crotchet-mongers without end; nothing would be allowed to be at rest. Probably, the solution of the difficulty may be found in limiting the production of "clever schoolboys." Certain it is that the world's work has mostly to be done by the mediocre men, who are dunces in præsenti, whatever they may have been in the past school or college days. So, if Mr. Petre thinks that a man is more likely to turn out an adult mediocrity for having been at a Catholic school, it may very well be that he was merely obeying a beneficent destiny, and that, if he had been at Rugby, Wellington, or Cheltenham, he would be a mediocrity still, but a mediocrity tormented by the memories of schoolboy cleverness. It may be, therefore, that the Catholic schools are really doing better work in cultivating the minds of dull and mediocre boys than in forcing beyond their strength youthful prodigies, a large proportion of whom will eventually go the way of middle-aged dunces. So far, the reporter's charge against Catholic schools, and Mr. Petre's comments thereon, may be set down as indictments against things in general. But there may be a deeper sense in which they are very real indictments, not only against the Catholic school system, but against the very creed of the Catholic Church itself.

Upon this we need not dwell. It is a familiar commonplace that dogmatic systems of religion are unfavourable to intellectual development, except where the intellect spontaneously acquiesces in the dogma, and obtains exercise not in challenging the dogma, but in working within its limitations. We need not go so far as to affirm that a Catholic cannot have a philosophy, but it is certain that he can have no philosophy save that of the Church. If he finds himself

in danger of running counter to the Church's teaching, he must give up philosophy, and at best become a specialist in some narrow walk of thought. Mr. Petre is much too good a Catholic to desire his students to be un-Catholicised; but all the time he covets for them, and perhaps still more for their teachers, qualities of mind which can be gained only through habits of inquiry directed into the highest subjects.

"Catholics we must be, Catholics we will be! Our faith is defined for us. Beyond and around the closed and inner sanctuary of those definitions there is another circle, on which be it far from us to encroach with irreverent step; but outside of these there is vet another region, composed of that which simulates religion, of the sentimentalities and illusions of unformed minds. To make war within this is fair game, and it is in the devastation and replanting of this territory that many educational problems will be solved and their wreckage swept away."

But, after all, the name of a restrictive system does not make very much difference. No more under dogmatic Protestantism than under dogmatic Romanism could the highest order of mind attain its growth, except indeed by way of revolt. Perhaps it may be that all really exalted intellect has revolt for its inseparable condition. Even Mr. Petre, devout Catholic as he is, has some glimpse of this. For in one place he expresses himself thus-not only recording his own thoughts, but confirming himself in them by quotation from a writer who is assuredly no dogmatist :

"And that a necessary caution should not come too late, let us here be warned that the path of a true intellectual life is beset with difficulties, trials, dangers, which

only those who have experienced them can conceive. If we are to give any rein to our intellectual cravings-and we are now permitted to do so, to desire to be strangers to no culture, to compete in the professions, in public careers, in society, with the best educated scholars in the kingdom'-let us at the outset impress on ourselves solemnly the fact that we are starting on a journey that will admit of no looking back. We must push through to the end, to the light which has become lurid and faded away in the course of our journey, but which, towards that journey's close, has shone forth once again, and received us into the brightness of a sun which shall have no setting.

The

"The loftiest culture of the intellect is not favourable either to undoubting conviction of any truth or to unhesitating devotion to any cause. greater the knowledge the greater the doubt,' says Goethe. And the faithfullest thinkers have felt more painfully than others that the deeper they go often the less easy it is to reach soundings;-in a word, the more thorough their study of the grandest subjects of human interest, the further do they get, not to, but from, certainty: the more fully they can see all sides and enter into all considerations, the less able do they feel to pronounce dogmatically or to act decidedly. 'The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life' profound thought, if thoroughly honest and courageous, is deplorably apt to sap the foundations, and impair the strength of our moral as well as of our intellectual Why does

convictions.

Genius ever wear a crown of thorns?... Why does a cloud of lofty sadness ever brood over the profoundest minds? Why does a bitterness as of Gethsemane mingle with or pervade the productions of even the serenest intelligences, if all human emotion be not

dead within them? Why? Because these are the minds which have seen further and penetrated deeper, and comprehended more, and deceived themselves less than others;-because precisely in proportion as portion as their experience was profound, as their insight was piercing, as their investigations were sincere, as their contemplations were patient and continuous, did they recognise the mighty vastness of the problem, its awful significance, and THE INADEQUACY OF

THE HUMAN FACULTIES TO DEAL

WITH IT.' (Greg, Enigmas of Life,' pp. 16, 137.)"

