of philosophy and research. It is, as I have said, the high protecting
power of all knowledge and science, of fact and principle, of inquiry and
discovery, of experiment and speculation; it maps out the territory of the
intellect, and sees that the boundaries of each province are religiously
respected, and that there is neither encroachment nor surrender on any
side. It acts as umpire between truth and truth, and, taking into account
the nature and importance of each, assigns to all their due order of
precedence. It maintains no one department of thought exclusively, however
ample and noble; and it sacrifices none. It is deferential and loyal,
according to their respective weight, to the claims of literature, of
physical research, of history, of metaphysics, of theological science. It
is impartial towards them all, and promotes each in its own place and for
its own object. It is ancillary certainly, and of necessity, to the
Catholic Church; but in the same way that one of the Queen’s judges is an
officer of the Queen’s, and nevertheless determines certain legal
proceedings between the Queen and her subjects. It is ministrative to the
Catholic Church, first, because truth of any kind can but minister to
truth; and next, still more, because Nature ever will pay homage to Grace,
and Reason cannot but illustrate and defend Revelation; and thirdly,
because the Church has a sovereign authority, and, when she speaks _ex
cathedra_, must be obeyed. But this is the remote end of a University; its
immediate end (with which alone we have here to do) is to secure the due
disposition, according to one sovereign order, and the cultivation in that
order, of all the provinces and methods of thought which the human
intellect has created.
In this point of view, its several professors are like the ministers of
various political powers at one court or conference. They represent their
respective sciences, and attend to the private interests of those sciences
respectively; and, should dispute arise between those sciences, they are
the persons to talk over and arrange it, without risk of extravagant
pretensions on any side, of angry collision, or of popular commotion. A
liberal philosophy becomes the habit of minds thus exercised; a breadth
and spaciousness of thought, in which lines, seemingly parallel, may
converge at leisure, and principles, recognized as incommensurable, may be
safely antagonistic.
3.
And here, Gentlemen, we recognize the special character of the Philosophy
I am speaking of, if Philosophy it is to be called, in contrast with the
method of a strict science or system. Its teaching is not founded on one
idea, or reducible to certain formulæ. Newton might discover the great law
of motion in the physical world, and the key to ten thousand phenomena;
and a similar resolution of complex facts into simple principles may be
possible in other departments of nature; but the great Universe itself,
moral and material, sensible and supernatural, cannot be gauged and meted
by even the greatest of human intellects, and its constituent parts admit
indeed of comparison and adjustment, but not of fusion. This is the point
which bears directly on the subject which I set before me when I began,
and towards which I am moving in all I have said or shall be saying.
I observe, then, and ask you, Gentlemen, to bear in mind, that the
philosophy of an imperial intellect, for such I am considering a
University to be, is based, not so much on simplification as on
discrimination. Its true representative defines, rather than analyzes. He
aims at no complete catalogue, or interpretation of the subjects of
knowledge, but a following out, as far as man can, what in its fulness is
mysterious and unfathomable. Taking into his charge all sciences, methods,
collections of facts, principles, doctrines, truths, which are the
reflexions of the universe upon the human intellect, he admits them all,
he disregards none, and, as disregarding none, he allows none to exceed or
encroach. His watchword is, Live and let live. He takes things as they
are; he submits to them all, as far as they go; he recognizes the
insuperable lines of demarcation which run between subject and subject; he
observes how separate truths lie relatively to each other, where they
concur, where they part company, and where, being carried too far, they
cease to be truths at all. It is his office to determine how much can be
known in each province of thought; when we must be contented not to know;
in what direction inquiry is hopeless, or on the other hand full of
promise; where it gathers into coils insoluble by reason, where it is
absorbed in mysteries, or runs into the abyss. It will be his care to be
familiar with the signs of real and apparent difficulties, with the
methods proper to particular subject-matters, what in each particular case
are the limits of a rational scepticism, and what the claims of a
peremptory faith. If he has one cardinal maxim in his philosophy, it is,
that truth cannot be contrary to truth; if he has a second, it is, that
truth often _seems_ contrary to truth; and, if a third, it is the
practical conclusion, that we must be patient with such appearances, and
not be hasty to pronounce them to be really of a more formidable
character.
