Who’s a Fossil?

“Faith transcends and dissolves all creeds,” Professor Albert Guérard writes in Fossils and Presences (Stanford, $5.00). “The only God is that power within ourselves who to the intellect is Mystery, and to the heart is Charity.” While this god of Mr. Guérard’s may be somewhat more satisfactory than Caliban’s “my damned god, Setebos,” he is not God. Mr. Guérard’s god is no more godlike than the “Religious Humanist Manifesto” of John Dewey and his associates was religious or humane. And Mr. Guérard’s Presences are not supernatural, you may be sure; they are merely “those powers, past, present, and future, which are helping us and guiding us.” They are ritualistic Liberal and disintegrated Liberal Presences.

Professor Guérard’s Fossils are “those established powers—perhaps once potent for good—which are now a drag in our quest.” Among them are “rugged individualism” (a term Mr. Guérard thumps every few pages), tradition, and any organic concept of society. And where is our Quest taking us? Well, there are no enemies to the Left, you know. To be sure, those Stalinists seem to be rather unpleasant fellows; but everyone ought to know that Franco is worse; and, besides, the early Christians were Communists—so Mr. Guérard says.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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“Faith transcends and dissolves all creeds,” Professor Albert Guérard writes in Fossils and Presences (Stanford, $5.00). “The only God is that power within ourselves who to the intellect is Mystery, and to the heart is Charity.” While this god of Mr. Guérard’s may be somewhat more satisfactory than Caliban’s “my damned god, Setebos,” he is not God. Mr. Guérard’s god is no more godlike than the “Religious Humanist Manifesto” of John Dewey and his associates was religious or humane. And Mr. Guérard’s Presences are not supernatural, you may be sure; they are merely “those powers, past, present, and future, which are helping us and guiding us.” They are ritualistic Liberal and disintegrated Liberal Presences.

Professor Guérard’s Fossils are “those established powers—perhaps once potent for good—which are now a drag in our quest.” Among them are “rugged individualism” (a term Mr. Guérard thumps every few pages), tradition, and any organic concept of society. And where is our Quest taking us? Well, there are no enemies to the Left, you know. To be sure, those Stalinists seem to be rather unpleasant fellows; but everyone ought to know that Franco is worse; and, besides, the early Christians were Communists—so Mr. Guérard says.