,,the ,,scientific ,,spirit ,,of ,,the ,,age ,,and ,,other ,,pleas ,,and ,,discussions ,,by ,,frances ,,power ,,cobbe ,,author ,,of 8,,an ,,essay ,,on ,,intuitive ,,morals10 8,,religious ,,duty10 8,,broken ,,lights10 8,,the ,,hopes ,,of ,,the ,,human ,,race10 8,,the ,,peak ,,in ,,darien10 8,,the ,,duties ,,of ,,women10 8,a ,,faithless ,,world10 ,,etc4 ,,boston ,,geo4 ,h4 ,,ellis1 #ada ,,franklin ,,street #ahhh ,,contents4 ,,essay ,,page ,,preface v ,i4 ,,the ,,scientific ,,spirit ,,of ,,the ,,age #a ,,ii4 ,,the ,,education ,,of ,,the ,,emotions #ce ,,iii4 ,,progressive ,,judaism #fi ,,iv4 ,,thoughts ,,about ,,thinking #aaa ,v4 ,,to ,,know1 ,,or ,,not ,,to ,,know #adg ,,vi4 ,,the ,,town ,,mouse ,,and ,,the ,,country ,,mouse #agc ,,preface4 ,we are all possessed of friends who1 when any serious belief or matter of practical conduct is in question1 take up at the outset a thesis of their own which they press on our acceptance with the best arguments at their disposal4 ,it is a rarer privilege to enjoy the intercourse of one who does not invariably start with a ready-made opinion of what may be true1 right1 or expedient in the doubtful case on which we wish to consult him1 but who will patiently turn over the matter with us1 suggest and register the various 8pros and cons10 refer to admitted principles and facts1 and thus aid us to form a comprehensive judgment for ourselves rather than induce us to accept his own4 ,the discourse of the first order of friends is an ,argument1 a ,plea1 a ,contention2 that of the second1 a ,discussion4 ,in the same way1 of course1 an ,essay may be either a ,plea or a ,discussion4 ,the author may take the position of ,counsel for one side or other of the case before the reader1 or else he may charge as ,judge1 and sum up the substance of such arguments as might have been used by two advocates on the opposite sides4 ,either style of writing is perfectly legitimate2 and each has its particular fitness and utility4 ,misunderstanding and perplexity only occur when the hasty reader 7newspaper critics being signally guilty in this matter7 chooses to assume that an avowedly one-sided ,plea is intended for a ,judicial ,discussion1#a or treats a ,discussion as a ,plea for the side which the critic dislikes4 ,in the present little collection of ,essays1 written at various times and for various objects1 it will be found that the first three belong to the class which ,i have described as ,pleas1 and the last three more or less to that of ,discussions4 ,i plead that the ,scientific ,spirit of the ,age1 while it has given us many precious things1 is1 in its present exorbitant development1 depriving us of things more precious still4 ,i plead that the ,education of the ,emotions 7to be carried on chiefly through the contagion of good and noble sentiments7 is an object of paramount importance1 albeit nearly totally ignored in ordinary systems of education4 ,i plead that1 in the present disintegration of all religious opinion1 ,judaism may yet become a progressive1 and cease to be merely a tribal1 faith2 and that1 if it absorb the moral and spiritual essence of ,christianity1 it may solve the great problem of combining a theology consonant to modern philosophy with a worship hallowed by the sacred associations of the remotest past4 ,in the last three ,essays1 ,i discuss the relation of ,knowledge to ,happiness2 ,i discuss the real--as distinguished from the conventional--character of our common processes of ,thought2 and1 finally1 ,i discuss the respective claims of ,town and ,country ,life to be esteemed most healthy and felicitous for body and mind4 ,i shall much rejoice if ,i win my readers to adopt the opinions which ,i have advocated in the first half of the book4 ,i shall remain altogether indifferent as to which of the alternative views put forth in the concluding ,essays may seem to them most impressive1 and only congratulate myself if ,i shall have succeeded in setting forth in due light and order the multitudinous points which together constitute the materials for forming a sound judgment upon them4 ,,frances ,,power ,,cobbe4 ,,hengwrt1 ,,dolgelly1 #ahhh4 ,,essay ,i4 ,,the ,,scientific ,,spirit ,,of ,,the ,,age4 ,that the present is pre-eminently the ,age of ,science is a fact equally recognized by the majority who hail it with triumph and by the minority who regard it with feelings wherein regret and apprehension have their place4 ,as in ,literature an age of production is ever followed by an age of criticism1 so in the general history of human interests ,war1 ,religion1 ,art1 start in early days and run their swift course1 while ,science creeps slowly after them1 till at last she passes them on the way and comes foremost in the race4 ,we still in our time have ,war2 but it is no longer the conflict of valiant soldiers1 but the game of scientific strategists4 ,we still have ,religion2 but she no longer claims earth and heaven as her domain1 but meekly goes to church by a path over which ,science has notified1 8,on ,sufferance ,only40 ,we still have ,art2 but it is no longer the ,art of ,fancy1 but the ,art of the ,intellect1 wherein the ,beautiful is indefinitely postponed to the technically ,true1 as ,truth is discerned by men who think qu'il n'y a rien de vrai except le laid4 ,all our multiform activities1 from agriculture down to dressmaking1 are in these days nothing if not 8scientific10 and to thousands of worthy people it is enough to say that ,science teaches this or that1 or that the interests of ,science require such and such a sacrifice1 to cause them to bow their heads1 as pious men of old did at the message of a ,prophet4 8,it is ,,science6 ,let it do what seemeth it good40 ,the claims of the sthetic faculty1 and even of the moral sense1 to speak in arrest of judgment on matters entirely within their own spheres1 are ruled out of court4 ,by a paradoxical fatality1 however1 it would appear as if the obsession of the ,scientific ,spirit is likely to be a little lightened for us by an event which might have been expected to rivet the yoke on our necks4 ,the recently published ,life of the most illustrious and most amiable man of ,science of this scientific age has suggested to many readers doubts of the all-sufficiency of ,science to build up not theories1 but men4 ,mr4 ,darwin's admirably candid avowal of the gradual extinction in his mind of the sthetic#b and religious elements has proved startling to a generation which1 even when it is ready to abandon ,religion1 would be direfully distressed to lose the pleasures afforded by ,art and ,nature1 ,poetry and ,music4 ,instead of lifting the scientific vocation to the skies 7as was probably anticipated71 this epoch-making ,biography seems to have gone far to throw a sort of dam across the stream1 and to have arrested not a few ,science-worshippers with the query3 8,what shall it profit a man if he discover the origin of species and know exactly how earth-worms and sun-dews conduct themselves1 if all the while he grow blind to the loveliness of nature1 deaf to music1 insensible to poetry1 and as unable to lift his soul to the ,divine and ,eternal as was the primeval ,ape from whom he has descended8 ,is this all that ,science can do for her devotee8 ,must he be shorn of the glory of humanity when he is ordained her ,priest8 ,does he find his loftiest faculties atrophied when he has become a machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts08#c ,while these reflections are passing through many minds1 it may be permitted to me to review some features of the ,scientific ,spirit of the ,age4 ,frankly1 ,i shall do it from an adverse point of view4 ,there were many years of my life during which ,i regarded it with profound1 though always distant1 admiration4 ,grown old1 ,i have come to think that many spirits in the hierarchy are loftier and purer2 that the noblest study of mankind is ,man1 rather than rock or insect2 and that1 even at its best1 ,knowledge is immeasurably less precious than ,goodness and ,love4 ,whether in these estimates ,i err or am justified1 it would1 in any case1 be superfluous for me to add my feeble voice to the glorification of the ,scientific ,spirit4 ,diana of the ,ephesians was never proclaimed so vociferously 8,great02 and perhaps1 like the worshippers of the elder goddess1 it may be said of those of ,science1 8,the most part know not wherefore they have come together40 ,it will suffice if ,i succeed in partially exhibiting how much we are in danger of losing by the ,scientific ,spirit1 while others show us1 more or less truly1 what we gain thereby4 ,in speaking of 8,science0 in this paper1 ,i must be understood to refer only to the ,physical ,sciences1 not to the mathematical or metaphysical4 ,the former 7especially the ,biological group7 have of late years come so much to the front that the old application of the word to the exact sciences and to metaphysics and ethics has almost dropped out of popular use4 ,i also desire to explain at starting that ,i am not so blind as to ignore the splendid achievements of modern physical science in its own realm1 nor the benefits which many applications of the ,scientific ,spirit have brought in various other directions4 ,it is the intrusiveness and oppression of the ,scientific ,spirit in regions where it has no proper work1 and 7still more often7 its predominance in others where its place should be wholly subordinate1 against which a protest appears to be needed4 ,a score of causes have contributed in our generation to set ,science up and to pull other things down4 ,the levels need to be redressed4 ,time will not permit me to exhibit the results of the excessive share taken of late years by the ,scientific ,spirit in many practical matters wherein experience and common sense were safer guides1 e4g41 in ,agriculture4 ,this side of the question ,i must leave untouched1 and limit myself to the discussion of the general influence of the ,scientific ,spirit in ,education1 in ,art1 in ,morals1 and in ,religion4 ,professor ,tyndall1 in the ,preface to his great work on 8,heat as a mode of ,motion10 calls ,science 8the noblest growth of modern times10 and adds that 8as a means of intellectual education its claims are still disputed1 though1 once properly organized1 greater and more beneficent revolutions wait its employment here than those which have marked its application in the material world0 7#b;d ed41 p4 x74 ,since the publication of this book1 and indeed since the opening of the ,age of ,science1 the relative claims of ,science and ,literature to form the basis of intellectual instruction have been incessantly debated by men qualified by experience in tuition 7which ,i cannot claim to be7 to form a judgment on the subject4 ,there has been1 however1 ,i think1 too little attention given on either side to the relative moral influences of the two studies4 ,in addressing the ,london ,society for the ,extension of ,university ,teaching on ,march #c last1 ,sir ,james ,paget expressed his dissent from ,professor ,morley's opinion 7given on a similar occasion last year7 that 8,literature was an excellent1 if not a better study than ,science40 ,sir ,james maintained1 on the contrary1 that 8nothing could better advance human prosperity than ,science10 and he elaborately set forth the specific benefits of a scientific education as he conceived them1 as follows3-- ,there was first the teaching of the power of observing1 then the teaching of accuracy1 then of the difficulty of attaining to a real knowledge of the truth1 and1 lastly1 the teaching of the methods by which they could pass from that which was proved to the thinking of what was probable4#d ,it would1 of course1 be unjust to hold ,science to these definitions1 as if they exhausted her claims as our instructress4 ,it may1 however1 fairly be assumed that1 in the view of one of the leading men of science of the day1 they are paramount4 ,if any much higher results than they were to be expected from scientific teaching1 ,sir ,james would scarcely have omitted to present them first or last4 ,to what1 then1 do these four great lessons of ,science amount8 ,they teach--and1 ,i think1 teach only--,observation1 ,accuracy1 ,intellectual ,caution1 and the acquirement of a ,method of advancing to the thinking of what was probable1--possibly the method commonly known as ,induction4 ,i must confess that these 8great truths0 7as ,sir ,james oddly calls them7 represent to my mind only the culmination of the lower range of human faculties2 or1 more strictly speaking1 the perfect application to human concerns of those faculties which are common to man and the lower animals4 ,a fox may be an 8observer10 and an exceedingly accurate one--of hen-roosts4 ,he may be deeply sensible of 8the difficulty of attaining to a real knowledge0--of traps4 ,further than this1 he may even 8pass from the proved0--existence of a pack of hounds in his cover to 8thinking that it was probable0--he would shortly be chased4 ,to train a ,,man1 it is surely indispensable to develop in him a superior order of powers from these4 ,his mind must be enriched with the culture of his own age and country1 and of other lands and ages1 and fortified by familiarity with the thoughts of great souls on the topics of loftiest interest4 ,he must be accustomed to think on subjects above those to which his observation1 or accuracy of description1 or caution in accepting evidence can apply1 and on which 7it is to be hoped7 he will reach some anchorage of faith more firm than ,sir ,james ,paget's climax of scientific culture1 8the passing from that which was proved to the thinking of what was probable40 ,he ought to handle the method of deductive reasoning at least as well as that of induction1 and beyond these 7purely intellectual7 attainments a human education making claim to completeness should cultivate the imagination and poetic sentiment2 should 8soften manners10 as the literae humaniores proverbially did of old2 should widen the sympathies1 dignify the character1 inspire enthusiasm for noble actions1 and chivalrous tenderness towards women and all who need defence2 and thus send forth the accomplished student a gentleman in the true sense of the word4 ,the benefits attributed by ,sir ,james ,paget to ,scientific education1 and even those with which1 in candor1 we may credit it beyond his four 8great truths10 fall1 ,i venture to think1 deplorably short of such a standard of culture as this4 ,the deficiencies of ,scientific education do not exhaust the objections against it4 ,there seem to be positive evils almost inseparable from such training when carried far with the young4 ,one of the worst is the danger of the adoption by the student of materialistic views on all subjects4 ,he need not become a theoretic or speculative ,materialist3 that is another risk1 which may or may not be successfully eliminated4 ,but he will almost inevitably fall into practical materialism4 ,of the two sides of human life1 his scientific training will compel him to think always in the first place of the lower4 ,the material 7or1 as our fathers would have called it1 the carnal7 fact will be uppermost in his mind1 and the spiritual meaning thereof more or less out of sight4 ,he will view his mother's tears not as expressions of her sorrow1 but as solutions of muriates and carbonates of soda1 and of phosphates of lime2 and he will reflect that they were caused not by his heartlessness1 but by cerebral pressure on her lachrymal glands4 ,when she dies1 he will 8peep and botanize0 on her grave1--not with the poet's sense of the sacrilegiousness of such ill-placed curiosity1 but with the serene conviction of the meritoriousness of accurate observation among the scientifically interesting 8,flora0 of a cemetery4 ,to this class of mind1 thoroughly imbued with the ,scientific ,spirit1 ,disease is the most important of facts and the greatest of evils4 ,sin1 on the other hand1 is a thing on which neither microscope nor telescope nor spectroscope1 nor even stethoscope1 can afford instruction4 ,possibly the student will think it only a spectral illusion2 or he will foresee that it may be explained by and by scientifically1 as a form of disease4 ,there may be discovered bacilli of ,hatred1 ,covetousness1 and ,lust1 respectively responsible for ,murder1 ,theft1 and ,adultery4 ,already hypocrisy is a recognized form of ,hysteria4 ,the state of opinion in 8,erewhon0 may be hopefully looked for in ,england1 when the ,scientific ,spirit altogether prevails4 ,besides its materializing tendency1 a ,scientific ,education involves other evils1 among which may be counted the fostering of a callous and irreverent spirit4 ,to this ,i shall return presently4 ,of course every tendency of a pursuit1 good or bad1 affects the young who are engaged in it much more than the old1 whose characters may have been moulded under quite opposite influences4 ,we must wait for a generation to see the ,scientific ,spirit in its full development4 ,as to the instruction of young men and women in ,physiological ,science in particular1 ,i am exonerated from treating the subject by being privileged to cite the opinions of two of the most eminent and experienced members of the scholastic profession4 ,i do so with great thankfulness1 believing that it will be a revelation to many parents1 blindly caught by scientific claptrap1 to learn that such are the views of men among the best qualified in ,england to pronounce judgment on the subject4 ,the late lamented ,mr4 ,thring1 of ,uppingham1 wrote to me1 ,sept4 #f1 #ahhf3-- ,my writings on ,education sufficiently show how strongly ,i feel on the subject of a literary education1 or rather how confident ,i am in the judgment that there can be no worthy education which is not based on the study of the highest thoughts of the highest men in the best shape4 ,as for ,science 7most of it falsely so called71 if a few leading minds are excepted1 it simply amounts1 to the average dull worker1 to no more than a kind of upper shop work1 weighing out and labelling and learning alphabetical formul1--a superior grocer assistant's work1 and has not a single element of higher mental training in it4 ,not to mention that it leaves out all knowledge of men and life1 and therefore--is eminently fitted for life and its struggle6 ,physiology in its worse sense adds to this a brutalizing of the average practitioner1 or rather a devilish combination of intellect worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and character4 ,for my part1 if it were true that ,vivisection had wonderfully relieved bodily disease for men1 if it was at the cost of lost spirits1 then let the body perish4 ,and it is at the cost of lost spirits4 ,i do not say that under no circumstances should an experiment take place1 but ,i do say that under no circumstances should an experiment take place for teaching purposes4 ,you will see how decided my judgments are on this matter4 ,the ,rev4 ,j4 ,e4 ,c4 ,welldon1 ,head ,master of ,harrow1 has been good enough to write to me as follows3-- ,i am most willing to let you quote my words1 whether what ,i said before or what ,i say now4 ,you command my full sympathy in the crusade which you have so nobly declared against cruelty4 ,i say this frankly1 although ,i know that there is some difference between us in regard to the practice of ,vivisection4 ,but even if it be necessary that in some cases1 and under strict conditions1 vivisectional experiments should be made upon animals1 ,i cannot doubt that the use of such experiments tends to exercise a demoralizing influence upon any person who may be called to make them4 ,i hold1 therefore1 that the educational effect of ,vivisection is always injurious4 ,knowledge is dearly purchased at the cost of tenderness1 and ,i cannot believe that any morally-minded person could desire to familiarize the young with the sight of animal suffering4 ,for my part1 ,i look upon the hardness of heart with which some distinguished physiologists have met the protest raised against ,vivisection as one of many signs that materialism means at the last an inversion of the ethical law2 i4e41 a preference of knowledge to goodness1 of mind to spirit1 or1 in a word1 of human things to divine4 ,surely it is a paradox that they who minimize the specific distinction between man and the animals should be the least tender in their views of animal sufferings1 and that ,christians who accentuate that distinction should be willing to spare animals pain at the cost of enhancing their own4 ,i conceive it then to be a primary duty of a modern educator1 at ,school or at ,college1 to cultivate in his pupils1 by all the means in his power1 the sympathetic sentiment towards the animal world4 ,to turn to a less painful part of our subject4 ,science and ,art are constantly coupled together in common parlance and in grants of public money2 but1 if ever incompatibility of temper formed a just ground of divorce1 it is surely in their case4 ,when ,science--like ,poverty--comes in at the door1 ,art--like ,love--flies out at the window4 ,they move in different planes1 and touch different parts of human nature4 ,science appeals to the ,intellect1 ,art to the ,emotions2 and we are so constituted that our ,intellects and ,emotions are like buckets in a well4 ,when our ,intellects are in the ascendant1 our ,emotions sink out of sight2 when our ,emotions rise to the surface1 our busy ,intellects subside into quiescence4 ,it is only the idolatry of ,science which could make intelligent men overlook the fact that she and ,art resemble two leashed greyhounds pulling opposite ways1 and never running together unless there be some game 7shall we surmise an endowment of public money87 in view4 ,the synthetic1 reverential1 sympathizing spirit of ,art is opposed1 as the different poles of the magnet1 to the analytic1 self-asserting1 critical spirit of ,science4 ,the artist seeks ,beauty2 finds likenesses2 discerns the ,ideal through the ,real4 ,the man of ,science seeks ,facts2 draws distinctions2 strips the ,real to the skin and the bones4 ,a great light of the ,scientific ,age has been heard to say that when he first visited the ,vatican he 8sat down before ,raphael's ,transfiguration and filled three pages of his note-book with its faults40 ,it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do6 ,how should a ,physicist approve of three figures suspended in the air in defiance of the laws of gravitation8 ,or what could a ,zologist say to an angel outrageously combining in his person the wings exclusively belonging to the ,order ,aves with the arms and legs of ,bimana8 ,worst of all1 what must be the feelings of a ,physiologist confronted with a bas-relief of a ,centaur with two stomachs1 or of a ,cherub with none8 ,poetry is the ,art of ,arts4 ,if we desire to see what ,science can do for it1 let us take a typical piece wherein ,fancy revels and plays like an ,ariel with wreaths of lovely tropes1--say ,shelley's 8,sensitive ,plant10 for example4 ,we must begin by cutting out all the absurdly unscientific statements2 e4g41 that the lily of the valley grows pale with passion1 that the hyacinth rings peals of music from its bells1 and that the narcissus gazes at itself in the stream4 ,then1 in lieu of this folly1 we must describe how the garden has been thoroughly drained and scientifically manured with guano and sewage4 ,after this the flowers may be mentioned under their proper classes1 as monandria and polyandria1 cryptogams and phenogams4 ,such would be the result of bringing the ,scientific ,spirit to bear on ,poetry4 ,introduced into the border realm of ,fiction1 it begins by marring with pedantic illustrations the otherwise artistic work of ,george ,eliot4 ,pushed further1 it furnishes us with medical novels1 wherein the leading incident is a surgeon dissecting his aunt4 ,still a step onward1 we reach the brute realism of 8,a ,mummer's ,wife0 and 8,la ,joie de ,vivre40 ,the distance between ,walter ,scott and ,zola measures that between ,art and ,science in ,fiction4 ,to many readers it may appear that the antagonism of ,science to ,art may be condoned in favor of her high claim to be the guide1 not to ,beauty1 but to ,truth4 ,but is it indeed ,truth1 in the sense which we have hitherto given to that great and sacred word1 at which ,physical ,science is now aiming8 ,can we think of ,truth merely as a vast heap of ,facts1 piled up into an orderly pyramid of a ,science1 like one of ,timur's heaps of skulls8 ,to collect a million facts1 test them1 classify them1 raise by induction generalizations concerning them1 and hand them down to the next generation to add a few thousand more facts and 7probably7 to reconstruct the pyramid on a different basis and another plan1--if this be indeed to arrive at 8,truth10 modern ,science may boast she has touched the goal4 ,yet in other days ,truth was deemed something nobler than this4 ,it was the interests which lay behind and beyond the facts1 their possible bearing on man's deepest yearnings and sublimest hopes1 which gave dignity and meaning to the humblest researches into rock and plant1 and which glorified such discoveries as ,kepler's till he cried in rapture1 8,o ,god1 ,i think thy thoughts after thee60 and ,newton's1 till he closed the 8,principia0 7as ,parker said of him7 by 8bursting into the ,infinite and kneeling there40 ,in our time1 however1 ,science has repeatedly renounced all pretension to throw light in any direction beyond the sequence of physical causes and effects2 and by doing so she has1 ,i think1 abandoned her claim to be man's guide to ,truth4 ,the ,alpine traveller who engages his guides to scale the summit of the ,jungfrau1 and finds them stop to booze in the ,wirthschaft at the bottom1 would have no better right to complain than those who fondly expected ,science to bring them to ,god1 and are informed that she now never proceeds above the ,ascidian4 ,so long as all the rivulets of laws traced by ,science flowed freshly onward towards the sea1 our souls drank of them with thankfulness4 ,now that they lose themselves in the sands1 they have become mere stagnant pools of knowledge4 ,we now turn to the influence of the ,scientific ,spirit on ,morals4 ,respecting the theory of ethics1 the physico-,scientific ,spirit has almost necessarily been from the first ,utilitarian1 not ,transcendental4 ,to ,mr4 ,herbert ,spencer the world first owed the suggestion that moral intuitions are only results of hereditary experiences4 8,i believe10 he wrote in #ahfh to ,mr4 ,mill1 8that the experiences of utility1 organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race1 have been producing corresponding modifications which1 by continued transmission and accumulation1 have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition1 certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility40 ,mr4 ,darwin took up the doctrine at this stage1 and in his 8,descent of ,man0 linked on the human conscience to the instincts of the lower animals1 from whence he held it to be derived4 ,similar instincts1 he taught1 would have grown up in any other animal as well endowed as we are1 but those other animals would not necessarily attach their ideas of right and wrong to the same conduct4 8,if1 for instance1 men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees1 there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would1 like the worker-bees1 think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers40 7,descent of ,man1 vol4 i4 p4 #gc47 ,these two doctrines--that ,conscience is only the 8capitalized experience of the human tribe0 7as ,dr4 ,martineau has summarized ,mr4 ,spencer7 and that there is no such thing as absolute or immutable ,morality1 but only a convenient ,rule for each particular class of intelligent animals--have between them revolutionized theoretic ethics1 and deeply imperilled1 so far as they are accepted1 the existence of human virtue4 ,it is in vain that the plea is often entered on the side of faith that1 after all1 ,darwin only showed how ,conscience has been evolved1 perhaps by ,divine prearrangement1 and that we may allow its old authority all the same4 ,he has done much more than this4 ,he has destroyed the possibility of retaining the same reverence for the dictates of conscience4 ,as he himself asks1 8,would any of us trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind8444 ,the doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind1 which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals1 are of any value40 7,life1 vol4 i4 p4 #caf47 ,who1 indeed1 can attach the same solemn authority to the monitions of the 8,stern daughter of the ,voice of ,god0 and to the prejudices of ancestors just emerging from apehood8 ,it was hard enough heretofore for tempted men to be chaste1 sober1 honest1 unselfish1 while passion was clamoring for indulgence or want pining for relief4 ,the basis on which their moral efforts rested needed to be in their minds as firm as the law of the universe itself4 ,what fulcrum will they find henceforth in the sand-heap of hereditary experiences of utility8 ,thus the ,scientific ,spirit has sprung a mine under the deepest foundations of ,morality4 ,it may1 indeed1 be hereafter countermined4 ,i believe that it will be so1 and that it will be demonstrated that many of our broadest and deepest moral intuitions can have had no such origin4 ,the universal human expectation of ,justice1 to which all literature bears testimony1 can never have arisen from such infinitesimal experience of actual ,justice1 or rather such large experience of prevailing injustice1 as our ancestors in any period of history can have known4 ,nor can 8the set of our 7modern7 brains0 against the destruction of sickly and deformed infants have come to us from the consolidated experience of past generations1 since the 8utility0 is all on the side of ,spartan infanticide4 ,but for the present1 and while ,darwinism is in the ascendant1 the influence of the doctrine of ,hereditary ,conscience is simply deadly4 ,it is no more possible for a man who holds such a theory to cherish a great moral ambition than for a stream to rise above its source4 ,the lofty ideal of ,goodness1 the hunger and thirst after righteousness1 which have been the mainspring of heroic and saintly lives1 must be exchanged at best for a kindly good nature and a mild desire to avoid offence4 ,the man of science may be anxious to abolish vice and crime4 ,they offend his tastes1 and distract him from his pursuits2 but he has no longing to enthrone in their place a positive virtue1 demanding his heart and life's devotion4 ,he is almost as much disturbed by extreme goodness as by wickedness4 ,nay1 it has been remarked1 by a keen and sensitive observer1 that the companionship of a really great and entirely blameless man of science invariably proved a 8torpedo touch to aspiration40 ,an obvious practical result of the present influence of ,science on ,morals has been the elevation of ,bodily ,health into the summum bonum1 and the consequent accommodation of the standard of right and wrong to that new aim4 ,an immense proportion of the arguments employed in ,parliament and elsewhere1 when any question touching public health is under discussion1 rest on the unexpressed major premise 8that any action which in the opinion of experts conduces to the bodily health of the individual or of the community is ipso facto lawful and right40 ,i cannot here indicate the conclusions to which this principle leads4 ,much that the ,christian conscience now holds to be ,vice must be transferred to the category of ,virtue2 while the medical profession will acquire a ,power of the ,keys which it is perhaps even less qualified to use than the ,successors of ,st4 ,peter4 ,another threatening evil from the side of ,science is the growth of a hard and pitiless temper4 ,from whatsoever cause it arise1 it seems certain that1 with some noteworthy exceptions1 the ,scientific ,spirit is callous4 ,in the mass of its literature1 the expressions of sympathy with civilized or savage1 healthy or diseased mankind1 or with the races below us1 are few and far between4 ,men and beasts are1 in scientific language1 alike 8specimens0 7wretched word672 and1 if the men be ill or dying1 they become 8clinical material40 ,the light of ,science is a 8dry0 one4 ,she leaves no glamour1 no tender mystery anywhere4 ,nor has she more pity than ,nature for the weak who fall in the struggle for existence4 ,there is1 indeed1 a scientific contempt quite sui generis for the 8poor in spirit10 the simple1 the devoutly believing1--in short1 for all the humble and the weak1--which constitutes of the ,scientific ,spirit of the ,age a kind of ,neo-,paganism1 the very antithesis of ,christianity4 ,i may add that it is no less the antithesis of ,theism1 which1 while abandoning the ,apocalyptic side of ,christianity1 holds 7perhaps with added consciousness of its supreme value7 to the spiritual part of the old faith1 and would build the ,religion of the future on ,christ's lessons of love to ,god and ,man1 of self-sacrifice and self-consecration4 ,prior to experience it might have been confidently expected that the ,darwinian doctrine of the descent of ,man would have called forth a fresh burst of sympathy towards all races of men and towards the lower animals4 ,every biologist now knows tenfold better reasons than ,saint ,francis for calling the birds and beasts 8little brothers and sisters40 ,but1 instead of instilling the tenderness of the ,saint of ,assisi1 ,science has taught her devotees to regard the world as a scene of universal struggle1 wherein the rule must be1 8,every one for himself1 and no ,god for any one40 ,ten years ago an eminent ,american physician remarked to me3 8,in my country the ardor of scientific research is rapidly overriding the proper benevolent objects of my profession4 ,the cure of disease is becoming quite a secondary consideration to the achievement of a correct diagnosis1 to be verified by a successful post mortem40 ,how true this now holds of the state of things in ,english hospitals1 that remarkable book1 8,st4 ,bernard's10 and its still more important key1 8,dying ,scientifically10 have just come in time to testify4#e ,no one who has read these books will deny that the purely ,scientific ,spirit is 7at all events sometimes7 a merciless spirit2 and that ,dr4 ,draper's famous boast1 so often repeated1 that 8,science has never subjected any one to physical torture0 7,preface to 8,conflict10 p4 xi71 is untrue4 ,irreverence appears to be another 8note0 of the ,scientific ,spirit4 ,literature always holds a certain attitude of conservatism4 ,its kings will never be dethroned4 ,but ,science is essentially ,jacobin4 ,the one thing certain about a great man of science is that in a few years his theories and books1 like ,french ,constitutions1 will be laid on the shelf4 ,like coral insects1 the scientists of yesterday1 who built the foundations of the science of to-day1 are all dead from the moment that their successors have raised over them another inch of the interminable reef4 ,the student of ,literature1 dealing with human life1 cannot forget for a moment the existence of such things as goodness which he must honor1 and wickedness which he must abhor4 ,but ,physical ,science1 dealing with unmoral ,nature1 brings no such lessons to her votaries4 ,there is nothing to revere even in a well-balanced solar system1 and nothing to despise in a microbe4 ,taking this into consideration1 it might have been foreseen that the ,scientific ,spirit of the ,age would have been deficient in reverence2 and1 as a matter of fact1 ,i think it will be conceded that so it is4 ,it is a spirit to which the terms 8imperious0 and 8arrogant0 may not unfitly be applied1 and sometimes we may add 8overbearing10 when a man of science thinks fit to rebuke a theologian for trespassing on his ground after he has been trampling all over the ground of theology4 ,perhaps the difference between the new 8bumptious0 ,spirit of ,science and the old exquisitely modest and reverent tone of ,newton and ,herschel1 ,faraday and ,lyell1 is only due to the causes which distinguish everywhere a ,church ,triumphant from a ,church ,militant4 ,but1 whatever they may be1 it seems clear that it will scarcely be in an age of ,science that the prophecy will be fulfilled that 8the meek shall inherit the earth40#f ,among the delicate and beautiful things which ,science brushes away from life1 ,i cannot omit to number a certain modesty which has hitherto prevailed among educated people4 ,the decline of decency in ,england1 