BOOK REVIEWS

Thomistic Revival and the Modernist Era. By Thomas J. A. Hartley. Toronto: Institute of Christian Thought. University of St. Michael's College, 1971. Pp. 110.

Now when the hegemony of Thomism within the Church seems over, it is perhaps inevitable that interest in the historical details of its revival in the 19th century will mount. This little book brings together in summary fashion the present state of our historical knowledge. It is swift, interesting, and well-researched, and any reader who approaches it with the assumption that the revival of Thomism sprang full-blown from the brow of Leo XIII will be pleasantly disabused of the notion.

I was reminded of Newman's surprise on coming to Rome after his conversion to find that St. Thomas was held in low esteem and little studied, except of course among the Dominicans. Newman could not have known that elsewhere in Italy there were places where St. Thomas and other Scholastics were carefully studied. These centers grew up independently of one another and ultimately were to have their impact, in varying degrees, on Leo's decision to write to the Church at large on the role he wished the thought of Aquinas to play. One of the features of this development, as Hartley sketches it, is that the Dominicans did not play a major part in it. Rather it was the Jesuits, Vincentians, and secular priests who influenced now this school, now that, until finally, when Cardinal Pecci of Perugia became Leo XIII, those scattered efforts coalesced in Aeterni Patris. But of course, the history of the revival of Scholasticism and of Thomism cannot confine itself to Italy, and Hartley devotes chapters to Germany and Spain and makes reference to France as well.

The reader of Hartley's little book will be struck by the way in which the strengths and weaknesses of the Thomistic revival were present almost from the beginning. The principal weakness, perhaps, was that it was not always the first-class mind which elected to be a spokesman for Thomism and that such spokesmen often sought a uniformity of thought which betrayed insensitivity to the methods of theology and philosophy. There was also the tendency to reject wholesale unexamined philosophies. The movement from Aeterni Patris to the XXIV Theses exhibits all these weaknesses. It would have been far more difficult for Hartley to exhibit, in a short monograph, the strengths of Thomism. Those strengths have to be seen in detail, in terms of substantive doctrines, and that requires patient and prolonged reflection. Programmatic statements about Thomism

as a whole may be valuable as protreptic but can scarcely substitute for theological or philosophical argument. What one would like to call essential as opposed to programmatic Thomism continues today and perhaps more effectively when it seems no longer to be propped up by rules and regulations. It has been suggested that Thomism is now in a state of diaspora, and it is, but rather than see this as an unnatural condition, one might observe that this is the normal way of the intellectual life. Philosophers come one at a time; the great ones seldom have students who attain their level, let alone advance beyond it. If there is a cumulative advance in philosophizing it surely does not take place in the layered and communal fashion we can discern in the natural sciences. The philosopher who relies on a label to get our attention is not unlike those pathetic individuals whose atavistic interest in their family tree seems meant to make us regard a twig as a branch or even a trunk. Twenty years ago almost every Catholic philosopher in this country regarded himself and was regarded by others as a Thomist. How swiftly the scenery, and the labels, changed. Surely, if the appellation had had serious reference, it could not have been so easily set aside. Nonetheless, I think there are as many serious Thomists now as there were then, that there was always a diaspora but that now it is no longer disguised. What commends a philosophy, finally, is not that it is commended, even by the Church, but that it enables us to see and understand. Theology is another matter, no doubt, but I am not the one to speak of it. It has occurred to me, however, that theologians nowadays seem to have confused their task with that of the Pope and bishops.

Hartley's monograph is the first of a series planned by the Institute of Christian Thought at St. Michael's College, Toronto. It is a good first step and one looks forward to subsequent works. A final caution: the title of the monograph must be understood formalissime. Though he denominates an era from Modernism, he is not concerned with Modernism as such.

Ralph McInerny

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana

New Answers to Old Questions. By William G. Most. London: St. Paul Publications, 1971. Pp. 576.

There is no more vexing problem in theology than the one relating to human freedom on the one hand and divine mastery over creation, and in particular of human salvation, on the other. Other issues, like those of the Trinity and Incarnation, certainly involve more profound mysteries. But

the question of human freedom and divine control is more intriguing because it seems more like a problem that is capable of full solution. After all, the notion of divine dominion is a very simple one, rife even among savages; and human beings might be expected to have some firsthand, experience-based concepts of the nature and scope of their own freedom, B. F. Skinner notwithstanding. But the fact is that no fully satisfying solution has as yet been advanced to liquidate this long-standing problem, and the history of theology is filled with the record of the acrimonious disputes which for centuries have been carried on among theologians partial to one or other of the more or less plausible explanations thus far proposed.

Those theologians who have kept abreast of the literature relating to the field of grace during the past decade will recognize this book, if they pass beyond its title, as a slightly expanded English version of the author's original Latin work entitled Novum tentamen ad solutionem de gratia et praedestinatione published in 1963 by the Editiones Paulinae in Rome. Only the fourth chapter has been somewhat modified and augmented with new material in this English version.

The first part of the book deals with the issue of predestination. The notions of God's universal salvific will, of his intent in creation and redemption, of the special promises of Christ, of Christian hope, and even of the Sacred Heart are presented from Scripture and tradition and brought to bear on the question of predestination as it is commonly understood both in theology and in the Church at large. The second part researches in particular the teaching of some of the Fathers from both East and West as well as the doctrine of St. Thomas, of Bañez, Molina, and St. Francis de Sales on reprobation and predestination. The author sees later solutions which claimed to have been based upon the writings of the Angelic Doctor as misrepresentations of his position. In this section, basing himself upon texts from St. Thomas, he offers his own theory, which he considers to be more consonant not only with the sources of revelation but also with correctly understood magisterial pronouncements. The third part of the work considers the idea of efficacious grace in the various theological schools. A major portion is given over to the writings of St. Thomas, which, in the author's opinion, do not support the distinction made by later theologians between merely sufficient and efficacious grace. The Angelic Doctor would recognize the possibility of an infrustratable grace only in very extraordinary cases where there is evidence of some unusual divine providence. The fourth part of the work is concerned with the question of divine foreknowledge and its relationship to the issue of predestination. The book is brought to an end with a summary, an appendix on order in the universe (largely the ideas of St. Thomas), and several indices.

Certainly the author is to be commended on the prodigious effort that

has gone into the compiling of this book. Hardly in modern times does one encounter an amassing of data on this ancient theological problem such as is found in this book. It is a veritable encyclopedia of information, and, unfortunately, as difficult to read. Its polemic nature (the text being constantly glossed with objections and series of responses) as well as its failure, in the opinion of this reviewer, to achieve organic unity in the intricate complexity of the issues of which it treats make assimilation even by the scholar who has enough Sitzleder to tackle it virtually impossible.

