Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

fection, however, if anything more than words, is greater than the forces of nature as such. Science and art actually aim at such an increase, but, depending upon nature and the given, they anticipate and seek after the true and the ideal, not knowing if they can attain unto it.

The originality of religion dwells in the fact that it proceeds not from power to duty, but from duty to power; that it advances resolutely, taking for granted that the problem is solved, and that it starts from God. Ab actu ad posse, such is its motto. 'Be of good cheer,' said Jesus to Pascal, 'thou wouldst not seek me hadst thou not found me.' God is being and principle, the overflowing spring of perfection and might. He who shares in the life of God can really transcend nature; he can create. Religion is creation, true, beautiful and beneficent, in God and by God."

Dante from the Roman Catholic Standpoint.

Most interesting to Dante students is the special volume of essays put forth by the Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica and the Rivista Scuola Cattolica. The object of the various essays seems to be to prove Dante's complete orthodoxy. The main difficulty with such an effort is that if true it is unnecessary and if necessary it proves too much.

Notes and Discussions

Pilgrim Song

On my library shelf it stands in its black leather binding as prim and slim as Grandmother herself, the hymnal that she loved. You can read the varying phases of her earthly pilgrimage by the penciled frames that are drawn about her favorite hymns.

Orphaned at an early age and sent into a pioneer state upon the borders of civilization, there must have seemed to her no abiding place. It is not strange that the pent-up loneliness and sense of wandering found expression in the lovely words "I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger, I can tarry, I can tarry but a night." In that wilderness home there was little of luxury and much of heart-breaking toil. There were days of weariness and nights of weeping. What wonder that her heart found comfort in the strains, "Joy cometh in the morning, there is rest in heaven"? Here are the songs that comforted her early widowhood and here the source of strength as she saw her youngest enter the Valley of Shadows. There where the yellowing pages fall apart as if obedient still to her will is the hymn that comprised her last mortal words, "Jesus, lover of my soul."

The turning pages open doors of memory through which pour in gusts of pilgrim song until I dream of faces living and dead, of scenes near and far. Each one seems to fit into its own time, place and experience, as if sacredly devoted to bear but a single message.

"Where Jesus is, 'tis heaven," is only a simple thing, little better than doggerel. I have known but one group of people to whom it appealed so that into its cup of faulty words they poured the flood of a glorifying experience. To read it none could suspect the hidden power: that lay in the sincerity of the singers.

"If on a quiet sea toward heaven we calmly sail," brings vividly to mind the faces of dear fisher-folk of Cape Cod, as out of the shadows and the storm, of which they have experienced many, I see creep across their faces the calm of life's deeper resignation. I seem to join them again in the final prayer:

"Help me in every state to make Thy will my own,
And when the joys of sense depart

To live by faith alone."

There is another which is like the comfort song of birds at even or the voice of the hermit thrush blessing the mountain solitude with the melody of unbroken peace, or like that sweetest song of all, a mother's lullaby amidst the gathering shadows of the night. It is only "Jesus calls us o'er the tumult," but it bears ever the content and image of a life that has meant more to me than all the others, moving quietly and faithfully forward amidst a world of distractions.

These snatches of song have come to mark successive phases in my discovery of God. They are mile-stones in the march of life. "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage."

Miss Hammond as a Literary Critic.

We have received the following letter, a part of which we quote: "Allow me to congratulate you on listing among your contributors that rarest of all writers, a real critic. One whose literary ability, whose evident culture give her the right and power to produce what we have so long been in need of interpretation of convincing soundness, of content and manner, that is a joy to the discriminating reader. Something almost unheard of in these days of windy-wordiness, when it is discouragingly apparent that the race is to the strident and the slangful." Faithfully yours,

Along the Bookshelf

BODY AND MIND, a History and a Defense of Animism, by WILLIAM MCDOUGALL, F.R.S. The Macmillan Company, New York. 1920. Pp. xix + 384.

A noteworthy book, and one among many, are really inadequate terms in which to describe McDougall's Body and Mind, a fifth edition of which has now been published. The author describes it as a defense of animism and assigns thus the reason for that defense: "Modern science and philosophy have turned their backs upon Animism of every kind with constantly increasing decision; and the efforts of modern philosophy have been largely directed towards the excogitation of a view of man and of the world which shall hold fast to the primacy and efficiency of mind or spirit, while rejecting the animistic conception of human personality. My prolonged puzzling over the psycho-physical problem has inclined me to believe that these attempts cannot be successfully carried through, and that we must accept without reserve Professor Tylor's dictum that Animism 'embodies the very essence of spiritualistic, as opposed to materialistic, philosophy,' and that the deepest of all schisms is that which divides Animism from Materialism."

"The main body of this volume is therefore occupied with the presentation and examination of the reasoning which have led the great majority of philosophers and men of science to reject Animism, and of the modern attempts to render an intelligible account of the nature of man which, in spite of the rejection of Animism, shall escape Materialism. This survey leads to the conclusion that these reasonings are inconclusive and these attempts unsuccessful, and that we are therefore compelled to choose between Animism and Materialism; and, since the logical necessity of preferring the animistic horn of this dilemma cannot be in doubt, my survey constitutes a defense and justification of Animism."

McDougall shows that the modern rejection of Animism is principally due to the materialistic scientific claim that the mechanistic principles of explanation hold exclusive sway throughout the universe. This claim he characterizes as "the mechanistic dogma."

The book contains a valuable outline of the history of animistic theory in the field of philosophy, the adverse developments of modern science and passes to a most thorough consideration of competing systems, showing their deficiency and inadequateness.

He shows to those who assume to puzzle over the mystery of how the psychical can act upon the physical, that this is at least no more mysterious than the materialistic assumption that the psychical is the product of the physical.

He treats the "psychology without a soul" with eminent consideration and fairness and yet exposes its insufficiency. It is a brilliant disclosure of the predominating fallacies of our modern thinking and a clear call to an order of thought which shall be more satisfying and in the truest sense more scientific.

We admire the courage of Professor McDougall not only in meeting the issue directly by assuming the much despised term animism but more also that he has dared to raise the standard of opposition in the face of scientific anathema and to carry his questions into the camp of the enemy. This he does with the utmost calmness and good taste and with such evident scholarship as to demand attention. Every personalist will rejoice in this eminent contribution to philosophy and will feel it necessary to own and read the book.

BERGSON AND FUTURE PHILOSOPHY, an Essay on the scope of Intelligence, by GEORGE ROSTREVOR. Macmillan Company, New York. Pp. 152.

Though many books are written on Bergson's philosophy few have the freshness, sympathy and interest of this small volume. The author strikes immediately at the high point in Bergson's work and that element most likely to be remembered namely, the doctrine of duration.

While strongly sympathetic he does not believe in Bergson's emphasis of contrast if not of contradiction between the roles of intuition and intelligence.

Rostrevor thus states the aim of his discussion:

"How far is it possible to go, without doing violence to the intellect at all? Is it possible by hard but quiet reflective thought to obtain an insight into the duration of our selves, and so into the nature of time? Duration being the

« AnteriorContinuar »