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.

The Joint Pastoral on the Social Question from the Catholic Hierarchy was particularly noteworthy for what may be called its specialisation. We have long heard the complaint that the official pronouncements of the Church are ineffective because they are too general to move the wills of individuals. This is largely an excuse for shirking responsibility in regard to momentous Encyclicals like Rerum Novarum or Quadragesimo Anno. The Joint Pastoral leaves no room for such an excuse because of the detail in which it describes the minimum which a Christian should accept and for which therefore every Christian in this country is bound to strive. It remains to be seen whether we shall be jolted out of our apathy. If such detailed direction from authority fails to awaken a corporate attempt to right the injustices of the day it will be left to the blind force of world upheaval to alter the present system—and who can say whether the result of that will be more or less just?

The most important of the Pastoral’s special applications of Catholic Social teaching is the tenth point, which declares that the present distribution of wealth in this country is unjust. This is more than a general declaration that the industrial system tends to an unjust distribution of wealth; it is a special judgment on the results of that system in our own country. Reasons for such a judgment are also given. For it is not so much that the distribution is unequal as that it places the lives of most Englishmen under the control of a few irresponsible individuals, or worse still of an impersonal group or company.

The debates in the House of Lords, within recent weeks, on the future of Germany shows the acuteness of the difficulty that will face the Allies in victory. The divisions in France are problem enough, but the pacification of Germany is far more serious. The Peers evidently grasped the problem ; no one has yet come forward with a possible solution. The conundrum is as baffling a one as any statesman has had to answer. The Nazi Party have succeeded in corrupting a high percentage of a vast people. They have set up an effective machine which exploits the evil tendencies—to be found in every people—of proud nationalism and of the false values of materialism. This paganism subjects truth to action so that what benefits the one nation is true, what does not is false. Like the Communists, the Nazis have given themselves the liberty to tell lies and break promises as it suits their purpose, a fact which should cause us no surprise, since it consists with their principles. This has reduced all the good elements in German society to defenceless impotence. The new paganism has even found men and women who were ready to propagate its doctrines in Christian words : the ‘German Christians’ thought to unite a garbled version of Christ’s teaching with that of Hitler and Rosenberg. Worst of all, the machinery was constructed so as to deprive the youth of the nation of truth and saturate it with the inhuman worship of blood and race. Pius XI wrote in his famous encyclical on the Church in Germany : ‘Thus to have ushered in the betrayal of the eternal principles of an objective morality ... is a sin against the future of the people, whose bitter fruits the coming generations will taste.’

The present issue of Blackfriars contains the substance of the papers read at the Annual General Meeting of the University Catholic Federation of Great Britain held at Birmingham from April ioth to 12th, 1942, on the general theme of ‘Science and Society.’ We are particularly grateful to the Federation and the speakers for permission to print the collected papers in this special number. We make no apology to our readers for occupying nearly every page with this subject, for there are few now who do not recognise the supreme importance with which modern science is—justly or unjustly—invested. In view of this unique position, the meeting at Birmingham was of special significance for the future.

Until recently there were only two views expressed on science that counted. First there was the handful of philosophers who sought to prevent the flood of experimental knowledge and description from bursting into other fields of knowledge. Jacques Maritain stands head and shoulders above all others here, in his constant effort to mark out the boundaries of the sciences. But there have been others with less insight who have tried to effect this result by a radical attack on science itself. Many of them speak in the name of philosophy or religion, but few attain the balanced judgment of the French philosopher. At a time of scientific warfare it is easy to throw unintelligent bricks at a carefully constructed glasshouse of science.

On Christmas Eve, in a comprehensive survey of the dangers and opportunities of the future, his Holiness Pius XII reiterated many of the teachings that have been characteristic of his Pontificate. We would point especially to his desire for collaboration among good-willed worshippers of Almighty God. ‘These principles (for the solution of the social question) can be followed in their entirety, and bear their fullest fruits only when statesmen and people, employers and employees, are animated by faith in a personal God . . . Every man who believes in God is numbered among his partisans and paladins. Those who have faith in Christ, in his divinity, in his love, in his work of love and brotherhood amongst men will make a particularly valuable contribution to the reconstruction of the social order.’ At the same time his Holiness reaffirms the spiritual centrality of Rome, concluding with this moving appeal : ‘From this Rome, centre, rock, and teacher of Christianity, from this city called Eternal by reason of its relations with the living Christ rather than by reason of its association with the passing glory of the Caesars, from this Rome . . . We direct Our Appeal to all . . .’ The present number of Blackfriars offers some parallels to these words.

