134 DARWIXIAXJSM. 



made good for themselves (by < dint of mutual compli- 

 ments) a somewhat exclusive and, for others, prescriptive, 

 position with the public. His one advantage was that 

 he could read German, I say ; and so it was that he had 

 his place among the abstracts. They could not do 

 without him, for example, when their manuals required 

 some historical reference a little more recondite than 

 usual, such as one might find, say, in Prantl only. And 

 so just two references qualify Mr. Grote. As there is 

 silver that is German silver, so there is Greek that is 

 German Greek ; and that German Greek, in the second 

 place, may be understood to convey no wisdom but the 

 wisdom only in its most suicidal form too singly, 

 simply, and solely of these same abstracts. " The 

 Frotagorean Canon ! " That " man is the measure of all 

 things " that is the only truth, but not when man is 

 taken as man no ! only when man is taken as any 

 particular individual man, Tom or Harry, Jim or Jack, 

 Thomson or Kobertson, Jones or Smith. 



"That every opinion of every man is true" That 

 " as things appear to me, so they are to me, and as they 

 appear to you, so they are to you : " " This theory is 

 just and important if rightly understood and explained." 

 (See the English Schwegler note on Sophists.) 



So says Mr. Grote ; and his explanation so far as we 

 see only an idle tautology, explanation there is none 

 required amounts to this : There is only a " to me " 

 and a " to you ; " there is not an is, an " is in itself." 



It really may be held, then, that the truth of Grote 

 was with Carlyle when his writing was only nameable 

 to him a " fetid quagmire, with nothing spiritual 

 about it." 



It is strange how much Carlyle has been misunder- 

 stood. He was a Conservative, even to be almost Toriest 

 of Tories; and he passed through life pretty well for 



