Short Studies on Great Subjects

by James Anthony Froude

We complain of generalities; we will not leave ourselves exposed to the same charge. We will mention a few of the thousand instances in which we cry for guidance and find none; instances on which those who undertake to teach us ought to have made up their minds.

On the surface at least of the Prayer-book, there seems to be something left remaining of the Catholic penitential system. Fasting is spoken of and abstinence, and some form or other of self-inflicted self-denial is necessarily meant. This thing can by no possibility be unimportant, and we may well smile at the exclusive claims of a church to the cure of our souls, who is unable to say what she thinks about it. Let us ask her living interpreters then, and what shall we get for an answer? either no answer at all, or contradictory answers; angrily, violently, passionately, contradictory. Among the many voices, what is a young man to conclude? He will conclude naturally according to his inclination; and if he chooses right, it will most likely be on a wrong motive.

Again, courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character. Among all fine people, old and modern, wherever we are able to get an insight into their training system, we find it a thing particularly attended to. The Greeks, the Romans, the old Persians, our own nation till the last two hundred years, whoever of mankind have turned out good for anything anywhere, knew very well, that to exhort a boy to be brave without training him in it, would be like exhorting a young colt to submit to the bridle without breaking him in. Step by step, as he could bear it, the boy was introduced to danger, till his pulse ceased to be agitated, and he became familiarised with peril as his natural element. It was a matter of carefully considered, thoroughly recognised, and organised education. But courage nowadays is not a paying virtue. Courage does not help to make money, and so we have ceased to care about it; and boys are left to educate one another by their own semi-brutal instincts, in this, which is perhaps the most important of all features in the human character. Schools, as far as the masters are concerned with them, are places for teaching Greek and Latin—that, and nothing more. At the universities, fox-hunting is, perhaps, the only discipline of the kind now to be found, and fox-hunting, by forbidding it and winking at it, the authorities have contrived to place on as demoralising a footing as ingenuity could devise.[AA]

To pass from training to life. A boy has done with school and college; he has become a man, and has to choose his profession. It is the one most serious step which he has yet taken. In most cases, there is no recalling it. He believes that he is passing through life to eternity; that his chance of getting to heaven depends on what use he makes of his time; he prays every day that he may be delivered from temptation; it is his business to see that he does not throw himself into it. Now, every one of the many professions has a peculiar character of its own, which, with rare exceptions, it inflicts on those who follow it. There is the shopkeeper type, the manufacturer type, the lawyer type, the medical type, the clerical type, the soldier's, the sailor's. The nature of a man is

Like the dyer's hand,

Subdued to what it works in;

and we can distinguish with ease, on the slightest intercourse, to what class a grown person belongs. It is to be seen in his look, in his words, in his tone of thought, his voice, gesture, even in his hand-writing; and in everything which he does. Every human employment has its especial moral characteristic, its peculiar temptations, its peculiar influences—of a subtle and not easily analysed kind, and only to be seen in their effects. Here, therefore—here, if anywhere, we want Mr. Emerson with his representatives, or the Church with her advice and warning. But, in fact, what attempt do we see to understand any of this, or even to acknowledge it; to master the moral side of the professions; to teach young men entering them what they are to expect, what to avoid, or what to seek? Where are the highest types—the pattern lawyer, and shopkeeper, and merchant? Are they all equally favourable to excellence of character? Do they offer equal opportunities? Which best suits this disposition, and which suits that? Alas! character is little thought of in the choice. It is rather, which shall I best succeed in? Where shall I make most money? Suppose an anxious boy to go for counsel to his spiritual mother; to go to her, and ask her to guide him. Shall I be a soldier? he says. What will she tell him? This and no more—you may, without sin. Shall I be a lawyer, merchant, manufacturer, tradesman, engineer? Still the same answer. But which is best? he demands. We do not know: we do not know. There is no guilt in either; you may take which you please, provided you go to church regularly, and are honest and good. If he is foolish enough to persist further, and ask, in what goodness and honesty consist in his especial department (whichever he selects), he will receive the same answer; in other words, he will be told to give every man his due and be left to find out for himself in what 'his due' consists. It is like an artist telling his pupil to put the lights and shadows in their due places, and leaving it to the pupil's ingenuity to interpret such instructive directions.

One more instance of an obviously practical kind. Masters, few people will now deny, owe certain duties to their workmen beyond payment at the competition price for their labour, and the workmen owe something to their masters beyond making their own best bargain. Courtesy, on the one side, and respect on the other, are at least due; and wherever human beings are brought in contact, a number of reciprocal obligations at once necessarily arise out of the conditions of their position. It is this question which at the present moment is convulsing an entire branch of English trade. It is this question which has shaken the Continent like an earthquake, and yet it is one which, the more it is thought about, the more clearly seems to refuse to admit of being dealt with by legislation. It is a question for the Gospel and not for the law. The duties are of the kind which it is the business, not of the State, but of the Church, to look to. Why is the Church silent? There are duties; let her examine them, sift them, prove them, and then point them out. Why not—why not? Alas! she cannot, she dare not give offence, and therefore must find none. It is to be feared that we have a rough trial to pass through, before we find our way and understand our obligations. Yet far off we seem to see a time when the lives, the actions of the really great, great good masters, great good landlords, great good working men, will be laid out once more before their several orders, laid out in the name of God, as once the saints' lives were; and the same sounds shall be heard in factory and in counting-house as once sounded through abbey, chapel, and cathedral aisle—'Look at these men; bless God for them, and follow them.'

And let no one fear that, if such happy time were come, it would result in a tame and weary sameness; that the beautiful variety of individual form would be lost, drilled away in regimental uniformity. Even if it were so, it need not be any the worse for us; we are not told to develope our individualities, we are told to bear fruit. The poor vagabond, with all his individualities about him, if by luck he falls into the hands of the recruiting sergeant, finds himself, a year later, with his red coat and his twelve months' training, not a little the better for the loss of them. But such schooling as we have been speaking of will drill out only such individualities as are of the unworthy kind, and will throw the strength of the nature into the development of the healthiest features in it. Far more, as things now are, we see men sinking into sameness—an inorganic, unwholesome sameness, in which the higher nature is subdued, and the man is sacrificed to the profession. The circumstances of his life are his world; and he sinks under them, he does not conquer them. If he has to choose between the two, God's uniform is better than the world's. The first gives him freedom; the second takes it from him. Only here, as in everything, we must understand the nature of the element in which we work; understand it; understand the laws of it. Throw off the lower laws; the selfish, debasing influences of the profession; obey the higher; follow love, truthfulness, manliness; follow these first, and make the profession serve them; and that is freedom; there is none else possible for man.

Das Gesetz soll nur uns Freiheit geben;