rrzsA 
 
 L A 
 
 .7 
 17 
 17 
 r^AlN 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 Sfll T^S 
 

 Confidential. 
 
 ti:y 
 
 IRISH UNIVERSITY 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 MEMORANDUM on Some Aspects of 
 The Religious Difficulty, 
 
1/ 
 
 IRISH UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. 
 
 MEMORANDUM ON SOME ASPECTS OF THE 
 RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. 
 
 THIS memorandum is written in response to an invita- 
 tion from the Chairman to put down in writing the 
 principal opinions or considerations which I should 
 desire to contribute towards the discussion of our report. I shall 
 n3t touch on matters of practical detail, in which many of rny 
 colleagues have had so much more experience than myself, 
 but shall confine myself to aspects of the case which are for 
 one reason or another more or less familiar to me. 
 
 It seems to me impossible to do full justice to the attitude 
 of the Irish Catholic bishops, which is at the root of our 
 difficulties, without recalling a few past facts which we all 
 know, but the full bearing of which we may sometimes forget. 
 
 The problem before us is, of course, allied to that which 
 is occupying Parliament in reference to primary education. 
 It is a consequence of the great revolution in education 
 effected in the nineteenth century, of transferring it from the 
 representatives of theology (the clergy) to the representatives 
 of science — that is the specialists in all departments. Not 
 among Catholics only, but universally, the universities were, 
 during the first forty years of the nineteenth century, in the 
 hands of the established Churches. A boy who was educated 
 at Trinity College, Dublin, or at Oxford, in 1830, was educated 
 almost entirely by clergymen. Now he is educated almost 
 entirely by specialists — their being lay or clerical being an 
 accident. The various Dissenting bodies also at that time 
 educated their own people who were refused admission 
 in the great universities. Education was universally 
 

 ''denominational" and ecclesiastical. Now it is in its higher 
 grades almost universally undenominational and secular. 
 
 Most of us, I suppose, think of this state of things mainly 
 as an advancein justice to all denominations, and in the emanci- 
 pation of educational methods from fetters which were antiquated. 
 We do not regard it as hostile to religion. But in point of fact (as 
 we all know) the movement which effected this transformation 
 was largely anti-theological, and even in some of its mani- 
 festations anti-religious. If it included a sense of the justice 
 of equal treatment for all creeds, and a sense of the liberty 
 necessary for science, it also included some of the anti- 
 Christian spirit of Continental liberalism. The movement 
 was inspired by a love of liberty and a hatred of its enemies — 
 bigotry and privilege. And these enemies were supposed to 
 be represented in concrete form by the established Churches 
 — the embodiments of ecclesiastical privilege and clerical 
 interference, — and especially by the Church of Rome, the 
 surviving representative of mediaeval intolerance. The 
 Churches, then, in turn had to be on the defensive. Two 
 ideals of education were competing, the denominational or 
 ecclesiastical, which threatened to be obscurantist, and the 
 undenominational or scientific, which threatened to be irre- 
 ligious. The proposed Queen's Colleges were inevitably 
 associated in the minds of all with the latter. 
 
 And what was the concrete exhibition of the new 
 movement which the Irish bishops had before their eyes in the 
 very years (1845- 1 850) during which the proposals as to the 
 Queen's Colleges were threshed out ? They saw it in Oxford 
 itself, as the rapid transition of its intellectual character 
 from a religious and theological to a freethinking tone. 
 The Oxford of 1845 was conservative and ecclesiastical. 
 The heads of houses were all clergymen. There were few 
 laymen even among the Fellows. The Tests were in force. 
 The theological party which condemned the mild liberalism 
 of Dr. Hampden was still in the ascendant. The Oxford of 
 1850, on the other hand, was liberal and secularist. In 1845, 
 after Newman's secession, with dramatic suddenness theology 
 went out and science came in as the ruling principle of the 
 academic mind. " We were startled," says Mark Pattison, 
 " when we came to reflect that the vast domain of physical 
 science had been hitherto wholly excluded from our pro- 
 gramme. The great discoveries of the last half century in 
 chemistry, physiology, &c., were not even known by report to 
 any of us. Science was placed under a ban by the theologians^ 
 
 851 
 
who instinctively felt that it ivas fatal to their speculations!' 
 This conception of science a« fatal to Christian theology was 
 the keynote of the sudden transformation which ensued. 
 " Whereas other reactions accomplished themselves by imper- 
 ceptible degrees, in 1845 the darkness was dissipated and the 
 light was let in in an instant." A " flood of reform " followed 
 "■ which did not spend itself until it had produced two 
 
 Government Commissions, until we had remodelled all 
 
 our institutions. In those years every Oxford man was a 
 Liberal." " All the intellectual force in the University," 
 writes another witness a few years later, " was on the negative 
 and anti-Christian side." " In the first rush of intellectual 
 freedom," continues Mr. Pattison, " we were carried beyond 
 all bounds, sought to change everything, questioned every- 
 thing, and were impatient to throw the whole cargo of tradition 
 
 overboard Our ileve resembled that gamin de Paris of 
 
 whom Renan says ecarte par vne plaisantene des croyances 
 dont la raison de Pascal ne teussit pas ci se degager, and which 
 it took Renan himself six years to work his way out of." 
 (Appendix to Report I., p. 315.) 
 
 The suddenness and completeness of the triumph of the 
 liberal movement in Oxford brought into relief the various 
 elements of which it was composed. The secularising and anti- 
 theological tendency,the agitation for the withdrawal of Tests, 
 thegrowthof specialism were parts of awhole. Theundenomina- 
 tional movement has been the/;-c?r//rc?/ expression of the liberal 
 and scientific movement. And in the eyes of leading men of 
 science, and of many others, the transformation which has 
 been effected in the nineteenth century from the old education 
 by the parsons to the new education by the specialists has 
 implied the recognition to a greater or less extent of the fact 
 that the theo'ogical explanation of the world and of life has 
 been defeated, and the scientific view has taken its place. 
 "I conceive," wrote Huxley, "that the leading characteristic 
 of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the 
 scientific spirit, and consequent application of scientific 
 methods of investigation to all problems with which the 
 human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of 
 traditional beliefs, which have proved their incompetence to 
 bear such investigation" (Life II., 374). Denominationalism 
 is, in this view, narrow and retrograde, because it implies a 
 check on the free development of the scientific method in 
 the interests of traditions which are superstitious. 
 
5 
 
 A part of the change in intellectual tone in Oxford, as 
 elsewhere, was in that indefinable quantity the "atmosphere " 
 — from the atmosphere of the Oxford of Newman to that of 
 the Oxford of Jowett. But there were also some definite 
 particulars in which the aggressions of science on the then 
 existing theology directly affected the subjects with which 
 professors and tutors had to deal in the educational pro- 
 gramme. The following are a few well-known instances : — 
 
 (i) Biologists and ethnologists, even before the early 
 evolutionists attacked the dogma of creation, had assailed 
 the Scriptural account in Genesis of the descent of all men 
 from a common ancestor. 
 
 (2) So, too, geologists attacked what was generally 
 received as the Bible's teaching on the antiquity of the world. 
 
 (3) The empirical philosophy in the hands of Mill and 
 Bain was avowedly anti-theistic. It attacked, both in ethics 
 and in metaphysics, the intuitionist basis of a theistic 
 philosophy. Dr. Mcintosh, of Queen's College, Belfast, one 
 of J. S. Mill's chief opponents on this particular point, in 
 regarding his own lectures on philosophy as a religious work 
 (7561), represented the prevalent idea on the subject. — still 
 prevalent up to 1870, — -that the "experience" philosophy 
 was in direct and necessary opposition to the philosophical 
 basis of theism. 
 
 (4) The philosophy of history Was in those days a 
 prominent subject. Mr. Wyse contemplated its being taught 
 at the Queen's Colleges.^ Mr. T. W. Allies actually did 
 lecture on it at Dr. Newman's Catholic University. The 
 events of the French Revolution and the dramatic career 
 of Napoleon had given a great stimulus to this study. 
 Frederick Schlegel and Hegel, De Tocqueville and Guizot, 
 Chateaubriand and the German Romanticistj were all in 
 different ways witnesses to this tendency. It figured, too> 
 in different forms and degrees in the writings of Lamen- 
 nais, Bonald, Mohler and Newman from a Catholic point of 
 view. It is clear that while the critical study of history, in 
 which the writer or professor is intent on the evidence for 
 isolated facts, and is very sparing of generalisation, is not 
 contentious, the philosophy of history is almost inevitably 
 so. One professor bases his whole account of the develop- 
 ment of the Christian Church and of secular history on 
 the naturalistic view which underlies the works of Gibbon 
 and Hume ; another treats the same subjects on such 
 
 * Appendix to Second Report, p. 186, 
 
principles as those of Allies' Dublin lectures on the " Forma- 
 tion of Christendom." Either treatment is likely to have a 
 deep effect on the religious faith of a thoughful young man. 
 
