The Pilgrimage of Western Man

The president of St. John's College, Annapolis, has won for himself the right to be heard. This is a thoughtful, careful and intelligent tracing of the pilgrimage of western man in search for unity, freedom and justice under law. President Barr, an eminent historian, examines the past in order to approach a solution for the future, when he feels no existing state can preserve man from war unless some sort of world government functions. He goes back to the 13th century with the vision of the City of God, St. Thomas Aquinas the spokesman. He traces the growing importance of the vision of the City of Man, the beginnings of humanism, the development of science, of Renaissance art, and on its heels, the Reformation, the march of controls, of revolution, of democracy, as the City of Man approaches its zenith in the nationalist concepts, the gods of power, and the machine in the nineteenth century. Two world wars, linked by armistice, shatters the dream, which is succeeded by the schizophrenia which causes countries to cooperate for peace on the one hand to prepare for war on the other. In conclusion he says that man is still searching for a city, a common government, whether as a Hitler or a Stalin would have it, or by common action as it should and must be. This is a reasoned argument, scholarly and readable. A sane balance among many impassioned books. (Kirkus Reviews)