DR. BAIN'S " PRACTICAL " ESSAYS.*

Da. Beni has obviously been rather hard pushed for a title to give to this collection of addresses and magazine articles ; forhis " practical " essays include dissertations on such very different subjects as "Errors of Suppressed Correlatives," "Civil Service Examinations," "Religious Tests and Subscriptions," and. "Procedure of Deliberative Bodies." Yet we are not particularly disposed to quarrel with Dr. Bain's use of the word "practical." He uses it in its philosophical sense, much as Tillotson does when he says, in a definition surely made to delight lexicographers, "Religion comprehends the knowledge of itif principles and a suitable life and practice ; the first, being speculative, may be called knowledge, and the latter, because it is practical, wisdom." It might be unfair to say of these essays by the author of " The Senses and the Intellect," and "The Emotions and the Will," that in them cerebro-psychology is brought down from the clouds (if it can ever be said to have been there) and presented as human nature's daily food, in the form of "religion in common life." For, in that case, nine readers in ten will say, after reading them, " Eheu ! paupertina philosophia in pauper- tinam religionem ducit !" But they are most emphatically practical in the sense that they are intended for reproof, for cor- rection, for instruction, in what Dr. Bain believes with his whole heart and soul (perhaps we should say with his whole cerebrum and cerebellum) to be righteousness. They consist mainly of good advices, from the author's special standpoint, on a variety of subjects,—such as the study of books, the contents of a uni- versity curriculum and of a Civil Service examination paper, the reform of the law relating to creeds, and the remodelling of Parliamentary procedure. Even Dr. Bain's two opening essays, on "Common Errors on the Mind," and "Errors of Suppressed Correlatives," which have such a speculative look, will be seen to be "practical," if we alter their titles, as without serious violence to Dr. Bain's intentions we may do, to "Popular Enthusiasms Subjected to a Shower Bath," and "Ethical Delusions under the Microscope." When, indeed, be is dealing with "Virtue alone is happiness below," or "Honour and shame from no condition rise," he seems " practical " in the sense that the comic dramatist says "tooth-drawers are practical philosophers that go upon a very rational hypothesis— not to cure, but to take away the part affected." Dr. Bain's dentistry may be old-fashioned, or rough-and-ready, or, as we may see by-and-bye, he may have employed his forceps on sound teeth. But there is no doubt as to the practicality of his intentions. He aims at influencing the conduct of life, not at showing his skill in dialectic.

Several, perhaps a majority, of the essays in this volume do not call for special notice, because they state opinions which Dr. Bain is well known to hold, and which it would now serve no purpose to explain, much less controvert. It is quite unnecessary at this time of day to analyse his views upon the Indian Civil Service examinations or the classical controversy. It is a matter of course, that a paper by Dr. Bain on "Metaphysics and Debating Societies" is very nearly equivalent to Punch's "Don't" to people about to marry. An essay on "Religious Tests and Subscriptions" calls also for little notice, although we do not quite see what it is I propos of, just at this moment. There is a disappointing limpness, too, about Dr. Bain's Practical Essays. By Alexander Bain, LL.D. London Longman!. 1884.

" practical " advices. Take, for example : "The practice of heresy-hunting might be allowed to fall into disuse. Instead of deposing heretics, the orthodox champions should simply refute them." Supposing, for argument's sake, we say "Agreed;" how is the practice of heresy-hunting in one form or another— for "refutation" itself is a description of heresy-hunting—to be formally given up, unless, indeed, Churches are to be revolutionised entirely, and to become institutes of free religions thinkers, in other words, unless the ecclesiastical circle is to be squared ? In this same essay Dr. Bain gives an explanation of what he terms "Carlyle's perplexing style of composition" which seems to us the reverse of adequate. "We now know," he says, "what his opinions were when he began to write, and that to express them then would have been fatal to his success ; yet he was not a man to indulge in rank hypocrisy. He accordingly adopted a -studied and ambiguous phraseology, which for long imposed upon the religions public, who put their own interpretation upon his mystical utterances, and gave him the benefit of any doubts. In the 'Life of Sterling' he threw off the mask, but still was not taken at his word." Our view of Carlyle's "ambigu- ous phraseology" is exactly the opposite of Dr. Bain's. It was Carlyle's mode of expressing what he considered his essential orthodoxy, not of veiling his fundamental heterodoxy. "Be a mystic, dearest," he wrote to his wife ; not " Be an agnostic ;"- be was, if possible, more contemptuous of agnosticism than of utilitarianism. A passage from "The French Revolution" will show our meaning better than any amount of argumentation :—

"In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little kirk, the dead all slumbering round it under their white memorial stones, 'in hope of a happy resurrection ;' dull wert thou, 0 reader, if never in any hour (say of moaning midnight, when such kirk hung spectral in the sky, and Being was as if swallowed up of Darkness) it spoke to thee things unspeakable, that went to thy soul's .soul. Strong was he that had a church, what we can call a church ; he stood thereby, though in the centre of immensities, in the conflux of Eternities,' yet man-like towards God and man ; the vague, shoreless universe had become for him a firm city and dwelling which he knew."

