Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Cardinal Newman, A Grammar of Assent by John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University by John Henry Cardinal Newman (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Apologia Pro Vita Sua. By JoHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN, edited by Charles l<'rederick Harrold. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947. Pp. 421, with index. $3.50. A Grammar of Assent. By JoHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN, edited with a preface and introduction by Charles Frederick Harrold. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947. Pp. 416, with index. $3.50. The Idea of a University. By JoHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN, edited with a preface and introduction by Charles Frederick Harrold. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947. Pp. 451, with index. $3.50. I The works of John Henry Cardinal Newman were published during his lifetime, and since that time have never been out of print. The 1940-41 bombings of London and the resultant fire in Paternoster Row, however, destroyed the entire existing stock. Longmans Company has projected a new edition, and entrusted it to Dr. Charles Frederick Harrold, Professor of English at the Ohio State University. Professor Harrold is a well known Newman scholar who has published an expository and critical study of the mind, thought and art of Newman. His name appears under Newman's quite frequently in the current bibliographies of Modern Philology and the Publications of the Modern Language Association. The function of an editor is the preparation of the most reliable text with such additions and changes as render it most useful to the modern reader. In this capacity Dr. Harrold has been an eminent success with only one or two minor exceptions. In this edition of the Idea of a University, the editor has done the Newman public a great service in the publication of Discourse V, "General Knowledge Viewed as one Philosophy," which Newman himself, once released from the Irish University project, omitted from subsequent editions of the Idea. In view of the difficulty of synthesizing Newman's educational thought, this discourse, marking a stage in the evolution of that thought, may be an aid towards a more definitive evaluation than has so far been had. " To make a place for the Discourse," the editor explains, " two chapters of 'University Subjects' have been omitted from this edition. They are 'Elementary Studies, 1854-56 ' and ' University Preaching, 1855.' Their lack of relevancy for our time, at least from a comparative standpoint, would seem to justify their omission." This is of a piece with the editorship of other English scholars of Anglo-Saxon texts who omit dogmatic and 503 504 BOOK REVIEWS homiletic passages on the grounds that their interest is null for the modern reader. The lecture on university preaching is not only a gem of advice but is the theory behind the sermons of a great preacher. The discourse on elementary studies in its fourth part includes a discussion of exactly what theological studies Newman as Rector would put in the curriculum of his University, certainly a salient point in a book which has for one of its main topics the relation of theology to University teaching. But these are small matters. Besides the text and the preface concerning the text, Dr. Harrold has exceeded his editorship by writing a formal introduction for each volume. Now an Introduction for a definitive edition should be written by a competent scholar with some sympathy for his subject and with all the qualifications necessary for an evaluation of his subject. Professor Harrold manifests sympathy, and of his scholarship there can be no cavil. But what competency does a Professor of English bring to an evaluation of the thought of Newman? Although Newman's prose doubtlessly has a claim to a place in English literature, he himself would hardly have considered himself primarily a literary artist. Dr. Harrold himself once wrote that any consideration of Newman as a literary artist must be preceeded by an expository study of his thought. The genius of Newman is many faceted, but the light which pours into the spectrum of his genius to be diffused in many colors is the white light of theology. Not a professional theologian, Newman centered his whole literary labor on questions of theology. The best evaluation of his thought then, since it is religious thought, would come from a theologian. But Dr. Harrold is a Professor of Literature, and indeed not a Catholic, but, as he says in another place: "to use a word Newman disliked, an 'Episcopalian .' " Harrold realized his own inadequacy in this regard, and feared that his " objective " approach might be construed as secr4!t sympathy or antipathy, or-worst of all-indifference. The disadvantages of such an " objective " approach are evident in these Introductions on several points on which the hypothetical theologian with a sympathy for Newman and a scholarship equal to Dr. Harrold's