work, and in imagination see the fairer ideal hanging over them, as it were, radiant in the clear blue of heaven. They may also derive inspiration and energy in their toil, from the contemplation of culture as yet unreached, but not despaired of. Looked upon as a possibility of the future, it tends to elevate present labour, to ennoble what would otherwise be drudgery, and to redeem the meanest terrestrial work from degradation. the limits of inevitable fate. It is the recognition of the ideal, we might almost say its worship, that is the grand condition of progress and of expansion in this life; and by analogy we infer that it is also the condition of our growth hereafter. Now, it is said by some, we postpone our culture in this world, because there are gigantic practical evils around us; we need to meet and counteract these evils, thinking of other things than of self-improvement. There will be leisure for that in another world." Three results seem to follow from the We answer by a question: "What, on admission of what we have advanced. One this principle, becomes of the law of habit? of these is a large-minded Catholicity. This Does not that law act with such inexorable arises directly and inevitably. No man may force, that the man who neglects the pres- scorn another's pathway to perfection, howent culture of powers, which he might have ever different from his own, if it be really nourished into strength, will find "that from a path towards that goal. As the original him who hath not, shall there be taken away balance of the powers is different in each even that which he hath "? Experience man's life, so the course of his culture must shows how difficult and rare it is for those vary; the order in which his powers awake who have passed a certain period of life to action will vary, and the harmony that without becoming, for example, catholic in results will vary also. As every class in sympathy, ever to attain to true catholicity. society has something to gain from contact As there is a tide in the beliefs of men with every other class, as from each stratum which, taken at the flood, leads on to faith, in the great social fabric sympathetic moveso there is a tide among their sympathies ments may pass and repass endlessly, so which, taken at the flood, leads on to cul- the most cultivated man in one department ture; omitted, all the voyage of the life may learn how best to advance, by studymay be among quicksands, and may end ing the course which other men are pursuin confusion and wreck. The law of intel- ing; and all may learn how richly varied lectual and moral habit operates with irre- a treasure-house our human nature is, how sistible force on human nature as at present manifold are the pathways of its progress, constituted; and we ask on what principle and how endless are the lights of knowledge it can cease to operate, or be superseded, which all guide to one end. One of the while human nature survives in its integ- most direct and evident inferences from the rity? On what grounds should a man who varieties of human nature and the possibili voluntarily cuts himself off from ennobling ties of human progress, is the value of an culture now, expect not to suffer for it by eclectic spirit, and of sympathies that are being proportionally incomplete hereafter? truly and inexhaustibly catholic. He will doubtless be greater than his fellows in the special sphere he has entered, and in which he has, it may be at much personal cost and sacrifice, chosen to remain. But on that very account the rest of his nature will suffer loss. His mere intensity in the special line in which he has laboured, however high, religious, or sacrificial it may have been,-though it may compensate to his own mind for lack of sympathy in other directions,-will never give rise to these sympathies in a future state. He must recognise and pursue the ideal now, or he must reckon upon inevitable one-sidedness hereafter. We do not forget, as we have said, that a vast number of men must be contented to go on in the tread-mill round of industrial production. They are doomed to toil at a handicraft, or to concentrate their powers on the mechanical processes of trade. Yet they may lift their eyes from the fixed routine of daily A second result of the recognition of the ideal, as we have defined it, is, that selfsatisfaction, indolent conceit of attainment (that worst foe of progress), becomes impossible. Every one who feels that a perfect ideal overhangs his actual performances will retain a sense of insufficiency. Ever craving a deeper insight and a larger wis dom, ever aspiring towards new attainments, and on the outlook for fresh knowledge from every quarter, he will show a proportionate humility and candour towards new truth. No conclusion that has been reached as the result of honest search by other men will be despised, and none that he has gained will be dogmatically assumed to be final. There may be confidence in what has been reached, in alliance with that grander Socratic feeling," All that I know is that I know nothing." We may have learned that "best of all philosophical les sons, we know in part," without ignoring the value and the validity of what we know. We may repose in the light we have, while we seek its increase, and sensitively shrink from that intellectual vanity, which deems its little light the centre of all truth and knowledge. Thus culture, while diffusing intellectual calm, always induces a slight intellectual restlessness. As it is a movement towards a result which can never be wholly reached -a constant process of becoming, of which the issues are most dimly seen,-the very stimulus it receives from the unattained breeds humility in the pursuer. In proportion to its manifoldness, and to the number of forces that co-operate to produce it, with the unforeseen issues that arise out of it, there is a loss of