No More Learning

At this period, when Liberalism
seemed to be becoming the tone of the time, when improvement of
institutions was preached from the highest places, and a complete change
of the constitution of Parliament was loudly demanded in the lowest, it
is not strange that attention should have been roused by the regular
appearance in controversy of what seemed a new school of writers,
claiming to be the legislators and theorists of this new tendency. The
air of strong conviction with which they wrote, when scarcely anyone
else seemed to have an equally strong faith in as definite a creed; the
boldness with which they tilted against the very front of both the
existing political parties; their uncompromising profession of
opposition to many of the generally received opinions, and the suspicion
they lay under of holding others still more heterodox than they
professed; the talent and verve of at least my father's articles, and
the appearance of a corps behind him sufficient to carry on a Review;
and finally, the fact that the _Review_ was bought and read, made the
so-called Bentham school in philosophy and politics fill a greater place
in the public mind than it had held before, or has ever again held since
other equally earnest schools of thought have arisen in England. As I
was in the headquarters of it, knew of what it was composed, and as one
of the most active of its very small number, might say without undue
assumption, _quorum pars magna fui_, it belongs to me more than to most
others, to give some account of it.

This supposed school, then, had no other existence than what was
constituted by the fact, that my father's writings and conversation drew
round him a certain number of young men who had already imbibed, or who
imbibed from him, a greater or smaller portion of his very decided
political and philosophical opinions. The notion that Bentham was
surrounded by a band of disciples who received their opinions from his
lips, is a fable to which my father did justice in his "Fragment on
Mackintosh," and which, to all who knew Mr. Bentham's habits of life and
manner of conversation, is simply ridiculous. The influence which
Bentham exercised was by his writings. Through them he has produced, and
is producing, effects on the condition of mankind, wider and deeper, no
doubt, than any which can be attributed to my father. He is a much
greater name in history. But my father exercised a far greater personal
ascendency. He _was_ sought for the vigour and instructiveness of his
conversation, and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusion
of his opinions. I have never known any man who could do such ample
justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect
command over his great mental resources, the terseness and
expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as
intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of
all argumentative conversers: and he was full of anecdote, a hearty
laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing
companion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely
intellectual convictions that his power showed itself: it was still more
through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to
appreciate the extreme rarity: that exalted public spirit, and regard
above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and
activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came
in contact with: the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the
shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and
his very existence gave to those who were aiming at the same objects, and
the encouragement he afforded to the fainthearted or desponding among
them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to
the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in
the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good
which individuals could do by judicious effort.

If was my father's opinions which gave the distinguishing character to
the Benthamic or utilitarian propagandism of that time. They fell
singly, scattered from him, in many directions, but they flowed from him
in a continued stream principally in three channels. One was through me,
the only mind directly formed by his instructions, and through whom
considerable influence was exercised over various young men, who became,
in their turn, propagandists. A second was through some of the Cambridge
contemporaries of Charles Austin, who, either initiated by him or under
the general mental impulse which he gave, had adopted many opinions
allied to those of my father, and some of the more considerable of whom
afterwards sought my father's acquaintance and frequented his house.
Among these may be mentioned Strutt, afterwards Lord Belper, and the
present Lord Romilly, with whose eminent father, Sir Samuel, my father
had of old been on terms of friendship. The third channel was that of a
younger generation of Cambridge undergraduates, contemporary, not with
Austin, but with Eyton Tooke, who were drawn to that estimable person by
affinity of opinions, and introduced by him to my father: the most
notable of these was Charles Buller. Various other persons individually
received and transmitted a considerable amount of my father's influence:
for example, Black (as before mentioned) and Fonblanque: most of these,
however, we accounted only partial allies; Fonblanque, for instance, was
always divergent from us on many important points. But indeed there was
by no means complete unanimity among any portion of us, nor had any of
us adopted implicitly all my father's opinions. For example, although
his _Essay on Government_ was regarded probably by all of us as a
masterpiece of political wisdom, our adhesion by no means extended to
the paragraph of it in which he maintains that women may, consistently
with good government, be excluded from the suffrage, because their
interest is the same with that of men. From this doctrine, I, and all
those who formed my chosen associates, most positively dissented. It is
due to my father to say that he denied having intended to affirm that
women _should_ be excluded, any more than men under the age of forty,
concerning whom he maintained in the very next paragraph an exactly
similar thesis. He was, as he truly said, not discussing whether the
suffrage had better be restricted, but only (assuming that it is to be
restricted) what is the utmost limit of restriction which does not
necessarily involve a sacrifice of the securities for good government.
But I thought then, as I have always thought since that the opinion
which he acknowledged, no less than that which he disclaimed, is as
great an error as any of those against which the _Essay_ was directed;
that the interest of women is included in that of men exactly as much as
the interest of subjects is included in that of kings, and no more; and
that every reason which exists for giving the suffrage to anybody,
demands that it should not be withheld from women. This was also the
general opinion of the younger proselytes; and it is pleasant to be able
to say that Mr. Bentham, on this important point, was wholly on our side.