Father Gerald Vann’s broadcast talks here reproduced strike a topical note in view of the Albert Hall meeting of the Industrial Christian Fellowship at the end of September and of the discussion it aroused. Religion has an intimate relation to politics and prayer is the heart of religion. A man’s social and political action should, in fact, flow from his relations with God in prayer. But the primary question brought to the fore by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech is whether one’s prayer and religion are to play an essential part in particular practical judgments about society and politics.

The attack on the Archbishop, in the letters to the Times for instance, did not lack an element of truth. There were times when he left the principles he rightly declared to be the province of religion for applications which were far from being the only ones acceptable to the conscience of the Christian.. But the fundamental problem raised was that of the very mission of the Church. Is the Church to turn from preaching eternal salvation through the Cross to concentrate all her energies on providing for the social well-being and happiness of the citizen on earth? In constantly driving home the social teaching implied in the Sermon on the Mount, as well as in the relation between man and his Creator, we are in danger of presenting that teaching upside-down. We may find ourselves standing on a platform shoulder to shoulder with Socialist and Communist, trying to raise our voices above theirs and to sell our wares by making them more attractive than those of our ‘rivals.’

There is one significant mark of our declining culture which deserves particular notice—the separation of the external side of religion from the internal. Just as a man in his prime finds no opposition between his body and soul, but rather lives as a single yet complex whole, so a healthy civilisation-finds its highest expression in a religion which harmonises into a single whole tire interior spirit of charity with the exterior structure of rubric, law and hierarchy. But when decay sets in these necessarily complementary elements begin to separate out into opposition and falsehood. The legalism of the pharisee is set over against the puritanism of the communist. ‘I hus at the beginning of the thirteenth century the external life of the Church was seriously encrusted with comfortable clergy, while the interior spirit seemed to be limited to groups of the laity, fermenting in a way that often resulted in schism or heresy. Hence the friars were sent to re-establish unity in religion. The rise of Puritanism in the seventeenth century reveals the separation of the two elements still more clearly. ‘When religion ceases to give life tc a people those for whom it represents a vested interest overemphasise the external rules of worship and ecclesiastical etiquette, while those who see a need for new vitality attempt a short cut to the good life by means of some sort of mysticism and fraternity which sidesteps formal religion.

In 1941 Blackfriars, with a view to setting our own house in order, dealt chiefly with the internal structure of society. This must remain our principal preoccupation in the future; for the general reader will have the international situation constantly before his eyes, whereas the radical, internal diseases of our society may more easily pass unnoticed. To understand these evils and to attempt to cure them will require all our spiritual resources before the end of the war if there is to be any hope of peace in our day. There are, however, in the international sphere two points of special concern which must also be understood and be made part of the foundations of peace—indeed without such an understanding any re-Christianisation at home would be abortive. Firstly, there is the sound Christian tradition that survives the diabolic attack of the Gestapo in the German nation ; and secondly, there is also a Christian tradition in France with which, above all other alliances, we must remain closely associated in any peace-making. It is to the second of these considerations that we devote the present issue, to the first we hope to return at a later date. .

With the present alignment of forces a defeat for Hitler would mean that Britain, America and the Soviet Union would impose their terms on Europe. Two of these powers are essentially non-European, while at the same time one to a greater and the other to a far lesser extent derives its culture and civilisation from Europe. England alone of the three can lay claim to being an integral parf of Europe, and that claim is being jeopardised by the alienation of the French from the British peoples. The main artery of cultural life has passed into Britain from Palestine, Greece and Rome through France.

Self-consciousness is one of the most dangerous characteristics of the modern age. The self-conscious car driver fixes his attention on himself as driving rather than on driving, the self-conscious eater thinks less of the meal than of the critical gaze of others. To be conscious of self in this way is always hazardous to the work in hand. Moreover this spirit makes itself felt particularly in the different categories of society. Class distinction has led to self-consciousness in the community. The ‘working classes’ in these days have learnt to regard themselves as ‘workers’ distinct from and even opposed to all other classes in a way different even from that known to medieval serf or classical slave. Any movement that tends to increase this consciousness must therefore lead to separation and civil strife.

For this reason many people are suspicious of a new devotion to Christ ‘the Worker.’ Instead of teaching those who labour in workshop, factory or office the objective reality of our Lord as the Saviour of all mankind, the devotion may seem to foster self-consciousness by giving them a crabbed view of Christ as one who is on their side against the rest of the world. The Christian Guilds were conteht with a special Patron Saint, they did not try to divide Christ in this way. No one has yet tried to stir up enthusiasm for Christ the Employer of the Apostles. But where are we going to draw the line in our application of different aspects of Christ to the self-conscious groupings of society?

