POSITIVIST SUSCEPTIBILITY.
MR. FREDERIC HARRISON reminds us to some extent of the saying concerning Hegel, that he had had but one hearer who had understood him, and that he had misunderstood him ; but we are not quite sure that Mr. Harrison would admit, of the reporters at least, that any one of them had gone even quite as far as this. In writing to the Pall Mall on Tuesday con- cerning the grievous wrongs which he undergoes at the hands of the Press, he says of the Pall Mall's own reporter :—" The Pall Mall Gasette of last Thursday published a short summary of the Press, he says of the Pall Mall's own reporter :—" The Pall Mall Gasette of last Thursday published a short summary
of my New Year's address. It was perfectly fair, done with care and intelligence, the work of a practised hand intent on the speaker's meaning. I doubt if I could do it so well myself ; but I would rather be without it. Being a summary, it inevitably varied my meaning. All the qualifications, pro- visoes, and balanced parts of each statement disappeared from the sentence. The impression was changed as this or that had to be erased. When my task was to put into an hour's lecture the proceedings and the public questions of the year, I was forced to weigh my words, and to touch many things with allusions carefully chosen. My hearers, familiar with what I have been saying for years, could follow my meaning. A casual reporter could not ; he naturally jots down the things which chance to strike him. I do not complain of him. It is what all who mount a platform must accept." Yes ; and if the speaker with a religion to publish is so fastidious that he would rather not be reported at all, than have " all the qualifications, pro- visoes, and balanced parts of each statement" "disappear from the sentence," we do not think that the religion he wishes
to publish will make much way in the world. Mr. Frederic Harrison speaks of the Times' report with still less equanimity. " It was not ill done," he says, " and not intended to be unfair.
But being reduced to one-third in bulk, it was necessarily a paraphrase of my words. No single sentence is a true report ; phrases are given without the context, qualifications and pro- visoes which modified them; and the meanings of many passages are changed. That is inevitable when a carefully studied essay is condensed into a column. But the critic who assumes
it to be a verbatim report incurs deliberate misrepresenta- tion." We cannot quite understand the phrase " incurs deliberate misrepresentation." We suppose Mr. Harrison means " incurs the risk of deliberately misrepresenting,"
though " to incur misrepresentation " would rather have suggested to us " to incur the risk of being deliberately mis-
represented." We are anxious to know what lie does mean, because we are singled out as the guilty persons par excellence
who incurred " deliberate misrepresentation." And certainly, whatever risk we incurred of misrepresenting Mr. Frederie Harrison, and whatever misrepresentation we were really so unfortunate as to fall into, we seem to have incurred still more risk of being misrepresented. We should, be very sorry to accuse Mr. Frederic Harrison of " deliberately" misrepresenting us, though he surely intends to accuse us of deliberately misrepresenting him. At least, we can put no other meaning on the following rather angry passage :—
" The Spectator, as usual, comes foremost in its perversion of the truth—ad majoreni Dei gloriant. Three years running I have had to expose the way in which the Spectator has chosen to put into my mouth that which I never said. This year, on Thursday last, was published my letter repudiating the Times' report as in- accurate, and I especially mentioned the topics of Ireland and Socialism. On Saturday the Spectator publishes two paragraphs attacking me, based on the report which I had stigmatised as incor- rect, and on the very points where I pointed out incorrectness. My argument about Ireland was this. The Irish Question is a question of landlordism ; and a hope of settling it may be drawn from this, that the English people seem disposed to deal with the question of landlordism generally in town and country. In the Times' report this appears= that the deliverance of England must come first from Ireland ?—which is obvious nonsense, transposing my words. But the Spectator amplifies it thus : Positivism has achieved great conquests in Ireland, by converting the Irish people to the conviction that they must sacrifice the landlords on account of their anti-social policy.' Every word of this is pure invention, as much as if I were to write, that the Spectator is promoting a Bill to have the Second Leeson in all Church services taken out of "Robert Elsmere." ' I said nothing about Positivism achieving conquests in Ireland, nothing about con- verting the Irish people, nothing about the Irish people at all. I spoke of the English people taking up the question of land- lordism in England. This the Times' reporter blunderingly misreports. And on this blunder the Spectator builds its entirely wanton fabrication. It has done it before, and it will do it again. For of all actual journals, but one, the Spectator is the most un- truthful in matters of fact. It was only last Saturday that I had to expose one of its misstatements about a recent trial. The same paper entirely misrepresents what I said about Socialism. My address stated that, having fully treated the question of Socialism quite recently, I should not return to it except to repeat, that the only practicable socialism was one which, whilst subjecting pro- perty to a social and religious control, would respect the freedom of the individual, the complete sanctity of the family, and the personal appropriation of capital in the hands of responsible men. This passage was cut down in the Times' report to an advocacy of Socialism which was founded on the Family.' I need hardly say that such a remark is crude nonsense. But the untruth is enough for the Spectator to found its attack. In the same way, the Spectator and others charge me with speaking with undue confidence. This is done by the chief process of suppressing every word in which I expressed a very different spirit."
