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© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2007, Unit 6, Th e Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expositions 1.1 (2007) 029–052] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368 
doi:10.1558/expo.v1i1.29 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Some Aspects of Human Nature As Viewed by Cardinal 
John Henry Newman

M. KATHERINE TILLMAN

University of Notre Dame

Th e three views of human nature presented in this essay, all John Henry 
Newman’s, are from the vantage point of natural religion, from that of the 
liberally educated person, and from that of one imbued with Christian 
faith and love. Th ese three views are related not progressively, but analo-
gously, for each viewpoint in itself shows some kind of profound, intrinsic 
development of what is usually taken to be “mere” human nature.

Being human, according to John Henry Newman, is quite distinct 
from fully fl ourishing as a human being, and the full fl ourishing of 
a human being is itself quite distinct from the fulfi llment of being 
human in Christ. Generally and abstractly viewed, as in this essay, a 
human being can be externally described in all three of these ways—as 
human, as fully fl ourishing, as Christian. In like manner, viewed gener-
ally and in the abstract, human beings can be viewed through the lens 
of each of the disciplines called “humanities.” Only taken all together, 
however, can the disciplines of the humanities, and all other views of 
human nature, approximate in as complete a way as possible (and even 
then not exhaustively) a portrayal of human being as it is. Th e lack 
of complete satisfaction and fi nality in defi ning human being may be 
because, in the concrete, the human person is individual and unique, 
like no other except as image of God, ultimately an ineff able mystery.  
It may also be because, as some would have it, there is no such thing 
as human nature, in which case, there could be no legitimacy to such 
undertakings as the humanities. But these rich and abundant studies, 
like this essay, presume the intelligibility of a defi nite subject matter 
viewed under one or another or many of its myriad aspects.

As an apologist for religion, Newman favored analogical argument 

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30 Some Aspects of Human Nature

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as his main instrument of persuasion. Analogy is the manner by which 
the mind reasons from things that are known to be alike in signifi cant 
respects to previously unknown similarities in other respects. Analogi-
cal thinking is employed, for example, in the translation of meaning 
from one language to another, or in the transposition from one tonal 
scale to a similarly structured scale in a diff erent key, or to an under-
standing of the lessons of history as they might be applied to our own 
time. Th is mode of reasoning requires a fl exible mind that can situate 
itself within the frameworks of various views (say, that of the French 
language and of the German language), while at the same time keep-
ing those views anchored in the “focal reality” to which they refer (the 
single meaning conveyed in both languages).

Each aspect by means of which a focal reality is considered Newman 
calls a “view” of that reality. Human nature can be viewed in a great 
variety of its dimensions, under a multitude of aspects or features, as 
the mind shifts into diff erent registers or keys for the viewing. Th e hu-
manities organize and order related aspects according to which each of 
these disciplines of the mind, by means of its own method, may view 
human nature. Here is how Newman says it.

Let us take, for instance, man himself as our object of contemplation; 
then at once we shall fi nd we can view him in a variety of relations; 
and according to those relations are the sciences of which he is the 
subject-matter, and according to our acquaintance with them is our 
possession of a true knowledge of him.  We may view him in relation 
to the material elements of his body, or to his mental constitution, or 
to his household and family, or to the community in which he lives, 
or to the Being who made him; and in consequence we treat of him 
respectively as physiologists, or as moral philosophers, or as writers of 
economics, or of politics, or as theologians. (IU 54–55)1 

Such is the purpose of studying the humanities—not to excel in a 
single view or method of approach, but for the truth writ large about 
human nature itself. Concludes Newman: 

When we think of [human nature] in all these relations together, or as 
the subject at once of all the sciences I have named, then we may be 
said to reach unto and rest in the idea of man as an object or external 
fact, similar to that which the eye takes of his outward form. (IU 55)

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In this essay, Newman’s understanding of human nature writ large 
is the focal reality, ordering and ordered by the three views of it taken 
here. Th e fi rst part of the essay describes Newman’s philosophical view 
of human nature in itself, that is, essentially. Th e second part shifts 
into Newman’s understanding of human nature in its possibilities for 
development into the most complete way of being human, naturally 
speaking, that is, human nature in its fl ourishing or full integrity. Th e 
last part of the essay takes the view which Newman privileges, namely, 
that of human nature transformed in Christ. It is not three diff erent 
realities being considered but one only, in ever-incomplete variations 
of its aspects. As Newman writes:

We know, not by a direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but as 
it were, by piecemeal and accumulation, by a mental process, by go-
ing round an object, by the comparison, the combination, the mutual 
correction, the continual adaptation of many partial notions, by the 
employment, concentration, and joint action of many faculties and 
exercises of mind. (IU 134) 

Newman repeatedly states his desire to take human nature “as it is” 
in the concrete actions of daily life. “Let us take things as we fi nd 
them; let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not. True 
philosophy deals with facts. We cannot make facts” (US 231). John 
Locke, whom Newman admires for other reasons, is the one whom 
he is directly opposing here. Locke “takes a view of the human mind,” 
Newman writes, 

which to me seems theoretical and unreal. Reasonings and convic-
tions which I deem natural and legitimate, he apparently would call 
irrational, enthusiastic, perverse, and immoral; and that, as I think, 
because he consults his own ideal of how the mind ought to act, in-
stead of interrogating human nature, as an existing thing, as it is found 
in the world. Instead of going by the testimony of psychological facts, 
and thereby determining our constitutive faculties and our proper 
condition, and being content with the mind as God has made it, he 
would form men as he thinks they ought to be formed, into something 
better and higher, and calls them irrational and indefensible, if (so to 
speak) they take to the water, instead of remaining under the narrow 
wings of his own arbitrary theory. (GA 109)

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Newman’s empiricism in this regard does not preclude, but is rather 
the basis for his positing the universality of human nature. Because 
of what one discovers within oneself and witnesses in others, direct-
ly through lived experience and indirectly through learning, one can 
conclude that the same fundamental attributes found in oneself are 
possessed by other beings like oneself. Newman reasons analogically: 
“Human nature is in all ages one and the same: as it showed itself in the 
Israelites, so it shows itself in the world at large now” (VM 39).  

