That fervent Catholic, Leon Bloy, wrote in one of his works: ‘Suppose that there were people round you continually speaking of your father and mother with the utmost contempt, who had nothing to offer them but insults and offensive sarcasms, how would you feel? Well, this is just what happens to our Lord Jesus Christ. We forget, or rather we do not wish to know, that our God made man is a Jew, nature’s most perfect Jew, the lion of Judah, that his mother is a Jewess, the flower of the Jewish race; that the Apostles were Jews, as well as all the Prophets; and finally that our whole sacred Liturgy is drawn from Jewish books. In consequence, how may one express the enormity of the outrage and blasphemy of vilifying the Jewish race?’

These words are addressed to Christians, who ought to understand them. In truth, the superficiality of Christians who believe they can possibly be anti-semites is prodigious! As a matter of fact, Christianity, in its human origins, is a religion of messianic and prophetic type, the spirit of which, as utterly foreign to Greco-Roman spiritual culture as to Hindu culture, was introduced into world religious thought by the Jewish people. The ‘Aryan’ spirit is neither messianic nor prophetic; to await the coming of the Messiah—the irruption into history of forces beyond history—is foreign to it. Moreover, the fact that German anti-semitism has evolved into anti-Christianity must be considered a highly significant symptom. A wave of anti-semitism has broken upon the world, casting away the humanitarian theories of the nineteenth century and daily threatening to submerge new lands.

In the material order, a man owns whatever he keeps; in the spiritual order, however, we own what we give away. The grace of election, given us so freely, is not bestowed upon us as if we were alone in the world, and without neighbours in sight; citizenship in the Kingdom of God is granted us that we may share it. No one can be a Catholic who is not a missioner at heart, who does not wish, pray, and work that all may be one in the Lord. And of all the apostolates, that to Israel is not the least. Her return to Christ is the last particular intention of our Octave, because it will be near the end of ages that the whole of the people comes to him. But though last in time, it is by no means last in rank.

The Church of Christ is the Israel of old, prolonged and extended—nay, renewed in youth like the eagle, enriched and fulfilled. ‘We are the House of Israel. We are Israel, the vineyard of the Lord,’ says an early Christian writer, (Pseudo Ambrosius, s. 58, n. 2; P.L. 17; 723) And another calls Abraham ‘the Father of the Church.’ St Augustine goes further; he makes the Church speak: ‘When God blessed Abraham, it was I he promised. The blessing of Christ, I am indeed spread through all the nations.’ (De Fide Rerum, 5; P.L. 40, 174) Each year, on Holy Saturday, before the blessing of the baptismal font, the Church herself remembers that in the Christian eon the miracles of old shine anew, and that what God’s mighty arm wrought when he freed from the yoke of Egypt the One People, he works now for the Gentiles in the waters of regeneration.

Historians of philosophy have been notoriously unsuccessful in the past, either through hanging their own thoughts on other men’s pegs or through simply giving a list of the pegs; of the former error the supreme example may for long be Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, whilst the second failing is one which Laird found difficult to avoid within the limited space of his Home University volume on Recent Philosophy. It is all the more pleasing, then, to find that Fr Bochenski has written a history of European philosophy during the present century which presents the main lines of modern philosophers neatly and lucidly, yet makes it quite clear that the question of truth is one which the philosopher, whatever his capacity, may not neglect, and he himself unobtrusively indicates the direction in which solutions of the difficulties are to be sought. He proves himself such a stimulating guide to the thought of our own day that we can whole-heartedly express the hope of seeing the work translated into English in the near future.

The characteristic notes of the book are neatness and precision. In his short preface Fr Bochenski points out with great modesty the shortcomings which are scarcely to be avoided in giving an account of other men’s thought, though his modesty does not prevent him from insisting that it is only a mark of respect towards another philosopher to offer criticisms of his work. To have expressed an essential truth so briefly is typical of the book.

One of the first books published by authority of the British Military Government in Germany was Nietzsche and Christianity by Karl Jaspers. This was the first of a number of post-war publications through which Professor Jaspers became practically the spokesman of academic Germany. He had been one of the few outstanding university professors who, though not directly discriminated for racial, religious or political reasons, had never for a moment associated themselves with National Socialism. Apart from church dignitaries and scientific technicians, he was the first German intellectual to be invited after the war for lectures abroad. When the first German university was re-opened by the Allied Military Authorities at Heidelberg, he was not only restored to his professorship but appointed Rector. Fifteen years after the publication of his chief work, Jaspers has become perhaps the most influential figure in the intellectual life of Central and Western Europe. In Switzerland, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, England and France, his Existentialism is discussed even by those who used to take but little interest in philosophical pursuits.

In these countries, it is difficult to obtain genuine information on Jaspers’s philosophy. Only one small book of his has been translated into English.

In 1931 the publishers of Sammlung Goeschen asked Jaspers to write the 1,000th volume of this series of popular text-books on all branches of learning. He gave his book the title The spiritual Situation of our Time, which the Australian translators (E. and C. Paul) rendered by Man in the Modern Age. This book is long out of print.