"Shall we say that there is no such thing as truth and error, but that anything is truth to a man which he troweth?" -- "Grammar of Assent."
THE personality of Newman was, as has been said, a religious force; his thinking was quite simply the bulwark of that force, supporting it in the conflict with intellectual representatives of the skeptical world. Nowadays philosophy is largely academic, and its teachers are generally men who bring to a special branch of thought a vast erudition and a scarcely less vast disdain for practical interference in the spiritual affairs of the day. Newman, however, did not study the mind for its own sake, but because of faith; in analyzing the powers of the soul he sought to find battlements where religion could hold fast against the attacks of atheism in its most insinuating and plausible forms. He wished to show that, when all the hypotheses of skeptical science had been granted, there remained ample reason for a complete confidence in the truth of revealed religion. No opportunity was missed; by treatise, by sermon, by pamphlet, and by private correspondence he tried to lend to those in need of it the assistance which he had found so valuable during the conflict within himself. Newman's thought is moulded into a thousand shapes, hidden in a thousand places; in none does it stand complete, but nowhere, also, does it stand alone.
Emphatically, the great Cardinal's thought was not in any sense of the word a patchwork. That which guided his mind always was a single apostolic mission, a rarely disturbed consecration to the things of the Faith. Looking upon the business of life as an intensely practical affair, where the great goal is harmony between creature and Creator, where the great rule of conduct is the Christian religion, he saw with dismay that the skeptic could plausibly deny the reality of both Creator and Christianity, or could, at least, affirm the essential intangibleness of both. Newman went through life a Defensor Fidei, and because his influence was handicapped by the lack of an adequate theory of knowledge, he set about to discover one. Because the differences between the primitive Church and its modern successor had not been satisfactorily accounted for, he constructed his doctrine of Development to reconcile old and new. Whenever he thought that an argument of his would meet an objection and dispose of it, he set that argument down. It is his purpose that gives to Newman's thought an admirable unity and a remarkable practicality, though in form it is diffuse. This unity is rendered more striking by the fact that no phase of modern thought escaped his notice, and that he could read the souls of other men as easily as he fathomed his own.
The many-sided genius of Newman and the multifarious shapes in which it sought expression make his total achievement difficult to follow. It may be well to begin with what seems to have been his chief concern -- a problem that has stirred the modern world to its depths, even as it shook the old. The existence of God has been universally accepted as a fact by all peoples to account for the Source of all good and the end of all aspirations of the human soul. For Newman these reasons for believing in a Creator were strengthened by his absolute trust in the voice of conscience, a voice that speaks unmistakably to the moral nature of man of a Moral Lawgiver. On the other hand, he realized unflinchingly that there is evil in the world, evil of such magnitude that it can never be compassed. Now as the reason of man was steadily trained upon this monstrous fact, as it came to learn more of the processes of nature and the constitution of the cosmos, there was grave danger that the material order of things would be considered a sufficient explanation of all existence, and that the idea of the Personality of God and the reality of His Providence would be thought chimerical. Men would say, had said, that there was no tangible evidence for the action of God in the world, while on the other hand proof of the total indifference of natural laws and natural forces was overwhelming. Why, then, set up the idea of Absolute Good and serve it, instead of taking the universe as it is, a blind entity of mingled good and evil, governed by immutably rigid "legislation" and only vaguely capable of betterment? Newman understood this point of view very fully; in fact, skeptics from Huxley to Paul E. More have felt that he himself was at least half an unbeliever.
The mystery of evil is always somewhere in the background of Newman's sermons, but is, perhaps, best stated in that celebrated passage of the "Apologia" which reads:
"To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienations, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens, so faint and broken, of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, 'having no hope and without God in the world'; -- all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution."
This, he felt, was the real state of affairs, but human reason would busy itself with a solution; having discarded the authority of a teaching Church, it would pride itself more and more upon its discovery of hidden natural forces and their practical applications; it would erect the dogma of science on the one hand, and, acting as the "universal solvent" on the other, would decry every idea of the super-physical, and make of the moral law revealed by God a mythological caprice, a delusion that could not endure the test to which other hypotheses are subjected. Newman realized the fascination of the skeptical mood, and in fact stated the "creed" of the agnostic very brilliantly before even the term had been invented.
