have been able to bestow upon the subject; such is the lesson which I have
gained from the history of my own special Father and Patron, St. Philip
Neri. He lived in an age as traitorous to the interests of Catholicism as
any that preceded it, or can follow it. He lived at a time when pride
mounted high, and the senses held rule; a time when kings and nobles never
had more of state and homage, and never less of personal responsibility
and peril; when medieval winter was receding, and the summer sun of
civilization was bringing into leaf and flower a thousand forms of
luxurious enjoyment; when a new world of thought and beauty had opened
upon the human mind, in the discovery of the treasures of classic
literature and art. He saw the great and the gifted, dazzled by the
Enchantress, and drinking in the magic of her song; he saw the high and
the wise, the student and the artist, painting, and poetry and sculpture,
and music, and architecture, drawn within her range, and circling round
the abyss: he saw heathen forms mounting thence, and forming in the thick
air:—all this he saw, and he perceived that the mischief was to be met,
not with argument, not with science, not with protests and warnings, not
by the recluse or the preacher, but by means of the great
counter-fascination of purity and truth. He was raised up to do a work
almost peculiar in the Church,—not to be a Jerome Savonarola, though
Philip had a true devotion towards him and a tender memory of his
Florentine house; not to be a St. Charles, though in his beaming
countenance Philip had recognized the aureol of a saint; not to be a St.
Ignatius, wrestling with the foe, though Philip was termed the Society’s
bell of call, so many subjects did he send to it; not to be a St. Francis
Xavier, though Philip had longed to shed his blood for Christ in India
with him; not to be a St. Caietan, or hunter of souls, for Philip
preferred, as he expressed it, tranquilly to cast in his net to gain them;
he preferred to yield to the stream, and direct the current, which he
could not stop, of science, literature, art, and fashion, and to sweeten
and to sanctify what God had made very good and man had spoilt.
And so he contemplated as the idea of his mission, not the propagation of
the faith, nor the exposition of doctrine, nor the catechetical schools;
whatever was exact and systematic pleased him not; he put from him
monastic rule and authoritative speech, as David refused the armour of his
king. No; he would be but an ordinary individual priest as others: and his
weapons should be but unaffected humility and unpretending love. All he
did was to be done by the light, and fervour, and convincing eloquence of
his personal character and his easy conversation. He came to the Eternal
City and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually
grew up around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials from
without. He did not so much seek his own as draw them to him. He sat in
his small room, and they in their gay worldly dresses, the rich and the
wellborn, as well as the simple and the illiterate, crowded into it. In
the mid-heats of summer, in the frosts of winter, still was he in that low
and narrow cell at San Girolamo, reading the hearts of those who came to
him, and curing their souls’ maladies by the very touch of his hand. It
was a vision of the Magi worshipping the infant Saviour, so pure and
innocent, so sweet and beautiful was he; and so loyal and so dear to the
gracious Virgin Mother. And they who came remained gazing and listening,
till at length, first one and then another threw off their bravery, and
took his poor cassock and girdle instead: or, if they kept it, it was to
put haircloth under it, or to take on them a rule of life, while to the
world they looked as before.
In the words of his biographer, “he was all things to all men. He suited
himself to noble and ignoble, young and old, subjects and prelates,
learned and ignorant; and received those who were strangers to him with
singular benignity, and embraced them with as much love and charity as if
he had been a long while expecting them. When he was called upon to be
merry he was so; if there was a demand upon his sympathy he was equally
ready. He gave the same welcome to all: caressing the poor equally with
the rich, and wearying himself to assist all to the utmost limits of his
power. In consequence of his being so accessible and willing to receive
all comers, many went to him every day, and some continued for the space
of thirty, nay forty years, to visit him very often both morning and
evening, so that his room went by the agreeable nickname of the Home of
Christian mirth. Nay, people came to him, not only from all parts of
Italy, but from France, Spain, Germany, and all Christendom; and even the
infidels and Jews, who had ever any communication with him, revered him as
a holy man.”(30) The first families of Rome, the Massimi, the
Aldobrandini, the Colonnas, the Altieri, the Vitelleschi, were his friends
and his penitents. Nobles of Poland, Grandees of Spain, Knights of Malta,
could not leave Rome without coming to him. Cardinals, Archbishops, and
Bishops were his intimates; Federigo Borromeo haunted his room and got the
name of “Father Philip’s soul.” The Cardinal-Archbishops of Verona and
Bologna wrote books in his honour. Pope Pius the Fourth died in his arms.
