mr. kingsley's method of disputation

i cannot be sorry to have forced mr. kingsley to bring out in fulness his charges against me. it is far better that he should discharge his thoughts upon me in my lifetime, than after i am dead. under the circumstances i am happy in having the opportunity of reading the worst that can be said of me by a writer who has taken pains with his work and is well satisfied with it. i account it a gain to be surveyed from without by one who hates the principles which are nearest to my heart, has no personal knowledge of me to set right his misconceptions of my doctrine, and who has some motive or other to be as severe with me as he can possibly be.

and first of all, i beg to compliment him on the motto in his title-page; it is felicitous. a motto should contain, as in a nutshell, the contents, or the character, or the drift, or the animus of the writing to which it is prefixed. the words which he has taken from me are so apposite as to be almost prophetical. there cannot be a better illustration than he thereby affords of the aphorism which i intended them to convey. i said that it is not more than an hyperbolical expression to say that in certain cases a lie is the nearest approach to truth. mr. kingsley's pamphlet is emphatically one of such cases as are contemplated in that proposition. i really believe, that his view of me is about as near an approach to the truth about my writings and doings, as he is capable of taking. he has done his worst towards me; but he has also done his best. so far well; but, while i impute to him no malice, i unfeignedly think, on the other hand, that, in his invective against me, he as faithfully fulfils the other half of the proposition also.

this is not a mere sharp retort upon mr. kingsley, as will be seen, when i come to consider directly the subject to which the words of his motto relate. i have enlarged on that subject in various passages of my publications; i have said that minds in different states and circumstances cannot understand one another, and that in all cases they must be instructed according to their capacity, and, if not taught step by step, they learn only so much the less; that children do not apprehend the thoughts of grown people, nor savages the instincts of civilization, nor blind men the perceptions of sight, nor pagans the doctrines of christianity, nor men the experiences of angels. in the same way, there are people of matter-of-fact, prosaic minds, who cannot take in the fancies of poets; and others of shallow, inaccurate minds, who cannot take in the ideas of philosophical inquirers. in a lecture of mine i have illustrated this phenomenon by the supposed instance of a foreigner, who, after reading a commentary on the principles of english law, does not get nearer to a real apprehension of them than to be led to accuse englishmen of considering that the queen is impeccable and infallible, and that the parliament is omnipotent. mr. kingsley has read me from beginning to end in the fashion in which the hypothetical russian read blackstone; not, i repeat, from malice, but because of his intellectual build. he appears to be so constituted as to have no notion of what goes on in minds very different from his own, and moreover to be stone-blind to his ignorance. a modest man or a philosopher would have scrupled to treat with scorn and scoffing, as mr. kingsley does in my own instance, principles and convictions, even if he did not acquiesce in them himself, which had been held so widely and for so long—the beliefs and devotions and customs which have been the religious life of millions upon millions of christians for nearly twenty centuries—for this in fact is the task on which he is spending his pains. had he been a man of large or cautious mind, he would not have taken it for granted that cultivation must lead every one to see things precisely as he sees them himself. but the narrow-minded are the more prejudiced by very reason of their narrowness. the apostle bids us "in malice be children, but in understanding be men." i am glad to recognise in mr. kingsley an illustration of the first half of this precept; but i should not be honest, if i ascribed to him any sort of fulfilment of the second.

i wish i could speak as favourably either of his drift or of his method of arguing, as i can of his convictions. as to his drift, i think its ultimate point is an attack upon the catholic religion. it is i indeed, whom he is immediately insulting—still, he views me only as a representative, and on the whole a fair one, of a class or caste of men, to whom, conscious as i am of my own integrity, i ascribe an excellence superior to mine. he desires to impress upon the public mind the conviction that i am a crafty, scheming man, simply untrustworthy; that, in becoming a catholic, i have just found my right place; that i do but justify and am properly interpreted by the common english notion of roman casuists and confessors; that i was secretly a catholic when i was openly professing to be a clergyman of the established church; that so far from bringing, by means of my conversion, when at length it openly took place, any strength to the catholic cause, i am really a burden to it—an additional evidence of the fact, that to be a pure, german, genuine catholic, a man must be either a knave or a fool.