apparent to every one old enough to recall earlier manners and topics of conversation1 is due in great measure1 ,i think1 to the scientific 7medical7 spirit4 ,who would have thought thirty years ago of seeing young men in public reading-rooms snatching at the ,lancet and the ,british ,medical ,journal from layers of what ought to be more attractive literature1 and poring over hideous diagrams and revolting details of disease and monstrosity8 ,it is perfectly right1 no doubt1 for these professional journals to deal plainly with these horrors1 and with the thrice abominable records of 8gyncology40 ,but1 being so1 it follows that it is not proper that they should form the furniture of a reading-table at which young men and young women sit for general--not medical--instruction4 ,nor is it only in the medical journals that disease-mongering now obtains4 ,the political press has adopted the practice of reporting the details of illness of every eminent man who falls into the hands of the doctors1 and affords those gentlemen an opportunity of advertising themselves as his advisers4 ,the last recollection which the present generation will retain of many an illustrious statesman1 poet1 and soldier1 will not be that he died like a hero or a saint1 bravely or piously1 but that he swallowed such and such a medicine1 and1 perhaps1 was sick in his stomach4 ,death-beds are desecrated that doctors may be puffed and public inquisitiveness assuaged4 ,so far does the materialist spirit penetrate into literature that in criticising books and men the most exaggerated importance is attached by numberless writers to the physical conditions and 8environments0 of the personages with whom they are concerned1 till we could almost suppose that--given his ancestry and circumstances--we could scientifically construct the ,man1 with all his gifts and passions4 ,as if1 forsooth1 a dozen brothers were alike in character1 or even all the kittens in a litter6 ,it is refreshing to read the brisk persiflage on this kind of thing in the ,revue des ,deux ,mondes for ,march #a4 ,the writer1 reviewing ,mr4 ,lecky's books1 states that but little of that splendid historian's private life has been published1 and adds3-- 8,je ne me plains pas de cette scheresse1 je la bnis4 ,c'est un plaisir1 devenu si rare aujourd'hui1 de pouvoir lire un livre sans en connatre l'auteur3 de juger une uvre directement et en elle-mme1 sans avoir tudier ce compos d'organes et de tissus1 de nerfs et de muscles1 d'o elle est sortie3 sans la commenter l'aide de la physiologie1 de l'ethnographie1 et de la climatologie3 sans mettre en jeu l'atavisme et les diathses hrditaires60#g ,turn we lastly to the influences of the ,scientific ,spirit on ,religion4 ,it is hardly too much to affirm that the advance of that ,spirit has been to individuals and classes the signal for a subsidence of religious faith and religious emotion4#h ,judging from ,darwin's experience1 as that of a typical man of science1 just as such a one becomes an embodiment of the ,scientific ,spirit1 this religious sentiment flickers and expires1 like a candle in an airless vault4 ,speaking of his old feelings of 8wonder1 admiration1 and devotion0 experienced while standing amid the grandeur of a ,brazilian forest1 he wrote in later years1 when ,science had made him all her own3 8,now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind4 ,it may be truly said that ,i am like a man who has become colorblind0 7,life1 vol4 i4 p4 #caa74 ,nor did the deadening influences stop at his own soul4 ,as one able reviewer of his 8,life0 in the ,spectator wrote3 8,no sane man can deny ,darwin's influence to have been at least contemporaneous with a general decay of belief in the unseen4 ,darwin's ,theism faded from his mind without disturbance1 without perplexity1 without pain4 ,these words describe his influence as well as his experience40 ,the causes of the anti-religious tendency of modern science may be found1 ,i believe3 #ast1 in the closing up of that 8,gate called ,beautiful10 through which many souls have been wont to enter the ,temple2 #b;d1 in the diametric opposition of its method to the method of spiritual inquiry2 and1 #c;d1 to the hardness of character frequently produced 7as we have already noted7 by scientific pursuits4 ,these three causes1 ,i think1 sufficiently account for the antagonism between the modern ,scientific and the ,religious ,spirits1 quite irrespectively of the bearings of critical or philosophical researches on the doctrines of either natural or traditional religion4 ,had ,science inspired her votaries with religious sentiment1 they would have broken their way through the tangle of theological difficulties1 and have opened for us a highway of ,faith at once devout and rational4 ,but of all improbable things to anticipate now in the world is a ,scientific ,religious ,reformation4 ,lamennais said there was one thing worse than ,atheism2 namely1 indifference whether ,atheism be true4 ,the ,scientific ,spirit of the ,age has reached this point4 ,it is contented to be ,agnostic1 not ,atheistic4 ,it says aloud1 8,i don't know40 ,it mutters to those who listen1 8,i don't care40 ,the ,scientific ,spirit has undoubtedly performed prodigies in the realms of physical discovery4 ,its inventions have brought enormous contributions to the material well-being of man1 and it has widened to a magnificent horizon the intellectual circle of his ideas4 ,yet notwithstanding all its splendid achievements1 if it only foster our lower mental faculties while it paralyzes and atrophies the higher2 if ,reverence and ,sympathy and ,modesty dwindle in its shadow2 if ,art and ,poetry shrink at its touch2 if ,morality be undermined and perverted by it2 and if ,religion perish at its approach as a flower vanishes before the frost1--then1 ,i think1 we must deny the truth of ,sir ,james ,paget's assertion1 that 8nothing can advance human prosperity so much as science40 ,she has given us many precious things2 but she takes away things more precious still4 ,,essay ,,ii4 ,,the ,,education ,,of ,,the ,,emotions4 ,human ,emotions--the most largely effective springs of human conduct--arise either at first hand on the pressure of their natural stimuli1 or at second hand by the contagion of sympathy with the emotions of other men4 ,this last source of emotion has not1 ,i conceive1 received sufficient attention in practical systems of education1 and to the consideration of it the present paper will be chiefly devoted4 ,every human emotion appears to be transmissible by contagion1 and to be also more often so developed than it is solitarily evolved4 ,for once that ,courage or ,terror1 ,admiration or ,contempt1 or even ,good-will and ,ill-will1 spring of themselves in the breast of man1 woman1 or child1 each is many times caught from another mind possessed of the same feeling4 ,by a subtle sympathy1 not unshared by the lower animals1 a sympathy which sometimes works slowly and imperceptibly and is sometimes communicated with electric velocity1 one man conveys to another1 as if it were a flame1 the emotion which burns in his own soul4 ,thenceforth the recipient becomes a fresh propagator of the emotion to those with whom he in his turn comes into physical contact4 ,a few instances may be named to make clear my meaning4 ,the most familiar example of the contagiousness of the emotions1 as the reader will instantly recall1 is that of ,fear1 which has often spread through whole armies with such inexplicable celerity and fatal results that the ancients were fain to attribute the frenzy to the malevolence of a god1 and called such terrors 8,panic40 ,the disasters which have occurred during the last few years in so many ,european and ,american theatres and churches afford sad evidence that1 though 8great ,pan is dead10 our liability to succumb to such waves of fear has not been diminished by modern civilization4 ,the proof of the special power of the contagion lies in this3 that there is every reason to believe that the majority of the persons constituting the terror-stricken crowd would1 if alone1 have met the danger with reasonable composure4 ,there is also happily1 we may remember1 such a thing as the contagion of ,courage as well as that of ,terror4 ,and many a time and oft in our history the captain of a sinking ship1 the commander of a retreating regiment1 has1 by his individual intrepidity1 restored the morale of his men4 ,again1 a remarkable instance of the contagiousness of emotion is afforded by the ,popularity of the men who become in any country the idols of the hour4 ,the fact is very well known to the organizers of claques and rclames in theatres1 and of ovations in political life1 that it is enough for a small band of friends in an assembly to cheer and clap hands1 to induce hundreds1 who had previously little interest in the work or person praised1 to join the hosannas4 ,when a statesman has succeeded in arousing enthusiasm for himself 7possibly by persuading scores of people and associations that 8all his sympathies are with their0--totally opposite aims71 he may then safely disappoint each in turn and veer round to the opposite point of the political and theological compass from which he sailed with flowing canvas4 ,his popularity will not be forfeited or even lessened2 for it is a mere contagion of sentiment1 not a rational or critical judgment4 ,herein lies the special peril of democracies1 that this kind of contagion of personal enthusiasm rapidly becomes the largest factor in their politics4 ,from the nature of things1 the masses cannot form judgments on questions of state1 referring1 perhaps1 to countries of which the very names are unknown to them2 and1 therefore1 they must of necessity choose ,men1 not ,measures4 ,when we further examine who are the ,men so chosen and why1 we arrive at the startling discovery that it is exclusively by rhetoric that the contagious admiration and sympathy of the masses can be roused4 ,not sound statesmanship1 not wise patriotism1 not incorruptible fidelity1 not dignified consistency1 not1 in short1 any one quality fitting a man to be a safe or able minister1 attracts the enthusiasm of the multitude1 or is even estimated at all by them4 ,the only gift they can appreciate is that which they themselves would designate 8the ,gift of the ,gab40 ,the lesson is a grave one for all free countries4 ,by such popular idolatry of great talkers were all the old republics of ,greece and ,magna ,graecia brought to destruction2 and the men who by such means acquired a bastard royalty over them so exercised it as to make the name of 8,tyrant0 for ever abominable4 ,as concerns emotions connected with ,religion1 the contagion of them has been notorious in all ages1 for good or evil1 according to the character of the religion in question4 ,the intoxication of the dances of old ,mnads and the modern ,dervishes1 the shrieks and self-woundings of the priests of ,baal and ,cybele1 the frenzied scenes of sacrifice to ,moloch and the ,aztec gods1 and a hundred other examples will occur to every reader4 ,probably those on the largest scale of all recorded in history were the first ,crusades1 when 8,europe precipitated itself on ,asia0 in a delirium of religious enthusiasm caught from ,peter the ,hermit and ,bernard of ,clairvaux4 ,the outbursts of the ,anabaptists1 the ,flagellants and ,prophets of the ,cevennes1 in ,christendom1 and of ,moslem fanatics under ,prophets and ,mahdis 7of which we have probably by no means heard the last71 and finally the ,revivals of various sects in ,england and ,america1 and the triumphs of the ,salvation ,army1 are all instances of the part played by the contagion of emotion in the religion of the community at large4 ,i shall speak hereafter of its share in personal religious experience4 ,in much smaller matters than religion1 and where no explosion reveals the contagion of sentiments1 it is yet often possible to trace the spread of an emotion1 good or bad1 from one individual of a family or village to all the other members or inhabitants4 ,it suffices for some spiteful boy or idle girl to call a miserable old woman a witch1 or to express hatred of some foreigner or harmless eccentric1 to set afloat prejudices which end in something approaching to persecution of the victims1 who may be thankful they did not live two hundred years ago1 when1 instead of being boycotted1 they would have been burned4 ,a child in a school or large household who has the misfortune to be lame or ugly1 or to exhibit any peculiarity physical or mental1 may1 without any fault on its side1 become obnoxious to the blind dislike of a stupid servant or jealous step-mother1 and then--the contagion spreading and intensifying as it extends--to the common hatred of the little community1--a hatred justifying itself by the sullenness or deceptions to which the poor victim at last is driven4 ,even domestic animals suffer from this kind of contagious dislike1 and benefit on the other hand by contagious admiration and fondness4#i 8,give a dog a bad name and hang him0 is true in more senses than one4 ,we need not pursue this part of the subject further4 ,every day's experience may supply fresh illustrations of the immense influence of contagion in the development of all human emotions4 ,nor is it by any means to be set down as a weakness peculiar to or characteristic of a feeble mind to be blindly susceptible of such contagion4 ,even the strongest wills are bent and warped by the winds of other men's passions1 persistently blowing in given directions4 ,original minds1 gifted with what the ,french call l'esprit primesautier1 are perhaps1 indeed1 affected rather more than less than commonplace people by the emotions of those around them1 because their larger natures are more open to the sympathetic shock4 ,like ships with all sails set1 they are caught by every breeze4 ,it is a question of degree how much each man receives of influence from his neighbors2 but 7to use the new medical barbarism7 we are never 8immune0 altogether from the contagion4 ,we may now approach our proper subject of the ,education of the ,emotions1 carrying with us the important fact that no means are so efficacious in promoting good ones as the wise employment of the great agency of ,contagion2 and1 further1 that this contagion works only by exhibiting the genuine emotion to the person we desire to influence4 ,only by being brave can we inspire courage4 ,only by reverencing holy things can we communicate veneration4 ,only by being tender and loving can we move other hearts to pity and affection4 ,let us glance over the variety of circumstances wherein great good might be effected by systematic attention to the natural laws of the development of the emotions4 ,we may begin by considering those connected with the education of the young4 ,in the first place1 parents duly impressed with the importance of the subject would carefully suppress1 or at least conceal1 such of their own emotions as they would regret to see caught up by their children4 ,at present1 numberless sufficiently conscientious fathers and mothers1 who would be horrified at the suggestion of placing books teaching bad lessons in the hands of their sons and daughters1 yet carelessly allow them to witness 7and of course to receive the contagion of7 all manner of angry1 envious1 cowardly1 and scornful emotions1 just as they chance to be called out in themselves4 ,it would be to revolutionize many homes to induce parents to revise their own sentiments1 with a view to deciding which they should communicate to their children4 ,in one way in particular1 the result of such self-questioning might be startling4 ,every good father desires his son to respect his mother1 and would be sorry to teach him only the half of the ,fifth ,commandment--in words4 ,yet how do scores of such well-meaning men set about conveying the sentiment of reverence which they recognize will be invaluable to their sons8 ,they treat those same mothers1 in the presence of those same sons1 with such rudeness1 dismiss their opinions with such levity1 and perhaps exhibit such actual contempt for their wishes that it is not in nature but that the boy will receive a lesson of disrespect4 ,his father's feelings1 backed up as they are by the disabilities under which the ,constitution places women1 can scarcely fail to impress the young mind with that contempt for women in general1 and for his mother in particular1 which is precisely the reverse of chivalry and filial piety4 ,almost as important as the contagion of parental emotion is that of the sentiments of ,teachers2 yet on this subject nobody seems to think it needful even to institute inquiries4 ,so far as ,i can learn1 the sole question asked nowadays when a professor is to be appointed to a ,chair at the ,universities is1 8,whether he be the man among the candidates who knows most or rather who has the reputation of knowing most of the subject which he proposes to teach80 ,this point being ascertained1 and nothing serious alleged against his moral conduct1 the fortunate gentleman receives his appointment as a matter of course4 ,even electors who personally detest the notorious opinions of the professor on religion or politics acquiesce cheerfully in the choice2 apparently satisfied that he will carve out to his students the particular pound of knowledge he is bound to give them1 and not a drop of blood besides4 ,the same principle1 ,i presume 7,i have little information on the subject71 prevails in schools generally1 as it does in private education4 ,a professor or governess is engaged to instruct boys or girls1 let us say in ,latin1 ,history1 or ,physiology1 and it is assumed that he or she will act precisely like a teaching machine for that particular subject1 and never step beyond its borders4 ,a little common sense would dissipate this idle presumption1--supposing it to be really entertained1 and that the mania for cramming sheer knowledge down the throats of the young does not make their elders wilfully disregardful of the moral poison which may filter along with it4 ,every human being1 as ,i have said1 exercises some influence over the emotions of his neighbor2 but that of a ,teacher1 especially if he be a brilliant one1 over his students1 often amounts to a contagion of enthusiasm throughout the class4 ,his admirations are adored1 the objects of his sneers despised1 and every opinion he enunciates is an oracle4 ,and it is these professors and teachers1 forsooth1 whose opinions on ethics1 theology1 and politics it is not thought worth while to ascertain before installing them in their ,chairs to become the guides of the young men and women who are the hope of the nation6 ,it does not require any direct1 or even indirect1 inculcation of opinion on the teacher's part to do mischief4 ,it is the contagion of his emotions which is to be feared1 if those emotions be base or bad4 ,let him teach ,history and betray his enthusiasm for selfish and sanguinary conquerors1 or justify assassins and anarchists1 or jest--,gibbon fashion--at martyrs and heroes1 will he not communicate those base sentiments to his young audience8 ,or let him teach ,science1 and convey to every student's mind that deification of mere knowledge1 that insolent sense of superiority in the possession of it1 that remorseless determination to pursue it regardless of every moral restraint1 which is too often the 8note0 of modern scientism1 will the instruction he affords to his students' brains counterbalance the harm he will do to their hearts8 ,and1 on the other hand1 what a splendid vantage-ground for the dissemination not merely of knowledge1 but of elevated feelings1 is that of a ,teacher6 ,merely in teaching a dead or modern language1 a fine-natured man communicates his own glowing feelings respecting the masterpieces of national literature which it is his duty to expound4 ,the last point we need notice as regards the contagion of emotions among the young is the subject of ,companions4 ,here again1 as in the case of respect for mothers1 there is great unanimity in theory4 ,every one admits that bad companions are ruinous for boys or girls4 ,but1 when it comes to taking precautions against the herding of innocent and well-nurtured children with others who have been familiar with vice1 ,i see little trace of the anxious care and discrimination which ought to prevail4 ,nay1 in the case of the children of the poor1 it seems to me the law is often wickedly applied to compel good parents to send them1 against their own will and convictions1 to sit beside companions who have come straight to school out of slums of filth1 moral and physical4 ,i have known ,americans argue that it is right for children of all classes to associate together1 so that the well-trained may communicate good ideas to the ill-trained4 ,the reasoning appears to be on a par with a proposal to send healthy people to sleep in a cholera hospital4 ,but1 while we allow ourselves to be terrified beyond bounds by alarms about the infection of bodily disease1 we take hardly any precautions against the more dreadful1 and quite as real1 infection of moral corruption4#aj ,the general sentiment of boys and youths in the great public schools and colleges of ,england--thanks to the high-minded ,masters who have been at their head--is1 on the whole1 good and honorable4 ,it may be taken for granted that a boy from ,harrow1 ,eton1 ,rugby1 ,winchester1 ,westminster1 or ,uppingham1 and a fortiori a man from ,oxford or ,cambridge1 will despise lying and cowardice and admire fair play and justice4 ,how grand a foundation for national character has thus been laid6 ,what a debt do we owe alike to the ,masters and the 8,tom ,browns0 who have communicated the contagion of such noble emotions6 ,in ,continental lyces and academies1 public opinion among the boys is1 by all accounts1 wofully inferior to that which is current in our great schools4 ,there has never been an ,arnold in a ,french ,rugby4 ,as regards girls1 their doubly emotional natures make it a matter of moral life and death that their companions 7of whose emotions they are perfectly certain to experience the contagion7 should be pure and honorable-minded4 ,it is most encouraging to every woman who reads ,mrs4 ,pfeiffer's masterly new book1 8,women and ,work10 to see the rising generation of girls displaying such splendid abilities and zeal for instruction1 and--as ,mrs4 ,pfeiffer amply proves--without paying for it in loss of bodily vigor4 ,fain would ,i see the 8blessed ,damozels10 who are still standing behind the golden bars of noble homes1 all flocking to the new colleges for women1 as their brothers do to ,christchurch and ,trinity1 there to imbibe parallel sentiments of truthfulness and pluck1 more precious than ,greek1 ,latin1 or mathematics6 ,leaving now the subject of the ,education of the ,emotions of the ,young1 by parents1 teachers1 and companions1 ,i proceed to speak of the general education of the emotions of the community by public and private instrumentality1--a wide field1 over which we can only glance4 ,what machinery is disposable to cultivate the better and discourage the lower emotions1 either by the exhibition of the direct natural stimulus to the former and withdrawal of it in the latter cases1 or by the aid of contagion8 ,in the grand matter of ,legislation ,i do not know that there is much more to be done than has already been achieved by the abolition of those public punishments of criminals--hanging1 drawing and quartering1 flogging at the cart's tail1 and the pillory--which must have been frightfully prolific of cruel passions in the spectators4 ,to have taken part in such executions1 e4g4 in the old stonings to death1 in the burning of witches and heretics1 or in the minor but yet barbarous and cowardly pelting of the helpless wretches in the pillory1 must have been an apprenticeship worthy of a ,red ,indian4 ,even to have been a passive spectator of a ,newgate execution in later years1 amid the yelling crowd1 must have been excessively demoralizing1 and in fact was at last recognized by the ,legislature to be so1 instead of a wholesome warning4 ,it is a cause for rejoicing that there is an end of this kind of contagious emotion in ,england1 except in the case of experiments on animals1 of which the ,act of #ahgf sanctions the exhibition to classes under special certificates which require the subjects to be fully ansthetized4 ,on this point the warning of the late lamented ,professor ,rolleston ought1 ,i think1 to have sufficed4 ,he told the ,royal ,commission3 8,the sight of a living1 bleeding1 and quivering organism most undoubtedly does act in a particular way upon what ,dr4 ,carpenter calls the emotiono-motor nature in us4444 ,when men are massed together1 the emotiono-motor nature is more responsive1 it becomes more sensitive to impression than it does at other times1 and that of course bears very greatly on the question of interference with vivisections before masses0 7,minutes1 #abhgaa74 ,the time will come when it will be looked upon as a monstrous inconsistency that the spectacle of the execution of murderers should be shut off from the adult population on account of its recognized ill effects in fostering contagious cruelty1 and1 at the same time1 as many as nineteen certificates should be issued in one year by the ,home ,office1 specially authorizing the mutilation of harmless animals before classes of young men and women4 ,majestic public functions1 coronations1 thanksgivings1 state entries into great cities1 and funerals of distinguished men afford admirable machinery for the communication of noble emotions through the masses4 ,it was worth the cost and trouble of last year's ,jubilee ten times over to have sent through so many brains and hearts the thrill of sympathy which followed the ,queen to the old throne of her fathers1 while the kings of the earth stood around her as witnesses that she had kept the oath to her people1 sworn there fifty years before4 ,for one day ,england and all her vast colonies beat with one heart1 and the contagion of loyal emotion1 love1 reverence1 pride1 and pity1 for woman1 empress1 mother1 widow1 ran round the globe4 ,sad was it 7as many must have remembered7 that he who would have found the true words to give utterance to the sentiment in the heaving breast of the nation1 he whose proud duty it would have been to welcome the ,queen to his own ,abbey1 was lying on that day silent beneath its pavement4 ,beyond ,legislation and ,public ,functions1 the largest influence which sways the emotions of all educated people is undoubtedly ,literature4 ,the power of ,books to awaken the most vivid feelings is a phenomenon at which savages may well wonder4 ,the magic which enables both the living and the long departed to move us to the depths of our being by the aid only of a few marks on sheets of paper is a never-ending miracle4 ,it were vain to attempt to do any justice to the subject1 or show how the contagion of piety1 patriotism1 enthusiasm for justice and truth1 and sympathy with other nations and other classes than our own1 is borne to us in the pages of the poets and historians and novelists of the world4 ,pitiful it is to think how narrow must be the scope of the emotions of any man whose breast has never dilated nor his eyes flashed over the grandeur of the ,book of ,job1 over ,dante or ,shakspere1 and whose heart has never been warmed and his sympathies extended1 backwards through time and around him in space1 by ,walter ,scott1 and ,defoe1 and ,dickens1 and ,george ,eliot4 ,alas that we must add that ,literature can not only kindle the noblest emotions1 but also light up baleful fires1 of the basest and most sensual1--to look for which we have not now even to cross the ,channel6 ,m4 ,zola has been translated into ,english4 ,after ,literature ,i presume that the ,stage is the greatest public agency for the promotion of fine emotions1 and it is to the honor of human nature that it is found 7at least in our country7 to be most popular when it fulfils its office best1 and calls out sympathy for generous and heroic actions4 ,when the ,roman audience rose en masse to applaud the line of ,terence which first proclaimed the brotherhood of man1--8,homo sum3 humani nihil a me alienum puto10--the highest mission of the ,drama was fulfilled4 ,of course no one desires the string of high emotion to be exclusively or perpetually harped upon2 and for my own part ,i think that the mere production of the emotion of harmless merriment is one of the greatest boons of the stage4 ,the contagion of laughter1 in a theatre or out of it1 is an altogether wholesome and beneficent thing4 ,how it unseats black ,care from our backs6 ,how it carries away1 as on a fresh spring breeze1 a whole swarm of buzzing worries and grievances6 ,how it warms our hearts for ever after to the people with whom we have once shared a good honest fou rire6 8,behold how good and how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity10 and 7with all respect let us add7 in hilarity6 ,a good joke partaken with a man is like the ,arab's salt4 ,our common emotion of humorous pleasure is a bond between us which we would not thereafter lightly break4 ,the education of the emotions of actors and actresses1 apart from that which they afford to the emotions of the public1 is a very curious subject of consideration4 ,great part of the training of an actor consists in learning to give the uttermost possible external expression to those emotions which it is the task of other people to reduce to a vanishing point4 ,undoubtedly 7as one of the most gifted of the profession has remarked71 the 8habit of representing fictitious feeling tends to produce a superficial sensibility1 and an exaggerated mode of expressing the same40 ,but it may be questioned whether this extreme be worse than the opposite1 wherein the expression of the emotions is so effectually repressed that the feelings themselves die out for want of air and exercise1--a consummation not unknown in the reposeful 8caste of ,vere de ,vere40 ,besides ,literature and the ,stage1 ,music no doubt is a most marvellous agency for calling out ,emotion4 ,it is1 in fact1 the ,art of ,emotion4 ,the musician plays with the strings of the human heart while he touches those of his instrument4 ,since ,collins wrote his 8,ode to the ,passions0 and ,pope his 8,ode on ,saint ,cecilia's ,day10 there is no need to describe how every emotion known to man may be brought out by music4 ,something may well be hoped for a generation which1 rejecting the more trivial and sensuous music of ,italy1 finds delight in the exalted play of the emotions which follows the wands of ,bach and ,beethoven and ,wagner4 ,the efforts now made to offer music at once cheap and good to as many of the working classes as can be found to enjoy it is perhaps the most direct way conceivable of fostering their best emotions4 ,the ,beauty of ,nature and of ,art are also powerful levers of the higher emotions1 which it becomes us to use for the benefit of our fellows whenever it is practicable to do so4 ,but1 while these varied engines are at work to stir beneficently the emotions of the masses1 there are on the other hand certain agencies in full play amongst us which have1 ,i fear1 a totally different effect2 which1 in fact1 can only tend to deaden1 if not destroy1 the most precious of emotions1 those of family affection4 ,i do not know that the question has ever been faced3 ,what are the moral effects of our enormous ,hospitals8 ,from the side of the bodily interests of the patients1 they may be wholly advantageous4#ab ,but as regards the sacred institutions of the ,family1 on which society itself is based1 ,i ask what1 except evil1 can result from the habitual separation of relatives the moment that illness makes a claim for tenderness and care8 ,it is the law of human nature that the sentiment of sympathy should be drawn forth by personal service to the suffering2 and feelings of gratitude and affection by the receipt of such personal service4 ,in comparison of these sources of emotion1 those which act in times of prosperity are weak and poor4 ,if we subtract in imagination from our own affections those which have come to us either through nursing or being nursed in sickness and danger1 the residue will represent all which we leave within reach of the million4 ,many of us can remember quarrels which have been reconciled1 unkindnesses atoned for1 and bonds of sacred union in faith and eternal hope linked beside beds of pain when death seemed standing at the door4 ,these things form some of the highest educational influences which ,providence brings to bear on the human spirit1 and out of them arise the sweetest affections1 the warmest gratitude1 the most vivid sense of a common nearness to ,god and the ,immortal ,life4 ,and of all this the entire working class of the nation is systematically deprived6 ,formerly it was only in cases of extreme poverty1 where the crowded lodging was an altogether unfit place to nurse the sufferer1 that recourse was had to the public ,hospitals4 ,now it has become the invariable practice the moment that illness1 even of non-infectious kind1 declares itself1 to send straight away to the hospital artisans1 small tradesmen1 and farmers from their own comfortable abodes1 servants from the large and airy houses where they have labored faithfully1 and even children from their mothers' arms4 ,it is not a mere matter of conjecture that such a custom must do harm and weaken the sense of family obligation4 ,it is a fact that it has done so already1 and is doing so more every day4 ,sons and daughters place their blind and palsied parents in asylums2 wives send their husbands in a decline to ,brompton ,hospital2 and it has become a surprising piece of filial devotion if a daughter remain at home to take care of a bed-ridden mother1 even when her means fully permit of such sacrifice of time4 ,what deadly injury is all this to the hearts of men1 women1 and children6 ,of course ,hospitals have their important uses4 ,no one denies it4 ,some cases of disease and some degrees of poverty require such institutions4 ,but this does not justify the monstrous over-use of them now in vogue4 ,even for the class whose homes are too crowded to admit of nursing being properly or safely done in them1 ,i cannot but think that small ,cottage ,hospitals1 where the wife or mother or daughter would be free to perform her natural duties by the bedside1 and where she would be shown how best to perform them1 would be infinitely preferable for every reason1 moral and physical1 to our present ,palaces of ,pain4 ,excellent also in all ways will be the plan of ,nurses provided for the poor in their own homes by the ,queen's wise gift of the balance of her ,women's ,jubilee ,fund4 ,the secret of the excessive resort to ,hospitals is of course the encouragement to patients given by the medical schools attached to them1 for the sake of obtaining a large supply of 8clinical material40 ,lastly1 we come to speak of the ,education of the ,religious ,emotions4 ,we have already referred to the outbursts of contagious enthusiasm in the ,crusades and ,revivals4 ,it remains to say a few words respecting the various sources of religious emotion1 at first and second hand4 ,a fundamental difference between the ,catholic and ,puritan mind seems to be that the former seizes on every available means for producing religious emotion through the senses2 the latter turns away from such means with intense mistrust1 and limits itself to appeals through the mind4 ,dark and solemn churches like that at ,assisi decorated by ,giotto 7which the friar who showed it told me was the 8best place in the whole world for prayer071 gorgeous altars1 splendid functions1 pictures1 music1 incense1--all these are to the ,catholic and ,high ,churchman veritable 8means of grace02 i4e41 they call out in them emotions which either are religious or they think lead to religion4 ,long ,prayers1 ,hymns1 ,bible-readings1 and preachings1--these1 on the other hand1 are the ,evangelicals' means of grace1 and they produce in them emotions distinctly religious4 ,we must1 ,i think1 treat these differences as matters of spiritual taste1 concerning which it is proverbially idle to dispute4 ,both have their advantages1 and both their great perils3 the ,catholic method has the peril of lapping the soul in a fool's paradise of fancied piety1 which is only sensuous excitement2 the ,puritan method has that of creating the hysteria of a ,revival4 ,in each case it is the contagion of the emotion