Frederic Palmer's account of Angelus Silesius, published in the April number of this Review, portrays admirably the struggles of a German mystic of some three hundred years ago, to attain the unattainable, to give utterance to the unutterable. Three and twenty hundred years ago, the like struggles were making part of the spiritual history of distant India. Perhaps Dr. Palmer's essay may lend a certain timeliness to an endeavor to interest Occidental readers in those sombre followers of the Mystic Way, who—time out of mind—have held retreat for meditation in the solemn stillness of the forests “lapped by the storied Hydaspes.”

More than a year ago, in a letter to the present writer, an eminent French savant, M. Alfred Loisy, contrasted the parts played by the Pope and the President of the United States respectively in the war. “Maintenant c'est Wilson qui devient pape, et qui fait la morale aux belligérants, en nous appuyant de son crédit politique, financier, militaire. Vive le pape Wilson!” The contrast was just. “Faire la morale aux belligérants” — this is what we expect a Pope to do. We have been disappointed; it is exactly what he has not done. On the other hand, the President is the one politician on either side who has risen to the level of a statesman, and has gained, not lost, in reputation during the last four years. It must be remembered that he came late into the firing line, and has therefore been less exposed than his European colleagues to the test of time under which so many of them have broken down. But more than any one man now in public life, he stands for the combination of Reason and Energy.

St. John tells us that when Jesus was parting with his friends he comforted them with the assurance that, though for a little while they should not see him, the time would come when they should have a deeper understanding of his life.

It is twenty-five years since Phillips Brooks died, and as we think of what he was to those who knew him, how great our loss has been, let us hope that some such experience as John prophesied has been ours in our relation to our great friend.

In regard to Western scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, every one repeats the laconic judgment, that it is “philosophy in the service, under the sway and direction, of Catholic theology.” It could be nothing else; and it seems that one has said everything after announcing this clear-cut formula. This current definition, susceptible of the most different meanings, is found on the first page of a recent book, published during the War, on the philosophy of the Middle Ages; and though the author gives a very mild interpretation of it, it is offered to the reader as an abridged thesis, in which one finds condensed all that is important to know on the subject. “Scholasticism is Philosophy placed at the service of already established ecclesiastical doctrine, or at least philosophy placed in such a dependence on this doctrine that it becomes an absolute Rule when both meet on common ground.”

Now this current definition of scholastic philosophy in the Middle Ages defines it very badly, because it is a mixture of the true and the false, of accuracy and of inaccuracy. It must be distrusted, like those equivocal maxims which John Stuart Mill calls “sophisms of simple inspection,” which by force of repetition enjoy a kind of transeat or vogue in science without being questioned.