CATHOLIC EDUCATION.

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Italian prince, elective while his neighbours are hereditary, but occupied, just as they are, and even more than they, with the precarious maintenance of his local dominion.1 As for Italy at large, her intellectual and even moral development was accelerated by such a settlement: but she lost her political nationality by it: for the popes could neither pervert their function by including all Italy under their temporal rule, in defiance of Europe; nor, from a regard to their own independence, permit any other great Italian sovereignty to border upon their territory. There was no more deplorable consequence of the condition of existence that we have just reviewed than the political sacrifice of so valuable and so interesting a part of the European community, which has been fruitlessly struggling, for ten centuries, to establish a national unity incompatible with the political system founded upon Catholicism.

These statical conditions of the political existence of Catholicism have been noticed with so much distinctness, because they are open to misconception when the philosophical principle of interpretation is not laid hold of. The dynamical conditions may be more briefly dismissed. We have little more to consider than the great elementary prerogative of Education,-using the word in the large sense before assigned to it.

Educational function.

If we were philosophical enough to judge of the Catholic system of universal ministration, not by the backward character of Catholic education in the present day, but by what it was in comparison with the preceding state of things, we should better estimate its importance. The polytheistic régime doomed the mass of society to brutish stupidity: not only slaves but the majority of free men being deprived of all regular instruction, unless we may so call the popular interest in the fine arts and observance of festivals, finished off with scenic sports. Military education, in which free men alone could share, was in fact the only one in ancient times that could be appropriately organized. Vast, then, was the elementary progress when Catholicism imposed on every disciple the strict duty of receiving, and as far as

1 Published in 1841.

possible, of procuring that religious instruction which, taking possession of the individual from his earliest days, and preparing him for his social duties, followed him through life, keeping him up to his principles by an admirable combination of exhortations, of exercises, and of material signs, all converging towards unity of impression. In an intellectual view, the philosophy which formed the basis of popular catechisms was all that it could be in those times, all that existed except the metaphysical teachings, which were radically unfit, from their antiorganic nature, to enter into general circulation, and which could only have engendered a prevalent scepticism. The rudiments of science, discovered in the school of Alexandria, were too weak, disconnected, and abstract to enter into popular education, even if they had not been repelled by the spirit of the system. So far from the Catholic system having always been repressive of popular intelligence, as is now most unjustly said, it was for a long period the most efficacious promoter of it. The prohibition of the indiscreet and popular use of the Scriptures was a logical necessity imposed by the view of giving an indefinite continuity to monotheism; and, injurious as are the intellectual and social consequences of such a prohibition, it cannot be philosophically regarded as a step backwards towards theocracy: for, so far from favouring the monopoly of knowledge and power which distinguished theocracy, the Catholic clergy were for ever labouring to imbue the whole of society with whatever knowledge they had themselves obtained. This was indeed a necessary consequence of the division of powers, which left no other sufficient support for the spiritual authority than the intellectual development of society. Our estimate of the mental and moral operation of the Catholic educational system will come in better hereafter; and our present business is with its political operation only. The political influence of the priesthood arose out of the natural ascendancy which accrues to the original directors of all education that is not confined to mere instruction; an immediate and general ascendancy, inherent in that great social office, quite apart from the sacred character of spiritual authority in the Middle Ages, and the superstitious terrors which were

CONFESSION THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION.