The heart of the work is, of course, the new solution it purports to offer in relation to the old problem. Of particular interest to readers of The Thomist is the contention of the author that it is really the solution of the Angelic Doctor to the extent that he wanted to address himself theologically to revelational data that were not as contradictory in his mind as they seemed to be in the opinion of his later commentators.

To present the author's solution in a few words is not, to be sure, to do all the justice to it that it deserves, but it is all that a short review permits. Apart from the case of an extraordinary exercise of divine providence where an intrinsically efficacious grace might be offered, all grace imparted in accordance with God's universal salvific will is in the first instance versatile, in the sense that it can be accepted or resisted by the human free will. If it is resisted, man becomes the author of his own demerit, and ultimately, through a lifetime, of his own condemnation. If it is not resisted--a fact which God foresees and notes--then at this point predestination takes place. Non-resistance is, in the opinion of the author, not an act of the will but merely a condition or attitude of the human psyche. In itself it is non-action but a necessary psychological prelude to a subsequently inevitable act of acceptance. As non-action, non-resistance cannot be a source of merit or demerit; so predestination in this system occurs in accordance with the hallowed formula: before foreseen merits. The subsequent act of acceptance of grace which is the source of merit flows from the initial movement of grace (non-resisted) as from its principal cause and the human will as its secondary cause; hence in rewarding man for his good works performed with the help of grace God is merely, in the words of St. Augustine, " crowning his own activity."

Two questions will undoubtedly immediately emerge for the reader. First, in the system of St. Thomas is the primary act of the human will adversative, to be described in terms of resistance or non-resistance? Is no-saying more properly man's thing than yes-saying? Secondly, in the scholastic system is there an equivalence between action and non-action at least to the extent that in some circumstances non-action can be interpreted as morally tantamount to decision and consequently have merit or demerit? In the new version of the confiteor we now accuse ourselves of failing to act. In the final analysis is the solution offered a real or merely verbal one?

Among the goodly number of assets of this book might well be listed

its copious references, handy indices, the synopsis of its main argument as well as apposite examples and analogies. Basically scriptural, clearly pertinent, and highly significant in today's world is the analogy of the human father and his wishes for his son, particularly a recalcitrant one. Among its liabilities are repeated typographical errors, a poor binding, and especially, as has been said, its tedious argumentativeness. In summary, this reviewer wonders if the author is really bringing new answers to old questions, or merely restating old answers in the face of new questions.

Charles R. Meyer

St. Mary of the Lake Seminary

Mundelein, Illinois

Caesar and God. The Priesthood and Politics. By Roger Vekemans, S. J. Translated from Spanish by Aloysius Owen, S. J., and Charles Underhill Quinn. Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis Books, 1972. Pp. 118. $3.95, paper.

The author is a Belgian Jesuit sociologist who has dedicated himself to work in South America. The book is a result of some jottings made in preparation for taking in a round-table discussion of the subtitle topic: " The Priesthood and Politics." Actually this topic occupies just the last chapter, less than a quarter of the book. The first two chapters are on " The Church in the World " and " The Church and Socio-political Matters." These two preliminary chapters are rather hard reading; partly, perhaps, because they are like jottings, with numerous quotations from various writers with the author's comments on each; but even more so because of the language. The difficulty would seem to stem from the original and not just the translation, since some of the quotations, also from Spanish, are much easier to read. Words like " theonomy " and " kenosis," as well as frequent use of Latin, Greek and French terms might well cause difficulty to a non-theologian. Expressions like " tenuous specification of eschatological relativization " (p. 51) and " reifying extrinsicism and notional prefabrication " (p. 59) might well stop even a theologian. Occasional misspellings make one wonder whether a new word is meant. " Corporavitism " (p. 46) turns out to be " corporativism," but whether " importunate caricature " (p. 56) is really meant to be that, or should be " unfortunate caricature " is still not clear to this reviewer.

In spite of the language, some ideas do come through clearly. It is a function of the Church and of religion to restore all things in Christ, including socio-political life. This does not necessarily mean that all must be changed. The socio-political sphere is autonomous. Religion's function

with regard to it is to point out whatever is contrary to God. Sociopolitical problems usually do not require some one clear particular solution but are open to several possibilities, so that most political activity is concerned with options rather than with one obligatory solution.

People who are religious must also be interested and involved in political processes. Nevertheless, since all Christians should be one in love and community, and since the Eucharist and preaching of the word are the principal means of achieving and promoting this unity, and since the priest is primarily the minister of the Eucharist and of the word, he should not become involved in political action that promotes one of several options. By coming out strongly for one among several possible solutions, he may find himself a cause of disunity instead of unity. The author does not advocate for priests " estrangement from politics " but rather an " avoidance of a militant political commitment." (p. 111) The priest should rather teach religious and moral doctrine but leave it to the laity to work out the political actions to achieve justice. The author is speaking about political activity by a priest as a citizen, not about a priest's actually becoming a candidate for political office. However, what he says seems to apply to such a case a fortiori. Much of what he says about the priest's function as a unifier of many and the consequent need to be somewhat at a " distance from the world " (p. 106) might also be applied to a support of priestly celibacy, although he does not mention this application. The final chapter is well worth reading.

Joseph J. Farraher, S. J.

Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

Berkeley, California.

The World's Living Religions. By Robert Ernest Hume. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Revised Edition, 1959. Pp. 335. $3.95.

This is a new printing of a revised edition of Robert Hume's pioneer work in comparative religions written in 1924. The revision was undertaken by Charles S. Braden thirteen years ago who updated the work in historical accuracy as a result of more recent scholarship and developments within contemporary religion. Although the editor states that he does not concur with Hume in many of his value judgments, he has made no change in the evaluations posited by Hume preferring to let his understanding of the religions stand as he knew them. Thus this could hardly be considered a complete revision as indicated on the title page. A twenty-page bibliography, moreover, shows little updating and has limited usefulness.

Hume's work is a mere outline of the origins, scriptures, historical

nature, and values of the eleven religions in the world today. The most positive character of the study is the ample use of the sacred books of the great religions which are used to elucidate the historical and doctrinal development of the religions. The negative aspects of this work, however, far outweigh this single contribution. Value judgments, both positive and negative, extend for pages following each treatment of a particular religion. Although these judgments are basically sketchy and simplistic, Hume goes to great length to use Christianity as the norm and exemplar from which he draws comparisons and contrasts. The questions which he asks of other religions are taken from the Christian world view and problematic. Judging, evaluating, and comparing from within the faith of the scholar is a position avoided by comparative religionists in the last twenty years. This type of study could be used for reference but better works are available; it may be a contribution to the history of methodology in comparative religion in its early stages. Hume's book will not give one an appreciation for the spiritual heritage of mankind but it will leave the reader with a highly fragmented and relativistic view of the whole religious enterprise.