It is the very immensity of the system of things, the human record of
which he has in charge, which is the reason of this patience and caution;
for that immensity suggests to him that the contrarieties and mysteries,
which meet him in the various sciences, may be simply the consequences of
our necessarily defective comprehension. There is but one thought greater
than that of the universe, and that is the thought of its Maker. If,
Gentlemen, for one single instant, leaving my proper train of thought, I
allude to our knowledge of the Supreme Being, it is in order to deduce
from it an illustration bearing upon my subject. He, though One, is a sort
of world of worlds in Himself, giving birth in our minds to an indefinite
number of distinct truths, each ineffably more mysterious than any thing
that is found in this universe of space and time. Any one of His
attributes, considered by itself, is the object of an inexhaustible
science: and the attempt to reconcile any two or three of them
together,—love, power, justice, sanctity, truth, wisdom,—affords matter
for an everlasting controversy. We are able to apprehend and receive each
divine attribute in its elementary form, but still we are not able to
accept them in their infinity, either in themselves or in union with each
other. Yet we do not deny the first because it cannot be perfectly
reconciled with the second, nor the second because it is in apparent
contrariety with the first and the third. The case is the same in its
degree with His creation material and moral. It is the highest wisdom to
accept truth of whatever kind, wherever it is clearly ascertained to be
such, though there be difficulty in adjusting it with other known truth.
Instances are easily producible of that extreme contrariety of ideas, one
with another, which the contemplation of the Universe forces upon our
acceptance, making it clear to us that there is nothing irrational in
submitting to undeniable incompatibilities, which we call apparent, only
because, if they were not apparent but real, they could not co-exist.
Such, for instance, is the contemplation of Space; the existence of which
we cannot deny, though its idea is capable, in no sort of posture, of
seating itself (if I may so speak) in our minds;—for we find it impossible
to say that it comes to a limit anywhere; and it is incomprehensible to
say that it runs out infinitely; and it seems to be unmeaning if we say
that it does not exist till bodies come into it, and thus is enlarged
according to an accident.
And so again in the instance of Time. We cannot place a beginning to it
without asking ourselves what was before that beginning; yet that there
should be no beginning at all, put it as far back as we will, is simply
incomprehensible. Here again, as in the case of Space, we never dream of
denying the existence of what we have no means of understanding.
And, passing from this high region of thought (which, high as it may be,
is the subject even of a child’s contemplations), when we come to consider
the mutual action of soul and body, we are specially perplexed by
incompatibilities which we can neither reject nor explain. How it is that
the will can act on the muscles, is a question of which even a child may
feel the force, but which no experimentalist can answer.
Further, when we contrast the physical with the social laws under which
man finds himself here below, we must grant that Physiology and Social
Science are in collision. Man is both a physical and a social being; yet
he cannot at once pursue to the full his physical end and his social end,
his physical duties (if I may so speak) and his social duties, but is
forced to sacrifice in part one or the other. If we were wild enough to
fancy that there were two creators, one of whom was the author of our
animal frames, the other of society, then indeed we might understand how
it comes to pass that labour of mind and body, the useful arts, the duties
of a statesman, government, and the like, which are required by the social
system, are so destructive of health, enjoyment, and life. That is, in
other words, we cannot adequately account for existing and undeniable
truths except on the hypothesis of what we feel to be an absurdity.
And so in Mathematical Science, as has been often insisted on, the
philosopher has patiently to endure the presence of truths, which are not
the less true for being irreconcileable with each other. He is told of the
existence of an infinite number of curves, which are able to divide a
space, into which no straight line, though it be length without breadth,
can even enter. He is told, too, of certain lines, which approach to each
other continually, with a finite distance between them, yet never meet;
and these apparent contrarieties he must bear as he best can, without
attempting to deny the existence of the truths which constitute them in
the Science in question.
4.
