Page:The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'.djvu/19

Rh in direct touch with the poets of high vision. We are in the very mood which broods over the 'flower in the crannied wall'. We are close upon the 'Presence far more deeply interfused'.

It was natural enough that Cardinal Newman should have drawn from this analogy between two separate departments of God's work, the conclusion that 'the less important system is economically or sacramentally connected with the more momentous system'. For the sacramental conception of reality is, simply, the concrete expression of the law that 'all things are double one against another.' The physical reproduces the secret of the spiritual. The same ultimate verity realizes itself in a single act, under a double form. It is a matter of indifference under which term it is expressed; for the actuality is identical with itself on either level, in either sphere.

This sacramentalism agrees with what is known of Butler's ecclesiastical tendencies. But it is curiously characteristic of Cardinal Newman to have discovered in this sacramentalism which he learned from Butler a confirmation of his own boyish belief in the unreality of material phenomena. For this is the exact reverse of the consequence which Bishop Butler drew from his analogy. It is in direct contradiction with the impression under which he arrived at it.

And it is this that I desire to emphasize, with all the strength at my command. For it touches the very root of the matter.

Butler rested his whole argument upon the immediate and unquestioned reality of material phenomena and upon the validity of human experience. There, in the solid facts as they were felt, lay his ultimate appeal. They were his standard of certainty. They supplied him with his canon of secured knowledge, through which he could venture to make an advance towards other and higher regions which were more remote from experimental certification.