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HENRY EDWARD M^H CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER ARRANGED BY WILLIAM SAMUEL LILLY Kal fiiijvt %v S" eyw, S Ke<£aAe, \atpto ye Siaksyofievos rots tr<£dSpa 7rpetr0vTais fioKei yap fiot xPV val """P* o.vtS)V irvvBa-vetrdai, tatrnep rtva. bSbv 7Tpoe\7)\v96TbiV, t\v koX rjfias Serjerei iropevsd I am happy to say that law still stands in the sacred statute-book. Well, a labourer has a right to determine for whom he will work, and when he will work. I do not mean in any capricious and extortionate way, but he must be first and last the judge and the controller of his own life, and he must pay the penalty if he abuses that freedom. This carries with it also the right to say whether he can subsist * Thess. iii. 10. + S. Luke x. 7. The Rights of Labour. 65 upon certain wages. This is undeniable. He may set too high a price upon his labour, but then he will pay the penalty. No man can appraise it for him. Another man may offer him his wages, and if he is not con- tent he may refuse it. He cannot say: 'You shall work'. Well, now, in England serfdom lasted until the fourteenth century, and I have no doubt that serfdom was one of the reasons why the fertility of England was not what it is now ; — one, I say, for I do not forget capital, skill, and science. Serfdom died out under the benign action of Christianity. Then for many centuries there existed a state of labour in this country which, though it was free in one sense, was not altogether free in another. It was under certain social circumscriptions which limited the freedom of the labourer — the old law of settlement and the like, into which I will not enter. At the present time the labour of Englishmen is, I may say, as free as the air. They may go where they will ; they may labour when they will ; they may labour for whom they will ; they may labour for what they can obtain ; they may even refuse to labour. This again is undeniable. I do not see how anybody can deny this without denying a right which belongs both to property and to capital. Labour has a right not only to its own freedom, but it has a right to protect itself. And now, I know I am treading very near to dangerous ground ; nevertheless, I will speak as an historian or as a political economist, but certainly not as a demagogue. If you go back to the earliest period of our Saxon history, you will find that there always were associations distinct from the life of the family on the one side and from the State on the other. The family has laws of its own — laws of 5 66 Political. domestic authority, laws of domestic order, and — I will say, after King Solomon — laws of very salutary domestic punishment. On the other hand, the State has its public laws, its legislature, and its executive. But between the public and the domestic life there is a wide field of the free action of men and of their mutual contracts, their mutual relations, which are not to be controlled, either, by domestic authority, and cannot be meddled with by the public, authority of the State ; — I mean the whole order of commerce. Commerce existed as soon as there was the interchange of one thing for another, and these free contracts between man and man — between employer and employed — are as old as civilisation. Clearly, therefore, there is a certain field which must be regulated by a law of its own, by tribunals of its own ; and as soon as we begin to trace anything in our Saxon history, we begin to trace the rise of guilds. They were of a religious character at first. Some have thought they were religious only, but that is a mistake ; they were also what we should call benefit societies ; they were also for protection ; they were again for the vindication of liberty from the oppressive jurisdiction of those who held local authority. There were guilds, or gilds, of many kinds — some were called 'frith-gilds,' and others were called 'craft-gilds,' and these 'craft-gilds' were composed of masters and of men — of employers and of employed. In all the history of civilisation, if you go back to the Greeks or to the Romans, you will find that trades and professions always had their societies and fellowships by which they were united together. It seems to me that this is a sound and legitimate social law. From this it would seem to me to follow that the The Rights of Labour. 67 protection of labour and of industry has at all times been a recognised right of those who possess the same craft : that they have united together ; that those unions have been recognised by the legislature ; that whether they be employers or employed ; whether they possess the dead capital or the live capital — the dead money or the live money— all have the same rights. And I do not see, I confess, why all men should not organise them- selves together, so long as they are truly and honestly submissive to one higher and chief, who is superior over us all — the supreme reign of law which has governed, at all times, the people of England. At a time, I think, in the early part of this century, or at the close of the last, when there was great suffering at Nottingham, when the stocking-weavers were under severe depression, and there were very painful and hostile conflicts between the employed and the employer, Mr. Pitt said in the House of Commons : ' The time will come when manufactures will have been so long established, and the operators not having any other business to flee to, that it will be in the power of any one man in a town to reduce the wages ; and all the other manufacturers must follow. Then, when you are goaded with reductions and willing to flee your country, France and America will receive you with open arms ; and then farewell to our com- mercial state. If ever it does arrive to this pitch, Parliament (if it be not then sitting) ought to be called together, and if it cannot redress your grievances, its power is at an end. Tell me not that Parliament cannot ; it is omnipotent to protect.' * I think it remarkable that Mr. Pitt at that day should have fore- * Pitt's Speech on the Arbitration Act, quoted in vol. xxiii., p. 1091, Hansard. 68 Political. seen the questions which are before us at this moment ; but it is not remarkable that he should have had the statesmanlike prudence of seeing that the remedy lies in the supreme control and protection of the law. I have great respect for political economy. I entirely believe in the law of supply and demand, and free ex- change and safety of capital, which are the first con- ditions of industry ; but there is one point on which I am sorry to say I am a very lame political economist, and I cannot keep pace with others. I find political economists denouncing all interference, as they call it, of Parliament with the supply and demand in any form of any article whatsoever. But the principle of free- trade is not applicable to everything. Why is it not applicable ? Because it is met and checked by a moral condition. There is no moral condition checking the multiplication of food and the multiplication of clothing — the multiplication of almost every article of life which is not easily susceptible of an abuse fatal to men and to society. Well, now, I am afraid I am going to tread upon difficult ground, but I must do so. I am one of those — which is of no importance, but Mr. Brassey is also one of those, and that is of a great deal more — who are of opinion that the hours of labour must be further regulated by law. I know the difficulty of the subject ; but I say the application of unchecked political economy to the hours of labour must be met and checked by a moral condition. If the great end of life were to multiply yards of cloth and cotton twist, and if the glory of England consists or consisted in multiplying, without stint or limit, these articles and the like at the lowest possible price, so as to undersell all the nations of the world, well, then let The Rights of Labour. 69 us go on. But if the domestic life of the people be vital above all ; if the peace, the purity of homes, the educa- tion of children, the duties of wives and mothers, the duties of husbands and of fathers, be written in the natural law of mankind, and if these things are sacred, far beyond anything that can be sold in the market — then I say, if the hours of labour resulting from the unregulated sale of a man's strength and skill shall lead to the destruction of domestic life, to the neglect of children, to turning wives and mothers into living machines, and of fathers and husbands into — what shall I say — creatures of burden — I will not use any other word — who rise up before the sun and come back when it is set, wearied and able only to take food and to lie down to rest, — the domestic life of men exists no longer, and we dare not go on in this path. I know I am treading on a very difficult subject, but I feel confident of this, that we must face it, and that we must face it calmly, justly, and with a willingness to put labour and the profits of labour second — the moral state and the domestic life of the whole working popu- lation first. I will not venture to draw up such an Act of Parliament further than to lay down this principle. I saw in my early days a good deal of what the homes of agricultural labourers were. With all their poverty they were often very beautiful. I have seen cottages with cottage-gardens, and with a scanty but bright furniture, a hearth glowing with peat, and children playing at the door; poverty was indeed everywhere, but happiness everywhere too. Well, I hope this may still be found in the agricultural dis- tricts. What may be the homes in our great manu- facturing towns, I do not know, but the homes of the 70 Political. poor in London are often very miserable. The state of the houses — families living in single rooms, sometimes many families in one room, a corner a-piece. These things cannot go on ; these things ought not to go on. The accumulation of wealth, in the land, the piling up of wealth like mountains, in the possession of classes or of individuals, cannot go on, if these moral conditions of our people are not healed. No commonwealth can rest on such foundations. (" Miscellanies," Vol. II., p. 81.) THE IRISH GRIEVANCE. The ' Land Question,' as we call it, by a somewhat heartless euphemism, means hunger, thirst, nakedness, notice to quit, labour spent in vain, the toil of years seized upon, the breaking up of homes, the miseries, sicknesses, deaths of parents, children, wives ; the despair and wildness which spring up in the hearts of the poor when legal force, like a sharp harrow, goes over the most sensitive and vital rights of mankind. All this is contained in the land question. It is this which spreads through the people in three-fourths of Ireland with an all-pervading and thrilling intensity. It is this intole- rable grief which has driven hundreds of thousands to America, there to bide the time of return. No greater self-deception could we practise on ourselves than to imagine that Fenianism is the folly of a few apprentices and shop-boys. Fenianism could not have survived for a year if it were not sustained by the traditional and just discontent of almost a whole people. Such acts of rash- The Irish Grievance, 7 1 ness and violence as have marked the last twelve months may be the work of a few, and those of no high or formidable classes ; but they would never have been perpetrated, they would never have been possible, if it were not for the profound estrangement of a large part of the people from British laws and from British govern- ment. This feeling is to be found nowhere more calm, deep, and inflexible than among those who are in imme- diate contact with the ' land question ' ; that is, in the occupiers and tenants, and in the labourers, whose lot is better or worse as the occupiers and tenants prosper or are impoverished. These are neither apprentices nor shop-boys ; neither are they a handful, but a population ; and a population in close kindred and living sympathy with millions who have tasted the civil and religious equality and are thriving under the land laws, of the United States. Let us not deceive ourselves. Ireland is between two great assimilating powers, England and America. The play and action of America upon England, if it be seven days slower in reaching Ireland than that of Eng- land, is sevenfold more penetrating and powerful upon the whole population. It is estimated that in the last twenty- five years £24,000,000 have been sent over by the Irish in America for the relief or for the emigration of their kindred and friends. The perfect unity of heart, will, and purpose which unites the Irish on either side of the Atlantic cannot be more complete. Add to this that the assimilating power of England, which has overcome the resistance of Scotland, and absorbed it into itself, is met by a stern repulsion in Ireland, which keeps the two races asunder. Add again, that the assimilating power of America is met and welcomed with gratitude, sym- pathy, aspiration ; that the attitude of Ireland has long 72 Political. been, as Sir Robert Peel said in Parliament five-and- twenty years ago — ' With her back turned to England And her face to the West. ' Four millions and a half of Irish in Ireland turn instinc- tively to five millions of Irish in America. It is this that every statesman and citizen ought to weigh ; and the first condition to estimating the gravity of the danger is to put away the childish shallowness with which some of our public papers have treated Fenianism. For nearly three hundred years the same diseases in Ireland have produced the same perils. In the seventeenth century the men who should have been our strength were in the armies of Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Poland, and the Low Countries. In the eighteenth century, according to the records of the War Office in France, 450,000 are stated to have died between 1690 and 1745 in the French service, and as many more it is believed between 1745 and the beginning of this century. Is this imperial wisdom or imperial strength ? I will not pursue these thoughts. I cannot think that the statesman who will not staunch this ebbing of our life-blood will deserve well of his country. And I do not think that any man who cannot, at least in some measure, do so is a statesman. It needs little wisdom or capacity to see that the constitution which fitted England in its childhood when it was bounded by Ber- wick Castle and the Cinque Ports, is a garment too narrow to cover the limits of three kingdoms. As one who towards the end of life can look back without discerning a deed or word at variance with the heartfelt loyalty of an Englishman, and as one who next after that which is not of this world desires earnestly to see maintained the The Prospect of Disestablishment. 73 unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British Empire, I implore all who are near the springs of sovereign power, and are able to guide by their wisdom the course of legislation, to take no rest until they shall have raised Ireland to an absolute equality, social, political, and religious, with England and Scotland, and shall have won back the love and fidelity of the noble-hearted, generous, heroic people of Catholic Ireland. Sir John Davies, Attorney-General in Ireland, in 161 3, no soft judge by nature or by office of the Irish nation, has left on record his opinion, formed on the experience of many years, — ' That there is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the exe- cution thereof, although it be against themselves, so that they may have the protection and benefits of the law when upon just cause they do desire it'. Let 'equal and indifferent justice' be done even now, and the heart of Ireland may yet be won. (" Miscel- lanies," Vol. I., p. 251.) THE PROSPECT OF DISESTABLISHMENT. To those whose memories can reach back to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and to the emancipa- tion of Catholics, it is evident that the changes we now see hurrying onwards like the race of a tide have been long preparing. The Church of England was morally disestablished by the change in our polity, which placed its destinies in the hands of a constituency and a legis- 74 Political. lature in which Dissenters from the State religion form a very powerful element. From that day the Church of England began to appeal to its own spiritual authority and to exert its own internal energies. It became a voluntary body in three distinct ways, — in the multipli- cation of churches dependent on voluntary offerings, in the founding of schools without endowments, and in the multiplication of colonial bishoprics. Twenty* years and more ago those who watched the voluntary churches formed in our colonies foresaw that the colonies would react upon the mother country and that the unestablished churches of Canada and Australia would insure and hasten the disestablishment of their mother church. But no one, I think, foresaw how soon or how rapidly the question would be raised. They who can remember the political events from 1830 to 1840 will recollect how violent were the outcries against the Established Church, and the demands for the removal of the bishops from the House of Lords. The Establishment was formidably threatened, but it was not as yet in much danger. The old political and social traditions were too strong ; the power of the Establishment in Parliament was para- mount It was confident of its own strength, and defiant of its adversaries. The time of reforming abuses was come, because the time of disestablishment was not yet. But since 1840 irresistible currents of change have been working within the Church Establishment. It has been parting asunder by the repulsion of two schools, each tending to their ultimate analysis, the Anglo- Catholic and the Critical, or, to use not offensively, but only for clearness sake, two other terms, the Romanising and the Rationalistic Schools. These two forms of * These words were written in 1868. The Prospect of Disestablishment. 75 thought and these two intellectual tendencies are so fully launched into activity that nothing can restrain them from reaching their natural points of rest. The Church of England is incapable of controlling or of holding them together. It cannot do so by authority, for both reject it ; the one as incompetent, the other as inadmissible. It cannot do so by intellectual control, for both alike regard the Anglican reformation as intel- lectually incoherent. It cannot do so by spiritual suasion, for both alike regard it as unattractive in its influences. Still less can it do so by its coercive judg- ments, for both alike appeal from them to their own standards of Catholicity or of Reason. This develop- ment of two counter and divergent movements has now been in operation for thirty years, and every successive decade has revealed that for the Church of England to return upon its past, or to retain its present attitude towards its own members, towards the country, towards the Catholic Church, is impossible. It is to be observed that the noted controversies on baptism and inspiration had no sooner ended with the decision of the Crown in Council than a new class of questions was forced upon the supreme tribunal of appeal. The appeals in causes of doctrine had revealed the true pretensions of the royal supremacy in matters of belief. This rendered the royal supremacy intolerable at home. The appeals in matters of jurisdiction from Natal revealed the pretensions, but also the incompetence, of the Crown in matters of authority, and this rendered the royal supremacy intole- rable in the colonies. Some of the best and most capable minds in the colonies are demanding freedom, which means disestablishment for their Church, and that demand is supported at least for the colonies, and some- 76 Political. times for even more, by a powerful sympathy at home. Some also of the best and most capable minds in Eng- land are prophesying that the Church of England must be disestablished, and are not only preparing for the event, but not obscurely invoking it as a release from the burden of a civil supremacy in matters of conscience. The Church of England has come to see that the supremacy of Kings has passed into the supremacy of Parliaments. The change in our political constitution is by itself effacing the whole theory of the Tudor supremacy. It is now resolved into the supremacy of the popular will. It was already intolerable to have an appellate jurisdiction in the Crown. It is still more in- tolerable to have it vested in the electoral constituency. The supremacy of Caesarism is past. The supremacy of the democracy will be the next form of ecclesiastical authority. So long as there is an Establishment this supreme control will be claimed, but the claim is in itself intolerable, and nothing can more powerfully alienate men from the idea of an Establishment. (" Miscellanies," Vol. I., p. 261.) THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. The Protestant Reformers did not foresee that 'the religious difficulty,' which they created by heresy and schism, would one day be fatal to Christianity and to themselves. The men of progress have found out that education forms men, and that men form society. They are, therefore, labouring to expel Christianity from Tke Religious Difficulty. yj education ; for men formed without religion will expel it from society. To this end governments are taking education into their own hands ; and men of progress are clamoring for education, free, secular, universal, and compulsory. If Christian parents are to have a voice in the formation of their children, the hope of building up a State without God will long be deferred. Therefore, the unrelenting effort to secularise our schools. Thou- sands of professors in all countries, paid and unpaid, have been preaching for generations that religion must be separated from politics, from philosophy, from science. We are almost wearied into silence. Public opinion is poisoned into believing this falsehood. The youth of these days is being reared upon a literature which is rationalistic and sensuous, if not worse. The period of life in which the mind and the man are to be formed is spent in studies from which Christianity is being more and more excluded every day. The little religion which remains in education is in juxtaposition with science and literature, not in union with it, much less diffused throughout it as its life and governing law. What wonder that so many grow up without God in this world ? that the Christianity of many more is shallow, powerless, and, so to speak, not so much as skin-deep ? Christianity has been left as a matter of choice to private individuals ; but modern education renders it morally impossible for individuals to be formed as Christians. ("Ecclesiastical Sermons," Vol. III., Intro., p. xcv.) 78 Political. THE EDUCATION QUESTION. The Holy See has always laid down this great and vital principle — namely, that secular and religious in- struction shall never be parted in education. It has laid down this principle not only for the schools of the poor, but for the universities of the rich. It has never wavered ; it has never receded, and it never will ; and that because education is not the mere teaching of in- tellectual opinions. Education is the formation of the whole man — intellect, heart, will, character, mind, and soul. Whether it be the poor child in the parish school, or the son of the rich man in the university, it is all the same. The Catholic Church will accept as education nothing less than the formation of the whole man. Therefore, when doctors and politicians talk of the separation of the religious and the secular element, the Church will have none of it, and that for this plain reason — instruction is not education. Secular teaching, without the light of faith and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, not only cannot form the man, but they deform the man. They form the man upon a false model ; they unshape him from that original reflection of the image of God which is in him. First, they deprive him of light ; and where light departs, darkness comes. The human mind, once deprived of the light of revelation, is filled with the clouds of unbelief or of credulity. It can The Future of the Primary Schools. 