I long continued to value Wordsworth less
according to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what he had done
for me. Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of
unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But
unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation.
This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are
intrinsically far more poets than he.
(¶5.14)
It so fell out that the merits of Wordsworth were the
occasion of my first public declaration of my new way of
thinking, and separation from those of my habitual companions who
had not undergone a similar change. The person with whom at that
time I was most in the habit of comparing notes on such subjects
was Roebuck, and I induced him to read Wordsworth, in whom he
also at first seemed to find much to admire: but I, like most
Wordsworthians, threw myself into strong antagonism to Byron,
both as a poet and as to his influence on the character. Roebuck,
all whose instincts were those of action and struggle, had, on
the contrary, a strong relish and great admiration of Byron,
whose writings he regarded as the poetry of human life, while
Wordsworth's, according to him, was that of flowers and
butterflies. We agreed to have the fight out at our Debating
Society, where we accordingly discussed for two evenings the
comparative merits of Byron and Wordsworth, propounding and
illustrating by long recitations our respective theories of
poetry: Sterling also, in a brilliant speech, putting forward his
particular theory. This was the first debate on any weighty
subject in which Roebuck and I had been on opposite sides. The
schism between us widened from this time more and more, though we
continued for some years longer to be companions. In the
beginning, our chief divergence related to the cultivation of the
feelings. Roebuck was in many respects very different from the
vulgar notion of a Benthamite or Utilitarian. He was a lover of
poetry and of most of the fine arts. He took great pleasure in
music, in dramatic performances, especially in painting, and
himself drew and designed landscapes with great facility and
beauty. But he never could be made to see that these things have
any value as aids in the formation of character. Personally,
instead of being, as Benthamites are supposed to be, void of
feeling, he had very quick and strong sensibilities. But, like
most Englishmen who have feelings, he found his feelings stand
very much in his way. He was much more susceptible to the painful
sympathies than to the pleasurable, and looking for his happiness
elsewhere, he wished that his feelings should be deadened rather
than quickened. And, in truth, the English character, and English
social circumstances, make it so seldom possible to derive
happiness from the exercise of the sympathies, that it is not
wonderful if they count for little in an Englishman's scheme of
life. In most other countries the paramount importance of the
sympathies as a constituent of individual happiness is an axiom,
taken for granted rather than needing any formal statement; but
most English thinkers almost seem to regard them as necessary
evils, required for keeping men's actions benevolent and
compassionate. Roebuck was, or appeared to be, this kind of
Englishman. He saw little good in any cultivation of the
feelings, and none at all in cultivating them through the
imagination, which he thought was only cultivating illusions. It
was in vain I urged on him that the imaginative emotion which an
idea, when vividly conceived, excites in us, is not an illusion
but a fact, as real as any of the other qualities of objects; and
far from implying anything erroneous and delusive in our mental
apprehension of the object, is quite consistent with the most
accurate knowledge and most perfect practical recognition of all
its physical and intellectual laws and relations. The intensest
feeling of the beauty of a cloud lighted by the setting sun, is
no hindrance to my knowing that the cloud is vapour of water,
subject to all the laws of vapours in a state of suspension; and
I am just as likely to allow for, and act on, these physical laws
whenever there is occasion to do so, as if I had been incapable
of perceiving any distinction between beauty and ugliness.
(¶5.15)
While my intimacy with Roebuck diminished, I fell more and
more into friendly intercourse with our Coleridgian adversaries
in the Society, Frederick Maurice and John Sterling, both
subsequently so well known, the former by his writings, the
latter through the biographies by Hare and Carlyle. Of these two
friends, Maurice was the thinker, Sterling the orator, and
impassioned expositor of thoughts which, at this period, were
almost entirely formed for him by Maurice. With Maurice I had for
some time been acquainted through Eyton Tooke, who had known him
at Cambridge, and though my discussions with him were almost
always disputes, I had carried away from them much that helped to
build up my new fabric of thought, in the same way as I was
deriving much from Coleridge, and from the writings of Goethe and
other German authors which I read during those years. I have so
deep a respect for Maurice's character and purposes, as well as
for his great mental gifts, that it is with some unwillingness I
say anything which may seem to place him on a less high eminence
than I would gladly be able to accord to him. But I have always
thought that there was more intellectual power wasted in Maurice
than in any other of my contemporaries. Few of them certainly
have had so much to waste. Great powers of generalization, rare
ingenuity and subtlety, and a wide perception of important and
unobvious truths, served him not for putting something better
into the place of the worthless heap of received opinions on the
great subjects of thought, but for proving to his own mind that
the Church of England had known everything from the first, and
that all the truths on the ground of which the Church and
orthodoxy have been attacked (many of which he saw as clearly as
any one) are not only consistent with the Thirty-nine articles,
but are better understood and expressed in those articles than by
any one who rejects them. I have never been able to find any
other explanation of this, than by attributing it to that
timidity of conscience, combined with original sensitiveness of
temperament, which has so often driven highly gifted men into
Romanism from the need of a firmer support than they can find in
the independent conclusions of their own judgment. Any more
vulgar kind of timidity no one who knew Maurice would ever think
of imputing to him, even if he had not given public proof of his
freedom from it, by his ultimate collision with some of the
opinions commonly regarded as orthodox, and by his noble
origination of the Christian Socialist movement. The nearest
parallel to him, in a moral point of view, is Coleridge, to whom,
in merely intellectual power, apart from poetical genius, I think
him decidedly superior. At this time, however, he might be
described as a disciple of Coleridge, and Sterling as a disciple
of Coleridge and of him. The modifications which were taking
place in my old opinions gave me some points of contact with
them; and both Maurice and Sterling were of considerable use to
my development. With Sterling I soon became very intimate, and
was more attached to him than I have ever been to any other man.
