and depending for its existence on the co-operation of the entire nation.  In self-government so founded, however stringently it might exercise its power, there was no degradation for the governed, because, in the wider sense, they were also governors.  In brief, Arnold’s idea of the State was exactly that which in later years one of his disciples—­Henry Scott Holland—­conceived, when, defending Christian Socialism against the reproach of “grandmotherly legislation,” he said that, in a well-governed commonwealth, “every man was his own grandmother.”  But, while Authority belongs to the State as a whole, it must be exercised through the agency of officialdom—­through the action of officers or governors designated for the special functions.  And here he taught us that we must not, as Bishop Westcott said, “trust to an uncultivated notion of duty for an improvised solution of unforeseen difficulties”; must not, like the Alderman-Colonel, “sit in the hall of judgment or march at the head of men of war, without some knowledge how to perform judgment and how to direct men of war.”

Then again we learned from him to value machinery, not for itself, but for what it could produce.  He taught us that all political reconstruction was at the best mere improvement of machinery; that political reform was related to social reform as the means to the end:  and that the end was the perfection of the race in all its physical, mental, and moral attributes.

Above all we learned—­and perhaps it was the most important of our lessons—­to think little of material boons—­vulgar wealth and stolid comfort and ignoble ease; to set our affections on the joys of soul and spirit; and to recognize in the practice of religion the highest development and most satisfying use of the powers which belong to man.

[Footnote 21:  A favourite creation of the late Mr. William Cory.]

[Footnote 22:  Burke.]

[Footnote 23:  Mr. Willis’ motion to remove the Bishops from the House of Lords was lost by 11 votes on the 21st of March, 1884.]

[Footnote 24:  Now (1893) Lord Wemyss.]

[Footnote 25:  Culture:  a Dialogue, 1867.]

[Footnote 26:  See p. 63.]

[Footnote 27:  It contains also “My Countrymen” and “A Courteous Explanation.”]

[Footnote 28:  The writer was then a schoolboy at Harrow, where Arnold lived from 1868 to 1873.]

[Footnote 29:  William Cory.]

[Footnote 30:  Reprinted in Essays in Criticism.]

[Footnote 31:  A Protestant lecturer of the period.]

[Footnote 32:  In 1885.]

CHAPTER V

CONDUCT

“By desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—­widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.”