there is no order 
 in the world, I canonize disorder. 
 
 Again, it is often said, ' There is a natural instinct 
 ' of Self-Preservation in us all. I cannot let myself be 
 ' killed or plundered ; I must take the life of the man 
 ' who threatens to kill or plunder me if I can. Why is 
 'it different with a number of men who form what is 
 ' called a Nation 1 Why may they not obey the same 
 ' instinct ? , Why may they not ward off blows, even if 
 ' the lives of those who strike the blows are exacted as 
 • the payment for themf There is a sophistry in this 
 plea which ought to be laid bare, since it touches the 
 first principles of Social -Life. No doubt there is an 
 instinct in me which leads me to slay a highwayman. 
 It is an instinct which an organized State is bound to 
 tolerate. The verdict of justifiable homicide is one 
 which is always accepted as reasonable. But that 
 phrase implies that the act is onl;^ tolerated. Clear 
 evidence must be produced that the life of a citizen 
 had not been wantonly trifled with even under the 
 greatest provocation. Suppose the injured man had 
 chosen to suffer the wrong — even to be killed himself 
 rather than to take the vengeance into his own hands — 
 we might be sorry that a criminal had been let loose, 
 that a just man had been his victim ; but we could not 
 
 Necessary 
 evils; an 
 immoral 
 phrase. 
 
 The in- 
 stinct of 
 Self-Pre- 
 servation. 
 
 An allow- 
 able in- 
 stinct can 
 never justi- 
 fy a delibe- 
 rate pur- 
 pose, far 
 less a mili- 
 tary organ- 
 ization. 
 
»74 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 iECT. XI. 
 
 War 
 changed 
 Britain 
 from a pro- 
 vince to a 
 Nation. 
 
 say that the law had not been honoured — superstiti- 
 ously honoured it may he, but still honoured — ^by the 
 refusal to anticipate its decrees. How is it possible to 
 assume such a ground for the deliberate act of an 
 Organic Nation ? How can it treat submission to a 
 brute instinct as a justification for the calling together 
 of an armed force expressly to fulfil the purposes of a 
 Society grounded upon Law ; to defend its existence ? 
 No natural instinct, nothing less than a moral obliga- 
 tion, can be an excuse for risking the lives of our own 
 citizens, for threatening the lives of other men. Our 
 admiration for soldiers, private men or leaders, means 
 that we suppose them to have done a duty ; our belief 
 that any war is worthy of our sympathy means, that we 
 suppose at least one of the nations which entered into 
 it to have done its duty. It is most important for the 
 clearness of our own minds, as important for the well- 
 being of our nation, that we should carry this convic- 
 tion always with us and be ready to apply it in all 
 cases. Let us try to consider it in reference to the dif- 
 ferent kinds of wars which we read of 
 
 I. We cannot forget that every Nation now exist- 
 ing in Europe became a Nation through war. Britain 
 was a part of the Roman Empire ; a civilized province 
 of that Empire ; growing in luxuries. It was chris- 
 tianized when the rest of the Empire was christianized; 
 it had its Bishops as well as its prefects. It rebelled 
 frequently against its Masters ; it was fertile, the saying 
 is, in tyrants. It was not free therefore from petty 
 wars by sea or land. But it was no Nation. By 
 battles — to what degree exterminating or subversive of 
 the previous civilization historians may dispute — but 
 certainly, by battles severe and bloody, the Saxons 
 
WAR. 
 
 175 
 
 established their supremacy here. It seemed to the 
 old inhabitants mere destruction, a relapse into bar- 
 barism and Paganism. We say that a mighty blessing 
 came out of this apparent relapse. It was emphatically 
 that blessing on which I have been dwelling in this 
 course of Lectures. First, a truer wholesome family 
 life took the place of the corrupt family life which the 
 Satirists of Rome describe and which passed from the 
 capital into the provinces. Secondly, a people strong 
 in the sense of neighbourhood, strong in the sense of 
 personal existence, capable therefore of Law, of Govern- 
 ment, bringing with them the roots of a vital native 
 speech, overthrew colonists in whom there was a feeble 
 sense of neighbourhood, a feeble feeling of personal 
 responsibility, who merely received Laws, Govern- 
 ment, Language, Religion, ' from Foreigners. The 
 Saxon wars, destructive as they might be, yet were 
 in the strictest sense the commencement of a new life 
 in our island. 
 
 I take a very strong case ; one which may be the 
 more helpful to us because it does not enkindle any 
 strong sympathies. We do not care about the details 
 of these Saxon wars ; we know exceedingly little of 
 the men who took part in thena. No heroical interest 
 attaches to them ; we assume them to have been 
 guilty of innumerable violences. Yet we accept them 
 as founders of our National Order ; we believe that we 
 should not be a Nation without them. What is true 
 of England, is true mutatis mutandis of every state of 
 Europe. And when I use those words, mutatis mutan- 
 dis, I intimate that each one was to be a distinct 
 Nation, with distinct laws, a distinct Government, a 
 distinct Language, and that without wars, often most 
 
 Tlie same 
 position 
 true of all 
 the cown- 
 tries in 
 Modern 
 Europe. 
 
1/6 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 War and 
 Giviliza- 
 tion. 
 
 Religious 
 Wars. 
 
 The Cru- 
 sades. 
 
 savagely conducted, they would have remained an in- 
 distinct mass incapable of bearing any of the fruits 
 which they have borne. 
 
 In saying that the more civilization advances the 
 less we shall hear of wars, Mr Buckle may have as- 
 serted an important truth ; but if the assertion is not 
 analysed, if it is merely take^i in the lump, it will 
 utterly mislead us. There may be a Civilization which 
 is destructive of Social Morality, of social existence. 
 War may be — so far as we know has been — the only 
 means of reforming it. There may be a Civilization 
 which, like that of Rome, means a huge Camp, an 
 enormous military System. The dissolution of such a 
 System however effected, by whatever hard hands, may 
 be the road to a truer peace as well as to a truer life. 
 
 2. Next come the religious wars of Christendom. 
 In the third part of these Lectures I must speak of the 
 Crusades as illustrating the conflict of two grand social 
 principles — their historical importance in that aspect 
 cannot be overrated. In another aspect the Crusades 
 may be represented as an attempt to fuse together the 
 different Nations of the West in a cause which was 
 equally interesting to them all. But then we become 
 aware of their weakness. The nations were not fused 
 together. Each crusade exhibited more clearly the ri^r 
 valries and conflicts between the princes and Barons of 
 the separate Kingdoms. They had a field in Palestine 
 for a Kingdom established on the maxims of Western 
 Chivalry. It broke to pieces ; there was only a repe- 
 tition in it of Western divisions. If the object of these 
 wars was to unite Christendom, they failed. If their 
 object was to destroy Islamism, they failed. If their 
 object was to eliminate from Christendom whatever 
 
WAR. 
 
 177 
 
 elements of Islarnism it contained within it, they failed. 
 The Orders of Knights which these wars called forth 
 were their most conspicuous feature ; those Orders, not 
 the Mahometans but the Christian powers put down. 
 Still more if their object was to consolidate the Papal 
 authority in the "West were they a failure. They gave 
 rise to the bitterest complaints against Papal extortion 
 and deception ; they attracted popular sympathy to 
 Frederick Ilnd and his house, the great antagonists of 
 the Papacy. They were successful only as supplying a 
 precedent for other wars of the same kind. If war was 
 the best and holiest instrument for crushing Islamism 
 in the East, it must be the best and holiest instrument 
 for crushing heresies in the West. So Simon de Mont- 
 fort went forth with authority and commission to ex- 
 tinguish the Albigenses ; every ciime under heaven 
 being perpetrated by his hosts in the hope that the 
 King of Heaven would reward them for breaking His 
 laws and teaching men to regard Him as their enemy. 
 The religious wars of the 1 6th and 17th centuries did 
 not pretend to preserve the Unity of Christendom. 
 They assumed that it was lost. But the Catholic 
 League tried to make a united France ; by the thirty 
 years' war it was hoped to make a united Germany; 
 the defeat of the Provinces it was hoped would have 
 made the most Catholic Sovereign supreme. There 
 was no want of genius in the Duke of Guise, the Duke 
 of Alva, or in Wallenstein, no hesitation about the 
 means for accomplishing their ends. Yet failure is 
 stamped upon them alL 
 
 3. How would it be if men agreed to treat con- 
 victions about the invisible world with indifference, 
 only to busy themselves with visible interests? That 
 
 M 
 
 LECT. XI. 
 
 The Albi- 
 
 gensian 
 
 War. 
 
 The wars ~ 
 of the six- 
 teenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 M. M. 
 
178 
 
 NATIONAL' MORALITY. 
 
 The Trade 
 Wars of 
 the last 
 three cen- 
 turies. 
 
 is the next point to be considered. I pass from reli- 
 gious wars to Trade Wars. The two classes may at one 
 point be said to touch each other. The invasions of 
 Peru and Mexico by the Spaniards professed at times 
 to be undertaken for the propagation of the faith. No 
 doubt their atrocities were sanctified in the eyes of the 
 perpetrators of them by that notion. Still it is evident 
 that they were mainly enterprises to satisfy the intense 
 hunger for gold. Trade was their main inspirer, though 
 the earlier chivalry of Spain must be credited with the 
 valour and daring of the leaders. From that time on- 
 wards Trade has been a principal motive of Wars, a 
 constant justification of them. Other ends no doiiht 
 were aimed at in the policy of Chatham both on the 
 European and the American continent. The object of 
 the Prussian Monarch was certainly not the advance- 
 ment of Trade. But the establishment of our Indian 
 Empire was begun by Tradesmen and maintained by 
 them. The military genius of Clive was formed in 
 the counting-house. The struggle to retain our Colo- 
 nies was kept alive by the commercial cities of Great 
 Britain ; the loss of Empire was deemed ignomi- 
 nious, the injury to Trade calamitous. When the 
 French War of 1793 began, the question about the 
 opening of the Scheldt was most curiously mixed with 
 denunciations of Republican and Atheistical principles. 
 Mr Pitt made use of these in his speeches, but he did 
 not venture to rely upon them as the motive for com- 
 mencing hostilities. Unless he could shew that there 
 was an English Trade interest at stake he did not 
 think that he had a sufficient Casus Belli. That feel- 
 ing was interrupted by events of which I am about to 
 speak ; but it has resumed its ascendency. Most of 
 
WAR. 
 
 i;9 
 
 the arguments which are based upon the principle of 
 non-intervention take this form; 'Suppose our Trade 
 'is attacked or is at hazard, there is a fair reason for 
 ' threatening war, if not for making it ; no other reason 
 ' is adequate.' 
 
 4, Burke protested against this mode of regarding 
 the great controversy which the E,6volution raised. He 
 cried aloud for a war of principles. The monarchs of 
 Europe adopted, feebly, but they did adopt, his dogma. 
 They proclaimed a Crusade against France. It was a 
 Crusade against a Nation ; the Nation had energy and 
 might to repel it and defeat it. Then came the Cru- 
 sade of Imperial France against the Nations. England 
 considered long whether she had an adequate pecuniary 
 interest in resisting that Crusade ; or whether her in- 
 terference could still be justified on the pleas which 
 had been urged against the France of 1793. At length 
 she heartily plunged into the war as one for the liberty 
 and distinctness of the Nations. ' Then the heart of 
 the country responded to the battle cry ; then the best 
 .and truest citizens were the loudest in raising it. For 
 this it was felt, and this only, makes a war lawful; 
 that it is a struggle for Law against Force ; for the life 
 of a people as expressed in their Laws, their Language, 
 their Government, against any effort to impose on 
 them a Law, a Language, a Government which is not 
 theirs. 
 
 I believe this conclusion to be a sound one, forced 
 upon the minds of those who had the strongest natural 
 aversion to war, who were the most suspicious of ap- 
 peals to the ambition or the love of glory in their Na- 
 tion, the most inclined by their habits and education 
 to sympathise with any profession, rather than with the 
 
 m2 
 
 The Non- 
 interven- 
 tion doc- 
 trin^. 
 
 The first 
 and second 
 French 
 War. 
 
 Reluctant 
 •proselytes. 
 
i8o 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Chris- 
 tian argu- 
 ments for 
 Peace. 
 
 Effect 
 upon the 
 Church of 
 its con- 
 tempt for 
 Nations, 
 
 military. I think that an experience of various kinds, 
 obtained in very different circumstances, obliged them 
 to account the arguments of those who pleaded for 
 Peace at any price hollow in themselves, and fatal to 
 the cause on behalf of which they were urged. 
 
 When these ai'guments turn upon the assertion that 
 Christ came into the world to establish a Kingdom of 
 Peace for all Nations, I not only accede to the doctrine, 
 but desire that it should be taken in its most strict 
 It is a Kingdom for all Nations. Unless there 
 
 sense. 
 
 are Nations, distinct Nations, this Kingdom loses its 
 character; it becomes a world Empire. I shall have 
 much to say on that text hereafter; many temble il- 
 lustrations "to give you of it from the history of Modem 
 Europe. I shall have to shew you that herein lay the 
 great contradiction of the Mediaeval Church, that which 
 produced its most monstrous corruptions. It thought 
 that it could exist without distinct Natiops, that its 
 calling was to overthrow Nations. Therefore the great 
 virtues which nations foster. Distinct Individual Con- 
 science, Sense of personal responsibility, Veracity, Loy- 
 alty, were undermined by it; therefore it called good 
 evil, and evil good ; therefore it mimicked the Nations 
 whilst it was trampling upon them; therefore it be- 
 came more bloodthirsty than any Nation had ever 
 been. It could not maintain the Kingdom of Peace ; it 
 must introduce the sword of the flesh into the region 
 which was only to be defended by the sword of the 
 Spirit; it must practically deny that there is a Uni- 
 versal Church upon earth, because it chose to set up a 
 Society which instead of including the Nations annihi- 
 lated them. We have received this lesson as a legacy 
 from our forefathers. It is a lesson respecting the spe- 
 
WAR. 
 
 I8l 
 
 cial temptation of us who call ourselves Churchmen, 
 and who feel that we are bound at all times and in all 
 places to vindicate the name. If we are asked to vin- 
 dicate it by speaking meanly of the Nation, we answer 
 that we know what comes of that. When our convic- 
 tions are earnest, religious persecution comes of it; 
 religious wars if persecution is resisted. When our 
 convictions are not earnest, when we do not care for 
 what we believe, we may talk about Peace and call it 
 by what grand names we will. But Peace will mean 
 laziness, luxury, self-seeking; whatever is most unchris- 
 tian ; whatever tends to the loss of moral fibre and 
 purpose; whatever favours the growth of slavery; what- 
 ever makes Society intolerable and ensures its destruc- 
 tion by internal decay or outward violence. 
 
 Very soon the reasonings of the advocates for Peace 
 at any price, which started from the loftiest principles, 
 drift into an appeal to the lowest motives by which 
 men can be actuated. The Sermon on the Mount is 
 made the groundwork for the suggestion that men 
 should not be such fools as to throw away their money 
 or their bodies for such a merely invisible, imaginary 
 cause as the defence of native Law and of an Order 
 which they have inherited. 'Why need our native 
 'Law be better than any other? Why may not the 
 'Order that we say our fathers bequeathed us be ad- 
 ' vantageously exchanged for one which exists in a 
 ' country equally civilized with ours ? If we did be- 
 ' come portions of some great Empire, would its rulers 
 ' interfere with our Commerce, hinder the transactions 
 ' in our shops, even, except for a while, seriously affect 
 'the movements of the Stock Exchange? The real 
 ' tangible blessings would be all preserved to us ; pnly 
 
 Argu- 
 ments for 
 peace at 
 any price. 
 
i82 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 Whence 
 they derive 
 their force. 
 
 'the intangible — the sentimental — would be taken 
 'away.' Yoa may perhaps have read books in which 
 these positions are formally, nakedly maintained. 
 Would that they might be always put forward broadly, 
 distinctly, in clear printed letters ! Then they are com- 
 paratively harmless ; then there is enough left of heart 
 in most of us to hate the lie that is hidden in them if 
 we cannot at once detect it by our understandings^ 
 The mischief of them is that they are mixed with much 
 benevolent talk about poor creatures who are starve! 
 or killed for the sake of a phantom, with much religious 
 talk about the wickedness of sending men out of the 
 world sinful and unprepared ; so that we are disposed 
 to entertain them as respectable and highly sensible 
 suggestions, such perhaps as we are not quite prepared 
 to accept in their length and breadth, but as are worthy 
 of our consideration. 
 
 Let me strip them bare of their plausible acces- 
 sories. It is very shocking that the lives of poor Hi en 
 or of rich men should be sacrificed to phantoms. The 
 question is. What are phantoms ? Should any one say, 
 ' The desire for Empire, for the annexation of teri-itory 
 ' is a grisly phantom ; for that no lives of poor or rich 
 ' ought to be sacrificed,' I heartily subscribe to his opi- 
 
 ' I received not long ago a tract issued, I believe, by tbe Society 
 for promoting Permanent and Universal Peace, and intended specially 
 for the clergy. It was on the text "Thou canst not serve God and 
 Mammon." Feeling the force and awfulness of that position and 
 knowing how much need we have all to be reminded of it, I beg to 
 thank the person or persons unknown who forwarded it to me. If I 
 had wanted other reasons, the lesson which it inculcates would le 
 decisive in hindering me from joining the Society I have named. Its 
 arguments seem to me alternately — or else indiscriminately — address^ ;•§§; 
 ed to the servants of God and Mammon, and on the whole to assume 
 the dominion of the latter as the established and legitimate one. 
 
WAR. 
 
 183 
 
 nioii. Should lie say, 'The advancement of Trade — 
 'even of a trade so advantageous to certain persons 
 ' engaged in it as that in Opium — is an ugly phantom, 
 ' for -which the life of no Englishman, of no Chinaman, 
 ' ought to be sacrificed,' we are still altogether in accord. 
 But just because I deem the invasion of a nation's free- 
 dom and laws for the sake of Empire, or for the sake of 
 supposed pecuniary profit, to be an accursed crime, I 
 hold the defence of the freedom and law of a Nation 
 against such attempts to be a sacred duty. I teU. the 
 benevolent men who care so much for the poor, that 
 they are slaying the souls of the poor by teaching them 
 that freedom and law are only phantoms for them, are 
 only realities so far as they protect the properties of 
 the rich. I teU them that they are sanctioning a doc- 
 trine which leads to the trampling down of the poor by 
 the rich, to the ultimate victory of mere force over 
 right. And I tell the religioas men that if they lead 
 iiny whether rich or poor to consider objects unreal 
 because they are invisible, because they cannot be ex- 
 pressed in the terms of the money-market, their religion 
 is a phantom — the vilest of phantoms. Is it not a 
 .phantom also if they forget that for certain invisible 
 «nds men, rich and poor, are bidden to lose their lives 
 instead of saving them ? Do they explain away that 
 language or resolve it into nothing, and yet call them- 
 selves disciples of Christ 1 
 
 These points being settled, I may leave what I 
 have said already about the number and the popularity 
 of Trade Wars to answer the rest of those pleas which 
 are not really for Peace, but against the sanctity of 
 national life. If we yield to these arguments we shall 
 have wars enough on our hand ; we shall be continually 
 
 J;E(;t. XI. 
 
 What are 
 Fhantoms, 
 what are 
 Sub- 
 stances ? 
 
 Civiliza- 
 tion often 
 the favour- 
 ite plea for 
 the most 
 unjust 
 wars. 
 
1 84 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECI, XI. 
 
 Deatlifor 
 Law. 
 
 drifting into them. For we shall have no standard by 
 which to try their worth ; and reasons of self-interest 
 will continually occur to us why just in this case, and 
 in this, we may use the force we have to crush some 
 feebler power. Our civilization will be a great and 
 continual excuse. And we shall exhibit this sign of 
 barbarism, that we measure civilization by our own 
 standard, and treat nothing as civilized which is not 
 in conformity with our maxims'. 
 
 I have tried, not by laying down arbitrary maxims 
 or by making artificial distinctions, but by examination 
 of facts, to ascertain what is the true ground of that 
 admiration for the deeds of Soldiers which we all have 
 cherished, and do cherish, as much in this day as in 
 any former day ; what turns it into falsehood. The 
 inscription at Thermopylffi, ' These three hundred died 
 in obedience to the Laws,' expresses briefly and grandly 
 what seems to me the true conception of the warrior's 
 life in the earliest ages and the latest. They go be- 
 cause the Law commands them to go ; they stand and 
 fall at the bidding of the Law ; they are witnesses for 
 Law against the brute force of Numbers. All discipline 
 is included in that comprehensive praise, all the per- 
 sonal valour, which we sometimes foolishly set in co^- 
 
 1 Though I cannot feel the admiration for Chinese civilization 
 which seems to be indicated by Dr Bridges in the very able article 
 which he has contributed to the Essays on International Policy, I 
 cordially recognize the value of his observations on the arrogance of 
 our behaviour towards a people who on one subject at least have 
 shown that their morality is better than om-s. I would also express 
 my thankfulness to him and his brother Essayists for the honesty 
 with which they have maintained, in opposition to many current 
 sayings, that the sins of our Middle Class on the subject of wars are 
 quite as flagrant as those of the aristocracy. 
 
WAR. 
 
 185 
 
 trast to discipline. The heart of Sparta was in those 
 men whom Persia could kill but not vanquish ; each 
 was a distinct living man standing in his place, doing 
 his work, dying his death. There is no blaze of senti- 
 ment, no flourish of trumpets. The name of Leonidas 
 lives ; his followers would have wished it to live, for 
 they trusted him and obeyed him. Their names have 
 perished ; none of them would have cared for that. 
 The Law did not command them to be remembered ; 
 only to keep the pass. That obedience to Law is the 
 soldier's characteristic. Losing it, he loses everything. 
 Whilst he preserves it we must reverence him even 
 when we reverence least the cause for which he suffers, 
 the rulers who have exposed him to suffer. But when, 
 as in the case of these Spartans, subjection to the Law 
 is. inseparably combined with the defence of the Law 
 against those who would have put a Tyrant Will in the 
 place of it, there the sentiment of admiration has no 
 drawback ; we are bound to indulge it ; we are ashamed 
 of ourselves when in any degree or under any pretext 
 we withhold it. 
 
 If we put the case before ourselves in that way, we 
 shall not be confused by the question whether we ought 
 to restrain our respect for the soldiers who followed 
 Napoleon to Moscow or from it, because our sympathies 
 may be and ought to be with the Russians who drove 
 them back. They were engaged in an attempt to de- 
 stroy the law of another people ; the crime of him who 
 aimed at that destruction was great. His followers 
 died in obedience to the only law which they knew ; if 
 they yielded to the anguish of cold, not to sabres or 
 guns, it is not for us to make that an excuse for re- 
 fusing them any sympathy or honour. But it will in 
 
 Obedience 
 always ve- 
 nerable. 
 
 The en- 
 durance of 
 the Soldier 
 always a 
 legitimate 
 object of 
 admira- 
 tion; his 
 ferocity 
 never.. 
 
iS6 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The danger 
 not in ma- 
 chines; tut 
 in the loss 
 of man- ■ 
 hood, 
 either in 
 Soldier or 
 Trades- 
 man. 
 
 all cases be the readiness to endure, not the wish to 
 inflict, misery which will extort from us either sympathy 
 or honour. There is a brutal appetite for slaughter 
 which is in the nature of every soldier because of every 
 man — which war would .probably call forth in each of 
 us as much as in any of whom we read. But we have 
 sunk into a very low state if that is what we like to 
 hear of — still more if we can joke about it. Be sure 
 that no brave man will do that ; it is fatal to bravery if 
 it once becomes predominant in any of us. And for 
 civilians who are free from the temptations of the sol- 
 diers to indulge in it is pitiful as well as hateful. 
 
 I am not afraid that this appetite for slaughter 
 should be strengthened by the scientific contrivances 
 for effecting it of which our age has been prolific. The 
 possession of terrible instruments does not of necessity 
 stimulate the desire to use them ; we may tremble, as 
 Roger Bacon is said to have done when the force of 
 gunpowder was discovered to him, at the powers with 
 which we are entrusted. No gift of Science is itself a 
 curse, though every one may become a curse. The 
 pursuit of Science if it cannot extinguish certainly does 
 not cultivate Savagery. The real fear is that the Sol- 
 dier may himself become a machine ; that he may look 
 upon himself as merely engaged to do works of slaiighr 
 ter. All efforts should be made to save him and us 
 from that fatal calamity. You will not save him from 
 it by telling him that it was a mistake of former days 
 to treat his profession as a noble one; that it is in truth 
 a miserable trade. He may all too easily be persiiad^d 
 to think so; what a trade he will make it when he doe's, 
 we know too well. Nor will the, Tradesman have at 
 all a higher apprehension of his calling. He will sup,- 
 
WAR. 
 
 187 
 
 pose that it is better than that of the man who carries 
 arms, because it does more to increase the material re- 
 sources of the country; the common "weal will mean 
 nothing to him but the aggregate riches of its citizens. 
 All that is really to be admired in him, his industry, 
 his forethought, his fidelity, will be only regarded as 
 means to the great end of Success ; that will be the 
 only god which he will worship. No one portion of a 
 Nation gains by the depreciation of another ; the whole 
 Nation gains when every portion of it is raised to the 
 highest level which has ever been imagined for it. Let 
 us have much higher thoughts of our soldiers officers 
 and men, than we have ever had ; let us do what in us 
 lies that they may have much higher thoughts of them- 
 selves. In a former course of Lectures I referred to 
 the tone in which some eminent military men had 
 spoken of the common Soldier, as if he could not have 
 an individual conscience, as if it was dangerous that 
 the conscience in him should be appealed to lest he 
 should prove refractory to orders. I maintained that 
 the security for his obedience lies in the cultivation of 
 his conscience, that if he does not think he ought to 
 die at his post, he will not die at his post. I main- 
 tained at the same time that the security for a Trades- 
 man's fidelity to engagements lies in the cultivation of 
 his conscience ; that as no dread of punishment or of 
 public opinion will keep the soldier from being a de- 
 serter if the sense of personal obligation perishes in 
 him, so no dread of punishment or of public opinion 
 ■will keep the Tradesman from being a rogue and a de- 
 faulter if the sense of personal obligation perishes in 
 him. Each maxim has its counterpart in the sphere of 
 Social MoraHty. In the Tradesman the sense of per- 
 
 The Sol- 
 dier and 
 the Trades- 
 man ought 
 each to 
 have a 
 greater re- 
 verence for 
 his own 
 calling 
 than he 
 has. 
 
188 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 TheVolun- 
 teers in 
 England. 
 
 A stand- 
 ing Army 
 must be an 
 English 
 Army. 
 
 soaal obligation will disappear if the feeling that he is 
 a citizen, the member of a Nation, disappears. In the 
 Soldier the sense of personal obligation will disappear 
 if the feeling that he is a Citizen, the member of a 
 Nation, disappears. The Tradesman despising the Sol- 
 dier because he does not contribute to the material 
 prosperity of the country will cease to be a Citizen; 
 The Soldier despising the Tradesman from any vulgar 
 conceit that his pursuits are degrading will cease to be 
 a Citizen. The recent Volunteer movement in Eng- 
 land has been a most healthful sign of approximation 
 between different classes, a recognition of the national 
 bond which holds them together. I trust if the im- 
 pulse which first led to this movement loses its power, 
 a vital principle will take the place of it. Unquestion- 
 ably it cannot depend for its permanence on any mere 
 fashion or any sudden fear. But since we have a stand- 
 ing army — since the objections which were once raised 
 against it have become weaker, since it is recognised by 
 all parties as one of the Institutions of our country — it 
 is most 'needful that all who belong to it from whatever 
 class they come, whatever position, high or low, they 
 may occupy in it, should learn to connect their profes.. 
 sion with their English life, to think of themselves as 
 defenders of a life which has endured for generations 
 and compared with which the animal life of each man, 
 precious and venerable as that is, is a very light thing; 
 The diffusion of this belief and this spirit will be the 
 great security that the discipline of the English Army 
 shall be a blessing both to itseK and to the whole peo- 
 ple ; that both its courage and its machinery shall be 
 used for our protection and not for our ruin. I do not 
 enter upon the question what might be the employ- 
 
WAE. 
 
 189 
 
 ments of an army in time of peace. A friend of mine 
 once wrote a pamphlet on that subject, which struck 
 me in my ignorance as full of valuable suggestions. 
 How far they could be applied must be left to the con- 
 sideration of men who have experience and knowledge. 
 If the Moralist tells them what it is that we want of 
 them, I am satisfied there is among our officers abun- 
 dance of skill and insight to devise the means of sup- 
 plying it. Continua;lly also they exhibit a sense of 
 righteousness as well as of tenderness and humanity, 
 which might make members of my profession and of 
 other professions ashamed. Nothing is so mischievous 
 to them as to us — for nothing is so false — as the asser- 
 tion or the assumption that the Camp must be less 
 under the dominion of law and of moral principle than 
 the City. It is that doctrine which has produced the 
 licence of Camps, and is sure eventually to produce the 
 licence of Cities. 
 
 But I cannot forget that in English eyes the Navy 
 has a kind of reverence which scarcely belongs to the 
 other service. I would say one word as to that. 
 
 Some may suggest that on moral as well as on 
 economical grounds it might be far better that our 
 Mercantile Marine should stand highest in popular 
 estimation ; let ships of war, they say, if there must be 
 such, be considered as waiting upon that. The opposite 
 opinion — the one which gives the naval officer an hon- 
 our that is not awarded to the hardworking man of 
 peace, who often encounters dangers as great, and 
 needs an almost equal amount of knowledge, belongs, 
 they affirm, to a barbarous tradition which for us ought 
 to be obsolete. I am most willing that any traditions 
 should become obsolete which lower any class of useful 
 
 ^iECT. XI. 
 
 The Camp 
 and the 
 City sub- 
 ject to the 
 ■ same prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 The Navy. 
 
 Tlie Mer- 
 cantile 
 Marine — - 
 why it 
 thmtld not 
 be prefer' 
 red to the 
 Navy, 
 
1 90 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XI, 
 
 A nation 
 ought not 
 to be sus- 
 picious; an 
 JSmpire 
 must be. 
 
 citizens, or which establish merely artificial maxims of 
 precedence. But it seems to me eminently desirable — ■. 
 greatly for the interests of Morality — that those whose 
 profession is to defend a Nation should be more valued 
 than those who merely contribute to increase the wealth 
 of its particular members. Let the mercantile . sailor 
 have all the honour that can be given him ; but his 
 honour will be greatest if there is a class doing in a 
 great measure the same work with him, whose lives 
 are devoted to the common weal. They vindicate for 
 him the right to say: 'I too am the servant of the 
 ' whole land ; these goods which I exchange concern 
 'not only him who sells or him who buys; they are 
 'the signs and pledges of the intercourse between my 
 ' people and the other peoples of the earth.' Then look 
 at the results of the opposite policy — the one which 
 some would urge upon us ' Our navy waits upon our 
 Commerce.' Exactly, and therefore all the private 
 grudges of commercial men, all the jealousies of mer- 
 chants whose language and habits are unlike their own, 
 become causes of national quarrels; the guns of Eng- 
 land must be always ready to avenge injuries real or 
 imaginary done to her trafiSc. There has been too 
 much, I apprehend, of this subjection to the mercantile 
 marine by the navy already ; if we wish for Peace we 
 shall diminish rather than increase it. 
 
 The doctrine Si vis Facem para Bellum is not the 
 one which I have maintained in this Lecture, though 
 in some of my statements I may have appeared to jus- 
 tify it.- I do not ask England to be augmenting its 
 armaments through suspicion of its neighbours. Such 
 suspicion is almost inevitable in Empires — even in Emr 
 pires whose motto is Peace ; the defence of a Nation 
 
WAR. 
 
 191 
 
 should have another ground. Every Nation should be 
 an armed Nation, not because it regards any other 
 with hostility, not because it imagines that any other 
 has an interest in assaulting it, but because its own 
 soil, its own language, its own laws, its own government 
 are given to it, and are beyond all measure precious to 
 it. Any contempt of foreigners, any notion that we 
 are better than they, is so much deduction from, our 
 strength, so much waste in braggadocio of the valour 
 which is needed for the day of battle. Reverence -for 
 the rights and freedom of every Nation is what we 
 should earnestly cherish if we would be true defenders 
 of our own. On the other hand, I cannot set much store 
 by a man's profession of interest in the well-being of 
 strangers who is indifferent about the land of his fathers. 
 Courage or Valour has been deemed in old times 
 the characteristic of a man. I cannot hold that opinion 
 to be obsolete, nor can I think that there will be valour 
 in us if we are indifferent about the defence of our 
 Nation, That is a duty which devolves upon us all in 
 our respective positions. There have been times and 
 countries when the professors and students of a Uni- 
 versity have heard the call to join an army which was 
 to drive foreigners from their soil ; when they have 
 obeyed it with as much alacrity as any who had been 
 trained to the service. But at all times and in every 
 land the call in some way to fight for the nation is ad- 
 dressed to old and young, to rich and poor, to man and 
 woman. We may all by grovelling habits, by low 
 thoughts, by vanity and insolence, be working for its 
 downfall; each one struggling with these in himself, 
 strengthening his neighbour against them, may be as 
 niuch as any soldier or sailor its champion. 
 
 The de- 
 mand for 
 Valour, 
 
jReference 
 to Domes- 
 tic Wor- 
 ship. 
 
 The Do- 
 meitic and 
 National 
 concep- 
 tions of 
 Divinity 
 
 LECTURE XII. 
 
 NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 In the last Lecture of my course on Domestic Morality 
 I spoke of Family Worship. I was not unwilling that 
 you should give that phrase its most modem sense ; I 
 wish to remind you always that we are members of 
 Families as much as Jews or Greeks or Komans were in 
 the days of old. But- 1 spoke especially of them. In 
 opposition to the theory that Worship is primarily sug- 
 gested by the wish to account for natural phsenomena 
 or to produce some change in them, I urged you to 
 notice the most obvious characteristics of the Homeric 
 mythology. Wherever the Gods dwelt, whatever re- 
 gions they governed, they were husbands, brothers, fa- 
 thers ', they were the founders of families in Greece or 
 Asia ; they formed a family above. When you assume 
 that men in an early stage of cultivation were busy 
 about the causes of the appearances in the earth or 
 sea or sky, you are bound to explain how such curiosity 
 was awakened; to introduce a 'law of Nature' is a 
 clumsy expedient, which breaks down when you need 
 its help most. If men are reminded continually by the 
 facts of their own existence that they have some origin 
 and some relations, may we not admit the Homeric 
 evidence as to worship without gainsaying? May we 
 
■ NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 193 
 
 not suppose that it was more difficult to explain whence 
 the hero derived the qualities which enabled him to 
 establish a house or do brave deeds without referring 
 to some divine parent, than to account for the rain or 
 an earthquake 1 
 
 I observed that in the Homeric mythology, though 
 it had this primary domestic eleinent, there were 
 abundant traces of a national condition. I did not 
 dwell upon these; closely as they were blended with 
 the others, it was possible to overlook them. It will 
 occur to you that there is often a positive tendency in 
 these two portions of the legends to break loose from 
 each other. Zeus the Lawgiver seems another being 
 from Zeus the Husband and Father. The two cha- 
 racters modify each other. His justice is perverted by 
 his affections; they must be cast aside when he gives 
 the nod. Evidently the conceptions were hard to 
 reconcile. In the traditions of an older Society 
 which Zeus overthrew and for which he substituted 
 a fixed iron rule, the contrast becomes direct and 
 palpable. 
 
 Which was to be preferred 1 There was the dream 
 of a golden age hovering over the first. The gods 
 were benevolent, tolerant, in sympathy with men. 
 There was the sense of Order and Government about 
 the latter. Wrong was forbidden and repressed; there 
 was a demand for submission and dread; a throne 
 above. Caprice was not excluded from this throne ; he 
 who occupied it might be vindictive. Still Right must 
 be the ground of it. There must be a God of Right; 
 there must be a supreme Justice. It was not only 
 the philosopher who repudiated any conceptions of the 
 Godhead which were inconsistent with Justice; the 
 
 often at 
 stlife with 
 each other. 
 
 The old 
 and the 
 new 
 Oovem- 
 ment. 
 
 Justice 
 asserting 
 itself above 
 fondness 
 
 M. M. 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XII. 
 
 and 
 
 favcnlrit- 
 
 ism. 
 
 Physical 
 Observa- 
 tions. 
 
 Worship 
 not ban- 
 ished but 
 developed 
 by politi- 
 cal life. 
 
 practical lawgiver, if he could not put them aside, if 
 he was compelled to bear with them, was yet impressed 
 with the conviction and sought to impress it upon his 
 countrymen that there was a Judgment-seat not swayed 
 by any of the motives which affected visible Judges ; 
 that there was one, whatever might be his name, 
 before whom they must tremble, by whom their acts 
 would be reviewed. 
 
 The mixture of observations and experiences re- 
 specting the outward physical world with those which 
 concerned human Society introduced much perplexity 
 into the national as into the domestic Worship. 
 But as the belief in Law and Government became 
 stronger, the view of natural pheenomena became mucll 
 changed. Those who had acquired the habit of recog- 
 nising an Order in their daily transactions with each 
 other were compelled to suspect an Order, and there- 
 fore some person or persons who administered it, in 
 day and night, in summer and winter; therefore to 
 suspect also some meaning and motive where they 
 could discern no succession, where all appeared anoma- 
 lous and incoherent. Thus we can understand a cir- 
 cumstance which our modem interpreters of ancient 
 beliefs find very puzzling; that the thoughts about 
 divine powers do not, as they would desire, appear 
 most conspicuous in barbarous periods, do not diminish 
 as men entered into civil Societies, but grow with the 
 growth and developement of these Societies; become 
 complicated with their complications. It must be so 
 if the demand for such thoughts is inseparable from 
 the Law, the Language, the Government, the Conflicts 
 of a people ;• if they are most earnest when a people 
 has most feeling that it is a people — most sense how 
 
NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 195 
 
 grand their fellowship is, how many influences are 
 threatening to destroy it. 
 
 Before I speak of the way in which Greek idol- 
 atrj' enfeebled the belief out of which it grew and 
 weakened the fibres of national existence, I will turn 
 to that worship which was especially a protest against 
 homage to any forms of Nature, to any likenesses of 
 beast or of man. I said in a former Lecture that the 
 revolution of which Sir H. Maine speaks as implied 
 in the transition from patriarchal to National life is 
 noted in the Jewish records with singular emphasis. 
 The Israelites in the land of Goshen have become the 
 slaves of the most organised despotism existing in 
 the world — a despotism upheld by a powerful body of 
 priests and magicians who interpret the phsenomena of 
 Egypt and use their knowledge or their ignorance for 
 the exhibition of various marvels. A lonely shepherd 
 in a desert hears a voice commanding him to go forth 
 for the deliverance of his countrymen. The voice pro- 
 claims to him first the old Name, the God of Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of his fathers com- 
 mands him trembling and reluctant to face the Ruler 
 of Egypt. But another more awful Name is joined to 
 this. The I AM is speaking to Moses. That is to be 
 the ground of the Nation's existence. In that Name 
 he defies the miracle workers. In that Name he bids 
 the Egyptian let the people go. In that Name he 
 leads the herd of slaves forth ; he gives them a Law. 
 They become a Nation ; they speak a common lan- 
 guage ; they have a Government. Jehovah is declared 
 to be the King ; the author of the Law, the ruler and 
 judge of those who administer it. In this Name they 
 enter into battle marshalled according to their families 
 
 n2 
 
 The 
 
 Hebrew 
 
 worship. 
 
 The 
 
 ground of 
 
 it in the 
 
 domestic 
 
 and 
 
 national 
 
 Name. 
 
196 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The 
 
 Their pro- 
 foundly 
 national 
 character. 
 
 The God 
 of our 
 Fathers. 
 
 and tribes. In this Name they conquer Palestine and 
 divide it. 
 
 All this history might be represented — so it has 
 often been by divines — as one which only concerns a 
 particular nation of the whole world, and has no rela- 
 tion to the national life of England, or France, or Italy, 
 or Germany. But by some means or other the book 
 of Psalms, which embodies all the characteristics of 
 the Jewish national worship, which is national in 
 its outward costume as well as in its essence, has pene- 
 trated into every one of these modern nations, not as 
 a foreign literature which may be contemplated with 
 a certain interest and a tolerable understanding by 
 antiquarians, but as the expression of the inmost trust 
 and conviction of men and women utterly unacquainted 
 with antiquities in the most practical and tremendous 
 moments of their existence. No difference of habits, 
 no questions about geography or chronology, no doubts 
 about the circumstances in which these hymns and 
 prayers were conaposed, no blunders of translators, have 
 hindered them from becoming the living possession of 
 a divided Christendom ; from being equally received 
 and recognised by Greeks, by Roman Catholics, by Pro- 
 testants, as their rightful inheritance. That being the 
 fact in this nineteenth century as well as in previous 
 centuries, it becomes interesting to look at some of the 
 more obvious features of a book ■ which stretches over 
 a long tract of history — ^how long we may not be able 
 to ascertain, but certainly a period during which the 
 Nation underwent the greatest vicissitudes in its eco- 
 nomy and government, during which it passed through 
 every alternation of prosperity and humiliation. 
 
 I. In these Psalms, 'the God of our fathers' 
 
'NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 197 
 
 is everywhere the ground of confidence, the refuge 
 from the darkness of the past, from the confusions 
 of the present. No image of Him comes before the 
 eye ; it is from images that the man flies to Him. 
 So the family is linked to the nation ; the solitary 
 sufferer to both. Israel lives on from generation to 
 generation amidst all changes ; for a living Being, who 
 was and is and will be, has given it a portion in His 
 immortality. 
 
 2. The other Name which was heard in the 
 bush stands forth in its awful personality, bound in- 
 separably to this. In its presence the man dares to 
 confess himself a person; claims, whilst he trembles, 
 to be one. Not a Law written in stones but the Law- 
 giver speaks to him ; He speaks in thunders, yet the 
 voice delights him. For He who speaks is Righteous ; 
 the assertor of rights; the deliverer of those who 
 have no helper from the oppressor. Righteousness is 
 not a quality, not the attribute of a Person, These 
 Psalmists know nothing of attributes. They worship 
 the Righteous Being; all that is not righteous is His 
 enemy. Whether it is in the world or in themselves 
 they can appeal 'to Him against it ; they believe, in 
 spite of the fear which continually besets them, in 
 spite of all contradictory appearances, that He will put 
 it down. 
 
 3. Since the root of all their faith and all their 
 prayers is He whom they invoke as the living and 
 true God, since they invoke Him not as the God of 
 earth or sea or air, but emphatically as the God of 
 Israel, as their God, you will not wonder at the pro- 
 minence which the Covenant with them and with 
 their fathers assumes in these prayers. When we 
 
 The God 
 of Right- 
 eousness. 
 
 The divine 
 Covenant. 
 
198 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The 
 
 ground of 
 all human 
 Covenants. 
 
 Loyalty 
 not de- 
 pendent on 
 circum- 
 stances. 
 
 The King 
 every- 
 where pre- 
 sent in 
 these devo- 
 tions. 
 
 dwell chiefly on considerations of property, when that 
 becomes the standard by which all things are mea- 
 sured, the vulgarest transactions of earth, mixed as 
 they are with chicanery and overreaching, determine 
 the meaning of this word ; they are transferred to the 
 highest region. But thus, the sense of these prayers 
 is inverted ; the Jew, like the idolaters against whom 
 he protests, is supposed to make the divine acts the 
 image of his own. The Covenant, as the Psalmists 
 conceive of it, is the ground of all Covenants between 
 man and man. It is the ground of faithful, honest 
 speech, of that which fails from among the children 
 of men because each one is trying to deceive his neigh- 
 bour and has a double heart. That insincerity is the 
 horrible plague and curse against which the Psalm- 
 ists cry to the God whose woi'ds are pure words, who 
 hates lying, who is the same from generation to gene- 
 ration. The man is aware of the temptation to this 
 insincerity in himself He asks to be delivered from 
 it, whether he is the victim of other men's treachery or 
 of his own. 
 
 4. I said that these prayers and songs belong to 
 various periods of the commonwealth. Whether any 
 of them were poured out before the kingly age may 
 be doubtful; there can be no question that they extend 
 to times when there were no kings, to years of cap- 
 tivity in another land ; to those when Judaea had 
 rulers like Ezra and Nehemiah, whether they bore 
 civil or sacerdotal titles. But Loyalty is one of their 
 most conspicuous characteristics. It has seemed both 
 to Jews and Christians so absorbing a one, that the 
 name of David has in spite of chronology and direct 
 internal evidence been associated with them alL A 
 
NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 199 
 
 great truth has been concealed under that error. The 
 Shepherd boy, the rival of Saul, the actual Monarch 
 of Israel, is discovering his need of an invisible King, 
 is learning by the bitterest experiences in all stages 
 of his life that if there is not one to -whom he may 
 appeal in his weakness, from whom he derives his 
 strength, he must be a victim of oppression or an 
 oppressor, his life and his people's life must be a con- 
 tradiction and a lie. Loyalty therefore must be in the 
 King, if it is to be shewn to the King. He must 
 confess a law which binds him ; a law which does 
 not bend to his self-wiU, which will assert its domi- 
 nion over him and punish him if he sets it at nought. 
 It is all very well to claim his people's obedience. 
 It will not be rendered to him if he is not an obedient 
 He may be the Lord's anointed ; that does not 
 
 man. 
 
 jnean that he can do what he likes ; it means exactly 
 the reverse of this ; it means that he is not his own 
 master; that he is only the people's master so far as 
 he understands himself to be their Shepherd, raised 
 up by One who cares for them more than he does, 
 to rule them for their good. David and Solomon have 
 all the temptations of Oriental Monarchs ; gratify their 
 lusts.; multiply wives. The national Law does not 
 prohibit these habits, mischievous as the history shews 
 them to be. Something more than Law is needed for 
 their cure. But it can do this. Whilst they long to 
 be emperors, it reminds them that they are kings 
 of a Nation ; that if they trample upon Eight, Eight 
 will prove too strong for them. That lesson survives 
 for their descendants. The seers could be loyal when 
 the monarchs were disloyal ; loyal when all outward 
 witnesses of the dominion of Law and a divine Law- 
 
 liECT. XII. 
 
 The King 
 a subject. 
 
 The King 
 lasts for 
 ever. 
 
200 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Lord 
 of Hosts, 
 
 Wars of 
 the Lord. 
 
 giver had ceased, wlien a man, exhibited in some 
 Babylonian conqueror,^ appears to be supreme in earth 
 and heaven. It is then that they enter into the 
 veiy secret of Loyalty ; then the past history of their 
 land becomes dearer and more sacred to them than 
 in their prosperity ; then they are sure that the King 
 who reigned of old is reigning still ; then they are sure 
 that He will reign for ever and ever. 
 
 5. As the name of King" of Kings lies at the 
 centre of all these hymns, so does that of Lord of 
 Hosts. The Psalms are eminently warlike; Israel is 
 at battle in them with foes visible and invisible; its 
 only hope is in a God who is fighting for it; who 
 has called it to fight His battles. One cannot compel 
 these writers to adopt the formula that defensive wars 
 are justifiable, offensive never. The wars for dispos- 
 sessing Palestine of its inhabitants were offensive ; yet 
 the victories of Joshua and his successors are subjects 
 of thanksgiving. There is the strongest belief that 
 those were wars of the Lord ; that they drove out 
 an utterly corrupt and debased people; that they es- 
 tablished in their place a Nation which was to be a 
 witness for Order and Right. Not that these writers 
 boast of their countrymen as better than other men. 
 The Psalms are full of confessions and complaints ; full 
 of anticipations that the same evils will, in every case, 
 bring the same punishments, because a righteous Lord 
 is King over all. But there is also a strong clear con- 
 viction that all the evils of the Israelites arose from 
 their not believing that they were a Nation; from 
 the covetousness and pride, the transgression of family 
 order and civic order, which separated them from each 
 other; which caused each man to think he had an 
 
NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 20r 
 
 interest apart from his neighbour. These habits of 
 mind would assuredly bring invasions upon them from 
 the gi-eat Empires round about them ; they were mi- 
 micking these Empires; their monarchs wanted to have 
 horses and chariots like the Babylonians ; they were 
 like them busy about guessing as to the future ; they 
 were trembling before powers of Nature ; trying to 
 find Gods in the outward world or to make Gods in 
 their own likeness. They would have their way, and 
 their way would bring ruin upon their land. 
 
 Such are a few of the notable features in a book 
 which has taken hold of the thought and life of the 
 Western Nations, of Nations prone to all the habits 
 against which the Psalmists are praying and protest- 
 ing; prone to disbelieve in a Righteous Being and to 
 conceive of some capricious Power as ruling over Men 
 and Nature ; prone to falsehood in speech and in act ; 
 prone to forget the , connection between Loyalty and 
 Law; prone to fall into Wars for all selfish and un- 
 righteous purposes, and then to affect a horror of 
 war for any purposes. There is not a curse which 
 threatens the life of England, of France, of Germany, 
 of Italy as a Nation — not a disposition that has de- 
 stroyed the individual strength and the reverence of 
 neighbours for each other — which these Hebrew singers 
 have not felt to be undermining the life of Israel and 
 their own, against which they- have not asked the help 
 of the God of Righteousness. In spite of that fact — 
 jnay I not rather say by reason of that fact — English- 
 men, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, have preferred 
 those Hebrew devotions to any which have grown up 
 among themselves, which have been shaped and coloured 
 according to their customs and modes of thinking. 
 
 LECT. XII. 
 
 Jewish 
 crimes. 
 
 The 
 
 Psalms in 
 Modern 
 Europe. 
 
202 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XII. 
 
 Hebraism 
 
 and- 
 
 Hellenism. 
 
 Hehraic 
 exclusive- 
 ness, what 
 comes of it. 
 
 Hellenic 
 exclusive- 
 ness, what 
 comes of it. 
 
 It has been strongly asserted in our day, by tbougbt- 
 ful and accomplished men, that there is in England 
 an excess of what they call the Hebraic habit of mind, 
 and that it ought to be qualified if not superseded by 
 that which they describe as the Hellenic. I have 
 shewn you already, that — little claim as I have to 
 the artistic perception and refinement which charac- 
 terise those who are imbued with Greek scholarship — 
 I yet reverence at a distance the truth which dis- 
 covers itself to me in the Homeric poems and in the 
 Tragedies of a later age, as well as in the writings 
 of the philosophers who sometimes complained of 
 both. So far as any persons undertake to magnify 
 the Hebrew temper for the sake of disparaging the 
 Greek, 1 think they are doing more injury to that 
 which they praise than to that which they censure. 
 They are denying that union of Jew and Greek in 
 the complete man of which the Christian Apostle 
 speaks ; they are introducing that kind of Judaism 
 which was his great antagonist. But am I honouring 
 the Greek habit of mind by glorifying it at the ex- 
 pense of the habits which I have been describing? 
 Rather I am eliminating from it that which has made 
 it noble, that which has won the honour and affection 
 of sincere men for it. They have felt that beneath 
 all the cori'uptions to which Greek history and its 
 literature bear such abundant testimony, there lay a 
 belief in Law and Order, a sense of personal respon- 
 sibility, a protest against falsehood, a loyalty, a pa- 
 triotism, which no popular delusions and superstitions, 
 no sophistry of rhetoricians could extinguish. They 
 have felt that the Greek worship, however mixed with 
 notions of supernatural caprice and baseness, did yet 
 
NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 203 
 
 account the qualities ■which are opposed to caprice 
 and baseness as the essentially divine. Because it did 
 so, the art of poets and sculptors which was so much 
 interwoven with this worship could discover in the 
 human objects that it contemplated, an ideal which 
 was above them though it did not interfere with their 
 reality. The Hebrew, limited it may be to two arts, 
 music and poetry — since of his architecture we can 
 only form guesses — used these to express his sense of 
 a perfect Truth and Unity, the ground of all Truth 
 and Unity in men. He sang of a Lawgiver to whom 
 each man was responsible, of a God of the Nation who 
 called on each man to live for it and die for it. What 
 do you suppose would become of Greek life and art 
 if all which these Hebrews confessed were by some 
 process separated from them ? You need not be at 
 the pains of speculating. You may contemplate that 
 life and that art when they had passed or nearly 
 passed into this condition ; when Gods of caprice alone 
 were worshipped ; when men recognised them as their 
 own creation and yet trembled before them; when 
 philosophers laughed at such service and practised it 
 because it was good, for the multitude, and because 
 the objects of it might be as true as anything else. 
 Is that the Hellenic habit of mind which we of the 
 modem age are to cultivate ? Alas ! the exhortation 
 to cultivate it is wholly needless. There is none which 
 we are so ready to adopt; no discipline is required 
 to perfect us in it. But whether, when we have 
 acquired it- thoroughly, when all which resists it in 
 us is cast away, we shall care more for Hellenic lite- 
 rature and history than for Hebraic may be a ques- 
 tion. I think it possible that we shall care less for 
 
 liECT. XII. 
 
