There are plenty of reformers and prophets for England’s material needs. The Beveridge Report is only one of several hundreds of printed works showing what the men of this country lack and how their needs are to be filled. We are shown the wretched lives of those to whom our system has been harsh : the uncertainty of employment, the great number living below subsistence level, the hovels in which many workers live, the long hours and the slender leisure; these things can be painted in vivid colours and provide the mainstay for the enthusiasts for the plans and reports.

There are few who recognise that those material needs are of secondary importance compared with the spiritual ones, and that the needs of Englishmen will never be met so long as we confine our efforts to relieving their physical wants. Pius XII, in his impressive Christmas allocution, has pointed out that the troubles from which we suffer cannot be cured if we leave out religion. This truth is set aside by the majority of social thinkers and planners, and they scoff at the Pope as reactionary and out of touch with reality. But in this country the need is greater than elsewhere.

Philosophers, ancient as well as modern, Eastern as well as Western, have always been primarily concerned with the relation of the One and the Many. They have approached it from many angles and have treated it under different titles; Act and Potency, Form and Matter, Substance and Accidents, these fall within the perennial philosophy, but there are many other approaches. They are looking for the meaning of things; the meaning is one, the things are many. Even if the philosopher decides that there is no meaning and all is continuous, unrelated change, he has found a single frame, the One, for his whole experience of the Many. How can both have reality, the one being embracing all things? If the one being is the reality, then is not the multiplicity around us only apparent? If the things we look upon, daily astonished at their variety, are real, then is not the One into which we try to fit them merely a convenient fiction to satisfy the hunger of the enquiring mind?

Curiously, although philosophers have given themselves to this problem with a constant zeal, they have seldom found a stabilised view that could show them the One and the Many locked in an enduring embrace. They have swayed between the two poles, either seeing all in terms of the unique One, or seeing the One in terms of the All. The Atomists found nothing but multiplicity, the lowest possible unit, undistinguished, containing nothing but its one homogeneous self; for Zeno and Parmenides, all that they could see or know was contained in the unique being of which they were themselves only expressions. Even Plato became so enamoured of unity that the variety of the world around him appeared only as fleeting shadows, never to be possessed as real treasure. Who can balance between these attractive depths?

Blackfriars, a month late owing to war conditions in production, wishes to join its voice with the innumerable tributes that have honoured and mourned the passing of Cardinal Hinsley. Catholics all over the country have expressed their gratitude to him for making Catholicism acceptable to their fellow countrymen, showing that it is no ‘Italian Mission ‘but has continued as much a part of England from time immemorial as his Catholic village home in Yorkshire. They have recognized the great qualities of this old Country Catholicism incarnate in the Cardinal, essentially straightforward with a hatred of the underhand and a love of fair play which represent the best in the English tradition. Many have recalled how this Yorkshire directness was elevated by a strongly Christian life that grew out of a deep personal love of our Lord and made his actions clearly Christo-centric. It was this Christian life that explained his warm-hearted attitude to non-Catholics which was already clear in his teaching days at Ushaw and culminated in his personal relations with Dr. Cosmo Lang and Dr. George Bell in particular. Blackfriars can add nothing new to what has been said in this way, but we are grateful to Dr. Bell, Bishop of Chichester, for consenting to write the memoir of this issue and so enabling us to pay our own tribute to the Cardinal’s memory in a way that he would appreciate. We are grateful, too, to Sir James Marchant for contributing another generous Anglican tribute. May the co-operation that the Cardinal implemented continue to bear an increasing fruit as a permanent memorial to his name.

A child playing with wooden bricks will happily knock over his construction and then earnestly and hastily build up another tottering house that is to last no longer than its predecessor. At present we are like the child feverishly trying to pick up the bits, even while they are still falling, to set to work on some new arrangement of the same material. Society must receive all our attention. It has fallen to pieces and so with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men we are trying to put it together again.

Sir William Beveridge dominates the playroom of the rebuilders and his Report presents the most comprehensive of all the hundreds of plans for the next tottering structure. But the materials are much the same as before only a little more pronounced in their shape. Praise is due to the Report as well as to its author for its high aims as well as for the knowledge and industry that has given it birth. Social security for the whole nation, freedom from want and disease, employment for all, to bring such blessings within reach of each citizen in the Kingdom explains the almost unanimous acclamation it has received. For many years now the Popes have been proposing a new way of life that will bring security for low as well as high.

