On Compromise

r conclusions in strict reserve; the other of the illiterate or unreflecting, who should have certain opinions and practices taught them, not because they are true or are really what their votar

Law to the heathen. But then we do so with a view to justifying ourselves for leaving the Jew to remain a Jew, and the heathen to remain heathen. We imitate the same apostle in accepting old time-worn altars dedicated to the Unknown God. We forget that he made the ancient symbol the starting-point of a revolutionised doctrine. There is, as anybody can see, a whole world of difference between the reserve of sagacious apostleship, on the one hand, dealing tenderly with scruple and tearfulness and fine sensibility of conscience, and the reserve of intellectual cowardice on the other hand, dealing hypocritically with narrow minds in the supposed interests o

ings in a more practical manner than would find favour with the sentimental champions of compromise in nearer times. There is a well-known letter of Hume's, in which he recommends a young man to become a clergyman, on the ground t

man] that the Pythian oracle with the approbation of Xenophon advised every one to worship the gods-[Greek: nhom? phole?s]. I wish it were still in my power to be a hypocrite in this particular. The common d

the chance of making something out of the Earl of Bute. This side of such dissimulation is shocking enough. And it is not any more shocking to the most devout believer than it is to people who doubt whether there be any Holy Ghost or not. Those who no longer place their highest faith in powers above and beyond men, are for that very reason more deeply interested than others in cherishing the integrity and worthiness of man himself. Apart, however, from the immorality of such reasoned hypocrisy, which no man with a particle of honesty will attempt to blink, there is the intellectual improbity which it brings in its train, the infidelity to truth, the disloyalty to one's own intelligence. Gifts of understanding are numbed and enfeebled in a man, who has once played such a trick with his own conscience as to persuade himself that, because the vulgar are superstitious, it is right for the learned to earn money by t

field itself, where the superior understanding happens to have been unequally yoked with a self-seeking character, over scenting the expedient? If Hume had been in the early productive part of his life the hypocrite which he wished it were in his power to show himself in its latter part, we may be tolerably sure that European philosophy would have missed one of its foremost figures. It has be

pelled, week after week, and year after year, to recite the symbols of ancient faith and lift up his voice in the echoes of old hopes, with the blighting thought in his soul that the faith is a lie, and the hope no more than the folly of the crowd; to read hundreds of times in a twelvemonth with solemn unction as the inspired word of the Supreme what to him are meaningless as the Abracadabras of the conjuror in a booth; to go on to the end of his days administering to simpl

that follows the trucking for money of intellectual freedom and self-respect, attends in its degree each other departure from disinterested following of truth, and each other substitution of convenience, whether public or private, in its place. And both parties to such a compromise are losers. The world which offers gifts and tacitly undertakes to ask no questions as to the real state of the timeserver's inner mind,

. Finally, pusillanimity or want of faith is the vice that belongs to unlawful compromise in the department of action and realisation. This is not merely a division arranged for convenience of discussion. It goes to the root of conduct and character, and is the key to the present mood of our society. It is always a hardy thing to attempt to throw a complex matter into very simple form, but we should say that the want of energy and definiteness in contemporary opinions, of which we first complained, is due mainly to the following notion; that if a subject is not ripe for practical treatment, you and I are therefore entirely relieved from the duty of having clear ideas about it. If the majority cling to an opinion, why should we ask whether that is the sound and right opinion or the reverse? Now this notion, which springs from a confusion of the three fields of compromise with one anot

its to make up his mind whether a given measure, say the disestablishment of the Irish Church, is in itself and on the merits desirable, until the official who runs diligently up and down the backstairs of the party, tells him that the measure is practicable and required in the interests of the band. On the one hand, a leader is lavishly panegyrised for his highmindedness, in suffering himself to be driven into his convictions by his party. On the other, a party is extolled for its political tact, in suffering itself to be forced out of its convictions by its leader. It

