Chapter XVIII: Part 18

Reflect, Gentlemen, how many disputes you must have listened to, which were interminable, because neither party understood either his opponent or himself. Consider the fortunes of an argument in a debating society, and the need there so frequently is, not simply of some clear thinker to disentangle the perplexities of thought, but of capacity in the combatants to do justice to the clearest explanations which are set before them,—so much so, that the luminous arbitration only gives rise, perhaps, to more hopeless altercation. “Is a constitutional government better for a population than an absolute rule?” What a number of points have to be clearly apprehended before we are in a position to say one word on such a question! What is meant by “constitution”? by “constitutional government”? by “better”? by “a population”? and by “absolutism”? The ideas represented by these various words ought, I do not say, to be as perfectly defined and located in the minds of the speakers as objects of sight in a landscape, but to be sufficiently, even though incompletely, apprehended, before they have a right to speak. “How is it that democracy can admit of slavery, as in ancient Greece?” “How can Catholicism flourish in a republic?” Now, a person who knows his ignorance will say, “These questions are beyond me;” and he tries to gain a clear notion and a firm hold of them; and, if he speaks, it is as investigating, not as deciding. On the other hand, let him never have tried to throw things together, or to discriminate between them, or to denote their peculiarities, in that case he has no hesitation in undertaking any subject, and perhaps has most to say upon those questions which are most new to him. This is why so many men are one-sided, narrow-minded, prejudiced, crotchety. This is why able men have to change their minds and their line of action in middle age, and to begin life again, because they have followed their party, instead of having secured that faculty of true perception as regards intellectual objects which has accrued to them, without their knowing how, as regards the objects of sight.

But this defect will never be corrected,—on the contrary, it will be aggravated,—by those popular institutions to which I referred just now. The displays of eloquence, or the interesting matter contained in their lectures, the variety of useful or entertaining knowledge contained in their libraries, though admirable in themselves, and advantageous to the student at a later stage of his course, never can serve as a substitute for methodical and laborious teaching. A young man of sharp and active intellect, who has had no other training, has little to show for it besides a litter of ideas heaped up into his mind anyhow. He can utter a number of truths or sophisms, as the case may be, and one is as good to him as another. He is up with a number of doctrines and a number of facts, but they are all loose and straggling, for he has no principles set up in his mind round which to aggregate and locate them. He can say a word or two on half a dozen sciences, but not a dozen words on any one. He says one thing now, and another thing presently; and when he attempts to write down distinctly what he holds upon a point in dispute, or what he understands by its terms, he breaks down, and is surprised at his failure. He sees objections more clearly than truths, and can ask a thousand questions which the wisest of men cannot answer; and withal, he has a very good opinion of himself, and is well satisfied with his attainments, and he declares against others, as opposed to the spread of knowledge altogether, who do not happen to adopt his ways of furthering it, or the opinions in which he considers it to result.

This is that barren mockery of knowledge which comes of attending on great Lecturers, or of mere acquaintance with reviews, magazines, newspapers, and other literature of the day, which, however able and valuable in itself, is not the instrument of intellectual education. If this is all the training a man has, the chance is that, when a few years have passed over his head, and he has talked to the full, he wearies of talking, and of the subjects on which he talked. He gives up the pursuit of knowledge, and forgets what he knew, whatever it was; and, taking things at their best, his mind is in no very different condition from what it was when he first began to improve it, as he hoped, though perhaps he never thought of more than of amusing himself. I say, “at the best,” for perhaps he will suffer from exhaustion and a distaste of the subjects which once pleased him; or perhaps he has suffered some real intellectual mischief; perhaps he has contracted some serious disorder, he has admitted some taint of scepticism, which he will never get rid of.

And here we see what is meant by the poet’s maxim, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Not that knowledge, little or much, if it be real knowledge, is dangerous; but that many a man considers a mere hazy view of many things to be real knowledge, whereas it does but mislead, just as a short-sighted man sees only so far as to be led by his uncertain sight over the precipice.

Such, then, being true cultivation of mind, and such the literary institutions which do not tend to it, I might proceed to show you, Gentlemen, did time admit, how, on the other hand, that kind of instruction of which our Evening Classes are a specimen, is especially suited to effect what they propose. Consider, for instance, what a discipline in accuracy of thought it is to have to construe a foreign language into your own; what a still severer and more improving exercise it is to translate from your own into a foreign language. Consider, again, what a lesson in memory and discrimination it is to get up, as it is called, any one chapter of history. Consider what a trial of acuteness, caution, and exactness, it is to master, and still more to prove, a number of definitions. Again, what an exercise in logic is classification, what an exercise in logical precision it is to understand and enunciate the proof of any of the more difficult propositions of Euclid, or to master any one of the great arguments for Christianity so thoroughly as to bear examination upon it; or, again, to analyze sufficiently, yet in as few words as possible, a speech, or to draw up a critique upon a poem. And so of any other science,—chemistry, or comparative anatomy, or natural history; it does not matter what it is, if it be really studied and mastered, as far as it is taken up. The result is a formation of mind,—that is, a habit of order and system, a habit of referring every accession of knowledge to what we already know, and of adjusting the one with the other; and, moreover, as such a habit implies, the actual acceptance and use of certain principles as centres of thought, around which our knowledge grows and is located. Where this critical faculty exists, history is no longer a mere story-book, or biography a romance; orators and publications of the day are no longer infallible authorities; eloquent diction is no longer a substitute for matter, nor bold statements, or lively descriptions, a substitute for proof. This is that faculty of perception in intellectual matters, which, as I have said so often, is analogous to the capacity we all have of mastering the multitude of lines and colours which pour in upon our eyes, and of deciding what every one of them is worth.