"The teacher then, whom I speak of," he says, "will discourse thus in his secret heart . . . without denying that in the matter of religion some things are true and some things are false, still we certainly are not in a position to determine the one or the other. And, as it would be absurd to dogmatize about the weather, and say that 1860 will be a wet season or a dry season, a time of peace or war, so it is absurd for men in our present state to teach anything positive about the next world, that there is a heaven, or a hell, or a last judgment, or that the soul is immortal, or that there is a God. It is not that you have not a right to your own opinion, as you have a right to place implicit trust in your own banker, or in your own physician, but undeniably such persuasions are not knowledge, they are not scientific, they cannot become public property, they are consistent with the allowing of your friend to entertain the opposite opinion; and if you are tempted to be violent in the defense of your own view of the case in this matter of religion, then it is well to lay seriously to heart whether sensitiveness on the subject of your banker or your doctor, when he is handled skeptically by another would not be taken to argue a secret misgiving in your mind about him, in spite of your confident profession, an absence of clear unruffled certainty in his honesty or in his skill."
From experience he knew that the Christian view of the world seems ascetic and that its mandates of sacrifice demand an effort of the will acting on motives of a very unmaterial complexion. Men living in the here and now must bridge the chasm to eternity before they can commune with the Creator; and the crossing is difficult to make. Epicures like Omar prefer cash to credit; Positivists, nobly Stoical though they be, prefer paradise on earth to heaven beyond. There is, sometimes even in religious minds, the desire that the Just Judge might be eliminated from the field of human action. Why not, then, follow the obvious choice of modern reason and substitute pantheism or naturalism for the Christian scheme?
In this manner -- though the statement we have given is bare to the utmost -- did Newman visualize the protest of scientific reason to Faith, long before it became the strong commonplace that it is today. In a very remarkable way he anticipated the future, divining even some of the general positions which skeptical philosophy would take up -- Evolution, for instance, and the realm of the subconscious. Nevertheless, he did vastly more than state the case of the opposition: unaided, opposed even by his own friends, he indicated the broad formations which Christian apologetics must assume in the combat with the world. The old evidences, nicely arranged in mathematical tableaux, were good but ineffective; they had never convinced many, nor did they confront the spirit of the times on the ground where it lay entrenched. For the eager apostle they were baggage, scarcely more. Newman did not succeed, as did St. Thomas, in stating a synthesis in which the prevailing philosophic doctrines were brought into harmony with the faith. His incomplete success was in some ways the direct result of his genius; he forestalled his opponents by attacking their arguments before they had been drawn up; he did not have the benefit of the full, free, cooperative discussion of the Middle Ages, but was hampered by narrow theological interference from men whose understanding of the issues at stake was childish, and besides he was, like all other moderns, too individual to work harmoniously with his neighbors.
It remains for us to consider some of the solutions Newman offered for the difficulties created by a skeptical view of life. In the first place, if one wishes to show that Faith is just as sensible as demonstration, that the mind can believe, it is necessary to present a correct sketch of the mind, or, in more technical language, to provide an adequate theory of knowledge. This, however, is difficult, for as Newman said: "The human mind is unequal to its own powers of apprehension; it embraces more than it can master." It is all very well to talk of logic and demonstration, but these are useful only in limited fields, just as the spade is efficient in a garden-plot, but scarcely practical for turning the sod of a vast plantation. In proceeding, then, to explain the processes by which the mind can arrive at a justifiable conclusion, Newman became exceedingly broad and subtle; while insisting on the concrete and supplying a wealth of striking illustrations, he was dealing with a subject which is almost incapable of definition and which assuredly requires acute attention. Again, while the "Grammar of Assent" is his most exhaustive treatment of the problem, it had been considered already in the "University Sermons" and to a lesser extent in the "Dublin Lectures."
