doctrine of Trinity. But, says a churchman, a certain creed is
necessary to men's moral and spiritual welfare, and therefore of the
utmost importance even for the prevention of robbery and murder. This
is what Macaulay implicitly denies. The whole of dogmatic theology
belongs to that region of philosophy, metaphysics, or whatever you
please to call it, in which men are doomed to dispute for ever without
coming any nearer to a decision. All that the statesman has to do with
such matters is to see that if men are fools enough to speculate, they
shall not be allowed to cut each other's throats when they reach, as
they always must reach, contradictory results. If you raise a difficult
point--such, for example, as the education question--Macaulay replies,
as so many people have replied before and since, Teach the people 'those
principles of morality which are common to all the forms of
Christianity.' That is easier said than done! The plausibility of the
solution in Macaulay's mouth is due to the fundamental assumption that
everything except morality is hopeless ground of inquiry. Once get
beyond the Ten Commandments and you will sink in a bottomless morass of
argument, counterargument, quibble, logomachy, superstition, and
confusion worse confounded.

In Macaulay's teaching, as in that of his party, there is doubtless much
that is noble. He has a righteous hatred of oppression in all shapes and
disguises. He can tear to pieces with great logical power many of the
fallacies alleged by his opponents. Our sympathies are certainly with
him as against men who advocate persecution on any grounds, and he is
fully qualified to crush his ordinary opponents. But it is plain that
his whole political and (if we may use the word) philosophical teaching
rests on something like a downright aversion to the higher order of
speculation. He despises it. He wants something tangible and
concrete--something in favour of which he may appeal to the immediate
testimony of the senses. He must feel his feet planted on the solid
earth. The pain of attempting to soar into higher regions is not
compensated to him by the increased width of horizon. And in this
respect he is but the type of most of his countrymen, and reflects what
has been (as I should say) erroneously called their 'unimaginative' view
of things in general.

Macaulay, at any rate, distinctly belongs to the imaginative class of
minds, if only in virtue of his instinctive preference of th