to justify their views by abstract reasoning; and that
is a rather conjectural and indefinite enterprise. It lies,
fortunately, outside of my field; and it will be enough if I try to
suggest one or two sufficiently vague hints. In the first place, the
contrast between the Utilitarians and their opponents may almost be
identified with the contrast between the prosaic and the poetical
aspects of the world in general. Bentham frankly objected to poetry in
general. It proved nothing. The true Utilitarian was the man who held
on to fact, and to nothing but the barest, most naked and unadorned
fact. Poetry in general came within the sweep of his denunciations of
'sentimentalism' and 'vague generalities.' It was the 'production of a
rude age'; the silly jingling which might be suitable to savages, but
was needless for the grown-up man, and was destined to disappear along
with the whole rubbish of mythology and superstition in whose service
it had been enlisted. There is indeed a natural sympathy between any
serious view of life and a distrust of the aesthetic tendencies.
Theologians of many different types have condemned men for dallying
with the merely pleasurable, when they ought to be preoccupied with
the great ethical problems or the safety of their souls. James Mill
had enough of the old Puritan in him to sympathise with Carlyle's
aspiration, 'May the devil fly away with the fine arts!' To such men
it was difficult to distinguish between fiction and lying; and if some
concession might be made to human weakness, poets and novelists might
supply the relaxations and serve to fill up the intervals of life, but
must be sternly excluded if they tried to intrude into serious
studies. Somehow love of the beautiful only interfered with the
scientific investigation of hard facts.

Poets, indeed, may take the side of reform, or may perhaps be
naturally expected to take that side. The idealist and the dreamer
should be attracted most powerfully by the visions of a better world
and the restoration of the golden age. Shelley was among the most
enthusiastic prophets of the coming era. His words, he hoped, were to
be 'the trumpet of a prophecy' to 'unawakened earth.' Shelley had sat
at the feet of Godwin, and represented that vague metaphysical
dreaming to which the Utilitarians were radically hostile. To the
literary critic, Shelley's power is the more remarkable because from a
flimsy philosophy he span an imaginative tissue of such ma