The Blind Sisters of St. Paul-Authorized translation by L. M. Legatt -By MAURICE DE LA SIZERANNE, Benziger Bros. pp. 303.

This volume belongs to the International Catholic Library edited by the Rev. Dr. J. Wilhelm. In it, Monsieur de la Sizeranne gives us an account of the origin, mcde of life, etc., of a minor religious community. Like a great many other minor communities, this one has France for its birth-place. It is known as the "Blind Sisters of St. Paul". The title of the bock is misleading: One might be led to think it had reference to the natural sisters of the Apostle of the Gentiles.

The community was founded about the year 1850 by Anne Bergunion. She had tested her vocation in a few religious communities, but found herself wanting. She then started a workshop for blind girls, from whom she afterwards formed her community. She herself became known as Sister Saint Paul. The community was named from that instance in the Apostle's life when he was struck with blindness and miraculously cured. After nearly sixty years of existence, the community can lay claim only to about sixty members. It still exists undisturbed in irreligious France; not being a teaching order but a "Congregation Hospitalière", it has received authorization. Not all the sisters are devoid of sight; blindness is not a condition of reception. Their constitution requires that the superioress be never chosen from among the blind.

From its name and appearance it would appear that this book is out of place among the erudite works of the International Catholic Library. But no; on perusal the book is scientific and interesting. It is divided into two parts; the first of interest to psychologists; the second, to philanthropists.

The first part is, in the main a psychological treatise in which are brought together a great number of curious incidents all bearing on, and illustrating the law governing the abnormal development of the other senses in those who have been deprived of their eyesight. Thus, for instance, a case is on record of a blind person who could take a dozen gloves belonging to different persons present, and then by merely smelling the hands of the latter, return each glove to its proper owner

Part II of the book is devoted to a history of the community. Their occupations are principally music, knitting, brush making and printing of "White books", or books for the blind. It is interesting

to note the processes employed to teach these different occupations to the blind pupils.

JOHN F. CHERRY.

"The Papers of a Pariah"-By ROBERT HUGH BENSON, Longmans Green & Co., pp. 211.

This is a posthumous work of an English convert, edited by Rev. Father Benson, who received the author into the church a week before his death.

It consists of a number of papers committed to the disposal of the editor. The essays are fourteen in number, and consist in observations on the Catholic Church by one outside her pale.

The editor tells us "they were written by one who was not only not a Catholic but by one who did not at all continuously contemplate the becoming one."

It is good to know how outsiders view the Catholic Church, her ceremonies and practices, but it would be an advantage to be able also to identify the outsider. There is very little in the book to commend it. Nobody would think of placing it in a Library where all hands could reach it; it would only tempt its readers to ridicule Catholic ceremonies. The writer had no idea of the mind of the church in her Ritual. He was not an apt pupil in that school wherein she teaches by signs and ceremonies. Were all his observations on a par with those he gives us at seeing a priest administer the last Sacraments, the book would fulfil a useful mission. Father Benson has been a busy writer and many things have come in quick succession from his facile pen. Possibly he is exposing himself to the danger of quantity versus quality. At all events, he has been more fortunate in writing than in editing.

J. F. C.

THE

NEW YORK REVIEW

VOL. III

JAN.-FEB. MAR.-APR., 1908

NO. 4, 5

DICHOTOMY

A STUDY IN NEWMAN AND AQUINAS

Thomas J. Gerrard

The question of the implicit thought of Newman has reached a very acute stage. There are thinkers both in the scholastic and in the modern camps who think that his system is antagonistic to that of Aquinas. "What then does Dr. Newman mean?" This is an old query long dead and come to life again. And since the great Cardinal is not here to help us we may not give it an off-hand answer. Much less may we presume to speak too rashly concerning St. Thomas: for his writings have come to be used as the Bible itself "in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque." I am of opinion however that as regards their more salient features, the two philosophies are quite compatible-nay, that they are complementary each to the other. St. Thomas I think provides a skeleton and Cardinal Newman clothes it with flesh and skin and makes it live.

In a previous article' I have dealt with the doctrine of Universals. In the present article I propose to deal with the Illative Sense. Has it got a parallel in the scholastic scheme of things? A writer in the Irish Theological Quarterly, Father John J. Toohey, S. J., has given us a very illuminative study in the question but on the particular point of the Illative Sense I find him inadequate. I agree with him thoroughly as far as he goes. There is however a wider and deeper view of the Illative Sense together with a wider and deeper corresponding element in scholastic philosophy. Let me try to indicate the parallel.

