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t 1. t ~ t • ' I : . 444 THE UNIVERSITY. OF TORO).;TO ·QUARTERLY -and morality as the counterpart of the· mysti.c's "dark night," which i_s a dimming ou_t of the lower forms of activity~ particularly .a rejection of aes,t~esls, i.e. of all imagery whatever. -· Leaving out th~ metaphysical awkwardness of trying to reconcile Croce and St. Thomas....::._..yhich, ~o say the least, seem·s to m'e insuperable_:_it should be remarked that t'he grounds of mistrust are more serious than _ Dr. MacGregor seems to s_ee. Aesthetic e~perience, exalted as it widely is today_ -to the supreme status.. of "the last ench_artment of ~u; kind," issues in· a .religion of _art which is a dangerous rival to 'Christianity-in effect a relapse into a form of pagan worship at the temple of the Muses. "No sane -artist" he says, "would claim qua artist that he produced works that were the lively oracles ·o'f God"-but this is precisely what artist-s, and _ artists as-great as Dante and Milton,·luve claimed; furthc:,-, and even more disconcertingly, the claims made by a Mallarme seem to be esse-ntially of the same order. . , -I , I I , But if the thesis of root and flower must have the effect of encouraging the ae-sthete's confusion of religion w~th aesthetic ~apture,- its second ~nd graver consequence is to suggest -_that religious experience is simply a I higher form of aesthesis. It is a ~rue (and profound) remark that" "the extent to which we ca_n use unpromising situ-ations to our spi ritual advantage depends. ·on our-. ... attainment in the mystical direction of·our will,. just· as· the extent to which we can s'ee beauty in a· frying-pan depends on the.·· maturity of our aesthetic experience"; but when w'e· have extracted its truth, we m-ust reject it -as a misleading analogy, because it suggests that religion is just a pigher art.- There is nothing- more dangerous to talk about,· ' the author admits, than mysticism, and he ·has run the danger at length, and not with impunity. [n spite of all pr'ecautions, mystical states are presented as induced "by an extremely complex .technique," that is, by us; in spite of all,good mystics to the co.ntrary, the purpose of these exercises. is presented as the enjoyment of Divine "favours." It is a picture which·might well lead the plain man to say, "Mysticism is indeed a merely aesthetic state, ?-nd I think I prefer Christian~ty.)) Surely the most half-hearted consideration of the Imitatio Christi reveals the model of a thoroughly _ active life; a life, that is, where all ~on templati6n .issues directly in action~ ·· rather than all action being absorbed and ~rawn _up in to" con tern plative enjoyment. .An I-ntroduction to Linguistic Science. By EDGAR H. STURTEVANT. ·New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press [Toronto: Ryerson]. 19-47. Pp. ix, 173. '($3.50) The study of linguistics now embraces such a wide variety of methods that the publication of a 'new in traduction to the· science requires no·' I '~ -\ SHORTER NOTICES· 445 ,· justification, especially 'one written by a scholar so competent as Edgar H· Stur,tevant, Professor of Linguisric~) Emeritus, at Yale. From the appli:cation of many methodologies, two facts seem to emerge as the- cardinal -doctrines of language study: the ~tructure of any language may be described . in terms of an over-all patterning of relatively 1simple sub-patterns, and tllese sub-patterns are constantJ y exposed to 1 the- operation of repatterping·: It is primarily with. the Ia tte1: long-es'tablished principle of historical ch~nge tQ.at, Sturtevant's previ.ous puBlications have· been- concerned, an·d his present. work derives much of its freshn e.ss fi-om his in timate acqu ai nranee with. special aspects of the subject such_as the relat'ion of Hittite to Indo-: European. He. does not ignore, however, the tentative findings of the more recent structural approach. lnd_eed,- at times he dramatizes the findings most successfully' as, for. instance, when in discussing syntax he writes: "There are, then, t\VO ways in...

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