79 give no account of God ; it has no knowledge of His character or of its own nature. Is this education ? Though a man were a professor of seven sciences, with- out the knowledge of God and of himself what is he ? In the sight of God he is like the men of the old world which knew not God. He may be as wise as Empe- docles or Aristotle, but he is not a Christian. He is not formed upon the type of Christianity : he is not after the example of Jesus Christ. The separation of religious from secular education wrecks altogether the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost in the souls of those who have been baptised. Is it a wonder, then, that the Catholic Church will never consent that its children shall be reared with- out the knowledge of their faith, or that education shall be so parted asunder that secular knowledge shall be made the subject of daily and earnest inculcation, and that religion should be left out as an accident, to be picked up when and as it may ? (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 377.) THE FUTURE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS. THE Future of the Primary Schools is really the future of the people of England. Such as is the education of the children such will be the men of the next generation. I confine what I say to England, for the state both of Ireland and of Scotland is widely different from the state of the English people. We hear much of our national character. What is 80 , Political. it? Is it a fixed, intellectual, and moral type, which reproduces itself by a natural law, or is it a result of certain conditions, such as the influence of homes, the training of childhood, the controlling force of public opinion, of political institutions, and of religious teach- ing ? If it depends on all these things, and in truth it does ; and if all these have been and are continually changing, then their result must have proportionably changed, and the national character of to-day is not the national character of fifty years ago. One proof is enough. For six hundred years Parliament, which is the chief index of our national character, has known how to govern itself without closures and surgical ap- pliances for keeping order. The national character was calm, grave, and deliberate. Order was its normal state ; disorder abnormal. Our national character has been steadily though imperceptibly changing, and the House of Commons has lost the gravity of self-control which made it the wonder of foreign Chambers and Parliaments. What has this to do with our Primary Schools? Everything. It is Parliament that frames our Education Acts and fashions our Primary Schools at its will. Till 1870 the Primary Education of England was voluntary and Christian. Since 1870 one half of the population of England is under a system which is neither Christian nor voluntary, but secular and compulsory. Can two systems so diametrically opposite in kind and efficacy produce one and the same result ? The national character was chiefly formed in its Christian schools. What character will be formed in schools without Christianity ? Already this is proved in the United States. The The Future, of the Primary Schools. 81 Common School system is bearing its fruits. And it will be even more perceptible among us in England, because the education of our .Voluntary Schools was, until 1870, chiefly religious. Its secular teaching was less precisely and sedulously cared for than its Christian teaching and discipline. This was turned to our re- proach. Our condition at present is this. The Board Schools instruct a million of children in secular matter, but exclude all Christian doctrine. The Voluntary Schools are reduced during the school day to Secular Schools. No Christian doctrine can be taught in them except out of hours. They are subject to the fierce competition of Board Schools supported out of inex- haustible rates ; taught by teachers receiving salaries double in amount compared with those of Voluntary Schools ; armed with the attractions of costly buildings and ample playgrounds, and all that public money can provide. In ten years they have drawn to themselves a million of children — nearly half the number gathered by the Voluntary Schools in fifty years. Can it be doubted that, in this unequal race, the system which is promoted by public law, paid for by public money, will not only check and outstrip, but starve and crush the system which lives only by private zeal and private self-denial ; or, in other words, that the Primary Education of Christian England will, in a generation or two, be no longer in Christian Schools but in Secular Schools ? We cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. A Christian people can never spring from Secular Schools, and neither private zeal nor home education will suffice to supply the Christian teaching and formation which is excluded from the Secular Schools of the State. The advocates of the Secular Schools were chiefly 6 82 Political. Nonconformists, who asserted that religion would be sufficiently taught at home and in Sunday Schools. Already we hear some of themselves declaring that Sunday Schools reach only the few that voluntarily attend, but do not reach the majority. Already we are told that the sons of Nonconformist homes are departing from the religion of their forefathers. But the poor of England are not Nonconformists. The Nonconformists are for the most part above the poor. They are the middle class. The Nonconformists are hardly to be found in poor schools. And the Board Schools are therefore being managed especially under their influence. The Primary Schools of England are chiefly filled by the children of the Established Church, of the Catholic Church, and of the Wesleyans. These three bodies are the religious educators of the English people, and it is especially their Voluntary Schools that are now oppressed by the unequal favour shown by the Act of 1870 to the schools of the minority. Let us never lose sight of the inheritance which is now at stake. Two systems are at this time in con- flict. On one side is the system of secular education, which as yet is only partially developed in England. It con- tains, nevertheless, in itself the principles fully developed in France, namely — 1. That education primarily and properly belongs to the State. 2. That the schools belong to the State. 3. That the children belong to the State. 4. That the State has no religion. 5. That the formation of the national character be- longs to the State. The Future of the Primary Schools. 83 6. That the formation of the teachers of the people belongs to the State. 7. That no one shall teach the people except by- patent of the State. In a word, we are being stealthily drawn into a pass where these principles are foregone conclusions already embodied in the law of the land ; and irresistible in their future application. On the other side is the traditional Christian educa- tion of the English people, which rests upon the following principles : — 1. That the children of a Christian people have a right by Divine law to Christian education. 2. That Christian parents have a twofold right and duty, both natural and supernatural, to guard this in- heritance of their children. 3. That Christian children are in no sense the children of a State that has no religion. 4. That their teaching and training, or formation as Christians, is of higher moment than all secular instruc- tion, and may not be postponed to it, or risked to obtain it. 5. That in the selection of teachers to whom their children shall be intrusted, Christian parents have a right and a duty which excludes all other human authority. 6. That to deprive the poor of this right and liberty which is claimed by and yielded to the rich is a flagrant injustice.; Let no one be deceived by thinking that these two systems can be reconciled or mingled with each other. They are mutually exclusive. We have to choose be- tween them. The sooner we make up our mind the 84 Political. safer for us. Every year we are losing ground. Every year the antagonist system, fraught with antagonistic principles, is penetrating the legislation and structure of the commonwealth, and tainting the brain and blood of the governing classes. It has already reduced the National Universities to schools of secular science and secular literature. It is throwing off Christianity from the public life of the State, and relegating it to the private life of men. If the primary schools of England shall cease to be Christian schools, there may still be Christians in England, but the traditions of the English people will exist no longer. It will be Christian England only as it is Catholic France, by accident of numbers, or rather, by the compassion of God upon individuals, and not by its public law, or faith, or fidelity to God. It is in this crisis of our country that God has once more restored to the Catholic Church both liberty and power. We are debtors above all men and to all men, to preserve inviolate, at all costs and at all privations, the unbroken and unimpaired tradition of Christian education in the whole circle of our Colleges and Schools, from the majestic and venerable Colleges of Stonyhurst and Ushaw to the primary schools of our humble missions in the green villages and in the busy towns of England. (" The Month," January, 1883.) PART II. PHILOSOPHICAL. REVELATION AND SCIENCE. TRUTH is one, and in harmony with itself. It is altogether unscientific and unphilosophical to dis- tinguish between Science and Revelation. Science is the exact method of investigating truth. The subject-matter of it may make apparent, but not real distinctions. There may be ' veins and lines,' as the father of the modern method of philosophy has said, but not ' sections and separations,' in the great continent of Truth. Revelation may be the subject of scientific treatment : and nature of a religious method. There is a first philosophy, a severe and exact science common to all branches of truth, in which, howsoever various as to the subject- matter, they all meet and harmonize. I have, therefore, no share in the fears with which some regard the pro- cesses of science. If it be true science it cannot be opposed to the truth of Revelation; for if Nature is God's work, Revelation is God's word, and they cannot be contradictory. Let me also remind you how the task of diffusing truth of every kind has at all times been united in the person of those who have also borne sacred offices. Anyone who will examine both the early and later Christian writers will find speculations, and treaties of science, intermixed with their writings on sacred truth. 88 Philosophical. Some also of the greatest luminaries of the Western Church stand among the foremost writers on physical science in their day ; and of this, the Father of our literature and theology, in the Anglo-Saxon period, of whom it has been truly said, that he ' shone like a single star serene in a night of darkness,' is a conspicuous example. Amidst his theological works and expositions of Holy Scripture, are to be found treaties on astronomy, computation, and other researches of science, as it was then pursued. And this great principle of uniting the study and diffusion of all truth in one office, is at the foundation of our Universities. All teachers of truth, then, now, and of old, whatsoever office they bear, and in whatsoever region they toil, are joined in one quire and fellowship. " The truly great Have all one age, and from one visible space Shed influence ! They both in power and act Are permanent, and Time is not with them Save as it worketh for them — they in it." All science rightly so called, is an approximation to the normal state of the perfect reason of man ; every truth scientifically proved tends to perfect and consolidate the firmament of all truth ; every one who establishes any result by exact science, adds to the great traditions of light, which is a good and perfect gift from above ; and as there is a science of revelation, so there is a creed of nature. (" Speech at the Fifty-seventh Anniversary Festival of the Royal Literary Fund, 1846.") The Church and Physical Science. 89 THE CHURCH AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. We are told that [the science of revealed truth] cannot be harmonised with physical sciences, and the stock example which is always given us is this : that Galileo was condemned for teaching the motion of the earth. It is true, indeed, that a book of Galileo was examined at a time when the whole world believed in the motion of the sun, and when the motion of the earth was not as yet a scientific truth. It had not been yet established by science ; nor was it scientifically proved for one hundred years afterwards. For a century after Galileo some of the highest intellects still believed in the motion of the sun. Many in this country lived and died dis- believing the hypothesis of Galileo, and believing it to be contrary to Scripture. Therefore the Church, at a time when the doctrine was but a hypothesis and a conjecture, apparently running counter to the belief of mankind, and to what seemed to be the words of Scrip- ture, discountenanced a book which tended to unsettle the belief of men both in natural and supernatural truth. The Church defined nothing, and uttered no doctrine. It made a disciplinary prohibition to protect men from the disturbing effect of an unproved hypothesis. And what has been the course of the Church since then ? From the moment that the motion of the earth was established as a scientific truth the Church has accepted 9° Philosophical. it ; and why ? Because the Church has no revelation of physical science. Holy Scripture is not a book of cosmical science. No revelation whatever is made of astronomy. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 369.) THE UNITY OF SCIENCE. ' Deus scientiarum Tu e's.' The Christian conception of the Divine Nature is an infinite Intelligence — the Foun- tain of all Sciences. There is but one Uncaused, one Infinite, and one Eternal ; one Being Who is above all • beings ; and to the Uncreated all created being is subordinate. It stands related to Him in an order of which He is the only Head. There is a Hierarchy of Being, and God is the Lord of all ; and this Hierarchy of Being is also a Hierarchy of Intelligence. All created intelligences are subordinate to the one uncreated in- telligence of God. So also all sciences are related to the one science of God, from Whom all descend and to Whom all return ; and in that hierarchy of sciences, theology, or the science of God, is the first and the Queen. All other sciences, physical and human — that is, relating to the world and to man — are subordinate, but inseparably united, because in God all truth is one. In the Divine mind all truths are in harmonious unity ; all divergences, as we think them, are but apparent. We see only in part. Only a portion of the infinite mind of God is revealed to us. We have a part of an eternal writing unrolled ; the rest is unrevealed. We Immutable Truths. 91 cannot read the context. We see a part of the great chart or map of truth, in which we only can follow certain tracks and paths. A section of a diagram is before us, the complement of which we do not know ; but when in the light of the kingdom of God we shall see even as we are seen, then the perfect unity of that intellectual light will be visible. Every eye shall see it ; every intelligence shall be full. The white light of the day contains all prismatic colours, which, when separated by human skill and made visible to the eye, seem to differ one from another ; but when once more they are all resolved again into the perfect unity of the solar light, all differences are lost in an undivided splendour. So with the sciences of the world. So far as they are erroneous they will be hereafter cast out ; so far as they are true they will all be taken up into that one infallible and uncreated light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 373.) IMMUTABLE TRUTHS. I AFFIRM that the truths known to the natural reason, or by the light of nature, have been transmitted as an intellectual tradition in the society of mankind. These truths, which relate to the existence and perfection of God, and to the moral nature of man, are permanent and immutable. They constitute what is called natural theology and philosophy. Upon the basis of these certain, fixed, and permanent truths has been raised a 9 2 Philosophical. structure of metaphysical and ethical systems, which are related to the primary philosophy as dialects are related to a language. Such are the philosophies which have multiplied themselves both before the faith entered into the world and since. Now, these secondary formations or philosophies are, in great part, tentative, uncertain, mutable, and transient. They arise and pass away without at all shaking the permanence of the primary stratum upon which they all repose. The enunciation of these primary truths may be called the axioms or dogmas of philosophy. I affirm that these dogmas of philosophy are fixed and immutable, because the truths they express are so. For instance, the existence of God, His moral perfections, the moral nature of man, his freedom of moral action, his responsibility, and the like, are fixed and immutable truths. They are as true and certain now as they were in the beginning. They can never become more or less true, fixed, or certain, but continue permanently in the same certainty and veracity. For this reason the verbal expression or dogmatic form of them is likewise fixed and permanent. The cry or the pretension of a new philosophy to replace the old, contains a tacit denial of the certainty of these primary truths. It is scepticism under a mask. In the order or sphere of the secondary or deductive philosophies there may be many modifications and steps of progressive exactness. The former are the axioms of the human reason, which stand for ever, like the lights of the firma- ment, steadfast and changeless. The same may be said of the scholastic theology, which consists in a scientific treatment of revealed truths, both of the primary and of the secondary order. Those of the primary order are the truths which are expressly Immutable Truths. 93 revealed ; those of the secondary, the conclusions which are deduced from them by process of reasoning. Now, the former order of primary truths is permanent and immutable. In the secondary order of deductions it is possible that verifications and modifications may from age to age be admitted. But the tradition or transmission of this whole order of truths, both primary and secondary, constitutes the theology of the Church. And this ' Science of God ' distributes itself according to its subject-matter into dogmatic, which treats of God and His works in nature and grace ; into moral, which treats of the relations of man to God and to his fellows ; into ascetical, which treats of the discipline of penance and obedience ; and into mystical, which treats of the union of the soul with God, and its perfection. Now, all these four branches of theology have their primary and their secondary truths. The latter spring from the former and repose upon them. In the latter we may conceive of a progressive exactness, always retaining their contact with the primary truths, which are the base of all. But the primary truths are truths of revelation, the knowledge of which resides immutably in the intelli- gence of the Church. They are fixed truths, and their verbal expressions are fixed dogmas, true in every age, and not less or more true than they were, nor ever will be. For what is dogma but the intellectual conception and verbal expression of a divine truth ? But as these truths can never vary, so neither the conception and expression of them. An immutable body casts an immutable shadow. A fixed form describes a fixed outline upon a mirror. The original never varies, therefore the reflection cannot. Of an eternal truth the image must be always the same. For instance, the unity of God is an eternal truth. The 94 Philosophical. proposition that God is One is a dogma ; that He is One in nature, Three in person ; that the Three Persons are co-equal and co-eternal ; that God is infinite in His perfections ; that the Father is the fountain of Godhead ; that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father alone ; that the Holy Ghost eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, and the like, which might be indefinitely multiplied in enumeration, are eternal truths, and their outlines, reflections and images on the human intelli- gence, both of the Church and of the individual, are fixed and immutable dogmas. So again to take another order of truths. That God created the world ; that God is present with His crea- tion ; that He governs it in the order of nature ; that His mind and will are its laws both in their permanent operations and in their exceptional suspension and change — all these are divine truths, and the verbal ex- pressions of them are dogmas ; permanent because the truths are immutable, and immutable because true. Again, that God has redeemed the world ; that the Son was made man of a virgin mother ; that He lived on earth, taught, worked miracles, chose and ordained apostles, founded His Church, instituted sacraments, died, rose again, ascended into heaven, sent the Holy Ghost to abide and to teach in His stead for ever — all these are both divine truths in their own objective subsistence, in the order of divine facts, and also dogmas in their intellectual conception and verbal expression ; and as these truths can never become less true, nor lose their value, or place, or relation to the will of God, and to the soul of man, so neither can the dogmas which express them. And lastly, that I may not waste more time over a The Keystone of Knowledge. 95 subject which, but for the almost incredible confusions of thought and language now prevalent, I should not so much as have introduced — that the Church is one and indivisible, singular in existence, the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the organ of His voice ; indefectible in its life, immutable in its knowledge of the truths revealed, and infallible in its articulate enunciation of them ; that the sacraments are channels of grace, each after its kind ; that the operations of the Holy Ghost as the illuminator and sanctifier of the Church and of its members are perpetual : to go no further — all these are divine and permanent and immutable truths, and therefore the intellectual conception and verbal expression of them become fixed and unchangeable dogmas. What then is dogmatic theology, taken as a whole, with all its contents, but the intellectual conception and verbal expression of the revelation of God, truth by truth, and therefore dogma by dogma ; a fixed, per- manent, and immutable transcript upon the human mind, and a perpetual and changeless enunciation of the same truth with all its intrinsic truths which constitute its perfect outline and complete integrity ? (" Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 243.) THE KEYSTONE OF KNOWLEDGE. The ' men of culture' of this day tell us that the exis- tence of the physical world does not prove the existence of a Creator ; that is to say, that the argument has no Q6 Philosophical. force of conviction for them. By whose fault ? When a blind man looks me in the face and says, ' I cannot see you,' am I therefore not there ? And yet the ' men of culture ' of these times can look upon the face of the visible world, in which the creatures of God are like the ladder in the patriarch's vision. The Divine Presence was at the head of it, and the angels ascended and descended upon it. So is it with the creation and its works. They are a scale of ascent whereby we pass from the inorganic to the organic, from the organic to the animate, from the animate to the rational, and from the rational to the spiritual ; ascending by a continuous and unbroken chain whereby we reach to the Cause of all. The existence of the world demands the existence of a Maker ; for ' every house is built by some man, but He that created all things is God '.* The physical sciences are the only sciences that men of culture will recognise as worthy of the name. But what are they ? They are like the foundation-stones of an arch, upon which stone upon stone is laid ; the piers rise until the arch begins to spring ; and the arch is not perfected in the beauty of its form and the solidity of its strength until the keystone is let in to tie it all together. What is the keystone of all knowledge ? It is theology, the science of God. When the natural sciences, physical and moral, are read in the light of God, they form one perfect whole. All is order and symmetry, and beauty and light. Such is the house that Wisdom has built for herself. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 307.) * Heb. iii. 4. Divine Philosophy. 