Chapter XX: Appendix: The Ignorance of Man.22 (3)

But, though the denial of the real necessary perceptions of the human mind cannot possibly do any harm, the denial of alleged necessary perceptions is often essential to the discovery of truth. The human mind, as experience shows, is apt to manufacture sham self-evidences. The most obvious case is, that men perpetually ‘do sums’ wrong. If we dwell long enough and intently enough on the truths of arithmetic they are in each case self-evident; but, if we are too quick, or let our minds get dull, we may make any number of mistakes. A certain deliberation and a certain intensity are both essential to correctness in the matter. Fictitious necessities of thought will be imposed on us without end unless we are careful. The greatest minds are not exempt from the risk of such mistakes even in matters most familiar to them. On the contrary, the history of science is full of cases in which the ablest men and the most experienced assumed that it was impossible to think things which are in matter of fact true, and which it has since been found possible to think quite easily. The mode in which these sham self-evidences are distinguished from the real ones is by setting as many minds as possible to try as often as possible whether they can help thinking the thing or not. But such trials will never exist without discussion. So far, therefore, the existence of self-evidences in the human mind is not a reason for discouraging discussion, but a reason for encouraging it.

Next, it is certainly true that many conclusions which are by no means self-evident and which are gradually obtained, nevertheless, are not the result of discussion. For example, the opinion of a man as to the characters of his friends and acquaintances is not the result of distinct argument, but the aggregate of distinct impressions: it is not the result of an investigation consciously pursued, but the effect of a multiplicity of facts involuntarily presented; it is a definite thing and has a most definite influence on the mind, but its origin is indefinite and not to be traced; it is like a great fund raised in very small subscriptions and of which the subscribers’ names are lost. But here again, though these opinions too were not gained by discussion, their existence is a reason for promoting discussion, not for preventing it. Every-day experience shows that these opinions as to character are often mistaken in the last degree. Human character is a most complex thing, and the impressions which different people form of it are as various as the impressions which the inhabitants of an impassable mountain have of its shape and size. Each observer has an aggregate idea derived from certain actions and certain sayings, but the real man has always or almost always said a thousand sayings of a kind quite different and in a connection quite different; he has done a vast variety of actions among ‘other men’ and ‘other minds;’ a mobile person will often seem hardly the same if you meet him in very different societies. And how, except by discussion, is the true character of such a person to be decided? Each observer must bring his contingent to the list of _data_; those data must be arranged and made use of. The certain and positive facts as to which everyone is agreed must have their due weight: they must be combined and compared with the various impressions as to which no two people exactly coincide. A rough summary must be made of the whole. In no other way is it possible to arrive at the truth of the matter. Without discussion each mind is dependent on its own partial observation. A great man is one image—one thing, so to speak—to his valet, another to his son, another to his wife, another to his greatest friend. None of these must be stereotyped; all must be compared. To prohibit discussion is to prohibit the corrective process.

Lastly, I hold that there are first principles or first perceptions which are neither the result of constant, though forgotten trials like those last spoken of, nor common to all the race like the first. The most obvious seem to me to be the principles of taste. The primary perceptions of beauty vary much in different persons, and for different persons at the same time, but no one can say that they are not most real and most influential parts of human nature. There is hardly a thing made by human hands which is not affected more or less by the conception of beauty felt by the maker; and there is hardly a human life which would not have been different if the idea of beauty in the mind of the man who lived it had been different.

But certainly it would not answer to exclude subjects of taste from discussion, and to allow one school of taste-teachers to reign alone, and to prohibit the teaching of all rival schools. The effect would be to fix on all ages the particular ideas of one age on a matter which is beyond most others obscure and difficult to reduce to a satisfactory theory. The human mind evidently differs at various times immensely in its conclusions upon it, and there is nothing to show that the era of the persecutor is wiser than any other era, or that his opinion is better than anyone else’s.

The case of these variable first principles is much like that of the ‘personal equation,’ as it is called in the theory of observations. Some observers, it is found, habitually see a given phenomenon, say the star coming to the meridian, a little sooner than most others; some later; no two persons exactly coincide. The first thing done when a new man comes into an observatory for practical work is to determine whether he sees quick or slow; and this is called the ‘personal equation.’ But, according to the theory of persecution, the national astronomer in each country would set up his own mind as the standard; in one country he would be a quick man, and would not let the slow people contest what he said; in another he would be a slow man, and would not tolerate the quick people, or let men speak their minds; and so the astronomical observations—the astronomical _creeds_ if I may say so—of different countries would radically differ. But as toleration and discussion are allowed, no such absurd result follows. The observations of different minds are compared with those of others, and truth is assumed to lie in the mean between the errors of the quick people and the errors of the slow ones.

