In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDIToRS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PRoVINCE OF ST. JoSEPH Publishers: Sheed and Ward, Inc., New York City VoL. IX JANUARY, 1946 No.1 THE REBUILDING OF M:AN W E LIVE in a scientific age-one has only to look at the ruins in Coventry or London or Stalingrad to see that. And being scientifically minded we have a healthy scorn of superstition. Yet it is a curious fact that if we look for survivals of superstition at the present day we shall find them most striking and most active among the votaries of science and even, though to a rapidly dwindling extent, among scientists themselves of a certain type. One is not thinking of ladders or salt or the number thirteen: there are more important superstitions than that. Superstition means the attribution of supernatural power to purely natural things. One does not associate that sort of thing with the scientifically minded because so many of them assert their disbelief in supernatural power altogether; but if one looks a little more closely one finds that in fact some of them reject God only to invent a mythology of their own. They reject God the eternal Father, but they invent an improbable Pickwickian figure called Benevolent Progress; they reject the divine Mind but they salute a deity called Blind Chance-not a searing, consuming fire but a wayward, unpredictable sprite. 1 GERALD VANN It seems possible and indeed likely that the world after war will find itself more and more definitely dividing into the two opposing camps of those who believe in God and those who do not, and that the struggle between them-a new phase of the perennial cosmic struggle-will decide the shape of the things to come. That is why this question of superstition is of such immense practical importance for the world. What we think about God determines what we think about man; and what we think about man determines what we think about the world man lives in and the structure of human society. The reality of the struggle between believer and non-believer is not disproved, it is only complicated, by the fact that both will be equally convinced of the necessity of some practical material reform. Both may advocate, for example, some form of social service; but the difference in their way of thinking about the nature of man will reveal itself in the manner in which the social service is administered-for the one it will be a personal serving of persons and for the other an efficient soulless material improvement of an impersonal standard of living. There are many today who believe that science is the only thing that can teach us how to build a new world, and that science is enough. To the believer in God, with all that that belief implies about the nature of man, such an outlook is bound to doom men ultimately to degradation and death, however right and necessary the various particular points in the social program may be. And if belief in science, not as servant but as leader, is really belief in some modern mythology, then indeed we are doomed. If we put our faith in a god of benevolent progress instead of realizing that progress is something we have to create with the sweat of our brow, then we end-as we have in fact done so recently-in an air-raid shelter. If we put our faith in blind chance we probably fail to get as far as the shelter. One of the most popular present-day misconceptions is the idea that Marxist communism preaches a doctrine of social revolution. In fact, this is just what it does not do. It is the Christian (if he is both alive to the social iniquities of the world and faithful to the teaching of the Gospels and the Church) THE REBUILDING OF MAN who advocates social revolution; the Marxist preaches a doctrine of social evolution, which is a very different matter. The difference is only modified, not substantially changed, by adding that the evolutionary process can be accelerated by human will...

pdf

Share