VIII
CHARACTER IN ITS BEARING ON SOCIAL CAUSATION[1]
By B. Bosanquet
I have long been oppressed with a growing sense of the inadequacy with which our social reformer conceive the power of character as a material agent. That the more commonplace ecclesiastical mind, both of the oldest and of the newest type, should be blind to ethical realities in their practical daily shape, we have reluctantly accepted as for some high reason a natural necessity. That the fashionably benevolent mind should share this blindness causes no surprise to those who have been called upon to observe that remarkable product of our century. But when able and critically minded men, who have undertaken the duty of scanning our social institutions with an idealist glance, are found to distinguish themselves from the popular ethical materialism only in so far as they push it to the extreme of exaggeration, then our heart would indeed sink within us, if we did not know that there are things which are difficult to see in proportion to their plainness and simplicity. And if we have the smallest sense of humour we may be inclined to smile at our own enthusiasm, remembering how some accidental circumstance, some new association or intense experience, awoke ourselves from the dogmatic slumber which not so very long ago, in the stress perhaps of an absorbing profession,
- ↑ A lecture given at Essex Hall for the Ethical Society.
