Yin UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL 209 



buried^ as many vainly suppose. On the contrar}^, 

 numbers of men of no mean learning and accom- 

 plishment, and sometimes of rare power and sub- 

 tlety of thought, hold by it as the best theory of 

 things which has yet been stated. And, what is 

 still more remarkable, men who speak the lan- 

 guage of modern philosophy, nevertheless think 

 the thoughts of the schoolmen. " The voice is 

 the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands 

 of Esau." Every day I hear " Cause," " Law," 

 " Force," " Vitality," spoken of as entities, by peo- 

 ple who can enjoy Swift's joke about the meat- 

 roasting quality of the smoke-jack, and comfort 

 themselves with the reflection that they are not 

 even as those benighted schoolmen. 



Well, this great system had its day, and then it 

 "was sapped and mined by two influences. The 

 first was the studv of classical literature, which 

 familiarised men with methods of philosophising; 

 with conceptions of the highest Good; with ideas 

 of the order of Nature; with notions of Literary 

 and Historical Criticism; and, above all, with 

 visions of Art, of a kind which not only would not 

 fit into the scholastic scheme, but showed them a 

 pre-Christian, and indeed altogether un-Christian 

 world, of such grandeur and beauty that they 

 ceased to think of any other. Tliey were as men 

 who had kissed the Fairy Queen, and wan- 

 dering with her in the dim loveliness of tlie 

 under-world, cared not to return to the familiar 