No such accurate result can be expected in more complex matters. The phenomena of astronomical observation relate only to very simple events, and to a very simple fact about these events. But perceptions of beauty have an infinite complexity: they are all subtle aggregates of countless details, and about each of these details probably every mind in some degree differs from every other one. But in a rough way the same sort of agreement is possible. Discussion is only an organised mode, by which various minds compare their conclusions with those of various others. Bold and strong minds describe graphic and definite impressions: at first sight these impressions seem wholly different. Writers of the last century thought classical architecture altogether inferior to Gothic; many writers now put it just the other way, and maintain a mediæval cathedral to be a thing altogether superior in kind and nature to anything classical. For years the world thought Claude’s landscapes perfect. Then came Mr. Ruskin, and by his ability and eloquence he has made a whole generation depredate them, and think Turner’s altogether superior. The extrication of truth by such discussions is very slow; it is often retarded; it is often thrown back; it often seems to pause for ages. But upon the whole it makes progress, and the principle of that progress is this:—Each mind which is true to itself, and which draws its own impressions carefully, and which compares those impressions with the impressions of others, arrives at certain conclusions, which as far as that mind is concerned are ultimate, and are its highest conclusions. These it sets down as expressively as it can on paper, or communicates by word of mouth, and these again form data which other minds can contrast with their own. In this incessant comparison eccentric minds fall off on every side; some like Milton, some Wordsworth, some can see nothing in Dryden, some find Racine intolerably dull, some think Shakespeare barbarous, others consider the contents of the Iliad ‘battles and schoolboy stuff.’ With history it is the same; some despise one great epoch, some another. Each epoch has its violent partisans, who will listen to nothing else, and who think every other epoch in comparison mean and wretched. These violent minds are always faulty and sometimes absurd, but they are almost always useful to mankind. They compel men to hear neglected truth. They uniformly exaggerate their gospel; but it generally _is_ a gospel. Carlyle said many years since of the old Poor Law in England:—‘It being admitted then that outdoor relief should at once cease, what means did great Nature take to make it cease? She created various men who thought the cessation of outdoor relief the one thing needful.’ In the same way, it being desirable that the taste of men should be improved on some point, Nature’s instrument on that point is some man of genius, of attractive voice and limited mind, who declaims and insists, not only that the special improvement is a good thing in itself, but the best of all things, and the root of all other good things. Most useful, too, are others less apparent; shrinking, sensitive, testing minds, of whom often the world knows nothing, but each of whom is in the circle just near him an authority on taste, and communicates by personal influence the opinions he has formed. The human mind of a certain maturity, if left alone, prefers real beauty to sham beauty, and prefers it the sooner if original men suggest new charms, and quiet men criticise and judge of them.

But an æsthetical persecution would derange all this, for generally the compulsive power would be in the hands of the believers in some tradition. The State represents ‘the rough force of society,’ and is little likely to be amenable to new charms or new ideas; and therefore the first victim of the persecution would be the original man who was proposing that which in the end would most improve mankind; and the next would be the testing and discerning critic who was examining these ideas and separating the chaff from the wheat in them. Neither would conform to the old tradition. The inventor would be too eager; the critic too scrupulous; and so a heavy code of ancient errors would be chained upon mankind. Nor would the case be at all the better if by some freak of events the propounder of the new doctrine were to gain full control, and to prohibit all he did not like. He would try, and try in vain, to make the inert mass of men accept or care for his new theory, and his particular enemy would be the careful critic who went with him a little way and then refused to go any further. If you allow persecution, the partisans of the new sort of beauty will, if they can, attack those of the old sort; and the partisans of the old sort will attack those of the new sort; while both will turn on the quiet and discriminating person who is trying to select what is good from each. Some chance taste will be fixed for ages.