these last words bring me to mr. kingsley's method of disputation, which i must criticise with much severity;—in his drift he does but follow the ordinary beat of controversy, but in his mode of arguing he is actually dishonest.

he says that i am either a knave or a fool, and (as we shall see by and by) he is not quite sure which, probably both. he tells his readers that on one occasion he said that he had fears i should "end in one or other of two misfortunes." "he would either," he continues, "destroy his own sense of honesty, i.e. conscious truthfulness—and become a dishonest person; or he would destroy his common sense, i.e. unconscious truthfulness, and become the slave and puppet seemingly of his own logic, really of his own fancy.... i thought for years past that he had become the former; i now see that he has become the latter." (p. 20). again, "when i read these outrages upon common sense, what wonder if i said to myself, 'this man cannot believe what he is saying?'" (p. 26). such has been mr. kingsley's state of mind till lately, but now he considers that i am possessed with a spirit of "almost boundless silliness," of "simple credulity, the child of scepticism," of "absurdity" (p. 41), of a "self-deception which has become a sort of frantic honesty" (p. 26). and as to his fundamental reason for this change, he tells us, he really does not know what it is (p. 44). however, let the reason be what it will, its upshot is intelligible enough. he is enabled at once, by this professed change of judgment about me, to put forward one of these alternatives, yet to keep the other in reserve;—and this he actually does. he need not commit himself to a definite accusation against me, such as requires definite proof and admits of definite refutation; for he has two strings to his bow;—when he is thrown off his balance on the one leg, he can recover himself by the use of the other. if i demonstrate that i am not a knave, he may exclaim, "oh, but you are a fool!" and when i demonstrate that i am not a fool, he may turn round and retort, "well, then, you are a knave." i have no objection to reply to his arguments in behalf of either alternative, but i should have been better pleased to have been allowed to take them one at a time.

but i have not yet done full justice to the method of disputation, which mr. kingsley thinks it right to adopt. observe this first:—he means by a man who is "silly" not a man who is to be pitied, but a man who is to be abhorred. he means a man who is not simply weak and incapable, but a moral leper; a man who, if not a knave, has everything bad about him except knavery; nay, rather, has together with every other worst vice, a spice of knavery to boot. his simpleton is one who has become such, in judgment for his having once been a knave. his simpleton is not a born fool, but a self-made idiot, one who has drugged and abused himself into a shameless depravity; one, who, without any misgiving or remorse, is guilty of drivelling superstition, of reckless violation of sacred things, of fanatical excesses, of passionate inanities, of unmanly audacious tyranny over the weak, meriting the wrath of fathers and brothers. this is that milder judgment, which he seems to pride himself upon as so much charity; and, as he expresses it, he "does not know" why. this is what he really meant in his letter to me of january 14, when he withdrew his charge of my being dishonest. he said, "the tone of your letters, even more than their language, makes me feel, to my very deep pleasure,"—what? that you have gambled away your reason, that you are an intellectual sot, that you are a fool in a frenzy. and in his pamphlet, he gives us this explanation why he did not say this to my face, viz. that he had been told that i was "in weak health," and was "averse to controversy," (pp. 6 and 8). he "felt some regret for having disturbed me."

but i pass on from these multiform imputations, and confine myself to this one consideration, viz. that he has made any fresh imputation upon me at all. he gave up the charge of knavery; well and good: but where was the logical necessity of his bringing another? i am sitting at home without a thought of mr. kingsley; he wantonly breaks in upon me with the charge that i had "informed" the world "that truth for its own sake need not and on the whole ought not to be a virtue with the roman clergy." when challenged on the point he cannot bring a fragment of evidence in proof of his assertion, and he is convicted of false witness by the voice of the world. well, i should have thought that he had now nothing whatever more to do. "vain man!" he seems to make answer, "what simplicity in you to think so! if you have not broken one commandment, let us see whether we cannot convict you of the breach of another. if you are not a swindler or forger, you are guilty of arson or burglary. by hook or by crook you shall not escape. are you to suffer or i? what does it matter to you who are going off the stage, to receive a slight additional daub upon a character so deeply stained already? but think of me, the immaculate lover of truth, so observant (as i have told you p. 8) of 'hault courage and strict honour,'—and (aside)—'and not as this publican'—do you think i can let you go scot free instead of myself? no; noblesse oblige. go to the shades, old man, and boast that achilles sent you thither."