might have fared better. The Apologia for instance is Newman's testimony to the faith that was within him. It is almost inevitable that those who do not share that faith should question the value of the testimony. Of course Newman is not called a liar; Kingsley's mistake is not repeated. But Frank Leslie Cross has charged that Newman's trend to Catholicism is falsely stated. Therefore Dr. Harrold discusses Newman's truthfulness and his success at selfanalysis in which discussion he is obviously, influenced by Houghton's Art of Newman'a Apologia. Cross's words are "exaggerative.'' Of course the very word apologia suggests " distortion," and the picture, while substantially true, is "shaded a little." Newman has a "sinuous" mind which is more concerned with " how he felt at a particular time than why he so felt BOOK REVIEWS 505 or thought." "Emotional factors as much as intellectual ones" brought about the conversion of "a most subtle and paradoxical character." The main emotional factor is supposed to be the rejection of Tract XC by the Anglicans. although it does not seem to have occurred to such critics that such a rejection showed Newman intellectually that Anglicanism was not what he had thought it to be. These remarks (pp. xix-xxi) are similar to the Anglican rebuttal that Newman's literary powers declined after his conversion, or the vividly painted contrast between the powerful preacher of Littlemore and the broken down old man of Birmingham. They do not obscure the luminousness of Newman's testimony, but,. proceeding as they do from a principle Newman fought against: "that a sufficient account is given of an opinion, and a sufficient ground for making light of it, as soon as it is historically referred to some human origin," it is regrettable that such remarks found their way into an edition of the Apologia. The Introduction to the Grammar of Assent, on the other hand, is not unfavorable at all, but only inconclusive. The Introduction, Dr. Harrold decides, is " not the place to enter fully into Newman's complex and subtle argument " (p. xviii) . He suggests that this may be the way of the scholar or special student, but recommends to the general,reader just skimming through the various chapters " catching a general (view of his argument , but lingering over certain passages, which, by their imaginative anrl literary quality, lift the book above the level of the usual treatise of its kind " (p. xix) . It is true that the Grammar is a difficult book, even for the theologian, because of the unusual sense Newman puts on his words. Still, a theologian could have dealt more adequately with the reality underlying the words, that is, the motives of credibility which have involved Theology, Psychology, Ethics and Criteriology. Dr. Harrold could have written a more definitive introduction had he relied more heavily on Father Juergen's Newman on the Psychology of Faith in the Individual which he mentions in the Bibliography. The omission of Father Benard's Introduction to Newman's Theology in the same bibliography is a serious one, not only because Father Benard's book is a helpful aid in understanding Newman's argument in the Grammar, but because it is a good refutation of the imputation of Modernism. Last of all, Dr. Harrold finds that the Idea of a University "betrays a temporal provincialism" (p. xx) for Newman will not admit research, except on a very limited scale, into his ideal university. "He has no premonition," says the Professor from Ohio State, " of what the world's great universities are to become, centers not only of the humanities but also of the vast scientific learning and investigation ministering to human enlightenment and welfare" (p. xx). That Newman might have modified his views is of course possible; that he would have changed them is highly 7 506 BOOK REVIEWS doubtful. Newman is hardly the man to bow before the fait accompli, no matter how formidable. Whatever may be said for Dr. Harrold's argument that" an instructor's research may enrich and vitalize his role as a teacher" (ibid), the Idea maintains the contrary, and the introduction to a definitive edition is hardly the place to argue with the work itself. It may seem a concentration on negation to point out incidental flaws in the great work Dr. Harrold has done. It may seem all the more ungracious since, on July lOth of this year, after bringing out three volumes of the Essays and Sketches, the editor died. Neverthless, while the reviewer rejoices that the name of this great Newman Scholar will always be associated with this truly monumental edition, he believed that a critical appreciation involved not lavish praise, which the edition does deserve, but the separation of a little chaff from a great harvest of wheat. n The Apologia pro Vita Sua without doubt is the best introduction to the life and work of the great English Cardinal. The very title is singularly appropriate for his whole career was in the highest sense of that abused word, apologetic. Well might Cardinal Manning preach the funeral panegyric: " We have lost our greatest