John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

Charles Reding was the only son of a clergyman, who was in possession of a valuable benefice in a midland county. His father intended him for orders and sent him at a proper age to a public school. He had long revolved in his mind the respective advantages and disadvantages of public and private education, and had decided in favour of the former. "Seclusion", he said, "is no security for virtue...." (p. 11)

Summary: Charles Reding comes to Oxford, and while a bright, inquisitive mind in his way, is not much different from other students, beyond the fact that he has an unusual irenic temperament that wants, where possible, to give people the benefit of the doubt. He falls in with William Sheffield, entering Oxford at the same time, who is a bit more cynical and sarcastic. Oxford University at the time was a central hub, one might say, in the Church of England, since once of its major social functions was the training of clergy, and religion is a hot topic at the time. The late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century had involved a proliferation of different views of religion in the English Church, and political disputes over Dissenters and Catholics had intensified the importance of religion as a subject, and thus everyone discusses religious matters. At Oxford, Reding comes into contact with some of this chaos. Sheffield, of course, is the sort of person destined to respectability; he thinks making a lot of fuss about religion is usually the sign of a sham, and thus dabbles in the fads but never commits to anything much. Reding meets Bateman, a ritualist Anglo-Catholic whose conception of being Catholic is wearing cassocks and making sure his Anglican church has saint-niches, which remain empty because, of course, he couldn't get away with filling them with statues of saints. He meets White, a brash young man whose Anglo-Catholicism is all big talk that will obviously never come into action. There is Freeborn, the Evangelical who thinks all these catholicizing movements are slipping toward idolatry. There is Vincent, the affable Latitudinarian who never quite opposes anyone, but never quite supports them. There is Carlton, who seems in many ways to represent the most intellectually serious forms of Anglicanism. And so forth. What we see is that there is no obvious doctrinal Anglican cores -- everybody agrees to use the same words, but the primary unity beyond that seems just to be an agreement not to be Roman Catholic.

This situation -- Anglicans being Anglicans and yet not obviously having anything in common beyond being Anglicans -- causes severe problems for Reding, particularly as he comes closer to having to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles for his degree and yet finding few answers and no agreement about how he is supposed to understand them. Charles ill-advised remarks to the effect that at least the Roman Catholics have an official position leads people to suspect him of being in danger of swimming the Tiber. Such suspicions are self-feeding -- every discussion, every question, every puzzlement gives people further reason for it. They start actively trying to prevent his flight to Rome. In vain does Charles point out that he has no intention of becoming Roman Catholic, that he has never talked to a Catholic priest, that he has never studied Catholic doctrine and only knows about it second-hand, that he doesn't understand why anyone leaves the Church of England for the Church of Rome. Everyone is very concerned about his eventual defection, and, ironically, it will be this that will create situations in which he has to make the leap. He is punished for a tendency to Roman Catholicism that he doesn't see himself as having, but it is so consistent that he begins to doubt his own assessment. Perhaps other people are seeing something about himself that he does not?

From the time that Loss and Gain was published, it has been treated as autobiographical and satirical. It is not autobiographical -- if any character in the book is like Newman, it is not Charles but the priest he briefly meets on the train when he is intending to convert. It is an essential part of Charles's story that he is not, unlike Newman, a part of the Oxford Movement; he knows very little about them, beyond respecting the Movement's willingness to take doctrine seriously. Reding's journey has none of the intellectual shifts that Newman's had; Reding, while an intelligent young man, has a conversion that does not at all proceed on intellectual ground. All they have in common, really, is what every convert to Rome would have had at the time: massive loss, as opportunities dry up and relationships rupture, and massive gain.

