To Mr. Norton.

Cambridge, May 8, 1871.

. . . Hard work with the pen for several months, since I took to writing out my lectures as a precaution against accidental depths of depression, destroyed whatever resources of entertainment that instrument had in reserve for me; and I felt after the lectures were over that I should never make any spontaneous effort again in the way of writing. Time, however, and the reviving influences of spring, give play to slowly uplifting as well as degrading forces, and persistent devotion to “constitutionals” has overcome the long drouth of ink and animal spirits, and I am young and writing again. . . . What times ours are! Late events in France have frequently reminded me of your prophecy before the war, on the disturbances the socialistic element of modern society would produce in the future politics of Europe. The solidity of English genius seems to be the only hope of mankind, — even American mankind. The constant example of English good sense and substantial progress will keep England where she has been for five hundred years, — ahead in all that requires courage and good sense combined. The French accuse her of never fighting for an idea. What she never fought for is the outward sign, the word, — the fetish of an idea. She keeps old names and forms, but changes the things. The

French keep the old abusive things, but change their names. English judges still sit on what they still call woolsacks, — monuments, says the French economist Say, of old financial folly. This folly she has no longer, only the name of it; while the communists of Paris are preparing to pull down the great fetish in the Place Vendôme. English conservatism is the only effective religion or guard against radicalism and empirical folly that remains in the world, — except, of course, gun-worship.

Whether the latter will save France this time remains to be seen; but there is hope of it, since the Germans have shown that gunpowder, spite of Teufelsdröckh, does not make all men equally tall, morally. The God of battles is not on the side of material advantages, except so far as moral superiority has secured them; else moral superiority would never have established any religion in the world, whether it be the Latin races’ respect for forms, or the German races’ respect for uses. This contrast in religious spirit of the formal and utilitarian faiths, of the fetish worshipping and the tool-using animal, is not, I imagine, so much due to original differences of race in Europe as to accidental relations of races to the current of civilization. Just as one savage will improve on another if he picks up or captures the other savage’s fetish, thinking he can turn it to some rational use, or because it pleases his fancy, and having no other respect for it, or no such respect as to paralyze his energies, so Roman civilization improved in barbaric hands; not because of fresh blood, but under a fresh freedom. The torch of civilization has passed from race to race, —from the Aryans to the historic Persians, from the Persians and the Semitics and Egyptians to the Greeks, from these to the Latin races, and thence to the Germans; not simply because the older races have successively become effete or deficient in animal vigor (though this may have much to do with it, since the

wealthy and cultured are seldom so prolific as the poor, and civilization doubtless tends to sap energy by perpetuating weakness), but also because the inquisitive, irreverent spirit with which barbarians approach civilization from without — their utilitarianism — has conquered in the long run the spirit of reverence, especially where reverence has rusted into Pharisaism or formal conservatism. The short-lived Arabic and Moorish supremacy was indeed the result of religious movements. But it was a new religion, and not the effete product of civilization; a proselyting spirit which brought these Semitic peoples into the same contact with civilization, and with the same freedom as inquisitiveness gave to the northern barbarians. When we contrast the Semitics and Aryans, race-differences become identical with the spiritual differences which in Europe proper were due to the accidents of history. No proper Semitic race ever maintained long a supremacy over Aryan neighbors. They are constitutionally too reverential, and have always been worshippers of fetishes, and have made the greatest advance in this direction, being the most persistent of word-worshippers, while the Aryans have respected tools and uses. We ought to be thankful, then, and confident that history has no necessary cycles, — since Utilitarianism has become the religion of England and Germany; and we should pity the poor French that they have no religion left but fear of hated symbols, or distrust of their own superstitions.

In this we see Natural Selection at work, the theory of which is the consummate doctrine of Utilitarianism. Spiritually, the Aryans and Semitics are distinct races, as men physically are distinct from apes. The German hates the Jew next to monkeys. But as, physically, men differ from and contend with one another (in skill of hand and brain, for instance) on the very same grounds that have given them supremacy over the apes, so, spiritually, Aryans differ and contend on the

ground of difference which distinguishes them most widely from the Semitics.