witness to the Faith." In its own day the Apologia was a witness to the veracity of Newman, a veracity the bigoted Kingsley had called into question in a larger attack on the Catholic priesthood. Newman challenged the statement, and in the controversy that ensued it became evident that Kingsley, as an exponent of muscular Christianity, was no match for the intellectual refinement of his opponent, a refinement which Kingsley regarded as guile and effeminacy. Kingsley's bludgeon was totally ineffective against the rapier satire of Newman. That phase of the controversy long over and relegated to an appendix, its only importance now is that it was the occasion for the history of Newman's religious opinions. The Apologia has long been read as a history of a conversion from Anglicanism; a more profound view might see in it a record of a great apologete's lifelong struggle with an enemy of Dogmatic Christianity , namely, Liberalism. Today Liberalism has become a shibboleth; at the very most it has but a relative meaning. Newman was never a Conservative in the sense in which he defined a Conservative: " a man who upholds government and society and the existing state of things,-not because it exists,-not because it is good and desirable, because it is established, because it is a benefit to the population, because it is full of promise for the future,-but rather because he himself is well off in consequence of it, and because to take care of number one is his main political principle " (Essays and Sketches, II, p. 340). Newman was ever a Liberal in the sense of progressivism . He always admired Pere Lacordaire who had said: " I die a repentant Catholic but an unrepentant Liberal." BOOK REVIEWS 507 The Liberalism that Newman opposed was of quite a different nature. Religion for him was revealed, objective and dogmatic; Liberalism was fundamentally anti-dogmatism and a subjective religion. "Now by Liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place. Among such are first principles of whatever kind; and of these the most sacred and momentous are especially to be reckoned the truths of Revelation . Liberalism then is the mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it, and of claiming on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of propositions which rest for their reception simply on the external authority of the Divine Word" (Apologia, p. 261). Liberalism is more a spirit than a coherent philosophy; today it is called Secularism which is the reliance on reason, science, education, the state, or any agent but the supernatural to save man from ignorance and chaos. In Newman's day, Liberalism was in a period of transition from an earlier Deism to the present Modernism which holds that religion should be reformed in the light of modetn thought. The Philosophy of Locke, the Economics of John Stuart Mill, the Higher Criticism of the German theological schools, the Scientism of the British Associationists-all were motivated by the Liberal spirit that made Swinburne cry out: " Glory to man in the highest for man is the measure of things." In the face of such a spirit, Newman feared that his wrestling was not with flesh and blood. " Are you aware that the more serious thinkers among us are used, as far as they dare form an opinion, to regard the spirit of Liberalism as the characteristic of the destined Antichrist? . . . Antichrist is described as the lJvopo~. as exalting himself above the yoke of religion and law. The spirit of lawlessness came in with the Reformation, and Liberalism is its offspring" (Apologia, p. 178) . Newman's own early life was not without Liberal influence. He was brought up in Evangelicism, which, though its fundamentalist character may seem to us poles apart from Liberalism, Newman thought "played into the hands of the Liberals " by its basic assumption of a subjective religion. Although ·the future champion of orthodoxy at an early age "received impressions of dogma, which, through God's mercy, have never been effaced or obscured," he likewise read Paine's Tracts against the Old Testament, Burne's Essay on Miracles and some verses of Voltaire in denial of the immortality of the soul. At Oxford he was active in the Latitudinarian party as represented by Whately and his Noetics. For five years he worked with these " liberal Christians " in their efforts to banish the mysterious from religion. At last he came to fear that he was preferring intellectual to moral excellence. " In proportion as I moved out of the shadow of that Liberalism which had hung over my course~ my early devotion towards the Fathers returned " (p. 28) . 