MATTHEW ARNOLD'S CRITICISM 109 



translation : ' Then Satan answered the Lord, and 

 said, Doth Job fear God for nought ? ' Franklin 

 makes this: ' Does your Majesty imagine that Job's 

 good conduct is the effect of mere personal attach- 

 ment and affection 1 ' I well remember how, when 

 first I read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, 

 and said to myself: 'After all, there is a stretch of 

 humanity beyond Franklin's victorious good sense! ' 

 So, after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as the 

 renovator of modern society, and Bentham' s mind 

 and ideas proposed as the rulers of our future, I 

 open the ' Deontology. ' There I read : ' While 

 Xenophon was writing his history and Euclid teach- 

 ing geometry, Socrates and Plato were talking non- 

 sense under pretense of talking wisdom and moral- 

 ity. This morality of theirs consisted in words; 

 this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters 

 known to every man's experience.' From the mo- 

 ment of reading that, I am delivered from the bond- 

 age of Bentham ! the fanaticism of his adherents can 

 touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of his 

 mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human 

 society, for perfection." 



The modern movement seems to me peculiarly a 

 movement of individualism, a movement favoring 

 the greater freedom and growth of the individual, 

 as opposed to outward authority and its lodgment in 

 institutions. It is this movement which has given 

 a distinctive character to the literature of our cen- 

 tury, a movement in letters which Goethe did more 

 to forward than any other man, — Goethe, who said 



