Psychologie et Morale aux XIIe et XIIIeSiècles: Tome 11, Première Partie by Odin Lottin (review)

424 BOOK REVIEWS enings, if contention and debate in that behalfe should continuallye be used . the best and holyest religion would be trodden underfote" (p. 148). In my article," The Conception of Society in More's Utopia," (Thought, September, 1947) , I presented what seems to me to be More's view on religious toleration which, I pointed out, was analogous tO Maritain's "pluralism." In Appendix A of Dr. Ames's book, the subject matter is " Religious Toleration in Utopia vs. More's Persecution of Heretics." While I do not believe this subject has been investigated along legal lines, it is possible that the solution of this ambiguity is to be found th~re. A judge has to decide according to the written law of the land, even if he personally questions its wisdom. I have not read a good paper on the extent to which law at this period is mandatory or discretionary. It would seem that this matter is worth looking into. More's " liberal " view was not indicative, of course, of that of all Catholics. Lord Acton in his essay on St. Bartholomew's Day reveals what the "strong arm" approach to ideological error could ultimately mean in a complete travesty of transcendent Christian principle. But More had anticipated according to Roper in his Life the day we " wold gladly wishe to be at a league and composition with them (heretics), to let them have their churches quietly to themselves; so that they wold be contente to let us have ours quietly to ourselves." It is also significant tha~ during the last years of More's life, till the end of his chancellorship, there was not one death sentence pronounced in the diocese of London (Chambers, Thomas More, p. 275). Fordham University, New York, N. Y. WILLIAM J. GRACE Psychologie et Morale aux XII• et XIII•Siecles: Tome 11, Premiere Partie. By ODIN LoTTIN. Louvain: Editions de l'Abbaye du Mont Cesar, 1948. Pp. 597. In an age when Christian civilization is experiencing violent upheavals even from within its own family of nations and when American democracy, one of its children, is no longer completely sure of itself and its origins, the understanding of the foundations of Christian ethics assumes great importance. In earlier ages, perhaps, Christian men could take for granted the principles and values which they possessed in common. Our American forefathers, for example, were satisfied in calling some of these truths "self-evident" and letting it go at that. Now such basic concepts as the dignity of man and fundamental rights no longer seem self-evident to many and are openly rejected by not a few. In such a time, published BOOK REVIEWS 4~5 research such as that of Abbe Lottin, on the ongm and development of moral principles, is not simply a matter of historic interest but of prime, immediate concern and practical value to all thinkers in the Christian tradition. It is impossible to appreciate not only our Christian ethical tradition but our political and legal democracy if we have not in some measure" retraced the tortuous path by which the essential moral principles governing law and conscience, rights and duties, reason and instinct were gradually unfolded, clarified, and defined. Much as we may be dazzled by the material successes of Christian civilization and democracy and astounding as each further advance of the physical sciences is, such physical achievements might well have been impossible had it not been for the earlier, less spectacular but more necessary advances in the clarification of fundamental moral concepts. Roscoe Pound has recently said, It is not an accident that jurisprudence and ethics and politics grew up and reached what may prove their maximum before there was much development of the physical sciences. The latter, indeed, could not have arisen nor gone far had it not been for the stability and security brought about and maintained by the former. If not so striking to the eye at first glance, the subjection of human behavior to the exigencies of civilized life by ordered application of the force of politically organized society which has developed in the western world since the chaos of the earlier Middle Ages, is...