508 BOOK REVIEWS The change in Newman's course amazed his former friends. Whately and Blanco White viewed his "bigotry" with alarm. Newman's brother Francis remonstrated. His course was directly opposite, ending in a rejection of all supernatural religion and retaining only a vague belief in a shadowy Divinity. The Scotch Utilitarian school motivated an attack on Newman's own clerical, humanistic Oriel. The times were against Newman; Mrs. Browning sniffed that the Tracts for the Times, which began at this period, should be called the Tracts against the Times. But the Oxford movement went doggedly on, and Newman formulated his theory of the Via Media, still, Christopher Dawson maintains, the best intellectual justification for Anglicanism. The Via Media however was but a paper theory, and it soon began to crumble under the attacks of the church it had set out to defend. Tract XC was rejected; the Thirty Nine Articles would not bear an interpretation that was not hostile to Catholicism. There was the affair of the Jersusalem Bishopric; Anglican prelates in effect recognized Lutheran orders. The Via Media had been seen as a ground between Rationalism and Catholicism ; now there was the progressive and painful realization that there could be no such ground. If Anglicans were part of the Church Universal, their severance could not be justified " without using arguments prejudicial to those great doctrines concerning Our Lord which are the very foundation of the Christian religion " (p. 185) . England then was wrong, but how could Rome be right? Newman felt that his Liberal enemies were rushing him over the brink of a terrible precipice. " The object of the Movement was to withstand the Liberalism of the day" (p. 95). Now "the most oppressive thought ... was the clear anticipation ... that it would issue in the triumph of Liberalism. Against the anti-dogmatic principle I had thrown my whole mind. . . . The men who had driven me from Oxford were distinctly the Liberals; it was they who had opened the attack on Tract 90, and it was they who would gain a second benefit, if I went on to abandon the Anglican Church" (p. 184). But it could not be helped. He had already come " to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind ... must embrace either the one or the other" (p. 179) . Liberalism was but the halfway house on one side, as Anglicanism was on the other (p. 184). But one perfectly consistent and of good will cannot live in a halfway house. In 1845, as Renan, who was a prophet of Liberalism, was leaving the Church, Newman, the arch-foe of Liberalism, was making his profession of faith at the feet of Father Dominic. In the light of such a view of Newman, it is strange that he of all people should have been taken as a prophet of Modernism or any other weakening of the objective Christian tradition which was his doctrine and BOOK REVIEWS 509 life. For one thing, the Modernists were using his name as a screen for their doctrines. An extant letter of Pius X to an Irish Bishop however absolves Newman from any implication in the condemnations of Modernism . If Newman has suffered much from those who unjustly used his name, and from over hasty critics, he likewise suffers from undiscerning admirers of the Credo in Newmannum school. The Apologia pleads for understanding. The misinterpretations, now on different grounds, continue . A careful reading against the proper background should show that Newman, despite the subjective note in his literary style, his uncongeniality to Metaphysics, and his willingness to conduct an argument on the enemy's ground, is ever in the vanguard of the forces of transcendency against vital immanence. m The Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent is Newman's apologetic against a particular form of Liberalism, the Rationalism of John Locke. Locke had enuntiated the principle of certitude that " doctrines are only so far to be considered as they are logically demonstrated." The natural corollary was: " It is dishonest in a man to make an act of faith in what he has not had brought home to him by actual proof." Newman saw the danger in the application of these principles to the faith of the average Catholic, who would not have a scientific demonstration of his motives of credibility. The Grammar of Assent is his rejoinder. A forbidding book to many, the fundamental principle for its understanding is Newman's enigmatic remark that "it is what it is and not what it is not." It is not a treatise on the theological genesis of faith. It is not an attempt to discredit the traditional, scientific apologetic of the schools. It is not an easy book for the believer himself, but a· book to show the rationalist philosopher that the average believer can have a faith that is rational. It is an argument formulated by Newman himself that the harmony between the religion of conscience (or Natural Religion) and the religion of revelation constitutes a sufficient accumulation of probabilities to justify an assent to the credibility of revelation. Newman chooses a long and somewhat involved approach to his subject . In the first part of the book, he discusses the various modes of apprehending and assenting to propositions, making his famous distinction between the notional and real assents, and finally applying the abstract discussion to belief in the one God, the Trinity and dogmatic Theology. In the second part, he discusses unconditional assent (i. e. for him, an assent which does not depend, and is not conditioned by previous syllogistic