The brilliant conclusion of the African campaign can compare with any of the major military victories of history. The Allies have a right to be proud of the achievement, and a duty to thank God for his all-planning providence. Events may in fact prove that Providence has so designed this to be the greatest step of the war towards ultimate victory and the beginning of peace. Even Peace News, which as a rule can be depended upon to adopt the gloomiest views, admits that this may be the beginning of the end of present hostilities. The Allied spirit has been greatly strengthened, and the Te Deum has been sung in many churches, and the gratitude to the Allied leaders and generals who have exorcized Africa so effectively also plays its part in this renewal of hope.

One might expect a certain slackening of effort with this realisation of success; the price of victory is so often presumption and false security. But there is little sign of such a relaxing, and all are anxious to press on to the goal. It therefore becomes increasingly urgent to recognize that the cleansing of Europe by force of arms can only be the prelude to a gradual process of spiritual cleansing if any sort of peace is to be won. This process of bringing health to a diseased continent will not be completed by the exorcism of fire and the sword, though the sooner that is done and the less wanton the present destruction, the sooner will the true exorcism be able to begin its work. To expect Europe to be righted at once is certainly foolish; that means that we should at once prepare ourselves for perseverance over a long period in trying to bring true peace.

The problem of synthesis between the individual and the group, man and society, the one and the many, may be solved by the application of the thomist social principle of self-sufficiency. We may state it in terms of the relation between the land and the city.

Against the many thomist enthusiasts who are also land enthusiasts it is sometimes pointed out that St. Thomas himself had no love for agriculture and regarded it as tending towards the work of the beast. Troeltsch has written in this respect: ‘In contrast to the inclination of modern Catholicism towards the rural population and its specific Ethos, it is solely the city that St. Thomas takes into account. In his view man is naturally a town dweller, and he regards a rural life only as the result of misfortune or of want ‘(Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, II, p. 318). The rude tiller of the soil degenerates through continual contact with the lesser creation, animals and the soil; he is to be pitied much in the same way as the modern ‘thomist ‘often pities the factory worker.

There is surely some truth in the assertion that those who cultivate the land lack the human delicacy of mind and soul that is to be found in the town dweller. The rustic may often be soil-sodden and unresponsive. The land and the things that grow and live on the land do not necessarily humanise; they do not inevitably of their nature tend to deepen the understanding and quicken the perception of the labourer. Experience often shows the contrary, the slow yokel more at home with his animals than with his fellows.

[Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461) is generally recognised as the principal Doctor of the mystery of the Incarnation in the Western Church. All know the part he played, through his legates and writings, in the Council of Chalcedon (451). Ho is also the most ancient of the great Latin Preachers, whose sermons on Church festivals are still extant. To this day, in the lessons of the second nocturn at Matins, the Roman breviary makes use of Leo’s eloquence to interpret the meaning and spirit of the various liturgical solemnities, for example, at Christmas and on the feast of the Epiphany.

St. Leo is certainly at his best when commenting on the dogmatic fact of the twofold nature, divine and human, in the one Person of Christ, which sums up the mystery of the Incarnation. True to the Western trend of theological exposition, he does not stop to weave subtle theories into the fabric of dogmatic beliof : he simply enumerates truths, but these he follows up with a wonderful wealth of practical conclusions for the everyday life of the faithful. Besides his classic work—the Tomos on the Incarnation which he sent to the Fathers of Chalcedon—St. Leo has left ten sermons which he preached in Rome on the feast of Christmas (see Migne, P. L., t. 54, col. 190-254). Each ranks as both a theological and an oratorical masterpiece.

The death of Cardinal Hinsley brings a sense of grievous loss to innumerable men and women outside his own flock. His championship of right, his outspokenness, his love of England, his pity for the suffering, all inspired by a deep religious faith, combined to make a remarkable impression on the public mind. A story he told me of his first meeting with Mr. Churchill throws a flood of light on the bonds which bound him to his fellow countrymen. It was just after the fall of France, when there was a widespread belief that anything might happen. ‘I am glad we’re alone,’ he said to the Prime Minister, ‘and have not to rely on France.’ ‘Why? ‘asked Mr. Churchill, much surprised. He replied, ‘Englishmen fight best when they have got their backs to the wall.’ It was very fitting that when the Cardinal died, nearly three years later, Mr. Churchill should express his deep sympathy with English Roman Catholics ‘in the loss of a leader of character and courage, a great patriot, and a true lover of justice and freedom.’