Now, let me call your attention, Gentlemen, to what I would infer from
these familiar facts. It is, to urge you with an argument _à fortiori_:
viz., that, as you exercise so much exemplary patience in the case of the
inexplicable truths which surround so many departments of knowledge, human
and divine, viewed in themselves; as you are not at once indignant,
censorious, suspicious, difficult of belief, on finding that in the
secular sciences one truth is incompatible (according to our human
intellect) with another or inconsistent with itself; so you should not
think it very hard to be told that there exists, here and there, not an
inextricable difficulty, not an astounding contrariety, not (much less) a
contradiction as to clear facts, between Revelation and Nature; but a
hitch, an obscurity, a divergence of tendency, a temporary antagonism, a
difference of tone, between the two,—that is, between Catholic opinion on
the one hand, and astronomy, or geology, or physiology, or ethnology, or
political economy, or history, or antiquities, on the other. I say that,
as we admit, because we are Catholics, that the Divine Unity contains in
it attributes, which, to our finite minds, appear in partial contrariety
with each other; as we admit that, in His revealed Nature are things,
which, though not opposed to Reason, are infinitely strange to the
Imagination; as in His works we can neither reject nor admit the ideas of
space, and of time, and the necessary properties of lines, without
intellectual distress, or even torture; really, Gentlemen, I am making no
outrageous request, when, in the name of a University, I ask religious
writers, jurists, economists, physiologists, chemists, geologists, and
historians, to go on quietly, and in a neighbourly way, in their own
respective lines of speculation, research, and experiment, with full faith
in the consistency of that multiform truth, which they share between them,
in a generous confidence that they will be ultimately consistent, one and
all, in their combined results, though there may be momentary collisions,
awkward appearances, and many forebodings and prophecies of contrariety,
and at all times things hard to the Imagination, though not, I repeat, to
the Reason. It surely is not asking them a great deal to beg of
them,—since they are forced to admit mysteries in the truths of
Revelation, taken by themselves, and in the truths of Reason, taken by
themselves—to beg of them, I say, to keep the peace, to live in good will,
and to exercise equanimity, if, when Nature and Revelation are compared
with each other, there be, as I have said, discrepancies,—not in the
issue, but in the reasonings, the circumstances, the associations, the
anticipations, the accidents, proper to their respective teachings.
It is most necessary to insist seriously and energetically on this point,
for the sake of Protestants, for they have very strange notions about us.
In spite of the testimony of history the other way, they think that the
Church has no other method of putting down error than the arm of force, or
the prohibition of inquiry. They defy us to set up and carry on a School
of Science. For their sake, then, I am led to enlarge upon the subject
here. I say, then, he who believes Revelation with that absolute faith
which is the prerogative of a Catholic, is not the nervous creature who
startles at every sudden sound, and is fluttered by every strange or novel
appearance which meets his eyes. He has no sort of apprehension, he laughs
at the idea, that any thing can be discovered by any other scientific
method, which can contradict any one of the dogmas of his religion. He
knows full well there is no science whatever, but, in the course of its
extension, runs the risk of infringing, without any meaning of offence on
its own part, the path of other sciences and he knows also that, if there
be any one science which, from its sovereign and unassailable position can
calmly bear such unintentional collisions on the part of the children of
earth, it is Theology. He is sure, and nothing shall make him doubt, that,
if anything seems to be proved by astronomer, or geologist, or
chronologist, or antiquarian, or ethnologist, in contradiction to the
dogmas of faith, that point will eventually turn out, first, _not_ to be
proved, or, secondly, not _contradictory_, or thirdly, not contradictory
to any thing _really revealed_, but to something which has been confused
with revelation. And if, at the moment, it appears to be contradictory,
then he is content to wait, knowing that error is like other delinquents;
give it rope enough, and it will be found to have a strong suicidal
propensity. I do not mean to say he will not take his part in encouraging,
in helping forward the prospective suicide; he will not only give the
error rope enough, but show it how to handle and adjust the rope;—he will
commit the matter to reason, reflection, sober judgment, common sense; to
Time, the great interpreter of so many secrets. Instead of being irritated
at the momentary triumph of the foes of Revelation, if such a feeling of
triumph there be, and of hurrying on a forcible solution of the
difficulty, which may in the event only reduce the inquiry to an
inextricable tangle, he will recollect that, in the order of Providence,
our seeming dangers are often our greatest gains; that in the words of the
Protestant poet,
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.