reasoning) , certitude, the nature of inference, the famous illative sense, and finally the application to religion. All this is more like the 610 BOOK REVIEWS Newman who composed a logic with Whately than the familiar rhetorician who shines through in the concluding chapters of each part. The Grammar is not easy to grasp. The theological censors had an unhappy time of it, Father Harper published an attack from the scholastic point of view, and Father Perrone threw up his hands in horror: "Newman miscet et confudet omnia." But Newman insisted that the best approach to the problem, was the one that was most personal, thus giving ground to the German sneer: Newman subjectificaiit. The language provides a great deal of the hazard. Some have maintained that English is not adaptable to philosophical purposes. Alfred had difficulty with the abstract thought of Boethius in the very beginning, and some have thought that the progressive refinement of the language made it more poetic but even less scientific. Whatever the case may be, English is a living language. Newman's book was written in archaic English when it appeared, for he wrote in the language of the problems he was facing, the language of Lockean philosophy, the language of the common rooms of the Oxford of thirty years before. Newman therefore is cut off from the precise terminology of the philosophia perennis by the insularity of British thought, and from us by changes in a living language . But surely this difficulty would vanish were we to accept Newman's terms in the sense he intended. That is precisely where the difficulty lies. Newman most frequently does not define but describes with a richness that is bewildering. For instance, it is hard to see whether the distinction between notional and real assent is that between the speculative and practical, or the universal and particular. It is with some trepidation then that one ventures to criticize work he is not sure he has fully grasped. Scientific demonstration of the credibility of revelation Newman does not deny, but simply passes by. He would argue from conscience, which he accepts in the sense of Aristotle's cppovtpt<;;. The illative sense is the heart of the argument. When the mind is confronted with the convergence of a sufficient number of probabilities (for Newman facts not capable of demonstration) the illative sense is able to conclude. It is the process of induction which Newman saw was not strictly a demonstration. In his whole approach, Newman seems impatient with the metaphysical sphere, and almost Kant-like is eager to be on more familiar ethical grounds. He is motivated by a spirit not unlike that which makes St. Thomas say in the introduction to the Secunda-Secundae of the Summa: " ... there is little use in speaking about moral matters in general, since actions are about particular things." But Newman allowed his impatience to carry him too far. Of course, it was really impatience with the excessive rationalism of Locke. And his own English character was notoriously not given to speculation, as he once confessed to his Irish students. BOOK REVIEWS 511 But that impatience made him reduce universals to m~re generalities and bypass metaphysical argument with what amounts to vituperation. Thomists might agree that universalia non movent, but they would not imperil all speculation by denying universals. Newman's distrust of paper logic led him to commit the most arrant sophisms about reasoning and laughing animals instead of rational, risible animals. But these things are incidental to the main argument, which can be seen in all clarity in the summation which is the old Newman. At the beginning of his work Newman put the words of St. Ambrose: "Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum. It was probably a warning against the Liberalism which he was writing to confute, but also an act of humility for his own dialectic. Quite fittingly one might write below the words of St. Ambrose the words of St. Paul: " It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." IV The Idea of a University has a similar place in Newman's struggle with the Liberal spirit. These lectures were occasioned by the foundation of a Catholic University of Ireland, of which Newman was the first Rector. The scheme to counteract an educational system invincibly secular by a university that was both theological and humane eventually failed, but not before Newman had put in seven of the best years of his life in the work, and had delivered a series of lectures on the nature and extent of university education and related topics. These discourses, for the most part published in this volume, constitute a genuine classic. The language is unsurpassed; the balance and harmony of the English prose can be compared only to a magnificent symphony. They can best be seen in relation to the milieu against which they were written. In general, these lectures form part of Newman's strategy against what he called in these very lectures a form of infidelity of the day. In his own days at Oxford, Newman had seen an educational reform launched