Lawyers, painters, musicians, physicians, it was the same too with them.
Baronius, Zazzara, and Ricci, left the law at his bidding, and joined his
congregation, to do its work, to write the annals of the Church, and to
die in the odour of sanctity. Palestrina had Father Philip’s ministrations
in his last moments. Animuccia hung about him during life, sent him a
message after death, and was conducted by him through Purgatory to Heaven.
And who was he, I say, all the while, but an humble priest, a stranger in
Rome, with no distinction of family or letters, no claim of station or of
office, great simply in the attraction with which a Divine Power had
gifted him? and yet thus humble, thus unennobled, thus empty-handed, he
has achieved the glorious title of Apostle of Rome.
10.
Well were it for his clients and children, Gentlemen, if they could
promise themselves the very shadow of his special power, or could hope to
do a miserable fraction of the sort of work in which he was pre-eminently
skilled. But so far at least they may attempt,—to take his position, and
to use his method, and to cultivate the arts of which he was so bright a
pattern. For me, if it be God’s blessed will that in the years now coming
I am to have a share in the great undertaking, which has been the occasion
and the subject of these Discourses, so far I can say for certain that,
whether or not I can do any thing at all in St. Philip’s way, at least I
can do nothing in any other. Neither by my habits of life, nor by vigour
of age, am I fitted for the task of authority, or of rule, or of
initiation. I do but aspire, if strength is given me, to be your minister
in a work which must employ younger minds and stronger lives than mine. I
am but fit to bear my witness, to proffer my suggestions, to express my
sentiments, as has in fact been my occupation in these discussions; to
throw such light upon general questions, upon the choice of objects, upon
the import of principles, upon the tendency of measures, as past
reflection and experience enable me to contribute. I shall have to make
appeals to your consideration, your friendliness, your confidence, of
which I have had so many instances, on which I so tranquilly repose; and
after all, neither you nor I must ever be surprised, should it so happen
that the Hand of Him, with whom are the springs of life and death, weighs
heavy on me, and makes me unequal to anticipations in which you have been
too kind, and to hopes in which I may have been too sanguine.
UNIVERSITY SUBJECTS, DISCUSSED IN OCCASIONAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS.
Introductory Letter.
To The Right Honourable WILLIAM MONSELL, M.P., ETC., ETC.(31)
MY DEAR MONSELL,
I seem to have some claim for asking leave of you to prefix your name to
the following small Volume, since it is a memorial of work done in a
country which you so dearly love, and in behalf of an undertaking in which
you feel so deep an interest.
Nor do I venture on the step without some hope that it is worthy of your
acceptance, at least on account of those portions of it which have already
received the approbation of the learned men to whom they were addressed,
and which have been printed at their desire.
But, even though there were nothing to recommend it except that it came
from me, I know well that you would kindly welcome it as a token of the
truth and constancy with which I am,
MY DEAR MONSELL,
Yours very affectionately,
[_November 1858._] JOHN H. NEWMAN.
Advertisement.
It has been the fortune of the author through life, that the Volumes which
he has published have grown for the most part out of the duties which lay
upon him, or out of the circumstances of the moment. Rarely has he been
master of his own studies.