 When the battle between the two ideals— the theological 
 and the scientific — was at its height, there is no doubt that 
 the incursion of the new methods associated with physical 
 science and history, and the new view of the world which 
 they brought with them, did vitally affect the religious beliefs 
 of thinking young men. Such names as those of Matthew 
 Arnold, Ma,rk Pattison, Arthur Clough, and J. A. Froude 
 remind us of a mental history which was typical of that 
 of many others less known to fame. Theological and 
 scientific problems, questions as to what it was reason- 
 able to believe, were in those years constant subjects of 
 discussion. Matters we now keep to ourselves or debate 
 only with a few intimate friends, or regard as beyond 
 the reach of useful discussion, were then a constant theme of 
 conversation in common rooms or in general society. Aubrey 
 de Vere writes to Sarah Coleridge in the forties that "every- 
 one is talking theology '' : everyone was defining his 
 weltanschaimng. Such conversations in the Oxford which 
 was ruled by Newman's genius brought many to Trac- 
 tarianism, many to Roman Catholicism, many to the views of 
 Arnold and Whately. At a later time they landed very 
 many in various stages of free thought. The secularist 
 atmosphere, which under the influence of the scientific' 
 pioneers expelled the old ecclesiastical atmosphere of the 
 univer>ities, did, as a matter of fact, take from many of the 
 young men whose minds were of a speculative cast all effectual 
 belief in Christianity. And such a wave tends to be corporate. 
 Newman has placed it on record that it affected many of 
 the young men who came in the fifties to his Catholic 
 university in Dublin. Those whose minds in other circum- 
 stances would have been quite unspeculative were caught 
 in it. 
 
 To all this must be added the fact that in Ireland 
 " mixed '' education had for centuries been offered to 
 Catholics, accompanied by proselyting attempts (6947), and 
 that even the " national " system of primary education had 
 been regarded by Whately as a probable instrument of 
 winning Catholics from their faith. Again, in such countries 
 as PVance and Belgium the undenominational universities 
 were avowedly free-thinking. Even so religious a man as 
 
Licordaire ceased to be a Christian during his university 
 career."^ " Mixed education " meant at these institu- 
 tions positively anti-religious education. Until the passing 
 of the Falloux law in 1850 effected a compromise between 
 the State and the Church, all university education recognised 
 by the State in France was in the hands of opponents of 
 Christianity. To this fact Dn CuUen, from his foreign 
 education, was especially alive. And Dr. Newman, in a 
 memorandum on his relations with Dr. Cullen, notes that the 
 Irish prelate alwa>^ tended to identify the English and Irish 
 " liberalism " with Continental liberalism. 
 
 In this state of things the Irish bishops were inevitably 
 suspicious, as representatives of theology, as Catholics, and 
 as Irish Catholics ; and it can hardly be denied that, whether 
 their action in 1846 and 1850 was entirely wise or not, there 
 was good reason for their anxiety as to the effect of the 
 liberal and secularistic movement of the hour on religious 
 faith. That anxiety was shared by some of the ablest 
 and most religious men in the Church of England, and long 
 survived in such representatives of the old Conservative 
 Oxford as Dean Goulburn and Dean Burgon in a form quite 
 as uncompromising as it took in Cardinal Cullen. 
 
 The outcry raised that the Queen's Colleges were 
 " godless " seems, in view of the important evidence brought 
 before the Commission by Dr. Starkie, to have been ex- 
 aggerated. It was indeed explicable, because at that time 
 an undenominational university was, as Bishop O'Dwyer has 
 pointed out, a novel experiment. The Queen's University 
 was the first university established in the Kingdom on a 
 de jure non-religious basis — if one may so express it. Still, 
 as Sir James Graham said (2nd report, p. 187), "The 
 Government contemplated the foundation of halls in which 
 religious instruction would be imparted." So, too, said 
 Sir Robert Peel : " We have given the Catholics every 
 facility for religious instruction." The board of visitors also 
 was provided for the object of safeguarding the religion 
 of undergraduates. 
 
 The bishops, however, did not originate this cry, and 
 indeed did not, as we know, in the first instance, positively 
 oppose the measure. They only sought to make the religious 
 
 * See Chocarne's " Inner Life of Lacordaire," pp. I7-45- LacorHaire 
 speaks of "the doubts which I had drawn in with the very air of the 
 university," and adds " I left college with my faith destroyed." 
 
safeg'uards adequate. They -uggested the four amendments 
 enumerated by Dr. Starkie— the first demanding a fair pro- 
 portion of CathoHc professors, and guarantees of due influence 
 for the CathoHc bishops in the appointment of professors ; the 
 second asking for dual chairs in history, logic, metaphysic, moral 
 philosophy, geology, and anatomy ; the third demanding the 
 dismissal of any professor or office bearer convicted of trying 
 to undermine a student's faith ; the fourth asking for a 
 salaried dean or chaplain. 
 
 It is to be noted that the proposed dual chairs were pre- 
 cisely in those subjects which, though not directly religious, 
 were at that time notoriously the battleground of religious 
 controversy, and the means of imparting anti-Christian theories. 
 Their supposed anti-theological bearing was urged by their 
 most eminent exponents. Even so moderate a man as 
 Mr. Wyse endorsed the claim for two chairs so far as moral 
 philosophy and the philosophy of history were concerned. 
 
 Dr. Newman was, I think, the first who made quite clear, 
 what most of us now recognise — 'how distinct were the 
 different elements which were united in the " liberal ^' and 
 " undenominational " movement. The recognition of the 
 claims of science to be emancipated from theological inter- 
 ference, and concomitantly of the practical necessity of 
 toleration and equality for the various denominations and for 
 the varieties of belief which the advance of thought was 
 constantly increasing, was one thing. Quite distinct in essence 
 was the directly secularistic and irreligious movement, similar to 
 Continental free- thought, which disparaged not only the undue 
 interference of theology, but theology itself, and was jealous 
 not only of ecclesiastical encroachment or privilege, but of all 
 clerical influence. But as we have seen in the case of Oxford 
 the two were united to some extent practically. The general 
 lines of Newman's proposed solution of the difficulty raised by 
 the scientific movement, with its just claims and its practical 
 excesses, consisted in the presence of theology in a university, 
 concomitantly with science, to represent aspects of the 
 human mind and of the universe which the scientific 
 habit disparaged or ignf)red, and a mutual toleration 
 and principle of non-interference between the two, in place of 
 the old censorship of theology over science. He advocated 
 also Catholic (denominational) influences of a religious 
 kind, not interfering in any way with the freedom of any 
 branch of study to pursue its own methods, and not for the 
 
most part of an intellectual or theological nature. Moreover, 
 he was in favour of a strong lay element in a university for 
 Catholics, to represent educational interests to which Church- 
 men, from their antecedents, were likely to be less alive. A 
 word more shall be said shortly on this subject. 
 
 The secularist movement which was long and success- 
 fully engaged in mitigating an excessive ecclesiastical and 
 theological predominance, seems now in many quarters to 
 be receiving a modification in the direction indicated by 
 Newman. We have gradually come to realise that positive 
 religious influences, while desirable for the highest edu* 
 cational interests, need not be prejudicial to the freedom 
 demanded by the sciences. A)id we see that practically 
 religious influences will only be strong and effective where 
 they are denominational. This is now openly avowed by 
 many in the case of primary education, and I think often 
 tacitly admitted as to secondary. 
 
 The solution whereby religious influence has been to a large 
 extent preserved in the English universities, and whereby at the 
 same time undue ecclesiastical privilege is avoided and theo- 
 logical inteiference with science prevented, has consisted in an 
 English compromise, namely, the blend which arose from unde- 
 nominational legislature on a strong basis of de facto religious 
 tradition and institutions — that is, the union of de jure un- 
 denominationalism with de facto denominationalism of a 
 more or less pronounced description. Thus at Oxford 
 the secularist and anti-religious spirit described by Mark 
 Pattison did not prove permanent. The religious tradition 
 of the place asserted itself again in such men as Scott 
 Holland, Liddon, Gore and others — T. H. Green's idealistic 
 philosophy being a serviceable bridge for the return journey 
 from the Liberalist contempt for the study of Divinity to 
 a more or less scientific theology. Lux Mundi and 
 Aubrey Moore's Essays mark the theological revival and 
 development wrought out by giving' free play to scientific 
 method as a corrective to strong traditions, in which religion 
 was deeply rooted in a prejudiced form — traditions which in 
 turn asserted themselves in a modified and intellectually 
 defensible form under the influence of science. 
 