But it will be said, ‘Whoever heard of such nonsense as an æsthetical persecution? Everybody knows such matters of taste must be left to take care of themselves; as far as they are concerned, nobody wants to persecute or prohibit.’ But I have spoken of matters of taste because it is sometimes best to speak in parables. The case of morals and religion, in which people have always persecuted and still wish to persecute, is the very same. If there are (as I myself think there are) ultimate truths of morals and religion which more or less vary for each mind, some sort of standard and some kind of agreement can only be arrived at about it in the very same way. The same comparison of one mind with another is necessary; the same discussion; the same use of criticising minds; the same use of original ones. The mode of arriving at truth is the same, and also the mode of stopping it.

We now see the reason why, as I said before, religious persecution often extirpates new doctrines, but commonly fails to maintain the belief in old tenets. You can prevent whole classes of men from hearing of the religion which is congenial to them, but you cannot make men believe a religion which is uncongenial. You can prevent the natural admirers of Gothic architecture from hearing anything of it, or from seeing it; but you cannot make them admire classical architecture. You may prevent the admirers of Claude from seeing his pictures, or from praising them; but you cannot make them admirers of Turner. Just so, you may by persecution prevent minds prone to be Protestant from being Protestant; but you will not make men real Catholics: you may prevent naturally Catholic minds from being Catholic; but you will not make them genuine Protestants. You will not make those believe your religion who are predisposed by nature in favour of a different kind of religion; you will make of them, instead, more or less conscious sceptics. Being denied the sort of religion of which the roots are in their minds and which they could believe, they will for ever be conscious of an indefinite want. They will constantly feel after something which they are never able to attain; they will never be able to settle upon anything; they will feel an instinctive repulsion from everything; they will be sceptics at heart, because they were denied the creed for which their heart craves; they will live as indifferentists, because they were withheld by force from the only creed to which they would not be indifferent. Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.

Upon examination, therefore, the admission that certain truths are not gained by discussion introduces no new element into the subject. The discussion of such truths is as necessary as of all other truths. The only limitations are that men’s minds shall in the particular society be mature enough to bear the discussion, and that the discussion shall not destroy the society.

I acknowledge these two limitations to the doctrine that discussion should be free, but I do not admit another which is often urged. It is said that those who write against toleration should not be tolerated; that discussion should not aid the enemies of discussion. But why not? If there is a strong Government and a people fit for discussion, why should not the cause be heard? We must not assume that the liberty of discussion has no case of exception. We have just seen that there are, in fact, several such. In each instance, let the people decide whether the particular discussion shall go on or not. Very likely, in some cases, they may decide wrong; but it is better that they should so decide, than that we should venture to anticipate all experience, and to make sure that they cannot possibly be right.

It is plain, too, that the argument, here applied to the toleration of opinion has no application to that of actions. The human mind, in the cases supposed, learns by freely hearing all arguments, but in no case does it learn by trying freely all practices. Society, as we now have it, cannot exist at all unless certain acts are prohibited. It goes on much better because many other acts are prohibited also. The Government must take the responsibility of saying what actions it will allow; that is its first business, and the allowance of all would be the end of civilisation. But it must, under the conditions specified, hear all opinions, for the tranquil discussion of all more than anything else promotes the progressive knowledge of truth, which is the mainspring of civilisation.

Nor does the argument that the law should not impose a penalty on the expression of any opinion equally prove that society should not in many cases apply a penalty to that expression. Society can deal much more severely than the law with many kinds of acts, because it need be far less strict in the evidence it requires. It can take cognisance of matters of common repute and of things of which everyone is sure, but which nobody can prove. Particularly, it can fairly well compare the character of the doctrine with the character of the agent, which law can do but imperfectly, if at all. And it is certain that opinions are evidence of the character of those who hold them—not conclusive evidence, but still presumptive. Experience shows that every opinion is compatible with what every one would admit to be a life fairly approvable, a life far higher than that of the mass of men. Great scepticism and great belief have both been found in characters whom both sceptics and believers must admire. Still, on the whole, there is a certain kinship between belief and character; those who disagree with a man’s fundamental creed will generally disapprove of his habitual character. If, therefore, society sees a man maintaining opinions which by experience it has been led to connect with actions such as it discountenances, it is justified in provisionally discountenancing the man who holds those opinions. Such a man should be put to the proof to show by his life that the opinions which he holds are not connected with really pernicious actions, as society thinks they are. If he is visibly leading a high life, society should discountenance him no longer; it is then clear that he did not lead a bad life, and the idea that he did or might lead such a life was the only reason for so doing. A doubt was suggested, but it also has been removed. This habit of suspicion does not, on the whole, impair free discussion; perhaps even it improves it. It keeps out the worst disputants, men of really bad character, whose opinions are the results of that character, and who refrain from publishing them, because they fear what society may say. If the law could similarly distinguish between good disputants and bad, it might usefully impose penalties on the bad. But, of course, this is impossible. Law cannot distinguish between the niceties of character; it must punish the publication of an opinion, if it punishes at all, no matter whether the publisher is a good man or whether he is a bad one. In such a matter, society is a discriminating agent: the law is but a blind one.

