Books: Hope Against Mischief

SCHOLASTICISM AND POLITICS—Jacques Maritain—Macmillan ($2.50).

In the 13th Century, St. Thomas Aquinas erected a towering Gothic cathedral of thought with vaulting arches of metaphysics, flying buttresses of Aristotelian science, stained windows of Revelation. In his great study of medieval France, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Henry Adams sympathetically noted the judgment of Pope Leo XIII: "On the wings of St. Thomas's genius, human reason has reached the most sublime height it can probably ever attain."

Outstanding lay Thomist today is Jacques Maritain, who was converted to Catholicism at 20, became professor of philosophy at the Institut...