PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1891
LONDON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. FOOTE,
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
ESSAYS IN RATIONALISM. [5]
PUBLISHER’S NOTE.
Whether this little volume will find sufficientpatrons to defray the cost of its production is at least doubtful. Thewriter whose essays it contains lived in obscurity and will never bepopular. But he possessed a fine intellect, however frustrated bycircumstances; he belonged to an illustrious family; and it is well tolet the public have access to the opinions of a brother of CardinalNewman and of Professor Newman, a brother who took his own course, asthey did, and thought out for himself an independent philosophy.
All Charles Robert Newman’s writings that are known to havebeen printed, appeared in the Reasoner, edited by Mr. George JacobHolyoake, at various dates during 1860–61. With triflingexceptions they are all reprinted in this collection.
Mr. Holyoake has kindly supplied a brief account of the atheisticNewman, and Mr. J. M. Wheeler has gathered all the information that isobtainable as to his life and personality. [7]
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
Of Charles Robert Newman, until the death of hisbrother, the Cardinal, almost nothing was known. Some reminiscences ofhim by Mr. Thomas Purnell and Precentor Edmund Venables appeared in theAthenæum at the time of his death in 1884, and theseremain the chief sources of information concerning him. Mr. G. J.Holyoake also, in his paper The Present Day, wrote: “Ifthe public come to know more of Charles R. Newman, it will be seen thatall the brothers, John Henry, Francis William, and Charles R. Newman,were men of unusual distinction of character, and that while each helddiverse views, all had the family qualities of perspicacity, candor andconscience.” But these notes attracted little attention. Mostpeople were under the impression there were only two brothers, who hadlong figured in the public eye as types of the opposite courses ofmodern thought towards Romanism and Rationalism. Yet the real type ofantagonism to Rome was to be found in Charles Robert, who is dismis