matic outlines are construed as expressions of devotional feeling towards the Virgin; and mere scholastic fancies, of the most baseless sort, clothed with pseudo-logical forms. "Mary was the "second Eve, and as the first Eve had, 66 or is alleged by schoolmen to have had, "a particular attribute, the second Eve "must à fortiori have had the same attri"bute or an attribute of a higher kind." When, in his "Discourse on the Fitness of the Glories of Mary," Dr. Newman spoke of the tradition of the Virgin's Assumption as coming "wafted westward on the aromatic breeze,” his readers could not help inferring that he was not the victim of any deep self-delusion on the subject. We know, from his autobiography, that he feels it a duty to throw himself into the system of the Church in which he finds himself. But in a long course of sophistical reasonings (so, without imputing the slightest dishonesty of purpose, we must call them) he has so strangely used his own intellect, that it is impossible to say whether this gifted man is or is not really the dupe of fallacies which would not for a moment impose upon any plain understanding. Not that Dr. Newman's reasoning powers ever bore any proportion to his other intellectual gifts, to the strength of his imagination, his dramatic insight into religious character, or his literary grace and skill.

Surely among all the strange purposes that dialectics have served, they never served a stranger than that of proving syllogistically that "the doctrine of the

Immaculate Conception is bound up "in the doctrine of the Fathers, that "Mary is the second Eve."

We have used the term "sophistical," in reference to Dr. Newman's habits of arguing. We repeat that we do not mean by it dishonest; but we will illustrate it at once, in its simply dialectical sense, by a quotation from this pamphlet.

"The Virgin and Child is not a mere modern idea; on the contrary, it is represented again and again, as every visitor to Rome is aware, in the paintings of the catacombs. Mary is there drawn with the Divine Infant

He with His hand in the attitude of blessing. No representation can more forcibly convey the doctrine of the high dignity of the mother, and, I will add, of her power over her Son. Why should the memory of His time of subjection be so dear to Christians, and so carefully preserved ?"

As though the painter, in thus representing the Infant Jesus in the lap of His mother, intended to suggest the idea here slipped in by Dr. Newmanthat of the permanent power of Mary over the Second Person of the Trinity, and His subjection to her, in the sense of the Roman Jure Matris inpera Filio. As though the Mother and Child had become a familiar subject of Christian art because it was Christ's time of subjection.

In quoting from the Fathers, Dr. Newman, like all the other controversialists who resort to that great treasurehouse of verbal proofs, is naturally drawn to the passages favourable to his own side of the question. He quotes from Tertullian ("De Carne Christi," 17) a passage which, in everything but mere verbal forms, is as remote from the doctrines and devotions which it is adduced to support, as if it had been fetched from the Zendavesta. In another part of the same treatise (c. 7), Tertullian says that Mary cannot be proved to have believed in Christ (non demonstratur ad hæsisse illi); and in another treatise ("Adv. Marionem," iv. 19), he says that Christ renounced her (abdicavit).

In the course of the argument we get some curious glimpses into Dr. Newman's state of mind, and his relations to the different elements of the Roman Catholic world. He gives us almost expressly to understand that he has sobered down since the ecstatic days of his conversion; a fact which indeed we might have discovered for ourselves, by comparing his present apology for the worship of the Virgin with the rapturous discourses on the Glories of Mary which he published in 1850. He distinctly severs himself from two of his old associates, the late Father Faber and Mr. Ward, both as to the prerogatives of the Virgin and as to the infallibility

Not only does he seem content that there should be national differences of religion, but that the religion of the common people should be vulgar, like themselves; and not only that it should be vulgar, but that it should be superstitious and corrupt.

"In the next place, what has power "to stir holy and refined souls is potent "also with the multitude; and the "religion of the multitude is ever vul

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gar and abnormal; it ever will be "tinctured with fanaticism and super"stition, while men are what they 66 are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt religion. If you are to have a "Catholic Church, you must put up "with fish of every kind, guests good "and bad, vessels of gold and vessels "of earth. You may beat religion out "of men if you will, and then their (6 excesses will take a different direction ; "but if you make use of religion to "improve them, they will make use of

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religion to corrupt it. And then you "will have effected that compromise of "which our countrymen report so un"favourably from abroad:-a high,

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grand faith and worship which com"pels their admiration, and puerile 66 absurdities among the people which

It is not easy to say what manner of teaching this is. teaching this is. But it certainly is not the teaching of Paul of Tarsus.

