CONTENTS OF VOLUME LXVI. JULY, 1894. History of English Policy. By Sir J. R. Seeley, K.C. M.G. Alsace and Lorraine. By Samuel James Capper The Prospects of Liberal Reunion. By T. H. S. Escott The Papal Encyclical on the Bible. A Reply. By the Rev. Father Clarke Incidents of Labour War in America. By W. T. Stead The Message of Israel. By Professor A. B. Bruce, D.D. The Armenian Question. II. In Russia. By H. F. B. Lynch Do Glaciers Excavate? By Professor T. G. Bonney Hampstead Heath. By Phil Robinson AUGUST, 1894. PAGE Theological Book-Keeping by Double Entry. By the Author of "The Policy NOVEMBER, 1894. School Supply in the Middle Ages. By Arthur F. Leach The Eastern Hindu Kush. By Colonel A. G. Durand, C.B. A New Theory of the Absolute. I. By Professor Seth The Development of English Metres. By William Larminie HISTORY OF ENGLISH POLICY. HERE seems occasion to apply a doctrine of relativity to English departments of study is the tendency to isolate the object of study, to consider it in itself alone, neglecting its relations to other things. In order to avoid this cause of error it has been necessary in most departments formally to preach a doctrine of relativity, and to protest against the unreal abstractions, the imaginary or merely verbal entities which swarm so long as we contemplate things in themselves alone rather than in the complicated relations in which Nature presents them to us. There is a fallacy, which might be called the fallacy of capital letters, and without entering into the natural sciences we may find endless examples of the great practical evils which it has caused. Error of a special kind gathers round those capital letters by which we distinguish abstract names. While we talk with comparative safety of men and women, as soon as we begin to speak of Man and Woman we expose ourselves to indefinite chances of error. The Man or Woman we have thus created for ourselves turns out again and again to be an unreal thing, a kind of mythical being, to whom in giving it abstraction we have given imaginary qualities and often an imaginary history. Thus, for example, if we analyse the causes of the French Revolution, we find at the bottom of all abuses, political and social, a perverted way of thinking, a philosophy which erred precisely in the way just described. The philosophy of the day had accustomed itself to think far too absolutely about human nature, to speak far too lightly of Man, and to lay down propositions far too sweeping about Man in general. To that generation, says M. Taine, Man appeared to be a very simple puppet, the motions of which were completely understood. The fallacy of capital letters had taken possession of a whole age, and thus a mental oversight became an enormous practical evil, a cause of infinite crimes and revolutions, an epidemic disease ravaging the world. This form of error has now been pretty thoroughly investigated. We have all been warned against the pretentious abstractions which so readily take the place of real things, against the artificial entities which the mind creates by considering things absolutely rather than in their relations. And yet we do not cease to make the mistake. The artificial entities still swarm in all our minds, surrounded with a whole mythology of fantastic beliefs which may at any time translate themselves into practical evils. Let me take an example from one of the greatest departments of knowledge, from history, and especially from English history. What is the precise subject with which English history deals? What is the thing or object which it contemplates? Few people trouble themselves to ask this question, while the most content themselves with assuming that everything interesting, or amusing, or curious, that ever happened in England must of necessity belong to English history. If we lay it down that the people who live and have lived in England are the subject of English history we propound indeed something tolerably obvious, yet it is already almost more than the average dabbler in English history is accustomed to recognise. But having once conceived such a thing as the people of England, we have already one of those general names which we may spell with a capital letter, and to which we may attach all the fallacies which gather so readily round capital letters. A host of general propositions swarm at once round the name. The people of England is the English race, and the English race has all the qualities we know so well. It rules the waves; by a natural vocation it is irresistible and ever victorious by sea. It is free; wherever it comes it brings certain institutions which protect it against the tyrannies to which other nations not so blest sooner or later fall a prey. It has a certain natural good sense and practical judgment which have been denied to other races who may possess more refinement. And so on. A whole doctrine has gathered itself round this name, English people—a doctrine which few of us have ever taken the trouble to verify. It is a doctrine which we have acquired by isolating the phenomenon, and considering it in itself alone, just one of those doctrines therefore which we ought to regard with suspicion. It is one of those doctrines which might easily involve us in great calamities. Thus the doctrine, that the English people is always free, might lead us to ruin if we overlooked how easily, after all, the one-man power springs up among us; and the doctrine that Britannia rules the waves might ruin us if it led us to forget that the waves after all are apt to be ruled by the strongest fleet. |