intellectual serenity, and therefore of the self-satisfaction which accompanies a clearly defined mental horizon. Self-complacency is impossible to one the possibilities of whose nature are infinite. The pride of attainment, however frequently it exists, is philosophically inadmissible in one who recognises the doctrine we now teach. Another result of equal value is that the harmonies in search of which some of the ablest minds have toiled so earnestly,-harmonies between reason and faith, between the spheres of knowledge and of feeling, between science and religion, emerge naturally, and without a struggle. If we recognise the fact that all our human powers are in their own place lights and guides, that all co-operate to one end (inasmuch as human nature is a unity),—and that our perfection consists in the harmony of all and the suppression of none, then the very possibility of a collision between faith and reason is prevented. If we have a faculty of reason, and also an instinct of trust which outsoars the methods of the reason, and which carries us into regions where the understanding does not follow, except to put into shape and form the conclusions which that instinct reaches, -there can be no final antagonism between such portions of our nature. Every faculty or instinct leaves scope for the simultaneous action of every other tendency. Moreover, it is evident that in no inquiry can we employ only one portion of our complex nature; least of all, when our study is directed to a revelation which addresses the whole nature. We may not at one stage of our inquiry make use of reason alone, and at another fall back on faith exclusively; any more than we may propose to solve all the problems touching the history of the human soul by rational analysis alone; or to elaborate the canons of criticism by a succession of acts of faith, or by the mere juxtaposition of sentences, wrenched from their context, and taken at random from a long series of historical books. But equally, at all times, and in every inquiry, we find we must combine the action of our several powers, so far as that is possible, and exert the entire force of our being. The isolation of one portion of our nature from the rest produces immediate disease, while the dismemberment of our nature would be its death. Thus, to arrest by some intellectual ligature the free circulation of the moral life, or the spontaneous action of the heart in its uprise towards God, would be as great an evil in the interest of Philosophy, as to cramp by some religious fetter the keen sweep of our rational faculty would be a mistake in the interest of Religion. To be the partisan of the higher portion of our nature is as foolish a procedure, as to be the hired and biassed advocate of the lower; and all such exclusiveness brings with it, soon or late, the penalty of anarchy within, a tumult of the powers more or less conscious. It has the brand of imperfection stamped upon it at the first, but in addition it works to its own destruction. Thus the command to give unto reason the things which are reason's, and unto faith the things which are faith's, is anticipated as we study our human nature with a view to the harmony of a perfect life. We are conscious of the faculty of reason, and of the instinct of faith. We are compelled to honour both. We find we have not to stint our reason in deference to faith, or to withhold our faith when reason is dumb, but that both, acting simultaneously, work in concord, and to a common end. But the question may still be put, Can any one realize this fair ideal? It is easy to issue the abstract precept, "Be perfect," cultivate your nature till it is perfect. Can any one approach even to within distant range of that perfection? Has not the pursuit been always destined to disappointment, and does not the heavenly precept, when tested by actual practice, seem issued in a sublime irony to man? as most of the answers to our philosophical problems seem little more than the echoes of the questions proposed; or, as Carlyle says of Hope, "What is Hope? a smiling rainbow, Is not the same true of this Ideal, held up, like the cup of Tantalus, before human lips? Are there not gigantic obstacles in the way of its realization, inevitable bias, incurable one-sidedness, faults of mental balance irremovable by culture? Nay, is it not better that the imperfections of the individual should last, and the race, composed of many individuals, attain to that which no one man can reach ? And is it not true that in proportion to the eagerness with which any one aspires after this allsidedness, he falls short in details, that he loses the perfection of the parts, in aiming at the perfection of the whole? Does not universal culture lose in intensity what it gains in breadth, and while it widens the horizon of the mind, enervate and dim its sight? Finally, may not the cultured contemplation of many sides of a problemespecially if it concerns human duty-relax the sinews of moral effort, emasculate the man, and result in dilettantism? strength of one faculty implies the weakness of another. But we may remember that in one historic Life all the diverse tendencies of human nature were brought into perfect focus, and held in divine repose, and that in that unique Ideal Life we find the harmony of opposite or usually antithetic powers. The realization of the ideal in that "Life which is the light of men," is a historical witness to the fact that it is within the limits of the attainable, and a ground of hope for man. We do not forget that the Divine was inwrought within that Nature as it is not within ours. None the less is that Life the pattern for humanity. The very law of the Christian life is the reproduction of the image that was in Christ. If we add to it the prospects of a state of being in which humanity may expand on all sides beyond It must be admitted that