of a mystical and indirect
kind), there is ample evidence that Fielding probably thought that it
was better to be Tom Jones than to be an utter coward and sneak. There
is simply not one rag or thread or speck of evidence to show that
Fielding thought that it was better to be Tom Jones than to be a good
man. All that he is concerned with is the description of a definite and
very real type of young man; the young man whose passions and whose
selfish necessities sometimes seemed to be stronger than anything else
in him.

The practical morality of Tom Jones is bad, though not so bad,
_spiritually_ speaking, as the practical morality of Arthur Pendennis or
the practical morality of Pip, and certainly nothing like so bad as the
profound practical immorality of Daniel Deronda. The practical morality
of Tom Jones is bad; but I cannot see any proof that his theoretical
morality was particularly bad. There is no need to tell the majority of
modern young men even to live up to the theoretical ethics of Henry
Fielding. They would suddenly spring into the stature of archangels if
they lived up to the theoretic ethics of poor Tom Jones. Tom Jones is
still alive, with all his good and all his evil; he is walking about the
streets; we meet him every day. We meet with him, we drink with him, we
smoke with him, we talk with him, we talk about him. The only difference
is that we have no longer the intellectual courage to write about him.
We split up the supreme and central human being, Tom Jones, into a
number of separate aspects. We let Mr. J.M. Barrie write about him in
his good moments, and make him out better than he is. We let Zola write
about him in his bad moments, and make him out much worse than he is. We
let Maeterlinck celebrate those moments of spiritual panic which he
knows to be cowardly; we let Mr. Rudyard Kipling celebrate those
moments of brutality which he knows to be far more cowardly. We let
obscene writers write about the obscenities of this ordinary man. We let
puritan writers write about the purities of this ordinary man. We look
through one peephole that makes men out as devils, and we call it the
new art. We look through another peephole that makes men out as angels,
and we call it the New Theology. But if we pull down some dusty old
books from the bookshelf, if we turn over some old mildewed leaves, and
if in that obscurity and decay we find some faint traces of a tale about
a complete man, such a man as is walk