dividing his subjects' allegiance? Unless the State control the religious life, there will be a chance for the Papacy, and civil obedience will be at an end. Moreover, there is

only one thing necessary for salvation, which is the confession that Jesus is the Christ; a dogma which ought to be kept free from all the surrounding scaffolding of ecclesiastical dogma invented by the Church doctors or largely borrowed from pagan philosophy.

The later years of Hobbes's life exhibit the aged philosopher as engaged in ceaseless conflicts with outraged divines or incensed mathematicians, but do not throw any fresh light on the nature of his thought. His weakest side was his geometrical speculation, and it was that which he defended with the stoutest obstinacy against the superior knowledge of Ward, and Wilkins, and Wallis. So remarkable a figure as his was the natural butt of all those who were concerned with defending the older philosophy, or were outraged by his notorious secularism. In personal characteristics perhaps as unamiable a man as ever lived, devoid of sympathetic affection, untouched by the higher graces of character, intensely and narrowly practical, and of great personal timidity, he yet, in virtue of a comprehensive intellect, and an analytic power of uncommon keenness and edge, succeeded in leaving a conspicuous mark on the history not only of English, but of Continental thought. He accepts the practical scientific problem from Bacon, and hands on the psychological problem to Locke. He may almost be said to have originated moral philosophy in England, or at all events

to have inspired, either by antagonism or direct influence, its most characteristic efforts and doctrines. In direct influence he lives again in much of the utilitarianism of Hume, Hartley, Bentham, Paley, and the elder and younger Mill; his characteristic selfishness is reproduced on a wider scale in the universalistic hedonism of eighteenth and nineteenth century speculation. Antagonism to his position diverged in two directions: on the one hand, it produced the rationalism of the Cambridge Platonists— Henry More and Ralph Cudworth; on the other, through Shaftesbury, it led to the moral-sense doctrines of Hutcheson. Indeed, the whole of the next two centuries was occupied in one way or another with Hobbes, and if any system can be called epoch-making, there is none which deserves the title better than his. Philosophy, as we now understand the term, is not perhaps so much indebted to him as to Descartes, from whom sprang the line of catholic thinkers, among whom occur the illustrious names of Spinoza, and Leibnitz, and Kant. But Hobbes did more than any one, with the possible exception of Bacon, to direct English thought into its characteristic channels, and to put before it its especial problems. Its precision, its clearness, its narrowness, its scientific tendency, its practical character-all are there. In Hobbes are represented in embryo the specific developments which we meet with in Locke and Berkeley, Hume and Mill. His countrymen may well be proud of one who concentrates in his single personality their most characteristic defects and excellences. Add to this the merits of an admirable

style, and we have the picture, not only of a thinker, but also of a writer and a man of letters. Above all others he succeeds in marrying words to thought, and lights up the most abstruse exposition with the brightest gleams of wit and fancy. Vir probus et fama eruditionis domi forisque bene cognitus" is the simple inscription which designates his resting-place in Hault Hucknall. Perhaps a happier text for his grave was suggested by the humour of one of his friends during his lifetime, "This is the true Philosopher's Stone."

31

STUDIES IN THE PROPHETIC NATURE.

CARLYLE'S POLITICAL DOCTRINES.

WHEN the inner history of a nation comes to be written it is a difficult yet necessary task to estimate, among the forces which have moulded its progress, the character and influence of Prophets. The records of most nations are adorned with the names of men of truly prophetic nature, interpreters of strange, rare thoughts, revealers of sudden and unlooked-for depths in human personality, sacri vates, who have cast new lights on the meaning of their times, and lifted up their voices in earnest denunciation or solemn warning. It is not indeed easy to probe such men, or weigh them in the critical balances; for it is the essence of their character to escape the logical dissectingknife, and to triumph over ingenious analysis. Yet they all have much the same traits a certain intolerance of their immediate surroundings, a certain visionariness of speculation, a retrograde and reactionary impulse, a generous weariness as of those born out of due time. A Plato, in the Greek world, framing ideal aristocracies at a time when matters were ripe for a Macedonian despot; a Mahomet talking of the one God, when the Koreish,

keepers of the Caabah, and all the official superintendents of the Idols were powerful in the land; a Dante with his mystic visions and bitter indignation against the Florentine magistrates; a Ruskin with all his grand devotion to earnestness and moral purpose in Art-names such as these flash out here and there in the annals of most nationalities. They are terrible talkers, with a magnificent power of oratory and affluence of style, sometimes beating their wings against the bars of Destiny, and losing the self-mastery and control of genius in wild rhapsody and passionate rhetoric. And the irony of history generally puts them in contrast with some small, practical men of the world, who cannot understand their fervour and are inclined to laugh at their enthusiasms. Plato expounding his ideal polity before an astonished Dionysius of Syracuse, or Mahomet bursting into tears before his good, sensible uncle, Abu Thaleb, who begged him the while to be quiet, or Dante at the court of Della Scala without power to be merry or to amuse, undoubtedly appeared strange, half-insane characters to their audience : just as Ruskin, brought to the æsthetic bar for his manifold sins against High Art by Mr. Poynter,* is a spectacle which we know not whether to call sad or laughable. History is full of such contrasts.

It will not be easy for the future historian of our time to put Carlyle into right perspective in a picture of the modern age. For he, too, is undoubtedly a Prophet in

* 'Ten Lectures on Art,' by E. J. Poynter, 1879. See also 'Edinburgh Review,' Jan, 1888,