notes to chapter xvi.

Ibid., vol. i. p. 15.

History of England, vol. v. p. 70.

Ibid., vol. v. p. 108.

Ibid., vol. v. p. 109.

Short Studies on Great Subjects, p. 59.

The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History, p. 20.

16.

Ibid., p. 22.

17.

Alton Locke, new edition, preface, p. xxi.

18.

Ibid., pp. xxiii. xxiv.

19.

Ibid., preface (1854), p. xxvii.

Thomson’s New Zealand, vol. i. p. 80.

Hallam’s Middle Ages, ch. ix., part ii.

Principles of Surgery. 5th ed. p. 434.

British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, January, 1870, p. 103.

Ibid. p. 106.

British Medical Journal, August 20th, 1870. I took the precaution of calling on Mr. Hutchinson to verify the extract given, and to learn from him what he meant by “severe.” I found that he meant simply recognizable. He described to me the mode in which he had made his estimate; and it was clearly a mode which tended rather towards exaggeration of the evil than otherwise. I also learned from him that in the great mass of cases those who have recognizable syphilitic taint pass lives that are but little impaired by it.

A Treatise on Syphilis, by Dr. E. Lancereaux. Vol. ii. p. 120. This testimony I quote from the work itself, and have similarly taken from the original sources the statements of Skey, Simon, Wyatt, Acton, as well as the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review and British Medical Journal. The rest, with various others, will be found in the pamphlet of Dr. C. B. Taylor on The Contagious Diseases Acts.

Professor Sheldon Amos. See also his late important work, AEdition: current; Page: [407]Systematic View of the Science of Jurisprudence, pp. 119, 303, 512, and 514.

Quoted by Nasse, The Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, &c., English translation, p. 94.

In one case, “out of thirty married couples, there was not one man then living with his own wife, and some of them had exchanged wives two or three times since their entrance.” This, along with various kindred illustrations, will be found in tracts on the Poor-Law, by a late uncle of mine, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, of Hinton Charterhouse, who was chairman of the Bath Union during its first six years.

Warton’s History of English Poetry, vol. ii., p. 57, note.

Burton’s Scinde, vol. ii., p. 13.

Speke’s Journal of Discovery of Source of the Nile, p. 85.

See pp. 79 and 127.

Summary of the Moral Statistics of England and Wales. By Joseph Fletcher, Esq., one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools.

Reeves’s History of English Law, vol. i., pp. 34–36. Second edition.

Brentano’s Introduction to English Gilds, p. cxcv.

Lubbock’s Prehistoric Times, p. 344. First edition.

Mrs. Atkinson’s Recollections of Tartar Steppes, p. 220.

Quoted in M’Lennan’s Primitive Marriage, p. 187.

Burton’s History of Sindh, p. 244.

Wright’s Essays on Archæology, vol. ii., pp. 175–6.

Ibid., vol. ii., p. 184.

Only four copies of this psalter are known to exist. The copy from which I make this description is contained in the splendid collection of Mr. Henry Huth.

Kinder- und Hausmärchen, by William and James Grimm. Larger edition (1870), pp. 140–2.

M. Dunoyer, quoted in Mill’s Political Economy.

Mill’s Political Economy.

Translation of Lanfrey’s History of Napoleon the First, vol. ii., p. 25.

Ibid., vol. ii., p. 442.

M. Lanfrey sets down the loss of the French alone, from 1802 onwards, at nearly two millions. This may be an over-estimate; though, judging from the immense armies raised in France, such a total seems quite possible. The above computation of the losses to European nations in general, has been made for me by adding up the numbers of killed and wounded in the successive battles, as furnished by such statements as are accessible. The total is 1,500,000. This number has to be greatly increased by including losses not specified—the number of killed and wounded on one side only, being given in some cases. It has to be further increased by including losses in numerous minor engagements, the particulars of which are unknown. And it has to be again increased by allowance for under-statement of his losses, which was habitual with Napoleon. Though the total, raised by these various additions probably to something over two millions, includes killed and wounded, from which last class a large deduction has to be made for the number who recovered; yet it takes no account of the loss by disease. This may be set down as greater in amount than that which battles caused. (Thus, according to Kolb, the British lost in Spain three times as many by disease as by the enemy; and in the expedition to Walcheren, seventeen times as many.) So that the loss by killed and wounded and by disease, for all the European nations during the Napoleonic campaigns, is probably much understated at two millions.

Burton’s Goa, &c., p. 167.

See Tweedie’s System of Practical Medicine, vol. v. pp. 62–69.

Dr. Maclean: see Times, Jan. 6, 1873.