 This blend is considered by many to have been the 
 ideal before Peel's mind when he proposed to found the 
 Queen's Colleges, and with that ideal both Ur. Delany 
 and Dr. O'Dwyer have declared themselves to sympathise. 
 
lO 
 
 But in 1845, as Dr. O'Dwyer has pointed out, the experi- 
 ment was new, and the evidence we now possess of its 
 possible success did not exist. And even apart from this, 
 in brand new colleges without the religious traditions and 
 institutions of Oxford or Trinity College, Dublin — which 
 asserted their influence automatically — the requisite de Jacto 
 denominationalism which Peel is held to have designed, had 
 imperatively to be secured by some reliable means. To 
 this task the bishops devoted themselves. 
 
 In the event Peel's scheme w^s not carried out. 
 Neither the bishops' nor Mr. Wyse's proposed amendments 
 were accepted. And no other satisfactory means of ensuring 
 due religious safeguards was devised. At the very least, the 
 promise of Lord Clarendon, that "the Catholic religion v/ill 
 be fully and appropriately represented " in the appointment 
 of professors in the colleges of Cork and Galway, seemed 
 indispensable to the de facto denominational predominance 
 which local circumstances demanded. If I am not mis- 
 taken, the Presbyterians at Belfast were given the safeguard 
 they required — that is to say, their claims were fully con- 
 sidered in the appointment of the professors. With the 
 Catholics it was otherwise. A change in the Ministry was, 
 no doubt, partly responsible for the neglect in carrying out 
 solemn assurances. But, in the event, only three out of 
 twenty pro''essors at Cork were Catholics. Thus a college in one 
 of the most Catholic districts in Ireland was to have its whole 
 trend of thought determined mainly by non-Catholics. And the 
 college was predominantly under the control of those who were 
 always felt to be representatives of the Protestant minority 
 garrison which held the power and wealth in a country 
 mainly Catholic. In Galway the case was similar. More- 
 over, the bishops were denied the right — which in colleges so 
 constituted might be really vitally necessary to exercise 
 — of preventing teaching which was dangerous to Catholic 
 faith. We cannot doubt that the failure on so vital a 
 point as that of the due representation of Catholics in the 
 teaching body, to carry out the assurances of Peel and Lord 
 Clarendon, brought home to the bishops how little they could 
 rely, in matters which to them from their ofhce were essential, 
 on an English Protestant Gov'ernment. 
 
 In this condition it may fairly be urged that the bishops 
 had a very real grievance. Still, in view of the vital necessity 
 of university education for Irish Catholics, the sympathies of 
 many of us will be with the minority who wished nevertheless 
 
n 
 
 under every disadvantage, to try and work the colleges. Dr. 
 Newman has stated, however, that in 1853 he found the majority 
 of Irish bishops not at all alive to the importance of 
 university education for Catholics. And when we observe 
 that the extreme measure which killed the colleges — of 
 visiting with canonical censures any priest who became 
 officially connected with them^ — was passed at the Synod of 
 Thurles by a majority of one only, we may fairly conclude 
 that all those who represented the best intelligence of the 
 episcopal bench were opposed to carrying the opposition to 
 the colleges to a point which caused them to fail. I con- 
 clude then that the Queen's Colleges were very unsatisfactory, 
 but that Dr. Murray was right in preferring them to the 
 absence of any university education for Catholics. 
 
 The position of things is now very different from what it 
 was in 1845- 1850. Education is becoming more and more 
 practical, technical, the affair of specialists. The attempt 
 to argue out the grounds of religious conviction and its 
 bearing on science is far less common. In many societies 
 such discussions would be very unpopular. The whole 
 subject is seen to be too vast and science too young for a 
 satisfactory synthesis. 
 
 The intellectual temper in the universities has thus largely 
 changed. There is a truce between the parties which fought 
 so keenly. Science is no longer directly aggressive. It is much 
 less occupied with speculation on the borderland between 
 itself and theology than it was thirty years ago ; and 
 theology has adapted itself largely to the scientific movement. 
 The anti-religious theories which are still mooted are less 
 liable to affect the methodical curriculum of a university. 
 There is less time or inclination for polemics now than in 
 the forties. The particular form in which a student in a 
 university now becomes acquainted with physical science, 
 and even with history, is far less likely to touch on dangerous 
 ground. Such is the general change in the situation. And 
 it directly affects those elements in the subjects taught 
 which I have above described as being in 1845 from the 
 circumstances of the time controversial. 
 
 (i) Educated Christians, including the best Catholic 
 
 professors and thinkers, have learnt to apply to Scripture 
 
 very widely the lesson long ago taught in one department by 
 
 the Galileo case. That is to say, they have come to be very 
 
 * Appendix lo Third Report, p. 8 9 . 
 
slow in affirming confidently that Scripture really teaches 
 what science or scientific criticism appears to deny. On the 
 contrary, they look to science and criticism in many cases for 
 the true explanation of natural phenomena with which 
 Scripture deals, and interpret Scripture in accordance with 
 such an explanation. 
 
 (2) Philosophy is taught far less aggressively or dog- 
 matically, and history far less theoretically now than in 1845. 
 In the forties, Kant was regarded as anti-religious — as the 
 prophet of scepticism. Now, he is regarded by many 
 Christians (including eminent Catholic philosophers) as 
 opposing primarily an old and somewhat inadequate religious 
 philosophy, and as aiding in the formation of a new one. 
 Hegel was regarded as before all things a pantheist, and 
 therefore an anti-theist. Now, we have the Christian Hegelians 
 pointing out the profoundly Christian trend of his later 
 teaching, And, concurrently with this, we have broken 
 down the opposition between the " experience " school and 
 the " intuitionist" school by a more general appreciation of 
 Hegel's larger conception of "experience." Further, this wider 
 conception has been seen to afford a theistic interpretation of 
 many ideas of Spencer, and to suggest (as Professor Caird 
 has shown) a theistic development of Comte himself. We 
 do not regard either Spencer or Comte as any more satis- 
 factory than our ancestors regarded them, but many upholders 
 of Christianity have come to maintain that those ideas, in virtue 
 of which their systems had life and power, are capable of 
 being absorbed into a deeper philosophy than their authors 
 themselves contemplated. 
 
 While such results perhaps make humorous critics smile 
 at the tergiversations of philosophy, and talk of metaphysicas 
 " a dog chasing its own tail," they bring home to those who 
 believe in philosophy the partial and non-final character of 
 all speculative systems. The cast of thought is on the increase 
 which holds that faith touches deeper springs of conviction 
 than any defined philosophical system can adequately test : 
 and in place of confidently denouncing each new system which 
 is advanced on the ground of its prima facie opposition to 
 portions of the mediaeval scholasticism, most of us are, I think, 
 learning rather to look first for its points of contact with 
 religious faith. This change affects the best exponents of 
 the scholastic philosophy itself. The manuals both of Father 
 Maher and of Mgr. Mcrcier show great appreciation of the 
 historical position of the philosophy with which they are 
 
13 
 
 primanly concerned, and a disposition to do full justice to 
 its affinities with other systems, and to treat it historically 
 rather than dogmatically. 
 
 (3) In history the weight is shifted from its philosophy 
 to the detailed study of periods, and the principles whereby 
 evidence should be sifted. Large views are out of fashion. 
 Among the best Catholic writers the philosophical element 
 has receded into the background. The great names are no 
 longer those of apologists, but of specialists. Whereas 
 Mohler, De Maistre, Bonald, Lamennais, Schlegel, were, so 
 far as they dealt with the subject, occupied in the apologetic 
 bearing of history, Duchesne, Pastor, and the Bollandist 
 Jesuits are largely occupied in what the ultra conservatives 
 regard as merely destructive criticism— z>., in correcting 
 exaggerations of fact which formed an effective but inaccurate 
 defence of the Christian and Catholic position. This change 
 among Catholic students began in the later fifties, and has 
 been described by Lord Acton in a memorable essay in the 
 " Home and Foreign Review " (" Home and Foreign Review," 
 vol. I, pp. 513 seg.). 
 
 (4) In geology and anatomy. 
 
 (a) The greater prevalence of a modified view as to 
 
 the practical consequences of the inspiration of 
 the Bible has drawn the teeth of old oppositions. 
 Monsignor Mercier told us that some of his 
 professors were evolutionists. Dr. Delany obviously 
 viewed with different eyes from Dr. Cullen the 
 supposed opposition between the mosaic cos- 
 mogony and the conclusions of geology. 
 
