The British Hegelians 1875 1925 1st

Edition Robbins Peter

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-british-hegelians-1875-1925-1st-edition-robbins-p
eter/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The 5 Second Rule Mel Robbins

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-5-second-rule-mel-robbins/

RSPB Handbook of British Birds 5th Edition Peter Holden

Richard Gregory

https://ebookmeta.com/product/rspb-handbook-of-british-birds-5th-
edition-peter-holden-richard-gregory/

Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment 1890

1925 Monod

https://ebookmeta.com/product/vaudeville-and-the-making-of-
modern-entertainment-1890-1925-monod/

FUNDAMENTALS OF MGMT. Robbins

https://ebookmeta.com/product/fundamentals-of-mgmt-robbins/
British and American Foundings of Parliamentary Science
1774 1801 1st Edition Peter J. Aschenbrenner

https://ebookmeta.com/product/british-and-american-foundings-of-
parliamentary-science-1774-1801-1st-edition-peter-j-
aschenbrenner/

Organisational Behaviour, 9th Edition Robbins

https://ebookmeta.com/product/organisational-behaviour-9th-
edition-robbins/

The Occult Imagination In Britain 1875 1947 1st Edition

Christine Ferguson Andrew Radford

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-occult-imagination-in-
britain-1875-1947-1st-edition-christine-ferguson-andrew-
radford-2/

The Occult Imagination in Britain 1875 1947 1st Edition

Christine Ferguson Andrew Radford

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-occult-imagination-in-
britain-1875-1947-1st-edition-christine-ferguson-andrew-radford/

The Structure of American Medical Practice 1875 1941

George Rosen (Editor)

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-structure-of-american-medical-
practice-1875-1941-george-rosen-editor/
ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
HEGEL

Volume 3

THE BRITISH HEGELIANS

Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylorandfrancis.com
THE BRITISH HEGELIANS
1875–1925

PETER ROBBINS

~ ~~o~:~~n~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1982 by Garland Publishing Inc.
This edition first published in 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1982 Peter Robbins
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-367-37331-3 (Set)

ISBN: 978-0-367-81731-2 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-40995-1 (Volume 3) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-81421-2 (Volume 3) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that
some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome
correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
THE BRITISH HEGELIANS
1875-1925

Peter Robbins

rt=:i31 Garland Publishing, Inc.

~ New York & London * 1982
 © 1982 Peter Robbins
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Robbins, Peter, 1940-
The British Hegelians, 1875-1925.
(Modern British history ; 6)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Philosophy, English-19th century. 2. Philosophy,
English-20th century. 3. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich, 1770-1831-Influence. I. Title. II. Series.
B1615.R63 1982 192 81-48366
ISBN 0-8240-5162-9

All volumes in this series are printed on acid-free,

250-year-life paper.
Printed in the United States of America
 PREFACE

The focus of this study is the social and political, and to a lesser E!Ktent the BDral and
metaphysical, thinking of an informal school of philosophy which had a clearly ascertainable
and relatively well-defined impact on British academic life as well as a BDre diffuse influence
on British public opinion, social praptice and policy-makirq for tw:> or three decades prior to
~rld ~ I. SUch recefJ.t -works as Peter Clarke's Liberals and Social Delrocrats and Peter
Gordon's and Jolm ~te's Philosopl!ers as Educational Reformers indicate_ an awakening of
interest in the latter dimension of British Hegelianism. 'lhe p:esent -work has something to say
abOut the "social gospel" of British Hegelianism; but it is primarily concerned with the
sources of British Hegelian thinking, the lines of its developnent and intellectual
relationships among members of the "school."

It is not a study of British Idealism, nor of neo-Hegelianisn in Britain. Altmugh the

British Hegelians are sometimes referred to as neo-Hegelians, this is, strictly speaking, a
misnomer. I -would argue that neo-Hegelianism, like neo-Marxism, is a canparatively recent
developnent and that both are products of the "young Marx" industry, that vast and still
growing enterprise - mainly but by no means exclusively European - dedicated to exhaustive
research into vormarz Germany, Isft, Right and Centre Hegelians, all their antecedents,
Rousseau, sturm und ~ and Scottish Enlightenment, and of course everythinq that Kant,
Fichte and Hegel ever wrote. In addition, this -work has expanded its range of sources to
include twentieth century Marxians wlD pioneered the move •back to Hegel," such as Gramsci and
Inkacs. '1he present intense and widespread interest in Hegel centres on his .{henomenology and
his earlier writings rather than on the logic and the later writinqs which enqaged the
attention of the British Begel.ians.

There are very few British Hegelians of the old school .left, either writing ];biloso];il.y or
in positions of academic influence. G.R.G. Mure, wm recently retired as- Warden of Merton
O:lllege, Oxford, must be one of the last. I do not know enough about the current state of
affairs at Scottish, Ccmmonwealth or .llanerican universities to com:nent. further about any
Hegelian remnant in the professoriat. But- certainly the fascination wi'bh Hegelian ontology is
generally considered regrettable and as rEm>te and difficult to ccmpreheni as the Victorian
crisis of religious doubt which first occasioned it.

As for British Idealism, it has a distinct history running from the cambridge Platonists
through Coleridge to Collinqw:>od - and beyond. This stream of tmught was for a time swept
·along by strong Kantian and Hegelian currents before returning to its characteristically
English meanderings.

Unless otherwise indicated in the telct, "idealism" and "idealist" are here used to refer
to ];il.iloso];il.ical idealism.

In footnotes on their first being introduced, I have p:ovided brief biograpucal sketches
of the principal British Hegelians am of minor figures wlDse labours in SCliB way, mwever
small, paved the way for Hegel's entry into British !hilosophy. Some others have received the
SCIIll! treatment because, even ti:Dugh peripheral to Hegelianism, they are important in other
contexts, but their names may be unfamiliar to the general reader - if such can be found for a
work of this nature.

In chapters 10 and 11 I have qooted fairly liberally from M::Taggart's Studies in Hegelian
Cosmology, because it is, compared_ to Green's Principles of Political Obligation, Bradley's
Ethical studies or Bosanquet's Philosophical Theory of the State, difficult to ca11e by either
in '14lole or in part.
 li

The bibliography includes a chronologically ordered list of English translations of

Hegel's writings.

This book began in 1963-64 as a doctoral dissertation at the london School of Econanics
and Political Science. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to
Professor Elie Kedourie for his supervision and guidance of my graduate work at ISE, while
entering the customary disclaimer on his behalf with respect to any errors, omissions or lapses
herein, for which, of course, he bears no responsibility whatever.

After being submitted as the written requirement for a doctorate fran the University of
london in 1966, this w:>rk lay untouched until the SUIIUller of 1980. As a result, considerable
re-thinking has occurred and extensive re-writing has been necessary. The process began with my
first year of university teaching, and I thank the 1967-68 honours political science class at
the University of Victoria for a profound "learning experience." In particular, I w:>uld express
my appreciation to Garry Curtis for his friendship, counsel and unfailing belief that something
would come of my labours on Green, Bradley, Bosanquet arrl the rest. T\00 former colleagues at
the University of Victoria, Richard Powers and Mark Sproule-Jones, have continued to encourage
Ire in this and other scholarly endeavours.

Over the years of The British Hegelians' gestation, birth, limbo and rebirth, my parents
have assisted in a variety of ways. In addition to their financial aid, my mother has typed the
thing at least once, and my father has given me the benefit of knowledge gained from his long
and scholarly devotion to nineteenth century English literature. ·

Of all those ...no have had to put up with the "thing," the one who has borne the brunt from
first to last and woo deserves first prize for tolerance and good humour - arrl for timely
prodding - is my wife, Juliet. A more than honourable mention goes to my three children.

Latterly, as publication deadlines approached and pressure roounted for the final revision,
my colleagues on the staff of Hansard have suffered my abstracted air arrl mutterings about
obscure fragments of British cultural history. 'IWo of them, Jo-Anne Brookman and David Greer,
have devoted many hours of their own tiire to helping Ire with the production of final copy.
 ABBREITIATICNS

The follOIId.ng abbreviations have been used for works cite:l often:

l!osanquet, Bernard The Philosophical Theory of the State, 4th e:li tion
The Principle of Individuality and Value e:li
Bradley, F.H.

Green, T.H.

McTaggart, J.Mc'l'.E.
Collected Essays
Ethical Studies, 2nd edition

Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 1941 reprint

Prolegomena to Ethics, 5th edition

Studies in Hegelian Cosmology

Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic
e:
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylorandfrancis.com
 TABLE OF ~S

Preface i

Abbreviations iii

Introduction: The Hegelian Entexprise

Chapter 1 Idealist Political Theory and the Victorian

Frame of Mind
9
Chapter 2 The Prehistory of Hegelianism in Britain 17

Chapter 3 Religious Resistance to Hegel.: Fran Coleridge

to Personal Idealism 26

Chapter 4 J .H. Stirling: Kant as the "Secret" of Hegel 38

Chapter 5 Hegel and Classical Scholarship at Oxford 42

Chapter 6 The Principle of Utility fran HU~te to Sidgwick 50

Chapter 7 F.H. Bradley: The Organic Theory of Sociecy 57

Chapter 8 T.H. Green: The Pursuit of the Ccnlnon Good 65

Chapter 9 Bernard Bosarquet: The Idealist Theory of the

state 72

Chapter 10 Idealism, "Evolutionism" and utilitarianism 81

Chapter 11 Idealism as a Sul:stitute Religion 91

Chapter 12 R.B. Hald:lne: Hegelianism with "Dirty Hands" 98

Chapter 13 The Decline of British Hegelianism 102

Bibliography 110

IndeK 122
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylorandfrancis.com
 INTRODUCTION

For the pdnciple in system is not the simple

exclusion of all that does not fit, but the
perpetual re-establishrtent of coharence.

Oakesoott, Introduction
to Leviathan, xv

The Hegelian Enterprise

There has always been a substantial body of philosophical opinion which has felt that the
caning of Hegel to Britain was like the introduction of sane ex:otic :!Preign drug desicped to
confound native clarity and caruron sense. Durii¥J the little rore than a century of the
English-speaking world's cognizance of Hegelian philosophy there has been one ,1;2riod, diting
roughly fran the 1880s to World War I, when toose mo felt otherwise prevailed. Fran srortly
after World War I until very recenUy Hegel has been the object of AI¥Jlo-SaKon suspicion or
disdain.1 The reasons for this disfavour were not quite the same as tlose which operated in the
middle years of the nineteenth century. Very few twentieth century philos~hers have cared to
condemn Hegel as irreligious, altoough some British Hegelians "defected" on s::ome smh gramd.
Neither individualist ethics nor existentialist Christianity has been aimed directly a<;Jlinst
the Hegelian version of idealisn- altoough they have detracted fran its influence. Acmsations
of p:>litical reaction, imnorality and Gceater Germm nationalisn have all been tmroughly
discredited - trough not eliminated. Charges of bad logic and 0\7e:r:weenii¥J metapl'\Ysics have had
to be laid with increasing care and circumspection, and have, nore often than not, canpletely
misfired.

The basis for such charges has been, primarily, the dualist or realist view of the world.
'!his is the metaphysical foundation mich gives the positivist and empiricist opposition to
idealism its force and penetration. It goes to the very core of Hegelian philosopl'\Y and it has
been the most trenchant and enduring criticism of it. The opposii¥J nonism, philos~hical
materialism, languishes as low as does philosophical idealism. After all, the view that mind
and matter, or mind and body, are two separate kinds of ultinately irreduc:ible stuff W!ich
sanehow interact is the obvious and canm:>nsense one.

A fully and finally satisfactory explanation of mind-body interaction remains an elusive

goal. c.o. Broad has distinguished 17 possible theories of the relationship betveen mind and
matter. Sane would say that a solution to this hoary problem is inherently imp:>ss:ible and
content themselves with the dogmatic assertion that mind and body obvirusly do interact and
that there is no m:>re one can meaningfully say on the subject. Others would say that weryday
linguistic usage talks about a dualistic world, and that that is sufficient. However, 1103t
dualists contirue to seek for an explanation of interaction, USU!llly on the basis of some

1 In the fourteenth edition of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (Ne.ot Yo:z:k.,
1964) Hegel is still labelled an "enemy of analysis" (p. 744), and his unit;:{ of toought and
being, in the guise of the theory of internal relations, "a mistake, and fran this mistake
arose the whole imposing edifice of his system." To which, characteristically, Russell adds:
"This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the IIDre interesting
the consequences to which it gives rise" (p. 746).
 2

analogy which indicates the kind of thirq that might ocwr, or which s~:g~sts a p:lSs:ihle way of
looking at instances of interaction between mind and body. Such analogies are fre;p.Ently drawn
frcm natural science, particularly frcm physics, in which a certain class of phenauena may
require two contrary sets of explanation in order to accomt for all its observable behaviour -
for exall\ple, the wave and coxpus::ular theories of light. Rarely does a contemp:lra:cy philOBopher
attempt to reduce one of the interacting "stuffs" to the other, certainly not IIB.tter into mind.
Experience would seem to guarantee the independent existence of a world of matter external to
our minds. Yet it is p:ecisely experience Up:ln Wl.ich the philoscphical idealist such as He~l
has always taken his stand.