The "Apologia" was described by an Anglican journal with singular infelicity as a dread warning against the dangers of a search after truth. Truth, in the simple meaning of the term, is precisely the thing which Dr. Newman has never sought has never, or almost never, even conceived the idea of seeking. That which he has sought most earnestly, most honestly, with an entire disregard of all worldly considerations, is the best ecclesiastical system. To this, not to a simple search for truth, he was trained by his Oxford culture and his Oxford associations, which, even in his search for a system, narrowed his view, contracted his sympathies, and gave him an almost irresistible bias towards Rome. If of the existing systems one is alone good, perhaps he has found it. If of the existing systems none is alone good, or even clearly the best, his labour that way is but lost, and he had better have stayed where Providence had placed him, and done what he could for those among whom Providence had thrown him. If in the casket which, after dread preparation and august throes of conscience, he at last opened, he has found neither exactly Portia's picture, nor exactly a death's-head, but something less attractive than the first, though less repulsive than the second, men of inferior gifts may be thankful that their conscience does not compel them to stake their eternal salvation on the issue of such a choice. He has borne in his life a witness to the transcendent importance of spiritual things for which all men have reason to be thankful. He has produced religious writings which will always be prized for their substance as well as for their form, by Christians of all communions. He has given an impulse to the revival of religious art, which is covering the country with the monuments of his influence. He has unconsciously, but not without merit, contributed to the ultimate union of Christendom, by opening a way from

putting an end to the hide-bound exclusiveness and self-complacency of the Anglican establishment. He is in every way an illustrious citizen of the Civitas Dei, though he is bound, like its other citizens, to remember that it is the kingdom of light. But if he, born and bred where he was, is found, at the close of his career, protesting that he believes in

the liquefaction of the Blood of St. Januarius and in the winking Madonnas of the Roman States, and here pretending to defend on rational grounds the worship of the Virgin and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, this is a Nemesis, no doubt, in Protestant eyes, but it is not the Nemesis of a life devoted to the pursuit of truth.

THIS problem has been long solved to the complete satisfaction of all scientific men and all philosophers. It, nevertheless, involves one of the most interesting inquiries of physical science. The question is this: If we opened our eyes for the first time upon the world around us, should we be able to know immediately without any reflection or any experience-that the objects which we saw were at a distance from our eyes should we be able to see that there was space around us? In other words: If we stand at the water's brink on the sea-shore, and look at that sheet of motionless or moving substance spread out before us, would it appear to us, if we were then using our eyes for the first time, as something perpendicular or as something horizontal-as something raised up towards the level of our eyes, or as something laid flat in a straight line out before our feet? Should we be able to see that the parts which we now know to be the most distant are the most distant; or should we suppose them to be no more distant from us than what we have at our feet? In still other words: When in winter we stand in a plantation close to a tree with its branches to the ground, and look through that tree, and through all the others, in one line from where we stand, do we see the spaces between these trees? Should we be able to

suddenly for the first time became possessed of sight, that all the trees thus seen, some through others, and all appearing to us to be crowded together in contact with one another, are not really in contact, but have intervals between them which make some of them more remote from us than others? or (which is the only alternative) should we in that case see the farthest tree as near us as the nearest ?

Now the answer of all thinking men is, that we cannot in any of these cases see the kind of extension which we call remoteness, and that, prior to experience, not only every object, but every part of every object, would seem to us as near as the object or the part which was the nearest. Locke states this matter thus, in the loose language of his age :"When we set before our eyes a round

"that which is truly variety of shadow "and colour collecting the figure, it "makes it pass for a mark of figure, and "frames to itself the perception of a "convex figure and a uniform colour, "when the idea we receive from thence "is only a plane variously coloured, as "is evident in painting." (Essay, in painting." (Essay, "Book ii. chap. 9). There is remoteness in a jet ball or in an apple as completely as in the ocean. There are some points in each more remote from us than others. The question is, do we see this remoteness or Do we infer it? All thinking men, except perhaps two, are agreed that we infer it.

Even those who have not thought much upon the subject will have little difficulty in discerning that we could not have known anything of remoteness -either what it was in itself, or where it was without experience, i.e. without having otherwise experienced the same or a similar extension; and the theory that we really could not have this knowledge obtains for such persons a strong prima facie corroboration from the information afforded us by those born blind, who have obtained their sight by an operation. We find that these persons see all objects so near them that they suppose them to be in contact with their eyes or face, and this to such an extent that, when they once find that they can get their hands placed between their eyes and the objects round them, they keep them there as they walk about, to protect their eyes from contact with these objects. Four instances of this, out of several, will be sufficient--a patient of Mr. Nunneley's, one of Dr. Franz's, one of Dr. Grant's, and Dr. Trinchinetti's double case. Of the first it is recorded that he thought the objects round him "to be in contact with the eye," and that, when he ascertained that this was not the case, "he walked most "carefully about with his hands held "out before him to prevent things "hurting his eyes by touching them." Of Franz's patient we read, to the same effect, that "all objects appeared so near "to him, that he was afraid of coming in