8.

But I should be transgressing the limits assigned to an address of this nature were I to proceed. I have not said any thing, Gentlemen, on the religious duties which become the members of a Catholic University, because we are directly concerned here with your studies only. It is my consolation to know that so many of you belong to a Society or Association, which the zeal of some excellent priests, one especially, has been so instrumental in establishing in your great towns. You do not come to us to have the foundation laid in your breasts of that knowledge which is highest of all: it has been laid already. You have begun your mental training with faith and devotion; and then you come to us to add the education of the intellect to the education of the heart. Go on as you have begun, and you will be one of the proudest achievements of our great undertaking. We shall be able to point to you in proof that zeal for knowledge may thrive even under the pressure of secular callings; that mother-wit does not necessarily make a man idle, nor inquisitiveness of mind irreverent; that shrewdness and cleverness are not incompatible with firm faith in the mysteries of Revelation; that attainment in Literature and Science need not make men conceited, nor above their station, nor restless, nor self-willed. We shall be able to point to you in proof of the power of Catholicism to make out of the staple of great towns exemplary and enlightened Christians, of those classes which, external to Ireland, are the problem and perplexity of patriotic statesmen, and the natural opponents of the teachers of every kind of religion.

* * * * *

As to myself, I wish I could by actual service and hard work of my own respond to your zeal, as so many of my dear and excellent friends, the Professors of the University, have done and do. They have a merit, they have a claim on you, Gentlemen, in which I have no part. If I admire the energy and bravery with which you have undertaken the work of self-improvement, be sure I do not forget their public spirit and noble free devotion to the University any more than you do. I know I should not satisfy you with any praise of this supplement of our academical arrangements which did not include those who give to it its life. It is a very pleasant and encouraging sight to see both parties, the teachers and the taught, co-operating with a pure _esprit-de-corps_ thus voluntarily,—they as fully as you can do—for a great object; and I offer up my earnest prayers to the Author of all good, that He will ever bestow on you all, on Professors and on Students, as I feel sure He will bestow, Rulers and Superiors, who, by their zeal and diligence in their own place, shall prove themselves worthy both of your cause and of yourselves.

Lecture X.

Christianity And Medical Science. An Address to the Students Of Medicine.

1.

I have had so few opportunities, Gentlemen, of addressing you, and our present meeting is of so interesting and pleasing a character, by reason of the object which occasions it, that I am encouraged to speak freely to you, though I do not know you personally, on a subject which, as you may conceive, is often before my own mind: I mean, the exact relation in which your noble profession stands towards the Catholic University itself and towards Catholicism generally. Considering my own most responsible office as Rector, my vocation as an ecclesiastic, and then again my years, which increase my present claim, and diminish my future chances, of speaking to you, I need make no apology, I am sure, for a step, which will be recommended to you by my good intentions, even though it deserves no consideration on the score of the reflections and suggestions themselves which I shall bring before you. If indeed this University, and its Faculty of Medicine inclusively, were set up for the promotion of any merely secular object,—in the spirit of religious rivalry, as a measure of party politics, or as a commercial speculation,—then indeed I should be out of place, not only in addressing you in the tone of advice, but in being here at all; for what reason could I in that case have had for having now given some of the most valuable years of my life to this University, for having placed it foremost in my thoughts and anxieties,—(I had well nigh said) to the prejudice of prior, dearer, and more sacred ties,—except that I felt that the highest and most special religious interests were bound up in its establishment and in its success? Suffer me, then, Gentlemen, if with these views and feelings I conform my observations to the sacred building in which we find ourselves, and if I speak to you for a few minutes as if I were rather addressing you authoritatively from the pulpit than in the Rector’s chair.

Now I am going to set before you, in as few words as I can, what I conceive to be the principal duty of the Medical Profession towards Religion, and some of the difficulties which are found in the observance of that duty: and in speaking on the subject I am conscious how little qualified I am to handle it in such a way as will come home to your minds, from that want of acquaintance with you personally, to which I have alluded, and from my necessary ignorance of the influences of whatever kind which actually surround you, and the points of detail which are likely to be your religious embarrassments. I can but lay down principles and maxims, which you must apply for yourselves, and which in some respects or cases you may feel have no true application at all.

2.

All professions have their dangers, all general truths have their fallacies, all spheres of action have their limits, and are liable to improper extension or alteration. Every professional man has rightly a zeal for his profession, and he would not do his duty towards it without that zeal. And that zeal soon becomes exclusive, or rather necessarily involves a sort of exclusiveness. A zealous professional man soon comes to think that his profession is all in all, and that the world would not go on without it. We have heard, for instance, a great deal lately in regard to the war in India, of _political_ views suggesting one plan of campaign, and _military_ views suggesting another. How hard it must be for the military man to forego his own strategical dispositions, not on the ground that they are not the best,—not that they are not acknowledged by those who nevertheless put them aside to _be_ the best _for_ the object of military success,—but because military success is not the highest of objects, and the end of ends,—because it is not the sovereign science, but must ever be subordinate to political considerations or maxims of government, which is a higher science with higher objects,—and that therefore his sure success on the field must be relinquished because the interests of the council and the cabinet require the sacrifice, that the war must yield to the statesman’s craft, the commander-in-chief to the governor-general. Yet what the soldier feels is natural, and what the statesman does is just. This collision, this desire on the part of every profession to be supreme,—this necessary, though reluctant, subordination of the one to the other,—is a process ever going on, ever acted out before our eyes. The civilian is in rivalry with the soldier, the soldier with the civilian. The diplomatist, the lawyer, the political economist, the merchant, each wishes to usurp the powers of the state, and to mould society upon the principles of his own pursuit.

