[138] Rev. John Henry Newman.
[139] The opinions of the Abbé Gaume are generally regarded by the most competent judges of matters pertaining to the higher Catholic education as exaggerated. We concur in this judgment, which is, moreover, in accordance with the instructions on this subject emanating from the Holy See. At the same time, we are strongly convinced that there is a very considerable amount of truth in the criticisms of the Abbé Gaume on the actual method of education even in strictly Catholic colleges, and that it needs to be made more Christian.—Ed. C. W.
[140] It may well be doubted whether this was a real advantage.—Ed. C. W.
[141] Hieronymus Savonarola und seine Zeit. Aus den Quellen dargestellt. Von A. G. Rudelbach. Hamburg. 1835.
[142] Girolamo Savonarola, aus grösstentheils Handschriftlichen Quelten dargestellt. Von Fr. Karl Meier. Berlin. 1836.
[143] This passage certainly does not prove Savonarola to have been a great philosopher.—Ed. C. W.
[144] Translated in England more than two hundred years ago. The Truth of the Christian Faith; or, The Triumph of the Cross of Christ. By Hier. Savonarola. Done into English out of the Author’s own Italian copy, etc. Cambridge John Field, Printer to the University. There is also a modern translation by O’Dell Travers Hill, F.R.G.S., a handsome edition. Hodder & Stoughton, London. 1868.
[145] “Seeing the whole world in confusion; every virtue and every noble habit disappeared; no shining light; none ashamed of their vices.”
[146] A precisely similar vision is described by Christopher Columbus as having appeared to him in America when he was abandoned by all his companions. The letter in which he speaks of this vision is given by the rationalist Libri in his Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques, and he justly describes it as one of the most eloquent in Italian literature.
[147] Cicero says: “Fuit jam a Platone accepta philosophandi ratio triplex: una de vita et moribus; altera de natura et rebus occultis; tertia de disserendo, et quid verum, quid falsum, quid rectum in oratione, pravumque, quid consentiens, quid repugnans, judicando” (Acad. lib. i. 6). This division is still recognizable in our modern logic, metaphysics, and ethics.