Sia,—Your recent review of M. E. Gilson's History of Christian
Philosophy in the Middle Ages was unworthy of your paper. There must be few students of mediaeval philosophy who do not know that Gilson is not a cleric. Your reviewer is one of them. But perhaps one who, instead of discussing Gilson's treatment of a technical subject, delivers himself with condescending prejudice of outmoded generali- ties, does so precisely because he is not sufficiently acquainted with the subject on which he has the presumption to pronounce. Would it be fair, for example, for a reviewer of a book on biochemistry to complain, not that the book under review, but that bio- chemistry itself was boring? Your reviewer, moreover, does not even succeed in his painful efforts at being clever: 'Aquinas, Father Gilson says, "changed the water of philosophy to the wine of theology." Water, forsooth! The metaphor is perfect. Scholastic philosophy is usually clear; it purifies and sometimes it dilutes theology; but how quickly one has had enough of it!' Such reviewing is contemptible. —Yours faithfully, University College, Dublin
JOHN J. O'MEARA
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