But though none of us, probably, agreed in every respect with my father,
his opinions, as I said before, were the principal element which gave
its colour and character to the little group of young men who were the
first propagators of what was afterwards called "Philosophic Radicalism. "
Their mode of thinking was not characterized by Benthamism in any sense
which has relation to Bentham as a chief or guide, but rather by a
combination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern political
economy, and with the Hartleian metaphysics. Malthus's population
principle was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us, as
any opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great doctrine,
originally brought forward as an argument against the indefinite
improvability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in the
contrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing that
improvability by securing full employment at high wages to the whole
labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of
their numbers. The other leading characteristics of the creed, which we
held in common with my father, may be stated as follows:

In politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy of two
things: representative government, and complete freedom of discussion.
So complete was my father's reliance on the influence of reason over the
minds of mankind, whenever it is allowed to reach them, that he felt as
if all would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if
all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word and
in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a
legislature to give effect to the opinions they adopted. He thought that
when the legislature no longer represented a class interest, it would
aim at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom; since
the people would be sufficiently under the guidance of educated
intelligence, to make in general a good choice of persons to represent
them, and having done so, to leave to those whom they had chosen a
liberal discretion. Accordingly aristocratic rule, the government of the
Few in any of its shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stood
between mankind and an administration of their affairs by the best
wisdom to be found among them, was the object of his sternest
disapprobation, and a democratic suffrage the principal article of his
political creed, not on the ground of liberty, Rights of Man, or any of
the phrases, more or less significant, by which, up to that time,
democracy had usually been defended, but as the most essential of
"securities for good government. " In this, too, he held fast only to
what he deemed essentials; he was comparatively indifferent to
monarchical or republican forms--far more so than Bentham, to whom a
king, in the character of "corrupter-general," appeared necessarily very
noxious. Next to aristocracy, an established church, or corporation of
priests, as being by position the great depravers of religion, and
interested in opposing the progress of the human mind, was the object of
his greatest detestation; though he disliked no clergyman personally who
did not deserve it, and was on terms of sincere friendship with several.
In ethics his moral feelings were energetic and rigid on all points
which he deemed important to human well being, while he was supremely
indifferent in opinion (though his indifference did not show itself in
personal conduct) to all those doctrines of the common morality, which
he thought had no foundation but in asceticism and priestcraft. He
looked forward, for example, to a considerable increase of freedom in
the relations between the sexes, though without pretending to define
exactly what would be, or ought to be, the precise conditions of that
freedom. This opinion was connected in him with no sensuality either of
a theoretical or of a practical kind. He anticipated, on the contrary,
as one of the beneficial effects of increased freedom, that the
imagination would no longer dwell upon the physical relation and its
adjuncts, and swell this into one of the principal objects of life; a
perversion of the imagination and feelings, which he regarded as one of
the deepest seated and most pervading evils in the human mind. In
psychology, his fundamental doctrine was the formation of all human
character by circumstances, through the universal Principle of
Association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the
moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education. Of all his
doctrines none was more important than this, or needs more to be
insisted on; unfortunately there is none which is more contradictory to
the prevailing tendencies of speculation, both in his time and since.

These various opinions were seized on with youthful fanaticism by the
little knot of young men of whom I was one: and we put into them a
sectarian spirit, from which, in intention at least, my father was
wholly free. What we (or rather a phantom substituted in the place of
us) were sometimes, by a ridiculous exaggeration, called by others,
namely a "school," some of us for a time really hoped and aspired to be.
The French _philosophes_ of the eighteenth century were the examples we
sought to imitate, and we hoped to accomplish no less results. No one of
the set went to so great excesses in his boyish ambition as I did; which
might be shown by many particulars, were it not an useless waste of
space and time.

All this, however, is properly only the outside of our existence; or, at
least, the intellectual part alone, and no more than one side of that.
In attempting to penetrate inward, and give any indication of what we
were as human beings, I must be understood as speaking only of myself,
of whom alone I can speak from sufficient knowledge; and I do not
believe that the picture would suit any of my companions without many
and great modifications.

I conceive that the description so often given of a Benthamite, as a
mere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of those
who have been designated by that title, was during two or three years of
my life not altogether untrue of me. It was perhaps as applicable to me
as it can well be to anyone just entering into life, to whom the common
objects of desire must in general have at least the attraction of
novelty. There is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no youth of
the age I then was, can be expected to be more than one thing, and this
was the thing I happened to be. Ambition and desire of distinction I had
in abundance; and zeal for what I thought the good of mankind was my
strongest sentiment, mixing with and colouring all others. But my zeal
was as yet little else, at that period of my life, than zeal for
speculative opinions. It had not its root in genuine benevolence, or
sympathy with mankind; though these qualities held their due place in
my ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm for
ideal nobleness. Yet of this feeling I was imaginatively very
susceptible; but there was at that time an intermission of its natural
aliment, poetical culture, while there was a superabundance of the
discipline antagonistic to it, that of mere logic and analysis. Add to
this that, as already mentioned, my father's teachings tended to the
undervaluing of feeling. It was not that he was himself cold-hearted or
insensible; I believe it was rather from the contrary quality; he
thought that feeling could take care of itself; that there was sure to
be enough of it if actions were properly cared about. Offended by the
frequency with which, in ethical and philosophical controversy, feeling
is made the ultimate reason and justification of conduct, instead of
being itself called on for a justification, while, in practice, actions
the effect of which on human happiness is mischievous, are defended as
being required by feeling, and the character of a person of feeling
obtains a credit for desert, which he thought only due to actions, he
had a real impatience of attributing praise to feeling, or of any but
the most sparing reference to it, either in the estimation of persons or
in the discussion of things. In addition to the influence which this
characteristic in him had on me and others, we found all the opinions to
which we attached most importance, constantly attacked on the ground of
feeling. Utility was denounced as cold calculation; political economy as
hard-hearted; anti-population doctrines as repulsive to the natural
feelings of mankind. We retorted by the word "sentimentality," which,
along with "declamation" and "vague generalities," served us as common
terms of opprobrium. Although we were generally in the right, as against
those who were opposed to us, the effect was that the cultivation of
feeling (except the feelings of public and private duty) was not in much
esteem among us, and had very little place in the thoughts of most of
us, myself in particular. What we principally thought of, was to alter
people's opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, and know
what was their real interest, which when they once knew, they would, we
thought, by the instrument of opinion, enforce a regard to it upon one
another. While fully recognising the superior excellence of unselfish
benevolence and love of justice, we did not expect the regeneration of
mankind from any direct action on those sentiments, but from the effect
of educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feelings. Although this
last is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in the hands of
those who are themselves impelled by nobler principles of action, I do
not believe that any one of the survivors of the Benthamites or
Utilitarians of that day now relies mainly upon it for the general
amendment of human conduct.