but i have not even yet done with mr. kingsley's method of disputation. observe secondly:—when a man is said to be a knave or a fool, it is commonly meant that he is either the one or the other; and that,—either in the sense that the hypothesis of his being a fool is too absurd to be entertained; or, again, as a sort of contemptuous acquittal of one, who after all has not wit enough to be wicked. but this is not at all what mr. kingsley proposes to himself in the antithesis which he suggests to his readers. though he speaks of me as an utter dotard and fanatic, yet all along, from the beginning of his pamphlet to the end, he insinuates, he proves from my writings, and at length in his last pages he openly pronounces, that after all he was right at first, in thinking me a conscious liar and deceiver.

now i wish to dwell on this point. it cannot be doubted, i say, that, in spite of his professing to consider me as a dotard and driveller, on the ground of his having given up the notion of my being a knave, yet it is the very staple of his pamphlet that a knave after all i must be. by insinuation, or by implication, or by question, or by irony, or by sneer, or by parable, he enforces again and again a conclusion which he does not categorically enunciate.

for instance (1) p. 14. "i know that men used to suspect dr. newman, i have been inclined to do so myself, of writing a whole sermon ... for the sake of one single passing hint, one phrase, one epithet, one little barbed arrow which ... he delivered unheeded, as with his finger tip, to the very heart of an initiated hearer, never to be withdrawn again."

(2) p. 15. "how was i to know that the preacher, who had the reputation of being the most acute man of his generation, and of having a specially intimate acquaintance with the weaknesses of the human heart, was utterly blind to the broad meaning and the plain practical result of a sermon like this, delivered before fanatic and hot-headed young men, who hung upon his every word? that he did not foresee that they would think that they obeyed him, by becoming affected, artificial, sly, shifty, ready for concealments and equivocations?"

(3) p. 17. "no one would have suspected him to be a dishonest man, if he had not perversely chosen to assume a style which (as he himself confesses) the world always associates with dishonesty."

(4) pp. 29, 30. "if he will indulge in subtle paradoxes, in rhetorical exaggerations; if, whenever he touches on the question of truth and honesty, he will take a perverse pleasure in saying something shocking to plain english notions, he must take the consequences of his own eccentricities."

(5) p. 34. "at which most of my readers will be inclined to cry: 'let dr. newman alone, after that.... he had a human reason once, no doubt: but he has gambled it away.' ... true: so true, etc."

(6) p. 34. he continues: "i should never have written these pages, save because it was my duty to show the world, if not dr. newman, how the mistake (!) of his not caring for truth arose."

(7) p. 37. "and this is the man, who when accused of countenancing falsehood, puts on first a tone of plaintive (!) and startled innocence, and then one of smug self-satisfaction—as who should ask, 'what have i said? what have i done? why am i on my trial?'"

(8) p. 40. "what dr. newman teaches is clear at last, and i see now how deeply i have wronged him. so far from thinking truth for its own sake to be no virtue, he considers it a virtue so lofty as to be unattainable by man."

(9) p. 43. "there is no use in wasting words on this 'economical' statement of dr. newman's. i shall only say that there are people in the world whom it is very difficult to help. as soon as they are got out of one scrape, they walk straight into another."

(10) p. 43. "dr. newman has shown 'wisdom' enough of that serpentine type which is his professed ideal.... yes, dr. newman is a very economical person."

(11) p. 44. "dr. newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand logic, to prove that i did not believe the accusation when i made it."