He was indeed one of the most lovable of men. His frank, cordial,
affectionate, and expansive character; a love of truth alike
conspicuous in the highest things and the humblest; a generous
and ardent nature which threw itself with impetuosity into the
opinions it adopted, but was as eager to do justice to the
doctrines and the men it was opposed to, as to make war on what
it thought their errors; and an equal devotion to the two
cardinal points of Liberty and Duty, formed a combination of
qualities as attractive to me, as to all others who knew him as
well as I did. With his open mind and heart, he found no
difficulty in joining hands with me across the gulf which as yet
divided our opinions. He told me how he and others had looked
upon me (from hearsay information), as a "made" or manufactured
man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped on me which
I could only reproduce; and what a change took place in his
feelings when he found, in the discussion on Wordsworth and
Byron, that Wordsworth, and all which that names implies,
"belonged" to me as much as to him and his friends. The failure
of his health soon scattered all his plans of life, and compelled
him to live at a distance from London, so that after the first
year or two of our acquaintance, we only saw each other at
distant intervals. But (as he said himself in one of his letters
to Carlyle) when we did meet it was like brothers. Though he was
never, in the full sense of the word, a profound thinker, his
openness of mind, and the moral courage in which he greatly
surpassed Maurice, made him outgrow the dominion which Maurice
and Coleridge had once exercised over his intellect; though he
retained to the last a great but discriminating admiration of
both, and towards Maurice a warm affection. Except in that short
and transitory phasis of his life, during which he made the
mistake of becoming a clergyman, his mind was ever progressive:
and the advance he always seemed to have made when I saw him
after an interval, made me apply to him what Goethe said of
Schiller, "Er hatte eine fürchterliche Fortschreitung." He and I
started from intellectual points almost as wide apart as the
poles, but the distance between us was always diminishing: if I
made steps towards some of his opinions, he, during his short
life, was constantly approximating more and more to several of
mine: and if he had lived, and had health and vigour to prosecute
his ever assiduous self-culture, there is no knowing how much
further this spontaneous assimilation might have proceeded.
(¶5.16)
After
1829 I withdrew from attendance on the debating
Society. I had had enough of speech-making, and was glad to carry
on my private studies and meditations without any immediate call
for outward assertion of their results. I found the fabric of my
old and taught opinions giving way in many fresh places, and I
never allowed it to fall to pieces, but was incessantly occupied
in weaving it anew. I never, in the course of my transition, was
content to remain, for ever so short a time, confused and
unsettled. When I had taken in any new idea, I could not rest
till I had adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and
ascertained exactly how far its effect ought to extend in
modifying or superseding them.
