which we admire in his literary works, should receive somewhat of a shock when he finds himself confronting the Philistines and recommending to them conduct, and, as conduct touched with emotion, religion. This I think will be found to be the reason why in "Literature and Dogma" he sets free such a torrent of enthusiasm for conduct as to seem to magnify its importance out of all proportion to the other affairs of life, and certainly at the expense of that harmonious development of all those other points, "at which," he tells us elsewhere," man's nature must come to its best." However this may be, to say that conduct is for every one three-fourths of life, is certainly an illusion, and just such an illusion as would come for the moment to a highly honourable and generous nature when pleading for conduct with those whose forte conduct is not, and who lose by not making it a stronger point than at present they do. Propter lectionem librorum et auctoritates eorum quos quisque colit et miratur," so Bacon goes on with his diagnosis of the idols of the cave. May we venture to say that Bishop Butler, Bishop Wilson, Pascal, Fénelon, St. Augustine, Mr. Arnold's favourite authors, from whom he seems to have derived the idea of writing about religion and conduct, though good and excellent men, are not the great thinkers of the world on these intricate questions, do not represent "the main stream and vital movement" of mankind's intelligence on these subjects; and that reading them too exclusively, dwelling on them, is like giving oneself in literature to the study of Kotzebue rather than Goethe, or of Crabbe and Waller to the neglect of Shakespeare? "The Germans," says Will Ladislaw, in "Middlemarch," when speaking of Mr. Casaubon's "Key to all Mythologies," "have taken the lead in historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a pocketcompass, while they have made good roads." The "Key to all Mythologies" was, it will be remembered, the fruit of very much the same sort of studies as those which have recently found favour with Mr. Arnold. But we must hasten on to the third kind of illusions which, Bacon says, infest the mind when it neglects the use of method. These are the "idols of the marketplace," idola fori, the illusions of language. These illusions he considers the most troublesome, "omnium molestissima sunt;" they insinuate themselves into the mind "ex fœdere verborum et nominum," from the association of words and names. Men believe that their reason governs words: "sed fit etiam ut verba vim suam super intellectum retorqueant et reflectant," but it also happens that words react upon the mind and govern it. These illusions of language are of two kinds: either they are the names of things which have no existence in fact; or they are the names of things which are real, but of which our idea is confused and ill-defined, and formed from a hasty and inadequate survey of the facts. The application of words, he explains, is often the work of the popular apprehension, and the lines by which they divide things are for the most part lines which the popular intellect can follow; and then "verba gignunt verba," words beget words, and in this way we come under the dominion of the "idols" of language. Let us see if Mr. Matthew Arnold has entirely escaped this dominion of words over his reasoning. Already in St. Paul and Protestantism”2 we find him, in his polemic against the Dissenters, founding an argument upon the use, and upon the wrong use, of a word. People, however, there were in abundance, he writes, who differed on points both of discipline and of dogma from the rule which obtained in the Church, and who separated from her on account of that difference. These were the heretics; separatists, as the name implies, for the sake of opinions. 1 "Novum Organum," lix. 2 And the very name, therefore, implies that they were wrong separating, and that the body which held together was right. in Now here, in the first place, Mr. Arnold is evidently thinking, not of "heretics," but of "schismatics." Heresy means a particular study or school of thought (aïpeσis 'EXλnvin means the study of Greek history); it does not mean separation. A heretic is not a separatist, unless he is expelled, from the main body, but simply, like Mr. Arnold himself, the adherent of a particular school of opinion. A schismatic, on the other hand, is the name given by the main body to one who of his own act and culpably separates from it. The verbal argument begins, therefore, with a mistake in the meaning of the word; but it does not hold any more if we substitute the right word; i.e., it is not an admission of the wrongness of separation, unless it can be shown that the term expressive of blame is the term applied by the separatists to themselves, which it clearly was not, but to the separatists by the main body. So