When Newman was invited by innocent people to appear as the champion of faith against science,he refused,for the reason (among others)that he could not tell what was the position to be assailed.He would not deny that 'science grew,but it grew by fits and Starts,'and threw out hypotheses which 'rose and fell.'(266)He supposes science to represent a fluctuating set of guesses.Even if it appeared to contradict revelation,the contradiction could be evaded by an easy device.Science and Scripture contradict each other as to the motion of the earth.We cannot decide till we know what motion is,and then it may turn out that science is false or reconcilable to Scripture.(267)This saying alienated Froude and Kingsley,and,I fancy,with good reason;but we can see how Newman came to it.Theology,he thought,rested on a deeper foundation than science.It represented a single body of deductive truth;while science represented a set of detached conclusions formed upon particular facts.
This appears to reverse the truth.'The scientific principle,in the first place,is at issue with the theology not upon this or that point,not on the conflict between particular statements,but all along the line.Two differing conceptions of the universe are at issue,and one must be accepted.Newman substantially replies that science has its own --a lower --sphere.(268)In the Idea of a University he argues that theology must be admitted into the course,because it deals with the realities underlying phenomena,and is therefore the rightful queen of sciences.The history of the actual relations of science and theology would supply a curious commentary upon this opinion.Newman meanwhile holds that the conflict arises from a scientific misconception.
The latest infidel device,he says,is to leave theology alone.
The man of science trusts to the interest of his own pursuits to distract the mind from theology,which then perishes by inanition.(269)His error consists in leaving the higher study out of sight,or applying methods legitimate in one sphere to those of the other sphere.Science,then,does not give certainty,or gives certainty which has no bearing upon the higher orders of truth.
The reply is obvious.The physical sciences,in the first place,give a body of consistent and verifiable truth,and the only such body of truth.In the next place,it is impossible to assign science and philosophy to two different provinces.The scientific doctrines must lay down the base to which all other truth,so far as it is discoverable,must conform.The essential feature of contemporary thought was just this:that science was passing from purely physical questions to historical,ethical,and social problems.The dogmatist objects to private judgment or free thought on the ground that,as it gives no criterion,it cannot lead to certainty.His real danger was precisely that it leads irresistibly to certainty.The scientific method shows how such certainty as is possible must be obtained.The man of science advocates free inquiry precisely because it is the way to truth,and the only way,though a way which leads through many errors.His test is that which so impressed Newman himself,Securus judicat orbis terrarum;only orbis terrarum must not be translated one European Church during a few centuries.The man of science fully agrees with Newman that there is a true 'illative sense';that men can reason implicitly before they can reason in logical form,and make approximately true formulae though involved in innumerable superstitions and errors.The ultimate criterion is the power of verifying conclusions,of testing truth by its capacity to explain phenomena,and by its conformity to the scientific truth already established beyond dispute.But there is no royal road to truth in philosophy any more than in science;or,rather,it must be far longer and more difficult to reach it.Therefore we must not lay down rules as absolutely certain,but subject them to perpetual examination,to what Newman calls 'the all-corroding force'of the intellect,in the conviction that by that process we are slowly approximating to sounder belief.The errors have to be 'corroded.'This is admittedly true of all the natural sciences;we have to puzzle out the truth in every development of thought,from astronomy to physiology,by a slow and painful process.Moreover,it is true of all the religions of the world except,as Newman would say,the Catholic.Why is that to be an exception?Newman candidly admits a difficulty.The suggestion that a religion to be universally accepted should be universally revealed,as though written 'on the sun,'is,he admits,plausible.(270)He urges that there always was a revelation somewhere,though a revelation in Jerusalem was not of much use in Peking.Yet the admitted fact seems to be a fatal objection to the a priori probability which he assumes of a revelation.To nine-tenths of the world there has been only a 'virtual,'that is to say,no revelation.How,then,does he try to make room for the one exceptional case?The secret is to keep to the geocentric point of view.Shut yourself up within the Church,interpret the world by reference to it,instead of interpreting it by its place in the world;pronounce the instincts by which it has been supported to be ultimate and infallible,instead of listening to the obvious explanation,and you can certainly escape self-contradiction --as it is still always possible on the same terms to hold to the Ptolemaic astronomy.You have only to assume as a first principle that the earth does not move,and the facts can always be forced into conformity.To outsiders this is to confuse the causes with the reasons of belief.So Newman in his famous development theory provides a kind of parallel to the scientific theory.He shows with the greatest clearness how a certain body works out the properties implied in the type,and so obeys an implicit logic.