Report on the Progress and Condition of the Royal Gardens at Kew, 1870, p. 5.

My attention was drawn to this case by one who has had experience in various government services; and he ascribed this obstructiveness in the medical service to the putting of young surgeons under old. The remark is significant, and has far-reaching implications. Putting young officials under old is a rule of all services—civil, military, naval, or other; and in all services, necessarily has the effect of placing the advanced ideas and wider knowledge of a new generation, under control by the ignorance and bigotry of a generation to which change has become repugnant. This, which is a seemingly ineradicable vice of public Edition: current; Page: [409] organizations, is a vice to which private organizations are far less liable; since, in the life-and-death struggle of competition, merit, even if young, takes the place of demerit, even if old.

Let me here add what seems to be a not-impossible cause, or at any rate part-cause, of the failure. The clue is given by a letter in the Times, signed “Landowner,” dating Tollesbury, Essex, Aug. 2, 1872. He bought “ten fine young steers, perfectly free from any symptom of disease,” and “passed sound by the inspector of foreign stock.” They were attacked by foot and mouth disease after five days passed in fresh paddocks with the best food. On inquiry he found that foreign stock, however healthy, “‘mostly all go down with it’ after the passage” And then, in proposing a remedy, he gives us a fact of which he does not seem to recognize the meaning. He suggests, “that, instead of the present quarantine at Harwich, which consists in driving the stock from the steamer into pens for a limited number of hours,” &c., &c. If this description of the quarantine is correct, the spread of the disease is accounted for. Every new drove of cattle is kept for hours in an infected pen. Unless the successive droves have been all healthy (which the very institution of the quarantine implies that they have not been) some of them have left in the pen diseased matter from their mouths and feet. Even if disinfectants are used after each occupation, the risk is great—the disinfection is almost certain to be inadequate. Nay, even if the pen is adequately disinfected every time, yet if there is not also a complete disinfection of the landing appliances, the landing-stage, and the track to the pen, the disease will be communicated. No wonder healthy cattle “‘mostly go down with it’ after the passage.” The quarantine regulations, if they are such as here implied, might properly be called “regulations for the better diffusion of cattle-diseases.”

Fischel’s English Constitution, translated by Shee, p. 487.

See Report of the Committee on Public Accounts, nominated on 7 Feb., 1873.

Times, April 3, 1873 (I add this during the re-revision of these pages for permanent publication, as also the reference to the telegraph-expenditure. Hence the incongruities of the dates).

“Decline and Fall, &c., chap. ii.

Burton’s Abeokuta, vol. i. pp. 43, 44.

Burton’s History of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 281–2.

I make this statement on the authority of a letter read to me at the time by an Indian officer, written by a brother officer in India.

Hawkesworth’s Voyages, vol. i. p. 573.

Forster’s Observations, &c., p. 406.

Parkyns’s Abyssinia, vol. ii. p. 431.

Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa, vol. i. p. 100.

Companions of Columbus, p. 115.

Times, Jan. 22, 1873.

Times, Dec. 23, 1872.

Lancet, Dec. 28, 1872.

Essays in Criticism, p. 12.

Times, Jan. 22, 1873.