An examination of experience as a progressive develcpment fran sense-certaint;y to

self-conscious reason shows, according to Hegel, that the external world is the p:oduct of
mind, and that mind must so externalize itself. The identit;y of matter and mind is both the
ground and the result of a continuous p:ocess of diremption and remion. The end is :implicit at
the outset of any journey of experience undertaken by any conscioo.sness, but it cannot be
deduced a priori. The categories of thought are p:oved only in the continuing ef:fbrt to or&r
experience through them. One must reduce the flCM of :impressions :impirqing on one's
conscioo.sness - channelling, diverting, sifting and storing. This cannot be done 'Without mmtal
equipment. But the "fonns" which 110uld our experience, while pre-established, are part of the
flow of experience and, indeed, a late developmmt. By themselves they are an a:tstraction, a
skeleton without flesh or breath of life. The design of the force which draws thin;Js oo.t and
makes them manifest is not for us to posit; it is in and for us to create. Creating it is a
process in space and time occupied by self-conscious human bein;JS• There are still some thin;Js
'itlich we have not, for better or worse, created. However, nothing is inherently inexplicable,
and if it can be grasped in and for itself, i f its structure and principle can be understood,
then it can be re-created, if only in thought. The p:ocess of re-creation was, :fbr Hegel,
contemplative, not active - for Marx, the signal failure of philOBophical idealisn. Hegel
regarded his philosq>hy as the beginning of the end of the p:ocess ~reby self-cons:::icus
reason brought "h:lme" to the world the spirit of what it was and what it had done: thought
would be adequate to being; mind would penetrate uatter ani there fini fbrms of
self-expression.

The logic of the process lies in the experience of it and only there. The Hegelian
principle of i&nticy is an i&ntity-in-difference. In other words, it recoglizes the
externally related, the contingent and the accidental for what they are: real experiences. The
unceasirq efforts of many minds to establish non-contin~t relations anong the varirus
elements of their canbined experience produce results, altlx>ugh they also produce fresh
dissonance and incoherence. The effort is always renewed and, in spite of lc:sses, its results
are cumulative. The ult:imate identicy of mind and its products, nature and histo:cy, is the
absolute presupposition of our a01uiring any grasp ..tlats:>ever of the world as we experience it.

Hegel has sooetines been said to be no philosq>hical idealist, because of his apparent
disinterest in the problem of 'knowled~.2 For one thin;J, he did not ask himself the
epistemological question posed by such :imp:lrtant p:edecess:>rs as Berkeley, Hlllre and lfant: how
can my sensations yield 'knowled~ of whate;rer it is which occasions them? I am only aware of my
own sensations ani reflections on them, and I have no assurance that· the sensations and
reflections conveyed to me by others can confinu anythirq other than themselves, i.e. be
evi&nce for the existence of others, because they are only further sensatiDns of mine. A
collapse into solipsisn is the reductio ad absurdum of subjective idealiam, and many who have
followed that course have provoked an eKtrezre reaction, even in their own thouljl.t, towards
"radical publiciam. "3 That sort of internal dialectic - the probing of the limits of a certain

2 A. c. Ewing, Idealism: A Critical Survey, 3rd ed. (!oman, 1961), ch. 2, esp. PP• 60-62.
3 J.N. Findlay, "The contempora:cy relevance of Hegel," Hegel: A Collection of Critical Esseys,
ed. A. Macintyre (New York, 1972) , P• 15.
 3

line of arguuent by pushi.nq it until it breaks down - was for Hegel the pursuit of truth. It is
a metbod. be made peculiarly his own in his analysis of any set of propositions about any area
of experience, or trought about experience. Hegel's own startirq p:~int was the actual, living
stream of experience, mat the pragnatist William James called a "bloaning, blzzl.ng confusion."
There is nothing outside our experience - until we start analyzl.ng it, as we must. The problem
of the existence of an external w:>rld is llilat we might call an academic one. No one not a
lunatic behaves as if it did not exist. Theoretically, its existence is a useful hypothesis fbr
a number of purposes, including the pursuit of natural acience. But reality is to be found in
the ebb and flow of experience, and in the dialectical turnirq of our experiences inside out
and upside down. What we seek is not verification of this, that or the other thing, blt an
order and coherence in our experiences which will satisfy, amonq other things, the q12st fbr
truth.

Jant pcsited a tranacendental schema, the synthetic mity of the lllllli:lbld of

apperceptions, as the ground of our knowledge of a causally relatei, spatially and tenp:~rally
ordered phenomenal w:>rld. He retained, however, a w:>rld of things-in-themselves, inaccess.ible
to the human mind. What the mind can know of an external, phenanenal w:>rld is the result of a
degree of self-activity inconceivable to any empiricist philosq>ber. But lfant's philoaq>hy is
fi.Imly dualist. The a priori conceptions apply only to sense data. They can yield no knO'ii'ledge
of a supersensible w:>rldJ they are tied to sense-perception. The mind interacts wlth an
external w:>rld which is an inexplicable ncumenon. Essential real!ty, the thirq-in-i tself,
eludes the mind because it is not adequate to the task of penetrating that reality W:l.idl lies
behind the phenanenal w:>rld. 'l'he pure foms of space and time are the rational, a priori
framework within which the w:>rld of contingent phenonena necessarily moves, and wLthout W:l.ich
we could have no experience whats:lever. They are not only the means whereby ordar and ccherence
are createi in our experience. They are the sine qua non of experience. This frillliEnDrk, this
schema is supplied by the understanding in conjmction with sense-perception. In addition,
there are pure idaas - categories such as causality - which, when sdlena.tized by the infusion
of anpirical knowledge (i.e. knowledge given under the fo:ms of space and time), further order
our experience. These, again, only give suletantive knowledge in conjmction wLth lilat is
derived fran sense-perception. They have a further regulative fmction, but in thEmselws ~
can contribute nothing to our knowledge of the external w:>rld. Even as regulative, they cannot
be projected beyond experience witrout c.reatirq irresolvable antinanies. Only for the practical
or mral reason can a pure idea have suletantive status. The external w:>rld is both conception
and perception, the conception empty witrout sense data, the perception shaped entirely by the
conceptual framework.

Hegel contended that Jant's transcendental mity of apperceptions yieldei uerely

subjective knowledge, with no guarantee of objective truth. He began with the ass1Dption that
we can know reality, that we are capable of knowing e"Uerythinq. The object is in thoucjlt as it
is in reality, because reality is trought. This is no mere play up:~n w:>rds. Hegel meant that
the c:atecpries of thought are those of reality. They are loqically prior to reality
externalized as nature and history, wt knowing than is a DDment of advanced
self-consciousness, mich is a product of that p:ocess of self-developmmt and self-exp:ession
which the w:>rld as an idea IIIUSt have gone thrwgh in ordar for us to have the sort of
experience we, as human beings, do have. Fran reality being a species of self-conacicumess it
does not follow that truth is merely subjective or a product of intrcspection. On the contruy,
fran self-conscious reason being reflected in reality it follows that the truth about ourselws
may be found in the w:>rld we have createi and re-createi. A journey into inner space must
eventually becaae a journey into outer space. It begl.ns and ends in C<lllliDXl space, and each
connection made is an intimation of cosmic necessity. In becaning aware of its own
implications, the human mind explicates the wmle of reality. It is a necessary J.X'esuppa;ition
of knowledge that reality is a trought process. It is equally necessary, in order that mind
know itself as reality, that it externalize itself in the w:>rlds of nature and huaan history.
 4

The effort to understand the external world is mind's caning into its own. It must tcke in
- literally canpcehend- everything before it can affinn the identity of mind and natter, the
underlying spirituality of the universe. The bare assertion of that identit;y is not sufficient;
in fact, it is quite erronecus. The kn0111ledge of physics, chemi.stry, engineering, aninal
husbandry, history - each in and for itself, each according to its own peculiar metlnd and
confonning to its own criteria of truth and adequacy - is necessary to that full self-knOW'lErlge
which is the actualization of the spiritual principle of reality. One cannot evade the "patient
toil of the neg;1tive."

In spite of Hegel's vehenent q>position tD aey reduction of the aliverse to

undifferentiated spirit, his positivist and realist critics persist in attacking h:im for
disreg;1rding essential distinctions, above all that bet..een mind and an external 1110rld of
matter or bodies in space and time. He certainly regarded the universe, the totality of thirgs,
as fundamentally spiritual in nature, and he did attempt tD trace a p::ogressive spiritual
development in nature - with some rather absurd results fran the point of view of the natural
scientist. But he was certainly not purporting to construct nature a p::iori or dedu:::e the wlPle
of natural science fran purely rational principles, as many of his critics have suggested. He
set out to describe a fully intellig:ible world, one in lrhich nothing is left cut or
disconnected, in which everything can be explained in te:ons of everythin;J else because all is
rational - there is nothing ..tlich the mind cannot penetrate and there dis::over a reflection of
itself.

This world of Hegel's was neither an article of faith nor a mystical VJ.Sl.On; it was the
necessary outcorre of findin:J the key to the understandin:J of the external w:>rld in
self-consciousness. Self-consciousness was for Hegel the archetype of identity-in-difference.
It was the perfect example, because the ultinate source, of the reconciliation of apparently
irreconcilable contradictories.

If one were to alter the tenns of the duality of mind and body and refer to then as
subject and object, one would get a clue to Hegel's identification of than. The self is both
the subject and the object of introspection. While one cannot jump out of one's skin and
examine one's self as one would any external object, one can examine oneself objectively as if
one were someone else as well as oneself. However, this does not seem at first sight to have
much bearing upon the p::oblan of the mind-body relationship. The mind, after all, is not a
material object; and there are a large number of material objects witrout minds - and even nore
without self-consciousness. Hegel's app::oach tD this problem was to point out that
self-consciousness depends upon the same opposition of subject and object as does the
oonsciousness of anything in the external w::>rld. COnscicuSless af self re;ruires the
objectification of self. COnversely, the conscicusness of an external object re;ruires that one
sooehow find oneself in that object. The object is and renains external; but in the p:ocess of
caning to understand it, the mind sees it less and less as an alien object and nore and 110re as
a familiar and integral part of an expanding w::>rld of experience. At the stage of philosq;ihy,
the full spirituality of the object becanes explicit. However, the stage of sheer externality
is not abolished. It is sufficient for natural science and p::actical life; and it is necessary
for self-consciousness: the self becanes conscicus of itself only in contradistinction to what
is not itself, the external w::>rld of things and other selves. In the p:ocess of coming to full
self-consciousness, the self brings with it the not-self, which it at first regards as
sooething in bare opposition to itself.

The culmination of this p::ocess is a system of kn0111ledge in lrhich, although the sum is
self-oonsciousness, every stage traversed in reaching it is preserved in it. Self-consciwsness
would not be full self-conscicusness if it did not include the inevitable nonents of diremption
and duality. It was these m:ments of the self faced by an alien, irreducible other, rather than
the introspective habit of standing outside oneself, that Hegel was referring to ..tlen he tal:ked
about self-objectification.
 5

In talking about mind, Hegel was talking about any individual mind as a rroment in the
totality of human minds past and present. Self-consciousness is an individual thing; but even
at its lowest level, that of sense-certainty, the germ of universal objective mind is at work.
Self-consciousness can be consciousness of self only because the self is shared; each is a
manifestation of intersubj ective mind, and even the self's IOC>st individual characteristics
derive from shared experience.

Our experience is neither an undifferentiated datum nor a series of data, nor is it

"formed" in a synthetic a priori fashion as it is in Kant's transcendentalism. Ebr a proper
understanding of it, Hegel renovated an ancient notion which had fallen into considerable
disgrace with the rise of IOC>dern science and mechanistic philosophy. ihl.s was Aristotle's
theory of causation, particularly of the final cause or telos. What shapes and directs any
process is its immanent or built-in purp:>se - its genetic code, to use a metaphor drawn from
twentieth century science. It has to be remembered that this is only a metaphor, because Hegel
has been all too easily made the butt of such stale anti-Aristotelian jokes as the one that the
apple fell because of its inner ~ive, or conatus, to strike Newton on the head and initiate a
chain of reasoning to produce the law of universal gravitation. 'nle Hegelian version would be
that a particular phase of the human experience was characterized by, aiOC>ng other things,
looking at falling objects in a new light. 'nlere was a shift in intellectual vision, which was
increasingly informed by an atomistic conception of matter in motion. Men of affairs as well as
men of science conceived of the Whole world as "push" because that afforded both an explanation
which was simple yet cognitively p:>werful and an unprecedented degree of control over external
forces. A new way of ordering experience emerged; and whatever it might have to say about
physical causation, its own emergent structure was anything but fortuitous. It was the product
not just of many minds, but also of many currents of thought. It was both cause and consequence
of a new II'Klrld view, whose most comprehensive, far-reaching and systematic expression was to be
found in the philosophy of Hobbes. Like its representative fhilosofhical expression, this
confluence of ideas had its own "centripetal force" drawing into itself "numberless currents of
thought, contemp:>rary and historic. n4

Explaining Hegel's (or any other) philosophy metaphorically can be misleading, especially
in Hegel's case, because of his deliberate eschewal of the imagery of art and religion.
Nevertheless, here is yet another metaphor: Hegel's history of philosofhy is itself a
philosophy. His account of how certain thinkers thought is part of the plan to whose unfolding
those thinkers contributed. '!he end or final cause of all human activity is a fully
self-conscious philosophy, one which knows the necessity of each particular in the
implementation of the plan of the world. The plan, however, is neither a blueprint nor an
oracle; it is an evolving hierarchy of being as experienced by all men. Philosophy may
understand better than any other IOC>de of experience what has happened and Wn.y, but its
comprehension grows with the growth of experience as a whole. Philosophy is the most
self-conscious fibre of being, but it is part of the natural history of being from rocks to
religion. It is implicit in. the life of each hunan being that he or she seek to make a
distinctive contribution to the human experience of Being.5 The integrating element is spirit
at II'Klrk in the II'Klrld- or in New Testament language, ~' the II'Klrd of God incarnate.

