inadequate and by comparisons, which are always defective in some respect, how the mind that thinks can agree with the heart that believes.

This is why St. Anselm is often called the founder of scholasticism. Some prefer to give the honor to Abelard, and still others ascribe it to John the Scot. They all had their share in it. For they were all actuated by the same motive, the hope to make Faith reasonable, to show the harmony between revelation and reason. When we come to speak of St. Thomas of Aquin, who was heir to what these pioneers accomplished, we shall go into the question more in detail and attempt to define the scholastic movement. Meantime, it is our task to try to place Anselm in the position in which he belongs in the history of medieval thought.

The inspiration of all his activity as a thinker was, as has just been said, his belief that the time had come for the contents of Faith to be made reasonable, and therefore acceptable to the thinking mind. St. Augustine had the same conviction in regard to his time. But, the conditions were different. The Latin Europe of the fifth century was different from the Latin Europe of the eleventh. Then there was over all things the shadow of impending decay and ruin. Like the ship that, shivering at the impact of the storm, is said to shudder at the doom that is awaiting her, the pagan world of St. Augustine's day felt a tremor of anticipated disaster and dissolution. There was no vigorous consciousness of present strength for future success. The age was, in a sense, decrepit, and all that the Christian philosopher could advise was to seek refuge in the mystic contemplation of a higher and better world. Platonism was, consequently, the haven of all aspiring spirits, and the last resort of Platonism was not to reason about spiritual truth but to try to grasp it intuitionally. In the eleventh century a new and vigorous race of Christians were beginning to be conscious of new intellectual needs. That consciousness was not very definite as yet, but it was none the less strong. The world of Christianity was Teuton and Celtic as well as Latin. It was full of hope, and full of lusty ac

tivity. It could be crude, it could be inconsistent, it could be barbaric in its love of sharp contrasts, it could be violent, but it could not bear to be indolent. Even the quiet life of the cloister could not escape the influence of this spirit of strenuosity. On the intellectual side that spirit showed a curious restlessness that was to burst out into lawlessness very soon in the schools of Paris and elsewhere. The restlessness in Anselm's world was kept in check by simple piety and devotion to the Church. But the restlessness was there, and it could not be satisfied by Platonism or any form of mysticism that did not give room for the exercise of reason. Wild animals in captivity will gnaw their cages, because they must find work for the "tooth and claw" with which nature meant that they should find their food. The Norman mind in Anselm's day was in some such predicament. It could not be content with classifying and arranging the heritage of the past: that had been begun in the days of Alcuin and completed in the days of Gerbert. It demanded new and so to speak, real exercise for its powers, and Anselm made his attempt to meet the demand.

He did not see the whole subject of truth as his successors did, in the thirteenth century. His view was partial and his task took him over a mere province of the great kingdom of knowledge. And what he did see he saw through the color of his own spiritual temperament. He had, although a Burgundian by race, the true Italian emotionalism of the intellectual kind, the emotionalism which glows to a real white heat. He had not the tearful sentimentality of St. Bernard, nor the gloomy spiritual temperament of the typical German mystic. The more he felt, the clearer became his vision and the firmer his intellectual grasp of the truth. He is, then, the St. Augustine of the eleventh century, but with all the difference that goes with the difference of time. He will not save souls by turning the thoughts inward on one's own spiritual life, or upwards towards the ineffable truth of God. He does not advocate withdrawal from the world of sense and con

4

centration on higher truths. He will, as far as he sees his task before him, make the truths which he loves clearer to himself and clearer to others, so that his mind and their minds shall be satisfied, as their hearts are satisfied already. The instrument, as it is called, which he uses, is dialectic, which hitherto has been used in the schools merely for the purpose of arranging and classifying traditional knowledge. Its application to the discovery of new truth and the elucidation of the higher spiritual truths is new. uses. He will live to see the with its "dialectic madness." as a philosopher will have been accomplished. As Primate of England he will be involved in a different kind of struggle. The contest between rationalism and mysticism will not interest him so much as that which was waged between the Church and the State.

Anselm is not skilled in those dawn of the twelfth century But, by that time, his work

All his life he dwelt, intellectually, in the heights. This accounts for the serenity of his thought. In the days of his exile from England he was invited by Pope Urban to attend the Council of Bari which was summoned to deal with the difficulties that had arisen between the Greeks and the Latins. "From an elevated seat," we are told, "Anselm began his discourse. He established from Scripture the orthodox doctrine that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and he spoke with a self-possession, force of argument and power of eloquence that seemed like an inspiration. A deep Amen was the one response of the whole assembly, when Urban exclaimed 'Blessed be thy heart and thy understanding, blessed be thy lips and the words that flow from them" (Hook, Eccl. Pol. 11, 229). And thus we like to represent him, seated in a high place, above the turmoil of dialectic debate, calmly and dispassionately discoursing of spiritual truth to an age that craved for such food, free from self-consciousness, free from the disturbance of the passions which controversy breeds, apparently emotionless. Yet, under all the calm exterior there glows a fire of spiritual sentiment,

there burns an ardent longing, as glowing as the fire in the heart of a crusader. The monk-philosopher loves the truth and he loves the Faith. He has harmonized those two in his own heart; his life is devoted to the task of showing that harmony to others and establishing it in the hearts of others. In that sense, because he had that feeling, and because he had that desire, he is one of the founders of Scholasticism.

WILLIAM TURNER.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Sermons and Addresses. By His Eminence William Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1911. Three Volumes, pp. 242, 402, 432.

The first of these volumes contains undated Sermons and Addresses, the second contains discourses pronounced during the years 1887-1906 while the author was Assistant Pastor at St. Joseph's Church, Boston, and Bishop of Portland, Maine, and the third is made up of Sermons, Addresses and Pastorals dating from the period 1906-1911, ending with the Pastoral in which the Archbishop announces his elevation to the Cardinalate.

The volumes are, in the first place, a record in which all may read the career of the distinguished author as priest, bishop and archbishop. Through them there runs the revelation of a personality, strong, devoted, loyal, consistent. There is evidence of a steadfastness, an intelligent grasp of fundamentals in church policy, and a broad sympathy with present day conditions, a sympathy which, however does not lead to inconsistency, opportunism or the diminishing by one jot or tittle of the Catholic claims or the demands of Catholic Christianity. The Archbishop who announces to his clergy his elevation by the Holy See to "the sublime Senate of the Pope" has nothing to suppress, nothing to explain away, nothing to apologize for in the sermon on "The Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of the World" which dates from the earliest years of his priesthood. The absoluteness of his fidelity to Catholic doctrine and to the policy of the Holy See is the key to this consistency and may, indeed, be said to be the most distinguishing trait of the author in these volumes.

In the second place, there is here a message clear, forceful, ringing with the note of sincerity, to which the clergy and laity who read cannot but give willing ear. It is the message of a prelate who stands high in the Councils of the Church, and who is at the same time an American devoted to our institutions and conscious of our national aims and aspirations. It is the message,