Man is a creature rooted in earth and drawing his breath from heaven. Apart from the truism that nature itself and every created thing comes from God, there is a sense in which we may make a legitimate distinction between the origins of man’s bodily and spiritual parts, regarding the one as from nature, the other from God. This union and integration of the corporal and spiritual in one creature is man’s unique distinction; and in most cases the normal, uninhibited man is emotionally aware of his kinship with the earth and with God. Throughout history this feeling of kinship has expressed itself in the two activities most perfectly characteristic of humanity, namely agriculture and religion. All civilisations have tended to approximate to the rural-religious pattern in some form or other until the last few centuries in the West and very recently in the Far East. Since the rural-religious life is essentially normal to man and satisfies the supreme appetitions of his being, it follows that he can only achieve true happiness and integration when his relation to nature and God is harmoniously satisfied. It does not, of course, follow that rural-religious societies will be necessarily happy or integrated : original sin is not so easily overcome; but it does follow inexorably that if men apostatise from nature and God they will inevitably be unhappy and disintegrated.

The New York Times in June 1942, published the ‘Charted Results of a Survey on College Study of U.S. History,’ with a commentary by Benjamine Fine under the heading : ‘U.S. History Study is not required in 82 per cent, of Colleges’ and again, a sub-heading : ‘72 per cent, do not list it as an entrance prerequisite.’

For a European like myself, brought up in the cult of history, Italian and foreign, ancient and modern, this seemed so strange as to surpass belief. I asked myself, if this was what happened to the history of the United States in United States colleges, what must be the unhappy fate of the history of other countries, and ancient and classical history.

The ‘Results’ have naturally amazed Americans too, leading to an animated discussion of the problem.

As easily happens, the general, educational problem was made to slide at once to that of war morale. The young man who does not know his country’s past cannot appreciate its institutions, cannot love its great figures, cannot be thrilled at the national name since the nation is unknown to him in its birth and development. It is easy to exaggerate on this theme, whether in order to show that history is necessary or to assert, as some have done, that it neither adds to nor detracts from patriotic feeling.

An diesem jüngsten Tag.
Du hast ibn uns herabgesandt auf Erden,
Dass alle Vŏlker, die lebendig sind,
Gezählt, gewogen und befunden werden
Und nichts mehr gelte, was nur Spreu im Wind.

The newest judging, weighing and numbering of the peoples differs from the trial described in this poem of the last war in its greater severity and in its terrible finality. There is no second chance for Christendom. The present conflict is not simply a period of testing from which Europe will emerge, purified or in a worse decline. It is the end of Europe, or it is the painful prelude to a glorious renewal. The very Christianity of Christendom is to-day in question. That is the tremendous theme of Mr. Christopher Dawson’s newest, most carefully written and most readable book.

The essence of the problem is stated squarely. This is neither a war of nations in the old imperialist style, nor even a war of ideologies in the crude sense of Democracy versus Fascism. ‘The conflict which threatens to destroy civilisation to-day is not a conflict of race or culture, or even ideology. It is a conflict of the naked will to power which has swallowed up all the ostensible ideological issues : the racial issue of Aryan versus Semite, the social issue of Communism versus Fascism, and the international issue between the supporters and opponents of the League of Nations.’

I have been asked to speak on the Christian leaven in the University. It is an important subject and one on which I myself feel strongly. The view which I am going to put forward will not I know be generally accepted ; it does not claim to be the only view which can be taken of the situation, but it is one which, in my opinion, is at the present time too little stressed ; I may therefore be forgiven if in this short space I state my case rather strongly, and I should like to apologise beforehand to all those whom I am now about to provoke. I do not mean to be offensive, but it is difficult to put what I want to say shortly and clearly without seeming to be so.

I propose in this paper to exclude all other considerations, and to state as forcibly as I can just one, perhaps rather narrow, view, essentially a convert’s view, of what the Christian Leaven is, and what it might be. I speak moreover not merely as a convert from Protestantism to Catholicism, but from Paganism to Christianity, and this is a far more revolutionary conversion, different not only in degree but almost in kind. ... St. Augustine as compared with Cardinal Newman. It is necessarily of more significance for the modern world in as much as the modern world itself is overwhelmingly pagan and not protestant and for this reason it is important to try and realise what is in fact involved in such conversion; it is not merely a question of Apostolic Succession or the validity of Anglican Orders which is at issue, but our entire conception of existence, the question of God’s existence and the nature of man.

