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 KNOWING AND FEELING. 
 
K^^OWmG AJ^D FEEL^G 
 
 A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 By WILLIAM SMITH. 
 
 mit^ a Memoir. 
 
 FOE PEIVATE CIECULATION. 
 
 1874. 
 

 
 PRIXTEI) BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY, 
 AT THE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Of the following papers three have appeared in 
 The Contemporary Revieio ; the fourth was left in MS. 
 I am not sure that it had received the writer's final 
 revision, or that I have throughout deciphered it 
 correctly. But I think that to those for whom this 
 volume is intended it will add to the interest of the 
 unfinished work. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 KNOWma AND FEELING; A CONTRIBUTION TO 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY- 
 PAGE 
 PartL ........ 1 
 
 IT. SOME FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THE WILL, . 37 
 
 III. SPECULATIVE THOUGHT, .... 63 
 
 IV. OUR PASSIONS, . . . . .94 
 
 MEMOIR, . . 125 
 
 APPENDIX, 247 
 
 PHOTOGRAPHS— 
 
 As A Child, ...... forcing 130 
 
 Bust, ,,167 
 
KJN'OWING AND FEELING: 
 
 A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYGHOLOaY. 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 To one fresh from physiological studies Psychology 
 is seldom acceptable. Indeed, our mental philosophy 
 is now accustomed to the language of apology, and 
 generally presents herself with some preliminary word 
 to justify her appearance at all. 
 
 The physiologist is plainly in the ascendant. Let us 
 do honour to his discoveries ; let us confess that it is 
 in his department alone that we can look forward 
 here to what can properly be called discovery. I can 
 understand and forgive the somewhat petulant mood 
 in which he occasionally speaks of the psychologist, 
 or metaphysician; — for he is apt to confound them 
 together, regarding them as the same creature in 
 different stages of development, in which, I think, he 
 is far from being wrong. He looks upon our self- 
 examinant, turning his mind in upon itself, as some, 
 pensive idler, sitting apart with finger on his brow, 
 revolving what has been a thousand times revolved 
 before, and to no earthly purpose. Perhaps he pictures 
 
2 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 him as one who ducks his head beneath the stream, 
 and, in that position, looks upward to its source. Whilst 
 he, the man of science, and the free observer of the 
 whole course of things, is busy in the dissecting-room, 
 tracing the threads of that delicate machinery by means 
 of which the world of space, the world of form, and 
 force, and motion, transforms itself, through the sensi- 
 bilities of a man, into a world of thought, of beauty, 
 of intelligence. By ingeniously devised experiments 
 he is extorting an answer to his questions from Nature 
 herself. 
 
 I can excuse his impatience. I, for my part, have 
 no wish to plague him with my psychology. If he is a 
 phrenologist, or working in that direction, he will have 
 to plague himself with a somewhat elaborate system of 
 psychology ; else how name his organs, or even know 
 what organ to seek ] If he has arrived at the con- 
 clusion — the conclusion of some of the most eminent 
 anatomists — that the brain, as organ of consciousness, 
 complex though it be, may still be considered as 
 one organ — he will probably have wrought out for 
 himself some scheme not unlike that of which I am 
 about to give the outline. In any case, the intelligent 
 physiologist has, doubtless, knowledge enough of this 
 kind to guide him in his experiments, and enable him 
 to interpret their results. Perhaps it is well that he 
 should not be zealously devoted to any one system of 
 psychology, that he may remain unbiassed in his obser- 
 vations, and both see and describe his facts in as dry a 
 light as possible. 
 
 It appears to me as certain as to him that we do, in 
 fact, step from organic life into consciousness. (I must 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 3 
 
 leave others to determine whether what are called 
 purely vital phenomena are not a higher order of 
 physical phenomena, resolvable into chemistry, electri- 
 city, and the like. I may be permitted to speak of 
 physical, vital, mental facts as three distinct orders.) 
 Some vital or organic function seems to precede, and 
 perhaps to follow, every manifestation of mind. There 
 ean hardly, therefore, be a branch of study of greater 
 interest than that which traces the connexion between 
 physical or purely vital properties and psychical pro- 
 perties. But these last, which in their nature are clearly 
 distinct from the physical or vital properties on which 
 they are grafted, can define themselves only to the man 
 reflecting on them. This reflection on ourselves is simply 
 indispensable. We can know ourselves as conscious 
 beings in no other way. This very self, this personality, 
 this / that rings for ever through human speech, belongs 
 essentially to the consciousness. What my conscious- 
 ness rests on is a distinct and specific inquiry. It may 
 rest on the brain ; the brain destroyed it may cease ; 
 but while it exists it carries within it its own per- 
 sonality. The light of thought may go out when the 
 lamp is shattered, but while it burns, tMt, and not the 
 lamp, is the self; the / of human speech. Whether 
 thought and feeling rest directly on the brain or on 
 some intermediate substance we call spirit, shall be an 
 open question if you will ; but the personality lies in 
 thought itself. It lies, as I take it, in the union of 
 memory and anticipation. It is thought embracing the 
 present, the past, the future, travelling on for ever — 
 an ever-present thought, that embraces a future that 
 will be past, and a past which has been future. I have 
 
4 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 been, I shall be, are but the past and future seen con- 
 stantly in the present. 
 
 Be that as it may, mind as it is in itself must be 
 studied in the mind. A curious sophistical objection 
 has been lately raised against the process of reflection, 
 or self-examination, which perhaps should be noticed^ 
 since it has been paraded with an air of confidence by 
 ardent supporters of the "physiological method," and 
 claims the authority of Auguste Comte. " In order to 
 observe," it is said, " your intellect must pause from 
 activity; yet it is the very activity you want to observe. 
 If you cannot effect the pause you cannot observe ; 
 if you do effect it there is nothing to observe." 
 
 ISTow it is plain that we cannot think of any subject 
 of personal or scientific interest, and be, at that same 
 instant, occupied in self-criticism or self-inspection. 
 But the very next instant we may find ourselves re- 
 viving our past thoughts and feelings, and noticing 
 some peculiarity in them as thought and feeling. A man 
 accustomed to self-observation finds himself repeatedly 
 summoning back his experiences, his emotions, or ideas, 
 asking himself perhaps by what process they came into 
 his mind. The moral man exercises this self-inspection 
 for a moral purpose, to detect the insidious aj)proaches 
 of some besetting passion ; the psychologist for his 
 psychological purpose, to compare and discriminate his 
 feelings, or detect his laws of association. There is no 
 pause in the activity of the mind, but this purpose gives 
 it a new direction. It is a method of inquiry perfectly 
 valid. That it needs to be supplemented by other 
 methods will be readily acknowledged. 
 
 I intimated that the distinction often drawn between 
 
A CONTKIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. , 5 
 
 the psychologist and the metaphysician was one of a 
 somewhat fallacious description. It is quite true that 
 a writer or lecturer may discourse instructively on 
 memory or judgment, imagination or reasoning, and 
 not plunge himself into those abstruse discussions about 
 being, cause, or the absolute, which are set apart by 
 some as the especial domain of metaphysics or onto- 
 logy. He may choose his illustrations from the com- 
 mon affairs of life. But, on the other hand, there are 
 some topics which the psychologist cannot avoid, and 
 which carry him, whether he will or not, into the 
 domain of the metaphysician. One of his earliest 
 subjects, our perception of the external world, cannot 
 be pursued without leading into these very discussions 
 of substance or being. How will he define his matter? 
 If he calls it phenomenal, the very name suggests the 
 dreaded noumenon. Will he give two substances, matter 
 and spirit, defined each by their properties 1 Will he 
 speak only of properties, and carry us down — or up — 
 to the one absolute and self-existent from which all 
 evolves, or by whom all is created 1 Some theory he 
 seems compelled to form. Psychology expands into a 
 system of philosophy. It is always the vestibule to 
 any structure of this kind we may raise. 
 
 I ask myself what it is to be conscious 1 or, in other 
 words, what is the simplest form of mind 1 
 
 If an animal moved when touched — if the stimulant 
 that set the animal in motion was clearly a sensation, and 
 if we rested there — if the animal were merely sensitive, 
 and a series of movements were simply initiated by a sen- 
 
6 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 sation, if it never rose to any knowledge of its own move- 
 ments, of its own body, of the relation of that body to 
 other bodies — if, in short, it were utterly destitute of 
 cognition or knowledge of any kind, should we say that 
 it was conscious 1 Assuredly not. We should have 
 before us a kind of vital mechanism, whose co-ordinated 
 movements were stimulated by sensation, but we should 
 not have before us a voluntary agent or a conscious 
 creature. Desire would be absent, for desire implies 
 certain elementary cognitions. It might move to this, 
 or from that, but there would be no consciousness of a 
 to OY from, a this or that. 
 
 Evidently, therefore, in addition to vital movement 
 and sensibility, a creature must have knowledge before 
 we pronounce it to be conscious. It is not in pure and 
 isolated sensation that the psychologist can find his 
 starting-point. There is no such thing in the con- 
 sciousness. He starts from a perception or cognition 
 of some kind — sensations held together by the rela- 
 tions of time or space. 
 
 I accept the current definition of knowledge or cog- 
 nition. It is a perception of relation. And for this 
 perception of relation I can select no better word than 
 that of judgment. It has been already used in this 
 wide and technical sense. Sensibilities and judgments 
 are the two elements that form the simplest state of 
 consciousness. Nor are there any others in the most 
 complex. The relations of time, space, and contrast 
 between sensations themselves as pleasurable and pain- 
 ful, are the earliest that arise. The simplest state of 
 consciousness is both a knowing and a feeling ; a know- 
 ing so far that there is some relation apprehended, and 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 7 
 
 a feeling so far that there is some sensation felt, plea- 
 surable or painful : for I demur to the supposition that 
 there can be sensations absolutely neutral. As sensi- 
 bilities and judgments form our perceptions, and as 
 these enter into our relations in thought, forming what 
 we call new objects of thought ; and as these new ob- 
 jects, or ideas, are themselves the source of new or 
 modified feelings and emotions (a higher order of sen- 
 sibility), it is plain that our two great elements of 
 judgment and feeling can never be absent from our 
 consciousness. 
 
 A sharp twinge of pain, I may be told, is assuredly 
 a consciousness. I am assuredly conscious of it. But 
 alone it would not form a state of consciousness; it 
 must be connected, as it invariably is, with other sen- 
 sations, forming some perceptive state : it is felt here 
 or there, has a before and after. A twinge of pain, 
 however sharp, quite isolated in a vital frame, would 
 not be an instance of consciousness. 
 
 I can think of an isolated sensation. But I do this 
 by contrasting it with sensations not isolated. I can 
 imagine it. But if I myself, so far as my mental attri- 
 butes are concerned, consisted of nothing but this 
 isolated sensation, I should not be a conscious creature. 
 
 The senses and the memory — which as a mere repe- 
 tition of sensations has justly been called an internal 
 sense — these give us consciousness by reason of some 
 perceived relations that hold them together. To hold 
 together what is different — the several in the one con- 
 sciousness — is of the essence of mind. The mental 
 unit, if such an expression may be used, always consists 
 of terms and a relation. We cannot in our earliest 
 
8 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 perceptions separate the two : we are compelled to 
 recognise them as both complex and indivisible. 
 
 Where, in fact, should we find such a thing as a 
 solitary or isolated sensation 1 The structure of all the 
 higher animals is such that if you awaken one sensi- 
 bility you awaken others also, and these sensibilities 
 belong to some central organ, in which they are not 
 only felt, but felt together, and felt as different. A 
 smell seems as simple a sensation, as we can imagine, 
 but a smell brings into play the muscles of the nose, 
 and prompts to some movement of the head. Most 
 sensations prompt to movement of some kind, and that 
 before we move for a purpose, and there is that con- 
 sensus or co-ordination in our movements, that the sen- 
 sations accompanying many muscular contractions may 
 be introduced by the slightest excitement. A pleasant 
 taste, one of the earliest pleasures of the infant, is in- 
 evitably connected with the movement of the lips and 
 the tongue. Sight, which is distributed so largely 
 through the animal creation, and is manifested so early 
 in most animals, is not only no solitary sensation, but 
 is not even a number of sensations of different colours. 
 Explain vision by what theory we will, it consists of 
 form traced in different lights outside the hody of the 
 creature who sees ; and therefore the knowledge of the 
 body, as introduced by other senses, must co-exist in 
 the consciousness, and form part of what we call vision. 
 This is not a case of association of ideas, or law of 
 habit; sight appears in many animals too soon to 
 admit of this explanation ; we have simply a confluence 
 , of sensations and perceptions, forming this new cogni- 
 tion or perception. Touch, again, as mere sensation, 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 9 
 
 may be a pleasure or a pain ; but as a perception, as it 
 actually enters into our consciousness, it comes, as is 
 universally admitted, -with other sensations traceable 
 to muscular contraction. What passes in that central 
 organ which converts these various sensations into per- 
 ceptions, into cognitions, into a consciousness '? I know 
 not. We only know that the togetlier of sensations and 
 repetitions of sense result in what we call a judgment, 
 a perceived relation, an object of cognition. 
 
 I do not care to perplex myself with the question 
 whether there are any animals so framed as to be 
 sensitive only, and not conscious, not cognitive. A low 
 order of animalculae, mere cells, borne hither and 
 thither by the medium in which they float ; or even 
 larger creatures, like our jelly-fish, may be endowed 
 with a certain dull sensibility as their only psychical 
 quality. But the animal which has any of our special 
 senses, and which has to seek its food, must have, we 
 should say, cognition as well as sensibility. 
 
 Sensations held together in the one consciousness — 
 the together of the different — implying a judgment, a 
 relation perceived, this is the most elementary form of 
 mind. liot the solitary nerve, but the ganglion with 
 its nerves stretching here and there, is the type of our 
 simplest consciousness. The relation perceived is a 
 fundamental fact — fundamental as sensation itself, with 
 which it is connected, — and is the foundation of all . 
 our knowledge. 
 
 II. 
 
 There are writers of great repute who, as the last 
 result of their analysis, find sensation to be the sole 
 
10 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 element of mind. Sensations, the memory and antici- 
 pation of sensations, and laws of association, forming 
 new groups of such memories- — these suffice to build up 
 the mind of man. The sense of contrast, they consider 
 as involved in sensibility itself. Without change sen- 
 sibility cannot be prolonged. First to feel, and then 
 remember the change, is all that is needed for what I 
 have called the perception of the relation of contrast. 
 To remember change is to remember successions also — 
 there is the relation of time : judgment is reduced to 
 memory. At all events, these two judgments, contrast 
 and succession, seem easily resolved into sensation and 
 memory, and these two, they think, will suffice, with 
 the aid of certain subtle laws of association, to con- 
 struct the consciousness. 
 
 But in this account we have not, I apprehend, 
 resolved judgment into memory, but have, in fact, 
 introduced this new element under the name, and as a 
 part, of memory. The knowledge of a succession of 
 sensations, it will be admitted, is something very 
 different from the succession itself — the mere flux and 
 change of sensibilities. Therefore the memory is 
 introduced to bring back into one consciousness a 
 portion of this flowing succession. Originally each 
 sensibility had vanished when its successor appeared, 
 but in memory the procession, or part of it, is brought 
 back, and antecedent and sequent perceived as such. 
 But if this be so, we have introduced into the memory 
 a quite new element which did not exist in sensation. 
 If the memory were a mere reproduction of the original 
 flux of sensibilities, it, too, would still be the same 
 flowing succession, where each ripple was gone when, 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 1 1 
 
 the next came. If we have assigned to the memory 
 this new power of holding together in the one con- 
 sciousness what originally was a mere flux of sensi- 
 bilities, and so cognising the succession, we have 
 simply introduced the element of judgment, or the 
 perception of relations as part of memory. 
 
 Memory, when it is something more than a mere 
 reproduction, when it implies a knowledge that such 
 reproduction belonged to the past, is itself based on a 
 judgment. A revived sensibility would in itself be 
 only another kind of sensibility. It is relegated to the 
 past in a state of consciousness which embraces a 
 present also. Consciousness, therefore, so to speak, 
 is wider than memory : memory exists in it. 
 
 The relation of contrast appears at first sight to be 
 involved in sensibility itself. A state of sensibility, 
 speaking physiologically, could not be sustained with- 
 out change ; the nerve requires rest, other nerves must 
 be brought into action. But here, too, I must repeat 
 that the apprehension of the change is something 
 different from the actual change itself. If you describe 
 the transition as a feeling, and say there is a feeling of 
 change, that feeling would pass with others in the same 
 unapprehended series, were there nothing but the series. 
 Here also you must call in the aid of memory, and 
 give to the memory this power of grasping the several 
 in one act of consciousness; which power we find 
 necessary to all consciousness, whether of the percep- 
 tion that manifestly precedes memory, or of that 
 thought which is so largely made up of the revived 
 past. 
 
 If even these judgments or perceived relations of 
 
1 2 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 time or succession, and of contrast and similarity, could 
 be resolved into mere acts of memory, what are we to 
 say to the relations of space or position constituting 
 form, or the external appearance "? It is true that the 
 utmost subtlety of some of our subtlest thinkers has 
 been put in requisition to deduce our idea or know- 
 ledge of extension from that of succession in time. In 
 England, I believe, Brown first ventured on this hypo- 
 thesis. Sir William Hamilton was thought to have 
 demolished it, but it has been revived by two, if not 
 three, of our most celebrated contemporaries. There 
 were good reasons why this effort should be made. In 
 the first place, there is a startling incongruity in the 
 fact that sensations should be to us the terms of this 
 relation — that they should uphold the relation of posi- 
 tion even within our own body. What have sensa- 
 tions to do with space, as themselves space-occupants ? 
 There is a delusion here, and it seems more satisfactory 
 to unravel the delusion than to accept it as one forced 
 on us by nature. And, secondly, if the relation which 
 constitutes form could be deduced from that of succes- 
 sion, one great obstacle would be removed to the 
 theory I have already glanced at, that builds up the 
 intellect out of sensation, and memory, and habit. I 
 admit that I ought here to examine this hypothesis 
 that deduces extension from succession, as lately put 
 forth by Professor Bain and Mr. J. S. Mill, but I must 
 defer such examination to another opportunity. It 
 would require more room than I could give it ; it 
 would require room for many quotations. I must beg 
 a verdict against them. I must content myself with 
 the counter-assertion (in which the great majority of 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 13 
 
 psychologists agree) that the two relations of time and 
 space are fundamentally different, and that neither can 
 be deduced from the other. They blend and meet in 
 the idea of motion ; but they are always recognised as 
 distinct, neither of them admitting of analysis. 
 
 When Kant asserts of space that it is a mode of 
 sensibility, he expresses, I presume, the same truth 
 that I endeavour to convey by saying that the relation 
 of position, or the knowledge of space, is introduced 
 directly by our sensations. And when the physiologist 
 refers to his nerves of touch and sight, and speaks of 
 X^oints of sensation felt, or perceived, at the periphery, 
 he does but express the same truth. One sensation 
 could not give position. Many do; but how? It 
 seems a very familiar fact that the sensation should be 
 felt there where the sensitive extremities are, and that a 
 number of these tlieres should constitute a form. But it 
 is one of those familiar facts which grow more marvel- 
 lous and perplexing as we reflect upon them. What 
 are the respective parts performed by the nerves and 
 the ganglion? Plainly, we have left physical pro- 
 perties and are amongst psychical properties, and of 
 that character that we have only to state them in 
 the best language w^e can select. We find (1.) The 
 sensibilities; and (2.) The relation of position per- 
 ceived. 
 
 The perception of the relation is here inseparable 
 from the concrete in which it appears. A form can 
 only be dissected into minuter forms, in each of which 
 the same relations of position, of sides and surfaces, 
 reappear. When afterwards we compare forms with 
 each other and perceive the relation of magnitude, the 
 
14 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 two terms of the relation can be separately cognised. 
 And as this is the case wherever we are accustomed to 
 use the word judgment, it seems a strained application 
 of the word when we apply it to a case where the 
 terms and the relation are inseparable. But no other 
 word is more applicable. And it should be remem- 
 bered that where the terms are distinct, as where the 
 two forms are separate, between which we perceive the 
 relation of magnitude, even here the terms and the 
 relation form a new whole. We cannot think of mag- 
 nitude, which is a matter of comparison, without the 
 forms that are compared. We make the abstraction 
 of a relation, of which we have had innumerable 
 instances, and may speak, if we please, of the idea of 
 magnitude. But magnitude itself can never be repre- 
 sented in consciousness, but by the two forms and the 
 relation. In like manner we can speak of the relation 
 of means and end without having before us any specific 
 instance of means and an end. But this is an abstrac- 
 tion, framed mainly by the aid of language, and for the 
 communication of thought ; the relation cannot really 
 be brought home to the mind without the terms we 
 call means and end. 
 
 If I had been writing this psychological sketch some 
 thirty years ago, I might have said that the sensational 
 school was well-nigh extinct, and have spared myself 
 the labour of contending for a distinct intellectual 
 element in the consciousness on which knowledge 
 depends. It was the habit then to speak of that 
 school as the philosophy of the eighteenth century, as 
 if it was already a matter of history. We of the nine- 
 teenth century, if not satisfied with what the Scotch 
 
A COKTKIBUTTON TO PSYCHOLOGY. 15 
 
 professors taught, had gone to Germany for our meta- 
 physics. Cousin, for the moment, was the represen- 
 tative of France. But the place physiology has lately 
 taken in our studies has revived the desire in many for 
 the simplest possible scheme of psychology. It seems 
 easy to attribute to the brain a variety of sensibilities, 
 and if thought is nothing but such sensibilities con- 
 nected and revived in memory, there appears no diffi- 
 culty in allying it altogether with the brain; the 
 transition is rendered conceivable from purely vital 
 to mental phenomena. I do not say that all who have 
 sought a simple scheme of psychology have been biassed 
 by their physiology, or by what are called materialistic 
 views. Simplicity is itself at all times a legitimate 
 aim of the theorist. And, on the other hand, there are 
 many wedded to their physiological method (the phreno- 
 logists, for instance), who wield a very complex psycho- 
 logy. I merely take notice of a tendency I have 
 detected in my own mind. The preconception that 
 there is a transition from chemistry to life, and 
 from life to consciousness, leads us to favour those 
 theories which make such transitions representable to 
 the imagination. 
 
 To me the old objection lings in the ear. If know- 
 ledge is finally reduced to sensation, this is tantamount 
 to there being no knowledge at all, or knowledge only 
 of our own sensations. Even the solid world of matter 
 fades into a dream. Groups of sensibilities that have 
 somehow, in my imagination, transferred themselves to 
 space, that I remember and anticipate, that have an 
 order in their coming and going — these are my material 
 world. I cannot accept of this result, nor of the 
 
16 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 scheme that leads to it. To me it reads like a de- 
 scription of mind with the chief element of mind left 
 out. We have no knowledge without sensations ; they 
 are the first terms to us of any relation ; but it is in 
 the perception of relations, of space, of time, of form 
 and force, that knowledge directly rests ; and as know- 
 ledge evolves, we come partly to understand how it 
 was that we commenced by what seems in itself a 
 delusion. The animated creature had but its own 
 sensations to give it the first consciousness of itself, or 
 the external world. But the forms which sensation 
 takes, are immediately invested with other properties, 
 by relations perceived . between them^ which alter their 
 character, and convert them into independent realities. 
 
 III. 
 
 By insisting on the fundamental distinction between 
 Sensibility or Feeling, and Judgment, or the element 
 of cognition, I separate myself from the sensationalists, 
 who, with Destutt de Tracy, arrive at the conclusion, 
 " Penser c'est sentir ;" how do I stand in reference to 
 that opposite school of metaphysicians who are desig- 
 nated as intuitionists 1 
 
 I cordially embrace the favourite doctrine of modern 
 times, that of evolution. I believe there is an order in 
 the appearing or becoming of all things, which order 
 apparently enters into . the very nature of the things 
 themselves. But every new appearance, every new 
 becoming, in this order is, in one sense, equally ori- 
 ginal. It could not be what it is out of its order, but 
 its coming into that order is always a new fact. Most 
 of us refer the whole order to the one Being who is 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 1 7 
 
 alone self-existent. Some prefer to rest in the ob- 
 served order, not from a conviction that nothing else 
 exists, but that human knowledge cannot penetrate 
 beyond. To us evolution is but a name for the method 
 of creation, and the nature of the created. 
 
 Well, when we apply our doctrine of evolution to 
 the human consciousness, what is the meaning of such 
 terms as primary and fundamental, to which so much 
 honour is by some attached 1 Are we to suppose that 
 the first intellectual forms or conceptions, such as issue 
 in their order from vital or physical antecedents, are 
 especially authoritative, or in any way especially excel- 
 lent"? In other departments of nature we are accus- 
 tomed to say that the lower appears first as condition 
 of the higher, the simpler as the condition of the more 
 complex. It is the last development and not the first 
 that should receive the highest honour ; or rather it is 
 that whole whose harmonized development is carried 
 furthest that should be most honoured. It is that 
 which will not combine with any harmonized whole 
 that we reject as error. This, if not an infallible test 
 of truth, will be found to be the actual test which 
 every man of necessity applies. 
 
 It is nothing to me to be told that certain savages or 
 uncultured men have not this or that idea or intel- 
 lectual perception. When it has come, how does it 
 enrich, how does it harmonize with the whole of the 
 conscious life % This is the question to be asked. I 
 am not concerned to build my faith on some primary 
 intuition or judgment. Truth is a harmony of many 
 judgments. 
 
 In this much debated question of our knowledge of 
 
 B 
 
1 8 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 the external world, in this objective independent exist- 
 ence of matter, it is not to some primary instinct or 
 intuition that I should appeal — not to the first, but to 
 the last development of intelligence. It is possible 
 that if you arrest us at a certain stage in the process a 
 charge of delusion might be made out against the 
 senses — especially against the sense of sight, for we are 
 here certainly presented with appearances which claim 
 to be outward realities, and which it required the 
 science of optics so to connect with the veritable 
 material world, that we are able to pronounce them to 
 be representatives of real forms in space. 
 
 Let me be permitted briefly to indicate the steps by 
 which I imagine (for we can only here imagine a past 
 by the help of such laws of human development as we 
 have been able to learn from facts still open to the 
 memory), by which I presume our belief in the external 
 world was formed. If my statement is correct it will, 
 at the same time, relieve us from the perplexities of 
 the Idealists, or all those who challenge us to prove 
 that our knowledge of matter is essentially anything 
 else than a knowledge of our own sensations. 
 
 That our sensations do range themselves to our 
 consciousness in space — outside each other as it has been 
 expressed — is a fact about which there can be no dis- 
 pute, even if we accept the subtle hypothesis that 
 originally they were known only as succeeding each 
 other in time. But, indeed, I know not how that 
 hypothesis can apply to that first localization of sensa- 
 tions to which I have to allude, that feeling or per- 
 ceiving our sensations within the area of our own 
 body ; there, as a physiologist might suggest, where 
 
A COXTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 19 
 
 the nerves of sensation really extend and ramify. 
 Besides the sensations on the surface, the body fills 
 with sensations from muscular movement, the flow of 
 the blood, or other work of nutrition. I can descend 
 to nothing earlier than some knowledge of our own 
 body by sensations felt in diff'erent parts of the area of 
 that body, contrasting body and limbs, and limb with 
 limb. 
 
 It may be well to observe that when I here speak 
 of localization of sensations, I do not refer to that act 
 of thought which the mature man is so familiar with, 
 who saj^s of one sensation it is in his arm, and of 
 another it is in his foot. He has already the image in 
 his mind of arm and foot, and refers the sensations to 
 these well-known limbs. Such localization as this is 
 plainly a subsequent process. I speak of that localiza- 
 tion by which the knowledge of Hmbs is formed, or 
 rather initiated ; so much knowledge as to render 
 possible the conceptions of form and movement. I 
 cannot but suppose that every animal whose' heait 
 beats, and whose limbs involuntarily stir, awakes to a 
 consciousness of sensations felt here and there. It does 
 not from this primary localization of sensation obtain 
 the full knowledge of its limbs. What further know- 
 ledge it obtains enters with the knowledge of the 
 external, or other body against which it presses. 
 
 The cognition of our limbs as sensitive and moving 
 forms is followed, or accompanied, by another most im- 
 portant cognition, namely, that the motion of the body 
 or limbs is impeded in certain directions, unimpeded in 
 other directions. The contrast stands out between a 
 
20 • KNOWING AND FEELING: 
 
 space that permits and a space that does not permit 
 motion. The outstretched arms, the hand with its 
 many fingers, these define the impediment in space, 
 shape it, shape it into that resisting form we henceforth 
 know as matter. The same process gives solidity and 
 a more definite form to our own limbs. The little 
 infant is seen hammering his own hand into the perfect 
 tool it is to become, while he is making acquaintance 
 with the objects on which he strikes. 
 
 All these proceedings are attended with vivid sensa- 
 tions, both in the muscles of the moving limbs and on 
 their touched surface. These sensations combine from 
 first to last with that cognition of the outer form in 
 space we call material object. But that form is funda- 
 mentally a thought, not a sensation. Form, movement, 
 resistance to movement, these are intellectual percep- 
 tions, what we have called Judgments. Eesistance is 
 a relation between a moving form and a portion of 
 space that resists movement. That resisting space ig 
 shaped out to the consciousness by the continued move- 
 ment round it and about it of the sensitive hand. But 
 though the sensitive hand is necessary to the cognition, 
 the cognition itself is not a sensation, but a relation 
 between the hand as a moving object and the obstacle 
 in space. 
 
 It is just here, I venture to say, that the analysis 
 presented to us (amongst others) by Professor Bain and 
 Mr. J. S. Mill is at fault. These writers speak con- 
 stantly of the sensation of resistance, as if a muscular 
 feeling, somehow or other associated with a space 
 beyond the body, constituted the whole of what we call 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 21 
 
 solidity,^ Now Eesistance not only in popular, but in 
 strictly scientific language, is a relation only to be got 
 at through the prior cognitions of form and motion. It 
 means resistance to motion. In itself it is a thought 
 or perceived relation. The muscular sensations which 
 accompany it, obtain from it the name of feeling of 
 resistance. But this feeling in itself would be merely 
 a sensation felt under the skin. 
 
 If an analyst persists in limiting our attention to 
 sensations alone and ignores that perception of relation 
 which constitutes first form, then motion, then resistance 
 to motion, he may very easily represent our knowledge 
 of matter as, in fact, nothing but the memory or antici- 
 pation of sensations. But his representation will always 
 wear the air of a paradox. Men will not recognise in 
 it an accurate account of their own cognitions. 
 
 But I must proceed another step or two. Not only 
 does my body move towards these forms that resist its 
 motion — that are known and defined by that resistance, 
 as well as clothed in some garment of my own sensa- 
 tions, but these bodies so defined move towards my 
 body, impinge on it, pleasure it or hurt it. They have 
 a motion of their own. They have movement as well 
 as resistance to movement, and they too, so moving, 
 move other bodies against which they impinge. They 
 have force. 
 
 Here, also, if I am arrested at a certain point, I might 
 
 1 " That resistance is only another name for a sensation of our 
 muscular frame, combined with one of touch, has been pointed out by- 
 many philosophers, and can scarcely any longer be questioned." — 
 Mr, J, S. Mill. 
 
 " Of matter as independent of our feeling of resistance we can have 
 no conception." — Professor Bain. 
 
22 KNOAVING AND FEELING : 
 
 have a great difficulty in eliminating the idea of force, 
 from sensations and desires of the animated creature. 
 For aught I know, a child attributes to every moving 
 body, especially if it strikes him, the impulse of desire 
 by which he himself moves. But sooner or later a dis- 
 tinction is made between the animate and the inani- 
 mate. And now when inanimate forms not only strike 
 on me, the sensitive, but strike on other inanimate 
 forms and the result is movement, is a resistance over- 
 come ; the conception of force as extended through 
 nature — force as prior to, and independent of, sensa- 
 tion — is formed. Our conception of matter may be 
 said to be complete. Perhaps resistance which wore 
 the appearance of inertia becomes itself considered as a 
 force. Force and resistance are regarded as two anta- 
 gonist forces, revealing each other. 
 
 Amongst the steps of this process I have not intro- 
 duced the sense of vision, because blind people do 
 obtain our notion of the solid form in space without 
 the aid of vision, and, because I should have to discuss 
 certain theories of vision. The Berkleian theoiy has 
 been discredited of late. I am inclined myself to 
 believe that the sensations of light arrange themselves 
 directly in space, in form — that the animal which has 
 vision has not to think out external form by the con- 
 trast between this and that direction in space. The 
 form is given and the hand strikes it, and so demon- 
 strates its resistance, its substantiality. Some know- 
 ledge of its own body is necessary to vision, otherwise 
 no Older form ; but this vision in outer space does not 
 require that the animal should from other organs have 
 obtained the knowledge of solid form outside of its 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 23 
 
 body. The visionary form is probably in most animals 
 the first introduction to the solid form. 
 
 Do I represent our knowledge of the external world 
 as- perfect 1 Is any man of reflection satisfied with it 1 
 These forms in space are defined by the forces they 
 display. We cannot think of the forms but by these 
 forces, nor can we think of the forces without aid of 
 the forms. Yet the form cannot be itself the space- 
 occupant, that which really possesses or exerts the 
 force. Not satisfactory, you say. But the cognition 
 of these forces as manifested in space remains to us, 
 although this cognition of them may still point to some 
 being or existence that escapes in itself from our appre- 
 hension. 
 
 When, therefore, the old perplexity is put before us, 
 how think of a world independent of ourselves — that 
 is, independent of our own senses 1 my answer is, that 
 we can think of no other ; that the material forms we 
 ultimately cognise are revealed to us by relations which 
 our senses have enabled us to perceive, but which are 
 from their nature upheld, not by sensations, but by 
 space-occupants, whatever they may be. If cognised 
 at all, they m^ust be cognised as independent of our 
 senses. Merely to say that with my intellectual exist- 
 ence the world ceases to exist for me, would be a 
 truism which no one would care to dispute, and which 
 no one would care to utter. The philosophers I am 
 alluding to say that matter, as known to us, is so com- 
 pletely the creation of our own senses, that it cannot 
 be thought of except in connexion with them. They 
 ceasing to exist, the material world as known to us 
 must cease to exist — must be thought of as ceasing to 
 
24: KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 exist. This they sometimes call the true doctrine of 
 the relativity of knowledge. Solidity is not a property 
 of the form in space, it is a muscular feeling of my 
 own. I entirely dissent from this interpretation of my 
 consciousness, from this description of our knowledge. 
 Solidity or resistance is a force, not a sensation. I 
 think of it, in my mature state of intelligence, as 
 existing in space — as existing before sensation — as a 
 necessary condition of sensation, as something that 
 from its nature cannot depend on my consciousness of 
 it, but on which it is very possible my consciousness 
 may depend. 
 
 To return to the Intuitionists. I was about to say 
 that I should not follow the example of those who 
 commence their treatises with an array of fundamental 
 truths which they appear to consider as inseparable 
 from a human mind. Certainly not, if these truths 
 are of a moral or religious character. If our very 
 definition of matter alters or clears itself as knowledge 
 advances, is it likely that moral and religious truth 
 should reveal itself with precision in the first stages of 
 intelligence 1 A truth is none the less a truth because 
 for many ages, and to many minds, it was utterly un- 
 known, and a sentiment is not to be described as less 
 pertaining to humanity, because it comes in as a 
 sequence to some previous accretion of knowledge. 
 
 In our ethical controversies there exists and has 
 long existed a school of philosophers who insist upon 
 describing the conscience, such as they find it in them- 
 selves, as having entered full grown into the world. 
 God, and obligation to obey Him by loving our fellow- 
 creatures — they detect all this in their own conscience, 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 2o 
 
 and forthwith they describe this conscience as an 
 original intuition. This may save the trouble of argu- 
 ment or investigation, but it leads to a misinterpreta- 
 tion of the real nature of a state of mind which has 
 been gradually evolved. It is on such a subject as this 
 that we must look into the history of the human race 
 to assist and correct our psychology. 
 
 We must bear in mind that in no way does " the oak 
 lie in the acorn." The only oak is that which begins 
 to exist then and there as it appears above the surface 
 of the earth, and throws its leaves into the light of 
 day. The seed was a condition of the tree, so too was 
 earth, and air, and water, and the heat of the sun. 
 Through many conditions, after many antecedents, this 
 grand novelty of the oak tree made its appearance. In 
 like manner, the only mind we know is just this con- 
 sciousness that evolves in its order under many condi- 
 tions. The knowing and the feeling, the knowledge 
 and the sentiments of which this mind is composed, 
 have their order of development, order depending on 
 the Eternal Cause of all things, if we can speak of its 
 depending on anything whatever; but there is no sub- 
 stance, mind, or brain, no acorn which in any way held 
 this wondrous oak tree within itself. New branches 
 spread, new truths, new sentiments — they come ; and 
 would you estimate their comparative value and im- 
 portance, you must do this by understanding their place 
 in the whole. 
 
 Amongst relations which start up as life progresses, 
 is this very one of the contrast between truth and 
 error. At first all cognitions are equally true ; but 
 anticipations come that are not realized, and memories 
 
26 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 that are not confirmed, and imagination puts together, 
 after some wild fashion of her own, the materials of 
 experience. So then there are false cognitions, erro- 
 neous thoughts, as well as true. And it becomes one 
 of the great interests of life to discriminate between 
 them. 
 
 IV. 
 
 All our passions are thoughts on one side. The 
 simplest desire enfolds some object of perception, or 
 some anticipated action. You would not qualify our 
 l^assions as pure feeling any more than you would 
 describe them as pure thought. Separate the elements, 
 and the passion ceases to exist. Fear is an anticipation 
 of injury from some external object, or some voluntary 
 agent. It is true that the injury we fear may be very 
 vague, but these vague fears have entered through 
 others not so vague. We run over all the evils we 
 have known without resting definitely upon any one, 
 or we fear something worse than anything hitherto 
 known. When darkness brings its imaginary terrors 
 we have the horrible suspicion that some creature or 
 person is present, whom we cannot see, and who may 
 suddenly make his presence known by seizing on us, 
 perhaps to torture us. A quite strange object, seen for 
 the first time, may excite fear, but this is because ex- 
 perience has taught us that there are hostile ias well as 
 friendly creatures, and we know not amongst which to 
 class this new-comer. Uncertainty must take the shape 
 either of a fear or a hope. 
 
 Merely to think of an object that has given us plea- 
 sure, is the source of a new emotion. It may be a. 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 2 i 
 
 desire or a regret ; merely to think of a man who has 
 injured us may be the source of a most vivid emotion 
 of hatred or revenge. Merely to think of one who has 
 given us pleasure is to love him. It is the first step 
 into love, happily not the last. Then comes the love 
 oi premeditated kindness to another. 
 
 Pain and pleasure might exist without hatred and 
 love. Hatred and love could hardly exist without 
 pain and pleasure. Such is the order of their becom- 
 ing. And by processes of evolution we cannot stop to 
 trace, wider and more complex cognitions bring with 
 them what we denominate more refined and noble 
 sentiments. Always the sentiment is thought on one 
 side, feeling on the other. 
 
 Is philanthropy — the question may perhaps have 
 been asked — a feeling or a thought '? It is plainly 
 both. But then the elements of thought and feeling 
 may be very differently proportioned. A man may be 
 intellectually occupied with schemes for the ameliora- 
 tion of human society, yet not have sufficient emotion 
 to lead him into any practical measures for that ameli- 
 oration. He will not be without some emotion how- 
 ever, for to think of the happiness of others as a 
 desirable object, is in some measure to desire it. 
 Another man may have reasoned upon his benevolent 
 schemes hastily or feebly, and yet be carried by his 
 feelings into vigorous and pertinacious action. 
 
 No subject appears to me more interesting than the 
 evolution of thought and feeling displayed in what we 
 generally call sentiments, aesthetic or moral. But I 
 must hasten to the completion of my psychological 
 sketch ; and two subjects remain — not to he discussed, 
 
28 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 for that is impossible, but to be defined and described 
 — the will and the personality. 
 
 I have said that mind or consciousness is always a 
 knowing and a feeling, always these in their infinite 
 diversity, and nothing else than these. What account, 
 then, do I give of the will 1 Is not the threefold 
 division — knowing, feeling, willing — that which is 
 generally adopted by psychologists 1 
 
 Let us limit ourselves at first to will as one with 
 voluntary motion. As mere mental resolution, the 
 questions that occur are of a different kind. A 
 mere mental resolve to perform a certain action at a 
 future time can be nothing but thought and desire, 
 some combination of our old familiar elements of judg- 
 ment and feeling. 
 
 That I have power to move I hold certain, but that 
 power or force does not belong to man simply as con- 
 scious man. Sensation is not force, cognition is not 
 force. There is some space-occupant that moves in 
 obedience to sensation, but the force of movement must 
 live in it. I learn that there is this force in my vital 
 frame ; I depend upon it, I trust it, I have the utmost 
 confidence that it will not desert me ; but in my con- 
 sciousness it is an object of knowledge. 
 
 That which belongs to the consciousness, which lives 
 only in it, is the sentiment of power — the feeling of joy 
 in triumph which follows the knowledge of this force 
 — the knowledge that / can what / wish, that desire 
 accomplishes itself 
 
 There is nothing that I sooner know, nothing that is 
 more pertinaciously present to me throughout life, than 
 this power of motion. But what does the power 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 29 
 
 mean 1 It means that if I wish to move I move. A 
 veritable power ; an accomplishment of my wish. 
 How that wish is accomplished I never know — except 
 that some force that runs through nature is here linked 
 to my desires. I know there is this connexion, and 
 have the sentiment of power due to such knowledge. 
 This is all I can detect. I notice that between my 
 desire and the movement intervene muscular sensations ; 
 these become to me the signs of movement and of force, 
 but they themselves are neither movement nor force. 
 There is no simple psychical element that in the case 
 of voluntary motion can be picked out and called tuill. 
 
 To act, to move, is surely something different from 
 to know I move. Certainly it is. The movement of 
 any body is something different from my knowledge 
 that it moves. But that movement can enter into my 
 consciousness only as knowledge. I am not bound to 
 explain voluntary motion on the theory of those who 
 give me no movement at all, no objective reality in 
 space — give me nothing but sensations or ideas. I 
 have the cognition of my own limbs, and I know that 
 they move in obedience to my desires. 
 
 Mr. Bain, at the commencement of his treatise on 
 the "Intellect," briefly mentions and dismisses the 
 twofold division here adopted ; and insists, somewhat 
 energetically, on the threefold division of knowing, 
 feeling, and willing. But the reader of Mr. Bain's 
 works soon becomes aware that in his analysis the 
 radical element, to be called will, is reduced to a 
 peculiar sensation which he somewhere suggests may 
 be due to the motor nerves, in a more direct manner 
 than physiologists generally teacli. That there is this 
 
30 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 peculiar sensation no one will think of disputing, and 
 that it has ni'ost important relations in this matter of 
 willing ; but if this peculiar sensation is the radical 
 element left in the crucible, what ground can there be 
 for making of it a separate class ? 
 
 Many writers are accustomed to speak of a sense of 
 effort, as if there were some sensation which at once, 
 and by itself, gave us knowledge of force, and of what 
 they would call the mind's force. I must repeat here 
 the same observations I made on the sense of resistance, 
 the same muscular sensation, with a slightly different 
 name. We call it sense of resistance when the obstacle 
 is prominent in our mind ; sense of effort, when the 
 impelled or pressed limb is the prominent perception. 
 
 The muscular sensation we call sense of effort, would 
 never have obtained this name, if certain cognitions 
 had not accompanied it — cognitions of our moving 
 limbs, of limbs pressed against an obstacle, of the 
 resistance overcome. We must travel to this last. Mere 
 pressure on an obstacle would be an increased sensation 
 of touch. The resistance overcome reveals the force, 
 and gives to pressure its true character. Effort is a 
 correlate of resistance. We have cognitions of form, 
 movement, resistance to movement, and resistance over- 
 come. By being accompanied with these cognitions 
 our muscular sensations obtain such names as sense of 
 resistance, sense of effort, or of force. A sensation in 
 itself cannot be the force we are seeking. 
 
 It being understood that our knowledge is of realities 
 in space, forms, movements, forces, bodies inanimate and 
 animate, what is there in will (psychically considered) 
 but a knowledge of our bodies as moving under such 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 31 
 
 and such conditions, our confidence in such laws of 
 moYement, and the sentiment of power that arises from 
 desire accomplished 1 
 
 And now a final word on the perplexing problem of 
 personality. 
 
 Amongst the theories propounded on the nature or 
 origin of the ego, the one most favoured, I believe, by 
 metaphysicians is that which represents the ego and 
 non-ego as rising together in every cognition. There 
 is no thought, say some, without this object and subject. 
 I have been, at times, disposed to adopt this theory, 
 but further consideration has compelled me to dissent 
 from it. 
 
 Attending as closely as I can to what passes in a 
 cognition of the external world, all that I find, in the 
 immediate act or state of knowledge, is a perception of 
 those relations, as of time' and space, which constitute 
 it to be an object of knowledge. This other relation 
 between myself and the object, between percipient and 
 perceived, is, in fact, another cognition, to which I may 
 pass immediately afterwards, but which was no essential 
 part of the precedent cognition. It is another know- 
 ledge, and has its own history, its own course of evolu- 
 tion. Self, or the constant thinker, is there in every 
 thought : such is our conviction ; but I can only recog- 
 nise it when in its turn it becomes an object of thought. 
 What the metaphysicians call subject seems to me only 
 the rapid, habitual, irrepressible recurrence of this 
 object of thought. I do not think myself in every act 
 of thought, though the self may be ever there. 
 
 Many high authorities represent the perception of an 
 object in space as necessarily involving the ego and the 
 
32 KNOWma AND FEELING : 
 
 non-ego, as if such object must necessarily be outside the 
 mind. But surely the external object means external 
 to my body. It requires two bodies, two positions in 
 space, to give externality, to give space itself to the 
 consciousness. My body and another body are here 
 the terms of the relation. The cognition of externality 
 is the perception of the relation between them. The 
 cognition itself has no place. Consciousness cannot be 
 thought of in a place, except by being connected with 
 something that has been so cognised. The external 
 object is outside me, because I have located this me in 
 my body. 
 
 How grows up this self, this object of thought which 
 I learn to regard as the percipient, the thinker, the 
 receiver of all impressions, the agent in all acts ? I am 
 afraid that my account will be only thought too com- 
 monplace, too homely. 
 
 This body of mine not only fills its place, and stands 
 opposed in turns to a multitude of other bodies, but it is 
 the seat of marvellous organs of sensation, and of this 
 marvellous power to move in obedience to sensation. 
 It is the eye that sees, the ear that hears, the hand that 
 touches, that moves and moves other things. Innu- 
 merable are the forms seen, the sounds heard, but the 
 same eyes, the same ears, are ever present ; the same 
 hands touch everything ; the same vital, mobile frame 
 is ready at all times to respond to our desires. This 
 body, so endowed, I must need carry with me through 
 all my memories and all my anticipations : it is my 
 earliest ego, and the ground or condition for any more 
 subtle ego that is afterwards devised. 
 
