THE DEFENCE 217 



To Idealism, he says, "every institution and every belief 

 is alike a manifestation of a spiritual principle." I shall 

 not quarrel with more than one word in his description of 

 it ; I object only to the apparently innocent word " alike," 

 to which I shall come presently. 



It is quite true that Idealism offers as the principle of 

 explanation of objects, and of political life amongst them, 

 simply the conception of "spirit." This it has done all 

 the way from Hegel, its modern founder, to Green, whom 

 Mr. Morley most justly regards as " the true successor of 

 Mill in the line of political thinkers." Speaking of Green, 

 Professor Maccunn says; "There can be no doubt that 

 he stands or falls by the doctrine that the political life_of 

 men and nations is a spiritual revelation." " Hegel's 

 object was his oBJect. To find reason in human society, 

 to show that the life of citizenship was in its essence a 

 reasonable life, reasonable in its respect for institutions and 

 accomplished facts, reasonable also in its sanguine hopes, 

 aspirations and ideals this was the central purpose and 

 sober passion of his life." The analysis of the empirical 

 fact of democratic citizenship convinced him that it 

 "really does justify the contention that civic duty, rightly 

 regarded, is nothing less than a spiritual function, or, if 

 we prefer so to phrase it, that the life of 



mode of divine service. It may seem to savour of extrava- 

 gance," Professor Maccunn adds, ' ' thus to claim the 

 'secular' for the spiritual. For the secularities of politics 

 are manifest. They are only too much with us. Who 

 is the politician who does not know the parties and pro- 

 grammes, the caucuses, committee rooms, polling booths, 

 the compromises, expediencies, trickeries? And is it of 

 this thing that one can venture to speak in terms of religion 



