XII. The Daemon of Socrates

At the outset I must plead guilty to a misnomer, for which, however, I am not responsible. It has become a tradition to speak of the Daemon of Socrates; but I hope to show that the term is without warrant and incorrect.

The Daemon of Socrates has been treated so often, and by so many authors, historians, philosophers, and critics, both in classical and Christian times, that I, at least, cannot hope to say anything new upon it. I may, however, review the judgments of others, and then offer what seems to me to be the true interpretation of this singular fact in the history of philosophy.

It will, I think, be found to be no mere intellectual eccentricity, no mere superstition, still less an un meaning record of Greek history, but a fact in the psychology of the greatest philosophical mind of the ancient world, full of significance for us, and throwing much light upon the analysis of our moral nature.

The life of Socrates extended over a tract of seventy years, that is from 469 to 440 B.C., and embraced the most critical and splendid period of Athenian history. During his lifetime, Athens rose to the height of its imperial hegemony over the states and islands and colonies of Greece; at the time of his death its decline was already far advanced. It was the period of the final victories over the Persians, and also of the Peloponnesian contests. In his day the Constitution of Athens passed from its aristocratic period to the con flicts of democracy and oligarchy, which completed its fall. In politics, it was the time of Pericles, and of the statesmen formed by him; in philosophy, of the Hylozoists, the Atomists, and the Metaphysical or Theological Philosophers (so ably described here last year by Professor Blackie), and also of the Sophists: in poetry, of Sophocles and Aristophanes; and in arts, of Phidias.

In the midst of all these splendours of imperial greatness, intellectual culture, excessive refinement, luxurious self-indulgence, public and private immorality, Socrates arose as a cross-questioner of men, a seeker after moral truth, an example and a teacher of temperance and justice. There is something majestic and melancholy in his account of himself, and of his mission, as he declared it in his Apology before his judges.

He was accused by Meletus and Anytus of corrupting the youth of Athens by philosophical para doxes, and of introducing new gods, or of denying all gods. In answer he spoke as follows:

'If you should say to me, "0 Socrates, we will not believe Anytus. We will let you off; but on this condition — that you no longer go on with this questioning and philosophising; and if you should be caught again doing this, you shall die;" — if, as I said, you should acquit me on these conditions, I should say to you, 0 men of Athens, I reverence you and I love you, but I shall obey God rather than you. As long as I breathe, and am able, I shall not cease to philosophise, and to exhort you, and to demonstrate (the truth) to whomsoever among you I may light upon, saying, in my accustomed words, " How is it, 0 best of men, that you, being an Athenian, and of a city the greatest and noblest for wisdom and power, are not ashamed to be careful of money, studying how you can make the most of it, and of glory also and of honour; but of prudence, and truth, and the soul, how you may make the best of these, have neither care nor thought?" And this I will do, to young and old, whomsoever I may meet; both to alien and citizen, and, above all, to the men of this city, inasmuch as you are nearer to me in kindred. For this is the command of God, as you well know; and I think that no greater good ever yet came to the State than this service which I render to God. For I go about doing nothing else than to persuade you, both young and, old, to be careful in the first place neither of the body, nor of money, nor of anything so earnestly as of the soul, how you* may make it as perfect as possible. I tell you that virtue does not spring from money, but that from virtue money springs, and all other goods of man, both to the individual and to the commonwealth. If, then, to teach these things be to destroy our young men, that would be mischievous in me indeed. But if any one should say I teach anything other than these truths, he speaks falsely. Moreover, I say, 0 Athenians, whether you believe Anytus or not, and whether you let me go or not, I shall never do anything else, even though I were to die many times.1

' Do not clamour, 0 Athenians, hut ahide by the request I made to you — that is, not to clamour at what I am saying, but to hear me. For you will be benefited, I believe, by hearing me. I am about to say to you some things at which, perhaps, you will cry out; but I pray you not to do so. For you know well, if you should kill me, being such a one as I say I am, you will not hurt me so much as you will hurt yourselves. Neither Meletus nor Anytus can any way hurt me. This cannot be. For I do not think that it is ever permitted that a better man should be hurt by a worse. Perhaps, indeed, he may kill him, or drive him into exile, or disfranchise him; and these things perhaps he and others may think to be great evils. But I do not think so; much rather the doing that which he (Mele tus) is now about — the laying hands on a man to kill him unjustly — is a great evil. But, 0 Athenians, I am far from making now a defence for myself, as some may think; [I am making it] in your behalf; lest by condemning me you should in anything offend in the matter of this gift which God has given you. For if you should kill me, you will not easily find another man like me, who, to speak in a comic way, is so precisely adapted by God to the State; which is like a horse, large and well-bred, but from its very size sluggish, and needing to be roused by a gad-fly. For

• » Apologia Socratis, B. 17; Platonis Opp. vol. i. p. 114, ed. Stallbaum, Gothffl, 1858.

so it seems to me, that the God has applied me, such as I am, to the State, that I may never cease to rouse you, and persuade and shame every one, fastening upon you everywhere all day long. Such another will not easily come to you, 0 men of Athens; and if you will listen to me, you will spare me. But perhaps, as those who awake in anger when they are stung, you will, at the instigation of Anytus, kill me at once with a slap; then you will end the rest of your life in sleep, unless God shall send some other gad-fly to be mindful of you. But that I am such a one, given by God to the State, you may know from this fact: it is not like the way of men that I, now for so many years, should have disregarded all my own concerns, and should have endured the neglect of my own domestic affairs, and should have been ever busied about your interests; going about to each of you privately, as a father or an elder brother, persuading you to be careful of virtue. If indeed I had derived any enjoyment from these things, and for these exhortations had received any reward, there would have been some reason in it. But now you yourselves see that the accusers, charging me as they do, without shame, of other things, of this at least have not been able to bring a witness against me; as if I had ever either exacted or asked any reward. I think, moreover, that I adduce a sufficient witness that I speak the truth — I mean my poverty.'2

' It may perhaps appear strange that I should go to and fro, giving advice, and busying myself about these things in private, but that in public I should not ven-

2 Apologia Socratis, s. 18, p. 118.

ture to go up (i.e. to the Pnyx) to give counsel to the State before your assembly. But the cause of this is what you have heard me say often and in many places: that a voice is present with me — a certain agency of God, somewhat divine (baipoviov) — which indeed Mele-tus has caricatured and put into the indictment. Now this began with me from my childhood; a certain voice, which always, when it comes, turns me aside from that which I am about to do, but never impels me to do any thing. It is this which opposed my mixing in politics, and I think very wisely. For you well know, 0 Athe nians, that if I had been hitherto mixed in political matters, I should have perished long ago, and should have done no good, either to you or to myself. Do not be angry with me for speaking the truth; for there is no man who will save his life, if he shall courageously oppose either you or any other populace, by striving to hinder the multitude of unjust and lawless things which are done in the State. It is necessary, therefore, that anyone who really combats for the sake of justice, if he would survive even for a little while, should live a private and not a public life.'8

When Socrates had ended his defence, the votes were taken: first, he was condemned as guilty of the charges laid against him; and secondly, he was sen tenced to die. He then once more addressed the court.

3 Apologia Socratis, B. 19, p. 123.¹

Athenians, for such time as we have. While it is so permitted, nothing forbids our conversing together. I wish to show to you, as my friends, what is the meaning of that which has now befallen me. 0 my judges— for in calling you judges I should call you rightly— something marvellous has -happened to me. Hitherto, the Oracle of the laipoviov, which is familiarly about me, with great frequency has opposed itself, even in very little things, if I were about to act in any way not rightly. But now there has befallen me, as you yourselves see, that which men may think, and most men do account, to be the greatest of evils. And yet this morning, neither when I came from home did the sign from the God oppose itself, nor when I came up hither to the court of judgment, nor anywhere during the defence I was about to make; although in other speeches it has often restrained me in the very midst of speaking. But now in this affair it has not anywhere opposed me, either in any deed or word. What, then, do I suppose to be the cause? I will tell you. That which has happened to me seems to be a good thing; and if we think death to be an evil, we are in error. Of this I have a sure evidence; for it cannot be that the accustomed sign would not have opposed itself to me if I were not about to do something which is good.'4

' Wherefore, 0 my judges, you ought to be of good hope about death, and to know this to be true— that no evil can happen to a good man, whether in life or in death; nor are his affairs neglected by the gods. Nor² are my affairs at this time the result of chance. But this is clear to me — that it were better for me now to die, and to be set free from troubles. Wherefore the sign has in nothing opposed me. I am, therefore, in no way angry with those who have condemned me, nor with those who have accused me; though they have condemned and accused me with no good will, but rather with the thought to hurt me. This, indeed, in them is worthy of blame.'5

Such was his general defence against his accusers. He stood up as a man conscious of something in him higher than himself — of a calling and a mission to his countrymen. He had laboured to recall them from luxury, self-indulgence, ambition, civil strife, political profligacy, and private corruption. He told them roundly that no man could serve them who mixed in their politics — that no man could rebuke their corruptions and live.