Calling the book satiricial is better founded. It is not a comic work, but parts are quite funny. Anglo-Catholics come in for some heavy satirizing; Newman knew them well, and his own Romeward interests being devotional, even as an Anglican he didn't always have much patience for those whose Romeward tendencies were mostly ritualistic or scholastic. And the chapter of Charles fending off the many sectaries who, hearing that he is converting to Catholicism, come to try to divert him into their own weird religious varieties, is justly regarded as hilarious by almost everyone. There is also a humorously biting edge to the fact that Charles is pushed into conversion entirely by people who are trying to keep him from being converted. Yet the book is not, I think, primarily satirical in purpose. Rather, it is a character study, a look at what, psychologically, goes into making a radical transformation, and all the loss and gain involved. It is, as its subtitle suggests, 'The Story of a Convert'. That it sees clearly the many absurdities and humorous twists that can attend conversion is just a byproduct of the great art with which it looks at the question.

While a dialogical novel, the work is not a philosophical or theological dialogue; religion is, of course, heavily discussed, but the participants in the discussions are themselves wrestling with questions. Catholic doctrines are not explored at any profound level, and Reding's own conversion is not a conversion by doctrinal arguments. It's a dialogical novel because dialogue displays for us social relations. This is one of the reasons, I think, that the novel is much better as a novel than most novels about conversions; the discussions do not serve a primarily didactic purpose but as a depiction of society and what it means to be someone who, without resentment, malice, or even dislike, nonetheless doesn't fit in it and cannot, however he tries, make himself do so. It is extremely successful at this.

Favorite Passage:

"...I hope you approve of the cassock, Mrs. Reding?"

"It is a very cold dress, sir -- that's my opinion -- when made of silk or bombazeen; and very unbecoming too, when worn by itself."

"Particularly behind", said Charles; "it is quite unshapely."

"Oh. I have remedied that", said Bateman; "you have noticed, Miss Reding, I dare say, the Bishop's short cassock. It comes to the knees, and look smuch like a continuation of a waistcoat, the straight-cut coat being worn as usual. Well, Miss Reding, I have adopted the same plan with the long cassock; I put my coat over it."

Mary had difficulty to keep from smiling; Charles laughed out. "Impossible, Bateman", he said;  you don't mean you wear your tailed French coat over your long straight cassock reaching to your ankles?"

"Certainly", said Bateman gravely; "I thus consult for warmth and appearance too; and all my parishioners are sure to know me. I think this a great point, Miss Reding: I hear the little boys as I pass say, 'That's the parson'."

"I'll be bound they do", said Charles. (p. 225)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

*****

John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain, Lipscombe, ed., Ignatius Press (San Francisco: 2012).

But God Had Called Him Man

 The Clerk
by Charles Williams 

 The clerk sat on a stool
And added up a column,
Looking a very fool,
Staid he was and solemn.
He said: 'Nineteen and one.
Mark nought and carry two.'
And that was all that he had done
And all that he could do. 

 The clerk sat on his stool
And another line began:
The heroes called him fool
But God had called him man.
He said: 'Two fives are ten
And carry one along.'
The devil shuddered in his den
And Heaven broke forth in song.

Dashed Off XXV

Every society's institutions are inevitably broken down by perversion, oppression, betrayal, and malicious violence.

(a fragment of the physical map) position with respect to time -> velocity; velocity with respect to time ->acceleration; velocity with respect to mass -> momentum; acceleration with respect to mass -> force; momentum with respect to time -> force; force with respect to distance -> work; work in terms of capacity/capability -> energy

anfractuous: full of windings and intricate turnings

Propp's functions are invariances across stories; they are determined by comparison to many other stories. Thus what counts as functional vs nonfunctional will in fact depend on the comparison set.

The groove in a sword blade (fuller) is to reduce the weight of the blade (even a short fuller can reduce a considerable portion of the weight) while not significantly weakening it. Ricassos, when existing, are unsharpened parts of the blade base (the forte) allowing the blade itself to be gripped for particular actions.

the small thing that makes the world a little better in a way that brings people together (Frieren)

three major forms of ornament-making: coloring, carving, casting (there are other forms, but they tend to copy these three into different media, e.g., mosaic)

Part of the purpose of civil religion is to give civil value to what is prior to the civil society; it is, so to speak, the filial piety of civil society itself.