Of these nine essays, two are now seen for the first time, and one, the longest, is new to the present writer. Secular and Sacred in Modern Industry takes up the last twenty pages. Two full-size reproductions and three or four ‘colophons’ from his hand make the little volume more intimate and precious to his old friends and the war-economy standard of production seems to enhance rather than impair the attractiveness. The little volume contains a lot of close reasoning, many aphorisms of price, and much true intense loyalty to the Papal Encyclicals on Labour and Social Reform. We speak feelingly;, having had to defend the faith of Eric Gill against those who never retain a single word of those earth-shaking documents even if they ever heeded one. On p. 13, 1. 7, occurs a sentence with one that too many.

Who wants an antidote to the Daily Bane and other touting boobytraps for Democracy and the Proletarianisation (his word) of all things? Who wants to hear that ‘the labourer’s point of view is necessarily radically different from any other’? Who swallows all the second-hand sops of Midas without any rumination? Who but everyone who does not read Eric Gill.

One of the cases of spiritual direction, which most frequently arises in the increasingly strenuous life of our age, is that of scrupulosity. The nervous tension, caused by the irritating atmosphere of great cities, is obviously conducive to psycho-neurotic troubles; and, if a rigorist educative influence saddles a hypersensitive temperament afflicted by these troubles, with the result that religion is misconceived as a repressive legalism, the effect will almost inevitably be a false conscience perhaps for ever paralysed by scruples. Whenever it makes its appearance and for the same reasons, this disease either suddenly breaks out in a violent crisis or gradually spreads in a slow, consuming progression. Much has been written about this malady : descriptions of the disorder, descriptions of the supernatural trial, the attitude to be taken towards the scrupulous by confessor and director, psychotherapeutic treatments or others in obstinate and disconcerting cases. It would seem that nothing has been overlooked and that the subject is therefore exhausted. One is tempted to conclude : the whole question has been settled once and for all. Nevertheless the scrupulous remain. It is in the West among Latins that scrupulosity is found in its endemic state, whereas it is unknown among Eastern Catholics and Orthodox . . .’

As the war now proceeds through stages that can, without undue optimism, be considered decisive, we become conscious of anxieties, tears, and even hopes, which, though always looming in the background of our thoughts, have been obscured by the very uncertainty of the war itself. We are all uneasy about the future of Europe. But we cannot postpone the declaration of our uneasiness until the last shot has been fired. Silence now would be imprudent for many reasons, and especially because it is certain that the end of hostilities will be the signal for an immediate outburst of bitter and passionate discussions between the partisans of the different political and economic systems that stand ready to compete for our support. Therefore, before we come to the parting of the ways, each of us owes it to himself to enter into his own mind and sort out his own ideas. Unless we do this, our ideas are always confused, and con-, fusion is always a sign of latent and unsuspected contradictions; until these are cleared away we are in no position to fight for or against anything.

In our opinion Europe is about to become the theatre of still another war, bloodless we hope, between two parties not yet aligned against one another : the one supporting a new order, and eager to profit by the ravages of the present war to build it; the other zealous to preserve in continuity the spiritual, political, or economic life ol the Old World. This is a general view, and does not ignore the intermediate shades of difference that may help to absorb something of the shock between extremes.

To live in the country and partake of the life of the country is in itself an education, partly because natural phenomena, experienced by the countryman at first hand, are educative, and partly because craftsmen abound everywhere practising their crafts in the open for all to see. These characteristics of the country provide two fundamentals of education : opportunity to study the relations of God with man, and the opportunity to learn through imitation (the only way that one human being learns, from another) the essential crafts of life.

Observation of nature is like looking at the illustrations of a history book. It offers visible examples of life and the way life is ordered. The pictures may be wrongly interpreted—as can be seen by the origin of the word paganism—but, given true philosophy, the countryside is a constant reminder of the ultimate things of life.

As regards the second educational advantage that the country possesses, almost every activity that a child watches—and is everywhere able to watch—explains itself. No one is likely to make a mistake about the purpose and method of milking a cow; the cutting, making and carrying of hay are their own text-book; the hedger, the thatcher, the ploughman, the blacksmith, the cobbler, each teaches a lesson to the passer-by, as do the manifold processes of cultivation in the fields.