5.
To one notorious instance indeed it is obvious to allude here. When the
Copernican system first made progress, what religious man would not have
been tempted to uneasiness, or at least fear of scandal, from the seeming
contradiction which it involved to some authoritative tradition of the
Church and the declaration of Scripture? It was generally received, as if
the Apostles had expressly delivered it both orally and in writing, as a
truth of Revelation, that the earth was stationary, and that the sun,
fixed in a solid firmament, whirled round the earth. After a little time,
however, and on full consideration, it was found that the Church had
decided next to nothing on questions such as these, and that Physical
Science might range in this sphere of thought almost at will, without fear
of encountering the decisions of ecclesiastical authority. Now, besides
the relief which it afforded to Catholics to find that they were to be
spared this addition, on the side of Cosmology, to their many
controversies already existing, there is something of an argument in this
very circumstance in behalf of the divinity of their Religion. For it
surely is a very remarkable fact, considering how widely and how long one
certain interpretation of these physical statements in Scripture had been
received by Catholics, that the Church should not have formally
acknowledged it. Looking at the matter in a human point of view, it was
inevitable that she should have made that opinion her own. But now we
find, on ascertaining where we stand, in the face of the new sciences of
these latter times, that in spite of the bountiful comments which from the
first she has ever been making on the sacred text, as it is her duty and
her right to do, nevertheless, she has never been led formally to explain
the texts in question, or to give them an authoritative sense which modern
science may question.
Nor was this escape a mere accident, but rather the result of a
providential superintendence; as would appear from a passage of history in
the dark age itself. When the glorious St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany,
great in sanctity, though not in secular knowledge, complained to the Holy
See that St. Virgilius taught the existence of the Antipodes, the Holy See
was guided what to do; it did not indeed side with the Irish philosopher,
which would have been going out of its place, but it passed over, in a
matter not revealed, a philosophical opinion.
Time went on; a new state of things, intellectual and social, came in; the
Church was girt with temporal power; the preachers of St. Dominic were in
the ascendant: now at length we may ask with curious interest, did the
Church alter her ancient rule of action, and proscribe intellectual
activity? Just the contrary; this is the very age of Universities; it is
the classical period of the schoolmen; it is the splendid and palmary
instance of the wise policy and large liberality of the Church, as regards
philosophical inquiry. If there ever was a time when the intellect went
wild, and had a licentious revel, it was at the date I speak of. When was
there ever a more curious, more meddling, bolder, keener, more
penetrating, more rationalistic exercise of the reason than at that time?
What class of questions did that subtle, metaphysical spirit not
scrutinize? What premiss was allowed without examination? What principle
was not traced to its first origin, and exhibited in its most naked shape?
What whole was not analyzed? What complex idea was not elaborately traced
out, and, as it were, finely painted for the contemplation of the mind,
till it was spread out in all its minutest portions as perfectly and
delicately as a frog’s foot shows under the intense scrutiny of the
microscope? Well, I repeat, here was something which came somewhat nearer
to Theology than physical research comes; Aristotle was a somewhat more
serious foe then, beyond all mistake, than Bacon has been since. Did the
Church take a high hand with philosophy then? No, not though that
philosophy was metaphysical. It was a time when she had temporal power,
and could have exterminated the spirit of inquiry with fire and sword; but
she determined to put it down by _argument_, she said: “Two can play at
that, and my argument is the better.” She sent her controversialists into
the philosophical arena. It was the Dominican and Franciscan doctors, the
greatest of them being St. Thomas, who in those medieval Universities
fought the battle of Revelation with the weapons of heathenism. It was no
matter whose the weapon was; truth was truth all the world over. With the
jawbone of an ass, with the skeleton philosophy of pagan Greece, did the
Samson of the schools put to flight his thousand Philistines.
