St John Henry Newman, The Tamworth Reading Room, A Review
“The Tamworth Reading Room,” pp.254-305 in Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects, edited with an introduction and notes by Gerard Tracey and James Tolhurst, Birmingham Oratory Millennium Edition, 2004.
The Background
What do we need? Will studying science make the average person any better? Can it induce us to be more religious people? And now we pose the question, is there any need for us to be better at all, and if so, by what means?
These were the questions tackled by St John Henry Newman’s brilliant series of seven letters written for The Times, under the pen-name Catholicus, between 5 and 26 February 1841, as a response to some statements made by Sir Robert Peel at the opening of the Tamworth Reading Room.
These institutions were different from the reading rooms we know today, which are those parts of a library separate from the book stack, where people can study in quiet. The Tamworth Reading Room was more like the cafe in a modern bookshop. It was part of a library, and allowed members to either read on site, or else to borrow books. It was intended to have “plain and popular lectures … upon such subjects as Astronomy as Chemistry – as Botany – upon recent improvements in Arts and Manufactures; and upon the application of Scientific Discoveries (etc.) …” [http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/education/tamread.htm]
It was, in short, a benevolent institution to assist with adult education which would include many books on the sciences, but not on what was called “controversial religion.” It was aimed at educating men and women who would otherwise not have the benefit of advanced schooling. The “Reading Rooms” were thought of as a sort of better alternative to the public drinking house, and I am sure that they were.
Sir Robert Peel was the first Prime Minister to come from an industrial middle class background (1834-1835). Between 1830 and 1850, he was the MP for Tamworth, where he had lived most of his life; and was President of the Tamworth Reading Room’s Committee of Management. A few months after delivering the opening lecture, Peel became Prime Minister for a second time (1841-1845). I have read his address, and it was clear that he was hoping it would help the farmers of the area to keep abreast of new developments, and could provide reliable information about people contemplating emigration to the British colonies. He was keen, as he said to support the “ambition” of people of “lowly estate.” Sir Robert also argued at great length, and with some beauty, that the physical sciences have such an uplifting effect on the mind and spirit that in learning them, a person will also morally improve as well. In other words, religion was not needed in adult education: science was enough.
Sir Robert had begun rather conservative, but continually then deflected along more liberal lines. This was disconcerting to John Walter, the editor of The Times, a newspaper so influential that Trollope, the novelist, satirised it as The Jupiter (the Roman king of the gods). Through his son, who had met St John Henry Newman at Oxford, and had been taken with him, Walter commissioned the letters. It was certain they would take issue with Peel’s sentiments. They did, and they also traced the ideas expressed back to their source, in the ideas of Lord Brougham, a famous political reformer. The “Tamworth Reading Room” is as much an attack on Brougham’s ideas as it was on those of Peel.
It is often said that when Peel read the devastating critique from the pen of “Catholicus” unfolding, he was furious because he had not dreamt that his ideas had the implications which they did. I am not so sure of that. I do not doubt either that Peel said that, or that he was genuinely angry at the series; after all, no one likes being criticised, and St John Henry Newman was one of the all-time great masters of analysis, critique, and powerful writing. But I do not think that Peel did not know what he was saying: he was a brilliant man in his own right. I think he was stunned at the force and the irresistible nature of the saint’s onslaught.
This background is important, as it shows what the real issue of controversy was: when we aim to educate the working and middle classes, what instruction should we make available?
This is why St JHN agreed to write these letters to The Times. And why it was such a great thing to make such a beautiful noise in the pages of the leading English newspaper.
St John Henry Newman’s Critique
The real issue which St JHN addressed in “The Tamworth Reading Room” was, what education is needed to lift and improve ordinary people? What areas should be on the agenda of an eminent Member of Parliament, at that time Leader of the Opposition and once and soon to be Prime Minister?
His first challenge to Sir Robert Peel was just how moral effects were supposed to flow from learning physical sciences (p. 261)? Simply posing this question makes one stop. St JHN draws out the lesson:
… does he mean, that, from the nature of the case, he who is imbued with science and literature, unless adverse circumstances interfere, cannot but be a better man? … To know is one thing, to do is another; the two things are altogether distinct. A man knows he should get up in the morning, – he lies a-bed; he knows he should not lose his temper, yet he cannot keep it. … the consciousness of a duty is not at all one with the performance of it. (p. 262)
Just how, St JHN asks, will studying the natural sciences change our moral lives for the better? He sketches the human conundrum; it is a notorious fact of experience that: “the human mind is at best in a very unformed or disordered state; passions and conscience, likings and reason, conflicting.” (p. 263) Yet, all that Peel promises is changing the course of thought, and not “a victory of the mind over itself … not the unity of our complex nature – not an harmonizing of the chaos …” (p.264)
Yet, what we need for moral improvement is an internal transformation, restoring the sovereignty of reason, and bringing unity and harmony to our inner natures. If that mind is still conflicted, it is not enough to just give the mind new material, or to distract it with amusements and novelties: our human nature cries out to be renewed. He rightly calls attention to what he terms “a chief error of the day,” namely, “that our true excellence comes not from within, but from without; not wrought out through personal struggles and sufferings, but following upon a passive exposure to influences over which we have no control.”