such objections the boundaries which now hem it in, the are not to be lightly dismissed. It is true precept which ordains perfection becomes that no man has ever attained to the abso- intelligible. If we superadd to the present lute ideal; but that is only saying, in other in which we both know, feel, and act in part, words, that all are incomplete, that no one that future in which we shall know as we has exhibited the perfect harmony of a per- are known, and feel and act with unimpeded fect life. It is also true, as we have already powers, we may see how our approach stated, that the perfection of human achieve- toward the ideal may then be incalculably ment is only possible through a division of quickened. Let us admit that no man is labour, and that in proportion to the excel-able in this life to reach that ideal harmony lence to which a man attains in one depart-to which the laws of culture point, none the ment is his inevitable deficiency in another. less is that the end of his existence; and he With the individual and with the nation may start on his sublime journey ever ap alike, the flow of the tide on one shore in- proaching nearer to that which he can never volves its ebb from another, the rise of the wholly reach. While he lives on this pendulum on one are implies that it has planet he is surrounded by most imperfect descended the other. And it is a problem educational influences. He inherits a cerwhether this oscillation will ever end, wheth- tain bias from his ancestors. He carries it er one nation can ever unite in its national in his blood, and develops it in many forms. life, as at a common focus, the grander char- He acquires another bias towards special acteristics of all its predecessors, just as it lines of thought and feeling and action. He is a question whether an individual will ever contracts it by contagion in subtlest ways arise with an individuality so great as to be from all with whom he associates. Certain absolutely cosmopolitan, and who will there- prejudices, sympathies, and antipathies are fore comprehend the scattered excellencies inextricably bound up with the very con of his fellows blent in harmonious union. stitution of his nature, while hindrances lie It is not likely, though we cannot say it is across his path in the very realms of culture impossible. The analogy of the past is into which he enters. In part, man shapes against it, but the possibilities of the future his own ideal. Humanity shapes for him embrace it. It may be, however, that in the other part. The best that he can therethe future, as in the past, the man of thought fore hope to reach is an approximation to will be lamed for action by the very fact that which for ever eludes his grasp. He that he is widened for contemplation, and even ascends to heights which he finds he is that the man of practice will be narrowed incompetent to keep. He breathes for a in thought by the very fact that he is ani- time a serener and less troubled air, and is mated in action. The temperaments men blessed by some gleaming prospect from the inherit may condition the types of charac-mountain summit; but he must soon de ter and culture which they realize; and it may be as impossible for the individual to choose his own type, or to regulate it when chosen, as it is for him to alter the form of his countenance or to add a cubit to his stature. It may be that in some natures the scend again to the more prosaic valley, per haps to toil in some vineyard in the heat of the day. The very definition of his chief end is, as we have said, a constant process of becoming, rather than an act of realization. It is a movement, now swift and now tardy, as his culture rises. Always about to be, it ture towards a goal which ever shifts and recedes | from the first dawn of intelligent life, we find that long before we reach a time at which we must decide what track we shall mainly pursue, it is already marked out for us by the working of these instincts themselves. That we may often begin and continue to educate ourselves amiss, we must accept as more or less inevitable. We may end with being to some extent unsymmetrical, because we began with an unconscious mental twist which we inherited. But it is the function of culture to rectify the bias, to redress the inequality, and to readjust the balance of the powers, so far as that is possible. One thing no man is at liberty to do, to yield hopelessly to the difficulties of his position, and acquiesce in his inevitable fate to remain the victim of a bias. We magnify the virtue of the chase, even though the pursuit is not always rewarded with immediate success. It is the condition of future attainment, and is nobler even without the attainment, than is the attainment without the chase. He who gives up the pursuit not only succumbs ignobly to defeat, but that defeat becomes more real and appalling as he continues to succumb. His eye, that once discerned it, now becomes blind to the real destination of man and the grand end of his existence; and he becomes perhaps the slave of some profession or trade or handicraft, solacing himself, after the ignominy seems past, by the more obvious practical utilities of this life. If space allowed, it would be easy to show in detail how fatal to the highest life of the individual is this despair of culture, and of how little worth is any material benefit he may confer upon his fellows if his own life has withered, and its growth been arrested at the root. Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." There is a wide difference between the preceding doctrine and the manifold special schemes which have been devised and submitted to men for the rectification of human life. The laws of culture are briefly summed up in this, "Let your whole nature expand to the very uttermost of which it is capable, in every possible direction, that it may grow into a perfect structure, compacted by that which every joint supplieth." It prescribes no rules. It is utterly catholic, cosmopolitan, and inexhaustible; yet it is precise, defined, and clear. It bids us "forget what is behind, and reach out to what is before us," nevertheless whereunto we have already attained," it bids us "walk by the same rule, and mind the same thing." Now, in contrast to this severe simplicity, we may have noted-perhaps with surprise-that many of the sages who have taught wisdom to past centuries point to one special end, the attainment of "broaden slowly down which would lead mankind, they say, to blessedness. Sanguine that they had discovered some scheme by which to rectify the disorganization of man's life, they have assumed the office of guides, and have said to others, "Follow us; act thus, and you will be blessed; take this road, and you will reach the shrine." Let us select any one of those schemes devised and lauded as a cure for the varied ills under which humanity labours; suppose it in full operation, and achieving those results which the most sanguine of its teachers could desire, would the result be really a perfect human state, or one approximately perfect? Would there be an approach to the ideal of human nature? We venture to affirm that even the most ardent and enthusiastic man who had sung the praises of his special scheme, would, in the gradual working out of his idea, pause, and wish that some new expedient might be added to it. He would find that as men gradually adopted his suggestion, it appealed but to a part of their nature, and while it might quicken that part, it could not stand alone that its isolation was its weakness. He would speedily desire to supplement or underprop his scheme by sundry new devices of larger import; and whether he did so or not, humanity would soon overstep the limits prescribed to it by its self-constituted teacher. It would either quietly or tumultuously break down the barrier, and advance on its many-sided career to a destiny beyond its own calculation to foresee. It is for this reason that systems of Philosophy are endlessly changing, that new schools of Poetry and Art rise and fall again. It is for the same reason that History is re-written by new annalists, who study the fossil remains of humanity from fresh points of view; and that Science marches ever forward with unimpeded feet on the pathways of discovery. We might add that, indirectly, it is for the same reason that social and political schemes are perpetually oscillating, and that commerce finds endless outlets for its energy. The great tidal waves of human thought, feeling, and action sweep onwards with the revolution of the ages, and a different deposit is each time cast forth upon the shore, to become the successive strata, each with its own record of past life, which some future interpreter may decipher and reveal. In the light of what has now been advanced, we may be able to estimate the value of Mr. Arnold's teaching on the subject of culture. There are two tendencies which stand somewhat sharply contrasted in human nature (but which are not so distinctly opposed as Mr. Arnold asserts)-that, viz., which goes forth towards thought and contempla tion, and that which tends to work and action, To these two tendencies Mr. Arnold has given the names-open themselves to criticism-of Hellenism and Hebraism; because the former, or the tendency to thought and contemplation-was the ideal of the an cient Greeks; the latter-the tendency to obedience and action-was predominant in the Jewish race, and characteristic of the Hebrew law. He says that "the force which encourages us to stand stanch and fast by the rule and ground we have is Hebraism; and the force which encourages us to go back upon this rule, and to try the very ground on which we appear to stand, is Hellenism,a turn for giving our consciousness free play, and enlarging its range.' Cutting our being into two, attributing to the one part the dignity of dealing with the one thing needful, and leaving the other part to take its chance,-that is the bane of Hebraism." "In Hellenism we find the impulse to the development of the whole man, to the harmonizing all parts of him, perfecting all, leaving none to take their chance." In this statement of the case we detect a very decided Hellenic bias. In proportion to the extent of its national literature, the Hebrew race gave marked proof of the vigour of its thought. It did not traverse so wide an area as did the contemporary or succeeding schools in Greece, but it thought as profoundly and as effectively within its narrow region. The scribes and seers of Palestine did not sail out over the distant seas of knowledge (as the Jewish merchants did not traffic much with the traders of the East or West), but they took deeper sea-soundings within the limits to which they were confined. Besides, the Hebrew race was working out an experiment that was scarcely consistent with vast width of thought and a many-sided national culture. Its scribes were not encyclopaedists, because they were the custodiers of a special theolo gy, and because religious worship was the centre of their culture. Turning to Greece, where Mr. Arnold says we will find a tendency to the perfecting of the whole man, "leaving no part to take its chance," it is not historically certain that religious culture, morality, and obedience to law, were pursued with any ardour except by one or two of the most exalted spirits of antiquity. But when we examine the great systems thought that have come down to us from that classic land, instead of finding that a life of contemplation constitutes the Greek ideal, we discover that the whole drift of Socrates's teaching was practical,-though his doctrine of virtue was not; that Plato's ideal (the man to whom we owe the consecration of the term) was not a speculative one; while Aris of |