Père Lagrange was inspired by a theological principle the rational consequences of which are from now on clearly in evidence. Inasmuch as the Bible is an inspired book it is wholly and essentially divine, therefore absolutely true and infallible as representing, with the necessary guarantee of authenticity, the very word of God Himself. At the same time, however, and precisely in virtue of the divine inspiration communicated to the human writers, it is no less integrally human by reason of its production by a human instrument who is both intelligent and free under the movement of God, the primary cause. Profound consideration of this co-ordination of the two causes had led Père Lagrange to a principle finely balanced, it is true, but as inevitable as it was freedom-giving: the distinction between what is characteristically divine—where there is no room for any defective element—and what is characteristically human—where there is room for limitations and imperfections. Whilst reserving always and most explicitly to the Church, the only living authority qualified by God for this purpose, the determination of the characteristically divine teaching or statement contained in a biblical passage, it then became possible to envisage the Bible in the human perspective of its inspired authors, to study it, that is to say, according to the rules of the most positive historic method.

If there be a typical trait of faith—an attitude of spirit or an act characteristic of it—this is certainly its simplicity. It is already observable in that indeterminate thing which we term the “religious sense’ ‘; whatever may be its context, its forms, the act of the cleaving of man to the Divine is eminently simple. In the most complex souls, in those most burdened by analysis, who seem to us irremediably torn by passions, problems and agonies of inward conflict and distress, when once this shock has come out of nowhere to compel the proclamation of God . . . , a sort of polarisation comes into action. Under all the excesses, many-sidedness, and beyond superficial deployments, a directness, a spiritual purity, is cutting its way through in the search for freedom: a certain primitive and simple thing at the very root of our being has been touched.

How much more so in faith! The religious factors which create this attitude of basic adhesion are transposed and “planted” in God Himself Who is the source and consummation of the entire change. No longer adoration grounded in the shivering dread of an annihilated creature, but communion in the life of a personal God by active “outpouring” of divine light interiorly.

What paradox, then, to wish to analyse it, analyse this faith which, like life beneath the surgeon's scalpel, escapes us in proportion as analysis goes deeper!

Must we leave it alone?—Let ourselves be involved in a sort of spiritual wave where, assent once given, we have to renounce every control, every recall to terra firma, under pain of falling into any kind of “rationalism”? Attractive, enduring temptation for the believer!

“World Conference, World Domination or World Government?” is the title I have chosen for the consideration of a problem which I venture to think is the most burning question of our age: but which, as a student of history, I shall approach historically.

What do we mean by “World” in this context? Evidently Humanity, the totality of human beings who at any one time inhabit our planet. This humanity is one, both biologically and historically. It has radiated from one centre in primitive times and gradually, in wave upon wave, spread over the whole earth. Primitive man was a food-collector, i.e., one who had not yet learnt the art of food-production; incidentally, and this is of special interest to us here, he did not know nor practise homicide; whether singly or en masse. Survivals of such primitives we still find on the fringes of the inhabited world, as for instance, the Eskimos of Greenland, the Firelanders of Patagonia, the Semangs of the Malay Peninsula, the Pygmies of the Central African Ituri forest: all people, who still have not even formed the conception of war.

With the threefold invention, in widely separated areas, of food-production by Hunters, Herdsmen and Farmers, there arose the three basic civilizations of mankind, which later on and in diverse manner mingled and produced secondary civilizations. Many of these again fused, and thus for instance there issued that great Archaeic Civilization, which we can trace back to the VII millennium B.C. and to which belonged the earliest—and essentially peaceable!—civilizations of the Mesopotamian, the Indus and the Nile valleys.

Once it was a sign of taste to knock down the little grecian temple at the end of the glade and build a gothic ruin in its place. Does it not seem that the contemporary revival of St. Thomas is sometimes conducted in the same spirit? And does not this to some extent justify the mutters about philosophical feudalism? At any rate such reflections have produced a most candid and enquiring essay, an examination of conscience as to why our philosophy should be either accepted or rejected more or less as a vogue.

In his own university the author discovers a feeling against St. Thomas out of all proportion to the effort of revival. He does not permit himself to suppose that the reaction comes from a fresh reading of the text. The fault is largely ours. We have presented our philosophy almost as a religious creed, not indeed by appealing outright to ecclesiastical authority, but by sundry becks and nods hinting, and not too gently, that we have bread where all else is synthetic confectionery; playing on the verbal emotions; using the psychological magic of security, a conservative code, the few simple tests. Rationalism, like racialism, can have its superstitions, and both can offer violence to the free individual, sensing only the forces of disintegration outside their own particular pattern. In both cases, too, it is the Jew who suffers, the wandering Jew; the mind unhappy, ironic, searching, but still unattached. We have avoided the issue with modern thought, or begged the question, bringing forward half a dozen or so of our own principles tricked out with technicalities.

In 1286 the Dominican Mission in the Mongol Ilkhanate of Persia was reinforced by the Friar who was the destined instrument of its greatest triumph: Fra Ricold of Monte Croce. The mission was then more than forty years old, for it had been established in 1240, less than two years after the armies of Charmaghan and Baachu, lieutenants of Okkadai, successor to the terrible Ghengis Khan, had swept like a devastating flame over the land.

Pope Gregory IX had in that year sent eight friars to Tiflis, and in 1254 William de Rubruck, the Franciscan envoy of St. Louis to the Grand Khan, met one of them Bernard of Catalonia, in the half desolated city of Naxua, near Ararat. He had mastered the Tartar tongue and was still preaching zealously to the savage conquerors, with no companion in his isolation but a German lay brother whose language he did not understand.

At the time of Fra Ricold's arrival in the Ilkhanate the Mongols had lost some of their brutal savagery, but their character had suffered no change. If the Ilkhan and his court no longer went dressed in ox hides nor ate dog flesh and drank blood with the gusto of their parents, they remained deceitful, treacherous and insolent towards all not of their race, and still accounted the slaughter of others as naught.

Fra Ricold, born in the Tuscan village of Monte Croce in 1242, entered the Dominican noviciate at Santa Maria Novella, Florence, in his twenty-fifth year. In 1272 he graduated as Master of Arts, and was then sent to St. Catherine’s Convent, Pisa, where he soon gained renown as a Thomist and masterly expositor of the Angelic Doctor.

The ideal education as here set forth is that which gives the first place in its consideration to the building up of integrated personalities. The aim of humane education must be directed towards something more complete in the- humanist sense than mere professional and vocational efficiency, however necessary this may be.

Dr. Castiello approaches the subject from the standpoint of empirical psychology and makes full use of all that is most valuable in this science. Educational psychology, however, is more concerned with problems of efficiency and skill than with cultural values. Its aim is strictly utilitarian, and so, to a great extent, materialistic. Nevertheless the various tests and devices invented for measuring intelligence and other abilities have their use, and are not to be despised.

A humane psychology of education reaches out to something beyond mere skill and ability and endeavours to penetrate more deeply into the constitution of personality.