to the practical business of English and Irish Catholicism, and lives.
It must needs be that men should act in sects and parties, that each of
these sects and parties should have its organ, and should make this
organ subserve the interests of its action; but it would be well, too,
that there should be a criticism, not the minister of these interests,
not their enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of them. No
other criticism will ever attain any real authority or make any real way
towards its end,--the creating a current of true and fresh ideas.

It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual
sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so
directly polemical and controversial, that it has so ill accomplished,
in this country, its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a
self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him
towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in
itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical
practical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal imperfection of
their practice, makes them willingly assert its ideal perfection, in
order the better to secure it against attack: and clearly this is
narrowing and baneful for them. If they were reassured on the practical
side, speculative considerations of ideal perfection they might be
brought to entertain, and their spiritual horizon would thus gradually
widen. Sir Charles Adderley[37] says to the Warwickshire farmers:--

"Talk of the improvement of breed! Why, the race we ourselves
represent, the men and women, the old Anglo-Saxon race, are the best
breed in the whole world.... The absence of a too enervating climate,
too unclouded skies, and a too luxurious nature, has produced so
vigorous a race of people, and has rendered us so superior to all the
world."