ing to Mr. Newman to pronounce on the soundness of his principles
and inferences, with the view of getting Mr. Newman's sanction for them
against more timid or more dissatisfied friends; and he would come down
with great glee on objectors to some new and startling position, with
the reply, "Newman says so," Every one knows from the _Apologia_ what
was Mr. Newman's state of mind after 1841--a state of perplexity,
distress, anxiety; he was moving undoubtedly in one direction, but
moving slowly, painfully, reluctantly, intermittently, with views
sometimes clear, sometimes clouded, of that terribly complicated
problem, the answer to which was full of such consequences to himself
and to others. No one ever felt more keenly that it was no mere affair
of dexterous or brilliant logic; if logic could have settled it, the
question would never have arisen. But in this fevered state, with mind,
soul, heart all torn and distracted by the tremendous responsibilities
pressing on him, wishing above everything to be quiet, to be silent, at
least not to speak except at his own times and when he saw the
occasion, he had, besides bearing his own difficulties, to return
off-hand and at the moment some response to questions which he had not
framed, which he did not care for, on which he felt no call to
pronounce, which he was not perhaps yet ready to face, and to answer
which he must commit himself irrevocably and publicly to more than he
was prepared for. Every one is familiar with the proverbial distribution
of parts in the asking and the answering of questions; but when the
asker is no fool, but one of the sharpest-witted of mankind, asking with
little consideration for the condition or the wishes of the answerer,
with great power to force the answer he wants, and with no great
tenderness in the use he makes of it, the situation becomes a trying
one. Mr. Ward was continually forcing on Mr. Newman so-called
irresistible inferences; "If you say so and so, surely you must also say
something more?" Avowedly ignorant of facts and depending for them on
others, he was only concerned with logical consistency. And accordingly
Mr. Newman, with whom producible logical consistency was indeed a great
thing, but with whom it was very far from being everything, had
continually to accept conclusions which he would rather have kept in
abeyance, to make admissions which were used without their
qualifications, to push on and sanction extreme ideas which he hi