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JOWETT'S LIFE
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enemies of common sense. But then where would common sense lead? Voltaire, we may say, was an incarnation of common sense, and of Voltaire Jowett asserted, 'somewhat perversely,' that he had done more good than all the fathers of the Church put together. The 'perversity' is obvious, for Voltaire's desire to crush the ' infame ' was clearly not to Jowett's taste. The school which perhaps represented most clearly the development of the eighteenth century philosophy was that of J. S. Mill, but of the Utilitarians Jowett always spoke with marked dislike. Young men, as a rule, like a leader who has some distinct aim, good or bad, and if Jowett were to be judged by that test one would say that no one of his time was less qualified to be a leader. To a distinct view of the importance of some solution he seems to have joined the profound conviction that no conceivable solution would hold water. 'He stood,' says one of his pupils, in a rather different sense, 'at the parting of many ways,' and he wrote, one must add, 'No thoroughfare' upon them all.

Jowett's influence, then, was hardly that of a consistent or confident guide in speculation. It was not less real and perhaps something much