Therefore it was that Meletus and Anytus accused him; and their accusation was the expression of a wide-spread enmity in Athens.

The charges laid against Socrates were chiefly two: the one, that of corrupting the youth of the day by his philosophy; the other, that of impiety, and of introducing new gods, 'irzece, xatva buipovict, or of denying the existence of gods. It is with the latter we have chiefly to do, because it connects itself with the belief of Socrates in respect to the Diemonion, or voice, or sign, which from his childhood had been with him as a monitor and guide.³

In answer to the charge of atheism, Socrates asked his accuser: « Is there any man who believes that there are human affairs, but does not believe in the existence of men; or that there are certain rules for managing horses, and yet believes that there is no such thing as a horse? There is no such- man. But pray answer me this point: is there any man who believes divine things and yet denies the being of a God?' Meletus answered, 'No, certainly.' i;hen Socrates replied, ' You acknowledge, then, that I believe and teach the existence of deities. So that, whether they be new or old, you still own that I believe in divinities or divine agencies. Now if I believe that there are divinities or divine agencies, I must necessarily suppose that there are gods.'6

In these passages of Plato we have the fullest and most explicit declaration of Socrates respecting the Daemon by which he was admonished. He tells us that it was 'a familiar sign, an oracle, a divine voice;' that this sign had been with him from his infancy; that its office was to take him off from certain lines of action; that it did not impel him to any.

With such declarations before him, it is not wonderful that Plutarch should have supposed this Daemon to be a personal being; and that he should have written a book (L>e Genio Socratis) on the familiar spirit of Socrates; and that Apuleius should have written De Deo Socratis — of the God of Socrates; and that the Neoplatonists and certain of the Christian Fathers should have understood this Dacmonion to be a per- 8 Apologia Socratis, s. 15, p. 105.

sonal being or genius: whether good or bad they did not determine.

Plutarch has not promoted either the perspicuity or the gravity of the subject by telling us that a voice in the Cave of Trophonius expounded to Timarchus the philosophy of daemons in the following words: 'Every soul partakes of reason. It cannot be without reason and intelligence. But so much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and passions is changed, and through pain or pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul does not mix itself in the same manner. For some plunge themselves altogether into the body, and so in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed only in part, but the purer part still remains out of the body. It is not drawn down into it; but it floats above and touches the upper part of a man's head. It is lilo a cord to hold up and direct the part of the soul which is sinking, as long as it proves obedient, and is not overcome by the passions of the flesh. The part that is plunged into the body is called the soul; but the uncorrupted part is called the mind, and people think that it is within them: as likewise they imagine the image reflected from a glass is in the glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be external, call it a daemon.'7

'Such was the soul of Hermodorus the Clazomenian, of which it is reported that for nights and days it would leave his body, travel over many countries, and return, after it had seen things and talked with persons at

7 Plutarch, DC Genio Socratis, sect. 22; Moralia, torn. i. p. 713, ed. Dcelmcr, Paris, 1841.

a great distance; till at last, by the treachery of his wife, his body was delivered to his enemies, and they burnt it in his own house while the soul was abroad.' Plutarch considerately adds, ' It is certain that this is not true;' but he goes on to say, 'The soul never went out of the body, but it loosened the tie that held the daemon, and gave it range and freedom.'8

Plutarch then relates the following anecdote: ' More and greater things you may learn from Siniias, and other companions of Socrates; but once, when I was present, as I went to Euthyphron the soothsayer, it hap pened— Simias, as you remember— that Socrates was going up to Symbolum, and the house of Andocides, all the way asking questions, and playfully attacking Eu thyphron. When, suddenly standing still, and making us to do the' same, he pondered with himself for some time. Then, turning about, he walked through Trunkmakers' Street, calling back his friends that walked before him, affirming that it was because of his daemon. Many turned back, amongst whom I, holding Euthy phron, was one; but some of the youths, keeping on the straight road, in order, as it were, to disprove the dasrnon of Socrates, took along with them Charillus the piper, who came with me to Athens to see Cebes. Now, as they were walking through Sculptors' Street, near the court-houses, a herd of pigs, covered with mud, met them; and being too many for the street, and running against one another, they upset some that could not get out of the way, and dirtied others; and Charillus came home with his legs and clothes very muddy; so that

8 DC Gcnio Socmtis, sect. 22. VOL. I. Z often, in merriment, they would remember Socrates' dromon, wondering at its constant care of the man, and that Heaven kept such a particular watch over him.'9

The following passage is more to our purpose. Plutarch says: ' The resolute impulses of Socrates seem to be both vigorous and firm, as springing from right principles and strong judgment. Therefore he, of his own will, lived in poverty all his life, though he had friends who would have been glad and willing to give to him; he would not give up philosophy, notwithstanding all the discouragements he met with; and at last, when his friends endeavoured and skilfully contrived his escape, he would not yield to their entreaties, nor withdraw from death, but maintained an inflexible mind in the last extremity. And surely these are not the actions of a man whose designs, when once fixed, could be altered by omens or sneezings; but of one who, • De Genio Socratit, sect. 10. lc Ibid, sect 11.⁴

by some higher guidance and principle, is directed to do right.'11

Plutarch then says that Socrates foretold the over throw of the Athenians in Sicily; and that in the pursuit at Delium he, with Alcibiades and Laches escaped by Eegiste, while others who would not follow him were overtaken and slain. This caused the daemon of Socrates to be much talked of in Athens.

We may now dismiss these speculations, and come back to Socrates, and learn from himself what he understood and intended us to understand by his Daemon or Daemonion.

But here again we are brought to a standstill. We cannot interrogate Socrates himself. We can only get at him by hearsay. Between him and us, stand Xenophon and Plato. It is, after all, Xenophon and Plato, not Socrates, who speak to us. Worse than this, Xenophon and Plato do not agree in what they tell us; and, worst of all, what they tell us evidently takes form and colour from their own minds. It may recall to us Sir Walter Scott's description in Kenilworth of Blount and Raleigh sitting on the bench in the hall at Say's Court. They were both looking in silence at the wall. The bluff old soldier looked at the wall and saw the wall, and nothing but the wall; but between the wall and the eye of Sir Walter Wittypate there was a whole imaginary world, with an endless procession and maze of persons and things of his own creation.

The Socrates of Xenophon stands out clear, hard, definite; a matter-of-fact description, a photograph with 11 De Genio Socratis, sect. 9.

few after:touches, with little sense that anything needs explanation, or could have any meaning but the letter of the text. The Socrates of Plato comes to us through the prisms of his marvellous imagination; so as to create a misgiving whether it he a conscientious likeness or a portrait by the hand of an artist and a friend, too creative and too fond to be faithful.

Nevertheless, we are reduced to those two biographers. They are the only full and trustworthy witnesses in close personal contact with the man whom they describe.

We will endeavour, then, to ascertain what they understood by the Daemon of Socrates. This will at least give the best approximation to what Socrates understood by it himself.

.In order to do this, we will first take down their evidence as they give it, and next compare the two testimonies; and lastly, make an estimate of their differences.

When this is done we may use our own criticism: for it is one thing to ascertain what Socrates may have understood, it is another to ascertain what we may understand by the psychological facts narrated by him or by them. It is not to be too hastily assumed that Socrates was an adequate interpreter of the internal facts even of his own mind. It is. not unreasonable to believe that the philosophical and other profounder experience of two thousand years may have enabled us more truly than he could to analyse and to appreciate the facts and phenomena of moral and mental philosophy. The heart has beat, and the blood has circulated, from the beginning of time; yet we take the physiology of Harvey as to the blood, rather than that of Hippocrates. The Ethics even of Aristotle are, in analytical depth and precise delineation, conspicuously in advance of the method and teaching of Socrates. In this the disciple is above his master, and we may be above both.

Let us begin, then, with Xenophon. The chief passages in which he describes the Drcmonian are as follows:

'It was in the mouths of men that Socrates declared that the Deity or Daemonion (ro tiaifJitomv) made things known to him, or gave him signs by which to know them.'

'He used to say that the Damionion signified (things) to him; and that he often advised those who were with him to do some things, and not to do others, as the Dasmonion forewarned him.']2

'For he thought that the Gods (rove Qzovg) had care of men in a way unlike that which most men imagine: for they suppose that the. Gods know indeed some things, and do not know others.. But Socrates believed the Gods to know all things — whatsoever things are said, or done, or purposed in secret; and that they are everywhere present; and that they make known human things to men.'13

When Hermogenes sorrowfully upbraided him for not defending himself more elaborately, and for even provoking his judges against him, Socrates answered: ' Of a truth, Hermogenes, when I set to work to think

12 Xenoph. Mem. lib. i. c. 1, s.. 1, Oxon. 1785. 13 Ibid. s. 4.

out iny defence before the judges the Doomonion hindered me.'14

Finally, Xenophou says of him that he was ' so pious that he would do nothing without the counsel of the Gods.'15

Such, then, is the evidence of Xenophon; upon which these remarks may he made:

1. That Xenophon carefully distinguishes between the Daemon of Socrates, which he calls ro ^aipovtov, and the Gods, whom he calls rovg Qzovg.