(¶5.17)
The conflicts which I had so often had to sustain in
defending the theory of government laid down in Bentham's and my
father's writings, and the acquaintance I had obtained with other
schools of political thinking, made me aware of many things which
that doctrine, professing to be a theory of government in
general, ought to have made room for, and did not. But these
things, as yet, remained with me rather as corrections to be made
in applying the theory to practice, than as defects in the
theory. I felt that politics could not be a science of specific
experience; and that the accusations against the Benthamic theory
of being a theory, of proceeding à priori by way of general
reasoning, instead of Baconian experiment, showed complete
ignorance of Bacon's principles, and of the necessary conditions
of experimental investigation. At this juncture appeared in the
Edinburgh Review, Macaulay's famous attack on my father's Essay
on Government. This gave me much to think about. I saw that
Macaulay's conception of the logic of politics was erroneous;
that he stood up for the empirical mode of treating political
phenomena, against the philosophical; that even in physical
science his notion of philosophizing might have recognized
Kepler, but would have excluded Newton and Laplace. But I could
not help feeling, that though the tone was unbecoming (an error
for which the writer, at a later period, made the most ample and
honourable amends), there was truth in several of his strictures
on my father's treatment of the subject; that my father's
premises were really too narrow, and included but a small number
of the general truths, on which, in politics, the important
consequences depend. Identity of interest between the governing
body and the community at large, is not, in any practical sense
which can be attached to it, the only thing on which good
government depends; neither can this identity of interest be
secured by the mere conditions of election. I was not at all
satisfied with the mode in which my father met the criticisms of
Macaulay. He did not, as I thought he ought to have done, justify
himself by saying, "I was not writing a scientific treatise on
politics, I was writing an argument for parliamentary reform." He
treated Macaulay's argument as simply irrational; an attack upon
the reasoning faculty; an example of the saying of Hobbes, that
when reason is against a man, a man will be against reason. This
made me think that there was really something more fundamentally
erroneous in my father's conception of philosophical method, as
applicable to politics, than I had hitherto supposed there was.
But I did not at first see clearly what the error might be. At
last it flashed upon me all at once in the course of other
studies. In the early part of 1830 I had begun to put on paper
the ideas on Logic (chiefly on the distinctions among Terms, and
the import of Propositions) which had been suggested and in part
worked out in the morning conversations already spoken of. Having
secured these thoughts from being lost, I pushed on into the
other parts of the subject, to try whether I could do anything
further towards clearing up the theory of Logic generally. I
grappled at once with the problem of Induction, postponing that
of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain
premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly
a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to
fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical
science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we
ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of
causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those
separate tendencies, to the effect of the same causes when
combined. I then asked myself, what is the ultimate analysis of
this deductive process; the common theory of the syllogism
evidently throwing no light upon it. My practice (learnt from
Hobbes and my father) being to study abstract principles by means
of the best concrete instances I could find, the Composition of
Forces, in dynamics, occurred to me as the most complete example
of the logical process I was investigating. On examining,
accordingly, what the mind does when it applies the principle of
the Composition of Forces, I found that it performs a simple act
of addition. It adds the separate effect of the one force to the
separate effect of the other, and puts down the sum of these
separate effects as the joint effect. But is this a legitimate
process? In dynamics, and in all the mathematical branches of
physics, it is; but in some other cases, as in chemistry, it is
not; and I then recollected that something not unlike this was
pointed out as one of the distinctions between chemical and
mechanical phenomena, in the introduction to that favorite of my
boyhood, Thomson's System of Chemistry. This distinction at once
made my mind clear as to what was perplexing me in respect to the
philosophy of politics. I now saw, that a science is either
deductive or experimental, according as, in the province it deals
with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or are not the
sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate.
It followed that politics must be a deductive science. It thus
appeared, that both Macaulay and my father were wrong; the one in
assimilating the method of philosophising in politics to the
purely experimental method of chemistry; while the other, though
right in adopting a deductive method, had made a wrong selection
of one, having taken as the type of deduction, not the
appropriate process, that of the deductive branches of natural
philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which,
not being a science of causation at all, does not require or
admit of any summing-up of effects. A foundation was thus laid in
my thoughts for the principal chapters of what I afterwards
published on the Logic of the Moral Sciences; and my new position
in respect to my old political creed, now became perfectly
definite.
(¶5.18)
If I am asked, what system of political philosophy I
substituted for that which, as a philosophy, I had abandoned, I
answer, no system: only a conviction that the true system was
something much more complex and many-sided than I had previously
had any idea of, and that its office was to supply, not a set of
model institutions, but principles from which the institutions
suitable to any given circumstances might be deduced. The
influences of European, that is to say Continental, thought, and
especially those of the reaction of the nineteenth century
against the eighteenth, were now streaming in upon me. They came
from various quarters: from the writings of Coleridge, which I
had begun to read with interest even before the change in my
opinions; from the Coleridgians with whom I was in personal
intercourse; from what I had read of Goethe; from Carlyle's early
articles in the Edinburgh and Foreign Reviews, though for a long
time I saw nothing in these (as my father saw nothing in them to
the last) but insane rhapsody. From these sources, and from the
acquaintance I kept up with the French literature of the time, I
derived, among other ideas which the general turning upside down
of the opinions of European thinkers had brought uppermost, these
in particular. That the human mind has a certain order of
possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an
order which governments and public instructors can modify to
some, but not to an unlimited extent: That all questions of
political institutions are relative, not absolute, and that
different stages of human progress not only will have, but ought
to have, different institutions: That government is always either
in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the
strongest power in society, and that what this power is, does not
depend on institutions, but institutions on it: That any general
theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of
human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy
of history. These opinions, true in the main, were held in an
exaggerated and violent manner by the thinkers with whom I was
now most accustomed to compare notes, and who, as usual with a
reaction, ignored that half of the truth which the thinkers of
the eighteenth century saw. But though, at one period of my
progress, I for some time under-valued that great century, I
never joined in the reaction against it, but kept as firm hold of
one side of the truth as I took of the other. The fight between
the nineteenth century and the eighteenth always reminded me of
the battle about the shield, one side of which was white and the
other black. I marvelled at the blind rage with which the
combatants rushed against one another. I applied to them, and to
Coleridge himself, many of Coleridge's sayings about half truths;
and Goethe's device, "many-sidedness," was one which I would most
willingly, at this period, have taken for mine.