From this neglect both in theory and in practice of the cultivation of
feeling, naturally resulted, among other things, an undervaluing of
poetry, and of Imagination generally, as an element of human nature. It
is, or was, part of the popular notion of Benthamites, that they are
enemies of poetry: this was partly true of Bentham himself; he used to
say that "all poetry is misrepresentation": but in the sense in which he
said it, the same might have been said of all impressive speech; of all
representation or inculcation more oratorical in its character than a
sum in arithmetic. An article of Bingham's in the first number of the
_Westminster Review_, in which he offered as an explanation of something
which he disliked in Moore, that "Mr. Moore _is_ a poet, and therefore
is _not_ a reasoner," did a good deal to attach the notion of hating
poetry to the writers in the _Review_. But the truth was that many of us
were great readers of poetry; Bingham himself had been a writer of it,
while as regards me (and the same thing might be said of my father), the
correct statement would be, not that I disliked poetry, but that I was
theoretically indifferent to it. I disliked any sentiments in poetry
which I should have disliked in prose; and that included a great deal.
And I was wholly blind to its place in human culture, as a means of
educating the feelings. But I was always personally very susceptible to
some kinds of it. In the most sectarian period of my Benthamism, I
happened to look into Pope's _Essay on Man_, and, though every opinion
in it was contrary to mine, I well remember how powerfully it acted on
my imagination. Perhaps at that time poetical composition of any higher
type than eloquent discussion in verse, might not have produced a
similar effect upon me: at all events I seldom gave it an opportunity.
This, however, was a mere passive state. Long before I had enlarged in
any considerable degree the basis of my intellectual creed, I had
obtained, in the natural course of my mental progress, poetic culture of
the most valuable kind, by means of reverential admiration for the lives
and characters of heroic persons; especially the heroes of philosophy.
The same inspiring effect which so many of the benefactors of mankind
have left on record that they had experienced from Plutarch's _Lives_,
was produced on me by Plato's pictures of Socrates, and by some modern
biographies, above all by Condorcet's _Life of Turgot_; a book well
calculated to rouse the best sort of enthusiasm, since it contains one
of the wisest and noblest of lives, delineated by one of the wisest and
noblest of men. The heroic virtue of these glorious representatives of
the opinions with which I sympathized, deeply affected me, and I
perpetually recurred to them as others do to a favourite poet, when
needing to be carried up into the more elevated regions of feeling and
thought. I may observe by the way that this book cured me of my
sectarian follies. The two or three pages beginning "Il regardait toute
secte comme nuisible," and explaining why Turgot always kept himself
perfectly distinct from the Encyclopedists, sank deeply into my mind.
I left off designating myself and others as Utilitarians, and by the
pronoun "we," or any other collective designation, I ceased to
_afficher_ sectarianism. My real inward sectarianism I did not get rid
of till later, and much more gradually.

About the end of 1824, or beginning of 1825, Mr. Bentham, having lately
got back his papers on Evidence from M. Dumont (whose _Traite des
Preuves Judiciaires_, grounded on them, was then first completed and
published), resolved to have them printed in the original, and bethought
himself of me as capable of preparing them for the press; in the same
manner as his _Book of Fallacies_ had been recently edited by Bingham.
I gladly undertook this task, and it occupied nearly all my leisure for
about a year, exclusive of the time afterwards spent in seeing the five
large volumes through the press. Mr. Bentham had begun this treatise
three time's, at considerable intervals, each time in a different
manner, and each time without reference to the preceding: two of the
three times he had gone over nearly the whole subject. These three
masses of manuscript it was my business to condense into a single
treatise, adopting the one last written as the groundwork, and
incorporating with it as much of the two others as it had not completely
superseded. I had also to unroll such of Bentham's involved and
parenthetical sentences as seemed to overpass by their complexity the
measure of what readers were likely to take the pains to understand. It
was further Mr. Bentham's particular desire that I should, from myself,
endeavour to supply any _lacunae_ which he had left; and at his instance
I read, for this purpose, the most authoritative treatises on the
English Law of Evidence, and commented on a few of the objectionable
points of the English rules, which had escaped Bentham's notice. I also
replied to the objections which had been made to some of his doctrines
by reviewers of Dumont's book, and added a few supplementary remarks on
some of the more abstract parts of the subject, such as the theory of
improbability and impossibility. The controversial part of these
editorial additions was written in a more assuming tone than became one
so young and inexperienced as I was: but indeed I had never contemplated
coming forward in my own person; and as an anonymous editor of Bentham I
fell into the tone of my author, not thinking it unsuitable to him or to
the subject, however it might be so to me. My name as editor was put to
the book after it was printed, at Mr. Bentham's positive desire, which I
in vain attempted to persuade him to forego.