4 Michael Qakeshott, Introduction to Hobbes' Leviathan (Oxford, 1960), p. xii.

5r have tried to resist the creeping capitalization of philosophical terms, if only because
Hegelianism has long been the chief offender in the eyes of those Wn.o take . strong exception to
the use of capitals to confer undeserved grandeur up:>n concepts. However, in this case at
least, without capitalization confusion could arise. By Dasein, Hegel meant determinate being,
which is pure being in a perpetual IOC>tion of becoming what it is not. What it is, is nothing.
It must continuously negate itself in order to break itself up into determinate things, to
acquire properties and qualities, to be sanething.
 6

It was with the world spirit that Hegel sought to overcane ICant's dualian and the
unknowable reality beyond the reach of hllliBil experience and conception. World spirit si<]lifies
more in Hegel's philosophy than CQIIIII)n reasm, but it is essentially, in all its meanin;Js, a
rational pdnciple. The Hegelian tem ~ can be translated as mi.nd or as spirit, spirit
being a higher and fuller level of mind; mind has DDre strictly intellectual connotations.
Spirit is realized in art and religion as well as philoscphy. In the Hegelian systEIIl philoaq>hy
is the crown of this trinity and can conceive what the EII\Otive and aesthetic 11Ddea of
experience cannot - that is, their respective roles and relations to the rest of experience. In
addition to its place in the hierarchy of being as the highest fom of self-conscious
intellectual activity, philoaq>hy is also the fullest exp:-ession of that rational p:-incipl.e
which ensures the human capacity to "grasp" the 1110rld. As we now know, the whole world, the
totality of things, is only explicable as the unfolding of W!at is, in hunan tems, the
rational. 11lile great play has been made during the past 150 years of the spirit of the age and
similar notions WJ.ich attEmpt to fonnulate the phencmena of the collective psyche, none of it
t:ruly addresses Hegel's philosophical problEII\. It was conceived in psychological teJllls only
insofar as his phenomenology offered a des::riptive analysis of reco9J.izable psycl:ological
types. But they are treated primarily as logical t.ypeis, in IIIIXlh the seme sort of way that
classical theorists of the social contract treated the state of nat~re. Hegel's purpose was
philosophical: to explain the necessaey foms of human experience, not to sb::lw bow this or that
historical fonn of social consciwsn~ss, p:>lit·ics or artistic endeavour enbodi.ed this .or that
idea.

Between various prototypes of psycbo-history and Marx's historical materialian, the ecact
nature of the Hegelian enterpdse has been obscured. One of the thin9=1 that historical
materialists (Marxist and non-Marxist) have been doing with increasing diligence since the
1960s is reading their antecedents backwards, i.e. frcm Marx to Hegel. One of the things they
have discovered is that there is still a lot left on the aqenda. of Hegel's phenauenology, and
that • are still wrestling with the contradictions of W!at Hegel called "the tnhappy
consciwsness." As Charles Taylor has said in response to a question first p:>sed by Benedetto
Cr:oce in 1907 - What is living- and WJ.at. is dead in the philoscphy of Hegel? - Hegel's ontology
may be a dead letter, but his account of DDdern man's predicament is as vital as ever.6 Can we
be at bane in a 1110rld WJ.ich is partly of our own making? Our maldng- it is no p:-otection ag:linst
our being alienated frcm it - quite the contrary - and • have a collective prq>ensity to
rationalize WJ.at we have made, in the sense of finding' reas:>ns fur that mich has always been,
or has becane, bereft of any rational basis. Marx's theory of alienation and the false
consciousness of capitalist s:>ciety is the best-known elaboration of these ia:!as. ACJlin,
Hegel's distinctive purpose can be lost sight of. By iil'lerting Hegel's conception of freedan,
Marx thoucjlt he could pt"Oject the final act of hUIIBll emmcipation onto the stage of histo:eyr
the realization of rationality could becaa.e a plan of political action. For Hegel, t:rue freedan
lay in knowing' that the freedan of all must be. thfortmately for the unfree - and that
includes everyone in various ways and to varying degrees - the idea of freedan cannot be
imposed on events, nor can ita actualization be mreaeen. Anl't)ne can now be free to the eld:ent
that he or she knows •what it's all abalt• and can reconcile his or her own self-realization
with the general scheme of things. It's basically a question of finding' one's identity and
one's self-respect in the world as it is. 11lat one finds are a lot of other individuals and
gralpS wb::l have soucjlt or are seeldnq self-:realization. To seek self-r~aliBtion is to
participate in the adventure of human reason, the DDst self-consciws mauent in the spirit of
the world. In ~!-religious fashion, Hegel depicts self-realization as a kind of
self-abnegation. '!he self to be realized is always 100re than oneself. One finds a lot of what
one is meant to be in interests and experiences WJ.ich appear to be wtside oneself.

It is jmp:>rtant, in discussing' Hegel on self-realization and the need. for wl:oleness in our

6 see Charles Taylor, Hegel (London, 1975), esp. ch. 20.

 7

experience, not to attach too 1111:Ch weight to the prescriptive aspect and religioo.s 01rertones of
self-realization. For one thing, Hegel's philosq>hy w:~s in part a reaction ag:linst the Ronantic
philosophers' holy war against the prevailing rationalism and materialism of the eighteenth
century Enlitjltenment. The campaign's chief architect was Herder, who aimed at nothing less
than a new science of man in the manner of Vico, based on the conception of man as a beiDJ who
created, identified and established himself in the world, within each sub-gr=p of hlll1Bili ty, in
a variety of WJ.ique ways. SUch ways lay in and throo.gh the develq>ment of diverse foDlls of
linguistic and artistic exp:ession. The attack, as it g1thered monentum, culminating in the
leadership of Fichte, was directed as much against constricting social and political foDlls as
it was against rationalist culture. It soucjlt a revolution in conscirumess 'llhich would both
canplement and control the overthrCM of the ancien ~· With Fichte it went even further,
positing a DDral will independent of everything else, an eternal catecprical imperative to make
the world over - the success of which endeavour would be self-destructive. Hegel accepte:i the
need to rediscover spirituality in nature - to, i f nothing else, see nature as a medium fbr
human self-expression - but he rejected the increasingly central role in human experience
assigned by the Rommtics to a schw:~rnerei of 110ral indi'iJ'lation and mystical comnmion 'lii.th
nature. His basic objection to the radical freedan preached by Fichteans and so-called liberal
nationalists w:~s that it claimed too much for subjectivity in q>position to the world as
structured by Enlightennent philosophy, and it entailed a "bad infinit;y." That is to sey,
Ronantic idealism posed a <pod will in e:rrlless q>position to ...tlatever was recalcitrant to it,
in the impossible - and therefore 110rally corrupting - pursuit of the elimination of the
contingent and the conventional. The p:oper conception of infinity, says Hegel, is circular.
Self-realization rightly conceived is a search for oneself in the world which returns to
oneself, The end is in the beginning; but the fulfil.:nent occurs in and through the joys and
sorrows, the enrichment and the loss of the inteJ:Vening journey. MoreOY"er, no matter l:r:>w far
one might soar above them, one cannot dispense with the "cake of rustan" and a>cial routine.

It bears repeating that Hegel's basic objective was uetaphysical rather than 110ral: to
demonstrate the necessary Wlity in diversity of the world; to 01rercane division between sli>ject
and object, between man and nature, between values and facts, because the .orld spirit denands
it. The identity of identity and non-identity cannot be merely asserted, willed or projected;
it has to be rationally explicated. However, it cannot be done by the kind of reaa>ning 'llhich
is employed in either pure or applied science. This is designed to separate the human mind, as
a disent>odied set of rules, fran the natter 'llhich it p:obes and nanipulates, and it is well
suited to its appointed purpose. Hegel tellliS this mode of reasoniDJ Verstand (understanding),
and distinguishes it very carefully fran Vernunft (reaa>n). The latter is the netl:r:>d and the
result - the one implicit in the other - of the mind in search of ultimate explanations, of
that reflection on experience \fbich mediates (overcOiles without discarding) the conscirumess
of diremption in nature and human history.

Hegel's vision of the identity of the autonanous individual with the rational plan
for the world and everything in it w:~s both logical and his'b:>rical. The logic 'lii.thoo.t the
history was timeless, inunutable truth, but entirely abstract. In order that spirit may be fully
realized, mankind IIUJSt "work it out." '!his neans experiencing all the lower and 110re or less
distorted fox:ms of consciousness en roo.te to the reCOY"ery of pr:imitive WJ.it;y. Of coo.rse, there
are worlds of difference between the innocence of original nan and the experience of
self-conscious, reflective man. Going no further back than the WJ.self-conscioo.s haD!Iony of
Periclean Athens:
"Fran the felicity of 'substantiality' ('so sind sie-so leben sie') the Western
conscioo.sness IIUJSt endure its historical saec~of 'alienation' or 'bif~rcation.'
However, this is the charge of freedan."7

7 G.A. Kelly, Idealism, Politics and History (Canbridge, 1969), P• 325.

 8

The philosophical anthrcpology which Beqel inherited fran Kant was DDral.istic. ICant was
pri.narily concerned to make roan :fbr man as a free uoral agent in a 'WOrld of external
causation. He also explored the notion that the nex:us of man and his 'WOrld and the way to grasp
reality lay in the aesthetic sense, that the model of truth is artistic app:eciation of
significant and therefore satisfying :fbDII. As with the self-legislati.DJ DDral will, ICant owed
muc:h of the ,inspiration :fbr his ideal human character to Ralsseau' s variOlS attaDpts to
construct an "image" of the good man - the self-possessed, self-directed person. Kant sought a
ratiocinative conception of that :fbDII of individual human freedaa :lbr lhidl GJethe and Sdliller
provided primarily literary expressions. Rou.sseau's Emile, especially the first part, is
devoted to the cultivation of a sensibility lhich is part aesthetic, part uoralistic. Emile's
education is designed to prociJce an individual Jmmune to "the historical pattern of cormptiort'
by inculcating "the rhythn of the human heart. n8 The natural goodness of mn - the residue of
which may be found in agricultural village life - is a pleasi.DJ prospect. However, it cannot be
recaptured, and sterner stuff than fli<jlts of litera:r:y fancy is required to make m:m noral:
sanethinq both artistic and political, and therefore coercive, a quasi-divine, supernatural act
of constitutional creation. Rousseau's political writings contain mny strictures on fine art
and the cultivation of feelings for their own sake. The crux of his objections was the
classical republican canmandl1ent ag:linst pt:r:y as a threat to civic virtue. In ICant's case,
the antinaaies of practical reas:>n - the logic of the DDral will - renain unresolved by the
critique of judgnent, so that we are left with the mcondi.tional and mcondi.tioned will to good
as the DDst authentic expression of humanity. To be a true subject and not an object one must
will the good, because the only intrinsically, indepmdently good thing is the good will. The
problem of autonanous, self-directed DDral action, as it presented itself to Beqel, was to
retain such freedaa while avoiding the pitfalls of, on the one hand, anorphOlS feelings of
goodwill - an intense sort of bonlunie - and the DDrality of impulse, and on the other, the
impotence of a will to good lhich cannot adlieve anything in ·the real 'WOrld of human desires
and needs withlut canpranisi.DJ its autonany. Hegel's solution, the concept of Sittlichkeit
( roughl,y translatable aS s:>Cial ethiCS) t waS a p>litical one.

