Publications in French

370 PERIODICAL WRITING pretentious. But one can at least give some indication of the variety of the contributions: Maurice Lebel, "Entretien national sur 1'humanisme " (mars; repeated in English, juin); A.-M. Hainelin, "Le Tractatus de Usuris de Maitre Alexandre d'Alexandrie (juin et septembre); R. P. Little, "Some Recollections of Tom Thomson and Canoe Lake" (jwn); G. J. Lavere, "The Basis for the State in the Political Philosophy of John Locke" (decembre). These divisions of which I speak are not to be healed by bilingual politicians, or hockey players, or meetings of professional associations. If they are to be healed at all, the arts must be our physicians. And the arts-among which we must give no mean place to prose in periodicals -are cosmopolitan. It is parochialism, disguised as "national consciousness," which divides a culture while attempting to nourish and defend it. There is, therefore, good ground for optimism when one can find so much critical and occasional writing in our periodicals which, whether its theme is Canadian or not, displays an intelligence, good humour, and versatility which follow no flag. XI. PUBLICATIONS IN FRENCH W. E. Collin La Lumiere de I'tlme (Montreal, Edns du Levrier, 224 pp., $2.00) is a collection of talks delivered over the radio by the distinguished Dominican scholar Father Louis Lachance. His theine was the role of grace in social and personal life. Considering "rebirth," of which Christ spoke to Nicodemus, as the essence of Christian experience he showed how later philosophers and theologians, St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, drew from it a theory of Christian humanism. Rebirth, he noted, means acquiring a new being, a new nature, a new conception of our filial relation to God and to drive the point home to his special audience he paused to examine the religious situation in Quebec. Here he made statements which are pertinent to the discussion of an idea that has engaged many minds this year: the collective soul of French Canada. "Catholicism in French Canada," he said, "is a mass phenomenon .. . . Mass Catholicism implies perfect integration of the clergy in the mass of the faithful ... and offers a ground which favours the growth of the mysticism of the leader." "Our religious life," he noted, "stays on a low plane. We are so possessed by the desire for earthly goods that we no longer hunger and thirst for that perfection which LETTERS IN CANADA, 1955 371 alone can make a man grow to his full stature." The coming of the gospel caused a revolution, a complete break in the web of time; the order of fate ended, the order of grace was enthroned in the very heart of man's personality. What French Canadians have lost, according to this spiritual doctor, is the idea of "the capital role that grace must play in our social and personal lives," the understanding that "the gospel gave us the laws, unknown before, which link man's world to his Creator." M. Edouard Montpetit (1882-1954) was the most human of nationalists . During the last few years of his life he was preparing for pUblication the third volume of his Souvenirs and a work he intended to call Presences. In Souvenirs (Montreal, Therien Freres, 235 pp.) he describes his visits to Rome, Paris, Brussels, Oxford, Edinburgh where he weilt to represent his own University of Montreal or to give lectures on French-Canadian culture. Montpetit was more than an economist; to economy he added history and geography; indeed within his vision all things, science, art, religion, literature, are inextricably mixed. Suffusing all is a spirit of fidelity. His concept of "presence" is a permanent contribution to Canadian thought. One of his disciples, Jean Desy, writes to him: "I can still see you caressing some polished stones you gathered on the beach at Perce, as though they were priceless bronzes. To penetrate the secret of beings, to receive the quickening truth, to translate it into action, that was the programme you outlined for us." Montpetit speaks of "the humanized landscape of France." Many an evening he sat on the bank of the great river of Canada thinking he caught the echo of paddles and voices...