Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/120

 bridge he avers that with the majority of mankind a little of mathematics goes a long way, and that science cannot satisfy the soul of man. He crosses to America, and there he chooses as his special topic Numbers, preaching to the text, 'The majority are bad.' For every one will recognise that Mr. Arnold's lectures have the note of the sermon method in this at least, that they start from a text—it may be from the Bible, it may be from Menander—to which the discourse returns time after time, with a reiteration which some may find wearisome, but which clearly effects the purpose of impressing itself on the method.

His method, then, is that of the lay sermon. Would that clerical sermons were ever as good! His secret is his subacid reasonableness and his serious levity or frivolous seriousness. What strikes one in his criticisms of life even more than their penetration is their sanity and completeness. Many a controversial victory he has won in discussions about letters or life, or sometimes even in politics, by attending to the one question, What are the actual and complete facts of the case? He takes human nature all round, and sees how far a proposed remedy answers to all its needs. Herein he is really penetrated by the scientific spirit in its best aspect, and he has been no insufficient teacher of the higher anthropology. That in