As the Messiah was a Semitic thought which the Jewish disciples of Christ saw realised in the Son of Man, the Word was an Aryan thought which the Greek disciples saw fulfilled in the Son of God. The history of the divine Dyas which preceded the Trias is clear enough, if only we are acquainted with the antecedents of Greek philosophy. Without that background it is a mere phantasm, and no wonder that in the minds of uneducated people it should have become what Arnold describes it,[9] father, son, and grandson, living together in the same house, or possibly in the clouds. To make people shrink back from such a conception is worth something, and Arnold has certainly achieved this, if only he has caused hundreds and thousands to say to themselves: “We never were so foolish or so narrow-minded as to believe in three Lord Shaftesburys.” For some reason or other, however, the “three Lord Shaftesburys” have disappeared in the last edition of “Literature and Dogma” and have been replaced by “a Supernatural Man.” Froude, who was an intimate friend both of Arnold and of Sir James Stephen, told me that the latter had warned Arnold that the three Lord Shaftesburys were really actionable, and if Arnold hated anything it was a _fracas_. In the fifth edition they still remain, so that the change must have been made later on, when he prepared the cheap edition of his book. Anyhow, they are gone! Arnold was a delightful man to argue with, not that he could easily be convinced that he was wrong, but he never lost his temper, and in the most patronising way he would generally end by: “Yes, yes! my good fellow, you are quite right, but, you see, my view of the matter is different, and I have little doubt it is the true one!” This went so far that even the simplest facts failed to produce any impression on him. He had fallen in love with Émile Burnouf’s attractive but not very scholar-like and trustworthy “Science de la Religion.” I believe that at first he had mistaken Émile for Eugène Burnouf, a mistake which has been committed by other people besides him. But, afterwards, when he had perceived the difference between the two, he was not at all abashed. Nay, he was betrayed into a new mistake, and spoke of Émile as the son of Eugène. I told him that Eugène, the great Oriental scholar—one of the greatest that France has ever produced, and that is saying a great deal—had no son at all, and that he ought to correct his misstatement. “Yes, yes,” he said, in his most good-humoured way, “but you know how they manage these things in France. Émile was really a natural son of the great scholar, and they call that a nephew.” This I stoutly denied, for never was a more irreproachable _père de famille_ than my friend and master Eugène Burnouf. But in spite of all remonstrances, Émile remained with Arnold the son of Eugène; “For, you see, my good fellow, I know the French, and that is my view of the matter!” If that happened in the green wood, what would happen in the dry!