The Three Ages of the Interior Life by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange O. P., Common Mystic Prayer by Gabriel Diefenbach, O. F. M. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 119 if Mr. Everett had permitted his readers to form their own judgments about Patten and his theories. In summation we believe that Mr. Everett has succeeded rather well in delineating the religious ethos in the theorizing of John Bates Clark and Richard T. Ely. However, we cannot insist too strongly that the contributions of these gentlemen have the character of restatement rather than originality. If in the nineteenth century Clark and Ely defended so ably the thesis that economics should not be divorced from ethics it must be remembered that they were merely reiterating the position of seven centuries old Thomism. And if these two Christian gentlemen had recognized the Calvinism against which they rebelled in their youth as the theological root of the separation of economics from the area of morals and, having recognized this fact, delved deeply into the Summa of St. Thomas, they would have found there the indispensable dogmatic validation of the ethical doctrines they preached. In our opinion Simon Nelson Patten should not have been included as an exponent of religion in economics. It is true that Patten believed in a social Christianity which for him at least assumed the proportions of a faith. But any dispassionate analysis of his doctrines reveals that his unorthodoxy was so marked, the departure in his philosophizing from traditional Christianity so obvious, that to classify him with Clark and Ely is very nearly tantamount to misrepresentation. Patten's intentions may have been admirable but the implications of his teachings, when actualized in practice, could be, as they have very nearly been, nothing short of disastrous. Providence CoUege, Providence, R. I. CHARLES B. QUIRK, O.P. The Three Ages of the Interior Life. (Volume I.) By REGINALD GARRioouLAGRANGE 0. P. (Translated by Sister M. Timothea Doyle, 0. P .) St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder Book Co., 1947. Pp. 517, with bibliography and index. $5.00. Common Mystic Prayer. By GABRIEL DIEFENBACH, 0. F. M. Cap. Paterson , N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1947. Pp. 136, with bibliography. $1.50. Father Garrigou-Lagrange is one of the acknowledged contemporary masters of Dominican spirituality. For all the years of his long career as a teacher and writer, he has fought a continuous battle to reestablish tradi- ~onal principles of the spiritual life and to bring out the Dominican contributions to the tradition. There are still many theologians who do not 120 BOOK REVIEWS agree with the great Dominican authority, but they no longer hold as tenaciously as they did once to the views of the spiritual life that were current during the 19th and early !lOth centuries. In an attempt to avoid the errors of quietism theologians began to split up the unity of the spiritual life by overemphasizing the differences between the ascetical and mystical states of soul. The peak of this trend can be found in the article on Mysticiame in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, which practically identifies mysticism with the miraculous. While admitting that there are many extraordinary phenomena in the lives of some mystics, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange has insisted that the substance of the mystical life needs no extraordinary principles, such as infused ideas, but is a normal, though unfortunately rare, development of the supernatural principles that are present in the soul from baptism, viz. sanctifying grace, the infused theological and moral virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Especially in the last he finds an adequate explanation for the essentials of the mystical life; the growing predominance of the activity of the Holy Ghost through His gifts, the corresponding perfection of the theological virtues, establishes the soul in a state of perfection that is just short of the perfection of heaven by the absence of the Beatific Vision. Such perfection cannot be attained by an active spirituality, for it requires a purification of soul that can come only from the initiative of the Holy Ghost working in the soul in what S. Teresa always refers to as a "supernatural" way. During such times of purification the soul is no longer the initiator of its own activity, but it is being moved by a higher principle. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange has written many works on...