"...the general reason why Plato rejects nominalism, materialism, etc., is that these positions render impossible the explanation of the phenomena they are supposed to explain." Gerson

Sanctions must derive from persons.

Every human person is a work in progress.

At the end of life, reconciliation, eucharist, and unction each and together provide an opportunity for full repentance and disposition to eternity.

The self is hidden by its passions.

Between 235 and 284, there were 20 emperors recognized by the Senate, but in fact there were many more claimants than this. The period was effectively a free-for-all civil war.

The range of Christian response to ancient persecution -- hiding, lapsed, certificated, and confessing -- are implicit in all Christian interactions with the world.

the simplicities that explain complexities

The human being has many consciousnesses, such as visual, tactile, memorative, integrated by being consciousnesses of one living being.

Scientimagic has always been more at the center of science fiction than science. What science fiction does is explore the evocativeness of scientific, parascientific, and peri-scientific vocabularies.

Recognition is not solidarity.

(1) express words (2) general tendency (3) analogy of doctrine (4) common consent

"*Authority* in all instances belongs to those by whom judgment is finally pronounced on the last appeal." R. I. Wilberforce

Movement through space is a temporal power; transition through time is a spatial power.

God in assuming human nature assumens also human civilizationality.

The meaning of a term is in its being alive.

kinds of private prayer: (1) basic religious expression (2) preparation for liturgy (3) participative liturgy

artificial virtues (in Hume's sense) and group virtues

'Existential import' would be more accurately called 'objectual import'.

faith as involving an openness to discovering

Often when people criticize things that are generally regarded as hierarchical, they criticize them for a lack of hierarchical acts.

"Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods." Wittgenstein

We cannot help but expect analogies between beautiful things; beauty pushes us toward analogies.

grammar : angel :: rhetoric : archangel :: dialectic : principality

ordinary experience of extraordinary things

the release & detachment of the same sign to different domains

rituals as symbols vs rituals as frameworks of symbols

People will sometimes classify philosophical things as religion when they don't know what to do with them.

In the ordinary narrative art, world-building arises through connection of story to story, attempt to maintain a consistency through variation within a story, and drawing the reader/listener in through plausible patterns.

Living as we do in the infancy of the Church, we often struggle to see the larger providential picture, and have often misguidedly fixated on things that mattered little or ignored things that mattered much. We are not different from our ancestors in this.

A People without a Crown lack one of the historical ways of seeing and understanding themselves; they must compensate for this or collapse into confusion.

three modes of apostolic mission: reasoning, preaching, and virtue
Cf. Beda: "Theirs was the honour and authority of the apostles by their holy witness, the truth by their learning, the miracles by their merit."

Civilization is both natural and artificial, like human life.

When we look at the dreams of transhumanists, so much of what they imagine is just an externalization of what rational mind and virutous character already have more intimately, as if, failing to be geniuses, we dressed in clothes we stereotype as those of geniuses.

"The office of Pontifex Maximus, or chief priest, was to declare and interpret divine law, or, rather, to preside over sacred rites; he not only prescribed rules for public ceremony, but regulated the sarifices of private persons, not suffering them to vary from established custom, and giving information to everyone of what was requisite for purposes of worship or supplication." Plutarch (Life of Numa Pompilius)

