Reflections on the Analogy of Being by James F. Anderson (review)

276 BOOK REVIEWS the center of which is moving about a larger deferent circle; rather, the epicycle is the small circle itself (p. 186). The commonly accepted date of Roger Bacon's death is not 1!294 but 1292 (p. 194) . But surely these objections are of a most trivial sort, and they in no way detract from the high standard of scholarship displayed throughout the book. Father Wallace has performed a most valuable service for both Thomistic scholars and historians of medieval natural philosophy. University of Wisconsm Madison, Wisconsin DAVID c. LINDBERG Reflections on the Analogy of Being. By JAMES F. ANDERSON. The Hague: Mattinus Nijhoff, 1967. Pp. 88. Imagine that twenty years ago you wrote a book which (along with brilliant chapters on the history of analogy) set down Thomistic analogy according to the schema of Cajetan. Subsequently a vast literature on the subject appeared through which runs an anti-Cajetanian thread: by and large, people argue that Cajetan's views on analogy are not those of Aquinas, make not much sense considered in themselves and ought to be discarded. Knowing this literature, having the opportunity to write another book, what would you do? If you are Professor Anderson, what you do is offer substantially the same book minus the historical chapters. The book is divided into discussions of analogy of inequality, analogy of attribution, metaphor and analogy of proper proportionality. I would like to report that, in his restatement of his position, Professor Anderson has achieved a tightness and clarity which surpass the measure of clarity reached in The Bond of Being. I would like to say that Professor Anderson, recognizing as he does the difference between establishing a position as being that of Aquinas and arguing for it convincingly in propria persona, has done one or the other or both. Professor Anderson makes no effort to show that his views are those of Aquinas, though he seems certain of the coincidence. He makes nothing like a convincing case for his own views. In order to convince his reader, Professor Anderson needs more precision in his statement. His book begins with the promising reminder that " analogy " has first of all a mathematical meaning, but he immediately rejects the significance of this. We are then told that there are many kinds of analogies which are analogously analogies because they participate in various ways in what is truly analogy, analogy of proper proportionality. The latter has never before been so firmly equated with being. Analogy of proper proportionality involves proportional-that is, analogous-unity. Being is explained in terms of proper proportionality and proper proportion- BOOK REVIEWS '277 ality is explained in terms of being. One cannot help wondering what would have happened if Professor Anderson had asked himself what kind of analogy is operative in his claim that his three (or four) kinds of analogy are analogously analogies. From the very outset of the book, what is to be explained is invoked to explain itself. This reviewer hopes that the present book represents a warm-up exercise and that Professor Anderson will soon turn his genial and cultivated mind to some, at least, of the difficulties that have been advanced against his Cajetanian views during the past several decades. As an echo of his past work, this book is disappointingly anachronistic; as possible fanfare for further and more persuasive stuff, it whets the intellectual appetite. University fY/ Notre Dame South Bend, Indiana RALPH MciNERNY A Short Account of Greek Philosophy. By G. F. PARKER. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1967. Pp. 194. $5.00. Plato and His Contemporaries. By G. C. FIELD. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc. Pp. 242, University Paperback Edition, 1967, $2.25. Deny to the life of mankind any semblance of continuity, deny any value to history and the role of the historian amounts to little more than a collector of facts, interesting perhaps but unrelated to modern life. Affirm a community to life, accept the experience of living as a fact which, while ancient with years, has maintained its identity through the passage of time, the appearance and disappearance of cultures, of social and political institutions, then the search into the past of life must be...