William Cenkner, O.P.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

Morality in Evolution. The Moral Philosophy of Henri Bergson. By Idella J. Gallagher. The Hague: Matinus Nijhoff, 1971. Pp. 112 Guilders 18.

It would be rather difficult to summarize a book which is already an intelligent, precise, and sympathetic summary of Bergson's doctrine; therefore it seems better to indicate the intention which explains its contents. The author, Idella J. Gallagher, has very well realized that Bergson's moral philosophy must be first of all connected, in order to be deeply understood, with the bergsonian philosophy as a whole. And to achieve such a connexion, she has taken the most sensible perspective, starting with the epistemological and metaphysical dualism which constantly underlies this philosophy, and then emphasizing its two masterpieces, i. e., the intuition of duration and the theory of life, both narrowly related to each other. For, as it is pointed out in the last words of chapter I of the Two Sources, " Let us then give to the word biology the very wide meaning it should have, and will perhaps have one day, and let us say in conclusion that all morality, be it pressure or aspiration, is in essence biological," it is quite certain that the moral philosophy herein proposed borrows its principles from the vision of life which had been formerly described through Creative Evolution and develops this vision.

The study of morality and religion was required, so to speak, by the exceptional situation that mankind has obtained, according to Creative Evolution, among the living beings and even in the all universe: mankind represents the species in which the " Vital impetus " (Elan vital) has succeeded, after so many failures or half accomplishments, to reach the open air and promote its spiritual vocation. This vocation was to liberate consciousness impeded in matter, so that it becomes a spirit sharing in the creative action from which the universe comes; therefore moral and religious life of mankind appear as the development and the summit of evolution. In short, Bergson has carried on until the Two Sources, although in a quite unforeseeable way (his first surprise before concrete duration having brought him to many others), the task which he had undertaken in his youth: to reform Spencer's evolutionism. He was then led, by a spontaneous inclination as much as by principle, to investigate moral and religious problems such as obligation, the morality of the closed society and of the open soul, the religion of the city and the religion of the mystics, in the light of a biological approach. Likewise, it is by replacing morality, reason, and society in a biological light that Bergson gets around the two opposing doctrines that he wanted to outpace altogether: Kantian rationalism and contemporary sociology inspired by Comte or Durkheim. Dr. Gallagher has very well outlined all these aspects through an analysis which equally respects the successive steps, articulations, notions, methods, and major intuitions of the bergsonian thought. Few authors indeed have had this respect towards the great philosopher, often misunderstood because overlooked in his precision. We can only regret that Dr. Gallagher did not emphasize enough the originality of the Two Sources, with regard to the preceding works in general and Creative Evolution in particular. Bergson himself asserted that none of his works follows from the preceding ones by the way of logical deduction or extrapolation. Each one marks a specific attempt to climb to a new stage and afterwards to proceed inductively and empirically from the new data. This is particularly true with regard to the Two Sources, which could not have been drawn from Creative Evolution by any logical deduction. If Dr. Gallagher had been more sensitive to this originality, perhaps she would have stressed a bit more the fact that the Two Sources does not merely rediscover traditional spiritualism in a refreshing though approximative manner; for, owing to the doctrine and method which make Bergsonism a " intauratio magna " in philosophy, we find herein a deep renewal of two major and eternal problems: the problem of man and the problem of God.

Jean Theau

University of Ottawa

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

page 527

Einstein and Aquinas: A Rapprochement. By John F. Kiley. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969. Pp. 164. Guilders 20.70.

Although the title modestly claims for this comparative study that it merely proposes a rapprochement between two thinkers who lived centuries apart, who were concerned with widely different areas of knowledge, and who operated out of totally diverse thought contexts, the author apparently has more serious intentions. He wishes to show that Einstein's theory of relativity is the fruit of a unique epistemological procedure, that this procedure is grounded in a realist metaphysics, and that the latter is none other than the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. Einstein's epistemology forms the starting point of the study, and from its outset Kiley was convinced that Thomism, " especially if its claims to being a true metaphysics were valid . . .," could provide " a solid and sure foundation " for Einstein's " critical and epistemic views." (pp. 107-108) One is not surprised, therefore, to read the final result to which Kiley comes: " It is the conclusion of this study that there is no main Einsteinian epistemological doctrine that does not receive, in a completely natural and undistorted manner, such hoped-for support by way of essential explanation within the relevant metaphysical and psychological positions of St. Thomas Aquinas." (p. 108) This result is ultimately seen by the author as advancing the Leonine program of Aeterni patris, with its insistence on " vetera novis augere et perficere," i. e., perfecting the old with the new for a genuine advancement of knowledge. (p. 109)

The study, as should be obvious from even this brief summary, labors under many defects and does not merit an extended review. Suffice it to mention that the author's knowledge of Einstein is derived largely from the latter's published works and secondary sources and takes no account of recent studies based on his vast correspondence and unpublished writings. Like many another famous scientist Einstein can be, and has been, quoted on both sides of practically every controversial issue. With regard to the problem of knowledge, Kiley's finding " a unique epistemological procedure " in the discovery of the theory of special relativity rests largely on his own interpretation of the limited evidence available to him. For example, Kiley bases his case for " the inductive beginnings " of relativity theory on Einstein's alleged dependence on the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment, (pp. 16, 18, 28, 33) Later on in the study he ties in these beginnings with Aquinas's theory of the agent intellect and its illumination of the imagination, proposing that " it would not be distorting Einstein's own statements about his cognitive life to justly picture the latter mentally ' examining ' an imaginary representation of the Michelson experiment in an attempt to understand its true meaning." (p. 93) He goes on: " And it is on this very point of the active intellect of Einstein, which ' saw something,' as it were, in his imaginary reproduction of the

Michelson experiment which his contemporaries did not, that St. Thomas' doctrine of the agent intellect impinges with the greatest force." (p. 93) Now, apparently unknown to Kiley, in a long article published in the same year as his study, Gerald Holton examines all of the evidence for the influence of the Michelson-Morley experiment on the discovery of special relativity and comes to the conclusion that such an influence is largely illusory and may even be " the stuff of which fairy tales are made " (see G. Holton, " Einstein, Michelson, and the ' Crucial ' Experiment," Isis, 60 [1969], pp. 133-197). And Einstein's own statements are as of little help here as they are in resolving the debate over whether he subscribed to a " positivist " or to a " metaphysical " philosophy of science (see Robert Neidorf, " Is Einstein a Positivist? " Philosophy of Science, 30 [1963], pp. 173-188, an article crucial to Kiley's thesis but which is not even listed in his bibliography). For, as Holton observes, " Einstein himself made different statements about the influence of the Michelson experiments, ranging from ' there is no doubt that Michelson's experiment was of considerable influence on my work . . ." to ' the Michelson-Morley experiment had a negligible effect on the discovery of relativity.' " (art. cit., p. 134)

Kiley's thesis may not be completely demolished by Holton's article, but whether it is or not, it is difficult to see how this book advances one's understanding of either Einstein or Aquinas or succeeds in establishing any meaningful relationship between the two.

