. 1. «. L I. fc V ► ». !». fc »> K i ■» ►Vv i. . ►. I. »■ 1- ' » ,■ » K i. u ► I k » *■ I- I- ' ■ ".1 I I ' , < I. *. k. I. k i >. f- k L I » I / ' I 1 ' • ' '- ■ . V% I. U k ► k. I. » > >■ > , K ' •-, '• . »' i.^1. I. V k I. L-1. ». J. |. r» k 1. <• V k V > I. » ► k k 111 . •kkKkkkkfrkkkikkVi.^ k » >. fc k V • ^ ^ k k fc k k k ► I 'y u tTi. k k ». k k k k » k .. k • • k k K k » » k I- k k k » k k k I P- k' k k i. k k k k > k > f • k I. I. » ». » k. k I- t » - )- J. %'k ». ► ► V I. > k * "- -V k. k- L. ».' k k ► » ' f VV k I. *, l.|. I » \^Vf «- >■ ' >• k '.'■ I- L^." \'k\\'AV.VkV . . . - . - . .. - • ■ - • -X\'> rkVk\%v.'.'.\\\-.;.v.v,;k .>>.;. ..;.k.. ... 1^ >. « k ». w 1 » « «. k k ». f. ► k I- »- S'i'-'. . . i i". . . . . ^^kV^k^^k^»S5KR^;^v'y;^^. •'■■'• •■ k'k k k f t »/, Tk. . k k k . k k k k k-i, Ik ... k_^k k v«.v.!.\r,\-,',\:/ ■kf^k f k k . » » k k . . . . 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From a Bust by MARIO RAGGI. ■^" 1 . ■'^ *-*^jr* "et M' 1 /^^ 1^* •^'■1^- * P.Y WILFKII) WARD jUTH' H OF 'WILLIAM a?.' THK OXFOttD MOVKMENT ^ ' \ '• ' A nnmn LAN AND CO. 03 /?;: y^JwrtTCfi ■..V *.V •■^[iis***-*; I I I ■^^ N? -.f- -yHtAVl^ W: .^i MARIO WILLIAM GEOEGE WAKD AND THE CATHOLIC BEVIVAL ^ I'M Ml I I ivi 1,1.. n i I I IJ l;V BY WILFRID WARD AUTHOR OP * "WILLIAM GEORGE WARD AND THE OXFORD MOVEMENT i iLonlion MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1893 All rights reserved A ? ^0(0 The accompanying letter, which is given as a specimen of Mr. W. G. Ward's handwriting, was written by him to Father (after- wards Cardinal) Newman, immediately after the acceptance by Mr. Ward of the editorship of the Dublin Review in 1862. It is endorsed, in Cardinal Newman's own handwriting, with an extract from his reply. A portion of the letter is printed in Chapter VII. c/^Ia4v^ ii^AAiM^) ^^00/ l/K^' ^1" ' \yy ' \y v/vy/i f I'H/^ I jy^y\. k)^ c kJ^f . ^ u (J* ^ ^p /H, i/^/^ iAi /^ / (k/d"^ \ i/i Ha / / /c. /^/^ P^ ^ i^iH^ c^4m M//^.^ iL^fi^ [U ^:(U^\,^ jt i^Or^ PREFACE The kind reception accorded to my work William George Ward and the Oxford Movement^ not only as a sketch of an important religious revival, but as a biography, has led me to hope that I shall meet the views of my readers by preserving the same double character in its sequel. But while in the days of the Oxford Movement Mr. Ward lived in the midst of those whom he influenced, and was present on the scene of controversial action — a " Rupert," as the late Lord Blachford described him, in the front of the fray — in later years he guided or urged on, in the retirement of his study, campaigns whose principal battles were often fought out at a distance. Some of his controversies were carried on more acutely in Eome than in England ; and the men who adopted his most characteristic intellectual positions were not Englishmen but Germans. This fact has necessarily caused a greater separation in this work than in the former, between the biographical and the historical parts; but the biographical is not less prominent. The materials at my disposal for this part of the book are in some respects more characteristic in this volume than in its predecessor ; and the personal element not less important in its relation to the work as a whole. I have ventured to hope that the story of my father's polemical friendship with John Stuart Mill, of the painful combination of public opposition with private tenderness and personal reverence in his attitude at a critical time viii PRE FA CE towards John Henry Newman, of the childlike simplicity on both sides in the plain-spoken intercourse between him and Tennyson, of the startling enthusiasms and unconventional freedom which characterised his conversations with Frederick Faber, of his influence — described by such men as Dr. Martineau, Mr. Huxley, and Professor Sidgwick — in the meetings of the old Metaphysical Society, of which he was at one time President, and which numbered among its members some of the most eminent thinkers, statesmen, and men of science of the day, will not be found uninteresting by those who followed with sympathy the story of his relations at Oxford with Arthur Clough and Archbishop Tait, with Dean Stanley and Mr. Jowett. Further, it would be impossible to understand the part played by Mr. Ward in the history of the time without keeping before us throughout the personality and character, to which quite as much as to his writings it was due. On the historical side this book deals, as its title indicates, with one aspect of the great movement which this century has witnessed almost throughout Christendom, on behalf of those Catholic Ideals against which the Reformation of the sixteenth century was in great part a protest. Lord Macaulay expressed, fifty years ago, a hope that some future historian would trace the progress of the Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century. '' No person," he added, " who calmly reflects on what within the last few years has passed in Spain, in Italy, in South America, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, in Prussia, even in France, can doubt that the power of this Church over the hearts and minds of men is now far greater than it was when the Encyclopaedia and the Philosophical Dictionary appeared." The present work makes no pretensions to being a history of the Catholic Revival ; but one part of it may be regarded as a contribution towards a not unimportant chapter in such a history. The share of the Catholic Church in the great transformation of Christendom which we are witnessing — a transformation which was initiated by the French Revolution PREFACE ix and the Napoleonic wars — is a subject which no student of the times can pass over. That share was characterised by two tendencies among Catholics, which have become popularly- known as the Ultramontane and the Liberal.^ The one has been in the direction of organisation and centralisation among Catholics themselves, the other towards the adjustment of their thought and action to the conditions of modern times. The former was associated at its outset with such names as those of Joseph de Maistre and de Bonald in France, and Leopold Stol- berg and Frederic Schlegel in Germany. The latter found its first definite expression in such men as Lacordaire and Mon- talembert. The two tendencies were at first quite compatible with each other. Indeed, the Liberal Catholic movement was in some sense an offshoot of modern Ultramontanism. As time went on, however, each of the two was carried to an extreme. Adaptation to an age of liberalism and progress tended towards disparagement of tradition and authority, and advocates of authority became excessive in their claims. Ultramontanism incurred the charge of narrowness and aggressiveness in such a writer as Louis Veuillot ; and Liberalism, in such men as Dollinger and his followers, stood convicted of disloyalty to the Pope. The acute collision between the two extreme parties in the eventful years preceding the Vatican Council, the comparative disappearance of both since then, and the subsequent renewal, in a more permanent form, of the combination of Ultra- montanism with the endeavour to find a modus vivendi with modem thought and modern political conditions, make un- doubtedly a turning-point in the history of contemporary Christian thought. In the events surrounding this crisis Mr. W. G. Ward took, both directly and indirectly, an active share. He represented in politics and theology the unqualified opposi- 1 I say "popularly" because, as I elsewhere explain, the original and true meaning of the word Ultramontane is not identical with that which it has come to bare. X PREFACE tion to the extremes of Liberal Catholicism against which Pius IX.'s pontificate was a constant protest; and in philosophy his tendency was towards the fusion of Ultramontane loyalty, with a sympathetic assimilation of all that is valuable in con- temporary thought, as the best means of purging it of what is dangerous. The history, then, of this crisis is naturally given in the story of his life ; and the earlier events in the Catholic Eevival which led up to it have been summarised in a separate chapter of my work. The remaining subject dealt with in this book is that of Mr. Ward's treatment of the more fundamental problems of religious belief which have been exercising the minds of Englishmen during the latter half of this century. The effect of his polemic against John Stuart Mill and Dr. Alexander Bain on such critical questions as Freewill, Necessary Truths, the Nature of Conscience, the true analysis of our Powers of Knowledge, is borne witness to in documents cited in this volume, not only by those who shared his views as Dr. Martineau and Mr. Hutton, but by his chief opponents as Mr. Mill, Dr. Bain, and Professor Huxley. Although the statement of some of the problems has somewhat changed since Mr. Ward dealt with them, a considerable portion of his writing is as applicable now as formerly. His main conten- tions and his positions on the chief questions in debate are analysed in the thirteenth chapter of this work. Any true account of the matters dealt with in my book necessarily involves some record of occasional collisions and misunderstandings between men equally zealous for the same cause. Dr. Johnson remarked that the ancient Greeks could argue good-humouredly about religion because they did not believe in it. In England, as in France, the intense devoted- ness of the men who took for a time opposite views as to the policy which was most advantageous for the cause of the religious revival, resulted in strong feeling on either side. The time has come when it is necessary to give some account of PREFACE xi this, if exaggerated or inaccurate rumours are to be arrested, and the story is to be told before those who knew its circum- stances have passed away. So far as France is concerned these matters have already been related from one point of view or another in such works as the life of Dupanloup and the life of Foisset. In England, likewise, old friendships were tried and interrupted by misunderstandings. As Th^ophile Foisset and Louis Yeuillot passed from their early close sym- pathy to being representatives of the opposite lines taken by the Univers and the Correspondaiitj so in England Cardinal Newman and my father were for a time strongly opposed in matters of ecclesiastical policy. While Newman persistently adhered to a via media compatible with moderate liberalism, at a time when exaggerations on both sides represented Liberalism and Ultramontanism as necessarily opposed, Mr. Ward, in his polemic against the anti-Eoman Liberalism of the hour, threw in his lot at one time with the extreme Ultramontanes. In relating what has to be related on this matter I have had the advantage of some assistance from Cardinal Newman himself. In two conversations in the year 1885, at which time I proposed to publish the present volume in company with its predecessor, he allowed me to consult him on the matters dealt with in Chapter YIIL; and I received his per- mission to cite some of his own letters as conveying the most accurate idea of his standpoint in these controversies. A little later he sent me, for publication, some of my father's letters to himself, one of them endorsed with a passage from another of his own letters in reply. I trust that these documents and conversations have enabled me to give an exact account of the matter so far as the facts of the case are concerned. I must add, however, that some of the views incidentally expressed, and the summaries with which I have supplemented the cor- respondence, were never seen by Cardinal Newman, and were in great part written since his death. I have to acknowledge the kindness of many friends who xii PREFACE have assisted me in various ways in my undertaking. Eemini- scences of great interest have been contributed by Cardinal Yaughan, Professor Huxley, Baron Friedrich von Hiigel, Dr. Martineau, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Father Mills, Father Lescher, Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, and Dean Goulbum ; and among those who have read considerable portions of my work in proof, and given me valuable suggestions, I must especially mention Lord Emly, Father Gordon, Superior of the London Oratory, Father Eyder, Superior of the Birmingham Oratory, the Due de Broglie, Mr. Edmund Bishop, Father Butler, and Baron Friedrich von Hugel. In some of these cases the personal share in the events recorded of those whose assistance I gratefully acknowledge has given to their opinion and advice very great weight. To Baron von Hiigel, especially, my work owes very much ; and his contributions to the " Epilogue " are so considerable that it may almost be regarded as a joint production. I must add to my list of obligations the valuable unpublished documents placed at my disposal by the late Cardinal Manning, referring to the proceedings of the Com- mission (of which he was a member) which drew up - the Vatican Definition in 1870. These papers and the passages I have cited from the seventh volume of the Jesuit Collectio Lacensis, published in 1890, — to the great importance of which Dr. Schobel of Oscott first called my attention, — give, I trust, a final answer to the exaggerations so assiduously propagated by Dr. Dollinger ^ as to the scope of the definition and the attitude of those who framed it. My thanks are due also to Mrs. Bishop, the intimate friend of the late Madame Augustus Craven, whose correspond- ence she is preparing for publication, for her permission to use one of Madame Craven's letters ; to Father Neville, for allow- ing me to print an extract from one of Cardinal Newman's letters referring to my father, of which I did not know until ^ See the last chapter of this book. PREFACE xiii after the Cardinal's death ; to Miss Helen Taylor, for her permission to publish selections from Mr. J. S. Mill's letters to my father, as well as for sending me those of my father's own letters which Mr. Mill preserved ; and to other correspondents of my father — Father Kyder, Dr. Bain, M. 0114-Laprune, Mrs. Eichard Ward, the Dowager Lady Simeon, and Lord Emly — for sending me letters of his, many of which are inserted in this volume. MOLESCROPT, Eastbourne, AfHl 1893. Postscriptiim. — Since this Preface was written, and the whole of my work was in type, some very valuable letters from my father to Cardinal Newman have been sent to me by Father !N"eville. I have added the most interesting of these to the letters from Cardinal Newman given in Appendix C. Any reader who is interested in the relations between the two men will find more detailed information in this Appendix than in any other part of the book. INTEODUCTION WiLLiAivi George Ward was born on the 21st of March 1812. He was the eldest son of Mr. William Ward, M.P.,^ the famous cricketer and proprietor of Lord's Cricket Ground; the grandson of Mr. George Ward of Northwood Park, Isle of Wight ; and the great-nephew of the well-known statesman and writer, Robert Plumer-Ward.^ He was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford. Many stories survive at both places of an original boyhood and early youth. " There were seemingly contradictory elements in his character," writes his schoolfellow, the present Lord Selborne, "which made him always good company. He had a pleasure in paradox and a keen sense of the ludicrous." A vein of melancholy seems from the first to have accompanied his keen powers of enjoyment and of amusing his friends ; and even in early boyhood a deep religiousness of sentiment went along with a passion for amusement — notably for the opera and theatre. His likes and dislikes were very intense, and his acquirements at school were, similarly, marked by high excellence in some departments and total neglect of others. He was an excellent mathematician, and is said to have discovered for himself, as a boy, the principle of Logarithms. He took the medal for Latin prose in 1829. On the other hand he professed himself totally unable to understand history ^ For the sake of those who have not read my book William George Ward and the Oxford Movement, I prefix to this volume an " Introduction " containing a brief outline of Mr. Ward's early career. 2 Mr. William Ward represented the City from 1826 to 1835 ; and in 1830, at the Duke of Wellington's request, he assumed the duties of chairman of the Select Committee appointed to report to the House of Commons on the affairs of the East India Company, previous to the opening of the China trade. His achievements at cricket are recorded in Mr. Pyecroft's popular work The Cricket Field. 3 Mr. Robert Ward, the friend of William Pitt, assumed, by royal license, the additional name of Plumer, on his marriage in 1828 to the heiress of the Plumer estates in Hertfordshire, Mrs. Plumer Lewin, a granddaughter of James, seventh Earl of Abercorn, by his marriage (in 1712) to a daughter of Colonel John Plumer. The Political Life and Literary Bernains of Robert Plumer Ward, by the Honourable E. Phipps, was published in 1850 (Murray). h xvi INTRODUCTION or poetry. Some of his verse compositions, — " tasks " as they were called at Winchester, — which he purposely made grotesque or prosaic, are still remembered, for instance the opening of his poem on the Hebrides : — There are some islands in the Northern seas — At least I'm told so — called the Hebrides. And the lines later on in the same poem — These people have but very little wood They therefore can't build ships. They wish they could. A great simplicity of character is also to be noticed in the records of his schooldays, and a singular deficiency in habits of observation. On eating a sole he is reported to have said, '' These are very nice : where do they grow ? " Passing to Oxford in 1830, his chief interest during his undergraduate days at Christ Church was the Union Debating Society, which was then at its zenith. " He developed," writes Dean Church, '' in the Oxford Union and in a wide social circle of the most rising men of the time, including Tait, Cardwell, Lowe, Eoundell Palmer, a very unusual dialectical skill and power of argumentative statement — qualities which seemed to point to the House of Commons." " Ward Tory chief," is his description in an undergraduate poem of those days, on the Union ; but owing to the influence, later on, of his close friend Arthur Stanley, afterwards Dean of Westminster, he became more liberal in his views, and in some sense a disciple of Dr. Arnold. He was elected Fellow of Balliol in 1834. During the Liberal phase of his intellectual life he was strongly opposed to the Tractarian movement, which had begun in 1833, — looking on it as holding up superstitions and myths for admiration rather than that high ethical ideal which it is the highest office of religion to encourage and enforce. " Why should I go and hear such myths % " was his answer to a friend who pressed him to go and hear Newman preach. The peculiar candour, which is spoken of in the accounts of his early days at Oxford, must be referred to as being the key to much of his subsequent career. In his examination for " greats " in the classical schools he refused to get up the necessary historical and collateral work at all ; and the frankness of his confessions of ignorance caused great amusement. After construing the passages set before him admirably, he disappointed the hopes of the examiners by answering all further questions with such exclama- tions as " I really don't know," or " I haven't the faintest idea ! " His influence after his election at Balliol is spoken of as very considerable. " No tutor in Oxford," writes Dean Lake, " seems to me to have had so much intellectual influence over his pupils ; " INTRODUCTION xvii and Mr. T. Mozley says, " Ward's weight in the university was great. . . . He represented the intellectual force, the irrefragable logic, the absolute self-confidence, the headlong impetuosity of the Rugby school. ... As a logician and a philosopher it was hard to deal with him." A sermon of Newman's, which he was persuaded to hear, and the appearance of Froude's Remains in 1838, quite changed his attitude towards Newmanism. He found the ethical ideal which had attracted him in Arnold, and which had been so effective an antidote to a certain sceptical tendency in his discussions on religious philosophy, more fully exhibited in Newman and Froude than in Arnold himself. According to the saying which he so often quoted, '' True guidance in retiu'n to loving obedience is the prime need of man," he came to look on Newman's teaching as affording a higher and truer guidance than Arnold's ; while the Catholic conception of Church authority gave a logical account of that necessity for an external teacher which experience had already made him recognise, and which was in his own case a safeguard against religious doubt. He avowedly joined Newman's party towards the end of 1838 ; defended and strengthened the positions of the famous Tract 90 in two pamphlets of the year 1841 ; and thenceforth pressed the Oxford Movement avowedly in the direction of the Eoman Church. He maintained that the Church of Eome had preserved the reality of Church authority, and that in spite of its corruptions it had retained the true ideal of a Church, which the Church of England had lost. " Her change," he ^Tote to Dr. Pusey in July 1841, "seems to have been objective, ours (which seems a much more radical change) subjective. With all her corruptions, with all the toleration of a low standard in the mass of men ... she has always held up for the veneration of the faithful the highest standards of holiness." Conscience, rather than intellect, he main- tained to be the true guide in such religious inquiry as was at that time engaging the attention of all Oxford. A full intellectual examination of pros and cons, in numerous and complicated theological arguments, was a matter for which human intelligence was far too imperfect, and human life far too short. The result of such an inquiry under present conditions could only be suspense, and the recognition that there was a good deal to be said on every side. But holy men whose lives aj^pealed to the conscience as the embodiment of all that is highest and noblest, were from that very fact safe guides to what is true in religion. And he gradually came to hold that the Catholic Church, as the society in which sanctity had thriven and its true ideal had been preserved, fulfilled in the highest degree that function of true guidance which the ethical greatness of an Arnold or a Newman only partially secured. xviii INTROD UCTION These views he advocated in the British Critic from 1841 to 1843, and elaborated more fully in the Ideal of a Christian Church, published in 1844. Newman had by this time left Oxford and retired to Littlemore. Ward's influence during these critical years, not only as a leader of the Oxford Movement, but on men who were not disciples of the movement, has been borne emphatic testimony to by representatives of very different schools of thought. " Few persons in our time," writes Mr. Jowett, Master of Balliol, " have exerted a greater influ- ence on their contemporaries than he did at Oxford." The present Dean of Westminster speaks of him as " succeeding Dr. Newman as " the "acknowledged leader" of the Tractarians.^ Dean Stanley has written of him that his " unrivalled powers of argument, his trans- parent candour, his uncompromising pursuit of the views he had adopted, and his loyal devotion to Dr. Ne^vman himself," made him "the most important element of the Oxford School at this crisis."^ And the testimonies of Dean Church and Dean Lake are equally emphatic. The Ideal of a Christian Church which the Church Quarterly Review has described as jDroducing a greater immediate sensation than any ecclesiastical book of the century, plainly advocated not only reunion Avith, but ultimate submission to Rome, on the part of the English Church. But it did not advocate it as an immediate programme, but rather exhorted members of both Churches to prepare the way to union by leading devoted lives, and encouraging the highest ideals of sanctity and asceticism. For writing this work Mr. Ward was deprived of his degrees in the memorable meeting of Convocation on the 13th February 1845, which has been perhaps most graphically described by Dean Stanley in his Essay on the " Oxford School." Mr. Ward lived for nearly a year afterwards at E-ose Hill, Oxford, having married Miss Frances Mary AVingfield, daughter of the Rev. John Wingfield, Prebendary of Worcester and Canon of York. He joined the Roman Communion early in September 1845. ^ See Recollections of Arthur Pcnrhyn Stanley, p. 65. - See William George JVarcl and the Oxford Movement^ p. 214. ANALYTICAL CONTENTS CHAPTER I EARLY CATHOLIC LIFE 1845-1851 Ward's conversion — Letter from Lord Shrewsbury — ''Newman cannot lag long behind" — Fresh conversions after the "Gorham" case — Popular fears of "Popery" — The "papal aggression" — The Pope and Cardinal Wiseman burnt in effi.crj — Hopefulness of English Catholics — "The conversion of England " — Ward fails to share in such hopes — His con- viction of the anti-Catholic temper of Englishmen — "Fancy a body of Englishmen who followed obsequiously the Lord Mayor of London as a matter of conscience " — " They think much worse of the Pope than I of the Lord Mayor" Ward's life at Old Hall — Pugin builds him a house close to St. Edmund's CoUege — History of St. Edmund's — Its descent from Twyford School — The refugees of the " Terror " from Douay and St. Omer go to St. Edmund's — Pitt and the Duke of Portland promise pecuniary subsidies — Seclusion of Old Hall in 1846 — Cardinal Newman on the seclusion of English Catholics in his youth — A gens lucifoiga — Bishop Butt on the piety at St. Edmund's — The spirit of Bishop Challoner and Alban Butler — Absence of intellectual interests in the college — Characteristics of the old-fashioned Catholics — Habi- tual suspiciousness of converts — Ward's greeting by Bishop Griffiths — "We have no work for you" — Intellectual dis- appointment only temporary — Frederick Oakeley and Father Whitty at St. Edmund's in 184G .... Ward's extreme poverty — He receives a pupil — Learns astronomy in order to teach it — " I am reading two chapters ahead. Ask nothing that comes later " — Illness and death of Ward's uncle — Prospect of inheriting his Isle of Wight property — P\QE XX ANALYTICAL CONTENTS PAGE AVard finds himself wishing that the end may be speedy — Scruples of conscience — Plain avowals to a priest — " Your spirits fall when he gets worse ? " "On the contrary they rise " — Letter from Newman — " If there is any one who can bear Avealth it is you " — Ward insures his life — His candour at the insurance office — " General health good ? " " Deplorably bad " — Gets average terms for a man over sixty . . 8 1846-1850 intellectually tentative — The three divisions of Ward's Catholic career from 1851 — Previous years preparatory to it — Intercourse with professors and students at St. Edmund's — His influence there — The proposal that he should lecture to the Divines opposed by conservative priests — Correspondence on theology with Newman and Father O'Reilly — On philosophy with John Stuart Mill and Sir William Hamilton — Theological divergence from Newman — Its source to be found in the Meal and the Esmy on Development — Ward's eagerness for new dogmatic definitions — " I should like a new papal Bull every morning with my Times at breakfast " — Newman's less eager attitude — His sense of the labour involved in explaining dogmatic utterances — Letter from Newman on the Encyclical of 1849 — The dogma of the Immaculate Conception . . . . .11 CHAPTER II CORRESPONDENCE WITH JOHN STUART MILL AND SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON Ward reviews Mill's Political Economtj — Points of sympathy revealed in their correspondence — Intellectual comparison between Newman, Mill, and Ward — Reasoning of Mill and Ward abstract and ideal — Mill's ideal State like W^ard's ideal Church — Their ideal conditions never actually fulfilled — Mill's polling booths and Ward's altars untenanted — Ethical sympathy between Ward and Mill — " Le mie cose eran poche ma grande " . . . . .17 Ward introduced to Mill by Frederick Lucas — Surprised at Mill's want of abandon in manner — Discussion on Ward's stringent criticism of Mill in the Tablet — Mill puzzled at Ward's combination of praise and disapproval — " How can you feel moral approbation towards one in whom you find such serious moral faults ? " — Ward's reply — Its development in a subse- quent letter — Habit or temper of mind ma)^ be wrong with- out personal fault — He appeals to Mill to own this — If public opinion deems implacable resentment a duty the indi- vidual may follow suit for a time inculpably — Good-will . may co-exist for a time with a false standard — "Good-will" ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxi PAGE the means of gradually correcting it — The two phenomena recognised in the doctrines of grace and freewill — Their relations to each other a " mystery " — " Excuse this sort of dogmatic way of waiting " . . . . .20 Ward's outspoken criticism of Mill's "population" doctrine — "You will be the first to excuse my apparent rudeness" — " I am prepared to receive imputations quite as strong against Christianity" — Ward goes to Mill as an old Greek to a philosopher — Looks on him as a repository of "facts" — Plies him with questions — " Anxious to have an idea of state of life among lower classes " — Of " amount of suffering and depression of spirits " among them — " I have no power of judging for myself" — "My faculty of observation deplorably inadequate" — Macaulay says "fish" used to be a luxury, and is now regarded by them as insufiicient — Is this so ? — Is Disraeli an accurate observer ? — Does his ^'^^hil give a true idea of the mechanic's mindb ? — " Now for a mathematical question" — "My mathematical powers are very good" — "Wanted, a good commentator on Laplace — Will Pontecoulant do 1 or Mrs. Somerville 1 — Questions about Laplace's theory of the origin of the planets — " I daresay these questions dis- play great ignorance ; my ignorance of astronomy is very profound" — Questions on Logic — Resemblance between scholastic logic and Mill's logic — " Do you concur with Mr. Mill, your father, in his low opinion of Butler ? " — Ward's own " enthusiastic veneration " for Butler . . .23 The letter proceeds to theology — " I am anxious to understand to the bottom your grounds of unbelief" — Will receive your reply " in the strictest confidence " — Ward expresses his own dissatisfaction with current natural theology — "Am almost tempted to turn Atheist " when reading it — Modern language about almost " seK-evidence " of Theism at variance with the great Scholastics — Suarez and Lugo cited — What is your view of St. Paul's character ? — Do not refrain, in answering, from any language however severe against St. Paul — I invoke him as a saint — But say what you think — A proof of Theism from miracles — " Pump-water " changed into " sherry wine " — The wine merchant's certificate — Would not this be an argument for Theism 1 — Should not St. Paul's character and alleged miracles make you suspend a confident judgment against Christianity — If so prudence demands an inquiry and a certain line of conduct — Would you not, by pursuing that line, find the evidence increase? . . • .27 Idea of God not innate, but idea of duty innate — Also ultimate — God's operation under the laws of nature — " I now bring to a close this gigantic and multifarious letter" — "There is hardly any one else in the world to whom I would so write," differing so much — " At all events excuse the liberty I have xxii ANALYTICAL CONTENTS CHAPTER III TEACHING THEOLOGY 1851-1858 PAGE taken" — Correspondence with Mill resumed more continu- ously at a later date — Ward consults Sir William Hamilton on the arguments for Theism — Sir William Hamilton's reply 2 9 Ward accepts the chair of Dogmatic Theology at St. Edmund's — St, Edmund's the St. Sulpice of English Catholics — Ward's consequent influence on the clergy — Pupils who became well known, Cardinal Yaughan, Father Keogh, Monsignor Gilbert, and Father Butler — Relations with the Roman professors, Perrone and Franzelin — With Pius IX.'s intimate friend, Monsignor Talbot . , . . . .33 Opposition to Ward's appointment — His nervousness at his first lecture — " Boring his pupils to death " — One pupil's yawn " not an ordinary yawn " — AYard stipulates for a theological censor — Asks to be called only "Assistant Lecturer" — Overcomes prejudices — Father Mills's account of his influence — His pupils nicknamed " AVardites " — Boycotted by old Catholics — The case taken to Rome — A touch of humour in Pius IX.'s reply — Ward's manner of lecturing — " His bright eye fixed you " — Enthusiasm of his pupils — " Fanatics to be left undisturbed " — Father Lescher's recollections — Ward quotes Butler on conscience — " Had it might as it has right it would rule the world " — His love of the poor — The claims of God — " A forgotten friend in the corner of the room " — Eff"ect of his words like an electric shock — " We believed in Ward and Ward only " — Ward's pupils accused of self-conceit — The professor's reply — " Say rather ?Fa?Y^-conceit " . 34 Ward's position supported by the President and Cardinal Wise- man — Pius IX. makes Ward a Doctor in Philosophy — Cardinal Wiseman's strategy — Ward's method of preparing his lectures — " Like an actor working up his part " — Labo- rious correction of pupils' notes — " Private audiences " . 37 The happiest time of Ward's life — The "priestly ideal" — His chief wish to form the characters of his pupils — The "science of saints" — Father Mills quoted — " A glimpse of the invisible realities " — Theological language in daily life — Rides with his pupils — A stream to cross — The groom's assurance that he can jump it useless — Ward owns to " faith without hope" , . , . .39 ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxiii PAGE Oxford friends puzzled at such "unimportant" work — Ward's sense of its importance — The world in two camps — Armies of Christ and of the spirit of evil — The Catholic Church the advanced guard of the former — Educating its priests the greatest public work — Contempt for English public opinion — "A master at a Roman Catholic college" — Old Hall Chapel more important than Downing Street — A walk with the Vice-President — " Where in all England does the devil look for his most dangerous work % that college " . .40 Two letters to Newman — Account of his work — " That attractive subject, my o\Yn praise" — Birth of his eldest son — Letters of congratulation — Ward's indignation — " A thing any man may do" — Letter from Cardinal Wiseman . . .41 Visits to the Isle of Wight — to London and the opera — " Mornings dogmatic, evenings dramatic " — Friendships with Newman, Mr. de Lisle, Colonel Vaughan — Visits in 1851 to Grace Dieu and to the Oratory — Visit to the Isle of Wight in 1855 — Meets Bradley and Faber — Visit to Sir John Simeon at Swainston — " Stayed up talking strong " . 44 Two intimacies formed at Old Hall, with Cardinals Manning and Vaughan — Manning and Hope Scott visit Old Hall — Vaughan appointed Vice-President of St. Edmund's in 1855 — Cardinal Vaughan's reminiscences — His intention to have Ward dismissed from the Professorship — His first interview with Ward — Avows his intention — Ward's reply — " How in- teresting. So kind of you to be so frank" — Vaughan admires the beech-trees — Ward's astonishment — " Wonderful man ! You know all the minutice of botany" — A cordial parting — Vaughan "most favourably impressed" — Attends Ward's lectures — Becomes " an ardent admirer" — His descrip- tion of the lectures — Ward not like a dry schoolman, like one of the Fathers — " A wonderful sight to see him " — " Torrents of exposition" — He "trembled with emotion" — Strange and memorable sights at the lectures — Ward's contempt for mere intellect — " My great intellect no more admirable than my great leg " — Walks with Ward — He did not need an audience to make him talk — Ward's enthusiasm " raised men's minds above themselves" — Gave " almost a new estimate of life" . 46 Ward's friendship for Vaughan — Their work a reflection of Con- tinental Ultramontanism — Some think the old English piety was not understood by them — Ward's impetuosity — His account of himself " I did God's work in the devil's way " — Warfare with men of the old school — Absence of personal malice — Fighting with a smile — " I feel like a slave dragged at your chariot wheel" — Ward resigns his Professorship — Farewell addresses from his pupils — Ward's reply — His sense of the arduousness of the priestly life — "A career from which I should shrink in craven fear and ignominious xxiv ANALYTICAL CONTENTS PAGK despondency" — His warnings against intellectual excitement — " The heart's deep and tranquil anchorage in God " . 51 Scope of Ward's lectures — His position as a theologian — Testi- mony of Father Butler and Father O'Eeilly — Lectures on Nature and Grace — Natural affections to be directed rightly, not repressed — Opposition to Oriental conception of asceti- cism — Repression should be like pruning, helpful to perfect life — Unrestrained feeling always gluttonous — Feeling if unrestrained is not bound up with character — Restraint and direction give a moral flavour — Anger rightly I directed becomes righteous indignation — Love of influence helps others to be good — Pride becomes Christian highmindedness — The counterpart of Aristotle's Megalopsychia — Love of approbation becomes exclusive — Chooses the saints as censors and approvers — " Despise the world, despise no one, despise being de- spised" — Personal love for our Lord — Love of St. Paul, who never saw Him . . . . . .55 CHAPTER IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 1858-1861 Occasional visits to London — Cardinal Wiseman's receptions — A repartee from Lord Houghton — Friendship with Faber — Faber as Ward's ''director" — Resemblances and contrasts be- tween them — Poet and mathematician — Enthusiasm — Exag- gerations of language — A letter from Faber on Nature and Grace — " A thousand times more interesting than a novel" — Not all are called to be saints — " A regular peg at mystical theology" — Another letter from Faber — The presence of God ....... 61 Dramatic and humorous aspect of their intercourse — Recreation hour at the Oratory — Ward and Faber sit opposite each other capping epigrams — Mediaeval debates — Occupations of angels — Stewart the bookseller in Heaven — " Should bind the book of life" — Some debates intensely serious — Pre- destination and Freewill — Ward and Faber absorbed in the debate — The step from the sublime — A pamphlet falls from Ward's pocket — Not on Freewill — '' Box and Cox, benefit of Mr. Buckstone " — The dramatic wins over the dogmatic . 63 Untruthful Jesuitism — "Deny the facts or defend the principle?" — Faber's conferences on Kindness — Ward attends his sermons against the grain — The old Oratory becomes the King William Street theatre — Ward visits it in its new character — Com- ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxv PAGE parisons between the old and the new — Anglican ideal and Catholic — "Sobriety" mrsus spiritual "inebriation" — Some sharp theological debates — amoris redintegratio — Our love " the highest of truths " ..... 65 Ward's relations with his younger children — A young child intrinsically incomprehensible — He " puts his conduct on a syllogism " — Intimacy with his elder children — The ^'parental heresy" — Dislike of donnishness — Reminiscences of his eldest daughter — God's rights — Ward views their being ignored with horror or amusement — His grandfather's death — His uncle's satisfaction at the element of religion not being "insisted on" — Injury to the "good cause" makes Ward ill — His horror at being thought pious — Eeserve on his own inner life — Personal love of our Lord — '' MacMahon is pious, I wish I were pious " — ^Belief in vocation — The Opera a relief from melancholy — His life providentially ordered — His consideration for servants — His great sensitiveness . 67 His elder relations strong Protestants — His grotesque account of his estrangement from them — " Not on speaking terms " — " The Wards always differ, therefore I best agree with them by differing from them" — Sir Henry Ward — A rencontre with his brother Henry at the theatre — A talk followed by a letter — "Let us meet as strangers, and I remain your affectionate brother, Henry Ward " — Arthur Ward of Cambridge — Ward's accounts of their differences much exaggerated . . . . . .72 Kevival of Oxford friendships — Goulburn, Jowett, Lord Coleridge, and Stanley visit him — Tait asks him to Fulham — Meets Dean Lake there — Tait on his appointment as Bishop — " The surroundings very agreeable " — AVard's candid avowals of shortcomings of English Catholics — " Many of them can't write English" — "A civilised man and a barbarian" — A dinner at Dean Goulbum's — Bishop Wilberforce and Lord Blachford — A Catholic preacher preaches Bourdaloue's Court sermons — A congregation of workmen warned against sumptuous living — " You young voluptuary " — " You butterfly of fashion" — Ward disclaims being a butterfly — Dean Goulbum's reminiscences — A conversation on " invin- cible ignorance" — "Your ignorance, my dear Goulburn, is most invincible " . . . . • .74 Ward's rides for health — His amusement at his own helplessness Lames two horses in three days — " Take me off, take me off " — " Fond of my horses ? you might as well say fond of my pills " — Letter to Stanley — '* Three falls, but none the worse, thank you" — A scholastic volume brought to the riding school — Meets Lord Blachford for the first time after ten years — " Come and see me ride " — Dean Goulbum's description of the riding — Freewill discussed on the way xxvi ANALYTICAL CONTENTS PAGE to the riding school — Strong symptoms of apprehension as they drew near — Six horses, each to trot ten minutes at a time — Ward arms for the fray " like some Homeric hero " — "Two minutes, please, sir" — "Ten minutes, please, sir" — "Now then, Goulburn, I'm quite ready to begin that argu- ment again" . . . . • .78 CHAPTER V THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM Ward finds himself in contact with three movements of thought — substantially identical with those which affected him at Oxford — Ward thinks that they will ultimately become two — Middle ground being cleared — English Church moving towards Catholic ideals — German Protestantism moving towards negation — Great continental Catholic Revival after the Revolution — It represented a true instinct — Catholicism the only permanent constructive principle against revolution- ary anarchy . . . . . .82 A school arose at outset of the revival which seized on this idea — Beginning with F^nelon's Ultramontanism as a basis, they disclosed marked characteristics of their own — De Maistre and Bonald in France, Stolberg and Schlegel in Germany its most prominent originators — Ultramontanism became in their hands the symbol of the principle of unity and effective authority — The strength of prescriptive right destroyed by the Revolution — Constitutions had to be rebuilt — Where to find a basis in the universal quicksand ? — The old symbol remained true — The "Rock of Peter" the only stable foundation — Ultramontanism as the principle of unity among Christians — De Maistre's phrase — " To make the same blood circulate in all the veins of an immense body" — This conception of the new Ultramontanism expressed itself variously — In de Maistre's papal and regal absolutism — In Lamennais's union of papacy and democracy — In the action of the majority in the Vatican Council — It represents the relations between the papacy and modern Europe — Bollinger's testimony to the influence of the pa2:>acy in 1855 . . . . 84 Ward comes in contact with the Catholic movements in 1858 — Liberal Catholicism had begun to put forth its principles — These appeared to him inconsistent with the principles of the original Revival — His aim to restore to the Catholic Revival its essential spirit of Ultramontane loyalty . . .86 The origin of these movements must be described before Ward's share can be understood — Religious reaction after the Revo- ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxvii PAGE lution — Chateaubriand's Atala — Napoleon's Concordat — His attempt to rule the Church through the Pope — His dexter- ous use of Gallicanism after Ultramontanism had failed him — The Restoration — Spread of Voltaire and Rousseau's works — Paucity and poverty of the clergy — Unpopularity of the Church — Disunion among the clergy . . .86 De Maistre writes his celebrated Du Pai:)e — An account of its scope — Practical utility of" the Papal power — Analogy of King to Pope and States-General to Church — Gallicanism based on principles of the Revolution — Papacy essential then to order in the Church — The Church essential to order in the world — His exhortation to princes — Papal authority the support of regal — Deposing power a protection against revolution — Influence of the Du Pa])e on difl'erent schools of thought — On Dollinger, Perrone, Donoso Cortez . . 88 De Bonald the founder of Traditionalism — Traditionalism the philosophical basis of the new Ultramontanism — De Bonald a wonderful link between old and new — Friends of his youth remembered Fenelon — He aims at giving reasons for faith in a sceptical generation — Urges the failures of philosophers in coming to an agreement — This proves insufficiency of individual reason and the analytical method — Seeks the basis of moral knowledge in a primitive revela- tion preserved by the collective reason of mankind — His anticipation of Herbert Spencer's view of society as an organism — Doubt and questioning the road to physical truths — Doubt and questioning do not interfere with those truths — But they destroy moral truths — Like wholesale vivisection — They destroy the function you wish to scrutinise — A man eats before he knows the analysis of digestion — He accepts the testimony of mankind and nature to its necessity — Truths necessary for life of social organism on a similar footing — God imparts to social and individual organism at starting the truths necessary for their life — Belief in God, retribution, good and evil, accepted as the testimony of mankind to the primitive revelation — The Catholic Church accepted, because it gives the truest application of the truths of natural religion — ^Its tradition preserves Christian revelation as human tradition preserves primitive revelation — Analogy between human society and the Church — The individual accepts fundamental convictions of society — Helps to purify it from incidental error — So with the Church — Protestant principle of private judgment attacks a fundamental law of thought — An individual criticising the foundations of the society which has educated him is attacking the foundation of his own thought — Language the criterion of what is true in social convictions . . • • • .92 Ultramontanism and Traditionalism fused and developed by de xxviii ANALYTICAL CONTENTS PAGE Lamennais — He formulates the doctrine of "universal consent " as test of truth — The Pope the mouthpiece of the universal consent — Lamennais had a chief share in the defeat of Gallicanism — Made cardinal in petto by Leo XIL — His in- fluence compared by Lacordaire to that of Bossuet — Lamen- nais's volte-face — Transforms Ultramontanism into a democratic movement — Universal consent becomes the plebiscite — The Revolution of 1830 . . . . .101 The Bourbon attempt to re-establish the ancient State Church of France a failure — Like rouging pale cheeks as a cure for illness — First stage of Liberal Catholic movement — Lamennais, Montalembert, Lacordaire recognised the changed state of society — Advocated freeing the Church from State patronage — Started the Avenir — The idea of uniting the Church to the democracy — " God and liberty " — Free education, free press, free association — Bome as the protector of ecclesiastical liberty — Antecedents of Montalembert and Lacordaire — General opposition to the Avenir — The editors go to Bome — Papal kindness and reserve — Condemnation by the Pope of exaggerations of the Avenir — Fall of Lamennais 103 Second stage of the Liberal Catholic movement — Premature theorising set aside — Endeavour to fashion Catholic life so as to suit the age continued — Protest against Catholic disabilities continued — Gallicanism nearly extinct — Saints' lives suited to the age — Montalembert's St. Elizabeth, Lacordaire's St. Dominic — Society of St. Vincent of Paul an antidote to St. Simonianism — Campaign for "free education" — The imrti Catholique — Early alliance of Montalembert and Louis Veuillot — Montalembert's eloquence — Popularity of the Church — Bevolution of 1848 — Success of clerical candidates for Parliament — Lacordaire elected — "The people's candidate" — Besigns his seat — Louis Napoleon appoints Comte de Falloux Minister of Public Instruction — The Falloux law — Veuillot and the Univers regard its conces- sions to Catholics as insufficient — Breach between Veuillot and Montalembert — Papal Nuncio congratulates Montalembert on his support of the Falloux law — Pius IX.'s personal sympathies to some extent with Louis Veuillot . . 107 Third stage of Liberal Catholic movement — The Gorrespondant its organ — Antithesis between Liberalism and Neo-Ultra- montanism — The Univers the organ of the Neo-Ultramontanes — Two different conceptions of the Catholic revival — Liberal Catholics still aim at enabling Catholics to take their place in the national life — " God and society " — Foisset and Cochin conductors of the Gorrespondant — Friendly to thinkers of all schools — The Univers irreconcilable — Tends to withdraw Catholics from a wicked world — Abb6 Gaume's campaign against the Classics — The Pope prescribes a via media — ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxix PAGE Influence of Lamennais on both parties — Lamennais's tone visible in the Univers — Combalot and Gerbet Ultramontane ex-disciples of Lamennais — Montalembert and Lacordaire Jiberal ex-disciples — Montalembert's early vindication of papal claims — His speech on the Roman question in 1849 — Fighting with the Church like fighting with a woman — The Church "more than a woman, a mother" — Thiers's delight at the speech — " I love the beautiful, and I love Montalembert" . . . . . .112 Contrast between the XJltraraontanism of F^nelon and of Veuillot — Ultramontanism has come to have popularly a new meaning in consequence — Identified with uncompromising and aggressive advocacy of papal claims — Degeneration of Neo-Ultramontanism and Traditionalism — Filiation of their later forms from the earlier illustrated by examples of each — Baron Clemens von Hllgel a disciple of de Bonald — The Abb^ Gaume a representative of later Traditionalism — Papal con- demnation of exaggerated Traditionalism — Traditionalism applied to Church history — Multiplication of legends — Absence at that time of a critical school — The school of Mabillon extinct — Writers like Pere de Smedt and Abbe Duchesne not yet to the front — " Historical lies " of M. Ch. Barth^lemy — Abb6 Darras — Extravagances of the Abb6 Gaume — Indignation of men like Dupanloup and Ozanam — Gaume views the Church and the world as opposite camps — His school views candour with suspicion — A strong man must be narrow — Catholics, secure of truth, have still better reason to be narrow — An infidel not " to be analysed by a sympathetic psychology " — Other Neo-Ultramontanes free from the extravagances of the Univers ;^arty — German Jesuits, Jesuits of Lyons and Givilta Cattolica for example — Harm done by the Univers — "The voice of Lamennais anathe- matising his own friends " . . . .116 Catholic revival in Germany— Stream of conversions early in the century — Stolberg and Schlegel — Overbeck and the Eomantic School — Heine's remarks on the movement — " The aristo- cratic Jesuit monster" — ^' Reinvigorating consumptive German art with asses' milk" — Mohler's Stjmbolism — The Prussian Government and the Archbishops of Cologne and Gnesen and Posen — Analogy between French and German movement — Both invoked Catholic tradition against a destructive philosophy — Bollinger's early Ultramontanism — His later movement not towards Gallicanism but towards Liberalism . . • .124 XXX ANALYTICAL CONTENTS CHAPTER VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 1858-1863 PAGE Ward's Ultramontanism more akin to that of de Maistre and de Bonald than to that of Veuillot and Gaume — Direct influence of de Maistre on "Ward — Yet the main source of their views was different — De ]\Iaistre's sense that the papacy was the one hope for order, derived from a life lived through the anarchy of the Terror — Ward's from the intellectual confusion and anarchy of Anglicanism and destructive criticism — Not the September massacres but the destruction of traditional Christianity — Strauss's Life of Jesus as much a land of waste and dreariness as France pillaged by the Jacobins — Comte's PhilosojjJiie Positive made a solitude in the metaphysics of religion as Strauss in its history — The yearning for the peace of the ancicn regime — The sense that St. Peter's Rock was the only solid foundation — The Revolution with Ward as with Germans concerned the world of thought — Its outcome Atheism rather than regicide — Heine quoted . .130 Ward's sense that the critical movement tended towards entire negation — The ultimate battle between Catholic Theism and Atheism — The Rock of Peter the " inexpugnable fortress " — Catholics should rest secure in their fortress — Ward welcomes each authoritative utterance — Speaks of the Pope as " Ecclesiastically absolute " — Urges " profound intellectual submission " — His pamphlet on the extent of Infallibility circulated by Dupanloup to prevent the Vatican definition — Ward never shared Veuillot's tendency to personal abuse — Veuillot occasionally rose to de Maistre's attitude , 132 W^ard's first connection with the Continental controversies was through the medium of English — English Liberalism from 1841 to 1874 — It represented the spirit of the time — Not only political but scientific and theological — Free trade, free contract, free association, free conscience, free scientific and theological discussion — Carlyle's Latterday Pamphlets laughed at — " Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change " — Mill's essay on " Liberty" — His " Essay on Representative Government" — Darwin's Origin of Species — Essays and Reviews — Free Church and free State . . 13^ Change of ethical convictions in England — The Liberal ideal ethical as well as political — Ward agreed with John Morley as to the fundamental opposition between the Liberal ideal and the Christian ideal — Frederick Schlegel testifies to connection ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxxi PAGE between Continental Liberalism and Revolution — " Re- ligious '' and " ecclesiastical " Liberalism . . .137 A school of English Catholics tended to adopt the Liberal ideal — The Rambler^ called afterwards the Home and Foreign RevieWy their organ — Its great ability — Ward and Wiseman fear its influence — Wiseman asks Oakeley and Ward to accept editorship of the Dublin Review — Newman becomes editor of the Rambler — Ward's delight — He writes to Newman — " I am about as competent to direct a review as to dance on the tight rope " — " Oakeley not much better " — English Catholics unable to appreciate a good Review — Their " deplorable in- tellectual degradation " — Newman accepting Rambler the only chance of a really good Review — " The Dublin must die " — "I shall, with great delight, dance at its funeral" . .139 Newman's contributions to the Rambler — He resigns the editor- ship — It passes into the hands of Sir John Acton and Mr. Richard Simpson — Other collaboi'ateurs Messrs. Wetherell, Oxenham, Monsell, and John O'Hagan — DoUinger's influence on it — It becomes a Quarterly in 1862, and is called the Home and Foreign Review . . . . .142 Tendency of the Review to emancipate political, scientific, and his- torical science from the control both of Catholic traditional teaching and of papal authority — Ward formulates the maxims involved in its method — Authority of Encyclicals and papal instructions disregarded — Questions recently practical in France and Ireland raised in this connection — Ward ad- vocates positive guidance by the Holy See in politics and science — Rambler minimises contrasts between Catholics and men of the world — Ward maximises them — Contrast in ideals of education — The Catholic ideal exclusive — Only one code of ethics true — This should be bound up with the character — The X. Y. Z. controversy . . .145 Ward's pamphlet on the relation of Intellectual Power to perfec- tion — Ward's criticism of Lord Brougham — His analysis of the modern ethical code — Its contrast with that of primitive Christianity . . . . • .149 CHAPTER VII THE "DUBLIN REVIEW " 1863-1865 The Rambler and Home and Foreign censured by the English bishops — Cardinal Wiseman asks Ward to accept the editorship of the Dublin Review — Ward writes to Newman G xxxii ANALYTICAL CONTENTS PAGE that he has " had the impudence " to accept it — " The editor of a Quarterly profoundly ignorant of history, literature, and politics" — Wishes to avoid "cliquiness" — Anxious to make Dublin a rallying-point for men of different views — " Like a man deficient of some sense " in literature proper — Still must edit it in his own way — Otherwise "merely giving opportunity for a miscellaneous scrap-book " — Manning, Da] gairns, Henry Wilberforce frequent contributors 154 Conciliatory programme not destined to be carried out — Con- gresses of Malines and Munich — Montalembert's address at the former — Dollinger's at the latter — Each an influential utterance on the Liberal Catholic side — Account of the two Con2:resses — Montalembert advocates as an ideal ^'Free Church and Free State," and absolute "Liberty of Conscience " — Goes too far for his own friends — Foisset's criticism . 157 Dollinger's address — His disparagement of Scholasticism — His tendency to minimise the province of Church authority — The address admitted of an interpretation in which all agreed — Home and Foreign urged the most extreme interpretation on the Liberal side — A Papal brief vindicates Scholasticism and the authority of Roman congregations — The editor of the Home and Foreign appeals to time to justify his views, and suspends publication . . . . .160 Ward's vindication of Church authority in philosophy — Its neglect leads to infidelity — A psychology inconsistent with the doctrine of grace or a metaphysic inconsistent with Theism would undermine faith — The Church must have power to check the teaching of such systems — His investigation of exact sphere of papal infallibility designed especially to pre- vent excesses of Dollinger's followers — Nothing short of an infallible utterance respected by them — They " regard the Church's rulers as they might regard Balaam's ass" — ■ 'f Organs of a divine utterance at intervals, but otherwise below the ordinary level of humanity " — Account of Ward's position on the extent of infallibility — On the authority of Roman congregations — Those who thought him too exacting vindicated a deference to papal pronouncements very different from that of the Home and Foreign — Ward republishes his essays on the subject in 1866 — Letter of dedication to Arch- bishop Manning . . . . . .164 Opposition aroused by Ward's emphasis and explicitness — New- man and even Manning agreed with him only partially — Ward held that all Liberalism was dangerous, " You may liberalise Catholicism, you cannot Catholicise liberalism" — Ward re- spects Montalembert far more than Dollinger — Argues out the question of liberty of conscience wdth him — His essay never published — It must be analysed as a good specimen of Ward's controversial style . . . .166 ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxxiii PAGE Highest ideal universal prevalence of true religious belief, recog- nised by the State in its legislation — ^The larger the true moral basis on which the body politic is established the nearer this highest ideal is approached — Each loss of a truth by public opinion a step downwards — Law should protect public conscience — As long as public conscience accepts monogamy as undoubtedly right the propagandism of poly- gamy should be penal — If penal measures fail and polygamy becomes an open question in public opinion, penal laws should be repealed — Imaginary speech of the Prime Minister on the occasion — " That good old monogamist George III." — Hereditary advocates of polygamy in a different position to their fathers — Appeal to polygamists to unite with mono- gamists in opposing and punishing still lower moral tenets — Another illustration of the principle of intolerance — A sect preaches the unlawfulness of fighting — The nation goes to war and can't get soldiers — Necessity of checking the sects' propagandism — The leading journal on the crisis — " We are sick of the cuckoo cry that these traitors are sincere " — "So were the Jacobites no doubt sincere " — " Their sincerity did not save them from axe and gallows " — Highest realisa- tion of self-protective intolerance — Universal prevalence of Catholic principles and ethos protected by the State — This was approached but not realised in the civilisation built up from the ruins of the Roman Empire — Contrast between horrors of war and horrors incidental to persecution — Im- mense preponderance of the former — Yet war often under- taken for objects of minor importance . . ,168 Few Catholics dissented from outlines of Ward's opposition to Liberalism — Opposition to the tone and details of his articles — Sources of opposition — One source their paradoxical form — Comparison of intellectual excellence with skill in clock- making — He maintains that the true patriot will very likely desire the "temporal humiliation" of England — Love of his country makes him feel England's national sins — Thinks they will best be cured by her being unsuccessful in war — Another source of opposition explained by himself — His indis- criminate attacks on Liberal Catholics — Comte de Richemont on the different groups to whom this name was given — Loyalty of Montalembert and his friends to Rome — Still if the danger was that Liberal Catholics would drift to- wards extreme left, Ward's clear analysis of the points at issue may have prevented this — Ward and Manning thought that this was the danger — Their campaign took the form of a movement — Rapprochement between the Dublin Review and the Continental Ultramontanes — The Civilta Cattolica and the Jesuits of Lyons — Letter from Manning to Ward . 178 xxxiv ANALYTICAL CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII WARD, NEWMAN, AND LIBERAL CATHOLICISM 1862-1865 PA»';E Proposal in 1864 that Newman should found an Oratory in Oxford — Ward's opposition to the scheme — Ward's views on Catholic education — "The atmosphere of infallibility " — The "Catholic spirit" should be imbibed in youth — This was impossible in the indifferentist atmosphere of Oxford — His oj^position to VviSe infallihilitatis extensione — He places the chief proof that a document is infallible in the Pope's intimation that he is guiding the belief of Catholics — Father Perrone refuses to endorse this view in the form in which Ward at first propounded it — Dupanloup attacks Ward in a letter to his clergy — He urges that no act is infallible not addressed to the whole Church — He vindicates the function of the Church in certain cases in deciding what Pontifical pro- nouncements are infallible . . . . .255 The deliberations of the committee which framed the definition — Cardinal Bilio opposes the formula first approved by the Pope as too stringent — Proposed modifications — The addition of an historical introduction emphasising the scientific means employed by the Pope — Annotation showing that the Pope does not teach without union with the Church — The altera- tions made by the committee lead Bishop Ullathorne to think it unnecessary to make his proposed speech — Text of the historical introduction . . . . .259 Bearing of the deliberations on Mr. Ward's attitude — He claims the sanction of the Council in the matter of opjDortuneness — Nothing ruled inconsistent with his views — Veuillot's extreme statements impressively contradicted by the action of the fathers — Their action told against what some held to be the tendency of Ward's views on the extent of infalli- bility — Fessler, Secretary of the Council, opposes Ward's views on the Syllabus — Ward somewhat qualifies his views later — He refrains to a great extent from writing further on the subject — His chief aim accomplished by the Council — Pius IX. congratulates him in a Brief . . . 263 Letter from Newman to Ward — " Theological differences between us unimportant" — " You are making a Church within a Church " — " I protest against your schismatical spirit " — " Bear with me " — Differences between them of ethos, not of principle — Hume and Reid — Letter from Ward to Monsell — " Do, please, bring me before some Roman tribunal " — " I ANALYTICAL CONTENTS xxxix PAGE would give every possible facility" — The judge should be *'not Dupanloup, but the Pope" — Newman and Ward come to a truer understanding in 1875 — Letter from Ward to Newman — " Gladstone has done good in teaching Catholics to understand each other" — Ward's last statement of his difference from Newman — A letter to Newman on the subject — Peace and unity to be sought only in the deference of all to Rome — Owns to mistakes of judgment — Cause of this " my breach with you " — " Unfit to play first fiddle " — Since breaking with you, " I have felt myself a kind of intellectual orphan" — Cardinal Newman's last reference to Ward in his private correspondence — " The love I ha/2'on views. The anomaly of a convert of quite recent date teaching dogmatic theology, of one 48 TEACHING THEOLOGY chap. who had never gone through a regular course under a trained pro- fessor, of a married man too, being placed in a position of such trust and importance, struck me as a thing to be got rid of as soon as possible. " The day after my arrival I went over to make acquaintance with this singular phenomenon. I found him hard at work in his study. He at once asked me to take a walk in the shrubberies \vith him. " He always Avent straight to the point, and began somewhat in this way : ' Well, what are your views about the college and my relations to it V I answered with equal frankness. I explained that I thought his position a curious anomaly, and that I should like to see his services dispensed with as soon as a good Professor of Theology could be found. Instead of showing the slightest annoyance or resentment, he at once burst out with such exclamations as, ' How very interesting ! Yes. I quite see your point. Most interesting ! Thank you ; thank you. So very kind of you to be so frank.' We talked about many things connected with the college, and Ward had probably taken my measure very completely by the end of our short walk." The Cardinal relates another amusing experience of Mr. Ward's quality, which came before the termination of their walk. " What fine beech trees ! " Father Vaughan remarked, as they turned into an avenue. The reply to this not very pregnant observation startled him. " Wonderful man," ex- claimed Mr. Ward. His visitor waited for an explanation. " What a many-sided man you are," pursued Ward ; " I knew that you were a dogmatic theologian and an ascetic theologian ; and now I find that you are acquainted with all the ininuticG of hot any r The Vice - President was thoroughly puzzled ; and it took him some little time to realise that to his new acquaintance the difference between a beech and an oak was one of those mysterious truths which, although undoubted, nevertheless brought home to him painfully and sadly the limits of his faculties. Cardinal Vaughan proceeds to recount the sequel to this conversation, — his own immediate change of feeling towards Ward, his attendance at the lectures, his conversion from an opponent to a hearty ally, and his impressions and recollections of Ward's influence at the college. " We parted," he writes, "in the most cordial manner. I was most favourably impressed Avith the man. A perfect gentleman in TEACHING THEOLOGY 49 and a real Christian — open, sincere, enthusiastic, generous, and ex- ceedingly able. During the next few Aveeks I used to go over often from the college to talk with him, and we soon became intimate friends. " AYard was fully conscious of his great intellectual power. He had worked his way into the Church by a faithful use of the strong logical faculty God had given him. He was endowed also with a fearless simplicity of mind and heart. Given to him the fact that God had made a revelation to the world, his one overmastering conclusion was that men ought to desire nothing so ardently as to ascertain the truths of that revelation, in order not only to form and feast their intellects upon them, but to make them the rule of con- duct of their lives. Dogmatic theology was, therefore, to him the science of sciences, and they who expound its truths the leaders and saviours of society. He had begun at St. Edmund's by teaching- philosophy ; he had now become Professor of Theology. To him no position in the world was equal to that of one chosen to form the minds and hearts of the teachers who were to be the salt of the earth and the light of the Avorld. " AVith this deep conviction AA^ard consecrated the whole of his powers to the study of theology. He tore the very heart out of Suarez, Vasquez, and de Lugo. All the time that he could give to study was given to theology. His position as a great landlord over broad acres, social influence, political power, Avere all simply contemptible to him as compared with the sphere and privilege of one who was thus closely associated with the interests of Christ in the formation of apostolic men. ' Good Lord,' he would sometimes exclaim, ' what are all those miserable, perishable baubles by the side of these splendid opportunities for promoting the real welfare of mankind and the interests of God ! ' I had little realised, when I blurted out to him during our first walk that I wished him far away, as an untrustworthy, because an untaught, teacher for such a post, how diligent he had been in educating himself upon the great theologians of the Church, and how sensitive he was to the danger which I had apprehended. I began to understand this and the great modesty of the man when I learnt that he had made it a rule, and a sine qitd non for the deliverance of his lectures, that some priest, occupying a responsible position, should always be present to act as a censor to his teaching, and as a security for the students against the possibilities of misdirection. "Not being very much occupied myself, I was exceedingly glad to occupy this post of censor, for I had heard much of the enthusiasm kindled by his lectures, and of the devotedness of the divines to their Professor. I therefore attended his lectures regu- larly. From being neutral and cold I soon became an ardent admirer. E so TEACHING THEOLOGY chap. " Ward lectured three times a week. The divines assembled at the fixed hour in the library. Presently we heard Ward's ponderous tread coming upstairs, then his rapid heavy steps along the corridor. With gown flying he hastened into the room and took his place at the centre of a long table, amidst his students. Down he went in a moment upon his knees for the pre- liminary prayers, and no sooner were they over than he opened his small octavo MS. book, with black leather binding, and plunged at once in medias res. His plan was to prepare and write out in hiero- glyphics, such as he himself was complete master of, his lecture. He followed the regular divisions of theology into treatises, worked up his matter thoroughly, and delivered it at a speed which few could follow comfortably with pen or pencil. What especially de- lighted me was the way in which he handled all the doctrines of the faith, constantly referring to their bearing upon life and conduct, and treating nothing as though it were a mere abstract and unimportant detail. I remembered often wondering in Rome how it was that so little piety and unction were brought into our lectm^es on dogma, and complaining that the most vital and essential doctrines of the faith were treated as dryly and logically as though they were no more than so many mathematical propositions. Well, of course, the reason of this was that they were being drawn out and defined with scientific precision, after the manner of St. Thomas and the school- men ; the theory being that the business of the professor is to deal simply with the intellect, and to furnish the minds of his students with the exact scientific knowledge, which it will be their business to turn to practical account. It was also urged, Anth great force, that four years were all too short for a full course of theology, and that the professors could aim at nothing beyond getting in their matter. Nevertheless, I always regretted this dry and abstract way of procedure. " And now I had come upon Ward. His method was entirely diff'erent. AVith him the heart and aff'ections were roused, by the picture of the doctrines worked out to their logical conclusions by his intellect. It was often a wonderful sight to see him at that table, holding his MS. book in both hands, while there came bubbling up, poiu-ing over, streams, torrents, of exposition, with application to daily life, followed by burning exhortation and reference to the future life and duties of his pupils. Sometimes his voice trembled and he shook all over, and I have seen him burst into tears when he could no longer contain his emotion. There were often strange and memorable sights; for the enthusiasm and emotion of the Pro- fessor were caught up in varying degrees by many of his disciples. Ward's course of theology, with all its intellectual characteristics, was truly a course of tliMogie affective. He was more like St. Augustine or some other of the Fathers teaching and haranguing "I TEACHING THEOLOGY 51 on the doctrines of the faith, than like a mere intellectual schoolman. Ward had the greatest contempt for mere intellect as such. ' My great intellect/ he used to say, ' is no more worthy of admiration or adoration than my great leg. The only thing worthy of respect and admiration is the doing our duty towards our Creator, the making some due return to our God for His unspeakable and infinite love for us.' " Ward did not confine himself to the intellectual pleasure and excitement of lecturing. He made his men work. He collected their transcripts of the notes they had taken, read them over regularly and corrected them. Twice a week he would take one or other of the divines out with him for a couple of hours' walk. A walk with Ward meant as exhausting an intellectual exercise for his companion as any he had gone through during the week. Ward did not need the sympathy of an audience of twenty men to induce him to flow. He only needed that the subject matter should be, in his judgment, important and vital from one point of view or another. He would then take quite as much pains mth a solitary companion as with a score. He would say that the formation of the mind of one priest upon a certain subject that he had in hand was ' of quite unspeak- able importance ' ; and nothing would satisfy him until he had con- vinced his hearer that he was right. Sometimes the companion whom he took out for an intellectual exercise of this kind would be a wag, and would love * to draw AVard,' and then he would come back with little stories of episodes which were characteristic enough of the Master and his simple directness and enthusiasm. ''The result, on the whole, of the intercourse between Ward and the divines was the creation of an enthusiastic appreciation of theology, and more hard study was done under Ward's inspiration and guidance than perhaps had ever been done before. The com- bination of moral and dogmatic teaching which he introduced, and his own intense devotedness to the truths he taught, raised men's minds above themselves, and introduced them into the regions of almost a new estimate of life and of the possibilities which were opening before them." The friendship formed from the day of this first conversa- tion with the new Vice-President was in some respects the closest and most unbroken one of Mr. Ward's life. " From the time when our friendship commenced," Ward wrote publicly to Father Vaughan years later, " you have been associated in every event of my life, public and private. . . . And I hope, I may add without impropriety, that I have found my knowledge of yourself a greater blessing than even your unwearied acts of kindness. I account your friendship as among the highest privileges I 52 TEACHING THEOLOGY chat. possess." Their agreement as to the essentials of priestly training was absolute ; and the work which the new Vice- President and the Dogmatic Lecturer carried on together was part of a general movement in English Catholicism, a reflection from one point of view of Continental Ultramontanism, of which I shall have shortly to speak. Father Faber's influence had much to say to this movement, which had for its object the introduction of a more active and recognised study of the high ascetic models and ascetic writings, and a closer imitation of Eoman practices of devotion. Catholicism in a Protestant country had gradually become, it was thought, dry and undemonstrative, and had lost the warmth and abandon of earlier days and of Catholic Christendom. There are those who, looking back at that time, consider that there was misunderstanding on both sides. While the zeal of the converts was unfairly set down to the interference of busy bodies, they in turn are held to have judged mistakenly. The deep and thorough piety of Ushaw^ and Old Hall, with its peculiarly English character, was not, it is said, understood by those whose ideals were formed abroad, or without personal knowledge of the English Catholic training. That a want of enterprise existed in consequence of years of persecution, that a body which was barely allowed to exist, was not sanguine as to plans for the " conversion of England," is beyond question. But English reticence on the deeper life of the soul, and on the practices connected therewith, was often, in the judg- ment of persons well qualified to speak, misunderstood by the eager reformers. Much of the spirit at which they aimed existed already in abundance, although its manifestations were not comprehended. Still, greater activity and energy, a more hopeful zeal, and a fresh infusion of Roman influence, were needed ; and even the critics of Mr. Ward's zeal for reform allow that he introduced these necessary elements : while it is impossible to read the Archbishop's eloquent tribute to the effect of his lectures, or the other testimonies I have cited, without the sense of a spiritual and intellectual animation among his pupils of a very unusual kind. There were at Old Hall the usual accompaniments of reform; and Mr. Ward's own shortcomings were recognised and exaggerated by himself in later life. He proposed in TEACHING THEOLOGY 53 frequent changes, and men of the old school complained that their good work in the past was condemned wholesale without being really understood. Mr. Ward spoke and acted with his usual promptness, and accused himself afterwards of ex- aggeration in language and impetuosity in action. "I did God's work," he said, "in the devil's way." He spoke, as he felt, strongly, and acted on his words and convictions. If a practice or a rule seemed to him out of harmony with his view, he said so, and did his best to get it changed. If the President disagreed with him, the Cardinal was sometimes appealed to, and was generally on his side. If a professor appeared to be opposing the system he was attempting to promote, he did his best to get him dismissed. But there was no personal malice. On occasion of one such endeavour he failed ; and on meeting the professor in question greeted him cordially, and without any pretence of ignoring his attempt or his failure. " I feel like a slave dragged at your chariot wheel," he remarked.^ But indeed this personal friendliness lasted during the very thick of such warfare as was carried on in 1854, when his own resignation was on the tci'pis. He dined in college once a week, and when Cardinal Wiseman came down to consult on some reform of the constitution, Mr. AVard was asked to meet him at dinner. Much joking and laughing during dinner was consistent with the fact that after dinner, or next morning, the crash of the falling torrent was to succeed to the smoothness and apparent safety of the waters above. The professors wondered for a time, but by degrees they learnt to fight with a smile. Ward resigned his post as lecturer in 1858. The work was beginning to tell on his health ; and, moreover, Father Faber and others considered that, now that his family was growing up, he should endeavour to give more attention to home hfe and to his children's education, and should live in his natural home in the Isle of Wight. These considerations, combined with difficulties, which were never entirely removed, in connection with his influence in the college, determined him finally to 1 For this anecdote and most of this account of the state of things I am indebted to the Reverend Dr. Rymer, who was a professor and at one time A'ice- President of the College. He became President in later years, after the college had ceased to be the ecclesiastical seminary of the diocese. 54 TEACHING THEOLOGY chap. take the step which had often before been contemplated by him. The parting with his pupils he felt most deeply. Two addresses were presented to him on his retirement — one by his former pupils, and one by those still at the college. He was much affected on the occasion, and his own farewell address, a printed copy of which he ]3i^esented to each, gave evidence of the spirit in which he had regarded his work and his sense of its absorbing interest. '' There is no one object which I have kept from first to last so constantly in my mind," he wrote, *'as the ascetical application of theological truth, nor is there any matter on which I should more grieve to be misunderstood. For what purpose has God revealed those great truths which we contemplate in theological studies, whether those which concern Himself directly, or those which relate to His operations in the souls of men ? For what purpose, except that we might spiritually grow on such truths, — that we might be more and more conformed to the likeness of that God, of that crucified Saviom\ whom Theology places before us % The Gospel doctrine, says St. Paul, is the power of God towards salvation to every one that believes ; it is the very lever whereby He raises to all sanctity those who will surrender themselves to its wonder-working influence. . . . Moreover, as the scientific teaching of abstract dogma, Avithout its ascetic correlative, would be, intellectually, a most maimed and imperfect work, so, practically, it must issue in the most terrible evils. I have been complimented from time to time by kind friends as having been of some service to you in forwarding an increased zeal for intellectual activity. Such compliments produce in my mind a strange conflict of feeling. On the one hand, I am ever most deeply grateful for any expression of interest in my work here ; yet, on the other hand, I feel that if the result of my efforts had really been what my kind friends suppose, I should have been simply the minister of untold evil. May God ever protect you from so great a calamity as is here in question. May God ever protect you from an increased zeal for intellectual activity Avhich shall not be accompanied, in at least a corresponding degree, by an increased love of the interior life, by an increased yearning for those only true joys which the Holy Ghost reserves for those who abandon to Him their whole hearts. May God ever protect you from seeking any part of your rest and peace in the empty, delusive, and most unspiritualising pleasures of mere intellectual excitement. "It has been my very deep conviction on the fearfulness of this evil which has goaded me (as I may say) to the prominent intro- duction of ascetical truth. How often have I absolutely forced HI TEACHING THEOLOGY 55 myself to put before you those high lessons of spirituality which are at last the only matters really worth the attention of an immortal being ! How often have I forced myself (I say) to speak of them while suffering most keenly under a sense of bitter self- contempt and self-reproach ! Who am I, and of what kind is my daily life, that I should dare so to speak % And to whom was I speaking % To ecclesiastical students ; to persons who had had the heart to correspond with that high and noble vocation with which God has favoured you, and who are looking forward to a career from which I should shrink in craven fear and ignominious despond- ency. Willingly, most willingly, would I have been silent, were it only for very shame, but that I have been stung with the remembrance of those great principles which I have just been stating. It was impossible for me to be neutral. Had I succeeded in obtaining your deep interest in a purely intellectual view of that great science committed to my charge, I should have been your worst enemy. I should have been preparing the way for the greatest calamity which under ordinary circumstances can hereafter befall you, — I mean the habit of effmo ad externa, of being carried away by the excitement of present work from the heart's deep and tranquil anchorage in God. I should have simply injured, the more seriously in proportion to the degree of my success, that very cause of Almighty God which I was labouring to serve. I would rather engage in the most irksome and menial occupation which could be found by looking through the world, than handle the sacred truths of Theology in so vile and degrading a spirit." The addresses were presented and the answer given in the Divines' Library at St. Edmund's. Those who remember the scene describe it as deeply affecting. There were tears in the eyes of many, while Ward himself was quite overcome. A word must be said as to the nature of some of Mr. Ward's lectures during these years. Of those which dealt with theology proper, any detailed account must be reserved for a work more purely theological than the present. But it may be said briefly that he aimed at returning to the method of the great Scholastics, in the positive exposition of the various branches of dogma, and departed from the controversial method of such writers as Perrone. His position as a theologian pure and simple will be estimated when his treatises are given to the public. Father Butler, who was for some years a pupil of Cardinal Franzelin at the CoUegio Ptomano, writes of Ward, " He was as truly a representative theologian of the Church as 56 TEACHING THEOLOGY chap. Eranzelin himself . . . and in several respects he surpassed Franzelin." " His wide acquaintance with the whole range of Scholastic Theology," writes Father Whitty formerly Provincial of the Jesuits, "made the great Jesuit theologian, Father O'Eeilly, say of him that he had never met his equal for minute and extensive dogmatic reading." The lectures which dealt with philosophy and ethics were amplified and published in 1860 ; and they are perhaps the least technical and most characteristic. Many of them deal with questions afterwards more fully treated in his Essays on Theism. Perhaps one of the most interesting lines of thought, apart from these, is worked out in the series, '' On the Adaptation of our Nature to Virtue." Based in part on Butler's treatment of the subject, most of it is, nevertheless, both in thought and expres- sion, characteristically its author's. It is directed against a false and semi- Oriental conception of asceticism, which has had its devotees in all nations. The general result of his treatment is the picture of a Christian, not necessarily a saint, but still fulfilling the degree of perfection to which he is called, not by a self- repression which dries up all that is spontaneous, interesting, human in the nature, but by concentrating all the affections — or " propensions " as he calls them in theo- logical language — on supernatural objects. " Christian mortification," he writes, " consists on the whole, not in thwarting, in checking, in endeavouring to root out our various propensions, but rather the very contrary . . . in giving tliem fuller and wider scope ; in directing them to those objects which yield them a far higher and deeper satisfaction than any other objects can give." A measure of repression is no doubt the condition ; but, like the work of pruning, it is directed towards the perfect life of the affections, and against their wildness and waste. For fallen nature to gratify feeling without any restraint is to destroy its delicacy. Any inclination, he contends, becomes gluttony by um^eserved indulgence. Eeserve is the condition of the highest emotions and affections. It is direction and moderation which bind them up with the character. Without this they flourish in opposite and incon- sistent directions. Inoperative love of virtue goes with indulgence in vice ; aesthetic appreciation of heroism with a Ill TEACHING THEOLOGY 57 life of inaction preferred in practice : and by degrees, the pursuit of the worse dims the vision of the better, liestraint is required to impart to any inclination a moral flavour, and to give it its due connection with well-ordered action. Anger, restrained and rightly directed, becomes righteous indignation ; love of influence is directed to the one great end — making others better Christians ; pride turns into the sense of the greatness of the Christian vocation to which St. Leo referred in his exhortation, " Eecognise, Christian thy dignity." It leads to that indifference to petty annoyances and trivial aims, that slow-moving and unswerving pursuit of one only aim — annoyance being reserved for what thwarts it, gratifica- tion for what helps it — which, in its pagan manifestation, Aristotle called megalopsycliia or high-mindedness. It is the concentration on the Christian ideal of the sense of worth which the heathen philosopher attributed to an ideal self; the Christian manifestation of the courage born of great aims, which was happily referred to by a French writer in the saying, " Pour un grand coeur tout est petit — pour un petit cceyr tout est grand." Love of approbation must go through a similar process of purification. In the lowest, undirected, unrestrained, un- reserved form, it leads to the constant smart or pleasure at every idle word from every foolish person. Under the guidance of Christian self-restraint it chooses its censors and its approvers. Professor Jebb has said of Erasmus that he was utterly indifferent to the opinion of the multitude, and devoted all his attention to that of the cultivated few. So, too, Aristotle's magnanimous man used irony with the crowd, and cared nothing for their opinion. The Christian's love of approbation, as described in these lectures, treats the world as Erasmus or the pagan treated the uneducated. His " con- versation is in heaven," and his love of approbation is concerned only with the approbation of those who vaUie things at their true worth — of God and the saints. It has all the indifterence, though none of the self-approving contempt, of the other. It realises the saying of St. Philip Neri, " despise the world, despise no one, despise being despised." The Christian must be exclusive ; but his exclusiveness is strictly conditioned by the moral unworthiness of what is excluded, 58 TEACHING THEOLOGY CHAP. and his attitude is not that of looking down on what is lesser than himself, but of looking up to what is so much greater and more worthy than himself, that the lesser is forgotten and uncared for. Perhaps Mr. Ward's treatment of the " Propension " of " personal love " is as characteristic as any ; and some extracts may be made from it. He points out how prominent a fad in the ISTew Testament is the intense Personal love for our Lord of those who were with Him, and asks. Can it be maintained that there has not been a similar feeling evident in the words and lives of those who did not see Him in the flesh, as St. Paul ? — "No one, I suppose," he writes, "who believes in any sense the Xew Testament facts, ever doubted that St. John, e.g. ' who lay on Jesus' breast,' had a real personal love for Him ; or St. Peter, who Avept bitterly when He turned to look on him ; or St. Mary Magdalen, Avhen she was unable to apprehend any other thought, except the one pervasive and absorbing impression, ' They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.' Now no one will dream of maintaining that Personal Love, once formed, is lost, merely because its object departs from this visible scene ; and it follows, therefore, that all those pious men who mixed familiarly with our Lord during His earthly ministry retained for Him a life-long Personal Love. But those who believe in the Incarnation hold necessarily that Personal Love for Jesus is Personal Love for the Incarnate God ; in their judgment, therefore, all these favoured disciples had a life-long Personal Love for the Incarnate God. "Now, I ask, can there be an hypothesis more absolutely incredible than that this was purely an eoxe^ptional case ? that those indeed who lived with our Lord in the flesh retained for Him a Personal Love, but that no other Christians could ever have the power of sharing their blessedness ? that the humblest of the seventy could enjoy this high privilege, but that St. Paul had not even the physical possibility of arriving at it ? yet this must be maintained by those who say that a real Personal Love for Him is now impossible." As far as St. Paul himself is concerned, we have his own words, full of burning love : — " What can St. Paul mean," he continues, " in such passages as the following, except that his love for Christ was similar to our love for a human object ? similar, though of course immeasurably in TEACHING THEOLOGY 59 higher and more pervasive. ' Mihi vivere, Christus est, et mori lucrum' (Philip, i. 21). ^ Desiderium habens dissolvi et esse cum Christo' (Ibid. i. 23). ' Quis ergo nos separahit a cJiaritate Christi? tribulatio *? an angustia 1 an fames ? an nuditas ? an periculum ? an persecutio ? an gladius ? ... Sed in his omnibus superamus propter Eum Qui dilexit nos. Certus sum enim, quia neque mors, neque vita, neque angeli, neque principatus, neque virtutes, neque instantia, neque futura, neque fortitudo, neque altitudo, neque profundum, neque creatura alia, poterit nos separare k charitate Dei, quae est in Christo Jesu Domino nostro.' J J3 Still, people will ask, How can it be ? How can there be personal love without personal knowledge ? Here the fact is, as Mr. Ward maintains, stronger than any theory against it. Still, an explanation is in a measure possible. The combination of the singularly vivid picture in the Gospels, which gives us the fullest knowledge of the kind supplied in a biography, with the absolute belief in the presence of the Object thus known, and in our power of communion with it, suffices. And this is made, in both respects, far more actual and practical by the Catholic system of meditation. He begins by stating the objection to the possibility of personal love of an invisible Christ, and then answers it : — " True," they might have said, " many of our Propensions may be abundantly satisfied by invisible objects : our Love of Approbation may be so satisfied ; or our Compassion ; or our General Love of mankind. But Personal Love is essentially different ; Personal Love requires personal knowledge." To this our reply is now obvious. No doubt, in human friendships, personal knowledge supplies the firmest and surest basis for tenderness of personal affection : yet even in them it is far from indispensable. That I may take instances which Protestants will admit, consider such a personal knowledge as we obtain e.g. of Johnson from Boswell's hfe, or of Dr. Arnold from Mr. Stanley's. What student is there of these biographies who is not conscious of personal regard, and that indeed in no incon- siderable degree, towards the remarkable men there commemorated? But supposing we had reason to know that Johnson and Arnold appreciate us as we appreciate them,— that they know our various thoughts and sympathise in our various troubles, — what then would be wanting to a very complete personal friendship 1 The application is apparent. And I may refer in this connection to the comparison, drawn out at length in [an earlier part of this work] 6o TEACHING THEOLOGY chap, iii between Personal Love to our blessed Savioiu* and Personal Love to any human object whatever. You will object that at least, in order to cultivate such Personal Love, we must give great and constant effort to the task of realising the invisible world. "Since we cannot actually see and hold palpable converse with our Blessed Lord, it will be the more requisite to supply the deficiency by specially fixing our thoughts on His various words and actions, the study of which brings home to our feelings ajid imagination His personal character." The whole practice of the Catholic Church is in full accordance with this statement. Meditation is recognised as a most important, integral part of the Christian life, and the great majority of meditation-books occupy far the gi^eater part of the year in a study of the various Mysteries relating to our Lord. The truth alleged is indeed most undoubted. Let any one consider the terrible hold which the world has on our affections, (1) from the very fact that it is so importunately visible, and (2) from the tendency of our corrupt nature towards all those things which are antagonistic to God, — and what will be his certain inference ? this, that unless we direct special and sustained efforts to this very purpose — the purpose of realising the invisible, of making ourselves practically and influentially conversant with the things of faith, — the things of sight, this dazzling and delusive world, Avill infallibly draw us into its vortex.