The importance of the Christian family as the corner-stone of any social rebuilding in the future is recognised by all; and Blackfriars cannot hope to do more than produce a few pointers to some of the more significant elements in its constitution. Thus we may note the vocation of marriage. For Christian marriage, no less than the religious life or the priesthood, is a ‘calling,’ a divine calling to specific functions, responsibilities and joys. Indeed, it involves the spirit of a religious vocation, since it involves the spirit of the three vows of religion. Married life usually implies a greater degree of actual poverty than living single, and must always mean a certain detachment from wealth and possessions. In this it stands out against the standards of those whose ideal of conjugal happiness is summed up in a service flat and a car. Married life demands a chastity that is constantly selfless in face of the selfish way out by birth prevention. It requires obedience, without which the family collapses in a chaotic group of warring relatives. All this necessarily implies sacrifice. The poverty, chastity and obedience of marriage are consecrated in a special way by the sacrament, which links them with Calvary : every sacrament represents the Passion of Christ. By his analogy between the union of the Church with Christ and that of husband with wife St. Paul shows how central this sacrificial element must be, for Christ was wedded to his Church on Calvary. In these days it might perhaps prove more helpful to insist on this aspect of married life rather than on the union of married love or the importance of children as its primary end. These latter are the natural elements of the marriage bond, whereas the sacrificial, and sometimes heroic, element should be essentially supernatural.

In discussions concerned with its history, rigid or narrow interpretations of the term ‘science ‘are to be avoided. The purpose of examining the history of science is, apart from mere antiquarianism, the desire to place modern science in a perspective whcredit may be seen in relation to other human activities, past, present and, perhaps, future; and to that purpose all from which science has grown is relevant. Mathematics may not be science, but Greek physios developed in great measure from geometry. The Egyptian goldsmith and Assyrian potter were not men of science, but chemistry developed from their labours; and between the beginnings of the use of tools and the industrial civilisation of to-day there is no moment of which we may say ‘Here began Science.’ In the words of Roger Bacon (Compendia Studii., Cap. v, quoted by Duhem) :

But, in agreeing to allow a wide interpretation to the term Science, we are not to forget that we shall include therein several different activities, notably those of the craftsman, the observer of nature, the philosopher and ontologist, the histories of which may not always, especially in the early period, be very closely linked.

Descartes was personally a believer, a sincere Catholic. His education by the Jesuits of La Flèche, and the philosophy they had taught him there, had marked him profoundly. This man, whose mind is so free and enquiring, who was always so conscious of a vitally important intellectual vocation, who grounded all his philosophy on a daring effort to doubt everything, that he might vanquish doubt by doubt and is discover the unimpeachable certainties implied in the very existence of the thinking self, this founder of modern rationalism never doubted the Catholic creed; he could even be blamed for being insufficiently aware of that anxious questing restlessness of the soul that is worked upon and deepened by Faith. To the Protestant theologians who tried to force the religious issue on him, he answered smiling that he preferred to remain in the religion of his king and his nurse.

He was not giving them his reasons for believing; he meant merely that he preferred to be left in peace on this matter. His death was nobly and genuinely Christian. That fine sense he always had of the dignity of reason and intellectual integrity, of the grandeur of created nature, was itself religious. I am sure that at the opening of his philosophical career, with the illuminative experience of November 10th, 1619, still vivid within him, he was equally desirous of establishing the principles of physical geometry—his work par excellence— and of grounding Christian doctrine on such firm foundations that atheists and sceptics would be silenced for ever. And with all this his hostility to Theology was stubborn and bitter and calculating. How explain this paradox?

The more I get on in years, the more certain I am that a Christian is nothing without Christ, even from a purely human point of view; that the unimaginable gift, which we have received without having in any way deserved, has this terrible counterpart that in betraying it we fall lower than the most inferior men, becoming monsters in the etymological sense of the word. If Christians felt this fearful truth profoundly they would no longer be tempted to despise the sceptics and to divide mankind into two parts, the Good and the Bad, placing themselves, of course, among the former. They would understand that the amazing privilege which has been bestowed upon them forbids them setting themselves up too easily as judges of those to whom it has been denied. They would especially refrain from having those disinherited brothers butchered by machine-guns, on the excuse of honouring Good, and of suffering with Christ on the Cross.

The great unhappiness of this world, the great tragedy of this world is not that there are atheists, but that we are such indifferent Christians; for I am more and more convinced that it is we who are sending the world to perdition, that it is we who are attracting to it the lightning of the Wrath of God. What a folly to pretend to justify ourselves by proudly boasting that we alone are in possession of the truth, of the whole and living truth, of the kind which can liberate and save, while it remains impotent in our hands, or while we remain pitifully on the defensive behind a sort of Maginot line spiked high with prohibitions and inhibitions, as if we had nothing better to do than to guard the Law, whereas our natural and spiritual vocation is to fulfil it.