William A. Wallace, O. P.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

Lotze's System of Philosophy. By George Santayana. Edited, introduced and enriched with a Lotze Bibliography by Paul Grimley Kuntz. Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press, 1971. Pp. 274. $11.95.

Santayana's doctoral dissertation, written about 1889 under the direction of Josiah Royce at Harvard, is one of the long-shelved intellectual preserves of American Philosophy. In editing and introducing Santayana's work on Lotze and providing a valuable Lotze-Bibliography Professor Paul G. Kuntz offers English-speaking scholars a missing link between the nineteenth- and the twentieth-century trends in philosophy.

Lotze's System of Philosophy by George Santayana was not written out of inclination. The young Santayana would rather have done a detailed study on Arthur Schopenhauer. However, Josiah Royce, Santayana's doctoral mentor, and Professor William James were for a Lotze-dissertation:

Josiah Royce because he had studied under Rudolph Hermann Lotze at Goettigen, and William James because of a real aversion toward Schopenhauer's philosophy. Consequently George Santayana had to abide by his mentor's suggestion and was certainly neither the first nor the last of doctoral candidates to conform to the advisor's intellectual predilection. But the Lotze-topic was timely too. Lotze at that time was considered " the most pillaged source " (p. 49) and his influence in the United States was " stronger in academic philosophy, perhaps, than that of any other author," (p. 48) even so much so that P. G. Kuntz does not hesitate to call the decades from 1880 to 1920 " the Lotzean period." (p. 49)

The Santayana dissertation takes up about 121 of the 274 pages of the book. Santayana deals first with " Lotze's Problem " (pp. 109-129) : " to join the separate fields of our certain knowledge into a theory of the world capable of completeness " (p. 128) which Santayana interprets " as natural science constructed on moral postulates," or even as " a moral idealism." Via excursus into the last period of the history of philosophy-- that of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Fechner, Herbart--Santayana finds Lotze rather " on the side of common sense and humane feelings," on the side of the empiricists, and even of the positivists. " Half-heartedly though," Santayana remarks, Lotze " is an apologist for the idealists rather than their opponent." (p. 142) The attentive reader of Santayana's Lotze-study encounters there the Lotzean nucleus of process philosophy which aroused Santayana's fervent defense of the traditional concepts and definitions of the pre-Lotzean meaning of substance, soul, atom, etc. Santayana criticizes Lotze's stress on and explanation of process, series of events, etc. Santayana opposes the altering of the definition " of a thing so as to make it the historical unity of its own successive modification." (p. 150) Apparently Santayana is not inclined to accept modifications of " substance " which Leibniz and Kant brought into the history of philosophy. Leibniz stresses the dynamics of substance, as philosophers of nature and philosophers of the sciences do. Kant resolves substance into the a priori category of Inherence-and-Subsistence, i. e., a necessary synthetic activity of mind upon the data of experience. According to P. G. Kuntz " Lotze (on substance) is clearly a Berkeleyan realist: to be a substance means nothing more than to appear as a substance." (p. 39) Consequently Santayana comes to the conclusion that Lotze's is a " paradoxial doctrine " holding that " substances suffer change, that they are processes " the property a series of events has of producing the idea of substance. (p. 152) This may amaze epigones both of Lotze as well as of Santayana who have become acquainted, if not familiar, with the dynamic world explanations of later decades rather than with the traditionally treasured static essences, substances, species, etc. Earlier than Teilhard (who is better known in the English-speaking areas) his contemporary Nicolai Hartmann writes in 1912:

In nature everything is process, event, becoming. The primary form of this process is movement. This constitutes the narrower problem of mechanics which formulates the laws of motion. But in it the first principal condition of any determinability has to be a constant, a determiner, which . . . is the resting pole of all change. The older physics saw this constant presented in the mass, for in spite of all its transformations mass appeared to remain unchanged. The newer physics deviated from this view, for precisely mass is neither primary nor constant. Basically its very notion appears secondary compared to and/or the result of energy. Consequently mass dissolves into a system of powers (energy) and from that it follows that only energy can be the constant . . . wherewith the idea of constancy becomes reversed: nothing remains constant in motion except motion itself. Energy then is the very first or primary datum which neither originates nor vanishes, but which is in constant transformation. Energy then is the constant, is substance generating various types of energy: heat, light, electricity, chemical and mechanical power. The increase of the one is at once the decrease of the other. Contemporary physics knows this principle as " preservation of energy . . . in this sense then every thing is a system of energy . . . and . . . every energetic system is a definite kind of natural thing (substance), Kleinere Schriften III, " Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie," 1912, pp. 87-89 (transl. CES).

Readers of Teilhard know about the evolutionary movement of the species towards the noosphere. Most recently we witness the debate about Jacques Monod's bestseller Le hasard et le nécessité, in which the author explores " the Molecular Ontogenesis " in themes such as " the spontaneous association of subunits in oligomeric proteins . . . the spontaneous structure of complex particles . . . microscopic morphogenesis and macroscopic morphogenesis . . ." etc., which, in spite of the law of invariance, appear to be " chance " results. Perhaps now, after about 80 years filled with accelerated progress of all sciences of nature etc., Santayana would modify his view. But at the time of his dissertation, when he analyzed Lotze's world view, he stated:

A substance by definition and common accord designates an unchanging thing, something self-sufficing and unaffected by what may go on about it. To call it mutable and make it the locus of relations is to describe an entirely different thing which we arbitrarily choose to call by the same name. But if our concept of reality . . . breaks up into an infinity of real points, each without extension, and into the complex of their external relations, then we have entered upon a line of thought that may lead us very far indeed. (p. 161)

In arguing about Lotze's atomism Santayana coins Lotze then an idealist whose theory of units and subunits (atoms) or " unextended points " clearly can be only " ideas." Santayana blames Lotze for not having said to himself:

Move, be changed, cultivate different thoughts and different interests, and the entire sense of reality will change for you: what was real to you will become

figurative, and what was figurative will become real; rocks and trees will become symbols, theodicies and mystical unities will become realities. But, to speak so . . . would not have been to construct a system of philosophy. Lotze . . . wishes to make idealists of us by an artificial process . . . (p. 181)

The unity of Lotze's world as process in time reminds Santayana of the unity found in materialistic monism, for there ..." motion, change, is essential to the cosmos no less than to the individual things; the unity of a thing . . . lies in the law of its variations. And this is precisely the description and theoretic unity that materialistic monism discovers." (p. 215) But Santayana admits that there is a difference between Lotze's and the materialists' monism, namely, Lotze supposes " a continuous consciousness . . . a personal God . . . an immortal philosopher to whom the law of things is fully and uninterruptedly present. . . ." (pp. 213-216) Nevertheless, Lotze's divine consciousness " is diffuse, changeful, admits ignorance, illusion and limitations." But Lotze does not fail to endow it with " attributes that most engage veneration and worship " (for morality's sake?)