^ ^ See Nature and Grare, pp. 341-346. CHAPTEE lY OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 1858-1861 Mr. Ward's life during term-time at Old Hall had few dis- tractions. An occasional visit to London, which meant a great many operas, a few dinner parties, attendance at Cardinal Wiseman's Tuesday receptions,^ and many talks with Father Faber, formed the extent of his dissipations. The friendship with F. W. Faber was at its height during these years. They had known each other at Oxford since 1833, but had not been very intimate there. They now drew together, in the thorough and enthusiastic line which they adopted in matters of CathoHc devotion ; and Faber was Ward's " spiritual director " from 1853 to the end of his life. Faber threw all the gifts of high imagination and musical utterance, which had made Wordsworth recognise him early as one who should be a great poet, into the service of the Catholic Church ; giving up all effort on the lines which lead to literary fame. Mr. Ward always held that the events of 1845 transformed him ; and that a nature which had seemed in early years to have something of the dilettante in it, revealed at last quite unexpected depths. Few had looked in the Oxford Faber for the almost unique influence as a spiritual guide at the London Oratory, which is still in the memory of many. Contrasted as the two men were in some ways, one gifted with high poetical imagination and the other before all things logical, 1 It was at one of these receptions, directly after the second reading of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, that Ward met Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, and said to him abruptly, "How d'ye do? I hear you voted for Lord John's bill. "— " Voted for Lord John's bill ? " stammered Milnes. " Only, " he explained apologetically, "for the second reading of it." 62 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. and even mathematical, in his cast of mind, there was a strong common element in that realisation of the whole realm of the world beyond the veil, which lively faith gives to many who are not poets. The present writer has before him the picture of their intercourse in his early youth, the eager and rapid conversation, the impression that the two men were on fire with the importance of the views and plans which they discussed, the tremendous exaggerations of language — fully conscious perhaps on the side of the Oratorian, while with Ward they were partly due to the vision of logical consequences which made bad lead at once to worst and good to best ; Faber's glowing and handsome face, and Ward, whose habitual expression was recently described by Mr. Mozley as " of one who is over- flowing with some grand idea or fount of ideas." Two letters from Father Faber, written when Ward was preparing the lectures on Nature and Grace for publication, give an idea of their more serious intercourse, and of the free and unconventional style of expression which was natural to both : — Aedencaple Castle, Helensburgh, N.B. Ibtli June 1858. My dear Ward — I have just read through your De Natura et Ch^atia Introductory with huge delight, and, if I were not afraid of reminding you of Dr. Griffiths, I should say, with the greatest edification. I long to see the corpus of which the sketch is so splendid and a thousand times more interesting than a novel. I have never seen the question of advertence treated more lucidly or with more unction anywhere. ... I am very glad you have in two places spoken as you have of the saints. I have never yet been disquieted by any freedom of opinion in our congregation, . . . but I have been more nearly driven to disturbance with Father Keogh's view that all have grace to be technically saints, and that it is only our own wills which hinder us from being downright St. Philips, than ever before. He taught it to the novices in lecture, and I forbade it. I know of no authority for it in ascetic theology, and I think it fatal to the pursuit of perfection. I believe the note on the fourfold division of Christians in the Creator and the Creature to be the true view. What you have said of the specialty of saints and the not aiming above a definite vocation, which by the aid of direction we are first and foremost to ascertain, is simply the voice of all the best writers on ascetics. I am having a regular peg at mystical theology, and reading IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 63 Siuri's De, Novissimis for relief. Best love to Mrs. Ward. I hope dear Mary will like my " Tales of the Angels," which I suppose are out by this time. — Ever most affectionately, F. W. F. WORK AWAY AT THE BOOK. Ardexcaple Castle, Helensburgh, N.B. 7th Juhj 1858. My dear Ward — I do most fully agree with you that the first step in leading an interior life is the attempt to live aixlinarily in the virtual remembrance of God. If we look into spiritual writers I think you will find a majority of them put the practice of the presence of God forward as the first step ; and this is, when analysed, really the same as living in the virtual remembrance of Him. Guillor6 puts recollection ; yet this also is the same idea. It means, in his sense, attention to God Avithin us. Do you not think that you may have been misunderstood ? . . . What was asked of me apropos of what you had said was whether it was the first thing a director should take pains to do, viz., to make his penitent do everything with some actual intention. I said it seemed to me not safe as a universal rule, (1) because the actuality aimed at would often destroy liberty of spirit in the earlier stages of the spiritual life, and so had better not be enjoined ah extra on the penitent as possibly leading to scruples ; (2) because often it is necessary not to let a man newly converted to God introspect too much. But as to the penitent himself and the virtual intention, I most cordially agree with you. What is an interior life but a life attending to God within us ? Your doctrine is the best preservative ao-ainst what I have called the " self -improvement system " of spirituality which is what makes mean little dwarfs of us all. . . . Jack Morris brought some wonderful reports of rum doctrines back from Eome, which Ave \vill discuss when we meet. I don't know when I shall leave here, but I expect to be at Arundel about the Assumption, and would come to you from there. But I will let you know beforehand, so as to see if it suits you. Best love to J\lrs. Ward and the children. If Father Yaughan is with you, my affectionate regards to him. — Ever, my dear Ward, most affectionately, F. W. Faber. Ask Mary to write me a little criticism herself when she has read "Ethel's Book." The intercourse between Ward and Faber had also its more dramatic and even its humorous side. Both of them delighted in the imaginative picturing of the supernatural world with the simple directness of the ages of faith, and in startling contrast to the vague atmosphere of modern thought 64 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. on matters of dogma. The Oratorian fathers who remember that time recall Ward's presence during the recreation hour after dinner, when the two men, eager talkers alike, both ''of mighty presence," with immense vocabularies, with equal positiveness of logic and superlativeness of rhetoric, sat opposite each other capping epigrams and anecdotes, while the other fathers were gathered round in a ring. Their discussions recalled at times the most speculative debates of mediaeval scholastics. Theological definitions or phrases were taken up and treated as musical themes sometimes are, as subjects on which to play fantastic variations. The style is well remembered, and some of the actual points debated. One point of debate — parallel to the medieval questions as to the habitual occu- pations of the angels — was the nature of our future employments in the next world. Of what kind is the daily life in heaven ? '■' Take Stewart for example," asks Ward referring to the well- known and kind-hearted theological bookseller, " what can he find to do there ? " Various suggestions are made. '' Bind the Book of Life," Ward proposes. " But that won't last for ever ! " Faber replies. " He and St. Jerome will talk without ceasiim." — " Ah, but he will never be happy without work." Other plans are suggested till Faber hits on the best. " I have it — he should catalogue the angels." The debates were sometimes intensely serious, and rose to such heights as the metaphysical conceptions involved in Theism as explained in the Athanasian sense, or the various analyses of the Catholic doctrine on Grace. But the inevitable step would come at times, with two such men, from the sublime to the not-sublime. On one occasion a discussion is in full course, on Grace and Predestination, Faber favouring the stringent Thomistic view, Ward the less rigorous opinion advocated by St. Alfonso Liguori. Definitions, citations from the great scholastics, are quoted with the exact memory and knowledge of men whose lives are absorbed in the study of such authorities. Ward, with the intensity of expression which his friends remember on such occasions, noticing nothing around him, is proving his view, throwing his arguments into syllo- gisms, illustrating them by sayings of the Saints. As he sways from side to side, all unnoticed by him a pamphlet falls from his pocket. One of the fathers picks it up, intending to restore IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 65 it to him when the heat of the contest shall give breathing time. In the meantime he mechanically opens it at the first page, thinking, perhaps, to see the title " De Actibiis Humanis," or " On Grace and Free Will," But it is not so. " Benefit of Mr. Buckstone. The celebrated comedian will appear in his original character of Box in Box and Cox, the part of Cox being undertaken by Mr. Compton," are the words which meet his eye. The argument on Predestination is still going on, but the audience becomes less attentive. The playbill circu- lates and finds its way gradually back to its owner, and the general laughter, which by this time has become audible, is explained to him. Neither Thomism nor Alphonsism can sur- vive it. Ward drops the discussion and joins in the laughter. The dramatic element wins the day over the dogmatic. Solvuntur tahdae risu. There was often a humorous arridre pens^e to the concep- tion of the English Protestant world as to the untruthful Jesuitism to which the two converts had surrendered, and sentences were so turned as to shock its imaginary representa- tive, and confirm his worst fears. A controversial point once arose about some priest's action, in which the facts had been misrepresented in the newspapers, but nevertheless the general course pursued had gone on a recognised and defensible Catholic principle. Ward was to write to the papers in his defence. He discussed with Paber the line which he should take in his letter. Both grounds seemed strong. But the Protestant would have read truly Jesuitical unscrupulousness into the question he called upstairs to Paber as he was leaving: " Which shall I do then, Paber ; deny the facts or defend the principle ? " Not even all Ward's admiration for Paber could over- come his distaste for sermons, eloquent preacher though the great Oratorian was. He looked rather to their conversations and correspondence for spiritual guidance. He did, however, occasionally attend his sermons somewhat against the grain, and I gather from a letter of Pather Paber's that his spiritual conferences containing the beautiful treatises on "Kindness," were due to discussions with Ward. The old King William Street Oratory, of which Paber was superior, was ultimately turned into a theatre, and the F 66 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. Oratorians migrated to Brompton. Ward in the course of his visits to the theatres found his way to the old Oratory. " Last night," he remarked to Faber, " I went to see an excellent piece at the King William Street Theatre. Between the acts two thoughts came into my head. The first was, Last time I was in this building I heard Faber preach. The second was, How much more I am enjoying myself to-night than I did the last time I was here." Faber's great breadth of sympathy and his reaction from the old conventional moderation of Puseyism, with its readiness to take scandal, were points of contact with Ward. " Keble used to say," Ward remarked, " that the chief characteristic of the English Church is sobriety ; the Catholic Church on the con- trary tells you to be ' inebriated ' with the love of God " ; and certainly nothing could be less like Keble's ideal than the religious discussions of Ward and Faber. They seldom met without some electric shock occurring in the course of conversation. " Shall I go into retreat ? " Ward asked one day when he felt that the absorbing interest of his intellectual work needed some counteracting spiritual influence. " A retreat ! " exclamied Faber. " It would be enough to send you to Hell. Go to the play as often as you can, but don't dream of a retreat." Faber and Ward carried their enthusiasm for scholasticism to the suitable length of having some rather sharp theological debates of a scientific character. One, on the " Conditions requisite for attrition," a subject which Ward was dealing with in the St. Edmund's lectures, filled many long letters ; and this did at one time lead to a touch of acrimony in their correspondence, which, however, only brought out more strongly in the end, as such differences are wont to do, the affection and value which each had for the other. " Kow, Charissime," Faber wrote, " let us bury the incipient irri- tability which is beginnmg to appear. Depend upon it no two men in England agree as we do. If you will be open and full with me I will be so with you, and act with you in all I can. But I will not argue this matter for fear now of harming our love, which is the highest of truths. Ever most affectionately and loyally, F. W. F." During the years of Mr. Ward's Old Hall Professorship IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 67 two daughters and three sons were born. Considering his strong family affection in later years, and the absolute trust and confidence which his children had in him, it is a curious fact that he professed not to take the slightest interest in them when they were small, and he certainly hardly ever saw them. He lived all day in his study, and while his elder children — notably his eldest daughter — went to him for long talks, and often accompanied him when he left home, he scarcely ever saw those with whom he could not converse. He applied to them what Dean Goulburn has explamed as a theory of his Oxford days, that he could have no merely instinctive affection for them, though he enjoyed then* society when they had become reasonable beings. Like Cardinal Newman, he " put his conduct on a syllogism," " I can have no affection for persons with whose character I am unacquainted," he used to say ; " I know nothing of the character of my younger childen ; ergo, I can have no affection for them." ^ In fact he tended to look on a young child as a being intrinsically incomprehensible to him. His children looked on him with great awe and reverence, but with something of a feelmg of mystery. Some of them had an idea that he was a priest. He is reported to have said, " I am always informed when they are born, but know nothing more of them." Occasionally, however, he came into the schooboom in the midst of his work and made some puns or jokes, which were much enjoyed, although a certain feehng of fear always remained. He was also sum- moned from time to time to administer rebukes ; on which occasions he got up his brief, and went through the process of reproof with great seriousness, which was in early days very impressive, though later, I think, we used to feel that his mind was occupied in reality with other things. With his elder children, and with each of us as we came to be "reasonable beings/' his relations were extremely intimate, and on a footing of almost absolute equality, except for occasional serious and separate talks on questions in which he thought reprimand or advice a duty (the former always most unwelcome to him). He disliked the donnishness and 1 ''You know," he whites in a letter, " I have no afifection for my children as such,'' 68 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. expectation of subservience in expression and opinion from which he had suffered at the hands of his own parents, and used to term it the " parental heresy." Some of us eventually differed considerably in opinion from him, but it was from him that we learnt to think independently. The sense of his own never-failing earnestness and consistency of purpose was, in such cases, a more permanent lesson than some of the opinions themselves, which, though at first naturally adopted by us, were never forced on us, however vehemently maintained as true in the abstract. I select from the reminiscences of his eldest daughter Mary — now for close upon thirty years a nun — passages which serve to show his relations at that time with those of his children who were his companions : — " I suppose the first thing that strikes us all in thinking of our dear father," she writes, "is the fact that he was utterly unlike any one else. He was always very free from human respect, and sometimes took a kind of mischievous pleasure in shocking people by bringing out some of his most original feelings and opinions. But the two most striking features of his character, as I remember him, were first, simplicity ; secondly, humihty. His simplicity was something so unhke what is generally met with, that I should think it must have taken those Avho first made his acquaintance some time to understand it. It consisted chiefly in the fact that he always seemed to live in the presence of God, and that His glory was a thing he desired Avith so much passion that the longing for it seemed to swallow up smaller interests. It is most curious how from his earliest childhood the sense of God's rights seems to have taken possession of him Avithout any extraneous teaching on the subject. He told me that he could not remember any time of his life when he had not a sincere wish to please God. He would tell stories of things he had heard said in which God's rights had been passed over or disalloAved, sometimes in a tone of horror, and sometimes as if intensely tickled at the absurdity of them. I suppose you knoAv one which he Avas fond of repeating, viz., his uncle George's accoimt of his grandfather's (om^ great-grandfather's) death. ' The element of religion was not absent, but it Avas not insisted upon ; he did not think too much about it.' ' Conceive/ said papa, ' a man just going to appear before his Creator to be judged who does not think too much about Him.' I need hardly enlarge on what you must knoAv so Avell. God's rights and God's interests were the only things Avhich aroused his deepest feelings. I remember hoAv, in his early difficulties at St. Edmund's, when he thought that a IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 69 state of things was arising which would seriously injure the priestly spirit of the students, he could not sleep, and would spend the nights chiefly in walking up and down his room ; and the illness in which for hours together he lost the use of his limbs was brought on by difficulties in connection with his efforts to counteract this danger. In some respects his feelings might be considered as per- sonal in a case in which he himself was so much concerned, but when his connection mth St. Edmund's had ceased, and we returned to Old Hall from North wood, he was far more distressed at anything which he considered to be doing harm than he had been before. He had no longer a share in the management of the college, and felt his powerlessness to interfere. Two able professors were at one time introducing a strong and exclusive classical taste. A. B. told papa that youths who before had been giving their spare moments to the study of the New Testament were now giving them to classics. Only those who know papa as we do can tell the anguish that such news would give him. He was quite ill, and we had to leave Old Hall for a time. I forbear to enlarge further on this sort of passionate devotion because you must have seen so much of it. " One curious peculiarity was his horror of being thought pious, and yet the way in which pious thoughts or words would come out spontaneously even in trivial matters. I remember mama gi\dng him back a key belonging to a little garden-gate at the back of his study, which enabled him to get to the college without going round. He said so fervently, ' Thank God,' that she asked him what elicited such a warm aspiration. He said it went against his mathematical instincts to walk first to the left and then all the way back again to the right, as he had to do without this key. The name of God was ahvays on his lips, but if I asked him what his particular devotions were he would probably answer, ' Gye and the Italian Opera.' One day I put that very question to him, though I knew as well as possible that the Sacred Heart and our Lord's Eesurrection were the two mysteries he most loved ; only I wanted to get him to talk about them. He answered by asking me a question. 'Are you often sublimely wrapt in ecstasy unconscious of all sublunary things T — 'No.' — 'Is it not rather absurd for me to ask you? 'he said. 'Well, it is just the same for you to ask me such questions. Those things are quite out of my line.' " It would be out of place in speaking of one who so much hated the ostentation of piety to dwell at great length on his spiritual life ; but the impression on this subject of the few that knew him intimately must be recorded. It was naturally at variance with that of those who knew him only under 70 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. the conditions of reserve which in connection with his inner history was remarkable in so outspoken a man. "His tender love for our Lord personally," continues his daughter, "deserves to be dwelt on, though it may be that you could not bring it out much in a book meant for general readers. When I was very young he took pains to explain to me all about the union of two natures in our Lord, and told me how every sin I committed had given pain to the Sacred Heart because our Lord had foreseen it. He loved to dwell on the emotions of our Lord's human soul ; and when I told him that the nuns I was going to at Stone each chose a motto for their ring, he said the motto of his choice would be Anima Christi sanctifica me. He had a very simple, familiar way of going to our Lord, and said to me one night as I was leaving him to go to Benediction, ' Give my love to the Blessed Sacrament.' Yet he had a horror of anything like taking liberties with God or the Sacraments, especially if people's lives were not altogether consistent with it. He did not like too frequent communion, except in those who were leading very holy mortified lives, and was very particular not to go himself if not well enough to prepare properly. Yet he would hardly venture to give an opinion on such matters as being quite above him ; but you could see which way his bias tended. If he thought any one was pious, he looked up to them with a humility that was almost amusing. An Irish man-servant of ours was in many Arays tire- some and not very bright, but Avas considered pious, and I remember the tone in which papa said, * MacMahon is pious ; I wish I was pious.' Shortly before I went to Stone I had been ill, and complained that I had not been able to go to Holy Communion for some time. He began telling me it Avas a good plan to make a spiritual communion with a careful preparation, but interrupted himself by saying that to be sure he was teaching his grandmother. Indeed the sort of reverence he showed one as soon as one's vocation had become a decided thing, would have been bad for one if it had not been so touching that it was rather an example of humility than a temptation to conceit. Still he liked the genuine article in point of piety, and never had any faith in sanctity if accompanied by any appearance of self- consciousness or conceit. In connection with his love for reality in piety, I may mention one little incident which also shows how little he understood children. He had a great idea that of course study was the one duty of a child's state of life, and that prayer should be directed to help one to perform one's duties ; and when Ave Avere talking one day at dinner of Edmund's great love for going to the college chapel, and of his idleness at his lessons (he Avas about eight years old or nine), papa said, as if mystified, that he could not understand it. ' AYhat IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 71 does he go to chapel for 1 ' he asked. When I was very young he taught me the value of ordinary actions offered up to God, and especially of little mortifications ; and I rememl)er once, when it came on to rain just as I was going out riding, he said he was sorry for my disappointment, but he had no doubt I had taken the opportunity of laying up merit. " He had a great belief in vocation, and always kept in mind that God did not ask the same things of different people. Papa once tried to make a retreat which was quite a failure ; but I think his nature and disposition to melancholy and overstrain from the vehement workings of his mind and soul were the real explanation of this incapacity of tension more than lowness of vocation ; and so also with his need for amusement which may be accounted for in the same way. And much as he used to laugh and joke about his longing for the play, I am quite certain that it was a most real humiliation to him, though he was too humble to feel great pain at it. He told me one day that the OjDera, a few nights before, had done him so much good, and he had poured out so many ' acts of love of God ' between the acts. Another time he said : ' When I look at the beautifid mise-en-schne in the Italian Opera, and listen to Mozart's music, I think that God cannot be only a God of terror and of vengeance when He allows us to see and hear such beautiful things.' " This leads me to speak of the decidedly melancholy tiurn of his character. I remember when we were in the Isle of Wight about 1858-60 it showed itself even more than usual, because of the depressing nature of the Cowes air. One day I said that I always received rather more advice than I cared for from a certain priest in confession ; he replied, ' He never speaks to me, except that the other day when I accused myself of my usual sin of utter want of confidence in God, he asked me if it had amounted to despair of my salvation, and I said it had not.' Yet he was very conscious that God's providence had watched over him, and said that he had had enough experience of it in the way in which the circumstances of his life had fitted into one another, leading to a definite result, to furnish an argument in favour of theism. " One more point deserves mention — his great consideration for servants. The only severe reproof I ever remember to have had from him was for imperiousness of manner towards them. I remember crying very much when he spoke, and he told me quietly that he was not angry with me for crying, but he should go on all the same with what he had to say. A patient at (our hospital at) Stoke-on-Trent, who had been a servant, told me that she had heard from a man who had lived Avith us of his great kind- ness, and of how he had always insisted on the servants having a strong cup of coffee after dinner on fast days. 72 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. " Of his tender affectionateness and delicate sympathy and con- sideration I need not speak. No one could have been more responsive or more intensely sensitive to any want of response on the part of others. If he did not feel deaths he was keenly alive to the least want of affection, and so amusingly or rather touch- ingly grateful for one's love, as though he had no claim upon it and was so surprised at getting it. There must have been a veritable depth of wounded feelings in his early life, for it always seemed as if there Avere open Avounds in his heart that wanted continual soothing and anointing. He told me that until his marriage he had felt a con- tinual heart bleeding from being unloved. He said that he never suffered again from that particular feeling after his marriage. Yet it was of him that Uncle William Wingfield said, ' You would not surely marry Ward ; he is a hard-headed mathematician.' " The writer of these recollections, his eldest daughter, went, in I860, at the age of sixteen, to be a nun at Stone under the holy Prioress, ]\Iother Margaret Mary O'Hallahan. She had been the constant companion of his leisure hours for five years, and always attributed her early vocation to the religious life in great measure to his influence. Ward was quite astonished at the expressions of admiration and gratitude towards him which occurred in a letter written by her shortly after she had entered the convent. He was deeply touched, but added in writing of it, " It is a grotesque comment on the illusions of affectionate children." The elder members of his own family were strong Protestants ; and his connection with them ceased almost entirely after his conversion, except in the case of his aunts who lived at Cowes, and to whom he was sincerely attached. It was perhaps partly his love of paradox and of startling effects which made him take pleasure in depicting his total want of sympathy with some of them ; and his picture as a whole was probably barely founded on fact. But he used to describe a state of mutual estrangement, which in its mixture of hostile demonstration with a feeling of total indifference, or even of passive friendliness, \yas almost grotesque. He once ex- plained to me that it had always been the habit in his family, if two relations differed strongly, to arrange not to be on speaking terms. " Why," he said, " should we meet and quarrel ? The world is large enough, and we all have friends enough. We arrange simply not to know each other — to meet as strangers." IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED js This was the only thmg in the nature of a family habit or tradition in which he ever took any pleasure. Generally the fact that any relation did a thing was a reason for doing the opposite. When reproached with being unsympathetic to his relations, he replied, " On the contrary. The Wards have always diftered on every conceivable subject. Therefore I best agree with my family by differing from them." I once asked him how much he had known of his father's first cousin, Sir Henry Ward, who had taken a very strong and effective line as Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. He replied quite gravely, " I only saw him twice — once as a boy, when he came to see my father ; and then again I had an inter\T.ew with him about a matter of business soon after I came into my property. We arranged at the end of it not to be on speaking terms ; " — quite a superfluous arrange- ment, it may be added, as Sir Henry Ward lived at that time in Ceylon, of which he was Governor, and in fact never came again to England for a prolonged visit. On one occasion the harmless nature of such estrange- ments was rather amusingly illustrated in the case of his brother Henry. They had been for a year or so on these terms, and one night they met at the Haymarket Theatre. Each of them had for the moment quite forgotten the quarrel, and friendly greetings passed and a talk about the play. ]N'ext morning came a letter from Henry Ward : *' Dear William, in the hurry of the moment to-night I quite forgot that we had arranged to meet as strangers, and I write this lest you should misunderstand me, to say that I think we had better adhere to our arrangement ; and I remain, dear William, your affectionate brother, Henry Ward." My father replied : " Dear Henry, I too had forgotten our arrangement. I agree with you that we had better keep to it ; and I remain, your affectionate brother, W. G. Ward." With his brother Arthur, whom Cambridge men and cricketers remember as for many years president of the University Cricket Club, and a well-known figure at Lord's, there was a similar arrangement for a time, but I do not think it lasted long. These differences, however, as I have already intimated seemed to me, when I knew the facts of each case, far more remarkable as a subject for my father's powers of descriptive 74 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. exaggeration than for anything else. Many a coohiess, which I had supposed from his account to be life -long, or to have lasted many years, was in reality a matter of weeks or even days. Amusing stories belonging to these brief periods dwelt in our minds as typical of a permanent state of things. Old Oxford friendships were in some degree resumed after 1858. It was about this time that Dean Goulburn found him out and called on him in London. The visit was very welcome to Mr. Ward. Old memories were revived ; the call was returned and repeated. Other old friends heard that Ward was not " spoilt" by his popery, and approached him. The Bishop of Oxford and Lord Blachford met him at dinner at Goulburn's. Jowett paid him a visit in the Isle of Wight. Lord Coleridge and Dean Stanley dined with him in his house at Gloucester Scjuare. Tait asked him to Fulham, and he found Lake,^ and other old friends there. From circumstances it was natural that the intimacies were never again quite on their former footing. Lines of life had divided, and common interests had ceased to be. But thorough and unreserved cordiality was re-established. The strained and bitter feelings of 1845 were wiped away as though they had never been. Anecdotes survive about some of these meetings. Soon after Tait's installation as Bishop, he wrote to Ward and asked him to come to Pulham and talk over his prospects and duties. I remember how often my father referred with delight to Tait's perfect frankness of satisfaction at his own appointment, though he undoubtedly felt also its cares and responsibilities. Ward saw much in other quarters of a nolo eiyiscoi)ari which he did not believe to be sincere ; and he found Tait's candour truly refreshing to look back on. " Don't you feel the responsibility of the position to be very heavy ?" Ward asked. " I do," said Tait, " but" (after a pause), "I must in frankness add that its sur- roundings are very agreeable!' Ward was imable to sustain any attempt to conceal from his old friends either his intense delight in the spiritual side of the Church of his adoption, and his convic- tion of the hopeless unsatisfactoriness, intellectually and ethically, of the Anglican position ; or, on the other hand, his ^ W. C. Lake, now Dean of Durham. IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 75 sense of the intellectual and educational shortcomings which Catholic England had necessarily incurred from many genera- tions of prescriptive laws. Mr. Jowett tells me that on one occasion, very soon after they had renewed their acquaintance, Ward made some extremely straightforward statements on the former subject, and then proceeded to remark : " English Catholics don't know what education means. Many of them can't write EngUsh. Wlien a Catholic meets a Protestant in controversy, it is like a barbarian meeting a civihsed man." And the peculiarities of the old-fashioned Catholics, both priests and laity, afforded him as much amusement and as many good stories as Dr. Jenkyns and the prim Oxford Dons had done in earlier days. One such story is repeated to me by Dean Goulburn, at whose dinner-table it was told. " I had asked my late father," writes the Dean, " who from his own great love of fun and humour had taken a hkmg to your father. Lord Blachford, and the Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce), who asked to be asked when I told him your father was coming, and a few others." The conversation turned on Catholic preaching, and Ward spoke of the mechanical and routme performances of some of the priests of the old school. One of them habitually read translations from the old Court sermons of Bourda- loue, without any regard to the nature of his congregation, which consisted of the poorest of the poor. The subtle temptations of wealth and titles and worldliness were earnestly dwelt on, and exhortations to curb the love of the ex- citements of the Court, and of the dehcacies of sumptuous Kving, were pressed on the attention of blacksmiths and carpenters. On one occasion he and a Mr. Grafton were in church, and were, he said, the only persons present higher in position than workmen and tradesmen. Ward sketched to the company the most emphatic and eloquent part of the ser- mon. Some stern rebuke from the New Testament was quoted, and then, with voice elevated, the preacher read out, " Hear this, you young voluptuary ! Hear this, you butterfly of fashion ! Hear this, you that love to haunt the antechambers of the great ! " "I looked at Grafton," Ward added, " to see how we could divide the parts — which was the butterfly and 76 OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. which the voluptuary. Fur myself, I didn't think I looked much like a Ijutterfly." — " ISTo, Mr. Ward," said Judge Goul- burn, the Dean's father, " the Court's entirely with you there." " Eoars of laughter," writes Dean Goulburn, who tells the story, " and from none louder and heartier than your father." Dean Goull^urn oives the circumstances of this renewal of their acquaintance as follows : — I had recently entered upon the charge of the district Parish of St. John Paddington, and heard that he had taken up his abode A^ithin two or three hundred yards of my Church. Wilhng to show that, though my convictions had forced me to act against him in his latter days at Oxford, I still nourished a kindly feeling for him, yet a little doubtful how he might take the proffered courtesy, I ventured to call. He welcomed me most warmly, and we had a long talk over old days and old friends — Stanley, Lake, Tait. Your father had tales to tell of his being invited to Fulham, and of the unfeigned cordiality with which the bishop received him. Of this first inters iew with him after long separation, I remember no more, except that, pointing to the books and papers on his table, he told me that Dr. Newman had invited him to join in a neAV translatioji of the Holy Scriptures for the use of English Catholics, in which I think he said some of the psalms had fallen to his share. *' You know," he added, with the candour which was one of his main characteristics, " your authorised version is so grand, and ours so miserable in comparison." My visit was returned, invitations to dinner exchanged between us, and walks arranged for ; and Avhen the old intimacy Avas reviA^ed, he one day put to me point- blank this een. But it remained till the end a very objectionable prescription, yet so necessary that if it were omitted he could not do a stroke of work on the following day. Its only mitigation lay in the intense amusement he found in the incongruity of the whole performance. It was an ample illustration of the saying of Dean Church that his intellectual adroitness was in starthng contrast to his physical clumsiness and helplessness : and the picture of himself rising at the appointed hour, leaving his scholastic foho for the riding school in fear and trembling, placing himself, with a profound sense of his own incompetence, unreservedly in the 1 R. G. Macmullen, of Oxford memory, now Canon Macmullen. 8o OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED chap. hands of his groom, to do what he would with him, was one which tickled his imagination. I think he deepened the lights and shades a little heyond the necessities of the case, and heightened the contrasts. A theological or ascetic book was latterly brought with him to the riding school itself, and read between the " acts," in the intervals of rest he allowed him- self while the horses were changed ; and the helplessness of the riding itself was not lessened by any attempt to learn to rise in his stirrups or to mount without assistance. But it was the amusement that made the riding just endurable which led to this unconscious emphasis of the situation ; and if he met a friend he would take him to see and enjoy the perform- ance. " How d'ye do, Kogers ? " he said on meeting the late Lord Blachford (then Sir Frederick Eogers) in Eegent Street, for the first time after an interval of some ten years, " come and see me ride." Dean Goulburn has included in his " reminiscences " an account of one such occasion, which shows that he must have thoroughly satisfied Mr. Ward by his appreciation of the " points " of the entertainment : — On my going to his house one day and asking him to come out for a Avalk, he said that this being his hour for riding exercise, he was going to his riding school, AA^here the horses were awaiting him, but that if I would walk with him there he would be dad of my company, and we might talk by the way. He proceeded to tell me that riding exercise having been pronounced by the doctors to be essential to his health, he had built a riding school on a piece of ground belonging to the Paddington estate of the Bishop of London, his old friend Bishop Tait having very kindly facilitated the lease. He added that, as his weight was so great that the horses could only endure it for a short time, he had made a contract with the stable- keeper to supply him with six horses for an hour's fast trot, each horse not to trot more than ten minutes at a time. This excited my surprise ; for though your father was certainly a bulky man, yet men quite as heavy as he are in the habit of hunting, and even sometimes take fences ; but my sirrprise was at an end when we arrived at the ground and I saw what he meant by "riding." Meanwhile, however, before we arrived there, we had plunged into some grave theological argument, if I remember right, on some fundamental question. It may have been the reconciliation of the Divine Pre- science with the freedom of the human ^vill, though I cannot absolutely say it was so. On our arrival, this was necessarily dropped, and your father began to exhibit strong symptoms of repugnance and apprehension to the exercise he had to take. Like IV OLD FRIENDSHIPS RENEWED 8i some Homeric hero arming for the fray, he arrayed himself, being helped by servants to do so, in his riding costume. Then came the mounting. A fine powerful mare was brought round to the horse block, fresh and frisky, and held by the head while he mounted. But no sooner had he put his left foot in the stirrup, and before he could throw his right leg over her back, the mare whisked round her hind quarter, and left him supported only by the stirrup and his two hands with which he grasped the saddle. He was in a state of great alarm and trepidation, and shouted to the attendants, " Henry ! George ! don't you see ? come under me ! help me over ! " It was the work of three or four men to get him into the saddle, which at length was done. Then, while the groom ran at the mare's head for a minute or two, till she fell into the routine of her trot round the arena, commenced the "riding," if so it can be called. It was really sitting in the saddle without an attempt at rising in the stirrups, with all the dead weight of a sack of sand. Jolt, jolt, jolt ; and after every jolt the dead weight came down on the flanks of the animal, until after two or three circuits of the arena they quivered frightfully. A man stood in the centre with a watch, to keep the contract with the stable-keeper, calling out the minutes as they fled : " Two minutes, please, sir," " Three minutes, please, sir," until, at the glad sound, "Ten minutes, please, sir," Avhich seemed to be familiar to her ears, the mare made a dead halt ; and while a fresh horse was being brought out, your father rubbed his hands, and said to me as I came towards him, " Now, then, Goulburn, I'm quite ready to begin that argument again where we left it off." G CHAPTEE V THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL AND THE NEW ULTEAMONTANISM Eeleased from his professorial duties, Mr. Ward found him- self brought once more in contact with the three movements of thought which in Oxford days had engaged his attention. Elsewhere ^ I have attempted to describe those aspects of the Eadical movement represented by the two Mills and Bentham, of the critical Protestantism inaugurated by Arnold and the Oriel Noetics, and of the movement towards Catholic devotion and doctrine, which affected him at Oxford. Each of these streams, in the microcosm of University thought, was the reflection of a great movement, not only in England, but still more in Continental Europe. The Positive Polity of Comte, and Mill's articles in the London and Westminster Review, which lay on the tables of Oxford common rooms, were echoes from the great revolutionary movement in thought and in politics, which had been for years so powerful a force on the Continent. The critical movement in history and Scripture started in one department avowedly from the standpoint of Niebuhr, and tended gradually in the other towards the con- clusions of Strauss. De Maistre and Lamennais were favourite authors with the second school of Tractarians. It was in con- troversy with a French divine that Newman himself first defined the position embodied in the lectures of 1837 — the Catholicism of the English Church and its relations with the Eoman. The claim made by the British Critic on the a ^priori philosophy, in support of the Oxford movement, had its parallel in Germany. Kant's Ethics, in England through the medium of Coleridge, in Germany through that of Schelling, were 1 See W. G. Ward and the Oxford Movement, chap. iii. CHAP. V THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 83 invoked in defence of Catholicism. Mohler's Symholism on the shelves of a tutor's library after 1841 made him a marked man ; while the pictures of Overbeck and Cornelius on the walls of an undergraduate's rooms at Balliol caused Dr. Jenkyns to eye him suspiciously, and express a fear that he was " tainted." Oxford reading was not wide ; and the movements took, on the whole, their own course in the University, in- dependently of outside influence ; but the relationship was in each case unmistakable. In Mr. Ward's view the three movements were destined ultimately to become two. The opinion which thinkers of so many different schools have urged of late years, that the ultimate conflict must be between Catholicism and negation in religion, was one which commended itself to him. " Protestantism," says Heine, " is the mother of free thought " ; and " free thought " means in the last resort religious negation. The middle ground is being cleared; and those who held it are moving one way or the other. The Protestant Church in Germany has moved towards further negation; the English Church is moving towards Catholic principles and ideals. Individuals in each country, insigni- ficant neither in numbers nor in influence, have gone far in both directions. Catholicism has largely increased in Germany ; schools of thought have arisen in the English Church verging closely on Agnosticism. This being so, the most effective opposition to the principles of the negative school consisted in the cultivation and spread of Catholic principles. Like so many other thinkers, Mr. Ward saw a close connection between the negative philosophy and the French Eevolution — between the destruction of traditional faith by Voltaire and Hume, and the destruction of the old political order under Eousseau's influence. Mill and Bentham avowedly accepted the connection ; and their political Eadicalism was as pronounced as their aversion to established religion. And here again Catholicism was the truest representative of the constructive principle. The great Catholic revival which actually set in, as a reaction from the horrors of the Eevolu- tion, was, then, in Mr. Ward's view, due to a true instinct on the part of its promoters. It was an instance of the insight which a great crisis will give to leading minds. The bloody 84 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. orgies of '93 were the true outcome of the principles of '89. Master minds, hitherto satisfied with the compromise of Pro- testantism or Latitudinarianism, awoke in the crisis to a new sense that Christianity was the indispensable protector of social order, and that Catholic principles were the only permanent preservers of Christianity. Hence the cluster of great Catholic thinkers and writers, which the present century has produced after sixty years of almost complete stagnation — notably in France and Germany. Almost at the outset of the CathoKc revival arose a remarkaljle school of thought, which seized on this idea that the Church was to be the principle of construction for the civilisation of the future. A school arose in France and almost contemporaneously in Germany, and extended its influence gradually throughout Christendom, which, beginning avowedly with the vindication of the Ultramontanism of F^nelon, soon disclosed marked characteristics of its own. The vindication of papal authority against the Galileans was in itself the renewal of a controversy proper to the cmcien rSgime, and to the France of the Grand Monarque. But it proved to be only the first step in a great movement, which had direct reference to the circumstances of our own century. The old civilisation was destroyed ; the last great memorial of the corporate faith of Christendom, the Holy Eoman Empire, had ceased to be ; — the Catholic Church remained. The imagination of the new exponents of Ultramontanism was possessed by the signifi- cance of facts which years later impressed our own Protest- ant historian. The Ultramontane doctrine — the infallibility and prerogatives of the Ptoman See — became in their hands the symbol of that principle of unity and effective authority, which had enabled the Church to stand im- movable amid a society whose structure had been shaken to its foundations. The Ptevolution and the Napoleonic wars had impaired the old constructive elements in politics and in relioion. Traditionary principles of belief and ancient polities had been destroyed. They had been torn up by the roots, and a new basis of social order was needed. De Maistre, speaking of the monarchy in 1 8 1 9, notes the error of supposing " que la colonne est replac^e parce qu'elle est relev(^e." The old strenf^th of AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 85 prescriptive right had been broken by a philosophy and a policy of anarchy. Thrones and constitutions had to be rebuilt; but where to build them in the quicksand which was almost universal ? The old symbol remained the true one. The Church appeared to be the one stable foundation which remained ; the See of Peter was the immovable rock — the centre of its strength. Count Joseph de Maistre and Vicomte de Bonald in France, Stolberg and Friedrich Schlegel in Germany, may be considered to be the protagonists of the new Ultramontane movement ; but it was chiefly from the French writers that it took its most marked character- istics. " La E^volution est une oeuvre fran^aise, done une oeuvre exager^e," said de Maistre ; and his own emphatic vindication of the opposing principle was characteristically French. The old regime was sick to death ; a new state of society was coming ; the Church must enforce the old doctrine of F^nelon as to the papal prerogative ; but it must use it as a principle of united action and of social order of quite new importance, because the old principles were failing. A stand- point which had been for Fenelon mainly theological, came to bear an international and directly practical character. Ultramontanism was to be the principle of order and authority and the principle of unity among Christians, as the Eevolution was among the representatives of democratic anarchy. It was needed, to use de Maistre's words, "to make the same blood circulate in all the veins of an immense body." Such was the general conception of the new Ultramontanism. It has borne fruit in various lines of thought and action : in de Maistre's system of papal and regal absolutism ; in Lamennais's vision of the union of the papacy with the democracy ; in the centralising tendency of the party represented in France by the Univers ; in the vindication of the Pope's dogmatic authority, which culminated in the Syllabus and the action of the majority at the Vatican Council ; in the policy which threw the weight of the Catholic vote in the German Eeichstag in favour of the army Septennate bill, and which has recently struck so hard at Eoyalism in France. In a word, the Neo-Ultramontane movement represents the growth of those special relations between the papacy and modern Europe 86 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. which made Dollinger say in 1855 that its moral power was greater than it had been in the palmy days of Innocent III. or Gregory VII. When Mr. Ward came in contact with the movements of the Catholic world in 1858, complications had arisen; and for a time the Catholic Eevival, which had begun with such stren- uous opposition to the Liberalism of the Eevolution, appeared to be untrue to itself. Liberal Catholicism had put forth its principles and was claiming a right to be heard. It was the restoration to the movement of what he considered its essential spirit, of Ultramontane loyalty, which was the principal object of his endeavour in the controversies which culminated in the Vatican Council of 1870. Some account must be given of the circumstances in which these schools of thought took their origin, before Mr. Ward's con- nection with them can be appreciated. The story of the efiPects of the Eevolution on Catholic Trance need not be told again. After the awful scenes of JSTovember 1793, when Gobel, the Constitutional Bishop of Paris, entered the hall of the Convention with his clergy, abjured Christianity, trampled under foot his ring and crosier, and donned the red cap or Phrygian bonnet, there was inevitably a revulsion of feeling. Lecointre protested to the Convention a few months later that " a people without a religion, without a worship, and without a church ... is destined inevitably to sink to the condition of slaves." ^ Catholic worship was decreed lawful in the following year. But the wholesale destruction of religious orders and priests left little material wherewith to rekindle Catholic devotion. " The Church presented to men and angels," writes Lacordaire, " the aiDpearance of nothing but a vast ruin." ^ The learned Church historian and intimate friend of Dollinger, Dr. Alzog, seems to date the beginning of the revival of Catholicism in France from the publication of Chateau- briand's romance Atalaf in 1801. " It marked the beginning" he writes, " of a literary, moral, and religious revolution in Prance." This was the year also of the Concordat, by which Napoleon gave to the Church some kind of fresh footing in ^ Alzog, Church History, vol. iii. p. 646. - ConsidJrations sur le sysUme philosojjhique cle M. dc Lamennais (Preface). ^ Atala Avas afterwards incorporated in the G6nie du Christianisme. AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 87 the country — which, in spite of the tyranny involved in the Organic Articles, at all events renewed its existence. The churches were reopened ; many of the 6migHs clergy returned ; the hierarchy once more performed its functions ; but it was in many ways a period of slavery for the French Church, in spite of the spiritual revival which continued gradually to gather force. It is not to my purpose to trace in detail the difficulties which arose from the persecution of Napoleon, or from the impotence of the Catholic Bourbons in the face of the renewed revolution. Bonaparte's tyrannous ill treatment of Pius YII., and his great scheme for using the Church as one of his instruments for the subjugation of Europe, have a singular interest for the student of that wonderful personality; but their bearing on the Catholic revival consisted principally in the fact that persecution tends to chasten. His first attempt was to increase the centralisation of the Church and the directness of its relations with the Holy See, and to rule the Church through the Pope ; ^ and when, after the Fontainebleau " Concordat," he quarrelled with Pius VII, the Gallican declaration of 1682 was made a law of the State.^ Thus with characteristic dexterity he made use at one moment of Ultramontanism, at another of Gallicanism, as an instrument of oppression.^ ^ Nineteenth Century, February 1879, p. 224. - Foisset, Life of Lacordaire, vol i. p. 114. ^ The immediate effect of his imperiousness on the French clergy was not always edifying. The autocrat was frequently flattered by the episcopate and priesthood. The religious conferences of one preacher, whose ostensible theme was the existence of God, were made the vehicle for eulogising the Emperor ; and it is significant of the state of things that Fouche, on behalf of his master, was by no means satisfied because the preacher had not introduced words in commenda- tion of conscription.^ Two questions and answers on the duties of Frenchmen towards Napoleon himself were printed in the Catechism by the Emperor's direc- tion. Those duties included not only obedience but love ; and with grim humour the Catechism proceeded to state that the penalty of shortcoming in this respect was "eternal damnation."- After the breach with the Holy See, Bishops were thrust into sees without the sanction of the persecuted Pope. The clergy did at times protest against such encroachments, and on one occasion 236 seminarists, who refused to assist at the mass of one of these intruders, were forthwith stripped of the soutane and incorporated in a regiment. "* Such speci- mens of the brutal humour of the Corsican despot are enough to recall his attitude towards the Church. 1 See Discours, Rapports et Travaux inedits sur le Concordat de 1801, p. 589. 2 See " Legon VIL" of the " Cat6chism." 3 Alzog, vol. iii. 88 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. The Eestoration improved matters but little. Gallican and Legitimist prelates who had refused to recognise the Pope's concordat with Napoleon, now returned ; ^ and the dangers of a Church out of harmony with the Holy See were apparent.^ Catholicism was, it is true, once more the religion of the State, and the king was externally loyal to it; but the Chamber came to include a majority of indifferentists or infidels. Napoleon had, at least, with his iron hand, kept down the revolutionary doctrines of Voltaire and Eousseau, as he had kept in subjection the Church. The Bourbons allowed the works of these writers to be printed again. They were greedily read. The spirit of the eighteenth century revived, with its hatred of the ecclesiastical office. The proposed concordat of 1816, designed to satisfy the royalist bishops, was rejected by the Chamber ; and the priests remained almost enth'ely unprovided for. This state of things improved by degrees. In 1822 an arrangement was con- cluded with Eome whereby the number of bishops was increased. The ordinations of 1823 were numerous, and Chateaubriand by his eloquence obtained a State grant for the clergy.^ But the unpopularity of the Church remained. It was in this state of things, with a Church divided into two parties, of which the Gallican rested for support on so feeble a reed as the throne of the Bourbons, that de Maistre made his famous plea for the great international bond of Catholic unity — the Papacy. He advocated a devotion to Eome, which he hoped would be the bulwark of Eoyalism, but which proved a far more powerful and permanent force than the constitution to which it was designed to lend strength. The influence of de Maistre had been a power for many years. His ConsicUrations sur la France, published in 1796, had been widely read. But it was to his great work Du Fape, the gospel of modern Ultramontanism as Ueberweg has called it, that his unique position was due. The work, of which some account must now be given, was published in 1819 in the surroundings ^ Foisset, Life of Lacordaire, vol. i. p. 24. - How far French Gallicanism had gone in the circumstances may be seen from the terms of the test imposed on the French clergy resident in England by the English Vicars Apostolic. They had to declare that Pius VII. was " not a heretic nor a schismatic nor the author or abettor of heresy or schism." '•^ Alzog, vol. iii. p. 701, V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 89 which I have described — amid an impoverished clergy, with little organisation or means of education, few in numbers, and with less than no leisure for theology or speculative thought. Conite de Maistre begins his book by referring to this state of things as a reason why a layman should deal with such a subject. " The Church," he writes of France itself, '' is making a new beginning." Priests can only devote them- selves to scientific polemic in " those times of calm when work can be distributed freely, according to power and talent." He enters the breach then to " fill the empty places in the army of the Lord." ^ The question he has to consider is, what principles it is important to urge on his fellow-country- men in such circumstances. He does not propose a scientific theological review unsuited to the situation. He proposes to treat a great practical principle, which should be brought into prominent rehef to meet an abnormal crisis. He desires to show that here as elsewhere " theological truths are general truths manifested and made divine in the religious sphere, so that one cannot attack them without attacking a law of the world." True to this programme the whole work is a rhetori- cal enforcement of the practical utility of the papal power. With the shadow of the French Eevolution oppressing him like a nightmare, he is brought back again and again to this conception : — the Pope is the king ; the Church is the " States- general." The king may assemble the " States-general" and consult them ; the Pope may assemble a council and consult it. Once let the " States-general " get the upper hand, assign to them the final power, and it will mean the triumph of the tiers etat ; the regicide of '93; the division of rebels into parties alternately triumphing and massacring each other — Girondists, Jacobins, Communists; the horrors of '94 and '95. Place the ultimate appeal in the hands of the Ecclesia, — the Assembly, — and you have the same result. The principle of unity is gone. Schism and Eevolution super- vene. " In the sixteenth century," he writes, " the Eevolu- tionists attributed the sovereignty to the Church, that is, to the 1 It is noteworthy that neither the founder nor the chief exponent of the new Ultramontanism were priests or theologians. De Maistre and Veuillot were both laymen. 90 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. people. The eighteenth only transferred these maxims into politics ; it is the same system, the same theory, down to its last consequences." ^ This analogy reappears in page after page. And while the papal power is thus essential to order within the Church, the Church itself, ruled by the Pope, is the one hope for order in the world. The dangers of anarchy, so fearfully evidenced in the last century, are not past. The grand mistake, he says, would he to suppose that the Eevolu- tion is over. On the contrary, " the revolutionary spirit is without comparison stronger and more dangerous than it was a few years ago." The hope and the remedy lie in remember- ing this. To be forewarned is, in a measure, to be forearmed. We must realise the presence in the modern world of a spirit which inspired the authors of a movement, " Satanic in its essence, . . . unlike anything which has been seen in past times." That spirit can only be extinguished by the spirit of God which is found in the Christian Church.^ And Christianity has no stability without the Papacy.^ It was the Papacy which formed the Christian civilisation and monarchies.'^ It is the Papacy alone which can rebuild them. The movement which culminated in the Eevolution began with the revolt from Papal authority in the sixteenth century. " The six- teenth and seventeenth centuries," he writes, " might be called the i:^rcriiise>i of the eighteenth, which was only the conclusion of the two preceding. The human mind could not suddenly rise to the degree of audacity of which we have been witnesses. It was necessary again to place Ossa on PeKon to declare war against heaven."^ "We have now had bitter experience of the final consequences of the revolt. He appeals to Protestants to take the lesson to heart. " Let princes above all," he writes, " observe that their power is escaping them, and that European monarchy could not be formed and cannot be preserved except by a Eeligion which is one and only one." ^' But while he appeals to those outside the Church to recognise this truth, he is still more concerned with urging on Catholics themselves the importance of union round the Chair of Peter. While guarding himself against any overstate- ^ Bu Pa2Jc, vol. i. p. 21. The references are to the edition of 1837 (Goemaere editeur, Bruxelles). - i. p. 15. 3 I p, 345^ 4 i^ p 347 5 ^^ p ^3^ e ^i p 55, V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 91 ment of Catholic doctrine as to the extent of Papal Infalli- bility, he urges the spirit of unquestioning obedience inde- pendently of fine distinctions. " Infallibility in the spiritual order, and sovereignty in the temporal order," he writes, " are words perfectly synonymous." " The king can do no wrong," is a maxim of the English constitution, and it represents the finality of the royal judgment. To go behind it is, whether warrantable or not, rebellion ; and de Maistre takes up a similar ground respecting the Pope. " The monarchical form once established," he writes again, " infallibility is only a necessary form of supremacy, or rather it is absolutely the same thing under a different name." A French writer has said if there was no God it would be necessary to invent one, and the Ultramontane speaks somewhat similarly of papal infallibility. Even if " no divine promise had been made to the Pope, he would not be less infallible, or considered so, as a final tribunal ; for every judgment from which one cannot appeal is and should be held to be just in every human asso- ciation, under all the forms of government imaginable ; and any true statesman will understand me when I say that the thing is not only to know if the sovereign pontiff is, but if he ought to he infalHble. He who should have the right to say to the Pope that he is wrong, would have for the same reason the right to disobey him." ^ This argument from utility is pressed and illustrated. If, he asks later on, Galhcanism be admitted, what are we to do in a crisis when general councils cannot be assembled? Perhaps, as Hume ^ has said, circumstances will not allow in our time of a general council. Again the shadow of the Eevolution is seen.^ He recalls the action of Pius VI. at the crisis of the civil constitution of the clergy, and of Pius VII. in his first concordat with Napoleon. '' If the needs of the Church," he writes, " called for one of these great measures which do not allow of delay, as we have seen during the French Revolution, what should be done? The judgments of the Pope being only reformable by a general council, who is to assemble the council ? If the Pope refuses, who shall force him? and meanwhile how shall the Church be governed ? " ^ i. p. 23. - i. p. 41. M. p. 34. 92 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. And so throughout. Papal sovereignty is the real theme, rather than infallibility strictly so called. The world is considered as in a state of revolt. Military obedi- ence rather than a dilatory constitution, a dictatorship rather than a consulship, is called for. The sovereignty of the Pope is regarded as the one effective institution embodying this necessary requirement. He upholds also the royal prerogative, on the lines of Charlemagne's Holy Eoman Empire, before Gallicanism had destroyed the harmony between temporal and spiritual orders; but papal authority is his main theme, and is in the last resort the support of regal. It touches directly the belief in the authority of religion, on which all secular authority depends. It is true that Popes have deposed this or that king, but such cases are quite exceptional. They have ever been the guardians of the principle of sovereignty, and, where they have deposed, they have really been a bulwark against the Pte volution. Flagrant injustice in the rulers, which would have been a plea for revolt, was redressed and chastised in the name of higher authority.^ Such were the leading ideas of the work which inspired the Catholic movement in the first half of the present century. Its influence was felt by men and schools very divergent from each other. Many of the friends of Montalembert were " brought up at the feet " ^ of Joseph de Maistre. Lamennais adopted and developed his Ultramontanism. The Bii Ta'pe influenced such different men as Perrone in Italy, Donoso Cortez in Spain, Dollinger in Germany ; while the uncom- promising iiitransigeants of the Univers professed in later years to be the true exponents of its principles in their original purity. A deeper thinker than de IMaistre, though a less marked personality, was Vicomte de Bonald, the founder of Traditional- ism. Traditionalism stood to the French Ultramontane move- ment in much the same relation as the philosophy of Butler and Coleridge stood, in a much smaller field, to the Oxford movement. It was the philosophical foundation of an energetic and practical agitation. De Bonald was its founder ; but ^ Du Pape, vol. i. p. 157. - This is the phrase used in a private letter by Albert Dechamps in speaking of his early youth. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 93 owing to the more popular character of de Maistre's works, and to the opposition aroused by Lamennais's exaggerated version of Traditionalism, the great debt which Christian thinkers owe to him has been, perhaps, insufficiently re- cognised. The most profound thoughts in the Essai sur Vindiff6rence are not Lamennais's but Bonald's ; while its exaggerations, which Eome finally condemned, are the work of Lamennais himself. Bonald was Minister of Public Instruction under the Empire, and continued to be a well- known figure in public life until the Eevolution in 1830; but his chief influence was due to his writings. His long life was a wonderful link between the old and the new. Born nearly forty years before the Eevolution, he lived through the Consulate and Empire, through the two reigns of the restored Bourbons, and passed away when the reign of Louis Philippe — the turning point of the Catholic revival — was more than half over. The friends of his youth remembered E^nelon, and the friends of his old age — the generation succeeding that of his own son. Cardinal de Bonald, who died durino- the Vatican Council — were among the prominent Catholics of our own time. The glories of the ancien regime, of the Church of Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, were a green memory in his boyhood ; the decay of Church and Constitution alike was not completed until he was over forty. He was seventy-eight years old, but still hale and vigorous, when it was finally acknowledged that the past could not return, and the citizen king replaced the heir to Louis XIV. ; and he passed away, at the age of eighty-eight, when the old Gallicanism was nearly swept away, and the victory of Ultramontanism in Erance was an assured fact. Beginning, as de Maistre did, with the sense of the necessity of some effective principle of reconstruction after, the anarchy of the Eevolution, his more philosophical mind came to feel the necessity of a rational justification of the proposed remedy against the prevailing maxims of an infidel generation. It was well enough and true enough to say that the Pope and the Church were the great hope for society ; but as long as the intellectual heirs of Voltaire and Eousseau represented Catholic faith as a surrender to superstition, and as long as the philo- sophy of the Encyclopaedists ridiculed the ideas of God and 94 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. immortality as delusive, an impassable barrier remained in many minds to the success of de Maistre's movement. Having, then, in his earlier works vindicated, with de Maistre himself, the constructive elements in society, he set himself to consider, in his Reclierches philosophiques sur les premiers ohjets des connoissances Tnorales, the ground on which a sceptical philosophy should be opposed, and the religious reaction should be vindicated as reasonable as well as practically useful. The attack on the Church had been made in the name of philosophy, and he begins by testing the methods which have claimed that title. He first reviews the past failures of so-called philosophy. For three thousand years, in matters of the very highest moment, concerning God, the World, the Soul, philosophers, men of unquestionable genius, have searched in the human mind for the ultimate basis of our knowledge and for the test of truth. Each has investigated the problem in his own way ; and they have never been able to come to any agreement in their solution. What an evidence of the insufficiency of the individual reason, even the best ! Does it prove philosophy to be a pretence ? And does it show that we can have no reasonable conviction of those great truths so necessary to the moral life of mankind ? The sceptic will answer, " Yes." Bonald maintains, on the other hand, that the continued and indomitable effort of the human spirit to reach this knowledge, and the persistency among men of these great ideas, are a stronger proof that a true account of them is attainable than past failures are of its hopelessness.^ Perhaps it may be with " philosophy as with the arts, with manners, with literature, that that which is easy, simple, and natural is always that which is obtained last of all, and often after long aberrations." ^ Where, then, are we to look for this easy and natural solution of what has so long perplexed us ? Let us find the source of the aberrations in the past, and by considering them hope to discover the right path. And if we look at the story of human conviction on these great subjects, we find that in the oldest civilisation, that of the Jews, the social truths were not sought for at all by an introspective philosophy.^ God had spoken to the people of Israel, — so their sacred ^ Recherchcs PJdlosopMques, etc. (Paris, 1818), vol, i. pp. 7, 79 82. = p. 80. 3 p. 5 ; pp. 8, 9. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 95 writings affirmed, — and the ideas, Providence, Morality, Eetribution, were accepted by the people as the legacy of the divine teaching to their ancestors. Later on and elsewhere we find that the tendency of the popular mind to mythical creation has asserted itself; and these social truths are found in various societies overlaid with extravagant legends. From these puerilities of popular mythology philo- sophy came as a reaction. But like other reactions it was thoroughgoing. It found the social truths bound up with an incredible mythology, and submitted the whole of the popular religion to the test of reason. It conceived not of the primitive tradition within the mythology which should share with philosophy the work of preserving truth while error was being eliminated. It regarded the whole as the offspring of popular fancy, which had run riot and should be ruthlessly tested by rational analysis. Here was the source of past aberration. The Jewish belief explained both the failure of philosophers and the persistency of the ideas. The ideas persisted because God had imparted them to the race ; philosophers failed to find their source, because they looked within the individual mind for the origin of what was in reality given to the society by God. But while the history of philosophy tends to this con- clusion, the study of the individual mind confirms it ; and in his treatment of this part of the subject we have some of the most striking thoughts of the French writer. External objects, he notes, are in some sense known to each by his own faculties, and men agree in their account of these objects. The sources and criteria of conviction are not ; and no two thinkers can agree about them. We are aware of the presence of a tree or a horse. A hundred men will all agree as to their presence and general appearance. But if we ask hoiv we know it, why the impression on our senses warrants us in the conclusion that external objects are in existence, the hundred men break up into idealists, realists, cosmo-thetic idealists, and so forth. The fact is that while we can know and measure outer objects by the individual reason, we cannot measure our own reason by itself. The first link in our chain of knowledge is outside and above ourselves, and to pretend to find it in ourselves is to play at thinking. 96 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. " Instead of attaching the link " to the point above us to which it belongs, " we hold it/' he writes, *' in one hand and Ave stretch out the chain with the other, and we think we are following it, while [in reality] it is following us. We take within ourselves the resting-place on which we want to climb up; in a word, we gauge our own thought by itself,^ which puts us in the position of a man who wished to weigh himself without scales or weights. Playthings of our own illusions, we inter- rogate ourselves, and we take the echo of our own voice for the response of truth." The individual reason, then, is intrinsically incompetent to supply a final account and justification of our beliefs. It is necessarily thrown on the convictions of society, which embody and preserve the primitive tradition. Once more, anticipating Herbert Spencer's conception of human society as an organism, he points out that the fundamental truths of morality and religion are necessary for its life. The instinct of self-preserva- tion leads the society to seriousness and reality in its recogni- tion of them. The society learns from experience, from punishment for their neglect, from reward for their recognition. What was given by revelation is preserved by practical experi- ment. The individual theorist has neither the revelation nor the experience. He is born after the first was given, he dies before the chastisement arrives which punishes the denial of social truths. His brief life does not afford opportunity of that verification which comes of experienced results. His reason should be to the general reason as his life to the general life, a part and a minister, not the final arbiter. The individual owes the very colour of his thought to the society which has educated him ; and for him to attempt to judge the social convictions inde- pendently is as though a branch exulting in its life were to expect to live and grow when separated from the tree. The result for the branch is that the external source of life is cut off, and though it may live for a brief space, its death is certain. And so the man who cuts himself off from the accumulated wisdom of society may think actively for a time ; but his thought grows sterile and dries up, and if others pursue a similar course, barrenness and death will be widespread. 1 "Nous nous peiisons nous-memes " is the French for which I have been unable to express an exact equivalent in English. AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 97 But here arises a remonstrance from those who, filled with the glory of individual research, cite the investigations of a Laplace, a Newton, a Bacon. Did not such men judge and reform the convictions of the society in which they lived ? Was not the universal reason wrong and the individual right when Copernicus first thought of the true movement of the planets, Newton of the principle of gravitation ? Were not doubting and questioning on the part of individuals the means of these great discoveries ? Bonald, without exhaustively discussing tliis question, gives pregnant suggestions in answer to it. It is in the ascertainment of those practical truths which are essential to the organic life of the race, that he vindicates the supremacy of the general reason over the individual. It is not in the theoretical analysis of details which do not concern that life. That the individual may carry further the analysis of certain truths he does not deny. But there is a condition which explains the distinction. The condition of individual analysis and questioning leading to knowledge, is that the process must end in synthesis and not in destruction. If the process of examining the move- ments of the planets destroyed them ; if the tides ceased to ebb and flow while their relation to the moon was doubted and investigated, such iuvestigations would not be of use. But as things are, physical experiment and analysis do not destroy ; they construct. In physical discovery the individual reason fulfils its proper function of minister to the general knowledge. It gives a true speculative analysis of the practical observations of the race. But with those moral truths — the existence of good and evU, of a Supreme Being, of future retribution — on which the hfe of society depends, analysis means destruction and not construction. The very thing you wish to analyse melts away in the act of doubting and questioning. It is like wholesale vivisection. Eip open heart and lungs to find what they are made of, and you may make discoveries ; but they will be of no avail for the person experimented on. So too destroy the virtues which make a good citizen or a good father — for to question their worth persistently is to destroy them — and you cannot reconstruct. And again in each case, in social virtue and in the living organism, there is the im- palpable something which makes its life and essence, which H 98 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. ceases to exist when analysis has destroyed. Not only you cannot reconstruct, but you cannot even examine in the dead what existed in the living. What, then, is the reasonable course with respect to those convictions which are essential to the life of the social organism ? Here again the analogy of the individual organism teaches what to do as it taught what to avoid. Faith and not doubt and inquiry leads each man to truth. Does a man wait to eat and drink before he has proved by chemistry and physiology that food supports life ? Does he, should he, begin by the inaction which a doubt on the subject would suggest ? On the contrary, the experience of the race gives it to him as a certain truth that if he does not eat he will starve. He believes it on the authority of those who witness to the general and practical truths of life.^ ^ L' usage des choses necessaires a notre existence physique n'a pas du tout ete laisse a la disposition de notre raison particuliere. Dans ce genre nous n'avons pas a choisir ni meme a examiner, puisque cet usage precede toujours pour nous la faculte d'examiner et de choisir. C'est assur^ment sur la foi d'autrui que nous usons exclusivement de certaines substances pour nous nourrir et nous vetir, ou que nous confions notre vie aux arts qui servent a nous loger ou ti nous transporter d'un lieu k un autre, quoique cependant I'usage de ces choses soit pour nous d'une toute autre consequence que le mouveraent de la terre ou I'attraction de la lune. Nous raettons meme souvent la raison des autres a la place de la notre pour des choses moins necessaires et moins usuelles ; et le geometre, qui entre, lui, centieme dans un bateau, ne consulte pas auparavant si la charge ne sera pas trop forte relativement au volume d'eau qu'elle deplace, mais il se fie a I'interet et \ I'experience d'un batelier qui n'a d'autre connoissance que sa pratique journaliere. Ainsi, pour des choses d'ou depend la conservation de notre vie, de cette vie qui nous est si chere, nous nous regions sur les habitudes que nous trouvons etablies dans la societe ; nous n'avons d'autre raison, pour y conformer nos actions, que I'exemple des autres ; nous ne faisons aucun usage de notre raison, de cette raison dont nous sommes si fiers ; nous pensons que la coutume immemoriale de la societe doit nous tenir lieu de raison ; et cette opinion est si bien etablie, que tout homme qui s'ecarte dans des choses communes de I'usage generalement adopte, passe pour un homme singulier, un esprit bizarre, et quelquefois pour un fou. Mais nous avons deux poids et deux mesures ; les memes hommes qui usent sans examen des alimens qu'on leur sert, ne veulent pas quelquefois recevoir de confiance des verites qu'ils trouvent etablies dans tout I'Univers. Cependant les verites morales sont toutes des verites pratiques, vrais besoins de la societe, comme pour I'homme les alimens et les vetemens ; et si I'homme physique '\:,it de 2Min, I'homme moral vit de laimrole qui lui revele la verite. Rien n'est trouble dans la nature materielle pendant que I'homme examine, discute, approfondit la verite ou I'erreur des syst^mes de physique, parce que le monde physique n'est pas I'homme, et qu'on con9oit qu'il pourroit meme exister sans I'homme ; mais tout perit dans la societe, lois et mosurs, pendant que I'homme delibke s'il doit AND THE NEW ULTRA MO NTANISM 99 To sum up, then, tlie analogy of society to the individual life suggests in its entirety that " simple account " of the origin of moral truths which philosophers have missed. In each case the truths necessary for life are imparted to the organism at the outset, and supplemented and conveyed by means of the society. The individual organism receives from nature and learns from society in' a spirit of faith that primary knowledge which is necessary for its preservation. This is the external point to which the chain of such knowledge is attached. Nature bids the child accept its food ; its nurse and its mother supply food and clothing, and teach it by degrees the further truths necessary for its preservation. So too with the corporate organism. God imparted to society at admettre ou rejeter les croyances qu'il trouve etablies clans la generalite des societes, telles que I'existeiice de Dieu et la spiritualite de nos ames, la distinction du bien ou du mal, etc. etc. ; parce que la societe est rhomme en tant qu'il soumet son esprit et conforme ses actions aux doctrines et aux preceptes de la societe, et qu'on ne congoit pas que la society puisse exister sans cette obeis- sance ; en un mot, le raonde moral n'a pas ete livH a nos disputes comme le monde physique, parce que les disputes qui laissent le monde physique tel qu'il est, troublent, bouleversent, aneantissent le monde moral. L'homme qui, en venaut au monde, trouve etablie dans la generalite des societes, sous une forme ou sous une autre, la croyance d'un Dieu createur, legis- lateur, remunerateur et vengeur, la distinction du juste et de I'injuste, du bien et du mal moral, lorsqu'il examine avec sa raison ce qu'il doit admettre ou rejeter de ces croyances generales, sur lesquelles a ete fondee la societe univer- selle du genre humain, et repose 1' edifice de la legislation gen^rale, ecrite ou traditionnelle, se constitue, par cela seul, en etat de revolte contre la societe ; il s'arroge, lul simple individu, le droit de juger et de refomier le general, et 11 aspire a detroner la raison universelle pour faire regner h. sa place sa raison particulifere, cette raison qu'il doit toute entiere a la societe, puisqu'elle lui a donne dans le langage, dont elle lui a transmis la connoissance, le moyen de toute operation intellectuelle, et le miroir, comme dit Leibnitz, dans lequel il apergoit ses propres pensees. Mais si un homme, quel qu'il soit, a le droit de deliberer apres que la societe a decide, tons ont incontestablement le meme droit. La societe qui enchaine nos pensees par ses croyances, et notre action par ses lois, et a I'enipire de laquelle nous faisons, tons tant que nous sommes, un effort continuel pour nous soustraire, la societe sera done livree au hasard de nos examens et a la merci de nos discus- sions, et elle attendra que nous nous soyons accordes sur quelque chose, nous qui depuis trois mille ans n'avons pu nous accorder sur rien. II faudra done recon- noitre dans tons les hommes le droit absurde et contradictoire de suspendre la marche de la soci(it6 dans laquelle ils existent, ou pour mieux dire le droit de I'aneantir ; car, semblable au temps qui en mesure la duree, la societe ne pourroit s'arreter meme un instant sans rentrer pour jamais dans le neant.^ 1 See pp. lOS scq. lOO THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. the outset those truths necessary for its preservation in its infancy, — for the very life of society, — with the gift of speech by which such truths are conveyed. The criterion for us now of these truths — our means of determining w^hat is true and what is false in current beliefs — depends on the question, " Is this belief a part of the knowledge imparted to the race for its preservation ? " And this is best tested by language, in which the primitive ideas were given, and which has preserved them. The experience of the society, which also finds its way into the language, supplements and completes what nature begins. Men have here and there corrupted and partially lost the social truths, as a child may be disobedient, and refuse to accept the necessity of eating its dinner, or of keeping from dangers which its nurse points out. Then comes the punishment which corrects and leads back to docility. The individual and the society alike grow sick or perish if they neglect the primary truths which nature has instilled. The French Eevolution Avas a punishment for such neglect, no less than the broken head of the child that will not keep away from the steep stone staircase against which it is warned. I have analysed at some length the fundamental philosophy of the Traditionalist writer in order to show the real and careful thought which lay at the root of a movement, which did not always in later days display the same characteristics. Of Bonald's superstructure less need be said. Having condemned individual scrutiny as a process in which " every one is judge and no one is witness," he presses far his attempt to find in language the symbol of the knowledge which nature has given and tradition has accumulated. Language educates the individual and even teaches him to think. The moral ideas are preserved in language even where mythology distorts their application. Man could combine the ideas and twist them, but he could not invent them. Thus language is the great test of the truth of an ultimate moral idea, and of its divine origin. Christian revelation supplemented what the primitive revelation and human experience had begun ; and so Christian tradition shares with human language, and in a far higher degree, the position of source and preserver of moral knowledge. Begin- ning with the knowledge of natural religion the heart becomes purified, and sees in the papal Church the truest application AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM loi of the moral truths which nature teaches only roughly and generally. There is in this system an obvious suggestion, from the standpoint of philosophy, of the connection, indicated by de Maistre from a political point of view, between the revolt of the sixteenth century and the events of the eighteenth. The individualism of private judgment culminated in the destructive philosophy, which was so closely connected with the Eevolution. Bonald's wholesale attack on individualism converts the Catholic conception of trust in the Church into a philosophical principle of general application. The outcome of his teaching is that the Protestant principle of private judgment attacks in reality a fundamental law of which the history of philosophy gives unanswerable evidence. Human society is one vast Church, from which each individual learns and to which he ministers. He may help to keep its organisation pure and purge it from incidental error ; but once he calls in question the fundamental truths of its constitution, he begins the destruction of the ultimate principle of his own life and thought. Luther did this in the sixteenth century to the Church; Voltaire and Hume to society at large in the eighteenth. The Ultramontanism of de Maistre and the Traditionalism of de Bonald were fused and developed by a man whose name stands out prominently in the ecclesiastical history of the century. The famous Abbe Felicite de Lamennais, in his Essai SILT V indifference., pressed to its extreme limit — and beyond the intentions of the founder of traditionalism — de Bonald's dis- paragement of the individual intellect, and formulated the doctrine of " universal consent " as the test of truth. Carrying into his philosophy the conception of the See of Eome as the divinely -sent witness to the Christian revelation, he regarded the Pope as the mouthpiece of this universal consent. He waged uncompromising war on Gallicanism, and may be said to have had a principal share in its ultimate defeat. He visited Leo XII. in Eome, and is supposed to have been made a cardinal in petto ; and his influence at its zenith has been compared by Lacordaire to that of Bossuet himself.^ In the hands of Lamennais the Ultramontane movement 1 "M. de Lamennais," writes Lacordaire, ". . . se trouva investi de la puissance de Bossuet" {ConsicUratiwis sur le systhne de M. de Lamennais^ p. 36). I02 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. was destined to undergo a violent change of direction, a change which opened the way for another great movement, which ultimately proved not only divergent but in some respects contrary to the views of de Maistre — the movement of the Liberal Catholics. Lamennais, in his early days, vied with de Maistre himself in his advocacy of absolutism, both papal and regal. He took de Maistre's ground that the papacy would prove the best support to the restored Koyalism, which had lost the traditional reverence and prescriptive strength of earlier days. But with that tendency to press principles to startling con- clusions which won for him from Sainte-Beuve the title " ce grand esprit immodere," while he almost caricatured Bonald's traditionalism, he emphasised what de Maistre had barely implied, that the papal power must be accepted as supreme over the regal.^ In 1826 he published a pamphlet in which he maintained that no one, " witlioitt sejmration from God J' could refuse to allow to the Pope the right to depose kings. The Catholic monarch Charles X. could not allow such a challenge to pass unnoticed. Already he was hated for his theocratic tendencies. Caricatures were invented of the king celebrating mass in his private chamber. Silence might imply acquiescence or even conspiracy on his part. Lamennais was prosecuted and condemned to pay a small fine. It was really a triumph for him. The conviction was purely technical and the fine nominal. But his was not the spirit to brook even the form of prosecution in the name of the Government. From that moment he spoke of the fall of the Bourbons as to be looked for in the order of Providence, and expressed his wish that it might come quickly. " What thou dost do quickly," he is reported to have said. Within two years appeared his Bes progris de la BSvohition et dc la guerre contre VEglise, The wlte-face was clearly indicated, and needed only the opportu- nity of 1830 to be openly avowed. The test of certainty was still the consent of the people, and the sacredness of an institu- ^ It is interesting to note Lacordaire's judgment, in 1829, on the nature of Lamennais's genius. After speaking of one of "his works as "an exaggeration of the views of M. de Maistre," he adds : "II m'a semble souvent que cet ecrivain n'invente pas ; il ne fait que mettre en ceuvre ses devanciers, en entrant les proportions " (See Foisset, Life of Lacordaire^ i. 137). This illustrates what has been pointed out in the text with reference to Lamennais's relations to de Maistre and de Bon aid alike. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 103 tion was still, by analogy, established by the same criterion ; but this consent was no longer simply identical with the tradition of the Church ; no longer the conviction of a society, the condition of whose stable existence was the double rule of pope and king. It was in the political order the plebiscite. He raised the standard of universal liberty, and appealed to the will of the people; — a purified people indeed, he added, but still the people. He asked for " la liberty de conscience, la liberty de la presse, la liberty de I'education." ^ And a few months later he wrote more expressly still, " quand les Catholiques aussi crieront ' liberty ' bien des choses changeront " ; and again, " il faut que tout se passe par le peuple, c'est-^- dire un peuple nouveau form^ peu k peu sous I'influence du Christianisme mieux con^u au milieu des nations en mines " ; ^ and again, " la liberte ou possM^e ou cherch^e est aujourd'hui le premier besoin du peuple." Hitherto he had looked to the king as the protector of the Christian people, that is of the Church. With de Maistre he had cherished the ideal of the days of Charlemagne, when the temporal sovereign protected the spiritual society, and the Pope its head. The king had failed him and turned persecutor, and he appealed to the people for protection. By this curious distortion the philosophy of Ultramontanism was converted into the basis of a Liberal movement. The theory was too unnatural to live, and it was speedily condemned, as we shall see, by Eome ; but the enthusiasms which it stirred and the movement which it inaugurated form a new and important chapter in the history of the French Church. The year of the Eevolution, 1830, was the culminating point of the unpopularity of the Church in Prance. The Archbishop's palace was destroyed by fire ; and for three years no priest dared to appear in the streets of Paris in his soutane. It marked the failure of the attempt, which it terminated, to restore the Church as nearly as possible under the conditions of the Church of the eighteenth century. The Bourbon Government had misread the times. They had seen the external transformation effected by the Eevolution, the violent disestablishment of the Church, the persecution of ^ Des jirogrts de la Revolution, p. 3. 2 Letter to Count Seniifft, January 1829. 104 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. its ministers to death and banishment, the destruction of the ancien regime. They decreed that the past was to return. Banished noblemen and banished bishops were re-instated. The Church was re-established. But they did not realise the inner malady to which the spoliation of the Church had been due. They had to deal with something much deeper than a change of law could affect. The external disestablishment of the Church was but a symptom ; it was not the real disease. To apply the cure of external re - establishment was like rouging pale cheeks as a cure for illness. It was not a change in the legal status of the Church, but the loss of Christian faith by the multitudes which had really to be reckoned with ; — not the external disestablishment, but the intellectual and moral disestablishment of Christianity. " Jesus Christ," writes the historian of those times,^ " had returned into the temples, but He had not returned into the hearts which unbelief had torn from Him. Almost throughout France at that time the majority of those who exercised a liberal profession were without religion." The men who now came into prominence, and into whose hands the Catholic movement was soon destined to fall — Mon- talembert and Lacordaire — recognised fully that a new state of things was to be dealt with. They were fired by the genius of Lamennais, by his vast designs, his zeal for Eome, and above all, his new-born enthusiasm for liberty. The Catholic movement represented with them the efforts of Catholics to adapt themselves to a new order, social, political, intellectual. The Church was not a part of the ancien regime. It was her glory to be ever renewing her youth, and flourishing anew in a garb suited to new times and fresh places. They saw that the old corporate faith was gone, that the Church must retreat from the pretence of being what she really was not, under pain of becoming less than she really was. The intellectual disestablishment of Christianity and of all belief in the super- natural was growing apace. Even where the Voltairian scoffing passed away, public sentiment returned not to faith but to indifference, or at most to philosoj^hic interest in religion as a social force. In these very years St. Simonianism appeared, and was moving on towards Positivism. Such were the facts, and Catholics must face them. 1 M. Foisset. AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 105 Lamennais and his friends believed that the Church was more likely to thrive if freed from State patronage and State interference. They hailed, therefore, with satisfaction the declaration of the July Government that Catholicism was not the religion of the State. They attempted to ally it with the power to which the future belonged — the democracy.-^ " God and liberty " was the motto which they claimed as their own. The principles of '89 were to be maintained and Christianised. The plea for liberty was not indeed merely an adaptation of Catholicism to the times. It was also a plea for the very life of the Church. A united Church and State in which the most Christian sovereign pro- tected the Church in temporals and obeyed it in spirituals was very well. But that had passed with the old state of things. Their union — partial under the Emperor, and professedly com- plete under the infidel Parliament of the Bourbons — was no longer a union of mutual respect. The cords which bound the Church to the State were not cords of love but prison chains. Lamennais and his followers started the Avenir newspaper to obtain redress. Education free from the control of an infidel State, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of conscience, the defeat of Gallicanism, with its traditional subservience of the spiritual to the temporal power, devotion to Eome as the principle both of unity and of ecclesiastical liberty, were the principal items of their programme. Of the special standpoint of Lamennais in this move- ment enough has been said. Montalembert had been fired by the sight of the wrongs of Catholic Ireland, and it was partly through this medium that he had conceived the idea of uniting in one common enthusiasm the cause of ^ It must be noted that while this statement is true of Lamennais and the Avenir, and of Montalembert and Lacordaire so far as they identified themselves with the Avenir, it would be inaccurate to describe Liberal Catholicism, as Montalembert and Lacordaire subsequently fashioned it, as democratic. Its zeal for constitutional methods and for liberty stopped short of this ; and Lacordaire, as M. Foisset has told us, afterwards regretted that he allowed his popular sympathies to lead him to take his place in 1848 on the extreme left of the Chamber. So far as the Avenir was concerned, M. Foisset tells us that its founder thought that "the future belonged to the democracy. The Church should ally itself frankly with it, to reconcile it with religion in a common devotion to liberty." Hence the title chosen (Foisset, i. 152). io6 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. Liberty and the cause of the Church. It was from Ireland that he wrote to Lamennais, placing his services at his disposal in a campaign which he regarded as that of a French O'Connell. Lacordaire bad been an infidel. On his conversion to Christianity his eyes were opened to the fact that the infidel apostles of liberty were false to their own principles, in their dealings with the Church. Liberty of conscience was violated by an enforced indifferentist education. The liberty of the clergy was handicapped at every turn. " In my youth," he writes, "the hberal question presented itself to me only as affecting the country and humanity. I desired, hke most of my contemporaries, the final triumph of the principles of 1789 by the establishment and execution of the Charter of 1814. In this everything was included for us. The Church in our thoughts was nothing but an obstacle ; it never entered into our minds to suppose that she too required to invoke freedom, and to claim her share in the patrimony of these new rights. When I became a Christian this second point of view became visible to me ; my Liberalism thus embraced France and the Church together, and I suffered so much the more in the civil struggle that I had hence- forward two causes to sustain in one, — two causes which seemed irreconcilable enemies, which no voice ought to attempt to bring together." 2 Acting under the influence of Lamennais, the conductors of the Ave air were not likely to stop at half measures. They went so far as to advocate the absolute cessation of State subsidy for the clergy. The opposition of the French clerical authorities was naturally pronounced ; and it was increased by the known sympathy of the Avcnir with the democracy, which was little congenial to men who were wont to identify the cause of the Church with that of the dethroned king. Stung by general opposition, the editors of the Avenir went to Eome, to claim the sanction which their loyal devotion to the Church must, as they thought, command. The story of their reception has often been told. Eome, supporting the traditions of centuries, committed to principles which must stand the test of all civilisations and times and countries, was invited to sanction theories eagerly improvised by young men in view of a special crisis in France. Prudence, patience, 1 Foisset, i. 158. 2 ^j^-^Z. i. 150. AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 107 slowness to act or speak, reserve — these were the characteristics of the papal court, according to the saying Eoma 'patiens quia aeterna. After long weeks of waiting at last they received a message from the Pope. Its substance was, in Lacordaire's words, that the "Holy Father did justice to our good intentions, but that we had treated supremely difficult questions without the moderation which was desirable ; that these questions should be examined, but that in the meantime we might return to our own country, where we should be told, when the proper moment came, what the decision was." Then and not till then they were granted an audience. They were received by the Holy Father with great kindness — but not a word was said as to the Avenir. " The Pope received us graciously," writes Lacordaire, " but without saying a single word as to our business." The condemnation by the Pope, in the celebrated Encyclical " Mirari Yos," of the exaggerated theories of the conductors of the Avenir, taught Lacordaire that, as an abstract theory, Liberalism might be carried too far. Thus was abruptly terminated the first stage of the Liberal Catholic movement. Their scheme, in the shape in which Lamennais had fashioned it, was condemned. The great leader to whom they had trusted — Felicite de Lamennais himself — wavered in his allegiance to Eome and fell ; and for some years Lacordaire had to endure in high quarters the suspicion which such events naturally entailed. A second stage was entered on. Premature theorising was set aside ; but the endeavour to fashion Catholic life in such a way as to influence the age, with its special prejudices and sympathies, continued ; the exhortation to loyalty to Eome as the defender of the liberties of the Church continued ; and the practical protest against persecution and Catholic disabilities was renewed a little later with energy and success. And in these points Montalembert and Lacordaire soon carried Catholic France with them, and determined for the time the direction of the Catholic movement. The old Gallicanism, typically represented by M. de Frayssinous, already weakened, soon became almost extinct.