of a multitude which creates the danger4 ,solitary religious emotion1 either produced by the glory and majesty of ,nature or by lonely prayer and communings with ,god1 can lead to no evil2 nay1 is the climax of purest joy vouchsafed to man4 ,not misguided are those who enter into their chambers and shut the door 8to pray to ,him who sees in secret10 or who go up into the hills and woods 8,to seek ,that ,being in whose honor shrines are weak1 ,upreared by human hands40 ,the converse of the emotions of ,awe and ,reverence--namely1 the tendency to jest and ridicule--are supposed by some to be dangerous enemies to religion4 ,i do not believe they are so4 ,i think a genuine sense of humor and a keen eye for the ludicrous is a most precious protection against absurdities and excesses4 ,like ,tenderness and ,strength1 the sense of the ,sublime and of the ,ridiculous are complementary to each other1 and exist only in perfection together in the same character4 ,it is the man who cannot laugh who never weeps4 ,finally1 we reach the point where the religious emotions1 produced either alone or by contagion1 effect the greatest of spiritual miracles3 that 8conversion0 or revulsion of the soul which ancient ,india1 no less than ,christendom1 likened to a ,new or ,second ,birth4 ,it would appear that1 when this mysterious change does not take place by the solitary work of the ,divine on the human spirit1 it does so by the attractive power of another human soul1 which has itself already undergone the great transformation4 ,it is the living ,saint who conveys spiritual life4 ,he need not be a very great or far advanced soul in the spiritual realm4 ,many a simple person with no exceptional gifts has 8turned to the wisdom of the just0 the hearts of strong men1 whom the most eloquent and thoughtful of preachers have failed to move by a hair4 ,but the greater the saint1 the greater naturally must be his power4 ,it was the contagion of ,divine ,love1 caught from him who felt it most of all the sons of men1 which moved the little band in the upper chamber of ,jerusalem--who moved the world4 ,it is worthy of notice that when a man so powerfully influences another as to 8convert0 him in the true sense1 i4e4 to bring him to the higher spiritual life1 it very often happens that at the same time he 8converts0 him in the lower sense1 to the doctrines of the special ,church to which he himself belongs4 ,the man has received the impulse of religion from that particular direction4 ,it has come to him colored by the hues of his friend's piety1 and he accepts it1 doctrines and all1 as he finds it4 ,the matter has been one of emotional contagion1 not of critical argument on either side4 ,it is impossible to form the faintest estimate of the good--the highest kind of good--which a single devout soul may accomplish in a lifetime by spreading the holy contagion of the ,love of ,god in widening circles around it4 ,but just as far as the influence of such men is a cause for thankfulness1 so great would be the calamity of a time1 if such should ever arrive1 when there should be a dearth of saints in the world1 and the fire on the altar should die down4 ,a ,glacial ,period of ,religion would kill many of the sweetest flowers in human nature2 and woe to the land where 7as it would seem is almost the present case in ,france at this moment7 the priceless tradition of ,prayer is being lost1 or only maintained in fatal connection with outworn superstitions4 ,to resume the subject of this paper4 ,we have seen that the ,emotions1 which are the chief springs of human conduct1 may either be produced by their natural stimuli or conveyed by contagion from other minds1 but that they can neither be commanded nor taught4 ,if we desire to convey good and noble emotions to our fellow-creatures1 the only means whereby we can effect that end is by filling our own hearts with them till they overflow into the hearts of others4 ,here lies the great truth which the preachers of ,altruism persistently overlook4 ,it is better to be good than to do good4 ,we can benefit our kind in no way so much as by being ourselves pure and upright and noble-minded4 ,we can never teach ,religion to such purpose as we can live it4 ,it was my privilege to know a woman who for more than twenty years was chained by a cruel malady to what ,heine called a 8mattress grave40 ,little or nothing was it possible for her to do for any one in the way of ordinary service4 ,her many schemes of usefulness and beneficence were all stopped4 ,yet1 merely by attaining to the lofty heights of spiritual life and knowledge1 that suffering woman helped and lifted up the hearts of all who came around her1 and did more real good1 and of the highest kind1 than half the preachers and philanthropists in the land4 ,even now1 when her beautiful soul has been released at last from its earthly cage1 it still lifts many who knew her to the love of ,god and ,duty to remember what she was1 and to the faith in immortality to think what now she must be1 within the golden gates4 ,,essay ,,iii4 ,,progressive ,,judaism4 ,when the new 8,science of ,religions0 has been further developed1 it will probably be recognized that the character of each is determined1 not only by its own proper dogmas1 but by those of the religion which it has superseded4 ,men do not1 as they often imagine1 tear up an old faith by the roots and plant a new one on the same ground4 ,they only cut across the old and graft the new on its stem4 ,thus it comes to pass1 for example1 that much of the sap of ,roman ,paganism runs through the pores of ,latin ,christianity1 and much of that of ,odin worship through those of ,teuton and ,scandinavian ,protestantism4 ,still more certainly does the faith held by an individual man in his earlier years dye his mind with its peculiar color1 so that no subsequent conversion ever wholly obliterates it1 but makes him like a frescoed wall on which yellow has been painted over blue1 leaving as the result--green4 ,the tint of ,anglican piety may be discerned even beneath a pervert ,cardinal's scarlet robe4 ,a ,romish acolyte1 transformed into the most brilliant of sceptical essayists1 still boasts that the ecclesiastical set of his brain enables him 8alone in his century0 to understand ,christ and ,saint ,francis4#ac ,a ,jew1 baptized and become ,prime ,minister of ,england1 wrote novels and made history altogether in the vein of the author of the ,book of ,esther4 ,beneath the wolf's clothing of the whole pack of modern ,secularists1 ,agnostics1 and ,atheists1 friction reveals 7for the present generation1 at all events7 a flock of harmless ,christian sheep4 ,for this reason hasty efforts to fuse religious bodies which happen to manifest tendencies to doctrinal agreement seem predestined to failure4 ,much else besides mere readiness to pronounce similar symbols of faith is needed to gather men permanently into one temple4 ,amalgamation attempted prematurely can only result in accentuating those diversities of sentiment which have stronger power to dissever than any intellectual affinities have charms to unite4 ,ecclesiastical schisms are infinitely easier to effect than ecclesiastical coalitions4 ,nevertheless1 the levelling of the fences which have for ages kept men of different religions apart is1 per se1 a matter for such earnest rejoicing that we may well exult at any instance of it1 independently of ulterior hopes or projects4 ,especially must our sympathies with those who are thus clearing the ground be quickened when the faith to be dis-immured is an old and venerable one1 the nearest of all to our own1--a faith whereof any important modification must be fraught with incalculable consequences to the civilized world4 ,the new ,reform among the ,jews is emphatically such a movement1--an effort to throw down the high and jealous walls behind which ,judaism has kept itself in seclusion4 ,the gates of the ,ghettos1 which for a thousand years shut in the ,jews at night in every city in ,europe1 were not more rigid obstacles to social sympathy and intercourse than have been the nation's own iron-bound prejudices and customs4 ,but just as these ,ghettos themselves1 so long 8little provinces of ,asia dropped into the map of ,europe10 have been thrown open at last by the growing enlightenment of ,christian ,states1 so the ,jewish moral walls of prejudice are being cast down by the advanced sentiment of cultured ,jews4 ,it is the specialty of the higher religions to unfold continually new germs of truth1 while the lower ones remain barren and become overgrown with the rank fungi of myth and fable4 ,i do not speak now of the results of external influences bearing on every creed1 and tending to vivify and fructify it4 ,such influences have done much1 undoubtedly1 even for ,christianity itself1 which has been stirred by all the agencies of the ,saracen conquests1 the classic ,renaissance1 modern ethics and metaphysics1 modern critical science1 and at last in our time by the extension of the theological horizon over the broad plains of ,eastern sacred literature4 ,i am speaking specially of the prolific power of the richer creeds to go on1 generation after generation1 bringing forth fresh1 golden harvests1 like the valleys of ,california4 ,if we look for an instance of the opposite barrenness1 we shall find it in the worn-out religions of ,china1 ice-bound and arid as the desolate plains and craters of the moon2 the ,tae-ping rebellion having been perhaps a solitary development of heat caused by the impingement on them of the orb of ,christianity4 ,if1 on the other hand1 we seek for a supreme instance of fertility1 we find it in the religion of ,nazareth1 which seems to enjoy perpetual seed-time and perpetual harvest4 ,the question is one of more than historical interest3 ,is ,judaism likewise a religion capable of bearing fresh corn and wine and oil for the nations8 ,we know that both ,christianity and ,islam are developments of the ,jewish idea1--the ,semitic development 7,islam7 carrying out its monotheistic doctrine in all its rigidity1 but losing somewhat on the moral and spiritual side2 the ,aryan development 7,christianity7 abandoning the strictly monotheistic doctrine1 but carrying far forward the moral and the spiritual part4 ,but both these ,banyan-like branches have struck root for themselves1 and their growth can no longer be treated as derived from the trunk of ,judaism4 ,our problem is1 ,can ,judaism further develop itself along its own lines8 ,or is it 7as generally believed7 destined to permanent immobility1 with no possible future before it save gradual dismemberment and decay8 ,shall we best liken it to ,abraham's oak at ,mamre1 whose leaf has not failed after three thousand years of sun and storm1 and when the very levin-bolt of heaven has blasted its crown1--or to the hewn and painted mast of some laden argosy wherein float the fortunes of ,israel8 ,there are1 it would appear1 three parties now existing among modern ,jews4 ,there is1 first1 the large ,orthodox party1 which holds by the verbal inspiration of the ,old ,testament and the authority of the ,talmud4#ad ,secondly1 there is the party commonly called that of ,reformed ,jews1 which separated about forty years ago from the ,orthodox by a schism analogous to that which cut off the ,free ,kirk from the ,kirk of ,scotland4 ,the raisons d'tre of this reform were certain questions of ritual 7the older ritual having fallen into neglect7 and the relinquishment by the reforming party of the authority of the ,talmud4 ,the progress so effected occasioned great heart-burnings1--now happily extinguished1--and proceeded no further than these very moderate reforms4#ae ,lastly1 there is a third ,jewish party1 existing chiefly in ,germany and ,america1 and numbering a few members among the younger generations in ,england4 ,for convenience' sake1 ,i shall distinguish it from the older ,reformed party by calling it the party of the ,new ,reform1 or of ,broad ,church ,jews1 the analogy between its attitude towards ,orthodox ,judaism and that of the late lamented ,dean ,stanley and his friends to the ,church of ,england being singularly close4 ,the attitude even of the ,orthodox and older ,reformed ,jews 7alike for our present purpose7 is1 theoretically1 not wholly unprogressive1 not necessarily purely tribal4 ,they have admitted principles inconsistent with stagnant tribalism4 ,they believe that1 though the ceremonialism of ,judaism is for ,jews alone1 yet the mission of ,judaism is to spread through all the nations its great central doctrine of the ,unity of ,god4 ,as ,philipsohn 7who1 it is said1 has since somewhat receded from his position7 observed in his ,lectures so far back as #ahdg3-- ,judaism has never declared itself to be in its specific form the religion of all mankind1 but has asserted itself to be the religion of all mankind in and by the religious idea4444 ,talmudism itself admits that he even who no longer observes the law1 but who utters as his confession of faith the words1 8,hear1 ,o ,israel1 the ,lord our ,god the ,eternal is ,one10 may be considered still to be a ,jew4 ,development of the ,religious ,idea1 p4 #bef4 ,the saying of the ,talmud1 8,the pious among all nations shall have a place in the world to come10 has become a stock quotation1 and has been of the utmost value to modern ,jewish orthodoxy4 ,thus even this most conservative party among the ,jews is not without a certain expansive principle4 ,it must be admitted1 however1 that it does little or nothing to make that principle practically efficacious1 and is content to wait for the advent of ,messiah to convert the nations by miracle without any trouble to ,jews to strive to enlighten them beforehand4 ,considering what the ,jews for ages have had to bear from those who vouchsafed to try to convert them1 we may pardon this lack of zeal for proselytism as far from unnatural2 yet the consequences have been deplorable4 ,he who holds a precious truth concerning eternal things1 and fails to feel it to be 7as ,mrs4 ,browning says7 8like bread at sacrament10 to be passed on to those beside him1 loses his right to it1 and much of his profit in it4 ,it is 8treasure hid in a field40 ,the attitude is anti-social and misanthropic of a people who practically say to their neighbors3 8,we possess the most precious of all truths1 of which we are the divinely commissioned guardians and witnesses4 ,but we do not intend to make the smallest effort to share that truth with you1 and generations of you may go to the grave without it for all we care4 ,we are passive witnesses1 not active apostles4 ,by and by1 the ,messiah will appear1 and convert all who are alive in his time1 whether they will or not2 but1 for the present1 ,christendom is joined to idols1 and we shall let it alone40 ,the faith which speaks thus stands self-condemned4 ,if a creed be not aggressive and proselytizing1 like ,buddhism1 ,islam1 and ,christianity1 it confesses either mistrust of itself or else misanthropic indifference to the welfare of mankind4 ,thus the ,orthodox and the elder ,reformed ,jews have tacitly pronounced their own sentence4 ,turn we now from these to the new ,reformation4 ,this last is a development of ,judaism1 truly on its own lines1 but yet extending far beyond anything contemplated by the elder bodies4 ,to measure it aright1 we must cast back a glance over the path which ,judaism traversed in earlier times1 and note how completely this new and vast stride is a continuance of that march towards higher and wider religious truth4 ,from the earliest conception of ,jahveh as the ,tribal ,god1--a conception which even ,kuenen admits to be native to the race of ,israel1 and untraceable to any other people1--from this conception1 which plainly assumed the existence of other and rival gods of neighboring nations1 it was an enormous step in advance to pass to the idea of ,one only ,lord of all the earth1 whose ,house should be a 8,house of prayer for all nations40 ,still vaster was the progress from anthropomorphic and morally imperfect ideas of the character of the tribal ,god to the adoration of ,isaiah's 8,high and ,holy ,one1 who inhabiteth eternity10 who dwells in the high and holy place with the pure in heart and the contrite4 ,again1 there was made a bound forward by ,judaism when the earlier simple secularism and disbelief of1 or indifference to1 a future world vanished before the belief in ,immortality which grew up in spite of the teachings of ,antigonus and ,sadok1 and 7after the ,dispersion7 never faded out again altogether4 ,and finally1 with the development of the ,prophetic spirit1 ,worship assumed more its true forms of praise1 confession of sin1 and thanksgiving2 and1 at the fall of ,jerusalem1 the bloody sacrifices 7long limited to the sacred enclosure7 came to an end forever amid the smoking ruins4 ,these were truly great steps of progress made by ,israel of old2 but the last of them left the nation to carry into its sorrowful exile an intolerable burden of ceremonialism and dusty superstitions1 whereof the ,talmud is now the lumber-room1 and possessed also by an unhappy demon of anti-social pride1 which forbade it to extend to or accept from other nations the right hand of human brotherhood4 ,the ,jews did not go out from ,jerusalem as the little band of ,christian missionaries had gone1 eager to scatter their new wealth of truth among the nations1 and1 though stoned and crucified by those whom they sought to bless1 yet ever after by their children's children to be revered and canonized4 ,the ,jews went out as misers of truth1 holding their full bags of treasure hid in their breasts4 ,nor in the ages following the ,dispersion1 while ,christianity diverged further and further from pure ,theism1 and through ,mariolatry and ,hagiolatry sank well-nigh to polytheism and idolatry1 do we ever once hear of an attempt by any ,jewish teacher1 even by such a man as ,maimonides1 to call back the wandering nations by proclaiming in their ears the 8schema ,israel0--8,,the ,,lord ,,your ,,god ,,the ,,eternal ,,is ,,one40 ,before the expulsion from ,palestine1 for a brief period1 ,judaism 7as one of its bitterest enemies has remarked7 showed promise of becoming a proselytizing creed1 8when1 under the influence of ,greek philosophy and other liberalizing influences1 it was tending from the condition of a tribal to that of a universal creed4 ,but ,plato succumbed to the ,rabbins4 ,judaism fell back for eighteen centuries into rigid tribalism1 and1 as ,lord ,beaconsfield cynically said of it1 has ever since #8no more sought to make converts than the ,house of ,lords4'0#af ,at last the long pause in the progress of ,judaism1 considered as a religion1 seems drawing to an end2 and we may hail its present advance as the continuance of that noble march which the ,jewish race began to the music of ,miriam's timbrel4 ,this last step forward of ,reformed ,judaism consists1 according to its latest interpreter1 in 8the struggle now consciously and now unconsciously maintained to emancipate the ,jewish faith from every vestige of tribalism1 and to enshrine its wholly catholic doctrines in a wholly catholic form40 ,this end is to be pursued through the 8,,denationalization of the ,jewish religion1 by setting aside all the rules and ceremonies which do not possess an essentially religious character or are maintained merely for the sake of the national1 as distinct from the religious1 unity40 ,the following are the modes in which this programme may be followed out3-- #a4 ,reformed ,judaism abandons the ,messianic hope4 ,it neither desires nor expects the coming of ,messiah1 and the resettlement of the ,jews in ,palestine as a nation it regards as retrogression toward tribalism4#ag #b4 ,it rejects the theory of the verbal inspiration of the ,old ,testament1 nor does it recognize the perfection and immutability of the law contained within the ,pentateuch4 #c4 ,it rejects the theory of a ,divine tradition recorded in the ,mischna1 and does not admit the authority of the ,talmudic laws4 #d4 ,it puts aside1 as no longer binding1 all the legal1 hygienic1 and agrarian ordinances of the ,pentateuch1 together with the laws relating to marriages and to the ,levites4 #e4 ,it cuts down the feasts and fasts to the ,sabbath1 the ,passover1 and four others4 #f4 ,it adopts the vernacular of each country for a larger or smaller part of the service of the synagogue1 instead of retaining the whole in ,hebrew4 ,besides these six great changes1 there are two others looming in the distance4 ,reformed ,judaism still regards the rite of circumcision as binding1 though several distinguished reformers 7notably ,geiger7 have recommended that proselytes should not be required to adopt it4 ,of the change of the ,sabbath day from ,saturday to ,sunday1 ,i am informed that the transference of the holy day has already been made by one synagogue in ,berlin1 which holds its services on the ,sunday1 and by many independent ,jewish men of business2 and that it is very much desired in some other quarters4 ,the difficulty attendant on this change obviously is3 that it would prove so favorable to the interests of ,jews in a secular sense that1 if adopted1 the charge of worldly motives is certain to be brought against those who advocate it4 ,these1 then1 in brief1 are the negations of ,reformed ,judaism4 ,on the positive side1 it reaffirms those dogmas which are the kernel of ,judaism1--8the ,unity of ,god2 ,his just judgment of the world2 the free relation of every man to ,god2 the continual progress of humanity2 the immortality of the soul2 and the ,divine election of ,israel0 7understood to signify that the ,jews1 under the will of ,god1 possess a specific religious mission not yet entirely fulfilled74 ,as to the observances of ,reformed ,judaism1 the framework of life and habit under which it proposes to exist1 8they will remain distinctively ,jewish1 and must not bear the mere stamp of nineteenth century religious opinion40 ,the ,jewish ,reformer thus1 like many another ,radical1 is an aristocrat at heart1 and shrinks from descending to the level of a parvenue faith4 ,in my humble judgment1 he is entirely right in his decision4 ,so long as he places the interests of truth and honesty above all1 he cannot do better than hold fast by everything which reminds himself and the world of his pedigree through a hundred generations of worshippers of ,jehovah4 ,the extent to which such reformation as that now sketched prevails at this hour among ,jews is difficult to ascertain4 ,the movement has been going on for some time1 and yet counts but a moderate number of adherents1 chiefly1 as ,i have said1 ,german and ,american ,jews4 ,nay1 what is most unhopeful1 the disease of religious indifference1 that moral phylloxera which infests the choicest spiritual vineyards1 is working its evil way among the broader-minded ,jews1 as it works 7we know too well7 among the broader-minded ,christians4 ,to unite depth of conviction with width of sympathy has ever been a rare achievement4 8,tout comprendre sera tout pardonner10 may be rendered1 in intellectual matters1 8,to find truth everywhere is to contend for it nowhere40 ,there is good room to hope1 however1 that if some fall out of the ranks1 the ,reformed party will yet possess enough energy1 vigor1 and cohesion to make its influence erelong extensively felt4 ,it is a startling prospect which has been thus opened before us4 ,if anything seemed fixed in the endless flux of nations and religions1 it was the half-petrified religion of the ,jew4 ,that the stern figure which we have beheld walking alone through the long procession of history should come at last and take a place beside his brothers is hard to picture4 ,we live in a time when1 8,faiths and empires gleam1 ,like wrecks of a dissolving dream40 ,every solid body is threatened with disintegration2 and the new powers of cohesion1 if such there be1 have scarcely come into play4 ,but1 of all changes fraught with momentous consequences1 none could well be more important than that of a stripping off of its tribal gaberdine by ,judaism1 and the adoption of 8a law fit for law universal40 ,the old fable is realized4 ,the wind and hail of persecution blew and pelted the ,jew for a thousand years1 and he only drew his cloak closer around him4 ,the sunshine of prosperity and sympathy has shone upon him1 and1 lo6 his mantle is already dropping from his shoulders4 ,for the present we can only treat the matter as a grand project1 but we may endeavor to estimate the value of a ,reformation of ,judaism such as ,luther accomplished for ,christianity4 ,in the first place1 it is1 ,i conceive1 the sole chance for the permanent continuance of the ,jewish religion that it should undergo some such regeneration4 ,if the proposed ,reform perish in the bud1 ,orthodox ,judaism will doubtless survive for some generations1 but1 according to the laws which govern human institutions1 its days must be numbered4 ,in former times1 when every nation in ,europe held aloof from its neighbors in fear and jealousy1 it was possible for alien tribes1 like the ,jews and gypsies1 to move among all1 holding rigidly to their own tribal alliances and observances2 hated and mistrusted1 indeed1 but scarcely more so than their ,christian next-door neighbors4 ,but now that ,christian nations are all blending together under the influence of perpetual intercourse1 and their differences of belief1 governments1 costumes1 habits1 and ideas are effacing themselves year by year1 the presence of a non-fusing1 non-intermarrying1 separatist race--a race brought by commerce into perpetual friction with all the rest--becomes an intolerable anomaly4 ,for once ,mr4 ,goldwin ,smith was in the right in this controversy1 when he remarked that 8the least sacred of all races would be that which should persistently refuse to come into the allegiance of humanity40 ,the ,jews have shown themselves the sturdiest of mankind1 but the influences brought to bear on them now are wholly different from those which they met with such stubborn courage of old4 ,political ambition1 so long utterly closed to them1 but to which ,lord ,beaconsfield's career must evermore prove a spur2 pleasure and self-indulgence1 to which their wealth is an ever ready key2 the scepticism and materialism of the time1 to which their acute and positive minds seem to render them even more liable than their contemporaries1--these are not the elements out of which martyrs and confessors are made4 ,a reformed1 enlightened1 world-wide creed1 which a cultivated gentleman may frankly avow and defend in the salons of ,london1 ,paris1 ,berlin1 or ,new ,york1 and in the progress of which he may feel some enthusiasm1--a creed which will make him free to adopt from ,christianity all that he recognizes in it of spiritually lofty and morally beautiful1--such a creed may have a future before it of which no end need be foreseen4 ,but for unreformed ,judaism there can be nothing in store but the gradual dropping away of the ablest1 the most cultured1 the wealthiest1 the men of the world and the men of the study1--the ,spinozas1 the ,heines1 the ,disraelis--and the persistence only for a few generations of the more ignorant1 fanatical1 obscure1 and poor4 ,again1 besides giving to ,judaism a new lease of life1 the ,reform projected would undoubtedly do much to extinguish that passion of ,judenhasse which is the disgrace of ,eastern ,christendom1 and the source of such manifold woes to both races4 ,the root of that passion is the newly awakened sense 7to which ,i have just referred7 of impatience at the existence of a nation within every nation1 having separate interests of its own and a solidarity between its members1 ramifying into every trade1 profession1 and concern of civil life4 ,were this solidarity to be relinquished1 and the mutual secret co-operation of ,jews#ah reduced to such natural and fitting friendliness as exists between ,scotchmen in ,england1 and were it to become common for ,jews to marry ,christians and discuss freely with ,christians their respective views1--were this to happen1 mutual respect and sympathy would very quickly supersede mutual prejudice and mistrust4 ,after two generations of such ,reformed ,judaism1 the memory of the difference of race would1 ,i am persuaded1 be reduced to that pleasant interest wherewith we trace the ancestry of some of our eminent statesmen to 8fine old ,quaker families10 or remark that some of our most brilliant men of letters have in their veins the marvellous ,huguenot blood4#ai ,it is superfluous to add that the ,jewish people1 thus thoroughly adopted into the comity of ,european nations1 and ,judaism recognized as the great and enlightened religion of that powerful and ubiquitous race1 the true mission of ,judaism1 as taught by ,bible and ,talmud--that of holding up the torch of monotheistic truth to the world--would begin its practical accomplishment4 ,the ,latin nations in particular1 to whom religion has presented itself hitherto in the guise of ecclesiasticism and hagiolatry1 and who are fast verging into blank materialism as the sole alternative they know1 would behold at last1 with inevitable respect1 a simple and noble worship1 at once historical and philosophic1 without priestly claims1 and utterly at war with every form of monasticism and superstition4 ,the impression on these1 and even on the ,northern nations1 of such a spectacle could not be otherwise than elevating1 and possibly1 in the ,divine order of the world1 might be the means whereby the tide of faith1 so long ebbing out in dismal scepticism1 should flow once more up the rejoicing shores4 ,even if this be too much to hope1 ,i cannot doubt that many ,christian ,churches would draw valuable lessons from the presence among them of a truly reformed ,judaism4 ,especially in these days of irreverence1 of finikin ,ritualism on one side and ,salvation ,army rowdyism on the other1 it would be a measureless advantage to be summoned to revert in thought to the solemn and awe-inspired tone of ,hebrew devotion which still breathes in the services of the synagogue4 ,it has been a loss to ,christians as well as to ,jews that these services have hitherto been conducted in ,hebrew4#bj ,had the synagogue services in ,london been conducted in the ,english language1 ,i believe that many of the popular misapprehensions concerning ,judaism would never have existed1 while the impression of profound reverence which the prayers convey would have reacted advantageously on ,christian worship1 too liable to oscillate between formalism and familiarity4#ba ,i am bound to add1 on the other side1 that it appears to me there are some very great advantages on the side of ,christianity of which it behooves reforming ,jews to take account4 ,these are not matters of dogma1 but of sentiment2 and not only may they be appropriated by ,jews without departing by a hair's breadth from their own religious platform1 but they may every one be sanctioned 7if any sanction be needed for them7 by citations from the ,hebrew ,scriptures themselves4 ,the great difference between ,judaism and ,christianity on their moral and spiritual sides1 in my humble judgment1 lies in this3 that the piety and charity1 scattered like grains of gold through the rock of ,judaism1 were by ,christ's burning spirit fused together1 and cast into golden coin to pass from hand to hand4 ,jews have continually challenged ,christians to point to a single precept in the ,gospel which has not its counterpart in the ,old ,testament4 ,they are perhaps in the right1 and possibly no such isolated precept can be found differentiating the two creeds2 but1 both by that which is left aside and by that which it chose out and emphasized1 ,christianity is1 practically1 a new system of ethics and religion4 ,to these three things in ,christianity ,i would direct the attention of ,jewish reformers3-- ,the ,christian idea of love to ,god4 ,the ,christian idea of love to ,man4 ,the ,christian sentiment concerning ,immortality4 ,for the first1 far be it from me to wrong the martyr race by a doubt that thousands of ,jews have nobly obeyed the ,first ,great ,commandment of the ,law 7given in ,deuteronomy vi4 #d1 as well as repeated by ,christ7 and 8loved the ,lord their ,god with all their heart and soul and strength10 even to the willing sacrifice of their lives through fidelity to ,him4 ,the feelings of loyalty entertained by a ,jew in the old days of persecution to the 8,god of ,abraham1 ,isaac1 and ,jacob0 must have been often a master-passion as fervid as it was deep-rooted4 ,but alongside of this hereditary loyalty to the ,god and ,king of ,israel there might well grow somewhat of that tender personal piety which springs from the ,evangelical idea of ,god as holding personal relations with each devout and forgiven soul4 ,of the two theories of religion1--that which starts with the idea of a ,tribe or ,church1 and that which starts with the unit of the individual soul1--,judaism has hitherto held the former4 ,it has been essentially a corporate religion2 and to be 8cut off from the congregation10 like ,spinoza1 has been deemed tantamount to spiritual destruction4 ,it is surely time that ,reformed ,judaism should now adopt the far higher theory of religious individualism1 and teach men to seek those sacred private and personal relations with the ,lord of ,spirits which1 when once enjoyed1 cause the notions of any mere corporate privileges to appear childish4 ,had the deep experiences which belong to such personal piety been often felt by modern ,jews 7as they certainly were by many of the old ,psalmists71 it could not have happened that modern ,jewish literature should have been so barren as it is of devotional works and of spiritual poetry4 ,to a serious reverential spirit 7a sentiment far above the level of that of the majority of ,christians71 ,jews too rarely join those more ardent religious affections and aspirations which it is the glory of ,christianity to inspire in the hearts of her saints4 ,had they known these feelings vividly and often1 we must have had a ,jewish ,thomas ,kempis1 a ,jewish ,saint ,theresa1 a ,jewish ,tauler1 ,fnelon1 ,taylor1 ,wesley4 ,it will not suffice to say in answer that ,jews did not need such treatises of devotion and such hymns of ecstatic piety1 having always possessed the noblest of the world in their own ,scriptures4 ,feelings which really rise to the flood do not keep in the river-bed for a thousand years4 ,again1 the ,christian idea of ,love to ,man possesses an element of tenderness not perceptible in ,jewish philanthropy4 ,jews are splendidly charitable not alone to their own poor1 but also to ,christians4 ,their management of their public and private charities has long been recognized as wiser and more liberal than that of ,christians at home or abroad4 ,they are faithful and affectionate husbands and wives2 peculiarly tender parents2 pious children2 kindly neighbors4 ,the cruel wrongs of eighteen centuries have neither brutalized nor imbittered them4 ,well would it be if whole classes of drunken1 wife-beating ,englishmen would take example in these respects from them6 ,but of certain claims beyond these1 claims always recognized by ,christian teachers1 and not seldom practically fulfilled by ,christian men and women1--the claims of the erring to be forgiven1 of the fallen to be lifted out of the mire1--,jews have hitherto taken little account4 ,the parable of the ,lost ,sheep is emphatically ,christian2 and among ,christians only1 till quite recently1 have there been active agencies at work to seek and save ruined women1 drunkards1 criminals1 the 8perishing and dangerous classes40#bb ,mary ,magdalene did well to weep over the feet of ,jesus ,christ4 ,it was ,christ who brought into the world compassion for her and for those like her4 ,and for the forgiveness of enemies1 also1 the ,christian spirit1 if not absolutely unique1 is yet supreme4 ,the very core of the ,christian idea fitly found its expression on the ,cross1 8,father1 forgive them1 for they know not what they do40 ,that divinest kind of charity1 which renounces all contests for rights1 and asks not what it is bound to do1 but what it may be permitted to do1 to bless and serve a child of ,god1--that charity may1 ,i think1 justly be historically named ,christian4 ,of course1 every pure ,theism is called on to teach it likewise4 ,with regard to women1 the attitude of ,judaism is peculiar4 ,it has always recognized some 8,rights of ,women10 and has never fallen into the absurdity of cherishing mental or physical weakness