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 158 NOTES. suspect that he was even enthusiastic about the truth. His enthusiasm was perhaps all the more catching that it was, at first, only suspected ; at any rate, his pupils followed his singularly lucid expositions addressed studiously to the logical understanding, with the growing feeling that it is a solemn duty which man owes to himself, as a rational being, to try to be clear-headed. Intellectual clearness, as such, seemed to be presented as a duty. But his more intimate pupils and friends came to see that he valued intellectual clearness not merely for its own sake, but as indicating that ideas incapable of logical handling were being kept out of discussion and left to reign in their own proper sphere. These pupils and friends observed that in his philosophical conversations (as in his ordinary talk) he held much in reserve. He was reticent almost ironically so about those ideas which may be summarily described as ' moral and religious,' when others were tempted to discuss them and hope by discussion to make them clearer. This, those who knew him well had learned to understand, was not because these ideas did not interest him, but because he felt that they were not objects of speculation but practical principles of life. And he showed how deeply they interested him by his own life. The acute dialectician never asked himself 'the reason why' he should spend his failing strength in doing his best for the mental improvement of his pupils. He simply assumed that it was worth doing ; and that was his ' metaphysic of ethics'. In the foregoing account of Shute's Oxford work, stress has been laid on his personal influence, because it is the influence of persons the significant silence, or the timely word, with effects reaching through a whole lifetime not the influence of books produced which is the really important philo- sophical influence of Oxford. Green's influence, for example, was of this kind. It is difficult, indeed impossible, to convey to others an adequate impression of the philosophical influence of a person. But Shute's friends and pupils who may read this notice will understand why prominence has been given to his personal influence ; and others, who have been for- tunate in their philosophical teachers, will understand that a philosophical reputation which, like his, rests on a personal influence powerful to shape lives, is placed on a very solid foundation. At the end of this necessarily inadequate estimate of Shute's philosophi- cal life and influence, a few lines respecting the facts of his external life will not be out of place. He was born in 1849. He belonged to an old family which was already settled at Monkton Combe in the time of Elizabeth. His school was Eton. From Eton he went to Cambridge, where he resided for a year, and then migrated to Oxford. In 1873 he took a First Class in Lit. Hum., and was elected to a Senior Studentship at Christ Church. In 1875 he went to Bombay as Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy, but his health obliged him to return o England within a year. Coming back to Christ Church in 1876, he soon became Tutor, and performed the duties of his Tutorship up to the day of the sudden beginning of his last illness. He examined several times in Lit. Hum.; he took an active part in college business ; and held the office of Proctor when his last illness came upon him. He died in London on Sept. 22, 1886, and was buried at Woking. J. A. STEWART. Mr. Patrick .Proctor Alexander, M.A., the very clever author of Mill and Carlyle and (following on Mill's replies in the third edition of the Exami- nation of Hamilton} of Moral Causation, or Notes upon Mr MiWs Notes (1868), also of Spiritualism: a Narrative with a Discussion (1871) and other writings, died at Edinburgh on Nov. 14th last, at the age of 63.