Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in
the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are
naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they
are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism.[415]
Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of renovation
applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for
elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the
future,--these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison[416]
and other disciples of Comte,[417]--one of them, Mr. Congreve,[418] is
an old friend of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of publicly
expressing my respect for his talents and character,--are among the
friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr.
Frederic Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural enough
motive; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are
the signal marks of Jacobinism,--its fierceness, and its addiction to
an abstract system.
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