M. Jacques Maritain, more than anyone else, is responsible for the wide recognition to-day of the all-important distinction between individual and person. He has insisted on the principle that while the individual is for the State, the State is for the person. Those unused to distinguishing two aspects of the same thing have shown some hesitation in accepting the plain fact that in one sense you are working for the good of the State and in another the State is working for your good. They do not readily see that man simply as a unit, separate from all other units and yet with them making up a single complex whole (Society or the State) plays a subordinate role, that of a part to its whole, and that at the same time man has a human soul, an intellect and will, which can be subordinated to nothing less than God. He lives in society for the benefit of his own mind and will, and yet he contributes to the perfection of the mind and will of the other members of that society, working with them for the perfection of each person in God.

The main difficulty in grasping this truth lies in the terminology used. There seems to be no particular reason why one aspect should be called ‘individual’ and the other ‘person.’ This, however, becomes clearer when it is realised that ‘individual’ means what is undivided in itself and divided) off from other similar things. It does not say anything about the thing itself, but simply states its position as a unit amid a host of similar units. ‘Person,’ on the other hand, originally referred to the character in a play, and we still read at the beginning of the written play the list of characters called the Dramatis Personae.

Man is a paradox; and his life is unceasing tension between contradictories. Of fallen man this is true in the sense explained by Plato’s horses and St. Paul’s ‘the flesh lusteth against the spirit’; but it is true also In a yet more primitive sense: of the human per. sonality itself in its inner structure. Man is a paradox because, being one thing, body-spirit, he is at the same time two things. He is a social animal, dependent physically, economically, culturally, spiritually, upon society; he is a ‘part of the universe,’ often at the mercy of natural forces, often determined not only in his behaviour but in his very way of thought by environment, upbringing, the history of the race, the history of the world; against the might of the stars he is a puny invisible speck—it is not only the dead who are

Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Yet at the same time there is in the infinitesimal speck a sort of infinity ; for the spirit of man is in Aristotle’s phrase ‘in a manner all things,’ and for Christian theology it is capax Dei—made capable of union with the Infinite. This part of the universe is at the same time not part of the universe: the angels themselves cannot knbw a man’s secret thoughts. The whirling-speck of dust is at the same time ‘the most perfect thing in nature’; the servant of the social and cosmic machines is the master for whose benefit they are made, and the country he inhabits is, in Kant’s phrase, the ‘kingdom of ends.’

The human person is traditionally defined as an individual self-subsistent substance of rational nature.

Our ideas of the freedom of man and of the rights of man depend on the view we take of human nature and of the purpose for which man exists. Whether we are fully aware of this or not, it is the basis of all our notions about ourselves, about the family, about the State, and about international order.

If man has dignity, freedom, rights, it is because he has, individually and personally, a certain value as a human being. Christianity teaches that this value is given to him by God who has created man in his own image and has made him for himself. That is, man has a soul which is able to know truth and love good and which finds its eternal happiness in the vision of God. God did not make man and then leave him to his own devices. He made him for a definite purpose. The basis of man’s rights is his right to fulfil this purpose. An attack on human freedom is an attack on the human person, on the dignity of man. We shall see that whenever man’s value in the eyes of God is denied, his dignity is debased and his freedom is attacked.

We take our fellow men for granted. But in fact we have one or two deep convictions about them. We think of them as equal. This does not mean that they are the same. Look round about you. You see every size and shape, age and ability. But try to think of the man next to you, the man next door, even those against whom we are fighting, as having a quite different, inferior, nature like a dog.

Of course others have faced this problem, and found their answer. It would be wanton, spiritual arrogance for the author in his academic seclusion to suggest otherwise. Yet sometimes, as he lays aside one or other of the various handbooks of Christian reconstruction with which the market is flooded in these days, a horrid doubt crosses his mind which passes into a nightmarish sense of unreality. We draught our charters, we hold our luncheons, we address our public meetings. We go to the world outside the conference-hall door with a smile, with a handbook, nearly always with a sense of assurance Again, we search the Scriptures not that we may have life, but that we may find a slogan for a Christian mass-movement, in which the demands ot the platform will blunt the sharpness of our truly Christian perception. Our attitude seems sometimes a curiously sorry compact of assurance and desperation. We are assured because we think we have a solution for the frightful torments of the present; we are afraid because we see the dreadful possibility that men will not listen to us, may in fact opt finally for other gods.

Is this altogether unfair? The picture is not intentionally spiteful. But there are moments when it seems hard to escape the conviction that some contemporary forms of Christian social activity are little less than highly subtle forms of escapism. They are ‘idealist’ in the sense assigned to that term by Marxist writers, for they rest on unconscious desire to escape the pressing demand to wrestle with social actualities in the here and now by passing into a world that analysis points out to be one of ideas only.

What is an Art Museum for? As the word ‘Curator’ implies, the most essential function of such a Museum is to take care of works of art which are no longer in their original places or no longer used as was originally intended, and are therefore in danger of destruction. This care of works of art does not necessarily involve their exhibition.

If we ask, why should the protected works of art be exhibited to the public, the answer will be made, that this is to be done with an educational purpose. But before we ask, Education in or for what? a distinction must be made between the exhibition of the works of living artists and that of ancient or relatively ancient or exotic works of art. It is unnecessary for Museums to exhibit the works of living artists, which are not in imminent danger of destruction; or at least, if such works are exhibited, it should be clearly understood that the Museum is really advertising the artist and acting on behalf of the art dealer whose business it is to find a market for the artist; the only difference being that it makes no profit. On the other hand, that a living artist should wish to be ‘hung’ or ‘shown’ in a Museum can be only due to his need or his vanity. For things are made normally for certain purposes and certain places to which they are appropriate, and not simply ‘for exhibition’; and whatever is thus made by an artist for a consumer is controlled by certain requirements. Whereas, as Mr. Steinfels has recently remarked, ‘Art which is only intended to be hung on the walls of a Museum is one kind of art that need not consider its relationship to its ultimate surroundings.

The stout little man, lurching-along the narrow pavement of a street in Lima, had been celebrating Peru’s rupture of relations with the Axis, and he was looking for Germans to insult. His technique for identifying German citizens was to thrust two fingers, extended in the symbolic shape of a ‘V’ into the face of passers-by and to study their reactions. Mine failed to satisfy him, but when he finally realised that was English he melted into a flood/of tender remorse. ‘Mi amigo. All English my friends.’ ‘Muchas gratias,’ I replied, ‘A Dios.’ But he would not let me go. ‘You are my friend. Anywhere, anywhen.’ His heart was in the right place, but his feet were not; and by the time I had rescued him from a passing car, his affection was dynamic in its energy. Seizing me by the arm, he propelled me through the front door of his own shop. I disengaged myself as the champion of the democracies collapsed on to the sofa. ‘You are my friend. Anywhere, anywhen.’ I looked up and my eyes came to rest on an advertisement for the Leica, an enlargement of a Leica snapshot of the Wetterhorn from Grindelwald. And, for one vivid moment, I had a sense of bilocation as if part of me was in Grindelwald and part in Peru. ‘My friend. Anywhere. Anywhen.’ Fifty years have passed since I first saw Grindelwald, and few indeed are the human friends whose company I would prefer to the Wetterhorn.