97 DIVINE PHILOSOPHY. The way to all knowledge or vision of truth is by seeking first the purities of God's presence. All processes of the intellect, all the laws of dialectics and of philosophy, are subject to that first philosophy which is the science of God. This is the foundation of the schools which the Church has reared. The Faith is their charter and their very life ; and the Faith is the virtue of purification. In nothing does the Church more directly front and contra- dict the wisdom of the world than in the whole principle and order of her divine philosophy. In the eyes of the world, to seek knowledge by humiliations, fastings, alms deeds, charity, daily prayers, devout communion, is a folly and a provocation. They see no relation between such premisses and the conclusions of truth. It is a logic the conditions of which they have not hearts to under- stand. And yet there is no fact in science proved by observation and experiment so ample and precise as this, that the greatest teachers of mankind have learned more truth upon their bended knees, and at the foot of the altar, than in the books and schools of science ; that the gifts of piercing intellectual force, of irresistible subtilty, elevated contemplation, discernment beyond the keenness of common understanding, direct insight, analytical penetration, energy, comprehension, unity of powers, have been the peculiar and characteristic marks of those who sought all truth in sanctity, and beheld all things in the light of God ; and those most full of light have been also the chastest, meekest, lowliest of men. 7 98 Philosophical. This is the witness of the whole Church of God, not in the apostles and seers, bishops and pastors only, but in all the regenerate servants of Christ — princes, statesmen, schoolmen, doctors ; men of science, speculation, active enterprise : neither is it in the attainment of direct religious truth only, but of all truth : for all truth is in Him, and by Him all is bestowed upon mankind. There is but one and the same path to all secular knowledge, to all sciences of the world, of nature, of humanity. With equal, or even inferior powers, it is true in all, that the purest heart shall shed forth most light. For such minds are planted, as it were, at the point of sight from which all things, the most confused and entangled to other eyes, seem to marshal themselves, and to fall under their own principles. The ethical science of the ancient world, the moral condition of classical ages, the theologies of the East, the whole tradition of worship among man- kind, the entire science of law, that is, of right and wrong, as it lies at the root of all civil society and the compacts of human life, all those truths which form the subject- matter of the study and probation of most men in the secular state, are to men of impure, or unilluminated hearts, full of doubt, probability, imperfection, — of abruptness, and seeming contradiction ; and that simply because they have never ascended to the first idea of truth which is to be seen in God alone. Let us then never think the subject-matter of our studies, or employ- ments, to be so secular and remote from Him, as that we can enter upon it in our own light and strength. It is ' the entrance of His word that giveth light,' and all light is from Him who ' lighteth every man that cometh into the world '. This is emphatically true of men at the outset of life, when they are learning not the particular Reason and Religion. 99 formulas and technicalities of a profession, but the ideas and laws which govern both the intellect of man and the matter which is subject to his knowledge. The studies of an university, from their peculiar character as a broad primary discipline of the heart and reason, are all studies most closely related to this first science of the Divine Spirit. The very faculties of the mind which are called into act and energy are those which lie nearest to the spiritual life ; I mean the discernment of moral distinctions, of the qualities of evidence, and the force of obligation. It is peculiarly the discipline of man as man, not of men as they are limited and cramped by the forms and usages of particular callings. It is a dis- cipline, the design of which is to enlarge the capacity of men for the reception and love of truth, as such. And what is that but the purification of the heart by truth that it may see God ? '0 Be to7ovto<; av e'itj fiios KpeiTTcov 77 Kara avOpanrov • ov yap r\, avOpanros iariv ovtw; /3i,cocreTai, aXX' ?j, Oeiov ti kv ai/rS V7rdpj(et. * (" Sermons preached before the University of Oxford," P- J 43-) REASON AND RELIGION. First, it would be a violation of reason in the highest degree not to believe that there is a God. To believe that this visible world is either eternal or self- created, besides all other intrinsic absurdities in the * Aris. Eth. Nicom. , x. 7, ioo Philosophical. hypothesis, would simply affirm the world to be God in the same breath that we deny His existence. It would be a gross and stupid conception of an eternal and self- existent being ; for to believe it self-created is a stupidity which exceeds even the stupidity of atheism. But if the world were neither eternal nor self-created, it was made ; and, if made, it had a maker. Cavil as a man will, there is no escape from this necessity. To deny it is not to reason, but to violate reason ; and to be rationalists, by going contrary to reason. Secondly, it would be a violation of the moral sense, which is still reason judging of the relations between my Maker and myself, not to believe that He has given to me the means of knowing Him. The consciousness of what I am gives me the law by which to conceive of One higher and better than I am. If I am an intelligent and moral being, and if my dignity and my perfection consist in the perfection of my reason and of my will, then I cannot conceive of a Being higher and better than myself, except as One who has, in a higher degree, those things which are the best and highest in myself. But my intelligent and moral nature, and the right exercise and action of its powers, is the highest and best that is in me. I know it to exceed all the other excellences which are in me. It exceeds, too, all the perfections of other creatures to whom gifts of strength and instinct have been given, without reason and the moral will. I am certain, therefore, that my Creator is higher than I am in that which is highest in me, and therefore I know Him to be a perfect intelligence and a perfect will, and Reason and Religion. 101 these include all the perfections of wisdom and goodness. I say, then, it would violate the moral sense to believe that such a Being has created me capable of knowing and of loving Him — capable of happiness and of misery, of good and of evil, and that He has never given to me the means of knowing Him, never spoken, never broken the eternal silence by a sign of His love to me, on which depend both my perfection and my happiness. Now, it is certain, by the voice of all mankind, that God speaks to us through His works — that He whispers to us through our natural conscience — that He attracts us to Him by instincts and desires, and aspirations after a happiness higher than sense, and more enduring, more changeless, than this mortal life. God speaks to me articulately in the stirring life of nature and the silence of our own being. What is all this but a spiritual action of the intelligence, and the will of God upon the intelli- gence and will of man ? and what is this but a Divine inspiration ? Critically and specifically distinct as inspiration and revelation in their strict and theological sense are from this inward operation of the Divine mind upon mankind, yet generically and in the last analysis it is God speaking to man, God illuminating man to know Him, and drawing man to love Him. The inspiration and revelation granted to patriarchs, prophets, apostles, seers, and saints, are of a supernatural order, in which the lights of nature mingle and are elevated by the supernatural and divine. These manifestations of Him- self to men are bestowed upon us out of the intrinsic perfections of His own Divine attributes. He created us as objects whereon to exercise His benevolence. His love and His goodness are the fountains of the light of nature. His image, in which He has created us, by its 102 Philosophical. own instincts turns to Him with the rational and moral confidence that if we feel after Him we shall find Him. And His love and His goodness are such, that our yearnings for a knowledge of Him are satisfied not only by the light of nature, but through His grace by the supernatural revelation of Himself. Thirdly, I am certain, with a certainty which is higher than any other in the order of moral convictions, that if there be a revelation of God to man, that revela- tion is Christianity. The reason of this belief is, that I find in Christianity the highest and purest truth, on the highest and purest matter of which the human intelli- gence is capable ; that is to say, the purest Theism or knowledge of God, the purest anthropology or science of man, and the purest morality, including the moral conduct of God towards man, and the moral action of man towards God. These three elements constitute the highest knowledge of which man is capable, and these three are to be found in their highest and purest form in Christianity alone. All the fragments or gleams of original truth which lingered yet in the religions and philosophies of the world are contained, elevated, and perfected in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and of the Divine perfections revealed in it ; in the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the perfections of our manhood mani- fested in the person of Jesus Christ ; and in the Sermon on the Mount, interpreted by the example of Him who spoke it. In these three revelations of the Divine and human natures, God has made Himself known to us, as the object of our love and worship, the pattern of our imitation, and the source of our eternal bliss. Now no Reason and Religion. 103 other pretended revelation, no other known religion, so much as approximates to the truth and purity of the Christian faith. They are visibly true and pure only so far as they contain germs of it. They are visibly impure and false wheresoever they depart from it. They bear a twofold testimony to its perfection, both where they agree and where they disagree with it. And that which is true of Christianity, viewed objectively in itself, is also visibly true when viewed subjectively in its history. Christianity has created Christendom ; and Christendom is the manifestation of all that is highest, purest, noblest, most God-like in the history of mankind. Christianity has borne the first-fruits of the human race. Fourthly, Christianity, in its perfection and its purity, unmutilated, and full in its orb and circumference, is Catholicism. All other forms of Christianity are fragmentary. The revelation given first by Jesus Christ, and finally expanded to its perfect outline by the illu- mination of the day of Pentecost, was spread through- out the world. It took possession of all nations, as the dayspring takes possession of the face of the earth, rising and expanding steadily and irresistibly. So the knowledge of God and of His Christ filled the world. And the words of the prophet were fulfilled, ' The idols shall be utterly destroyed ' ; * not with the axe and the hammer only, but by a mightier weapon. ' Are not, my words as a fire, and as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ? ' f Idolatry was swept from the face of the world by the inundation of the light of the knowledge of the true God. ' The earth shall be filled, that men * Isaias ii. 18. t Jer. xxiii. 29. 104 Philosophical. may know the glory of the Lord, as waters covering the sea.'* The unity and universality of Christianity, and of the Church in which it was divinely incorporated, and of Christendom, which the Church has created, exclude and convict as new, fragmentary, and false, all forms of Christianity which are separate and local. Now these four truths, as I take leave to call them, — first, that it is a violation of reason not to believe in the existence of God ; secondly, that it is a violation of our moral sense not to believe that God has made Himself known to man ; thirdly, that the revelation He has given is Christianity ; and, fourthly, that Christianity is Catholicism — these four constitute a proof the certainty of which exceeds that of any other moral truth I know. It is not a chain of probabilities, depending the one upon the other, but each one morally certain in itself. It is not a chain hanging by a link painted upon the wall, as a great philosophical writer of the day well describes the sciences which depend upon an hypothesis.*! - These four truths, considered in the natural order alone, rest upon the reason and the conscience, upon the col- lective testimony of the highest and purest intelligences, and upon the maximum of evidence in human history. The intellectual system of the world bears its witness to them ; the concurrent testimony of the most elevated races of mankind confirms them. They are not four links of an imaginary chain, but the four corner-stones of truth. ' Sapientia sedificavit sibi doraum.' And the house which the wisdom of God has built to dwell in is * Hab. ii. 14. + Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, Vol. I., p. 16. The Church and Knowledge. 105 the cultivated intellect, or reason of the mystical body, incorporated and manifested to the world in the Visible Church. ("Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 10.) THE CHURCH AND KNOWLEDGE. I ASSUME one truth as undeniable and axiomatic, namely, that God has revealed Himself ; that He has committed this revelation to His Church ; and that He preserves both His revelation and His Church in all ages by His own presence and assistance from all error in faith and morals. Now, inasmuch as certain primary truths — which may be naturally known of God and the soul, and of the relations of the soul with God, and of man with man ; that is, certain truths discoverable also in the order of nature by reason or by philosophy — are taken up into and incorporated with the revelation of God, the Church, therefore, possesses the first principles of rational philosophy and of natural ethics, both for individuals and for society. And, inasmuch as these principles are the great regulating truths of philosophy and natural morality, including natural politics, the Church has a voice, a testimony, and a jurisdiction within these pro- vinces of natural knowledge. I do not affirm the Church to be a philosophical authority, but I may affirm it to be a witness in philosophy. Much more when we come to treat ,of Christian philosophy or the Theodicsea, or Christian morals and Christian politics ; for these are no more than the truths of nature grafted upon the stock of revelation, and elevated to a supernatural perfection. 106 Philosophical. To exclude the discernment and voice of the Church from philosophy and politics, is to degrade both by- reducing them to the natural order. First, it pollards them, and next, it deprives them of the corroboration of a higher evidence. Against this the whole array of Catholic theologians and philosophers has always "con- tended. They have maintained that the tradition of theological and ethical knowledge is divinely preserved, and has a unity in itself ; that there is a true traditive philosophy running down in the same channel with the divine tradition of faith, recognised by faith, known by the light of nature, and guarded by the circle of super- natural truths by which faith has surrounded it. In saying this, I am not extending the infallibility of the Church to philosophical or political questions apart from their contact with revelation ; but affirming only that the radical truths of the natural order have become rooted in the substance of faith, and are guaranteed to us by the witness and custody of the Church. So like- wise, as the laws of Christian civilisation are the laws of natural morality elevated by the Christian law, which is expounded and applied by the Church, there is a tradi- tion both of private and public ethics — or, in other words, of morality and jurisprudence — which forms the basis of all personal duty, and of all political justice. In this, again, the Church has a discernment, and there- fore a voice. A distribution of labour in the cultivation of all provinces of truth is prudent and intelligible. A division of authority and an exclusion of the Church from science is not only a dismemberment of the kingdom of truth, but a forcible rending of certain truths from their highest evidence. Witness the treat- ment of the question whether the existence of God can The Church and Knowledge. 107 be proved, and whether God can be known by natural reason, in the hands of those who turn their backs upon the tradition of evidence in the universal Church. Unless revelation be an illusion, the voice of the Church must be heard in these higher provinces of human knowledge. ' Newton,' as Cardinal Newman says, ' cannot dispense with the metaphysician, nor the metaphysician with us.' Into cosmogony the Church must enter by the doctrine of creation ; into natural theology, by the doctrine of the existence and perfections of God ; into ethics, by the doctrine of the cardinal virtues ; into politics, by the indissolubility of marriage, the root of human society, as divorce is its dissolution. And by this interpenetra- tion and interweaving of its teaching the Church binds all sciences to itself. They meet in it as in their proper centre. As the sovereign power which runs into all provinces unites them in one empire, so the voice and witness of the Church unites and binds all sciences in one. It is the parcelling and morselling out of science, and this disintegration of the tradition of truth, which has reduced the intellectual culture of England to its present fragmentary and contentious state. Not only errors are generated, but truths are set in opposition ; science and revelation are supposed to be at variance, and revelation to be the weaker side of human knowledge. The Church has an infallible knowledge of the original revelation. Its definitions of Divine Faith fall within this limit ; but its infallible judgments reach beyond it. The Church possesses a knowledge of truth which belongs also to the natural order. The existence of God — His power, goodness, and perfections — the moral law written in the conscience — are truths of the natural 108 Philosophical. order which are declared also by revelation, and recorded in Holy Scripture. These truths the Church knows by a twofold light — by the supernatural light of revelation, and by the natural light whijch all men possess. In the Church this natural light is concentrated as in a focus. The great endowment of common sense — that is, the communis sensus generis humani, the maximum of light and evidence for certain truths of the natural order — resides eminently in the collective intelligence of the Church ; that is to say, in the intelligence of the faithful, which is the seat of its passive infallibility, and in the intelligence of the pastors, or the Magisterium Ecclesiae, which is the organ of its active infallibility. That two and two make four, is not more evident to the Catholic Church than to the rest of mankind, to S. Thomas or S. Bonaventura, than to Spinoza and Comte. But that God exists, and that man is responsible, because free, are moral truths, and for the perception of moral truths, even of the natural order, a moral discernment is needed ; and the moral discernment of the Church, even of natural truths, is, I maintain, incomparably higher than the moral discernment of the mass of mankind, by virtue of its elevation to greater purity and conformity to the laws of nature itself. The highest object of human science is God ; and theology, properly so called, is the science of His nature and perfections, the radiance which surrounds ' the Father of lights, in whom is no change, neither shadow of vicissitude '. Springing from this central science flow the sciences of the works of God, in nature and in grace ; and under the former fall not only the physical sciences, but those which relate to man and action — as morals, politics, and history. Now, the revelation God has given The Church and Knowledge. 109 us rests for its centre upon God Himself, but in its course describes a circumference within which many- truths of the natural order relating both to the world and to man are included. These the Church knows, not only by natural light, but by Divine revelation, and declares by Divine assistance. But these primary truths of the natural order are axioms and principles of the sciences within which they properly fall ; and these truths of philosophy belong also to the domain of faith. The same truths are the object of faith and of science ; they are the links which couple these sciences to revela- tion. How, then, can these sciences be separated from their relation to revealed truth without a false procedure? No Catholic could so separate them, for these truths enter within the dogma of faith. No Christian who believes in Holy Scripture could do so, for they are included in Holy Writ. No mere philosopher could do so, for thereby he would discard and perhaps place himself in opposition and discord with the maximum of evidence which is attainable on these primary verities, and therefore with the common sense not only of Christendom, but of mankind. In this I am not advocating a mixture or confusion of religion and philosophy, — which, as Lord Bacon says in his work, ' De Augmentis Scientiarum,' will undoubtedly make an heretical religion, and an imaginary and fabulous philosophy, — but affirming that certain primary truths of both physical and ethical philosophy are delivered to us by revelation, and that we cannot neglect them as our starting-points in such sciences without a false pro- cedure and a palpable forfeiture of truth. Such verities are, for instance, the existence of God, the creation of the world, the freedom of the will, the moral office of the 1 10 Philosophical. conscience, and the like. Lord Bacon says again, 'There may be veins and lines, but not sections or separations,' in the great continent of Truth. All truths alike are susceptible of scientific method, and all of a religious treatment. The father of modern philosophy, as men of our day call him, so severe and imperious in maintain- ing the distinct province and process of science, is not the less peremptory and absolute as to the unity of all truth and the vital relation of all true science to the Divine philosophy of revelation. (" Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 126.) DOGMA AND REASON. It is also in behalf of the human reason itself, of its freedom and its perfection, that the Church is jealous in its custody of dogma. What axioms are to science, dogma is to theology. As there can be no science without fixed principles and primary certainties, so there can be no knowledge of God, nor of His revelation, without fixed and primary truths. Such are the doctrines of the faith delivered to us by the perpetual and Divine office of the Church. The intellect of man is feeble and vacillating until it has certain scientific principles to start from. These once given, it acquires firmness and power of advance. One truth scientifically proved, becomes the basis of many. The physical sciences, each in their kind, are proof of this. The same is true in the science of God. The truths of the natural order are confirmed and perfected by revelation. On the basis Dogma and Reason. m of natural truths rests, by the Divine disposition, the order of revealed truths ; such as the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Church and its supernatural endow- ments. The horizon of the human reason is therefore expanded by revelation, and the reason is elevated above its natural powers. And in this both its freedom and its perfection is secured. It is no bondage to know the truth, and no freedom to be in doubt. And yet they who know the truth are not free to contradict it ; and they that are in doubt have the liberty of wandering out of the way. The law of gravitation once demonstrated, took away the liberty of contradicting it : and yet no man considers himself to be in bondage. All science limits the reason by the boundaries of its own certainty ; but we do not therefore think men of science to be intellectual slaves. So is it with the science of God. We are limited by Divine Revelation, and by the in- fallibility of the Church, to believe in the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the whole dogma of faith ; yet we are not therefore slaves, but freemen. We are redeemed from doubt and error, and from that which is both at once, from the guidance of the blind, the theology of human teachers, by the presence and office of a Divine. ' You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' And not free only, but perfect ; for the human reason advances to its perfection in proportion as it is conformed to the Divine. The dogma of faith is the mind of God, and theology is the science of God ; and they that are most fully illuminated by it are the most conformed to the Divine intelligence, which conformity is the perfection of the reason of man. (" England and Christendom," p. 158.) H2 Philosophical. REASON AND FAITH. REASON is the preamble of faith. Unless a man were convinced by evidence that Christianity is a divine revelation, how could he believe it ? Unless he believed upon evidence that Holy Scripture is the Word of God, how could he accept it ? Unless he believed upon evidence that the Catholic Church is the only and true Church of Jesus Christ, how could he submit to it ? It is quite true, then, that the natural intellect must go first, and must examine what may be called the pre- ambles, before we can believe. After having examined the proper evidences, and after being intellectually convinced that they prove Christianity to be a divine revelation, and the Scriptures to be the Word of God, and the Catholic Church to be the Church of God, and the like — then we believe with a rational faith. There is no act more entirely intellectual, and no act of the reason higher or more perfect, than the believing in a Divine Teacher. It is an act of submission to the teach- ing of God. Therefore, do not let anybody imagine that faith is a blind act, or an act of superstitious credulity, or the act of those who cannot use their reason. It is in the highest sense a precise and perfect act of our intel- lectual power to submit our reason to a Divine Teacher ; and having accepted the whole revelation on His authority, it is an intellectual act all the way along the path of faith to examine and to understand what we Reason and Faith. 