A man is an animal with a sun inside him. That there is such an anima in the animal is clear from evidence, early and late. The cave paintings stand witness to its creative force. Plotinus recognized as the birthright of all an inner ‘sunlike’ eye; Sir Thomas Browne said that ‘we live by an invisible sun within us;’ and Picasso has claimed that he has a sun in his belly.

Artists strikingly testify to this signet of humanity because as ‘makers’ they leave in the world enduring traces of its radiant power. Man is a creative creature. (I use the term, to ‘create’, as it is commonly applied to the arts.) As artist he is privileged to bring new things into existence, endowing substance with singular and personal form. ‘Seen’ into existence by one man, they may be seen thereafter by all.

This anonymous gift of sun, outside the strictly animal order and indicating an extra dimension, generates questions. Where did it come from? Why is it there?

Speculation, unless of the philosophical variety that provides in itself the pleasure and the end, is not fashionable. The present moment, transient and isolate, provides sufficient stuff to engage all our attention. The artist concentrates on the empirical problem of seeing that the fabulous goose in his possession continues to lay the golden eggs. Though he may suffer ‘the disinclination of the sophisticated mind’ (de Lubac) to consider the source of his gift, the question is not extraneous. It is a question of life and death, like ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I doing here?’ By pressure of necessity it asks itself at unexpected moments. It has the vitality of a hydra; cut off one head and it confronts you with another.

In his recent novel Island Mr Aldous Huxley says some very silly things about St Augustine, or to be quite fair he makes one of his ‘wiser’ characters say them. From them it can be deduced that all he actually knows about Augustine is the Confessions, or a vague impression about that work, massa damnata, and unbaptized infants. This is probably representative of what the average educated man knows about Augustine, and so he will readily accept Mr Huxley’s dismissal of the man as a neurotic rigorist predestinationist. But the average educated Englishman cannot be excused this absurd misconception much longer, for what is in fact a monumental biography of St Augustine, Augustine the Bishop by Professor F. Van der Meer, is now available in English. Describing Augustine’s death the author says this about him: ‘To his Church he bequeathed two things; the memory of his humble and indescribably lovable personality [so much for the neurotic pessimist], and his great library, the archive of his spirit’ (p. 274).

It is quite clear that Dr Van der Meer knows that library inside out, and that he has read every word of Augustine’s letters and sermons, which are the most self-revealing of his works. And so in an immensely readable 589 pages (excluding notes) he substantiates over and over again the humble and indescribably lovable personality of his hero. I feel bound to say that it seems a pity that the publishers have presented his work in a volume that is handsome indeed, and well printed, but whose weight (3 lb.) and price (£4 10s) can scarcely fail to deter many possible purchasers and readers. The book is really a classic. It has had to wait almost twenty years for translation into English - understandably, perhaps.