But there is no need to dwell on this. After all, the duties of a schoolmaster must mainly lie among the mediocrities, by whom the world's work has to be done. Enough if the master can feel sure that he is not hindering a genius, if it is his lot to have one for a

pupil. Viewing matters in this light, the Catholic schoolmasters would seem to have fair grounds for satisfaction, if, as Mr. Petre thinks, their average pupils are not intellectually inferior to the average pupils in other schools.

În connection with this part of the discussion, two points may be noted. One is, that the English Catholics seem to have no objection to London University. Now the Denominational agitator in Ireland is never tired of denouncing London University, and these denunciations are able to mislead even the subtle mind of Mr. Matthew Arnold. Another point to which Mr. Petre calls our attention is that an influential section of English Catholics lamented the setting up of a Catholic University College at Kensington, because it helped to draw away from young men Oxford! Truly the policy of the priesthood is the same, all over the kingdom, but they are very skilful in varying their instruments.

Catholic young men must be kept away at all costs from "Protestant" universities. So in England, London University is brought into play, and a "University College founded to stand between the Catholics and Oxford. There is no cry against London degrees, nor against the London system of examinations, because it is well understood that no such cry would do any good. But in Ireland it is easy to get up a cry. Four millions of Catholics without a university! Four millions is such a fine round number-but the fact is quietly ignored that there are not one thousandth part of that number of families that could or would send a. son to any university. Besides, once the work of disestablishing and disendowing begins, who knows what luck may be in store for vigorous agitators? Hit Trinity and the Queen's hardthey have no friends! It will not do, in this policy, to admit that even London University supplies any want. The poor Irish Catholic must be represented as utterly destitute, and down-trodden. So London University is played off against Oxford in England; but it is denounced as totally unsuited to Ireland. It is the merest insanity of psuedo-liberality to shut our eyes to facts like these. An incidental admission by a writer like Mr. Petre is worth scores of formal assertions by advocates on the other side. After Mr. Petre's pamphlets it will henceforward be impossible to assert that Catholics as such need have any conscientious objection to a university of the London type. And after the specific admission at page 7 of "Remarks it will henceforward be impossible to assert that it is not "the expressed will of the Holy See that there should be a Catholic university college "by whose foundation the training influences of residence at

the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are placed farther out of reach of orthodox ambition."

We pass to another side of Mr. Petre's indictment against Catholic schools: "Our Catholic boys do not come near their Protestant fellows in expansion of mind, earnestness of purpose, definiteness of aim." One would think that this was the most crushing indictment that could be framed, not of a particular scholastic system merely, but of the whole Catholic Church. Surely if there is any advantage in an infallible guide (whether that guide be the Pope or the Church), if there is any efficacy in Sacraments, if in short being a Catholic means anything at all, one has a right to expect a different result from this. Protestants and sceptics may say that all this simply proves Catholicism false; but a devout Catholic like Mr. Petre cannot say this. And, accordingly, he tries to evade saying it, by making the words of the report he is quoting refer to some sort of intellectual life distinct from the spiritual life. According to Mr. Petre a man may be a good and saintly character, and yet deficient in expansion of mind, earnestness of purpose, and definiteness of aim. In other words, the Catholic ideal is harmlessness, not moral vigour. And the means by which this ideal is pursued (at least at Stonyhurst) are thus set forth:

"What shall be said of that most lamentable and disgraceful of caricatures and excrescent anomalies-the system of espionage.'

66 6

Espionage' is supervision under panic, supervision dement. Espionage is yearly-we speak advisedly-irritating our boys out of balance of intellect, and out of all dignity of character. It is the spirit of ignorance and narrowmindedness temporarily clothed in

the garb of principles really foreign to it. Where this distortion of supervision is practised, it would seem that Catholic boys must be supposed to come to school so degraded and brutalised, so far inferior in rectitude and purity to their Protestant fellows, that they must be treated as meditating the worst kind of evil at every hour of the day, and, we must add, of the night. Where this system is in Vogue, boys are literally at all hours and in all places under the eye of a master, 'jaded and worn down by the perpetual monotony of his duties.' That master despite himself, is a warder and not a companion. He is on duty to detect and punish, not to encourage and give help."

