Abstract

The Grammar of Assent is at first sight a baffling book. It has no preface, and its opening sentences are dry and forbidding. Yet once Newman’s purpose is grasped, its whole drift becomes clear. Aldous Huxley remarked long ago that “Newman’s analysis of the psychology of thought remains one of the most acute, as it is certainly the most elegant, which has ever been made”. One opens Father Boekraad’s study hoping that at last this want of an introduction has been supplied, but alas! one is doomed to disappointment. His book has many merits, but one grave defect—it is obscure. It has to be read two or three times before it can be understood. If then, the Grammar of Assent itself is at first sight obscure, here we have a case of ‘obscurum per obscurius’. This is a great pity, because Father Boekraad is full of enthusiasm for his subject, and has devoted great pains to it. He has been able to study Newman’s unpublished papers in Birmingham, under the guidance of Father Henry Tristram, and publishes apposite and valuable extracts from them.