2. That he describes the Daemonion as showing beforehand what things are to bo done, and what not to be done: that is to say that the action of this monitor was both to enjoin and to forbid.

3. That he refers this admonition and direction to the Gods, without whose counsel (yvajpri) Socrates would never act.

4. That nothing in Xenophon is to be found which invests the Dacmonion with personality, or with any other character than that of a divine influence or agency, or a counsel or direction of the Gods acting upon the reason of man.

We will now proceed to our other witness.

The chief passages of Plato bearing on the Diemoniou are those which we have already quoted from the Apology. They need not be repeated.

To these may be added what follows.

In the Enthydcmus, Socrates says: ' I happened to be providentially sitting alone in the place where you saw me, in the dressing-room (of the Lycieum), and

'« Xenoph. Mem. lib. iv. c. 8, s. 3. '• Ibid. s. 4.

I had in my mind to be gone. When I got up, the accustomed sign, the Daomonion, came; I therefore again sat down.'10 Soon after came Euthydemus and his companions.

Again, in the Phaedrus: ' When I was about to cross • the river, the Daemonron, the accustomed sign, came, which restrains me when I am about to do anything; and I seemed to hear a certain voice which did not suffer me to proceed until I should have expiated myself, as having in some way offended against God.'17

And in the Alcibiades, he says: ' The cause of this was nothing human, but a certain divine hindrance, the power of which you shall hereafter hear; but now, as it no longer hinders me, I am therefore come, and I am in good hope that for the future it will not hinder me.'18

In the Thecetetus, he says: ' The Daemonion which comes to me hinders my intercourse with some, and not with others.'19

And in the Republic: l It is not worth while to speak of the divine sign which comes to me, whether it have occurred to any other or not.'20

I do not quote from the Theages, in which there is much on the point, for two reasons. First, doubts have been raised as to its authenticity; and secondly, the statements contained in it may be found also in other dialogues of which there is no doubt.

Now in these passages we have the following points:

16 Euthydemus, 273, vol. vi. 80, ed. Stallbaum, Gothte, 1886.

17 Phcedrus, 242, vol. iv. 72. 1S Alcibiades, 103, vol. v. 221. 19 Thecetetus, 151, vol. viii. 71. 20 De Ilcpublica, lib. vi. s. 496.

1. That the Drcmonion is spoken of as 0£ov r/, ffqfAsiov, tytovr,, and duOvla rov ^cct^oviov?!: something divine, something of the Deity, a sign, a voice, the accustomed divination or oracle of the Deity. It is evident, therefore, that Plato represents it as an agency or a voice, not as an agent or a person; and if the agent or person from whom this agency or voice proceed he sought for, it is to he found in God or in the Gods.

2. That the function of this agency or voice was to check, to hinder, and to restrain, not to suggest or to prompt to any line of action.

3. That it manifested itself in such apparently fortuitous events as the hindering the departure of Socrates from the Lycaoum till Euthydemus came; and foivv \7Tt ff[Aizco7$, even in the least things: that is to say, its function was to forewarn or to check in matters not so much of right and wrong as of safety, or of expediency, or of good fortune.

Comparing these two testimonies of Xenophon and Plato we find:

1. That they agree as to the impersonal nature of the Dncmonion. The terms used hy. them signify, at the utmost, a divine agency or a divine voice; they do not signify the presence or attendance of a divine per son or of a familiar spirit.

It is, perhaps, not wonderful that some of the ancients should have so misunderstood their language, and that Socrates should have been accused of intro ducing new deities. The same charge was in like manner made against the Apostle at Athens, because lie preached the Resurrection, rqv avuffTaviy. Nevertheless Cicero understood Plato's language, and trans lated the DaBinonion by divinum aliquid.

It is to be borne in mind that both Xenophon and Plato speak, not as we do, of the Aai'pav of Socrates, but of the luipoviov. They never speak of the ^cupoviov as faog, but observe strictly the known distinction between these terms. Awpmov signifies the abstract or neuter idea of divine power, the Deity or the Divinity. As Aristotle says, it implies r\ Qsog YI Qzou 'icyov?1 either the presence or the power, not of a bctffJitav or inferior divinity, but of God. Aai^uvv.ia so far used convertibly with S>og, that it is sometimes used for Qzog, but Qzog is never used for Aa//&a/y. ®$og and Aa/^yv are • sometimes used together; but Aai^v signifies a divinity of lower rank.

In the Apology, Socrates tells his judges that when he was coming out of his house, TO TOV flzov ffqpziov, the sign of the God, distinguishing the agency from the person, hindered him. Xenophon also makes Euthydemus say that the Gods showed a special friend ship to Socrates. And again he says, speaking of voices, signs, and divinations, that by these things, rovg dzovg ffqpatmv, the Gods signified things to man. The!)ai[Loviov was one of those signs: impersonal, derived from a divine agent.

2. That they disagree as to the function or office of the Daarnonion. Xenophon ascribes to it the twofold office of suggestion and restraint. Plato ascribes to it expressly that of restraint only.

21 Arist. Ehet.il. xxiii. 8.

Plutarch agrees with Xenophon, and describes its office as either restraining or enjoining;

3. That they further disagree, inasmuch as Xeuophon recognises the action of the Drcmonion in matters of right or wrong, as well as in matters of expediency; whereas Plato seems to restrict it to the latter.

The sum of the evidence, therefore, may be thus stated: Socrates believed himself to he assisted from his childhood by a divine agency, whereby he was forewarned and guided in matters of his own personal conduct, both towards himself, as in his escape after the defeat at Delium, and his waiting in the Lycseum; and towards others, as in judging what disciples to receive or to reject, and in his whole mission as cross- • examiner of his fellow-countrymen.

Such is the judgment of ancient writers. I will quote only a few of the many modern critics on this subject. Bishop Thirlwall says: ' Socrates, who was used to reflect profoundly on the state of his own mind, had, it seems, gradually become convinced that he was favoured by the Gods with an inward sign, which he described as a voice.'23

In like manner, Mr. Grote says: ' We have also to note that marked feature in the character of Socrates, the standing upon his own individual reason and measure of good and evil; nay, even perhaps his confidence in it so far as to believe in a divine voice in forming and moving him."-'4 Mr. Grote further refers

23 De Cento Socratis, sect. 11.

» lliit. of Greece, vol. iv. p. 290. 2« Grote's Plato, vol. i. p. 295.

in a note to a curious passage from the Life of Coriolanus by Plutarch, where he says that the Oods do not infuse into men new volitions: but they work upon the principle of association in the mind, su^gestin". -. i • i ideas which conduct to the appropriate volitions. Plutarch's words are, ' Not infusing the motive powers, but the ideas which call those motive powers into activity; not making the act involuntary by constraint, but giving an outset to the will, and inspiring it with courage and hope.'25

According to both these estimates it would appear that the groundwork of this divine action, as Socrates believed it to be, was the intellectual and moral activity of his own mind.

Zeller, in his work on Socrates and the Socratic Schools, gives his estimate of the Dsemonion in the following words:

' The lupmov is therefore an internal oracle, and as such it is by.Xenophon and Plato included under the more general notion of divination, and placed on a par with divination by sacrifice and.the flight of birds. In attempting to bring this inward revelation of Socrates into harmony with the facts of psychology, it may be laid down, in the first place, that the dcemonium must not be confounded with the voice of conscience, as many ancient and modern critics have done.'.... ' The lai{Loviov has nothing to do with the universal moral standard, which, according to Socrates, is a matter for v irpoaipeati>, ovS' dpf&s, tpp&V ayuyoi'is, als ovSt Troie? rfv irpa£iv aKOvctov, oAAo T£ e/coucr/w apxV Ka.1 rb Bufifav Ka.1 rb ^iri^iv Trpoo-n'fycnj/. In Vita M. Coriolani vol. i. sect. 33, ed. Doelmer, Paris, 1857.

pure intelligence to determine.'... ' For these [that is, actions in prospect] Socrates either has recourse to pavrtxr} in general, or to his luipoviov, leaving moral conduct to he determined by clear knowledge.'20

We are here approaching to the estimate which appears to me to he hoth adequate and true.

Mr. Riddell, of Balliol, after carefully analysing the evidence we have hitherto examined, says:

'If, then, declining Socrates' account, we are disposed to refer the phenomenon to ordinary psychological causes, we can do so satisfactorily, provided we confine our attention to Xenophon's account alone. All Xenophon's notices of it encourage the view that it was a quick exercise of a judgment, informed hy knowledge of the subject, trained by experience, and inferring from cause to effect, without consciousness of the process. In a mind so purified by temperance and self-know ledge, so single of purpose, and unperturbed by lower aims, endowed with such powerful natural faculties, especially those of observation and of causality, the ability to forecast and forejudge might become almost an immediate sense.'

1 As to the reconcilement of authorities, when Plato makes Socrates say, ail aKOTg'zxti pt, he describes it by its most perceptible act. For its coincidence with an existing purpose would be superfluous and little noticeable.'... 'The voice was no impulse; it did not speak to the will, but had a critical or reflexive function..'