n talking about proposals which are not exactly ready to be voted on. As it is, everybody knows that questions are inadequately discussed, or often not discussed at all, on the ground that the time is not yet come for their solution. Then when some unforeseen perturbation, or the natural course of things, forces on the time for their resolution, they are settled in a slovenly, imperfect, and often downright vicious manner, from the fact that opinion has not been prepared for solving them in an efficient and perfect manner. The so-called settlement of the question of national education is the most recent and most deplorable illustration of what comes of refusing to examine ideas alleged to be impracticable. Perhaps we may venture to prophesy that the disendowment of the national church will sup

es. Truth and wisdom have to bide their time, and then take their chance after all. The most that the individual can do is to seek them for himself, even if he seek alone. And if it is the most, it is also the least. Yet in our present mood we seem not to feel this. We misunderstand the considerations which should rightly lead us in practice to surrender some of what we desire, in order to secure the rest; and rightly make us acquiesce in a second-best course of action, in order to avoid stagnation or retrogression. We misunderstand all this, and go on to suppose that there are the s

on of the experience of civilised societies, or else on nothing more creditable than an arbitrary and unreflecting temper. Those who have thought most carefully and disinterestedly about the matter, are agreed that in advanced societies the expedient course is that no portion of the community should insist on imposing its own will upon any other portion, except in matters which are vitally connected with the maintenance of the social union. The question where this vital connection begins is open to much discussion. The line defining the sphere of legitimate interference may be drawn variousl

this rests on a different footing. Here the reasons for respecting the wishes and sentiments of the majority are far less strong, though, as we shall presently see, such reasons certainly exist, and will weigh with all well-considering men. Finally, in the formation of an opinion as to the abstract preferableness of one course of action over another, or as to the truth or falsehood or right significance of a proposition, the fact that the majority of one's contemporaries lean in the other direction is naught

ough military phases and through religious phases, but they have been transitory, and the great central stream of national life has flowed in political channels. The political life has been stronger than any other, deeper, wider, more persistent, more successful. The wars which built up our far-spreading empire were not waged with designs of military conquest; they were mostly wars for a

hey remain a majority. This has come to pass for the simple reason that, on any other terms, the participation of large numbers of people in the control and arrangement of public affairs immediately becomes unworkable. The gradual concentration of power in the hands of a supreme deliberative body, the active share of so many thousands of persons in choosing and controlling its members, the close attention with which the p

se who have most to do with the spiritual direction of a community. No doubt the tone of a long-enduring and imperial society, such as Rome was, must be conservative, drastic, positive, hostile to the death to every speculative novelty. But then, after all, the permanence of Roman power was only valuable to mankind because it ensured the spread of certain civilising ideas. And these ideas had originated among people so characteristically devoid of the sovereign faculty of political coherency as were the Greeks and the Jews. In the Greeks, it is true, we find not only ideas of the highest speculative fertility, but actual political institutions. Still we should hardly point to Greek history for the most favourable examples of their stable working. Practically and as a matter of history, a socie

ated by it can take a real interest. All matters fall out of sight, or at least fall into a secondary place, which do not bear more or less directly and patently upon the material and structural welfare of the community. In this way the members of the community miss the most bracing, widening, and elevated of the whole range of influences that create great characters. First, they lose sincere concern about the larger questions which the human mind has raised up for itself. Sec

, if they applied themselves seriously to the formation of true opinions in this or that department, they would come to conclusions which, though likely to make their way in the course of some centuries, are wholly unpopular now, and which might ruin the influence of anybody suspected of accepting, or even of so much as leaning towards, them. Life, they reflect, is short; missionaries do not pass for a very agreeable class, nor mart

place among them as preacher or teacher, he is willing to forego his birthright of free explanation; he consents to be blind to the duty which attaches to every intelligent man of having some clear ideas, even though only provisional ones, upon the greatest subjects of human interest, and of deliberately preferring these, whatever they may be, to their opposites. Either an individual or a community is fatally dwarfed by any such limitation of the field in which one is free to use his mind. For it is a limitation, not prescribed by absorption in

what quarter in the large historic firmament can we turn our eyes with such certainty of being stirred and elevated, of thinking better of human life and the worth of those who have been most deeply penetrated by its seriousness, as to the annals of the intrepid spirits whom the protestant doctrine of indefeasible personal responsibility brought to the front in Germany in the sixteenth century, and in England an

y the oestrus of intellectual responsibility. Their doctrine was dismally insufficient, and sometimes, as the present writer has often pointed out, it was directly vicious. Their daily lives were surrounded by much shabbiness and many meannesses. But, after all, no temptation and no menace, no pains or penalties for thinking about certain subjects, and no rewards for turning to think about something else, could divert such men as Voltaire and Diderot from their alert and strenuous