First, he set out resolutely to attack the exorbitant claims of logic. Relying on a remarkably shrewd psychological insight, he showed that the assents treated of in this science are only notional, or in a way abstract, while the mind in practice requires real, or concrete, assent. Logic does not reach to the first principles upon which inferential thinking is based, or take up those hidden but very effective working processes of the soul which arrive at conclusions accurately, but which underlie consciousness so completely that if a man is asked how he came to hold this or that belief he is unable to explain his way step by step, although he knows its entire safety. There is no such thing in real life as a detailed enumeration of the reasons why a certain conclusion has been arrived at and acted upon.
Again, logic is the refuge of the non-original mind, which cannot employ the inexplicable gift of intuition, by means of which genius reaches its goal with the sudden directness of a ray of light. For these reasons and more, it is not entitled to the elaborate claims that have been made for it. One must bear in mind that Newman does not cast the science of demonstration overboard; on the contrary, he places a high estimate on it wherever it proves useful, as this passage from the "Apologia" will suffice to indicate: "There was a contrariety of claims between the Roman and Anglican religions, and the history of my conversion is simply the process of working it out to a solution." There is involved in this part of the great Oratorian's theory, many think, a distinct anticipation of and application to apologetics of the modern theory of subliminal consciousness.
Man, however, is not merely a machine that ratiocinates; he is primarily a person who acts. Consequently, his conclusions will surely be modified by motives, conscious or otherwise, and he will have difficulty in arriving at the Truth. Can he attain to it?
"Shall we say," Newman asks, "that there is no such thing as truth and error, but that anything is truth to a man which he troweth? And not rather, as the solution of a great mystery, that truth there is, and attainable it is, but that its rays stream in upon us through the medium of our moral as well as our intellectual being; and that in consequence that perception of its first principles which is so natural to us is enfeebled, obstructed, perverted, by the allurements of sense and the supremacy of self, and, on the other hand, quickened by aspiration after the supernatural; so that at length two characters of mind are brought out into shape, and two standards and systems of thought -- each logical, yet contradictory of each other, and only not antagonistic because they have no common ground on which they can conflict."
If, then, the Unseen Things in which a man has faith are not manifested directly by the science of reason and may be modified by the inclinations of the moral or conative nature, how shall we know that the conception of those Unseen Things which is formed in our minds is in consonance with reality? How shall we be saved from superstition on the one hand and from unbelief on the other? Newman argues that faith is based on slight evidence but on overwhelming antecedent probabilities existing in close union. Thus, a miracle is evidence to a religious mind of the truths of Revelation; whereas to Hume, the atheist, it is an illusion because miracles are ipso facto impossible. In both cases the mind acts upon presumptions which are dictated by what Newman later termed the "illative sense" -- that is, the living mind's power to weigh probable causes, analogies, and desirable effects which cannot be arranged in logical order. Although the individual who believes cannot state the reasons for his faith in perfect order, his mind has satisfied itself on the validity of those reasons. So much for faith; but "Right faith is the faith of a right mind; right faith is an intellectual act done in a certain moral disposition. . . . As far as and wherever Love is wanting, so far and there, Faith runs into excess or is perverted." This recognition of the important part which the will plays in the determinations of the mind is one of the most striking parts of Newman's subtle apologetics; it is virtually the anticipation of a line of thought which, pushed farther, would be called Pragmatism. The lectures of William James on the Pragmatic System set out to show that every truth must be essentially verifiable, which means that our experiences must find it coincident with themselves. Thus we conclude that truth is what is useful, the word being taken in no mere Hedonistic or Utilitarian sense, but as synonymous with being capable of satisfying ethically the observer and the thinker. Stripped of vagueness and strengthened by a firm reliance upon the objectivity of intellectual and moral standards, this becomes Newman's doctrine of "antecedent probability" and "the right mind."