The time occupied in this editorial work was extremely well employed in
respect to my own improvement. The _Rationale of Judicial Evidence_ is
one of the richest in matter of all Bentham's productions. The theory of
evidence being in itself one of the most important of his subjects, and
ramifying into most of the others, the book contains, very fully
developed, a great proportion of all his best thoughts: while, among
more special things, it comprises the most elaborate exposure of the
vices and defects of English law, as it then was, which is to be found
in his works; not confined to the law of evidence, but including, by way
of illustrative episode, the entire procedure or practice of Westminster
Hall. The direct knowledge, therefore, which I obtained from the book,
and which was imprinted upon me much more thoroughly than it could have
been by mere reading, was itself no small acquisition. But this
occupation did for me what might seem less to be expected; it gave a
great start to my powers of composition. Everything which I wrote
subsequently to this editorial employment, was markedly superior to
anything that I had written before it. Bentham's later style, as the
world knows, was heavy and cumbersome, from the excess of a good
quality, the love of precision, which made him introduce clause within
clause into the heart of every sentence, that the reader might receive
into his mind all the modifications and qualifications simultaneously
with the main proposition: and the habit grew on him until his sentences
became, to those not accustomed to them, most laborious reading. But his
earlier style, that of the _Fragment on Government, Plan of a Judicial
Establishment_, etc. , is a model of liveliness and ease combined with
fulness of matter, scarcely ever surpassed: and of this earlier style
there were many striking specimens in the manuscripts on Evidence, all
of which I endeavoured to preserve. So long a course of this admirable
writing had a considerable effect upon my own; and I added to it by the
assiduous reading of other writers, both French and English, who
combined, in a remarkable degree, ease with force, such as Goldsmith,
Fielding, Pascal, Voltaire, and Courier. Through these influences my
writing lost the jejuneness of my early compositions; the bones and
cartilages began to clothe themselves with flesh, and the style became,
at times, lively and almost light.

This improvement was first exhibited in a new field. Mr. Marshall, of
Leeds, father of the present generation of Marshalls, the same who was
brought into Parliament for Yorkshire, when the representation forfeited
by Grampound was transferred to it, an earnest Parliamentary reformer,
and a man of large fortune, of which he made a liberal use, had been
much struck with Bentham's _Book of Fallacies_; and the thought had
occurred to him that it would be useful to publish annually the
Parliamentary Debates, not in the chronological order of Hansard, but
classified according to subjects, and accompanied by a commentary
pointing out the fallacies of the speakers. With this intention, he very
naturally addressed himself to the editor of the _Book of Fallacies_;
and Bingham, with the assistance of Charles Austin, undertook the
editorship. The work was called _Parliamentary History and Review_. Its
sale was not sufficient to keep it in existence, and it only lasted
three years. It excited, however, some attention among parliamentary and
political people. The best strength of the party was put forth in it;
and its execution did them much more credit than that of the
_Westminster Review_ had ever done. Bingham and Charles Austin wrote
much in it; as did Strutt, Romilly, and several other Liberal lawyers.
My father wrote one article in his best style; the elder Austin another.
Coulson wrote one of great merit. It fell to my lot to lead off the
first number by an article on the principal topic of the session (that
of 1825), the Catholic Association and the Catholic Disabilities. In the
second number I wrote an elaborate Essay on the Commercial Crisis of
1825 and the Currency Debates. In the third I had two articles, one on
a minor subject, the other on the Reciprocity principle in commerce,
_a propos_ of a celebrated diplomatic correspondence between Canning
and Gallatin. These writings were no longer mere reproductions and
applications of the doctrines I had been taught; they were original
thinking, as far as that name can be applied to old ideas in new forms
and connexions: and I do not exceed the truth in saying that there was a
maturity, and a well-digested, character about them, which there had not
been in any of my previous performances. In execution, therefore, they
were not at all juvenile; but their subjects have either gone by, or
have been so much better treated since, that they are entirely
superseded, and should remain buried in the same oblivion with my
contributions to the first dynasty of the _Westminster Review_.

While thus engaged in writing for the public, I did not neglect other
modes of self-cultivation. It was at this time that I learnt German;
beginning it on the Hamiltonian method, for which purpose I and several
of my companions formed a class. For several years from this period, our
social studies assumed a shape which contributed very much to my mental
progress. The idea occurred to us of carrying on, by reading and
conversation, a joint study of several of the branches of science which
we wished to be masters of. We assembled to the number of a dozen or
more. Mr. Grote lent a room of his house in Threadneedle Street for the
purpose, and his partner, Prescott, one of the three original members of
the Utilitarian Society, made one among us. We met two mornings in every
week, from half-past eight till ten, at which hour most of us were
called off to our daily occupations. Our first subject was Political
Economy. We chose some systematic treatise as our text-book; my father's
_Elements_ being our first choice. One of us read aloud a chapter, or
some smaller portion of the book. The discussion was then opened, and
anyone who had an objection, or other remark to make, made it. Our rule
was to discuss thoroughly every point raised, whether great or small,
prolonging the discussion until all who took part were satisfied with
the conclusion they had individually arrived at; and to follow up every
topic of collateral speculation which the chapter or the conversation
suggested, never leaving it until we had untied every knot which we
found. We repeatedly kept up the discussion of some one point for
several weeks, thinking intently on it during the intervals of our
meetings, and contriving solutions of the new difficulties which had
risen up in the last morning's discussion. When we had finished in this
way my father's _Elements_, we went in the same manner through Ricardo's
_Principles of Political Economy_, and Bailey's _Dissertation on Value_.
These close and vigorous discussions were not only improving in a high
degree to those who took part in them, but brought out new views of some
topics of abstract Political Economy. The theory of International Values
which I afterwards published, emanated from these conversations, as did
also the modified form of Ricardo's _Theory of Profits_, laid down in my
_Essay on Profits and Interest_. Those among us with whom new
speculations chiefly originated, were Ellis, Graham, and I; though
others gave valuable aid to the discussions, especially Prescott and
Roebuck, the one by his knowledge, the other by his dialectical
acuteness. The theories of International Values and of Profits were
excogitated and worked out in about equal proportions by myself and
Graham: and if our original project had been executed, my _Essays on
Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy_ would have been brought
out along with some papers of his, under our joint names. But when my
exposition came to be written, I found that I had so much over-estimated
my agreement with him, and he dissented so much from the most original
of the two Essays, that on International Values, that I was obliged to
consider the theory as now exclusively mine, and it came out as such
when published many years later. I may mention that among the
alterations which my father made in revising his _Elements_ for the
third edition, several were founded on criticisms elicited by these
conversations; and in particular he modified his opinions (though not to
the extent of our new speculations) on both the points to which I
have adverted.

