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ceremonial.

Most men hold that it is truth, and not prettiness, which is the relevant consideration; but then very few men are as subtle as Mr. Arnold.

In brief, Irish Liberalism (as distinguished from Ultramontane Irreconcilability) is only just struggling into growth; and nothing would more surely kill that growth than the concession to Ultramontane clamour of the control of University education.

The problem dealt with by Mr. Petre has as little as possible to do with the particular Catholic university question which has just been considered. There is nothing at all in common, except that they are both questions relating to education, and to the education of Catholics. Beyond this, indeed, it may be said that the objects held in view by Mr. Petre, and the methods he desires his coreligionists to pursue, are diametrically opposed to the objects and methods of the Catholic university agitators. Mr. Petre's plans have nothing to do with politics. He asks the State for nothing; neither for endowments, nor charters, nor legislative interference of any sort. His palatial university experiment at Woburn Park is made upon own family property, and his raw material is the creme de la crême of the society in which he moves. His arguments and his exhortations are addressed wholly and solely to his fellow-Catholics, and any action which may be taken at his instance must be altogether the action of the Catholic section of English society. He does not want to take away from Protestant schools, colleges, or universities any one thing they possess ;

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and, though he does covet some of their advantages, they are advantages which, like light, can be shared without diminishing the original possessor's quantity. Now in all these things the Irish university and intermediate school agitations are unlike the English movement. The agitators do want help from the State, in the shape of both endowment and of privilege. They do not, and cannot, rely on their own co-religionists, because the many have not the power, and the few have not the will, to support them. They do (whatever Mr. Matthew Arnold may think) desire to take both the money and the privileges of the Protestant and the secular institutions. And, lastly, the very things Mr. Petre would share, if he could, with the Protestant institutions are just the things which the Irish Catholic agitator would ardently desire to keep at a distance from his schools, his colleges, and his university. It might seem, therefore, that Mr. Petre's writings could throw no light whatever on the question of State denominational education, and that any discussion of them would be wholly irrelevant. But this is not precisely the case. Mr. Petre's writings do throw a light on the subject. Indeed, from the sociological point of view, this is almost the only use that can be made of them for, whatever value they may have as addressed by a Catholic to Catholics, they can only be of service to non-Catholics by clearing up the relations which subsist between Catholicism as a creed and education as a department of social science. What then is the lesson that these writings teach?

"The

"Remarks on the Present Condition of Catholic Liberal Education." Problem of Catholic Liberal Education." "The Position and Prospects of Catholic Liberal Education." "Catholic Systems of School Discipline." By the Hon. and Rev. William Petre. London Burns and Oates, 17, Portman-street, W. 1877 and 1878.

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It is that the claim to possess and to teach infallible truth in faith and morals is fatal to the interests at once of those who make the claim and of those who submit to it. And that a standard of virtue which places it in negative innocence rather than positive excellence, is fatal to strength of motive and to robustness of character.

Of course Mr. Petre does not say this. What he does say is scattered over four pamphlets, and is obscured in no inconsiderable measure by the very faults of style for which he holds Catholic schools responsible. But something of his drift may be gathered from a few extracts. The text and thesis of his first discourse, he tells us, he has borrowed from a report on Catholic schools, an extract from which is prefixed to his earliest pamphlet:

"I hold, first, that after twenty years' experience of one of the largest of our Catholic colleges, and some opportunity of judging of the results of education in our other colleges, that as schools for boys our colleges do a great, and in many respects most satisfactory work. In morality they are infinitely superior to to non-Catholic schools; they conscientiously train all comers, the dull as well as the elever, and secure a higher average standard of knowledge in a wider range of subjects. Still, if a comparison be made between the highest and the cleverest boys at each respectively, I think we do not come near Eton, Rugby, Cheltenham, Wellington, and some other nonCatholic schools in three particulars, viz., first in scholarship; secondly, and much more, in composition, some varieties of which-for instance, Greek verse-are utterly unknown amongst us; thirdly, in expansion of mind, earnestness of purpose, definiteness of aim." (Report, &c.)

The author of these words, it must be borne in mind, is comparing "the highest and the cleverest boys" at Catholic schools with those at Eton, Rugby, Cheltenham, and elsewhere. Mr. Petre goes on to make certain comments of his own, the ultimate outcome of which he thus expresses:

"It is a melancholy but an instructive fact, that the clever boys and promising young men of school and college life are largely -we do not by any means say entirely-represented in later life by such men as we have described; while the real men of power seem in large part to be developed from a boyhood not considered clever in any remarkable degree, from a youth marked by eccentricity rather than obvious promise; who have persisted in esteeming positive knowledge, "what in truth she is, not as our glory and our absolute boast," but as materials out of which the reflective mind can form combinations and draw conclusions calculated to bring about new results in the world of thought, and so in the world of action. (See D'Israeli's "The Literary Character of Men of Genius," chap. ii. and iii.)"

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Now these words are either an indictment of things in general, or they mean specially to imply that these results are more common among Catholic than among nonCatholic youth. In our opinion they are chiefly an indictment of things in general. It is not the fault of any one system more than of any other that "clever boys do not universally develop into men of power.' An optimist would probably call this a beneficent arrangement of Providence. It is certain that if all the clever schoolboys did turn out "men of power," the world would be an even more unpleasant place to live in than it is already. There would be

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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 yet 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 convictions. Why does Genius ever wear a crown of thorns?... Why does a cloud of lofty sadness ever brood over the profoundest minds? Why does

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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 their experience was profound, as their insight was piercing, as 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 young men from Oxford! Truly the policy of the priesthood is the same, all over the kingdom, but they are very skilful in varying their instruments.

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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 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.'

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