"We were not expected to walk about in couples in conversation. If talking in couples was at all persisted in, the parties were liable to arbitrary separation on the part of the Prefects. There is a special There is a special fear of particular friendships' in the schools of which I am speaking. This fear amounts almost to a superstition, and is of obvious foreign origin.

"No boy was allowed to lay his hand on a companion. I do not mean to engage in a fight, but to wrestle or to play. The fear of 'romping' was hardly less intense than the fear of particular friendships.' Any kind of demonstration of affection was regarded with marked suspicion, with the inevitable result of putting a premium on adventure in this respect. Stonyhurst boys would not have liked to be seen shaking hands with one another. To walk arm-in-arm would not have been permitted. In all these matters we were surrounded by a close atmosphere of suspicion.'

We forbear to quote another passage from page 31, for reasons

which readers of the pamphlet can appreciate for themselves.

66

re

Supper over, there was creation till about 8.30, at which hour we marched to the chapel for night prayers, night prayers, the passage from the playroom to the chapel being sentinelled as usual. The last sentinel was the Spiritual Father, who was posted outside the chapel door. He said the prayers, which lasted about a quarter of an hour. From the chapel we proceeded to the dormitory, which in its several divisions was under the custody of the three Prefects. About fifteen minutes was allowed for undressing, and then the gas was turned out, and the day ended. We could not, as said above, wash before going to bed. There were no conveniences for washing in the dormitory. The dormitories consisted of a number of rooms, each holding, say, eight or ten beds, and opening into one another. The beds were divided by wooden partitions, with curtains in front forming small cubicles. The rule of silence was enforced in the dormitory with a jealousy of strictness which could not be exceeded. On no account whatever could one boy communicate with another."

"When the gas was out, the Prefects remained on guard till presumably the boys were asleep. Then two of them retired, but, by turns, each one maintained the watch throughout the night, armed with a dark lantern. Often have I awoke at night and found myself in full light of this lantern. It had a strange effect, the person who held it was invisible. The light stopped a moment, and then flashed along noiselessly. Once or twice the bearer of the light, seeing me awake, has come into my cubicle and spoken a word to me, and I have discovered him to be the Prefect."

And now let us compare this

with Mr. Petre's own account of the Protestant system:

"The life of a Protestant public school is for a boy eminently one of individuality and of freedom. The principles urged upon him in childhood are left much to their own growth, barring the support of a broad and distinct genius loci,' a strongly-outlined tradition. Added to this, he is not subjected to a minute personal discipline, a mechanical system of surveillance, or the enforced company of minds unsympathetic with his own. 'Bounds' are large; the choice of occupation over and above the regular school work is wide; opportunities for reading and for æsthetic cultivation, for leisure, for selection of companions, are numerous and largely under the control of each individual. A boy's virtue is in his own hands, and so far as can be expected without the grace of the sacraments, we feel bound to say that in the average instance the result on this latter head is ultimately satisfactory. If it were not so, we Englishmen should not be so famous as upright gentlemen, as lovers of truth, of justice, of moral purity."

Surely here is an instructive

contrast.

The wonder is that young men brought up under the Stonyhurst system have any moral stamina at all. And, as Mr. Petre naïvely admits, the boys who are under this system of something more than convict discipline are remarkable for their pious use of confession and 66 other means of grace." The net result is either the" means of grace" are sufficient,

and the priestly masters and prefects are simply thwarting them (which seems to be Mr. Petre's own opinion); or else the " means of grace," even when most freely used, require the incessant presence of functionaries who are something between mouchards and prison warders. The inference either way is hardly complimentary to the Catholic faith. But, as sociologists, we are mainly concerned to observe, that this is the kind of thing Mr. Matthew Arnold wants to place under the wing of the State, and this is the kind of thing which the O'Conor Don, the Home Rulers, and Sir Charles Dilke want to endow with funds confiscated from the third university in the Empire. And such a policy is to be called Liberal!

No! The Liberal party has not been wrong in refusing to lend itself to any schemes for giving state recognition to such systems as these. If, as Mr. Arnold puts it, Liberals have hitherto deferred to the prejudices of middle class Puritanism, then, and in so far as it is so, they have given a wrong reason for their conduct. But their conduct has been right; and it has only been impolitic in so far as a wrong reason has been given. Irish Catholic Liberals (there are not many of them, as has been already pointed out) might naturally be alienated by conduct showing hatred and contempt of their religion. But when a devout and loyal son of the Church, like Mr. Petre, describes Catholic education as he does, can Catholics blame Liberals for refusing to lend State support to such a system?