» Zeller'a Socrates and tlu Socratic School*, pp. 76-78. Long man, 1868.

Mr. Riddell goes on to say that the ^ai^oviov was ' an unanalysed act of judgment;' that it was xginzq, not iTTtrazTizr], that it was Socrates' suhstitute for {LKvnxri, and that, where men are wont to have recourse to external preternatural aids, Socrates went by a guide within himself; that to this guide he, in all good faith, gave a religious name. ' His mental acts, so far as he could uhravel them, were his own, were human; beyond his ken, they were divine. And what really was of the nature of an immediate critical sense seemed to him an immediate inspiration.'27

This appears to me to be in outline an explanation both true and adequate.

If I were asked to add my own judgment as to what the Daemon of Socrates was, in the estimate of Socrates himself, I should answer as follows:

It was a belief of a divine assistance, granted, as -he says, to all men in some things, and in some special circumstances; of which most men are hardly, if at all, conscious; but in his case it was consciously recognised from his childhood, and it acted upon him in and through the intellectual and moral operations of his own mind: so that he ascribed to the action of the Daamonion much that was undoubtedly the normal activity of his own intellectual and moral state. Such, I think, Socrates believed it to be. • If, however, I were asked what we may believe it to have been, I would answer:

1. That, holding altogether with Lord Bacon, when he says in his essay on atheism, ' I had rather believe

27 Riddell's Apology of Plato, pp. 105-8, Oxford, 1867.

all the fables of the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind,' we may well believe in a divine providence sur rounding the life, and a divine action present to the mind, of any man who, according to the testimony of one that knew him by closest intimacy, was ' so pious as never to do anything without the counsel of the Gods; so just as never to hurt any one even in the lightest thing; but full of the greatest benefit to all who conversed with him; so temperate as never to * prefer what was pleasant to what was best; so prudent as never to err in discerning the better from the worse, and never to need the judgment of any other in this discernment, being sufficient in himself.'28 That u divine providence and a divine help are over the whole intellectual and moral world is an axiomatic truth in the relation of God to man: that they may be looked for in a special degree in just and prudent men follows as a corollary from that axiom. But as this lies beyond our analysis, we will confine ourselves to the subject as a matter of psychology.

I will therefore add a further proposition, namely:

2. That the statements of Xenophon and Plato may be, not only harmonised, but brought under the same psychological explanation, resting on the laws of the speculative and the practical reason. It would indeed be too narrow an explanation, as Zeller objects, to refer the signs of this monitor to the action of conscience alone; for conscience is only one office or one function of the reason of man. Nevertheless it is certain that, w Xenoph. Memorabilia, lib. iv. c. 8, s. 5.

in a large part of that which Socrates referred to the Daemonion, conscience was directly present and perceptibly in action. It is no objection to this to quote, as Zeller does, the declaration of Socrates that, ' It is idle to consult the Gods about things which may be known by deliberation;'29 or to say that Socrates ' referred morals to the judgment of reason.'30 This is precisely the philosophical definition of conscience. Conscience is dictamen rationis. It is reason acting upon right ' and wrong with a view to practice: just as apprehension is the reason acting upon truth and falsehood with a, view to science. In matter of speculative truth, as in physical science, geometry, and the like, the intellect acts without any response from the passions or affections of the moral nature. Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, says that mathematics have no ethical character, but that the teaching of Socrates has.31 In matter of practical truth, the discernments of the intellect are followed by a response of the moral nature by way of approval or disapproval. But the primary judge is the reason, the response of the moral nature is secondary. It is, therefore, most true that morals are subject to the jurisdiction of reason; but that does not prove that this monitor of Socrates was not in great part the action of conscience.

And here it may be well to make more clear and precise the philosophical definition of conscience.

Scientia is the simple knowledge of things by the reason. Conscientia is the self-knowledge of the reason or mind. 'Nil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.' 29 Xenoph. Mem. p. 78. 30 Ibid. 31 Ehet. iii. 16, 8.

Now this conscience in its first intention is consciousness, as we commonly call it. It extends over all the internal acts of the reason or mind, over the whole inner world of our personal identity. Conscience, in the second intention of common parlance, signifies the reason judging of moral action, and discerning of right from wrong, with an approval or disapproval of the moral sense following upon its decisions. Metaphysi cians, therefore, distinguish the operations of conscience into two kinds, and speak of a psychological conscience, by which we reflect upon internal acts of the minds in general, and a moral conscience, by which we reflect upon and judge of the ethical character of actions, whether internal or external. And this conscience they again distinguish into habitual and actual. The habitual conscience is the permanent disposition of the mind in relation to its own moral state; the actual conscience is the fixing of its attention and judicial discernment on its own moral acts. The habitual conscience is spontaneous, and therefore unconscious; the actual conscience is reflex, deliberate, and therefore conscious.

Such is the language of scholastic philosophy; and this seems with great precision to account for the fact which Socrates appears to have observed in himself, and Plato has recorded; namely, that the Drcmonion seemed to act only by way of check and restraint. The spontaneous action of conscience was habitual and unperceived — the actual aroused attention and conscious effort.32

Prisco Filosofia Spcculativa, torn. i. pp. 208-10,

In saying, then, that this internal monitor of Socrates is the reason, including the conscience, I intend expressly to include what is here described as the psychological as well as the moral conscience, and also the distinction hetween the habitual or spontaneous and the actual or deliberate conscience. The application of this will be further seen when we answer an objection which may be anticipated. This comprehensive view includes all the mental judgments, whether of expediency or of morality, that is, both of prudence and of rectitude.

As to the examples given by Xenophon and Plato, in almost every one of them may be traced a moral element and a moral discernment.

For instance, the decision of Socrates to keep out of politics, that he might better serve the public good. This is surely a high moral judgment, involving the noblest motives of relative duty. The discernment as to what disciples to retain, or what persons to receive back again among them after they had once left him, unless it were a blind and capricious act, which in Socrates is incredible, must have been founded upon such a discernment of moral qualities and distinctions, both in his own character and in that of others, as to demand the exercise of the moral reason. When we say that one man is simpatico and another antipatico, we are exercising a moral sense and discrimination of an intimate and explicit sort; and this determines us in receiving or refusing to receive men to our confidence.

In deciding that he would not defend himself so as

VOL. I. AA to escape death, the action of conscience, sustaining the highest aspirations and the nohlest intrepidity, is clearly revealed.

I admit that in the escape after the flight and pur suit at Delium, and in the waiting in the Lycamm, and in the matter of Plutarch's pigs, there is to he dis cerned rather the activity of prudence than of conscience. But on the supposition that the monitor of Socrates was a mature and experienced reason, the action of both prudence and conscience would be alike included.

To this it may be objected, that Plato distinctly declares that the monitor of Socrates told him, not what things to do, but what things not to do; that inasmuch as conscience has a twofold office towards both good and evil, the Dacmonion could not be conscience.

But to this objection two answers may be made. The first, that Xenophon and Plutarch directly say that the Dncmonion both enjoined and forbade, that is, pronounced for or against certain lines of action.

The other answer has been anticipated by the state ments of our scholastic philosophy. It has been shown that the action of conscience, when it suggests or approves anything, is less perceptible than when it dis approves or forbids. This may be seen by analogies. We are insensible of our continuous respiration, but distinctly sensible of the act of holding the breath; it is an actus imperatus requiring a conscious exertion of the will. Again, in walking we are unconscious of the momentum of our pace, but conscious of any hindrance, and even of the act of stopping. The moral reason or conscience is always in activity, but with little or no reflex action upon itself until something offends it. We are then conscious of a change of attitude and of a recoil. For instance, the reason and conscience of Socrates permitted him freely to mix among men to cross-examine them, but not to enter into politics. In the former, he followed his own spontaneous inclination; in the latter, he imposed a conscious restraint upon himself. This is what Aristotle describes as prudence, or ®g6vqfff$. He distinguishes it from science, as being an intellectual habit conversant with practical and contingent matter; and from intuition, as being of details rather than of principles. He says that O^oi^o-/?, or prudence, is an intellectual virtue conversant about moral action. And he ascribes to it a power of sight, which is so trained and perfected by experience as to discern with an intuitive rapidity what is right or expedient in practice. He says that prudent men have a faculty which men call (beivorqs) skill, or ability, or re source, ' the nature of which is to do — and to do correctly—the things which conduce to the end proposed. If this aim be good, the skill is praiseworthy; but if it be bad, it becomes craft.' Wherefore Aristotle says, 'We call prudent men skilful, and not crafty. But prudence is not the same as this faculty (i.e. ^uvorqg, or skill). But the habit of prudence grows upon this eye, as it were, of the soul.'33 This is a precise description of the prompt and provident intuition, a sort of, and evfiovhfct, presence of mind, rapidity of

33 Arist. Eth. N. L. vi. xii. T<J? fytytcm rovrca' yiverui TT)S counsel, with which Socrates discovered the useful, or the expedient in matters of practice. But the nature of this intellectual faculty is, in the main, distinctly moral, and belongs to the region of conscience, or the discernment of right and wrong.