Here, Gentlemen, observe the contrast exhibited between the Church
herself, who has the gift of wisdom, and even the ablest, or wisest, or
holiest of her children. As St. Boniface had been jealous of physical
speculations, so had the early Fathers shown an extreme aversion to the
great heathen philosopher whom I just now named, Aristotle. I do not know
who of them could endure him; and when there arose those in the middle age
who would take his part, especially since their intentions were of a
suspicious character, a strenuous effort was made to banish him out of
Christendom. The Church the while had kept silence; she had as little
denounced heathen philosophy in the mass as she had pronounced upon the
meaning of certain texts of Scripture of a cosmological character. From
Tertullian and Caius to the two Gregories of Cappadocia, from them to
Anastasius Sinaita, from him to the school of Paris, Aristotle was a word
of offence; at length St. Thomas made him a hewer of wood and drawer of
water to the Church. A strong slave he is; and the Church herself has
given her sanction to the use in Theology of the ideas and terms of his
philosophy.
6.
Now, while this free discussion is, to say the least, so safe for
Religion, or rather so expedient, it is on the other hand simply necessary
for progress in Science; and I shall now go on to insist on this side of
the subject. I say, then, that it is a matter of primary importance in the
cultivation of those sciences, in which truth is discoverable by the human
intellect, that the investigator should be free, independent, unshackled
in his movements; that he should be allowed and enabled, without
impediment, to fix his mind intently, nay, exclusively, on his special
object, without the risk of being distracted every other minute in the
process and progress of his inquiry, by charges of temerariousness, or by
warnings against extravagance or scandal. But in thus speaking, I must
premise several explanations, lest I be misunderstood.
First, then, Gentlemen, as to the fundamental principles of religion and
morals, and again as to the fundamental principles of Christianity, or
what are called the dogmas of faith,—as to this double creed, natural and
revealed,—we, none of us, should say that it is any shackle at all upon
the intellect to maintain these inviolate. Indeed, a Catholic cannot put
off his thought of them; and they as little impede the movements of his
intellect as the laws of physics impede his bodily movements. The habitual
apprehension of them has become a second nature with him, as the laws of
optics, hydrostatics, dynamics, are latent conditions which he takes for
granted in the use of his corporeal organs. I am not supposing any
collision with dogma, I am but speaking of opinions of divines, or of the
multitude, parallel to those in former times of the sun going round the
earth, or of the last day being close at hand, or of St. Dionysius the
Areopagite being the author of the works which bear his name.
Nor, secondly, even as regards such opinions, am I supposing any direct
intrusion into the province of religion, or of a teacher of Science
actually laying down the law _in a matter of Religion_; but of such
unintentional collisions as are incidental to a discussion pursued on some
subject of his own. It would be a great mistake in such a one to propose
his philosophical or historical conclusions as the formal interpretation
of the sacred text, as Galileo is said to have done, instead of being
content to hold his doctrine of the motion of the earth as a scientific
conclusion, and leaving it to those whom it really concerned to compare it
with Scripture. And, it must be confessed, Gentlemen, not a few instances
occur of this mistake at the present day, on the part, not indeed of men
of science, but of religious men, who, from a nervous impatience lest
Scripture should for one moment seem inconsistent with the results of some
speculation of the hour, are ever proposing geological or ethnological
comments upon it, which they have to alter or obliterate before the ink is
well dry, from changes in the progressive science, which they have so
officiously brought to its aid.
And thirdly, I observe that, when I advocate the independence of
philosophical thought, I am not speaking of any _formal teaching_ at all,
but of investigations, speculations, and discussions. I am far indeed from
allowing, in any matter which even borders on Religion, what an eminent
Protestant divine has advocated on the most sacred subjects,—I mean “the
liberty of Prophesying.” I have no wish to degrade the professors of
Science, who ought to be Prophets of the Truth, into mere advertisers of
crude fancies or notorious absurdities. I am not pleading that they should
at random shower down upon their hearers ingenuities and novelties; or
that they should teach even what has a basis of truth in it, in a
brilliant, off-hand way, to a collection of youths, who may not perhaps
hear them for six consecutive lectures, and who will carry away with them
into the country a misty idea of the half-created theories of some
ambitious intellect.