Santayana concludes that in Lotze's system of philosophy we find well incorporated " the individual thing," " the soul," " the unity of the world," and even " a personal God," but it is an " atomistic, monistic, idealistic " system of change, of relational conditions, of process.

The 121 pages of Santayana's dissertation were minutely corrected not so much by Josiah Royce but rather by Professor Kuntz (see pp. 229-232: " Errata et Corrigenda.") May a reviewer still add some corrections? On pages 134, 148, 149 and many others before and after, always write " Leibniz," never " Leibni-t-z." On page 7,--separation of German words, names, etc.--separate according to syllables: " Fraeulein Schlo-te " not " Schl-ote." A remark to Santayana's spelling of " errathen." After the revision of the German spelling (during Kaiser Wilhelm's time) all the " th-spellings " turned into mere " t-spellings " except in the word " Thron " (" Am Thron darf nicht geruettelt werden," Kaiser Wilhelm).

These minor imperfections in no way diminish the excellence of Professor Kuntz's work. His great merit is to revive through this publication not only the interest in Santayana but even more so the interest in Lotze. Kuntz offers in his introduction to Santayana's Lotze's System of Philosophy a Prolegomenon to Process Philosophy. He leads us into the interlacing trends and thoughts from Santayana to the present, from Lotze to Whitehead, from the traditional, static worldview to process philosophy. In detailed accuracy and scholarly analysis as well as masterly synopsis Paul Kuntz offers a philosophical essay which connects the 19th and 20th centuries. The influences evident in American Philosophy today are presented, criticized, evaluated, and at times spiced with subtle humor and vivacity. This introduction is more than an introduction. It is a

domestic dialogue between Santayana and Kuntz, and a reliable measure and instrument for thinkers to find the way through the labyrinth of ideas, systems and trends of the last eight decades. Its greatest value, perhaps, lies in its turn to and justification of process philosophy, on the basis of the contemporary scientific and philosophical teachings.

C. E. Schuetzinger

Mercy College of Detroit

Detroit, Michigan

An Examen of Witches. By Henry Boguet. Pp. 361, $11.50; Witch Hunting and Witch Trials. Ed. by C. L'Estrange Ewen. Pp. 358, $11.50; The Trial of the Lancaster Witches 1612. Ed. by G. B. Harrison. Pp. 235, $6.50. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1971.

With the current outbreaks of experimentation in the occult sparking a renewed interest in medieval and early modern witchcraft, Barnes and Noble have capitalized by releasing facsimile reprints of three books all of which were first published in Great Britain in 1929. These books will be of considerable interest and of some value to students of witchcraft.

Of these the most scholarly is C. L'Estrange Ewen's painstaking compilation of legal indictments and depositions taken from the records of 1373 assizes held for the Home Circuit in England between 1559 and 1736 under the title Witch Hunting and Witch Trials. In a 115 page introduction there is a readable exposition of the editor's insights and viewpoints; the indictments and other legal documents will best be used as a reference work.

Easier flowing is the revealing record of the trial of the Lancaster witches held at Lancaster Castle, England, in 1612. The records, published in 1613 by Thomas Potts Esquire under the title The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, give a valid overview of the attitudes prevalent in the courts and among the people in seventeenth-century England. G. B. Harrison in his introduction provides a survey of the best works available on witchcraft in England.

The sixteenth-century An Examen of Witches by Henry Boguet borrows heavily in both style and content from the famous Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, whose influence spread from their inquisitions in Northern Germany throughout Germany, France, Italy, and the British Isles. Published nearly a century after the Malleus Maleficarum, Boguet's work shares the same unmistakable reliance on the scholastic method popularized in the thirteenth-century Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas.

When one approaches a new book or books on witchcraft, it is always

with the hope of finding clear and peremptory evidence for or against the historicity of the alleged phenomena and their causality. The former question would seem to be more easily solved. However, of the three authors who have given us the best general studies of witchcraft, one, Dr. H. C. Lea, seems convinced that the only reality of the exploits of witches lies in the hysterical minds of deluded human beings. The other two, Rev. Montague Summers and Charles Williams, recognize a certain objectivity to the alluded phenomena. While Rev. Summers gives unflinching credence to the supernaturality of at least a modicum of these, Mr. Williams seems to support the conviction that the most enlightened position involves a suspension of judgment as to the causality of verified phenomena pending future developments of ever-progressing sciences.

It would provide a neat little package if we could say that each of the three books under review represents one of the classical positions on witchcraft investigation--and this is nearly true. An Examen of Witches, which is edited--with an introduction--by the Rev. Montague Summers, certainly assumes the reality and the supernaturality (by diabolical influence) of a good number of cases, at least.

There is no question either that G. B. Harrison in his introduction to The Trial of the Lancaster Witches 1612 takes the contrary point of view, decrying the atrocities foisted on man by his own superstitions. Harrison's closing words to us are, " It is as well not to be superior about the superstitions and injustices of our ancestors; our own will make nauseous reading to posterity."

C. L'Estrange Ewen would like to have us think that he is totally dispassionate and objective in presenting his findings. However, certain unguarded statements tip the scale in the direction of incredulity. To the point is the following short paragraph: " Delusions fostered by the Church, became the beliefs of the people. If the Devil existed, it was a small step to the supposition that personal acquaintance was possible and that agreements and liaisons could be made. Protestants were as superstitious as the Catholics, and the Reformation in no way lessened the persecution arising from these ridiculous beliefs."