(¶5.19)
The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of
political thinking was brought home to me, were those of the St.
Simonian school in France. In 1829 and 1830 I became acquainted
with some of their writings. They were then only in the earlier
stages of their speculations. They had not yet dressed out their
philosophy as a religion, nor had they organized their scheme of
Socialism. They were just beginning to question the principle of
hereditary property. I was by no means prepared to go with them
even this length; but I was greatly struck with the connected
view which they for the first time presented to me, of the
natural order of human progress; and especially with their
division of all history into organic periods and critical
periods. During the organic periods (they said) mankind accept
with firm conviction some positive creed, claiming jurisdiction
over all their actions, and containing more or less of truth and
adaptation to the needs of humanity. Under its influence they
make all the progress compatible with the creed, and finally
outgrow it; when a period follows of criticism and negation, in
which mankind lose their old convictions without acquiring any
new ones, of a general or authoritative character, except the
conviction that the old are false. The period of Greek and Roman
polytheism, so long as really believed in by instructed Greeks
and Romans, was an organic period, succeeded by the critical or
sceptical period of the Greek philosophers. Another organic
period came in with Christianity. The corresponding critical
period began with the Reformation, has lasted ever since, still
lasts, and cannot altogether cease until a new organic period has
been inaugurated by the triumph of a yet more advanced creed.
These ideas, I knew, were not peculiar to the St. Simonians; on
the contrary, they were the general property of Europe, or at
least of Germany and France, but they had never, to my knowledge,
been so completely systematized as by these writers, nor the
distinguishing characteristics of a critical period so powerfully
set forth; for I was not then acquainted with Fichte's Lectures
on "the Characteristics of the Present Age." In Carlyle, indeed,
I found bitter denunciations of an "age of unbelief," and of the
present as such, which I, like most people at that time, supposed
to be passionate protests in favour of the old modes of belief.
But all that was true in these denunciations, I thought that I
found more calmly and philosophically stated by the St.
Simonians. Among their publications, too, there was one which
seemed to me far superior to the rest; in which the general idea
was matured into something much more definite and instructive.
This was an early work of Auguste Comte, who then called himself,
and even announced himself in the title-page as, a pupil of
Saint-Simon. In this tract M. Comte first put forth the doctrine,
which he afterwards so copiously illustrated, of the natural
succession of three stages in every department of human
knowledge: first, the theological, next the metaphysical, and
lastly, the positive stage; and contended, that social science
must be subject to the same law; that the feudal and Catholic
system was the concluding phasis of the theological state of the
social science, Protestantism the commencement, and the doctrines
of the French Revolution the consummation of the metaphysical;
and that its positive state was yet to come. This doctrine
harmonized well with my existing notions, to which it seemed to
give a scientific shape. I already regarded the methods of
physical science as the proper models for political. But the
chief benefit which I derived at this time from the trains of
thought suggested by the St. Simonians and by Comte, was, that I
obtained a clear conception than ever before of the peculiarities
of an era of transition in opinion, and ceased to mistake the
moral and intellectual characteristics of such an era, for the
normal attributes of humanity. I looked forward, through the
present age of loud disputes but generally weak convictions, to a
future which shall unite the best qualities of the critical with
the best qualities of the organic periods; unchecked liberty of
thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all modes not
hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to what is right and
wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings by
early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so firmly
grounded in reason and in the true exigencies of life, that they
shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious,
ethical, and political, require to be periodically thrown off and
replaced by others.