113 believe. We must know what it is, at least in outline, and we must know why we ought to believe it, before we can believe at all. Having first believed Christianity to be a divine revelation, then we begin to examine its details. But we no longer examine as in doubt whether to believe it or not : but in faith that we may understand more fully what we believe. We do not test its details as critics, to pronounce whether or no they are credible, whether or no they mean this or that, whether or no God could or could not have revealed such and such a thing, but we read the Word of God as disciples, with a consciousness that we are in the presence of a Divine Teacher ; that we have in our hands a document which is divine ; and that though our faith is founded upon an intellectual conviction, it rises into a living and personal consciousness that we are related to a Divine Person, and that we can say what the Apostle said : ' I know Whom I have believed, and I am certain that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day ' ; * I know, that is, of Whom I am learning this truth, and I know that He will never mislead me, for He is Himself the uncreated Truth. ' But having believed,' Saint Anselm says, ' as it would be contrary to the divine order for us to examine and to discuss by reasoning the revelation of God until we have believed it, so it would be an act of great negligence on our part if, after we have believed it, we did not try thoroughly to understand it,' thoroughly to penetrate under the surface, beneath the letter into the substance, into the analogies, and proportions, and relations of truth with truth. Now the gift of intellect or understanding is precisely * 2 Tim. i. 12. 8 1 14 Philosophical. that gift of the Holy Spirit which enables us to under- stand the meaning of what we believe from the time when we believe it. Let us take an example or two. We believe in the existence of God by natural light. We believe that God is one in three Persons by the light of revelation. A child knows so much as this from his Catechism ; but those who have the gift of understanding will go on to contemplate in the Holy Trinity, so far as the human mind can understand divine things, what are the relations of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; how They are three Persons, how They are coequal, how They are coeternal, how They differ only in that They are related to each other, and that all things in God are common save only the relations of Fatherhood, Sonship, and Procession. Therefore I may say, that the office of this gift of intellect is like that of a lens, by which we steadfastly look at any natural object until we see lines and features that are not visible to our ordinary sight. The naked eye cannot perceive them, but the power of the misroscope reveals them ; and as the powers of the microscope are multiplied, we see more and learn more of the object, which still remains always the same to our natural sight. I might take for another example the Incarnation, and I hardly know any example more complete. The one phrase, ' The Word was made flesh,' contains the whole theology of the Incarnation in all its treatises. Compare that doctrine with the Nicene Creed, where it is said that the Son of God is God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, consubstantial with the Father before all worlds. This is but an expansion of the words of Saint John. Take next the Creed of Saint Athanasius, in which the Incarnation is unfolded in precise terms — the The Elements of Divine Faith. 1 1 5 two natures, the two substances, the one Person, the perfect humanity. Take next the third part of the Summa of Saint Thomas and the works of Petavius. This gradual unfolding of the simple utterance, ' The Word was made flesh,' is an example of the action of the gift of understanding, analysing, and expanding the simple declaration of Saint John. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 356.) THE ELEMENTS OF DIVINE FAITH. There are three things which are essential to divine faith. First, it is a gift of God, by the grace of the Holy Ghost. Secondly, the matter or material object of faith is the truth revealed by God. Thirdly, the reason why we believe it, or the formal object of faith, is the authority of God Himself. These are the three elements which constitute divine faith. Now, first of all, faith, as Saint Paul tells the Ephe- sians,* is a gift of God ; and this he says lest any man shall ascribe his salvation to himself; lest he should conceive that his knowledge of God comes from the light of his own intellect, or that his moral superiority over the heathen comes from culture and not from grace. The Apostle says, ' By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves — it is the gift of God, lest any man glory ' : that is to say, though faith is the most rational and the most strictly intellectual act, though it is the highest intellectual act of which the reason is capable, it is not an act of its own power alone. * Eph. ii. 8. u6 Philosophical. Reason goes before faith, and accompanies it and pervades it always. The prelude or preamble of faith is a process of reason. But the last act of reason must be full and complete before the first act of faith can be made. By the last act of reason I mean this : the evidence of Christianity convinces me that it is a divine revelation. And the first act of faith is to say : therefore I believe it. The act of belief contains in it a light of the Holy Spirit of God, illuminating the reason, moving the will, and kindling in the heart a love of the truth. This grace, which God gave in measure throughout the whole world before the Incarnation, He gives now in fulness to every regenerate child. It is given in Baptism by the infusion of grace into the soul. Faith, hope, and charity are infused into the soul of every baptised infant. As by nature every human soul has reason and memory and will, which three faculties are implanted in the soul by its creation, so faith, hope, and charity are infused into the soul in regeneration by supernatural grace. They thenceforward reside in the soul : and as we call an infant a rational being because by nature it possesses reason, so we count a baptised infant one of the faithful because it possesses the infused virtue of faith. And this grace of faith, which is in us from our regeneration, is developed by exercise, just as the reason which we have from our birth is developed by culture. And as the whole power of numbers lies potentially in the reason of a child, as fire lies in a flint, needing only to be elicited, so in the soul of a regenerate child there is the power of faith, which needs only instruction and exercise to unfold it. Saint Paul speaks of another kind of faith which is a fruit of the Holy Ghost* But this is not the theological virtue or power of belief which is infused * Gal. v. 23. The Elements of Divine Faith. 117 into all the regenerate ; it is a mature habit and pious facility of belief, an habitual consciousness of the presence of God, of the unseen world, of the relation of God to our own soul and our responsibility to Him, of eternity, of judgment, of reward, and of punishment to come. Such, then, is the first element of the virtue of faith — it is a supernatural grace infused into the soul whereby we have the light and the will to believe. Secondly, the matter that we believe is the word of God. ' Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ' If we believe the word of man, it is a mere human faith. If we believe the word of historians, it is still no more than a human faith. We believe because we trust the evidence, or because we trust in historical criticism. Call this evidence, or criticism, or what you will, but faith it is not. Faith springs from a divine grace, and rests upon the word of God. Just as the eye is so formed and fitted that it needs the objects of the visible world to terminate upon, and as light is the condition of sight, so is it with this grace of faith. The unseen world, which contains the objects of faith, is necessary to the exercise of faith, and we know them only from the light of the revelation of God. Saint Paul says, in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews,* that without faith we should not have known how to please God. The light of reason by itself, indeed, suffices to demonstrate the existence of God as an intellectual problem ; but over and above that demonstration comes the light of faith, which lighteth every man that cometh into this world. By this we know that God is, and that * Heb. xi. 6. 1 18 Philosophical. He is a Rewarder of men. The creation we might indeed metaphysically reason out ; but God has revealed the fact that He made the heaven and the earth. We might indeed, from our moral nature, conceive that we should one day be judged either for punishment or reward, but God has revealed the fact of judgment to come. We should not indeed have known that after death the body would rise again if God had not revealed the fact. From the nature of the human soul and an expectation of the future we might have believed its immortality, but God has revealed that the soul shall never die. We thereby know it by faith. Therefore these great truths and phenomena of the natural order are also part of the revelation of God. But this is not the power, or faculty, or virtue, which we intend when we speak of divine faith. The object of this is not the natural world, but the revelation which God made through Jesus Christ. We speak of the divine truths and divine facts which have been revealed to us by the coming of the Holy Ghost. We speak of the manifesta- tion of God in the flesh, and of the new creation into ■ which we are elevated by being born again of the Spirit. Here is the subject-matter of faith, and it is partly written and partly unwritten. We have the record of parts of it in the Holy Scriptures. But the whole world has become the scripture of this word of God. Saint Paul therefore says : ' Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved ; but how shall they call upon Him in Whom they have not believed, or how shall they believe Him of Whom they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher ? ' * Wheresoever the Church spread, there the Word of God * Rom. x. 13, 14, 18. The Elements of Divine Faith. 119 was made known to the nations of the world, and the whole Church throughout the world, from east to west, became as it were one wide scripture of God written on the hearts and in the minds of men. Saint Irenseus says that many nations had never seen the written Scriptures, but yet had believed the revelation of Jesus Christ, because it was written on their hearts by the Spirit dwelling in them. Therefore the subject-matter of faith is the word, that is, the revealed truth of God. Now there are two things necessary to a doctrine of faith or to an act of Catholic faith. One is, that God shall have revealed unto His Apostles the truth that we believe ; and the other is, that His Church should teach it. This, shortly, is the reason why we believe. Every Catholic child is taught to, say day by day an act of faith such as this : ' O my God, I believe all that Thou hast revealed,' for these two reasons, ' because Thou art the truth, and canst neither deceive nor be deceived ' ; or, as Saint Augustine says, ' We believe because God is the truth — Deus est Veritas et verax' ; He is the true God, truth Himself, and He is veracious and He cannot deceive us. It is therefore necessary that our faith should terminate upon the authority of God, and if our faith terminates upon the authority of God, it is im- possible that we can err. We have an infallible reason for believing, because it is the authority of God Himself Who teaches us what to believe. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 68.) 120 Philosophical. PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH. THE relation of philosophy to faith lies at the foundation of the chief intellectual problems of the day. Without a clear decision on this subject there can be no sufficient treatment of the first truths of theology. The most lamentable aberrations of these later years may in some cases be traced to a single philosophical error, which, like a morbid particle in the blood, will produce death. ' A certain class of modern metaphysical philosophers has been well subdivided into objective and subjective atheists, and yet these writers are read both without and within the Church in England without scruple or hesita- tion. Happily many men are not consequent, and many have no conception of the character and reach of the books they read. Inconsequence and unconscious- ness preserve them from the evil of the anti-Catholic and anti-Christian philosophy by which they are surrounded. A still more urgent subject is the relation of Faith and the Church to Science. It would seem to be too trivial to go on repeating, that between revelation and science there can be no opposition ; that the works of God are His words, and the words of God are His works, and that both are in absolute harmony. In the Divine mind they are one truth : in the Divine action they may be only partially and successively developed. They may for a time seem to be diverse, and to involve discrepancies of signification ; but ultimately and es- sentially they must be one, even as God is one. ' Deus scientiarum Tu es.' God is the fountain of all sciences. Philosophy and Faith. 121 For this cause Catholics have no fear of science, scientifi- cally elaborated and scientifically treated. They have no fear of any accumulation of facts and phenomena, truly such, nor of any induction or conclusion scientifically established. They fear only science unscientifically handled, superficial observations, hasty generalisations, reckless opposition to revelation, and undissembled readi- ness to reject revelation rather than doubt of a modern theory about flint instruments and hyena's bones. It is, indeed, true that Catholics have an intense dislike and hostility to such science as this, and to all its modifica- tions. They hold it to be guilty, not only oiTese majeste against the Christian revelation, but against the truth and dignity of science itself. They abhor — and I accuse myself of being a ringleader in this abhorrence — the science now in fashion, which I take leave to call ' the brutal philosophy,' to wit, there is no God, and the ape is our Adam. How necessary it is for Catholics to prepare them- selves on the relation of society and of science to the Church, may be seen by what passed the other day : as atrMalines, so at Munich. Catholics cannot meet with- out being forced into the time-spirit. We do not live in an exhausted receiver. The Middle Ages are passed. There is no zone of calms for us. We are in the modern world — in the trade-winds of the nineteenth century, and we must brace ourselves to lay hold of the world as it grapples with us, and to meet it intellect to intellect, culture to culture, science to science. ("Miscellanies," Vol. L, p. 93-) 122 Philosophical. THE LIBERTY OF FAITH. , It is commonly said, that what is called ' dogma ' is a limitation of the liberty of the human reason ; that it is degrading to a rational being to allow his intellect to be limited by dogmatic Christianity; that liberty of thought, liberty of discovery, the progress of advancing truth, apply equally to Christianity, if it be true, as to all other kinds of truth ; and therefore a man, when he allows his intellect to be subjected by dogma, has allowed himself to be brought into an intellectual bondage. Well, now, let me test the accuracy and the value of this supposed axiom. The science of astronomy has been a traditional science for I know not how many generations of men. It has been perpetually advancing, expanding, testing, completing its discoveries, and demonstrating the truth of its theories and its inductions. Now, every single astronomical truth imposes a limit upon the intellect of man. When once the truth has been demonstrated there is no further question about it. The intellect of man is thenceforward limited in respect of that truth. He cannot any longer contradict it without losing his dignity as a man of science — I might say, as a rational creature. It appears, therefore, that the certainty of every scientific truth imposes a certain limitation upon the intellect ; and yet scientific men tell us that, in proportion as science is expanded by new discoveries and new demonstrations, the field of knowledge is increased. Well, then, I ask, in the name of common justice and of common sense, why may I not apply this Reason and Conscience. 123 to revelation? If the possession of a scientific truth, with its complete scientific accuracy, be not a limitation, and is therefore no degradation of the human intellect, but an elevation and an expansion of its range, why should the defined and precise doctrines of revelation be a bondage against which the intellect of man ought to rebel ? On the contrary, I affirm that every revealed doctrine is a limitation imposed upon the field of error. The regions in which men may err become narrower, because the boundaries of truth are pushed farther, and the field of truth is enlarged. The liberty of the human intellect is therefore greater, because it is in possession of a greater inheritance of certainty. And yet, if there be one superstition which at the present day is under- mining more than any other the faith of men, it is the notion that belief in the positive dogma of Christianity is a slavish limitation of the intellectual freedom of man. (" Four Great Evils of the Day," p. hi.) REASON AND CONSCIENCE. IT is most certain that the greater part of the sins committed on the face of the earth come from the perversion of the intellect, which is the corruption and darkness of the reason ; and that if we would heal our own souls, we must begin by rectifying the false action and the perversion of our intellect. There is in every one of us a perversion of the reason, at least in some matters ; in many it spreads widely over their intellect, in all it is to be found in some measure. The reason in man is like a lens through which we can discern 1 24 Philosophical. minutely both truth and falsehood ; but if there be a flaw in the lens, be it never so small, every object we see through it will be in some measure distorted. So it is with the intellect. The reason or intellect in us is that part of the soul which is nearest to God. The Son of God became man by assuming a reasonable nature ; when He. took upon Himself a created nature He did not take it from the irrational creatures, He took it from the reasonable creation. And the order of the Incarna- nation was this : He took a human body by assuming a human soul, and He assumed a human soul by uniting His eternal intelligence with a created intelligence ; so that the human reason is that part of our nature which is in the most immediate contact with God, and the reason which is in us is therefore in a special way the image of God. It is the light of God in the soul, where- by we are able to know God and ourselves, and to judge of truth and falsehood, and of right and wrong. The conscience is only the reason judging of right and wrong in matters of practice, as the speculative intellect is the reason judging of truth and falsehood in abstract truth. And so long as the reason that is in us is conformed to the intelligence of God — that is, to the truth and to the will of God, which is the law of God — in that measure we are like to God, and walk in His light. Our nature is thereby rectified, and restored from the corruption and distortion of the fall. But just in proportion as the reason that is in us is darkened or perverted, just in that measure we depart from God, just in that measure we become deformed and the image of God in us is obscured. Sin consists in a conscious transgression of the law with the eyes of our reason open. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 297.) The Intuition of Faith. 125 THE INTUITION OF FAITH. WljAT is the power of vision, the spiritual sight, by which the unseen is visible ? We have by nature two powers by which we attain to knowledge, and two objects upon which these powers terminate. Revelation and regeneration have superadded a third object and power, which embrace and perfect the other two. By nature we apprehend this sensible creation by sense. Sensations are the beginning of knowledge, as to this visible world. And sensations are bounded by the limits of sense. They cannot reach beyond the horizon of sight, hearing, feeling, taste, and the like. But we have a higher power directed to a higher object. We have intellect, which terminates upon the intellectual world, and by intellect we interpret our sensations ; we perceive such objects as cause, relation, proportion, substance, and the like. Intellect is a higher power than sense, and corrects its errors. Phenomena are the objects of sense ; ideas are the objects of the intellect. The ideal world is a reality which informs the world of sense. To the phenomena of creation intellect adds at once the idea of God, not so much by inference as by consciousness, that is, by a concurrent perception. But revelation has proposed to us another and a higher object — a world of spiritual realities ; and regeneration has infused into us a power to apprehend it. Sense gives us the perception of the visible world ; intellect its interpretation, namely, the power and perfection of God ; faith, the mystery of the Godhead. Intellect cor- 126 Philosophical. rects and exalts sense ; faith corrects and exalts both. To take an example. Sense beheld in Jesus of Naza- reth a man ; intellect a man endowed with supernatural powers ; faith, the Word made flesh. The judgments of sense and of the intellect were true, but inadequate ; faith included and corrected both, exalting them to a spiritual intuition. Take another example. The blessed Sacrament to sense is bread and wine ; to intellect a symbol ; to faith the Body and Blood of Christ. Or, once more, to sense the visible Church is a society of men ; to intellect an organized and historical kingdom ; to faith it is the heavenly court on earth, the beginning of the new creation of God. The consciousness of spiritual life unites itself with the presence of God, and in Him is united to the proper objects of faith, that is, to things unseen. And there- fore faith has been defined as the perfection of the will and of the intellect — of the will as it sanctifies, of the intellect as it illuminates, of both at once as it issues in its congenial fruits. It is one all-penetrating, manifold, wakeful, energetic power, like the principle of life itself, universal, quickening, and prolific. Acting towards God, it issues in trust, love, prayer, contemplation, wor- ship ; towards man, in charity, gentleness, self-denial ; upon ourselves, in abasement, discipline, and penance. (" Sermons," Vol. IV., p. 376.) COMPREHENSION AND APPREHENSION. We are conscious of truths which we cannot demonstrate, because they are before all reasoning, from which all Comprehension and Apprehension. 