 (b) Further, these sciences have gained so widely in 
 
 credit that most persons realise that they must go 
 their own way in peace, and that before we can 
 adjust their conclusions to the teaching of Scripture 
 and to theology, they must be allowed complete 
 freedom to work out those conclusions in their own 
 way. Thus, any battle between the two depart- 
 ments is postponed at all events. 
 
 (c) Concurrently with this, the aggressive tone of their 
 
 exponents has much diminished now that they 
 have won what they may consider to be the 
 victory of shaking themselves free nearly every- 
 where from the inquisitor's animadversions. 
 No doubt the old oppositions have left their heirs. The 
 contest between naturalism and supernaturalism ■ has not 
 
14 
 
 ceased. It represents, indeed, an undying contest, and is 
 itself the heir to the opposition, far older than Christianity, 
 between the philosophy of Providence and that of Necessity. 
 But the enormous increase of specialism postpones such a 
 contest almost entirely to a stage subsequent to that of 
 university training. The theologians have admitted so much, 
 and both history and physical science have had such eminent 
 Christian exponents, that we have no longer, as we had half a 
 century ago, a battle on the very threshold of these subjects, 
 The truce proposed by Cardinal Newman in the remarkable 
 lectures he dehVered in Dublin in 1855 has been largely 
 realised in later years. 
 
 The growth of undenominationalism from 1845 up to 
 the present time has gone almost pari passu with this 
 relaxation of acute oppositions. The change in the Irish 
 bishops' demands, which is avowedly due to undenomination- 
 alism, is probably influenced more or less consciously by the 
 concurrent decrease of contentious elements in the educational 
 programme. Obviously, the more specialism increases, the 
 less are the dangers to religious belief which arise from mixed 
 education, because the mixture affects a far smaller field. 
 Perhaps we may roughly characterise the changes in the 
 attitude dominant in the universities since 1830, as con- 
 sisting of three stages — 
 
 (i) Thetheologians — heirs at Ox ford as well as in Rome 
 to the mediaeval synthesis of knowledge^thought 
 that they could dictate a priori to the represen- 
 tatives of science and hist^iry. 
 
 (2) The scientists and naturalistic historians thought 
 
 that they could banish and discredit theology, 
 
 (3) Each party is learning more effectively the proverb, 
 
 " ne sutor ultra crepidam." 
 This great alteration in the situation inevitably brings 
 with it a decrease in the necessity of pressing SDme of the de- 
 nominational safeguards. The aggressions on religion have 
 diminished, and the defences are correspondingly less 
 necessary. Some protective machinery is demanded by the 
 guardians of religious interests for possible future emergencies, 
 but in present circumstances it is little likely to be used. 
 Moreover, time has made all educated men — including 
 the Catholic representatives oi education in Ireland — see 
 the importance of one object of the liberal movementy 
 namely, of thoroughness in scientific method. What Newman 
 
15 
 
 said in 1855 is now generally admitted — that even the errors 
 of science must be allowed to take their course rather than 
 that its free development should be impeded by the inter- 
 ference of theologians. On the lowest ground a thorough 
 scientific training is seen to be necessary for efficiency and 
 credit in the eyes of the world. Thus, though the bishops still 
 demand for a college which Catholics shall frequent, an element 
 which is de facto denominational, what they ask for is far 
 less denominational than what thev asked for in 1846. They 
 no longer ask for dual chairs. They are conscious (and the 
 facts at University College, Dublin, show this to be practice 
 and not mere profession) that to get the best specialist pro- 
 fessors in secular subjects is so important, that they must 
 be ready to welcome an eminent non-Catholic if a first-rate 
 Catholic is not to be found."^ Their present claim is, indeed, a 
 claim for little more than what Peel already seems to have 
 felt the justice of in 1845. -f- They ask for a University, 
 undenominational de Jure, but with such a predominance of 
 Catholics on the governing body at the outset, and such 
 religious safeguards, as will give it the character of a de Jacto 
 denominational institution. Trinity College, Dublin, which is 
 a Protestant university made dcjicre undenominational, supplies 
 mutatis mutandis the precedent for the Catholic demand. 
 
 But while the development of events has made it possible 
 to the bishops conscientiously to accept less than they asked 
 for in 1846, it has brought about the general acceptance of a 
 principle which gives their claim a new and special force» 
 The principle which has triumphed in the " liberal " move- 
 ment to which 1 have referred, is the principle of religious 
 equality ; — that in the matter of education no one should be 
 handicapped by his religious creed. On this principle they 
 now take their stand. They demand equality ; and equality, 
 they point out, must mean that combination of de facto 
 religious and denominational influences with de Jure unde- 
 nominationalism which the existing consequences of their 
 past history have secured at Oxford and Trinity, and which 
 consideration for the Presbyterian body on the part of the 
 Government and the subsequent action of that body have 
 secured at Belfast. 
 
 * Father De'aiiy s-peaks on th's subject with the cunviction which his own 
 experience has brought (see question 1454). 
 
 t This is distinctly intimated in the evidence both of Bishop O'Dwyer and 
 ot Dr. Delany. 
 
i6 
 
 To allow " denominational " influences may of course have 
 in different instances different practical results. It may 
 conceivably tend to what it is said to have tended to be in 
 Dr. CuUen's hands — an exerciseof such ecclesiastical predomi- 
 nance and interference as would handicap effective scientific 
 teaching ; or it may only mean such definite religious 
 influences as are essential to a satisfactory education — 
 influences which cannot be secured by a combination of 
 persons of different creeds, and can only be effectively exerted 
 by one denomination, with its esp^^it de cotps and its definite 
 ideals and institutions. 
 
 The opposition to the Catholic claim appears to rest on 
 the presumption that de facto denominationalism, the pre- 
 dominance of one denomination, the presence of its religious 
 services and its theology, its predominance on the governing 
 body, which issue in Trinity College in giving such religious 
 influences as parents would desire, v/ithout introducing either 
 a strong sectarian or an anti-scientific spirit, would in the case 
 of a Catholic institution necessarily have an essentially different 
 result. Denominationalism in a Catholic university would, 
 it is supposed, be different in kind from what exists in Trinity 
 College. The claim is therefore one for privilege — for 
 denominationalism in a sense in which it is not allowed to 
 others. 
 
 May it not be said in reply that this is a conjectural 
 objection on which it is very hazardous to wreck an import- 
 ant scheme to remedy an admitted grievance } A Catholic 
 may indignantly repudiate the suggestion that he is less able 
 than a non-Catholic to free himself from unreasonable 
 ecclesiastical control, or that history and science are taught 
 less scientifically at Louvain than at Trinity College, Dublin. 
 A Protestant may be quite unable to agree with such a 
 disclaimer, or to divest himself of the conviction that his own 
 fears in the contrary direction are just. But if such a convic- 
 tion on the part of the Protestant legislators, without conclusive 
 evidence to support it, is to be a reason for not giving Irish 
 Catholics the same opportunity and chances as Irish Protes- 
 tants of exercii>ing their educational capacities, and of proving 
 by experiment that the suspicions of their critics are 
 groundless, the idea of equal legislation, the principle of 
 justice underlying the undenominational ideal, falls to the 
 ground. 
 
 Further, what might appear to be a special insistance on the 
 
17 
 
 denominational element in the Catholic demand may fairly 
 be said to be a demand n-)t for Catholic privilege, but for a 
 removal of inequalities caused by Protestant privilege in 
 the past. The Catholic asks for more because he has less. 
 We may easily forget how much in the present state of 
 things is due to past inequality. Therefore, the best way of 
 testing what will give equality in the present is to suppose 
 equality in the past, and then see the state of things which 
 equal legislation on such a basis would have effected. 
 Suppose, then, that in days when Trinity College was 
 Protestant there had been also a Cath lie college in Dublin 
 University ; that when Trinity was opened to Catholics, the 
 Catholic college had been open to Protestants ; that when 
 all tests had been abolished at Trinity, the same had held in 
 the other college. This would have been a history of parallel 
 antecedents, equal opportunities and similar legislation — exact 
 equality. Ea h college would have been first denominational 
 and then gradually undenominational by law. It is plain 
 that the special character of the religious arrangemen's 
 and developments of the college apart from the law, 
 has nothing to do with the undenominational character 
 which the law requires. Whether the denominational 
 esprit de corps or ecclesiastical influence were greater or 
 less in one college than the other might be a matter 
 of accident, or it might be connected with points in the 
 particular creed. But it is of the essence of equal legislation 
 not to handicap on the ground of peculiarities of creed. It 
 might again, like the strong theological atmosphere of the 
 Oxford of 1835, be the result of certain dominant personalities. 
 Such things would have been outside the purview of the 
 legislator, who gave to each equal laws, and allowed them 
 freedom apart from the law. 
 
