Page:Some New Philosophical Views.djvu/9

Rh In my own opinion, too, there are special difficulties just now hindering the success of such an experiment, owing to the thinkers in the realm of English philosophy who for more than a generation just have had the public ear, studiously avoiding technology in their works. Certain critics of Mr. Mill state that they find his language loose when it is strictly scrutinized,—Professor Stanley Jevons has said so in these pages,—but it is undeniable that it has an appearance of lucidness. Mr. Darwin uses a few catch-phrases, but they are free from what is commonly meant by technicality, and, in fact, the ease of his style has greatly helped the spreading of his views. Professors Huxley and Tyndall have each a rare art of making plain what they urge; and Professor Bain is only a little less a master of simple statement. Mr. Matthew Arnold, of late years, has seemed to accumulate a phraseology of his own; but it consists not of new terms but of parts of sentences, familiar enough when the words are taken separately, and only made special by allotment to a particular meaning, and by a strenuous iteration afterwards in their use. In Mr. Herbert Spencer's works, a nomenclature of some intricacy is to be met with, but he, again, has shown much skill in habituating his readers to it. If Mr. Cyples says, as I gather he does, that in arriving at what he believes to be new conclusions, he found that the mental process developed these new terms of expression, and that he has had to work with them, it has to be allowed that he knows best what happened in his own case. All that he has now to do is to get the public to use his terminology, and to speak of "the neurotic diagram," "egoistic-actualisation," "the Executive System," &c. I myself think that he would have made his task not a little easier if he had just reversed the order of the contents of his volume, and begun with what is now the ending of it,—that is, the portion in which the use of the technology is the least frequent. Anyhow that is the plan which I, who wish to do what I think a notable book a service, find my judgment suggests.

In Chapter XXI., that is, in the last chapter, if we except the short conclusion of the work, the author deals with "Art: its Functions." I should like to let him speak at once for himself, by quoting the opening sections defining Art generally, or else by giving a novel hypothesis he puts forward on the once much-debated question of the origin of the Sublime. But I will go on to a shorter passage, where an explanation of the puzzle as to what may be called the emotional excess which has always been noted in the case of Music is thus hinted at:—