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 all, as it seems to an outsider, 'kept it up.' The very tone of voice of a true Rugbeian implied, modestly but firmly, that he was endowed with a 'moral consciousness.' He had a quasi-official right to share the lofty view which he had imbibed at the feet of the master. He always seemed to be radiating virtuous influences. A conscience is, no doubt, a very useful possession in early years. But when a man has kept one till middle life, he ought to have established a certain modus vivendi with it; it should be absorbed and become part of himself not a separate faculty delivering oracular utterances. The amiable weakness of the Rugby school was a certain hypertrophy of the conscience. It had become unpleasantly obtrusive and self-assertive. In other words, they were decidedly apt to be moral prigs.

Jowett's influence was not exactly of this kind, but before asking what it was I must say something of one problem which is forced upon us by this book. Jowett was a man of wide philosophical culture. He was prominent in Oxford society during some remarkable intellectual changes. He lived there for some fifty-seven years. As an undergraduate he was a looker-on