When we had enough of political economy, we took up the syllogistic
logic in the same manner, Grote now joining us. Our first text-book was
Aldrich, but being disgusted with its superficiality, we reprinted one
of the most finished among the many manuals of the school logic, which
my father, a great collector of such books, possessed, the _Manuductio
ad Logicam_ of the Jesuit Du Trieu. After finishing this, we took up
Whately's _Logic_, then first republished from the _Encyclopedia
Metropolitana_, and finally the _Computatio sive Logica_ of Hobbes.
These books, dealt with in our manner, afforded a high range for
original metaphysical speculation: and most of what has been done in the
First Book of my _System of Logic_, to rationalize and correct the
principles and distinctions of the school logicians, and to improve the
theory of the Import of Propositions, had its origin in these
discussions; Graham and I originating most of the novelties, while Grote
and others furnished an excellent tribunal or test. From this time I
formed the project of writing a book on Logic, though on a much humbler
scale than the one I ultimately executed.

Having done with Logic, we launched into Analytic Psychology, and having
chosen Hartley for our text-book, we raised Priestley's edition to an
extravagant price by searching through London to furnish each of us with
a copy. When we had finished Hartley, we suspended our meetings; but my
father's _Analysis of the Mind_ being published soon after, we
reassembled for the purpose of reading it. With this our exercises
ended. I have always dated from these conversations my own real
inauguration as an original and independent thinker. It was also through
them that I acquired, or very much strengthened, a mental habit to which
I attribute all that I have ever done, or ever shall do, in speculation:
that of never accepting half-solutions of difficulties as complete;
never abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until it
was cleared up; never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain
unexplored, because they did not appear important; never thinking that I
perfectly understood any part of a subject until I understood the whole.

Our doings from 1825 to 1830 in the way of public speaking, filled a
considerable place in my life during those years, and as they had
important effects on my development, something ought to be said of them.

There was for some time in existence a society of Owenites, called the
Co-operative Society, which met for weekly public discussions in
Chancery Lane. In the early part of 1825, accident brought Roebuck in
contact with several of its members, and led to his attending one or two
of the meetings and taking part in the debate in opposition to Owenism.
Some one of us started the notion of going there in a body and having a
general battle: and Charles Austin and some of his friends who did not
usually take part in our joint exercises, entered into the project. It
was carried out by concert with the principal members of the Society,
themselves nothing loth, as they naturally preferred a controversy with
opponents to a tame discussion among their own body. The question of
population was proposed as the subject of debate: Charles Austin led the
case on our side with a brilliant speech, and the fight was kept up by
adjournment through five or six weekly meetings before crowded
auditories, including along with the members of the Society and their
friends, many hearers and some speakers from the Inns of Court. When
this debate was ended, another was commenced on the general merits of
Owen's system: and the contest altogether lasted about three months. It
was a _lutte corps a corps_ between Owenites and political economists,
whom the Owenites regarded as their most inveterate opponents: but it
was a perfectly friendly dispute. We who represented political economy,
had the same objects in view as they had, and took pains to show it; and
the principal champion on their side was a very estimable man, with whom
I was well acquainted, Mr. William Thompson, of Cork, author of a book
on the Distribution of Wealth, and of an " Appeal" in behalf of women
against the passage relating to them in my father's _Essay on
Government_. Ellis, Roebuck, and I took an active part in the debate,
and among those from the Inns of Court who joined in it, I remember
Charles Villiers. The other side obtained also, on the population
question, very efficient support from without. The well-known Gale
Jones, then an elderly man, made one of his florid speeches; but the
speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly
every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St.
David's, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation
for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin
and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had
uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever
heard, and I have never since heard anyone whom I placed above him.