 The Arts 
 of the Jew 
 and the 
 Greek, 
 
 Hellenia 
 Art with- 
 out truth 
 popular in 
 old and 
 modem 
 days: 
 
204 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 What will 
 pare 
 
 Hellenism 
 do for 
 Science t 
 
 The 
 
 horror of 
 Sacrifices 
 as bribes to 
 the divin- 
 ityHebraic 
 not 
 Hellenic. 
 
 They be- 
 long to the 
 Nation's 
 Order, 
 
 English History, English literature, the English Nation, 
 than for either. 
 
 I have spoken of Art because we naturally asso- 
 ciate that with Greece. But how will Science fare 
 if all Hebrew elements are cast out of our minds and 
 we are left to the influence of naked Hellenism? Then 
 all the objections which scientific men raise against 
 religious men for introducing an irregular and disturb- 
 ing force into the order of Nature will be aggravated 
 a thousandfold. For ' He spake and it was done,' ' He 
 commanded and all things stood fast,' for the conti- 
 nual appeals in the Psalms to ' a Law given to things 
 that they cannot transgress,' will be substituted endless 
 vicissitudes, the likelihood of miracles at every moment. 
 A habit of doubting whether anything is, whether all 
 things are not the creatures of the eyes which behold 
 them, would be far more than we now guess the preva- 
 lent one in our minds if we were left without that 
 apprehension of a fixed government over ourselves 
 which we do not derive from, the Greeks, whatever else 
 they may have taught us. 
 
 To the Jew again we owe that tremendous indigna- 
 tion and scorn which breaks forth in the Psalmists 
 and the Prophets against those who fancy that the 
 righteous Lord can be bribed by Sacrifices to alter His 
 purposes or mitigate His Laws. These denunciations 
 express the very meaning of the Jewish economy. It 
 does not dispense with Priests and Sacrifices ; they are 
 parts of the national Order; they are declared to de- 
 pend like all other parts of it upon the everlasting 
 Lawgiver. But because they are part of the nation's 
 Order, because they proceed from its Lawgiver, they 
 cannot interfere with His order, they cannot be contri- 
 
NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 205 
 
 vances for escaping His judgments. They are declared 
 to be His signs and pledges of reconciliation with His 
 subjects; the worshipper gives up some dead thing as 
 a witness that he gives up himself ; that he repents of 
 any acts which have had their root in self-will and 
 disobedience. So the belief which was latent in the 
 fjreek Sacrifices is brought clearly to light; the false- 
 hood which produced their direst superstitions and 
 crimes — as it has produced the darkest superstitions 
 and crimes in every age and country of the world — is 
 also detected and exposed. 
 
 I shall be told that the interest in these Jewish 
 devotions has nothing whatever to do with our English 
 or French or German sympathies ; that lonely suffer- 
 ing men conscious of their personal evils, caring no- 
 thing about the politics of kingdoms, are those who 
 chiefly delight in them. My answer is this. An English^ 
 man, a Frenchman, a German, does not shake off the 
 recollection that he is an Englishman, a Frenchman, a 
 German because he is in a solitary chamber, because 
 he is racked with personal suffering, because he is 
 awake to evils which he has done. Much of his suffer- 
 ing, much of his remorse, will be connected with 
 thoughts of fellow-citizens whom he has knovra, who 
 have injured or neglected him, whom he has injured or 
 neglected. The chains of neighbourhood may never 
 he more keenly felt, may never enter more as iron into 
 the man's soul, than when he seems to be most thrown 
 upon himself. But suppose him by any artificial con- 
 trivances to have weaned himself from all national 
 attachments — suppose him to be wholly wrapped up in 
 the thought of his own felicity or misery present or 
 future — or suppose hini to look upon himself only as 
 
 which they 
 cannot set 
 
 These 
 Devotions 
 would not 
 appeal to 
 individual 
 if they did 
 not appeal 
 to national 
 feelings. 
 
 The man 
 without 
 attach' 
 ments 
 cannot care 
 for them. 
 
206 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Sect 
 age of 
 Jewish 
 existence. 
 
 The Phari- 
 sees. 
 
 belonging to some school or sect, or only, as a cosmopo- 
 lite — then I say that if he mumbles these Psalms 
 twenty times a day, they will be merely dead sounds 
 to him ; if he would extract any meaning from them 
 he must reduce them into feeble allegories ; he may 
 talk about them, but they will not speak to him ; he 
 may try to think about them, but they will not ex- 
 press his thoughts. 
 
 So I apprehend it was with the Jew himself when 
 he like the Greek became incapable of national life. 
 Incapable of it, I say; for when he had lost all the 
 signs and pledges of it he may yet have longed for it, 
 and then no utterances will have been more real and 
 dear to him than those of the Psalms. But there did 
 assuredly fall upon the most conspicuous men in his 
 land — upon those who were highest in religious repu- 
 tation, those who were so numerous a sect that a popu- 
 lar writer ridicules our ignorance for describing them 
 as a sect at all* — such a contempt for the people of the 
 land, such a sense of their own superiority to the 
 ordinary child of the Covenant, as must have made 
 them wholly incapable of entering into the belief of 
 the Psalmist in a Lord God of Israel. They might 
 glorify themselves for not worshipping the Gods of the 
 countries in which they settled or with which they 
 
 * See the celebrated article on tlie Talmud in the Quarterly Beview, 
 The eulogist of the Pharisees clenches his position by saying that it is 
 as absurd to call them a sect as to call Boman CathoUos a sect in 
 Eome, or Protestants a sect in London. I do not see the force of the 
 argument. I do feel the point of the sarcasm. That a Sect loses its 
 venom by becoming numerous and powerful appears to me the most 
 extravagant of paradoxes. That Protestants and Boman Catholics 
 may be most sectarian when they are most numerous and powerful I 
 sorrowfully believe. 
 
NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 207 
 
 traded. They might, in the Reviewer's phrase, be " men 
 of progress" — men who belonged to the present not 
 the past, who had quite outgrown the pastoral or agri- 
 cultural habits of a previous period, who believed in 
 Commerce and applied a commercial standard to all 
 their transactions with Heaven as well as earth. But 
 the Law for them was one graven in stones; one to be 
 exceedingly reverenced because it was their law — not a 
 law proceeding from the mouth of a Deliverer whom 
 they could trust. "Words must have shrivelled into 
 letters — as letters to be honoured and called divine. 
 Loyalty : toward whom was that to be exercised ? To 
 the Priest perhaps, if he was of the proper sect ; but 
 chiefly to the oracle of the Sect ; to him who could 
 best adapt old traditions to modern circumstances. A 
 prince of the house of David might possibly arise ; if 
 the Herodian family was in the ascendant the question 
 how far it should be accepted as a fact or resisted by 
 intrigues must be an open one. The Lord of Hosts 
 might still be an object of wild irregular hope to the 
 poor, a charm for some brigand champion to work with; 
 the rich and comfortable would be thankful to the 
 Koman Governor for quelling such disturbers. The 
 Sectarian Morality in this case, as in all cases, was 
 certain to extinguish the National Morality, unless that 
 received some unlooked-for renovation; unless the pray- 
 ers which Psalmists had poured forth for a deliverer 
 of the Nation and of all Nations received an answer. 
 
 Such an answer might be as needful for the Con- 
 queror of the Jew as for the Jew himself I said that 
 I should have oocasion to speak of the Roman faith 
 as a political faith in the best,and the worst sense of that 
 word. You will not wonder now that I should acknow- 
 
 Tkeir re- 
 spect for 
 Law. 
 
 Their 
 Loyalty. 
 
 Thoughts 
 of a King 
 and De- 
 liverer, 
 
 RoTuan 
 Faith, 
 
'208 
 
 NATIONAL MORALITY. 
 
 National, 
 
 Virtus. 
 
 Cicero ; 
 Ms sin- 
 cerity. , 
 
 His in- 
 sincerity. 
 
 ledge a "best" sense. A faith which is not political, which 
 has nothing to do with Law, with Language, with 
 Government, with Battles, is, it seems to me, not a 
 faith in a righteous Being, a distinguisher of Eight and 
 Wrong, not faith in a Being who is true and who seeks 
 truth in men, not faith in an object of Trust and 
 Loyalty, not faith in a Source of Valour or Courage. 
 Let it be ever so domestip — and I have said that the 
 first element of Roman faith was domestic, the autho- 
 rity of the Father — let it make ever so much effort at 
 universality, and we shall see hereafter how Eoman 
 worship in later days aspired to this merit — ^there will 
 be in it no groundwork for that kind of character 
 which we describe as manly, which was comprehended 
 in the Virtus of the Republic. 
 
 Cicerq is thoroughly sincere when he connects wor- 
 ship with Laws ; so doing, though he may derive phrases 
 or illustrations from his Greek teachers, he speaks as a 
 Roman. As an Academician he could see certainty in 
 nothing, least of all in any speculations about the di- 
 vine nature. As a Citizen he felt the most unshaken 
 conviction that there must be a ground for social life 
 and social morality, that what is most right must be 
 most divine. Fables about the Gods which he might 
 accept or reject as a fit drapery for his belief did not 
 touch the core of it ; that was in a Lawgiver and Judge 
 whom no fancy, no intellect could make or unmake. 
 
 But in his heart, as in the hearts of his countrymen, 
 the profoundest insincerity lay hard by this honest and 
 ineradicable conviction. There must be a divine ground 
 of Law, said the inner conscience of ihe Nation and of 
 the patriot. How necessary it is to assume such a 
 ground that Law may be upheld, that men generally 
 
NATIONAL WORSHIP. 
 
 209 
 
 may reSpect it, said the lower nature of the man jus- 
 tifying itself by the calculations of a sordid expediency. 
 We must make men observers of their words by feign- 
 ing to recognise a God of truth ! We must cheat men 
 into loyalty, seeing how little there is to awaken it in 
 self-seeking rulers, by threatening them' -with the ven- 
 geance of the Gods if they are disloyal ! We must ask 
 the augurs, scarcely able to refrain from laughing at 
 each other as they meet, to invent supernatural reasons 
 for rushing into wars or avoiding them ; else how shall 
 the soldier keep his oath to his commander, or not for- 
 get his discipline, or not shrink from the enemy when 
 he should face him? Here was the hateful and ac- 
 cursed side of the worship, that which made it accept- 
 able to the mere Magistrate, that which made it in- 
 credible to such men as Lucretius, who were sure that 
 there must be in nature if there was not among men 
 some order which was not based upon trickery and lies. 
 Not the philosophy of Epicurus but the dissolution 
 of the Republic was to demonstrate the hollowness of 
 such a System. A Nation canaot stand upon fictions. 
 An Empire may demand them as its necessary sup- 
 ports. But an Empire introduces another division of 
 Social Morality. The Battle of Actium signified not 
 to Italy only but to Egypt, to Greece, to Palestine, to 
 every country under heaven, that Nations for a while 
 were at an end. A world in which nations should be 
 buried had been long preparing. It now came forth 
 with the hero of proscriptions as its Monarch and its 
 God. That is the first form under which Universal 
 Society presents itself to us in Modem History. We 
 shall have to consider what Morality was implied in it, 
 and whether any other Universal Society is possible. 
 M. M. O 
 
 Lies uned 
 to make 
 men true. 
 
 The death 
 ofNations. 
 
 Transition 
 to the new 
 Age. 
 
lECT. XIII. 
 
 Internal 
 impatience 
 ofNational 
 bound- ^ 
 aries. 
 
 The 
 
 • WorW 
 may he 
 uery small. 
 
 LECTURE XIII, 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY, 
 
 (1) TEE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 'I AM the member of a Family;' 'I am the Citizen of 
 a Nation/ these are assertions which each of us confi- 
 dently repeats to himself, about which he entertains no 
 scepticism. Am I only the member of a family ; only 
 the member of a Nation ? At a certain crisis in our 
 lives this question, which has often been stirring within 
 us before, is fully presented to us. This domestic circle 
 has been unable to confine me within it. Can the 
 Law, the Language, the Government, the, Hostilities of 
 a particular country confine me ? Do I not belong to 
 a larger Society, what is called a World ? 
 
 We have seen from the example of the first Social 
 Moralist to whom I referred in these Lectures that this 
 word is not necessarily a very comprehensive one. It 
 denoted to Chesterfield, it has denoted to many, a 
 peculiarly narrow Society; one the virtue of which 
 consists in its narrowness. A number of other worlds 
 entirely unlike that of Chesterfield, but possessing this 
 characteristic, attract or repel us when we reach the 
 
THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 211 
 
 verge of manhood. They oifer a gratification to cer- 
 tain tastes which we are cherishing, a promise that we 
 shall be associated chiefly with those who share the 
 same tastes. We hear of a literary world, a scientific 
 world, a sporting world, a religious world. Each of 
 these worlds may have different hemispheres; those 
 who dwell in one may not be able to endure the atmo- 
 sphere of the other. The name therefore must receive 
 rather a negative definition. It must signify that the 
 inhabitants of these worlds are not admitted into them 
 in virtue of any ties of blood or of country. The bond 
 of their fellowship, whatever it be, is not this. 
 
 Any one of these exclusive Societies may have a 
 charm for us because it appeals to our choice. The 
 family, the Nation, are given to us. Here is an opening 
 into a region which we can compare with other regions, 
 which we can adopt because it accords with dispositions 
 or is likely to de.velope powers that seem to be specially 
 ours. That which we select is a world which turns on 
 its own axis and revolves about some sun that illumi- 
 nates no other. But the phrase 'man of the world' 
 denotes one who is not a member of any such limited 
 circle. We take him to be a person who may fall into 
 any Society and feel no embarrassment in it, but who 
 entirely refuses to be tied by the maxims, customs, be- 
 liefs of one or another. He floats at large; adapts him- 
 self to the circumstances of every country or class; 
 observes them acutely, perhaps with contempt, perhaps 
 with pity, as far as possible with indifference,; is en- 
 tangled by no strong sympathies or antipathies ; can 
 use men to accomplish his purposes if he has ambition 
 or avarice or any other passion to gratify; but can 
 also dispense with them if he finds them inconvenient, 
 
 02 
 
 lEOT. XIII. 
 
 Its nega- 
 tive defi' 
 nition. 
 
 The ' Man 
 of the 
 World.' 
 
 His 
 
 freedom 
 from all 
 particular 
 affections, 
 dislikes, 
 convic- 
 tions. 
 
m 
 
 UmVMSAL MORALITY. 
 
 liEOT. XIII. 
 
 The Man. 
 
 How he 
 differs 
 from the 
 man of the 
 world. 
 
 or if other tools suit him better. That is nearly I 
 thiak what we understand by a man of the world. 
 There may be varieties of the species. The French 
 man of the world may not be exactly like the English 
 man of the world ; may have fewer angular points, and 
 therefore may fulfil the character more perfectly. No 
 national peculiarities ought to enter into his . compo- 
 sition; no family affections. They evidently weaken 
 his forces, impair his completeness. 
 
 Such a model as this many set before themselves 
 when they are approaching the age in which mere citi- 
 zenship, as well as mere domestic ties, become insuf- 
 ficient for them, when they are aware that they have 
 grown not in thews and bulk alone ; that the inward 
 service of the mind and will has waxed wide withal 
 and demands a wide society for its exercise. But to 
 some who have reached the same stage, who are con- 
 scious of the same necessities, the question occurs, 
 ' May not a Man, perhaps, be more than a man of the 
 world ? If we can be thoroughly men shall not we enter 
 more not less into fellowship with all people and kin- 
 dreds than he does? Shall we not have fellowship 
 with what they are — not only, as seems to be his case, 
 with the outside of them, with what they seem and are 
 not ? Having arrived by whatever process at that in- 
 tercourse, shall we not understand better what our 
 country is to us — what his country is to every neigh- 
 bour, what our family is to us, what his family is to 
 him 1 Shall we not be more thoroughly individual, he 
 less lost in a crowd?' These thoughts have worked 
 and are working in us, side by side with the desire to 
 have the credit and dignity of being men of the world. 
 I apprehend that the chief business of a University is 
 
THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 313 
 
 to ripen such hopes, to shew how they may be accom- 
 plished. If it does that — if it is, in the truest sense, 
 a school of Humanity — it will also explain to its mem- 
 bers how one may have a calling to this pursuit, on-e 
 to that — how one may devote himself to Science, one to 
 Letters, one to Politics, yet without being enclosed in 
 an artificial, exclusive world ; rather with the power of 
 shewing how every study and work discovers some 
 spring of life in man which without it would be closed. 
 
 We have always observed, thus far, that there is 
 a correspondence between our own personal experience 
 and the larger experience which makes up History. 
 The transition from the patriarchal to the legal period 
 — the shock which accompanies the transition, we 
 noticed in both alike. To this amazing crisis through 
 which we all more or less consciously pass, from the 
 national to the universal condition,' where shall we 
 turn for a resemblance ? If the remarks which I made 
 at the close of the last Lecture are true, the point 
 of comparison is marked enough. Just at the com- 
 mencement of our era, at the moment in which Octa- 
 vius Csesar became lord of the World, did the age of 
 Nations pass away with a great noise, did the universal 
 age begin. What was to come of that universal age, 
 .whether nations were or were not in its womb, was to 
 be declared hereafter; that it opened with the extinc- 
 tion of them, there can be no doubt. We have not to 
 infer, as in the crisis spoken of before, some great 
 revolution ; nothing is more patent and notorious than 
 the Revolution by which this the third period of histo- 
 rical development was inaugurated. 
 
 I do not, , of course, limit the Revolution to the 
 mere struggle of Antony and Augjistus which brought 
 
 LECT. XIII. 
 
 Which 
 character 
 University 
 Culture is 
 intended 
 to form. 
 
 The crisis 
 in general 
 history 
 which cor- 
 responds 
 to the i}i- 
 dividual 
 
214 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITt. 
 
 LECT. XIII. 
 
 The new 
 doctrines 
 about 
 Brutus and 
 Ccesar. 
 
 Ccesar the 
 champion 
 of Equal- 
 ity. 
 
 His eman- 
 cipation 
 from all 
 domestic 
 and na- 
 tional re- 
 straints. 
 
 it to its close. Figures far more striking and interest^ 
 ing than these had appeared in the earlier scenes of 
 the Drama. Of old we used to speak of Brutus 
 with some reverence ; those who withstood Csesar were 
 thought to have been honest patriots, if they took a 
 wrong way of exhibiting their patriotism. Modern 
 scholars command us to abandon such notions. Julius 
 Csesar, they say, understood his time as no one else 
 did. His opponents were stupid pedantic worshippers 
 of the past. His merits have been put upon another 
 ground by his imperial biographer and panegyrist; 
 Roman republican History, he says, exhibits only a 
 conflict of orders. Julius Csesar was the intelligent 
 champion ■ of equality ; he was preparing the way for 
 the only kind of government in which the Will of the 
 Majority could become faithfully embodied and en- 
 forced. I submit to these authorities so far as the 
 question is one which their learning or their practical 
 experience is competent to decide. I accept the state* 
 ment that Julius Csesar had a remarkable, an unpa- 
 ralleled, understanding of his own time ; that he was 
 hampered by no traditions of the past ; that he had no 
 prejudices of any kind which hindered him from using 
 any class of his countrymen for the object which he had 
 set before himself ; that he had a culture which placed 
 him on the level of the highest orators, statesmen, 
 even sages among Romans ; that he had a capacity for 
 government which made him able to manage the tem^ 
 pers and passions of barbarians ; that he was perfect 
 in the knowledge as well as in the. temper which could 
 win the confidence, of the legions ; that he was able 
 to use the advantages of his birth or throw them aside 
 if so he might conciliate the mass of citizens; that h6 
 
THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 215 
 
 thoroughly appreciated the decay of morality in Roman 
 families ; that he deliberately, as his greatest admirer 
 declares, corrupted the matrons of Rome for the sake 
 of his political objects. Being free from old Roman 
 prejudices and principles, from all scruples of con- 
 science, he -did assuredly possess in a high; even in a 
 transcendent degree, the qualities of 'a man of the 
 world;' he presented even a typical specimen of that 
 character because he rose .above it, because he had 
 a geniality, a sort of half humanity, which properly 
 forms no part of it. So far I yield to his panegyrists. 
 I allow that the most profligate man in Rome had 
 a clearer comprehension of what Rome had become 
 than any of his contemporaries. I allow that he could 
 not have used his profligacy so effectually, if he had 
 not retained in the midst of it a nobleness which he 
 did not derive from it. And I subscribe ex animo to 
 the decision of a Judge who speaks not as a mere 
 scholar, but (as he constantly intimates) from an ob- 
 servation of later times, that where Society has through 
 a series of self-seeking plots fallen to the depths which 
 Rome had reached during the civil wars, an Empire is 
 its inevitable destiriy. - ■ 
 
 Let so much be conceded. But when these Csesar- 
 ists further require us to reverence' a' man because 
 he -was without reverence for the laws of the house- 
 hold or the institutions , of his country ; when they 
 require us to despise ■ those ' who could not give up 
 the dream, that there was an order which might be 
 maintained — who could not accept the destiny of being 
 subject to a military despot — we have a fight to 
 say, ' We will hot obey you, whether you are scholars 
 or" emperors, for this is not a question which with. all 
 
 The typi- 
 cal Man 
 of the 
 World. 
 
 The inevit- 
 able Em- 
 pire. 
 
 Revolt 
 
 againstmir 
 
 teacher). 
 
2l6 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The actual 
 Empire. 
 
 The over- 
 throw of 
 domestic 
 virtues. 
 
 your wisdom you can decide for us. The question- 
 is whether it is a duty to worship success; whether 
 we are to canonize triumphant wrong and to treat 
 those as fools who struggled to the last for the right. 
 We are not safe in doing that if all the historians 
 joined with all the crowned heads in Europe to en- 
 join it.' 
 
 The best justification of those who urge such a 
 course upon us is undoubtedly this, that a man of 
 a much vulgarer and baser character than Julius 
 Caesar ultimately achieved the dominion of which he 
 was deprived, I have acknowledged already that such 
 a result in the state to which Rome had .fallen could 
 not have been averted. I feel the fitness of' the doom 
 that the coarse and bloody hands of Octavius rather 
 than the more graceful hands of his predecessor should 
 have executed it. Nor do I, as I have shewn you 
 already, look upon the change only as a degrg-datiou 
 and a curse. The passage from the National into 
 what I have called the Universal period, I hold in 
 itself to have been an elevation and a blessing. 
 Which words apply best to the Universal Society 
 that owned Augustus as its founder I will now 
 enquire. 
 
 I. I do not credit the Empire with the down^ 
 fall of domestic life in the city or the provinces. I 
 have accepted the testimony of a highly competent 
 if a somewhat partial witness, that this had taken 
 place already, that it was a most important and need- 
 ful preparation for the Empire. I would only observe, 
 that the precedent of the illustrious Dictator was cer- 
 tainly not lost sight of by those who acquired the 
 higher title. No angry language of Christian advo- 
 
,**. 
 
 fttE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 217 
 
 cates, or of Pagan Satirists, should be invoked to es- 
 tablish that fact. Gibbon was certainly neither one 
 nor the other, but an historian studious of facts, with 
 a very fashionable, a most unpuritanical, standard of 
 morality. Certainly one would ask for no evidence 
 that he has not accepted. I would rather that three- 
 fourths of that evidence had never been produced or 
 could be forgotten. Are we to conclude from it that 
 there was no reverence for parents left, no affection 
 between husbands and wives ? There is enough in 
 Tacitus to confute such a dark supposition, to shew 
 how deeply he honoured such virtues; how convinced 
 he was that they subsisted still among some of high 
 birth like Germanicus and Agrippina, among some 
 officials like his own father-in-law; how sure he was 
 that they must be brought back through a barbar- 
 ous race if they forsook the civilised world. His 
 pictures may be treated by modern scepticism as 
 merely fantastic. But whence came the fancy ? That 
 was not an imperial gift. It dwelt in a man who hated 
 the Empire ; who clave however hopelessly to the fallen 
 Nation. 
 
 2. That Nation had stood on Law. Law was 
 now declared to proceed from the inouth of the Em- 
 peror. He affirmed the Law to be his law. He knew 
 inwardly that it was not his law. He knew that 
 he had received it from other ages. The Juriscon- 
 sults, a brave and splendid race of men, did their best 
 to, make him and his subjects understand that the 
 Law was not of to-day nor of yesterday ; that there 
 were principles in it, which might be drawn out of it, 
 formally asserted, applied to new cases. When they 
 eould not expand a law which was meant fo"r a nation 
 
 Allproi^sta 
 against 
 this decay 
 associated 
 with re- 
 grets for ' 
 the Nation. 
 
 Law af- 
 firmed to , 
 be the ' 
 Emperor's 
 voice. 
 
 The Juris- - 
 consults of 
 the Empire 
 practical 
 protestants 
 against it. 
 
2tS 
 
 'UNIVERSAL MORALItY. 
 
 The Law 
 of Nature, 
 
 Ldngiiage. 
 
 to suit all the demands of a world, they invented the 
 notion of a Law of Nature — one which anticipated all 
 formal law and applied to every race equally. What 
 contradictions are involved in this conception Sir H. 
 Maine has pointed out with his customary ■clearness 
 and ability. With his customary candour he has shewn 
 that there was a truth latent in the contradiction ; that 
 it was an effort to find some other, basis for law than 
 arbitrary will. The Eoman Law unquestionably was 
 able to reach the other countries of the world because 
 they were under the Koman yoke. In that sense it 
 may be said that the universal Empire conferred a 
 benefit on them. But Law had itself a national ground ; 
 it was a silent protest against the principle on which 
 the Empire rested though it was obliged to tolerate 
 that principle. We may see hereafter that it has 
 only been a blessing to. the nations of modern Europe 
 so far as they are nations ; so far as it has helped 
 them to feel that the will of a man is not the source 
 of Law. 
 
 3. Prom the phrase 'Augustan Age! which was 
 so much used in the last century and has descended 
 to ours, it might be conckided that a new and brilliant 
 epoch for the Latin language began with the establish- 
 ment of the Empire. It is an obvious: remark that, 
 the poets or historians who illustrated that age were 
 all formed under, the Republic, that Horace had 'foughti 
 with however little distinction, under the standard of 
 Brutus, ..that Virgil's experiences of the. effects of the 
 civil war in Italy were sufficient to account for^ his 
 readiness to hail any one who .could restore peace. 
 Such observations would not account for the eminent 
 writers ^f the, so calledj silver age ; for Seneca, Tacitus, 
 
T'SE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 219 
 
 the two Plinys, and Quintilian, or among poets Lucan, 
 Pefsius, Juvenal. If the hearts of some of these were 
 in the old time, • they had unquestionably been subject 
 to all the . influences of the new. Seneca's philosophy 
 had as little of a national impress as his life. He 
 aimed at universality in the one ; he was the parasite 
 if he was the victim of his pupil. These accomplished 
 men, so unlike each other, had yet one common cha- 
 racteristic which separated them from . their prede- 
 cessors. Cicero lived emphatically in his time; he 
 recurred to the past for examples to guide the pre- 
 sent ; though he complained of the toils of the- Forum, 
 of the perturbations of parties, though he found a 
 relief from them in letters and philosophy, he never 
 doubted that his business was among, them, that he 
 had no right to stand aloof from them. The eloquent 
 men under the Empire might still plead causes ; if 
 they were friends of the ruler they might govern pro- ; 
 vinces. But they were studying composition rather 
 than frankly expressing themselves. The world around : 
 them chiefly supplied them with topics of lamenta- 
 tion or of bitter sarcasm. When that is the case with 
 the wise men — the men of letters — there cannot be; 
 much communion between them and the ordinary 
 citizen. Language cannot be that covenant of indi- 
 viduals and classes with each other which I have 
 supposed it to be. So when we pass the bounds of 
 the first century it is no longer to Latin that we turn 
 for the truest and deepest expressions even of Roman; 
 life. Plutarch of Chaeronea has more to tell us of 
 the old heroes of the Republic than eny who. boasted ; 
 descent from them, because he can compare them 
 .with Greeks. •. Philosophy, different aspects of which 
 
 The effects 
 of the 
 Empire 
 upon it. ■ 
 
 Language 
 no longer 
 a civic 
 bond. 
 
220 
 
 VNIYERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Em- 
 pire not a 
 form of 
 Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The old 
 offices with 
 a new 
 Centre. 
 
 The checks 
 upon the 
 System 
 must not 
 he con- 
 founded 
 with it. 
 
 Lucretius and Cicero forced their own language to re- 
 present even if they sometimes complained of its stub- 
 bornness, no longer makes that eifort. Even an Em- 
 peror thoroughly determined to be a Roman, yet finds 
 that he can converse with himself best in Greek. If 
 you reflect on these facts you will feel that tl^e change 
 which the Empire wrought in the feelings of its sub- 
 jects respecting Law was scarcely greater than its effect 
 on Language. 
 
 4. There is a great delusion latent in the expres- 
 sion 'form of Government' when it is applied to the 
 Empire. It was not a change from Republican forms 
 to a Monarchical form ; Augustus scrupulously adhered 
 to the old names, maintained the offices which were at- 
 tached to them. He only drew the forms to himself, or 
 round himself. He only said, ' I, the Imperator, claim 
 all these forms as subject to me. They are nothing 
 apart from me.' In other words he said. The notion 
 of something permanent in civil Society which may not 
 be set at nought by any temporary master has passed 
 away. The General, who commands the physical force 
 of a Land and of its provinces, is Lord of all ; whatever 
 ancient titles he bears himself or tolerates in others 
 mean nothing, if they are restraints upon his pleasure. 
 
 That is the imperial doctrine; I do not say that the 
 doctrine faithfully represented /acfs. The ancient titles 
 had a might which no decrees could annul. The loyalty 
 which they once called forth could not be utterly ex- 
 tinguished in deference to brute force. The name of 
 Consul lasted till the age of Justinian ; it might be 
 chiefly a sham and a mockery; but it had a signification 
 almost to its final day. Besides, the old republican 
 forms imparted a shape, to the provincial .governments. 
 
THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 22i 
 
 teaching military Governors that they might be the au- 
 thors of a civil order among harharians. These forms 
 • were therefore checks, if ineffectual checks, upon mere 
 arbitrary will ; but to describe them as parts of the im- 
 perial System because it was not able to cast them off 
 or make them absolutely its ministers, is surely mon- 
 strous. The Oriental type was that which the Empire 
 as such was always striving to acquire ; in the age of 
 Diocletian the aspiration was almost realised. The 
 monarch of Nicomedia was not necessarily troubled 
 with the traditions of Italy ; he could encourage his 
 colleagues in the West to shake them off. 
 
 5i I approach the subject which all feel to be- most 
 important in speaking of the Empire. Its name, its 
 origin, its continuance, all point to the function of the 
 Soldier. He had been the defender of a Nation ; 
 wherever he had gone forth in wars of conquest, it was 
 to spread and glorify the national name. His discipline 
 exhibited the submission of animal force to a command- 
 ing word, his courage the personal valour which is 
 called forth in those who feel themselves bound by a 
 common interest united in a common cause. He had 
 been taught in the civil wars — specially by the great 
 darling of the Legions — that he had in his hands the 
 weapons which could break down national barriers, 
 which could make him supreme. The lesson was for- 
 malised by the Empire. The General was the chief 
 not of a Nation, but of a World. The Army was a 
 world power; all relics of national existence could not 
 but look very paltry in its eyes. Yet they had a charm 
 for it. The old oath, the traditional respect for Law, 
 could survive great shocks. The Jurisconsults, whilst 
 they saw the terrible force of the legions, did not despair 
 
 Age of 
 Diocletian. 
 
 The Le- 
 gions. 
 
 The de- 
 fenders of 
 order 6e- 
 coming 
 conscious 
 of a power 
 to destroy 
 it. 
 
222 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. ' 
 
 LEOI. XIII. 
 
 The rival 
 candidates 
 for the 
 purple. 
 
 Imperial 
 Religion. 
 
 Apparent 
 similarity 
 to the na- 
 tional Re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Gibbon's 
 celebrated 
 dictum; 
 how far 
 true. 
 
 of binding them with some of the withes and cords 
 which in violent moments they had often rent asunder. 
 But restraints upon the army were in fact restraints 
 upon the Empire. And it soon began to be evident 
 that the collision of these forces — the rising of the ser- 
 vants against the Master, their choice of some rival 
 Master — would shew what the blessing of an Empire 
 is. With great satisfaction the modem biographer of 
 Julius Caesar has dwelt upon the strife of orders in the 
 Republic. Is there to be no sequel to that history set- 
 ting forth in lively contrast the tranquillity of the mili- 
 tary Despotism which displaced it ? 
 
 6. Lastly, I come to the Imperial Worship. 
 Wherein did it differ from the National Worship ? No 
 altar was displaced. The priests and augurs were what 
 they had been ; every god kept his place in the Pan- 
 theon. If there was a change in I'espect to foreign re- 
 ligions, it was on the side of increased toleration. The 
 maxim that any kind of worship might be allowed and 
 even encouraged which was not detrimental to public 
 order and did not interfere with allegiance to Rome, 
 must have become more fixed as the dominion extended, 
 when it was confessedly a world dominion. Therefore 
 so far as Worship consists of a routine of Services, 
 the transition from the Republic to the Empire cannot 
 have affected it. If there was a growth of Scepticism 
 it was only a growth; the seeds were deep in the hearts 
 of Romans when Augustus was hailed as their deliverer, 
 their new God. Gibbon's dictum that to the people all 
 religions seemed equally true, to the philosophers all 
 equally false, to the Magistrates all equally useful, is too 
 epigrammatic, too evidently generalized from the expe- 
 rience of the 1 8th century, to be of much value. About 
 
THE TfNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 223 
 
 the people he knew very little, either in his own time 
 or in the time of which he wrote ; his conclusion about 
 the philosophers was borrowed from those who contri- 
 buted to the Encyclop6die. The clause respecting the 
 Magistrates may, however, be accepted. What a re- 
 ligion could do to keep up the dread of government in 
 one tribe or another was the measure of its worth. If 
 ignorant men and women trembled at the thought of 
 Gods who might crush them, the trembling might be 
 dangerous or helpful. The Divinity might be invoked 
 by patriotic priests against the visible ruler ; by dex- 
 terous management the priests might be converted into 
 the servants of the ruler,; the supernatural vengeance 
 might be directed on the heads of those who defied him. 
 Such calculations may have seemed highly reasonable 
 to the conquerors of provinces in the former time. 
 The difference was that the conception of a righteous 
 and true Being, which had struggled with this policy 
 during the Eepublic — ^which had been at the root of 
 its worship — was necessarily banished from the imperial 
 theory. The Emperor was the standard of Godhead. 
 His power was the image of the highest, of the uni- 
 versal,^ Power. He did homage to heavenly powers no 
 doubt. He wanted their aid. But he was to all in- 
 tents and purposes the God of the earth. If the gods 
 above protected him, he also protected them. They re- 
 tained their authority by his permission. It would be 
 a fair exercise of his prerogative that he should in- 
 crease their number. He could not permit any of 
 them, more than any mortals within his dominion, to 
 encroach upon his supremacy. 
 
 That the profound unbelief which was implied in 
 'p^ch. worship as this was compatible ;with gross supeir- 
 
 LECT. XIII. 
 
 The Empe 
 ror the 
 real God 
 of the 
 Earth. 
 
 Unhelief 
 and SnpeT' 
 itition ■ ' 
 
224 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 EBCT. XIII. 
 
 working 
 together. 
 
 The Phi- 
 losophers 
 trying to 
 restore 
 faith. 
 
 Marcus 
 Aurelius. 
 
 His great- 
 ness does 
 not dimin- 
 
 stition, with a reverence for enchantments, with an in- 
 tense longing for tidings respecting the future, Gibbon, 
 whose testimony on this point is open to no suspicion, 
 has told us. On the other hand, that opinion which I 
 quoted from him respecting the philosophers has the 
 slightest possible application to the most eminent of 
 them. Plutarch, so far from accounting all Eeligions 
 equally false, spent much of his thought and time in 
 distinguishing those which rested on the acknowledge- 
 ment of righteousness and benevolence as character- 
 istics of divinity from those which canonized Caprice 
 and Terror. About Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, as 
 I shewed in a former course of Lectures, the statement 
 is even more conspicuously untrue. To the latter I 
 must refer again here, since it may seem to you that 
 he, being an Emperor, must confute or at least weaken 
 some of the remarks which I have made respecting the 
 Empire generally. Retaining all the reverence I have 
 expressed for him, wishing that I could give a more 
 fervent utterance to it, — I yet look upon him as the 
 strongest confirmation of the position that all the man- 
 ners of the Romans, all that made them a great and 
 noble people, came from an earlier time, that they de- 
 rived actually nothing from the Empire but what was 
 immoral and degrading. The Meditations of Marcus 
 Aurelius exhibit a man who is striving by all means 
 that he knows of — by the help of old traditions, ■ of 
 family attachments, of one or another form of Greek 
 wisdom — to recover something which he feels has de- 
 parted, or is departing from his country, from those 
 who are governing in it, from those who are serving in 
 it. The greatness of a battle conducted under such 
 circumstances I cannot appreciate ; if I dared speak of 
 
THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 
 
 225 
 
 it in the language of some as a wonderful effort of un- 
 assisted reason, I should contradict my faith, I should 
 feel that I was blaspheming God. I believe the con- 
 science and reason of Marcus Aurelius could not have 
 been called forth — as I believe yours and mine cannot 
 be — ^by any less divine Teacher than the one whom he 
 confessed but knew not how to name. I feel that the 
 more because I hold that he was dwelling under the 
 'pressure of an accursed and a doomed system, which 
 brought forth its natural and inevitable fraits in his 
 son's days and in the days that followed. I do not for 
 a moment yield to the notion which Gibbon endorsed 
 in a careless moment — when his customary fidelity to 
 fact yielded to his passion for rhetorical display — that 
 the period from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius was one of 
 the greatest happiness for the human race, while the 
 period up to Trajan and after Marcus Aurelius was one 
 of the most miserable. The acknowledgment of such 
 miraculous influences proceeding from the government 
 of men whose intentions were not always good, and 
 when they were best could often effect very little, de- 
 mands a stretch of credulity which sceptical historians 
 have no right to demand of us. Niebuhr struck the 
 extravagant dogma to the grouiid by noticing the plagues 
 and pestilences with which this blessed period for the 
 race was tormented in different portions of the globe. 
 
 Such dreams of the world's felicity may have haunt- 
 ed Seneca when in his comfortable gardens he was 
 writing his book on Clemency and extolling the youth- 
 ful perfections of Nero. I do not believe they ever 
 visited the couch of Marcus Aui-elius. He knew better 
 what felicity was ; and how little he could be the au- 
 thor of it to his people or to himself. 
 
 M. M. P 
 
 LECT. XIII. 
 
 ish the 
 darkness 
 of the Emt 
 pire, but 
 makes it 
 mcmifest. 
 
 The notiortr 
 that there 
 was a 
 specially 
 happy 
 period for 
 mankind 
 under the 
 Empire 
 wild and 
 fantastic^ 
 
226 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 liECT. XIII. 
 
 The con- 
 tradiction 
 in the 
 heart of an 
 earnest 
 and true 
 Emperor. 
 
 His motive 
 to perse- 
 cute. 
 
 I have connected this remarkable man with the 
 worship of the Empire, because he, unlike its other 
 Rulers, knew that a Worship which was merely sanc- 
 tioned by the Magistrate for its usefulness could not 
 be useful, that what was built upon a lie must have 
 the curse of a lie upon it. He had this conviction ; it 
 struggled with all motives and arguments of Policy in 
 his heart of hearts. Yet he felt at the same time that 
 he must anyhow keep alive the sense of religion which 
 was perishing in the minds of the Romans, must per- 
 mit them to hold fast — nay, must require them to hold 
 fast — that which they had received from their fathers 
 and had ceased to believe — rather than let a scepticism 
 which seemed to him hopeless and destructive over- 
 shadow and possess them. One result of this convic- 
 tion was that persecution which Mr Mill considers so 
 great a deduction from the high character of the Em- 
 peror. I hinted before that I could not join in the 
 censure which comes with such weight from his lips. 
 Why I cannot join in it I must explain more fully in 
 the next Lecture, wherein I purpose to consider an- 
 other form of Universal Society which appeared in the 
 world contemporaneously with the Universal Empire. 
 
LECTURE XIV. 
 
 (2) THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 When I speak of the Roman Empire as universal — 
 when I call it a world — ^you will not suppose me to 
 aflSrm that it included all which was known of the 
 earth at its fall or at its commencement. You know 
 well that the Parthians disputed with it in the East; 
 you will not forget the calamity of Varus which told 
 Augustus what unconquered foes he had in the West. 
 Nevertheless both the Latin poets and the writers of 
 the New Testament speak of the dominion of the Cae- 
 sars as if it deserved the name which I have given to 
 it. A world dominion it was. The boundaries of bar- 
 barous tribes, the traditions of civilised lands, did not 
 determine its limits. The fortune of war might narrow 
 or extend them. Emperors might decide what rivei-s 
 or mountains their legions should not attempt to cross. 
 Nor, whatever rivals it had, was there anywhere an 
 organic Society which could be reasonably compared 
 with it. There might hereafter arise in the East a 
 compact Empire to resist and defy it. Parthians only 
 half oriental — with customs and a faith derived from 
 the Macedonian conquest^had no coherency in the 
 least degree answering to that which centuries of con- 
 
 P2 
 
 LEOT. XIV. 
 
 Under 
 what con- 
 ditions the 
 Roman • 
 Empire is 
 called a 
 World. 
 
 No other 
 organic 
 
228 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 _ I.ECT. XtT. 
 
 The Rival 
 Society. 
 
 Its Mon- 
 arch. 
 
 This Soci- 
 ety not to 
 be de- 
 scribed as 
 a Religion . 
 
 flict had shewn to exist in the Italian city. A grand 
 future might be preparing for Germany ; Tacitus might 
 perceive those seeds of order in it which he thought 
 were perishing in his own land : at present it was only 
 a collection of warring tribes. 
 
 I am now to speak of a Society which though it did 
 not affect but disclaimed the title of.' a world,' was not 
 more bounded by the divisions of countries or lan- 
 guages than the Empire, was not exposed to the vicis- 
 situdes of arms which affected the Empire, could not 
 equally be restrained in its advances by the policy of 
 its rulers. Beginning in the most exclusive of Nations, 
 it appeared after the capital of that nation had been 
 destroyed by Titus, affirming that it was meant for aU 
 nations. Branches of this Society were found in all 
 the great cities of the Empire. Divided from each 
 other in place, often even by language, they were yet 
 united by some secret bond of fellowship. They ac- 
 knowledged an invisible Head or Lord. They were 
 not content with saying that He was their Lord ; they 
 affirmed Him to be Lord of all men. They did not 
 urge the subjects of the Csesar to revolt from their al- 
 legiance. They did say there was a Monarch above 
 him, to whom his subjects owed a more complete alle- 
 giance; to whom he owed it. They said that alle- 
 giance to that King must affect all the acts of their 
 daily life. 
 
 It is a perverse way of representing these facts to 
 speak of a certain religion, called the Christian, as pro- 
 claimed in different parts of the Empire by a body of 
 earnest teachers and devotees. The Roman Empire 
 tolerated all religions. It could not have made a special 
 exception to the disadvantage of a doctrine which, as 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 229 
 
 its apologists assured their rulers, commanded absti- 
 nence from all violence, even from all retaliation of in- 
 juries. Yet the mildest and best Emperors — beginning 
 from Trajan — ^felt that the Christian Society could not 
 be tolerated, that the Empire in self-defence must 
 trample it out. 
 
 The reason is obvious if we do not substitute lan- 
 'guage which we have adopted from quite a different 
 Source for that which we find in the Gospels, in the 
 Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles of the New 
 Testament. There we read nothing of a religion ; we 
 read in every page of a Kingdom. It is called a King- 
 dom of Heaven, no doubt. But the first time it is 
 spoken of we are assured that it is not in some distant 
 region or in some future state. John the Baptist an- 
 nounces that it is at hand. The people of all kinds 
 and classes in Palestine — the religious as much as the 
 irreligious — are called to repent of their sins because 
 it is at hand. So we learn that it is a Kingdom over 
 the man himself, over his thoughts and purposes, in 
 that region which produces the acts whereof the Legis- 
 lator takes cognisance but which he cannot reach. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount is occupied with this 
 Kingdom. Christ speaks of it as the Kingdom of a 
 Father. Multitudes are gathered from every quarter 
 of the land. The poorest of the land are told of a Father 
 in Heaven who cares for the just and the unjust, and 
 the good and the evil; who cares for the lilies and 
 feeds the birds and certainly will not forget to feed 
 or clothe His children, but who has better things for 
 them ; who would make them like Himself, who would 
 make them partakers of His own righteousness, of His 
 own life. The Righteousness which these ■ ignorant 
 
 It de- 
 scribed it- 
 self as a 
 Kingdom. 
 
 Its charac- 
 ter. 
 
 The Ser- 
 mon on the 
 Mount. 
 
230 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LBCT. XIV. 
 
 It sets 
 forth a 
 Social Mo- 
 rality. 
 
 Morality 
 in its es- 
 sence. 
 
 workmen are told they may possess, is of a different 
 kind from that of the Scribes and Pharisees who were 
 deemed the models of Righteousness by the Jewish 
 people. It was nothing external. Their Father in 
 Heaven would have them be righteous that they might 
 do righteous acts. The tree must be good that the 
 fruit may be good. 
 
 Such language has seemed to many a proof that 
 the Morality of this kingdom is merely individual, that 
 it is not Social Morality. The account of Social Moral- 
 ity, which I deduced in my first Lecture from the 
 opinions of all who have written upon it, entirely re- 
 futes (as I remarked in that Lecture) this apprehen^ 
 sion. It is with the fjdo^, the character which is the 
 ground of social peaqe, that the Social Moralist is con- 
 versant; it is against the secret evils which make 
 Society intolerable that he is contending. Is it other- 
 wise with Him who spoke of Meekness, Mercy, Purity 
 of Heart, with Him who denounced the roots of Mur- ' 
 der and Adultery, leaving the crimes to the Lawgiver? 
 He takes us at once from the solitude of the desert 
 into a Society. A body of fishermen are gathered 
 about Jesus. They are sent to preach of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven in the most frequented neighbourhoods. 
 They are warned that the Sects will always be their 
 enemies. They are to address the children of Abrar 
 ham as such, though they may be outcasts, though 
 as farmers of taxes to the Romans they may seem to 
 have forfeited their position as Jews. Jesus eats and 
 drinks with those whom the teachers of the land deem 
 accursed of God, who have often sunk into the worst 
 evils with which they are reproached. He goes among 
 them expressly to deliver them out of that conditioDi 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 231 
 
 to tell them of a new life of whicfe their Father in 
 Heaven would make them capable. 
 
 It is as a King — the expected King of the house of 
 David — that the GaJilseans especially, amidst many 
 doubts and hesitations, are disposed to welcome Him. 
 He does not claim the honour, but His words are 
 kingly and He exercises what seem to them the highest 
 faculties of a King. He delivers them from the plagues 
 and sicknesses which torment their bodies, from the 
 powers which have obtained dominion over their spirits 
 filling them with filth and madness. He appeals to 
 something in the poorest man or woman which answers 
 His voice, which believes in Him as a Deliverer. The 
 Kingdom of Heaven He illustrated by parables drawn 
 from the objects and relations with which His hearers 
 were most familiar. So they were taught that He 
 had come to open or unveil that divine life, of which 
 the human life in all its social conditions and circum- 
 stances was the image; to the end that the lower 
 might be reformed by the higher, not the higher de- 
 based and darkened by the lower. 
 
 The great scandal to the Jewish teachers was that 
 He whom they called a Carpenter's Son spoke of 
 God as His Father ; said that He came to shew forth 
 His Father's works to men. For that assumption 
 he was condemned as a blasphemer by the Sanhedrim. 
 But it was on the charge of assuming to be a King 
 that He was brought before the Roman governor; on 
 that charge He was condemned to the Roman death of 
 crucifixion. To those who believed Him to be the 
 Son of God^ the King who was to rule for ever, such 
 an end seemed incredible. The Gospels conclude with 
 the announcement of His Resurrection. It is recorded 
 
 The Royal- 
 ty of the 
 Son of 
 Man. 
 
 Miracles 
 and Para- 
 bles. 
 
 The Son of 
 God. 
 
 The King. 
 
 The Resur- 
 rection. 
 
232 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The gift of 
 Tongues. 
 
 The Spiri- 
 tual Soci- 
 ety. 
 
 Its divi- 
 sions. 
 
 Its expan- 
 sion. 
 
 in diiferent words by each ; in few and simple words 
 by all. They assume the death to be the marvel, the 
 victory over death to be implied in all that Christ 
 taught, in all that He was. 
 
 The message that the Conqueror of Death had 
 appeared, that He had ascended on high to claimTIis 
 rightful kingdom, is that with which the book that we 
 call the Acts of the Apostles begins. A sign is said 
 to have prepared the people of Jerusalem for it. At 
 one of their great feasts, where men were gathered 
 from various regions, the Galilsean apostles begin to 
 speak with tongues; each person in the crowd hears 
 them in the dialect of the country wherein he was 
 born. St Peter explains the meaning of the wonder. 
 The Spirit of God has taken possession of their thoughts 
 and lips that they may make known to their country- 
 men the deliverance which the God of their fathers 
 has wrought for them, the King whom according to the 
 promise He has given them. The words strike the 
 hearts of some. A Society of men is baptized into the 
 name of the Christ. The Uniting Spirit descends 
 upon them. They do hot claim the things which they , 
 have as their own. They confess God as their Father 
 in Christ. They are brothers. 
 
 Divisions soon arise. There is a mixture of He- 
 brews and Hellenists in their new Society. The last 
 think that they are neglected in the distribution of 
 gifts to the poor. Stephen, a Hellenist, is one of an 
 order which is appointed to meet the emergency. He 
 first appears to perceive the full meaning of the Pente- 
 costal sign. The King whom they have announced 
 cannot be only the King of those who gave Him up to 
 be crucified, He must be the Lord of all men, Some 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 233 
 
 words of this kind made tlie Sanhedrim believe that 
 the Law and the Temple of their fathers were threat- 
 ened. Stephen defended himself, and in a popular 
 frenzy was stoned as a blasphemer. 
 
 The book goes on to record how Peter was brought 
 out of his Jewish prejudices to believe that men of 
 another nation might hear the tidings which he had 
 preached to his own ; how a fierce young Pharisee who 
 had taken part in Stephen's death was convinced, not 
 by argument, but by an overwhelming discovery to 
 himself of the Lord whom he had resisted, that the 
 Jew was not better than the Gentile, that both alike 
 needed a deliverer from their own evil, that both alike 
 possessed one. 
 
 The battle of the circumcised people against the 
 acknowledgment of a common Lord for them and the 
 uncircumcised, with the establishment of Churches in 
 such cities as Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, 
 where they were mixed together, is the main subject 
 of the book. In each of these Societies the strife re- 
 appears. The Jew who accepted Jesus as the promised 
 Deliverer and Ruler of his land yet cannot bring him- 
 self to believe that he has not some advantage over 
 those who have been idolaters. The Greeks bring into 
 the Churches a number of their idolatrous habits, a 
 number of notions derived from their political and 
 philosophical fadtions. The treatment of these contro^ 
 versies becomes the leading purpose of St Paul's letters. 
 The principles of his Social Morality, of his Moral 
 Theology, are developed in reference to them. The 
 efforts on each side to separate were struggles against 
 a Spirit who was working to bring men into one, to 
 overcome the animal tendencies, the narrow notions. 
 
