Catholic Art and Culture By E. I. Watkin (review)

BOOK REVIEWS131 both easy and pleasant to peruse. It takes the reader into the inner recesses of the mind and shows him the motivating factors of human conduct. It points out to him the principles and ideals which must regulate human life if man is to be successful, healthy and happy. Excellent illustrations of these facts are given by citations of clinical cases and the lives of various historical and literary personalities. Among its chapters there are some which have more than a personalhygiene value. Spiritual directors will find material especially helpful to them in Chapter IV which discusses anxiety and scrupulosity. Chapters X to XV, which treat of mental hygiene in the home, will be of particular interest and value to parents. For those teaching in the grades, Chapter XVI, which treats of the application of mental hygiene in the school, will be useful. The student of English literature will find interesting psychological studies of the poets — D. G. Rossetti, Swinburne, Shelley and Kilmer in the final chapters. To those cognizant of the defects and inherent limitations of modern psychiatry, Dr. Moore's work will be welcomed for more than its personal value. Day by day, more and more people are seeking the aid of psychiatrists . And it is a sad fact that among those who are acting as the guides of human beings in their conflicts and perplexities, few are found who realize the therapeutic value of intellectual and religious matters, or who employ them in their therapeutic procedures. It is to remedy this defect of modern psychiatry and psychiatrists that Dr. Moore composed his volume. Personal Mental Hygiene is a definite contribution to the Catholic book-shelf. To accomplish its full purpose it must reach the hands of teaching and practicing psychiatrists. Personal Mental Hygiene, together with Dr. Moore's earlier work, The Nature and Treatment of Mental Disorders, answers a need long felt by many Catholics in their own work and in their discussions with non-Catholic psychiatrists. Brian Lhota, O.F.M. Holy Name College, Washington, D.C. Catholic Art and Culture. By E. I. Watkin. (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1945. Pp. 226. $4.50.) In this illuminating study, Mr. Watkin delineates the character and the history of "Catholic religion-culture" and its expression in art. According to him, this culture forms a cycle whose early stages coincide with the decline of Antiquity and the death of old paganism; it reaches its summary summit in the Gothic period and its rich autumnal stage in the Baroque era; with modern times winter sets in: Catholic religion-culture dies away in a more and more barbarized world of crude and irreligious materialism. Yet, the first buds of a new Catholic religion-culture are already ascertainable, forecasting new spring. The coming culture will harmonize the horizontal movement of secular humanism with the vertical movement towards God and the depths of the human soul in a more {»erfect manner than was ever achieved before. Contemplative Christendom ed by mystics will dominate this future development. 132BOOK REVIEWS The historical philosophy of the author is influenced by Spengler's idea of cultures as organisms subject to birth, rise, decline, and death. By combining with this view the older theories of steady and spiral cultural progress achieved in the Hegelian way of dialectical evolution, he arrives at a brighter and more optimistic outlook than the author of The Decline of the West. He deviates also in other respects. He does not care for the Spenglerian fate, and his approach to history is pragmatic. Cultures are not based on blood and soil but on religions. Every former culture was a religion-culture and so is ours. Catholic religion-culture arose within the old Hellenistic-Roman-Oriental world and survived it; it was passed over to the then young peoples of Europe as the basic and creative force of their cultural development; mass-civilization put an end to it when it turned to one-sided secularism, thus disrupting the necessary harmony between the horizontal and the vertical movement. The author's vision of the future is similar to Spengler's "second religiosity" with its mystical leanings and its longing for quiet, meditative, spiritual...