1. If anyone shall deny one true God, Creator and Lord of things visible and invisible; let him be anathema.

2. If anyone shall not be ashamed to affirm that, except matter, nothing exists; let him be anathema.

3. If anyone shall say that the substance and essence of God and of all things is one and the same; let him be anathema. (Vatican Council—on Catholic Faith, Can. I—III).

1. If anyone shall say that the one true God our Creator and Lord cannot be known by the natural light of Reason, through created things; let him be anathema.

2. If anyone shall say that it is impossible or inexpedient that men should be taught by divine revelation concerning God and the worship to be paid to Him; let him be anathema.

3. If anyone shall say that man cannot be raised by divine power to a higher than natural knowledge and perfection, but can and ought by a continuous progress to arrive at length of himself at the possession of all that is true and good; let him be anathema.

4. If anyone shall not receive as sacred and canonical the books of Holy Scripture entire with all their parts, as the Holy Synod of Trent has enumerated them, or shall deny that they have been divinely inspired; let him be anathema.

There is this special reason and excuse for undertaking a lengthy expositional review of M. de Rougement’s L’Amour et L'Occident, that if, as seems likely, its historical thesis fails to win general approval the book is bound to suffer neglect. Whereas in fact it has a doctrinal significance that does not depend on the soundness of its history. It is alive with the inspiration of a great theological vision. It succeeds in laying open the real meaning of the conflict between the love of Eros and the love of Agape; and to do that is to display one of the deepest and most vital of all religious issues.

The historical thesis turns on a particular theory concerning the origins of the European cult of Romantic, Passionate Love. It is universally recognized that it descends from the cult of Courtly Love practised by the Troubadours of twelfth century Provence, and that it was through the prestige of their poetry that it captured the imagination of Europe and became thereafter the chief theme of our literature and a dominant force in our civilisation. What is new in this book—new at least in the force of its conviction and the weight of its arguments—is the attempt to show that the Troubadour movement was itself originally an integral part of the heresy of Albigensianism or Catharism. It is maintained that the Courtly Love celebrated by the Troubadours was a symbolic idea invented to represent the unearthly love of Catharist mysticism. The characteristic themes of anguished love, of passion frustrated, of marriage denounced and chastity exalted are interpreted as a secret expression of the Catharist ideal of the flight of a soul from this world and all worldly happiness to achieve union with absolute love.

The Order of Preachers enjoys an old-established reputation for learning. There is nothing to show that this was the cause of Cyril Jarrett’s first attraction to Dominican life; but once he realised that the Dominican ideal invites every Friar Preacher to be a saint, and all who can to be scholars, he made saintly scholarship the object of his very ardent ambition.

His record at school and his experience of himself as a student more than justified such an aspiration. He was docile to the teaching of masters and books. All the masters under whom he ever sat have testified with one voice that he was one of the most industrious and intelligent pupils that passed through their hands.

The course of study he had to follow at Woodchester and Hawkesyard was strictly ordered as a preparation for the ecclesiastical and religious state. It included logic, scholastic philosophy and speculative theology. He applied himself diligently to these subjects, passed his examination in them with conspicuous success, and was able to turn them all to good account in later life. To the discipline of logic especially he yielded himself with unquestioning faith and a rare obedience. It strengthened his methodical habits of clear, accurate thinking, speech and writing. About the time he made his solemn vows, and for some years afterwards—years during which he was very consciously forming his character in force and freedom— he indulged in much speculative enquiry into the psychology of the human will. His researches into this problem took him beyond his text-books; and he supplemented his reading by his own written reflections. This was in accordance with his habit of making and keeping notes of whatever in his reading impressed him deeply.

What we call the Christian Middle Ages emerge from a time of confusion that separates them from the ordered civilization of the Roman Empire. During that time of confusion there was a progressive disintegration of the old Roman order. The Empire itself broke up, and Europe was subjected to successive waves of barbarian invaders, who, if they brought nothing else, did at least invigorate the West with fresh blood. The barbarian brought with him an energy both physical and moral that provided sufficient human enthusiasm to embrace Christianity, and under Christian inspiration produce something as near a purely Christian culture as mankind has yet reached.

The connecting link between the ancient and medieval world is the Catholic Church, carrying with her down the centuries the cultural heritage which she had already adopted and baptised: this was largely preserved in the living tradition of her worship, which gathered and conveyed in an unbroken stream a thin residuum of human achievement. Much disappeared in the wanton destruction of the great libraries of the ancient world, or through the neglect that comes of despair, when the past glows with a melancholy radiance and the future is veiled by darkness and fear. At such times there comes a point when nothing seems worth saving but the bare fact of existence. In a world of shifting sands the Church remained the one rock of civilization.

‘The Machine has no rights,’ said the philosopher, ‘let us exploit it.’ Let it once be made the slave of all men and who knows what other Athens shall arise. It is a pity that this vision of happiness should ever have been called the Leisure State; for if there is one thing certain about Leisure States it is that nobody wants them. If men and women want leisure it is only in order to act in a way which pleases them. Play itself is activity, and, very often, the more it resembles hard work the more fun it provides. You may distinguish play from work as fun is distinguished from drudgery, but this is a bad distinction, for there is no reason why Mr. Selfrdge should not be right in saying, ‘There is no fun like work.’ Play is best distinguished from work as means is distinguished from end; play is for work and work is for the Last End, or is the Last End if we can call work that operation by which man apprehends God. Play is a sort of artificial work freely undertaken for the sake of more work afterwards. It is true that little children do not normally play games with any thought of working better when they leave off; but this is because, being little children, their play is their work, in much the same way as the play of lambs and kittens is the serious work of lambs and kittens. Play, in the sense of recreation, does not begin until responsible human work begins; until the ‘age of reason.’ Until then the child’s play is just one of the ways by which it quite seriously adjusts itself to the Universe. Its play is all movement and mimicry. It cannot play without playing ‘at’ something, unless it simply jumps about.

‘une belle equipe’ is the title of a stimulating account in the Canadian Revue Dominicaine of the work of the ‘Cerf’ publishing house in Paris:

They are only seven Friars Preachers, but they control one of the most triumphant of the Catholic movements of France, that of ‘Les Editions du Cerf.’ True, they have the wholehearted support of many of their colleagues in the Dominican Order and of a splendid group of the laity. But they alone form the permanent central organisation.

From his earliest days as a Dominican each of them had dreamed of a gigantic apostolate which would utilise modem technical resources of propaganda to the utmost. The great theses of St. Thomas, which had enabled them to penetrate into the heart of the Christian mysteries, seemed to them to be too substantial a nourishment to be served as they stood to the men and women of to-day. So they made up their minds to give a modern presentation to the eternal message of Christ, which their scholastic studies had enabled them more clearly to understand—a presentation adapted to the comprehension of modem men.

It is now many years ago that they began to put their ideal into execution . . . When so many false shepherds were leading the masses astray, when so many demagogues were making themselves the apostles of inhuman causes and leading the people into the slavery of the State, the Machine, the Majority, they proclaimed aloud the claims of God and the dignity of the human person . . . They must address living thought to living men in living language.