 The incor- 
 poration of 
 Gentiles, 
 
 The ele- 
 ments of 
 strife. 
 
 The 
 
 Uniting 
 
 Spirit. 
 
234 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. xrv. 
 
 The ulti- 
 mate 
 
 ground of 
 Society 
 and of 
 Social Mo- 
 rality. 
 
 The Jewish 
 Apostles 
 and the 
 Gentile 
 Apostle. 
 
 Their 
 external 
 diversities 
 and essen- 
 tial agree- 
 ment. 
 
 the spiritual enemies, which were tearing them asunder. 
 This Spirit of moral purification raises men to know 
 that they are spirits; to confess a Lord of their spirits 
 who took their nature afmd bore their death that He 
 might deliver them from sin and death, that He might 
 unite them to the Father from whom He came, whose 
 express Image He was, whose WUl He came on earth 
 to do. The Will therefore to all good — ^the Will mani- 
 fested in Sacrifice — is the ultimate ground to which 
 the Apostle refers the fellowship of human society, tlie 
 virtues of every man who is a member of it. 
 
 The Name into which all the members of the 
 Ghristian Church were baptized was according to the 
 Apostle the reconciliation of his nation with all other 
 nations; the Universal Sacrifice which is commemo- 
 rated by the Eucharist was the deepest basis of a 
 Human Morality, the meeting-point of a fellowship 
 between the Father of all and the children of men. 
 The Apostles of Jerusalem who contemplated the 
 Christian Church less in its various departments, more 
 as a whole expanded out of the Jewish Nation, were 
 set in contrast to St Paul by the Jewish and Gentile 
 factions, the first claiming Peter or James or John as 
 their champion, the other the tent-maker of Tarsus. 
 He indignantly repelled the injurious honour in speak- 
 ing of the school among the Corinthians which thrust 
 it upon him. Their Catholic Epistles shew that they 
 foresaw, as he did, the utter shaking and overthrow of 
 their own nation, and sought, as he did, in the divine 
 Name, for the foundation of a Unity which should 
 be liable to no accidents or limitations of space and 
 time. The last book in the Bible purports to set forth 
 the Revelation or unveiling of the Kighteous Lord of 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 235 
 
 Heaven and Earth, the discomfiture and ov^throw of 
 the powers whether in the Jewish or Gentile world 
 which had divided them. 
 
 A Society starting frojn these principles and aiming 
 at these results could not be very alarming to the 
 Roman world while it appeared as one of the Jewish 
 sects, whilst the really powerful sects in Jndsea, in 
 the Greek cities and in Eome, could treat it as an 
 insolent disturber of their dogmas and traditions. The 
 impartiality and indifference of the Roman judges to- 
 wards all questions of opinion had many opportunities 
 of exhibiting themselves when the Nazarenes were 
 brought before their tribunals. The Roman magistratte 
 at Ephesus ridiculed the notion of interfering even on 
 behalf of the Goddess of the City, the market for 
 whose shrines had been injured by St Paul's preach- 
 ing. When the proconsuls of Csesarea were inclined to 
 favour the Sanhedrim at his expense he could appeal 
 to the Emperor. Suppose the story of Nero's torches 
 is true, it does not prove that he was the least alarmed 
 at the progress of a body, the very name of which was 
 mistaken by him and his biographer; it was only an 
 act of imperial wantoniiess or a desire to conceal his 
 own crime. After the fall of Jerusalem we begin to 
 hear of some enquiries made by Domitian respecting 
 kinsmen of Jesus who might be pretenders to the 
 Jewish throne. If St John's deportation to Patmos 
 took place under that monarch or before him, it was 
 probably suggested by some notion that he had spoken 
 of a Kingdom which would overthrow the Roman. 
 But it was not till the beginning of the second century 
 that anything which deserves the name of an imperial 
 persecution commenced. 
 
 LECT. XIV. 
 
 How long 
 the Church 
 continued 
 harmless 
 in Roman 
 
 The Em- 
 pire its 
 frequent 
 protector 
 against 
 Jews and 
 even 
 Greehs. 
 
 The second 
 Century 
 the begin- 
 ning of a 
 new state 
 of things. 
 
236 
 
 VNI7EESAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. ?IT. 
 
 The'im- 
 perial 
 'maxims of 
 Toleration 
 not aban- 
 doned. 
 
 The Chris- 
 tian Soci- 
 ety affect- 
 ing the 
 govern- 
 ment and 
 business of 
 the earth. 
 
 The Resur- 
 fection. 
 
 What I have said may shew you that that name 
 ' Persecution,' if it is supposed to indicate a -departure 
 from the maxims of toleration which had been habitu- 
 ally recognised in the Empire, is altogether misapplied. 
 The motive which influenced Trajan was clearly not 
 zeal for any set of opinions or mode of worship, dislike 
 to any other set of opinions or mode of worship. If 
 the organised society which he found in his different 
 provinces had any reason for its existence — if it did 
 not repudiate the reason given in the books which it 
 accepted as authoritative — it was based upon principles 
 utterly at variance with those of the Empire, principles 
 implying that the principle on which it stood was false. 
 These principles could not be concealed. The Chris- 
 tian Society was bound to proclaim them ; its members 
 must endure any punishments rather than be . silent 
 about them. "What could the Emperors do if they 
 meant to maintain not the authority of the gods but 
 their own ? They were not bewildered by notions into 
 which modem times have fallen. They knew that the 
 Christian kingdom in whatever sense it was not of the 
 world Came directly into contact and collision with 
 their world. Those who spoke of it dwelt upon the 
 earth, addressed men who were engaged in the common 
 occupations of earth, sought to regulate their behaviour 
 in their earthly transactions. It was as little possible 
 to evade this conclusion because the Christians preach- 
 ed everyjphere that their Master had risen from the 
 dead. He had risen, they said, to claim His kingdom 
 over men. His Resurrection was a witness that Death 
 was not the Lord of the Universe, that One who had 
 overcome Death was its Lord. By faith of the opera- 
 tion of God who raised Him from the dead, they rose. 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 2?,7 
 
 SO they affirmed, to a new life here. If these words 
 have lost their meaning for those who repeat them now, 
 Trajan and his successors could not treat them as with- 
 out signification then. The words might sound most 
 foolish in their ears ; but they had an influence which 
 wise statesmen could not disregard. 
 
 As little could they be affected by a notion which 
 has become popular in our day, that the Apostles ex- 
 pected, and taught their disciples to expect, that the 
 Son of Man was coming speedily to destroy the earth 
 and its inhabitants- therefore that the polity of the 
 earth was of no concern to them. The Apostles un- 
 questionably expected the end of an Age. They said 
 that if the Son of Man had indeed come to claim a 
 Kingdom, He would prove by some tokens that He was 
 King. They looked therefore with awe and trembling 
 to the downfall of that City which was dear to them 
 above all others — which they deemed to be emphati- 
 cally the holy city — but which had become an accursed 
 city, the home of furious sects, hateful to man and 
 God. Its fall was to them, in the fullest sense, the end 
 of the Jewish or separate age, the discovery or unveil- 
 ing of the Universal King. Suppose the Apostles were 
 so flagrantly inconsistent with their own teaching, as 
 to expect the destruction of a Universe, which they 
 affirmed that Christ had redeemed and reclaimed from 
 its destroyers — suppose they treated human politics as 
 indifferent when they were announcing a polity for 
 men — ^the Churches had survived the crisis to which 
 they looked forward, were composed of Hebrews, 
 Greeks, Latins, Barbarians, were declaring that they 
 had a commission to be the salt of the earth, to be the 
 lights of the world. In that character they were en- 
 
 Ii*CI. XIT. 
 
 ECT. 
 
 The ex- 
 pectation 
 of Christ's 
 appearing. 
 
 Did it 
 mean the 
 expecta- 
 tion of ruin 
 to the 
 earth t 
 
 The con- 
 stitution 
 and voca- ' 
 tion of the 
 Churches. 
 
238 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XIT. 
 
 Ignatius of 
 Antioch. 
 
 Demon 
 worihip. 
 
 To over- 
 throw it 
 was to 
 undermine 
 not a form 
 of worship, 
 but the 
 imperial 
 worship as 
 such. 
 
 dangering not the religion of the Empire only but the' 
 entire fabric of it. 
 
 What might strike us as an assault upon its reli- 
 gion was in truth an assault on its existence. Ignatius, 
 the overseer or father of the Church in Antioch, de- 
 nounced, in language which sounded to Trajan very 
 monstrous and ridiculous, the Demons whom he and 
 his subjects worshipped. Christ his Lord, he said, had 
 come to deliver his disciples from the Demons. The 
 instinct of the Emperor enabled him to perceive in 
 such phrases, however he might laugh at them, the 
 tokens of a perilous revolution. If he had known 
 more of the ground on which the old teacher rested his 
 assertion his alarm would not have been diminished; 
 he would have felt it to be most reasonable. Man, it 
 was affirmed, could throw off the service of Gods half 
 human, half divine — having the benevolent and male- 
 volent caprices of human creatures — because One had 
 appeai-ed on earth and had ascended on high, in whom 
 perfect Humanity was united with Godhead ; in whom 
 men might claim fellowship with their Father in Hea- 
 ven. Such a doctrine struck at the foundation of that 
 which I have described as the worship of the Empire. 
 The idea of essential actual Eight being eliminated 
 from the conception of Godhead, there remained as a 
 comfort to the affections, as a refuge from the terrors of 
 the Conscience, these half beings who might change 
 their aspects every hour according to the state of the 
 worshipper's temper or of his digestion; frightening 
 him to. occasional acts of service, cheering him with 
 occasional hints of patronage. The man clung to them 
 chiefly in the vague hope that they might shield him 
 from the Highest of all, whom it was terrible to con- 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 239 
 
 template. Not the most profound Unbelief could drive 
 out these demons ; Unbelief must endure them, and 
 make certain compacts with them. But if the Highest 
 of all was declared to have revealed Himself as the 
 Father of men, to have entered into fellowship with 
 them, that He might draw them from the adoration of 
 all creatures to the adoration of Him ; then indeed the 
 homage of demons was shaken to its centre. It was 
 inevitable that Trajan, feeling the continuance of the 
 Empire to be involved in the continuance of some 
 worship of this kind, should not treat those who were 
 overthrowing it as he would have treated any ordinary- 
 fanatics, but as Atheists and traitors. With his desire 
 to indulge the inhabitants of Eome in the amusements 
 which they liked best, it was natural that he should 
 expose Ignatius to the beasts of the circus. 
 
 Thus the distinction between a Religio licita and 
 one that must be dealt with as disloyal and destructive, 
 had a clear justification in the minds of those dis- 
 posed to the broadest toleration. Anything or nothing 
 might be true about the unseen world. All guesses 
 about it, all modes of expressing the guesses, might be 
 legitimate. But the Christians were interfering with 
 the visible world, and at the same time denouncinsf 
 uncertainty in the invisible. The line between reli- 
 gion and politics has been found a difficult one to draw 
 in every period ; I do not think it was drawn less 
 accurately by the ruler of Eome than it has been by 
 any later rulers, or than it would be by the most liberal 
 men now. 
 
 With Marcus Aurelius policy was not the sole mo- 
 tive for punishing the Christians : a dread of weaken- 
 ing reverence in his subjects for what might be divine, 
 
 Trajan 
 punishes 
 Ignatius as 
 an Atheist 
 and Bebel, 
 
 The Reli- 
 gion which 
 could not 
 he lawful 
 in an Em- 
 pire. 
 
240 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Justin; 
 his mar- 
 tyrdom 
 probably 
 due to 
 Marcua 
 Aurelius 
 himself. 
 
 Bad Em- 
 perors 
 generally 
 the least 
 impatient 
 of the 
 Christian 
 Society. 
 
 ■The Image 
 of the Em- 
 peror. 
 
 Sacrifice to 
 that the 
 test of al- 
 legiance. 
 
 must have mingled witli the obvious necessity of put- 
 ting down a rival — however feeble arrival — of the power 
 which he was appointed to exercise. It cannot be 
 doubted that he threw more heart and energy into the 
 cause than Trajan or any previous ruler. The deaths 
 in Gaul during his reign may be ascribed to the zeal of 
 pro-consuls, may have been only sanctioned by him. 
 But Justin suffered in Rome, apparently through the 
 agency of men about the court, favourites of the Impe- 
 rial Philosopher. Justin's life would seem to have been 
 a singularly blameless one. If he had any affectation 
 it was that of being himself a philosopher. He had 
 pleaded earnestly and eloquently for a thorough exami- 
 nation into the principles and conduct of the body to 
 which he belonged. The condemnation of such a man 
 by one so habitually just and humane as Marcus, is the 
 most decisive proof which can be given that there was 
 a necessary and inextinguishable hostility between the 
 Universal Empire and the Universal Family which no 
 individual merits on one side or the other could miti- 
 gate. The safety of the Church may be said gene- 
 rally — ^there were exceptions — to depend on the care- 
 lessness of the Emperors in upholding the dignity of 
 their position. A brutal gladiator like Commodus was 
 likely to indulge its members — at least not to treat 
 them worse than his other subjects. 
 
 In a short time a test was discovered which clearly 
 separated the Christians from those who had merely 
 preferred certain demons or customs to others. Would 
 they sacrifice to the image of the Emperor? That 
 was a trial of political fidelity. If they accepted it, no 
 objection would be taken to any early or midnight 
 meetings for special acts of homage to their own diyi-. 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 24X 
 
 nity. Only let the Emperor be acknowledged as the 
 King of kings and Lord of lords ; the reserved rights 
 of any unknown gods would not be challenged. There 
 was a curious felicity, I ought rather to say, a stem 
 logic, in the demand. It was the image of the Em- 
 peror to which, under the name of Jupiter or any other, 
 a majority of his subjects were offering their sacrifices. 
 A dominion bounded by no law, brute force in its 
 fullest development, force which could inflict any amount 
 df mischief if it pleased, and which probably might 
 please to make this or that man or people know what 
 it could do, this was becoming more and more the con- 
 centrated Godhead before which the world trembled. 
 That there should be weak men and women to say 
 ' For no tortures or fires will we sacrifice to such an 
 image — be it of a visible or an invisible power' — was 
 the wonder of the age. To endure pain and death was 
 an ordinary phsenomenon. Soldiers could do that; their 
 business was to do it. But to endure pain and death 
 because they would not submit to an act which seemed 
 to most a mere form — which was to many a reality 
 because it expressed what they felt — that was Christian 
 martyrdom. 
 
 There is no need to dispute about the number of 
 the martyrs. They may be reduced to Dodwell's esti- 
 mate or below it. Still they will explain the essential 
 character, the radical opposition, of the two Polities ; 
 how one stood on force, the other on sacrifice ; how the 
 capacity of inflicting death was the measure of the 
 force ; how trust in One who had conquered death — 
 not, as some fancy, the vision of garlands and crowns 
 after it — ^was implied in the Sacrifice. 
 
 There are many notorious events in the history of 
 M. M. Q 
 
 LEOT. XIT. 
 
 The dia- 
 gnosis of 
 the twQ 
 Folities. 
 
 The perils 
 and weakr > 
 
242 
 
 UNIVEESAL MORALITY. 
 
 LE(iT. XIV. 
 
 neises of 
 the Chris- 
 tian Fami- 
 
 ly. 
 
 Seresier, 
 
 Excommu- 
 nication 
 for exter- 
 nal differ- 
 ences. 
 
 Tertullian 
 treats the 
 majority of 
 the Church 
 as apo- 
 state. 
 
 The exclu- 
 siveness of 
 Cyprian, 
 
 the early Churcli which may have reasonably dimi- 
 nished the dread of it in the Roman Ruler, because 
 they seemed to confute its boast of Universality. The 
 disputes in the Churches over which the Apostles pre- 
 sided between Jews and Gentiles, if they became less 
 obvious after the^fall of Jerusalem, took forms more 
 various not less fatal to peace. Opinions evidently 
 derived from the Synagogue clashed with opinions 
 which were as evidently the offspring of idolatrous 
 customs. There were aspects of the Gospel for all 
 Nations which touched the spiritual conceptions of 
 Syrians and Egyptians ; Christian teachers who mixed 
 with either brought these points into prominence, gave 
 them an exclusive character, and — whether through 
 their own fault or the suspicions of men trained in 
 another school it does not concern us here to enquire — 
 became separated from the fellowship of the Church. 
 Latin and Hellenic diversities became equally and very 
 soon conspicuous. Churches excommunicated each 
 other because they could not agree about the time 
 of keeping the festival of the Resurrection. One illus- 
 trious Apologist of the Church, the African Tertullian, 
 having acquired the habit of contemplating the Chris- 
 tian as a rival religion to the Pagan, and of defending 
 it with legal acuteness and ferocity, asked himself how 
 closely he could draw the lines of his religion : at last 
 they were found to exclude the great body of those 
 who bore the Christian name. One of his successors 
 in the same Church, Cyprian, was a far more genial 
 character, full of impartial kindness to Pagans and 
 Christians when they were suffering in the same pesti- 
 lence. But cases of apostasy by men under the terror 
 of death, which had been condoned at the intercession 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 243 
 
 of confessors -who were themselves about to incur it, 
 led him to lay down tremendous canons respecting the 
 'lapsed;' to distinguish very sharply between the Clergy 
 and the Laity; to question the validity of Baptism 
 when administered by those whom he counted heretics. 
 He proclaimed by the whole course of his acts, whether 
 in themselves reasonable or foolish, that comprehen- 
 siveness was the peril of the Church, exclusiveness its 
 security. In his own Church especially, but to a great 
 extent in all the Churches of his time, a passion 
 for government was evidently developing itself. The 
 union of the Christian family could be secured, it was 
 thought, by the frequent gathering together of Councils, 
 which often raised the questions discussed and appa- 
 rently settled in them into causes of separation. 
 
 Meanwhile another passion was appearing which 
 threatened the social life of the Christian Society. It 
 had been proclaimed in the most rich and corrupt 
 cities of the Empire. It had established itself in them. 
 The Christians in Egypt, to escape either from enemies 
 of their bodies, or from enemies of their spirits, betook 
 themselves to deserts. The hermit life was no inven- 
 tion of theirs; there were precedents for it among Jews 
 and Heathens. It was altogether a strange graft upon 
 the New Testament stock ; yet no one could say that 
 it would not grow upon that stock. If it was any- 
 thing but a graft, if it assumed to be the original 
 Christian principle, it must subvert the practice as well 
 as the doctrine of the Apostles. 
 
 Soniewhat allied to this tendency — yet in one way 
 most unlike it — was another that appeared in the same 
 region. The Alexandrian Church was of all that ex- 
 isted in the Empire the most learned, the most inclined 
 
 , Q2 
 
 Passwn 
 for legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 The flight 
 fromeities. 
 
 The Alex- 
 andrian 
 Church. 
 
 Its Learn- 
 ing, 
 
244 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. ~ 
 
 Its mysti- 
 cism. 
 
 These in- 
 clinations 
 made the 
 Church 
 less dan- 
 gerous to 
 the Em- 
 pire. 
 
 to profit by Hellenic as well as Rabbinical ■wisdom, the 
 least timid in acknowledging obligations to Pagan pbi- 
 losophers. In one sense appealing much more dis- 
 tinctly and boldly to human sympathy than the Church 
 of which Tertullian and Cyprian were the lights, the 
 Alexandrian teachers were much less capable than they 
 were of entering into the ordinary habits and pursuits 
 of the earth ; were much more disposed to cultivate an 
 exalted mysticism. They felt strongly that Christ had 
 come to be the Redeemer and Head of men, not of a 
 sect of men. But they found it difficult to recollect 
 that men had bodies as well as spirits ; that the com- 
 mon earth had a sacredness of its own and was not 
 merely a picture or parable or prophecy of an invisible 
 state. In spite of their learning, therefore, they had 
 affinities with the hermits who despised it. 
 
 If ecclesiastical historians appeal to these different 
 impulses and aspirations as proofs of the many-sided 
 character of the message which the Church had re- 
 ceived — as proofs that it could not sink into the dead 
 uniformity of the Empire so long as a quickening Spirit 
 animated it — ^they shew a sense of the grandeur of their 
 subject ; they can imitate the honesty of the Scriptures 
 in exposing the partialities and wrong doings of their 
 heroes. But after all we may justly apply the words of 
 the Satirist respecting Cicero's verses, 
 
 Antonl gladios potuit contemnere si eio ' 
 
 Omnia dizisset, 
 
 to the cases of which I have spoken. The Church 
 needed not to fear any disturbance from the Emperors, 
 if it had been content to quarrel about Easter, to fra- 
 ternise in particular notions or conceptions, to try how 
 many it could exclude from its ranks, to play at legist- 
 
TSE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 245 
 
 •lation, to organise a sect or school, to hide itself in 
 'deserts, to eschew the common earth. There were 
 Emperors-T-the heartless and odious Philippus ' Arabs 
 ;was one, the amiable eclectic Alexander Severus was 
 perhaps another — to whom the Church presented itself 
 merely in this light, who fancied therefore that Chris- 
 tians might be safely trusted with ofiSces under the 
 Emperor, even that their Lord might be adopted as one 
 ■x)f the objects of imperial patronage. The feebleness of 
 such experiments soon made itself manifest to the more 
 •vigorous rulers like Decius* The Society was main- 
 taining its coherency and its claim to universal diffu- 
 sion in spite of the efforts of its teachers to reduce it 
 •into an ordinary Sect organisation defined by tests of 
 opinion. It would not submit to the manipulations of 
 its ablest and acutest doctors. It was evidently in- 
 tended for the people. Being so intended it was a con- 
 tinual defiance of the Empire* The hostility was felt 
 most strongly when Diocletian realised the true con^ 
 ditions of an Empire, when he perceived that it must 
 be Oriental, that the old republican ligatures must be 
 .thrown offi Since Rome, with its manifold traditions, 
 .was a great hindrance to the accomplishment of this 
 .purpose, it must no longer be the recognised centre; 
 there must be different heads of the world to encounter 
 ' in closer conflict the various powers which were threat- 
 .ening to rend it asunder. To Diocletian and in general 
 ,to , his subordinate Caesars the Christian Society ap- 
 peared the most formidable of these powers ; an effort 
 ;W'a;s made to crush it which for system and complete- 
 ness had no parallel in the earlier times. This ten 
 year^ attemjit at extermination imiiiediately preceded 
 .the determination of Consts-ntirie to. ally, hijnself with 
 
 LEOI. XIV. 
 
 But it con- 
 tinues to 
 give signs 
 of popular- 
 ity which ' 
 cannot 
 be over- 
 looked. 
 
 The Dio- 
 cletiim 
 Persecu- 
 tion. 
 
 Constan- 
 tine. 
 
246 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XIV, 
 
 TheMoral- 
 ity of tlie 
 Universal 
 Family. 
 
 Its foun- 
 dation. 
 
 The 
 
 Universal 
 
 Founda- 
 
 tion of 
 
 Domestic 
 
 MoraU, 
 
 the Church, and to establish a new Centre for a Chris- 
 tianised Empire. The effect of that alliance on Social 
 Morality I shall consider in another Lecture. 
 
 Before I enter upon that subject whicb will lead us 
 over a tract of a thousand years, I wish you to observe 
 how the morality of this Universal Society is related to 
 that of the Family and the Nation as it presented itself 
 to us in former Lectures. 
 
 According to the Christian Creed the Authority of 
 a Father, the Obedience of a Son, lies at the root of the 
 Universe, is implied in its Constitution. In a living 
 Spirit the Authority and the Obedience are for ever 
 united. After this image it is declared that Man is 
 created ; the perfect Humanity is in the Son of God ; 
 the Spirit guides men to see in the Son of Man the Son 
 of God ; in His Father their Father. Absolute Faith 
 or Trust in His Father is declared to be the character- 
 istic of Him who took men's nature upon Him ; such 
 faith or trust, exalting men above themselves, makes 
 them partakers of the true human life. The Son of 
 Man is announced as the Brother of all men, one who 
 has entered into the conditions of the poores't, the most 
 suffering of them, one who has endured their death. 
 Men are proclaimed to have a Universal Brotherhood in 
 Him. Lastly, the principle of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 is said to be, that the Chief of all is the Servant of all; 
 the King of Heaven having become in very deed a Ser- 
 vant of His creatures. Here is the announcement of a 
 foundation or underground for that ^5o? which we 
 found to be demanded by all the relations of the 
 Family. 
 
 I have carefully pointed out to you that National 
 life was in suspension or abeyance during the period 
 
THE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 247 
 
 which we have been examining. We are reminded of 
 that suspension in the conditions of the Church as 
 much as in those of the Empire. The awkwardness 
 which the writers of these centurjes exhibit when they 
 come into contact with the common earthly records of 
 the Jewish history — which yet they could not help re- 
 garding as the starting-point of their own — their eager- 
 ness to resolve honest facts into flimsy allegories — indi- 
 cate the atmosphere by which they were surrounded. 
 But the question is not how far they understood the 
 characteristics of national life ; it is whether the Uni- 
 versal principles of which they were bearing witness 
 were incompatible with it, or were such as might re- 
 store it. 
 
 I have said already that the Christians, just as much 
 as the Imperialists, recognised a Will, a supreme and 
 Absolute Will, as the ground of life and order to man 
 and to the Universe. Was it an Arbitrary Will ? If 
 it was. Law was a fiction which might be tolerated, 
 might be necessary ; it was only another name for phy- 
 sical force. I have endeavoured to shew you, that the 
 deadly opposition between the Empire and the Church 
 had its root in the fact, that the latter preached to the 
 world of a Will which was not arbitrary, of a Will which 
 was essentially righteous, of a Will to make men right- 
 eous. Because the image of such a Will was before 
 the Christian Martyrs they could not do sacrifice to the 
 image of the Emperor. 
 
 The sign that a Universal Church had come into 
 existence was, so the members of it declared, a gift of 
 tongues. A Society with such a belief could not attach 
 any special sacredness to one language, were it Latin or 
 Greek or Hebrew. But it might keep alive the belief 
 
 Wan there 
 also a 
 foundation 
 for Na- 
 tional 
 Moj-aUf 
 
 A Will 
 which in- 
 volves 
 Law, 
 
248 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY.- 
 
 The Spirit 
 of Truth 
 the in- 
 spirer of 
 Speech. 
 
 Actual 
 
 Govern- 
 
 me7tt of 
 
 Heaven 
 
 over 
 
 Earth. 
 
 The Re- 
 conciler. 
 
 that there was a dialect for each race ; it might nourish 
 the seeds out of which organic languages should pro- 
 ceed. The acknowledgment of a Spirit who rules over 
 the speech and the thoughts, who makes speech the 
 real expression of thought, must have been felt by 
 many as the promise that such seeds would be ripened 
 by a divine culture. And since this Spirit was declared 
 to be emphatically the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit who 
 guides into Truth, just so far as He was believed in, the 
 reverence for veracity, the horror of lies, would have its 
 deepest root, its strongest security. 
 
 The belief in an invisible and righteous Govern- 
 ment, a Government over men, over the earth, was in- 
 volved in the original idea of the Church. If at any 
 time the teachers of the Church lost their faith in this 
 invisible government, they became eager to define their 
 own rights and powers; so the senseiof Service was lost; 
 so fihe domestic character of the government was lost. 
 But while they lived in the confession of an actual -King 
 over men they were witnesses for the authority of law- 
 ful kings in the former days and in the days to come ; 
 of kings, I mean, who should not reign after their own 
 pleasure. ' ', 
 
 Since the belief in, God as the, Reconciler of Man- 
 kind, to Himself, . of Sacrifice as the instrument of 
 .Reconciliation, was one which expressed itself in all the 
 life, acts, institiutions of the.Christian Society, it may be 
 thought that the old name of a- lord of Hosts, which 
 was so deaf to the Esalniists, must, have lost its force; 
 that the Prince, of Peace must have baiiishe4 war fronj 
 the: thoughts, £|,nd ■ Ipjnguage o£ ,those w;ho confessed 
 themselves as. His subjects-, Yet no book of the fiible 
 is so full-Qf -^^rumpets of do.om, Yialg, of Wrath, of 
 
'CHE UNIVERSAL FAMILY. 
 
 249 
 
 Earthquakes and Revolutions, as the last ; the one from 
 ■which .the Church derived its permanent imagery as 
 well as some of its most practical lessons. So long as 
 there is wrong and oppression on the earth, so long that 
 book as well as every previous one declares that there 
 will be war in Heaven against these destroyers ; that 
 the powers of Nature as well as human instruments 
 will be employed against them. . That book said as em- 
 phatically that those who drew the sword would perish 
 by the sword, that those who brought others into cap- 
 tivity would go into captivity. It promised victory to 
 .patience; they who followed Christ must conquer as He 
 did, by giving up themselves to die, not by seeking 
 power to kill. These warnings have remained for the 
 Christians of all ages; but they cannot be separated 
 from the others. If the Universal Family seeks to pre- 
 vail by persecution and bloodshed it becomes a world 
 Empire. But World Empires are overthrown by the 
 arms of Nations; Humanity — and therefore those who 
 belifive in a Son of Man-^must rejoice in their fall. 
 
 Much . has^ been spoken and written about the 
 ' secondary' causes which may have contributed to the 
 triumph of a Society so weak as the one that was pro- 
 claimed by Galilsean fishermen. Perhaps we are not 
 quite settled in our minds about ike first cause. If we 
 suppose it to have been some supreme power which 
 could dispense with the laws of the Universe, we may 
 account for an Empire, we cannot account for a Society 
 which uses the Lord's Prayer, which starts from the 
 belief of a Father in Heaven. If we assume Him to 
 be the first cause of the Society, we shall of course ad- 
 mit secondary causes — I adopt the phrase because it is 
 given me, not because I deem it a philosophical one — 
 
 Tfie War 
 against the 
 Destroyers 
 of the 
 Earth. 
 
 The 
 
 victory of 
 Patience. 
 
 Secondary 
 causes. 
 
250 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECI. XIV. 
 
 What their 
 character 
 wjust be. 
 
 The 
 
 Human 
 
 vffos. 
 
 provided they are homogeneous with the character of 
 Him who has established it and with the character of 
 the Society itself. Believing in a God who has consti- 
 tuted families, who has constituted Nations, we may 
 ask whether there is any Universal Human Constitu- 
 tion which is in harmony with these ; for which these 
 may prepare us. We may joyfully admit that Judaea, 
 that Greece, and that Rome had the preparation of 
 these secondary causes; that without them the Chris- 
 tian Society would have been utterly unintelligible to 
 those among whom it first appeared. If we do not 
 acknowledge their worth it will be unintelligible to us ; 
 the most incredible of all anomalies. 
 
 You may say to me perhaps : ' But there must be a 
 certain ^^os which is characteristic of the Universal or 
 Human Society as such ; it cannot be merely the sup- 
 port of the subordinate Morality.' Yes ! the old doc- 
 trine of Cardinal Virtues I have no doubt is a sound 
 one. I may have something to say about them here- 
 after. Here I will only repeat the sentence, "And 
 now abideth Faith, Hope, Charity, these three; but 
 the greatest of these is Charity." 
 
LECTURE XV. 
 
 THE UmVERSAL FAMILY SUBJECT TO THE 
 UNIVERSAL EMPIRE {CONSTANTINOPLE). 
 
 Whether Constantine was or was not taught by a 
 vision — as he affirmed in his latter days — that he would 
 conquer if he took the Cross for his sign, there can be 
 no doubt that he had some reason to despair of con- 
 quest unless he could find some other weapon than any 
 which was supplied by the Roman armoury. The Em- 
 pire had lost its Unity. Through a trial of ten years 
 the Church appeared to have preserved its unity. A 
 man of less foresight and enterprise than Constantine — 
 in less difficult circumstances — might have asked him- 
 self whether he could have more cordial friends than 
 men whom he had suddenly delivered from a great 
 persecution. No one has pretended that he began his 
 toleration with any strong faith in Christ. Eclecticism 
 had diffused itself among philosophers; it had many 
 attractions for intelligent soldiers whose lives were spent 
 in action, who had no leisure for balancing opinions ; it 
 might easily be represented as a recurrence to the old 
 Eoman treatment of different forms of worship. That 
 the Edict of Milan, like any other, was not a mere off- 
 spring of a man's will, that the Emperor was nat the 
 
 The Edict 
 of Milan; 
 what it 
 meant. 
 
252 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The mo- 
 tives of 
 Constan- 
 tine in 
 publishing 
 it. 
 
 Why it 
 could not 
 issue in 
 mere tole- 
 ration. 
 
 He fulfils 
 the pur- 
 pose of 
 Diocle- 
 tian. 
 
 The new 
 capital. 
 
 The 
 
 Empire 
 only * 
 
 King of kings — those who hold the Christian faith 
 must, of course, maintain. That the ordinary motives 
 of selfishness and ambition were concerned with the 
 publication of it, those who hold that faith are not the 
 least obliged to deny. 
 
 It is far more important to consider the inevitable 
 effects of this step, Impajrtial permission of Christian 
 and Pagan worship was all that Constantino at first 
 dreamed of. The impossibility of stopping at that 
 point was not evident to him with all his sagacity, 
 with all his knowledge of the deadly battle between 
 the two Societies which had lasted for more than two 
 centuries. Facts soon proved too strong for him. 
 Other rivals being crushed, his colleague Licinius be- 
 came the champion of Heathenism. Constantino must 
 Jaecome the avowed patron of its opposers. 
 
 In' taking this course he seemed to be departing 
 as widely as possible from the policy of his predepessoj:. 
 He was really aiming at the same objects, as his pre- 
 decessor. The ingenious scheme of saving the unity 
 of the Empire by giving it different rulers had been 
 tried and failed. But all the reasons against allowing 
 Rome to remain the centre of an. Oriental Government 
 were as strong for Constantine as they ;had been for 
 Diocletian. And if a new capital could be found, how 
 much more effectually might it be stripped of old 
 Italian associations if it could start with new temples, 
 with a new worship. The discerning eye of the Em- 
 peror fixed upon the best site in the world for the 
 experiment. For a thousand years Constantinople was 
 to be the thea,tre for it. 
 
 When one talks of an alliance between the, Empire 
 and ■ the Church, there is much , danger of :miscon' 
 
THE CHRISTIANIZED EMPIRE. 
 
 253" 
 
 ception. No terms were arranged, no agreements con- 
 cluded. The Emperor remained what he was. All 
 powers that belonged to his predecessors rested in him. 
 He was able to adopt new titles of Eastern origin 
 which old Eomans knew not. He was able to cast 
 away many restraints and limitations which impeded 
 the action of a military despotism that had been de- 
 veloped out of a Republic. The Eastern Empire was 
 precisely what Augustus or the most arbitrary of his 
 successors might have wished to make his own if he 
 had been able. There were no vestiges in Byzantium 
 of a People ; no Orders ; oificials were oflScials merely. 
 Domestic life was -less sacred, more directly insulted, 
 in the new court than in i the ancient. The records of 
 Constantino's family are bloody records. The worst 
 creatures of Eastern despotism were soon the guardians 
 of the palace, specially of its women. 
 
 Where then was the Christian Family? Its pre- 
 sence was indicated by the name of Patriarch. He 
 stood near the Emperor in the capital. Each city 
 had some one higher or lower in office who bore a 
 name kindred to that, suggesting domestic associa- 
 tions. These ministers of the Christian body had the 
 honour of being officials of the government ; had pri- 
 vileges and exemptions which distinguished them from 
 ordinary men. The Emperor and his court performed 
 Christian rites in temples dedicated to Christ or to 
 one of His apostles. The Emperor could summon the 
 Bishops or Fathers from different lands to discuss 
 questions in Theology which were producing strife. 
 He could preside at their deliberations ; if he pleased, 
 he could enforce their decrees. That was the alliance. 
 Thpse who were baptized into the name of th^ In- 
 
 changed hy 
 becoming 
 more 
 Oriental. 
 
 No traces 
 of domestic 
 Morality. 
 
 The Alli- 
 ance. 
 
 The 
 
 new Digni- 
 ties of the 
 
254 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Christian 
 Body. 
 
 Import- 
 ance given 
 by Gibbon 
 to the 
 Church 
 contro- 
 
 visible Father the Creator of all things, of a Son 
 who had redeemed mankind and established His King- 
 dom over all men, of a Spirit who worked in men 
 to overcome their enmities and bring them into fel- 
 lowship with each other, paid practical homage and 
 worship to a visible Emperor, acknowledged him to 
 be the Lord of men. The contradiction of these King- 
 doms remained just as real as it had been in the 
 previous centuries. But Constantine had won a vic- 
 tory which his heathen forerunners had failed to win. 
 The rulers and officers of the Christian body performed 
 that sacrifice to the imperial Image which the Martyrs 
 had suffered death for refusing. 
 
 It is impossible, as every reader of Gibbon must 
 have perceived, to separate the history of the Empire 
 from the theological controversies in which the Church 
 was engaged. Indifferent as the historian might be 
 to the subjects of these controversies, his conscience 
 as a narrator of facts obliged him to give them pro- 
 minence. No one on the whole has done the Christian 
 teachers in the Greek world so much justice as he 
 has done. The figures of Athanasius, of Gregory of 
 Nazianzus, of Cyril, of Chrysostom, which in most 
 purely ecclesiastical narratives are dry skeletons, whe- 
 ther they are chosen as subjects for applause or con- 
 demnation, acquire in his pages flesh and blood ; we 
 feel that they were not doctors in a school, but 
 human beings exercising a powerful influence on the 
 life of society. The nature of this influence, and 
 how it was compatible with the dominion which the 
 Empire undoubtedly claimed over the body that had 
 been taken under its patronage, we have now to con- 
 sider. 
 
THE CHRISTIANIZED EMPIRE. 
 
 255 
 
 I. Perhaps the most full-length and remarkable 
 portrait in the Decline and Fall is that of Atha- 
 nasius. The historian had many excuses for repre- 
 senting him as a divine who was ready to embroil the 
 universe for a single letter. On a closer view he dis- 
 covered in him sound practical ability and common 
 sense ; even, a willingness to overlook distinctions which 
 he deemed important if they did not concern his main 
 purpose ; along with these qualities a marvellous power 
 of enduring the opposition of emperors and ecclesi- 
 astics rather than desert his cause. It has been a 
 wonder to most readers that such a man should for 
 such a cause pass through incredible hardships, the 
 loss of property and reputation, the risk of death. If 
 the contest as they have supposed was for a subtle 
 school question, not concerning any common living in- 
 terest, not affecting human progress, the wonder would, 
 be to me incredible. 
 
 To many Bishops at the Council of Nice who 
 were very vehement on either side of the contro- 
 versy, to many amiable and devout men who were 
 anxious for the settlement of a dispute which was 
 evidently the caiise of bitter feelings and of many 
 unchristian acts, to Constantine himself looking at 
 the subject as one which was disturbing his govern- 
 ment, it bore no doubt this aspect. To Athanasius 
 any denial of the Unity of the divine Father with 
 the Son meant the restoration of demon worship — 
 Christ being on that hypothesis only one, if the most 
 important, of human creatures. It seemed to him, 
 therefore, that he was asserting the existence of that 
 Kingdom which the Church had proclaimed, the union 
 between Earth and Heaven of which it had borne 
 
 Atkawi- 
 siw. 
 
 Was his 
 battle for 
 a school 
 Dogma! 
 
 The 
 
 principle 
 involved 
 in it. 
 
^s^- 
 
 UNIVERSAL morality: 
 
 Perplexity 
 of Athana- 
 sius. 
 
 His feli- 
 city. 
 
 He has to 
 encounter 
 the opposi- 
 tion of 
 priests as 
 well as 
 Rulers, , 
 
 witness. We may find as we proceed that this King- 
 dom might be denied, this union set at nought, by- 
 many who accepted the formula of the Nicene Council. 
 Perhaps all who in that age or any other accepted 
 it merely as a] formula — who supposed that the re- 
 lations of God and Man could be determined by the 
 votes of a Majority in an ecclesiastical assembly — re- 
 jected the principle for which Athanasius contended, 
 as much as any Arian could. I may fully admit that 
 he was unable to perceive how many recognised his 
 principle who did not understand his formula. Like 
 all men of his time, as of later times, he was bewil- 
 dered between the feeling that he was the steward of 
 a spiritual treasure for which it was worth while to 
 die, and the feeling that circumstances had placed 
 not far from his reach a material force which he might 
 use to kill those who dissented from him. Happily 
 for his character, this force was not generally within. 
 his reach. He had through the greater part of his 
 life to experience the weight of it directed against 
 himself. He was taught by hard blows how little' 
 the decrees of a Council can avail to maintain any 
 cause which it is worth a man's while to stake his 
 existence -upon ; how ready he must be to withstand' 
 ecclesiastical powers as well as secular if he would 
 do any work for mankind. It seems to me that he 
 was doing a work for mankind ; that if that work had 
 not been done, the Empire, garnished with Christian? 
 notions and ceremonies, would have been more peril- 
 ous, more crushing to Humanity, than it had been in 
 any former day. The question whether there was any 
 other Universal Society than the Imperial — whether 
 all thought, belief, hope, which belongs to the invisible. 
 
TBS CHRISTIANIZED EMPIRE. 
 
 257 
 
 was not to be crushed under the hoof of a visible 
 Despot — was the one at issue; that Athanasius, often 
 almost alone, was called to face. 
 
 2. I am not delivering a course of Lectures on 
 Ecclesiastical History — ^but on Social Morality ; I am 
 contemplating all topics simply in reference to that. 
 There is another subject, deeply concerning Social 
 Morality, which the life of Athanasius brings distinctly 
 before us. He fled from cities into the desert of the 
 Thebais. There he found a set of monks who wel- 
 comed him when most of the dignified ecclesiastics 
 had deserted him. Gratitude might have been reason 
 enough for regarding them with affection and rever- 
 ence. But they had other attractions for him. In 
 his life of St Anthony he expressed his admiration 
 for them, endorsed their claims to miraculous powers, 
 recorded their conflicts with unseen enemies who took 
 visible shapes. So this form of life, with all its ac- 
 companiments in that and subsequent ages, comes 
 before us with the imprimatur of a man for whose 
 wisdom as well as his zeal I have professed so much 
 respect. 
 
 I cannot separate this phenomenon from those of 
 which I have spoken already. When there is a Court 
 like that of Constantinople — when it assumes a Chris- 
 tian name and uses Christian teachers as its instru- 
 ments — there will be, I believe there must be, this 
 kind of protest against it, this savage war in the name 
 of Christ against a corrupt civilization which usurps 
 His name. No two men can be much more unlike in 
 their characters or their beliefs than Athanasius and 
 Rousseau ; but the manners of Constantinople or Alex- 
 andria in the fourth century were not unlike those of 
 M. M. R 
 
 The Monks 
 of the 
 desert. 
 
 His admi- 
 ration for 
 them. 
 
 They were 
 
 protesters 
 
 against a 
 
 corrupt 
 
 civiliiO' 
 
 tion. 
 
/2S8 
 
 VmVEESAiL MORALJTT. 
 
 His rea- 
 sons for 
 helieving 
 in the 
 miracles of 
 the Monks, 
 
 and in 
 their con- 
 Jlicts with 
 evil 
 Spirits. 
 
 Contrast 
 ietween 
 this life 
 and its 
 
 Paris in the i8th. The disgust for them must have 
 been deeper in the mind of the Bishop than of the 
 Genevan philosopher,; if the life of the woods was asso- 
 ciated with the life of faith, it might commend itself 
 to the former as it did to the latter. He had heen 
 wont to think of the miracles of our Lord on earth, 
 and of His Apostles after His departure from earth, as 
 signs of the dominion of the Son of Man over the 
 powers of Nature to which men had bowed down. 
 Coming from a Society in which visible things alone 
 were really reverenced whatever phrases might be used 
 to express a reverence for the unseen, he would be 
 likely to recognise any wonders which the monks were 
 said to have enacted as proofs that Heaven was not 
 hopelessly separated from earth, that Christ still as- 
 serted His rule. Above all he would have felt that 
 the wickedness which he saw in so many concrete and 
 dispersed forms in the great cities must be traced to a 
 root in some powers of spiritual wickedness, of utter 
 darkness. If he found Monks who were shut out from 
 participation in the follies and crimes of the external 
 world declaring with deep earnestness that they were 
 brought into direct combat with these spiritual princi- 
 palities, there would be I apprehend in his reason, 
 as well as in his conscience, much that would respond 
 to their testimony and that would make him unwilling 
 to examine it with any sceptical suspicions. 
 
 Looking at all these questions with the light of 
 fifteen centuries reflected on them, we may observe, as 
 I did last week, that the desert life was borrowed not 
 from the example of Christ who preached the Gospel 
 of His Kingdom in the most frequented places, not 
 from the example of His Apostles who marched straight 
 
THE CHRISTIAmZED EMPIRE. 
 
 259 
 
 into the most commercial and luxurious cities and 
 formed flocks out of the inhabitants of those cities, but 
 from such examples as were familiar in Egypt, as are 
 still most common in Hindostan. We may perceive 
 that the monkish miracles appealing mainly to the 
 sentiment of surprise in those who beheld them, claim- 
 ing to be divine because they were irregular exercises 
 of power, coming forth as, frequently and effectually in 
 the 'form of curses as of blessings, were in all respects 
 unlike those acts of Christ which awakened faith in an 
 abiding Ruler and Deliverer, which were done to ex- 
 hibit the character of His Father in Heaven, which 
 were to restore health, to prove that disease and death 
 are not the laws of God's creation but the violations of 
 its Law. They resembled therefore much more nearly 
 the miracles of the magicians who resisted Moses and 
 of those who resisted 'the Apostles. We may see that 
 if the Monks who performed them had at first a 
 thoroughly honest purpose — if they felt that they were 
 putting forth a divine energy not an energy which they 
 could claim as theirs — ^they were continually tempted 
 to confound their own gloiy with God's, and then to 
 think that they were honouring both Him and them- 
 selves by falsehoods. And it may become more and 
 more terribly evident to us that while the temptation 
 of Christ in the Wilderness as a preparation for His 
 conflict with the sins of cities was a witness that Good 
 is mightier than Evil; those conflicts in the Wilder- 
 ness which were not such a preparation suggested the 
 thought that the power of Evil is indeed the mightiest 
 of all, and can only be resisted by some speeially train- 
 ed recluse or devotee. Out of which terrible notion 
 & scheme of Demonology issued which has afilicted 
 
 e2 
 
 LEOI. XV. 
 
 miracles 
 and the 
 life and 
 miracles of 
 the New 
 Testament, 
 
 8t An- 
 thony's 
 tem/pta" 
 tions. 
 
 MonMslt 
 demon- 
 ology a 
 
t26o 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XV. 
 
 witness for 
 the tri- 
 umph of 
 'Evil. 
 
 Modem 
 enlighten- 
 ment 
 liable to 
 become 
 swper- 
 stitiotts. 
 
 Modem 
 
 Demono- 
 
 logy. 
 
 The dis- 
 putes of 
 Constan- 
 tinople. 
 
 mankind frightfully in all ages, the Evil Spirit gra- 
 dually losing both his characters, moral Evil heing 
 changed into physical deformity, a Spirit passing into 
 what is most palpable and material. Of such facts and 
 consequences every Moralist who does not separate 
 Morality from History is bound to take notice ; to omit 
 them would be to leave some of the darkest passages 
 in human experience untouched. But I should be 
 cowardly if I pretended to think that modern conclu- 
 sions upon these topics are not liable to be as confused, 
 as mischievous, even as superstitious, as those of the 
 Alexandrian Bishop. In the lofty wisdom which looks 
 down upon the seclusion of deserts, we may be foster- 
 ing the corraption of Cities ; even boasting of it as a 
 proof of our advanced Civilization. Then assuredly 
 we shall have our retribution ; not only in the growth 
 of the vices we have loved, but in the appearance, 
 under the most unhealthy form, of the refuges from 
 them which we have abhorred. "We may refuse to 
 believe in the power of men over nature because we 
 crouch to it and deny our human rights; a state of 
 mind which must issue at last in a despair of Science 
 and of all mechanical inventions. We may be think- 
 ing that powers of Evil have no terror for us or in- 
 fluence over us, and may find suddenly — not indeed 
 that we are fighting them but — that they have become 
 our gods ; that we confess no other. In the midst of 
 fopperies we may be cultivating a most contemptible 
 Demonology; the devilish may be the supreme over 
 us when we have ceased to acknowledge a Devil. 
 
 3. These observations are not really a digression 
 from the story of the Greek Empire. The main charac- 
 teristic of it was a frivolity which could find an occupa- 
 
TSE CHRISTIANIZED EMPIRE. 
 
 26l\ 
 
 tion in any thing, which did unhappily find one of its 
 principal occupations in theological disputes. These 
 amused the people in the Circus, these took their turn 
 with all other ways of killing time or men among 
 the inhabitants of the palace. I may agree with the 
 Comtists in regarding Julian as a fanatic who dreamed 
 of restoring what had passed away; I may call him, 
 as Strauss does, a Romancer on the throne of the 
 Caesars. But I cannot wonder that he should have 
 been intensely disgusted with all that he saw and 
 heard in the Christianised Capital, that he should pre- 
 fer the poorest Athenian Sophist, the most extravagant 
 of Egyptian hierophants, to the Orthodox or Arian 
 disputants who dwelt under its shadow. And I cer- 
 tainly see in the two years' dominion of Paganism 
 Tlvhich he established, and in the much longer and more 
 persecuting reign of the Arian Valens, a far greater 
 blessing to those who accepted the teaching of Athana- 
 sius than in the victory which they won when Theo- 
 dosius became master of the world. Great as was the 
 temporary advantage to mankind of being subject to 
 an honest and able man not born in the purple but 
 trained in poverty and hardship, it could scarcely com- 
 pensate the mischiefs which arose from the insolence of 
 such Bishops as Theophilus of Alexandria, who believed 
 that they were worshipping the true God because 
 they were demolishing the temple of Serapis, and who 
 shewed what kind of faith they would substitute for 
 that of which they destroyed the external emblems by 
 their malice against some of the truest and best men of 
 their own order. The Episcopal champion of orthodox 
 Christianity conspired with the miserable successor of 
 Theodosius and his wife to bunt into exile and death 
 
 Julian^ 
 
 Sdgn of 
 Theodo- 
 
 The over' 
 throw of 
 Heathen- 
 ism and the 
 disgrace of 
 Christians. 
 
262 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Gregory. 
 
 Chrysos- 
 torn. 
 
 He could 
 not be a 
 Reformer 
 of his age. 
 
 Chrysostom, a faithful witness for a Gospel to the poor, 
 and therefore of course an offence to the Court of Con- 
 stantinople. Even in the better days which preceded 
 the reign of Arcadius, Gregory of Nazianzus, a man 
 scarcely less eloquent and not at all less sincere than 
 Chrysostom, who had suffered for his orthodoxy under 
 Valens, lamented, as Gibbon will have told you, the 
 degradation and loss of strength which he experienced 
 in being permitted to enter the capital in the imperial 
 train as the representative of a successful opinion ; he 
 lamented even more bitterly the odious temper of 
 Ecclesiastical Councils in which he discovered the Spirit 
 of the Devil rather than of God. 
 
 4. I would willingly linger over the tragedy of 
 Chrysostom's life ; it illustrates so strikingly the moral 
 of the whole history. But you may read it for your- 
 selves in Gibbon, if you have not leisure or inclination 
 to study original documents. Chrysostom was empha- 
 tically an opposer of tyranny; he believed that the 
 Kingdom of Heaven was a Kingdom over men and for 
 men. The people of the City looked up to him as their 
 friend and champion; the officials of Arcadius, whether 
 lay or clerical, felt towards him as an enemy. But 
 though he could be a sufferer for justice and truth, he 
 could not be in any effectual sense a Reformer. The 
 very means which he deemed the best for the renova- 
 tion of Society indicated its incurable decay. Bands 
 of women under the guidance of himself or some other 
 priest might give themselves to the service of God, and 
 to good works for their fellow-creatures. They were 
 flying from a detestable society ; they were vindicating 
 high duties for their sex. But they were combining 
 with the court to suggest the belief that domestic life 
 
 ..^^ 
 
TWE cBRrsTumzsD empire: 
 
 263 
 
 is art essentially unholy one ; that women were only in 
 their right state when they lived apart from the other 
 sex, subject to a Confessor or director of the conscience 
 who was likely, even if he were a good man, to con- 
 fuse rather tban elevate their standard of character and 
 duty. Th« Church in the lower Empire could not 
 cease by itS' Creeds and by the acts of its better priests 
 to remind men of a Universal Family^ — the express- 
 contrast to- an Empire. But this Family caught the 
 image of that against which it was the protest,, and 
 became itself the antagonist of the household. Still 
 less could it rekiiidle any national life in those who 
 spoke the language and preserved the memoi'ies of 
 Themistocles and Demosthenes. 
 
