Mixed essays, Irish essays and others

Preface

THE first essay in this volume was published nearly . twenty years ago, as preface to a work on Continental Schools, which has probably been read by specialists only. The other essays have appeared in well-known reviews.

The present volume touches a variety of subjects, and yet it has a unity of tendency—a unity which has more interest for an author himself, no doubt, than for other people ; but which my friendly readers, whose attention has long been my best encouragement and reward, will not unwillingly suffer me, perhaps, to point out to them.

Whoever seriously occupies himself with literature will soon perceive its vital connection with other agencies. Suppose a man to be ever so much convinced that literature is, as indisputably it is, a powerful agency for benefiting the world and for civilising it, such a man cannot but see that there are many obstacles preventing what is salutary in literature from gaining general admission, and from producing due effect. Undoubtedly, literature can of itself do something towards removing those obstacles, and towards making straight its own way. But it cannot do all. In other words, literature is a part of civilisation; it is not the whole. What he eee a PO], : . “a é OSipg| Sam > PiVai wey ™ SH

Vili PREFACE.

then is civilisation, which some people seem to conceive of as if it meant railroads and the penny post, and little more, but which is really so complex and vast a-matter that a great spiritual power, like literature, is a part of it, and a part only? Civilisation is the humanisation of man in society. Man is civilised when the whole body of society comes to live with a life worthy to be called human, and corresponding to man’s true aspirations and powers.

The means by which man is brought towards this goal of his endeavour are various. It is of great importance to us to attain an adequate notion of them, and to keep it present before our minds. They may be conceived quite plainly, and enounced without any parade of hard and abstruse expression.

First and foremost of the necessary means towards man’s civilisation we must name expansion. The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in plants for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. All the conveniences of life by which man has enlarged and secured his existence —railroads and the penny post among the number —are due to the working in man of this force or instinct of expansion. But the manifestation of it which we English know best, and prize most, is the love of liberty.

The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion, Not only to find oneself tyrannised over and outraged is a defeat to this instinct, but in general, to feel oneself over-tutored, over- governed, sate wpon (as the popular phrase is) by authority, is a defeat to it. Prince Bismarck says: “ After all, a benevolent rational absolutism is the best form of government.” Plenty of arguments may be adduced in support of such a thesis. The one fatal objection to it is that it is against nature, that it contradicts

PREFACE. ix a vital instinct in man—the instinct of expansion. And man is not to be civilised or humanised, call it which you will, by thwarting his vital instincts, In fact, the benevolent rational absolutism always breaks down. It is found that the ruler cannot in the long run be trusted ; it is found that the ruled deteriorate Why? Because the proceeding is against nature.

The other great manifestation of the instinct of expansion is the love of equality. Of the love of equality we English have little ; but, undoubtedly, it is no more a false tendency than the love of liberty. Undoubtedly, immense inequality of conditions and property is a defeat to the instinct of expansion ; it depresses and degrades the inferior masses. ‘The common people is and must be, as Tocqueville said, more uncivilised in aristocratic countries than in any others. A thousand arguments may be discovered in favour of inequality, just as a thousand arguments may be discovered in favour of absolutism. And the one insuperable objection to inequality is the same as the one insuperable objection to absolutism: namely, that inequality, like absolutism, thwarts a vital instinct, and being thus against nature, is against our humanisation. On the one side, in fact, inequality harms by pampering; on the other, by vulgarising and depressing. A system founded on it is against nature, and in the long run breaks down.

I put first among the elements in human civilisation the instinct of expansion, because it is the basis which man’s whole effort to civilise himself presupposes. General civilisation presupposes this instinct, which is inseparable from human nature ; presupposes its being satisfied, not defeated. The basis being given, we may rapidly enumerate the powers which, upon this basis, contribute to build x | PREFACE, up human civilisation. They are the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, the power of social life and manners. Expansion, conduct, science, beauty, manners,—here are the conditions of civilisation, the claimants which man must satisfy before he can be humanised.

That the aim for all of us is to make civilisation pervasive and general ; that the requisites for civilisation are substantially what have been here enumerated ; that they all of them hang together, that they must all have their development, that the development of one does not compensate for the failure of others ; that one nation suffers by failing in this requisite, and another by failing in that: such is the line of thought which the essays in the present volume follow and represent. They represent it in their variety of subject, their so frequent insistence on defects in the present actual life of our nation, their unity of final aim. Undoubtedly, that aim is not given by the life which we now see around us. Undoubtedly, it is given by “a sentiment of the ideal life.” But then the ideal life is, in sober and practical truth, “none other than man’s normal life, as we shall one day know it.”

Contents

. IRISH CATHOLICISM AND BritisH LIBERALISM . ‘Porro Unum Est NECESSARIUM”

. A GuIpE TO EncuisH LITERATURE

. FALKLAND