The strangest of all these, the clearest proof in itself of flurry and sense of need, is exhibited in his summoning—­of all wonderful things —­of Comparative Philology to the rescue of Literature.  To rebut the criticism on his denial of a Personal God, he takes refuge in the ethnological meaning of Deus, which, it seems, is “Shining.”  The poor plain mind, already staggered by Mr Arnold’s private revelations as to what did not happen 6000 years ago (or earlier) in the garden of Eden, quite succumbs before this privilegium of omniscience.  One had thought that the results of philology and etymology of this sort were extremely ingenious guesses, to be admitted in so far as they do not conflict with facts, and till the next guess comes, but nothing more.  Lo! they are quoted as if they were on a par with “two and two make four,” or the law of Excluded Middle.  We may not take Moses and the prophets without proof, but Curtius and Professor Max Mueller may speak, and we must but hear.  And later, when Mr Arnold is trying to cope with Descartes, he flies for refuge to “the roots as, bhu, and sta.”

One is tempted rather to laugh at this; but on some sides it is very serious.  That no God of any religion can be more of a mere hypothesis than as, bhu, and sta, never seems to have occurred to Mr Arnold for one moment, nor that he was cutting the throat of his own argument.  We must not, however, fall into his own mistake and quadruplicate to his duply.  It may be sufficient to say that the long defence of the Fourth Gospel which this book contains is one of the oddest things in all literature.  What, on Mr Arnold’s principles, it matters whether the Fourth Gospel was written in the first century, the fourth, or the fourteenth, it is impossible for the poor plain mind to see.  He will not have it as revelation, and as anything else its date is quite immaterial.

The fact is that this severe censor of “learned pseudo—­science mixed with popular legend,” as he terms theology, appears to have no idea of the value of evidence whatever.  The traditional history of the Bible is not even to be considered; but a conjectural reconstruction of it by a Dutch critic, without in the older cases one jot or tittle of evidence outside the covers of the Bible itself, deserves every respect, if not reverent acceptance en bloc.  Miracles are fictions, and the scenes in the garden of Eden and at the Sepulchre never happened; but as, bhu, and sta are very solemn facts, and you can find out all about the Divinity, because the word Deus means (not “has been guessed to mean,” but means) “Shining.”  That Shakespeare knew everything is much more certain than that miracles do not happen; and he certainly knew Mr Arnold’s case if not Mr Arnold, when he introduced a certain main episode in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  To frown on Oberon and caress Bottom is venial compared with the dismissal of the Bible as popular legend, and the implicit belief in as, bhu, and sta.