that no argument whatever can be founded on the use of the word, either way. Similarly, when Mr. Arnold is pointing out that the moral law is "a prime element and clue in man's constitution,"1 he says, the etymology of the word righteousness (= right, straight, way, road, a certain line, a necessary orbit) bears witness to its being so; but here he himself seems to be aware that verba gignunt verba, for he says that he will leave this kind of argument to Mr. Ruskin, and that "for these fanciful helps there is no need." Still on "these fanciful helps" he does come more and more to rely as he proceeds, and words more and more come to react upon his reasoning and to govern it. In "Literature and Dogma" his argument about the "Eternal Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness," is a fabric mainly, if not entirely, verbal; 1 "St. Paul and Protestantism," p. 107. Р it is constructed ex fœdere verborum et nominum. Let me try to make good this criticism. The unconscious artifice-it is of course unconscious, not intentional-on which the whole edifice is built up is this first, a word is taken which imports so little, and seems to lie so close to ordinary experience, and is besides so easy of comprehension, that it is readily admitted as representing a reality. Then a word a little stronger, and with a little more meaning in it, is joined with the first, as a kind of rhetorical improvement of it; and it is so little stronger that its addition is readily admitted. Then the original and very simple word is discarded; and with the stronger one standing alone, a third is next associated, which is a little stronger still, and has a little more, but scarcely appreciably more meaning; and this third word is then admitted as a synonym and rhetorical improvement on the second, and so on; until at last we find ourselves landed in an entirely new region, and have the illusion of being carried thither by a continuous stream of reasoning, whereas we really have been landed thither on the stepping-stones of words. Like Fame, in Virgil, Mr. Arnold's conception of the "Eternal:"_ Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo; Parva metu primo; mox sese attollit in auras, Let us first take quite a simple instance of this method of progression by means of words: speaking of the primitive religious ideas of Israel, Mr. Arnold says: In Israel's earliest history and earliest literature, under the name of Eloah, Elohim, The Mighty, there may have lain and matured, there did lie and mature, ideas of God more as a moral power, more as a power connected above everything with conduct and righteousness, than were entertained by other races not only can we judge by the result that this must have been so, but we can see that it was so. "May have," "did," " must," "was;" how little a thing it is to admit the first, how quite a different thing to 1 Literature and Dogma," p. 31. admit the last and the last but one! Yet the progression has been inappreciable almost, we are carried along so easily by the words, it is so easy to think that the words are reasons, or that reasons fill the intervals between them. What did they (the ancient Israelites) mean by the eternal ? the eternal what? (asks Mr. Arnold). The eternal cause ? Alas, these poor people were not Archbishops of York. They meant the eternal righteous, who loveth righteousness. They had dwelt upon the thought of conduct and right and wrong, till the not-ourselves which is in us and around us became to them adorable eminently and altogether as a power which makes for righteousness; which makes for it unchangeably and eternally, and is therefore called The Eternal.1 "There is not a particle of metaphysics," he says, rather uneasily perhaps, "in all this." Yet Mr. Arnold himself seems to suspect that even in this beginning there may have crept in elements which are not experimental. Eternal cause is metaphysical and must be at once rejected. But how about eternal or unchangeable, without adding cause? is that exactly experimental? Then the not-ourselves, is that not perilously like the notme of metaphysic? Well, righteous, righteousness, conduct, and the thought of them, and the emotions clustering around them-these at least are experimental. Some such misgiving as this seems to pass through Mr. Arnold's mind, for on the next page but two, the starting-point is very much reduced in scale. "The monotheistic idea of Israel,” we there read, " is simply seriousness;" and again, further on,3 “God is here really, at bottom, a deeplymoved way of saying conduct or righteousness." Here then, at least, we get a point close to experience from which to set out in our survey of the experiences of Israel we have no "not-ourselves," no "eternal," but simply conduct and the emotional regard of conduct. What does this But now, how to proceed? 3 P 47. 2 P. 35. |