Sittlichkeit is not the set of values by mich p>litical life in the rational state can be
judged. But it closely approaches that higher fom of life by overcaninq the inadequacy of the
Ka.ntian ethic - the hic;llest adlievenent in its sphere - through an act of Hegelian medl.ation.
It cancels and preserves the contradictions inherent in Moralitat1 it does not deey them.
Similarly, the rational state "sublates" Sittlichkeit. The di.stingui.shinq feat~re of
Sittlichkeit is that it is a set of internalized x:ules, which ex:ist independently of the
self-legislating subject. However, they have been freely internalized and are there:lbre not
sanethinq set over against the subject. The political subject of the rational state, whidl
ex:presses its rationality to a ve:r:y high degree through the conduct of its citi:llens aooordi.ng
to Sittlichkeit, is a subject in the sense of being a self-directed 11&1\ber of his canmmit;y.
Sh>rt of beillg' a philoscphical sort of person, a Platpnic visiona:r:y, or a member of that
"universal class" of higher civil servants whose function it is to understand the etms of the
caomunity and its place in the un:fbldinq of 'WOrld spirit, the citizen of a well-governed state
with good laws lives at the peak of human achievement. 1!\lrthennore, he obeys p>sitive laws and
s:x:iai conventions, and not the <plden rule of Jesus Christ or William G:ldwin. Hegel purp>rted
to find his standard of the rational state in what was actually happeni.DJ arcund rum, in the
laws ~ich were in place and in the p>litical re:lbrms mich 'l!lere in p:ocess. !1\le underl~ng
rationality of all that is actually happeni.DJ is difficult to explain wit.h>ut fallinq into the
trap of either the 'ltlig interp.-etation of histo:r:y or the simple-minded positivism that matever
is, is right. The conceptual device whidl allowed Beqel to demonstrate - to his own
satisfaction at least - the historical reality of the rational was the teleological argunent
which Kant explored at lenqth in his Critique of Judpnt, found wantillg' and discarded.

8 ~·• P• 45.
 CHAPl'ER 1

Idealist Political Theory

and the Victorian Frame of Mind

TOO idea that nature is the result of a diremption within too world spirit is an
unnecessary mystification for those who do oot share Hegel's preoccupation with the rational
ordering of all experience. There is, however, one area of human experience which lends itself
particularly well to a Hegelian explanation - the social and the political. Here we are faced
with an external world which everyone must to scme extent agree is a product of too human
mind. Just as the world of natural Jilenomena is, says Hegel, an externalization necessary to
full self-consciousness, so is too w:>rld of custan an:i law. TOO crucial difference is that the
human spirit is more deeply involved, more self-conscious and more purposive in the life of
organized political society.

At this point we need to remind ourselves of too potential for misconceiving the
spirituality which Hegel discovered in the world and all its doings as a sort of gnosticism.
Hegel was talking about a necessary process of self-knowledge. It is a process of
self-realization in that sense, as IIIUCh as it is self-fulfilment. In explicating Hegel's
political thought, we should think in terms of too dialectical, teleological mode of thinking
which he called Vernunft, because the state, as the apex of moral and political endeavour, is
neither a transcendental deduction nor a moral ideal in Hegel's philosophical system; it is the
necessary historical expression of continuing and cumulative attempts to live the good life in
a collective form. Vernunft may also be interpreted as intersubj ective mind, as opposed to a
narrowly rationalistic cogito. In this sense, it is a collective and substantive thing, and oot
simply an inference fran any individual experience or the rules for thinking to indubitable
conclusions. Reason is self-conscious thought. But, as we have seen, it is not esoteric; it is
not what we would today call a second-order activity; it is not the preserve of the
professional JililosoJiler. It is part of the "cunning of reason" that it can fool the wise. 'lhe
rational state knows that it is rational, an:i it knows through the experience of each of its
citizens. Hegel's political theory describes the rational state in terms of an immanent
potential which every state seeks to actualize. The fully rational state is one in which every
citizen regards himself as in a position to fulfil himself because he is a member of the
state. Teleologically, every state exists because its citizens are conscious to sane degree
that individual potential can only be realized within the state.

The idea that the state can be the agent of moral improvement and spiritual advancement,
that it is more than a conmon denominator or an organization of material convenience, has deep
roots. Particularly in the political part of his Jililosopucal system, Hegel was
self-consciously renovating a tradition of thought which has always drawn directly from Plato
and Aristotle. The climate of opinion in early nineteenth century Germany was especially
receptive to such theories, because of a comparatively recent but well-developed passion for
the art and thought of classical Greece. It was almost a hundred yaars after German hellenism
burst into bloan that a similar thing occurred in England. 1 The Ranan model retained its hold

1 The ,lililhellenism of such English Jbmantic poets as Keats and Byron is well known, but they
were superficial in their appreciation of classical Greek culture by comparison with Schiller
and HOlderlin. Behind the extensive knowledge of and penetrating insight into classical Greek
culture displayed by the German Romantics lay the pioneering philological work of Winckelmann.
Their passion for things Greek was so exceptional as to be called by one commentator "the
 10

on the English mind, but in late Victorian art history and literary criticism the Greeks
overtook the lbmans, due in part to the transmission of GeJ::man classician by such influential
scholars as Benjamin Jowett and by the British Hegelians themselves. Hegel was an enthusiastic
but discriminating hellenist with an intense interest in -the Greek city-state. !n it he found
the prototype of the completely rational state, the state whose citizens are self-consciously
at one with their social and political setting. The citizens of ancient Athens ha:i been in
quite unself-conscious unity with their laws, customs and gods. '!here had been a natural and
imnediate acceptance of the moral and political order. !n fact, there had been for a brief
period m distinction - and consequently no conflict - between the IIDral and political ....orlds.
It was inconceivable that the political life of the city could be j udge:i by any higher 100ral
standard. As Hegel fully appreciated, it was so judged by 9::1phocles' Antigone. It was also
judged - and found wanting - · in the speeches and dee:is of sane of its JOOst illustrious
political leaders. It was a vital, dynamic form of political identity-in-difference, albeit
inherently unstable.

The relatively unself-conscious harmony of the polis was no defence against an

apolitical, individualistic moral creed. First stoicism and then Olristianity offered the
individual release fran the formalize:i social and political world which succeede:i the
city-state. A condition of alienation - alienation of the individual from his celestial as well
as fran his terrestrial city - lasted until the French ReVolution, when a forcible assimilation
of the t\«1 cities, and of the alienated individual to this ideal brought to earth, was
attempted. The attemp:: was unsuccessful because the resultant state of absolute liberty was an
empty proclamation. It lacked the concrete content, the diversity and p3rticularity required to
realize true freedcm. The rational state, prematurely proclaimed by the French Revolution, must
comprehend the intermediate };hase of sheer individualism. It must give the subj active element
its due.

!n speaking of individualian in society, Hegel was fully aware of what was happening in
the industrial towns on the Cbntinent and in the JOOst industrialized country, England. Be also
studie:i the work of British political econcmists, pll'ticularly James Steuart. What Hegel called
"civil society'' was basically the free market ecoiiOI!\y with a strong infusion of corporativism.
This very energetic area of social life was seen by Hegel as being destructive as well as
creative i f mt mediated by the state, by the political organ of that reason Which grasps the
proper place in the total scheme of things of the production of goods and services and the
pursuit of wealth. '!he rational state does not repress ecOIIOil\ic activity or attempt to reverse
its course, but it does contain and control it. It cannot merely reproduce the unself-conscious
and (by modern standards) static oonmunity of the classical city-state.

One of the JOOst important things which the French revolutionaries and their German
philosophical counterparts left out of account was the complexity of the societies wrose
political organs they so easily remove:i. As has been said many times with the hindsight offered
by Hegel himself .and de Tocqueville, the see:is of the post-revolutionary regimes were not only
present in the ~ ~ b¢:. had germinated and sprouted there. 'lhe attempt. to impose on
French society, for example, a political ideal drawn fran a Roman past or an imagine:i future
was doomed to failure. A highly articulated social order functioned within the fossilized
aristocratic regime. After the ravages of the Terror it reasserted itself. Arguably, it had to,
because people cannot live without functional differentiation and the social sub-groups to
which they attach themselves for their various special activities ani interests. They cannot
live in a continuous state of collective reformation euphoria.

tyranny of Greece over the German mind."

Hegel's freq)lent allusion to themes from classical Greek drama is a striking feature of
his work. This and other aspects of Hegel's hellenian are discusse:i in J.G. Gray, Hegel's
Hellenic Ideal (New York, 1941 ) •
 11

For Hegel, the various "estates" of a nndern organized sociecy are necessaxy
nanifestations of enbodied Geist. ~t Hegel failed to furesee ..as the sweep and diss::>lving
power of the idea, not that all are free but that all must be free witmut distinction, rark or
condition. On the other hand, he had 110re than an inkling of the anomie to be e:q;erienced by
those who lived in hanogenews or hanogenizing societies. Hegel was certainly not, like Burke,
urging llel to cling to their "little platoons" of habitual loyalcy or ext:olliD;J the
prescriptive right of existing institutions. He did insist, however, upon the rationalicy of a
society of differentiated - and une;rual - parts. '!his was not to deny the dlanges, including
future changes, wrought by social nnbilicy and state action; but absolute freedan was quite
,Unpossible, and soma sort of social order and articulation were indispensable.

In the rational state the individual citizen knows that he is free, and knows it in and
through his participation in the rational will of the state. The rational will may be seen
simply as an amplification of the <Ji!Ileral will, to the extent that Rousseau's "Jroi comnun" is a
universal "I," an element in ·the content of each particular conscioosness 11tlich unites it with
every other consciousness. Rousseau's 9=0neral will ~oas considered by sorre British Hegelians,
notably Bernard Bosat:q,uet, to be a prefiguring of Hegel's rational state. On Bosanquet's
interp:-etation, Rousseau's 9=0neral will is nerely an area of agreenent aiiDI¥3' particular
individual wills; whereas Hegel's rational or objective will actually constitutes individual
wills - they live entirely within it. Rousseau's state is a device to secure the IE"iw.te
individual in the "natural libercy" mich he brings with rum to sociecy. Natural libercy is the
creation of bad social theory, a fiction, and the individual is an mreal al:straction apart
fran the sociecy mich creates and sustains him. For Hegel, the identification of the
individual's noral will with the collective will of the s::>cial orgmiilll is the source and
sustenance, not the denial, of personal freedan, and it is the necessaxy precondition fur the
fulfilnent of individual spiritual needs and aspirations through a variety of s::>cio-economic
and cultural activities.

The notion of a social organiilll belongs Jrore to the British Heqelians than to Hegel
himself. It owed a great deal of its persuasiveness to the then recently developed Darwinian
theory of the origin of natural species, which inspired much misguided "organic" political
theory, in 11tlich the explanation of legal and other s::>cial obligitions ..as distorted by
excessive reliance upon the ideas of environmental conditioniD;J and selective adaptation. The
British Hegelians were at tines led astray by the biological analogy. On the wmle, however,
their grounding in Aristotle - as with Hegel himself - pr017ided then with a theoxy of
development in 11tlich rational purpose played a large part and p:eserved then fran the
naturalistic distortions of uncritical social Darwiniilll• In part because of the popularicy of
pseudo-Darwinian theories of politics and society, in part because of their Hegelian version of
naturalism, they did not simply dismiss the idea that, as a social animal, man is swject to a
process of purely natural selection and that species survival can underCertain, and not nerely
atavistic, circumstances shape our social nonns and collective m::>ral judgnents. In spite of
their ethical pitfalls, and the connotations of brutality, biological netapmrs are alnalt
inescapable in a discussion of the develqllllent of the individual Jroral will in a social
context. It is less awkward- it "ccmes naturally" -to say "growth" rather than "developnent,"
which is itself indicative of the pervasiveness of the analogy. The so-called organic theoxy of
society was well suited to explain the origin and nurture of the individual noral will. Mc:st
British Hegelians were also satisfied that it went a long way tc'tlard explainiD;J the full nature
of political mm. In this latter respect they ~~~ere misled, and Hegel's ''rational state" and
"rational will" are Jrore apprcpriate headings. The distinctive feature of the fully rational
state, says Hegel, is the self-consciwsness of its manbers. They are not the manber orgms of
an organism; they are capable of thinking thenselves apart fran sociecy. ThE¥ in fact do not
exist apart fran society, and cannot, but they are distinguishable, they lead individual lives,
and they act for their canmunity as opposed to merely carcying out its canmands.

The analogy of organic growth was particularly congenial to the nineteenth century. It
 12

tied in very well with its historical studies, and the nineteenth century ..as pre-eminently an
historical age, as the seventeenth 'IBS a scientific one. The notion that aey p~.rticular
national group possesses an historical develcpment unique to itself was the great solvent of
abstract rocial and political m:xiels. It becane increasingly difficult to pcstulate m.iversal
conditions for order and progress. Yet the desire to find an order and a purpose within
historical chan~ itself remained as strong as ever. Hegel's philoscphical s:ystem is
historicist or develcpmental, in the sense that it recognizes actual historical differences not
only as necessary but also as the w:>rking out of a si!¥3'le, all-parvadi!¥3' id:!a. Historical
change is the medium of purposive growth. The end to lrlhich each and eNery one of the
multiplicity of historical forms contributes is spirit's full self-knowledge, the explication
of the w:>rld, which w:>uld be impossible with::lut all the diverse foDns and all the inte:rveni!¥3'
stages. One of the highest of these stages is the s:>cial and political life of the rational
state. Hegel regarded the Prussian limited m:mru:-chy in which he lived as the historical fonn
IOOSt expressive of social and political rationality, but as by no neans its cons1.l!!UIB.tion. Tmre
was nothing accidental about it, nor was it simply expedient or coilll'enient. It was somethin;J
lrlhidl afforded spiritual fulfilnent as mudl as art, religion or the pursuit of knowledge.
Rearon re:;[uired it, and its imperfections did not detract fran its essential rationalit;y.