This single point alone would make this one of the most important essays in the English language, for St Newman understood that we have to be active from within, not passive, expecting outside forces to do for us what we need to do for ourselves. And this, he powerfully concludes at the end of this section, is the art of life:
… assuming that there is an Art of life, to say that it consists, or in any essential manner is placed, in the cultivation of Knowledge, that the mind is changed by a discovery, or saved by a diversion … that grief, anger, cowardice, self-conceit, pride, or passion, can be subdued by an examination of shells or grasses, or inhaling of gases, or chipping of rocks, or calculating the longitude, is the veriest of pretences which sophist or mountebank ever professed to a gaping auditory. If virtue be a mastery over the mind, inward order, harmony, and peace, we must seek it in graver and holier places than in libraries and reading rooms.” (p. 268)
In other words, we cannot be morally passive and think that intellectual efforts alone suffice: we must be morally active, we must arouse our souls.
One of the evils inherent in Peel’s words and actions and those of politicians like him, was that notwithstanding his own good intentions: “… these Christian statesmen cannot be content with what is divine without as a supplement hankering after what was heathen.” (p. 270) The divine and the secular belong to different spheres, hence the Lord’s injunction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s (Mark 12:17 and parallels). It is because they are different spheres, we might add, that the divine can infuse the secular, and make it a servant of the Gospel. The secular, however, cannot infuse the divine. It can sometimes accept it, but the bad side of the world will always reject it, for the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness can never understand the light (John 1:5).
St Newman develops this, saying that: “the great difference, in a practical light, between the object of Christianity and of heathen belief, is this—that glory, science, knowledge, and whatever other fine names we use, never healed a wounded heart, nor changed a sinful one; but the Divine Word is with power.” (270)
If we commence with the secular, we are doomed to likewise end with it, for as he writes:
In morals, as in physics, the stream cannot rise higher than its source. Christianity raises men from earth, for it comes from heaven; but human morality creeps, struts, or frets upon the earth’s level, without wings to rise. The Knowledge School does not contemplate raising man above himself; it merely aims at disposing of his existing powers and tastes, as is most convenient, or is practicable under circumstances.
Thus, to insist upon secular knowledge, and to exalt that above all else, may result in losing the virtues people had from their religious culture. In words which have proved only too prophetic, St Newman says:
If Sir Robert would open on them a wider range of thought and more intellectual objects, by teaching them science; but what warrant will he give us that, if his object could be achieved, what they would gain in decency they would not lose in natural humility and faith? If so, he has exchanged a gross fault for a more subtle one. (273)
Against Peel’s optimism that education in the natural disciplines could lead to a spiritual development, St JHN countered: “Science gives us the grounds or premises from which religious truths are to be inferred; but it does not set about inferring them much less does it reach the inference; – that is not its province.” (pp. 292-293). Further, deductions by themselves do not have any power of persuasion: the heart has to be reached through the imagination, impressions, and through human influence. As St JHN states: “No one … will die for his own conclusions; he dies for realities.” (p. 293) He continues: “ … man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal.” (p. 294) A “mere notion” of God is of no value, you might as well try and “warm yourself by the Moon.” (p. 304)
This last point was to be a feature of St JHN’s work, reaching a memorable form in his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, although that book, unfortunately, is often so difficult to follow that it does not fully realise its aim, which means that we have to do our small parts to continue that work. Briefly, it is to so proclaim the faith that it people not only receive ideas, but also feel the reality of the faith, that they see it as a powerfully desirable goal in life.
In one of the most concise descriptions of faith to be found outside the Scriptures, he declares: “Life is for action. If we insist on proofs for everything, we shall never come to action: to act: you must assume, and that assumption is faith.” (p.295) That is, faith is not a fantasy, a dream, or an escape; faith, not argument or even knowledge is the foundation of really fruitful action. (p. 296) Christianity tells a supernatural story: it is not a deduction from what we know but an assertion of what we are to believe. (p. 296) What we are taught by the Church, imperfect as it may be, still comes to some good end, because it started from a clear and solid beginning – revelation. (p. 297)
When I first read this masterpiece over 40 years ago now, I was struck by its brilliance, although over time I forgot the bulk of the argument. However, I never forgot this magnificent line from the seventh and final letter, which critiques Peel’s view that the wonders of nature will inevitably lead us to the Creator: “… wonder is not religion, or we should be worshipping our railroads.” (p. 302) Railroads were the space ships of the 1840s. He ends the series of letters with these words:
… intrinsically excellent and noble as are scientific pursuits and worthy of a place in a liberal education, and fruitful in temporal benefits to the community, still they are not, and cannot be, the instrument of an ethical training; that physics do not supply a basis, but only materials for religious sentiment; that knowledge does but occupy, does not form the mind; that apprehension of the unseen is the only known principle capable of subduing moral evil, educating the multitude, and organizing society; and that, whereas man is born for action, action flows not from inferences, but from impressions,—not from reasonings, but from Faith. (p. 304)