 For although to our first apprehensions it is the eye 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 33 
 
 that sees and the ear that hears, and the hand that moves, 
 we come to recognise our consciousness, as embracing 
 in its own unity whatever the eye and the ear and the 
 hand can contribute. What is this which combines all 
 that the senses give, and contributes thoughts of its own 1 
 I see, and I remember while I see. What is it that 
 both thinks and feels 1 Whatever it may be, I place 
 it there amongst the senses. It has no form or substance 
 that I can seize upon ; but I can give it a place ; I can 
 lodge it in the body. Somewhere behind the eye and 
 the ear is that which remembers what was seen and 
 heard. Men soon become familiar with forms of matter 
 impalpable or iuAdsible ; they feel the wind they do 
 not see ; they see reflections in the water they do not 
 touch. Something both invisible and impalpable within 
 the body — this shall be that which thinks. 
 
 The more mature and cultivated man meditating on 
 the unity of consciousness (for the consciousness is 
 always that one which embraces the many) carries his 
 speculations still further. His thinking substance shall 
 be one and indivisible. Here perhaps he rests. It is 
 no disparagement to his conception of a soul or spirit 
 within the body, that it could not have been reached 
 but through a previous knowledge of the body itself. 
 Have I not said that it is the last, and not the first, 
 that is most honourable and of necessity the most 
 authoritative "? 
 
 Whatever is the final conception we attain (some 
 mingled conception to the last, I presume, of body and 
 soul), whatever is the object of thought we call self, 
 that object accompanies every memory and every antici- 
 pation. It is that which has felt and acted, which will 
 
 G 
 
34 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 feel, enjoy, suffer, and act in the future ; it is this we 
 surround, as a nucleus, with habits and acquirements, 
 and ever recurring wants or passions. No reflection is 
 without it. The thought just passed is instantly re- 
 cognised as having been the thought of this self. But 
 it is always as an object that it occurs ; the relation of 
 object and subject is, in reality, the relation between 
 two objects of thought. 
 
 I do not say that thought exists without a thinker ; 
 I merely say that the thinker does not think himself 
 in every thought. Under very strong passion, or in 
 earnest meditation upon some impersonal topic, we are 
 aware that there has passed an interval without any 
 reference to self. 
 
 But, in general, the present consciousness is made up 
 of memories and anticipations, and in all these self 
 enters. To remember a sensation as mine is to attri- 
 bute it to this body of mine. It is because the present 
 consciousness is almost always some combination of our 
 past or of our expected future, that this self is so rarely 
 absent from us. 
 
 For this reason I said in the commencement that 
 personality ultimately depends on the fact, that the 
 present consciousness embraces in itself the past, the 
 future. The two selfs of past and future must need be 
 identical, for our anticipations are our memories thrown 
 before us. 
 
 The actual present consciousness, if it could possibly 
 be limited to some one object, as the perception of 
 relations in space, would have no self in it. It would 
 consist of just that perception of relation. 
 
 To no such consciousness can we travel back. In 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 35 
 
 the first place, all sensations, actions, cognitions, have 
 been associated with this body, or this soul-in-body ; 
 and, in the next place, our present consciousness almost 
 invariably consists of the past and future of this self. 
 And the very present will, the instant it has passed, 
 be known as having belonged to the same self. 
 
 Consciousness travels on, one ever-present, with its 
 past and future self. And as it travels on it moulds 
 and magnifies this self — whose real home is always in 
 the past or future. 
 
 Our poet Tennyson has not scrupled to represent the 
 personality as a knowledge that has had its course of 
 growth or development ; and, to judge by the frequency 
 with which his lines have been quoted, they must have 
 harmonized with some general conviction — 
 
 " The baby new to eartb and sky, 
 
 What time his tender palm is prest 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 Has never thought ' that this is I.' 
 
 But as he grows he gathers much, 
 And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me,' 
 And finds I am not what I see. 
 
 And other than the things I touch : 
 
 So rounds he to a separate mind." 
 
 The nature of our knowledge of the external world, 
 the will, and personality, are three topics intimately 
 connected. I regard our knowledge of the external 
 world as based on the perception of relations which 
 from their nature can be supported only by space- 
 occupants. I believe in the external world ; therefore 
 I can believe that the actual relations of this world 
 
36 KNOWING AND FEELING. 
 
 become (I know not how) in the sensitive organism, 
 ^perceptions of these relations. And if I believe that an 
 animated body, by such perceptions, has become cogni- 
 sant of itself and of its surroundings, must not I see 
 here the first i^ersonality ? This animated creature, 
 standing out in contrast to all the rest of the world, 
 moving in obedience to all desires, has will because 
 there is this combination of desires and movements ; 
 and has the sentiment of power because it knows this 
 connexion of desire and movement. 
 
 Man is not simply a conscious being, he is a combi- 
 nation of physical and psychical properties, or, as we 
 familiarly say, he is body and soul. To know is pre- 
 eminently the psychical property, and to know the 
 body, its movements and laws of movements, and how 
 they are connected with feeling or desires, becomes a 
 consciousness of power. If we seek anywhere for an 
 Individuality that can march forth alone in the uni- 
 verse, we shall seek in vain. We move, and live, and 
 have our conscious being as parts of some great whole 
 — of Divine authorship as we think. There are, so far 
 as we can penetrate, innumerable space-occupants which 
 define themselves to us by their relation to each other ; 
 they form bodies, vital bodies, these last become con- 
 scious of themselves and their surroundings. As 
 psychologists, we must begin by shutting ourselves up 
 in our consciousness ; but having justified to ourselves 
 our knowledge of the world in space, we end by, in 
 part, explaining our consciousness by that world in 
 space. Mind is a creation upon a creation ; the mind 
 of man, the last creation, still travelling on, as we be- 
 lieve, to its completeness or to further development. 
 
PART II. 
 
 SOME FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THE WILL. 
 
 Consciousness, I endeavoured to show, is, from its 
 first to its last stage of development, a combination of 
 knowing and feeling. The two elements, sensation and 
 judgment (apprehension of relations), are inextricably 
 blended in our simplest perceptions ; sensations arising 
 to us in the relations of space and time. The unit of 
 consciousness, if this expression is permissible, is a 
 combination of sensations and a judgment, or appre- 
 hension of relations. I say if this expression is per- 
 missible, because I have always felt the difficulty there 
 is in speaking of one definite state of consciousness, 
 seeing that the consciousness itself is an arena of per- 
 petual change and flux, and that what we should call 
 the movement of thought appears necessary to thought 
 itself When, in the further evolution of mind, cogni- 
 tion seems to separate itself most distinctly from feeling, 
 as in the labours of the mathematician or man of 
 science, the cognitions with which their thinking is 
 concerned were originally due in part to sensations ; 
 and a desire of some kind, curiosity if no other, pre- 
 sides over all that movement of thought which we here 
 call reasoning or acquisition of knowledge. A percep- 
 
38 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 tion, in becoming a memory, if it is stripped of its sen- 
 sational character, assumes an emotional character. To 
 think of a past pleasure or pain becomes a present 
 passion. In short, look into the consciousness at any 
 moment you will, you find an inextricable complication 
 of the intellectual and the emotional, of passions that 
 grow out of cognitions, of cognitions again that have 
 passions and other feelings for the objects of dis- 
 crimination and comparison. All our moral truths 
 have pain and pleasure, love and hate, for the very 
 terms of the cognitions they deal with. 
 
 But consciousness is not the whole man. He con- 
 sists of body, as well as mind, or in a union of physical 
 and psychical properties. The connexion between 
 these properties, in one remarkable instance, gives us 
 voluntary motion, gives us will. Will, as voluntary 
 motion, is plainly neither exclusively a physical nor 
 psychical property, but a result of their combination. 
 Movement and the force by which one body moves or 
 breaks up another body, are physical properties, thought 
 and feeling are psychical properties ; the connexion 
 between the two constitutes the will, as matter of fact ; 
 the knowledge of such connexion gives us our sentiment 
 of power, our self-confidence, our belief that to a cer- 
 tain extent we have a command over the future. It 
 converts thought into a purpose, anticipation into a 
 resolve. 
 
 Two great facts encounter us on the threshold of 
 life, — the action of the external world on our sensitive 
 bodies, and the reaction of those sensitive bodies on 
 surrounding objects. These two great facts, or speak- 
 ing from a psychological point of view, these two cog- 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 39 
 
 nitions, enter together into the consciousness. I know 
 my own body and its movements, at the same time that 
 I know the external object and its movement, or its 
 resistance to movement. The two cognitions are 
 needful to each other. I know furthermore that the 
 movements of my limbs follow, to a certain extent, my 
 desires. I know this as a matter of experience, and 
 have learned to trust to it as the invariable order. I 
 know nothing more ; or if physiology and metaphysical 
 reasoning have given me any insight into the nature of 
 this connexion between desire and movement, it is 
 plain that I am here dealing with some additional 
 cognitions. In psychology, the will is nothing else 
 than a special cognition accompanied by its special 
 class of sensations and emotions. 
 
 As to the theories we form of the nature of mind 
 and matter, or of the connexion between them, I 
 repeat that we are plainly here on the high road of 
 reasoning or conjecture. To some, the transition from 
 a state of consciousness to bodily movement seems best 
 represented by supposing that the same substance puts 
 forth in succession these two different modes of activity. 
 Others prefer to assign these two modes of activity to 
 different substances, and they represent the one of 
 these substances stimulating and determining the 
 movements of the other. We hear some maintain 
 that all force is essentially will, that is, it emanates 
 from mind, from the mind of Deity, matter being only 
 the passive recipient of such forces. This last theory 
 claims our respect ; all these theories claim our exa- 
 mination ; but they are evidently at present in the 
 state of conjecture. What we really know, what every 
 
40 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 man, woman, and child born into the world really 
 knows, is that desire is followed by movement. 
 
 Here some reader may object — But we do not say 
 my desire moves my arm, or desire moves the arm ; we 
 say I desire, and I move. Does not the / move remit 
 the power at once to the ego, whatever the ego may 
 be ] To me it seems that the / move is equivalent to 
 this man moves ; and this man is just the union of the 
 several properties, physical and psychical, that go to 
 the formation of this whole. Both the desire and the 
 movement belong to the man, but the man is nothing 
 but the combination of desire and movement and other 
 properties. His heart, his limbs, his lungs lelong to 
 the man ; that is, they are parts of the whole we call 
 a man. In no other sense do they belong to him. 
 This mode of speaking and thinking follows us every- 
 where, for everywhere we encounter individualities 
 which are but combinations of parts forming a new 
 or specific whole. We say of a dog that it has a head, 
 has four legs. Abstract the head, or the legs, where is 
 the dog 1 The dog is a certain whole of many parts 
 and properties, and each one is in its turn referred to 
 that whole. In the / think, I desire, I move of human 
 speech there is a reference of each of these properties 
 to that whole which constitutes the conception of man, 
 or to so much of that whole as is necessary to give a 
 meaning to the expression /, or this man. And when 
 we say / will, this is a reference to the same whole of 
 that connexion between the properties of desire or 
 movement which enters so conspicuously into the 
 composition or individuality of man. 
 
 I observed in my last paper that the term Will was 
 
A CONTRIBUTTOX TO PSYCHOLOGY. 41 
 
 often applied exclusively to the purpose itself, to the 
 thought or consciousness that precedes motion, and I 
 added that this application to the mental resolve had 
 given rise to a class of questions I could not then stay 
 to examine. I alluded especially to the question we 
 ask about the will, whether it is free or not 1 If I 
 may venture to trespass so far on the patience of the 
 readers of the Contemporary, I would continue some- 
 what further my discussion of the will, and carry the 
 discussion into this old debate. 
 
 It is not difficult of explanation how the term Will 
 comes to be used as synonymous with Purpose ; how 
 it happens that we speak indifferently of a man of 
 indomitable resolve, or indomitable will. The purpose 
 of the man is the important element in every human 
 action. It ^s to this our blame or praise attaches. 
 The actual movement of body or limb that follows the 
 resolution may often be of the most trivial description, 
 or, through the wonderful education which resides in 
 habit, it may be performed, as we are accustomed to 
 say, almost automatically. If the child at first moves 
 for the very pleasure of movement, from the desire to 
 reproduce the sensations of touch and muscular con- 
 traction (the memory and anticipation of such muscular 
 sensations acting, it is supposed, as a repetition of the 
 original stimulus that passed from the nerves of sense 
 to the nerves of motion), it very soon has ulterior 
 objects for its various movements. It clutches at some 
 object of desire, and so well has habit done its office, 
 that the eye seems to direct the hand without a thought 
 
42 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 being bestowed on the muscle, or on the individual 
 movements of the arm and the fingers. And again, 
 the motives that induce either the child or the man to 
 clutch at an object may be very different. The outward 
 action may be the same where the purposes are in 
 flagrant contrast. A child grasps the neck of the 
 decanter to help itself to some tempting liquid, the 
 nurse grasps the same decanter to prevent the child 
 from drinking what would be deleterious to it. The 
 meaning and nature of the action comes to depend on 
 the thought behind it. A bridge has been carefully, 
 laboriously, slowly built by the subtle power of habit, 
 between the consciousness of the man and the physical 
 world, and now what processions are marshalled on the 
 other side of the bridge ! The bridge itself is scarcely 
 considered. 
 
 A school-boy moves a pen over a copy-book and 
 produces his array of letters, good or bad. With very 
 much the same action of his hand, an emperor may • 
 abdicate his throne. Vastly different actions, and the \ 
 same trivial, customary movement. Very often the 
 movement that follows along deliberation or important 
 resolve, has no peculiar relation to the thought or pur- 
 pose. To a mere spectator, it would be quite insig- 
 nificant. To descend from our imperial altitude — and 
 to descend gently — let us suppose a member of parlia- 
 ment receiving an offer to join the ministry, to take 
 office as we say, how gravely he might deliberate, with 
 what emotion he might resolve ! Yet the resolution 
 made, what does he do ? Perhaps he rises gently from 
 his seat, touches a bell, and despatches a message, 
 which has no apparent connexion with the acceptance 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 43 
 
 or refusal of office. The resolution is all, the ability to 
 act on it is implied, and, therefore, it takes to itself the 
 name of will, which primarily embraced not only the 
 purpose but the external act itself. 
 
 More especially to him who has the purpose is the 
 ability to act in uniformity with it implied. Purpose 
 includes some anticipated action. It includes the con- 
 fidence that this bridge lies open between thought and 
 movement. No wonder the man says / loill who as 
 yet only anticipates action. 
 
 But there is another important fact to be taken 
 notice of. A purpose not only goes forth into action ; 
 it influences our trains of thought. We think under 
 the influence of a purpose. Purposes once formed, all 
 our thinking, unless it be some idle reverie, is controlled 
 and prompted by them. We are not able here to 
 anticipate tfie very thought, as we can anticipate the 
 very movement which is next to he, but the purpose 
 rouses the mental activity, and keeps it circulating 
 round a given centre. The mechanical inventor, 
 though he may be walking abroad in the fields, where 
 not a wheel or a cog can anywhere be seen, is kept 
 revolving in his mind all manner of combinations of 
 wheelwork by his predominant purpose. Whatever 
 may be our end in view, we are casting about for 
 means for its accomplishment. For this reason it is 
 said that attention is voluntary. We are looking or 
 thinking energetically for some purpose, if it be only to 
 know what manner of thing lies before us, and in what 
 respects it difi'ers from other things of similar kind. 
 
 Nor is this thinking for a purpose without its senti- 
 ment of power, for although the thinker cannot antici- 
 
44 KNOWING- AND FEELING : 
 
 pate the very thought, as he can anticipate the very 
 movement, that is next to take its place in the series 
 of events, he has learnt that there is an influence of 
 desire upon thought, he knows that his wishing, here 
 also, will be effective, and will, in some less direct way, 
 lead to the end he has in view. He tells you that he has 
 the power to concentrate his energies upon his subject, 
 and is not without some degree of confidence in the 
 result. The thinker has his sense of power as well as 
 the acrobat, though he cannot tell you so precisely what 
 will be done. 
 
 Whether we give the name of will to this control 
 which desire or purpose has over the current of thought, 
 or prefer to describe this control as one amongst the 
 laws of thought, laws that regulate the sequence and 
 permanence of our ideas, — in either case the fact 
 remains that we do marshal our thoughts under the 
 sway of any predominant purpose. This is one sense 
 of self-determination, as when we say that a man has 
 the power of determining his own character. 
 
 II. 
 
 When science began to teach that all the forces or 
 activities that surround us in space are determined, as 
 to their moment of display, by relations to other forces 
 or activities ; that nothing moves alone ; nothing origi- 
 nates its own movement or arrests its own movement ; 
 that everything acts in a pre-ordained order ; nay, that 
 whatever we call thing or individual, is some gathering 
 together of pre-existent forms and activities, and acts 
 in its individuality only in ordered relation to other 
 individuals — men were prompted to ask, what then of 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 45 
 
 human thoughts and feel'ngs which constitute the con- 
 sciousness of man 1 Does the same order prevail here 1 
 Do these also come into existence, appear and disappear, 
 according to some established law 1 And is this indi- 
 viduality which I call myself made up of divers ele- 
 ments, and does it act and live, as such individuality, 
 by strictly ordained relations with the surrounding 
 world of material forms and forces 1 Look abroad : 
 the river, which lies and flows upon the earth, would 
 not be a river without its channel ; the earth is upheld 
 by the sun ; the smallest atom consists of parts and of 
 divers forces, and has its movements determined by 
 other atoms. As for living things, the plant is not only 
 rooted in the soil, but grows out of air, and water, and 
 heat, and light, and depends on a perpetual interchange 
 of its very substance with the surrounding world. For 
 the animal does it not feed upon the vegetable, or on 
 some other animal 1 How self-contained it seems as 
 it darts hither and thither, runs or flies, seizing upon 
 its prey ! Yet the creature does not live an instant 
 but by the order or harmony of that greater whole of 
 which it is a part. Is man an individuality of this 
 description ? Distinguished as he is from all other 
 creatures, and the last appearance in this region of 
 space, is he not also a part of this wondrous whole 1 
 And though we assign to him — to each individual man 
 — the indivisible soul we are all in imagination so 
 familiar with, is not this new entity itself reacted on 
 by the material instruments it is compelled to employ 1 
 These nerves, this brain, are its slaves, and its tyrants 
 also. They receive impressions or modifications from 
 the very work they are engaged in, they grow this way 
 
46 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 or that by their very activity (growth which we call 
 habit), and will at length perform work only of one 
 kind. So the past comes to determine the present. 
 In this, or some other way, man finds out that there is 
 within his own little kingdom of mind, or self, an 
 evolution, in which what has been determines what will 
 he ; determines it to us, to our apprehension, who see 
 only the growth, and cannot dive down to the grower, 
 whether of the plant or the mind. 
 
 If this be so, the startling reflection occurs. What be- 
 comes of our moral responsibility 1 Do we not punish 
 this or that scoundrel in the firm faith that it depended 
 on himself, at every moment of his life, whether he 
 would be a scoundrel or not 1 How can I continue to 
 punish him, or to punish him with the same sense of 
 justice, if I am to believe that he grew into a scoundrel 
 by the laws of nature — laws somewhat more complicate, 
 but of the same kind that grow a tiger or a domestic 
 dog? And, moreover, if I myself am the person 
 punished, in what spirit am I to receive my punish- 
 ment 1 Good for the whole, you say. A necessity is 
 imposed on society to punish, and it is a necessity for 
 me to submit. Perhaps I may profit by it. But w^hat 
 of this sentiment of remorse— of self -reproof ? If crime 
 was a misfortune or a misery in some other man, it was 
 but a misfortune and a misery in me. 
 
 What contribution have I to make towards a solu- 
 tion of this old difiiculty 1 
 
 I would observe that this teaching of science, at some 
 time or other, came in as a new doctrine, that our 
 passions and sentiments had been adjusted without it, 
 that it is not likely that it should be received and not 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 47 
 
 work some change in preconceived ideas of justice or 
 moral responsibility j but that it is very possible, when 
 the whole truth stands out clear before us, that the 
 modifications made on our sense of justice may be far 
 from pernicious. 
 
 The universality of law appeared as a new doctrine. 
 Those who claimed for the human mind an exemption 
 from the sway of law, were also, to a certain extent, 
 teaching a new doctrine. It was not, therefore, on this 
 position, " that man's mind or man's will is free, while 
 the rest of nature is under the bondage of law," that 
 moral responsibility was founded. Such an intellectual 
 position could only be taken up after the teaching of 
 science. But what occurred was this : men looked at 
 the individual before them, saw him capable of self- 
 movement, of self-determination, and felt towards him 
 as if he were the veritable ultimate source of whatever 
 injury or benefit came from the man. They carried 
 their thoughts no further. Reign of law, or exemption 
 from this reign, had not been heard of. Neither, when 
 they contemplated themselves, did they ask whence 
 their desires or purposes ; but, conscious of acting from 
 these, rested in the thought that they were the origin 
 of their own deeds ; as in some sense they certainly 
 are. With the teaching of science the individual, while 
 retaining his individuality, is shown to be more and 
 more distinctly a part of a greater whole. The indi- 
 vidual man is not only part of that entirety we call the 
 world ; he is also part of another we call society. The 
 recognition of these truths does and must modify the 
 sentiment of justice that had grown up before their 
 advent ; and I add that such modification, so far from 
 
48 KNOWING A.ND FEELING : 
 
 being a cause of alarm or regret, is one that takes its 
 place in the order of human progress. 
 
 III. 
 
 The sentiment of moral responsibility is safe enough 
 whatever betides. Let us look at the facts out of which 
 it springs. 
 
 Man is, all his life, from infancy upwards, surrounded 
 by other human beings whose wants and desires con- 
 flict or harmonize with his own. He is never free from 
 this environment. He is prompted or controlled at 
 every turn. Just as we move, and attain our power 
 of resistance from the pressure and impact of foreign 
 bodies, so do we love and hate and attain our sense 
 of freedom or self-assertion from the sympathy, con- 
 trol, and resistance of other human beings. The pres- 
 sure and stimulant of this social medium is as necessary 
 to the growth of passion and intelligence as the pres- 
 sure and stimulant of the external world was to animal 
 life itself. It is no exaggeration to compare the two. 
 
 The child is, from the hour of its birth, under the 
 control and superintendence of others. Without such 
 superintendence it could not live. But it no sooner 
 begins to move by impulses and desires of its own than 
 it manifests an opposition to the control. The little 
 rebel, who has found that it can move as it desires, 
 refuses to move in any other way ; and here, let me 
 observe, is the very origin of our sentiment of freedom. 
 I move as I desire, is power; I move as I desire in 
 opposition to the command or control of another, is 
 freedom as well as power. That sentiment of freedom 
 we have to act upon in relation to our fellow-creatures 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 49 
 
 has a social origin. It did not spring from any theory 
 about the freedom of the will. It sprang from resist- 
 ance to control. 
 
 Submission was good, but rebellion was better. 
 The child learnt self-assertion. Then afterwards, as 
 intelligence and affection are developed, it learns to 
 forego its self-assertion. A mere helpless submission 
 becomes a voluntary obedience. It chooses obedience. 
 The moral sentiment is created. 
 
 Strange ! Even most intelligent men, like M. Jouf- 
 froy and others, in arguing the question of the free 
 will, plant themselves on this fact of Choice, and hence 
 contend for their favourite doctrine. Indisputably we 
 choose. But what is choice ? It is manifestly a very 
 conspicuous instance of that combination of passion 
 and reasoii; of the intellectual and emotional elements, 
 which we say characterizes the consciousness through- 
 out. In what the moralist calls choice the two elements 
 of judgment and passion are inseparably combined. 
 There is comparison, contrast, consequences inferred, 
 and there is that prevailing feeling, whatever it may 
 be, which is the essence of a ^preference. There is no 
 vnll to preside over this choice, but this choice becomes 
 itself will by its going forth into action. It is the pas- 
 sion and judgment of the man that together make his 
 choice. His energy" lies in his passion. 
 
 My position as a psychologist is clear. If we are 
 speaking of action, will is the relation between thought 
 and feeling, between a state of consciousness and some 
 movement. To describe this relation as being free is 
 unintelligible language. By a license of speech we 
 give the name wall to the purpose alone. The purpose 
 
 D 
 
50 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 alone, before it is connected with action, is a certain 
 combination of thought and feeling. Then, to say 
 that such purpose is free, is simply to assert that 
 thought and feeling, that the whole mind of man is 
 free, that is, not included in the general laws of the 
 universe. Such assertion may be made; but it is a 
 far wider, and very different assertion, than that which 
 the advocate of free will is understood to make. 
 
 I was observing that, whether we make such asser- 
 tion or not, moral responsibility must equally remain. 
 Man is not a solitary being ; he grows up, pressed on 
 all sides by fellow-creatures. He loves and hates, and 
 has to rejoice or suffer under the love and hatred of 
 others. This coercion of the society on the individual 
 is inevitable. It is exercised in different manners at 
 different times. The common purposes of mankind 
 vary. Many circumstances arise, modifying this coer- 
 cion of society; as, for instance, the division of the 
 community into several classes, whose interests, or 
 common purposes, are not identical. Nor are great 
 philosophical truths or doctrines without their influence. 
 They may modify the love or hate we entertain to each 
 other. They may enlighten us on what should be the 
 common purposes of society. Where there is a common 
 purpose, energetic and almost unanimous, this coercion 
 is at its height. But need I say that no society could 
 exist, not the poorest, scantiest hive of human beings, 
 without this control of all on each, and the sentiment 
 of moral responsibility which is the result of it 1 
 
 IV. 
 
 Presuming we have arrived at the conclusion that 
 mind and matter, psychical as well as physical qualities. 
 
A COXTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 51 
 
 are all parts of one stupendous scheme, parts of that 
 harmonious whole we ascribe to the Infinite Power, 
 which again manifests itself to us in that whole — pre- 
 suming that some such philosophical doctrine were 
 generally accepted, what would be its influence on our 
 moral sentiments ? 
 
 I can well understand that a man with very vague 
 notions about desert and punishment might, on first 
 becoming acquainted with such a philosophy, be disposed 
 to extract from it an excuse for self-indulgence. He 
 has ofi'ended some one, who threatens punishment, and 
 he pleads the necessity of the case, that " he could not 
 help it" — that, in short, his passions were too strong to 
 be controlled. Some such colloquy as the following 
 might take place : — 
 
 "But you could help it," the offended man might 
 retort. " You had the two courses of conduct placed 
 before you, and you chose this." 
 
 " Yery true ; I chose. But then, as you know, I 
 had certain habits and tastes, and but a certain amount 
 of knowledge. I could not choose otherwise." 
 
 ''' It was your duty not to let such habits and tastes, 
 as you call them, become predominant. It is the first 
 purpose of every intelligent man to form his own 
 character ; you had the power to watch over yourself, 
 and to check your- self-indulgences." 
 
 " True again ; but you know as well as I do that I 
 could not exercise a supervision over my own habits 
 and tastes, with a view to the formation of my own 
 character, unless I had this very purpose of forming a 
 character. My power here is simply an acting or 
 thinking under the influence of such a purpose. Now 
 
52 KNOWING AND FEELING- : 
 
 no such purpose has ever grown up in me, or it has 
 been a plant of an extremely feeble description. I 
 have been chiefly occupied with such chance pleasures 
 — they have been few enough — that came within my 
 reach. You, I believe, have had this solemn purpose 
 of forming a character ; I congratulate you upon it ; in 
 me it has not been evolved." 
 
 Here the off'ended man will probably break ofi" the 
 colloquy : — " All I can say is this," he will ultimately 
 reply, " that if you do it again I will so punish you 
 that you will choose better for the future." 
 
 And if this is an earnest threat it will very likely be 
 efl'ectual, and lead to some better choice on the next 
 occasion. It may also lead our tiro in philosophy to 
 some reflection on the nature of punishment. Based on 
 the past deed, its operation is really prospective. It 
 stands between the past and the future. It is, in short, 
 an instrument of education ; a coarse instrument, but 
 indispensable. 
 
 Moreover, even the off'ended man, when his anger has 
 subsided, may gather something from such a colloquy. 
 He, too, will be led to reflect on the nature of vice and 
 its punishment. He knows that in some extreme cases 
 society can think only of self-defence. It either exter- 
 minates the criminal or incarcerates him, just as we are 
 compelled to shoot a tiger or shut it in a cage. But 
 these cases excepted, he too will note that punishment 
 is in its nature a mode of education, and a mode not to 
 be resorted to while there are other blander or more 
 efl'ectual modes within reach. 
 
 What gain could it be to any individual to relieve 
 him from punishment on the plea that passion and habit 
 were too strong for him, and that he " could not help 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 53 
 
 it'"? The more need that society should come to his 
 aid and help him " to help it." What are any of us 
 without the control of society 1 
 
 Look into the village school. Here is an idle boy 
 who lounges, and sulks, and slumbers over his book. 
 In fact he is fat, and lethargic in his temperament. A 
 physiologist will suggest good reasons for his indolence. 
 He cannot help it. Left to himself he cannot. But the 
 schoolmaster comes to his assistance, applies reproof, 
 shames him in the eyes of his fellow-pupils ; if need be 
 applies the cane. The boy struggles through his task. 
 Thus stimulated he becomes intelligent of something 
 beyond marbles and peg-top. Would it have been 
 kindness, would it have been well, for him or the com- 
 munity, if th^ plea " he could not help it " had been 
 listened to, and the lethargic temperament left in un- 
 disputed predominance 1 It was predominant, and for 
 that reason, doubtless much to his regret, the school- 
 master was compelled to administer the sharp stimulant 
 of the cane. 
 
 The notions afloat in the public mind about punish- 
 ment or criminal justice may receive some modification 
 from our philosophy, and with considerable advantage. 
 As it is the purpose or intention which is the great 
 element in human action, it is the purpose or intention 
 we mainly look for "when we ask the question, whether 
 a man deserves punishment or not. And since we have 
 not been accustomed to proceed further in our inquiries, 
 but have rested at this purpose, we have naturally 
 rested in this idea of desert. We leave ofiP with this 
 feeling, that the man deserves the punishment, as he 
 really designed the act and the evil consequences that 
 
54 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 followed from it. Apart from the consideration of the 
 deterring or educational effect of the punishment, the 
 mind receives a satisfaction from this feeling, that it 
 was deserved. It would not shock us to carry out the 
 punishment irrespective of any good results to ensue 
 from the punishment itself. But if we push our 
 inquiries into the origin of this purpose that we punish, 
 we may often find more room for compassion than for 
 anger. We find neglected education, unpropitious cir- 
 cumstances, an inordinate appetite for pleasure, or a 
 pitiful instability, at the root of all. We become more 
 and more awake to the importance of early education, 
 and speculate on the kind of education that might 
 compete with these deleterious influences. But on this 
 account do we forego the present punishment ? No ; 
 but we administer it for such good results as we hope 
 may flow from it. We make the discovery that a 
 perfect punishment regards the past purpose — punishes 
 it — but punishes in order to aid the formation of better 
 purposes for the future. A merely retributive punish- 
 ment is discarded ; it must be also prospective in its 
 character. A perfect punishment, that which is really 
 deserved, is that which is inflicted on what is truly a 
 human action, a purposed deed, and inflicted with the 
 design of preventing such purpose for the future. A 
 just punishment stands between the past and the future 
 — the past is judged ; the character of the act is dis- 
 criminated, and it is further punished for the improve- 
 ment of the criminal himself, if possible ; but, at all 
 events, for the prevention of the recurrence of such acts. 
 Public punishments, such as are administered by the 
 laws, are administered by the whole society, by the 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 55 
 
 whole community, for its own interest and self-preser- 
 vation. I have heard it asked, Why should a man be 
 punished as an example for others — why should he be 
 sacrificed to the good of society 1 And thereupon I 
 have heard the querist endeavour to satisfy himself by 
 some eternal fitness between punishment and crime. 
 The culprit deserved, and therefore he was punished. 
 The culprit deserves no punishment at all, unless you 
 can prove, first, that he committed the crime ; and, in 
 the second place, that the punishment of it is for the 
 good of society. It is precisely this very element of 
 the good of all that makes the punishment a righteous 
 punishment, that makes it deserved, that makes it justice, 
 and not mere revenge. The man punished is one of the 
 all. Would he renounce this solidarity ? 
 
 But under our" philosophy it is said the criminal will 
 not judge himself so severely as he was wont to do. 
 Men will be apt to be self-indulgent. Eemorse will 
 die out. Here, I have to observe that the standard of 
 moral perfection that men propose to themselves must 
 depend on the existing development of intelligence and 
 affection. It can depend on nothing else. Philosophy 
 or science does nothing to check this development. 
 As to this peculiar sentiment of remorse, some modifi- 
 cation here may well be admitted. As in punishing a 
 criminal we put ourselves between the past and the 
 future, punish the deed done to secure a better doing for 
 the future, so we must desire the criminal also to put 
 himself between the past and the future, to reproach 
 himself for the deed done, and at the same moment 
 resolve on better life for the future. We have no 
 desire that he should inflict misery on himself, that 
 
56 KNOWING AND FEELING: 
 
 leads to no good result. If it were possible for him to 
 rest wholly in his remorse for the past, the sentiment 
 would be of no avail. Penitence that leads to better 
 life is the noblest of sentiments ; but it is noble in 
 proportion as the sad penitent directs his steps to 
 wiser courses. A remorse that shuts a man up for 
 self-torture does not commend itself to us. " You have 
 done wrong ; you know it and you feel it ; go now 
 and do right ; show your sorrow in your better life." 
 That is the language we expect to hear from the lips 
 of intelligent men. Eemorse that contemplates any 
 other expiation than the better life for the future leads 
 to superstitious practices. Again and again has society 
 witnessed this spectacle : men and women have had 
 remorse, have expiated their vices by some self-torture, 
 some • retributive punishment self-inflicted, and gone 
 back into society ready to reproduce the same vices. 
 There is no expiation for an old crime but a new 
 virtue. 
 
 The sentiment of moral responsibility, or the moral 
 sentiment, passes through many phases. At first it is 
 plainly the fear of punishment attached to some volun- 
 tary or purposed action. Then the kind of punish- 
 ment that is feared begins to change ; we fear disgrace 
 more than bodily pain. Afterwards the boy or youth 
 undertakes to be himself a judge of others ; sees him- 
 self less frequently in the place of culprit ; delights to 
 put himself in the judgment-seat. He thinks with the 
 multitude, or with some class or body to which he 
 belongs j he pronounces judgment in their name. Of 
 course he has to commend the same chalice to his own 
 lips that, in the name of such society, he has offered to 
 
A CONTKIiJUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 57 
 
 others. With maturer intellect he comes to understand 
 how individuals grow each in his own environment ; 
 he becomes more tolerant of the criminal, less tolerant 
 of the crime ; he wants to attack this last in every- 
 way imaginable — stifle it, if possible, in its birth. 
 Morality takes the shape of a great desire — desire of 
 excellence in others and in himself — desire of a com- 
 pleted society to be obtained only by the co-operation 
 of each member of it. For such is the nature of the 
 human hive. It forms the individual, yet itself is only 
 an assemblage of individuals, each leading his own 
 intelligent and passionate existence. Add, too, that 
 such desire is sustained by the knowledge that it is 
 shared with other minds around him, who will esteem 
 and love him in proportion as he possesses and acts 
 upon it ; sustained^ also by the knowledge that it is 
 one with the laws of God. 
 
 Surely to believe that God has created a world which 
 ■progresses in part through the progressive purposes of 
 man, will not check the growth of such purposes. 
 
 V. 
 
 To resume. Will, in its primitive significance, is the 
 relation between the psychical and physical properties 
 of man. Movement and sensation are found blended 
 together. We presume even in the brain, but we enter 
 into a knowledge of this union only through the move- 
 ment of the limbs ; nor can we proceed further back, 
 in our introspection, than the consciousness of our 
 limbs moving at the call of sensation or desire. En- 
 deavouring to trace the earlier stages of the growth of 
 a definite case of will, we assume that at first the 
 
58 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 infant would move from some sense of uneasiness, by a 
 purely physiological connexion between that sense of 
 uneasiness and a given movement ; or that there is a 
 direct connexion between our organs of perception and 
 specific movements. Some experiences, founded on 
 these physiological facts, must have preceded a definite 
 desire to move, because such a desire implies the know- 
 ledge that movement follows our feelings and percep- 
 tions. It is an emotional anticipation of the movement 
 that directly leads to it. Such emotional anticipation 
 is itself only a combination of thought and feeling ; the 
 movement of the limb ensues ; the combination of these 
 two is a case of will. 
 
 If by any means a conviction is introduced into the 
 mind that you cannot move, you will be unable to move 
 voluntarily ; because the anticipation of movement is 
 an essential part of the process, and you are prevented 
 from forming the anticipation. Thus a weak or idiotic 
 person might be persuaded by another that he could 
 not move his arm, and while under that persuasion a 
 voluntary movement of the arm would be impossible. 
 People under the mesmeric influence are said to be 
 reduced to the requisite state of idiocy, and to be 
 capable of receiving such a conviction. I do not speak 
 to this fact myself ; I merely observe that, if it be a 
 fact, the explanation of it is at hand. In the mesmeric 
 exhibitions that I have witnessed, the lads who were 
 told that they could not rise from their seats, and were 
 thereupon seen to writhe with unavailing effort, seemed 
 to me to play their parts only too well. Mere immo- 
 bility, which I presume would have been the efi'ect of 
 such genuine convictions, would have told nothing to 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 59 
 
 the spectators. So the lads grimaced and writhed. 
 But if so much of the old accustomed conviction was 
 left as to enable them to perform such contortions, one 
 suspects they might have carried their movements a 
 little further. 
 
 Let us take some complete and finished instance of 
 voluntary motion — say a trained youth in his athletic 
 exercises. He is ]puUing the stone. He chooses his 
 position, plants his feet firm upon the earth, and at 
 such distance from each other as to give him the surest 
 support ; his back is arched,' his chest expanded to 
 afford fullest play to the muscles ; he raises the stone 
 in both hands. All these preliminary movements 
 follow each other, or group themselves together, with 
 scarce a thought bestowed upon them. There was a 
 time when they wer^ separate acquisitions, practised 
 with conscious care, and with that degree of loain 
 which attends upon new movements, and which enters 
 largely into what is called sense of efi'ort when new 
 movements are being learnt. Now they fall as readily 
 into their place as words in our ordinary language. 
 They are, indeed, a kind of expression of himself, of 
 his thought or purpose. He next fixes his eye on some 
 imaginary spot to which he means to hurl his massive 
 stone, and with one last passionate resolve that con- 
 tracts every muscle in his frame, he dismisses it from 
 his hands. What next ensues ? He sees it flying 
 through the air ; he sees it half-bury itself in the earth, 
 or scatter the soil where it falls. Such perception of 
 form, and motion, and resistance overcome, such know- 
 ledge of the force which it has displayed, enter rapidly 
 into his mind. That force of the stone is carried back 
 
60 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 to the arm that propelled it, to the passion that nerved 
 the arm ! 
 
 But manifestly the passion, and the arm so nerved 
 or stimulated, cannot be separated in the last concep- 
 tion he forms of what moved the stone. If in popular 
 language he says it was his will that did it, he never, 
 in the term will, separates the psychical property, the 
 purpose, the passion, from the bodily force. He unites 
 the two in this one convenient word, will. 
 
 We fall into a mistake if (speaking of voluntary 
 motion) we take this convenient word will, and express 
 by it some simple and peculiar psychical quality. It 
 was framed to express a union of soul and body — the 
 passion-contracted arm — but the psychical part of the 
 business usurps the name to itself. 
 
 This it does very conspicuously when the movement, 
 or series of movements that we perform, is not the 
 main object of our contemplation, or when the action, 
 whatever it may be, is still at a distance. Here popular 
 language applies the term will to the resolution itself. 
 And here it is evident that we can have nothing before 
 us but the elements of thought and passion. Such 
 terms as resolution and determination obtain a peculiar 
 significance from the persistence of the thought and 
 passion, and also from a feeling of opposition to what- 
 ever would resist or change it. 
 
 A contemplated action can be nothing but a thought. 
 Often the action, so far as bodily movement is con- 
 cerned, is of a very trivial character. It may be the 
 utterance of a few words, a yes or a no. The resolu- 
 tion of the Christian martyr was to abstain from saying 
 " I recant," or from throwing a few grains of incense 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 61 
 
 before the statue of an emperor. But such abstinence 
 was followed by death. And friends and enemies 
 implored and threatened in order to shake his resolu- 
 tion. But in vain. The martyr had one persistent 
 purpose — to be faithful to his God. In the alternative 
 placed before him he chose death. 
 
 What grand things have been said by poets and 
 orators of this unshaken resolve ! The man you cannot 
 terrify, or flatter, or persuade, if he really have a great 
 purpose, and power to accomplish it, is indeed one of 
 the sublimest objects we can contemplate. The author 
 of that noble poem, " The Spanish Gipsy," makes one 
 of her characters say — 
 
 " You may divide the universe with God, 
 Keeping your will intact, and hold a world 
 Where He is not supreme." 
 
 The stoic bent on doing what is good and right in 
 defiance of the multitude, in defiance of his own self- 
 regarding passions, attains, it is generally believed, the 
 culminating point of human greatness. The greatness 
 lies plainly in the purpose, the thought and passion of 
 the man. 
 
 It is worth a remark that we sometimes expect that 
 the resolution or choice of a virtuous man should be 
 sudden, instantaneous, without a moment's hesitation. 
 On other occasions we demand deliberation, and only 
 approve the choice that follows on deliberation. If a 
 man of honour is asked to tell a falsehood we should 
 be disappointed if he did not at once reject* the pro- 
 posal ; we expect that from the settled habit of his 
 mind he will dismiss it at once, not without some 
 feeling of scorn or anger that it should have been 
 
62 KNOWING AND FEELING. 
 
 made. But if some arduous and difficult enterprise is 
 proposed to him we expect that he should deliberate 
 before he returns an answer, because a wise man would 
 carefully abstain from committing himself to what 
 might be beyond his power to accomplish, because only 
 light and feather-brained men would rush heedlessly on 
 a difficult enterprise, because the resolution that is 
 expected from him is one that must embrace all the 
 probable dangers ahead. Time for reflection and 
 deliberation there must be in such a case. No fitting 
 resolution could else be formed. 
 
 But the choice that follows deliberation, and the 
 choice that is sudden as lightning, are ultimately re- 
 solvable into the same elements of judgment and feel- 
 ing, or, as we popularly express them, of reason and 
 passion. 
 
 Do you wish to believe that this ever-varying and 
 progressive movement of thought and feeling wells 
 forth arbitrarily from your own mind 1 Are you re- 
 luctant to be the creature, ambitious to be creator 1 Do 
 you wish to make these fine lines just quoted — beautiful 
 as poetry — literally true, and have a universe of your 
 
 own — 
 
 " A world 
 Where He is not supreme " ? 
 
 It seems that all our lines of thought bring us from 
 the natural to the supernatural, bring us to that Abso- 
 lute Being and Power on which all nature rests. We 
 move and live and have our being in God. We exist 
 as part of His um verse. This is what I presume is 
 meant when we say that " in Him we live and move 
 and have our being." 
 
PART III. 
 
 SPECULATIVE THOUGHT. 
 
 Philosophy is one of those words which have 
 traversed various epochs of mental development, and 
 have come down to us with different significations not 
 strictly compatible with each other. Such words defy 
 definition. In the general use of them the old and 
 the new significations are both preserved. For an old 
 meaning does not instantly drop off when a new mean- 
 ing comes in ; both continue to live as long as possible 
 together. In such cases there are, in fact, two or more 
 words to the mind, while there is only one to the ear or 
 the eye, and it depends on the context which word the 
 writer is using. Any wisdom or knowledge above that 
 of the multitude has passed by the name of Philosophy, 
 whether it was moral, or religious, or scientific in its 
 character. It was Philosophy that taught a man to 
 rise above the tribulations of life. It was Philosophy 
 that taught him to rise above life itself, above ordinary 
 knowledge, into the fancied empyrean of the pure in- 
 tellect. It was Philosophy that taught him to know 
 the " causes of things ; " meaning thereby what we now 
 call the " order of phenomena." Originally it embraced 
 science, and if we open a history of Philosophy, we 
 
64 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 find ourselves conducted back to the hypothesis of 
 Thales, that water was the all-forming, all-sustaining 
 element. Even in times close at hand, it was customary 
 to speak of the philosophy of Newton. At the present 
 moment our most careful writers define the word by 
 its contrast with science. The aims and the method 
 of science being determined, a kind of thinking that 
 lies outside of these shall be denominated Philosophy 
 or Speculative Thought. Questions which science can- 
 not resolve, or which at present it makes no attempt to 
 resolve, are relegated to this category. Such are the 
 questions we ask about the Absolute, or Unconditioned 
 Existence, or the First Cause of all Things ; such are 
 the questions we ask about the nature of mind, regarded 
 as a substance, and the whence and whither of the 
 human soul. These questions lie at the basis of reli- 
 gion. And if the future of the individual mind may 
 be regarded as a fit subject of speculative thought, the 
 future of this human terrestrial society may be inserted 
 in the same list. One can hardly say that science has 
 made herself complete mistress of this territory. We 
 still debate what is the ideal of a perfect human society 
 — vt^hat is the ideal to which we are tending, and the 
 realization of which should be the aim of successive 
 generations. While this debate lasts our Sociology 
 cannot be altogether abstracted from the region of 
 Speculative Thought. 
 
 I use the term Philosophy in this modern and 
 restricted, but still somewhat vague, sense. Striking 
 as the contrast is between it and science on some sub- 
 jects, there are others in which this distinction grows 
 fainter and fainter as we examine it. Philosophy, in 
 
A CONTKIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 65 
 
 its best aspects, may be but science in the making; — a 
 very slow making, it will be added. I include in it 
 certain well-kno^vn theological and social problems; 
 some that concern the nature of the individual man, 
 and some that concern that organized whole, the human 
 society, which has its own progressive movement. 
 
 At all events, in this present era in which we live, 
 there is a field of inquiry called Philosophy, in which 
 no man steps forward to teach, as he would teach in 
 any department of science, as he would teach a system 
 of astronomy or chemistry. No man can here present 
 himself as the interpreter of a system of truths and 
 doctrines which, whether complete or not, is the scien- 
 tific creed of all his contemporaries who have studied 
 the subject, the scientific creed, let us say, with some 
 few diversities, of every university in the world. In 
 this region of inquiry professor is arrayed against pro- 
 fessor, and one eminent authority is neutralized by 
 another authority equally eminent. Every teacher is 
 therefore compelled to come before us with the results 
 of his own personal inquisitions, with convictions which 
 he himself has wrought out with infinite toil ; working 
 his way, he also, from the very beginning, both aided 
 and embarrassed at every step by the thoughtful utter- 
 ances of his conflicting predecessors. It is not necessary 
 that he should claim to have a philosophy of his own 
 (in the sense of having an original system) ; but he, and 
 indeed aU men who are concerned in the study, must 
 shape the scheme they finally adopt by their own 
 labours. They cannot learn it as they might their 
 
 E 
 
66 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 botany. They have to choose their theory of the 
 universe out of several thrown before them. 
 