In the winter of 1920-21 there was founded in Vienna the Association known as Logos. It was an Association or club of members of the University who sought to solve their problems and difficulties by discussion and research. There were under-graduates and graduates, scholars and professors, men and women of the learned professions : historians, scientists, doctors, lawyer, metaphysicians, linguists, social-philosophers and economists. Those were days of hardship and misery in Austria. The dismemberment of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, the breakdown of a world built five centuries before, the reversal of age-old traditions, poverty and unemployment, anti-religious movements and modern materialistic-rationalistic trends of thought, brought new social and individual needs and innumerable personal problems, and led a few people to gather together for discussion. They soon realised that only faith could provide a firm basis for their proceedings and that authoritative guidance on theological matters was essential. They, therefore, approached the Jesuit Fathers in Vienna and asked for the appointment of a Father to act as spiritual adviser at their meetings. This request was granted, and after a year’s intensive work by some twenty laymen of different learned professions of science and arts and after many experiments a certain definite method was tested and accepted and proved to be perfectly workable.

On the whole the English type of spirituality shows greater consideration for the human needs of the individual than that of, say, Italy or Spain; it has a gentler and more tolerant character. The northern climate preaches moderation in penances and asks for attention to human frailty and feelings. The phlegmatic Englishman is seldom demonstrative in external religion, for he is unwilling to reveal his emotions, though they be intense. The warm blood of the South appears to him to indulge in excess in all things, excess in sanctity as in sinning. We may find a gentle human element in the mystics of fourteenth-century England; but it goes further back than that. St. Aelred of Rievaulx shows it in his life and writings in the twelfth century; he is in fact one of the only spiritual writers who has dealt with human friendships to justify them as part of the spiritual life. ‘I began to wonder whether Scripture had any blessing to give to friendship, or was it only a thing that paganism had praised. However, I had found that the letters of the saints were full of references to friendship.’ And so he sets out in pursuit of a human love within the embrace of the divine. ‘Particular friendships’ have often been condemned; yet there is something of the same sympathy as St. Aelred’s in the writing of Richard Rolle, while the author of the Ancren Riwle (c. 1200) takes it for granted that the recluses for whom he writes will have special friends.

On the last page of their classical history of the English Law, Pollock and Maitland wrote these words : ‘The men who were gathered at Westminster round Patteshull and Raleigh and Bracton (in the thirteenth century) were penning writs that would run in the name of kingless commonwealths on the other shore of the Atlantic Ocean. They were making right and wrong for us and for our children.

The rules of right and wrong that were framed by these prelates and judges of the Middle Age constitute the Common Law of England, a system of law that rules not only England (and Ireland), but also the Dominions of Canada and Australia and New Zealand and (in great measure) India and most of the colonies and possessions of the Crown. The Common Law rules also ‘those kingless commonwealths on the other shore ol the Atlantic Ocean,’ the states of the American Union, with the single exception of Louisiana.

The Common Law is thus one of the two great systems of Law and of legal tradition by which the world was governed before the war. The other system is the system and tradition of the Roman Law, which governed the great continental countries of Europe and their non-European dependencies. The Roman Law has a history of twenty-five centuries.. It was accordingly pagan in origin. It reflected what Lord Acton has called the vice of the classical state : it was Church and State in one. Divine honours were paid to the Emperor. And the law recognised or drew a sharp distinction between free man and slave; and between citizen and stranger.

As Vicar-General of the diocese of Nimes in southern France, as founder of the Assumptionists, and above all as helper, adviser, and often guiding spirit of nearly all the great religious enterprises of his day in France, Fr. Emmanuel d’Alzon was one of the most influential leaders of French Catholicism in the XIXth century. His Writings, with their frequent allusions to contemporary events, would serve as a penetrating and supremely interesting commentary on the passing of the Third Republic. Thus, in 1835, writing to a friend, he crystalised his thoughts on the Church’s part in politics :

... I assure you, have made up my mind about politics, my most intimate conviction being that Christianity must be separated from parties . . . in order to dominate them all by spreading through society the so often stifled seeds of justice, order and charity. Christianity is destined to be the foundation of society : belonging to no particular fraction of the body, it must embrace them all, link them together, and force them to forgive one another.

In the light of this principle, the co-operation of the spiritual and temporal powers for their mutual benefit, he would almost certainly have welcomed the fall of the Third Republic, whose rise he watched wistfully for ten years before his death : much as he, the descendant of some of the noblest families in France, would have regretted the circumstances of that fall, he would, as a far-sighted, optimistic, and Christian thinker, have considered the actual passing of the Rousseau-inspired system, which had so largely betrayed the Catholic traditions, the ‘soul ‘of France, as a providential stepping-stone, a link in the long chain of historical events, from the worst threads of which God is forever weaving greater good.

