know of the doctrine." But though Mr.
Newman especially had thrown out deep and illuminating thoughts on this
difficult question, it had not been treated systematically; and this
treatment Mr. Ward attempted to give to it. It was a striking and
powerful effort, full of keen insight into human experience and acute
observations on its real laws and conditions; but on the face of it, it
was laboured and strained; it chose its own ground, and passed unnoticed
neighbouring regions under different conditions; it left undealt with
the infinite variety of circumstances, history, capacities, natural
temperament, and those unexplored depths of will and character,
affecting choice and judgment, the realities of which have been brought
home to us by our later ethical literature. Up to a certain point his
task was easy. It is easy to say that a bad life, a rebellious temper, a
selfish spirit are hopeless disqualifications for judging spiritual
things; that we must take something for granted in learning any truths
whatever; that men must act as moral creatures to attain insight into
moral truths, to realise and grasp them as things, and not abstractions
and words. But then came the questions--What is that moral training,
which, in the case of the good heart, will be practically infallible in
leading into truth? And what is that type of character, of saintliness,
which gives authority which we cannot do wrong in following; where, if
question and controversy arise, is the common measure binding on both
sides; and can even the saints, with their immense variations and
apparent mixtures and failings, furnish that type? And next, where, in
the investigations which may be endlessly diversified, does intellect
properly come in and give its help? For come in somewhere, of course it
must; and the conspicuous dominance of the intellectual element in Mr.
Ward's treatment of the subject is palpable on the face of it. His
attempt is to make out a theory of the reasonableness of unproducible;
because unanalysed, reasons; reasons which, though the individual cannot
state them, may be as real and as legitimately active as the obscure
rays of the spectrum. But though the discussion in Mr. Ward's hands was
suggestive of much, though he might expose the superciliousness of
Whately or the shallowness of Mr. Goode, and show himself no unequal
antagonist to Mr. J.S. Mill, it left great difficulties unanswered, and
it had too much the appearance of being dir