Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/396

 III. HINTON'S LATEE THOUGHT. By H. HAVELOCK ELLIS. JAMES HINTON has come to be thought of as an original and profound if somewhat obscure metaphysician, a sort of preacher of Nirvana who somehow tried to bolster up Christian orthodoxy, who also at one period dealt in a very ascetic way with morals. There can be no doubt that Hinton himself is in some degree responsible for this conception ; it may easily be traced to Man and his Dwelling-place and The Mystery of Pain, probably his best-known works. But these books represent early and comparatively crude stages of his development. It was only during the last five years of his life that Hinton's genius was adequately manifested. During that period his mental activity was immense ; he wrote constantly, although he published scarcely any- thing. Such of his work as has yet appeared since his death is, for the most part, either confined to the immature periods, or misrepresents and mutilates the last period, an exception being made in favour of some portions of The Art of Thinking. When his later works have been fairly edited it will probably be found that his claim to remembrance (putting aside the remarkable and fascinating personality of the man himself, which can here be only alluded to) lies, not in these already published posthumous books, not in Man and his Dwelling- place, or The Mystery of Pain, but in works that at present have scarcely been named, and are not even known by most of those who have undertaken to speak about Hinton. Among these may be mentioned first (as it will be first published) "The Law-breaker". This is an attempt to set forth the nature of genius, especially in regard to the false laws among which genius finds itself, and to show that the genius-way of action, so far from being an abnormality, is the life of man in miniature, the laws of genius becoming the laws of man. In " Ethics " Hinton undertakes to prove a thesis of which " The Law-breaker" represents only one aspect; he sets forth a morality of which the law, to the exclusion of all other laws, is : " Attend to the facts ; do what is wanted " ; the natural guide being impulse made perfect by acceptance of the law, and free to accept all pleasure as well as pain. - This conception, audacious as it must probably seem, had its origin in Hinton's singularly profound sense of the moral