In still another way did Newman show his reliance on the practical, conative side of human nature: in his statement of the reasons for believing in the existence of God. Here he seems to reduce, in accordance with the spirit of his age, the intellectual evidence to a minimum. For physical arguments, particularly the one from design, he seems to care very little; nor does he regard as probable any direct communication with the Unseen since the days of Revelation, thus discarding the testimony of mystic saints and the theology to which they have contributed. Miracles even appear to him rather ineffective arguments against the unbeliever, although they are most important to the Christian and deserve his humble credence. The apostle in Newman had decided correctly; for the atheist like Zola, when confronted with evidence which he cannot controvert, will distort the facts willfully in order to save his negative first principles. That which makes the existence of God absolutely certain for Newman is the voice of conscience, speaking within the soul of man and imposing its "ought" with the sanction of Eternal Authority. Here is the root of action and the root of belief; here is the point d'appui for the spirit lost in the din of a moving world. Religion's "large and deep foundation is the sense of sin and guilt, and without this sense there is for man, as he is, no genuine religion." Conscience insists upon the good, teaches the God of Judgment and Justice; for, by its emotional character, "it always involves the recognition of a living object towards which it is directed." It is an "instinct" for the Supernatural and Divine; though it may be perverted, it will not die without anguish; but if it is heeded it "has a living hold on truths which are really to be found in the world, though they are not on the surface," it reads the scroll of the world by its own steady light and is able to assume that the laws of nature "are consistent with a particular Providence." It is, therefore, "a connecting principle between the creature and the Creator"; and thus we have the ontological argument of St. Anselm concretized, made real and practical, and brought out of the mists of a faulty idealism within the range of every honest man. We cannot hope to review here any adequate treatment of this most vital section of Newman's philosophy; what has been said may suffice, however, to give an idea of the general trend of his thinking.
From this deep and subtle recognition of "facts as they are" Newman was driven to admit that, despite the tremendous questions involved, personal interest and right disposition are prerequisite to successful theological investigation. While the ordinary man will receive truths and the inferences drawn from then on "testimony," the especially gifted individual alone can assure progress in the science of theology or venture to study the ultimates of religious consciousness. Nevertheless, just as the pragmatist would verify his findings by the compass of normal beliefs, or "common sense," so the personal element in Newman's theistic inquiry is guided by the coordination of the single mind with other living minds. "Truth," he says, "is wrought out by many minds working freely together," and he, therefore, had great sympathy with the open discussion which prevailed during the Middle Ages -- something like which the Oxford Movement had been. Moreover, since conscience and the right frame of mind are so essential and so beset with temptation, since Revelation, once given, is the bulwark of all times, he naturally sought out the one divinely appointed Power which can successfully resist the attacks of reason and the seductiveness of the world; this, he saw, is the Catholic Church. Obviously, this part of his theory, when isolated, gives critics the opportunity to say that Newman submitted to Rome in order to save his belief in the supernatural; however, the statement falls to the ground when this item is carefully correlated with the rest of his thought. Repeatedly he emphasized the fact that faith can exist "without creed or dogma"; but understanding human nature as it is, taking the facts in the case,he saw clearly that such faith was little likely to endure in the teeth of a hostile world, and that besides being the guardian of Revelation the Church is the medium of the sacramental graces that make for supernatural life.
At this point Newman came face to face with a new objection and met it in a way that is truly remarkable. Reason must follow and study the revealed truths in the Christian dispensation, and in history reason has done so. "At the very beginning," says Newman, "St. Paul, the learned Pharisee, was the first fruits of that gifted company, in whom the pride of conscience is seen prostrate before the foolishness of preaching." The successive victories of the Fathers over heresy, the devotion of the saints, the energy of monastic orders, and the decrees of Popes and Councils, have surrounded the simple precepts of revealed religion with a dense array of dogmas. Is not, then, the greater part of the Church's teaching today the work of human minds whose conclusions do not warrant any more adherence than that given to systems of philosophy? Or is it all Divine? By a striking anticipation of the evolutionary hypothesis, Newman answered these questions with his idea of the development of Christian doctrine. In his essay on the subject he maintains that what seem at first sight to be mere extraneous additions to the teaching of the Saviour are in fact outgrowths of a living, active power, inhabiting that teaching and developing it in consonance with the needs of the time. By a careful analysis of the history of dogma, he shows that the Scriptures are capable of diverse interpretations and have, in fact, received them; but, far from countenancing any change, the Church has kept the same viewpoint from the beginning, having merely expounded and clearly stated its belief when occasion demanded. Theology, then, becomes not a repository for dead corollaries and rigid syllogisms, but an organic body, every member of which is infused with life from the center. As a matter of fact, this theory of Newman is considered by many as his ablest contribution to the thought of the world; it is at the very least a satisfactory test of the originality of his mind.