And it is needful to distinguish the fervid and strong spirits with whom the revival began from the mimics of our later day. No doubt the mere occasion of tractarianism was political. Its leaders were alarmed at the designs imputed to the newly reformed parliament of disestablishing the Anglican Church. They asked themselves the question, which I will put in their own words (Tract i.)-'Should the government of the country so far forget their God as to cut off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claims to respect and attention which you make upon y

sibility of tradition and the Church. This was deplorable enough. But apart from other advantages incidental to the tractarian movement, such as the attention which it was the means of drawing to history and the organic connection between present and past, it had, we repeat, the merit of being an effective protest against what may be called the House of Commons' view of human life-a view excellent in its place, but most blighting and dwarfing out of it. It was, what every sincere uprising of the better spirit in men and women must always be, an effective protest against the leaden tyranny of the man of the world and the so-called practical person. The man of the world despises catholics for taking thei

which are, after all, on these conditions so very likely to come to naught? The answer to this is that opinions do not come to naught, even if the man who holds them should never think fit to publish them. For one thing, as we shall see in our next division, the conditions which make against frank declaration of our convictions are of rare occurrence. And, apart from this, convictions may well exert a most decisive influence over our conduct, even if reasons exist, or seem to exist, for not pressing them on others. Though themselves invisible to the outer world, they may yet operate with magnetic force both upon other parts of our belief which the oute

ant questions, whether social or spiritual, augments dignity while it does not lessen humility. In this sense, taking thought can and does add a cubit to our stature. Opinions which we may not feel bound or even permitted to press on other people, are not the less forces for being latent. They shape ideals, and it is ideals that inspire conduct. They do this, though from afar, and though he who possesses them may not presume to take the world into his confidence. Finally, unless a man follows out ideas to their full conclusion without fear what the conclusion may be, whether he thinks it expedient to make his thought and its goal fully known or not, it is impossible that he should acquire a comm

n theory of government or society is so misled by a wrong understanding of the practice of just and wise compromise in applying it, as to forget the noblest and most inspiring shape which his theory can be made to assume. It is the worst of political blunders to insist on carrying an ideal set of principles into execution, where others have rights of dissent,

orated member of the former: that conscience, if perversely and misguidedly self-asserting, has no rights against the decrees of the conscience of the nation: that it is the most detestable of crimes to perturb the pacific order of society either by active agitation or speculative restlessness; that descent from a long line of ancestors in great station adds an element of dignity to life, and imposes many high obligations. We do not say that these and the rest of the propositions which make up the true theoretic basis

selfish and anti-social, because amid the ceaseless change that is inevitable in a growing organism, the institutions of the past demand progressive re-adaptations: that such improvements are most likely to be secured in the greatest abundance by limiting the sphere of authority, extending that of free individuality, and steadily striving after the bestowal, so far as the nature of things will ever permit it, of equality of opportunity: that while there is dignity in ancestry, a modern society is only safe in proportion as it summons capacity to its public counsels and enterprises; that such a society to endure must progress: that progress on its political side means more than anything else the substitution of Justice as a governing idea, instead of Privilege, and that the best guarantee for justice in public dealings is the participation in their own government of the people most likely to suffer from injustice. This is not an exhaustive account of the progressive doctrine, and we have here nothing to say as to its soundness. We only submit tha

e solutions, suggested questions, and proffered answers. But then they are at large, without cohesion, and very apt to be the objects even in the more instructed minds of not much more than dilettante interest. We see in solution an immense number of notions, which people think it quite unnecessary to precipitate in the form of convictions. We constantly hear the age lauded for its tolerance, for its candour, for its openness of mind, for the readiness with which a hearing is

