The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

I54

Lzfe of Benjamin Jowett

[CHAP. V

in the next ten years, and unless they are prepared for an
irreconcilable war with the course of events they will sit
down and be 'rationally pious.' There seems good hope,
I think, that what has already taken place in politics among
statesmen will take place among Churchmen-plain matter
of fact people in a matter of fact country will honestly look
about them and see what wants doing.
About Arnold's theory I do not quite agree. Its fault is not
simply, I think, that it is too concrete, but that it does not
acknowledge the true concreteness of the Church as it is.
When it gets out of the Ideal, it is not merely impracticable,
but a falsehood. Men must have religion, but they are not
all equally religious; their inward requires an outward; but
external institutions are not things of degrees, they cannot
represent shades of feeling and opinion. And therefore when
you say, 'If they must have a Church externally, this is the
true external,' I cannot consent, because it is leading men
to expect an outward form of the Church which never can
be while human nature remains, and drawing them from the
true form which we have at present and [which] may ever
approximate towards the spiritual, although the dualism will
still remain:Was ist wirklich, das ist verniinftig:
Was ist verntinftig, das ist wirklich.
Granting the truth of Christianity, the opposition having
lasted 800o years is a tolerable proof that it is 'wirklich.'
No, it is not the system, but the Oo's1 of the English Church,
which is distasteful to me. The change of this POos ought to
preserve, not destroy the system. If we could once get out
of the pious fraud line, Englishmen would not soon relapse
into it, whereas Germans are, I think, ever liable to returns
of the malady.
Your two last letters gave me great delight. I feel every
day of my life that if one is ever to be of any good, idiosyncrasies, eccentricities, irritabilities, excitements, self-consciousnesses, follies of all sorts must be got rid of. No more subjectivity, but I hope you are going on your way rejoicing.
1 The moral tone.