"In apprehending the Creator through the creature, the philosopher has no cause to boast: he simply consents not to frustrate a principal purpose of his natural being, when the way has opened for him to fulfill it." Farrer
"To reject metaphysics is equivalent to saying that there are no serious questions for the human mind except those which fall under the special sciences."
"Our minds, in fact, are neither mirrors nor containers: their receptivity depends on what they can *do*, on their ability to busy themselves with their object, to express it in discoursing on it."
"To know God by revelation man needs both reason and wit; without reason he could not make sense of revelation, without wit he could not receive it."
"Poetry and divine inspiration have this in common, that both are projected in images which cannot be decoded, but must be allowed to signify what they signify of the reality beyond them."
"All parables are imperfect, or they would not be parables. Wisdom lies in seeing how far any comparison takes us, and at what point it must desert us."
"A good man helped by Grace may do human things divinely; Christ did divine things humanly."
"The two essential capacities of a reasonable creature, to love and to think, are in a manner both divine and infinite. Thought can aspire to think things as they are in themselves, not as they happen to affect the the thinker, and this is to model one's mind on the thought of God, the simple truth. So also we can care for things as God made them to be, not as they concern a personal interest, or a private passion."
"The sacraments are covenanted mercies; of uncovenanted mercies the number is infinite, and the scope unknown."
"The way to show God's mind in nature is to let them show us how they go."

Any argument from evil always presupposes an account of creation.

Medieval theology and philosophy were primarily concerned with explication of meanings.

Most theories of reason and rationality only consider them in their solid, crystalline form, but they have liquid and gaseous forms, less rigid and more diffuse and fluid, and other forms for which the physical analogy begins to fail.

Evolutionary theory shows us that it takes a considerable part of a universe to make a living thing.

A group mind would have to be held together by self-love, both love of the group mind for itself as group mind and love of the individual parts for themselves as part of the group.

If you had an oracle of the gods, to use it well you would have to know yourself.

the anarchic character of modern Catholicism (Brendan Hodge)

No one spirituality is adequate to the entire Body of Christ.

"Only the person who renounces self-importance, who no longer struggles to defend or assert himself, can be large enough for God's boundless action." Edith Stein
"God is truth, and whoever seeks truth is seeking God, whether he knows it or not."

Cor ad Cor Loquitur

 Today is the feast of St. John Henry Newman, who will be officially designated a Doctor of the Church in November. From An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Chapter 10, Section 1:

Conscience is a personal guide, and I use it because I must use myself; I am as little able to think by any mind but my own as to breathe with another's lungs. Conscience is nearer to me than any other means of knowledge. And as it is given to me, so also is it given to others; and being carried about by every individual in his own breast, and requiring nothing besides itself, it is thus adapted for the communication to each separately of that knowledge which is most momentous to him individually, -- adapted for the use of all classes and conditions of men, for high and low, young and old, men and women, independently of books, of educated reasoning, of physical knowledge, or of philosophy. Conscience, too, teaches us, not only that God is, but what He is; it provides for the mind a real image of Him, as a medium of worship; it gives us a rule of right and wrong, as being His rule, and a code of moral duties. Moreover, it is so constituted that, if obeyed, it becomes clearer in its injunctions, and wider in their range, and corrects and completes the accidental feebleness of its initial teachings. Conscience, then, considered as our guide, is fully furnished for its office. I say all this without entering into the question how far external assistances are in all cases necessary to the action of the mind, because in fact man does not live in isolation, but is everywhere found as a member of society; I am not concerned here with abstract questions.

One of his most famous works, usually just known as "Lead, Kindly Light":

The Pillar of the Cloud
by St. John Henry Newman

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
 Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home --
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene -- one step enough for me. 

 I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that Thou
 Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
 Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. 

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
 Will lead me on,
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
 The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. 

 At Sea.
June 16, 1833.

A Poem Draft

A rough first sketch, based on the Japanese folktales of Momotarō; 'Momo' means 'peach' and Tarō is a very common Japanese name, common enough that it is sometimes used to mean an everyman. Hence 'Peachy Jack'.

 Peachy Jack

In days of old, young Peachy Jack,
from river born, explored the earth,
and sought the spirit-island ways
to fight the spirits of the earth;
he met a dog upon the road
and with him shared some sticky buns;
a monkey, and a pheasant, too,
were sharing in those tasty buns.
"And whither go you?" each would ask;
"I go to steal the spirit-gold,"
our Peachy Jack would then reply,
and so they went in search of gold,
and, coming to the spirit-house,
the pheasant flew above the gate,
the monkey climbed the ivy wall,
the dog broke through the iron gate,
and they and Peachy Jack did fight
the spirit-king and bound him well,
and took his gold and then went home;
the four together lived quite well.

