The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of DublinNewman, John Henry
Religion
The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin
Newman, John Henry
Education, Higher; Universities and colleges
And so of other sciences: just as Comparative Anatomy, Political Economy,
the Philosophy of History, and the Science of Antiquities may be and are
turned against Religion, by being taken by themselves, as I have been
showing, so a like mistake may befall any other. Grammar, for instance, at
first sight does not appear to admit of a perversion; yet Horne Tooke made
it the vehicle of his peculiar scepticism. Law would seem to have enough
to do with its own clients, and their affairs; and yet Mr. Bentham made a
treatise on Judicial Proofs a covert attack upon the miracles of
Revelation. And in like manner Physiology may deny moral evil and human
responsibility; Geology may deny Moses; and Logic may deny the Holy
Trinity;(12) and other sciences, now rising into notice, are or will be
victims of a similar abuse.
14.
And now to sum up what I have been saying in a few words. My object, it is
plain, has been—not to show that Secular Science in its various
departments may take up a position hostile to Theology;—this is rather the
basis of the objection with which I opened this Discourse;—but to point
out the cause of an hostility to which all parties will bear witness. I
have been insisting then on this, that the hostility in question, when it
occurs, is coincident with an evident deflection or exorbitance of Science
from its proper course; and that this exorbitance is sure to take place,
almost from the necessity of the case, if Theology be not present to
defend its own boundaries and to hinder the encroachment. The human mind
cannot keep from speculating and systematizing; and if Theology is not
allowed to occupy its own territory, adjacent sciences, nay, sciences
which are quite foreign to Theology, will take possession of it. And this
occupation is proved to be a usurpation by this circumstance, that these
foreign sciences will assume certain principles as true, and act upon
them, which they neither have authority to lay down themselves, nor appeal
to any other higher science to lay down for them. For example, it is a
mere unwarranted assumption if the Antiquarian says, “Nothing has ever
taken place but is to be found in historical documents;” or if the
Philosophic Historian says, “There is nothing in Judaism different from
other political institutions;” or if the Anatomist, “There is no soul
beyond the brain;” or if the Political Economist, “Easy circumstances make
men virtuous.” These are enunciations, not of Science, but of Private
Judgment; and it is Private Judgment that infects every science which it
touches with a hostility to Theology, a hostility which properly attaches
to no science in itself whatever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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