This instinct or faculty of moral discernment is traceable throughout the whole history of the ancient world. S. Paul only affirms what all records of antiquity demonstrate in saying, ' When the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the works of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness (ffvub^u^rv^fjvffrjg UVTUV 7rtg avvt&rfitus}, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.'34

Once more: it may be objected that it is not for us to theorise as to what Socrates ought to have understood of his own inward life, but to take things as he expressed them.

To this I have already by anticipation made one sufficient answer. But I will add another. Socrates refused to be classed with the philosophers or teachers of Athens. He delivered no system of philosophy. He framed to himself no moral or mental science. He found philosophy in the hands of physicists, or physical theorists, and of Sophists. He thought the physicists to be vainly curious, if not impious, in trying to discover what the gods kept secret; he thought the Sophists to be venal, superficial, and immoral. He was the M Roin. ii. 14, 15.

founder, not of a new philosophy, but of a new era in philosophy. He extricated the conceptions of God and of morality from the region and philosophy of matter, and set them in the sphere of mind. He brought down philosophy, as Cicero says, from heaven to earth, to the market-place and the streets, and the homes and the hearts of men. He cross-examined every man he met with, politicians, philosophers, rhetoricians, painters, private citizens, artisans; but he framed no system and laid down no theories; he made no analysis of the human mind. Lord Bacon is said to have created a Novum Organum in philosophy by questioning Nature. This Socrates certainly did by questioning man. His method was one of universal questioning, whereby he heaped up materials for his disciples, one of whom afterwards gave to them a scientific order and precision of expression which has formed the imperishable basis of mental and moral philosophy to this day. The Ethics of Aristotle analyse, lay out, distinguish, and define the intellectual and moral processes of the human mind — modern metaphysicians must bear with me — with a truth which has never been surpassed. What Socrates felt, Aristotle has fixed by exact analysis. The character of Socrates is the (pgovipog of Aristotle, the prudent man; but prudence is etymologically and essentially far-seeing,35 the perfection of the moral reason. ' All men,' he says, ' seem to testify that such a habit which is according to prudence. is virtue. But it is necessary

35 ' Prudens futuri teinporis exitum

Caliginosa nocte premit Deus. ' Hor. Od. iii. 29.

to make a slight difference, for virtue ia not only a habit according to right reason, but inseparably joined with right reason; and prudence is the same as right reason on these subjects. Socrates, therefore,' Aristotle says, ' thought the virtues to be reasons or rational habits, for he thought them all to be sciences; but we think them to be intellectual habits joined with reason. It is clear, however, from what has been said, that it is impossible for a man to be properly virtuous without prudence, or to be prudent without moral virtue.'36 Aristotle seems to me to give in this passage the psychological analysis of the intuition and providence with which Socrates was eminently endowed. His prudence or <£govrtffts constituted the CCVTU,ZZZK£, or self-dependence of reason in all questions of morality, of which Xenophon speaks.

' Xullum nuraen abest si sit Prudentia, nos tc Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam cccloque locamus.'3?

The prudence of Socrates was his own moral state, and yet non sine Numine, for we may well believe that to him was granted no common share in the ' Light that lighteth every man that cometh into this world.'

In saying this I am not rejecting the supposition that the particular providence which never suffers even a sparrow to fall to the ground without its Creator's will may have in a special way encompassed the life of a man who witnessed in a corrupt world to the lights of Nature and to the laws of right. In the midst of an intellectual frivolity and a moral degradation

» Eth. N. L. vi. xiii.

« Juvenal, lib. iv. sat. x. 365-6.

never surpassed in the history of mankind, made all the guiltier by reason of the refined culture and luxurious civilisation of Athens, Socrates bore witness, until seventy years of age, to the supremacy of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, the four perfections of man in the order of Nature.

Whether the estimate I have given of the Dsemonion of Socrates be true or not, the inquiry in which we have been engaged is manifestly not a barren speculation. It sets before us a great moral example; it teaches us a great moral law, necessary to men at all times, vital to us in these declining days. I mean, that there is no way for men to attain their true dignity, nor to serve their age and country, but to be upright in conscience, and, even at the cost of life, to be both in public and private duty prudent and temperate, just and brave. It tells us with a thrilling human voice, and in the accents of our common humanity, that man's supreme rule of right is the moral reason or conscience; that the cultivation of the mere intellect, while the moral life and powers lie fallow, is the work of sophists, deceivers or deceived, or both; that the education of man is his moral formation; that intellectual culture without moral goodness is a wildfire and a pestilence, which makes havoc of men and states; that knowledge is virtue, and virtue knowledge; for that, unless we would maim and mutilate our being, the intellectual and moral powers of man must be simultaneously and equably unfolded and matured. These are axioms of the moral life; vital, I say, at all times and in all lands, but nowhere more in season

SCO THE DAEMON OF SOCRATES.

and more wholesome than to us, who, in the sudden growth of a vast maritime empire, splendid and un stable for its very greatness, in the refinements of luxury, and the inundation of a stupendous prosperity, seem to he developing some of the moral and intellectual evils which went before the fall of imperial Athens, — political factions, licentious freedom, sophistical education, a relaxation of moral and religious traditions, a growing scepticism, an unstable public opinion, swayed to and fro by nameless hands and by irresponsible voices. In such a public state Socrates lived and died, bequeathing to us this lesson — that conscience is the Voice of God.

XIII.

A LETTER TO HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH,

PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND.

A LETTER TO HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OE ARMAGH,

PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND.

MY DEAR LORD PRIMATE, — I can say with truth that, among the disappointments which have befallen me in events of this kind, I can remember none greater than that of failing of my promise to be with you at the dedication of the cathedral of Armagh.

When your Grace first invited me, I answered at once that I could refuse nothing to the successor of S. Patrick. Any such invitation from Ireland would come in his name; but an invitation from Armagh comes with his authority. It speaks from his own see as Metropolitan and Primate of Ireland.

I felt also that your invitation was not only a personal and private kindness, but that it had a wider meaning. It was a bidding to me to come and to greet once more the Bishops of Ireland, among whom I spent so many happy hours during the Council of the Vatican. I may say still more: it was an invitation to the Catholic Church in England to come and join with the Catholic Church in Ireland in a solemnity which bears witness to the indissoluble unity of the Faith. It seemed to me very fitting, and in these days very timely, and in every way very good and full of meaning, that the Primate of Ireland should have by his side a representative of the Catholic Church in England. I knew also from certain sources that among the clergy and people of Ireland many kind hearts wished to give me a welcome.

Therefore I do not think that I failed in any way to appreciate the reasons which now make my disappointment greater. Your Grace will believe me, then, when I say that no light cause would have made me deprive myself of so much pleasure, and disappoint so many kind friends, and frustrate so many kind inten tions. I may also add that no light cause would have made me even seem to be wanting in respect to your Grace and the Bishops, and to the clergy and people of Ireland.

But in truth I had, as I wrote last week, no choice.

Our Provincial Council, which I thought would be over in ten or twelve days, took two-and-twenty; and after it closed it laid upon me many more days of work. The dedication of the church at Rathkeale was fixed for the 17th. I could not leave S. Edmund's College, where the Council was held, until the 16th. It was then impossible to reach Rathkeale in time, even if I could have travelled night and day; and I did not know till the work was over how completely unable I was to travel at all, still more to fulfil the promise I had made of preaching in Rathkeale and in Dublin and Armagh, and of accepting the many kind tokens of welcome which were, as I knew, prepared for me.

Those who were then with me know that I do not often break promises of work. Between the conviction that I ought not to undertake any work at that time, and the pain of disappointing so many known and unknown to me, I was in real anxiety. I can therefore assure you that your Grace's kind and considerate letter, and one equally kind and considerate from his Eminence the Cardinal, have given me a sensible relief and consolation. I will now therefore go on to fulfil my promise to give you in print what I should have said in words. Your Grace need not be afraid lest I should send you the sermon I was to preach. My purpose is more merciful. I wish to write what I should have said about the Catholic Church in Ireland, and also in England, their mutual relations of co-operation and support; and somewhat about the witness we have to bear, and the work we have to do in our country, at this strange crisis of the Church in all nations of Europe.

I.