 Choose we must ; we can hold a scheme of doctrine 
 on no other conditions. The philosopher invites us to 
 the discussion of questions that are not decided, on 
 which each thinker must come to a decision for himself. 
 Herein lies the troubled charm, the deep delight, and 
 the peculiar mental discipline of philosophic studies. 
 Science tasks the intellect of the student, and tasks it 
 severely ; but so far as he is a student only, and not a dis- 
 coverer, tasks it only in the apprehension of what another 
 teaches. But in Philosophy every student is compelled, 
 not indeed to be a discoverer, but to be a judge, and a 
 judge in the last resort of whatever claims to be a dis- 
 covery or a truth. There is here no arrogance in deciding 
 against the highest authority, for, choose which camp you 
 will, you are sure to find great champions arrayed against 
 you, with whom individually you would blush to com- 
 pare yourself The most modest student finds himself in 
 the place of a judge before whom great advocates plead; 
 he is bent on learning from them all he can, but at last he 
 has to "take the papers home," and there decide the point. 
 It is a high, and solemn, and somewhat painful self- 
 reliance which Philosophy imposes. In other studies I 
 am one of the school ; I enter and take my place in 
 some social group ; I step with light-hearted alacrity 
 into a heritage of truths which have been gradually 
 evolved by a succession of enterprising, laborious intel- 
 lects. But here I am, against my will, isolated, indi- 
 vidualized, compelled to begin the work again from the 
 beginning, as if I were some solitary architect bridging 
 chaos for the first time. Or let us say there are so 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 67 
 
 many bridges, all of dubious security, and some mere 
 wrecks and ruins, out of whose fragments you are 
 invited to build afresh. You have neither ambition 
 nor power to originate a philosophy — you would so 
 willingly know the truth on much easier terms ; but it 
 cannot be ; you must at least choose your teacher, 
 choose your guide ; if you are capable of implicit faith, 
 and. desire only to submit to the Aristotle or the Plato 
 of the day, you must still choose one out of several 
 candidates for the spiritual supremacy; you must, at 
 last, be shut up apart, like cardinals in their cells, to 
 elect, from your solitude, the one Infallible. 
 
 We hear Philosophy condemned because of its un- 
 certainty. How often lately have its three thousand 
 years of obstinate questiqnings been contrasted with 
 the onward march of science ! But if Philosophy were 
 certain it would become science, and cease to be Phi- 
 losophy. Philosophy lies on the confines between night 
 and morning ; it is a perpetual dawn ; it cannot also 
 be the light of day. Science advances her boundary, 
 extends her lines, her circumvallations, but where- 
 soever we overlook her ramparts there we encounter 
 Philosophy. Whether it is desirable that there should 
 be an arena where light and darkness contend together 
 — an arena of thought where men of equal knowledge 
 and equal power of apprehension see so differently — I 
 cannot venture to determine. One would naturally 
 say. Give us certainty, give us truth, or at all events 
 that universal conviction that passes for truth ; give us 
 universal science. Let it be cell science ! Away with 
 this chaotic, cloud-encumbered region of speculative 
 thought, this alternation of doubt and faith ! Well, the 
 
68 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 prayer may be wise or not — may be one day granted or 
 not ; but such is not at present the intellectual con- 
 dition of mankind. There exists for us this field of 
 inquiry in which the reflective man of every generation 
 is invited to exercise, in solitary, self-reliant manner, 
 the utmost power of thought that is in him. And 
 what seems strange, it is precisely in this field of in- 
 quiry that he meets those problems which wear the 
 most momentous aspect to him — problems of God and 
 his own soul, and in later times, of the future of col- 
 lective humanity. Yes, and our speculative thoughts, 
 though you call them but the mists of the morning, 
 are amongst the most practical realities of life ; for 
 laws and governments, and the moral tone of society, 
 are affected by them in a surprising manner. So that 
 if the individual thinker were ready to forego a fruit- 
 less search, ready to resign what he may have brought 
 himself to regard as a morbid curiosity, a mere turbu- 
 lent desire for knowledge where knowledge is not 
 attainable, society would not willingly permit the re- 
 signation. Such has been the craving for certainty, 
 where certainty has not been granted, that the philo- 
 sopher has again and again turned priest, and con- 
 verted into a divine oracle the suggestions of his 
 troubled soul. Perhaps it seemed to him inspired by 
 Heaven. By this device has he not transformed the 
 morning mist, a changeful exhalation of the earth, into 
 the eternal rock '? And the device has succeeded for a 
 time. But by-and-by the spirit of inquiry — rebelling 
 against the mysterious authority, that would repress 
 it — was sure to revive. Some rival philosopher, as 
 ardent perhaps for intellectual freedom, as his prede- 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 69 
 
 cesser for intellectual and moral government, breaks 
 the charm. The rock becomes mist again. We must 
 shape it into new forms ; perhaps — who knows ? — into 
 forms better suited to the coming time. 
 
 II. 
 
 I remarked at the outset of these papers that one of 
 the earliest topics the psychologist has to encounter — 
 perception, or our knowledge of the external world — 
 led him, whether he desired it or not, into the specu- 
 lative region assigned to metaphysics. He is compelled 
 to ask himself, what is the nature of that matter we 
 say we know ] what is the nature of that mind which we 
 say knows or perceives 1 And on the answer he gives 
 to these questions may depend the whole character of 
 his philosophy. He may take up his position, so to 
 speak, in the individual consciousness, regarding the 
 external world as, in fact, the phenomena of his own 
 mind, a production caused, in part, it may be, by some- 
 thing in space, but still a production of his own, in 
 which his knowledge begins and ends. Or, if he be- 
 lieves in the independent existence of material forms, 
 and their movements in space, he may find his point of 
 departure out of himself, he may advance from these 
 primary existences or facts, through the successive 
 stages of a world-development, up to the human mind, 
 or, more properly speaking, up to man, since the indi- 
 vidual will probably be to him a complex of physical, 
 vital, and psychical properties. 
 
 I venture to ask the reader to accompany me for a 
 few steps in this region of speculative thought ; so far, 
 at least, as to determine which of these two methods. 
 
70 KNOWINCt and FEELINa : 
 
 or points of departure, we should adopt ; whether we 
 should interpret all nature from the conscious man, or 
 whether the man himself is not the last and greatest in- 
 dividuality produced by the gathered forces of nature — 
 forces and their relations which some of us make bold to 
 describe as due to the power and intelligence of God. 
 
 Although Ihave already touched upon the nature of 
 our knowledge of the material world, I must unavoid- 
 ably resume the topic. It is just this knowledge that 
 extends and assumes new phases, and becomes all our 
 science and half our philosophy. And the psycho- 
 logical perplexity in which it lies involved is a hinder- 
 ance to our path. Moreover, it so happens that this 
 psychological perplexity has been lately revived amongst 
 us by some of our most eminent thinkers. Have we 
 any knowledge of things in themselves, or of things 
 as they exist independently of the percipient 1 Or 
 is what we call our knowledge mere phenomena or 
 appearances, bred of sensation alone ? 
 
 To many the question itself will appear absurd, such 
 confident belief have they in the independent existence 
 of material forms and movements. " I can under- 
 stand," they would say, " or, at all events, I can aspire 
 to understand this proposition — that the whole world 
 is dependent on the Power and Intelligence of God : 
 that it is in some way, inconceivable to me, the mani- 
 festation in space of such Power and Intelligence ; that 
 it exists, but is not se//-existent. The distinction is 
 hard to seize, but I will do my best to. apprehend it. 
 But if you tell me that what I seem to know as exist- 
 ing in space is merely a manifestation of my own intel- 
 ligence, or some phantasmagoria of the senses, I revolt 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 71 
 
 at the proposition. Surely there was a world in space, 
 sun and earth, and innumerable activities, harmonized 
 and progressive, before man came upon the scene. 
 Will you tell me, with the late Professor of St. An- 
 drews, that the world cum me is the only intelligible 
 world, the only world (I presume must be meant) in 
 which order reigns supreme 1 Or will you tell me, 
 with the present Professor of Aberdeen, that all my 
 knowledge is but knowledge of my own sensations — 
 the cause of such sensations being utterly withdrawn 
 from me — that I have, in fact, no knowledge at all, 
 only synchronous or successive sensations, their me- 
 mories and their anticipations % I will try to conceive 
 of the world — and will thank you if you can here assist 
 my conceptions — as the act, or innumerable acts, of 
 one Being, whom I know as the source of all move- 
 ment, force, order, and harmony. But some of these 
 activities were put forth before others. There is an 
 order in their appearance. I, as an individual, was a 
 body before I was a soul. The earth in ^7s individuality 
 underwent many changes before it was the vegetable- 
 bearing and animal-bearing earth, which it is at pre- 
 sent. What is to become of Astronomy and Geology, 
 or Physiology itself, if I know nothing of material 
 forms and movements, nothing of laws mechanical or 
 chemical — know nothing but my own sensations and 
 their laws of sequence and combination ? " 
 
 With some such indignant protest many will dismiss 
 the controversy at once. But however true it may be 
 that science, as well as common-sense,^ demands the con- 
 viction of a world of matter and motion existing inde- 
 pendently of us the percipients of it, this conviction has 
 
72 KNOWING AND FEELING t 
 
 been and is still disputed by metaphysicians of more 
 than one school of thought. This fundamental faith, 
 as some have termed it, has been disputed in our own 
 days, and by men of scientific culture. It must be a 
 perplexity worth our while to investigate which men of 
 highly trained intellects, our own contemporaries, throw 
 in our path. It is a perplexity, moreover, of old 
 standing, and lies across the threshold of philosophy. 
 
 The perplexity is this. On one hand stands the 
 obstinate invincible conviction that solid forms exist 
 and move in space. On the other hand, it is triumph- 
 antly asked, What is your solid form 1 As the coloured 
 form is acknowledged to be only your sensation of 
 light, taking this appearance in space, so the solid form 
 must be allowed to be only your own sensation of touch 
 assuming, directly or indirectly, some localization in 
 space. If the form is resolvable into touch or vision, 
 the solidity is especially resolvable into certain muscular 
 sensations. You cannot begin with knowing that there 
 is some body in outer space, and then attach to that 
 body your muscular feeling of resistance ; you must 
 start from this muscular feeling. The solid form is 
 this combination of tactual and muscular sensations. 
 How it is that many and various sensations come 
 through some function of the brain to assume the 
 character of presentations or perceptions, may at present 
 be but dimly understood. But it is evident that your 
 perceptions are, in their ultimate analysis, your own 
 sensations, and it is equally evident that your know- 
 ledge of matter is reducible to these perceptions. How, 
 then, can you possibly claim a knowledge of matter, 
 such as it is apart from you the percipient ? 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 73 
 
 If it is said that these perceptions represent realities, 
 the answer is ready, How can we know that they repre- 
 sent anything "? A picture represents a thing because 
 we know the so-called thing, and see the imitation of it. 
 But if the presentation is all that we have, if things and 
 their imitations, and all the universe are but, in fact, 
 these presentations — how can we get behind or beyond 
 them 1 We must rest in them. 
 
 The perplexity seems irremovable. And so it is 
 while the premisses here assumed are conceded. They 
 cannot be conceded. Sensation, which in itself is a 
 pleasure or a pain, cannot be all there is in perception, 
 in that presentation, or ideation, which no mortal dis- 
 putes. That spreading out of our sensations in space, 
 into forms, which, however brought about, is an indis- 
 putable fact, is but another name for the perception of 
 the relation of position. Localization is impossible 
 with one position only, it is the relation perceived or 
 apprehended between two or more points in space. 
 For this reason I prefer to speak of it as a ju,dgment 
 rather than an idea. The idea of space enters in a 
 concrete of sensations and judgment. The pure idea 
 of space is a subsequent abstraction. In the simplest 
 perception there is the intellectual element of judgment. 
 
 Again, this analysis of solidity is manifestly defective. 
 In addition to the muscular sensations here spoken of, 
 there is the relation perceived between these forms, 
 their changes of position, their movements, and mutual 
 repulsions — perceived relations which, in other words, 
 are our ideas of force or activity. In perception ly the 
 hand the moving hand is one body, and the other body 
 is brought to our knowledge partly by the contrast 
 
74 KXOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 apprehended between it and empty space ; it is at first 
 that part of space where the movement of the hand is 
 impeded, and where also those sensations arise which 
 come to be a measure of the resistance. In perception 
 hy the sight the body, or form, external to our own is at 
 once given to the consciousness. Solidity is the resist- 
 ance between form and form, converting form into 
 body. Or it may be described as that space-occuimncy 
 which we infer to be permanent here and there and 
 everywhere around us, as a necessary condition of such 
 resistance. 
 
 I do not speak of these sense-forms as representing 
 realities, I say that in the evolution of thought they 
 become, or usher in a knowledge of realities. The re- 
 lations of position, of movement, of resistance — these 
 impose on them an objective character. Our own 
 sensations, which ushered in all this knowledge, we are 
 afterwards able to separate from forms which uphold 
 themselves in our consciousness by virtue of these 
 relations. The forms belong to space, the movements 
 belong to the forms, which now define each other by their 
 reciprocal activities. 
 
 Some psychologists introduce at the earliest epochs 
 of our consciousness an intuitive idea of causation. 
 Our sensations have a cause from without, and this 
 cause is our matter. It is a violent supposition which 
 I do not find it necessary to make. Some image or 
 presentation is first given by the senses and the intel- 
 lect, in the manner I have described, and this is re- 
 garded as cause of our sensations. It is only the 
 scientific or reflective mind that makes a clear dis- 
 tinction between matter as the cause of our sensations. 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 75 
 
 and matter as it comes to us clothed in these very sen- 
 sations of which we say it is the cause. The infant 
 knows the external thing as a hindrance to the move- 
 ment of its limbs, as a support to its own body, as 
 something it strikes on with its little fist. But the 
 impediment to motion excites its muscular sensations, 
 and the support, or the thing struck, may give pleasure 
 or pain, be soft or hard. What it would call the 
 cause of its sensations would be just the concrete per- 
 ception made up in part of those very sensations. 
 
 So far, then, from being unable to think a material 
 world independent of ourselves as percipients, this is 
 the only world we do think of. We make mistakes. 
 The unreflective man thinks that colour belongs to the 
 object in space. He corrects his mistake, and thinks 
 his objective world without the colour. But to get a 
 clear notion of this independent world is the aim he 
 constantly puts before himself. 
 
 Yet it is just this mode of thinking that some of our 
 subtlest contemporaries deny to be possible. Mr. Bain 
 cautions us against any such attempt. In making it 
 he says, " We are affirming that to have an existence 
 out of the mind which we cannot know but as in our 
 mind. In words we assert independent existence, while 
 in the very act of doing so we contradict ourselves. 
 Even a possible world implies a possible mind to per- 
 ceive it, just as much as an actual world implies an 
 actual mind to perceive it." It is indisputably true 
 that the conscious man must find everything, so to 
 speak, in his own consciousness. But he finds space 
 and time there, that is, he thinks them, and when he 
 thinks things as verily belonging to space, and thinks 
 
76 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 them as acting upon each other, he must inevitably 
 think them as independent of himself. His conscious- 
 ness is just this mode of thinking. If, indeed, the 
 forms which he perceives in space are proved to be 
 only his own sensations, he takes them back from 
 outer space ; he has detected the delusion ; his sensa- 
 tions cannot be the space-occupants he thought he had 
 perceived. But forms that support each other in his 
 consciousness by their reciprocal attractions, move- 
 ments, and repulsions, can be thought of only in one 
 way, namely, as belonging to space, and independent of 
 the percipient. 
 
 But all is delusion ! — thought as well as sense. So 
 some have exclaimed. Space itself is purely subjective. 
 Intellect, or judgment, or idea, as well as sensibility, is 
 but some activity of mind, whatever mind may be. 
 
 That, again, is very true. Knowledge is some ac- 
 tivity of mind, whatever mind may be. Knowledge of 
 form and motion is something totally different from 
 form and motion themselves. I cannot get further 
 than my knowledge. Neither can I escape from my 
 knowledge. Universal scepticism is impossible, because 
 it is impossible for a living conscious man not to think, 
 and to think is to have such and such truths or con- 
 victions before us. What is meant by calling space 
 subjective? It is, of course, my thought, but the 
 nature of the thought cannot be altered by this new 
 name. There is but one possible mode of thinking 
 space and its contents. The relations apprehended 
 between space and the space-occupant, and between the 
 space- occupants themselves, these I cannot escape from, 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 77 
 
 and these are tantamount to a conviction of the reality 
 of things. 
 
 Mr. Bain would pronounce us very obtuse for not 
 perceiving that solidity is nothing hut a muscular sen- 
 sation j I am sure that the majority of his critics will 
 pronounce that a psychology which leads him to such 
 a paradoxical result, must somewhere be defective. In 
 his theory, and in Mr. Mill's, there is no other known 
 property of what we call matter than the property of 
 exciting sensations in us. Therefore we cannot think 
 a world but in relation to ourselves. But if we can 
 think this property, this relation (I am not quite clear 
 whether one of these philosophers would even grant so 
 much) — but if we can think this property we can also 
 think other properties, other relations, those between 
 matter and matter, and thinking these we think a 
 world that upholds itself independently of us. We 
 believe that Calcutta exists — so many houses, so many 
 people, bodies animate and inanimate, a city we may 
 go to see ; we do not merely believe that if we cross 
 the ocean we shall have a certain series or collection of 
 sensations to be called Calcutta. And so of the ocean 
 we cross, its property of fluidity is not merely some 
 sensation of ours, it is essentially a relationship between 
 the solid and the fluent matter. And what of motion ] 
 If we see a thing in motion, and then shut our eyes, 
 and afterwards open them again when the thing is in 
 another part of the earth or sky, do we not believe in the 
 absolute motion of the thing % Do we merely believe 
 this, that if we had kept our eyes open we should have 
 continued to see it move ] 
 
78 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 I beg to observe that it is not to any tribunal of instinct 
 or common-sense that I would carry this question. It 
 is our latest conceptions of matter, and not our earliest, 
 to which I would appeal. It required some advance in 
 the science of optics, and some knowledge of the organ of 
 sight, before it could be clearly understood that colour had 
 in fact no existence in the object — that so far as the ob- 
 ject or the inorganic world is concerned, it. is a peculiar 
 movement. And it seems to have required some reflec- 
 tion before force or momentum, as due simply to rapi- 
 dity of movement, or the mass of the moving body, 
 was quite separate from that sensation of eff'ort which 
 accompanies our muscular movements, and in which the 
 popular mind sees the force itself Common-sense has 
 the trick of forgetting how slowly it learnt some of its 
 most confident and fundamental convictions. What 
 cannot ]be possibly driven out of space, what may be 
 .shattered into fragments or driven beyond our atmo- 
 sphere, but cannot be expelled from space — that shall 
 be our matter. But this favourite definition which 
 common-sense utters as if it never doubted it, we owe 
 to the science of chemistry. It was the chemist who first 
 taught us that what is burnt is not destroyed, has only 
 changed its form; taught us the marvellous transfor- 
 mations from the solid to the fluid, from the fluid to the 
 vapour, from the vapour back to the solid — taught us 
 that in each of these states the same matter has its 
 peculiar properties or relations to other matter. 
 
 We call upon the psychologist to explain the actual 
 human thought that is in us ; he must not substitute 
 another for it and then explain that. 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 III. 
 
 I ask myself wliat is the last conception we form of 
 Inatter. For those who are agreed that they know it 
 as an objective reality in space, differ in the description 
 or definition they would give of this reality. 
 
 I suppose we all have the same idea of motion, but 
 of matter and force thoughtful men give different ac- 
 counts. According to one theory there is always the 
 same amount of motion in the universe, and force is only 
 the transference of motion from one body to another. 
 Viewed in the light of this theory, force is a sequel to 
 motion, it is the effect of a moving body on some other 
 body. These theorists see, in imagination, every mole- 
 cule of matter in incessant motion, vibratory or rotary, 
 and explain all the phenomena of chemistry, as well as 
 of heat and light, by changes of direction and velocity 
 of movement. For motion itself no cause can be 
 assigned by the human mind. The more generally 
 received theory regards matter as capable of exerting 
 force, that is of originating and directing motion in 
 other bodies, even though itself stationary, or, at all 
 events, independently of its own motion, for absolutely 
 stationary perhaps no matter is. Attraction of gravity 
 and chemical affinity seem to them to demand this con- 
 cession. Here the term force attains another meaning, 
 difficult to apprehend, yet perhaps not more so than that 
 force of momentum and pressure which the most ardent 
 seeker of simplicity is compelled to admit. A third 
 class of theorists has converted the atom itself into a 
 force. These speak of .space-occupancy as itself a force. 
 Here we lose sight of our old landmarks. Force was 
 
80 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 the action of Space-occupant on Space-occupant. If our 
 Space-occupants are themselves a force, force must be 
 conceived as the entity we contrast with the void of 
 space, or as the acting of some supernatural agent on 
 or in space. 
 
 This last notion, which resolves both ftiatter and force 
 into the action, or innumerable actions, of one Being 
 to which we assign no place at all, either because it 
 fills all space, or is altogether unrelated to space, is a 
 great favourite with speculative thinkers, and has a 
 fascination in it I readily admit. We see the idea of 
 Being which at first presented itself as broken up, and 
 limited to the moving and resisting thing in space, 
 develop itself till it attains the unity, and majesty, 
 and spirituality to which we give the sublimest of all 
 names. But I decline at present to ascend to these 
 heights of speculation. I take my stand on a lower 
 level — one, however, from which the ascent to such 
 heights may be not impracticable. 
 
 The advance of science may possibly unite all men 
 in one definition of matter and force. In our present 
 imperfect knowledge I can detect nothing more clear 
 than this — that the space-occupant is marked out and 
 individualized to us by its capability of receiving im- 
 pressions, as well as of communicating them. The 
 union of passivity and activity distinguishes the atom. 
 Its activity is the result of its passivity ; its passivity 
 is, in fact, but the expression of the activity of some 
 other atom. 
 
 It is very easy to resolve passivity into a form of 
 activity. The capability of receiving impressions is 
 shown only in some action ; but then, when we turn to 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 81 
 
 action in the material world, we require the acted on. 
 We may either express the relation by saying that force 
 must be dual, or by the old terms passivity and activity. 
 In either case we have to conceive the space-occupants 
 as being there, else how conceive of their relations to 
 each other as active and passive, or as acting together "l 
 
 But — and this is the point on which I desire to lay 
 stress — while the relative demands the positive, or the 
 two positives, while every case of action requires as 
 prior condition the two space-occupants, our positives, 
 our space-occupants, reveal themselves only in their 
 relations, only in this co-agency. You can think of 
 either apart, because every whole has parts, and these 
 may separately occupy the mind, but the parts have 
 gathered all by which you think them from their rela- 
 tions to each other. Always it will be found that some 
 whole formed by the relation of parts presents itself to 
 us whenever we reflect upon our conception of matter 
 
 I confidently, therefore, conclude that, in addition to 
 space-occupancy, motion, and force, we must define 
 matter as that which organizes itself, or is always organ- 
 ized. The first or simplest individuality we can de- 
 scend to will be found to be a whole and parts, a 
 complexity, in relation with other complexities. 
 
 And not only is matter never known to us except as 
 organized, it is apparently organizing itself in new and, 
 as we think, in advanced modes. But in every stage 
 what we call new does not come in as a distinct and 
 separate novelty, it is a combination of old and new. 
 Life is more than chemistry, but it is chemistry also. 
 Mind is more than life, but it is life also. 
 
 Try to think of matter in its simplest conditions. 
 
 F 
 
82 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 We say of water, for instance, that it is a fluid, that it 
 has a peculiar movement called flowing, which becomes 
 possible by its relation to a more solid surface. But if 
 the water is stationary, what then ? Perhaps I answer 
 it has a potential fluidity. What do I mean by this 
 potentiality ? What will he does not now exist. What 
 now exists is a stationary mass. Science responds that 
 a certain coherence of particles exists, such that the 
 flowing movement will occur if the solid surface on 
 which the water rests is altered, or its equilibrium is 
 otherwise disturbed. A potential existence means then 
 the existence of those main conditions on which some 
 expected future depends. This answers very well in 
 the case of fluidity. Now I advance to the particle 
 itself of matter. I define it as simply as I can by its 
 impenetrability. Here, too, if I have a complex body 
 approached by another body, I can say that it has a 
 potential impenetrability, even before the collision takes 
 place. It has that coherence of particles which will 
 enable it to resist dispersion or division. But I am 
 concerned with one single particle. How am I to 
 represent its potentiality of resistance? I cannot re- 
 present it at all. My unit of existence is not one 
 atom, but two or more in their related activitide. It is 
 organized matter I alone know. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Having justified, I trust, the ordinary conviction on 
 which science proceeds of a world in space prior to, or 
 independent of, human thought, I may contemplate 
 mind as it is related to this world, as it appears in its 
 place in the series of developments. 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 83 
 
 Astronomy speculates on the genesis of a planetary 
 system from some revolving nebula in a surrounding 
 ether. Geology, with far more certainty, teaches the 
 changes in the organization of our globe fitting it for 
 life, or for new life. The physiologist takes up the 
 marvellous tale, showing the development of life, of 
 sensation, of thought. Even the metaphysician, who 
 bids us despair of forming the conception of a material 
 world independent of the percipient, commences his, 
 in many respects, admirable treatise with a careful 
 description of the organs of sense and locomotion, of 
 the brain and the nerves. Apparently he acknow- 
 ledges that the psychical manifestations he intends to 
 discourse upon, are postponed till certain organs are 
 grown. I will not ask for an explanation of this 
 apparent discrepancy : this would only take us back 
 to the debate we have just left, and which we must 
 consider closed, or we shall never be able to advance at 
 all. The physiologist shows us a heart beating in the 
 embryo before a brain is formed. Life is there — -that 
 new activity we call vital movement — but not sensation. 
 He bids us wait the growth of nerves and a brain 
 before the psychical properties of feeling and knowing, 
 before a consciousness can be developed. Such is the 
 order of evolution, or creation. 
 
 Eeflecting upon ourselves as conscious creatures, each 
 individual seems shut up in his own consciousness. 
 All that is without, — the physical world, and even the 
 society that surrounds him, — are but his own thoughts. 
 How often is it said that each of us has a world of his 
 own that nothing can enter ! This is the individuality 
 which the metaphysieian delights to contemplate. The 
 
84 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 Ego which he generally describes is just the conscious- 
 ness itself, viewed as a permanent reality, or referred 
 to some permanent reality known only as that which is 
 conscious. 
 
 Such attitude the reflective mind assumes. But, 
 pursuing our reflections, we detect that, if there be a 
 real knowledge, and a thing known, then the mere 
 faculty to know is incomplete, or nugatory, without 
 the thing to be known. The thing most intimately 
 and constantly known is our own body and its move- 
 ments. If, therefore, the that which knows is a distinct 
 entity, it is as good as nothing till there is something 
 to know. The faculty of knowledge is justly esteemed 
 • as the greatest or most exalted property that has come 
 into the world, but the world and the living body must 
 have been there before it. A self was never attained 
 without the union of a knowing, and a thing known. 
 
 But we not only need this body of ours as a lodg- 
 ment for this new property, or entity, and as that 
 which is first of all and constantly to he known. It 
 seems as if the new entity could not act at all, except 
 in a certain condition of the vital organs, or some of 
 them. We need the eye to see with, the ear to hear 
 with ; we need the brain, not only to act with these 
 organs, but to act as reviver of that knowledge obtained 
 through them. The modern anatomist has drawn from 
 its hiding-place, behind the eye and the ear, this strange 
 organ — so shapeless to look at, so wondrous in the new 
 activities it develops, or in the part it plays in their 
 development. It is suspected that there occurs no 
 change in consciousness that is unaccompanied by some 
 action of this organ ; and it is moreover supposed that 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 85 
 
 in many cases such action leaves behind it some slight 
 alteration in the structure or composition of the brain 
 itself, whereby it is rendered more fit for that very 
 action. I know not whether it be so, but Habit, which 
 lies at the basis of all individual progress, has been 
 explained as a growth of this description. 
 
 How simple a thing was nutrition to our forefathers ! 
 We fed this body, we stuffed these pipes of ours, and 
 there an end. No doubt the body could not do its 
 work without food. We were satisfied with under- 
 standing this truth, and giving it the necessary supply. 
 But modern science has pushed its curiosity beyond 
 this. It has watched the course of this nutrition, taken 
 note of the why it was wanted, seen the tissue waste 
 and disintegrate in its very functions, seen it hold its 
 permanence in a perpetual transmutation. I need not 
 enter into details ; how far the physiologist has been 
 able to trace a specific function to the several parts of 
 the nervous and cerebral system, — which' are thus per- 
 petually being destroyed and restored, — is known to 
 every reader of these papers. 
 
 But observe the sort of revolution in our thinking 
 that has taken place. It was always recognised that 
 we wanted the material outside world as the common 
 instructor of us all, the common object of our know- 
 ledge. When we speak of true or false in the events 
 of life, or the theories of science, it is tacitly under- 
 stood that, while there are millions of minds, there is 
 but one real world from which they all draw their 
 knowledge. Two men differ in their measurement of 
 Chimborazo. Let them go and measure it again, and 
 yet again, till they both agree. Chimborazo stands 
 
86 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 there, impartial umpire. General assent is perhaps 
 your synonym for truth, but how is general assent 
 obtained or preserved, unless by the teaching of one 
 great instructor? Now, in these modern times, this 
 outside world, this environment we live in, is also 
 recognised as taking its part — through this process of 
 nutrition — in building up the learner himself, building 
 up tissues that seem to feel ; seem 
 
 For here comes in the question, often so angrily dis- 
 cussed amongst us, whether the psychical properties 
 which constitute consciousness are properties of the old 
 substance we called matter, or whether properties so 
 novel do not imply an altogether new substance or 
 entity, we call spirit ? A question difficult to decide. 
 Indeed I am more impressed with the difficulty, than 
 with the extreme importance of the question, which 
 does not appear to me to be quite of that momentous 
 nature which our controversies assume it to be. For 
 say there is this separate substance, called spirit, what 
 have we before us in man ? A new organization, a new 
 whole, composed of this spirit and the vital frame. 
 And in this new whole only is the spirit found, whose 
 first office and manifestation is the knowing this body 
 and what immediately surrounds it. This new indi- 
 viduality, Man, is like every other individuality in 
 nature — a complexity, a whole composed of parts, 
 whose unity consists in some harmony of forces or 
 properties. 
 
 Amongst the speculative thinkers of Greece and 
 Eome, and amongst the early fathers of the Church, 
 it was the prevailing opinion that the soul was a kind 
 of ethereal matter. With this species of dualism we 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 87 
 
 need not now concern ourselves. Matter has grown so 
 ethereal under the investigations and theories of modern 
 science that the imagination toils in vain to represent 
 what are nevertheless described as physical agents. 
 That ether, whose pulsations are light for us, presents 
 a subtlety we cannot go beyond, for we strive in vain 
 to apprehend it. If mere tenuity and refinement is 
 what the imagination seeks, we find these sufficiently 
 amongst declared physical phenomena. 
 
 The speculative thinker, however, wanted more than 
 refinement, he wanted for his new substance perma- 
 nence; he wanted a one permanent substance which 
 he could call himself, and which, existing through all 
 surrounding changes, might exist, itself unchanged, 
 even in other worlds. He seems slowly to have con- 
 vinced himself that this something permanent could 
 not be any form of matter which is always in move- 
 ment, decomposing and recomposing, and he devised 
 the unextended substance ; spirit stood out in clear con- 
 trast to matter. Who, indeed, first introduced this 
 form of dualism, what Eastern or Western sage, I know 
 not. It is, perhaps, as old as philosophy itself. But 
 it was not the popular philosophy of Europe, so histo- 
 rians write, till the time of Descartes, who had much 
 to do in giving it shape and currency. 
 
 This dualism has always held its ground in defiance 
 of notorious difiiculties. I need hardly mention them. 
 How is motion, it is asked, of the extended substance 
 to afi'ect the unextended 1 And that motion of a 
 mechanical or molecular kind is connected with feeling, 
 and feeling again with motion, is surely an indisputable 
 feet. We all know how Leibnitz contrived his " pre- 
 
88 KXOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 established harmony" to escape from this difficulty, 
 and we all know that the result of his pre-established 
 harmony was to make the difficulty more prominent 
 than ever. Men admired the ingenious contrivance, 
 but only thought the more of the perplexity from which 
 it was intended to relieve them. 
 
 But the difficulties are not all on one side. For 
 instance, it is the law of physics that contact of moving 
 matter produces motion. Now in the brain there must 
 be a point where motion no longer produces motion, 
 but feeling. How can we reconcile this with our law 
 of physics 1 The brain, as material substance, is under 
 the laws of motion, and must respond to impulse — by 
 motion and by all the motion due to that impulse. 
 There is no room for any other effect. To say that 
 sensation is a transmuted force is simply to say that 
 there comes in a new quality, which bears, or may bear, 
 in its degree, some correspondence with the mechanical 
 force of motion for which it is substituted. But the 
 substitution remains. At a certain moment matter no 
 longer responds to motion by motion, but by feeling. 
 What has become of our laws of motion 1 It is true 
 that in the phenomena of vital movement we may be 
 said to have already departed from the laws of physics, 
 for here a movement ensues which appears to have 
 little or no correspondence with the impulse which 
 prompts it. But here the physicist, with his still half- 
 understood laws of electricity and galvanism, may make 
 his protest — file a sort of lie exeat regno, till the case is 
 decided. 
 
 That there is this New Becoming is the great and 
 indisputable fact ; marvellous, as indeed every Becom- 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 89 
 
 ing has been and is. A sharper distinction there is 
 not in all nature than that between motion and sensi- 
 bility. There is no possibility of confounding them, 
 nor does one slide into the other. The utmost rapidity 
 of motion cannot be conceived as approximating to 
 feeling by reason of its rapidity. Sensation is as dis- 
 tinct from motion, as motion from rest. 
 
 But this New Becoming makes its appearance in a 
 vital frame, full of its own peculiar movements. Now 
 do you ask, What feels 1 Not surely that vital frame 
 minus its feeling. As moving-thing, or as space-occu- 
 pant, it does not feel. The only answer open to us is 
 that this concrete made up of motion and of feeling — 
 feels. The answer looks at first like a mere subter- 
 fuge, but it is the answer with which we are obliged to 
 content ourselves in all similar cases. What moves '? 
 Not the space-occupant merely as such. You add the 
 very property of motion to the space-occupant, and then 
 say it moves. What thinks ] Not a moving or vitalized 
 body. You add the property of thought, and then say, 
 The man thinks. A new whole, a new individuality 
 has entered into the world. To ask for its origin is to 
 approach the problem of creation, or to view matter as 
 organizing itself, or as developing still new properties. 
 
 Cause in Science is the series, is the order ; Cause in 
 Metaphysics is the origin of the series or order. 
 
 Science is perfectly right in limiting itself to its own 
 Causation. But all that it teaches only stimulates us 
 the more to ask what it is that develops the series, the 
 order, the organizations ever advancing, as it seems, in 
 their nature. It may be deemed but a poor account to 
 give of our individuality, or personal being, that it is 
 
90 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 just this new whole that moves, and grows, and thinks. 
 But if you would extend this account you must be pre- 
 pared to answer the question, What is the origin of 
 the whole world as it develops itself in space and in 
 time, in physical and in psychical properties? And 
 accordingly there are not wanting those who say that 
 their Ego itself rests on the Omnipotent. 
 
 What is it that resists us in the simplest stone, or 
 merest clod, we strike our foot against? It is some 
 aggregate of atoms held together by a force .of coher- 
 ence, and which we further describe by this very re- 
 sistance. In the clod of earth stands and grows a 
 living plant. Its very materials are gathered from the 
 soil and the air, by the aid of the inconceivably rapid 
 movements of heat and light. Do you ask, What 
 grows and lives 1 We say it is the plant, and we 
 define the plant by this very life and growth. To 
 atoms and their chemistry was added that by means of 
 which a new whole, the living plant, came into exist- 
 ence. Up to the plant walks the animal, and grazes 
 on it. This creature grows, and feels, and moves spon- 
 taneously. What feels? Just this animal which we 
 describe by many properties, and last and chiefly, by 
 this very property of feeling. Such property had stolen 
 into the world, and manifested itself there, and formed 
 that new concrete or whole which we call the sensitive 
 animal. There is no other answer. And if you ask, 
 What thinks ? It is man, another organism into which 
 this property has entered, greatest of properties yet 
 known, and known as part of this new whole. At 
 every stage we have a new organization, or indivi- 
 duality, composed of old and new. Whence came the 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 91 
 
 new*? Whence came the oldl This is the problem 
 of creation. What moves 1 admits but of one answer. 
 It is this very compound of space-occupancy and motion. 
 What introduced motion into the universe is another 
 question. What thinks 1 It is this very creature who 
 lives, and moves, and feels, and also thinks. What 
 introduced thought into the universe, and so constructed 
 this new individuality 1 That is another question. 
 
 This incessant hecoming, how are we to deal with it 1 
 Am I to accept it as an ultimate fact, like being itself 1 
 for indeed every being (in the form it wears to us) was 
 also a becoming. Am I to devise an "unknowable 
 cause," and attribute to it our evolving series 1 Or 
 may I not advance at once to the supposition that this 
 evolving whole we have before us existed as a thought 
 before it existed in space, or as an actuality ? May I 
 not leap at once to this supposition, and deduce what 
 I can from it '? What Aas been determines what is, and 
 both together what will he. But if the past determines 
 the future, does not that whole that is to be determine 
 every part of the series 1 And how can this be con- 
 ceived but on the supposition that the whole pre- 
 existed in thought 1 
 
 On the great subject of the creation of the world the 
 wisest, we are told, are the most reticent. One feels 
 it almost a presumption to discuss it at all. And what 
 says Matthew Arnold in one of his terse, melodious, 
 and thoughtful verses 1 — 
 
 " Achilles ponders in his tent, 
 
 The kings of modern thought are dumb, 
 Silent they are, though not content, 
 And wait to see the future come." 
 
92 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 A mere soldier of the rank and file would venture to 
 suggest to those who have a certain repugnance to the 
 term, or the idea of creation, that an evolution that re- 
 sults in ever new individualities would be no bad defini- 
 tion of creation. And such an evolution makes itself 
 known to us. 
 
 No justice could be done to the religious problem 
 without some preparatory study of man in his social 
 and emotional aspects. And our present concern was 
 to determine what philosophical writers often call a 
 stand-point. Ours cannot be the individual man ; but 
 the great cosmos in which he appears — so much of it 
 as we can embrace. We are accustomed to say that 
 we proceed from the simple to the complex, and from 
 the lower to the higher. But the simplest to which 
 we can descend is still a complexity, and in proceeding 
 from the lower to the higher we confessedly indicate 
 an order only of development, we do not say that the 
 lower actually produces the higher. Either the whole 
 development is to be accepted as one absolute fact, or 
 we make attempt to pass on to the developing power 
 and intelligence. But always it must be our endeavour 
 to study the individual as part of the whole cosmos, so 
 far as that is revealed to us. 
 
 We are confessedly in the region of philosophy or 
 speculative thought, where it would be unbecoming to 
 dogmatize. For myself this obstinate conception 
 occurs again and again, that the whole, as it develops, 
 and will be developed, in space and time, determined 
 all the parts of that whole- — which it could only do on 
 the supposition that it pre-existed in thought, the 
 thought, therefore, of some Being capable of so think- 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 93 
 
 ing and so acting, — not thinking or acting as a human 
 being. I find this conviction even stronger in me than 
 that which demands some one permanent being (con- 
 scious or unconscious) as mere cause of all this Becom- 
 ing we witness ; though the two lines of thought may 
 easily be harmonized. But whatever conception we 
 strive to form of this speculative nature, it is indis- 
 putable fact that matter exists nowhere for us but as 
 organized ; it rises before us as ordered — the expression 
 of reason as we think. It is ever a whole, and ever a 
 becoming. Need I add that we know only a small 
 portion of that whole, even as hitherto developed, and 
 must make up our cosmos of the very little, we do 
 know ? 
 
PART IV. 
 
 OUR PASSIONS. 
 I. 
 
 Before we approach the problems of Sociology, we 
 should frame for ourselves some distinct ideas of man 
 as a social being ; we should understand his passions, 
 or what we should call the emotional side of the 
 human consciousness. 
 
 As I have endeavoured to show, in treating of the 
 feelings or passions, as in dealing with our cognitions, 
 it IS still the same one consciousness we have before us 
 — which is ever composed of cognitions and feelings. 
 Our Perceptions are some union of sensations and judg- 
 ments ; and in Thought our perceptions have become 
 memories, and our sensations have become passions. 
 To think of a pain and pleasure, as Mr. James Mill 
 and other analytical writers have observed, is itself a 
 new pain or pleasure ; it is in fact a passion ; is a 
 regret or a fear, an anger or a hope. 
 
 Every passion rests on some cognition. Love and 
 Hate are unintelligible without an object of love or 
 hate, and these feelings are modified according to their 
 objects, and the kind of actions they lead to. We 
 have no way of defining our passions but by describing 
 the objects, the events, the various cognitions insepar- 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 95 
 
 ably combined with them. Beyond the broad distinc- 
 tion that some are pleasurable and others painful, we 
 should be utterly unable to describe our passions if we 
 attempted to separate them from the cognitions with 
 which they are thus indissolubly connected — forming 
 together one moment or act of consciousness. How 
 distinguish Ambition from any other excitement, Envy 
 from any other vexation, unless by marking out the 
 kind of objects, the kind of acts, these feelings are 
 combined with 1 
 
 Whether we think of the past or the future, whether 
 ideation shall take the shape of memory or anticipa- 
 tion, seems to decide at once on the nature of the 
 feeling. The past pleasure becomes a regret, or it 
 becomes a hope or a desire. The past pain thought of 
 only in the past is anger and unmitigated vexation ; 
 mix with it thought of that action to which it may 
 prompt, and it becomes^ revenge. 
 
 Knowing and Feeling are the two psychical elements 
 of the human consciousness. Will, or bodily action, is 
 the relation between this consciousness and the muscles 
 of the human frame. 
 
 The intellectual and emotional elements can neither 
 of them be extolled at the expense of the other. To 
 the reason or intellect we may very justly ascribe all 
 that is progressive in man, — his choice, his self-govern- 
 ment, his knowledge, his advancement even in this 
 matter of passion. But in his passions or emotions 
 lies all that we call his happiness or misery. Take 
 either element away and the man is no longer man ; a 
 human consciousness is no longer before us. 
 
 Our own passions, with all that results from them, 
 
96 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 become the objects of reflection. We learn to prefer 
 love to hate : not by any means the first truth we 
 learn ; in its fulness it is rather the last and the most 
 essential to human well-being. All passions equally 
 assert themselves while they rest in the state of actual 
 passion. But as intelligence advances Hate becomes 
 subordinate to Love. Hate at last is compelled to claim 
 admittance on the plea of doing the offices of Love, 
 accomplishing the purposes of a world-embracing 
 Benevolence. Hate limited to anger against the wrong, 
 the vile, the malicious, is admitted; in its own first 
 nature as the triumphant inflictor of pain it is reproved. 
 Love, on the contrary, in its proper character as the 
 giver of pleasure, has been expanded and approved, and 
 becomes the divine in man. 
 
 Feeling is not only that which constitutes us happy 
 or miserable, and so gives its very value to our know- 
 ledge (for even the mathematician amongst abstractions . 
 — that are to remain abstractions — has a gratification 
 in the solution of his problems without which they 
 never would have been problems for him), but it is the 
 element in our consciousness which is more especially 
 concerned in that onward movement from thought to 
 thought, and from thought to action, which constitutes 
 the very energy of life. 
 
 All continuous thinking must be also varied think- 
 ing, that is, there must be some movement or change, 
 in however limited an arena, or the conscious life 
 ceases. Now, we are not sufficiently acquainted with 
 the nature of cerebral movements to determine all their 
 laws. There may be, and probably is, some cerebra- 
 tion not impelled by passion or feeling of any kind. 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. ' 97 
 
 But what is very patent to us is this, that all thinking 
 other than a dream, or dream-like reverie, or such as is 
 manifestly dependent on the senses for the direction 
 that it takes, all that the adult mind cares to designate 
 as its thinking, is carried on by an energy in some way 
 imparted by desire, or an energy the presence of which 
 becomes known to us by this apparent relation between 
 desire and the onward progress of life. 
 
 There is no essential difference between thinking for 
 a purpose and acting for a purpose. Physiologicalhj, we 
 should say that in the one case the movements were 
 limited to the brain, in the other case they had extended 
 through the motor nerves to the muscles. Psychologically, 
 we can only take notice of the fact that our passionate 
 or emotional thought, our purpose, has led to other 
 thoughts, or led also to movements of the limbs. All 
 energetic thinking might be called a willing. This 
 momentum from thought to thought Vv^e call our activity. 
 We say that man possesses this activity. A solitary 
 thought, if such can be imagined, gives no sentiment of 
 power, no idea of activity. 
 
 The great law of Habit, on which so much rests, let 
 us bear in mind, is to us one of nature's activities known. 
 Our knowing it is all we have to do with as conscious 
 beings. It lies in our consciousness just as any other 
 of the great laws of nature ; it is there as a cognition. 
 The knowledge of it gives us power, but we can no more 
 explain it than we can explain any other of the laws of 
 nature. The human being, because he knows what laws 
 of habit are presiding over his consciousness, can take 
 advantage of them — just as he can take advantage of 
 any law of hydrostatics; here, as elsewhere, knowledge 
 
 G 
 
98 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 is power. He practises his art — he persists in en- 
 deavouring, in purposing ; he has no conception how- 
 it is that practice makes perfect — but he knows it 
 will ; the schoolboy repeats his lesson, he knows that 
 by the repetition he shall learn it, but neither he nor 
 perhaps any one else knows anything more about this 
 wondrous mechanism of memory. The moralist bids 
 us beware of the cup once taken, the lie once told — 
 the only once may break a habit ; he bids us practise a 
 virtue as we practise an art, if we would be perfect. 
 
 I must .again observe that whether we call our state 
 of mind a- thought, or a passion, or a will, it is still the 
 same one consciousness we have described as made up 
 of Knowing and Feeling. We call it a Cognition or 
 a Thought when the intellectual element which we 
 have called judgment is prominent, we call it a sensa- 
 tion or a passion when the sensitive or emotional 
 element prevails. What distinguishes will from other 
 states of consciousness, is the special cognition and 
 passions or sentiments that are involved in it, — special 
 because they relate to the special organs of locomotion 
 or muscular activity. The limb moves — not assuredly 
 in the first instance by a distinct intention or purpose 
 on our part that it should move, but by the laws of 
 vitality or of animal life — the limb moves and meets re- 
 sistance, which has the effect of stimulating or re-exciting 
 the organs of locomotion — exciting the sensation that 
 is appropriate to them. These sensations in the next 
 stage become desire, become a passion — desire of 
 movement, passion of thwarted desire ; these, with the 
 cognition of the resisting obstacle and the sensation 
 excited in the limb, constitute our sense of effort. This 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 99 
 
 sense of effort, so far from being a very simple matter, 
 has in it sensations, cognitions, passions. 
 
 So Personality is. a special knowing. That the person 
 is itself an oljed of thought becomes evident as well 
 when we attempt to think ourselves as soul as when 
 we attempt to think ourselves as body. Thought itself, if 
 we could imagine it deprived of these objects, body, 
 and soul in body (made thinkable to us in some manner 
 because localized in the body), would be impersonal. 
 Such thought would be an eternal I^ow : the past and 
 future is the ever present consciousness. 
 
 This last conjecture may seem hypothetical, and I am 
 quite aware on what delicate and subtle ground I am 
 treading in this matter of personality. Our best 
 authorities have held that the consciousness at once 
 reveals the it and the / — the object and subject. Thought 
 is necessarily / think — such is its formula. Well, let us 
 adopt this view. Still the nature of the / has to be 
 revealed and apprehended. And if Thought is always 
 / thiiik, still I think this / either as body or soul, and 
 it becomes the object carried by me into the past and 
 future. The subject must become an object when we 
 think of it as having been in the past, and as that 
 which will be in the future. What we call personal 
 identity must be some personal body or soul. Certain 
 philosophers of the associative school, who are assured 
 of nothing but a train of sensations and thoughts, must 
 find this problem of personal identity (as one of the 
 most eminent of that school has confessed) peculiarly 
 difiicult. 
 