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connected with it. Furnished from the beginning with the empirical wisdom of the Eastern theocracies and the ingenious speculations of the Greek philosophy, the Catholic clergy had to apply themselves to the steady and accurate investigation of human nature, individual and social; and they made as much progress in it as was possible by means of irrational observations, directed or interpreted by theological or metaphysical conceptions. Such knowledge, possessed in the highest existing degree, was eminently favourable to political ascendancy, because it naturally and at all times constitutes the chief intellectual basis of spiritual authority; all other sciences operating merely, in this relation, through their influence on speculation that regards Man and society. The institution of Confession is an allimportant function of the prerogative of Education. It is at once a consequence and a complement of it. For it is impossible, on the one hand, that the directors of youth should not be the counsellors of active manhood; and, on the other, that the social efficacy of their early influence should be secure without such a protraction of moral influence as would enable them to watch over the daily application of the principles of conduct which they had instilled. There can be no stronger proof of the decay of the old spiritual organization than our present inability to see the necessity of such a function, and to feel its adaptation to those primary needs of our moral nature, effusion and direction, which, in the first instance, could not be better satisfied than by the voluntary submission of every believer to a spiritual guide, freely chosen from a vast and eminent corporation, all of whose members were usually fit to give useful advice, and incapable, from their disinterested position, of abusing a confidence on which their personal authority was founded. If such a consultative influence over human life were denied to the spiritual power, what social prerogative would remain that might not be more justly contested? The moral effects of this noble institution, which purified men by confession and rectified them by repentance, have been so effectually vindicated by those who understand them best, that we may spare ourselves any elaborate comparison of it with the rough and ineffectual discipline, equally precarious and vexatious, by which

the magistrate, under the polytheistic system, strove to regulate morals by arbitrary precepts, in virtue of the confusion of powers which then prevailed. We have to regard it now only as an indispensable condition of spiritual government, furnishing the information and the moral means without which it could not perform its social office. The evils which it produced, even in its best days, are attributable less to the institution itself than to the vague and absolute nature of the theological philosophy on which the spiritual organization was founded. The right of absolution, almost arbitrary under the best securities, arose necessarily out of this position of circumstances; and no remonstrances could avail against the practical need of it; for without it, a single serious fault must have perpetually occasioned despair, the consequences of which, to the individual and to society, must have converted this salutary discipline into a source of incalculable disturbance.

From the political estimate of Catholicism, Dogmatic conditions. we must next pass on to a brief review of its dogmatic conditions, in order to see how secondary theological doctrines, which appear to us socially indifferent, were yet necessary to the political efficacy of a system so complex and factitious that when its unity, laboriously maintained, was once infringed by the destruction of any one of its component influences, the disorganization of the whole was, however gradual, absolutely inevitable.

The amount of polytheism involved in Catholicism was as small as the needs of the theological spirit would at all admit. But there were accessory dogmas which, derived more or less spontaneously from the characteristic theological conception, have expanded into means more or less necessary to the fulfilment of its destination in regard to social progress. We must notice the most important of these.

The vague and variable tendency of theological conceptions impairs their social efficacy by exposing the precepts they supply to perpetual modification by human passions: and this difficulty can be met only by an incessant vigilance on the part of the corresponding spiritual authority. Catholicism had no choice, if the unity of its social function was to be preserved, but to repress the irreconcilable

outbreaks of the religious spirit in individual minds by setting up absolute faith as the first duty of the Christian, because there was no other basis for moral obligation of other kinds. This was a real advance of the moral interests of society; for the great practical utility of religion in that age was that it permitted the provisional elevation of a noble speculative body, eminently adapted during its ascending period to direct the opinions and morals of mankind. It is from this point of view that the dogmatic, as well as the directly political character of Catholicism ought to be judged; for in no other way can we seize the true character of some doctrines, dangerous no doubt, but imposed by the nature or the needs of the system and in no other way can we understand the importance formerly attributed by so many superior minds to special dogmas which might at first appear useless to the final destination, but which had a real bearing both upon the ecclesiastical unity and social efficacy of Catholicism. Some of these dogmas were the very means of the destruction of the system, by the mental and moral insurrection which they provoked. For instance, Dogma of the dogma that the reception of the Catholic exclusive salfaith is the sole means of salvation was the vation. only instrument for the control of theological divergence; but this fatal declaration, which involves the damnation of all heretics, involuntary as well as wilful, excited more deep and unanimous indignation than any other, when the day of emancipation arrived; for nothing is more confirmatory of the provisional destination of all religious doctrines than their gradually leading on to the conversion of an old principle of love into a final ground of insurmountable hatred; as we should see more and more henceforth amidst the dissolution of creeds, if their social action did not tend finally towards a total and common extinction. The dogma of the condemnation of mankind through Adam, which is, morally, more revolting than the other, was also a necessary element of the Catholic philosophy, not only for the theological explanation it supplied of human suffering, but, more specially, because it afforded ground for the scheme of redemption, on the necessity of which the whole

Of the Fall.