To most people I may seem to be slaying the slain, and proving what no one doubts. People, it will be said, no longer wish to persecute. But I say, they _do_ wish to persecute. In fact, from their writings, and still better from their conversation, it is easy to see that very many believers would persecute sceptics, and that very many sceptics would persecute believers. Society may be wiser; but most earnest believers and most earnest unbelievers are not at all wiser.

_THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION BILL._[26]

(1874.)

If the ‘Public Worship Regulation Bill’ dealt only with subjects theological or religious, we should not interfere in the discussion; but it deals also with political questions, on which we do not think it right to be silent, especially as many whom we much respect have, we think, selected a policy of which the effect will be the reverse of what they expect, and the success of which they may hereafter much regret.

All changes in England should be made slowly and after long discussion. Public opinion should be permitted to ripen upon them. And the reason is, that all the important English institutions are the relics of a long past; that they have undergone many transformations; that, like old houses which have been altered many times, they are full both of conveniences and inconveniences which at first sight would not be imagined. Very often a rash alterer would pull down the very part which makes them habitable, to cure a minor evil or improve a defective outline.

The English Church is one of those among our institutions which, if it is to be preserved at all, should be touched most anxiously. It is one of our oldest institutions. Every part of it has a history, which few of us thoroughly understand, but which we all know to be long and important. In its political relations it has been altered many times, and each time under circumstances of considerable complexity. The last settlement was made more than two hundred years ago, when men’s minds were in a very different state from what they are now: when Newton had not written, when Locke had not thought, when physical science, as we now have it, did not exist, when modern philosophy, for England at least, had not begun. The railways, the telegraphs, the very common sense of these times, would have been unintelligible in the year 1660; they would have been still more unintelligible in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. To attempt to enforce on us now a settlement made in times so different, is a grave undertaking; it ought only to be made after the most ample discussion, and when every competent person has had time to consider the effect.

We have as yet felt little inconvenience from our old law, because we have dealt with it in a truly English manner. Always refusing to change it explicitly, always saying that we would never so change it, we were changing it silently all the while. Year by year this practice was omitted, or this habit insensibly changed. Each generation differed from its fathers; and though they might in part utter the same words, they did not mean the same things; their intellectual life was different. Incessant changes in science, in literature, in art, and in politics—in all that forms thinking minds—have made it impossible that really and in fact we should think the same things in 1874 as our ancestors in 1674 or 1774. Just as in legal theory Queen Victoria has pretty much the same prerogative as Queen Elizabeth, so too in legal theory the English Church may be identical with that of two hundred years ago; but the Church is not a legal theory, it is ‘a congregation of faithful men;’ and no one of these is in a state of mind identical, or nearly identical, with those of two hundred years ago.

Many Continental statesmen would be much puzzled at this insensible alteration; they would have a difficulty in imagining a law which was a law in theory but not a law in practice, which no one would alter in word and no one enforce in reality. But the English are very practised in this sort of arrangement—they have a kind of genius for the compensation of errors. For many years we had probably the worst and most bloody penal law in Europe; it is awful to read the old statutes which fix death as the penalty for minor acts altogether undeserving of it. But these statutes did not work nearly so much evil as might have been expected. There was besides a complex system of indictments which let off very many culprits upon trifling flaws, and there was also an absurd system of incessant remissions and pardons; the worst evils of an excessively bad law were exceedingly mitigated by a very bad mode of applying it. Speaking roughly, and subject to minor criticism, the history has been the same in the Church; in it, too, an imperfect law has been remedied by an imperfect mode of procedure. The Church has been allowed to change in this and that because it has been exceedingly difficult to interfere with it. The legal penalty against change has been distant, costly, and uncertain; and therefore it has not been applied. Change has been possible because the punishment of change was difficult. But the essence of the ‘Public Worship Regulation Bill’ is to make that punishment easy. ‘If the Rubric says so,’ say its supporters, ‘the Rubric ought to be enforced.’ This is as if Sir Samuel Romilly had attacked, not our bad penal code, but our bad penal procedure. If, by the historical growth of approximate equivalents, _A_ mitigates _B_, you will deteriorate, not improve the world, if you change _A_ without changing _B_, though both may be evils.

