for wise doubt, the habit of suspending our judgment, the courage, if there be a need, to acknowledge our ignorance. We can wait; we have no passion now for rash generalisations. Nor are we disposed to judge our fellows absolutely; we do not see men as if each one was fashioned all of a piece, entirely good or entirely bad, worth everything or worth nothing. We can make distinctions, which implies that we can spare time to reflect and to analyse: "Avec l'absolu c'est plus tôt fait; le vulgaire se plaît à l'absolu, c'est la forme naturelle de la pensée inculte." We now enjoy the rapier play of Voltaire's wit, his incorruptible good sense, and we see at the same time his pitiful character, wholly devoid of the sentiment of self-respect. We do not doubt, any more than did M. Thiers, that Napoleon conducted a campaign with his genius, but we are willing to acknowledge, with M. Thiers, that he conducted politics with his passions, and we add that his incomparable force of intellect coexisted with the ignoble soul of a criminal. And Goethe-Scherer has always had his grave reserves with respect to Goethe "c'est Goethe qui a écrit Faust,' l'œuvre unique, tissue de sarcasme et de pathétique, et c'est Goethe qui a écrit cette œuvre prétentieuse et mal venue des Wanderjahre.'" We now acknowledge that the whole truth has at least two different aspects; we are no longer prone to admire "comme une bête." We find something of intellectual apathy or sloth in the hasty and exaggerated judgments which are given en bloc, and which refuse to make the due distinctions.

Nor in old age can we be content to pay ourselves with words. "Progress! progress!" cry the fresh young voices of our nineteenth century; but this notion of an unlimited advance towards perfection is borrowed from the sciences and industrial arts; and in reality applies only to the accumulation of knowledge, and to a certain, external, material improvement of society. Every day more of suffering is averted, more pleasures are made accessible to the great body of our fellows, and this indeed is something considerable, something essential. "The error begins in supposing that what is true of the practical and positive order is equally true of the moral order, in supposing that society advances in moral uprightness, in equity, in moderation, in modesty, in refinement of feeling, by some inevitable evolution and automatic development." And again what shall we say of another word which passes for current coin, for unalloyed gold-the word "humanity"? What is it but a name for one of those abstractions which are created to satisfy the incurable mystical needs of the soul? We have a family, friends, a city, a country, but all these are not enough; we must needs idealise the entire genus homo. "I cannot sufficiently admire," cries Scherer, "the power of abstraction of those persons, who in the wide overflow of their sympathies, forget all that is hideous, mean and stupid, nor will pay any regard to what is vicious, vile, atrocious. . . . As for myself, the human species amuses me and interests me, but in its totality it inspires me neither with veneration nor tenderness; I decline solidarity."

The "discomfiture of the absolute," the discovery of the relative character of things, is regarded by Scherer as the great event in modern thought. And the discomfiture of the absolute, as he says, is at least favourable to indulgence. "To understand is to excuse, it is almost to become an accomplice." The instinct of indignation is indeed one of those instincts which protect the dignity of human life; but we do not lose it when it has been wisely tempered. The finest fruit of instruction, the best proof of nobility of soul, is it not sympathy with all the aspirations of men towards light and happiness? But even this sympathy is the purer if it also be tempered by experience. We see the wanderings, the errors, the sins, the sorrows of men, their ineffectual strivings towards an unattainable ideal; and if we love them, our love is mingled with a poignant pity.

Such, in brief, is Scherer's philosophic testament. Not that he regards himself as a philosopher who has reached illuminated heights above his fellows. Far from that. "My aim has been as much to amuse as to instruct, and when I look back over my life, it seems to me in all sincerity that I have had a certain passion for seeing things as they really are at bottom, that this passion has led me into many adventures, and that my pen as I held it between my fingers, has been for me an instrument of experiment and research. Which fact, however, is not inconsistent with this other, that while working for myself, I have had a confused sense of working at the same time towards a common result, towards some impersonal achieve

ment, towards some end which I cannot clearly discern."

Assuredly we, his debtors, will gratefully acknowledge that the faithful striving of his life has not been for himself alone.

LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE.1

WHEN the Curators of the Taylorian Institution honoured me with an invitation to lecture on some subject connected with the study of modern literature, I glanced back over my recent reading, and I found that a large part, perhaps an undue proportion of it, had consisted of French literary history and French literary criticism. The recent death of that eminent critic, M. Scherer, had led me to make a survey of his writings. I had found in M. Brunetière an instructor vigorous and severe in matters of literature ; one who allies modern thought with classical tradition. I had beguiled some hours, not more pleasantly than profitably, with M. Jules Lemaitre's bright if slender studies of contemporary writers, in which the play of ideas is contrived with all the skill and grace of a decorative art. I had followed M. Paul Bourget, as many of us have done, through his more laborious analyses in which he investigates, by means of typical representatives in literature, the moral life of our time. And I had in some measure possessed myself of the legacy of thought left to us by two young writers, ardent students, interested in the philosophical aspects of literature, whose premature loss French letters must deplore, M. Guyau, the author of several volumes on

Read as the Taylorian Lecture, Oxford, November 20th, 1889.