Nor do they confine themselves to the mere province of secular matters. They intrude into the province of Religion. In England, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, lawyers got hold of religion, and never have let it go. Abroad, bureaucracy keeps hold of Religion with a more or less firm grasp. The circles of literature and science have in like manner before now made Religion a mere province of their universal empire.

I remark, moreover, that these various usurpations are frequently made in perfectly good faith. There is no intention of encroachment on the part of the encroachers. The commander recommends what with all his heart and soul he thinks best for his country when he presses on Government a certain plan of campaign. The political economist has the most honest intentions of improving the Christian system of social duty by his reforms. The statesman may have the best and most loyal dispositions towards the Holy See, at the time that he is urging changes in ecclesiastical discipline which would be seriously detrimental to the Church.

And now I will say how this applies to the Medical Profession, and what is its special danger, viewed in relation to Catholicity.

3.

Its province is the physical nature of man, and its object is the preservation of that physical nature in its proper state, and its restoration when it has lost it. It limits itself, by its very profession, to the health of the body; it ascertains the conditions of that health; it analyzes the causes of its interruption or failure; it seeks about for the means of cure. But, after all, bodily health is not the only end of man, and the medical science is not the highest science of which he is the subject. Man has a moral and a religious nature, as well as a physical. He has a mind and a soul; and the mind and soul have a legitimate sovereignty over the body, and the sciences relating to them have in consequence the precedence of those sciences which relate to the body. And as the soldier must yield to the statesman, when they come into collision with each other, so must the medical man to the priest; not that the medical man may not be enunciating what is absolutely certain, in a medical point of view, as the commander may be perfectly right in what he enunciates strategically, but that his action is suspended in the given case by the interests and duty of a superior science, and he retires not confuted but superseded.

Now this general principle thus stated, all will admit: who will deny that health must give way to duty? So far there is no perplexity: supposing a fever to break out in a certain place, and the medical practitioner said to a Sister of Charity who was visiting the sick there, “You will die to a certainty if you remain there,” and her ecclesiastical superiors on the contrary said, “You have devoted your life to such services, and there you must stay;” and supposing she stayed and was taken off; the medical adviser would be right, but who would say that the Religious Sister was wrong? She did not doubt his word, but she denied the importance of that word, compared with the word of her religious superiors. The medical man was right, yet he could not gain his point. He was right in what he said, he said what was true, yet he had to give way.

Here we are approaching what I conceive to be the especial temptation and danger to which the medical profession is exposed: it is a certain sophism of the intellect, founded on this maxim, implied, but not spoken or even recognized—“What is true is lawful.” Not so. Observe, here is the fallacy,—What is true in one science is dictated to us indeed according to that science, but not according to another science, or in another department. What is certain in the military art has force in the military art, but not in statesmanship; and if statesmanship be a higher department of action than war, and enjoins the contrary, it has no claim on our reception and obedience at all. And so what is true in medical science might in all cases be carried out, _were_ man a mere animal or brute without a soul; but since he is a rational, responsible being, a thing may be ever so true in medicine, yet may be unlawful in fact, in consequence of the _higher_ law of morals and religion having come to some different conclusion. Now I must be allowed some few words to express, or rather to suggest, more fully what I mean.

The whole universe comes from the good God. It is His creation; _it_ is good; it is all good, as being the work of the Good, though good only in its degree, and not after His Infinite Perfection. The physical nature of man is good; nor can there be any thing sinful in itself in acting according to that nature. Every natural appetite or function is lawful, speaking abstractedly. No natural feeling or act is in itself sinful. There can be no doubt of all this; and there can be no doubt that science can determine what is natural, what tends to the preservation of a healthy state of nature, and what on the contrary is injurious to nature. Thus the medical student has a vast field of knowledge spread out before him, true, because knowledge, and innocent, because true.

So much in the abstract—but when we come to _fact_, it may easily happen that what is in itself innocent may not be innocent to this or that person, or in this or that mode or degree. Again, it may easily happen that the impressions made on a man’s mind by his own science may be indefinitely more vivid and operative than the enunciations of truths belonging to some other branch of knowledge, which strike indeed his ear, but do not come home to him, are not fixed in his memory, are not imprinted on his imagination. And in the profession before us, a medical student may realize far more powerfully and habitually that certain acts are _advisable in themselves_ according to the law of physical nature, than the fact that they are forbidden according to the law of some higher science, as theology; or again, that they are accidentally wrong, as being, though lawful in themselves, wrong in this or that individual, or under the circumstances of the case.

Now to recur to the instance I have already given: it is supposable that that Sister of Charity, who, for the sake of her soul, would not obey the law of self-preservation as regards her body, might cause her medical adviser great irritation and disgust. His own particular profession might have so engrossed his mind, and the truth of its maxims have so penetrated it, that he could not understand or admit any other or any higher system. He might in process of time have become simply dead to all religious truths, because such truths were not present to him, and those of his own science were ever present. And observe, his fault would be, not that of taking error for truth, for what he relied on _was_ truth—but in not understanding that there were other truths, and those higher than his own.