This is a sufficiently "mystical utterance ;" but will Dr. Bain say that it is not from the heart, and that it does not show Carlyle essentially in sympathy with "the religions public" ? The three most "practical of Dr. Bain's essays—at least in the popular acceptation of the word— are "The Art of Study," The University Ideal," which the author delivered in his capacity as Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, and "Pro- cedure of Deliberative Bodies." The two first are excellent; Dr. Bain's very deficiency in imaginativeness makes him a good adviser of youth, especially in regard to methods of study. Some of his suggestions, too, for the reform of the procedure of assemblies of which the House of Commons is the type, are sensible enough,—such as those for the im- provement of the work done by committees, and for what Dr. Bain terms "the plural backing" of certain proposals of an obstructive nature, like the blocking of Bills. But we fear Dr. Bain's favourite suggestion, the substitution to a great extent for oral debate of the circulation of printed statements containing the sentiments of members, is unpractical, if not impracticable, rather than practical. A deliberative assembly, the bulk of whose members should be practically condemned to hold their tongues, would cease to be deliberative, because it would cease to be free to deliberate in its own fashion. It may be desirable to readjust deliberative bodies to the changed conditions of our times, when discussion is largely conducted, and the fate of public measures is frequently settled, outside their walls. It may even be desirable to reduce the size of deliberative assemblies, or to confine their deliberations to a certain class of topics. But further than this it is both undesirable and unprofitable to go, without converting deliberative bodies into voting machines. The reluctance—perhaps the excessive reluctance—of Mr. Gladstone to further curb the freedom of Members of Parliament should convey a lesson to impatient outsiders.

It would not be difficult to get up a battle all along the philo- sophic line over Dr. Bain's essays on "Common Errors on the

Mind," and " Errors of Suppressed Correlatives; "for his creed may without very much difficulty be read between the lines of both. But we prefer to treat them EIS good advices, and, therefore, "practical." Looking at them in this way, we -find many senti-

ments in them worthy of approval, and, in consequence deserving of being translated into conduct. Thus, Dr. Bain has much to say about the toilsome pursuit of pleasure, in the vein of the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis ; and he is right—although he also may seem to be asserting a commonplace—when he includes among "common errors on the mind" "the prescribing to persons indis- criminately certain tastes, pursuits, and subjects of interest, on the ground that what is a spring of enjoyment to one or a few may be taken up, as a matter of course, by others with the same relish." What we object to in these two essays is the persistent tilting in them at certain familiar maxims of morality, which is calculated to have, from the " practical " point of view, a bad ratherthan a good effect. Thus, take from the essay on "Common Errors of the Mind" what is said about Virtue and Happiness : —" It is a melancholy fact that Pope's bold assertion, "Virtue alone is Happiness below," cannot be upheld against the stern realities of life. Life needs to be made up of two aims,—the one Happiness, the other Vii tue, each on its own account. There is a certain mutual connection of the two, but all attempts at making out their identity are failures." This seems to us not so much an unfair, as a useless criticism. Without entering into the question as to the constituents of Virtue on the one side and of Happiness on the other, it should be borne in mind that Pope did not mean by his " bold " assertion either that in Virtue is to be found perfect Happiness, or that no pleasure is to be found outside of Virtue. What he did mean was that in Virtue—in other words, persistence in self-denial and in the performance of duty—is to be found more Happiness than in any- thing else. The proposition is not only defensible, but provable by facts ; Dr. Bain will not deny the veracity of the numberless persons who have declared that they found Happiness in Virtue.

Contrast with Pope's maxim Dr. Bain's view :—" The most apparent way to secure happiness is to ply all the known means of happiness, just as far as, and no farther than, they are discovered to produce the effect." Fancy a young man setting on a life which must be one, not of experiments, but of actions, trying to apply Dr. Bain's theory of "plying all the known means of happiness ! " Again, take what Dr. Bain, in his paper on "Errors of Suppressed Correlatives," says

upon what he—fairly enough, from his own standpoint of relativity—terms "reciprocal juatice ":—" Plato, indeed, had

the hardihood to say that the just man is happy in

himself, and by reason of his justice, even although others are unjust to him. But the position is untenable. A man is happy in his justice if it procure for him justice in return ; as a citizen is happy in his civil obedience, if it gain him protection in return. There are two parties in the case, and the moralist should obtain access to both : he should induce the one to fulfil his share before promising to the other the happiness of justice and obedience." Granted, so far as the moralist is concerned ; but what of the man himself, who is asked whether he shall do justice, in its ancient and proper sense, as coast ins et perpetua voluntas jag &num euique tribuendi ? He knows himself as

what Dr. Bain calls "the one party in the case." But the other party is Society, which is composed of individuals, only a limited number of whom can be known to him. He cannot make a definite bargain with an indefinite body ; and if he is to be at all "happy in his justice," as Dr. Bain rather oddly puts it, he must be content with Plato in being "happy in himself, and by reason of his justice, even although others are unjust to him." Dr. Bain does not agree with Pope and Plato. But what, has he to say to Milton and Emerson ? Milton says :—

" Virtue could see to do what virtue would

By her own radiant light, tho' sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk."

Emerson tells us :— " Every man takes care that his neighbour shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neigh- bour. Then all goes well. He has changed his matket.cart into a chariot of the sun. What a day dawns when we have taken to heart the doctrine of faith, to prefer, as a better investment, being to doing ; being to seeming ; logic to rhythm and to display ; the year to the day ; the life to the year ; character to performance ;—and have come to know that justice will be done us; and if our genius is slow, our term will be long !"

Dr. Bain may think all this nothing better than eloquent and mischievous nonsense, and probably he would keep the maxims of heroic morality, the worship of Perfection, out of his book of conduct. But they are quite as "practical" as any that, so far as we can see, he would put in their place ; and then they are ever so much more inspiriting.