Very illusive is the thing we call Freedom or Liberty, presenting a variety of notions to the men and women who in every age pursue it. Lord Acton, concerned mainly with its political aspect, saw liberty as ‘the delicate fruit of a mature civilization,’ and declared that’ the most certain test of the real freedom of a country ‘was’ the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.’ (But then, as Creighton remarked, Acton demanded that history, as primarily ‘a branch of the moral sciences, should aim at proving the immutable righteousness of the ideas of modern liberalism —tolerance and the supremacy of conscience.’) Dr. Johnson argued that private liberty was the essential thing—‘Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private liberty.’ The later Johnsonian dictum: ‘we are all agreed as to our own liberty: we would have as much of it as we can get; but we are not agreed as to the liberty of others: for in proportion as we take, others must lose,’ still commands wide assent.

Misgovernment in one form or another provokes the passionate cry- for freedom; the perennial revolt that to achieve its end turns to revolution or is suppressed by force of arms. Misgovernment within—Remota justitia quid reg- na nisi magna Patrocinia? The Augustinian sentence expresses consciousness of robbery that must be stopped.

‘Freedom in the governed to complain of wrongs and readiness in rulers to redress them constitute the ideal of a free state,’ is the ideal free state of Erskine May, distinguished nineteenth century English constitutional lawyer.

Rome, the colossus, insatiable, brooking no rival, had meant then, as Augustine and others realised, a never- ending series of wars, some of them necessary in self-defence, others, perhaps, wars of pure aggression. But now a more appalling spectre was showing its head: the barbarian hordes. Rome had at least stood for law and equity. But these barbarian hordes simply wasted and ravaged. Augustine may well be portraying them when he asks:

‘What else is it but robbery on a huge scale to wage war first on our near neighbours, and after subduing them to attack those more remote; and so, through mere lust of power, to grind down and make subect peoples who have never done us any harm?’ So, too, when he asks again:

’ What else are kingdoms wherein there is no justice, save robberies on a large scale? Take the case of a robber- band. It is made up of men who act under some sort of leader, who have some sort of social pact among themselves and divide their booty by mutual agreement. Supposing now that, owing to the numbers who join it, this evil institution so grows that it is able to establish itself in definite localities and have a centre whence it conducts operations —why, then, it proceeds to attack cities, to subjugate other peoples, and ends by acclaiming itself a kingdom. A rise in rank ‘which was in no sense due to those robbers having laid aside their evil ambitions but simply to their ever growing impunity.’

A yearning for lasting peace is the common property of all times and of all peoples, and finds expression in all religions. It can be found in the conception underlying the Golden Age and in that of the Garden of Eden, just as in the eschatological idea of heavenly peace.

Christianity, as the sum total of truth, proclaims ‘peace on earth’ in the Christmas message to ‘men of good will.’

We, who are living twenty years after the world conflagration and in the midst of a new one, or rather in the re-kindling of the old, have a special duty to reflect how best wars can be prevented and a durable peace maintained. Our times, in fact, abound in such ideas and projects.

There has probably never been a war in history during which peace and its permanent organization have been so much discussed. Indeed, there has probably never been a time in the world’s history when a great turning point has been so clearly recognized and consciously experienced by so many contemporaries.

If we disregard the day-dreams of pacifists which escape from the reality of the problem into misguided asceticism or into the heresy of Gnosticism, we shall see that the ideas and schemes offering lasting peace to the world are concerned with agreements between nations, with the foedus among peoples, with federalism. Whether these effiorts appear as a reform of the League of Nations or call themselves the ‘Federal-Union’ or ‘Pan-Europe’ movement, they all aim, by some form of agreement, at banishing war from the world.

When Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Protestant Bishop of Derry, died on July 8th, 1803, in Albano, having about him none but hired servants, Cardinal Erskine took upon himself the troublesome duty more properly to have been discharged by a British representative in Rome if there had been one, of winding up his affairs.

This wealthy eccentric is best known by the vivid picture given by Froude in The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, of his activities in connection with the Irish Volunteers. He drove to the National Convention of the Volunteers at Dublin in November, 1783, in an open landau drawn by six horses magnificently apparrelled in purple, with white gloves, gold fringed, and gold tassels dangling from them, and buckles of diamonds on knee and shoe: ‘His own mounted servants, in gorgeous liveries, attended on either side of his carriage. George Robert Fitzgerald rode in front with a squadron of dragoons in gold and scarlet uniforms, on the finest horses which could be bought in the land. A second squadron brought up the rear in equal splendour, and thus, with slow and regal pace, the procession passed on, volunteers falling in with bands playing and colours flying, the crowd shouting: “Long life to the Bishop,” the Bishop bowing to the crowd.’

The incident certainly typifies the Earl-Bishop’s strange spectacular character and career, but whilst many popular articles have been written on his queer antics and conduct, he was by no means an inconsiderable man as a political thinker.

What may be termed the empirical bent of modern education is, in the opinion of most educationists, directly traceable to the Reformation and the ‘news-thought’ that arose from it. The teaching of natural science has, at least in primary and secondary education, almost entirely replaced the mediaeval study of philosophy.

Contrary, however, to modem popular notions on the subject, education in the Middle Ages was far in advance of that of modern times in essentials. It is true that a universal level standard cannot be claimed. For instance, in the thirteenth century, universities such as Bologna, Padua and Naples took students through a long and allembracing course, while Paris specialised in philosophy and theology. Germany was noted for its convent schools where both elementary and higher studies were catered for. In England, the founding of Oxford University in the twelfth century and Cambridge in the thirteenth guaranteed for English youths a good all-round training.

Whatever the standard and scope of mediaeval education, it had one characteristic by which it differs from general education to-day: it was inseparably bound up with religion. The customary elementary course of grammar, rhetoric and logic was often the preliminary to a higher course that embraced philosophy and theology; and girls as well as boys sometimes studied theology.

Arising out of the association of all education with philosophy and theology was the fact of its stimulus to thought. Even the elementary course aimed at making the student a thinker, while the higher course, even when not specifically theological, tended in the same direction.

The above title outlines Professor Collingwood’s project for the reinstatement of metaphysics in answer to Kant’s question, ‘How can metaphysics become scientific?’ Since metaphysics has hitherto been a mistake about metaphysics, it was time something should be done about it.

In the books called Metaphysical ( = the next after the physics = much the same kind of title as ‘Collected Works,’ vol. viii), says Professor Collingwood, Aristotle undertakes two tasks. The first is the study (First Science) of the presuppositions of the ordinary non-metaphysical sciences; the second is the construction of a science (ontology) of pure being, and therefore (natural theology) of God. As first science metaphysics is logically presupposed by all the other sciences, although from the learner’s point of view it is approached only when the other sciences have been to some degree mastered. As last science (wisdom) it will be the ultimate goal of the scientist’s pilgrimage, and the most explicit name for it will be theology.

The first chapter of Professor Collingwood’s book is a condensed paraphrase of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The second separates the two tasks mentioned above and argues, in continuity with Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel, that a science of ‘pure being ‘is a contradiction in terms.

The grounds of this conclusion are already visible in the paraphrase of Aristotle in his first chapter (p. g). Speaking of the system of the subordination of the sciences, he says: ‘At the base of the system of universals there are universals which are infimae species, not giving rise to any further sub-species.