The great interest of these debates predisposed some of those who took
part in them, to catch at a suggestion thrown out by McCulloch, the
political economist, that a Society was wanted in London similar to the
Speculative Society at Edinburgh, in which Brougham, Horner, and others
first cultivated public speaking. Our experience at the Co-operative
Society seemed to give cause for being sanguine as to the sort of men
who might be brought together in London for such a purpose. McCulloch
mentioned the matter to several young men of influence, to whom he was
then giving private lessons in political economy. Some of these entered
warmly into the project, particularly George Villiers, after Earl of
Clarendon. He and his brothers, Hyde and Charles, Romilly, Charles
Austin and I, with some others, met and agreed on a plan. We determined
to meet once a fortnight from November to June, at the Freemasons'
Tavern, and we had soon a fine list of members, containing, along with
several members of Parliament, nearly all the most noted speakers of the
Cambridge Union and of the Oxford United Debating Society. It is
curiously illustrative of the tendencies of the time, that our principal
difficulty in recruiting for the Society was to find a sufficient number
of Tory speakers. Almost all whom we could press into the service were
Liberals, of different orders and degrees. Besides those already named,
we had Macaulay, Thirlwall, Praed, Lord Howick, Samuel Wilberforce
(afterwards Bishop of Oxford), Charles Poulett Thomson (afterwards Lord
Sydenham), Edward and Henry Lytton Bulwer, Fonblanque, and many others
whom I cannot now recollect, but who made themselves afterwards more or
less conspicuous in public or literary life. Nothing could seem more
promising. But when the time for action drew near, and it was necessary
to fix on a President, and find somebody to open the first debate, none
of our celebrities would consent to perform either office. Of the many
who were pressed on the subject, the only one who could be prevailed on
was a man of whom I knew very little, but who had taken high honours at
Oxford and was said to have acquired a great oratorical reputation
there; who some time afterwards became a Tory member of Parliament. He
accordingly was fixed on, both for filling the President's chair and for
making the first speech. The important day arrived; the benches were
crowded; all our great speakers were present, to judge of, but not to
help our efforts. The Oxford orator's speech was a complete failure.
This threw a damp on the whole concern: the speakers who followed were
few, and none of them did their best: the affair was a complete
_fiasco_; and the oratorical celebrities we had counted on went away
never to return, giving to me at least a lesson in knowledge of the
world. This unexpected breakdown altered my whole relation to the
project. I had not anticipated taking a prominent part, or speaking much
or often, particularly at first, but I now saw that the success of the
scheme depended on the new men, and I put my shoulder to the wheel. I
opened the second question, and from that time spoke in nearly every
debate. It was very uphill work for some time. The three Villiers and
Romilly stuck to us for some time longer, but the patience of all the
founders of the Society was at last exhausted, except me and Roebuck. In
the season following, 1826-7, things began to mend. We had acquired two
excellent Tory speakers, Hayward and Shee (afterwards Sergeant Shee):
the Radical side was reinforced by Charles Buller, Cockburn, and others
of the second generation of Cambridge Benthamities; and with their and
other occasional aid, and the two Tories as well as Roebuck and me for
regular speakers, almost every debate was a _bataille rangee_ between
the "philosophic Radicals" and the Tory lawyers; until our conflicts
were talked about, and several persons of note and consideration came to
hear us. This happened still more in the subsequent seasons, 1828 and
1829, when the Coleridgians, in the persons of Maurice and Sterling,
made their appearance in the Society as a second Liberal and even
Radical party, on totally different grounds from Benthamism and
vehemently opposed to it; bringing into these discussions the general
doctrines and modes of thought of the European reaction against the
philosophy of the eighteenth century; and adding a third and very
important belligerent party to our contests, which were now no bad
exponent of the movement of opinion among the most cultivated part of
the new generation. Our debates were very different from those of common
debating societies, for they habitually consisted of the strongest
arguments and most philosophic principles which either side was able to
produce, thrown often into close and _serre_ confutations of one
another.
The practice was necessarily very useful to us, and eminently
so to me. I never, indeed, acquired real fluency, and had always a bad
and ungraceful delivery; but I could make myself listened to: and as I
always wrote my speeches when, from the feelings involved, or the nature
of the ideas to be developed, expression seemed important, I greatly
increased my power of effective writing; acquiring not only an ear for
smoothness and rhythm, but a practical sense for _telling_ sentences,
and an immediate criterion of their telling property, by their effect on
a mixed audience.

The Society, and the preparation for it, together with the preparation
for the morning conversations which were going on simultaneously,
occupied the greater part of my leisure; and made me feel it a relief
when, in the spring of 1828, I ceased to write for the _Westminster_.
The _Review_ had fallen into difficulties. Though the sale of the first
number had been very encouraging, the permanent sale had never, I
believe, been sufficient to pay the expenses, on the scale on which the
_Review_ was carried on. Those expenses had been considerably, but not
sufficiently, reduced. One of the editors, Southern, had resigned; and
several of the writers, including my father and me, who had been paid
like other contributors for our earlier articles, had latterly written
without payment. Nevertheless, the original funds were nearly or quite
exhausted, and if the _Review_ was to be continued some new arrangement
of its affairs had become indispensable. My father and I had several
conferences with Bowring on the subject. We were willing to do our
utmost for maintaining the _Review_ as an organ of our opinions, but not
under Bowring's editorship: while the impossibility of its any longer
supporting a paid editor, afforded a ground on which, without affront to
him, we could propose to dispense with his services. We and some of our
friends were prepared to carry on the _Review_ as unpaid writers, either
finding among ourselves an unpaid editor, or sharing the editorship
among us. But while this negotiation was proceeding with Bowring's
apparent acquiescence, he was carrying on another in a different quarter
(with Colonel Perronet Thompson), of which we received the first
intimation in a letter from Bowring as editor, informing us merely that
an arrangement had been made, and proposing to us to write for the next
number, with promise of payment. We did not dispute Bowring's right to
bring about, if he could, an arrangement more favourable to himself than
the one we had proposed; but we thought the concealment which he had
practised towards us, while seemingly entering into our own project, an
affront: and even had we not thought so, we were indisposed to expend
any more of our time and trouble in attempting to write up the _Review_
under his management. Accordingly my father excused himself from
writing; though two or three years later, on great pressure, he did
write one more political article. As for me, I positively refused. And
thus ended my connexion with the original _Westminster_. The last
article which I wrote in it had cost me more labour than any previous;
but it was a labour of love, being a defence of the early French
Revolutionists against the Tory misrepresentations of Sir Walter Scott,
in the introduction to his _Life of Napoleon_. The number of books which
I read for this purpose, making notes and extracts--even the number I
had to buy (for in those days there was no public or subscription
library from which books of reference could be taken home)--far exceeded
the worth of the immediate object; but I had at that time a half-formed
intention of writing a History of the French Revolution; and though I
never executed it, my collections afterwards were very useful to Carlyle
for a similar purpose.