Take another case, in which there will often in particular circumstances be considerable differences of opinion among really religious men, but which does not cease on that account to illustrate the point I am insisting on. A patient is dying: the priest wishes to be introduced, lest he should die without due preparation: the medical man says that the thought of religion will disturb his mind and imperil his recovery. Now in the particular case, the one party or the other may be right in urging his own view of what ought to be done. I am merely directing attention to the _principle_ involved in it. Here are the representatives of two great sciences, Religion and Medicine. Each says what is true in his own science, each will think he has a right to insist on seeing that the truth which he himself is maintaining is carried out in action; whereas, one of the two sciences is above the other, and the end of Religion is indefinitely higher than the end of Medicine. And, however the decision ought to go, in the particular case, as to introducing the subject of religion or not, I think the priest ought to have that decision; just as a Governor-General, not a Commander-in-Chief, would have the ultimate decision, were politics and strategics to come into collision.

You will easily understand, Gentlemen, that I dare not pursue my subject into those details, which are of the greater importance for the very reason that they cannot be spoken of. A medical philosopher, who has so simply fixed his intellect on his own science as to have forgotten the existence of any other, will view man, who is the subject of his contemplation, as a being who has little more to do than to be born, to grow, to eat, to drink, to walk, to reproduce his kind, and to die. He sees him born as other animals are born; he sees life leave him, with all those phenomena of annihilation which accompany the death of a brute. He compares his structure, his organs, his functions, with those of other animals, and his own range of science leads to the discovery of no facts which are sufficient to convince him that there is any difference in kind between the human animal and them. His practice, then, is according to his facts and his theory. Such a person will think himself free to give advice, and to insist upon rules, which are quite insufferable to any religious mind, and simply antagonistic to faith and morals. It is not, I repeat, that he says what is untrue, supposing that man _were_ an animal and nothing else: but he thinks that whatever is true in his own science is at once lawful in practice—as if there were not a number of rival sciences in the great circle of philosophy, as if there were not a number of conflicting views and objects in human nature to be taken into account and reconciled, or as if it were his duty to forget all but his own; whereas

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I have known in England the most detestable advice given to young persons by eminent physicians, in consequence of this contracted view of man and his destinies. God forbid that I should measure the professional habits of Catholics by the rules of practice of those who were not! but it is plain that what is actually carried out where religion is not known, exists as a temptation and a danger in the Science of Medicine itself, where religion is known ever so well.

4.

And now, having suggested, as far as I dare, what I consider the consequences of that radical sophism to which the medical profession is exposed, let me go on to say in what way it is corrected by the action of Catholicism upon it.

You will observe, then, Gentlemen, that those higher sciences of which I have spoken, Morals and Religion, are not represented to the intelligence of the world by intimations and notices strong and obvious, such as those which are the foundation of Physical Science. The physical nature lies before us, patent to the sight, ready to the touch, appealing to the senses in so unequivocal a way that the science which is founded upon it is as real to us as the fact of our personal existence. But the phenomena, which are the basis of morals and Religion, have nothing of this luminous evidence. Instead of being obtruded upon our notice, so that we cannot possibly overlook them, they are the dictates either of Conscience or of Faith. They are faint shadows and tracings, certain indeed, but delicate, fragile, and almost evanescent, which the mind recognizes at one time, not at another,—discerns when it is calm, loses when it is in agitation. The reflection of sky and mountains in the lake is a proof that sky and mountains are around it, but the twilight, or the mist, or the sudden storm hurries away the beautiful image, which leaves behind it no memorial of what it was. Something like this are the Moral Law and the informations of Faith, as they present themselves to individual minds. Who can deny the existence of Conscience? who does not feel the force of its injunctions? but how dim is the illumination in which it is invested, and how feeble its influence, compared with that evidence of sight and touch which is the foundation of Physical Science! How easily can we be talked out of our clearest views of duty! how does this or that moral precept crumble into nothing when we rudely handle it! how does the fear of sin pass off from us, as quickly as the glow of modesty dies away from the countenance! and then we say, “It is all superstition.” However, after a time we look round, and then to our surprise we see, as before, the same law of duty, the same moral precepts, the same protests against sin, appearing over against us, in their old places, as if they never had been brushed away, like the divine handwriting upon the wall at the banquet. Then perhaps we approach them rudely, and inspect them irreverently, and accost them sceptically, and away they go again, like so many spectres,—shining in their cold beauty, but not presenting themselves bodily to us, for our inspection, so to say, of their hands and their feet. And thus these awful, supernatural, bright, majestic, delicate apparitions, much as we may in our hearts acknowledge their sovereignty, are no match as a foundation of Science for the hard, palpable, material facts which make up the province of Physics. Recurring to my original illustration, it is as if the India Commander-in-Chief, instead of being under the control of a local seat of government at Calcutta, were governed simply from London, or from the moon. In that case, he would be under a strong temptation to neglect the home government, which nevertheless in theory he acknowledged. Such, I say, is the natural condition of mankind:—we depend upon a seat of government which is in another world; we are directed and governed by intimations from above; we need a local government on earth.