(¶5.20)
M. Comte soon left the St. Simonians, and I lost sight of him
and his writings for a number of years. But the St. Simonians I
continued to cultivate. I was kept au courant of their progress
by one of their most enthusiastic disciples, M. Gustave
d'Eichthal, who about that time passed a considerable interval in
England. I was introduced to their chiefs, Bazard and Enfantin,
in 1830; and as long as their public teachings and proselytism
continued, I read nearly everything they wrote. Their criticisms
on the common doctrines of Liberalism seemed to me full of
important truth; and it was partly by their writings that my eyes
were opened to the very limited and temporary value of the old
political economy, which assumes private property and inheritance
as indefeasible facts, and freedom of production and exchange as
the dernier mot of social improvement. The scheme gradually
unfolded by the St. Simonians, under which the labour and capital
of society would be managed for the general account of the
community every individual being required to take a share of
labour either as thinker, teacher, artist, or producer, all being
classed according to their capacity, and remunerated according to
their works, appeared to me a far superior description of
Socialism to Owen's. Their aim seemed to me desirable and
rational, however their means might be inefficacious; and though
I neither believed in the practicability nor in the beneficial
operation of their social machinery, I felt that the proclamation
of such an ideal of human society could not but tend to give a
beneficial direction to the efforts of others to bring society as
at present constituted, nearer to some ideal standard. I
'honoured them most of all for what they have been most cried
down for -- the boldness and freedom from prejudice with which
they treated the subject of family the most important of any, and
needing more fundamental alterations than remain to be made in
any other great social institution, but on which scarcely any
reformer has the courage to touch. In proclaiming the perfect
equality of men and women, and an entirely new order of things in
regard to their relations with one another, the St. Simonians, in
common with Owen and Fourier, have entitled themselves to the
grateful remembrance of future generations.
(¶5.21)
In giving an account of this period of my life, I have only
specified such of my new impressions as appeared to me, both at
the time and since, to be a kind of turning points, marking a
definite progress in my mode of thought. But these few selected
points give a very insufficient idea of the quantity of thinking
which I carried on respecting a host of subjects during these
years of transition. Much of this, it is true, consisted in
rediscovering things known to all the world, which I had
previously disbelieved, or disregarded. But the rediscovery was
to me a discovery, giving me plenary possession of the truths,
not as traditional platitudes, but fresh from their source; and
it seldom failed to place them in some new light, by which they
were reconciled with, and seemed to confirm while they modified,
the truths less generally known which lay in my early opinions,
and in no essential part of which I at any time wavered. All my
new thinking only laid the foundation of these more deeply and
strongly while it often removed misapprehension and confusion of
ideas which had perverted their effect. For example, during the
later returns of my dejection, the doctrine of what is called
Philosophical Necessity weighed on my existence like an incubus.
I felt as if I was scientifically proved to be the helpless slave
of antecedent circumstances; as if my character and that of all
others had been formed for us by agencies beyond our control, and
was wholly out of our own power. I often said to myself, what a
relief it would be if I could disbelieve the doctrine of the
formation of character by circumstances; and remembering the wish
of Fox respecting the doctrine of resistance to governments, that
it might never be forgotten by kings, nor remembered by subjects,
I said that it would be a blessing if the doctrine of necessity
could be believed by all quoad the characters of others, and
disbelieved in regard to their own. I pondered painfully on the
subject, till gradually I saw light through it. I perceived, that
the word Necessity, as a name for the doctrine of Cause and
Effect applied to human action, carried with it a misleading
association; and that this association was the operative force in
the depressing and paralysing influence which I had experienced:
I saw that though our character is formed by circumstances, our
own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that
what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of
free-will, is the conviction that we have real power over the
formation of our own character; that our will, by influencing
some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or
capabilities of willing. All this was entirely consistent with
the doctrine of circumstances, or rather, was that doctrine
itself, properly understood. From that time I drew in my own
mind, a clear distinction between the doctrine of circumstances,
and Fatalism; discarding altogether the misleading word
Necessity. The theory, which I now for the first time rightly
apprehended, ceased altogether to be discouraging, and besides
the relief to my spirits, I no longer suffered under the burthen,
so heavy to one who aims at being a reformer in opinions, of
thinking one doctrine true, and the contrary doctrine morally
beneficial. The train of thought which had extricated me from
this dilemma, seemed to me, in after years, fitted to render a
similar service to others; and it now forms the chapter on
Liberty and Necessity in the concluding Book of my "System of
Logic."