CHAPTER V

CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY. ONE STAGE ONWARD


For some years after this time I wrote very little, and nothing
regularly, for publication: and great were the advantages which I
derived from the intermission. It was of no common importance to me, at
this period, to be able to digest and mature my thoughts for my own mind
only, without any immediate call for giving them out in print. Had I
gone on writing, it would have much disturbed the important
transformation in my opinions and character, which took place during
those years. The origin of this transformation, or at least the process
by which I was prepared for it, can only be explained by turning some
distance back.

From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from
the commencement of the _Westminster Review_, I had what might truly be
called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception
of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. The
personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers in this
enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the
way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon,
my whole reliance was placed on this; and I was accustomed to felicitate
myself on the certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through placing
my happiness in something durable and distant, in which some progress
might be always making, while it could never be exhausted by complete
attainment. This did very well for several years, during which the
general improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself as
engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill
up an interesting and animated existence. But the time came when I
awakened from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1826. I was
in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to;
unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement; one of those moods
when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent;
the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are,
when smitten by their first "conviction of sin. " In this frame of mind
it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that
all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in
institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be
completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and
happiness to you? " And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly
answered, "No! " At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on
which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have
been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to
charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I
seemed to have nothing left to live for.

At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did
not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of
life, had no effect on it. I awoke to a renewed consciousness of the
woful fact. I carried it with me into all companies, into all
occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes'
oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and
thicker. The lines in Coleridge's _Dejection_--I was not then acquainted
with them--exactly describe my case:

"A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear. "

In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past
nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength
and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed
feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of
mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. I
sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved
anyone sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should
not have been in the condition I was. I felt, too, that mine was not an
interesting, or in any way respectable distress. There was nothing in it
to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known where to seek it, would have
been most precious. The words of Macbeth to the physician often occurred
to my thoughts. But there was no one on whom I could build the faintest
hope of such assistance. My father, to whom it would have been natural
to me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last
person to whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything
convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as I was
suffering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it, he
was not the physician who could heal it. My education, which was wholly
his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of
its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of
thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably
irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of _his_ remedies. Of
other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making
my condition intelligible. It was, however, abundantly intelligible to
myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.

My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral
feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the
results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take
pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another
sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those
things, from the effect of education or of experience. As a corollary
from this, I had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myself
convinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongest
possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure
with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all
things hurtful to it. This doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it now
seemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied themselves
but superficially with the means of forming and keeping up these
salutary associations. They seemed to have trusted altogether to the old
familiar instruments, praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now, I
did not doubt that by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly,
intense associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might be
created, and might produce desires and aversions capable of lasting
undiminished to the end of life. But there must always be something
artificial and casual in associations thus produced. The pains and
pleasures thus forcibly associated with things, are not connected with
them by any natural tie; and it is therefore, I thought, essential to
the durability of these associations, that they should have become so
intense and inveterate as to be practically indissoluble, before the
habitual exercise of the power of analysis had commenced. For I now saw,
or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity
--that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings:
as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the
analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and
correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued) is that it tends
to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice; that it
enables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually clung
together: and no associations whatever could ultimately resist this
dissolving force, were it not that we owe to analysis our clearest
knowledge of the permanent sequences in nature; the real connexions
between Things, not dependent on our will and feelings; natural laws,
by virtue of which, in many cases, one thing is inseparable from another
in fact; which laws, in proportion as they are clearly perceived and
imaginatively realized, cause our ideas of things which are always
joined together in Nature, to cohere more and more closely in our
thoughts. Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations
between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether to
weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling.
They are therefore (I thought) favourable to prudence and clear-
sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and
of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermine all desires, and
all pleasures, which are the effects of association, that is, according
to the theory I held, all except the purely physical and organic; of the
entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a
stronger conviction than I had. These were the laws of human nature, by
which, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my present state. All
those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy
with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and
especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were
the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was
convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it,
did not give me the feeling. My education, I thought, had failed to
create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving
influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual
cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate
habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the
commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but
no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so
carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general
good, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity
and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as those
of benevolence. I had had (as I reflected) some gratification of vanity
at too early an age: I had obtained some distinction and felt myself of
some importance, before the desire of distinction and of importance had
grown into a passion: and little as it was which I had attained, yet
having been attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon, it
had made me _blase_ and indifferent to the pursuit. Thus neither selfish
nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no power
in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and
create, in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of
pleasure with any of the objects of human desire.

These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry, heavy dejection of
the melancholy winter of 1826-7. During this time I was not incapable of
my usual occupations. I went on with them mechanically, by the mere
force of habit. I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental
exercise, that I could still carry it on when all the spirit had gone
out of it. I even composed and spoke several speeches at the debating
society, how, or with what degree of success, I know not. Of four years'
continual speaking at that society, this is the only year of which I
remember next to nothing. Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of all
writers I have found a true description of what I felt, were often in my
thoughts, not at this time (for I had never read them), but in a later
period of the same mental malady:

"Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live. "

In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied it,
and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state;
but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the general
phenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect of
causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove. I frequently
asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life
must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself that I did
not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year. When, however, not
more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light
broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's
_Memoires_, and came to the passage which relates his father's death,
the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by
which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be
everything to them--would supply the place of all that they had lost. A
vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was
moved to tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression
of the thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone. I was no
longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed,
some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all
capacity for happiness, are made. Relieved from my ever-present sense of
irremediable wretchedness, I gradually found that the ordinary incidents
of life could again give me some pleasure; that I could again find
enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine and
sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that there was,
once more, excitement, though of a moderate, kind, in exerting myself
for my opinions, and for the public good. Thus the cloud gradually drew
off, and I again enjoyed life; and though I had several relapses, some
of which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as I
had been.

