tv. COMBR’S INFLONNOE ON COBDEN. 93

was full of the intellectual spirit. Though he was shortly to Amel
become the leader of a commercial movement, he never Zr. 81-2
Ceased to be the preacher of a philosophy of civilization ; and
his views on trade were only another side of views on education
 and morality. Realist as he was, yet his opinions were
\nspired and enriched by the genius of social imagination.
Some readers will smile when I say that no teacher
of thay day was found so acceptable or so inspiring by
Cobden as George Combe. He had read Combe’s volume
before he wrote his pamphlets, and he said that “if
Seemed; like a transcript of his own familiar thoughts.’ *
Foy emphatically second-rate men have done better work
than the author of the Constitution of Man. That memorable
book, whose principles have now in some shape or other
become the accepted commonplaces of all rational persons,
Vas a startling revelation when it was first published (1828),
showing wen that their bodily systems are related to the
rest of the universe, and are subject to general and inexorable
 conditions; that health of mind and character are
Connected with states of body; that the old ignorant or
ascetical disregard of the body is hostile both to happiness
and mental power; and that health is a true department of
morality. We cannot wonder that zealous men were found
bo bequeath fortunes for the dissemination of that wholesome
gospel, that it was circulated by scores of thousands of
Copies, and that it was seen on shelves where there was
Rothing else save the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress.
It is easy to discern the attraction which teaching so
fresh and inspiriting as this, would have for a mind like
Cobden’s, constitutionally eager to break from the old
grooves of things, alert for every sign of mew light and
hope in the sombre sky of prejudice, and confident in the
Wrge possibility of human destiny. To show, as Combe
 Tafs of Georg Combs, i. 11.