The manner in which the
trial was conducted was certainly singular, and is worth a word or
two. The Holy Office was never more scandalously indifferent to any
pretence of justice or legality in its proceedings. We were not
told what was the charge against us, nor what were the terms of the
trust deed of the college, if such a document existed; neither were
we informed what was the meaning of the indictment, and yet the
council must have been aware that nothing less than our ruin would
probably be the result of our condemnation.
My father wrote and published a defence of us, entitled To Think or
not to Think, with two noble mottoes, one from Milton's Areopagitica
and the other some lines from In Memoriam, which was read in those
days by people who were not sentimental fools, and who, strange to
say, got out of it something solid which was worth having. The days
may return when something worth having will be got out of it again.
To the question, "Will you explain the mode in which you conceive
the sacred writers to have been influenced?" my father replied--
"Rather a profound question, that. A profounder, I venture to say,
never agitated the mind of a German metaphysician. If the query had
been put to me, I should have taken the liberty to question the
questioner thus: 'Can you explain to me the growth of a tree? Can
you explain how the will of man influences the material muscles?--In
fact the universe is full of forces or influences.
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