It Never Was Lit Again on my Hearth

 The Witch
by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge 

I have walked a great while over the snow,
And I am not tall nor strong.
My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set,
And the way was hard and long.
I have wandered over the fruitful earth,
But I never came here before.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door! 

 The cutting wind is a cruel foe.
I dare not stand in the blast.
My hands are stone, and my voice a groan,
And the worst of death is past.
I am but a little maiden still,
My little white feet are sore.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door! 

 Her voice was the voice that women have,
Who plead for their heart's desire.
She came -- she came -- and the quivering flame
Sunk and died in the fire.
It never was lit again on my hearth
Since I hurried across the floor,
To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.

More Lonesome than the Desert Wild

 The Stranger
by Henry Longueville Mansel

 I stood amidst a joyful crowd, in festive pageantry:
Among the gay, the fair, the proud, was none to smile on me.
 No! cold was every glancing eye, and heartless every tone:
 And in the midst of gaiety I felt I was alone. 

 I turned me from the festal scene -- my heart was truly sad;
 I felt I must not linger there, where all save me were glad.
 I was a lonely being there -- unnoticed and unknown:
 I turned me from the sight and wept, because I was alone. 

I stood where every look was warm, and every accent kind;
I thought not of the giddy throng, the joys I left behind:
But, withering like the autumn leaves, those kindred souls are gone,
 And I am left in solitude, neglected and alone. 

 More lonesome than the desert wild, than ocean's trackless wave;
 More mournful than the pall of death, more cheerless than the grave;
 Is he who weeps for loved ones lost, for friendships overthrown;
 And gazes on the busy world, 'mong millions, -- yet alone. 

 O may I learn to rest my hopes on other worlds than this!
Here, pilgrims on life's weary way, we cannot hope for bliss.
 O may I, bowed to God's decrees, with resignation own,
Our destined mansion is not here -- 'tis good to be alone.

The Golden Age of the Philosopher

 There are proud enthusiasts who conclude that, by advancing in knowledge and the useful arts, man will soon be able to command nature, and become independent of it. It is singular to observe how every mind paints a golden age for the future destinies of our world, and each mind colours that age with its own hues. The golden age of the philosopher is an anticipated period in which man shall be able to control all, and yet be controlled of none. But the philosopher forgets one most important element in his calculation and that is, that in very proportion as society becomes more artificial, it becomes more reticulated, and the destinies of every one portion more connected with those of every other, and that the snapping of one link in this network may throw the whole into inextricable confusion. In short, both the regular and the contingent pervade nature, and we cannot free ourselves from the one or the other; and man, whether in his lesser or wider spheres, whether in the ruder or more civilized states of society, is made to fall in with very much the same proportion of both.

James McCosh, The Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral, Third Edition, Sutherland and Knox (Edinburgh: 1852) p. 173. McCosh was arguably the last major figure in what we call today, 'Scottish Common Sense Philosophy'. He spent some time in Belfast at Queen's College (now Queen's University), but in the 1860s was invited by the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) to become its president. He was one of Princeton's most effective presidents; the college had had a very rocky nineteenth century, beginning with student riots over Stanley Stanhope Smith's attempts to secularize it, continuing with student riots over Ashbel Green's attempt to re-theologize it, nearly shutting down due to low enrollment under James Carnahan, then, as it was slowly improving, hit by the Civil War (almost a third of its students had been from Southern states). McCosh turned most of it around, cultivated one of the premier faculties in the United States, established the doctorate program, massively expanded enrollment, and established features of collegiate life that were copied elsewhere for the next fifty years. In 1888, he resigned the presidency and became a philosophy professor until his death in 1894. McCosh's The Method of the Divine Government is one of the better nineteenth-century discussions of design arguments and their implications.