To the Same.

July 18, 1875.

... It never occurred to me before that our prospective treatise on “Manners” would be, so far as my contributions would determine its form, a branch of the utilitarian philosophy. It would be a great triumph if I could get you to indorse a utilitarian account of such manners as the votes of all refined and sensible people approve,—the true lawgivers in this branch of morals; an account which would show that their justification is wholly in effecting the greatest happiness of the greatest number,—notwithstanding that the refined and sensible would mostly be unaware of any such principle of judgment, would be simply conscious of having no superstitious regard for the authority of manners. The true character of common sense is not to interfere with the due poise of the considerations that determine its judgments by handling them with the force of analytic attention. Reverence, however, not less than irreverent analysis, interferes with this poise; and to be free from superstition is, therefore, the supreme merit of such a judgment.

One remains a boy longer in philosophy than in any other direction; though this has its drawbacks, since manners even in philosophy—modes of thought and feeling, even about the most abstract subjects — are early fixed, and the danger of a late maturing in philosophical opinions is that such heterogeneous combinations, such deformities, as dogmatic scepticism, come to pass.

----- wants to reconcile, or to have somebody else reconcile, views that are in conflict in his mind; and because men like Lewes pretend to do this, he admires them, very uncritically, I think. Lewes, in my opinion, is a very shallow

thinker, who is making capital out of a strong general desire to have the two philosophies reconciled.

On Friday evening, I saw ----- again, and introduced the subject of the “duty of belief,” as advocated by him in the “Nation.” He retracted the word “duty.” All that he meant to say was that it is foolish not to believe, or try to believe, if one is the happier for believing. But, even so, he seemed to me to be more epicurean (though he hates the sect) than even the utilitarians would allow to be wise. He is by temperament opposed to what is known as epicurean; and, mistaking pleasure to be only the passive pleasures of life, he misunderstands what this philosophy really teaches. To him the perfection of moral action and belief is in heroic conditions of life; and a creed adapted to these, however rare they may be in fact, is to him the true creed, covering the whole range of life, and prescribing a rule for the extremes of human action; whereas, he thinks an epicurean could, according to his philosophy, do nothing better in extremis than commit suicide. And so I had to argue over again the irrationality of suicide on epicurean principles ; the necessary illusion of it as an end, or a means to any end; in short, to prove to him that the suicide is sane only on heroic principles, which, as being responsible for such insanities, had to provide imaginary motives against it.

He quite agrees that evidence is all that enforces the obligation of belief, and that it does this only in virtue of its own force as evidence. Belief is only a matter of choice and, therefore, of moral duty so far as attending to evidence is a volitional act; and he agreed that attention to all accessible evidence was the only duty involved in belief. On the other hand, I allowed that he was not the only sinner who misuses the word “duty,” which ought to mean only those principles of conduct, and what follows from them, which recommend

themselves to all rational beings, or at least to all adult, rational, human beings. And, further, I allowed that unproved beliefs, unfounded in evidence, were not only allowable, but were sometimes even fit, becoming, or appropriate to states of feeling or types of character which are deserving of approval, or even of honor. This fitness does not however amount to an obligation of duty. So far we are agreed, and he retracts.

A Rebus for the children. What does “S E E 8 o” spell?