 It is because amongst our memories and anticipa- 
 tions is ever found the same one body alone ever pre- 
 
100 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 sent, that personal identity arises. I do not regard, I 
 may say, memory as any distinct faculty ; it is merely 
 the development of the consciousness. All conscious- 
 ness is founded on the relation of time. Memory and 
 anticipation are merely experience of these relations. 
 
 But I must disentangle myself from these subtleties 
 and proceed to some general remarks on the passions, 
 of a more practical character. 
 
 We may notice how soon in the history of mental 
 development sensation becomes passion. It does so the 
 moment a pain is attributed to the object or person 
 before us ; it then becomes anger. It does so the 
 moment that it is remembered or anticipated, the 
 moment it is thought of. I presume our passions 
 require sensation as their condition. I presume that a 
 creature who had known no pain would hardly know 
 fear. But still the passion is a new development. And 
 we should look in vain if we expected to find every fear 
 precisely justified in its degree by any experienced pain. 
 Probably passionate men are for the most part sensitive 
 men, yet the anger any given man feels will not be 
 measured by the pain he has suffered. Then we have 
 the startling fact that to think of another s pain becomes 
 compassion. Here we have a new development affiliated 
 to the older fact of sensation, but not to be measured 
 by it. We could not speak of such a degree of sensa- 
 tion being transformed into such a degree of compassion, 
 as if we were dealing with chemical agents. The con- 
 scious life has a certain progressive, expansive develop- 
 ment of its own. Then again there is that other 
 sympathy, when the passion, whatever it may be, is 
 communicated from one to the other by tone or gesture 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 101 
 
 — SO that a number of people shall feel merely by this 
 communication a passion in a far greater degree than 
 each of them could do singly. How in all anger grows 
 into rage when a multitude comes under the same 
 passion. 
 
 It is evident that any analogy drawn from chemistry 
 or chemical analysis soon breaks down. We are not in 
 presence of mechanical and chemical or even vital laws, 
 but of the laws of consciousness, which though based 
 on these are distinct from them. If we permit ourselves 
 to say that matter that is vitalized has new laws and 
 properties, so we may say that matter that is mentalized 
 has still other laws. 
 
 But the fact which above all seems to me to demand 
 attention is the manner in which passions grow and 
 modify with our thoughts. In other words, our two- 
 fold consciousness presents ever its new phases of 
 feeling with its new mode or enlargement of cogni- 
 tion. How this is to be presented physiologically I 
 pretend not to say. The notion that feeling is in one 
 portion of the brain and thought or ideation in another, 
 does not assist one in the least, — rather adds to one's 
 perplexity, for how conceive the co-operation and re- 
 spective influence of the organs^ Nor do I believe 
 that our most eminent anatomists or physiologists hold 
 to such division. I should find it easier to imagine 
 that what was action in thinking was also sensation. 
 The fact, however, is indisputable, that while Thought 
 or intelligence is based in the first instance on sensation 
 — the thought itself becomes the parent of new emotions, 
 which new emotions or passions become in their turn 
 the materials of Thought by being remembered or anti- 
 
102 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 cipated in conjunction with the objects with which they 
 were first connected. 
 
 (All along it is / see it, / think it, I excogitate it, 
 as if that vision, that thought, which really constitutes 
 the / were something different from the I that saw it, 
 thought it. As many metaphysicians have pointed out, 
 the / here and its it both include the whole conscious- 
 ness. The I is the consciousness spoken of as belong- 
 ing to some being — which is the specific thought plus 
 this reference of it to some permanent subject. What 
 we have to study is consciousness, and the one Evolu- 
 tion of Thought and Feeling.) 
 
 This does not prevent me from saying and believing 
 that this activity of thought and feeling belongs to me 
 as an individual, because such thought is also evolved 
 in my consciousness. 
 
 That such evolution has its law is not inconsistent 
 with the fact that it evolves in a certain individual, 
 which individuality is composed of other and more 
 peculiar elements. When we are discussing the ques- 
 tion of will or free-will, we are instantly referred to a 
 certain spontaneous activity. Now, if I am to study 
 human action, I find this highest activity, that which 
 is to govern all else, is the reason and feeling of a man. 
 I do not deny to the man this activity. And it comes 
 to him, as it were, direct from Heaven. Direct from 
 Heaven, and yet with a method. I find men impatient 
 if they are reminded that it is not possible for a man 
 to leap at once from the thoughts of a child to those of 
 a man, or from the thoughts of a clown to those of a 
 Socrates. But the man nevertheless energizes — as con- 
 scious man in his consciousness — he attributes this 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 103 
 
 activity to a self made up in part of this property, in 
 part of other vital and mechanical properties.. 
 
 II. 
 
 When we pass, as I have said, beyond the distinction 
 pleasureable or painful, or the distinction of degree, as 
 gentle or violent, we describe our passions by the 
 objects that call them forth, or the events they lead 
 to. To think of the object of our love or hate is the 
 only way of recalling the passion ; to think of some act 
 of retaliation is the way to keep alive our anger or 
 revenge. If anger needs nothing but the presence of 
 the perceived object, revenge is essentially a thought, 
 or thought — supported as it lives in and through the 
 contemplation of that blow anger would or should have 
 dealt, and still contemplates the dealing of. With 
 revenge fear mingles very soon, and if we strike the 
 first blow out of sheer anger, we strike the second out 
 of fear that the injury^ should be repeated. We have 
 not to wait for the calculations of expediency before we 
 strike, wound, or destroy, to prevent the repetition of 
 our pain. Fear acts the expediency at once, and the 
 first task of reflection is to moderate her energy. 
 
 To think of another as the source of pleasure is to 
 love him. It is the simplest phase of a feeling destined 
 to many modifications as knowledge and thought ex- 
 pand. Some would hardly honour the feeling with the 
 name of love till it had advanced one stage further, to 
 the contemplation and desire of giving pleasure, — a 
 new desire, a tenderness and a joy and a sense of 
 power withal which we learn keenly to appreciate in 
 others and in ourselves. Next, there enters the pleasure 
 
104 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 of being loved, of being the object of affection, and this 
 without any necessary reference to positive benefits 
 which may flow from such affection. Men who love to 
 be loved are generally those least desirous to receive 
 actual benefits from those who love them. 
 
 (I would suggest in a parenthesis that the sentiment 
 of Beauty is a modification of that of Love. It has in 
 it the same tenderness, something of the same yearning 
 to give pleasure — yearning that has no way of mani- 
 festing itself in action. It has been often objected to 
 the association-theory that there is a radical difference 
 between the pleasure of sensation and the feeling of 
 beauty. Fundamentally the theory may be correct, 
 but it should be understood that the sensations of 
 pleasure have in their reproduction in memory taken 
 the form of passion. The sentiment of Beauty is more 
 akin to the passion of love than to the direct sensation 
 of pleasure.) 
 
 Approbation is love with a reason given for it. 
 There is judgment of some kind in all thinking, and 
 therefore in all loving, but in approbation the judg- 
 ment stands out conspicuous, and challenges examina- 
 tion. 
 
 That we admire strength and despise feebleness is 
 founded on a very patent judgment of the excellent 
 results of strength. But here we may notice the eff'ect 
 of comparison or contrast in heightening our admiration. 
 I suppose if all had had the same degree of strength 
 or courage there would have been no energetic admira- 
 tion of these qualities : it would have required a certain 
 philosophic or reflective attitude of mind to have ap- 
 preciated them. It is the contrast of the brave man 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 105 
 
 with the coward that sets the former in such high 
 relief. 
 
 In like manner if a man reflects upon himself, his 
 self-approbation begins at least by some comparison with 
 others. He contrasts himself favourably with others, 
 and has a sentiment of elation or self-admiration. But 
 our self-esteem finds its great support and corrobora- 
 tion in the esteem of others. 
 
 The known affections of others towards ourselves 
 affect us, I presume, in the first instance, as leading us 
 to anticipate benefit or injury from those who entertain 
 such affections for us. But the knowledge that another 
 loves or approves me does not end with exciting agree- 
 able feelings. It has the other result of exalting my 
 self-complacency, my vanity or pride. My sense of 
 merit would be very feeble if the comparison I make 
 between myself and others I did not believe to be also 
 made by many of my fellow-men. 
 
 I must be permitted to repeat here the observation 
 I have already made. What we call secondary passions 
 may be secondary only in the order of time. I cannot 
 test or predict the strength of any passion by measuring 
 the force of antecedent feelings which were' the condition 
 of its development. I can only note and record subse- 
 quent developments — their kind and degree. The 
 knowledge that I am superior to another man, or am 
 thought superior, breeds a well-known sentiment, that 
 bears (according to the sort of superiority conceived) 
 various names, as vanity and self-complacency, pride or 
 self-esteem. But the strength of my vanity and self- 
 esteem could not be measured by antecedent feelings, 
 which might nevertheless be a condition of them. 
 
106 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 What we call the secondary passion grows, and develops, 
 and modifies with the advancing intellect : feeling and 
 knowledge expanding or varying together. This self- 
 esteem becomes one of the most effective passions of 
 mankind. It enters into our loftiest and meanest of 
 moods; modifies with our loftiest or most petty purposes. 
 The patriot feels it ; the man devoted to his art or the 
 discovery of truth feels it ; the vain man displays it in 
 its ridiculous aspect. Attached to one character^ to such 
 qualities which are or should be in some degree common 
 to all members of a human society, it is that sentiment 
 of sell-approbation to which the moralist appeals, and 
 which he does all in his power to foster and educate. 
 
 The sentiment of Moral "Responsibility, about which 
 there are so many debates, is a Thought and a Feeling. 
 Try to separate the feeling, and we should have (at 
 least in its simplest stage) some passion of fear, weak 
 or strong as the case might be, but not in itself distin- 
 guishable from other fears. As reflection advances 
 upon the relationship between the individual and 
 society, the state of mind designated as that of Moral 
 Eesponsibility advances or undergoes a change. I 
 would observe that in what we call the sentiment of 
 Duty, and honour so highly under that name, it is not 
 the feeling ]per se that is so highly honourable to human 
 nature : it is the intellectual development that elevates 
 the feeling, and renders the whole state of mind we de- 
 scribe as sentiment of Duty so worthy of being extolled. 
 Eespect for the sentiment and its union with theology 
 have induced many writers to invest it with peculiar 
 mystery, but in a psychological point of view I see not 
 why it should be more mysterious than other sentiments 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 107 
 
 — say than the sentiment of ambition. In both cases 
 we see certain recognised passions or desires assuming 
 an elevation by the importance to the whole society of 
 the thoughts and purposes of which they form a part. 
 Moral Responsibility in a child or savage is a very com- 
 monplace fear — ''ear of some chastisement, for breaking 
 a law trivial in itself, and trivially apprehended. After- 
 wards there is fear of another kind, fear to lose the 
 esteem of others or our own self-esteem, and a law of 
 higher kind or more nobly apprehended. 
 
 Nothing has created more confusion than the ten- 
 dency men have to take what is most exalted, or what 
 is actually most authoritative in the human mind, as 
 first in order as well as in importance ; beginning in 
 their history of the consciousness with the develop- 
 ment which has latest risen to the place of supremacy. 
 Many of our ethical perplexities are due to this inver- 
 sion. What strange rhapsodies one sometimes hears 
 about the sentiment of Justice or the sense of Desert ! 
 Some Minerva is born armed and in divine panoply 
 from the brain of each of us. To the passionate man, 
 the fellow-man who has injured him deserves — ^just all 
 the vengeance he can inflict. That is what he would 
 call the satisfaction of justice. It is the satisfaction of 
 his revenge.' Whether one man or twenty men give 
 themselves this satisfaction, it is simply revenge. But 
 to bystanders there are injuries of various degrees, and 
 revenges of various kinds, and some measure or pro- 
 portion between the injury and revenge grows up in 
 the popular mind, and that shall be what the wrong- 
 doer deserves. In the mind of the cultivated jurist 
 the sentiment of Justice is still further modified. When 
 
108 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 the society deliberately makes laws for tlie future conduct 
 of its members, and fixes a penalty to the violation of 
 them, the expectation arises that men will be governed 
 by these laws, and that the threat of the penalty will 
 be sufficient. At all events the proclaimed laws and 
 the threat are in the first instance to be set before 
 them. The punishment must be inflicted when the 
 law is broken, else the threat would become a nullity. 
 But the use of the punishment is to preserve the effi- 
 cacy of the threat. Hence to the enlightened jurist 
 an ex jpost facto becomes unjust. The proportion of the 
 punishment to the crime ceases to satisfy him. The 
 law has become to him the great and important fact. 
 Have you tried to govern the man by due proclamation 
 of the law with its penalty 1 If not, you may inflict 
 revenge, you do not execute justice. 
 
 How manifest is it that the expansion of the intelli- 
 gence of man has given rise to a new sentiment of 
 justice. Instead of seeing everywhere intuitive senti- 
 ments of morality, I find my hope and encouragement, 
 my good augury for society, in this great fact, that 
 with increasing knowledge and wider thinking higher 
 sentiments grow up. Thinking glows into passion. 
 Note, as the forms of government change with the 
 circumstances and intelligence of men, how the senti- 
 ments change also. The staunch est republican on 
 earth must be utterly destitute of the spirit of philo- 
 sophy if he has never noted with admiration how the 
 sentiment of loyalty grows up in the monarchy — en- 
 nobling what to him may have seemed a sad necessity. 
 I do not venture to prophesy the future of human 
 society, but when some scheme is proposed of organizing 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 109 
 
 industry more directly for tlie benefit [of the working 
 classes], and the objection is made that this supposes a 
 new and more persistent sentiment of patriotism than 
 the world has yet seen — ^the objection does not appear 
 to me fatal. New social sentiments do arise with new 
 thinking on social matters. It is the new thinking 
 glowing into feeliiig. Half habit, half reflection, the 
 new sentiment takes its place and does its work. 
 What one notes at present is that the Thinking is so 
 desperately imperfect — so fatally one-sided. One hears 
 men shouting for their social and democratic government 
 who have but one idea — that they, the shouters, are 
 somehow to share more largely in the fruits of in- 
 dustry. We find the most ignorant and craving of 
 mankind shouting for that which requires a lofty in- 
 telligence to comprehend, and the corresponding eleva- 
 tion of feeling to assist in bringing into practice. 
 
 III. 
 
 The seutiment of Duty leads us, we are accustomed 
 to say, to the virtuous action ; the sentiment of Merit 
 is the reward for having performed it. What exactly 
 are the conditions of this sense of merit '? An old 
 controversy, which will return upon us again and again, 
 here intrudes itself. To feel that an action was meri- 
 torious, is not one condition this — that I recognise that 
 I might or might not have performed it — that I per- 
 formed it of my own free will 1 In an analysis of this 
 sentiment I must glance again at this formidable con- 
 troversy. All is not repetition that at first seems so. 
 And there are subjects best treated by approaching 
 them at intervals from slightly different points of view. 
 
no KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 A persistent exhaustive method might only weary the 
 attention. 
 
 Merit of a moral kind attaches indisputably to the 
 purpose, the intention. Indeed, that can only be pro- 
 perly called a human acuion which was purposed, 
 which flowed from a human consciousness. Any other 
 action would be merely automatic. Perhaps a bygone 
 purpose or purposes may have induced habits of such 
 strength that little more may be observable in a given 
 present action than the force of habit. But in such 
 cases we tacitly refer the habit to such bygone pur- 
 poses, and so bring it within the circle of our praise 
 and blame. 
 
 Put the case that you have unintentionally been the 
 instrument of procuring some benefit for another — you 
 have no sense of merit in such an act — you repel the 
 praise or the proffered gratitude. If you were weak 
 enough to accept them, you would feel that you were 
 practising a deceit, or tacitly confirming his deception. 
 Or put the case, far more likely to occur, that you have 
 unintentionally injured your neighbour, you acquit 
 yourself of all blame — you have no sense of demerit. 
 The act was not yours — you did not purpose it. 
 
 But certain moralists are not contented with this 
 account of the matter. The act must not only be 
 yours, but you must feel that you could have refrained 
 from it if you pleased — that it was your free act. 
 They admit that all the merit lies in the intention, but 
 they see in the intention itself what they call a freedom ; 
 the essence of the will lies in the intention, and in the 
 intention there is this freedom ; and this sense of free- 
 dom is a condition of your sense of merit. 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. Ill 
 
 Now it is not a mere verbal dispute when I maintain 
 that this choice, this sense of freedom to do this or that, 
 lies in the very intellectual element of the conscious- 
 ness. It is judgment, it is comparison, seen in the 
 selection of our purpose. To give it this new name of 
 will, is to give the name of a whole to a part. Will is 
 properly the purpose and the action. As the purpose 
 is so essential a part it draws the name to itself. But 
 a purpose in itself is a combination of thought and 
 feeling, or if we deliberate what shall be our purpose, 
 this deliberation is itself a thought, or perhaps many 
 thoughts, a series of comparisons and judgments. 
 
 I praise the act of an intelligent human being. If 
 the act had not its origin in intelligence of some kind 
 and degree, it is not a human act at all — I withdraw 
 my praise. In this intelligence lies the choice, the 
 freedom of which you are conscious. He does not will 
 his intelligence — but his intelligence is that part of his 
 will which constitutes it a human will. So much of 
 clear vision as you have on the right hand and the left, 
 so much of freedom have you. 
 
 " Very true," answers some controversialist ; " it 
 would be only a change of terms if I spoke of the 
 freedom of the intelligence, instead of the freedom of 
 the will — if it were not that you, like other psycholo- 
 gists, (trace a certain development, according to law, 
 of the human intelligence, which you also combine 
 with the element of feeling, and that at all events 
 makes its first appearance without any choice of ours. 
 I want in the freedom of will that which carries a 
 human soul out of and above the laws of nature. I 
 don't find this arbitrariness in the intellect." 
 
112 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 And I reply, with utmost candour, that such arbi- 
 trariness I cannot find in man, under any terms what- 
 soever. The choice that he has, which I say is his 
 freedom and his intellect also, is a choice which repre- 
 sents the man's position at the moment. But the 
 nature, the terms of that choice, these have come down 
 to him from the past. Yes, I choose, I intellectually 
 energize thus. But there are many kinds of choice. I 
 may ask, What is wisest ? What is best for me and for 
 all % I may ask. What will yield me here and now the 
 greatest pleasure % I may ask how best to obey a law, 
 or merely how to escape from the penalty of its infrac- 
 tion 1 This must surely depend on the growth and 
 cultivation of my mind during the past. I cannot 
 suddenly rise to the elevation of the moralist, who 
 desires so to live that in providing for his own happi- 
 ness he promotes the happiness of others, or at all 
 events does nothing prejudicial to the well-being of 
 society. I know of no arbitrary power by which a 
 man can suddenly rise to this elevation. He rose to 
 it through much thinking, and thinking under many 
 social influences. 
 
 When I deliberate, I feel that I can choose this or 
 that. Such is the nature of deliberation. But the 
 this or that? I did not conjure them up before my 
 intellectual vision for the first time, and for or by this 
 act of deliberation. 
 
 There is all along this intellectual energy of choice. 
 We are conscious of it ourselves, and we do our utmost 
 to keep it alive in others. On this efficacy of our 
 praise and blame rests the moral duty of a right distri- 
 bution of praise and blame. In this efficacy of our 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 113 
 
 punishments rests the justification of punishment itself, 
 whenever we want any other justification than the 
 passions of revenge and fear immediately supply. 
 
 But if this be so, the question recurs, How is it there 
 is such a reluctance to admit so plain a statement? 
 There must be something unexplained. Gravest autho- 
 rities, and those who pass for profoundest moralists, 
 repeatedly demand for man an arbitrariness that places 
 him outside of the laws of nature, will not admit that 
 his Choice itself is an intellectual act quite in accord- 
 ance with a development according to law. It is not 
 enough that he has this intellectual energy, which 
 grows under social promptings and social restraints. 
 It seems to me that I could not strike the man unless 
 I knew him as the author of his own intellect and 
 affection. 
 
 I have two observations to make here : To the 
 unreflective or unscientific mind there is a certain delu- 
 sion about this act of Choice. The judgment is abs- 
 tracted from the terms. That concatenation of events 
 and of our own cogitations and feelings, which has 
 brought us to the present deliberation with such might 
 and energy as we possess, is not present to us. Nothing 
 perhaps is present but the act of judgment we have 
 to perform, and it takes upon itself this arbitrary 
 character. 
 
 But reflection exposes this delusion ; why is it that 
 we resist the correction 1 I apprehend that we should 
 not be so willing to do so, if this first impression had 
 not been incorporated with Theology, and with the 
 punishments which Theology holds out. 
 
 We may be sure that no especial theory of punish- 
 
114 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 .ment was invented for theology. But theology is 
 remarkably conservative ; it changes, but it changes 
 slowly ; it carries into our age the teaching that origi- 
 nated probably in what was peculiar to a previous 
 age. 
 
 Justice as administered by human tribunals is even 
 now some mixture of vindictiveness and expediency. 
 In ruder times the vindictiveness, under the name of 
 retribution, was a very predominant element. And it 
 becomes such in the punishments dealt out by Zeus, or 
 whatever was the presiding deity. 
 
 When these punishments were transferred to another 
 world — where they are now continued beyond the 
 existence of human societies, and eternized there — it 
 was too late to represent them as expedients for the 
 improvement and advance of human society, or of 
 any societies known to us. The punishment therefore 
 stood forth in its retributive character, could justify 
 itself in no other way. 
 
 The theological thinker had no other resource than 
 to exaggerate the guilt of the culprit, and if possible to 
 modify the nature of that guilt to suit the new expan- 
 sion of criminal justice. 
 
 He fixed on this element of Choice. The man chose 
 the crime, and in choosing the crime chose the punish- 
 ment — dared or defied it. 
 
 The guilt itself was converted into the violation of a 
 law — a God's law. And here again a certain natural 
 tendency of thought was taken advantage of without 
 applying the needful corrections. Obedience to the 
 rules of morality, from its extreme importance, was and 
 is very generally taken for morality itself. The essence 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 115 
 
 I of morality lies in the " Love thy neighbour." " Be 
 a source of happiness to others as well as to yourself." 
 The rules of morality are the modes in which this 
 " Love thy neighbour " can best be carried into effect. 
 Such precepts however as, " Speak the truth," " Do not 
 steal," and the like, become taught (and not unwisely) 
 as absolute first precepts, and virtue is defined as acting 
 in obedience to such precepts. 
 
 Matters stand thus : — There is a law. That law has 
 been infringed, and a punishment quite irrespective 
 of the wants or demands of the human society must 
 follow. First, Virtue has become obedience to a law, 
 then punishment follows on an infraction of the law. 
 Abstractions are put in the place of human beings. 
 The Calvinist rides off on these two abstractions ; they 
 are enough for him. But most men, seeing there is a 
 punishment falls on the individual soul — as he stands 
 there face to face with God (not as he is one of a 
 social community with and for whom he must needs 
 suffer and enjoy) — find themselves obliged to aggravate 
 the criminality of the human being's choice. They say, 
 Here was a free-will ; the man could have obeyed — did 
 not obey — therefore whose fault but his own ? And 
 from this positive ground they feel that they must not 
 retreat. 
 
 In morality men have to judge each other. "What is 
 loveable and serviceable they praise. What is hateful 
 and injurious they condemn. That follows inevitably 
 from their own nature. Moreover, they soon learn that 
 their praise and blame, their reward and punishment, 
 ever fosters the loveable and represses the hateful. 
 We are all judges, and all judged, and under the in- 
 
116 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 fluence of an opinion that all contribute to, and that all 
 are ruled by, the whole society grows ; and if it does 
 not advance, yet preserves what degree of excellence 
 has been reached. If the individual, brought to the 
 bar of this public opinion, should appeal against its 
 judgment, on the ground that he — the hapless indi- 
 vidual developed according to law — that he thought, 
 judged, selected with such poor intelligence as had 
 been accorded to him — that he was weak in knowledge 
 and judgment, strong in passion or desire — the answer 
 is at hand : he would be still weaker, and more incur- 
 able, if his fellow-men, with praise where they could 
 give it, with blame where he went wrong, did not re- 
 strain and guide him. The love and hate of others was 
 his strength, gave him shame and honour. Amongst 
 the laws of his being to which he appeals is this — that 
 he 1? a social creature — can develop only under the 
 affections and judgments of his kind. He makes his 
 appeal to law, and from the law he is answered. 
 Society has just this solidarity. 
 
 In theology it is no longer society that judges, nor 
 is the social man condemned, that either he or society 
 may be the better for the judgment. It is an indi- 
 vidual soul abstracted from the society that is put 
 before the tribunal of God, his sin is to his Creator ; 
 and now if he tenders the plea, " I was made thus," 
 what answer can be given to the plea ? If listened to, 
 it would stop the judgment ; it cannot be listened to. 
 The individual must be decreed to have been at all 
 times able to act better than he did act, or the sentence 
 is supposed to fail in justification. 
 
 It is thus, I apprehend, that our doctrine of free-wiU, 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 117 
 
 as we meet with it constantly sustained, is made to 
 hold its ground. I am speaking, be it understood, of 
 the doctrine of divine punishment as generally taught. 
 There are not wanting symptoms of some change — 
 tardy and reluctant — in theology. The jurist has long 
 had one theory of punishment, the theologian another. 
 This divergence cannot last for ever. 
 
 Would it not be wise to understand that the Creator 
 punishes man through man and for the good of man ? 
 I think I see the curtain descending altogether on that 
 terrible vista of the future, lit up with what already seem 
 unholy fires. Not the torture of the individual soul — 
 not vengeance in any shape — but the onward progress 
 of a whole spiritual community ; — this men begin to 
 hold to be the divine purpose. 
 
 Choose well! That is the act ever before us, the 
 last result to which we are pressing. Ill choices have 
 been made, to the misery of the chooser and others. 
 Press on, and choose better, and ever better. 
 
 Nor can any doctrine of law or necessity, whether 
 we call it the nature of things or the ordinance of God, 
 rationally intervene to quell the efforts or extinguish 
 the purposes of man. He does think, purpose, choose, 
 — this is his nature, though he thinks, purposes, and 
 chooses at each moment on some condition of the past ; 
 he does this by an energy no one could positively pre- 
 dict, for the intellect of the man is the last appearance 
 in the world, a faculty that has come in — that joins 
 itself to the rest, is conditioned by the rest — but none 
 but God knows what possible strength it may manifest. 
 Fatalism, or a necessity known to us, there is not; 
 there is a faculty of intelligence acting on conditions. 
 
118 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 and as that faculty acts or not, will be results. But no 
 science has limited the energy of this faculty. 
 
 Mr. Palgrave, when on a voyage with Mahometans, 
 writes of them thus : " The Mahometans seemed 
 thoroughly convinced that they were in the hands 
 of an Absolute and Arbitrary Power, which might 
 save them if it chose, or drown them if it chose, but 
 on which their prayers or needs would have little or 
 no effect." 
 
 . Their prayers, probably not; but what of their 
 efforts to save the ship ] If the fatalism of the 
 Mahometan went so far as this, that the result would 
 be the same whatever the skill and labour of navi- 
 gation, we are justified in calling such fatalism an 
 absurdity. The efforts and activities of men (when we 
 are considering human nature) are precisely the things 
 determined by God. A creature stands before us who 
 works thus, energizes thus ; works on with sense of his 
 own individuality; has this energy of intellect and 
 choice, and must manifest it as long as he has conscious 
 life. 
 
 If the advocates of free-will only demand the acknow- 
 ledgm_ent of an intellectual energy which none of us can 
 sound or fathom, and which is the last gift from the 
 hands of God, I for one have no controversy with them ; 
 that such energy must at each stage receive the con- 
 dition, the terms on which it works, is also a truth 
 which they perhaps, on their side, would feel bound to 
 acknowledge. 
 
 IV. 
 
 There is yet a topic which cannot be omitted, — the 
 influence of passion on belief. It seems to me that a 
 
A CONTEIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 119 
 
 clear understanding of the great psychical qualities 
 which constitute a human consciousness enables us to 
 thread our way through those difficulties that surround 
 the nature of Belief. 
 
 We cannot, as I often have to repeat, transcend our 
 Intelligence and our Feelings. All thinking is origin- 
 ally belief; all object of thought is originally truth. 
 There comes in a distinction between these objects and 
 these thoughts. Our memory, even our senses, are 
 found occasionally deceptive. When we have to antici- 
 pate the future, we make many an egregious mistake. 
 The distinction between truth and falsehood enters, and 
 enters to grow more and more important. 
 
 That which is distinguished as false should be, as 
 such, banished from the mind ; its distinction as false 
 should be a pure exercise of judgment. But the judg- 
 ment does not always give a clear decision, and mean- 
 while the passionate or emotional nature of a thought 
 gives it standing-place. By reason of its emotion, it 
 becomes the exciter of kindred or sustaining thoughts. 
 Thus belief — which must always be the reception or 
 no-reception of an idea according to this distinction 
 of true or false — is no longer governed by the judgment 
 only. The affections throw their weight into the 
 scale. 
 
 Hence there grows up a second distinction between 
 Belief and a conviction of the reason. Absolute truth 
 knows of no degrees. Even a probability, if it can be 
 mathematically calculated, takes the form of an absolute 
 truth. But anticipations which are hopes and fears as 
 well as judgments, are strong or feeble, admit — and 
 Belief here admits — of degree, as strong or weak — be- 
 
120 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 cause the passion that fastens them on us, that will not 
 let them be dismissed, may be strong or weak. 
 
 Belief, when it is distinguished from pure intellectual 
 assent, as when we distinguish Faith from Eeason, 
 marks a predominant presence of feeling or desire. 
 
 I shall perhaps be reminded here that there is an 
 assent that comes from merely repeating what others 
 have told us. A habit of this kind is conspicuous 
 enough. But the habit acts so as to favour some 
 judgment already made. Mere repetition of itself would 
 not be a belief — it would not involve that distinction 
 between true and false, probable or improbable, which 
 lies at the basis of belief. If / believe, because another 
 has told me, it is because I have more confidence in 
 that person than in another person telling me the con- 
 trary, and on a belief thus founded habit may operate, 
 which indeed operates on all things.. 
 
 The influence of passion on belief is seen everywhere. 
 It makes one thought a greater favourite than another 
 thought, or fastens it there by the very emotion, though 
 it may be painful and fearful. Then, when the question 
 is asked, Is it true or not^ are there not certain 
 known truths, truths perhaps of the senses which con- 
 tradict this thought, and forbid it to enter as a truth 1 
 — this overpowering influence of the emotion renders a 
 calm judgment impossible. We say the voice of reason 
 is stifled — is too weak to be heard. 
 
 If our estimate of another's character has gathered 
 around it our love or hate, how hard it is for us to 
 revise our judgment, and admit evidence that contradicts 
 this estimate ! If a future event, highly improbable, 
 has, however, once excited a keen hope within us, how 
 
A CONTPJBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. 121 
 
 reluctantly do we listen to any exposition of that im- 
 probability ! We say the man has a strong belief, and 
 very weak judgment. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that truth and proba- 
 bility may also receive their support in our mind from 
 the emotion they carry with them. And a passionate 
 belief may be a true belief. In such cases a theologian 
 would say — presuming his doctrines were the subject 
 of discussion — that the man had both Reason and Faith. 
 
 And nowhere are the feelings observed more con- 
 spicuously than in our religious beliefs. It is Imagina- 
 tion that first leads us out of the circle of terrestrial 
 objects, and the imagination would probably come and 
 go, like a passing dream, if it did not awake some feel- 
 ing of love and hate, of hope or fear. He who first 
 whispered that there is a Father in the skies (and 
 philologists trace back the conception to a very remote 
 antiquity) was founding a new sentiment and new hope 
 — a reverence due elsewhere, a protection to be looked 
 for elsewhere. The feelings of a child to a parent 
 found new scope : the adult was again a child, and 
 had a Celestial Protector. He who first suggested that 
 there might be in the skies, for the whole society, a 
 Ruler and Avenger of crime, was founding a new 
 Government for mankind. Here was a Judge not to 
 be deceived, perhaps a Leader in battle not to be re- 
 sisted. From time to time voices of dissent will arise 
 — sceptical questionings — but the main result of these 
 will be to give to such Imaginations the distinctive 
 character of Beliefs. We thought them — possibly with 
 the same spontaneity with which we saw this and that; 
 your suggestion that they may be falsities only makes 
 
122 KNOWING AND FEELING : 
 
 US think them again, under the distinction of true and 
 false, and declare that they are not falsities. 
 
 If to imagination succeeds some idea of the reason, 
 or if the imagination itself is partly justified and partly 
 modified by subsequent knowledge and reflection — it is 
 still some passion or emotion which gives to assent that 
 energy which exalts it to a Faith. Why should a thought 
 recur again and again, or how could it influence our 
 lives, if it were not a passion as well as a thought — if 
 it had no bearing on human felicity ? A truth to which 
 we are entirely indifferent falls from us as an idle pro- 
 position. At least there is the passion of discovery, 
 and the passion of dispute, or intellectual energy would 
 flag. 
 
 Those who write the history of religion are constantly 
 portraying to us the result of emotion in the belief 
 and practices of the various nations of the earth, and 
 they show how emotion acts upon thought, and thought 
 again upon emotion. What was the first worship, when 
 men went shouting through the woods, or clanging 
 their cymbals underneath the impassive sky, but some 
 sentiment of wonder in the presence of earth and 
 heaven that they did not know how better to express 1 
 
 But the vague sentiment of wonder, which probably 
 came first and certainly lasts the longest, must soon 
 have been followed by other sentiments. What a 
 yearning we have to know the future ! Was there 
 nothing in heaven or earth that could tell usi was 
 there no way of extorting the knowledge? So the 
 oracle grew up, and the oracle was believed in, not 
 because men had really tested the veracity of oracles, 
 but because they evidently desired that there should be 
 
A CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY, 123 
 
 oracles. It would have been a kind of profanity to 
 make a statistical list of predictions that were true and 
 predictions that were falsified, with a third column 
 from those uttered in such ambiguities of language, 
 that whether they were really verified or falsified it was 
 impossible to say. 
 
 But the god can do more than reveal; he can give 
 the victory. Or he can bring defeat and pestilence on 
 the land. Fear is even more potent than hope in this 
 matter of belief To deny the god might anger him — 
 supposing our denial a mistake, and he really existed all 
 the while. Supposing there were nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine chances in favour of the non-existence, and 
 one only in the thousand in favour of the existence of 
 some terrible demon — yet so long as there is room for 
 a mistake, my tongue is paralysed, I tremble and 
 believe. 
 
 We have noticed how passion grows in strength 
 when shared by a crowd; and the passion-supported 
 belief augments in the same proportion. We need not 
 transcend the dusty arena of politics for an example of 
 this. A national hatred brings with it national beliefs 
 that are perfectly astounding to the cool-headed spec- 
 tators. The violent patriot cannot recognise any good- 
 ness in the adversary of his country ; to do so would be 
 to cease to hate, or to cease to hate with due patriotic 
 virulence. Our neighbours the Irish, or I should rather 
 say one class of Irishmen, hate England, hate the 
 English rule, hate every statesman that would uphold 
 it. He may labour most strenuously for the good of 
 Ireland, strive in every way to be just and beneficent — 
 it avails nothing ; he is hated, and therefore his justice 
 
124 KNOWING AND FEELING. 
 
 is a disguised fear, and his benevolence a mere treachery. 
 There is no help for it. 
 
 It is well known that on religious subjects a specific 
 argument has been deduced for the truth of a proposi- 
 tion from the excellent results of believing it true, or 
 from the desirableness that it should be true. It is so 
 desirable to be immortal, why not therefore "? It is so 
 desirable, so many have thought, that there should be a 
 Judge to mete out rewards and punishments according 
 to the merits and demerits of men — and what is seen to 
 be so wise, must it not be ? This kind of argument 
 may have its place. Having established the existence 
 of a Benevolent and Omnipotent Creator, we may adopt, 
 of two suppositions equally open to us, that one which 
 is in accordance with such established belief But in 
 general we must remember that we come to the uni- 
 verse to learn what is ; what we should think wisest is 
 hardly a rule for the universe. 
 
 But whatever logicians may determine about the 
 argument, the desire for immortality is indisputably 
 the great foundation for a belief in it. Awake that 
 desire and cultivate yourself for a specific form of im- 
 mortal happiness, and the faith is secure. And men 
 more especially distinguish this as a faith. They do 
 not say that it is against Eeason : far from it ; but they 
 are conscious that it is mainly upheld by Feeling. 
 
 Having thus seen the elasticity and growth of human 
 passion — following, in short, human knowledge and 
 change of outward circumstances — we are somewhat 
 better prepared to enter on a survey of the past with 
 some hope of dimly foreseeing the future. 
 
MEMOIR. 
 
" It is quite in vain that critics and readers both 
 constantly repeat that the biography of a man of letters 
 is almost always unentertaining, and that we could 
 hardly expect it to be otherwise. Whatever it is we 
 expect, or have any just reason for expecting, there is 
 an incurable curiosity to know something of the man 
 wherever the writer has succeeded in interesting us. 
 The case stands thus : we have a living human being 
 revealing himself to us by his thoughts, and by nothing 
 else. Something to fill up the blank we inevitably 
 crave. We have here an object of esteem, perhaps of 
 some degree of veneration, and yet our hero remains 
 obstinately invisible ; even to the mind's eye utterly 
 obscure. We desire that he take human form, and be 
 seen moving amongst the realities of life ; we desire 
 that he stand out before us somewhat distinctly in the 
 imagination. 
 
 " Other great men, the man of action, the great 
 captain, the great statesman, write their lives in their 
 deeds ; the very career which ennobles or distinguishes 
 them is also their biography. We see them in their 
 
128 
 
 actions. Their lives, too, are written in the history of 
 their country, and they hardly need a separate memo- 
 rial. With the mail of letters it is otherwise. He has 
 written a book, and placed it there on the desk before 
 us. The hand that placed it there is unseen. Unless 
 some friend will tell us, we can know nothing of the 
 destiny of this man. He comes before us as the 
 thinker only : he had these thoughts, but where 1 
 under what circumstances ? He also lived, enjoyed, 
 or suffered. It may be a commonplace story, but in 
 this instance we must have the commonplace." 
 
 These are Avords of your own, my beloved ; and I 
 appeal to their sanction as I prepare to write out my 
 glimpses of your early life, my memories of the later 
 years during which it was intertwined with mine. I 
 am not writing for the public — a task you held un- 
 suited to a wife, requiring a more impartial judgment 
 than her love and sorrow could exercise. I only try to 
 write for the inner circle of friends who desire to know 
 how you came to be what you were, and to hold the 
 opinions you held. I cannot, indeed, tell them much, 
 yet there is no other who can tell them so much. For 
 you used to say that you had let me look you through 
 and through j and whenever you adverted, ever so 
 lightly, to your past, I gathered up your words and 
 stored them in my heart. L. C. S. 
 
MEMOIR. 
 
 That must have been a happy home at North- End, 
 Hammersmith, into which, during the January of 
 1808, William Henry Smith was born, the youngest 
 of a large family. His father, a man of strong natural 
 intelligence, having early made a fortune sufficient for 
 his wants, early retired from business, in consequence 
 mainly of an asthniatic tendency, which had harassed 
 him from the age of thirty. The impression I 
 gained of him from his son's description was that of 
 one peculiarly fond of quiet and of books, but whose 
 will gave law to his household, and was uniformly 
 seconded by the loving loyalty of his wife. The large 
 family had a recognised Head, a condition I have often 
 heard my husband insist upon as essential to all healthy 
 domestic life. Whatever the spirits of the children 
 might prompt, it was an understood, a felt law, that 
 "Papa's" tastes and habits must be respected. And 
 these, being interpreted by so gentle a mother, were 
 never viewed in the light of unreasonable restraints. 
 This dear mother seems to have been a woman of a 
 quite primitive type, full of silent piety, wrapped up in 
 the home and the family. She was of partly German 
 extraction, her mother had been an eminently saintly 
 
 I 
 
130 MEMOIR. 
 
 character, and I have caught glimpses too of a grand- 
 father devoted to the study of Jacob Boehme, whose 
 folio volumes, and the tradition of the veneration in 
 which they had been held, still existed in the Hammer- 
 smith home. 
 
 How often, by the divination of love and sorrow, 
 I have tried to conjure up that home before my mind ! 
 My husband once took me to its site, but the good old 
 house had been cut up into shops, and the large garden 
 was all gone, — the large garden, that had seemed so 
 large to the happy child playing there by the hour 
 " under the scarlet and purple blossoms of the fuchsias," 
 under the benignant eye too of a well-remembered old 
 servant, gardener and groom, who kept the plants and 
 the sleek discreet horse " Papa " drove in his gig, in 
 equal order. It was an every-day delight to play in 
 that garden, a high privilege to ride in that gig. I 
 think I can see the father, very tall, a little worn by 
 asthma, with black eyes of peculiar, piercing power, 
 and a certain stateliness and natural dignity which 
 were wont to receive from officials at public places a 
 degree of deference, noticed with some amusement by 
 the little observant companion and sight-seer. What 
 he must have been at an early age the miniature 
 photographed on the first page will best show. No 
 wonder that, as his eldest surviving sister affectionately 
 recalls, " he was the pet of both parents," though his 
 exceeding mobility did sometimes a little agitate the 
 valetudinarian father, who would lay down a half-crown 
 on the table and say, " William, you shall have it, if 
 you will only sit still for ten minutes ! " A child with 
 such an expression as the picture shows would surely 
 
MEMOIR. 131 
 
 have complied had it been any way possible ; but he 
 did not remember that the half-crown was ever won. 
 One day, when he was very small, a canary bird be- 
 longing to a sister died, and was buried beneath a 
 flower-bush in the garden ; and on that occasion, when 
 the bright and restless creature lying suddenly motion- 
 less on the palm of some young hand had given the 
 happy child his first experience of wondering sadness, 
 he wrote his first verses. There is no one but me who 
 recalls the trifling incident, — me, to whom nothing that 
 ever befell him can be a trifle ! I always felt a sacred 
 interest in hearing him spontaneously revert to this 
 joyous period. It was not very often that he did so ; to 
 speak of himself at all was unusual with him; but in 
 his writings one not unfrequently comes upon passages 
 akin in spirit to the one I am about to transcribe from 
 a review of Jean Paul, which he wrote in the summer 
 of 1863:— 
 
 "All men delight, as Richter himself observes, in 
 far-reaching recollections of their days of childhood. 
 He proceeds to assign two reasons for this : ' That in 
 this retrospect they press closer to the gate of life, 
 guarded by spiritual existences ; ' and secondly, ' That 
 they hope in the spiritual fervour of an earlier con- 
 sciousness to make themselves independent of the little 
 contemptible annoyances that surround humanity.' This 
 is going very far for a reason ; a better might be found 
 nearer hom.e, in the simple pleasure of the tender and 
 other emotions that we feel at the revived image of 
 our miniature self. Mr. Bain, in his late admirable 
 treatise on the Emotions, has described a form of our 
 passions which he calls self-pity, a tender yearning over 
 
132 MEMOIR. 
 
 one's-self — the same kind of pathetic sentiment which 
 we feel for another, and which, indeed, is first elicited 
 by some other person, and afterwards indulged in 
 towards ourself; We look upon ourself as worthy of 
 commiseration, or else of congratulation. We sympa- 
 thize, in fact, with that self which is thrown before us 
 as an object of contemplation. In no case is this 
 species of sentiment so distinctly felt as when we 
 conjure up the self of childhood. We weep — not its 
 tears again, but tenderly over the little sorrows that 
 brought them ; we laugh — not again the laughter 
 of childhood, but we laugh over its laughter, till the 
 eyes fill again with other tears. The image that rises 
 up in the memory, though recognised as ourself, is yet 
 so difi'erent from this present recollecting and reflecting 
 self, that we are capable of loving it, praising, chiding, 
 laughing over it, with the same freedom as if it were 
 some other person we were thinking of. We feel a 
 charming egotism when we record the feats of child- 
 hood ; we sympathize with the boastfulness of the little 
 boaster ; the vanity is not our own. We feel no shame 
 at reviving its sallies of passion ; we, the mature judge, 
 pardon the little ignorant culprit. Whatever feelings 
 in the course of our life have been elicited towards 
 children, centre upon this child, which also was ourself 
 We travel hand in hand with it, like the guardian angel 
 in the picture-books, looking down with grave, sweet, 
 half-puzzled smile ; only, in the picture-books, the 
 angel guides the child, and here the child is leading 
 the graver angel where it lists, stooping now for a 
 flower, or striking out hopelessly after the too swift 
 and vagrant butterflies." 
 
MEMOIR. 133 
 
 Here is another glimpse of the enjoyments of those 
 early days. The cheerful drawing-room in the Ham- 
 mersmith home had a window at both ends. Round 
 the one that looked into the garden clustered the white 
 blossoms or hung the luscious fruit of a surpassing 
 pear-tree — a swan- egg — the like of which was never 
 met in later years ! From the other window the 
 children could watch the following spectacle, which my 
 husband evidently enjoyed recalling in a notice of Mr. 
 Knight's Reminiscences, published in 1864 : — 
 
 " Very pleasant is this looking back over a period of 
 history through which we too have lived. Give a boy 
 a telescope, and if he is far enough away from home, 
 the first or the greatest delight he has in the use of it 
 is to point it back to the house he lives in. To see the 
 palings of his own garden, to see his father at work in 
 it, or a younger brother playing in it, is a far gi-eater 
 treat than if you were to show him the coast of France 
 or any other distant object. And so it is with the 
 past in time. If the telescope of the historian brings 
 back to us events through which we have lived, and 
 which were already fading away in the memory, he 
 gives to us quite a peculiar pleasure. . . . 
 