If I had been able to be among you, I should have expressed, so far as I could, some of the many motives of veneration with which I regard Catholic Ireland; for I know no country in the world more truly Christian, nor any Catholic people that has retained its faith and traditions more inviolate. The one only exception I know is indeed out of all comparison: I mean Rome. It is true indeed that the immutability of Rome is thrown out into higher relief by the fact that the city has been submerged, times without number, by every form of anti-Christian enmity, and that it has been the centre of all the warfare of the world against the Faith; but it has been sustained by its exceptional divine pre rogatives, and therefore remains immovable. Ireland has not the special support of either ' Tu es Petrus' or of ' Ego rogavi pro te;' nevertheless it remains to this day, for fourteen hundred years, as S. Patrick left it, unstained and inviolate in Catholic fidelity. I know of no other province in the Kingdom of our Divine Master of which this can be said. Every other country in Europe has had its heresy and its periods of obscuration. Some have risen and fallen again, and have been restored once more; some, after centuries of light and grace, have apostatised utterly, and lie dead to this day; but Ireland is the Ireland of S. Patrick to the present hour. I am well aware what nibbling critics and historical scavengers may rake up from the twelfth or thirteenth centuries of Irish history; but this still more confirms my assertion. Even in those dark days the faith of Ireland never failed. It was Catholic and Roman, as S. Patrick taught it. I note this, not only because it is a great glory, which has been won by cen turies of suffering even unto death — and Ireland may indeed be truly inscribed in the calendar of the Church as both confessor and martyr — but I note it because it seems to me to be related to other great truths. If England had been less prosperous in this world, it might have been more faithful to the Kingdom of God. If Ireland has had an inheritance of sorrow, it has received, in the order of grace and life eternal, the recompense of a great reward. In this I see some

ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 3C7 explanation of the unexampled spiritual fertility of Ire land. What other race since the Apostles has so spread the Faith on earth? There is at this hour an Irish and catholic population in England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and the United States, double in number as compared with the whole population of Ireland. They are multiplying beyond all other races; founding churches and episcopates, building cathedrals; raising everywhere altars, schools, colleges, convents; and covering the surface of new countries, I may say new continents, with the Catholic faith as fervent, fruitful, and pure as in Dublin, Cashel, Tuam, and Armagh. I know nothing else like this in the world; I may say, in Christian history. When I remember how this faith has been preserved, through what sorrows and suffer ings, with what a prolonged martyrdom of generations, I must believe that our Divine Master has called the Irish nation to a great mission and a great destiny. And this comes out all the more visibly in this age of national apostasy. The nations have fallen away one after another from the unity of the Kingdom of God. Germany and the North fell first; France, and Italy, and Austria, and now Spain, have followed. By antiChristian revolutions and public rejection of the Vicar of Jesus Christ they have as nations ceased to be Catholic, and seem bent on ceasing to be even Christian; but Ireland, in heart and soul and will, in its private life and public opinion, in its popular voice and political action, is Christian and Catholic; with a noble pride and manly indignation at the apostasy and cowardice of the nations who are hiding their face from the Redeemer of the world, and disowning His Vicar on earth. With all my heart I love Ireland for this apostolic fidelity, for this chivalry of Catholic fortitude and Christian love. Your Grace is at this moment while I am writing sur rounded hy the Bishops and clergy of Ireland, dedicating the cathedral at Armagh. I am consoling myself for my privation hy writing these words: and praying that the promise made to S. Patrick may he abundantly fulfilled in all the world, and with a special benediction on the province of Ulster, and upon the faithful, fervent, generous people of Ireland.

Edmund Burke said that, with some changes, the Catholic Church in Ireland, to his mind, bore the closest resemblance of any Church on earth to the Church of the Apostles. I fully believe this; for it is the most pastoral Church in the world, where pastors and flock are in the closest bonds of confidence and love. Where this is, Christianity is in its primitive purity of life. I am not going to dwell on these topics now. Ireland, its adversaries being both judges and witnesses, is at the head of the nations for purity of morals and freedom from ordinary crime. For years I have declared my belief that Ireland is the most Christian country in the world. Its Christian traditions are universal and unbroken; its people know their religion; the intelligence of Ireland has been illuminated, quick ened, enlarged by the inherited faith of fourteen hundred years; to your flocks Christian and Catholic are convertible terms. An Irishman without faith is a shame to his mother and to Ireland. The laity of Ire land, as I well know, are as prompt and clear when

ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 3G9

Catholic doctrine or principle is at stake, and speak as authoritatively and logically in defence of the Catholic religion, as if they had been trained in a seminary. The whole action of Irish homes, Irish public opinion, and the social life of the nation moulds them, not by constraint and unwillingly, but insensibly and spontaneously, to the instincts and character of Christians. May God preserve this inheritance of His grace to you. In England it has been shattered and wasted; every year mutilates more and more the remaining Christian traditions of public life and opinion among us. We can test this comparative difference under our own hands. The difference of Catholic formation between those who come to us from Ireland and those who are born of Irish parents in England is sadly marked. The atmo sphere of Ireland unfolds and ripens the Catholic instincts of faith; the atmosphere of England, like untimely frost, checks and cuts them off.

II.

I could have wished also to say to my Irish brethren what, as one looks at Ireland from a distance, may perhaps be a mirage or an illusion; but it may also be a truth and reality, more promptly seen by those who look from a distance than by those who live in the monotony of every day and the importunate presence of the common life which surrounds them. Perhaps no one is so quick to perceive the growth of the trees about a friend's house as a visitor who comes only from time to time. One conviction, then, is strongly impressed upon my mind. I do not believe that Ireland was ever

VOL. i. BB so full of life, power, and resource as at this day. I can fully understand how the constant sense of the many evils and wrongs you daily see may make it hard to realise this fact; but I believe it to be the simple truth.

1. First, was there ever any time in the history of Ireland when its people were so completely united? There have been in past times many interests of races, families, and classes which have hindered the fusion of the people into one whole. At this day they are as solidly united as the people of Scotland or of Yorkshire. The moral importance of this fact will be estimated by all who know the past history of Ireland.

2. Next, it may with certainty be said that the people of Ireland were never so well or so universally educated as at this day. The College of S. Patrick's, at Maynooth, has now since the beginning of this century wrought its effects throughout the Catholic clergy; a number of lesser colleges throughout the provinces has powerfully affected the Catholic laity. The system of education which for the last thirty years has covered Ireland with national schools has diffused education through the whole body of the people. Popular education in Ireland is more widely spread than in England. What was intended by some to undermine the Catholic religion in Ireland has turned to the confirmation of the Faith. The mass of the people at this day are an intelligent and educated Catholic nation: all the more Catholic because all the more intelligent; and thereby able to appreciate explicitly the grounds of their faith, the notes of the Church, the history of heresy, and the emptiness of all anti-Catholic systems, which, after ages of pretension, are visibly dissolving every day before their eyes. Firm, changeless, and invincible as Ireland has ever been in its faith, it is more so now than ever. Everything has been tried against it, from martyrdom and pitchcaps to soup and secular education: merges prof undo pulclirior euenit. I am old enough to remember the high days of Exeter Hall, and Irish missions at Dingle and the like, and Priest Protection Societies, and the New Reformation in Connemara; of which the great public oracle of England declared that, if its progress should be long maintained, Roman Catholicism would one day be as extinct in Ireland as the worship of the Phoenicians in Cornwall. But all these things have gone to the limbo of South Sea Bubbles; and the Catholic people of Ireland are rising and consolidating every year in vigorous intelligence and immutable faith. 3. To this I may add one more sign of prosperous growth in Ireland. Since the day when its people were put out of their inheritance in the soil, there was never a time when so much land had returned again into Catholic hands. Famine and fever and the exodus have indeed done their mournful work, in assuring to those who survive or remain a better remuneration for their industry; but, apart from this, there never was, I believe, a time when more industry was at work in Ire land, when more capital was invested, more activity of production and exchange was in motion, and when therefore better returns were secured to the employers and better wages to the employed. Of this I lately had an unlooked-for and trustworthy proof. A very intelligent Englishman, who had raised himself, as he told me, from the plough's tail, went over last autumn to Connemara, to see with his own eyes the material condition of the peasantry in Ireland. On his return he assured me that in abundance and quality of food, in rate of wages, and even in the comfort of their dwell ings, the working men of Connemara are hetter off than the agricultural labourers of certain of our English counties. It is therefore to me beyond a doubt that the Catholic population of Ireland is at this moment forming to itself a social organisation, in all its condi tions of industry and commerce, labour and capital, and filling up the unsightly chasm between the richest and the poorest with a gradation of social classes, which must every year indefinitely increase the re sources and power of the country. I know, indeed, that the last census shows once more a diminished population: but when this descent has touched a certain point emigration will slacken, if not cease, and the population will increase again.

