1892 "AN APOLOGETIC IRENICON" 



Thus, begging the Positivists not to regard him as a rival 

 or competitor in the business of instructing the human race, 

 he says : 



I aspire to no such elevated and difficult situation. I declare 

 myself not only undesirous of it, but deeply conscious of a con- 

 stitutional unfitness for it. Age and hygienic necessities bind 

 me to a somewhat anchoritic life in pure air, with abundant 

 leisure to meditate upon the wisdom of Candide's sage aphorism, 

 " Cultivons notre jardin" especially if the term garden may 

 be taken broadly and applied to the stony and weed-grown 

 ground within my skull, as well as to a few perches of more 

 promising chalk down outside it. In addition to these effectual 

 bars to any of the ambitious pretensions ascribed to me, there is 

 another : of all possible positions that of master of a school, or 

 leader of a sect, or chief of a party, appears to me to be the 

 most undesirable ; in fact, the average British matron cannot 

 look upon followers with a more evil eye than I do. Such 

 acquaintance with the history of thought as I possess, has taught 

 me to regard schools, parties, and sects, as arrangements, the 

 usual effect of which is to perpetuate all that is worst and 

 feeblest in the master's, leader's, or founder's work; or else, as 

 in some cases, to upset it altogether; as a sort of hydrants for 

 extinguishing the fire of genius, and for stifling the flame of 

 high aspirations, the kindling of which has been the chief, per- 

 haps the only, merit of the protagonist of the movement. I 

 have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. 

 All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, this and this 

 have I learned; thus and thus have I learned it: go thou and 

 learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility 

 for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, con- 

 clusions, the value of which you ought to have tested for your- 

 self. 



Again, replying to the reproach that all his public utter- 

 ances had been of a negative character, that the great prob- 

 lems of human life had been entirely left out of his purview, 

 he defends once more the work of the man who clears the 

 ground for the builders to come after him : 



There is endless backwoodsman's work yet to be done. If 



' those also serve who only stand and wait," still more do those 



who sweep and cleanse; and if any man elect to give his strength 



to the weeder's and scavenger's occupation, I remain of the opin- 



