With the concession of this theoretical truth, however, his praise of Liberalism is exhausted. Its impulses are right, its instinct is healthy, its main object and aim may be even more justifiable and necessary than it knows. Where it fails is in substituting for rational action a mechanical procedure and a blind worship of conventional ideas and phrases. The effect is seen in a harmful partiality of view, in the employment of means which defeat their own ends, in the prodigal expenditure of effort in return for very inadequate practical results. Further, while Liberalism to some extent furthers the instinct for expansion, that fundamental condition of civilisation, it neglects the other instincts,-for conduct, intellect, beauty, social life, and manners. Trade and industry are one of the most obvious expressions of the instinct for expansion, but when it takes this exclusive form it is apt, like the lean kine of Pharaoh's dream, to destroy all its fellows. There must be few who will differ from Arnold when he says that the typical manufacturing town, throb though it may with life and marked though it undoubtedly is by evidences of expansion of every kind, is a monstrous travesty of humane life.

On the other hand, Conservatism, if guiltless of the most obvious sins of Liberalism, commits others, and also suffers from limitations peculiar to itself. It has the aristocracy with it, as Liberalism has the middle class, and in the one case no less than the other the alliance is wholly disadvantageous. An aristocracy,

by the spectacle it affords of "a splendour and grace and elegance of life, due to inherited wealth and to traditional refinement," does indeed give satisfaction to the "baffled and starved instinct for beauty," and even to "the instinct for fit and seemly forms of social intercourse and manners," yet here its civilising mission ceases. "To the instinct for intellect and knowledge, the aristocratic class and its agents, the Tory statesmen, give no satisfaction at all. To large and clear ideas of the future and of its requirements, whether at home or abroad, aristocracies are by nature inaccessible; and though the firmness and dignity of their carriage, in foreign affairs, may inspire respect and give satisfaction, yet even here, as they do not see how the world is really going, they can found nothing.

And, finally, to the instinct of the great body of the community for expansion they are justly felt to be even averse, insofar as the very first consideration with them as a class - a few humane individuals amongst them, lovers of perfection, being left out of account is always' the maintenance of our traditional, existing social arrangements.'"' 1

In fine, the main thing, both for Liberal and Conservative, is not to work blindly at cut and dried schemes, based on mechanical party principles, irrespective of what reason and consciousness have to say on the subject. Rather let these schemes be laid open to the full play of thought; let reason probe to the 'Irish Essays: "The Future of Liberalism."

Before you decide to go

roots of human motive and action, in order that we may get to know things as they really are, and on the basis of this knowledge we may hope to create,not indeed, even then, full-fledged projects of worldregeneration, but a frame of mind out of which wise and fruitful reforms may gradually grow. "A slow and tedious process, yours-always thinking, never doing," the practical man of action is apt to say; “why cannot we go straight for our goal?" "Slow indeed and tedious," Arnold would answer, "but that is the inevitable way of nature. Thought must come first, and it will not be hurried. straight for your goal, be sure where your goal is and that the goal is the right one. Here action, however vigorous and rigorous, will not help you, only reflection, and the more deliberate and cautious reflection is, the less likelihood of wasted effort, when the time for effort comes." Flexibility of mind and patience are thus the qualities which Arnold most desires for the politician, and he laments that "the nice sense of measure is certainly not one of Nature's gifts to her English children." "Toutes les questions sont des questions de plus ou de moins," he writes in one of his Notebooks, and the principle accurately defines his attitude to political controversy of all kinds. He had grasped the fact that the true political philosophy is that which proceeds from the assumption that politics has to do, not with irreconcilable antinomies and an

1

Essay on The French Play in London.

tagonisms, but with complementary principles, merging into each other by imperceptible gradations, and that balance and harmony in social life can only be secured when in the application of these principles reason takes the place of routine and toleration the place of asperity.

A

CHAPTER XVIII

NATIONALITY AND RELIGION

LACK of the sense for practical affairs and hence

a constitutional inability to afford safe direction through the labyrinth of politics have, with little justification, been alleged against Matthew Arnold, and alleged with such assumption of certitude that the reader who goes to him with prejudiced mind may be apt, in sheer reaction, to estimate his political philosophy and prescience even beyond their deserts. Few men who have influenced public thought during the past generation have realised with equal clearness the vital part which religion plays in the problem of the government of nations, and none has approached that problem in relation to Ireland in a truer spirit of liberality and broad-mindedness. "All roads,' says the proverb, 'lead to Rome,' and one finds in like manner that all questions raise the question of religion. Questions of good government, social harmony, education, civilisation, come forth and ask to be considered; and very soon it appears that we cannot possibly treat them without returning to treat of re