127 reasoning springs, and to which all reasoning in the end bears witness. We are conscious of our own existence and of the existence of God. I do not mean originally, but after these truths are known to us, by whatsoever means they are known. We are conscious of those truths which are the most intuitive or most immediately known ; and this consciousness signifies a higher, deeper, and surer kind of knowledge. It is against this that the masters of false philosophy set themselves with much derision ; and yet it is self-evidently true. We may be conscious of what we know; we may know what we can- not comprehend. Comprehension is not the condition of knowledge. To comprehend anything I must be able to circumscribe it in a definition, and to fix its boundaries' in my thoughts. But the highest truths refuse this treatment, and pass beyond the horizon of a finite intelligence. And yet they are not only true but are the most necessary truths, of which not only there can be no doubt but they are themselves the first principles and necessary conditions of a whole order of truths. They are transcendent because they pass beyond the compre- hension of our finite intelligence ; but they are tran- scendent because they a redivine, and because divine are true. For instance : who can comprehend eternity, immensity, infinity, self-existence ? And yet God is all these ; and the knowledge of God is the foundation of a whole world of subordinate truths, both in nature and in grace. These truths pass beyond our horizon, as the path of the planets, or the vaster and incalculable sweep of comets ; yet we know these, and apprehend and con- template them with the fixed certainty of the highest knowledge. We may apprehend what we cannot com- prehend, as in eternity we shall see God as He is ; but 128 Philosophical. not wholly, for the beatific vision is finite ; but the Object and Source of bliss is infinite. (" Ecclesiastical Sermons," Vol II., p. 177.) INTELLECTUAL ILLUMINATION. The deepest insights into Divine truth are obtained not by controversy, but by contemplation. By contemplation I mean the act of the reason, con- sciously and of our own will, with faith and love, dwelling upon the truth received by the gift of God ; and by contro- versy, the activity of the intellect, either seeking truth by collision and counter-reasonings, or proving and evincing what it has already received. Controversies, in which both sides are seeking for their conclusions, and both alike are uncertain and conflicting, may enlighten the disputants, but can confer no boon on those who have already received the doctrines of faith. Such, in fact, have been the controversies of the Gentile schools, external to the precinct of the Church, before Christ's coming and since. But it is no less true of the controversies which have been forced upon the Church itself. For what are they but defences of the truth as it is already apprehended in the mind of the Church ? The Councils of the fourth and fifth ages did but affirm and illustrate the faith of the first. The Catholic creeds, precious as they areas expositions of truth, added nothing to the ' good and perfect gift'. They did but express outwardly what had been held from the beginning. Intellectual Illumination. izg Again, controversies can but inadequately exhibit those inward perceptions ; for all controversy must be limited to the conditions of logic and speech, of thoughts and terms ; and these have no sufficient capacity to receive the fulness of truth as it is seen by contempla- tion. And it is this that stamps with such inestimable worth the creeds and definitions, the very words and forms, which the Church has approved and used in propounding the faith. The right use of language in Divine things is a high gift, and presupposes much spiritual discernment of truth ; for language can but approximate and shadow forth, as it were, by symbols and characters (the most perfect indeed that we possess, yet still inadequate), the ideas and relations of Divine truth ; as, for instance, the unity of the uncreated God, the eternal generation of the Son, the procession of the Holy Ghost. These, when expressed in controversy, do not give back any clearer insight to the enlightened intellect. Are they not among the things ' which it is not lawful for a man to utter ' ? What can words or propositions reflect back upon the regenerate reason which devoutly adores the mystery of the Holy Trinity ? In truth it is not controversy that has aided contemplation, but contemplation that has sustained and perfected all true controversy. It is out of the contemplative life of the Church that the verbal and logical expression of truth has been derived. Con- troversies are but the efforts of her lower and less perfect faculties ; exercises of those gifts which are addressed not to the apprehension of truth, but to the instruction of mankind. And they are those chiefly of the intellect alone, separable and distinct from the grace of sanctity. Though the greatest contemplatists and saints have been 9 1 30 Philosophical. the first and greatest defenders of the faith, — witness St. Athanasius, St. Austin, St. Anselm, among a multitude — yet the mental gifts employed in controversy may be possessed by unholy men ; and the knowledge which results from controversy is no more than may be ap- prehended by the intellect. It may become a sort of intellectual or literary tradition as regards the spiritual life, superficial and inactive. And this explains how men of a low tone of personal religion have been able controversial writers ; partly because the faculties of controversy lie within their reach, and partly because the terms and definitions of truth have been supplied to them by men who have inwardly partaken the contem- plative life, i.e., the faith and love of the Church : so that in reality, through the conflicts of eighteen hundred years, they have most effectively maintained the truth who have intensely apprehended it in devotion of heart. The true account of the matter, then, would seem to be, that the controversies of the Church are not by way of investigation but of exposition, and therefore, so far from bringing accesses of light, are themselves the results and not the cause of knowledge. And for want of a clear acknowledgment of this great fact, the endeavour to reduce objects of faith to definitions and proofs has become, to many, a source of infinite danger. We may see this in the schools and sects constituted upon the principle of inquiry and reasoning. They have per- petually entangled themselves in verbal arguments, and produced heresies by subjecting to the imperfection of language, and the rules of logical inference, mysteries which can only be received by the passive apprehension of the reason ; as, for instance, the heretical use of the Intellectual Illumination. 131 words ' Son of God ' : and of the terms TrpofSokr) and airoppoia, as describing the eternal generation of the Son ; or again, the Sacramentarian errors; and the like. These perplexities are the natural result of their first principle, and the perpetual tendency of it is to exhaust and forfeit what truth is still possessed. When language and dia- lectics, which are vehicles of a mechanical kind, are abused as sources of proof, truth escapes by a perpetual waste ; witness the Arian, Eutychian, and Socinian heresies, and the modern Christian sects, which have developed themselves into rationalism, rejection of the canon of Holy Scripture, and in the end of Christianity itself. Controversy, then, in the hands of the Church has relation not so much to herself as to her antagonists. The very weapons by which she overcomes she uses sparingly and almost against her will. Though both necessary and good, they are yet all too earthly and limited to give full utterance to the life and perception of faith. The contemplation of truth is so nearly allied to worship that they continually blend. In meditating upon it the Church adores the presence of her Lord ; and from it she gains insights into the Divine will, mind, wisdom, and love, which issue not in definition and speech, but in affections and emotions ; they can find no vent in figures and arguments, but in silence and sanctity, in love, obedience, adoration. This is the scientific and true use of reason, the enlightened ra- tionalism, which later days have inverted and profaned, by which things first believed are afterwards apprehended, first loved are afterwards understood. It is by this devout reflection of the mind on the objects of faith that the reason pierces into the causes and relation of truth, and finds the perfect harmony of its own light with the 132 Philosophical. lights of nature and of faith.* (" Sermons preached before the University of Oxford," p.- 162.) THE PHILOSOPHY OF FASTING. It is plain that there is an inclination to evil not ima- ginary and metaphysical, but real and active, in the flesh of which we are born ; that our state does not consist in a merely spiritual condition ; that our spiritual condition is subjected, by the sin of man, to the power of another inclination or law, which dwells and works in the body of our natural flesh. In early times this truth was so deeply apprehended that some fell into the error of be- lieving in the existence of two principles, good and evil ; of which the one was in and of God, the other in and of the matter of the visible world. They believed matter to be unmixed evil ; and rather than ascribe its origin to God, they supposed it to have its origin in another being, thereby destroying the unity of God's creation,, and His monarchy over all things. I note this only because we seem in the recoil from Manichsean errors to have gone in the opposite extreme, and to treat the flesh as if it were not the subject of evil at all ; as if sin lay only in our spiritual nature, and our probation were con- fined to the workings of the mind. If heretics of old abhorred matter and all contact with it as evil, we have come to be incredulous of the mysterious agency of evil which is in it. If this were not so, how could we be so ill-inclined to * S. Thom. Aquin., contra Gentes, lib. i., c. 7. The PhilosopJvy of Fasting. 133 believe that the habit of fasting has a real and effective relation to the purifying of our souls ? Many people formally reject the practice as a whole. Others are willing to admit it so far as to be a sort of public acknow- ledgment of the duty of humiliation. Some as express- ing, not as promoting, the contrition of the heart ; that is as a sign or symbol of what already exists, and is wrought by other agencies : not as a means, no less than an expression. How shallow a knowledge does this imply of our wonderful and fearful nature : how secure and dangerous an unconsciousness of what we are ! It is surely impossible for any one to reflect at all without perceiving the relation which exists between the habit of the body and the condition of the mind ; between the workings of the flesh and the qualities of the soul. Besides these self-evident proofs, which the one word sensuality will suffice to shew, is it not mani- fest that the sins of anger, pride, hardness of heart, indo- lence, sloth, selfishness, are so closely related to the body, that it is hard to say where they chiefly dwell, whether in the spirit or in the flesh? Does not the universal language of mankind connect them together ? Does not the natural instinct of discerning the characters of men by outward tokens prove to us that whether we will or no, we do associate the bodily and mental habits of men together? Is not the tradition of mortification as uni- versal as that of sacrifices, pointing to a truth to be afterwards revealed in the Gospel ? And what do all these things prove, but that the body, or, as the holy Scripture says, the flesh, is the occasion, the avenue, the provoking, aggravating, sustaining cause of moral and spiritual evil in the soul ? that it kindles and keeps alive the particular affections which, when consented to by 134 Philosophical. the will, become our personal and actual sins ? It follows, then, at once, that an external self-discipline, such as fasting, does enter into the means of our sancti- fication ; that as the obstructions to penitence and purity of heart arise chiefly out of sensuality, or indul- gence of the affections and emotions of the flesh or carnal mind, so a system which withdraws the excite- ments and contradicts their effects must tend to set the mind freer for its purely spiritual exercises. (" Sermons," Vol. II., p. 65.) THE DISCIPLINE OF POVERTY. THE very state of poverty is a wholesome corrective of many subtle and stubborn hindrances of our sanctifica- tion. Riches intoxicate the heart ; they raise its pulse above the natural beat, and make the desires of the mind flushed and feverish. Even the blameless and upright among rich men are full of artificial feelings, false sym- pathies, unreal standards of what is necessary, becoming, and right. Riches take them out of the universal cate- gory of man, and train them up in a sickly and unna- tural isolation from the real wants, sorrows, sufferings, fears, and hopes of mankind. Certainly they hinder, in a marked degree, the secret habits of humiliation, self- chastisement, and self-affliction, without which no high reach of sanctity is ever attained. How can a man who, without toil, forethought, or faith, lives daily on a full fare, and is warm and well furnished, put himself in the The Discipline of Poverty. 135 point of sight from which alone the Sermon on the Mount or the Passion of our Lord can be fully read ? There must be something of antipathy between states that are so remote, if not opposed. It is not only the pampered and luxurious, but the easy and full, who harbour strange desires, excessive anxieties, irregular wishes, foolish cares. Now, poverty is a very wholesome medicine for all this ; sharp, indeed, and rough to the taste, yet full of potent virtues. It is a sort of discipline — the ascetic rule of God's providence. They that are poor are already and unconsciously under a discipline of humility and self-denial. What so chastens the desires of the heart, and restrains them within due bounds and order ? What so reduces a man within the limit of his own sphere ? How great simplicity and abstinence of mind there is in the poor of the world ! A hard life, scanty fare, coarse raiment, plain food, a low-roofed dwell- ing, are all they have, and the continuance of them all they desire. From what unnumbered temptations, day- dreams, hankerings, schemes, speculations, snares, are they altogether free ! Their life lies in the well-known precinct of a lonely hamlet, where, from birth to the grave, they dwell in familiar daily converse with the very stones, and trees, and brooks, with simple and true thoughts of life and death, and the realities of our fallen state. How clear and direct is their insight into the world beyond the grave ! How little have they to divide their thoughts with God ! How soon they release themselves from life ! How simply they die ! What are our hurried days and waking nights, but the tyranny of a multitude of thoughts, which are worldly, ambitious, selfish, or needless, empty and vain ? What is it that keeps us perpetually straining, and moiling, and wearing .T36 Philosophical. ■ourselves away, but some desire which is not chastened, some thought of the heart which is not dead to this worldly state? What makes us lament the flight of time, and the changes of the world, but that we are still a part of it, and share its life ? What makes us die so hard, but that we leave behind us more treasures than we have laid up in heaven — that our hearts are not there but here ? (" Sermons," Vol. II., p. 301.) THE SECRET OF SYMPATHY. Sympathy is more or less perfect, as the holiness of the person is more or less so. There is no real sym- pathy in men of a sensual, worldly, unspiritual life ; unless we are to call that inferior fellow-feeling which ranks with our natural instincts, and is to be found even in the lower animals, by the name of sympathy. There is a natural pity, benevolence, and compassion, which expresses itself in congratulations and condolences, and we may in one sense call it sympathy ; but it is its lowest and most irrational form, little differing from the perceptions of cold and heat, sweet and bitter, which are common to all mankind. There is little distinct consciousness about it. And even these sympathies of nature are crossed and crushed by personal faults. Ambition, covetousness, selfishness, will extinguish them ; much more actual familiarity with sin. Just as a man becomes infected by the power of evil, he ceases to sym- pathise with others. All his feelings centre in himself. .Sin is essentially a selfish thing. It sacrifices everything The Secret vf Sympathy. 137 to its own lust and will. It is also peculiarly merciless. Reckless as it is of the evil of sin, and therefore lenient to the worst offenders, it is, nevertheless, peculiarly un- charitable, hard, and unfair. Sinners put the worst con- struction on each other's words and acts. They have no consideration or forbearance. Their apparent sympathy is but a fellowship in the same disobedience. And so also the sympathy of the world, how hollow, formal, and constrained it is ! How little soothing or consoling in our sorrows and trials are worldly friends, even the kindest-hearted of them ! And why, but because it is peculiarly the property of true sanctity to be charitable ? and in the grace of charity is contained gentleness, com- passion, tenderness of hand in touching the wounds of other men, fair interpretations, large allowances, ready forgiveness. These things ripen as personal holiness grows more mature. The loving compassion, active emotion of pity, the tears and tenderness with which the holiest men have ever dealt with the sinful, is a proof, that in proportion as sin loses its power over them, their sympathy with those that are afflicted by its oppressive yoke becomes more perfect. It may be said, indeed, that they know by present experience what is the distress and shame of sin ; that they really have in them the original taint ; and that it is by virtue of this that they are able so intimately to sympathise with the trials of others who are repenting. Nevertheless it is most cer- tain that this sympathy becomes more perfect in pro- portion as their repentance is perfect, and their warfare turned into the peace of established sanctity ; that is in proportion as they cease to be like those they sym- pathise with in the very point of sinfulness. (" Ser- mons," Vol. II., p. 181.) 138 Philosophical. "THIS ENLIGHTENED AGE." IF there be one thing in this nineteenth century of which men are proud, with an arrogant self-gratulation, it is the intellectual illumination of the days in which we live ; and if there be anything which more than another is making havoc, like a devouring pestilence, in the whole Christian world, it is what we call intellectual pride. Let us, therefore, bring this intellectual progress to the test. Let us see what it is. Let us see what men have to be proud of. Now there have been three periods of the world. A period before the revelation of Christianity was given, during which the reason of man was left unaided, except by the lights of nature and the inscrutable communica- tions of God, of which we cannot now stay to speak. What was the state of the world when the intellect and the reason of man was left to its own light ? Read over the first chapter of Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans. I need not enter into any detail. The utter and universal perversion of the intellect of those who first multiplied gods, and then worshipped the creature more than the Creator, and the consequent moral corruption of the heart in those who, being intellectually perverted, could hardly discern right from wrong, is a picture so horrible, that I have no will to dwell upon it. Secondly, the reason of man under the light of revelation has been rectified and conformed to the intelligence and to the will of God in this, that God has made both known to us by the declaration of His truth and of His law ; and the Christian world, so far as it is worthy of the " This Enlightened Age." 139 name, has been conformed to the truth and the law of God. The intellect of the Christian world has been thereby illuminated and sanctified. And when the in- tellect or reason of man is illuminated and sanctified, it carries the light of truth before the will in the path of obedience, and guides it in the way of conformity to God ; as the Psalmist says : ' Thy word is a light unto my feet'. Such was once the state of the Christian world, and such it is still, wherever faith reigns over the hearts of men. God sustains and preserves His Church by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, the fountain of all illumination and of all grace, in its conformity with His own divine intelligence. He guides the Catholic Church in the path' of His eternal truth. That which we call infallibility is nothing but this : the Church cannot err from the path of revealed truth. And they who are faithful to the Church are illuminated and sanctified, even in the midst of the darkness and the distortion of this nineteenth century. What is the intellectual state of the men who have revolted from the Church, who have fallen away from it, who have set themselves up on the outside to be its critics, its judges, and its teachers ? What is the condi- tion of those nations that have broken away from the unity of the faith and of the Church of God ? We see a country which, intoxicated with an excess of material power, is now daring, as a precursor to its own chastise- ment, to persecute the Church of Jesus Christ. A fatal extinction of supernatural light, the aberrations of false philosophy, the inflation of false science, the pride of unbelief, and a contemptuous scorn of those who believe, are preparing Germany for an overthrow or for suicide. The intellect of man in revolting from God falls from 1I40 Philosophical. God, and, falling from God, loses its own perfection ; it thereby darkens itself, and, having lost the light and the knowledge of God, loses also the knowledge of His law. Saint Paul says of such : 'Their foolish heart was darkened : professing themselves to be wise, they became fools'. The intellectual results of this we see in the philosophies of the Absolute and the Unknowable, of independent morality, of universal scepticism, and the denial of all that is not subject to sense. And this is ■'culture'; and its professors and disciples are 'men of culture,' the lights of the world, who from their intellec- tual heights look down upon the nations, and pity men. To us simple mortals it seems as if these intellectual Titans were truncated men, walking about headless and unconscious of their mutilation. To us they seem to be intellectual pollards : stunted trees walking. They have abdicated the elevation and the dignity of the human reason in rejecting the knowledge of God, and in reject- ing God they have rejected their own highest perfection. Such must be the condition of the world after it has de- parted from faith, and of the intellect and reason of man when the light which conforms it to God has de- parted. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 299.) TENDENCIES OF ENGLISH THOUGHT. DURING the last ten or fifteen years the doctrines of M. Comte have attracted the attention of a small number of our English metaphysicians. But he had hardly so much as one thorough disciple among us — certainly not Tendencies of English Thought. 