‘‘Y’OU see a field of bones,’ says this author, speaking of Scholasticism, ‘but the bones live.’ The same may be said of the categories on which his work is built up. Categories have an obstinate way of remaining skeletons. Thanks, however, to the constructive power of the writer, the bones take on flesh and sinew: they live. In the mass of history and voice ‘production’ we welcome like the natural voice this evidence of an authentic historical gift that makes categories—those troublesome things—ceme alive, that introduces us not merely to the abstract thought but to the thinker of the Middle Ages, not only to what was thought but why it was thought, and, above all, to the vision of life that inspired the thought. The narrative is enlivened throughout with the asides ‘(one might almost call them the captions labelling the pictures), which convey the author’s conclusions to our intelligence.’ Education had come out of the sanctuary into the library, it had not yet left the library for the counting-house .... it had not yet begun to teach men how to make a livelihood, it was still engaged in teaching men how to live ‘(p. 68)—or this :’ Mediaeval man was by nature a philosopher, by instinct a believer, by education a scientist, but by choice an artist ‘(p. 236)— or :’ the analysis of thought was always his (the scholastic’s) occupation, as the analysis of man is ours ‘(p. 244). The power of conveying a swift impression in the flash of a word is certainly Father Jarrett’s, and we could go on multiplying instances by way of illustration, but let these suffice: ‘the strange pleasures of the water,’ ‘the cosier sense of home.’