In our work of investigating cases for possible exorcism today we see the same three fundamental attitudes. Theologians choose their positions more on the basis of philosophy than of analysis of data. It seems that those who adopt the currently popular existentialist philosophy, in one of its multiple forms, write off the devil as a myth, a personification of evil. Accordingly, they deny any supernatural element in the phenomena of witchcraft and tend to be skeptical about their very occurrence. Those, on the other hand, who hold to a more traditional scholastic philosophy, viewing truth as rather objective than relative, see the reported events as possible and the intervention of the Devil as credible. A similar division exists among scientists in their outlook on psychics and the science of parapsychology.

In a thorough study of the phenomena of spiritism it was our conclusion that some 98% are attributable to fraud and deception; another 1% or more can be explained by science, including the fringe science of parapsychology. The portion of 1% which remains seems to be in the realm of the praeternatural and is best explained, in the light of Christian revelation, by the agency of the Devil or demons.

As regards pastoral theology, it matters not much whether people see the Devil as a myth or as a personality--no more than it mattered practically when the microscope showed the bacterial world of activity which goes on in a drop of water. Man continues to drink the water and is normally oblivious to the life within it. Constant consciousness of this activity might create a race of neurotics.

The trilogy on witchcraft published by Barnes and Noble is a definite asset in providing us with a deeper insight into the minds of the legislators, judges, and people in sixteenth-century England. For the more profound and significant questions pertaining to the historicity and causality of the alleged phenomena of witchcraft we receive no help.

John J. Nicola

National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Washington, D. C.

Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography and History. By Warren A. Shibles. Whitewater, Wisconsin: The Language Press, 1971. Pp. 410. $12.50.

Warren Shibles, who has previously published work on Wittgenstein and on models of classical Greek philosophy, now provides what may fairly be described as an extensive and useful research tool for the study of metaphor. Not only is the bibliography complete but it is also extensively annotated in such a way as to provide a comprehensive picture of the scholarship dealing with this complex topic in literary criticism, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics. Part I of the index lists all the major works on metaphor and related terms, such as archetype and analogy. Parts II and III list the names and ideas mentioned in each descriptive annotation. One may, for example, find listed all of Aristotle's principal statements about metaphor, including his statement in the Poetics: " The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others. It is the mark of genius."

Professor Shibles, in a previous work entitled An Analysis of Metaphor, observed that metaphor is not only of the utmost importance in the analysis of poetry but is also really basic in the consideration of philosophical systems and theologies. Indeed, as Aquinas pointed out, the theologian

finds metaphor to be essential because it is a means whereby spiritual realities may be represented to the senses, and it also serves to remind us that we do not have literal description of divine truths.

In his introductory essay, Professor Shibles argues that metaphor is a form of knowledge, as well as an art form that may be taught as one of the arts, rather than as an aspect of them. In his view, metaphor is likewise properly viewed as a philosophical method that enables one to see the basic metaphor in each system of knowledge and to create a variety of types of metaphorical systems.

He would argue that no definition can be taken literally; all definitions are seen as metaphorical ways of organizing facts. Rejecting traditional concepts of " mind " and " imagination," he does not see the construction of metaphors or metaphorical systems as evidence of the operation of " mind " or " imagination." Consequently, all attempts to treat metaphor in this way he regards as based upon the illusion of " the traditional mind-body, inner-outer dualism." His work is professedly meant in part as a movement towards a new rhetoric, and he sees philosophy, poetry, rhetoric, and science as, to a large extent, attempts to " learn " our language.

Metaphor, he seems not to deny, produces a world of " as-if." It is not a method for the building of metaphysics. But that clearly is not Professor Shibles' concern either, and he has provided students of several disciplines, at the very least, with a useful reference work.

Paul van K. Thomson

Providence College

Providence, Rhode Island

Foundations of Theology. Ed. by Philip McShane, S. J. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972. Pp. 257. $10.00.

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume series containing all of the papers which were delivered at the International Lonergan Congress held in Florida in 1970. Although one might initially be tempted to view a symposium of this sort as merely providing an opportunity for the devoted disciples of the master to extol his accomplishments, judging from the contents of this volume it seems clear that a serious effort was made to solicit the opinions of those who would examine Lonergan's thought in a truly critical manner with a view to determining its real significance for contemporary theology. Even a cursory glance at the list of contributors reveals a rather broad spectrum of philosophical and theological perspectives, and while it is true that all show themselves to be basically sympathetic to Lonergan's attempt to develop a truly viable foundational theology, many nevertheless remain sharply critical of certain aspects of his thought.

Despite the fact that this set of papers covers an extremely broad range of topics, all of the participants restrict themselves to a common theme. Each attempts to focus attention upon one or more facets of Lonergan's efforts to establish a foundational theology through a detailed examination of the method employed in the various fields of theological concentration. Among some of the more interesting and provocative theses in this collection are those advanced by Charles Curran, Charles Davis, Langdon Gilkey, George Lindbeck, Quentin Quesnell, and David Tracy. Curran offers a number of critical observations on Lonergan's reflections upon the nature of religious conversion, a notion which in recent years has assumed a central importance in his thought. Davis, for his part, readily admits that Lonergan's writings exerted considerable influence upon his own intellectual development, but this does not prevent him from criticizing strongly certain aspects of his system. In his opinion Lonergan's philosophical theology contains a number of unquestioned assumptions concerning the validity of traditional metaphysics and the relationship between divine revelation and an infallible magisterium. Gilkey argues that it is possible to detect an underlying tension in Lonergan's thought between the general epistemological perspective which he adopts and the particular theological conclusions reached through an application of the principles which undergird this perspective. Lonergan, he charges, is unwilling to accept completely the relativistic implications of his own empiricism. Lindbeck raises the question of whether the theory of doctrinal development as advanced by Lonergan is sufficiently neutral from an ecumenical point of view to allow for its acceptance on the part of one who stands firmly within the Protestant tradition of sola scriptura. Quesnell's paper contains a number of interesting observations on Lonergan's view of scripture as a source of theology. Finally, Tracy outlines some of the more recent developments in Lonergan's thought and claims that it is possible to point to a radical ambiguity in the way in which Lonergan understands foundational theology. Passing notice should also be made of the fact that this collection includes a paper by Karl Rahner on the idea of functional specialties in theology which is insightful but disappointingly short (only three pages).

The general consensus seems to be that, however critical one might be of particular aspects of Lonergan's thought, one is forced to admit that he has made a number of important contributions to the contemporary search for a truly viable foundational theology. Lonergan's own response to the various points raised in the course of the discussion is of necessity rather brief and sketchy, but it does help to shed some further light upon the direction in which his thought is currently moving. In the end, however, it would appear that the present debate over the importance of his views for contemporary theology will be significantly advanced only with the appearance of his long-promised Method in Theology.

Charles N. Bent, S. J.

Boston College

Chestnut Hill, Mass.

