66 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



brazen calf, ye misguided citizens, and worship it, you, since you 

 will and can. But observe, let it be done in secret; not in public; 

 we say in secret at your peril ! You have pleased to create a new 

 Monster into this world; but to make him patent to public view, 

 we, for our part, beg not to please. Observe, therefore: Build 

 a high-enough brick case or joss-house for your brazen calf; with 

 undiaphanous walls, and lighted by sky- windows only; put your 

 monster into that and keep him there. Thither go at your 

 pleasure, there assemble yourselves and worship your bellyful, 

 you absurd idolators; ruin your own souls only, and leave the 

 poor population alone; the poor speechless unconscious population, 

 whom we are bound to protect and will " (6). 



Aggrandizement not Morality. — But the world is not 

 ready yet for Carlyle. The Bishop of Hereford, recently writing 

 in the 19th Century (c) said: — 



"There stands before us the plain facts that after eighteen 

 centuries of christian teaching and influence in Europe, a great 

 deal of our public life, both at home and abroad, although in the 

 hands of christian statesman, is to all practical intents and pur- 

 poses still carried on as if the sermon on the Mount had never been 

 spoken, and only the lower and selfish motives had a rightful claim 

 to exercise dominion in practical affairs. " * * * 



"The point is that honest and good men do not seem to 

 recognize those standards of ethical judgment which they accept 

 without question in private life, as having the same claim on 

 their allegiance in the arena of politics or in the relationships of 

 nations. " * * * 



"The terms in which national or imperial aims and policy 

 are defined, and the spirit in which international affairs are con- 

 ducted, are such as to make it only too plain that the whole struc- 

 ture of foreign politics, and also a great part of internal politics, 

 are built upon a foundation of selfishness, jealousy, rivalry, greed 

 of power and wealth, and not upon any higher or christian 

 basis . " 



Frederic Harrison (quoted in the article just referred to) 

 wrote : — 



"The key to all rational estimate of European politics is to 

 recognize that the dominant factor in them to-day is the passion 

 of national self-assertion — the struggle for national supremacy. 



(h) Latter-Day Pamphlets, 223. 

 (c) Vol. 48, p. 227. 



