An associate of ESTAR(SER) residing in Belgium recently passed us the following short notice, which we reproduce here:

“In the course of a perusal of A.G. Sertillanges’ well known La vie intellectuelle (I was working with the edition of 1921), I found myself quite arrested by several turns of phrase in chapter 6, ‘L’esprit du travail.’  I take the liberty of including an image. It will be remarked that Father Sertillanges here suggests that ‘comprendre c’est de devenir autre’ (‘to understand is to become other’) and that this is achieved by means of an uncanny effort: ‘Essayez de penser dans l’objet de la science, non en vous-même,’ which we would render as ‘endeavor to think inside the object to be understood, and not in yourself’  (this movement of thought into the thing is likened to speaking out into the air, rather than up into one’s own sinuses). Nebbel’s 1973 essay on “Birds in Cassocks” (Proceedings, second series, Volume II, no. 3, pp. 11-28) does discuss a number of Jesuits and Franciscans working in Francophone Europe (and the colonies) in the first decades of the twentieth century who are strongly suspected of Birdish associations, but I was unaware of any links to the Dominican order. In light of Sertillanges’ striking phraseology here, a closer look would be, I think, warranted.”

We agree. Anyone with further leads is encouraged to follow up.