^ Lacordaire's conferences at Notre 1 Dr. Alzog says as much as this ; and his statement is confirmed by the letter of M. Albert Dechamps cited elsewhere. "Jansenism and Gallicanism," writes io8 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. Dame, opposed for a time by the Archbishop of Paris (Mgr. de Quelen), gained in the end marked influence on all schools. The theme he so often returned to — of religion as necessary for the preservation of society — was one which commended itself to all. Even free thinkers found here a point of union with Catholics. The genius of Montalembert revived, in a form suited to the age, the monastic and saintly ideal, in such works as his Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, followed up later on by his Monks of the West. His character, brilliancy, and liberal sympathies gained him a hearing in the Assembly ; and he employed his great gifts as an orator in endeavouring to make the Catholic cause intelligible and persuasive to his fellow countrymen. Lacordaire's Life of St. Dominie, published in 1841, continued the work which Montalembert's writings had begun ; and his establishment of the Dominicans in France was the most important attempt at re-introducing the "regular" life, since the destruction of the religious orders. The society of St. Vincent of Paul — founded a few years earlier as an antidote to St. Simonianism — was another Catholic institution which appealed to the temper of the hour, and at the same time claimed the sympathy of Catholics of all schools. Such were some of the forces at work during the twelve years which succeeded the Pte volution. Eenewed life and organisation soon placed Catholics in a position to protest against disabilities. The cry of liberty was once more raised, but this time not in the form of unreal theo- rising, but as a practical protest against illiberal repression. In this form the cry was echoed by all Catholics, — even the survivors of the party most attached to the ancien regime. The first great political campaign of the Catholics was on the education question. Catholics saw their children under the existing law educated on principles of religious indifference. Never was truer tyranny exercised in the name of freedom. Indifference was as truly a creed as Catholicism ; and the secularists had been doing since the days of the Eevolution the very thing with which they had reproached Catholic authorities of an earlier time.^ Montalembert and Lacordaire had never Dr. Alzog, " which at one time had divided the French clergy into hostile camps, now nearly if not quite disappeared " (vol. iii. p. 712). ^ " One of the abuses of his power," writes M. Foisset, *' with which Louis AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 109 ceased since the days of the Avenir from protesting against this abuse; but it was in 1842 that the first systematic effort to obtain redress was made. The party which was formed at this juncture under Montalembert's presidency, the " parti CathoHque," united all sections of Catholics. Louis Veuillot, the strenuous opponent in later years of Liberal Catholicism, was as eager a member of it as Montalembert himself. " Ce Veuillot m'a ravi/' wrote Montalembert in 1842, " voilc\ un homme selon mon coeur." The campaign in its early stages gave occasion for one of Yeuillot's most brilliant essays, and for one of Montalembert's most eloquent speeches.^ M. Dupin in April 1844 had delivered a hostile criticism on the attitude of the clergy, and had ended with the words " soyez implacables." Montalembert took up the gauntlet in the upper house. The peroration of his speech gives some idea of his special genius, and of the spirit of the party. On vous dit : "soyez implacables." Eh bien ! soyez - le ; faites tout ce que vous voudrez et tout ce que vous pourrez. L'Eglise vous rt^pond par la bouche de Tertulhen et de Fenelon : " Nous ne sommes point a craindre pour vous, mais nous ne vous craig- nons pas." Cathohques du dix-neuvi^me siecle, au miheu d'un peuple hbre, nous ne voulons pas etre des h^lotes. Nous sommes les successeurs des martyrs, et nous ne tremblons pas devant les successeurs de Juhen I'Apostat. Nous sommes les fils des crois(^s et nous ne reculons pas devant les fils de Yoltaire.^ As long, then, as the question was one which did but deal with the vindication of Cathohc rights — all were agreed. The Catholic party achieved oratorical successes, and was tolerated and admired, but their numbers were insignificant ; and uncom- XIY. has been especially reproached, was his taking away their children from the French Calvinists to have them brought up in the Catholic faith. In our time no free-thinker has been able to think of it without horror. Nevertheless this is to the letter the treatment inflicted by the Revolution on Catholics. The State has taken their children to have them brought up in religious indifferentism, and no one was indignant. Thus they have silently perverted France from Christianity " (Boissard's Life of Foisset, p. 42). ^ See Boissard's Life of Foisset. 2 The remark of M. Mole, one of his opponents, on the occasion was charac- teristically French. " Quel dommage que Montalembert ait si pen d'ambition ! Et pourtant, c'est beau. Si je n'avais que quarante ans, je ne voudrais pas d'autre r61e que celui-lk." no THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. promising assertions of principle in the face of an over- whelming majority of opponents were the limit of their action. But with the Ee volution of 1848 came a change. It was a crisis which brought into relief the progress of the Church in its influence over Frenchmen since 1830. In 1830 the primary object of execration had been the episcopate and clergy; and now they were hailed as friends of the people. Events seemed for the moment — and only for the moment — to justify the sanguine hopes of Lacordaire and Montalembert that they could Christianise the Eevolution, and Catholicise the principles of '89. The success of clerical candidates in the first Parliament of the Eepublic was great. Three bishops and twenty priests were in the Chamber.^ Lacordaire himself won a seat. The alliance between religion and Eepubli- canism seemed for a few short months a fait accom^pli. The Dominican orator took his seat on the extreme left in February 1848 ; but he soon repented such a step. He found at his side the unmistakable forerunners of the atheistic left of the present day. His Parliamentary career was short, and he resigned his seat in May. Then came the election of Louis Napoleon to the presidency, and the subsequent general elec- tion. Montalembert and other Catholics of weight had supported him. The Catholic element was indeed not as strong as it had been in the democratic Parliament of February ; but Napoleon felt that he owed much to their support, and offered to Montalembert's friend, the Comte de Falloux, the post of Minister of Education and Public Worship. The question of " Free Education " - at last came into the region of practical politics. M. de Falloux's task was a delicate one, as he had no hope of carrying any measure by a Catholic majority. He formed a committee under the presidency of M. Thiers, and after considerable difficulty succeeded in secur- ing its consent to an equal measure of liberty for Catholics in primary and secondary education. M. Thiers endeavoured at first to give the University the monopoly of secondary education, while allowing the clergy the supreme control of the primary. In the proposed law, as finally drafted by the ^ Boissard, p. 96. - " Education libre," unlike our own " Free Education," meant the liberty to educate as Catholics, and not at the indifferentist institutions of the State. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM in committee, the State, by means of the University, was allowed the monopoly of conferring degrees, but with this reserve, and with the further admission of a general State control, the principle of " free education " was secured. The question at once arose. Should Catholics accept this ? and the two answers which were given by Veuillot in his journal the Univcrs, on the one hand, and by Montalembert and Falloux on the other, caused a division among French Catholics of which the results were far-reaching. Montalem- bert assured himself that this law was the very best he could hope to see passed. To preserve the rising generation from being educated on principles of indifferentism, Catholics must be content to take their degrees at secularist institutions, " The Church in its relations with temporal society," writes M. Boissard, in his exposition of Montalembert's view, " has never adopted the principle of everything or nothing." It seemed wiser and more considerate to French Catholics to secure for their children a Christian education at the necessary cost, than to maintain an unpractical non loossumus. He there- fore supported the law. Louis Yeuillot, on the other hand, strenuously opposed the law, and accused Montalembert of being false to his former convictions. He would accept nothing for the Catholic educators which did not include the power of conferring degrees. Whether or no such an attitude began with the hope that more might be gained, it soon changed, as things became less rather than more hopeful, into one of general protest against the existing order of things. The party of the Univers became known as " irreconcilable." It should be remembered that this measure almost imme- diately succeeded the events which led to Pio Nono's change of feeling, and inaugurated his own hostile attitude towards the " Eevolution " and the liberalism of modern society. The murder of de Eossi, the triumph of the Eepublicans, the Pope's own enforced flight from Eome put an abrupt termination to his concessions to Liberalism. If he had begun in the spirit of Lacordaire, who sat on the extreme left in the Assembly, like Lacordaire he soon learnt something of the character of the men who flourished and dishonoured the standard of freedom. The French priest retired from public life. But the Pope had necessarily to continue to deal with the people 112 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. and with the secular power. For him there could be no gran rifiuto. What wonder that resentment at what seemed so ungenerous a response to his overtures made him disinclined for fresh concession ? Eome, indeed, never identified itself with either of the two parties in Catholic France. As we shall see, it refrained, in the controversies which arose, from throwing in its weight on either side of the balance ; but there is no question that the Pope's own personal sympathy went some way with the '^ irreconcilables " from this time onwards, as it had been at first to some extent with the Liberals ; that he had little hope for the age, and held that those who really imbibed its spirit would soon cease to be Catholics or Christians. His public action, however, was, as I have said, identified with neither party. And, at the outset of the discussion between Montalembert and Yeuillot, the character of exclusive orthodoxy claimed by the Univers was somewhat roughly shaken, by a special message conveyed to Montalembert, through the jSTuncio, expressing the Holy Father's gratitude for the part taken by him in the passing of the education law.-^ But in truth the occasion of the difference which had arisen was not its cause ; and the division only deepened and increased. The alliance had been in some sense superficial. The tone of the Univers had already offended many Catholics by its arrogance. Archbishop Affre had, in 1844, spoken of it as " most offensive " and " very unchristian." It tended to give the Catholic party the peculiarities of a sect ; while men like Count de Falloux, on the other hand, were questioning the desirability of an organised Catholic party at all. Both schools had vindicated the rights of Catholics, but in a different spirit; — Montalembert in the name of liberty, Veuillot as an uncompromising assertion of Catholic claims. The crisis brought out the difference. The theory of Liberalism, in abeyance since the Avenir, came into prominence again. A third stage in the Liberal Catholic movement was reached. While Montalembert, in a spirit of practical compromise with the times, accepted what he could get, Veuillot, insisting on the absolute rights of the Catholic Church, would take nothing less. The divergence of attitude on one point quickly extended ^ Le Comte de Montalemhert, by Foisset, j). 239. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 113 itself to many ; and two different conceptions of the line which the Catholic revival should take in France, gradually spread through the ranks of clergy and laity. If Montalembert and Lacordaire learnt, by degrees, to modify their simple trust in the abstract idea of " Liberty," as an unfailing cure for all the ills of the time, they never ceased to aim at doing all they could to find a modus vivendi between Catholics and the society of the age, and a place for Catholics in the national life. " God and Society " was the new motto which replaced '' God and Liberty." But liberality of view remained after theoretic Liberalism had become qualified. The Correspondmity which was the organ of the school, and of which Augustin Cochin and Th^ophile Foisset — a man second to none in his influence on the counsels of the party — were chief directors, kept on friendly terms with sincere thinkers of all schools and religions. One of its chief aims was gradually to make the position of Catholics intelligible to fair-minded men outside the Church, and to find between them points in common. The party represented by the Univers^ on the other hand, tended to withdraw Catholics from contact with a wicked world, to take little interest in and have little belief in the progress of thought outside the " visible fold," and to extend to the non- Catholic world in general the feeling of suspicion which had been engendered by persecution. Veuillot looked in short to a state of war as most hopeful, and to a Catholic party as a compact phalanx resisting the encroachments of modern society and of the fatal secularist spirit. He accused the Corre- spondant of " making war on its natural friends the Catholics, and holdinfT out its hand to the adversaries of the Church — academicians, philosophers, eclectics." -^ The representatives of the Gorrespondant, on their side, maintained that " not every- thing in the modern spirit is bad." Its original manifesto — for it had been in existence since 1829 — had "appealed to all men of goodwill," had announced its design " to present Catholic truth to a society which no longer knows it," to " entertain no feeling for any one but goodwill and tender compassion." To this programme it still adhered at this juncture. In the words used by Fred(^ric Ozanam in describing the standpoint of its writers, it had "for its object 1 Boissard's Life of Foisset, p. 159. I 114 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. to seek in the human heart all the secret cords which can reunite it to Christianity, to reawaken in it the love of truth, goodness, and beauty ; and then to manifest in revealed faith the ideal of these three things to which every soul aspires." It adhered to the principles of ''liberty" advocated by Monta- lembert and Lacordaire, but they were expressed in a guarded form in its new manifesto, published in October 1855. "Si la religion seule," wrote the editors, " rend la liberte possible, elle trouve dans une sage libert(^, une juste accord, Teli^ment humain le plus favorable k son developpement au sein du monde moderne." These last words had an important bearing on the controversies which arose later on. Carrying out their several principles, the Uiiivers sup- ported, while the Correspondant opposed, the Abb^ Gaume's curious campaign in favour of excluding the Classics from the education of candidates for the priesthood, and of substituting patristic study in their place. So revolutionary a proposal, however, was not in harmony with the habitual moderation of Eome in such matters. The conductors of the Avenir had been reproved for being wanting in '' mode- ration " in their Liberal theories ; and now the opposite party failed to obtain papal countenance for its immoderate rigorism, as Lamennais had for his immoderate advocacy of freedom. The Pope in his Encyclical of March 1853 prescribed the continued use of the Classics, with all necessary precautions, and along with the patristic literature, — the plan which had already been advocated by M. Foisset in the Correspondant} Lamennais had ceased to be a Catholic for nearly twenty years, when the separation represented by the opposite lines of the Univers and the Correspondant became a fait accomptli ; and yet the force of that vigorous and perverse mind made itself felt even now, in a crisis in which he had personally no share. The influence of his earlier writings on both parties was unmistakable. Of the party which soon came to be called Ultramontane, to the exclusion of the Liberal school of Montalembert, no two men were more typical representatives ^ It Avas characteristic of the tendency of Veuillot's mind that when Louis Napoleon posed for some years as the protector of the Pope, that writer's absolutist tendencies asserted themselves on his behalf. The Univers was staunchly Imperial, while Lacordaire and his friends retained their constitutional sympathies. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 115 — though from different points of view — than Abbe Gerbet and Abbe Combalot. And Gerbet bad been joint-editor of the Avcnir, and Combalot had been Lamennais's disciple at La Chenaie. It is impossible not to trace much of the tendency to constant denunciation of the errors of the age on the one hand, and the hatred of compromise, the aggressive character which marked the school of Yeuillot on the other, to this direct infusion of the spirit of Lamennais. On the other side, the cry of the Avenir for a '' free Church in a free State," and the enthusiasm for liberty which Lamennais had fostered in Lacordaire and Montalembert, were still moving forces in the Liberal Catholic party. The disastrous consequences of division became apparent ; and as time went on the exaggerations of the Univcrs tended to drive Montalembert in a direction opposed to those who were most prominently identified with the assertion of papal claims. But both parties were equally noted, at starting, for this characteristic of the new Ultramontanism ; and it was Mon- talembert who raised his voice in the early days of the Eoman question, and checked the tyranny of Louis Napoleon for a time. That Prince proposed in 1849 to impose conditions on the re- establishment of the papal sovereignty, which were intolerable under the circumstances. Amncstie gen^rale, S^cidarisation dcs emplois, Promulgation a Rome du Code NaiooUon, were the head- ings of the scheme. Montalembert protested in the Assembly. By a happy and successful rhetoric he gained general sympathy, and represented the contest as one between the weak and the strong. " When a man is condemned to fight against a woman," he said, ''if that woman is not the most degraded of beings she can brave him with impunity. She says to him, ' Strike, but you dishonour yourself, and you will not conquer.' Well the Church is not a woman — she is much more than a woman, she is a mother. She is the mother of Europe, she is the mother of modern society, she is the mother of modern humanity. And though a son may be unnatural, rebellious, ungrateful, it is in vain for him to struggle — he is still a son ; and there comes a moment in every struggle with the Church when this war becomes insupportable to the human race, and when he who has maintained it falls, overpowered, annihilated, either by defeat or by the unanimous reprobation of humanity." This speech, which was one of Montalembert's ii6 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. great triumphs, aroused the enthusiasm of friend and foe. " I envy him for it/' said M. Thiers ; " but I hope the envy is no sin. I love the beautiful, and I love Montalembert." In spite, however, of these loyal sentiments towards the Holy See, the Liberal party no longer held with the views of de Maistre. They had early abandoned Lamennais's non- natural interpretation of the Ultramontane theory ; and they established, by their opposition to the exaggerations which Yeuillot's friends advocated in the name of Ultramontanism, the popular antithesis of our own time between Ultramontane and Liberal. The original meaning of the word Ultramontane became almost forgotten. The Ultramontane or Transalpine had been to Fenelon and to his countrymen, the dweller beyond the Alps, who maintained certain papal prerogatives, notably the doctrine of papal infallibility, which the Frenchman — the Galilean or Cisalpine — denied. But the Ultramontane of the Univcrs — Veuillot, Combalot, Gaume — was, to the popular imagination, an uncompromising aggressor, and even fanatical opponent of modern civilisation in the name of papal claims. His temper was not that of the great exponent of Ultramontanism in the last century — the gentle and sympathetic Fenelon. So marked is the contrast that it is hard to persuade an average man of the world that the dogma of papal infallibility defined in 1870, which is popularly associated with modern Ultramon- tanism, is identical in substance with that so strenuously advocated by Fenelon.^ The new school, starting with the somewhat aggressive attitude of de Maistre, adding to it that additional love of extreme statement which the days of Lamen- nais's supremacy had introduced, achieved their final develop- ment under the influence of the marked personality of Veuillot. They lost the ballast supplied by those able and moderate thinkers, Foisset and his friends, who threw in their lot with the Correspondcmf, and assumed an attitude almost as unlike in its exaggerations to the original genius of the ^ It has been pointed out to me tliat the statement in the text is even short of the truth. Fenelon pressed th6 extent of papal infallibility in his controversy with the Jansenists beyond anything expressly defined by the Council. (See Appendix A.) On the other hand, the condition given by Fenelon for an act being ascertainably infallible, that it should be published with the consent of the Apostolic Sec, although it has no practical bearing at the present time, is to^ be observed in the shape in which he states the doctrine. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 117 movement as was the democratic Ultramontanism of Lamennais himself. The filiation of this later version of modern Ultramon- tanism from the earlier, and the distinction between the two, will be recognised by some examples. It took its stand, as did the earlier, on the principles of traditionalism. But a philosophy cannot long preserve its delicacy after it has become a creed for the many; and the difference between the earlier and the later conception of traditionalism, in ethos as well as in logic, will be seen in a citation from each. Here is a passage from a MS. by a disciple ^ and translator of de Bonald, typical of the temper of mind which grew out of the earlier philosophy of traditionalism : — There is in the succession of facts from the apparition of Christ on the earth a connection so marvehous and so rigorously exact that every human science, mathematics included, pales in twilight by comparison ; and the building up of the universal Church in which all languages, all races, all intellects, all persons enter as materials, finding their place according to the vocation which comes to them and the cardinal virtues which are communicated to them, forms the highest teaching and the basis of every other. There were in the ancient world sciences and schools as there were religions and peoples : in the new world there can be but one science, one teaching — that of the Word and that of the Church, the teaching of the whole human family. A retrograde step was taken at the time of the Crusades. Instead of continuing the conquest of the world by the Church and by teaching, they wanted to retake with temporal arms the empty tomb of Christ. It was reconquered, but not by a conquest which becomes an inheritance ; and the vain sciences of paganism and of the peoples of the East were brought back to Europe to its scourge. These sciences have broken Christian unity and devoured Christianity, at first as an organisa- tion and [then] actually in its organic parts. The filiation from such ideas — conceived in 1820 and endorsed by their author twenty years later — of the traditional- istic element in the new Ultramontanism of the fifties, and the distortion and exaggeration which they underwent in the process, will be readily seen in the works of one of the most prolific writers of the later school. 1 Baron Clemens von Hiigel, an Austrian diplomatist, and afterwards keeper of the Secret State Archives in Vienna. I owe the I\IS. to the kindness of his nephew, Baron Friedrich von HUgel. ii8 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. Le> ver rongeur die dix-neuvi^me sUcle, published in 1851 by L'Abb6 Gaume, at the very outset of the separation between the Univers and Corresjpondant, was the first of a series of works written in a spirit of marked opposition to the tendencies of the age. I have already referred to its practical object — the abolition of the study of Classics in the 'pctits s4minaires. But while the Pope's distinct countenance of classical studies in his Encyclical marked the book in the eyes of the majority as extreme, its line of thought was accepted in many respects both in Eome and in France. It is hardly too much to say that M. Gaume attributes all the evils of Christendom, throughout its history, to the study of the Pagan Classics. Taking up that side of traditionalism which attributes all the highest and surest knowledge to the perpetuation of Christian tradition, he sees in classical study — as the Austrian writer saw in the Arabian philosophy — the introduction of an unchristian tradition which mars the Christian. '' Catholic tradition rejected as a trammel and the infallibility of the reason erected into an axiom," led, in this writer's opinion, to the worst excesses in philosophy and the worst horrors in social life. Plato's spiritualism and Aristotle's empiricism account respec- tively for the pantheism of Spinoza and the sensism of Locke. Hence the pedigree is easily traceable. " Locke trouve dans la sensation I'unique source des idees ; Condillac invente I'homme statue ; Maillot arrive c\ I'homme carpe ; et le baron Holbach, resumant dans le fameux Systkne de la nature le principe et les consequences de cette ecole, nous donne comme le manuel de la raison et de la conduite, Tassemblase mon- strueux de toutes les absurdites et toutes les turpitudes du materiahsme et de I'atheisme tant ancien que moderne." And while the line from Aristotle to Baron Holbach is traced in the domain of speculation, Plato and the sophists alike are held responsible for the two most terrible upheavals of established order which Christendom has seen. " The ancient sophists opened the way to the barbarians ; their modern disciples delivered society to the destroyers of '93. The thought of the wise had prepared the Revolution, the arm of the 'people carried it out." Plato had " marked out the ideal " in his BcpjiUie. " Priests and laymen in the sixteenth, seven- teenth, and eighteenth centuries set themselves to celebrate AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 119 this wonder. The hour of action comes. Miraheau takes the first step downwards ; Eobespierre the second ; St. Just the third ; Antonelle the fourth ; and Babeuf, more logical than all his predecessors, takes the last, to absolute communism — to pure Platonism." ^ The papal condemnation in 1855 of Traditionalism, as a philosophical theory of the source of all knowledge, increased rather than diminished the tendency which this work mani- fested. Driven from the roots the traditionalist principle took refuge in the branches. Tradition, being no longer regarded as the necessary source of the knowledge of first truths, was cul- tivated as the guarantee of the innumerable legends, some authentic, some not, which have clustered round the figures of Church history. There had always existed in France as else- where those who loved traditional stories of a marvellous nature, and tended to multiply the number which were presented as facts rather than as legends. The existence of this school has always been inseparable from the element of pious belief which enters so much into popular devotion. But in pre-revolution days there had also been the critical school of the Maurists and their friends, which offered an alternative to minds averse to implicit reliance on traditions which appeared to them vague and uncertain. This had passed away, and was not yet re- placed. The spirit which led Mabillon, in the face of strong opposition, to reject from his Ads of the Benedictine Saints all whom he considered to have no certain claim to be Benedictine, and to oppose in another work the custom of venerating the relics of unknown saints, the spirit now represented by the Bol- landists or by such writers as Abbe Duchesne in his analytical works, had no prominent or learned representatives ; and con- sequently able men of the school of M. Gaume were able to direct popular opinion all the more widely. The Acta sinccra Marty- rum, by Mabillon's companion and biographer, Euinart, to this day the standard authority on the subject, was replaced by the thoroughly uncritical and inexact Actes des Martyrs of Gueranger. Church history was allowed to be represented by such men as the Abb4 Darras ; and many French Catholics were ready to accept without question what the Bollandist Pere de Smedt has not hesitated to call " the historical errors and lies of M. Ch. 1 p. 329. I20 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. Barthelemy." Incredible and unsupported stories in history and extravagances in dogma were the order of the day. Those traditions or doctrines which were most uncongenial to the modern world were placed in strong relief, and appeared to those who shrank from the new traditionalism to be depicted grotesquely out of perspective. The disparagement of the individual intellect, which Bonald had so carefully limited, was extended by later writers, without his genius, to the dispar- agement of scientific research itself; and even after the con- demnation by Rome of such exaggerations, the temper which prompted them — of distrust of modern science and civilisation — remained. Thus after the traditionalists had set aside as untrust- worthy the scientific methods, which establish a connection between the moon and the month, M. Gaume, in his Traiti clu Saint Esprit, accounted for the seven days in the week, by explaining that the devil marked out a day as suitable for the invocation of each of the seven sub-devils, who administer the seven deadly sins. In a similar spirit of emphasising what was likely to irritate the modern world, a whole treatise of four hundred pages was devoted by him to Holy Water. Its origin, not only from the days of our Lord but from the early days of the Old Testament, was illustrated by traditional stories. To its use were attributed the most far-reaching benefits, to its neglect the worst of evils. " What are the things," he asks, " which ordinary holy water purifies ? Man and the world. Neither more nor less." It purifies " man and creatures from all wliich by the malice of the great homicide [the devil] menaces their life, their health, and tends to make them unhappy by turnino- them from their providential end." And elsewhere he com- pares the special properties of holy water to the peculiarities of the waters of Vichy, Plombih^es, or Luxeuil ; and dwells on those wonderful "powers in virtue of which the bare application of it can cleanse the soul, which is an " object of repulsion to God," steeped " in venial sin from head to foot." It is obvious that such writing was not calculated to attract the free-thinkers of the time, or even average men of the world. Early in the day the methods of Gaume and Veuillot exasperated the more cultivated Catholics ; and eventually the remonstrances of such men as Dupanloup assumed the indignant tone of which we shall have to speak V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 121 later. The collection together of all the most startling suppositions which individual theologians have tolerated, and the advocacy in some cases of forms of expression which appeared to most readers to go even beyond what could be tolerated, were extremely trying to those who considered that an age which did not understand the depth and beauty of Catholicism had to be won and not further repelled. Those who trusted that the need of the human heart for religion would lead Frenchmen back to the beautiful counsels of St. Francis of Sales and Fenelon, and who took hope from the conferences of Eavignan and Lacordaire, fairly lost patience at the devotion of talent to emphasising and exaggerating points which were, in the ordinary course, the last which could appeal to earnest inquirers. Serious controversy, the exposition of the fallacies in unchristian philosophy, had its value. Still more valuable was that persuasive writing which exhibits Christianity as the fulfilment of the deepest aspirations of the soul ; as St. Paul declared the unknown God who had been ignorantly wor- shipped. But what could such writing as this effect ? Frederic Ozanam speaks on the subject with painful feeling. '' This school of writers," he says, " professes to place at its head Count de Maistre, whose opinions it exaggerates and denaturalises. It goes about looking for the boldest paradoxes, the most disputable propositions, provided that they irritate the modern spirit. It presents the truth to men not by the side which attracts them, but by that which repels them. It does not propose to bring back unbelievers, but to stir up the passions of believers." M. Gaume, on the other hand, when defending his work on "Holy Water," simply appeals to the uselessness of con- troversy with the irreligious world, and the hopelessness of influencing it, as a fact of experience. " Nous ne convertirons pas," he writes to a friend, " ni Mazzini ni Garibaldi, ni leurs acolytes de I'ancien et du nouveau continent, libres penseurs, solidaires, spirites ; nous n'eteindrons dans leur coeur ni la haine du Catholicisme ni la soif des places et de I'argent ... nous ne ferons rien de tout cela. Mais quel qu'eut et4 le sujet de notre ^tude, I'aurions-nous fait ? Vous qui etes plus puissants que nous, vous I'avez tent^ : avez-vous reussi ? Yos beaux discours, vos savants ecrits, vos protestations, vos superbes 122 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. articles, ont-ils retards meme une heure le progres de la revolu- tion ? Ce n'est pas avec des arguments qu'on conjure les fl^aux de Dieu ; c'est par la prik^e et la penitence." And he goes on to explain that he knows that Catholic devotional writing cannot, in the nature of the case, be understood by the modern man of letters. " Pour les lettr^s de ton pays, du mien, et de tons les pays . . . ils vont hausser les ^paules . . . que veux-tu ? Ils nous mesurent a leur aune." ^ The Church and the world then are, according to this view of things, simply different and hostile camps. Pray for the world, let Church tradition grow and thrive in its own chan- nels. To strengthen and complete in all its smallest details the edifice of the Catholic devotional life was a writer's best object. Thus you feed the souls of the faithful, and enable them to pray the better for the outside world. But allied with this view was a further one, which con- firmed the school of the Univers in this attitude of estrange- ment from the modern world. They tended to view current Catholic teaching, apart from matters of faith, as more or less final in its form. They were little ready to see the necessity, for the sake of accuracy, of viewing it in the light of modern discoveries, and thereby correcting its expression. They were little alive to the possibility of such modifications being called for as the discovery of Copernicanism introduced in the current interpretation of Josue. If traditional expressions of belief conflicted with modern scientific theories, no doubt could arise but that the science of an evil day was wrong. If individual Catholics had difficulties as to such collisions, it showed a want of faith in them. Openness of intellect and patient candour were perhaps not congenial qualities to this school, which may have looked on such pretensions much as Canning did, and held them to be pretexts for the unreal many-sided- ness which " notes with keen discriminating sight, black's not so black nor white so very white." A strong man, perhaps they felt, must be to some extent narrow. That gift of judging fairly and impartially from all points of view, which the ideal intellect might have, is not bestowed on limited human nature. The best we can hope is to see clearly from one point of view ; and for Catholics, whose faith assures ^ Veau henite du dix-neuvihne si^cle, pp. 4-6. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 123 them that theirs is the truest point, exclusiveness and one- sidedness are simply intellectual virtues. Hence the tendency of the school to uncompromising views. Hence M. Gaume's expressed contempt for science, and his love for the most extreme vagaries hoth of popular devotion and of theological expression; and, on the other hand, M. Veuillot's personal attacks on the free-thinkers of the day. The careful separation of good and had elements in the character of an enemy of the Church, or the delicate weighing of the certain, the prohahle, the possible, the impossible, in dogmatic belief, seemed to them often to savour of that plausible and corroding rationalism which attenuates and ends by destroying the deepest and most vital differences of opinion. An infidel was not a man to be analysed by a sympathetic psychology, or to have the pedigree of his infidelity examined, and the unbelief partially excused by the heredity of persons or of circumstance. He was an infidel, — a man to be condemned and avoided, — and there was an end of it. Such was the new Ultramontanism in its original source and in its most direct current. But while the peculiarities typified in such wTitings as I have cited, by Veuillot and Gaume, damaged the school in the eyes of the world, which looked on these men as representatives of modern Ultramontanism, there were in reality many sym- pathisers in the movement who were comparatively free from such excesses. The tendency to emphasise the papal authority, and to centralise the forces of the Church, existed, apart from such marked extravagances of thought and expression as have been described above, in Germany, in Italy, in Spain. It had ever been characteristic of the Jesuits as a body; and in many places they joined forces with the school of de Maistre. The German Jesuits and the theologians of Mayence were active members of the school. The Civilta Cattolica, the organ of the Italian Jesuits, was equally pronounced. In France itself, although the influence of the Unimrs was very great, its spirit was not by any means typical of the whole Ultramontane party. The Jesuits of Lyons, of whom P^re Eamiere was a distinguished representative, shared Veuillot's sympathy with the centralising tendency, but advocated it in a very different spirit. With all of these the lessening of national peculiarities 124 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. in the various churches — the tendency to uniformity with Eome in discipline, in theological and philosophical method, in ritual, in devotion — was a desired object ; and the promoters of this object rapidly became the most powerful party in France. The Eoman liturgy largely replaced the Galilean ; St. Sulpice was remodelled in the same spirit under Archbishop Morlot ; the modern devotional writings of Gaume and Segur in great measure replaced those of Fenelon and Bossuet. But the persons instrumental in these measures were often far from being entire sympathisers in the attitude of M. Gaume, or in the personal abuse employed by M. Yeuillot. As so often happens, however, the characteristics of the extremest writers arrested attention, and coloured the popular conception of the whole party. The Catholic esprit cle corps, the passion- ate loyalty to the Holy See, the devotion to the Apostolic ideal, the personal piety of these writers were not denied. But none the less their extravagances of thought and language proved an effective weapon in the hands of the enemies of the Church ; while the tendency to censoriousness and personal abuse caused much friction among Catholics themselves. It was the voice and the metliod of Lamennais used for the purpose of anathematising his own friends. A word must be added as to the Catholic revival in another country, with whose controversies Mr. Ward came later on in contact. Catholicism in Germany in the beginning of this century was at nearly as low an ebb as in France. The suppression of Bishoprics and convents and confiscation of church property, which followed the Napoleonic wars, had thoroughly cowed German Catholics. Even the intellectual productions, specially characteristic of the German divines, ceased. " Scientific and theological works from their pens became daily more rare," writes a German historian, " until finally they ceased almost entirely to appear." The first symptom of revival was the stream of conversions among eminent men in the beginning of the century. The religious reaction after the Eevolution was fostered by dread of the invincible emjDeror. " The universal sadness," writes Heine, " found consolation in religion . . . and in fact against Napoleon none could help but God Himself.'' This movement refused for the most part to take the form of Protestantism. V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 125 Leopold Frederick, Count Stolberg, the historian, led the van in 1800. He withdrew from the public service on his con- version, and henceforth devoted his energies to writing; many of his works having a directly religious character. His History of the Religion of Jcsiis Christ was mainly instrumental in the conversion of Prince Adolphus of Mecklenberg. A few years later (1805) came the reception of Frederick Schlecjel and his oifted wife. Attracted at first to Catholicism on grounds partly ai^sthetic, his grasp of Catholic principle deepened, and his Philosoijli y of History, written shortly before his death, is an evidence of the colour which his thought ultimately assumed. Disciples of his in a great measure were many of the Eomantic School, which included a number of eminent writers, and the group of artists, of whom Overbeck was the most conspicuous, who joined the Catholic Church about the year 1814. With these men, as with Schlegel, the movement began on aesthetic grounds; but assumed, in the hands of such thinkers as Joseph Gorres, a deeper intellectual character, and took its stand on the study of history. Heine noted the whole case with anger, and spoke of it with his usual mixture of insight and scoffing raillery. "The aristocratic Jesuit monster," he says, " at that period raised its unsightly head from amidst the dark forest depths of German literature " ; and he thus describes the origin of the movement in the love of medifeval art : — When the artists of the Middle Ages were recommended as models, and were so highly praised and admired, the only explana- tion of their superiority that could be given was that these men beheved in that which they depicted, and that therefore Avith their artless conceptions they could accomplish more than the later sceptical artists, notmthstanding that the latter excelled in technical skill. In short, it was claimed that faith worked wonders, and in truth how else could the transcendent merits of a Fra Angelico di Fiesole or the poems of a Brother Ottfried be explained ? Hence the artists who were honest in their devotion to art and Avho sought to imitate the pious distortions of these miraculous pictures and sacred uncouthness of those marvel -abounding poems and the in- explicable mysticisms of those olden works— these artists determined to wander to the same Hippocrene whence the old masters had derived their supernatm^al inspkations. They made a pilgrimage to Eome, where the Vicar of Christ was to reinvigorate consumptive German art with asses' milk. In brief, they betook themselves to 126 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. the lap of the Eoman Catholic Apostolic Church, where alone, according to their doctrine, salvation was to be secured. Many of the adherents of the Komantic School — for instance Joseph Gorres and Clemens Brentano — were Catholics by birth, and required no formal ceremony to mark their readhesion to the Catholic faith ; they merely renounced their freethinking views. Others, however, such as Frederick Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, Novalis, Werner, Schiitz, Carov6, Adam Miiller, etc., were born Protestants, and their conversion to Catholicism required a public ceremony. The above list of names includes only authors ; the number of painters who in swarms simultaneously abjured Protestantism and reason was much larger.^ The furious attacks of Heinricli Voss on Stolberg for his conversion, which he described as due to a league between Jesuitism and aristocracy, were so personally bitter as to benefit instead of injuring the Catholic cause. Then came Mohler's Symholism in 1830 — a book for which his biographer claims that it created a greater sensation than any theological work of the century. The persecution by the Prussian government of the Archbishop of Cologne in 1837, followed by that of the Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen, for maintaining the Catholic doctrine on mixed marriages, — culminating in the imprisonment of both, — was perhaps the turning point in the German Catholic revival. In the words of the historian already quoted, it " excited the sympathies of the whole Catholic world, and in Germany caused a reaction in favour of the Catholic Church more loyal and outspoken than had been known for many years." - As we have seen, the revival was neither in Prance nor in Germany a merely theological and devotional revival. It was also the renewal of appreciation of the whole "genius of Christianity," to use the title of Chateaubriand's great work. Chateaubriand in Prance, Pouqu^ in Germany, and a little later ]\Ianzoni in Italy brought Catholic life into fiction ; and we ^ See Heine's Essay on the "Romantic School," contributed in 1833 to the Review Europe LitUndre. - So too said Dollinger. In the notes of a conversation of 1855 with the present Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, he is reported to have said of the imprisonment of the Archbishop of Cologne that it "was the spark that lit the flame of the movement in Germany in favour of Catholicity. The dormant awoke. The lax took up arms, and throughout this portion of the continent the Catholic religion took a new start. Gorres wrote a work, Athanasius, which in one year went through five editions." V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 127 cannot but recall the effect of tlie Fromessi Sposi on one so indifferent to theology as Macaulay. '' I finished Manzoni's novel not without many tears," he writes. " The scene between the Archbishop and Don Abbondio is one of the noblest that I know. ... If the Church of Eome were really what Manzoni represents her to be, I should be tempted to follow Newman's example." The Eomantic School of Cornelius and Overbeck represented Catholic art in Germany, while their example found equally zealous if less distinguished imitators in France, in the Confrerie de St. Jean originated in 1840 by Lacordaire. The Catholic Eevival in Germany developed gxadually so many distinctive lines of thought, that no attempt can be made here to enumerate them. But some of the most im- portant have an immediate bearing on the theme of this work, and must be spoken of. It was natural that the revival should take a critical and intellectual direction in Germany, as in France it bore a more social and political aspect. But there was a certain analogy between the story of the two movements in some of their leading features. In both countries, as we have seen, the revival was in great part a reaction against the Eevolution, and against its parents — the philosophies of Eousseau and Voltaire. De Bonald in France and Stolberg and Schlegel in Germany invoked once more the authority of tradition, and turned to the pure streams of the Christian revelation and life, which had been polluted from the Eenaissance onwards. Here, indeed, at the outset, was a differ- ence. Bonald was an Absolutist. Schlegel was, to some extent, a Liberal. Bonald's views had a strong political colour. The German revival kept, on the whole, clear of politics. Again, the mystical element, due in part to the influence of Jacobi and Klopstock, was present in Germany, and scarcely at all operative in France. But the initial spring — the return to Christian tradition, the sense that the unbroken continuity of the Catholic Church represented that tradition — was common to both. Once more devotion to the Holy See — that spirit of loyalty with which de Maistre had fired the whole Catholic world — was at the outset equally characteristic of the German movement. Stolberg, Schlegel, Mohler, and Dollinger himself were markedly Ultramontane. Gorres, too, the parent of the 128 THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL chap. deeper historical spirit among German Catholics, was equally so. Thus in Germany as in France we have the ancestors of very different movements united at starting in their Ultra- montanism. As Montalembert represented in early days equally with Veuillot the party most bent on enforcing the papal claims, so Dollinger was, in his youth, almost as Ultramontane as his friend of later years, Windischmann,^ the Vicar- General at Munich. Dollinger was opposed both to the principle of Gallicanism and to ecclesiastical absolutism. Both were infringements on the liberties of the Church. As long as Ultramontanism meant, primarily, a protest against State tyranny, Dollinger was Ultra- montane. The later change was partly in Dollinger, and partly, as he considered, in the Ultramontane party itself. " It cannot ... be denied," writes an intimate friend of Dollinger (see Guardian, 22nd Jan. 1890, p. 142), " that in those early years Dr. Dollinger leant to the Ultramontane side. ... As time went on, however, and Ultramontanism grew in strength, and became more and more the representative of the strict Koman system, Dollinger drifted away from it. This does not mean, however, that he moved in the direction of Gallicanism as that system is sometimes understood. The system which prevailed in France, particularly under Louis XV. and Cardinal Fleury, found no favour in his eyes. He regarded it as an instrument by which rulers who deemed themselves irresponsible to all men, extended their power over the Church. He sympathised warmly with the appellants and the re-appellants. He opposed Ultramontanism because he considered it an attempt to introduce the principle of absolutism into the Church itself. Both Ultramontanisrii and Political Gallicanism were, in his view, endeavours to curtail ecclesiastical liberty and to make the caprice of rulers superior to law." In short, DolUnger's movement was not towards Gallicanism, but towards only those tenets of Gallicanism which were absorbed into the new-born Liberal Catholicism. ^ This was the Wiudischmann whom Dollinger described as ' ' an Ultra- montane by nature, with a native capacity for organising and ruling " ; and as " the only person whom I ever knew who combined the highest qualities of a critical scholar with Ultramontane opinions " {v. Guardian, article by H. P. L. 22nd Jan. 1890). V AND THE NEW ULTRAMONTANISM 129 The new antithesis between the Liberal movement and the Ultramontane dated in France, as we have seen, from 1850. In Germany there was no sudden rupture which at all corre- sponded with the dispute over the Falloux law ; but a number of historical and critical students gradually separated them- selves more and more from the distinctively Eoman school, which had its headquarters in the city of Mayence. With Dollinger himself the attitude of estrangement from Eome began to show itself in the fifties. Henceforward the Mayence school, led by the great Bishop von Ketteler, was in opposition to the tendency of the school of Munich, whose most extreme developments were represented later on by Froschammer in philosophy, and by Dollinger in history and theology. Its chief organ, the Katholih, had a prolonged discussion with the quarterly review of Tubingen, which advocated almost as strongly as the school of Dollinger the Liberal developments of critical and historical learning, and the freedom of science in its relation to Church authority.-^ The German Jesuits were in harmony with the school of Mayence, and their organ the Stimmen aus Maria Laach was as markedly in accord with the more Eoman school as the Katholih, Of the spread of in- tellectual Liberalism in Germany and England under Dollinger's influence, and of Mr. Ward's opposition to it, an opposition seconded and echoed in Germany itself by such writers as Dr. Scheeben of Mayence, and Fathers Schneemen and Schazler, who avowedly adopted Mr. Ward's analysis of the Ultramon- tane position in their vindication of the papal prerogatives, I shall have to speak later on. ^ See Hoine and Foreign Review, vol. iv. p. 214. K CHAPTER VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 1858-1863 Mr. Ward, coming upon the controversy between Liberal Catholicism and Ultramontanism in 1858, when the divergence of the parties was acutest, had necessarily to lean to one or other side ; and when the extent of papal authority was in question, there could be little doubt as to his choice. But his spirit was far more akin to that of de Maistre and de Bonald, than to the spirit of their later representatives, Veuillot and Gaume. The personal rancour which characterised Veuillot was foreign to Mr. Ward's temper and taste ; and how distasteful to him were such views as M. Gaume's on Holy Water will be appreciated by those who remember his disgust at the somewhat similar principles which were advocated by certain writers in reference to the benefits due to the scapular. But the enthusiasm for Eome as the one source of unity, strength, and peace, in Ward as in de Maistre, was a ruling passion ; while the hopelessness of attaining practically to the highest truths by mere argument and analysis, had been, as we have else- where seen, with Ward as with de Bonald, a deep-set feeling. There was probably an element of direct influence here, so far as de Maistre was concerned. Ward had been familiar with de Maistre's works at Oxford, and quoted him frequently in his writings. Carlyle's French Revolution was also a book which, at the time of its publication, had an influence on him, and helped in some degree to make the nightmare of the French writer an influential force on his English disciple. But on the whole, the spirit and aspirations, which he shared with the French Ultramontane, derived their strength in the Englishman from a different source. CHAP. VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 131 The vision of horror which led de Maistre to look to the Eoman Pontiff as the one hope for order and peace, was due to personal experience of a life lived through the Terror of '93. And perhaps nothing short of a personal experience could have given so keen an edge and marked a direction to his views. Mr. Ward had also the personal experience of con- fusion, of anarchy, of destruction. But the confusion was that of opposite dogmas energising and colliding in the Church of his birth ; the anarchy was the free thought of those who replaced impossible contradictions by a spirit of free criticism imported from Germany ; the destruction was not the republican baptisms in the Seine, or the September massacres, or the regi- cide, but the breaking down of the landmarks of traditional Christianity and the ruin of faith. He had looked at indi- viduals, as Clough, who in early youth had dwelt with peaceful certainty on the details of the Gospel story, and could now do so no longer. He had gone through a phase of the same dreari- ness himself. The depopulated scene of Strauss's Life, of Jesus was as truly to him a land of waste and dreariness, an out- come of barbarian outrage and destruction, as to de Maistre were the churches pillaged by the Jacobins, and the country robbed by massacre and emigration of nine-tenths of its clergy. The Christian imagination could no longer rove with confident trust through scenes full of consolation, whose cer- tainty was divinely guaranteed. The consoling power was gone from the shadowy figure which replaced the Son of God. The certainty was gone from all that filled in the meagre outline of the story which criticism allowed to remain. So, too, Comte's Positive PMloso'phy , which he had read so eagerly at Oxford, made a solitude in the metaphysics of religion, as Strauss did in its history. Once more came the temporary victory of destructive forces ; once more the yearning for the peace of the ancien regime; once more the sense that St. Peter's Eock was the one foundation which could not be shaken, which would support the lesser principles of order and trust, and restore peace and stability. With Mr. Ward the Eevolution concerned primarily the world of philosophy, as it did with so many in the land of thought, Germany. Athe- ism was its outcome rather than regicide. " On both sides of the Ehine," writes Heinrich Heine, " we behold the same 132 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. rupture with the past ; it is loudly proclaimed that all rever- ence for tradition is at an end. As in France no privilege, so in Germany no thought is tolerated without proving its right to exist ; nothing is taken for granted. And as in France fell the monarchy, the keystone of the old social system, so in Germany fell theism, the keystone of the intellectual ancien regimer With Ward, as with de Maistre, what had been was but a symptom and a forewarning of what was impending. Ever since 1844 he had constantly reasserted what he had said in the Ideal, that the movement of the age was towards that negation in religion of which Voltaire and Comte represent, though in very different spirits, successive stages. The reli- gious revivals did not shake this belief. They did not appear to him any more to lessen the fundamental uncertainty which was growing, than the religious revival of Augustus gave back the primitive faith and unquestioning heroism of the Eoman kingdom. The destructive movement continued intermittently, but still with persistency, as the Eevolution reappeared in 1830, in 1848, in 1870. A great crisis might come at any time and reveal suddenly the really powerful agents, denuded of the light-sitting though all-covering clothes of conventional civilised life. Then would appear the true depth and breadth of the destructive forces, and the meagre residue of deep belief, often covered by so much religious sentiment and profession. Then would appear also the strength, and the absolute neces- sity, of a real living principle of Authority — existing in fact and not only in theory. He spoke of the war of principles constantly as of an actual battle, with its din and confusion. Energising ideas are described as " clamorously distinct," their collision as the " frightful conflict of opinion raging round us." His anticipation is expressed again and again in passages of which the following is a sample : " An internecine conflict is at hand between the army of Dogma and the united hosts of indifferentism, heresy, atheism ; a conflict which will ultimately also (I am persuaded) turn out to be a conflict between Catholic Theism on the one side and Atheism of this or that kind on the other. Looking at things practically, the one solid and inexpugnable fortress of truth is the Catholic Church built on the Kock of Peter." ^ ^ Essays mi the Church's Doctrinal Authority, p. 24. VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 133 And the word " fortress," which he makes use of in this passage, is suggestive of further points in his treatment. The German sceptic has called the Catholic Church the Bastille of the soul. Mr. Ward, substituting the idea of a fortress for that of a prison, fully accepts the position. The safety for a Catholic against the evil influences of surrounding free thought lies, in his view, in " intellectual captivity/' in shutting the intellect within the sacred influences which the Church supplies, in order to preserve it from error. The freedom which leads to anarchy is the danger ; the surrender to restraint and authority is the safeguard. The intellect is no more trustworthy in its independent rovings than the will is. If there is no higher law to give truth to the one and goodness to the other, then a philosophy of pessimism must result ; for lawlessness can never lead to happiness. But a Catholic has his fortress ready made, and has but to remain in it. " Independence of intellect," he writes, "just like independence of will is not man's healthy state but his disease and calamity. Independence of will consists in setting at nought every law, human and divine, and following each momentary passion and inclination. This is depravity ; this is misery . . . The will's perfection consists neither in independence nor in subjection to tyranny, but in subjection to God who is sanctity. Just so as regards one's intellect. Its perfection consists neither in independence from authority on the one hand nor in subjugation to false oracles on the other hand, but in absolute surrender to God who is Truth. It consists in submission to His expressed voice — whether that voice be heard in the dictates of reason or revela- tion — and in docility to His discoverable intimations. Not in intellectual independence but in intellectual captivity is true intellectual liberty and perfection." ^ With this conception of the value, — the necessity, — of authoritative guidance he made no secret of his wish to find and to prove the sphere of infallible papal utterances to he large ; and here we have another element of marked agreement with the new Ultramontanism as distinguished from the old. The argument from utility has a comparatively minor place in F^nelon ; it was the most powerful motive force with de Maistre and with Ward. The Pope was needed by de Maistre to keep ^ Dublin Review y January 1867. 134 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. order in times of revolution or of political crisis ; by Ward to keep order in times of intellectual anarchy. " The great thing we want," says de Maistre, " is for the Pope to settle things one way or another." Mr. Ward wrote an essay called " Are Infallible Definitions Rare ? " with the object of proving them to be very frequent ; and maintained that this was a matter of congratulation, as increasing the store of truth infallibly guaranteed. In the strong conviction, then, of the desirableness and utility of papal interference, the two writers are in accord. And we may concur in this sense with the remark of an acute critic that '' Dr. Ward ... is not so much a theologian as a theopolitician," and his explanation that Mr. Ward is drawn to the " most effective scheme of authority, the best calculated to beat down this wretched wild world into subjection," whicli " recommends itseK to him as the best moral disci- pline, and as satisfactorily supplying a moral want." This temper in their advocacy gave special force to both writers ; if it also gave to the form of their writings the character of what opponents stigmatised as special pleading. Each works directly to prove a case. Neither shrinks from energy of expression or even occasional paradox, in the abundance of their sense of the truth and justice of then' principles. The Revolution is " satanic " for de Maistre ; he insists that there is " no Christianity without the Pope " ; he declares, as we have seen, that " infallibility and supremacy " are " absolutely the same things under different names," and openly avows his utilitarian basis by saying that the great thing is not only to know " if the Pope is, but if he ought to be infallible." Mr. Ward on his side speaks of indifferentist principles as " fitting people for that hell which, unless they repent, they will without doubt for all eternity inhabit." While he does not rhetorically identify infallibility and supremacy, he frequently insists on the fact that the Pope is " ecclesiastically absolute " ; he urges the " profound intellectual submission required from a Catholic " to prevent his being " deplorably destitute of loyalty " ; and he wrote a jDamphlet on the extent of Infallibility of which the form rather than the substance gave it so much the appearance of enlarging a Catholic's obligations of belief, that Bishop Dupan- loup had it circulated among the Bishops and priests in Rome VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND i35 before the Vatican definition was made, as the best argument against it. Mr. Ward's resemblance to de Maistre was, as I have said, closer than to any of the French developers of his system — Gaume, Veuillot, or their friends. Mr. Oxenham has truly said that the comparison so often made, between Ward and Veuillot, was doubly unjust ; for Veuillot was in no sense a philosophical thinker, while his personal rancour had no counterpart in the Englishman. In his higher moods indeed Veuillot rose to de Maistre's broad conceptions, and was related to the English Ultramontane as his master was. Tlie crisis of the Commune was treated by him worthily. The underlying thought of his treatment was, in the words of a contemporary writer, " that material civilisation is, after all, infinitely petty and infinitely sad, because it touches only the crust of things and leaves the heart of man unchanged. The Ee volution has . . . brought a new gospel of liberty, equality, and fraternity for the healing of the nations, and has preached the message by the lips of such a John the Baptist as Eousseau, and such a Messiah as Napoleon. But the result is 'petroU. The Commune is the heaven to which the Eevolution has led poor France. She must learn, says Louis Veuillot, that she has been going, not towards heaven but towards hell ; she must wearily go back to the old guidance of the Church, if she would escape a destruction worse — infinitely worse — than Sedan or Paris in flames. She must learn once more the simple duty of obedience to an inscrutable will, and of faith in an unseen Eedeemer. Her hope lies in the Vatican. ... It is the gospel of an Ultramontane Carlyle." Substitute for France the human soul, for the Eevolution and the Commune the horrors of hope- less doubt and infidelity, and we have here Mr. Ward's attitude. But the very difference of the terrain which engaged his atten- tion marks the point at which the resemblance ends. While Veuillot occupied himself with concrete France, and lampooned the existing lihres 'pmsmrs, as well as the existing Liberal Catholics, while his attacks were on persons and parties, Mr. Ward, looking at the individual soul, peopled with passions and principles of thought and action, attacked abstract ideals and tendencies. Violence of language we have in both cases. But while Veuillot satirises and gossips about M. " Cliampfleury " and M. Eenan, or abuses Montalembert and Dupanloup, Mr. 136 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. Ward is found to be denouncing Liberalism, or Temporalism, or Indifferentism,or Intellectualism with a fierceness which suggests personal bitterness, and which reminds one how singularly living and real the abstract world was to him. Just as in Oxford days he characterised " that hateful and fearful type of anti- christ," Lutheranism, " in terms not wholly inadequate to its prodigious demerits," so he now sketched the influence of Worldliness on the soul as that of a " circumambient poison," and described the moral degradation of Intellectualism as an " idolatry " more " degrading " than that of " the worshipper of stocks and stones." The Lihres Penseurs and the Odeurs de Paris are chock - full of proper names ; the " Essays " in the Duhlin Review contain scores of pages without any personal reference; and where personal reference is made, the person is generally absolved, and even his subjective meaning is often excused, while his words are treated " solely in their legiti- mate objective sense." Turning now to the sequence of events, it must be noted that Mr. Ward's first connection with the continental schools of thought was indirect. His early controversies were with English thinkers, whose Liberalism was due in part to EngHsh, in part to French and German influences. The Liberal move- ment in England was at its height in these years. It was supreme in politics as well as in speculative thought. It con- tinued to be so until well on into the seventies. Erom 1841 to 1874 there was no large Conservative majority;^ and the occasional return of Conservatives to power was only the partial suspension of a movement which on the whole represented the English mind. And associated with this political tide was a general sanguineness as to the effects of freedom in all shapes, which showed itself in liberal theology, in the movement for secular education, in the relaxation of the University tests, in the belief in free trade, freedom of contract, freedom of association, in the advocacy, as though of self-evident truths, of the benefits of unrestricted liberty of the press and liberty of conscience, in the pursuit of the freest discussion on Biblical criticism, ^ The word ''large" is relative, but the dominance of Liberalism during these years will not be questioned. Speaking of the year 1874 Mr. Froude says, * England, it really seemed, had recovered from her revolutionary fever-fit for the first time since 1841 a strong Conservative majority was returned inde- pendent of the Irish vote " {Life of Lord Beaconsjleld, p. 235). VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 137 and on those new scientific theories which alarmed the upholders of the traditional theology. Trade was flourishing : scientific discovery moved apace : and there was the intoxication of general success which seemed to confirm the hopes of those who looked on the unchecked development of the Liberal Ideal as an infallible nostrum to cure all evils. Carlyle had struck a discordant note almost at the outset of the movement in the Latterday FampJdcts, but he was looked on as simply an eccentricity for writing them. With a wonderful trust in the teleology of the universe, most of the leading spirits in the country echoed Tennyson's words : — Let the great workl spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change ; and freedom in all its shapes was regarded as the one condi- tion for the forces of the universe to move without hindrance, and to accomplish the great destiny in store for them. Mill's book on Liberty was published in 1859. His work on Beprcsoitative Government appeared in the following year, containing in the most persuasive form the modern ideal of a State, in sharp contrast to the Catholic ideal of St. Thomas Aquinas's Dc Regiminc Frincijncm. Darwin's Origin of Species came out in the same year ; and the grave question was forced upon the attention of Christians — " Is modern research going to prove that the Biblical narrative of creation is unscientific ?" Essays and Bevietos, and Colenso's works in the years immedi- ately following, pressed further the question of scriptural in- spiration, and the minds of numbers were unsettled. Mr. Frederic Harrison marked the sympathy of a Positivist with the leaders of the Broad Church movement by his comments, in the Westminster Review, on their manifesto. The Jews were admitted to Parliament. A free Church and a free State were held up as an ideal, and disestablishment was spoken of as merely a matter of time — as a point to which the pro- gress of things must necessarily lead. And contemporaneously with the advance of the Liberal movement there was a growing change in the ethical convictions and standards of English public opinion. Coming fresh upon the world from the absolute seclusion in which he had lived for fourteen years, Mr. Ward was at once struck with what Mr. Mill has called the " mongrel 138 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. morality " of the later nineteenth century, and with its intel- lectual confusion. The growth of the secularist spirit, of which Cardinal Newman has written so eloquently in his dis- courses on University education, had been marked since Ward's Oxford days. In the Oxford of 1830-45 the conviction that this life was a preparation for the next, that to save one's soul was the great object, that the true standard of virtue was to be found in the Sermon on the Mount, was general, with a large majority, in their serious moments. In 1858 things were very different. It was partly — as Mr. Ward came across it — the difference between a religious university and an irreligious world. But it was also in great measure a change in the spirit of the times. The standard of ethics was less Christian, more purely naturalistic. Mr. Ward associated the change with the Liberal movement. He had no close sympathy with either political party, and had as hearty a dislike for stagnant Conser- vatism as for the excesses of ultra-Liberals; but the principles and watchwords of Liberalism were, he considered, both in politics and in theology, opposed to those of the old Christian civilisation. They were symbols of the new ideal of the aims and meaning of life. He held with Mr. Morley^ that, ethi- cally and politically, there was a homogeneous conception of life and society which expressed the modern tendency of the Eevolution ; and this was all around him still contending with the remains of the old ethical and political ideals of mediaeval Christendom. " The maxims and principles of Liberalism," said Frederick Schlegel, '' . . . can have no other tendency than to revolution." So wrote the German thinker with reference to Continental Liberalism ; and Mr. Ward held it to be true of English as well. He classed the ethical, political, and intellectual movements together, then, as naturally akin. To the modern ethical principles he gave the name " religious Liberalism " ; to the Liberal doctrine on the relations of the Church to modern society and modern science he gave the ^ "Christianity," writes Mr. Morley, "is the name for a gi^eat variety of changes which took place during the first centuries of our era, in men's ways of thinking and feeling about their spiritual relations with unseen powers, about their moral relations to one another, about the basis and type of social union. So the Revolution is now the accepted name for a set of changes which began faintly to take a definite practical shape . . . towards the end of the eighteenth century," etc. {HousseaUy vol. 1. p. 1). VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 139 name " ecclesiastical Liberalism " ; -^ and he treated both at length. And while Liberal principles in England were spreading, and were assuming the character of the scientific ideal which an enlightened mind must necessarily accept, signs were not wanting, among English Catholics, of a tendency to adopt them, more marked and unreserved than that of Montalembert or Lacordaire. The Ba7Mei\ afterwards called the Home and Foreign Hevieiv, perhaps the most uniformly able Catholic Eeview of the present century during its later years, was avowedly Liberal. And it appeared to Mr. Ward to worship the modern ideal, both in ethics and in politics, with an unreserve which was quite inconsistent logically with the principles of Christianity. Its history must be briefly given. The Bamhler had been started as a weekly paper in 1848. Its object was, in the words of its conductors, " while avoiding as far as possible the domain of technical theology, to provide a medium for the expression of independent opinion on subjects of the day, whether interesting to the general public or specially affecting Catholics." Its success from the first was marked. On the 1st of September 1848 it was enlarged, and thenceforth pub- lished monthly. It was attempted at first to keep its scope to matters of purely literary interest, but " the events of the time and the circumstances of English Catholicism " gradually led its conductors " to open their pages to investigations of a deeper and more complex nature." It gained contributors of gieat and even brilliant literary talent ; and it treated philoso- phical and social problems on markedly Liberal principles. Its general sentiments were expressed in the manifestoes issued from time to time by its conductors, and incidentally in editorial articles ; and they became more pronounced as time went on. "Modern society," they wrote, "has developed no security for freedom, no instrument of progress, no means of arriving at truth, which we look upon with indifference or suspicion." And speaking of the scope of the Eeview they added, " not only do we exclude from our range all that concerns the ascetic life and the more intimate relations of religion, but we most ^ See e.g., Essays on the Church's Doctrinal Authority j p. 88. I40 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. willingly devote ourselves to subjects quite remote from all religious bearing." Mr. Ward held that such professions were, under the circumstances, both unsatisfactory and impossible to carry out. And the actual articles in the Revieio, even before some of these explicit avowals, gave evidence of the unsatis- factory nature of its programme. The sweeping advocacy of all modern instruments of progress resulted, he considered, in an almost habitual treatment of Papal teaching as antiquated, and of the modern liberties and modern scientific theories as claiming supreme and unreserved allegiance. And again, the exclusion of all subjects with a religious bearing was, considering the in- timate connection between the social and religious life, either an empty profession, or an avowed divorce of sociology from religion which was equally uncatholic. And further, the Revieio appeared to restrict its Catholic principles to the accept- ance of the definitions of faith, and to set aside as unimportant and often untrue the whole mass of ethical and doctrinal teaching which makes up the practical life of Catholicism. This amounted, in Mr. Ward's opinion, to the denial of the Catholic ideal, — which had a unity of its own, — the definitions representing only the fixed points and outlines of a large system, and the outcome of a mass of energising principles.-^ The definitions which were admitted became in such a scheme practically a dead letter ; and were excluded from the range of active thought, and consequently kept from colhsion with those Liberal principles which were freely applied. If the intellectual brilliancy of the Ramhler meant the spread of these views and this method, it was loss, and not gain, to the cause of the Catholic Kevival and of Christianity itself Such principles must be opposed, however brilliant their advocates — nay, the more because they were brilliant and, therefore, dangerous. " Great is the evil," Mr. Ward wrote, a little later, in reference to this school of thought, " [if the Church possess] no children who can defend her cause with fully adequate intellectual power. But then there is another evil possible and greater still, namely, that her nominal children may assail her cause with fully adequate intellectual power." And such must be the result if the modern spirit is allowed unrestricted sway, and no care is taken that CathoHcs " shall ^ See Ward's Essays on tJie Church's Doctrinal Authority^ pp. 10-16. VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 141 be educated in clear appreciation of the Church's various prin- ciples, and in deep harmony with her mind and spirit." ^ The DuUin Review was, during the years 1857-60, at a very low ebb ; and the influence of the RamUer was in conse- quence the more unchecked. Cardinal Wiseman, for so many years the most accomplished representative of English Catholi- cism in literature, was especially alarmed at its developments ; and Mr. Ward shared in his alarm. They saw the renewed vigour of intellectual life after the stagnation of penal times, and feared lest under such influences it might take a wholly wrong direction. Ward indeed regarded the mass of English Catholics as still so deficient in literary interests, that a serious Catholic Eeview was out of place, until improved education should enable them to appreciate it. However, at the Cardinal's request, he, Oakeley, and other fellow-converts consented in 1858 to take an active share in rehabilitating the moribund Dublin Revieiv, as an antidote to the RamUer. A httle later overtures were made to Newman, who was known to value highly the ability of the conductors of the RamUe7\ to under- take its editorship and place it on a new footing. Ward, understanding — prematurely as it proved — that Newman had already accepted the editorship, wrote to Cardinal Wiseman expressing his satisfaction with the arrangement, and added that he felt his services in connection with the Dublin to be no longer necessary. The following letter, written when he found that Newman was still hesitating, tells its own tale :■ — NoRTHWOOD Park, Cowes, Shrove Tuesday, 8th March 1859. My dear Father Newiman — ... All of us, except Oakeley, were occupied entirely against the grain : nor (I think) is there one who would have dreamt of accepting the Dublin Review on the terms we did, except for our detestation of the RamUer and our wish to serve the Cardinal in his war against it. For myself the whole thing (as I plainly told him) was a greater nuisance than could well he supposed. I am occupied with matter which interests me extremely, and for my own part would not care to walk across the room if by merely doing so I could turn out a first-rate Quarterly. My whole wish (putting it roughly) was to try that the Cardinal should feel the converts would help him. We were all delighted to have a good excuse for retiring. I 1 Dublin Review, vol, xviii. p. 11. 142 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. understood from Burns that your editorship was a fixed thing, and on that I wrote to the Cardinal. I have the most perfect conviction that at best ours would have been a wretched failure. No one has less right to be suspected of false modesty than I have ; but I am about as competent to direct a Hevieio as to dance on the tight rope, and Oakeley is not much better. I am perfectly sure, and never doubted for a moment, that nothing; can make the Dublin even tolerable. A. B. is an omni- present supreme inquisitor into every detail, and even if he were responsible editor, if there is one man on earth more unfit than me for such a post, it is him. Abounding (as I think) in most admir- able instincts, but not a reasonable being in any shape. I am writing in a hurry, currente calamo, to save the post. I hope I have made myself intelligible. On public grounds I don't care one button for having a good Review, nor do I see who would be the better for one, in our miserable state of intellectual degradation. But I am 'perfectly certain that the only chance of our having one, would be that you should throw aside scruples ivliich are most misplaced, and simply take the editorship of the Bamhler, working it into a regular Quarterly. The Dublin then must die, and I should with gTeat delight dance at its funeral. On jjersonal grounds it would be the most delightful thing to me in the world to have again a real exhibition of yourself. All this of course in confidence. But if you wish a quasi- official answer about our " Dublin " negotiations, such as you could quote, let me have the Avord, and I will send you one. — Ever aff'ectionately yours, W. G. AVard. Newman accepted the Ramhlcr. A compromise was effected as to its increased size. The Dublin continued as a Quarterly; and the new EamUcr was bi-monthly. Its first number appeared in May 1859. A second appeared in July; and then Newman found the scheme impracticable and retired suddenly from the editorship. He had contributed to it essays on "Northmen and Normans in England and Ireland," and on the " Douay and Eheims Version of Scripture," which bear the record of the character which he wished to impress upon the Review), — one marked at once by interest in Catholic tradition, by breadth, and by freedom from such theological technicalities as were unsuited to general readers. He had published also a remarkable paper, " On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine." But from the date of his retirement VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 143 he washed his hands of all responsibility as to the line taken by the Review. The group of men — some of them of singular brilliancy — into whose hands its conduct then fell, must now be men- tioned more particularly. Sir John Acton, now Lord Acton, and Mr. Eichard Simpson were the most active spirits. Among other coUaborateurs or occasional contributors were Mr. Wetherell, Mr. H. K Oxenham, Mr. Monsell, Mr. John O'Hagan. Sir John Acton was the editor, and publicly accepted his responsibility for the line taken by the Revieiv. He was connected by ties of family with Germany, and owed to Munich and Dollinger his University training. He came to England straight from the feet of the great Bavarian, and at once devoted himself to literature. He avowed frankly his dislike for the Eoman and Scholastic system, and was an eager devotee of Liberal principles and what is called advanced thouc^ht. He seems to have believed that he saw in the school of German savants, of whom Dollinger was the chief, the harbingers of a great movement, of vv^hich the characteristics should be a thorough independence and frankness in critical and historical and scientific investigation, a broader theology, a union of the progressive creed of the nineteenth century with acceptance of the Church's defined dogma. Mr. Eichard Simpson, his chief collaborateur, was an Oxford man, and a convert from Anglicanism. His career as an Anglican clergyman had not been without its passages of arms with Church authorities ; and it was said by some of his friends that disputes with his bishop had become such a neces- sary part of his daily life, that he could no more do without them than some men can dispense with a daily constitutional. He was a man of subtle intellectual power, with a quick and sensitive apprehension of the dangers to faith which an age of enhghtenment might bring. Both scientific re- searches and a frank pursuit of metaphysical speculation must, he felt, lead to dangers for the many if Christianity were identified in the popular mind with obsolete and false scientific teaching. Mr. Simpson had without doubt a taste for con- troversy, and was perhaps slower to see the advantages of the suaviter in modo than of the fortiter in re. Mr. Henry Oxenham, the graceful writer whose essays 144 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. were long familiar to readers of the Saturday Review, was also an Oxford convert. His cast of thought was somewhat similar to Sir John Acton's, although he was not credited with the authorship of any articles as comprehensive as the remark- able expositions of the Liberal Catholic position which appeared from time to time from Sir John Acton's pen. Mr. Wetherell was also an Oxford man of considerable literary gifts, who spent on literature the leisure he could spare from the routine work of a clerk in the War Office. Mr. Monsell, now Lord Emly, and Mr. John O'Hagan were also occasional contributors ; though neither of the two had any sympathy with the anti-Eoman tendencies of the Review. Their articles were on political or literary subjects. Mr. Monsell was the intimate friend of Cardinal Newman. He held office in various Liberal administrations, and was Post- master -General in Mr. Gladstone's Government. He was intimately associated with Montalembert and his party, and an enthusiastic advocate of Liberal Catholicism in its French and political form, as Lord Acton was in its German and more intellectual manifestation. Mr. John O'Hagan, afterwards Mr. Justice O'Hagan, was both a poet and an orator. His translation of La Chanson de Rolande is a work of great accuracy and beauty.^ In the May of 1862 the RamUer was turned into a Quarterly, and its title changed. The Home and Foreign Revietu, as it was now called, was carried on on the same lines and under the same editorship as its predecessor. The Home and Foreign Revieiv, during the two years of its brief existence, bore comparison in the range of the subjects treated, and in the ability and thoroughness and scholarship of the writers, with any Eeview of our own times. It won admiration from the English world of thought, and was much read in literary circles both in London and at Oxford.^ It naturally held its place as a power, moreover, among that group of German thinkers of whom DoUinger was the most prominent, and whose views it to a great extent reflected. ^ A volume of liis essays, including several articles in tlie Raiiibler and Home and Foreign, will shortly, I understand, be published. tfr.: 2 I observe that Mr. Max Miiller speaks of it in 1863 as "one of the best- edited of our Quarterlies." VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 145 From the date of Newman's retirement onwards the re- viewers accentuated their theological Liberalism.-^ They tended to desert the traditional Catholic positions, and to hold that their religion need not affect their views of politics, or of history, or of critical science : and they wrote of current topics as men of the world, according to the current maxims of the day. Mr. Ward engaged himself in unearthing the abstract principles which appeared to him to be involved in such a procedure. In the first place to treat the political problems of the hour as matters entirely apart from Catholic teaching, was to pass over a large mass of recent papal instruction. Pius IX. had been throughout his pontificate emphasising the traditional Catholic position on matters unquestionably affecting the European politics of the time. The duties of the civil power towards the Church and religion had been urged in an Allocution and a Brief of 1850 and 1851,^ and the union of Church and State was spoken of as the true ideal in an Allocution of September 1852.^ As early as 1849 came his first declaration on the Temporal Power.* These were the first of a long series of pronouncements, containing condemnations of modern eiTors on the subjects in question, which were afterwards embodied in the Syllabus and Encyclical of 1864. The question recently so practical both in Prance and in Ireland, Wliat is the exact binding authority of such mstr notions ? forced itself on Mr. Ward. On the lowest view they required external obedience and deference ; and to claim for the politics advocated in the Rcvieio complete independence, was to fall below this lowest standard. Again, to claim for criticism and history that they should be treated entirely without reference to religious beliefs, was in Mr. Ward's eyes unreal. History cannot be read with precisely the same eyes by one who believes in a Providence and in the supernatural, and by one ^ Here is a specimen of the language of the Review which startled the ecclesi- astical authorities, on the Index and the Inquisition : " Is it not scandalous to allow congregations like those of the Indexand Holy Office to come forthwith all the pomp of authority, and to condemn as false and heretical theories which the Church, as teacher of the truth, has not so condemned ? As if the only object were to impose on weak minds and to force them to obedience by pretending an infallible authority which really has nothing to do with the matter in hand." ^ The Allocution In Consistoriali and the Brief Ad AjwstoUcos. ^ The Allocution Acerhissimum. ** In the Allocution Qulbus quantisque. L 146 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. who does not. Gibbon's five causes of the spread of Christianity suffice for a convinced atheist, because he does not believe in the possibility of any supernatural cause. They are the best possible selection from the materials at his disposal. Belief in revelation and in the supernatural affords fresh material, and gives another factor for logic to reckon with. So, too, criticism will lead M. Eenan to the belief that a Christ who is not God can be fashioned true to those facts in the Gospel narrative which are unquestioned. Here, again, his fundamental philosophy limits the hypotheses at his disposal. He draws a true conclusion from his own premises. " If the supernatural view is incredible " (and this is his tacit assump- tion) " my account is the best adapted to explain the facts." But a Christian has an additional hypothesis within his reach — that of a supernatural cause — which squares better with the phenomena. He forms logically a different view of facts from different premises. But Mr. Ward went farther than this. Holding liimself that a thoroughly loyal Catholic should accept, not only the defined authoritative teaching, but the " doctrinal intimations "^ of the Holy See ; believing with de Maistre that a spirit of increased deference to Eome was the great need of the Church in these latter days ; he regarded the Bambler, not only as failing to appreciate the true logic of the Christian position, but as doing the greatest injury to the Catholic cause. Sympathising with de Maistre's sentiment, " Point du Christianisme sans le pape," he maintained that revealed doctrine could not be securely preserved without extensive guidance from the Holy See itself in matters of Critical Science and Politics.^ Such guidance was in fact offered, and it must be accepted with docility. In some cases its acceptance was of obligation, in all it was due in loyalty. Whilst, then, the RamUer endeavoured to make little of the necessary differences between a Catholic and an average man of the world, Ward of set purpose made much of them. ^ See infra, p. 273. '^ Mr. Ward seems to maintain that papal instructions are a positive help to science. ** Although," he writes, "the Church does not teach human sciences from their own principles, she can, nevertheless, very importantly advise and assist them." This is written with reference to papal condemnations of scientific tenets as false [Doctrinal Authority, p. 446). VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 147 He considered that contemporary thought was really moving in a direction contrary to Christianity, and those v^ho refused to face this fact, and surrendered themselves passively to the intellectual influences around them, would wake up some morn- ing and find that they were no longer Christians at all. It was, then, a most necessary work to bring to light the radical opposition between the two sets of principles. In his earlier controversies on this subject he emphasised the contrast on the ethical side, maintaining that the general Liberalism of the EamUer came in great part from neglect- ing or opposing the Christian ethical standard. Its want of reverence for authority had its springs in a deficient sense of the claim of Christianity to be the one guide — absolutely supreme. The necessary contrast in secular matters between a convinced Christian and a man of the world was only to be understood by a realisation of the vast differ- ence between the natural and supernatural views of life, and the standards which they implied. Much of the enthusiasm for Freedom in the abstract went with deficiency in Christian reverence. Much of the sanguineness of Liberalism arose from the concentration of youthful hopefulness on this world instead of the next ; from admiration, in the spirit of a positivist, for achievements on behalf of the prosperity of the human race on earth — an end of surpassing importance to the secularist, of only passing and minor interest in the Christian view. And logically connected with this was the enthusiasm for a great mind rather than a great character, for intellect which deals skilfully with the forces around us, rather than will, whose strength teUs ultimately for the world behind the veil. The first question which arose in this connection was the fundamental one of the best method of education — in the sense of formation of mental and moral habits. The Bamhler re- flected, as Mr. Ward considered, the spirit of the times in this matter. General literature, as acquainting the mind with aU varieties of opinions, characters, histories, religions, was the grand instrument. The ideal product was the well- informed man, with wide sympathies and many-sided powers of appreciation, who seems to Sit as God holding no form of creed, But contemplating all. 148 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. Such was the conception first known in Christendom at the Eenaissance. It was the ideal of continental indifferentists. It was, Ward maintained, the ideal of the Oxford of Jowett and Pattison. Christianity, on the other hand, was exclusive. It could not logically deal with all phases of thought as on a level ; with all standards of moral judgment as equally valuable studies ; with equal appreciation of all elements in this various universe as the best training. Ethics had one standard and one only. Let this standard become rooted, and one with the habitual and fixed sjDrings of action, before you introduce another principle which might well take root if it found congenial soil. Such was the view for which Mr. Ward contested eagerly in the now forgotten " X. Y. Z." controversy in the RamUer in 1 8 5 9 and 1860. The more liberal view was advocated in the RamUcr by a writer under the pseudonym of " X. Y. Z." Mr. Ward wrote a series of letters in reply under the signature '' W. G. W." He opposed the " Liberal " system as a diet consisting only of varied tasting without the essential element of swallowing which is required for nourish- ment. He stated his views with his own uncompromising and somewhat irritating plainness. " The free and unre- stricted study of able writers who imply some standard of praise and blame inconsistent with the Christian, tends in the greatest degree to imbue youths with the same detestable standard," he wrote, " and the more injuriously in proportion as tlie more unconsciously." He sympathised indeed in some degree with Abbe Gaume's strictures on classical study, which he read with interest. The practical outcome of Ward's ^'iews was the advocacy of the extension of theological and patristic reading, the Classics being treated as a mere instrument of rudimentary education in grammar, and general literature primarily as recreation.-^ 1 I may supplement the account in the text by an analysis of some scrappy private notes on the subject. A distinction is drawn betAveen that serious reading Avhich forms the character and the ideals of life, and the varied reading wliich gives wide sympathies and literary culture. The first was to come earlier, immediately after the rudimentary education, and was to be treated as the serious formation of the man ; the second was to come later, and to be regarded avowedly as recreation, and as the study of something which was to remain external. He Jipplies to Christian education the saying ''know everything of something, and something of ever3^t]iincr." Tlie Christian literature was to form the mind°fully, VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 149 His attack on the worship of intellect, contained, for the most part, in an address to the Catholic " Academia," On the Relation of Intellectual Power to Mans true Perfeetion, went on somewhat similar lines.-^ It provoked a good deal of surprise and some amusement as coming from one whose whole life was absorbed and fascinated by intellectual speculation. And yet there is little doubt that this very fact led him to be scrupulously exact in ascribing to a sphere, in which he ex- celled and delighted, absolutely no place in the true perfection of man. Like his prototype de Maistre, he felt his own moral shortcomings keenly, and echoed the French writer's saying, " Je ne sais pas ce qu'est la vie d'un coquin, je ne Tai jamais etc ; mais la vie d'un honnete homme est abominable." " I have the intellect of an archangel, and the habits of an eating, walking, and sleeping rhinoceros," he is reported to have said ; and he felt that the intellect would remain, as it remained in Lucifer, even if the life were depraved. The true theory of human perfection must face this fact frankly. His argument went on clearly defined lines. The days when the only hearty reverence in the world was reserved for to give itits standard and point of view, to saturate it, and thus to give strength and consistency ; and then in order to prevent narrowness a course of general reading was to be allowed. There is a knowledge of ethical principles which only comes by acting on them. We cannot act on contradictory ethical codes. We cannot at once obey a precept of meekness and impatient resentment, of purity and unbridled love of the beautiful, of mortification and unstinted indulgence in all healthy pleasure. We cannot at the same time make national greatness and the cause of God in the world the mainspring of our devotion. Even if the supple and weak intellect can admire inconsistent ideals equally, by a kind of dramatic sympathy, the whole man acting and thinking and expressing his entire self has to choose sides. One who cannot choose sides between contradictory principles of action, cannot act at all, and is a radically weak man. It is the business of education to make a strong man, — a man whose thought and feeling act con- sistently, — and how much more does this apply to Christian education where the ethical ideal is held to be infallibly revealed, and where the springs of action are ready to hand and constantly kept before the mind. That one who theoretically held that inconsistent ethical ideals might well be each of them suited to human nature under different conditions, and that none was beyond doubt complete or true, — that such a one should fall into the weakness of indecision or of a too many-sided sympathy, was in a manner excusable. But that professed Chris- tians should do so was simply inexcusable, and a deliberate forfeiture of their privileges. The controversy in the Hambler dealt with further questions ; but they do not come within the scope I have marked out for this book. 1 This address was published in 1862 by Cardinal Wiseman's request. 