injury and profit Socrates had been referring primarily to happiness and unhappiness anticipated in the future by inference from the past, then no doubt his argument would have been strictly Utilitarian. But we have but to look a little way further to see that the primary injury he spoke of was to their consciences, their sense of right, and their power of action. They would be transgressing justice if they killed him, and that would be the worst evil they could suffer. 'I,' he says, 'am like a horsefly, sent by God to stir up a noble horse that has become somewhat sluggish.' This appeal is to their sense of shame for their inaction and laziness. And the point that we are pressing is that this is an appeal to the heart, and not to the head ; to the vital sympathy, not to the hope of pleasure or the fear of pain. We are not of course questioning that Socrates would have said that the Athenians would be more happy in the strictest sense of that word if they acquitted him than if they condemned him; we have repeatedly said that happiness is the essential result of right action; but the question is to which faculty he is making his appeal, to the moral sense absolutely, or the moral sense merely as the result of calculated consequences. We say it is to the former. Still more is this the case where he is defending himself for not imploring their pity. It would be base, he says, for him to do so, and for them to listen to him should he do so. So again at the end, he gives as his reason for thinking that he had acted rightly that day, that the divine sign, which was wont to check him whenever he was about to do anything wrong, had on that day never once checked him. Hence he also infers that the result of the trial, his condemnation, could be no real misfortune to him. Or again, let us turn to the 'Crito,' the dialogue in which Socrates gives his reasons for not attempting to escape from prison after he had been condemned. They are characterised by great simplicity. He had in his heart consented, during the whole of his life, to the laws of Athens: he had received the benefit of those laws, he had preferred Athens to all other cities; it would be wrong doing against those laws and that city to transgress their command now. Did he transgress it, men would despise him, and his life would be unhappy. The touch of personal happiness or unhappiness, it will be seen, comes into his thoughts though not as a dominant influence; but the happiness of others, as an intellectual prevision, scarcely comes before him at all; what he feels is the obligation, the desire, to do the will of those others, of his own city, in so far as it is lawful for him to do so. If we may venture to say so, the great error of Plato's dialogues, and the cause of their obscurity, is his attempt to translate

that

that moral sense, of which Socrates was so remarkable an example, into an intellectual conception. It would seem that Socrates himself was not free from this error.

*

It

Our second instance is one that has been so often brought forward, that we ought to apologise for referring to it again: but it is an instance which, though often urged, has never yet been explained so as to accord with Utilitarian philosophy. is an instance drawn from the Utilitarian camp itself; and it is one, in our opinion, as creditable to the feelings of the writer referred to as it is incompatible with the system promulgated by him. The late John Stuart Mill, in a well-known passage, declared that he should prefer to go to hell rather than worship as good a Being whom he did not, in his heart and according to the ordinary sense of the word, feel to be good. Is it possible to put more strongly the legitimate strength of instinct against the prevision of consequences? Nor must it be supposed that the case is an imaginary one; doubtless many persons in breaking from false forms of religion have felt the sense of right support them against consequences that appealed most terribly to the imagination.

The third instance we shall adduce is taken from fiction; but fiction, in the hands of Shakspeare, is next to reality. In 'Hamlet,' it will be conceded, intellectual foresight did not lead to strength of action. But then, it may be thought, Hamlet is no instance of action at all; he symbolises the speculative mind. Here, we must confess, in our opinion, the ordinary judgment is wrong. The critics appear to us to have dwelt on one side of Hamlet's nature alone, when they have called him irresolute. They have forgotten the enormous strain which was laid on Hamlet, not by any original fault of his own, but by the circumstances in which he was placed. They have considered it a light thing for a young man, in the prime of life, the heir of a great kingdom, to divert all his thoughts and all his hopes to a single act of bloody vengeance, at the bidding of a visitant from the unseen world, whose truthfulness, even whose reality, he could not directly test. It is, indeed, true that where Hamlet tries to foresee and pierce into the actuality of the things he contemplates, his foresight does not help him to action. But we are satisfied that Shakspeare, who represents Hamlet as a favourite with the people, never meant him to be looked upon as merely an irresolute dreamer; for such characters are never popular. Through all the imaginations with which a vivid fancy and

The argument here used has been employed by Dr. Ward in the 'Dublin Review;' also in the 'Spectator' newspaper; and it is, we believe, well known.

subtle

subtle reason clothe the world in which they move, the living active impulse in Hamlet's soul is still discernible, leading him from point to point, till at last it culminates in the terrible victory of justice. Can it be doubted that, in the following scene with Ophelia, Shakspeare means to depict the actual change that had passed over Hamlet when he gives up all his former hopes, even the dearest of them, for the sake of performing his father's bidding?

Ophelia. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all embrac'd;
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle;

Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport,

As if he had been loosed out of hell,

To speak of horrors,- he comes before me.

Polonius. Mad for thy love?

