thought. "After the death of the Apostles the whole of the Christian Faith was left in the shape of written or unwritten traditions; but with this great difference, that these great truths were henceforth received and transmitted by minds not inspired and through media which were human." Again, "The time at length came when its recipients ceased to be inspired; and on these recipients the revealed truths would fall, as in other cases, at first vaguely and generally, and would afterwards be completed by developments." Nor would Father Newman have a difficulty in allowing that Christianity in this respect was on a level with sects and doctrines of the world. "Christianity differs from other religions and philosophies, in what it has in addition to them; not in kind, but in origin; not in its nature, but in its personal characteristics, being informed and quickened by what is more than intellect, by a Divine Spirit" (p. 85). As far, however, as the intellects and minds of the recipients are concerned, no special grounds of exception can be assigned to it. It must develope like other religious systems. It can claim no exemption from the ordinary laws which govern human ideas. It has, indeed, an infallible developing authority, and thus has objective external means of distinguishing between true developments and false; but the subjective process is precisely the same, because the intellect of a Christian and the intellect of a heathen are. precisely the same.

Now there is a special reason why all ideas, in this sense purely human, must develope; namely, because all ideas are necessarily judgments, and every judgment is necessarily only a partial aspect of a whole. "Whole objects do not create in the intellect whole ideas, but are, to use a mathematical phrase, thrown into a series, into a number of statements, strengthening, interpreting, correcting each other, and with more or less exactness, approximating, as they accumulate, to a perfect image " (p. 94). A judgment is in its very nature a comparison of parts of an object, a process of analysing and of splitting up. Thus it can only be one view or aspect of a whole. These aspects, taken individually, are indeed not identical with the whole, because they are essentially parts; but they are practically identical with it, as far as we are concerned, because it cannot possibly be viewed except under its aspects (p. 34). The human mind can know nothing whatsoever about an object, except as far as it judges it; and therefore its present judgments, that is, its partial views, are simply the measure of its present knowledge. Hence the absolute need of developments. For Christianity is an idea, or a collection of ideas; and ideas, being judgments, are not

ordinarily brought home to the mind except through the medium of a variety of aspects, like bodily substances, which are not seen except under the clothing of their properties and influences, and can be walked round and surveyed on opposite sides, and in different perspectives, and in contrary lights." Thus time is a necessary condition for the apprehension of the whole truth, and this gradual unfolding of its various aspects is what is called its development.

It is curious how, in all systems, this same faculty of human judgment plays its part. Alike in Hegel, Dean Mansel, and Father Newman, the problem to be solved is the relation of our finite judgment to our knowledge of the Infinite. Curiously also, Father Newman's theory of the necessity of development is founded on premisses which look very like those on which Dean Mansel founds his view of its impossibility. As that writer makes a judgment to be always the unit of thought so Father Newman defines ideas to be "habitual judgments." It is true that further on there is this difference: Father Newman only asserts the practical identity of ideas and judgments, without saying what Dean Mansel says, that they are absolutely the same. He does however at least imply, that to the human mind practically an idea is non-existent except as far as a portion of it reaches it through judgments. All its other portions and the idea as a whole are zero. If the human mind possesses any other faculty, natural or supernatural, by which it can obtain even a rude view of the whole, then the necessity for development is not proven; for the need is based by Father Newman on the assumption that, though the whole idea exists somewhere objectively, it cannot reach the human mind in any sense except partially and by degrees. In his view, immediately after the Apostles the sun of divine truth suffered a partial eclipse; no human eye saw, even dimly, the full disk. Its development is its gradual unveiling. That part which is hidden is to us total darkness. Under these circumstances, development of course is a necessity. The case, however, is by no means so clear, if the full orb is still visible, and only the parts have grown less clear through the decrease of strength in our sight as compared with the Apostles.

This comparison is already enough to show that there is a difference between Father Newman and Dean Mansel. In the view of the latter, the eclipse is total; in that of the Catholic writer, it is partial, though, as far as it goes, absolute. As a whole, the object is hidden, and the parts which are not seen are total darkness. The difference and the likeness between the writers are more forcibly brought out

by Father Newman's view that a doctrine, so far as it is a mystery, "cannot be developed," because, "relatively to us, its statements are mere words" (p. 98). In other terms, he makes a sharp and complete division of a mystery into the incomprehensible and the comprehensible part; the former is to us not twilight, but absolute darkness. Its light never reaches the mind at all, and will never reach our planet, not from its distance, but from inherent impossibility of apprehending it with our faculties. Is this, however, true of any part of revelation? Is not this equivalent to saying that partially, at least, Christianity is inconceivable ? That there are hopeless contradictions in it, which make it to us no-sense? Is not the incomprehensible part precisely the supernatural part, and if the residuum is purely human knowledge, we may ask, as in the case of Dean Mansel, what has been revealed?