 5. You must not forget that literature, so far as it 
 can be divorced from- life, had still a home in Constan- 
 tinople and the great cities which were subject to it. 
 In respect to, antiquarian knxjwledge, to the care and 
 study of MSS., to the Arts which mmistered to luxury 
 and amusement, the East was becoming more and more 
 markedly contrasted with the West, I reserve all con- 
 siderations of that for th« next Lecture ; but I must 
 remind you here that it- was subject in the days of 
 Honorius and Arcadius, and throughout the fifth cen- 
 tury, to inundations of tribes whrch seemed for a while 
 just as likely to overwhelm the Greek Empire. They 
 rolled over that Empire leaving it much as it had been ; 
 rather with an increased persuasion that it was the 
 centre of Order and Civility to the Universe. That 
 persuasion reached its highest point in the reign of 
 Justinian, when the Goths of Italy and the Vandals of 
 Africa were subdued by the arms of Belisarius ; when 
 Arianism was crushed by a Ruler who yet had his own 
 
 Nuns, 
 
 Influence 
 of the 
 Church. 
 
 Eastern 
 Civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 Justinian- 
 
264 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The gran- 
 deur and 
 degrada- 
 tion of Ms 
 age. 
 
 Mahomet. 
 
 Power of 
 his mes- 
 sage. 
 
 Its victory. 
 
 theological fancies and was suspected of heresy; "when 
 he could command old Rome to yield up its laws that 
 they might be organized by his ministers and receive 
 their authority from his sanction. A time no doubt 
 very grand for Imperialism, when it put forth its most 
 gorgeous fruits, when it seemed to strengthen its roots 
 by the mixture of a soil that was not its own. A 
 grander time also than ever for disputes about theolo- 
 gical terms and the colours of horses; for intrigues 
 against the most faithful generals; for intolerable fe- 
 male profligacy in the highest places. A preparation 
 for another time which was at hand, for a proclamation 
 utterly strange, tremendously startling to Rulers and 
 to people. 
 
 6. That proclamation issued from a cave in Arabia 
 while the monarchies of Greece and of Persia were en- 
 gaged in a struggle no less terrible but far more equal, 
 than that between Alexander and Darius. A poor and 
 solitarj' fugitive declared that there was a God actually 
 ruling in Heaven and commanding men to serve Him 
 upon earth. That was the awful and amazing news 
 which overthrew one of the two contending Empires 
 and robbed the other of its choicest provinces. The 
 addition 'I Mahomet am his prophet' would have di- 
 minished the force of the message, would have only 
 added another sect to the multitudes already in exist- 
 ence, if it had not meant, ' I proclaim war against all 
 your idols of wood, stone, paper, in the name of this 
 God. He lives, and is calling you to account for your 
 worship of other Gods.' That was a sound before 
 which the monarchs trembled, for it reminded them 
 that they had professed a faith in this living God; that 
 they had been debating about Him in every mode of 
 
THE CBRISTIANIZED EMPIRE. 
 
 265 
 
 their speech, -witli fury in their acts; and that after all 
 they had not believed in Him as their Ruler and 
 Judge. When Temples and Cities, whether Persian or 
 Christian, fell down before the armies of the Prophet ; 
 when places most dear and sacred to Jews and Chris- 
 tians owned their sway,; when the first City of the 
 Christian Empire was itself threatened; then indeed 
 Christians felt and understood that with no Arabian 
 Sect were they engaged, that One of whom all their 
 Sects spoke was come down to fight against them. 
 
 7. No such series of events is merely stunning to 
 those who are the witnesses of it. The defence of Con- 
 stantinople shewed that a spirit had been slumbering 
 in the people which, could be awaked. The movements 
 of the Emperors for breaking the images which they 
 and their subjects had worshipped testified to the ef- 
 fects of the Islamite denunciations. But never more 
 remarkably than in this iconoclasm was the essential 
 contradiction of the Empire made manifest. Leo and 
 his successors imitated Hezekiah and Josiah in their 
 acts. But they were Kings of a Nation ; witnesses for 
 the invisible Ruler of a Nation. The Isaurians were 
 witnesses for their right to dictate the faith of their 
 subjects ; whatever invisible Power they might in their 
 hearts confess, their own power was what they seemed 
 to the monks and people of Constantinople to be as- 
 serting, what they were in fact asserting. And this 
 power the faith which they had trampled upon was 
 able to defy. The Image meant what was more deep, 
 more living, more righteous, more unseen, than the 
 arms which broke it in pieces or punished the adoration 
 of it. First in Greece, afterwards more completely in 
 Italy, the iconodulists questioned, even set at nought 
 
 The Revi- 
 val. 
 
 Icono- 
 clasm. 
 
 Tyranny 
 involved in 
 it. 
 
 Defeat of 
 it. 
 
266 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The East- 
 ern and 
 Western 
 Chvrches 
 at open 
 war. 
 
 AUxius 
 and the 
 Crusaders. 
 
 The Latin 
 Masters of 
 the City. 
 
 as impious, a dominion which till then they had owned 
 as sacred. A great Western Eevolution — ^the birth of 
 a Western Empire — was the consequence of the move- 
 ment. In the East the monarchs undid the acts of 
 their predecessors and bow§d to the images which the 
 people had refused to abandon.. 
 
 8. The dream that Constantinople might be the 
 centre of the Latin as well as the Greek world which 
 had been cherished by its founder, almost realised by 
 Justinian, was now over.. Could not the Family at 
 least maintain its universality? No !' Language and 
 difference of customs seemed to affect this Society as 
 well as the other. Latins and Greeks found reasons 
 for anathematising each other. The common faith was 
 the very plea for separations.. In the ninth century the 
 enmity of the Churches was> declared, in the eleventh 
 reconciliation appeared to be hopeless. Then began 
 that new fanaticism among the- Mahometans who were 
 in possession of the Sepulchre wbich stimulated the, 
 powers of the West to combine for its recovery. The 
 Grecian Empire felt the increased terror of the Crescent; 
 was inspired with, still greater terror by the advance of 
 the soldiers of the Cross. It tried to repel both forces 
 by cunning; it shewed both, how weak it was in the 
 midst of its magnificence. The lesson was not lost 
 upon Venice, which knew the East better than the rest 
 of Europe, and for which a, rich and commercial city 
 offered a dearer prize than Jerusalem. The, fourth 
 Crusade in spite of the threats of Innocent III. was di- 
 rected against the city of the- Caesars. He received its 
 homage from those who bad disobeyed his commands 
 and incurred his excommunication. For a few years 
 I the bishops of Rome could appoint Patriarchs over the 
 
TEE CHBISTIANIZED EMPIRE. 
 
 267 
 
 heretic Empire, and were acknowledged by its civil 
 rulers. To endure such a yoke was impossible. All 
 ■ there was of religion and of native life in Greece rose 
 against it. The conquerors themselves, lay and clerical, 
 felt their position to be untenable and ridiculous. If 
 Greeks and Latins were to be united it could not be by 
 compelling either to adopt the habits and ceremonies of 
 the other. So a most instructive and precious lesson 
 respecting the distinctness and sacredness of native 
 life was borne in the heart of an Empire which bad 
 done all that was possible to extinguish it. 
 
 9. Not by Latin hands was the predestined doom 
 of the city to be accomplished ; not by Latin hands 
 was it to be averted. The early Saracens were full of 
 passionate zeal for ^e faith which had taken possession 
 of them ; but the Islamite polity was never realised — 
 never presented to the world — as it was by the Otto- 
 man Turks. When they appeared it was manifest that 
 the destroyer) however his march might for a while be 
 retarded, was on his way. The two divisions of Chris- 
 tendom might by degrees awake to the sense of a 
 common danger, to ineffectual efforts at reconciliation. 
 They might ask themselves like men in a dream 
 whether a Christian Family ought not to be at one; 
 why it could not be ; why it could not resist an enemy 
 whom it deemed the enemy of Christ. There was no 
 answer except the dishonest cabals of a council, that 
 could split hairs and tell lies, but the members of 
 which had no belief in each other or in themselves or 
 in God. The best and only answer came from the 
 Constantine who died before the gates of his city as the 
 Mahometan victor entered it. 
 
 How that fall affected the Society and the Social 
 
 Their ex- 
 
 TJie des- 
 tined Con- 
 queror. 
 
 Tiie Coun- 
 cil of Flo- 
 rence. 
 
 The Fall. 
 
268 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Moral 
 of it. 
 
 The impos- 
 sihility of a 
 Christian 
 Empire 
 demon- 
 strated. 
 
 The change 
 to Ottoman 
 Rule a 
 reason for 
 thanks- 
 giving. 
 
 Morality of the Latin kingdoms I must consider in 
 another Lecture. I contemplate it now as the neces- 
 sary catastrophe of the Constantinopolitan history, as 
 the true interpretation of that history. For a whole 
 millennium the question was tried under the most 
 favourable conditions whether a Christian Empire is 
 possible ; whether the idea of it does not involve a 
 flagrant contradiction. Every new passage in the story 
 has helped us in the examination of that problem ; 
 here is the final solution of it. Such a revelation of 
 the name and character of God and of His relation to 
 His creatures as the Christian's Creed and the Lord's 
 Prayer take for granted cannot coexist with an Empire 
 such as that which Augustus established, which Con- 
 stantino transferred to a new city and consecrated with 
 new names. All who adhere strongly to the Polity 
 which is described in Scripture as the Kingdom of 
 Heaven must be in hostility to this Kingdom, must, 
 however little they may aim at that result, be working 
 for its subversion. Such an Empire nevertheless de- 
 mands some invisible basis for its support ; cannot 
 exist without it. The Mahometan Creed, the an- 
 nouncement of a God who merely commands His crea- 
 tures, who stands in no living relation to them, supplies 
 this basis ; it is a firmer one than a shifting sand of 
 words notions and ceremonies like that on which the 
 Christian Emperors tried to build their palaces and 
 their temples. I cannot conceive — History gives us 
 no warrant for conceiving — that an Empire like the 
 Turkish can exist in its greatest vigour without the 
 accompaniments of Turkish life — polygamy and that 
 dread of a brother's succession which leads to his mur- 
 der. But even if these are recognised as necessary 
 
TEE CHRISTIANIZED EMPIRE. 
 
 269 
 
 elements of the Society, it is less hideously insincere, 
 less intrinsically immoral, than that of which I have 
 been speaking to-day. One should never contemplate 
 without awe the departure of such an Empire from the 
 earth; but it was an incubus from which men must 
 have been delivered before they could be convinced 
 that Truth and not Falsehood is the Lord of the 
 Universe. 
 
Del 
 
 Paradiso, 
 Canto XX. 
 lines 55 — 
 60. 
 
 Dell' 
 Inferno, 
 Canto xix. 
 lines 115 — 
 118. 
 
 Dante's 
 reason. 
 
 LECTURE XVL 
 
 THE UNI7ERSAL FAMILY A LATIN FAMILY 
 (ROME). 
 
 In my last Lecture I may seem to have spoken of 
 Constantine with less honour than he deserves. If I 
 have erred it has been in good company. That the 
 puritan poet Milton should have thought slightingly of 
 him might cause you no surprise. But the language of 
 the Catholic theologian Dante is even more vehement. 
 The poet finds Constantine among the blessed indeed, 
 but if he has been saved himself ' he has brought ruin 
 on the world.' 
 
 What this ruin was in Dante's judgment we learn 
 from his Inferno. He supposed Constantine to have 
 made a donation of lands to the Bishops of Eome. 
 That donation, it seemed to him, had been the cause of 
 unspeakable corruption to them and to the Church. 
 Had Dante been aware that no such donation was 
 made, that the story of it was a fiction which wise men 
 in the 9th century disputed, which was afterwards to 
 be thoroughly exploded ; his special reason for bitter- 
 ness against' the first Christian " Emperor would have 
 been removed. Naturally enough he contemplated all 
 j subjects from a Latin point of view. He describes 
 
THE LATIN J^AUILY. 
 
 Constantine as founding his city in the East, that ' he 
 might give the Shepherd room' — in other words, that 
 he might leave the Popes in possession of Rome. 
 
 That mode of interpreting History is not so unphilo- 
 sophical as to our Protestant eyes it might at first 
 appear. The great contrast of the two portions of the 
 modem world from the beginning of the fourth century 
 to the middle of the 15 th, is that an Emperor had do- 
 minion in the one — an Emperor 'plus a Patriarch ; that 
 one claiming the name of a Spiritual Father was the 
 Euler of the other ; Emperors when they existed often 
 challenging a rival authority, bat always paying hom- 
 age to his. The fourth century from the conversion of 
 Constantine to the end of the reign of Theodosius may 
 be looked upon as an intermediate period during which 
 this new authority was beginning to make itself felt, 
 often checked by the presence of an Emperor in his 
 own capital. When Honorius left Eome for Ravenna — 
 when Alaric sacked the old city and shewed a reverence 
 only for Christian priests and Temples and for those 
 whom they protected — then it became a question 
 whether this reverence would be sufficient to hold in 
 subjection rude tribes which certainly would not bow 
 to any material force that could be sent against them. 
 When the little Augustus disappeared from the stage, 
 and the temporary anarchy gave place to the sway of 
 the Ostrogoths, there was the dawn of a national life 
 for Italy ; there was no longer any Roman monarch 
 who could dream of contesting with Constantinople for 
 Universal Empire. The Popes might sometimes turn 
 to the Empire for protection against heretical neigh- 
 bours ; quite as often the Emperors and their ecclesias- 
 tical dependents were the heretics whom they confronted 
 
 Constan- 
 tine makes 
 room for 
 the Pope, 
 
 The Bach- 
 ing of 
 Home. 
 
 The fall 
 of the 
 Empire. 
 The Ostro' 
 goths; ' 
 
272 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 tlie Lom- 
 bards ; 
 
 Gregory 
 the Great. 
 
 His diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 Is the 
 Family 
 (Ecumeni- 
 cal I 
 
 Results of 
 his medita- 
 tions. 
 
 with their own decrees. Justinian's victories might be 
 welcomed by them for a while. But the Lombards 
 came — perhaps by Greek invitation. The Bishops of 
 Eome knew not whether they or the Exarchs of Kavehna 
 were least to be trusted. In the utter desolation of 
 Rome Gregory the First shewed himself the true father 
 of it. He realised the might of that name. He had 
 faith to expect that a European family would gather 
 around it. His Popedom was the inauguration of such 
 a Family. 
 
 What were its limitations ? The Patriarch of Con- 
 stantinople, John the Faster, said that he who claimed 
 to be a father should be a Universal One. Gregory's 
 humility trembled to usurp the name ; his Greek 
 antagonist would not concede it to him. But he could 
 not frankly disclaim it. Was not the Family which 
 Christ established a Universal one ? Could he on whom 
 the duty had devolved of bringing men into it dare to 
 confine it by any geographical boundaries ? Yet must 
 it not have a common worship ; and if that, a commoQ 
 language for the expression of worship ? If there was 
 that unfortunate Greek tongue, if it had been turned 
 to rather sacred uses, if the wretched Jews boasted of 
 their language as entitled to a certain veneration, what 
 were these facts to the tribes which Gregory longed to 
 reclaim and unite in a divine Society? They were 
 clearly committed to Latin Guardianship; in Latin 
 habits they must be clothed; in Latin songs and prayers 
 they must pour out their deeper thoughts ; they might 
 talk of their farms and their merchandise in what dia- 
 lects they found convenient. So did this excellent man 
 seek to mould the West according to his conceptions ; 
 so to the degree that his conception prevailed, did he 
 
THE LATIN FAMILYi 
 
 273 
 
 convert what in his inmost. heart he believed to be- a 
 Universal Family into a Latin Fanaily. 
 
 To the extent that his conception prevailed; how can 
 we determine that extent? Certainly by no measures 
 of ours. We can only jperceive that two principles 
 essentially hostile were contending in European Society, 
 contendmg in the same minds lay and ecclesiastical, 
 male and female; contending in the Bishops of Rome 
 themselves. It was not merely the notion that the 
 sacred world was a Latin world in conflict with a belief 
 that a Son of Man had appeared for the redemption of 
 all people and kindreds. Inseparable from this was the 
 perplexity between the Father of Heaven to whom 
 prayer was offered, and the Father who dwelt in a 
 house, perhaps a palace, upon earth ; the perplexity 
 whether there was a Kingdom of Heaven governing the 
 earth, or whether Heaven and earth were hopelessly 
 separated, and only a mimicry of one could be exhibited 
 on the other. Most practical was this perplexity for 
 those who inhabited cities and were concerned with the 
 occupations of men; not less so for those who dwelt in 
 solitudes or religious societies, trying to raise their 
 thoughts from the visible to the invisible, believing that 
 the true home of their spirits was in the last. Every 
 one who repeated the Lord's Prayer or the Creed had 
 some sense of this confusion; it beset doctors of divinity 
 when they recollected that they were human beings. 
 Gregory's own dream could not have been fulfilled if 
 men learned to believe chiefly in him. He hoped to 
 make them trust One whom he trusted; it was his 
 calamity if he interposed himself between the worship- 
 pers and the object of their worship. 
 
 The proclamation of Mahomet followed the work of 
 a. a. & 
 
 The prac- 
 tical 
 contra- 
 dictions. 
 
 Whom it 
 affected. 
 
 Itlamism 
 in the 
 West. 
 
274 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Christen- 
 ainn. 
 
 The Latin 
 jj: /.rents 
 surround- 
 ed by 
 trouble- 
 some chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Gregory the Great. It was the proclamation of a Uni- 
 versal dominion, of a God who bade all men submit to 
 His invisible rule. The soldiers of the Crescent had 
 no thought of bounding their conquests by continents or 
 by languages. The old province of Africa stooped to 
 them ; they subdued the Visigoths of Spain : they 
 entered France. But in Western Europe Islamism 
 encountered not an Empire but a Christendom; a 
 Society based upon the Family principle under what- 
 ever contradictions that principle might be exhibited. 
 The Invisible Father stood in contrast to the mere 
 Sovereign; the confession of One in whom Divinity and 
 Humanity were united confronted the denial of all 
 fellowship between them. These conditions involved 
 others, which the Popes could not understand. The 
 message of a divine Fatherhood and of a Son of Man 
 had gone forth among tribes distinct from each other. 
 The Ostrogoths in Italy had begun to develope a na- 
 tional order, laws which, if affected by those of Rome, 
 were not imperial. The Lombards impressed a far 
 more distinctly national character upon the land. 
 There was clearly a kind of morality in them which 
 Churchmen did not manifest at all in the same degree. 
 Humanity was not the characteristic of these tribes, 
 nor forgiveness, nor humility. Respect for veracity 
 and justice, however passion might interfere with it, 
 was. The same qualities, accompanied probably with 
 a stronger domestic feeling, a deeper honour for women, 
 dwelt in the English to whom Gregory proclaimed the 
 Gospel of Christ, In them, as well as the Franks, these 
 qualities might sometimes be cultivated by the lessons 
 of Christian priests, sometimes stifled; but the elements 
 of them existed before those lessons were imparted ; if 
 
THE LATIN FAMILY. 
 
 ■275 
 
 that had not been so, we have no reason to suppose 
 they would ever have penetrated into the social life of 
 our ancestors. I believe the foundations of that Social 
 life were discovered by those who spoke of the Family 
 for all mankind. But their imperfect announcement of 
 that Family, their circumscription of it within Latin 
 limits, inevitably made them jealous of the nations 
 which they were nurturing, incapable of perceiving 
 what need there could be for them. Many of the 
 habits which were to be characteristic of the Nations, 
 industry in tillage of the land, the invention of useful 
 arts, the honour of letters, the cultivation of the man 
 himself, had distinguished the Monasteries of the West 
 from those of the East. From these proceeded many 
 of the brotherhoods which were so beneficial in the 
 infancy, which, may perhaps under new conditions be 
 more beneficial in the maturity, of Trade ; which- con- 
 tributed to the organization of towns. The Monks of 
 .,the West, as Count Montalemberb has shewn, under- 
 took also splendid labours for the evangelisation of 
 different European countries and for the reformation 
 of their manners. But they shared with their Eastern 
 prototypes the inevitable disease of seeming to be pro- 
 testers against family life as gross and. secular, witnesses 
 that the sexes will be most holy when most separated. 
 The excuses for such an opinion lie upon the surface 
 of history; the accidental and occasional benefits of the 
 separation cannot be gainsaid. But even if it had 
 been limited to the orders, even if Celibacy had not 
 become the universal law of the Latin priesthood, it 
 must have shaken to its roots the feeling of a connexion 
 between the Universal Family and the particular Family 
 and have reacted most injuriously upon the former. 
 
 ^2 
 
 LEOT. XVI. 
 
 The clash- 
 ing of the 
 particular 
 families 
 with the 
 general 
 
 Great 
 works of 
 the West- 
 ernMonks. 
 
 Effect of 
 Celibacy , 
 on Societij. 
 
276 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Popes 
 rewarding 
 their de- 
 
 The Em- 
 pire of 
 Charles 
 the Great, 
 
 A tlieo- 
 logico- 
 metaphysi- 
 cal concep- 
 tion. 
 
 Its doom. 
 
 The effects of this reaction became specially, mani- 
 fest wheh those events happened which separated the 
 Western from the Eastern World. The Bishops of 
 Rome, quarrelling with Emperors of Constantinople on 
 the subject of Images and dreading the Lombards, 
 invoked the aid of the Franks. They appealed not, to 
 the Merovingian kings — the Rois faineants — but .to- the 
 Mayors of the Palace. As the reward of their services 
 they wore constituted monarchs of France by the Popes, 
 When the Lombards were overthrown Charles received 
 the iron crown. He made the donation of lands to the 
 Roman Bishop, with which Dante credited Constantino. 
 He was consecrated by that Bishop Emperor of the West. 
 
 The foundation of this Empire, notwithstanding the 
 endless questions respecting spiritual and secular Juris- 
 diction to which it gave rise, is hailed by some modem 
 philosophers as the commencement of a Social Life for 
 Europe, and through Europe for America. It is strange 
 that these philosophers should be the great champions 
 of Fact against all metaphysical and theological concep- 
 tions. A conception, partly metaphysical, partly theo- 
 logical, was involved in the establishment of a Western 
 Empire; to be the rival of the now heretic Greek 
 Empire; to rest upon the authority of the successors 
 of St Peter, yet to inherit the traditions of Augustus, 
 Diocletian, and Constantine. Men intoxicated with 
 mysticism may lose themselves in admiration of a 
 phantom which combined so many fragments of the 
 past, which exhibited Paganism and Christianity in 
 such a beautiful mosaic. The disciples of 'positive' 
 fact ought to remember that the Empire of Charle- 
 magne, though it had a founder so able and brUliant, 
 so capable of appreciating the worth of Legislation as 
 
TBE LATIN FAMILY. 
 
 ^77 
 
 well as of education, yet fell to pieces on his death; 
 his laws, his Education, since they were not buried in 
 its ruins, helping to invigorate the Nation which the 
 Empire would have extinguished, 
 
 I do not, of course, forget that this holy Roman 
 Empire was to have a revival in the tenth century. 
 That fact is very important: but instead of connecting 
 it directly with the experiment of Charlemagne, we 
 must trace its origin and necessity to the social be- 
 wilderments of which that experiment was the source. 
 Was the Western Bishop the creator of the Emperor, or 
 was the Emperor the Patron of his spiritual father, the 
 real source of dignity to the Pope? That was the 
 question to which the circumstances of Charlemagne's 
 elevation gave birth, or at any rate which they forced 
 upon the consideration of the West, It was a most 
 practical question — one which was certain to involve 
 the most practical results. It must as far as possible 
 be kept out of sight; if nothing else could be done the 
 secular patronage must be thrown back to a distant 
 age. The Gallic Monarch was dangerously near; if the 
 first Christian Emperor could be supposed to have 
 acknowledged a spiritual supremacy, already attested 
 by the decrees of various Councils, in the Roman 
 Bishop — and to have endowed him with a permanent 
 territory — there was a sacredness about the dominion 
 which at least would diminish the obvious incongruity 
 of it with his pretension to be a Universal Father. It 
 was needful to forge the ecclesiastical decretals as well 
 as the imperial donation. A monk believed that he 
 should be doing God service in undertaking that task; 
 his compilation was accepted and endorsed by a suc- 
 cession of Popes. But it was not unchallenged. Hinc- 
 
 LEOT. XVI. 
 
 The con- 
 fusions 
 which it 
 left be- 
 hind. 
 
 TheForgid 
 Decretalir 
 
 The 
 
 Gallican 
 
 Protest. 
 
278: 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 'Empire of 
 the Othos. 
 
 TofalUj 
 unlike in 
 its nature 
 and object 
 tliat of the 
 ninth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 XJnlike 
 also to the 
 Eastern 
 Empire. 
 
 mwe- 
 
 brand's 
 
 mar, one of the greatest ornaments of the Gallican 
 Church, denied that an Italian had ever heen exalted 
 to absolute supremacy over all other Bishops. A 
 quarrel began between Cismontanes and Ultramontanes 
 which has not terminated in our day. 
 
 This dispute concerns my subject chiefly as it 
 illustrates one .specially weak point in ecclesiastical 
 morality. It has not tjie same general interest as 
 those frightful abuses in the Italy of the tenth century 
 which produced the German efibrt for Reform. The 
 Empire of the Othos was not called into existence by 
 the Popes to save them from extinction. It was sul- 
 lenly accepted as the only means of introducing some- 
 thing like order and morality into the election and 
 the conduct of the spiritual Rulers. To that extent 
 it was successful. Some scandals were abated, a 
 higher moral standard recognized. But then came the 
 great reaction of the eleventh century. Hildebrand 
 arose to declare that none could reform the Church 
 but its spiritual fathers ; and that they had also a 
 right to reform, govern and depose Princes. A 
 Western Empire coming to its birth under such cir- 
 cumstances and encountering in its cradle such an 
 antagonist might be useful or mischievous; but it 
 would bear a very slight, chiefly nominal, resemblance 
 to that -which passed under our review in the last 
 Lecture. The hands were the hands of the Roman, 
 but .th« voice was the voice of the Teuton. Arminius 
 was clothing himself in the robes of Augustus. 
 
 The conflict which ensued between these powers 
 down to the time when the House of Hapsburg 
 became supreme in Germany is of profound interest. 
 No one can deny that the conception of Hildebrand 
 
THE LATIN FAMILY. 
 
 279 
 
 was a grand one. He would be content with, no Latin 
 dominion. The dream of an imperial derivation for 
 his authority was hateful to Jiim. The father of Chris- 
 tendom must be a Universal Father. Not the Em- 
 peror Constantine but the fisherman Peter must be 
 the rock on which his rights were founded. Was not 
 the humbleness of his progenitor his glory? What 
 was the glory of princes in comparison with it ? Hold- 
 ing such a position, could he tolerate the beggarly 
 ambition of ecclesiastics who would sell their heavenly 
 offices for the paltry lucre of earth, who cared for the 
 delights of marriage, the honour of transmitting lands 
 to their heirs ? They must be hindered from this low 
 trafficking ; they must be roused to consider the amaz- 
 ing spiritual power which they might exercise if they 
 were indifferent to such trumpery prizes. He would 
 shew them how a man conscious of celestial prero- 
 gatives could mock and defy those to whom they were 
 looking up for patronage or protection. National 
 ■ Kings, what were they but servants whom he might 
 use or cashiet at his pleasure? Emperors who dared 
 to talk of Rome as if it were theirs — who had thought 
 they could make and unmake their divinely appointed 
 Master — let them kneel at his feet, or try whether 
 they could withstand the bolts of the Almighty which 
 would be hurled against them. It is impossible to 
 listen to such words without a real admiration for the 
 .man who poured them forth, especially when he proved 
 that he was able to endure punishments as well as 
 to threaten or inflict them. Hildebrand had assuredly 
 a deep and inward conviction that a Universal Family 
 had a divinity which did not belong to a Universal 
 Empire ; had an honest contempt for that because it 
 
 LEOT. XVI. 
 
 scheme of 
 Beforma- 
 tion. 
 
 Simony 
 and Wed- 
 lock. 
 
 Defiance nf 
 Monarchs, 
 
28o 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORAlIfY. 
 
 LEOT. XTI. 
 
 His effort 
 to be dif- 
 ferent from 
 them a 
 failure. 
 
 Irony of 
 his posi- 
 tion. 
 
 seemed to claim a divinity for brute force. And yet 
 perhaps the chief claim of Hildebrand upon the respect 
 of the Social Moralist is, that he brought into cleared 
 light than any less earnest and resolute man could 
 have done the contradiction that was latent in the 
 ecclesiastical scheme to which he was imparting so 
 much new energy. The conflict with the Empire 
 shewed how much of imperialism the Papacy itself 
 embodied ; how much the Father must be transformed 
 into an Emperor if he would be the rival of the 
 Emperor. He held his office by descent from St Peter ; 
 perhaps so ; what inheritance did he take by the 
 descent? Was he a Servant of Servants in virtue 
 of it, or a King of Kings? Hildebrand would fain 
 be both; one because he was the other. But to be 
 King of Kings he must have some dominion such as 
 Kings had. The imaginary donation of Constantino, 
 the real gift of Charlemagne, had attached such a 
 dominion to the See of Rome. Did it seem to Gregory 
 a humiliating mixture of earthy dross with the hea- 
 venly treasure which the Apostle had bequeathed? 
 If it did, he must submit to an increase of the humi- 
 liation. The piety of Matilda greatly enlarged the 
 Church's patrimony. He who claimed to set his foot 
 on the neck of Princes is himself a Prince. How in- 
 soluble this knot would become by human fingers, how 
 many efforts would be made to cut it, future ages were 
 to declare. Hildebrand was not without a bitter fore- 
 taste of the perplexity. 
 
 Nor could he be wholly content with the result 
 of his domestic legislation, many excuses as there 
 were for it in the irregularity of the Clergy, in theit 
 neglect of their proper duties, in their servility to lay 
 
THE LATIN FAMILY. 
 
 2«I 
 
 patrons. Great as these evils might be, did their sepa- 
 ration from human ties bring no contempt upon those 
 ties in the flocks which they were to guide, did it 
 create no perilous arrogance in themselves? It gave 
 them a ' detachment ' from common mundane interests, 
 which might in some cases leave them more free to 
 think and speak of the Kingdom of Heaven. Might 
 it not also tempt them to set up a kingdom for them- 
 selves which was not heavenly at all, which is exactly 
 the reverse of heavenly if spiritual pride is the special 
 attribute of the devil 1 
 
 The Crusades in some degree abated the strife 
 between the Holy Empire and the Holy Chutch. They 
 had a more important effect, it has been observed, in 
 turning the thought of the West from Rome to Jeru- 
 salem, from the Vicar of Christ to Christ. The Orders 
 which devoted themselves to the recovery of the Sepul- 
 chre were bound to an invisible chief; the symbol of 
 every warrior suggested One- who had conquered by 
 suffering. However many influences were hostile to 
 these and at last swayed the hosts more completely, one 
 must never forget such signs in estimating the cha- 
 racter of an age and the impulses by which its acts 
 were determined. I have dwelt in a former Lecture 
 on the failure of the Crusades to accomplish their 
 primary object, as well as on the absurdity involved in 
 the conception of drawing swords to prove how much 
 better the New Testament method of propagating a 
 faith is than that which is sanctioned in the Koran. 
 But while we take full account of these inconsistencies 
 and treat them as indispensable helps in judging of' 
 the mediaeval rjOo'i, it would be a great blunder to over- 
 look the other not less obvious side of that ^^o?, all 
 
 His sepa- 
 ration of 
 the priests 
 from the 
 •people mis- 
 chievous 
 to both. 
 
 The Cru- 
 sades not 
 on the 
 whole 
 favourable 
 to the 
 Papal as- 
 cendancy. 
 
 The reve- 
 rence 
 for weaH- 
 ness by 
 Strength. 
 
282 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XVI. 
 
 The 
 
 Knight a 
 counter- 
 acting 
 influence 
 to the 
 Priest. 
 
 The 
 
 Schools of 
 tlie West. 
 
 which -was implied in the reverence for weakness by 
 men whose temptation was to glorify strength. I have 
 shewn you that I am not disposed to exaggerate the 
 graces of Chivalry ; that I regard even its special grace, 
 the homage to women, with a kind of suspicion. 
 Taking that homage however in connexion with the 
 whole life of the Knight — with his manifold induce- 
 ments to ferocity — I cannot but hail it as a great step 
 from the purely virile into the humane morality. 
 Chivalry had its self-exalting and therefore its degraded 
 side. It might foster the pride of birth ; it might in- 
 jure women by making them idols. But it bore wit- 
 ness against dogmas which both the Greek and the 
 Latin Church were hallowing. The boast of Apolo- 
 gists that Christianity has elevated the condition of 
 women may be open to dispute ; much which has been 
 called Christianity in a,ll divisions of Christendom has 
 degraded them. If any opinions about Christ hinder 
 us from regarding Him as the Centre of the Humanity 
 which is common to both sexes, those opinions must 
 lower both. Chivalry, however imperfectly, did counter- 
 act some of these opinions. 
 
 There is one aspect of Latin cultivation in which 
 it was markedly contrasted with the Greek ; curiovdy 
 contrasted, since it was indebted to Greeks for the 
 divergence. I have remarked how carefully the study 
 of the letter of the old classical books was pursued by 
 those who were elevated above the vulgar at Constan- 
 tinople, how a kind of antiquarian taste must have 
 been diffused through Society. The Latins with the 
 most imperfect means of understanding the old Philo- 
 sophers — with bad translations of Aristotle made from 
 a corrupt text — ^nevertheless received an impression 
 
THE LATm FAMILY. 
 
 283 
 
 from them, specially from him, which had nothing that 
 answered to it among those who could converse with 
 him and with Plato in their own tongue. This fact 
 has been represented to us in words which convey a 
 very confused notion of it, and which make it simply 
 miraculous. Aristotle, it is said, became a supreme 
 dictator in the schools of the West, because they needed 
 a philosophical dictator as well as one in theology. 
 Why did they ask for a philosophical dictator, and why 
 did this one offer himself to them when there was 
 everything in his Pagan reputation to alarm them, 
 when Popes had openly denounced him ? It was not 
 first as a dictator — it was in precisely the opposite cha- 
 racter as the awakener of the subtlest. intellectual ques- 
 tions — that he atti-acted and subdued them. Greeks 
 would have ridiculed the mediaeval Latins — moderns 
 have ridiculed them — not for their willingness to em- 
 brace any conclusions which were given them, but for 
 their restless anxiety to solve riddles which men who 
 are busy with the affairs of the woi'ld find it conve- 
 nient to pronounce insoluble. How the words we speak 
 are related to the thoughts which they express, to 
 the things which they indicate — this doubt tormented 
 them ; they could not dismiss it. They could leam 
 the forms of Logic while it was unsettled ; they "could 
 not satisfy themselves about the use or signification of 
 Logic. And was not Logic intertwined with all the sub- 
 jects upon which it was possible to discourse? did it not 
 mean Discourse ? Aristotle, the great Logician, had also 
 discoursed about Ethics, Physics, the Soul, Being, all 
 things in Heaven and Earth. Christian Theology lay a 
 little out of his sphere ; but must it not be mightily in- 
 fluenced by all that was within his sphere ? A multitude 
 
 LEOT. XVI. 
 
 What was 
 the power 
 of Aris- 
 totle over 
 them i 
 
 What have 
 words to 
 do with 
 things and 
 thoughts ! 
 
 Logic 
 
 mixing 
 itself with 
 all studies. 
 
S84 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 IiECT. XVI. 
 
 Serious- 
 ness of the 
 questions 
 at issue. 
 
 They are 
 not deso- 
 late. 
 
 The Men- 
 dicant 
 Orders. 
 
 of quibbles were mingled with these thoughts ; triflers 
 could entertain themselves with these, feeling so much 
 the more zest in them because they were evidently on 
 the borders of the gravest controversies that men could 
 be occupied with. But we shall be triflers more vain 
 than they were if we treat the questions which the 
 Nominalists and Realists debated in the schools as 
 beneath the notice of intellectual men. The fault of 
 the schoolmen was that they were far too intellectual ; 
 they were always striving to sound the depths of the 
 human intellect; to ascertain its capacities. A time 
 came when such enquiries became utterly exhausting 
 to those who were engaged in them ; when the heart 
 and flesh of men cried out for some more nourishing 
 food. Nevertheless it is true that the relation of words 
 to thoughts and things is not less important to the 
 nineteenth century than it was to the twelfth. How- 
 ever contemptuous we may be towards those who felt 
 themselves compelled to study these relations, we may, 
 before we are aware, be embarrassed by them while we 
 are studying the courses of the planets, or the intrigues 
 of cabinets, or the fashions of drawing-rooms. 
 
 There was a movement in the beginning of the 
 1 3th century which ultimately sifiected all the pursuits 
 of the schools, but which began by affecting the people 
 much more. The Mendicant Orders were witnesses 
 that the Church was meant for the poor ; that it failed 
 utterly and denied its first principle, if it had not a 
 message for the poor. Retirement into cells for the 
 sake of holiness might be good ; the Franciscan and the 
 Dominican felt that their primary vocation was to act 
 upon the unholy. It might be very honourable for 
 priests to sit in high places and receive the homage of 
 
THE LATIN FAMILY. 
 
 285 
 
 priaces ;. another kind of honour was claimed by the 
 Apostles; the circumstances of later times had not 
 made it obsolete. What was Property in the eyes of 
 the Fishermen ? They gave up their goods, they had 
 all things common. If the fallen were to be reclaimed, 
 if the complaints of heretics were to be answered, the 
 new preachers like their prototypes must be servants 
 not masters, beggars instead of lords. 
 
 The project was formed >in the days of the Pope 
 who possessed most of worldly power, who exhibited 
 the most of worldly sagacity. Innocent III. exercised 
 the dominion which Gregory VII. claimed, but exer- 
 cised it with the full persuasion that he could only 
 trample upon princes by resorting to the arts of princes. 
 A career, on the whole, of marvellous success — of suc- 
 cess, as in the case of the Latin conquest of Constanti- 
 nople, when it could have been least expected, when it 
 came by disobedience to his own commands — was draw- 
 ing to its close. He had sanctioned the horrors of the 
 AJbigensian war; could he be quite sure that he had 
 taken the divinest way of vindicating the cause of 
 Christ ? He was a Ruler over both divisions of Christ- 
 endom ; had he any real authority over the hearts of 
 his subjects in either ? The proposition to turn enthu- 
 siasts loose upon the world was contrary to his maxims 
 of Policy. But might not enthusiasts, however unpa- 
 latable to wise men, do a considerable work among 
 fools? The lofty politician accepted the help of the 
 beggars ; they soon justified, and more than justified, 
 his calculations. They did acquire the dominion over 
 the vulgar which seemed likely ; they acquired also a 
 dominion over the learned which would have seemed 
 most improbable; in a little time they became the 
 
 Theirprin- 
 ciple and 
 object. 
 
 The time 
 of their 
 apvear- 
 ance. 
 
 Row the 
 Enthmi- 
 asts did 
 what the 
 Politician 
 failed to 
 do. 
 
286 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XVI. 
 
 The spirit 
 of the 
 Nations 
 awaken- 
 ing. 
 
 Difference 
 between 
 the Italian 
 liejmblics 
 and the 
 rest of 
 Hwrope. 
 
 Ecclesias- 
 tical influ- 
 ences in 
 the various 
 nations, 
 some 
 
 favourable 
 some ob- 
 structive 
 
 most effectual champions of the Papacy in all lands 
 against the national spirit of those lands. 
 
 For this becomes now a far more important conflict 
 than the one between the Empire and the Popedom 
 though in many ways entangled with that. The Italian 
 Cities, in their efforts for emancipation, so full of vari- 
 ous interest, so broken by quarrels with each other 
 and by intestine conflicts, sometimes call forth the 
 wrath and tyranny of the Empire, sometimes secure a 
 strange patronage froin the Papacy; not seldom link 
 themselves first to one then to the other, always having 
 a reasonable excuse for distrusting both. Their experi- 
 ments in government ; the talents and the arts which 
 they develope ; their commercial activity ; their mani- 
 fold crimes and bitter disappointments ; exhibit a most 
 striking picture of wha,t may be called naked civiliza- 
 tion. I mean the civilization of Cities without the sta- 
 bility, the comparative dulness which belongs to the 
 land, and to a people that has land for the basis of its 
 interests. In the other parts of Europe, as I hinted 
 in my first Lecture, the growth of nations cannot be 
 identified with civilization of this kind. The towns 
 were to be all important elements in them ; without a 
 municipal order they would have been at the mercy of 
 rude and tyrannical proprietors ; but the two, country 
 and town, were not separately but together through 
 collisions or through the dependence of each upon the 
 other, to work out a distinct native life. In the West- 
 ern world these silent processes went on without much 
 disturbance from the Holy Empire or the Bishop of 
 Rome ; not however without many and opposing influ- 
 ences from those who called themselves the servants of 
 the last. The priests of the town left to themselves 
 
THE LATIN FAMIlr. 
 
 287 
 
 were generally fostering the native habits, contributing 
 to the unfolding of the native speech ; the monasteries, 
 though essentially Latin, were producing Chronicles 
 which were often vehemently patriotic. But the Friars 
 in their character of Reformers were essentially Cos- 
 mopolitan, which meant at last essentially Eoman; 
 defenders of the Papal power as the only sacred and 
 divine power. The dignified Ecclesiastics, on the con- 
 trary, were often much more attached to the native 
 King of whom they held the lands than to the distant 
 Priest from whom they received their pall. And the 
 Universities, however devoted to general Latin cultiva- 
 tion, often resisted the intrusion of the Mendicant Or- 
 ders into their government, often nourished the temper 
 which those orders were seeking to crush. 
 
 Thus the different representatives of what I have 
 called the -Universal Family under a Latin limitation, 
 were working either by encouragement, or by an oppo- 
 sition which was even more effectual than encourage- 
 ment, to call forth that national life in different lands 
 which the Popes desired to extinguish. The blessing 
 of that awakening, the elements of Social Morality 
 which we owe to it and which were perishing for the 
 want of it, I have considered already. I shall not re- 
 peat what I said on that subject in the second part of 
 this course. But I must beg you to notice one or two 
 points which concern us especially here. 
 
 I. I have said that Property is one of the charac- 
 teristics of a Nation, that the sense of Property appears 
 in us along with the sense of Law. I have said also 
 that the refusal to call anything which they had their 
 own was one leading characteristic of the Universal 
 Family on its first appearance in Jerusalem, No law 
 
 to their 
 growth. 
 
 The Frian 
 
 altogether 
 
 Boman. 
 
 The result. 
 
 The con- 
 flict be- 
 tween Pro- 
 perty and 
 Commu- 
 
288 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The com- 
 munisvi of 
 the Friars 
 a chief 
 secret of 
 their 
 power. 
 
 Their 
 traffic 
 made 
 
 them hate- 
 ful to de- 
 vout men. 
 
 The Re- 
 hellion a 
 claim to be 
 Church- 
 men. 
 
 had affirmed or could affirm such a principle ; the 
 Apostles uniformly treated it as lying wholly out of 
 the range of law. But the adoption of this principle as 
 the governing one of their lives unquestionably gave 
 the Friars their great power in all lands ; they seemed 
 to have caught the mantle of the Apostles, while most 
 of those who were called the successors of the Apostles 
 had envied the purple of the Csesars. The shock was 
 therefore tremendous when these orders were found 
 to be willing agents in collecting revenues from the 
 national Clergy to increase the Papal Treasury ; when 
 subtle questions about the limits of general property 
 and individual property divided the disciples of Francis; 
 when religious mendicancy appeared to be cultivating 
 covetous habits in those who gave as well as in those 
 who asked. These discoveries, of which our earliest 
 English literature is full, embittered the feelings of the 
 yeoman and tradesman against the Friars. Though 
 we know that there were noble specimens of moral 
 excellence as well as of theological wisdom among 
 Franciscans and Dominicans — they began, as orders, to 
 be regarded with detestation, not by those who dis- 
 believed the Creeds of the Church, but by those who 
 clung to them ; by those who cried, like the writer of 
 Piers Flowman's Visions, for a living God, and felt that 
 the popular teachers were separating the people from 
 Him. It cannot be too strenuously repeated, that the 
 movement among the middle classes in England during 
 the 14th century against the Friars was in the strictest 
 sense an assertion of Englishmen's right to be members 
 of the Church of Christ; a vindication of it as a Church 
 for the Nation. There was no denial of the Univer- 
 sality of the Church ; there was a denial of the attempt 
 
inji jjATiiy ra.M.iiji. 
 
 to make it a Latin Church, and to disconnect its 
 morality with that of the ordinary Citizen; There was 
 no denial of its claim to be a Family undei: a Universal 
 Father; there was a suspicion that the Universal 
 Father must be nearer to His children than the city of 
 Eome was, that he who dwelt there must have taken a 
 title which was not his. 
 
 2. The prestige of that City had been gr.eat. If a 
 Universal Family was to succeed a Universal Empire, 
 and if there was to be an earthly Father of that Uni- 
 versal Family, no one can wonder that this should have 
 been regarded as his proper throne. It was startling 
 then to hear that a Pope who had specially exulted in 
 his dignity, who had proclaimed a triumphant f&te 
 to all Nations in the eternal city, had been driven from 
 that home by French Lawyers, and that his successors 
 had abandoned it for Avignon. No amount of humilia- 
 tion for a servant of God would have seemed strange 
 to those who read the Apostolic records ; but humilia- 
 tion following such boasts as those of Boniface VIII., 
 followed by such flagrant and open contempt of Morality 
 as that displayed in the Court of Avignon, did startle 
 the people of Europe, all the more because they were 
 beginning to recollect what manner of men the early 
 Ministers of the Church had been. It is impossible by 
 any cold study of the past to measure what these 
 scandals were to those who were living among them- 
 A number of passages in our own literature as well as 
 the letters of Petrarch, who visited Avignon and felt 
 the departed glory of Rome, may help us in some faint 
 way to realise them. 
 
 3. Then came the greater and more amazing scan- 
 dal which is denoted by the name of the Western 
 
 H. M. . T 
 
 The fall of 
 Boniface. 
 
 Avignon. 
 
 The 
 
 Western 
 
 Schism, 
 
29Q 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The pre- 
 tensions of 
 Councils. 
 
 What 
 came of 
 the Coun- 
 cils. 
 
 schism. That was a battle between two sometimes 
 three bad men — a battle waged with every spiritual 
 and every carnal weapon to decide which was the Vicar 
 of Christ, the father of the Universal Family. When 
 the evil became intolerable, when every nation was 
 rent asunder by it, the University of Paris by the 
 mouth of Gerson and other illustrious doctors declare^ 
 that the knot must be cut, that a Council must be 
 summoned, that it must decree who were the pre- 
 tenders to divine authority, who was the appointed 
 Judge and Dogmatist of Mankind. 
 
 Every one must have felt the force of the argu- 
 ment, that if such a Judge and Dogmatist existed the 
 pretension of a Council to be above him involved a 
 strange contradiction. Gerson and his friends were 
 aware of the contradiction. They resolved to face it. 
 Events for which they were not responsible, which 
 they could not control, had produced a state of things 
 which was flagrantly monstrous. The remedy might 
 be dangerous, the disease must be fatal. Some have 
 thought that nothing came out of the Councils which 
 were summoned at that time except the murder of 
 Huss, with the justification which it afforded for the 
 strifes between Emperors and Ecclesiastics, seeing that 
 when they were agreed it was to commit a scandalous 
 breach of faith as the prelude to an enormous crime. 
 I should not undervalue that result since I look upon 
 Huss as a martyr for truth, as an asserter of national 
 righteousness against both the enemies of it. But the 
 Councils produced other and wider, if not more im^ 
 portant consequences than this. The reasonings ii) 
 favour of their interference, and in opposition to it, 
 forced the thought on Europe — 'Popes then and 
 
TBE LATW FAMIL T. • 
 
 29 1 
 
 ' Councils, these you think govern the Universe, sepa- 
 'rately or together, as friendly or as hostile powers. 
 ' The Holy Empire you suppose is meant to use its 
 ' sword in obedience to them. You have deliberately, 
 ' distinctly settled that God has left the earth to these 
 ' rulers, that He takes n.o further charge of it. Then 
 'the Creed which you have taught us to utter, the 
 ' Lord's Prayer which you give us indulgences for re- 
 'peating, clearly mean nothing. They are mockeries,' 
 So men in many ?l shop and household — in many a 
 lonely monastery — ^were beginning to speak. The 
 speech might be deep not loud; it was the more peril- 
 ous for that, 
 
 4. The principle of a Universal Family then had 
 maintained itself in the West under very different con- 
 ditions from those which we examined in the last 
 Lecture. It had npt been pierged in an Empire ; had 
 not generally been in alliance with one. It had not 
 shrunk before the Mahometan proclamation ; it had 
 defied that proclamation. It had met the announce- 
 ment of an Absolute Despot in the Heaven with the 
 assertion that there is a union between Heaven and 
 Earth in a Son of God. All the order of the West had 
 borne testimony to this difference. There was no dead 
 uniformity in Latin Europe though Churchmen had 
 tried to create one. Nations had started out of the 
 Family; the Church in each land had assumed national 
 characteristics. But it seemed that the offspring must 
 destroy that from which they had sprung if the Family 
 was only Latin; if it could not really make good its 
 claim to be universal. In the midst of these doubts 
 and speculations — when the Father of the West was 
 once again holding an insecure seat in the old City — 
 
 T2 
 
 LECT, XVI. 
 
 The 
 
 thoughts 
 whichtheir 
 acts sug- 
 gested. 
 
 Conclu- 
 sion, 
 
 Contrast 
 between 
 the East 
 and West, 
 
292 
 
 VmVEBSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The crisis 
 for both. 
 
 came the news that the other City, the city of Constan- 
 tine, was ready to fall. I alluded in my last Lecture 
 to the efforts of the West — ^feeble and dishonest efforts 
 — to avert that fall. When it actually came Nicholas V., 
 a man of sincere purpose and high cultivation, trembled 
 for the ■whole of Christendom. Could not he do some- 
 thing to repair the calamity? The Greek and Latin 
 Churches had never been able to unite. Might not 
 Greeks and Latins together constitute a commonwealth 
 of letters; the first bringing the wisdom which was 
 banished from its original home ; the second, through 
 their spiritual Ruler, diffusing human culture as they 
 had once diffused divine doctrine? Dean Milman's 
 clear historical instinct perceived in these thoughts of 
 the Pope, and in the events which issued from them, 
 the crisis of Latin Christianity. What Christianity 
 was to succeed that we must consider in the next 
 Lecture. 
 
LECTURE XVII. 
 
 TEE UNIVERSAL AND TEE INDIVIDUAL 
 MORALITY IN CONFLICT. 
 
 Nicholas V. was unlike his most eminent prede- 
 cessors. He did not aspire to convert barbarous tribes 
 like Gregory I. ; he did not dream of setting his foot 
 on Kings like Gregory VII. ; he did not suppose 
 that the world could be held together by webs of 
 policy like Innocent the Third. He did not appre- 
 ciate the Mediflsval divinity or philosophy, or the 
 speech in which they were expressed. He accepted 
 the signs of the times. He mourned over Constan- 
 tinople as if it had been not the centre of a doctrine 
 or ecclesiastical government opposed to the Latin, but 
 as the centre of a culture by which Latins might bene- 
 fit. He did not think that old Pagan learning would 
 unchristianize Christendom. He hoped it might do 
 mudh to humanize Christendom. 
 