150 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. saints were passed ; and yet such an attitude was the logical outcome of Christianity. Worship of mere intellectual genius, as such, was inconsistent with Christian belief; and yet it was a strongly operative force in the Liberal movement. He quoted with great indignation and ample italics from an address of Lord Brougham's, which he considered in this respect typical of modern Liberalism, where it was allowed its full fling unchecked by theological influences. "Consider," he wrote, " this amazing burst of Lord Brougham's. ' It is no mean reward of our labour ' in scientific studies, says this inveterate man of the world, ' to become acquainted with the prodigious senius of those who have almost exalted the nature of man ahovc its destined sphere ; and who hold a station apart rising over all the (freed teaehers of mankind,' — God Incarnate," Mr. Ward adds, "and His Apostles of course inclusively, — ' and spolcen of revereyitly, as if NevMn and Lapletee were not the names of mortcd men.' No worshipper of stocks and stones," Mr. Ward continued, " ever perpetrated a much more degrading idolatry than this. And the judgment of a consistent Catholic on such insane rant will be understood from the fact that Lord Brougham considers Newton and Laplace to be ' almost exalted above the destined sphere ' of humanity, precisely because of their possessing qualities which are possessed in an immeasur- ably greater degree by Satan and his angels. It is hard on Newton to be so spoken of; for in many ways that eminent astronomer was worthy of great respect. But on the various moral excellences which he seems to have possessed — his humility, simplicity, public virtue — Lord Brougham has not a word to say. It is in consequence of his having approached so much more nearly than most other men towards intellectual equality with the evil spirits, that Lord Brougham speaks of him, just as the Catholic might speak of St, Ignatius or St. Francis of Assisi." Eeferring to the Catholics who were infected by the ethos of modern Liberalism, he wrote : — They exhibited a certain general view of life : a habit of putting in the background man's true end ; of preposterously over- estimating intellectual excellence in regard of its supposed dignity and nobleness ; of measuring morality by a difierent standard from the Christian. If a strong man or a great man were one in whom the VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 151 deepest thought was inseparably allied with that unity of conviction which forms character, any tendency to regard mere intellectual acquirement, or cleverness, as inherently admirable must be excluded from Catholic education. Separating sharply that higher contemplation which the schoolmen call " intel- lectus " from the " intellect," which he regarded in a more limited sense than the word conveys to many, as mere nimble- ness or agility of mind, he urged that it formed no true part of man's perfection. Here, as elsewhere, clearing away all the web which complicated the problem in real life, he set himself to point out, in the pamphlet already referred to, that intellect — regarded simply as skill in analysis and dialectic — was as little a part of man's true perfection as skill in " cutting hair " or " making boots." The pamphlet aroused opposition. One opponent said he could hardly make up his mind whether it was the advocacy of a paradox or the statement of a truism. And there is something in the style of the pamphlet, as we shall presently see, which makes this verdict intelligible, however much we may dissent from it. Mr. Ward goes still nearer the root of the ethical contrast between the modern world and primitive Christianity in a characteristic passage which must be quoted : — The world awards praise or blame to human actions, on such principles as these — Principle 1. If a man makes the main end of his life to consist in labouring to promote his o^vn interior perfection and growth in God's love, — if he concentrates his chief energy in the performance of this work, — he must have a mean and contemptible spirit. Monasteries are the proper places for such as him : he is fit for nothing better. Principle 2. Those who are worthy of our honour as high- minded and spirited men have two main motives ever before their mind : a sensitive regard to their honour, and a keen sense of their personal dignity. Good Catholics would express this by saying — they must be actuated by vainglory and pride in an intense degree. Principle 3. As their springs of action are worldly, so also are the external objects to which their action is directed. Some great temporal end — the exaltation of our country's temporal greatness or the achievement of her liberty — here is a pursuit well worthy of man's high aspirations. He who should regard godless- ness and worldhness as immeasurably greater evils to his country 152 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND chap. than political weakness or subjection, is a poltroon unworthy the name of patriot. Principle 4. Physical courage is a far greater virtue, at least in a man, than meekness or humility or forgiA'ingness. Principle 5. Of all modes of life, the most irrational is that, wherein a man or body of men separate from the world, that they may the more uninterruptedly contemplate their Creator. I might most easily add to this list ; but I have said enough to indicate clearly what I mean. Such as these, I say, are the principles by which the Avorld estimates human conduct ; by which Lord Macaulay measures facts of the past, and the Times newspaper facts of the present. These principles are not even categorically stated in worldly literature ; they are treated as too obvious and undeniable to need explicit statement ; and they underlie the whole award of praise and blame, expressed or implied by the mass of men, when contemplating the actions of their fellows. The Church, on the other hand, has no office more important than that of witnessing to and upholding consistently and prominently a moral standard in the extremest degi'ee contrary to this. Those moral truths indeed to which the Church -svitnesses belong to the natural order, and are in themselves discoverable by human reason; yet they have also been supernaturally revealed, and form an integi^al part of the Church's depositum. And the reason commonly given for this fact is, that though reason in the abstract is adequate to their ascertainment and proof, yet in fact, the world around us being such as we see, they would certainly be overlooked or denied, were it not for the Church's px'ominent and emphatic witness. Suppose then, that through our neglect of interior culture, we have allowed ourselves in such habits of mind as I was lately describing ; suppose that in theology proper we have brought down the Church's authority tOAvards its minimum point ; of course, in the region of history and politics, we shall neglect that authority altogether. . . . Our one security from infection is to sit ever at the Church's feet, and listen to her voice, and make her utterances our one test and measure of human morality. Nor is it at all necessary, if Ave wish to knoAV the Church's voice on such matters, that Ave should become theologians and study her various definitions. The books Avhich she places in every one's hands for spiritual reading — the Imitation^ the Spiritual Combat, or Rodriguez ^ — are all in deepest harmony on fundamental principles. The evil is not that AA^e can possibly be ignorant of the Church's standard, but that Ave do not choose to apply that standard where it is rightly applical>le. AVe often act as though AA^e held the Church's principles to be true for one half hour, and false for all the rest of the day. We pass our due time in spiritual reading, ^ The well-known author of ChristUw Fcrfecfiov. VI LIBERAL CATHOLICISM IN ENGLAND 153 and accept, without question, the holy lessons placed before us. Then, this special work of piety being over, we plunge into the records of the past, or think and write on the politics of the present, and in doing so we measure the various facts Avhich come before us by a standard directly contradictory to those very lessons of piety which we have received. I wonder that we are not ashamed of this as a mere matter of intellectual inconsistency. If the Church's principles are true in the morning, they are true through the day ; if they are true to us, they are true to others ; and those who have habitually and deliberately adjusted their conduct by different prin- ciples are no fit objects for our admiration, but on the contrary (to say nothing else of them) have been l)h\nderers and fools. CHAPTEE VII THE " DUBLIN REVIEW " 1863-1865 The tone of the Rambler and Home and Foreigji became more and more generally distasteful to English Catholics. The protest of its writers, in the name of modern criticism and candour, against the special pleading of Catholic controversial authors, appeared to many to lead them into an opposite ex- treme, and to make them take pleasure in representing the action of the Church in the course of its history in the most unfavourable light possible. It was tlie Candour which spares its foes and ne'er descends With bigot zeal to combat for its friends. Again, they carried their opposition to the current Catholic teaching in such matters as the relations of Church autliority to politics and secular science, and the relations of faith to reason, to a pitch which proved beyond the endurance of the local ecclesiastical authorities. In October 1862 the English bishops, with one exception, issued a formal protest against the Revieio ; and this was followed up by two pamphlets from the pen of Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham, on the methods and views it had advocated. At the same time Cardinal Wiseman, anxious, under the circumstances, to place the DuUin Eevieio on a permanent footing, and to ensure its preserving the re- ligious character of its earlier years, which the strong political element among its contributors was endangering, asked Mr. Ward to accept the post of responsible editor. Mr. Ward, after some hesitation, consented. He announced the fact to Newman in the following letter, dated "Freshwater, 16th October":- — CHAP. VII THE ''DUBLIN REVIEW 155 My dear F. Newman — I am desirous that you should not hear for the first time from any one but myself that I have had the impudence to accept the editorship of the Dublin. It is certainly a new phenomenon to have the editor of a quarterly profoundly ignorant of history, politics, and literature . . . But it was really a Quintus Curtius afiPair, and the only apparent alternative was the Tories seizing it and making it a political organ. I think even my editorship is better than that. I am very desirous to avoid ... all appearance of cliquiness, and my notion is when I go back to town to call on as many different kinds of people as I can . . . My absurd difficulty about riding . . . will prevent my being in Birmingham more than thirty-six houi's, but I should be greatly obliged if you would give me some talk for part of that time ... I wish I could hope there was any chance of persuading you to write. The smallest contribution would be most gratefully received, whether grave or gay, lively or severe. . . — Ever affec- tionately yours, \Y. G. "Ward.^ Mr. Ward explained his views further in the corre- spondence which followed. He designed as far as possible to make the DuUin a rallying-point for Catholic writers of various views, and to impress on it the directly religious character of Newman's British Critic. The following letter gives the conditions under which Mr. Ward accepted the editorship : — As to the Dublin ... I am most certainly to be the editor in the secoiul of your two senses. As to Richardson, it is quite doubtful whether he will continue. And as to the Cardinal, he earnestly desires to know nothing about any number before it ap2^ears. All for which he stipulates is that there shall be three theological "assessors" approved by him, to whom I am to show whatever ^?^ my judgment legitimately falls under theological censorship ; the majority in each case to decide. The three are to be Manning, Dr. Russell, and (we hope) F. Eyre, S.J. I most earnestly -wish to make the Review a means of helping forward the conspiratio bonorum^ which seems so all important just now. There are many views in poHtics, e.g., or in philosophy, from which I might importantly differ, and which, nevertheless, extremely good Catholics may hold or wish to advocate. But on this 1 This letter is endorsed by the Cardinal with an extract from his own reply, ' ' I could not \vrite for the Dublin without writing also for the R^ome and Foreign, and I mean to keep myself, if I can, from these public collisions, not that in that way I can escape the evil tongues of men, great and small, but reports die away and acts remain. " 156 THE ''DUBLIN REVIEW' CHAP. and many other matters I am particularly anxious for your advice.^ iSTewman seems to have expressed his doubts as to the Diiblin imitating with success the old British Critic, and Ward replied in his next letter entirely concurring in such doubts : — I hope you don't think me madman enough to imagine that I could make the D]jMhi\ B[evieio\ ever so distantly comparable with your Bljitisli] G\_ritic\. I don't think it is generally a fault of mine to be over sanguine about what I undertake ; and least of all about the Dublin Beview, for which in many respects I am the most unfitted man alive. If I obtain even the most ordinary success, no one will be more surprised than I shall be. To take a thing for a model, don't imply a notion of coming near it ; otherwise J[esus] C[hrist] and the Saints could not be our models. Still, however, I think that my only chance is to do what I have said. Badly as I shall do in my line, surely I should do worse out of it. Xow in all such matters as literature proper, etc., etc., I am like a man deprived of some sense, I literally can no more get on with it than I can read Hebrew without having learned. I am driven to the play (except that now I am taking up chess) from sheer in- ability to comprehend anything intermediate between theology or philosophy and the theatre. Consequently, I assume that if it is God's will I should undertake the D. B. He must -wish me to do it in my own line and not in another. Otherwise in fact I should not be undertaking it at all, but merely giAdng 02:)portunity for a mis- cellaneous scrap-book. The iirst number of the Diiblin Bcvicio under Mr. Ward's editorship appeared in July 1863. The plan of the Beview was considerably recast under his auspices ; and one feature of importance was the institution of a supplement to each num- ber, containing a record of Continental events of interest to Catholics. In this supplement were chronicled not only the political or social events which bore upon the fortunes of the Church, but the essays or controversies in leading Continental periodicals, as the Correspondant, the Civilta Cattolica, the ^ Ward had an interview with Newman on the 18th of November, and talked over his prospects with the Ihthlin. He had been summoned to Birmingham by the Bishop to discuss the situation, and took this opportunity of seeing Newman. Newman was kind and sympathetic, but he adhered to strict neutrality. He wrote to Lord Emly, however, on the following day, describing Ward's intentions. "Poor fellow," he adds, "I wonder if he will burn his fingers as others, or have better luck." VII THE ''DUBLIN REVIEW' 157 KatJiolik. The staff of writers whom Mr. Ward gathered round him included men of known abihty. Manning, Dalgaunis, and Henry Wilberforce were frequent contributors. Mr. Healy Thomson was sub-editor — succeeded later on by ]\Ir. Cashel Hoey. The new editor's conciliatory programme was not destined to be carried out. Before the appearance of his second number two events occurred which determined the line adopted by the DuUin Review during the eventful years which succeeded — a line primarily defensive of dogmatic principles. The first was the public exposition by Montalembert of his views on Church and State, at the Congress of Catholics at Malines in August 1863; the second was the address of Dr. DoUinger at the Munich Congress in the following month. Each was a significant and influential utterance on behalf of Liberal Catholicism : one was on semi -political questions, the other on the matter of pliilosophical and theological speculation. " It is with very deep truth," Mr. AVard wrote, " that an able writer in the CiviWf places in close juxtaposition these two orations. Both tend to disparage the Church's legitimate authority, whether in poHtics or pliilosophy." Some account must be given of the two Congresses. Some thousands of Catholics had responded to the invitation of Baroii de Gerlache — the staunch defender of the liberties of the Belgian Church in the days of Dutch persecution, and the Supreme Judge of the Court of Cassation — to a reunion to be held at Malines in August 1863. The Congress was under the presidency of the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines. Our own Cardinal Wiseman also took an active share in its pro- ceedings. The Patriarch of Jerusalem was present, and the Bishops of Gand, Tournay, and Namur in Belgium, and of Adelaide in AustraHa, and of Beverley in England. The assembly consisted chiefly of Erenchmen and Belgians, and was designed partly to arouse Belgian Catholics to better organisa- tion and corporate action. Then* political power was not in pro- portion to their numbers ; and the recent infringements of the liberty of Catholic education by the Liberal Government had not been opposed by them effectively. The subjects discussed during the four days of the Congress (18th to 22n(l of August) were of various interest, — Christian education, Catholic 158 THE ''DUBLIN REVIEW chap. associations, works of charity, Christian art. The state of the Church in different countries was also a subject dealt with ; and Cardinal Wiseman delivered an interesting address on " The Condition, Eeligious and Civil, of Catholics in England." M. L'Abbe (afterwards Cardinal) Mermillod spoke on the " Union of Christian Churches " ; M. L'Abbe Soubiran " On the Works of the Oriental Churches and Schools." On Thursday, the 20th of August, at half- past five, Count de Montalembert delivered his celebrated address on "A Free Church in a Free State," which he followed up the next day by another on " Liberty of Conscience." Both addresses were of a rhetorical rather than a scientific character. The first advocated, on lines dangerously resembling the theories of the Avenir, the separation of Church and State. The second strongly condemned the principle of rehgious intolerance advocated by Catholic theologians, and countenanced by the mediaeval Church. The speeches made an immense sensation. Cavour, a few years earlier, had taken up the Liberal Catholic formula, "L'Eglise libre en I'etat Ubre," and applied it to justify the spohation of the Pontifical states ; and Montalembert was charged with playing into the hands of the Nationalist party. Veuillot's friends attacked both speeches bitterly. The English press took them up, and Mr. Grant Duff in a speech to his constituents at Elgin hailed Montalembert's advocacy of liberty of conscience as marking a new departure in Ultramontane Cathohcism. The speeches, both in their advocacy of the principles of modern Liberalism, and in their disparagement of the past, went too far even for some of Montalembert's own friends. Lacordaire, years earlier, had admitted the union of Church and State to be the normal condition of things. " On est alle trop loin a Ma lines," wrote Eoisset in reference to Montalembert's adcbesses ; and the same writer speaks of his condemnation of mediaeval Christendom as " quatre fois trop absolu." In Mr. Ward's eyes the speeches were an abandonment of the Christian Ideal, on the relation between the civil and ecclesiastical powers, in favour of the Liberal. Monta- lembert appeared to Mr. Ward to attack the mediaeval relations between Church and State, and the principle of an established religion, not only as unsuited to the times but as absolutely wrong. Again, he appeared to advocate general tolerance of all VII THE ''DUBLIN REVIEW 159 forms of religious propagandism as an abstract principle of justice. Had he merely advocated separation of Church and State and general toleration as a practical programme for the nineteenth century, Mr. Ward would have had no quarrel with him.-^ But he appeared to represent the modern ideal, based on the indifferentism of governments, as higher and truer than the mediaeval, which was based on the Catholic unity of the Holy Eoman Empire. Still, Mr. Ward viewed Montalembert's speech as far less serious than Dollinger's. The debatable questions raised by the Frenchman were not practical. " The evil work of de- catholicising civil society," Ward wrote, " has been now so com- pletely wrought out in far the largest portion of Europe, that the question at issue rather concerns our theoretical estimate of the past than our practical provision for the present." Far more serious were the proposals of Dr. DolUnger. " For ourselves," wrote Ward in the Duhliny " we regard the philosophical movement with immeasurably greater alarm and consternation than the political." The memory of Froschammer was still green at Munich, and Froschammer had openly defied papal authority in all matters of philosophical speculation. A speech, then, which might be interpreted as lending Dollinger's sanction to a programme of similar tendency was a serious matter. Let us briefly give the story of the Congress and address. In August 1863 DoUinger and two of his friends, Abbot Haneburg and Dr. Alzog the historian, invited a number of Catholic Scholars and Divines of Germany to a literary conference to be held on the 28 th of September. They set forth as the object of the meeting the danger to religion from the spread of infidelity, and the desirableness that German Catholic writers of different schools should understand each other better and act as far as might be in concert, — that a spirit of conciliation should replace the existing antagonisms. Nearly one hundred professors, many of them laymen, authors, and doctors of divinity, responded, — nearly all men of in- 1 So Mr. Ward implies in many places, e.g. "I suppose pretty nearly every Catholic does hold that the "modern liberties" are a necessity under present circumstances. . . . But what Montalembert maintained was that their establish- ment constituted a true social progress. Indeed he maintained more than this, for he maintained that the earlier state of things was wrong in principle " {Doctrinal AuthoritAj, p. 28). i6o THE ''DUBLIN REVIEW chap. tellectual mark, and some of them deputed specially by their Bishops. They assembled at the Benedictine monastery of Munich on the appointed day. An address of fidelity to the Holy See was unanimously voted. Four days were occupied in varied discussions. It was resolved that the Conference should be annually repeated. The Pope telegraphed his blessing. The Bishop of Augsburg and Archbishop of Bamberg gave toasts at the final banquet in the Benedictine refectory. The assembly, of which a considerable majority were from the diocese of Munich, included such names as Professor Sepp the disciple of Joseph Gorres, Dr. Eeinkens of the University of Breslau and Dr. Hagemann of Hildesheim, both historians le teacher, has formed the intellect of Christian Europe ; indeed, to the African Church generally we must look for the best early exposition of Latin ideas." On the necessity of scientific interpretation, some of the strongest passages are to be found in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, see pp. 176, 279, 280, 296, 307, 321, 332, 333, 334, 338. X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 251 on in their strongest interpretation, would be, therefore, inexact and misleading.-^ Again, in the Syllabus there was a further reason against a full or a popular interpretation, namely, that the propositions had reference to condemnations made in special circumstances by the Pope." Those circumstances had to be taken into account before the force of the condemnations could be determined. On these principles Newman advocated " a wise and gentle minimism," ^ in interpreting Eoman teaching, as the duty of those who are determining what is of obligation in belief, as distinguished from those opinions which are prompted by piety. But, in truth, the fundamental question in the controversy had relation to the function of trained theologians in the economy of the Church. This, with the moderate party, was very important, with Mr. Ward comparatively unimportant. j\Ir. "Ward held that the exact claim of a Pontifical utterance, and its import, were easily ascertainable by a man of fair ability from the Pope's own words. And we do not find in his writings much emphasis laid on the elaborate prepara- tion of the official utterances of Eome by the Pope's theological advisers. Papal infallibility meant that the Pope taught, and the faithful believed. The Pope and the faithful were the two important factors in the whole theory of a teaching Church. Newman, on the other hand, never forgetting the human aids used by the Pope in determining inhat was the teaching of the Church, and the human media whereby the faithful ascertained ivhat was taught, looked at Ward's analysis as incomplete and unpractical. And this view was urged, in one shape or another, by such writers as Father Eyder, Dupanloup, Pere Daniel the Jesuit, and Bishop Fessler, Secretary-General to the Vatican Council. The ultimate judgment of a theological discussion rested of course with the Pope, as the Crown and Parliament are supreme, not only over the nation, but inclusively over the legal profession. But it was for theologians to supply materials for a decision, and to interpret decrees of the supreme authority when framed, both as to their meaning and as to their bind- ing force ; as it is for specialists and lawyers to supply the 1 Letter to the Duke of i^orfolk, p. 295. 2 Ihid. p. 28. =^ Ibid. p. 339. 252 THE SYLLABUS chap. help necessary both iu framing and in interpreting Acts of Parliament. " It is for theologians to discuss," Father Eyder wrote to Ward, " and for the Pope to decide. But when you go on to tell me that I must interpret theologians by the Pope I am simply aghast. I had always imagined the very object of the Schola to be that it should interpret the positive theology; the matter of which latter is Scripture, and the decrees of Councils and Popes. You might as well find fault with me for interpreting Scripture by the Fathers instead of the Fathers by Scripture." In a similar spirit wrote Cardinal Newman. " None but the ScJiola TJicologorum is competent to determine the force of papal and synodal utterances " ; and again, " [The Church] only speaks when it is necessary to speak ; but hardly has she spoken out magisterially some general principle when she sets her theologians to work to explain her meaning in the concrete, by strict interpretation of its wording, by the illus- tration of circumstances, by the recognition of exceptions," etc. So, too, the learned Jesuit, Pere Daniel, protested against using the Encyclical and Syllcibus as popular documents to be read by the average layman, when in fact they needed the inter- pretation of experts. " L'Encyclique," he wrote, " n'est pas un enseignement populaire : elle s'adresse principalement a r^piscopat, aux membres du clerg^, auxquels il appartient d'en p^netrer le sens a I'aide de leurs connoissances speciales, et de I'enseigner aux fideles " (Etudes Religieuses, October 1868). It must be borne in mind that Ward repeatedly explained his constant enforcement of the necessity of attending to the Pontifical Acts themselves, as being for the sake of men who were actually disloyal. He considered the appeal to theologians to be a common form of subterfuge parallel to O'Connell's boast that he could " drive a coach and four through any Act of Parliament." A clever specialist could evade any decree. He represented the appeal as implying that " in the days of Jan- senism, e.g., ordinary laymen had no means of knowing that their assent was required to the dogmatic fact about Jansenius until theologians had said their last word on the subject." Again, men bent on a lax view might take advantage of the eccen- tricity of some one theologian, and give on his authority an X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 253 unnatural interpretation to a decree whose sense was clear enough. It was obvious that the appeal to theologians was capable of being travestied and abused. Ward was vividly impressed by the dangers incidental to neglecting or opposing papal guidance, and pressed the Pope's own words as a land- mark, which, if kept in sight, would be a standing rebuke to uncandid evasion. They should act, he held, as a warning to any loyal-minded man against subterfuge and biassed inter- pretations to which those might have recourse who disliked the decisions of Eome, and really wished only for an excuse to oppose them. Newman, who did not deny that men might seek to evade their duty by an uncandid use of theological opinion, as an unscrupulous man can abuse and exaggerate any truth, sought the remedy in a direction different from Ward's theory. The remedy must lie, not in ignoring or making little of what was in its place so necessary as the guidance of the members of the theological school, but in urging in addition a spirit of loyalty to the Holy See. " To be a true Catholic," he wrote, " a man must have a generous loyalty towards ecclesi- astical authority, and accept what is taught him with what is called the ])ietcis ficlei ; and only such a tone of mind has a claim, and it certainly has a claim, to be met and handled with a wise and gentle minimism." The constitutional provisions in the Church — which included the varieties of theological interpretation — were essential as a protection against the un- warrantable dogmatism of individuals, just as a scientific moral theology is required to prevent tyranny in the Confessional. A Confessor, we know, on the principles of '' probabilism," is not allowed to impose as of obligation anything which theologians of weight deny to be obligator}^ But, none the less, as probabilism may be made a cloak for laxity, so minimism in dogma may be an excuse for rebellion. The remedy in each case is not to make little of the value of theological authority, but to preach against the use of it in an uncandid or disloyal spirit ; not to lay down as of strict obligation what grave theologians called in question, but to warn people against confining themselves to what is of strict obligation, and against evading the meaning of the Holy See on the strength of a theological opinion which really does not carry sufficient weight. 2 54 THE SYLLABUS chap. Coming then to the actual question of the enforcement by the DuUin Review of a stringent view as to the obligations imposed by papal decrees, Newman criticised it as tyrannical. He urged upon a Catholic theological writer an attitude in some sense similar to that of the Confessor. He bade him not urge as obligatory what grave theologians questioned, though he should exhort to the spirit of loyal obedience. Mr. Ward, on the other hand, taking the view that the Pope himself desired a full and not a minimistic interpretation, and looking on a Catholic writer as bound in loyalty to second the Pope's wishes, maintained that if a writer thought it clear that a decree did in the Pope's intention impose a certain obligation, he was right in saying so, even although grave theologians thought otherwise. Thus the ultimate point at which such different lines of policy began to diverge was that Newman said, " Say if you like ' I think this is the true interpretation,' but do not impose it on others as obligatory, if grave theologians think differently " ; while Ward replied, " If I think it is in- fallibly true, and part of the Church's teaching, I think it is obligatory ; and I say so, as the Pope wishes me to. I do not impose it on my own ijjse dixit, or assuming any authority, but I give the reasons which convince me." And these two attitudes were in reality almost inseparable from their respective modes of approaching the decrees. If the average layman is competent to go straight to the Pope's words, he will probably be able to weigh the Dublin Ee viewer's reasons for this or that interpretation ; and reasoning which he can understand cannot well be tyrannous. But if the theological knowledge necessary for an exact interpretation and determination of their binding force, is only the property of a few, the vehement inculcations of an opinion as obligatory under sin have the effect, as Newman says, of tyranny. The average layman, being unequal to weighing the argument, is told by an expert in the chief Catholic Rcvieio what he must believe ; and the theological expert is to him a natural exponent of the Church's voice in dogma as the Con- fessor is in morals. This being so it became practically, in Newman's view, unjust and intolerant in Mr. Ward to urge his interpretation in such a way as to lead others to suppose it to be an undoubted expression of the Church's teaching, and X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 255 without letting it be fully apparent that persons of equal authority thought otherwise. Ward's views on the extent of infallibility, expounded first in the English essays already named, were summed up in a pamphlet called Be infallihilitatis exteiisione, published in Latin in March 1869, shortly before the Vatican Council. In this pamphlet he developed the consequences of his special method of finding in the Pope's own words a sufficient criterion of the precise degree of authority with which he speaks, a method which enabled him to dismiss for the most part the formal tests advocated by many theologians for the determining whether the Pope was in this or that case speaking ex Cathedrd or infallibly. He maintained that if the Pope intimated in any way that he was guiding the belief of all the faithful and not simply inculcating a precept of discipline, his teaching was infallible.^ He then explained that there were many papal utterances — some addressed only to jD^ivate individuals — in which this condition was fulfilled, and maintained that their infallibility was ipso facto decisively proved. Both the infallible teaching and the proof that it was infallible teaching were thus to be looked for in the Pope's own words.^ This pamphlet giving, as it did, theological form to views of the same tendency as Veuillot's, with something of Veuillot's rhetoric, although far more moderate in their loo-ic, and beins:, moreover, accessible to all as written ^ The exact degree to which he pressed this opinion varied. In his English controversies he maintained without reserve that when ' * the Pope teaches all the faithful in a doctrinal exposition what is to be held by them as certain, he is by that very fact to be held to speak ex Cathedrd." He found, however, that Perrone and other Roman theologians denied this when he wrote for then- opinion. They maintained that the Pope might be speaking not as universal Doctor, but as universal Ruler {Guhcrimtor). Ultimately Jlr. AVard limited his proposition to cases where the Pope exacted " entirely absolute interior assent." (Cf. De infalli- hilitatis extensione, p. 38, and Doctrinal Authority, pp. 433 and 435.) 2 Mr. Ward lays down the following among the ''fundamental principles" assumed in his pamphlet. "If we desire to know the extent of the Pope's infallibility we have only to inquire what extent of infallibility the Pope claims for himself in practice. In whatever decrees the Pope binds the faithful to yield interior and entirely absolute assent, of these decrees he practically teaches and professes the infallibility. " It will be noted that although this is a, less stringent view than his earlier one, it still finds the great test of infallibi- lity in a form of the Pope's own words, which his critics considered not sufficiently significant to constitute a practical test in very many cases. 256 THE SYLLABUS chap. in the official language of the Church, was taken up by Dupanloup in conjunction with some of Archbishop Manning's pastorals, and vehemently attacked by him. Dupanloup, as is well known, was in frequent communication with Newman and other eminent representatives of the " moderate " party, and he brought out clearly the central matters on which the differ- ence turned. He published in November 1869 a letter to his clergy on the approaching Council. Echoing the complaint of the Jesuit Pere Daniel in France, and of Father Eyder in England, he deprecated the fact that "intemperate journalists" insisted on '' opening debates on one of the most delicate theological subjects, and answering beforehand in what sense the Council would decide and should decide." The public mind thus became filled with an extravagant and untheological idea of what papal infallibility meant ; and the definition was inopportune because it would be utterly misunderstood. Statesmen would be alarmed, and would not have the theological knowledge to satisfy them in questions which would arise with very practical bearing on the safety of governments. On se demandera sur quels objets s'exercera cette infailHbilit^ personnelle. Quand il n'y aurait que les mati^res mixtes ou les conflits furent tou jours si frequents, quelles sent ici les limites % Qui les determinera % Le spirituel ne touche-t-il pas au temporel de tous cotes % Qui persuadera aux gouvernements que le pape ne passera plus, jamais, dans aucun entrainement du spirituel au tem- porel % Des lors la proclamation du nouveau dogme, ne paraitra-t- elle pas, non aux theologiens habiles, mais aux gouvernements, qui ne sont pas theologiens, consacrer dans le pape sur les mati^res pen definies et parfois non definissables une puissance illimit^e, souver- aine sur tous leurs sujets catholiques, et pour eux gouvernements, d'autant plus sujette aux ombrages, que Tabus leur paraitra tou jours possible ! The fact that such impressions were due in part to the strong interpretations of the Univcrs, showed that the pretence of appealing to the Pope's words rather than to the explana- tions of theologians, was really the substitution of the explana- tions of Veuillot for those of theological experts. Interpretation and application of general decisions there must be, and Dupan- X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 257 loup held that they should be given by experts and not by writers without theological training. Coming to Mr. Ward's special share in the controversy, the Bishop singled out primarily Ms contention that utterances not addressed to the whole Church might be infallible : — Faut-il dans I'acte ex Cathedra que le Pape s'adresse a touts r^glise? Qui, disent la plupart. Non, dit un anglais professeur laique de Theologie . . . quand il ne parlerait qu'k un seul 6veque ou meme k un simple laique il pent avoir voulu enseigner ex Cathednt Et c'est assez. . . . M. Ward est un ancien ministre Anglican, converti, z^le catholique aujourd'hui, et qui a 6t6, quoique laique, professeur de theologie au grand s6minaire de I'archevech^ de Westminster. ... Eh bien, alors faut-il au moins comme plusieurs le r^clament pour qu'il n'y ait aucun doute sur son intention que le Pape d<^fine la doctrine sous la sanction d'un anatheme contre Terreur 1 Ou suffit-il, comme d'autres le preten- dent, qu'il exprime, d'une mani^re quelconque, son intention de faire un dogme ? And this last contention which was Mr. Ward's, the Bishop uncompromisingly condemns. His language on another feature in Ward's pamphlet has an important bearing on the controversy. Ward had ascribed infallibility to a number of documents on the ground that they contained condemnations reproduced by the Syllabus, and he maintained that all Catholics were bound to believe this. Afterwards, in deference to the opinion of Eoman theologians, he retracted the assertion that such a belief was of obligation.-^ Dupanloup at once seized on the retractation. If even a theological expert like Ward could make such a mistake how much more would others. What an argument for leaving so subtle a question to time, and to the safer process of discussion among theologians, whose ultimate decision would have the advantage of the fullest consideration of pros and cons ! What a proof that a true view of papal infallibility was inseparable from the constitutional methods habitually employed ! The Pope was indeed infallible ; but the exact knowledge of what he taught infallibly, and when he taught infallibly, came to the faithful in the cases which his own words might well leave doubtful not through the rapid private judgment of an individual, however able, or of a pubKc writer for his ^ See Essays on the Church's Doctrinal Authority^ p. 462, note. S 258 THE SYLLABUS chap. readers, but through the learning and knowledge of the great teaching Church as a whole. This important passage from the letter must be extracted in full : — Qui d^cidera en fait que telle decision du Pape remplit toutes les conditions d'un d^cret ex Cathedra % Ce discerneraent sera-t-il facile % Non. C'est ce que reconnaissent de bonne foi les partisans les plus avanc6s de rinfaillibilite jDontificale. Le th^ologien anglais Ward, par exemple, dit express ement " Puisque toutes les allocu- tions pontificales, toutes les lettres Apostoliques, meme toutes les ency cliques, ne contiennent pas des definitions ex CathedrCt^ il faut reganler de j^res pour discerner d'une fa(^on suffisante quels sont ceux de ces actes oil le souverain Pontife doit etre cens6 parler ex Cathedrd, et il faut y regarder dans les actes meme ex Cathedrd, c'est k dire dans les actes meme infailhbles, pour bien discerner ce qu'il enseigne ex Cathedrd, c'est a dire infailliblement." Et ce discernement est si difficile parfois aux th^ologiens eux- memes, que M. Ward reconnait avec une modestie qui I'honore avoir commis et opiniatr ement soutenu une grave m^pris touchant la nature des actes pontificaux de diverses sortes, ou avaient et6 fletries les proj30sitions signal^es plus tard dans une pi^ce r6cente eman6e de Rome. II avait cru et il afiirmait que chacun des actes qui a fourni des propositions au recueil appel6 Syllabus, devait etre regard e par cela seul comme ay ant le caract^re d'un acte ex Cathedrd : ce qu'il confesse maintenant avec franchise avoir 6t6 une grosse erreur. L'histoire ecclesiastique, du reste, est pleine de faits sem- blables. Qu'on se rappelle certains actes considerables des papes dans les temps passes, sur lesquels les th^ologiens ont tant dispute et disputent encore pour savoir s'ils sont, oui ou non, ex Cathedrd. Quand le pape Etienne condamna saint Cyprien dans la question du bapteme des h^retiques, a-t-il parle ex Cathedrd? Les uns afiirment, les autres nient. . . . Qui d^cidera done ? L'Eglise. II fauclra done souvent en revenir, de fait, a une decision de I'Edise. 'o' Here, then, Dupanloup indicated that important fact which Cardinal Newman has so constantly pointed out, and which was at the very root of the differences between the tendencies of these two schools. The function of the Church, as represented by the bishops and the theological school, in determining the force and interpreting the meaning of papal declarations, as well as in assisting the Pope in the deliberations previous to definitions, was, as we have seen, the point most insisted on by Newman and his friends. It was minimised and almost X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 259 denied by the Univers, Without it infallibility seemed to many indistinguishable from inspiration or revelation.^ What then was the issue of the Council in its relation to these differences ? The materials for an answer have only been before the public a comparatively short time, al- though Cardinal Newman, with the intuition of genius, had in great measure given it by anticipation in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk in 1874. The fuU acts of the Council — an enormous Latin tome published as the 7 th volume of the Jesuit Collectio Lacensis in 1890 — give for the first time the record of the lengthy and involved deliberations on the definition, which occupied the committee for upwards of fifty sessions. I have, moreover, had access to an important private diary of one of the bishops belonging to the commission which framed the definition, parts of which only are embodied in the official record, and which adds details of great interest. It would repay us to go far into the whole question, but the scope of this work warns me to keep strictly to the matters in which Mr. Ward was concerned. These were, as we have seen, primarily two : — (1) the opportuneness of the definition, and (2) the sphere to which ^ This distinction was the turning point in the submission, three years later, of a chief opponent of the dogma. Pere Gratry notes the moderation of the Vatican definition itself ; and in describing the dogma as he had resisted it, and as it was represented beforehand by its extreme advocates, says : " Writers of a school which I thought excessive were undesirous of limitation to infallibility ex Cathedrd as being too narrow " ; he explains that a " personal " and " inspired " infallibility were represented as the objects of the definition. " I almost feared," he says, ''a scientific infallibility, a political and governmental infallibility." Such a view of the case has been amply accounted for by the words already cited from the Univers and X->ublished on the eve of the Council. It was encouraged in the course of the Council itself, when M. Veuillot exhorted the Fathers to hasten on to the definition remarking that once this was achieved affairs could proceed much faster, as Pontifical bulls could take the place of conciliar deliberation. {Univers, 1870, 20th Feb.) So again a more distinguished organ of the extreme party was quoted by Bishop Dupanloup as saying, "When [the Pope] thinks it is God who Tneditates in him." It was probably such language as this, joined to Veuillot's personal scurrility, which was the cause of Montalembert's opposition. "When I examine thoroughly," wrote his intimate friend, Madame Augtlstus Craven, " what made me cling so strongly to those who opposed [the definition], I find it was principally because of the manner, the odious and unchristian manner, in which it was defended by those who upheld it." And she mentions Veuillot and his friends as among the number. . 26o . THE SYLLABUS chap. infallibility extended, as well as the manner in which this should be ascertained by individual Catholics. As to the first question no doubt is left by the records that an overwhelming majority were from the first in favour of the opportuneness of the definition. The doctrine itself was regarded as a matter practically decided ; and it was denied by scarcely any Catholics in the years preceding the acrimonious controversies which dated from the appearance of the Syllabus. At the date of the Council itself only a small group questioned its opportuneness. This fact, sufficiently notorious before the publication of the acts of the Council, is in no way modified by them ; and Mr. Ward claimed, in the attitude of the Fathers, a sanction for an important principle which he had urged — that the interests of truth were in such a case more important than the interests of peace.^ Next as to the second question on which Cardinal Newman laid so much stress — the extent of Pontifical infallibility, with the correlative question of the normal means whereby the faithful might ascertain what was taught as of obligation : — I)id the decree involve a new estimate of the papal prero- gative for any except Gallicans themselves ? Did it give any countenance to the attitude of Veuillot, as represented in the citations I have given from the Univcrs ? Did it make light of the share of the episcopate and of the Schola Theologorum, either in the deliberations which precede a definition or in the subsecjuent ascertainment of its scope? Did it imply that the Pope in his decisions acted apart from the Church ? Did it tend to emancipate papal decisions from the control of precedent and tradition ? Did it admit of the interpretation that God inspired the Pope, or revealed doctrine to the Pope, or did it on the contrary limit the divine assistance to the infallible security that he would never define ex Cathedrd what was not the teaching of the Church ? Some of these questions, indeed, are such as no instructed Catholic would ask, but they are all put by educated men of the present time ; and in many cases an answer is taken for granted which travesties the acts of the Council. Even for Catholics themselves some of the questions have an interest. The tendency towards centralisation has an attraction for many as ^ See Doctrinal Authority, p. 38. X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 261 the opposite tendency has for others ; and it will be instructive to note the bearing on these tendencies of parts of the delibera- tions and of the definition. On some of these points the definition itself is very express; but its impressiveness is added to by a perusal of the preceding deliberations in the documents to which I have referred. The proposed definition having been discussed and weighed for the space of two months by the commission of bishops and theologians appointed for the purpose,^ had actually been drafted and approved by the Pope, when Cardinal Bilio, the President of the commission, who avowed his wish to conciliate the party of Dupanloup,^ on the 5th of May, un- expectedly opposed the formula as too strong. He urged that as the extent of the Church's infallibility had not yet been discussed, papal infallibility should only be defined as extending to definitions of " divine faith." He explained that of course he did not deny that the Pope was infallible in canonising saints, and in dogmatic facts ; but he opposed extending the definition to these points, It was argued on the other hand by the sup- porters of the original formula that such a limitation as he proposed would appear to deny papal infallibility in dogmatic facts, which would open the door to great confusion. The session broke up in a tumult (tumultiiarie). J^ext day the eminent theologians, Perrone and Pran- zehn, were summoned, and a formula, limiting the scope of the definition as proposed, was passed with only two dissentients — Archbishop Manning and the Bishop of Eatis- bonne.^ On the 7th of May, after a conference between the Bishop of Eatisbonne and Franzelin, the difficulty in the matter of dogmatic facts ^ was allowed by the latter to have weight, and it was agreed by those present that the question of the extent of papal infaUibility should simply be left with the statement that it was the same as that of the Church. Thus both a stricter and a laxer view of its extent 1 This commission was officially styled ''Deputatio pro rebus fidei." 2 The diary already mentioned quotes a remark made by Cardinal Bilio when the inopportunists finally refused to accept any definition, "My hope of con- ciliating the opposing Fathers is disappointed." 3 The diary adds that certain of the other Fathers, while voting for it in substance, wished for some modifications. 4 Cardinal Manning told me that this was the chief difficulty they urged. 262 THE SYLLABUS chap. would be allowable. After mucli further discussion a formula by Kleutgen and Franzelin was submitted to the committee dealing with the extent of infallibility in the negative manner described, but with a most important addition of a " historical introduction," avowedly designed to prevent extreme inter- pretations of the decree. It was to show "in what manner the Eoman Pontiffs had ever been accustomed to exercise the magistermm of faith in the Church " ; and to prevent the fear lest " the Eoman Pontiff could proceed {irrocrdere 2^ossit) in judging of matters of faith without counsel, deliberation, and the use of scientific means." This introduction formed the basis of what was ultimately voted on at the public session of the Fathers on July the 18th, although the text of Pranzelin and Kleutgen was not entirely approved. The point was emphasised still further in one of the Annotations to the first draft of the new formtda, proposed on the 8th of June, which formed the basis of further modifications. " It seemed useful," we read in this Annotation, " to insert in the Chapter some things adapted to the right understanding of the dogma, namely that the Supreme Pontiff does not perform his duty as teacher without intercourse and union (si7ie commercio et unione) with the Church." ^ In the historical introduction, as finally published, the safeguard urged in this connection as necessary, was thus expressed : " The Eoman Pontiffs, as the state of things and times has made advisable, at one time calling ecumenical councils or finding out the opinion of the Church dispersed throughout the world, at another by means of particular synods, at another using other means of assistance which Divine Providence supplied, have defined those things to be held which by God's aid they had known to be in agreement with sacred Scripture and the Apostolic traditions. For the Holy Ghost was promised to the successors of Peter, not that by His revelation they should disclose new doctrine, but that by His assistentia they might preserve inviolate, and expound ^ It was evidently to these additions to the decree originally proposed that Bishop Ullathorne, the friend and Ordinary of Dr. Ne-wanan, refers in the followino- passage in his Autobiograjyhij, which follows his statement that he had intended to speak in favour of some change in the decree as originally pro- posed : "In fact the lines of explanation added to the decree before its promul- gation accomplished all that I desired," p. 46. X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 263 faithfully the revelation or deposit of faith handed down by the Apostles." The deliberations of the Council were not published in Mr. Ward's lifetime, and he was far too careful a theologian to have at any time ignored the considerations set forth in the decree itself; and when they were urged as proofs that the Council had rejected his views on the extent of infallibility he was able to point to the fact that nothing had been ruled inconsistent with his teaching. Whatever his rhetoric had appeared to others to imply, his logic had gone no further than could be reconciled with the terms of the definition. The question, indeed, as to the extent of infallibility, as we have seen, was designedly left open. But the immense elaboration of the previous deliberations, as well as the text of the decree, were an impressive contradiction to the exaggerations of the school of the Univers ; and they brought into relief the im- portant role which the Church had played in those delibera- tions which issued in the definition, and must play in its interpre- tation. If it needed so much discussion amonsr theologjians to decide upon wording which was free from objection, how clear that what was worded so carefully and scientifically must be carefully and scientifically interpreted 1 Wliile the decree condemned the Galilean view that the consent of the Church is the test of the validity of a definition, the Fathers enforced the share of the Church as represented by bishops, synods, and scientific theologians, in its framing, and, by consequence, the practical necessity of their aid in its interpretation, and in determining what was infallibly and irreformably decreed and what was not. That share Mr. Ward had never denied, but it was thought by many that his attitude tended to reduce to a minimum what both the theory and practice of the Council had recognised as so important. Scarcely less important in the same direction was Bishop Tessler's pamphlet on True and False Tn/allihility, published soon after the Council. Bishop Fessler's work was welcomed by Newman as in sympathy with his own views ; and in one point of importance the Bishop directly opposed Mr, Ward's line in the DuUin Review. He cited the opinion of " grave theologians" that the Syllabus was not issued rx Cathedrd. Fessler was Secretary-General to the Vatican Council, and his 264 THE SYLLABUS chap. work was approved by the Pope. Mr. Ward pointed out that there was no proof that the Pope had examined it in detail ; but the fact that while Fessler's official position lent so much authority to his words, they remained then and afterwards uncensured, seemed to many proof conclusive that Eome itself at the very least did not think it desirable to enforce a more stringent view. Mr. Ward himself in later years, while retaining in the main his own views, considered that he had been in some respects too exacting. He has placed on record the fact that even before the Vatican Council eminent Ptoman theologians refused to endorse his theory in several particulars ; and during the last years of his life he more than once reverted to the subject, and qualified his earlier teaching. " I have now no doubt," he wrote a year before his death, "that in various parts of my pamphlets I pressed one or two of my points much too far. . . . This was due in part, I take for granted, to the heat of polemics ; but it is due still more (I think) to a certain hankering after premature logical completeness which I quite recognise as prominent among my intellectual faults." One noteworthy point on which he abandoned his original position was the assertion that the fact of the Pope's teaching all the faithful a doctrine as certain, was positive proof that he taught ex Cathedrd. This position, which had been criti- cised as untenable by certain theologians of weight in the year of the Vatican Council, he definitely abandoned in 1881. He came to hold with Perrone that the Pope might be only ex- pounding current Catholic teaching, and not exercising his prerogative of Universal Doctor. But if Ward had enforced his lesson of loyalty by means of a machinery which could not in all respects have stood the test of time after it had done its work, he had, nevertheless, in great measure gained his object. The party charged with disloyalty, against whom he was really writing, either accepted the decree with Gratry, or ceased to foster an anti - papal feeling among Catholics by excluding themselves from the Church with Bollinger. If his treatment had had, as he implies, some of the exaggeration, and over-stringent insistence on each detail of his scheme which the apostle of any move- ment is apt to fall into, he had some of the success of AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 265 an apostle. It was to the Ultramontane movement that, humanly speaking, the Council was due ; and if that as- sembly did not ratify the technical details of his treatment, it brought about that spirit of deference to the Holy See, which he sought to obtain by means of a theory which he himself considered later on as too exacting. Unlike Veuillot, he had no love for the controversy, and he was only too glad to retire from it. He recognised that his main point was won ; that the disloyal Liberals had lost their influence ; and he ceased from pressing his views as he had done in earlier years. " The Council," he wrote, " taken in connection with some of its attendant circumstances, was (I think) the deathblow of that organised party in England which had been represented successively by the Rambler, the Home and Foreign, and the North British " ; and consequently, " since the year 1870 1 have written much less constantly and urgently than before on the extent of the Church's doctrinal authority. Circum- stances of the moment have sometimes rendered it in some sense necessary to do so ; but where there was no special pressure of circumstances I have commonly left the theme alone." His services were appreciated in the quarter in which recognition was to him a reward unlike in kind to recognition from any one else. The Holy Father addressed a special brief to him on 4th July 1870, which was couched in the following terms : — PIUS P.P. IX. Beloved Son, health and Apostohc Benediction. We congratulate thee, beloved son, that having been called into the light of God's sons, thou labourest to diffuse the same light over the minds of others ; and that, having been received into the bosom of Holy Mother Church, thou studiest to exhibit and illustrate her holiness, and to assert the divine authority of her supreme Pastor, to vindicate his Prerogatives, to defend all his Eights. In this we see the nobleness of a mind which, having been drawn forcibly to the truth by mature examination, burns for it with more inflamed love, in proportion as it has gained it with greater labour; and occupies itself with extending further the received blessing with more intense eff'ort, in proportion as (taught by its own experience) it accounts the condition of those in error more miserable. The unwearied labour with which, for many years past, thou hast applied all the gifts of abiUty, knowledge, erudition, eloquence, given thee by the Lord, to supporting the cause of our 266 THE SYLLABUS chap. most holy religion and of this Apostolic See, plainly shows the faith inherent in thy mind and the charity diffused in thy heart, whereby thou art pressed to redeem the past time, and to atone for any controversy formerly perhaps undertaken in behalf of error, by alacrity and strenuousness in defending truth. But since a sure reward is prepared for him who sows justice, and those who train many thereto shall shine like stars for ever and ever, — while we rejoice that thou thus wreathest for thyself a garland, — we exhort thee at the same time that thou pursue thy design, and continue to fight valiantly the Lord's battles ; in order that thou mayest ever lead forward more into the way of truth, and mayest obtain for thyself a more splendid crown of eternal glory. We wish thee, therefore, the necessary strength for this, and supplicate copious helps of divine grace and all blessings ; and as the foretaste of these and as a pledge of our paternal good-will, we very lovingly impart to thee the Apostolic Benediction. Given at Kome, at Saint Peter's on the 4th day of July, in the year 1870, being the twenty-fifth of our Pontificate. Pius P.P. IX. I subjoin some passages from private correspondence of these years illustrative of the attitude of Ward on the one hand, and of Newman and his immediate friends on the other, in reference to the questions raised by the Encyclical and Sylla- bus of 1864 and the Council of 1870. It will be observed that they tend to show that Newman's analysis of the con- troversy in the first letter which I cite was in great measure true. The differences in theological opinion appeared smaller and smaller as each side found opportunities for explaining itself fully, but the difference in ethos, and, as Mr. Ward himself expressed it later, in their views on " Ecclesiastical prudence," remained. Erom the first letter to the last, New- man's main grievance is Ward's identifying his own explana- tions, both of the force and of the meaning of Pontifical acts, with the acts themselves, and treating those who denied his statements as disloyal to the Pope. The following letter gives the key to the situation. It was written immediately after the appearance of Father Kyder's criticism of Ward's views on infallibility : — The Oratory, Birmingham, 9th Maij 1867. My dear Ward — Father Eyder has shown me your letter, in which you speak of me ; and though I know that to remark X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 267 on what you say will be as ineffectual now in making you understand me as so many times in the last fifteen years, yet, at least as a protest in memoriam, I will, on occasion of this letter and of your letter to myself, make a fresh attempt to explain myself. Let me observe then that in former years, and noWj I have considered the theo- logical differences between us as unimportant in themselves ; that is, such as to be simply compatible with a reception both by you and by me of the whole theological teaching of the Church in the widest sense of the word teaching ; and again now, and in former years too, I have considered one phenomenon in you to be " mo- mentous," nay, portentous, that you will persist in calling the said unimportant, allowable, inevitable differences, which must occur between mind and mind, not unimportant, but of great moment. In this utterly uncatholic, not so much opinion as feeling and sentiment, you have grown in the course of years, whereas I con- sider that I remain myself in the same temper of forbearance and sobriety which I have ever wished to cultivate. Years ago you wrote me a letter, in answer to one of mine, in which you made so much of such natural difference of opinion as exists, that I en- dorsed it with the words, " See how this man seeketh a quarrel against me." . . . Pardon me if I say that you are making a Church within a Church, as the Novatians of old did within the Catholic pale, and as, outside the Catholic pale, the Evangelicals of the Establishment. As they talk of " vital religion" and " vital doctrines," and will not allow that their brethren " know the Gospel," or are Gospel preachers, unless they profess the small shibboleths of their own sect, so you are doing your best to make a party in the Catholic Church, and in St. Paul's words are dividing Christ by exalting your opinions into dogmas. ... I protest then again, not against your tenets, but against what I must call your schismatical spirit. I disown your intended praise of me, viz., that I hold your theo- logical opinions in "the greatest aversion," and I pray God that I may never denounce, as you do, what the Church has not denounced. — Bear with me, yours affectionately in Christ, J. H. Newiman. Both the comparative smallness of the differences, and Ward's emphatic insistence on the questions in debate, are ap- parent in the correspondence on a matter raised by the Ency- clical of 1864. Ward pressed its condemnation of " liberty of conscience." Men, closely identified with Newman, as Mr. Monsell, were known to be advocates of " liberty of conscience." But in reality the old saying of Dr. Brown as to Hume and Eeid was curiously illustrated. " Hume and Eeid are really 268 THE SYLLABUS chap. agreed," he said. " One cries out, * You can't help believing in an external world,' and then whispers, ' But you can give no good reason for your belief ' ; the other cries out, ' You can give no sufficient reason for believing in an external world,' and then whispers, ' But you can't help the belief.' " Yet Hume and Eeid fought at the time as though the shout were everything, and the whisper nothing. So in the controversy on religious hberty many who took exception to Ward's line, and who regretted his rhetoric, were often by no means prepared to advocate a jprinciple opposed to his. Where they differed was in their war cry. Men like Mr. Monsell, or M. Foisset, or Dupanloup, felt the necessity of emphasising the practical im- portance of liberty and toleration ; while Ward emphasised, as we have already seen, the truth of an abstract principle of intolerance. But Ward did not deny the expedience of tole- ration under "our deplorable circumstances," any more than Monsell denied — when the ground of debate had been made quite clear — that an ideal state of things would include a Catholic state, protecting the conscience of its subjects from the influence of teaching which would destroy religious unity. ISTewman, with whose views Mr. Monsell absolutely identified himself, was most explicit against any principle of universal toleration as the State's duty. Dupanloup wrote to Monsell asking him to obtain from Newman Theological authorities against persecution. In Newman's answer to Monsell dated 6 th of February 1864, he asks the question whether the civil power may {i.e, " has the right to ") inflict punishment for religion as religion, and replies " My notion is that you must hold the affirmative here, in spite of St. Athanasius's attacks on the persecuting Arian Emperors." He adds that " The great ques- tion is expedience or inexpedience." He urges on the advocates of toleration the importance of showing from history that it is expedient ; leaving alone the question of abstract justice. But so far as the Church itself is concerned he maintains that " gentleness is its own duty." Ward " whispers " each point which Newman " shouts." In every article (I have found no exception) in which he deals with the question, he has a saving clause to the effect that religious toleration is generally expedient at the present time ; and in a letter to Bishop Moriarty, dated 1864, he expressly X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 269 acquiesces in the application of the maxim "Ecclesia a san- guine abhorret " to the Church's own duty of gentleness. However, in each case, as with Hume and Eeid, the whisper was for a time unnoticed. Ward spoke of his opponents as though they maintained a principle opposed to the recognised Catholic teaching ; and they in turn regarded him as a practical advocate of religious persecution. Such a letter as the following may be given as a sample of many, and indicates generally the state of things — a state which fortu- nately issued ultimately in mutual explanations. Mr. Monsell, to whom it was written, had, it may be remembered, spoken strongly in the House of Commons in 1863 against the religious intolerance of the Spanish Government. He had characterised it as "opposed to the first principles of religious liberty," and had intimated his belief that the "prejudices of the Spanish people " were responsible for it. The question came up in his correspondence with Ward on the whole sub- ject more than a year after the appearance of the Encyclical ; and Ward wrote as follows : — My dear Monsell — You don't wish to enter into the theological question ; and if you did, you could read what I have printed. I only write, therefore, because I don't wish you to suppose that I concede that you are not directly contradicting what the Church teaches ; because I do not concede this. Indeed, if an Encyclical and Syllabus, coming from Pope and accepted by the Bishops, are not the Church's teaching, I don't see how the Council of Trent is the Church's teaching. . . . I feel so strongly with you the tremendous responsibility of such opinions as those advocated in the Dublin Review, that nothing would induce me to advocate them except the Church's plain voice. If you really wish to shut me up, do please bring me before some Eoman tribunal. It seems to me very hard that those on your side will not adopt this straightforward course. When Eyder's pamphlet came out I wrote at once both to Newman and to him that that most simple course was open to them ; and that I would give every possible facility to any such procedure. If any individual is to judge in the matter, surely it should not be Dupanloup but the Pope. As to Morel's book, I did not cite it as agreeing with all its opinions for I don't ; and particularly I think him very unjust to Ketteler. But I cited it for the amount of papal teaching which it textually contained. I can't fancy any one reading it and doubting 270 THE SYLLABUS chap. that there is in the Church a chain of traditionary teaching condemnatory of what I must call Montalembert's heterodox notions about religious liberty. I hope you will not think I am writing in a violent and head- strong temper. I am not conscious of the least ajDproach to such a temper. But I really think that those on your side do not face the question. — I remain, my dear Monsell, with great respect, sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. It was perhaps the result of correspondence between two men so different in intellectual tendency, and in the work of life — the one a statesman who had constantly to think of the practical effect of his words, the other a philosopher and an abstract thinker, to whom practical effect was a secondary question, and theory was all in all — that it took a long time before they understood each other's position. To Mr. Monsell the abstract principle was of minor importance, and the exact doctrinal weight of the Syllabus and Encyclical was a matter which he naturally left to professed theologians. But these two points were everything to Ward ; and he seems to have persevered in the impression that his correspondent, with Newman's sanction, both set at naught the teaching of the Encyclical, and denied the dogmatic authority of the condemnation it recorded. It is instructive to note how comparatively inconsiderable the theological difference between the two parties was proved to be once both sides had spoken out fully. Third persons made mischief ; sayings on either side were exaggerated or misquoted. Feeling was too strong on every side during the years of acute controversy for the necessary explanations. These earlier contests are often remembered ; the later arrival of a truer understanding is, perhaps, not so well known. " We should never," Ward wrote in the DuUin Eeviciv, with reference to Newman's answer to Gladstone in 1874, "have dreamed of giving the name ' minimistic ' to such a treatise as F. Newman's. Nothing can be more alien from its spirit than any tendency to deal grudgingly with the question whether this or that Pontifical act be ex Cathedrd. On one or two particulars, indeed, of comparatively small practical importance, we venture to be at issue with F. Newman on X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 271 this head ; but we have hardly ever read a work with which we felt generally more sympathy on the pomts to which we here refer." The following -letter of the same period touches on the special question of the Syllabus : — My dear Father Newman — I have to thank you very much for forwarding me a copy of your appendix, which I have read with great interest of course. If it be not impertinent in me to say so, your own view of the Syllabus has seemed to me, from the time I first read it, a thoroughly intelligible, loyal, and Catholic view, and I have said so in our forth- coming number. I meant to have said so in January, but I have given reasons why your arguments do not convince me. I think that you have done good service by your change of wording in page 22. Several considerable persons thought you had intended to say that there were no ex Caihedrd Acts as early as the seventh century. I had aheady written half a page to interpret your present words by other passages of yours which distinctly state the contrary ; now I shall merely have to note your change of expression. 1 really think Gladstone has done much good in teaching CathoHcs to understand each other better. In what I have written for our forthcoming number I express various subordinate differ- ences of opinion from you, but I trust and expect you will find nothing in the slightest degree tending to the excitement of divisions. With deepest sincerity I wish you Paschal joys and all others, . . . and remain ever afi'ectionately yours, W. G. Ward. So much as to the clearing up of some of the misunder- standings of the past. A divergence remained, and though we are still anticipating in point of time ; I think that the last full statement on Ward's part, in their private cor- respondence, of the nature of that divergence, with its pathetic peroration, should be given here, as completing the view of this curious controversy. Its argument is hardly more than a restatement of what has so often appeared. Ward imported a chivalrous devotion to the intimations of the Holy See into the essence of a Catholic writer's career. He trusted to the Holy Ghost for the Pope's prudence ; and filled with a deep sense of the impotence of the individual to judge, threw himself throughout into the policy of Eome. Newman not 272 THE SYLLABUS chap. less ready to obey absolutely where obedience was due, drew a sharper distinction between matters of policy and of doctrine. He could not forget the human elements which affected policy, though they could not touch the essence of doctrine. Saints have been called on to rebuke Popes, though Popes can define doctrine infallibly and saints cannot. Ward's sanguine trust appeared to be based on an ideal of guidance from on high, which, however desirable, had not been in fact vouchsafed. Newman had written immediately after publishing his pamphlet, and the purport of his letter I well remember though it was destroyed on the spot by my father — according to his general habit. He asked my father to " bear with him " in reading certain portions of his pamphlet which censured the line generally taken by the LuUin Review. If he was to write at all (he said) he must speak out ; and he added that he had always admired Ward amid all differences for his own absolute straightforwardness. He expressed the sense he had always had, and always should have, while life lasted, of Ward's unfairness in stigmatising those who took a less stringent view of the papal prerogatives and infallibility than himself, as " minimisers," and making his own belief the measure of the belief of all Catholics. This feeling, he said, he must, if he wrote at all, give expression to. The letter was signed '' with much affection, yours most sincerely," — a signature which seemed to me under the circumstances warm, but which my father complained of as being less warm than the '' yours affectionately " of their old intercourse. My father's reply — one of the last letters sent to me by Cardinal Newman before his death — was as follows : — 20^7t January 1875. My dear Father Newivian — I was so engaged yesterday in business connected with our forthcoming number that I could not give your letter my attention. But I was extremely glad to see your handwriting again after some interval, and am grateful also for your various kind expressions. I rather infer that you would wish me rather to answer said letter than merely acknowledge its receipt, so I will try to ansAver what you say point by point. I have taken up my best pen, so as to minimise (not indeed doctrine but) your trouble in deciphering me. At last you can throw it unread into the fire if it borefe you. X AND THE VATICAN DEFINITION 273 I see most clearly and admit most readily that you had no legitimate alternative between either not writing at all, or including in your pamphlet what you consider a just rebuke of our exorbitances. My grief is not that you say what you say, but that you think it. I feel sensibly your kind eulogy of my straightforwardness. . . , Your chief charge against me is that I " make my own belief the measure of the belief of others." As these words stand, they do not convey to me any definite idea. But it seems to me that the difference between you and me (I do not wish at all to under- rate it) may be understood by some such explanation as this. It has always appeared to me that a Catholic thinker or writer ought to aim at this : viz., so to think and write, as he judges that the Holy See (interpreted by her official Acts, and due regard being had to individual circumstances) would wish him to think and write. I have often said in the Dublin Review that peace and truth are in some sense necessarily antagonistic ; that every proclamation of a truth is a disturbance of peace. I have then gone on to say that whether or no in some given case the interest of souls would suffer most by the proclamation or the withholding of some given truth — that this question is one which ordinary men (I mean not specially helped by God) cannot even approximate to deciding; that, con- sequently, it is one of the very chief gifts bestowed upon the Pope, that in his authoritative teaching he can so decide. By a further consequence, I have thought it might very often be a duty to persuade Catholics (if one can) that certain beliefs are obligatory on them which as yet they do not recognise. I have thought that this was one's duty, w^henever it should seem to one (after due deliberation) that the Hol}^ See is desiring to enforce this obligation ; and on the other hand I have always said that truths, which one might think to have been infallibly declared, ought not on that account to be brought forward, unless there are signs that the Holy See wishes them to be now brought forward (I refer to truths other than the dogmata of the faith, though connected intimately with them). And I have thought that the " peace and unity," which as you so truly say are the '' privilege and duty of Catholics," are to be sought in one way and no other viz., in increasing among us all an ex animo deference, not only to the definitions but to the doctrinal intimations of the Holy See. I have written on at dreadful length but I did not see how otherwise to explain myself. Now I am daily more and more con- vinced that my aim has been the true one ; but I am also daily more and more convinced that I have fallen into grievous mistakes of judgment from time to time, whether as regards what I have said, or (much more) my way of saying it. I may say with the greatest sincerity that the one main cause of this has always appeared to me 274 THE VATICAN DEFINITION chap, x to be my breacli with you. Never was a man more unfit than I to play any kind of first fiddle. You supplied exactly what 1 needed; corrected extravagances, corrected crudities, suggested opposite considerations, pointed out exaggerations of language, etc. etc. When I found that you and I (as I thought) proceeded on fundamentally different principles, this invaluable help was lost ; and I have never been able even approximately to replace you. If you will not laugh at the expression, I will say that I have felt my- self a kind of intellectual orphan. I may say in my own praise that my censors have complimented me on my submissiveness ; but I have always wished to submit myself much more could I have found a guide whom I trusted. Excuse this tremendous prolixity of egotism. It will at least show how very desirous I am that you should think less ill than you do of my intellectual attitude, and that your rebukes therefore should be less severe. The ivhole colour of my life has changed, I assure you, from the loss of your sympathy. But my gratitude for the past will ever remain intact. — Affectionately yours, W. G. Ward. I hope I am not dreadfully illegible. They never met again, and the opposition of so many years could not be as though it had never been. Advanced age on one side and increasing infirmity on the other made travelling a difficult matter ; and so the experiment of a meeting could scarcely have been tried. But certainly the early love for Newman, which had never passed away, remained more un- disturbed during the last seven years of my father's life than it had been since the divisions of the years following 1860. I remember well the strong feeling he showed when I un- earthed (about 1879) some old letters of the Cardinal's, written with warmth of expression, and his constant wish that I should come, in some personal way, under his influence ; and it is a relief to turn to the last mention of my father in Cardinal Newman's later correspondence with myself. " It pleases me to find," he wrote in March 1885, "that you take so kindly the real affection I have for you, which has come to me as if naturally from the love which I had for your father." Note. — Some of the documents relating to the modifications made in the definition of j)apal Infallibility, as originally proposed, are given in Appendix A, p. 435. CHAPTEE XI W. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL The year of the Vatican Council brought about a complete change in Mr. Ward's life. He had a severe attack of rheumatic gout from which at one time fatal effects were feared. During his long convalescence he used to speak of it as the " inauguration of old age " ; and after his recovery he was in many ways a changed man. Much of the inclination to combative discussion, which had co-existed with his sensitiveness in controversy, passed away never to return. He held aloof henceforth in great measure from party strife. He was glad to turn to the comparative calm of philosophical debate. The heated controversies with Liberal Catholics gave place to the earnest but friendly tournaments with Mill and Bain. He never renewed the habits of violent bodily exercise which in earlier days were a necessity to him. Mentally and physically alike there was a change in the direction of greater repose. Henceforth, then, while still working for the Catholic cause, he took part in the Catholic Eevival on its philosophical side. A great movement had set in, for the revival of the philosophy of the mediaeval schools — a movement associated with such well-known names as Liberatore, Sanseverino, Palmieri, Caretti, and, later on. Cardinal Zigliara. Father Kleutgen's able work on the Scholastic Philosophy was perhaps the most remark- able outcome of this movement. Mr. Ward, while admiring profoundly Kleutgen's great work, and while adopting with the utmost sympathy in his philosophical writing the scholastic method so long familiar to him in theology, and congenial to him for its orderly clearness, was never a thorough Aristotelian ; and this fact 276 JV. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL chap, qualified the part he took in the movement. Further, he had a very strong feeling as to the necessity in philosophy of elbow-room for free intellectual thought ; and the tendency which he saw in some of the modern scholastics to exclude original thought, and to treat the words of the older schoolmen as authoritative texts, was a severe trial to him. Fortunately Father Kleutgen himself was far more moderate in his demands ; and Ward was able in some degree, through his interpretation of the movement, to find a 'modus vivendi with the ISTeo- Scholastics. But it was to the end a process which required considerable effort. The result of this difficulty, however, was that the story of Ward's philosophical work, unlike that of his theological, is not closely associated with the writings of any Catholic school. His share in the revival of the Scholastic method in philosophy had relation, primarily, to the controversies in England and Scot- land which were external to distinctively Catholic thought. In his view of the requirements of Catholic philosophy he returned to the method of his great patron, St. Thomas Aquinas, from whom he learnt a different lesson from that learnt by many of the ISTeo- Scholastics. While these men adopted bodily the old formuhe of the mediaeval systems, with little regard to their connection with the thought of the present hour, Mr. Ward preferred to treat contemporary philosophy as St. Thomas himself had treated it six hundred years earlier. That great thinker had had the chief share in working a far - reaching change in the relations between Catholic and non-Catholic thought. He was the chief repre- sentative of that school which, deserting the old patristic antagonism to Aristotle, and the policy of holding aloof from the rationalism of the day, addressed itself to the task of showing how the peripatetic philosophy could be reconciled with Christianity, and to dealing closely and candidly with such non-Christian thinkers as the Arabians, Averroes and Avicenna, and the Jew, Maimonides. From the last named St. Thomas learnt much which he has incorporated in his great philosophical work. Indeed, the amount which both St. Thomas and Albertus Magnus owe to this great Jewish thinker is a remarkable fact to which German writers have recently called attention. XI W. G. WARD AND /. 6*. MILL 277 All this was entirely in harmony with Mr. Ward's philo- sophical temper. With St. Thomas he sharply divided the truths of faith from those of reason ; and in the latter sphere he returned to the debates from first principles which he had loved in the early days of his Liberalism, treating all Theists as allies, all Agnostics as foes. His work was, in its very form, what St. Thomas's chief philosophical effort had been. The Dominican saint wrote, not a complete treatise on philosophy, but a Summa Contra Gentiles^ a work expressly directed against the philosophical systems which in his own day were impugning belief in Christian Theism ; and Ward wrote a defence of Theism in the shape of an attack on con- temporary Antitheists. Pantheism was the danger in 1270 ; Phenomenism in 1870; and St. Thomas was best imitated, not by a useless T4sum4 of arguments against a system of Pantheism which had ceased to exist, but by dealing in St. Thomas's spirit with the errors which had taken its place. One further characteristic of Mr. Ward's adaptation of the Scholastic method also had its prototype in the days of mediaeval Scholasticism. Not only did he with St. Thomas enter into frank controversy, in his writings, with non-Christian thinkers on the truths of reason, prescinding entirely from revelation ; but he held personal intercourse with them as well, both in his correspondence with Mill and Bain, and in his share in the debates of the Metaphysical Society. A French writer has described the impressions of a visitor in the days of Charlemagne at one of the meetings of the Mahometan rationalists of Bagdad — the Motehallemin or " teachers of the word " as they were called. " There were present," he writes, '' not only Mussulmans of every kind, orthodox and heterodox, but also misbelievers, materialists, atheists, Jews, Christians ; in short there were unbelievers of every kind. Each sect had its chief, charged with the defence of the opinions it professed, and every time one of the chiefs entered the room all arose as a mark of respect, and no one sat down again until the chief was seated. The hall was soon filled, and when it was seen to be full, one of the unbelievers spoke. ' We have met together to reason,' he said. ' You know all the conditions. Mussulmans, you will not bring forward reasons taken from your book or founded on the authority of your prophet, for we 278 JV. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL chap. do not believe in the one or the other. Each must limit him- self to arguments taken from reason.' " Such were the con- ditions accepted by the Christian disputants in the city of Haroun al Easchid. And they were accepted by Mr. Ward in his intercourse with Mill and Martineau, Bain and Huxley. The first step in this direction was his resumption — in the years immediately preceding the Vatican Council — of his corre- spondence with J. S. Mill. Early in 1865 Mill sent Ward a copy of his Examination of Sir William Hamilton s FliilosoijJiy. In it he conceded in part the justice of Ward's contention, explained later on in this volume, as to the immediate evidence of the reliableness of Memory. He conceded that Memory must be allowed to be intuitive, but he denied that this proved any general power of intuition. There was this one intuition and no more. He referred his readers to Ward's work on Nature and Grace, in which he first developed his position on the subject, and expressed his concurrence with Ward's reasoning, and his sense of the ability and " practical worth " of the volume.-^ Mill's concession on the question of Memory, made on his unwavering principle of absolute candour, was a shock to some of his followers, who recognised all it involved. To Ward it appeared to be a renunciation of his whole opposition to the intuitional philosophy as such, and he was not slow to say this. Dr. Bain, later on, expressed emphatic dissent from Mill's position ; but of this we shall have to speak shortly. Ward wrote to Mill on receipt of the volume as follows : — IWi April 1865. My dear Sir — I have to thank you for a present of your work on Sir William Hamilton, and also for a kind notice of me therein, which I only reached this morning, having read your book steadily through up to that point. I could not express in few words the various impressions made by what I have read of your book nor (of course) would you particularly care to hear them. I will only say that I recognise your usual candour (usual in you, most unusual in others), when I find you admitting that " our belief in the veracity of memory is evidently ultimate," a concession which I think, you would have been unwilling to make did not your candour and desire of truth so characteristically preponderate over attachment to your own system. 1 This tribute of Mill, with further additions, will be found at p. 209 of the edition of 1872. XI IV. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL 279 I fear that since we last corresponded our divergence is even greater than it was before. I am now editor of the Dublin Review, and if you ever happen to cast your eye on it I cannot doubt that you will think it as simply mischievous (except for its ineffective- ness) as any production can possibly be. In it my position as editor has obliged me to attend (which I had never done before) to various politico-religious questions, and I have a clear conviction that the Catholic Church is really committed to principles opposed in the greatest degree to your own. Your work on liberty specially exhibits such contrariety. Yet if you happen to look at our April number you will find an article on America with which you will thoroughly sympathise, and which (I think) you will consider able. It is by a son of W. Wilberforce, and I believe he has obtained some of his facts by communication with Miss Martineau. The article on the Encyclical and Syllabus is by me. If you care to open it at p. 469 and again at p. 493, you will admit (I think) that the statement is clear of principles which you will re2;ard as detestable. ]\Iay truth prevail ! Sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. Mill, who was not accustomed to Ward's superlatives, wrote back : " It is very unlikely that anything you write, however much I may disagree with it, could appear to me either ' detestable ' or ' simply mischievous.' I have never read anything of yours in which I have not found much more to sympathise with than to dislike. . . . [again] the only op- position which I deem injurious to truth is uncandid opposition, and that I have never found yours to be, nor do I believe I ever shall." Mill's candidature for Westminster was on the tapis when Mr. Ward next wrote to him. The line he took is in the memory of many. While consenting to represent the con- stituency if elected, he refused to canvass or in any way to work for his return. His success under the circumstances was remarkable and interesting. Mr. Ward wrote to him as follows in July : — Old Hall, Ware, 11th July 1865. My dear Sir — I was much obliged by your last letter, but thought I would not trouble you with my reply while you were so busy in election matters. At this moment I have no time to write on what I intended, but wish to ask you a question on a totally different matter. Meanwhile I must say how warndy I sympathised 28o JV. G. M^ABD AND J. S. MILL chaf. with your whole attitude at your election. If such an example should spread — if many places were found in which a majority would vote for a candidate who plainly tells them they are doing him no favour in electing him — one great difficulty would be removed from the mind (I think) of many who now dread the influx of the popular tide. Even had you failed, the very attempt (it seems to me) was an epoch in English history. I say this, tho' I detested even the old bill of '31, and cannot help regarding our present constitution as *' democracy tempered by bribery and intimidation," one bad thing neutraHsed greatly by another. But you at least have ever been free from mob-worship. The question I wish to ask concerns the Copernican system. I am writing an article on the case of Galileo. De Morgan certainly says that in his time the heliocentric theory was more probably false than true so far as regards its scientific proof. I think there is something on the subject in your Logic, but I cannot lay my hand on it. Could you kindly refer me % I have your 4:th edition. At all events, could you tell me your own judgment on the matter, as no doubt you have formed one *? An eminent Catholic mathematician thinks that even in Newton's time the theory was far from proved, and that the first really decisive event was Bradlefs proof that the earth moves from one place to another. Unfor- tunately (though I studied pure mathematics at Oxford with much interest) I never got on with the apjolied, and am therefore, alas ! profoundly ignorant of astronomy. Many thanks for your kind expressions of agreement ; they pleased me the more from their rarity. I find that many Protestants will tolerate a " Liberal " Catholic ; but for myself, who look on Ultramontanism as the only genuine article, the most " Liberal " of Protestants have no toleration. Even my very old friend the Dean of Westminster looks at me quite askance ; and yet I really believe, if I may speak in my own favour, that no one takes more pains than I do to do justice to an opponent, though I admit that, from a certain narrowness, I have often great difficulty in under- standing opposite views. That I am not simply a " bigot," in the ordinary sense, I persuade myself, were it only from my great interest in everything you write. I may take the opportunity of saying how heartily I agree with the drift of that passage about God which has so excited the bitterness of many Christians. To me it seems simply axiomatic, and I am quite confident no Catholic doctor has held that a malignant Creator could have any claims except to resistance and detestation.^ ^ "If, " wrote Mill in answer to a criticism of Dean Mansel, '' instead of tlie glad tidings that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences Avhich the highest human mind can conceive exist in a degree inconceivable to ns, I am informed XI IV. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL 281 I really wish, whenever you have perfect leisure, you would run your eye over my article in the Dublin Beview for April, pp. 469-481 and 492-498. The rest of the article would not interest you at all, I imagine; but you kindly spoke of reading this and also H. Wilberforce's article in the same number on America. When I have time I wish to write on one point of your work on Hamilton in connection with my philosophical volume. I am most grieved to tease people by my deplorable handwriting, which I fear is worse even than it was. — I remain, my dear sir, very sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. Mill again gravely remonstrated with Mr. Ward, insisting that he considered him no " bigot." " It gives me much pleasure," he wrote, " that you sympathise so completely with me on the subject of the Westminster election. That you were sure to feel with me as to the passage of my book for which I have been attacked, I could not doubt after reading your book on Nature and Grace. Let me add that (whatever may be my opinion of Ultramontanism) I know far too much both of your writings and of yourself to be in any danger of mistaking you for a ' bigot.' Few people have proved more fully than you not only their endeavour but their ability to do ample justice to an opponent." Mill wrote also at considerable length on the Galileo case, and the essay was partially recast in deference to his criticisms. It appeared in October 1865. A year later a question arose in which for once Mr. Ward and Mill heartily and unreservedly sympathised — the negro question. The events will be in the memory of many readers. An insurrection had broken out in Jamaica. Governor Eyre put down the insurrection with promptitude. But it soon transpired that his treatment of the negroes had been character- ised by unnecessary and even wanton cruelty. Four hundred that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, hut what they are we cannot learn, or what are the principles of his government, except that 'the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving' does not sanction them — convince me of it and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. AVhatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do — he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures ; and if such a being can sentence me to Hell for not so calling him, to Hell I will go.''— On Hamilton, pp. 123, 124. 282 W. (^. WARD AND J. S. MILL chap. and thirty-nine persons had been put to death; over six hundred of both sexes had been flogged. Gordon, the leader of the insurrection, was executed upon evidence which Lord Chief Justice Cockburn characterised as not only utterly insufficient for conviction, but insufficient to justify even a trial. " No competent judge," he said, '' could have received that evidence." A Eoyal Commission went out to Jamaica. Eyre was deposed ; and a large section of the English people applauded. Then came a reaction. There was, we may remember, another party, of which Tennyson, Carlyle, and Kingsley were representative members, who strongly opposed the action of Mill and of the " Jamaica committee," which he organised under Mr. Charles Buxton's presidency ; and this party rapidly gained adherents. They held that Eyre had acted promptly and saved the island. It was intolerable, they considered, that the hands of a man of action should be tied at such a crisis, and that his career should be checked, and perhaps ruined, because of faulty excess in the right direction. Mr. Ward's sympathies were, as I have said, with Mill, far more than with his opponents, though he was alive to the dangers of the humanitarian and the sentimentalist movement, against which they entered their protest. The " damned nigger " outcry, which Carlyle promoted, seemed to him, how- ever, simply unchristian. The DuNin Revieiu took its place among Mill's defenders. Henry Wilberforce wrote an article for it on Jamaica, which was published in October 1866, and Mr. Ward sent the article to Mill. Mr. Ward had at the time just completed an essay of some importance on " Science, Prayer, Freewill, and Miracles." Of the purport and occasion of this essay, whicli aroused considerable attention, I shall speak directly. It is referred to in the following letter to Mill, which accompanied the G^ift of Wilberforce's article. W. G. Ward to J. S. Mill Old Hall, Nr. Ware, 7 th Febrioary 1867. My dear Sir — I hope the October number of the Dublin Review reached you, otherwise I Avill send you another. The article on XI IV. G. WARD AND /. 