Most readers of logic will, I suppose, be surprised on missing from the above sentence the name of Sir W. Hamilton. They will not be more surprised than I was myself on recently learning that Mr. George Bentham’s work, Outline of a New System of Logic, was published six years before the earliest of Sir W. Hamilton’s logical writings, and that Sir W. Hamilton reviewed it. The case adds another to the multitudinous ones in which the world credits the wrong man; and persists in crediting him in defiance of evidence. [In the number of the Contemporary Review following that in which this note originally appeared, Professor Baynes, blaming me for my incaution in thus asserting Mr. Bentham’s claim, contended for the claim of Sir W. Hamilton and denied the validity of Mr. Bentham’s. The month after, the question was taken up by Professor Jevons, who, differing entirely from Professor Baynes, gave reasons for assigning the credit of the discovery to Mr. Bentham. Considering that Professor Baynes, both as pupil of Sir W. Hamilton and as expositor of his developed logical system, is obviously liable to be biassed in his favour, and that, contrariwise, Professor Jevons is not by his antecedents committed on behalf of either claimant, it may I think, be held that, leaving out other reasons, his opinion is the most trustworthy. Other reasons justify this estimate. The assumption that Sir W. Hamilton, when he reviewed Mr. Bentham’s work, did not read as far as the page on which the discovery in question is indicated, though Edition: current; Page: [411] admissible as a defence, cannot be regarded as a very satisfactory ground for a counter-claim. That in Mr. Bentham’s work the doctrine is but briefly indicated, whereas by Sir W. Hamilton it was elaborately developed, is an objection sufficiently met by pointing out that Mr. Bentham’s work is an “Outline of a New System of Logic;” and that in it he has said enough to show that if, instead of being led into another career, he had become a professional logician, the outline would have been adequately filled in. While these notes are still standing in type, Prof. Baynes has published (in the Contemporary Review for July, 1873) a rejoinder to Prof. Jevons. One who reads it critically may, I think, find in it more evidence against, than in favour of, the conclusion drawn. Prof. Baynes’ partiality will be clearly seen on comparing the way in which he interprets Sir W. Hamilton’s acts, with the way in which he interprets Mr. Bentham’s acts. He thinks it quite a proper supposition that Sir W. Hamilton did not read the part of Mr. Bentham’s work containing the doctrine in question. Meanwhile, he dwells much on the fact that during Sir W. Hamilton’s life Mr. Bentham never made any claim; saying—“The indifference it displays is incredible had Mr. Bentham really felt himself entitled to the honour publicly given to another:” the implication being that Mr. Bentham was of necessity cognizant of the controversy. Thus it is reasonable to suppose that Sir W. Hamilton read only part of a work he reviewed on his own special topic; but “incredible” that Mr. Bentham should not have read certain letters in the Athenœum!—the fact being that, as I have learnt from Mr. Bentham, he knew nothing about the matter till his attention was called to it. Clearly, such a way of estimating probabilities is not conducive to a fair judgment. Prof. Baynes’ unfairness of judgment is, I think, sufficiently shown by one of his own sentences, in which he says of Mr. Bentham that, “while he constantly practises the quantification of the predicate, he never appears to have realized it as a principle.” To an unconcerned observer, it seems a strong assumption that one who not only “constantly practises” the method, but who even warns the student against errors caused by neglect of it, should have no consciousness of the “principle” involved. And I am not alone in thinking this a strong assumption: the remark was made to me by a distinguished mathematician who was reading Prof. Baynes’ rejoinder. But the weakness of Prof. Baynes’ rejoinder is best shown by its inconsistency. Prof. Baynes contends that Sir W. Hamilton “had been acquainted with the occasional use of a quantified predicate by writers on logic” Edition: current; Page: [412] earlier than Mr. Bentham; and Prof. Baynes speaks of Mr. Bentham as having done no more than many before him. But he also says of Sir W. Hamilton that, “had he at the time, therefore, looked into Mr. Bentham’s eighth and ninth chapters, the mere use of a quantified predicate would have been no novelty to him, although, as I have said, it might have helped to stimulate his speculations on the subject.” So that though Mr. Bentham did not carry the doctrine further than previous logicians had done, yet what he wrote about it was calculated “to stimulate” “speculations on the subject” in a way that they had not been stimulated by the writings of previous logicians. That is, Prof. Baynes admits in one part of his argument what he denies in another. One further point only will I name. Prof. Baynes says:—“Professor De Morgan’s emphatic rejection of Mr. Bentham’s claim, after examining the relevant chapters of his ‘Outline,’ is in striking contrast to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s easy-going acceptance of it.” Now though, to many readers, this will seem a telling comparison, yet to those who know that Prof. De Morgan was one of the parties to the controversy, and had his own claims to establish, the comparison will not seem so telling. To me, however, and to many who have remarked the perversity of Prof. De Morgan’s judgments, his verdict on the matter, even were he perfectly unconcerned, will go for but little. Whoever will take the trouble to refer to the Athenœum for November 5, 1864, p. 600, and after reading a sentence which he there quotes, will look at either the title of the chapter it is taken from or the sentence which succeeds it, will be amazed that such recklessness of misrepresentation could be shown by a conscientious man; and will be thereafter but little inclined to abide by Prof. De Morgan’s authority on matters like that here in question.]

These words are translated for me from Die Entwicklung der Naturwissenschaft in den letzen fünfundzwanzig Jahren. By Professor Dr. Ferdinand Cohn. Breslau, 1872.

16.

I am told that his reasons for this valuation are more fully given at p. 143.

17.

Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Février, 1873, p. 731.

18.

Œuvres de P. L. Courier (Paris, 1845), p. 304.

19.

Histoire des Sciences et des Savants, &c.

20.