 For Irish Catholics, then, to ask for what they would have 
 had under such circumstances is the nearest attainable 
 measure of asking for equality. I should have no wish to 
 disguise the fact that the proposed university or college is 
 primarily for the benefit of one denomination, but to say 
 that a college so constituted that rt// the und -nominational 
 legislation is accepted can be in any way an exce, tion 
 to the undenominational system, so far as that system 
 preva Is, seems to me quite inexact, if undenominationalism 
 in England had been equivalent to secularism, the case would 
 have been otherwise. Even if there had been in university 
 legislation a Cowper-Temple clause forbidding denomina- 
 tional teaching, matters would be on a different footing. 
 
Trinity College could then no longer have its divinity schools. 
 But English uni^ ersities are not undenominational in the 
 sense of Board schools. Their undenominationali m is under- 
 stood in the limited sense of all emoluments and offices 
 being open by law to all-comers. Therefore the college 
 or university would be, in the ordinary sense, undenomina- 
 tional—that is to say, dc jure undenominational. 
 
 I submit that the only case in which, on the principle 
 of equal le. islation, regardless oi creed, the legislature can 
 take cognisance of the peculiarities of distinct denominations, 
 and the results of these peculiarities, is where such peculiarities 
 c^n be unmistakably shown to make the secular education 
 unsatisfactory. If in the case of any denominational system it 
 can be shown that there is ecclesiastical interference of a kind 
 which prevents the freedom necessary for first rate educaticn 
 in any department, then the legislature has to consider that 
 public money is being spent on an inferior education. 
 
 This leads me to speak more particularly of a subject to 
 which considerable attention was given in our enquiry — the 
 claim of the bishops to be members of a Board of Visitors 
 which would adjudicate on any case in which a professor was 
 supposed to have taught something offensive to the religious 
 convictions of his pupils. The bishops claim to decide what 
 is Catholic dogma. This claim in itself is simply the claim to 
 carry out in a manner conformable to the Catholic principle 
 that the bishops are official witnesses to dogma, the principle 
 already admitted in one form or another in the Queen's 
 Colleges and in the Scotch universities — that a professor 
 is pledged not to offend against the religious convictions of 
 the students. In present circumstances, we know that 
 practically such offences have been almost unknown in the 
 Queen's Colleges — that the regulation against them never has 
 occasion to be practically enforced. We have evidence to 
 the same practical state of things among Catholics in the 
 medical schools in Cecilia Street. Bishop O'Dwyer declare? 
 that he does not believe that in a university for Irish 
 Catholics such a case would arise once in forty years. 
 Indeed, where professors are chosen who are in general 
 sympathy with the spirit of the mstitution, it is unlikely 
 to occur. 
 
 As however the claim is made, and might conceivably 
 become practical, it is important to make it quite clear that such 
 a claim on the part of the bishops is quite distinct from a 
 claim to interfere with any branch of scientific teaching in its 
 
19 
 
 own sphere — a claim which might justly be a subject of 
 animadversion on the part of the legislator. It is tJiis course 
 which has been a source of trouble in the past. And it was 
 with the object of pointing out that such a claim is not now 
 preferred that I asked certain questions in the course of 
 our enquiry. 
 
 It was, as we know, only gradually that the absolute 
 necessity of freedom for science made itself practically 
 realised, either among Catholics or among Protestants : and 
 it was by means of an anti-ecclesiastical movement. Dr. 
 Mackinnon, in his recent work on the French Monarchy, points 
 out that the Protestant theologians " were as ready as the 
 intolerant orthodoxy of the Sorbonne to persecute free 
 thought in defence of their own orthodoxy." Theoretically 
 the freedom of science in its own sphere has always been 
 acknowledged by the Catholic Church. And even the 
 Galileo case was an instance in which a certain interference 
 with theology by Galileo was the occasion of the adverse 
 aition of the ecclesiastical authorities. An attitude of suspicion 
 towards science was at one time greater in the case of Protestant 
 theologians than of Catholics, because the Bible was taken 
 by the former more literally, and without the principle that 
 its teaching is gradually interpreted by the Church. Thus 
 Copernicus' De Revolutionilnis Orbium was dedicated to a 
 Pope and condemned by Melancthon. But among all theo- 
 logians. Catholic and Protestant, interference with scientific 
 theories in the name of orthodoxy very long survived in 
 practice. The Inquisition did not in the end confine itself to 
 considering Galileo's treatment of Scripture. It proceeded 
 to make pronouncements on the truth or falsehood of scientific 
 hypotheses themselves. Any survival of such a mode of pro- 
 cedure, belonging to a period when the nature of scientific 
 methods and their requirements were not understood, may 
 be reasonably objected to in the interests of education. And 
 it has to be clearly understood that teaching offensive to faith 
 - — of which the bishops claim to take cognisance — means not 
 a scientific theory or conclusion which is inconsistent with 
 received theological views, but extra-scientific dissertations 
 directly contravening dogma. Professor Butcher cite1 a 
 saying in the opposite direction from Dr. Cullen. And this 
 makes it the mere i nporta it 'o point out that Dr. CuUen's view 
 is not that contemplated m the present proposal of the bishops. 
 
 It is sufficiently well known that Dr. Cullen for various , 
 reasons did not adequately realise the freedom which modern 
 science and history demand for efficiency. Very many 
 
20 
 
 people, Anglicans and Presbyterians as v/cll as Catholics, of 
 his generation did not realise it. It is only in our own time 
 that it is fully understood. Dean Burgon and his friends 
 were, it may be maintained, no more alive to it than Dr. 
 Cullen. But the ablest Catholic educationalists equally with 
 those of other denominations have long dissociated themselves 
 from this po^^ition. Even as early as the fifties Cardinal 
 Newman urged the absolute necessity for freedom of in- 
 vestigation and discussion in " astronomy, geology, physiology, 
 ethnology, political economy, history." I refer to his lecture 
 on Chrstiaiiify and scientific investigation (" Idea of a 
 University," pp. 456 seq?) This lecture is included in a work 
 frequently cited with approval by the present Irish hierarchy 
 ■ — for instance by Archbishop Walsh in his pamphlet on the 
 subject before us. And the evidence we have had from Dr. 
 Delany and Dr. O'Dwyer (753, 1299) is entirely in harmony 
 with the view of Dr. Newman, and not with that of 
 Dr. Cullen. Broadly speaking, Dr. Newman's contention is 
 that all the sciences, including the practical bearings 
 of theology on the world of secular facts, are in a condition of 
 gradual development ; that each must be allowed to develop 
 freely ; that they must not be allowed to encroach on 
 each other ; and that temporary apparent contradictions 
 between physics and history on the one hand, and theology 
 on the other, are not to be a reason for interfering with the 
 historians or scientists, but are to be tolerated ; that such 
 interference is liable to error — even at times if made in the 
 name of defined dogma, as theologians miy identify with 
 dogma something which in the end proves to be separable 
 from it ; that the true solution of temporary antagonism is 
 very likely unattainable in our time, and only to be reached 
 eventually by a freedom which such interference would 
 prevent. The spirit which should animate the presiding genius 
 of a Catholic university he describes as follows '. " Taking 
 into his charge all sciences^ methods, collections of facts, 
 doctrines, truths, which are the reflexions of the universe 
 upon the human intellect, he admits them all, he disregards 
 none, and as disregarding none he allows none to exceed or 
 encroach. His watchword is, live and let live. . . . If he has 
 one c-irdinal maxim, it is that truth cannot be contrary to truth; 
 if he has a second, it is that truth often seems contrary to 
 truth ; if a third, it is the practical conclusion that we nmst be 
 patient with such appearances. ... It is the highest 
 wisdom to accept truth of whatever kind . . . though 
 there be difficulty in adjusting it with other known truth 
 
21 
 
 . . . a scientific specialist or enquirer is not bound, in 
 conducting his researches, to be every moment adjusting his 
 course by the maxims of the (theological) schools ... or to 
 be determined to be edifying, or to be ever answering heretics 
 or unbelievers. . . . Unless he is at liberty to investigate on 
 the basis and according to the peculiarities of his science he 
 cannot investigate at all. It is the very law of the human 
 mind to make its advances by a process which consists of 
 many stages and is circuitous ... In scientific researches 
 error may be said, without a paradox, to be in some instances 
 the way to truth, and the only way." The net result is that, 
 whether right or wrong on a particular point, all branches of 
 scientific enquiry must be free. Authority must only interfere 
 where there is unmistakable and direct encroachment on 
 dogma, or a practical attempt to tamper with the religious 
 convictions of the young. 
 