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.

God is love. God is creator, God’s creation is the expression of his love.

Man is created in the image and likeness of God. Man too is lover and creator. But for him, to love and to create is hard.

It is hard to love, because so often when he sees a beautiful thing man wants to clutch at it, possess it, dominate, domineer, use it for himself, destroy it.

It is hard to create, because creation comes only from love.

There is no love and no creation without worship and humility and fear; and in order that we may have these things God takes us by the hand, and leads us to the trackless and waterless, places, and gives us the gift of pain.

Man’s destiny is to create, in the image and likeness of God. We are not men and women unless we are makers, whether what we make be ships or sealing wax or cabbages or kingdoms. But for most men and women the primary creation is procreation; the primary work of art is married life. God gives us in each case the ecstasy of creation : the joy that follows the agony of making, the joy that follows the anguish of child-bearing. If we had only these gifts of joy and ecstasy we might forget the giver, and rest in the gifts and regard them as our own possession; we might cease to love and worship, and become beasts of prey. Love is worship. ‘With my body I thee worship ‘; the body conveys the message, but it is the whole I that worships, the whole of the body and its deepest roots, the whole of the spirit and its deepest roots, in one act of recognition and acceptance of oneness, of adoration and offering.

It is of profound significance that since the end of the last war Catholic thinkers in Germany should have devoted themselves almost exclusively to the preparation for the struggle for the Faith which is now raging. It is as though they had sensed the impending danger and were concentrating all their energies on the twofold task of arriving at a true appreciation of the present spiritual situation, and of providing the means to solve its problems in the spirit of Christ. This struggle for the Faith, for the very reason that it is fought on the spiritual plane, is by no means identical with the present war, which only becomes relevant as it serves to clarify the situation, and affects the spirits of men. The decisive events will take place in the depths of the human heart; it is here that the future of mankind will be decided. The crucial question is the same, which has at all times determined the fate of the individual as well as of nations : ‘What think ye of Christ?’

This question was asked in the days of the Roman Empire, when to acknowledge the Kingship of Christ meant torture and death. It was asked in ages when belief was easy, when the individual was not yet torn out of community with his fellows, and lived in a world which bore in every detail the stamp of God. It is characteristic of the present situation that the very conditions which enabled such a question to be heard and answered in the past, seem no longer to exist.

Nobody wants to live in a world that is blind and insane; and if that is what we are heading for, then we had better try to do something about it. Aldous Huxley makes this very plain in his latest book, Grey Eminence. One of the main points he makes there is this : that a world totally without prayer would be a world ‘totally blind and insane.’ His actual phrase is a ‘totally unmystical world ‘; but I am going to keep to the simpler and less misunderstood word ‘prayer,’ because people sometimes think that mysticism means either a tendency to swoon away at odd moments, or else a sort of permanent woolly-headedness. I am going to use the word ‘prayer,’ but I don’t mean just ‘asking for things,’ and as I am going to define it, it wili agree with what Huxley has in mind. A world totally without prayer would be a world totally blind and insane. ‘Where there is no vision the people perish ‘; and Huxley’s judgment of our own world is tjhat we are dangerously far advanced into the darkness.

Now, the first thing to notice about this is that it is not an odd or uncommon view. It is not only Huxley’s view; it is the Christian view. It is also the view of all the great religious teachers of the world ; and more than that, learned men of all kinds are telling us that this society of ours, the modern Western world, is the only civilisation in the whole of the “world's history which has not held that view and based its life upon it.

Where there is no vision, the people perish; ... if those who are the salt of the earth lose their savour, there is nothing to keep’ that earth disinfected, nothing to prevent it from falling into complete decay. The mystics are channels through which a little knowledge of reality filters down into our human universe of ignorance and illusion. A totally unmystical world would be a world totally” blind and insane. From the beginnings of the eighteenth century onwards, the sources of all mystical knowledge have been steadily diminishing in number, all over the planet. We are dangerously advanced into the darkness.

For several centuries now, Europe has been the battleground for an attack upon the very existence of the spirit of man, though it was during and after the eighteenth century that the attack reached its height; and it is man who has been more or less consistently the loser till almost the whole of his heritage has been taken from him. The stature of Christian man was infinite—we speak of Christian doctrine and belief not practice quia omnes nos peccavimus : we betray what we believe but that does not invalidate the beliefs—because seeking first the kingdom of heaven he could find oneness with God and be tilled, and all the other things, the knowledge and love of created things and joy in them, and the whole of a happy human life, were added to him.