Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/596

 584 T. HAEPEB'S METAPHYSICS OF THE SCHOOL, m. i. and finality ; and, perhaps, there might be added an appendix on " the concord " between scholastic and modern embryology. This is partly a concord of that very general and vague kind which more or less obtains between the best common-sense and the happy guesses of genius on the one hand and natural science on the other : thus, " Modern botanists agree with St. Thomas that the highest natural operation of plants is that of reproduc- tion ". But it is much oftener an agreement to differ in details, or to allow the Saint to roam in free speculation far beyond the little space of solid fact and fairly confirmed theory which ordinary men of science have cleared and fenced : thus, " The active prin- ciple is in the spenn-cell," " the active virtue from the soul of the male parent ". This is quite uncertain if not unmeaning, and is rather ungallant to boot, but falls in with the subtle masculinity of mediaeval theology and of the saint's polity worldly and other- worldly, and no significance or alignment is too subtle or remote for his regard. Then, " vital operations in the embryo (are) not from the mother but from the soul of the embryo," and its " vital spirits (are) directive cause of development," and so on with the curious drama of souls and spirits and " formative virtue " in generation. Much of this is " metaphysic " of the most trans- cendent sort in masquerade, and as such out of the plane of science altogether. And, for the rest, it must be said that of these matters we know nothing for certain, if anything at all ; for, if they are above the horizon they still only just glimmer and fade in the debateable cloud-land that borders vision. Content, patience, reserve, do not seem to be words of the School, which forgets that faith may be directly as doubt and inversely as dogma. The immense painstaking and the remarkable skill with which F. Harper has collected and manipulated biological facts and fancies, call for notice, but the conglomeration that results refuses to be charmed by him into a living organic whole of thought with the quasi-physiology of his school. There always comes in a forbidding of the banns and the union is checked short of vitality, as where, on p. 152, the speculative biologist is pleas- ing himself with the " concord " about natural evolution of living forms without " the direct Agency of the First Efficient Cause," when St. Thomas abruptly steps in and " makes an exception of the human soul " or life. It may be admitted, however, that Father Harper is more suc- cessful in war than in peacemaking; and his criticism of the atomism of speculative physics, as ordinarily held and understood, is worthy of most careful consideration and of our respect and reservation of judgment even where we do not quite follow him. Coming after Mr. Stallo's recent book, which owes so much to Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsrjrun.de der Naturwissenschaft, a great deal of it has been anticipated in detail, but its standpoint is on the whole different, and, perhaps, as an alternative one, valid at least for provisional and destructive purposes. It would be in-