by his own Oriel bitterly opposed by the Scotch utilitarian school, and the Liberals whose gospel was Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Newman now reiterated his insistence on the non-utilitarian character of liberal education. Scientism too was in the ascendant. The newly founded University of London had excluded theology from the curriculum; several government commissions were busy preparing clerical, humanistic Oxford for the days when the philosophy of John Stuart Mill would reign. The Liberal policy, conscious or unconscious, was not to fight theology, but to ignore it. By concentration on research in the positive sciences, the interest and imagination of students would be so captivated that theology would soon be forgotten. Newman countered that a university was a place for teaching; research was to be left to the Academies, Societies and 512 BOOK .REVIEWS similar foundations. He maintained vigorously that a university by its very name professes to teach universal knowledge; therefbre, the exclusion of the science of theology would destroy the universality of the university. Modem interest in the Idea is not that of curiosity in a literary antique, but that of inquiry from a master in the philosophy of education. In this respect, the first nine (or ten, counting Discourse V which Newman omitted from later editions, but which Dr. Harrold gives in appendix) discourses that make up the first section are of greater interest than the lectures of the second section on university subjects. The lectures on University Subjects are for the most part separate and each a perfect unit. The lectures on University Teaching are supposed to constitute one perfect argument. The main doctrines as outlined in the previous paragraph are clear enough, but many have found the synthesis of the nine (or ten) lectures difficult in view of seeming contradictions, and withal an uneasy and hesitant manner that almost amounts to diffidence. The main argument is that a university is a place for teaching universal knowledge. The first four (or five) discourses are concerned with the "universal," that is, the integrity of the university. For that integrity, theology is necessary. But what Theology? The fact has been grasped; the nature of the fact eludes many. Newman, who is arguing on human grounds, and, he says, on grounds common with Protestants and other monotheists, seems to be holding for a mere Natural Theology or Theodicy. His definition and description of Theology points to that. Yet, the conclusion goes beyond that. If the Incarnation be a fact, he says in effect, it is a part of knowledge, has an influence on other knowledge, and must be considered in any complete education. Therefore, the Theology for which Newman is holding is not simply Theodicy but "that system of revealed facts and principles which constitute the Catholic faith." In another lecture (" Elementary Studies " not printed in this edition) Newman is more particular on the theology to be taught in his ideal university . He respectfully opposes those who would teach Theology proper, or even replace the Classics with Scripture and the Fathers, and prefers to follow the English tradition. In this he is motivated by the object of University education as he sees it, the lay gentleman. This question will be discussed shortly. Theology proper, he thinks, would be taught super· ficially by lay professors, be received superficially by young minds, and might even be the occasion for intellectual pride. He urges instead a broad . knowledge of doctrinal subjects, and that part of Scripture and Church History which is considered sufficient in the general culture of a layman. The only theological works he would admit are those like Bellarmine's Controversies, Suarez' On Laws, and Cano's treatise on the Loci Tkeologici. The relation of Theology to the rest of the curriculum brings up another 'BOOK REVIEWS 518 interesting question. In both Discourse ill and IV, Newman seems to hold only that the other sciences have a negative subordination to Theology . In this as in other matters, he held that his ideal university was Louvain, though Oxford is much more in evidence. In the hitherto omitted discourse on " (Universal) Knowledge viewed as one Philosophy " Newman speculates on the possibility of Theology being in a more vital sense the unifying wisdom. In a footnote (p. 899} he supposes it plausible that Theology is the form of the other subjects, i. e. the external form as charity is of fides formata. This he rejects on the grounds that theology then would not be one subject among the others. But perhaps this objection could be met by a distinction not precise but descriptive. Theology is both a science and a wisdom. As a science, it might be with the others and be in fieri towards the wisdom which would be in facto ease. Such a tentative proposal might more nearly approximate the ideal of Pius XI who insisted that " Religion . . . be in very truth the foundation and crown of youth's entire training" (Divini Illiua Magiatri). It is this same encyclical of Pius