141 a school. Several writers such as Mr. Lewis and Mr. Mill have treated of Positivism ; but neither appear to adopt it as a whole. Nevertheless the tendency of both metaphysics and science in England is to eliminate the supernatural and to limit the basis of philosophy to the span of sense and of experiment. We have some Posi- tivism among us, little or no Pantheism, but abundance of Materialism. The English mind is positive by nature, not indeed scientifically, but by its immersion in material interests and material production. We are so practically material that scientific materialism makes little way with us. The Germans are speculative, the French logical, the English as a people are neither. We are thoroughly traditional and insular, and we hold out obstinately against all invasions, whether of armies or of philosophies. Nevertheless ideas penetrate subtilely ; and one by one, an idea deposited in the mind of a people is like a seed wafted by the wind or dropped by a bird. It will spring; up and reproduce itself. For this reason we have need to watch carefully over a part of our national education, which perhaps more than any other is left without direction, that is mental philosophy. Christendom has a tradition of philosophy, as well as of faith, and in that tradition truth both natural and supernatural is com- bined in perfect unity, symmetry, and harmony. Philo- sophy and theology are the upper and the nether springs of truth. Philosophy may be called the theo- logy of reason ; theology the philosophy of revelation. They belong respectively to the natural and super- natural worlds, and they belong also to each other as integral parts of one perfect whole. In the confusion of these later centuries they have been divorced from each other, and set in opposition to each other. Philosophy 142 Philosophical. has taken up an attitude of defiance to theology ; and theology in condemning a false philosophy has been thought to be unphilosophical. The existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, the law of morals, are truths of philosophy ; and yet modern philosophy has con- founded them with theology, and rejected them with disdain. Materialism and independent morality are the direct product of that rejection. Again, philosophy teaches that the nature of man is composed of soul and body, reason and sense ; and that in the know- ledge and discovery of truth the whole nature, with its faculties and sensations, discovers by a simple intelli- gent activity. Modern philosophy has disintegrated the nature of man, and placed criterion of truth either in the reason generally or in the sense, from which have come two distinct philosophies, both false because both partial — the rationalistic which in Germany has generated Pantheism, and the sensuous which in Eng- land and Scotland has generated not complete Mate- rialism, but a philosophy which is sense-bound and mutilated as to the higher truths of the intellectual order. The propositions — that the existence of God cannot be proved by reason ; that God is not an object of knowledge ; that morality in us is diverse from the moral perfection of God ; that our knowledge of things is not proper but relative and arbitrary; that the will is not free, and the like — are intellectual aberrations from which the traditional philosophy of the Christian Church and of the Christian world would have pre- served us. But these questions are too speculative to become popular, and among us are confined to so small a class of literary men that their action on society is both Tendencies of English Thought. 143 limited and superficial. It would seem as if the atmos- phere of England were unfavourable to the growth of abstractions, whether false or true. A remarkable in- stance of this is the sudden popularity, and as sudden oblivion, of a book which represents more systematically, perhaps, than any other in a popular form, some of the worst errors of the positive and material philosophy, Buckle's History of Civilisation. The author is no longer among us, and I am informed by his friends that he was of an estimable nature. I would not wound his memory, but I cannot spare the book. If I rightly understand it, the theory on which it is based is as follows : — The actions of men are determined by the motives which prompt them. If we knew the motives we could predict the actions of any in- dividual. Society is made up of individuals. If we knew the motives of each individual we could predict the collective action of society. Statistics prove the same. We find every year so many suicides in such a population ; and of suicides, so many by drowning, so many by laying violent hands on themselves. Again, the number of letters put into the post without direction bears a proportion to the population ; and so on in various examples. From this he infers that the laws or motives which govern individuals are fixed and pro- portionate, and that society has a fixed and prede- termined course of evolution. The writer adds, with much simplicity, that he knows of only two objec- tions to this theory — the one Divine Providence, and the other the freedom of the human will. The idea of Providence he dismisses as a superstition of the infant state of man. The savage goes out to the hunting fields, one day he finds game, another day 144 Philosophical:. he finds none. Chance, becomes Providence, and Pro- vidence the benign action of a Divine Being. The freedom of the will is a ' sensation ' having no higher basis than our consciousness. But what higher certainty- there can be for the ultimate facts of the human mind,- or what greater evidence can be found for our personal identity, he does not tell us. This dreary mechanical and superficial philosophy of society is but Positivism applied to Sociology. It fell dead ; and the book has disappeared. Thus far our social peril would not seem to be from speculative Positivism, Pantheism, or Materialism. Nevertheless, we are perhaps practically the most material of nations, and the influence of the supernatural over the society of England is becoming feebler year by year. The only safety for our country is in those old words, which may be a little heavy perhaps, 'but living and powerful ' — God, the soul, and immortality; These are the salt of the earth. Whosoever shall reinvigorate and extend their influence over the minds: and wills of our people will do the highest work of a Christian and of a citizen, and promote not only the stability of our social order, but the eternal welfare of mankind. (" Miscellanies," Vol.. I., p. 205.) INDEPENDENT MORALITY. THESE last generations have become fruitful of impiety and of immorality of a stupendous kind ; and among other of their impious and immoral offspring is a pesti- Independent Morality. 145 lent infidel school, who, with an audacity never before known in the Christian world, are at this time assailing the foundations of human society and of Divine law. They have talked of late of what they call independent morality. And what do you suppose is independent morality ? It means the law of morals separated from the Lawgiver. It is a proud philosophical claim to account for right and wrong without reference to God, who is the Giver of the law. And what is the object of this theory ? It is to get rid of Christianity, and of God, and of right and wrong altogether, and to resolve all morality into reason ; and inasmuch as, it tells us, the dictates of human reason are variable all over the world, and change from generation to generation, this philo- sophy denies and destroys the foundations of morality itself. Now, I should not turn aside to mention this monster of immorality and impiety if it were not that, at this time, there is an effort making in England to intro- duce under a veil this same subtil denial of morals, both Christian and natural. Only the other day I read these words : ' That in the education of the people it is not possible indeed, as things are, to teach morality without teaching doctrine, because the English people are so accustomed to associate morality and doctrine together that they have not, as yet, learned any other foundation of morals '. God forbid they ever should ! The mean- ing of this is : Teach children right and wrong, but say nothing about God, nothing about the Lawgiver; teach them right and wrong if you will, but nothing about Jesus ,Christ. What is this but a stupidity as well as an im- piety? For morals are not the dead, blind, senseless rela- tions that we have to stocks and stones, but the relations of duty and of obligation we have to the living Lawgiver, 10 146 Philosophical. who is our Maker and Redeemer. There are no morals excepting in the relations between God and man, and between man and man. Morals mean the relations and duties of living and moral agents ; and this inde- pendent morality, this morality without God for school- children, is bottomless impiety if it be not the stupidity of unbelief. (" Sin and its Consequences," p. 9.) THE PERVERSION OF THE INTELLECT. THE characteristic mark of these latter days is the per- version of the intellect The intellect of man is with- drawing itself from the light of faith, and therefore from conformity to God. And this intellectual perversion is the source of a systematic immorality in men, in house- holds, and in states. The intellect in man is the image of God in us. It is the light of the soul ; and if that light be darkened, how great is the darkness. If that light be clouded, how deep and deceitful is the twilight in which men walk. As I have already said, a flaw in a lens will distort all objects that are seen through it. The intellect perverted in any way distorts principles, judgments, and laws. And twenty errors in practice are as nothing compared with one error in principle. Twenty errors in practice may be corrected, and the twenty-first may never be committed ; but one erroneous principle is like a damaged wheel in a machine. It can never work correctly afterwards. One speculative error will produce an infinite series of practical errors. The series is inexhaustible, until the machine itself is either The Perversion of the Intellect. 147 amended or destroyed. We see at this day the revival of Gnosticism. In the first age of Christianity, the Oriental mind, inflated with a belief in its own know- ledge, refused to learn of a Divine Teacher. It spun for itself visions, superstitions, genealogies without end, respecting the nature of God and the nature of man. We have it before us at this day in the illuminism of those who refuse any light or teacher but their own judgment; who proclaim that the reason in man is all-sufficing for his own guidance. The first consequence of this is, that they apply their reason as the test of everything they are to believe ; next, as the measure of that which is credible ; and thirdly, they make their reason the source of all their faith. And what is that faith ? The credulity of unbelief; the rejection of the revelation of God. Such is Rationalism. There has sprung up in the midst of all this rankness a school of men who tell us that the Absolute is unknowable, and that we can therefore know nothing about God. They say that they do not deny the existence of God, because they know nothing about Him. But if we know nothing about God, we can know nothing about His law. As I have said, if we reject the Lawgiver, at the same time we reject the law. And if we know nothing about the law of God, what can we know about right and wrong ? what can we know about morality ? And therefore, if we know nothing of God, we know nothing of morality. God and the moral law come and go together. Such is the condition of a large number of highly-cultivated men in most countries of Europe at this day. This strange state of privation, happily, is not so rankly produced amongst ourselves as in the older race, to which we bear a certain kindred ; but even among us there are too many. Now what is 148 Philosophical. the cause of this strange unbelief? The cause of it is simply the rejection of the principle of faith, that is, of submission to a Divine Teacher; and a rejection therefore of revelation, which comes from a Divine Teacher ; the erecting of human reason in the place of that Divine Teacher. The intellect of man becomes thereby a god to himself. It is the primeval lie : ' Ye shall be as gods '.* (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 323.) A BRUTAL PHILOSOPHY. Hitherto mankind has believed that the gift of intelligence and the knowledge of God through the light of reason are the true dignity of man. If to possess an intelligence whereby he knows the Infinite and Eternal God, perfect in His attributes of love and mercy, of justice and power, elevates man, then to lack this know- ledge is no elevation. Surely if there be anything which ennobles man, it is to be lifted upwards and united with the Divine Original by Whom he was made. What then, I ask you, is the state of those who abuse that very reason, which is God's best gift ; who misuse the intelli- gence He gave for the knowledge of Himself to deny His existence ; who say that the world is the only reality of which we have any positive knowledge ; that the sensible facts and the phenomena of the world, and the things that we can handle and taste, and test and analyse by chemistry — that these things are the only truths we can * Gen. iii. 5. A Brutal Philosophy. 149 know, and that anything beyond these — such as right and wrong, and conscience and soul — are superstitions of theology or abstractions of metaphysics ? Does such a philosophy dignify or degrade human nature ? What is the difference between a man and the dumb creatures ? Is it not the possession and the right use of reason ? If that be so, then, as I have said before and say again, such philosophy is the brutal philosophy. It reduces man to the level of those who know not God. Nay, it teaches that we cannot know God. What more could be said of the brute natures ? But that which degrades this philosophy more in my eyes is this, that it is not content with abdicating the powers of reason for its own disciples. They who profess it are not satisfied with their own state of privation. They go about to rob other men of their dignity. They will not let other men know God, or have the use of reason to know God. And there are none so tyrannical, none so bigoted, none so intolerant, as those who do not believe in the existence of God. They are so sure that the reason of man can- not know God, that they confidently affirm that God does not exist. He is the unknowable, because they do not know Him. And because they do not, we cannot. We have come at last to know that there is a fanaticism worse than that which they impute to us. These are truths very shameful and humbling to human nature. The men of the nineteenth century who profess to be the guides and lights of men, the creators and promoters of progress and modern civilisation, are beyond all men intolerant, despotic, and tyrannous. They have found out that the highest thing on earth is not the Church of God, but the State ; that the State is supreme ; that liberty of conscience is a fiction ; that obedience is due ISO Philosophical. in all things and from all men to State laws, all revelation, all jurisdiction, all liberty, all rights of God and of His Church notwithstanding. This clumsy and incoherent philosophy is the negation of all faith : it is the deification of the human reason as the sole rule of life, and of the human will as the sole source of law. Out of this philosophy of the Unreasonable there has come an elaborate system of politics, which has these two characteristics : first, a claim to interfere with the intellectual belief of other men ; and, secondly, a claim to control parental rights. They preach liberty of speech and of the press until it refutes them ; then they gag and suppress it. They will not let fathers and mothers educate their offspring in their own faith or in their own opinions. They banish all teachers who do not agree with them ; they claim to interfere with the training and formation even of the priesthood. Intoxicated by temporal greatness and military success, they think to achieve that which no power of man has ever yet accomplished — the subjugation of the Church of God. Like Titans, they are attempting to do the impossible, and God is bearing with them for a while to open the eyes of the nations. They began by deifying the State, declaring it to be omnipotent, not only over taxes and customs, and coinage and commerce, and sewerage and drainage (in which things we willingly endure their omnipotence), but omnipotent over the human conscience, over the soul of man, over the Church of God. Here they go blind and cannot see the sun ; and here we tell them that they are impotent. This portentous aberration of the reason springs from a despotic atheism, and this again springs from the disorder and tumult which three hundred years of separation from divine faith have Atheism. 151 inflicted on the world. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. 45.) ATHEISM. There exists at this day, and there has existed for two centuries, a certain number of men — few indeed — who profess themselves to be Atheists, or not to believe the existence of God. I am sorry to say we have among us a certain number of such men who, by their speeches and writings, profess this, which I must call not only a blasphemous but a stupid impiety. I call it stupid for this reason. A man whom Englishmen are fond of call- ing the greatest philosophical intellect that England ever produced, in one of his essays has used these words. Quoting the Book of Psalms, he says, ' The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God '. It is not said, ' The fool hath thought in his heart ' : that is, the fool did say so in his heart, because he hoped there might be no God. He did not say it in his head, because he knew better. And this explanation is exactly what the Apostle has written, speaking of the ancient world : ' The in- visible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made : His eternal power also and divinity : so that they (that is, the nations who know not God) ' are inexcus- able ' ; ' for, professing themselves to be wise, they be- came fools'.* And he goes on to explain the reason of it ; 'as they liked not to have God in their knowledge ' : * Rom. i. 20, 22. J S 2 Philosophical. they had no love, no liking for Him, there was no moral sympathy with His perfections of purity, justice, mercy, sanctity, and truth. These things were out of harmony with their degraded nature ; and because they had no love to retain this knowledge of a pure and holy God, therefore their intellects were darkened. And yet, not- withstanding all this, even these, who not knowing God, and not glorifying Him as God, worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, these were not Atheists. So far from it, they were Polytheists : they believed in a multitude of gods. So profoundly rooted in human nature was a belief in God, that when they lost the knowledge of the one only true God, they mul- tiplied for themselves a number of false gods. The human mind was incapable of conceiving the perfection of the one only true God, and it divided the Divine idea into a multitude of gods : but it was so profusely and instinctively filled with the notion of the existence of God, that it multiplied God, instead of rejecting His exist- ence. The heathen world, therefore, is a witness and a testimony to the existence of God. It became supersti- tious, credulous, anything you will, but atheistic it could not be. Nay, more than this : even the learned men, the more refined and the more cultivated, they also did not reject the notion of God ; they became Pantheists, that is to say, they invested everything with divinity. The thought of God was so kindred to their nature, it had such a response in them, their intellect and their conscience testified with such constant accord to the reasonableness of believing in God, or in gods, that they invested all things round about them with a participa- tion in the Divine nature. How, then, has it come to pass that men, in these last times, after receiving the Positivism. 153 illumination of the Faith, and knowing ' the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent,' knowing Him in His perfections, in His attributes, and by His works and grace,— that they should have fallen lower, I must say, than even the heathen world, that they should have come to deny the very existence of God ? They are, indeed, few in number ; but, nevertheless, they are active and full of zeal to propagate their opinions. (" Four Great Evils of the Day," p. 7.) POSITIVISM. In France there exists a school of Atheism which has a few disciples also in England ; I mean the Positivist school of philosophy. The founder of it, Comte, taught that the human intellect has three periods : the first is the period of childhood, the second is the period of youth, and the third the period of manhood. Now, it says the period of childhood is the theological period, in which the human reason believes in gods or in God. The second period of the human reason is that which the founder of this school of philosophy calls the meta- physical period : and here is a refinement well worthy of note. He says, when men are men, they give up the superstition of believing in God ; nevertheless, they fall into the superstition of believing in cause and effect, in law and principle, that is, in the metaphysical conceptions which are intrinsic through the inevitable action of the human reason. He treats these as super- stitions. As the belief in God was a theological super. 1 54 Philosophical. stition, so the belief in cause and effect, in consequence, and principle, and law — all this is a metaphysical super- stition. Well, the third state of the human reason, which is the perfect state of manhood, in what does it consist ? In believing that which we can see, feel, touch, handle, test, weigh, measure, or analyse by chemistry. We may test the facts, but we must not connect them together. We must not say that one thing follows after another by a law, or is caused by it. An explosion of fire-damp is not caused by the candle being carried into the pit ; it follows after the carrying of it into the pit, but it is a metaphysical superstition to believe that it is caused by it. This is what is called the scientific state of the human mind. And this scientific state of the human mind is when, having pushed over the horizon and out of sight the idea of God, the idea of cause and effect, of law and principle, and all mental philosophy, we are reduced to this — that we may count and number and distinguish the things we see as phenomena and facts, but we must not connect them together, we must not form conceptions as to why they follow one upon another. And this is Science, the perfection of human reason ! The immediate result of this, of necessity, is Atheism. I would ask, Is this the elevation of the human reason ? Does this Philosophy dignify, or per- fect, or exalt, or unfold it, or confer upon it knowledge greater than it had before ? If there can be anything which dwarfs, and stunts, and diminishes, and distorts the human reason, it is this. Atheism, then, is a lower abasement of the intellect than was ever reached by the heathen world. More than this, it is a degradation and distortion of the human intelligence ; and in propor- tion as the human intelligence departs from the know- Phenomenism. 155 ledge of God, in that same degree it departs from its own perfection. Nevertheless, this school does exist among us ; and this is the first form, or rather the worst form, of the revolt of the intellect, because it is the revolt of the intellect from God altogether, from His existence, and from all that He has made known to us by the light of revelation, and even from that which He has made known to us by the light of nature, which is the light of reason. (" Four Great Evils of the Day," p. 11.) PHENOMENISM. There are modern philosophies which teach either that matter does not exist or that we cannot know its existence. If they said only that we do not know what it is, we should have no contention with them. But to deny its existence is to contradict a law of our reason : to doubt of its existence is to doubt of the certainty of our reason. But I fear the cause lies deeper. We have already seen that the Scholastic philosophy passes at once from the immediate certainty of our own existence to the intellectual and logical certainty of the existence of God, and from that beginning it descends through all orders of existences. The modern philosophies not only invert this method, which might be legitimately done, but they fail or refuse to ascend to the First Existence and the First Cause. They begin their work by sense in the midst of phenomena. All beyond this veil, to them has no cognizable existence. Is not this an abdication of 156 Philosophical. reason in its highest prerogatives ? Is it not a suppres- sion of one-half of the knowledge which sense and reason, acting simultaneously, convey to us ? When the sense reports from without, the reason pronounces within. We are not sense only nor reason only ; both act together in every normal process of our rational nature. When the senses report phenomena the reason predicates existence, and in that existence, substance, or matter, or catter, or stuff, or what you will, a being and a reality are there of which the sense can only report the apparel and the appearance. And yet the physical sciences, by anatomy, and analysis, and chemistry, report a great deal more than appearances. They test and superinduce changes, and corruptions, and transformations — of what, and into what? Of phenomena only, or atoms, or force- loci, or points having position and no parts ? My sceptical mind finds this hard of digestion. When I am told that atoms of force-points by cohesion, or attraction, or repulsion, or equilibrium, can account for all diversities of species, and kinds, and proportions, and operations,, and qualities, and extensions, and dimensions, in all the unities which we call bodies, my reason demands a mind and cause, a law and a plastic power, in which all second causes are enveloped, and from which they all come. Unless the Atomists and Dynamists ascend to the Creator, and see Him in all atoms and forces and points as the sole intelligible reason of the Cosmos, they speak but half truths, which the reason rejects as inadequate. ("Miscellanies," Vol. II., p. 353.) The Scholastic Doctrine of Matter. 