The present collection of Lectures and Essays, written by him while Rector
of the Catholic University of Ireland, is certainly not an exception to
this remark. Rather, it requires the above consideration to be kept in
view, as an apology for the want of keeping which is apparent between its
separate portions, some of them being written for public delivery, others
with the privileged freedom of anonymous compositions.
However, whatever be the inconvenience which such varieties in tone and
character may involve, the author cannot affect any compunction for having
pursued the illustration of one and the same important subject-matter,
with which he had been put in charge, by such methods, graver or lighter,
so that they were lawful, as successively came to his hand.
_November, 1858._
Lecture I.
Christianity And Letters. A Lecture in the School of Philosophy and
Letters.
1.
It seems but natural, Gentlemen, now that we are opening the School of
Philosophy and Letters, or, as it was formerly called, of Arts, in this
new University, that we should direct our attention to the question, what
are the subjects generally included under that name, and what place they
hold, and how they come to hold that place, in a University, and in the
education which a University provides. This would be natural on such an
occasion, even though the Faculty of Arts held but a secondary place in
the academical system; but it seems to be even imperative on us,
considering that the studies which that Faculty embraces are almost the
direct subject-matter and the staple of the mental exercises proper to a
University.
It is indeed not a little remarkable that, in spite of the special
historical connexion of University Institutions with the Sciences of
Theology, Law, and Medicine, a University, after all, should be formally
based (as it really is), and should emphatically live in, the Faculty of
Arts; but such is the deliberate decision of those who have most deeply
and impartially considered the subject.(32) Arts existed before other
Faculties; the Masters of Arts were the ruling and directing body; the
success and popularity of the Faculties of Law and Medicine were
considered to be in no slight measure an encroachment and a usurpation,
and were met with jealousy and resistance. When Colleges arose and became
the medium and instrument of University action, they did but confirm the
ascendency of the Faculty of Arts; and thus, even down to this day, in
those academical corporations which have more than others retained the
traces of their medieval origin,—I mean the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge,—we hear little of Theology, Medicine, or Law, and almost
exclusively of Arts.
Now, considering the reasonable association, to which I have already
referred, which exists in our minds between Universities and the three
learned professions, here is a phenomenon which has to be contemplated for
its own sake and accounted for, as well as a circumstance enhancing the
significance and importance of the act in which we have been for some
weeks engaged; and I consider that I shall not be employing our time
unprofitably, if I am able to make a suggestion, which, while it
illustrates the fact, is able to explain the difficulty.
2.
Here I must go back, Gentlemen, a very great way, and ask you to review
the course of Civilization since the beginning of history. When we survey
the stream of human affairs for the last three thousand years, we find it
to run thus:—At first sight there is so much fluctuation, agitation,
ebbing and flowing, that we may despair to discern any law in its
movements, taking the earth as its bed, and mankind as its contents; but,
on looking more closely and attentively, we shall discern, in spite of the
heterogeneous materials and the various histories and fortunes which are
found in the race of man during the long period I have mentioned, a
certain formation amid the chaos,—one and one only,—and extending, though
not over the whole earth, yet through a very considerable portion of it.
Man is a social being and can hardly exist without society, and in matter
of fact societies have ever existed all over the habitable earth. The
greater part of these associations have been political or religious, and
have been comparatively limited in extent, and temporary. They have been
formed and dissolved by the force of accidents or by inevitable
circumstances; and, when we have enumerated them one by one, we have made
of them all that can be made. But there is one remarkable association
which attracts the attention of the philosopher, not political nor
religious, or at least only partially and not essentially such, which
began in the earliest times and grew with each succeeding age, till it
reached its complete development, and then continued on, vigorous and
unwearied, and which still remains as definite and as firm as ever it was.
Its bond is a common civilization; and, though there are other
civilizations in the world, as there are other societies, yet this
civilization, together with the society which is its creation and its
home, is so distinctive and luminous in its character, so imperial in its
extent, so imposing in its duration, and so utterly without rival upon the
face of the earth, that the association may fitly assume to itself the
title of “Human Society,” and its civilization the abstract term
“Civilization.”
