374 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1867. the bulk of them. And thereby hangs a tale. The Unitarians 

 in general are highly intellectual, but have a practical dislike of 

 the spiritual. Mr. Martineau is a strong spiritualist, not merely 

 in religion, but in psychology. He neither can nor will teach 

 psychology, the structure and action of the mind, without a 

 distinct recognition not merely of a God, but of God and His 

 action upon the minds of men. This he teaches in his lectures 

 at University Hall an unconnected appendage to University 

 College, in which Manchester New College is located, the students 

 of which attend lectures on secular subjects at University Col- 

 lege, and learn Theology at the Hall. 



The Senate of University College (i.e. the Professors) re- 

 ported that Mr. Martineau was the best candidate. The Council 

 (which is composed of a small body of philosophical men, whose 

 creed no one knows; a larger body, perhaps one-third of the 

 whole, of Unitarians, and a full half of the miscellaneous Church- 

 men, &c., whom one finds making up the mass of all public bodies) 

 rejected him on the ground that a very distinguished Theologian, 

 no matter of what sort, would injure the College, as giving an 

 appearance of breach of its neutrality. This influenced many, 

 but all the world knew that it was his sect being Unitarian that 

 was objected to, and fear of the unpopularity of the Unitarian 

 doctrine was of considerable effect. But it was very well known 

 in the College that the philosophical party was only making a 

 tool of the anti-Unitarian party. Their objection was to Mr. 

 M.'s theism in psychology. There is a school of philo- 

 sophers who cultivate what they call sensational philosophy. 

 They are driving at the doctrine that thought is a secretion of 

 matter, and they want to get rid of all but matter and its con- 

 sequences. . . . The fact then was, as I told the Council in my 

 letter of resignation, in these words, that Mr. M. was rejected 

 because he was too far from orthodoxy to please the priests, and 

 too far from atheism to please the philosophers ; that he was 

 offered up to the Janus Bifrons of expediency, each member 

 of the majority of the Council choosing the head of the idol to 

 which his offering was to be made. 



To myself, who never will have anything to do either with 

 religious exclusion or with atheism, the proceeding was a call to 

 resign, which I immediately obeyed. I knew it to be an abandon- 

 ment of the principle of the College done in the worst way ; a 

 pretence of fearing heterodoxy, with the fear on the minds of 

 the leaders of nothing but theism. Not a soul of the Council or 



