My family were Church-and-State Tories of an untheoretical, moderate sort. Eldest sons ‘went into politics’ and younger sons ‘went into the Church’. A religious outlook was taken for granted; the religion was very sincere; so were the politics.

They served God according to their light and the King according to their light. The lights were not as dim as some people now suppose. My grandfather, a man of unostentatious piety, was well-read in theology. He was also interested in social reform and played a part in founding schools for the poor and the first reformatories.

Each of the books here under review testifies in its own way to the predicament in which philosophy finds itself. But ‘predicament’ has to be taken in a much wider sense than in the title of Professor Barnes’s book. For the predicament of philosophy is this: that the eminent who claim to speak its tongue (and there can be little doubt of the genuine eminence of such thinkers as Russell or Whitehead or Heidegger or Husserl or Maritain or Gilson, to name but several) speak languages not translated, and perhaps not translatable, to each other, about subjects not related, and perhaps not relatable, to each other; and by the very fact of engaging in the conversation of one the would-be philosopher appears to forfeit not merely the right but the very possibility of conversing intelligibly or interestingly with the others; nor (such is the predicament) is he permitted to make any preliminary enquiry before committing himself to one or other company, since to do so is, by the very fact of doing it, to commit himself, in the eyes of one or other group, to an investigation or to some facon de parler vicious and vitiating from the outset. So the contemporary positivist has no use for and is not interested in, and, for the most part, is quite ignorant of, the thought of the existentialist, and the existentialist of the positivist, and each of the thomist, and the thomist of them both. To read the books here reviewed together is to feel the disconcerting difficulties of this predicament.

This article is concerned with gestures in religion not I with religion in gestures, with the action seen rather than with the prayer prayed as when the hand touches the forehead and completes the sign of the Cross upon the breast. It begins with the story of other actions in a large pageant or spectacle in order to give the setting to so small a gesture as the Sign of the Cross, because that contrast follows my own experience; I saw the Miracle many years before the Sign of the Cross ceased, with my conversion, to be merely a sign of superstition!

Reinhardt’s Miracle happened forty years ago in Olympia, London. It was a good ‘period’ piece, modem in production, medieval in inspiration, and may be described as an example of religious mime; although its theology was faulty and its actors hired only to reproduce the shape or picture of a medieval pageant, it was clearly intended to appeal to the religious instinct of the beholder.

Since that time (1910) pictures, pageant and mime have become more popular. Europe has suffered the upheaval of great wars. Most big cities have become cosmopolitan with large numbers of inhabitants ‘illiterate’ save in their own tongue and therefore avid for the common language of picture and spectacle—a fact which propagandists are not slow to appreciate.

Twenty years ago, a branch of the Moscow Olympiad of the Revolutionary Theatre (M.O.R.T.) in New York ‘where one of the strongest dramatic councils’ then existed (according to a Bulletin of the ‘International Workers’ Theatrical Olympiad’)

Having rashly consented to the Editor’s request for an article on my brother I find myself doubly embarrassed; by having to write about my brother and about art. But die latter embarrassment is the worse. Being assured of his entire unconcern, I do not really mind discussing my brother in public. Indeed the situation has its advantages; it compels one, at least, to try to be objective. But to play at art-criticism is a game I do not relish.

Let me begin with the fact, plain to me, that my brother’s is a quiet talent. Decidedly not precocious as a boy, he had turned twenty before a bent for carving showed strongly in him. It came then with remarkable spontaneity; not chosen to suit a theory, still less a pose; hardly encouraged by others; not even, it seemed, the result of any specially urgent desire for self-expression. He never appeared tormented or oppressed by any abundance of feeling and imagery striving for an outlet. He was recollected rather than expansive. And so, though its range has widened, his art essentially remains; content with relatively few images. Yet he is drawing attention now, not only because (and this is his own chief conscious concern) his figures evince good craftsmanship, but also because of a quality in them, let me risk calling it a certain sober sweetness, which I shall try, I will not say to define, but to suggest, summarily, in these few remarks.

My brother learned his craft from Eric Gill, during seven years in the workshops at Pigotts or on tour with that master.

Wardour Old Castle was built in 1392 by John fifth Lord Lovell of Tichmarsh. During the Wars of the Roses it changed hands several times and, in 1499, was sold to Lord Willoughby de Broke whose grand-daughter re-sold it to a Cornish knight, Sir John Arundell of Lanheme. The family’, wrote John Francis, 12th Baron Arundell of Wardour in 1906, ‘has never ceased to be Catholic since mediaeval times’, and in 1552 Sir Thomas Arundell was executed because he belonged to the old religion. Queen Mary restored Wardour to Matthew Arundell, son of Sir Thomas, who in spite of his faith was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. He modernised the castle and built new Tudor windows into the Norman walls. Matthew Arundell’s son, Thomas, went to the Wars in Hungary, captured a Turkish banner at Esztergoum and was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire. Queen Elizabeth objected to this Popish honour and Count Thomas was sent to prison. James I, who could never quite forget that he had been born a Catholic, set Thomas Arundell free and made him the first Baron Arundell of Wardour. His grandson, the third Lord Arundell, was granted a special licence by James II whereby he and his heir were established as Counts of the Empire for good.

By this time Wardour Castle, though still inhabitable, had during the Great Rebellion, undergone two seiges in the space of ten months. Lady Blanche Arundell, a god-daughter of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, had not the blood of the Plantagenets in her veins for nothing.