“To him that hath shall be given”; “If any man will do the will of the Father, he shall know of the doctrine.”  But though Mr. Newman especially had thrown out deep and illuminating thoughts on this difficult question, it had not been treated systematically; and this treatment Mr. Ward attempted to give to it.  It was a striking and powerful effort, full of keen insight into human experience and acute observations on its real laws and conditions; but on the face of it, it was laboured and strained; it chose its own ground, and passed unnoticed neighbouring regions under different conditions; it left undealt with the infinite variety of circumstances, history, capacities, natural temperament, and those unexplored depths of will and character, affecting choice and judgment, the realities of which have been brought home to us by our later ethical literature.  Up to a certain point his task was easy.  It is easy to say that a bad life, a rebellious temper, a selfish spirit are hopeless disqualifications for judging spiritual things; that we must take something for granted in learning any truths whatever; that men must act as moral creatures to attain insight into moral truths, to realise and grasp them as things, and not abstractions and words.  But then came the questions—­What is that moral training, which, in the case of the good heart, will be practically infallible in leading into truth?  And what is that type of character, of saintliness, which gives authority which we cannot do wrong in following; where, if question and controversy arise, is the common measure binding on both sides; and can even the saints, with their immense variations and apparent mixtures and failings, furnish that type?  And next, where, in the investigations which may be endlessly diversified, does intellect properly come in and give its help?  For come in somewhere, of course it must; and the conspicuous dominance of the intellectual element in Mr. Ward’s treatment of the subject is palpable on the face of it.  His attempt is to make out a theory of the reasonableness of unproducible; because unanalysed, reasons; reasons which, though the individual cannot state them, may be as real and as legitimately active as the obscure rays of the spectrum.  But though the discussion in Mr. Ward’s hands was suggestive of much, though he might expose the superciliousness of Whately or the shallowness of Mr. Goode, and show himself no unequal antagonist to Mr. J.S.  Mill, it left great difficulties unanswered, and it had too much the appearance of being directed to a particular end, that of guarding the Catholic view of a popular religion from formidable objections.