if with the middle-class in occupation of the executive government, to those of the Rev. W. Cattle; if with the working-class, to those of Mr. Bradlaugh.  And with much justice; owing to the exaggerated notion which we English, as I have said, entertain of the right and blessedness of the mere doing as one likes, of the affirming oneself, and oneself just as it is.  People of the aristocratic class want to affirm their ordinary selves, their likings and dislikings; people of the middle-class the same, people of the working-class the same.  By our everyday selves, however, we are separate, personal, at war; we are only safe from one another’s tyranny when no one has any power; and this safety, in its turn, cannot save us from anarchy.  And when, therefore, anarchy presents itself as a danger to us, we know not where to turn.

[89] But by our best self we are united, impersonal, at harmony.  We are in no peril from giving authority to this, because it is the truest friend we all of us can have; and when anarchy is a danger to us, to this authority we may turn with sure trust.  Well, and this is the very self which culture, or the study of perfection, seeks to develop in us; at the expense of our old untransformed self, taking pleasure only in doing what it likes or is used to do, and exposing us to the risk of clashing with every one else who is doing the same!  So that our poor culture, which is flouted as so unpractical, leads us to the very ideas capable of meeting the great want of our present embarrassed times!  We want an authority, and we find nothing but jealous classes, checks, and a dead-lock; culture suggests the idea of the State.  We find no basis for a firm State-power in our ordinary selves; culture suggests one to us in our best self.

It cannot but acutely try a tender conscience to be accused, in a practical country like ours, of keeping aloof from the work and hope of a multitude of earnest-hearted men, and of merely toying with poetry and aesthetics.  So it is with no little [90] sense of relief that I find myself thus in the position of one who makes a contribution in aid of the practical necessities of our times.  The great thing, it will be observed, is to find our best self, and to seek to affirm nothing but that; not,—­as we English with our over-value for merely being free and busy have been so accustomed to do,—­ resting satisfied with a self which comes uppermost long before our best self, and affirming that with blind energy.  In short,—­to go back yet once more to Bishop Wilson,—­of these two excellent rules of Bishop Wilson’s for a man’s guidance:  “Firstly, never go against the best light you have; secondly, take care that your light be not darkness,” we English have followed with praiseworthy zeal the first rule, but we have not given so much heed to the second.  We have gone manfully, the Rev. W. Cattle and the rest of us, according to the best light we have; but we have not taken enough care that this should be really the best light possible for us, that it should not be darkness.  And, our honesty being very great, conscience has whispered to us that the light we were following, our ordinary self, was, indeed, perhaps, only an inferior self, only darkness; and [91] that it would not do to impose this seriously on all the world.