in them as honorable or attractive4 ,as ,mrs4 ,cyril ,flower 7then ,miss ,constance de ,rothschild7 showed in an interesting article published some years ago1 the 8,hebrew ,woman10 so magnificently described in the last chapter of ,proverbs1 has always been the ,jewish ideal3 8,strength and honor are her clothing4 ,she openeth her mouth with wisdom40 ,no jealousy1 but1 on the contrary1 joyful recognition1 awaited in each age the vigorous actions of ,miriam and ,deborah1 of ,judith and ,esther1 and of the mother of the seven martyrs in the ,book of ,maccabees4 ,jewish marriages 7till quite recently formed always on the ,eastern rather than on the ,western system7 are proverbially faithful and affectionate2 and the resolution of ,jews never to permit their wives to undertake labor outside their homes 7such as factory work and the like7 has undoubtedly vastly contributed to the health and welfare of the nation4 ,yet1 notwithstanding all this1 something appears to be lacking in ,jewish feeling concerning women4 ,too much of ,oriental materialism still lingers4 ,too little of ,occidental chivalry and romance has yet arisen4 ,in this respect1 strange to say1 the ,east is prose1 the ,west poetry4 ,the relations of men and women1 above all of husband and wife1 cannot be ranked as perfect till some halo of tender reverence be added to sturdy good-will and fidelity4#bc ,and1 beyond their human brethren and sisters1 ,christians have found 7it is one of those late developments of the fertile ,christian idea of which ,i have spoken7 that the humbler races of living creatures have also claims upon us1--moral claims founded on the broad basis of the right of simple sentiency to be spared needless pain2 religious claims founded on the touching relation which we1 the often forgiven children of ,god1 bear to 8the unoffending creatures which he loves40 ,this tender development of ,christianity1 and the discovery consequent on it1 that 8he prayeth well who loveth well both man and bird and beast10 is assuredly worthy of the regard of those ,reformers who would make ,judaism a universal religion4 ,semitic literature has hitherto betrayed a hardness and poverty on this side which it is needful should now be remedied1 if ,judaism is to ride on the full tide of ,aryan sympathies4 ,and1 lastly1 the ,christian sentiment concerning ,immortality deserves special attention from ,reforming ,jews4 ,the adoption of the dogma of a ,future ,life has scarcely even yet1 after some fifty generations1 imprinted on the ,jewish mind the full consciousness of 8,that great world of light which lies ,behind all human destinies40 ,jews have1 it would appear1 essentially the esprit positif4 ,they are content to let the impenetrable veil hang between their eyes and the future world1--that veil which the ,aryan soul strives impatiently1 age after age1 to tear away1 or on which it throws a thousand phantasms from the magic-lanthorn of fancy4 ,millions of ,christians have lived with their 8treasures0 truly placed in that world where moth and rust do not corrupt1 nor thieves break through and steal4 ,especially have the bereaved among us dwelt on earth with their hearts already in heaven where their beloved ones await them4 ,to too great an extent1 no doubt1 has this 8other-worldliness0 been carried1 especially among ascetics2 but1 on the whole1 the firm anchorage of ,christian souls beyond the tomb has been the source of infinite comfort and infinite elevation4 ,of this sort of projection of the spirit into the darkness1 this rocket-throwing of ropes of faith over the deeps of destruction1 whereby the mourner's shipwrecked soul is saved and reinstated1 the ,jewish consciousness seems yet scarcely cognizant4 ,perhaps these days of pessimism and mental fog are not those wherein any one is likely to find his faith in immortality quickened4 ,as ,dr4 ,johnson complained that he was 8injured0 by every man who did not believe all that he believed1 so each of us finds his hope of another life chilled by the doubts which1 like icebergs1 float in the sea of thought we are traversing4 ,but1 for those ,jews who thoroughly accept the dogma of immortality1 it would surely be both a happiness and a source of moral elevation to give to such a stupendous fact its place in the perspective of existence4 ,there is infinite difference between the molelike vision which sees nothing beyond the grassroots and the worms of earth1 though dimly aware of a world of sunlight above1 and the eagle glance which can measure alike things near and afar2 between the man who counts his beloved dead as lost to him because he beholds and hears and touches them no more1 and the man who can say calmly amid his sorrow1-- 8,take them1 thou great ,eternity6 ,our little life is but a gust1 ,which bends the branches of thy tree1 ,and trails its blossoms in the dust40 ,turning now from the results on ,judaism itself and on ,christianity at large of a great ,jewish ,reformation1 we may indulge in some reflections on the possible bearings of such an event on that not inconsiderable number of persons who1 all over ,europe1 are hanging loosely upon or dropping silently away from the ,christian ,churches4 ,i am not speaking of those who become ,atheists or ,agnostics and renounce all interest in religion1 but of those who1 like ,robert ,elsmere1 pass into phases of belief which may be broadly classed under the head of ,theism4 ,these persons believe still in ,god and in the life to come1 and hold tenaciously by the moral and spiritual part of ,christianity1 perhaps sometimes feeling its beauty and truth more vividly than some orthodox ,christians who deem the startling1 miraculous1 and 8apocalyptic0 part to constitute the essence of their faith4 ,but this 8apocalyptic part10 and all which ,dr4 ,martineau has called the 8,messianic mythology10 they have abandoned4 ,of the number of these persons1 it is hard to form an estimate4 ,some believe that the ,churches are all honeycombed by them1 and that a panic would follow could a census of ,england be taken in a ,palace of ,truth4 ,not a few in the beginning and middle of this century quitted their old folds1 and under the names of 8,unitarians10 8,free ,christians10 and 8,theists0 have thenceforth stood confessedly apart4#bd ,but of late years the disposition to make any external schism has apparently died away4 ,the instinct1 once universal1 to build a new nest for each brood of faith seems perishing among us4 ,the ,church-forming spirit1 so vigorous of old in ,christianity and in ,buddhism1 is visibly failing1 and making way for new phases of development1 of which the ,salvation ,army may possibly afford us a sample4 ,among cultivated people subtle discrimination of differences and fastidiousness as regards questions of taste are indefinitely stronger than that desire for a common worship which1 in the breasts of our forefathers1 who 8rolled the psalm to wintry skies10 and dared death merely to pray together1 must have mounted to a passion4 ,englishmen generally still cling to public worship1 but it is chiefly where an ancient liturgy supplies by old and holy words a dreamy music of devotion1 into which each feels at liberty to weave his own thoughts4 ,wherever the demand is made for prayers which shall definitely express the faith and aspirations of the modern-minded worshipper1 there the subtleties and the fastidiousness come into play1 and1 instead of being drawn together1 men sorrowfully discover that they are made conscious by common worship of a hundred discrepancies of opinion1 a thousand disharmonies of taste and feeling4 ,in all things1 we men and women of the modern ,athens are not 8too superstitious10 but too critical2 and in religion1 which necessarily touches us most vitally1 our critical spirit threatens to paralyze us with shyness4 ,the typical ,english gentleman and lady of to-day are at the opposite pole of sentiment in this respect from the ,arab who kneels on his carpet on the crowded deck for his evening orison1 or from the ,italian contadina who tells her beads before the wayside ,madonna4 ,doubtless1 here is one reason among many why such multitudes remain without any definite place in the religions of the land4 ,they hang languidly about the old hive1 feebly humming now and then1 but feeling no impulse to swarm1 and finding no queen-spirit to lead them to another home where they might build their proper cells and make their own honey4 ,but1 whether embodied in any religious sect or ,church1 or hanging loosely upon one1 the persons of whom we have been speaking1 as believers in ,god and in the spiritual1 but not the apocalyptic side of ,christianity1--,christian ,theists1 as we may best call them1--are of course nearer in a theological point of view than any others to those ,reformed ,jews whom we may call ,jewish ,theists4 ,the intellectual creeds of each1 in fact1 might1 without much concession on either side1 be reduced to identical formul4 ,now1 ,christian ,theists have hitherto wanted a rallying point1 and have been taunted with the lack of any historic basis for their religion4 ,why 7it will be asked by many7 should not this ,reformed ,judaism afford such a rallying point1 and the old rocky foundations laid by ,moses support a common temple of ,christian and ,jewish ,theism8 ,it may prove that such a consummation may be among the happy reunitings and reconstructions of the far future4 ,but for the present hour1 and for the reasons ,i have given in the beginning of this paper1 ,i do not believe it can be near at hand4 ,i am also quite sure that it would be the extreme of unwisdom to hamper and disturb the progress of ,reformed ,judaism along its own lines by any hasty efforts at amalgamation with outsiders1 who would bring with them another order of religious habits and endless divergencies of opinion4 ,let ,reformed ,judaism relight the old golden candlestick1 and set it aloft1 and it will give light unto all which are in the house1--not only the ,house of ,israel1 but in the ,house of ,humanity4 ,a glorious future may in ,god's ,providence await such purified1 emancipated ,judaism4 ,it is true1 it may not exhibit the special form of religion which one party or another among us altogether desires to see extended in the world4 ,some radical reformers who sympathize in its general scope would wish to find it stripping off altogether its ,jewish character1 and torn up from the root of ,mosaism4 ,many more orthodox ,christians will undervalue it because it shows no indication of a tendency to adopt from ,christianity such doctrines as the ,trinity1 the ,incarnation1 or the ,atonement1 even while1 on the spiritual side1 it is imbued with the essential ideas of him whom it will doubtless recognize as the great ,jewish ,rabbi and ,prophet1 ,jesus of ,nazareth4 ,but it is not for us to seek to modify1 scarcely even to criticise1 such a movement as this4 ,a respectful interest and a hopeful sympathy seem to me the only sentiments wherewith ,christians and ,christian ,theists should stand aside and watch this last march forward of that wondrous patriarchal faith1 whereof ,christianity itself is the firstborn son1 and ,islam the younger2 and which now in the end of the ages prepares to cross a new ,jordan1 and take possession of a new ,holy ,land4 ,,note4--,it is proper to mention1 in republishing this essay at the desire of ,jewish friends1 that it was received on its first appearance with the utmost possible disfavor by the ,jewish press4 ,,essay ,,iv4 ,,thoughts ,,about ,,thinking4 ,endless books have been written about the ,laws of ,thought1 the ,nature of ,thought1 and the ,validity of ,thought4 ,physiologists and metaphysicians have vied with one another to tell us in twenty different ways how we think and why we think and what good our thinking may be supposed to be as affording us any real acquaintance with things in general outside our thinking-machine4 ,one school of philosophers tells us that ,thought is a secretion of the brain 7i4e41 that ,thought is a form of ,matter71 and another that it is purely immaterial1 and the only reality in the universe1--i4e41 that ,matter is a form of ,thought4 ,the meekest of men 8presume to think0 this1 that1 and the other2 and the proudest distinction of the modern sage is to be a 8,thinker10 especially a 8free0 one4 ,but with all this much ado about ,thought1 it has not occurred to any one1 so far as ,i am aware1 to attempt a fair review of what any one of us thinks in the course of the twenty-four hours2 what are the number of separable thoughts which1 on an average1 pass through a human brain in a day2 and what may be their nature and proportions in the shape of ,recollections1 ,reflections1 ,hopes1 ,contrivances1 ,fancies1 and ,reasonings4 ,we are all aware that when we are awake a perpetual stream of thoughts goes on in 8what we are pleased to call our minds10 sometimes slow and sluggish1 as the water in a ditch2 sometimes bright1 rapid1 and sparkling1 like a mountain brook2 and now and then making some sudden1 happy dash1 cataract-wise1 over an obstacle4 ,we are also accustomed to speak as if the sum and substance of all this thinking were very respectable1 as might become 8beings endowed with the lofty faculty of thought02 and we always tacitly assume that our thoughts have logical beginnings1 middles1 and endings--commence with problems and terminate in solutions--or that we evolve out of our consciousness ingenious schemes of action or elaborate pictures of ,hope or ,memory4 ,if our books of mental philosophy ever obtain a place in the ,circulating ,libraries of another planet1 the 8general reader0 of that distant world will inevitably suppose that on our little ,tellus dwell a thousand millions of men1 women1 and children1 who spend their existence as the interlocutors in ,plato's ,dialogues passed their hours under the grip of the dread ,socratic elenchus1 arguing1 sifting1 balancing1 recollecting1 hard at work as if under the ferule of a schoolmaster4 ,the real truth about the matter seems to be that1 instead of taking this kind of mental exercise all day long1 and every day1 there are very few of us who ever do anything of the kind for more than a few minutes at a time2 and that the great bulk of our thoughts proceed in quite a different way1 and are occupied by altogether less exalted matters than our vanity has induced us to imagine4 ,the normal mental locomotion of even well-educated men and women1 save under the spur of exceptional stimulus1 is neither the flight of an eagle in the sky nor the trot of a horse upon the road1 but may better be compared to the lounge of a truant school-boy in a shady lane1 now dawdling pensively1 now taking a hop-skip-and-jump1 now stopping to pick blackberries1 and now turning to right or left to catch a butterfly1 climb a tree1 or make dick-duck-and-drake on a pond2 going nowhere in particular1 and only once in a mile or so proceeding six steps in succession in an orderly and philosophical manner4 ,it is far beyond my ambition to attempt to supply this large lacune in mental science1 and to set forth the truth of the matter about the actual ,thoughts which practically1 not theoretically1 are wont to pass through human brains4 ,some few observations on the subject1 however1 may perhaps be found entertaining1 and ought certainly to serve to mitigate our self-exaltation on account of our grand mental endowments1 by showing how rarely and under what curious variety of pressure we employ them4 ,the first and familiar remark is that every kind of thought is liable to be colored and modified in all manner of ways by our physical conditions and surroundings4 ,we are not steam thinking-machines1 working evenly at all times at the same rate1 and turning out the same sort and quantity of work in the same given period1 but rather more like windmills1 subject to every breeze1 and whirling our sails at one time with great impetus and velocity1 and at another standing still1 becalmed and ineffective4 ,sometimes it is our outer conditions which affect us1 sometimes it is our own inner wheels which are clogged and refuse to rotate2 but1 from whatever cause it arises1 the modification of our thoughts is often so great as to make us arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions on the same subject and with the same data of thought1 within an incredibly brief interval of time4 ,some years ago1 the ,president of the ,british ,association frankly answered objections to the consistency of his inaugural address by referring to the different aspects of the ultimate problems of theology in different 8moods0 of mind4 ,when men of such eminence confess to 8moods10 lesser mortals may avow their own mental oscillations without painful humiliation1 and even put forward some claim to consistency if the vibrating needle of their convictions do not swing quite round the whole compass1 and point at two o'clock to the existence of a ,deity and a ,life to come1 and at six to a nebula for the origin1 and a 8streak of morning cloud0 for the consummation of things4 ,possibly1 also1 the unscientific mind may claim some praise on the score of modesty if it delay for the moment to instruct mankind in either its two o'clock or its six o'clock creed1 and wait till it has settled down for some few hours1 weeks1 or months1 to any one definite opinion4 ,not to dwell for the present on these serious topics1 it is only necessary to carry with us through our future investigations that every man's thoughts are continually fluctuating and vibrating1 from inward as well as outward causes4 ,let us glance for a moment at some of these4 ,first1 there are the well-known conditions of health and high animal spirits1 in which every thought is rose-colored2 and corresponding conditions of disease and depression1 in which everything we think of seems to pass1 like a great bruise1 through yellow1 green1 blue1 and purple to black4 ,a liver complaint causes the universe to be enshrouded in gray2 and the gout covers it with an inky pall1 and makes us think our best friends little better than fiends in disguise4 ,further1 a whole treatise would be needed to expound how our thoughts are further distempered by food1 beverages of various kinds1 and narcotics of great variety4 ,when our meals have been too long postponed1 it would appear as if that ,evil ,personage who proverbially finds mischief for idle hands to do were similarly engaged with an idle digestive apparatus1 and the result is that1 if there be the smallest and most remote cloud to be seen in the whole horizon of our thoughts1 it sweeps up and over us just in proportion as we grow hungrier and fainter1 till at last it overwhelms us in depression and despair4 8,why80 we ask ourselves1 8why has not ,a4 written to us for so long8 ,what will ,b4 think of such and such a transaction8 ,how is our pecuniary concern with ,c4 to be settled8 ,what is the meaning of that odd little twitch we have felt so often here or there about our persons80 ,the answer to our thoughts1 prompted by the evil genius of famine1 is always lugubrious in the extreme4 8,a4 has not written because he is dead4 ,b4 will quarrel with us forever because of that transaction4 ,c4 will never pay us our money1 or we shall never be able to pay ,c4 ,that twitch which we have so thoughtlessly disregarded is the premonitory symptom of the most horrible of all human maladies1 of which we shall die in agonies and leave a circle of sorrowing friends before the close of the ensuing year40 ,such are the ides noires which present themselves when we want our dinner2 and the best-intentioned people in the world1 forsooth6 recommend us to summon them round us by fasting1 as if they were a company of cherubim instead of imps of quite another character6 ,but the scene undergoes a transformation bordering on the miraculous when we have eaten a slice of mutton and drunk half a glass of sherry4 ,if we revert now to our recent meditations1 we are quite innocently astonished to think what could possibly have made us so anxious without any reasonable ground4 ,of course1 ,a4 has not written to us because he always goes grouse-shooting at this season4 ,b4 will never take the trouble to think about our little transaction4 ,c4 is certain to pay us1 or we can readily raise money to pay him2 and our twitch means nothing worse than a touch of rheumatics or an ill-fitting garment4 ,beyond the alternations of fasting and feasting1 still more amazing are the results of narcotics1 alcoholic beverages1 and of tea and coffee4 ,every species of wine exercises a perceptibly different influence of its own1 from the cheery and social 8sparkling grape of ,eastern ,france0 to the solemn black wine of ,oporto1 the fit accompaniment of the blandly dogmatic post-prandial prose of elderly gentlemen of orthodox sentiments4 ,a cup of strong coffee clears the brain and makes the thoughts transparent1 while one of green tea drives them fluttering like dead leaves before the wind4 ,time and learning would fail to describe the yet more marvellous effects of opium1 hemlock1 henbane1 hashish1 bromide1 and chloral4 ,every one of these narcotics produces a different hue of the mental window through which we look out on the world2 sometimes distorting all objects in the wildest manner 7like opium71 sometimes 7like chloral7 acting only perceptibly by removing the sense of disquiet and restoring our thoughts to the white light of commonsense cheerfulness2 and again acting quite differently on the thoughts of different persons1 and of the same persons at different times4 ,only secondary to the effects of inwardly imbibed stimulants or narcotics are those of the outward atmosphere1 which in bracing weather makes our thoughts crisp like the frosted grass1 and in heavy ,november causes them to drip chill and slow and dull1 like the moisture from the mossy eaves of the ,moated ,grange4 ,burning1 glaring ,southern sunshine dazes our minds as much as our eyes1 and a ,london fog obfuscates them1 so that a man might honestly plead that he could no more argue clearly in the fog than the ,irishman could spell correctly with a bad pen and muddy ink4 ,nor are mouths1 eyes1 and lungs by any means the only organs through which influences arrive at our brain1 modifying the thoughts which proceed from them4 ,the sense of ,smelling1 when gratified by the odors of woods and gardens and hay-fields1 or even of delicately perfumed rooms1 lifts all our thoughts into a region wherein the ,beautiful1 the ,tender1 and the ,sublime may impress us freely2 while the same sense1 offended by disgusting and noxious odors1 as of coarse cookery1 open sewers1 or close chambers inhabited by vulgar people1 thrusts us down into an opposite stratum of feeling1 wherein poetry entereth not1 and our very thoughts smell of garlic4 ,needless to add that in a still more transcendent way ,music seizes on the thoughts of the musically-minded1 and bears them off in its talons over sea and land1 and up to ,olympus like ,ganymede4 ,two easily distinguishable mental influences seem to belong to music1 according as it is heard by those who really appreciate it or by others who are unable to do so4 ,to the former it opens a book of poetry1 which they follow word for word after the performer1 as if he read it to them1 thinking the thoughts of the composer in succession with scarcely greater uncertainty or vagueness than if they were expressed in verbal language of a slightly mystical description4 ,to the latter the book is closed2 but though the listener's own thoughts unroll themselves uninterrupted by the composer's ideas1 they are very considerably colored thereby4 8,i delight in music10 said once ,sir ,charles ,lyell to me3 8,i am always able to think out my work better while it is going on60 ,as a matter of fact1 he resumed at the moment a disquisition concerning the date of the ,glacial ,period at the precise point at which it had been interrupted by the performance of a symphony of ,beethoven1 having evidently mastered in the interval an intricate astronomical knot4 ,to ordinary mortals with similar deficiency of musical sense1 harmonious sound seems to spread a halo like that of light1 causing every subject of contemplation to seem glorified1 as a landscape appears in a dewy sunrise4 ,memories rise to the mind and seem infinitely more affecting than at other times1 affections still living grow doubly tender1 new beauties appear in the picture or the landscape before our eyes1 and passages of remembered prose or poetry float through our brains in majestic cadence4 ,in a word1 the sense of the ,beautiful1 the ,tender1 the ,sublime1 is vividly aroused1 and the atmosphere of familiarity and commonplace1 wherewith the real beauty and sweetness of life are too often veiled1 is lifted for the hour4 ,as in a camera-obscura or mirror1 the very trees and grass which we had looked on a thousand times are seen to possess unexpected loveliness4 ,but all this can only happen to the non-musical soul when the harmony to which it listens is really harmonious1 and when it comes at an appropriate time1 when the surrounding conditions permit and incline the man to surrender himself to its influences2 in a word1 when there is nothing else demanding his attention4 ,the most barbarous of the practices of royalty and civic magnificence is that of employing music as an accompaniment to feasts4 ,it involves a confusion of the realm of the real and ideal1 and of one sense with another1 as childish as that of the little girl who took out a peach to eat while bathing in the sea4 ,next to music during the dinner-time comes music in the midst of a cheerful evening party1 where1 when every intellect present is strung up to the note of animated conversation and brilliant repartee1 there is a sudden douche of solemn chords from the region of the pianoforte1 and presently some well-meaning gentleman endeavors to lift up all the lazy people1 who are lounging in easy-chairs after a good dinner1 into the empyrean of emotion 8sublime upon the seraph wings of ecstasy0 of ,beethoven or ,mozart2 or some meek damsel1 with plaintive note1 calls on them1 in ,schubert's ,addio1 to break their hearts at the memory or anticipation of those mortal sorrows which are either behind or before every one of us1 and which it is either agony or profanation to think of at such a moment4 ,all this is assuredly intensely barbarous4 ,the same people who like to mix up the ideal pleasure of music with incongruous enjoyments of another kind would be guilty of giving a kiss with their mouths full of bread and cheese4 ,as to what we may term extra-mural music1 the hideous noises made by the aid of vile machinery in the street1 it is hard to find words of condemnation strong enough for it4 ,probably the organ-grinders of ,london have done more in the last twenty years to detract from the quality and quantity of the highest kind of mental work done by the nation than any two or three colleges of ,oxford or ,cambridge have effected to increase it4 ,one mathematician alone1 as he informed the writer1 estimated the cost of the increased mental labor they have imposed upon him and his clerks at several thousand pounds' worth of first-class work1 for which the ,state practically paid in the added length of time needed for his calculations4 ,not much better are those church bells which now sound a trumpet before the good people who attend 8matins0 and other daily services at hours when their profane neighbors are wearily sleeping or anxiously laboring at their appointed tasks4 ,next to our bodily ,sensations come in order of influence on our thoughts the ,places in which we happen to do our thinking4 ,meditating like the pious ,harvey 8,among the ,tombs0 is one thing2 doing the same on a breezy mountain side among the gorse and the heather1 quite another4 ,jostling our way in a crowded street or roaming in a solitary wood1 rattling in an ,english express train or floating by moonlight in a ,venetian gondola or an ,egyptian dahabieh1 though each and all favorable conditions for thinking1 create altogether distinct classes of lucubrations4 ,if we endeavor to define what are the surroundings among which ,thought is best sustained and most vigorous1 we shall probably find good reason to reverse not a few of our accepted and familiar judgments4 ,the common idea1 for example1 that we ponder very profoundly by the seashore1 is1 ,i am persuaded1 a baseless delusion4 ,we think indeed that we are thinking1 but for the most part our minds merely lie open1 like so many oysters1 to the incoming waves1 and with scarcely greater intellectual activity4 ,the very charm of the great ,deep seems to lie in the fact that it reduces us to a state of mental emptiness and vacuity1 while our vanity is soothed by the notion that we are thinking with unwonted emphasis and perseverance4 ,amphitrite1 the enchantress1 mesmerizes us with the monotonous passes of her billowy hands1 and lulls us into a slumberous hypnotism wherein we meekly do her bidding1 and fix our eyes and thoughts1 like biologized men1 on the rising and falling of every wave4 ,if it be tempestuous weather1 we watch open-mouthed till the beautiful white crests topple over and dash in storm and thunder up the beach2 and1 if it be a summer evening's calm1 we note with placid1 never-ending contentment how the wavelets1 like little children1 run up softly and swiftly on the golden strand to deposit their gifts of shells and seaweed1 and then retreat1 shy and ashamed of their boldness1 to hide themselves once again under the flowing skirts of ,mother ,ocean4 ,again1 divines and poets have united to bolster up our convictions that we do a great deal of important thinking at night when we lie awake in bed4 ,every preacher points to the hours of the 8silent midnight10 when his warnings will surely come home1 and sit like incubi on the breast of sinners who1 too often perhaps1 have dozed in the day-time as they flew1 bat-wise1 over their heads from the pulpit4 ,shelley1 in 8,queen ,mab10 affords us a terrible night scene of a king who1 after his dinner of 8silence1 grandeur1 and excess10 finds sleep abdicate his pillow 7probably in favor of indigestion72 and ,tennyson1 in 8,locksley ,hall10 threatens torments of memory still keener to the 8shallow-hearted cousin ,amy0 whenever she may happen to lie meditating-- 8,in the dead1 unhappy night1 and when the rain is on the roof40 ,certainly1 if there be any time in the twenty-four hours when we might carry on consecutive chains of thought1 it would be when we lie still for hours undisturbed by sight or sound1 having nothing to do1 and with our bodies so far comfortable and quiescent as to give the minimum of interruption to our mental proceedings4 ,far be it from me to deny that under such favorable auspices some people may think to good purpose4 ,but1 if ,i do not greatly err1 they form the exception rather than the rule among bad sleepers4 ,as the ,psalmist of old remarked1 it is generally 8mischief0 which a man--wicked or otherwise--8devises upon his bed02 and the truth of the observation in our day is proved from the harsh ,ukases for domestic government which are commonly promulgated by ,paterfamilias at the breakfast table1 and by the sullenness de parti pris which testifies that the sleepless brother1 sister1 or maiden aunt has made up his or her mind during the night to 8have it out0 with ,so-and-so next morning4 ,people are a little faint and feverish when they lie awake1 and nothing occurs to divert their minds and restore them to equanimity1 and so they go on chewing the bitter cud of any little grudge4 ,thus it comes to pass that1 while ,anger causes ,sleeplessness1 ,sleeplessness is a frequent nurse of ,anger4#be ,finally1 among popular delusions concerning propitious conditions of ,thoughts1 must be reckoned the belief 7which has driven hermits and philosophers crazy7 that thinking is better done in abnormal isolation than in the natural social state of man4 ,of course there is benefit quite incalculable in the reservation of some portion of our days for solitude4 ,how much excuse is to be made for the shortcomings1 the ill-tempers1 the irreligion of those poor people who are scarcely alone for half an hour between the cradle and the grave1 ,god alone can tell4 ,but1 with such reasonable reservation of our hours and the occasional precious enjoyment of lonely country walks or rides1 the benefits of solitude1 even on ,zimmermann's showing1 come nearly to an end2 and there is little doubt that1 instead of thinking more1 the more hours of loneliness we devote to doing it1 the less we shall really think at all1 or even retain capacity for thinking and not degenerate into cabbages4 ,our minds need the stimulus of other minds1 as our lungs need oxygen to perform their functions4 ,after all1 if we analyze the exquisite pleasure afforded us by brilliant and suggestive conversation1 one of its largest elements will be found to be that it has quickened our thoughts from a heavy amble into a gallop4 ,a really fine talk between half a dozen well-matched and thoroughly cultivated people1 who discuss an interesting subject with their manifold wealth of allusions1 arguments1 and illustrations1 is a sort of mental ,oaks or ,derbyday1 wherein our brains are excited to their utmost speed1 and we get over more ground than in weeks of solitary mooning meditation4 ,it is superfluous to add that if our constitutional mental tendency be that of the gentleman who navely expressed his feelings by saying impressively to a friend1 8,i take great interest in my own concerns1 ,i assure you ,i do10 it seems doubly desirable that we should overstep our petty ring-fence of personal hopes1 fears1 and emotions of all kinds1 and roam with our neighbors over their dominions1 and into further outlying regions of public and universal interest4 ,of all ingenious prescriptions for making a miserable moral hypochondriac1 it is difficult to imagine a better than the orthodox plan of the 8,selig-gemachende ,kirche0 for making a ,saint4 ,take your man or woman1 with a morbidly tender conscience and a pernicious habit of self-introspection4 ,if he or she have an agonizing memory of wrong1 sin1 or sorrow overshadowing the whole of life1 so much the better4 ,then shut the individual up in a cell like a toad in a stone1 to feed on his or her own thoughts1 till death or madness puts an end to the experiment4 ,but if the seaside and solitude and the midnight couch have been much overrated as propitious conditions of thought1 there are1 per contra1 certain other conditions of it the value of which has been too much ignored4 ,the law of the matter seems to be that real hard ,thought1 like ,happiness1 rarely comes when we have made elaborate preparation for it2 and that the higher part of the mind which is to be exercised works much more freely when a certain lower part 7concerned with 8unconscious cerebration07 is busy about some little affairs of its own department and its restless activity is thus disposed of4 ,not one man in fifty does his best thinking quite motionless1 but instinctively employs his limbs in some way when his brain is in full swing of argument and reflection4 ,even a trifling fidget of the hands with a paper-knife1 a flower1 a piece of twine1 or the bread we crumble beside our plate at dinner1 supplies in a degree this desideratum1 and the majority of people never carry on an animated conversation involving rapid thought without indulging in some such habit4 ,but the more complete employment of our unconscious cerebration in walking up or down a level terrace or quarter-deck1 where there are no passing objects to distract our attention and no need to mark where we plant our feet1 seems to provide even better for smooth-flowing thought4 ,the perfection of such conditions is attained when the walk in question is taken of a still1 soft ,november evening1 when the light has faded so far as to blur the surrounding withered trees and flowers1 but the gentle gray sky yet affords enough vision to prevent embarrassment4 ,there are a few such hours in every year which appear absolutely invaluable for calm reflection1 and which are grievously wasted by those who hurry indoors at dusk to light candles and sit round a yet unneeded fire4 ,there is also another specially favorable opportunity for abstruse meditation1 which ,i trust ,i may be pardoned for venturing to name4 ,it is the grand occasion afforded by the laudable custom of patiently listening to dull speakers or readers in the lecture-room or the pulpit4 ,a moment's reflection will surely