NOTES

174. +unum necessarium or one thing needful.  Arnold refers here, and in his subsequent chapter title, Porro Unum est Necessarium, to Luke 10:42.  Here is the context, 10:38-42. “[Jesus] . . . entered into a certain village:  and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. / And she had a sister called Mary . . . . / But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. / And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:  / But one thing is needful:  and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”  King James Bible.

177. +Romans 11:34.  “For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?” King James Bible.

189-90. +Romans 2:21-22.  “Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? / Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?” King James Bible.

CHAPTER VI

[197] But an unpretending writer, without a philosophy based on inter-dependent, subordinate, and coherent principles, must not presume to indulge himself too much in generalities, but he must keep close to the level ground of common fact, the only safe ground for understandings without a scientific equipment.  Therefore I am bound to take, before concluding, some of the practical operations in which my friends and countrymen are at this moment engaged, and [198] to make these, if I can, show the truth of what I have advanced.  Probably I could hardly give a greater proof of my confessed inexpertness in reasoning and arguing, than by taking, for my first example of an operation of this kind, the proceedings for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which we are now witnessing.  It seems so clear that this is surely one of those operations for the uprooting of a certain definite evil in which one’s Liberal friends engage, and have a right to complain and to get impatient and to reproach one with delicate Conservative scepticism and cultivated inaction if one does not lend a hand to help them.  This does, indeed, seem evident; and yet this operation comes so prominently before us just at this moment,—­it so challenges everybody’s regard,- -that one seems cowardly in blinking it.  So let us venture to try and see whether this conspicuous operation is one of those round which we need to let our consciousness play freely and reveal what manner of spirit we are of in doing it; or whether it is one which by no means admits the application of this doctrine of ours, and one to which we ought to lend a hand immediately.