Passages From the Prose Writings Author:Matthew Arnold General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1880 Original Publisher: Smith, Elder Subjects: Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Poetry Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no... more » illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Turgot and Butler. 309 Nine years afterwards began his glorious administration as Intendant of the Limousin, in which for thirteen years he showed what manner of spirit he was of. When, in 1774, he became Minister and Controller-General, he showed the same thing on a more conspicuous stage. ' Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are nobly serious, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report,' -- that is the . history of Turgot's administration ! He was a Joseph Butler in government. True, his work, though done as secular administration, has in fact and reality a religious character; all work like his has a religious character. But the point to seize is here : that in our country, in the middle of the eighteenth century, a man like Butler is still possible in religion ; in France he is only possible in civil government. And that is what I call a true ' decay of religion, the influence of it more and more wearing out of the minds of men.' The very existence and work of Butler proves, in spite of his own desponding words, that matters had not in his time gone so far as this in England. -- Last Essays. SUTLER'S PSYCHOLOGY. What he calls our instincts and principles of action, which are in truth the most obscure, changing, interdependent of phenomena, Butler takes as if they were things as separate, fixed, and palpable as the bodilyorgans which the disse...« less