The analogy, indeed, very imperfectly expresses the truth. In the recent history of the Church, the English have conspicuously shown another of their predominant peculiarities—indifference to abstract truth. When a quarter of a century ago English lawyers in the Court of Privy Council were first required to decide theological questions, they did so in a way which astonished theologians. They declined to supply any abstract proposition. If the enacted formularies contained such and such words, no clergyman of the Church could, according to them, contradict those words, but they allowed the clergy to say anything else. We cannot use theological terms here; but suppose, by an economical analogy, the formulary had said that ‘Free trade was beneficial to mankind,’ the lawyers would have decided that no clergyman could say that free trade was not beneficial; but they would have allowed him to say that ‘Commercial liberty was inexpressibly disastrous to mankind,’ because as lawyers they would not undertake to say that ‘free trade’ and ‘commercial liberty’ meant the same thing, or that in an abstract subject the two phrases might not in some way and to some minds seem consistent. In mere description this kind of decision may not seem very sensible, and it is utterly contrary to any which a theologian would ever have adopted; but in practice it preserved the Church Establishment. It was first applied in the Gorham case, and retained the Evangelical clergy in the Church; then, in the _Essays and Reviews_ case, it retained the Broad Church; and lastly, in Mr. Bennett’s case, it retained the High Church. If the Establishment was to be maintained, it was necessary that all these parties should be kept side by side within it, and by this system of interpretation they were thus kept.

Unfortunately, the courts of law have not been able to apply the same sort of judicial decision to the practical directions for the public worship of the Church which they applied to her theoretical teachings. There is inevitably something more distinct and clear about acts which are required to be done at a given time and place, than in statements of abstract doctrine. When the courts have been appealed to, it has not been possible to apply to ritual the same comprehensiveness which has had such excellent political effects in the case of doctrine. But, nevertheless, there is exactly the same necessity for it. Almost every party in the Church is harassed by some of her rules, just as it is hampered by some of her words. The Broad Church dislikes the Athanasian creed, and avoids the use of it. The Low Church and the High Church are in vital and necessary opposition as to the mode of conducting the Sacramental services. In every characteristic Church every party thinks probably something is done which the strict Rubric would forbid, or something omitted which it would prescribe. Until now this difficulty has not been very acutely felt. As we have explained, the imperfection of the law was cured by the imperfection of the procedure. No doubt the rubrics were framed in other days; no doubt they took no notice of the wants of the present day; no doubt a strict adherence to them would expel from the Church very many whose doctrines had been decided to be consistent with hers. But then, to enforce the observance of the Rubric was difficult, costly, and dubious, and so the natural evil did not happen. The wants of various minds were variously met by various deviations from the law, which in theory were liable to penalties, but which in practice were unpunished.

The scope of the ‘Public Worship Regulation Bill’ is to destroy this variety. It is a new Act of Uniformity as far as ‘public worship’ is concerned. A short and simple process—which has been so often stated that we need not here describe it—is prescribed which will enable objectors to enforce any rubric, and which no doubt will cause them to be so enforced. The proposers of the Bill have not enough considered the applicability of this primary assumption: no Church can have only a single form of public worship unless it has also a single creed. An apparent uniformity may be maintained in specified details; but in spirit, in feeling, in its deepest consequences on those who habitually hear and see, the effect will be different. A service conducted by a Broad Churchman, explained in his sermon, and commented upon in his manner, will be very unlike what it would be if that service is conducted by a _bonâ fide_ dogmatic believer. No mere Act of Uniformity can prevent this. Still less can it efface the inevitable difference between a Sacramental service in the hands of a High Church clergyman and in those of a Low Church. The two belong to separate and unlike species. The one believes that the service contains a supernatural act, the other that it is an edifying rite; the one regards it as an invisible miracle, the other as a conspicuous exhortation. Make what laws you like, how can the two perform these services with the same tone of mind, the same kind of thought, the same effect on the congregation? You may dress two men up in the same clothes, but they will be two men for all that. If once you permit two or more faiths in a Church, you in truth permit two or more Rituals. The various feelings and the various creeds will somehow find a means of bringing themselves into contact with the minds with which they wish to be in contact. You have ‘swallowed the camel’ when you permitted the creed, and it is useless to strain at the gnat and forbid the expression of it.