 His aspirations — if they were of this kind — had 
 ultimately, it seems to me, a higher fulfilment than 
 he expected. Whether they were fulfilled during his 
 own century, by what is called the Renaissance or 
 the Revival of Letters, you will hear different judg- 
 ments from persons eminently qualified by their know- 
 
 Nichoia* 
 V, 
 
 Ills aims 
 and Iwpes, 
 
 Admirers 
 of the 
 Revival. 
 
294 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The wit- 
 ni'sses on 
 the other 
 side. 
 
 How we 
 may learn 
 from both. 
 
 of the new 
 learning. 
 
 ledge and ability to pronounce a judgmenti Mr Ros- 
 coe, himself a merchant, felt an honourable sympathy 
 with the Medicean Family, believing that it had con- 
 verted Trade from the pursuit of personal pelf into 
 an instrument for civilizing Italy and Europe. Mr 
 Hallam, uniting the man of letters to the constitutional 
 politician, hailed with joy the time when students 
 ceased to pore over questions about the relation of 
 words to things, ,and busied themselves with the 
 orators, poets, statesmen who had used words grace- 
 fully and effectually \o' explain things and the rela- 
 tions of men to each other. On the other hand, you 
 will read in Mr Browning's subtle and vigorous verse, 
 in Mr Ruskin's eloquent pi'ose, many an exposure of 
 the external affectations, of the inward heartlessness; 
 of this brilliant tinte. And if you turn from these 
 native critics to the patriots of Italy, you will hear 
 still more fervent denunciations of Medicean princes 
 and popes who trafi&cked with the liberty of Flo- 
 rence, and ratified a code of political morality that 
 debased their own land and all lands for more than 
 a century. 
 
 If you reflect on these testimonies and steadily 
 recognise the facts to which they appeal, you may 
 gain lessons from them all; you will not be over- 
 powered by any of them. You will thankfully ac- 
 knowledge what innumerable benefits we owe ^to 
 Greek literature ; how Greek art has taught us to 
 reverence the actual form and countenance of human 
 beings ; what a new impulse, what a sense of common 
 fellowship Philology has imparted to the thoughts of 
 men; what treasures of political experience are con- 
 tained in the histories of the old Nations. Without 
 
•TEE REflVAL AND ^HE REFORMATION. 
 
 295 
 
 that movement of which I am speaking, these gifts, 
 and many that were to proceed from these, would 
 have been hidden ; the schools must have persevered 
 in working mines in which gold had been found, in 
 which little was left but rubbish. But precious as it 
 is to know what men thought and what they were 
 iri the ages before the existence of a Universal Family 
 for mankind was proclaimed — little as we can under- 
 stand what that proclamation means if we treat these 
 ages with indifference — it is impossible for Mr Bi'own- 
 ing or Mr Ruskin to exaggerate the habit of lying 
 which was diffused among cultivated men by their 
 efforts to reproduce the manners and tone of thinking 
 in the old world. To call such a revival of the past 
 Progress, is surely to indulge in the most ridiculous 
 and the most mischievous of fictions. No popular su- 
 perstition was really subverted ; the people were encou- 
 raged to amuse themselves with all delusions, the most 
 immoral and destructive. The refined men — sanction- 
 ing them in their intercourse with the world at large — 
 had another set of superstitions older than these with 
 which they trifled; not attaching any meaning to them, 
 liking them because they were unreal. Nicholas V. 
 had probably no anticipation of such a calamity. 
 Some of his successors welcomed it and adapted them- 
 selves to it. Some of them resisted it, not in the 
 interests of morality but of their own paltry local 
 ambition. Alexander VI. strikes us as a monstrous 
 figure to stand at the end of the century of refinement 
 and revival ; but Macchiavelli, a most competent eye- 
 witness, regarded him as the type of the princes and 
 the policy of his time. If Europe was somewhat 
 startled by what it heard of his iniquities, those who. 
 
 LEOT. XTII. 
 
 Falsehood 
 of modem 
 Paganism. 
 
 The Pope- 
 dom of thi 
 Revival. 
 
296 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The new 
 world. 
 
 The Dia- 
 logues 0/ 
 Erasmus. 
 
 The pic- 
 ture of 
 Social , 
 Morality 
 which they 
 present. 
 
 followed him exceeded other monarchs in the lust of 
 conquest, excelled all in intrigue. From those whose 
 main object was to win some paltry principality issued 
 the spiritual decrees, the examples of spiritual wisdom 
 and character which the Universe was to obey and 
 copy. For Greece was Mahometan and America had 
 been discovered. The Pope who used the Sultan to 
 do murders for him, bade the most Catholic monarch 
 take possession of the new world in Christ's name. 
 What kind of life and government the Spaniards would 
 exhibit to those who had worshipped the gods of. 
 Mexico and Peru, might be conjectured from the 
 authority under which they conquered, from that spe- 
 cimen of life and government which they deemed the 
 most sacred and divine. 
 
 But it is not possible to test the Morality of an 
 age by looking at its more glaring transactions. The 
 Dialogues of Erasmus lead us from the acts of Em- 
 perors and Pontiffs, from the victories over a Conti- 
 nent, to the inner life of small circles of ordinary men, 
 not in some foregone time, but in the very time which 
 produced scholars of such ripe culture, of such exqui- 
 site faculties, as Erasmus himself. A more brilliant 
 and in another sense a more dark picture than those 
 dialogues give us of a time. 'in which prophets were 
 prophesying lies, and the priests bearing rule by their 
 means, and a people were loving to have it so,' it is 
 not easy to imagine. Practices which debased So- 
 ciety — which lowered the heart and bewildered the 
 judgments of individuals — come before us stamped 
 with a holy sanction, recommended if not enjoined as 
 opiates or stimulants to the conscience, submitted to — 
 it might be with grumbling, with a half sense of their 
 
TBE REVIVAL AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 297 
 
 vanity — but still submitted to ; for what other schemes 
 had an equal chance of turning out useful hereafter ? 
 And these pictures are not drawn by some prejudiced 
 fanatic, by some rebel against the existing order of 
 things, by some malignant infidel. They are sketched 
 by a humourist remarkable for his, clear manly sense, 
 by one who disliked innovations, who thought Leo X. 
 might restore the age, by an earnest student of the 
 Scriptures and of the fathers. Erasmus suflfered much 
 from external difficulties ; but he was not tormented 
 by internal struggles; he had the temper of the re- 
 vival ; he was what was called then, and has been 
 called since, a Humanist rather than a Theologian. 
 With the dogmas of those days he had little quarrel ; 
 what he lays bare is its want of ordinary Morality — 
 social and individual. 
 
 No one, I think, proves more clearly to us that a 
 Reformation could not come from the quarter whence 
 be looked for it. Leo X. might fully appreciate the 
 jokes of Erasmus, might call himself a humanist, might 
 claim, beyond all question, to be one, if humanity con- 
 sists in spending money upon works of art. But if 
 Humanity has a connexion, as we sometimes fancy it 
 has, with Man, with his well-doing and well-being, then 
 Leo was not a humanist ; for on that particular creature 
 he had no leisure to bestow any thought, except so far 
 as it had a capacity of hewing stones out of a quarry, 
 or of moulding them into certain shapes. Did Erasmus 
 sincerely hope that any one of the scandals which he 
 had charged other priests with promoting would be 
 checked by this Pope 1 that it would not receive his 
 fullest imprimatur if it would add a shilling to the 
 1;reasury which he wanted for the purpose of enriching 
 
 Was Leo 
 X. a Hu- 
 manist ! 
 
^9^ 
 
 "UmVERSAt MORALlTf. 
 
 Side of In- 
 dulgences, 
 
 The Calcu- 
 lation on 
 which it 
 
 General 
 Scepticism 
 favourable 
 to its suc- 
 cess. 
 
 Ms city or glorifying tis name? If the poor Scholar 
 entertained such a dream it was soon to be scattered. 
 
 The story of Leo's sale of Indulgences and of the 
 way in which Tetzel proclaimed it in Germany has 
 been told so often by authors writing in what is called 
 the Protestant interest, that it becomes difficult to re- 
 member what profound moral interests, concerning all 
 nations and all men, were involved in it. To me it 
 seems the most momentous practical question ever pre- 
 sented to the consideration of human beings; one which 
 never can be obsolete, with which every Protestant of 
 the nineteenth century is engaged, not when he is re- 
 futing Eomahists, but when he is examining his own 
 deeds and principles. The watchwords of Luther may 
 be repeated in England or Germany by those who in 
 spirit are on the side of Leo. The maxim on which the 
 Pope acted was this. He assumed that men in his own 
 age and in every age must desire to escape the punish- 
 ment of the evil deeds of which their consciences ac- 
 cused them, that for the chance of such an escape they 
 would be willing to pay much. If there was a growing 
 Scepticism about the papal power as well as about all 
 other invisible influences, that scepticism might be 
 rather favourable than damaging to an experiment 
 grounded upon an accurate calculation of the ordinary 
 motives of human conduct. A general feeling of un- 
 certainty — a notion that all things may be true because 
 nothing is certain— leads men to make ventures hi 
 objects which they feel would be desirable supposing 
 they were possible. There may be a hundred blanks in 
 a lottery, still the one prize tempts to a moderate, even 
 an immoderate, outlay. Popular preachers could per- 
 suade the vulgar that the promised pardon would be an 
 
TEE REtlVAL AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 igg 
 
 ■effectual one in the courts above. Their rhetoric might 
 not affect the more educated, but Would they grudge a 
 sum which might bring a reversion of profit to them- 
 selves, and which would be spent on the restoTatioii of 
 St Peter's ? Suppose the accomplished prelate had any 
 misgivings— very likely he had none — about so obvious 
 a method 6f raising funds, the end to which they would 
 be devoted must have soon comforted him. The event 
 justified Leo's hopes. The age believed, as it had been 
 taught by the highest examples, that money is the 
 great power in the Universe. Crimes Were rife in all 
 classes of Society. Princes and peasants had an equal 
 interest in getting them condoned. They had a good 
 chance of eluding the vengeance of the Law on earth — 
 it was powerless enough in most countries against ordi- 
 nary thieves, still more against feudal brigands. But 
 might it not pursue them into the other world? Princes 
 and Magistrates declared that they had no jurisdiction 
 there; that they could set aside no divine sentences. 
 The Pope said that he had jurisdiction there also ; that 
 he was endowed with powers to remit the divine sen- 
 tences. Tetzel declared there was no limit to that 
 power; the papal treasury of pardons was infinite. 
 Were his hearers mad enough to refuse the needful 
 price for such a blessing ? 
 
 There- was but one answer to these pretensions that 
 could be effectual. Was it a blessing which Leo of- 
 fered? Martin Luther declared that it was not a 
 blessing but a curse. For a man to escape from the 
 punishment of his crimes was the worst misery that 
 could befal him. It would be worth while for any one 
 to spend a fortune if it would avert that misery. A 
 man .carries a plague of, evil about him, which goes 
 
 AUclaesei 
 interested 
 in securittg 
 pardons 
 even at a 
 consider- 
 able cost. 
 
 Indulgen- 
 ces de- 
 clared to 
 be a curse, 
 
300 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Forgive- 
 ness the 
 opposite of 
 Indul- 
 gence. 
 
 Luther's 
 Belief. 
 
 Luther's 
 recurrence 
 to the old 
 Creed, 
 
 forth in crimes against Ms fellows. If he can be de^ 
 livered from this plague — from the guilt, the guile, by 
 which his conscience is tormented — if he can be made 
 a right man — that is the blessing of al^l blessings. That 
 is the blessing which he claims when he says, 'T be- 
 lieve in the forgiveness of sins.' Indulgence, remission 
 of penalties, is saying to a man, ' There is no forgiveness 
 ' for thy sins. They cannot be sent away from thee to 
 ' Hell. They must go with thee there.' 
 
 This was the spirit of the famous theses which 
 Luther fixed on the door of the Church at Wittenberg. 
 If they are construed into a mere denial of the Pope's 
 power to do what he professed to do, their moral force 
 is lost; their moral force and with it their effect on the 
 Society of Europe. Luther as little asked God to let 
 him escape from the punishment of his wrong doings 
 as the Pope. He had asked for that gift in unutterable 
 agonies. He had found that it c(ndd not be granted 
 him. What matter was it where he was, in Hell or 
 Heaven, if he was still the same ? But if He who 
 punished him was One in whom he might trust, who 
 punished him that he might cease to trust in himself 
 or to seek any good in himself — then indeed he might 
 enter into the freedom of a man ; the accuser and tor- 
 mentor who was always near him could be answered 
 and overcome. ' 
 
 This was that faith of Luther which assuredly' did 
 not seem to him a new one, introduced into Europe or 
 Germany by him in the i6th century. He declared 
 vehemently that it was the old Creed of his fathers, 
 that he wanted no language to express it in but that 
 which had been current in Christendom for centuries, 
 that which children were taught in their nurseries. To 
 
TBE EEYIVAL AND TBE REFOBMATION. 
 
 301 
 
 that Confession he had had recourse in his own personal 
 conflicts; as he studied the Hebrew Psalms and the 
 Epistles of St Paul he had come to apprehiend, in some 
 small measure, the meaning of it, though he never ex- 
 pected to fathom its meaning. He was thoroughly 
 sincere in these assertions, his whole heart was thrown 
 into them. Why then was he at variance with those 
 who used this Creed, who declared that it expressed 
 what they believed and wished all men to believe ? 
 
 The first answer is, that they commanded men 
 to believe implicitly on the authority of others that 
 which he exhorted men to believe directly for them- 
 selves. The belief in Christ he said was an escape 
 from his own opinions and from the opinions of men. 
 It was trust in One who could teach a man better than 
 all mortals could teach him, or than he could teach 
 himself. The second answer, which is implied in the 
 former, is, that Luther claimed for all men, even the 
 most sinful, the right to believe that they might 
 become righteous ; whereas faith, as it was generally 
 understood, was either a necessity to which men must 
 submit under dire penalties or a privilege which cer- 
 tain men might exercise, if they had by previous dis- 
 cipline entitled themselves to it. The third answer 
 I have hinted at in the title of this Lecture. A Uni- 
 versal faith, a faith for the whole Church, for the 
 whole human family, might at times seem to Luther 
 a great gift. He might rejoice that he and his German 
 countrymen had inherited it. But the formula of 
 the Creed is 'I believe.' That was strictly Luther's 
 formula. He had fought for this faith in his closet. 
 It had come to him as his deliverance. He was the 
 champion of an individual life, an individual Moral- 
 
 IiECT. XTII. 
 
 How he 
 became 
 separated 
 frrnn those 
 ■wTw re- 
 peated it. 
 
 The Indi- 
 viduality 
 ofLuther'i 
 Faith, 
 
303 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORAMTr. 
 
 tEOT. XVII, 
 
 Clough's 
 Poems, 
 Vol. ii. 
 p. 304. 
 
 The Ger- 
 man tor- 
 mentor 
 of the Gods 
 and God- 
 
 ity, He inaugurated a time in which individual Mo- 
 rality was to engage in a very strange kind of battle 
 with that Morality which had associated itself either 
 with the Empire or the Popedom. The nature of this 
 conflict we should try to understand ; then perhaps we 
 may have some hope that principles seemingly hostile 
 will be reconciled not by superficial agreements or hoi-, 
 low compromises, but through a fuller discovery of that 
 which is involved in each of them. 
 
 Mr Clough sings in his remarkable Amours de 
 Voyage, 
 
 Luther they Bay was im-wise ; like a half taught German, he could not 
 See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance ; 
 Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses, 
 Jupiter, Juno and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets, 
 Scholars and Sculptors and Painters were quietly clearing away the 
 Martyrs and Virgins and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas : 
 He must forsooth make a fuss, and distend his huge "Wittenburg 
 
 lungs, and 
 Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe ; 
 Lo you, for forty days from the windows of Heaven it fell ; the 
 Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty ; 
 Are they abating at last ? the doves that are sent to explore are 
 "Wearily fain to return at the best with a leaflet of promise, 
 Fain to return as they went to the wandering wave-tost vessel. 
 Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean. 
 Luther they say was unwise ; he didn't see how things were going. 
 
 So many have said, and more have thought; the 
 description is vivid, dramatic, and suggestive. Leo's 
 mythology is admirably contrasted with Luther's the- 
 ology ; the popularity of the first in its own age and 
 later ages with the cruel German deluge by which it 
 was for awhile overwhelmed. If Jupiter, Juno and 
 Venus, the fine letters and fine arts, had only shewn 
 a man how he could hg-ve a clear conscience, the deluge 
 
Missing Page 
 
304 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Indi- 
 vidual 
 faith also 
 suffered 
 from them. 
 
 The Re- 
 formers 
 canneither 
 he content 
 with the 
 old Creed 
 nor devise 
 a new one. 
 
 Perplexi- 
 ties of 
 Oharles V. 
 
 claimed again the "I believe" — just because all his 
 discoveries in theology were the discoveries of an in- 
 dividual man — realising truth for himself before he 
 announced it to his fellows — the effort of putting these 
 discoveries into shapes and moulds for the purpose 
 of argument against opponents, still more for the 
 purpose of testing the allegiance of disciples, led to 
 the most unsatisfactory results. It seemed more and 
 more as if those who called themselves Keformers 
 could not unite, as if their symbols of fellowship were 
 in fact symbols of division. The States which were 
 most disposed to accept the news that the Bishop of 
 Rome had no commission to rule over their kings or 
 set aside their laws — which felt that they must assert 
 this liberty and struggle for it to the death — yet suf- 
 fered exceeding inconvenience and mischief from the 
 dogmatic temper of the Reformers ; from their ina- 
 bility to content themselves with the old Creed which 
 Luther valued so dearly, or to frame one from which 
 there would not be a number of dissentient voices 
 among themselves. So although the circumstances of 
 Germany and its princes obliged the Lutheran divines 
 to frame the confession of Augsburg — though the men 
 who were chiefly concerned in the composition of it 
 were both learned and moderate — it could not become 
 a uniting bond for Christendom ; it was not one for 
 the Reformers in Switzerland or for England or even 
 Germany. 
 
 The most powerful monarch in the world found 
 himself embarrassed in every one of his dominions by 
 the tumult which a Saxon Monk, the son of a miner, 
 had raised. As chief of the Electors of Germany 
 Charles V. found himself in conflict with Princes who 
 
TBE REVIVAL AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 30s 
 
 Supported Luther. In the towns of his native Flanders 
 he saw the infection spreading among tradesmen^ even 
 among nobles. The religious troubles interfered with 
 his plans in Italy, made his relations with the Pope 
 contradictory and hypocritical. Francis Could intrigue 
 with the Protestant subjects of Charles, though he was 
 bent upon crushing Protestantism among his' own; 
 Even in his hereditary kingdom the most Catholic 
 Monarch of Spain and the Indies could not be sure 
 that there was not a leaven of disaffection at work, or 
 that he had any power to expel it. But in Spain the 
 ^armour was to be forged for resisting the Refonners 
 which its ruler did not possess. 
 
 When you hear of the Jesuits you think of a 
 society diffused through all parts of the globe, exer- 
 cising a mysterious influence everywhere. The im- 
 pression is a true one. I wish to shew you how true 
 it is ; how strictly the Jesuits belong to the subject 
 bf Social Morality with which we are occupied. But 
 that I may prove my right to speak of them I must 
 leave Society for the lonely chamber of a wounded 
 knight, a knight who was exchanging the drestms of 
 love and conquest for real struggles with his own soul. 
 Very unlike the birth and education of Luther and 
 Loyola were; directly contrasted the results at which 
 they arrived. Yet there was this resemblance between 
 them. Neither was occupied with dogmas, or opinions, 
 except accidentally. B©th were occupied with the pro- 
 blems of their own being. Both owed their power 
 to exercises through which they passed in hours 
 ^hen no eye but God's was upon them. They had 
 this further resemblance. Both spoke much of death ; 
 not of a death to take place at , a certain hour when 
 M,M. y 
 
 LEOT. XVII. 
 
 in Ger- 
 many, 
 Flanders, 
 and Italy, 
 
 The Catho- 
 lic Oliam- 
 pion not 
 the CathO' 
 lie Mon- 
 arch. 
 
 The Soci- 
 ety of 
 Jesvs. 
 
 Its foim- 
 dation in 
 the strug- 
 gles of an 
 individual. 
 
3o6 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY^ 
 
 Loyola's 
 a faith in 
 Death ; 
 Luiher's in 
 Resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 The result 
 of the 
 former, ab- 
 solute sub- 
 mission to 
 a Society. 
 
 The Soci- 
 ety how re- 
 
 The Pope 
 and the 
 Su;perior. 
 
 the body should cease to breathe, but of a present 
 death; a death which a man enters, as the caterpillar 
 becomes a chrysalis before it emerges into a butterfly^ 
 The anguish of this death each might describe in his 
 own way, the Spaniard with not less intense convic- 
 tion of its necessity than the German. But here 
 begins the difference between them to which all others 
 were subordinate. Luther deemed the death an ac- 
 cursed state, out of which the man by trusting in a 
 Deliverer arose a new creature. Loyola held that 
 the disciples of Jesus were not faithful to Him, un- 
 less, by all their studies and meditations they pro-; 
 duced this death and cherished it when it was pro- 
 duced. What would be the fruit of this process ? The 
 individual being slain the Society became all in alL 
 The member of it had nothing to hinder him from 
 paying the most absolute submission to its commands. 
 Whatever it bade him do, he would do. 
 
 What it bade him do; — but was there no one 
 to give the 'it' a living personal force V Were men 
 to obey an abstraction ? Loyola had no such idle 
 fancy. Beginning in romance he had become sternly 
 practical. Of course the decrees of the Church must 
 come through the Pope ; of course the notion of re- 
 sisting him which the Reformers had encouraged-r- 
 pretending their duty to obey a higher authority- 
 must be disraissed as a mere device of self-will. But 
 the Pope himself though very valuable as an express 
 sion of authority that might be exerted, of decrees 
 that might be issued through Christendom, was too 
 apt not to exert authority, not to issue decrees; evea 
 to use his authority first on one side then on another, 
 to issue contradictory decrees., For a practical mao 
 
THE REVIVAL AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 y^7 
 
 like Ignatius Loyola the Church of other days was 
 by no means a complete or satisfactory Society. The 
 Society of Jesus must compensate its deficiencies. The 
 Superior of that Society must be obeyed as the Pope 
 had never been. The members of the Society must 
 present such models of individual death, of purely 
 social vitality, as the members of the Church certainly 
 did not present. *■** 
 
 How dangerous such a Society might become to 
 the one which it was created to protect, many of the 
 Popes who witnessed its vast progress were painfully 
 aware. They made, their dislike of it evident; they 
 used the old orders against the intruder. But the 
 Jesuits became mightier and mightier. They could 
 gather the most enterprising and devoted spirits about 
 them ; they could invade countries which the Church 
 had not subdued ; they could reach the lowest and the 
 highest in all lands; their three instruments, the pulpit, 
 the school, and the Confessional, were reclaiming wo- 
 men, children, and men from the Protestant sects, 
 were bringing them under the yoke of the Papacy. 
 Could it afford to disown such services 1 Could it deny 
 that a new machinery had been invented exactly fitted 
 to cope with the temper of the times, because it was 
 ready to discard as well as to defend the habits and 
 maxims of an earlier time ? 
 
 It was indeed a Society which Ignatius Loyola 
 had called into existence. If a Society reaches its 
 perfection when the life of the individual is crushed! 
 it may be called the Society of the Universe. None ! 
 that preceded it did, none that are to follow it I 
 suspect will, compass this end so completely. Framers 
 of philosophical Systems may set the same object | 
 
 U2 
 
 LEOT, XVII. 
 
 Tfte Socie- 
 ty of JesTis 
 oversha- 
 dows the 
 Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 Some of 
 the Popes 
 rebel.. 
 
 But in 
 vain. 
 
 Loyola the 
 enemy of ■ 
 Nations - 
 was yet 
 strikingly 
 national. 
 
3.0?. 
 
 VNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XVII. 
 
 The Em- 
 pire of 
 Spainmore 
 than of 
 Borne pro- 
 moted by 
 the Jesuit 
 influence. 
 
 Popularity 
 of the 
 suicide re- 
 commend- 
 ed by the 
 Jesuits, 
 
 before them; their means of realising it look very- 
 feeble and contemptible by the side of those which 
 the Spaniard of the sixteenth century called into play. 
 We must not forget that he was a Spaniard of the 
 sixteenth century. Though his disciples have pene- 
 trated into all lands — have made thenjselves familiar 
 with all classes in all lands — ^though no order has 
 done so much to break down the distinction of Nations, 
 still the image of Spain was stamped upon their acts, 
 still it was at least as much the dominion of Spain 
 as of Rome that they were extending. That might 
 not be the case in the following century ; but while 
 Philip II. reigned, the Jesuit principle — ^the Jesuit 
 resolution to crush individual life — was paramount in 
 the mind of the Monarch, paramount in every plan 
 which was directed against the insurgents of Holland, 
 against the Huguenots of France, against the Queen 
 of England. The skill of generals, the discipline of 
 armies, the craft of monarchs, all these would have 
 been ineffectual if Ignatius had not taught men to 
 regard death — not physical but moral death — as the 
 highest result at which the most devout men, by per- 
 severing struggles and by divine grace, could arrive. 
 Men who knew nothing of the exercises of Ignatius, 
 men worn out with self-indulgence — exhausted by 
 fruitless efforts to determine which of different opinions 
 was the least improbable — having tried all the re- 
 sources of self-will — heard with delight that their 
 highest duty was to abandon the search for truth, the 
 dream of finding any illumination respecting the divine 
 purposes. Only by submitting to the judgment and 
 the will of a fellow-creature could they obtain the 
 slightest satisfaction of, their discontent. "When they 
 
THE REVIVAL AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 309 
 
 had submitted, it would vamsh away. Was this a 
 hard death to die? Multitudes in that day, multi- 
 tudes in, all days since, have said that none was so 
 easy, that it was like the death of the philosopher in 
 the bath, the veins slightly opened, the blood trickling 
 quietly away. And then how quickly the rewards of 
 this death follow ! You have not to wait for them in a 
 future state. All goes on so pleasantly here. Give 
 yourself into the keeping of one who has a right to 
 direct you and how tranqiiilly business may be done 
 and leisure enjoyed ! 
 
 If the word Faith was Luther's,, Obedience was 
 Loyola's. Grand names both. I put the last first 
 when I spoke of a Father's Authority as the founda- 
 tion of Domestic Morality; I have put it first also in 
 speaking of the Universal Morality; since I have 
 said that the Will of the Father in Heaven, the Obe- 
 dience of the Son, take precedence of other principles 
 in the Eevelation of Christ. But you will have ob- 
 served that this is not the Obedience which Loyola 
 enjoined. The domestic relation has nothing. to do 
 with the Society of Jesus ; the Universal Relation, 
 however essential as a dogma, just as little. The obe- 
 dience which it exacts is to a Superior. The Pope 
 is the Superior expanded and weakened. Thus the 
 belief in Paternal Authority, which is expressed in the 
 Ci-eed of Christendom, after struggling for centuries 
 with the acknowledgment of a visible Latin Father 
 whose authority consisted in his right to say what 
 men should think and believe, received its greatest 
 shock from Jesuitism. So far as the principle of this 
 Society penetrated the minds and hearts of men, the 
 Pope's dominion ' no longer presented even the faint 
 
 LECT. XVII. 
 
 Character 
 of Loyola's 
 obedience. 
 
 The belief 
 of fatherly 
 Authority 
 quenched 
 in Jesuit' 
 ism. 
 
'3IO 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XTII. 
 
 Yet it 
 spoke with 
 anauthori- 
 ty which 
 the Lu- 
 therans 
 wanted. 
 
 Calvin 
 against 
 Loyola. 
 
 What his 
 principle 
 effected. 
 
 image of this authority. But more effectually than 
 ever it helped to make the Lord's prayer unintelli- 
 gible. When you hear of Jesuit obedience you must 
 keep this distinction in your minds. It must not be 
 forgotten, on the other hand, that the Jesuit had a 
 power which the Lutheran did not possess. The first 
 started from a higher ground. One spoke of the soli- 
 tary creature in her weakness and evil flying to a 
 Deliverer; the other began with a call on all men 
 for submission to a Ruler, who, if not absolutely om- 
 nipotent, yet appeared to represent omnipotence on 
 earth. If some felt intensely their need of such an 
 emancipation as the German spoke of, there were far 
 more who felt that they and all their neighbours 
 needed government; was not the Spaniard's message 
 then one for them ? 
 
 No ! answered another voice ; the voice not of a 
 German, of a Spaniard, but of a Frenchman; 'just 
 'because you demand a Ruler, an absolute Omnipo- 
 'tent Ruler; just because each nation requires such 
 'a Ruler and each man, you cannot be content with 
 ' the rule of the Pope ; you must renounce that rule 
 ' utterly and for ever ; you must pronounce it accursed 
 ' and hateful. The Pope's Church is no Church. God 
 ' Himself is building His Church, is calling us into it. 
 ' We stand upon His election. He can make us know 
 ' what that is. We want no other.' So spoke John 
 Calvin; and .numbers in France, in Holland, in Scot- 
 land listened to his words. The wars in France were 
 wars of the Calvinistical principle against the Catholic. 
 The deliverance of Holland from Spain was the work 
 of Calvinists. The formation of the Scotch nation and 
 the overthrow of Mary Stuart was the doing of men 
 
THE REVIVAL AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 311 
 
 possessed by the Calvinistical conviction. A principle 
 which produced consequences so mighty, that which 
 was the counteracting force to the Jesuit force, must 
 demand the earnest attention of the Social Moralist. 
 Without it Social Morality would, as I think, be feeble 
 and imperfect. 
 
 In his Essay on Milton, Lord Macaulay dwelt with 
 a young man's eloquence on the power of this faith, 
 ■as it was exhibited in the lives of the English Puri- 
 tans. In his mature years he illustrated it far more 
 strikingly in the character of William the III., the 
 central figure in his history. The records of our 
 civil war and of the Revolution which concluded them 
 are, as he feltj unintelligible, if we treat with indif- 
 ference the belief in an Unchangeable Personal Will 
 which not only governs the course of events, but 
 which, first of all, chooses out individual men to ful- 
 fil its purposes. The strength of Cromwell, Mr Carlyle 
 has shewn us, lay in the conviction that he was a 
 called and elected man ; the strength of each man 
 in his host depended mainly on the sense of his own 
 vocation to be there for death or for life. What was 
 true in the following generation was true of those 
 whom William the Silent gathered about him, was 
 true of those who were inspired by the preaching of 
 Knox. The teacher whose name they all reverenced 
 •was a great dogmatist. He had the love of system 
 which belongs to Frenchmen ; he had no impatience 
 of the fetters of Latin when he was most opposing 
 himself to the Church which had consecrated that 
 tongue to its service. But his dogmas, his systematic 
 gifts, his Latin lore, however they might be prized 
 by his disciples, would have stirred no armies to battle, 
 
 LBOT, XVH. 
 
 Cromwell 
 and Wil- 
 liam III, 
 
 Calvin a ■ 
 gnat Sys~ 
 temaiizer. 
 
 But his 
 strength 
 was not in 
 his System. 
 
3i2 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 iEOT. XVII. 
 
 The war a 
 
 deadly 
 
 one. 
 
 TJie Cal- 
 vinists 
 give no 
 quarter 
 and ask for 
 none. 
 
 no people to rebellion. A living God higher than all 
 dogmas and systems was heard, not by the schoolman, 
 but by the hard-handed seller of cloth, by the rough 
 ploughman, speaking in no school-tongue to him, bid- 
 ding him rise and fight with himself, with monarchs, 
 Tyith devils. The Jesuit told him that- his salvation 
 hereafter depended on his submission to the decrees 
 of the Pope and the Church. Let the soldiers of 
 Philip and Alva yield to those threats. He dared not. 
 He must defy them. What were the Pope, or the 
 Church, to him ? They were fighting aga,inst the God 
 who had called him out of death to life. 
 
 In such a warfare there could be no compromise 
 and little compassion upon either side. Jify heart and- 
 soul sympathise with those who were engaged against 
 Alva and Philip. I hold as much as any one can, 
 that they were strugghng for freedom to act, and think, 
 and live ; for the right to be men. I hold that unless 
 that right had been asserted, the meaning of the words 
 Mercy and Justice would have been lost for us who 
 have followed. But I dare not pretend that except 
 in rare instances where feelings derived from, other 
 sources modified those which were characteristically 
 theirs, they did or could display those virtues towards 
 their enemies. To stamp out Papists as enemies of 
 God was, they deemed, their vocation. They did not 
 differ from the early soldiers of Islamism in that re- 
 spect. They were both equally Iconoclasts, both equally 
 destroyers of those whom they accounted worshipper? 
 of Images. 
 
 Since I did not scruple to speak of soldiers of the 
 Crescent as witnesses for a Truth against which the 
 Imperialism of Constantinople with all its surface 
 
TBE REVIVAL AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 313 
 
 Cliristianity could maintaiu no permanent contest, you 
 will not suppose that I can withhold my homage from 
 .those who regarded . Christ as their supreme Lord. 
 John Knox, it has been said, died with the Apostles' 
 Creed on his lips, wishing that those about him could 
 understand it as he did at that moment. He had 
 always rebutted with indignation the charge that he 
 worshipped a mere Sovereign instead of an essentially 
 Righteous Being. Perhaps when he was leaving the 
 ea,rth the name of Father which he had pronounced 
 so often came before him with a new vitality, deep- 
 ening and expanding his thoughts of a supreme 
 Will It was not to be expected that he or his fol- 
 lowers, whilst they were in the midst of a deadly 
 struggle, should suppose that this Name had anything 
 to do with those who hated them and whom they 
 Jiated. When the struggle was over,. when the Cal- 
 vinists settled down in Holland or Scotland as domi- 
 nant ecclesiastical bodies, or elsewhere as organised 
 sects, the dogmatic and negative elements of their 
 belief almost inevitably became predominaMover those 
 which had a quickening and inspiring influence on 
 them in' the sixteenth century. They suffered their 
 children and men in general to say the Lord's Prayer ; 
 but it was in an unreal sense ; they would have done 
 more honestly to forbid it altogether. 
 
 In speaking of the Lutheran, the Jesuit and the 
 Calvinist, I have alliided to Germany, to Spain, to 
 France, to Holland, and Scotland; only by accident, 
 in connection with the Puritans and William of Orange, 
 to England. For England, under the Tudor Princes, 
 exhibits an aspect of the struggle between the Uni- 
 versal and the Individual Morality which is peculiar. 
 
 LBOT. XVII. 
 
 The nega- 
 tive side of 
 their faith 
 prevailing 
 over the 
 positive. 
 
 The Lord's 
 Prayer be- 
 comes for 
 them either 
 exclusive 
 or a mock- 
 ery. 
 
314 
 
 UNIVEmAL MORALITY. 
 
 Circum- 
 stances of 
 England. 
 
 The Na- 
 tional 
 King and 
 the Uni- 
 versal 
 Bishop. 
 
 Wyeliffe 
 national. 
 
 The Lol- 
 lards not 
 national. 
 
 and should not be confounded with what we read of 
 elsewhere, thougli the phenomena here can never be 
 understood apart from those on the Continent. Through 
 all the Plantagenet period the strongest princes were 
 maintaining a national position against the claims of 
 the Pope to universal dominion. The issue upon 
 which the controversy turned, was the dependence of 
 the Clergy on the native Sovereign or on the foreign 
 Bishop. There were Beckets among the native Clergy; 
 there were such men as the Bishop of London whom 
 he excommunicated ; insurgents against royalty in the 
 name of the Pope and the Universal Church ; servants 
 of the King in the name of the National Church. In 
 the reign of Henry III. the suspicion of Roman as- 
 cendency and of its supporters the Friars became 
 strongly developed among certain of the Clergy. It 
 grew as the national language grew. It became asso- 
 ciated with a vehement protest on behalf of individual 
 morality under Wyeliffe ; of individual morality united 
 with domestic morality. The Friars were denounced, 
 as the foes of practical honesty, even of chastity. The 
 prelates were denounced as luxurious and simoniacal. 
 Under the Lancastrian princes the Wycliffites lost 
 their sympathies with the royal power ; the monarchs 
 united with the prelates to persecute them ; the pre- 
 lates in recompense paid homage to the Sovereigns 
 and submitted to many restraints upon intercourse 
 with Eome. The abominations of the Ecclesiastical 
 Courts vexed people of all classes; the Monasteries 
 were suspected of indolence and of various crimes; 
 there were cries for Reformation ; for a political Re- 
 formation, for a moral Reformation. The right of the 
 people to a Bible was proclaimed as it had been ever 
 
THE REVIVAL AND' THE REFORMATION. 
 
 315 
 
 since Wycliffe's days ; it was denied more vehemently 
 than ever when it was seen that the Bible would be 
 accepted, not as a document for other ages, but as 
 a message to that time about its evils. The rage 
 which Henry VIII. conceived against Luther arose 
 from the belief that he was stirring up the people 
 against their rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical. The 
 renunciation of the papal authority by the same Henry 
 was nob merely the gratification of a private indul- 
 gence ; it was prompted by the instincts of an English 
 Sovereign determined to assert his own position, able 
 to assert it more completely than his predecessors had 
 done. For a large portion of his people went with 
 him, hailing him as their representative ; a large por- 
 tion of the most zealous, learned, youthful of his 
 Clergy went with him, feeling that he would deliver 
 them from the power which had granted indulgences, 
 which interfered with direct faith, which exalted itself 
 into the place of the highest Will. That is to say, 
 the intensely individual feelings to which Luther and 
 Calvin had appealed co-operated with the old national 
 feelings of Englishmen, and accepted the Sovereign 
 as their champion. When they did not, when they 
 simply proclaimed themselves Protestant, King Henry 
 persecuted them ; he had no notion of allowing sects 
 in his Kingdom. On the same principle though to an 
 opposite effect, Edward VI. claimed the land as Pro- 
 testant, and persecuted Eomanists; whatever is not 
 national must be put down, was the maxim of both. 
 When Mary gave herself up to the Spanish alliance, 
 when she besought the Pope to accept her again as 
 his subject, the Protestants were treated as rebels- 
 they must be punished as the Christians under the. I 
 
 The Sove- 
 reign and 
 the Re- 
 formers 
 beginning 
 to under- 
 stand each 
 other. 
 
 The fruit 
 was anEn- 
 glish not a 
 sect move- 
 ment. 
 
 The worst 
 and best 
 tendencies 
 of the 
 Tudor 
 period 
 National 
 not Catho- 
 lic. 
 
3i6 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XVII. 
 
 The 
 
 Marian 
 
 ^vgerers. 
 
 The Eliza- 
 bethan 
 age. 
 
 Benefits 
 
 which 
 
 England 
 
 derived 
 
 from the 
 
 conflict 
 
 withPhilip 
 
 and the 
 
 Jesuits. 
 
 Roman Empire/were punished. They endured as those 
 Christians endured. The refusal to acknowledge the 
 supremacy of the Pope was for them what the refusal 
 of sacrifice to the image of the Emperor had been for 
 the former. They looked up to the Christ whom they 
 had confessed in the Creed to preserve them from 
 reverence to His vicar at Rome. But it must be said, 
 at the same time, that they were not like the Martyrs 
 of the olden time, maintaining the reality of a Family 
 for all nations. Thej'' were doing a work, it seems 
 to me, as necessary; testifying for the sacredness of 
 their nation's life, testifying for the relations of the 
 family against those who were undermining them in 
 the interest of a society boasting to be spiritual and 
 universal. I cannot think our gratitude to them can 
 ever be exaggerated, but it should be placed on its 
 right ground; their influence on subsequent history 
 will then be fairly appreciated. 
 
 In the next reign England was brought face to face 
 with Spain and the Jesuits. They laboured more to 
 overthrow our Queen and Nation than to effect any of 
 their purposes. They felt that for this end all contriv- 
 ances were lawful. Numbers were ready to risk death 
 themselves if they might inflict it on Elizabeth. This 
 discipline, I conceive, was exceedingly salutary to us. 
 That our Statesmen were led to commit a number of 
 falsehoods in contending against falsehoods ; that in 
 such experiments they had generally the blessing of 
 being outwitted; that the Queen was perplexed and 
 vacillating in her own humours ; that the Clergy in 
 their eagerness to be national often crushed the witness 
 for a Universal Family which amidst all contradictions 
 the Romanists were bearing — often crushed the witness 
 
TBB mviVAL And teb reformation. 
 
 %^f 
 
 for individual life whicli amidst all contradictions the 
 Puritans in their own body were bearing; that they 
 were sometimes slavish in their devotion to Koyalty, 
 sometimes arrogant in asserting their own prerogatives ; 
 this I am far from denying. But somehow, through 
 the errors of all parties and by means of them all, 
 England was learning a lesson practically which the 
 latest school of French Philosophy is attempting to 
 teach theoretically ; that there are two bodies needful 
 for the good order of every State, one a governing, one 
 an educational body ; that if the last assumes the pro- 
 vince of the first it must fail, that if the first assumes 
 the province of the last it must fail ; that they must 
 work co-ordinately if the nation is not to become feeble 
 through want of external law or of internal life. The 
 distinctness and co-operation of these two factors of na- 
 tional existence we commonly express by the phrase, 
 ' Union of Church and State,' which may be abused to 
 many sectarian purposes and receive many perverse 
 interpretations, but which, when it has been purified of 
 the baser elements that have mingled with it, will be 
 found, I think, to express the secret of English sta- 
 bility. We should as frankly acknowledge — ^for history 
 demands the confession — that unless the individual 
 election of the Calvinist, the protest for Universality by 
 the Eomanist, had worked continually by the side of 
 this national principle — each threatening at times to 
 extinguish it — a habit of feeble compromise, of insin- 
 cere profession, of satisfaction with mere, negatives, 
 would have prevailed both among our Churchmen and 
 Statesmen. They are reminded by the presence of 
 those who ridicule their fellowship or condemn it as 
 picked,, that they can only prove it to be good for any- 
 
 LEOT. XVII. 
 
 The Union 
 of Chwreh 
 and State; 
 is it a 
 reality or 
 only a 
 watch- 
 word ! 
 
 Harriot 
 been suffit 
 cientfor 
 
318 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XVII, 
 
 life tliough 
 the 
 
 strength 
 of it. 
 
 The State 
 a check 
 upon tlie 
 riches 
 of the 
 Church, 
 not the 
 author of 
 them. 
 
 thing by shewing that it gives a higher tone to States- 
 manship, a more practical direction to the thoughts and 
 the acts of Churchmen. Not producing these fruits it 
 carries within it fatal signs and seeds of dissolution. 
 
 Oftentimes the Union of Church and State is repre- 
 sented in very different language to this. It is sup- 
 posed that the State, requiring the aid- of a spiritual 
 Society, provides the funds for its use without which its 
 operations would be ineffectual. Dogmas of this kind 
 seem to me strikingly at variance with history. The 
 Universal Church instead of suffering from want of 
 funds, has been in perpetual danger from the overflow 
 of them ; its rulers have been continually tempted to 
 turn them to their own account. In different lands the 
 cry of Simony and Extortion has been raised against 
 its teachers ; the most notorious acts of States — espe-i 
 cially of our State — have been designed to hinder the 
 accumulation of revenues in ecclesiastical hands, to pre- 
 vent the misappropriation of them. Sometimes this 
 has been done honestly and beneficially ; sometimes in- 
 juriously, because the State has thought that only out- 
 ward and material enjoyments were of any worth to its 
 subjects. Even in such instances the spiritual body 
 may have derived great good from the lesson ; its guides 
 may have been led to ask themselves whether they do 
 not exist to testify that outward and material interests 
 are not the most important of all to a Nation; and 
 therefore that Money cannot be their chief agent. There 
 may often be much insincerity in the taunt that rich 
 Churchmen profess to derive their lineage from poor 
 fishermen. But we cannot afford ^o dispense with th^ 
 admonition, be it sincere or insincere. For Money, as 
 we learn from the instance of Leo X., does very easily 
 
TBE BEVIVALANS THE REFORMATION. 
 
 319 
 
 commend itself to men in ecclesiastical positions and at 
 a time of high civilization as the good thing, which all 
 Morality may be sacrificed to obtain. If Statesmen 
 remind us with a sneer that the TJniversal Family was 
 established in the world by men who did not count 
 that which they had as their own, we must not dispute 
 or qualify the assertion. I canqot believe that there 
 will be a true "Universal Morality which does not in 
 some way give effect to that principle, or a true Na- 
 tional Molality which does not reconcile it with the 
 possession and administration of Property "itith'e hands 
 of individuals. 
 
 The subject which I have been considering through- 
 out this Lecture suggests this puzzle to us continually. 
 The Individual and National Morality bore a noble 
 protest against the Money Worship of the Church which 
 professed to be Universal. Tha>t was the beginning of 
 the protest, and never ceased to give it vitality. But 
 individuals and Nations are the conservators of pro- 
 perty ,• they cannot shew us any human basis for Society 
 which can prevent Property from being accepted as the 
 basis of it. Where is this human basis to be sought 
 for ? Who can tell us of it ? 
 
 These questions began to occupy men's minds when 
 the weary battles between Romanism and Protestantism, 
 which the 16th century had called forth, were approach- 
 ing to a close. 
 
 LEOI. XVII. 
 
 The 
 Church 
 may be the 
 greatest 
 witness for 
 or against 
 Money 
 Worship. 
 
 The great 
 puzzle of 
 tKe 'dgf,' 
 
LBOT.XVin. 
 
 The new 
 age. 
 
 The 
 Problem. 
 
 LECTURE XVIII. 
 
 ATTEMPTS TO DEDUCE TEE PRINCIPLES OF 
 HUMAN MORALITY FROM OBSERVATIONS 
 ON HUMAN NATURE. 
 
 I COME now to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 of the Christian sera. What lessons have these centu- 
 ries contributed to our enquiry concerning the basis of 
 Human or Universal Morality ? I believe that -we owe 
 them much precious instruction. And when I say 
 we owe it to them, I mean to teachers in those cen- 
 turies who differed altogether from each other, who 
 seemed as if they existed to confute each other; I think, 
 each of them has told us something which he had as- 
 certained for himself; I think he has left us the task of 
 considering how it is possible to reconcile the principle 
 which seemed to him all sufficient with principles which 
 he rejected as untenable. That we may see from what 
 point the philosophers of those centuries started, I must 
 recall to you some of the observations which I made in 
 the last Lecture. 
 
 We found ourselves encountered by a strange para- 
 dox. The men, women and children in all parts of 
 Christendom were repeating still — as they who went 
 before them had repeated — a Creed which implied the 
 
FROM HOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 5-' 
 
 belief of a DiviDe Humanity ; a Prayer which implied 
 that all men had a Father in Heaven. The most emi- 
 nent Christian Teachers, Lutheran, Jesuit and Calvinist, 
 adhering to these forms, inculcating them on their dis- 
 ciples, y£t amidst all differences seemed to agree on this 
 one point, that Humanity was not divine, that the ma- 
 jority of men could not call God their Father. It 
 seemed as if they had arrived at this conclusion in spite 
 of efforts against it. Luther felt intensely that ■ what 
 was true for himself, a sinner, must be true for all how- 
 ever they had sinned. Yet by degrees Lutheranism 
 came to mean that certain blessings had been conferred 
 on men who were more conscious of evil thaa others, 
 and who therefore exercised more faith than others. 
 The Consciousness and the faith, by whatever tests they 
 were to be ascertained, cut them off from the rest of 
 mankind. Loyola assuredly wished to raise a standard 
 against sectarian divisions, to vindicate the existence of 
 a 'Universal Society. Yet to be what he would have 
 them to be, men must lose all the individuality which 
 appeared to be the very characteristic of men as distin- 
 guished from the animals. Calvin would arouse them 
 to the intensest sense of individual existence. God's 
 voice was going forth for the very purpose of arousing 
 them. But since few seemed to recognise it, Calvin 
 resolved that the majority of men must be in an out- 
 cast condition; those who were saved were exempted 
 from the lot to which i\i&iic kind was devoted. So long 
 as the common Creed was adopted, there was a power- 
 ful counteraction to all these conclusions ; those who 
 were most earnest in their convictions were generally 
 least embarrassed by the. conclusions, least scrupulous 
 about contradicting themselves to avoid them. For 
 M. M. -V- 
 
 LECT.XVIir. 
 
 The Sects 
 abandon _ 
 the search 
 for any 
 solution 
 of it. 
 
 Yet men 
 and women 
 feel them- 
 selves 
 obliged to 
 adopt one 
 in the 
 practice 
 of life. 
 
322 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT.Xnil. 
 
 Th& Pro- 
 blem un- 
 dertaken 
 by Philo- 
 sophers. 
 
 Bacon. 
 
 they believed in that which was above logic ; grasping 
 the premises, they could conceive that the deductions 
 represented the feebleness of their intellects. But as 
 sects and schools formed themselves, the deductions 
 were found more manageable than the premises. They 
 could be expressed much more distinctly in formulas; 
 they were much more convenient for the rhetorician as 
 well as the disputant. By degrees both of these had 
 plentiful scope in maintaining or refuting different mo- 
 difications of the conclusions which the experience of 
 life seemed to suggest ; modifications hard to justify by 
 reasoning, but eagerly adopted by the affections, always 
 shaking the stability of the general dogmas, always wel- 
 comed for the comfort which they afforded in individual 
 cases. Men of strong hard understandings flung them 
 aside with scorn and indignation ; the feebler and more 
 feminine clung to them in spite of all difficulties. 
 
 Such confusions and contradictions were to be ob- 
 served in all circles and schools where these questions 
 were discussed; they could not escape the attention 
 either of students or practical politicians. They must 
 find some foundation for a common morality; one 
 which should serve the wants of men irrespective of 
 their schools and sects. They assumed on the autho- 
 rity of the sects and schools themselves, that their' 
 Cree4;s were not human, not meant for mankind. They 
 would conduct their investigations therefore without 
 reference to any theological maxims. What maxims 
 should they substitute for these ? 
 
 The name of Bacon stands before that of all 
 Englishmen in the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. He had predecessors in Italy and Germany who 
 may deserve honour greater than his for their actual 
 
FMOM H0BBE8 TO KANT. 
 
 323 
 
 discoveries in the world of Nature ; who certainly en- 
 dured persecutions for them from which he was exempt. 
 But no one so deliberately undertook the task of ex- 
 plaining how investigations in Nature should be con- 
 ducted ; what in former days had hindered the success 
 of them. No one having himself had a large political 
 experience, being the most acute of writers on Morals, 
 expressed so strong a conviction that there was a 
 securer method of testing the facts of Nature than any 
 which could be applied to the facts of human life. 
 If he had been indifferent about these — if he had not 
 employed immense diligence in fixing the relations 
 of History, Ethics, Jurisprudence to each other, and 
 in providing for the more effectual study of them — ^his 
 manifest preference for the other kind of search — his 
 greater hopefulness for it — would have made less im- 
 pression on his readers. As the weight of the Lawyer's 
 and Statesman's disappointments and errors was 
 thrown into the physical scale, all that he had known, 
 all that he had been, seemed to testify for the maxim 
 which he asserted in the preface to his Instauratio 
 Magna, that the ambition of finding a Moral Science 
 had led to the fall of Man, that only Natural Science 
 was innocent. 
 
 The form which this remark took shewed how 
 familiar Bacon was with the modes of thinking^which 
 prevailed among theologians ; he had more interest in 
 Theology, more knowledge of it, than most who passed 
 for learned divines; he never evinced the least dissent 
 from the Creed of his country, rather a very firm 
 allegiance to it. Yet no one spoke with greater warmth 
 against the theological notions, especially as to final 
 causes, which had disturbed the study of Nature ; no 
 
 X2 
 
 His Moral' 
 ity and 
 his Phy- 
 sics. 
 
 His con- 
 tempt of 
 the studies 
 in which 
 he excelled,. 
 
 Theologi- 
 cal idols 
 and all 
 others cast 
 down, 
 
324 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT.XTIH. 
 
