's ministry even the embryonic form of
the Church's later theological teaching.' 'A dogma,' says Le Roy, one of
the ablest philosophers of the school, 'proclaims, above all, a
prescription of practical order; it is the formula of a rule of
practical conduct. Why then should we not bring theory into harmony with
practice?'

These extracts mark a much later phase of the revolt against Catholic
dogma and scholastic theology than can be found in Newman's writings.
They are contemporary with the Pragmatism of James and Schiller, and the
Activism of Bergson. So bold a defiance of tradition would have been
impossible thirty years earlier. And yet, when Newman pours scorn upon
human reason, and when he enthrones the 'conscience' as the supreme
arbiter of truth, is he not, in fact, preparing the way for these
startling declarations, which imply a complete rupture with Catholic
authority? Dogmas are indisputably 'notional' propositions; that is to
say, they belong to that class of truths to which Newman ascribes only a
very subordinate importance. We cannot, in his sense,'assent' to an
historical proposition as such, but only to the authority which has
ordered us to believe it. And is there any justification for Newman's
confidence that this authority may make apparent innovations, such as he
admits to have been made throughout the history of the Church, but no
real changes? If he had been able to think out the implications of his
doctrine of development with the help of such arguments as those of
Bergson, would he not have seen that without change and real innovation
there can be no true evolution? Do not the fluidity and pragmatic
character of dogma, so much insisted on by Sabatier and Le Roy, follow
from the anti-intellectualist personalism which we have seen to be the
foundation of Newman's philosophy of religion? The Modernist might argue
that he is only extending to the history of the Church the doctrine of
education by experience which Newman found to be true in the
life-history of the individual. Life itself, with its experiences and
its needs, is the revealer of truth. We cannot anticipate the wisdom of
the future.

'I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.'

The kindly light leads a man on step by step; it conducts him from
experience to experience, not without lapses into error; it reproves him
if he desires to 'choose and see his path.' If this is true in the
history