XI that causes difficulty with the next five lectures on the essence of a university. These lectures maintain that the object of the University is intellectual, not moral. Knowledge is to be its own end in such wise that the product of university education is "not the Chri~tian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman." Newman concludes that his mission in the University was that of St. Philip Neri whom he sees, in a brilliant peroration, as preferring " to yield to the stream, and direct the current, which he would not stop, of science, literature , art, and fashion, and to sweeten and sanctify what God had made very good and man had spoilt " (p. 208) . Yet it is the same St. Philip the Holy Father quotes against such a philosophy of severance. The encyclical maintains that " the proper and immediate end of Christian education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian. . . . Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education , is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ." These views, however, may not be so opposed as they appear; in fact, they may well be complementary , though it would be difficult to reconcile them in every particular. Newman is reasoning from different principles; he reaches a conclusion not too far from the Holy Father's. Knowledge as Newman said, is of course its own end. Learning is the good of the intellect, as health is the good of the body. But these ends are only intermediate. Knowledge is an end in itself, but not man's end. From'the aspect of the intellect, the good which is knowledge is a bonum honeatum; from the higher aspect of the whole man it is a bonum utile. The object of education, as Newman himself admits, in the added connota- lH4 BOOK REVIEWS tions he gives both " education " and " wisdom," is not simply the intellect , but the body, soul, intellect and will which make up the whole man. Newman was not wrong in what he affirmed; if anything he was wrong only in what he did not affirm. Abstrahentium non est mendacium. If the reader does not think Newman returned clearly enough to the totality from which he abstracted, he might read the Tamworth Reading Room articles for Newman's views on the other side of the paradox. Newman was the last man in the world to be an intellectualist; at Oxford he had been in trouble with Provost Hawkins because the young Newman maintained that the work of the tutor was not only intellectual, but " quasipastoral ." In the spade work of viewing the university as a bare idea before seeing it, like the Pope, as an instrument of the Church, Newman has done valiantly. That his work should be passed over so lightly in the current discussions on the theology and philosophy of education is a grave misfortune. One may not agree with a theory of the Idea; to have passed it over is to push back the starting place of the investigation, and to lose much needed time. v Newman was not a Thomist. The stock remark that he was an eclectic, while in the main correct, hardly puts the matter in the proper perspective . Not a "professional" theologian, he more than once candidly admitted his limitations in that respect. His entire training had been Anglican; in many ways his mind was already formed when he entered the Church. He spent but one year at the Propaganda in Rome before Ordination . And those were the days before Leo XIII when the sacred sciences were hardly in a flourishing condition. Newman wrote from Rome to his friend J. D. Dalgairns, who had favored a Dominican apostolate for the group of Oxford converts: " Aristotle is no favour here ... nor St. Thomas. . . . St. Thomas is a great saint ... people ... reverence him, but put him aside." Philosophy, Newman said from the reports he received, was " odds and ends, whatever seemed best-like St Clement's Stromata. They have no philosophy. Facts are the great things, and nothing else. Exegesis, but not doctrine" (Ward's Life, I, 166 f.). Newman called Aristotle his master (Grammar, p. 327) and pays high tribute to the Stagirite: " While the world lasts, will Aristotle's doctrine on these matters last, for he is the oracle of nature and of truth. While we are men, we cannot help, to a great extent, being Aristotelians, for the great Master does but analyze the thoughts, feelings, views, and opinions of human kind. He has told us the meaning of our own words and ideas, before we were born. In many subject-matters, to think correctly, is to think like Aristotle; and we are his disciples whether we will or no, though we may not know it" (Idea, p. 97). But the Aristotle he knew was the ·BOOK .REVIEWS 515 Aristotle of the Nicomachean Ethica and the Rhetoric and not of the Physics and Metaphysics. In fact, he once wrote a Platonic interpretation of the Poetica with no reference to the catharsis, and maintained in the face of the Organon that Logic was not an instrumental art. Newman always reverenced St. Thomas and spoke of him with genuine admiration. He had in his library the Summa Contra Gentes, but in the half dozen times or so he cites St. Thomas, he may very