EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 67 



as other men have done in every time. Erasmus 

 wrote " my works will live for ever." Lord Chatham 

 exclaimed " I can save this country and no one 

 else can." Thomas Carlyle said in effect "with 

 health and peace I could write the best book of this 

 generation." The earlier Newman looked on the world 

 as something to be saved by the church, and the church 

 as something to be saved by John Henry Newman. 



Now all these men are striking examples, in bodily 

 as well as in mental organization, of the ceaselessly 

 active and alert type. They were not markedly gentle 

 or quiet or dreamy ; they were not inordinately affec- 

 tionate ; but they were all honourable and courageous 

 souls and in no one of them was there the least dash of 

 the self-seeker or the charlatan. 



Newman was effective in disputation, in exposition, 

 in narrative and in strategic by-play; he was not 

 original except in subtlety of controversial methods. 

 The active temperament tends to look back, to defer 

 to authority, to consider all questions closed. The 

 reflective temperament looks more to the future, con- 

 fronts all authority, and declares every question open. 

 Newman was of the strongly active bias, and therefore 

 conservative. His greatest evils, as is well known, 

 were two liberalism in religion and liberalism in politics. 

 When pressed by liberal admirers for one liberal crumb 

 of comfort, he replied: "liberty, yes, the liberty to 

 choose good leaders," meaning thereby the liberty to 

 choose leaders whom he, Newman would have approved. 

 The Romish Church in somewhat like manner permits 

 one act of private judgment the act of embracing the 

 Romish Church. Certain moderns, Newman being 

 one of them, finding that reason fails to sanction their 

 preconceived views, generously permit us to prove by 