enable the reader to corroborate the remark that we seldom think out the subject of a new book or article1 or elaborate a political or philanthropic scheme1 a family compact1 or the menu of a large dinner1 with so much precision and lucidity as when gazing with vacant respectfulness at a gentleman expatiating with elaborate stupidity on theology or science4 ,the voice of the charmer as it rises and falls is almost as soothing as the sound of the waves on the shore1 but not quite equally absorbing to the attention2 while the repose of all around gently inclines the languid mind to alight like a butterfly on any little flower it may find in the arid waste1 and suck it to the bottom4 ,this beneficent result of sermon and lecture-hearing is1 however1 sometimes deplorably marred by the stuffiness of the room1 the hardness and shallowness of the seats 7as in that place of severe mortification of the flesh1 the ,royal ,institution in ,albemarle ,street71 and lastly by the unpardonable habit of many orators of lifting their voices in an animated way1 as if they really had something to say1 and then solemnly announcing a platitude1--a process which acts on the nerves of a listener as it must act on those of a flounder to be carried up into the air half a dozen times in the bill of a heron and then dropped flat on the mud4 ,under trials like these1 the tormented thoughts of the sufferer1 seeking rest and finding none1 are apt to assume quite unaccountable and morbid shapes1 and indulge in freaks of an irrational kind1 as in a dream4 ,the present writer and some sober-minded acquaintances have1 for example1 all felt themselves impelled at such hours to perform arial flights of fancy about the church or lecture-room in the character of stray robins or bats4 8,here10 they think gravely 7quite unconscious for the moment of the absurdity of their reflection71 8here1 on this edge of a monument1 ,i might stand and take flight to that cornice an inch wide1 whence ,i might run along to the top of that pillar2 and from thence1 by merely touching the bald tip of the preacher's head1 ,i might alight on the back of that plump little angel on the tomb opposite1 while a final spring would take me through the open pane of window and perch me on the yew-tree outside40 ,the whole may perhaps be reckoned a spontaneous mythical self-representation of the ,psalmist's cry3 8,oh that ,i had wings like a dove1 for then would ,i flee away and be at rest40 ,another kind of meditation under the same aggravated affliction is afforded by making fantastic pictures out of the stains of damp and tracks of snails on the wall1 which often 7in village churches especially7 supply the young with a permanent subject of contemplation in 8the doctor with his boots10 the 8old lady and her cap10 and the huge face which would be quite perfect if the spectator might only draw an eye where one is missing1 as in the fresco of ,dante in the ,bargello4 ,occasionally1 the sunshine kindly comes in and makes a little lively entertainment on his own account by throwing the shadow of the preacher's head ten feet long on the wall behind him1 causing the action of his jaws to resemble the vast gape of a crocodile4 ,all these1 however1 ought perhaps to be counted as things of the past2 or1 at least1 as very 8,rural ,recreations of a ,country ,parishioner10 as ,a4 ,k4 ,h4 ,b4 might describe them4 ,it is not objects to distract and divert the attention which anybody can complain of wanting in the larger number of modern churches in ,london4 ,but1 if our thoughts are wont to wander off into fantastic dreams when we are bored1 they have likewise a most unfortunate propensity to swerve into byways of triviality no less misplaced when1 on the contrary1 we are interested to excess1 and our attention has been fixed beyond the point wherein the tension can be sustained4 ,every one has recognized the truth of ,dickens's description of ,fagin1 on his trial1 thinking of the pattern of the carpet2 and few of us can recall hours of anguish and anxiety without carrying along with their tragic memories certain objects on which the eye fastened with inexplicable tenacity4 ,in lesser cases1 and when we have been listening to an intensely interesting political speech1 or to a profoundly thoughtful sermon 7for even ,habitans in ,sicco may sometimes meet such cases71 the mind seems to 8shy0 suddenly1 like a restive horse1 from the whole topic under consideration1 and we find ourselves1 intellectually speaking1 landed in a ditch4 ,another singular phenomenon under such circumstances is that1 on returning1 perhaps after the interval of years1 to a spot wherein such excessive mental tension has been experienced1 some of us are suddenly vividly impressed with the idea that we have been sitting there during all the intervening time1 gazing fixedly on the same pillars and cornices1 the same trees projected against the evening sky1 or whatever other objects happen to be before our eyes4 ,it would appear that the impression of such objects made on the retina1 while the mind was wholly and vehemently absorbed in other things1 must be somehow photographed on the brain in a different way from the ordinary pictures to which we have given their fair share of notice as they passed before us1 and that we are dimly aware they have been taken so long4 ,the sight of them once again bringing out this abnormal consciousness is intensely painful1 as if the real self had been chained for years to the spot1 and only a phantom 8,i0 had ever gone away and lived a natural human existence elsewhere4 ,passing1 now1 from the external conditions of our ,thinking1 if we attempt to classify the ,thoughts themselves1 we shall arrive1 ,i fear1 at the painful discovery that the majority of us think most about the least things1 and least about the greatest2 and that1 in short1 the mass of our lucubrations is in the inverse ratio of their value4 ,for example1 a share of our thoughts1 quite astonishing in quantity1 is occupied by petty and trivial ,arrangements4 ,rich or poor1 it is an immense amount of thought which all 7save the most care-engrossed statesmen or absorbed philosophers7 give to these wretched little concerns4 ,the wealthy gentleman thinks of how and where and when he will send his servants and horses here and there1 of what company he shall entertain1 of the clearing of his woods1 the preservation of his game1 and twenty matters of similar import2 while his wife is pondering equally profoundly on the furniture and ornaments of her rooms1 the patterns of her flower-beds or her worsted-work1 the menu of her dinner1 and the frocks of her little girls4 ,poor people need to think much more anxiously of the perpetual problem1 8,how to make both ends meet10 by pinching in this direction and earning something in that1 and by all the thousand shifts and devices by which life can be carried on at the smallest possible expenditure4 ,one of the very worst evils of limited means consists in the amount of thinking about sordid little economies which becomes imperative when every meal1 every toilet1 and every attempt at locomotion is a battle-field of ingenuity and self-denial against ever-impending debt and difficulty4 ,among men1 the evil is most commonly combated by energetic efforts to earn rather than to save2 but among women1 to whom so few fields of honest industry are open1 the necessity for a perpetual guard against the smallest freedom of expense falls1 with all its cruel and soul-crushing weight1 and on the faces of thousands of them may be read the sad story of youthful enthusiasm all nipped by pitiful cares1 anxieties1 and meannesses1 perhaps the most foreign of all sentiments to their naturally liberal and generous hearts4 ,next to actual arrangements which have some practical use1 however small1 an inordinate quantity of thought is wasted by most of us on wholly unreal plans and hypotheses which the thinker never even supposes to bear any relation with the living world4 ,such are the endless moony speculations1 8if such a thing had not happened0 which did happen1 or 8if ,so-and-so had gone hither0 instead of thither1 or 8if ,i had only said or done0 what ,i did not say or do1 8there would have followed0--heaven knows what4 ,sometimes we pursue such endless and aimless guessings with a companion1 and then we generally stop short pretty soon with the vivid sense of the absurdity of our behavior2 unless in such a case as that of the celebrated old childless couple1 who1 looking back over their fireside on forty years of unbroken union1 proceeded to speculate on what they should have done if they had had children1 and finally quarrelled and separated for ever on a divergence of opinion respecting the best profession for their 7imaginary7 second son4 ,but1 when alone1 we go on weaving interminable cobwebs out of such gossamer threads of thought1 like poor ,perrette with her pot of milk1--a tale the ubiquity of which among all branches of the ,aryan race sufficiently proves the universality of the practice of building chteaux en ,espagne4 ,of course1 with every one who has a profession or business of any kind1 a vast quantity of thought is expended necessarily upon its details1 insomuch that to prevent themselves1 when in company from 8talking shop0 is somewhat difficult4 ,the tradesman1 medical man1 lawyer1 soldier1 landholder1 have each plenty to think of in his own way2 and in the case of any originality of work--such as belongs to the higher class of literature and art--the necessity for arduous and sustained thought in composition is so great that 7on the testimony of a great many wives7 ,i have come to the conclusion that a fine statue1 picture1 or book is rarely planned without at least a week of domestic irritation and discomfort1 and the summary infliction of little deserved chastisement on the junior branches of the distinguished author or artist's family4 ,mechanical contrivances obviously give immense occupation to those singular persons who can love ,machines1 and do not regard them 7as ,i must confess is my case7 with mingled mistrust1 suspicion1 and abhorrence1 as small models of the ,universe on the ,atheistic ,projection4 ,again1 for the discovery of any chemical desideratum1 ceaseless industry and years of thought are expended2 and a ,palissy deems a quarter of a lifetime properly given to pondering upon the best glaze for crockery4 ,only by such sacrifices1 indeed1 have both the fine and the industrial arts attained success2 and happy must the man be counted whose millions of thoughts expended on such topics have at the end attained any practical conclusion to be added to the store of human knowledge4 ,not so 7albeit the thoughts are much after the same working character7 are the endless meditations of the idle on things wholly personal and ephemeral1 such as the inordinate care about the details of furniture and equipage now prevalent among the rich in ,england1 and the lavish waste of feminine minds on double acrostics1 art1 embroidery1 and1 above all1 ,dress6 ,a young lady once informed me that1 after having for some hours retired to repose1 her sister1 who slept in the same room1 had disturbed her in the middle of the night3 8,eugnie1 waken up6 ,i have thought of a trimming for our new gowns60 ,till larger and nobler interests are opened to women1 ,i fear there must be a good many whose 8dream by night and thought by day0 is of trimmings4 ,when we have deducted all these silly and trivial and useless thoughts from the sum of human thinking1--and evil and malicious thoughts1 still worse by far1--what small residuum of room is there1 alas1 for anything like real serious reflection6 ,how seldom do the larger topics presented by history1 science1 or philosophy engage us6 ,how yet more rarely do we face the great questions of the whence1 the why1 and the whither of all this hurrying life of ours1 pouring out its tiny sands so rapidly6 ,to some1 indeed1 a noble philanthropic purpose or profound religious faith gives not only consistency and meaning to life1 but supplies a background to all thoughts1--an object high above them1 to which the mental eye turns at every moment4 ,but this is1 alas6 the exception far more than the rule2 and1 where there is no absorbing human affection1 it is on trifles light as air and interests transitory as a passing cloud that are usually fixed those minds whose boast it is that their thoughts 8travel through eternity40 ,alone among ,thoughts of joy or sorrow1 hope or fear1 stands the grim1 soul-chilling thought of ,death4 ,it is a strange fact that1 face it and attempt to familiarize ourselves with it as we may1 this one thought ever presents itself as something fresh1 something we had never really thought before1--8,i shall die60 ,there is a shock in the simple words ever repeated each time we speak them in the depths of our souls4 ,there are few instances of the great change which has passed over the spirit of the modern world more striking than the revolution which has taken place in our judgment respecting the moral expediency of perpetually thinking about ,death4 ,was it that the whole ,classic world was so intensely entrancing and delightful that1 to wean themselves from its fascinations and reduce their minds to composure1 the ,saints found it beneficial to live continually with a skull at their side8 ,for something like sixteen centuries ,christian teachers seem all to have taken it for granted that merely to write up 8,memento mori0 was to give to mankind the most salutary and edifying counsel4 ,has anybody faith in the same nostrum now1 and is there a single ,saint ,francis or ,saint ,theresa who keeps his or her pet skull alongside of his ,bible and ,prayerbook8 ,a parallel might also be drawn between the medical and spiritual treatment in vogue in former times and in our own4 ,up to our generation1 when a man was ill1 the first idea of the physician was to bleed him and reduce him in every way by 8dephlogistic0 treatment1 after which it was supposed the disease was 8drawn off02 and1 if the patient expired1 the survivors were consoled by the reflection that ,dr4 ,sangrado had done all which science and skill could effect to preserve so valuable a life4 ,in the memory of some now living1 the presence of a medical man with a lancet in his pocket 7instantly used on the emergency of a fall from horseback or a fit of apoplexy1 epilepsy1 or intoxication71 was felt by alarmed relations to be quite providential4 ,only somewhere about the period of the first visitation of cholera in #ahcb this phlebotomizing dropped out of fashion2 and1 when the doctors had pretty nearly abandoned it1 a theory was broached that it was the human constitution1 not medical science1 which had undergone a change1 and that men and women were so much weaker than heretofore that1 even in fever1 they now needed to be supported by stimulants4 ,very much in the same way it would appear that in former days our spiritual advisers imagined they could cure moral disease by reducing the vital action of all the faculties and passions1 and bringing a man to feel himself a 8dying creature0 by way of training him to live4 ,nowadays our divines endeavor to fill us with warmer feelings and more vigorous will1 and tell us that 8',tis life of which our veins are scant2 ,o ,life1 not ,death1 for which we pant2 ,more life1 and fuller1 that we want40 ,is it possible that human nature is really a little less vigorous and passionate than it was when ,antony and ,cleopatra lived on the earth1 or when the genius of ,shakspere made them live on the stage8 ,,essay ,v4 ,,to ,,know1 ,,or ,,not ,,to ,,know4 ,the father of ,grecian philosophy held that 8,man was created to know and to contemplate40 ,the father of ,hebrew philosophy--whose 8,song10 if not his 8,wisdom10 is canonical1 and whose judgment1 if not his life1 is supposed to have been divinely guided--taught the somewhat different lesson3 8,he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow40 ,we have been more or less steadily trying the validity of ,solomon's dictum for about three thousand years4 ,would it be premature to take stock of the results1 and weigh whether it be really for human well-being or the reverse that ,knowledge is 8increasing10 not only at the inevitable rate of the accumulating experience of generations1 but also at the highly accelerated pace attained by our educational machinery8 ,it is at least slightly paradoxical that the same ,state should call on its clergy to teach as an infallible truth that 8he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow10 and at the same time decree for all its subjects1 as if it were a highly benevolent measure1 universal compulsory education4 ,i fear that the prejudice in favor of ,knowledge is so potent that no reader will give me credit for entering on this inquiry in any other spirit than one of banter4 ,nevertheless1 ,i propose in the present paper to examine1 to the best of my ability1 the general bearings of book-knowledge upon human happiness and virtue1 and so attain to some conclusion on the matter1 and decide whether ,solomon did or did not give proof of profound sagacity in originating the axiom that 8,ignorance is bliss0 in the usual negative form of ,hebrew verities2 and also in foretelling 7nearly thirty centuries before the present ,london publishing season7 that 8of the making of books there is no end40 ,knowledge1 like other evils1 it seems1 is infinitely reproductive4 ,the larger and simpler objections to book-lore lie on the surface of the case4 ,first4 ,health1 bodily activity1 and muscular strength are almost inevitably exchanged in a certain measure for learning4 ,ardent students are rarely vigorous or agile2 and1 in the humbler ranks1 the loss of ruddy cheeks and stalwart limbs among the children of the peasantry1 after schools have been established in a village1 has been constantly observed4 ,the close and heated class-rooms in which the poor urchins sit 7often in winter with clothes and shoes drenched through with rain or snow7 form a bad exchange1 in a physical point of view1 for the scamper across the common1 and the herding of sheep on the mountain4 ,let us put the case at its lowest4 ,suppose that1 out of three persons who receive an ordinary book-education1 one always loses a certain share of health2 that he is never so vigorous as he would have been1 and is more liable to consumption1 dyspepsia1 and other woes incident to sedentary humanity1 of which again he bequeaths a tendency to his offspring4 ,here is surely some deduction from the supposed sum of happiness derivable from knowledge4 ,can all the flowers of rhetoric of all the poets make atonement for the loss of the bounding pulse1 the light1 free step1 the cool brain of perfect health8 ,secondly4 ,it is not only the health of life's noon and evening which is more or less compromised by study1 but the morning hours of life's glorious prime1 hours such as never can come again on this side heaven1 which are given to dull1 dog's-eared books and dreary 8copies10 and sordid slates1 instead of to cowslips and buttercups1 the romp in the hay-field1 and the flying of the white kite1 which soars up into the deep dark blue and carries the young eyes after it where the unseen lark is singing and the child-angels are playing among the rolling clouds of summer4 ,there was once a child called from such dreams to her lesson1--the dreary lesson of learning to spell possibly those very words which her pen is now tracing on this page4 ,the little girl looked at her peacock1 sitting in his glory on the balustrade of the old granite steps1 with nothing earthly ever to do but to sun himself and eat nice brown bread and call 8,pea-ho60 every morning1 and the poor child burst into a storm of weeping1 and sobbed1 8,i wish ,i were a peacock6 ,i wish ,i were a peacock60 ,truly ,learning ought to have something to show to compensate for the thousand tears shed in similar anguish6 ,school-rooms are usually the ugliest1 dullest1 most airless and sunless rooms in the houses where they exist2 and yet in these dens we ruthlessly imprison children day after day1 year after year1 till childhood itself is over1 never1 never to return4 ,and then the young man or woman may go forth freely among the fields and woods1 and find them fair and sweet1 but never so fair or so sweet as they were in the wasted years of infancy4 ,who can lay his hand on his heart1 and say that a cowslip or a daffodil smells now as it used to smell when it was so very much easier to pluck it1 quite on our own level8 ,do strawberries taste as they did1 and is there the same drop of honey in each of the flowerets of the red clover8 ,are modern kittens and puppies half so soft and so funny as they were in former days when we were young8 ,no one will dare affirm any of these things who has reached years of discretion4 ,is it not then a most short-sighted policy--giving away of a bird in hand for a bird in the bush--to sacrifice the joyous hours of young existence for the value of advantages 7if advantages indeed they be7 to be reaped in later and duller years8 ,watch a child at play1 ,o reader1 if you have forgotten your own feelings4 ,let it be ,coleridge's 8,little singing1 dancing elf1 ,singing1 dancing by itself40 ,catch1 if your dim orbs are sharp enough1 those cloudless blue eyes looking straight into yours1 and hear the laugh which only means the best of all possible jokes1 8,i am so happy60 ,then go to your stupid desk1 and calculate algebraically what amount of classics and mathematics are equivalent to that ecstasy of young existence1 wherein 8,simply to feel that we breathe1 that we live1 ,is worth the best joy which life elsewhere can give40 ,the pagan ,irish believed in a paradise for the virtuous dead1 and called it 8,innis-na-n',oge10 the 8,island of the ,young40 ,we all live there the first dozen years of mortality2 and1 unless we prove unusually excellent1 ,i fear it may be long before we arrive at a better place4 ,but hitherto we have taken for granted that the little prisoners of the school-room are all sure to live and come into their fortunes of erudition1 earned with so many tear-blisters on their lesson-books4 ,of course1 however1 this is far from being the true state of the case4 ,the poor little child1 whose happiness--innocent1 certain1 and immediate happiness--is bartered so ruthlessly for the remote and contingent benefit of his later years1 may very probably never see those years at all2 nay1 in a fixed average number of cases1 it is absolutely certain that he will not grow into a man4 ,can anything be much more sad than such an abortive sacrifice8 ,who does not remember ,walter ,scott's 8,pet ,marjory10 with her infantine delight in her visits to the country1 and the calves and the geese1 and the 8bubbly-jocks02 and how she wrote down in her private journal that she was learning the multiplication table1 and that seven times seven was a 8divlish thing10 and quite impossible to acquire2 and how1 when somehow at last even the still more dreadful 8eight times eight0 had been lodged in her poor little brains1 there came a day when she cried suddenly to her mother1 8,oh1 my head6 my head60 and then in a few brief hours there was an end of lessons and their advantages for ,marjory forever8 ,and yet again1 when some ardent lad has passed through school and college1 foregoing all the sports of his age1 and receiving prizes and honors1 till he stands a first-class man of ,oxford or ,cambridge1 and his father's sacrifices and his mother's yearnings and all his own gallant and self-denying labors seem on the point of reaping their reward1 how often does it come to pass that with the close of the struggle come the reaction1 the decline1 the hasty journey abroad1 the hoping against hope1 and then--death6 ,thirdly4 ,there is the waste of ,eyesight in education4 ,it is understood1 when we see a young man with the 8light of the body0 dimmed behind glass spectacles1 that he has hurt his eyes by poring over books4 ,a farmer1 a sportsman1 or a soldier1 purblind at twenty-five or thirty1 is a rare thing to see4 ,it is the scholar1 lawyer1 or divine who has paid the penalty of seeing ,god's beautiful world evermore through those abominable bits of glass4 ,and for what mighty advantage8 ,again ,i say1 it ought to be something excessively valuable for which a man will exchange the apple of his eye4 ,suppose ,bell ,taylor were to ask a blind gentleman a fee of a thousand pounds to give him his sight as he has given it to more than one born blind4 ,the blind man1 if he possessed the money1 would doubtless pour it out like water to obtain the priceless boon of vision4 ,and this is the gift which our boys exchange for a moderate acquaintance with the ,greek language1 to be forgotten in a few years after they leave school6 ,half the vast ,teutonic nation beholds the universe from behind spectacles2 owing1 no doubt1 to their vaunted compulsory education1 aided by their truculent black types4 ,and we open-eyed ,britons are exhorted1 forsooth1 to admire and follow in the steps of those barnacled ,prussians6 ,such are three of the most obvious losses to be placed in the scale against the gains of ,knowledge1--the loss to many of bodily health2 to all of the unshackled freedom of childhood2 and to not a few of perfect eyesight4 ,but we cannot suppose it was to any of these things ,solomon alluded when he linked ,knowledge and ,sorrow in one category4 ,it is not likely that those studies of his1 about the hyssop and the cedar1 injured his health2 nor that the royal sage sat on his famous ivory throne to receive the ,queen of ,sheba in a pair of spectacles4 ,as to the loss of the pleasures of childhood1 his well-known opinion of the value of the ,rod 7to the wisdom of which the subsequent conduct of his son ,rehoboam afforded an illustration7 makes it probable that he would have approved of the torture of infants through the instrumentality of lessons4 ,knowledge and ,sorrow had1 no doubt1 some other connection in his mind2 and that connection we have still to mark4 ,it is a paradox only too readily verified that the mind as well as the body suffers in more ways than one from the acquirement of book knowledge4 ,in the first place1 the ,memory1 laden with an enormous mass of facts1 and accustomed to shift the burden of carrying them to written notes and similar devices1 loses much of its natural tenacity4 ,the ignorant clodhopper always remembers the parish chronicles better than the scholarly parson4 ,the old family servant1 who is strongly suspected of not knowing how to write and whose spectacles are never forthcoming when there is any necessity to read1 is the living annalist of the house1 and was never yet known to forget an order1 except now and then on purpose4 ,not only are the interests1 and consequently the attention and retentive powers1 of illiterate persons monopolized by the practical concerns of life and the tales of the past which may have reached their ears1 but they have actually clearer heads1 less encumbered by a multitude of irrelevant ideas1 and can recall whatever they need1 at a moment's notice1 without tumbling over a whole lumber-room full of rubbish to get at it4 ,the old ,rabbinical system of schooling1 which mainly consisted in the committal to memory of innumerable aphorisms and dicta of sages and prophets1 possessed this enormous advantage over modern instruction1--that whatever a man had so learned he possessed at his fingers' ends1 ready for instant use in every argument4 ,but1 as half the value of knowledge in practical life depends on the rapidity with which it can be brought to bear at a given moment on the point of issue1 and as a ready-witted man will not merely outshine in discussion his slow-brained antagonist1 but forestall and outrun him in every way1 save in the labors of the library1 it follows that to sacrifice the ready money of the mind for paper hard to negotiate is extremely bad economy4 ,mere book-learning1 instead of rendering the memory more strong and agile1 accustoms it to hobble on crutches4 ,other mental powers suffer even more than the memory by the introduction of books4 ,that method which we familiarly call the 8,rule of ,thumb0--that is1 the method of the ,artist--is soon lost when there come to be treatises and tables of calculation to form1 instead1 the ,method of the ,mechanic4 ,the boats of ,greece are to this day sculptured rather than wrought by the shipwrights1 even as the old architects cut their marble architraves by the eye of genius trained to beauty and symmetry1 not by the foot-rule of precedent and book-lore4 ,the wondrous richness and harmony of coloring of ,chinese and ,indian and ,turkish stuffs and carpets and porcelain are similarly the result1 not of any rules to be reduced to formul1 but of taste unfettered by pattern-books1 unwarped by ,schools of ,art ,manufacture1 bequeathed through long generations1 each acquainted intimately with the aforesaid 8rule of thumb40 ,for the ,reasoning powers1 the noblest in the scale of human faculties1 it may be fairly doubted whether the modern increase of ,knowledge has done much to strengthen them1 when we find ourselves still unprotected by common sense against such absurdities as those which find currency amongst us4 ,men are treated amongst us like fowls1 crammed to the crop with facts1 facts1 facts1 till their digestion of them is impaired4 ,as to the ,imagination1 books are like the stepping-stones whereon fancy trips across an otherwise impassable river to gather flowers on the further bank4 ,but it may be questioned whether the reading eye ever really does the same work as the hearing ear4 ,the voice of tradition bears1 as no book can do1 the burden of the feelings of generations4 ,a ballad learned orally from our mother's lips seems to have far other meaning when we recall it1 perchance long years after that sweet voice has been silent1 than the stanzas we perused yesterday through our spectacles in a volume freshly reviewed in the ,times4 ,such are the somewhat dubious results of book-lore on the faculties exercised in its acquisition4 ,it is almost needless to remark that there are also certain positive vices frequently engendered by the same pursuit4 ,bacon's noble apophthegm1 that 8a little knowledge leads to atheism1 but a great deal brings us back to ,god10 needs for commentary that 8a little0 must be taken to signify what many people think 8much40 ,read in such a sense1 it applies not only to religious faith1 but to faith in everything1 and most particularly to faith in ,knowledge itself4 ,nobody despises books so much as those who have read many of them1 except those still more hopeless infidels who have written them4 ,watch the very treatment given to his library by a bookworm4 ,note how the volumes are knocked about1 and left on chairs1 and scribbled over with ill-penned notes1 and ruthlessly dog's-eared and turned down on their faces on inky tables1 and sat upon in damp grass under a tree6 ,contrast this behavior towards them with the respectful demeanor of unlettered mortals1 who range the precious and well-dusted tomes like soldiers on drill on their spruce shelves2 nobody pushed back out of the line1 nobody tumbling sideways against his neighbor1 nobody standing on his head6 ,history is not jumbled ignominiously with romance2 moral treatises are not made sandwiches of 7as we have beheld7 between the yellow covers of ,zola2 and 8,sunday books0 have a prominent pew all to themselves1 where they are not rubbed against by either profane wit or worldly wisdom4 ,such is the different appreciation of literature by those to whom it is very familiar and by those to whom it preserves still a little of the proverbial magnificence of all unknown things4 ,we used to hear1 some years ago1 so much about the ,pride of ,learning that it would be a commonplace to allude to that fault among the contingent disadvantages of study4 ,one of the ,fathers describes how he was flogged by an angel for his predilection for ,cicero1--an anecdote which must have made many a school-boy1 innocent of any such error1 feel that life was only a dilemma between the rods of terrestrial and celestial pedagogues4 ,but it is obvious that the saint had in his mind a sense that the reading of 8,tusculan ,disputations0 had set him up--saint though he was--above the proper spirit of implicit docility and unqualified admiration for more sacred instructions4 ,the critical spirit1 which is the inevitable accompaniment of high erudition1 is obviously a good way off from that ovine frame of mind which divines1 in all ages1 have extolled as the proper attitude for their flocks4 ,nay1 in a truer and better sense than that of the open-mouthed credulity so idly inculcated1 it must be owned that1 short of that really great knowledge of which ,bacon spoke and which allies itself with the infinite wisdom of love and faith1 there are few things more hurtful to a man than to be aware that he knows a great deal more than those about him4 ,the main difference between what are called self-made men and those who have been educated in the upper grades is that the former1 from their isolation1 have a constant sense of their own knowledge1 as if it were a ,sunday coat1 while the others wear it easily as their natural attire4 ,the best thing which could happen to a village ,crichton would be to be mercilessly snubbed by an ,oxford don4 ,the days when women were 8,prcieuses0 and 8,blue ,stockings0 were those in which it was a species of miraculous ,assumption of ,virgins when they were lifted into the heaven of ,latin ,grammar4 ,but1 passing over the injury to healthy eyesight and mental vigor contingent on learning1 and the moral faults sometimes engendered thereby1 ,i proceed to ask another question4 ,what is the ethical value of the ,knowledge bought at such a price1 and heaped together by mankind during the thirty centuries since ,solomon uttered his warning8 ,how has it contributed to their moral welfare8 ,surely it is true that even as ,art too often gilds sensuality1 and renders it attractive to souls otherwise above its influence1 so ,knowledge must open new roads to temptation1 and take off from sin that strangeness and horror which is one of the best safeguards of the soul4 ,the old jest of the confessor1 who asked the penitent whether he did such and such dishonest tricks1 and received the reply1 8,no1 ,father2 but ,i will do them next time10 was only a fable of one form of the mischief of knowledge2 and that not the most fatal form either4 ,to know how to do wrong is one small step towards doing it4 ,to know that scores and hundreds and thousands of people1 in all lands and ages1 have done the same wrong1 is a far larger encouragement to the timidity of guilt4 ,not only is it dangerous to know that there is a descent to ,avernus1 but specially dangerous to know that it is easy and well trodden4 ,dr4 ,watts was injudicious1 to say the least of it1 to betray to children that the way to perdition is a 8,broad road1 where thousands go10 which1 moreover1 8,lies near1 and opens fair40 ,better let people suppose that it has become quite grass-grown and impassable4 ,many offences1 such as drunkenness1 debauchery1 swindling1 adulteration1 and false weights1 are diseases propagated1 chiefly1 if not solely1 like small-pox by direct infection conveyed in the knowledge that ,a1 ,b1 ,c1 and ,d do the same things4 ,david was not so far wrong to be angry2 and divines need not be so anxious to excuse him for being so1 when he saw the 8wicked0 flourishing 8like green bay-trees40 ,such sights are1 to the last degree1 trying and demoralizing4 ,in a yet larger and sadder sense1 the knowledge of the evil of the world1 of the baseness1 pollution1 cruelty1 which have stained the earth from the earliest age till this hour1 is truly a knowledge fraught with dread and woe4 ,he who can walk over the carnage field of history and behold the agonies of the wounded and the fallen1 the mutilations and hideous ruin of what was meant to be such beautiful humanity1--he who can see all this1 ay1 or but a corner of that awful ,aceldama1 and yet retain his unwavering faith in the final issue of the strife1 and his satisfaction that it has been permitted to human free will1 must be a man of far other strength than he who judges of the universe from the peaceful prosperity of his parish1 and believes that the worst of ills is symbolized by the stones under which 8the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep40 ,almost every form of knowledge is some such trial of faith4 ,look at zology and palontology4 ,what revelations of pain and death in each hideous artifice of jagged tooth1 and ravening beak1 and cruel claw6 ,what mysterious laws of insect and fungus life developed within higher organisms1 to whom their presence is torture6 ,what savage scenes of pitiless strife in the whole vast struggle for existence of every beast and bird1 every fish and reptile6 ,turn to ethnology1 and gather up the facts of life of all the barbarian tribes of ,africa and ,polynesia2 of the countless myriads of their progenitors2 and of those who dwelt in ,europe and ,asia in bygone ons of prehistoric time4 ,is not the story of these squalid1 half-human1 miserable creatures full of woe8 ,our fathers dreamed of a ,paradise and of a primeval couple dwelling there in perfect peace and innocence4 ,we have at last so eaten of the ,tree of ,knowledge that we have been driven out of even the ideal ,eden2 and instead thereof we behold the earliest parents of our race1 dwarf and hirsute1 shivering and famished1 contending with mammoths in a desert world1 and stung and goaded by want and pain along every step in the first advance from the bestiality of the baboon into the civilization of a man4 ,turn to astronomy1 and we peer1 dazed and sick1 into the abysses of time and space opened beneath us2 bottomless abysses where no plummet can sound1 and all our toylike measures of thousands of ages and millions of miles drop useless from our hands4 ,can any thought be more tremendous than the question1 ,what are we in this immensity8 ,we had fondly fancied we were ,creation's last and greatest work1 the crown and glory of the universe1 and that our world was the central stage for the drama of ,god4 ,where are we now8 ,when the 8stars fall from heaven10 will they 8fall on the earth even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs08 ,nay1 rather will one of the heavenly host so much as notice when our little world1 charged with all the hopes of man1 bursts like a bubble1 and falls in the foam of a meteor shower1 illumining for a single night some planet calmly rolling on its way8 ,let us pass from the outer into the inner realm1 and glance at the developments of human thought4 ,the knowledge of ,philosophy1 properly so called1 from ,pythagoras and ,plato to ,kant and ,spencer1--is it a ,knowledge the increase of which is wholly without 8sorrow08 ,not the most pathetic poem in literature seems to me half so sad as ,lewes's ,history of ,philosophy4 ,those endless wanderings amid the labyrinths of ,being and ,knowing1 ,substance and ,phenomenon1 ,nominalism and ,realism1 which1 to most men1 seem like a troubled 8dream within a dream10 to him who has taken the pains to understand them rather appear like the wanderings of the wretch lost in the catacombs4 ,he roams hither and thither1 and feels feebly along the walls1 and stumbles in the dark1 finding himself in a passage which has no outlet1 and turns back to seek another way of escape1 and grasps at something he deems may contain a clew to the far distant daylight1 and1 lo6 it is but an urn filled with dust and dead men's bones4 ,faust is the true type of the student of metaphysics when he marks the skull's 8spectral smile03-- 8,saith it not that thy brain1 like mine1 ,still loved and sought the beautiful1 ,loved truth for its own sake1 and sought1 ,regardless of aught else the while1 ,like mine the light of cloudless day1 ,and in unsatisfying thought ,by twilight glimmers led astray1 ,like mine1 at length1 sank overwrought80 ,there may be truth within our reach4 ,some of us deem we have found it in youth1 and1 passing out of the metaphysic stage of thought1 use our philosophy as a scaffolding wherewith to build the solid edifice of life1 gradually heeding less and less how that scaffolding may prove rotten or ill-jointed4 ,but1 even in such a case1 the knowledge of all that has been1 and is not1 in the world of man's highest thought is a sorrowful one4 ,as we wander on from one system to another1 we feel as if we were but numbering the gallant ships with keels intended to cut such deep waters1 and topmasts made to bear flags so brave1 which lie wrecked and broken into drift-wood along the shore of the enchanted ,loadstone ,isle4 ,what is1 then1 the conclusion of our long pleading8 ,knowledge is acquired at the cost of a certain measure of health1 and eyesight1 and youthful joy4 ,knowledge involves the deterioration of some faculties as well as the strengthening of others4 ,knowledge engenders sundry moral faults4 ,in the realms of history1 of physical and of mental science1 the survey of things obtained through knowledge is full of sadness and solemnity4 ,the telescope which has revealed to us a thousand galaxies of suns has failed to show us the ,heaven which we once believed was close overhead4 ,is then the pursuit of ,knowledge1 after all1 truly a delusion1 the worst and weariest of human mistakes1 a thing to which we are driven by our necessities on one hand and lured by our thirst for it on the other1 but which1 nevertheless1 like the martyrs' cup of salt water1 only burns our lips with its bitter brine8 ,not so6 a thousand times1 no6 ,knowledge1 like ,virtue1 is not good because it is useful1 but useful because it is good4 ,it is useful contingently1 and good essentially4 ,the joy of it is simple1 and not only needs not to be supplemented by accessory advantages1 but is well worth the forfeit of many advantages to obtain4 ,the most miserable wretch we can imagine is the ignorant convict locked up in a solitary cell1 with nothing to employ his thoughts but unattainable vice and frustrated crime1 whereon his stupid judges leave him to ruminate as if such poison were moral medicine to heal the diseases of his soul4 ,and1 on the other hand1 one of the happiest beings we can imagine is the man at the opposite end of the intellectual scale1 who lives in the free acquirement of noble knowledge4 ,what is any 8increase of sorrow0 incurred thereby1 compared to the joy of it8 ,to build ,memory like a gallery hung round with all the loveliest scenes of nature and all the masterpieces of art2 to make the divine chorus of the poets sing for us their choicest strains whenever we beckon them from their cells2 to talk familiarly1 as if they were our living friends1 with the best and wisest men who have ever lived on earth1 and link our arms in theirs in the never-withering groves of an eternal ,academe1--this is to burst the bounds of space and bring the ages together1 and lift ourselves out of the sordid dust to sit at the banquet of heroes and of gods4 ,,essay ,,vi4 ,,the ,,town ,,mouse ,,and ,,the ,,country ,,mouse4 ,whether it is best to live rapidly or slowly2 whether the 8twenty years of ,europe0 be preferable to the 8cycle of ,cathay02 and what is to be said on behalf of each of the two modes of existence1--supposing that we have the choice between them1--seem to be questions not unworthy of a little consideration4 ,it is quite possible that the common impulse to be 8in among the throngs of men10 and to cram a month's ideas and sensations into a day1 may be the truest guide to happiness2 indeed1 it is rather sorrowful to doubt that it should be so1 considering how every successive census shows the growth of the urban over the rural populations1 and how strongly the magnets of the great cities seem destined in future years to draw into them all the loose attractable human matter in each country4 ,nevertheless1 it must be admitted to be also possible that1 like the taste for tobacco or alcohol or opium1 the taste for town life may be an appetite the indulgence of which is deleterious1 and that our gains of enjoyment thereby obtained may be practically outbalanced by the loss of pleasures which slip away meanwhile unperceived4 ,it would be satisfactory1 once for all1 to feel assured that in choosing either town or country life 7when we have the choice71 we not only follow immediate inclination1 but make deliberate selection of that which must necessarily be the higher and happier kind of life1 on which1 when the time comes for saying good-night1 we shall look back without the miserable regret that we have permitted the nobler duties and the sweeter joys to escape us1 while we have spent our years in grasping at shadows and vanities4 ,the dog with the bone in his mouth1 who drops it to catch the bone in the water1 is a terrible warning to all mankind4 ,but which is the real bone1 and which is only the reflection8 ,the question is not easily answered4 ,let us premise that it is of ,english country life and town life alone ,i mean to speak4 ,foreigners--,frenchmen1 for example--who live in the country seem always to do so under protest1 and to wish to convey to the traveller that1 like the patriarch1 they are only strangers and sojourners in the rural districts1 seeking a better country1 even a ,parisian4 ,molire's ,comtesse d',escarbagnas1 who has been six weeks in the capital once in her life1 and who indignantly asks her visitor1 8,me prenez-vous pour une provinciale1 ,madame80 is the type of them all4 ,of course1 country life taken thus as a temporary and rather disgraceful banishment can never display its true features or produce its proper quantum of enjoyment4 ,and again1 among ,english forms of country life1 it is life in bona fide rural districts which we must take for our type4 ,all round ,london there now exists a sort of intellectual cordon1 extending from twenty to thirty miles into ,kent and ,surrey1 and about ten miles into ,herts and ,essex4 ,professor ,nichols might have mapped it as he did our starry cluster1 by jotting down every house on the boundary inhabited by politicians1 literary men1 and artists1 and then running a line all round from one to another4 ,within this circumference 7of course1 extending year by year71 the ideas1 habits1 and conversation of the inhabitants are purely ,londonesque4 ,the habitu of ,london dinner-parties finds himself perfectly at home at every table where he sits down1 and may take it for granted that his hosts and their guests will all know the same familiar characters1 the same anecdotes of the season1 the books1 the operas1 the exhibitions2 and1 much more than all this1 will possess the indescribable easy ,london manner of lightly tripping over commonplace subjects1 and seriously discussing only really interesting ones1 which is the art of conversational perspective4 ,beyond the invisible mental ,london ,wall which we have described1 the wanderer seems suddenly to behold another intellectual realm4 ,as the author of the 8,night ,thoughts0 describes a rather more startling experience1 he stands on the last battlement1 which 8,looks o'er the vale of non-existence10-- at the end of all things wherewith he is familiar4 ,he has1 in short1 penetrated into the ,rural ,districts of the ,mind1 where men's ideas have hedges and ditches no less than their fields4 ,and once again we must take ,english country life in its most elevated and perfect form1--that of the hereditary landed gentry1--to contrast it most advantageously with the life of towns4 ,to understand and enjoy country life as it may be enjoyed1 a man should not only live in one of those 8,stately ,homes of ,england10 of which ,mrs4 ,hemans was so enamoured1 but be born and have spent his youth in such a house1 built by his fathers in long past generations4 ,a wealthy merchant or a great lawyer who buys in his declining years the country seat of some fallen family1 to enjoy therein the honorable fruits of his labors may probably be a much more intelligent person than the neighboring squire1 whose acres have descended to him depuis que le monde est monde4 ,but he can no more make himself into a country gentleman1 and acquire the tastes and ideas of one1 or learn to understand from the inside the loves and hates1 pleasures and prejudices of squiredom1 than he can acquire the dolce favella ,toscana by buying himself a ,florentine barony4 ,and1 lastly1 our typical country life must neither be that of people so great and wealthy as to be called frequently by political interests up to ,parliament1 and who possess two or more great estates 7a man can no more have two homes than he can have two heads71 nor yet that of people in embarrassed and narrow circumstances4 ,the genuine squire is never rich in the sense in which great merchants and manufacturers are rich2 for1 however many acres he may possess1 it is tolerably certain that the claims on them will be quite in proportion to their extent4 ,there is1 in fact1 a kind of money which never comes out of land2 a certain freedom in the disposal of large sums quite unknown among the landed gentry1 at least in these days4 ,but1 if not possessed of a heavy balance at their bankers1 the country family must have the wherewithal for the young men to shoot and hunt and fish1 and for the girls to ride or amuse themselves with garden and pleasure-grounds according to taste4 ,all these things1 being elements of the typical ,english country life1 must be assumed as at least attainable at will by our 8,country ,mouse0 if he is not to be put altogether out of countenance by his brother of the town4 ,as for the ,town ,mouse1 he need not be rich1 nor is it more than a trifling advantage to him 7felt chiefly at the outset of his career7 that his father or grandfather should have occupied the same social position as himself4 ,all that is needed is that1 in the case of a man1 he should belong to a good club1 and go out often to dinner2 and1 in the case of a lady1 that she should have from one hundred to five hundred people on her visiting list4 ,either of these fortunate persons may1 without let or hindrance1 experience pretty nearly all the intellectual and moral advantages and disadvantages of living in a town1 provided their place of abode be ,london4 ,over every other city in the empire there steals some breath of country air1 if it be small2 or1 if it be large1 its social character is so far modified by special commercial1 industrial1 or ecclesiastical conditions that its influence cannot be held to be merely that of a town pur et simple2 nor are the people who come out of it properly typically towny1 but rather commercial-towny1 manufacturing-towny1 or cathedral-towny1 as the case may be4 ,turn we now from these preliminaries to the characteristics of the ,town life and the ,country life1 each in its own most perfect ,english form4 ,let us see first what is to be said for each1 and then strike our balance4 ,very briefly we may dismiss the commonly recognized external features of both1 and pass as rapidly as possible to the more subtle ones1 which have scarcely perhaps been noted as carefully as their importance as items in the sum of happiness will warrant4 ,,town ,,mouse loquitur4 8,i confess ,i love ,london4 ,it is a confession1 of course1 for everybody who lives in the country seems to think there is a particular virtue in doing so1 resembling the cognate merit of early rising4 ,even that charming town poet1 ,mr4 ,locker1 practically admits the same when he says1-- #8,i hope ,i'm fond of much that's good1 ,as well as much that's gay2 ,i'd like the country if ,i could1 ,i like the ,park in ,may4' 8,the truth is that one wants to live1 not to vegetate2 to do as much good1 either to ourselves or other people1 as time permits2 to receive and give impressions2 to feel1 to act1 to be as much as possible in the few brief years of mortal existence2 and this concentrated ,life can be lived in ,london as nowhere else4 ,if a man have any ambition1 here it may best be pursued4 ,if he desire to contend for any truth or any justice1 here is his proper battle-field4 ,if he love pleasure1 here are fifty enjoyments at his disposal for one which he can obtain in the country4 ,the mere sense of forming part of this grand and complicated machine1 whereof four millions of men and women work the wheels1 makes my pulse beat faster1 and gives me a sense as if ,i were marching to the sound of trumpets4 ,then the finish and completeness of ,london life is delightful to the thoroughly civilized mind4 ,it is only the half-reclaimed savage who is content with unpaved and unlighted roads1 ill-trained servants1 slovenly equipages1 and badly cooked1 badly attended dinners4 ,like my little nibbling prototype who served his feast #8sur un tapis de ,turquie1' ,i like everything1 down to the little card on which my menu is written1 to be perfect about me4 ,the less ,i am reminded by disagreeable sensations of my animal part1 the more room is left for the exercise of my higher intellectual functions4 ,the ascetic who lives on locusts and wild honey1 and catches the locusts1 has far less leisure to think about better things than the alderman who sits down every day to ten courses1 served by a well-trained staff of ,london servants4 ,the sense of order1 of ease1 of dignity and courtesy1 is continually fostered and flattered in the great ,imperial ,city1 which1 notwithstanding its petty faults of local government1 is still the freest and noblest town the globe has ever borne4 ,people talk of the #8freedom' of the country1 and my quondam host1 the ,country ,mouse1 is perpetually boasting of his #8crust of bread and liberty4' ,but1 except the not very valuable license to wear shabby old clothes1 ,i am at a loss to discover wherein the special freedom of rural life consists4 ,you are certainly watched1 and your actions1 looks1 and behavior commented on fifty times more by your idle neighbors in the country1 gasping for gossip1 than by your busy neighbors in town1 who never trouble themselves to turn their heads when you pass them in the street1 or even to find out your name if you live next door4 ,in the country1 you have generally the option of going on either of three or four roads4 ,in ,london1 you have the choice of as many thousand streets4 ,in the country1 you may #8kill something' whenever you take your walks abroad1 if that special privilege of the ,british gentleman be dear to your soul1 and you care to shoot1 hunt1 or fish4 ,or1 if you belong to the softer sex or sort1 you may amuse yourself in your garden or shrubbery1 play tennis1 teach in the village school1 or pay a visit to some country neighbor who will bore you to extinction4 ,in ,london1 you have ten times as large a choice of occupations1 and five hundred times as pleasant people to visit2 seeing that in the country even clever men and women grow dull1 and in town the most stupid get frott with other people's ideas and humor4 8,again1--and this is a most important consideration in favor of ,london1--when a man has no particular bodily pain or mental affliction1 and is not in want of money1 the worst evil which he has to dread is ennui4 ,to be bored is the #8one great grief of life' to people who have no other grief4 ,but can there be any question whether ennui is better avoided in ,london or in the country8 ,even in the month of ,august1 as somebody has remarked1 #8when ,london is 8empty10 there are always more people in it than anywhere else'2 and where there are people there must be the endless play of human interests and sympathies4 ,nay1 for my part1 ,i find a special gratification in the cordiality wherewith my acquaintances1 left stranded like myself by chance in the dead season1 hail me when we meet in ,pall ,mall like shipwrecked mariners on a rock2 and in the respectful enthusiasm wherewith ,i am greeted in the half-deserted shops1 where in ,july ,i made my modest purchases1 unnoticed and unknown4 ,in the country1 on the contrary1 ,ennui stalks abroad all the year round2 and the puerile ceremonies wherewith the ignorant natives strive to conjure away the demon--the dismal tea and tennis parties1 the deplorable archery meetings1 and1 above all1 the really frightful antediluvian institution1 called #8,spending a ,day'--only place us more helplessly at his mercy4 ,we conjugate the reflective verb #8to be ,bored1' in all moods and tenses2 not in the light and airy way of townsfolk1 when they trivially observe they were #8bored at such a party last night1' or decline to be #8bored by going to hear such a preacher on ,sunday morning1' but sadly and in sober earnest1 as men who recognize that boredom is a chronic disease from which they have no hope of permanent relief4 ,there is1 in short1 the same difference between ennui in the country and ennui in town as between thirst in the midst of ,sahara and thirst in one's home1 where one may ring the bell at any moment and call for soda water40 ,so speaks the modern ,town ,mouse1 describing the more superficial and obvious advantages of his abode over those of his friend in the country4 ,and 7equally on the surface of things7 straightway replies-- ,,country ,,mouse4 8,there is some sense in these boasts of my illustrious friend and guest1 but against them ,i think ,i can produce equivalent reasons for preferring the country4 ,in the first place1 if he lives faster1 ,i live longer2 and ,i have better health than he all the time4 ,my lungs are not clogged with smoke1 my brain not addled by eternal hurry and interruption1 my eyes not dimmed by fog and gaslight into premature blindness4 ,while his limbs are stiffening year by year till he can only pace along his monotonous pavement1 ,i retain till the verge of old age much of the agility and vigor wherewith ,i walked the moors and climbed the mountains in my youth4 ,he is pleased at having twenty times as many sensations in a day as ,i2 but1 if nineteen out of the twenty be jarring noises1 noxious smells1 plague1 worry1 and annoyance1 ,i am quite content with my humbler share of experience4 ,even if his thick-coming sensations and ideas be all pleasant1 ,i doubt if he ever have the leisure necessary to enjoy them4 ,very little would be gained by the most exquisite dinner ever cooked1 and the finest wines ever bottled1 if a man should be obliged to gobble them standing up1 while his train1 just ready to start1 is whistling behind him4 ,londoners gulp their pleasures1 we country folk sip such as come in our way2 think of them a long time in advance with pleasant anticipation1 and ruminate on them and talk them over for months afterwards4 ,i submit that even a few choice gratifications thus carefully prized add to a man's sense of happiness as much as double the number which are received when he is too weary to enjoy or too hurried to recall them4 8,again1 the permanent and indefeasible delights of the country seem somehow to be more indispensable to human beings than the high-strung gratifications of the town4 ,the proof of this fact is that1 while we can live at home all the year round1 ,town ,mice1 after eight or nine months' residence at longest1 begin to hate their beloved city1 and pine for the country4 ,even when they are in the full fling of the ,london season1 it is instructive to notice the enthusiasm and sparkle wherewith they discuss their projected tours a few weeks later among ,swiss mountains or up ,norwegian fiords4 ,also it may be observed how of all the entertainments of the year the most popular are the ,flower-shows1 and the afternoon ,garden-parties in certain private grounds4 ,even the wretched1 unmanly sport of ,hurlingham has become fashionable1 chiefly because it has brought men and women out of ,london for a day into the semblance of a country place4 ,had the gentlemen shot the poor pigeons in ,lincoln's ,inn ,fields or ,bloomsbury1 the admiring spectators of their prowess would have been exceedingly few4 ,nay1 it is enough to watch in any ,london drawing-room wherein may stand on one table a bouquet of the costliest hot-house flowers1 and on the other a bowl of primroses in ,march1 of hawthorn in ,may1 and of purple heather in ,july1 and see how every guest will sooner or later pay some little affectionate attention to the vase which brings the reminiscence of the fields1 woods1 and mountains1 taking no notice at all of the gorgeous azaleas and pelargoniums1 gardenias1 and camellias1 in the rival nosegay4 ,it is very well to boast of the #8perfection' and #8finish' of ,london life1 but the #8perfection' fails to supply the first want of nature1--fresh air2 and the #8finish' yet waits for a commencement in cheerful sunlight unobscured by smoke and fog1 and a silence which shall not be marred all day and night by hideous1 jarring1 and distracting sounds4 ,what man is there who would prefer to live in one of the ,venetian palace chambers1 gorgeously decorated and adorned with frescos and marbles1 and gilding and mirrors1 but with a huge high wall1 black1 damp1 and slimy1 within two feet of the windows1 shutting out the light of day and the air of heaven1 rather than in a homely ,english drawing-room1 furnished with nothing better than a few passable water-color sketches and some chintz-covered chairs and sofas1 but opening down wide on a sunny garden1 with an acacia waving its blossoms over the emerald sward1 and the children weaving daisy chains round the neck of the old collie who lies beside them1 panting with the warmth of the weather and his own benevolence8 8,then as to the dulness of our country conversation1 wherewith my distinguished friend the ,town ,mouse has rather impolitely taunted us4 ,is it because we take no particular interest in his gossip of the clubs that he thinks himself justified in pronouncing us stupid8 ,perhaps we also think him a trifle local 7if we may not say provincial7 in his choice of topics1 and are of opinion that the harvest prospects of our country1 and the relations of agricultural labor to capital1 are subjects quite as worthy of attention as his petty and transitory cancans about articles in reviews1 quarrels1 scandals1 and jests4 ,east ,indians returning to ,europe after long absence are often amazed that nobody at home cares much to hear why ,colonel ,chutnee was sent from ,curriepoor to ,liverabad1 or how it happened that ,mrs4 ,cayenne broke off her engagement with old ,general ,temperatesty4 ,and in like manner perhaps a ,londoner may be surprised without much reason that his intensely interesting #8latest intelligence' is rather thrown away upon us down in the shires40 ,these1 as we premised1 are the obvious and salient advantages and disadvantages of ,town and ,country life respectively observed and recognized by everybody who thinks on the subject4 ,it is the purport of the present paper to pass beyond them to some of the more subtle and less noticed features of either mode of existence1 and to attempt to strike some kind of balance of the results as regards individuals of different character and the same individual in youth and old age4 ,when we ask seriously the question which1 of any two ways of spending our years1 is the most conducive to ,happiness1 we are apt to overlook the fact that it is not the one which supplies us with the most numerous isolated items of pleasure1 but the one of which the whole current tends to maintain in us the capacity for enjoyment at the highest pitch and for as long a time as possible4 ,there is something exceedingly stupid in our common practice of paying superabundant attention to all the external factors of happiness down to the minutest rose-leaf which can be smoothed out for our ease1 and all the time forgetting that there must always be an internal factor of delightability to produce the desired result1 just as there must be an eye wherewith to see as well as candles to give light4 ,the faculty of taking enjoyment1 of finding sweetness in the rose1 grandeur in the mountain1 refreshment in food and rest1 interest in books1 and happiness in loving and being loved1 is--as we must perceive the moment we consider it--indefinitely more precious than any gratification which can be offered to the senses1 the intellect1 or the affections1 just as eyesight is more valuable than the finest landscape1 and the power of loving better than the homage of a world4 ,yet1 as ,shelley lamented1-- 8,rarely1 rarely comest thou1 ,spirit of ,delight02 and we allow it to remain absent from our souls1 and grow accustomed to living without it1 while all the time we are plodding on1 multiplying gratifications and stimulants1 while the delicate and evanescent sense they are meant to please is becoming numb and dead4 ,we often1 indeed1 make religio-philosophical remarks on the beautiful patience and cheerfulness of sufferers from agonizing disease1 and we smile at the unfailing hilarity wherewith certain ,mark ,tapleys of our acquaintance sustain the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune4 ,we quote1 with high approval1 the poet who sings that 8,stone walls do not a prison make1 ,nor iron bars a cage40 ,nevertheless1 the singular phenomenon of evident1 unmistakable ,happiness enjoyed1 in despite of circumstances1 never seems to teach us how entirely secondary all objective circumstances needs must be to the subjective side of the question1 and how much more rational it would be on our part to look first to securing for ourselves the longest and completest tenure of the internal elements of enjoyment before we turn our attention to the attainment of those which are external4 ,the bearing of this remark on the present subject is1 of course1 obvious4 ,is it ,life in ,town or ,life in the ,country wherein the springs of happiness flow with perennial freshness1 and wherein the ,spirit of ,delight will burn brightest and longest8 ,to solve this problem1 we must turn over in our minds the various conditions of such a state of mind and spirits1 the most generally recognized of which is bodily ,health4 ,there is not the smallest danger in these days that any inquirer1 however careless1 should overlook the vast importance of physical soundness to every desirable mental result4 ,indeed1 on the contrary1 we may rather expect shortly to find our teachers treating ,disease as the only real delinquency in the world1 and all crimes and vices as mere symptoms of disordered nerves or overloaded stomach1--kleptomania1 dipsomania1 homicidal mania1 or something equally pardonable on the part of automata like ourselves4 ,seriously speaking1 a high state of health1 such as the 8,original0 described himself as having attained1 or even something a few degrees less perfect1 is1 undoubtedly1 a potent factor in the sum of happiness1 causing every separate sensation--sleeping1 waking1 eating1 drinking1 exercise1 and rest--to be delightful2 and the folly of people who seek for ,happiness1 and yet barter away ,health for ,wealth or ,fame1 or any other element thereof1 is like that of a man who should sell gold for dross4 ,admitting this1 it would seem to follow that ,life in the ,country1 generally understood to be the most wholesome1 must be the most conducive to the state of enjoyment4 ,but there are two points not quite cleared up on the way to this conclusion4 ,first1 bodily health seems to be1 to some people1 anything but the blessing it ought to be1 rendering them merely coarse and callous1 untouched by those finer impulses and sentiments which pain has taught their feebler companions1 and so shutting them out from many of the purest and most spiritual joys of humanity4 ,paley questioned whether the sum of happiness would not be increased to most of us by one hour of moderate pain in every twenty-four2 and1 though few would directly ask for the increment of enjoyment so attained1 there are perhaps still fewer who would desire to unlearn all the lessons taught in the school of suffering1 or find themselves with the gross1 oxlike nature of many a farmer or publican1 whose rubicund visage bears testimony to his vigorous appetite and to the small amount of pain1 sorrow1 or anxiety which his own or anybody else's troubles have ever caused him4 ,taking it all in all1 it seems doubtful1 then1 whether the most invariably robust people are really much higher than those with more fluctuating health who have taken from the bitter cup the sweet drop which is always to be found at the bottom by those who seek it4 ,for those1 unhappiest of all1 whom disease has only rendered more selfish and self-centred and rebellious1 there is1 of course1 no comparison possible4 ,and1 secondly1 ,is it thoroughly proved that country life is invariably healthier than the life of towns8 ,the maladies arising from bad air1 late hours1 and that overwork and overstrain which is the modern ,black ,death1 are of course unknown in the calm-flowing existence of a rural squire and his family4 ,but there are other diseases which come of monotonous repose1 unvarying meals1 and general tedium vitae1 quite as bad as the scourges of the town4 ,of all sources of ill health1 ,i am inclined to think lack of interest in life1 and the constant society of dull and disheartening people1 the very worst and most prolific4 ,undoubtedly1 it is so among the upper class of women2 and the warnings of certain ,american physicians against the adoption by girls of any serious or earnest pursuit seems painfully suggestive of a well-founded alarm lest their own lists of hysterical and dyspeptic patients should show a falling off under the new impetus given to women's work and study4 ,in ,london1 people have very much less leisure to think about their ailments1 or allow the doctor's visit to become a permanent institution1 as is so often the case in country houses4 ,the result is that 7whether or not statistics prove the existence of more sickness in town than in the country7 at least we do not hear of eternally ailing people in ,london nearly so often as we do in country neighborhoods1 where there are always to be found as stock subjects of local interest and sympathy old ,mr4 ,a4's gout1 and ,lady ,b4's liver complaint2 and those sad headaches which yet fortunately enable poor ,mrs4 ,c4 to spend at least one day in the week in her darkened bedroom out of the reach of her lord's intolerable temper4#bf ,be it also that the maladies which townsfolk mostly escape--namely1 dyspepsia1 hysteria1 and neuralgia--are precisely those which exercise the most direct and fatal influence on human powers of enjoyment1 whereas the ills to which flesh is heir in great cities1 among the upper and well-fed classes1 are generally more remotely connected therewith4 ,but--pace the doctors and all their materialistic followers--,i question very much whether bodily health1 the mere absence of physical disease1 be nearly as indispensable a condition of happiness as certain peculiarities of the mental and moral constitution4 ,the disposition to ,anxiety1 for instance1 which reduces many lives to a purgatory of incessant care1--about money1 about the opinion of society1 or about the health and well-being of children1--is certainly a worse drawback to peace and happiness than half the diseases in the ,registrar-,general's list4 ,this anxious temperament is commonly supposed to be fostered and excited in towns1 and laid to sleep in the peaceful life of the country2 and1 if it were certainly and invariably so1 ,i think the balance of happiness between the two would well-nigh be settled by that fact alone4 ,but again there is something to be said on the side of the town4 ,an ,african traveller has described to me how1 after months exposed to the interminable perils from man and brute and climate1 he felt1 after his first night on board a homeward-bound ,english ship1 a reaction from the tension of anxiety which revealed to himself the anguish he had been half-unconsciously enduring for many months4 ,in like manner the city man or the statesman feels1 when at last he takes his summer holiday1 under what tremendous pressure of care he has been living during the past year1 or session1 in ,london2 and he compares it1 naturally enough1 with the comparatively careless life of his friend1 the country squire4 ,but every one in ,london does not run a race for political victory or social success1 and there are yet some sober old ways of business--both legal and mercantile--which do not involve the alternative of wealth or ruin every hour4 ,for such people ,i apprehend ,london life is actually rather a cure for an anxious temperament than a provocative of care4 ,there is no time for dwelling on topics of a painful sort1 or raising spectres of possible evils ahead4 ,labors and pleasures1 amusements and monetary worries1 succeed each other so rapidly that the more serious anxieties receive less and less attention as the plot of ,london life thickens year by year4 ,one nail drives out another1 and we are now and then startled to remember that there has been really for days and months a reasonable fear of disaster hanging over us to which we have somehow scarcely given a thought1 while