Being - A Study in Metaphysics

Since the decline of scholasticism, scholars the world over have been busy with vain endeavors to elaborate a coherent system of philosophy. Men of all but transcendent ability have given their best efforts to the work of moulding their thoughts into a shape which they hoped would be at once lasting and profitable. But invariably the result has been a sad failure. System after system has been formulated only to topple under criticism, much in the same way that playhouses of colored blocks fall before the blows of a vigorous child. And in every instance the weakness of the system has been in the foundation rather than in the superstructure. Thus Hegel, for instance, built up his impossible system on a false notion of "Being," and Spinoza erected his on a false idea of sub' stance. For this reason the efforts of those who are presenting to students the pivotal doctrines of scholasticism in simple, easy language, are deserving of all praise and encouragement. Father Rother, the author of the book under review, is among such. His present volume deals in a most simple fashion with the vexed problem of "Being." Every aspect of this most metaphysical of metaphysical problems, from the bare notion to the analogy of "Being," is treated in a manner that leaves little or nothing to be desired by a student who .is taking his initial steps in scholasticism. For despite the inherent difliculty of the matter, the thought is always clear and the language is almost invariably apt. Now and then some of the expressions might be happier; but then, perhaps the exigencies of the topic under discussion render a better choice of words and phrases extremely difiicult. At any rate the blemish, if so we may call it, is slight; for in all cases the expressions chosen suit well enough the particular phase of thought which the author is striving to express. We regret that in the discussion of the analogy of "Being" Father Rothcr did not see fit to dissociate Scotus from many of his interpreters. This, we judge, can be done; for to our mind the great doctor taught a doctrine quite similar to that now in vogue among the majority of scholastics. As a final word, we recommend the book to the many who are obsessed by one or other of the wretched forms of pantheism, which are so prevalent to-day. A careful study of it will deliver them from the incubus of Hegel's "An sich" and "Fur sich," or Fichte's "Ego," or Schelling's "Absolute." which even to Hegel was as "the night in which all cows look black." "Indocti discant et ament meminisse periti." --America, Vol. 6