3. And lastly, I must say that no one without a fore sight almost prophetic could have foretold, in 1828 and 1829, to how high a share in the public life and power of the Empire Ireland has been lifted by the last five-and-forty years. On this let me speak out of my own observation. I was just entering upon life when the Catholics of these kingdoms were admitted into Parliament. I well remember the political conflicts from the time of Mr. O'Connell's election for the county of Clare. From that day to this many events and reasons have made me note somewhat closely the course of our legislation: and my clear and firm conviction is, that at no time in the history of the English monarchy has Ireland had so wide, so various, and so powerful a share in the legislature, in the puhlic opinion, and in the public life of the Empire. The justice of Englishmen has admitted Ireland to the same legal privileges and powers as Eng land and Scotland; and the intelligence and energv of Irishmen are every year converting what is potential in the statute-book into actual exercise and possession. It is not my intention now to enter upon political matters; but I must say in passing that I do not forget the inequalities which still depress the Catholic population of these kingdoms. They are not, however, inequalities of the law, which is the same for all; but inequalities of social and personal conditions, which still weigh upon the posterity of those who were a generation ago under penal laws. Who would have believed that, after five-and-forty years — that is, nearly half a century after the admission of Catholics to Parliament — there should not be a single Catholic returned to the House of Commons by any constituency in England or in Scotland? And who would believe that, of the hundred and five Irish members in the House of Commons, the Catholic members should be only one in three to represent a people of whom the Catholics are nearly four to one? Nevertheless, as I am aware, the Protestant re presentatives of Catholic constituencies are men of honour; and through them also Catholic Ireland makes its just claims felt, so far as they are felt, in the Imperial Legislature. Your Grace will correct me if I be in error; but am I not right in affirming that Ireland has a public opinion of its own, which has matured and strengthened in the last forty years beyond all example in the past history of tho country? And has not that public opinion a powerful action, through an extensive and active press, upon the public opinion of England and upon the Imperial Legislature? And let me add that, in all the great cities and towns of England and Scotland, there is a response to this public opinion and to this public voice of Ireland which carries home both to the ear and to the intelligence of this country. My belief is that there is a great future for Ireland. If less than tifty years have brought about what I have hardly touched in outline, what may not another fifty years with the accelerating ratio of improvement accomplish? When I look on foreign nations, and I may say also upon England, I see cause for grave foreboding. Everywhere I see change, or what men call progress, without stability. Governments and nations are marching into the unknown, without a base of opera tions, and therefore without any line of retreat; without communications open for resource, or means of reform ing in case of a disaster. States — I do not say monar chies, for they have sold themselves and are morally gone — but States without faith are therefore without God; and States without God have no stability, because they have no vital coherence. They may hold together by the force of custom for awhile, or by the tenacity of interest even for a long time; but they have no source of life or curative resources in themselves. All these things I see in Ireland. You have a people pervaded by faith, openly serving God by every form of private and public duty. You have a religious unity in doctrine, worship, and communion, which resists and casts off all modern expedients of latitudinarianism or Godless legislation. The progress of Ireland is on the pathway of Christianity, which has made the nations of Christendom and the glory of them. They have departed, or are de parting, from faith, and their glory likewise is departing from them. For them I see no future. I see no future for imperial Germany; or for revolutionary Italy; or for Spain, if it abandon its ancient Catholic traditions; or for France, if it continue to deify Voltaire and to glorify the principles of 1789. But I do see a future for Ireland, and I see also a future for England — if Ire land be Ireland still, and if England have still a Christian heart. Here is the trial which has now reached its crisis. The trial is this: Shall the next generation of Irishmen be formed as Catholics? Shall the next generation of Englishmen be formed as Christians?

III.

I am at a loss to understand the blindness which has fallen upon a multitude of men at this day. They would indignantly claim to be Christians. But they deal with Christian education as they would deal with the casting of iron and the combing of wool — as a necessary but expensive work, in which there is no motive for enthusiasm. Not so those who desire to rid the world of the Catholic faith, of doctrinal Christianity, and of religion in any form. They know perfectly well that the school is more fatal to their policy than the church. Our churches would soon stand empty if our

'i <• A LETTER TO THE schools were not full. They see what we are either blind enough not to see, or, as they may well think, stupid enough not to understand — that the shape and mould and form and character of the next generation are to be decided in our schools. Bring up the children without religion, and the next generation will pull down the churches. We in England were upon the brink of being terrified by agitation, and juggled by leagues into some compromise, which is the beginning of interminable concessions. This danger is, I hope, past, because the momentary scare is over, and the weakness of the agitation is found out. We have need, however, of a hundred eyes, and of keeping them all open, to watch the dangers which beset the Catholic and Christian education of these countries. The popular education of Ireland is indeed safe: not through any favour of legislatures, but through the fidelity and industry of the Catholic Church and its people. Your danger will be in the higher education. And your only safety will be in the same Catholic fidelity and industry; which will render all experiments at mixed education in Ireland useless, because the Catholic laity in Ireland refuse them, and the Catholic Church is resolved to provide colleges and a higher education for its people. When the late proposal for university education in Ireland was first made known, I was, for a time, induced to believe, looking at it as for us in England, that it could be accepted with safety and worked for ultimate good. But this impression — for I will not call it a judgment or even an opinion — I carefully guarded by the consciousness that those only who are upon the spot and familiar with all local and personal conditions could form an adequate judgment. I was fully aware that what could be tolerated in England might be intolerable in Ireland: and that what would be a gain to a handful of Catholics in a vast non-Catholic population might be a great loss, and even a wrong, to a Catholic people of which the religious unity and Catholic traditions are unbroken. When, then, the Catholic Episcopate of Ireland refused the proposal on the high Christian principle that it involved two things which the Catholic Church in flexibly refuses — the one, mixed education; the other, education without faith — I recognised the higher and nobler attitude of its refusal. I saw in it the broad assertion that a Catholic people have a right to Catholic education; that education is impossible without faith; that already enough had been endured by Ireland, and that had been done by Parliament in the establishment of primary schools in which the Catholic religion could not be taught, and in the founding of colleges where education is mixed; that both these things are wrong against a Catholic people; and that it was therefore impossible to consent to a measure which would consolidate, perpetuate, and extend this system of mixed and Godless education in the heart of a people profoundly religious and profoundly Catholic. When I saw this, I at once recognised, not only the truth and the justice, but also the higher elevation, of your reply. Such mixed and Godless schemes of university education have become inevitable in England by reason of our endless religious contentions. England has lost its religious unity, and is paying the grievous penalty.

But Ireland may well remind the Imperial Parliament that it has not forfeited its religious unity, and that such penal legislation is neither necessary nor tolerahle. Even Scotland has made this plea good, in bar of schemes of education at variance with its religious convictions. The Scotch Education Bill is essentially religious and denominational. Parliament has legis lated for Scotland wisely and justly, according to the desires and the conscience of the Scotch people. It will assuredly take its measure of any education schemes for England from the ideas and choices of the English people. To their shame be it spoken, there are Eng lishmen and Scotchmen who will claim this for themselves and will deny it to Irishmen. We have of late years fully unmasked this injustice. For a long time your claim was not denied, because it was not distinctly enunciated. Ireland had borne with a long course of niggard and ungenerous legislation, in which the least possible recognition was admitted that Ireland is a Catholic country, and the Irish a Catholic people. But when certain politicians began to claim Presbyterian education for Presbyterian Scotland, the whole truth was told, and the claim of Ireland was unintentionally established. The Presbyterians in Scotland are as somewhat more than four to one of the entire population. The Catholics of Ireland are about the same to their non-Catholic fellow-countrymen. The late Irish University debates have lifted the whole question, and placed it upon this level: Catholic Ire land justly claims that its higher education shall be Catholic. And from this demand, I trust, under God, it will never go back. The Bishops and people of Ireland, who, in resistance of the Godless colleges, five-and-twenty years ago founded a Catholic University, will not fail now in resisting the scheme of a mixed university, to give permanence and development to the university which already exists. The vigorous unity of the pastors and people of Ireland will not hesitate to take up and to consolidate the work which was so well begun, with so much foresight, and with so much self-denial. Its very existence on Stephen's Green is a witness that Catholic Ireland claims a pure Catholic University. I trust that no line, no letter, of this noble and explicit inscription will be effaced. It was the work of the Irish Church and nation. It has stood for more than twenty years, bearing witness to the claims of the laity of Ireland, and to the duty of the Imperial Parliament towards the Irish people. If it served no other purpose in our day — and it does serve a multitude of other and excellent uses — this one alone would suffice to bind the faithful to maintain it in its integrity, and to make it the centre of the higher national education of Ireland.

IV.

If this be done by the spontaneous efforts of the Irish people, the day must come when a juster spirit will prevail in our Legislature. It will not for ever obey the narrow bigotry of Covenanters, nor the jealous fears of sectarians, nor the imperial haughtiness of tyrannical Liberals, nor the supercilious contempt of infidels. The Parliament of the future will be broader, and more in sympathy with the constituencies of the three kingdoms. England and Scotland will not claim to legislate for Ireland according to English and Scotch interests and prejudices; and Ireland, when it is justly treated, will have no more will then than it has now to make or meddle in the local affairs of England or Scotland. The three peoples are distinct in blood, in religion, in character, and in local interests. They will soon learn to ' live and let live/ when the vanishing rdiqu'uc of the Tudor tyranny shall have died out; unless the insane example of Germany shall, for a time, inflame the heads of certain violent politicians to try their hand at what they call an imperial policy. I have watched, with a mixture of sorrow and indignation, the writings and the speeches of a handful of boisterous and blustering doctrinaires, who are trying to turn men away from doing what is just towards Ireland by grandiloquent phrases about the imperial race and an imperial policy. An imperial policy, in the mouths of doctrinaires, means a legislation which ignores the special character and legitimate demands of races and localities, and subjects them to the coercion of laws at variance with their most sacred instincts. Not so the imperial policy of ancient Rome, which wisely consolidated its world-wide power by the most delicate regard to the religion of every race and nation. But our doctrinaires either have no religion, or a Scotch or English creed. They will take good care to make provision for themselves.