in the country it would have filled our whole horizon1 and we should scarcely have forgotten it day or night4 ,and1 again1 quite as important as bodily health and freedom from anxiety is the possession of a certain childlike freshness of character2 a simplicity which enables men and women1 even in old age1 to enjoy such innocent pleasures as come in their way without finding them pall1 or despising them as not worth their acceptance4 ,great minds and men of genius seem generally specially gifted with this invaluable attribute of perennial youth2 while little souls1 full of their own petty importance and vanities1 lose it before they are well out of the school-room4 ,the late sculptor1 ,john ,gibson 7whose works will be1 perhaps1 appreciated when all the monstrosities of modern ,english statuary are consigned to the lime-kiln71 used to say in his old age that he wished he could live over again every day and hour of his past life precisely as he had spent it4 ,let the reader measure what this means in the mouth of a man of transparent veracity1 and it will appear that the speaker must needs have carried on through his seventy years the freshness of heart of a boy1 never wearied by his ardent pursuit of the ,beautiful1 and supported by the consciousness that this pursuit was not wholly in vain4 ,people who are always 8looking for the next thing10 taking each pleasure not as pleasure per se1 but merely as a useful stepping-stone to something else which may possibly be pleasure1 or as a subject to be talked of2 people who are always climbing1 like boys at a fair1 up the slippery pole of ambition1--cannot possibly know the meaning of such genuine and ever fresh enjoyment4 ,is a man likely to grow more or less simple-hearted and single-minded in ,town or in the ,country8 ,alas6 there can be little or no doubt that ,london life is a sad trial to all such simplicity2 and that nothing is more difficult than to preserve1 in its hot1 stifling atmosphere1 the freshness and coolness of any flower of sentiment1 or the glory of any noble1 unselfish enthusiasm4 ,social wear and tear1 and the tone of easy-letting-down commonly adopted by men of the world towards any lofty aspiration1 compel those who would fain cherish generous and conscientious motives to cloak them under the guise of a hobby or a whim1 and1 before many years are over1 the glow and bloom of almost every enthusiasm is rubbed off and spoiled4 ,but it is time to pass from the general subjective conditions of happiness common to us all to those individual tastes and idiosyncrasies which are probably more often concerned in the preference of town or country life4 ,we are all of us mingled of pretty nearly the same ingredients of character2 but they are mixed in very different proportions in each man's brewing1 and in determining the flavor of the compound everything depends on the element which happens to prevail4 ,by some odd chance1 few of us1 notwithstanding all our egotism and self-study1 really know ourselves well enough to recognize whether we are by nature gregarious or solitary1 acted upon most readily by meteorological or by psychological influences1 capable of living only on our affections or requiring the exercise of our brains4 ,we are always1 for example1 talking about the gloom or brightness of the weather1 as if we were so many pimpernels1 to whom the sun is everything and a cloudy day or a sharp east wind the most pitiable calamity4 ,the real truth is that1 to ninety-nine healthy ,english men and women out of a hundred1 atmospheric conditions are insignificant compared to social ones2 and the spectacle of a single member of the family in the dumps1 or even the suspicion that the servants are quarrelling in the kitchen1 detracts more from our faculty of enjoyment than a fall of the barometer from ,very ,dry to ,stormy4 ,in the same way we talk about people 8loving the country0 or 8loving the town10 just as if the character which fitted in and found its natural gratification in the one were qualified to enjoy quite equally the other4 ,obviously1 in some of us the passion for ,nature and natural beauty is so prominent that1 if it be starved 7as it must needs be in a great city7 or only tantalized by the sight of pictures reminding us of woods and hills and fresh breezes when we are stifled and jostled in the crowded rooms of ,burlington ,house or the ,grosvenor ,gallery1 we miss so much out of life that nothing can make up for it1 and no pleasures of the intellect in the company of clever people1 or gratification of taste in the most luxurious home1 are sufficient to banish the regret4 ,a young branch swaying in the breeze of spring1 and the song of the lark rising out of the thyme and the clover1 are better than all the pictures1 the concerts1 the conversation which the town can offer4 ,and just in the opposite way there are others amongst us in whom the sthetic element is subordinate to the social1 and who long to take a part in the world's work rather than to stand by and watch the grand panorama of summer and winter move before them while they remain passive4 ,is it not patently absurd to talk as if persons so differently constituted as these could find happiness1--the one where his ingrained passion for ,nature is permanently denied its innocent and easy gratification1 the other where his no less deeply rooted interest in the concerns of his kind is narrowed within the petty sphere of rural social life8 ,but let us now pass on1 hoping that we have found the round man for the round hole1 and the square man for the square one4 ,what are the more hidden and recondite charms of the two modes of life1 of which the ,town ,mouse and the ,country ,mouse have rehearsed the superficial characters8 ,what is the meaning in the first place of that taste for 8,life at ,high ,pressure10 against which ,w4 ,r4 ,greg cautioned us1 and ,matthew ,arnold inveighed8 ,how was it that the sage ,dr4 ,johnson felt undoubtedly a twinge of the same unholy passion when he remarked to the faithful ,boswell how delightful it was to drive fast in a post-chaise1--in such a post-chaise1 and over such roads as existed in his time8 ,i apprehend that the love for rapid movement comes from the fact that it always conveys to us a sense of vivid volition1 and effectually stirs both our pulses and our brains1 causing us not only to seem to ourselves1 but actually to become1 more intelligent4 ,at first the bustle and hurry of ,london life bewilder the visitor2 and1 finding it impossible to think1 move1 and speak as fast as is needful1 he feels as a feeble old lady might do arm-in-arm with ,jack in his ,seven-league boots4 ,but after a little while he learns to step out mentally as rapidly as his neighbors1 and thereby acquires the double satisfaction of the intrinsic pleasure of thinking quickly and not dwelling on ideas till they become tedious1 and the further sense of gratified vanity in being as clever as other people4 ,this last is again a curious source of metropolitan satisfaction4 ,it is all very well to boast of having 8also dwelt in ,arcadia40 ,such pastoral pride is humility beside the conceit of being a thorough-bred ,londoner4 ,there may live many men with souls so dead as never to themselves to have said--anything signifying peculiar appropriation of the soil of ,scotland1 or of any other 8native land40 ,but who has ever yet met a ,cockney who was not from the bottom to the top of his soul proud of being a ,londoner1 and deeply convinced that he and his fellows can alone be counted as standing 8in the foremost files of time08 ,of course1 whilst he is actually in ,london1 he has no provocation to betray his self-satisfaction among people who can all make the same boast4 ,but watch him the moment he passes into the country4 ,observe the pains he takes that the natives shall fully understand what manner of man1 even a ,londoner1 they have the privilege of entertaining1 and no doubt will remain as to how immensely superior he feels himself to those who habitually dwell 8far from the madding crowd40 ,if he wander into the remoter provinces1 say of ,scotland1 ,wales1 or ,ireland1 there is always in his recognition of the hospitality shown to him a tone like that of the shipwrecked apostle in ,malta3 8,the ,barbarous people there showed us no small kindness40 ,he manages to convey by looks1 words1 and manners his astonishment at any vestiges of civilization which he may meet on those distant shores1 and exhibits graceful forbearance in putting up with the delicious fresh fruit1 cream1 vegetables1 and home-fed beef and mutton of his entertainers in lieu of the stale produce of the ,london shops4 ,one such stranded ,cockney ,i have known to remark that he 8observed0 that the eggs at ,n----1 and at another country house where he occasionally visited1 had in them a 8peculiar milky substance10 about whose merits he seemed doubtful2 and another ,i have heard1 after landing at ,holyhead on his return from ,ireland1 complacently comparing his watch 7which had1 like himself1 faithfully kept ,london time during all his tour7 with the clock in the station1 and observing to his fellow-passengers 8that there was not a single clock right in ,dublin1--they were all twenty minutes too slow1--and1 when he went to ,galway1 he found them still worse40 ,even if a man sincerely prefer country life1 and transfer his abode from ,london to the rural districts1 he still retains a latent satisfaction at having lived once in the very centre of human interests1 close to the throbbing heart of the world4 ,the old squire1 who has been too gouty and too indolent to run up to town for twenty years1 will still brighten up at the names of the familiar streets and play-houses1 and will tell anecdotes1 the chief interest of which seems to lie in the fact that he formerly lodged in ,jermyn ,street1 or bought his seals at the corner of ,waterloo ,place1 or had his hair cut in ,bond ,street1 preparatory to going to the play in ,drury ,lane4 ,as volunteers enjoy a field day with the manuvres and marches1 so a ,londoner experiences a dim sense of pleasure in forming part of the huge army of four millions of human beings who are for ever moving hither and thither1 and yet strangely bringing about1 not confusion1 but order4 ,the ,greek philosophers and statesmen1 who thought such a little tiny 8,polis0 as ,athens or ,sparta 7not an eighth part of one postal district of ,london7 almost a miracle of divine order1 would have fallen down and worshipped at the shrine of ,gog and ,magog for having provided that a whole nation should be fed1 housed1 clothed1 washed1 lighted1 warmed1 taught1 and amused for years and generations in a single city eight miles long4 ,it is impossible not to feel an ever fresh interest and even surprise in the solution of so marvellous a problem as this human ant-hill presents1 and ,londoners themselves1 perhaps even more than their visitors1 are wont to watch with pleasant wonder each occurrence which brings its magnitude to mind3 the long quadruple train of splendid equipages filing through ,hyde ,park of a summer afternoon2 the scene presented by the river at the ,oxford and ,cambridge boat-race2 or the overwhelming spectacle of such crowds as greeted the ,queen on her ,jubilee4 ,the facility wherewith a busy-minded person1 possessed of moderate pecuniary resources1 can carry out almost any project in ,london1 is another great source of the pleasure of town life4 ,at every corner a cab1 a hansom1 an omnibus1 an underground station1 or a penny steamboat1 is ready to convey him rapidly and securely to any part of the vast area2 and a post-pillar or post-office or telegraph office1 to forward his letter or card or telegram4 ,he has acquired the privilege of ,briareus for doing the work of a hundred hands1 while the scores of penny and half-penny newspapers give him the benefit of the hundred eyes of ,argus to see how to do it4 ,not many people seem to notice wherein the last and greatest of ,london pleasures1 that of ,london society1 has its special attraction4 ,it is contrasted with the very best society which the ,country can ever afford1 by offering the charm of the imprvu4 ,there are always indefinite possibilities of the most delightful and interesting new acquaintances or of the renewal of old friendships in ,london3 whereas even in the most brilliant circles in the country we are aware1 before we enter a house1 that our host's choice of our fellow-guests must have lain within a very narrow and restricted circle1 and that1 if a stranger should happily have fallen from the skies into the neighborhood1 his advent would have been proclaimed in our note of invitation4 ,now it is much more piquant to meet an agreeable person unexpectedly than by formal rendezvous2 and1 for that large proportion of mankind who are not particularly agreeable1 it is still more essential that they should be presented freshly to our acquaintance4 ,other things being equal1 a ,stranger ,bore is never half so great a bore as a ,familiar ,bore1 of whose boredom we have already had intimate and painful experience4 ,there yet hangs about the ,stranger ,bore somewhat of the mists of early day1 and we are a little while in piercing them and thoroughly deciding that he is a bore and nothing better4 ,often1 indeed1 for the first hour or two of acquaintanceship1 he fails to reveal himself in his true colors1 and makes remarks and tells anecdotes the dulness of which we shall only thoroughly recognize when we have heard them repeated on twenty other occasions4 ,with our own ,familiar ,bore no illusion is possible4 ,the moment we see him enter the room1 we know everything that is going to be said for the rest of the evening1 and ,hope itself escapes out of ,pandora's box4 ,thus1 even if there were proportionately as many bores in ,london as in the provinces1 we should still1 in town1 enjoy a constant change of them1 which would considerably lighten the burden4 ,this1 however1 is very far from being the case2 and the stupid wives of clever men and the dull husbands of clever wives1 who alone smuggle into the inner coteries 7few people having the effrontery to omit them in their invitations71 are so far rubbed up and instructed in the best means of concealing their ignorance1 silliness1 or stupidity1 that they are often quite harmless and inoffensive1 and even qualified to shine with a mild reflected lustre in rural society in the autumn4 ,certain immutable laws made and provided by society against bores are brought sooner or later to their knowledge4 ,they do not tell stories more than five minutes long in the narration1 nor rehearse jokes till they fancy they can recall the point1 nor entertain their friends by an abridgment of their own pedigree1 or by a catalogue of the ages1 names1 heights1 and attainments in the ,latin grammar of their hopeful offspring4 ,to all this sort of thing the miserable visitor in the country is liable to be subjected in every house the threshold of which he may venture to cross2 for1 even if his host and hostess be the most delightful people1 they generally have some old uncle or aunt1 or privileged and pompous neighbor1 with whom nobody has ever dared to interfere in his ruthless exercise of the power to bore1 and who will fasten on a new-comer just as mosquitoes do on fresh arrivals at a seaport after having tormented all the old inhabitants4 ,and if ,london ,bores are as lions with drawn teeth and clipped claws1 ,london pleasant people on the other hand are beyond any doubt the pleasantest in the world2 more true and kind and less eaten up by vanity and egotism than ,parisians1 and twice as agile-minded as the very cleverest ,german4 ,again1 a great charm of ,london is that wealth is of so much less social weight there than anywhere else4 ,it is singular what misapprehensions are current on this subject1 and how apt are country people to say that money is everything in town1 whereas the exact converse of the proposition is nearer the truth4 ,in a country neighborhood1 the man who lives in the largest house1 drives the handsomest horses1 and gives the most luxurious entertainments is allowed with little question to assume a prominent position1 be he never so dull and never so vulgar2 and1 though respect will still be paid to well-born and well-bred people of diminished or narrow fortune1 their position as regards their nouveau riche neighbors is every year less dignified or agreeable4 ,quite on the contrary in town3 with no income beyond what is needful to subscribe to a club and wear a good coat1 a man may take his place 7hundreds do so take a place7 in the most delightful circles1 welcomed by all for his own worth or agreeability1 for the very simple and sufficient reason that people like his society and want nothing more from him4 ,in a city where there are ten thousand people ready to give expensive dinners1 it is not the possession of money enough to entertain guests which can by itself make the owner an important personage1 or cause the world to overlook the fact that he is a snob2 nor will the lack of wealth prevent those thousands who are on the look-out only for a pleasant and brilliant companion from cultivating one1 be he never so poor4 ,the distinction between the rural and the urban way of viewing a new acquaintance as regards both birth and fortune is very curiously betrayed by the habit of townsfolk to ask simply 8what a man may be0 7meaning1 8,is he a lawyer1 a littrateur1 a politician1 a clergyman1--above all1 is he a pleasant fellow807 and that of country gentry invariably to inquire1 8,who is he80 7meaning1 ,has he an estate1 and is he related to the ,so-and-so's of such a place87 ,it is not a little amusing sometimes to witness the discomfiture of both parties when a bland old gentleman is introduced in ,london to some man of world-wide celebrity1 whose antecedents none of the company ever dreamed of investigating1 and the squire courteously intimates1 as the pleasantest thing he can think of to say1 that he 8used to meet often in the hunting field a gentleman of that name who had a fine place in ,cheshire10 or that 8he remembers a man who must surely have been his father--a gentleman-commoner of ,christchurch40 ,for those men and women--numerous enough in these days--who hold rather pronounced opinions of the sort not relished in country circles1 who are heretics regarding the religious or political creed of their relatives and neighbors1 ,london offers the real ,broad ,sanctuary1 where they may rest in peace1 and be no more looked upon as black sheep1 suspicious and uncomfortable characters1 the 8gentleman who voted for ,topsy ,turvey at the last election10 or 8the lady who doesn't go to church on ,sundays40 ,in town1 not only will their errors be overlooked1 but they will find scores of pleasant and reputable persons who share the worst of them and go a great deal further1 and in whose society they will soon begin to feel themselves by comparison quite orthodox1 and perhaps rather conservative characters4 ,and lastly1 besides all the other advantages of ,london which ,i have recapitulated1 there is one of which very little note is ever taken4 ,if many sweet and beautiful pleasures are lost by living there1 many sharp and weary pains also therein find a strange anodyne4 ,there is no time to be very unhappy in ,london4 ,past griefs are buried away under the surface1 since we may not show them to the unsympathizing eyes around2 and present cares and sorrows are driven into dark corners of the mind by the crowd of busy every-day thoughts which inevitably take their place4 ,a man may feel the heart-ache in the country1 and wander mourning by the solitary shore or amid the silent winter woods4 ,but let him go1 after receiving a piece of sad intelligence1 into the busy ,london streets1 and be obliged to pick his way amid the crowd2 to pass by a score of brilliant shops1 avoid being run over by an omnibus1 give a penny to a streetsweeper1 push through the children looking at ,punch1 close his ears to a ,german band1 hail a hansom and drive to his office or his chambers1--and at the end of the hour how many thoughts will he have given to his sorrow8 ,before it has had time to sink into his mind1 many days of similar fuss and business will have intervened2 and by that time the edge of the grief will be dulled1 and he will never experience it in its sharpness4 ,of the influence of this process1 continually repeated1 on the character1 a good deal might be said2 and there may be certainly room to doubt whether thus perpetually shirking all the more serious and solemn passages of life is conducive to the higher welfare4 ,after we have suffered a good deal1 and the readiness of youth to encounter every new experience and drink every cup to the dregs has been exchanged for the dread of strong emotions and the weariness of grief which belong to later years1 there is an immense temptation to spare our own hearts as much as we can2 and ,london offers the very easiest way1 without any failure of kindness1 duty1 or decorum1 to effect such an end4 ,nevertheless1 the sacred faculties of sympathy and unselfish sorrow are not things to be lightly tampered with2 and it is to be feared that the consequences of any conscious evasion of their claims must always be followed by that terrible ,nemesis1 the hardening of our hearts and the disbelief in the sympathy of our neighbors4 ,we have made love and friendship unreal to ourselves1 and it becomes impossible to continue to believe they are real to other people4 ,yet1 ,i think1 if the shelter be not wilfully or intentionally sought1 if it merely come in the natural course of things that the business and variety of town life prevent us from dwelling on sorrows which cannot be lightened by our care1 it seems a better alternative than the almost infinite durability and emphasis given to grief in the monotonous life of the country4 ,if these be the advantages of ,town life1 however1 there are to be set against them many and grievous drawbacks4 ,first1 as the ,country ,mouse justly urges1 half those quickly following sensations and ideas which constitute the highly-prized rapidity of ,london life are essentially disagreeable in themselves1 and might be dispensed with to our much greater comfort4 ,in the country1 for example1 out of fifty sights1 forty-nine at least are of pretty or beautiful objects1 even where there is no particularly fine scenery4 ,woods1 gardens1 rivers1 country roads1 cottages1 wagons1 ploughs1 cattle1 sheep1 and over all1 always1 a broad expanse of the blessed sky1 with the pomps of sunrises and sunsets1 and moonlight nights and snow-clad winter days1--these are things on which everywhere 7save in the ,black ,country1 which is not the country at all7 the eye rests in peace and delight4 ,in the town1 out of the same number of glances of our tired eyeballs1 we shall probably behold a score of huge advertisements1 a line of hideous houses with a butcher's shop as the most prominent object1 an omnibus and a brewer's dray1 a score of bricklayers returning 7slightly drunk7 from dinner1 and a handsome carriage with the unfortunate horses champing their gag-bits in agony from their tight bearing-reins while the coachman flicks them with his whip4 ,in the country1 again1 out of fifty odors the great majority will be of fresh herbage1 or hay1 or potato or bean fields1 or of newly ploughed ground1 or burning weeds or turf4 ,in the town1 we shall endure the sickly smell of drains1 of stale fish1 of raw meat1 of carts laden with bones and offal1 the insufferable effluvium of the city cook-shops2 and last--not least--pervading every street and shop and park1 puffed eternally in our faces1 the vilest tobacco4 ,and finally1 in the country1 our ears are no less soothed and flattered than our senses of smelling and sight4 ,the golden silence when broken at all is disturbed only by the noise of running waters1 of cattle lowing1 sheep bleating1 thrushes and larks and cuckoos singing1 rooks cawing on the return home at evening1 or the exquisite 8sough0 of the night wind as it passes over the sleeping woods as in a dream4 ,in the town1 we have the relentless roar and rattle of a thousand carts1 cabs1 drags1 and omnibuses1 the perpetual grinding of organs and hurdy-gurdies1 the unintelligible and ear-piercing cries of the costermongers in the streets1 and generally1 to complete our misery1 the jangle of a pianoforte heard through the thin walls of our house1 as if there were no partitions between us and the detestable children who thump through their scales and polkas for six hours out of the twenty-four4 ,such are the sufferings of the senses in ,london1--surely worth setting against the luxuries it is supposed to command1 but which it only commands for the rich1 whereas neither rich nor poor have any immunity from the ugly sights1 ugly smells1 and ugly noises wherewith it abounds4 ,but1 beyond these mortifications of the flesh1 ,london entails on its thoroughgoing votaries a heavier punishment4 ,sooner or later on every one who really works in ,london there comes a certain pain1 half physical1 half mental1 which seems to have its bodily seat somewhere about the diaphragm1 and its mental place between our feelings and our intellect1--a sense1 not of being tired and wanting rest1 for that is the natural and wholesome alternative of all strong and sustained exercise of our faculties1 but of being 8like dumb driven cattle10 and of having neither power to go on nor to stop4 ,we seem to be under some slave-master who whips us here and there1 and forbids us to sit down and take breath4 ,we want fresh air1 but our walks through the crowded streets or parks only add fatigue to our eyes and weariness and excitement to our brains4 ,we need food1 but it does us little good2 and sleep1 but we waken up before half the night is past with our brains busy already with the anxieties of the morrow4 ,we are conscious we are using up brains1 eyesight1 health1 everything which makes life worth possessing1 and yet we are entangled in such a mesh of engagements and duties that we cannot break loose4 ,we can only break down2 and that is what we pretty surely do when this state of things has lasted a little too long4 ,perhaps the reader is inclined to say1 ,why not try the golden mean1 the compromise between town and country1 to be found in some rus in urbe in ,fulham or ,hampstead1 or a villa a little way further1 at ,richmond or ,norwood or ,wimbledon8 ,i beg leave humbly to contend that the venerable ,aristotelian 8,meson0 is as great a mistake in geography as in ethics1 and that it will be generally found that people adopting the ,half-way ,house system of lodgement will be disposed to repeat the celebrated ,scotch ode with slight variations4 8,their heart is0--in ,london2 8their heart is not10--by any means1 in ,hampstead or ,twickenham4 ,their days are spent either in waiting at railway stations to go in or out of town1 or in the yet more tantalizing anticipation of friends who have promised to 8give them a day10 and for whom they have provided the modern substitute for the fatted calf1 but who1 on the particular morning of their engagement1 are sure to be swept off their consciences by an unexpected ticket for the opera1 which they 8could not enjoy if they had gone so far in the morning as dear ,mr4 ,a4's delightful villa40 ,of course1 it is possible to live in the outer circle of real ,london1 and have fresh air and comparative quiet1 infinitely valuable4 ,but he who goes further afield1 the ambitious soul who dreams of cocks and hens1 or even soars to a paddock and a cow1 is destined to disillusion and despair4 ,he tries to 8make the best of both worlds10 and he gets the worst of both4 ,the genuine ,londoner considers his proffers of hospitality as an imposition2 and the genuine country cousin is indignant1 on accepting them1 to find how far is his residence from the exhibitions and the shops4 ,his trees are black1 his roses cankered1 and his soul imbittered by the defalcations of friends1 the blunders and extortions of cabmen1 and his own infructuous effort to be always in two places at once4 ,nor is the second and1 apparently1 more facile resource of the tired ,londoner--that of quartering himself on his kind country friends for his holidays--very much more successful4 ,the country would indeed be delightful for our ,christmas fortnight or our ,easter or ,whitsuntide week1 if we were permitted to enjoy in it that repose we so urgently need and so fondly seek4 ,we are quite enamoured1 when we first turn our steps from the smoky city1 with the trees and fields2 and we enjoy indescribably our rides and drives and walks1 the varied aspects of nature1 and the beasts and birds wherewith we are surrounded4 ,but one thing we have not bargained for1 and that is--country ,society4 ,of course we love our friends and relations in whose homes we are received with kindness and affection1 whom we know to be the salt of the earth for goodness1 and who love us enough to feel an interest even in our towniest gossip4 ,but their country friends1 the neighboring gentlefolk1 the clergyman's wife1 the family doctor1 the people who are invariably invited to meet us at the long formal country dinner6 ,this is the trial beneath which our new-found love of rural life is apt to succumb4 ,sir ,cornewall ,lewis's too famous dictum returns1 slightly modified1 to our memories--,as 8life would be tolerable but for its pleasures10 so the country would be enchanting1 were it not for its society4 ,could we be allowed to live in the country1 and see only our hosts1 we should be as happy as kings and queens4 ,but to fly1 for the sake of rest and quiet1 from the tables where we might have met some of the most brilliant men and women of the day1 and then to find that we shall incur the disgrace of being unsociable curmudgeons if we object to spend the afternoon in playing tennis with the rector's stupid daughters1 and to dine afterwards at the house of a particularly dull and vulgar neighbor with whom we would fain avoid such acquaintance as may justify him in visiting us in town1 this is surely an evil destiny6 ,when1 alas6 will all the good and kind people who invite town friends to come and rest with them in the country forbear to make their acceptance the occasion for a round of rural dissipation1 and believe that their weary brother would be only too glad1 did civility permit1 to inscribe on the door of his bedroom during his sojourn the affecting ,italian epitaph1 ,implora pace6 ,the ,country ,mouse has naturally said as little as possible of the drawbacks of his favorite mode of existence1--metaphorically speaking1 the dampness of his 8,hollow ,tree10 and its liability to be infested by ,owls4 ,it may be well to jot off a few of the less recognized offsets to the pleasures of rural life before listening to any eulogies thereof4 ,the real evil of country life ,i apprehend is this3 the whole happiness or misery of it is so terribly dependent on the character of those with whom we live that1 if we are not so fortunate as to have for our companions the best and dearest1 wisest and pleasantest1 of men and women 7in which case we may be far happier than in any other life in the world71 we are infinitely worse off than we can ever be in town4 ,one1 two1 or perhaps three relatives and friends1 who form our permanent housemates1 make or mar all our days by their good or evil tempers1 their agreeability or stupidity1 their affection and confidence1 or their dislike and jealousy4 tre avec les gens qu'on aime1 cela suffit1 says ,rousseau2 and he speaks truth4 ,but tre avec les gens qu'on n'aime pas1 and buried in a dull country house with them1 without any prospect of change1 is as bad as having a millstone tied round our necks and being drowned in the depth of the sea4 ,in a town house1 if the fathers and sons1 mothers and daughters1 scold and wrangle1 if the husband be a bear or the wife a shrew1 there is always the refuge of the outer circle of acquaintances wherein cheer and comfort1 or1 at least1 variety and relief1 may be found4 ,reversing the pious ,dr4 ,watts's maxim1 we cry1-- 8,whatever brawls disturb the home1 ,let peace be in the street40 ,the ,club is the shelter of henpecked man2 a friend's house1 or ,marshall and ,snellgrove's1 the refuge of a cockpecked woman4 ,on the stormiest domestic debate1 the advent of a visitor intervenes1 throwing temporary oil on the waters1 and compelling the belligerents to put off their quarrels and put on their smiles2 and1 when the unconscious peacemaker has departed1 it is often found difficult1 if not impossible1 to take up the squabble just where it was left off4 ,but there is no such luck for cross-grained people in country houses4 ,humboldt's 8,cosmos0 contains several references to certain observations made by two gentlemen who passed a winter together on the inhospitable northern shores of ,asia1 and one of whom bore the alarming name of ,wrangle4 ,it is difficult to imagine any trial more severe than that of spending the six dark months of the year with ,wrangle on the ,siberian coast of the ,polar ,sea4 ,but this is a mere fancy sketch1 whereas hundreds of unlucky ,english men and women spend their winters every year in country houses1 limited1 practically1 to the society of a ,mr4 or a ,mrs4 ,wrangle who makes life a burden by everlasting fault-finding1 squabbling1 worry1 suspicion1 jar1 and jolt4 ,as regards children or dependent people or the wives of despotic husbands1 the case is often worse than this4 ,by a terrible law of our nature1 an unkindness1 harshness1 or injustice done once to any one has a frightful tendency to produce hatred of the victim 7,i have elsewhere called the passion heteropathy7 and a restlessness to heap wrong on wrong1 and accusation upon accusation1 to justify the first fault4 ,woe to the hapless stepchild or orphan nephew or penniless cousin1 or helpless and aged mother-in-law1 who falls under this terrible destiny in a country house where there are few eyes to witness the cruelty and no tongue bold enough to denounce it6 ,the misery endured by such beings1 the poor young souls which wither under the blight of the perpetual unmerited blame1 and the older sufferers mortified and humiliated in their age1 must be quite indescribable4 ,perhaps by no human act can truer charity be done than by resolutely affording moral support1 if we can do no more1 to such butts and victims2 and1 if it be possible1 to take them altogether away out of their ill-omened conditions1 and 8deliver him that is oppressed from the hand of the adversary40 ,it is astonishing how much may be done by very humble spectators to put a check to evils like these1 even by merely showing their own surprise and distress in witnessing them2 and1 on the contrary1 how deplorably ready are nine people out of ten to fall in with the established prejudices and unkindnesses of every house they enter4 ,very little of this kind of thing goes on in towns4 ,people are too busy about their own affairs and pleasures1 and their feelings of all kinds are too much diffused among the innumerable men and women with whom they come in contact1 to permit of concentrated dislike settling down on any inmate of their homes in the thick cloud it is apt to do in the country4 ,here we touch1 indeed1 on one great secret of the difference of ,town and ,country life4 ,all sentiments1 amiable and unamiable1 are more are less dissipated in town1 and concentrated and deepened in the country4 ,even a very trifling annoyance1 an arrangement of hours of meals too late or too early for our health1 a smoky chimney1 a bad coachman1 a door below stairs perpetually banged1 assumes a degree of importance when multiplied by the infinite number of times we expect to endure it in the limitless monotony of country life4 ,our nerves become in advance irritated by all we expect to go through in the future1 and the consequence is that a degree of heat enters into family disputes about such matters which greatly amazes the parties concerned to remember when the wear and tear of travel or of town life have made the whole mode of existence in a country home seem a placid stream1 with scarcely a pebble to stir a ripple4 ,and now1 at last1 let us begin to seek out wherein lie the more hidden delights of the country life2 the violets under the hedge which sweeten all the air1 but remain half-unobserved even by those who would fain gather up the flowers4 ,we return in thought to one of those old homes1 bosomed in its ancestral trees and with the work-day world far enough