Apologia pro Vita Sua | Page 6

Newman, how the mistake (!) of his not caring for truth arose."
(7) P. 37. "And this is the man, who when accused of countenancing falsehood, puts on first a tone of plaintive (!) and startled innocence, and then one of smug self-satisfaction--as who should ask, 'What have I said? What have I done? Why am I on my trial?'"
(8) P. 40. "What Dr. Newman teaches is clear at last, and I see now how deeply I have wronged him. So far from thinking truth for its own sake to be no virtue, he considers it a virtue so lofty as to be unattainable by man."
(9) P. 43. "There is no use in wasting words on this 'economical' statement of Dr. Newman's. I shall only say that there are people in the world whom it is very difficult to help. As soon as they are got out of one scrape, they walk straight into another."
(10) P. 43. "Dr. Newman has shown 'wisdom' enough of that serpentine type which is his professed ideal.... Yes, Dr. Newman is a very economical person."
(11) P. 44. "Dr. Newman tries, by cunning sleight-of-hand logic, to prove that I did not believe the accusation when I made it."
(12) P. 45. "These are hard words. If Dr. Newman shall complain of them, I can only remind him of the fate which befel the stork caught among the cranes, even though the stork had not done all he could to make himself like a crane, as Dr. Newman has, by 'economising' on the very title-page of his pamphlet."
These last words bring us to another and far worse instance of these slanderous assaults upon me, but its place is in a subsequent page.
Now it may be asked of me, "Well, why should not Mr. Kingsley take a course such as this? It was his original assertion that Dr. Newman was a professed liar, and a patron of lies; he spoke somewhat at random, granted; but now he has got up his references and he is proving, not perhaps the very thing which he said at first, but something very like it, and to say the least quite as bad. He is now only aiming to justify morally his original assertion; why is he not at liberty to do so?"
Why should he not now insinuate that I am a liar and a knave! he had of course a perfect right to make such a charge, if he chose; he might have said, "I was virtually right, and here is the proof of it," but this he has not done, but on the contrary has professed that he no longer draws from my works, as he did before, the inference of my dishonesty. He says distinctly, p. 26, "When I read these outrages upon common sense, what wonder if I said to myself, 'This man cannot believe what he is saying?' I believe I was wrong." And in p. 31, "I said, This man has no real care for truth. Truth for its own sake is no virtue in his eyes, and he teaches that it need not be. I do not say that now." And in p. 41, "I do not call this conscious dishonesty; the man who wrote that sermon was already past the possibility of such a sin."
Why should he not! because it is on the ground of my not being a knave that he calls me a fool; adding to the words just quoted, "[My readers] have fallen perhaps into the prevailing superstition that cleverness is synonymous with wisdom. They cannot believe that (as is too certain) great literary and even barristerial ability may co-exist with almost boundless silliness."
Why should he not! because he has taken credit to himself for that high feeling of honour which refuses to withdraw a concession which once has been made; though (wonderful to say!), at the very time that he is recording this magnanimous resolution, he lets it out of the bag that his relinquishment of it is only a profession and a pretence; for he says, p. 8: "I have accepted Dr. Newman's denial that [the Sermon] means what I thought it did; and heaven forbid" (oh!) "that I should withdraw my word once given, at whatever disadvantage to myself." Disadvantage! but nothing can be advantageous to him which is untrue; therefore in proclaiming that the concession of my honesty is a disadvantage to him, he thereby implies unequivocally that there is some probability still, that I am dishonest. He goes on, "I am informed by those from whose judgment on such points there is no appeal, that 'en hault courage,' and strict honour, I am also precluded, by the terms of my explanation, from using any other of Dr. Newman's past writings to prove my assertion." And then, "I have