 " This great revolution in our mode of travelling, 
 the substitution of the steam-engine for the horse, will 
 soon be a matter of history, and older men will begin 
 to record, with that peculiar zest which belongs to the 
 recollection of youth, the aspect which the highway 
 roads leading out of London presented in their time. 
 The railway-train rushing by you at its full speed is 
 sublime ! — it deserves no timid epithet. You stand 
 perhaps in the country, on one of those little bridges 
 
134 MEMOIR. 
 
 thrown over the line for the convenience of the farmer, 
 who would else find his fields hopelessly bisected. A 
 jet of steam is seen on the horizon, a whir of a thou- 
 sand wheels grows louder and louder on the ear, — and 
 there rushes under your feet the very realization of 
 Milton's dream, who saw the chariot of God, instinct 
 with motion, self-impelled, thundering over the plains 
 of heaven. You look round, and already in the distant 
 landscape the triumphal train is bearing its beautiful 
 standard of ever-rising clouds, white as the highest 
 that rest stationary in the sky, and of exquisitely in- 
 volved movement. For an instant the whole country 
 is animated as if by the stir of battle : when the spec- 
 tacle has quite passed, how inexpressibly flat and deso- 
 late and still have our familiar fields become! Nothing 
 seems to have a right to exist that can be so still and 
 stationary. Yet grand as this spectacle is, we revert 
 with pleasure to some boyish recollections of the high- 
 road, and to picturesque effects produced by quite 
 other means. We are transported in imagination to 
 a bay-window that commanded the great western road 
 — the Bath Eoad, as people at that time often called it. 
 Every evening came, in rapid succession, the earth 
 tingling with the musical tread of their horses, seven mail- 
 coaches out of London. The dark-red coach, the scarlet 
 guard standing up in his solitary little dickey behind, 
 the tramp of the horses, the ring of the horns — can one 
 ever forget them 1 For some miles out of London the 
 guard was kept on his feet, blowing on his horn, to 
 warn all slower vehicles to make way for his Majesty's 
 mails. There was a turnpike within sight of us ; how 
 the horses dashed throuofh it ! with not the least abate- 
 
MEMOIE. 135 
 
 ment of speed. If some intolerable blunderer stopped the 
 way, and that royal coachman had to draw up his team, 
 making the splinter-bars rattle together, we looked upon 
 it as almost an act of high treason. If the owner of that 
 blockading cart had been immediately led off to execu- 
 tion, we boys should have thought he had but his 
 deserts. Our mysterious seven were still more exciting 
 to the imagination when, in the dark winter nights, only 
 the two vivid lamps could be seen borne along by the 
 trampling coursers. No darkness checked the speed of 
 the mail ; a London fog, indeed, could not be so easily 
 vanquished ; but even the London fog which brought 
 all ordinary vehicles to a stand-still could not altogether 
 subdue our royal mails. The procession came flaring 
 with torches, men shouting before it, and a man with a 
 huge link at the head of each horse. It was a thrilling 
 and a somewhat fearful scene." 
 
 The first sorrow that left a trace on my husband's 
 remembrance was the going to school, at the age, I 
 think, of eight or nine. He did not go far indeed, but 
 to the sensitive and much-petted child, the change from 
 the atmosphere of love and joy that filled his home was 
 simply appalling. He was sent to a clergyman of the 
 name of Elwal, and found himself surrounded by a 
 good many older boys, who appeared to him — and 
 probably were — boisterous and brutal. At all events 
 the little fellow, to whom the Bible his mother so loved 
 was the most sacred of all things, could not read it, 
 could not kneel night and morning beside his little bed, 
 without jeers and taunts and rough dissuasives. He 
 only read and prayed the more resolutely. The un- 
 flinching spirit that throughout life followed after 
 
136 MEMOIR. 
 
 truth at any cost, was even then awake in the lonely 
 and sorrowful child. Then, too, the comparatively 
 coarse fare, the inevitable fat, for which he had a 
 constitutional loathing, somewhat impaired his health. 
 Yet he probably kept back — with the strange reticence 
 that belongs to childhood — the full amount of his un- 
 happiness, or he would never have been left at this 
 school ; and no doubt, too, .school-life to one so quick 
 to learn, so active in play, must also have had a plea- 
 sant side. Still the memory of those days never failed 
 to awake in him the pathetic yearning, the self-pity^ to 
 which allusion has been made in a preceding extract. 
 He was always sorry for the " miniature self " placed 
 under Mr. Elwal's care. 
 
 The next school to which he went was in every way 
 a contrast. Mr. Elwal taught well, but disregarded — 
 as was indeed almost universal at that time — the 
 material comforts of his pupils. At Eadley, near 
 Abingdon, the latter were well attended to, but the 
 standard of learning was not high. But the two years 
 or so spent there were always cheerfully adverted to. 
 It might jar the High Church susceptibilities of the 
 present inmates of Eadley Hall to know that early in 
 the century it was a Dissenting school — the head- 
 master a Dissenter, who seemed to have little vocation 
 for his office beyond failure in some former business ! 
 However, he had a fair staff of masters and an amiable, 
 popular wife, who liked William Smith to drive with 
 her in her little pony-carriage, which he appeared to 
 have liked too. In fact, at Eadley — so far as I could 
 discern — he did nothing but what he liked. A re- 
 ligious profession was in the ascendant there, would 
 
MEMOIE. 137 
 
 have insured approval ; one is not therefore surprised to 
 find that the feeling of devotion, which opposition had 
 only stimulated, now retired out of sight. He very- 
 soon learnt all that the masters could teach him, was 
 at the head of the school (a distinction which, he care- 
 fully impressed upon me, implied but mediocre scholar- 
 ship), and had his time almost entirely at his own dis- 
 posal. Radley was then a noble but still unfinished 
 house, standing in beautiful grounds. There was one 
 room especially fine in its proportions, with rows of 
 stately pillars, and looking into the park — a room 
 originally destined for a library, but almost unfur- 
 nished, and with a scanty choice of books — and this 
 room was the boy's favourite and undisturbed resort. 
 And among the few volumes it contained he found 
 Byron ! And pacing up and down that pillared room, 
 book in hand, the potent spell wrought in the young 
 poetic heart, No sketch of his youth could be faithful 
 that omitted this Byronic phase. He has often de- 
 scribed its sufferings to me, but I prefer to give them 
 in words of his own, written in 1864. Throughout 
 the long series of his articles on various subjects I can 
 trace occasional allusions to this morbid influence : — 
 
 " The youth of the last age were battling blindly 
 and passionately against fate, were full of gloomy 
 mysteries, great devotees to beauty, which after all was 
 but to them the rainbow in ' a storm which they 
 thought might abate, but which never ceased, — rainbow 
 always upon clouds which broke up only to re-unite 
 in darker masses, — rainbow of beauty, not of hope, 
 incongruous apparition in a troubled and chaotic 
 world. 
 
138 MEMOIR. 
 
 " Our Byronic fever had more than one phase ; 
 sometimes it exhibited itself in a mere moody fantas- 
 tical misanthropy, combined with a reckless pursuit of 
 very vulgar pleasure ; but in a less numerous and 
 more meditative order of minds it displayed itself in a 
 morbid passionate discontent with themselves as with 
 all others. These were not pleasure-seekers, they had 
 a great scorn for human life." .... It is needless to 
 point out to which of these two classes the writer 
 could ever have belonged. 
 
 But although the first reading of Byron's poetry 
 dated as far back as the two years spent at Radley 
 school, it was later that the Byronic spirit was fully 
 developed. Certainly the germ must have lain dor- 
 mant during the brief and happy period that the 
 boy passed at Glasgow College (1821-22). He was 
 young to go there — only fourteen ; but an elder brother 
 — his favourite brother Theyre, a keen logician even 
 then, and remarkable for worth and charm as well as 
 intellect — was at that time a student at Glasgow, and 
 it seemed desirable that William, who had evidently 
 absorbed what of learning Eadley could afford, should 
 share higher advantages under his brother's care. 
 
 He always remembered this session at Glasgow with 
 peculiar interest, and more than once described to me the 
 passage from London to Leith, made in foggy weather 
 (in a sailing vessel of course), the impressions received 
 on landing, the introduction to Scotch coUops, and the 
 ambrosial sweetness of the first glass of Edinburgh ale ! 
 A clever student (now a bishop) shared the lodgings of 
 the two brothers ; John Sterling was one of their inti- 
 mate associates, and much eager conversing and debat- 
 
MEMOIR. 139 
 
 ing went on, to which I cannot doubt that the boy 
 contributed many an apposite illustration and subtle 
 argument. His elder brother in one of his home letters 
 writes : — "William and I have no 'ennui;' we are closely 
 engaged, and when threatened with a lowness of spirits 
 we can manage between us to conjure up some ludi- 
 crous image, to make a joke out of something, and 
 relieve ourselves with a feat of hilarity. It is no bad 
 thing, T can assure you, to have brains enough even to 
 play the fool." 
 
 It was now that for the first time William Smith fell 
 in with Scotch metaphysics, that — to use his own words 
 in talking over the subject with me — " he got thinking." 
 As a consequence, the old theological foundations be- 
 came gradually disturbed, at first perhaps insensibly, 
 for his supreme enjoyment was still found in hearing 
 Dr. Chalmers preach. That fervent eloquence always 
 remained one of his most vivid memories. At the 
 time I write of, the three friends and fellow-students 
 were all Dissenters, but my husband was the only one 
 of them who throughout life not only firmly adhered 
 in theory to the Voluntary system,^ but as a matter of 
 taste preferred the simple Presbyterian service. The 
 large family in the Hammersmith home were indeed in 
 
 - Nevertheless I give a little anecdote which I owe to my husband's 
 gifted brother-in-law, Mr, Weigall, to prove that long before the 
 Glasgow days, at a very early age indeed, William Smith could look 
 npon both sides of a question. ''His brother Theyre," writes Mr. 
 Weigall, " always predicted to me his future distinction. I remember 
 his mentioning as an evidence of his quickness that when he (Theyre) 
 was driving him in a little pony-carriage of rather fragile-looking con- 
 struction, kept chiefly for the use of his sisters, William said to him, 
 ' I don't like riding in this thing. I never feel secure. T always feel 
 as if I were being supported by voluntary contributions.' " 
 
140 MEMOIR. 
 
 the habit of attending the parish church once a day — 
 the father had the old-fashioned Church-and-King rever- 
 ence, — but it was in the Independent chapel that the 
 younger members had their strongest emotions roused. 
 It is easy to trace the influence of early associations in 
 the passage I am about to extract from a notice of 
 Sheridan Knowles, written by my husband in the 
 summer of 1863 : — 
 
 " If a French actor or Italian opera-singer retires 
 from the stage to a convent of La Trappe, there to dig 
 his own grave in silence and sechision, we hasten to 
 throw around the incident a halo of poetry. If we do 
 not altogether admire and applaud, we stand aside in 
 submissive, respectful attitude ; we look in mute amaze- 
 ment at this man who is so palpably forsaking earth 
 for heaven. No poetry hovers over the Dissenting 
 meeting-house. Neither the pew nor the pulpit of the 
 Baptist chapel presents anything attractive to the 
 imagination. Good Protestants as we are, we sympa- 
 thize more readily with the Trappist than with the less 
 ardent but surely more rational devotion that takes 
 shelter in the walls of the little Bethel. Yet this 
 should not be. In reality that little Bethel may be the 
 scene of a pious enthusiasm as remarkable as any that 
 demonstrates itself, under more poetic circumstances, 
 in the convent of La Trappe. We have but to throw 
 ourselves into the heart of the true worshipper, and 
 the most unsightly edifice of brick and mortar that 
 ever glared on us from the dusty street of a provincial 
 town will become invested with a poetry of the highest 
 order. See the well-regulated methodical tradesman 
 enter such a building. Leaving the cares and gains of 
 
MEMOIR. 141 
 
 the week behind him, he walks at the head of his 
 family up the narrow passage, which we will not call 
 the aisle ; he needs no verger to usher him into his 
 seat ; his hand reaches over to the familiar button that 
 fastens the door of his pew ; he opens the door, lets in 
 wife and children, then establishes himself in his accus- 
 tomed corner. He deals out from some secret deposi- 
 tory — perhaps from a drawer under the seat — the 
 Bibles and the Hymn-books, calf-bound, and the oldest 
 of them not a little soiled and dog-eared. These he 
 distributes, and then prepares for the morning devo- 
 tion. One great sentiment he more or less distinctly 
 recognises — the sentiment which, differently modified, 
 constitutes the essence of religion in all churches and 
 in all hearts, that he and his family are then and 
 there doing homage to the Lord of all, are pledging 
 themselves to obedience to whatever is just, and wise, 
 and good, because His ways are perfect, and He requires 
 of us. His rational creatures, what poor attempts at per- 
 fection we can make. After some interval of silence, 
 a man, in spotless black coat and white neckcloth, rises 
 from the deal pulpit opposite, a square deal box, with 
 a reading-desk to it, which desk has no other ornament 
 or furniture than the one large book, on which the 
 minister reverently lays his hand. That one book 
 sanctifies the whole place. Take that away, and all 
 is dirt and dinginess. But our man in the corner of 
 his pew could tell you that from that central spot there 
 has emanated, he knows not how, a subtle influence 
 that has pervaded the whole building, so that its very 
 plastered walls are sacred to him. There is a knot in 
 the unpainted wood-work of his pew on which his eye 
 
142 MEMOIR. 
 
 has often rested as he followed the worthy preacher. 
 Were our man to travel, and to be absent in foreign 
 kingdoms, that knot in a piece of soiled deal would 
 rise before his imagination, and suggest holy memories 
 to him. His hand would be again on the button of 
 that pew, and he would prepare himself for solemn 
 meditations. Oh, believe us, the poetry comes from 
 within. A lady kneels upon her prie-dieu before an 
 altar, covered with glittering candlesticks and flowers, 
 and lights and tapestry — kneels there under the carved 
 roof which echoes with marvellous music ; so let her 
 kneel, if her heart worships better in that fashion ; but 
 all the array of aesthetic symbolism will be unmeaning 
 to her as the upholstery of her own drawing-room, 
 unless she can bring to it that very poetry which our 
 sober tradesman has contrived to throw over a wooden 
 pew, polished only by his own elbows." 
 
 To return to the youthful Glasgow student. Perhaps 
 nothing can convey so accurate an idea of what he was 
 at this early age as a letter written in most delicate 
 and legible characters to one of his elder sisters. In it 
 we already see something of that blending of thought 
 and feeling, of self-control and reflectiveness with spon- 
 taneity, which distinguished the man. It shows, too, 
 how happy and loving was the home circle he was 
 nurtured in, — a circle, I have heard him say, of which 
 no member permitted him or her self an uncourteous 
 tone or the disrespect of personal comment towards 
 any other. There was a latent fire in the dark eyes of 
 all, and a tacit conviction prevailed that such a liberty 
 would be resented. I copy the letter verbatim. It 
 was written in the summer of 1822 : — 
 
MEMOIR. 143 
 
 " My dear Esther, — I surely need not tell you with how 
 much pleasure Selina's letter was received. Need I say, I shall 
 be glad to see you all. With how much pleasure I look forward 
 to the happy time, how many fond anticipations, and how 
 many expectations I indulge ! You have lately felt all these, 
 and know them well ; but you cannot tell the change my mind 
 has undergone before the arrival of that joy-bearing letter. I 
 had been ' making up ' my mind to spend my summer at 
 Glasgow, and perhaps part of that summer alone. I say 
 'making up,' for it was a kind of process, and one rather 
 tedious and difficult. For, as I told my dear mamma, the 
 thought Avould often come with great force — 'how I should 
 like to see them all ! ' Now this would greatly retard the pro- 
 cess, and therefore I set strict watch over my thoughts ; and 
 when they rambled to North End, I checked them, after a very 
 short indulgence, for fear they should end in a desire to visit 
 that happy corner. It has set all in a flame. Those smothered 
 feelings burst forth — hope and expectation shine with double 
 lustre — all is light and gladness. And shall I see you all so 
 soon ? Yes, I shall, I shall ! 
 
 " This is the first time I have stopped to take breath since I 
 began this letter, for, whenever the subject of home comes 
 across my mind, it imparts such an impulse that there is no re- 
 sisting it. Perhaps it has carried me on with precipitation in this 
 case. Sometimes it crosses my path while I am taking a walk, 
 and then it is sure to make me take extraordinary long steps, 
 or make fantastic leaps. In short, wherever it comes, it gives 
 an irresistible stimulus, which no gravity can withstand and no 
 will restrain. But gently ! gently, my pen ! 
 
 " There is one little circumstance I cannot help mentioning. 
 When Theyre had perused the letter, and knew how the con- 
 tents would please me, he put on a grave look, and, with a 
 solemn manner, read to me that part which contained the news. 
 The contrast was very great, for, while he was standing in this 
 solemn manner, I was laughing and wriggling about the 
 chair, as though bewitched. — Well then, you may expect us the 
 first week in August, at the latest ; and glad shall I be when 
 that week comes, for I do so want to see you all. 
 
144 MEMOIR. 
 
 " No doubt it will give you pleasure to hear that Theyre has 
 carried ofif the first prize in the Logic class. There are in every 
 class a certain number of prizes given, and they are distributed 
 according to the votes of the students. Theyre obtained his 
 unanimously. He also was successful in a prize essay. I must 
 also tell you that the Greek Professor gave me one for two or 
 three poetical translations I wrote. There is no little ceremony 
 in distributing them, but I will not trouble you with that. 
 
 "How many circumstances are there which are constantly 
 directing our thoughts to that place where our affections are 
 placed ! The most trifling thing will sometimes carry us away 
 many miles, and detain us there for a long time. The other 
 day, as I was demonstrating a proposition (for I am attending a 
 little to mathematics), I happened to put the lid of the case of 
 instruments upon my compass, and, twirling it round, it made 
 a noise like a rattle. This rattling immediately reminded me 
 of Mayfair ; it was but a step to North-End, and, when once 
 you have set your foot there, you know how many difficulties 
 to take it away again. Well, some time after I found myself 
 looking intently on the proposition, and holding the compass 
 and the case on it in my hand, but quite ignorant of what I 
 was doing. I seemed to have been roused from a vision." . . . 
 
 Then follow messages of love to the different mem- 
 bers of the family, and a little significant postscript : 
 " You promise you won't keep me ! " which proves how 
 much the College life was appreciated.^ But though 
 
 * My husband throughout life entertained a very decided preference 
 for the Scotch system of mental training. I may illustrate this by 
 some observations of his in an article, written in 1855, on the Life of 
 Lord Metcalfe. That distinguished man, as a young Oxonian, professed 
 to " abhor metaphysics," and in his journal prayed to be delivered 
 from "the abominable spirit" of reliance on reason as a guide, — 
 " blessed reason,^' as he in irony termed it : — 
 
 " One cannot help remarking that a Scotch youth of the same age 
 might be equally pious, equally steadfast in his faith, and perhaps 
 more conversant with the several articles of his creed, but he never 
 would have expressed the tenacity of his convictions in this manner, 
 
MEMOIE. 145 
 
 he did return at the commencement of the next session, 
 a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs soon led to 
 his being sent away home, and in the January of 1823 
 his father died, at the age of sixty-three. 
 
 And now came many changes, all of them fraught 
 ,7ith pain. There was the loss of the indulgent father, 
 the spectacle of the mother's meek, deep-seated grief, 
 the break-up of the cheerful home, and in addition 
 there was the closing of the College career — for the 
 climate of Glasgow was pronounced too severe to be 
 safely returned to ; and the youth in whose secret soul 
 the problems of the metaphysician and the ^dsions of 
 the poet were already seething, found himself destined 
 to an uncongenial calling — that of the Law. " He was 
 articled," I quote from a letter of Mr. Weigall's, "to 
 Mr. Sharon Turner, the Anglo-Saxon historian, who 
 was by profession an attorney ; but the office routine 
 was so distasteful to him that he soon solicited Mr. 
 Turner to cancel his articles, but Mr. Turner told him 
 he did not feel justified in doing so, as he did not 
 consider William at that time the best judge of what 
 was expedient for him. William dragged through the 
 weary hours he was required by his agreement to spend 
 
 never would have spoken of ' blessed reason ' ironically. . . . His 
 first and last boast would have been that his faith was the perfection 
 of reason. A Scotch lad, who had only breathed the air of Glasgow, 
 or of Edinburgh, would have never shrunk from intellectual contest, 
 or professed that the creed he held and cherished was not in perfect 
 harmony with the truly blessed reason. He would as soon have 
 thought of proclaiming himself a lunatic in the public streets, and 
 avowing a preference for a slight shade of insanity. Such distinction 
 we cannot help noticing between the systems of education in England 
 and Scotland ; but we have no intention of pursuing the subject, or 
 drawing any laboured comparison between their respective merits." 
 
 K 
 
146 MEMOIR. 
 
 in Mr. Turner's office, and has often told me they were 
 the most tedious and profitless in his existence." When 
 it is remembered, too, that at this early age necessity 
 was laid upon the earnest seeker after truth to loose 
 from the old moorings, and put forth, he alone, — he — 
 so loving, so sensitive, so considerate of the feelings of 
 others — alone on what then seemed " a dim and perilous 
 way," one towards which, at all events, no member of 
 his home ever so much as glanced, — it need excite no 
 surprise that he viewed this period of his youth as pro- 
 foundly unhappy. He would occasionally revert to it, 
 but I never encouraged any reminiscence that cast a 
 shadow over his spirits. I feel, however, that the 
 following passage from one of his early works sprang 
 from personal experience : — 
 
 " It generally happens that the external influences of 
 daily scene and customary actions oppose their timely 
 resistance to the desponding humour of our early days. 
 But in my own case the outward scene of life was such 
 as to foster and encourage it. The encroaching dis- 
 position became sole possessor of my mind. The ivy 
 grew everywhere. It spread unhindered on my path, 
 it stole unchecked upon my dwelling, it obscured the 
 light of day, and embowered the secluded tenant in a 
 fixed and stationary gloom. ... In this moody con- 
 dition of my soul, every trifling disgust, every casual 
 vexation, though disregarded of themselves, could sum- 
 mon up a dismal train of violent and afflicting medita- 
 tions. The first disturbance, the first ripple on the 
 surface, soon indeed subsided, but, to take an illustration 
 from some fairy tale I have read, the pebble was thrown 
 upon enchanted waters, and it roused the gloomy and 
 
MEMOIE. 147 
 
 tempestuous genius that lay scarce slumbering beneath 
 them." ... 
 
 Yet nothing could be more true than that " his mis- 
 anthropy injured no one but its owner." Such was the 
 sweetness of his nature, and his equitable recognition 
 of the claims of others, that I doubt if his devoted 
 mother, or any one of the home-circle "to whose 
 hilarity he conspicuously contributed," ever suspected 
 that beneath such a sunlit, smiling surface any gloomy 
 genius whatsoever dwelt and stirred. A lady, how- 
 ever, who in her character of acquaintance may have 
 observed more accurately than relatives, who often 
 stand too near to see, describes him at this period 
 as " most gentle and gracious, but seemingly quite 
 apart from the rest in his dreamy, gentle way." She 
 adds : " Looking at his face, one could only think of 
 the wonderful depth and intellect of his eyes — this was 
 something marvellous." 
 
 And now comes a period of which I can give scarce 
 any account, for to my husband, whose life had long 
 been one of abstract thinking — imjm'soiial, one might 
 almost say — any attempt at recalling dates was dis- 
 tinctly painful-; and I, while gladly garnering any 
 crumbs that fell for me from his past, was aware that 
 he could not, even had he tried, reconstruct it con- 
 secutively. But I know that he lived with a most 
 tender mother — a mother in whose eyes whatever 
 William did was right — to whom his very leaving off 
 attending church and chapel, though it might have 
 disturbed her in the case of others, could not seem 
 wrong. I know that his first visit to Switzerland — 
 first sight of the Lake of Lucerne and the glories of 
 
148 MEMOIR. 
 
 the mountains — was paid during an early period of 
 youth, while there was on him that misanthropic 
 Byronic mood, in which, to use his own words, " a love 
 and enthusiasm for nature was a compensation for want 
 of cordial sympathy with man, not a related feeling 
 strengthened by and strengthening that sympathy." 
 
 When exactly that mood passed away for ever I 
 cannot determine ; but in his earliest productions it is 
 already looked back upon as from a distance. I will 
 finally dismiss it in two passages of his own : — 
 
 "He who has read, and felt, and risen above the 
 poetry of Byron, will be for life a wiser man for having 
 once been thoroughly acquainted with the morbid senti- 
 ments which there meet with so full and powerful an 
 expression. And so variously are we constituted, that 
 there are some who find themselves best roused to 
 vigorous and sound thinking by an author with whom 
 they have to contend. There ^ are who can better 
 quiet their own perturbed minds by watching the 
 extravagances of a stronger maniac than themselves, 
 than by listening to placid strains, however eloquent. 
 Some there are who seem destined to find their en- 
 trance into philosophy, and into its calmest recesses, 
 through the avenue of moody and discontented reflec- 
 tion." And : " It is a sort of moral conversion when a 
 youthful mind turns from a too exclusive admiration 
 of Byron's genius to the pages of Wordsworth." This 
 conversion in my husband's case took place early. 
 
 I have heard him say that during his youth he was 
 a quite rapacious reader of English and French litera- 
 ture. All the dramatists, all the essayists, all the his- 
 torians of both countries, in addition to their philoso- 
 
MEMOIR. 149 
 
 phical writers, — nothing came amiss to him, and if the 
 day seemed long in the lawyer's office, the nights flew 
 in eager study. It was his custom to sit up till three 
 or four. The dear mother must have had many an 
 anxious thought as to the effects of such a practice on 
 so sensitive and fragile a frame, but she never seems 
 to have interfered, even by tender remonstrance, with 
 her son's perfect liberty. I extract a passage of his 
 (written in 1847) which is evidently the expression of 
 a personal experience : — " The student's lamp was 
 burning ; how calm, how still is the remote and secluded 
 chamber ! . . . Reflection has her emotions, thrilling 
 as those of passion. He who has not closed his door j 
 upon the world, and sat down with books and his 
 own thoughts in a solitude like this, may have lived, 
 we care not in how gay a world, or how passionate an 
 existence, he has yet an excitement to experience, 
 which, if not so violent, is far more prolonged, deeper 
 and more sustained than any he has known — than any 
 which the most brilliant scenes or the most clamorous 
 triumphs of life can furnish. What is all the sparkling 
 exhilaration of society, the wittiest and the fairest, what 
 all the throbbings and perturbations of love itself, com- 
 pared with the intense feeling of the youthful thinker 
 who has man, and God, and eternity for his fresh con- 
 templations, who for the first time perceives in his 
 solitude all the grand . enigmas of human existence 
 lying unsolved about him. His brow is not corrugated, 
 his eye is not inflamed ; he sits calm and serene ; a 
 child would look into his face and be drawn near to 
 him ; but it seems to him that on his beating heart 
 the very hand of God is lying." 
 
150 . MEMOIR. 
 
 One is not surprised to find that to the life of the 
 lawyer and the student William Smith before long 
 added that of the writer. I learn from his brother-in- 
 law, Mr. Weigall, that " his first effort in print was a 
 series of papers, under the head of the ' Woolgatherer,' 
 published in the Literary Gazette, which he, John Sterling, 
 and Maurice undertook to revive from its then mori- 
 bund condition." " Sterling's father," writes Mr. 
 Weigall, "the 'Thunderer' of the Times, called on me 
 shortly after one of these papers (a dissertation on the 
 Character of Hamlet) was published, to congratulate 
 me on the impression it had produced. I remember 
 his saying that ' such pure and elegant English had not 
 been written since the days of Addison.' The Gazette 
 became such a success that it was more than they could 
 manage, as neither of them were inclined or able to 
 undertake commercial cares and responsibilities, and 
 they were very willing to listen to overtures made to 
 them by Colburn the publisher to take it off" their 
 hands, which he did, and the Gazette was thenceforth 
 merged in the Athenceum." 
 
 This incident I never heard my husband allude to. 
 There are two lines of Arthur Clough's which William 
 Smith might have taken for his motto throughout life. 
 They contain the very essence of his character : — 
 
 " Things so merely personal to myself 
 Of all earth's things do least affect myself." 
 
 Success or approbation, such as he would have dwelt 
 on with pleasure if falling to the lot of another, 
 never seemed so much as recognised in connexion 
 with himself. He shrank from praise more sensitively 
 
MEMOIE. 151 
 
 than from censure. The latter he could at least appro- 
 priate. 
 
 From Mr. Weigall I learn too that " the reputation 
 he acquired by these papers led to his being urged to 
 join the Union Debating Society." " I accompanied 
 him," Mr. Weigall writes, " more than once to the 
 Union debates. I remember one occasion especially, 
 on which John Stuart Mill was in the chair. There 
 were present on that evening Mr. Roebuck, Mr. H. L. 
 Bulwer (afterwards Lord Bailing), Mr. Eomilly (the 
 present Lord), Sir Henry Taylor (author of ' Philip van 
 Artevelde '), and William. ... I never on any other 
 occasion heard such an eloquent debate. William 
 spoke chiefly in reply to Sir H. Taylor — very forcibly, 
 but not with his usual gentleness." 
 
 Of the first poems that he published, 'Guidone' 
 and ' Solitude,' my husband tells the fate in ' Thorndale,' 
 through the lips of Luxmore. He really did dig a 
 hole in the garden and bury the unsold copies in the 
 earth! How full of beautiful passages each of these 
 poems is, a rapid glance even suffices to show, but they 
 are too subjective and perhaps too sad to please widely. 
 The abnormally introspective habit of thought that at 
 this early period secretly tortured one — then, as 
 always, exceptionally free from self-reference in speech 
 or action — is too infrequent to awaken general interest. 
 The same may be said of his first prose work, ' Ernesto : 
 a Philosophical Romance,' written much about this time, 
 but only published in 1835 as the last volume of 
 ' The Library of Romance,' edited by Leitch Ritchie. 
 It was with some difficulty that I prevailed upon him 
 to give me a copy of this early production, the very 
 
152 MEMOIR. 
 
 story of which he had utterly forgotten, and never 
 cared to glance over. Immature he no doubt was 
 right in pronouncing it, but it abounds in thoughtful 
 and eloquent passages. There is in it the promise 
 of ' Thorndale.' I will only make two extracts from 
 it, both of which have an autobiographical interest. 
 The first describes the experience of an unsuccessful 
 poet : — 
 
 " I sought it not — I sought not this gift of poetry — 
 I despised not the ruder toils of existence — I strove to 
 pursue them, but I strove in vain. I could not walk 
 along this earth with the busy forward tread of other 
 men. The fair wonder detained and withheld me. 
 Flowers on their slender stalks could prove a hindrance 
 in my path ; the light acacia would fling the barrier of 
 its beauty across my way ; the slow-thoughted stream 
 would bend me to its winding current. Was it fault 
 of mine that all nature was replete with feeling that 
 compassed and enthralled me ? On the surface of the 
 lake at even-tide there lay how sweet a sadness ! Hope 
 visited me from the blue hills. There was perpetual 
 revelry of thought amidst the clouds and in the wide 
 cope of heaven. The passion of the poet came to me, 
 not knowing what it was. It came, the gift of tranquil 
 skies, and was breathed by playful zephyrs, and fell on 
 me with serene influence from the bright and silent 
 stars. 
 
 "I saw others pursuing and enjoying the varied 
 prosperity of life. I felt no envy at their success, and 
 no participation in their desires. I could not call in 
 and limit my mind to the concerns of a personal wel- 
 fare. I had leaned my ear unto the earth, and heard 
 
MEMOIR. 153 
 
 the beating of her mighty heart and the murmur of 
 her mysteries, and my spirit had lost its fitness for any 
 selfish aim or narrow purpose. I stood forth to be the 
 interpreter of his own world to man. Alas ! I myself 
 am but one — the poorest of the restless and craving 
 multitude. 
 
 " Gone ! gone for ever ! is the pleasant hope that 
 danced along my path with feet that never wearied 
 and timbrel that never paused ! Oh, gay illusion, 
 whither hast thou led me, and to what desolation has 
 the music of thy course conducted ! I am laden as it 
 were with the fruitage of kind afi'ections, but I myself 
 am forlorn and disregarded ; I kindle with innumerable 
 sympathies, but am shut out for ever from social en- 
 dearments, from the sweet relationships that make 
 happy the homes of other men. I am faint with love 
 of the beautiful, and my heart pants with its unclaimed 
 devotion — but who may love the poet in his poverty?" 
 
 The second passage that I quote from ' Ernesto ' em- 
 bodies the conclusions of a speculative intellect that, 
 having " proved all things" with unflinching energy, 
 could best " hold fast" what it recognised as funda- 
 mental truth — fundamental, and vital to the thinker 
 from first to last ! 
 
 " The most sublime, the most essential, the most 
 irresistible of all doctrines — the existence of an Intel- 
 lectual Creator of the universe — needs the support of 
 other faculties than reason. The many learned treatises 
 which daily appear to elucidate and confirm what is 
 called the argument from design, would prove as feeble 
 and ineff*ectual as they are felt to be strong and con- 
 
154 MEMOIR. 
 
 vincing were they restricted in their appeal to a passion- 
 less and unimaginative intellect. ... 
 
 " In such questions, a reason, unsupported by the 
 common feelings of our nature, and by those associa- 
 tions of thought which such feelings have generated or 
 maintained, might probably oscillate for ever. But 
 indeed it is not as a doctrine explanatory of the world's 
 creation that the belief of a divine existence holds 
 the place it does in the mind of man. We claim 
 a humanized causation. Our transiency seeks support 
 on an eternal mind, our fears implore, our hopes solicit, 
 a beneficence that is beyond the circle and superior to 
 the dominion of nature. AVe may cavil, but we must 
 believe ; the heart demands it, and reason allows if she 
 could not compel. Do we wish by this to enfeeble 
 the proof of a divine existence 1 We could not live a 
 day, an hour, without this faith. We desire only to 
 point out the indissoluble union, the harmony and 
 necessary co-operation of the several faculties of the 
 human mind — of the reason, the feelings, and the ima- 
 gination. We honour this compounded and complicate 
 condition of humanity. Is it for nothing that we are 
 imaginative beings ? that we must for ever carry forth 
 the feelings of a known world into the region of the 
 unknown ? He who would deny to his affections all 
 influence on his belief must either pronounce (and this 
 is frequent and harmless) that to be the pure result of 
 ratiocination to which other operations of the mind 
 have greatly contributed ; or in the almost suicidal 
 attempt to separate himself entirely from the control of 
 feeling, he must unsocialize his reason, deprive himself 
 of some of the greatest sources of human felicity, and lose, 
 
MEMOIR. 155 
 
 it may be, the needful guidance and restraint of those 
 very passions which he so contemptuously estimated." 
 
 In 1836 and 1837 my husband wrote several articles 
 for the Quarterly Bevieiu, in reference to which I find 
 some notes from Lockhart, at that time its editor. 
 These, and a few other letters that I shall presently 
 refer to, had been put aside by William long years ago, 
 and first came to sight again after our marriage, when a 
 box of stored-away books was sent to him at Brighton. 
 I remember well that his first impulse was to destroy 
 these letters, but I pleaded for their preservation, and 
 they were therefore consigned to another stationary and 
 seldom-opened box, and thus escaped the doom of every 
 justly appreciating written tribute paid him in later 
 years — the flames. I can recall a note from Mr. J. S. 
 Mill, in the autumn of 1865, alluding in his large- 
 hearted, generous way to certain lectures William had 
 delivered at Kensington more than twenty years before 
 (lectures of which I had heard Jiim make casual and dis- 
 paraging mention), and that note I meant to abstract and 
 preserve; but when next I rummaged my husband's little 
 desk — which always stood open to my inspection — I 
 could not find it; the note had been burnt ! But to return 
 to the Quarterly. It appears that Mr. Lockhart did not 
 wish it to transpire that William Smith's articles were 
 those of a young and unknown writer. In one of the 
 notes I find, " I have heard nothing but good of your 
 paper on Landor, and I am sure it has told tenfold the 
 more from no one knowing as yet where it came from. 
 Be it so with Mr. Bulwer. You will lose nothing in 
 the issue." Never surely did editor find a contributor 
 more conveniently willing to suppress himself ! Two 
 
156 MEMOIR. 
 
 of these articles were on legal subjects, one on Sir Harris 
 Nicholas — -a kind friend of my husband's, at whose 
 house he was in the habit of meeting interesting society 
 —one was on Modern Science, the remaining two on 
 Landor and Bulwer. 
 
 I wish I could more distinctly trace William Smith's 
 legal experiences. I know that he studied every branch 
 of law that a solicitor can practise, before he began to 
 read for the bar with a Mr. Brodie. I think that it must 
 have been in 1838 that he was called to the bar at the 
 Middle Temple. Although I have spoken of office 
 routine as irksome to him, yet in the history and philo- 
 sophy of Jurisprudence he always found vivid interest, 
 and would recommend the study as eminently favourable 
 to the best development of the mind. Certainly he 
 never in later years regretted having undergone this 
 legal training. Perhaps he owed to it the rare tem- 
 pering of lively imagination by shrewdest common 
 sense, of quick feeling by dispassionate judgment. 
 But in his early days the bias towards a life devoted 
 to poetry and abstract thought was too strong to be 
 resisted without suffering, and the combining profes- 
 sional study with literary pursuits must have been a 
 strain upon a frame that was never a strong one. On 
 no point was his counsel to the young more strenuous 
 than in regard to the dangers of such divided allegiance. 
 Here are some words of his on the subject : — " It is a 
 piece of advice we would give to every man, but 
 especially to the student — Harmonize your labours. 
 If ambition prompt you to mingle two conflicting studies 
 that will not accord, that breed perpetual civil war in 
 the mind, we charge you to fling away ambition. If 
 
MEMOIR. 157 
 
 the higher and more beloved study — be it science, or 
 poetry, or philosophy — will not yield, then choose at 
 once for it and poverty, if such must be the alternative. 
 Better anything than a ruined, disordered mind ; or, if 
 you prefer the expression, than a confirmed cerebral 
 disease." We shall find the writer of this passage 
 making such decided choice by and bye. But the time 
 had not yet come. 
 
 In 1839 "William Smith published 'A Discourse on 
 Ethics of the School of Paley.' " The late Professor 
 Terrier," I quote from the obituary notice in the Scots- 
 man, " used to speak of this pamphlet, — in bulk it is 
 nothing more, — as one of the best written and most 
 ingeniously reasoned attacks upon Cudworth's doctrine 
 that had ever appeared." It is interesting to find that 
 the favourite brother Theyre — William's fellow-student 
 at Glasgow, — who had now for several years been a 
 clergyman of the Church of England, and was Hulsean 
 Lecturer in 1839-40, adopted the opposite stand-point, 
 and in the notes to the second volume of his Lectures 
 vigorously contends against the theory put forth in 
 the ' Discourse on Ethics,' while admitting, with 
 evident satisfaction, that it had never " met with a more 
 ingenious as well as eloquent advocate." 
 
 It was also in 1839 that my husband, having been 
 introduced by Mr. Warren to the Messrs. Blackwood, 
 wrote his first article, entitled ' A Prosing on Poetry,' for 
 their Magazine. Thus began a much-valued connexion, 
 that endured to the end of his life, and an uninterrupted 
 friendship. His contributions were very varied — tales, 
 adaptations from foreign literature, at first intermingled 
 with reviews. Later the articles became more exclu- 
 
158 MEMOIR. 
 
 sively critical and devoted to philosophical subjects. I 
 have the whole series, bound up in eight volumes, 
 containing a hundred and twenty papers, not one of 
 them hastily or carelessly written, not one that does 
 not contain unbiassed criticism and earnest thought. I 
 often look at the volumes regretfully : so much wisdom 
 and charm of style seems buried there — forgotten ! But 
 I cannot doubt that these contributions did good work in 
 their day, enlarged and enriched many a kindred mind, 
 woke inquiry and diffused toleration. Some years ago 
 Mr. Blackwood proposed to reprint a selection from 
 them, but my husband declined, and though he still 
 would from habit tear out and lay aside his articles, I 
 found written on the paper that contained all those of 
 later date, " To be burnt — when — ." In that one 
 instance I could not obey him. 
 
 In 1840 William Smith published a pamphlet on 
 Law Eeform, written in his own easy, lucid style, " for 
 the general reader," and calling, not only for certain 
 changes that have since taken place, but for several 
 now under consideration. 
 
 I think that about this time my husband's life must 
 have been peculiarly pleasant. He was still living 
 with the mother who so loved him, and whom he so 
 loved ; there were cheerful homes of married brothers 
 and sisters, where he was always eagerly welcomed — 
 depended upon on social occasions to make the " party 
 go off well" by his bright talk and smile — and he had 
 besides his own ^circle of personal friends, amongst 
 whom I may name George Henry Lewes,^ Samuel War- 
 
 ^ Since I wrote this Mr. Lewes has sent me his reminibcencea of 
 his friend, which I gratefully transcribe here, though they refer to a 
 
MEMOIR. 159 
 
 ren, the author of ' The Correlation of Physical Forces ' 
 (now Mr. Justice Grove), Frederick Denison Maurice, 
 and John Sterling. I have before alluded to his habit 
 of under-estimating — perhaps I should rather say his 
 inability to realize — the amount of the regard he inspired. 
 Hence, while delighting to enlarge upon the special 
 merits of more successful men, he would touch very 
 lightly upon his own intercourse with them. But from 
 other sources I know something of the charm they 
 found in his society, and the regret with which they 
 
 somewhat later period. " It was, I think, early in the year 1842 that 
 I first made the acquaintance of William Smith, an acquaintance that 
 very rapidly grew into a friendship over which no cloud ever crossed. 
 Our ways of life separated us, and we saw but little of each other 
 duiing the last twenty years, but the separation was of bodies only, 
 not of minds. He was at first what I knew him at last, one of the few 
 men deservedly called distinguished, a genuine and mdividual nature 
 not in any degree factitious or commonplace. He was himself, and 
 all his opinions and sentiments were his own, not echoes or compro- 
 mises. In spite of his shyness, there was an affectionate expansive- 
 ness in his manner which irresistibly attracted me, and although I 
 always spoke of him as 'Little Smith,' the epithet, absurd enough 
 coming from one no bigger than himself, only expressed the sort of 
 tender feeling one has for a woman. So far from its implying any 
 assumption of superiority, I regarded him not only as my elder, but 
 in many respects my superior ; and in the height of our discussions, 
 which were incessant, my antagonism was always tempered by that 
 veneration which one ii-resistibly feels in presence of a genuine nature. 
 It was this genuineness, and his keen flexible sympathy, which formed 
 the great charm of his society. One felt thoroughly at home with 
 him at once. 
 
 "At that time he had lodgings in Pembroke Square, Kensington. 
 I lived in the same Square, so that we saw each other frequently ; 
 though it was I who mostly had to pay the visit, his reserve making 
 him less Avilling to come in to me. He led a lonely, uncomfortable 
 life, as such a man in lodgings inevitably must, unless he goes into 
 society. I used to preach to him against his waste of time in desul- 
 tory study, and his injudicious arrangement of the hours of work. In 
 vain. Like most literaiy men, he had a prejudice in favour of night- 
 work, and would fritter away the precious hours of morning, taking 
 
160 MEMOIR. 
 
 lost sight of him ; and I shall here copy a letter of 
 Sterling's — the man of all others I have heard my 
 husband say whom he could have best loved — both 
 because it is interesting in itself, and proves the value 
 Sterling set upon his friend : — 
 
 " Clifton, January 6th, 1840. 
 " My dear Smith, — I have very little time for writing any 
 but tlie most indispensable letters before I leave England. 
 Yours, however, is too kind, and gave me too much unexpected 
 
 little exercise, and less relaxation. I used to tell him that marriage 
 was the only safety for him — and so it proved ! So affectionate a 
 nature could not be content with study and work : the heart claimed 
 its own ! 
 
 "There was another point on which I used to preach with equal 
 unsuccess— the waste of bis fine mind in metaphysical research. This 
 was a standing subject of controversy. His profound seriousness and 
 restless desire to get to the bottom of every subject made him cling 
 pertinaciously to even the faintest hope of a possible answer. to those 
 questions which for centuries have vexed speculative minds, and no 
 failure could discourage him . 
 
 " We were always hattling, yet never once did we get even near a 
 quarrel. On many points, wide as the poles asunder, we managed to 
 mangle each other's arguments without insult, and whenever opposi- 
 tion seemed verging towards the excitation of temper, some playful 
 remark or wild paradox of retort was ready to clear the air with 
 laughter. In this way we ' travelled over each other's minds,' and 
 travelled over the universe. On matters of poetry and criticism we 
 were more at one ; but even there, precisely because Smith had his 
 own views, his own mode of looking at things, there was an endless 
 charm iii listening to him and differing from him. Till deep into the 
 night we would sit ' talking of lovely things that conquer death ; ' and 
 I seem now to see the sweet smile and the lustrous eye fixed on me, 
 and hear his pleasant voice playfully uttering some fine truth. One 
 of the noticeable points in him was the lambent playfulness, combined 
 with great seriousness, the subtle humour and the subtle thought 
 which gave a new aspect to old opinions, so that we may say of him 
 what Goethe says of Schiller, that — 
 
 ' Hinter ihm, ira wesenlosen Scheine, 
 Lag, was uns Alle bandigt — das Gemeine.' " 
 
MEMOIR. 161 
 
 pleasure, to be left unacknowledged. . I attach little value to 
 the contents of my volume as jjoems, but had my judgment of 
 them been different, no corroboration of it from others could 
 give me the kind of gratification which I derive from finding 
 that you sometimes think of me, and return so cordially the 
 regard which I must always feel for you. The future is with 
 me still more uncertain than with most people, but if any among 
 the strange chances of life should bring us within reach of 
 each other, I should consider it a more unalloyed advantage 
 and pleasure than most of those which life affords. As to the 
 Professorship, my suggestion in answer to Mill's inquiry 
 whether I knew of a fitting person would have been the same 
 had I known of you only what I have read in your writings. 
 There was at that time some reason to imagine the stars might 
 be turned from their courses for once, and the Glasgow Pro- 
 fessors from jobbing. It would have been, of course, very 
 pleasant to see you in your right place, and I still trust that 
 some opportunity may arise of having you established as a 
 public teacher. 
 
 " 1 should be very glad to know something of what you are 
 about, and also to have some accounts of Theyre and of Weigall 
 — to both of whom pray remember me warmly. I leave this on 
 Friday for Falmouth, whence I am to embark for Madeira. I 
 have had a long and severe illness, and at one time seemed 
 hardly likely to recover. It is still very doubtful whether I 
 can face another English winter, and I may very possibly be 
 afloat again on this yeasty world — with a wife and four children 
 to lighten my movements. At all events, I shall be always 
 affectionately yours, JoH^r Sterling." 
 
 In connexion with this faint hope of a Glasgow 
 Chair, to which the letter alludes, I find two notes of 
 Mr. J. S. Mill's, full of friendly co-operation and in- 
 terest ; but highly as my husband esteemed the post of 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy in a Scotch University, I 
 am sure that the whole scheme arose entirely from the 
 zeal of a few friends, and that its impracticability gave 
 
 L 
 
162 MEMOIR. 
 
 him no sense of disappointment. I never heard liim 
 dwell upon it. 
 
 In the summer of 1842 a great grief befell him. His 
 dear mother died at the age of seventy-five, having 
 survived her husband nineteen years. I have spoken 
 of the peculiar tenderness between the mother and son. 
 Some friends who remember her well have described 
 her to me in her later years, placid and smiling in her 
 arm-chair, knitting away, with William seated on a 
 footstool beside her, kissing her hand, interrupting her 
 work by his playful ways and tender raillery, she pre- 
 tending to chide — she, so proud, so fond ! Into his 
 intellectual nature, his thought-life, the dear mother 
 did not and could not enter, but she had a boundless 
 love for him ; his comforts, his tastes, were paramount 
 with her ; he was her first object always, and one of his 
 surviving sisters writes to me : — " I shall never forget 
 the desolation of heart William expressed when the 
 grave closed over our mother." Later, his wife and he 
 held it as a treasure in common that both were the 
 youngest and peculiarly loved children of their mothers, 
 and never felt their hearts more closely knit together 
 than when speaking of them. I believe that he spent 
 the winter of that first orphan year with a married 
 sister. Afterwards the dreary London lodging life to 
 which Mr. Lewes refers must have set in. 
 