 This view was very insufficiently accepted by theo- 
 logians. Catholic or Protestant, when Dr. Newman wrote. And 
 it is known that others besides Cardinal Cullen differed from it. 
 But it is now very generally accepted. Its main features 
 were adopted by Monsignor d'Hulst in his inaugural address 
 to the Catholic Scientific Congress of 1888. It is entirely 
 in harmony with the views expressed both by Dr. O'Dwyer 
 and Dr. Delany before the Commission. The actual 
 facts at University College, Dublin, as placed before us 
 in Dr. Delany's evidence, tell in the same direction. 
 In history (which seems to some the subject in which 
 theological and apologetic influences are most likely to be 
 prejudicial) the growth of the scientific spirit among 
 Catholic writers on the Continent has been most marked. 
 History as represented now by Abbe Duchesne or even Dr. 
 Pastor is so far specialised that theological differences hardly 
 come into contact with it at all. At Louvain it is, I am 
 told, so far specialised that what may be termed synthetic 
 history receives hardly any attention. It is entirely dissociated 
 from apologetic. Accuracy of method is the primary lesson 
 inculcated. No doubt bias might still betray itself in a 
 Catholic professor of history — a bias as much in favour of 
 Catholicism as Mr. Froude betrayed in his Oxford lectures 
 on the other side. But the present tendency among Catholic 
 historians, so far as I am acquainted with it, is in the 
 opposite direction. So far as bias is apparent, it is against their 
 own side. The reaction from the special pleading of Abbd 
 Darras has not yet spent itself Certainly there has been 
 nothing in the evidence before us to make it probable that 
 
such an attitude as that assumed by Cardinal Cullen fifty 
 years ago would preside in an Irish university for Catholics. 
 And there has been considerable evidence to show that it 
 would not. Such an attitude would be an anachronism in a 
 Catholic as much as in a Protestant university. 
 
 The fears entertained in an opposite direction would 
 seem to be due to the suspicion that at heart Catholics still 
 desire a university on exactly the basis of the mediaeval univer- 
 sities, in which the Church had direct control of all branches of 
 study ; that if they consent to less, it is under protest, and 
 with a hope to regain for ecclesiastical control what has been 
 lo-t. But to suppose this is to forget that educated Catholics, 
 like f ther people, recoq:nise that while in the Middle Ages 
 theology was a chief instrument whereby men hoped to 
 gain knowledge even of the world of fact, now the positive 
 sciences occupy a large territory once claimed by the divines. 
 
 Not only then the practical claim, but the ideal of 
 Newman differs from that of St. Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 At the risk of being a little tedious it may be worth while 
 t") enumerate the chief points in which the Church does 
 distinctly modify even its ideal claim as that claim is presented 
 by Dr. Newman. 
 
 The old sway of the Church over university education 
 included in the Middle Ages — 
 
 (a) Certain positive religious influences which were 
 
 needed to guard the faith of individuals. 
 
 (b) The presence of theology as representing the 
 exercise of the human mind in determining the 
 theological implications of the Christian revelation. 
 
 (c) The checking of the speculations of the human 
 
 reason where they trench on theological ground, 
 and are opposed to the truths of revelation or its 
 logical consequences. 
 
 (d) The attempt — which became confident, constant 
 
 and energetic under the influence of the modes of 
 thought prevalent in the thirteenth century — to de- 
 termine by means of lo-jical deductions from theo- 
 logy a large number of facts, physical and historical. 
 It is the last of these claims which the growth of the 
 scientific method has by universal consent so greatly affected. 
 This has now been long admitted by the best Christian 
 thinkers, whether at Oxford or at Louvain— although this 
 admission has been gradual. It has been brought about 
 largely by the pressure of the undenominational and scientific 
 
23 
 
 movement. This has been, from an intellectual point of view, 
 the, really valuable achievement of that movement. No lulers 
 readily resign a claim, whether they be successors of Charles I. 
 or of Albertus and Aquinas. A determined effort against such 
 encroachments of theology on the field now occupied by 
 science was needed. A movement more or less hostile to 
 theology was probably, vi pntctice, the only effective means of 
 teaching theology its true place. Undenominationalism in 
 so far as it was bent on releasing education from the remains 
 of a control which cramped the scientific spirit, was right. 
 Its claim was strong as an alternative to bigotry. 
 
 But of the three remaining presuppositions of Church 
 control, two remain, from the Catholic point of view, unaltered 
 by the advance of science. And the third remains unaltered 
 in theory (although not, as I shall endeavour to point out, in 
 practice). They continue as parts of the true ideal And as 
 far as undenominationalism opposes them, it is on ground 
 which (it may be maintained) is not from the Catholic point 
 of view tenable. 
 
 Let us consider each of the three as applying to present 
 conditions. 
 
 (a) A Church which regards faith as a matter of teaching 
 and not of private judgment, and as a gift and a virtue which 
 may be lost like any other virtue under stress of temptation, 
 must insist on the functions of the representatives of religion 
 in the first department. Catholic theology holds indeed in 
 the abstract that the reason, rightly exercised, leads the well- 
 disposed to Theism and to Christianity. But it recognises 
 that in the concrete a youth's reas -n is impressionable and is 
 readily swayed towards or away from the Christian view of 
 life, the world, and history, by the surroundings in which it is 
 educated. While it believes in the possibility of a reconcilia- 
 tion of all science with revelation, it does not trust the im- 
 mature mind, or even the average mature mind, to effect that 
 reconciliation, still less to do so under difficulties or on the 
 spur of the moment. The university undergraduate cannot 
 be expected to hold the balance justly where powerful 
 intellectual influences are present which militate against 
 his faith, and in the absence of the influence and aid 
 of sacraments, liturgy, teaching, on the Christian side. The 
 view which regards every private judgment as in all circum- 
 stances practically sufficient for the discernment of and 
 adherence to religious truth, it regards as the unphilosophical 
 fallacy of Protestantism. 
 
24 
 
 (b) The presence of theology as representing the 
 human reason exercised on revelation, Cardinal Newman 
 has insisted on as the necessary counterpart * of 
 belief in revelation as representing a fact and not merely 
 a sentunent. 
 
 As exemplified in the prescientific period, under the 
 mediaeval Church, in such a work as the Summa of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, this immediately issued in deductions, maintained as 
 more or less probable, in the field of history and of physical 
 science. In Newman's conception of a modern Catholic 
 university adapted to an ate of scientific advance, its practical 
 utility was distinct from this. The presence and influence of 
 theology has (according to his exposition) an immediate 
 bearing on the subsequent point — namely, the claim of the 
 Church to check the speculations of the human reason where 
 they touch on theological ground, and oppose by implication 
 the truths of revelation. 
 
 (c) With regard to this claim, the Chairman pointed out 
 the real difficulty (341) — namely, that it may include a claim on 
 the part of ecclesiastical authority to determine the limiting line 
 between theology and science. History shows that that line 
 shifts as knowledge grows, and that neither theologians alone 
 nor men of science alone can be trusted to determine it 
 accurately. Theologians have (as, for instance, when they 
 declared in 1616 that Copernicanism was heresy) encroached 
 on science ; men of science like Huxley have encroached 
 on theology. It is only by the presence of both to guard 
 their own interests that the line is likely to be drawn with 
 approximate accuracy. And accuracy is secured not merely 
 by an artificial compromise, but still more by the mutually 
 corrective influence which each exerts on the other. Theology 
 consists largely in deductions from reason and revelation 
 combined. As the data of reason change and grow (that is, 
 as science advances) the conclusions from joint premises of 
 reason and revelation necessarily change with the changing 
 factor. This necessary development of theology is an 
 additional reason for its presence in a university, that it may 
 so far as possible keep pace with the rapidly moving reason 
 of an age of scientific advance. Its presence, from this point 
 of view, is likely to tend not to obscurantism, but to its 
 elimination. 
 
 This appeirs to be the only fully satisfactory way of 
 dealing with the danger of an irreligious use of the sciences. 
 The interference of one science with the conclusions of 
 another — including the interference of theology with secular 
 
25 
 
 science — is more and more felt by educated men to be an 
 anachronism, because, as sciences are progressive, at a given 
 stage their mutual bearings may be largely misconceived. 
 If theological interference only took place where defined 
 doctrine was in so many words denied it would be defensible. 
 If a professor of history or physics taught in so many 
 words "the dogma of creation is false," "the dogma 
 of inspiration is false," "the idea of Providence is a 
 superstition, " the good sense of any university would 
 hold that he should be checked. The real difficulty 
 in former times has been that, in fact, interferences have 
 been of another kind. And this is the cause of the 
 deep prejudice existing against all interference with 
 teachers of science in the name of orthodoxy. " Coper- 
 nicanism contradicts the dogma of the Inspiration of Scrip- 
 ture," was the plea of Melancthon and of the Roman 
 congregations which condemned Galileo for heresy. " Evolu- 
 tion contradicts the dogma of creation," WdS a saying of both 
 Catholic and Anglican bishops thirty years ago. " Certain 
 generally rec ived conclusions of geology contradict the 
 mosaic cosmogony " was apparently Dr. Cullen's view. All 
 these extra-theological assumptions are now abandoned by 
 the large majority of educated Christians, and their abandon- 
 ment teaches a lesson we must face as to the insecurity of 
 theological judgments on half-developed sciences. Where, 
 on the other hand, science and theology are present, repre- 
 sented by men of real ability, each re-acts on the other. 
 Each learns to keep its limits. And the representatives of 
 each will take by way of assimilation much that they would 
 resist in the form of aggression. 
 