That great institution, then, the Catholic Church, has been set up by Divine Mercy, as a present, visible antagonist, and the only possible antagonist, to sight and sense. Conscience, reason, good feeling, the instincts of our moral nature, the traditions of Faith, the conclusions and deductions of philosophical Religion, are no match at all for the stubborn facts (for they _are_ facts, though there are other facts besides them), for the facts, which are the foundation of physical, and in particular of medical, science. Gentlemen, if you feel, as you must feel, the whisper of a law of moral truth within you, and the impulse to believe, be sure there is nothing whatever on earth which can be the sufficient champion of these sovereign authorities of your soul, which can vindicate and preserve them to you, and make you loyal to them, but the Catholic Church. You fear they will go, you see with dismay that they are going, under the continual impression created on your mind by the details of the material science to which you have devoted your lives. It is so—I do not deny it; except under rare and happy circumstances, go they will, unless you have Catholicism to back you up in keeping faithful to them. The world is a rough antagonist of spiritual truth: sometimes with mailed hand, sometimes with pertinacious logic, sometimes with a storm of irresistible facts, it presses on against you. What it says is true perhaps as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth, or the most important truth. These more important truths, which the natural heart admits in their substance, though it cannot maintain,—the being of a God, the certainty of future retribution, the claims of the moral law, the reality of sin, the hope of supernatural help,—of these the Church is in matter of fact the undaunted and the only defender.

Even those who do not look on her as divine must grant as much as this. I do not ask you for more here than to contemplate and recognize her as a fact,—as other things are facts. She has been eighteen hundred years in the world, and all that time she has been doing battle in the boldest, most obstinate way in the cause of the human race, in maintenance of the undeniable but comparatively obscure truths of Religion. She is always alive, always on the alert, when any enemy whatever attacks them. She has brought them through a thousand perils. Sometimes preaching, sometimes pleading, sometimes arguing,—sometimes exposing her ministers to death, and sometimes, though rarely, inflicting blows herself,—by peremptory deeds, by patient concessions,—she has fought on and fulfilled her trust. No wonder so many speak against her, for she deserves it; she has earned the hatred and obloquy of her opponents by her success in opposing them. Those even who speak against her in this day, own that she was of use in a former day. The historians in fashion with us just now, much as they may disown her in their own country, where she is an actual, present, unpleasant, inconvenient monitor, acknowledge that, in the middle ages which are gone, in her were lodged, by her were saved, the fortunes and the hopes of the human race. The very characteristics of her discipline, the very maxims of her policy, which they reprobate now, they perceive to have been of service then. They understand, and candidly avow, that once she was the patron of the arts, the home and sanctuary of letters, the basis of law, the principle of order and government, and the saviour of Christianity itself. They judge clearly enough in the case of others, though they are slow to see the fact in their own age and country; and, while they do not like to be regulated by her, and kept in order by her, themselves, they are very well satisfied that the populations of those former centuries should have been so ruled, and tamed, and taught by her resolute and wise teaching. And be sure of this, that as the generation now alive admits these benefits to have arisen from her presence in a state of society now gone by, so in turn, when the interests and passions of this day are passed away, will future generations ascribe to her a like special beneficial action upon this nineteenth century in which we live. For she is ever the same,—ever young and vigorous, and ever overcoming new errors with the old weapons.

5.

And now I have explained, Gentlemen, why it has been so highly expedient and desirable in a country like this to bring the Faculty of Medicine under the shadow of the Catholic Church. I say “in a country like this;” for, if there be any country which deserves that Science should not run wild, like a planet broken loose from its celestial system, it is a country which can boast of such hereditary faith, of such a persevering confessorship, of such an accumulation of good works, of such a glorious name, as Ireland. Far be it from this country, far be it from the counsels of Divine Mercy, that it should grow in knowledge and not grow in religion! and Catholicism is the strength of Religion, as Science and System are the strength of Knowledge.

Aspirations such as these are met, Gentlemen, I am well aware, by a responsive feeling in your own hearts; but by my putting them into words, thoughts which already exist within you are brought into livelier exercise, and sentiments which exist in many breasts hold intercommunion with each other. Gentlemen, it will be your high office to be the links in your generation between Religion and Science. Return thanks to the Author of all good that He has chosen you for this work. Trust the Church of God implicitly, even when your natural judgment would take a different course from hers, and would induce you to question her prudence or her correctness. Recollect what a hard task she has; how she is sure to be criticized and spoken against, whatever she does;—recollect how much she needs your loyal and tender devotion. Recollect, too, how long is the experience gained in eighteen hundred years, and what a right she has to claim your assent to principles which have had so extended and so triumphant a trial. Thank her that she has kept the faith safe for so many generations, and do your part in helping her to transmit it to generations after you.

For me, if it has been given me to have any share in so great a work, I shall rejoice with a joy, not such indeed as I should feel were I myself a native of this generous land, but with a joy of my own, not the less pure, because I have exerted myself for that which concerns others more nearly than myself. I have had no other motive, as far as I know myself, than to attempt, according to my strength, some service to the cause of Religion, and to be the servant of those to whom as a nation the whole of Christendom is so deeply indebted; and though this University, and the Faculty of Medicine which belongs to it, are as yet only in the commencement of their long career of usefulness, yet while I live, and (I trust) after life, it will ever be a theme of thankfulness for my heart and my lips, that I have been allowed to do even a little, and to witness so much, of the arduous, pleasant, and hopeful toil which has attended on their establishment.

NOTE ON PAGE 478.

I think it worthwhile, in illustration of what I have said above at the page specified, to append the following passage from Grandorgæus’s catalogue of Muratori’s works.