 He pro- 
 motes phy- 
 sical en- 
 quiries; he 
 cannot 
 deter mere 
 from moral 
 enquiries. 
 
 iut the 
 moral en- 
 quiries 
 begin to 
 assume a 
 physical 
 chardcter. 
 
 one took such pains to warn divines that they must 
 not bring their theories and preconceptions into the 
 investigation of facts. Theories and preconceptions of 
 all kinds must be sedulously banished from that inves- 
 tigation. Men must be continually on the watch 
 against the mixture of the habits of their own minds, 
 whether particular or general, belonging to them as 
 individuals or as human beings, with the objects which 
 they were contemplating. The main business of one 
 who traced out an experimental method — a method 
 for ascertaining the meaning of facts — was to explain 
 where these habits were likely to intrude themselves, 
 and how the errors to which they gave rise might be 
 corrected. 
 
 That lessons so elaborate as these, proceeding from 
 such a man, should have given a great impulse to 
 the 'innocent' studies which he commended by pre- 
 cept and example, was surely to be expected. It 
 might also have been expected that an age busy with 
 a number of political experiments, occupied with many 
 moral experiments, should not desert them, even if 
 they were of the same character with those which 
 produced the fall. Men would not be persuaded even 
 by the ablest arguments that they ought to despair 
 of knowing themselves, or even that such knowledge 
 was not of primary importance to them. But might 
 they not seek for that knowledge in the way which 
 Bacon had declared to be most effectual for obtainin? 
 a knowledge of the external world ? They had those 
 reasons to which I have alluded for concluding that 
 theologians who had been so troublesome in Physics 
 would give no help in this region. To follow the 
 teaching of the Jfovum Organum they must also de^ 
 
FJIOM EOBBES TO KAN.T. 
 
 "323 
 
 tach themselves and their own modes of thinking from 
 ■these investigations. How could that be done when 
 they were the subjects of the investigation? There 
 must be a Human Nature ; a Nature belonging to all 
 men, not to one as distinct from another, not to 
 Englishmen more than Frenchmen or Germans. This 
 might be set apart and looked at, just as much as 
 the nature of flowers or stones. Conclusions might 
 ,be established respecting it and then applied to par- 
 ticular cases. 
 
 The Students who were engaging in Bacon's spirit 
 and according to his method in physical investigation, 
 would perhaps have wondered that the Moralists and 
 Politicians who derived hints from the same source 
 should apply them so differently. They had learnt to 
 dread generalities ; to fix their thoughts on particulars ; 
 to make their experiments on these ; to discover laws 
 in these. Their imitators were busy with what looked 
 like a great abstraction — a very sublime generalisa- 
 tion. They were to start -from the conception of a 
 Nature ; and from this fantastic entity to argue about 
 the conditions and laws to which individuals must 
 conform themselves. In general men who are en- 
 gaged in different pursuits do not trouble themselves 
 enough about each other's plans to make remarks of 
 this kind. But they may have presented themselves 
 to the eminent man whose works afford the first and 
 most illustrious specimen of what I venture to call Na- 
 tural Philosophy applied to the examination of Human 
 Society. 
 
 I. Thomas Hobbes had been an amanuensis of 
 Bacon. I do not know that he has confessed any 
 gpecial obligations to the great Chancellor. I should 
 
 LEOI.XVIII, 
 
 Human 
 Nature. 
 
 The as- 
 sumption 
 of such a 
 Nature not 
 Baconian. 
 
 Thomas 
 Hobbes. 
 
326 
 
 tlNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 tEOT.XTIII. 
 
 He comes 
 from a 
 physical 
 school to 
 investigate 
 the politi- 
 cal events 
 of his time. 
 
 Greek and 
 
 Hebrew 
 
 champions 
 
 of liberty 
 
 equally 
 
 hateful. 
 
 think they could have had little sympathy with each 
 other. The habits of their minds, as well as their 
 positive conclusions, were strangely unlike. Bacon was 
 given to flights of fancy which Hobbes must have 
 treated with much logical contempt. Yet the impres- 
 sion of one upon the other is unmistakeable. Hobbes 
 always avowed a deep respect for the physical disco- 
 veries of his age ; as great a scorn for the ethical and 
 political theories of former ages. Nevertheless he felt 
 that his vocation was to be an ethical and political 
 student. Hating Plato and Aristotle and the Greek 
 philosophers generally, he reverenced Thucydides. !For 
 he, so it seemed to Hobbes, had clearly prophesied of 
 evils which were threatening England in the days of 
 Charles I. Parliaments were raising their voice against 
 Prerogative. Ecclesiastics were defending it by ima- 
 gining some divine commission which the Monarch had 
 received. Puritans were appealing from a visible to 
 an invisible Ruler. \y^hat was coming? Such an 
 anarchy as there had been in the Greek cities when 
 they were fullest of dreams about liberty, when they 
 were most impatient of dominion. All the evils of 
 which Hellenic Democracies gave the examples would 
 be tremendously aggravated by the Hebrew element 
 which the religious men threw into the cauldron. How 
 was the danger to be- averted ? 
 
 Throwing aside all conceptions which pseudo-phi- 
 losophers or theologians have introduced into the en- 
 quiry, let us consider what Human Nature itself is. 
 Hobbes is determined that the experiment shall be 
 made fairly. The creature he is considering must be 
 stripped of all the wrappings with which we find him 
 encircled. He must be pursued to his native woods< 
 
FROM HOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 327 
 
 You will not find him in solitude there. Many savages 
 are herding together. What is their business ? Fight- 
 ing. Every one has hold of something which the other 
 wants. Every one wishes to get that something for 
 himself. A brutal condition, you say. Well ! but 
 these creatures are like you in all respects. They are 
 exhibiting your nature. 
 
 ' Oh ! impossible, my nature desires Society.' All 
 in due time. The Society is to come. But first men 
 must be weary of fighting. They must find out that 
 fighting does not answer ; that it does not bring each 
 man what he craves for. Then they begin to perceive 
 the worth of combination. They agree together not 
 to rob and kill if they have some protection against 
 the "peril of being robbed and killed. They enter into 
 contracts. They find the need of a supreme power 
 which shall compel each party to observe the contract ; 
 which shall hinder A from cheating B, B from cheating 
 A. It must be a supreme power; once established 
 there must be no talk about the right of this man 
 not to bow down to it, of that man to choose a go- 
 vernor whom he would like better, of a third to claim 
 the help of some unseen Sovereign against what he 
 fancies to be the injustice of his visible Sovereign, All 
 such claims overthrow Society. They bring back the 
 State of War ; the savage State. 
 
 Society then is entirely artificial; no product of 
 Nature at all. But it can only subsist if it is in con- 
 formity with the principles of that Nature which it 
 seems to contradict. How can that be? Look at a 
 stone. Its condition is to rest. But an outward force 
 sets it in motion. Its nature obliges it to move when 
 that force is applied to it. So is man subject to mo- 
 
 LEOT.XYIII. 
 
 Human 
 Nature in 
 its naked- 
 ness. 
 
 When it 
 begins to 
 clothe 
 itself. 
 
 Society 
 wrtificial. 
 
 How the 
 artifice 
 works with 
 the 
 Natwre. 
 
328 
 
 UNIVERSAL. MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT.XTIII. 
 
 Tlie De 
 OiTe and 
 the Levi- 
 athan. 
 
 IrresistihU 
 Motives. 
 
 tives. If certain forces, act upon him, let him be as 
 naturally inert as he may, he must submit to those 
 foi-ces; he cannot help himself. The motives which 
 dispose men to be at war with their neiglibours may 
 be so employed by the supreme power that they shall 
 find themselves disposed or compelled — you may use 
 either expression — to keep the peace with their neigh- 
 bours. Peace may be accepted as their normal state. 
 They may f6el that it is each man's interest to keep 
 war at a distance. 
 
 The arrangements of a Commonwealth fashioned 
 upon these maxims form the subject of Hobbes' book 
 Be Give and of his Leviathan. You must not call it 
 an ideal Commonwealth. Hobbes wishes to have as 
 little to do with ideas as possible. Those troublesome 
 ideas of Eight and Wrong— ^of what men ought to do 
 and ought not to do — had confused the rulers and the 
 ruled. The man who flings these aside that he may 
 consider the motives by which men are swayed to one 
 course of conduct or another, explains how Society ac- 
 tually is preserved from dissolution. Every scheme not 
 grounded on these motives tends to its dissolution. 
 
 Is there nothing then which holds this fabric to- 
 gether besides the ruler who is subject to the accident 
 of death ? The answer has been practically given when 
 it is proclaimed that men are subject to Motives which 
 they cannot resist. Human Nature, like all nature, is 
 under bands of Necessity. The man is as little able 
 to break loose from that yoke as the smallest insect.. 
 He has dreamed of Choice. The sooner he gives up 
 the dream the better, so far as it implies that he can 
 in any wise determine to what forces he will yield, 
 what he will resist. When. you speak of his Nature 
 
FROM EOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 329 
 
 you relinquish such demands for him. What his na- 
 ture is he must be. What drives it this way or that 
 must drive him. 
 
 Such conclusions did not interfere with Hobbes' 
 notions of a Religion. He declared himself a faithful 
 member of the Church of England. He preferred it 
 to other churches, because he thought it less aspired to 
 set up its own claims against those of the civil Ruler. 
 So long as men confined their belief to the unseen 
 world he would allow them to entertain whatever they 
 pleased. Whenever the belief came into contact with 
 the visible world, or affected their behaviour as citi- 
 zens, it was a nuisance which the magistrate must in 
 one way or other abate. 
 
 Since I have told you that I believe we may learn 
 something valuable from each of these seventeenth and 
 eighteenth century teachers, you will ask me what spe- 
 cially I learn from this one who seems to contradict 
 most of the positions which I have laid down in pre- 
 vious Lectures. I have derived these instructions froip 
 Hobbes for which I must always feel very grateful to 
 him: (i) He has shewn me what men would certainly 
 be if they came into the world as merely separate 
 creatures without fathers or mothers, or any relations 
 to their fellows. Then they would be the mere warring 
 creatures which he has described. So I can appreciate 
 better what the value of those facts is which make his 
 account of mankind a fiction, though by no means a 
 useless fiction. (2) Hobbes has made me understand 
 more clearly than any one that I have a nature which 
 inclines me to be at strife with my fellows, and that if 
 I am the mere victim of that nature I shall be at strife 
 with them. (3) He has convinced me that if Society 
 
 Beligion of 
 Hohbes. 
 
 Reagons 
 for grati- 
 tude to 
 Jlohbes. 
 Belatioits. 
 
 Nature. 
 
330 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Force, 
 
 Necessity 
 
 Will. 
 
 Locke. 
 
 The enemy 
 of Prero- 
 gative, 
 
 is a merely artificial institution it must be what he 
 supposed it to be, dependent altogether on Force, dis- 
 turbed and shaken whenever the thought of Eight 
 mingles with that of Force. We might have gathered 
 as much from the history of the Eoman Empire before 
 and after Constantine, as well as from some portions of 
 more modern history; but we do not owe him less for 
 drawing out the moral in his own clear and masterly 
 manner. (4) No one I think has proved by such tri- 
 umphant logic that to say we are governed by external 
 motives is the same thing as saying that we are under 
 a yoke of inevitable Necessity ; that there is no Will 
 in us, no Will over us. (5) Therefore I esteem Hobbes 
 as a most effectual preacher of the doctrine, that if we 
 really care to have a free Will in us we must acknow- 
 ledge a Will over us which seeks to make us free. 
 Hobbes, it seems to me, tears off more disguises from 
 men's minds upon all these subjects than almost any 
 teacher of any time ; obliges rulers as well as subjects 
 to give some account to themselves of their words and 
 professions. Such services may warrant those who dis- 
 sent most from his conclusions in ranking him high 
 among other benefactors. 
 
 II. John Locke felt at least as mxich as Hobbes 
 the influence of the physical enquiries which were occu- 
 pying his age. Though a commentator on the Bible 
 and a defender of Christianity he was quite as mucH 
 resolved to consider Human Nature without reference 
 to Theology. But he did not begin life with any dread 
 of those who assailed Prerogative. He had suffered 
 much from those who asserted it. He had heard from 
 them a number of Scriptural arguments which appeared 
 to him monstrous. He had been an exile during the 
 
FROM EOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 331 
 
 i-eign of James II. He accepted the Prince of Orange 
 as the defender of the Order on which his predecessors 
 had trampled. The Jacobites exclaimed that the di- 
 vinely appointed King had been set aside by a wilful 
 and wicked insurrection of his subjects. Sir Robert 
 Filmer produced a grand theory in support of that po- 
 sition. A patriarchal government over his descendants 
 vested in Adam. The Kings of the earth derived it 
 from him. To depose a Stuart was to set at nought 
 the grant which had been made to the primeval an- 
 cestor of mankind. It was difficult to treat ^uch an 
 argument seriously. It must have been difficult for a 
 believer in the Bible not to treat it as profane. Locke 
 thought it worth while to use his vigorous intellect in 
 refuting it ; for it had, apparently, a certain hold on a 
 portion of Englishmen disaffected to William's Govern- 
 ment. The theory must be met by some counter 
 theory. Locke was tempted to elaborate that theory 
 of an original contract to which I referred in a former 
 Lecture, the one which Sir H. Maine affirmed to be 
 utterly ' unhistorical.' It deserves that reproach be- 
 cause Locke's contempt for Filmer's absurd caricature 
 of patriarchal government led him to overlook the truth 
 that lay behind it, and therefore to imagine as Hobbes 
 had done what men might do and be if they chanced 
 to come into existence without fathers. Once make 
 that supposition, Hobbes's picture of the State of War 
 and of the necessary submission to some ruler for the 
 sake of terminating it has surely more consistency and 
 probability than Locke's picture (far pleasanter to con- 
 template I own) of men deliberately meeting to choose 
 a ruler under certain conditions, and affirming the right 
 to cashier him if the conditions were broken. 
 
 Filmer's 
 theory. 
 
 The coun- 
 ter theory. 
 
 Starting 
 from the 
 same hy- 
 pothesis, 
 that of 
 Hobbes the 
 more rea- 
 sonable. 
 
332 
 
 UNITERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Justifica- 
 tion of 
 Locke. 
 
 His Con- 
 tract be- 
 lovging to 
 his own 
 time. 
 
 tJis resem- 
 blance to 
 the old 
 Furitans. 
 
 His Whig 
 dialect. 
 
 But there is a sense in ■which Locke's conception 
 was not ' unhistorical.' It bore very directly upon thq 
 history of his own time. Because he was practically 
 busy about the acts and life of a Nation, he perceived 
 the meaning of obligations ; he could not resolve obli- 
 gations into Force. Contemplating men as a set of 
 naked units without kith or kindred, he ought to have 
 arrived at the same conclusion with the philosopher of 
 Malmesbury. But as he was not looking at England 
 abstractedly, but was interested in its movements, was 
 feeling and suffering with it, he was not able to forget 
 the actual conditions of its inhabitants in a theory of 
 what they might have been in some by-gone mythical 
 period. The Sovereign and the people in the year 1688 
 had bonds to each other — invisible, but most real bonds. 
 They were made aware of their reality by a sudden con- 
 vulsion ; aware that they were under laws which neither 
 Rulers nor people could set aside. The ancient Con- 
 tract might be the dream of a shadow; there was a 
 permanent contract involved in the very existence of a 
 Nation, which was at that moment proving itself to be 
 substantial. So the belief of a Justice and Injustice, of 
 a Right and a Wrong, which Hobbes had blown to the 
 winds with his triumphant Logic, were found somehow 
 to exist practically — all Logic notwithstanding. Locke 
 might express the belief in what words he pleased. It had 
 hold of his heart : it came forth in his life. Like the 
 Puritans, among whom he had grown up, he confessed 
 that there was some righteous Being who had made a 
 Covenant with the land. He translated the words into 
 the Whig dialect and called it a Contract ; for he was an 
 honest man, and did not like to use phrases which in his 
 lips and in the lips of his party would have been unreal. 
 
FROM nOBMB TO KANT. 
 
 333. 
 
 He had another reason for the change. The Scotch 
 Covenant into which English Puritans had entered was 
 against Popery and Prelacy. It assumed the great call- 
 ing of a Nation to be the extermination by all means of 
 idolatry or of any opinions or forms of ecclesiastical 
 Government which it supposed to favour Idolatry. 
 Locke could not acfcept any such maxim as this for his 
 Government. He was a Champion of Toleration. 
 What did that word signify to him? If I read his 
 Essay on the subject without knowing any of the cir- 
 cumstances which called it forth, I might suppose that 
 he adopted the old doctrine of the Eoman Empire ; that 
 regarding conclusions respecting the unseen world as 
 uncertain, he would allow the subjects of a Nation to 
 hold any which they liked, provided they did not inter- 
 fere with the affairs of the visible world. But when I 
 take his book with the commentary of his time, my 
 view of it is greatly changed. The Covenanters and 
 Puritans whom the Stuarts had tried to coerce did not 
 the least confine themselves to speculations on the un- 
 seen. They affirmed a divine Government over the 
 earth and its doings. The Quakers, whom both Epis- 
 copalians and Puritans had persecuted, avowedly pro- 
 claimed maxims which must affect all the acts of earthly 
 rulers. Nevertheless William III. found himself com- 
 pelled to pass an Act of Toleration, which either imme- 
 diately or in its consequences affected all Sects. This 
 Act Locke was called upon to defend against its im- 
 pugners. They regarded it as an abdication of the 
 duty which belongs to a State. He knew that it was 
 a frank confession by Statesmen of their impotence to 
 establish tiniformity of opinion ; however inconvenient 
 diversities of opinion might be to them, however nearly 
 
 The Hcotch 
 Covenant. 
 
 Essay on 
 Toleration, 
 
 The State 
 confessing 
 its impo- 
 tence. 
 
334 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT.XVIII. 
 
 Lockers 
 reasonfor 
 making the 
 jfallibility 
 of men's 
 judgment 
 his plea for 
 Toleration. 
 
 The Tole- 
 ration of 
 a Nation 
 utterly un- 
 like that of 
 an Empire. 
 
 Belief a 
 Nation's 
 strength. 
 
 many opinions might trench upon their own authority. 
 In very deed the beliefs of men had proved too strong 
 for any weapons that the State could employ against 
 them. Toleration was simply an acceptance of this 
 fact. There was one case in which it could not be ac- 
 cepted. Komanists were not tolerated. The Revolution 
 was a declaration of war against all- who would subject 
 the crown of England to a foreign authority. Locke 
 must have felt it difficult to maintain a scheme of To- 
 leration in face of so vast and notable an exception. 
 He was therefore tempted to dwell much on the claim 
 to Infallibility which the Roman Church had put for- 
 ward for its head ; to shew how much this assumption 
 was the secret of persecution ; how little right any 
 State or Church had to imitate the pretension which it 
 refused to the Pope. A most valuable warning surely ; 
 but one which involves no denial of an absolute ground 
 for human belief, rather removes the most practical 
 form of that denial. The notion that any mortal au- 
 thority can prescribe belief is deduced from- the uncer- 
 tainty of it ; from the doubt whether there is a Spirit 
 of Truth who guides men into Truth. If Locke had 
 foreseen a time when the English State would be 
 obliged to confess its inability to restrain Romanism as 
 much as any form of Protestantism by civil penalties, 
 he would have seen that the imperial idea of Toleration 
 was utterly inapplicable to the conditions of a Nation. 
 An Empire desires to reduce the Belief of its subjects 
 to a minimum ; to make it as harmless, as insincere as 
 possible, therefore it permits all varieties of opinion 
 about divinities ; only the actual confession of a living 
 Ruler must be silenced. A Nation finds that the be- 
 liefs of its subjects constitute its strength. If thei? 
 
FROM BOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 335 
 
 beliefs perished it would perish. Therefore it must 
 avoid any meddling with opinions lest it should quench 
 some of the life within them, which is its own life. 
 
 III. But I must pass from Locke to a pupil of his 
 whose mind was cast in a very different mould from the 
 master's, and who travelled far from his maxims. Lord 
 Shaftesbury was a student of Human Nature like 
 Hobbes. He disliked Puritans and religious teachers 
 generally, as much as Hobbes. But he disliked them 
 for what he considered their agreement with Hobbes 
 on the subject of Human Nature. They regarded it as 
 essentially corrupt and evil. Hobbes rejecting those 
 terms, not accusing himself or his fellow-creatures of 
 any sin, yet assumed that in a savage condition or in 
 the most refined Society they were capable only of be- 
 ing influenced by selfish motives. Against such a 
 slander Shaftesbury lifted up his voice. You may no 
 doubt, he said, present to our Nature degrading objects. 
 You may make the object which you teach men to 
 reverence most an object of Dislike and Dread. But 
 our nature aspires after goodness and beauty, cannot 
 be content unless it has an ideal of goodness and beauty 
 before it. All great acts as well as noble conceptions 
 have come from the contemplation of it. Men are 
 rebels against their Nature, are deserting the true prin- 
 ciples of it when they foUow what Hobbes and the 
 Divines would stigmatise as their natural instincts. 
 
 I need nbt repeat that Shaftesbiiry was even less 
 inclined than either of the philosophers I have spoken 
 of hitherto to introduce any theological element into 
 his conception of human life. He believed that he was 
 following the best of the Greek Philosophers in his 
 worship of the Ideal ; he felt also that he was assert- 
 
 LECT.XTIII, 
 
 Shaftesi 
 bury. 
 
 Denounces 
 Puritans 
 and 
 
 Hobbes for 
 the same 
 offence. 
 
 His wor- 
 ship of an 
 Ideal part- 
 ly Greek, 
 
336 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY.. 
 
 partly chi- 
 valrous. 
 
 His use of 
 the word 
 Nature. 
 
 Hume. 
 
 ing the dignity of an Englisli Gentleman and Noble- 
 man ; that he was protesting against low and vulgar 
 tendencies and the notions which justified them. Some- 
 thing of aristocratical hauteur there was no doubt in 
 him ; he might have a certain contempt for the profane 
 herd ; still it was man, not a particular class of men, 
 that he desired to glorify. 
 
 As I have maintained that Hobbes made his point 
 good, if we look merely at our natural tendencies or 
 inclinations you may ask me how I can sympathise , 
 with Shaftesbury. My answer is, I do sympathise with 
 him thoroughly and heartily, because I do not identify 
 Humanity with our natural tendencies and inclinations, 
 because I believe as he did that any good deed and 
 good thought in men has come from the aspiration 
 after an ideal. The pursuit of the ideal, it seems to 
 me, according to Shaftesbury's own shewing, raises a 
 man above the inclinations and tendencies of his na- 
 ture; above himself Acknowledging the divine Hu- 
 manity which Christendom in Shaftesbury's days pro- 
 fessed, as it professes in our day, to believe, I am 
 bound to accept his statements with this addition, which 
 I should think must greatly strengthen them, that the 
 Ideal has proved itself to be real, and that it has the 
 power of attracting men to itself. 
 
 IV. The next thinker who presents himself to us 
 was almost equally unlike Shaftesbury and Hobbes ; 
 indifferent to ideals ; the profoundest of Sceptics, as 
 Hobbes was the most vehement of Dogmatists. A. 
 hatred of Puritans and Covenanters, and of the zeal 
 which those names represent, is the one point of com-, 
 mon agreement between the three. David Hume de-; 
 spaired of metaphysics. Himself the most acute of 
 
FROM HOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 337 
 
 speculators, his main effort was to shew that specu- 
 lations about Causes and Principles could lead no whi- 
 ther, must end at last in vagueness and vacancy. But 
 if we forsake these it is weU, he said, to find some guide 
 for practical life, to know how best we may steer our 
 vessel so as not to be much disturbed by shoals and 
 quicksands. When one considers Human Nature for 
 this purpose, laying aside all dogmas about the ends 
 which it ought to pursue, what does one perceive? 
 Some men have this taste, some have that. Some pre- 
 fer coarse animal indulgences, some have an appetite 
 for intellectual gratifications ; some desire solitude, some 
 find their delight in refined Society. But all have an 
 apprehension of what is useful for that end which they 
 have set before them. A certain fitness in this or that 
 act or course of action to give them the results which 
 they wish for, every one is capable of recognizing ; the 
 more a man cultivates the faculties which he is en- 
 dued with the clearer will be the recognition. We 
 should have the best Morality, the least of .friction and 
 confusion, Hume thought, if this principle of Utility 
 was felt to be the governing one in human Society. He 
 carried his maxim into history and Politics. He might 
 not himself care particularly for any. scheme of Wor- 
 ship. But he believed that one should be sanctioned 
 by the State in every country. It suppHed common 
 people with something which they wanted. An esta- 
 blished Keligion was useful in keeping down fanaticism; 
 the citizens of a land being satisfied that every thing had 
 been properly arranged with respect to the concerns of 
 the invisible or future would not give their neighbours 
 or themselves any extraordinary trojible about it. 
 
 After assenting to the doctrine of Shaftesbury, I 
 
 M.M, T 
 
 LECI.XTIII. 
 
 How he 
 was led to 
 seek for an 
 ethical 
 prineiple. 
 
 The j/se- 
 fuL 
 
 Beligiou! 
 Establish- 
 ments use- 
 ful. 
 
•33« 
 
 VNlVMSAL "morality: 
 
 >BQT .XVIII. 
 
 His Utility 
 
 will not 
 
 include 
 
 Shaftes- 
 
 bjiry's 
 
 Ideal. 
 
 Value of 
 Ms doc- 
 trine. 
 
 Utility the 
 maxim of 
 the i8th 
 century. 
 
 should be very inconsistent if I adopted Hume's Utility 
 as the exclusive, governing principle of human life. 
 Hume might have expanded it to make it meet the 
 taste of the philosophical Nobleman as well as of any 
 one who preferred the turf and the gambling table to 
 Plato; but that is practically to deny Shaftesbury's 
 standard under pretence of tolerating it. Yet may we 
 not be very thankful to Hume for fixing our thoughts 
 upon the fact that there is this perception of the useful 
 in human beings, that it is widely diffused among them', 
 that it does curiously fit means to ends, and is awake to 
 any disagreement between means and ends ? If people 
 had perceived this fact before — if it could not be exactly 
 new to any man — still the writer who compels us" to 
 take notice of it, to consider what we should be without 
 it, how much in Nature would be lost to us, how impos- 
 sible Art would be in its most mechanical or in its finest 
 forms, assuredly renders us a great service. It is evi- 
 dent that in every region of action and thought this 
 sense of utility was acting upon men during the eighi 
 teenth century. Hume shewed a remarkable insight 
 into, his time — the insight which comes from sympathy 
 ■ — when he gave it so much prominence. Paley, not 
 only in his Moral Philosophy but in those of his works 
 which were especially directed against Hume, did 
 homage to it. Even the reactions against both Hume 
 and Paley -shewed how the principle which was the 
 sacred one to each of them had mastered their conteni- 
 poraries. Was Human Nature then the springhead of 
 this Utility ? Or did man's apprehension bear witness 
 of some arrangements which he had not invented, of 
 which he could only get partial glimpses ? Apparently 
 he did a number of very useless unprofitable things, 
 
fhom hobbes to kaiTt. 
 
 339 
 
 How was it ttat in spite of tbese lie was able to demand 
 a kind of order in wliich means and ends should always 
 be adjusted to each other 1 I do not give the answer 
 to these questions : I do not maintain that Paley found 
 the answer to them when he treated the Universe as 
 a great workshop of ingenious contrivances ; but I wish 
 you to ponder them ; you will appreciate Hume's con- 
 tribution to Moral Philosophy better if you do. 
 
 V. A friend of Hume's made another contribution 
 to it which, seems at first to be utterly incompatible 
 with the dogmas of Hobbes. Adam Smith thought 
 that he found in Human Nature a principle of Symr 
 ^ai% which would explain some of the most remarkable 
 facts and experiences of life. How strange it is that 
 men should be able to throw themselves into the 
 thoughts, feelings, interests of others ! How marvellous 
 is the common heart which pervades a crowd, composed 
 of men who do not know each other, who have each his 
 own cares and troubles ! A play — tragedy or comedy 
 with the tears and laughter that follow it — ^is not that 
 indeed a mystery as it used to be called, a mystery in 
 its effects if not in its subject ? Adam Smith had 
 thought of these things. They seemed to him not less 
 worthy of investigation because they were common, be- 
 cause every one is aware of them. He was a practical 
 man. His main occupation was not with Sentiments, 
 but with the maxims of Trade and Commerce, with the 
 material Wealth of Nations. In considering these, how- 
 ever, he was reminded of a certain sympathy between 
 different countries which had been set , at nought by 
 legislation, while it aimed at promoting the good of 
 one by injuring or weakening another. He was prov- 
 ing that antipathies between men of different lands did 
 
 T2 
 
 lEOT.XVIII. 
 
 Adam 
 Smith. 
 
 Commerce 
 of Nations 
 anillvstra- 
 lion of the 
 principle. 
 
340 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Sow 
 
 Smith and 
 Hobbes 
 can be re- 
 conciled. 
 
 Sympathy 
 
 presumes 
 
 Society, 
 
 not favour the objects whicli they desired, but inter- 
 fered with them. There was therefore a consistency in 
 his thoughts, such as ,we may always trace in those of 
 men who have exercised any considerable influence on 
 the world, to whatever subject they have been directed. 
 The difficulty, as I said, is to reconcile his facts — 
 for it is to facts that he called his reader's attention 
 when he was writing on Morals as much as when he 
 was writing on Political Economy — with those which 
 Hobbes pointed out so clearly and forcibly. How can 
 the self-seeking creature which he described to us be 
 the same with the sympathetic creature of whose ways 
 Adam Smith took notice ? Yet facts must somehow 
 harmonise with each other ; if theories keep them apart, 
 the theories must give way. Suppose it were true that 
 human beings are not constituted separate atoms, that 
 they cannot really be contemplated out of Society, that 
 the attempt to sever themselves from each other — to 
 set up separate interests — implies disorder and contra- 
 diction ; and yet that each one of them is a distinct 
 living person and cannot lose his distinctness with- 
 out injuring his Society. Sympathy such as Smith 
 speaks of would then appear to be a necessary condi- 
 tion of Humanity, and yet the selfishness which Hobbes 
 dwells upon may have made itself as fully manifest in 
 all places and in all ages as he affirmed that it did; 
 nay, he might be perfectly correct in saying, that the 
 solitary nature of man out of all families and nations is 
 this selfishness and nothing else. It would indeed in 
 that case be a question of the most profound practical 
 importance to which of these principles you should 
 appeal for the support of Society, and how you may 
 appeal to it effectually. If Hobbes detected not the bond 
 
FROM EOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 34t 
 
 of Society but the secret of its dissolution, we may still 
 be much, his debtors for bringing that secret so dis- 
 tinctly and vigorously before us. 
 
 VI. A great enemy of Adam Smith's doctrine of 
 Sympathy appeared in Jeremy Bentham. I alluded to 
 him in my Lectures on National Morality as a young 
 man at Oxford, who listened to Sir William Blackstone's 
 exposition of the balance between our Monarchy, Ari- 
 stocracy, and Democracy, and held it up to contempt in 
 his Fragment on Qovernment. Having satisfied himself 
 with his work of destruction, he began to ask himself on 
 what basis he could construct his social edifice. As he 
 had been bred a Tory, and was specially impatient of 
 ' the Whig dogmas respecting the Constitution, he natu- 
 rally betook himself to Hume the defender of Charles I., 
 the enemy of Whigs, yet free from any notion of a di- 
 vine right, and from all theological prejudices. Hume's 
 ■ Utility at once commended itself to Bentham as the 
 safe escape from the theories of both the English par- 
 ties. What other foundation did Government want 
 than this ? The student of Human Nature- throwing 
 away traditions had perceived this to be the true rule 
 of conduct for himself and his fellows. How absurd to 
 suppose that a Government of human beings needed 
 some fiction to sustain it ! What was useful was alone 
 good for private men or legislators. 
 
 Useful to whom ? Bentham saw that he must an- 
 swer this question. When he meditated on the answer 
 he travelled very far indeed from his guide. To com- 
 pare his utility with Hume's is a most profitable study; 
 we may discover into what delusions a Shibboleth may 
 lead us, if we do not derive our interpretation of it from 
 the habits and temper of those who adopt it. Hume, 
 
 LEOT.XVIII, 
 
 Jeremg 
 Bentham 
 
 adopts 
 Hume's 
 
 Hume and 
 Bentham 
 use the 
 same word 
 in the msst 
 different 
 senses. 
 
342 
 
 UNirSRSAL MORALITY.' 
 
 LECT.XVIII. 
 
 Their 
 
 practical 
 
 Opposition. 
 
 did not like to be disturbed by men who had notions oi 
 some good to which Society might attain ; who were 
 tormenting themselves. with certain supposed evils by 
 which it was afflicted. 'My dear friends/ he said, 'be 
 'quiet; let good and evil alone; think only of what is 
 'useful; and do permit your neighbours to judge what 
 'is useful to them.' 'I demand/ said Bentham, 'the 
 ' greatest happiness of the greatest number. Governors 
 ' chattering about good and evil have neglected what 
 ' tends to promote that end ; have done and are doing 
 'what produces advantage to themselves, mischief to 
 'the majority. We must work night and day to de- 
 ' prive them of their advantages, to save the majority 
 'from the mischiefs which they are inflicting on it.' 
 Accordingly there was scarcely one practical conclusion 
 deduced by Hume from his doctrine of Utility, that was 
 not contradicted by one which Bentham traced legiti- 
 mately from his. Were religious establishments the 
 comfortable escape from enthusiasm in Hume's estima* 
 tion? Down with them to the ground, they are the 
 creation of the sinister interests of priests, they are sus- 
 tained by those of lawyers, was the cry of his pupil. 
 The ■^6o<; of the men, and therefore the ^^09 which they 
 would respectively have cultivated in Society, was more 
 utterly opposed than that of almost any two whose bio- 
 graphies are preserved to us. 
 
 If therefore Bentham has some important lesson to 
 teach us — I do not mean by his practical suggestions, 
 which may be full of important lessons, but by the 
 maxim which he announced as the all-satisfying and 
 comprehensive one — it must be a lesson of an altogether 
 different kind from any which the eminent Scotch Uti- 
 litarian has imparted to us. The words "Greatest 
 
PROm^HOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 34J 
 
 Happiness of the greatest number," do convey to me a 
 very profound lesson. I do not pretend that I can give 
 them any definite sense. Happiness is to me an un- 
 known quantity, of which I must learn the value by 
 some* process or other. The greatest number of Units, 
 as I have been trying to shew you throughout these 
 Lectures, does not express mankind to me at all, seeing 
 that I cannot contemplate mankind except in families 
 or Nations, or as constituting a universal fellowship in 
 some living Head. But I do not the less honour the 
 man Vho set this Ideal before him, who steadily and 
 manfully pursued it amidst all difficulties. The diffi- 
 culties, indeed, seem to me stupendous, since they arose 
 not only from the number of selfish interests which he 
 felt were obstructing the path of every reformer, but 
 even more, as I remarked in a former course of Lec- 
 tures, from the doubt in Mr Bentham's' own mind, 
 whether the interest of the Community is composed of 
 the interests of its separate members, or whether it 
 is merely a fictitious entity assumed in order to explain 
 what those interests are. Yet defying all these uncer- 
 tainties he went right onward, sure that there was a 
 common end for which private ends must be sacrificed, 
 and actually sacrificing his private ends for the sake of 
 it. However a man expresses that purpose — ^whatever 
 phrases he may choose or may reject — he exhibits a 
 faith which should be dear to those who reverence faith 
 more than formulas of the intellect. If he assails any 
 principle which we have realised, we may fight for it to 
 the death; but we shall be sure that there is one which 
 he has realised, and which it would be very dangerous 
 for us to assail. It may be that in the ardour of his 
 ..practical labours, Mr Bentham did not feel how lofty 
 
 LEOT.xviit:: 
 
 Greatest 
 Happiness' 
 of the 
 greatest 
 Number: 
 The great' 
 eft number 
 how,cojri-. ; 
 posed. 
 
 Bentham's 
 
 earnest 
 
 faitK. 
 
344 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 What 
 gratitude 
 we all owe 
 to Mm. 
 
 He bids MS 
 leave 
 dreams of 
 Optimism 
 for work. 
 
 Kant. 
 
 An enemy 
 of Theolo- 
 gians and 
 Utilita- 
 rians, 
 
 an ideal had possessed him. Weaker men may be 
 crushed under the thought of what it is which the 
 greatest number require, and how they are ever to at- 
 tain what they require. But if they are driven in their 
 despair to think that there is One who knows this bet- 
 ter than they do — if that is the only belief in which 
 they are able to work for their fellow-men — they cani 
 not be otherwise than most grateful to him for sug- 
 gesting the aim which they own that they are quite 
 unable to reach. It is not indeed in a comfortable 
 Optimism that they can ever find refuge from the pal- 
 pable evils which he has set before them, or from the 
 sense of their own impotence. Those who have ever 
 wished for the greatest happiness of a majority of their 
 race or of the whole of it, cannot acquiesce in any plea- 
 sant dreams that somehow it will drop upon them from 
 the skies. They know that it is better to be miserable 
 than to take up with a lie; that nothing is so miserable 
 as a lie. The service Mr Bentham will have done them 
 is in leading them to ask themselves whether there is 
 not a Truth in which the greatest number of men — in 
 which all men — may trust, and whether that Truth will 
 not make them free. If there is a Happiness without 
 Truth and Freedom or beyond them, we may wait to 
 learn what that is. 
 
 VII. There was no writer of the i8th century or 
 of any century who was more resolute that theological 
 speculations should not interfere with his Moral Creed 
 than Immanuel Kant. There was no writer who op- 
 posed so sternly all the maxims of the school which 
 made Utility its standard. Happiness its object. What 
 have we to do with the consequences of our actions ? 
 There is a Command going forth to each man, not 
 
FROM HOBBES TO KANT.. 
 
 345 
 
 from -without but from within, not from some power 
 which enforces its decrees by promises of rewards or 
 threats of punishment, but from a Reason which is 
 higher and more binding than all calculations of profit 
 and lo^s, saying, 'Do this,' "Abstain from that.' It 
 speaks to each man. Yet there is a sign and test of 
 its being meant for all men. You, A, trifle with the 
 precept not to lie, not to slay yourself. How if B, C, 
 and D, how if every one — did the same ? Thus there 
 is a Universal Imperative. If ninety-nine out of every 
 hundred men set it at nought, it has not the less evi- 
 dence of its Universality; every transgression of it is a 
 confirmation of its reality, 
 
 I am sure I have no wish to accept this doctrine 
 of Kant. It sounds to me very tremendous. It comes 
 home to oneself. It is impossible to put it aside and 
 treat it as a mere vague general proposition. But I 
 frankly tell you that I cannot escape from it whether 
 I wish to do so or not. Nor do I think that any one 
 of you can. This voice is speaking in each of us. It 
 has that awful authority which Kant ascribes to it. If 
 one asks it, ' What shall I get by doing what I am told 
 to do?' I believe there is no answer; a dreadful si- 
 lence. When I refer to the lessons I have been taught 
 in Bentham's school — though I cannot forget them, 
 though they must have an application of their own — 
 they do not seem to help me here. Perhaps they ra- 
 ther add to my alarm. Bentham himself, trained as 
 he was in his own maxims, appears to have girded 
 himself to his task of promoting the greatest happiness 
 of the greatest number in deference to some internal 
 monitor ; how then can he give me any hints for avoid- 
 ing one ? Kant may have been unjust to Utilitarians — 
 
 His asser- 
 tion forces 
 itself on 
 reluctant . 
 hearers. 
 
 No help 
 against it 
 from the 
 Bentham- 
 ites. 
 
346 
 
 :VNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XTIII. 
 
 Yet terrific 
 and wi- 
 thering to 
 effort. 
 
 Kanfs 
 reasonable 
 dislilce to 
 the Theo- 
 logy of the 
 market. 
 
 incapable of perceiving their truth — but they cannot 
 confute for me the one which he perceived with such 
 marvellous clearness. 
 
 But it is, as I said, a terrific truth if it stands 
 alone. The Reason, or whatever it is which utters this 
 command, can listen to no prayers or expostulations, 
 will hear no confession of my failures, offers me no 
 energy when I am weak that I may perform its behest. 
 It merely decrees, 'This thou art bound to do;' 'this 
 thou art bound not to do;' and if I am conscious of 
 other and very sharp bonds which restrain me from 
 compliance, it tells me not how I may break them, 
 points to no door or chasm in the wall of my prison 
 through which I may break loose from it. A very 
 gi-and moralist is Kant ; but some have thought a little 
 cruel. And yet it is not his cruelty. The cruelty 
 must be in the constitution of our own being, if he has 
 told us all that we can know about it. 
 
 Now I do not the least complain of Kant for his de- 
 sire to put theology, according to his conception of it 
 aside. He took it to be a certain scheme of rewards 
 and punishments, by which a power in the heavens in- 
 duces His creatures on earth to do the things whicl 
 He has ordered, not to do the things which He has 
 forbidden. It was impossible to reconcile such a notioi 
 with the simple imperative which issues, as he believec 
 and felt, from the deepest cavern of our being. I an 
 rejoiced that he did not attempt to reconcile this re 
 ligious philosophy, which was the current one in hi 
 day, with the principle which he enunciated. But sup 
 posing the divine voice not to be one thundering mo 
 tives out of an unknown region to a set of creature 
 capable only of cringing . to selfish fear or of beinj 
 
FROM nOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 U7- 
 
 stimulated to selfish ambition — supposing there to be 
 an actual divine Humanity such as Christians had con- 
 fessed in their common Creed for a number of centu- 
 ries — supposing, as their book^ affirmed, that the divine 
 Head of Humanity had actually come among men that 
 He might deliver them from their bondage to a selfish 
 nature, and 'unite them to a Father who cared for them 
 all — supposing these old sayings to be true, then the 
 command would certainly come as Kant declared it 
 did from within, from the secret depths of Humanity 
 in each man and to all men — ^it would be more strictly 
 a command to each man and to all men, than one could 
 be which merely issued from what they might call their 
 own Reason. Such an imperative, however absolute, 
 might be mistaken for the conclusion of a particular 
 judgment which other and more mature judgments 
 would set aside. Whereas on this hypothesis it would 
 proceed from the common and Universal ReasoUj and 
 yet from one who could enter into the weaknesses of 
 those who were to obey it, one to whom confession of 
 such weaknesses would be possible, who could impart 
 the energies which convert wishes into purposes, and 
 cause purposes to bear fruit in acts. 
 
 It would be very ungracious and unjust to com- 
 plain of Kant, of Bentham, of Adam Smith, of Hume, 
 of Shaftesbury, of Locke, or of Hobbes, for taking no 
 account of a principle which, though recognised by the 
 people, was as habitually ignored by the divines of the 
 1 8th century as it could be by any philosophers. The 
 divines also were greatly impressed by the physical 
 teachers of the day. They were busy in constructing 
 a Natural Theology; that is to say, in bringing evi- 
 dences for the existence of some Author of the Uni- 
 
 WMch was 
 not the 
 Theology 
 of Chris- 
 tendom, 
 
 The Uni- 
 versal . . . 
 Reason. 
 
 Natural 
 
348 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY^ 
 
 LECT.XVIII. 
 
 Unsatis- 
 factory to 
 men of 
 Science, 
 
 And to the 
 most un- 
 scientific. 
 
 The Es- 
 prits forts 
 of France. 
 
 Accepted 
 as leaders 
 by the 
 middle 
 classes 
 though at- 
 tached to 
 the upper. 
 
 Terse ; what kind of Author being apparently inferred 
 from physical facts, really from certain moral beliefs 
 which they brought with them to the investigation, 
 Such arguments have proved very unsatisfactory to 
 the students of Nature in later times. They proved 
 very unsatisfactory to the hearts and consciences oi 
 ignorant men and women in those times. Our English 
 Methodism with all its accompaniments was a pro- 
 test against the inadequacy of a Natural Theology; 
 was a demand by suffering men and women, conscious 
 of evil, for a human and divine Helper. They might 
 not more than dream of such a Helper for mankind. 
 As in the i6th century the cravings of the religious 
 seemed to be for some one who should exempt them 
 from the condition of mankind. StiU they resorted to 
 the old Creed which expressed the larger belief; no 
 other seemed to justify the narrower one. <. 
 
 Meantime there came from the cultivated men in 
 France those expressions of scorn for all popular be- 
 liefs, which spread more and more through the refined 
 circles in Europe. It was emphatically and formally 
 scorn for popular beliefs. Yet there was mixed with it 
 so much just contempt and indignation for those who 
 had oppressed the people and kept them in igno- 
 rance — so many pleas even for men who had been 
 hindered from expressing their faith by persecutions 
 civil or ecclesiastical, that the middle classes in France 
 and elsewhere hailed the new teachers, even if they 
 were over fond of Courts and great assemblies, as their 
 champions. Rousseau indeed, who was so often at 
 war with the scoffers, had a greater power than they 
 had, and was looked upon as the real prophet of the 
 coming time. But Rousseau, like them, believed that 
 
FSOM EOBBES TO KANT. 
 
 349 
 
 the Christian experiment had failed, that a Universal 
 Family had as much ceased to be as a Universal 
 Empire. How strong that persuasion was throughout 
 Eurppe when the French Revolution began, it is 
 impossible to express in words. And yet the deepest 
 cry of that Revolution was for a Universal Brother- 
 hood. Whether that could exist without a Universal 
 Fatherhood was to be the question for a future time. 
 The Revolution only went thus far. It said dis- 
 tinctly, ' The Universal Brotherhood which we French- 
 men want cannot be based on such a Fatherhood 
 as Christians have supposed to exist in the capital 
 of Italy.' 
 
 LEOT.XTIII. 
 
 Ory for 
 Prater^ 
 nity. 
 
LEOI. XIX. 
 
 How the 
 revolu- 
 tionary 
 cries were 
 answered. 
 
 The an- 
 swer of 
 the first 
 Empire. 
 
 LECTURE XIX. 
 
 THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 Many writers on the French Eevolution have main* 
 tained that the two cries for Liberty and "Equality 
 interfered with each other, that the destruction oi 
 Orders was the preparation for the Empire, and there- 
 fore for the loss of Freedom. It may be a question 
 whether the Orders had not destroyed themselves 
 before the voice of any popular assembly declared 
 them to be no more; otherwise I can have no ob- 
 jection to a remark which is so much in accordance 
 with those which I made respecting the dissolution of 
 the Roman Republic. But for my present purpose it 
 is of more importance to enquire how the third cry 
 for Fraternity affected both the others. So far as 
 Fraternity meant the union of all Nations, the first 
 Napoleon might boast that he had accomplished what 
 the Assemblies had only decreed. French, Spaniards, 
 Austrians, Prussians, Swiss, all were comprehended in 
 his embrace; if Russia and England refused it, that 
 was the fault of their exclusiveness ; he would have 
 cordially hugged them both. But Fraternity did not 
 mean only or chiefly the removal of the barriers which 
 Language or Customs or Laws had raised between the 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION OP HUMANITY. 
 
 351 
 
 •different portions of mankind. It meant first of all 
 ■a union for Frenchnlen. Other nations might become 
 brothers. France should set them the example, should 
 shew them under what conditions Brotherhood was 
 possible,' These conditions it was evident were not 
 exhibited by the Empire. If that had not quite satis- 
 fied the demand for Equality by putting down old 
 distinctions to raise up others in their place, if it had 
 met the appetite for liberty by establishing a mar- 
 .ivellous and mysterious Police, it had certainly done 
 nothing to make Citizens feel themselves members of 
 a Family. Was the Conscription, the sign of their 
 (adoption into it ? " 
 
 But the craving which this word expressed was 
 .t(3o deep a one to be extinguished because rulers, the 
 most popular and triumphant, failed to provide any 
 food for, it. Philosophers, theoretical and practical, 
 girded themselves to the task. It might have been 
 foreseen that they would be most numerous and most 
 comprehensive in the country which had been giving 
 birth to the Revolution. All those of whom I spoke 
 in the last Lecture were brought up in a Protestant 
 atmosphere, under the influence of its individualizing 
 tendencies. Some, perhaps all of them, might be pro- 
 voked to a reaction against these tendencies, might 
 •strive to throw them off. Hobbes and Hume both 
 lived much in France, and for different reasons cor- 
 ;:espondiDg to the difference of their characters pre- 
 ferred French to English Society. Yet every one, 
 from the philosopher of Malmesbury to the philosopher 
 of Konigsberg, shewed that he could not begin from 
 Society, that whether he talked of Motives or of Ideals 
 pr of Consequences or of pure Duty or even of Sym- 
 
 The Philo- 
 sophical 
 answers. 
 
 The philo- 
 sophy of 
 the i8th 
 century in- 
 dividual- 
 izing. 
 
3S2 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The social 
 tendencies 
 of French- 
 men, 
 
 of Eccle- 
 siastics to 
 use the 
 revolution- 
 arySymbol 
 in the re- 
 construc- 
 tion of 
 Society. 
 
 pathy, he was still, consciously or unconsciously, con- 
 templating each man in himself before he contem- 
 plated a body of men. The air which Frenchmen 
 breathed was of a most different quality. They were 
 social by instinct, social by tradition, social by the faith 
 in which they had been educated, social by the in- 
 fluences of the Eevolution which had cast oflF that 
 faith. There had been a Calvinism in France which 
 had added, I conceive, much to its health and vigour. 
 The desertion of it by Henri IV., the persecution of it 
 by Louis XIV., helped to destroy the moral fibre of 
 the land. But it was an alien plant in the soil. The 
 efforts of Kings to uproot it would have availed little 
 if the heart of the people had cherished it. But un- 
 belief and belief, the contempt of the esprits forts, the 
 passionate zeal for Reform in the body of the Nation, 
 seemed equally to stand apart from what we might 
 suppose would have supplied some justification to the 
 one, and have helped forward the other. The French 
 love of Organization was impatient of any practice or 
 any theory which did not promise first and above all 
 things Combination and Fellowship. 
 
 Such a disposition offered a great encouragement 
 to the champions of Catholicism who had seen it 
 trampled down in the revolutionary fury. ,When that 
 fury had spent itself there was sure to be a cry for 
 some constructive power, some fusing principle, which 
 might bind the fragments of Society together again* 
 The more worldly Churchmen might accept the doubt' 
 ful compliment of Napoleon, that the Papacy was an 
 institution which it would be worth while to create 
 if it did not exist; the religious would expect it to 
 prove its unfailing vitality, to shew that no humafi 
 
TME MODERN CONCEPTION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 3S3 
 
 hands could have created it. Jesuitism, as a protest 
 against all tendencies to separation — for a mysterious 
 unity — could not despair of being welcomed back from 
 the banishment to which the last age had consigned 
 it. The name of Brotherhood was itself mediaeval. 
 The Church had called religious Brotherhoods into 
 existence, which had ministered in many ways to order 
 and civilization. Trade Brotherhoods had been pro- 
 duced by the same impulse, had borne the same stamp. 
 Might not the watchword of the Revolution be re- 
 claimed by ecclesiastical wisdom, be consecrated to an 
 ecclesiastical use ? 
 
 Though such thoughts might hover about a num- 
 ber of minds, might penetrate into some hearts, the 
 Papacy was evidently too much terrified by the de- 
 structive symbol — too much inclined to suspect mis- 
 chief in all who gave it even a half spiritual sense — 
 to seek help from popular sympathy, when the old 
 Governments were restored. Its simple policy was to 
 ally itself with them ; to discourage all associations 
 which savoured of freemasonry; to treat the protec- 
 tion and preservation of property as the supreme in- 
 terest of the Church no less than of particular States. 
 If the States felt that it was performing this function 
 for them, they might be willing to keep down heretics 
 within their borders ; to enforce, as far as ihey could, 
 reverence for the Priesthood. 
 
 But a higher interest than this it was felt must 
 be vindicated by some Society, whether it was called 
 the Church or by any other name. The idea of a 
 Brotherhood for men as men which had taken hold of 
 France if not Europe at the Revolution, could not be 
 realised by institutions which merely contemplated 
 M. It ' z 
 
 The 
 
 Papacy re- 
 jects this 
 Policy. 
 
 No insti- 
 tutions 
 based on 
 Property 
 ■ or aiming 
 at the pro- 
 tection of 
 it can 
 satisfy the 
 
■354 
 
 UNIVEBSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XIX. 
 
 craving for 
 a Univer- 
 sal Bro- 
 therhood. 
 
 Schemes 
 more or 
 less com- 
 munistic. 
 