e are the questions which they really have in their minds. Now, in spite of the scientific activity of the day, nobody is likely to contend that men are pressed keenly in their souls by any poignant stress of spiritual tribulation in the face of the two supreme enigmas. Nobody will say that there is much of that striving and wrestling and bitter agonising, which whole societies of men have felt before now on questions of far less tremendous import. Ours, as has been truly said, is 'a time of loud disputes and weak convictions,' In a generation deeply impressed by a sense of intellectual responsibility this could not be. As it is, even superior men are better pleased to play about the height of these great arguments, to fly in busy intellectual sport from side to side,

ake a step with sense and judgment, without regulating it in view of this point, which ought to be our first object.... I can have nothing but compassion for those who groan and travail in this doubt with all sincerity, who look on it as the worst of misfortunes, and who, sparing no pains to escape from it, make of this search their chief and most serious employment.... But he who doubts and searches not is at the same time a grievous wrongdoer, and

t the more ignoble and frivolous kind. And this too has been described for us by a subtle doctor of Pascal's communion. 'Are there pleasures of Doubt, as well as of Inference and Assent? In one sense there are. Not indeed if doubt means ignorance, uncertainty, or hopeless suspense; but there is a certain grave acquiescence in ignorance, a recognition of our impotence to solve momentous and urgent questions, which has a satisfaction of its own. After high aspirations, after renewed endeavours, after bootless toil, after long wanderings, after hope, effort, weariness, failure, painfully alternating and recurr

elcome shores. These persons, however, whether fortunately or unfortunately, have no longer much influence over the most active part of the national intelligence. Whether permanently or not, resolute orthodoxy, however prosperous it may seem among many of the uncultivated rich, has lost its hold upon thought. For thought has become dispersive, and the centrifugal forces of the human mind, among those who

ecisively followed and consistently applied in framing a rule of life and a settled scheme of its aims and motives. Why do we say that intellectual self-respect is not vigorous, nor the sense of intellectual responsibility and truthfulness and coherency quick and wakeful among us? Because so many people, even among those who might be expected to know better, insist on the futile attempt to reconcile all those courses, instead of fixing on one and steadily abiding in it. They speak as if they affirmed, and they act as if they denied, and in their h

countenance to the intellectual habits, which alone can check and rectify the constantly aberrating tendencies of sentiment on the one side, and custom on the other. This remark brings us to another type, of whom it is not irrelevant to speak shortly in this place. The consequences of the strength of the political spirit are not all direct, nor does its strength by any means spring solely from its indulgence to the less respectable elements of character, such as languor, extreme pliableness, superficiality. On the contrary, it has an

r real opinions, or the chance of reaching truth, for the sake of gain, there are far more who shrink from giving their intelligence free play, for the sake of keeping undisturbed certain luxurious spiritual sensibilities. This choice of emotional gratification before truth and upright dealing with one's own understanding, creates a char

he says, 'is the worship of the heart. God never rejects this homage, under whatever form it be offered to him. In old days I used to say mass with the levity which in time infects even the gravest things when we do them too often. Since acquiring my new principles [of reverential scepticism] I celebrate it with more veneration: I am overcome by the majesty of the Supreme Being, by his pres

r reality. Such a doctrine is an everyday plea for self-deception, and a current justification for illusion even among some of the finer spirits. They have persuaded themselves not only that the life of the religious emotions is the highest life, b

ces the human family, being now grown up, no longer requires,-however this may be, it is at least certain that in the meantime the spiritual life of man needs direction quite as much as it needs impulse, and light quite as much as force. This direction and light can only be safely procured by the free and vigorous use of the intelligence. But the intelligence is not free in the presence of a mortal fear lest its conclusions should trouble soft tranquillity of spirit. There is always hope of a man so long as he dwells in the region of the direct categorical proposition and the unambiguous term; so long as he does not deny the rightly drawn conclusion after accepting the major and minor premisses. This may seem a scanty virtue and very easy grace. Yet experience shows it to be too hard of attainment for those who tamper with disinterestedness of conviction, for the sake of luxuriating in the softness of spiritual transport without interruption from a syllogism.

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