(12) p. 45. "these are hard words. if dr. newman shall complain of them, i can only remind him of the fate which befel the stork caught among the cranes, even though the stork had not done all he could to make himself like a crane, as dr. newman has, by 'economising' on the very title-page of his pamphlet."

these last words bring us to another and far worse instance of these slanderous assaults upon me, but its place is in a subsequent page.

now it may be asked of me, "well, why should not mr. kingsley take a course such as this? it was his original assertion that dr. newman was a professed liar, and a patron of lies; he spoke somewhat at random, granted; but now he has got up his references and he is proving, not perhaps the very thing which he said at first, but something very like it, and to say the least quite as bad. he is now only aiming to justify morally his original assertion; why is he not at liberty to do so?"

why should he not now insinuate that i am a liar and a knave! he had of course a perfect right to make such a charge, if he chose; he might have said, "i was virtually right, and here is the proof of it," but this he has not done, but on the contrary has professed that he no longer draws from my works, as he did before, the inference of my dishonesty. he says distinctly, p. 26, "when i read these outrages upon common sense, what wonder if i said to myself, 'this man cannot believe what he is saying?' i believe i was wrong." and in p. 31, "i said, this man has no real care for truth. truth for its own sake is no virtue in his eyes, and he teaches that it need not be. i do not say that now." and in p. 41, "i do not call this conscious dishonesty; the man who wrote that sermon was already past the possibility of such a sin."

why should he not! because it is on the ground of my not being a knave that he calls me a fool; adding to the words just quoted, "[my readers] have fallen perhaps into the prevailing superstition that cleverness is synonymous with wisdom. they cannot believe that (as is too certain) great literary and even barristerial ability may co-exist with almost boundless silliness."

why should he not! because he has taken credit to himself for that high feeling of honour which refuses to withdraw a concession which once has been made; though (wonderful to say!), at the very time that he is recording this magnanimous resolution, he lets it out of the bag that his relinquishment of it is only a profession and a pretence; for he says, p. 8: "i have accepted dr. newman's denial that [the sermon] means what i thought it did; and heaven forbid" (oh!) "that i should withdraw my word once given, at whatever disadvantage to myself." disadvantage! but nothing can be advantageous to him which is untrue; therefore in proclaiming that the concession of my honesty is a disadvantage to him, he thereby implies unequivocally that there is some probability still, that i am dishonest. he goes on, "i am informed by those from whose judgment on such points there is no appeal, that 'en hault courage,' and strict honour, i am also precluded, by the terms of my explanation, from using any other of dr. newman's past writings to prove my assertion." and then, "i have declared dr. newman to have been an honest man up to the 1st of february, 1864; it was, as i shall show, only dr. newman's fault that i ever thought him to be anything else. it depends entirely on dr. newman whether he shall sustain the reputation which he has so recently acquired," (by diploma of course from mr. kingsley.) "if i give him thereby a fresh advantage in this argument, he is most welcome to it. he needs, it seems to me, as many advantages as possible."

what a princely mind! how loyal to his rash promise, how delicate towards the subject of it, how conscientious in his interpretation of it! i have no thought of irreverence towards a scripture saint, who was actuated by a very different spirit from mr. kingsley's, but somehow since i read his pamphlet words have been running in my head, which i find in the douay version thus; "thou hast also with thee semei the son of gera, who cursed me with a grievous curse when i went to the camp, but i swore to him, saying, i will not kill thee with the sword. do not thou hold him guiltless. but thou art a wise man and knowest what to do with him, and thou shalt bring down his grey hairs with blood to hell."

now i ask, why could not mr. kingsley be open? if he intended still to arraign me on the charge of lying, why could he not say so as a man? why must he insinuate, question, imply, and use sneering and irony, as if longing to touch a forbidden fruit, which still he was afraid would burn his fingers, if he did so? why must he "palter in a double sense," and blow hot and cold in one breath? he first said he considered me a patron of lying; well, he changed his opinion; and as to the logical ground of this change, he said that, if any one asked him what it was, he could only answer that he really did not know. why could not he change back again, and say he did not know why? he had quite a right to do so; and then his conduct would have been so far straightforward and unexceptionable. but no;—in the very act of professing to believe in my sincerity, he takes care to show the world that it is a profession and nothing more. that very proceeding which at p. 15 he lays to my charge (whereas i detest it), of avowing one thing and thinking another, that proceeding he here exemplifies himself; and yet, while indulging in practices as offensive as this, he ventures to speak of his sensitive admiration of "hault courage and strict honour!" "i forgive you, sir knight," says the heroine in the romance, "i forgive you as a christian." "that means," said wamba, "that she does not forgive him at all." mr. kingsley's word of honour is about as valuable as in the jester's opinion was the christian charity of rowena. but here we are brought to a further specimen of mr. kingsley's method of disputation, and having duly exhibited it, i shall have done with him.