There are indeed great outlying portions of mankind which are not, perhaps
never have been, included in this Human Society; still they are outlying
portions and nothing else, fragmentary, unsociable, solitary, and
unmeaning, protesting and revolting against the grand central formation of
which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into a second whole.
I am not denying of course the civilization of the Chinese, for instance,
though it be not our civilization; but it is a huge, stationary,
unattractive, morose civilization. Nor do I deny a civilization to the
Hindoos, nor to the ancient Mexicans, nor to the Saracens, nor (in a
certain sense) to the Turks; but each of these races has its own
civilization, as separate from one another as from ours. I do not see how
they can be all brought under one idea. Each stands by itself, as if the
other were not; each is local; many of them are temporary; none of them
will bear a comparison with the Society and the Civilization which I have
described as alone having a claim to those names, and on which I am going
to dwell.
Gentlemen, let me here observe that I am not entering upon the question of
races, or upon their history. I have nothing to do with ethnology. I take
things as I find them on the surface of history, and am but classing
phenomena. Looking, then, at the countries which surround the
Mediterranean Sea as a whole, I see them to be, from time immemorial, the
seat of an association of intellect and mind, such as to deserve to be
called the Intellect and the Mind of the Human Kind. Starting as it does
and advancing from certain centres, till their respective influences
intersect and conflict, and then at length intermingle and combine, a
common Thought has been generated, and a common Civilization defined and
established. Egypt is one such starting point, Syria another, Greece a
third, Italy a fourth, and North Africa a fifth,—afterwards France and
Spain. As time goes on, and as colonization and conquest work their
changes, we see a great association of nations formed, of which the Roman
empire is the maturity and the most intelligible expression; an
association, however, not political, but mental, based on the same
intellectual ideas, and advancing by common intellectual methods. And this
association or social commonwealth, with whatever reverses, changes, and
momentary dissolutions, continues down to this day; not, indeed, precisely
on the same territory, but with such only partial and local disturbances,
and on the other hand, with so combined and harmonious a movement, and
such a visible continuity, that it would be utterly unreasonable to deny
that it is throughout all that interval but one and the same.
In its earliest age it included far more of the eastern world than it has
since; in these later times it has taken into its compass a new
hemisphere; in the middle ages it lost Africa, Egypt, and Syria, and
extended itself to Germany, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. At one
time its territory was flooded by strange and barbarous races, but the
existing civilization was vigorous enough to vivify what threatened to
stifle it, and to assimilate to the old social forms what came to expel
them; and thus the civilization of modern times remains what it was of
old, not Chinese, or Hindoo, or Mexican, or Saracenic, or of any new
description hitherto unknown, but the lineal descendant, or rather the
continuation, _mutatis mutandis_, of the civilization which began in
Palestine and Greece.
Considering, then, the characteristics of this great civilized Society,
which I have already insisted on, I think it has a claim to be considered
as the representative Society and Civilization of the human race, as its
perfect result and limit, in fact;—those portions of the race which do not
coalesce with it being left to stand by themselves as anomalies,
unaccountable indeed, but for that very reason not interfering with what
on the contrary has been turned to account and has grown into a whole. I
call then this commonwealth pre-eminently and emphatically Human Society,
and its intellect the Human Mind, and its decisions the sense of mankind,
and its disciplined and cultivated state Civilization in the abstract, and
the territory on which it lies the _orbis terrarum_, or the World. For,
unless the illustration be fanciful, the object which I am contemplating
is like the impression of a seal upon the wax; which rounds off and gives
form to the greater portion of the soft material, and presents something
definite to the eye, and preoccupies the space against any second figure,
so that we overlook and leave out of our thoughts the jagged outline or
unmeaning lumps outside of it, intent upon the harmonious circle which
fills the imagination within it.
3.