Newman’s insistence on the objectivity and universality of human 
nature is important to stress because for him, “What is not universal 
has no claim to be considered natural, right, or of divine origin. . .” 
(GA 260).

I.  Human being qua human

To be human, for Newman, is to be an integral person of body and 
soul with a rich interiority that is naturally oriented outward toward 
the external world, visible and invisible. Th e heart of this interiority is 
conscience, the soul’s inner chamber of connection with its Maker. For 
Newman, this is the primary fact of human nature:  its always already-
there relation to God, be that relation less or more fully realized, be it 
but sporadically perceived or vaguely inchoate, or altogether rejected. 

Human beings then are naturally religious, for by “religion,” New-
man means “the knowledge of God, of His Will, and of our duties 
towards Him” (GA 251). Inquiring into the chief doctrines and the 
grounds of natural religion, both in primitive times and now, New-
man fi nds “there are three main channels which Nature furnishes for 
our acquiring this knowledge, viz. [a] our own minds, [b] the voice of 
mankind, and [c] the course of the world, that is, of human life and 
human aff airs” (GA 251).  

a. By “our own minds” as a channel for knowing God, Newman 
means conscience, “our great internal teacher of religion” (GA 251).  
Th rough conscience, each human being possesses a connatural aware-
ness of self-in-relation-to-God (“myself and my Creator” 2)—an interi-
orly experienced knowledge possessed in no other way.  

Conscience is a personal guide, and I use it because I must use myself; 

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I am as little able to think by any mind but my own as to breathe with 
another’s lungs. Conscience is nearer to me than any other means of 
knowledge. (GA 251)

God as Judge is the specifi c content of the knowledge disclosed 
through the ordinary experience of conscience.  Th e concomitant self-
knowledge attained through conscience is of oneself as naturally pos-
sessed of a moral sense, an inner rule of right and wrong, and thus of 
oneself as obligated by a code of moral duties.  

I take our natural perception of right and wrong as the standard for 
determining the characteristics of Natural Religion, and I use the reli-
gious rites and traditions which are actually found in the world, only 
so far as they agree with our moral sense. (GA 251)

Th e moral sense that naturally accompanies conscience dictates “no 
religion is from God which contradicts our sense of right and wrong” 
(GA 270). A person’s conscience makes application of this general sense 
of right and wrong to the particular circumstances of everyday life. 

Th e rule of morals is the same for all; and yet, notwithstanding, what 
is right in one is not necessarily right in another.  What would be a 
crime in a private man to do, is a crime in a magistrate not to have 
done . . . (GA 270)

b.  Th e second natural conduit of religious knowledge, the “voice of 
mankind,” is located especially in the humanities, which assist in fi ll-
ing out the doctrines of natural religion, as they fi nd expression in the 
various belief systems and mythologies of human history, in recorded 
dreams, and in literal and fi ctional narratives of voyages and travels. Th e 
ubiquitous utterances of this voice, heard across all ages and cultures, 
reinforce and develop the knowledge that comes through conscience. 
Th ey tell of an inherent and unshakable human sense of sin and guilt, 
of pollution and retribution, of obligations due an angry God, of de-
served punishment for unobserved duties, of exacted penalties in this 
life and in a projected future life, of a corrupt condition that requires 
expiation, of priesthood and rites, of prayers, off erings and sacrifi ces, 
and of the possibility of atonement. Th ese natural acknowledgements 
of the divine seem harsh and negative, as Newman observes: “Wher-
ever Religion exists in a popular shape, it has almost invariably worn 

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its dark side outwards” (GA 252–3). Newman insists on the severity of 
natural religion because, 

from the circumstances of human nature, though not by the fault of Reli-
gion, such is the shape in which we fi rst encounter it. Its large and deep 
foundation is the sense of sin and guilt, and without this sense there is 
for man, as he is, no genuine religion. (GA 258, emphasis added)

c. Th e third natural informant about religion, which is “the system 
and the course of the world,” points to an experienced order in the uni-
verse together with a strong sense of its Maker’s obscurity, withdrawal 
and even complete absence from human aff airs. 

Starting then with the being of a God, (which, as I have said, is as cer-
tain to me as the certainty of my own existence . . .) I look out of my-
self into the world of men, and there I see a sight which fi lls me with 
unspeakable distress . . . .  If I looked into a mirror, and did not see 
my face, I should have the sort of feeling, which actually comes upon 
me, when I look into this living busy world, and see no refl exion of its 
Creator. . . .   Th e sight of the world is nothing else than the prophet’s 
scroll, full of “lamentations, and mourning, and woe.” (Ap 216–17)

With reverberations of Hobbes’ dismal portrayal of human life in its 
natural state as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and in a man-
ner that recalls the dread and despair in that condition as represented 
by thoughtful believers from Job to Pascal and Kierkegaard, Newman 
describes the forlorn state of the human race in its sad restlessness 
throughout the ages.

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the 
many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, 
their confl icts; . . . the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reach-
ing aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the 
disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical 
pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervad-
ing idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that con-
dition of the whole race. . . —all this is a vision to dizzy and appall; 
and infl icts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is 
absolutely beyond human solution. What shall be said to this heart-
piercing, reason-bewildering fact? 