Before leaving the question of Academies and their influences, let me call attention to a fact which makes me doubt whether as a judge of style, considered simply as correct or incorrect, an Academy is to Edition: current; Page: [413] be trusted. Mr. Arnold, insisting on propriety of expression, and giving instances of bad taste among our writers; due, as he thinks, to absence of Academic control, tacitly asserts that an Academy, if we had one, would condemn the passages he quotes as deserving condemnation, and, by implication, would approve the passages he quotes as worthy of approval. Let us see to what Mr. Arnold awards his praise. He says:—

“To illustrate what I mean by an example. Addison, writing as a moralist on fixedness in religious faith, says:—

‘Those who delight in reading books of controversy do very seldom arrive at a fixed and settled habit of faith. The doubt which was laid revives again, and shows itself in new difficulties; and that generally for this reason,—because the mind, which is perpetually tossed in controversies and disputes, is apt to forget the reasons which had once set it at rest, and to be disquieted with any former perplexity when it appears in a new shape, or is started by a different hand.’

It may be said, that is classical English, perfect in lucidity, measure, and propriety. I make no objection; but in my turn, I say that the idea expressed is perfectly trite and barren,” &c., &c.

In Mr. Arnold’s estimate of Addison’s thought I coincide entirely; but I cannot join him in applauding the “classical English” conveying the thought. Indeed, I am not a little astonished that one whose taste in style is proved by his own writing to be so good, and who to his poems especially gives a sculpturesque finish, should have quoted, not simply without condemnation but with tacit eulogy, a passage full of faults. Let us examine it critically, part by part. How shall we interpret into thought the words “arrive at a...habit”? A habit is produced. But “arrival” implies, not production of a thing, but coming up to a thing that pre-exists, as at the end of a journey. What, again, shall we say of the phrase, “a fixed and settled habit”? Habit is a course of action characterized by constancy, as distinguished from courses of action that are inconstant. If the word “settled” were unobjectionable, we might define habit as a settled course of action; and on substituting for the word this equivalent, the phrase would read “a fixed and settled settled course of action.” Obviously the word habit itself conveys the whole notion; and if there needs a word to indicate degree, it should be a word suggesting force, not suggesting rest. The reader is to be impressed with the strength of a tendency in something active, not with the firmness of something passive, as by the words “fixed and settled.” And Edition: current; Page: [414] then why “fixed and settled”? Making no objection to the words as having inapplicable meanings, there is the objection that one of them would suffice: surely whatever is fixed must be settled. Passing to the next sentence, we are arrested by a conspicuous fault in its first clause—“The doubt which was laid revives again.“ To revive is to live again; so that the literal meaning of the clause is “the doubt which was laid lives again again.” In the following line there is nothing objectionable; but at the end of it we come to another pleonasm. The words run:—“and that generally for this reason,—because the mind...” The idea is fully conveyed by the words, “and that generally because the mind.” The words “for this reason” are equivalent to an additional “because.” So that we have here another nonsensical duplication. Going a little further there rises the question—Why “controversies and disputes”? ‘Dispute’ is given in dictionaries as one of the synonyms of ‘controversy’; and though it may be rightly held to have not quite the same meaning, any additional meaning it has does not aid, but rather hinders, the thought of the reader. Though, where special attention is to be drawn to a certain element of the thought, two almost synonymous words may fitly be used to make the reader dwell longer on that element, yet where his attention is to be drawn to another element of the thought (as here to the effect of controversy on the mind), there is no gain, but a loss, in stopping him to interpret a second word if the first suffices. One more fault remains. The mind is said “to be disquieted with any former perplexity when it appears in a new shape, or is started by a different hand.” This portion of the sentence is doubly defective. The two metaphors are incongruous. Appearing in a shape, as a ghost might be supposed to do, conveys one kind of idea; and started by a hand, as a horse or a hound might be, conveys a conflicting kind of idea. This defect, however, is less serious than the other; namely, the unfitness of the second metaphor for giving a concrete form to the abstract idea. How is it possible to ’start’ a perplexity? ‘Perplexity,’ by derivation and as commonly used, involves the thought of entanglement and arrest of motion; while to ’start’ a thing is to set it in motion. So that whereas the mind is to be represented as enmeshed, and thus impeded in its movements, the metaphor used to describe its state is one suggesting the freedom and rapid motion of that which enmeshes it.

Even were these hyper-criticisms, it might be said that they are rightly to be made on a passage which is considered a model of style. But they are not hyper-criticisms. To show that the defects indicated are grave, Edition: current; Page: [415] it only needs to read one of the sentences without its tautologies, thus:—“The doubt which was laid revives, and shows itself in new difficulties; and that generally because the mind which is perpetually tossed in controversies is apt to forget the reasons which had once set it at rest” &c. &c. Omitting the six superfluous words unquestionably makes the sentence clearer—adds to its force without taking from its meaning. Nor would removal of the other excrescences, and substitution of appropriate words for those which are unfit, fail similarly to improve the rest of the passage.