"Newman and Conceptualism" THE NEW YORK REVIEW, Jan.-Feb., 1907. 2Oct., 1907.

The doctrine of the Illative Sense is not the foundation but the crown and completion of Newman's philosophy of assent. If we must get at the foundation we must take a comprehensive view of the various heights and see whence they arise. It will be found that they slope down into what Wordsworth calls the "abysmal depths of personality." Newman does not start with an abstract theory but with his own living concrete self. "If" he says "I may not assume that I exist, and in a particular way, that is, with a particular mental constitution, I have nothing to speculate about, and had better let speculation alone. Such as I am, it is my all; this is my essential stand-point and must be taken for granted; otherwise, thought is but an idle amusement, not worth the trouble.... I am what I am, or I am nothing. I cannot think, reflect, or judge about my being, without starting from the very point which I aim at concluding. My ideas are all assumptions, and I am ever moving in a circle. I cannot avoid being sufficient for myself, for I cannot make myself anything else, and to change me is to destroy me. If I do not use myself, I have no other self to use. My only business is to ascertain what I am, in order to put it to use. It is enough for the proof of the value and authority of any function which I possess, to be able to pronounce that it is natural."

It is the whole man therefore, Newman's own very self, which starts out on the search for truth. He works however, not anyhow and at random, but according to his nature. He uses all his faculties as he finds them. "We do but fulfil our nature in doubting, inferring and assenting; and our duty is not to abstain from the exercise of any function of our nature but to do what is in itself right rightly."* This truth is obvious. It is manifest throughout all nature. Every being has a sufficient reason for its existence or else it ceases to be a being. The plants perform their function of explicatng themselves. The brutes perform their function of instinct, and have limbs, organs, habits and appetites-all in their totality adapted for the welfare and preservation of their possessors. Man too has his own proper nature. It differs essentially from that of the brute in that it possesses a mind. And this mind is the endowment which man uses in order to develop and make perfect his nature. The law of progress is the acquisition of knowledge; and the faculty by which knowledge is acquired is the mind. Here then is the key to the situation: it is

Grammar of Assent. p. 347. 'Ibid. p. 7.

the whole man who acts and the chief instrument by which he acts is his mind. The principium quod is the whole self; the principium quo is the understanding. The understanding exists, not as Mahohomet's coffin, suspended between heaven and earth, but in the living: concrete man, as an integral part of man's nature and in vital conjunction with all man's other faculties.

The mind acting thus in the living concrete man does not lose its nature, nor yet does it operate otherwise than according to its laws. But it does not necessarily know those laws. Universals exist fundamentally in things before they are formally abstracted by minds. The mind does not always stop to reflect whether, every time it reasons, its syllogism is in Barbara, Celarent, Darii or Ferio. It acts naturally. It follows its rules be they ever so implicit and hidden from direct perception. It also utilizes all the evidence at. its disposal; not merely the evidence which it can here and now explicitly summon to its aid through the instrumentality of an infallible memory, but also the evidence of the totality of its past experience, an experience which may have been forgotten but which has nevertheless exercised an influence on the totality of the man's. spirit and which may be, and indeed, must be taken into account in the formation of a judgment.

Again, when the mind acts in the living concrete man, it uses the ministry of the senses, internal as well as external. But it does not do so as it were woodenly, artificially and mechanically. When a huntsman turns a pack of hounds into a wood he does not lead each. of them by the nose. He does not say to Jack: "You smell round that tree," nor to Jock: "You run down that ditch." But he allows them all to act according to their natural and reciprocative gregarious instinct. Nevertheless, if he be a good huntsman, he has complete control over every hound, and if there be a fox in the cover he brings it out.

The mind likewise in using the senses, does not lead each by the nose. It does not merely say to the eye: "Read that pageof history," and to the ear: "Listen to that man's lecture on the effect of music on morals," and then forthwith form an important judgment on the ethical code of the South Sea Islanders. But in addition to the direct attention which it gives to this or that faculty, it also allows all the man's faculties to act naturally. All his experiences of the infinite variety of shape and colour and odour; all the experiences which he has had through the faculty of hearing; all the ex