 The play of ' Athelwold' was published in 1842, and 
 I transcribe, from one of Mr. Mill's notes, a passage 
 relating to it, not without interest, knowing whose 
 criticism it is that he quotes : — 
 
 " I showed your play to the most superior woman I have ever 
 known, and the most fastidious judge of poetry, and she writes 
 
MEMOIR. 163 
 
 to me about it : ' I like the play very much. I think the sub- / 
 
 ject an excellent one, and the mode of saying it natural, / 
 
 healthy, and quite free from the affectation of "old dramatists," ~"/ 
 which is an affectation I, of all others, most nauseate. It is the 
 only play, and almost the only poem, of the present time which 
 I know without affected mannerism.' ^^ 
 
 " I think it worth while telling you of this opinion, because, , • , ^ 
 
 if you were acquainted with the writer, I am sure you would -^^ ''> '' " /' 
 attach real value to her judgment, and especially to her appro- jbZt(yf^ ^ 
 bation. — Ever yours, J. S. Mill." ^>Cl!^4 
 
 Here is another letter on the subject of * Athelwold,' 
 a little flowery and prolix, but also interesting : — 
 
 " 3 Serjeants' Inn, 8th Feby. 184-3. 
 *' Dear Sir, — I have long desired to gratify myself by ex- 
 pressing to you the deep admiration with which, attracted by 
 the extracts I saw in the weekly papers, I perused your tragedy 
 of ' Athelwold,' and by seeking from you such recognition of a 
 common love for dramatic literature as may be testihed by your 
 acceptance of my very frail and imperfect attempts at that 
 delightful species of poetry. I hope I do not trespass too far 
 on your good-nature, emboldened by some old recollections of 
 several members of your family, and by the assurance of Mr. 
 Warren that my offering will not be unwelcome, when I ask 
 you to accept of my own slender dramas, and of the earnest 
 wish I cherish that you may realize the splendid promise which 
 your ' Athelwold ' has given to the world. It seems to me to 
 combine more purely dramatic power with more of poetical 
 luxuriance and tenderness than any of the dramas which have, 
 within the last few years, sprung from the imagination of our 
 national genius. The only obstacles which I perceive to its 
 entire success in representation are the impossibility of pre- 
 senting any image of that loveliness which, in its infant perfec- 
 tion, charmed the mighty Dimstan, and the magic power of 
 which sways the heart of 'Athelwold,' and the destinies of the 
 scene— which, being seen, will not be believed — and in the too 
 painful nature of Elfrida's perfidy, and the wearying agony of 
 
164 MEMOIE. 
 
 the closing scenes — wearying tHough. touched and softened by 
 exquisite beauty. But on that inner stage — the theatre which 
 every true lover of the dramatic poem lights up within his own 
 mind as he reads — will * Athelwold ' ever hold a noble place, 
 which no bad passions of managers, nor caprices of actors, nor 
 envy of author-critics shall abolish or destroy. My own plays 
 are, I well know, mere proofs of the affection of one who has 
 loved, ' not wisely but too well,' the dramatic form of poetry, 
 and has been unduly tempted by the opportunity of tasting 
 the pleasure which, with all its alloy, does belong to the reali- 
 zation of the conceptions of the mind on the stage. That 
 you may attain this pleasure with as little of the annoyances 
 which encircle it as theatrical associations will permit, and 
 extend and complete the lasting fame which your first work 
 promises, and find in all dramatic creation to be its ' exceeding 
 great reward,' is the earnest wish of, dear Sir, your faithful and 
 obedient servant, T. N. Talfourd." 
 
 In the spring of 1843, Mr. Macready made applica- 
 
 cation to the author for permission to act ' Athelwold.' 
 
 I find two little notes on the subject, and give the 
 
 second : — 
 
 " 5 Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park, 
 
 "My dear Sir, — We are about to endeavour, with your 
 permission, to give a representation of ' Athelwold ' before the 
 close of our present season. I very much regret my intention 
 of producing it should have been so long deferred, but in a 
 theatre the most careful plans are constantly deranged by unex- 
 pected circumstances. 
 
 " I should wish to have your assent and also your approval 
 of the large omissions which must of necessity be made in its 
 performance, — Yours, my dear Sir, most sincerely, 
 
 " W. C. Macready." 
 
 On the first night of its representation the play met 
 Vith decided success, and the author was enthusias- 
 tically called for. What seemed to have imj^ressed 
 
MEMOIE. 165 
 
 him most on the occasion was Macready's exquisite 
 rendering of the character of ' Athelwold.' Miss Helen 
 Faucit (now Mrs. Theodore Martin) recollects that one 
 particular moment in her impersonation of Elfrida was 
 pronounced by Macready " the best thing she ever did." 
 We have seen that the season was already drawing to 
 a close. The play had therefore a brief run, and why 
 it was not reproduced the following year I know not 
 with any certainty. 
 
 The autumn of 1843 was spent by my husband in 
 Paris, where the lectures at the Sorbonne were his 
 especial interest. I have before me a note to his 
 sister, Mrs. Weigall, characteristically describing his 
 position in a French boarding-house : " stuttering out 
 my broken sentences of French, thinking it a great 
 good fortune if the simplest thing I utter is understood, 
 and a great honour if the dullest person in the company 
 will condescend to talk to me." 
 
 I know that for a time William Smith went the 
 Western Circuit, but to him it proved " so expensive 
 and profitless he had to relinquish it." Probably he 
 had already done so at this time, for, in the summer of 
 1845, he made a tour in Switzerland. How intensely 
 he enjoyed it appears in a paper, — ' The Mountain and 
 the Cloud,' — written on his return, and published in 
 BlacJcvjoocVs Magazine. And in a letter to the sister 
 who was his regular correspondent, I find expressions 
 of delight : " I saw Mont Blanc to perfection, the lake, 
 and the splendid scenery that lies between. This ivas 
 pleasure ! To be carried by a mule over the mountain- 
 passes, alone, your guide walking silent behind, the 
 beast taking care of himself and you too, the eye 
 
166 MEMOIR. 
 
 greeted at every turn by something new and great, /, 
 in my poor experience of life, have had no enjoyment 
 comparable to it." 
 
 The winter following was spent in Brussels, at the 
 house of his eldest brother Frederick (who had for 
 some years lived in Belgium), where William had the 
 cheerful companionship of young nieces. It was there 
 he wrote ^ Sir William Crichton,' which appeared, with 
 a reprint of * Athelwold,' and of his two early poems, 
 in a small, a very small unpretending volume,^ pub- 
 lished by Pickering towards the end of 1846. I copy 
 Serjeant Talfourd's estimate of the play :■ — 
 
 "S Serjeants' Inn, Chancery Lane, 
 Ath February/ 1847. 
 " Dear Sir, — You have added greatly to the obHgation you 
 conferred on me by sending me your noble tragedy of ' Athel- 
 wold,' when you directed your publisher to present me with 
 your small volume containing that drama and two others of 
 kindred — one, at least in my humble judgment, of superior — 
 merit. Of ' Guidone ' I have been able only to take a glance, 
 too transient to know more than that it is worthy of its author; 
 but ' Sir William Crichton ' I have read with the deep and 
 earnest attention it commands and requites, and feel that I 
 
 1 Tills small volume was never widely circulated, but it met with 
 cordial recognition from a few. Walter Savage Landor was one of 
 those who estimated it highly. It is to Mr. Weigall that I owe this 
 knowledge. He writes thus : " About eighteen years ago I saw a 
 good deal of Laudor. On one occasion I mentioned William's works. 
 He said immediately : ' I know Mr, Smith, and everything he has 
 published. I have a great respect for him, sir. There are things in 
 his works quite equal to anything that Shakespeare ever wrote.' I 
 said I was much gratified to hear him say so, and wished the world 
 thought so too. He replied, ' The world does not think so now, 
 because it is chiefly composed of fools ; but I know it, and I believe 
 some day the world will agree with me.' " 
 
MEMOIR. 167 
 
 have acquired a possession for life. Whether enough of stirring 
 action would remain if all its fine shadings of thought were 
 withdrawn, to fill the stage for the ordinary point of tragic 
 development, I will not determine ; but that with much of 
 picturesque action and heroic character it has the highest excel- 
 lence of thoughtful beauty, of affections steeped in meditative 
 sweetness, I am as sure as that I think and feel ; while I read 
 
 it, to me 
 
 ' There is that within 
 Makes all external scene, whate'er it be, 
 Mere dream and phantom — merely moving cloud 
 Athwart some pale and stationary thought.' 
 
 And those lines, which seem to me indicative of your true 
 genius, seem also to me among the most beautiful ever written. 
 If Heaven gave me such a choice, there are very few of which 
 I had rather been the author." 
 
 It was in the spring of 1846 that my husband visited 
 Italy.^ He travelled, as usual, alone, and with eager, 
 unresting haste. I have heard him say that he spoke 
 to no one ; that the excitement the marvels of ancient 
 art occasioned was inexpressible ; that he went on from 
 place to place regardless of fatigue. From Rome he 
 writes to his sister, Mrs. Weigall : — " I must tell you 
 that I, even I, am here — that I have seen St. Peter's, 
 the Vatican, the Coliseum, and I know not what collec- 
 tions of statues and paintings." The morning after 
 his arrival he " sallied forth to St. Peter's ;" one gladly 
 realizes how light the step must have been, how vivid 
 the enjoyment ! 
 
 1 I think it must have been before this that the bust here photo- 
 graphed was taken. The sculptor, Mr. Weigall, writes of it as fol- 
 lows : " I saw then in William the profound philosopher, the pene- 
 trating, calm, judicious critic, and the tender, passionate poet, and, 
 I believe, to those who have eyes to see such things, all these phases 
 of his character may be found in the bust." 
 
168 MEMOIR. 
 
 " I had been prepared," he says, " to expect that the gigantic 
 proportions of the statuary and other accessories took off from 
 the apparent magnitude of the building ; but what I was not 
 prepared for was the magnificent effect of all this gigantic 
 statuary. From the moment you enter within the limits of 
 St. Peter's everything swells out into colossal proportions. The 
 interior of the dome is perfect — so mellow and so chaste with 
 all its splendours. Then the effect of the high altar is quite 
 startling. It stands j ust under the dome (in pictures it appears 
 necessarily as if at the extremity of the building). You know 
 the four twisted columns of bronze, but you have iciotfelt their 
 height ; and besides, there is much of this altar that cannot be 
 represented in a picture, as it lies beneath the surface. A 
 marble staircase descends before the altar. You look down and 
 see golden doors, and before them a marble image of a Pope 
 kneeling there in eternal prayer for the people. Then in every 
 direction such stupendous sculpture : figures thrown with such 
 audacity and grace over the architraves ; and above all, the 
 tombs of various Pontiffs, which add to their other merits that 
 of being so well placed that at first they seem groups designed 
 only for the ornament of the church. But what shall I say of 
 the Vatican ? of the Apollo, the Laocoon, of a certain Jupiter 
 Tonans, the most sublime representation of the old ruler of the 
 skies ? I had better say nothing, for in my present mood I 
 should probably be guilty of some extravagance. There is also 
 a collection of sculpture at the Capitol — the celebrated Dying 
 Gladiator, a Venus, and the delightful little group of Cupid and 
 Psyche ; in short, the sculpture here is beyond all description 
 admirable, and the delight I have experienced is more than I 
 would willingly make even the attempt to express. 
 
 "Then have I not seen the Sistine Chapel, and the frescos 
 of Michael Angelo ? Now as to these, you know, or at least 
 Henry knows, (how often have I thought that he ought to have 
 been here ! ) that these consist first of a large picture on the 
 wall representing the Last Day, and of the compartments of 
 the roof. Now for that same large picture of the Last Day : I 
 got nothing from it ; it excited in me no sentiment whatever ; 
 I have not a word to say about it ; but some of those compart- 
 
MEMOIR. 169 
 
 ments of the roof are amongst the sublimest things I have ever 
 beheld. The effect is quite thrilling — is awful. You breathe 
 hard as you look up to them. 
 
 " The Coliseum I have not seen by moonlight, and probably 
 shall not ; but on a very beautiful day I traversed it and 
 mounted it, and explored it in all directions. It is certainly 
 the king of ruins. And you see from it the principal ruins of 
 ancient Eome ; you have the blue hills on the horizon, so that 
 a visit to the Coliseum is full of interest. But I am falling, I 
 fear, into the gossip of travellers, which is just a reminiscence 
 to themselves of a pleasure they have had, but which conveys 
 nothing to any other. As to the city of Rome, I can tell you 
 that all that is not temple or palace is filth and wretchedness. 
 ... I wish to see other parts of Italy, and therefore cannot 
 stop very long in any one. My next stage will be Naples, then 
 I retrace my steps to Florence, to Venice, to Milan, through 
 Switzerland and the Khine, home ; all which, though it sounds 
 a great deal, wiU not take much time in accomplishing." 
 
 This programme however was slightly modified. On 
 his homeward way he became very ill, and had to make 
 a halt at his eldest brother's house in Brussels. By 
 him William was, as I have often heard the latter 
 recall, most tenderly nursed. In many particulars 
 there was a family likeness between the two men. 
 Both had the faculty of inspiring intense affection in 
 those who knew them best, both the same refined 
 courtesy in domestic life. Their cast of mind was 
 indeed dissimilar, but the elder brother fully appreci- 
 ated the nature of the younger. I shall never forget 
 his looking at William with moistened eyes, on the 
 occasion of a flying visit of ours many years later, and 
 saying : " He was always quite different from the rest of 
 the world." His daughters, too, most lovingly remem- 
 ber the student uncle, so interested in their pursuits, so 
 
170 MEMOIK. 
 
 encouraging, so playful.^ In him the solitary . nature 
 was strangely combined, or I might rather say alter- 
 nated, with the eminently social. When he did come 
 out of his own element of abstract thought, it was to 
 enter with genuine interest into the very slightest 
 concerns of others ; to set talk flowing with greater 
 spontaneity ; to bring out the best of every mind. He 
 came into a room where he felt himself welcome like 
 an influx of fresh air and light. Whoever he addressed 
 was conscious of a certain exhilaration and increased 
 freedom, for he, more than any person I have known, 
 " gave one leave to be one's-self " 
 
 But it may be asked. Why are not more of his own 
 letters quoted to illustrate his character better than the 
 words of another can 1 I do not know that there are 
 any of his early letters extant. At no time of his life 
 
 1 It is to one of these nieces that I owe the following lines of his, 
 which she tells me her uncle put into her hand as a kind of reply to 
 some theological discussion or other, which, with the self-assertion of 
 early youth, she had tried to force upon him : — 
 
 CHRISTIAN RESIGNATION. 
 
 There is a sweetness in the world's despair, 
 
 There is a rapture of serenity, 
 When severed quite from earthly hope or care. 
 
 The heart is free to suffer or to die. 
 
 The crown, the palm, of saints in Paradise, 
 My wearied spirit does not crave to win ; 
 
 Breathe— in Thy cup, Christ, of agonies — 
 Breathe Thy deep love, and let me drink therein. 
 
 To weep as Thou hast wept, I ask no more, 
 Be mine the sorroAvs that were known to Thee ; 
 
 To the bright heavens I have no strength to soar, 
 But I Avould find Thee on Thy Calvary. 
 
MEMOIR. 171 
 
 does he appear to have kept up a large or varied cor- 
 respondence, and he had an especial dislike to letters 
 of his being preserved or referred to. In more than 
 one case I know he entreated that they should be 
 destroyed, and (however reluctantly) his wish was 
 complied with. I think it proceeded from the same 
 quite abnormal sensitiveness, that made him shrink 
 not only from any allusion to his own books, but from 
 the very sight of them. Never was I able to keep a 
 volume of his writing on table or shelf for three days 
 together ! Silently they would be abstracted or pushed 
 into some dark recess. But as to his letters — though 
 naturally I am averse to extract from my own stores, 
 and I have no letters on general subjects to draw 
 from — I know from testimony as well as experience 
 that they were quite special in their simplicity and 
 natural grace. No one familiar with him could pos- 
 sibly have attributed his shortest note to any other 
 person. It was sure to bear some indefinable stamp 
 of his individuality. Here is a passage of his re- 
 garding the letters of Southey, most applicable to his 
 own : — 
 
 " The letters- as we advance through these volumes, 
 become more and more characterized by that consum- 
 mate ease and unstudied elegance which are the result 
 only of long practice in composition ; for the perfect 
 freedom and grace of the epistolary style may be 
 described as the spontaneous expression of one pre- 
 viously habituated to a choice selection of terms. It 
 requires this combination of present haste and past 
 study. The pen should run without a pause, without 
 an after-thought, and the page be left without a correc- 
 
172 MEMOIR. 
 
 tion ; but it must be the pen of one who in times past 
 has paused very long and corrected very often." 
 
 The influence of William Smith's foreign tours is 
 traceable in his contributions to Blackwood's Magazine 
 during the years 1846 and 1847. 'Mildred,' a tale 
 published in the latter year, the scene of which is laid 
 in Italy, contains some descriptions of the treasures of 
 the Vatican, which will, I think, be read with interest. 
 The extract following is taken from a conversation 
 between two who are in heart even more than friends, 
 while outwardly something less : — 
 
 " ' You are before the Amazon,' said Winston ; ' it is 
 the statue of all others which has most fascinated me. 
 I cannot understand why it should bear the name it 
 does. I suppose the learned in these matters have 
 their reasons : I have never inquired nor feel disposed 
 to inquire into them ; but I am sure the character of 
 the statue is not Amazonian. That attitude — the 
 right arm raised to draw aside the veil, the left hand 
 at its elbow steadying it — that beautiful countenance, 
 so full of sadness and of dignity — no, these cannot 
 belong to an Amazon.' 
 
 " ' To a woman,' said Mildred, ' it is allowed to be 
 indifferent on certain points of learning ; and in such 
 cases as this I certainly take advantage to the full 
 privilege of my sex. I care not what they call the 
 statue. It may have been called an Amazon by Greek 
 and Roman — it may have been so named by the artist 
 himself when he sent it home to his patron ; I look at 
 it as a creation standing between me and the mind of 
 the artist : and sure I am, that, bear- what name it may, 
 the sculptor has embodied here all that his soul had felt 
 
MEMOIR. 173 
 
 of the sweetness and power and dignity of woman. It 
 is a grander creation than any goddess I have seen; 
 has more of thought.' 
 
 " ' And as a consequence/ interposed Winston, ' more 
 of sadness, of unhappiness. How the mystery of life 
 seems to hang upon that pensive brow ! I used to 
 share an impression, which I believe is very general, 
 that the deep sorrow which comes of thought, the 
 reflective melancholy which results from pondering on 
 the bitter problem of life, was peculiar to the moderns. 
 This statue and others which I have lately seen have 
 convinced me that the sculptor of antiquity has occa- 
 sionally felt and expressed whatever could be extracted 
 from the mingled poetry of a Byron and a Goethe.' 
 
 '"It seems that the necessity of representing the gods 
 in the clear light of happiness and knowledge deprived 
 the Greek artist of one great source of sublimity. But 
 it is evident,' continued Mildred, ' that the mysterious, 
 with its attendant sorrow, was known also to him. 
 How could it be otherwise ? Oh ! what a beautiful 
 creation is this we stand before ! And what an art it 
 is which permits us to stand thus before a being 
 of this high order, and note all its noble passions ! 
 From the real life we should turn our eyes away, or 
 drop them abashed upon the ground. Here is more 
 than life, and we may look on it by the hour, and mark 
 its graceful sorrow, its queen-like beauty, and this over- 
 mastered grief which we may wonder at but dare not 
 pity.' 
 
 " They passed on to other statues. They paused 
 before the Menander sitting in his chair. ' The attitude,' 
 said she, ' is so noble that the chair becomes a throne. 
 
1 74 MEMOIR. 
 
 But still, how plainly it is intellectual power that sits 
 enthroned there ! The posture is imperial ; and yet 
 how evident that it is the empire of thought only that 
 he governs in ! And this little statue of Esculapius,' 
 she added, ' kept me a long while before it. The 
 healing sage — how faithfully is he represented ! "What 
 a sad benevolence — acquainted with pain — compelled 
 to inflict even in order to restore.' 
 
 " They passed through the Hall of the Muses. 
 
 " ' How serene are all the Muses ! ' said Winston. 
 ' This is as it should be. Even Tragedy, the most moved 
 of all, how evidently her emotion is one of thought, not 
 of passion ! Though she holds the dagger in her down- 
 dropt hand, how plainly we see that she has not used 
 it ! She has picked it up from the floor after the fatal 
 deed was perpetrated, and is musing on the terrible 
 catastrophe, and the still more terrible passions that 
 led to it.' 
 
 '' They passed through the Hall of the Animals^ but 
 this had comparatively little attraction for Mildred. 
 Her companion pointed out the bronze Centaur for her 
 admiration. 
 
 " ' You must break a Centaur in half,' said she, 
 ' before I can admire it. And if I am to look at a satyr, 
 pray let the goat's legs be hid in the bushes. I cannot 
 embrace in one conception these fragments of man and 
 brute. Come with me to the neighbouring gallery. I 
 wish to show you a Jupiter seated at the further end 
 of it, which made half a Pagan of me this morning as I 
 stood venerating it.' 
 
 " ' The head of your Jupiter,' said Winston, as they 
 approached it, ' is surpassed I think by more than one 
 
MEMOIK. 175 
 
 bust of the same god that we have already seen ; and 
 I find something of stiffness or rigidity in the figure ; 
 hut the impression it makes as a whole is very grand.' 
 
 " * It will grow wonderfully on you as you look at 
 it,' said Mildred. ' How well it typifies all that a 
 Pagan would conceive of the Supreme Euler of the 
 Skies, the controller of the powers of nature, the great 
 administrator of the world who has the Fates for his 
 council ! His power irresistible, but no pride in it, no 
 joy, no triumph. He is without passion. In his right 
 hand lies the thunder, but it reposes on his thigh ; and 
 his left hand rests calmly upon his tall sceptre sur- 
 mounted by an eagle. In his countenance there is the 
 tranquillity of unquestioned supremacy, but there is no 
 repose. There is care, a constant wakefulness. It is 
 the governor of a nature whose elements have never 
 known one moment's pause.' 
 
 "'I see it as you speak,' said Winston. He then 
 proposed that they should go together and look at the 
 Apollo, but Mildred excused herself. 
 
 " ' I have paid my devotions to the god,' she said, 
 ' this morning, when the eyes and the mind were fresh. 
 I would not willingly displace the impression that I 
 now carry away for one -which would be made on a 
 fatigued and jaded attention.' 
 
 '' ' Is it not god-like ?' 
 
 " ' Indeed it is. I was presumptuous enough to think 
 I knew the Apollo. A cast of the head esteemed to be 
 a very good one — my uncle had given me — I placed it 
 in my own room ; for a long time it was the first thing 
 that the light fell upon, or my eyes opened to in the 
 morning ; and in my attempt at crayons, I copied it I 
 
176 MEMOIR. 
 
 believe in every aspect. It seemed to me therefore 
 that in visiting the Apollo I should recognise an old 
 acquaintance. No such thing. The cast had given 
 me hardly any idea of the statue itself. There was 
 certainly no feeling of old acquaintanceship. The brow 
 as I stood in front of the god quite overawed me ; in- 
 voluntarily I retreated for an instant ; you will smile, 
 but I had to muster my courage before I could gaze 
 steadily at it.' 
 
 "'1 am not surprised ; the divinity there is in no 
 gentle mood. How majestic, and yet how lightly it 
 touches the earth ! It is buoyant with god-head.' 
 
 '' ' What strikes me/ continued Mildred, ' as the 
 great triumph of the artist, is this very anger of the 
 god. It is an anger which, like the arrow he has shot 
 from his bow, spends itself entirely upon its victim ; 
 there is no recoil, as in human passion, upon the mind 
 of him who feels it. There is no jar there. The 
 lightning strikes doivn — it tarries not a moment in the 
 sky above.'" 
 
 A complete and decisive change in William Smith's 
 manner of life was now drawing near. I may mention 
 an incident^ — supplied by Mr. Weigall — which must 
 have closely preceded it. " Soon before the Corn Laws 
 were repealed," writes Mr. Weigall, "William was urged 
 by John Stuart Mill to attend a meeting to aid the 
 advocates for repeal. The Honourable Mr. Villiers, Mr. 
 Mill, and William were the principal speakers, and 
 William was beyond doubt the most impressive of them 
 all. The Chartists at the time were getting rampant, 
 and were in screat force at that meetins:, both men and 
 
MEMOIR. 177 
 
 women. They had disapproved of almost every wisely 
 qualified utterance from Mr. Mill, but when William 
 opened his speech with a most happy and harmonious 
 sentence, the women about me said — ' Oh what a 
 beautiful speaker ! don't disturb him,' and for some 
 time they seemed delighted ; but when he began with 
 his prescient wisdom to caution them against expecting 
 too much from the repeal — that the effect of free-trade 
 in corn would be to equalize prices throughout Europe, 
 they began to howl him down — William stopped and 
 faced the turmoil boldly, and by a very stirring appeal 
 to their candour and sense of fair-play secured again 
 their good-will, and sat down, the great success of the 
 evening. From what I observed on that occasion," adds 
 Mr. Weigall, " I felt convinced that could WiUiam have 
 overcome his retiring habits he would have won dis- 
 tinction in public life." But the retiring habits were 
 just then on the point of decisively prevailing. 
 
 I do not know whether it was in 1848 or 1849 that 
 my husband acted upon a resolve that must have been 
 for some time gathering — the resolve of entirely relin- 
 quishing the pursuit of his profession, and devoting 
 himself to thinking and writing, in perfect solitude, 
 amidst the beautiful scenery of the English lakes. He 
 had made no way at the bar ; he was not likely to make 
 any — he had no legal connexions ; his heart was not in 
 his calling ; his sensitive nature shrank from collision 
 with purely personal aims and ambitions, from the 
 inevitable turmoil and dust of "Life's loud joyous 
 jostling game." He could not, with any hope of suc- 
 cess, compete on that arena. And, indeed, in addition 
 to other hindrances, his private fortune, seriously 
 
 M 
 
178 MEMOIR. 
 
 diminished by a loan to an unsuccessful relative (loan 
 which he in his refined generosity converted into a 
 gift), was no longer adequate to the expenses chambers 
 and circuit entailed on the briefless barrister. Then 
 there were other influences at work. The " love of 
 thinking for its own sake " was growing irresistible, 
 and was seconded not only by a " passionate thirst for 
 nature and beauty," but by that craving for solitude jf 
 which strangely underlay all his social charm, all his 
 enjoyment of society, which found such forcible expres- 
 sion in his earliest poems, and renders portions of 
 /Thorndale' so unutterably pathetic. Circumstances 
 and character alike now pointed one way. There is a 
 line of Browning's that sums it all up : Thenceforth 
 
 " This man decided not to Live, but Know." 
 My husband has often described to me his first plunge 
 into the new life. It was made at Bowness (on 
 Windermere), a quiet village in those days. There he 
 took a small lodging, where the sitting-room opened 
 into a garden, and for six months he never spoke to a 
 creature, except indeed the few words of necessity to 
 his landlady. It comforts one to remember what loving 
 letters from sisters and nieces must have varied that 
 solitude, as well as what high raptures Nature and 
 Thought bestowed upon their devotee. And then the 
 winters were always social. Some weeks would be 
 spent at the house of his brother-in-law, Mr. Weigall, 
 where there were clever nephews growing up and two 
 much-loved nieces, of whom bis sister has told me he 
 was " the idol and the oracle." Some would be plea- 
 santly passed at Bath or Brighton, where he had several 
 friends. 
 
MEMOIE. 179 
 
 In 1851 his still, secluded summer life was varied by 
 an incident that might have given a different direction 
 to all his future. One day the following letter from 
 Professor Wilson was delivered to him. Although it 
 is marked " strictly private and confidential," there can 
 be no indiscretion in giving it now and here : — 
 
 " My dear Str, — ^^Our excellent friend John Blackwood has 
 kindly undertaken to put this letter into your hand at Bowness, 
 or if not, to find your direction there and forward it to you. 
 My health has become very lately so precarious that I have 
 been interdicted by my medical adviser from lecturing this ensu- 
 ing session, and T can think of no man so qualified meanwhile 
 to discharge for me the duties of my Chair as yourself. I am 
 therefore most anxious, without delay, to see you here, when I 
 will explain fully to you what will be required from you. As 
 yet the matter is in my own hand, and I do not fear that, 
 though laborious, your duties will be agreeable. You will have 
 to give a course of lectures on Moral Philosophy to my class 
 during my leave of absence from College. It is absolutely- 
 necessary that you should be with me immediately for a day, 
 that you may empower me to say that I can depend on you, 
 for not a word can I utter publicly or privately without a per- 
 fect understanding with you. I shall therefore be looking for 
 you in return to this, and be most happy to receive you iu my 
 house on your arrival. — Yours, with all esteem, 
 
 " John Wilson. 
 
 " 6 Gloucester Place, Edikburgh, 
 Sept. 2Wi, 1851." 
 
 Here seemed an opening every way congenial, for 
 William had, as we have seen, a great respect for Scotch 
 philosophy, and looked upon the duties of a Chair in a 
 Scotch University as most honourable and useful. He 
 has told me that he asked for two hours of deliberation, 
 and carried the matter out, to be revolved and decided 
 in the course of his morning's walk. He decided to 
 
180 MEMOIR. 
 
 decline. Swayed by some scruples (how needless !) as 
 to his fitness, possibly by some other scruples — for he 
 was too truthful ever to profess certainty where he was 
 conscious of doubt, — swayed, perhaps, by the spell of 
 the mountains and the life of unfettered thought, by 
 the " spell of the desk," on which already lay the early 
 pages of ' Thorndale.' At all events he did decline, nor 
 have I ever heard him express a regret that he did so. 
 I gain a glimpse of him at this time from a letter of 
 Mr. Blackwood's, written to me after I lost him : — " I 
 remember going up to the Lakes a great many years 
 ago, and finding him all alone at Bowness. It made 
 me sad to leave him so solitary, as I felt that his fine 
 sensitive nature required some one ever nigh who 
 could sympathize with him." 
 
 In the May of 1852 a heavy blow fell upon William 
 Smith. His favourite brother Theyre, at that time 
 rector of Wymondham, in Norfolk, died suddenly and 
 prematurely. Thenceforth Brighton, where Mrs. 
 Theyre Smith and her children made their home, be- 
 came a centre of tenderer interest to William, and his 
 constant winter resort. 
 
 It was in the same year that my husband exchanged 
 Windermere for Keswick Lake, the lovely Derwent- 
 water, afterwards so dear to us both. There the 
 summer solitude was less unbroken than heretofore. 
 He was introduced by an early friend, who had left 
 the Bar for the Church (the Eev. J. H. Smith, of 
 Leamington), to Dr. Lietch, a physician who had been 
 led by ill-health to give up practice in a large town, 
 and benefit a then comparatively retired district by his 
 active and enlightened benevolence. How refreshing 
 
MEMOIE. 181 
 
 the society of each to the other appears from a letter 
 written to me by Dr. Lietch in the October of 1872 : — 
 
 "In 1852, '53, and '54, when your husband was at work on 
 ' Thorndale,' I saw much of him ; the old felled spruce tree, 
 converted into a rude seat on the hiU of Faw Park, is still, or 
 was last year, in existence, on which we often sat and talked of 
 many things, which when 'Thorndale' was published and sent to 
 me'by him, were vividly recalled to me. At that time there was 
 something of Clarence in him, something (at times much) of 
 Cjrril, occasionally gloomy flashes of Seckendorf, and frequently 
 '- the perfect tranquillity with which the poet would admit, on 
 some most momentous subjects, his profound ignorance.' The 
 ' wistful perpetual argument ' which was his life was then 
 going on with incessant energy, and was more visible to me 
 then than during the last twelve or fifteen years of his life, 
 when I saw less of him, and when, indeed, your presence and 
 love had silenced many conflicts, and reconciled him to many 
 doubts and difficulties in this incomprehensible world." 
 
 Several summers had now been spent at Portinscale, 
 a pretty hamlet within a short walk of Dr. and Mrs. 
 Lietch's cheerful and kindly home; but in 1856 an 
 attractive row of new lodging-houses, and the close 
 vicinity of the very excellent library that the town of 
 Keswick possesses, induced William Smith to move to 
 3 Derwentwater Place. And there, in a light, pleasant, 
 three- win do wed room, with peeps of lake and moun- 
 tains, 'Thorndale' was getting finished. I transcribe a 
 passage from an article on Landor, written in 1853, 
 which appears to me interesting as virtually a criticism 
 and a justification from the pen of the author of the 
 form his own book in great measure assumed : — 
 
 '' The dialogue, as we have intimated, has lost ground 
 amongst us as a form of composition, and there are 
 other reasons than the caprice of fashion or the love of 
 
182 MEMOIR. 
 
 change for this general distaste towards it. In an age 
 where many books are to be read, we like to come at 
 once and rapidly to the gist of the matter ; we wish to 
 be led straightway to the conclusion we are finally to 
 rest in. We have little time to spare, and cannot 
 afford to be bandied about from one speaker to another. 
 Why this circuitous path, when we might have gone in 
 a direct road from one point to the other 1 Why this 
 zigzag, this tacking about, as if we were for ever under 
 contrary winds 1 Or let it be the line of beauty itself 
 we are illustrating, why these undulations here when 
 we have our wicket-gate before us, and might reach it 
 by a straight and level path 1 It is still worse when 
 there is no wicket-gate to enter, no final conclusion to 
 rest in, and a dialogue replete with thought and dis- 
 cussion proves to be written with a dramatic rather 
 than a didactic purpose. Art for the sake of art, where 
 the province is speculative truth, becomes a rather 
 questionable matter. Earnest-minded men like to see 
 clearly where it is that the author himself is earnest 
 and sincere — where it is that he really intends to work 
 upon their conviction, and where he is merely exercis- 
 ing his ingenuity to give pleasure or create surprise. 
 
 " We note these objections to the dialogue, without, 
 however, entirely acquiescing in them. If this form of 
 composition may be sometimes wearisome or vexatious 
 to the reader, it may be all but necessary to the writer. 
 That very incertitude and fluctuation which it admits 
 of may be inseparable from minds whose thoughts and 
 reflections we would nevertheless willingly listen to. 
 Men of this temper could not write at all if they might 
 not draw something of a mask or a veil between them- 
 
MEMOIR. 183 
 
 selves and the public. If it is troublesome to the 
 active impatient man to be bandied about, or partially 
 mystified by dramatic inventions, it may be infinitely 
 to the ease of the writer to adopt some form of com- 
 position which does not rigidly compromise him, which 
 gives a certain scope for oscillation, which permits him 
 to say what seemed truth yesterday, though he already 
 suspects that it will not wear exactly the same appear- 
 ance to-morrow. There are men who grow bold only 
 when they speak in the name or the person of another ; 
 they could not utter the ' last word' of the problem if 
 in their own persons they must pledge themselves for 
 ever to their own solution. They see much of the 
 subject, much of its difficulties ; they have something 
 withal to say which is worth our hearing ; but they 
 doubt if they are in possession of the whole truth. 
 Well, we must permit them some device, some fiction, 
 some dramatic form which will give them liberty of 
 speech, which will sanction half-truths and partial con- 
 tradictions. We must not tender the oath and the 
 book to all our witnesses. We shall get more truth 
 from some by diminishing the weight of responsibility. 
 Not to add to all this that there are readers also of 
 kindred minds who more frequently find themselves in 
 the attitude of unpledged contemplation than of direct 
 search for truth, or strenuous advocacy of opinions." 
 
 It was in the August of 1856 that William Smith 
 and his future wife first became acquainted. My be- 
 loved mother — at that time a complete invalid — a little 
 niece of mine who then lived with us, and I, had been 
 spending the early summer in Borrowdale, and we too, 
 attracted by the new and cheerful row of lodging- 
 
184 MEMOIR. 
 
 houses, now took up our abode at 3 Derwentwater 
 Place. The solitary student, to whom I confess I not 
 a little grudged the drawing-room floor, soon sent to 
 jDroffer one request — that the little girl would not 
 practise her scales, etc., during the morning hours. 
 Now and then we used to pass him in our walks, but 
 he evidently never so much as saw us. There was 
 something quite unusual in the rapt abstraction of his 
 air, the floating lightness of his step ; one could not 
 help wondering a little who and what he was, but for 
 several weeks nothing seemed more entirely unlikely 
 than our becoming acquainted. 
 
 The lodging-house that we all occupied was kept by 
 a mother and two daughters, who had had a reverse of 
 fortune, and to whom this way of life was new. We 
 were their first tenants. One of the daughters espe- 
 cially was well educated and interesting. To her I gave 
 a copy of Grillparzer's ' Sappho,' which I had recently 
 translated. I knew she would value it a little for my 
 sake, but it never occurred to me that she would take 
 it to the recluse in the drawing-room. She did so 
 however. Piles of manuscript on his desk had con- 
 vinced her that he was " an author,'' and it amused her 
 to show him the little production of one of the other 
 lodgers ! Perhaps he may have thought that she did 
 this at my request, perhaps his kindliness disposed him 
 to help by a hint or two some humble literary aspirant 
 — for always he was kind— at all events the very next 
 day he sent down a message proposing to call, and on 
 the 21st of August there came a knock at our sitting- 
 room door ; the rapid entrance of a slight figure, some 
 spell of simplicity and candour in voice and manner 
 
MEMOIE. 185 
 
 that at once gave a sense of freedom, and the give-and- 
 take of easy talk — beginning with comments on the 
 translation in his hand — had already ranged far and wide 
 before he rose and, lightly bowing, left the room.^ I 
 thought him absolutely unlike any one I had ever met ; 
 singularly pleasant in all he said ; even more singularly 
 encouraging and gracious in his way of listening. He 
 pointed out a passage in the translated play that had 
 particularly taken his fancy : — 
 
 " Like to the little noiseless garden snail, 
 At once the home and dweller in the home ; 
 Still ready — at the very slightest sound — 
 Frightened, to draw within itself again ; 
 Still turning tender feelers all around, 
 And slow to venture forth on surface new ; 
 Yet clinging closely if it cling at all, 
 And ne'er its hold relaxing — but in death." 
 
 I have transcribed the lines because, in after days, he 
 was much given playfully to designate himself " The 
 Snail." At the close of this first call I well remember 
 that my mother, who had been reclining the while in 
 an adjoining room, exclaimed : '' What could you find 
 to talk about so long, my dear] one might have 
 thought you had known each other for years ! " That 
 was it ! To certain natures William Smith, from the 
 first moment of meeting, could never seem a stranger ! 
 The call was soon repeated, and afterwards he came 
 
 1 One little observation of Ms clung to my memory, returns to it 
 very often in my present loneliness — is it too trivial to record ? Dis- 
 cussing the building instinct in insect and bird, and their variety of 
 dwellings, he said, "The primary condition of the home is that there 
 should be two." 
 
186 MEMOIK. 
 
 three times in the evening, as then my mother was 
 able to see him. She was at once impressed with his 
 charm : " How could you call him plain, my dear 1 he 
 has one of the most delightful countenances I have 
 ever seen ! " The dear mother ! herself a sufferer and 
 grievously depressed for two years past, it was not 
 frequent at that time to hear her express delight ; but 
 she was delighted with him ! He afterwards told me 
 that just then he was " positively starving for con- 
 versation." Hence, perhaps, his effervescence, and 
 abandon. On one of these pleasant evenings he 
 read us some of ' Sartor Resartus.' He gave me a 
 copy of his dramas, and the day we left Keswick (just 
 a fortnight after our first meeting) he took me to see 
 his favourite view of the Lake ; and we talked with 
 the perfect unreserve of those who hold themselves 
 little likely ever to meet again. He spoke much of 
 his mother, of his happy home with her, his sense of 
 isolation since he had lost her ; spoke, also, a little of 
 his literary work and religious opinions. I, on my 
 side, told him of my family circumstances, in which, 
 too, there was sadness and struggle. He frankly said 
 he was sorry we were leaving ; I did not say to any 
 one, not even to myself, how sorry I was to go ! A 
 short note or two were interchanged, then came a 
 longer letter telling me of the projected departure for 
 Australia of Mr. and Mrs. Weigall and their daughters, 
 of whom he was especially fond, and "whose house 
 afforded him a refuge to which he occasionally fled 
 from this Avandering, solitary life." No wonder that 
 he added, " To me this is no little affliction, though 
 they write in good spirits ; " and, " I think you will 
 
MEMOIR. ' ■ 187 
 
 have a little compassion for me." From that time the 
 letters grew longer. We planned a meeting at Patter- 
 dale in the ensuing spring, and thither he duly went. 
 My mother, however, preferred the prospect of an Irish 
 tour ; and I, whose chief solicitude then was the state 
 of her health, never let her find out till long after the 
 touch of disappointment I could not help feeling at 
 being unable to keep tryst. 
 
 I will give a few passages from some of these early 
 letters which chanced to get preserved when, at his 
 earnest request, I burnt the correspondence of the two 
 years that intervened between our first and second 
 meeting. But the extracts no more show the charm 
 of the letters than pulled-out petals the beauty of a 
 flower. The first gives a glimpse of his lonely life : — 
 
 " That other book you alluded to we should agree upon, I am 
 sure. I think there are passages in Charlotte Bronte's letters 
 which beat all the letters I have ever read. And what a 
 picture ! what a family group at the little rectory ! . . . How 
 thoroughly I could sympathize with some of these letters in 
 which she describes her own solitude. How many hours have I 
 passed in the evening with the candle put in some corner of the 
 room, because my eyes could no longer bear the light, pacing 
 up and down, and looking out at the clouds — if fortunately 
 there were any clouds to be seen. I have rarely been more 
 interested in any book than this." 
 
 Here is his account of ' Thorndale,' which was then 
 on the point of publication : — 
 
 " The book — the libretto as I modestly style it — is being 
 printed, but it goes on very slowly. It will be only one volume, 
 much such a volume as one of the new edition of Professor 
 Wilson's works. The title is to be 'Thorndale,' or 'Thornd ale's 
 Diary,' — the last title will tell you what sort of work it is. 
 
188 MEMOIR. 
 
 Not a novel." But a diary admits tlie intermixture of some in- 
 cidents with reflection. It closes with a sort of Confession of 
 Faith, or view of human progress, which is a sort of continuous 
 essay. Some will perhaps read up to this, and then drop the 
 book ; others would be satisfied with reading this last part, 
 and leaving the rest alone. I am not at all sanguine about its 
 success — I never have succeeded in anything, — but one must 
 put forth what there is in one's mind, be it much or little. T was 
 quite in earnest when I said that I should like to have a lady 
 critic at my elbow ; because it is on matters of taste, style, bits 
 of verse, etc., that I should particularly want to consult another. 
 And as to graver matters, although there are some few men 
 whose opinion would be invaluable, they are very few, and quite 
 inaccessible. Even on these I would rather have the impressions 
 of an intelligent woman than the ' average man,' who is not at 
 all impressible, and who is certainly not a whit wiser, or more 
 disciplined or trained to thinking." 
 
 The following extract 1 give because the views it 
 expresses about India were held by him to the end, 
 and put out in the last article he ever wrote : — 
 
 " Yes! this terrible revolt in India must occupy aU thoughts. 
 It occupies mine a good deal, but to very little purpose. I see 
 that the national revenge of England must have its course. 
 But our Indian Empire has never been a great favourite of 
 mine. I always looked at it as leading to much benefit, in one 
 way or the other, to India itself, but as having little to do with 
 the real power and prosperity of England, I myself revolt at 
 the scheme, put forth by some writers in the Times, of govern- 
 ing India entirely by foreign troops, presuming this were 
 possible. If the English power is not really educating Indians, 
 so that they will assume one day an independent and permanent 
 position amongst the nations, I really see no justification what- 
 ever for our conquests." 
 
 It was in the autumn of 1857 that 'Thorndale' 
 appeared. On my return from the Irish tour, by which 
 my dear mother's health had marvellously benefited, 
 
MEMOIR. 189 
 
 I well remember going into an Edinburgh library in 
 quest of some other book, and having ' Thorndale ' re- 
 commended me by the librarian as a very remarkable 
 work indeed. Before long the author sent me a copy, 
 but I glanced over it merely; I did not read it for 
 some months. My way of religious thinking, perhaps 
 I should rather say of feeling, led me to shrink from 
 any disturbing influence. 
 
 It was never an easy matter to convince William 
 Smith of his own success. But if favourable, often 
 enthusiastic, and always unbiassed criticism (for he 
 belonged to no literary clique or mutual admiration 
 society whatever), could afl'ord a test, then ' Thorndale ' 
 was decidedly successful. In reference to this I will 
 here quote a passage from an article on ' Gravenhurst ' 
 by M. Milsand, which appeared some years later in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes : — 
 
 "Je relisais demi^rement un extrait des jugemens 
 port^s par la presse sur I'avant-dernier ouvrage de 
 M. Smith : Thorndale, ou le Conflit des Opinions. 
 J'^tais frapp6 du ton de tous ces jugemens. Les 
 appreciations des juges ne s'accordaient pas. ' On 
 respire partout,' disait I'un, Mes sentimens 6lev6s du 
 gentilhomme et du chr6tien ; ' * I'auteur,' disait I'autre, 
 ' est un esprit si d6licatement 6quilibr6, qu'il pent peser 
 avec une egale justesse les opinions les plus oppos^es; en 
 somme, c'est une intelligence singulierement sceptique 
 et impartiale.' Mais a travers ces dissidences d'opinions 
 on sentait chez les divers critiques la meme impression 
 d'attrait, je dirais volontiers d'allechement. Les uns et 
 les autres avaient ^t6 6videmment gagn6s ; ils s'accor- 
 daient a repr^senter le livre comme une oeuvre qui 
 
190 MEMOIR. 
 
 demandait a etre savour6e a loisir, qui devait avoir 6t6 
 ecrite lentement, ecrite plutot par intermittence et aux 
 heures favorables, tant elle renfermait de delicieuses 
 pens6es, et tant les pensees avaient la fraicheur, et 
 comme le duvet du premier moment." 
 
 In a note of Mr. J. S. Mill's — one of the few to 
 whom my liusband wished a copy sent, — ' Thorndale ' 
 is spoken of as follows : — 
 
 " I had already read the book with great interest. As is the 
 case with everything of yours that I have read, it seemed to me 
 full of true thought aptly expressed, and, though not resolving 
 many questions, a valuable contribution to the floating elements 
 out of which the future moral and intellectual synthesis will 
 have to shape itself. I have been much pleased, both on your 
 account and that of the book itself, at the decided success it 
 has met with." 
 
 My husband's contributions to BlackwoocVs 
 were suspended from the April of 1856 to the January 
 of 1858, when he wrote a notice of a translation I 
 had made of Frey tag's ' Debit and Credit.' His kindly 
 encouragement was a support to me in every little 
 effort of the sort, and during the ensuing spring our 
 letters were very frequent. We told each other all our 
 interests, and also all our discouragements and diffi- 
 culties. I well recollect his pleasantly contrasting our 
 lives in some such words as these : " You are in a good 
 roomy boat, rowing hard, but with others around you ; 
 whilst I am bobbing up and down on the waves alone, 
 with only a life-belt to trust to." Certainly a habit of 
 confidence had been very firmly established when, on 
 the 14th of July 1858, we met again at Patterdale, and 
 yet neither had. quite distinct or correct impressions of 
 
MEMOIE. 191 
 
 the other. William often told me he could never 
 identify the Ii*atterdale companion with the Keswick 
 acquaintance. Nor was I prepared for all I found in 
 him. By this time I had indeed read ' Thorndale/ and 
 had felt its pathos as keenly as its beauty. In the let- 
 ters I had been accustomed to receive there was almost 
 always an undertone of sadness ; but, to my surprise, 
 their writer was cheerful beyond any one I knew, or, at 
 least, cheerful with a kind of cheerfulness I had never 
 known — something akin to morning sunlight — the 
 soaring song of larks — the sportiveness of young wood- 
 land creatures. I cannot describe it, but it effaced for 
 me all memories of care and disappointment ; it made the 
 whole world new. Neither was he any longer inclined to 
 be solitary. From the day of our first cordial meeting 
 to that of my mother's and my departure we invariably 
 took long walks, morning and evening, let the weather 
 be what it would. When it was fine, we sought out 
 some exquisite shade of birch-trees on high ground, with 
 peeps of UUeswater through the branches, or a mossy 
 knoll overhanging a " lake-like bend of river," or a 
 sequestered grass walk beside a most joyous brook, and 
 in such scenes as these he would read to me by the 
 hour,^ or I, in my turn, would repeat poetry to him. 
 When it was wet we put up with any shelter we could 
 find, or talked and laughed very gaily under our 
 umbrellas. We were not, however, always gay. The 
 
 1 To those who knew William Smith, it is unnecessary to dwell 
 upon the charm of his reading. His voice was singularly flexible, 
 varied, and, above all, pathetic. He himself had an idea that he 
 succeeded best with comic su.bjects, and many delighted especially in 
 hearing him read Dickens, Sterne, etc. Yet I always grudged the 
 voice to anything but poetry of a high order. 
 