I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society 

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of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. (Ap 217)
Accordingly, it does not seem unreasonable to Newman for people 

earnestly to inquire in the face of this silence:  “Why does He not write 
His Moral Nature in large letters upon the face of history, and bring 
the blind, tumultuous rush of its events into a celestial, hierarchical 
order?” (GA 256).

Th ese deep-seated acknowledgements and perplexing questions, 
which stem from the predominantly harsh side of natural religion, al-
ready suggest and imply, Newman notices, a lighter, if not immediately 
consoling, side as well:  visions of salvation, superstitions about the 
easy amelioration of wrongs, prophecies of better times to come and 
hope in a future state of just recompense. Without ignoring its dark 
underside, Newman writes, it can also be said that “all Religion, so far 
as it is genuine, is a blessing, Natural as well as Revealed” (GA 258).  
Some alleviation of the burdens of natural religion are constituent ele-
ments of it, as instanced in the realization that “religious beliefs and 
institutions, of some kind or other, are of such general acceptance in all 
times and places” (GA 258). Some comfort is also found in religion’s 
benefi ts that are naturally expected, and in the hope for a happier state 
after death for those who do good and avoid evil.

Th ey have an earnest of that future in the real and recurring blessings 
of life, the enjoyment of the gifts of the earth, and of domestic aff ec-
tion and social intercourse, which is suffi  cient to touch and to subdue 
even the most guilty of men in his better moments, reminding him 
that he is not utterly cast off  by Him whom nevertheless he is not 
given to know. (GA 258)

Despite the chaos of physical nature and human aff airs in every age, 
human beings are able to recognize naturally a good God who is re-
lated to humankind providentially.  

. . . the spontaneous piety of the human mind discerns Divine Su-
pervision. Nay, there is a general feeling, originating directly in the 
workings of conscience, that similar governance is extended over the 
persons of individuals, who thereby both fulfi ll the purposes and re-
ceive the just recompenses of Omnipotent Providence. (GA 259)

As universal as belief in providence, Newman notes, is the pervasive 

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practice of prayer, experienced as a comfort in times of trouble, for 
individuals and for whole societies and cultures as well. 

Here again, if, in order to determine what the Religion of Nature is, 
we may justly have recourse to the spontaneous acts and proceedings 
of our race, as viewed on a large fi eld, we may safely say that prayer, as 
well as hope, is a constituent of man’s religion. (GA 260) 

Together with prayer, which is “the voice of man to God,” an express 
revelation of some kind, as “the voice of God to man,” is a naturally 
hoped for, desired and expected solace in natural religion. God’s revela-
tion to the naturally devout can be seen in their religious interpreta-
tions of the ordinary and extraordinary events of life, which are taken 
as coming directly from the hand of God, often in reward or punish-
ment for deeds done or omitted.

In treating of Revealed Religion in the long section of the Grammar 
of Assent bearing that name, Newman articulates his more ample view 
of the preparedness for a divine revelation for those who hunger for it 
that is provided by natural or popular religion. It is a “pre-sentiment” 
of a revelation from God.

One of the most important eff ects of Natural Religion on the mind, 
in preparation for Revealed, is the anticipation, which it creates, that 
a Revelation will be given. Th at earnest desire of it, which religious 
minds cherish, leads the way to the expectation of it. (GA 272)

For Newman, this inborn, natural desire, based on the twofold sense 
of God’s infi nite goodness and human unworthiness, produces the 
“strong presumption” and the “antecedent probability” of Divine Rev-
elation.  

Like his favored Alexandrian Fathers of the Church, Newman fi nds 
not only hints and traces of the divine, but a genuine “dispensation” 
and revelation manifest in pre- and non-Christian sources.  Clement of 
Alexandria and Origen were the fi rst Christian humanists and educa-
tors of the Christian intellect to take Greek thought on its own terms, 
thus “recovering and purifying it,” rather than reversing, condemn-
ing or discarding it because it was heathen.  In marked contrast with 
earlier western Fathers and apologists whom Newman had read, the 
Alexandrians, like Newman, embraced the philosophy, literature and 

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mythology of the Greek sages and poets, striving to see the intercon-
nectedness of all truth in God. Properly understood, this “dispensation 
of paganism” was the divinely ordained preparation of the Hellenic 
mind, indeed of any educated mind, for the Good News of the Gospel. 
“Th ere had been in some sense a dispensation carried on in favor of the 
Gentiles.  He who had taken the seed of Jacob for His elect people had 
not therefore cast the rest of mankind out of his sight” (Ap 36). In fact, 
Newman wonders if there ever was a time when reason was unaided by 
such revelatory divine gifts.

It must be recollected that Christianity is only the continuation and 
conclusion of what professes to be an earlier revelation, which may 
be traced back into prehistoric times, till it is lost in the darkness that 
hangs over them. As far as we know, there never was a time when that 
revelation was not. (GA 278)

In the poem “Heathenism,” Newman exquisitely exhibits the voice 
of God’s Spirit within this special dispensation of paganism, be it of 
yesteryear or of today.