157 "THE SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINE OF MATTER. The following will be, I believe, a correct statement of the Scholastic teaching : — 1. By strict process of reason we demonstrate a First Existence, a First Cause, a First Mover ; and that this Existence, Cause, and Mover is Intelligence and Power. 2. This Power is eternal, and from all eternity has been in its fullest amplitude ; nothing in it is latent, dormant, or in germ : but its whole existence is in actu, that is, in actual perfection, and in complete expansion or actuality. In other words God is Actus Purus, in whose being nothing is potential, in potentia, but in Him all things potentially exist. 3. In the power of.God, therefore, exists the original matter (prima materia) of all things ; but that prima materia is pura potentia a nihilo distincta, a mere poten- tiality or possibility ; nevertheless, it is not a nothing, but a possible existence. When it is said that the prima materia of all things exists in the power of God, it does not mean that it is of the existence of God, which would involve Pantheism, but that its actual existence is possible. 4. Of things possible by the power of God, some come into actual existence, and their existence is determined by the impression of a form upon this materia prima. The form is the first act which determines the existence and the species of each, and this act is wrought by the will and power of God. By this union of form with the materia prima, the materia secunda or the materia signata is constituted. 158 Philosophical. 5. This form is called forma substantialis because it determines the being of each existence, and is the root of all its properties, and the cause of all its operations. 6. And yet the materia prima has no actual existence before the form is impressed. They come into existence simultaneously ;* as the voice and articulation, to use St. Augustine's illustration, are simultaneous in speech. 7. In all existing things there are, therefore, two principles ; the one active, which is the form — the other passive, which is the matter ; but when united, they have an unity which determines the existence of the species. The form is that by which each is what it is. 8. It is the form that gives to each its unity of co- hesion, its law, and its specific nature.-f- * Kleutgen, p. 294, note. + The following quotations will show the definitions of S. Thomas as to Matter, Existence, Act, Potentia, Form, substantial and accidental : — ' ' Genuina notio materise primae, earn scilicet esse quidem quidpiam reale et positivum, non esse tamen actu substantiam sed solum potentiam realem in omnium substantiarum species, quae generatione fieri possunt."— Coudin, Philosophia Divi. Thoma, torn. ii. p. 45. "Concludamus igitur cum D. Thoma, 2 Contra Gentes. cap. 45, in rebus tres gradus reperiri. Invenitur enim aliqua res quae est Actus tantum, scilicet Deus Optimus Maximus : et alia res quae est potentia tantum, scilicet materia prima : et demum alia res, quae miscetur ex actis et potentia, cujus modi sunt omnes creaturae inter Deum'et materiam primam positae. " — Ibid., p. 82. " Existentia est extra nihilum et causas sistentia .... Quia vero res censetur sisti extra causas et nihilum, cum nihil ei deesse requisitum ad rationem entis, ideo metaphysici definiunt existentiam, ultimam entis aciualitatem." — Ibid., p. 89. "Secunda sententia materise omnem prorsus existentiam propriam ab- negat, eamque censet meram potentiam realem et positivam existentiae capacem. Ita Thomistae omnes plerique alii." — Ibid., p. 89. " Conclusio. Materia prima nullam ex se habet existentiam, sed existit per existentiam totius compositi quo illicompetit per formam." — Ibid. ' ' Forma substantialis recte definitur Actus primus materia. Dicitur in primis Actus ad differentiam materise, quae est pura potentia. Dicitur Mr. Spencer's Doctrine of Will. 159 When, therefore, we are asked whether matter exists or no, we answer, It is as certain that matter exists as that form exists ; but all the phenomena which fall under sense prove the existence of the unity, cohesion, species, that is, of the form of each, and this is a proof that what was once in mere possibility is now in actual existence. It is, and that is both form and matter. When we are further asked what is matter, we answer readily, It is not God, nor the substance of God; nor the presence of God arrayed in phenomena ; nor the uncreated will of .God veiled in a world of illusions, deluding us with shadows into the belief of substance : much less is it catter, and still less is it nothing. It is a reality, the physical kind or nature of which is as unknown in its quiddity or quality as its existence is certainly known to the reason of man. (" Miscellanies," Vol. II., p. 348.) MR. SPENCER'S DOCTRINE OF WILL. When I am told by Mr. Herbert Spencer that my will is 'a group of psychical states,' and that I am led into primus ad differentiam existential, quae est actus ultimus entis : et ad differen- tiam formarum accidentalium, quae sunt solum actus secundarii, praasup- ponentes actum substantialem. Additur materia ad differentiam formarum per se subsistentium, quales sunt angeli, quae sunt actus sed non recipiuntur in materia," — Ibid., p. 112, "Forma informans dividitur in substantialem, et accidentalem. Sub- stantialis est quae dat esse simpliciter .... Sic anima rationalis est forma substantialis, quia dat esse humanum : .... at vero scientia est forma accidentalis quia dat solum esse secundarium et addititium esse humano." That is to say, the rational soul constitutes man : science a learned man. But the former is the substance of humanity, the latter an accidental excellence. Cornell Catholic Union Library. 160 Philosophical. error if I suppose that there is something distinct from the 'impulse' given by these 'psychical states' which determines my action — when I say Mr. Herbert Spencer tells me this, I confess that I do not understand him. And I believe that I do not understand him through no fault of mine, but because no intellectual equivalent can be found for his terms. Are these 'psychical states' the desires or dispositions antecedent to my action ? They are not myself; and I am conscious of sometimes going against them by a deliberate antagonism of my free will. Do they contain the finis intentus or the final cause of my actions ; how does this necessitate my will if the end of my action is freely chosen ? Am I deceived in thinking that my choice is free ? The consciousness that I have a power to go against my strongest desires, and, under the dictate of my reason, that is, of my con- science, to select the end which is the least attractive, or rather the most repulsive to my desire or appetite, remains both a primary and an ultimate consciousness which cannot be denied nor explained away, nor squared with ' the impulse of psychical states '. In the action of the will the strongest appetites are freely but absolutely under control of the reason. I have the strongest re- pugnance to pain, but I willingly go to the rack rather than turn Mussulman. Why? because my reason tells me that pain is to be chosen rather than apostacy. The will is accurately defined to be appetitus rationalis. Our desires pass under the cognizance of the reason, and by the guidance of the reason the end most opposed to natural appetite is often freely chosen. Such was the will of the martyrs ; such is the risking of life by fire or water to save the life of another of whom we know nothing but his peril. Such was the will of the prisoner Mr. Spencer 's Doctrine of Will. 161 condemned to death who/ to escape hanging, starved himself in prison. It is no answer to say these were their dominant appetites. They were not so as appetites, but as deliberate decisions of reason controlling the appetite by an act of the will. That there is a power of determination which is not a ' psychical state ' but a deliberate choice followed by a decisive action, is as certain as my consciousness of existence. ' I am ' and 'I will' are certainties of which I have an immediate knowledge in myself. If Mr. Spencer includes all this in the ' psychical state,' why not say so ? To tell me that ' I myself am only a group of psychical states which are always changing,' is to contradict my immanent and permanent consciousness of my own identity. To tell me that my own identity is an illusion, and is only a psychical state, or a v group of such states, and then to tell me that such states are always changing, while my consciousness of personal identity never changes but is always permanent, is to me not philosophy, but a con- tradiction in terms. If I break my leg I have a group of psychical states arising from the pain and terror of the accident ; they may pass, or vary, or return, but my consciousness that I am the ego who broke his leg remains always without variation. To tell me that I am a group of variable psychical states is to tell me that I have no permanent or conscious identity or ego ; and to tell me this is, I think, to try to talk me blind. I can hardly believe that any metaphysician has ever intended to hold or to say this. But to me they seem to say it, whatever they may hold. This is the only meaning I could attach to Mr. Buckle's words on personal identity and free will in his first volume on ' Civilization,' and the only sense I can attach to Mr. Herbert Spencer's II 1 62 Philosophical. words now. If this be not his meaning, I can find no intellectual equivalent to his terms. But I shall rejoice to find that I am mistaken. ("Miscellanies," Vol. II., P- 337-) FREEWILL AND HABIT. It is our will that determines our whole destiny. You all know well the difference between the features of your face and of your countenance. God made your features, but you made your countenance. Your features were His work, and He gives to every man his own natural face — all different from each other, and yet all of one type. But the countenances of men are far more diverse even than their features. Some men have a lofty coun- tenance, some have a lowering countenance, or a worldly or ostentatious vain-glorious countenance, or a scornful countenance, or a cunning and dissembling countenance. We know men by their look. We read men by looking at their faces — not at their features, their eyes or lips, because God made these ; but at a certain cast or motion, and shape and expression, which their features have acquired. It is this that we call the countenance. And what makes this countenance? The inward and mental habits ; the constant pressure of the mind, the perpetual repetition of its acts. You can detect at once a vain-glorious, or conceited, or foolish person. It is stamped on their countenance. You can see at once on the faces of the cunning, the deep, the dissembling, certain corresponding lines traced on the face as Freewill and Habit. 163 legibly as if they were Written. As it is with the countenance so it is with the character. God gave us our intellect, our heart, and our will ; but our character is something different from the will, the heart, and the intellect. The character is that intellectual and moral texture into which all our life long we have been weaving up the inward life that is in us. It is the result of the habitual or prevailing use we have been making of our intellect, heart, and will. We are always at work like the weaver at a loom ; the shuttle is always going, and the woof is always growing. So we are always forming a character for ourselves. It is plain matter-ofrfact truth that everybody grows up in a certain character ; some are good, some bad, some excellent, and some unendurable. Every character is formed by habits. . If a man is habitually proud, or vain, or false, and the like, he forms for himself a cha- racter like in kind. It is the permanent bias formed by continually acting in a particular way ; and this acting in a particular way comes from the continual indulgence of thoughts and wishes of a particular tendency. The loom is invisible within, and the shuttle is ever going in the heart ; but it is the will that throws it to and fro. The character shows itself outwardly, but it is wrought within. Every habit is a chain of acts, and every one of those acts was a free act of the will. There was a time when the man had never committed the sin which first became habitual, and then formed his abiding character. For instance, some people are habitually false. We sometimes meet with men whose word we can never take, and for this reason. They have lost the perception of truth and falsehood. The distinction is effaced from their minds. They do not know when they are speaking 164 Philosophical. truly and when they are speaking falsely. The habit of paltering, and distinguishing, and concealing, and putting forward the edge of a truth instead of showing boldly the full face of it, at last leads men into an insincerity so habitual, that they really do not know when they speak the truth or not. They bring this stateTupon themselves. But there was a time when those same men had never told a lie. The first they told was perhaps with only half an act of the will ; but gradually they grew to do it deliberately, then they added lie to lie with a full deliberation, then with a frequency which formed a habit ; and when it became habitual to them, then it became unconscious. Or take another example ; men who, perhaps, had never tasted anything in their lives that could turn their brain have at last acquired a habit of habitual drunkenness. Now, .to make clear, do not suppose by the words habitual drunkenness I mean only that sort of gross reeling intoxication by which men openly in the light of day shame themselves in the street. I wish there were no other habits of intoxication than these. There are men and women who live a refined life, and in the full light of society, undetected, who habitually cloud their understanding, and habitually undermine the moral powers of their will, by the use of stimulants. This evil is growing in these days on every side. It is making havoc of men, of women, and, through the folly of parents, even of young children. I must openly say that in this the imprudence, the folly, the weak indulgence of parents, their want of vigilance over their sons and daughters — I am speaking, remember, of the upper classes — is such, that they seem to me to be blind or infatuated. There are at this time even young women who habi- Freewill and Habit. 165 tually drink as much as would intoxicate a man ; God only knows the lives of misery and the deaths of stupor or of madness to which they are advancing. Now there was a time when they had never so much as tasted intoxicating drink. There was a time when, with a certain fear, a shrinking, a consciousness of doing a wrong or doubtful act, they began to taste, and then to drink, at first sparingly, then freely, until gradually growing confident and bold, and the temptation acquiring a great fascination, and the taste being vitiated, a craving has been excited, and the delusion of a fancied need has come upon them. They have gone on little by little, so insensibly that they, have not become aware, until a bondage has been created which, unless God by an almost miraculous grace shall set them free, they will never break. What I have given in those two ex- amples of a habit insensibly formed I might give in everything else. It applies equally to anger, jealousy, prodigality, or profuseness. Saint Augustine said, speaking of himself in his youth, while he was in habits of sin, that they bound him like a fetter. He says : ' I was bound by a chain which I had made for myself. No other man made it. I was bound mea ferrea voluntate, by the chain of my own iron will.' What but this is eternal death ? What is the eternal loss of God ? It is the final state of a soul which has lost its hold on God here by its own wilful acts. Bound in ' ropes of darkness,' as Saint Peter says, when the time of grace is over, and the day of probation is gone down, and judgment is passed, the soul that has deprived itself of God in this world is cast out of the sight of God hereafter, and confirmed in the intensity of its variance, and in its enmity against God, Whom it can 1 66 Philosophical. never see, because it has bound its own eyes with the bandage of wilful blindness, and all its powers with the iron fetters of its own deliberate will. (" Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost," p. Si.) WHAT IS THE RELATION OF THE WILL TO THOUGHT? (!•) In the Session * before last we came out from the dis- cussion of the question, ' Has a frog a soul ?' with one point conceded, that is to say, that men differ from frogs, in that they have a will and a moral consciousness. But it may, perhaps, be said that this 'excellence of men over frogs only implies that the brain of man is more perfect or more highly developed than the brain of frogs, and that the consciousness may be, and so far as we can prove, is no more than a function of the brain, or a result of the sum total of the brain and its functions ; or in other words, that it does not prove or even imply the existence of a soul distinct from the organism of man ; or again, that it proves only that matter can think and be conscious of itself. I. Now, my purpose is to give reasons for believing that even if matter can think, there is still another faculty, and more than this, another agent, distinct from the thinking brain. With a view to this, we must ascer- tain what is thought, and what is the faculty we call the will : and then what the relation between them. By * This paper was originally read before the Metaphysical Society. What is the Relation of the Will to Thought? 167 thought I understand an -intellectual act and the per- manent intellectual state consequent upon it, whereby any given object is apprehended, and consequently so far known. By will I understand a faculty whereby we are able to choose and to act either in accordance with or in opposition to our sensitive or our rational appetite. But both thought and will are actions or faculties of an agent, that is of a thinker and a wilier. When we talk of sensations and perceptions we always tacitly under- stand and presuppose a sentient, and a percipient, a seer and a hearer of whom sense, perception, thought, and will are actions and attributes. We call this subject 'self or ' I ' ; and here we have reached the last analysis of our internal consciousness. We may try to go further, but in doing so we shall only destroy our perception of the ultimate certainties of all moral knowledge just as we may gaze upon the noonday sun until we go blind, by destroying the eye against its light. That we are conscious of thought and will is a fact of our internal experience. It is also a fact in the universal experience of all men ; this is an immediate and intuitive truth of absolute certainty. Dr. Carpenter, in an able discussion ' On the Uncon- scious Activity of the Brain,' or ' Unconscious Cerebra- tion,' lays down as an axiomatic truth 'that the common-sense decision of mankind, in regard to the existence of the external world, is practically worth more than all the. arguments of all the logicians who have discussed the basis of our belief in it '. The reason of this is evident. The logical arguments are discursive, analytical, and subsequent upon the decision of common- sense by which is formed the premiss ' that the external world exists ' ; anterior to any reflex action of discourse 1 68 Philosophical. or argument upon it. What is true in this case of a judgment formed upon the report of sense, by the inter- pretation of the intellect, is still more evidently true of the decisions of our consciousness on such interior facts as thought and will, and of the existence of an internal world which is our living personality, or of the agent who thinks and wills. I may therefore lay down as another axiom, side by side with that of Dr. Carpenter, 'that the decision of mankind derived from consciousness of the existence of our living self or personality, whereby we think, will, or act, is practically worth more than all the arguments of all the logicians who have discussed the basis of our belief in it '. 2. We may begin, then, with the fact that all men, except abnormal individuals, who as exceptions prove the law of their species, are conscious of the power of thinking, willing, and acting. But the word ' conscious ' declares that we know something ' with ourselves '. It is a reflex action of the thinking agent upon himself, whereby he knows that he is thinking, or of the willing agent, that he is exerting the power of will. Now, the consciousness of mankind of the distinction between this living agent and the material organisation through which, in hoc stadio mortalitatis, he energises, is so articulate and emphatic that the soul and the body, which, though distinct, are one, have been, and popularly are still regarded, as two separate and independent entities. 3. It will perhaps be answered that this consciousness does not prove that itself is anything more than the sum of the brain, and of its functions, or in other words, that it is the brain that thinks, and • the brain that is conscious. We have, then, to show that this conscious- ness is the function not of the brain without a personal What is the Relation of the Will to Thought ? 169 self or agent, but of a personal self or agent who in this state of mortality energises through the brain as his instrument, but is independent of and anterior to its operations. It has been shown by Dr. Carpenter that there is a large array of phenomena which prove that the brain in a state of unconsciousness can remember, create, and understand. It can also do two things at once, the one consciously, the other unconsciously, that is, while con- sciously engaged on one thing it can direct the body in walking, the hands in playing on musical instruments, or in manual works, and the like. It is not only that the mind ' velox sine corpore currit,' but the brain seems to govern the hands, feet, and whole body, while the mind is absent. These phenomena certainly suffice to show that there is a separation between our conscious selves and the habitual action of the brain ; and that to many of our thoughts the will is not proximately related at all, so that between our non-volitional thoughts, as in dreams, and our conscious selves, there is not only a mental distinction, but a difference of nature, and there- fore a separation as between two distinct things. The phenomena of the unconscious brain are not subjected to time, or space, or the actuality of our lot, or to the government of the moral conscience. There are no proper or normal acts either of the reason or of the will in the unconscious brain. The unconscious brain has an activity, but it is not a moral agent. All this abundantly proves that there is somewhat beyond the brain of which these phenomena render no adequate account. They presuppose an Agent without revealing him ; they show that there is a Thinker and a Wilier on whom they depend, even when he is unconscious. 170 Philosophical. 