We can only say that we have always published in full Mr. Harrison's often not particularly courteous replies to anything that we have said, as we now publish this accusation made in another journal, and the least courteous communication of them all. Mr. Harrison understands very little of the drift of this journal, if he thinks that we could suppose the least perversion of the truth about any one to be for the glory of God; and that is, indeed, one of those amiable insinuations which we should have expected from almost any one rather than from Mr. Harrison. We are very sorry for having misinterpreted Mr. Harrison's drift, as we evidently have, both on Socialism and on Ireland, in our two short paragraphs. We were not aware that Mr. Harrison had denied the correctness of the Times' report, or we should have left the lecture unnoticed, or else have warned our readers of the uncertain character of the ground we were treading on. We have not the least fear that many of our readers will agree with Mr. Harrison that, "of all actual journals, but one, the Spectator is the most untruthful in matters of fact," and should not expect to retain any of them as readers, if they did agree with him. Indeed, we wonder much at his anxiety to expose the misrepresentations of a journal of which he has formed so very low an estimate. For our own parts, we regret that estimate. We have a great respect for Mr. Frederic Harrison's honesty and aims, and do not feel in the least disposed to charge him with either deliberate misrepresentation, or even indifference as to the justice of his representations; but we do deny that there was anything in the misconceptions contained in our brief paragraphs which ought to have warned us that the report on which we were observing, must be a misleading one, and that our criticism on it was even more misleading than the report.
And we assert afresh most deliberately that the chief " note " of the English Positivist utterances is a sublime conceit which we have hardly ever seen equalled among culti- vated men. In the tone to which we refer, Mr. Frederic Harrison is not alone. It appears to us to be ingrained in the authoritative expounders of the Positivist philosophy. The air of patronage with which they treat all religions alike, barring only " the religion of Humanity," has in it the super- cilious and superfine air with which the late Mr. Matthew Arnold used to treat "the dissidence of dissent," without any of his radiant and fascinating good-humour ; for it proceeds not from the magnificent self-confidence and self-satisfaction of the men, but from the didactically and imperiously incul- cated self-confidence of their doctrine. Their philosophy exults in having superseded God, and in the glory of that achievement treads on air. And, of course, it is of the greatest importance to those who hold that the great Power which they term the " Human Providence " is self-evolved, and is more or less controllable and controlled by the master-minds of the race, to insist that the classification of the sciences on which they build up their view of the direction which that control ought to take, should be accurately conceived. Nay, not the classification of the sciences only must be accurately conceived, but every distinguished Positivist's deduction from Positivist premisses must be either published with all its " qualifications, provisoes, and balanced parts," or had better not be published at all. Fastidiousness is of the very essence of a teaching of this kind. If the only great Power which excites to reverence and worship is the Human Providence, of course the wisest men must do all they can to direct the march of that Human Providence ; and who are the wisest men except those who have found the trne, philosophy, superseded God, and given the most finished expression and illustration to the generalisations of Auguste Comte ? And how could a finished expression and illustration of that kind trust itself to determine the course of the Human Providence, if all the " qualifications, provisoes, and balanced parts " of each state- ment were not to be scrupulously and even pedantically accurate P Those to whom is committed the shaping of the Human Providence, so far as it can be committed to any one, are naturally disposed to " tread delicately," and make a great grievance of a verbal error, however unimportant, in the burden of their teaching. Instead of saying with Luther : " I tell our Lord God plainly that if He will have His Church, He must keep it Himself, for we cannot keep it, and if we could, we should be the proudest asses under Heaven," they probably say to each other, in effect We, who have no Lord God to whom we can trust the keeping of our Church, must undertake to keep it for ourselves ; and how are we to guide the Human Providence aright unless we take care that " all the qualifications, provisoes, and balanced parts " of our statements shall be reproduced with rigid accuracy P It is a most difficult task to guide the Human Providence aright. We only attempt it because we see most clearly what perversions of human destiny the various religious superstitions entail. But if it is difficult to steer a ship in a narrow channel, it is still more difficult to steer Humanity amidst the quicksands of human superstition. We must therefore insist that every turn given to the helm at our instigation shall be most faithfully announced. We are forced to weigh our words, and to touch many things with " allusions carefully chosen." And we cannot be responsible for the turn given to the Human Providence, unless these " allusions carefully chosen" are accurately reported to the world. The wisdom engaged in moulding the only Great Power entitled to man's reverence has a great responsibility, —to resent, and so far as possible to punish, misrepresenta- tion. The principles of retribution with which the Christian credits his Providence, ought not to be entirely alien to the Positivist teachers who find themselves misinterpreted, when they have striven in vain to give the right turn to the mighty career of the Human Providence.' That at least is how we explain the immeasurable conceit with which the Positivists lay down the law, and querulously complain if they are not represented accurately to the very letter. They are themselves fulfilling the function which every Church worthy of the name believes to be fulfilled by a Power far above it. And, of course, when you are cutting out the work of a very modified and limited Providence, the whole justification for which depends on the force of the provisoes and the balanced parts of your statements, you do feel extremely sensitive as to misunderstandings. It is enough to make a man supercilious to believe, or even half-believe, that he has so delicate a part to play. A man who has to furnish his quota towards the best substitute for God, can hardly avoid putting on the airs of an ill-rewarded and misunderstood intelligence who has grave complaints to make of those for whose destiny he is so anxiously providing. For our own part, we are heartily thankful that we can put full trust in a power which compassionates our weakness and overrules our mistakes.
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