 Possessors, and sought to secure them in their pos- 
 sessions. Wherever there had been the conceptior 
 of a Universal Society by the most exalted Philo- 
 sophers, by the simplest peasants, a certain Com- 
 munism had mingled with it. States might regard 
 the word and that which it represented with dread: 
 might resolve to keep it at a distance. But were they 
 not narrow in their objects ; tied by traditions and ge- 
 nealogies and class distinctions? "Were they for ever 
 to divide the world ? 
 
 If I tried to notice in this Lecture even a few 
 of the schemes to which this prolific thought has 
 given rise I should do both them and you injustice. 
 I might lead you to think of them as merely visionary 
 when they were the result of much practical observa- 
 tion and experience. I might exhibit some of their 
 weak points when it would do us much more good to 
 perceive where they were strong. I might connect 
 them with titles which have become opprobrious when 
 the objects of their propounders were benevolent, when 
 they desired to promote Order not Confusion. I would 
 only make these two remarks, which you may find 
 useful. The first is that for the reasons I have given 
 already the most carefully elaborated of these schemes 
 will be found to have French authors, though no doubt 
 opportunities have been afforded by the freer life of 
 Great Britain for practical experiments limited in ex- 
 tent, but of great interest and value — e.g. that of Mr 
 Owen at Lanark. The second is that beneath all the 
 schemes, great or small, however diverse in character 
 and design, lies the conviction that somehow or other 
 there must be, or there must be formed, a Human 
 Family. If only a few compose it, still it must in 
 
TBE MODERN CONCEPTION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 3SS 
 
 virtue of its principles be capable of embracing all 
 men. 
 
 I am thus drawn on to consider what I have 
 called in the title of this Lecture the modern con- 
 ception of Hv/manity. Inattention to the nomencla- 
 ture of different periods or, what means the same, 
 to the nomenclature of the most eminent thinkers in 
 different periods, often leads us into fatal misappre- 
 hensions respecting their distinctive qualities. We 
 paay easily confound the Human- Nature which was 
 the favourite and common subject of study in the 
 last age with the ■ Humanity which has begun to be 
 so much spoken of in ours. If we do, I suspect we 
 shall not appreciate the step which we have taken, 
 in advance of our immediate predecessors; we shall 
 understand even less where we stand in relation to 
 those who were before them. We shall be embarrassed 
 with schools, each of great historical and even present 
 importance, but partial and contradictory; when we 
 might ascend through them to a living and practical 
 moral ground. 
 
 The disciples of M. Comte maintain that it is he 
 who has brought us to this higher ground, that he has 
 interpreted the earlier experiments of this century, and 
 has embodied them in a comprehensive system. I am 
 not at all anxious to dispute these claims, or to set up 
 any rival who can challenge a share of them for him- 
 self I assume that his philosophy does represent the 
 modem conception of Humanity. Probably it is no- 
 where so completely expressed as in his writings. He 
 has explained to our generation the desire of former 
 teachers to build up a Universal Society, and a Mo- 
 rality which should be adapted .to it; their eagerness 
 
 Z2 
 
 Tlie idea of 
 a Human 
 Family 
 underlies 
 them all. 
 
 Human 
 Nature 
 
 place to 
 Humanii 
 in our 
 
 Auguste 
 Comte. 
 
 His ser- 
 vices to 
 previous 
 philoso- 
 phers. 
 
356 
 
 UNIVERSAL MOnALITT. 
 
 His ser- 
 vices to 
 the theo- 
 logian. 
 
 Sis esti- 
 mate of 
 Bacon's 
 effect on 
 moral 
 studies 
 justified 
 by facts. 
 
 to associate this Human Society and Human Mora] 
 with physical studies ; their impatience of Theoh 
 and its traditions and associations; their resolution t 
 whether or not it was necessary in other days it sho 
 be banished from the new age. It seems to me t 
 he has brought these questions to a more distinct i 
 intelligible issue than any previous thinker. Aj 
 Clergyman and a Professor of Moral Theology, I i 
 myself under unspeakable obligations to him. For 
 has cleared the ground of much rubbish which hinde 
 us from knowing where we were standing ; he has cc 
 pelled us to abandon all apologies for our faith, i 
 simply to ask ourselves what we mean by it, and w' 
 we suppose it can do for mankind. If it can do : 
 thing, if what we have called the Kingdom of Heavei 
 not concerned about the Reformation or Eegenerat 
 of the earth, we must confess that we have been wa 
 ing in a dream, or have been deliberately imposinj 
 lie upon our fellow creatures. 
 
 I. M. Comte has dwelt much upon the fact t 
 since the time of Bacon ^, Moral Philosophy has b( 
 more and more inclined to assume a physical, and 
 discard a theological foundation. The truth and i 
 portance of this remark I fully recognised in my 1 
 Lecture. I did not merely accept it as a general pro 
 sition ; I endeavoured to illustrate it in a number 
 
 ^ M. Comte joins the name of Descartes to that of Bacon. I 
 not competent to estimate the kind of impression which that il 
 trious thinker has made on his own countrymen. If I am not i 
 taken, his influence on England, where his physical speculations 
 little prized and Where his search for a ground of his own thou| 
 has afiected the most earnest students at some stage of their li 
 has heen rather to counteract than to promote the tendency whii 
 spoke of in my last Lecture. 
 
TEE MODERN CONCEPTION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 357 
 
 particular cases taken from the representatives of 
 schools utterly opposed to each other. The period be- 
 tween our Civil Wars and the French Revolution pre- 
 sented a series of experiments all conducted upon the 
 maxim which M. Comte supposes to have established 
 itself for ever as the only reasonable or possible one. 
 I recognised a great value in each of these experiments ; 
 an undoubted result from each. But upon that maxim 
 which these students assumed, they could not be recon- 
 ciled, they must be at war for ever. Introduce the 
 maxim which they agreed to cast out and which yet 
 continued to subsist as the acknowledged basis of the 
 people's faith in all countries of Europe, and we could 
 do justice to all these results;, it was impossible to 
 part with any one of them. 
 
 2. The agreement of such remarkable men — sp 
 different as those I have enumerated — that Theology 
 had been used up at least for moral and political purposes, 
 that a physical age had set in, offers surely a great ex- 
 cuse for M. Comte's grand generalization, which Mr 
 Mill reckons his most characteristical one. The study 
 of Physical facts, he says, must be taken as the sign of 
 the world's maturity ; the study of Theology of its in- 
 fancy; a middle period of Metaphysical speculation 
 being the transition from one to the other. No man 
 who has heard such a proposition enunciated can forget 
 it, or can fail to find instances in history which seem 
 to establish it. What will have really far greater 
 weight with most men than these instances, what will 
 give them weight, will be their own personal experi- 
 ences. ' Were not we,' they ask, ' theologians in our 
 'nurseries? Did we not stumble about in strange 
 ' metaphysical puzzles of which we could find no solu- 
 
 LEOT. XIX. 
 
 Reference 
 to the pre- 
 vious Lec- 
 ture as to 
 this 
 
 method of 
 the last 
 century. 
 
 The In- 
 fancy, 
 Boyhood 
 and 
 
 Manhood 
 of the 
 world. 
 
 Personal 
 experiences 
 have done 
 more than 
 history to 
 make this 
 conception 
 popular. 
 
358 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Ambiguity 
 in the 
 word "po- 
 sitive." 
 
 Positivism 
 of the 
 Stock 
 Exchange 
 and the 
 Clubs. 
 
 This Posi- 
 tivism not 
 new. 
 
 M. Comte 
 evidently 
 desired an 
 opposite 
 
 ' tion, when we first became capable of exercising our 
 'thoughts? Do we not discover as we become men 
 'that our business is with "positive" things; with the 
 'outward world, of which in the earlier periods we 
 'knew nothing?' There is a force in reflections of 
 this kind which those who submit to it are not aware 
 of. And it is a force which affects ordinary men of 
 the world even more than students. For the name 
 ' positive' covers much ground. It may be taken loosely 
 to express the processes or the results of scientific en- 
 quiries. But that is not its obvious or natural signi- 
 fication. It denotes rather the material on which these 
 processes are exercised, that with which men are con- 
 cerned who buy and sell if they never trouble them- 
 selves about science. In this sense practical men may 
 exclaim that they have been talking Comtism all their 
 lives without knowing it, because they have said to 
 each other : ' It is very good for children to say prayers 
 'with their mammas in the nurseries. It does not 
 'much signify what nonsense they talk about their 
 ' minds and souls at College. When they become law- 
 'yers or merchants or Members of Parlianaent, they 
 ' soon tame down into common sense. Then what they 
 ' care about is the prices which things or men will fetch 
 'in the market.' Discourse no doubt denoting a high 
 civilization, but one which cannot be appropriated to 
 the 19th century. Opinions similar to it in all essen- 
 tials are attributed to citizens of London in Ben Jon- 
 son's Comedies, to citizens of Rome in the Epistles of 
 Horace. 
 
 But this assuredly is not orthodox Positivism, 
 not what M. Comte meant by the third or mature 
 stage of human existence. That Experimental Phi- 
 
THS MODERN CONCEPTION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 359 
 
 losophy, in Bacon's sense of that word, has been re- 
 served for this last stage and has been one of the 
 greatest gifts to mankind, I take to be his doctrine ; 
 surely a very sound "one. I do not feel less gratitude 
 to him for this announcement, that he has expressed 
 it in terms which are open to the other construction. 
 The ambiguity will ,be 'useful to us if it teaches us 
 that there are two possibilities ; one of ascent from our 
 infantine wisdom, one of descent. We may rise to a 
 scientific apprehension of the meaning of facts, we may 
 sink into the habit of considering them only as ■ they 
 affect our private interests. We may become human, 
 we may drop into a positive money-worship which is 
 merely brutal. That we should avoid the degradation 
 and attain the elevation would have been surely M. 
 Comte's desire. 
 
 What I maintain is that the hindrances to Expe- 
 rimental Philosophy were also the great hindrances 
 to theological belief. As long as men are counted 
 infallible the investigation into the meaning of facts 
 will be checked, precisely because the belief in a God 
 of Truth, in a God who stirs men to pursue Truth and 
 leads them on in the pursuit of it, is checked. The 
 practical denial of God, not faith in Him, makes us 
 afraid that if we seek we shall not find, if we knock it 
 will not be opened to us. Those nursery prayers 
 which the Club sage thinks were so good for the child, 
 so inappropriate to the man, ought to be so regarded 
 if the man's ultimate vocation is to get all he can 
 for himself. But in that ripest period he will look 
 back upon his childhood, and fancy it must have been 
 the sunniest and most blessed moment of his ex- 
 istence because he cherished delusions which have 
 
 one ; a 
 growth 
 into 
 Science 
 through 
 experi- 
 ment. . 
 
 The child 
 may be the 
 father of 
 the ma/n. 
 
36o 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XIX. 
 
 The man 
 may feel 
 his need of 
 Theology 
 because 
 he needs 
 Science. 
 
 The Hie- 
 rarchy of 
 Studies. 
 
 Must we 
 know them 
 all before 
 we become 
 Comtists ? 
 
 passed for ever away. Whereas, if his vocation is 
 to know Truth and to be true, he may have thee 
 had his first glimpse of the vista which through ages 
 upon ages he is to explore. He may have been 
 shewn who would be his guide through the bewil- 
 dering, but most needful and precious questionings, 
 respecting himself and his fellows into which he enters 
 as he grows older ; he may feel that he first knows the 
 full need of his mother's lessons when he grapples with 
 the mysteries either of the outward Universe or of 
 Human Society. 
 
 3. So I come to that great development of the 
 doctrine that Physical or Positive studies should be 
 the induction to Human studies in which M. Comte 
 supposed the glory of his System to consist. Here I 
 feel myself in a difficulty which I must state frankly, 
 and about which I greatly desire light from those who 
 can give it. M. Comte supposes that there is an order 
 or hierarchy of studies, that Humanity is at the sum- 
 mit, but that Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology and 
 others lead up to it. Now I am utterly unable to 
 ascend this scale. I do not affect to be a Mathema- 
 tician, a Chemist, or a Biologist. It would be the 
 greatest quackery to pretend that I can judge whether 
 M. Comte's arrangement of these subjects is right, or 
 how well or ill he has treated any one of them. Am I 
 therefore unfit to understand his doctrine so far as it 
 bears on Humanity ? Is it impossible for me without 
 this qualification to become a Comtist 1 Or can I only 
 acquire that qualification by taking for granted all that 
 is said in M. Comte's course on topics about which I 
 am ignorant ? In the first case it strikes me that the 
 limits of the school must be drawn very closely; 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF SUMANITT. 
 
 361 
 
 that the conditions under which it is entered are 
 severer than those which any sect in the world has 
 laid down. But I open a book written in a popular 
 style and addressed to all Europeans and Americans ; 
 there I find people of every class and tongue urged 
 at once to become proselytes of the new faith. That 
 book sometimes leaves a painful impression upon the 
 mind that the second alternative — that of implicit 
 faith — is demanded of us. Much is said to have been 
 done by 'Positivism' behind the scenes; we seem 
 sometimes to be told that we must receive its lessons 
 on Humanity, they being inevitable deductions from 
 doctrines previously established respecting Mathema- 
 tics, Chemistry, Biology. When, however, I meet with 
 Comtists, men of the highest worth and honesty, who 
 do not profess any deep ajcquaintance with these sub- 
 jects — who, at the same time, would never submit to 
 the infallibility in a Philosopher which they deny to 
 a Pope — I feel that I must have misunderstood them 
 on these points ; that they do not mean to exclude us 
 from the benefit of their lessons upon what they deem 
 the highest of all topics, because we are not competent 
 to pass an examination in the lower. Although there- 
 fore I should like some more confident assurance that I 
 am not venturing on sacred ground without the proper 
 initiation; I shall assume that it is lawful to claim 
 my portion, ignorant as I am, in the Humanity of 
 which the Comtists speak. I think they will find 
 hereafter that men will not care as they ought to care 
 for Mathematics or Chemistry or Biology, if they are 
 not first induced to assert their rights as men. I may 
 fully accept M. Comte's doctrine that Humanity is the 
 climax of these studies. I must also believe that it 
 
 or accept 
 the whole 
 course of 
 them as 
 articles of 
 faith! 
 
 The School 
 apparently 
 invites us 
 to consider 
 their 
 human 
 teaching , 
 without 
 this prepa-. 
 ration. 
 
 Humanity 
 may be the 
 last of 
 Studies ; 
 
362 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 is it not 
 also the 
 first ? 
 
 lies beneath them, and must in some way be the prepa- 
 ration for them. 
 
 4. If ' this point is settled we can do muct 
 greater justice to the comprehensive Humanity of this 
 teacher. That he refuses to confine it by any sec- 
 tarian limits, that he would recognise of all kindreds 
 and nations as sharers in it, is a valuable and neces- 
 sary protest, it seems to me, against opinions which 
 have prevailed in all parts of Christendom. What the 
 humanity of the Eastern Empire was I have tried to 
 shew you. How the West became more and more 
 Latin in all its thoughts and conceptions ; how Pro- 
 testants rebelling against this limitation introduced 
 others still narrower, so that the rejection of what is 
 common to man seemed to be the badge of their cir- 
 cles, I have also been compelled to explain. We may 
 not have learnt these facts from the Comtists' preach- 
 ing; yet we may be heartily thankful to it for not 
 allowing us to forget them or explain them away. 
 As little can we deny the service it has done us by 
 declaring that the mere Roman Virility must not be 
 confounded with Humanity ; that we cannot feel the 
 length and breadth of that word till we acknowledge 
 the grandeur of the woman's position. Once more we 
 must rejoice that they have not permitted these to be 
 barren maxims, that they have insisted upon them as 
 truths which must affect the Politics of the world; 
 which must be tested by the circumstances, not of 
 other times, but of our own. Such hints are most 
 salutary and bracing ; they speak not of compromises 
 but of battle ; if we are to be swept away in the battle, 
 as they threaten that we shall be, we must nevertheless 
 prepare ourselves for it. 
 
 The com- 
 prehen- 
 siveness 
 of the 
 Comtist 
 Humanity 
 do he 
 hipUy 
 prized; as 
 well as the 
 claim that 
 it should 
 lie tested 
 in practice. 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 363 
 
 5. If I recognise the worth of this conception be- 
 cause it protests against the attempt to exclude any 
 portion of the race frona the circle of Humanity, I hon- 
 our it quite as much because it treats Humanity not as 
 degraded, but as glorious. On this point also I have 
 been forced to own that it is at war with the lessons 
 which different portions of Christendom have derived 
 from their teachers, with those which prevail in Pro- 
 testant sects as well as among Romish Orders. It is at 
 variance also with the doctrines of Philosophers so little 
 in sympathy with either as Thomas Hobbes. The dif- 
 ficulty indeed of combining a view of Humanity which 
 is inclusive with one ■which is elevating has been felt 
 in all ages and by all thinkers to be enormous. Is it 
 not a truth that a majority — a vast majority — of our 
 species are gross and animal ; nearer — to use a phrase 
 which an illustrious statesman has made classical — the 
 ape than the angel ? Does not every new investigation 
 bring this truth more home to us ? Is not Science en- 
 dorsing' it 1 The consequence is that from whatever 
 point theorists start, they commonly end with adopting 
 under some form or other, the doctrine which they 
 complain of when it assumes its Calvinistical form. 
 They hold whatever is good among men to be excep- 
 tional. The Comti^ts bravely resist this conclusion. 
 They will pay the highest honour to Humanity as such. 
 If they contemplate it in particular specimens, that is, 
 if I do not mistake, because they suppose the charac- 
 teristics of it to be most fully exhibited in those spe- 
 cimens. 
 
 6. And they suppose the human characteristic, 
 that which all are to strive for because it is human, to 
 be not Selfishness but Love; only when each man 
 
 The 
 honour 
 given to 
 Humanity 
 a useful 
 protest 
 against 
 many pre- 
 valent 
 notions. 
 
 Difficulty 
 of avoid- 
 ing those 
 notions. 
 
 Acknow- 
 ledgment 
 of Love to 
 others not 
 
364 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XIX. 
 
 ourselves 
 as the true 
 end of 
 Humanity. 
 
 Benefit of 
 this lesson 
 even 
 
 though we 
 may have 
 heard it 
 ■ lief ore. 
 
 The way I 
 to the goal. 
 
 M. Comte's 
 notions of 
 Theology. 
 
 seeks not his own interest, but the interest of the whole 
 Society, is he truly human. That is the goal which we 
 are to keep in sight ; not the obtaining of rewards, not 
 the escape from punishment, but this sublime and per- 
 fect Charity. Great as the Intellect is, it must bow to 
 the heart ; all efforts after knowledge, even if pursued 
 according to that wonderful system which M. Comte 
 elaborated, are still conducing to this higher end ; only 
 when that, is attained has Positivism fulfilled its 
 mission. 
 
 Portions of this language may sound not altogether 
 new to us. Do you think we can safely dismiss them 
 on that plea? Have we understood them so well — 
 have they penetrated so far into our practice — that we 
 can afford to part with any one who sings them afresh 
 to us, mingled possibly with some sharp notes of de- 
 nunciation and contempt ? If Comtists know the secret 
 of combining reverence for all mankind with resistance 
 to the selfishness to which we feel that each of us has 
 continually yielded, surely we should listen earnestly 
 while they impart it. If they do nothing but cause us 
 some shame, that may be the very good we want ; those 
 who stir us to that may be our highest benefactors. 
 
 What is the secret then? It is this: 'Part with 
 ' your Theology. Exalt Humanity into the place which 
 'it has occupied.' The words have a most tempting 
 sound. There are numbers who are eager to accept 
 them. I think I have partly shewn you why. If I 
 gave you different passages from M. Comte's books 
 which shew what he supposed Theology to be, you 
 would be still better acquainted with his reasons. He 
 often compliments the Theology of the Catholic Church 
 for vindicating the feelings against the mere glorifica- 
 
TEE MODERN CONCEPTION OF HUMANITY. 
 
 P5 
 
 tion of the intellect by Philosophers. But Positivism, 
 he says, does that more perfectly; it exalts the heart 
 to its right place, to its highest honour. Theology has 
 worshipped a -woman in the person of the Virgin. How 
 much better does Oomtism fulfil the same object ! 
 Theology has kept up a certain notion of a Society not 
 confined to one nation with a Supreme Dogmatist over 
 it. That was very well for the Middle Ages; it was 
 better than the anarchy which the brutal conflicts of 
 the different States might have produced. It suggested 
 the thought that there is an educational power as well 
 as a merely governing one. But Positivism has adopted 
 all that is good in this doctrine into itself. A supreme 
 Dogmatist must give place to a perfect System; a 
 wider Humanity must displace what was merely the 
 preservation and development of certain maxims origi- 
 nating with a set of Hebrew teachers. -Then Theology 
 has its direct mischiefs. It encourages Selfishness. It 
 leads men to abandon the interests of the earth and 
 mankind for the sake 'of rewards which are to be ob- 
 tained in some future world. It is also adverse to fixed 
 principles such as Science craves for. It introduces 
 uncertainty and fluctuation by promising continual in- 
 terferences on behalf of particular favourites. 
 
 Now you will perceive how much excuse there is for 
 these charges ; how little right any one of us may have 
 to say, ' They do not apply to me.' But did it not oc- 
 cur to M. Comte that there was another way of judging 
 what the Theology of Christendom is besides an exami- 
 nation, which must be somewhat loose and hasty, of the 
 tenets and practices of its particular teachers ? Might 
 he not, just for a moment, have looked at those very 
 short documents to which I have referred so often, 
 
 Its merits 
 in his eyes 
 as a prepa- 
 ration for 
 Positi- 
 vism. 
 
 Its direct 
 evils. 
 
 The Creed 
 and the 
 Lord's 
 Prayer 
 passed over 
 as insigni- 
 ficant. 
 
366 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XIX. 
 
 The Hu- 
 manity of 
 the Creed. 
 
 A Head of 
 Humanity 
 unites all 
 the ele- 
 ments of it. 
 
 seeing that they are recognised by all the teachers,' and 
 also are the language of the people? If he had done so 
 he would have discovered exactly what is the difference 
 between his conception of Humanity and the theolo- 
 gical one ; he would not have discovered any one of 
 those characteristics which, either for praise or blame, 
 he has imputed to Theology. 
 
 He would not have found that the Creed of the 
 West speaks either of the feelings or the Intellect. He 
 would have read in it of God a Father who is the 
 Creator of Pleaven and Earth, that He is emphatically 
 not a capricious Being who interferes on behalf of a 
 few favourites, but One who had made Himself known 
 to men through a Son — that Son entering into the na- 
 ture of men, dying the death of men, rising for men, 
 exalting His manhood at the right hand of God, being 
 the Head and -Judge of men. Here is the common 
 Humanity of men ; here is that Humanity exhibited 
 not in some partial examples, but in a Central Object 
 to whom all may turn, in whom all may see their own 
 perfection. And that Perfection is emphatically the 
 Perfection of Unselfishness, of One who sacrifices Him- 
 self for the good of the kind, for the pure Love which 
 M. Comte deems the supreme good of man. M. Comte^ 
 if he had continued the perusal of this simple manual 
 of Theology, would have heard of a Uniting Spirit who 
 builds up a Society of men, who sets them free from 
 sins, who promises to raise up their bodies out of death, 
 who gives them the Life of the Eternal God which has 
 been shewn to be the Life of the Eternal Charity. . 
 Certainly not a limited Latin or Greek Society, not one 
 held in subjection to any Supreme Dogmatist or to the 
 rules of any Sect. 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION OP HUMANITY. 
 
 367 
 
 What is it that M. Comte calls upon us to exchange 
 for this obsolete infantine Theology? We are still to 
 believe in Humanity, only in a headless Humanity. It 
 is a Humanity which has no deeper root than our own 
 nature, which can only be understood and adored in 
 ourselves and in our fellow-creatures. It is no meta- 
 physical abstraction. Positivism abhors Metaphysics. 
 It must therefore take concrete forms ; it must be reve- 
 renced and adored in those. Every one who reads 
 history, who knows anything of himself, must perceive 
 how plausible such a doctrine is, how highly probable 
 it is that it should bring forth practical fruits. M. Comte 
 has produced the most clear and .complete Philosophy 
 of Idolatry that exists in the world ; the fuUest justifi- 
 cation and apology for all the worships that have di- 
 vided Humanity. The only question is whether such 
 a Philosophy is the way to a United and Universal 
 Humanity. 
 
 I think it may be, if it has the effect which it 
 ought to have, of leading us to see how much we have, 
 one and all, been acting on the maxims of this Phi- 
 losophy, how much we have been deifying our own 
 partial tastes and conceptions, how little we have been 
 : confessing a Centre from which the life of all human 
 creatures is derived, in which they may find a fellow- 
 ship amidst all their diversities. What honour do not 
 Comtists deserve of us— what columns and statues can 
 be too magnificent for their high priest— if they bring 
 ' us back to the belief that the Love which they say 
 is the sublimest quality of men is indeed, as St John 
 said, the very being of God ; that which was mani- 
 fested to men in His Son ; if in the bitter despair of 
 becoming by any effort of ours what .they tell us that 
 
 LECT. XIX. 
 
 A Head- 
 less Hu- 
 manity re- 
 produces 
 all the dif- 
 ferent 
 idolatries 
 that have 
 divided it. 
 
 Hmi> 
 Comtism 
 may lead 
 us back to 
 the unitivfi 
 Humanity, 
 away from 
 the idola- 
 tries which 
 it seems to 
 endorse. 
 
368 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XIX. 
 
 Practical 
 sugges- 
 tions of 
 Comtists 
 on ques- 
 tions of 
 national 
 Policy. 
 
 we ought to be, in the full consciousness of all the 
 selfishness which Hobbes imputes to our nature, we 
 are led to confess a Spirit who can raise us to a par- 
 ticipation of the divine Nature? For my own part 
 I do not profess the least skill in confuting Comt- 
 ists. I am glad to be confuted by them, since theii 
 exposure of my Theology compels me to understand 
 how little I have appreciated it, and what the worth 
 of it is. 
 
 I am anxious to distinguish between any Social 
 arrangements which Comtists may recommend and 
 their fundamental principles. Their dogmas about the 
 relations of Labourers to Capitalists are entitled to the 
 same respectful consideration as all others that have 
 been propounded by Frenchmen or Englishmen who 
 have devoted thought to that subject. If they seem 
 to contradict others which have commended them- 
 selves to our judgments, we need not be in a hurry 
 to reject either. Still less ought we to despair of 
 a solution of the most difficult problems, because our 
 assent is demanded to so many different solutions; 
 every student, every practical man may contribute 
 some hint which we cannot afford to lose ; in action 
 we may discover the use of one and another that we 
 have slighted. If Comtists sometimes appear as de- 
 cisive in their conclusions upon those points which 
 must be open to the influence of varying circum- 
 stances as upon the most universal principles, that 
 is the ordinary infirmity of young and vigorous schools 
 bent upon shewing that they are not content with 
 figures in ivory or pasteboard, but must have actual 
 pawns and bishops and kings to play with. And surely 
 it is well for us to be reminded that all our principles 
 
THE MODERN CONCEPTION OP HUMANITY. 
 
 369 
 
 must be tested at last by what they can do for our own 
 characters and for mankind. 
 
 From those applications of this System which con- 
 cern the intercourse of Nations with each other, we 
 may all I think derive much instruction j many grave 
 warnings as to immoral notions and habits which we 
 have tolerated in public men, and have perhaps che- 
 rished in ourselves. As long as they adhere to the 
 word ' international,' I can listen to them gratefully ; 
 for that word recognises the distinctness of the bodies 
 which hold fellowship with each other ; it excludes the 
 imperialism in which Nations are lost. But there is 
 in this system such a dread of the individuality which 
 I believe is involved in the existence of Nations ; such 
 an evident hankering after the ' death ' of Jesuitism if 
 it could be secured without the name which Loyola 
 adopted, and (as I hold) dishonoured ; the founder and 
 disciples of this school have such an admiration for 
 Charlemagne's doings in the West, such a liking for 
 the civilization of China even though the 'Progress' 
 which they admire is not quite compatible with its 
 ' Order ' ; that one cannot but perceive an Empire 
 looming through all their speculations, however much 
 it may at present be kept out of their own sight as well 
 as ours. 
 
 If that vision did come in its fulness upon some 
 of the disciples of this school, if they saw that they 
 must in deed as well as in name renounce the Liberty 
 which was once dear to them — I suspect they would 
 begin to reconsider with great seriousness the steps 
 by which they had arrived at such a result. I should 
 be very sorry if their reflections led them into an angry 
 reaction against their teacher or his lessons. Those 
 
 LECT, XIX. 
 
 And on in- 
 temational 
 qiiestions. 
 
 Import- 
 ance of 
 that 
 phrase. 
 
 Tendency 
 to Imperi- 
 alism in 
 Comtists. 
 
 Banger of 
 a Reaction 
 in men 
 awakening 
 to the 
 worth.of 
 Liberty^ 
 
 A A 
 
370 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XIX. 
 
 Conclu- 
 sion. 
 
 who have known most of these reactions in themselve 
 or seen them in others would be guilty of a crime : 
 they tried to produce them in any one. I hope tha 
 instead of revolting against M. Comte, his disciple 
 may always remember him as the discoverer to ther 
 of the great truth that there must be some TJniverss 
 Society for men. That Society, as I have .tried t 
 shew you, may take the form of an Empire ; thei 
 it will be but a repetition of the experiments agains 
 which the cry in men for a Brotherhood has ascende( 
 to heaven. It may take the form of a Family ; thei 
 it may satisfy that cry, if indeed there is a Father ii 
 Heaven who adopts men of all Nations and Kindredi 
 into His Family, and teaches them what are theii 
 places in it. 
 
LECTURE XX. 
 
 DEMAND IF THE NEWEST GIRGUMSTANCES FOR 
 A DIVINE GROUND OF HUMAN LIFE AND 
 HUMAN MORALITY. 
 
 When I spoke to you in tlie last Lecture of that whicli 
 I called the Modem Conception of Humanity, I did not 
 intimate any purpose of adding to this conception some 
 theological tenets modem or ancient. If I undertook 
 such a task, I should not only be forsaking my proper 
 province as a Moralist, I should be making all that I 
 have said to you about Morality unintelligible. I have 
 not tried to shew you that something is desirable be- 
 sides the Universal or Human Morality which has been 
 the subject of this course; I have wished to ascertain 
 what is the foundation of that Morality; how it can be 
 in very deed a Morality for men as men, a Morality for 
 you and me. I believe, as I have said, that all the 
 partial conceptions of Humanity and of Human Mo- 
 rality which the enquirers of the i8th century be- 
 queathed to us, as well as that more comprehensive one 
 which has been elaborated in our own day, afford us 
 the greatest help in understanding the lessons of those 
 periods which we had examined previously. But I 
 fully admit that the test of all principles affecting to be 
 
 Purpose 
 Qf this 
 Lecture. 
 
 The real 
 test of a 
 Principle. 
 
372 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The Root 
 of Hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Universal- 
 ity of St 
 laul. 
 
 moral and human must be their application to the 
 circumstances in which we are placed. What signifies 
 it to us if they were adapted to Palestine in the first 
 century, or to Constantinople or Rome in the middle 
 ages, or to the Teutonic nations at thfe Reformation, "if 
 they do not explain our lives, if they cannot direct our 
 practice in this year 1869? We may respect them as 
 fragments of antiquity, we may deposit them in mu- 
 seums, but we must have something else for our 
 common daily business. Because I can find no other 
 which is adequate to our emergencies, I go back to the 
 principle of a Universal Family which was announced 
 eighteen centuries ago, and which has been subject to 
 so many contractions and mutilations in subsequent 
 periods. I accept the principle in that primitive form 
 which has been preserved among the people of Chris- 
 tendom, whatever may have been the opinions of its 
 different doctors. 
 
 I. That a Fatherly Will is at the root of Humanity 
 and upholds the Universe was the announcement which 
 shook the dominion of capricious demons and the 
 throne of an inexorable fate in the Roman Empire. 
 The circumstances in which it was first proclaimed 
 shew how much the Universality of the announcement 
 was involved in its essence. The resistance to it came 
 from the Jews, because they said they were the chosen 
 people of God, the only favourites of Heaven. The 
 Apostle of the Gentiles — whom it is the most modem 
 fashion to credit with the characteristic peculiarities of 
 Christian Theology — afiSrmed his privilege as a Jew 
 only to be this, that he might proclaim his Gospel 
 concerning God to all Nations. His cause would have 
 been lost, every argument which he used would have 
 
NEW CmaVMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 373 
 
 been stultified, his sufferings would liave been wasted, 
 his influence on mankind would have been nothing, if 
 he had not delivered this as a message to men just as. 
 he found them, not after they had entered the Church, 
 but as the reason why they should enter it. Every 
 attempt that was made afterwards by any Church or 
 any school to make the truth of the announcement 
 dependent on the acceptance of it by one set of men 
 or another was a defiance of his express words; must 
 deprive the morality which he deduced from it of all 
 reahty for them or for their race. 
 
 Now the circumstances which are at this time 
 creating the greatest suspicion of Christian MoraUty 
 are these. We know that an immense world has been 
 discovered of which the Palestine fishefmen and the 
 tentmaker of Tarsus knew nothing. 'While it was 
 'possible to contemplate Christendom as constituting 
 'the world, or at least all that is sacred in it, the 
 'morality of these teachers,' it is said, 'might be ac- 
 'cepted as sufficient. ■ It led to great crimes and 
 ' brutalities when new regions of men were revealed to 
 'the sailors of Spain or Holland or England. Those 
 'who lay outside the fold might be treated with un- 
 ' bridled ferocity, or be compelled by such ferocity to 
 ' come within it. Afterwards when along with com- 
 'mercial intercourse and civilization some notion of a 
 'common Humanity began to prevail, the Churches 
 'caught a little of it, talked with pity of the poor exiles 
 'from God's mercy, and when no longer able to perse- 
 'cute them, made considerable efforts 'to persuade them 
 'that the European faith in some one of its forms was 
 'better than their own. But though in these efforts 
 ' some gentleness towards people of other religions may 
 
 Modem 
 objection 
 to Chris- 
 tian Mo- 
 rality. 
 
 Alleged 
 inade- 
 quacy for 
 a world 
 consisting 
 of many 
 Religions. 
 
374 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Deduction 
 from the 
 apostolic 
 maxim. 
 
 ' have been called forth — though that may have been 
 ' found on the whole the most useful policy for the 
 ' proselytisers — what fellowship can they have felt with 
 'those whom they warned under the most terrible 
 'penalties to become like them; how can they have 
 ' confessed that there was any common moral standard 
 'to which they might appeal?' 
 
 I am not careful to consider the numerous excep- 
 tions to this charge which the records of every sect and 
 Nation might offer, because I wish you to observe, that 
 if it was true absolutely and without any exception 
 against all Christians, it would only shew what had 
 been the effect of neglecting the maxim from which 
 they started. It is equally true that every instance of 
 the behaviour towards men of other races and faiths 
 which is the opposite to this has been an adherence, 
 whether intentionally or not, to that maxim. Suppose 
 a man to hold it fast, he must trace all sense of Justice, 
 Veracity, Equity, Kindliness in himself to that which 
 he afifirms to be the perfectly good Will; he must 
 acknowledge every unjust, untruthful, unfair, unkind 
 act of his as a rebellion against it. He must attribute 
 all the imperfection of his acts either to a confused 
 apprehension of this "Will, or to some perverse influence 
 which hinders him from gmng effect to his apprehension 
 of it. And this judgment of himself must be also the 
 one which he forms of all with whom he is brought into 
 contact. "Whatever sense of Justice, Veracity, Equity, 
 Kindliness is found in them must have its source in 
 that same "Will, cannot have any other source. "What- 
 soever in them is unjust, untrue, unfair, unkind, must 
 come from a confused apprehension of this "Will, or 
 from some false influence which prevents them from 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 375 
 
 giving effect to their apprehension of it. The principle 
 in both cases is precisely the same. And the treatment 
 of the cases must be in all essentials the same. To set 
 up a Western standard of morals against an Eastern is 
 to deny our principle; to exalt ourselves in any degree, 
 either on the plea that our civilization is better, or that 
 our religion is better, is to confute the claims of each. 
 The man who boasts of his peculiar civilization boasts 
 of his narrowness, of his incapacity to recognise the dis- 
 tinctions and varieties which are found in the society of 
 men as in the natural Cosmos. The man who boasts 
 of his religion, boasts that he has some special God who 
 is not the Father of all the Families of the Earth, who 
 is not the root of all that is right and true in himself 
 and all men, who does not abhor what is wrong or false 
 in him as much as in all other men. 
 
 There can be no doubt that any one who is uni- 
 formly just, fair, kindly in his dealings with those of 
 another faith, still more that any one who deliberately 
 exerts himself to improve their condition, to elevate 
 their thoughts, to make them partakers of all that 
 he finds most precious to himself whatever it be, does 
 .undermine the worship of separate local gods, still 
 more the worship of unjust and cruel gods, even 
 though he never speaks a word against them, though 
 he enters into no argument to withdraw any one from 
 them. On the other hand, if, under any pretext, we 
 ' assume a right to insult or bully or corrupt or cheat 
 any man in any country whom the chances of do- 
 minion or diplomacy or trade throw in our way, we 
 do what in us lies to confirm that man in the belief 
 of insulting, bullying, corrupting, cheating gods; we 
 lead him to pay them homage as the best means of 
 
 What it 
 prohibits. 
 
 Boasting 
 self-con- 
 tradictory. 
 
 Influences 
 which im- 
 dermine or 
 sustain 
 immoral 
 divinities. 
 
1>7^ 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Horn to get 
 rid of a 
 Theology. 
 
 How to fall 
 under the 
 dominion 
 of one. 
 
 securing their connivance or support, and of conn- 
 teracting our violence or our tricks. This effect we 
 shall produce, because we are, in our inmost hearts, 
 doing homage to these gods ourselves, because we are 
 invoking them, if not at public altars and temples, yet 
 in our daily transactions, in our secret thoughts. It 
 is well that we should thoroughly understand this. 
 Comtists or others may talk to us about getting rid 
 of theology. We can very easily get rid of that the- 
 ology of which I have spoken to you in these Lec- 
 tures — of that theology which recognises a E-ighteous 
 Will, a Fatherly Will, as the ground of us and of the 
 Universe. We do get rid of that continually; we 
 shake it off as a most inconvenient burthen.; But we 
 cannot get rid of some theology. When we have re- 
 jected the name or names that men have worshipped, 
 the substance, the character which the names repre- 
 sent, cleave to us as closely as ever. The more we 
 feel that there is no object above our nature — no 
 ground beneath our nature — the more will those ten- 
 dencies, appetites, antipathies, which we find in our 
 nature, present themselves to us as irresistible powers 
 which we must obey. They will associate themselves, 
 as they have done in all mythology, with the powers 
 of the outward world ; then in spite of all our know- 
 ledge of that world, these powers will combine with 
 those which we feel characteristic of ourselves to terrify 
 and enslave us. 
 
 I believe the circumstances of our time are com- 
 pelling us to take notice of these facts, that men in all 
 directions are taking notice of them. Those who speak 
 most of the moral corruptions which are to be dis- 
 covered in Hindostan, Japan, in any Eastern land ; 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 m 
 
 those who complain that we will not recognise the 
 nobler qualities which are to be found in the natives 
 of all these countries ; those who ask whether the same 
 evils which Christians have denounced as the results 
 of Heathen worship are not to be seen in their own 
 actions — all alike, however they may wish to fix our 
 attention upon one set of facts, and to make us in- 
 credulous of others which rest upon evidence as strong 
 and decisive, are leading us to the same result. They 
 aU point to a standard of which they are conscious, 
 of which they discover a consciousness not only ia par- 
 ticular men, but in whole Societies of men ; they re- 
 cognise in each particular man, in every Society of 
 men, a departure more or less violent from that stand- 
 .ard. The question how if that is so we are to account 
 for the dissimilar maxims which men have proposed 
 to themselves, and by which they have tried to regu- 
 late their conduct, may seem to become more difiScult 
 as our experiences become more manifold. In fact 
 those manifold experiences are driving us to a prac- 
 tical solution of the difficulty — are interpreting the old 
 solution of it. Not that which is peculiar, not that 
 which is exceptional, is most elevated ; but that which 
 has the largest, most comprehensive sympathy, which 
 can most enter into the conditions of those who are 
 lowest and most degraded. Whence can such a Sym- 
 pathy have issued, whence can the desire of it have 
 issued ? If its source is in our circumstajjces it must 
 soon be exhausted; those circumstances, by their va- 
 rieties and contradictions, are exhausting it. If the 
 source is in ourselves, the Self of each man must ex- 
 tinguish it. The circumstances have given rise to 
 those partial conceptions of worth which men in dif- 
 
 Mecogni- 
 tion of a 
 common 
 Standard 
 by oppos- 
 ing think- 
 ers. 
 
 The pecu- 
 liar stand- 
 ard less 
 elevated 
 than the 
 common 
 one. 
 
 Those 
 which se- 
 parate men 
 
37^ 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XX. 
 
 can be ex- 
 plained; 
 whence has 
 come that 
 which 
 unites 
 them ? 
 
 Redemp- 
 tion : 
 
 fromwhat? 
 
 The cry 
 for a Pro- 
 metheus, 
 
 ferent regions have formed, which they have exalted 
 into gods. The selfish instincts have made these con- 
 ceptions incapable of reconciliation. Suppose the sym^ 
 pathy to have sprung from a Will which has called 
 Man into being, which is the origin of Life and Order 
 to the Universe, there is at least the dawn of light 
 upon this great paradox, the promise that all our acts, 
 thoughts, and habits may not for ever be entangled in 
 the meshes of it. 
 
 II. But a Fatherly Will always must seem a mon- 
 strous and incredible dream to human beings living 
 in a world such as we live in, if they have been left 
 to destroy themselves and each other according to their 
 whims and fancies. If that is the Will or the Fate 
 which governs the Universe, there must be some Deli- 
 verer from that Will or Fate ; some Prometheus who 
 shall steal the fire that is to hinder human creatures 
 from being utterly wretched, utterly at the mercy of 
 the Tyrant. Such redemptions every mythology is full 
 of — full in proportion to the experiences which there 
 were of human misery in the land that produced it. 
 There must be some friendly demon, some co-operator 
 with the poor victims of mortal oppression or of Death, 
 the common oppressor — one who shall at least alle- 
 viate the wretchedness of some district or family or 
 time if he cannot remove it. To secure such aid and 
 co-operation what prayers must not be poured forth, 
 what sacrifices offered ! If a child will secure the help 
 of the intercessor, if it will buy off the wrath of the 
 enemy, can that be grudged? More and more the 
 enemy is contemplated as absolute and supreme; the 
 helpers as temporary and accidental. And supposing 
 they are habitually well disposed — supposing they have 
 
NMW CIRCUMSTA.NCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 379 
 
 Qot been alienated by any offences of their votaries, 
 what do they know about the wants of their votaries ? 
 There may be pity; what participation in woe can 
 there he'i A modem poet has given admirable ex- 
 pression to the sense of hopeless separation between 
 the inhabitants of the earth and its supposed rulers 
 and to the cry which it suggests. He may or may 
 not be right artistically in attributing such sentiments 
 to a Greek Chorus, but they are in themselves most 
 striking and true. 
 
 "But up in heaven the high gods one by one 
 Lay hands upon the draught that quickeneth, 
 
 Fulfilled mth all tears shed and aU things done, 
 And stir with soft imperishable breath 
 The bubbUug bitterness of life and death, 
 
 And hold it to our lips and laugh; but they 
 
 Preserve their lips from tasting night or day, 
 Lest they too change 'and sleep, the fates that spun. 
 
 The lips that made us and the hands that slay; 
 Lest all these change, and heaven bow down to none. 
 
 Change and be subject to the secular sway 
 And terrene revolution of the sun. 
 
 ■ Therefore they thrust it from them, putting time away. 
 
 "I would the wine of time, made sharp and sweet 
 With multitudinous days and nights and tears 
 And many mixing savours of strange years. 
 Were no more trodden of them under feet. 
 
 Cast out and spilt about their holy places : 
 That Ufe were given them as a fruit to eat 
 And death to drink as water; that the light 
 Might ebb, drawn backward from their eyes, and night 
 
 Hide for one hour the imperishable faces. 
 That they might rise up sad in heaven, and know 
 Sorrow and sleep, one paler than young snow. 
 One cold as blight of dew and ruinous rain; 
 Bise up and rest and suffer a little, and be 
 '. Awhile as all things born with us and we. 
 
 And grieve as men, and like slain men be slain." 
 
 Swin- 
 burne's 
 Atalanta, 
 PP-50> 5'- 
 
 Why 
 
 should not 
 the gods 
 suffer with 
 men? 
 
38o 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XX. 
 
 The Chris- 
 tian an- 
 swer. 
 
 The two 
 ideas of 
 Bedemp- 
 tion often 
 confound- 
 ed in 
 Christian 
 countries. 
 
 The answer to this passionate demand according to 
 the Christian Theology has been given once and com- 
 plete!]!^. He whom it recognises as the Creatqi and 
 Life-giver of the Universe 'has grieved as men, and 
 like slain men been slain.' He endures the tyranny 
 which is triumphant over man's nature that 'He may 
 redeem the Will of men from subjection to their nature 
 and to all the accidents which befall their nature ; that 
 He may ultimately raise their bodies as well as their 
 wills out of the death to which He submits. 
 
 If you fancy that you can trace in modern Europe — 
 in any of those who have accepted the Christian Reve- 
 lation — that very confusion which has mingled with the 
 mythologies of the old world, and with those which 
 Oriental scholars bring under our notice — if you see 
 among the people of Christendom and even among their 
 teachers a disposition to think of a Redemption frOm 
 the Creator instead of by Him, of a Sacrifice to change 
 His Will rather than to accomplish it — that is only a 
 proof how little we can trust the opinions or notions of 
 men in one region or another — ^how common a gravita- 
 tion there is in all these notions and opinions towards 
 narrowness and self-seeking — how habitually, if we 
 think as the Apostles thought and spoke as they spoke, 
 we must look not to men but to Him of whose Will 
 they testified, whose redemption they proclaimed, to 
 sustain our confidence in either. And all modern cir- 
 cumstances, it seems to me, by bringing into clearer 
 light the feebleness and insecurity of our judgments 
 and, at the same time, the needs of Humanity in every 
 region of the earth, are urging us to adopt the original 
 language, undiluted by the least Sectarian mixture, 
 which declared that a Redemption had been accom^ 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 381 
 
 plished for Mankind by the obedience of the Son of 
 God, by the sacrifice of the Son of Man. 
 ; in. The announcement of a Fatherly Will as re- 
 deeming human creatures from their bondage to evil 
 and death by this Sacrifice has been felt in all ages to 
 be characteristic of the New Testament, however it 
 may have been reduced and explained away by those 
 who have undertaken to interpret the New Testament. 
 If we accept its language in the simplest and obvious 
 sense, another announcement was at least as distinctive' 
 of it, and was no less closely connected with its claim 
 to be intended for all Nations. The commonest, vul- 
 garest people were told that the Spirit of the Father in 
 Heaven would be with them to raise, reform, and edu- 
 cate their spirits, to emancipate them from their animal 
 and sensual nature, to deliver them from the suspicion, 
 malice and vanity which set them at enmity with each 
 other and made the pursuit of selfish ends the business 
 of their lives. No words can be more distinct than 
 those which contain this assurance. The presence of 
 such a Spirit is declared to be the very bond of the 
 Universal Society which was to be composed of such 
 heterogeneous elements, that which alone could prevent 
 them from breaking loose from each other, and becom- 
 ing more hostile than ever. These statements lie on the 
 surface of the record, so that the man who runs may 
 read them. Yet they evidently belong to its inmost 
 essence. If there is a Society for men as men, they, 
 according to the teaching of the Apostles, explain the 
 possibility of it. Accordingly the people of Christen- 
 dom, when they have felt the social impulse strongly, 
 when they have become impatient of class divisions, 
 have turned to this language, have recognised in it a 
 
 The an- 
 nounce- 
 ment of a 
 Spirit of 
 Truth. 
 
 A message 
 to the 
 Pejple. 
 
 Accepted 
 by them. 
 
382 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The dread 
 o.t enthusi- 
 asm. 
 
 message addressed to them. On the other hand, the 
 learned men have been anxious to construe it in some 
 other than its apparent sense, to explain that it could 
 not interfere -with the authority of teachers who had 
 better means than wayfarers of judging what was true 
 in belief and right in action. Whether these advan^ 
 tages were derived from some external advantages of 
 position or culture, or from the divine gifts and the in- 
 spiration of the Apostles descending upon them, might 
 be disputed. There was an agreement to this extent, 
 though one not precluding the bitterest controversies 
 between those who entered into it, that the popular be- 
 lief is a dangerous one, sure to issue in an outbreak of 
 enthusiasm which must be dangerous to all organizar 
 tion, civil or ecclesiastical. This was the feeling of, the 
 divines as well as of the philosophers in England during 
 the last century. Enthusiasm was their horror. That 
 must in all ways be checked. Hume's method of 
 checking it by establishing a religion in which he did 
 not believe I have referred to before ; it was accepted 
 by numbers who denounced his scepticism, as a de- 
 sirable and judicious expedient. For they had evidence 
 — clear evidence — ^from the facts of their own days, as 
 well as from the testimonies of history, that very wild 
 incoherent acts were perpetrated by individuals and 
 sects who supposed that they had possession of this: 
 divine gift ; to that persuasion might be traced the 
 contempt of learning which had characterised the fo]-) 
 lowers of Ziska in Bohemia, the contempt of Law and ; 
 its restraints which had characterised the Anabaptists 
 in Munster. These appeared sufficient reasons for mak-. 
 ing efforts — desperate efforts — to prove that the Apo-. 
 sties did not mean that this was a gift for men in all 
 
 Excuses 
 for it. 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 383 
 
 ages ; that it was in fact exhausted, for all practical and 
 important purposes, in the miracles which they were 
 enabled to perform, To shew how necessary these were 
 for their work — how strong the evidence was that they 
 were perfonned in that age — how little any subsequent 
 age could assert the same privilege — was a chief object 
 of those who aspired to connect scholarship with Chris- 
 tianitj'. Protestants indeed were obliged to combat the 
 traditions of the Latin Church in favour of the continu- 
 ance of miraculous powers; but as against what were 
 called the enthusiastical delusions, they might generally 
 calculate on the co-operation of their opponents. 
 
 So it was in the i8th century. A great change has 
 taken place in ours. As in the 13th century, the 
 poJ)ular conviction has sensibly modified if not over- 
 powered the opinions of the learned. Our fashionable 
 language is in many respects the very reverse of that 
 which was adopted by our forefathers. We do not de- 
 nounce enthusiasm. We are wont to speak of it as a 
 great power, indispensable for the study of any subject, 
 for energy to fulfil any task. The reaction has been so 
 vehement that, as was sure to be the case, another is 
 setting in. There is seen to be much affectation in the 
 talk about enthusiasm, that the tfOlk cannot promote 
 energy either in study or action. Motives, it is sup- 
 posed such as Hobbes deemed the only powerful ones, 
 are necessary to stimulate both. Rewards and Punish- 
 ments of some kind are said to be the only securities 
 for diligence in one kind of work or another. 
 
 But however fashions of speech may alter among 
 the wise or the unwise, the great movements of the 
 world go on. There is in every land a people demand- 
 ing to be recognised under that name, not as a set of 
 
 The gift of 
 the Spirit 
 absorbedin 
 miracles. 
 
 A revolu- 
 tion and 
 counter- 
 revolution. 
 
 The de- 
 mand for 
 a Society 
 of human 
 
384 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 States, 
 
 Churches, 
 
 Sects. 
 
 castes ; there is a demand for a fellowship which shall 
 not be confined by boundaries of space or even of time, 
 which shall unite us to men in the most distant regions 
 of earth, which shall unite us to our ancestors and to 
 our posterity. States may do their utmost to assert 
 their authority; but can they satisfy these require- 
 ments ? Ecclesiastics may put forth their highest pre- 
 tensions. Can they control these aspirations ? 
 