’MID Balak’s magic fi res
Th e Spirit spake, clear as in Israel;
With prayers untrue and covetous desires
       Did God vouchsafe to dwell;
Who summon’d dreams, His earlier word to bring
To patient Job’s vex’d friends, and Gerar’s guileless king.
       If such o’erfl owing grace
From Aaron’s vest e’en on the Sibyl ran,
Why should we fear, the Son now lacks His place
       Where roams unchristen’d man?
As though, where faith is keen, He cannot make
Bread of the very stones, or thirst with ashes slake.3

All of this then—from the natural informant of conscience to the 
histories and stories of our kind that tell of the sophisticated and uni-
versal practices of natural religion, even the desire for God’s continuing 
self-revelation—all of this, Newman is asserting, is available by nature 
to every human being.  “Such, then, in outline is that system of natural 
beliefs and sentiments, which, though true and divine, is still possible 
to us independently of Revelation.” (GA 263, emphasis added)

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II.  Human well-being

Th e fi rst part of this essay has taken up Newman’s view of human na-
ture in its very essence. Th is essential nature, pre-eminently religious, 
is not fully developed in most individuals, in many cases through no 
fault of their own.  Th e essay’s second view of human nature now takes 
its stand beside Newman’s view of the “mere” humanity or essence of 
a person.4  It investigates what is required for that person’s continuing 
development and full actuality—not as a carpenter, not as a nurse, not 
as a university student or a professor, but just insofar as that person is 
a human being. What then, for Newman, constitutes the fullness of 
human fl ourishing and well-being, its integrity, and how is one to go 
about developing it?5  All of the natural predispositions and potentiali-
ties of human nature must be brought out and developed as completely 
as possible, if an individual’s nature is to be fully actualized.  

Th e full fl ourishing of the individual is not something natural to 
human beings “as we fi nd them”; rather, their well-being and com-
pleteness needs to be achieved by each person, importantly, through 
training, through education and through habit. “Th e bodily eye, the 
organ for apprehending material objects, is provided by nature; the eye 
of the mind, of which the object is truth, is the work of discipline and 
habit” (IU 135).

Because human nature must be taken “as we fi nd it,” and because hu-
man beings are by nature religious, it is insuffi  cient, according to New-
man, to defi ne them as exclusively rational animals. “After all, man is 
not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting 
animal” (DA 294),6 and is also a believing,  worshiping and praying 
animal, according to the dictates of natural religion. Th e development 
of reasoning, judgment and will are moral and religious obligations, 
“sacred duties” (GA 225–26), rooted by nature in conscience for the 
gradual perfecting of human being.

Liberal education can begin this personal development, although the 
fully developed human being does not follow with necessity from that 
education. Any study at all can be taken up in a liberal manner, that 
is, by pursuing it exclusively for its own sake and for no purpose or 
ulterior motive outside itself. Newman favors, however, the study of 

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the classics of Greece and Rome as best able to provide a rigorous edu-
cation of the intellect.

Th e question is not what department of study contains the more won-
derful facts, or promises the more brilliant discoveries, and which is in 
the higher and which in an inferior rank; but simply which out of all 
provides the most robust and invigorating discipline for the unformed 
mind. (IU 222)

He notes the centuries-old preference for classics, and their “lineal 
descent,” as possessing “the best instruments of mental cultivation, and 
the best guarantees for intellectual progress” (IU 221). In an address 
to the School of Philosophy and the Arts at the Catholic university in 
Dublin, he states that western civilization 

has its common principles, and views, and teaching, and especially its 
books, which have more or less been given from the earliest times, and 
are, in fact, in equal esteem and respect, in equal use now, as they were 
when they were received in the beginning. In a word, the Classics, and 
the subjects of thought and the studies to which they give rise, or, to 
use the term most to our present purpose, the Arts, have ever, on the 
whole, been the instruments of education which the civilized orbis ter-
rarum has adopted. . . . (IU 216)

In western tradition, liberal education in the classics was found to 
involve four principal disciplines: 

Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, and Mathematics; and the science of 
Mathematics, again, was divided into four, Geometry, Arithmetic, As-
tronomy, and Music; making in all seven, which are known by the 
name of the Seven Liberal Arts. (IU 218–19)  

According to Newman’s idea, the goal or end of university education 
is the cultivation of a lively and disciplined intellect, just for the sake 
of its own health and well-being. Th e very attainment of knowledge is 
its own fulfi lling and pleasurable end. In holding this, Newman pays 
extraordinary tribute to Aristotle: 

All that I have been now saying is summed up in a few characteristic 
words of the great Philosopher. “Of possessions,” he says, “those rather 
are useful, which bear fruit; those liberal, which tend to enjoyment. 
By fruitful, I mean, which yield revenue; by enjoyable, where nothing 

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accrues of consequence beyond the using.” (IU 102, quoting Aristotle 
Rhetoric 1.5)

Th e goal of liberal education is achieved, fi rst, by learning and by 
practicing the all-important “habit of method” in its many disciplined 
applications to the verbal arts of the trivium and the mathematical arts 
of the quadrivium.

Let [the student] once gain this habit of method, of starting from 
fi xed points, of making his ground good as he goes, of distinguishing 
what he knows from what he does not know, and I conceive he will be 
gradually initiated into the largest and truest philosophical views, and 
will feel nothing but impatience and disgust at the random theories 
and imposing sophistries and dashing paradoxes, which carry away 
half-formed and superfi cial intellects. (IU 13)

A healthy intellect is one that is “energized” for the seeking and de-
tection of truth, its sole and proper object. Th e mind actively digests, 
assimilates, compares, corrects, refi nes and relates, and gradually be-
comes habituated to these complex processes. Th e unfortunate alterna-
tive is “lingering in the vestibule of knowledge” (IU 134), the mind 
passive, inert and barely receiving of the facts and information pre-
sented to it—its purpose to pass tests, to graduate, to get a good job, 
and so forth. Study for any useful or extrinsic purpose, even in the ad-
mirable service of religion, is not liberal, but is study for utility’s sake, 
for what it can do. Newman is not belittling the practical knowledge 
that is power in the world. He is simply arguing that the perfecting of 
the intellect for its own sake, the special work of the university, has a 
living beauty and a fulfi llment entirely its own:

[Its] enlargement consists, not merely in the passive reception into the 
mind of a number of ideas unknown to it, but in the mind’s energetic 
and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ide-
as, which are rushing in upon it. . . . We feel our minds to be growing 
and expanding then, when we not only learn, but refer what we learn 
to what we know already. It is not the mere addition to our knowledge 
that is the illumination; but the locomotion, the movement onwards, 
of that mental centre, to which both what we know, and what we are 
learning, the accumulating mass of our acquirements, gravitates. (IU 
120–21)

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Th e objective is gradually to illuminate one’s knowledge beyond the 
mere acquisition of information, “to invest it with an idea,” so that 
knowledge will be “impregnated by Reason,” and one’s mind becomes 
habituated to this larger, philosophical way of viewing things (IU 103). 
Philosophy in this sense is for Newman “the architectonic science,” not 
unlike Aristotle’s “science of sciences” or Bacon’s “philosophia prima,” 
enabling one to see the bearing of one discipline, method and subject 
matter upon another, and their relation to the whole:  “to have mapped 
out the universe is the boast, or at least the ambition, of Philosophy” 
(IU 105).  

In Newman’s idea of the university, the individual disciplines are 
seen as particular views which approximate, under a variety of aspects, 
knowledge of the whole of God’s created universe. Each discipline is 
a manageable abstraction from the whole, its subject matter accessed 
by a method unique to that subject. “Th ese various partial views or 
abstractions, by means of which the mind looks out upon its object, 
are called sciences” (IU 53). Pace Descartes’ mathesis universalis, no one 
can view or comprehend all aspects of the created universe at once. 
Newman writes:

With all its capabilities, the human mind cannot take in this whole 
vast fact at a single glance, or gain possession of it at once. Like a short-
sighted reader, its eye pores closely, and travels slowly, over the awful 
volume that lies open for its inspection. Or again, as we deal with 
some huge structure of many parts and sides, the mind goes round 
about it, noting down, fi rst one thing, then another, as it best may, and 
viewing it under diff erent aspects, by way of making progress towards 
mastering the whole. So by degrees and by circuitous advances does it 
rise aloft and subject to itself a knowledge of that universe into which 
it has been born. (IU 53) 

 Every science or discipline is limited to the excellence of its own 
method and view of reality, and every discipline needs the others to 
help limit, balance and make the best sense of itself.  

I have said that all branches of knowledge are connected together, be-
cause the subject-matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself, 
as being the acts and work of the Creator. Hence it is that the Sci-
ences, into which our knowledge may be said to be cast, have multi-

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plied bearings one on another, and an internal sympathy, and admit, 
or rather demand, comparison and adjustment. Th ey complete, cor-
rect, balance each other . . . To give undue prominence to one is to 
be unjust to another; to neglect or supersede these is to divert those 
from their proper object.  It is to unsettle the boundary lines between 
science and science, to disturb their action, to destroy the harmony 
which binds them together. . . Th ere is no science but tells a diff erent 
tale, when viewed as a portion of a whole, from what it is likely to 
suggest when taken by itself, without the safeguard, as I may call it, of 
others. (IU 94)

What is required is the availability for inquiry into all branches of 
knowledge, “at least implicitly” (IU 182), and the study of a fair number 
of the disciplines, where that study is neither superfi cial nor shallow, 
thus avoiding the educational disaster Newman calls “viewiness”(IU 
12).7 

Newman argues that just as the other subjects in the encyclopedia of 
knowledge, the intellectual discipline of theology is a necessary part of 
any university curriculum. To start with, theology can help to purify 
and develop the intellectual aspects of natural religion, preserving de-
votion and worship, but dismissing any remnants of ignorance and su-
perstition.  In developing his reasons for the required study of theology, 
Newman argues that theology is a way of knowing just like other forms 
of knowledge, so it has its place in a university, which claims as such 
to teach all knowledge.8 Th eology’s absence from the circle of learning 
would mean that the disciplines upon which it has some bearing would 
be distorted, unbalanced and incomplete without its signature contri-
bution. How could Dante’s Divine Comedy or the history of music or 
of philosophy be taught without any theological references? “To blot 
[theology] out is nothing short, if I may so speak, of unraveling the 
web of University Teaching. It is, according to the Greek proverb, to 
take the Spring from out of the year” (IU 71). As would the omission 
of any other essential discipline, theology’s absence would “put our 
whole encyclopedia of knowledge out of joint” (IU 63), because each 
subject infl uences and is infl uenced by other subjects.

Are we to limit our idea of University Knowledge by the evidence of 
our senses? then we exclude ethics; by intuition? we exclude history; 

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by testimony? we exclude metaphysics; by abstract reasoning? we ex-
clude physics. Is not the being of a God reported to us by testimony, 
handed down by history, inferred by an inductive process, brought 
home to us by metaphysical necessity, urged on us by the suggestions 
of our conscience? It is a truth in the natural order, as well as in the 
supernatural. (IU 38)

Here Newman is advocating the inclusion in the curriculum of the 
intellectual subjects of theology and ethics as proper subjects of any 
university at all. Th eir practical counterparts, the actual practice of re-
ligion and morality, Newman reserves for his discussion of the residen-
tial life of the Catholic University.9 

Th e philosophical habit of mind gradually formed by liberal educa-
tion is a lasting “master view,” one that is neither complete nor unalter-
able in its details, but one that contributes to a full human life. Th is 
enlarged way of seeing has rightly surveyed the vast fi eld of knowledge 
and its objects, thereby understanding in general how things stand in 
relation to one another and to the whole. Th e liberally educated indi-
vidual, whom Newman refers to as “the gentleman,” possesses a wealth 
comparable to any material advantage, one less tangible, but one more 
permanent and satisfying.