 The theologians have, however, in such a state of things 
 a r61e, the importance of which varies with the circumstances 
 of the time, in resisting the extra-scientific excursions 
 of the exponents of the secular sciences. In point of 
 fact the desire for knowledge as to man's origin and 
 destiny, and as to a multitude of subjects on which 
 (according to many thinkers) certainty is denied us, ma}^ lead 
 any speculative mind — modern specialist men of scientific 
 habits of mind as well as mediaeval theologians — to theo- 
 logical conjectures. Gibbon's influence on the young is not 
 likely to be entirely confined to imparting habits of critical 
 investigation. His own naturalistic philosophy of history is 
 certainly not hidden in the pages of the Decline and Fall. 
 Specialists who have large human natures, who are men of 
 really great and inquiring minds, rarely abstain completely 
 
26 
 
 from touching the problems of reHgion. When Strauss and 
 Renan brought scientific criticism to bear on the Gospels, 
 they did not content themselves with the dry investigation of 
 dates and documents without drawing any irreligious conclu- 
 sions. They were not satisfied until they had constructed a 
 purely human Christ directly opposed to Christian doctrine. 
 So, too, physiologists have denied the existence of soul, and 
 evolutionists have denied the creation. The presence of 
 theology is needed (so Dr. Newman argues) in any world of 
 strenuous thought, such as a university ought to be, to guard 
 its own interests ; to point out where science ends and 
 speculation, based on an inadequate view of life, or on semi- 
 conscious naturalistic assumptions, begins. Theology has, as 
 we have seen, largely effected this work during the past fifty 
 years in the larger world of thought ; but, it should always 
 hold, as it were, a watching brief in its own interests. 
 
 Theology then is needed, both in the field of fact and 
 proof, and in the field of imaginative speculation, as a 
 counter force to science, not to oppose its legitimate activity, 
 from which on the contrary it should learn, as Aquinas 
 learnt from Aristotle, but to keep it m its place, and remind 
 its devotees of aspects of human nature, and of life, and of 
 thought which they are liable to forget. Its presence is 
 desirable in some form both in the interests of intellectual 
 completeness and in the interests of the faith of the young. 
 Such is, in outline, the CathoHc ideal — -what would be desirable 
 in the circumstances of our own time on the principles 
 sketched by Newman in his lectures. 
 
 In the absence of the mutually corrective action of science 
 and theology, such as Newman's ideal Catholic university 
 would have, the only possible arrangement for protecting 
 the interests of theology without damaging scientific freedom 
 would seem to be that contemplated by Dr. Delany, Dr. 
 O'Dwyer and the Bishop of Clonfert* in connection with the 
 proposal before us, — viz.. that there should be some 
 ma hinery for preventing (i) direct aggre:.sioa on Catholic 
 dogma or (2) attempted proselytism. An interference so limited, 
 and with judges present on the Board of Visitors to ensure 
 such limitation, would, as Dr. O'Dwyer pointed out, hardly 
 ever occur. And if it did occur, it would be regarded by no 
 
 * Bishop O'Dwyer's words (753-754) are very important. His defini'ion of 
 the point at which interference would be necessary is drawn from distinctly extra 
 scientific teaching on the part of men of science. So, too, Dr. Delany, 1,29^ 
 seq.,and Bishop Healy, 6,585-6,588. And Dr. Delany appears to contemi>la(e 
 that there should be effective precautions against this liaut beting exceeded. 
 
27 
 
 one as a hardship. A professor who went out of his way to 
 attack rehgion would be obviously guilty of grave impropriety. 
 There would probably be no objection if other denominations 
 desired to be represented on the Board to testify to what was 
 offensive to their creed. In the Catholic Church the claim is 
 necessarily made because, as I have said, the bishops are the 
 official witnesses of doctrine. 
 
 No doubt the claim is practically a far less vital matter in 
 the present condition of the universities than it was fifty 
 years ago ; but it cannot be dispensed with, for there is no 
 security in the nature of things that some movement of 
 thought might not arise so aggressive as to make such a claim, 
 and the parallel claim in the Queen's Colleges, of practical 
 importance once more. 
 
 The Catholic principle that p^trc/y denominational educa- 
 tion is preferable to mixed education would appear then, 
 from the above sketch, to mean practically and in reference 
 to present circumstances, only that it is so from a religious 
 point of view. When the sciences were in the hands of 
 the theologians (in the Middle Ages) this was also the 
 educational point of view. Now that the sciences belong 
 to other guardians, it is essential that these guardians 
 should be adequately represented in a university. And 
 this often cannot be done if a university is not free 
 to select the best specialists irrespective of creed. Moreover, 
 human nature being what it is, if the theological and 
 ecclesiastical element is allowed unduly to predominate, other 
 interests will suffer. If science Vv'on its freedom only by an 
 anti-ecclesiastical movement, it is likely to maintain it only 
 by the vigilance of those who are, in however friendly a sp'"rit, 
 somewhat jealous of ecclesiastical encroachment. This applies 
 in a measure to Belfast or Trinity as well as to a Catholic 
 college. But it is a practical consideration when a new college 
 or university is being founded. The view however that certain 
 strong denominational influences which hostile critics are sure 
 to decry as "clerical" are indispensable for intellectual as well 
 as purely moral interests, remains in force ; and an education 
 so far "mixed" as to reduce them to a inininiuvi^ is, from a 
 Catholic point of view, very unsatisfactory. 
 
 On the basis of the above considerations I will attempt 
 to answer the following questions which have been discussed 
 among us : — 
 
 (a) The claim to equality for all creeds being admitted 
 
28 
 
 to be a valid one, is it accurate to describe the 
 Catholic claim as a claim for privilege ? 
 
 (b) Does the opening of Trinity College to Irish 
 
 Catholics really offer them equality with Pro- 
 testants ? 
 
 (c) Is it the part of frankness to point out that such an 
 
 institution as is contemplated is denominational, 
 and is it uncandid to go to Parliament with the 
 plea that no endowment is asked for denomina- 
 tional purposes ? 
 
 (d) Is the presence of the bishops on the governing 
 
 body likely to make the institution so far clerical 
 and sectarian as to injure the thoroughness and 
 necessary freedom in secular education ? 
 
 (e) Is the numerical predominence of laymen on the 
 
 governing body desirable? Or is it likely to be 
 a useless pretence, disguising externally the fact 
 that the whole real direction of the university 
 is in episcopal hands ? 
 
 (f) Which would be preferable, a university for 
 
 Catholics, or an autonomous college in a reformed 
 
 Royal university ? 
 (a) It is not a claim for p'ivilege. It is a claim for 
 equality. If dogma and authority would occupy a more 
 prominent place in a Catholic than in Protestant institution, 
 which is dejic-^e undenominational, it is partly because these 
 are more prominent in the Catholic system than in the 
 Protestant: — and equality means equally free play for the 
 denominational peculiarities of different creeds. If, further, 
 bishops in Ireland have greater influence than elsewhere, that 
 is an accidental circumstance, and does not enter into the 
 nature of the claim. Such influence would not arise from the 
 constitution of the proposed college or university. The view 
 that it is a claim for privilege rests partly on forgetting fas 
 Dr. Bernard in his evidence seemed to do) that the Bishops 
 no longer make the claim they made in 1866, and partly on 
 regarding the creation of certain denominational influences 
 de facto as the according of a privilege. Yet in Trinity 
 College such influences have always existed and do not need 
 to be created. Their creation for a Catholic college is the 
 giving of what Trinity has, not the according of a privilege 
 which Trinity has not. 
 
 (h) That at Trinity, as at Oxford, the dangers to faith and 
 morality might be regarded by Catholic authorities as a 
 variable quantity at different times seems to me probable. I 
 
^9 
 
 have not myself the knowledge necessary to estimate them. 
 But if the claim for equality be admitted to be just — the 
 principle that creed should be no educational disadvantage — 
 Trinity College seems to be quite inadequate to satisfy it in 
 the case of Irish Catholics. To displace the strong Protestant 
 predominance, if it could ever be done, would be a matter of 
 a lifetime or more. And, meanwhile, the Catholic majority 
 in Ireland are comparatively without any share in controlling 
 or determining the higher education. 
 