This is to be especially borne in mind by those who think that there is a party in the Church that desires to introduce Romanism, and who approve of this Bill because they think it will counteract that party. The essence of Romanism is not in its ceremonies, but in its doctrines. As was explained to the House of Commons on Wednesday, nothing could be simpler than the mode in which Mr. Newman used to conduct his services at Oxford; and yet he then held ‘Roman’ doctrine, and penetrated half the young men about him with a deep faith in the highest sacramental principle. Unless you reverse the decision in the Bennett case, a doctrine which no common person will distinguish from Romanism will continue to be, and must be, taught in the Church of England. We do not believe it will lose in strength by being denied this or that form of Ritual. It will attract in any case the minds to whom it is congenial, and it will rather gain than lose in _éclat_ by seeming to be persecuted.

We shall be told that this argument proves too much; for that it proves that this Bill will do nothing at all, and that therefore at least it will do no harm. But it will, we think, do great harm—at least, if it be good to keep the Establishment, and if it does harm to weaken it. The real danger of the Establishment is from within, not from without. The manner in which its sections have been retained within its limits has in part developed, and as time goes on is still developing more largely, a great evil. Specially the Low Church, specially the Broad Church, and specially the High Church, have all been kept in her communion because the judges refused to draw certain logical inferences from her formularies; as lawyers they declined to draw them. But intellectual young men, who are thinking of becoming clergymen, do not like this reasoning. They say: ‘The courts of law may not like to draw these inferences, but I must. I have spent my youth in a mental training which has prepared me to draw them, and which compels me to do so. Educated as I have been, I cannot take half an argument and leave it; I must work it out to the end. That end seems to me inconsistent with this or that of the formularies of the Church. Others say it is not, but I am not sure that it is not; at any rate, I do not like to risk the happiness of my life upon its being consistent. If in after years my investigation should run counter to a vast collection of assertions framed by various men, in various ages, of various minds, what will be my fate? I must either sacrifice the profession by which I live, or the creed in which I believe. The lawyers probably might not turn me out indeed; but my conscience was not made by lawyers—I shall have to turn myself out.’ This is the sort of thought which more and more prevents intellectual young men from taking orders, and we are beginning to see the effect. The moral excellence and the practical piety of the clergy are as good as ever; but they want individuality of thought and originality of mind. They have too universal a conformity to commonplace opinion. They are not only conscientious, but indecisive; more and more they belong to the most puzzling class to argue with, for more and more they ‘candidly confess’ that they must admit your premises, but, on ‘account of the obscurity of the subject,’ must decline to draw the inevitable inference. Already this intellectual poorness is beginning to be felt; and if it should augment, it will destroy the Establishment. She will not have in her ranks arguers who can maintain her position either against those who believe more or against those who believe less. Scepticism sends trained and logical minds to the intellectual conflict; Romanism does so also; but the Established Church refuses them—refuses them silently and indirectly, but still effectually. The Public Worship Bill will, we conceive, augment this difficulty almost at the very point at which its being augmented will be most calamitous. Many young men who are acutely conscious of the restraints of the Establishment in speculation, are attracted by its freedom in practice. ‘I may be cramped in metaphysics,’ they think at heart, ‘but I shall be free in action.’ But this Bill will be a measure—for aught young men can tell, the first of a series—which will limit the freedom of their lives, and cramp them on the side of practice as they already are on the side of thought. The most malevolent enemy of the Established Church could deal her no acuter wound.

Upon the whole, we can conceive nothing clearer than that this Bill should not pass this year. We are certain that members of Parliament have not considered the necessary arguments, and that the nation has not done so either.

THE END.

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FOOTNOTES

[1] _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire._ By Edward Gibbon, Esq. With Notes by Dean Milman and M. Guizot. Edited, with additional Notes, by William Smith, LL.D. In Eight Volumes. London, 1855. Murray.

[2] _Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D., some time Lord Bishop of Durham._

_Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. VI. Part II. Article, Joseph Butler._ By Henry Rogers, Author of the ‘Eclipse of Faith.’ Eighth edition.

[3] Trench, _On the Synonyms of the New Testament_ (p. 191).