He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on 
which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great 
points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence 
it is that his education is called “Liberal.” A habit of mind is formed 
which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equi-
tableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom; or what in a former 
Discourse I have ventured to call a philosophical habit. (IU 96)

As a kind of by-product of liberal education, the “gentleman” pos-
sesses “the connatural qualities of a large knowledge” (IU 110) and is 
thereby equipped with “fi tness for the world,” that is, with the ability 
to learn, and to excel, in any fi eld of work or profession. “Th at training 
of the intellect, which is best for the individual himself, best enables 
him to discharge his duties to society” (IU 154). Nonetheless, whether 
or not an individual ever works at or professes anything, that individu-
al has achieved the intellectual excellence that exquisitely suits human 

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nature and has risen to the full stature of humanity at its best and most 
integral.  Writes Newman:

Th at further advantages accrue to us and redound to others by its pos-
session, over and above what it is in itself, I am very far indeed from 
denying; but, independent of these, we are satisfying a direct need 
of our nature in its very acquisition; and, whereas our nature, un-
like that of the inferior creation, does not at once reach its perfection, 
but depends, in order to it, on a number of external aids and appli-
ances, Knowledge, as one of the principal of these, is valuable for what 
its very presence in us does for us after the manner of a habit, even 
though it be turned to no further account, nor subserve any direct 
end. (IU 97–98)

Just so, Newman would seem to conclude his Idea’s discourses with 
this highest ideal of university education:

It is the education, which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own 
opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence 
in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches 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. 
It prepares him to fi ll any post with credit, and to master any subject 
with facility. (IU 154)

Toward the end of the discourses, however, Newman begins to shift 
into a diff erent register, taking on a view that implies and foreshadows 
his idea of a specifi cally Catholic university, up to this point not readily 
obvious. He shows how the well-educated “gentleman” can nonethe-
less be led astray by the very liberal learning that has brought about his 
well-being.  Just as there is the natural religion of heathenism, hum-
ble and devout before God, so in a civilized age there is the “religion 
of philosophy,” but this religion is proud and arrogant (IU 157–58). 
Th e religion of reason or of philosophy is a counterfeit religion that 
can readily attach itself to the university-educated individual who pos-
sesses that hard won philosophical habit of mind, for it thrives not on 
submission before God, but on pride of intellect, on faith in only itself 
and its creations. “It considers itself from fi rst to last independent and 
supreme; it requires no external authority; it makes a religion for itself ” 
(IU 157). For Newman, alongside the liberal habit of mind into which 

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one has been inducted intellectually, there needs to take place a simul-
taneous development of conscience, not only intellectually through 
theology and education of “the moral sense,” but more totally in the 
personally lived experience of religion and morality. He elucidates:

Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another; good sense is not con-
science, refi nement is not humility, nor is largeness and justness of 
view faith. Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives 
no command over the passions, no infl uential motives, no vivifying 
principles. . . .  Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel 
with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and deli-
cate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend 
against those giants, the passion and the pride of man. (IU 110–11)

Th e life of the liberally educated individual, then, is continually chal-
lenged further, for “Liberal Education makes not the Christian, not the 
Catholic, but the gentleman” (IU 110).  

Newman has roundly advocated the liberal education of the “gentle-
man.”  Nonetheless, like St. Augustine, St. Th omas Aquinas and Dante 
before him, he also warns of the dangers that accompany such mental 
excellence.  Just reading books and cultivating one’s garden would be 
fi ne, Newman says, if one did not have an immortal soul.  

III.  Abundant life

Th e true, fi nal end of human nature, namely, abundant and eternal 
life, is off ered by Christ and His Church.  It is a life that neither de-
stroys nor deifi es human nature, but raises it up and far exceeds it.  
Newman writes:

“Ye must be born again,” is the simple, direct form of words which 
[the Church] uses after her Divine Master; “your whole nature must be 
re-born, your passions, and your aff ections, and your aims, and your 
conscience, and your will, must all be bathed in a new element, and 
reconsecrated to your Maker,—and, the last not the least, your intellect.” 
(Ap 222, emphasis added) 

Because faith is, for Newman as for St. Th omas Aquinas, “the reason-
ing of the religious mind, or of what Scripture calls a right or renewed 
heart” (US 203, emphasis added), it is important to Newman to clarify 

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exactly what is involved in rightly disposing the mind and heart for 
faith. From natural conscience comes the desire for more than it itself 
can fully supply, that is, for authoritative guidance and a divine law, 
possessed in their fullness, not just in a vague, incomplete and frag-
mentary way. 

It creates in them a thirst, an impatience, for the knowledge of that 
Unseen Lord, and Governor, and Judge, who as yet speaks to them 
only secretly, who whispers in their hearts, who tells them something, 
but not nearly so much as they wish and as they need. (OS 66) 

A right state of heart, readied by the heart’s longing, hope and love, is 
necessary not only as a predisposition for faith, but also for maintain-
ing, preserving and keeping that gift.  For “what is to be their protec-
tion against the aberrations of the intellect, but the deep convictions 
and eager aspirations of the heart?” (OS 74–75). In this sense, “we be-
lieve, because we love” (US 236), and we come to understand because 
we believe.