(¶5.22)
Again, in politics, though I no longer accepted the doctrine
of the Essay on Government as a scientific theory; though I
ceased to consider representative democracy as an absolute
principle, and regarded it as a question of time, place, and
circumstance; though I now looked upon the choice of political
institutions as a moral and educational question more than one of
material interests, thinking that it ought to be decided mainly
by the consideration, what great improvement in life and culture
stands next in order for the people concerned, as the condition
of their further progress, and what institutions are most likely
to promote that; nevertheless, this change in the premises of my
political philosophy did not alter my practical political creed
as to the requirements of my own time and country. I was as much
as ever a radical and democrat for Europe, and especially for
England. I thought the predominance of the aristocratic classes,
the noble and the rich, in the English Constitution, an evil
worth any struggle to get rid of; not on account of taxes, or any
such comparatively small inconvenience, but as the great
demoralizing agency in the country. Demoralizing, first, because
it made the conduct of the government an example of gross public
immorality, through the predominance of private over public
interests in the State, and the abuse of the powers of
legislation for the advantage of classes. Secondly, and in a
still greater degree, because the respect of the multitude always
attaching itself principally to that which, in the existing state
of society, is the chief passport to power; and under English
institutions, riches, hereditary or acquired, being the almost
exclusive source of political importance; riches, and the signs
of riches, were almost the only things really respected, and the
life of the people was mainly devoted to the pursuit of them. I
thought, that while the higher and richer classes held the power
of government, the instruction and improvement of the mass of the
people were contrary to the self-interest of those classes,
because tending to render the people more powerful for throwing
off the yoke: but if the democracy obtained a large, and perhaps
the principal, share in the governing power, it would become the
interest of the opulent classes to promote their education, in
order to ward off really mischievous errors, and especially those
which would lead to unjust violations of property. On these
grounds I was not only as ardent as ever for democratic
institutions, but earnestly hoped that Owenite, St. Simonian, and
all other anti-property doctrines might spread widely among the
poorer classes; not that I thought those doctrines true, or
desired that they should be acted on, but in order that the
higher classes might be made to see that they had more to fear
from the poor when uneducated, than when educated.
(¶5.23)
In this frame of mind the French Revolution of July found me.
It aroused my utmost enthusiasm, and gave me, as it were, a new
existence. I went at once to Paris, was introduced to Lafayette,
and laid the groundwork of the intercourse I afterwards kept up
with several of the active chiefs of the extreme popular party.
After my return I entered warmly, as a writer, into the political
discussions of the time; which soon became still more exciting,
by the coming in of Lord Grey's ministry, and the proposing of
the Reform Bill. For the next few years I wrote copiously in
newspapers. It was about this time that Fonblanque, who had for
some time written the political articles in the Examiner, became
the proprietor and editor of the paper. It is not forgotten with
what verve and talent, as well as fine wit, he carried it on,
during the whole period of Lord Grey's ministry, and what
importance it assumed as the principal representative, in the
newspaper press, of radical opinions. The distinguishing
character of the paper was given to it entirely by his own
articles, which formed at least three-fourths of all the original
writing contained in it: but of the remaining fourth I
contributed during those years a much larger share than any one
else. I wrote nearly all the articles on French subjects,
including a weekly summary of French politics, often extending to
considerable length; together with many leading articles on
general politics, commercial and financial legislation, and any
miscellaneous subjects in which I felt interested, and which were
suitable to the paper, including occasional reviews of books.
Mere newspaper articles on the occurrences or questions of the
moment, gave no opportunity for the development of any general
mode of thought; but I attempted, in the beginning of 1831, to
embody in a series of articles, headed "The Spirit of the Age,"
some of my new opinions, and especially to point out in the
character of the present age, the anomalies and evils
characteristic of the transition from a system of opinions which
had worn out, to another only in process of being formed. These
articles were, I fancy, lumbering in style, and not lively or
striking enough to be at any time, acceptable to newspaper
readers; but had they been far more attractive, still, at that
particular moment, when great political changes were impending,
and engrossing all minds, these discussions were ill-timed, and
missed fire altogether. The only effect which I know to have been
produced by them, was that Carlyle, then living in a secluded
part of Scotland, read them in his solitude, and saying to
himself (as he afterwards told me) "here is a new Mystic,"
inquired on coming to London that autumn respecting their
authorship; an inquiry which was the immediate cause of our
becoming personally acquainted.