[4] Trench, _ubi supra_.

[5] _The Prospective Review._

[6] Professor Rogers’s _Defence of the ‘Eclipse of Faith’_, p. 43. It is to be observed, we are not at all speaking of the facts of the Old Testament; we are but limiting the considerations on which the above writer has rested its defence. These refined reasonings but weaken the case they are brought to support. ‘I did not know,’ said George the Third, ‘that the Bible needed an apology.’

[7] We doubt, however, if Butler would at all have accepted Mr. Rogers’s statement of his view, though it is perhaps the most common interpretation of him. Probably, he really meant no more than what we contend for, though his language is not always so limited in terms.

[8] _The Life of Laurence Sterne._ By Percy Fitzgerald, M.A., M.R.I.A. In two volumes. Chapman and Hall.

_Thackeray the Humourist and the Man of Letters._ By Theodore Taylor, Esq. London: John Camden Hotten.

[9] _Library Edition._ Illustrated by upwards of Two Hundred Engravings on Steel, after Drawings by Turner, Landseer, Wilkie, Stanfield, Roberts, &c. including Portraits of the Historical Personages described in the Novels. 25 vols. demy 8vo.

_Abbotsford Edition._ With One Hundred and Twenty Engravings on Steel, and nearly Two Thousand on Wood. 12 vols. super-royal 8vo.

_Author’s favourite Edition._ 48 vols. post 8vo.

_Cabinet Edition._ 25 vols. foolscap 8vo.

_Railway Edition._ Now publishing, and to be completed in 25 portable volumes, large type.

_People’s Edition._ 5 large volumes royal 8vo.

[10] _Cheap Edition of the Works of Mr. Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, &c._ London, 1857-8. Chapman and Hall.

[11] _The History of England from the Accession of James the Second._ By Thomas Babington Macaulay. Longmans.

[12] _Œuvres complètes de_ C.-J. de Béranger. _Nouvelle édition revue par l’Auteur, contenant les Dix Chansons nouvelles, le facsimile d’une Lettre de_ Béranger; _illustrée de cinquante-deux gravures sur acier, d’après_ Charlet, D’Aubigny, Johannot Grenier, De Lemud, Pauquet, Penguilly, Raffet, Sandoz, _exécutées par les artistes les plus distingués, et d’un beau portrait d’après nature par_ Sandoz. 2 vols. 8vo. 1855.

[13] We have been obliged to abridge the above extract, and in so doing have left out the humour of it.

[14] _Poems._ By Arthur Hugh Clough, sometime Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. With a Memoir. Macmillan.

[15]

‘——domus Albuneæ resonantis,
Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.’

[16] _Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, F.S.A._ Selected and Edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. In Three Volumes. London, 1869.

[17] ‘Since writing the above, Baron Rolfe has verified my prediction more strikingly by being created a peer, by the title of Lord Cranworth, and appointed a Vice-Chancellor. Soon after his appointment, he called on me, and I dined with him. I related to Lady Cranworth the anecdote given above, of my conversation with my brother, with which she was evidently pleased. Lady Cranworth was the daughter of Mr. Carr, Solicitor to the Excise, whom I formerly used to visit, and ought soon to find some mention of in my journals. Lord Cranworth continues to enjoy universal respect.—H. C. R. 1851.’

[18] _Enoch Arden, &c._ By Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet Laureate. _Dramatis Personæ._ By Robert Browning.

[19] The first words in Lord Jeffrey’s celebrated review of the _Excursion_ were, ‘This will never do.’

[20] ‘A curious physiologico-botanical theory by Goethe, which appears to be entirely unknown in this country: though several eminent continental botanists have noticed it with commendation. It is explained at considerable length, in this same _Morphologie_.’

[21] _The Poems and Prose Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough_, vol. ii. p. 472.

[22] _Science in Theology._ Sermons preached before the University of Oxford. By the Rev. Adam S. Farrar. Longmans.

[23] _Contemporary Review_ for April 1871.

[24] It should be stated that this essay was originally read as a paper before a society which discusses subjects of a metaphysical nature.

[25] _Contemporary Review_ for April 1874.

[26] [This paper originally appeared in the _Economist_ on the occasion of the adoption by the Government of the late Mr. Russell Gurney’s Public Worship Regulation Bill. It is here included as a telling practical illustration of the teaching of the previous essay.—EDITOR.]