The Openness of Being. The Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh 1970-71. By Eric L. Mascall. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971. Pp. 278. £3.50.

The Anglican theologian Eric Mascall in bringing his gentle scholarship to the 1970-71 series of the Gifford Lectures furthers an already prestigious series--Alfred Whitehead's Process and Reality, for example, originated as the Gifford Lectures of 1929. Stating that " unnecessary verbosity is at best inconsiderate and at worse immoral," (p. 91) the author manages to avoid both rudeness and sin, while ranging with wit and insight, and completely without obfuscation and mystification, over rather a complete spectrum of what has constituted natural theology discussion over the past few decades. Clearly, a good deal of his own reading comes to the fore in the process, and indeed the bibliographical character of the Lectures is very pronounced. The procedure is largely one of allowing the various arguments and points of view to sound and resonate for themselves in a markedly dispassionate climate that makes for enlightened discourse. It does not preclude the author testing the arguments at their weakest points and appending his own (usually alternative) viewpoints. Most of these, it is true, have been expressed in the author's earlier publications, though they are here newly nuanced at several strategic points.

What dominates throughout is Fr. Mascall's epistemological stance of robust Realism. This renders him understandably impatient with the meta-theological concerns of much of Anglo-Saxon theology whose fixation on language has indeed produced a paralysis of sorts. It is no surprise then to find him looking with sympathy on the " transformational generative grammar " of Noam Chomsky which--against the claims of logical empiricists and ordinary language analysts--offers some hope for anchoring language in metaphysics rather than vice versa. Nevertheless, the question as to how thought and language do inter-relate remains an open and vexing one for theology, and the feeling persists that Fr. Mascall is disposed to separate them a bit too radically: ". . . the truths themselves are something other than our assertions of them, and are not in themselves linguistic at all." (p. 25) If one means truth in things this affords no problem, but formally speaking truth is in the judgmental act of mind, and here the plot thickens. A footnote from J. A. Baker to the extent that " truth does not come to men clothed in words, it comes to them as words " is much to the point in serving to preclude the oft-entertained notion that formal truth somehow or other lies behind and beneath language as having a non-linguistic reality of its own. To think is not merely to acquire language (as Leslie Dewart boldly maintains in his Foundations of Belief, e. g., p. 126), at the same time language is not a mere appendage to thought for the sole sake of communication. Heidegger's aesthetic, almost mystical, notion of Being (Sein) " coming to pass " in Dasein as primal

languages needs a lot more hard-headed verification than his disciples have been able to offer. But the mind is indigenously dictive; what it knows it necessarily brings to expression (which is not to say the knowing is the interior speaking or conceiving), and the articulation is, in some primal sense at least, language. There are, of course, further problems: theological language is readily diversified as mythological, symbolic, or analogical, and the truth-bearing capacity is not identical in each case; the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments (in Hume's sense) implies not only distinct kinds of truth but distinct meaning in language too. At any rate, I for one, can only feel that a satisfactory theological explorative act into the problem of language is yet to come.

This same Realism means that the review of the " ontological argument " in the light of current attempts to rehabilitate it, notably that of Charles Hartshorne, is cautious at the very least. Fr. Mascall seems intrigued with the approach of M. J. A. O'Connor who suggests that Anselm understood God as really existing within the mind as well as without it. It is difficult to see how this is not a very strained interpretation and one that detaches the argument from any Augustinian background. Understandably, the author is much more at home with the " cosmological argument," and here he attempts what is presumably an introduction to British readers of Transcendental Thomism--in the persons of Maréchal, Rahner, Coreth, and Lonergan. While not an in-depth treatment, Fr. Mascall is adroit in cutting through to the nerve of thought that tends to be somewhat involuted. For example, he sees clearly, that, for Rahner, ". . . God is grasped not in his character as the ground of us who are the subjects of perception," (p. 72) and that Lonergan " bases metaphysics upon epistemology and not vice versa." (p. 84) His critique is then less than enthusiastic, the author finding himself left with " residual puzzlements and reservations." (p. 83) What is missing is any attempt to deal critically with the assumptions of this school of thought, not least of all the sense in which it can and cannot validly lay claim to the name " Thomism." I have reservations on Schubert Ogden's observation that what we have here is only " adjectivally transcendental and substantively Thomism " (" The Challenge to Protestant Thought," Continuum, VI, 2, p. 239). This may well lie outside the intended concern of the present lectures; still the congeniality of the " transcendental turn " with Thomism remains a strangely unexamined thesis in contemporary discussion.

Fr. Mascall is patently more at home with the Realism represented by Gilson and Maritain: ". . . unless one frankly accepts the position that it is of the very nature of the mind to grasp and assimilate extra-mental being one will never be able to escape the toils of one's own subjectivity." (p. 67) This may well be, paradoxically, at once the strongest and the weakest point in the thesis of the entire book. But is it any longer possible to dismiss the critical question so readily? Does not one have to justify

the above assumption? And how to do this except critically? The overwhelming contribution of contemporary thought is that man can contribute to what he knows without reducing the knowledge-act to pure subjectivity; in Merleau-Ponty's words, granting a pré-monde that is irreducibly " given," man is a co-constitutor of his world of meaning. Seemingly, it has to be asked whether the earlier Moderate Realism does full justice to the historicity of man's knowledge. The point is of some significance because in the end it is the author's own position, and it underlies as an epistemological premise his own argument for God which emerges gradually in the book. Along the way, it enables him to make a telling point against pure Phenomenological methodology which, like Hindu Yoga, suspends normal awareness of the world, so that " the one thing it ignores in the given is precisely its givenness." (p. 105) It is the existence and contingency of the given, finite world that exhibits it (to Fr. Mascall) as open to God, something arrived at by an inference which while mediated is non-syllogistic and non-discursive in kind. Austin Farrer provides the occasion for this thesis, but Fr. Mascall enthusiastically makes it his own: " theistic argumentation is not rational demonstration." (p. 108) This would not appear to be too far removed from Langdon Gilkey's expression that God is not inferred from creatures but rather surmised in creatures, save that the empirical context is less marked. Fr. Mascall, I believe, would be more apt to allow the insight (which Gilkey does not) that the rational demonstrations (or better " viae ") are only logically rigorous formulations of a dynamism that the mind first enters upon in a prelogical fashion.

