JOHN HENNI NEVJvIAN The Origins and Application of his Educational Id eas Ph.D. Thesis 1968 JOHN JACKSON ProQuest Number: U622466 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U622466 Published by ProQuest LLC(2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 CONTENTS C hapter Page One Introduction • • • 1 Two The impact of his family 16 Three The impact of Ealing School .. 31 Four The impact of Oxford University 52 Five His early ventures 71 Six His work in Ireland 84 Seven How he established the Oratory School 120 Eight How he saved the Oratory School 149 Nine His work as headmaster of the Oratory School 193 Ten His abortive plans to return to Oxford 234 Eleven His reaction to Manning’s Kensington scheme 241 Twelve Conclusion 245 Appendices 258 Bibliography 280 CHAPTER ONE INTHODUCTION 1. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION When he wrote his memoirs, Newman declared that **from first to last education in the large sense of the word has been my line," (1 ) ( 2) By this he meant that his educational ideas 'were an integral part of his philosophical and spiritual thinking, that they were basic to the most fundamental and personal of his beliefs, and had been acquired gradually over the years. Although education in his opinion v/as essentially an intellectual process he thought of the intellect in a way which was unusual for the age in which he lived, Newman disliked paper logic and questioned the philosophies of those who like Bentham assessed propositions in purely abstract terms. He explained his position in the Apologia, He was not converted to Catholicism he said, in any logical sense: "All the logic in the world would not have made me move faster towards Rome than I did," Instead he was moved by a shift of his total personality, by a gradual realisation of his true position, "It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a number of years, and I find myself in a new place; how? The whole man moves; paper logic is but the record of it, " 1, "Autobiographical Writings", p,259. 2, His educational ideas are to be found in his nine discourses delivered in Dublin in 1852, and volume three of ’H istorical Sketches’; ’the rise and progress of universities'. His 'Discourses on the scope and nature of university education’ w ill be referred to simply as his 'Discourses’, 2. For Newman then the intellect never functioned in a purely abstract sense since it involved the whole man, and it was this which marked him out as a traditionalist, one who swam against the tide of rationalism and harked back not only to the precepts of renaissance and medieval times but also to the pagan idealism of A ristotle and the Christian ethic of St. Paul, Whilst utilitarians and scientific rationalists questioned the validity of their institutionalised inheritance, and liberal protestants interpreted the Christian message subjectively in the light of their own experiences, Newman therefore set out to preserve those links with antiquity which had survived the test of time, and to reiterate the objective dogmatism of the early ch u rch . It seemed to Newman that the sp irit of liberalism was destroying the concept of unity upon which civilization depended, and consequently he advocated a system of education which preserved the universality of knowledge and the generalised nature of things. What did he mean by these phrases? For Newman knowledge was comprehensive and expansive. Each science was related one to another and therefore it was impossible ( 3) to discriminate between them. As "knowledge forms one whole"^ the "systematic omission of any one science from the catalogue (of knowledge) prejudices the accuracy and completeness of ,,, knowledge," (4) Newman was especially critical of those who wished to exclude theology from the university curriculum. Religious doctrine he maintained 3, ’Discourses', p,37. 4. 'Discourses’, p,38. 3. "is knowledge in as full a sense as Newton’s doctrine is knowledge. University education without theology is unphilosophical. Theology has at least as good a right to claim a place there as astronomy," ( 5) He was not claiming however, that theology was more important than chemistry, geology or any other subject, but rather that it was a vital segment of the circle of knowledge and that its omission prejudiced the accuracy of knowledge in proportion to its importance. As "sciences ,,, belong to one and the same circle of objects they are one and all connected together; (and) as they are but aspects of things, they are severally incomplete in relation to the things themselves," (6) Knowledge then was all embracing, it was an objective entity, a vast and unified circle in which each science had its own place: in a word it was universal, P, R, Leavis has referred in his writings to a "central intelligence" by which sciences are related one to an o th er,a dimension of learning in which the individual is able to identify the bearing of one s cience upon another, and this is what Newman meant by the generalised or "architectonic" nature of things. Thus having argued that it was important to preserve the spirit of univer­ sality , Newman claimed that once the human mind had learned to reflect this spirit it acquired a new and mysterious discipline 5, 'Discourses', p.31. 6, 'Discourses', p.38. 7, 'Education and the university' by P, R, Leavis, p,25. 4. which enabled the individual to bridge the gulf between one science and another and thereby overcome the problems created by specialisa­ tio n . One year before Newman delivered his discourses in Dublin the Great Exhibition was held in London to commemorate the technological achievements of men like Arkwright and Stephenson, Wedgwood and Watt, Bolton and Brunei, inventive geniuses who had revolutionised the industrial, commercial and social life of England; but whilst Newman recognised their achievements - "let me not decry the useful or / g \ mechanical arts"' ' - he reckoned it foolhardy for educators to ape this trend by concentrating upon the study of purely vocational subjects. To do so would cause man to become usurped by his profession "clothed in its garb from head to foot ••• shaped pressed and stiffened in the exact mould of his technical character," (9) and he prophesied that unless utilitarianism was checked society would become fragmented; divided against itself into a series of "unconnected units, each displacing and repelling one another.What was th e use Newman asked, of a man who was a skilled technician and nothing else? What of his life as a father, a citizen and a friend? How could he use his leisure time? How could he know right from wrong? Educators adopted utilitarian ends at the expense of the very civilization they were so anxious to improve and would ultimately defeat their own purpose. 8, Essay on 'Scientific investigation', 9, 'Discourses', p,145. 10. 'Discourses', p,135. 5. Moreover, u tility obscured the object of knowledge which was truth. In Newman's opinion one did not discover truth as one dis­ covered scientific data, but one acquired glimpses of it as one discriminated between a variety of possibilities, and for this reason he thought of unbelief not as a question of ignorance but as one of mental confusion. Like A ristotle Newman believed that it was impossible to account for everything in this world, but whereas Brou^am, Bentham and J, S, Mill concentrated solely upon the visible and intelligible, he embraced the mysterious and unfathomable as well and consequently his understanding of truth was more profound than t h e i r s . Unlike the utilitarians who were chiefly interested in learning for its byproducts - its usefulness and its power - Newman valued it as an end in itself and embraced the Aristotelian concept of liberal knowledge. He applauded the effortless way in which liberal knowledge was attained - the individual adopted a negligent sense of accom­ plished ease akin to the renaissance notion of sprezzatura - and argued that it was best to undertake an enterprise because it was enjoyable and relaxing and not because it led to personal gain or profit. Liberal knowledge he said, would "open the mind correct it, refine it ,,, give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address (and) eloquent expression," (11) 11, 'Discourses', p,101, 6. I t was a "personal possession worth possessing for what it is and not merely for what it does." (12) This distinction between knowledge which is instructional and vocational, and knowledge which is illuminating and edifying, between an education based upon the accumulation of facts and professional skills, and an education designed to leave its mark on the inner man, his tastes and values, led Newman to admit that liberal education was not necessarily of any practical use. In an era in which men were obsessed with practical enterprises, with making things and acquiring possessions, Nevman's philosophy was therefore retrospective, and yet it possessed one great advantage. It gave the individual "a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them and a force in using them," ( 13) it taught him "to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant," ( 13) and for this reason Newman claimed that it was of greater benefit to civilization than utility.