4 8 



LECTURES AND ESS A YS 



Students and Ex-students of the Catholic 

 University in Ireland to the Episcopal 

 Board of the University ; and it consti- 

 tutes the plainest and bravest remon- 

 strance ever addressed by Irish laymen 

 to their spiritual pastors and masters. It 

 expresses the profoundest dissatisfaction 

 with the curriculum marked out for the 

 students of the University, setting forth 

 the extraordinary fact that the lecture- 

 list for the faculty of Science, published 

 a month before they wrote, did not 

 contain the name of a single Professor 

 of the Physical or Natural Sciences. 



The memorialists forcibly deprecate 

 this, and dwell upon the necessity of 

 education in science : " The distinguish- 

 ing mark of this age is its ardour for 

 science. The natural sciences have, 

 within the last fifty years, become the 

 chiefest study in the world; they 

 are in our time pursued with an activity 

 unparalleled in the history of mankind. 

 Scarce a year now passes without some 

 discovery being made in these sciences 

 which, as with the touch of the magician's 

 wand, shivers to atoms theories formerly 

 deemed unassailable. It is through the 

 physical and natural sciences that the 

 fiercest assaults are now made on our 

 religion. No more deadly weapon is 

 used against our faith than the facts 

 incontestably proved by modern re- 

 searches in science." 



Such statements must be the reverse 

 of comfortable to a number of gentle- 

 men who, trained in the philosophy of 

 Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed 

 to the unquestioning submission of all 

 other sciences to their divine science of 

 Theology. But this is not all : "One thing 

 seems certain," say the memorialists, 

 " viz., that if chairs for the physical and 

 natural sciences be not soon founded in 

 the Catholic University, very many young 

 men will have their faith exposed to 

 dangers which the creation of a school 

 of science in the University would defend 

 them from. For our generation of Irish 

 Catholics are writhing under the sense 

 of their inferiority in science, and are j 

 determined that such inferiority shall j 



not long continue ; and so, if scientific 

 training be unattainable at our University, 

 they will seek it at Trinity or at the 

 Queen's Colleges, in not one of which is 

 there a Catholic Professor of Science." 



Those who imagined the Catholic. 

 University at Kensington to be due to 

 the spontaneous recognition, on the part 

 of the Roman hierarchy, of the intel- 

 lectual needs of the age will derive 

 enlightenment from this, and still more 

 from what follows : for the most formid- 

 able threat remains. To the picture of 

 Catholic students seceding to Trinity 

 and the Queen's Colleges the memo- 

 rialists add this darkest stroke of all : 

 " They will, in the solitude of their own 

 homes, unaided by any guiding advice, 

 devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin, 

 Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell : works in- 

 nocuous if studied under a professor 

 who would point out the difference 

 between established facts and erroneous 

 inferences, but which are calculated 

 to sap the faith of a solitary student 

 deprived of a discriminating judgment to 

 which he could refer for a solution of his 

 difficulties." 



In the light of the knowledge given by 

 this courageous memorial, and of similar 

 knowledge otherwise derived, the recent 

 Catholic manifesto did not at all strike 

 me as a chuckle over the mistake of a 

 maladroit adversary, but rather as an 

 evidence of profound uneasiness on the 

 part of the Cardinal, the Archbishops, 

 and the Bishops who signed it. They 

 acted towards the Students' Memorial, 

 however, with their accustomed practical 

 wisdom. As one concession to the spirit 

 which it embodied, the Catholic Univer- 

 sity at Kensington was brought forth, 

 apparently as the effect of spontaneous 

 inward force, and not of outward pressure 

 becoming too formidable to be success- 

 fully opposed. 



The memorialists point with bitterness 

 to the fact that "the name of no Irish 

 Catholic is known in connection with the 

 physical and natural sciences." But this, 

 they ought to know, is the complaint 

 of free and cultivated minds wherever 





