school is only plausible in so far as it is Aristotelic; its characteristic elements are extremely unsatisfactory. Martineau is also unwittingly scholastic in his better passages, and he is too much disposed to that ‘extrarational’ proof which appealed to Mr. Romanes in his later years: for my part, I would not take a single serious step in this life on extra-rational proof, and I fail to see why it is a surer guide to the next. Thus I came to attach most importance to the schoolmen and the modern writers who adapt their principles to modern thought. I studied with extreme care St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, Scotus, Suarez, Vasquez, Pontius, Herinx, and a host of other veterans; also an infinity of smaller modern writers, Tongiorgi, Sanseverino, Lepidi, Pesch, Moigno, Zigliara, Rosmini, Lacordaire, Monsabré, &c.
Amongst English Catholic literature there was little to be read. In my younger days I had been taught to shelter myself under the authority of the great Newman: it was a few years before I found that that was rather a compromising position for a philosopher. There is an old adage in the schools that ‘in philosophy an authority is worth just as much as his arguments, and no more.’ Newman is the last guide in the world to choose in philosophical matters: the key to his line of thought is found in the inscription (epitaph, one feels tempted to say) of his one philosophical work, ‘The Grammar of Assent’—the inscription is a text from St. Ambrose, ‘Not by logic hath it
