67 
attained a high degree of practical experience. But what 
does it prove ? Simply that there are classes of minds which 
are able to discern by intuition what others can only discern 
through media. If such a power was general with respect 
to a man's mental faculties instead of being partial only, 
those possessing it would form a higher order of beings 
than the human race ; but it does not follow that they could 
arrive at certainties out of pure contingencies. No doubt 
men of high mathematical powers see many truths by simple 
intuitional acts, which others less gifted arrive at through 
very painful processes. Such a faculty was possessed by 
Napoleon I., Sir Isaac Newton, and by those calculating boys 
so strongly dwelt on by Dr. Newman. Any person who has 
ever attended to the operation of his own mind, is aware that 
it often happens that after one has exhausted oneself in 
fruitless efforts to solve a point, a thought rushes unbidden 
into the mind which unravels the whole difficulty. Such is 
the case with respect to many practical judgments. Thucy- 
dides tells us that Themistocles was the best to form an 
accurate judgment of what the occasion required on the fewest 
possible data. This was the result of natural genius combined 
with experience. It is a vain attempt for those of us who 
have not- this gift to penetrate its arcana ; and, for the same 
reason, it is impossible to base any general theories like 
those of Dr. Newman on cases of this kind. We are unable 
to reduce them to the forms of logic ; but this proves 
nothing either way. 
51. To one important remark of Dr. Newman I must draw 
attention. We are too much in the habit of assuming that 
our reason is a simple faculty which acts with equal power 
on all kinds of subject matter. In the following remark of 
Dr. Newman there is a substratum of truth, but the mode 
in which it is put is certainly inaccurate. 
a The rational faculty may be called departmental. It is not so much 
one faculty, as a collection of similar or analogous faculties under one name ; 
there being really as many faculties as there are distinct subject matters.” 
52. In proof of this, he observes that the hard-headed mathe- 
matician frequently fails in historic evidence, successful ex- 
perimentalists in pleading, shrewd men of business in philo- 
sophic questions, &c. “ Priestley," says he, “ was great on 
electricity and chemistry, but was weak in ecclesiastical history; 
Newton, strong in the Principia, reasoned badly on the Apoca- 
lypse. It is notorious how ridiculous a clever man may make 
himself, who ventures to argue with professed theologians. 