 Both confess their inability. They say, 'We are 
 rent asunder by Sects.' These, cry the Statesmen, 
 make it most difficult to educate the people of a coun- 
 try; these, cry the Churchmen, destroy the Unity which 
 we declare to be the special characteristic of Christian 
 life. Yet what deliverance is there froni these Sects ? 
 The States have tried persecution and have failed, have 
 tried toleration and have failed. The Latin and Greek 
 Churches have tried Excommunication, and Sects have 
 been the result of it. Protestants have followed in 
 their wake, behold what they have accomplished! 
 There remain two courses. One is to ignore all that 
 the Sects have been inculcating; to cultivate indiffer- 
 ence ; to decide that we can know nothing of the in- 
 visible world. I have not denied before — I shall not 
 deny — the many pleas which there appear to be for 
 this course, or the number of philosophical men who 
 recommend it, or the attraction which it may well have 
 for the body of citizens in every country weary with 
 the contentions of its religious parties. I would only 
 ask whether it is possible ; whether what you have dis- 
 posed of under one name is not certain to appear under 
 another; whether as we become acquainted with dif- 
 ferent lands and seek for living intercourse with the 
 inhabitants of them, we are not obliged to perceive 
 
 Scheme of 
 banishing 
 the invisi- 
 Me, how 
 farfea- 
 sible. 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 38s 
 
 how thoughts of the invisible world have mingled with 
 all their thoughts of the visible, so that you cannot ex- 
 tinguish one except at the risk of extinguishing the 
 other ? In an age which demands the freest scope for 
 thinking you wish to draw a broader, deeper line of de- 
 marcation between the subjects which it may approach 
 and those which it must avoid than the most dogmati- 
 cal priest or ruler of consciences was ever able to draw. 
 We may confidently affirm that if it were drawn in 
 this day as in former days hosts of new sects would 
 .spring up to efface it, and would obtain power over 
 the hearts of the people everywhere just because they 
 effaced it. 
 
 The other alternative is that which I have just 
 spoken of. We may believe actually, as we have pro- 
 fessed in words to believe, that there is a Spirit guid- 
 ing and educating the thoughts of us and of all men 
 awakening us to activity when we are most inclined to 
 he slothful, keeping us at one when we are most in- 
 clined to be divided. Instead of shrinking from this 
 assertion as one that is likely to exalt the vulgar 
 -against the cultivated, we may announce it to the most 
 vulgar because we desire for them the highest culture ; 
 to the learned because we wish them to know what 
 •Humanity really is, and how they may be instruments 
 in bringing forth that which is latent in the most 
 .brutal. So the first may feel all arrogance, self-conceit, 
 refusal to learn, all unsocial tempers, a rebellion against 
 a divine Teacher who would make them capable of 
 receiving illumination and diffusing it ; so .the second, 
 when their zeal in study and discovery is flagging, may 
 recognise an inspirer; may perceive that he is a de- 
 tecter of the frauds which they practise on themselves, 
 
 The other 
 method. 
 
 The Spirit 
 who 
 teaches 
 Fishermen 
 and Sages. . 
 
 BH 
 
386 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 And keeps 
 them from 
 vile acts. 
 
 The results 
 of denying 
 His pre- 
 sence with 
 common 
 men. 
 
 Com- 
 mercial 
 knavery. 
 
 of the excuses which they make for not fairly grappling 
 with facts and giving all weight to evidence. Then as 
 to common morality. It was a great blunder in the 
 teachers of the last century, first to tell poor men that 
 they must not rob and cheat, and that they ought to 
 be good husbands and fathers ; and when they said they 
 had found a counseller nearer to themselves who resisted 
 their inclination to rob and cheat, who inspired them 
 with a desire to be good husbands and fathers, then to 
 reply, 'There is no such counseller for you; there was 
 ' One who enabled the Apostles to do strange acts, but 
 ' He has left the earth long ago.' It was a fearful blun- 
 der, for it led these poor men to rejoin, ' Well, and why 
 ' should not we perform strange acts too? We did prize 
 ' the Helper who enabled us to do common acts, to care 
 'for our neighbours, to be honest and just in our deal- 
 'ings; but since you say that there is no other sign of 
 ' His presence but the doing of that which is uncommon, 
 'we will try to work wonders.' So the enemies of spi- 
 ritual guidance became the abettors of the impostures 
 and insincerities which they intended to put down. 
 
 But whatever may have been the case then, the cir- 
 cumstances of our time shew how certain it is that 
 Society in ' the most civilised lands will perish through 
 the frauds of rich men as well as poor men — of the 
 most refined and the most outwardly religious—if there 
 is not some power which can create a habit of honesty, 
 which can resist the secret temptations to flagrant dis- 
 honesty in men whom neither the terrors of law nor of 
 public opinion can hinder from bringing disgrace on 
 themselves and ruin on their fellow-citizens. Such dis- 
 coveries give us stronger reasons for asking whether the 
 news of such a Power which came to men centuries ago 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 387 
 
 must be discarded as false, whether they may not be 
 accepted in a more complete sense than they have ever 
 been? 
 
 There are other facts which the sight of the streets 
 in every civilised capital brings home to us, which are 
 brought much more vividly home to those earnest men 
 who have penetrated into the dwellings within those 
 streets. Much, very much has been done — much more 
 might be done — for the improvement of those streets 
 and dwellings by mechanical contrivances, by medical 
 knowledge, by wise legislation. But there are habits 
 in men and women which may set at nought the effects 
 of aU mechanical contrivances, of all medical know- 
 ledge, of the wisest legislation. They cannot be re- 
 formed by any of these; till they are reformed they 
 wiU produce ever more crimes, ever fresh misery. Who 
 can work this reformation? Threats of punishment 
 cannot, promises of reward cannot. Is there not some 
 demand for the old faith in a Spirit to regenerate social 
 life as well as individual life, to overcome the sources 
 of death, ultimately to raise men out of death itself? 
 
 We want — I cannot say how much we want — the 
 labours of physiologists, of statesmen, of men with every 
 kind of gift, to co-operate for the removal of the plagues 
 that torment Humanity. We want them; most thank- 
 ful we should be that so many of them are ready to 
 meet the want. Who has inspired them? Who has 
 taught them to labour for an end which is not a selfish 
 one? I wish they would ask themselves that question. 
 I have tried to find an answer to it in this Lecture. I 
 have sought for the source of that Humanity, of that 
 human Morality, which I see and admire in one man or 
 'Another. I have sought for the source of the habit, the 
 
 BB 2 
 
 LEOT. XX. 
 
 TheStreets 
 and Homes 
 of London 
 and Paris. 
 
 Can the 
 dwellers in 
 them be 
 improved 
 as well as 
 the build- 
 ings i 
 
 The In- 
 spirer of 
 philan- 
 thropy. 
 
388 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 I.ECT. XX. 
 
 Opinions 
 about such 
 a Spirit 
 must be 
 fxlse if the 
 power is 
 in them. 
 
 The Ser- 
 mon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 Coimsels 
 of Perfec- 
 tion. 
 What 
 those coun- 
 sels are 
 supposed 
 to be. 
 
 temper, the character which I believe is struggling in 
 every man with those impulses to self-indulgence and 
 self-aggrandisement which I find in myself, which the 
 wisest observers have detected in our nature. I cannot 
 discover any defence of this Morality, any security for 
 the permanence of it or the development of it, any 
 power of combating that which is opposed to it, except 
 in that Spirit to whom the Apostles attributed every 
 gift which they possessed, but to which they traced as 
 habitually the consistency and harmony of the Society 
 that was meant for all men. The phrases which con- 
 fess this presence cannot be the power that we want if 
 those phrases are true. They speak of that which is 
 not measured by our notions or apprehensions of it, 
 they promise that clearer revelation of it by which we 
 hope to see the weakness of our apprehensions detected, 
 all that is strong in them expanded. 
 
 There is however a notion current among men of 
 letters and men of business — not unsanctioned by 
 divines — that the portion of the New Testament which 
 has been supposed to contain its Canon of Morality is 
 wholly unsuited to the conditions of Modern Society, 
 though it may be accepted as a respectable and vener- 
 able document if it is reduced into figures and denied 
 all connection with ordinary practice. 'The Sermon 
 'on the Mount speaks,' it is said, 'of those to whom it 
 'is addressed being perfect as the Father in Heaven is 
 'perfect. Of course, therefore, it only suggests what 
 ' are technically called counsels of perfection to men who 
 'are disposed to quit the business of the earth and 
 'devote themselves to the contemplation of a future 
 ' world. It leaves ordinary crimes which men are prone 
 'to commit in order to warn the select class against 
 
NEW CmaUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 389 
 
 'purely internal evils. It bids that class abstain as 
 'much from seeking the protection of law as from 
 'self-defence by arms. It teaches them to depend on 
 ' divine help such as is afforded to ravens, not to work 
 'for their bread. It encourages indiscriminate alms- 
 ' giving which we know to be so mischievous. It forbids 
 ' us to exercise any criticism on the acts and opinions 
 ' of our fellow-men. In every particular it sets at nought 
 'the most established maxims of modern civilisation, 
 ' all that has been proved to be most important for the 
 ' well-being of our community.' If these statements 
 are true, the doctrine which I have endeavoured to 
 establish in the Lecture is overthrovra. I am therefore 
 very anxious to examine whether they are true. 
 
 I . That the command — Be ye perfect as your Father 
 in Heaven is perfect-r-taken in connection with the 
 previous words — He maJceth the sun to shine upon the 
 just and the mijust and the good and the evil, instead 
 of recognising a class of devotees was the first complete 
 proclamation of a Universal Morality, I have maintained 
 already. All dreams of such 'counsels of perfection' as 
 lead to the separation of men into classes, of just and 
 unjust, of good and evil, are shattered by that sentence. 
 Unless there is some way in which the disciples of 
 Christ can care for the just and the unjust, for the good 
 and evil — can care for men as men — they are declared 
 to be not like their Father in Heaven. Accordingly 
 the strongest denunciations of the Sermon are directed 
 against the sect of Jews which was following these 
 counsels of perfection. Such were the counsels of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees — schemes for cultivating a right- 
 eousness which should make them eligible for higher 
 rewards than other men. Those rewards, so the Ser- 
 
 The prin- 
 ciple of the 
 Sermon 
 strikes at 
 the root of 
 a caste 
 Morality. 
 
 Denuncia- 
 tion of 
 Pharisai- 
 cal right- 
 eousness. 
 
39° 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Laws 
 against 
 overt acts. 
 
 Christ 
 deals with 
 the source 
 of the acts 
 in the man. 
 The inter- 
 nal Moral- 
 ity the 
 wniversal. 
 
 mon everywhere declares, could not be the rewards 
 which the Father who seeth in secret bestows. His 
 reward is that likeness to Himself, the unselfish Being, 
 which such self-seeking makes impossible. 
 
 2. Instead of such crimes as Adultery or Murder 
 being spoken of as if they belonged only to the outside 
 ■world, the disciples are expressly reminded that they 
 are just as liable to fall into them as any men; that the 
 propensities which lead to them exist in every human 
 being and may at any time be developed into acts. 
 The acts are subject to the cognisance of the Law. If 
 it meddles with any thing besides acts it becomes mis- 
 chievous and cruel. Yet the Lawgiver feels that there 
 is something behind which is producing the acts: if 
 there was any power which could reach that something, 
 which could prevent the commission of the acts, what 
 trouble he would be saved, how thankful he would be! 
 Christ tells men the good news that they may have a 
 will in accordance with the Law, that they may over- 
 come that in themselves which leads them to violate 
 it. An esoteric Morality surely in the strict sense of 
 that adjective; but universal because esoteric — apply- 
 ing to the inner life of all men, to the man himself 
 To talk of this as a superfine morality, a morality for 
 the specially religious, is to pervert language grossly. 
 It is only a morality for them so far as they acknow- 
 ledge themselves to be like all other men. It is a 
 message to all men that they may be right and true, 
 for God would make them so. 
 
 3. "If any man ask thy cloak, let him have thy 
 coat also" is supposed to interfere with the principles 
 of Justice. I apprehend that we interfere with the 
 principles of justice when we take other men's coats^or 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 391 
 
 cloaks, not when we give up our own. A man of great 
 genius in our day, Victor Hugo, has perceived the 
 immense power which a literal compliance with this 
 command might exercise in the reformation of a crimi- 
 nal. The hero of the Miserables is changed from a 
 ruflSan into one of the noblest of men precisely by this 
 kind of conduct in the Bishop from whom he stole a 
 pair of candlesticks. A beautiful illustration surely of 
 the way in which the interests of Law and of Social 
 Order may be promoted by one who does not consider 
 that they exist to promote his advantage or secure his 
 property; that a man is worth more than these. He 
 benefits the individual and the Community equally 
 because he does not prefer himself to both. 
 
 ,4- There is however one great exaggeration and 
 perversion of the words "If he compel thee to go with 
 him one mile, go with him twain," which this excellent 
 Bishop sanctioned in his practice. He seems to have 
 read, "If a criminal tell thee one lie, tell him two." 
 So his virtue confirmed the offender in one of his most 
 characteristic vices. Apply that doctrine to the passage 
 in which the disciples of Christ are told not to turn 
 away from him that asks. The whole principle of the 
 Sermon being that the man is to be like his Father in 
 Heaven, we must learn what this precept means from 
 the sentence: 'Your Father in Heaven will not give 
 those who ask Him for bread a stone, for a fish a ser- 
 pent.' He will not do men an injury merely to please 
 them. If I regard a beggar as a fellow-man, as a 
 brother, I shall conform to the same rule. I shall not 
 give him what would make him idle and brutal. I do 
 turn away from him if to get rid of him or to please 
 ftiyself I degrade him. What then if it has been proved 
 
 TheBishop 
 in the 
 Misera- 
 blis. 
 
 How the 
 Bishop ex- 
 tended and 
 perverted 
 the princi- 
 ple. 
 
 The case 
 ofBeggars. 
 
392 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 the na- 
 tional Mo- 
 rality of 
 neighbour- 
 hood de- 
 mands a 
 Universal 
 Brother- 
 liood to 
 sustain it. 
 
 by criminal statistics or by Political Economy that in- 
 discriminate almsgiving is most mischievous? That 
 proof determines this application of the principle in the 
 Sermon on the Mount; it shews what would be an 
 unbrotherly act. It does not alter the principle unless 
 Statistics and Political Economy have proved that all 
 men are not brothers. No National Morality rises to 
 that principle. But its own principle of neighbourhood, 
 needs the deeper and more universal one to sustain it. 
 Maintain the memn and tuum if you can; but the tuum 
 will be effaced by the meum if there is not some principle 
 which is capable of defending humanity against selfish- 
 ness. In that case, Political Economy will never be 
 able to defend itself against the natural instinct of mo-, 
 nopoly, let its maxims be as much accepted as they may. 
 5. Christ's disciples, it is supposed, were told that 
 they need not work because they were commanded not 
 to be anxious and restless about the results of their 
 work. If I wanted evidence that this Sermon belongs 
 to the circumstances of our time this passage and the 
 objections to it would supply tbe evidence. We have 
 fallen into the notion that we shall work more ener- 
 getically with our hands and with our brains, because 
 we are continually fretting ourselves about what will 
 come of our work, what pence or praises we shall get 
 by it. And yet every one of us knows in Ms inmost 
 heart that this fretting destroys the honesty of his 
 work and the effects of the work. If we could be free 
 from this perpetual fever, if we could work from an 
 internal impulse, not under the pressure of external 
 motives, — if we could work as freemen not as galley 
 ■ slaves — what a difference it would make to the health 
 of our bodies and of our spirits and to all our influence 
 
 WorTi not 
 better 
 when the 
 workman 
 is restless. 
 
 The 
 modern 
 incentives 
 to labour 
 
NEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 393 
 
 upon Society! If it were not a falsehood to tell the 
 student of a University, or the tiller of the ground, or 
 the woman in a factory, You have a Father in Heaven 
 who cares for you at least as much as for the sparrows, 
 who will sustain your life — your human and your 
 animal ^life — no less than that which He has given 
 them, what a new spring of hope there would he for 
 them in their most solitary hours, what a sense of 
 fellowship! Is it wonderful that this part of the dis- 
 course should be more out of harmony with the temper 
 of a restless excited age than any other, and yet that 
 none should be so necessary for such an age? And 
 what a curious illustration it is of our current notions 
 that we should be supposed to need this kind of in- 
 ward help and strength less than a former age, because 
 our. occupations are so multiplied, because we have so 
 many new mechanical aids which earlier times had not 
 for fulfilling them! 
 
 6, Precisely the same twofold remark is applied 
 to the command not to judge lest ye be judged, not to 
 take the mote out of other men's eyes while a beam is in 
 our own. None can be so tormenting to all of us of 
 every school and sect and profession ; none seems so 
 necessary if Society — ^humau Society — is not to be ex- 
 tinguished by the jealousies and enmities of schools, sects 
 and professions. If there is a Social Morality this must 
 be its leading maxim. If there is a Personal Morality this 
 must be its leading maxim. Here they coincide. The 
 distinctions of the just and the unjust, of the good and 
 the evil, which are as much recogiiised in fact by those 
 who reject the words as by those who attach the most 
 importance to them, cannot be discovered by the study 
 of other men's lives, by prying into their acts and their 
 
 LEOT. XX. 
 
 of the 
 hands and 
 brain. 
 
 Sow they 
 confirm tM 
 lesson 
 which is 
 said to be 
 obsolete. 
 
 The com-' 
 mand not 
 to judge. 
 
 Its appli- 
 cation to 
 ow day. 
 
394 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 The need 
 of a Judge 
 of our 
 thoughts 
 and pur- 
 poses. 
 
 The moral- 
 ity of the 
 Sermon 
 said to be 
 feminine, 
 and «»i- 
 heroic. 
 
 motives. I can only be a true critic when I am my 
 own critic; when I distinguish between the powers 
 which are fighting in me for ascendancy, which are 
 claiming me for their servant. And when I enter into 
 this criticism I perceive how treacherous it will be 
 if there is not a Judge over me who detects what I can- 
 not detect, who shews me my evil that He may lead 
 me out of it. When I ask who this Judge is, the old 
 words come back to me. I find that the internal 
 teacher, who appears to take me apart from my kind, is 
 in very deed that Spirit of the Father in Heaven who 
 unites me to my kind, who shews me that the highest 
 blessings are those which I share with it, that the 
 worst curse is to lose fellowship with it and therefore 
 with Him. 
 
 I shall have more to say on this subject in my final 
 Lecture. I will conclude the present with two re- 
 marks. The first has reference to the passive or femi- 
 nine character which has often been ascribed to the 
 Sermon on the Mount. It has been thought to dis- 
 courage all the qualities which have been most conspi- 
 cuous in heroes who have struggled for freedom ; to 
 commend the submission which is sought for by tyrants 
 and paid by slaves. Since I have spoken to you of 
 the message concerning a Father in Heaven as being 
 exactly that which encountered the image of a Man 
 God upon earth, you will understand how far I can 
 accept this statement. The Sermon on the Mount was 
 expressly designed to prepare those who heard it for 
 opposition and persecution, for the courage which could 
 defy both and endure to the end. That object is mani- 
 fest upon the surface of it. The notion that it is hostile 
 to courage springs from the opinion that what sustains 
 
ifEW CIRCUMSTANCES AND OLD PRINCIPLES. 
 
 395 
 
 courage is a sense of self-importance, and therefore that 
 whatever undermines this sense weakens courage. That 
 unquestionably is a favourite tenet in this day. The 
 incapacity of this self-seeking, bragging spirit to resist 
 any great oppressor will, I believe, be made manifest 
 by the circumstances of our time. When Imperialism 
 comes forth in its full force to demand our homage, we 
 may find that we demand something to oppose it which 
 we have lost. And then we may understand as we 
 never did before, that the free and brave Spirit is the 
 Spirit of Charity and Truth, the Spirit who fights in us 
 with our selfishness ; a Spirit which makes men femi- 
 nine, if feminine means courteous, deferential, free from 
 brutal and insolent pretensions ; but which also gives 
 women manliness, if manliness means the vigour to live 
 for the cause of Humanity and die for it. 
 
 The other remark has reference to what I said in 
 a former Lecture about Cardinal Virtues. I said I 
 believed there might be such virtues, and I quoted the 
 words of the Apostle concerning Faith, Hope and 
 Charity. I did not say more lest I should mislead 
 you. There is in some a notion that Cardinal Virtues 
 mean certain specially grand and exceptional virtues 
 which entitle certain men to specially grand and excep- 
 tional rewards hereafter. Cardinal Virtues in this sense 
 are identical with those Counsels of Perfection to which 
 I have just referred. You will judge therefore how 
 little I can admire them or associate them with Uni- 
 versal Morality. But a Cardinal Virtue may signify 
 just what its etymology would suggest. It may be the 
 hinge on which other virtues turn, without which they 
 would have no coherence, no vitality. If that force is 
 given to the phrase, there can be no doubt that the 
 
 LECT. XX. 
 
 The cou- 
 rage of the 
 braggart 
 not that of 
 the hero. 
 
 Cardinal 
 Virtues. 
 
396 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Self-Sacri- 
 fioe the 
 cardinal 
 principle 
 of Human 
 Morality. 
 
 Its divine 
 founda- 
 tion. 
 
 Sermon on the Mount does set forth the Cardinal 
 Yirtue. Self-Sacrifice is that upon which all its pre- 
 cepts hinge. Without this the Faith, Hope and Charity 
 of the Apostle would be mere idle names, they would 
 have no relation to the practice of Life. But Sacrifice 
 leads us again to the original principle of the Discourse 
 — 'Be like your Father in Heaven.' Men are only 
 bidden to exhibit this grand principle of Morality in 
 their acts — -they are only able to exhibit it because He 
 has given the example of it. The Paradox is amazing, 
 but it is the Christian Paradox, the Human Paradox, 
 The fuller illustration of it must be reserved for the last 
 Lecture of this course. 
 
LECTURE XXL 
 
 EVMAF WORSHIP. 
 
 I CONCLTTDED my coTirse on Domestic Morality witli 
 a Lecture on Domestic Worship. In all classical My- 
 thology — in all Mythology we could hear of — divinities 
 were spoken of as parents, children, brothers, husbands, 
 wives. To deduce these thoughts from the phsenomena 
 of Nature was impossible ; to connect them with the 
 conditions of earthly families was obvious. The ques- 
 tion was forced upon us. What is the connection ? The 
 Mythologies contemplated it under ,two contradictory 
 aspects. There was a continual tendency to impute 
 all the corruptions of Family Life which are found on 
 earth to the unseen rulers of the world. There was an 
 acknowledgment not less clearly manifest of a domestic 
 Order from which these were departures, there was a 
 feeling that the Gods must be the preservers of that 
 Order. .This conflict of opinions could not be adjusted, 
 though in different places and times either might be 
 predominant. When a Society is clearly sinking into 
 disorder and baseness — ^when it is becoming untenable 
 — its tastes and appetites are eagerly transferred to 
 the rulers above; they exhibit the same in a more 
 aggravated form because they are credited with greater 
 power to indulge them. On the other hand, whenever- 
 
 Domestic 
 Worship. 
 
 Its two 
 
 Moments 
 of decay. 
 
398 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XXI. 
 
 Moments 
 of renova- 
 tion. 
 
 The Na- 
 tion and 
 its wor- 
 ship. 
 
 Recapitu- 
 lation of 
 its charac- 
 teristics as 
 described 
 in a former 
 Lecture. 
 
 any cry begins for the reformation of a Society, for 
 some escape from its domestic confusions, there arises 
 a suspicion that the conception of Worship has been a 
 false one, that the Gods cannot be the images of those 
 ■whom they are supposed to govern and direct ; that if 
 they exist at all it must be as the models and pro- 
 tectors of Order, not as the examples and patrons of 
 what is disorderly. If that is so, cannot they shew 
 that it is so ; cannot they come forth to vindicate and 
 establish the Order ? to cure the disorders ? 
 
 That thought of an Order, if not wanting before, 
 acquires quite a new vigour when a Nation emerges 
 out of a horde of Families. By whatever revolution 
 that change is effected, it seems always to be preceded 
 by the sense of oppression from some visible power, 
 sustaining itself by an appeal to invisible powers ; with 
 the belief in a Deliverer from the oppression of both. 
 The conviction becomes mighty that He has in some 
 way made Himself manifest in that character ; has 
 proved Himself to be a Ruler as well as a Deliverer. 
 So National Worship begins. It is in its deepest root 
 the recognition of the ruler of all as Righteous, not 
 capricious, as a Deliverer not as an Enemy. He is the 
 Author and Vindicator of Law, the Defender of Bounda- 
 ries, the Head of the Host, the Source of Speech and 
 Government. There blends inseparably with this the 
 old sense of Domestic Authority. He is the Avenger 
 of all outrages upon domestic life and peace. He 
 upholds the right of the Father and the Child. He 
 binds the Husband to the Wife. He is the detecter 
 and the foe of the Adulterer. 
 
 In all national worship therefore is implied a con- 
 tinual cry for help against oppression, for the defence 
 
BUMAN WORSHIP. 
 
 399 
 
 of Right when it is most crushed under Might. A 
 King of Kings is always judging the visible King — 
 when he is thoroughly given up to self-seeking and 
 arrogance, putting him down. There is a prayer to one 
 who is on the side of the poor and the helpless. But 
 there is also a prayer from the man against himself, 
 against his own inclinations to break the law under 
 which he is living and to become an oppressor. There 
 is the same tendency to corruption in this Worship as 
 in that which is more strictly domestic. The Statesman 
 may discover a great charm in the notion of a Religion 
 which by arts that he does not possess can keep the 
 people quiet. Could he not turn it to his account? 
 Could he not bring tha object or objects of the people's 
 worship into his service ? might not the thunders above 
 echo the decrees which go forth from his lips on earth ? 
 It is a wonderfully clever fancy. He finds priests and 
 augurs who thoroughly enter into it. The impression 
 of their power on the multitude will be much deep- 
 ened if the lords of the earth shew that they are 
 dependent upon it. By degrees the priests persuade 
 themselves that they can command those gods whom 
 they profess to obey. The fraud creeps unawares into 
 their souls till it possesses them wholly. Then they 
 and the statesmen Cheat and overreach each other; 
 the people are the victims of both. They may pray 
 for luck in their traffic or their robberies ; they can 
 scarcely hope for deliverance from any oppression ; for 
 are not the powers above the agents of those below ? 
 To this state was the Worship of Rome sinking just 
 at the time when its most enlightened citizens were 
 learning from Greeks to treat it as an open question 
 whether Gods existed at all— or whether if they did, 
 
 Its dege- 
 neracy. 
 
 Reference 
 to Borne. 
 
UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 they must not be simply enjoying their own felicity 
 without any concern about the happiness and misery of 
 mortals. 
 
 Imperialism was the inevitable outcome of this 
 highly civilised morality, this religious Unbelief. I 
 shewed you that there was no novelty in the Empire 
 or in its worship. Families could not be abolished, 
 therefore the old names of divinities which pointed to 
 the existence of families could not be abolished. It 
 was convenient to retain the old names which spoke of 
 laws and orders ; therefore it was convenient to retain 
 the worship of Gods who upheld laws and orders. But. 
 domestic life, national life, were crushed under the 
 hoof of the Caesar, therefore the Csesar must be the God 
 of the World whatever other Gods there were in earth 
 or heaven. 
 
 Family Worship, National Worship had both been 
 mingled with the idea of Sacrifice. It was felt that 
 Sacrifice must for some reason or other be the essential 
 of both. It seemed to be the bond of Society, to be 
 strangely interwoven with the fears and hopes of indi- 
 viduals. Yet it seemed also to be the dissolution of 
 the bonds of Society, to involve frightful violations of 
 domestic affection, to enable the individual offender if 
 he was rich to rise above the law and the gods who 
 enforced the law whilst the poor man became at once 
 a hater of the law, and a victim of the priest who 
 taught him by what offerings he might escape from the 
 greatest terrors of it. Everywhere legislators felt that 
 Law was imperilled by the notion of Sacrifice, every- 
 where that it was a notion rooted in the hearts of men 
 which must, if possible, be converted into an ally. Im- 
 perialism cut the knot. ' Let there be sacrifices to as 
 
ffUMAur worship: 
 
 401 
 
 many gods, or to what gods you please ; but there must 
 be Sacrifice to the Image of the Emperor.' That was 
 the true crisis of the principle. For so it was shewn 
 that the first of all questions in Universal or Human 
 Worship is not 'Shall there be sacrifice?' but, To what 
 kind of "Will shall the Sacrifice be made? and the 
 second. What shall be the chief oblation? 
 
 The Christian Martyrs amidst many confusions of 
 speech and of thought made very distinct answers to 
 both these questions. We must not sacrifice, they 
 said, to this image, but to One who is the direct oppo- 
 site of this Osesar ; to One who is not bribed by the 
 sacrifices of his creatures; who has made the great 
 Sacrifice for them that He may reconcile them to Him- 
 self. And the oblation which He enables us to make 
 that we may be like Him, is the oblation of ourselves. 
 They thus proclaimed to their generation and to the 
 generations which should come after them and should 
 have any honour for their memories, that Christian 
 worship is a protest against all self-willed, self-seeking 
 power in Heaven or Earth, is an acknowledgment of a 
 Fatherly Will, a WiU to redeem and restore Humanity, 
 a WiU which is expressed in Sacrifice ; that it is an 
 ofifering to that Will of the men themselves that they 
 may be what He would have them be, may do what He 
 would have them do. That I understand to be the 
 idea of Christian Worship which has been floating in 
 the minds of all Churches and Schools in Christendom, 
 however little they may have realised it. My object is 
 to shew you how that idea the more it is realised 
 exhibits the principles and sustains the practice of a 
 Universal Morality. 
 
 I. The announcement of a Will, such as I have 
 M. M. c C 
 
 Sacrifice; 
 to whom ! 
 
 Sacrifice; 
 of what? 
 
 Idea of 
 
 Christian 
 
 Worship. 
 
402 
 
 UNIVEBSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XXI. 
 
 A Revela- 
 tion im- 
 plied in it. 
 
 Meaning 
 of the 
 word. 
 
 Discovery 
 of a Will 
 to those 
 who are its 
 
 supposed to be at once the ground and the object of 
 our Worship, obviously presumes a Revelation. In the 
 last Lecture but one I spoke of what seemed to me the 
 entire inef3ficiency for any moral purpose of what is 
 called a Natural Theology. I did not deny that those 
 who have elaborated that Theology have imported into 
 it many conceptions of Justice, Mercy, Benevolence. 
 But these conceptions are imported into that region. 
 They are not found in the stars, or in the wings of 
 insects or amidst geological strata. To demand of a 
 Natural Philosopher that he should detect them must 
 be a gross injustice. I rejoice when he rises up against 
 it. I think it is honesty in him to say, ' We cannot 
 pick up divinity or morality on the sea-shore, they do 
 not grow amidst any flowers that we have examined.' 
 They are honest also in pointing out all the contradic- 
 tions of the natural world, all the signs of death and 
 destruction that are found in it ; all the reasons which 
 might excusably lead men and have led them to suspect 
 malevolence as well as benevolence in the construction 
 of it. Nothing of this kind ought to be suppressed ; to 
 hide facts or try not to look at them is a great rebellion 
 against such a Will as I confess. 
 
 And how then can I know anything of such a Will ? 
 When I answer, as I have answered so often, I can only 
 know a Being who is above me if He reveals Himself, I 
 do not mean if He tells me in some laws or letters 
 what He is. Accepting the New Testament I believe 
 that He cannot shew me in laws what He is, that He 
 can only shew me in a Person and in the acts of a 
 Person what He is. The older records took that prin- 
 ciple for granted. In acts of deliverance and judg- 
 ments done for a Nation and explaining in some mea- 
 
HUMAN WORSHIP. 
 
 403 
 
 sure the government which was exercised over other 
 Nations, the Jewish lawgivers and Prophets say that He 
 declared His mind which is the same throughout all 
 ages. The words of wise and true men who believed in 
 the Divine Order and sought not to mix their own 
 confusions with it, illustrated and expounded these acts 
 to their countrymen; they disclaimed th« credit of 
 being themselves the authors of any wisdom they might 
 impart ; they traced it all to the Source of "Wisdom. 
 So they became, I conceive, instruments of the Divine 
 Revelation ; so they taught all in all ages what Dis- 
 covery is, who it is that enables them to know whatever 
 they do know. But since they testified of an everliving 
 Teacher and Discoverer, they could not be satisfied 
 with any Revelation of Himself which had yet been 
 made. They believed that He would shew fully in 
 some Man what He is. 
 
 What we call the New Testament Revelation is 
 the unveiling of such a Being — of such a Will, to men ; 
 that is to say, of a perfectly Moral Being — of the Will 
 in which all the Justice, Sincerity, Fidelity which exist 
 partially in any Nations or Men have their fulfilment 
 and their root, a Will which cannot be satisfied except 
 in delivering men from their Injustice, Insincerity, 
 Infidelity ; except in imparting to them His own cha- 
 racter. His own Image. That I, take to be the first 
 part of a Human or Universal Worship, the acknow- 
 ledgment in whatever forms of speech, by whatever 
 signs — ^the most simple and universal having most evi- 
 dence of a divine origin — of a Will that is absolutely 
 good, of a Will that has sought and is seeking to make 
 men good. In Mr James Mill's History of British India 
 there is a powerful exposure, of what he calls the flat- 
 
 LECI. XXI. 
 
 The Old 
 Testament 
 speaks of 
 such a 
 Revela- 
 tion, 
 
 What was 
 needful to 
 complete 
 it. 
 
404' 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XXI. 
 
 Flattery of 
 the powers 
 above. 
 
 How the 
 demands 
 spoken of 
 in the last 
 Lecture 
 suggest the 
 need of 
 Prayers. 
 
 Orna- 
 mental 
 Worship. 
 
 tery of Worship ; of the attempt to conciliate the power 
 which is supposed to be supreme by bestowing upon it 
 grand titles and giving it credit for sublime virtues. 
 That must undoubtedly be the way in which divinities 
 are honoured who are regarded as answering in the 
 unseen world to Emperors in the visible world; as liable 
 to their changes of temper and open to the motives 
 which affect them. But there is a delight in Truth 
 and Goodness which must find an expression that is 
 compatible with awe and reverence ; which as it shrinks 
 from flattering the dearest of earthly objects must be 
 horrified at any approach to insincerity towards Him 
 from whom their excellence is derived. To be made 
 true is above all other things that which you ask of the 
 living and true Being. 
 
 II. That which you ash ; for that is the difference 
 between the subject of the last Lecture and the. one 
 with which we are occupied now. Then I was con- 
 sidering what a demand the newest circumstances of 
 our time, the newest philosophies of our time, make 
 for a divine ground of Society and Social Morality. 
 The circumstances are overwhelming in their multitude, 
 in their variety, in the temptations which they offer to 
 ambition, self-seeking, fraud. The philosophers are 
 tremendously severe and exacting. We must seek the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number, we must 
 acknowledge the imperative of Duty, we must have a 
 love for others in which the love for ourselves is lost. 
 The first two forms of philosophical Dogmatism stand 
 apart from Worship ; when the last dawned upon M. 
 Comte he felt that there must be a worship of some 
 kind. It was a great discovery. But it has seemed to 
 many of his disciples that he was merely placing a Co- 
 
HUMAN WORSHIP. 
 
 40s 
 
 rinthian capital upon an edifice already very firm and 
 compact, a capital which though it struck him as a 
 very beautiful and artistic completion of his design, had 
 in their eyes a rather incongruous appearance. I con- 
 fess that if I looked upon Worship as having this orna- 
 mental character I should not care much about it. I 
 might introduce it into a discussion upon Social Mo- 
 rality along with Stage-Plays and Cricket Matches, but 
 I should not expect it to command the Same attention 
 as either. 
 
 Because I have learnt the demands which the time 
 and the philosophers make upon me, and the exceeding 
 diflSculty from my own selfish tendencies of satisfying, 
 these demands, I turn to Worship, adopting what M. 
 Comte would call the infantine conception of it. If it 
 is possible to have communication with a Will such as 
 I have been speaking of — one which is good, and is 
 seeking to make us all like itself — then I must suppose 
 that we may singly and unitedly ask that this Will may 
 be accomplished in us all, and so that we may become 
 reasonable members of a Society — in the real sense of 
 the word, fellow-creatures. 
 
 When I speak of the Will which I own as being the 
 highest of all ' seeking' to make us right, I am not in- 
 different to the question which has tormented you' and 
 me and all human beings—' Why does it not make us 
 right without seeking?' Having known what this 
 doubt is I certainly should not dispose of it by saying, 
 'How can we know?' For such an answer would at 
 ' once throw us back on a mere Power which may be 
 dreaded but cannot be worshipped. I believe we can 
 know because we can ask to know. The asking shews 
 us what sort of rightness that would be which comes 
 
 Worship to 
 meet the 
 necessities 
 of Hu- 
 manity, 
 
 The para- 
 dox of a 
 Supreme 
 Will seek- 
 ing to 
 make mem 
 right. 
 
4o6 
 
 UNIVESSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LEOT. XXI. 
 
 Sow it is 
 Halved in 
 practice. 
 
 Visions of 
 the Past, 
 how to es- 
 cape from 
 them. 
 
 apart from communication with any higher Will, what 
 that Tightness is which is the effect of communication 
 with it. However little or feeble our apprehension of 
 that communication maybe, it is enough, to make us 
 aware of the difference between the rightness of a stone 
 which rolls down a hill because an impulse has been 
 given to it, and the rightness of a Will which struggles 
 with obstacles and overcomes them because a higher 
 Will is inspiring it. And the effort at all hazards; and 
 in spite of all resistance, external and internal, to grasp 
 that higher Will and to claim its energy when our own 
 is least, may shew us what the wonder of our human 
 life is. I do not know in what way Physiologists may 
 ultimately determine the difference between it and the 
 life of brutes. In the struggle with a something in us 
 which is assuredly brutal, in seeking for a divine 
 strength against it, the- most degraded men have real- 
 ised — I know no other way in which the most intel- 
 lectual can fully realise — ^this difference. 
 
 In that struggle we become aware of one human 
 distinction which some might be glad to part with. 
 The past rises again, links itself to the present as if 
 they were one, forbids us to separate the future from 
 either. In vain philosophers teach us that it is foolish 
 and childish to occupy ourselves with the recollection 
 of that which has been, that remorse is unnecessary. 
 The past occupies itself with us ; the spectre appears 
 without being summoned ; like Caesar's it says, ' I will 
 meet thee again.' When any philosopher offers us & 
 charm for laying the ghost, how rejoiced we are to try 
 it ! to adopt a new one when the last has failed ! There 
 has been a trade in these charms wherever human 
 beings have dwelt : every superstition has been an at- 
 
BUMAN WORSHIP. 
 
 407 
 
 tempt to disengage men from their by-gone acts and 
 thoughts, from their own past existence; those dark 
 sacrifices to which I alluded before have seemed to 
 promise most. 
 
 And surely the expectation had a right ground. 
 Through Sacrifice — through the giving up of a man's 
 self-— must come his escape from the ghastly visions of 
 the past as well as of the present and the future. Only 
 if he can acquire a portion in that Humanity which, as 
 M. Comte perceived, cannot be selfish — does he obtain 
 what he craves for, that freedom ffom the torment of 
 the individual Conscience which enables him to be 
 truly a social being. Such a giving up of Self Chris- 
 tians have affirmed to be possible since the Head of 
 their race has made it first, since He has shewn forth a 
 perfectly filial submission in doing it. If that is so a 
 Worship which turns upon the confession of this Sacri- 
 fice, which claims for each human being the right to 
 accept it for himself, cannot be a mere supplement to 
 Morality, should be the most effectual instrument of 
 removing all that interferes with the daily practice 
 of it. 
 
 Til. When first the belief in such a Sacrifice, not 
 for one nation or class, but for mankind, dawned upon 
 a little band of men speaking the most uncouth dialect 
 of Palestine — scarcely aspiring to be reckoned genuine 
 Jews — they may well have been staggered. But they 
 could not doubt that the Worship which had such a 
 principle for its ground must be emphatically a Eucha- 
 rist, a thanksgiving for a transcendant gift making all 
 common things look beautiful and amazing, giving a 
 divine character to the earth which they trod, to the 
 food which they ate. It could not have been so if they 
 
 LECT. XXI. 
 
 The deli- 
 verance 
 from Self. 
 
 The Sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 The belief 
 in a Con- 
 quest of 
 Death. 
 
4o8 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XXI. 
 
 Such a 
 conquest 
 necessary 
 to make 
 human 
 life real. 
 
 Does it 
 involve 
 Self-seek- 
 ing? 
 
 had not believed that He who 'like slain men was 
 slain,' had overthrown the Empire of Death, had vindi- 
 cated Life, human life, animal life, from the destruction 
 which in every man seemed to have overpowered it, 
 and yet to which no man could willingly submit. The 
 supremacy of Death is that which has everywhere been 
 the plea for superstitions in those who have sought for 
 a while to baffle it, the plea for slavish surrender to a 
 necessity in those who have despaired of any effect from 
 these superstitions. Yet every one who devises plans 
 for the future which he can never see completed, every 
 Physician setting the devotion to fate at defiance, every 
 scientific man waiting for unknown results, not suffer- 
 ing himself to be checked by Christian or Comtist who 
 tells him they may be worth nothing, every man of let- 
 ters, every student who does not work to please his own 
 age and meet its fancies — bears witness that the works 
 of man and the thoughts of man are not ' rounded with 
 a sleep;' that there is an unlimited future before him; 
 It is easy to say that the expectation of such a future 
 must be selfish if it is personal ; that if it is anything 
 but a vague dream of some benefit to posterity it must 
 be inconsistent with an enlarged and enlightened" hu- 
 manity: to say this is easy; to feel it is easier. For 
 since selfishness dogs us at every step, since it mingles 
 with every feeling that is most adverse to it, since it 
 checks every aspiration that springs up in contradiction 
 of it, can we wonder that popular writers represent all 
 good if we claim to be sharers in it, all truth if we say 
 to be without it is to be in Hell, as so much property 
 which we are wishing to enjoy by excluding others 
 from it ? 
 
 It is so natural, so obvious, than when we read of 
 
EUMAN WORSHIP. 
 
 409 
 
 ;he Son of God, 'that for the joy -which was set before 
 aim He endured the Cross and despised the shame/ 
 such writers scream with delight, 'See His own dis- 
 ;iples confess] that His aims were selfish,' though 
 ;hey affirm that He gave up Himself to redeem and 
 •estore the Universe. And how can any one answer 
 ;he charge in his own case who is conscious of a con- 
 ;inual disposition to seek his own interest at the cost 
 )f the interests of other men? He cannot answer it 
 ixcept by saying that he feels his selfishness to be the 
 iurse and misery of his existence ; that it is his privi- 
 ege as a human being to seek fellowship with one who 
 lid sacrifice Himself for the sake of mankind ; that 
 le can, whilst he aims at that fellowship, confess the 
 ;elf-seeking habits which separate him from it ; that he 
 ian look forward to a resurrection and renovation of 
 ffumanity, to its deliverance from that which is destroy- 
 ng it ; such he conceives the highest reward he can 
 lesire for himself or for any of his feUow creatures. But 
 le will -not pretend that he does' not look upon all 
 ninor rewards as included in this; the renovation of all 
 ntellectual energies which are dwarfed and impaired 
 )y the low and grovelling aims to which they were 
 lirected ; the renovation of physical health in Societies 
 yhich, as the most recent evidence demonstrates, have 
 >een and are suffering in unspeakable ways and through 
 mknown channels from their moral corruptions. Be- 
 teving that all in their different walks and vocations 
 lay contribute to the restoration of health and the 
 emoval of the corruptions which lead to disease and 
 ickness, he counts it a grand comfort that all may in a 
 ommon Worship seek for the common inspiration 
 rhich shall make these ends dear to them, and which 
 
 The vic- 
 tory over 
 Self the 
 great re- 
 ward. 
 
 All other 
 rewards 
 involved 
 in this. 
 
 Worship 
 implies 
 and sane-* 
 tions this 
 victory. 
 
410 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 Ends of 
 Worship. 
 
 Rejwva- 
 tion of the 
 Earth. 
 
 shall call forth the wisdom that may devise means suit- 
 able to such ends. Unless there has been a Resurrec- 
 tion, a permanent vindication of the glory of Life, a 
 contempt put upon Death in all its aspects and forms, 
 I cannot think that any theories or speculations — least of 
 all any sentimental expressions of tenderness for death 
 as if it were not an Enemy — can avail to free men 
 from the terrors of it, and from the slavery to which 
 those terrors have led. For Death will assuredly ex- 
 press to men the ultimate purpose of the Universe — 
 attribute the origin of it to Nature, Necessity, or mole- 
 cules or demons as you please^f there has been no 
 conquest of it. And that purpose once admitted there 
 must be a drying up of the human energy and hope 
 which have risen up against it ; a drying up of this 
 energy and hope as much in those who have supposed 
 them to be their own as in those who have traced them 
 to a Father in Heaven. 
 
 IV. Those who do trace them to that Author must, 
 I conceive, see in all Worship at once the profoundest 
 confession of their own impotence and nothingness, and 
 the profoundest assurance of a good to Humanity 
 which they cannot in the least conceive of, but which 
 neither their selfishness nor the selfishness of all men 
 can obstruct. The highest, the most celestial contem- 
 plation they can imagine is that of the purposes and 
 movements of the Will which has called them into 
 existence ; of the methods by which it has worked, and 
 is working, to bring all things, and especially all human 
 Wills, in subjection to itself But such a contempla- 
 tion cannot be separated from a hope for the renova- 
 tion of the Earth; for a destruction of all that has 
 caused its degeneracy and decay; for a discovery of 
 
HUMAN WORSHIP. 
 
 411 
 
 every one of its vital powers and principles. To all 
 men who are busy in searching for those powers and 
 principles, under whatever difficulties, amidst whatever 
 confusions, the true worshipper must, in the strictest 
 and solemnest sense of that language, wish God speed. 
 He must be sure that God is speeding such enquiries 
 and will bring them to~ their full result. There has 
 been a notion amongst moralists and divines, that the 
 physical student is seeking for certainties, that they 
 are to be content with probabilities. Hence all com- 
 munion between them is destroyed ; they seem to have 
 a different starting point and to be pursuing different 
 objects. A Worshipper can only rest upon One who is 
 absolute Truth, who guides into Truth. He begins 
 therefore from certainty. But since it is not his cer- 
 tainty, since he may have only a feeble grasp of it, he 
 looks for a guide to himself and to all, in whatever 
 directions their intellects and their affections may move, 
 through all the mazes in which they may be lost, to the 
 rock which lies beneath them, beneath the Universe. 
 
 Worship then I conceive becomes the link between 
 Physical and Moral Studies. It vindicates a common 
 ground for both; it asserts Science not Probability to 
 to be the aim of both. All restraints upon the freest 
 exercises of human thought by any mortal power it 
 leads us to regard as a defiance of God; all checks 
 upon discovery as indicating an unbelief that He is or 
 that He is such a Being as Christ has revealed -to us. 
 But the severe restraints which Science imposes upon 
 the self-conceit and arrogance which are the enemies of 
 clear free thought, upon the haste which substitutes 
 our judgments and notions for discovery, have their best 
 protection and security in the humility and awe whifih 
 
 Physical 
 Enquiries. 
 
 Worship 
 the bond 
 between 
 Moral and 
 Physical 
 Studies. 
 
412 
 
 UNIVSH'SAL' MOBAZrFY. 
 
 The Social 
 Moralist 
 obliged to 
 encounter 
 evils of 
 which the 
 Physical 
 Student 
 takes no 
 account, 
 
 Worship cultivates, or rather which He to whom the 
 Worship is directed cultivates in us. The moral de- 
 mands of physical Science are, if we may .trust its most 
 earnest defenders, those who are most jealous of our 
 interference, quite amazing ; we wonder when we think 
 of the patience, self-denial, continual surrender of the 
 most cherished notions which they exhibit, and without 
 which they say no progress can be made, no victories 
 achieved. Just so far then as Sacrifice which is the 
 principle and the end of Worship is sought for and 
 obtained, just so far may we look for fresh vigour, 
 for new successes in physical enquiries, because for a 
 deeper and more complete Social Morality. 
 
 We do not want the pursuers of physical science or 
 their great teacher to remind us that there may be an 
 innocence in their studies which stands in great contrast 
 to all that the Social Moralist encounters in his proper 
 sphere. He finds himself amidst the disorders of 
 Families, the calamities of Nations, the more terrible 
 contradictions of the Society which professes to be 
 Universal. To believe that there is a harmony amidst 
 all these discords, to believe that the Harmony will at 
 last prevail over the discords is most hard. It becomes 
 harder the more closely we look into particulars, the 
 more the actual details of domestic life, of civic life, of 
 ecclesiastical life discover themselves to us. They must 
 be faced in our 'every day's experiences ; they pursue us 
 into our solitude if we fly from them ; there we find 
 the source of the confusions which torment us in the 
 world. But if there is at the root of all human Society, 
 of Humanity itself, that divine Sacrifice which our 
 Worship sets before us, the Spirit of which it teaches 
 may go with us wherever we go, whatever we are doing 
 
HUMAN WORSHIP. 
 
 413 
 
 or thinking or purposing; there must be a light pene- 
 trating the gloom, "When I have spoken of Human 
 "Worship, I have not meant some grand Cosmopolitan 
 worship to be hereafter evolved out of the modes of 
 particular races and nations, when all those are blotted 
 out. I have endeavoured to shew you how much mischief 
 has proceeded from every effort to constitute a Univer- 
 sal divine Society which shall swallow up these distinc- 
 tions into itself. We, need for the establishment and 
 rectification of our Social Morality not to dream our- 
 selves into some imaginary past or some imaginary 
 future, but to use that which we have, to believe our 
 own professions, to live as if all we utter when we 
 seem to .be most in earnest were not a lie. Then we 
 may find that the principle and habit of Self-sacri- 
 fice which is expressed in the most comprehensive 
 human Worship supplies the underground for national 
 Equity, Freedom, Courage ; for the courtesies of com- 
 mon intercourse, the homely virtues and graces which 
 can be brought under no rules, but which constitute 
 the chief charm of life, and tend most to abate its 
 miseries. Then every tremendous struggle with our- 
 selves whether we shall degrade our fellow-creatures, 
 men or women, or live to raise them — struggles to 
 which God is not indifferent if we are — may issue in a 
 real belief that we are members one of another, and 
 that every injury to one is an injury to the whole bodj'-. 
 Then it will be found that refinement and grace are 
 the property of no class, that they may be the inherit- 
 ance of those who are as poor as Christ and His 
 Apostles were ; because they are human. So there 
 will be discovered beneath all the politics of the Earth, 
 sustaining the order of each country, upholding the 
 
 and there- 
 fore to 
 seek a de- 
 liverance 
 from them. 
 
 What is 
 wanted for 
 the restor- 
 ation of 
 Human, 
 National, 
 and 
 
 Domestic 
 Morality. 
 
414 
 
 UNIVERSAL MORALITY. 
 
 LECT. XXI. 
 
 What are 
 its deadly 
 enemies. 
 
 charity of each household, a City which has foundations, 
 whose builder and maker is God. It must be for all 
 kindreds and races; therefore with the sectarianism 
 which rends Humanity asunder, with the Imperialism 
 which would substitute for Universal fellowship a Uni- 
 versal death, must it wage implacable war. Against 
 these we pray as often as we ask that God's wiU may be 
 done in Earth as it is in Heaven. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 It may he as well to mention that the reference in a note to p. 58 
 of this volume is not to the Essay of Mrs Butler which introduces the 
 deeply interesting series of Essays on Woman's Work and Woman's 
 Culture ; but to an earlier pamphlet which had excited much atten- 
 tion in Cambridge and elsewhere. The volume of Essays had not 
 appeared when the Lectures on Domestic Morality were delivered. 
 In connexion with the subject of this final Lecture, I would commend 
 to the attention of my readers the eloquent and fervent protest of 
 Miss Cobbe on behaU of her sex against the worship which the 
 Comtists claim for it. Miss Cobbe expresses, with much greater 
 power, the conviction to which I have given utterance, that if we set 
 up idols for ourselves to worship, the idols will suffer as much degra- 
 dation as those who bow down to them. 
 
 CAMBKIDBE : PBINTBD BY 0. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UHIVEBSIIY PEESS. 
 
A CATALOGUE OF THE WOEKS 
 
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 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, 
 
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