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of Grant's case is similar. We are told that "on first seeing he asked for his "guide. But,' said he, 'I think I can. get on without him.' He then tried a "few steps, but everything seemed to "make him afraid." Of the fourth case we have the following fuller statement :-"The observations of Dr. Trin"chinetti on this point are more exact, "and very instructive. He operated at "the same time on two patients (brother "and sister) eleven and ten years old

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respectively. The same day, having "caused the boy to examine an orange, "he placed it about one metre from him, "and bade him try to take it. The boy brought his hand close to his eye, and, "closing his fist, found it empty to his great surprise. He then tried again a "few inches from his eye, and at last, "in this tentative way, succeeded in taking the orange. When the same experiment was tried with the girl, "she also at first attempted to grasp the orange with her hand very near her eye; then, perceiving her error, stretched "out her forefinger, and pushed it in a straight line slowly until she reached the object. Other patients have been "observed (by Janin and Duval) to "move their hands in search of objects, "in straight lines from the eye. Dr. "Trinchinetti indeed regards these ob"servations as indicating a belief that "visible objects were in actual contact "with the eye. . . . It is especially

worthy of remark that, when the boy "had missed the orange on his first

attempt, he sought to seize it at gra"dually increasing distances until he "succeeded." I give this important statement in the words of Mr. Abbott, one of the two critics above alluded to, who suppose themselves our opponents, and represent themselves as such, upon this common doctrine; and there are few general readers to whom it will not appear that we have in these surgical cases abundant prima facie evidence for the truth of the conclusion which ever very little reflection will suggest to them, that we do not see distance from us, or remoteness, in the same sense, or in the

short, that from the moment it becomes what it is, we do not see it at all, and that we then become acquainted with its existence in quite another way.

It is necessary to explain here, once for all, that by "distance" we always mean the space between two visual points, and that we never can see the thing which we call "distance," except where we see its two extreme points. If there is nothing but air between these two visual points, it may appear to us that we cannot see this space, since air occupies it, and air is invisible. But this is a mistake. If we see the two points at the same time, we see the space between them which is a quality or relation characteristic of them, and, since the points are visual, the space or distance between them, whether occupied by visual points or not, is visual also. Now, there are two kinds of this visual distance. 1. There is that of which we see the two visual extreme points before us-either one point above and one below, or one point to the right and one to the left. This is called "angular" distance, from the angle which it forms with the eye; sometimes "transverse" distance, because it crosses the line of sight; and sometimes "lateral" distance, because we are placed at the side of it, and not at the end of it, when we see it. 2. The other kind of visual distance is what we call "remoteness," or distance from us, and differs from the above only in the circumstance that it is placed differently with respect to our eye, and very differently. It does not lie at all across the line of sight, but coincides rigidly with it; nor are we at all at the side of this sort of distance when we look towards it, but only at the end of it; and one of its visual points is always so exactly either behind, or in visual contact with, the other, that we cannot see the least portion of the space that we know there is between them. In treating on the subject now before us, this second kind of distance is supposed to be sufficiently designated by the term "distance" alone, without any qualifying expres

in the line of sight," and "distance from us;" sometimes "the third dimension of space;" and it means exactly what we call "remoteness"-which term, though here unusual, is by far the safer one to use. Of the two kinds of distance now described, there is no question, nor room for question, as to whether we see the first. It is obvious that we do. What needs explanation is, the fact that we cannot, under any circumstances, see the last. We can only see the last by converting it into the first, i.e. by placing the eye at the side of it. But when we do this it ceases to be remoteness; or, in other words, no one point in it is any longer nearer to us than another.

Before I proceed to exhibit more in detail our principle respecting this remoteness, and to state the demonstration of it, it is necessary to speak of our two critics, Mr. Abbott and Mr. Bailey, who assert, against us all, that we can see distance, and to explain how they came to oppose (or shall I not say-to fancy that they opposed?) so very obvious a fact of consciousness and science, as that disputed in this assertion.

And first I would observe, that what they oppose is a much more limited proposition than their language would lead one to imagine. They do not deny, as it is ordinarily supposed they do, that we cannot see distance. They admit that we cannot. Their language seems to have deceived even themselves. They admit that, except for a few yards in front of us, we do not see immediately a single particle of the distance between us and the horizon, nor even between us and the most distant stars. All distance from us they admit to be inferred from signs, and, in itself, as invisible as thinking men have ascertained it to be, with the sole exception of that very short space before us. They suppose that the first acts of the chicken while it is leaving the shell, prove that, in that very limited space, we can see the distance or intervals which we cannot see further off. That is all. The question between them and us is not, then, as to whether distance is or is not a