The theory developed here is augmented somewhat in an Appendix (no. IV) which views the openness of finite being to Infinite Being as no mere static or mental relating of natures on logical grounds but as a necessary enduring dynamism of contact that allows for novelty within the creaturely realm; this precludes any charge of " essentialism " or " conceptualism." Two other appendices bolster the general position by appealing to the Empirical arguments of Boyce Gibson (Appendix, no. I), and the Sociological ones of Peter Berger (Appendix, no. II). Berger's suggestions do appear to constitute a genuine contribution precisely because they remain sociological and make no claim to usurp a philosophical or theological role, but Gibson's concluding from " pointers, not complete in themselves " to God not as Cause but as Presence is problematic for the very opposite reason. Setting aside the category of causality deprives him of any way to explain exactly what presence is; the term tends to dissipate, much as it does in a similar use of it by Leslie Dewart. More importantly, his argument concludes to " something which is in greater measure that he (man) is "; God is thus the finite perfections " but relieved of the limitations " (cited on p. 182). This appears to slight the " infinite qualitative difference " and suggests that if one is to speak of God there is no way of avoiding recourse to that type of cognitive projection that is analogy--

but analogy as strict attribution and not as proportionality. Only the former makes it impossible to conceive of God as the creaturely perfection simply denuded of its conditions of finiteness; only attribution leaves God as Unknown who can be " designated " from the contents of a finite concept as a " point de départ."

One other Appendix (no. III), though somewhat extraneous to the central theme of the book, deserves mention. It deals with an ecumenical effort on the part of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant theologians at Chevetogne in 1953 to deal with the problem of the openness of nature to grace. Noteworthy is the observation, worth pursuing perhaps, concerning the surprising parallelism between the positions of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Gregory Palamas. The correspondence is covert, hidden beneath an obvious but superficial divergence in conceptual system and language. Lending credence to this view is the information that Fr. Mascall gleans from the two books of J. Meyerdorff that Gregory's adversary, Barlaam, was a professed Nominalist in full flight from Thomistic Realism. The degree to which the tradition of the Eastern Fathers survives in Aquinas's work on grace is too often obscured by a one-sided emphasis on the created dimension to the grace-state.

What these Gifford Lectures offer us in the end is a rather refreshing perspective on man's natural capacities of God, refreshing not least of all because they refuse to neglect or obscure the implications in the pre-Kantian conviction of the objectivity and veracity of man's involvement in the world. Fr. Mascall's own staunch position comes through with clarity and force: that unless natural theology is possible, revealed theology is impossible too. This does not eliminate the conviction that present society is, in John MacQuarrie's words, " experiencing a dark night of the soul " wherein God holds himself at a remove and absent from the world. But it is at least a flickering candle in that dark.

William J. Hill, O. P.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction. By William H. Capitan. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1972. Pp. 201.

Intended for " students and general readers," Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, by Professor William H. Capitan, is a serious and sympathetic discussion of religion. The method Capitan employs is one of descriptive analysis; for each of the several topics considered, he presents in historical sequence and in summary form arguments and counter-arguments

of authorities who represent classical and contemporary viewpoints. His choice of this method derives from a desire to " give the reader an understanding of the richness of the field." Hence, what may be lacking at times in depth of analysis is compensated for by heuristic possibilities and an inducement to pursue further a greater range of philosophical perspectives and problems connected with religion.

Every book is the product of selection. Since there are more philosophical problems concerning religion than one can possibly cover adequately, Capitan brings his subject under manageable form by concentrating on the dominant religious tradition of our Western culture, theism, in particular Judaeo-Christian theism. When one considers the limitation necessarily imposed upon an introduction to the field, Capitan makes a generous selection of central issues to be considered, such as the teleological argument for the existence of God, the problem of evil, revelation, miracle, immortality, faith and belief, religious experience, and religious language.

The author's approach is to plunge " in media res, without a great deal of preliminary definition," but there is considerable doubt as to whether this is " the best way to initiate " the student and general reader. It is to be seriously doubted that this is the best way to approach a field which is notorious for confusion on a practical level (witness compilations of bibliographies and course descriptions for philosophy of religion) and for uncertainty as to its nature and scope on the theoretical level. True, " a battery of definitions in vacuo " is to be eschewed. But, particularly in an introduction to the subject, an ordered approach by way of descriptive definition emerging from analysis is to be desired--if for no better reason than to indicate as clearly as possible what philosophy of religion is not; it is not apologetics, not philosophical theology, not religious philosophy. Later in the book Capitan very logically and, for its limited handling, very adequately defines mysticism by outlining first what it is not and then, relying on the excellent authority of W. T. Stace, what it is. For an understanding of the philosophy of religion, Capitan would have the reader do the essential mapping himself, " based on the clarification of his own thought," and to this end he seeks to lead the reader " by historical illustration of a variety of views and debates on key topics." However, what this method brings about is a clearer understanding not of what the philosophy of religion is, but rather of differing philosophical perspectives of religion due to individual philosophers' conceptions of the nature, aim, and method of philosophy. This is illustrated, for example, in his exposition of the existentialist notion of faith as represented by Kierkegaard, Buber, and Tillich.

Although readers might understandably prefer reference to the views of fewer authorities and more sustained critical appraisal by Capitan, he contends that the procedure he has adopted has the advantage of " making philosophical biases less important " and of making more obvious the

gradual changes in the relationship between philosophy and religion, the impact of science and secularity upon religion, and the evolution of the modern predicament of religion. The greatest problems men face in religion today are inherited as typically post-Cartesian; hence Capitan's emphasis upon the response of philosophers of the modern period is valuable. He takes particular cognizance of the challenge a scientific worldview poses to what religions typically offer--that is, meaning to man's existence--and places the focus of modern philosophy of religion on the question: " What is the difference between the religious and the secular views of the world and their implied ways of life? "

Capitan sees the central problems in the philosophy of religion revolving about the notion of faith and its correlative, religious experience. He devotes a chapter to each of these topics and discusses the epistemic, psychological, and linguistic aspects of religious claims deriving from each. In his fifth and last chapter, within the context of a discussion of man's quest for meaning in life, Capitan submits for consideration some alternatives to the Judaeo-Christian theistic view: a this-worldly transcendence (in which life has no meaning beyond itself), humanism, and Zen Buddhism. In response to non-religious man, the religious believer, Capitan rightly observes, is forced to go beyond the limits of rationalistic and experimental demonstration. " Some matters, even though they are quite properly philosophical, have to be dealt with by being put not to the test of reason or the test of experiment, but to the test of living." (201)

But, of course, this seemingly simple concluding statement raises the problem so extremely crucial to an understanding of what philosophy would have to be in order to take seriously the modality of experience and behavior manifested by religious man. In other words, the consideration of a trans-conceptual or non-conceptual dimension of meaning, such as religion claims, challenges philosophy's conception of philosophical rationality and of its theory of meaning.

M. Sharon Burns, R. S. M.

Loyola College

Baltimore, Maryland