Th e safeguard of Faith is a right state of heart.  Th is it is that gives it 
birth; it also disciplines it.  Th is is what protects it from bigotry, credu-
lity, and fanaticism.  It is holiness, or dutifulness, or the new creation, 
or the spiritual mind, however we word it, which is the quickening 
and illuminating principle of true faith, giving it eyes, hands and feet.  
It is Love which forms it out of the rude chaos into an image of Christ; 
or, in scholastic language, justifying Faith, whether in Pagan, Jew, or 
Christian, is fi des formata charitate. (US 234)  

Supernatural faith and love build upon natural religion, whether one 
is university-educated or not. While liberal education is in no way a 
necessary cause of or a prerequisite for the reception of revealed reli-
gion, a believer who possesses that broad, far-reaching enlargement of 
mind, which includes the study of theology, can profess an intelligent 
faith with deeper understanding and consequence.  St. Paul, Newman 
points out, was learned before and after he “learned Christ,” leaving 
behind only his sins. “We would not be unclothed,” Newman quotes 
Paul as saying, but “clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swal-
lowed up by life” (OS 95). A man of profound self-knowledge, St. Paul 
was conscious of possessing a nature capable of all the emotions, high 

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purposes and sins that human beings could confront.
Human nature, the common nature of the whole race of Adam, spoke 
in [Paul], acted in him, with an energetical presence, with a sort of 
bodily fullness, always under the sovereign command of divine grace, 
but losing none of its real freedom and power because of its subordina-
tion. And the consequence is, that, having the nature of man so strong 
within him, he is able to enter into human nature, and to sympathize 
with it, with a gift peculiarly his own. (OS 95–96)

Just as Moses, St. Paul’s counterpart in the Old Covenant, was famil-
iar with the wisdom of the Egyptians, so St. Paul, fi ttingly called “the 
Apostle of the Gentiles,” revealed his close acquaintance with pagan 
Greek writings.  Newman observes that Paul quotes from the Greek 
classics three times: once each to the Athenians, to the Corinthian con-
verts and to his disciple Titus (OS 97). Newman says of Paul: “He was 
a true lover of souls. He loved poor human nature with a passionate 
love, and the literature of the Greeks was only its expression; and he 
hung over it tenderly and mournfully, wishing for its regeneration and 
salvation” (OS 98).  

Newman celebrates the tenderness, compassion and amiability of 
“that glorious Apostle.” Yet St. Paul’s strong words and epistolary ad-
monishments to those who neglected their discipleship of Christ dem-
onstrate his real distinction from Newman’s celebrated “gentleman” of 
merely philosophic religion. St. Paul cries out about those who, having 
“rejected a good conscience,” have “made shipwreck of their faith” (OS 
73). A glance at some of “the lineaments of the ethical character, which 
the cultivated intellect will form, apart from religious principle” brings 
out St. Paul’s distance and diff erence from the dignifi ed, philosophic 
and civilized “gentleman,” who, for Newman,

is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles that hinder the 
free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs 
with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His ben-
efi ts may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or con-
veniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a 
good fi re. . . .  He carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in 
the minds of those with whom he is cast. . . ; his great concern being 
to make every one at their ease and at home. . . .  He submits to pain, 

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48 Some Aspects of Human Nature

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because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and 
to death, because it is his destiny. . . . If he be an unbeliever, he will be 
too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; 
he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infi delity. . . , [for] he 
is a friend of religious toleration. (IU 159) 

Because of these cultivated attributes, St. Paul though learned was no 
“gentleman” in Newman’s full and secular sense of the term. Paul had 
little time for the “comforts or conveniences” of a sedentary, leisurely 
life as he traveled the rough ground of the Mediterranean preaching 
Christ. In Paul there was no “avoidance of whatever may cause a jar or 
a jolt,” for he was not concerned “to make every one at their ease and 
at home,” this world being no lasting abode.

Newman’s Christian “gentleman” is obviously meant to be an ideal 
type to which no single individual likely conforms completely. Th e no-
tion is perhaps best realized amidst the rich variety of Doctors of the 
Church—among those who were educated institutionally, those self 
taught, those graced by God with philosophic vision.  Th ose who have 
become “gentlemen,” Newman says,  

are seen within the pale of the Church and without it, in holy men, 
and in profl igate; they form the beau-ideal of the world; they partly as-
sist and partly distort the development of the Catholic. . . .  Basil and 
Julian were fellow-students at the schools of Athens; and one became 
the Saint and Doctor of the Church, the other her scoffi  ng and relent-
less foe. (IU 181)

In the lives and writings of the celebrated Christians who are learned 
saints and doctors, especially St. Athanasius and St. Augustine for 
Newman, living examples embody “how sacred learning and profane 
are dependent on each other, correlative and mutually complementary, 
how faith operates by means of reason, and reason is directed and cor-
rected by faith” (IU 223).

Such lofty notions as the full fl ourishing of human nature in the 
“gentleman,” and the abundant life of grace co-existing with intellec-
tual excellence in a Doctor of the Church, might leave one wondering 
about the fate of the ordinary, even the uneducated, masses of peo-
ple who dominate by sheer numbers the populations of every place 

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and time. Th ese people have a special and always acknowledged place 
in Newman’s heart and writings, perhaps because of his closeness to 
his mother and sisters, perhaps because of his pastoral experience as a 
priest, perhaps because of his studies of the role of the laity, especially 
in the early centuries of the Church. In the fi rst place, he writes: con-
science is “adapted for the use of all classes and conditions of men, 
for high and low, young and old, men and women, independently of 
books, of educated reasoning, of physical knowledge or of philosophy” 
(GA 305). Furthermore, if conscience is assiduously and devoutly at-
tended to, if the heart is on the lookout for a revelation, one may be 
assured 

that the best argument, better than all the books in the world, better 
than all that astronomy, and geology, and physiology, and all other sci-
ences can supply,—an argument intelligible to those who cannot read 
as well as to those who can,—an argument which is “within us,”—an 
argument intellectually conclusive, and practically persuasive, whether 
for proving the Being of a God, or for laying the ground for Christian-
ity,—is that which arises out of a careful attention to the teachings of 
our heart, and a comparison between the claims of conscience and the 
announcements of the Gospel. (OS 74)

Th e reasoning of the religious mind, then, is the deep and earnest 
thought of a rightly disposed individual; it is the grounds for his or her 
faith.  Such grounds, or reasons for faith, can be most personal, simple 
and implicit, for given one’s pre-disposition to believe, those grounds 
are suffi  cient even for certitude.

