instance. One of the most erudite students of philosophy in this country once enounced his opinion as follows: Many a man," said he, " has been reduced to the lowest depths of despondency by an obstruction in the major viscera, and has subsequently been restored to a sense of the Divine favour by a mild course of aperient medicine." As to the connection of pleasure with right conduct, perhaps, bearing in mind the various experiences with regard to pleasure here adduced, we might hazard a conjecture, that so long as a community is progressive, right conduct, being a series of actions along the lines within which the community is moving, will be for the most part pleasant; and that when the community begins to decline towards stagnation or dissolution, right conduct will encounter rebuffs both within and without, and become unpleasant; and contrariwise, bad conduct that is action which moves within the lines of declension in a community, will begin largely to be pleasant. So that, inasmuch as in every community there are processes of growth going on by the side of and intermingled with processes of decay, we can never count upon virtue being pleasant or vice disagreeable, but must expect each to be sometimes the one and sometimes the other; whilst it is certain that if we make happiness the aim of our endeavours, we are sure to miss it. We see then how difficult and complex this whole question of the connection of pleasure or happiness with conduct is: so that when Mr. Arnold says, "of course" and " undeniably," "we all know," that to righteousness belongs happiness, he is "feigning" in human nature "a greater equality and uniformity than is in truth."

But, in the second place, Bacon says that there are "the idols of the cave," the illusions peculiar to each individual, arising from character, education, circumstances, preferences in study, and the like: and that these things lead a man into " specum sive cavernam quandam individuam," a den or cavern of his own.

Let

us examine Mr. Arnold's third fundamental proposition enunciated in "Literature and Dogma." It is this.

1

"When we are asked," he says, "what is the object of religion? let us reply, Conduct." And when we are

asked further, What is conduct? let us answer, Threefourths of life." As a definition of conduct this is of course only quantitative or arithmetical, and as such is no answer at all to the question, "What is conduct ?" It is like saying: "When we are asked what is the object of human anatomy? let us reply, Man's body. And when we are asked further, what is the body? let us answer, From nine to eighteen stone." But Mr. Arnold has told us on the previous page more explicitly what conduct is. After quoting an essay by M. Littré, he says

All the impulses which can be conceived as derivable from the instinct of self-preservation in us and the reproductive instinct, these terms being applied in their ordinary sense, are matter of conduct. It is evident this includes, to say no more, every impulse relating to temper, every impulse relating to sensuality; and we all know how much that is. How we deal with these impulses is the matter of conduct-how we obey, regulate, or restrain them—that and nothing else. And he adds

It is evident, if conduct deals with these, how important a thing conduct is, and how simple a thing.2

Impulses relating to temper, impulses relating to sensuality-three-fourths of our life are to be occupied with the management of these! "Three-fourths"-this is not a rhetorical way of saying how large, how important a thing conduct is; but it is the expression of an exact proportion, such as we might have in a recipe

As the discipline of conduct is three-fourths of life, for our æsthetic and intellectual disciplines, real as these are, there is but one-fourth of life left; and if we let art and science 2 Ibid. p. 17.

1 "Literature and Dogma," p. 18.

divide this one-fourth fairly between them, they will have just one-eighth of life each.'

And still more explicitly further on—

Conduct, plain matter as it is, is six-eighths of life, while art and science are only two-eighths.2