it is his last, and he has intentionally reserved it for his last. let it be recollected that he professed to absolve me from his original charge of dishonesty up to february 1. and further, he implies that, at the time when he was writing, i had not yet involved myself in any fresh acts suggestive of that sin. he says that i have had a great escape of conviction, that he hopes i shall take warning, and act more cautiously. "it depends entirely," he says, "on dr. newman, whether he shall sustain the reputation which he has so recently acquired" (p. 8). thus, in mr. kingsley's judgment, i was then, when he wrote these words, still innocent of dishonesty, for a man cannot sustain what he actually has not got; only he could not be sure of my future. could not be sure! why at this very time he had already noted down valid proofs, as he thought them, that i had already forfeited the character which he contemptuously accorded to me. he had cautiously said "up to february 1st," in order to reserve the title-page and last three pages of my pamphlet, which were not published till february 12th, and out of these four pages, which he had not whitewashed, he had already forged charges against me of dishonesty at the very time that he implied that as yet there was nothing against me. when he gave me that plenary condonation, as it seemed to be, he had already done his best that i should never enjoy it. he knew well at p. 8, what he meant to say at pp. 44 and 45. at best indeed i was only out upon ticket of leave; but that ticket was a pretence; he had made it forfeit when he gave it. but he did not say so at once, first, because between p. 8 and p. 44 he meant to talk a great deal about my idiotcy and my frenzy, which would have been simply out of place, had he proved me too soon to be a knave again; and next, because he meant to exhaust all those insinuations about my knavery in the past, which "strict honour" did not permit him to countenance, in order thereby to give colour and force to his direct charges of knavery in the present, which "strict honour" did permit him to handsel. so in the fifth act he gave a start, and found to his horror that, in my miserable four pages, i had committed the "enormity" of an "economy," which in matter of fact he had got by heart before he began the play. nay, he suddenly found two, three, and (for what he knew) as many as four profligate economies in that title-page and those reflections, and he uses the language of distress and perplexity at this appalling discovery.

now why this coup de théatre? the reason soon breaks on us. up to february 1, he could not categorically arraign me for lying, and therefore could not involve me (as was so necessary for his case), in the popular abhorrence which is felt for the casuists of rome: but, as soon as ever he could openly and directly pronounce (saving his "hault courage and strict honour") that i am guilty of three or four new economies, then at once i am made to bear, not only my own sins, but the sins of other people also, and, though i have been condoned the knavery of my antecedents, i am guilty of the knavery of a whole priesthood instead. so the hour of doom for semei is come, and the wise man knows what to do with him;—he is down upon me with the odious names of "st. alfonso da liguori," and "scavini" and "neyraguet," and "the romish moralists," and their "compeers and pupils," and i am at once merged and whirled away in the gulph of notorious quibblers, and hypocrites, and rogues.

but we have not even yet got at the real object of the stroke, thus reserved for his finale. i really feel sad for what i am obliged now to say. i am in warfare with him, but i wish him no ill;—it is very difficult to get up resentment towards persons whom one has never seen. it is easy enough to be irritated with friends or foes, vis-à-vis; but, though i am writing with all my heart against what he has said of me, i am not conscious of personal unkindness towards himself. i think it necessary to write as i am writing, for my own sake, and for the sake of the catholic priesthood; but i wish to impute nothing worse to kingsley than that he has been furiously carried away by his feelings. but what shall i say of the upshot of all this talk of my economies and equivocations and the like? what is the precise work which it is directed to effect? i am at war with him; but there is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done. i say it with shame and with stern sorrow;—he has attempted a great transgression; he has attempted (as i may call it) to poison the wells. i will quote him and explain what i mean.

