those modern thinkers, who consider Nietzsche and Blake as mere interesting "cases," would concur with Locke's point of view, and would express it with a boldness that would probably have scandalized Locke. But these are the men who would do away with fairy-stories and sneer at the flag. Rationalism is the grave of enthusiasm, and the Walpoles and Lockes follow on each other like snow and winter. Enthusiasm in the mouths of such men does indeed mean fanaticism; but that is not so much because language has changed, as because, according to the conception of a Prose Age, there never can be any distinction between the two.

Another equally great, but somewhat less famous Whig, also treats of enthusiasm. Lord Shaftesbury's work is as redolent of the drawing-room as is Locke's of the study; his scholarship is that of the fine gentleman, finished without being tedious, thoughtful without being emotional. To his mind, the best cure for enthusiasm is humour, and he hints that the Jews might have done better by a little good-humoured buffoonery than by shouting "Crucify him." This was plain speaking even in the heyday of Deism, and if Shaftesbury had lived a little longer, he might have found his ideal in Voltaire. He remarks disparagingly upon the enthusiasm or fanaticism of poets, Horace and Lucretius being singled out for special mention. To anything like spiritual perception, Shaftesbury, like Locke, is obviously dead; though he does admit, theoretically, that there can be such a thing as "noble enthusiasm " (thus proving that the sense of the word has not greatly changed after all). But, as in the case of Locke, the admission is at once qualified by the old rationalist test: "For to judge of spirits," says Shaftesbury, "whether they be of God, we must antecedently judge of our own spirit, whether it be of reason or sound sense," and so forth. "Mystic" is another word that we shall hardly be surprised to find coupled with "fanatic."

But Shaftesbury is not altogether the slave of a Prose Age. There is a certain cool and temperate enthusiasm, that he not only countenances, but even adopts for his own. We must remember that we are dealing with a man who wrote before the Walpole regime, and thus we need not be surprised to find him combating the more extreme materialist tendencies. Shaftesbury sees the Universe as a harmony, and provided that we can tune our enthusiasm to this harmony, we do well to give it scope. For the "cool philosophy," which would kill admiration, and regard love as a physical process, he has no sympathy.

On patriotism, Shaftesbury speaks with no uncertain voice. "Of all human affections," he writes, "the noblest and most becoming to human nature is the love of one's country." But with the subtlety that is so characteristic of him, he goes on to formulate a very interesting distinction between the patriotism of the soil, and that of institutions. From the way people talk of Old England, one would imagine she was the richest and most beautiful country on the face of the earth. The acid of Shaftesbury's criticism dissolves very much of the patriotic fervour that we might have expected from him. Old England, to his mind, was a very different country; albeit she has gone on steadily improving, and we have even come to "make a somewhat better figure in Europe than we did before," though" we must confess that we are the latest barbarous and last civilized or polished people of Europe." We then have some severe remarks about English insularity, remarks which we might expect from so wide a traveller as Shaftesbury, and which singularly anticipate Matthew Arnold's raillery in "Friendship's Garland." Hardly will the ancients themselves be regarded, by a people so indifferent to the merits of every modern nation except themselves. Shaftesbury is less inclined to give rein to patriotism than to rebuke its

excesses; an eminently proper attitude, but one characteristic of a Prose Age. On the whole, we may regard him as standing between the sturdy sentiment of Addison, and the cold materialism, that is so characteristic of the Walpole epoch. He is one of the most charming, the most subtle, and perhaps the most unjustly neglected of English authors, and he presents the rare combination of profound critical acumen with extreme optimism.

We now come to a philosopher of very different calibre, the genial cynic, Mandeville. In one sense we may consider him as the voice of his time, laughing at virtue, and approving all sorts of vice, even seeming to justify corruption. But there is more than this in Mandeville; and if we examine him more closely, we shall be astonished at the wizardry with which he anticipates problems of our own day, and solves them with a boldness worthy a Nietzsche or an Ibsen.