One would have said that the proportion which conduct should bear to the rest of life is not a constant

proportion, but one depending upon temperament, character, circumstances, occupation, and the like. One can at least see that, in a man of genius like Goethe, questions about the regulation of the impulses towards self-preservation and towards reproduction, occupy a very small proportion indeed of his time and attentionscarcely any indeed. That is permitted to Goethe which is not permitted to me for where would the modern world have been if Goethe had made conduct threefourths of his life, and art and science one-eighth each? But, genius apart, one would suppose that the proportion which conduct should bear to the rest of life would at least vary directly with the strength of the impulses which it is occupied in regulating, with the physique in short; with the action of particular sets of circumstances, in strengthening or controlling them, and the like; and that these factors would vary indefinitely with different individuals, and in each individual with different periods of his existence. So that a universal proportion for conduct to bear to the rest of life it is not possible to fix. Regard for a moment the ancient Israelites, who had neither art nor science, and who, Mr. Arnold tells us, thought that conduct was not only three-fourths of life, but the whole3 of it. Were their lives better regulated, after all, than say the lives of the ancient Romans, or of the modern Germans, for this exclusive attention? We seem to gather from the Bible that the Jews were a stiff2 Ibid. p. 354.

1 "Literature and Dogma," p. 210.

Ibid. p. 235.

necked and stupid people, always going wrong in some way or other in matters of conduct, and falling into every trap and temptation that their own impulses or the examples of the neighbouring nations set for them. So little does disproportionate attention to the regulation of the desires gain its end.

But what does Mr. Arnold himself say in " Culture and Anarchy," in his earlier manner as we have called it, about this predominance of the care for conduct? He is speaking of the Puritan character, the modern representative of what he calls Hebraism, the exclusive or predominant care for right practice, and is contrasting it with Hellenism, the passion for sweetness and light, for culture and intelligence, for art and science

The true and smooth order of humanity's development is not reached in either way (either by Hebraism or by Hellenism). And therefore, while we willingly admit with the Christian apostle that the world by wisdom-that is, by the isolated preponderance of its intellectual impulses-knew not God, or the true order of things, it is yet necessary, also, to set up a sort of converse to this proposition, and to say likewise (what is equally true) that the world by Puritanism knew not God. And it is on this converse of the Apostle's proposition that it is particularly needful to insist in our own country just at present.

For, as he explains in the same chapter—

We have fostered our Hebraizing instincts, our preference of earnestness of doing to delicacy and flexibility of thinking, too exclusively, and have been landed by them in a mechanical and unfruitful routine.2

A man who is so landed, Mr. Arnold insists, "is a victim of Hebraism, of the tendency to cultivate strictness of conscience rather than spontaneity of consciousness. And what he wants is a larger conception of

1 "Culture and Anarchy," p. 153.

3 Ibid. p. 157.

2 Ibid. p. 174.

human nature, showing him the number of other points at which his nature must come to its best, besides the points which he himself knows and thinks of."

Hebraism and Hellenism-between these two points of influence moves our world; . . . . and it ought to be, though it never is, evenly and happily balanced between them.

Here, then, we see Mr. Arnold still on the high road; he is moving in the element of the "better self" and the Zeit-Geist; and has not yet entered into the "cage of Puritanism" and "turned the key" upon himself there, as in "Literature and Dogma." He is not yet in the "cave;" what sends him thither? "Vel propter naturam propriam et singularem; vel propter educationem et conversationem cum aliis," are some of Bacon's reasons. Let us try the last, "propter conversationem cum aliis.”

Mr. Arnold is in these later works of his addressing what he calls the Philistines-i.e., the great middle class which rules our destinies in this country, in France, and in the United States of America. Now it must be confessed that although the Philistine is a man of inflexible morality in certain departments, and of eminent respectability in all, although he has all sorts of prejudices, it may be, and hard and fast lines about conduct, yet conduct itself is not exactly his forte, any more than it was Goethe's. "Sincere, gross of perception, prosaic," as Mr. Arnold rightly calls him, the Philistine has his threefourths of life immersed in what is called "business," and business, with its famous guiding principle of “caveat emptor," is not regarded by him as falling within the scope of those rigorous principles and that inflexible morality of which he is fond of speaking. We have only to read the daily newspapers to be convinced of this, so that it is easy to see how a man like Mr. Arnold, who, by nature, education, and circumstances, has been impelled and habituated to that transparent uprightness

1 "Culture and Anarchy," p. 129.