On his first page Mr. Williams tells us what he has undertaken to study in this book. It is a good statement and may be quoted at length. ‘Beatrice was, in her degree an image of nobility, of virtue, of the Redeemed Life, and in some sense of Almighty God himself. But she also remained Beatrice right to the end . . . . Just as there is no point in Dante’s thought at which the image of Beatrice in his mind was supposed to exclude the actual objective Beatrice, so there is no point at which the objective Beatrice is to exclude the Power which is expressed through her. But as the mental knowledge or image of her is the only way by which she herself can be known, so she ... is (for Dante) the only way by which that other Power can be known—since, in fact, it was known so. The maxim of his study, as regards the final Power, was : ‘This also is Thou, neither is this Thou.’

I say ‘the only way,’ but only to modify it. There were .... many other shapes—of people and places, of philosophies and poems. All these had their own identities. . . . But in his poetry Dante determined to relate them all to the Beatrician figure, and he brought that figure as near as he could to the final image, so far as he could express it, of Almighty God. It is, we all agree, one of the marks of his poetic genius. But it is something else also. It is the greatest expression in European literature of the way of approach of the soul to its ordained end through the affirmation of the validity of all those images, beginning with the image of a girl.’

As Christians we believe that all the relationships binding man to man and society to society are regulated by law which is not something which changes—not something-socially tolerable in one century and socially intolerable in the next—but an immutable law rooted unchangeably in the Will of God. This idea of the law of God is the whole basis of Christian society, national and international, and it ought to be the constant endeavour of Christian peoples to bring their own local order into harmony with the eternal and unchanging order of God. Internatioal law, however imperfect it may seem now, is just an attempt to make nations live according to the Will of God. That is why international law is so important to us and of such very deep concern to all Christians.

God did not design a Lawless world; man and the sins of man made the world lawless, and it is the task of Christians to bring back society, national and international, to the rule of law in conformity with the will of God. This is the principle on which all teaching of international order is based. The teaching of Christianity on the social order is, as you know, a harmonious blending of rights and duties up from the individual citizen, through the associations needed for a full Christian life—the family, the local community, associations for work, the nation itself—right up to that community of nations, that world society which, in the last ioo years, has come into physical being for the first time. I may say in passing that I saw how completely it had come into being last year when, on my way to the United States of America, I had supper in Ireland and the next day I had tea in Baltimore.

‘I am That, thou art This; thou art This, I am That. I am Sky, thou art Earth. I am the Harmony, thou the Words. Let us twain here unite our houses.’ The whole Indian theory of government is epitomised in these ritual words which the Brahman Priest addresses to the King. By a characteristic modern distortion of traditional thought, it has been supposed that the King addresses them to the Priest, and Dr. Coomaraswamy devotes a great part of his new book to restoring the ancient interpretation beyond a doubt. His study is difficult reading, and touches on a whole multitude of matters which a short summary must necessarily pass over; but one may give some suggestion of the general scope of the argument and of the depth and serenity which set it apart from the many political philosophies now daily beating upon our ears.

Through all things there is hierarchy; as in heaven, so in earth, as in the government of ‘these worlds,’ so in that of states and of every man within himself. The spiritual is above the temporal, the contemplative above the active; and the Priest represents spiritual authority and the contemplative life, the King temporal power and the active life. In Eastern terms, the higher principle is described as masculine, the lower as feminine. Hence in the ideal marriage of Sacerdotium and Regnum, the Priest is bridegroom, the King is bride. The formula cited above is a marriage formula.

As might have been expected the successful participation of the U.S.S.R. in the Second World War has proved a godsend to the Communist Party of Great Britain. It was claimed in August that over 30,000 had joined its ranks since the beginning of the year, bringing total membership up to well over 50,000. Literature sales by Central Books amounted to £92,000 in that half-year : despite the paper shortage plans are announced for increased output. It may be of value to attempt an analysis of the current communist appeal as it is put forward in this propaganda. This analysis is given without comment. Its aim is not to confute communism but to provide information for those who lack time or opportunity to examine the literature themselves.

The readiest objection likely to be made against the Party is that of tergiversation. It is met by the explanation that Communist Party policy is to suit tactics to circumstances while always keeping the final goal of socialism in view. The circumstances of the war have changed : it was an imperialist war until June 22nd, 1941, and as such opposed : since that date it has been supported because it has become a People’s War of Liberation. Similarly the Soviet Non-Aggression Pact with Germany in 1939 is justified as having shattered plans for an imperialist anti-Soviet coalition. Our present Russian alliance is established on a basis of ‘temporary common interests ‘and ‘the mass of the people ‘desire co-operation to continue beyond the war and peace settlement. New members are however reminded that ‘socialism cannot be won by votes, but only by the workers setting up their own Government, with armed strength behind it to put down any attempts by the rich to overthrow it.’