And now is it not strange that two sentences which Mr. Arnold admits to be “classical English, perfect in lucidity, measure, and propriety,” should contain so many defects: some of them, indeed, deserving a stronger word of disapproval? It is true that analysis discloses occasional errors in the sentences of nearly all writers—some due to inadvertence, some to confusion of thought. Doubtless, from my own books examples could be taken; and I should think it unfair to blame any one for now and then tripping. But in a passage of which the diction seems “perfect” to one who would like to have style refined by authoritative criticism, we may expect entire conformity to the laws of correct expression; and may not unnaturally be surprised to find so many deviations from those laws. Possibly, indeed, it will be alleged that the faults are not in Addison’s English, but that I lack the needful aesthetic perception. Having, when young, effectually resisted that classical culture which Mr. Arnold thinks needful, I may be blind to the beauties he perceives; and my undisciplined taste may lead me to condemn as defects what are, in fact, perfections. Knowing absolutely nothing of the masterpieces of ancient literature in the original, and very little in translation, I suppose I must infer that a familiarity with them equal to Mr. Arnold’s familiarity, would have given me a capacity for admiring these traits of style which he admires. Perhaps redundance of epithets would have afforded me pleasure; perhaps I should have been delighted by duplications of meaning; perhaps from inconsistent metaphors I might have received some now-unimaginable gratification. Being, however, without any guidance save that yielded by Mental Science—having been led by analysis of thought to conclude that in writing, words must be so chosen and arranged as to convey ideas with the greatest ease, precision, and vividness; and having drawn the corollaries that superfluous words should be struck out, that words which have associations at variance with the propositions to be set forth should be avoided, and that there should be used no misleading figures of speech; Edition: current; Page: [416] I have acquired a dislike to modes of expression like these Mr. Arnold regards as perfect in their propriety. Almost converted though I have been by his eloquent advocacy of Culture, as he understands it, I must confess that, now I see what he applauds, my growing faith receives a rude check. While recognizing my unregenerate state, and while admitting that I have only Psychology and Logic to help me, I am perverse enough to rejoice that we have not had an Academy; since, judging from the evidence Mr. Arnold affords, it would, among other mischievous acts, have further raised the estimate of a style which even now is unduly praised.

21.

Culture and Anarchy, p. 16.

22.

Ibid., pp. 130–140.

Shortly after the first publication of this chapter, I met with a kindred instance. At a Co-operative Congress:—“Mr. Head (of the firm of Fox, Head, & Co., Middlesbrough) * * * remarked that he had thrown his whole soul during the last six years into the carrying out of the principle involved in the Industrial Partnership at Middlesbrough with which he was connected. In that Industrial Partnership there was at present no arrangement for the workmen to invest their savings. A clause to give that opportunity to the workmen was at first put into the articles of agreement, but, as there was only one instance during three years of a workman under the firm applying to invest his savings, that clause was withdrawn. The firm consequently came to the conclusion that this part of their scheme was far ahead of the time.”—Times, April 15, 1873.

Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, Second Series, 1871, p. 480.

Ibid., p. 483.

Ibid., pp. 483–4.

Daily papers, Feb. 7, 1873.

Times and Post, Feb. 11, 1873.

Times, Nov. 25, 1872.

Ibid., Nov. 27, 1872.

Craik, in Pict. Hist., vol. iv., p. 853.

Ibid., vol. iv., p. 853.

When, in dealing with the vitiation of evidence, I before referred to the legislation here named, I commented on the ready acceptance of those one-sided statements made to justify such legislation, in contrast with the contempt for those multitudinous proofs that gross abuses would inevitably result from the arrangements made. Since that passage was written, there has been a startling justification of it. A murder has been committed at Lille by a gang of sham-detectives (one being a government employé); and the trial has brought out the fact that for the last three years the people of Lille have been subject to an organized terrorism which has grown out of the system of prostitute-inspection. Though, during these three years, five hundred women are said by one of these criminals to have fallen into their clutches—though the men have been blackmailed and the women outraged to this immense extent, yet the practice went on for the reason (obvious enough, one would have have thought, to need no proof by illustration) that those aggrieved preferred to submit rather than endanger their characters by complaining; and the practice would doubtless have gone on still but for the murder of one of the victims. To some this case will carry conviction: probably not, however, to those who, in pursuance of what they are pleased to call “practical legislation,” prefer an induction based on a Blue Book to an induction based on Universal History.