Internal impatience of National bound. aries. The very LECTURE XIII. UNIVERSAL MORALITY. (1) THE UNIVERSAL EMPIRE. 'I AM the member of a family;' 'I am the citizen of a nation; these are assertions which each of us confidently repeats to himself, about which he entertains no scepticism. Am I only the member of a family; only the member of a nation? At a certain crisis in our lives this question, which has often been stirring within us before, is fully presented to us. This domestic circle has been unable to confine me within it. Can the law, the language, the government, the hostilities of a particular country confine me? Do I not belong to a larger Society, what is called a WORLD? We have seen from the example of the first Social Moralist to whom I referred in these Lectures that this word is not necessarily a very comprehensive one. It denoted to Chesterfield, it has denoted to many, a peculiarly narrow Society; one the virtue of which consists in its narrowness. A number of other worlds entirely unlike that of Chesterfield, but possessing this characteristic, attract or repel us when we reach the Its nega tive defi. verge of manhood. They offer a gratification to certain tastes which we are cherishing, a promise that we nition. shall be associated chiefly with those who share the same tastes. We hear of a literary world, a scientific world, a sporting world, a religious world. Each of these worlds may have different hemispheres; those who dwell in one may not be able to endure the atmosphere of the other. The name therefore must receive rather a negative definition. It must signify that the inhabitants of these worlds are not admitted into them in virtue of any ties of blood or of country. The bond of their fellowship, whatever it be, is not this. of the Any one of these exclusive Societies may have a charm for us because it appeals to our choice. The family, the nation, are given to us. Here is an opening into a region which we can compare with other regions, which we can adopt because it accords with dispositions or is likely to develope powers that seem to be specially ours. That which we select is a world which turns on its own axis and revolves about some sun that illuminates no other. But the phrase 'man of the world' The 'Man denotes one who is not a member of any such limited World.' circle. We take him to be a person who may fall into any Society and feel no embarrassment in it, but who entirely refuses to be tied by the maxims, customs, beliefs of one or another. He floats at large; adapts him- His freeself to the circumstances of every country or class; all parobserves them acutely, perhaps with contempt, perhaps ticular with pity, as far as possible with indifference; is en- dislikes, tangled by no strong sympathies or antipathies; can tions. use men to accomplish his purposes if he has ambition or avarice or any other passion to gratify; but can also dispense with them if he finds them inconvenient, dom from affections, convic or if other tools suit him better. That is nearly, I think, what we understand by a man of the world. There may be varieties of the species. The French man of the world may not be exactly like the English man of the world; may have fewer angular points, and therefore may fulfil the character more perfectly. No national peculiarities ought to enter into his composition; no family affections. They evidently weaken his forces, impair his completeness. Such a model as this many set before themselves when they are approaching the age in which mere citizenship, as well as mere domestic ties, become insufficient for them, when they are aware that they have grown not in thews and bulk alone; that the inward. service of the mind and will has waxed wide withal and demands a wide society for its exercise. But to some who have reached the same stage, who are conscious of the same necessities, the question occurs, The Man. May not a MAN, perhaps, be more than a man of the world? If we can be thoroughly men shall not we enter more not less into fellowship with all people and kindreds than he does? Shall we not have fellowship with what they are-not only, as seems to be his case, with the outside of them, with what they seem and are not? Having arrived by whatever process at that intercourse, shall we not understand better what our country is to us-what his country is to every neighthe world. bour, what our family is to us, what his family is to him? Shall we not be more thoroughly individual, be less lost in a crowd?' These thoughts have worked and are working in us, side by side with the desire to have the credit and dignity of being men of the world. I apprehend that the chief business of a University is How he differs from the man of character intended to ripen such hopes, to shew how they may be accom- Which plished. If it does that—if it is, in the truest sense, University a school of Humanity—it will also explain to its mem- Culture is bers how one may have a calling to this pursuit, one to form. to that-how one may devote himself to Science, one to Letters, one to Politics, yet without being enclosed in an artificial, exclusive world; rather with the power of shewing how every study and work discovers some spring of life in man which without it would be closed. We have always observed, thus far, that there is a correspondence between our own personal experience and the larger experience which makes up History. The transition from the patriarchal to the legal period -the shock which accompanies the transition, we noticed in both alike. To this amazing crisis through which we all more or less consciously pass, from the national to the universal condition, where shall we turn for a resemblance? If the remarks which I made at the close of the last Lecture are true, the point of comparison is marked enough. Just at the commencement of our era, at the moment in which Octavius Cæsar became lord of the World, did the age of nations pass away with a great noise, did the universal age begin. What was to come of that universal age, whether nations were or were not in its womb, was to be declared hereafter; that it opened with the extinction of them, there can be no doubt. We have not to infer, as in the crisis spoken of before, some great revolution; nothing is more patent and notorious than the Revolution by which this the third period of historical development was inaugurated. I do not, of course, limit the Revolution to the mere struggle of Antony and Augustus which brought The crisis in general history which corresponds dividual to the in crisis. The new about Brutus it to its close. Figures far more striking and interesting than these had appeared in the earlier scenes of the drama. Of old we used to speak of Brutus with some reverence; those who withstood Cæsar were thought to have been honest patriots, if they took a wrong way of exhibiting their patriotism. Modern doctrines scholars command us to abandon such notions. Julius Cæsar, they say, understood his time as no one else did. His opponents were stupid pedantic worshippers of the past. His merits have been put upon another ground by his imperial biographer and panegyrist. Roman Republican History, he says, exhibits only a Cæsar the conflict of orders. Julius Cæsar was the intelligent champion champion of equality; he was preparing the of Equality. and Cæsar. way for the only kind of government in which the Will of the Majority could become faithfully embodied and enforced. I submit to these authorities so far as the question is one which their learning or their practical experience is competent to decide. I accept the statement that Julius Cæsar had a remarkable, an unparalleled, understanding of his own time; that he was hampered by no traditions of the past; that he had no prejudices of any kind which hindered him from using any class of his countrymen for the object which he had His eman. set before himself; that he had a culture which placed him on the level of the highest orators, statesmen, even sages among Romans; that he had a capacity for government which made him able to manage the temrestraints. pers and passions of barbarians; that he was perfect in the knowledge as well as in the temper which could win the confidence of the legions; that he was able to use the advantages of his birth or throw them aside if so he might conciliate the mass of citizens; that he cipation from all domestic and national |