192 MEMOIR. 
 
 burden of loneliness was far more painful to him at this 
 time than when he first resolved to endure it. In one 
 of our early walks I can recall his suddenly bursting 
 out, — " I have come to envy any room in which there 
 are two chairs ! " And we knew that the days of our 
 present happiness were numbered, and we did not then 
 imagine that it could by any possibility be rendered 
 permanent ! To both the future seemed dark. But 
 before the close of those six summer weeks out of their 
 happiness a tie had been woven, strong enough to dis- 
 pense with any definite hope, to endure through what- 
 ever dividing circumstances or differing opinions ; and 
 fourteen years later, when the last parting was drawing 
 very near, he could still smile as he said, " Patterdale 
 was our Idyll." 
 
 Henceforth the constant letters took a different tone. 
 But the new letters went to the old address, for, after 
 we left, he soon returned to Keswick, and w^as occupied 
 in preparing the second edition of ' Thorndale.' In the 
 winter he came to Edinburgh for some weeks — came 
 after much irresolution, and with many scruples, such 
 as will easily be imagined in a nature so fastidiously 
 honourable, so purely unselfish as his. On my part 
 there were no scruples. In heart and soul, through 
 life to death, I knew that I was his. Poverty might 
 indeed preclude much, but that nothing could alter, andy 
 to be the chosen and the dearest friend of such a one )** ,-,,/' 
 as he, seemed to me, and, what is more remarkable, } 
 
 seemed to my most fond and partial mother, a high if 
 not altogether a happy destiny. I may here quote 
 a passage from a review by him of Gray's Letters 
 (written four years before the time I am speaking of), 
 
 h^ kr fc^ t(>^^ fe-U -KvtW^ ^^^SU^SO . 
 
 
MEMOIR. 193 
 
 because it was verified in the life of both of us : — 
 
 " How grossly do we err, indeed, when we think that 
 
 youth is the especial or exclusive season of friendship,, 
 
 or even of love ! In the experience of many it has i / 
 
 been found that the want of the heart, the thirst for / / ^X-v 
 
 affection, has been felt far more in manhood than in (J 
 
 early years." 
 
 The six weeks spent in Edinburgh were for him 
 social, cheerful weeks. For the first time I saw him in 
 society. In a gathering of strangers he would often 
 sit silent ; and I noticed, with some amusement, how 
 any complimentary allusion to his book would em- 
 barrass him, and make him look round for a way of 
 escape. Perhaps this may have led to his being called 
 a shy man. I never thought the epithet descriptive. 
 He chose to retire, was more swift to hear than to speak, 
 preferred learning from others to setting them right, 
 and was very sensitive to differences of social atmo- 
 sphere. But when that atmosphere was congenial, he 
 was more completely frank, and more invariably elicited 
 frankness from others than sufferers from shyness can.^ 
 During his stay in Edinburgh we were of course much 
 together, and my dear father now learnt in a measure 
 to know him. I say " in a measure," for he, alas ! was 
 blind, and could not see the animated face, the smile 
 which was as it were the key to the whole man ; so that » 
 to those who never saw it I despair of conveying the 
 secret of his personal influence. 
 
 ^ I recollect Dr. Robert Chambers, at whose house William once 
 dined, observing to me, after some humorous lamentations about the 
 universality of the name of Smith, that he had " never seen a man 
 whom he could so soon love." Dr. Chambers could not have sus- 
 pected the interest I felt in hearing him say so. 
 
 N 
 
194. MEMOIR. 
 
 We could not now consent to long separations ; the 
 summers we might at least contrive to spend together, 
 and therefore, breaking through the habit of years, 
 William Smith forsook his dear Lake country, and in 
 the May of 1859 we met at Dunkeld. During this 
 summer a fervent protest of his against the explana- 
 tion given by Dr. Mansel of ' The Limits of Eeligious 
 Thought' appeared in Blachoood's Magazine, and he 
 was occupied in writing a review of Sir W. Hamilton's 
 ' Lectures on Metaphysics.' Our talks now more fre- 
 quently took an abstract character. He woidd lead me 
 into his own favourite sphere of philosophical thought, 'f 
 and, untrained as my mind was, any receptivity it had 
 lay in that direction. On other points, too, I could 
 not but be insensibly modified by his companionship. \ 
 But never was man more tender and reverent to the 
 convictions of others ! The following passage, written 
 by him in 1861, with regard to the spirit evinced 
 by M. Eenan in one of his early works, exactly por- 
 trays his own habit of feeling and acting in these 
 matters : — 
 
 " No man is more ready to admit that, whatever 
 his own opinions may be, those opinions are as nothing 
 when weighed against the manifest wants, tendencies, 
 and aspirations of mankind. He knows that the atti- 
 tude of mind of the incessant inquirer after truth, by 
 which the philosopher is supposed to be distinguished, 
 can belong only to a few. While claiming freedom for 
 such inquirers, he has no expectation and no wish that 
 they should take the place of teachers of the multitude. 
 They could not give to that multitude their own 
 thoughtfulness ; they would give their doubts, but not 
 
MEMOIR. 195 
 
 that spirit of inquiry which invests doubt itself with 
 sacredness." . . . And again : — 
 
 "Not his the presumption that would project his 
 
 own mind as a type for all others He would 
 
 not intentionally weaken the foundation on which the 
 morality of more simple-minded or more imaginative 
 men than himself is seen to rest ; but the gradual per- 
 meating influence of a truth once spoken he has no 
 wish, no power to arrest. This he believes must be 
 ultimately beneficent." 
 
 During the four months spent at Dunkeld we saw 
 more of each other than at Patterdale ; for now, in 
 addition to the two long walks, the evenings were 
 always spent together; and when we parted, on the 
 1 6th of September, he soon to make his way back to 
 Keswick, — of all the improbabilities that occupied our 
 minds none were so out of the question as our being 
 separated for long. There was an autumn meeting 
 at Keswick, a winter meeting in London, and the 
 3d of May 1860 found him and me and my dear 
 mother comfortably installed as joint-tenants of Mount 
 Hazel, a farm-house in Carnarvonshire, not far from 
 the coast. 
 
 For some months past William's mind had been 
 occupied with the idea of another book, and on one of 
 those May-days I was called into his study to listen to 
 the introductory chapter of ' Gravenhurst.' But although 
 he only wrote two short papers for the Magazine, the 
 book did not get on very fast during the happy time 
 spent, first at Mount Hazel, and then at Llanberris. 
 Our mountain walks were so long, and we were so 
 much together. Nothing, indeed, was materially 
 
196 MEMOIR, 
 
 changed iu our outward position, but obstacles weighed 
 less upon our spirits than they had done at Dunkeld ; 
 we succeeded better, at all events, in pushing them out 
 of sight ; and the nearly five months of constant com- 
 panionship had brought about a still more complete 
 sympathy. For under his influence I could not but 
 grow a little wiser and worthier. Parting was a great 
 pain, but this time I think he felt it even more than I ! 
 A week later we met at the house of a dear friend, and 
 by the middle of December — I hardly know how — we 
 discovered that, as he phrased it, " the impossible had 
 become possible," and that we must "live and work 
 together." I will give two grave passages from the 
 pile of joyous letters between the 14th of December 
 and our marriage : — 
 
 " And so my dear bird was a Httle serious, a httle sad. We 
 should both be very shallow people if we were not a little 
 serious. I make very serious vows to myself. I do hope that 
 you shall never have cause for any other sadness than what 
 comes inevitably to us all. I will ' love her, comfort her, and 
 honour her.' I should often repeat to myself those lines — 
 
 * No more companionless 
 Although he trod the path of high intent,' 
 
 if I did not feel that there was a certain presumption in my 
 talking of ' the paths of high intent.' Yet, although with little 
 success, and very little power, I have always put before myself 
 a high aim in my studies and my writings. And I should like 
 to die stiU striving, though I get no higher than to strive," . . . 
 
 And this, in answer to words of mine disclaiming 
 any presumptuous wish to change " the nature of my 
 thinker's thoughts :" — 
 
 "Since I wrote, another letter came from Edinburgh, for 
 
MEMOIR. 197 
 
 wliicli I ought to thank you still more. It gave me re-assur- 
 ance that my dear bird and I shall always be en rapport. 
 
 ' I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not honour more,' — 
 
 so runs some knightly rhyme. I, who am no knight, must sub- 
 stitute the word truth for honour, though it mars the verse." 
 
 In the February of 1861 I left Edinburgh, taking 
 with me, for my only portion, my parents' blessing. 
 We were married on the 5th of March, at St. John's 
 Church, Notting Hill, from the house of a most dear 
 friend, the one, perhaps, to whose noble and tender 
 nature the kindred nature of my husband most entirely 
 responded. Other friends, friends of childhood, of 
 girlhood, friends of a lifetime, gathered round us. 
 They almost all came from a distance, and many of 
 them met again on this occasion who had not met for 
 years. One of them — my sister in heart — described ff 
 thus the impression William made upon her : — " Lucy, j 
 I should like to teU him everything that ever happened V^ 
 me ! " All were at once completely at home with him. 
 It was a happy beginning of a great happiness ! 
 
 We spent some weeks at Hastings and at Brighton ; 
 then settled ourselves for the summer at Tent Cottage 
 (near Coniston), — a green nest, with tall trees round, 
 that my beloved mother shared with us. There is a 
 line of my husband's that often recurs to my mind : — 
 
 " It takes so little to make Earth a Heaven." 
 
 Of worldly goods, so very little ! Were I to name the 
 income that procured for us the ideal of both I should 
 excite in some a smile of incredulity. But it is literally 
 true that from first to last we were never conscious of a 
 
198 MEMOIE. 
 
 privation — never perturbed by care. Whatever our in- 
 come, we always contrived to have it in advance, and it 
 was one of the peculiarities of my husband's character to 
 be equally prudent and generous, a combination that 
 much in my former life had taught me to prize. But 
 indeed all that life now seemed to me requisite training 
 for such "measureless content" as mine. I had had 
 perplexity enough to enhance the rest of reliance on a 
 perfectly sound judgment; buffeting enough to make 
 me habitually alive to a justice and tenderness that 
 never failed. 
 
 It was during this summer that he wrote down, on 
 the inside of an old envelope, the following lines — 
 an answer, I imagine, to some conventional prompting 
 of which I must have been guilty. They are so char- 
 acteristic that I give them : — 
 
 " Oh vex me not witli needless cry / 
 
 Of what the world may think or claim ; 
 Let the sweet life pass sweetly by 
 
 The same, the same, and every day the same. 
 
 Thee, Nature, Thought — that burns in me 
 
 A living and consuming flame — 
 These must suffice ; let the life be 
 
 The same, the same, and evermore the same. 
 
 Here find I taskwork, here society — 
 
 Thou art my gold, thou art my fame ; 
 Let the sweet life pass sweetly by. 
 
 The same, the same, and every day the same." 
 
 The "sweet life" was not disturbed during the 
 remainder of the year, but we changed its scene to 
 Keswick — to the house where we had first met five 
 years before, — and then to Brighton. During the 
 
MEMOIE. 199 
 
 summer William had written several articles, — one for 
 the British Quarterly (of which his friend Dr. Yaughan 
 was then editor), on the poems of Mrs. Browning — 
 poems so dear to us both that her death that summer 
 seemed to bring personal loss and pain. While the 
 winter sped on at Brighton, ' Gravenhurst' grew rapidly. 
 William wrote it undisturbed by my presence — a great 
 triumph to me — I sitting the while at another table 
 writing too. For through the kindness of Mr. Strahan 
 — most enterprising and liberal of publishers — I had 
 for several years a good deal of translation to do. This 
 was one of the finishing touches to the completeness of 
 our life. Not to speak of my pleasure in contributing 
 to our income, I delighted in compulsory occupation, 
 and to see me busy over my manuscript gave my hus- 
 band a more comfortable sense of security from casual 
 remarks than he would have had if I had only been 
 working or reading. Then, when the pen was thrown 
 down, both enjoyed the walk all the more thoroughly, 
 the more childishly — in both there was much of the 
 child. 
 
 '"" In the May of 1862 * Gravenhurst' was published, and 
 we went to Switzerland for five months, dividing the 
 time between Bex, Zermatt, Sixt, Chamounix, and 
 Unterseen. It was our custom to settle down quietly 
 at one place after another, to get its loveliness by heart, 
 and to be free from that ruffling of equanimity bad 
 weather may entail on the rapid tourist. Our fortnight 
 at Zermatt stands out very prominently in my memory. 
 The keen air and the kind of scenery exhilarated my 
 husband to the utmost. In a manuscript book of his 
 I find, very hastily jotted down : — " Two short, long 
 
200 MEMOIR. 
 
 weeks and all my future — such is your share, Zermatt, 
 of my life. Nowhere the torrents so grand, the snow- 
 hills more beautifully set. I cannot describe the scene 
 on the Gorner Grat — but I recur to it and keep it 
 alive. All pleasure — flowers, the English hare-bell, looks 
 up from my ankle, the white Pinguicula (as if dropt 
 from the skies upon its stalk, on which it rests rather 
 than grows), shy as the violet and more delicate. You 
 look up from the flower and down into the ravine. I 
 tremble as I look below — one false step and all the 
 beauty is gone for ever, gone for me ! And see, the 
 torrent-stream is so safe, just here is its low bed 
 scooped in the solid rock; it is so distant, as to seem 
 quite silent. And then the village, and the cows, and 
 the goats, and the church, and the bells ; a great deal 
 of the praying here seems done by the bells — and not 
 badly." 
 
 What rapturous memories of our long walks those 
 few words waken ! At Zermatt, too, we made an in- 
 teresting and enduring friendship. We were there 
 early in June, and the Hotel du Mont Cervin had only 
 two other inmates, a young husband and wife, and 
 their sweet child of three. The visitors' book gave 
 their names ; they were New-Englanders. We never 
 thought it worth while to record ours, and hence in the 
 course of two or three days Mr. Loomis, who discerned 
 something remarkable about the man, asked William 
 what his was. " The commonest of all English names, 
 — William Smith." " Yes ; but I like it for the sake 
 of a favourite author." And then I broke in, inquiring, 
 with a strong presentiment what the answer would be, 
 which of the numberless Smiths he alluded to 1 " The 
 
MEMOIE. 201 
 
 author of * Thomdale.' " It was a great pleasure to 
 me to say, " This is he." Mr. Loomis had with him 
 the American edition of the book, which my husband 
 saw with interest. So began a friendship and corre- 
 spondence that were kept up to the last. 
 
 We had had some vague idea of spending the winter in 
 Switzerland, but the illness of my dear father recalled us. 
 The winter was spent at Weston-super-Mare, where we 
 knew no one — where, from the 14th of October to the 
 17th of February we only spoke to each other; and 
 never were we more cheerful than under these circum- 
 stances. The place itself had not much interest — 
 country and sea were alike tame; but the beautiful 
 sunsets in front of our large window were a constant 
 source of pleasure, and we had Switzerland to re- 
 member. But, indeed, however ecstatic my husband's 
 enjoyment of Swiss glories, it was far less exceptional 
 than his unfailing delight in the familiar shows of earth 
 and sky. It never was more true than of him that 
 
 "The poet hath the child's sight in his breast, ^ . 
 
 And sees all new. What oftenest he has viewed, * j 
 He views with the first glory. ''^ 
 
 As usual, during these peaceful months William was 
 thoroughly occupied, not only in writing for the Maga- 
 zine, but with psychological subjects. In the manuscript 
 book that at that time lay upon his desk, I find much 
 jotted down under the head of ' Knowing and Feeling.' 
 But the one thing in him that I regretted was his 
 habit of writing so many of his thoughts illegibly, even 
 to himself. He would often deplore his own way of 
 working, — extracts made, line of argument traced out, 
 
202 MEMOIR. 
 
 to be referred to hereafter, and when wanted unde- 
 cipherable ! When a new MS. book was begun, there 
 would be resolves to do better ; but habit was too 
 strong, the pen flew too fast, the writing (in his letters 
 so delicate and clear) baflled the writer's own patience. 
 
 In the spring of 1863, after a little round of visits — 
 a thing unprecedented with us— we found ourselves 
 again in the neighbourhood of Coniston, attracted 
 thither mainly by friends with whom, during our stay 
 at Tent Cottage, we had entered into cordial relations, 
 and whom we had much enjoyed meeting during our 
 Swiss tour. One of these friends was an especially 
 congenial companion to my husband, and his corre- 
 spondent to the end. Whenever he had received any 
 new or vivid delight from art or nature, or whenever a 
 political or a religious movement had excited in him 
 more than usual interest, I always knew that the 
 sheets of note-paper I saw spread out on the little desk 
 were destined for Miss Eigbye. She will not, I know, 
 object to my quoting here her earliest impression of 
 him : — 
 
 " I like to recall the first time I saw him, and the 
 feeling that his joyous, radiant expression awakened in 
 me — something of surprise, and wonder, and pleasure. 
 I remember distinctly recognising that it was some- ! 
 thing I had never seen before." ' 
 
 During the course of this summer there fell upon me 
 an irreparable blow, — the death within one week of 
 both beloved parents. But my husband's presence made 
 anguish (as I now understand the word) impossible. 
 A few days before her sudden seizure, my mother had 
 said to me, " Thank God, my darling, that when I am 
 
MEMOIR. 203 
 
 in my grave you will have one to love you as I do ! " 
 She, better than any one, would have understood how, 
 having all in him, even her loss could not darken life. 
 My joy henceforth lacked the complete reflection it 
 found from her sympathy, but it was " fulness of joy " 
 still. More "than ever my companion, more than ever 
 tender — my husband seemed resolved that my nature 
 should know no want. Part of the ensuing winter was 
 spent in Edinburgh amid true friends ; the remainder 
 at Brighton. 
 
 The summer of 1864 was memorable to us, as being 
 the first we spent at a house which became almost a 
 home; I refer to Newton Place, in Borrowdale. It 
 was a house pleasantly planned, with large windows, 
 and rooms lofty in proportion to their size, — a house 
 into which breeze and sunlight streamed in from the 
 four quarters ; and it was pleasantly situated, with the 
 lake and Skiddaw in front, on either side bold wooded 
 crags or soft grassy hills, and between us and the latter 
 green meadows, with a river gliding silently through. 
 It was a pleasant coincidence that this house had been 
 somewhat coveted by me eight years before, when my 
 mother and I occupied it for a few weeks ; and that 
 William, calling upon some friends who tenanted it, 
 had said to himself that the drawing-room would make 
 him a delightful study. And now we shared it. We 
 were able to secure it to ourselves from April to 
 December, and we had rooms to which we could 
 welcome friends. But I will vary my chronicle of our 
 outwardly unbroken life, by an extract from his manu- 
 script-book of the year, suggested evidently by the 
 quiet stream we so often watched together : — 
 
204 MEMOIR. 
 
 '' The Eiver. 
 
 " Beauty here does not owe milch to utility. Not 
 many objects more beautiful or more useful, but the 
 beauty and utility seem very distinct. The river to a 
 very thirsty man has lost its beauty ; and the farmer, 
 who thinks more intensely than any of us of irrigation, 
 sees very little of its charm of beauty. This lies in its 
 motion, in its light, in its endless variety, and that 
 curve which displays more of these, and suggests life 
 and choice of movement." 
 
 " All beautiful things grow more beautiful by looking 
 long at them. There is the charm of novelty ; there 
 is also the growing charm of persistency and repeti- 
 tion ; the eye feeds. Indeed, dwell on any object, and 
 the sentiment it is calculated to inspire augments so 
 long as attention is unfatigued." 
 
 " See how the wind gives a ripple this way, while 
 the stream is that way. Where the river bends, and 
 one part is exposed to the wind and the other not, you 
 would say that the stream is flowing in one direction 
 here, and there in another direction. We must explain 
 its apparent contradiction. Like noble minds, it leaves 
 its inconsistencies to the candour or the mistake of others." 
 
 " This gnat upon the surface, it does not seem to me 
 a life, but a fragment of life — a joy — a motion, nothing 
 more." 
 
 " The river by its inundation obliterates itself ; by 
 overflowing becomes mere marsh. I pray that my river 
 here will keep its bounds, and not strive to be a lake." 
 
 " There is a sodden leaf that cannot float upon the 
 
MEMOIR. 205 
 
 surface, and yet has not weight enough to rest upon 
 the ground. It moves always, but is always drawn 
 along the lottom of- the stream. That is its progress." 
 
 " How endless are the charms of a river ! It has 
 ceaseless motion, yet it suggests repose ; these blurred 
 shadows of the bank and trees are stationary, though 
 the water is ever flowing. Motion and shadow ; life 
 and the dream of life ; and the whence and the whither!' 
 
 " The moss just under the stream is kept moist by 
 the water, and yet shines in the sun. How resplendent 
 a green ! but where I see nothing but the bare stones, 
 I find the most fascinating spectacle. There the river 
 of light is flowing. On the surface the water ripples, 
 ripples in the light ; so light and shadow course each 
 other in mimic flow along the bottom of the stream. 
 I watch that under-stream that is no stream, and think 
 of what thought may be." 
 
 " This stick half in the water, crooked to the eye, 
 I take it out, it is straight. Delusion that the child 
 detects, and that to the man has become an additional 
 knowledge by his explanation of it. But the man 
 himself, can he take himself out of the element through 
 which he sees himself 1 " 
 
 The winter of 1864-65 was outwardly more varied 
 than was usual with us. It included a stay of two 
 months at Llandudno, in North Wales, a short visit to 
 Bath, where my husband had an old and intimate friend 
 and correspondent, and several weeks at Brighton ; and 
 then, after a fortnight in London, we set out early in 
 May for Svfitzerland, and saw Lucerne and enchanting 
 Engelberg in their fresh beauty, and had Pensions to 
 
206 MEMOIR. 
 
 ourselves. Our other happy resting-places were Grin- 
 del wald, Unterseen, Champ^ry, Bex, La Comballaz. 
 One week too was given to Chamounix, for which 
 "William had an especial affection. His deepest im- 
 pressions of sublimity had been received there twenty 
 years before, renewed in 1862 ; his constant nature 
 preferred re-visiting it to exploring new scenes. Never 
 shall I forget his lying on the ground on our return 
 from the Chapeau one glorious August day, gazing long 
 and silently, absorbed in wonder and worship, at what 
 he had called " the sculpture of landscape," — " the great 
 hills built up, from their green base to their snowy 
 summits, with rock, and glacier, and pine forests," — 
 " leading beyond this earth." Then suddenly starting 
 from his trance of rapture he said, " Now, I don't want 
 to see that again ! " He had indeed seen it this last 
 time in fullest perfection. 
 
 We spent five months in Switzerland. They were 
 fraught with delight ; and yet there were days — days 
 of reaction after vivid enjoyment — when I could plainly 
 see that my husband missed the steady occupation, the 
 studious routine of our English summers. Had his life 
 been prolonged, I do not think we should ever have 
 become tourists again. During the ensuing years, re- 
 membering his own delight in Italy, and kindly anxious 
 to give me every possible pleasure, he would often ask 
 me whether I really wished very much to go there ; 
 because, if so, the effort would be made. But I had 
 always a doubt as to such a journey being the best 
 thing for him. I dared not wish it. 
 
 I will transcribe a few of the ' Scraps of Verse 
 from a Tourist's Note-book,' which were written 
 
MEMOIR. 207 
 
 during our second Swiss summer, and published in the 
 Magazine : — 
 
 ' ' The lightest, brightest cloud that floats 
 In the azure, can but throw 
 Some kind of shadow, dark or faint, 
 On whatever lies below." 
 
 For me, thank God ! although I lowly lie, 
 I lie where earth looks straightway to the sky ; 
 On me, remote alike from king and clown, 
 No fellow-atom flings his shadow down. 
 
 No shadow ? — none ? — Think; look again ! 
 An hour ago that huge and rocky hill 
 
 Stood bare, unsightly ; all in vain 
 Did mid-day light each rent and chasm fill. 
 It waited for the cloud. The shadow came. 
 Rested or moved upon its brow 
 And, lo ! it softens into beauty now — 
 Blooms like a flower. With us 'tis much the same, — 
 From man to man, as the deep shadows roll. 
 Breaks forth the beauty of the human soul." 
 
 " High rise the mountains, higher rise 
 
 The clouds ; the mimic mountain still, 
 The cloud, the cloud, say what we wiU, 
 
 Keeps full possession of our skies. 
 Let cloud be cloud, my friend ; we know the wind 
 
 Shapes and re-shapes, and floats the glory on ; 
 Glory or gloom it floats, but leaves behind 
 
 The stable mountain, open to the sun. 
 Let cloud be cloud — unreal as the space 
 
 It traverses ; earth can be earth, yet rise 
 Into the region of God's dwelling-place. 
 
 If light and love are what we call his skies." 
 
 The stream flows on, it wearies never, 
 
 Whilst T, who do but watch its flow, 
 I weary oft. ' Ah, not for ever ! 
 
208 MEMOIR. 
 
 Soon other eyes ' — I know, I know, 
 I too repeat my ' Not for ever,' 
 
 And waking to that thought I start, 
 And find my weariness depart." 
 
 I pluck the flower, one moment to behold 
 Its treasury of purple and of gold ; 
 The blossom, and a nest of buds around, 
 Ruthless I pluck, and fling them on the ground. 
 
 Plucked because fair, then flung to death away ! 
 I might have stooped and looked, and had a blameless joy. 
 
 Nature's great prodigality, you say, 
 
 E'en for man's wantonness provides. 
 
 It may be so, but still with me at)ides 
 A sense of shame that I could so destroy." 
 
 " The stream to the tree — I shine, you shade. 
 And so the beauty of the world is made." 
 
 Our second Swiss tour, like our first, was succeeded 
 by several months of exclusively tUe-a-Ute life at 
 Weston-super-Mare, and I was soon happily convinced 
 that the spell of the desk had in no way been weakened 
 by our wanderings. William wrote a long ' Eeview of 
 J, S. Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's 
 Philosophy,' confining himself chiefly to that " central 
 position in which the great question is discussed of the 
 nature and origin of our knowledge of the external 
 world." To those who know his writings it is needless 
 to indicate the side he took in the controversy. He 
 " selected to be totally wrong" (according to Mr. Mill) 
 " with Sir William Hamilton rather than exchange our 
 real world of matter and motion, of substance and 
 force, for permanent possibilities of sensation attached 
 to nothing at all — for mere thoughts of sensations, — a 
 
MEMOIR. 209 
 
 dreary and bewildering idealism." My husband's 
 mind was at this time constantly engaged with the 
 problems the book in question treats of, but a remark 
 he made with regard to Sir W. Hamilton — " He loved 
 thinking over the book better than thinking over the pen' — 
 was just then applicable to himself. The manuscript 
 book grew full, but during our stay at Weston-super- 
 Mare nothing else was written. We left it with tender 
 regret, as we always did any place where we had been 
 quite alone — left it for an interval of social life in Edin- 
 burgh, and in the February of 1866 found ourselves 
 once more at Newton Place. During the eleven 
 months that we spent there we had very frequently 
 guests — dear young nieces, dear old friends — of mine 
 originally, but now of his, for he adopted them heartily, 
 and not any of them, I know well, have forgotten or 
 will forget the simple cordiality of his welcome. It is 
 true that the prospect of any interruption to our 
 duality was sometimes perturbing to the student, who 
 loved his regular work and his habitual ways ; true that 
 when those even we best loved left and we returned to 
 each other, I heard the words that above all words 
 made my heart leap with joy : — " Now I have my ideal 
 of life." But none came to us who were not friends 
 indeed, we had no surface acquaintance, no conventional 
 sociality, and at the close of every visit we received we 
 found ourselves enriched by pleasant memories and 
 enlarged interests. Early in 1867 we made our winter 
 flight to Brighton, and for the summer fixed ourselves 
 at Barmouth, in North Wales — a place to which my 
 husband had never before been, though he had chosen 
 it for the scene of one of the episodes in ' Thorndale.' 
 o 
 
210 MEMOIR. 
 
 We had a snug little cottage to ourselves, perched 
 just above the estuary, on the other side of which rose 
 the range of Cader Idris. The place suited my hus- 
 band's health, and as usual we were fortunate in a 
 landlady, whose kindliness and care for us gave a sense 
 of comfort and security very precious to both. We 
 should have been, I believe, unduly pained by an 
 opposite experience, but during our married life we 
 never encountered it. My husband's unvarying con- 
 sideration for the claims and the feelings of all brought 
 into contact with him, as well as his self-helpfulness 
 and punctuality, made him the most popular of lodgers. 
 Looking over my diaries, whatever year I take up 
 seems to have been the happiest ! William was much 
 occupied, I remember, this particular summer with 
 scientific subjects. One of the papers that he wrote 
 for the Magazine was a review of a work of fimile 
 Saigey's, treating of the ' Unity of Natural Phenomena.' 
 I think the closing paragraphs will interest some who 
 read these pages : — 
 
 " What if the movements of suns and planets, about 
 which so many theories have been devised, should at 
 last be studied in the movements of the molecule 1 
 The movements of suns and systems may be but results 
 or examples of those two movements of rotation and 
 translation with which we found it necessary to endow 
 every atom from the commencement. 
 
 " Need we add that we have still to ask how atoms 
 came to be endowed with these movements, and were 
 brought into all these rhythms or harmonies ? Need 
 we add that our last and boldest generalizations only 
 make the necessity more glaring to supplement the 
 
MEMOIE. 211 
 
 atom and its movement with the great idea of Intelli- 
 gential Power 1 
 
 " God, and the atom, and the soul of man, 
 Something we seem to know of all the three — 
 Something — and only — always — of the Three ! " 
 
 We were seven months at Barmouth. What memo- 
 ries arise of grave and tender talk during sunset strolls 
 along the quiet sands, while the distant Carnarvon- 
 shire mountains stood out lilac against a " daffodil 
 sky;" of glad morning rambles, after morning work, 
 over hills gorgeous with furze and heather ; of rapid 
 pacing up and down the bridge, watching the flowing 
 or the ebbing rush of the tide ! We had a good many- 
 brief visits from different friends during the summer ; 
 but we were much alone too. The winter found us in 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 During our stay there one of our peculiar interests 
 lay in attending together, every Sunday morning, a 
 rather singular service held by a Mr. Cranbrook in the 
 Hopetoun Eooms. Mr. Cranbrook had been originally, 
 I believe, an Independent minister, but at the time I 
 speak of he had seceded from that body. We never 
 knew his history with exactness, but heard of him as 
 an earnest thinker, following at any cost after what he 
 deemed truth. He was then evidently in ill-health, 
 and had the wistful look of one " led by the Spirit" into 
 a desert. His congregation was small ; but loving 
 hands always placed flowers on each side of the desk 
 before him. His sermons were generally critical ; but 
 in his prayers the emotional nature of the man came 
 out. We found the contrast between the cold ana- 
 lytical tone of his preaching and the passionate cry of 
 
212 MEMOIR. 
 
 his heart deeply pathetic, and came away with much 
 to talk over during our Sunday morning walk. To me 
 it was always an unspeakable interest to go with my 
 husband to a place of worship. I never saw there a 
 demeanour quite the same as his, — he sat so still, there 
 was such reverent attention in his fixed glance. It 
 was not often that I had this experience ; compromises 
 and conformity to custom formed no part of his re- 
 ligion ; but he laid down no rule for others ; could 
 understand how in them memories and affections might 
 hold together old habits and changed opinions ; never 
 charged their intellectual inconsistency with dishonesty. 
 When I returned from church, he liked me to tell him 
 what I had heard, and if a deepened sense of things 
 unseen and a desire to live more in accordance with 
 the highest standard be the best results of religious 
 teaching, then it was his comments that most helped 
 me. I, on my side, reverenced the law of his higher 
 nature, unflinchingly obeyed and rewarded openly by a 
 transparent simplicity, a reality in look, and speech, and 
 gesture, that all felt the influence of, and which his 
 venerable friend Dr. Brabant once referred to in these 
 words : — " When I am with your husband I feel in the 
 presence of absolute truth." 
 
 In the January of 1868 we left Edinburgh for our 
 dear Newton Place, and some of our kind friends 
 thought it an injudicious move. But even in winter 
 we enjoyed it thoroughly. Perhaps never more than 
 then, when mighty winds swooping down from Scaw- 
 fell tossed and twisted our protecting trees and shook 
 the walls of our dwelling as they passed us by, or 
 when heavy rains had turned our meadows into a lake, 
 
MEMOIR. 213 
 
 and flooded roads shut us most completely in. To the 
 happy, storm is as exhilarating as sunshine, and I used 
 to liken our secluded life to a full glass of champagne, 
 into which — drop the merest trifle, it effervesces anew. 
 A book, a magazine, sent by a friend, a parcel from 
 the London library, the arrival of proof to correct, etc., 
 still more, any natural spectacle — northern lights, frost- 
 work, falling snow — anything, everything, was pleasure- 
 able excitement. On such winter evenings my hus- 
 band would often take me from room to room of our 
 dwelling " to show me " the moon, or moon-lit clouds, 
 or the starlight splendour in different parts of the sky. 
 And after standing long in silence together gazing at 
 the silent stars, he would turn from their oppressive 
 magnificence with such words as these : — " Love must 
 be better than Hate in all worlds ! " So much was 
 certain. While thus alone, from the first hour of rising 
 — when I could hear him "singing, dancing to him- 
 self" — to the winding up of our evening by some game 
 of chess or cards, all was conscious enjoyment. I can- 
 not convey to those who did not know him, or knew 
 him- but slightly, the variety of his playfulness, the 
 delicate humour that gave charm and freshness to 
 " every day's most quiet need by sun and candle-light." 
 I suppose it required a heart like his, " moored to some- 
 thing ineffable, supreme," and an entire absence from 
 personal anxieties, enmities, ambitions. I only know 
 that this " spirit of joy" that he felt and diffused was, 
 as far as my experience goes, unique, and no sketch of 
 his character that did not lay stress upon it could be 
 in any degree complete. 
 
 This year, 1868 — our * Annus Mirabilis ' as he some- 
 
214 . MEMOIR. 
 
 times called it — was the most social of all our years. 
 For several months we had a succession of dear friends, 
 some of them eminently congenial companions to 
 my husband; and between their coming and going, 
 intervals of our oivn life. William was well and strong; 
 the seasons were all unusually fine; in autumn the 
 hills were one sheet of golden bracken, such as we 
 never saw before or sin'ce ; the leaves hung later on his 
 beloved birch-trees, and our mountain walks were 
 longer than usual. 
 
 It was in the February of 1869, when we were back 
 again at Brighton, that, for the first time, I saw my 
 husband really ill. True, it was only, as we supposed, 
 an attack of influenza, nor did he once allow it to 
 interfere with his rising at the usual hour and walking 
 out on all dry days. But an entry in my diary tells 
 that he was "suddenly seized with a shivering-fit, of 
 course succeeded by fever and such prostration of 
 energy as I had never witnessed in him. The day 
 passed, and he did not once sit at the dear, familiar 
 little desk; dozed off over the book in his hand, 
 always, however, rousing himself to give the sweetest 
 smile and say some sweet words." It was the first 
 draught of the bitter cup, but this time it passed away, 
 and before a fortnight was over no trace of illness 
 seemed left ; the step, was as elastic, the eye as bright 
 as before. 
 
 We had debated with ourselves whether to spend 
 the following summer in Derbyshire or Cornwall ; but 
 I had a longing to see the Atlantic break on the Bude 
 shore, having read of the waves rising there to an un- 
 usual height, and my husband, to whose more occupied 
 
MEMOIR. 215 
 
 mind place was less important, allowed my preference 
 to prevail. It was a long journey to take, to a spot 
 quite unknown to us, where, of course, we should not 
 have a single acquaintance. I think I never set out in 
 a greater ferment of delight than on that bright April 
 day ! But Bude is a place that has its wrong side, " a 
 bare, sandy common, and an ugly canal ; " and my hus- 
 band's first impression of it, given in a letter to a dear 
 niece, was, " that a more dreary region could not be 
 discovered in all England," and that, "had he fallen 
 upon it alone, he should have been off like a shot the 
 next morning." However, a little accident that befell 
 me immediately on my arrival (the falling of a sashless 
 window on my hands) so distressed him as to " make 
 it impossible to growl at the place," and its own 
 peculiar charm soon asserted itself. Later on he 
 writes to the same niece : — " These ground-swells of 
 the Atlantic will spoil me for any other seas. On the 
 coast of Sussex and Kent I have seen grand seas, but 
 I was blinded or blown away in the attempt to look at 
 them, and the waves were generally dark and turbid. 
 On this coast I have seen waves as lustrous and clear 
 as the waters of. the Lake of Geneva rising in all the 
 grand forms of a storm." 
 
 Our small abode at Bude was not so quiet as we 
 could have wished, but William at once set about 
 writing on a subject that had long been occupying his 
 mind : * Knowing and Feeling.' The illusion that, as 
 I take up one pocket-book after another, makes the 
 year therein recorded seem of all our years the best, 
 comes over me strongly as I dwell on our Bude life. 
 The bold cliffs, where always there was a renovating 
 
216 MEMOIR. 
 
 breeze, short flower-filled turf for our feet, and a 
 glorious semicircle of sea below us, where, as we stood 
 or sat near the edge, great gulls would come soaring 
 up from the shore, not seeing us till close by, then 
 calmly slant ofi" — their wide wings foam- white in the 
 sunshine ; or whence we watched the ravens that had 
 their nests in the rocks below, tumble fantastically in 
 the air, — how these things delighted him ! The peaceful 
 days were all made up of thinking, writing, and of four 
 short rambles on common or shore. He took no long 
 walks, felt no inclination for them -, but we heard that 
 the air of the place often disposed to lassitude, and our 
 landlady — struck at first, as indeed strangers usually 
 were, with his look of fragility — told me she and her 
 neighbours noticed a marked improvement as the weeks 
 went on. The summer brought us a dear young niece ; 
 and General and Mrs. Cotton, whose presence in Bor- 
 rowdale had been a delight the previous summer, now 
 spent three weeks at Bude. William, very busily en- 
 gaged with his own thoughts and pen, only joined in 
 one excursion — that to Tintagel. In a letter to his 
 niece Clara he says : — 
 
 " I was very glad that I went. It was a kind of scenery 
 somewhat novel to me. At Tintagel you stand on a rock — 
 500 feet above the level of the sea — which juts out, and enables 
 you to command a magnificent view of both sides of this beau- 
 tiful coast. What makes the chief charm of the view are the 
 grand, isolated rocks that rise at some little distance from the 
 shore out of the blue sea. These assume various shapes, and 
 all beautiful. But perhaps the greatest novelty at Tintagel 
 were the caves. In one of these the greenest of ferns had 
 growTi over the roof in the most delectable way, and the colour 
 of the rocks was to me quite surprising — all the colours of the 
 
MEMOIE. 217 
 
 richest marbles — dark red, green, yellow, but a sort of dull, 
 deep purple being the prevailing tint. In another cave it was 
 not the colours one admired, but the admirable proportions, the 
 lofty roof, the form of the whole. In this second cave we saw 
 a spectacle I shall never forget. The cave led through to the 
 ocean. It was the calmest and brightest of days, but there was 
 a ground swell, and the magnificence of the waves as they filled 
 for a moment the whole entrance to the cave, then dashed up 
 the spray to the roof, was something to remember for ever." 
 
 From the 10th of September to the 5th of January 
 we were quite alone, and the little desk was soon per- 
 manently installed in the joint sitting-room. As usual, 
 I have no outward events to record. A wonderfully 
 high tide had been predicted for the 6th of October, 
 such as would lay half Bude partially under water ; but 
 there was no wind that night, and we watched the 
 calm sea flow in — the village lights reflected in its 
 perfect stillness — flow in and turn, having spread no 
 further than at the September spring-tides. I confess 
 I was disappointed ; but William, who never had any 
 craving for the abnormal, was heartily glad that the 
 low-lying houses should escape the anticipated discom- 
 fort. One day we saw the rocket apparatus used, but 
 only in the way of practice. This was a novel sight to 
 both, and a great interest. The sunsets grew finer 
 as autumn advanced, and we invariably went out to 
 watch them. Even in December we could sit in the 
 shelter of the rocks without any fear of chill. The 
 morning and evening hours were occupied by the pro- 
 jected treatise on 'Psychology;' I used sometimes to 
 doubt whether the critic would ever let the author 
 finish it ! But however intent my husband might be 
 on this or other abstruse subjects, he was never ren- 
 
218 MEMOIR. 
 
 dered absent-minded, never so mucli as let the fire go 
 out while he was writing, and the moment the pen was 
 laid down the brow was all smoothness, the eye all 
 light, and he as ready to listen to any triviality his 
 companion might have to impart as to share his own 
 trains of thought with her. 
 
 We left Bude, as I have said, early in January, left 
 it for Bath, and there spent three weeks under the roof 
 of my husband's old and true friend, Mrs. Haughton. 
 In my pocket-book for this year he wrote, "A new 
 decade ; the old wish : may it be a repetition of the 
 last ! " There had been several entries of the kind : 
 " May we have no new years, only the old ones back 
 again ; " " May the new year be happy as the old," etc. 
 As we purposed spending the following spring and 
 summer in the North, at our dear Newton Place, we 
 fixed upon Edinburgh for the few intervenmg winter 
 weeks. Again in February he had for three days a 
 very sharp attack of illness, of cold merely, as we 
 thought. Yet, looking back, I see too plainly the 
 significance of one night of fever and breathlessness, 
 that made him fear he was going to be asthmatic like 
 his father, and after which he rose looking fearfully ill, 
 though in a few hours that appearance passed ofi". 
 Looking back, I notice too a greater reluctance to go 
 into society, but at the time there were many ways of 
 accounting for this ; one, that I was greatly occupied 
 with a dearly-loved invalid friend, and spent all my 
 evenings with her. 
 
 March found us once more at Newton Place. If these 
 happy records be found monotonous, they are soon about 
 to close. This year my husband published in the Con- 
 
MEMOIE. 219 
 
 temi)orary two articles on ' Knowing and Feeling/ and 
 wrote two papers for Blackwood's Magazine. One of 
 these was upon Dr. Noah Porter's work on the 'Human 
 Intellect/ for which he had, and expressed, high appre- 
 ciation, and which generally lay upon his writing-table. 
 I need hardly say that he also read much. What and 
 how he read shall be described in words of his own, 
 written long years before, and true to the end : — 
 
 " The books of a speculative man lie open quite 
 tranquilly before him, the page turns slowly — they are 
 the things that set his own thoughts in motion, and 
 with those thoughts, whether the books lie there or 
 not, he is chiefly engaged. What he reads is all along 
 so mingled with and modified by his own reflections, 
 that at the end of his labours he can scarcely tell what 
 was his own and what the author's. The written words 
 on the page have been like music to a thoughtful man, 
 which prompts and accompanies his long reverie, but 
 itself is little heeded. Even when heeded most, and 
 carefully weighed and scrutinized, the words he reads 
 are still the mere utterance of a thought that has thus 
 been carried to him ; they are not the utterance of this 
 or that man, and bear on them nothing of motive or 
 character. Whilst the historian, in proportion as he 
 prosecutes his labours, recalls and re-animates some 
 scene of past existence, and adds detail to detail till it 
 almost appears to be again a portion of the living world, 
 the philosophic or metaphysic labourer, who is in search 
 of first principles, and is exploring with this purpose 
 the furthest recesses of the human mind, departs at 
 every step more completely from all detail and every 
 famihar object, and gains as the result of his toil some 
 
220 MEMOIR. 
 
 abstract truth, if truth it be, which after all no man 
 seems to care for but himself. Like the celebrated 
 traveller whose ambition it was to detect the source of 
 the Nile, he leaves behind him the broad stream with 
 its fertile and populous banks, whereon city and temple 
 have been built — he bends his devoted course to where 
 the river of life grows more and more narrow, more and 
 more silent as he proceeds — and at length stands alone, 
 in brief and troubled rapture over a discovery which 
 may still be dubious, and in which no one participates." 
 I think I may as well sum up our summer in an 
 extract from an irregularly-kept diary of mine : — 
 ^' July the 2Sth, 1870. . . . Here we have been for 
 more than four months, for half our appointed time. 
 And hitherto it is passing sweetly, as former summers 
 have passed in this almost home. Visits from different 
 friends have been much enjoyed by me, because I have 
 had my conditions of enjoyment : William has been 
 well, and occupied thoroughly and energetically. . . . 
 The days are all too short. And as they fly by, they 
 bring an ever deepening consciousness of the peerless 
 treasure of living with one so entirely beloved and 
 loveable, — with so large an intellect, so gracious a 
 nature ! ^ Never does word of detraction or spite cross 
 his dear lips ; never is he hasty, unjust, uncandid, un- 
 wise in thought or word. He ought to be an elevating 
 influence. I ought to be better. We have been all 
 surrounded by hay — the last fragrant cartful from the 
 meadows will now be soon carried off, and of late we 
 have had exquisite summer. The one apparent cloud 
 
 1 It may be asked, — "What were the faults, the drawbacks?" I 
 answer now, as I should have done then, "I do not know tliem." 
 
MEMOIR. 221 
 
 over our little lives is that which darkens millions — 
 this horrible, appalling war. Sometimes one feels it 
 almost wrong to be so happy." 
 