(¶5.24)
I have already mentioned Carlyle's earlier writings as one of
the channels through which I received the influences which
enlarged my early narrow creed; but I do not think that those
writings, by themselves, would ever have had any effect on my
opinions. What truths they contained, though of the very kind
which I was already receiving from other quarters, were presented
in a form and vesture less suited than any other to give them
access to a mind trained as mine had been. They seemed a haze of
poetry and German metaphysics, in which almost the only clear
thing was a strong animosity to most of the opinions which were
the basis of my mode of thought; religious scepticism,
utilitarianism, the doctrine of circumstances, and the attaching
any importance to democracy, logic, or political economy. Instead
of my having been taught anything, in the first instance, by
Carlyle, it was only in proportion as I came to see the same
truths through media more suited to my mental constitution, that
I recognized them in his writings. Then, indeed, the wonderful
power with which he put them forth made a deep impression upon
me, and I was during a long period one of his most fervent
admirers; but the good his writings did me, was not as philosophy
to instruct, but as poetry to animate. Even at the time when out
acquaintance commenced, I was not sufficiently advanced in my new
modes of thought, to appreciate him fully; a proof of which is,
that on his showing me the manuscript of Sartor Resartus, his
best and greatest work, which he had just then finished, I made
little of it; though when it came out about two years afterwards
in Fraser's Magazine I read it with enthusiastic admiration and
the keenest delight. I did not seek and cultivate Carlyle less on
account of the fundamental differences in our philosophy. He soon
found out that I was not "another mystic," and when for the sake
of my own integrity I wrote to him a distinct profession of all
those of my opinions which I knew he most disliked, he replied
that the chief difference between us was that I "was as yet
consciously nothing of a mystic." I do not know at what period he
gave up the expectation that I was destined to become one; but
though both his and my opinions underwent in subsequent years
considerable changes, we never approached much nearer to each
other's modes of thought than we were in the first years of our
acquaintance. I did not, however, deem myself a competent judge
of Carlyle. I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not; that
he was a man of intuition, which I was not; and that as such, he
not only saw many things long before me, which I could only when
they were pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it
was highly probable he could see many things which were not
visible to me even after they were pointed out. I knew that I
could not see round him, and could never be certain that I saw
over him; and I never presumed to judge him with any
definiteness, until he was interpreted to me by one greatly the
superior of us both -- who was more a poet than he, and more a
thinker than I -- whose own mind and nature included his, and
infinitely more.
(¶5.25)
Among the persons of intellect whom I had known of old, the
one with whom I had now most points of agreement was the elder
Austin. I have mentioned that he always set himself in opposition
to our early sectarianism; and latterly he had, like myself, come
under new influences. Having been appointed Professor of
Jurisprudence in the London University (now University College),
he had lived for some time at Bonn to study for his Lectures; and
the influences of German literature and of the German character
and state of society had made a very perceptible change in his
views of life. His personal disposition was much softened ; he was less
militant and polemic; his tastes had begun to turn
themselves towards the poetic and contemplative. He attached much
less importance than formerly to outward changes; unless
accompanied by a better cultivation of the inward nature. He had
a strong distaste for the general meanness of English life, the
absence of enlarged thoughts and unselfish desires, the low
objects on which the faculties of all classes of the English are
intent. Even the kind of public interests which Englishmen care
for, he held in very little esteem. He thought that there was
more practical good government, and (which is true enough)
infinitely more care for the education and mental improvement of
all ranks of the people, under the Prussian monarchy, than under
the English representative government: and he held, with the
French Economistes, that the real security for good government is
"un peuple éclairé," which is not always the fruit of popular
institutions, and which if it could be had without them, would do
their work better than they. Though he approved of the Reform
Bill, he predicted, what in fact occurred, that it would not
produce the great immediate improvements in government, which
many expected from it. The men, he said, who could do these great
things, did not exist in the country. There were many points of
sympathy between him and me, both in the new opinions he had
adopted and in the old ones which he retained. Like me, he never
ceased to be an utilitarian, and with all his love of the
Germans, and enjoyment of their literature, never became in the
smallest degree reconciled to the innate-principle metaphysics.
He cultivated more and more a kind of German religion, a religion
of poetry and feeling with little, if anything, of positive
dogma; while, in politics (and here it was that I most differed
with him) he acquired an indifference, bordering on contempt, for
the progress of popular institutions: though he rejoiced in that
of Socialism, as the most effectual means of compelling the
powerful classes to educate the people, and to impress on them
the only real means of permanently improving their material
condition, a limitation of their numbers. Neither was he, at this
time, fundamentally opposed to Socialism in itself as an ultimate
result of improvement. He professed great disrespect for what he
called "the universal principles of human nature of the political
economists," and insisted on the evidence which history and daily
experience afford of the "extraordinary pliability of human
nature" (a phrase which I have somewhere borrowed from him), nor
did he think it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral
capabilities which might unfold themselves in mankind, under an
enlightened direction of social and educational influences.
Whether he retained all these opinions to the end of life I know
not. Certainly the modes of thinking of his later years, and
especially of his last publication, were much more Tory in their
general character than those which he held at this time.
