EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 65 



century. Cardinal Newman was a brilliant and an 

 extreme example of the more energetic, vigilant, and ; 

 distinctly less emotional nature. 



Newman's greatness was based on a massive brain, 

 though a massive brain is not the peculiar possession of 

 any one type of men and women. His head reminds 

 us of the heads of Caesar, Shakspeare, Scott, Burns, 

 and Goethe. Carlyle was physiological enough to say 

 that two fools never produce a wise child, and, it may 

 be added, a large head never comes from two small 

 ones. Excellent churchmen have not been rare men 

 of high spiritual ideals, blameless lives, cheerful 

 obedience to authority, men too of eloquence and argu- 

 ment who have compelled the attention of a church or 

 a party ; only one churchman has compelled the atten- 

 tion of a people. A thousand churchmen have had 

 Newman's propensities, only one has had his endow- 

 ments. In Newman's mother there probably lay the 

 potentialities of her great son. In natural gifts and 

 proclivities, though not in detailed opinion, which is 

 much more under the control of environment, he 

 appears to have taken mainly after his keen-witted self- 

 confident mother. Her vision was clear and untroubled, 

 but it was neither wide nor deep* in its grasp. His 

 father's eye swept a larger field, but with less intensity 

 and less self-confidence. His mother strove to see, 

 and therefore saw, a world tossed to and fro between 

 supernatural forces between divine guidance and 

 diabolical machination. His father saw a world made 

 up for the most part of natural good and evil, and his 

 judgments were based on grounds of strictly human 

 justice and human charity. 



Cardinal Newman had many of the notes of character 

 which, it seems to me, cluster together in the active 