 This is the last of the happy entries in that book. 
 Certainly in the early autumn my husband was for a 
 while less uniformly well than usual — teased with 
 nettlerash, less up to long walks. Yet there seemed 
 nothing to alarm — though I remember his saying one 
 day when we were talking over our Swiss rambles of 
 five years before — " I could not do those things now. 
 La SanU is going down." And then in his tender pity 
 he instantly added, " Let us hope only very gradually." 
 I cannot retrace the slow and stealthy course of his ill- 
 ness. I cannot — I did so more than a year ago, and that 
 account, with a few additions, shall be repeated here: — 
 
 In the October of 1870 we were planning a week's 
 visit to Coniston, not only to see the autumn beauty of 
 its woods — far richer than ours in Borrowdale — but to 
 renew pleasant walks and talks with our friends there. 
 Everything was arranged — our lodgings secured, our 
 packing done. . In the night my husband had a shiver- 
 ing-fit. I foresaw a cold, feared the risk of a journey, 
 and begged that the visit might be given up. But no 
 cold followed, no appearance of illness of any kind. 
 In November a similar shivering-fit recurred. I then 
 took alarm. It seemed to me that the flooded mea- 
 dows around us might have something to do with 
 these attacks, — that these new symptoms, feverishness 
 without a cold, were probably aguish. He consented, 
 at the expiration of the term of nine months, for which 
 he had taken Newton Place, to move to Aberdovey (a 
 
222 MEMOIE. 
 
 sheltered sea-side spot in North Wales), instead of 
 lingering on in our favourite quarters till early in 
 January, as he had purposed doing. After this second 
 shivering-fit on the 4th of November, William looked 
 ailing for two or three days, but then seemed quite to 
 recover his normal condition. The third shiver on the 
 1st of December was slighter, and the following day he 
 walked to Keswick and back, seven miles, without 
 fatigue. The fourth attack was at Aberdovey, in the 
 night of the 18th of December. This was very disap- 
 pointing, and I began to fear i)lace might not have had 
 to do with these shivering-fits, — that the flooded mea- 
 dows were not so much in fault as some obscure con- 
 stitutional cause. Yet his sweet cheerfulness, the 
 alacrity of his every movement, his unimpaired ap- 
 petite and bright look, — all these seemed incompatible 
 with danger. From this time the records of disturbed 
 nights become very frequent in my diaries. He was 
 never a very good sleeper, however. While at Aber- 
 dovey, he took long walks on the fine sands, encoun- 
 tered the coldest east winds without the least reluctance 
 or apparent injury. I had indeed hours of anxiety, 
 but then from the time I gave him my heart and soul 
 at Patterdale no transient ailment of his ever failed to 
 make me anxious — to hint to me what anguish might 
 be. While we were at Aberdovey in February there 
 came another of those mysterious shivers ; yet when 
 we moved to Brighton the end of that month, none of 
 his friends thought him looking ill. Thinner, slightly 
 thinner, he certainly was, and knew himself to be. 
 Towards the end of April, after an immunity of nearly 
 ten weeks, a very severe shivering-fit occurred in the 
 
MEMOIR. 223 
 
 night. Yet though he looked yellow and ill the next 
 day, I was less rather than more uneasy ; for I had 
 now seen several of these attacks pass over him without, 
 as it appeared, any material harm ensuing. I may 
 mention that the tenth anniversary of our marriage 
 (the 5th of March 1871) found us at Brighton. I had 
 been spending three or four days with a dear friend in 
 London, but returned on the Saturday, in spite of a 
 great possible treat on the Sunday (luncheon with Mr. 
 and Mrs. Lewes), because that Sunday was our dear 
 anniversary, and I could not have borne it to find us 
 separated. This time its return made us low. Ten 
 years ! There was something solemn about the closing 
 of that term. My own depression during several of 
 those March days was quite unusual, and I remember 
 his saying to me, " Ten years ! I used to think if I 
 could have ten happy years ! And I have had them." 
 And in the January of 1871 he had put in my pocket- 
 book, where he always wrote my name, " One happy 
 decade over — will another, will half of another, be 
 granted]" Till then these inscriptions had been so 
 joyous. 
 
 We had agreed that it might be well to spend our 
 next summer in a bracing climate. We resolved upon 
 Ilkley in Yorkshire, and arrived there on the 11th of 
 May. The place did not attract us, but still we 
 thought of settling down there. Some delay in accept- 
 ing his offer on the part of our landlady gave us time 
 to revert in thought to our dear Borrowdale. The fact 
 of the shivering-fits having recurred thrice by the sea 
 had removed from our minds all suspicion of Lake- 
 country climate having to do with them. My husband 
 
224 MEMOIR, 
 
 assured me he thought he should be quite as well there; 
 that possibly Ilkley might prove too cold in autumn. 
 I do believe his kind wish that I should enjoy the 
 society of dear friends who were to spend their summer 
 in Borrowdale influenced him ; but oh, I am sure that 
 / had no wish that could even exist in presence of my 
 absorbing wish that he should be in the best place for 
 his own health and enjoyment ! But we neither of us 
 took to Ilkley. He seemed well, but not peculiarly 
 well there. Never shall I forget one misty grey even- 
 ing when we stood watching the sun set behind the 
 low hills, and he, his dear eyes fixed wistfully on the 
 west, said, as though thinking aloud, " The summers 
 will be few." I think, however, this was less the 
 language of definite apprehension than of that vague 
 yearning melancholy we all know. When the die was 
 cast, the charm of the moors began a little to gain 
 upon us ; but we could not have secured a house to 
 his taste, and he was even more pleased than I to find 
 himself again in the old home, the favourite study. 
 Eleven days of intense enjoyment succeeded. He at 
 once sat down to the little desk in the old corner, and 
 rapidly wrote the last article of his that ever appeared 
 in BlackwoodJs Magazine — one on the ' Coming Race.' 
 I remember his saying one day as he laid down the 
 book, " I should not wonder if it was written by Buh 
 wer." I occupied myself meanwhile with giving to the 
 little room where I sat during his busy morning hours, 
 more of a home look than heretofore (indeed, we planned 
 making Newton Place more of a permanent home, and 
 collecting there all our small and scattered possessions), 
 and so I sent for books long left in Edinburgh, for 
 
MEMOIR. 225 
 
 William's bust, etc. We had blissful walks to see all 
 his favourite haunts in their fresh beauty ; we were 
 never more gaily, light-heartedly happy. On the even- 
 ing of the 5 th of June I walked into Keswick, and on 
 the way back I met him. He was coming along so very 
 quickly, looked so boyish, I may sa}^, in figure and tread, 
 I could hardly believe at a distance it was he ; but soon 
 I saw the white teeth shine out — saw the radiant smile 
 that always greeted me, and never more fully realized 
 the old ever-new joy of putting my arm through his, 
 and hearing and telling all that an interval of three 
 hours (a long interval to my consciousness) had brought 
 for each. He had had a visit from his friend Dr. 
 Lietch. " Did Dr. Lietch think him looking well V 
 " Yes ; he had noticed that he seemed in very good 
 health." That verdict was another delight. There 
 was nothing to disquiet me that summer evening ! In 
 the night a very protracted shivering-fit came on. The 
 following day he was really ill. And now began a period 
 of restless wretchedness, upon which I hardly know how 
 to dwell — restless wretchedness of my own only ; for 
 while fever-fit followed fever-fit, and began visibly to 
 sap his strength, he never admitted that there was any 
 necessity for alarm, and strenuously resisted advice or 
 change of place. In a letter to a niece written at this 
 time, I mention that when most suffering he would only 
 stroke my face and say, " I am so sorry for you.'" But 
 a remarkable strength of will pitted itself against the 
 malady. He would not give in. After a sleepless 
 night (burning skin and flying pulse) he would still rise 
 early, still take his cold bath, still carry on all the habits 
 of health — even to the sitting at the desk and trying 
 
 P 
 
226 MEMOIR. 
 
 hard to read and think as usual. I fear I wearied him 
 with supplications and prayers that he would go to 
 some milder climate, and above all consult some first- 
 rate physician. For my own fears were now fully 
 roused, and I thought this obscure disease might yet be 
 taken in time — if not, that the dear life would be thrown 
 away. During these miserable weeks we had flying 
 visits from four friends who loved and valued him so 
 truly they could not resist coming over from London, 
 Wales, etc., to form their own impressions of his case. 
 Of these friends two were gravely apprehensive, one was 
 sanguine of recovery, and the other, though anxious, 
 because of the obscurity of the case, could not trace any 
 signs of actual danger. There was no suffering at this 
 or any time, except, indeed; the malaise of fever, of which 
 he still made light. Daily, he went out, often took the 
 drive to Keswick in a public car. In the open air he 
 always felt and looked comparatively well. From the 
 24th of July to the 26th of September, although the 
 hands were often hot and dry, and the nights much dis- 
 turbed by the cough which attended lying on the right 
 side, there was no shivering-fit ; he improved in appear- 
 ance, and every one thought he was quite recovering. 
 Even I was hopeful; even to me the old joy returned in 
 great measure. At the end of September came two 
 shivering fits, but they were not succeeded by illness, 
 and October passed over us bringing, as it seemed, still 
 further amendment. His mental energy was unimpaired, 
 his power of writing,^ his spirits, had entirely returned ; 
 
 ^ It was during this happy respite that William wrote his last article 
 — on Mr. Greg's Political Essays. Originally intended for the Maga- 
 zine, with the views of which, however, it was not found quite in 
 accord — it appeared in the Contemporary of June 1872. I give its 
 
MEMOIR. 227 
 
 the most marked difference was that he did not run up- 
 stairs two steps at a time, as till this summer he had 
 invariably done. A dear friend who had not seen him 
 for more than a year, and who now paid us a brief 
 visit, saw nothing in his ajjpearance to alarm, was not 
 even struck with his increased thinness, and I believe 
 secretly thought my accounts of his illness had been 
 exaggerated by affection. But it is affection that is 
 clear-sighted. 
 
 Early in November William caught cold. It did not 
 threaten to be even a severe cold ; but just when I was 
 
 closing paragraphs, — a fitting last utterance for one always so reverent 
 of labour, and so interested in the progress of the labouring classes : — 
 
 " No one doubts, we presume, that in spite of fluctuating or oscil- 
 lating movements, or long-stationary periods, there is observable 
 thi'ough the past ages a progress of humanity. And since this progress, 
 speaking broadly, is one with the enlarged scope and increased activity 
 of the human mind, and especially with that activity which increases 
 actual knowledge of nature and ourselves, and since this mental activity 
 cannot be expected to come suddenly to an end, since the increase of 
 knowledge, especially of external nature, seems at this hour to be ad- 
 vancing with accelerated speed, Ave may surely predict that there is yet 
 a course of progressive development lying before us. Of what precise 
 nature, it would indeed be hazardous to predict. The knowledge yet 
 to be acquired, the additional inventions and expedients of a future 
 age, its modified passions, its new sentiments, cannot be known to us 
 now. But we know that scientific knowledge, as a general riile, leads 
 to improvements in industrial art, and thus multiplies those products 
 which render life agreeable and civilized. A larger number enjoying 
 all those advantages of temperate pleasure and healthful occupation, 
 of amenity of manners and culture of mind, which only a minority 
 enjoys at present — this alone would be an immense progress, and this 
 we may venture to prophesy. 
 
 " It is as if the student of botany and vegetable physiology had the 
 groTAiih of a plant exhibited before him up to a certain point, and had 
 to predict Jww it would grow on. Something he has gathered of the 
 laws of vegetable growth, and he doubts not that it will grow higher 
 and put forth fresh leaves like those which it has already produced. 
 But let us say this plant has not yet blossomed, how is he to fore- 
 
228 MEMOIR. 
 
 rejoicing over its passing away, on the night of the 9th 
 a terrible shivering-fit came on. From this time his 
 illness — I can now see — steadily advanced. But while 
 what is the irrevocable past was still the fluctuating 
 present, there were gleams of hope. O how many 
 hopes I was called upon to surrender ! He now began 
 to lay more stress upon this persistent fever than he 
 had ever before consented to do, and to notice the 
 decline of his strength. He consented to leave Borrow- 
 dale for Brighton on the 1st of December; sea-air we 
 thought might be of use, and there further advice was 
 
 tell what the blossom will be, or what the last fruit will be ? The 
 student of humanity is in some such position. He has half the growth 
 before him ; how is he to predict the other half ? Precisely he cannot. 
 But he, too, knows something of the laws or method of human growth. 
 Like the botanist, he can say of this plant that it will grow higher, 
 and expand its branches, and multiply its leaves. What if there is a 
 blossom and a fruitage yet to come ? Of that he can say nothing. An 
 evolution still in the future cannot enter into science, since it does not 
 enter into knowledge at all. 
 
 '' Even this superficial and rapid survey of what maybe acquired by 
 studying man in history, may indicate how such acquisitions may aid 
 or guide or console us, when we are involved in certain of our social 
 and political problems. We find the artisan and the labourer urging 
 their claim to be admitted within the inner circle of civilized life. They 
 urge it rudely, perhaps prematurely ; they occasion alarm and con- 
 sternation by their clamour and their threats. Nevertheless that they 
 do urge their claim is a good augury. . It is the right desire, and indi- 
 cates that some step has been already made towards its fulfilment. 
 And that general progress of society in art and knowledge, on Avhich 
 we can most securely calculate, is of such a nature as to guarantee its 
 future fulfilment. The movement is one not to be absolutely and 
 resolutely opposed, but the statesman's task is to moderate, guide, 
 and render it safe. Task hard enough, it must be admitted. Much 
 turmoil and many terrors will probably attend the movement. But 
 if ultimately what is most refined and enjoyable in human life should 
 be participated in by the hand-worker as well as the head-worker, this 
 would not only be the extension of culture and happiness, but it 
 would put our civilisation on a broader and safer basis." 
 
MEMOIR. 229 
 
 to be had. He bore the journey well, slept well 
 during our one night in London, and when we got to 
 Brighton about two the following day, went as usual 
 down to the shore, just to have a peep at the sea before 
 our three-o'clock dinner, while I prepared his sister-in- 
 law and loving nieces for his look of extreme illness ; 
 for the repeated feverish attacks during November had 
 reduced him extremely, and the complexion was dark 
 and sallow. Still the bright, sweet smile, that only got 
 brighter and sweeter to the last, the animated manner, 
 and above all, the interest he took in everything and 
 everybody but his own self and his own state, prevented 
 his friends from realizing that he was dangerously ill. 
 He was disappointed to find that instead of strengthen- 
 ing him, Brighton seemed rather to weaken, and some- 
 times he regretted that he had left the Lake-country 
 home. But still, during December, he was able to walk 
 three miles and more. However, since change of place 
 did not work improvement, he did consent to see a 
 medical friend, — one who knew his constitution, and 
 took the kindliest interest in his case. Here was the 
 rising of another. hope ! Tonics, opiates — these he had 
 made no trial of — perhaps the system would respond to 
 these ! The year ended with just a ray of light ; yet 
 it was some time about its close that he one day said 
 suddenly to me : " Oh, Lucy, we will go off together to 
 the country, have done with medicines and doctors, and 
 there we will calmly and quietly await the inevitable 
 end, and we will love each other to the last." (I won- 
 der now how I bore the agonizing terror of those days, 
 as I should have wondered then how days of solitude 
 and vain yearning such as these could be borne!) 
 
230 MEMOIR. 
 
 And in my pocket-book for 1872, his last entry of my 
 name is accompanied by these ominous words, " The 
 new year has less of hope, but more of love and grati- 
 tude, than any of its predecessors." — Tonics and opiates 
 we soon found only destroyed his appetite, and did not 
 avert the dreaded shivering-fits. About the middle of 
 January fever began to come on every morning after 
 breakfast. The nights were invariably broken ; lying 
 on the right side became more and more impossible 
 because of the cough induced ; but, strange to say, loss 
 of sleep did not seem to make him worse ; on the con- 
 trary, I often noticed that the better the night the more 
 languid the day. But those anxious nights were not 
 all unhappy ; he used to be not merely cheerful, but 
 playful, during those sleepless hours. Nothing pro- 
 voked a gesture or tone of impatience, still less a com- 
 plaint; it was always the alleviations on which he 
 dwelt : — How comfortable the bed, the room, the fire- 
 light ! how delicious the beaten-up egg and sherry; 
 how pleasant to have the candle lit and laid beside 
 him ; how pleasant to be warmly wrapped up, and to 
 have book or newspaper given him to read for an hour 
 or so ! It was about the middle of January that he 
 began to find the walks he had persistently taken " do 
 him more harm than good," tire him overmuch, and he 
 now gladly consented to the drives his dear niece Clara 
 was only too happy to offer him. In the days of 
 health he preferred his own light, rapid walking to the 
 most luxurious of carriages ; now the daily drive with 
 the sweet, affectionate companion — tender to him as a 
 daughter, with whom he had all the ease of a father, 
 could speak or be silent at will — this became the 
 
MEMOIR. 231 
 
 greatest refreshment and pleasure. Oh, I thankfully 
 record everything that made this last illness easier to 
 him ! In our happy days we had all, and abounded ; 
 now, when we might for the first time have discovered 
 that we were poor, loving hearts made their wealth 
 minister to his comfort. How he used to watch for 
 " the dear grey horses " ! In this way he got the fresh 
 air, and saw the sea and the clouds. And when he 
 came in, and had taken his luncheon, there was always 
 an interval of comparative strength, and a short walk 
 could still be enjoyed. It was on the night of the 2 2d 
 -of January that a shivering-fit of peculiar intensity 
 reduced my husband to such a degree of weakness that 
 he, for the first time, allowed me to remain in the room 
 to help him while dressing. For the first time I be- 
 came fully aware of the extent of his emaciation, and in 
 my misery I besought him to try at least what homoeo- 
 pathy might avail in a case evidently not calculated for 
 other treatment, — Dr. Allen, the kind friend who had 
 hitherto attended him, gladly consenting. He, it ap- 
 peared, had had no hope from the first. In his opinion 
 the lungs were . obscurely afi'ected. Dr. Hilbers, the 
 homoeopathic physician, thought the defective action of 
 the heart was the chief danger. One thing was certain 
 — I see it now — daihj he ivasted. In the middle ages 
 it might have been supposed that his waxen eflagy 
 was being slowly melted by some cruel witchcraft, so 
 singular and anomalous the case. If consumption of 
 the lungs, then many of its characteristic symptoms 
 were wanting : no expectoration, no night-perspirations, 
 no pain in the side, no physical disagreeables such as 
 would have distressed his exceeding fastidious refine- 
 
232 MEMOIR. 
 
 ment. Only the fever in the morning, for the hour or 
 two after breakfast, when the book fell from the languid 
 hand, and he dozed, oppressed by an " unaccountable 
 weakness," yet always willing to rouse himself to take 
 his (fortunately) tasteless medicine, to give kind looks 
 and words in return, to get ready for his drive. The 
 afternoons were the best part of the day — the afternoons 
 and the evenings. And during these he had frequently 
 visits from congenial friends. One was a Mr. Carpenter, 
 a remarkable man, philosopher and philanthropist, — a 
 man of most active benevolence and most fervent piety 
 (not of the dogmatic kind), who had valued my husband's 
 works before he came to know and still more highly 
 value him. Mr. Carpenter's visits were always a plea- 
 sure ; and the two would discuss politics and general 
 questions with quite eager earnest. One day in Feb- 
 ruary, Professor Maurice, an early friend of William's, 
 not met for many years, made him a long call.-^ During 
 
 ^ My husband wrote the following account of this meeting to Miss 
 Rigbye on the 15th of February, The handwriting shows how weak 
 he already was : — 
 
 "... I had an interview the other day with a clergyman of a very 
 different stamp. I was honoured by a call from Professor Maurice, 
 who was here in Brighton for a few days. He was looking remark- 
 ably well. Old age has only improved his expression. His white 
 hair and the soft expression of his eyes made a charming picture. 
 Whether his physical health responded to this appearance I cannot 
 say. He has the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge, 
 and also a living at Cambridge. I congratulated him on a Professor- 
 ship so suitable to his tastes and acquirements. ' Yes, well/ he said, 
 * if any one would come to hear.' It is only in some rare cases com- 
 pulsory, and young men at Cambridge pretty well limit themselves 
 to what tells on their examination. This he looks upon as a great 
 evil, and I have myself always humbly thought that the system of 
 competitive examination was carried to a baneful extent. He re- 
 gretted that the colleges for women would be regulated on the same 
 
MEMOIR. 233 
 
 these winter months my husband had not only con- 
 stant visits from two loved nieces, but he saw some- 
 thing of three of his favourite nephews, and much 
 enjoyed getting them to talk of their own lives. Never 
 did he dwell upon himself — never in health, never in 
 illness ! He was self-forgetting to a degree I have not 
 seen nor shall see equalled. It was the childlike atti- 
 tude of listener that bright intelligence usually chose 
 to occupy. Yet sometimes, through all the weakness, 
 there would be bursts of energy on some general sub- 
 ject — a kindling of the old fervour against some social 
 wrong or political blunder. Oh how hard it was to 
 realize that so much light was so soon to be quenched ! 
 And indeed there were some signs of improvement 
 during the month of February.^ Appetite returned ; 
 he enjoyed the food he took ; there were many days 
 when recovery did not seem to be impossible. I had 
 
 falsetto system as that for young men, and the ambition of standing 
 first and in the first class would take the place of a real love of study 
 — of knowledge for its sake ." 
 
 ^ Those who have taken an interest in this account so far — an 
 account only meant, for friends— will best understand my husband's 
 state from his own description of it in part of a letter to a beloved 
 Edinburgh friend, Mrs, Stirling, written on the 16th of February : — 
 
 " If you or other friends were to call on me some afternoon, you 
 would find me cheerful, delighted to converse, looking fairly well. 
 The debility in my limbs would not betray itself, and I should give 
 the impression that I was a mere sham. You would report me very 
 well. Meanwhile, this distressing debility and this haunting fever 
 keep their ground, and the next day I perhaps sit like a stock or stone. 
 I mention this that you may know what value to put on the too 
 
 frequent accounts of my dear L . How kind, how anxious, how 
 
 angelic she is ! Patience, and a more genial air flowing over me, is my 
 hope. We have been stirred to think of Nairn, and I have received 
 such accounts that, were it not for tlie long journey, we should close 
 at once, — Yours very gratefully, W. S," 
 
234 MEMOIR. 
 
 seen my mother, wlien several years older than AYil- 
 liam, recover from greater prostration and apparently 
 an equal amount of anomalous illness. Neither did 
 Dr. Hilbers (who was kinder than I can express) forbid 
 me all hope. He once spoke, in answer to a question 
 of mine as to months, of my " possibly having him for 
 years." Sometimes he would tell me, with a beaming 
 smile, that the pulse was better, that he was " satisfied." 
 I do not think, however, that I ever had any hope of 
 actual recovery. I think I knew " by the love that 
 was in my heart " what the end would be. But not 
 how near. We had many dreams of another summer 
 — talked of Ilfracombe, Aberystwith ; once of Nairn ; 
 nay, once of Mentone ! I am glad he had those float- 
 ing thoughts, very thankful that the knowledge of how 
 ill he was was mercifully kept back, or at least was not 
 abidingly present to him. Certainly he grew more 
 rather than less hopeful. But then I cannot distin- 
 guish between what he spontaneously felt and what he 
 wished to feel out of his tender compassion for me. 
 On the 19th of February we went to London together; 
 he to receive his yearly dividends at the bank. The 
 little trip entailed no fatigue ; and though it often 
 flashed across me that it might be our last, I think we 
 were both rather cheered by it. That evening we 
 counted up our income for the year to come, and he 
 said " that everything was pleasant done together." 
 I never knew in any man quite so felicitous a blend- 
 ing of generosity and prudence. "The only use of 
 money is not to have to think about it," was one of 
 his axioms. Eminently liberal in his repayment of all 
 service rendered to him, giving whenever he could give 
 
MEMOIR. ' 235 
 
 with a child-like pleasure at the moment, and then an 
 absolute forgetfulness, — personal economy was I believe 
 not distasteful to him. " Plain living and high think- 
 ing" would have been his choke, as it was his destiny. 
 In his playfulness he would tell me that when we came 
 into our fortune (an imaginary £3000 a year that we 
 used to argue about the disposal of), I should see how 
 reformed a character he would become in the matter 
 of dress ; but I feel sure the old coat, old hat, old 
 slippers, would have been equally clung to, and that 
 our life could not have been rendered more completely 
 satisfying by any increase of means. 
 
 On the 5th of March, the eleventh anniversary of 
 our marriage, we walked together on the West Pier — 
 walked briskly to and fro in the breeze and sunshine, 
 and in sheltered corners stood to watch the waves. 
 That evening there came to Brighton General and 
 Mrs. Cotton, two of the friends in whom he most 
 thoroughly delighted. General Cotton's conversation 
 he always spoke of as one of the greatest enjoyments 
 procurable, and her brightness and charm now seemed 
 peculiarly to refresh him. They could not persuade 
 themselves that the case was hopeless, so animated was 
 his greeting, and by candlelight the sallow hue of his 
 skin, and even the emaciation, was not startling. But 
 each day now brought some slight diminution of bodily 
 strength. On the 13th, while preparing for his morn- 
 ing's drive, he said : " I am weaker than ever. It is 
 vain to kick against the pricks." And then, with most 
 pathetic playfulness, and calling himself by one of the 
 myriad pet names I used in our happier days to invent 
 for him, he declared he could be quite sorry for him- 
 
236 MEMOIK. 
 
 self, could pity himself. I could not help saying, " And 
 me ! " And oh the unutterable compassion of his voice, 
 the deep tenderness that rung out in his reply, " In^ 
 finitely ! infinitely ! " Then in a few moments he very 
 solemnly and earnestly went on, " There is a power 
 stronger than all our wishes and regrets ; we must not 
 let any angry or impatient feelings creep into our 
 hearts, we must quietly and patiently yield." 
 
 On the same day we took our last walk ; sat out, 
 and looked at sea and sky together for the last time. 
 On Friday we moved to the house of his kind sister- 
 in-law on the other side of the square. Painting was 
 going on at the back of our comfortable lodgings, and 
 Dr. Hilbers spoke of that as quite sufficient, in his 
 weak state, to induce the symptom that now alarmed 
 us, and reduced his strength still further. His sister- 
 in-law was not at home, but his niece Violetta had 
 already most lovingly implored him to be her guest, 
 and now renewed her entreaties. 
 
 When once the change was accomplished it was very 
 affecting to notice his enjoyment of it. Sometimes, 
 during the last few weeks, he had expressed his long- 
 ing for a home, and now one, familiar to him for 
 twenty years, and having only pleasant associations, 
 was eagerly thrown ojDen to him. All its comfortable 
 arrangements gave him pleasure. In the cheerful bed- 
 room we occupied, pictures of his kindred hung upon 
 the walls ; and thinking of the peculiarly tender love 
 between him and his mother, one is glad that the last 
 chair he ever sat in should have been his mother's arm- 
 chair. He seemed better that first evening at No. 1, 
 and when General and Mrs. Cotton came as usual to 
 
MEMOIR. 237 
 
 spend it with him, told them he " felt himself in para- 
 dise since his move." Yet in the night, while I lay 
 silently there hoping he was asleep, he suddenly said, 
 *' Your love supports me," and something in the almost 
 solemn tone of the voice struck terror to my heart. 
 The next day he had his breakfast in bed for the first 
 time. But he enjoyed his drive, talked with animation 
 to his companion, and insisted upon walking down to 
 the dining-room for dinner. This too he did on the 
 Sunday ; but for the last time. For now the bodily 
 strength ebbed rapidly. The last drive was on Tues- 
 day the 19th, when he noticed with pleasure some 
 beautiful streaks of light in the afternoon sky. It was 
 a cold day, and spite of all precautions he returned 
 chilled, and that evening he had a shivering-fit. Till 
 now these attacks had invariably come on in the night, 
 and no one but myself had ever witnessed them. Oh 
 what agony, for months past, witnessing them ! for I 
 knew the fever and weakness that invariably succeeded 
 them. Yet they never seemed to depress him. He 
 would be SLctRsiilj playful during their continuance — 
 always solicitous to soothe my alarm, to assure me the 
 attack was passing off, would soon pass off, was less 
 severe than the last. 
 
 I do not here enumerate the remedies tried. It is 
 enough to say that nothing had the least effect in check- 
 ing those paroxysms of trembling and breathlessness 
 with sense of internal chill. Pain there was none. 
 He would entreat me not to move, to fold him closely 
 in my arms ; and so, with perfect cheeriness and hope- 
 fulness, thinking more of my alarm than any danger to 
 himself, he bore one fever-fit after another till they had 
 
238 MEMOIR. 
 
 wasted him to a shadow. On Wednesday evening he 
 looked sad as the familiar shudder came on at a new 
 hour. " This dashes our hopes," he said. Yet he 
 took the greatest pleasure that very evening in Mrs. 
 Cotton's music. Music had been one of the passions 
 of his earlier days. Of late he had got weaned from 
 it, having a wife who did not play ; and, indeed, even 
 when the opportunity arose of gratifying the dormant 
 taste, he had seemed almost reluctant to do so. But 
 now that he was getting too weak for much sustained 
 conversation, the ''refreshment" of the sweet, slow, 
 flowing music — the only kind he wished for— -was 
 keenly felt ; and this enjoyment he had for several 
 evenings. It now became my privilege to wait upon 
 him daily more and more. Little by little the singu- 
 larly independent and self-helpful man came to permit 
 his wife to do everything for him. But so perfect the 
 sweetness of his nature, and so exquisite its courtesy, 
 he never showed the least annoyance at this necessity : 
 he even made it a pleasure. The washing and dress- 
 ing—all got over in bed now — were got over in the 
 cheerfullest way possible, with the gracefuUest acknow- 
 ledgment of every attempt to serve. -^ It was still 
 impossible not to feel happy in his presence, and I 
 knew I had the rest of my life for sorrow. Yet when 
 I look back to myself at that time, I almost shudder to 
 think that I could be cheerful ! But he had more than 
 once said to me that my cheerfulness was his greatest 
 
 1 On one of these mornings some sudden impulse made me say : — 
 " William, sucli love as mine for you cannot be the result of mere 
 mechanical or vital forces, can it?" And he replied, in a tone of con- 
 viction from which in my darkest hours I gain some support, " Oh 
 no I It has a far higher source. " 
 
 / 
 
MEMOIR. 239 
 
 boon and delight ; and for weeks I had had one wish 
 only, — to smooth the path for him. I never spoke to 
 him but with smiles, with almost gaiety, to which he 
 invariably responded. His sensitive nature was pecu- 
 liarly susceptible to gloomy looks, and besides, he had 
 not given up all hope of recovery. On this point he 
 seemed to have, so to speak, a double consciousness. 
 His knowledge of physiology must have told him of 
 imminent danger; and, indeed, many expressions of his 
 showed that he understood his own case perfectly. Yet 
 at other times there was the hopefulness that charac- 
 terizes consumption. On the 20th he told me that he 
 had a conviction that " when we got to the country he 
 should recover ; " twice told me this during that last 
 fortnight. I am thankful for every word that he uttered 
 in this strain, for it seems to prove that he did not 
 suffer. On Friday our dear friends General and Mrs. 
 Cotton left, and he missed and regretted them. But he , 
 continued to see friends to the last. Indeed, his nature , / 
 seemed to grow more and more genial and gracious, j / 
 more demonstrative of affection. The smile of welcome 
 was warmer and as bright as ever. The dear nieces 
 never had so many sweet and loving words to garner 
 up in their hearts as during this last winter. For me 
 he had a boundless tenderness and pity. I have , 
 memories of love and blessing too sacred to my sorrow I / 
 to be recorded here. I had thought I might give more J 
 of his gracious sayings. But I could not give the look, 
 the tone ; it is best, as he once wrote of words of 
 mine, to let them " just sink into the silence of one's 
 heart." Yet those who value him as he deserved will 
 be glad to know that even his exceeding humility did 
 
240 MEMOIR. 
 
 not prevent his realizing that he was, and had long 
 been, the object of an exceptional affection. On one of 
 our last days he said to me, " Yours is a great love. I 
 do not believe there ever was such another." And 
 another saying of his will prove that however inferior 
 to him, his constant companion was still sufficing. 
 During one of the last nights, fixing the large dark 
 eyes — always beautiful, but never so beautiful as now — 
 very earnestly on mine, he said, " I think you and I 
 should make a happy world if we were the only two 
 in it." 
 
 On the morning of Tuesday the 26 th Mr. Carpenter 
 saw him. They talked politics, discussed the Budget, 
 and my husband's mind was clear and keen as ever. 
 Mr. Carpenter did not think he was bidding him good- 
 bye for the last time, though he blessed him, rejoicing, 
 as he said, to see '^ so bright a face." 
 
 Even on Wednesday William rose at the usual hour, 
 walked resolutely down-stairs, finished the third number 
 of 'Middlemarch,' which he had read during the last few 
 days with steady determination, listened to a " beauti- 
 fully written " and very kind note from the author, saw 
 his dear niece Clara and both doctors — for now Dr. 
 Allen came as an invaluable friend, and for the last two 
 evenings helped to carry him up-stairs. Wednesday 
 night was one of very high fever and of some delirium. 
 I was alone with him (always alone at night), and even 
 though distressed by vague dream-like fancies that we 
 were in an enemy's country, and amenable to some 
 punishment there, the " sweet reasonableness " of his 
 nature prevailed even then, and he showed me how we 
 must make the best of our situation. And he was 
 
MEMOIR. 241 
 
 easily recalled, and always knew me. But the high 
 fever had done its work. The following morning, 
 Thursday the 28th, he told me he did not mean 
 to attempt to rise. I cannot retrace the hours of this 
 last day. It seemed as though he who hitherto had 
 retained some enjoyment and hope of life, now all at 
 once knew that he was to die, and equally acquiesced 
 in it ! His perfect calm, his habitual manner, were not 
 for one moment disturbed. It was of others he still 
 thought throughout. He alluded to the " melancholy 
 of it" for "poor Eebecca" (his sister-in-law) in the 
 half-playful manner he might have had on any other 
 day. Throughout these hours of the last weariness he 
 used some of our words for different things, — for we 
 had a language of our own, as I said before. But for 
 me he had tones of tender pity. For me he " grieved 
 deejply, deeply. He could have wished to live for my 
 sake more than for his own." And then in some 
 connexion that has escaped me, though I strain my 
 memory often to recall it, but I think in answer to 
 some cry of anguish, and with a wish to give me still 
 something to live for, with a thrilling earnestness of 
 voice and far-off gaze I shall surely remember till I die : 
 " And if there be a further sphere for us, it must be 
 our part to prepare ourselves for it." For Violetta, his 
 " sweetest of hostesses," as he called her, he had the 
 most gracious solicitude. " Was she quite well 1 were 
 we eating enough % " The mind was unclouded 
 throughout. He listened to letters, talked of dic- 
 tating a reply to one. The voice grew indistinct and 
 the sentences broken ; but I do not believe there was 
 the least confusion of mind. I add a few sentences 
 
 Q 
 
242 MEMOIR. 
 
 jotted down while the blow still stunned, and the agony 
 was still felt : — " Throughout the day he kept telling 
 me he ' was doing well,' ' was doing very well/ and once 
 I heard the words, ^ Quite normal/ as though he were 
 watching himself die. Once I saw the hands clasped 
 as in a speechless communion with the Unseen, and 
 twice I caught the solemn word God, uttered not in a 
 tone of appeal or entreaty, but as if the supreme con- 
 templation which had been his very life meant more, 
 revealed more than ever. When I said to him, ' Oh 
 what a grace of patience God has given you ! ' he shook 
 his head in gentle deprecation. . . . 
 
 " Dear Vi was of course necessarily called out of the 
 room to provide for his wants, and thus I had the 
 privilege of never leaving him. God bless her for it. 
 . . . When my angel hardly seemed conscious, when 
 the eyes were half-closed and the open lips were parched 
 and pale (he was averse to having them moistened, and 
 had said ' Let me rest '), I dared to lay mine on them 
 and say, ' Your miserable wife ! ' I did not hope for 
 the response that came — three little kisses, and the 
 whispered word ' Blessing.' Some time in the day, 
 when I implored him to give me that blessing, he had 
 said in his sweet natural way, ' I only wish it was better 
 worth.' But he gave it then. It was not far from 
 the end when opening his eyes and seeing Vi and me 
 beside him, he had quite in a cheerful tone said, ' There 
 they are, the two dear creatures.' Later — as I bent 
 over him — he opened his eyes, and with the same smile 
 as in health and happiness, bright, inexpressibly tender, 
 Cy ^6 took my face into his hand'. — twice did so. This 
 
 old familiar caress was the farewell. 
 
MEMOIR. 243 
 
 " After his last spoonful of turtle, which Vi gave 
 while I raised him, the ijeculiar sound in the throat 
 came on, but it had no horror, no intensity about it, 
 and did not to either of us convey the fact that he was 
 about to go. After that the laboured breathing changed 
 its character. Violetta was called away. I was quite 
 alone with my love. I got on the bed behind him, the 
 better to prop him in what seemed an easy sleep — the 
 hands and feet still warm. His head passed gradually 
 from the pillow to my breast, and there the cherished 
 head rested firmly ; the breathing grew gentler and 
 gentler. Never shall I forget the great awe, the brood- 
 ing presence with which the room was filled. My 
 heart leapt wildly with a new sensation, but it was not 
 fear. Only it would have seemed profane to utter even 
 my illimitable love, or to call upon his name. This 
 must have lasted, Yi thinks, not more than ten minutes, 
 the head grew damp and very heavy ; my arms were 
 under him. Then the sleep grew quite quiet, and as 
 the church-clock began to strike ten I caught a Kttle, 
 little sigh, such as a new-born infant might give in 
 waking — not a tremor, not a thrill of the frame ; and 
 then Yi came back with Clara's nurse (who having a 
 peculiar love and admiration for him I had said might 
 come up). I told them he was gone, and I thanked God 
 for the perfect peace in which he passed away. ..." 
 
 He was buried in the Brighton Cemetery, in a spot at 
 present still secluded, and over which the larks sing 
 joyously. There a plain grey granite headstone rises 
 " to his pure and cherished memory," with just his 
 name and two dates, and this one line, long associated 
 
244 MEMOIR. 
 
 with him in my mind, and which all who knew him 
 have felt to be appropriate — 
 
 " His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." 
 Only four went to his funeral, viz., Clara's husband, 
 General Cotton, and Mr. Carpenter (whom he had taken 
 pleasure in introducing to each other as " two of the 
 noblest men he knew"). Dr. Allen, his kind friend of 
 years. There were no mourning trappings — peculiarly 
 discordant with the idea of him — only the carriage with 
 " the dear grey horses " followed, and in it hearts that 
 valued him. A clergyman who had known him, not long 
 but well, in our Borrowdale home, asked whether he 
 might come and read the Service. This will show the 
 feelings my husband inspired in those whose tlioughts 
 were not his. Indeed, I never knew a high moral nature 
 that did not at once recognise the purity, righteousness, 
 and holiness of his. In the case of all such the sense 
 of differing opinions melted away under the influence of 
 his character. To men of negative views, the j)Ossibility 
 of a future life seemed to acquire a deeper interest now 
 that he had passed away ; to those whose faith in im- 
 mortality was firmest, the conception of spiritual enjoy- 
 ment became all the clearer for having known one so 
 spiritually-minded, so purely searching after the truth. 
 I might multiply testimonies to this effect, but they are 
 not needed here. If, however, the appreciation of the 
 cultivated and thoughtful seem a mere matter of course, 
 it was yet not more marked or more unfailing than the 
 love he, shy and silent towards them, won from all the 
 simple and uneducated who were brought into frequent 
 contact with him. Something in his courtesy elevated 
 them, something in his brightness cheered. I do not 
 
MEMOIR. 245 
 
 think any person wlio ever spoke to him half-a-dozen 
 times was quite indifferent to him. No man sought 
 love less, or was less careful about the impression he 
 made on others. But love unsought came largely to 
 him, and during his last illness I think he discovered 
 with something of sweet and tender surprise how very 
 dear he was to many ! It was, I dare to believe, a 
 gentle, a cheerful last illness ! Of him every memory is 
 sweet and elevating ; and I record it here, that a life- 
 long anguish such as defies words, is yet not too high a 
 price to pay for the privilege of haidng loved him and 
 belonged to him. 
 
 This was written a year and a half ago, and I have 
 nothing to add. I might indeed cite the testimony of 
 relations and friends to some ineffable charm in his 
 nature, ineffable tenderness in their regret. But I 
 prefer closing this brief memoir with words of his — 
 and the passage I am about to quote contains, I believe, 
 the very secret of his pure life and the ground of his 
 serenity in death : — 
 
 " There comes a time when neither Fear nor Hope 
 are necessary to the pious man ; but he loves right- 
 eousness for righteousness' sake, and love is all in all. 
 It is not joy at escape from future perdition that he 
 now feels ; nor is it hope for some untold happiness 
 in the future : it is a present rapture of piety, and 
 resignation, and love ; a present that fills eternity. It 
 asks nothing, it fears nothing; it loves and it has. 
 no petition to make. God takes back His little child 
 unto Himself — a little child that has no fear, and is 
 all trust." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS OF WILLIAM SMITH TO 
 '' BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE." 
 
 1839. August, . 
 October, . 
 
 1840. January, . 
 February, 
 June, , , . 
 September, 
 December, , 
 
 1841. March, . . 
 
 1842. May, . . . 
 June, . . . 
 September,. 
 
 jj 
 October, . 
 
 1843. March, . . 
 May, . . . 
 
 July, . . . , 
 October, . . 
 
 1844. June, . . . , 
 August, . , 
 
 September, , 
 November, . 
 
 A Prosing upon Poetry. 
 On the Feigned Madness of Hamlet. 
 Hints on History, Part 1. 
 Do. do. Part 2. 
 
 Wild Oats — A New Species. 
 The Boundary Question. 
 On Population (a Review of Alison). 
 Wordsworth. 
 Gabrielle de Belle Isle. 
 Angelo. 
 
 Dennis on Shakespeare. 
 History ofFrance (Review of Michelet) Parti. 
 Do. do. Part 2. 
 
 Comte. 
 
 Dumas on Italy. 
 Leap Year : A Tale. 
 Past and Present, by Carlyle. 
 Mill's Logic. 
 
 The Diligence : A Leaf from a Journal. 
 Some Remarks on Schiller's Maid of Orleans. 
 M. Girardin. 
 M. Louis Blanc. 
 French Socialists. 
 
248 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 1845. February, . 
 
 , The Superfluities of Life. 
 
 April, . . . 
 
 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. 
 
 June, . . . . 
 
 The Novel and the Drama. 
 
 July, . . . 
 
 . Torquato Tasso (Goethe's). 
 
 August, . , 
 
 . On Punishment. 
 
 September, 
 
 . Warren's Law Studies. 
 
 October, . , 
 
 Manner and Matter : A Tale. 
 
 November, . 
 
 Hakem the Slave : A Tale. 
 
 December, , 
 
 . The Mountain and the Cloud. 
 
 1846. December, 
 
 . Mildred : A Tale. Part 1. 
 
 1847. January, . , 
 
 Do. do. Part 2. 
 
 February, , 
 
 Do. do. Part 3. 
 
 April, . . . 
 
 Cromwell. 
 
 May, . . . . 
 
 The Visible and Tangible : A Metaphysical 
 
 
 Fragment. 
 
 July, . . . 
 
 . Sir H. Nicolas's History of the Navy. 
 
 August, . 
 
 , Grote's History of Greece. 
 
 September, 
 
 . Le Premier Pas. 
 
 55 
 
 Byways of History. 
 
 »? 
 
 Giacomo da Valencia ; or, the Student of 
 
 
 Bologna. 
 
 October, . , 
 
 . Works of Hans Christian Andersen. 
 
 November, 
 
 . The American Library. 
 
 December, 
 
 . Emerson. 
 
 1848. June, . . . . 
 
 , Guesses at Truth. 
 
 October, . 
 
 . J. S. Mill's Political Economy. 
 
 December, . 
 
 , Mrs. Hemans. 
 
 1849. March, . . 
 
 . M. Prudhon, Contradictions Economiques. 
 
 April, . . , 
 
 . Tennyson's Poems. 
 
 May, . . . 
 
 . Colonization ; Mr. Wakefield's Theory. 
 
 August, . , 
 
 . Charles Lamb. 
 
 October, . , 
 
 . Physical Geography (Mrs. Somerville). 
 
 1850. January, . 
 
 . Howard. 
 
 February, 
 
 . Goldsmith. Part 1. • 
 
 March, . . , 
 
 Do. Part 2. 
 
 jj 
 
 A Late Case of Court-Martial. 
 
 April, . . , 
 
 , Festus. 
 
 September, , 
 
 , The Night Side of Nature. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 249 
 
 1851. March, . . 
 April, . . . 
 May, . . . 
 August, . 
 September, 
 October, , 
 November, 
 
 1852. March, . . 
 May, . . . 
 September, 
 October, . 
 
 1854. Jamiary, . 
 February, 
 March, . . 
 
 ?? 
 
 1855. March, . . 
 April, . . 
 
 August, . 
 
 1856. March, . . 
 April, . . 
 
 1858. January, . 
 March, . . 
 August, . 
 
 November, 
 
 1859. July, . . . 
 August, . 
 October, . 
 November, 
 
 December, 
 
 1860. August, . 
 October, . , 
 
 1861. February, 
 
 . Southey. Part 1. 
 Do. Part 2. 
 
 . Some American Poets. 
 . Voltaire in the Crystal Palace. 
 . Mr. Ruskin's Works. 
 . The Essays of Mr. Helps. 
 . The Dramas of Henry Taylor. 
 . Miss Mitford's Pecollections. 
 . Life of Niebuhr. 
 . Jeffrey. Part 1. 
 . Do. Part 2. 
 
 Corneille and Shakespeare. 
 
 Eeview of Sortain's Count Arenberg. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers as Political Economist. 
 . Landor's Last Fruit off an Old Tree. 
 , G-ray's Letters. 
 , The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Jerome Cardan. 
 
 Life of Lord Metcalfe. 
 , Sir Benjamin Brodie's Psychological In- 
 quiries. 
 , Warren's Blackstone. 
 
 Liddell's History of Rome. 
 
 Prescott's Philip the Second. 
 
 Debit and Credit. 
 
 Sullivan on Cumberland. 
 
 Gladstone's Homer. 
 
 White's Eighteen Christian Centuries. 
 
 Buckle's History of Civilisation. 
 
 Dr. Mansel's Bampton Lectures. 
 
 Leaders of the Reformation. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton. 
 
 Vaughan's Revolutions in English History, 
 vol. i. 
 
 Motley's Dutch Republic. 
 
 Dr. Hanna's Wycliffe and the Huguenots. 
 
 Charles Hemans on Papal Government. 
 
 Carthage and its Remains. 
 R 
 
250 
 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 1861. May, .... Motley's History of the Netherlands, 
 June, .... Miss Bremer in Switzerland and Italy. 
 August, . . Vaughan's Revolutions in English History, 
 
 vol. ii. 
 November, . M. Ernest E,enan. 
 
 1862. May, .... Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.* 
 
 1863. January, . . T. TroUope's Italian Novels. 
 April, . . . Spedding's Life of Bacon. 
 May, .... Wilson's Prehistoric Man. 
 September, . Jean Paul Biehter. 
 October, . . Sheridan Knowles. 
 December, . Tyndall on Heat. 
 
 1864. February, . Kirk's Charles the Bold. 
 April, . . . Mr. Knight's Reminiscences. 
 August, . . Mr. Lewes's Aristotle. 
 
 „ Victor Hugo's Shakespeare. 
 
 October, . . Max MiiUer's Lectures on the Science of 
 Language, 2d Series, 
 
 1865. March, . . . William Blake. 
 
 1866. May, , . . . J. S. MiU on Sir William Hamilton. 
 
 „ Scraps of Verse from a Tourist's Journal. 
 
 June, .... Life of Steele, 
 
 1867. February, , Dallas's Gay Science. 
 March, . . . Ferrier. 
 
 April, .... Hemans's Ancient Christianity. 
 June, .... The Duke of Argyll's Beign of Law. 
 'September, . La Physique Moderne (Saigey). 
 
 1868. July, .... Motley's History of the Netherlands. 
 November, . Lewes's History of Philosophy. 
 December, . Dean Milman. 
 
 1870. July, .... Lecky's History of Morals. 
 November, . Professor Porter on The Human Intellect. 
 
 1871, July, .... The Coming Race. 
 
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