Studies in Literature

by John Morley

It would not be very easy for us now, and perhaps it would not be particularly becoming at any time, to analyse the position that has been assigned to this Review in common esteem. Those who have watched it from without can judge better than those who have worked within. Though it has been open, so far as editorial goodwill was concerned, to opinions from many sides, the Review has unquestionably gathered round it some of the associations of sect. What that sect is, people have found it difficult to describe with anything like precision. For a long time it was the fashion to label the Review as Comtist, and it would be singularly ungrateful to deny that it has had no more effective contributors than some of the best-known disciples of Comte. By-and-by it was felt that this was too narrow. It was nearer the truth to call it the organ of Positivists in the wider sense of that designation. But even this would not cover many directly political articles that have appeared in our pages, and made a mark in their time. The memorable programme of Free Labour, Free Land, Free Schools, Free Church had nothing at all Positivist about it. Nor could that programme and many besides from the same pen and others be compressed under the nickname of Academic Liberalism. There was too strong a flavour of action for the academic and the philosophic. This passion for a label, after all, is an infirmity. Yet people justly perceived that there seemed to be a certain undefinable concurrence among writers coming from different schools and handling very different subjects. Perhaps the instinct was right which fancied that it discerned some common drift, a certain pervading atmosphere, and scented a subtle connection between speculations on the Physical Basis of Life and the Unseen Universe, and articles on Trades Unions and National Education.

So far as the Review has been more specially identified with one set of opinions than another, it has been due to the fact that a certain dissent from received theologies has been found in company with new ideas of social and political reform. This suspicious combination at one time aroused considerable anger. The notion of anything like an intervention of the literary and scientific class in political affairs touched a certain jealousy which is always to be looked for in the positive and practical man. They think as Napoleon thought of men of letters and savans:—"Ce sont des coquettes avec lesquelles il faut entretenir un commerce de galanterie, et dont il ne faut jamais songer à faire ni sa femme ni son ministre." Men will listen to your views about the Unknowable with a composure that instantly disappears if your argument comes too near to the Rates and Taxes. It is amusing, as we read the newspapers to-day, to think that Mr. Harrison's powerful defence of Trades Unions fifteen years ago caused the Review to be regarded as an incendiary publication. Some papers that appeared here on National Education were thought to indicate a deliberate plot for suppressing the Holy Scriptures in the land. Extravagant misjudgment of this kind has passed away. But it was far from being a mistake to suppose that the line taken here by many writers did mean that there was a new Radicalism in the air, which went a good deal deeper than fidgeting about an estimate or the amount of the Queen's contribution to her own taxes. Time has verified what was serious in those early apprehensions. Principles and aims are coming into prominence in the social activity of to-day which would hardly have found a hearing twenty years ago, and it would be sufficient justification for the past of our Review if some writers in it have been instrumental in the process of showing how such principles and aims meet the requirements of the new time. Reformers must always be open to the taunt that they find nothing in the world good enough for them. "You write," said a popular novelist to one of this unthanked tribe, "as if you believed that everything is bad." "Nay," said the other, "but I do believe that everything might be better." Such a belief naturally breeds a spirit which the easy-goers of the world resent as a spirit of ceaseless complaint and scolding. Hence our Liberalism here has often been taxed with being ungenial, discontented, and even querulous. But such Liberals will wrap themselves in their own virtue, remembering the cheering apophthegm that "those who are dissatisfied are the sole benefactors of the world."

This will not be found, I think, too lofty, or too thrasonical an estimate of what has been attempted. A certain number of people have been persuaded to share opinions that fifteen years ago were more unpopular than they are now. A certain resistance has been offered to the stubborn influence of prejudice and use and wont. The original scheme of the Review, even if there had been no other obstacle, prevented it from being the organ of a systematic and constructive policy. There is not, in fact, a body of systematic political thought at work in our own day. The Liberals of the Benthamite school surveyed society and institutions as a whole; they connected their advocacy of political and legal changes with carefully formed theories of human nature; they considered the great art of Government in connection with the character of man, his proper education, his potential capacities. Yet, as we then said, it cannot be pretended that we are less in need of systematic politics than our fathers were sixty years since, or that general principles are now more generally settled even among members of the same party than they were then. The perplexities of to-day are as embarrassing as any in our history, and they may prove even more dangerous. The renovation of Parliamentary government; the transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of land; the relations between the Government at home and our adventurers abroad in contact with inferior races; the limitations on free contract and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts of minorities; these are only some of the questions that time and circumstances are pressing upon us. These are in the political and legislative sphere alone. In Education, in Economics, the problems are as many. Yet ideas are hardly ripe for realisation. We shall need to see great schools before we can make sure of powerful parties. Meanwhile, whatever gives freedom and variety to thought, and earnestness to men's interest in the world, must contribute to a good end.