produce. He taught us that all political reconstruction was at the best mere improvement of machinery; that political reform was related to social reform as the means to the end: and that the end was the perfection of the race in all its physical, mental, and moral attributes.

Above all we learned—and perhaps it was the most important of our lessons-to think little of material boons-vulgar wealth and stolid comfort and ignoble ease; to set our affections on the joys of soul and spirit; and to recognize in the practice of religion the highest development and most satisfying use of the powers which belong

to man.

CHAPTER V

CONDUCT

"By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil-widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower."

Whether Lactantius was etymologically right or wrong, there is no doubt that he was right substantially when he defined Religion as that which binds the soul to God. And religion thus conceived naturally divides itself into two parts: duty and doctrine, practice and theory, conduct and theology. Both elements are presented to us in the Bible. Of the one it is written: "The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." Of the other: "Which things the angels desire to look into." Even the respective functions of the Synoptists and St. John seem to accommodate themselves to this natural division. Following the line thus indicated, we shall consider Arnold's influence on Religion under the two heads of Conduct and Theology. The pas

sage from Middlemarch which stands at the head of this chapter seems in a way to express his attitude towards the religious problems of his time. It would be impossible for a convinced believer in the faith of the Christian Church, as traditionally received, to profess that Arnold "knew what was perfectly good" in the domain of religion; but beyond all question he "desired" it with an even passionate desire, and attained far more closely to it than many professors of a more orthodox theology.

Of him it might be truly said, as of his favourite poet, that he "saw life steadily and saw it whole." And of life he declared that Conduct was three-fourths. For all the infinite varieties and contradictions of mere opinion he had the largest tolerance, knowing that no opinion, as such, is culpable. For people thinking so diversely as Wordsworth, Bunsen, Clough, and Palgrave; Church and Temple, Lake and Stanley; Lord Coleridge, William Forster, and John Morley, he had equally warm regard, and, in some ways, sympathy. It was only when the sphere of conduct was approached that his judgment became severe and his sympathy dried up. In Politics-levity, time-serving, mob-pleasing, the spirit which prefers partisanship to patriotism, were the faults which he could not pardon. His imperfect sym

pathy with Mr. Gladstone, a deplorable but undeniable fact, was due not so much to dissent from Gladstone's theory of the public good as to disapproval of his character. Respect is the very

last feeling he excites in me; he has too little solidity and composure of character or mind for that. He is brilliantly clever, of course, and he is honest enough, but he is passionate, and in no way great, I think." In Religion-obscurantism, resistance to the light, the smug endeavour to make the best of both worlds, offended Arnold as much on the one hand, as insolence, violence, ignorant negation, "lightly running amuck at august things,” offended him on the other. He loved a "free handling, in a becoming spirit, of religious matters,' and did not always find it in the writings of his Liberal friends. It is true that he once made a signal lapse from his own canon of religious criticism, but he withdrew it with genuine regret that "an illustration likely to be torn from its context, to be improperly used, and to give pain, should ever have been adopted.' In Literature, again, though his judgment was critical, his charity was unbounded. He could find something to praise even in the most immature and unpretending efforts; and he knew how to distinguish what we call "good of its sort," good in the second order of achievement, from what is simply bad.

In literature, as in opinion, it was only when moral faults were mingled with intellectual defects that he became censorious. He detested literary humbug-a pretence of knowledge without the reality, a show of philosophy masking poverty of thought; the vanity of quaintness, the " ring of false metal," the glorification of commonplace.

And so again when we come to Life-the social life of the civilized community-he was the consistent teacher and the bright example of an exalted and scrupulous morality. Even the intellectual brilliancy of authors whom he intensely admired did not often blind him to ethical defects. It is true that some objects of his literary admiration-Goethe and Byron and George Sand-could scarcely be regarded as moral exemplars; but, while he praised the genius, he marked his disapproval of the moral defect. In writing of George Sand, who had so profoundly influenced his early life, he did not deny or extenuate "her passions and her errors." Byron, though he thought him "the greatest natural force, the greatest elementary power, which has appeared in our literature since Shakespeare," he roundly accused of "vulgarity and effrontery,” “ ness and commonness," "affectation and brutal selfishness." In the case of Goethe, he said that the moralist and the man of the world may

coarse