R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD.
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
AND AT MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, AND GLASGOW
1914 All rights reserved[Pg ii]
Nihil Obstat.
J.P. ARENDZEN, D.D.,
Censor Deputatus.
Imprimatur.
EDM. CAN. SURMONT,
Vicarius Generalis.
Westmonasterii,
Die 20 Septembris, 1913.[Pg iii]
"Te Trina Deitas unaque poscimus
Sic nos Tu visita, sicut Te colimus:
Per Tuas semitas duc nos quo tendimus,
Ad lucem, quam inhabitas!"
S. Thomas's Hymn for Matins on the
Feast of Corpus Christi.
[Pg v]
The present generation in the fervour of its repentanceis like to cast off too much. So manyfalse principles and hasty deductions have beenoffered to its parents and grandparents in thename of science that it is becoming unduly suspiciousof the scientific method.
A century ago men's minds were sick unto deathfrom too much science and too little mysticism.To-day the danger is that even the drawing-roomsare scented with a mysticism that anathematizesscience.
At no time since the days of S. Thomas was thesaint's scientific method more lacking. Everywherethere is need for a mystic doctrine, which initself is neither hypnotism nor hysteria, and in itsexpression is neither superlative nor apostrophic,lest the hungered minds of men die of surfeitfollowing on starvation.
The message and method of S. Thomas are partof that strange rigidity of the thirteenth centurywhich is one of the startling paradoxes of the agesof faith. It is surely a consolation that these agesof a faith which moved mountains, or at leastessayed to remove the Turk, were minded to[Pg vi]express their beliefs in the coat of mail of humanreason! The giants of those days, who in thesphere of literature were rediscovering verse andinventing rhyme, and who in every sphere ofknowledge were bringing forth the sixteenth andnineteenth centuries, were not so blinded by thewhite light of vision as to disown the Greeks.They made the Ethics of Aristotle the four-squarewalls of the city of God; they expressed themysteries of the Undivided Three in terms of theSyllogism. Thus they refused to cut themselvesoff from the aristocracy of human genius. Theylaid hands—but not violent hands—on the heritageof the ages. No philosophers have ever equalledtheir bold and lowly-minded profession of faith inthe solidarity of human reason. For this causeS. Thomas, who is their spokesman, has nowbecome an absolute necessity of thought. Unlessthe great Dumb Ox is given a hearing, our mysticismwill fill, not the churches, but the asylumsand the little self-authorized Bethels where everyman is his own precursor and messiah.
That S. Thomas is to be accepted as a masterof mysticism may be judged from the followingfacts in the life of a mystic of the mystics, S. Johnof the Cross:
"It has been recorded that during his studies heparticularly relished psychology; this is amplyborne out by his writings. S. John was not whatone could term a scholar. He was, however, intimatelyacquainted with the Summa of S. ThomasAquinas, as almost every page