Christianity is addressed, both as regards its evidences and its contents, 
to minds which are in the normal condition of human nature, as be-
lieving in God and in a future judgment. Such minds it addresses both 
through the intellect and through the imagination; creating a certitude 
of its truth by arguments too various for direct enumeration, too per-
sonal and deep for words, too powerful and concurrent for refutation. 
(GA 379)

Newman goes out of his way to allow always for the miracle of grace 
imparted directly from above:

Th e act of mind, for instance, by which an unlearned person savingly 

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believes. . . may be analogous to the exercise of sagacity in a great 
statesman or general, supernatural grace doing for the uncultivated 
reason what genius does for them. (US 218)

In sum, unlettered or educated, factory worker or Doctor of the 
Church, “we attain to heaven by using this world well, though it is to 
pass away; we perfect our nature, not by undoing it, but by adding to 
it what is more than nature, and directing it towards aims higher than 
its own” (IU 93).

With regard to the three views of human nature related analogously 
in this essay—that of human being qua human, that of fully fl ourish-
ing human being, and that of the graced person of faith—the Catholic 
Church can do no less and no more than take human nature exactly “as 
it is,” and “as it is found,” in her learned saints, in her faithful people 
and, indeed, in all people, for “she does not teach that human nature 
is irreclaimable, else wherefore should she be sent? not, that it is to 
be shattered and reversed, but to be extricated, purifi ed, and restored; 
not that it is a mere mass of hopeless evil, but that it has the promise 
upon it of great things, and even now, in its present state of disorder 
and excess, has a virtue and a praise proper to itself ” (Ap 221–22). His 
vocation as apologist, philosophical theologian, and teacher for this 
Church requires that Newman know this human nature as it is, in its 
length, breadth and depth, viewed under many aspects, but ultimately 
as one living focal reality.

Endnotes

1. Abbreviations of the titles of Newman’s works are identifi ed in square brackets 
in the Works Cited.  Newman’s main writings may be found in full at http://
www.newmanreader.org.

2. Newman describes his experience of conversion at age 15:  “. . . making me 
rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident 
beings, myself and my Creator. . .” (Ap 18).

3. Verses on Various Occasions, No. LXXIV, written at Messina, April 21, 1833.  
See VVO 129.

4. Newman employs Aristotle’s categories to distinguish the essence and the 
integrity of a thing in order to diff erentiate the idea of a university in itself (its 

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essence) from its entire well-being (its integrity), which is added by colleges, 
libraries, laboratories, museums and so forth, and, especially, by the Church.  
Newman illustrates the distinction by means of an analogy.  A human being’s 
essence is its human form and matter, soul and body. Th e air the human being 
breathes is not part of its essence, but is, Newman says, “a sine qua non” for 
the individual’s well-being or integrity as a living human being.  So too, ana-
logically, the Church breathes integrity or full life into the university as such, 
making it a Catholic University.  For Newman’s use of these terms, and for his 
acknowledged indebtedness to Aristotle for them, see the fi rst paragraph of the 
Preface of IU, and also DCD 49.

5. Assumed here, as in Newman’s educational writings as a whole, are the ordi-
nary, early ways of developing human nature in children, namely, through the 
family and by schooling.  For the early education of young boys, Newman 
emphasizes, above all, “a discipline in accuracy of mind” (IU 273).  See also 
IU 10–13.

6. Th is statement may seem to be a rejection of Aristotle’s classic defi nition, that 
“man is a rational animal”; to the contrary, however.  It embraces Aristotle’s 
meaning and points to a broadened and more inclusive sense of rationality 
than that of Newman’s own day.  Newman’s understanding of human nature 
is much closer to that of Aristotle, because of the latter’s rich meaning of the 
fullness of rationality, than it is to the impoverished and truncated rational-
ity of much of modern thought.  For example, Descartes defi nes the self as 
a doubting or thinking thing, for in his hypothetical experiment, he has left 
behind all moral and religious holdings as if they did not pertain, essentially, 
to human self-identity.

7. Cf. IU 13:  “An intellectual man, as the world now conceives of him, is one 
who is full of ‘views’ on all subjects of philosophy, on all matters of the day.  It 
is almost thought a disgrace not to have a view at a moment’s notice on any 
question . . .” 

8. Newman’s many arguments for the necessary inclusion of theology in any 
university curriculum are found in the fi rst three Discourses of the Idea.

9. Th is discussion is found in the chapters of Rise and Progress of Universities 
(RPU). Not well known is the fact that Newman considered his writings on 
university education to be a “three-volume work.”  Besides the discourses of 
the Idea, there is the volume of various University Subjects presented in essays 
and lectures which Newman eventually published as the second half of the 
Idea, where it is found today. Th irdly there is the important volume he ulti-
mately entitled Rise and Progress of Universities, a collection of lead articles fi rst 
published by Newman in the Catholic University Gazette.  See “Introduction” 
to Rise and Progress by M. Katherine Tillman.

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References

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and Co.
1967 Apologia Pro Vita Sua [Ap]. Ed. and intro. Martin J. Svaglic.  Oxford: 

Clarendon Press.
1976 Th e Idea of a University [IU].  Ed. and intro. I. T. Ker.  Oxford: Clarendon 

Press.
1985 Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent [GA].  Ed. and intro. I. T. Ker.  Ox-

ford: Clarendon Press.
1989 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine [DCD].  Foreword by Ian 

Ker.  Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
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1997 Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford [US].  Intro. M. 

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n.d. Verses on Various Occasions [VVO].  London: Burns, Oates, & Co.

Tillman, M. Katherine
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