The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions
and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life,
very unlike that on which I had before I acted, and having much in common
with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-
consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction
that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life.
But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it
the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds
fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of
others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit,
followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at
something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life
(such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing,
when they are taken _en passant_, without being made a principal object.
Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.
They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you
are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not
happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your
self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust
themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will
inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or
thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or
putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became the
basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best
theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and
of capacity I for enjoyment; that is, for the great majority of mankind.

The other important change which my opinions at this time underwent, was
that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime
necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the
individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the
ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human being
for speculation and for action.

I had now learnt by experience that the passing susceptibilities needed
to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be
nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant,
lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen
before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to
consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition
both of individual and of social improvement But 1 thought that it had
consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of
cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the
faculties now seemed to be of primary importance. The cultivation of the
feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical
creed. And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing degree
towards whatever seemed capable of being instrumental to that object.

I now began to find meaning in the things, which I had read or heard
about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture.
But it was some time longer before I began to know this by personal
experience. The only one of the imaginative arts in which I had from
childhood taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of which (and
in this it surpasses perhaps every other art) consists in exciting
enthusiasm; in winding up to a high pitch those feelings of an elevated
kind which are already in the character, but to which this excitement
gives a glow and a fervour, which, though transitory at its utmost
height, is precious for sustaining them at other times. This effect of
music I had often experienced; but, like all my pleasurable
susceptibilities, it was suspended during the gloomy period. I had
sought relief again and again from this quarter, but found none. After
the tide had turned, and I was in process of recovery, I had been helped
forward by music, but in a much less elevated manner. I at this time
first became acquainted with Weber's _Oberon_, and the extreme pleasure
which I drew from its delicious melodies did me good by showing me a
source of pleasure to which I was as susceptible as ever. The good,
however, was much impaired by the thought that the pleasure of music
(as is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades
with familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or
fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my then
state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life,
that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of
musical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and two
semi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways,
of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed
to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room
for a long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out, as these had
done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. This
source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the
philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out. It
was, however, connected with the best feature in my character, and the
only good point to be found in my very unromantic and in no way
honourable distress. For though my dejection, honestly looked at, could
not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought,
of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was ever
in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the
flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was,
whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in
their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state
of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by
struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And I felt that
unless I could see my way to some better hope than this for human
happiness in general, my dejection must continue; but that if I could
see such an outlet, I should then look on the world with pleasure;
content, as far as I was myself concerned, with any fair share of the
general lot.

This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of my reading
Wordsworth for the first time (in the autumn of 1828), an important
event of my life. I took up the collection of his poems from curiosity,
with no expectation of mental relief from it, though I had before
resorted to poetry with that hope. In the worst period of my depression,
I had read through the whole of Byron (then new to me), to try whether a
poet, whose peculiar department was supposed to be that of the intenser
feelings, could rouse any feeling in me. As might be expected, I got no
good from this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of mind was
too like my own. His was the lament of a man who had worn out all
pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who possess the
good things of it, must necessarily be the vapid, uninteresting thing
which I found it. His Harold and Manfred had the same burden on them
which I had; and I was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort from
the vehement sensual passion of his Giaours, or the sullenness of his
Laras. But while Byron was exactly what did not suit my condition,
Wordsworth was exactly what did. I had looked into the _Excursion_ two
or three years before, and found little in it; and I should probably
have found as little, had I read it at this time. But the miscellaneous
poems, in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of value was
added in the latter part of the author's life), proved to be the precise
thing for my mental wants at that particular juncture.

In the first place, these poems addressed themselves powerfully to one
of the strongest of my pleasurable susceptibilities, the love of rural
objects and natural scenery; to which I had been indebted not only for
much of the pleasure of my life, but quite recently for relief from one
of my longest relapses into depression. In this power of rural beauty
over me, there was a foundation laid for taking pleasure in Wordsworth's
poetry; the more so, as his scenery lies mostly among mountains, which,
owing to my early Pyrenean excursion, were my ideal of natural beauty.
But Wordsworth would never have had any great effect on me, if he had
merely placed before me beautiful pictures of natural scenery. Scott
does this still better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape
does it more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems a
medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward
beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under
the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the
feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a
source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which
could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connection with
struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement
in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to
learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the
greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once
better and happier as I came under their influence. There have certainly
been, even in our own age, greater poets than Wordsworth; but poetry of
deeper and loftier feeling could not have done for me at that time what
his did. I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent
happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only
without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in, the
common feelings and common destiny of human beings. And the delight
which these poems gave me, proved that with culture of this sort, there
was nothing to dread from the most confirmed habit of analysis. At the
conclusion of the Poems came the famous Ode, falsely called Platonic,
"Intimations of Immortality": in which, along with more than his usual
sweetness of melody and rhythm, and along with the two passages of grand
imagery but bad philosophy so often quoted, I found that he too had had
similar experience to mine; that he also had felt that the first
freshness of youthful enjoyment of life was not lasting; but that he had
sought for compensation, and found it, in the way in which he was now
teaching me to find it. The result was that I gradually, but completely,
emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it.
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.

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 always 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.

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 although 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 these 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 anyone) are not only
consistent with the Thirty-nine Articles, but are better understood and
expressed in those Articles than by anyone 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
name 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.