5. MILL 283 Jamaica is ^vritten by Mr. H. Wilberforce, who has since joined your committee. Mr. Buxton writes to say he considers it decidedly the best article he has seen on the subject. I shall be very glad of your opinion on it. ... I am delighted to see you have begun your campaign, and in such an excellent spirit. I most sincerely \vish you success in its prosecution. The anti- negro fanaticism which (by I a curious reaction from the opposite extreme) seems now dominant in England, appears to me unspeakably shocking. I have spent a most agreeable hour to-day in reading your in- augural address. I wish we agreed as much in matters we both regard of supremest importance, as in many others. — Sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. I have written an article for April against you on Freewill. The St. Andrews' address — delivered by Mill as Lord Kector of the University — has been described by Mr. Bain as in one sense a failure, owing to Mill's want of acquaintance with practical academic life. But its ability and interest are acknowleds^ed ; and its theoretical attitude towards mental discipline and intellectual work was identical with Ward's. He often quoted from it the statement that the " ultimate end " from which such things take their " chief value " is " that of making men more effective combatants in the fight which never ceases to rage between good and evil." Mill was much pleased with Wilberforce's paper. " The article on Jamaica," he wrote, ''is excellent. I am very happy that you feel with me so strongly on that subject. I am glad too that you like the St. Andrews' address. I wish I had seen your article on Freewill while I was revising my book on Hamilton for a new edition, and replying to other critics. You would have been a much worthier adversary than most of those I have had." The article being actually in type, Mr. Ward took advan- tage of Mill's interest in it, and proposed to send him a proof with a view to modifying it, so as to meet his criticisms. " There is one page in particular," he wrote, " on which I very specially desire your opinion, being myself so ignorant of physical facts. If you would only read that page (or two pages) I should esteem it a real favour." At the same time he adds, " I hope you will at once refuse if at all too much pressed for time." Mr. Ward seems to have felt conscious of something curious and difficult to explain in the instinct which 284 W. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL chap. prompted him to single out, as the one critic whose judgment he asked for, one who was so totally opposed to all his deepest convictions. The singleness of Mill's purpose, however, was a magnet whose power was unfailing; and he adds as if in explanation, " You see I treat you, as you have a right to be treated, as the fairest, most truth-loving, most generous of opponents." Mill undertook to read and criticise the essay, which was duly forwarded, together with the following letter : — 21 HaiMilton Terrace, N.W., February 1867. My dear Sir — I forward you my article, as you have been so kind as to permit it. The discussion on Freewill begins close to the top of slip 14, and continues about half-way down slip 18. I shall be grateful of course for any criticism you will make on my remarks ; and will give it my best attention. It would certainly have been a great advantage, if it had been possible, for you to notice them in your next edition ; but (so far from being surprised at your inability to do so) my own wonder is that you are able to get through such an infinitude of work. You will not be surprised, considering the line you take on Eeform and similar questions, that I, for my humble part, could have wished a larger proportion of your time given to speculation and a smaller to politics. But you will, I am sure, pardon this expression of opinion from a strong- Conservative ; and indeed take it as a compliment. . . . The part, however, of my article on which I very particularly desire your judgment, and in which I have written vA\h very far greater diffi- dence than on Freewill, extends from shp 6 at the middle to the middle of slip 12. . . . My statement about eclipses and comets was taken from what was told me at Oxford by a very accomplished scientific professor. The other day another scientific friend here said that the sphere of astronomical prediction is far wider than I had been told. You will see, however, that this rather forwards than impedes my argument, if it be really true (as he also seems to think) that scientific pre- diction has not materially advanced in other sciences. Eead, please, on this head, Mansel's letter, quoted in my final slip. This is the particular question on which I should be so grateful to you for an answer. I am so deplorably ignorant of physics (which I feel to be a very serious misfortune) that I may have made some serious bungle. In vieio of course you will totally differ from me, but I much wish to know how far you can endorse my facts. — I remain, my dear sir, sincerely yours, W. Gr. Ward. The essay on "Science, Prayer, Freewill, and Miracles," XI W. G, WARD AND /. S. MILL 285 which ultimately appeared in the Dublin Revieiv in April 1867, is a typical specimen of Mr. Ward's controversial writing. It was called forth by the appearance of a work by the Duke of Argyll entitled Tlie Reign of Law, and an essay by Mr. ^lalcolm M'Coll called " Science and Prayer." The question it dealt with was the difficulty, in the face of the ever-growing proofs of the uniformity of nature, of preserving the Christian conception of a God who is behind the veil, worldng always. The Mediaevalist saw the hand of God in everything. God sent the rain, sent the sunshine, sent an earthquake, sent the plague or pestilence, punished with paralysis or illness, cured disease in answer to prayer. The more the details of physical science revealed the constant chains of uniform sequence in the course of nature, the harder it seemed to conceive of God as directly effecting its changes. To pray for rain was easy as long as God was supposed to " open the heavens " ; but when the necessary preliminary conditions of a shower were understood, it seemed as unreal as to pray that the sun might set at six o'clock in June. The barometer was no prophet of the future ; it recorded a present state of things, from which rain must follow by necessary law. This was one of the points raised, and there were other parallel ones. Mr. Ward begins his argument by stating the sceptical philosopher's view, in a passage which may be quoted as a specimen of his habit of entering fully into an opponent's case, when that case proceeded on lines which appealed to him as forcible. He writes as follows : — There are not a few scientific men, then, we fear, who, if they spoke out their full mind, would argue as follows : — The one principle implied in every scientific investigation of every kind is the principle of phenomenal uniformity ; or, in other words, the principle that, in every case Avithout exception, where there are the same phenomenal antecedents, the same phenomenal consequents will result. Let me suppose for a moment the con- tradictory of this ; let me suppose, e.g.^ that some deity had the power and the will to affect the fixed laws of nature, science would be an impossibility. I compose a substance to-day of certain materials and find it by experiment to be combustible. I compose another to-morrow of the very same materials, united in the very same way and in the very same proportions, and I find the com- position r/zcombustible. If such a case were possible, the whole 286 W. G. WARD AND /. 5. MILL chap. foundation of science would be taken from under my feet. Science from the first has assumed this phenomenal uniformity as its first principle ; nor could it have advanced one single step without that assumption. Those achievements, then, of physical science, which the most religious men cannot attempt to question, afford an absolutely irrefragable demonstration of that first principle which science has from the first assumed. No investigations, proceeding throughout on a false basis, could by possibility have issued in an innumerable multitude of unexperienced yet experimentally true conclusions. But now answer me candidly : how is this principle of phenomenal uniformity reconcilable, I will not say with Chris- tianity, but with any practical system whatever of religion ? I will begin with my weakest point of attack, and rise by degrees to my strongest. I will begin with the doctrine that prayer for temporal blessings is reasonable and may be efficacious. Your country is visited with famine or pestilence, and you supplicate your God for relief. Your only child lies sick of a dangerous fever, and, as a matter of course, you are frequent in prayer. You are diligent, indeed, in giving her all the external help you can ; but your chief trust is avowedly in God. You entreat Hii;n that He will arrest the malady and spare her precious life. What can be more irrational than this % Would you pray, then, for a long day in December ? Would you pray that in June the sun shall set at six o'clock ? Yet surely the laws of fever are no less absolutely fixed than those of sunset ; and were the case otherwise no science of medicine could by possibility have been called into existence. The only difference between the two cases is that the laws of sun- set have been thoroughly mastered, whereas our knowledge as to the laws of fever, though very considerable, is as yet but partial and incomplete. The " abstract power of prediction," as Mr. Stuart Mill calls it — this is the one assumption in every nook and corner of science. All scientific men take for granted — when they cease to do so tbey will cease to he scientific men — that a person of superhuman and adequate intelligence, who should know accurately and fully all the various combinations and properties of matter which now exist, could predict infallibly the whole series of future phenomena. He could predict the future course of weather or of disease with the same assurance with which men now predict the date of a coming eclipse. Pray God all day long ; add fasting to your prayer if you like, and let all your fellow Christians add iluk prayer and fasting to yours in order that the said eclipse shall come a week earlier. Do you suppose you will be heard % Yet the precise date of an eclipse is not more peremptorily fixed by the laws of nature than is the precise issue of your daughter's fever. You do not venture to doubt speculatively this fundamental doctrine of science ; in our various scientific conversa- xr IV. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL 287 tions, my friend, you have always admitted it. But, like a true Englishman, you take refuge in an illogical compromise. You assume one doctrine when you study science ; and another, its direct contradictory, Avhen your child falls ill. And yet I am paying you too high a compliment, for you do not profess that this latter doctrine is true ; you do not profess that your prayer to God is reasonable, or can possibly be efficacious: your only defence is that your reason is mastered and overborne by the combined effect of your religious and your parental emotion. As though you could please God — if, indeed, there be a Personal God at all — by acting in a manner which your reason condemns. Well, you tell me you see your mistake ; you will henceforth pray for spiritual blessings, and for them alone. AVhy, you are still as unreasonable as you were before. Is not psychology, then, as truly a science as medicine 1 You never doubted that it was when you used to take such interest in the study of Reid and Hamilton. But if psychology he a science, if the conclusions, whether of Hartley and Mill or of Hamilton and M'Cosh, have more value than the inventions of a fortune-teller or the dreams of a madman, mental phenomena proceed on fixed laws no less inflexibly than physical. What, then, can possibly be your meaning when you pray for what you call grace 1 when you supplicate for help against what you call temptation'? for groAvth in what you call virtue ? All these prayers imply in their very notion that your God is constantly interfering with the course of mental phenomena. To talk as you do, or, at least, to pray as you do, is equivalent to saying in so many words, not that this or that school of psychologians is in error, but that there is no science of psychology at all ; that there are no fixed laws of mind to be discovered by any one whatever ; that the real agencj^ at work, in causing our various thoughts, volitions, and emotions, is the unceasing and arbitrary intervention of a Personal Creator and Sanctifier. Take your choice. Believe in science, or believe in the efficacy of prayer. But at least do not assume an intellectual position so obviously contemptible as that of seeking to combine the two. At least, you reply, you may exercise your Freewill for good or for evil, however powerless your God may be to assist you in the combat. On the contrary, I rejoin, this figment of Freewill is even more directly unscientific than the superstition of prayer. The very foundation of all science, as every one well knows, is this great truth that the same phenomenal antecedents are invariably succeeded by the same phenomenal consequents. Now, the notion of Freewill directly, and, as it Avere, unblushingly contradicts this fundamental truth. When you say your will is free, your very meaning is that — the very same phenomenal antecedents being supposed, both physical and mental — you possess a real power of 288 JV. G. WARD AND /. 5. MILL chap. choosing what mental conseqiieiit shall ensue. How amazing, not that a priest-ridden Ultramontane or an ignorant rustic, but that you, an educated and scientific gentleman, can have been blind to so extravagant an inconsistency ! After this, it is hardly worth while to make one more remark, which I will not, however, omit. The Christian religion, in particular, is grounded on an allegation of miracles. But miracles, it is plain, constitute the same anti-scientific absurdity in the material world which Freewill constitutes in the mental. To believe the existence of miracles is, ipso facto, to disbelieve phenomenal uniformity, and to disbelieve phenomenal uniformity, is to reject the very possibility of science. We cannot follow Mr. Ward througli all the details of his answer to this line of reasoning, but two characteristic extracts shall be made, which give its drift, and explain the correspondence with Mill which followed. The first has refer- ence to prayers for rain or for health ; the second to the " free- will " doctrine. He maintained that the advance of science in no way tended to prove that prayer was unreasonable for such things as health and fine weather. The advance of science, great as it has been, has gone on definite and limited lines. In " cosmic " phenomena, as he calls such phenomena as eclipses, or the relative motion of the planets, science has gone far towards establishing laws of periodic recurrence. Further discoveries will then presumably carry further our knowledge of such laws ; and prayer that the sun should set at noon, or that the planets should stand still for ten minutes, would have all the unreality of asking for interference in an absolutely fixed system. But in " earthly " phenomena — those concerning our own planet especially — the case is otherwise. In these the ascertained laws of periodicity are very limited in the past, and will be so equally, it may be presumed, in the future. Optics give a law of refraction, chemistry of the proportions in which elements combine ; but neither say lohen refraction or combination will take place. There is nothing to show that any very lono- chain of regular succession will ever be established in such cases ; nay, considering how small a proportion the power of prediction bears to the accessibility of the forces at work there is a positive argument against any such lengthened chain of uniform causation, uninterfered with by forces external to the fixed system. Darwin, in the Botcmic Garden (Canto iv. XI W. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL 289 1. 320), suggests that changes of wind may be due to some minute chemical cause, which might be governed by human agency. If then man could constantly affect the sequence of " earthly " phenomena without violating the laws of nature, why cannot God do so ?^ Mr. Ward could not then see that the discovery of a considerable number of uniform successions, in such phenomena as those concerning the weather, in the least degree interfered with the ordinary Christian conception of a God who is behind the veil, working always. He quotes Mill as allowing that the great test of scientifically ascertained regularity in physical phenomena is their capability of prediction; and so far as " earthly " phenomena go this capability is very limited. Prayers for rain and health, if their validity is on other grounds acknowledged, are in no way discredited by such limited regularity as has been observed in the course of the weather or of human disease. He proceeds to explain his meaning by the following illustration : — We begin, then, with imagining two mice, endowed, however, with quasi-human or semi-human intelHgence, enclosed within a grand pianoforte, but prevented in some way or other from inter- fering with the free play of its machinery. From time to time they are delighted with the strains of choice music. One of the two considers these to result from some agency external to the instrument ; but the other, having a more philosophical mind, rises to the conception of fixed laws and phenomenal uniformity. " Science as yet," he says, " is but in its infancy, but I have already made one or two important discoveries. Every sound which reaches us is preceded by a certain vibration of these strings. The same string invariably produces the same sound, and that louder or more gentle according as the vibration may be more or less intense. Sounds of a more composite character result when two or more of the strings vibrate together ; and here, again, the sound produced, as far as I am able to discover, is precisely a compound of those sounds which would have resulted from the various component strings vibrating separately. Then there is a further sequence which I have observed j for each vibration is preceded by a stroke from a corresponding hammer, and the string vibrates more intensely in proportion as the hammer's stroke is more forcible. ^ This suggestion of Darwin's is given by Dean Mansel in a letter to Dr. Pusey cited by Ward. U 290 W. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL chap. Thus far I have already prosecuted my researches. And so much at least is evident even now, viz., that the sounds proceed not from any external and arbitrary agency — from the intervention, e.g., of any higher will — but from the uniform operation of fixed laws. These laws may be explored by intelligent mice, and to their exploration I shall devote my life." Even from this inadequate illustration you see the general conclusion which we wish to enforce. A sound has been produced through a certain intermediate chain of fixed laws, but this fact does not tend ever so distantly to establish the conclusion that there is no human premovement acting con- tinuously at one end of that chain. Imagination, however, has no limits. We may very easily suppose, therefore, that some instrument is discovered producing music immeasurably more heavenly and transporting than that of the pianoforte, but for that Y^ry reason immeasurably more vast in size and more complex in machinery. We will call this imaginary instrument a "polychordon," as we are not aware that there is any existing claimant of that name. In this polychordon the inter- mediate links, between the player's premovement on the one hand and the resulting sound on the other, are no longer two, but two hundred. We further suppose, imagination, as before said, being boundless, that some human being or other is unintermittently playing on this polychordon, but playing on it just what airs may strike his fancy at the moment. Well, successive generations of philosophical mice have actually traced one hundred and fifty of the two hundred phenomenal sequences, through whose fixed and invariable laws the sound is produced. The colony of mice, shut up within, are in the highest spirits at the success which has crowned the scientific labour of their leading thinkers, and the most eminent of these addresses an assembly : " We have long known that the laws of our musical universe are immutably fixed, but we have now discovered a far larger number of those laws than our ancestors could have imagined capable of discovery. Let us redouble our efforts. I fully expect that our grandchildren will be able to predict as accurately for an indefinitely preceding period the succession of melodies with which we are to be delighted as we now predict the hours of sunrise and sunset.^ One thing, at all events, is now absolutely incontrovertible. As to the notion of there being some agency external to the polychordon — intervening with arbitrary and capricious will to produce the sounds we experience — this is a long-exploded superstition, a mere dream and dotage of the past. The progress of science has put it on one side, and never again can it return to disturb our philosophical progress." 1 "The iDolychordou, if the reader pleases, may be supposed to have a glass cover, through which the light penetrates." XI IV. G. WARD AND /. S. MILL 291 And then he draws his moral from the parallel : — . Two hundred absolutely fixed laws intervene between the player's premovement and the resulting sound ; but this fact does not tend ever so remotely to show that there is not an inteUigent player or that his premovement is not absolutely unremitting ; and in like manner though phenomenal laws the most strictly and rigorously uniform existed throughout the realm of nature ... it would not tend ever so remotely to show that these laws are not at each moment directed to this purpose or to that by an immediate and uncontrolled Divine Premovement. God's ends cannot be more inscrutable to us . . . than would be the end of a human performer to the mice. . . . And as a player on the polychordon may be readily induced at the smallest request of a little child to produce this particular musical result rather than some other, so the heai'tfelt prayer of the humblest Christian may powerfully affect God's premovement of the physical world. In treating of the Freewill question, he formulated for the first time the distinction, which has since been generally accepted as valid, between the will's spontaneous impulse, in forming which it is not free, and a man's power of effort in opposition to that impulse. " We will here, then," he writes, " lay down a proposition which, beyond all possible question, is fully consistent with the doctrine of Freewill, and which, for our part, we confidently embrace as true. My soul at some given moment possesses certain qualities, intrinsic and inherent, certain faculties, tendencies, habits, and the like. It is solicited, moreover, by certain motives having their own special character, intensity, and direction. Our proposition is this : Under such circumstances science, considered in its abstract perfec- tion, may calculate infallibly the ' spontaneous resultant ' of those motives, or, in other words, my will's 'spontaneous impulse.' Now, this proposition is indubitably consistent with Freewill, because I have the fullest power of opposing my will's spontaneous impulse. My thoughts are at this moment, perhaps, predominantly influenced by worldly or sensual motives. I may turn them, how- ever, by an effort towards what is heavenly and divine, but if I do not put forth some exertion, I follow, as a matter of course, my will's spontaneous impulse. How far I may choose to put forth such exertion — this is not abstractedly matter of calculation at all. I acquit myself more laudably under my probation, precisely in proportion as I more frequently and more energetically put forth effort in a good direction. At the same time, it should be observed 292 JV. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL chap. that in all ordinary cases the act of will which results in fact is found in close vicinity to the will's spontaneous impulse. It is only in the rarest and most exceptional cases — or rather, we may say, it never happens at all — that a man of ordinary piety will be found putting forth an act of heroic saintliness. In 999 cases out of 1000 a man's probation is carried to a successful issue by this more than by anything else, viz., by putting forward on repeated occasions a number of acts which are a little higher than his spontaneous impulse. Nor does any exception to this general remark strike us at the moment except those cases in which there is a violent temptation to mortal sin. We maintain, then, that so far as regards, not the will's actual movement , but its spontaneous impulse, there is a theory of motives as strictly scientific, as abstractedly capable of scientific calculation, as any theory of mechanics or chemistry. But we further maintain that, in applying that theory to practice, allowance must always be made for the fact that in every instance the will has a real power of acting above the level of such spontaneous impulse. How far the will may choose to do so is a matter incapable of calculation, and external to science altogether. And this circumstance precisely, neither more nor less, constitutes that one particular in which the doctrine of Freewill interferes with the strictly scientific character of psychology." Mill's careful and candid criticism on these two lines of argument, in a letter dated 14th of February 1867, written from Blackheath Park, deserves being reproduced in full : — J. S. Mill to W. G. Ward Dear Sir — I have read your article with very great interest. You are the clearest thinker I have met for a long time who has written on your side of these great questions. I quite admit that your theory of divine premovement is not on the face of it inad- missible. The illustration of the mice inside the piano is excellent. The uniform sequences which the mice might discover between the sounds and the phenomena inside, would not negative the player without. But you only put back the collision between the two theories for a certain distance. It comes at last. At whatever point in the upward series the unforseeable will of the divine musician comes in, there the uniformity of physical sequence fails ', the chain has been traced to its beginning ; a physical phenomenon has taken place without any antecedent physical conditions. Now, what would be asserted on the other side of the question is that the facts always admit of and render highly probable the supposition that there were such antecedent physical conditions, and that there XI W. G. WARD AND /. S. MILL 293 lias been no ultimate beginning to that series of effects short of whatever beginning there was to the whole history of the universe. We do not pretend that we can disprove Divine interference in events and direct guidance of them; all our evidence is only negative. We say that, so far as known to mankind, everything takes place as it would do if there were no such direct guidance. We think that every event is abstractedly capable of being predicted, because mankind are, in each case, as near to being able actually to predict what happens as could be expected, regard being had to the degree of accessibility of the data^ and the complexity of the conditions of the problem. I cannot perceive in your article any errors in physics. But I am not a safe authority in matters of physical science. Astronomers now think that they can predict much more than eclipses and the return of comets. Their predictions reach even to the dissipation of the sun's heat, and the heaping up of the solar system in one, dead mass of conglution. But I hold all this to be at present nothing more than scientific conjecture. All that is required by your argument is that the possibility of absolute and categorical prediction should be as yet confined to cosmic phenomena. This I believe all men of science admit ; and I indorse everything on that subject which is said by Mansel in your note. Scientific prediction in other physical sciences is not absolute but conditional. We know certainly that oxygen and hydrogen brought together in a particular way will produce water; but we cannot predict with certainty that oxygen and hydrogen will come together in that way unless brought together by human agency. The human power of prediction at present extends only to effects which depend on a very small number of causes, and consequently can be predicted. Most other physical phenomena can be predicted with the same certainty, provided we are able to limit the causes in question to a very small number. This power of prediction you have not I think allowed for in your essay. Yet it surely is all-important. For if the efi'ect of any single cause, or if any pair or triad of causes can be calculated, the joint effect of a myriad of such causes is abstractedly capable of calculation. That we are unable practically to calculate it, is no more than might be expected, at least in the present state of our knowledge, however calculable it may in itself be. With regard to Freewill, you have not said much that affects my argument. I am not aware of having ever said that foreknow- ledge is inconsistent with Freewill. That knotty metaphysical question I have avoided entering into, and in my Logic I have even built upon the admission of the Freewill philosophers that our freedom be real though God foreknows our actions. You simplify the main question very much by your luminous distinction between the spontaneous impulse of the will, which you regard as strictly 294 W- G. WARD AND J. S. MILL chap. dependent on pre-existing mental dispositions and external solicita- tions, and what the man may himself do to oppose or alter that spontaneous impulse. The distinction has important practical consequences, but I see no philosophical bearing that it has on Free- will ; for it seems to me that the same degree of knowledge of a person's character which Avill enable us to judge with tolerable assurance what his spontaneous impulse will be, will also enable us to judge with about an equal assurance whether he will make any effort and, in a general way, how much effort he is likely to make to control that impulse. Our foresight in this matter cannot be certain because we never can be really in possession of sufficient data. But it is not more uncertain than the insufficiency and uncertainty of the data suffice to account for. Thanking you very much for giving me the opportunity of reading your very able and interesting speculation. — I am, dear sir, very truly yours, J. S. Mill. Mr. Ward dealt with the Freewill question in later essays at great length. In the matter of his theory of pre- movement, he did not consider that Mill's criticism had destroyed the force of his own argument, even allowing that the complexity of the causes of earthly phenomena was as comparatively great as Mill supposed. He held that God's premovement might naturally enough be hidden within a numerous and complex chain of causation. It was not in the order of Providence that such direct influences should be visible on the surface. That causes artificially isolated acted uniformly, and in a manner susceptible of prediction, did not prevent God's frequent interference in the complex combinations in which they are actually found in nature. The fact that fire and wood left apart did not affect each other, and that their non - combustion could be predicted if they were left to themselves, did not prevent their being in fact brought in contact with one another by human agency, and combustion ensuing which was thus due to an agency outside the sphere of prediction : and God's supposed premovement was on a similar footing. Prescinding from such incalculable and independent agency, prediction was in each case possible. And it was natural enough that Providence should abstain from special premovement in cases in which it would be so visible as to be an unmistakable miracle. " Let it be assumed," he wrote, " that God does premove earthly phenomena, and . . . that He does XI W. G. WARD AND J. S. MILL 295 not want this premovement to be a visible palpable fact. On this supposition He would act just as we maintain He has acted. He would make earthly phenomena to proceed on so complex a chain of causation that His assiduous premovement of them eludes direct observation." The controversy with Mill was renewed in 1871 in a more thorough and systematic shape. Mill's own public rejoinder appeared in 1872, and he died in 1873. Mr. Ward spoke of his death as a " severe controversial disappointment," ^ adding that he had "far more hope of coming to an under- standing with him" than with other members of his school, " because he was in the habit of apprehending and expressing his own thoughts so much more definitely and perspicuously than they." Ward continued, however, his examination of Mill's philosophy, of which a full account shall be given in a subsequent chapter. ^ See Duhlin Hevieiv, July 1873. CHAPTEE XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 1869-1878 In 1869 came an event which brought Mr. Ward suddenly into personal relations with a large number of the most eminent English thinkers of the day — the formation of the Metaphysical Society. The Metaphysical Society was a remarkable and typical product of modern conditions of intellectual life. Its aim was to bring together in friendly and free debate on the fundamental problems of man's life and destiny, representatives of all the various schools of opinion which made up the world of thought at the time of its foundation. It aimed, in short, at being a living microcosm of the great intellectual world in England. Its original promoters were men who keenly realised the decline of definite faith in the supernatural, among thinking men. They considered, too, that the rising school of scientific agnosticism was assuming an arrogance of tone, and gaining an influence from its self-confidence, which made it all the more dangerous. The movement towards religious negation was then at its height ; and the opposition between the opinions current among men of science and theologians had not yet been sensibly diminished by the mutual explanations of the more comprehensive thinkers on either side. Darwin's '' monkey " and the Adam of Genesis contested the honourable position of founder of the human race, before the popular imagination : and every argument for evolution was held to support the former and discredit the latter. There were, moreover, few signs as yet of the religious reaction of our own time. Such attempts as had been made in CHAP. XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 297 the English Church at facing frankly the criticism and science of the day evinced rather the impatient and liberalising temper of Essays and Reviews^ than the greater caution, reverence, and thoroughness of Liix Mitndi. The scorn of the " lights of science " for the intellectual position of an orthodox Christian, showed at times a onesidedness and slight acquaintance with Christian thought at its best, which could not but be in some degree modified, it was thought, by a personal rapprochement with Christian thinkers. Again, in all the deep problems of religious belief, the personal equation goes for so much that it was considered — and the opinion was justified by the event — that a far truer understanding of an opponent's real mind must ensue from such a rappivchement, than from any amount of con- troversial literature. The necessary conditions of success in the attempt were absolute freedom of speech, — which could safely be admitted among highly- cultivated intellectual men, — and privacy in the debates of the Society. And these conditions were from the first observed. There could be no protest against an opinion on the ground that it shocked religious preposses- sions ; and the details of the discussions must be, consequently, reserved for those who pledged themselves to conform to this rule. From this very circumstance the proceedings of the Society cannot be even now publicly recorded ; but the external facts connected with its foundation, and its general features and results have an interest of their own : and they have been described to me by some of its most distinguished members. Many of the papers themselves were subsequently published. Enough therefore of interest is available to illustrate the social side of reunions which gave Mr. Ward an opportunity for marked and characteristic influence. The fij:st idea of forming such a Society was conceived by Mr. James Knowles, now editor of the Nineteenth Century, in the course of a conversation with Mr. (afterwards Lord) Tennyson and Mr. Pritchard, some time Savilian Professor of Astronomy. Archbishop Manning and Mr. Ward were among the first before whom the proposal to co-operate in its formation was laid, and they readily undertook to do so. The original programme of the Society — that it should be a rallying point for Theists of various denominations in their struggle against 298 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. the advance of Agnosticism — was soon abandoned ; and it speedily took the comprehensive character I have described. Archbishop Manning, Mr. Ward, and Mr. Tennyson met at Mr. Knowles's house, and discussed the claims of the various thinkers of the day to be invited to join, and forthwith arranged among themselves who should communicate with whom. Mr. John Stuart Mill was a personage of importance for such an object, both from his unique eminence at that time as a thinker, and from his interest in religious metaphysics. Mr. Ward under- took to invite him to join, and wrote to him in the following terms : — 8 Upper Hamilton Tekeace, London, N.W., lUh March 1869. My dear Sir — Certain Theists, who feel very strongly what they consider the evils more and more impending from such views as you, Mr. Bain, and others so ably advocate, are extremely desirous of promoting direct and personal discussion on the subject. They are of opinion, rightly or wrongly, that those on j^our side do not duly weigh what is said on ours, and that good of various kinds would ensue from a closer personal rapprochement. They are, there- fore, desirous of establishing a " Metaphysical Societj^," in which metaphysical questions shall be discussed in the manner and with the machinery of the learned and scientific societies. They have been so kind as to ask various Catholics, including myself, to join them ; and the Archbishop and I (I don't know about others) have put down our names. The following gentlemen have also already joined the Societj^, Rev. Mr. Martineau, Eev. Mr. Maurice, Dean Stanley, Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Hutton of the Spectator^ Eev. Mr. Pritchard (late President of Astronomical Society), Mr. Robert Browning, Mr. Bagehot, Sir John Lubbock. They are further going to ask either Professor Huxley or Mr. Tyndall (I forget which . . . ), Archbishop Thomson, Dr. Carpenter, Mr. James Hinton, Dean Mansel, Professor De Morgan, Mr. Herbert Spencer. They are very anxious to have Mr. Bain, but they fear he is a fixture in Scotland. And they are especially desirous of you. For some reason or other, others seemed to have difficulty in writing to you ; so I was impudent enough to volunteer, as you have so kindly received various communications with which I have troubled you. And perhaps we can be the better friends from being such very pronounced enemies. They are going to ask the Duke of Argyll to be President. They suggest such subjects as these — The immateriality of the soul and its personal identity. The nature of miracles. XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 299 The reasonableness of prayer.. The personality of God. Conscience — its true character. The originator is Mr. Knowles, living at Clapham, who says ym do not know him ; he is a great friend of Dean Stanley's. Will you kindly consider the proposition, and let me have an answer ? — I remain, my dear sir, sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. Mr. Mill, though sympathising with the object of the Society, felt that at his time of life the day was past for entering into the arena of verbal discussion, and declined to join ; as also did Mr. Herbert Spencer, who was invited to become a member. Mill's general view of the prospects of the Society — expressed in his reply to Ward — is interesting, as corresponding in great measure with the view of its actual achievements given later on by Dr. Martineau, namely that the most thorough results could only be attained by means of debates in which the hand-to-hand conflict of the Socratic method is possible. He wrote as follows : — l^th March 1869. The purpose of those who have projected the Society mentioned in your letter is a laudable one, but it is very doubtful whether it will be realised in practice. Oral discussion on matters dependent on reasoning may be much more thorough than when carried on by written discourse, but only I think if undertaken in the manner of the Socratic dialogue, between one and one. None of the same advantages are obtained when the discussion is shared by a mixed assemblage. Even, however, as a kind of debating society on these great questions the Society may be useful, especially to its younger members. But my time is all pre-engaged to other occupations, and I do not expect any such benefit, either to others or to myself, from my taking part in the proceedings of the Society, as would justify me in putting aside other duties in order to join it. It is very natural that those who are strongly convinced of the truth of their opinions should think that those who differ from them do not duly weigh their arguments. I can only say that I sincerely endeavour to do the amplest justice to any argument which is urged, and to all I can think of even when not urged, in defence of any opinions which I controvert. The Society rapidly gained members, and came to include a very motley assemblage of men of different opinions and different callings ; direct opponents of Theism and Christianity such as W. K. Clifford ; statesmen who were also 300 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. Churchmen as Mr. Gladstone, .Lord Selborne and the Duke of Argyll ; Churchmen who were also Church dignitaries as the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol ; members of the broad Church School as Dean Stanley and Frederick Denison Maurice ; Unitarians as Dr. James Martineau ; Catholics as Archbishop Manning, Father Dal- gairns, and Dr. Ward; Agnostics who were men of science as Professor Huxley and Professor Tyndall ; Agnostics who were men of letters as Mr. John Morley and Mr. Leslie Stephen; Positivists as Mr. Frederic Harrison. Among other members were Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Euskin, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen, Mr. E. H. Hutton, Dean Church, Mr. J. A. Froude, Mr. W. E. Greg, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Mark Pattison, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Alexander Grant, Lord Sherbrooke (then Mr. Lowe), Sir M. E. Grant Duff, Lord Arthur Eussell, Sir William Gull, and Dr. Andrew Clark. Mr. Knowles acted as honorary secretary. It was originally proposed to call it the " Theological " Society, but the name " Metaphysical " was ultimately deter- mined on. It met once a month. A paper was written and privately distributed to the members, and afterwards read and discussed at the meeting. The subjects for discussion seldom departed far from the sphere of Eeligious Philosophy ; and though occasionally such headings are found to the Essays read before the Society as " Matter and Force," " the Eelation of Will to Thought," " What is Matter ? " far more frequently the titles bear direct relation to the " world behind the veil " as " What is death? " " The Ethics of Belief," " Is God unknowable?" " The Theory of a Soul," " The Personality of God," " The Nature of the Moral Principle." The first meeting took place at Willis's rooms on 21st April 1869; but subsequently the Grosvenor Hotel was chosen as the habitual field of encounter. A good deal of anxiety was felt at first lest some of the most startling subjects of debate might, through the medium of the hotel waiters, find their way to the zealots of Exeter Hall. This fear was, however, allayed when a member on arriving at the hotel was thus greeted by the porter, " A member of the Madrigal Society, sir, I suppose ? " The discussion of the evening was always preceded by a dinner which many of the members attended. This pre- XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 301 liminary gathering, of a purely social character, was an import- ant feature in the meetings. My father always considered that some of the most characteristic results of the Society were obtained in the friendly conversations at the dinner-table ; and it was much to his taste to find himself next to a Huxley or a Tyndall, and to sharpen his weapons for the deadly combat which was to ensue by a most animated and genial conversation on neutral topics. He followed with alacrity the advice given by Tranio in The Taming of the, SJirevj, Do as adversaries do in law, Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends ! llTotes of the members actually present at particular meetings, given to me by Sir Mountstuart E. Grant Duff, help to preserve the picture of the intercourse of the remarkable men who made up the Society : — " I was elected," he writes, "in the beginning of December 1870, and dined for the first time with the Society on the 13th of that month. Your father was in the chair ; next him sat Dr. Elhcott the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol ; next him was Mr. Bagehot, then myself, Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. (later Lord) Tennyson, and Mr. R H. Hutton. On your father's left was Mr. Knowles the secretary, then in order. Dean Alford, Father Dalgairns, Mr. Frederic Harrison and Mr. Froude. The paper was by Mr. Bage- hot ' On the Emotion of Conviction.' "My second visit was on the 11th of January 1871, when there was a large party, consisting of your father, Mr. G. Grove, Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Froude, the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Knowles, Dean Stanley, Mr. James Martineau, Mr. R. H. Hutton, Mr. Shad- worth Hodgson, Mr. Ruskin, Sir John Lubbock, Professor Huxley, Archbishop Manning, Professor Sidgwick, Lord Arthur Russell, and Mr. Frederic Harrison. I sat, I remember, between the future Cardinal and Professor Huxley." ^ ^ "With a great many of the members of the Society," Sir Mountstuart adds, " I was, of course, well acquainted before I joined it ; but some I met there for the first time. Your father, for example, I had never seen before. He did not represent the side of the Oxford Movement which had most interest for me, but he was a notable historical figure ; and, moreover, he had been the hero of the hour when I first made acquaintance with Oxford as a boy of sixteen, in 1845. "I do not remember that the Laureate took any part in the discussion, but his mere presence added dignity to a dignified assemblage. Dean Alford, I think, and Father Dalgairns, I am sure, I had never met till I met them at the Meta- physical. The second I had long wished to see on account of his close connection 302 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. The general impression produced by a typical meeting has been sketched ^ by a constant attendant, Mr. E. H. Hutton ; and will be specially in place as Mr. Ward was the writer and reader of the Essay of the evening : — '* At the meeting of the Metaphysical Society which was held on the 10th of December 1872," he writes, "Dr. Ward was to read a paper on the question 'Can experience prove the uniformity of Nature % ' Midcllemarch had been completed and published a few days previously. On the day following the meeting the Convoca- tion of Oxford was to vote upon the question raised by Mr. Burgon and Dean Goulburn, whether the Dean of Westminster (then Dr. Stanley) should be excluded for his heresies from the List of Select Preachers at Oxford or not. The ' Claimant ' was still starring it in the provinces in the interval between his first trial and his second. Thus the dinner itself was lively, though several of the more dis- tinguished members did not enter till the hour for reading the paper had arrived. One might have heard Professor Huxley flash- ing out a sceptical defence of the use of the Bible in Board Schools at one end of the table ; Mr. Fitzjames Stephen's deep bass remarks on the Claimant's adroit use of his committal for perjury, at another ; and an eager discussion of the various merits of Lydgate and Rosamond at a third. * Ideal Ward,' as he used to be called, with Newman before he made his great plunge ; and the other on account of his poem * Lady Mary ' which ought to be a great deal better known than it is, and makes a very good second, in its OAvn line, to the * St. Agnes ' of the great writer who sat opposite him. " I remember, after the dissolution of the Society, the late Archbishop of York told me that he was more struck by the metaphysical ability of Father Dalgairns and of Mr, James Martineau than by that of any other of the dis- putants. " I think the paper which interested me most of all that were ever read at our meetings was one by Mr. "W. R. Greg on ' Wherein consists the special beauty of imperfection and decay ? ' in which he propounded the questions ' Are not ruins recognised and felt to be more beautiful than perfect structures ? Why are they so ? Ought they to be so ? ' "Another very close friend of mine I connect much more with the Meta- physical, for we used to go thither from time to time from the House of Commons together. This was Lord Arthur Russell. He, as you probably know, amongst his many interests, which embraced almost everything that deserved to be the subject of la grancle curiosiM, had a very strong interest in Metaphysics, and it is a pity that this side of his mind has not been painted, for the many who cherish his memory, by some one able to do it justice. He wrote at least three papers for the Society, one of which, on 'The Absolute,' was read in March 1871, another on 'The Persistence of the Religious Feeling' in May 1876, and another on ' Ideas as a Force ' in 1877." ^ The passage cited is from an Essay by ]\Ir. Hutton published in the iVwie- teenth Century. XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 303 from the work on the Meal of a Christian Church for which he had lost his degree nearly thirty years earlier at Oxford, was chuck- ling with a little malicious satisfaction over the floundering of the orthodox clergy, in their attempts to express safely their dislike of Dean Stanley's latitudinarianism, without bringing the Establishment about their ears. He thought we might as well expect the uni- formity of nature to be disproved by the efforts of spiritualists to turn a table, as the flood of latitudinarian thought to be arrested by Mr. Burgon's and Dean Goulburn's attempt to exclude the Dean of Westminster from the List of Select Preachers at Oxford. Father Dalgairns, one of Dr. Newman's immediate followers, who left the English Church and entered the Oratory of St. Philip Neri with him, a man of singular sweetness and open- ness of character, with something of a French type of playfulness in his expression, discoursed to me eloquently on the noble ethical character of George Eliot's novels, and the penetrating dis- belief in all but human excellence by which they are pervaded. Implicitly he intended to convey to me, I thought, that nowhere but in the Eoman Church could you find any real breakwater against an incredulity which could survive even the aspirations of so noble a nature as hers. And as I listened to this eloquent exposition with one ear, the sound of Professor Tyndall's eloquent Irish voice, descanting on the proposal for a ' prayer-gauge,' which had lately been made in the Contempcnxiry Review, by testing the efficacy of prayer on a selected hospital ward, captivated the other. Everything alike spoke of the extraordinary fermentation of opinion in the society around us. Moral and intellectual ' yeast ' was as hard at work multipljdng its fungoid forms in the men who met at that table, as even in the period of the Renaissance itself. " I was very much struck then, and frequently afterwards, by the marked difference between the expression of the Roman Catholic members of our Society and all the others. No men could be more difi'erent among themselves than Dr. Ward and Father Dalgairns and Archbishop Manning, all of them converts to the Roman Church. But nevertheless, all had upon them that curious stamp of definite spiritual authority, which I have never noticed on any faces but those of Roman Catholics, and of Roman Catholics who have passed through a pretty long period of subjection to the authority they acknowledge. In the Metaphysical Society itself there was every type of spiritual and moral expression. The wist- ful and sanguine, I had almost said hectic, idealism of James Hinton struck me much, more than anything he contrived to convey by his remarks. The noble and steadfast, but somewhat melancholy faith, which seemed to be sculptured on Dr. Martineau's massive brow, shaded off into wistfulness in the glance of his eyes. Pro- fessor Huxley, who always had a definite standard for every ques- 304 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. tion which he regarded as discussable at all, yet made you feel that his slender definite creed in no respect represented the crav- ings of his large nature. Professor Tyndall's eloquent addresses frequently culminated with some pathetic indication of the mystery which to him surrounded the moral life. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen's gigantic force, expended generally in some work of iconoclasm, always gave me the imj^ression that he was revenging himself on what he could not believe, for the disappointment he had felt in not being able to retain the beliefs of his youth. " But in the countenances of our Roman Catholic members there was no wistfulness, rather an expression which I might almost describe as a blending of grateful humility with involuntary satiety — genuine humility, genuine thankfulness for the authority on which they anchored themselves ; but something also of a feeling of the redundance of that authority, and of the redundance of those provisions for their spiritual life of which almost all our other members seemed to feel that they had but a bare and scanty pasturage. " Dr. Ward, who was to read the paper of the evening, struck me as one of our most unique members. His mind was, to his own apprehension at least, all strong lights and dark shadows. Either he was absolutely, indefeasibly, ' superabundantly ' certain, or he knew no more * than a baby,' to use his favourite simile^ about the subjects I conversed with him upon. On the criticism of the Kew Testament, for instance, he always maintained that he knew no more than a baby, though really he knew a good deal about it. On the questions arising out of Papal Bulls he would often say that he was as absolutely and superabundantly certain as he was of his own existence. Then he was a very decided humorist. He looked like a country squire, and in the Isle of Wight was, I believe, generally called ' Squeer Ward ' ; but if you talked to him about horses or land, he would look at you as if you were talking in an unknown language ; and would describe, in most extravagant and humorous terms, his many rides in search of health, and the pro- found fear with which, whenever the animal showed the least sign of spirit, he would cry out 'Take me off! take me off ! ' He was one of the very best and most active members of our Society as long as his health lasted ; most friendly to everybody, though full of amazement at the depth to which scepticism had undermined the creed of many amongst us. A more candid man I never knew. He never ignored a difficulty, and never attempted to express an indistinct idea. His metaphysics were as sharp cut as crystals. He never seemed to see the half lights of a question at all. There was no penumbra in his mind, or at least, what he could not grasp clearly, he treated as if he could not apprehend at all. " When dinner was over and the cloth removed, a waiter entered XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 305 mth sheets of foolscap and pens for each of the members, of which very little use was made. The ascetic Archbishop of Westminster, every nerve in his face expressive of some vivid feeling, entered, and was quickly followed by Dr. Martineau. Then came Mr. Hinton glancing round the room with a modest half-humorous furtiveness, as he seated himself amongst us. Then Dr. Ward began his paper. He asked how mere experience could prove a universal truth without examining in detail every plausibly asserted exception to that truth, and disproving the reality of the exception. He asked whether those who believe most fervently in the uniformity of Nature ever show the slightest anxiety to examine asserted excep- tions. He imagined, he said, that what impresses physicists is the fruitfulness of inductive science with the reasonable inference that inductive science could not be the fruitful iield of discovery it is, unless it rested on a legitimate basis, which basis could be no other than a principle of uniformity. Dr. Ward answered that the belief in genuine exceptions to the law of uniform phenomenal antecedents and consequents, does not in the least degree invalidate this as- sumption of the general uniformity of nature, if these exceptions are announced, as in the case of miracles they always must be, as demonstrating the interposition of some spiritual power which is not phenomenal between the antecedent and its natural consequent, which interposition it is that alone interrupts the order of phe- nomenal antecedence and consequence. 'Suppose,' he said, 'that every Englishman, by invoking St. Thomas of Canterbury, could put his hand into the fire without injury. Why, the very fact that in order to avoid injury he must invoke the saint's name, would ever keep fresh and firm in his mind the conviction that fire does naturally burn. He would, therefore, as unquestioningly in all his physical researches, assume this to be the natural property of fire, as though God had never wrought a miracle at all. In fact, from the very circumstances of the case, it is always one of the most in- dubitable laws of nature which a miracle overrides, and those who wish most to magnify miracles are led by that very fact to dwell with special urgency on the otherwise universal prevalence of the law.' There was a short pause when Dr. Ward had concluded his paper, which was soon ended by Professor Huxley, who broke off short in a very graphic sketch he had been making on his sheet of foolscap as he listened." The debates which used to follow the reading of the paper of the evening are described as full of character. Sir M. E. Grant Duff gives one or two characteristic touches of de- scription : — " I recall," he writes, " Mr. Mark Pattison refusing to be 'drawn ' X 3o6 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. by the questions of his adversaries till he thought the proper time had come to speak, and looking, for all the world, like a wild animal watching its opportunity at the mouth of its den. I seem to see again the massive forehead and august presence of Bishop Thirlwall whom I do not think I ever met elsewhere. I daresay you know the story of his refusing to ask under his roof a German savant who had defended the execution of Socrates. Perhaps that was half in jest ; if it were not, the Metaphysical Society was the very best place to learn patience with all opinions. Your father, Manning, Dalgairns and the other Catholics had certainly advanced a long way beyond that Spanish doctor to whom I called your attention lately, and who was so shocked by the prototype of the Metaphysical Society which met in Bagdad more than a thousand years ago. The courtesy of its members to each other was indeed exemplary and phenomenal. I remember Arthur Eussell saying one day at the Breakfast Club, 'The members of the Metaphysical Society are always very polite to each other. I can recall only one occasion on which they made the slightest approach to anything the least different. The Cardinal was speaking of some miracle which had been described to him, and observed, " I said to the person who gave me the account of it, ' Now I should like to ask you one or two questions, you know I am a person of a rather sceptical dis- position.' " At these words the Society exhibited some signs of amusement in which the illustrious speaker heartily joined.' " Both the general characteristics of the debates and Ward's own share in them have been described for me by three members who represent, perhaps in the extreme degree, its typical modes of thought. No Theism could be more profoundly or philosophically elaborated than that of Dr. Martineau, whose later eagerness in the advocacy of destructive Biblical criticism was at that time little looked for. No Agnosticism was more openly avowed than that of Professor Huxley, the first inventor of the word ''Agnostic." No man in England holds the balance be- tween opposite opinions more habitually or more justly than Mr. Henry Sidgwick. The accounts of all three amply illus- trate the unexpected amount of sympathy which disclosed itself among persons holding views which had seemed in the abstract to be without any common measure. It is hard to say which was more distasteful to Mr. Ward, the acquiescence in intellectual indecision so characteristic of the Cambridge Professor, or the attitude of the scientific iconoclast XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 307 who taught that God was unknowable and Christianity a superstition ; while Ward's own standpoint — that of Ultra- montane Catholicism — was utterly opposed to the first prin- ciples of Mr. Huxley's reasoning. Mr. Huxley has, indeed, never been slow to recognise the trained and disciplined in- tellectual organisation among Catholic theologians ; but their ultimate beliefs are to him a tissue of fables ; and their method reveals to him "the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and scientific mind." ^ Indeed, his preference for thoroughgoing Catholicism over less definite forms of Christianity, seems to be partly due to the impression that it candidly avows that opposition to all rational science which every defender of the " orthodox " position, if he is but frank and logical, should confess to. The Ultramontane's supposed credo quia inipossihile is to the Professor a satisfaction, because it acknowledges the position he most wishes to assail. The Ultramontane does not hide in ambush but comes forth into the open. Mr. Huxley prefers him as the hungry lion welcomes the unwary and adventurous antelope. Again the measured sentences and complex refinements of Mr. Sidgwick, with their passionless outcome of purely in- tellectual judgment, were to the apostles on all sides — positive and negative — as tantalising as their own enthusiasms and broad principles were to him exaggerated or onesided. Of Martineau Mr. Sidgwick is reported to have said, "he always preaches " ; and Martineau would perhaps have retorted, " Sidgwick never makes up his mind." Another consideration which did not promise well for the good understanding, which was nevertheless attained, was the extreme conservatism in those days of the typical theologians. Objections to the then current theories of Biblical inspira- tion and to other traditional beliefs which are now recognised to have real force, and which the most orthodox have in some measure admitted and deferred to, were often treated simply as part and parcel of an impious revolt against religion ; and such want of exact judgment gave to the scientific school some of the asperity which naturally attends on unfair proscription. Most of us remember the time when theories as to the days of creation and as to the ^ Nineteenth Century^ June 1889. 3o8 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY . chap. inerrancy secured by inspiration, which are now generally received among Christians, were treated in many quarters as a part of the insolence of geological and critical science. The "advanced" thinkers felt themselves to be wronged, and revenged themselves for the moral strictures of their opponents, which were unfair because they were indiscriminate, by an intellectual contempt which was certainly neither less indis- criminate nor less unfair. While the narrow Theologian was disposed to condemn all the conclusions of science which clashed with theological traditions as inexcusable infidelity, the more combative members of the scientific school accepted the situation, and argued " since this is Christianity how can Christianity be a religion for rational men ? " This attitude was marked in the writings of the late Professor W. K. Clifford as well as in Mr. Tyndall's occasional utterances ; and both of these writers were members of the Metaphysical Society. It still survives to a certain extent in some of Mr. Huxley's Essays on " controverted questions." A more generally sympathetic mental habit is typical of our own day. Scientific dogmatism is now as little regarded as an ultimate solution of these great problems as religious dog- matism. But Mr. Huxley's uncompromising condemnations were then representative of an influential section of critics. It was natural therefore that collision should be looked for ; and it was remarkable that the opposite forces, instead of clashing abruptly or destructively, were tempered unexpectedly by a third force, hitherto latent — the strong elements of human sympathy which discovered themselves. " We all thought it would be a case of Kilkenny cats," said Professor Huxley to the present writer. " Hats and coats would be left in the haU ; but there would be no owners left to put them on again." The following sketches certainly show that the case proved far otherwise, and that respect and something like affec- tion developed themselves where they had been least expected. " Charity, brotherly love," testifies the eminent member just alluded to, " were the chief traits of the Society. We all expended so much charity, that, had it been money, we should every one have been bankrupt." Such indeed was its character from first to last. It was expected to die of irreconcilable dissensions ; it eventually came to an end because members XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 309 tliOTight that mutual understanding had reached its highest point. Personal friendliness was established, and difference of standpoint was allowed for. Its sources, so far as they were intellectual, were traced ; and by mutual consent the elements which were not intellectual were banished from discussion. What remained, after years of constant explanation, still unfathomed, was seen to be beyond the reach of the debates of the Society. Mutual approximation could advance no farther, and as there was no force to make it recede, stagnation became at last the inevitable tendency. " The Society died of too much love," as Professor Huxley expressed it. The conditions which from the first tended to produce this result are indicated in Dr. Martineau's reminiscences. The absolute mutual toleration among the members, for which he stipulated at the outset, no doubt had its share. It came upon the men who opposed orthodoxy in the name of science as an agreeable contrast to the wholesale hostility of the outside world. They found in the Metaphysical Society strenuous opposition to their views, as a whole, combined with open- minded consideration of the reasons they had to allege ; and it was no doubt partly this hearty acceptance on the part of theologians, pubhcly reputed to be intolerant, of the conditions of mutual respect and equal discussion, which won from their opponents both intellectual appreciation for their candour and ability, and a recognition, the more thorough because it was due to what was unexpected, of their friendliness and fairness. And on the side of the theologians the toleration which began as a practical necessity often passed into real personal regard. "We have not converted each other," Father Dalgairns re- marked, " but we certainly think better of each other." The earlier attitude of mutual disapproval is dramatically indicated by an incident related to me by Mr. Froude. A speaker at one of the first meetings laid down emphatically as a necessary condition to success, that no element of moral reproba- tion must appear in the debates. There was a pause, and then Mr. Ward said, "While acquiescing in this condition as a general rule, I think it cannot be expected that Christian thinkers shall give no sign of the horror with which they would view the spread of such extreme opinions as those advocated by Mr. Huxley." Another pause ensued, and Mr. 3IO THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY ' chap. Huxley said, " As Dr. Ward has spoken I must in fairness say that it will be very difficult for me to conceal my feeling as to the intellectual degradation which would come of the general acceptance of such views as Dr. Ward holds." No answer was given ; but the single speech on either side brought home then and there to all, including the speakers themselves, that if such a tone were admitted the Society could not last a day. From that time onwards, says Mr. Froude, no word of the kind was ever heard. Dr. Martineau writes as follows of his own recollection of the formation of the Society, and of the good understanding to which its members attained : — The invitation to aid in constituting it originally came before me in this form : "A few persons, eminent in genius and character, observing with anxiety the spread of Agnostic opinions, propose to organise an intellectual resistance, in the shape of a Society con- spicuously competent to deal with the ultimate problems of philosophy and morals. Will you join % " My answer was to this effect : '* I feel the deepest interest in these problems, and, for the equal chance of gaining and of giving light, would gladly join in discussing them with gnostics and agnostics alike ; but a society of gnostics to put down the agnostics I cannot approve and could not join." It was feared at first that the modified project thus suggested would be unacceptable to the two or three professional theologians who had already been consulted ; but they readily acceded to the proposal. The invitations to the institutive dinner were, therefore, addressed impartially to some best representatives of the several schools, positive or negative, of philosophical or religious opinion ; and at that first meeting it was distinctly settled that the members, crediting each other with a pure quest of truth, would confer together on terms of respectful fellowship, and never visit with reproach the most unreserved statement of reasoned belief or unbelief. This initial understanding, so far as I can remember, was honourably observed throughout the history of the Society. And this is the one clear moral gain which may be claimed for our meetings. They divested even extreme contrasts of opinion of every vestige of personal antipathy, and not infrequently opened the way to friendships and admirations which before would have been deemed impossible. For myself I can say that if I had gained nothing from the Metaphysical Society but the impression of Father Dalgairns's personality, I should have been for ever grateful to it. XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 311 That such affinities should go so far as to lead to absolute agreement, or to diminution of difference so noteworthy as to be openly avowed, was not to be expected. The sympathies aroused implied rather a psychological than a logical approach. They consisted rather in a truer estimate of an opponent's way of thinking, of the associations, habits, intellectual training which explained his state of mind, than in anything deeper. The difference was generally in first principles ; and while width of mind was necessarily gained all round from an intelligent apprehension of such varied mental history, principles themselves did not change as a whole. Still Dr. Martineau seems to think that there may have been some modification of view, in the light of so much that had been hitherto im- suspected, which was not unimportant. He continues thus : — Whether the growth of such sympathetic affinities carried with it any intellectual approximation I cannot judge. That during the existence of the Society, no member migrated from one school of thought to another, by no means proves that we all remained stationary. It is the rarest result of a debate, that ipro?, and cms change places ; but, short of this, the state of mind in both may be very materially affected ; each may be surprised by some unexpected merit in the other's case, or some latent fallacy in an argument for his own ; and having entered the discussion as an advocate, he will vote on it as a judge. To me at least, and I should think to others, the evenings of the Society laid bare not a few spurious semblances of disagreement, in the unconscious assumption, at the outset, of inconsistent postulates, in the indistinct conception of the thesis under examination, and in the ambiguous use of terms introduced as media of proof. The constitution of the Society — as including public men of most various interests — was no doubt opposed to the obtain- ing of results as complete and scientific as might have been looked for from professed metaphysicians alone. The conces- sions on either side would have been more carefully registered and would have formed fresh points of departure, had the meetings been always attended by the same members, and had all the members had the logical habits of trained abstract thinkers. Such conditions must, one would think, have ultimately brought the intellectual positions of the members somewhat nearer to each other. But as it was, the attendance varied; and there was not enough of concentration or con- 312 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. secutiveness of thought from one meeting to another, to bring about generally such important modifications of view as individual debates seemed occasionally to promise. "Experiences of this kind," continues Dr. Martineau, "would have led to more sensible abatement of differences, had the Society kept more faithfully to the promise of its name as Metaphysical. Being, however, at one time sought or accepted by many persons variously distinguished, — statesmen, judges, prelates, poets, men of science and of letters, — it came to have even a preponderance of members whose genius was at home in other fields that ours, and several who had no faith in Metaphysics and could not be expected to give patient and helpful attention to our appropriate discussions. Hence, at the larger meetings, the debates, or rather conversations^ were apt to become desultory, and even to run off into total irrelevance. But now and then, when from six to ten members of congenial culture, raised on the same logical base, were gathered round the table, it became evident as we came to close c[uarters, how slight and innocent was the incipient divergency which looked so large when measured by its scope in life." Turning to Ward's share in the discussions, Dr. Martineau holds it to have been especially effective in the smaller and closer debates. It was especially on such occasions that Dr. Ward's singular metaphysical acuteness played its happiest part, being protected by his social sympathies from all temptation to a keen punitive use against nonsense, and enlisted with evident joy in the service of reconciliation. The smaller meetings, too, instead of being sur- rendered to a single speaker at a time, succeeded by another and yet another, delivering notes prepared beforehand on the paper read, all waiting for a summary answer at the end, were allowed to slip into easy Socratic dialogue, dealing with each point as it arose. And this freedom, while favouring the chances of mutual under- standing, was especially advantageous to the function of a skilled logical detective of fallacies like Dr. Ward. If an argument, after his dissection, were allowed to hang together till the end of the evening instead of visibly falling to pieces at once, it had no small chance of escaping after all with some repute of life. I am not, however, quite an impartial judge of your father's part in the discussions of our Society ; for I found myself, almost invariably, on the same bench with him and helped out of lingering self-distrusts by his tone of quicker confidence. Mr. Henry Sidgwick in his " Eecollections " confirms Dr. Martineau's estimate of the special quality in Ward's XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 313 debating which made him help in the analysis of the points at issue, and in the diminution of mutual misunderstanding. His sketch includes also some account of the general impression produced on him by Ward's personality and manner of debate. I remember well the first time that I saw your father — it was, I thmhj at the second or third meeting of the Society. He came into the room along with Manning, and the marked contrast between them added to the impressiveness. I remember thinking that I had never seen a face that seemed so clearly to indicate a strongly- developed sensuous nature, and yet was at the same time so intellectual as your father's. I do not mean merely that it expressed intellectual faculty ... I mean rather the predominance of the intellectual life, of concern (as Matthew Arnold says) for the " things of the mind." I did not then know your father's writings at all ; and though from what I had heard of him I expected to find him an effective defender of the Catholic position, I certainly did not anticipate that I should come — as after two or three meet- ings I did come — to place him in the very first rank of our members, as judged from the point of view of the Society in respect of their aptitudes for ftu'thering its aim. The aim of the Society was, by frank and close debate and unreserved communication of dissent and objection, to attain — not agreement, which was of course beyond hope — but a diminution of mutual misunderstanding. For this kind of discussion your father's gifts were very remarkable. The only other member of the Society who in my recollection rivals him is — curiously enough — Huxley. Huxley was perhaps unsur- passed in the quickness with which he could see and express with perfect clearness and precision the best answer that could be made, from his point of view, to any argument urged against him. But your father's dialectic interested me more, apart of course from any question of agreement with principles or conclusions, not only from its subtlety, but from the strong and unexpected impression it made on me of complete sincerity and self-abandonment to the train of thought that was being pursued at the time. When Tennyson's lines on him came out afterwards I thought that two of them — How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind, How loyal in the following of thy Lord ! were very apt and representative ; but the first line does not convey what I am now trying to express — the feeling one had that he gave himself up to the Aoyos like an interlocutor in a Platonic dialogue, and was prepared to follow it to any conclusions to which it might lead. This is a characteristic more commonly found in the discus- sions of youth than in those of middle age ; and I do not know that 314 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. I can better describe the impression of this feature of your father's manner of debate than by saying that he often reminded me of old undergraduate days more than any other of the disputants. And of course this was all the more impressive in a man tirho so unreservedly at the same time put forward his complete adhesion to an elaborate dogmatic system. I remember that once — on one of the rare occasions on which I had the privilege of sitting next him at our dinners — I asked him to tell me exactly the Catholic doctrine on some point of conduct, the nature of which I cannot now recall. He answered, " opinions are divided ; there are two views, of which I, as usual, take the more bigoted." Of course I understood the word to mean " bigoted as you ivoulcl call it " : but the choice of the word seemed to me illustrative of the mixture of serious frankness and genial provoca- tiveness which characterised his share of our debates. Professor Huxley's notes on the subject have a special interest of their own as illustrating Mr. Ward's habitual readi- ness to " agree to differ " from him. Eeasoning in different planes, and starting from different first principles, their con- clusions were diametrically opposed ; but the utmost friendli- ness was soon attained in private intercourse. Their encounters, even when most deadly, had that purely * dispassionate and argumentative character which we see in St. Thomas Aquinas's refutations of the medigeval pantheists. "It was at one of the early meetings of the Metaphysical Society," writes Mr. Huxley, " that I first saw Dr. Ward. I forget whether he or I was the late comer -, at any rate we were not introduced. I well recollect wondering what chance had led the unknown member who looked so like a jovial country squire to embark in our galley — that singular rudderless ship, the stalwart oarsmen of which were mostly engaged in pulling as hard as they could against one another ; and which consequently performed only circular voyages all the years it was in commission. " But when a few remarks on the subject under discussion fell from the lips of that beaming countenance, it dawned upon my mind that a physiognomy quite as gentle of aspect as that of Thomas Aquinas (if the bust on the Pincian Hill is any authority) might possibly be the facade of a head of like quality. As time went on, and Dr. Ward took a leading part in our deliberations, my suspicions were fully confirmed. As a quick-witted dialectician, thoroughly acquainted with all the weak points of his antagonist's case, I have not met with Dr. Ward's match. And it all seemed to come so easily to him ; searching questions, incisive, not to say XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 315 pungent, replies, and trains of subtle argumentation, were poured forth, which, while sometimes passing into earnest and serious exposition, would also, when lighter topics came to the front, be accompanied by an air of genial good -humour, as if the whole business were rather a good joke. But it was no joke to reply, efficiently. "Although my personal intercourse with Dr. Ward was as limited as it might be expected to be, between two men who were poles asunder, not only in their occupations and circumstances, but in their ways of regarding life and the proper ends of action, yet I am glad to remember that we soon became the friendliest of foes. It was not long after we had reached this stage that, in the course of some truce in our internecine dialectic warfare (I think at the end of one of the meetings of the Metaphysical Society), Dr. Ward took me aside and opened his mind thus : ' You and I are on such friendly terms that I do not think it is right to let you remain ignorant of something I wish to tell you.' Rather alarmed at what this might portend I begged him to say on. 'Well, we Catholics hold that so and so, and so and so (naming certain of our colleagues whose heresies were of a less deep hue than mine) are not guilty of absolutely unpardonable error ; but your case is different, and I feel it is unfair not to tell you so.' Greatly relieved I replied, without a moment's delay, perhaps too im- pulsively, ' My dear Dr. Ward, if you don't mind, I don't,' where- upon we parted with a hearty hand shake ; and intermitted neither friendship nor fighting thenceforth. "I have often told the story, and, not unfrequently, I have re- gretted to observe that my hearer conceived the point of it to lie in my answer. But to my mind the worth of the anecdote consists in the evidence it affords of the character of Dr. Ward. He was before all things a chivalrous English gentleman ; I would say a philo- sophical and theological Quixote, if it were not that our associations with the name of the knight of La Mancha are mainly derived from his adventures, and not from the noble directness and simplicity of mind which led to those misfortunes." The few lines which Cardinal Manning sent me shortly before his death, though recording only a general impression made by scenes of which the details had passed from his memory, suggest traits in Ward's manner of debating which explain the appreciation he won from other camps than his own. " It is strange," wrote the Cardinal, " how a whole world of memories eludes one's grasp like the shades in the fields of Asphodel. . . . When I look back on your father in the Metaphysical Society I can make a com])ositio loci and fill it 3i6 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. with faces, and his in the midst of them. But then it is only- imaginary, though made up of realities. I cannot recall any special night or discussion . . . hut I have a clear and lively recollection of his singular ahility and gentleness in debate. He was always evidently reserving his strength. In writing he always let it all out ; but in discussion he was singularly respectful to antagonists, and when in extreme contradiction was always playful and kindly, so as to make collision impossible. His intellectual power was fully felt [but so also were] his great courtesy and kindness of heart and temper." Mr. James Knowles, the secretary and never - failing attendant at the meetings, tells much the same story. He describes "Ward as " acute and relentless as a debater to the extreme," and yet " in every capacity as a member of the Society most genial." He goes on to speak of the emphasis with which Ward insisted on the necessity of a candidate for election being a " good fellow " as well as an able man. Ward set the highest value on this as securing " the atmosphere necessary for such discussions." He hit hard and fought hard in the abstract, but his personal relations with all the members were specially characterised by honhomie. "This was the more remarkable," adds Mr. Knowles, " because many of us used to say that were the inquisition re-established, we heretics would rather take our chance of escape from Manning than from Ward. We felt that Ward's relentless logic would stick at nothing, not even at the protests of his own most amiable and gentle nature. I recollect Huxley going with me to dine at your father's house one day. The first thing he did was to go and peer out of the window. Dr. Ward asked him what he was doing, on which he said, ' I was looking in your garden for the stake, Dr. Ward, which I suppose you have got ready for us after dinner.' " The presence of a considerable number of members who were not professed metaphysicians, if it occasionally handicapped the more technical discussions, undoubtedly added very much indeed to the human interest of the Society. Abstract thinkers were reminded of the necessity of being definite and practical ; while statesmen, lawyers, and men of science were aroused from the groove of routine work, and led to bring into play the purely intellectual faculties, which so often become stiff and XII THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 317 unwieldy in the course of a technical career. Again the element of poetry and prose literature represented gave quite as much picturesqueness and imaginativeness to the debates as they lost in logical form. It was a sign of life and health in the Society that. Mr. Gladstone was said to have treated the Liberal Whip, impatient for instructions about a coming division, to a dissertation on the immortality of the soul. Mr. Huxley's paper, which dealt with that subject, probably gained in actuality from its anatomical and physiological illustrations, even though metaphysicians might consider them irrelevant ; and it was in all likelihood more fascinating and stimulating to hear Mr. Euskin explain that he was always expecting the sun not to rise, than to have listened to a reasoned proof of the uniformity of nature. Again, sparks were struck by the flint and steel of contrast. I do not ever remember my father's breaking in upon his regular hours at night except on occasion of one talk with Huxley, when each returned home alternately with the other some five or six times, ending in a final parting very near cock-crow. Ward was chairman of the Society during the year 1870, and often officiated (Mr. Knowles tells me) as occasional chair- man. Most of the members who have conversed with me on the subject note especially his success in this capacity — his absolute impartiality, his quick sense of the true issues of the debate, his good-humour on occasions on which his interference was called for, his success in keeping the discussion to the point — in avoiding both digression and mistiness. One member recalls a proposal which was made by the Society to appoint Ward and Huxley — the Catholic and the Agnostic — perpetual chairmen in alternate years, a proposal which Mr. Ward's uncertain health made him unable to entertain. Mr. Ward read three papers before the Society in the course of his membership — one on 15th December 1869, on " Memory as an Intuitive Faculty," one on 10th December 1872 (already described), and one on 14th July 1874, on "Necessary Truth." In the first of these he drew out an argument (elsewhere fully analysed) in reply to Mill and the " Experience " School. He had undoubtedly hit a weak point in their system, when he argued against basing on experience that trust in memory which is the very condition of experimental knowledge itself. 3i8 THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY chap. In a passage which one of the memhers has described as " falling like a bombshell " among his opponents, he illustrated the impossibility of all knowledge unless memory be from the first intuitively known to be trustworthy. The argu- ment was especially ad hominem against the men of science who maintain the " experience " philosophy. Every truth of science rests ultimately on remembered facts. " Unless such a man assumes that his own and other men's memory of the past can be trusted," he wrote, " he has no more means of even guessing that the earth moves round the sun or that wheat helps to make bread, than he has of guessing that whist is being unintermittently played in the planet of Jupiter ; . . . unless you assume that memory is to be trusted you cannot under- stand the very meaning of a single sentence which is uttered ; you cannot so much as apprehend its external bodily sound." Mr. Ward continued his membership of the Metaphysical Society until in 1878 his health obliged him to resign it. The Society lasted nearly two years longer ; but Mr. Knowles resigned the secretaryship in 1879, and the attendance began to fall off. Its last meeting was on 11th May 1880. Mr. Ward owed to the Metaphysical Society not only the most interesting intellectual reunions of his later life, but also friendly meetings outside the debates themselves. Such men as Martineau or E. H. Hutton or Huxley would dine with him, and talk of topics of the day, and listen to him as he sang Non piii andrai or Deli vieni alia finestra. The genial nature of his intercourse with them is shown by the fact that while his Catholic controversies made him ill, his meetings and arguments with his metaphysical friends and enemies were among the most effective of tonics when he was ill or depressed. The difference of his feeling in the two lines of controversy finds expression in a saying of Mr. Simpson's related by Sir M. E. Grant Duff, which, due allowance being made for Mr. Simpson's love of a startling exaggeration, contains un- doubtedly a germ of truth. "The conversation with your father, which I best remember," writes Sir Mountstuart, "turned chiefly upon Clough, about whom he spoke most kindly — so kindly that I afterwards, in talking of it to Mr. Simpson, an Oxford convert, who was not a member of our Society, but a considerable metaphysician, expressed some little xri THE METAPHYSICAL SOCIETY 319 surprise, considering that your father's views and those of Clough, in his later years, were so widely different. * Oh ! ' answered Simpson, 'there is nothing to surprise you in that; you may depend upon it he would speak very kindly of you, but he would call me an Atheist." ' Indeed, acute as the feeling about Clough had been while they were being torn asunder, it was like the amputation of a limb. Once the separation was accomplished healing became possible and pain eventually ceased. Men who differed from Mr. Ward in the very first principles of thought were, similarly, something apart from the sensitive sphere of his own most intimate religious life, and he regarded them with the interest which remarkable thought and char- acter ever had for him. It was a genuine regret to him when ill-health compelled him to resign his membership of the club ; and some of the friendships begun at its meetings — notably that with Mr. E. H. Hutton — became more and more to him to the end of his life. CHAPTEE XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY In the beginning of 1871, — the year succeeding the Vatican Council, — immediately after his recovery from his illness, Mr. Ward began the systematic work in behalf of Theism, which, although never completed, must be accounted the magnum ojncs of his life. Mr. Mill was at that time at the height of his influence, and Mr. Ward threw his argument into the form of a polemic against that writer's fundamental philosophy. The attack was begun in an article published in the Ditblin Revieiu in July 1871 on " The Eule and Motive of Certitude," which was succeeded in October by another on " Mr. Mill's Denial of Necessary Truths," and in the following January by an article called " Mr. Mill on the Foundation of Morality." Before the series had advanced further Mill died, having first published a reply to some of the questions raised by Mr. Ward, in the third edition of the Examination of Hamiltons Philosophy. In his reply Mill recognised the importance of the objections Ward had raised. " In answering them," he wrote, "I believe I am answering the best that is likely to be said by any future champion." Mr. Ward continued the series at intervals, still treating Mill as the protagonist of the " Anti-theistic " philosophy, but exchanging passages of controversy with living exponents of some of his doctrines. His polemic with Mr. Bain and Mr. Shad worth Hodgson on " Freewill," in particular, involved incidental skirmishes which delayed the advance of his systematic argument for Theism. The questions of Causation and Freewill were dealt with, the former slightly, the latter exhaustively. The last article published before his death, CHAP, xiii THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 321 reviewing the general line of his argument so far as it had yet gone, and touching on its practical results, was called the " Philosophy of the Theistic Controversy." Some account must here be given of the general drift of his work. And first of all certain natural anticipations of its scope must be set aside as inexact. Though the essays deal, as Mr. Ward explains, with the " Philosophy of the Theistic Controversy," they do not form a work on Theism. Viewed as a treatise on the foundations of Theism his work is obviously very incomplete. Viewed again as a psychological analysis of the Theist's mind it does not carry us far. A reader approach- ing the essays with either of these preconceptions will not only be disappointed, but will find closely and elaborately reasoned disquisitions on points which seem far indeed away from the great Object of religious imagination and religious worship. The true analysis of arithmetical and geometrical knowledge, the rationale of our trust in memory, the basis of our trust in nature's uniformity, are interesting questions in the abstract; but they may seem at first sight to belong to the first elements of mental science, which have often been treated adequately. They may appear trivial and disappointing to those who approach the subject anxious to realise the full groundwork of religious knowledge, in days of doubt and unbelief. But the fact is that Mr. Ward approached the question from a special point of view. The complete analysis of the basis of Theism needed, indeed, as he plainly indicated, a very delicate investigation of the ethical element in conviction, and of the principles warranted by man's moral nature. It needed also a careful investigation into the tests of informal proof, on the lines of Newman's Grammar of Assent, with the main principles of which he heartily concurred. That all this was of the utmost importance he felt indeed ; but the way to it was blocked by a previous question. These investigations could not be effectively undertaken without the previous destruction of certain theories which paralysed the mind of many inquirers. At the time when he began to write, J. S. Mill's philosophy had, as I have said, great influence. Mill had been for years applying and developing Hume's position that all our knowledge is derived from sensitive experience. Y 322 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. Moral and mathematical knowledge alike were the outcome of a network of past experiences, welded together and fused into inseparable associations. Goodness was utility, conscience fear of the father or ruler. Knowledge, deemed absolute and objective by the a imori schools, was explained as relative and subjective. All we could know was our own impression. And this passed by an inference a fortiori to the theory which has been most definitely expressed by Mr. Tyndall, that we have not even the " rudiment of a faculty " wherewith to apprehend the infinite God. All that subtler investigation to which I have referred was by this philosophy beforehand discredited as waste of time. The ultimate cause must necessarily be unknown and unknowable by beings with faculties so limited in their scope ; and sensible men, who realised their necessary limitations, must therefore be — as it came to be termed — agnostics. This philosophy, I say, blocked the way. Until it was shown to be false, further investigation was without motive or hope of success. It must be shown that the mind can be immediately acquainted with something beyond its sub- jective impressions ; that morals and mathematics cannot be reduced to the association of such impressions ; that the element " ought " and the element " must " in consciousness are not relative and passive feelings, but involve a perception of objective necessity, conscious of its own power and truth- fulness. Mill had frankly recognised the battleground. Disprove the Experience Philosophy and his organised system must fall. Establish the mind's power to perceive objective truth, to acquire knowledge of objective facts by intuition (to use the technical phrase), and the one coherent philosophy which at that time was paralysing the very idea of religious inquiry, must halt and fail of effect. The criticism of Theistic philosophy as defective would no doubt remain. But from its negative character this was much less formidable ; or at least it admitted a common basis of reasoning with the a priori thinkers, which the Experience Philosophy professed to have destroyed. Not a step could be won in answering the negative criticism until these previous questions had been dealt with. Mr. Ward held that nothing but constant concentration on a few critical points was required to show that the root- XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 323 doctrines of the Experience School could not stand philosophi- cally. Whewell and others had introduced confusion into the controversy. For example, in endeavouring to prove against the Experience School that the mind can perceive the intrinsic necessity of certain truths, they had treated the relative necessity of natural law as on a similar footing with the absolute necessity of mathematical truth. Mill had been victorious in his criticism of such loose thinking, and his theory was daily accepted by a larger number as conclusively established. Ward's object was to narrow the ground of controversy, to seize upon his root-doctrines and confront them with instances which, beyond question, disproved them ; to stand over him till he confessed that they could not be logically defended. Hence the narrowness of the ground taken up. Hence the insistency. The merit he would have claimed was the reverse of that which the temper of mind typical of our own generation looks for. Discursiveness and suggestiveness and the psychological analysis of mental attitudes, apart from questions of truth or falsehood, are characteristic of our time. So too is the assumption that a confident decision on these subtle questions is not to be looked for ; the sense that " yes " or " no " are the last words to be pressed for among cultivated men. Concentration rather on modes of thinking than on vahd thought is in fashion ; and the foregone conclusion that no absolute knowledge is possible enters tacitly into the premises and vitiates the method. I speak not of course of physical or mathematical science, but of metaphysico- religious speculation. Ward on the other hand pressed home a few questions, in answering which there was no other alternative than the unqualified negative or afi&rmative. He banished the concrete, in which all is complex, and all truth is qualified. He isolated principles, refusing for the moment even to look at their appli- cation to religious thought itself, — for religious thought would be complicated and prejudiced by religious feeling. With surgical skill he separated in turn each single abstract truth, to be examined and operated on, from the rest of the living mind of thought and feeling; and then he turned the limelight on it, and patiently continued examination and dissection until its true nature was patently apparent. If he did not this he 324 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. did nothing. Some of his answers had been touched before by other thinkers. More have been adopted since by writers who, in Dean Church's words, "have not scrupled to plough with Dr. Ward's heifer." But it was his especial work (1) to single out beyond question those points which were at once essential to the Experience Philosophy, and were yet, if candidly examined, demonstrably untenable; (2) to make this examination without ever allowing himself to be confused by adjacent concrete matter, or to desist until it was practically allowed that on these special points his opponents would have to reconsider their position. ISTo controversy ever ends in opponents simply acquiescing ; and in this case the sudden rise into prominence of Herbert Spencer's new version of the Experience Philosophy, and his union of that philosophy with the doctrine of evolution, gave the school new ground ; but that the old ground was felt by the original school of Mill not to have cleared itself from the difficulties raised by Mr. Ward appears, I think, in their own admissions, which I shall cite later on in the course of my analysis of the controversy. The first question concerned the general principle, Can the mind perceive immediately something beyond its own subjective impression ? Is intuition a valid mental act ? This is the question raised in the essay on "The Eule and Motive of Certitude." Mr. Ward treats it doubly. Eirst he shows that the very conclusions of Mill and Bain themselves need as connecting links the principle of intuition; that the successful work which they appeal to as testimony to their principles, rests on that very power which they theoretically deny ; and then he isolates one single instance of the mind's power of intuition, — the power of memory, — shows that it is something distinct from a subjective impression or experience, though at first sight so like it ; and insists that it must in certain cases carry with it its own evidence of truthfulness as an immediate informant. I have elsewhere given an account of the former and more general line of argument, which I may here reproduce : Mill's carefully disciplined and naturally candid and thought- ful mind had done much for the superstructure of psychology and logic, although the basis he adopted, which was substantially that of his father, and in part an inheritance from Hume, was most XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 325 unsatisfactory, or rather was no basis at all. What Mr. Ward did attempt was to show that the root -doctrines of the Experience School are devoid of all scientific foundation, and incapable of defence ; while the representatives of that school have in all the useful work they have done for philosophy been in reality acting upon those very principles of intuition which they deride as super- stitious and unscientific in their opponents. If we note the consequences of this (supposing the charge to be true), we at once see the peculiar importance of the work which he undertook. If it be granted that JMill's Logic is in many respects an advance upon previous works of the same description, and that the experimental method of psychology attains to valuable and new results — is, in fact, a distinct step forward in that science — there seems at first sight no escape from admitting that the methods and principles of inquiry adopted by these philosophers are really an improvement upon those which they have replaced. The writers themselves acquire all the authority which attends on success, and public opinion declares in their favour. They appeal to results as a positive proof that the first principles whence they started were sound. And the consequence is that people do not look closely at the real connection between their success and their avowed prin- ciples. The world sees their success, and takes them at their word as to the way in which it was gained. Mr. Ward's central aim, we may say, was by a concentrated attack upon their first principles, to draw attention to them, and to their absolute incom- patibility with the mode of philosophising of those who professed them. He singled out a few of their fundamental axioms, and insisted on holding them up to the light and examining them. " These men are conjurors," he said in effect. A conjuror, who is performing feats of sleight of hand before an audience of simple villagers, passes a shilling, apparently, through the table. He gives them plenty of time to examine the shilling and to mark it They see it and touch it, and know unmistakably that there it is on one side of the table. And when it comes out on the other side, they examine it again, and recognise their own mark. But at the really critical part of the performance, he diverts their attention, and, while bidding them watch closely something unconnected with the real secret of the trick, imperceptibly passes the coin from the right hand to the left, so that when a few moments later he is pressing his right hand on the top of the table and holding a plate in his left underneath to catch the coin, as he says, when it passes through, the whole work is already done ; there is no coin in the right hand ; it is really under the table. He then explains to them that his method is simple enough. He scratches the table three times in one spot, and says " Presto, open," and the table opens and allows the coin to pass. The villagers listen with open mouths. 