“Sanctissimus D.N. Benedictus xiv. Pont. Max. Epistolam sapientiæ ac roboris plenam dederat … ad Episcopum Terulensem Hispaniæ Inquisitionis Majorem Inquisitorem, quâ illum hortabatur, ut ‘Historiam Pelagianam et dissertationem, etc.,’ editas à claræ memoriæ Henrico Cardinali Norisio, in Indicem Expurgatorium Hispanum nuper ingestas, perinde ac si aliquid Baianismi aut Jansenismi redolerent, prout auctor ‘Bibliothecæ Jansenisticæ’ immerito autumavit, quamprimum expungendas curaret. Eoque nomine Sapientissimus Pontifex plura in medium attulit prudentis œconomiæ exempla, qua semper usum, supremum S. R. Congr. Indicis Tribunal, à proscribendis virorum doctissimorum operibus aliquando temperavit.

“Quum autem summus Pontifex, ea inter nomina illustria Tillemontii, Bollandistarum, Bosoueti Ep. Meld., et illud recensuerit L. A. Muratorii, his ad Auctorem nostrum delatis, quam maximè indoluit, veritus ne in tantâ operum copiâ ab se editorum, aliquid Fidei aut Religioni minùs consonum sibi excidisset.…

“Verùm clementissimus Pontifex ne animum desponderet doctus et humilis filius, pernumaniter ad ipsum rescripsit … eumque paternè consolatus, inter alia hæc habet: ‘Quanto si era detto nella nostra Lettera all’ Inquisitore di Spagna in ordine alle di Lei Opere, non aveva che fare con la materia delle Feste, nè con verun dogma o disciplina. Il contenuto delle Opere chi qui non è piaciuto (nè che Ella poteva mai lusingarsi che fosse per piacere), riguarda la Giurisdizione Temporale del Romano Pontifice nè suoi stati,’ ” etc. (pp. lx., lxi).

INDEX.

ABELARD, 96,
age of, 263

Accomplishments not education, 144

Addison, his _Vision of Mirza_, 279;
his care in writing, 284;
the child of the Revolution, 312, 329

Æschylus, 258

Alcuin, 17

Aldhelm, St., 17

Alexander the Great, his delight in Homer, 258;
conquests of, 264

Anaxagoras, 116

Andes, the, 136

Animuccia and St. Philip Neri, 237

Apollo Belvidere, the, 283

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 134, 263, 384

Arcesilas, 101

Architecture, 81

Arian argument against our Lord’s Divinity, 95

Ariosto, 316

Aristotelic philosophy, the, 52

Aristotle, xii., 6, 53;
quoted, 78, 101, 106, 109, 134, 222, 275;
his sketch of the magnanimous man, 280, 383, 431, 469

Athens, the fountain of secular knowledge, 264

Augustine, St., of Canterbury, mission of, 16

Augustine, St., of Hippo, quoted, 410

BACCI’S Life of St. Philip Neri, quoted, 236

Bacon, Friar, xiii., 220

Baconian philosophy, the, 109

Bacon, Lord, quoted, 77, 90, 117-119, 175, 221, 225, 263, 319, 437

Balaam, 66

Beethoven, 286, 313

Bentham’s _Preuves Judiciaires_, 96

Berkeley, Bishop, on Gothic Architecture, 81

Boccaccio, 316

Boniface, St., 220

Borromeo, St. Carlo, enjoins the use of some of the Latin classics, 261;
on preaching, 406, 412, 414, 421

Bossuet and Bishop Bull, 7

Brougham, Lord, his Discourse at Glasgow, quoted, 30, 34-35

Brutus, abandoned by philosophy, 116

Burke, Edmund, 176;
his valediction to the spirit of chivalry, 201

Burman, 140

Butler, Bishop, his Analogy, 61, 100, 158, 226

Byron, Lord, his versification, 326

CAIETAN, St., 235

Campbell, Thomas, 322, 326

Carneades, 106

Cato the elder, his opposition to the Greek philosophy, 106

Catullus, 325

Chinese civilization, 252

Christianity and Letters, 249

Chrysostom, St., on Judas, 86

Cicero, quoted, 77;
on the pursuit of knowledge, 104, 116, 260;
style of, 281, 282, 327;
quoted, 399;
his orations against Verres, 421

Civilization and Christianity, 255

Clarendon, Lord, 311

Colours, combination of, 100

“Condescension,” two senses of, 205

Copleston, Dr., Bishop of Llandaff, 157;
quoted, 167-169

Corinthian brass, 175

Cowper, quoted, 191, 467

Crabbe, his _Tales of the Hall_, 150;
his versification, 326

Craik, Dr. G. L., his _Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties_, quoted,
103, 104

DANTE, 316, 329

Davison, John, 158;
on Liberal Education, 169-177

Definiteness, the life of preaching, 426

Demosthenes, 259, 284

Descartes, 315

Dumesnil’s Synonymes, 368

Du Pin’s Ecclesiastical History, 140

EDGEWORTH, Mr., on Professional Education, 158, 170, 176

Edinburgh, 154

_Edinburgh Review_, the, 153, 157, 160, 301, 329

Edward II., King of England, vow at his flight from Bannockburn, 155

Elmsley, xiv.