Ophelia. My lord, I do not know;

But truly, I do fear it.

Polonius. What said he?

Ophelia. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard;

Then goes he to the length of all his arm;

And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,

He falls to such perusal of my face,

As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so;

At last, a little shaking of mine arm,

And thrice his head thus waving up and down,—
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound,

As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,

And end his being: That done, he lets me go;
And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd,
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
For out o' doors he went without their helps,
And, to the last, bended their light on me.'

Of course, if we are wrong in thinking that Shakspeare intended to show a real moral strain in Hamlet-that the wrench and displacement of his nature was the result of his determination to follow the absolute command laid upon him—then Hamlet is no case to our point. In any case, indeed, he displays the weakness of intellectual prevision as respects action; but what we are seeking is, where lies the strength with which that weakness is naturally contrasted? And we certainly think that Shakspeare shows it where, on independent grounds, we believe it to be in the natural impulse of the heart, tending towards an end not definable as happiness simply, and one which in the instance of Hamlet appears even to exclude happiness, and

to

to be the revelation of horrors (though we by no means are saying that this appearance is real). We look upon Hamlet, in short, as a remarkable instance on this side of his character, of that extra-regarding impulse' which Mr. Sidgwick (in his mood more remote from Utilitarianism) declares sometimes to come into irreconcileable conflict' with the impulse towards one's own happiness (though that is not quite our own way of putting it). And those who read the play with fresh eyes will perhaps find more purpose and sequence in Hamlet's conduct throughout than is generally thought.

We conclude by putting into as clear a contrast as possible the Utilitarian view, with that which we ourselves hold. The Utilitarians say that all men seek happiness, and other things only as a means to happiness; but that some men seek their own happiness, some the happiness of others as well; that the best end, the end which duty prescribes, is the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and that the understanding of every man, when properly enlightened, accepts this as the ultimate end, and, when so enlightened, naturally aims at it. We hold, that all men follow and seek after certain objects of desire, not as means to happiness, but as ends in themselves, though unavoidably, and as a matter of course, presupposing that happiness is involved in their attainment: that, nevertheless, this presupposed happiness is imagined beforehand with very different degrees of vividness and force; that in the attainment of these objects of desire, the happiness of others is often commingled, sometimes to a much greater extent than our own happiness; that we have, not in our understandings, but in our hearts, a feeling which determines the scope and value of different objects of desire, and hence guides us towards the best choice; that this best choice is frequently not the one most obviously and vividly connected in our imaginations with happiness, either our own or that of others. We hold that God, as He has implanted, so strengthens this moral feeling in us; that, while the best choice is often not that which antecedently is most connected in our thoughts with happiness, it is the one which in the result brings most happiness to all; and that by a law of natural retribution that which we expend (without an ulterior thought of secret selfishness) on the happiness of others is always repaid to ourselves.

ART.

ART. VIII.-Essays and Studies. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. London, 1875.

I regulated

N the flying island of Laputa it is said that architecture,

ciples, and yet the houses are ill-built, the fields unproductive, and the dress out of shape. The finer arts, with the exception of music, are unknown in that airy region, for the inhabitants, we hear, are wholly strangers to imagination, fancy, and invention;' but had these arts been practised, they would, no doubt, have started from the principle thus determined by Mr. Swinburne :

'No work of art has any worth or life in it that is not done on the absolute terms of art; that is, not before all things and above all things a work of positive excellence, as judged by the laws of the special art to whose laws it is amenable.'

Of late years we have heard much talk of the Absolute in other places besides Laputa. Its supremacy in English art and politics has been boldly asserted, and among the loudest and most strenuous of its advocates it appears that we are now to reckon Mr. Swinburne. On the other side, we confidently affirm that the method of criticism propounded above is contrary to the constitution of nature, the teaching of experience, and the principles of the greatest critics. It is of course true that every work of art must obey the laws of the art to which it belongs. But Quintilian, reminding the orator that he is not to follow the precepts of rhetoric as immutable laws, says, 'The art of rhetoric would certainly be very easy if it could be comprised in so small a number of rules; but these rules admit of great alterations according to the nature of causes, times, circumstances, and necessity; so that the principal requisite of an orator is judgment, by which he shapes his course according to his conditions. And Addison, speaking more generally, says, 'Music, painting, and architecture, as well as poetry and oratory, are to deduce their laws and rules from the general sense and taste of mankind, and not from the principles of those arts themselves; or, in other words, the taste is not to conform to the art, but the art to the taste. Music is not designed to please only chromatic ears, but all that are capable of distinguishing harsh from disagreeable notes. A man of an ordinary ear is a judge whether a passion is expressed in proper sounds, and whether the melody of those sounds be more or less pleasing.'

There are, however, two kinds of society in which the absolute is supreme; one is the coterie, and the other is the mob. The mob bows to the absolute because, always acting upon

impulse,