being swept from their Christian moorings. During the great Classic renaissance some became so enamoured of pagan models that their Christianity grievously suffered. So is it with the revival of past glories in Ireland. The Anglo-Irish dramatic School of non-Catholics, like Yeats and Synge, offer us some of the pagan rubbish as well as some of the pagan gold. But they compose only a small part of the great Irish renaissance. When the first murmurings were heard of the earthquake revival, which is now stirring Ireland to its foundations, few suspected the magnitude of all the forces that were let loose. People thought that it was to be a mere revival of the ancient language, and, behold! industries began to flourish again. Gaelic novels, literary publications, historical investigation, archaeological research, mythological inquiries give token of some good directions of the movement. And no one can yet foretell its full possibilities. The Anglo-Irish players may have the merit of turning the attention of many lands to this multifarious spiritual activity of Ireland. Not Ireland alone may benefit by this general revival. The world, which in periods of renaissance obtained reasoning from Greece and law from Rome, may once more procure imagination and fire from Celtic sources, as it did in the times of McPherson and of Arthurian legend. This Promethean fire, which is borrowed by Yeats, though in the pale reflection of the English tongue, from the heaven of Irish mythology, is characteristic of Irish writings and oratory, but can find its adequate expression only in a native Gaelic drama and literature.

GARRETT PIERSE.

ST. PAUL SEMINARY.

ST. ANSELM.

The student of history is sometimes inclined to think that epochs, eras and centuries, though they are only arbitrary divisions of time, almost have a personality and an individual power of thought. He knows that he is using figurative language when he says that such and such a century was longing for a leader, that such and such an epoch was brilliant or dull, or conservative, or liberal. He knows that it is the men who live in a certain epoch that think and feel. Nevertheless, he is inclined to attribute collective thought and collective consciousness to a certain group of men who live within the boundary, so to speak, of a certain period of time. The student of the history of philosophy is in a special manner inclined to this view of history. He deals with ideas and tendencies, and they seem to belong less to the individuals within a definite era than to the era itself. Thus, we may say that the century of Gerbert, the tenth, was chiefly concerned with the heritage of the past, and took little thought beyond its own immediate need of that heritage. That heritage had survived, as if by a miracle. Over and over again its transmission had been endangered; the waves of barbarian devastation seemed certain to submerge it. But it was not submerged. Owing to the efforts of men like Bede, Alcuin, Isidore and Rhabanus, it had been preserved. The fragments that were accessible were put together in slipshod, almost haphazard, manner, without literary skill and according to an entirely conventional method of elucidation. The tenth century came into this inheritance with a certain insecurity of tenure, and even when the tenure was made less insecure, the heritage was not catalogued, inventoried and arranged, so to speak, for use and enjoyment. That was the task which the tenth century undertook. By means of logical division and logical definition it put its own house in order; it studied, classified and ar

ranged what had just come into its possession, and, by the end of the century, it was like the householder who, after days of bewildering chaos, in which all is furniture-van outside and all confusion within, at last sees each piece of furniture in its proper place, heaves a sigh of relief, and feels that he can sit down to his desk and work.

The eleventh century, therefore was in position to begin constructive work. It is not easy to find a general term to describe that constructive effort in all its phases. The word “freedom,” strange as it may seem to some, has been suggested. The eleventh century was dominated largely by Norman ideals. It was the Norman spirit of individuality that inspired many of the eleventh century movements; Hildebrand's struggle for freedom of the Church from imperial control, his effort for the ethical uplift of clergy and laity, the Crusader's struggle with the Saracen for the freedom of the Holy Places, and, finally, the effort of the spirit in the movement known as scholastic philosophy to attain freedom of thought. This, to some, may seem a paradox, if not a downright historical misrepresentation. And yet, it is literally true that scholastic philosophy was actuated by the spirit of intellectual freedom. The "Fides quaerens intellectum," "Faith seeking understanding" which is the motto of scholasticism, is the watchword of a kind of knight-errantry of the mind. Faith, as the early Christian writers understood it, and as the scholastics understood it, was necessary to salvation. It was obligatory on every Christian to accept certain truths on the authority of God and the Church. He who accepted those truths was a true believer; he who rejected them was a heretic. But, now the time had come to seek a national foundation for faith. He who believed without trying to understand was as a child compared with him who believed and understood what he believed, as far as it is possible to understand what is above us. The thought was not by any means new. Clement and Origen and others of the Greek Fathers, especially, had used this very comparison. But, now the eleventh century takes the thought up, in its own way. "Fides quaerens intellectum,"