away behind the park palings so that the sound of wheels is never heard save when some friend approaches by the smooth-rolled avenue4 ,what is the key-note of the life led by the men and women who have grown from childhood to manhood and womanhood in such a place1 and then drop slowly down the long years which will lead them surely at last to that bed in the green churchyard close by1 where they shall 8sleep with their fathers08 ,that 8note0 seems to me to be a peculiar sense--exceeding that of mere calmness--of stability1 of a repose of which neither beginning nor end is in sight4 ,instead of a 8changeful world10 this is to them a world where no change comes1 or comes so slowly as to be imperceptible4 ,almost everything which the eye rests upon in such a home is already old1 and will endure for years to come1 probably long after its present occupants are under the sod4 ,the house itself was built generations since1 and its thick walls look as if they would defy the inroads of time4 ,the rooms were furnished1 one1 perhaps1 at the father's marriage2 another1 tradition tells us1 by a famous great-grandmother2 the halls--no one remembers by whom or how long ago4 ,the old trees bear on their boles the initials of many a name which has been inscribed long years also on the churchyard stones4 ,the garden1 with its luxuriant old-fashioned flowers and clipped box borders and quaint sun-dial1 has been a garden so long that the rich soil bears blossoms with twice the perfume of other flowers2 and1 as we pace along the broad terraced walks in the twilight1 the odors of the well-remembered bushes of lavender and jessamine and cistus 7each growing where it has stood since we were born7 fall on our senses like the familiar note of some dear old tune4 ,the very sounds of the landrail in the grass1 the herons shrieking among their nests1 the rooks darkening the evening sky1 the cattle driven in to milking and lowing as they go1 all in some way suggest the sense1 not of restlessness and turmoil like the noises of the town1 but of calm and repose and the unchanging order of an 8abode of ancient ,peace40 ,then the habits of the owners of such old seats are sure to fall into a sort of rhyme4 ,there are the lesser beats at intervals through the long day1 when the early laborer's bell1 and the gong at nine o'clock1 and one o'clock1 and seven o'clock1 sound the call to prayers and to meals4 ,and there are the weekly beats1 when ,sunday makes the beautiful refrain of the psalm of life4 ,and yet again there are the half-yearly summer strophe and winter antistrophe of habits of each season1 taken up and laid down with unfailing punctuality1 while the family life oscillates like a pendulum between the first of ,may1 which sees the domestic exodus into the fresh1 vast old drawing-room1 and the first of ,november1 which brings the return into the warm1 oak-panelled library4 ,to violate or alter these long-established rules and precedents scarcely enters into the head of any one1 and the child hears the old servants 7themselves the most dear and permanent institutions of all7 speak of them almost as if they were so many laws of nature4 ,thus he finds life from the very beginning set for him to a kind of music1 simple and beautiful in its way2 and he learns to think that 8,order is ,heaven's first law10 and that change will never come over the placid tenor of existence4 ,the difficulty to him is to realize in after years that any vicissitudes have really taken place in the old home1 that it has changed owners1 or that the old order has given place to new4 ,he almost feels--thinking perhaps of his mother in her wonted seat--that ,shelley's dreamy philosophy must be true 8,that garden sweet1 that lady fair1 ,and all bright shapes and odors there1 ,in truth have never passed away3 ',tis we1 'tis ours1 have changed1 not they40 ,the anticipation of perpetual variety and change which is the lesson commonly taught to children by town life1--the ,micawber-like expectation of 8something turning up10 to amuse or distract them1 and for which they are constantly in a waiting frame of mind1 is precisely reversed for the little scion of the old country family4 ,for him nothing is ever likely to turn up beyond the ordinary vicissitudes of fair weather and foul1 the sickness of his pony1 the death of his old dog or the arrival of his new gun4 ,all that is to be made out of life he invents for himself in his sports and in his rambles1 till the hour arrives when he is sent to school4 ,and when the epochs of school and college are over1 when he returns as heir or master1 life lays all spread out before him in a long1 straight1 honorable road1 all his duties and his pleasures lying by the wayside1 ready for his acceptance4 ,for the girl there is often even longer and more unbroken monotony1 lasting 7unless she marry7 into early womanhood and beyond it4 ,nothing can exceed the eventlessness of many a young lady's life in such a home4 ,her walks to her village school1 or to visit her cottage friends in their sicknesses and disasters2 her rides and drives along the familiar roads which she has ridden and driven over five hundred times already2 the arrival of a new book1 or of some old friend 7more often her parent's contemporary than her own71--make up the sum of her excitements1 or even expectations of excitement1 perhaps1 through all the years when youth is most eager for novelty1 and the outer world seems an enchanted place4 ,the effects on the character of this extreme regularity and monotony1 this life at ,low ,pressure1 vary1 of course1 in different individuals4 ,upon a dull mind without motu proprio or spring of original ideas1 it is1 naturally1 depressing enough2 but it is far from equally injurious to those possessed of some force of character1 provided they meet the affection and reasonable indulgence of liberty without which the heart and intellect can no more develop healthfully than a baby can thrive without milk1 or a child's limbs grow agile in swaddling clothes4 ,the young mind slowly working out its problems for itself1 unwarped by the influence 7so enormous in youth7 of thoughtless companions1 and devouring the great books of the world1 ferreted out of a miscellaneous library by its own eager appetite and self-guided taste1 is perhaps ripening in a healthier way than the best taught town child1 with endless 8classes0 and masters for every accomplishment under the sun4 ,even the imagination is better cultivated in loneliness1 when the child1 through its solitary rambles by wood and shore1 spins its gossamer webs of fancy1 and invents tales of heroism and wonder such as no melodrama or pantomime ever yet brought to the town child's exhausted brain4 ,then the affections of the country child are concentrated on their few objects with a passionate warmth of which the feelings of the town child1 dissipated amidst scores of friends and admirers1 affords no measure whatever4 ,the admiration amounting to worship paid by many a little lonely girl to some older woman who represents to her all of grace and goodness she has yet dreamed1 and who descends every now and then from some far-off ,elysium to be a guest in her home1 is one of the least read and yet surely one of the prettiest chapters of innocent human sentiment4 ,as to the graver and more durable affections nourished in the old home1--the fond attachment of brothers and sisters1 the reverence for the father1 the love1 purest and deepest of all earthly loves1 of mother for child and child for mother1--there can be little doubt that their growth in the calm1 sweet country life must be healthier and deeper rooted than it can well be elsewhere4 ,and finally1 almost certainly1 such a peaceful and solitary youth soon enters the deeper waters of the moral and spiritual life1 and breathes religious aspirations which have in them1 in those early years1 the freshness and the holiness of the morning4 ,happy and good must1 indeed1 be that later life from the heights of which any man or woman can dare to look back on one of these lonely childhoods without a covering of the face4 ,talk of hermitages or monasteries6 ,the real nursery of religion is one of these old ,english homes1 where every duty is natural1 easy1 beautiful2 where the pleasures are so calm1 so innocent1 so interwoven with the duties that the one need scarcely be defined from the other2 and where the spectacle of ,nature's loveliness is forever suggesting the thought of ,him who built the blue dome of heaven1 and scattered over all the ground his love-tokens of flowers4 ,the happy child dwelling in such a home1 with a father and mother who speak to it sometimes of ,god and the life to come1 but do not attempt to intrude into that ,holy of ,holies1 a young soul's love and penitence and resolution1 is the place on earth1 perhaps1 best fitted to nourish the flame of religion4 ,of the cruelty and wickedness and meanness of the world the child hears only as of the wild beasts or poisonous reptiles who may roam or crawl in ,african deserts4 ,they are too far off to force themselves on the attention as dreadful problems of the ,sphinx to be solved on pain of moral death4 ,even sickness1 poverty1 and death appear oftenest as occasions for the kindly and helpful sympathy of parents and guides4 ,to turn to lighter matters4 ,of course among the first recognized pleasures of the country is the constant intercourse with1 or rather bathing in1 ,nature4 ,we are up to the lips in the ocean of fresh air1 grass1 and trees4 ,it is not one beautiful object or another which attracts us 7as sometimes happens in town71 but1 without being interrupted by thinking of them individually1 they influence us en masse4 ,dame ,nature has taken us on her lap1 and soothes us with her own lullaby4 ,probably1 on the whole1 country folks admire each separate view and scrap of landscape less than their visitors from the town1 and criticise it as little as school-boys do their mother's dress4 ,but they love ,nature as a whole1 and her real influence appears in their genial characters1 their healthy nervous systems1 and their optimistic opinions4 ,nor is it by any means only inanimate nature wherewith they are concerned4 ,not to speak of their poorer neighbors 7of whom they know much more1 and with whom they usually live in far more kindly relations than townsfolk with theirs71 they have incessant concern with brutes and birds4 ,how much1 to some of us1 the leisurely watching of stately cattle1 gentle sheep1 and playful lambs1 the riding and driving of generous1 kindly-natured horses and the companionship of loving dogs1 add to the sum of the day's pleasures and tune the mind to its happiest key-note1 it would be difficult to define4 ,for my own part1 ,i have never ceased to wonder how ,christian divines have been able to picture ,heaven and leave it wholly unpeopled by animals4 ,even for their own sakes 7not to speak of justice to the oft ill-treated brutes71 would they not have desired to give their humble companions some little corner in their boundless sky8 ,a place with perpetual music going on and not a single animal to caress1--even those which ,mahomet promised his followers1--his own camel1 ,balaam's ass1 and ,tobit's dog1--would1 ,i think1 be a very incomplete and unpleasant paradise indeed6 ,it has often been said that the passion of ,englishmen for field sports is really due to this love of ,nature and of animals2 that1 like sheepdogs 7who1 when they are not trained to guard sheep1 will1 by an irresistible impulse1 follow and harry them71 they feel compelled to have something to do with hares and foxes and partridges and grouse1 and salmon2 and they find that the only thing to be done is to course and hunt and shoot and angle for them4 ,into this mystery ,i cannot dive4 ,the propensity which can make kind-hearted men 7as many sportsmen unquestionably are7 not merely endure to kill1 but actually take pleasure in killing1 innocent living things1 and changing what is so beautiful in life and joy into what is so ineffably sad and piteous1 wounded and dying1 remains always to me utterly incomprehensible4 ,but it is simply a fact that lads trained from boyhood to take pleasure in such 8sports10 and having1 ,i doubt not1 an 8hereditary set of the brain0 towards them1 like so many greyhounds or pointers1 never feel the ribrezzo1 or the remorse1 of the bird or beast murderer1 but1 escaping all reflection1 triumph in their own skill1 and at the same time enjoy the woods and fields and river-sides where their quarry leads them4 ,to do them justice1--as against many efforts lately made to confound them with torturers of a very different class1--they know little of the pain they inflict1 and they endeavor eagerly to make that pain as brief as possible4 ,nevertheless1 ,sport is an inexplicable passion to the non-sporting mind2 and1 moreover1 one not very easy to contemplate with philosophical forbearance1 much less with admiration4 ,a larger source of wonder is it to reflect that this same unaccountable passion for killing pheasants and pursuing foxes has so deep a root in ,english life that its arrest and disappointment by such a change of the ,game laws as would lead to the abolition of game would practically revolutionize all our manners4 ,the attraction of the towns already preponderates over that of the country2 but till lately the grouse have had the honor of proroguing annually the ,british ,senate1 and the partridges1 the pheasants1 the woodcocks1 and the foxes induce pretty nearly every man who can afford to shoot or hunt them to bring his family to the country during the season wherein they are to be pursued4 ,of course women1 left to themselves1 would mostly choose to spend their winters in town1 and their summers from ,may till ,november in the country4 ,but ,sport determines the ,session of ,parliament1 and the ,session determines the season2 and1 as women love the ,london ,season quite as much as men like foxhunting1 both parties are equally bound to the same unfortunate division of time1 and year after year passes1 and the lilacs and laburnums and hawthorns and limes in the old country homes waste their loveliness and their sweetness unseen1 while the little children pine in ,belgravian and ,south ,kensington mansions when they ought to be romping among their father's hay-fields and galloping their ponies about his park4 ,all these arrangements1 and1 further1 the vast establishments of horses and hounds1 the enormous expenditure on guns and game-keepers and beaters and game-preserving1--the sole business of thousands of workingmen1 and the principal occupation and interest of half the gentlemen in the country1--would be swept away by a stroke4 ,by some such change as this1 or1 more probably1 by the pressure of a hundred sources of change1 it is probable1 nay1 it is certain1 that the old form of country life 7which ,i have been describing1 perhaps1 rather as it was a few years ago than it is now7 will pass away and become a thing of memory4 ,when that time arrives1 ,i cannot but think that ,england and the world will lose a phase of human existence which1 with all its lights and shadows1 has been1 perhaps1 the most beautiful and perfect yet realized on earth4 ,certainly1 it has offered to many a happiness1 pure1 stable1 dignified1 and blameless1 such as it will be hard to parallel in any of the novel types of high pressure modern life4 ,and1 on the other hand1 there is nothing so mournful as the life of an old ancestral home in the country6 ,everything reminds us of the lost1 the dead who once called these stately chambers their habitations1 whose voices once echoed through the halls1 and for whose familiar tread we seem yet to wait2 whose entrance1 as of yore1 through one of the lofty doors would scarcely surprise us2 whom we almost expect1 when we return after long absence1 to see rising from their accustomed seats with open arms to embrace us1 as in the days gone by4 ,the trees they planted1 the walks and flower-beds they designed2 the sword which the father brought back from his early service2 the tapestry the mother wrought through her long years of declining health2 the dog grown blind and old1 the companion of walks which shall never be taken again2 the instrument which once answered to a sweet touch forever still1--these things make us feel ,death and change as we never feel them amid the instability and eager interests of town existence4 ,all things remain as of old 8since the fathers fell asleep40 ,the leaves of the woods come afresh and then fade2 the rooks come cawing home2 the church bells ring1 and the old clock strikes the hour4 ,only there is one chair pushed a little aside from its wonted place1 an old horse turned out to graze in peace for his latter days2 a bedroom upstairs into which no one goes1 save in silent hours1 unwatched and furtively4 ,as time goes by1 and one after another of those who made youth blessed have dropped away1 and we begin to count the years of those who remain1 and watch gray hairs thickening on heads we remember golden1 and talk of the hopes and ambitions of early days as things of the past1--things which might have been1 but now1 we know1 will never be on earth1--when all this comes to pass1 then the sense of the tragedy of life becomes too strong for us4 ,the dear home1 loved so tenderly1 is for us little better than the cenotaph of the lost and dead2 the warning to ourselves that over all our busy schemes and hopes the pall will soon come down1--8the night cometh when no man can work40 ,i believe it is this deep1 sorrowful sense of all that is most sad and most awful in our mortal lot1 a sense which we escape amid the rushing to and fro of ,london1 but which settles down on our souls in such a home as ,i have pictured1 which makes the country unendurable to many1 as the shadows of the evening lengthen4 ,to accept it1 and look straight at the grave towards which they are walking down the shortened vista of their years1 taxes men's courage and faith beyond their strength1 and they fly back to the business and the pleasures wherein such solemn thoughts are forgotten and drowned4 ,and yet beneath our cowardice there is the longing that our little race should round itself once again to the old starting point2 that where we spent our blessed childhood1 and rested on our mother's breast1 and lisped our earliest prayers1 there also we should lay down the burden of life1 and repent its sins1 and thank the ,giver for its joys1 and fall asleep1--to awaken1 we hope1 in the eternal ,home4 ----- ,footnote #a3 ,several such critics1 writing of the essay in this book on the 8,scientific ,spirit of the ,age0 when it appeared in the ,contemporary ,review for ,july1 condemned me for failing to do adequate justice to ,science1 quite regardless of my reiterated assertions 7see pp4 #f1 #g1 #cd7 that ,i was writing exclusively on the adverse side1 and left the glorification of the modern ,diana of the ,ephesians to the mixed multitude of her followers4 ,footnote #b3 8,up to the age of thirty1 or beyond it1 poetry of many kinds1 such as the works of ,milton1 ,byron1 ,wordsworth1 ,coleridge1 and ,shelley1 gave me great delight1 and even as a school-boy ,i took intense delight in ,shakespeare4 ,i have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable1 and music very great delight4 ,but now1 for many years1 ,i cannot endure to read a line of poetry4 ,i have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music40--,darwin's ,life1 vol4 i4 p4 #aja4 ,footnote #c3 ,darwin's ,life1 vol4 i4 p4 #aja4 ,said of himself by ,darwin4 ,footnote #d3 ,that organ of the ,scientific party1 the ,british ,medical ,journal1 eulogizing this address1 remarked that 8,sir ,james is a master of ,english1 clothing all his thoughts in the most elegant language40 ,to the mere literary mind the above definitions may be thought to leave something to be desired on the score of 8elegance40 ,footnote #e3 ,speaking of this latter book1 the ,manchester ,guardian 7,march #ag7 remarked that 8the charges in #8,st ,bernard's' were supported by details of cases reported in medical journals and by statements made by lecturers of distinction4 ,the quotations are precise and easily verified4 ,the hospitals will do well to take some notice of a medical man who avers that the healing of patients is subordinated to the professional advantages of the staff and the students1 that cures are retarded for clinical study1 that new drugs are tried upon hospital patients1 who are needlessly examined and made to undergo unnecessary operations4 ,they cannot afford to pass over the statement that the dying are tortured by useless operations1 and that the blunders of students are covered by their teachers for the credit of the hospital40 ,every one of these offences against justice and humanity is directly due to the inspiration of the ,scientific ,spirit4 ,footnote #f3 ,it was long before ,science acquired her natural voice4 ,for more than a thousand years she submitted servilely to ,aristotle and his interpreters4 ,but the ,science of the ,dark ,ages was only a branch of learning of which a ,picus of ,mirandola or an ,admirable ,crichton could master the whole1 along with the classics and mathematics of the period4 ,the genuine ,scientific ,spirit was not yet born2 and when it woke at last in ,galileo and ,kepler1 and down to our own day1 the ,religious spirit was still paramount over the ,scientific4 ,it is only in the present generation that we witness at once the evolution of the true scientific spirit and of scientific arrogance4 ,footnote #g3 ,while ,i am writing these pages1 the ,globe informs us that there reigns at present in ,paris a mania for medical curiosities and surgical operations4 8,it has become the right thing to get up early and hurry off to witness some special piece of dexterity with the scalpel4 ,the novel yields its attraction to the slightly stronger realism of the medical treatise1 and the picture galleries have the air of a pathological museum4 ,it is suggested that the theatres1 if they want to hold their own1 must represent critical operations in a thoroughly realistic manner on the stage40 ,footnote #h3 ,in the very noteworthy paper by ,mr4 ,myers in the ,nineteenth ,century for ,may on the 8,disenchantment of ,france10 there occurs this remark3 8,in that country where the pure dicta of ,science reign in the intellectual classes with less interference from custom1 sentiment1 or tradition1 than even in ,germany itself1 we should find that ,science1 at her present point1 is a depressing disintegrating energy0 7p4 #ffc74 ,elsewhere he says that ,france 8makes ,m4 ,pasteur her national hero06 ,footnote #i3 ,i have heard a pitiful example of this kind of prejudice4 ,an orphan boy and his ugly mongrel dog were the objects of universal dislike and ridicule in the house of his uncle1 a ,scotch farmer4 ,the lad always sat of an evening far back from the circle by the fireside1 with his crouching dog under his stool lest it should be kicked4 ,one day the little son of the house1 of whom the farmer and his wife were dotingly fond1 went out with the boy and dog1 and1 a snow-storm coming on1 they were all lost on the hills4 ,next morning the dog returned to the farm1 making wild signs that the farmer should follow him1 which he and his wife did at once1 in great anxiety4 ,at last1 the dog brought them to a spot where they found the boy stiff and cold1 but their child still alive4 ,the boy had taken off his own coat and wrapped it round the child1 whom he laid on his breast1 and then1 lying under him on the snow1 had died4 ,let us hope that at least the dog reaped some tardy fruits of the farmer's repentance4 ,footnote #aj3 ,i will cite an example from my own experience1 which may help to make parents realize the subtle peril of which ,i speak4 ,twenty-five years ago ,i was engaged in an effort to help ,mary ,carpenter in the care of the ,red ,lodge ,reformatory for girl-thieves at ,bristol4 ,our poor little charges had all been convicted of larceny1 or some kindred offence1 but they were not technically 8fallen0 girls3 another establishment received young women of this 8unfortunate0 class4 ,twice1 however1 it happened1 during my residence with ,miss ,carpenter1 that girls who had been on the streets were by mistake sent to us when convicted of theft1 and were of course received and placed with the others1 all being under the most careful surveillance both in the school-rooms1 playgrounds1 and dormitory4 ,nevertheless1 in each case1 before the 8unfortunate0 had been three days in the ,lodge1 by some inexplicable contagion the whole school of fifty girls were demoralized so completely that the aspect of the children and change in their behavior gave warning to their experienced janitress to trace the history of the new-comer more exactly1 and1 as the result proved1 to detect where the infection had come in4 ,footnote #aa3 ,in ,dr4 ,ingleby's just published ,essays there is a very pertinent story from ,saint ,augustine concerning this contagion of the emotion of cruelty4 ,a certain ,alypius detested1 on report1 the spectacle of the ,gladiators1 but was induced to enter the amphitheatre1 protesting that he would not look at the show3 8,so soon as he saw the blood10 says ,saint ,augustine1 8he therewith drank down savageness2 nor turned away1 but fixed his eye1 drinking in pleasure unawares1 and was delighted with that guilty fight1 and intoxicated with the bloody pastime2 nor was he now the man he came1 but one of the throng he came into40--,saint ,augustine's ,confessions1 ,bk4 vi41 c4 #h4 ,similar perversions occur at all brutal exhibitions4 ,a friend sends me the following instance from his own knowledge4 8,a party of ,english people went to the ,bull ,ring of ,san ,sebastian4 ,when the first horse was ripped up and his entrails trailed on the ground1 a young lady of the party burst into tears and insisted on going away4 ,her brothers compelled her to remain2 and a number of horses were then mutilated and killed before her eyes4 ,long before the end of the spectacle the girl was as excited and delighted as any ,spaniard in the assembly40 ,footnote #ab3 ,readers of that singular book1 8,st4 ,bernard's0 7,swan1 ,sonnenschein ,co41 #ahhg1 new edition #ahhh71 and its sequel1 8,dying ,scientifically10 may possibly entertain doubts on this subject4 ,footnote #ac3 8,c'est pourquoi1 seul dans mon sicle1 j'ai s comprendre ,jsus ,christ et ,st4 ,franois d',assise40--,m4 ,renan4 ,footnote #ad3 ,the heads of this party in ,england are the venerable ,rabbi ,nathan ,adler and his son and colleague1 ,rev4 ,herman ,adler1 who hold a kind of ,patriarchate over all ,english ,orthodox ,jews4 ,the principal synagogue of this party 7to which the ,rothschild family hereditarily belongs1 also the ,cohens1 ,sir ,g4 ,jessel1 etc47 is in ,great ,portland ,street4 ,the ,eglise mre is in the ,city1 and there are many other synagogues belonging to it scattered over ,london and ,england4 ,the ,portuguese branch of the ,orthodox party 7the most rigidly ,orthodox of all71 to which ,sir ,moses ,montefiore belonged1 has its chief synagogue in ,bevis ,marks4 ,the late distinguished ,rabbi ,artom1 brother of ,cavour's private secretary1 was minister of this synagogue4 ,footnote #ae3 ,the ,reformed ,jews1 among whom ,sir ,julian ,goldsmid and ,mr4 ,f4 ,d4 ,mocatta hold distinguished places1 have only one synagogue in ,london1 that in ,berkeley ,street4 ,the minister of this wealthy and important congregation is the ,rev4 ,d4 ,marks4 ,a special liturgy1 differing chiefly from the ,orthodox by omissions of ,talmudic passages1 is in use in this synagogue4 ,footnote #af3 ,professor ,goldwin ,smith1 in the ,nineteenth ,century4 ,footnote #ag3 ,it will be noticed that nothing can be further apart than these ideas of a ,reformed ,judaism from those put forward by ,george ,eliot in 8,daniel ,deronda40 ,equally remote are they from the crude endeavor to return to a supposed primitive ,judaism through the 8worship of the letter0 of the ,old ,testament1 which was hailed some years ago with premature satisfaction by a certain school of ,protestant ,christians4 ,see the interesting 8,history of the ,karaite ,jews10 by the ,rev4 ,w4 ,h4 ,rule1 ,d4,d41 #ahgj4 ,footnote #ah3 ,as an example of this1 ,i can mention the following fact4 ,all the ,jewish journals in ,germany 7amounting to nine out of ten of all the newspapers in the country7 support a certain cruel practice4 ,and why8 ,it has nothing to do with religion1 nothing to do with finance1 nothing to do with any matter wherein ,jews have a different interest from other people4 ,the key to this mystery is simply that seven or eight of the most guilty persons are ,jews4 ,this 8clandestine manipulation of the press10 and tribe-union for purposes disconnected with tribal interests1 constitutes a cabal1 and necessarily creates antagonism and disgust4 ,nothing of this kind can be laid at the door of ,english ,jews1 and it is much to be wished that they would expostulate with their brethren on its imbittering effects abroad4 ,footnote #ai3 ,i cannot but think that too much has been made1 particularly under the influence of the modern mania for 8heredity10 of the exceptional character of the ,jewish race4 ,of course1 the ,jews are a most remarkable people1 so vigorous physically as to be able to colonize either ,india or ,greenland1 and after a thousand years of ,ghetto existence to remain 7to the confusion of all sanitation-mongers7 the healthiest race in ,europe4 ,on the mental side1 their multifarious gifts and their indomitable sturdiness are no less admirable4 ,but their fidelity to their race and religion is not unmatched4 ,not to speak of the miserable ,gypsies1 the ,parsees offer a more singular spectacle2 for their members have always been a handful compared to the ,jews 7not above #aej1jjj at the utmost71 and during the ten ages of their exile they have exhibited a spirit of concession towards the customs of their neighbors which has left the actual dogmas of their religion the sole bond of their national integrity4 ,they worshipped the ,one good ,god under the law of ,zoroaster three1 perhaps four1 millenniums ago1 and they worship ,him faithfully still1 though a mere remnant of a race1 dwelling in the midst of idolaters1 and with no distinctive badgelike circumcision1 no haughty disdain of 8,gentile0 nations1 no hope of a restoration to their own land4 ,their priests have been illiterate and despised1 not erudite and honored rabbis4 ,their sacred books have twice become obsolete in language1 and incomprehensible both to clergy and laity4 ,their ,prophet has faded into an abstraction4 ,but their faith in ,ahura-,mazda1 the 8,wise ,creator10 the 8,rich in ,love10 remains as clear to-day among them as when it first rose upon the ,bactrian plains in the morning of the world4 ,the virtues of truth1 chastity1 industry1 and beneficence inculcated by the ,zend-,avesta1 and attributed by the ,greek historians to their ancestors of the age of ,cyrus1 are still noticeable among them in marked contrast to their ,hindu neighbors2 as are likewise their muscular strength and hardy frames4 ,even as regards their commercial aptitudes1 the ,parsees offer a singular parallel to the ,jews4 ,the ,times remarked some years ago that out of the #aej1jjj ,parsees there were an incredible number of very wealthy men1 and six were actual millionaires4 ,one of the last1 ,sir ,jamsetjee ,jeejebhoy1 gave away in his lifetime the sum of #gjj1jjj sterling in charities to men of every religion4 ,footnote #bj3 ,the congregations use ,prayer-books with the vernacular in parallel columns4 ,footnote #ba3 ,i refer especially to the magnificent services for the ,day of ,atonement as used in the ,reformed ,synagogue4 ,there are also many noble prayers in the collection of ,sabbath and other services for various festivals4 ,the whole liturgy is majestic1 though somewhat deficient as regards the expression of spiritual aspiration4 ,footnote #bb3 ,so rapidly moves the world that1 since this ,essay was first published1 a whole systematic work of charity of this specially ,christian character has been established by benevolent ,jewish ladies in ,london4 ,i have before me the 8,report of the ,jewish ,ladies' ,association for ,prevention and ,rescue ,work0 for #ahhf-hg1 printed for private circulation4 ,the president of the association is ,lady ,rothschild2 the honorable secretaries1 ,mrs4 ,cyril ,flower and ,mrs4 ,j4 ,l4 ,jacobs4 ,nothing can seem more wisely kind and merciful than the whole scheme as here detailed4 ,we are told that the poor ,jewish girls reclaimed from a life of vice 7into which only of late years have many been known to fall7 8are taught not only to follow the observances of their faith1 but also to lead pure and useful lives2 and no pains will be spared to make them better women as well as capable earners of their own livelihood4444 ,the committee feel convinced they will not be allowed to fail in their strenuous endeavor to bring back those who are1 as it were1 sunk in moral death1 to a new life40 ,footnote #bc3 ,see this affectingly brought out in that charming book1 8,the ,jews of ,barnow40 ,footnote #bd3 ,a clever book1 exhibiting great acquaintance with current phases of opinion1 appeared a few years ago1 offering by its title some promise of dealing with the case of the ,christian ,theists of whom ,i am speaking4 ,the author proposes to discuss 8,natural ,religion10 but he shortly proceeds to describe a great many things which1 in the common language of mankind1 are not religious at all1--scientific ardor1 artistic taste1 or mere recognition of the physical order of the universe1--and to urge that these1 or nothing1 must constitute the religion of the future4 ,the ,israelites who had gazed up in awe and wonder at the rolling clouds on ,sinai1 from whence came the thunders and voices1 and the stern and holy ,law1 and were immediately afterwards called on to worship a miserable little image of a calf1 and told1 8,these be ,thy ,gods1 ,o ,israel60 might1 one would think1 have felt the same sense of bathos which we experience when we are solemnly assured that these sciences and arts are henceforth our 8,religion40 ,a drowning man proverbially catches at straws1 and people who feel themselves sinking in the ocean of ,atheism seize on every spar which comes under their hands1 and cry1 8,we may float yet awhile by this40 ,no one can blame them for trying to do so2 but it is rather hard to expect all the world to recognize as an ironclad the hencoop on which they sit astride4 ,among the 8,natural ,religions10 as he is pleased to call them1 of which he has brought us intelligence 7some of which are not natural1 and none of which are properly ,religions71 the author of this book has disdained to mention that ancient but ever new form of opinion which in former days went by the name of ,natural ,religion4 ,the words were not happily selected1 and belong indeed to an archaic theological terminology4 ,but they were understood by everybody to mean1 not the recognition of the virtues of physical science1 nor admiration of fine scenery1 nor enthusiasm for art1 nor recognition of natural laws2 for all these things had names of their own4 ,but it was understood to mean the recognition and worship of a super-mundane1 intelligent1 and righteous ,person1--in other words1 of ,,god4 ,it contemplated ,god 8mainly above ,nature10 not1 as the author of this book says must henceforward be done1 8mainly in ,nature0 78,natural ,religion10 p4 #afj74 ,for admirable pictures1 however1 of the modern ,artist1 who would rather have painted a good picture than have done his duty1 and of the modern ,man of ,science who1 8consumed by the passion of research10 finds 8right and wrong become meaningless words10 see p4 #abj4 ,footnote #be3 ,a ,chief of the ,police ,force has informed me that arrests of desperadoes are always made1 if practicable1 at about four ,a4,m42 that hour being found by experience to be the one when animal courage is at its lowest ebb and resistance to be least apprehended4 ,footnote #bf3 ,i have heard this peculiar but common form of feminine affliction classified as the 8,bad ,husband ,headache40 ---------------------------------------- -------------------------------- ,,transcriber',s ,,notes #a4 ,silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling4 #b4 ,archaic1 non-standard1 and uncertain spellings retained as printed4 #c4 ,footnotes were re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter4 #d4 ,enclosed italics font in underscores4