Imperial policy means, and may be defined as, legislation to hamper and harass the Catholic Church in Ireland. Such imperial legislation would be in tensely English for England and Scotch for Scotland, but imperial — that is, anti-Irish and anti-Catholic — for Ireland. Imperial legislation means using imperial power to force Ireland into subjection to the religious ideas of England. These same gentlemen lament openly that the policy of the Tudors stopped short of exterminating the Irish Catholic race. They are saying, ' If we had lived in the days of our fathers not a Catholic soul should have been left in Ireland, and then we should now have had no trouble with questions of Church, or land, or university education.' The appearance of such public counsellors is a portent of evil. They distort the vision and heat the blood of men; they revive animosities and kindle old hates. They may be the forerunners of convulsions w^hich would lay waste our public peace, if there be not calmer heads and juster hearts to repress their inflammatory declamation.

The rise of an empire is no cause of joy to men who love their country. It is often the sign of the loss of true liberty. When local government, springing from mature national self-control, grows weak and impotent, then, and then only, it is that imperial centralisation becomes possible and necessary. France has tried it, and is expiating the fault by half a century of successive revolutions and a chronic instability. Germany is beginning to inflict upon itself a vengeance worse than France could wreak, by an imperial despotism which legislates in violation of the religion and conscience of its subjects. Its present ecclesiastical laws have been hailed and heralded by our newspapers as the policy of Henry VIII. Till the other day no Englishman was found to glorify Henry VIII. Now he has received his apotheosis as a great Englishman and a wise king. Germany is applauded because it is persecuting the Catholic Church. The imperial power is setting to us the magnanimous example of defying the Pope. Articles without end appear every week, all alive with sympathy for this ignoble tyranny, which violates liberty of conscience, of religion, of speech, and of action in its most sacred sphere. And Englishmen, who have prated for three hundred years of the duty of private judgment, of the rights of conscience, of civil and religious liberty, are praising the German penal laws with all the fervour with which they used to denounce the fables of the Spanish Inquisition.

V.

I cannot say that I have much fear of an imperial policy in Great Britian and Ireland. The day is past, and the work would be found too tough for our doc trinaires. My chief reason for this confidence is that the people of these three kingdoms will not have it so. They mean to manage their own affairs with a great extension, rather than a hair's breadth of diminution, in the freedom of local self-government. They are willing, as I said, to live and to let live; not to meddle with others, nor to allow anybody to meddle with them: above all, in matters of conscience and of religion they will not be interfered with by any authority. They have no desire to interfere with the conscience or religion of their neighbours; and they do not mean to be used again as the tools or the weapons of any party, political or religious.

Such is certainly the mind and will of the English people, as I believe I can undertake to say; and I think your Grace would be able to add your testimony as to the people of Ireland. They have least of all any desire to meddle with the political or religious affairs of their neighbours; and they have no intention that any neighbours whatsoever should meddle with theirs. In this temper of mind I see the surest guarantees of our future peace; and of the healthful development of a local self-government over the three kingdoms, suited to the character, faith, conscience, traditions, and interests of each. We shall be thereby removed every day further and further from the dangers of ' imperial ' centralisation, which is everywhere, as it has been in France, the paralysis of all local and individual energy and life. In this expansion of our distinct and various national life and energy I see also the bonds of mutual good-will and justice, which must assuredly draw us more closely together and hold us indissolubly united.

I shall, therefore, hope that our Legislature will hereafter represent more adequately the legitimate will, conscience, and mind of Great Britain and Ireland; and that when certain politicians, who would vote for denominational education in England and mixed education in Ireland, because they exist by favour of the Orangemen of Ireland and the Anglicans in England, shall have put off their traditional narrowness and their anti-Catholic enmity; and when the so-called Liherals shall have repented of their sympathy with the German penal laws, and the Nonconformists shall have remembered that it is not for Free Churches to force the conscience of those who believe education without religion to be anti-Christian, — when these recent mental aberrations shall have been rectified by the repentance of certain of our legislators — and they will be rectified when the House of Commons truly represents the people of the three kingdoms — then I believe the university education offered to the people of Ireland will be such as a Catholic nation has a right to possess. Until then I hope both the Bishops and the laity of Ireland will wait in patience. The policy of patience won for them unconditional Catholic Emancipation fifty years ago; and it will win for them hereafter a true and pure Catholic University.

VI.

In the course of the late debates I heard strange utterances about the duty of Government to interfere to save the laity of Ireland from an Ultramontane priesthood. There are yet men alive, and in Parliament too, who can harbour and utter such wild talk. This was the dream of those who set up the National Education of 1835. They fought ' Popery ' ' with their right hand tied behind them.' The result was not encouraging. And now rather than confess their mistake they must try it again. It has failed with the poor, but it may prosper with the upper class, especially if there can be found anywhere the fear of being thought to be priest-ridden to work upon. I will confess that I had maliciously made up my mind, when I should be enjoying your hospitality, to see what the lay men of Ireland would say to this benevolent purpose of their English protectors. As I have not seldom to converse with men who profess to know on the best evidence that the laity in Ireland are sighing for redemption from an Ultramontane and domineering priesthood, I thought it would not be amiss if I could give in this matter the result of my own experience. But in truth I have no need to go to Armagh to know what the laity of Ireland would say to those who scatter imputations on their fidelity, and would try to seduce them from their pastors; nor do I need any evidence to assure me that the handful of men who, in London or in Dublin, mutter and whisper under the eaves of Castles and Governments against the Hierarchy of Ireland do not represent or know the Irish people.

VII.

I am well aware how many questions there are bearing on the welfare of Ireland which demand attention; but I must take leave to say that in my judgment there is none that bears any comparison in vital importance to that of education. It is nothing less than this i Shall the posterity of Ireland be the children of S. Patrick, or the children of this world? Here is an issue in which I believe all Irishmen will be united. Even the Protestants and the Presbyterians of Ireland desire that education shall be religious and Christian. The whole Irish people, Catholic and Protestant, there-

VOL. i. cc fore, alike demand that the tradition of Christian education, unbroken hitherto, may be preserved inviolate, and handed down as they have received it to their children's children.

I rejoice to know that on the 12th of July no Catholic in Ulster raised his hand or his voice to hinder the freedom which his Protestant neighbours enjoyed; and that on the 15th of August no Protestant moved to disturb his Catholic neighbours. WJien these things can be done in Ulster, what may not be done in all Ireland? I learned yesterday that on Sunday, while the Catholic cathedral of Armagh was dedicated, the bells of Armagh rang a friendly greeting. God grant that their mingled harmony may bo a prophecy of a future perfect unity of faith. It made me doubly sorry that I was not there to hear them. Whatever experiments, I was almost going to say tricks, the miserable political and religious contentions of England may force men to practise in this country, Scotland will have none of them. John Knox has just put his foot down, and while he gives freedom to others, ho will have his own Bible and catechism. Ireland will not fail to do what Scotland has done. S. Patrick will claim that the Christian faith of the whole people shall be guarded in all its purity and freedom; and Irishmen will know how to make this national right understood and felt at the next general election. I hope to see the hundred and five Irish members vote as one man against every attempt to meddle with the full freedom and purity of religious education in Ireland.

And now, my dear Lord Primate, I have detained you too long; and if I were not to put some force on myself I should run on out of bounds. I hope my brethren, the Bishops of Ireland, will accept what I have written as an expression of my heartfelt regret at finding myself here alone while they were offering up the Holy Sacrifice in thanksgiving in the new cathedral of Armagh. The Catholic Church in Ireland and in England has at this day a solid unity of mutual co operation such as it never had since Armagh and Canterbury were founded. In the Vatican Council no Saint had so many mitred sons as S. Patrick; and, wonderful are the ways of God, no single power on earth had there a hierarchy so numerous gathered from the ends of the earth as our own. These things are not with out a future; and that future hangs in great measure on our close union and mutual help. In your brotherly invitation to Armagh I read the same meaning; and in this answer, in the name of the Catholic Bishops and Church in England, I accept and reciprocate the assurance of our alliance.

Believe me, my dear Lord Primate,

Your G race's affectionate brother and servant, ^ HENRY EDWARD,

Archbishop of Westminster. London, August 31, 1873.

Footnotes

1. I would wish to speak kindly with those who have voted for me, in respect to what has now happened, while the archons are occupied, and before I go to the place where I must die. Bear with me, therefore, 0 ↩

2. Apologia Socratis, s. 31, p. 164. ↩

3. Apologia Socratit, s. 3?, p. 172. ↩

4. I myself, Galaxidorus, have heard a Megarian, who had it from Terpsion, say that Socrates' daemon was nothing else but the sneezing either of himself or of others; for if another sneezed, either before, behind him, or on his right hand, then he went on to do what he was about; but if on the left hand, he refrained from acting. One sort of his own sneezing confirmed him, whilst deliberating and not fully resolved; another stopped him when already about to act. But indeed it seems strange that if he used sneezing as his sign, he should not have told this to his friends, but should have said that it was a dromon that hindered or en joined him.'10 ↩