There is another campaign in the leadership of which the Cardinal’s death will be most keenly felt. It is the campaign for a regeneration of Britain and Europe and a building up of a new social, economic and political system on just and moral foundations. Staunch Roman Catholic though he was, he saw that in a world so divided as our own the gathering of all forces looking in the same direction was indispensable for such a purpose. Accordingly, in August, 1940, profoundly stirred by the moral collapse which caused France’s down fall, he inaugurated the movement of ‘The Sword of the Spirit ‘to ‘deal with the issues raised by the present war.’

It is probable that the most serious obstacle in the way of a rapprochement between Thomism and much ‘modern thought’ is the widespread misgiving that Thomism ignores or rejects ‘value-perception’ and ‘value-experience.’ This misgiving is impressive both to the layman and to the professional philosopher. To the layman, because it is supposed that the embracing of the principles of a system so frigidly rational and so rigidly scientific involves a repudiation of the ‘appreciative,’ ‘humanistic’ attitude to life, and with it the denial of the validity of one’s most cherished and intimate personal experience. To the philosopher, because, in the words of Professor Pringle-Pattison, ‘At the present time philosophy is carried on more explicitly in terms of value than at any previous time.’

That ‘experience,’ ‘value-perception,’ ‘intuition,’ ‘instinct,’ ‘real’ or ‘affective’ knowledge—call them what you will—have in great measure come to claim the place which of old was ascribed to logical reasoning is a commonplace which calls for no proof. Even among those whom the Romanticist revolt from reason has not led to an admitted abandonment of logical, hard-headed thinking, there has come about a divorce of ‘experience’ from ‘thought’ whose effects can be scarcely less disastrous. ‘Description’ and ‘appreciation’ come to be regarded, not merely as distinct and independent ways of approach to the same reality, but as terminating in diverse realities.

Some unlucky star must have presided over the birth of State compulsory schooling in England; or perhaps we English secretly disbelieve in formal education altogether. It is over seventy years now since the beginning was made, with a special brand of education for the lower orders called ‘elementary,’ having as little vital connection as possible with religion, and staffed by teachers similarly segregated from any of the true educational influences of the country.

The results have been better in some respects than the nation deserved ; the shortcomings have been still more evident, but from 1870 onwards it seems that nothing less than a war will induce England to take a passing interest in educational reform. The Boer War coincided with the 1902 Act which initiated free secondary schools for some at least of the ‘elementary’ children, and made it possible for voluntary schools to survive and teach religion, at the same time handing over educational responsibility to the elected councils of town and county which dealt with the usual local affairs. The First Great War was another time of heart-searching, and resulted in the Fisher Act of 1918, an attempt to widen the narrow ‘ladder’ which was the only way out of the ‘elementary’ system, and to do a little more for the vast majority of boys and girls who would still be thrown into the industrial system at fourteen. It was a very modest bit of planning, but it proved too ambitious for the post-war mood of England; not much of it ever came into action, though the patient administrators managed in time to set going the process called ‘reorganisation,’ designed to produce, within the elementary system, a substitute for secondary schooling.

In order to understand what St. Thomas means by affective knowledge ‘or knowledge by ‘inclination ‘or ‘connaturality,’ something must first be said of what he understands by ‘knowledge,’ and what by ‘affect,’ ‘inclination,’ or ‘connaturality.’ Readers will not expect in this short article a full and detailed account, let alone a justification, of St. Thomas’s theory of knowledge and of appetite. A brief survey of some salient points such as is required for our present purposes is all we shall attempt; and to obviate the necessity of explaining St. Thomas’s medieval terminology we shall frankly paraphrase his thought in less unfamiliar language. Those readers who wish to study the matter further in St. Thomas’s own words will find at the end of the article a selection of ‘readings ‘in which they may investigate the various points raised.

St. Thomas’s account of the nature of knowledge is much more ‘phenomenological ‘than is often supposed by those who have not studied him closely. Nothing could be further from the truth than that St. Thomas’s epistemology is based on an a priori ‘ faculty psychology,’ or that he short-circuits the ‘critical problem ‘of knowledge by unwarranted assumptions based on illegitimate abstractions. It is a first principle with St. Thomas (as it had been with Aristotle) that potencies can be affirmed only as inferences from actualities; and” the whole structure of his ‘faculty psychology ‘(if such it can indeed be called) is based on a thoroughgoing empiricist scrutiny of the ‘given ‘fact of knowledge.