"dr. newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand logic, to prove that i did not believe the accusation when i made it. therein he is mistaken. i did believe it, and i believed also his indignant denial. but when he goes on to ask with sneers, why i should believe his denial, if i did not consider him trustworthy in the first instance? i can only answer, i really do not know. there is a great deal to be said for that view, now that dr. newman has become (one must needs suppose) suddenly and since the 1st of february, 1864, a convert to the economic views of st. alfonso da liguori and his compeers. i am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word dr. newman may write. how can i tell that i shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation, of one of the three kinds laid down as permissible by the blessed alfonso da liguori and his pupils, even when confirmed by an oath, because 'then we do not deceive our neighbour, but allow him to deceive himself?' ... it is admissible, therefore, to use words and sentences which have a double signification, and leave the hapless hearer to take which of them he may choose. what proof have i, then, that by 'mean it? i never said it!' dr. newman does not signify, i did not say it, but i did mean it?"—pp. 44, 45.

now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in their proper places; here i will but say that i scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any protestants hate them; and i pray to be kept from the snare of them. but all this is just now by the bye; my present subject is mr. kingsley; what i insist upon here, now that i am bringing this portion of my discussion to a close, is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my feet;—to poison by anticipation the public mind against me, john henry newman, and to infuse into the imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust of everything that i may say in reply to him. this i call poisoning the wells.

"i am henceforth in doubt and fear," he says, "as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word dr. newman may write. how can i tell that i shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation? ... what proof have i, that by 'mean it? i never said it!' dr. newman does not signify, 'i did not say it, but i did mean it'?"

well, i can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect, i am but wasting my time in saying a word in answer to his foul calumnies; and this is precisely what he knows and intends to be its fruit. i can hardly get myself to protest against a method of controversy so base and cruel, lest in doing so, i should be violating my self-respect and self-possession; but most base and most cruel it is. we all know how our imagination runs away with us, how suddenly and at what a pace;—the saying, "caesar's wife should not be suspected," is an instance of what i mean. the habitual prejudice, the humour of the moment, is the turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good sense or a bad. we interpret it by our antecedent impressions. the very same sentiments, according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. there is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a lunatic asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, "how naturally he talks! you would think he was in his senses." controversies should be decided by the reason; is it legitimate warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and to its dislikings? anyhow, if mr. kingsley is able thus to practise upon my readers, the more i succeed, the less will be my success. if i am natural, he will tell them, "ars est celare artem;" if i am convincing, he will suggest that i am an able logician; if i show warmth, i am acting the indignant innocent; if i am calm, i am thereby detected as a smooth hypocrite; if i clear up difficulties, i am too plausible and perfect to be true. the more triumphant are my statements, the more certain will be my defeat.

so will it be if mr. kingsley succeeds in his man?uvre; but i do not for an instant believe that he will. whatever judgment my readers may eventually form of me from these pages, i am confident that they will believe me in what i shall say in the course of them. i have no misgiving it all, that they will be ungenerous or harsh with a man who has been so long before the eyes of the world; who has so many to speak of him from personal knowledge; whose natural impulse it has ever been to speak out; who has ever spoken too much rather than too little; who would have saved himself many a scrape, if he had been wise enough to hold his tongue; who has ever been fair to the doctrines and arguments of his opponents; who has never slurred over facts and reasonings which told against himself; who has never given his name or authority to proofs which he thought unsound, or to testimony which he did not think at least plausible; who has never shrunk from confessing a fault when he felt that he had committed one; who has ever consulted for others more than for himself; who has given up much that he loved and prized and could have retained, but that he loved honesty better than name, and truth better than dear friends.

and now i am in a train of thought higher and more serene than any which slanders can disturb. away with you, mr. kingsley, and fly into space. your name shall occur again as little as i can help, in the course of these pages. i shall henceforth occupy myself not with you, but with your charges.