Thus stated, Newman's system will be found to possess coherence and ample breadth of view. It has already been suggested, however, that he differed largely from the representative philosopher in the use which he made of his thought. Essentially speculative, he proved the worth of speculation by combining with his critique of reason a rich imagination and a burning will. His thought is never divorced from the actual, from the here and now. Although his avowed respect for Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Bacon was most sincere, still it may be doubted whether he possessed an erudite knowledge of any of the three. What Newman understood perfectly was the mind of his neighbor; he divined with surprising correctness not only the deficiencies, the cravings, and the difficulties of the individual soul, but also what was most likely to have a salutary effect on that soul. In his longer treatises he met the general spirit of modern times on the very field it had chosen for the combat; in thousands of personal letters he replied to the difficulties with which those who looked to him for guidance were beset. Newman realized fully the influence of personality in teaching; where argument proved too subtle, or dissertation too callous, he did not hesitate to invoke the romantic mood in the souls of his hearers, and thus to carry them along by the impetuosity of his feeling. This was the alembic in which his reasoning was combined with his mission and moulded into a unity that is as round and full as the world of Shakespeare, and yet as candid and recondite as the doctrines of Emmanuel Kant.
This outline does not aspire to the presumption of proving that Newman was a great philosopher; it wishes merely to state what his philosophy was and how it came into being at all. When, in the "Dublin Lectures" Newman made a synthesis of the worthwhile aims of education in our day, he insisted on the liberty of literature and science as well as upon the freedom and dignity of theological inquiry. Reading clearly the spirit of the era in which he lived, he believed that its convictions could easily be harmonized with traditional Christianity, but that the practical acceptance of the Christian system would entail difficulty, that, in fact, the struggle with the skeptic mood would be intense and bitter. Newman fought with the weapons of genius an antagonist that was as yet stirring in the future's womb, forestalling the great offensive strategy of the evolutionist, the pragmatist, and the agnostic in metaphysics. Never has Christian apologetics wagered so much, dared to risk all with the confidence of absolute faith. Newman was not a skeptic hiding in the robes of the Church; he was an apostle rifling the wardrobe of the unbeliever. The great warrant for such an undertaking is the warrant which genius always demands -- success. If his system has answered difficulties, cleared away any doubts, stirred religious feelings, and won souls, then it has been genuinely useful, whatever its departures from traditional method.
However small may be the influence of heredity on the mind it is strange that Newman should have been utterly Hebraic in his devotion to the one God, and quite French in the nature of his philosophic thought. Canon Barry has outlined a parallel between Newman and Renan, which is interesting indeed: the imaginative Breton with his horror of systems and syllogisms, his desire to weld the ends of the world together in the crucible of his thought, his passage from Christian faith to the ironic skepticism of a totally disillusioned man, and Newman equally poetic, equally concrete, equally conscious of the multitude of deeps upon deeps on which the world has been built, but secure in the quiet citadel of his faith, obedient Christian to the end. Again, there is striking similarity between the faith of Newman and the faith of Pascal: they have the same distrust of reason, the same reliance on intuition, the same sense of the overwhelming power of evil. But, though Renan dreamed of conquering the world by his intellect, and Pascal had won it over by the greatness of his contempt for its follies, there lived in neither the flaming eagerness of the apostle which made of Newman an ignis ardens that fed on the saving of souls.
Those to whom this means nothing, or who think it of small importance, will never succeed in taking Newman at his true worth. One may admire his lucid statement of a proposition, the brilliancy of his illustration, and the subtlety of his intellect, and rightly so; but these are qualities which the great Oratorian would have despised for their own sakes. Only when they served as means by which to present the message of the Redeemer, only when they hovered like ministering angels over desperate souls, did he value them at all. Newman belongs to the history of religion first, and then to literature. Behind him lay the past of Christendom with the splendour of its schools, the beauty of its sanctuaries, and its concern with the multitude of souls; before him loomed the future of a world for which the Saviour had come, and from which He seemed about to be cast. And, finally, there existed nothing which could come between him and his Creator; for he had gone, ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.