PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM
321
bunglingly applied to literary problems, but this can happen and has
happened with insights of all sorts-mystical insights, let us say-and
the fact is that some knowledge of analytical psychology has now become
indispensable. Elsewhere the authors seem to me to be inconsistent with
their
best insights when they deal so indulgently as they do with formalis–
tic criticism. For one thing the word "formalistic" itself is a nuisance: it
. simply perpetuates the old mechanical distinction between form and
substance that this book itself rejects (in favor of a better distinction),
and for another, the kind of criticism
it
points to has for the present
almost exhausted its usefulness. It is well enough to say that pure
exegesis itself implies a judgment of value: this is too close to the self–
defense put up by the pedantic sort of literary scholar who justifies his
devotion to the most arid subjects on the ground that this, too, implies
a judgment of value. Neither the one nor the other can be excused
from the obligation to make these judgments candid and explicit.
These, however, are relatively minor reservations to make in one's
hearty appreciation of a volume, on the whole, so studious, so painstak–
ing, so instructed, and so helpful in every way as this. Among other
things, it points straight in the direction of that authoritative Cyclopaedia
of Literary Criticism toward which so many of us have been looking.
Newton Arvin
EXISTENTIALISM AND RELIGION
EXISTENCE AND THE EXISTENT.
By
J~cques Morit~in. Tr~nsl~ted
by
Lewis
G~I~ntiere ~nd Ger~ld
B.
Phel~n. P~ntheon,
New York. $3.00.
According to M. Maritain, Thomism is an "existentialist"
philosophy: what is more, it is the only philosophy that represents "au–
thentic" existentialism. On the other hand, philosophical theories now
current under the label of existentialism have no right to
this
designation;
the existentialism they represent is "apocryphal."
How does the author arrive at this verdict? First, he defines the
principle of existentialism as the one asserting the primacy of "existence"
over "essence." Existentialism in this sense means the rejection of all
"essentialist" philosophies, the prototype of which is Platonism, and
which assert the primacy of essence over existence. The next step con–
sists in showing that a Catholic philosophy must side with existentialism
so defined, since if we hold "that only "essences" or "ideas" possess pre–
eminent being and truth, there will be no room for belief in God,
Creator of existents whom He loves and who love Him. M. Maritain