Epicurus, 40

Euclid’s Elements, 274, 313, 501

Euripides, 258

FENELON, on the Gothic style of Architecture, 82

Fontaine, La, his immoral _Contes_, 315

Fouqué, Lamotte, his tale of the _Unknown Patient_, 119

Fra Angelico, 287

Franklin, 304

Frederick II., 383, 384

GALEN, 222

Gentleman, the true, defined, 208

Gerdil, Cardinal, quoted, xiii., on the Emperor Julian, 194;
on Malebranche, 477

Giannone, 316

Gibbon, on the darkness at the Passion, 95;
his hatred of Christianity, 195, 196;
his care in writing, 285;
influence of his style on the literature of the present day, 323;
his tribute to Hume and Robertson, 325

Goethe, 134

Gothic Architecture, 82

Grammar, 96, 334

Gregory the Great, St., 260

HARDOUIN, Father, on Latin literature, 310

Health, 164

Herodotus, 284, 325, 329

Hobbes, 311

Homer, his address to the Delian women, 257;
his best descriptions, according to Sterne, marred by translation, 271

Hooker, 311

Horace, quoted, 257, 258, 329

Horne Tooke, 96

Hume, 40, 58;
style of, 325

Humility, 206

Huss, 155

JACOB’S courtship, 232

Jeffrey, Lord, 157

Jerome, St., on idolizing the creature, 87

Jerusalem, the fountain-head of religious knowledge, 264

Ignatius, St., 235

Job, religious merry-makings of, 232;
Book of, 289

John, King, 383

John of Salisbury, 262

Johnson, Dr., his method of writing the Ramblers, xx.;
his vigour and resource of intellect, xxi.;
his definition of the word _University_, 20;
his _Rasselas_ quoted, 116-117;
style of, 283;
his Table-talk, 313;
his bias towards Catholicity, 319;
his definition of _Grammar_, 334

Joseph, history of, 271

Isaac, feast at his weaning, 232

Isocrates, 282

Julian the Apostate, 194

Justinian, 265

Juvenal, 325

KEBLE, John, 158;
his Latin Lectures, 369

Knowledge, its own end, 99;
viewed in relation to learning, 124;
to professional skill, 151;
to religion, 179

LALANNE, Abbé, 9

Leo, St., on the love of gain, 87

Literature, 268

Locke, on Education, 158-160, 163, 319

Logos, 276

Lohner, Father, his story of a court-preacher, 411

Longinus, his admiration of the Mosaic account of Creation, 271

Lutheran leaven, spread of the, 28

MACAULAY, Lord, his Essay on Bacon’s philosophy, 118, 221;
his _Essays_ quoted, 301, 435-438, 450

Machiavel, 316

Malebranche, 477

Maltby, Dr., bishop of Durham, his Address to the Deity, 33, 40

Michael Angelo, first attempts of, 283

Milman, Dean, his History of the Jews, 85

Milton, on Education, 169;
his _Samson Agonistes_ quoted, 323;
his allusions to himself, 329

Modesty, 206

Montaigne’s Essays, 315

More, Sir Thomas, 437

Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, 140

Muratori, 478, 520

Music, 80

NERI, St. Philip, 234

Newton, Sir Isaac, xiii., 49, 53;
on the Apocalypse, 304;
his marvellous powers, 324

Newtonian philosophy, the, 49

Noah’s ark, 73

OLYMPIC games, the, 107

Optics, 46

PAINTING, 79

Palestrina, 237

Paley, 58, 449

Palladio, 57

Pascal, 315

Patrick, St., greatness of his work, 15

Periodical criticism, 333

Persian mode of letter-writing, 277

Pindar, 329

Pitt, William, his opinion of Butler’s Analogy, 100

Pius IV., Pope, death of, 237

Plato, on poets, 101;
on music, 110

Playfair, Professor, 157

Political Economy, 86

Pompey’s Pillar, 136

Pope, Alex., quoted, 118;
an indifferent Catholic, 318;
has tuned our versification, 323;
quoted, 375, 501

Porson, Richard, xiv., 304

Pride and self-respect, 207

Private Judgment, 97

Protestant argument against Transubstantiation, 95

Psalter, the, 289

Pulci, 316

Pythagoras, xiii

RABELIAS, 315

Raffaelle, first attempts of, 283; 287

_Rasselas_ quoted, 116

Recreations not Education, 144

Robertson, style of, 325

Rome, 265

Round Towers of Ireland, the, 95

SALES, St Francis de, on preaching, 406, 410, 411

Salmasius, 140

Savonarola, 235

Scott, Sir Walter, 313;
his _Old Mortality_, 359

Seneca, 110, 116, 327

Sermons of the seventeenth century, 140

Shaftesbury, Lord, his _Characteristics_, 196-201, 204

Shakespeare, quoted, 150;
his _Macbeth_ quoted, 280;
_Hamlet_ quoted, 281;
quoted, 284, 287;
morality of, 318;
quoted, 410, 513

Simon of Tournay, narrative of, 384

Smith, Sydney, 157

Sophocles, 258

Southey’s _Thalaba_, 323;
quoted, 324

Sterne’s Sermons, quoted, 270-272

Stuffing birds not education, 144

Sylvester II., Pope, accused of magic, 220

TARPEIA, 140

Taylor, Jeremy, his _Liberty of Prophesying_, 472

Terence and Menander, 259

Tertullian, 327

Thales, xiii.