4. Let us now dismiss this unconscious cerebration, which is not our present subject, and take another field of observation far wider and more explicit in its evi- dence, that is the Conscious Activity of the Brain. In our conscious state the will has no proximate relation to thought ; in our conscious state, though there is an undercurrent both of thought and action to which the will does not direct itself, yet that which constitutes our normal consciousness or true self, is that which we do with knowledge, consent, and advertence. Our uncon- scious acts are acts of man, that is acts of which only man is capable ; but only our conscious acts are human acts, that is, done under the normal conditions of rational action, or under the conditions of a moral and responsible agent. We may make this clearer by a distinction of the Schools. According to the scholastic philosophy, the Divine Mind is a pure act {Actus purus), that is, its whole perfection is full and actual ; there is in it nothing latent, potential, or undeveloped. The powers of the human mind, on the contrary, are at first undeveloped, potential, and latent. It is by acts of the will that it is unfolded from the potential to the actual state. I do not stay to speak of the action of other intellects or other wills in calling out what is only potential in our minds, because the co-operation of our own will and its joint action on our own thought is essential to all processes of learning. It is certain, how- ever, that the most valuable part or period of man's education is what is called his self-education, or what he does for himself upon himself; and precisely for the same reason, because the will is exerted with greater energy upon the eliciting and cultivating of the power of thought. What is the Relation of the Will to Thought? 171 (II.) 1. This, then, is the first relation of the will to the thought or the brain. It educates it Now, the action of the will upon our intellectual habits and acts is three- fold. First, every act of intention is an act of the will. The will determines to what the intellect shall be directed, as an archer aims at a mark. In the midst of the mul- tiplicity of thoughts which are perpetually streaming through the mind, the selection of one as a fixed object of investigation or contemplation is an act of the will analogous to the distinction between seeing and looking. The waking eye is perpetually full of a multitude of objects, while it looks at one alone. Secondly, the act of attention is a continuous act of the will, sustaining the first intention, and applying the mind fixedly to the object. Lastly, the intentness or intensity of intellectual acts is eminently an energy of the will. The languor of some minds and the ardour of others in study or dis- covery, and the languor or ardour of the same mind at different times in life, or even at different times of the same day, comes from a different degree of volition which governs the application of the mind. The intel- lect, then, or the thinking brain, if any be pleased so to call it, is distinctly directed, sustained, and urged onward by the will. The acts and habits of intention, attention, and intensity are imposed upon the brain by a faculty distinct from it in kind and in energy. The wilier, what- ever he be, is distinct from the thinking brain. A confirmation of this may be found in the fact already _ touched in passing, namely, that during the earlier period of our lives the potentiality of our intel- I7 2 Philosophical. lectual and moral nature is elicited and educed, and thereby brought into act by the will of others. Parents and teachers supply to us the force of will on which intention and attention depend. Our ' plagosus Orbilius' did for our brain in boyhood what our developed will, when we could wield the ferule, did for it in after life. I affirm, then, that so far from our brain being com- mensurate with ourselves, or ourselves only the sum of our brains, we are the educator of our brain, and all our life long our will is calling its potentiality (of which neither any man, nor the whole race of man, has yet as- certained the limit) into act. Our mind, or our brain- potentiality, can have but three relations to Truth. It may be wholly undeveloped, which is a state of igno- rance ; or only partially developed, which is a state of doubt, or of knowledge mixed with ignorance ; or, lastly, of full conformity with any given truth, which is- the state of knowledge, or of subjective Truth, denned by the Schoolmen as ' adsequatio rei et intellectus '. Through the whole process whereby the potentiality of the mind or brain is being unfolded into actual con- formity with truth, the will impels, directs, and sustains it ; so that it may be affirmed that the brain derives its activity originally from the will ; and that the will is the educator of the brain. This, then, is one relation of the will to thought. 2. A second relation is to be found in the fact that the will uses the brain as an instrument, as it uses the eye ; both are organs of the will. I am not now discus- sing the acts of the intellect or reason on certain primary and intuitive truths which precede the acts of the will. The axiom ' nihil volitum quin sit praecognitum ' is self- What is the Relation of the Will to Thought? 173 evident. The will never energises in vain, or in the dark. It acts always ' sub specie veri ' or ' sub specie boni '. Again, ' ratio praelucet voluntati '. Reason carries a light before the will. We must think before we will. If men could be said to worship an unknown God, it was because they knew Him in confuso ; but we cannot will what is unthinkable, or unthought. This, however, lies beside our present point. When the mind or brain is developed in any degree, it becomes an instrument in the hand of the will. The analogy of the eye is, if not in all things com- plete, at least for the most part true. All the day long we use our eyes, and yet not all sight is volitional. The eye, as I have said, sees much which it does not look at. There is conscious sight and unconscious sight all the day long. But out of the field of objects before the sight we fix the eye on particulars. Looking is sight directed and intensified by the will. So it is with the brain. All day long the mind runs on like a river, murmuring to itself. We hear it, but for the most part do not heed it. The perpetual weaving and unwinding of associations goes on with little or no attention, and therefore with hardly, if any, act of the will, except by way of permission, or of — resistance. But out of this woof we take up a certain thread and hold it fast by an act of attention, and of intention ; and this gives the character to the man. The mind of a mathematician is filled with many things besides mathematics, but he gives little or no attention to them ; that is, his will does not fix upon them and detain them. He uses his brain as an instrument of mathematics. The same holds good of every man and every deliberate line of mental energy. I have never heard any adequate 174 Philosophical. explanation of this determination of the mind or brain to one particular study or pursuit of truth from those who suppose the brain to determine itself, and therefore deny the action of a will distinct from it, and exercising a command over it. The theory that the thinking brain determines itself ascribes to it the power of volition, which not only involves all the same difficulties but many more, and leaves them all unsolved. It is, there- fore, inadequate, and for that reason unphilosophical. If the power of self-development be ascribed to the brain, why not ascribe the same to the hand ? The func- tions of the hand appear inexhaustible in number, subtil beyond all conception in kind. It is the executive of all that intellect can compass, and the will attain. And yet we treat the hand, which for dignity among the members ranks with the eye and the ear, and can even in some degree supply the place of both, as an intelli- gent servant, a mere instrument, exquisite indeed in delicacy, skill, and versatility, but dependent altogether upon a higher agency. We are told that it is the instru- ment of the brain ; but what better reason have we for saying that the hand is the instrument of the brain, than for saying that the brain is itself the instrument of an Agent higher in nature, independence, and authority? Why attribute design and will to the material brain, while we deny both to the material hand ? A chest of carpenter's tools is inactive, and has neither invention nor product without the mind and will of the carpenter. What have the brain and the hand more than the lathe and the chisel, without the Agent from whom they derive guidance and activity? 3. A third relation, then, of the will to the brain as an instrument of thought, is the constructive power by What is the Relation of tlie Will to Thought? 175 which the mind creates systems, whether of truth or fiction. For instance, I may put in the Intellectual System of the world as described by Cudworth, and both the History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences as described by Whewell. In these creations of the constructive intellect we see the work of the will sustaining and applying continuous thought. The ' Ethics ' and ' Physics ' of Aristotle ; his treatise ' De Anima,' the whole realm of mental and moral philosophy are examples of what the intellect can achieve under the jurisdiction of the will. Each one of the exact sciences in its three periods of observation, induction, and deduction, exhibits a sustained act of thought under a sustained act of volition. Any one who has so much as even turned over a synopsis of the ' Summa Theo- logica ' of St. Thomas Aquinas will have traced the toil of profuse thought under the control of an architectonic will. The same may be said of the ' Iliad,' the ' Divina Commedia,' of treatises on the 'Reign of Law,' or on the ' Evidence of Man's Place in Nature,' and the like. These are usually regarded as simply creations of the intellect ; they are also creations of the will, which from the first intention to the last stroke of the pen has per- vaded the thought and guided the writer's hand. 4. A fourth relation is the action of the will upon the moral thought or conscience. Whatsoever controversy may exist upon the origin of our moral intuition or moral sense, this at least is held by all, that man is bound to do what he believes to be right, and to abstain from doing what he believes to be wrong ; or, in other words, that our rule of conduct is our moral reason. It is evident therefore, that the will is under the jurisdiction of a judge whose dictates prescribe the limits and the 176 Philosophical. direction of our moral action. Thus far the intellect precedes the will, and is superior to it. The will is not a blind force, but a faculty having eyes and light from the intellect. . A blind will is a Titan of destruction. 'Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.' But the will, in- formed by reason or the moral conscience, is thencefor- ward the supreme ruler in man. The difference between Aristotle's Temperate and Intemperate man resides in the will. The thoughts of the brain, we should say of the heart, may be in direct revolt against the will ; but the will controls both the sensitive and the rational appetites. Self-denial, self-mortification and self-sacrifice are acts of ascendency, inflicted by the wilier upon the thoughts and the appetites of which the brain is the instrument. For instance, thoughts of malice, appetites of revenge, or of luxury, which, as we say, possess the mind, or, as others say, the brain, are combatted and brought under by a power which thereby asserts a sepa- rate existence and a superior authority over the brain itself. We cannot move a stone so long as we rest upon it. It is our independence which gives us leverage and force. Now I have hitherto called this the thinker or the wilier, but it is an agent who thinks and wills ; for intellect and will are not the agent, but only functions of an agent, for whom as yet we have no name, who not only thinks and wills, but gives life to the brain itself. We here touch upon a vast subject, too vast for this paper, which can only enumerate it amongst its other branches, and pass on. The control of the will over thought runs through the whole moral culture and discipline of man. What is called character is distinct from the moral nature, as What is the Relation of the Will to Thought? 177 countenance is distinct from the features. We made neither our features nor our moral nature ; but we have made both our countenance and our character. They are the sum and result of habits, as habits are the sum and result of acts, and in every several act the will had its original and constructive share by permission, or by action. The moral character is therefore ultimately deter- mined by the will. But as I have said, the replenishment of the mind, or brain, if you please to say so, with thought and know- ledge, which is permanent or immanent thought, is to a great extent all through life a voluntary act. Now, out of the thoughts so stored up in the whole course of life arises a world of moral conflicts or temptations. For instance, the thoughts of vain-glory, jealousy, malice, deceitfulness, and the like which spring up from the memories of the past, are the subject-matter of moral probation, choice, and character. As we deal with them, such we are. The memory of insults or great wrongs will arise in the mind, or brain, if you will, at the sight of the person who has outraged us ; or by association of time, place, or any one of endless circumstances ; or, again, by the direct suggestion of others. So far the thoughts may be spontaneous or involuntary on our part. Their presence in the mind is neither good nor evil. Their first impression upon the mind, even though it become a fascination or an attraction to an immoral act, is not immoral, because, as yet, though the thought has conceived them, the will has not accepted them. These primo-primi motus of the thoughts, as they are called, are not as yet personal acts. The secundo-primi motus of inchoate assent are only partly moral ; the 12 178 Philosophical. deliberate acts of willing advertence, that is of attention and intention, bring them fully within the order of moral action. The agent, through the deliberate will, makes the thought his own. He thereby becomes what his intention is. The example of revenge will suffice for all other kinds of moral evil. The same rule may be applied also to good thoughts when they become mental acts. So far is obvious to all who admit the idea of a moral agent. But perhaps it may be said that here the rela- tion of the will to thought ceases, and that it has no share in beliefs, or in opinions, or in intellectual errors ; and that in the formation of these there is no moral agency. It may, however, be affirmed that, excepting the exact and physical sciences, in which the processes of the intellect are necessitated by the evidence, in all other matters the will has an immediate relation to thought, and the formation of our beliefs and opinions enters into the order of morals. For instance (as I must be allowed to affirm) — 1, the existence of God may be proved by reason ; 2, the evidence for the existence of God is such that the reason of man applied with due intention and attention will arrive at the proof. Now, we have seen that these acts of intention and attention are acts of the will, and that in the whole intel- lectual process there is a continuous act of volition. In all matters capable of proof, that is, where sufficient evi- dence is present or within reach, if the intellectual pro- cess be duly sustained the proof will be completed ; if it be remitted, the proof may remain incomplete, and that incompleteness results not Ex parte intellectus, which, so far as it went, discharged its office ; but Ex parte volun- tatis, which, by remissness or deviation misdirected or What is the Relation of the Will to Thought? 179 baffled the intellect. The saying ' None are so blind as those who will not see ' is a moral axiom. This truth has a large range, but time will not allow of more. I must, however, add one example. The treatment of the moral actions of other men, as in history, is in a high degree itself a moral act. The justifying or condemning the actions of men is a continuous test of the moral state of the historian. He will see good and evil in the lives of other men as he sees them in his own. He will see them also in the same measure in which his own moral consciousness is obscure, or perverted, or incom- plete. A biographer is an unconscious autobiographer. The dictum which perhaps awed or dazzled some of us in boyhood, ' that a man is no more responsible for his opinions than he is for the height of his stature or for the colour of his skin,' has long since gone to the limbo of superstitions. To a morbid eye things appear inverted or bisected, because the eye is morbid. To a great extent, opinions are imperfect or distorted because the action of the will affects the completeness of the thought. And the completeness of the thought is subjective truth. It may, therefore, be said that in the whole range of moral action the will, guided by the primary intuitions of the reason to desire the true and the good, is the condition and the pledge of attaining truth and goodness. I have not forgotten, but I have not space to touch upon, what Dr. Carpenter calls the ' unconscious pre- judices ' springing from early influences for which we are not responsible. I have spoken only of what is the normal relation of the will to thought in moral agency, from which arises what is called the moral conscience. An .erroneous conscience is the result of failure in this 180 Philosophical. cultivation of the moral thought. From the abnormal influence of the will over our intellectual habits come error, prejudices, superstitions, fanaticism, illusions, depraved judgments, and a whole mental pathology. But this is not our subject at present. (III.) It is time now to sum up the answers to the question, ' What is the relation of the will to thought ? ' From what has been said, it appears : — 1. That the unfolding of the potentiality of the intellect, or, as some say, of the brain into actual know- ledge, is accomplished partly by the will of others acting upon us, partly by our own will acting upon ourselves. In the latter case it is obvious that the will plays a leading part ; in the former also, it co-operates with and gives effect to the will of others. 2. That the mind or brain once stored with knowledge retains it without acts of the will, and often refuses to give it up to the will when it is demanded. This is what we call forgetfulness. I say retains it, because it may be doubted whether anything once actually known be ever lost ; or whether the mind or brain once unfolded into act, ever again relapses from its actual development into the mere potentiality from which it has issued. Our forgetting does not prove this, and the well-known facts of persons in states of unconsciousness speaking in languages which they knew in childhood, and had long been unable to speak in their conscious moments, goes far to prove it. A large part, therefore, of thought which was once voluntarily acquired, lies secreted in the form of knowledge, of which much passes from our conscious- ness, though we have no warrant to say that it passes What is the Relation of the Will to Thought? 181 from the mind. This latent thought, or, as I should say, knowledge, is the stuff that dreams are made of. It is certain that nothing arises in the mind in sleep which has not entered it while waking. It may be wrought up into new and abnormal combinations, but the elements all lie within the circle of past thought and knowledge. For instance, none but a mathematician would be tormented by the nightmare of travelling to London on an asymp- tote. 3. That in our waking hours the mind is replenished by a multitude of thoughts which are so far voluntary that we do not try to expel them ; even while we are actually occupied only with those which are brought under our intention and attention by acts of the will. 4. That hence it follows beyond doubt that even if the brain could think, it does so in these instances, under the jurisdiction of a force distinct from itself. 5. That this force is not a function of the brain, but of an agent acting on the brain. This agent by acts of will educates the brain, calls it from potentiality into act, uses it as an instrument of his intentions, creates by it intellectual systems and ideal worlds, according to his choice, and discretion, and finally reduces the brain in matters of moral judgment and choice to subjection and obedience, thereby establishing a moral law and government over the whole body. To say all this is done by the brain of itself to itself, is to ignore the countless phenomena which cover the whole field of our intellectual activity, and to leave without solution the development of the brain in self-educated man. I am afraid we should flog a boy who accused his brain of his false concords and false quantities. We punish the whole agent for idleness, which is flagrant injustice, if no agent 1 8 2 Philosophical. but the brain exists. To say that the brain developes itself, is to deny what the consciousness of all mankind affirms, and on which the whole procedure of justice, from the school to the Penal Code, is founded. If there be a fact of human consciousness, it is that we possess a will, and that the activity of that will fol- lows indeed the first intuitive dictates of the intellect ; but precedes the whole series and ramifications of in- tellectual acts, on which the processes of thought, the attainment of knowledge, and the morality of men de- pend. Further, thought and will are functions of an agent distinct from the material brain ; and the existence of an agent which we call ' self or ' I ' is a fact of con- sciousness of the highest degree of certainty in human knowledge. 6. That this agent is neither intelligence nor will, but possesses both. It energises in and through the brain in thought and in union with thought by volition, as it also quickens the body with life. And yet life, intelli- gence, and will are all properties or faculties of a per- sonal agent, who is in contact with matter, but is not material. And this personal agent the ancient world called 'tyvxv' or 'anima,' and we call 'soul'. Once more to repeat the axiom laid down in the beginning, ' the decision of mankind derived from consciousness of the existence of our living self or personality, whereby we think, will, and act, is practically worth more than all the arguments of all the logicians who have discussed the basis of our belief in it '. These facts of our consciousness are anterior to all logic. They form the premisses which are intuitively certain, and they acquire no intrinsic certainty from the syllogistic forms of reasoning which depend on them. What is the Relation of the Will to Thought? 183 To doubt the certainty of these internal facts is an irra- tional scepticism. It rejects the more certain upon the evidence of the less certain, and tries to rest the pyramid of human knowledge on its apex. Such appears to be the old basis of metaphysical philosophy. It is founded on the intellectual system and tradition of mankind, and in its chief constructive principles, though often assailed, it has never been shaken. I know nothing in modern metaphysics nor in scientific reasoning to induce me to doubt the existence of the soul, or to attribute thought and volition to a material organism, except as a condition of its exercise in our present state. I could as soon believe that the hand by automatic activity executed its almost inexhaustible variety of operations without the brain, as that the' brain calcu- lates the laws of comets or discusses metaphysics with- out an intellect distinct from matter. The cessation of thought and will with the cessation of life points away from matter to something beyond, that is, to something immaterial, as from the body to the soul. If it be said that the knife cannot detect it, it may be answered neither can the knife detect thought, or will, or life ; and yet these exist by the acknowledgment of all ; and are manifest by a threefold world of phenomena, vital, in- tellectual, volitional, altogether insoluble, except on the old-world belief that in man there is a soul. (" The Contemporary Review," February, 1871.) PART III. RELIGIOUS. What is Christianity? 187 WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? WHAT is Christianity but the summing up and final expression of all the truths of the natural and supernatural order in the Person of Jesus Christ ? God has made Him to be the avaKe<$>akai,a>