Apologia pro Vita Sua | Page 4

do but justify and am
properly interpreted by the common English notion of Roman casuists
and confessors; that I was secretly a Catholic when I was openly
professing to be a clergyman of the Established Church; that so far
from bringing, by means of my conversion, when at length it openly
took place, any strength to the Catholic cause, I am really a burden to
it--an additional evidence of the fact, that to be a pure, german, genuine
Catholic, a man must be either a knave or a fool.
These last words bring me to Mr. Kingsley's method of disputation,
which I must criticise with much severity;--in his drift he does but
follow the ordinary beat of controversy, but in his mode of arguing he
is actually dishonest.
He says that I am either a knave or a fool, and (as we shall see by and
by) he is not quite sure which, probably both. He tells his readers that
on one occasion he said that he had fears I should "end in one or other
of two misfortunes." "He would either," he continues, "destroy his own
sense of honesty, i.e. conscious truthfulness--and become a dishonest
person; or he would destroy his common sense, i.e. unconscious
truthfulness, and become the slave and puppet seemingly of his own
logic, really of his own fancy.... I thought for years past that he had
become the former; I now see that he has become the latter." (p. 20).
Again, "When I read these outrages upon common sense, what wonder
if I said to myself, 'This man cannot believe what he is saying?'" (p. 26).
Such has been Mr. Kingsley's state of mind till lately, but now he

considers that I am possessed with a spirit of "almost boundless
silliness," of "simple credulity, the child of scepticism," of "absurdity"
(p. 41), of a "self-deception which has become a sort of frantic
honesty" (p. 26). And as to his fundamental reason for this change, he
tells us, he really does not know what it is (p. 44). However, let the
reason be what it will, its upshot is intelligible enough. He is enabled at
once, by this professed change of judgment about me, to put forward
one of these alternatives, yet to keep the other in reserve;--and this he
actually does. He need not commit himself to a definite accusation
against me, such as requires definite proof and admits of definite
refutation; for he has two strings to his bow;--when he is thrown off his
balance on the one leg, he can recover himself by the use of the other.
If I demonstrate that I am not a knave, he may exclaim, "Oh, but you
are a fool!" and when I demonstrate that I am not a fool, he may turn
round and retort, "Well, then, you are a knave." I have no objection to
reply to his arguments in behalf of either alternative, but I should have
been better pleased to have been allowed to take them one at a time.
But I have not yet done full justice to the method of disputation, which
Mr. Kingsley thinks it right to adopt. Observe this first:--He means by a
man who is "silly" not a man who is to be pitied, but a man who is to be
abhorred. He means a man who is not simply weak and incapable, but
a moral leper; a man who, if not a knave, has everything bad about him
except knavery; nay, rather, has together with every other worst vice, a
spice of knavery to boot. His simpleton is one who has become such, in
judgment for his having once been a knave. His simpleton is not a born
fool, but a self-made idiot, one who has drugged and abused himself
into a shameless depravity; one, who, without any misgiving or
remorse, is guilty of drivelling superstition, of reckless violation of
sacred things, of fanatical excesses, of passionate inanities, of unmanly
audacious tyranny over the weak, meriting the wrath of fathers and
brothers. This is that milder judgment, which he seems to pride himself
upon as so much charity; and, as he expresses it, he "does not know"
why. This is what he really meant in his letter to me of January 14,
when he withdrew his charge of my being dishonest. He said, "The tone
of your letters, even more than their language, makes me feel, to my
very deep pleasure,"--what? that you have gambled away your reason,

that you are an intellectual sot, that you are a fool in a frenzy. And in
his pamphlet, he gives us this explanation why he did not say this to my
face, viz. that he had been told that I was "in weak health," and was
"averse to controversy," (pp. 6