The notion that aey political canmmit;y is an indispensable self-manifestation· of

universal reason or the w:>rld spirit struck re);X"esentative Victorian minds as extremely odd, if
not bizarre. Native philosophical traditions of anpiricism, "psychologism" and "cannon sense"
realism strongly reinforced the nt>ral and political theory of utilitarianism, and vice versa. 2
The affinity, if not the alliance, between these two streams of tb:>ught is made quite EKplioit
in J.S. Mill's System of Logic (a w:>rk Wl.ich, incidentally, had <pne through nine editions and
coo.mtless printings by 1875). The basic canponents of our experience are discrete units of
sensation. Fran these we induce, by psych:>logical association and assimilation, thase
"tendencies" axoongst phenanena which further obseiVation and experiment (if feasible) stabilize
as the "laws" of the sciences of man and nature. The nethod of decanpcsition and recanpcsition,
using the building blocks of our sensory experience, Works in the theo:cy of political refoDn
e:;rually as well as it does in theories of the physical universe.3 A political caMu.nit¥,
according to classical utilitarianism, is a "fictitious body," nothin;r =re than the
individuals woo canpose it at aey one tine,4 Continuit;y is a minor consideration. The
institutions, the laws, the custans and rules which relate the members of a canmunicy to one
another are a tempora:cy convenience subject to unlimited alteration.5 Parts are rE!IOOvable
wi trout reference to other parts or to the whole. The pieces of a social arran;rement and the

2 A closer examination of the dlief theorists of utilitarianism is reserved till later. See
ch. 6, PP• 50-56.
3 Mill termed the proper nethod the "Concrete Deductive Method." (J.s. Mill, A System of Iogic,
8th ed., P• 619). The Whig historian, T.B. Macaulay, was one of the first to point out that the
utilitarians' method ..as a thinly disguised species of a p:iorism, and that the historical
experience of <;pVernnent and political life in general, as captured in the theories and
reflections of others, was cheerfully i<Jlored by the utilitarians in applying their assuned
"laws."
4 Jerany Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of M:>rals and Legislation, ed. w. Harris:m
(Oxford, 1948), P• 126. Benthem italicized "body" and "111e100er," presumably to indicate that
~ey were untxustw:>rthy ~~etaph:>rs of social structure.
In Hobbesian fashion, Benthan claimed that the only law worthy of the name - autb:>ritative
law - is the cQl1III!I.nd of the legislator {the sovereign, in Jolm Austin's jurisprudence). There
are, of course, limits to what the legislator can achie.re; but these lie in his instruments,
the pleasures and ptins lrlhich govern human behaviour. Bentham's contempt for rustan and cannon
law is notorious: "• •• he who, for the purpose just mentioned or for airJ other, wants an eKampl.e
of a ccmplete body of law to refer to must begin with making one." (Bentham, M:>rals and
Legislation, P• 123.)
 13

individuals who are pieces of those pieces are like the parts of a Maccano set. '!hey may be
assembled .in a variety of ways, according to the design of any .intelligent individual,
regardless of his experience of materials and their behaviour in the real w:>rld of social
construction.

The philosophical radicals, the utilitarians pf the 1820s and 1830s, wb:>se activities
revolved around and gave direction to the 'lii:!Stminster Review, were breezily confident in the
possibilities of social reconstruction. In marked contrast to their view, redolent of the
eighteenth century Enlightenment, that mankind had m history, only a long and virtually
WlX'elieved experience of misery and error, and that the human condition might be rapidly
transformed by the application of a few simple principles to the problems of ignorance and
injustice, was the (broadly speaking) "Anglican" view that progress was being made, that it
would continue to be made, but that it w:>uld require careful cultivation of what had been
slowly and pa.infully achieved in the past. This latter view may be called "Anglican" because it
was the view of a br:oad spectrum of conservative reformers who, while they did mt share the
extreme Burkeans' belief that the aristocratic constitution of church and state was divinely
ordained, nevertheless were greatly concerned that unless something was done to civilize the
mass of Britons, the pressure for radical reform, which laissez-faire liberals, middle-class
democrats and Chartist agitators were exerting with .in=easing urgency on a variety of
.institutions, would explode with such force that many cultural am spiritual values w:>uld be
blown away with social and political privileges. '1he sen.se of social obligation, assumed yet
alert, which characterized their viewpoint made them receptive to the general thrust am tone
of the social and political thouqht of };hilosophical idealism. In pirticular, they found in the
historicist rationalism and skepticism about individual liberty conveyed by idealism a friendly
sign, a welcome marker in their naviqation of a middle course between "ltrl.gs and Tories on the
one side and "steau intellect" Radicals on the other.

The separation of the individual frcm his social matrix was a corollary of the Kantian
theory of moral autonomy. Kant's preoccupation with the internal aspect of morality and
relative neglect of intersubj active lll)rality - what Heqel called Sittlichkeit - made him, in a
limited sense, an ally of social and political atomism. '!his is not to say that .in some devious
way Kant was a utilitarian, nor that he believed that society is freshly created by each new
political generation. en the contrary, he asserted the cumulative nature of society, its
.institutions and its !~~)res, and also the necessity for a custanary or habitual element in
morality. M:>recver, like lbusseau, Kant portrayed humanity as driven to construct a society of
freedom under law by what he called "unsocial sociability.•6 AnDur propre - envy and pursuit of
"the bubble reputation" - is what poisons natural sympathy and necessitates the formation of a
secom human nature. Kant, again like Ibusseau but without his despair, offers oo solution to
the "most difficult" problem of all: who or what will govern the governors of that best society
in Which all capacities are developed to the full but in which m one's freedan is inconsistent
with anyone else's? 'lhe rulers, too, must be human, and therefore subject to anDUr pr~?pre and
self-partiality. Kant was sanguine about the eventual realization of civic perfection -
admittedly after "many vain attempts" - because "the history of mankind can be seen, .in the
larqe, as the realization of nature's secret plan to bring forth a perfectly constituted
state.•7

All this sounds a bit like Heqel' s lliOrld spirit, and the List der Vernunft weaving its
unexpected patterns in hlmlaD. history. However, Kant's political proposals were rationalistic
proj acts of enlightened reform, the sort of thing which Heqel averred to be dangerously

6 ImDanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Po.int of View, trans. L.w.
Beck, in Kant on History, ed. Beck (Indianapolis, 1963), P.P• 11-26. See especially theses 4, 5
and 6.
7 I. Kant, universal History, P• 21.
 14

unrealistic, an abstraction with no grip on actuality. In addition, his 1110ral philc:&ophy pulled
him further toward the view that society is canposed of self-legislating, strictly autonCIIIals
individuals. The individual cannot manufacture the content of his mral will entirely for
himself; but the cpodness of that wUl lies entirely in its self-consistency. The ueasure of
1110rality is an internal one. The autonanous mral. agent obeys a universal and .impersonal law,
paying no heed to subjective lhims and inclinations or to the blandishnents of uere p:-op:'iety
and taste. The principal defect of the good will,. in Hegel's eyes, was its being unattached to
time or place, to social conditions. It wa.s an al::stract miversal. The 110ral actions of the
possessor of a good will are mtivated entirely by a sense of ducy - ducy to the mral law,
mich law rEqUires that one legislate for oneself as if one ~e legislating for ever3Pne. The
good will is neither deflected nor reinforced by any other mtive than that of acting in su::h a
way that its action may becaae the basis of a miversal maxim.a The ll'a.ntian individual obeys a
bleak and stoical law 'ltlich tends to cut him off fran others. He is an end in h:lmself, living
in a "kingdau of ends." Every human being in this kin:rdau is an end in himself; no one is to be
treated as a means to SOIIle other end. As Kant h:lmself wa.s aware, su::h a kin:Jdcm of
ends-in-themselves is an ideal. All art{! existing s:>ciety can do is strive to app:-oximte to
that ideal, since a societ;y consisting of perfectly Kantian individuals would be an anarchy,
with no need for any resexve of ,P)litical power to enforce their s:>cial behaviour. They would
be incapable of disregarding the rightful cla:lms of each other; they would exist in rational
ha:lliDny, undisturbed by self-interest. They would share no auerriding cannDn interest, because
they could no mre be the means to a OQUI'OC)n end than they could to eadl other. A canmunit;y of
people livin:J acoordin:r to the ll'a.ntian ethic would not really be a camnmity. It lollS
abstraction frau concrete social and pllitical conditions 'ltlidl Hegel regarded as the major
defect in Kant's liDral philosophy. Kant further failed to see that a CannDn temp:~ral interest
pexmits the individual to realize himself as an end in h:lmself, that it is the pecnliar nature
of a camnunity to overcaae the apparent cpposition bet~~~een ends and neans in mterial as llell
as moral concerns. 'What Kant called a heteronanous end, one not freely chosen, is not therefore
.imnoral or subversive of the good will· There is nothing imlloral in being canpelled to neet
one's bodily as tAell as spiritual needs.
"The fact that man is a living being, however, is not fortuit<11s, rut in
confomicy with reason, and to that extent he has a right to make his needs his end.
There is nothing degrading in being alive, and there is no !IDde of intelli~nt being
higher than life in 'itlich existence would be plSSibleo 119
In a well-governed camnunity the satisfaction of needs is a cooperative pursuit, a CQIIIIDn
endeavour. The citizen of any state - because every state approximates in SOIIle degree to the
rational state- is a means to an end 'ltlich includes himself. His state may be very wide of the
mark, it may be excessively devoted to the pursuit of material gain for its own sake, but he
cannot fulfil himself by trying to destroy it or by wi.ttmawing frau it. However imperfect, it
is for him the only available vehicle for the realization of rational freedan.

Hegel attanpted to contain econanic, pllitical ana. cultural forces released or accelerated
by the Frendl Revolution and the Nap:>leonic wars within the framew::>:tit of a ,P)litical
dispensation Which, in the event, proved constricting and epheueral., m~l to the task. His
brand of liberal constitutionalism wa.s an interp:-etation of e"Vellts in Pxussia ..t:lich todt a
reactionary turn even before his death; and the explosive powers of dEmocracy and nationalisn
wre to J:rOW a caubina.tion be:110nd the capacity of Vernunft and objective mi.nd. New s:>cial·
foms - in industry, eaDlllllJlications and urban life - broke out of the confines of traditional
pllitical structures or fbrced then to make radical alterations. That s:>ciety and not the state

8 "Every maxim that does not so qualify is opposed to liDrality." Immanuel Kant, Introduction to
the Metaphysics of lbrals, trans. J. Lsdd, in The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, edo Ladd
(Indianapolis, 1965), P• 27.
9 G.w.F. Hegel, Philosopb.y of Right, trans. T.M. Rhox (OXibrd, 1942), Zusatz to para. 123, P•
252.
 15

was setting the pace of human development - and that it soould do so - beCCille the cannon
contention of refoxners and revolutionaries. That the Rechtstaat could harnonize the new fbrms
of human endeavour, and direct their energies into purposes dictated by what Hegel called the
"rational will," 'laS either an anachronism or divination of the 'o!Orld spirit. Wlat Hegel
perceived JOOst acutely was the potency of what his inurediate p:edecess:>rs had done to create a
philosophical image of the self-possessed hunan being fbr whcm nothing was imposs.lble and wha3e
highest standard was self-consistency. A fascination with will power was one of philosophical
idealism's dlief legacies.10 Only Hegel offered a logic of the will to reconcile wi.thwt
neutralizing self-detennination and the detenninateness of the world. However, there was no
returning to any conception of manld.nd as part of the dlain of being. Kant's transcendentalism
made it possible to conceive of human reas:>n as the final arbiter of the ~oUrld and the
individual noral will as the only absolutely and mconditionally opod thing.

Kant's kingdan of ends has continued to exert a powerful p:>litical appeal, both as a
utopia and as a discipline for the culture of self-mastecy. Kantian ethics owed much of its
original "muscle" to Gennan Pietism (a sicpificant factor in Kant's pers:>nal background and
development), and it found an echo in the English Puritan tradition of belief in salvation by
self-improvenent and taking the war between opod and evil to the fbrces of evil. M:l.ey of the
British Hegelians \\'ere products of that tradition and, as imperfectly "uediated" Kantians, they
ranked the c;pod will above the <pod s:>ciety.

The British utilitarians saw a balance of interests in s:>ciety. Fant postulated a

regulative ideal sustained by a universal, passionless sense of duty. For the fonner, sociecy
was little 110re than a referee, and laws and institutions exceeding the minimum re;ruired to
ensure civil peace, order and fair play \llere a mischievous obsti:Uction; for the latter, sociecy
was a noral cocoon, superfluous to the fully rational individual. Both the utilitarian "fact"
and the Kantian ideal portray the individual as !lDrally self-sufficient and disregard the
positive llDral function of society - that of p:oviding both the source and the fulfilnent of
the individual's 100ral being. Neither Kant nor the utilitarians cruld conceive of the whole of
society - the conflicts of interest, the articulation of functions and classes, and the body of
received law and custan - as the true expression of rational freedan. This conception was
Hegel's most important contribution to s:>cial and p:>litical theory. His rational state was a
necessary stage in the unfolding of the world spirit; it was a logical necessicy in the special
Hegelian, historicist usage of "logic."

