generations; that it is not Progress but Slavery which severs one generation from any which has preceded it. Here is that immortality which Sir H. Maine connects with the Family making itself felt in the period which he affirms to stand on the other principles of neighbourhood and individual distinctness. Nevertheless nothing is truer than that these principles made themselves manifest in the awakening of Germany, make themselves manifest in the awakening of every people to national consciousness. Each man in such a crisis feels himself to be a man, therefore feels his neighbour to be a man. He cannot help reverencing himself because he has learnt to reverence his neighbour. He cannot help reverencing his neighbour because he has learnt to reverence himself. The 'I' and the 'Thou' stand out confronting each other, making each other intelligible. There can be no account given of those wonderful moments of revival which is so true, so satisfactory, as this. The songs of patriots express it, the deeds of patriots express it. For an instant-it be only for an instant-jealousies, discontent, murmurings about precedence are suspended. They maythey will all appear again; but that instant wherein the leader exercises authority and the soldier pays willing obedience, wherein there is a trust of man in man, wherein Neighbourhood assumes the likeness of Consanguinity, wherein all are glad to serve, and yet the Master establishes his right to rule that instant is felt to be the one which determines what a nation is intended to be, what it become. may may The Family rising with the Nation. The crisis of a people's renovation explains its history. There is a sad counterpart to this German story in Spain. the records of another nation. I must refer to it because that nation was even more than Germany linked The hope with the thoughts and hopes of England at the same time, and because the history of its fortunes and misfortunes has done more than anything to excite in us a distrust of individual energy, a confidence in mere organisation. Before the dry bones in Germany began. to move, before they rose up a great army, Spain had for itself. proclaimed itself independent of the same oppressor, had invoked the co-operation of England. The heart of our people responded to the call; the stirs of life in a Southern race kindled our Northern blood. Wordsworth sang, of what it might do Inference drawn The power of Armies is a visible thing, Ah!-reply the despatches of the Duke of Wellington, the history of Sir William Napier, the limits of that power can be all too easily defined: the revenge, of the Pe- savage enough, was indeed there; the combat for free from the progress and issue ninsular War. dom was weak, capricious, interrupted by the vulgarest disputes, the meanest suspicions. And the "formal and circumscribed" power of armies, on the other hand, proved that it could effect the liberation which the socalled patriots only attempted. Can we resist that argument, if we exalt facts above theory? I do not wish to underrate the worth of discipline. I look upon it as a divine gift to nations, without which no other gift will be of much worth. But I entirely deny that the errors of the Spaniards at that time were any evidence that individual life is not a more precious, a more essential endowment of a nation, even than that. ence not Indeed, I know of no history which establishes this The Infer. position so triumphantly. Individuality had been most justified laboriously extinguished in the Spanish people by those but con. futed by rulers, civil and ecclesiastical, to whom they had bowed facts. before Joseph Buonaparte ever visited their land. They had been taught that individual death was the very highest perfection of the saint; they had felt it to be the chief comfort of the sinner. For such a people to become a Collection of Individuals was the hardest thing conceivable. The throes of birth were terrible; the result might be at the time a miserable abortion. Yet that struggle may have been a preparation for better days; the Spaniards may remember the times of old, instead of merely trying to make all things new. They may learn that the best manner of chivalry may be revived in the 19th century, without any of the fantasies which Cervantes shewed to be the caricature and debasement of it. Not arrogant self-assertion, but that self-assertion which is sustained by a man's respect for his neighbour, may come forth to make laws living, not mere letters on paper. Years of degradation and despotism may yet teach lessons to a noble race which they could not learn from any foreign allies, however well organised and successful. the Lec I have used these words "thy neighbour and thy- Title of self" because they express better and more simply than ture exany that I know the meaning of a Nation's existence; plained. the hos which must keep it alive. You know whence the language comes. Its connection with other lessons, borrowed from the same source, I shall not consider in this lecture. But I would observe to you that the Revolution which Sir H. Maine supposes must precede the passage from the Family condition to the legal or National is described in the Scriptures with a precision and minuteness which one cannot find anywhere else. Passage of The Patriarchal Horde does not emerge into a Nation out of pa. till it has passed through a period of oppression and triarchal slavery. Deliverance is inscribed upon its Law, is made existence. the very foundation of it. The recollection of ances the Jew tonational tors and relations enters into every part of it. We hear the suspicious murmurings of a people unused to individual freedom. But there is a moment in which they awaken, like the Germans of later days, to life and liberty and song. NOTE. 1871. A Lecture touching on the Germany and France of 1813 must suggest recollections of the great events which have occurred in the years since it was published, If I saw in these events a reversal or correction of the inferences which I deduced from the earlier I should refer to them; as I do not, it is better to let them wait for the commentary of fifty years hence, LECTURE VIII. LAW. I SPOKE in the last Lecture of the School as the passage out of domestic life into the life of neighbourhood, which is also the individual or personal life. A line from George Herbert, which I quoted in a former course, defines this transition, "Then Schoolmasters deliver us to Laws." The school is the preparation for National Life. When we contemplate men in a A Nation Nation, we contemplate them as under a Law. The implies a expressions are interchangeable. Law. given to us, Under a Law, you observe; that is the marvel The Law we have to consider. There may be a great many theories about the making or unmaking or remaking of laws; who are to be the agents in making or unmaking or remaking; what principals employ the agents. But apart from all these disputes, there is for each of you and for me this fact. We find a Law; it claims us as its subjects; we learn by degrees that we are subject to it. That is a very great discovery. We The are slow in arriving at it; very slow in confessing the acknow ledgment full force of it. Just so far as it is brought home to of it. me I know that I am a distinct person; that I must answer for myself; that you cannot answer for me. I perceive also that each of you is a distinct person; that each of you must answer for himself. |