(¶5.26)
My father's tone of thought and feeling, I now felt myself at
a great distance from: greater, indeed, than a full and calm
explanation and reconsideration on both sides, might have shown
to exist in reality. But my father was not one with whom calm and
full explanations on fundamental points of doctrine could be
expected, at least with one whom he might consider as, in some
sort, a deserter from his standard. Fortunately we were almost
always in strong agreement on the political questions of the day
which engrossed a large part of his interest and of his
conversation. On those matters of opinion on which we differed,
we talked little. He knew that the habit of thinking for myself,
which his mode of education had fostered, sometimes led me to
opinions different from his, and he perceived from time to time
that I did not always tell him how different. I expected no good,
but only pain to both of us, from discussing our differences: and
I never expressed them but when he gave utterance to some opinion
of feeling repugnant to mine, in a manner which would have made
it disingenuousness on my part to remain silent.
(¶5.27)
It remains to speak of what I wrote during these years,
which, independently of my contributions to newspapers, was
considerable. In 1830 and 1831 I wrote the five Essays since
published under the title of "Essays on some Unsettled Questions
of Political Economy," almost as they now stand, except that in
1833 I partially rewrote the fifth Essay. They were written with
no immediate purpose of publication; and when, some years later,
I offered them to a publisher, he declined them. They were only
printed in 1844, after the success of the "System of Logic." I
also resumed my speculations on this last subject, and puzzled
myself, like others before me, with the great paradox of the
discovery of new truths by general reasoning. As to the fact,
there could be no doubt. As little could it be doubted, that all
reasoning is resolvable into syllogisms, and that in every
syllogism the conclusion is actually contained and implied in the
premises. How, being so contained and implied, it could be new
truth, and how the theorems of geometry, so different in
appearance from the definitions and axioms, could be all
contained in these, was a difficulty which no one, I thought, had
sufficiently felt, and which, at all events, no one had succeeded
in clearing up. The explanations offered by Whately and others,
though they might give a temporary satisfaction, always, in my
mind, left a mist still hanging over the subject. At last, when
reading a second or third time the chapters on Reasoning in the
second volume of Dugald Stewart, interrogating myself on every
point, and following out, as far as I knew how, every topic of
thought which the book suggested, I came upon an idea of his
respecting the use of axioms in ratiocination, which I did not
remember to have before noticed, but which now, in meditating on
it, seemed to me not only true of axioms, but of all general
propositions whatever, and to be the key of the whole perplexity.
From this germ grew the theory of the Syllogism propounded in the
Second Book of the Logic; which I immediately fixed by writing it
out. And now, with greatly increased hope of being able to
produce a work on Logic, of some originality and value, I
proceeded to write the First Book, from the rough and imperfect
draft I had already made. What I now wrote became the basis of
that part of the subsequent Treatise; except that it did not
contain the Theory of Kinds, which was a later addition,
suggested by otherwise inextricable difficulties which met me in
my first attempt to work out the subject of some of the
concluding chapters of the Third Book. At the point which I had
now reached I made a halt, which lasted five years. I had come to
the end of my tether; I could make nothing satisfactory of
Induction, at this time. I continued to read any book which
seemed to promise light on the subject, and appropriated, as well
as I could, the results; but for a long time I found nothing
which seemed to open to me any very important vein of meditation.
(¶5.28)
In 1832 I wrote several papers for the first series of Tait's
Magazine, and one for a quarterly periodical called the Jurist,
which had been founded, and for a short time carried on, by a set
of friends, all lawyers and law reformers, with several of whom I
was acquainted. The paper in question is the one on the rights
and duties of the State respecting Corporation and Church
Property, now standing first among the collected "Dissertations
and Discussions;" where one of my articles in Tait, "The Currency
Juggle," also appears. In the whole mass of what I wrote previous
to these, there is nothing of sufficient permanent value to
justify reprinting. The paper in the Jurist, which I still think
a very complete discussion of the rights of the State over
Foundations, showed both sides of my opinions, asserting as
firmly as I should have done at any time, the doctrine that all
endowments are national property, which the government may and
ought to control; but not, as I should once have done, condemning
endowments in themselves, and proposing that they should be taken
to pay off the national debt. On the contrary, I urged
strenuously the importance of having a provision for education,
not dependent on the mere demand of the market, that is, on the
knowledge and discernment of average parents, but calculated to
establish and keep up a higher standard of instruction than is
likely to be spontaneously demanded by the buyers of the article.
All these opinions have been confirmed and strengthened by the
whole course of my subsequent reflections.