likely be using current scholastic manuals. It would be impossible to cite his divergences from the Common Doctor. Over and above the matters already mentioned, there are several small things in the appendices of the volumes under review. In Note III of the Grammar after a careful consideration of what had been written by St. Thomas and others on the punishment of the damned having no termination , he ventures the opinion that " a refrigerium was conceivable, which was not strictly a cessation of punishment though it acted as such: I mean the temporary absence in the lost soul of the consciousness of its continuity or duration." Then almost at the end of his remarks, he notes: " In what I have been saying, I have considered eternity as infinite time, which is the received assumption (p. 887) . It may be the received assumption , but it is not correct, nor is it received in theology which was precisely where the author was arguing until he vitiated the discussion by the use of a word in a sense other than theological. Note G of the Apologia makes a rather good analysis of the problems concerning lying and equivocation , but closes with this: " . . . as to playing upon words, or equivocation , I suppose it is from the English habit, but . . . for myself I can fancy myself thinking it was allowable in extreme cases for me to lie, but never to equivocate " (p. 828) . Which gives a rather disappointing picture of one who, despite careful study, remains prejudiced by an earlier impression rather than by solid reasoning. But these minutiae are lost in the large picture of a great Catholic thinker with his roots deep in antiquity, yet ever progressive. To mention but one thing, his Development of Dogma, a pioneer work in an important matter, has provided hints for the more thorough studies of Father Marin-Sola and other theologians. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this great progressive Traditionalist was created Cardinal by the same Leo Xill who gave St. Thomas back to the schools. As a matter of fact, the new Cardinal addressed a warm letter of congratulation to the Pontiff on the publication of the Aetemi Patris. In 1880 one of the Oratorians jokingly asked the Cardinal what he should do were he elected Pope. His Eminence responded seriously that he would as his first act organize commissions on Biblical criticism and the early history of the Church. Which was what Pope Leo later did, a step that foreshadowed the work of Pere Lagrange. 516 BOOK REVIEWS Newman's sympathy for Catholic tradition with his awareness of modem problems, his subtle mind coupled with a genius for clear expression would have made him a magnificent Thomist. But it is hardly good Thomism to waste time in vain speculations on "might have been." Newman is what he is, and he is great. Writer, preacher and thinker he is preeminently an apologete. And presupposing truth, the ultimate criterion of any apologetic is determined by its effectiveness. Newman's apologetic has been effective in his day, and it is still effective in ours. More than one modem problem is an outgrowth of the Liberalism Newman fought. History ·is not disparate, but continuous and causally connected. The Atomic Age is not cut off from Victorianism by an iron curtain. It is true that our times have their peculiar problems, and therefore have need of special apologetics. One great apologete of our day proposes an apologetic of the passions for the Freudians. Several converts have found their way through Aristotle and St. Thomas. And there is no doubt that many, led astray by a secularist philosophy, reading Newman would be led to question the validity of principles they had regarded as self evident. Should they pursue the question long enough and sincerely enough they might join that number of souls, who under God owe their faith to the work of John Henry Cardinal Newman. Dominican Ho'U8e of Studies, Waahington, D. C. URBAN VoLL, O.P. An Historical Introduction to Modern Philosophy. By HuGH MILLER. New York: Macmillan, 1947. Pp. 615, with index. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I read the following statement from the pen of this responsible author, professor of philosophy at U. C. L. A., that Saint Thomas was a Benedictine monk, who therefore was interested in upholding authority! Not a major point, but if anybody said Aristotle was a Spartan or Descartes a Dutchman, he would be dubbed an ignoramus; we would drop his book and go to a reliable source. How long are stupid blunders about even the greatest figures of the Middle Ages to be tolerated? Should we drop the book, or proceed? Let us be doubly fair and see what the author has to say. In fact, as it turns out, what he has to say is instructwe in more ways than one. He is endeavoring to provide a synoptic view, not so much of the history of philosophy, as of philosophy itself in terms of history. This is necessary, he thinks, to grasp the historical , and hence the philosophical, significance of two tendencies-the rationalist and the empiricist-those well-known pivots around which the ...