We dwell on his political consistency, however, only because it affords an evidence of that unity of character which was always recognized in Father Hecker by those who knew him best.  Change in him, in whatever direction it seemed to proceed, meant primarily the dropping off of accidental excrescences.  There was nothing radical in it.  What he once held with the settled allegiance of his intelligence he held always, adding to or developing it further as fast as the clouds were blown away from his mental horizon.  From the standpoint of personal experience he could fairly criticise, as he did in conversation some few years before his death, Cardinal Newman’s dictum that “conversion is a leap in the dark.”  “I say,” he went on, “that it is a leap in the light.” "Into the light, but through the dark,” was suggested in reply.

“No,” he answered.  “If one arrives at a recognition of the truth of Catholic doctrine through one or other form of Protestant orthodoxy, then the difficulties of ordinary controversy will indeed leave him to the very end in the dark.  But if he comes to the Church through the working and the results of natural reason, it is light all the way, and to the very end.  I had this out with Cardinal Newman personally, and he agreed that I was right.”

It is true that his views were rectified when he entered the Church, and that when once in it he was ever acquiring new truth and new views of truth.  But his character never changed.  He was a luminous example of the truth of the saying that the child is father to the man, so often apparently falsified by experience.  Boy and man, the prominent characteristic of his mind was a clear perception of fundamentals and a disregard of non-essentials in the whole domain of life.  To reverse a familiar maxim, “Take care of the dollars and the cents will take care of themselves,” might describe his plan of mental economy.  To the small coin of discussion in any field of inquiry he paid little attention.  One who knew him many years has often heard him say, “Emphasize the universal always.”

He was a teacher by natural vocation.  No sooner was he satisfied that he knew anything of general moment than he felt pressed to impart his knowledge.  Contact with him could never be simply for acquaintance’ sake; still less for an idle comparison of views.  While no man could be more frank in the admission of a lack of data on which to base an opinion in matters of fact, or a lack of illumination on affairs of conduct or practical direction, when such existed, yet to be certain was, to him, the self-luminous guarantee of his mission to instruct.  But until that certainty was attained, in a manner satisfactory to both the intellectual and the ethical sides of his nature, he was silent.