“The involute of progression is the subconscious evolution of the particular function.” No close reasoner will deny this. It is the final summing up of all that is meant by Development. It is the root formula of the nineteenth century that is now, alas! drawing to a close under our very eyes. Now to such a fundamental proposition I add a second. “The sentiment of right is the inversion of the subconscious function in its relation to the indeterminate ego.” This also I take to be admitted by all European philosophers in Germany. Now I will not go so far as to say that a major premiss when it is absolutely sound, followed by a minor equally sound, leads to a sure conclusion. God fulfils himself in many ways, and there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But I take this tentatively: that if these two propositions are true (and we have the word of Herr Waldteufel,[44] who lives in the Woodstock Road, that it is true) then it follows conclusively that no certainty can be arrived at in these matters. I would especially recommend you on this point (here Mr. Lambkin changed his lecturing voice for a species of conversational, interested and familiar tone) to read the essay by the late Dr. Barton in Shots at the Probable: you will also find the third chapter of Mr. Mendellsohn’s History of the Soul very useful. Remember also, by the way, to consult the footnote on p. 343, of Renan’s Anti-Christ. The Master of St. Dives’ Little Journeys in the Obvious is light and amusing, but instructive in its way.
There is a kind of attitude (this was Lambkin’s peroration, and he was justly proud of it) which destroys nothing but creates much: which transforms without metamorphosis, and which says “look at this, I have found truth!” but which dares not say “look away from that—it is untrue.”
Such is our aim. Let us make without unmaking and in this difficult question of the origin of Right, the grand old Anglo-Saxon sense of “Ought,” let us humbly adopt as logicians, but grimly pursue as practical men some such maxim as what follows:
“Right came from nothing, it means nothing, it leads to nothing; with it we are nothing, but without it we are worse than nothing.”[45]
Next Thursday I shall deal with morality in international relations.
VIII.
Lambkin’s Special Correspondence
Lambkin was almost the first of that great band of Oxford Fellows who go as special correspondents for Newspapers to places of difficulty and even of danger. On the advantages of this system he would often dilate, and he was glad to see, as he grew to be an older, a wealthier, and a wiser man, that others were treading in his footsteps. “The younger men,” he would say, “have noticed what perhaps I was the first to see, that the Press is a Power, and that men who are paid to educate should not be ashamed to be paid for any form of education.” He was, however, astonished to see how rapidly the letters of a correspondent could now be issued as a book, and on finding that such publications were arranged for separately with the publishers, and were not the property of the Newspapers, he expressed himself with a just warmth in condemnation of such a trick.
“Sir” (said he to the Chaplain), “in my young days we should have scorned to have faked up work, well done for a particular object, in a new suit for the sake of wealth”; and I owe it to Lambkin’s memory to say that he did not make a penny by his “Diary on the Deep,”[46] in which he collected towards the end of his life his various letters written to the Newspapers, and mostly composed at sea.
The occasion which produced the following letter was the abominable suppression by Italian troops of the Catholic Riots at Rome in 1873. Englishmen of all parties had been stirred to a great indignation at the news of the atrocities. “As a nation” (to quote my dear friend) “we are slow to anger, but our anger is terrible.” And such was indeed the case.