It was not mtil the last quarter of the nineteenth centucy that philosophical idealism
gained sufficient purchase on British thinking to be able to provide a systematic alternative
to the incoherent but influential utilitarian consensus, whose autl:ori ty was such that other
theories effectively accepted its tenns. Witl:out a philosophy, the drubts and rese:r'lations
mq;ressed by nainstream s:>cial critics such as J,s. Mill and M:l.tthew Arnold could t;rick blt not
get under the skin of native insularity. It was the British Hegelians who challen;Jed the
supremacy of the dcminant theories of mind and nature - fbr example, ass:>ciationist psycl:ology
and the crude inductivism which appeared to work so well in the triumphs of British applied
science. Althou\1:1 they could not evict llbat Bralley conten¢uoo.sly called ''the scl:ool of
experience," they soon su::ceeded in danesticatinq philosophical idealisn. The Marxists failed
dismally in their effbrts to convince any blt a minuscule number of British thin:kers that their
philosophy was anythin;J but an alien inti:Usion, although much of the enpiricisu and materialisn
of Engels' "scientific socialism" was congenial to the nineteenth century En;Jlish mind. It was
canpetition fran pragmatisu and logical positivism - two philosophies of partially foreign
provenance - Wlim proved IOOSt damaging to philosophical idealism. In the p:ocess of
naturalizing Hegel and giving him a new heme, the British Hegelians lost sight of elements in

10 It still fuels the debate between revolutiona:r:y and evolutionary Marxists, the :li>rner
arguing that history can be made to fulfil its purpose by an act or acts of re.rolutionary will.
 16

his tl:ought which were subse;ruently re-appropriated by others, including some of his
canpatriots who had earlier rejected him. As part of the hardening and narrowing tendency, sane
minor British Hegelians propagated a somewhat preachy, SUnday-school version of Hegel, which
was an easy target for critics. The nain British rendition of Hegelianisn, however, offered a
solution to the liberal (and Liberal) dilemma - an al=st swconscirus, quasi-netaphysical
attachment to rampaging subjectivity, canbined with deep anxiety abrut the quality of life thus
freely created - which did not involve a~ rallcal discontiruity or jettis:min;J of widely held
values.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “You couldn’t do it, John; it wouldn’t be—as far as I can see—right; and
though Honor is a love-child, and her father—according to you—would be
in his proper place at Botany Bay, it isn’t for us to malign him to his own
daughter. No, John,” the old woman continued, for notwithstanding her
jealousy of Honor there existed in the old woman’s heart a certain fund of
good sense, as well as kindliness of nature, to fall back upon in time of
need,—“no, John, we must trust to Providence that all will come right in
time. There’s good, after all, in Honor; and some day, perhaps, she will
have done with whimsies, and take at last to sense.”
 CHAPTER XIII.

LADY MILL HAS BUSINESS ON HAND.

“Did you in all your life ever see anyone so changed as that pretty Mrs.
Beacham? Not less pretty, I don’t mean that; but she looks pale and serious,
and to my thinking still more like a lady than she did when she was
married!”
The words were Kate Vavasour’s—bright, cheerful, merry Kate—who
was walking home on Christmas-day from church with her brother Horace
—a “public man” now, and a very occasional and not over-willing visitor to
his old home.
Several events of importance, events influencing more or less the well-
being of certain individuals connected with this story, had occurred during
the swiftly-passing months which had changed the year from midsummer to
winter.
To begin with: Arthur Vavasour (who after his farewell meeting in
Danescourt grounds had not again seen Honor Beacham) had, according to
expectation, been made one with Sophy Duberly before the altar. In less
than a month from his coming of age, the marriage ceremony was
celebrated with becoming pomp in London, the “happy pair” departing
immediately afterwards for the Continent, bent—according to the
newspapers—on a “lengthened tour abroad.”
Nor did any long period elapse before Horace Vavasour also broke the
weary chain that bound him to home. He had yearned for the long-hoped-
for emancipation; but he experienced—a good deal to his surprise—when
the time came for bidding adieu to Gillingham, very little of the exultation
which he might naturally have expected to have been his portion. All
unknown to himself, the home-raised lad had grown attached to the old
place. The grumblings and complainings, the discontent, and the longing for
change, were more a habit with him than the result of conviction; and when
the hour of parting came, and he looked back on the tearful faces of his two
sisters, standing gazing after him on the steps of the marble portico, Horace
would gladly have given up all his cherished hopes to remain with those
dear fellow-victims in the old home that he was leaving.
 As was only natural, however, those regrets were not of long duration.
Lady Millicent had not made home so sweet to the children committed to
her care, that they should continue for a lengthened period to pine for the
few blessings which that home afforded. By swift degrees, regret for the
past ceased to have a place in the memory of the absent one; whilst the
recollection of the many privations, the dulness, and the tyrannous rules of
far-away Gillingham, remained fixed, as with a sculptor’s chisel, on his
heart for ever.
Kate was during that, to her, dull Christmas time, the only daughter of
the house at home, for Rhoda (an extremely unusual proceeding) had been
allowed to accept of a pressing invitation from the Guernseys to spend a
month with them in Paris.
“Two women were grinding at the mill,” Kate said merrily to her
brother, “and a jolly grind it was too! And it’s just as well that one was
taken, and a great bore that the other—meaning me—was left behind.”
Horace, who had very good-naturedly given up several far pleasanter
engagements for his sister’s sake, and who purposed spending a dull week
at the Chace with the kind purpose of enlivening poor Kate’s worse than
solitude, pinched her cheek playfully.
“All the same a hundred years hence,” he said; and forthwith there
commenced on both sides a series of questions and answers necessitated by
the separation of several months which had taken place between them.
There was much to say. They were on their way to church when the
conversation about Arthur and his wife began—about Arthur, who was said
to be by no means cured of his reckless habits of extravagance, and whom
Horace had parted with only a week before under the portico of the Grand
Hotel in Paris.
“I didn’t think Sophy improved in looks; but then there is a reason, I
believe, for that; and besides, she had been making lion-seeing a toil instead
of a pleasure. She is a jolly girl, though; and I consider Arthur to be one of
the luckiest fellows I know.”
“I wonder if he thinks so himself,” mused Kate.
“I daresay not. Do we ever value any of our blessings till we lose them?
Do you think I cared much about this dear old place till I found myself tied
to that precious office as a paid clerk? Sounds pretty considerable mean, as
the Yankees say, doesn’t it, when one’s mamma has something about sixty
thousand per annum?”
“But you like it, Racy. It’s better than this, I’m sure. Ah, how I should
like to be you! and how I envy—no, I don’t envy Rhoda, because I’m glad
she’s happy, poor dear; but I often think what fun she’s having, and I
wonder whether it will ever be my turn to go away.”
“Your turn? God knows, my poor Kitty! It takes a longer head than mine
or yours to fathom my lady’s projects. I heard from old Randolph the last
thing before I left town yesterday that she was after some underhand work
about the entail. She’ll never rest, I feel certain, till she upsets that clause,
or whatever they call it, in my grandfather’s will which gives the reins of
power to Arthur after he attains the age of twenty-five. Poor old Atty! I
foresee no end of worry and bother for him if the news of this gets about;
but we must hope the best, as Randolph says, while we prepare ourselves
for the worst.”
Old Josh Randolph, as he was familiarly called, had been for very many
years the trusted solicitor and man of business of the Vavasour family. A
better-hearted and a more truly honest man—as all who knew him allowed
—never existed than Joshua Randolph, as one proof of which it may be
recorded in his favour that he had made no large fortune out of the quarrels
and cantankerousness of his clients. Neither—to his credit be it recorded—
had he ever taken undue advantage of their necessities. Young Vavasour,
who had known “Josh” from the time when the heir-apparent was a lad at
Eton, had had recourse to the old man’s advice in many a boyish scrape,
and later, when the handsome youth had grown to be a man, and his
“entanglements” were of a more complicated and less venial character, old
Josh was still the attorney to whose counsels he turned, and who had never
(all praise to him) been detected in that unfeeling act of pilfering, namely,
that of making occasions for the swelling of his lawyer’s bill.
This rarely excellent individual had heard with regret and shame that
work for the long-robed gentlemen was likely, through Lady Millicent’s
bitter discontent, to be ere long cut out. He made no secret of his opinion on
the subject, and Lady Millicent, finding that the family lawyer was not the
“man for her money,” soon removed the light of her countenance from the
steady, old-fashioned firm of which Mr. Randolph was the senior partner.
Her ladyship’s first visit in the Lincoln’s-inn chambers (where old Josh
received her with a slow and respectful courtesy, but without a grain of
subservience either in his speech or manner) was also the last. Far too slow,
perhaps indeed too rigidly honest, for the requirements of the maîtresse
femme was the steady-going anti-progress solicitor. There was something in
the very air of that business-room of his, an air redolent of musty
respectability, that was utterly out of harmony and keeping with Lady
Millicent’s grand manner, her rapid energetic movements, and the
authoritative mode of speech which she habitually adopted. The experiment
had been duly tried of taking the old man by surprise and startling him into
acquiescence; but never—it did not greatly grieve the faithful Josh that so it
was—did the great lady of Gillingham give a second thought to the
inhabitant of that dingy room piled high with japanned deed-boxes and with
ancient faded folios. The lawyer’s absence of sympathy in her ladyship’s
cause was evidenced in every response he made to her questions and
suggestions. A cautious man he was and a composed—one not to be lightly
moved from his opinions, and who deemed the will of the late Earl of
Gillingham a document almost sacred in its character. When Lady Millicent
astonished the clerks at Messrs. Randolph and Bretts’ by the apparition of
her stately person, she was far indeed from imagining that anything short of
the most obsequious compliance with her wishes, and the most thorough
and flattering approbation of her views and projects, would be the result of
her condescension; and to a certain degree there was justification for her
expectations. On the face of it, and at the first cursory view of the
unmotherly mother’s purpose, there was certainly something that was, at the
least, plausible, to justify her undertaking. The late earl’s will had been
made very late in life, and long after Lady Millicent had been taught (no
difficult task) to consider herself the future possessor, during her natural
life, of that rich inheritance. In causing the important clause which deposed
after a certain period the mother regnante in favour of the grown-up son,
Lord Gillingham had, in his daughter’s opinion, departed in a most
unjustifiable manner from the ways of his forefathers. Manifestly (as it was
her purpose to prove) it was flagrantly unjust that such a will should stand.
Long ago she had taken (privately) high legal opinions on the subject. She
had consulted law-books, and entered largely into the question of
precedents; the result of all which exertion and study was the visit to
Lincoln’s-inn, which had been productive of nothing save anger and
mortification. But because Lady Millicent could “make nothing” of the old
lawyer, who was staunch in his adherence to Arthur Vavasour’s interests, it
by no means followed that she felt any doubt either as to the rectitude of her
project, or the advisableness of pursuing it to the end. She was a woman—
as we know—of determined character, and, moreover, one in whom
difficulty and opposition only increased in a tenfold degree the desire to
succeed; so, without any unnecessary delay, she opened negotiations with
another legal adviser, who took a different and more satisfactory view of the
matter than that adopted by the uncompromising Josh; and one consequence
of this proceeding was the remark made by Horace Vavasour to his sister
Kate, on the ill consequences likely to accrue to Arthur from the bare
rumour even of the proceeding in question.
“But how can it hurt Atty so very much?” Kate asked. She was puzzled,
and not without reason, by the anomaly, that Arthur, who had married that
“immense” heiress, and of whom the millionaire Mr. Duberly was said to be
so fond, could be injured in any way by the report of Lady Millicent’s law-
proceedings.
“How!” Horace repeated hesitatingly, and then broke out: “How! Why
because from the time he was sixteen—from my poor father’s death almost
—poor Atty has played the fool. And such a fool! Not having the most
remote idea either of the value of money or of the wickedness of men and
women; with our good father in his grave, and with—but we won’t talk of
her. Poor old Atty! How often in those times that seem so long ago now,
and so miserable—and yet what almost children we both were—he and I
have crept at night into each other’s rooms to consult in our blind ignorance
on what could by any possibility be done! Such a heap of silly ideas as we
propounded then; such methods as we turn by turn proposed to keep the
knowledge of poor Atty’s bills and foolishness from my mother!”
“I daresay that it would have been much better had she known it all
then,” suggested Kate.
“Of course it would have been a thousand times better,” rejoined Horace,
who was beginning to show some deference to his sister’s opinions; “but
how were we to find courage enough to be open? I ask you, Kate—and no
one could answer the question better—whether milady is the kind of mother
to whom the most morally courageous lad in existence could, without a
good deal of winding-up, confess that he had run-up bills, had betted on the
great boat-race, had been to the Jews, and, in short, was no more worthy to
be called her son?”
“Poor dear Atty! I don’t wonder he couldn’t do it; and I suppose (I can
guess now, when I remember all the trouble he so often seemed to be in)
that those bills never were paid, and that—”
“Not only not paid, but more, to the tune of thousands upon thousands,
added to their amount. And then the Jews! But what’s the use of telling you,
child, about such things? Here we are at the church-door, and we shall find
milady—God forgive her!—saying her prayers with as much devotion as if
—”
“Hush,” remonstrated Kate, feeling the indecorum, especially standing
as they two did, on God’s-acre, of speaking harsh truths concerning their
only remaining parent; “hush, Racy dear, she is our mother; let us try to
remember it, however much she may do to put the fact out of our heads.”

