this
philosophy to which I believe we must have recourse in our hour of need.
I have no ability to do this in any case. It begins with St. Paul, is
continued through St. Augustine, and finds its culmination in the great
Mediaeval group of Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, Hugh of St. Victor and
St. Thomas Aquinas. I do not know of any single book that epitomizes it
all in vital form, though Cardinal Mercier and Dr. De Wulf have written
much that is stimulating and helpful. I cannot help thinking that the
great demand today is for a compact volume that synthesizes the whole
magnificent system in terms not of history and scientific exegesis, but
in terms of life. Plato and Aristotle are so preserved to man, and the
philosophers of modernism also; it is only the magisterial and dynamic
philosophy of Christianity that is diffused through many works, some of
them still untranslated and all quite without coordination, save St.
Thomas Aquinas alone, the magnitude of whose product staggers the human
mind and in its profuseness defeats its own ends. We need no more
histories of philosophy, but we need an epitome of Christian philosophy,
not for students but for men.

Such an epitome I am not fitted to offer, but there are certain rather
fundamental conceptions and postulates that run counter both to pagan
and to modern philosophy, the loss of which out of life has, I maintain,
much to do with our present estate, and that must be regained before we
can go forward with any reasonable hope of betterment. These I will try
to indicate as well as I can.

Christian philosophy teaches, in so far as it deals with the
relationship between man and these divine forces that are forever
building, unbuilding and rebuilding the fabric of life, somewhat as
follows:

The world as we know it, man, life itself as it works through all
creation, is the union of matter and spirit; and matter is not spirit,
nor spirit matter, nor is one a mode of the other, but they are two
different creatures. Apart from this union of matter and spirit there is
no life, in the sense in which we know it, and severance is death. "The
body" says St. Thomas, "is not of the essence of the soul; but the soul,
by the nature of its essence, can be united to the body, so that,
properly speaking, the soul alone is not the species, but the
composite", and Duns Scotus makes clear the nature and origin of this
common "essence" when he says there is "on the one hand God as Infinite