 (c) If undenomationalism in universities meant, as in 
 Board schools, the banishment of denominational influences 
 and teaching de facto as well as de jure, it is true that it 
 would be misleading to describe the proposed institution as 
 undenominational. But as in Oxford the Church of England, 
 and in Trinity College, Dublin, the Protestant Church of Ireland, 
 still have a position of great influence in universities admittedly 
 undenominational, a similar influence for the Catholic Church 
 in the proposed university or college would not prevent its 
 being undenominational, as that word is commonly used in 
 the case of universities. The word is used to describe their 
 de jure constitution, not their de facto condition. 
 
 (d) The following considerations appear to tell in 
 mitigation of the assumption that in Ireland the Catholic laity 
 is so far subservient to the Hierarchy that the presence of 
 even a i&\N bishops on the governing body would mean that 
 they would entirely control the institution. 
 
 (i) A largely signed memorial has recently been sent 
 to this Commission by the Irish Catholic laity, in 
 direct opposition to the policy of the Hierarchy. 
 This does not appear to bear out the theory that 
 on educational questions the laity are universally 
 subservient to the Bishops. 
 
 (2) Dr. Starkie and Colonel Ross appeared to agree 
 that, so far as bishops or the clergy have undue 
 predominance in matters educational, it is mainly 
 due to the fact that absence of university education 
 makes the number of Catholic laymen who take 
 an interest m such questions unduly small. The 
 existence then of a Catholic university or 
 university college would gradually tend to 
 diminish episcopal predominance (see 2402-2406). 
 (3) It is noticeable that the bishops appear not to 
 have interfered at all with the curriculum at 
 University College, but to have left it entirely in 
 the hands of its Rector and his staff". 
 
30 
 
 (4) In the medical schools at Cecilia Street also there 
 is no case of interference on record. 
 
 In such a matter facts are safer guides than presumptions, 
 especially as in the case of inter-denominational judgments 
 the parties rarely know one another intimately enough to be 
 competent judges, and inevitably inherit opinions respecting 
 each other which are not favourable or sufficiently accurate. 
 
 (e) That the bishops would, for a time, have an influence 
 somewhat beyond their numbers, and that in Ireland their 
 influence is of a special character, seems, however, to be 
 generally admitted. And if this arises (as Dr. Starkie and 
 Colonel Ross have suggested) from temporary circumstances, 
 the presence and numerical predominance of laymen on the 
 governing body will be very important. There is unques- 
 tionably, among Catholics on the Continent, a steady growth 
 of the influence of specialists in matters educational. And if 
 this has not yet (as some assert) made itself duly felt in 
 Ireland, such machinery should be created in the constitution 
 of a college or university for Catholics, as would give this 
 movement every facility for making itself fully felt in course 
 of time. 
 
 This was a subject on which Dr. Newman and Dr. Cullen 
 differed greatly in 1852, the former urging the necessity of a 
 strong lay element to prevent undue clerical predominance. 
 If so early as 1852 this was urged, it would by now, if the 
 Catholic university had continued to exist, have been very possi- 
 bly, an accomplished fact. As I have pointed out, in Oxford, 
 also, clerical influence was once supreme. In Trinity College, 
 Lublin, the clerical element has only gradually diminished. 
 Catholic opinion does not stand still, and Catholics are more 
 like other people than sometimes seems to be supposed. 
 Theology is no doubt more elaborate and coherent and 
 ecclesiasticism stronger among them than among members 
 of the Church of England. But the recognition of new 
 conditions exists, and exists widely, among Catholic laity 
 and Catholic thinkers and scholars, lay and clerical, in 
 many countries. The bishops themselves have declared 
 their wish not to interfere in secular education, and, 
 as we have been told, have not interfered at University 
 College. And even those who are inclined to think that such 
 a self-denying ordinance would not be entirely carried out at 
 present should welcome the presence of a body of laymen 
 which, even if it did not at first secure its due influence, still 
 would keep places on the governing body which might later 
 on be filled by those who were able to do so. 
 
31 
 
 (f) The very uncertainty in some minds as to the manner 
 in which a body predominantly Cathohc would carry out their 
 educational programme would appear to be a strong reason 
 for a university rather than a college. For a university would 
 be in the hands of the claimants, and its failure would rest 
 entirely on their own head, while they would be placed on 
 their mettle to show in practice that various suspicions which 
 have been expressed in their regard were unfounded. More- 
 over, this alone would thoroughly satisfy the claim for 
 equality. Both ideally and from the educational point of 
 view I am inclined to think that this would on the whole be 
 best. 
 
 On the other hand, so far as practical politics are concerned, 
 it is a strong fact that University College already exists, that 
 the Royal University already exists, and that, although 
 indirectly. University College has already been endowed. 
 That this is a strictly denominational endowment can hardly be 
 maintained, as the college is open to all. Ten per cent, of 
 its students are, we have been told, non-Catholics. It has also 
 several Protestant professors. But it is an instance of the 
 endowment of a de Jacto denominational institution for 
 Catholics, in the case of whom the traditional prejudice appears 
 still to be an obstacle to what is not objected to in the case 
 of others, as is quite evident from the necessity in 1879 of 
 concealing from Parliament the object of the endowment by 
 which it benefits. 
 
 It might be the direction of least resistance to endow a 
 large new university college, which might become eventually 
 a university. The prejudices of the English House of 
 Commons might allow of this and yet oppose the larger 
 proposal. In that case I should sHU urge that the lay element 
 should be well represented on the governing body of the 
 college, which would be a far more representative institution 
 in such circumstances than it is now. 
 
 Wilfrid Ward. 
 
 P.S. — The Chairman's Memorandum reaches me as I am 
 correcting the proofs of this paper. I add this note on the 
 application of the above remarks to two of the proposals it 
 contains. I do not see an intrinsic difference between 
 Proposal I. and Proposal II., unless in the former the phrase 
 " full consideration given to Roman Catholic sentiments in 
 administration " is to be understood as falling short of the 
 appointment in the new college at the outset of a predominantly 
 Roman Catholic governing body. I should, on this hypo- 
 
32 
 
 thesis, prefer Proposal II., but I should deny (a) that 
 it would be denominational in the sense in which the endow- 
 ment of denominational universities or colleges is now contrary 
 to custom, and (b) I should deny that " full " consideration is 
 given to Roman Catholic sentiments by anything less than is 
 contemplated in Proposal II. The minimum consideration 
 apparently contemplated in Proposal I. would no doubt make 
 it impossible for the bishops to condemn such an institution 
 as dangerous to faith and morals. But we desire surely to 
 do more than this — to remedy a grievance. The grudging 
 concession of a minimum would not secure the desired 
 cordiality on the part of the bishops, and would be far less 
 likely than a more generous proposal to result in a successful 
 educational institution. 
 
 But, moreover, a decidedly predominating denominational 
 element appears to be suitable to the conditions of the 
 country, in which Catholic and Protestants are still to a large 
 extent different social as well as religious bodies. The de 
 jure undenominationalism of Proposal II. would provide a 
 machinery whereby the gradual change we may hope for in 
 these conditions in the country at large might reflect itself 
 in the University College. But we cannot force on a country a 
 system for which it is not yet fitted. 
 
 The undenominational system has been everywhere 
 gradually achieved by successive stages in legislation, corres- 
 ponding roughly to stages of public opinion. I submit that 
 Irish opinion has not reached the stage contemplated in 
 Proposal I., understood in its minimistic sense. The 
 scheme in the Royal University, which has worked fairly well, 
 is better described as bi-denominational than as undenomina- 
 tional. A Catholic university or college, made undenomina- 
 tional de jnre_ and thus corresponding to Trinity College, 
 which is historically a Protestant college, made undenomina- 
 tional de jure, gives greater equality, and appears to be 
 better suited to the state of religious parties in Ireland. 
 Nor need it tend to make the separation between Catholics 
 and Protestants permanent — for the absence of Tests in all 
 institutions allows of its cessation when the abatement of 
 sectarian feeling leads both parties to desire it. The barriers 
 separating Catholics and Protestants are likely to be increased 
 (it may be argued) by the continuation of what Catholics 
 deeply feel to be a grievance. 
 
 I should, however, as Proposal II. seems to contemplate, 
 desire such limitation of clerical control as modern educational 
 conditions demand. 
 
 Primed by Love & Malcomson, Limited, Great Queen Street, London, W.C