A New Deal From St. Thomas

Extract

Once it was a sign of taste to knock down the little grecian temple at the end of the glade and build a gothic ruin in its place. Does it not seem that the contemporary revival of St. Thomas is sometimes conducted in the same spirit? And does not this to some extent justify the mutters about philosophical feudalism? At any rate such reflections have produced a most candid and enquiring essay, an examination of conscience as to why our philosophy should be either accepted or rejected more or less as a vogue.

In his own university the author discovers a feeling against St. Thomas out of all proportion to the effort of revival. He does not permit himself to suppose that the reaction comes from a fresh reading of the text. The fault is largely ours. We have presented our philosophy almost as a religious creed, not indeed by appealing outright to ecclesiastical authority, but by sundry becks and nods hinting, and not too gently, that we have bread where all else is synthetic confectionery; playing on the verbal emotions; using the psychological magic of security, a conservative code, the few simple tests. Rationalism, like racialism, can have its superstitions, and both can offer violence to the free individual, sensing only the forces of disintegration outside their own particular pattern. In both cases, too, it is the Jew who suffers, the wandering Jew; the mind unhappy, ironic, searching, but still unattached. We have avoided the issue with modern thought, or begged the question, bringing forward half a dozen or so of our own principles tricked out with technicalities.