326 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. They have no doubt this is the true explanation. See there, he is doing it again, to show them that this is really the secret of the matter. He scratches, pronounces the words, and they hear the coin drop into the plate beneath the table. He can do it, and so they do not doubt that he himself gives the true account as to how he does it. So also it is with Mill and Bain. They have done a work for philosophy. They have shown up a good deal of in- accurate thinking in their predecessors, and added considerably to the analysis of mental operations. This they make clear, and take care that the world should recognise. And all the time they profess to have been philosophising on the principles of the Experience School, and to reject the power of the mind to know immediately anything beyond its own consciousness. Here is the trick. Their readers read these principles as they state them, and study the results ; but the sleight of hand whereby the results are reached, the imperceptible insertion of intuitions into the process when nobody was looking, escapes notice. And the impossible account which they themselves give of this part of the performance is accepted, not after close scrutiny, but in virtue of the authority naturally possessed by those who have been successful in a parti- cular department of study. Mr. Ward's work, then, was confined to the detection of this sleight of hand. He insists repeatedly on the necessity of watch- ing this part of the process, and on the absolute impossibility of accepting their own account of the philosophical method they employ, which entirely eliminates intuitive perception of truth. In all their useful and careiul analysis, Mill and Bain act, he says, as unmistakably on a belief in the validity of intuitions, in the mind's power to perceive directly certain objective truths, as I do, or any other Christian philosopher does. They use all the authority they have gained by successful deductions from intuition, in advocating principles which are not more subversive of religious philosophy than they are of the methods they themselves have employed. So much for the general line of argument. The illustra- tions were many. The uniformity of nature with its leap to the future, mathematical reasoning with its conception of " must," the sense of duty, the " kinds " of happiness which J. S. Mill introduced into his Utilitarianism ; — all of these involved a mental perception of objective truth, and not merely a passive impression. Some of them involved the conception of ideas which no sensible experience could generate. Several of these questions have special treatment in connection with a later part of Ward's scheme. But on the sole question of intuition, of the mind's power of directly witaessing to truths XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 327 over and above the consciousness of the moment, he isolated, as I have said, and insisted on Memory. No doubt, at first sight the instance surprises. Why choose memory, which deals after all solely with experience, and is a fact of consciousness, against the experience philosophy ? Why not take something directly concerned with the non-sensuous world ? Because the instance of memory shows that so intimately present to the mind are its highest powers, its powers of active perception as opposed to passive feeling, that in prolonged experience itself, in sustained consciousness, that is to say, in a process at first sight entirely subjective, if it is so continued as to afford knowledge in any sense, there is an element of objective perception. Memory involves two things (1) the impression of a past experience. This im- pression is no doubt purely subjective. But it also involves (2) the decision " that past thing happened." And it is this last which is meant by the phrase " I remember." How account for it ? How can you know it unless the mind declares it with true insight in the act of remembering ? Professor Huxley took up the question and answered that we so often experience the truthfulness of memory that we come to trust it. But this only brought the point at issue into fuller light. " How do you hnow that you have found it truthful ? You must begin by trusting it, and helieving such trust to he knowledge, before you have any reason for supposing that memory has ever been accurate. Let us hear Mr. Ward : — " [These philosophers] may " he writes, " deny to man all other intuitional faculties ; but they must still ascribe to him that intui- tional faculty which is called memory, and which indubitably no less needs authentication than the rest. This is a point of quite central importance, and to which we beg our readers' most careful atten- tion. The distinction is fundamental, between a man's power of knowing his present and his past experience. Certainly he needs no warrant to authenticate the truth of the former, except that present experience itself. To doubt my present inward consciousness, as Mr. Mill most truly affirms, * would be to doubt that I feel what I feel.' So far, then, the phenomenist and ourselves run evenly together ; but here we may come to a very broad divergence. ' I am conscious of a most clear and articulate mental impression that a very short time ago I was suffering cold '; this is one judgment : ' a very short time ago I was suffering cold ' ; this is another and 328 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. totally distinct judgment. That I know my present imp'ession by no manner of means implies that I know my past feeling. '* We would thus, then, address some phenomenistic opponent. You tell us that all diamonds are combustible, and that the fact is proved by various experiments which you have yourself witnessed. But how do you know that you ever witnessed any experiment of the kind 1 You reply that you have the clearest and most articulate memory of the fact. Well, we do not at all doubt that you have that present impression which you call a most clear and articulate memory. But how do you know — how can you legitimately even guess — that the present impression corresponds with a past fact ? See what a tremendous assumption this is, which you, who call yourself a cautious man of science, are taking for granted. You are so wonderfully made and endowed — such is your assumption — that in every successive case your clear and articulate imp^ession and belief of something as past, corresponds with a past fact. You find fault with objectivists for gratuitously and arbitrarily assuming first principles ; was there ever a more gratuitously and arbitrarily assumed first principle than your own % " You gravely reply that you do not assume it as a first principle. You tell us you trust your present act of memory because in in- numerable past instances the avouchments of memory have been true. How do you know — how can you even guess — that there is one such instance ? Because you trust your present act of memory : no other answer can possibly be given. You are never weary of urging that a 2^1' i or i philosophers argue in a circle ; whereas no one ever so persistently argued in a circle as you do yourself. You know, forsooth, that your present act of memory testifies truly, because in innumerable past instances the avouchment of memory has been true ; and you know that in innumerable past instances the avouchment of memory has been true, because you trust your present act of memory. The blind man leads the blind, round and round a 'circle' incurably 'vicious.'" Mr. Ward's insistence on the one instance of memory bore further fruit. It was really a test question once it was driven home, and Ward saw this. Before long he had split leading exponents of the Experience School into three on the subject. Huxley, we have seen, had attempted to explain our belief without the aid of intuition and fell into a vicious circle. J. S. Mill was too wary to follow suit. He saw that to give any justification of the belief, memory itself must first be judged trustworthy before the meaning of any sentence of the justifica- tion could be understood, — even, as Ward had said " its external bodily sound." Consequently he frankly admitted, after the xiii THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY. 329 appearance of Ward's Philosophical Introduction on Nature and Grace, in which the point was first urged, that Ward had made good his point, and that the belief was "ultimate."^ But he did not realise the consequences of his admission. The experi- ence philosophy did not profess merely to show that experience and association have much to say to knowledge. Had it been so limited it would have been a true philosophy not a false ; a step forward not backward. It asserted unconditionally that intuition was impossible, and that to use Mr. Huxley's phrase " it admits of no doubt that all our knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness." This being so, to admit an intuitive element in memory was to admit the fundamental principle of the system to be false. Mill, failing for the moment to view his system as a whole, while he candidly debated this isolated point, lost sight of the critical importance of his admission. But Mr. Bain saw it at once. He was in a difficulty. Huxley's explanation had failed ; Mill's amounted to a surrender all along the line. Yet Ward's dilemma — memory either involves intuition or is no part of knowledge — called aloud for an answer. Bain contented himself with the admission that Mill's position was a surrender, and that the question was one to which he did not at present see an answer. " [When Mill] lays down," he wrote, '' as final and inexplicable the belief in memory I am unable to agree with him. This position of his has been much dwelt on by thinkers opposed to him. It makes him appear, after all, to be a transcendentalist like themselves, differing only in degree. For myself I never could see where his difficulty lay, or what moved him to say that the belief in memory is incomprehensible or essentially irresolvable. The precise nature of Belief is no doubt invested with very pecuHar delicacy; but whenever it shall be cleared up we may very fairly suppose it capable of accounting for the behef that a certain state now past as a sensation but present as an idea was once a sensation, and is not a mere product of thought or imagination" {Criticism of J, S. Mill, p. 121). This adjournment of the debate was mainly valuable from its recognition of the incompatibility of Mill's admission with his general system. This point Ward pressed farther, and Mill answered again. Ward pointed out that once the mind 1 See Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 4th edition, p. 209. 330 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. was allowed the power at all of intuitive perception, the strong ground of the Experience School, as a complete system, was gone. " There was," he wrote, " an imperative claim on him to explain clearly and pointedly where the distinction lies between acts of the memory and other alleged intuitions." Mill's answer to this was very remarkable as amounting really to an express surrender of Phenomenism altogether as a com- plete theory of knowledge, and a repudiation of the general principle which from Hume to James Mill had been the basis of a sceptical philosophy. "The distinction is," he replied, " that as all the explanations of mental phenomena presuppose memory, memory itself cannot admit of being explained. JVTicnever this is shown to he true of any other part of our know- ledge I shall admit that j^ctrt to he intuitive." ^ This answer had two noteworthy points. First, it expressly abandoned, as I have said, the exclusive " experience " theory. According to that theory it was the ultimate resolu- tion of so-called knowledge to states of consciousness which was the sole test of its genuineness and trustworthiness. The inference to the existence of an external world was unsound, hecause that required something irresolvable into subjective consciousness. So too, a fortiori, as to the existence of God. Mill, on the contrary, expressed readiness under certain con- ditions to admit the intuitive element, and to desert this test. But further, his reply really admitted the whole intuitional principle which he professed to dispute. He did not face the dilemma which Ward had presented, or this would have been more evident. The dilemma is, substantially, this : The proof that supposed knowledge is real knowledge must be either its ultimate dependence on the mind's immediate and confident perception (intuitionism), or its reducibility to subjective con- sciousness (phenomenism). By admitting one intuition he really admitted the validity of the former test, though he was not aware of it. He i)'^^ofessed to [/round his acceptance of this one intuitive belief not on the intuitional principle but merely on the impossibility of giving reasons for it which do not presuppose the belief itself. But how does such a ground prove it valid ? It proves it indeed to be an ultimate helief, but why not an ultimate delusion instead ^ On Hamilton, p. 210, note. XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 331 of ultimate knowledge? Unless the light of the immediate mental vision or intuition is a sufficient voucher, memory remains — an ultimate impression indeed, but not an ultimate element of Jcnoivledge. The only assurance that it is part of our knowledge is gained from the intuitionist principle, that the mind can by its own light see such ultimate truths. Mr. Ward points out the ignoratio elenchi of Mill's reply as follows : — " Memory," Mr. Mill says, " must be assumed to be veracious, because as all the explanations' of mental phenomena presuppose memory, memory itself cannot admit of being explained " ; or, in other words (as he expressed the same thought somewhat more clearly in his original note), because " no reason can be given for the veracity of memory which does not presuppose the belief and assume it to be well grounded." But a moment's consideration will show that this answer implies a fundamental misconception of the point we had raised. The question which he answers is, whether my knowledge of past facts (assuming that I have such knowledge) is on the one hand an immediate and primary, or on the other hand a mediate and secondary, part of my knowledge ? But the question which we asked was totally different from this. We asked, On what ground my belief of the facts, testified by my memory, can be accounted part of my knowledge at all? We asked, in short, On what reasonable groimd can my conviction rest, that I ever experienced those sensations, emotions, thoughts, which my memory represents to me as past facts of my life 1 We say that the question to which Mr. Mill has replied is fundamentally different from the question which we asked. Let it be assumed that my belief in the declarations of my memory is a real part of my knowledge, and nothing can be more pertinent than Mr. Mill's argument : he shows satisfactorily that such belief must be an immediate and primary part of my knowledge, not a mediate and derivative part thereof. But when the very question asked is whether this belief be any part of my knowledge at all, Mr. Mill's reply is simply destitute of meaning. For consider. We may truly predicate of every false belief which ever was entertained — nay, of every false belief which can even be imagined — that "no" satisfactory *' reason can be given for it which does not presuppose the belief and assume it to be well grounded." If Mr. Mill, then, were here pro- fessing to prove the trustworthiness of memory, his argument would be this: "The declarations of memory," he would be saying, "are certainly true, because they possess one attribute which is possessed by every false belief which was ever entertained or can ever be imagined." 332 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. The case of memory was, as I have said, dwelt upon repeatedly as giving the intuitionist principle foothold. Once its import was clearly realised Ward could advance steadily; if it was only half-realised there would be perpetual fallings back upon the old question in new forms. The ground gained once ' for all was this : The only conceivable basis for trusting memory is the principle that the mind can directly witness to objective truth ; that is to say not only to a present mental phenomenon, but to past fact as well. It can declare not only " I feel that I felt cold two seconds ago," but also " I felt as a fact cold." This being so, intuitionism takes its departure at the narrowest possible angle from phenomenism. The mind's positive declara- tion, differentiating the purely rational faculties from those of association, is first shown in the very stronghold of the experi- ence philosophy, in experience itself. The perception of objective truth is detected within regions at first sight wholly subjective. The difference between the blind and passive impression as to the past which serves the lower creation as a practical guide, and its rational counterpart in man, comes in the flash of light and sense of power which transform impression into perception, passive feeling into self-asserting vision. But important as this truth is in the abstract, as establishing the principle of intuition on ground at first sight belonging to its opponents, from the very fact that it could be with some plausibility concealed, it obviously could not carry our knowledge far. It pointed out the rational character of human experience, and established the claim of the rational nature to assert by its own right and beyond appeal, where assertions were ascertained to &e its genuine assertions, and not impressions or hasty inferences assumed to be assertions. But so far the intuition principle remained at rest in the *' experi- ence " camp, content with having vindicated its claim, but not interfering with the general character of the experience philosophy, as concerned with the phenomena of mental experience, rather than with truths beyond that experience. The next step was to set the rational power in motion and to show that what was practically harmless to phenomenism while regarded merely as a faculty employed in regulating and ascertaining past phenomena, could in an instant step beyond the whole circle of truths known by experience. The power xiii THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY ^i'hZ of intuitiou — that mental limelight which helped iu the analysis of sensitive experience, and seemed to Mill, in the case of memory, to be really reconcilable with a subjective philosophy, and not worth arguing against further — was suddenly turned away from the subjective and contingent, and focussed on the objective and necessary. If the mind has the power of certify- ing to the truth of its positive vision, the truths it brings to light in this new sphere cannot be mistaken or doubted. " Ought " and " must " are ideas as valid and facts as irresis- tibly true as past experience vividly remembered. This was the next step. But a word more as to its import. It was the old story of Kant's synthetic a 'priori truths. As long as the mind, with whatever power of reflective certainty, could only analyse its own operations, and as long as valid propositions were mere equations, or statements of experienced truth, not much progress was made towards Theism. To know the infinite and absolute Godhead involved something different in kind from this. Experience and analysis might develop infinitely skilful walking power upon earth, but they gave no wings to fly heavenward. Where then in their simplest and most un- deniable form were such wings to be looked for in the human reason ? Where could it be pointed out that the mental Light, whose authority was established, showed clearly facts or ideas not derived at all either from experience or from analysis ? The answer lay in Kant's doctrine, and in his very words. Certain truths were known not a posteriori or from experience, and not analytically ; they were a priori and synthetic. Mathematics and morals were the fields in which these ideas could be seen with clearest and calmest vision ; '' must " and " ought," with their practical applications, were the ideas themselves. Establish that the necessity of ''must" belongs to a region outside contingent experience ; that the sanctity and binding power of " ought " cannot be explained by the mere experience of the consequences of our actions to ourselves aod others, and it is seen that the rational nature has taken flight from the ground ; that it moves freely and securely, outside and far above the most developed and fully analysed oToping of the association philosophy. Geometry was the field chosen by Ward for establishing 334 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. the " must/' as ethics was necessarily for the '' ought." Mill himself had challenered the intuitionists in the field of mathematics, and had maintained that mathematical axioms did not necessarily obtain in the fixed stars.^ It was Mill's work to show that "must" was a delusion, a mere disguised reproduction of "constantly has been." Mathe- matical axioms were generalisations from experience, and, as such, we could have no warrant for them beyond the regions of experience. They rested on precisely the same basis as the uniformity of nature. Our experience of both was constant, most intimate, without exception. The result was an in- separable association. "No stones are without gravity" and " no parallel lines ever meet " stood on the same basis. It is as inaccurate to say two and two must be four as to say a stone must have weight. Mill admitted the former to involve a deeper sense of necessity, but only from its being more constantly experienced. The difference was purely in degree and not in kind. Here, then, was a plain issue, and Ward fixed on it for his answer. He selected the truth " all trilateral figures are triangular" as his specimen instance, and, as usual, focussed the controversy on the fewest and most central points. The question was. Is the mind's declaration, " all trilateral must be triangular," essentially similar to its declaration that nature is uniform, or does it present char- acteristics quite different in kind ? The key to Mill's position and his attempt to get rid of that idea so pregnant with consequences, so uncomfortable to the philosopher of experience, " must " or " necessary " will be found in the following passages of the work on Hamilton : — It is strange that almost all the opponents of the association psychology should found their main or sole argument in refutation of it upon the feeling of necessity ; for if there be any one feehng in our natiu-e which the laws of association are obviously equal to producing, one would say it is that. Necessary, according to Kant's definition, and there is none better, is that of which the negation is impossible. If we find it impossible, by any trial, to separate two ideas, we have all the feeling of necessity Avhich the mind is capable of. Those, therefore, who deny that association can generate a necessity of thought, must be willing to affirm that 1 Mr. V^ard pointed out that this was tlie outcome of his words in the second volume of his Logic. XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 335 two ideas are never so knit together by association as to be practically inseparable. But to affirm this is to contradict the most familiar experience of life. Many persons who have been frightened in childhood can never be alone in the dark without irrepressible terrors. Many a person is unable to revisit a particular place, or to think of a particular event, without recalling acute feelings of grief or reminiscences of suffering. If the facts which created these strong associations in individual minds had been common to all mankind from their earliest infancy, and had, when the associations were fully formed, been forgotten, we should have had a necessity of thought — one of the necessities which are supposed to prove an objective law, and an a 'priori mental con- nection between ideas. Here is Mr. Ward's criticism on this passage : — We have always thought this passage to be among the weakest which Mr. Mill ever wrote. Firstly, the two instances which he gives in no way exemplify a necessity of thought, but only a necessity oi feeling ; the feeling of fear in solitary darkness and of grief in revisiting a particular place or in thinking of a particular person. Now many wild theories have doubtless been maintained by considerable persons ; but who in the world ever alleged that a necessity of feeling "proves an objective law, and an a primi mental connection between ideas " ? But a more important fallacy remains to be mentioned. Mr. Mill's whole reasoning turns on the phrase, "necessity of thought," and yet he has used that phrase in two senses fundamentally different. A "necessity of thought" may no doubt be most intelligibly understood to mean, " a law of nature whereby under certain circumstances I necessarily think this, that, and the other judgment." But it may also be understood to mean, "a law of nature whereby I think as necessary this, that, and the other judg- ment." Now we heartily agree with Mr. Mill, that from a " necessity of thought " in the former sense, no legitimate argument whatever can be deduced for a necessity of objective truth. Supposing I felt unusually cold a few moments ago ; it is a " necessity of thought " that I shall now remember the circumstance : yet that past experience was no necessary truth. It is a " necessity of thought " again, that I expect the sun to rise to-morrow ; and many similar instances could be adduced. The only " necessity of thought " which proves the self-evident necessity of objective truth is the necessity of thinking that such truth is self- evidently necessary. The controversy then must fix itself on this one question, Is there a judgment of necessity in relation to mathematical truths different in kind from the mere impression of constancy 336 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. wrought by the uniform laws of nature, and introducing a mental element or factor " must," generically distinct from the experiential " constantly does " ? Ward exhibits the contrast, beginning with its most obvious features, and later on draw- ing out its further and deeper elements. Here is his account of Mill's position : — All my life long I have been seeing trilaterals which are tri- angular, while I have had no one experience to the contrary. So in- separable an association then — thus Mr. Mill argues — has been established in my mind between the ideas of trilateral ness and triangularity, that I am deluded into the fancy of some a piori connection between them, independent of what is known by experi- ence ; I am deluded into the fancy, that by my very conception of a trilateral figure I know its triangularity. We shall have, as we proceed, to consider this argument in detail ; but we will at once urge against it what seems an irrefragable argument ad hominem. According to Mr. Mill, my having constantly experienced the triangularity of trilateral figures is merely one out of a thousand sets of instances, in which I have observed the unexceptional uni- formity of the laws of nature. There is no other experimental truth whatever, he thinks, which rests on nearly so large a mass of experience, as does this truth, that phenomena succeed each other in uniform laws. To this universal uniformity, " we not only do not know any exception, but the exceptions which limit or ap- parently invalidate the special laws, are so far from contradicting the universal one that they confirm it" (Logic, vol. ii. p. 104). Now the fact of my having constantly experienced triangu- larity in trilateral figures suffices (according to Mr. Mill) for my having knit the ideas of trilateralness and triangularity into such inseparable association that I delusively fancy one to be involved in my very conception of the other. Much more certainly therefore — so Mr. Mill in consistency should admit — I must have knit into such inseparable association the two ideas *' phenomena," and "succeeding each other by uniform laws," that I necessarily fancy one to be involved in my very conception of the other. If, through my constant experience of triangular trilaterals, I am under a practical necessity of fancying that in every possible region of existence all trilaterals are triangular — much more, through my constant experi- ence of uniformity in phenomenal succession, must I be under a practical necessity of fancying that in every possible region of existence phenomena succeed each other by uniform laws. Now am I under any such necessity, or under any kind of approach to it? We summon the defendant into court as witness for the plaintiff". "I am convinced," he says (Logic, vol. ii. p. 98), "that any one accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who will fairly XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 2>1>1 exert his faculties for the purpose, will . . . find no difficult)/ in conceiving that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may succeed one another at random without any fixed law." Put these two statements then together. I find insuperable difficulty in fancying, that in any possible " firmament " there can be non- triangular trilaterals ; but I find no difficulty whatever in fancying that in many a possible *' firmament " phenomena succeed each other without fixed laws. Yet I have experienced the uni- formity of phenomenal succession (according to Mr. Mill) very far more widely, and in no respect less unexceptionally, than I have experienced the triangularity of trilaterals. The impossibility, there- fore, which I find in believing the non-triangularity of any possible trilateral, cannot be in any way imagined to arise from constancy of experience. In other words, Mr. Mill's psychological principle breaks down. But the fact of this distinction was, when pressed home, admitted by Mill. Still with resourceful tactics he held his ground against the unwelcome and transcendental " must." That the feeling of necessity is stronger in mathematics than in physics he granted ; but that arose, he said, from the fact that the experience of mathematical truth is coextensive with nature. That two and two makes four holds with respect to every object you have ever seen. That things equal to the same are equal to each other is proved, not by reference to certain classes, but to all classes of things with which we are familiar. Ward here answered him by an appeal to facts which he claimed to be unquestionable. He showed that there are immediate mathematical truths which it never occurs to us to observe, and yet which, on being pointed out, at once give rise to the idea of necessity. A conviction which arises on the contempla- tion of one solitary instance cannot be due to familiarity. And the case becomes stronger when we find the idea "must" extending to propositions which are so little familiar as to need lengthened proof to be admitted at all. Mr. Ward thus states the case : — Mr. Mill's contention, then, is as follows : " The truth that all trilaterals are triangular, is known by every one with indefinitely greater freshness of familiarity than the truth that wood floats upon water." This is what he affirms, and what we deny, and it is precisely on this point that issue is joined. As politicians would say, we cannot desire a better issue than z 338 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. this to go to the country upon. We affirm as an indubitable matter of fact, that Mr. Mill is here contradicted by the most obvious experi- ence. We affirm as an indubitable matter of fact, that ninety-nine hundredths of mankind not only do not know the triangularity of trilaterals with this extraordinary freshness of familiarity, but do not know it at all. Those who have not studied the elements of geometry — with hardly an exception — if they Avere told that tri- laterals are triangular, and if they understood the statement, would as simply receive a new piece of information as they did when they were first told the death of Napoleon III. Then, as to those who are beginning the study of mathematics. A youth of fifteen, we said in our second essay, is beginning to learn geometry, and his tutor points out to him that every trilateral is triangular. Does he naturally reply — as he ivoidd if his tutor was telling him that limses are of different colours — " of course the fact is so ; I have observed it a thousand times " ? On the contrary, in all probability the proposi- tion will be entirely neAv to him ; and yet, notwithstanding its novelty, will at once commend itself as a self-evident truth. Lastly, take those who learned the elements of geometry when they were young, and are now busily engaged in political, or forensic, or commercial life. If the triangularity of trilaterals were mentioned to them, they would remember, doubtless, that they had been taught in their youth to see the self-evidence of this truth ; but they would also remember, that for j^ears and years it had been absent from their thoughts. Is it seriously Mr. Mill would allege, that they know the triangularity of trilaterals with the same fresh- ness of familiar experience (or rather with indefinitely greater fresh- ness of familiar experience) with which they know the tendency of fire to burn, and of water to quench it 1 or with which thej^ respectively know the political events of the moment, or the practice of the courts, or the habits of the Stock Exchange ? If he did allege this in his zeal for a theory, we should confidently appeal against so eccentric a statement to the common sense and common experience of mankind. But is it not, then, Mr. Mill might ask, a matter to every man of everyday experience, that trilaterals are triangular 1 If by " everyday experience " he means " everyday ohservation^^ and his argument requires this, we answer confidently in the negative. Even if we could not lay our finger on the precise fallacy which has misled Mr. Mill, it would be none the less certain that he has hern misled. It cannot possibly be true that the triangularity of trilaterals is a matter to every man of everyday observation, because (as we said just now) patently and undeniably the mass of men know nothing whatever ahoid it. But Mr. Mill's fallacy is obvious enough to those who will look at facts as they really are. In the first place, putting aside that very small minority who are XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 339 predominantly occupied with mathematical studies, the very notion of a " trilateral " does not occur to men at all, except accident- ally and on rare occasions. It is not because my eyes light by chance on three straws mutually intersecting, or on some other natural object calculated to suggest a trilateral, that therefore any thought of that figure, either explicitly or implicitly, enters my mind. I am probably musing on matters indefinitely more interest- ing and exciting ; the prospects of the coming Parliamentary divi- sion, or the point of law Avhich I am going doAvn to argue, or the symptoms of the patient whom I am on my way to visit, or the probable fluctuation of the funds. The keen geometrician may see trilateral in stocks and stones, and think of trilateral on the slightest provocation ; but what proportion of the human race are keen geometricians % Then, secondly, still excluding these exceptional geometricians, for a hundred times that observation might suggest to me the thought of a trilateral, not more than once perhaps will it suggest to me the triangularity of such trilateral. Mr. Mill himself will admit, we suppose, that such explicit observation is comparatively rare -, but he will urge, probably, that I implicitly observe the triangularity of every trilateral which I remark. We will make, then, a very simple supposition for the purpose of testing this suggestion, as well as for one or two other purposes connected with our argument. We will suppose that all rose stalks within the reach of human observation had leaves of the same shape with each other. On such supposition, the shape of its stalk-leaves would be a more obvious and obtrusive attribute of the rose than is triangularity of the trilateral ; and yet, beyond all possibility of doubt, one might very frequently observe a rose, without even implicitly noticing the shape of its stalk-leaves. The present writer can testify this at first hand. In a life of sixty odd years, he has often enough smelt roses and handled their stalks, and yet he had not the slightest notion whether their leaves are or are not similarly shaped, until he asked the question for the very purpose of this illustration. And it is plain that if he has not observed the mutual dissimilarity of their leaves, neither would he have observed their similarity did it exist. Now, we appeal to our readers' common sense, whether what we said at starting is not undeniably true, viz. that every ordinary person is very far more likely to observe the shape of rose-stalk leaves, than to observe the number of angles formed by the sides of a trilateral. At the same time, we fully admit that many a man may have implicitly observed the similarity of shape in rose -stalk leaves (supposing such similarity to exist) without having explicitly adverted to the fact until he heard it mentioned ; and in like manner this or that man may have implicitly observed the 340 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. triangularity of various trilaterals. But such a circumstance does but give occasion to another disproof of Mr. Mill's theory. Suppose I have implicitly observed the former phenomenon. I hear the proposition stated, that the shape of all rose-stalk leaves is similar, and I set myself to test its truth by my former experience. I consult my confused remembrance of numerous instances in which I have looked at rose-stalks, and I come to assert, with more or less positiveness, that all those within my observation have had similar leaves. On the other hand, I wish, let us suppose, to test the pro- position that all trilaterals are triangular. If Mr. Mill's theory were true, I should proceed as in the foregoing instance ; I should contemplate my confused remembrance of numerous instances in which I have observed their triangularity. But the fact is most different from this. I do not consult at all my memory of past experience, but give myself to the contemplation of some imaginary trilateral, which I have summoned into my thoughts. And the impression which I receive from such contemplation is not at all that the various trilaterals / have observed in times past are triangular, but that in no possible world could non- triangular trilaterals exist. Observe, then, these two respective cases. My process of reaso7iing has been fundamentally different in the two ; and the impression which I receive from that process will have been fundamentally different in the two ; consequently the two cases are fundamentally different, instead of being (as they would be on Mr. Mill's theory) entirely similar. Our readers will observe that we have just now twice used the word " impression," instead of such more definite terms as *' cog- nition " or "intuition." Our reason for this is easily given. By the admission of Mr. Mill himself, every adult who gives his mind to the careful thought of trilaterals, receives the impression that their triangularity is a necessary truth ; but Mr. Mill denies that this impression is a genuine intuition, and we could not of course assume what Mr. Mill denies. Here we bring to a close the exhibition of our first argument against Mr. Mill, an argument which we must maintain to be simply final and conclusive, even if no second were adducible. According to his theory, the triangularity of trilaterals (or any other geometrical axiom) is a phenomenon known to all men with as great freshness of familiarity as the phenomenon that fire burns, or that water quenches it ; or rather, the former class of phenomena is known to all men with incomparably greater freshness of familiarity than the latter. But such a proposition is undeniably inconsistent with the most patent and indubitable facts. This circumstance would of course be fatal to Mr. Mill, even though we were entirely unable to account for it psychologically ; but (as we have further argued) it can be psychologically accounted for with the greatest possible ease. XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 341 A second argument has been incidentally included in our exposition of tlie first. The mental process, whereby I come to cognise the truth of a geometrical axiom, is fundamentally different from the mental process, whereby I come to recognise the truth of an experienced fact; whereas, on Mr. Mill's theory, these two processes would be simply identical. From " must " he passed to " ought." The '' must " of mathe- matical intuition carried with it two characteristics — the sense of power in the mind which decided, and secondly, the accom- panying clearness of the conceptions involved. That every trilateral figure is triangular is a proposition which we not only assent to confidently, but feel in doing so that we grasp most fully the spacial relations with whose necessity it deals. With the ethical " ought " there is equal confidence, but there is at once the sense that the subject matter touches on some- thing mysterious and beyond our full apprehension. " A son ought to honour his father." The mind affirms that as positively as it affirms that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. But this "ought" touches on something less clearly obvious than the necessity of spacial relations. What is that something ? What is its import ? That there is in it something of mystery which needs clearing up is plain enough from the agreement of thinkers of different schools. All acknowledge the mystery which needs solving, however different the solutions proposed by each. The Scholastic Synteresis, Kant's categorical Imperative, the Moral Sense of Hutcheson, the " mathematical " morality of Cudworth, the theological explanations of the meaning of " right " and " wrong " by the Scotists, the utilitarianism and associationism of Mill himself, are all instances familiar to us of endeavours to trace out what is that something which the human mind so confidently recognises, and yet finds so hard to analyse, expressed in the words " moral worth," " moral obligation." Mr. Ward's object was to show that this mysterious " some- what " involved in Ethical truth is a still further and more pertinent illustration of the mind's power of perceiving truths l3eyond the regions of experience. " It is wrong to do murder." Here first of all we have "must" as before. Murder is necessarily wrong. It could not be otherwise. To take away life without a just cause would be wrong for any man. The 342 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. truth is necessary and universal. It has the element of " must." But it has also in the word " wrong " another idea. Is that idea — however apparently mysterious and complex — ultimately resolvable into simpler ideas already possessed by us? Yes, answer Utilitarians and some of the theologians. And Ward proceeded to examine their analyses and confute them. Once more, as in mathematics, comes Kant's test of synthetic a ijriori knowledge. The theologians in question say " morally evil means what God forbids." But write down the sentence, " It is morally evil to disobey God." Is it an identical pro- position ? Is it equivalent to saying, '' to disobey God is to disobey God " ? Clearly not. Is it analytical ? Wlien I say, "Disobedience to God is morally evil," does the predicate contain what was already in the subject, as when we say "a triangle has three angles " ? The answer is again negative. The proposition is synthetic and not analytic ; " morally evil " remains consequently something further — something which this theological account fails to explain. Again is the conception of the Utilitarians — that " evil " is tantamount to " injurious to the human race " — adequate ? Apply the same test. Write down the statement, "It is morally evil to act in such a way as to injure the human race." It is clearly a synthetical proposition. " Injuring the human race " and " acting wrongly " are distinct ideas. Test the propositions in another way. If they are analy- tical their converse is unmeaning, and obviously absurd. " I saw a triangle which had not three angles." " An act of dis- obedience to God was not disobedience to Him," or "an act beneficial to mankind was injurious to it " — such propositions are absurd. But is it absurd to say, " It was right under cer- tain circumstances to disobey God," or " It was right to injure the human race " ? We may, if we will, consider such pro- positions false, and universally false, but they are not unmeaning. Add the condition, " If God could command what is vicious," and the first proposition becomes true. Add, " If a higher duty command it," and the second is true. Whether such conditions can actually exist is a further question, but the hypothesis shows that the propositions are fuUy intelligible, and that '' good " and " evil " are ideas which the proposed analyses do not explain. XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 343 And equally, according to Mr. Ward, do other analyses fail. The more the ideas are contemplated the more do their reality and yet their irresolvability assert themselves. Correlatively we are conscious that, in limits, it is ours to choose in each case whether or no we will conform ourselves to the standard which our constant moral judgments reveal to us. In pointing this out he developed with great wealth of illustration the doctrine of " anti - impulsive effort," already referred to in an earlier controversy with Mill. And here Mr. Ward called attention parenthetically to another truth of intuition which was essential to his scheme, although he never elaborated it fully. In his Essay on Causa- tion he points out that Mill's attempt to support Hume's doctrine that causation is only succession — that all we mean when we say that fire causes warmth is that the close presence of fire is always immediately followed by the sensation of warmth — is untrue to the facts of consciousness. Just as the attempts to explain " necessarily does " as " always does," and " good " as " beneficial," are untrue to psychological facts, so is the attempt to explain causation as succession. And he shows it by the appeal to internal experience. No doubt if I look at another man, and see him strike a tree with an axe, and cut it down, all I see is the succession between the blow and fall of the tree. But let me strike myself, and first I am conscious that my will causes my arm to move ; and secondly, I have the conviction, due to a complexus of sensations, that my blow was not merely followed by the fall of the tree, but exercised a power which, call it what you will, is a reality over and above the sequence of events. However far causation may extend, and even supposing that it does not hold good throughout external nature, it is plain that the idea of it, as something distinct from succession, exists. When we have most knowledge it is clearest — in the exercise of our own will. And the belief in its existence in external nature is in accord- ance with the analogy of our most intimate and thorough knowledge ; while the phenomenist view has for its support only the analogy of external observation. The phenomenist decides to stop at the onlooker's view of the blow; the intuitionist takes that of the man who not only sees his own blow as an external phenomenon, but feels it as an act of which 344 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. he is conscious. " Whatever commences to exist has a cause " — this is the form in which Ward accepted the causation axiom ; and it led back ultimately to the First Cause, which has no commencement. Eeturning from this digression, he considered the prolonged experience of a man as a moral being, listening to the dictates of his moral nature as life proceeds, and conscious that he has the power to obey or disobey them. In proportion as we co-ordinate our experiences on this head, — of the con- sciousness of freedom, and of constant moral judgments, — we become aware of living in contact with a supreme Eule of nature ; and inasmuch as responsibility for our free conformity to it or neglect of it is a further element of moral intuition, we rise to the conviction that that Ptule is a law imposed by a Superior Being. While rejecting the conclusion that God's will is the source of the morality of acts, and determines the content of the moral Eule, he comes by the reverse process to the conclusion that this morality, which is intrinsic to the acts, and whose obliging force on ourselves we recognise, represents the will of a Being having rightful authority over us. We recognise the proposition " this is wrong " not only as a specula- tive truth, not only as a mere fact parallel to " this is sweet," but as a truth claiming control over our practical life. And further, the moral rule which is thus perceived as also a moral law, being necessary in itself, presupposes as its basis the necessary Being God. And thus the argument from Ethics and from Necessary Truth coalesce : — " As time goes on, then," Mr. Ward writes, " this, that, and the other act are successively known to me as not permissible — as wrong, base, wicked, whatever their attractiveness to my inclinations. Again, this act is known to me as more virtuous than that, which- ever of the two, exercising my liberty, I may choose to perform. In proportion, therefore, as I give more attention to the ethical conduct of my life, in that proportion the number of such necessary moral truths brought within my cognisance increases unintermittently and inexhaustibly. I thus obtain an ever-clearer perception of the fact that I am in contact with a certain necessarily existing and pervasive Supreme Eule of life ; from Avhich, indeed, as regards its actual injunctions, I cannot SAverve without wrong-doing and wicked- ness. No other motive of action has any claim on me at all so j^aramount as the claim of this Eule. No other course of action is XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 345 so reasonable as that of conforming myself more and more with its counsels ; nor can any other thing be so intensely unreasonable as the doing that which it pronounces to be intrinsically evil. We have already therefore arrived at a very remarkable and note- worthy conclusion. There is a certain purely invisible and metempirical standard which claims to be the only true measure and arbiter of man's whole conduct in this visible scene. Man is proverbially monarch of the visible world ; and it is precisely man who is cle jure subject to the authoritative judgments of an invisible tribunal. " But as soon as I have arrived at the conviction expressed by that statement, a further step is strictly inevitable and irresistible. The notion of a Supreme Rule from which I cannot swerve without wickedness, passes inevitably and irresistibly into the fiirther notion of a Law imposed on me by some Superior Being. The notion of an invisible tribunal, by which my actions are authoritatively praised or blamed, passes into the further notion of some Personal Judge sitting on that tribunal. To dwell on the earlier of the two con- victions without passing into the latter — to remain content with the notion of a Supreme Eule without carrying it forward to the notion of a Natural Law — is as impossible psychically as to pass my life standing on one leg is impossible physically. That rule to which profound, continuous, unreserved allegiance is due from free and reasonable beings, cannot be a mere abstraction; it must be the Law of some personal Superior possessing rightful authority." And if this Eule and Law consists of duties irreversible, as has already been shown, in the nature of things, as necessary and unchangeable as the truths of geometry, we have a vast body of Truth — truths of number, truths of spacial relations, truths of moral obligation and moral relations — holding good throughout the universe, and which omnipotence itself could in no way modify. Such a fact is either a startling limitation of God's power, or it is in some intimate manner connected with God's nature, and is unchangeable because God Himself is un- changeable : and this is the writer's conclusion. This vast body of necessary Truth presupposes, as he holds, the one Necessary Being God. " If there be Necessary Truth," he wrote, " there must be a necessary Being on Whom such Truth is founded." The essay from which these extracts are made appeared in 1880, two years and a half before Mr. Ward's death. A pause of two years ensued before he attacked the final problem to which his whole series had been preparatory. He considered that the road was cleared. The mind's power of intuitive 346 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. certitude, and its power to rise above the regions of experi- ence, were fully established. The analysis of our perception of moral truth, with its correlatives of freewill and moral respon- sibility, had been completed. The depths of man's moral nature, and the mysterious region of truth opened out by this analysis, had been touched on. The next essay, "The Philosophy of the Theistic Controversy," gives the sense of a pause in the writer's thought, and of the adoption of a somewhat new method. Hitherto, except in the last essay on Ethics and Theism, the battle had been fought out in regions where abstract argument was absolutely conclu- sive and ]Dractically sufficient. The method of St. Thomas and Albertus in their philosophical debates had been so far absolutely adopted. Mr. Ward asked for no more than sustained attention and a clear head ; and the immediate issues were so far from the ultimate and vital conclusions which separated him from his opponents, that he might well expect to get what he claimed. But the essay on " Ethics in its bearing on Theism " seems to have brought before his mind the practical as distinct from the scientific bearing of his controversy. Thinkers who would follow him in his analysis of memory, or of mathematical truth, would pause before admitting that Ethical judgment pre- supposed a " metempirical rule," and that that Eule was the law imposed by a rightful superior. The great controversy was now coming to close quarters. Candour and mutual civilities were less likely to be the order of the day. Brilliant men of science as Mr. Huxley, mathematicians of genius as Mr. W. K. Clifford, whose ability was beyond question, would treat such extensive deductions from the facts of consciousness as pre- posterous. If, tacitly by some, avowedly by others, the old ground taken up by James Mill and the phenomenists, of the impossibility of all intuition, was being deserted, thanks in a measure to Mr. Ward's fifteen years of ceaseless importunity, the refusal to admit the force of the arguments for Theism on less vulnerable ground, and on the mere denial of their sufficiency, was a prospect immediately before him ; and it weighed heavily. Could he hope to touch the leading agnostic men of science ? No. And for the mass of waverers there would remain the p^imd facie unanswerable plea, " If some XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 347 of the ablest men of the day say Theism is ' not proven ' by reason, how can you call on us to hold it not only probable but indubitable." The sense of this difficulty is observable throughout the Essay. While giving a HsunU of the earlier part of his series he considers before going farther this practical objection, and endeavours to diminish its force. The most prominent of the agnostic thinkers at the moment were eminent in physical science. The first point to be noted was that the acuteness of a man of science is not displayed in the metaphysical analysis even of what he mamtains cts true. His special gifts are conspicuous in that further practical reasoning on which scientific discovery depends. A Huxley and a Tyndall do not reason exceptionally well in justification of their belief in nature's Uniformity. It is a presupposition in all their work, and they are naturally too impatient to spend time over justify- ing theoretically what nobody doubts. This is natural enough. But none the less it brings out the fact that the acuteness on which their authority rests is not established in the domain of psychology and metaphysics ; that it gives them no special claim as authoritative judges of Mr. Ward's train of reasoning. Correlatively, and as an immediate consequence, such a thinker tends to look on metaphysics as sterile, as yielding no improving or clearly fruitful or useful stock of fresh know- ledge, overlooking the unanswerable argument that in the last resort it is metaphysical analysis which is the basis of the very foundation of physical science itself. Mr. Ward writes as follows on these two points : — We cannot be surprised that any one who fixes his keen interest and attention on studies which have issued in results hke these [namely the great facts disclosed by physical science], still less one who is himself occupied in relevant physical investigations, should become, as it were, intoxicated under such an influence. We cannot be surprised at his assuming, as a matter of course, that it is experimental methods, and no others, which can aflford solid foundation of argument for important truth. No doubt, as we have been pointing out above, the whole cogency of a physicist's argument in each successive case rests in its last analysis on intuitive premisses ; and without the assumption of such premisses, his experiments Avould be entirely valueless. Still, what his mind incessantly dwells on are not such premisses as these ; on the contrary, he entirely 348 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. forgets them, or would even, on occasion, deny their existence. AVhen, therefore, he hears of propositions the most extensive, being predominantly proved by intuitive assumptions — unless he is an unusually large-minded and dispassionate man — he is tempted to regard such a method of reasoning with angry contempt. Let us suppose, then, that such an argument is placed before him as that on which we have insisted, and which occupies so prominent a place in Theistic advocacy. " Whatever is known to me," we said, " as intrinsically and necessarily wrong, is also known to me intuitively as necessarily forbidden by some Superior Being, who possesses over me rightful jurisdiction." This proposition, if true, is manifestly one of unsurpassable importance, and our scientist asks us for its ground. We have, of course, nothing to reply, except that mental phenomena, if studied carefully and with prolonged attention, show the genuineness of this alleged intuition. Such a method of argument is one with which his own studies bring him into no sort of contact ; and, again, it is one the validity of which is incapable of being tested in this world by any subsequent verification. For his own part, then, he could as readily believe, with the astrologers, that by studying the course of the stars one may obtain knowledge of future human events, as he could believe that by merely studying the human mind one can acquire knowledge of a Superhuman Being. His reasoning is, of course, poor and shallow enough, but it is surely very natural in any scientist who has not been carefully trained in different principles, unless, as we have said, he is unusually large-minded and dispassionate. Consequently (which is our im- mediate point), the fact that certain most brilliant and successful explorers of external nature deride the intuitional method as un- substantial and even childish, constitutes no kind of presumption that this method may not, nevertheless, be, as we have shown that it is, the only possible foundation of human knowledge. Lord Macaula}^, in the article from which we have quoted, un- intentionally, but effectivel}^, confirms our reasoning. His own sympathies with physical science have quite incapacitated him for appreciating any less superficially tangible course of speculation. In most manifest sympathy with Bacon, he points out that the English philosopher " did not consider Socrates' philosophy a happy event." He adds on his own account that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest cultivated an " unfruitful wisdom " ; " systematically misdirected their powers " ; " added nothing to the stock of knowledge " ; gathered in no other " garners " than of "smut and stubble." As to the great Christian thinkers — St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and the rest — he does not even condescend in this connection to hint at their existence. We suppose Lord • Macaulay's warmest admirers cannot read, without a blush of shame, various parts of the paper which we are criticising. Still, our point XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 349 remains untouched. If so accomplished a writer, and one so versed in human affairs, could — even in some chance moment of excitement or aberration — have expressed such sentiments as these, how much more easily credible it is that the exclusive votaries of physical science may be guilty of the like perverse and shallow injustice, towards a line of thought essentiall}^ differing from their own. Mr. Ward next calls attention to the large amount of actual prejudice which comes to the assistance of these habits of mind, in preventing the typical man of science from doing justice to the arguments for Theism ; and further, v^hen it is remembered that in purely mental reasoning, as distinguished from experimental, not merely absence of bias but the positive will to see the truths proposed is essential to their apprehen- sion, the authority of these men must fall below zero if it be admitted that they not only are without any special capacity and special wish, but are positively indisposed to accept the doctrines in question. This point — not be it observed as primarily an argument against their poiver of apprehending the truths in question if they should be eagerly anxious to do so, but as an argument against the rejection by them of such truths carrying special weight in virtue of their authority — he enforces repeatedly, and in various ways. The necessity of an active will he points out by an argument a fortiori. The sphere in which passion and prejudice are least likely to interfere is mathematics, and yet in mathematics themselves an effort of the w^ill may be indispensable. Now, many persons will say, as a matter of course, that, whatever truth may otherwise be contained in this doctrine, there is one region of thought, at all events, within which it can have no possible place — the region of pure mathematics. But, on the contrary, it is from that very region that we shall adduce what we consider one of our most apposite illustrations. Let us first take a geometrical theorem: e.g.^ "the angle in a semicircle is a right angle." This theorem, we admit, as exhibited in Euclid, is " evidently " certain. Even here, no doubt, a continued exercise of Freewill is requisite, in order that I may carefully apply my mind to see the self-evidence of what I assume as axioms, and the validity of that reasoning which I base on those axioms. But, this process concluded, I have no longer the power of doubting the theorem. At the same time, there may still be important work for my Freewill to do in compelling my intellect fully to realise that theorem, which I have not the power to doubt. But now let 350 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. us enter a more advanced portion of the mathematical region — the doctrine of infinitesimals. The Eev. Bartholomew Price, e.g., in his admirable work on that subject, lays down such propositions as these : " There may be infinite quantities infinitely greater than infinities " ; '' an infinity of the 7^th order must be infinitely sub- divided to i^roduce an infinity of the {n-\)\h order"; etc. {Infinitesimal CakniHs, pp. 16-20.) Mr. Price would consider that the truth of these propositions is as demonstratively established as is any geometrical theorem : and we entirely agree with him. But am I nevertheless — supposing I have mastered the demonstra- tion — necessitated to accept them ? Surely not. I have the jDOwer of alloAving myself to be so bewildered by the strangeness of such propositions, as to withhold that assent which the adduced argu- ments, nevertheless, as I see, reasonably claim. I laudably therefore exercise my Freewill, in exciting myself to have the courage of my convictions ; in compelling my intellect to disregard even insoluble difficulties which may stand in the way of a demonstrated proposition. Finally, let us cite the passage in which after stating further elements in the modern philosophic temper which indisposes it even to consider the supernatural view of life with any will to apprehend or accept it, Mr. Ward describes the classes of men whom lie hopes to affect and influence : — Now, the more extreme and fanatical of the Phenomenistic Antitheists protest with excitement, and with a kind of fury, in the name of " suffering humanity/' against such a view as this. "This life," they say, "is the only term of existence which we have any reason whatever to expect. And is this brief period of man's enjoyment to be poisoned and changed into a time of self-torture by the fantastical dream of an imaginary hereafter *? Humanity forbid ! Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Those who promote such theories concerning the obligation of present obedience to a Deity and the ever -impending peril of future woe, are simply odious conspirators against the happiness of mankind." In truth there are a certain number of violent thinkers who cleave to the "great cause" of man's earthly enjoyment with a fanaticism as heated and blind as any class of religionists ever exhibited towards the specialties of their sect. Of such men it is hardly to be expected, without a kind of miracle, that the most cogent adverse reasoning imaginable shall produce on them its due effect. Still, it is by no means all Antitheists who are so inaccessible to argument : on the contrary, many are fully convinced, indeed, of their own tenets, but without being so simply intolerant XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 351 and contemptuous towards opponents. Then there are, perhaps, not a few who, while they are strongly impressed with the force of Antitheistic reasoning and find great difficulty in reconciling religion with their scientific convictions, shrink, nevertheless, from definitively taking their place in their irreligious camp, owing to their dread of the tremendous moral and social evils ^vhich Avould result from rejection of Goci. Lastly, there are many who have ever been Theists and earnestly desire so to remain, who, nevertheless, for the sake of their own future security, wish to understand how the prevalent Antitheistic arguments can be met. Here, then, is a rough classification of those thinkers to whom our course of reasoning in future essays will be directly addressed. And in indicating the temper in which he proposes to deal with the subject for the sake of the more candid and sincere agnostic thinkers he adds the following noteworthy passage : — Cardinal Newman says, somewhere, that he entirely refuses to be converted by "a smart syllogism." In a similar spirit speaks M. Laprune. Religious "Truth," he says, "when unknown or forgotten, despised, misconceived, is not brought into the mind by the all-powerful virtue of a syllogism. Neither the excellence of Truth nor the mind's dignity permits this." And certainly, if it be true, as we have alleged, that, by the very fact of engaging in Theistic controversy, we summon the Antitheist to a supremely energetic act of will, one sees plainly that anything like flippancy or overbearingness of tone in the conduct of that controversy, or, again, any peremptory challenging of instantaneous assent and submission may probably be productive of most serious mischief. The sincere inquirer must be allowed his full time for patient consideration and healthy resolve. Thus did Mr. Ward complete the process of preparation both of his tools and of his material. The necessary first principles — intuition, necessary truth, causation, and the simplicity of the ethical idea — were all established. And the question of the dispositions necessary for the apprehension and realisation of his further argument had been suggestively treated. The undue authority of the Agnostic prophets had been discounted, and he had placed clearly before himself what kind of mind he would hope to influence. The rest of the essay is little more than a synopsis of his scheme — a rdsumS of past essays and a forecast of future ones. In indicating arguments which he purported to develop he laid most stress on those from the moral nature, from 353 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. causation, and from necessary truth ; but he gave no definite idea of his method of treating them. The two further points he touches on in the essay are, (1) his view that the normal mode of arriving at a belief in Theism is not argument, but that process of implicit reasoning which Car- dinal ^N'ewman has described in the Grammar of Assent, and which the Jesuit, Father Kleutgen, has in a somewhat different form expounded in harmony with the traditional Scholastic teaching, and (2) that a true Philosophy of Theism does not isolate the proof of God's existence from the proof of other religious truths. In accordance with M. 011(^ - Laprune's treatment of the subject in his work, Be la Certitude Morale, which influenced him much at this time, he held that there are " four cognate doctrines jointly constituting the creed of a genuine Theist. They are (1) the necessary character of ethical truth, (2) Freewill, (3) the existence of God, (4) a future life of reward or punishment," and that " the proof of each one adds indefinite force to the proof of all the rest." And here the series abruptly broke off. A page had been written on " Agnosticism as such," but there is nothing in the MS. which adds to the argument of which an analysis has here been given. Two extracts must be given in conclusion, illustrative of Mr. Ward's treatment of Freewill, which excited more public attention than any other part of his work except that on Necessary Truth. I give them here rather than earlier, as they were in some sense an interruption of the general current of the arc^ument above indicated. Mr. Ward considered that the controversy had become obscured, owing to the fact that advocates of Freewill often claimed too much for freedom. He himself was disposed to consider that a very large proportion of life — in some men by far the largest — was passed in obedience to what he termed the " spontaneous impulse" of the will ; and that the opponents of Freewill gave, on the whole, a true account of the cfenesis of that impulse. It did not necessarily represent merely the balance of emotion, but was often determined by habit, by fixed ideas, by a love or antipathy which was deeper than emotional feelings. If this much were freely conceded, he considered that the power of effort in a man, in opposi- xiii THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 353 tion to his spontaneous impulse, became more luminously evident. Hold yourself passively, and the spontaneous im- pulse — compounded of habit, fixed ideas, emotion, and the rest, reacting on circumstances internal and external — wins the day. The active movement against this impulse reveals a distinct originative force which is unmistakable, and of which the determinist can give no account. He can, indeed, conceive motives acting on you as impelling forces ; he cannot con- ceive the individual taking up the originating position and choosing his motive, and strengthening its power by his own original action. I select from his controversy with Dr. Bain and Mr. Hodgson the following extract as to the spontaneous impulse : — My "strongest desire" at any moment is very far from being synonymous with my " strongest emotional craving'^ at that moment. We should hold a most shallow view, if we supposed that the will's spontaneous impulse is determined as a matter of course by the mere balance of emotional craving and excitement. Habits of the will, e.g. are also important factors in the result. Suppose I have acquired a firm habit of temperance, and an unwholesome dish is placed before me. My sensitive appetencij may prompt me to indulgence : but my spontaneous, direct, unforced impulse, under the influence of habit, prompts me to forbearance ; and I should be doing violence to the predominant impulse of my nature, if I succumbed to the solicitation. Or consider the case of pater- nal affection. A father who severely pinches himself for his son's temporal benefit may in many instants of the day feel more vivid emotional pain from his own privations than he feels of emotional dehght at the thought of his son's well-being. Yet the spontaneous unforced impulse of his will is no less unrelentingly directed at that moment, than at others, to the continuance of his benefaction. Here again possibly, as in the former instance, is seen merely the result of haUt ; but we should ourselves be disposed to explain the phenomenon much more prominently by this or that man's natural teniperament and mental constitution. Certainly habit is not the only reason why the spontaneous impulse of a man's will diverges at times from his preponderance of emotion. Consider what Dr. Bain calls the influence of " fixed ideas," "infatuation," "irresist- ible impulse." " There are sights that give us almost unmitigated pain, while yet we are unable to keep away from them." ^ In 1 JEJmotions atid the Will, third edition, p. 390. We are disposed to agree with Dr. Bain on every point as to the genesis of the will's spontaneous impulse. Our difiference from him is the fundamental one, that we maintain confidently men's power of successfully resisting that impulse. 2 A 354 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. such cases the abnormal impulse of the will conquers the emotional repugnance. Enough, however, of such matters for the present occasion. We certainly think that this general question — an inves- tigation, namely, of those psychological laws which determine the will's spontaneous impulse — is of extreme scientific importance, and that it has been very unduly neglected by psychologians. The following passage, from an answer to Mr. Bain, pub- lished in Mind, gives the pith of Mr. Ward's contention as to the compound phenomenon on which he rests the proof of freewill, — or, to speak more precisely, the disproof of the doctrine that the will is determined in its action. He follows, as usual, the method of allowing the determinist's explanation to the furthest possible point, and then showing that there is a residuum which he cannot explain, and which is only accounted for by the conception of Freewill — of an originating power in the person himself, distinct from his passive impulses : — I am a keen sportsman, and one cloudy morning am looking forward with lively hope to my day's hunting. My post, however, comes in early; and I receive a letter, just as I have donned my red coat and am sitting down to breakfast. This letter announces that I must set off on that very morning to London, if I am to be present at some occasion on which my presence mil be vitally important for an end which I account of extreme public moment. Let us consider the different ways in which my conduct may imaginably be affected, and the light thus thrown on the relative strength of m}^ motives. Perhaps (1) the public end for which my presence is so earnestly needed happens to be one in which I am so personally interested, which so intimately affects my feelings, that my balance of emotion is intensely in favour of my going. This motive, then, is indefi- nitely stronger than its antagonist. I at once order my carriage, as the station is four miles off and time presses ; and I am delighted to start as soon as my coachman comes round. Perhaps (2) the balance of my emotion is quite decidedly in favour of the day's hunting, because the public end, though intellectually I appreciate its extreme importance, is not one ^vith which my character leads me emotionally to sympathise. Nevertheless, through a long course of public-spirited action, I have acquired the firm and rooted habit of postponing pleasure to the call of duty. Here, therefore, as in the former case, there is not a moment's vacillation or hesitation. My spontaneous impulse is quite urgently in favour of going. My balance of emotion^ indeed, is in favour of staying to hunt; but good habit, by its intrinsic strength, spontaneously prevails over XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 355 emotion ; and the motive which prompts me to go is indefinitely stronger than that which prompts me to stay. Or (3) when I have read the letter, my will may possibly be brought into a state of vacillation and vibration. My emotional impulse is one moment in one direction and the next moment in another. Then, as I possess no firm hahit of public spirit, I take a long time in making up my mind : the strength of my motives is very evenly balanced, whichever may finally prevail. Lastly (4), I have perhaps very little public spirit, and am comparatively fond of hunting ; so that I do not even entertain the question whether I shall oiBfer up my day's sport as a sacrifice to my country's welfare. Now, all these four alternatives are contemplated by the Deter- minist, and square entirely with his theory. In each case my conduct is determined by my strongest present motive. There is, however, a fifth case which he does not — and consistently with his theory cannot — admit to be a possible one ; but in regard to which we confidently maintain, by appeal to experience, that it is abund- antly possible, and by no means unfrequent. It is most possible, we say, that I put forth on the occasion anti-impulsive effort ; that I act resolutely and consistently in opposition to my spontaneous impulse, in opposition to that which at the moment is my strongest desire. Thus on one side the spontaneous impulse of my will is quite decidedly in favour of staying to hunt ; or, in other words, the motive which prompts me to stay is quite decidedly stronger at the moment than that which prompts me to go. On the other side, my reason recognises clearly how very important is the public interest at issue, and how plainly duty calls me in the direction of London. I resolutely, therefore, enter my carriage, and order it to the station. And now let us consider what takes place while I am on my four miles' transit. During the greater part, perhaps during the whole, of this transit, there proceeds what we have called in our essays " a compound phenomenon " ; or, in other words, there co- exist in my mind two mutually distinct phenomena. First phenomenon. My spontaneous impulse is strongly in the opposite direction. I remember that even now it is by no means too late to be present at the meet, and I am most urgently solicited by inclination to order my coachman home again. So urgent, indeed, is this solicitation, so much stronger is the motive which prompts me to return than that which prompts me to continue my course, that, unless I put forth unintermitting and energetic resistance to that motive, I should quite infallibly give the coachman such an order. Here is the first phenomenon to which we call attention — my will's spontaneous impulse towards returning. A second, no less distinctly pronounced and strongly marked phenomenon is that of unintermitting energetic resistance to the former motive of which we have been speaking. On one side is 356 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. that phenomenon which may be called my will's spontaneous, direct, unforced iiivpulse and preponderating desire ; on the other side, that which may be called my firm, sustained, active, antago- nistic resolve. We allege, as a fact obvious and undeniable on the very surface, that the phenomenon which we have called " spon- taneous impulse" is as different in kind from that other which we have called " an ti- impulsive resolve," as the desire of wealth is different in kind from the recognition of a mathematical axiom. Our imaginary arbitrator will at once thus explain the distinction. On one side, he will say, is that impulse which results, according to the laws of my mental constitution, from my nature and external circumstances taken in mutual connection. On the other side, he will say, is that resistance to such impulse, which I elicit by vigorous personal action. The scope of our argument, so far as we have gone, will per- haps be made clearer if at this point we expressly encounter an objection which has been sometimes urged against us in one or other shape. It may be thus exhibited. " Doubtless a man's spontaneous impulse is infallibly and inevitably determined by his entire circumstances, external and internal, of the moment. But how can you prove that his anti- impulsive effoi't is not equally due to the combination of those cir- cumstances ? When the pious Christian receives an insult, what right have you to assume that his Christian forbearance is less inevitably determined by circumstances than is his spontaneous burst of indignation^ And so on with every other illustration you have given." We have again and again, as we consider, implicitly refuted this objection ; but we may probably do service by setting forth such refutation explicitly. Our preceding argument, then, may be thus summed up. We are purporting to disprove the doctrine of Determinists — Le. the doctrine that every man at every moment, by the very constitution of his nature, infallibly and inevitably elicits that precise act of will to which his entire circumstances of the moment, external and internal, dispose him. Now, we allege that this doctrine is disproved by taking into combined considera- tion these two facts : (1) In a large number of cases, I know, by certain and unmistakable experience, ichat is that act of will to which my entire circumstances of the moment dispose me. (2) In many of such cases, I know, by certain and unmistakable ex- perience, that, as a matter of fact, I elicit some different act of will from this. By the very force of terms, that act to which my entire circumstances of the moment dispose me is in accordance with my spontaneous, direct, unforced impulse. If, then, I act at any moment otherwise than according to such impulse, I act in some way different from that to which my entire circumstances of the XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 2>S7 moment dispose me. And if I ever so act, Determinism is thereby disproved. We do not pretend that Determinism is disproved merely because I act at times in opposition to what would be my more pleasuraUe course ; for we entirely admit that my spontaneous impulse may often enough tend to the less pleasurable course. We do not pretend that Determinism is disproved merely because I put forth intense effort in opposition to some desire which urgently solicits me ; for we entirely admit that my spontaneous impulse often p'ompts such effort. But if it be shown that I can suc- cessfully contend against my spontaneous impulse itself, then it is most manifestly shown that Determinism is false, because it is shown that I can act in some way different from that to which my entire circumstances of the moment dispose me. Determi- nists, therefore, are obliged to maintain, and do maintain, that no such thing is possible to man as anti-impulsive effort -, that I can put forth no effort, except that to which my spontaneous im- pulse prompts me, and which we have called " congenial." To this we have replied that, as regards the more strongly accentuated cases, the phenomenal difference of kind between "congenial" and "anti-impulsive" effort is no less manifest than is the phenomenal difference of kind between the act of desiring wealth and the act of recognising a mathematical axiom. But this fact, if admitted, is of course conclusive against Determinism. It is not easy to measure the part due to one thinker in the modifications and changes which time brings about in the world of thought. And the present writer prefers, for obvious reasons, not to attempt to estimate the degree of Mr. Ward's influence on the course of ethical and metaphysical thought in those problems with which he concerned himself. But a few words may be said as to its direction. In two cases especially witness has been borne, as we have already seen, to the effect of Ward's polemic, by the chief repre- sentatives of the school he attacked — the case of the rational basis for trust in memory, and the case of the analysis of the Freewill controversy. In the former case he was held by many thinkers to have brought into vivid relief the necessity of an ultimate appeal to a power in the mind of immediate and active perception, which the school of Mill and Bain held to be non- existent ; a power of Intuition to which knowledge is ultimately reducible, which is quite distinct from the " states of conscious- ness " to which the Experience School professed to reduce all knowledge. He very sharply separated "intuition" from the theory of " innate ideas/' and thus introduced new definiteness 358 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. into an old controversy. The significance of memory was care- fully limited to the proof that the mind possesses not certain primitive conceptions, but an original 'power, which the thinkers who had developed Locke's theory of the tahula rasa so far beyond Locke's own version of it could not account for. We have already seen that no agreement was come to among his opponents in their answers to his argument on this head — Mill, Bain, and Huxley, each taking up a different position. In the case of Freewill both Mill and Bain bore witness, in the private correspondence given in this volume, to the fact that he had greatly simplified the issues of the controversy. That the successive momenta designated by him " spontaneous impulse " and " anti-impulsive effort " are genuine psychological facts they admitted. Further, Ward fixed and riveted the modi- fication they had already introduced into Bentham's Utilitarian- ism, by emphasising the share taken in the formation of the spontaneous impulse of the will by other factors besides the degree of sensible pleasure which attracted it, — by habit, by fixed ideas, by refined tastes. Many of the advocates of Free- will placed his success on higher ground, and held his distinction to have brought also into relief the essentially different character of the determined impulse of the will, which is passive, and of the anti-impulsive effort, which is active. On the necessity of mathematical truth again he was generally (I think) considered to have written conclusively. I have already cited Mill's own emphatic testimony to the force of his argument. Mill's original position which amounted to the view that two and two might make five in one of the fixed stars, which Ward attacked so unsparingly, cannot be said now to survive to any large extent, if at all. Also the force of Ward's appeal to the universality of belief in Nature's Uni- formity, and to its necessity for the very elements of physical science, and yet its incapability of being proved on the Experience Principles, was generally recognised. In each of these cases the criticism was mainly destructive. On the constructive side Ward met with a less general amree- ment. His contention that the anti-impulsive effort bears its own evidence of not being due to latent psychical conditions supervening on the original impulse, which he designated " spontaneous," appeared to some to be pressed too far. The XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 359 possibility that the effort was due to some such latent phenomenal cause needed patient examination, and a fuller and more careful analysis than it received at his hands. In the matter of Nature's Uniformity he did not attempt to construct or analyse the intuitional position ; content with de- molishing the Phenomenist ground. His argument from Neces- sary Truth to a Necessary Being, on which he laid such stress, was not accepted by any means universally, even among Theists. His argument from the sense of obligation to the existence of God, so cogent in the form in which Cardinal Newman states it in the Crrammar of Assent, startled some thinkers in Mr. Ward's pages by its claim to the simplicity and obviousness of intuition. That it had great force was generally allowed by Theists, but the attempt to rank it with such truths as knowledge of the recent past — an attempt characteristic of his wish to divide all philosophical knowledge into intuitions and explicit infer- ences — seemed to his critics somewhat forced. His contention that the ethical ideas " good " and " bad " are simple and irresolvable, was a contribution of acknowledged value to the Ethical controversy. It has been adopted in the exact form in which Mr. Ward expressed it for the first time, by several recent writers, and has been accepted by many as the most accurate statement of the intuitional position on the sub- ject. It is interesting to note that the displacement of the old Experience Philosophy, which attempted to resolve these ideas into simpler elements compounded by association, and in some degree recognisable here and now, once they are pointed out, and the substitution in its place of the Evolution theory, with its appeal to associations fashioned and interwoven in the past life of the race, and therefore inaccessible to the living critic's observation and verification, synchronised almost exactly with the years of Mr. Ward's polemic. Those who believe in the force of his argument may indulge the hope that it had some share in bringing about a change of front, which was necessarily, to some extent, a confession of past inaccjaracy. Altocrether, whether or no Mr. Ward laid down all the lines on which a complete Philosophy of Theism adapted to our own times could be constructed, most students of the subject have recognised the value of his suggestions towards such a Philosophy ; while it has been still more widely recognised that 36o THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. the thinkers who strove to undermine Theism in the name of phenomenism and determinism failed to save their system as a whole from his destructive analysis of its foundations, — or at least of those foundations which alone remain to the Experience Philosophy in its complete and thoroughgoing expression. Appendix to Chapter XIII. Mr. Ward's correspondence with Dr. Bain in 1879, in connection with the Freewill controversy, presents features of interest, and may suitably be given here. Bain proposed to reply to Ward's criticisms in the Dublin Hevieiv itself, so that the same readers should have both sides of the question before them. " I have rarely met an opponent," he added, in writing on the subject, "combining your ability and candour ; and to have to deal with men of that stamp is a great relief and refreshment in the dreary polemic that occupies so much of the strength of those who make philosophy their life- work." Ward wrote in reply as follows : — 20 Marlborough Place, N.W., nth May 1879. Dear Sir — The Editor is very well disposed to accept your proposal, and will send you througli me a definite answer in three days. There is a certain other official whom he must consult. But I have no practical doubt that it will be as you suggested. I will write you again as soon as I have the final answer. I shall be back at Weston in a week ; but you will see that I have been able to move. In fact I am rapidly recovering. I must again express my sense how very fair and straightforward is your proposal. I feel it a great advantage in more than one way (as I used to feel when controverting with Stuart Mill), that the argument on your side (and I trust on mine) will be so straightforward and (as the French say) "loyal." I do not myself think that — when the central question is disposed of — there will be much remaining of einsodical or linguistic discussion. — I remain, dear sir, faithfully yours, W. G. Ward. I would suggest that it will conduce to decisiveness, if you will renew your acquaintance with my old article of April 1874, and also read that for July 1874. I hope by this time my articles have reached you. Another letter, giving the editor's final answer, followed a few days later : — XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 361 20 Marlborough Place, St. John's Wood, N.W., IWi Matj 1879. Dear Sir — I enclose the editor's letter which arrived this morning. I would only add to it that if your remarks would naturally extend somewhat beyond the 16 pages — I hope you will not stint them — I can easily arrange with the editor for any number of pages not exceeding 20 or thereabouts. I will take the opportunity of adding a (perhaps needed) explanation on my use of the term " effort." By " effort " I mean " resistance to some desire." By " congenial effort " I mean " resistance to a weaker desire in order to gratify a stronger." By "anti-impulsive effort " I mean *' resistance to my strongest present desire in order to pursue an end indicated by reason." I think there is no difference between you and me as to what we should mean by the " strongest present desire." I think our difference is precisely this : you say that " anti-impulsive effort is impossible " ; I say that "it is frequent." I shall be greatly interested in receiving your paper. Will you kindly forward it to me at " Weston Manor, Freshwater, Isle of Wight," whither I return next Wednesday. I am getting altogether back into good intellectual working order. With many thanks for your courtesy. — I remain, dear sir, faithfully yours, W. G. Ward. A difficulty arose as to the proposed arrangement, and the controversy was ultimately transferred to the columns of Mi7id. The proposal was Dr. Bain's. Aberdeen, 9th July 1879. Dear Sir — As requested by the editor of the Revieio I send you his letter of the 14th May. I have thought over your proposal, and have taken time since my arrival to go through the series of your articles, from which I begin to see the energy and elaboration that you have expended upon the great theses of controversy between yourself and your opponents. Any reply to your final article must have in view all that has gone before ; and to be of any value at all must be carefully considered and can scarcely be short. A war of pamphlets is one way. Another way is to transfer the debate to the columns of Mind, which was projected, inter alia, to give facilities for free discussion of all the contested matters of Philosophy. I do not think that I should find admission in the October number for a paper of any length, having to continue my papers on Mill, and to prepare a short notice of Spencer's Ethics ; nor would I undertake to be ready so soon, now that I see the gravity of the issue as apprehended by you. I could, however, be in readiness for the following number, and could be- speak a place for my observations. It would, further, be allowable to show you the proof that you might append any short observations there and then, reserving a fuller reply if you saw fit. 362 THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY chap. On the whole, I prefer this course to writing a pamphlet. — Believe me, yours faithfully, A. Bain. A paper passed on either side. Bain wrote and Ward replied, raising further objections to his theory. A further paper by Ward in answer to Mr. Shadworth Hodgson on the same subject brought the following letter from Mr. Bain : — Aberdeen, Vith November 1880. Dear Dr. Ward — Your paper in reply to Mr. Hodgson, which I have just received, is a reproach to me for my want of courtesy in not respond- ing to your paper in Mindj in answer to mine in the January number. The explanation of my long silence, either of writing privately or of rejoining publicly, is that my health has been failing for several years ; and I found, last winter especially, that after the effort of that article in the January No. of Mind, I had to refrain from all labours of the pen during my heavy teaching labours in Aberdeen University. When the session was over I was occupied with arrangements for resigning my chair, and otherwise ; and let the subject of our amicable controversy pass out of my mind. I am now released from teaching work, and have a certain fund of strength still ; but having many demands upon it, in preparing a final revision of my numerous writings, I am not over eager to expend myself in avoidable controversy. I am, therefore, predisposed to the conclusion that we have both pretty well exhausted our respective sides, and would not add much to the elucidation of the great problem in dis- pute by prolonged argument. There are many points in Mr. Hodgson's statement that I would adopt ; but not everything. I do not consider that he is so guarded as he ought to be in the use of the leading terms that enter into the controversy. In a short article in Mind, vol. i., p. 393, I endeavoured to state what I consider the hinge of the difficulty of Freewill and Necessity, and I really am unable to add anything to that explanation. I trust you will continue for years to come in a condition for philo- sophical discussion. You are probably ten years older than I am, but I shall not be doing the same work at your age, even if my life is prolonged till then. — With best wishes, I am, yours faithfully, A. Bain. I shall continue to take an interest in your discussions on the vast questions that so fiercely agitate our age. Ward's reply ran as follows : — Netherhall House, Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead, N.W. London, 16^^ November 1880. My dear Dr. Bain — Many thanks for your extremely kind letter, which has just reached me. I am greatly concerned to hear of your ill health, and should be most sorry if you were induced by any reference to me to overtax your energies in the slightest degree. XIII THE AGNOSTIC CONTROVERSY 363 But in trutli I am rather disposed with you to doubt whether much more remains to be said on the matter. It is my wish to think so, because I am so desirous of proceeding to the later portions of my theistic argument. I am, for the moment, hors de combat I have been suffering from vertigo, and on one occasion lapsed into total unconsciousness. The doctor tells me I must, for some time to come, avoid subjects which greatly exercise my mind. With many thanks for your kind expressions, and with every best wish, I remain sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. CHAPTEE XIV TWO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES Two intellectual friendships of Mr. Ward's later years have supplied this memoir with valuable psychological studies of its subject which may be inserted at this stage. Baron Friedrich von Hiigel, and Mr. Pdchard Holt Hutton of the ^i^edatoT, write of him from different points of view, and neither with entire intellectual sympathy. The friendship with Baron Friedrich von Hiigel began in 1873, and became subsequently still more intimate when they were neighbours at Hampstead. Baron von Hugel's account of their intercourse which I subjoin, besides its great interest on other grounds, gives a penetrating analysis of what so many felt who came in contact with Mr. Ward — the sense of largeness of heart and of sympathy in one who took up a theological position which appeared at first sight almost identical with that of the school of Veuillot and Gaume. His account is the more interest- ing from the very wide difference in intellectual temperament and standpoint which it reveals in two men who were at once devoted to the Holy See, and in the highest degree absorbed by the intellectual life. There could scarcely be a better illustra- tion of the compatibility of the Ultramontane position with the widest divergencies, where intellectual differences are accompanied by genuine humility and deference to the Church, and are not the outcome of a spirit of disaffection on either side. And their sympathy came, not as the more limited sympathy with Mill did, greatly from the avoidance of the delicate ground of discussion on those theological questions on which Ward was most sensitive, but perhaps mainly from their intense agreement in placing the ethical life far above all else. CHAP. XIV TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 365 This strong element of sympathy made it possible for the two men to discuss the most delicate and contention-provoking questions in spite of all differences. Baron von Hiigers con- fidence in the worth and reliableness of historical and Biblical criticism is manifest in his letter. His distrust of attempts hitherto made to reduce the intellectual elements involved in faith to an exact analysis would seem to be almost equally profound. Ward was sceptical where his friend was hopeful, and sanguine and deeply interested where he was distrustful. Ward looked on the results of historical criticism as most un- certain ; while his confidence was great that the rational elements, both in the foundation and in the superstriicture of Catholic belief, could be built up by logical statements closely pieced together, as a solid and visible place of refuge for the perplexed mind. An analysis of the foundations of rehgious knowledge and a logically-complete scheme of Church authority were, in his mind, the most important and most certainly obtainable of intellectual possessions for a Catholic ; and they were, perhaps, the two subjects which least inspired his friend's intellectual efforts, though his devotion to the truths of faith themselves was as intense as Ward's. Baron von Hligel writes to me as follows : — 4 HoLFORD Road, Hampstead. My dear Ward — I have, as you know, shrunk long and often from attempting to give you my recollections of your father. Well as I knew him during the last nine years of his life (1873- 1882), as well, perhaps, as a young man of twenty-one to thirty could know a man just forty years his senior; warm as is my admiration for him, and my gratitude for the very much I owe him of kindness, example, and stimulation, yet there are several circumstances which make it difficult for me to write upon the subject at all. I was, for one thing, but eighteen at the time of the Vatican Council. I arrived then at maturity only considerably after the close, or at least the adjournment, of what he himself considered the main controversy of his Catholic life. To this hour I have not had a number of that terrible Ecnne and Foreign Review in my hands j I know but the bare outlines of the history of the Con- gresses of Mahnes and Munich ; I have never read through the Ward-Eyder controversy : what was lived and fought through by your father has been barely read over by myself. Then again, on this one set of questions, I was from the first in relations of friendly and respectful, but most frank and open conflict with him, and to 366 TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES chap. make the why and wherefore clear will require some dwelling upon my own ideas and requirements instead of those facts of his mind and life which are necessarily what alone you can care to have and I to give. And then, above all, how recent are all the events and persons involved ! One shrinks from judging where even a pre- liminary survey is probably premature. However, I will try and make these drawbacks subserve to make my remarks as impartial, independent, and reserved as I can with regard to that side of your father's mind and character which I had the privilege to know. How well I remember my first stay with him at windy Weston, and our walks and talks upon the Downs ! Almost as well as those later times when here, upon the Heath, he would as then discourse and draw me out and train me as to Theism and its proofs, grace and freewill, the nature and extent of Church authority, and this with a zest and a vigour, with an informality and personal unpretentiousness, with a genial, breezy defiance of all hesitation and uncertainty on any subject which was allowed a lodgement in his mind, such as I have never met with either before or since. Indeed, it was this state of tension of mind and nerve which struck me from the first as a concomitant, more probably a part- cause, of his special strength and special weakness. His separate courses at dinner, served in quick succession so as to avoid all delay ; his sensitiveness to the vibration of the ground caused by one's approaching the part of the terrace on which, im- mediately after his dinner, he would be playing chess ; his insisting upon getting out and crossing on foot a foot-bridge, when his carriage forded a shallow brook ; and, later on, by the time our friendship had ripened into close intimacy, his suddenly breaking off in the midst of a sentence with an " excuse me, only a ten minutes' nap," and then and there throwing himself on our drawing-room sofa, and, at the end of that time, waking up refreshed and vigorous ; all this, with numberless other little symptoms, meant one and the same thing, — an overwrought brain and overstrung nerves. It was the same mentally. His inability to remain for an instant without definite occupation or amusement for his mind, or to conceive that any living being could so remain ; his calling his youngest daughter into his study, with the explanation, " Margaret, do attend to poor Fish, amuse the poor dog, he is so dull, so bored ! " his incapacity for imagining that a man could keep simply neutral in his estimate of a stranger, and could possibly avoid definitely holding him to be bad, if he did not definitely hold him to be good,^ when of course neutrality is really all that is strictly possible, and all that is expected of us ; his " imploring " Father ^ See, c.g.