The subject I am discussing here deals with a very peculiar kind of knowledge — a kind of knowledge whose means is not concepts and reasoning, but affective inclination or affinity, and which is often disregarded by philosophers interested only in the rational kind of knowing. Henri Bergson liked to quote a sentence he found in the letters of a French philosopher; the sentence was as follows: “I have suffered from this friend enough to know him.” When I know a friend to the core — not through having submitted him to a complete series of psychological tests, but because I have suffered from him and have got in myself the habit of his nature — then we may say in philosophical language that I know this man by connaturality.

Georges Bernanos is established as a great novelist. But today the author of The Stdr of Satan and The Diary of a Country Priest stands as a prophet. The honest, impassioned and radical judgments of A Diary of Our Times and of the recent Plea for Liberty are those of a man who can no longer contain his devotion to people, his profound concern for their souls, within the limits of any art pattern. He must break out, no matter how wonderful his power within the realm of art, and evangelize his convictions more directly. It is common now to see important poets and novelists assuming responsibility for the social salvation of mankind: the mention only of T. S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Thomas Mann and Sigrid Undset (separated widely in art and outlook, of course, but all united in their criticism of modern civilization and in their hope that justice may finally exist among the men of the earth) will be sufficient verification. This is not a time, it appears, in which the pure speculations and naked truths of philosophers and theologians easily subdue and win minds. For this is a day of the denial of absolutes and the measured thought of formal philosophers and formal religious thinkers, even the most true and sympathetic, has small influence with the multitudes of confused. So poets and artists, out of their more concrete and more attractive, unanalytical handling of experience, rise to speak.

A discussion of the “art of politics” requires no justification at a time when the potentials of publicity and propaganda have made it abundantly clear that successful government is not identical with application of the results of a Gallup poll. It is for this very reason that we have also become distrustful of the ars politica which has been more and more identified with the modern arts of persuasion. Although the engineers of political publicity assure us that with the right technique the ruler can get anything “across,” we turn rather to those who assert that good government is not an art but an active prudence, directed by such steady instruments of control as popular representation. However, even the most perfect technology of government is not a substitute for the art of governing. Guizot, no friend of absolutism, has pointed out one of the most astonishing manifestations of this “art”: the ability of the ancien régime to maintain between people and ruler an intimate understanding without parliaments in the modern sense.

The antiquary, professed collector of the manuscripts and records of the past, is popularly ranked with the harmless butterfly-collector. Lytton Strachey characterized him as an “amiable muddler,” and Alexander Pope pilloried his dreary obscurantism.

But who is he in closet close y-pent

Of sober face, with learned dust besprent?

Right well mine eyes arede the myster wight

On parchment scraps y-fed and Wormius hight.

To future ages may thy dulness last

As thou preservst the dulness of the past.

There dim in clouds, the poring scholiasts mark,

Wits who, like owls, see only in the dark,

A lumber-house of books in every head,

For ever reading, never to be read.

These opinions are peculiarly shortsighted, for antiquarianism, the collection and study of old records, has been neither obscure nor harmless in its consequences. Hans Kohn and Carlton Hayes have made clear the considerable part played by antiquaries in stimulating a consciousness of nationalism, the most powerful public emotion of modern times.

The efforts of the Italian people to create the basis of a new political life are proceeding amidst the most serious difficulties, but not without well-founded hopes for the future. There is hunger in Italy today—and insecurity, unemployment, lack of transportation and of some of the bare necessities of civilized human life. Worst of all, there is inflation on a fearful scale, with its destruction of economic and moral values, with its sudden impoverishment of whole classes. No wonder that some foreign observers have reported apathy among the people with regard to political problems. It is difficult to imagine any other attitude under conditions which make life a nightmare. Nevertheless, the outlines of things to come are taking shape.

In a previous article we studied the religious and political position of the French Catholics—both of the clergy and of the laity—from the armistice to the end of the summer of 1942. Here we propose to continue this study following the same plan, considering first the questions cm which the clergy and the laity have taken a stand and indicating the nuances which differentiate their positions, and secondly the present problems in which the faithful take part on their own responsibility. French Catholic life, like all life, is in motion. Yet discovering its inspirations and currents can help us to understand the way it will manifest itself in the period of reconstruction.