“Did you ever see any one so changed as that pretty Mrs. Beacham? Still
more like a lady even than she used to be—I mean, she hasn’t the same
fresh country look that everyone admired so before. Mr. Delmaine thinks
her both out of health and out of spirits; he said so yesterday afternoon to
me when mamma and I went to the church to see the decorations. She
attends to her class, though, at the school just the same as ever, and gets the
children on wonderfully with their singing. How well they sang the anthem
to-day! and all, Mr. Delmaine says, thanks to Mrs. John Beacham.”
Rather to Kate’s disappointment, her brother did not enter with much
apparent interest into the question of Honor’s illness or her merits. And yet
he was interested in John’s pretty, pensive-looking wife, more interested
than could well be explained to the young girl walking by his side. There
were many circumstances in Honor’s short life which were perforce
unknown to the high-born and carefully-reared Katherine, whose secluded
life kept her very little au fait of the doings and sayings of the outer world.
Of the former intimacy of her brother at Updown Paddocks she had heard
little or nothing; nor, though it was more than probable that the “ower true
tale” of Honor’s birth had reached Miss Vavasour’s ears, was the subject
one which could well be touched upon with a discreetly-brought-up young
lady. Under these circumstances, it is only natural that Horace Vavasour
should have manifested some unwillingness to pursue the subject touched
upon by his sister. Concerning one cause, amongst others, of Mrs. John
Beacham’s lowness of spirits he might have entertained his own ideas, but
those ideas he, for the moment, wisely kept to himself.
 CHAPTER XIV.

HONOR FEELS LIKE A “LADY.”

Of all the many changes that had taken place amongst the characters in my
story, none was more thorough, even though its features might be less
boldly marked, than that which had gradually crept over the household of
excellent John Beacham. From the moment when he dealt the blow that
levelled his wife’s worthless parent to the ground, John had never been
exactly the same man. A sense of failure, of a disastrous fall in his own
esteem, was in some measure the cause of this woeful alteration: but there
was more, and for worse than this, at the bottom of his apparent
moroseness, of his often sullen temper, and of what his mother called his
“silent ways.” There was far worse indeed than this—far worse than any
morbid impression that he himself had sunk in the opinion of the world at
large; for there was the sight of Honor’s altered face, and a near prospect,
nearer day by day, of some cruel domestic change for this honest, single-
hearted man, whose youth and manhood had hitherto passed so
uneventfully.
The summer had passed away, the autumn-time had come and gone;
from the hedge-rows of the Paddocks the last lingering leaves had fallen,
and another new year was about, with the accustomed rejoicings, to be
ushered in, but still things had not improved in John’s altered home. No
sunshine of the heart brightened up the old walls, and yet, for all that inside
there was gloom, it was necessary, for old custom’s sake, that the show of
merriment should be kept up; for Christmas-time was nigh at hand, and
hospitality, as well as jollity, had, time out of mind, been, at that festive
season, the order of the day at Peartree-house. To give and distribute largely
and ungrudgingly at the dying-out of the old year had ever been an
institution in Mrs. Beacham’s family. “The Turtons,” she was wont to say
(John’s mother was—as of course all the world knew—a Turton of
Cradock, in the West Riding of York) “The Turtons always kep a good table
at Christmas-time both for rich and poor, in their own county; and I’m not
going to do different, though this is Sandyshire. Christmas comes but once a
year, and it’s only right that when it does come, them as can afford it should
give them as can’t their bellies full.”
In furtherance of this charitable object, preparations for feeding the
hungry began betimes in the spacious kitchen of Peartree-house. No
stronger proof could be adduced of the fact, that albeit often cross,
disagreeable, and snappish in the privacy of home, Mrs. Beacham was, au
fond, generous and kind-hearted, as the manner in which, on the grand
occasion of Christmas-time, she fulfilled her welcome duties could fully
testify.
“L’année est morte, vive l’année!” The old cry has been cried, and the
old song sung, till some of us are weary of the semi-joyous and all solemn
sound; but the good Samaritan at the Paddocks addressed herself, even as
she had done for fifty years, to the congenial task before her; and, as I said
before, the old kitchen of the farm-house reeked with preparations for the
coming festival. Such a kitchen as it was! The ceiling half-covered from
beam to beam with flitches of well-smoked bacon—with a store of precious
delf, and a glittering batterie de cuisine in the shape of pots and pans, that
excited envy in the hearts of half the housewives in the neighbourhood; and
with a chimney so wide-mouthed and gaping that the largest spit in
Sandyshire would have been scarcely long enough to span it!
The amount of fuel consumed in that “kitchen range” was, as Mrs.
Beacham was given proudly to say, what nobody would believe; and yet if
any of these incredulous ones had chanced to catch a glimpse at Christmas-
time of that same furnace, methinks that their doubts regarding its
consuming powers would, like other and more material things under its
influence, have melted into thin air.
Many were the mouths which the hospitable widow felt called upon that
day to fill. There was the great “house dinner” as it was called—to which
were invited (a yearly custom so ancient at the Paddocks that the invitation
had come to be regarded as a right) every man and boy employed by Mr.
Beacham upon the farm and breeding-establishment. To these were added
not only the wives and daughters of the middle-aged labourers, but the
“followers”—if they were respectable, and their courtship was pour le bon
motif—from adjacent farms, of the damsels connected with John’s especial
retainers. It was a great object with the givers of the feast that everyone, on
that day at least, should both be and look happy. On all other days (Sundays
excepted) John was, though a just and liberal, very far from what is called
an easy-going master. He required his good penny’s-worth for the penny
given; and men taking service at Updown Paddocks did so with their eyes
open—knowing that under the eye of their new master there would be little
chance of shirking the duties they had undertaken.
By retainers so kept to their work, and in their places, it will readily be
believed that the Christmas dinner at the Paddocks (which took place at
three o’clock on Christmas-day) was an event of importance; and after the
roast-beef and turkeys, the plum-pudding and mince-pies—plum-pudding
with plenty of raisins and citron, let me tell you, and mince-pies fit for a
lord-mayor’s dinner—had been duly discussed, there followed a dance in
the big barn, with punch and pipes to wind up the entertainment.
Many months had not elapsed since the time when few would have
enjoyed the simple pleasures of that holiday season more thoroughly in her
quiet, lady-like way than Honor Beacham. Those months, swiftly passing,
dull and uneventful as they had seemed, had transformed, as effectually as
years of age and experience, a light-hearted and thoughtless girl into a
dreaming, restless, and far from contented woman. Change, with noiseless
foot and imperceptible approach—change, never resting, and for ever at its
silent work, had done its appointed task on pretty Honor Beacham’s tastes
and character.
Nor for honest John himself had the sure work of time and change been
done less effectually than it had been accomplished for his wife. Not that
any alteration was observable in his outward habits, for in truth he was
busier and more active than ever, more engrossed with business cares, and,
in Honor’s opinion, redder in the face, and in the evening time still more
given than of yore, to silence and to slumber. His deep love for his young
wife had not diminished; but busy men cannot afford, as Mrs. Beacham had
been heard say, to “make a noodle of a woman.” In her day, men had
something else to do than to be talking nonsense to a wife, and Honor must
learn to do without such silliness. And Honor—as many a young wife has
done before her, and as wives will do to the end of time—did learn the
salutary lesson, that women are not married to be toys, and that for them, as
well as for the bread-winners of the family, “life is real, life is earnest;” and
that to “wait” does not comprise the whole duty of woman. Gradually—not
so gradually, however, but that Honor perceived, with mixed anger and
sadness, that so it was—John grew to be less mindful of her presence, and
more forgetful of those petits noms of affection, those delicate attentions
with which the busiest men in the early days of matrimony are in the habit
of indulging their newly-bought toys. At that period of her life, it would
have been well for Honor if to work had been one of the necessities of her
being. With the instinct born of natural good sense and a desire to do right,
she understood this truth, and made more than one effort to be permitted a
share in the light daily toil which the old lady so jealously reserved for
herself alone. She was naturally, as John used to say in the days of his
courtship, when Honor was far too intent upon her paid-for duties to walk
with or talk to him—she was naturally a “busy little thing,” and her time,
now that she was a lady at large, often hung with perilous heaviness upon
her hands. That old Mrs. Beacham was the last woman in the world to
understand such a character as that of the young girl whom her son had
sworn at the altar to love, honour, and cherish, has been made more than
sufficiently evident; nor, even had she been able to comprehend Honor’s
peculiar idiosyncrasies of disposition, would the old lady have been
qualified, either through evenness of temper or steadiness of purpose, to
guide her daughter-in-law in a safe and rightful path. Although, as time
wore on, she was, in some respects (and in consequence chiefly of John’s
diminution of outward conjugal affection towards his wife) more disposed
to make the best of that erring young person, yet Honor was often reminded
to her cost, that you never could be sure of Mrs. Beacham. Even at the
exceptional season, when so many hearts and purses (I speak of those who
boast such luxuries) are open, and when cantankerous feelings are supposed
to be lulled to rest, the old lady at Updown Paddocks did, as will speedily
be seen, allow her temper to crop up, to the great hindrance of individual
and general enjoyment in the house over which she ruled.
“I suppose you mean to come and see the dance, Mrs. John?” (Honor
was always “Mrs. John” with her mother-in-law, when the latter chose to
fancy that her son’s wife was remembering the fact that in her veins ran the
gentle blood of the Norcotts). “The people are used to see John, and as I
always come in to have our healths drank, maybe they might be expecting
you as well.”
It was seven o’clock, and they, the scarcely congenial trio, were sitting
silently, that Christmas afternoon, in the little parlour, resting after the
labours of the day; John reading the Farmer’s Gazette, and Honor musing
silently in a big armchair, her habitual seat. In answer to the old lady’s
question, she replied that she was quite willing to go, that there was no
hardship in walking across the farmyard to the barn. The evening was fine
—looking a little like frost, she thought.
“The sunset was beautiful,” Honor went on to say, falling back upon the
commonplace, when she found her mother-in-law looking cross and
dissatisfied at her lukewarm acquiescence. “I watched it from the hill above
the garden. Such masses of red and purple, and such curious-shaped clouds!
Did you notice it, John, before you came in?”
John was unfortunately at that moment so intent upon an article in the
Gazette which touched upon a pet system of his own, that Honor’s question
failed to strike upon his ear. The reason of his silence was perceived by her
at once, and, like a good wife, she forbore to repeat her very trivial
observation. All, therefore, would have been well, and no evil consequences
would have followed on John’s wholly involuntary sin of omission, had not
Mrs. Beacham, who chanced to be in rather an irritating mood, taxed her
daughter indirectly with the terrible crime, in the old lady’s sight, of fine-
ladyism.
“Ha, ha, ha! I beg your pardon, though, Mrs. John, for laughing, but it is
a good joke to hear you asking us busy folk if we’ve been amusing
ourselves with looking at the sun! The sun indeed! My patience! To hear a
woman grown like you talking such nonsense!”
“I don’t think,” said Honor, flushing up, “that it can quite be called
nonsense looking at the beautiful things that God has given us to enjoy. I
have nothing to do, either. I often wish I had. I read, and I draw, and work a
little; but I often wish I was obliged to be busy. I shouldn’t think then, and I
hate thinking.”
She had gone rambling on as if talking to herself. The fact that neither of
her two companions were in the slightest degree capable of entering into the
more sickly than sensible fancies of her young brain, had totally escaped
her recollection, and she was startled, and that not agreeably, when John,
laying down the paper he was studying, looked half sternly and half
anxiously at his wife. He had not listened—who ever does listen to anything
of the kind with entire impunity,—he had not listened without its producing
some effect upon his mind, to his mother’s constant remarks and
insinuations regarding his wife’s conduct and character. Since Arthur
Vavasour’s marriage, and the consequent entire cessation of his visits at the
Paddock, that raw had necessarily healed, but unfortunately those whose
nature it is to buzz about the sore places which will sometimes even in the
healthiest skin be found, are never at a loss to detect the peccant spots,
while to keep the venom rankling in the wound is to them a pleasant,
chiefly because it is an exciting, task.
It may seem strange to those who have not made human nature their
study, that Mrs. Beacham—dearly loving her son—should have seemed to
take positive delight in certain hints and allusions which, as she well knew,
could not fail both to give him pain and to intensify the coldness which too
evidently was beginning to exist between himself and his wife. If anyone
had accused the old woman of the sins of mischief-making and evil-
speaking, her surprise and indignation would have been great and
vehement. In her own mind she probably believed that, by constantly
endeavouring to make it appear that Honor, since the discovery of her birth,
and her temporary association with those above her, had grown proud and
fanciful and discontented, she, John’s mother, was simply doing her duty—
a duty which had for its aim and object the wholesome correcting of “Mrs.
John,” and the expedient enlightenment of a mind—her son’s, to wit—that
was blinded by the mists of uxorious folly. That Mrs. Beacham was herself
rendered happy by the state of things existing at the Paddocks must not be
supposed; but that she was not so, proved only another exciting cause for
the attacks upon Honor, which, whilst John often felt real uneasiness for
Honor’s evident delicacy of health, worried the poor man terribly.
Sometimes—not often, or probably his mother would have shown herself
far more lenient to the pale-faced girl, who never disputed her will, but
whose very submission was an aggravation—sometimes, as on the present
occasion, John would turn angrily upon Honor, speaking sharply to her,
after the fashion of even the best-tempered men who, without being able
either to understand the why, or to suggest a remedy for the evil, find the
comfort of their home broken up, through, as it seems to them, the
wilfulness or the valetudinarianism of a woman!
“It strikes me, Honor,” he said, laying down the paper which he had
ostensibly been studying, and speaking in a cold hard tone, at which his
wife inwardly rebelled, “it strikes me that you have been talking a precious
deal of what I call nonsense. You ‘do this,’ and you ‘don’t do it;’ You think,
and you ‘hate thinking.’ Upon my soul, I’m ashamed, and that’s the truth, to
hear you talk such rubbish. Now, I’ll just tell you what it is. I met Dr.
Kempshall yesterday, and we got talking a little about you. Says he,
laughing, ‘I tell you what it is, Beacham; you are spoiling that wife of yours
by kindness. Women are delightful creatures,’ says he; ‘but it doesn’t do to
let them have all their own way. She wants shaking up a bit, she does; and,
above all, she mustn’t—take my word for it—be given way to. Those
nerves that young women talk about are the deuce and all when they get too
much ahead;’ and, upon my soul, I begin to think he’s right.”
The ready tears rose to Honor’s eyes at this unexpected rebuke; while,
alas, swift as the lightning’s flash, the thought that one she had known in
days gone by would not have used her so, darted through her brain.
“I did not mean to be troublesome; I beg your pardon,” she said, with a
half proud, half sad submission which almost frightened John; and then,
slowly rising from her chair, she left the two alone to talk over her
behaviour as it pleased them best.
Honor Beacham had now known for many a month the true and rightful
cause of a discontent and a misery which, however little justified by that
cause, grew daily less endurable. That cause, she understood full well at
last, had always, ever since the day when she accepted the hand of plain
John Beacham, been in existence. It had required, however, certain
concurrent events to bring it fully and unquestionably to light; and those
concurrent events had not, unfortunately, been wanting in the home of
Honor Beacham. The real and very melancholy truth, to leave off speaking
darkly, lay in this—namely, that Honor Beacham was perfectly unsuited,
not only to the life she was fated to lead, but also to that most excellent
John himself. Something of this had been dimly shadowed out to her in the
early days of courtship; but more, far more, was revealed when the dry and
uninteresting details of home life took the place of honeyed words and
pleasing compliments. But it was reserved (is it not mostly so?) for the
force of contrast to put the finishing touch to such deadly domestic
discoveries as these. Very trying to Honor, after she had grown familiar
with the refined voice, the subdued laugh, and all the conventional graces
(as they appeared to her) of Arthur Vavasour, was the jubilant hilarity, the
rather noisy speech, and, alas, the occasional philological lapses of her
socially-untutored husband. Slowly, yet very surely, the evil worked,
undermining imperceptibly the moral system, and rendering insecure the
foundations of poor little Honor’s more rational hopes of happiness. But it
was not till the memorable day when she made the discovery that in her
veins ran purer blood than that which coursed with such a full and healthy
flow through the arteries of her yeoman husband, that the mischief that had
long been brewing began seriously to develop itself. Then the semi-Celtic
girl, retiring into the fastnesses more of a perilous fastidiousness than of a
vulgar commonplace pride, threw far away from her with reckless hand the
happiness that was within her reach; and dark was the looming of coming
events, which, although she saw it not, cast its shadow before her onward
path. From the moment when Colonel Norcott, whose misdeeds were not
unfortunately (as a warning to others) stamped upon his forehead, addressed
and acknowledged her as his child, the bonds that bound this foolish Honor
to the farmer of Updown Paddocks hung very heavily on her mind.
Yet, reader, I pray you not to blame her too severely for her involuntary
fault. There was no ugly root of pride, no taint of what Mrs. Beacham called
“fine-ladyism,” at the bottom of poor Honor’s loathing of a lot that on the
surface seemed so prosperous and happy. No one—no, not even her
severest judges, not even John’s prejudiced parent—could condemn more
sternly than did the girl herself her worse than coldness towards her
husband—her black ingratitude towards Heaven. But it was in vain she
strove against the feelings which her conscience whispered were so base
and wicked. In vain she told herself how good her husband was, how
honest, how respected, and how generous. Honesty, generosity, and
respectablity are excellent things in their way. With them to back him up, a
man may defy change, and winter and rough weather. He may go through
life with honour, and to his grave lamented; but, alas for him, such gifts
may fail to win a woman’s love, or bind her truant fancy. Still, as I said, or
rather, perhaps, implied before, if Honor had never chanced to mix with
what the world calls gentlemen, poor John’s lack of refinement (vulgar he
never could be called), his occasional conversational solecisms, his hands (a
trifle red and rough), his boisterous laugh, and his general ignorance of the
ways and speech of delicately-reared people, would not, in Honor’s
opinion, have told so heavily against him—would not, in short, have so
shamed, so repelled, and so—for it came at last to that sad climax—have so
entirely disgusted her.
The absence of refinement in her husband’s manners and mode of speech
had never struck Honor so vividly as on the occasion of her return to Pear-
tree House after the ten days which she had passed at the Bell. The room in
which her father had lain there was but a poor one; smaller and far less
comfortably furnished than the nuptial chamber at the farm. The little room,
too, near to it, which had been appointed for her especial use, and where,
lying awake in the silent watches of the night, she had wept and wondered,
so passing strange was the mutation that a turn in the wheel of Fortune had
brought about, was scarcely larger than a closet; but it was near her father!
“Father!” what a sweet sound it had for her, that word, and new as it was
sweet. Twenty times a day did she repeat it in a soft caressing whisper, that
only her own heart could hear; and very tender grew the large blue eyes,
gazing on the nobly-shaped head, lying so still and motionless upon the
hard inn-pillow.
It was not till two days and nights had elapsed since the accident, and
Colonel Fred Norcott was pronounced on the road to convalescence, that
Honor found either time or inclination to notice the, to her, wondrous
elegance and refinement of the sick man and his surroundings. Once
perceived, she was never weary of admiring what was to her so new, and so
in harmony with her own natural tastes. The very sound of her parent’s
voice, low and measured, the almost womanly beauty of his soignées hands,
the marvellous details of his dressing-case, his ivory hair-brushes; why had
not John a dressing-case, and beautiful handles like those, instead of—but
what need is there to dwell either on honest John’s shortcomings, or on the
thousand and one details which, absurd and improbable as it may seem,
went far towards working a revolution in Honor’s feelings, and sent her
back to her husband’s side an altered and a worse than discontented woman.
Worse than discontented, inasmuch as the change which had been wrought
in her was beyond her own control either to modify or to conceal; worse
than discontented, in that it was scarcely likely that this newly-born
fastidiousness would be less than fatal to the conjugal happiness of which
there had been once so fair a promise in the quiet prosperous home of
Updown Paddocks.
 CHAPTER XV.