It would, however, be manifestly unfair to press too far an obiter dictum of an author who was not a Catholic when he penned those words. The real difficulty of the whole thing seems to us to be, that if there were no counter-statement of the author, it would seem to leave no provision for, or rather would exclude the possibility of, any knowledge, even implicit, of the whole Christian faith during the process of development. If the whole idea of Christianity is not contained in minds, which, on the hypothesis, it has never reached, it may fairly be asked, where is it? Where are the undeveloped parts? Are they contained in a set of words? But we know that words are incapable of development. Is the hidden portion contained in the sum of the portions which are known and of the judgments which have been formed? On the contrary, these judgments, as we know, are not equivalent to the whole. Nor again do they contain each other, nor act as an impulse to further knowledge, without some previous knowledge, however dim, of the whole. Surely it must be that the power of forming judgments, that is, of splitting up an idea into parts, implies some previous possession of the whole. It is not the entire account of the formation of our ideas to say that they are simply judgments. A thing to be judged must already, in some sense, be understood; and if it is ever so imperfectly apprehended by the mind, then, even practically, our simple apprehension of it goes beyond our judgment. It must have been placed, so to speak, at the bar of our mind, have been rendered present to it, and at least have been roughly conceived by it, before it can be judged. Some act of presentation must have taken place before we can represent it to ourselves even in thought. Judgment is essentially a reflective act, but

reflection implies a mental object to be reflected on. Judgment is an analysis, and every analysis implies a previous synthesis; it implies that an object has reached the mind in some sense as a whole, else it could not be split up into its parts. The old dilemma about the relation between judgments and concepts might be quoted here. A judgment is itself composed of at least two concepts, and therefore presupposes them; but if concepts are simply the produce of the faculty of judging, they in their turn presuppose judgments. Here then we have an infinite series, judgment presupposing concept, and concept presupposing judgment. This therefore is not the entire account of the faculties concerned in the formation of ideas. A rudimental knowledge of the whole performs some practical function in the process. Even in Father Newman's own illustration, the mind has some rough view of the whole material object at least simultaneously with its judgment that it is coloured, round, or smooth. What we judge is the whole object in some sense known.

Still more is this certain in objects of faith. In point of fact, that of which the intellect first catches a view is the doctrine as a whole. What was first known was the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Out of this came various judgments; the notion of the Monas, the Consubstantiality, and the Circuminsession of the Persons. A very

real knowledge of the whole was absolutely necessary to act as the impulse to the evolution of the parts. Otherwise they would have lain like geological strata, one upon another, without being fused in the furnace of thought. It was not a mere

question of formal logic. All A is B would not have been enough to decide the Arian controversy. The question was, what was the idea attached from the first to the word God by all Christians, when they used it of the Son. The sense was the point, not the word. Without the knowledge of the whole Trinity, the Procession of the Holy Ghost could not be evolved out of the Consubstantiality of the Son. One part does not imply the other, and the knowledge of one part is not even implicitly the knowledge of another, without some knowledge of the whole. The parts are the real objective contents of the whole, they do not necessarily contain each other. A dim knowledge of the whole is ever the grand impulse to the irresistible movement of the inner dialectics of the idea, which, through the judgment, forces its contents into the consciousness of the intellect.

For this truth we gladly appeal to Father Newman himself. We wish that we had space to quote the whole passage, for every word tells, and to curtail is to mar its eloquence.

The mind which is habituated to the thought of God, of Christ, of the Holy Ghost, naturally turns with a devout curiosity to the contemplation of the object of its adoration, and begins to form statements concerning it before it knows whither or how far it will be carried. One proposition necessarily leads to another, and a second to a third; then some limitation is required; and the combination of these opposites occasion some fresh evolutions of the original idea, which, indeed, can never be said to be entirely exhausted. This process is its development, and results in a series or rather body of dogmatic statements, till what was an impression upon the imagination has become a system or creed in the reason. Now such impressions are obviously individual, and complete above other theological ideas, because they are impressions of objects. As God is One, so the impression which He gives of Himself is one; it is not a thing of parts, it is not a system, nor is it anything imperfect and needing a counterpart. It is the vision of an object. When we pray, we pray not to an assemblage of notions or to a Creed, but to One Individual Being. This being the case, all our attempts to delineate an impression of Him go to bring out one idea, not two or three, or four; not a philosophy, but an individual idea in its separate aspects. This may be fitly compared to the impression made on us by the senses. Material objects are real, whole and individual, and the impressions which they make on the mind, by means of the senses, are of a corresponding nature, complex and manifold in their relations and bearings, but, considered in themselves, integral and one.*

Most true and most nobly said, but at the same time most inconsistent with what had been said before. Here is a whole object creating in the intellect a whole idea, a direct contradiction of a passage which we have elsewhere quoted. Here is an idea which is not a judgment but "an impression on the imagination." Previous then to the partial aspects into which the great Object of our faith is split up by the faculty of judgment, we have the power of catching a sight, however obscure, of the whole. The human intellect is not so cribbed, cabined, and confined as Father Newman's former expressions seemed to imply. It can see beyond its judgments, and they are not even practically identical with its knowledge of an object. There comes upon it an impression of the Infinite and the Absolute previous to and beyond its own fragmentary statements. Surely the faculty by which this is effected is too important to be left out of sight in a theory of development. It seems to furnish us with the very thing of which we are in search, a nucleus out of which all the series of developments is drawn. It is a real knowledge of a whole idea, which implicitly contains all future explicit statements. According to this view, Catholic truth is not a series of views like a diorama,

* University Sermons, p. 331.