The men, he
said, who could do these great things did not exist in the country.
There were many points of sympathy between him and me, both in the new
opinions he had adopted and in the old ones which he retained. Like me,
he never ceased to be a utilitarian, and, with all his love for the
Germans and enjoyment of their literature, never became in the smallest
degree reconciled to the innate-principle metaphysics. He cultivated
more and more a kind of German religion, a religion of poetry and
feeling with little, if anything, of positive dogma; while in politics
(and here it was that I most differed with him) he acquired an
indifference, bordering on contempt, for the progress of popular
institutions: though he rejoiced in that of Socialism, as the most
effectual means of compelling the powerful classes to educate the
people, and to impress on them the only real means of permanently
improving their material condition, a limitation of their numbers.
Neither was he, at this time, fundamentally opposed to Socialism in
itself as an ultimate result of improvement. He professed great
disrespect for what he called "the universal principles of human nature
of the political economists," and insisted on the evidence which history
and daily experience afford of the "extraordinary pliability of human
nature" (a phrase which I have somewhere borrowed from him); nor did he
think it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral capabilities
which might unfold themselves in mankind, under an enlightened direction
of social and educational influences.
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