Faith is now in the field like a gallant knight, seeking contest with reason, and hoping by using reason against unbelief to win fresh victories for God. Other centuries had striven to conserve the past and put it in order, the eleventh is "out for " conquest in the realm of truth.

There were many difficulties in the way. First and most serious of all difficulties was the choice of weapons. If battles are to be fought, for God and truth, what weapons shall be used? Some will advocate pious meditation, spiritual intuition, humble acceptance of God's teaching: they are the mystics. Others will be in favor of reasoning, of logic, or dialectic, as it was then called, of argumentation, and disputation; they are the rationalists. In the twelfth century the question will be decided, as we shall see when we come to speak of Abelard. In the eleventh century, some use one weapon, some another; the purpose, even, of the campaign against error and unbelief will not be definitely understood, but the "fight is on," as we say, and it is our purpose in this paper to describe how one very conspicuous fighter, Anselm the monk and Archbishop of Canterbury bore himself in the contest.

Anselm was born at Aosta, in the confines of Lombardy, in the year 1033. Those who attach importance to the influence of environment will be interested in noting that both in his own home and in the scenes amid which he spent his childhood and his youth, the boy Anselm had his mind and his heart trained in the direction in which he afterwards distinguished himself. From his mother he imbibed a spirit of simple faith and ardent piety, and from the sublime scenery by which he was surrounded he was led to thoughts of the exalted greatness of God. A charming anecdote of his childhood years illustrates the influence of both. His mother had often spoken to him of the God "Who dwells on high," and the child had taken the phrase, as children do, all too literally. She had described heaven as the ideal Court, and, in phrases suited to the boy's years, had told him of the angels who minister to the throne, as servitors do in the court of an earthly monarch. Day by day, the child looked up at the mountains wrapped in

eternal snow and ice, until one night the summons came, and in dream he set out to climb the highest of them all in order to reach the heavenly court. There at last, after much difficulty encountered, he came into the presence of the Great King and from the hands of His seneschal received a "bread of exceeding whiteness," which refreshed him and enabled him to return to Aosta. The dream was soon recounted to his mother who saw forthwith that God had set His mark on the child. In the anecdote we see a forecast of Anselm's carer as a thinker; for him, through life, God was to be the greatest and highest reality, and his effort to prove this by argument has earned him a place forever in the history of human thought.

We shall not narrate here the incidents of his public career nor those which concern his choice of a vocation. It is enough to know that from childhood he chose the Church as his portion, and after many extraordinary experiences, went finally to Bec in Normandy, and became a disciple of the great canonist, Langfranc, whom he succeeded first as teacher at Bec, then as Abbot of that monastery, and finally as Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England. His dealings with William Rufus and with William's successor, Henry, his strenuous defense of the rights of the Church against the aggression of the secular power, belong to general history. They mark a turning-point in the political history of England, and in the history of the Church in general. His unswerving loyalty to his convictions, his courage in the face of tyrannical oppression, his patience in exile, his willing sacrifice of his own comfort and what he valued most, of his peace of mind, made it possible later for those who came after him to solve the same vexed problem both in England and in Germany. We are not specially interested here in these events except in so far as they throw light on the character of the man. We are more concerned with his achievements in the world of thought.

St. Anselm is the typical monk-philosopher. Over all his writings and over all his reasonings there falls the shadow of the cloister, with its peace, its freedom from confusion, its calm, placid detachment from worldly cares and mundane