CARDINAL WISEMAN
459
perplexed by difficulties, or darkened by ignorance and prejudice. These men have not ahvays the results of research at command; they have no time to keep abreast with the constant progress of historical and critical science; and the solutions which they are obliged to give are conse- quently often imperfect, and adapted only to uninstructed and uncultivated minds. Their reasoning cannot be the same as that of the scholar who has to meet error in its most vigorous, refined, and ingenious form. As knowledge advances, it must inevitably happen that they will find some of their hitherto accepted facts contradicted, and some arguments overturned which have done good service. They will find that some statements, which they have adopted under stress of controversy, to remove prejudice and doubt, turn out to be hasty and partial replies to the questions they were meant to answer, and that the true solutions would require more copious explanation than they can give. And thus will be brought home to their minds that, in the topics upon which popular controversy chiefly turns, the conditions of discussion and the resources of arguments are subject to gradual and constant change. A Review, therefore, which undertakes to investigate political and scientific problerns, \vithout any direct sub- servience to the interests of a party or a cause, but with the belief that such investigation, by its very independence and straightforwardness, must give the most valuable indirect assistance to religion, cannot expect to enjoy at once the favour of those who have grown up in another school of ideas. l\1en \vho are occupied in the special functions of ecclesiastical life, where the Church is all- sufficient and requires no extraneous aid, \\.ill naturally see at first in the problems of public life, the demands of modern society, and the progress of human learning, nothing but nevv and unwelcome difficulties,-trial and distraction to themselves, temptation and danger to their flocks. In time they will learn that there is a higher and a nobler course for Catholics than one which begins in fear and does not lead to security. They \\Till come to see how vast a service they may render to the Church by