It were well that at the outset we should define the sense in which we understand the word Politics. No word has been more cruelly abused, with the result that its true sense has been disastrously obscured to the grave detriment of the people and of their rulers.

Perhaps our minds fly off at a tangent to the Tapers, Tadpoles, Rigbys and the like, so relentlessly and yet so faithfully portrayed in Coningsby by Disraeli; or to some Political Society the sole purpose of which appears to be to provide a licensed cockpit for the envenomed recrimination of rival partizans. We need to disillusion ourselves; this sort of thing is not true Politics; like all false notions it is more dangerous than ignorance.

In the days when Politics came into being the politike episteme was the Science of Citizenship and the politike techne was the Art of Citizenship, that is to say, the theory and the practice of a member of a polis, whether ruled or ruler (cf. Plato, Gorg. 521 D). The duty concerned was primarily social as distinct from individual; not that the individual was dispensed from all responsibility, but that his responsibility as a citizen was determined by his membership of the polls (cf. Plato, Gorg, loc. cit., Apol. 31 D; Arist. Eth. Nic. VI, viii. 2). All this worked, as it were, within a microcosm. Outside the Greek world there were no cities, only the barbaros ge, a variegated waste the contagion of which threatened— especially from the direction of Asia—the purity of Hellenic art and culture and the honest simplicity of Hellenic thought. Nor were the Greek cities, according perhaps to the highest political ideal, encouraged to mutual intercourse—on the contrary the aim of each city was to be aularkes, self-sufficient, to legislate for itself and to live to itself (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. I, vii, 5).

Little is kown about the outer life of Meister Eckhart. Born somewhere in Thuringia about 1260, he probably entered the Dominican Convent at Erfurt as a youth. His great intellectual gifts were soon recognised, for he was sent to Paris to complete his education at the fount of medieval scholarship. On his return to Germany he was elected Provincial of his Order. As such he was entrusted with the supervision of all Dominican convents in Northern Germany, and, after some time, with the reform of the houses in the Bohemian Provinnce as well. About 1310 he was relieved of these administrative duties, and again sent to Paris as teacher of his Order. Three years later he returned to Germany, living first at Strasbourg and afterwards at Cologne, where he became one of the most influential preachers. As, at that time, one of the chief duties of the Dominicans was the spiritual direction of numerous communities of religious women, Meister Eckhart’s sermons were mostly addressed to them. In these communities an exuberant inner life had sprung up, and Eckhart, reared in the intellectual discipline of St. Thomas, brought his great learning to the task of leading the devout women away from visions and ecstatic experiences to the heights of mystic contemplation.

But in these heights human language becomes sadly inadequate. It was Meister Eckhart’s tragedy that he tried to express the inexpressible, and in doing so had to use paradoxical statements that savoured of false doctrine. So the last years of his life were overshadowed by a trial for heresy, which eventually led to the condemnation of twenty-six of his theses, though most of these were admitted to be susceptible of an orthodox interpretation.

‘A child above all other gifts brings hope with it and forwardlooking thoughts,’ but to entertain hope means to recognise fear, and standing as we do at present on the brink of an unknown future, both hope and fear imperatively urge us to do now what we can to make that future safe for the child.

Of all the groups into which every Christian child is born, the family is the most divinely natural and the most fundamentally important. It is through the family that he becomes a member of that wider, more self-sufficing society, the State, whose function it is to provide for the temporal well-being of the community. Through the family also he becomes a member of that supra-natural society by whose instrumentality he is enabled to attain to full development and to his appointed supernatural end. In his encyclical letter on ‘The Christian Education of Youth,’ His Holiness Pius XI sets forth with authority and uncompromising clarity the respective rights and duties (as educators) of these three societies, ‘distinct from one another yet harmoniously combined by God into which man is born. The family holds directly from the Creator the mission, and hence the right, to educate the offspring ... It is the right and duty of the State to protect and foster but by no means to absorb the family and the individual or to substitute itself for them. It also belongs to the State ... to supplement the work of the family whenever this falls short of what is necessary . . . and to provide suitable means (e.g. education) ... in conformity with the rights of the child and the supernatural pre-eminent rights of the Church.’