^ his Be Infallihilitatis Extensione,lSQ9, p. 46. XIV TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 367 O'Eeilly, in his reviews of the latter's thoroughly historical Church and State articles, to take sides clearly on this and that minor point, as such declaration was ' of vital importance, when the real point would be, not the requirements of logic or of life, but the amount and nature of the evidence available ; his instinctive shrinking and turning away — as rapidly as if a live coal had fallen upon his hand — from some discussion I was retailing to him from one of Dr. Lightfoot's dissertations, a discussion on a point of admittedly minor importance, as soon as it became clear to him that it did not even profess to lead beyond suspense or probability • and, in a somewhat different direction, his rushing out of our house bareheaded on my repeating to him, under pressure, the remark of a clerical friend, that he considered the Vatican Council had made a clean sweep of the Extreme Right as well as of the Extreme Left : all this hangs well together, and spells a man who could aflSirm and who could deny, but who could not suspend, who could revolutionise, but who could hardly reform his judgment. Now, I take this all but unique intensity and impatience as the chief occasion, if not cause, of his most characteristic weaknesses and strengths. It was the probable root of his strangely large incapacity for entering into minds and trials different from his own. How curious was his non- appreciation of the genius of Pascal! His Pens6es^ he told me, he considered " clever," " pointed," but they were only a litterateur's work to his mind. Pope Benedict XI Y. was for him never much more than the dry lawyer. And of all George Eliot, he only appreciated her Felix Holt, decidedly her poorest production. And as he never could afford to suspend his own mind and realise a differing one, it is no wonder that he was con- tinually addressing so many imaginary alter egos^ and saw for every one only his own dangers and his own helps. Hence, what used so long to shock and pain me in him, so clearly zealous as he was for souls, his strange persistence in having everything theological " out " with everybody, his constant pitching upon the most prob- lematical and provocative points before strangers, or sceptical or scrupulous minds, treating before them, say, of the materiality of hell -fire, or of the interior assent due to non -infallible Church decisions. It was simply that this method would have helped himself. This was, again, the probable cause of his incapacity for history of all kinds. That " great empire over the affections " which the BoUandist P^re de Smedt so rightly requires of the historian ; that "abstraction from one's own ideas, so as to reach the degree of impersonality without which a man is no true historian " insisted upon by the Biblical scholar Abb6 Loisy, — this kind of self-restraint would have been to him intolerable. Hence, too, his fear of the D 68 TJVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES chap. historical spirit : as all suspense must mean negation, and as there was no logical reason why, if one thing were denied, another and another should not be so too, and as the real reason, the varying degrees and kinds of the historical evidence, was practically non- existent for him, an historical mind was to him, if at the same time believing, illogical, dangerous, ignorant of its own necessary consequences. But if this intense occupation of his mind with itself was a cause of weakness, it was also, perhaps, the chief occasion of his strength. It was this that forced on his continuous attention his own moral shortcomings, the phenomena and problems of his own mind for his own mind, the persistent search after the first prin- ciples of thought and action. It was the unceasing stimulus which set his splendid mental powers in motion, and made of him the formidable answerer of himself in the person of his alter ego, J. S. Mill ; which, by deadening the outer world to him, rendered pos- sible, indeed, in a manner easy, that noble unworldliness of his ; which kept ever before him the wide upland reaches of moral and spiritual perfection ; and which helped him to attain to his deep and constant realisation of the supreme importance of the purifica- tion and direction of the will. And so he trudged onwards, with one and the same ever -deepening, dogged instinct, which no remonstrances on the score of what was "moderate" or "suited to Englishmen," or other cries and shibboleths, could daunt or even disturb, from Mill to Arnold, from Arnold to Newman, from New- man to Rome, as in each case the teacher and pattern of a higher and deeper moral and spiritual life. And here I have reached my two direct obligations to him. He was such a true psychologist and ethical philosopher, so open and just towards all the phenomena of his own mind ; never was there a man with less of routine or conventionality about his thinking : — a living mind, a breathing soul ; indeed he breathed too fast. And how reverently yet comfortably free he was, in this the one subject that was really within and not simply outside his mind ! How emphatic he used to be against the conception of orthodoxy in philosophy in the same sense as orthodoxy in theo- logy ; against the conception of the Church's direct doctrinal magis- teriimi being in philosophy other than negative ! How clear and wise he was in his repudiation of the position that, in pure thought, there is no half-way house between Agnosticism and the Catholic Church, when Christianity itself is but contingent and historical, and Theism necessary and philosophical ! How strong he was on the superior strength and applicability to our times of the moral psychological proofs for God's existence as compared with the extrospective arguments, say those from Final Causes ! " Mind," he would say, " the two arguments to urge, for fifty years to come, are XIV TH^O PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 369 the arguments from conscience and from the persistence, in this weak and wayward world, of conscience's chief exponent and fullest realisation, the Catholic Church." How brave and true he was in his constant grasp of the fact that the argument from Design, as dealing with finite effects, does not, cannot get beyond an indefinitely great First Cause ; a step only towards Theism, which requires proofs of an infinite mind : and, again, in his constant admission, as complete as Lotze's, that the existence of evil baffles all and every attempt at philosophical explanation ! How interesting is his, I think largely new, distinction between Atheists and Anti-theists (Agnostics) as applied to the question of Invincible Ignorance, and his inclination to admit, exceptionally and for exceptional times, the latter within its borders, at least for a considerable time, and certainly in the sense that a man might, through his own past fault, find himself, for a while, in involuntary suspense about these points ! How subtle and true to life was his discrimination between what a man really thinks and what he thinks he thinks, and his insistence that, before God, only the first of these often very dififerent things really matters ! And, then, how much he did by his penetrating rousing words, and by the noble standard of all his moral aims and ideals, towards helping one to find, in spite of many obstacles and prejudices, in the highest realisations of the Catholic spirit the deepest responses to all the noblest cravings of the human heart ; nor was it a small service to learn, by practical experience, how utterly public-spirited and truly spiritual were the motives and final ends of the extremest of Ultramontane thinkers. In one word, he was that in philosophy, including the largely psychological grace and freewill questions, which, on historical subjects, at no price would he be or allow others to become, and this although his splendidly ethical and spiritual temper of mind would, one would have thought, have been of itself both a protec- tive and stimulant to considerable intellectual liberality all round. But this was not the case. And this brings me to my third and final obligation to him, perhaps my greatest, though it was unintentional and indirect. I can say of him, in my smaller Avay, what Cardinal Newman said of Dr. Whately : " He emphatically opened my mind, and taught me to think and to use my reason." For his was a mind that would not tolerate evasion or mechanical repetition ; and if in philosophy and the religious life I owe much to him directly, in historical and Church Authority matters I learned as much indirectly. And this was all the more possible, because never was there a man who less attempted to practically advise or to direct : and indeed the very few semi-conscious indications of this kind which he ever gave me proved, when tested by experience, to be thorough failures. 2b -t 70 TWO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES chap. I learned from him, with a vividness and finality which I wish I could convey in words, two equally important things. The one was that your father's position in these latter questions was most genuine and necessary for him ; and that a party with some such views and aims will and ought ever to exist and flourish in the Church ; the second was, that it was and ever would and ought to remain but a party, one legitimate but only one out of two or more legitimate ways of viewing these matters, — that it would have been, in the long run, as impossible, short of stultifying our natures and losing all hold of Eeason and of Faith, for me to see like Dr. AVard as for Dr. Ward to see like me. It was long before I ceased to put this down to my ignorance or naughtiness ; but much evidence in the actual practice and experience of life has quietly and comfortably convinced me that all that is best within me would be crushed and ruined by accepting your father's temper of mind on these matters as binding on myself. And yet the difi'erences are so common and yet so unregarded, so general and practical, so prior and subsequent to all definite theory, so dependent, in the case of your father and myself, on the twin energies and perceptions of my mind being — at least one of them — difi"erent from his own, that it is as difficult to draw them out clearly, as it is easy, in the practice of life, to at once feel both the existence of the difi'erences, and their importance for the helping or hindering of similar minds and characters. It used to strike me so strangely to notice in your father, how the more remote a conclusion before him was from the certain premiss, the more anxious and emphatic he would be in insistence on its being " certain if anything is certain," on its " unspeakable importance," on suspense in the matter as " truly alarming." And yet I found he was but following out the natural workings of his own mind. Only by getting a perfectly water and air-tight vessel of authority could he conceive it possible to keep every particle, — which meant any particle, — of the Faith. The fight with the enemy was on the frontiers, hence a shed or a tree-stump there was in a sense more important than all the treasures of the capital. It was strange to notice four consequent peculiarities, characteristic of his argumentation in these matters. He would, for one thing, always argue as if a particular Defini- tion or Church pronouncement were not only true as far as it went, but as if it were so completely coextensive with the full truths of which it necessarily gave but some negative or positive determina- tion, that it would bear arguing from in any direction and to any distance. Again, he would no doubt shrink from no logical con- chision from his premisses, however startling or paradoxical such conclusion might be, but he would as certainly refuse to patiently consider each new group of facts which each new link in his chain XIV TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 371 of reasoning brought successively into view. And not only was he thus fair intensive (though not extensivd) to his logic but not to the facts, but even his logic — though all rapid, resourceful, burning with earnestness, it held one at the time as in a vice — was, I think, in two respects far from perfect, even as logic pure and simple. Nothing would be more common than for him to argue for this or that power for the Church on the ground of its being necessary for her very existence as a Religious Teacher. But to a close observer it never lasted long before he had slipped in quite another argument : that this or that further power was desirable and useful for restraining men argumentatively constituted like himself. Now the argument from necessity is cogent, the argument from desirableness is not : such additional powers cannot be proved by this method, a method which showed how utilitarian was the basis of what looked so like the offspring of pure thought. And again, his constant insistence that the Church is infallible as to the limits of her own infallibility lost all its cogency when made to cover the claims put forward in documents, the ex Cathedra character of which was exactly one of the points in debate. No doubt there is such a thing as un-catholic Liberalism, and it was and is one of the characteristic errors of the age ; excesses were committed by the parties opposed by your father, and the subsequent history of a good many of their members tends to throw doubt on at least the completeness of their principles. Personally, I have never been anything but an Ultramontane, in the old and definite sense of the word, ever since I have been a convinced Catholic at all; I have been ever glad of the Definition of 1870, and the fanaticism of such men as Friedrich Michelis and Johannes Friedrich was at all times as repulsive to me as it could be to your father. But from all this it surely does not follow that your father really got to the bottom of these delicate complex questions, or that he and his did not largely occasion the very evils they specially perceived and, I think, but very partially understood. Catholics were not, either then or now, divided simply between the two extreme wings, the Ultras and the Extras, as they have been wittily called. The large majority no doubt belong to the centre, and to that centre I belong myself. St. Fran9ois de Sales and F^nelon in the past. Bishop Fessler, M. Foisset and Father Hilarius, Cardinal Newman and Father Ryder in our time, would, in various degrees and ways, represent this position. But the difference on these points is but a consequence; I should like to try and get at the cause. Is it not this, that minds belong, roughly speaking, to two classes which may be called the mystical and positive, and the scholastic and theoretical ? The first of these would see all truth as a centre of intense light losing itself gradually in utter darkness; this centre would gradually 372 TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES chap. extend, but the borders would ever remain fringe, they could never become clear-cut lines. Such a mind, when weary of border-work Avould sink back upon its centre, its home of peace and light, and thence it would gain fresh conviction and courage to again face the twilight and the dark. Force it to commit itself absolutely to any border distinction, or force it to shift its home or to restrain its roamings, and you have done your best to endanger its faith and to ruin its happiness. Such a mind need not have a touch of Liberal- ism about it, for it would be specially capable of learning the con- stant necessity of purification of the heart and will, for the sake of its work, and how much more for the sake of its fuller end ; and, again, of suspending final assent to its conclusions in proportion as the Church or the body of theologians speak definitely and formally on the question in debate. But, indeed, such a mind would gene- rally be more in danger of personal conceit than of objective Libei^alism, and Avould naturally tend to find the true worth of man in his character and dispositions and his culminating happi- ness, even hereafter, in the determination and satisfaction of the will. Now all this would seem to fit in so well with the requirements of our time. For what is the all-important ci'pologia for religion wanted in our days % Nothing more nor less — as one of the chief officials of the Vatican Council was fond of insisting to a close friend of mine — than the demonstration, by a large number of actual realisations, of the possibility within the Catholic Church of the combination of a keen, subtle, open-eyed, historical, critical, and philosoj^hical spirit with a child-like claimlessness and devoted faith. Now this, all the theorising in the world cannot replace, though it can easily for a time suppress or drive it elsewhere. For not a paper demonstration, however able, that the theories of Darwin or of Welhausen will not do, or could be modified and made to do ; not a narrowing and disfiguring of research to simply controversial issues or restricting it to regions where no conflict can arise, — nothing of all this is what is chiefly wanted. AYe want some- thing less ambitious but deeper and perhaps more difficult ; the encouragement and development of a Wallace and a Lotze, qii^ devoted observers of nature and of mind ; of a Delitzsch, qu^i reverently candid student of Scripture ; or, again, the repro- duction of a Petavius and a Mabillon, of a Yercellone and a de Rossi. Clad in his one intellectual chaussure, the seven-league boots of theological speculation, your father was utterly impatient of the noble patience which alone can build up such work and men, or even of such patience as alone could test and gauge their worth. He would speak at times as though men of this class were people who undertook this kind of thing at their own risk and peril, and who could be tolerated only if they XIV TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 373 reported themselves periodically to the ecclesiastical police. And yet such labourers are so much wanted : the historical spirit and the spirit of observation of the world within and of the world with- out are modifying, enlarging, restating the problems and the solutions of all around us. And such labourers, — you will not get them, if you do not give them air and elbow-room and warmth ; and, in the long run, they have ever found all these conditions within the Church. Much has been done, especially in France and Belgium, in this direction since 1870 ; the war and the Council have helped to clear the air ; much in the direction of producing the work and the men, and leaving the future, if it cares and can, to substitute a perfect theory of the relations of Faith and Science for these workers' working hypotheses. Instead of the Congress of Munich we have had the two International Scientific Congresses of Catholics of Paris in 1888 and 1891. The Paris Institut Catholique and the Brussels Bollandists \ the Bulletin Critique and the Analeda Bollandiana ; the standard historical and critical work of such scholars as Pere de Smedt, Abb(^ Duchesne and Abbe Loisy — all join in replacing the din and heat of premature, more or less dangerous and unreal controversy by the silence and light of life and work. The standards of work and criticism of the seventeenth century have again been taken up, after more than a century of theories, disporting themselves largely in vacuo ; the historical Church has again got true historians. How impatient your father would have been of all these remarks ! How " unspeakably " beside the mark he would have declared them all to be ! And, indeed, the sort of work and men I am thinking of, — he would not have noticed their presence within the Church, unless they took to theorising and furnishing him with fresh materials for alarm and elaborate counter-theories. It might again be urged that I am treating your father as unique, whilst he was nothing but one from among many able spokesmen of a widespread movement which culminated in definitions absolutely binding upon all Catholics. But this objec- tion is more plausible than true. If we take into account only the necessarily restricted number of men who have taken up a carefully thought out and permanent position in these difficult, complex, still largely problematical questions ; and if we pass over among them such men as Father Knox in England, and Drs. Scheeben, and Von Schazler, and Father Schneemann in Germany, perhaps also Pere Ramiere in France, of whom at least the first four were, on their own admission, learners on these points from your father — it will be seen how quite exceptional was the length to which he carried his theory. Take his De Infallibilitafis Extensione (1869) and its seventeen Theses. According to his own admission there, the very Theologians and Roman Congregations to whom he wanted to 374 TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES chap. attribute quasi infallible authority, refused to endorse thesis after thesis of his. Take again his attitude on the ex Cathedrd character of the Syllabus. He first obliges every Catholic to accept it sub mortali ; he next takes off this obligation ; he finally re-imposes it. Take, finally, the Vatican definition. He never made any secret of how much he cared for the question as to the Object^ the range of Infallibility, and how little comparatively for that as to its Subject, its organ ; of how backward he thought, on the first question, the opinions of the large majority of the Bishops of the Council ; and of how disappointed he was that the Council, whilst giving a most moderate definition as to the Subject, left the question of the Object exactly where it was before your father began insisting that it was the great Catholic question of the age. And of this I am very sure so great a difference in degree as there was between your father's Ultramontanism and my own, results, practically, in a difference in kind, and reacts most powerfully upon one's whole temper of mind, and one's method of attacking problems and looking at things without and within. And yet how well we got on together ! This came, I think, from my always discussing questions with the living man, and rarely reading the comparatively dead letter of his articles on Church authority matters, and, indeed, so even in discussion keeping chiefly to philosophical and ascetical matters. It came from his striking readiness (during those last years at all events) to put up with much that was caviare to him, or even " dangerous," if only he was persuaded that one habitually tried to put character above intellect and faith above reason. "I cannot make out, my dear sir, whether you are a Liberal or not ; I incline to think not " he said to me after many a year of friendly but emphatic divergence. " If only I could find traces in him of the self-denying spirit, and of a love for souls, I could put up with the rest," he said of a man whose views were especially calculated to alarm him and many others. But most of all, perhaps, it came from my knowing him too well to fall into a most natural and common but most thorough mistake about him. There was an habitual pain in his mind at perceiving how many of the assailants of his position on Church Authority inclined to treat him either as an amusing enfant terrible, or, again, as a sheer fanatic : " they have theories and excuses to cover every kind of intellectual defect and excess, only our position is to be held to be sheer nonsense, to be outlawed from all discussion " he would say again and again. He did not see the many reasons for this mistake ; I doubt whether he, even for one moment, realised how easy it was for a simple reader of him to think that : " he only does it to annoy because he knows it teases " ; indeed, how could he realise it if he at all was what I have tried to show him to have XIV TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 375 been % But, all but inevitable, a mistake it was for all that. It was completely absent from our intercourse. My constant convic- tion of his seriousness and reasonableness in the face of his own requirements helped largely, I think, to make that intercourse what it was. I wish I could think that this paper of mine would help towards a better comprehension of one to whom I owe so much, one so penetrating and swift of mind, so massive and large in sympathy and will, a man every inch of him, a friend of friends, a father and a playfellow to one so all but utterly unlike himself. But the little I can do is now done. — Yours very sincerely, FrIEDRICH von HtJGEL. Mr. Hutton's account of Ward, published in the Spectator shortly after his death, though less personal than Baron von Hugel's, is very graphic, and conveys a somewhat similar impression of keen ethical sympathy between the two men amid considerable intellectual differences : — " Ideal Ward " was his Oxford nickname ; " Squire Ward " was his title in the Isle of Wight, where he had estates ; " Dr. Ward " was the description by which he was best known to the Catholic theologians ; while his friends knew him simply as Mr. Ward. Oddly enough, each of the names applied to him by comparative strangers represented something really characteristic in him, and something also that was almost the very antithesis of that char- acteristic. There was an ideal element in him, but much more that was in the strongest sense real, not to say realistic. There was something in him of the bluff and sturdy manner of the English Squire, and yet nothing was more alien to him than hunters, hounds, partridges, and stubble-fields. There was a good deal in him of the theologian and the doctor, but yet any one expecting to find the rarefied atmosphere of philosophical and theological subtlety would have been astonished to find how sub- stantial, not to say solid, theological and philosophical propositions became in his hands. The name " Ideal Ward " often raised a smile, for anything less like aesthetic idealism than Mr. Ward's manner it would be difficult to conceive. Yet in one sense, Mr. Ward certainly was a thorough- going idealist. His ideal of intellectual authority was as high as it well could be. No man who was so keen and precise a thinker, — who loved, indeed, a good philosophical disquisition not less, but much better, than he loved a game of chess, and he loved a game of chess heartily, — had a more honest love of authority, and a more ardent belief in it, than Mr. Ward. In his very last book, he traverses all the favourite prepossessions of philosophers, by 376 TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES chap. saying that, in his belief, the principle of authority is so far from being " adverse to the true interests of philosophy," that it is, on the contrary, " the only conservator of those interests " ; and he gives a very plausible reason for his belief. Philosophers, he said, will never come to any good, without being checked in the hasty adop- tion of wild premisses, and the hasty inference of unsound con- clusions from partially true premisses, by the distinct warning from a higher source, as to Avhere the quicksands of falsehood begin. An authority, he thinks, which fixes the limits within which alone speculation is legitimate, puts just the sort of pressure on philosophy which is requisite to give an edge to thought. For ourselves, we agree entirely with Mr. AVard, though we disagree as to the authority by which the pressure should be administered. Nothing seems to us more certain than that the speculative faculty of man is not adequate to its vast work unless and until it accepts limits from a source which cannot be called speculative, because, whether it come from within or without, it must be held to be the " cate- gorical imperative " of a divine law. Until we have made up our minds where the moral law comes from, — whether we are or are not at liberty to explain it all aAvay into elements of error and emotional misapprehension, — whether the sense of moral freedom, of right and wrong, of sin and remorse, be trustworthy or not, — whether, in short, the origin of our most commanding instincts be spiritual, or fanciful and illusive, — till then, speculation is far too vague and indeterminate to be worth attempting ; and the answer to these questions is, after all, not really speculative, but precisely of the same kind as the answer to the question whether this or that man is our moral sujDerior, — whether we ought to welcome his in- fluence or to resist it. So far, then, we quite agree with Dr. Ward, that speculation in vacuo is not for man, that human specula- tion should start from fixed points given us by authority from above, — though we do not think, with him, that that authority is the authority of an external and historical institution. But we have referred to the subject only to point out what an amount of iron Dr. Ward's belief in an actual authority really put into his speculations, — what a tonic it gave to his reasoning, — how firm it made his convictions, what strength it lent to his illustrations, and what fixity to his conclusions. His was a mind of high speculative power, but of speculative power which was always referring back to the fixed points of certainty from which he started, and which attempted to deal only with the intermediate and indefinite world between these fixed points. And his source of strength was also his source of weakness. He had so many dogmatic certainties which (as we believe) were mistaken, that he seemed to have all the sphere of higher knowledge spread out clear and sharp in a sort of philosophical ordnance map, and held immovably hundreds XIV TIVO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES yjj of fixed beliefs which he freely admitted to be unattainable, and even incredible to a Protestant. Never did a mind of great power luxuriate so heartily in the bars of what an outsider thought his intellectual prison. " That," he would virtually say, *' seems to you a prison-bar, does it % Now, look at me ; I have got fast hold of it, and it keeps me from falling out of the window out of which I have seen you Protestants fall so often. I like it. It is a good, strong support, which the Church has been good enough to provide me with. It keeps me from attempting all sorts of insoluble problems. It leaves me plenty to speculate upon, with fixed, determinate points, which prevent my speculation from being barren and shadowy. But you, without these bars, as you call them, you are like a surveyor who has no known data from which to calculate the unknown elements of his problem. Indeed, your speculation is not determination of the unknown from the known, but like an attempt to solve an equation in which there are more unknown quantities than there are conditions which fix their value." In this sense, then, Mr. Ward was a genuine Idealist. His ideal of the intellectual authority to be exerted over the mind by the Church was a high one, and it was to him a source of strength, and not of embarrassment. But in another sense, " Ideal " AYard seemed a term almost applied in irony. Never was there a thinker or a man who seemed to live on such definite and even palpable convictions, — to whom the vague and indefinite, even though steeped in a haze of bright sentiment, seemed so unwelcome. As an Oxford tutor, he was said to be always wrestling with men's half- thoughts or illogical inferences, often trying to make them ignore, perhaps, iliai half which was deepest rooted in their own minds, though less visible to him than the half which he undertook to develop. It is said that Dr. Newman converted him to Anglicanism almost by a single remark, — namely, that it would have been impossible, if the Primi- tive Church had been Protestant in our modern sense, that the Church of the third and fourth centuries should have been what it was, — that the growth of Catholicism could not have been from a Protestant root. That is true enough, of course ; but how im- possible the Anglicans of those days appear to have found it to realise that the unspiritual, no less than the spiritual, elements of the Early Church — the tendencies rebuked by our Lord, no less than the tendencies fostered by him — were among the seeds out of Avhich the historical Church grew ! Ward's powerful mind had therefore enormous influence over those whose real starting-point he grasped, but he constantly failed to influence others, for sheer want of insight into the many half-discovered doubts which played round the admissions into which he was able to draw them. Thus, on poetic minds like Clough's, it is probable that Ward's influence 378 TWO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES chap. was not wholly salutary. He put too much strain on the clear convictions, and allowed too little for, indeed endeavoured too little to get a sight of, the many prolific half-thoughts which had hardly risen above the horizon of the young thinker's mind. He applied a vigorous logic to what was palpably admitted, but failed to see the large penumbra of impalpable and yet most influential doubt. And it was a curious thing to compare the real man with the "Squire Ward," of the Isle of Wight nomenclature. No man more hearty, frank, and with a more real hold on such of the physical enjoyments of life as were to him physical enjoyments, can be imagined. He had nothing of the hermit, or the monk, or the rapt pilgrim through visionary worlds about him. His plea- sures were as definite and as intelligible as any squire's, but he had no love for any of the ordinary agricultural amusements, — no pride in " the land," no interest in crops, no pleasure in the chase. He enjoyed trudging about on the plain road talking theology, or a game of chess, or a good opera-bouffe, better than any orthodox squirearchical amusement in England. Indeed, he enjoyed the former amusements very much, and none of the latter at all. He had a great sense of humour, and the humour which he enjoyed was as bright and clear and definite as was his reasoning itself. It was, indeed, strange to contrast the impalpable character of Ward's chief interests with the extraordinarily palpable way in which they represented themselves to him. His philosophy, theology, and music were as real to him as real property is to others, — a great deal more real than real property was to himself. For many of the later years of his life, Mr. Ward had the opportunity of comparing his own deepest convictions with the convictions, or no-convictions, of many of the ablest doubters of the age. He was one of the founders of the now deceased Meta- physical Society, where he met Anglican Bishops, Unitarians, sceptics, physicists, journalists, all sorts of thinkers, on perfectly equal terms ; and probably no one among them knew what he thought so well, and made it so distinct to his brother metaphy- sicians, as Mr. Ward. There, indeed, he was "Dr." Ward, and his position as a Doctor of Theology, with a degree conferred by Pio Nono, gave him a position hardly inferior in professional weight as an authoritative Catholic divine to that of Cardinal Manning himself. And no man in the Society was more universally liked. The clearness, force, and candour of his argument made his papers welcome to all, — for in that Society nebulousness was almost the rule, weakness chronic, and inability to understand an opponent's position, rather than want of candour, exceedingly common. From the time, indeed, that Mr. Ward ceased to become a regular attendant at the Metaphysical Society, the Metaphysical Society XIV TWO PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES 379 began to lose its interest, and to drop into decay. Such was the attractive power of at least one strong and definite philosophical creed. It is well known that Mr. Ward, though an ardent disciple of Dr. Newman's, did not in his later years belong to the same school of ecclesiastical thought. Indeed, he was amongst the strongest of the so-called Vaticanists, as it was natural he should be ; while Cardinal Newman belonged to the school which dreaded premature definition, not to say even over-definition. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that Mr. Ward did not up to the last cherish the deepest admiration for his old leader, which, whether in public or in private, he hardly found enough opportunity to express. His mind, indeed, was one of the most modest, as well as of the most grateful to those from whom he had learned anything, with which the present writer ever came in contact ; and to Cardinal Newman Mr. Ward always seemed to feel that he owed his intellectual life. To represent him as in any sense estranged in spirit from his old master by his ecclesiastical differ- ences of opinion, is one of the greatest blunders which have ever been current in the theological world. His friendships were un- usually deep and tender, and the tenderness of his love for Dr. Newman is a matter of which all his friends had the fullest and the most absolute knowledge. To not a few in various com- munions his friendship will be a very great and keenly-felt loss. CHAPTEE XV CLOSING YEAES 1871-1882 The closing years of any life whicli we have followed with sympathy, have a peculiar interest; and I shall not need to make any apology to those who have cared to read this narra- tive so far, for giving, at the present stage, somewhat minute details of the habits and life of the subject of my memoir. In 1871 Mr. Ward finally left Old Hall. A compromise was effected between a home so far from the Isle of Wight, and the vicinity of " secular " Cowes ; and a house was built on liis Freshwater property. Weston Manor stands within a mile of Tennyson's house, Farringford, but much higher. It is close to the " ridge of the noble down " which stretches from Freshwater Bay to the ISTeedles, a familiar and favourite resort of Mr. Ward's during many years, and the scene of many a walk and theological talk with Father Faber in the past. In accordance with the taste of its owner the house was as exposed as possible to every current of fresh air. For some years, before the trees had succeeded in making headway against the pitiless Isle of Wight gales, it looked as if it had been dropped bodily from the clouds on to the bare rock. Periodical storms — and there were some memorable ones in the seventies — did much damage to the grounds. In the course of one of them the stable gates and gate - posts were blown down. Another occasion is well remembered on which an intruder, who had built a carriage shed without leave on some of Mr. Ward's land, was judged and condemned by a furious tornado before the law had been invoked against him. Carriage and shed CHAF. XV CLOSING YEARS 381 were blown bodily into the Solent, a distance of some hundred yards. Shrubs planted and sheds erected in the summer were levelled to the earth by the winter blasts, and for many years the commencement of a storm was heralded by the agitation visible in the drawing-room carpet. These and other penalties were paid for the coveted supply of fresh air and high winds. A beautiful view across the Solent of what an Isle of Wight wag called " the adjacent island of England" would have been to many a compensation for these somewhat rough conditions. By Mr. Ward it was welcomed, as an additional attraction indeed, but of secondary importance to the unstinted supply of oxygen. Here, for twelve years, with the exhilarating breezes and picturesque scenery which he used to seek on the top of the ISTeedles' Down, supplied to the full on the terrace outside his study, Mr. Ward carried on the work of his life, read and talked theology, wrote philosophy, and interested himself in the Catholic Mission which he founded. A sayer of caustic things — a quondam visitor at Weston — was asked to describe the characteristics of the house, and he replied, "It is windy and dogmatic." But there were at Freshwater opportunities for intellectual intercourse and enjoyment of a kind very different from the dogmatic. Tennyson, the near neighbour of Mr. Ward, soon became his intimate friend. A man almost unknown to fame, but of great ability, the Eev. Christopher Bowen, the father of the present Lord Justice Bowen, who died at eighty-eight after an old age almost unexampled in vigour, was another neighbour and an acquaintance of many years' standing. Mrs. Cameron, a lady of known versatility and originality of mind and character, the friend of Darwin, Sir Henry Taylor, Herschell, and many other lights of science and literature, was also a Freshwater acquaintance and friend. Mr. G. F. Watts built himself a house within an easy walk of Weston. The presence of such persons meant also the frequent visits of others of like calibre ; and Mr. Ward, little as he at any time mixed in society, keenly enjoyed a talk with Mr. Bowen or one of his sons, or a visit to Farringford, whence he would perhaps bring back to dinner old friends whom he found staying there, as Mr. Jowett, the Master of BalUol, or Lord 382 CLOSING YEARS chap. Selborne ; while he appreciated the life and activity which centred round Mrs. Cameron, who would address him as " Squire Ward," and who, although she never succeeded in inducing him to follow the example of Darwin and Herschell, and allow her to photograph him, used to amuse and startle him when they met by her originahty and enthusiasm. Such surroundings helped to keep up that double life which Ward ever led — the one so ecclesiastical in its interests, the other so free and unconstrained that a casual acquaintance might be surprised to find that he was a member of the " rigid dogmatic Church." It was the conspicuousness of these two different sides in his Freshwater life which explains Tennyson's tribute to him as the " most liberal " (or as he afterwards worded it, " most generous ") " of all Ultramontanes," and the poet's suggested epitaph on one who had caught much of Ward's own spirit, his chaplain, Father Haythornthwaite, Here lies Peter Haythornthwaite, Human by nature, Roman by fate. Let us describe Mr. Ward's habits more closely, neglecting to observe neither side. His daily routine was precise and metho- dical. Eisiug at half-past six, he went to chapel at seven for meditation or mass. The number of his meditation books, and the numerous pencil references in them, show how systematic a work this was with him. He breakfasted at eight in his study, reading at the same time the evening paper of the previous day. He went to chapel again at nine. Then he read and answered his letters — nearly always answering by return of post. Then came the serious work of the day — the philosophical essay on which he was engaged, or the address to the Metaphysical Society, or the Theological controversy, or the reading necessary for any of these works. The other fixed items in his programme were a walk and a solitary luncheon in his study at one o'clock, a drive at two, and then another walk. He generally came to the drawing-room for five o'clock tea, and dined with his family at half-past seven. The interests and habits which filled in this skeleton of routine will best be given as they struck the present writer XV CLOSING YEARS 383 wlien he came to Weston from time to time after periods of absence. The general features, both of habits and of con- versations, and the things actually said, shall be faithfully recorded ; although sayings belonging to various occasions, of which the details are forgotten, must be here grouped together. Perhaps it is after a year spent by me in 1878 at the Gregorian University in Eome. I arrive in the afternoon, and the message comes that I am to go to his study at 4.30. I appear, as I think, at the appointed time, and, after cordial greetings, he points to the clock and observes that I am two whole minutes late. The talk with me is to last a quarter of an hour. He is using his dumb-bells, which have taken the place of the riding of an earlier date. He does not pause in this gymnastic exercise, but begins at once a conversation about Eome. The professors at the Collegio Eomano — Caretti, Ghetti, Palmieri, Ballerini — are discussed. The length of the course and the nature of the work are elicited with great rapidity. Then there is a general order to " flow " on the whole subject of Eoman life and education. The particulars are drunk in with eagerness. "Intensely interesting," "in- definitely important," are the exclamations which follow. Then closer inquiries as to the scholastic system pursued there, — and these are very characteristic. Absolute deference to authority in matters of doctrine, absolute reliance on scholastic tradition in theology are vindicated. This, of course, he trusts I find in Eome. But is there any tendency to siibstitute current formulae for real thought ? Is an argument in philo- sophy, pure and simple, tested by the weighty names of its advocates, or forced upon the student in the name of orthodoxy? If so, all this is " intellectually deplorable." " More intolerable than any Eastern slavery " was a phrase he used of the attempt to invest purely philosophical opinions with the semblance of authority ; and to allow formulae learnt by rote to supersede genuine thought was to make the mental attitude utterly unreal. What, then, was the state of the Eoman University in this respect ? Were the Concorsi ^ mere intellectual tournaments, or did they help one to get to the bottom of things ? Was the ^ The Concorso was the periodical jiublic disputation customary at the Roman College. 384 CLOSING YEARS chap. Bepetitore ^ a mere juggler who could escape from any difficulty, or had he a real mastery of his subject? The quarter of an hour is past before the subject has been pursued far ; the dumb-bells are put down, and he returns to his study-table on which lie in order five books, each with a marker in it. One of them is Father Kleutgen's work, La FhilosojMe Scolastiqtte ; another, a volume of Newman's Parochial Sermons ; a third, Planche's Reminiscences ; a fourth, Barchester Towers ; the fifth, Sardou's comedy Les vieux gargons. " My worldng powers are getting so uncertain," he explains, as he takes up Planche's Bcminiscences, '' that I find I have five different states of head, and I keep a book for each. Kleutgen is for my best hours in the morning, Newman comes next, then Planche, and then Trollope ; and, when my head is good for nothing, I read a French play." We meet next at a punctual half- past seven dinner. " When you left me," he begins, " I read a great deal of Planch^." Some of the anecdotes are delightful. One of the " supers " in Macready's time at Covent Garden, who used to speak Shakespeare's lines without understanding a word of them, had, as Eatcliff in Bieliard III., to give the answer — " My Lord ; 'tis I. The early village cock Hath twice done sahitation to the morn.' He gave, with immense emphasis, the first line only. Even an English audience laughed outright at the effect of the response to the words " who's there ? " " My Lord, 'tis I, the early village cock." He is in the humour for anecdotes and we have some more. An Irish friend, who has recently been staying at Weston, has recalled memories of the Young Ireland Party of 1847. "John Mitchel of the Nation, and a handful of friends," Ward reminds us, " were for physical force ; and the ' moral force ' people were very indignant with them. The ' physical force ' people held a meeting in Dublin, and the hall in which they met was surrounded by * moral force ' people, who threw brickbats at the windows. In the end the physical force people were conveyed from the hall by a side door tremb- ^ The Mepetitore was the '" coach " for the public disputations. XV CLOSING YEARS 385 ling and in fear of their lives, protected by priests. It was an Irish bull in action." He has another story to tell, this time of his Irish friend himself, who, glowing with patriotism and pride of ancestry, described to him how his ancestor, an Irish king, rather than fall into the hands of the enemy, made a funeral pile and burnt himself, his wife, and all his descendants to the fourth gene- ration on it, so that not one was taken. " The mystery of our friend's birth," he adds, " remained unaccounted for." Ireland leads to Cardinal Cullen, whose crusade against round dances at the Dublin balls is discussed. Some one is quoted as thinking the objection extravagant, and Ward epitomises his opinion thus, "He thinks, in short, that to object to a gallop a man must himself be a canter^ The conversa- tion grows a little desultory. A recent speech of Disraeli^s comes on the tapis, in praise of which Ward is eloquent. Some one remarks incidentally that Bright is hors de comlat with " water on the brain." " Bright may be dizzy," he replies, " but Dizzy is certainly bright 1 " One of the party observes, changing the subject, that the services at the Weston Chapel have been much more largely attended since the introduction of English devotions. This leads to an argument. Some of the company are for keeping exclusively to the Latin liturgy. Ward, on the contrary, takes a strongly utihtarian view, — whatever appeals to the largest number and makes them devout is best. And he appeals to the increase of the congregation as a decisive argument for the English devotions. He condemns the tyranny of students of liturgy and students of art. " Let us have popular hymns in the popular tongue. Let the ornaments in the Church be such as the people like. None of your cold marble statues. Give me a nice dressed up doll — a big Eoman painted doll." His interlocutor remarks incidentally and somewhat sententiously, "What rare things are good taste and real knowledge in art, or ritual, or music." Ward sees his advantage. "As you say, most true. Perhaps only one in a hundred can appreciate really good taste in such things." — " Not one in a thousand," repHes the other. " Very well," Ward replies, his premisses complete," you teU me that certain practices— Uturgical, musical artistic — are in better taste than certain other practices. 2 c 386 CLOSING YEARS CHAP. I have no doubt they are. I know nothing about such things, and you know much. You have good taste. By all means, then, if you have a priest to yourself in a desert island have such practices observed. Have difficult and high-class music. Have cold artistic statues. Have nothing but Latin services. They appeal to you, they do you good. Keep to them. But you come to our populous towns, where every possible influ- ence is needed to make the poor better and more religious, and you tell me to keep exclusively to practices which / had supposed could benefit only one in a hundred, and which you — who know much better — say can benefit less than one in a thousand. Something is to be done which appeals to you and to the artistic few, and which leaves the vast multitude, who stand in far greater need of such help than you do, totally destitute of it. I call that intolerable selfishness." This subject naturally leads to A. W. Pugin, whose mediae- valism Ward strongly condemns on a similar gTOund. But he adds, " all the same, I have great sympathy with Pugin. He was very like me. He was a man of one idea, and so am I. His idea was Gothic Architecture, mine is devotion to Eome. I remember his coming into the Sacristy at Old Hall College, and seeing Dr. Cox vested in an old French cope. He said he was going to offer prayers for the conversion of England. ' What is the use, my dear sir,' said Pugin, in a tone of deep depression, ' of praying for the conversion of England in that cope ' ? On another occasion at St. Barnabas's, Nottingham, he was showing to an Anglican friend the rood screen he had erected. * Within,' he said, ' is the holy of holies. The people remain outside. Never is the sanctuary entered by any save those in sacred orders.' At that moment a priest appeared within the sanctuary in company with two ladies to whom he was showing the screen. Pugin, in acute excitement, said to the sacristan, ' Turn those people out at once. How dare they enter ? ' — ' Sir,' said the sacristan, ' it is Bishop Wiseman.' Pugin, powerless to do anything, sank down on a neighbouring bench and burst into tears." Dinner can scarcely pass without some reference to Oxford and Newman — a subject which ever arouses deep feeling. " Was there ever anything in the world like Newman's in- fluence on us ? " he repeats for the hundredth time. And XV CLOSING YEARS 387 the scene at Littlemore, during the farewell sermon on the " Parting Friends," often described before, is told with even fresh pathos. After dinner he retires early to his study, and a message, half an hour later, summons me for further conversation. I find him in high good humour, buried in a French play, the third he has read in the course of the day. " This is a delightful play," he explains. " Truly French. The height of romance and self-devotion, as long as it can be combined with breaking a large proportion of the ten commandments. Achille and Clairette love each other. Achille is married to Jeanne, Clairette to Jacques. Jeanne and Jacques, discovering the state of affairs, not unnaturally raise objections. Jacques captures Clairette, and further meetings with Achille are impossible. Ineffectual attempts on the part of the lovers to solve the difl&culties of the situation by schemes of murder and indefinite lying. After much difficulty one meeting is contrived. Achille says that life is intolerable while Clairette is the wife of Jacques ; Clairette does not care to live away from Achille. Escape is found impossible. ' Then,' says Achille, ' if we cannot live together, let us die together. You can see the window of my room from your house. Take this pistol. At eleven o^clock to-night I shall wave a lamp near the window three times, and after the third time I shall say " Clairette," and you will say " Achille " ; and at that moment we will shoot ourselves.' " He points to a large cupboard full of French plays. "I read these things so fast now," he explains, " that I sometimes get through six in an evening, being fit for nothing better — that is, I read as much as I want to, and master the plot. I therefore wrote to Stewart to send me every French play that has ever been written. I am leaving them to you in my will." ^ The rest of the conversation is on things dramatic. The autumn opera season, and the prospect of Mr. and Mrs. Ban- croft moving from the Prince of Wales Theatre to the Hay- market especially interests him. Looking in at about eleven next mornins: I find with him 't) ^ These plays were kept until within a year of his death. He then resolved to burn them. 388 CLOSING YEARS chap. a well-known thinker of somewhat liberal views in theology, who is staying in the neighbourhood. My father's face shows that he is deeply interested in his visitor's conversation, which soon reveals views somewhat similar to M. Eenan's on the origin of Christianity. The contrast between the modern myth theory and the last century theory of fraud interests Ward particularly. His visitor's statements are becoming more and more out of accord with Ultramontane orthodoxy. Suddenly, to my father's evident disappointment, he breaks off in the midst of the development of some startling position, and says, " I ought not to say these things to you!' — " Please go on," entreats Ward, with earnestness, " of course I am saying anathema all the time, but |?/^«sc go on." The visitor leaves shortly, and I am told to take myself off and come back for a walk at one. We are starting' on the stroke of the clock, when he pauses for a moment. He thinks that Tudno, his daughter's Pomeranian dog, who has found his way into the study, looks dull, and something must be done to amuse him. " I am so incompetent in these matters. I don't know what does amuse a dog. Send for A. B. (the dog's mistress) and she will see to it ; and now let us start." It is very wet. A year or two ago this would have made no difference to the scene of the walk ; but now, he explains, his doctor objects to his getting wet through, and a wooden shed has been built some 200 yards long, and open to the air ; and here we walk and take up the threads of former conversa- tions. On the way to the shed we meet a priest who is staying in the neighbourhood, and is on his way to call. He turns back and walks with us. The state of the mission is discussed, and plans for its future. My father, then, turning to me, alludes to a letter he has shown me already about matters theatrical in London, and adds very earnestly, "There is one thing I long to see before I die." — "What is that?" asks the priest, who thinks that plans for the Freshwater mission are still the theme of discussion. " One thing, and then I shall sing my nunc dimittis'' We wait to hear it. " If I can but see," he continues, in tones of deep earnestness, " the Bancrofts at the Haymarket Theatre I shall die happy." The priest is somewhat puzzled and alarmed, and soon takes his leave, and we continue our walk. Later in the day the XV CLOSING YEARS 389 weather clears, and he summons us in a state of great excitement to come and look at the sunset, which he says is " most noble." That evening he goes, after dinner, to Farringford, the only private house in which he ever spent the evening during the last fifteen years of his life, and comes back with stories of kindly disputes on the Inquisition and the Armada, which were adjourned till the following morning, when Tennyson and his eldest son were coming up for a walk. No picture of Mr. Ward at this time would give him " in his habit as he lived," without reference to two phases of his thought and conversation which were at opposite poles, — the one his deep sense of the melancholy aspect of life, the other the relief he found in talking elaborate and fantastic nonsense. ffis sense of the amount of unhappiness in the world was constant; and although his faith and religious habits became, he said, more and more supporting as life went on, he never got rid of the habitual trial to which he was subject from the thought of the more terrible side of religion, the judgment of the reprobate, and the difficulties, sometimes apparently almost insurmountable, which beset the probation of many of our fellow-creatures. " Such is life " was a phrase which would come at any moment, after gay conversation as after gTave, in a tone of resigned sadness. " It is most true," he wrote to his eldest daughter Mary in February 1881, in reply to remonstrances on the score of pessimism, "that I fail grievously in realising the extent of God's love to us. Facts are so perplexing and disheartening to me. You speak, of course, concerning God's love not to this or that chosen person (for why should I consider myself one of those chosen persons), but to all the redeemed, i.e. to all mankind. Yet the vast majority of men are placed by Him in the most disadvantageous circumstances as regards their hope of achieving their true end. If you can tell me of any Catholic writer who faces and satisfactorily treats this difficulty you wiU confer on me the greatest possible service. It seems to me that, as a rule, they shirk it altogether. Cardinal Newman is the only one I happen to know who really confronts it, and he simply speaks of it as a most awful mystery and difficulty." In another letter he speaks of the subject as giving him a "kind of 390 CLOSING YEARS chap. physical pain" ; and certainly the problem of the existence of evil was a constant clond on his mind. " Life as a whole/' he often said, " is a most melancholy thing. Looking at it naturally it is a constant struggle with an enemy who we know must beat us in the end. And the supernatural view is sad as well. Look at the numbers who are said by theologians to be lost. No doubt it is through their own fault, but nevertheless it is a terrible thought." He felt, indeed, that faith brought the highest happiness attainable on this earth, and should give peace to the individual by teaching him to leave all in the hands of a just God. But a reasoned optimism was to his mind utterly unreal. So far as we are able to judge by our reason, a keen vision of facts must lead to melancholy. The cheerful view of life which many a man of the world takes, meant simply the refusal to look at life as a whole. Melancholy was not morbidness, but a consequence of being alive to facts as they really are. He held with Byron that The glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift ; What is it but the telescope of truth "Which strips the distance of its fantasies And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality too real % The strain of an overwrought mind would bring a reaction, and he used sometimes to take refuge in talking utter nonsense for an hour at a time. It was often brought forth, however, with the deepest mock seriousness. At times the " method in his madness " was so elaborate, that an onlooker, who did not know him, would have been utterly puzzled. Nonsense was talked with such intense gravity and such elaborate logical sequence, that a stranger would think that he must have missed the drift of the words. One could not tell from his face when he began to speak whether some deeply-interesting psychological observation or moral reflection was coming, or one of these inventions of elaborate " Alice -in -Wonderland " narratives. When he began we tried to shut him up, but he continued with such persistency, and the stories became so ludicrous from the gravity with which he went on, regardless of remon- strances, to treat the particular one he had in hand as about XV CLOSING YEARS^ 391 the most interesting thing in the world, that in the end the resolution of his listeners not to encourage him by their laughter, generally broke down. I remember one specimen which in the end fairly over- came the gravity of Father Dalgairns who was staying with us at the time, and to whom it was principally addressed. After some interesting discussions on the principles involved in the monastic system, which were illustrated by observations made at the Dominican Convent at Stoke, where Ward had been visiting his eldest daughter, he remarked, " On my way to Stoke I spent a couple of days at Trentham." Then, with a serious- ness which led us to expect some illustration of the opinions he had been expressing, he continued, " the most remarkable thing about the village of Trentham is that it is 7wt the birth- place of Jeremy Bentham." Every one began to protest against such nonsense ; but he proceeded, " You don't believe me ? I assure you it is so. I made inquiries, and there is no doubt whatever about it." Further protests, which were again useless. '' I found out more than this," he continued. " I was staying in the pretty old-fashioned inn of the place with a dear old landlady, a Mrs. Bright, who must have been some eighty years old, and knew all the history of the neighbourhood. She told me that her inn had originally been a private house, and there seems not the least doubt that it was the identical house in which Jeremy Bentham wasn't born. I believe that my room was the very room, but that is only a vague tradition. About the house there seems to be no doubt." And so he would go on for half an hour. This particular joke we were not safe from for years, and it came up when least expected in some new form. Once it disappeared for nearly a year, and we thought it was forgotten. " Where do you think I went last week ? " he asked one day ; and I expected to hear of a new opera of interest, "To see our old friend Mrs. Bright." I had for- gotten the name. *' Don't you remember ? At Trentham." We tried to burke the story, but in vain. " Yes, but you don't know what a curious visit it was. By a most singular coinci- dence I went there on the 26th of July. Now the 26th of July is the anniversary of the very day on which Jeremy Bentham wasn't born." Further vain remonstrances. "The 392 . CLOSING YEARS chap. world doesn't forget as easily as one is apt to think." This was said with a touch of sad seriousness. " Jeremy Bentham was a great man. You have no idea of the number of people — and the hind of people who didn't come in honour of the occasion. The Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Dean of Westminster, and a considerable number of minor clergy — I daresay upwards of a hundred — didn't come. It was very remarkable." Father Hay thorn thwaite, Mr. Ward's chaplain and constant companion during his last years, gives me some interesting notes of remembered habits and conversations, some of which I subjoin. " Mr. Ward's feeling for the Church of England " he writes " in its practical and devotional working, apart from its doctrinal teaching, is a matter in which he would have run counter to the narrow and ignorant prejudices inherited by one born and bred a Catholic. ' I never got anything but good,' he has said to me over and over again, ' from the Church of England.' He had himself been one of her ministers, he had known them by hundreds, and strongly as he felt all the defects of the Anglican system, violently as he would show up the contradictions, the absurd illogicalness of her position and teaching, he had nothing but respect for her teaching representatives. Once his wife was arranging a dinner-party and was pondering where to place the Eector of a neighbouring parish. 'My dear,' chimed in her husband, ' put him somewhat near me. I dearly love a parson.' " Speaking of the melancholy which was habitual to Ward, Father Hay thorn thwaite remarks how it would show itself when to strangers he appeared full of brightness and happiness. After a dinner-party, at which he had been the life of the company, he would be found in his study in a state of brood- ing melancholy or even in tears. "As he walked alone," he continues, "he often hummed snatches of song. ' The old squire must be a 'appy gen'lman, sir,' said a poor tenant to me, 'he do alias seem to be a singing to hisself so.' What a star tlingly- different tale Avas told one when one got at that restless mind, perpetually racked by gravest questions as his body was ever discomforted by ill health. Pessimistic views of life, and the remembrance of death, coloured all his thought. 'I don't think the thought of death is absent from my mind for five minutes in the day,' he said to me. Truly XV CLOSING YEARS 393 the saving uses of Christianity were never so apparent as they were in his case. The sense of God's presence, in which he lived, and the graven ess of his under life, made all life a serious and a deeply-interesting business. His property was a trust lent him by God, of which he was only a steward. His talents the same, to be worked, as a miser would work a mine, but in God's service. That there was so much evil in the world only aroused his energies in an endeavour to lessen it. No man disliked fighting so much as he did, yet his life was fated to be a prolonged battle in his vigilant self -discipline and in his writings against what he considered to be doctrinal errors. " His piety was warm, tender, and full of unction ; sometimes he would himself read the household night prayers at ten P.M., and the earnestness of his tones and the beauty of his reading voice could not but deeply impress all joined in prayer with him. Perhaps the sublimest image in my own memory is that of his face at the moment of Holy Communion. His gray head was thrown back, his eyes closed, and in all the lines of a glowing face were written absolute faith, and utter trust in Him he was receiving into his heart. " Allied to love of God was love for his fellow-men. His ear was always open to the cry of human distress. So ready was he to assist the needy, and full of simple trust in stories told him that conscientious persons had need to be doubly careful of cases put before him. A poor woman from the East End of London wrote to him for a sewing machine. He answered her application, and sent her the asked-for sum of money ; and it was amusing how, during the next few weeks, constant posts brought him similar requests. Happening to mention to me this strange and sudden need for sewing machines at the East End, I was just in time to stop the flow of an indiscriminate charity. Afterwards he got me to examine into all cases of charity put before him before relieving them. But though an ounce of prudence was thrown into his almsgiving, it did not diminish it. On one occasion I asked him to give me a pound or so to help a poor man whose bread bill was hanging like a millstone round his neck. * Two pounds % How much does the man owe altogether?' — '.£10,' I replied, where- upon he went to his cheque book and wrote a cheque for the full amount, saying, * For heaven's sake, let us put the poor man out of his misery at once.' When I afterwards told him of the man's enthusiastic gratitude, his eyes filled with tears." Both Father Haythornthwaite and others who were thrown constantly in Mr. Ward's society bear witness to the power which his unswerving ethical standard, applied with relentless logic, had in creating a moral atmosphere in his house. It was not 394 CLOSING YEARS chap. until he was gone from earth that they fully realised the support he had been to them in this respect. The position which a parent holds with young children — their sense that right is what he approves, wrong what he disapproves — Mr. Ward held for many who had reached middle age, and held intellectually their own independent views. The chilling breath of " public opinion " did not touch them so long as they were secure of his approval. And it was hard to adopt even the most universally received and plausible maxims under which worldliness dis- guises itself in the presence of one whose penetrating insight detected at once the underlying weakness, and so heartily despised it. " Purity of intention " he wrote down as his favourite virtue ; and both for himself and for others he would in a moment strip bare the real motive of action, able to endure an acknowledged fault, but unable to be patient in the presence of want of candour and habitual self-deception. Mr. Ward's interest in his property did not increase after he had gone to live in the Island ; but his attention to all business connected with it was methodical and punctual. There is a good deal of character in the business interviews of which his agent, Mr. Coverdale, has sent me the following notes. My acquaintance with your father originated more or less accidentally. Being somewhat anxious upon a matter of business touching his estate, he consulted the late Mr. Barclay of the Lon- don Joint Stock Bank, in whose judgment he placed great reliance. Mr. Blount had only that morning mentioned my name to Barclay in connection with another property. The result was a letter asking me to call upon your father at Hampstead. The interview was somewhat characteristic. After the usual civilities and an invitation that I would remain for luncheon, he suddenly broke out : " But to the point, I understand that you have much to do and must not take up your time. Unfortunately I am not a man of business, indeed I hate it, and as for my estate I don't care in the least for it, except in so far as it enables me to carry on my work." The object of my visit was then discussed curtly, but with a precision and clearness which at once made me regard him as a man of business, notwithstanding his denial of the fact. When the matter on which your father was consulting me was drawing to a close, he one day said to me, in his usually terse way, " I want to know if you will undertake the management of my property. I know very little about it ; Mrs. Ward can tell you more than I can." My position as agent was then settled. XV CLOSING YEARS 395 When I went to AVeston Manor on business, my visits to his study were, as a rule, of short duration ; punctual to a degree, pre- cise and very methodical. He was always prepared with the various items he wished to discuss, duly jotted down in a book kept for the purpose. He quickly caught up a point, discussed it if neces- sary, or decided it promptl}^ Mere details he dismissed at once. My position as his agent gave me ample scope for noticing Mr. Ward's truly charitable disposition. " Just let me see how I stand," he would say in answer to an appeal. A dive into a drawer brought up his bank book, which as a rule formed his law of charity. I don't mean to say that he gave indiscriminately or without judgment, but he never, to my knowledge, refused when he had the means, and the object seemed a worthy one. Mr. Coverdale adds an anecdote illustrative of Mr. Ward's tlioughtfulness for the comfort of others : — My first visit to Weston Manor was made with the brougham and pair of horses which had been kept for estate purposes, and which I at once suggested should be sold. "But," said he, "it is a very long drive from Cowes, and the weather in this island is often very rough." — " I prefer, notwithstanding, to substitute a dogcart," said I. " Oh, but think of your health," was the reply. On one occasion he said, "I think you want a little rest; draw £50 or £60 from the estate account and go abroad." If I did not accept the generous offer it was not from a moment's hesitation as to its meaning. I mention these two of very many instances of his never- failing kindness. A few words must be said as to Ward's friendship with Tennyson. Their first introduction to each other by Dean Bradley about the year 1868, was not a success. "They did not," Dean Bradley tells me, "thoroughly understand one another"; and as Mr. Ward was not living in the Isle of Wight at that time there was no opportunity for closer inter- course. But after the foundation of the Metaphysical Society in 1869 and the completion of the building of Weston Manor in 1871, an intimate acquaintance began which led ultimately to a warm friendship. In a letter to Mr. Jennings, written and published in 1884, a niece of Lord Tennyson's thus refers to the intercourse between the two men in the past : — Green grows the grass over the grave of a valued Fresh- water friend of Lord Tennyson's whose mortal remains lie in his own churchyard close to Weston Manor, the house built by him, and in which the last years of his life were passed. I speak of 396 CLOSING YEARS chap. Mr. Ward, famous as one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement and well known in later times, not only as a shining light in the Eoman Catholic Church, of which he became a member, but to the world of letters in general as among the deepest thinkers of the day. Not alone at the Metaphysical Club to which they both belonged, but in the familiar intercourse they interchanged in their respective homes at Freshwater, did the authors of In Memoriam and of the Ideal of a Christian Church commune together of the mysteries of faith and philosophy, each keeping firmly to his own standpoint, whilst giving earnest heed with that freedom from prejudice a truly liberal mind alone can give to the arguments of the other. They had not a few things in common in their mental calibre, and a close resemblance in that childlike simplicity which is ever an attribute of the truly great. But there was one point on which they differed, foto coelo. AVhilst the Laureate cherished trees and flowers as if they were really endowed with the acute sensa- tions attributed by Dante to his living wood, and loved to listen in the early morning to the song of the birds in the trees overshadoAv- ing Farringford, Mr. Ward preferred the open expanse of Weston Manor to his well-wooded seat near Cowes, and was reported to have offered a reward of a guinea for every nightingale's head brought to him there, being well-nigh distracted by the loudness of their song. In truth the difference here referred to was typical of a deep mental difference, which to the end prevented them from completely understanding each other intellectually, though they came to value each other more and more, and to find out how much they had in common in their moral enthusiasms, in their unworldliness, in their simple devotion to truth. Tennyson's love of trees and his love of all nature were a part of the intensely sensitive perceptions and concrete mind of the poet, in marked contrast to Ward's imperfect observation of the concrete, and love of the abstract and mathematical. Tennyson would note every flower in his garden, each variety in the song of each bird, every peculiarity in their habits with most exact and loving observation. His imagination was always of the kind described by Mr. Ruskin in Modern Painters as most perfect. Euskin gives three ranks, " the man who perceives rightly because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a j)rimrose : a star or a sun or a fairy's shield or a forsaken XV CLOSING YEARS 397 maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself — a little flower apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations and passions may be that crowd around it" Mr. Ward had in regard to nature enthusiasm and imagination ; but it was of the second class. He perceived wrongly because he felt strongly. And, consequently, minute beauty did not appeal to him, because he could not perceive it at all ; though the greatness of mountain scenery and the pathos of a summer's sunset would overcome him. He could not, as we have seen, distinguish one tree or flower from another. A bird was an object of vaguest knowledge to him. It was primarily a thing which made a noise and kept him awake. I^either was sufficiently apprehended to be appreciated, and painful feelings were associated with both. Trees shut out the fresh air, shut out the grand views which he loved, however little he marked their details. Birds kept off sleep. Tennyson, on the other hand, perceived accurately while he loved — nay, the more accurately because he loved nature and it suggested so much to him. It was his love of the starling which made him note both the fact and the fancy contained in the line — The starling claps his tiny castanets. I recollect his pointing out to me the change in the call of the cuckoo in June, and repeating the old lines he learnt as a boy — In April he opens his bill, In May he sings all day, In June he changes his tune, In July away he does fly, In August go he must. Nothing escaped him in nature, animate or inanimate. Every plant that he saw, every species of heath, heather, and bracken on the downs near Aldworth, the song of every bird, the habits of every living creature were noted by him. The last time I ever saw him, when I was staying at Aldworth a month before his death, he had just made a discovery — slight enough 398 CLOSING YEARS chap. in itself, but suggestive of his customary watchfulness — that the rabbits which frequented the garden looked at the chalk line on the lawn -tennis court as marking out a space forbidden to them. He pointed out signs of their having been running all round the court, right up to the boundary line, but nowhere within it. This type of mind — inductive in its reasoning, filled with minute observation of facts — accorded little with the deductive, mathematical, essentially abstract character of Mr. Ward's intellect. And even in metaphysics, where each was at home, they approached the same problems from somewhat different standpoints. With Ward the coherence of first principles and of reasoned deductions was so much ; while with Tennyson metaphysical thought was not argumentative, but rather the penetrating with the rapid glance of intuitive and imaginative genius behind the phenomena. For Ward a coherent logical system was the great desideratum ; to Tennyson a great assumption satisfying to the reflective imagination was so much, and he tended, like Cardinal Newman, to pass from close and detailed observation of phenomena to a theoretic idealism ; while Ward, who saw so much less of concrete matter, was a thorouCTho'oino; realist. Such in general was the contrast : — on the one hand we have the poet who loved his birds and his trees, whose eye nothing in external nature escaped, whose imagination threw a limehght on facts by which they were only more accurately seen, whose conversation corresponded with the complexity of the concrete world, intermittent, full of observation abounding- in facts, from which, however, any far-reaching conclusions were drawn with the care and caution of a true inductive reasoner, theoretical only in the region of purest metaphysics, mistrustful of logical completeness in a survey of the immense and manifold world, seeing by momentary lightning-flashes what he could not entirely recover or express when the lightning had past ; and on the other hand we have the enthusiastic, compre- hensive, abstract thinker, who worked everything into a theory, who applied quick as thought abstract principles to all conceiv- able subjects, — as mathematics may deal with problems of space and measurement applying to the wliole universe, however diverse its material contents may be, — brilliant and complete in expression, delighting to range without let or hindrance in his XV CLOSING YEARS ♦ 399 conclusions from a tendency to its full realisation, from simple axioms to the most complicated yet most certain geometrical theorems, rapid in movement, impatient of facts which seemed to him to divert attention from principles, loving the startling, free, and rapid mental exercise which could settle at once a spacial problem which would apply to the planet of Jupiter or to the region of fixed stars — and physically loving the fresh air, the large expanse of horizon, the wide vistas of the surrounding country, delighting in the large scenic effects which filled him with great thoughts and feelings, treating smaller things either as non-existent or as somewhat irrelevant obstacles. Along with the intellectual contrasts between the two men there were, however, a similarity and sympathy in plainness of speech, in simple candour, in enthusiasm for the moral aims of life, in unworldliness, in love of truth, in appreciation of intellectual brilliancy of all kinds, a sympathy which was expressed in great part in the beautiful lines written by Tenny- son after Ward's death. They were, latterly, close friends and on almost playful terms. Tennyson loved Ward's plainness of speech, even if his sentiments were intolerable. He told me that in the days when the question of persecution was debated at the Metaphysical Society he said to Ward : '' ' You know you would try to get me put in prison if the Pope told you to.' Ward could not say no." Lord Tennyson added, "he only replied ' the Pope would never tell me to do anything so foolish.' " On one occasion a friend of Tennyson's was speaking of the untruthful tendency of Catholic casuistry. "Well, the most truthful man I ever knew," Tennyson replied, "was a strict Ultramontane. He was grotesquely truthful," he added. He paid a tribute likewise to Ward's combination of intense seriousness with simplicity and love of fun. " He was the most childlike and the least childish man I have known," he said. It has been said of Tennyson that he always " said the thing that was in his mind," and his Freshwater neighbour here closely resembled him. They told each other plain truths or adverse opinions with great frankness. " Your writing. Ward," Tennyson said, after vainly endeavouring to decipher a letter, " is like walking sticks gone mad." Tennyson sent Ward his Be, Profundis when it appeared ; but Ward, who had beforehand 400 CLOSING YEARS chap. said that it was sure to be a poetic flight far above his com- prehension, declared, when he had read it, that he could not understand a word of it. " You really should put notes to such poems," he said. But the " Children's Hospital " in the same volume, with its simple pathos, struck a true chord of sympathy. Ward wanted no notes to it, and cried as he read it. His fixed opinion that he could not understand poetry kept him from ever attempting to read Tennyson's poetry as a whole, and he said it was of no use for him to look at In Memoriam. I caught him out unawares here. A few months before his death he was inveighing against the cant of consoling a man by reminding him that other people suffer as much as he does, and I repeated the lines — That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more : Too common ! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break. '' How beautiful," he said, " where do they come from ? "-» — " From In Memoriam,'' I replied. " Dear me," he answered, " I thought I could not understand In Memoriam" and he asked me to write down the lines that he might keep them in his pocket. Another story has been related to me by one who was present, indicating that more of Tennyson's thought and genius appealed to Ward than he was prepared to admit. Tennyson asked him to come down to Farringford and hear him read Becket before it was printed, and compare ideas on the poet's treatment of the Catholic Saint and Archbishop. Ward went, — convinced, as it afterwards appeared, that the whole play would be simply " out of his line," but prepared to hear it patiently through. Gradually, however, in the course of the reading his features lighted up, and marks of evident interest and admiration appeared. At the end of the play he broke out into enthusiastic praise. " Dear me ! I didn't expect to enjoy it at all. It is splendid. How wonderfully you have brought out the phases of his character as Chancellor and Archbishop. Wliere did yoic learn it all t " For Mrs. Tennyson, whose conversation he used to say reminded him of Newman's in Oxford days, he had a deep XV CLOSING YEARS 401 admiration ; and he had a cordial affection for her eldest son. Their feeling for him was expressed in the letter written to me by Hallam Tennyson after his death. " His wonderful simplicity of faith and nature," he wrote, " together with his subtle and far-reaching grasp of intellect make up a man never to be for- gotten. My father and mother and myself will miss him more than I can say. I loved him somehow like an intimate college friend." How fully Tennyson did take in the character of a man intellectually so different from himself, is seen in the lines he wrote after Ward's death. I will write them down both in their original and in their final form. They ran at first thus : — Gone, lost to earth, whom lost I hope to find, Most liberal of all Ultramontanes, Ward. I knew thee most unworldly of mankind, Most subtle in tierce and quart of mind with mind, And hail the cross above thy hallowed sward, Mute symbol of thy service to the Lord. They were finally recast as follows — Farewell, whose living like I shall not find, — Whose faith and work were bells of full accord, — My friend, the most unworldly of mankind, Most generous of all Ultramontanes, Ward. How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind. How loyal in the following of thy Lord ! The portion of the year not spent by Mr. Ward in the Isle of Wight was passed in houses taken from time to time on or near Hampstead Heath. The only exception to this rule was a tour in Wales in 1874, on part of which I accompanied him, and in which his intense enjoyment of the scenery near Llandudno, and still more at Bangor and Llanberis, was a thing not to be forgotten. Its beauty stimulated his ideas, he used to say, in the controversy with J. S. Mill and Bain ; and he showed me the places on the Great Orme's Head, at which particular arguments in favour of Treewill or Necessary Truth had suggested themselves to him, in the course of his daily walks. With the curious hopefulness which accompanied his pessi- mism, he used to predict of each new house at Hampstead 2 D 402 CLOSING YEARS chap. that it would be the inauguration of a " new epoch " in his existence, and to describe all its advantages, — how he could be near London and yet not in it ; could see his friends without the interruptions of work incident to a party staying at Weston ; could have talks with men like E. H. Hutton, who were inacces- sible in the Isle of Wight ; could enjoy, in spite of proximity to London, the fresh air and scenery of the Heath ; and, above all, could go every night to the play or opera. Until the last few years, when doctors were imperative on the necessity of care, he liked nothing better than to go on a bright and frosty evening to the play, and, on returning, to sit out on the heath until past midnight, looking at the lights of London and talking over the play itself. Both the heath and the play were great assuagers of all evils, physical and mental, but the play came first. When I wrote to him in 1879 concrratulatingj him on the improvement in his health wrought by the Hampstead air, he replied, " You philosophise wrongly about my health. The Haymarket is the region whence salvation cometh. Hamp- stead is only the sine qud non. Long live Captain Armit ; ^ of whom, however, you have probably never heard." The midnight visits to the heath were discontinued about 1875, and he began to cut short the evenings at the theatre, leaving soon after ten ; but he did not cease to go frequently to play or opera until his last illness in 1882. The last time I went to the opera with him was at the Lyceum Theatre in the autumn of 1881. An autumn season had been undertaken by Mr. J. Hayes, and Mr. Ward attended the performances very regularly. The opera on this particular evening was Eossini's II Barhierc di Siviglia. He enjoyed it immensely, and repeated the remark which he had frequently made during the opera htffa series ten years earlier at the same theatre, that the lighter Italian operas — such, for example, as the Barhiere, or Donizetti's Z'Blisire cVamore or Don Pasqitale — were far more effective in a theatre of moderate size than at Covent Garden. " They are lost at Covent Garden," he said, "and there is a drawing -room -like effect here, which is in keeping with the piece." ^ One of the dramatis personce of some play. XV CLOSING YEARS 403 He was delighted with the Figaro of Signor Padilla, and said he hardly remembered a better Figaro since Eonconi. When the scene came in which Bartolo and Basilio go out together, and Signor Zoboli and the Basilio of the evening, whose name I forget, went through the usual " gag " — each making polite speeches and begging of the other to go through the door first, and finally each simultaneously accepting the other's invitation, so that they are squeezed together in the doorway, he went, as usual, into a roar of laughter. A few moments afterwards he said, very seriously, " Do you know, I have seen that joke time after time for nearly sixty years, and probably seven-eighths of the people who played it are dead." And a little later he resumed, " It is to me at my age a most solemn thought. I remember as far back as De Begni's per- formance of Figaro in 1825, and, ever since then, year after year, I have seen all the same ' points ' made in the acting and singing — Eosina's UgliettOy Figaro's constant gossip, all the Count's rather fruitless scheming, and then the whole thing ending joyfully with " Almaviva son io, non son Lindoro " followed by the charming finale; and now here are all the same jokes, the same scene, the same story, and generation after generation of singers who have gone through it all, who have succeeded each other in presenting these living pictures, has passed away — gone over to the majority, and before many years are gone I shall have to follow them." He reverted two or three times in the course of the evening to the same thought. The daily walks on Hampstead Heath were generally taken in company with some friend who came out from London, or with Baron or Baroness von Hiigel, who were near neighbours. Sometimes he went out alone, and the solitary walks were the occasion of many an act of kindness to the poor. On one occasion he came home, and, on taking off his cloak, he was discovered to be coatless. He had given away his coat to ^ poor man whom he had met half clothed in the bitter weather. On another occasion he was heard saying as he came in, " Who will undertake to dispose of these toys for me ? " and he was found with a number of dolls, pin-cushions, penny whistles, ninepins, and Noah's arks. It transpired that he had met a poor person selling toys, and that, acting on advice 404 CLOSING YEARS chap. received from Father Keogh not to give away indiscriminately but to buy, he had invested in a large number of these articles. Cardinal Vaughan once spoke of Mr. Ward in public as " the champion of unpopular truth," and there is no doubt that this was his own view of himself. His controversial career and his constitutional depression gave him an habitual feeling that his life was a constant struggle against opposition and difficulty, and the marks of affection and respect which multi- plied during these last years kept him in a constant state of surprise. '' How extraordinarily kind," " really how touching," were the exclamations which followed a kind letter or a kind message. " Dear me," he once said, " I really think I am becoming quite popular. How very odd." He probably got more pleasure from his friendships during these years than at any earlier time. Some were old friendships, long in abeyance and now renewed, as with Mr. and Mrs. de Lisle, or with Canon Macmullen. Friendships belonging to a more recent date were those with Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson, already spoken of. Baron and Baroness Friedrich von Hiigel, Mr. K. H. Hutton, and Miss Simeon, afterwards Mrs. Eichard Ward. A letter to Miss Simeon, who had been in frequent intercourse with him at Freshwater, and sought his advice on matters of religious opinion and practice, is worth giving. Miss Simeon shared her father's liberal sympathies, and the letter is valuable as expressly stating what those who knew Ward always felt — that his vehement attacks on liberalism were aimed in reality simply at the non-supernatural view of life which he often found united with liberal-Catholic opinions, and which he considered to be in strict logic connected therewith : — Weston Manoe, Uh December 1872. My dear Miss Simeon — I take it as a great comphment and favour that you write so openly and at such length. I suppose now we have got as far as argument will go and may " shut up " (as the slang is), I will only, therefore, say a few final words chiefly of explanation. I am delighted that you agree on the whole so much with Father Newman's sermons, and also (I infer so from your note) with the extracts from his other works contained in my article. I think people's true mind is indefinitely better expressed by what they like than by the famiulce they use. I think you understand that I for one have no kind of dislike- to ecclesiastical liberalism (as I call it), except so far as it indicates- XV CLOSING YEARS 405 " religious liberalism." I think the former consistent in itself with even saintliness ; but I cannot but think most differently of the latter. . . . The only question you raise on which you have as yet had no argument from me is on the relation between intellectual cultivation and personal perfection. I had a controversy on the subject with Father Roberts some eight years ago in which I con- sider (though he does not) that he ended by admitting every essen- tial doctrine which I maintained. I don't want to bore you with further controversy, but if ever you care to look into the question I will gladly send you the pamphlets. Perhaps you will allow me to say expressly what I have already implied, that I don't think your formulce at all do justice to your real feelings and views, though of course I am very far from entirely sympathising even with the latter. I must again thank you for your extraordinary good nature. I earnestly hope, some time or other, you will go into a retreat. I will trouble you now no more. So with these three unconnected sentences I conclude. — I remain, my dear Miss Simeon, with every best wish, very sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. A few letters written during these years to other friends give an indication of the subjects which occupied Ward's mind. The question as to how far inspiration protects the Scriptures from error, in matters other than faith and morals, was then less burning than it is now. But the following letter, belonging probably to the year 1874, in reference to a pamphlet by his old opponent, Father Eyder, shows that he recognised its growing importance, and was not disposed to be stringently conservative in the matter. It is interesting, more- over, as indicating his view, very practical at the present hour, that the modifications in current theological teaching which the advance of science must make necessary, are best effected by discussion in privately circulated pamphlets. The danger of scandal to the weak, and the unseemly wrangle which popular controversy on subjects essentially unfit for popular treatment is apt to bring, are thus avoided. Father Ryder's pamphlet dealt, among other things, with the antiquity of the human race, and the difficulties raised by geological discoveries against the Biblical account of this matter. Albion Villa, Hampstead Heath, London, N.W., 29th Jane. My dear Father Ryder — I have read your paper with intense interest [did you happen to read an article in the Dublin Review of 4o6 CLOSING YEARS CHAP. July 1871, by Bishop Hedley ? If not, do look through it, " Evolution and Faith "]. In the midst of my profound ignorance on physical subjects, two things are clear to me — (1) That the work you are labouring at imperatively requires to be done ; and has been, in fact, from cowardliness much too long deferred. And (2) that I can fancy no way of doing it so unobjectionable as privately printing papers for distribution among the clergy, as you have done. There is very little in the way of opinion on which I should dare to venture, for even theologically (putting aside my jphysical ignorance) I have never studied the doctrines about Inspiration. I confess I am startled about pre-Adamite men, and specially feel a distaste for your postponing their extinction to the Deluge, so that there should have been numbers of men mixing with Adam's descendants who were not born in original sin, nor (I suppose) raised to the supernatural order, nor redeemed by Jesus Christ. Supposing science necessitates the supposition of pre-Adamite rational animals, — why should these animals have been men? I daresay there is some theological objection to any other hypo- thesis which does not occur to me. As to the "Unanimis Consensus Patrum" — I should have thought the problem you raise entirely external to the " res fidei et morum," on which that '' consensus " has authority. And as you say the case of Copernicanism seems conclusive on this. What specially impresses me in your paper — apart from its great ability and learning — is its apparent truthfulness, A writer like A. B. always gives me the impression (igno- rant as I am of physics) of being an artful dodger. Of all evils to our cause the prevalence of this spirit would be the greatest. Far better that we be silent than that we speak otherwise than with honest sincerity, as you have done. So it results that I think you have begun (1) a necessary work, (2) in the best external shape, and (3) in the best spirit. This will do pretty well. I should like to know to whom I may show your paper. Dalgairns ? Hutton ? The idea about inspiration being in some sense vision (p. 26), came ( I fancy) from Hugh Miller. I don't quite like your ap- plication of it in its entirety. I shall be off the stage before these questions become prominent. In fact their probable prominence will just about synchronise with your full maturity. Perhaps you are the theologian destined to deal with them. So ends a most scrappy and fragmentary, but very cordially interested letter. — Very sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. XV CLOSING YEARS 407 The subject is continued in a letter of 1st July. Albion Villa, Hampstead Heath, London, N.W., Is^ July. ... I am very anxious to know what Father Coleridge thinks of it, and shall be most grateful if you are able and willing to tell me. Oddly enough . . . when he wrote in the Dublin Review, he was decidedly more rigid than myself about Scripture. One or two expressions of the kind occurred in the MS. of his articles, which I induced him to omit. As a general rule I find the Jesuits very rigid as to any change in the traditional ways of teaching with reference to modern diffi- culties, though I fancy the other orders are even more so. Going back to your wakeful nights — did you ever try chl(yral for sleep 1 Many doctors now recommend it, though many denounce it. There is no doubt, at all events, that it is far less injurious than the old hypnotics. I take it now and then without being aware of any injury from it. Huxley is a zealot for it. — Very sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. In 1878 decreasing strength and increasing infirmity warned Mr. Ward that if he wished to complete his defence of Theism against the school of MOl and Bain he must resign the editorship of the DuUin Bevieio. The last number under his auspices appeared in the October of that year, and was prefaced by the following letter from Cardinal Manning, written on occasion of his retirement from the editorship : — My deak Dr. Ward — You will hardly need any words of regret from me on your resignation of the editorship of the Dublin Review. I have so often and so recently expressed to you in private how great I believe to be the services you have rendered to the Faith and to the Church, that personally you can need no further assurance. But I feel it due to you to bear a public testi- mony to the work that you have done in the last sixteen years. When my predecessor, the late Cardinal, transferred to me his rights in the Dublin Review, he attached to his gift the condition that I should ensure its perpetuity. I at once sought your help. You were among the first to whom I turned to find an editor and contributor. After a short interval, you consented to undertake the whole burden and responsibility of editor ; and from that time, through sixteen years, I can attest how unremitting has been your labour in defending and in spreading not only the Faith, but the principles and opinions which surround the Faith. And of these I must especially note your articles in defence of Catholic education 4o8 CLOSING YEARS chap. and of Catholic philosophy, in refutation of modern philosophical and metaphysical theories. In the course of this period three special subjects of great moment have been forced both by events and by anti-Catholic public opinion upon our constant attention, — I mean the Temporal Power of the Holy See, the relations of the Spiritual and Civil Powers, and the Infallibility of the Head of the Church. In all these your vigilant and powerful writings have signally contributed to produce the unity of mind which exists among us, and a more considerate and respectful tone even in our antagonists. I cannot attempt to enumerate the many subjects on which you have rendered valuable aid ; nor to estimate what has been the effect of the Dublin Review in raising our literary standard. The principle and spirit which has governed the Dublin Review in all these years, has been to represent fully and faithfully the guid- ance of the Sovereign Pontiff in his authoritative acts, by teaching neither less nor more, and, so far as possible, by reproducing his own words. Few are aware as I am at how much cost and sacrifice you have persevered in this laborious work, so long as health per- mitted you ; and now, in retiring from the office of editor, I hope you may have many years of health and strength to labour still for us and for the Faith. In this desire I am confident not only many friends, but many who know you only by your writings, and many who have even been opposed to you, will heartily join. May God grant to you and to your home every good gift. — Believe me, always, my dear Dr. Ward, yours affectionately in Jesus Christ, Henry Edward, Cardinal Archbishop of TFestminster. Archbishop's House, 27id Oct. 1878. Mr. Ward's reply ran as follows : — My dear Lord Cardinal — In your Eminence's most kind letter, you recall to my mind the circumstances under which I became editor of the Dublin Review. You will not have forgotten how actively I laboured, in co-operation with you, to bring about an arrangement, under which I should have occupied a less pro- minent position. But this project broke through. And no other course then seemed feasible, except that I should undertake the office of editor and do the best I could with it ; relying on your generous promise of support and co-operation, in which you have never failed me. I felt keenly my own manifold incompetence for the honourable but at the same time most responsible task with which I had been entrusted. In fact there were only two promises which I could venture to make. I promised (1) that I would devote my very best energies ungrudgingly and unremittingly to the work ; making XV CLOSING YEARS 409 it the one substantial business of my life, so long as I retained my office. And I promised (2) that — as regards those momentous questions which are a Catholic editor's chief anxiety — the one norm and rule of our doctrine should be the teaching and intimations of the Holy See, so far as I could apprehend these by careful study. I am particularly gratified by your pronouncing, that we have maintained as essential " neither less nor more " than the Holy See teaches. From the first it has been my strong conviction, that it is hardly a less evil to treat open questions as though they were closed, than to treat questions on which the Supreme Pontiff has expressed or intimated a judgment, as though they were matters for free discussion. Whether the Review under my guidance would do any greatly effective work towards the development and in- vigoration of Catholic thought — I was extremely doubtful. But I thought I could engage, that whatever work of the kind it should do, would at least be in the right direction. In this respect, too, I possessed an inestimable security, through your appointment of three priests who were to act as ecclesiastical censors. One of these — Rev. Father Eyre, S.J. — has retained this post during the whole period of my editorship. I have to thank him with especial earnestness for the indefatigable zeal and care with which he has discharged the wearisome duties of his office ; and for his valuable advice on several anxious occasions. The other two places in the censorship have been occupied success- ively by various accomplished theologians whom you have named. I have to thank them all for the important assistance they have rendered me, by correcting what was doctrinally erroneous, by warning me whenever they accounted my course contrary to eccle- siastical prudence, and by drawing my attention to passages, which were expressed with exaggeration or were otherivise liable to mis- apprehension. One reason, which alone would have made me profoundly dis- trustful of my power to edit a Review, is my incompetence on all matters of literature and secular politics. It has been the chief felicity of my editorial lot, that I have obtained the co-operation of one so eminently qualified to supply these deficiencies as Mr. Cashel Hoey. It was once said to me most truly, that he has rather been joint-editor than sub-editor. One half of the Review has been in some sense under his supreme control ; and it is a matter of extreme gratification to look back at the entire harmony which has prevailed from the first between him and myself. In the various anxieties which inevitably beset me from time to time, he has invariably shown himself, not only to be a calm and sagacious adviser, but even more, to be the most cordial and sympathetic of friends. I must also express sincere gratitude to my contributors. Some 4IO CLOSING YEARS chap. of them indeed have given me assistance of inappreciable value ; and that with a considerateness for my difficulties and perplexities, of which I have been keenly sensible. It would have surprised me more than a little, if, at the com- mencement of my editorship, I could have known that its termina- tion would be crowned by such a letter of approval as you have given me : a letter emanating from him who has a right (if any one) to speak with authority. After making every allowance for your kind partiality — I cannot but feel that I may still take your words as a most consoling testimony. I trust I may take them as a proof to myself, that my humble labours have not failed of doing real service to the only public cause worth labouring for, — the promotion of God's interests in the world. No other arrangement could personally have been so acceptable to me as that which your Eminence has made, in regard to those in whose hands the Duhlin Review will henceforth be placed. And the language of extraordinary kindness, with which you have now honoured me, is but the last of many instances in which your approval has been a most powerful support against those feelings of discouragement and despondency with which I always tend to regard my own exertions. It is the simple truth (as you well know) that I should more than once have entirely broken down and resigned my editorship in despair, had it not been for your Eminence's encouraging assurances. — Begging your Eminence's blessing, I remain, my dear Lord Cardinal, ever your affectionate servant, "VV. G. Ward. In the following year Leo XIII. appointed Mr. Ward, in recognition of his services, a commenclatorc of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. The remaining four years of his life were occupied, so far as health made work possible, almost exclusively with philosophical writing. The only exception was the work of editing and republishing a selection from his devotional and doctrinal essays from the Dublin Review. A correspondence which interested Ward more deeply than any other in the later part of his life belonged to these very last years. His correspondent was M. 011(^-Laprune, the author of the philosophical work Be La Certitude Morale. M. 011^-Laprune was professor of philosophy at the Ecole ISTormale, in Paris, and published in 1880 the work already referred to, a copy of which he sent to Mr. Ward. A contributor to the Corre- spondant, and in daily contact with the free-thinkers of the Ecole Norm ale, his views were far more akin to those of Lacordaire or Montalembert than to those of Yeuillot. The intellectual XV CLOSING YEARS 411 sympathy which disclosed itself between the two writers was a fresh evidence of the liberal attitude wliich was natural to Mr. Ward in matters relating to philosophy. He did not indeed forget the importance of guarding the claims of authority to protect the philosophical principles which enter into dogmatic theology, — a matter with which M. Olle-Laprune was less concerned ; but their correspondence shows, before all things, Ward's sympathy with a broader view than that of many of the Neo- Scholastics. For those interested in this aspect of Ward's career, the letters on both sides will have an interest. M. Laprune's are very long, and are given in an Appendix. I subjoin four of Mr. Ward's own letters : — Weston Manor, Freshwatee, I. W., \Uh August 1880. Dear Sir — I have to thank you very much indeed for your volume on Moral Certitude. I have now read as far as page 148 ; and my impression is that the doctrines which it so clearly sets forth are the very doctrines which, more than any others, will enable us Theists honestly to confront and soHdly to refute con- temporary infidehty. ... I send you an article which I published in January last, and which I hope may interest you. I am now engaged in defending freewill against more than one opponent. I am very grateful for the kind expressions concerning me, which you sent me in company with your volume. — I remain, dear sir, with great respect, faithfully yours, W. G. Ward. On reading my letter again I think I have been very far from expressing, with sufficient clearness, the very great sympathy and admiration with which I have read your volume as far as I have gone. Weston Manor, Freshwater, I.W., 26th December 1880. Dear Sir — When last I wrote to you I had read carefully about half your volume on Moi'al Certitude. Very soon afterwards I had an attack of head - weakness (to which I am most subject), which prevented me from pursuing my study until about three weeks ago. I have now finished the whole volume, and must not fail to thank you heartily for the extreme interest and pleasure it has given me. As to the last chapter especially, it seems to me almost the most important thing I have ever read as regards the special exigencies of contemporary Theistic controversy. I am now busy reading your work on Maleh'anche, and deriving from it (I hope) very great profit. Partly from your book and partly 412 CLOSING YEARS chap. from another which I have accidentally met with, M, Robert on SceiAism, I find there is a Catholic philosophical school in France, the existence of which (so narrow is my reading) I did not suspect. I shall esteem it a very great favour if you will mention to me which of such books you would especially recommend ; also, is there any periodical which I could take in which would keep me au courant of French thought on such matters ? I have taken the liberty of forwarding you a few reprints of my recent articles, as I did not quite understand from your former letter whether you had seen those articles. The illness I just mentioned will prevent me from contributing another before next July ; but in that article I hope to draw attention to your volume, and make on it a few sympathetic comments. If I may speak quite frankly there is one particular which I desiderate in it. You quote J. S. Mill's argument based on the moral and j^hysical evils of the world ; but you do not, I incline to think, answer his objections with that completeness and distinct- ness which their importance and prevalence deserve. — I remain, dear sir, with much respect, sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. Weston Manor, Freshwater, I.W., 2UK Jidy 1881. My dear Sir — I have been reading again with great attention your last letter. I have to thank you for it extremely. It has been the means of making me acquainted with a number of French Catholic philosophical works which Avill be of immense service. On getting those you have mentioned I find in them references to others ; and I have now some thirty or forty volumes, the posses- sion of which I owe to you. It seems to me (as far as I have yet had time duly to look at them) that they may be all in some sense called " Cartesian " rather than Scholastic. One of my own strongest convictions is that Catholics will not be able duly to meet the intellectual neces- sities of the time unless their philosophical basis be far larger than that recognised in the Seminaries. And I fear that Leo XIII. 's Encyclical may possibly do some incidental harm in the midst of much good. I have been greatly pleased by a paper on it in the Annales de la Philosophic Chrefienne last month. On the other hand, I venture to think it of much greater importance than your school (if I may so call them) apparently consider it, to strengthen the bonds between Dogmatic theology and Philosophy. One other remark : I have been reading with immense interest Margerie's work on the Existence of God. But neither he nor any Catholic I know, except Cardinal Newman, regards the existence of moral evil in the sha2)e we witness as so great a difficulty as I think it is. In England (I think) it is the one cheval cle hataille of the XV CLOSING YEARS 413 infidels. To me the world seems wi the surface to be not a place of equitable probation but of unmitigated favouritism ; some men being so exceptionally helped in their moral struggle and others so hope- lessly handicapped. To me all other religious difficulties put together do not seem so great as this by itself. It seems so near a con- tradiction in terms to say that the Creator of such a world as this is at once Omnipotent and Just. Excuse this talk in this detestable hanchmiting. Please don't take trouble to decipher it. Is there any hope of our ever meeting ? I wish you could come and pay us a visit here. Though my handwriting is so bad my talk is still (in my 70th year) very vigorous, and I am sure I should derive from you so very much instruction. — I remain, my dear sir, with great respect, sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. Pray think about paying us a visit. Netheehall House, Hampstead, Zrd February 1882. My dear Sir — You will have received by this time my article on " The Philosophy of the Theistic Controversy." I wish to express my regret that from an accidental oversight I omitted to mention one point connected with you which I had actually entered into my preparatory notes. I should have explained that one prin- cipal part of your meaning about God being cognised through faith is that such cognisance arises in the mind spontaneously, universally, irresistibly. This seems to me among the most important of Theistic facts. I hope that otherwise you may not be dissatisfied with my humble comments on your volume. On receipt of your last letter I ordered the Revue cles deux Moiides, in order to read Janet's commentary on your volume ; which com- mentary I find very weak in my judgment. Can you kindly tell me where I shall see your answer. . . . — Ever sincerely yours, W. G. Ward. This letter was probably the last ever written by Mr. Ward in connection with his philosophical work. He was strongly impressed at this time with the fact that death was at hand. " I keep asking myself Sydney Smith's question," he used to say, '' Which of the many uncomfortable ways of removing one from this world will nature employ in my case ? " He was constantly repeating the lines — Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti ; Tempus abire tibi est. Old friends had been dying lately, and he had been drawing 414 CLOSING YEARS chap. nearer to those who remained. Ambrose de Lisle and Oakeley — friends the thought of whom carried him back many- years — passed away in 1879. Dean Stanley died in 1881. Death had been busy too with his own relations. His brother Henry and two sisters died in the seventies. His aunt, Miss Emma Ward, well known in the Isle of Wight for the nearly seventy years during which she had taken a leading part in the charities in the island, died in 1880.^ With Oakeley and de Lisle intimacy had been revived shortly before their death, and during^ the vears 1880 and 1881 there were meetino's — farewell meetings they proved to be — with other old friends. Jowett came to see him, as I have said, from Farringford. Macmullen, long separated from him by differences of opinion, came to him at Hampstead. In 1881 Archdeacon Browne of Bath and Wells — " Beauty " Browne of Oxford memory — visited him at Weston. " I had not seen him " writes the ^ A word may be added in memory of Miss Emma Ward of AVestliill, to whom Mr. Ward was sincerely attached. From the time of her mother's death in 1813, when she first kept house for her father at Northwood, until her owai death in 1880, her life was one of constant acts of charity. It was said of her that she would forego any of the comforts of her daily life rather than fail to help a deserving case ; and for several years near the end of her life she gave up her carriage and horses, spending the money thus saved entirely on charitable objects. She was a Tory of the old school, intensely loyal to the Throne, and devoted to the people of the Isle of Wight. On the day of her funeral all the shops in Cowes were shut, and large numbers of the towTispeople followed the funeral procession. Some characteristic traits during the last days of her life are worth recording. The wedding of a friend of hers was to take place in two days' time, and she remarked, '■I hope I shall not die for two days. It would be such a bore for the A. B.'s to have to put off their wedding. " The Queen was constant in her inquiries during Miss Ward's last illness, and called at Westhill a few days before her death. Although scarcely able to move, Miss Ward could not bear that there should be any delay in the expression of her loyal thanks, and dictated at once a letter to one of the ladies-in-waiting, Lady Ely. " Miss Ward," the letter said, "although very feeble, is quite able to appreciate the gracious kindness done to her, and begs at the close of her long life to express her heartfelt gratitude for the many proofs of regard she has received from the Royal Family, beginning so far back as the year 1811, when H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester was her father's guest. And she is now more honoured still by Her Majesty's most kind interest, who she hopes will condescend to receive this expression of her loyal and deep affection for herself." The Court Circular of February the 2nd referred to her death in the following terms : " On Satm-day, Sir John Co well attended the funeral of the late Miss Emma Ward of Westhill, Cowes, on the part of the Queen. Her Majesty had made several inquiries for Miss Ward during her ill- ness. Miss AVard was universally respected and beloved for her great kindness and benevolence during her long life." XV CLOSING YEARS 415 ArcMeacon " since he lived for a short time in Sussex Square [in the fifties] till we were staying one winter at Shanklin, in 1881, when he invited us to spend twenty-four hours with him. He sent his carriage to meet us at Carisbrooke, and we were much struck with his patriarchal mode of life. His chaplain and agent dined at his table. He called the former, although he seemed almost a boy, ' Father.' His bright daughter had ridden to hounds that morning. Every bedroom had its patron saint, and before day broke we heard him wending his way to his beautiful chapel He asked us to come to visit him at Hampstead the next spring, but alas ! before we arrived in London he was with his Saviour." Mr. Ward was taken ill in February 1882, and although he was supposed after a week to be convalescent, the doctors detected, a month later, signs of an internal disease which rendered his recovery improbable. He removed to Winchester in April for change of air and scene, and revisited, close upon the end of his life, in company with his old schoolfellow, Lord Selborne, who came to see him there, the scenes of his boyhood. Here he seemed to be moving slowly towards recovery, and was able to go to Hampstead at the beginniug of June, in the course of which month the unfavourable symptoms became more pronounced, and his memory began to fail him. The present writer visited him about the third week in June, and although he was not yet confined to his room the gravest fears were entertained as to ultimate recovery. A few sayings and incidents belonging to this time are worth recording. A glimpse at the persistence of his moral discipline was given by a remark to one of his daughters. " Is it too late to hope to make a radical change in one's character after thirty ? " she asked. " Dear me, I hope not," was his reply as though he were quite startled. "I am over seventy, and there are several vital and quite radical changes in my character which I am hoping, please God, to make." To the present writer he remarked, " If ever I recover I shaU take one lesson to heart which I have learned in thinking over my past life during my illness, and that is to make more allowance than I ever did for the inevitable differences between one mind and another." He also made the remark, that it had been a great help to him in his illness to find that the 4i6 CLOSING YEARS chap. temptations against faith which had tried him in eariier days appeared to have passed away. One day, about a fortnight before his death, he found his memory so bad that conversation seemed to break down. He could not remember the most ordinary words or events. I asked him, as memory of early life is proverbially strongest, to try and dictate to me some of his old mock-heroic verses of Winchester days which I had often wished to have. He did so, to his own surprise, without any difficulty. He was confined to his bed for nearly two weeks before his death — being moved occasionally from room to room. He suffered acutely, his great strength of constitution making the struggle for life a hard one. Some one remarked that to watch him during these weeks was like seeing a great ship breaking to pieces and going down in the storm. The habitual thoughts of his life were with him as long as he retained consciousness — up to the night of Monday 3rd July ; and when partly wan- dering in mind he sent for one of us to talk over points which he thought of great importance for the defence of Christianity in coming years. He then described a fit of acute pain he had had a short time previously, and showed unmistakably that his mind was failing, speaking of Figaro in Eossini's JBarliere as an old friend of his. He dictated to his servant, within a week of his death, an account of his sufferings, that others, he said, might know what they might have to go through. Father Haythornthwaite administered the last sacraments to him, and Canon Purcell of Hampstead was frequently at his bedside. He was constantly troubled with the idea that his illness was a great nuisance to those who nursed him. "I fear," he said, " that I am a great bore to every one." He was sensitively grateful for the numerous inquiries made by his friends, and particularly pleased on hearing that his old friend Archbishop Tait had called to hear the last news of him. On Sunday th^ 2nd of July he asked what day of the week it was, and on being told, remarked that something would happen on Thursday — the day on which he actually died. The servant to whom the remark was made was so much impressed by it that when the doctor said that Mr. Ward could not live through Tuesday night, he insisted that Thursday was the day named by him, and on which he would die. Wednesday was XV CLOSING YEARS 417 spent in total unconsciousness, and in an apparently comatose state, and at 8.30 on Thursday morning he moved his head and looked up suddenly with an expression full of intelligence. The nun who was nursing him hastened to call Mrs. Ward, who had barely reached the room when the end came without a struggle. After death his features assumed a look of singular peace and beauty which those who saw him will not readily forget. His remains were carried to the Isle of Wight where he was buried, a very large assemblage of Catholic clergy — many of them old pupils — attending the funeral. Bishop, now Cardinal, Yaughan preached the sermon, and paid a tribute both to their personal friendship and to Mr. Ward's influence in the Catholic Church which he characterised as in some respects unique. On the day following the funeral Tennyson visited his grave in company with Father Haythornthwaite, and was deeply moved. A cross of fresh flowers had been placed to mark the spot until the monument should be erected. Tennyson quoted Shirley's couplet : — Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust. And then, standing over the grave, he recited the following stanzas : — The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things : There is no armour against fate, Death lays bis icy hand on kings. Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds : Upon Death's purple altar now See where the victor-victim bleeds. Your heads must come To the cold tomb. Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust. 2 E 4i8 CLOSING YEARS chap, xv Mr. Ward was buried with his face to the east in the little Catholic churchyard at Weston Manor. Over the grave, on a massive stone octagon base, a tall churchyard cross of Gothic design has been erected. Besides the figures of Our Lady and St. John on either side of the gabled Kood, there is in a niche on the eastern side of the shaft of the cross, a figure of St. Paul the Apostle. The inscription, engraved on a brass-plate, and let into a panel on the east side of the base, runs as follows : — ►p HaC • SUB • CRDCE • QDIESCIT ^ EXSPECTANS • RE7ELATI0NEM • FILIORUM • DeI GULIELMUS • GeORGIUS • WaRD FiDEI • PROPDGNATOR • ACERRIMUS ^ UT • PLENA • INTER • ViCTORES • PACE IN • AETERNUM • FRUATUR DeUM • GUI • SERVIVIT ADPRECARE Ob • IN • DIE • OOTAVA • SS • APOSTOLORUM • PeTRI • ET • PaULI Anno • aet • LXX • Sal • CIOIOCCCLXXXIJ. ^ The following translation is suggested by Mr. Everard Green, F.S.A., who assisted in the composition of the epitaph. ' ' Under this cross is resting, looking for the revelation of the sons of God, William George Ward, a most valiant champion of the faith ; for whom do thou beseech God whom he served, that among conquerors he may ever taste perfect peace," - The words propugtmtor acerrunus occur twice in the Roman Breviary : first of St. Athanasius (2nd May, lectio IV.) and next of St. Gregory Nazianzen (9th May, lectio VI.), and the word prop^ignaior occurs twice in the Collect for St. Stephen, King of Hungary (2nd September). I am indebted for these references to Mr. Everard Green. CHAPTER XVI AN EPILOGUE The survey of any prolonged controversy generally brings with it an accompanying sense of unsatisfactory results. It is a record of frequent misunderstandings. Like the old religious wars, religious controversies are fruitful in the noblest enthusiasm partially misdirected, in an excess of heat over light, in battles on behalf of one great truth under- taken against those who are urging another great truth, halves of the whole truth in reality, and yet regarded as irreconcilably opposed, — for the blackness against the whiteness of the particoloured shield. Champions devour each other for the greater colour of God, and the cynical man of the world remarks, " How these Christians love one another ! " and finds his plausible excuse for disparaging religious faith and leaving it alone. Or at best he compares their enthusiasm to that of Don Quixote, and charges them with expending their zeal in valiantly overcoming windmills, which their imagination has transformed into opponents of a sacred cause. That disinterested zeal for the noblest ideals is preferable, even if occasionally misapplied, to indifference and selfishness, is only a partial answer to the difficulty. Why not, asks the cynical critic, expend your zeal more fruitfully ? in practical benefits whose utility to mankind is confessed ; — in building hospitals, visiting the poor, housing them, clothing them, feeding them ? Why wear yourself out in constructing huge logical edifices, and sounding within them the war trumpet, and defending, amid the din and turmoil of a siege, fortresses which, when full analysis and explanation have done their work, in course of time melt away like the vision of Prospero, 420 AN EPILOGUE chap. And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind. If we conceive a small insect which could trace one by one the fortunes of each grain of the cloud of pollen which we see in a Swiss pine forest in the spring, the result of his observa- tions would probably be as sceptical as the conclusions of Mr. Ward's philosophical mice. The mice could conceive of no independent first cause ; the insects would see no order or pur- pose. They might follow the course of hundreds of grains, and find the result mere waste. Yet it is grains of pollen — though so small a proportion to those which are wasted — which are the means of perpetuating the beautiful types in the botanical kingdom. We care little for the incidental waste in the process, when we realise how necessary it is to organic life. And so it may well be with a life of controversy. Suppose that nine-tenths or even more of what has been written fails of the precise effect which its author hoped for, the residue which takes its place in the production and development of organic thought, and which does so in consequence of the series of experiments which a life of active thought alone can ensure, redeems that life as fully from any sense of in- effectiveness, as the fragrance and beauty of the pine forest or tiower garden rebuke the sceptical and captious pertinacity of the insect philosopher, who has registered his thousand instances of wasted pollen -grains. Why, instead of the laborious [process of following the course of grain after grain to disprove its effectiveness, did he not look simply at great visible results ? Why did he not note and thank the pollen which has fertilised, and leave the rest alone ? How far and where and how has the Catholic Eevival, and Mr. Ward's share in it, represented thought which has fertilised and proved productive? This is the question in answer to which I would attempt to make, as a kind of epilogue, a few very brief notes, as suggestions of what it would be as yet premature to assert more fully and positively, and referring primarily to religious thought among Englishmen. Let us take, first, the ethical side. The persistency of Catholic Christianity as an exponent and as a realisation, in the person of its saints, of the highest and purest ethical XVI AN EPILOGUE 421 standard, was a matter urged by many of the champions of the Catholic Eevival and repeatedly by Mr. Ward himself. The tendency, on the other hand, of the movement which began with the Eeformation, to destroy by its individualism the living Catholic tradition which preserved the primitive Christian ethos untainted, and kept up an impassable barrier between Christian ethics and the standard of the natural man, was a view forced upon the leaders of the Eevival in France and Germany ; — alike on Stolberg, Schlegel, Lacordaire, and Montalembert. There can be little doubt that this thought has impressed serious thinkers of our own time as a grave and significant one. The prevalence of Catholic devotional works, as those of St. Francis de Sales, Fenelon, P^re Grou, not only among English churchmen with Catholic sympathies, but among others in this country, implies beyond doubt a new influence of the spiritual lights of the Catholic Church as models and guides in the devotional life. And the point especially urged by Mr, Ward in this connection, — the value of a continuous living society which should preserve the impalpable ethos of a truly spiritual ideal of life, which should keep it untainted by the maxims of an unbelieving generation ; the functions of a visible Church as helping the affections and imagination against an importunately visible world ; of a Church which should assimi- late the spiritual wisdom of a St. Francis and a Fenelon, and exhibit the atmosphere which fostered their sanctity — this is a conception which many have accepted in some measure, and have yet hoped to see it realised outside the Eoman communion. Then, again, on the intellectual side, the idea which inspired de Maistre and his contemporaries, — of the Church as the principle of construction, the organised foe to intellectual and social anarchy, as the normal preserver, too, of the accumulated wisdom of the past, and the safeguard against the unreality of an excessive individualism (as contrasted with individuality), — this would appear to be a powerful force in that important movement in the Anglican Church which found its voice in Zux Muncli. " The Church," rather than " the Bible," as in idea the foundation and rule of faith, is accepted in words by many who share little of the opinion of the early Tractarians as to the necessity of making the idea actual, or entering frankly into any relations with a living authority, whether 422 AN EPILOGUE chap. in Eome or England. The dissolvent tendency of private judgment, and its voluntary renunciation of the constructive thought of the Christian Church in the past, are admitted in a measure by such thinkers. And Mr. Ward's share in enforcing the further logical consequence which they reject, — that the constructive principle is only thoroughly safe- guarded by devotion to Eome, was beyond question considerable. Many who do not concur with the details of Ward's analysis of papal infallibility will agree with the testimony of Cardinal Manning already cited as to the effect of his writings in promoting unity among Catholics themselves in this respect.-^ Then, too, the pregnant truth which from Bonald to New- man has been found influencing Catholic thought, that exhaustive logical analysis is not the normal test of the validity of practical beliefs, including the deepest religious convictions, will be found quite as characteristically in Dean Church's Lectures on the Psalms, or in some of Dr. Liddon's works, as in those of De Bonald or Ward or Newman. It is to be found likewise in various forms and degrees in the mysticism of Thomas Hill Green, in the broad Church writings of F. D. Maurice, in the speculative poems of Tennyson. And while its source is partly Kantian, the Catholic Eevival has un- doubtedly contributed much to its exposition, vivification, and application. These lines of thought which the Catholic Eevival brought into new prominence, and which Mr. Ward urged in his own way, have had their effect, then, even in our own country, and outside the Eoman communion. They were sources of sympathy which helped to make more effective the fight, shoulder to shoulder, of Dalgairns and Ward with other Christian thinkers in the Metaphysical Society, who were external to the Eoman Church. Catholic thought had often touched men unconsciously where it had not done so con- sciously. Again, the new prominence of the argument from con- science in the Catholic analysis of Theism — a prominence synchronising with the Catholic Eevival of this century — was a bond of union which would have been looked for in vain between a Calvinist and a Catholic of the seventeenth century ; ^ See p. 408. XVI AN EPILOGUE 423 while the spirit of open-minded appreciation of all phases of religious conviction which had been fostered by the Corre- spondant in France, and which Mr. Ward so heartily adopted in his dealings with English philosophers, introduced an element necessary to co-operation — the readiness to give and take. Dr. Martineau would think it possible to gain the assent and assist- ance of Catholics in his great plea for Theism and the Moral Law ; while Ward and Dalgairns were emphatic in urging the benefit which Catholic thought must derive from adopting many of the positions of the great Unitarian thinker in these fundamental problems.^ The presumption — special to times of intellectual stagnation — that the highest and purest faith necessarily brings with it an intellectual analysis which is entirely satisfactory, and can dispense with the ordinary conditions for exact and thorough philosophy, was no longer admitted. A genuine Catholic philosophy was felt to have much to gain from such a work as the Types of Ethical Tlheory, as St. Thomas Aquinas had learnt from Aristotle's Metaphysic, and as Albertus Magnus had adopted many of the positions of Maimonides. Turning back to the new influence of the Catholic ideal of spirituality as represented by its typical exponents, it is admitted by most thinking men that the Catholic Church in communion with Eome is its natural home. The corruptions of Eome, her lapse into superstition, her identification with a retrograde movement incompatible with the normal progress of the age, is the lament of many who recognise this. The anti-Eoman position which is most consonant with patent facts is that of Dean Church and of the Newman of 1833, that the state of Christendom is anomalous, and that the purity of Christian faith has failed, and irrational superstition super- vened, where faith should normally be strongest and purest — in Eome itself. " Sir," said Dr. Johnson, " I would be a Catholic if I could, but an obstinate rationality prevents me " : and it is the idea of a plain incompatibility with enlightened thought 1 An analogous example of frank and hearty admiration is to be found in a paper of Rev. Dr. Braig, parish priest, in the Philos. Jahreshericht der Gorres- Gesellschaft fur 1884, pp. 23 seq., which is all the more significant because Hermann Lotze's system (the subject of the paper) contains a larger number of positions finally unacceptable to a Catholic thinker than do the writings of Dr. Martineau. 424 AN EPILOGUE ^^hap. which is pleaded by the best thinkers as the motive for resisting a claim so obviously strong prnnd facie. ^To this incompatibility the Vatican Council is supposed by many to have set the final seal. For some years of the Oxford Movement the Council of Trent was looked on as the expres- sion of the abuses into which Catholicism had fallen, and its work of reformation was not known or understood by the average Tractarian.^ A somewhat similar fate has befallen the Council of the Vatican. Mr. Gladstone's attack on it was sympatheti- cally echoed by many who did not even care to read Cardinal Newman's reply ; and a writer of evident ability referring, in the Udinhurgh Review of January 1892, to the Vatican Council, has committed himself to such sentiments as the following : '' It is Dollinger's undying merit to have stood forth — eventu- ally single-handed and alone — against the most astounding infatuation in which any religious community in civilised times has ever indulged, to have vindicated the rights of reason and conscience against the most undisguised attack ever made on them." It would not be in character with the present work to enter on a full examination of the bearing of what is known as Vaticanism or of the Vatican Council itself on modern Catholic thought ; but it may be worth while to call attention to a few facts closely connected with the subjects dealt with in this volume, the significance of which different readers will no doubt estimate differently, but which are certainly not consistent with such indictments as. I have cited. The state of the case will be all the more easily understood by freely conceding from the first that Dollinger's protest at ^ See e.g. even Fioude's Remains (vol. i. pp. 307 etc.), where he talks of Trent as "the atrocious council." It is interesting to note in what light the prospects of Rome were regarded in Germany at the end of last century. Herder wrote, "The Church of Rome resembles but an old ruin, incapable of sheltering any new life" ; and Nicolai "Only among the common superstitious herd the Roman faith may possibly manage to continue in precarious existence, before science and culture it will never again hold its own." Even Goethe wrote, *' The Council of Trent has long ere this ceased to live in the minds of thinking men ; the period of conquests seems to me to have for ever passed away from the Catholic Church" (see Jannsen. L. F. Oraf von Stolherg, vol. i. p. 1). These prophesies were followed within 30 years by the conversion to Rome of 50 or 60 men of the greatest distinction in Gennany itself. XVI AN EPILOGUE 425 the Munich Congress of 1863 against the unhistorical and uncritical spirit of certain Catholic divines had, in many quarters, considerable justification. Enough has been recorded in these pages, especially in reference to France, to show how prominent a phenomenon at that time was the combination of a thoroughly unhistorical and uncritical spirit with an urgent and sometimes aggressive insistence on the papal claims. The words already cited of so weighty an authority as P^re de Smedt,^ with reference to M. Ch. Barth^lemy, the almost universal reaction at the present time, among Catholic thinkers, against such histories as that of the Abb6 Darras, the account, given earlier in this volume, of Abb^ Gaume and his friends, the characteristic passages cited from the pages of the Monde and the Univcrs, the view entertained by so devoted a Roman as Mr. Ward himself as to the inteltectual narrowness of some of the Neo- Scholastics, all illustrate the prominence in the sixties of what was stigmatised as Ultramontane narrowness. And that it was a powerful force at the time of the Syllabus few will deny. The real question is, Have the men who were responsible for such a line gained by the Vatican Council, and have its decrees in any sense endorsed their views ? Is the Roman Church since the Council committed to the general line of a school which was unhistorical and uncritical, and are its members, therefore, unfit, from an intellectual point of view, to cope with the crucial questions of contemporary thought ? Any one who attempts to answer this question must at least bear in mind certain broad facts. The present Pope, who has exercised his prerogative so frequently in the direct guidance of Catholics, and has, in this respect, given especial prominence to the duty of Ultramontane loyalty which the Vatican Council emphasised, has notoriously encouraged historical studies, and encouraged their pursuit in the most absolutely candid and critical spirit. His saying is well known that if the gospels had been written in the spirit of partisanship we should never have heard of St. Peter's fall or Judas's betrayal. His opening the Vatican Archives to Protestant as well as Catholic students, his encouragement and approval of Pastor's extremely plain-spoken history of the 1 See p. 119. 426 AN EPILOGUE chap. Popes/ both by placing the Vatican Archives at his disposal, and by the Brief of commendation addressed to the author after the appearance of his first volume, are noteworthy evidences that he has meant what he said — that history is to be pursued by its own methods and independently of its giving such results as are most acceptable to the Catholic controversialist. And while the historical spirit is receiving direct encourage- ment in the Vatican itself we have the important fact to which Baron von Hugel calls attention in his letter to me already cited ^ — the growth since the Vatican Council of a school of Ultramontane critics, Biblical and historical, whose accuracy and eminence are beyond dispute. To mention only names well known to English scholars, we have Professor Bickell,^ of Innsbruck, whose eminence as a Biblical critic and Hebraist is uncontested. In 1870 he was known as the author of a pamphlet in behalf of the proposed definition of papal Infallibility. Abb^ Loisy again, Professor of Exegesis at the Institut Catholique in Paris, is known in Germany and England, as well as in France, as a critic of the first rank. ^ An English translation of this important work has been published by Father Antrobus, of the Oratory (John Hodges, Charing Cross, 1891). It is significant to notice, in the Postscript added by Prof. Pastor to his 2nd vol., the hearty recognition which the Protestant Prof. Burckhardt, the greatest living authority on the history of the Italian Renaissance, accords to Pastor's "mighty undertaking " ; and then to remark the petulant vehemence with which a small old Catholic special-pleader such as Herr von Druffel attacks the same book. 2 See p. 373. ^ A distinguished Oxford critic to whom Bickell's name was well known as a Hebrew scholar and Biblical critic recently said in astonishment to a friend of the present writer's, "You don't mean to say that Bickell is a Roman 'priest ? " Such a remark is worth mentioning as a sign of the times, and of the extent to which the idea of modern Catholicism as essentially uncritical prevails among educated Englishmen. See on the other hand in the Oxford Professor William Sanday's The Oracles of God, Longmans, 1891, pp. 20, 21—" A controversy [on Capellus's first great book, 1624] arose in which the set of opinion throughout the PLcformed Churches was so strong that ... a later work by Capellus (the Critica Sacra published at Paris in 1650) could only be published by the help of his son who had joined the Church of Rome. It was in that Church that the view which is now universally held to be the right one (the late addition of the vowel points to the originally purely consonantal Hebrew Biblical text) found its ablest advocates. The writer indeed, who laid the foundation of Old and New Testament criticism, was a member of that Church, the Oratorian Richard Simon." See also p. 80, n. 1 — "There is an admirable school (of historical critics) at Paris, at the head of which is the Abbe Duchesne, one of the first XVI AN EPILOGUE 427 Pere de Smedt and the Bollandists were recognised both as loyally Eoman and as accurate and critical students of Church history even before Leo XIII. had set his seal on the move- ment of which they are representatives. Abb^ Duchesne, again, the editor of the Bulletin Critique, is known in this country as a critical scholar of admitted reputation : and he is known to his friends as the most loyal of Ultramontanes. In Italy we have the same phenomenon. De Eossi's reputa- tion, for example, is European. Is then the claim so glibly made in the spirit of undisguised hostility to Eome that the men whom impartial judges rank as our best critics have been anti-Eoman, for a moment tenable ? Could the student who compares Eeusch's Bihel unci Natur with the Biblical works of Abb^ Loisy give the palm either for acquaintance with the true critical method or for candour and thoroughness to the anti-Vaticanist ? ^ On the other hand, while the opponents of the decrees certainly had not the monopoly of intellectual and critical acumen, had the school of Yeuillot the monopoly of fanaticism ? Does Professor Friedrich's history of the Vatican Council breathe that calm impartiality which we look for in the true historian ? Was Dollinger — great historian as he was — free from fanaticism almost as great as Yeuillot's on the other side when he wrote : " As regards the dogmatic question, it is now clear and certain for me that the entire edifice of papal omnipotence and infallibility rests upon cunning and fraud, force and violence, in various forms, and that the stones which went to this building, are but a series of forgeries and fictions, and of conclusions and consequences drawn therefrom, — a series stretching through all the centuries, beginning with the fifth." Again, how can we believe that he even attempted to ascertain the real scope and meaning of the definition ? No doubt he had not seen when he wrote, and probably never saw, the record of its preparation which was published in theological scholars in Europe, M. le Blaut, IM. Tixeront, and the Abbt^. Batiffol ; in Germany, Bishop Hefele, Professors Kraus, Funk and Schanz ; in Rome, Cardinal Hergenrbther and the veteran De Rossi, who in 1885 lost the companionship of another distinguished Christian archaeologist, Garucci." ^ It is a curious fact that until the changes made recently, in a new edition, showed that Reusch had become aware of his shortcomings, his work was by no means abreast of the best criticism of the time at which it was written. 428 AN EPILOGUE chap. 1890, and which proves conclusively how intentional were the phrases which pointed to a moderate interpretation; but Bishop Fessler and Newman had said enough to suggest the possibility of the view which we now know beyond question to be the true one. It did not even define what F^nelon so strenuously urged, — the Pope's infallibility in dogmatic facts; and yet we find Dollinger writing as follows : " If my bishop were to declare : ' I absolve you from excommunication, on condition that you shaU believe and profess what Bossuet and F6nelon . . . taught concerning the Pope — who would be more ready and willing than I ? " (the italics are my own). And finally, what are we to think when he says in so many words, that " no one possessing a scientific culture of mind could ever accept the decrees of the Vatican Council."-^ The reader of this volume has the materials before him for judging of the correctness of the last two of these assertions, and may, if for no other reason, well doubt the moderation or justice of the first. Indeed, it has been well said that such a view would involve our holding the influence and sway of Eome to be a standing miracle. The shallow sceptic's contention, happily now almost obsolete, that Theism itself is but the invention of tyrannous, greedy priests, is here applied to explain and exhaust a phenomenon which has somehow managed to rally to itself and to keep, through the storm and stress of passions within and without, the enthusiastic loyalty of so large a proportion of Christendom. Again, was Dollinger even as a critic abreast of the times ? Would not his known unqualified disparagement of Welhausen have been cited as incurable narrowness had he been a Vaticanist and not an anti-Vaticanist ? ^ It is not to my purpose to pursue these questions further. They are set down to suggest the general conclusion to which ^ Dedaraiions and Letters on the Vatican Decrees, pp. 135, 121, 112 of German original. ^ In a review in the Academy of the Declarations (30th May 1891), written from anything bnt a Catholic's standpoint, it is well said: "Dr. Dollinger appears to hold that the Church was infallible up to 1870, but after that time, after the time it disagreed with himself, it became fallible and erring, the victim of tyranny and fraud." XVI AN EPILOGUE 429 the facts recorded in this book appear also to tend. The true proportions of any event are best seen at a little distance, and we are still too near the Vatican Council to understand its bear- ings completely. The present writer makes no attempt to estimate the relative strength of the various schools of thought in Catholic Europe at the present hour. But the events succeeding the Council to which he has referred, seem to throw grave doubt on the assumption so current in England that the utterances of the Old Catholics and of Dollinger himself on the subject, were the voice of the candid and critical remnant. They would seem likewise to favour the suggestion already made in this volume that the grounds of the opposition to the Council on the part of the German students were wider and less deep than they were supposed to be ; that their attitude was partly due to disaffection caused by the excesses of that section of the Ultramontane party whose influence was so great at the time of the Syllabus, and with whom Pius IX. was considered personally to sympathise ; that Dollinger's opposition to the dogma on historical grounds was in part occasioned by the form in which it was stated by some of its most prominent advocates. It may be remembered that the Mayence school, the most prominent representatives in Germany of the modern Ultramontane movement, adopted, in the person of Dr. Scheeben, who had become Professor of Dogmatics at Cologne, the most extreme position of Mr. Ward as to the extent of infallibility. The consistency of the Ultramontane position itself, both with the historical spirit and with a large-minded and moderate temper of mind, is a matter more readily tested practically than theoretically. Solvitur amhulando. Such men as E^nelon or Muratori, who lived before the extreme exponents of Ultramon- tanism had begun their work, or the more recent writers of whom I have spoken, whose prominence has come since the Vatican Council, and after the decline of the influence of the more extreme party, are living examples more decisive than any argument can be. The Vatican decision killed, indeed, the dangerous revival of Gallicanism which had allied itself with the indifferentism of the extreme Liberal Catholic position. It Idlled a movement, the chief danger of which, even in Mr. Ward's eyes, was not that it would get rid of the traditional 430 AN EPILOGUE chap. intellectual formulae of the schools, but that it would sap the foundations of the Catholic spiritual life. It emphasised, by localising the centre of authority beyond dispute, the necessity of the spirit of obedience, and of looking to Eome as the centre of unity. But its effect on directly intellectual problems has not in fact proved to be in a direction opposed to freedom and thoroughness. The best intellectual work of the early years of the present century in Germany itself had been done by men whose Ultramontanism was unquestioned, such as Stolberg, Gorres, and Mohler. The enforcement in 1870 of the theological position of these men was not, on the face of it, likely to prove in itself unfavourable to real thought or to the historical spirit. A movement which had the enthusiastic sympathy of a Bickell could scarcely have been too incompatible with enlightenment of intellect to be accepted by a Eeusch. That a phase of the new Ultramontanism was in fact so injurious to the interests of intellectual life in the Church, may make the work of dissociating that phase from the Vatican definition itself in the imagination of rough-and- ready exponents of English public opinion a slow one ; but no careful student of the period can identify the two. This view of the case, which has at least received con- firmation of late years, harmonises with that which nearly twenty years ago was indicated by Cardinal Newman. "Whether," he wrote to the Duke of Norfolk in 1874, " the recognition of the Pope's infallibility in doctrine will increase his actual power over the faith of Catholics, remains to be seen and must be determined by the event. . . . There is no real increase [in his authority]. He has for centuries upon centuries had and used that authority which the Definition now declares to have ever belonged to him. Before the Council there was the rule of obedience, and there were exceptions to the rule ; and since the Council the rule remains and with it the possibility of exceptions." And again he says, "All are not Israelites who are of Israel, and there are partisans of Rome who have not the sanctity and wisdom of Rome herself. . . . There are those who wish and try to carry measures, and declare they have carried when they have not carried them. How many things, for instance, have been reported with a sort of triumph on one XVI AN EPILOGUE 431 side, and with irritation and despondency on the other, of what the Vatican Council has done ; whereas the very next year after it, Bishop Fessler, the Secretary General of the Council, brings out his work on True and False Infallibility, reducing what was said to be so monstrous to its true dimensions. When I see all this going on those grand lines in the Greek tragedy always rise on my lips — Oi)7roT€ Tav Atos apfJLOViav dvarCyv Trapc^LacTL (Sovkai. And still more the consolation given by a Divine Speaker that though the swelling sea is so threatening to look at, yet there is One who rules it and says, ' Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther ; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.' " The assault on Christian faith which we see around us draws its strength, as we daily see, from three sources. There is the historical criticism of Christianity, which Strauss had begun in the days of the Oxford Movement, and which Eenan popularised in our own time ; there is the directly Biblical criticism of the Old Testament represented by such men as Welhausen; and there is the agnostic metaphysic, or denial of metaphysic, in its various forms. The number is daily growing in England as elsewhere of those who feel the necessity that Christian thinkers should deal not only reverently and cautiously, but also frankly and fully with each of these branches of study ; and, if in the first two departments, the writers already mentioned have been examples of the compatibility of Ultramontanism with such a spirit, in the region of pure thought Mr. Ward's own career may be read as a similar example. His worst enemy never accused him of either want of candour or want of thoroughness in that side of psychology and metaphysic to which he devoted himself. In the one subject, except mathematics, in which he professed to reason with due independence, he was characteristically broad, and liberal in the best sense, without wavering foi a moment in his Ultramontane loyalty. The recognition he won in this department from such men as Mill and Bain, as well as from Catholic thinkers in France and Germany, has been recorded in these pages ; and the points which his lifelong insistence pressed into the recognised statement of these great problems 432 AN EPILOGUE chap. — the grains of pollen which fertilised — have been traced in a previous chapter. Those who indulge the hope that the Catholic Eevival may prove to be what it has been so often in the past, a new budding forth of Christian life, in a fresh climate and under fresh conditions, blossoming widely, and bringing with it the flower of intellectual as well as ethical greatness ; who see in the Catholic Church the great instrument for the preservation of the belief in the supernatural which is now on the decline all around us, take note of these signs. If Catholic ideals and principles are spreading apace, and if the great organised society of the Catholic Church raises no barrier against those minds which now feel that they must in honesty face the problems of the times with perfect frankness, the fight shoulder to shoulder of all Christian thinkers in defence of this cause so vital to the welfare of humanity, must become in some degree a Catholic Movement. The sympathy in heart and aim must grow from a common enthusiasm and a common work ; and the study of such great examples as Fenelon and St. Francis of Sales, or in our own century, Lacordaire, will do more to break down the barrier of intellectual prepossession than any controversial discussion can effect by itself. One evening at the Metaphysical Society was a more unanswerable answer to the old-fashioned Churchmen who thought that Ultra- montanes were uncandid and insincere than ten years of con- troversial writing could have been. And, further, we have reached a time when theoretical controversy, indispensable though it be up to a certain point, has grown so intricate as sometimes to injure the sense of true proportion, and to obscure the vision of patent facts. The living Catholic Church, visible and continuous, with its roll of Saints, its hold on the minds of the people, its work in making them realise the supernatural, the exhibition in it of the intellectual virtues as well as the moral, this is a tremend- ous fact. It is emphatically " in possession," and to realise its significance is an indispensable condition to any sound judgment on the religious controversies of the hour. The continuous exhibition within any society of the highest types of goodness amid an evil world is a beacon light which all travellers may follow without fear. All may rest content that the seeker for XVI AN EPILOGUE 433 religious truth should follow this light, whether they hold its source to lie in a spirituality which can be perfectly found only in one society, or think that it may be found in more. The more closely the light is approached, the more clearly will this difference of opinion be decided. This work has been the story of a life, and the record of many controversies. That neither aspect of it is without its value in the long run has, I trust, sufhciently appeared. Sound and vigorous thought is seldom lost on the few who determine the advance of the intellectual life of Europe. But for the many who look for courage in the example of the strong men who have gone before us, the worker is yet more than his work. Christian biography, even apart from the records of its greatest heroes, — the Christian saints, — may do a work which abstract controversy cannot do. A life with one unswerving purpose remains, in spite of the shadow of human defects, a source of strength and light to other lives. It speaks more eloquently than argument to the power of the convictions which sustained it, and to the nature of the influ- ences which formed the character. Again, controversy, unless it be carried on in a spirit of earnestness and absolute candour, may sometimes, for the moment, distract attention from the light and lead astray from the path. But the radiance of example, of truthfulness of intellect, of self-abandoning pursuit of goodness, shines for all alike and unmistakably. It lights up the home in which such lives are passed, which has fostered them, and in which they have foujid their rest. It shows that home to others from afar ; it reveals to those who draw near to it its true character. Note. — The reader will find in Appendix A, p. 435, some details of the preparation of the Vatican Definition, illustrating what has been said in this chapter as to Dr. Dbllinger's misrepresentation of its scope. 2f APPENDIX A I SUBJOIN the pihes justificatives of the important crisis described pp. 261 seq. in the deliberations on the definition of Papal In- fallibility. I first extract from the diary of one of the Bishops (see p. 259), who favoured the more stringent view of papal infallibility, an account of Cardinal Bilio's unexpected opposition to the formula originally proposed, as defining too much. This passage is incorporated in the CollecUo LacensiSy and mil be found in volume vii. at p. 1699. Schema capitis IV., sive capitis addendi, ab eminentissimo Bilio com- positum et a sancto patre Pio IX. probatum erat, quapropter inopinatum omnibus accidit quod idem Cardinalis in sessione deputationis die 5 Maii, feria V. (mane) quum nemo patrum adversus schema loqueretnr, ipse contra illud argumentum coepit : non plus definiri posse de infallibilitate papae quam definitum sit de infallibilitate ecclesiae ; de ecclesia autem hoc tantum definitum esse, — eam esse infallibilem in definitionibus dogmaticis stricte sumptis, ergo quaeritur, inquit, num proposito schemate infallibilitas papae non nimis extendatur. Non negavit Cardinalis, imo tanquam certissimum asseruit, Papam infallibilem quoque esse in factis dogmaticis, in canonizatione sanctorum, aliisque paris momenti rebus. Addidit sese vehementer cupere ut in hoc concilio Yaticano definiretur, Ecclesiam infallibilem esse non solum in definitionibus dogmaticis stricte sumptis, sed etiam in factis dogmaticis, in canonizatione sanctorum, in approbatione ordinum. Sed quum nunc de infallibilitate Papae definienda ageretur antequam actum esset de infallibilitate Ecclesiae, illud incommodi habere schema quod plus diceretur quam oporteret. The words then proposed, — limiting the definition of papal infallibility to those rare occasions when something is proposed to the whole Church as strictly "de fide divina," its contrary being not only "erroneous" but "heretical," — characterised the "object" of the infallible utterance as " quid in rebus fidei et morum ab uni versa Ecclesia fide divina credendum tenendumve vel rejiciendum sit." With respect to the formula proposed on 8th June, which formed the basis of what was finally defined — in which the phrase " fides divina " was omitted, and the vaguer phrase " matters of 436 APPENDIX A faith or morals " was allotted to the sphere of infallible definitions — an Annotation of the commission, given in the official record, calls attention to the fact that its more vague and comprehensive wording does not in fact decide either more or less than the moderate formula of May the 6th ; but it avoids such objections as had been urged; for instance that of appearing to deny papal infallibility in dogmatic facts. All it makes a " dogma of faith " is that a papal definition determining what is ^'de fide divina" is infallible. Theologians are agreed in extending the sphere of infallibility somewhat farther, and thus it is " theologically certain " that the " dogmata of divine faith " do not cover the whole sphere of pontifical infallibility. As to how much farther it extends, opinions, as we have seen, differ. Dogmatic facts, and the canonisation of saints, are almost universally included ; and many theologians, with Mr. Ward himself, extend the sphere to censures falling short of the censure "heretical." The very important " Annotation " on this subject (Adnotatio IV. 8th June) will be found at p. 1644 of the seventh volume of the Collectio Lacensis. It runs as follows : — Quod ad ipsam definitionem pertinet, sensus formulae quae nunc proponitur eatenus indeterminatus est quatenus quaeri potest quaenam sit deftnitio quaestionis fidei, num ea tantum qua aliquid fide divina credendum proponitur, an eae quoque quibus de facto dogmatico decernitur aut censura minor infra haeresim infiigitur etc. Sed huic dubitationi per ea quae de objecto infallibilitatis addita sunt, quantum hie satis est, respondetur. Si enim in alia constitutione objectum infallibilitatis ecclesiae determinabitur eo ipso etiam objectum infallibilitatis Komani Pontificis declarabitur. Sin vero nulla talis definitio fiet, de objecto vi hujus decreti judicandum erit secundum ea quae nunc jam de Ecclesiae infallibilitate communiter tenentur : nempe dogma fidei esse Romanum Pontificem non posse errare quum fide divina credenda proponit, et theologice certum esse, eum etiam in aliis rebus declarandis ab errore immunem esse. Unde patet per banc formulam nee jilus nee minus definiri quam in prius p'oposita definiretur ; sed per hanc formulam genericam vitari videntur incommoda quaedam in priori a nonnuUis inventa. That the fathers were determined to prevent even the appearance of anything further having been decided than is explained in this Annotation, is seen in the official record of the same day (8th June). One of the fathers said, in discussing the proposed formula in its original shape, " Schema non placere quum sensus ejusdem sit am- biguus et quod definiri non intendatur tamen definiatur, sc. infallibili- tatem et R. Pontificis et Ecclesiae ad ea etiam extendi quae damnantur nota quae haeresis nota sit inferior. Quare declarandum esse videri esse dogma fidei Pontificem in decretis fidei et morum eadem iafallibilitate gaudere qua gaudeat Ecclesia, et eodem modo quo APPENDIX A 437 Ecclesiae, etiam Pontificis decreta, quae ad idem objectum extend- antur, esse irref ormabilia " (p. 1688). This proposal is, as we know, substantially embodied in the decree as ultimately drafted. In its final shape it declared *' Eomanum Pontificem ea infallibilitate pollere quti, divinus Kedemptor Ecclesiam suam in definienda doctrina de fide vel moribus instructam esse voluit." On 22nd May, when it was decided not to retain the formula which appeared to deny that infallibility could extend beyond strict definitions of divine faith — the denial of which is heresy — Cardinal Bilio's proposal for an historical introduction, emphasising the scientific " subsidia " used by the pontiff, was made. " Proposuit, we read, " ut historicus quidam prologus illi capiti praefigeretur quo ostenderetur qua ratione summi Pontifices fidei magisterium in Ecclesia exercere semper consueverint, simulque falsae suspicioni praecluderetur aditus, quasi Romani Pontifices absque consilio, deliberatione et scientiae subsidiis in rebus fidei judicandis procedere possint" (p. 1701). In the same direction is the first " Annotation " of 8th June. Utile visum est inserere capiti nonnulla ad rectam intelligent! am dogmatis accommodata, nempe : Summum Pontificem doctoris munere non sine commercio et unione cum Ecclesia fungi ; nunc per Concilia nunc per se decreta edere ; antequam definiat, Scripturam et traditionem consulere ; derdque donum infallibilitatis non hoc sensu personalem esse ut ei abstractione facta a sue munere conveniat" (p. 1644). The words of the historical introduction which carried out these suggestions have been already cited in the text (p. 262). APPENDIX B The subjoined letters from M. 011(^ - Laprune are the replies to Mr. Ward's letters to that thinker, cited in Chapter XV. The incidental reference, in the second letter, to the passage -at -arms between the writer and M. Jules Ferry, throws an interesting light on the state of things in the France of 1881. Bagnilkes-de-Bigorre, Villa des Tilleuls, 19 scx>temhre 1880, Monsieur, — Je suis fort touched de la lettre que vous avez bien voulu m'adresser, et je vous reniercie bien vivement. L'approbation que vous donnez k ce que vous avez lu de mon livre, m'est singulierement pre- cieuse, et c'est pour moi un encouragement, en meme temps qu'une satisfaction bien grande, de vous entendre me dire que les doctrines exposees dans cet ouvrage sont celles qui, plus que toute autre, nous mettent k meme de r(^futer Tincredulite contemporaine. Vous etes, en pareille matiere, un juge ^minemment competent, vous qui discutez avec une si admirable vigueur les theories contraires avec verites morales et religieuses. J'avais remarqu^ dans la Dublin Review, dont je suis le lecteur assidu, I'article tres important que vous avez bien voulu joindre k votre lettre ; je suis heureux d'en avoir maintenant cet exemplaire et de le tenir de votre main. J'espere qui si vous rencontrez dans la lecture de mon ouvrage quelque proposition qui vous paraisse inexacte, vous voudrez bien me la signaler. Les critiques ou les observations d'un penseur si clairvoyant sont d'un grand prix. Si votre approbation m'encourage, les reflexions dont vous aurez la bont(^ de me faire part me donneront le moyen d'ameliorer mes theories, et votre lettre si gracieuse me permet d'esp^rer que vous ne me refuserez pas ce secours. Je vous remercie par avance de riionneur que vous me ferez et du profit que je trouverai dans vos critiques. Vous me demandez, monsieur, si je suis Catholique. Les der nitres pages de mon livre, si vous y etes parvenu maintenant, vous ont doun6 la reponse, J'y rends k I'Eglise Catholique un hommage ou ma foi se declare. Je suis Catholique, je le suis profondement, je le suis de tout APPENDIX B 439 mon esprit et de tout mon coeur. Bien que je n'aie eu en vue dans mon livre que ce que j'appelle la foi morale et naturelle, je pense que mes assertions ont dans I'ordre surnaturel des applications faciles a voir. Je suis avec le plus vif int^ret votre lutte contre les adversaires du lihre arbitre. Vous rendez h, la v^rit^ un Eminent service. Depuis longtemps, monsieur, je vous connaissais. Vos articles dans la Dublin Revieio et votre beau livre On Nature and Grace m'avaient inspire pour le Docteur Ward de profonds sentiments d'admiration et de sympathie. J'avais remarqu6 aussi I'liommage m^rit^ que Tun des penseurs le plus (^nergiquement combattus par vous, Stuart Mill, vous avait rendu, et je me suis plu k le rappeler dans une des notes de mon livre. Je suis heureux que ce livre m'ait amen6 k vous connattre mieux maintenant et d'une manifere personnelle. Je me f^licite des relations qui s'^tablissent entre.nous ; elles sout pour moi un honneur, et je sens tout le profit que j'en recueillerai. Veuillez agr^er, cher monsieur, Thommage de mon respect, et me croire cordialement tout votre. Leon Oll]^-Laprune. J'espere que, si vous avez quitt6 Tile de Wight, ma lettre vous sera renvoy^e ou vous etes maintenant. Pour moi, je dois rester k Bagn^res- de-Bigorre jusqu'a la fin du mois ; je passerai le mois d'octobre a Pau, coteau de Turan9on, Basses Pyr<^nees. Apres cela, je reviendrai k Paris pour reprendre mes cours k I'Ecole Normale Superieure. J'habite a Paris, rue Gozlin, 31. Coteau de Turancon, pr^is Pau, 2?>f6vrier 1881. Cher Monsieur, — Je vous demande pardon de faire une si tardive r^ponse a votre excellente lettre. De vives inquietudes, caus^es au commencement de Tann^e par la sante de mon pere, m'ont empech^ de vous repondre au moment ou vous avez ^crit, et, depuis que mes inquie- tudes sont dissip^es un travail pressant a pris et absorb^ tons mes moments. Je regrette vivement de n'avoir pu plus tot vous adresser mes remercie- ments. Je suis singulierement touche des cboses que vous me dites. A peine remis d'une maladie fort p^nible, vous avez voulu, monsieiu', reprendre et poursuivre jusqu'au bout la lecture de ma Certitude Morale^ et, cette lecture achev^e, vous vous etes hate de me dire vos impres- sions. Je vous en suis extremement reconnaissant. Je ne saurais vous dire assez quel prix j'attache k vos jugeraents. Connaissant, comme je le fais, vos travaux, vos belles etudes sur les plus hautes questions de la philosophie, vos serieuses et profondes discussions des systemes contem- porains, et I'esprit qui anime tout ce que vous ^crivez, je sais ce que vaut un temoignage d'estime et de sympathie venant de vous. Quand vous me dites notamment que vous avez remarqu^ le dernier chapitre de mon livre, je suis heureux, sans vanite aucune, de vous entendre parler comme vous le faites de Timportance de ces pages qui me tiennent fort au coeur, en eflfet, et ou j'ai mis le r^sultat de mes plus intimes et de mes plus chores reflexions. Vous les croyez utiles. C'est pour moi une tres douce satisfaction de recevoir ce temoignage d'un juge tel que vous. 440 APPENDIX B Je comprends bien que le Scepticisme de M. Robert vous ait frapp^. C'est un livre s^rieux et int^ressant. J'en ai en connaissance au moment on je venais de terminer I'impression de ma Certitude Morale. Sans nous connaitre le moins dn monde, et sans nous douter que nous poursuivions d'une mani^re differente, il est vrai, des objets d'etude analogues, nous nous trouvons, M. Robert et moi, etre arrives au terme en meme temps. Cela est curieux, C'est le signe de Timportance de la question au temps present. C'est le signe d'un certain mouvement d'esprits qui a des caractferes communs. Peut-on nommer cela une ^cole 1 Y a-t-il une ^cole pbilosopbique catholique, dont ces livres r^veleraient I'existence? II y a, dans I'Universit^ de France, un certain n ombre d'esprits pro- fond^ment religieux, s^rieusement et liautement chr^tiens. N'appartenant a aucune des ^coles, qui ont la faveur en ce moment, ils combattent le positivisme, Patlieisme, le panth^isme, I'idealisme. Jusque la ils ne different pas beaucoup de certains spiritualistes qui defendent avec vigueur les vieilles doctrines. Mais ce qui distingue les penseurs et les ^crivains dont je parle, c'est qu'ils rc^pudient nettement le rationalisme ; ils sont, et, dans I'occasion, ils se montrent franchement chr^tiens, catbo- liques. Ce ne sont pas des adeptes de ce qu'on a bien nomm6 la ])hilosophie s^'pare'e. Leur philosophie est chretienne, et se declare telle. Aussi le groupe dont le livre de M. Robert et le mien vous ont r6v^l6 I'existence, a bien les caracteres que vous notez. Seulement cela ne constitue pas une ^cole proprement dite. Ces penseurs se connaissent ^ peine entre eux, ou, s'ils ont des relations mutuelles, ils n'exercent guere d'iniiuence les unes sur les autres. Aucun n'est le maitre, aucun n'est le chef. II n'y a point de direction commune donnee h. tons par un esprit qui serait comme le centre d'oii i)artirait le mouvement. Chacun ob^it k sa raison chretienne, k sa conscience, et fait de son mieux son ceuvre, luttant contre les erreurs du temps present, tachant d'^claircir tel ou tel point obscur. Ce qu'ils ont de commun leur vient de la doctrine chretienne elle-meme, non d'une ^cole philosophique. lis doivent a leur instruc- tion universitaire une connaissance familiere de Descartes et du 17® siecle ; mais ils usent librement du cart^sianisme. lis consultent volontiers Saint Thomas d'Aquin, et, meme avant que le Pape L^on XIII. eut public son Encyclique, ils avaient pour le grand docteur catholique plus que du respect ; ils croyaient bon et salutaire de I'^tudier, et ils retudiaient ; mais leur philosophie n'est pas a proprement parler le Thomisme. Ce sont des hommes, au courant de toutes les doctrines philo- sophiques qm ont agit^ le monde depuis trois siecles, tr^s attentifs aux efforts de la philosophie contemporaine, desireux de defendre les grandes Veritas si etrangement attaquees aujourd'hui : ils se livrent a cette oeuvre sans former une ecole, mais ils sont chretiens, ils sont catholiques. Ils n'ont pas seulement souci de ne pas heurter les dogmes. lis sont animus de I'esprit chr^tien. Je ne sais, monsieur, si je reussis bien a vous faire connaitre ce groupe de philosophes qui vient d'attirer votre atten- tion. Remarquez c^u'il ne s'agit pas ici de la philosophie du clerge. Bien que j'aie des rapports affectueux avec plusieurs membres de la com- munaute de Saint-Sulpice, par exemple, je ne connais pas assez la philo- sophie de cette ilhistre maison pour en parler pertinemment. Du reste il y a 1^ un Anglais bien distingue, qui serait h. meme de vous renseigner, APPENDIX B 441 M. Hogan. Je ne voiis parle pas non plus de la philosophie chez les J^suites : leurs Etudes litt^raires, revue mensuelle que vous connaissez certainement, vous incliquent leurs tendances et vous signalent leurs travaux. Je vous parle seulement du groupe de philosophes appar- tenant ou ayant appartenu k TUniversit^ de TEtat, et liautement clir<^- tiens et catholiques. Vous me demandez de vous faire connaitre des livres et une revue p^riodique qui vous permettraient de suivre ce mouvement d'id^es. Parlous d'abord des livres. Je ne vous cite que ceux dont les auteurs sont non seulement chr^tiens mais publiquement declares comme tels. M. Charaux, professeur de pliilosophie a la facult<^ des lettres de Grenoble, a public plusieurs 6crit importants, entre autres la Methode Morale et la Pensee et V Amour (que je signale dans la preface de mon livre). M. Desdouits, professeur de philosophie au lycee de Versailles, a publie (k la librairie Thorel, a Paris) des ouvrages que vous pourriez aussi consulter. M. Am6dee de Margerie, ancien professeur k la faculte des lettres de Nancy, a quitte rUniversite de PEtat, et il est maintenant Doyen de la faculty des lettres k I'lnstitut Catholique de Lille : il y fait iin cours de philosophie. II est I'auteur d'une Theodicee (2 vols., chez Didier, k Paris) oil vous le trouverez nettement chr^tien et catholique. Plus anciennement, M. Th. H. Martin, Doyen (honoraire maintenant) de la faculte des lettres de Eennes, avait rendu de tres grands services k la philosophie chretienne par sa savante etude sur le Tim^e, par sa Philosophie de la Nature (2 vols.), par ses Essais sur la Science et les Sciences, et il travaille et ecrit encore. Voil^, monsieur, quelques noms. Je ne vous ai point parl^ du P. Gratry, mort depuis bientot dix ans, et tr^s bien connu de vous. On ne pent dire qu'il ait fait ^cole. Mais il a tres certainement exerce une profonde influence sur les esprits. II a contribue, plus que personne peut-etre, k faire aimer et goiiter la philosophie chretienne. En un sens trfes vrai, mais large, il a ete le maitre de plusieurs, qui ne reproduisent pas d'ailleurs ses doctrines particulieres et qui jugent librement ses plus chores theories. Son ame a r(^pandu dans Tair un souffle g^n^reux, chaud, vivifiant. Beaucoup d'esprits en ressentent encore I'influence. Le groupe de penseurs que j'ai essay^ de vous caracteriser, a-t-il un organe special, une revue periodique 011 Ton puisse chercher ses ten- dances, et ses travaux ? Non, pas k proprement parler. Plusieurs ont ecrit dans le Correspondcmt ou dans le Gontemporain ; mais aucun, je crois, d'une maniere suivie ni pendant un temps tr^s considerable. Et d'ailleurs ces revues ne sont pas des revues proprement philosophiques. Les Annales de Philosophie Cliretienne, surtout depuis leur r^cente reorganisation sous la direction de M. Xavier Eoux, sont peut-etre destin(^es k devenir I'organe du groupe en question. M. Martin de Rennes lui donne les dtudes qui occupent sa laborieuse vieillesse. M. Charaux 6crit aussi dans ce recueil. II y a annonc6 et analyse ma Certitude Morale. On m'a demande d'y ecrire moi-mCme, et je suis fort dispose a le faire, quand j'en aurai le loisir. Vous le savez, monsieur, ce ne sont pas ces doctrines qui sont aujourd'hui en honneur. N^anmoins elles re9oivent un accueil non seulement respectueux, mais sympathique, quand elles sont enseigni^es 442 APPENDIX B avec sinc^rit^, et avec qiielque talent L'Universit^ de I'Etat, malgr^ la guerre declar^e par M. Ferry ^ tout ce qui est clerical^ n'a pas banni de ses chaires ce noble enseignement. Elle s'ouvre de plus en plus aux autres doctrines ; on y trouve souvent surtout un certain spiritualisme vague, non sans el(^vation, mais sans precision, fidele encore aux grandes v^rit^s morales, mais tent6 et d6j^ ^branle par les philosopbies qui dominent aujourd'hui dans le monde. Pourtant un philosophe tres francliement et tres hautement spiritualiste pent se faire ecouter et applaudir : aussi M. Caro, a la Sorbonne. Un pliilosophe cbr^tien pent obtenir a TEcole Normale sup^rieure, le respect, la sympathie, au point d'etre publiquement venge par ses <^leves le jour oil la presse hostile I'insulte. C'est ce qui m'est arrive, et dans des circonstances bien remar- quables. Ayant manifest^ ma sympathie a des religieux expuls^s en vertu des trop fameux d^crets du 29 mars, et ayant ^^rotest^, simple- ment, correctement, mais hautement, contre cette violation du droit et de la liberty religieuse en signant un proces-verbal des faits accomplis durant Texpulsion, j'ai eu Thonneur d'etre frappe par M. Jules Ferry. Cela s'^tait pass^ dans les Pyrenees a Bagneres-de-Bigorre, le 16 octobre ; mon cours a I'Ecole Normale clevait recommencer apres la Toussaint ; le Ministre m'a suspendu pour un an. Catholique notoire, et clerical publiquement compromis et frappe comme tel, j'ai ^t6 dans les journaux I'objet de toutes sortes d'attaques. Le XIX"". silde m'a lou^ perfidement de m'etre fait aimer cependant i\ I'Ecole Normale ; mais comment? Parceque, disait-il, j 'avals eu I'habilete de laisser mon clericalisme h. la porte. Alors mes Aleves ont spontanement proteste dans une lettre rendue publique, et ils ont rendu c\, leur maitre un ^clatant temoignage, declarant qu'ils savaient bien ses convictions, et que lui lie les dissimulait point. Je vous demande pardon de vous donner tant de details sur un fait qui m'est personnel ; mais cela vous pent servir : vous voyez par 1^ que la jeunesse de cette Ecole Normale (d'oii sort I'elite des professeurs des lycees de I'Etat) est capable de supporter un enseignement chretien, que dis-je? de s'attacher ^ un maitre chretien. N'en concluez pas que tons ces jeunes gens qui ont suivi mes legons, aient adopts ma doctrine, et retenu I'esprit qui inspire mes conferences. J'espere avoir fait quelque bien ; mais je ne meconnais pas que la philosophie chr(3tienne n'est point aujourd'hui en honneur. Vous trouverez dans ma Certitude Morale la description d'un etat d'esprit que je crois assez commun. C'est avec pages 336-338. La Eevue Philosophique (revue mensuelle chez Germer-Bailliere) vous permettrait aussi de juger de ce qui est actuellement k la mode. La philosophie anglaise attire beaucoup les regards. Kant d'une part, les positivistes anglais d'autre part, voilL\ les maitres du jour. J'ai toujours eu une profonde sympathie pour le mouvement d'id^es qui se produit en Angleterre contrairement k ce positivisme. J'aimerais a m'en rendre un compte exact. J'ai souvent song^ k en entreprendre I'etude et k composer avec des documents precis une s^rie d'articles pour le Gorrespondant Le loisir m'a manque. On ne connait gufere en France que la philosophie anglaise positiviste. Stuart ]\Iill, Alex. Bain, Herbert Spencer, ce sont comme des dieux. Carlyle etait certainement connue ; et sa philosophie avait ^t^ mise en lumifere par M. Taine ; et puis on va APPENDIX B 443 s'occnper beaucoup de lui parce qii'il vient de mourir. Mais Tattention se concentre plutot sur les autres. Je serais curieux de connaitre par le detail la liitte centre ce positivisme soit chez les protestants soit chez les Catlioliqnes. II y aiirait im grand int^ret, ce me semble, a retracer cette histoire. Vous y anriez une place d'honneur, vous qui avez avec tant de courtoisie, mais avec tant de vigueur, combattu Stuart Mill, vous que Stuart Mill cite deux fois avec honneur, ainsi que je me suis donn6 le plaisir de le rappeler dans mon livre. Je connais aussi un peu les Merits de M. Saint-George Mivart. Je ne parle pas du Cardinal Newman : vous avez vn, par mon livre, combien je I'ai ^tudi^, combien je lui dois, et quelle satisfaction j'ai dprouv^e a declarer que je lui dois beaucoup et que je lui suis profond^ment reconnaissant. Ainsi, monsieur, ^^endant que vous desirez etre renseign^ sur ce que vous nommez une Ecole pliilosophique catholique en France, j'ai a regard de I'Angleterre une curiosity analogue, et le temps seul m'a manqu^, et mallieurensement me manque encore, pour mettre a execution mes projets d'etude. J'espere qu'il ne me manquera pas toujours. Vous m'annoncez, monsieur, une chose qui excite toute ma recon- naissance. Vous avez le dessein de parler de ma Certitude Morale dans la Dublin Review. Rien ne pouvait ni'etre plus agreeable. D^j^ le n^ de Janvier contient une notice concernant mon livre. Mais c'est court, c'est une indication, il n'y a presque point d'appr(^ciation. Vous, clier Monsieur, vous me dites que vous voulez faire sur cet ouvrage de sympatliiques com- mentaires. Je ne sais comment vous remercier de Thonneur que vous songez a me faire. Cette annonce me cause une profonde satisfaction. Je regrette bien que votre sante vous empeclie d'ecrire en ce moment dans cette excellente Dublin Preview. J'aime tant vos articles. C'est si serieux, si etudie, si consciencieux. Vous savez si bien analyser et discuter. Vous avez eu la bont^ de me renvoyer vos derniers articles tiri^s a part. Je vous en remercie mille fois. Je regrette de ne vous avoir pas dit assez clairement que j'avais re9u d^j^ le premier envoi. Le second, comme le premier, est arriv^ k bon port, et je suis heureux d'avoir ainsi ces remarquables articles, publies k part. Vous avez fait une admirable campagne contre les adversaires du libre arbitre. Je viens de m'occuper d'Aristote. C'est encore un sujet qui a pour vous de I'interet. Je commence I'irapression d'une ^tude sur la Doctrine Morale d^Aristote. Je me suis beaucoup servi de vos remarquables Editions anglaises, Sir Alex. Grant, Moore, Congreve, etc. Je vous remercie vivement, cher Monsieur, de la critique que vous m' adressez ou plutot du regret que vous m'expressez a propos d'un passage de mon livre. Vous trouvez qu'ayant signaM I'argument de Stuart Mill fond6 sur les maux moraux et physiques du mojide^ je ne r(^ponds pas k I'objection avec assez de nettete et n'y insiste pas comme elle le m^riterait. Vous avez raison; j'ai pens^ que ce n'etait pas de mon sujet, vu que je ne me proposais pas en cet endroit de prouver I'existence de Dieu ; mais je trouve avec vous que de tels arguments ne peuvent ctre indiqu^s sans qu'une discussion s^rieuse et complete en etablisse aussitot la non- valeur. lis produisent de I'effet, ils ont, h. vrai dire, une r(5elle import- ance. II faut montrer par un examen complet qu'ils ne sont pas con- cluants. Je vous remercie done, Monsieur, et chaque fois que vous 444 APPENDIX B voudrez bien me signaler ce qui dans mes ecrits vous aura semble insuffisant ou fautif, vous me trouverez sincerement reconnaissant. Je termine en vous offrant toutes mes excuses. Je me suis laiss6 aller a causer avec vous, et voila une lettre extraordinairement longue. Quand je pense que vous etes ^ peine sorti d'une maladie penible, et que vous etes encore fatigu^, je suis confus de vous imposer la lecture d'une si longue lettre. J'espere que vous voudrez bien me pardonner cette sorte d'indiscr^tion. Le d^sir de repondre a vos questions d'une maniere complete et s^rieuse m'a entrainc. Vous ne verrez en tout ceci qu'une preuve de la profonde estime et de la vive sympatliie que vous m'inspi- rez. Je fais bien des vceux pour que votre sant^ se raifermisse, et je vous prie d'agreer, cher Monsieur, I'assurance de mes sentiments de grand respect, et, laissez-moi le dire, de cordiale confraternity ; car nous servons la mC-me noble cause, et nous pouvons nous saluer par ces belles paroles chores aux premiers Clir(itiens : 'H yapis tov Kvpiov rjfxCjv 'l-qo-ov XptcrTov fxeO' rjixoju. L]^ON OlL]^-LaPRUNE. Permettez-moi de vous donner mon adresse ordinaire : 31, rue Gozlin, h Paris. Je serai de retour a Paris le 1 6 mars. Pour ce qui concerne la doctrine de St. Thomas d'Aquin, vous avez pu voir, par mon livre, combien j'aime a la faire connaitre et comment mes theories s'en rapprochent sur des points tr^s importants. Vous pourrez voir de meme que, dans cette ^tude sur MalebrancJie (que vous voulez bien prendre la peine de lire), mon admiration pour Malebranche ne me fait point accepter ses theories exagerees, et c'est plutot a la maniere de Saint Thomas (mais de Saint Thomas lui - meme, non de quelques-uns de ses adeptes ou commentateurs) que je tache d'expliquer la connaissance. Plus je lis Saint Thomas, plus je I'admire et plus je trouve qu'il est bon de T^tudier profond^nient et de se mettre k son ^cole. Pau, coteau de TUEANgON, 17 aout 1881. Cher Monsieur — Je suis confus et desole de mon long silence. Vous m'avez ecrit deux fois, et quelles lettres ! combien gracieuses et charmantes ! Vous m'avez envoye votre tres remarquable article. Vous avez, k la fin de ce travail, parle de mon livre sur la Certitude Morale en termes extremement flatteurs. Et moi, je ne vous ai pas donne le moindre signe de vie. Veuillez, je vous en prie, me pardonner. Vos lettres me causent une trfes vive satisfaction ; je suis tres honore et tres heureux de ce commerce epistolaire qui s'est ^tabli entre vous et moi ; et cette fois j'ai ^-t^ tres particuliferement touche de I'aimable et cordiale invitation que vous avez bien voulu me faire. Si je ne vous ai pas (icrit tout de suite pour vous exprimer mes sentiments, c'est que j'ai 6t6 tres occupe. Quand j'ai regu votre lettre du 3 juillet, j'etais k Vichy, et, tout en prenant les eaux, je mettais la derniere main a un Essai sur la Morale d'Aristote que vous allez recevoir ces jours-ci. En arrivant ici, j'ai donne tons mes soins k un autre travail ; j'ai achev^ la preparation d'une edition classique tr^s s^rieuse du 8^ livre de la Morale a APPENDIX B 445 Nicomaque qui figure maintenant sur le programme de nos classes de Philosophie. Tout cela m'a absorb^, si je puis aiiisi parler, et maintenant encore je ne puis me donner le plaisir de causer longuement et tout a I'aise avec vous, com me je le souliaiterais. J'ajourne encore la rcponse d^taiU^e k la partie pliilosophique si interessante de votre dernifere lettre. Je n'y touclie que brifevement, me proposant surtout aujourd'hui de vous remercier, cber monsieur, de toutes vos amabilites. Je pense comme vous que les Catlioliques, pour faire face aux necessities intellectuelles de I'heure presente, ont besoin d'une base pliilosophique plus large que celle qui est reconnue dans les S^minaires. Je crois aussi qu'il y a une maniere etroite d'entendre le retour k la philosophie de Saint Thomas, et que la pensee de Lc^on XIII pourra etre mal interpretee ; je dis avec vous que TEncyclique pent faire accidentellement quelque mal au milieu de beaucoup de bien. Je reviendrai en detail sur cette question dans une autre lettre. J'examinerai aussi la remarque tres juste que vous faites au sujet de I'union entre la philosophie et la th^ologie. Vous dites que ce que Ton pent appeler notre Ecole ne resserre pas assez les liens. C'est vrai. J'examinerai avec vous les raisons de cela. Enfin je suis bien frappe de ce que vous dites k propos du mal moral. Oui, les philosophes catholiques et en general les philosophes spiritualistes ont I'air d'escamoter (si Ton pent employer ce mot) la difficult^, ou bien ils ne la voient pas. Le Cardinal Newman la voit Je connais les passages auxquels vous faites allusion. Vous la voyez aussi. J'aime cette maniere franche d'aborder les questions. Nous avons trop commun^ment je ne sais quelle peur des difficulties qui nous fait fermer les yeux. Les ennemis, qui les ont bien ouverts, sourient sans doute de notre si^curit^ oil ils soupgonnent quelque poltronnerie. Je voudrais m^diter sur ce grave sujet et chercher le moyen de r^pondre comme il faut a la grande objection du mal moral. Je me propose de penser tres s^rieusement a cela. Mais, pour cette etude et pour bien d'autres, de quel recours me serait un entretien avec vous I Le d^sir que vous m'exprimez si gracieusement, cher monsieur, je le ressens aussi. Depuis que nous sorames en correspondance, une profonde sympathie mutuelle nous a rapproch^s I'un de I'autre. Nous avons caus^ par lettres de philosophie, mais ce n'a pas ete un commerce purement intellectuel ; il s'y est mele quelque chose de cordial, parce que nous sommes devours a la meme noble et sainte cause, et que des Chretiens, des catholiques ne peuvent s'entretenir de ces int^rets sacr^s sans que leur ame se montre. Nous nous sommes done connus peu a peu mutuellement, nous avons vu ou entrevu nos ames, pour ainsi dire, et des liens afFectueux se sont formes entre nous. Voil^ que maintenant vous m'appelez aupres de vous. Vous me faites un grand honneur ; et bien volontiers, je vous assure, je ri^pondrais k votre appel si je le pouvais. 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