COLONEL NORCOTT FEELS PATERNAL.

In a small drawing-room on the first floor of a house in Stanwick-street,
two persons were, one cold morning towards the end of April, seated at a
late and very metropolitan-looking breakfast. Of those two persons Colonel
Frederick Norcott was one. His outward man, as regarded dress at least, had
not improved since last we saw him, some eight months ago, flânéing in the
grounds of Danescourt. A short and somewhat nondescript garment, one
which might once have done duty as a shooting-jacket, but which had
degenerated into a coat of many uses (namely, one that its owner was in the
habit of dressing, smoking, and, as in the present instance, breakfasting in)
was greasy and out at elbows. The Colonel’s throat, a scraggy one, as is
customary with middle-aged gentlemen who “keep their figures,” was
exposed, by reason of an open shirt-collar, to view, and as he discontentedly
munched, with his still strong teeth, the untempting lodging-house fare
provided for him, the expression of the Colonel’s countenance was not
precisely what could be called a bright and a “shining morning face” on that
warm April day.
The “colonial lady,” seated opposite to her lord, and watching the
changes of his countenance in hopes to discover therein some sign or token
by which to regulate her remarks, was, as I before hinted, a lady of faded
and “washed out” appearance (entre les deux âges), willing still, as was
only natural, to be admired, but swamping all such womanly aspirations in
her deep devotion for, and her overweening appreciation of, the man who
had honoured her with his empty pockets and his once-respected name.
“You sent that letter to the post, of course,” said the Colonel, pushing
away his chair from the table, and preparing for some of the unwelcome
business of the day. The remark was scarcely an interrogative one, for the
master of the Stanwick-street lodging had on the previous day made known
to his submissive wife the wish that she should write in his name a certain
letter on a certain subject, and it had never occurred to him as possible that
Mrs. Norcott could have delayed the duty of attending to his wishes.
 “Honor will of course answer the letter at once,” continued Fred, “and I
should not wonder (let me see, to-day is Wednesday) if she were to be here
the end of the week.”
Mrs. Norcott, a lady of an habitually pallid complexion, flushed slightly
on hearing these remarks. It was not often, to do her justice, that she
ventured on independent action, but in the instance alluded to she had been
rash enough to arrogate to herself, though in a very mild degree, one of the
most valued privileges of her sex.
“I am very sorry,” she began, endeavouring to cover her confusion by
renewed attentions to the tea-pot; “I thought that you hardly meant it. You
spoke in a hurry, and as Mr. Vavasour was here, I could not well ask you
whether I was to write or not.”
Colonel Norcott rose from his chair impatiently.
“What a confounded nuisance!” he exclaimed, planting himself
autocratically upon the rug, with his back towards the empty fire-grate.
“Another day lost, and Vavasour, who—” He stopped short, not in
confusion; Fred was not the man to be easily what is called flabbergasted,
but there were limits, and very strongly marked ones too, to his confidential
intercourse with Mrs. N., and these he probably felt that he had been on the
point of overstepping.
“You ought to have known,” he went on peevishly, “that it is of
consequence to me—that I am anxious, in short, to have Honor here, and
what the d—l made you think for yourself in the matter is more than I can
guess. Come now, out with it,” he continued, growing momentarily more
irritated, and in proportion as the poor colonial heiress seemed disposed to
silence, working himself up to a determination that she should give a reason
for the fear that was in her; “out with it! I suppose you have some excuse
for not doing as I wished, and that excuse I am standing on this rug to hear.”
Thus apostrophised, the unlucky woman had no choice but to obey,
which she prepared to do in evident trepidation and discomposure.
“Now, Frederick,” she began, putting a large bony hand to her brow,
“you really might have a little mercy on my poor ’ead” (as if, par
parenthèse, any man ever had much pity on a plain wife with big fingers,
who dropped her h’s and bored him with her ailments); “I’ve got the most
dreadful ’eadache, and your voice this morning does go through it so!
About Mrs. Beacham I really thought—”
 “Go on, will you?” growled the Colonel.
“Well, I really thought, now I did indeed, that it would never do. In the
first place, though I didn’t see much of her ’usband, it was plain enough to
me that he’s not the kind of man to let his wife go gadding off to London;
and even if he did, why, Frederick, how in the name of goodness are we to
make her comfortable here? Unless you gave up your bedroom—”
“O, hang that!” from Colonel Fred.
“Well, but unless you did, there’s no place for her to sleep in but the attic
next to mine. I would let her have mine,” continued the good-natured
woman, “but that’s small and wretched enough; however, there’s no use,
I’m certain, in talking of it, for Mr. Beacham would as soon see her go up in
a balloon as set off by herself to London.”
Apparently, the Colonel was a little taken aback by the force of his
wife’s arguments, for he paused a while before he replied, and then said,
almost hesitatingly:
“The only thing would be to say that I am ill. Honor would come directly
then. That blockhead of a horse-breaker has scruples of conscience about
that disgusting crack over the skull he gave me, and would never refuse his
wife leave to come, if he had the most remote idea that I was still suffering
from the effects of the blow.”
There could scarcely be a stronger proof of the melancholy fact that poor
Bessie was not now for the first time cognisant of her husband’s tricks and
dodges than the little surprise she evinced at Colonel Fred’s spirited
suggestion. She listened at first in silence, thinking over in her mind the
pros and cons regarding the chances of successfully carrying out his plans:
while not for a moment did it occur to her to raise an objection on high
moral grounds to the trap which was about to be set for the unwary. The
class of wives of which Mrs. Norcott is the type are, as a rule, a cowardly
class; and, moreover, they are women who, taking perhaps too lowly an
estimate of themselves, and certainly too high a one of their partners, are
ready to buy the rare smiles, and equally rare meed of approbation which
falls to their lot, by a mean and truculent subserviency, which in reality
gains for them neither affection nor esteem. As is usual, however, with
persons who are destitute of moral courage, Mrs. Norcott would have gladly
compromised with her conscience, and changed the whole lie for a half one.