Of course, I am speaking not of that narrow utilitarianism or epicurean doctrine which opposes, but of that which includes and utilizes all other devotions. Men can still climb trees awkwardly, when they have occasion, though they are no longer arboreal in their habits. The modern utilitarian English Aryan can still play for the uses of Church and State on the harp of David, though inharmoniously; can build temples and even burn incense, but he is no longer predominantly reverential. The reverential spirit in the true Englishman no longer takes possession of all thoughtful, meditative moments, like a conscience or supreme practical reason, either to elate or torture him into poetical fervors, as it did David. He uses his feet chiefly for walking; and utilitarian considerations stick in his thoughts and share with reverence his conscience. His reverence must harmonize with inquisitive common-sense and rational considerations of consequences. If it does so, there is no necessary bound to strength of conviction or even to heat of feeling, except in temperament. In Mr. Mill this is capable of great fervors. That Mill should be practically a sentimentalist, and at the same time the greatest prophet of utilitarianism, puzzles many, as I have lately seen in Mr. Mivart’s book, — who commends his intemperate sentiments, but condemns his theories, — and as I have heard in conversation with persons who sympathize with his philosophy, but think his expressions of feeling either inconsistent or insincere.

Both the epicurean sensualist and the intuitional sentimentalist so far misunderstand Utilitarianism as to imagine that strong spiritual feelings cannot be moved by or in obedience to so weak a principle as utility; but really the practical strength of this principle depends on how much we regard or prize the ultimate standard, not on the fact that there is an

ulterior standard for most rules of conduct, beyond the fact that we feel them to be right. So the actual practical strength of utilitarian morality comes to depend on how steadily we can think under strong feeling, or on how strongly we can feel with clear thoughts; and Mr. Mill exemplifies it in a high degree by what appears to his epicurean and to his transcendental opponents as an inconsistency. That he reverences the nature of women or his ideal of womanhood there can be no doubt, and little doubt that this comes in part from his inability to measure or clearly understand a type of mind so different from his own,—the intuitional. It would be only when he saw reason to doubt the guidance of feminine tact that this reverence would receive a shock, but the reverence and tact of the women from whom he has drawn his type avoid this; and as his own clear reason has unconsciously, as you suggest, furnished the guidance that he reverently follows, he worships unreservedly. But we all make our own gods, and then worship them, — no longer indeed out of wood or brass, yet still in our fancy; or, as Voltaire wickedly said, “God created man in his own image, and men have returned the compliment.” Still, it is something not to worship another man’s god slavishly; better still, not to worship, as Mill passionately refuses to do, a no-man’s god, a nondescript block of the Absolute; best of all, to worship what we know to be real, though we overlook its defects.

. . . My dreadful negligence of Miss Grace’s and Miss Jane’s welcome letters would weigh heavily on my conscience, if I ever permitted such faults to come under its jurisdiction; but now that my inclinations are no longer the sullen rebels they were, I shall write conscientiously without fear of doing it perfunctorily. First, however, I must fulfil an engagement I have made, to deal with Mr. Mivart’s book on the “Genesis of Species” for the next “North American Review.” Since Mr. Darwin has recognized my last effort, I am encouraged,

and defy Mr. Dennett and the “Nation,” but only in the hope that I have improved my style a little. Mr. Dennett, one of the editors of the “Nation,” and also at that time the Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard College, had made certain shrewd criticisms on Chauncey’s style in the “Nation,” of November 10, 1870 (Vol. XI. p. 315). I give a part of it below: — “Mrs. John Farrar speaks of a ride which she once took with her husband and Mr. Bailey, the Astronomer-Royal, in the course of which the two scientific men amazed her by talking for an hour together perfectly good English, of which she understood not a syllable. ‘The effect was very curious,’ she says, ‘of hearing people converse in English without being able to comprehend what they said.’ We suspect a majority of the readers of the present number of the ‘North American’ will, once in a while, have much the same feeling in reading Mr. Chauncey Wright’s review of Wallace’s ‘Theory of Natural Selection.’ The subject, too, is one more interesting to the general reader than any other in the whole range of science; and the dabbler in science may properly be condoled with on the difficulties which Mr. Wright’s style interposes between the amateur student of Darwin and what even an amateur student easily perceives to be a very acute and able discussion of Mr. Wallace’s arguments. That the style is evidently a good one, if the reader were only master of the writer’s vocabulary, and that the essay is in many places intelligible even to the uninstructed, will increase, rather than diminish, our supposed reader’s regrets and aggravate his botheration of mind. ... It is fair again, inasmuch as we have said what we have about Mr. Wright’s style holding his reader off from his subject-matter, to admit freely the difficulty, while suggesting the propriety, of an observance, whenever possible, of Joubert’s precept for metaphysicians, that they should not, as too many of them have done, put common thoughts into metaphysical language, but should study, as almost none of them have done, to put their metaphysical thought into the language of common people. The day will be a good one for thought, literature, and instruction, when — decency being saved — the very last is seen of the practice, once prevalent and avowed, of writing for special classes and schools and coteries. By which general remark, we certainly mean no impertinence to authors like Mr. Wright.” ⁶²