Theology, a branch of knowledge, 19;
definition of, 60

Thucydides, 259, 325, 329

Titus, armies of, 265

VIRGIL, his obligations to Greek poets, 259;
wishes his Æneid burnt, 284;
fixes the character of the hexameter, 325, 329

Voltaire, 303, 315

UTILITY in Education, 161

WATSON, Bishop, on Mathematics, 101

Wiclif, 155

Wren, Sir Christopher, 57

XAVIER, St. Francis, 235

Xenophon quoted, 107, 258

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES

_ 1 Vid._ Huber’s English Universities, London, 1843, vol. ii., part 1,
pp. 321, etc.

2 Opere, t. iii., p. 353.

3 Vide M. L’Abbé Lalanne’s recent work.

4 Cressy.

5 In Roman law it means a Corporation. Vid. Keuffel, _de Scholis_.

6 Hist. vol. ii. p. 529. London, 1841.

7 Mr. Brougham’s Glasgow Discourse.

8 Arist. Ethic. Nicom., iii. 3.

9 Introd. Lecture on Pol. Econ. pp. 11, 12.

10 Advancement of Learning.

11 Intr. Lect., p. 16.

12 Vid. Abelard, for instance.

13 Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. Introd.

14 Cicer. Offic. init.

15 Τέχνη τύχην ἔστερχε καὶ τύχη τέχνην. Vid. Arist. Nic. Ethic. vi.

16 Aristot. Rhet. i. 5.

17 It will be seen that on the whole I agree with Lord Macaulay in his
Essay on Bacon’s Philosophy. I do not know whether he would agree
with me.

18 De Augment. iv. 2, vid. Macaulay’s Essay; vid. also “In principio
operis ad Deum Patrem, Deum Verbum, Deum Spiritum, preces fundimus
humillimas et ardentissimas, ut humani generis ærumnarum memores, et
peregrinationis istius vitæ, in quâ dies paucos et malos terimus,
_novis suis eleemosynis, per manus nostras_, familiam humanam dotare
digneatur. Atque illud insuper supplices rogamus, ne _humana divinis
officiant_; neve _ex reseratione viarum sensûs_, et accensione
majore luminis naturalis, _aliquid incredulitatis_ et noctis, animis
nostris erga divina mysteria oboriatur,” etc. _Præf._ Instaur. Magn.

19 Fouque’s Unknown Patient.

20 The pages which follow are taken almost _verbatim_ from the author’s
14th (Oxford) University Sermon, which, at the time of writing this
Discourse, he did not expect ever to reprint.

21 Crabbe’s Tales of the Hall. This Poem, let me say, I read on its
first publication, above thirty years ago, with extreme delight, and
have never lost my love of it; and on taking it up lately, found I
was even more touched by it than heretofore. A work which can please
in youth and age, seems to fulfil (in logical language) the
_accidental definition_ of a Classic. [A further course of twenty
years has past, and I bear the same witness in favour of this Poem.]

22 Mr. Keble, Vicar of Hursley, late Fellow of Oriel, and Professor of
Poetry in the University of Oxford.

23 Vid. Milton on Education.

24 I do not consider I have said above any thing inconsistent with the
following passage from Cardinal Gerdil, though I have enlarged on
the favourable side of Julian’s character. “Du génie, des
connaissances, de l’habilité dans le métier de la guerre, du courage
et du désintéressement dans le commandement des armées, des actions
plutôt que des qualités estimables, mais le plus souvent gâtées par
la vanité qui en était le principe, la superstition jointe à
l’hypocrisie; un esprit fécond en ressources éclairé, mais
susceptible de petitesse; des fautes essentielles dans le
gouvernement; des innocens sacrifiés à la vengeance; une haine
envenimée contre le Christianisme, qu’il avait abandonné; un
attachement passionné aux folies de la Théurgie; tels étaient les
traits sous lesquels on nous preignait Julien.” Op. t. x. p. 54.

25 Gibbon, Hist., ch. 24.

26 Vid. Hallam’s Literature of Europe, Macaulay’s Essay, and the
Author’s Oxford University Sermons, IX.

27 In Augment., 5.

28 De Augm., § 28.

_ 29 Vid._ the Author’s Parochial Sermons, vol. i. 25.

30 Bacci, vol. i., p. 192, ii., p. 98.

31 Now LORD EMLY.

_ 32 Vid._ Huber.

_ 33 Vid._ the treatises of P. Daniel and Mgr. Landriot, referred to in
Historical Sketches, vol. ii., p. 460, note.

34 Sterne, Sermon xlii.

35 “Position of Catholics in England,” pp. 101, 2.

36 August, 1854.

37 Macaulay’s Essays.

38 Hallam.

39 Misc. Works, p. 55.

40 This was written in June, 1854, before the siege began.

41 Bombarding.

42 The Black Sea.

43 Here again Mr. Brown prophesies. He wrote in June, 1854.

_ 44 Vid._ University Sermons, vii., 14.

_ 45 Vid._ Article I.

46 Macaulay’s Essays.

47 I use the word, not in the sense of “Naturalis Theologia,” but, in
the sense in which Paley uses it in the work which he has so
entitled.

48 Cardinal Gerdil speaks of his “Metaphysique,” as “brillante à la
verité, mais non moins solide” (p. 9.), and that “la liaison qui
enchaine toutes les parties du système philosophique du Père
Malebranche,… pourra servir d’apologie à la noble assurance, avec
laquelle il propose ses sentiments.” (p. 12, Œuvres, t. iv.)

49 Muratori’s work was not directly theological. _Vid._ note at the end
of the Volume.

50 University Gazette, No. 42, p. 420.

_ 51 Vid._ supr. p. 231.