HINTON'S LATER THOUGHT. 405 he believed, the problems of life are connected with it has been already said, and it is a fact of great interest. We have seen too how singularly opposite in many points the gospel of Art that Hinton found was to that contained in the jewelled eloquence of Mr. Euskin's fervent, if rather strained, moral analogies. Hinton's life covered nearly the same period as that of perhaps the greatest imaginative artist England has produced, and the last years of his life were synchronous with the appearance of that new aesthetic feeling which is only now beginning to come into life and which must neces- sarily be of slow development. When Hinton wrote the various tendencies which we recognise collectively as Socialism had in England scarcely taken definite form. One who held, so strongly as he, that " overthrowing society means an inverted p}-ramid getting straight," would probably to-day, however, be classed among extreme agitators. And it was Hinton's desire, apparently even his distinct purpose, to make some attempt towards the formation of a new society, although he held that such must not be a merely individual effort. His attempts in that direction would have been characterised by insistence on the moral aspect of every revolutionary change. The aim must be true before the life can be true ; but we must work from without inn:a.rds. The moral worth of the external change lies in its dynamic relations to the life of the spirit. The material and the sensuous have this incom- parable significance, that they carry within them the force which can liberate the soul. It may be that some new birth of social life waits for us in no very remote future, and Hinton's immense enthusiasm and profound moral insight can ill be spared in the work of reorganisation. With the complete publication of all that he produced, these qualities will yet be found to set a final seal of fascination upon his life-work ; and if we are approaching such a renascence Hinton must be counted among its first prophets. 23