Now, before going on to speak of the education, and the standards of
education, which the Civilized World, as I may now call it, has enjoined
and requires, I wish to draw your attention, Gentlemen, to the
circumstance that this same _orbis terrarum_, which has been the seat of
Civilization, will be found, on the whole, to be the seat also of that
supernatural society and system which our Maker has given us directly from
Himself, the Christian Polity. The natural and divine associations are not
indeed exactly coincident, nor ever have been. As the territory of
Civilization has varied with itself in different ages, while on the whole
it has been the same, so, in like manner, Christianity has fallen partly
outside Civilization, and Civilization partly outside Christianity; but,
on the whole, the two have occupied one and the same _orbis terrarum_.
Often indeed they have even moved _pari passu_, and at all times there has
been found the most intimate connexion between them. Christianity waited
till the _orbis terrarum_ attained its most perfect form before it
appeared; and it soon coalesced, and has ever since co-operated, and often
seemed identical, with the Civilization which is its companion.
There are certain analogies, too, which hold between Civilization and
Christianity. As Civilization does not cover the whole earth, neither does
Christianity; but there is nothing else like the one, and nothing else
like the other. Each is the only thing of its kind. Again, there are, as I
have already said, large outlying portions of the world in a certain sense
cultivated and educated, which, if they could exist together in one, would
go far to constitute a second _orbis terrarum_, the home of a second
distinct civilization; but every one of these is civilized on its own
principle and idea, or at least they are separated from each other, and
have not run together, while the Civilization and Society which I have
been describing is one organized whole. And, in like manner, Christianity
coalesces into one vast body, based upon common ideas; yet there are large
outlying organizations of religion independent of each other and of it.
Moreover, Christianity, as is the case in the parallel instance of
Civilization, continues on in the world without interruption from the date
of its rise, while other religious bodies, huge, local, and isolated, are
rising and falling, or are helplessly stationary, from age to age, on all
sides of it.
There is another remarkable analogy between Christianity and Civilization,
and the mention of it will introduce my proper subject, to which what I
have hitherto said is merely a preparation. We know that Christianity is
built upon definite ideas, principles, doctrines, and writings, which were
given at the time of its first introduction, and have never been
superseded, and admit of no addition. I am not going to parallel any thing
which is the work of man, and in the natural order, with what is from
heaven, and in consequence infallible, and irreversible, and obligatory;
but, after making this reserve, lest I should possibly be misunderstood,
still I would remark that, in matter of fact, looking at the state of the
case historically, Civilization too has its common principles, and views,
and teaching, and especially its books, which have more or less been given
from the earliest times, and are, in fact, in equal esteem and respect, in
equal use now, as they were when they were received in the beginning. In a
word, the Classics, and the subjects of thought and the studies to which
they give rise, or, to use the term most to our present purpose, the Arts,
have ever, on the whole, been the instruments of education which the
civilized _orbis terrarum_ has adopted; just as inspired works, and the
lives of saints, and the articles of faith, and the catechism, have ever
been the instrument of education in the case of Christianity. And this
consideration, you see, Gentlemen (to drop down at once upon the subject
proper to the occasion which has brought us together), invests the opening
of the School in Arts with a solemnity and moment of a peculiar kind, for
we are but reiterating an old tradition, and carrying on those august
methods of enlarging the mind, and cultivating the intellect, and refining
the feelings, in which the process of Civilization has ever consisted.
4.
In the country which has been the fountain head of intellectual gifts, in
the age which preceded or introduced the first formations of Human
Society, in an era scarcely historical, we may dimly discern an almost
mythical personage, who, putting out of consideration the actors in Old
Testament history, may be called the first Apostle of Civilization. Like
an Apostle in a higher order of things, he was poor and a wanderer, and
feeble in the flesh, though he was to do such great things, and to live in
the mouths of a hundred generations and a thousand tribes. A blind old
man; whose wanderings were such that, when he became famous, his
birth-place could not be ascertained, so that it was said,—
“Seven famous towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.”