He is the one serious thinker of his time who has the hardihood to discard utterly the conventions of morality. The ordinary deist, or sceptic, or freethinker was ready enough to pour cold water upon the supernatural, but seldom failed to insist upon his own unwavering enthusiasm for virtue and hatred of vice, despite the absence of any divine bias towards altruism. Shaftesbury is at particular pains to show that a moral sense is part of the universal harmony, and that it is natural for man to distinguish between vice and virtue; but to Mandeville all such special pleading is folly. In his essay on the "Origin of Moral Virtue," he tries, with much ingenuity, to demonstrate how all ideas of vice and virtue originally had their source in the selfish interests of individuals. This essay is strikingly similar to Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals," and suffers from the same defect, though in a far greater degree, for it attributes too much importance to the conscious machinations of those in authority. Moral ideas were the invention of scheming politicians, who

wished to tame the original brute instincts of the savage, and thus make him easier to govern. Such a theory, to say the least of it, must undergo very severe qualification in the light of modern research; but whether we accept or reject it, the root idea of the essay remains untouched. What Mandeville was trying to show, is that ideas of vice and virtue are not divine at all, but matters of expediency. It is true that he has to make, at the end of his essay, one of those irritating concessions to public opinion which were the necessary stock-in-trade of every infidel who wished for a quiet life. Of course he meant no disparagement to the Christian religion; far from it, but-and Cerberus was appeased.

A number of respectable utilitarians are ready to go quite as far as this. Mandeville, however, pushes the attack still further. Pity is weakness, charity but veiled selfishness, luxury a public benefit, and honesty often the ruin of a nation. You cannot combine national virtue with prosperity, save in some impossible Utopia. Our deepest-rooted convictions are, in the opinion of this strange reformer, only prejudices, which ought to be discarded for the public weal. Most striking of all Mandeville's heresies is his justification of ignorance among the lower classes, and his prophetic anticipation of the effects of cheap education. A certain amount of drudge labour he sees to be necessary for the continuance of society, and it is both cruel and pernicious to endow the poor with a knowledge that can only serve to engender cunning, and to destroy content. Mandeville's prophecy of the effects of universal education might almost be a retrospect of to-day. "Everybody is for turning the penny and short bargains: he that is diffident of everything and believes nothing but what he sees with his own eyes is counted most prudent. In all their dealings men seem to act from no other principle than that of Devil take the hindmost. Instead of planting oaks that will require

one hundred and fifty years before they are fit to be cut down, they build houses with a design that they shall not stand above twelve or fourteen years. All heads run upon the uncertainty of things and the vicissitudes of human affairs. The Mathematics become the only valuable study and are made use of in everything, even where it is ridiculous [Mandeville seems to have had a shrewd anticipation of modern Political Economy], and Men seem to repose no greater trust in Providence than they would in a broken merchant."

We have, perhaps, digressed overmuch into the perilous paths of Mandeville's philosophy; for it is not when our author rises above the limitations of his age that his influence is most felt; it is as a cynic and scoffer that he is best remembered and chiefly influential. The moral that most people were inclined to draw from him was: "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." There is much of Walpole in Mandeville; the same cynicism, the same hatred of shams, and the same devotion to commercial interests. It is not under such influences that men warm with enthusiasm, or perform heroic deeds. In fact Mandeville, in his "Essay on the Moral Idea," has his sneer at heroism, just as Walpole talks of Spartans, patriots and boys. Both were theoretically attached to the public interest, but with a devotion sadly different from that of Drake and Nelson. Cynicism may pull down, but it cannot build, and it was as a cynic that his age chose to regard Mandeville, and that he himself posed. But perhaps the coarse wit and coffee-house jester was greater than he knew.

Naturally such premature boldness of speculation roused furious opposition; Dennis, Thorold, and the pious William Law were among the champions of virtue against Mandeville. Most bitter of all was the criticism of Francis Hutcheson, the intellectual heir of Shaftesbury,