374 BOOK REVIEWS such questions as: the relation between authority and conscience; the relation between the Magisterium and the natural moral law; the fundamental difference between contraception and rhythm; the apparent parallel between the condemnation of Galileo, usury and contraception; the unbreakable link between the life-giving and the love-giving aspects of sexual intercourse; the reception of the Sacraments on the part of those who practice contraception. With regard to this last problem, a pastoral directive of great understanding and compassion is given. Married couples, we are told, who " honestly try to stop using contraception and who fall into sin should not despair, even if it happens over and over. Such couples should go to confession and then return to Communion. They should stay close to Christ in the Eucharist by receiving Him often, even-or especiallywhen they are struggling with temptation.... In going to confession, people should not demand more of themselves than God is demanding of them. But this does not mean being sure one will never fall again. . . . We believe that God rewards those who keep seeking Him, no matter how unsuccessful they seem to be in their own eyes." This booklet was primarily written for the benefit of the faithful of the Archdiocese of Washington. However, it has already been widely appreciated in many places far removed from its immediate intended destination. It should continue to enable all who read and study it to realize that Pope Paul VI has certainly benefitted mankind by issuing his Encyclical. St. Charles' Seminary Nagpur, India KILIAN R. DwYER, 0. P. The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought. By EMIL L. FACKENHEIM. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. $8.50. To the average university student today Hegel's thought seems unintelligible . It has little connection with the world of science and technology. Its theories, if they are not simply fantasies, seem arbitrary constructions of existential facts. Its core dialectic, although somewhat corresponding to an emergent evolutionary model of the world, nevertheless seems strange, a priori, and enigmatic. And yet this peculiar speculative construction was created from beginning to end precisely to explain and justify the modern mind. It is a closely reasoned off-shoot of Kantian and post-Kantian thought whose point of departure is the defense of the modern scientific world-view. This has perhaps never been presented with greater penetration and detail than by Johann Erdmann, the Hegelian of the right of the last century, in the second volume of his Outline of the History of Philosophy. With vast erudition and deep insight he shows how Hegel arose step by step BOOK REVIEWS 375 from the original Kantian endeavor to bolster the claims of Newtonian science. But the point to which Hegel was eventually led in this process seems remote from its beginning and even in conflict with it. This is in good part what makes him unintelligible. And yet, contemporary thinkers cannot escape from him. He has laid down their terminology and for many, if not for most, this is indispensable. Existentialism's debt to it is well-known. Hegel's terminology is to contemporary philosophy what scholastic terminology was to modern philosophy after the Reformation. But his influence is more than this. The content of his thought also emerges every once in a while to command renewed attention. I suspect that this is because the steps that led to it, taking their point of departure in the modern scientific mentality, have not yet been overcome. Every thinker who moves from the same beginning tends to follow the same path and, sooner or later, to become once more fascinated with the great German. In the past few years theologians have shown this interest in him and probably for the same reason. An interesting article by Peter Henrici, S. J. documents this, "Hegel und die Theologie," Gregorianurn, No. 4 (1967), 706-746. Professor Fackenheim's book is part and parcel of this new interest. He agrees with the common opinion that Hegel's thought was fundamentally Christian. Hegel, he thinks, took his beginnings from the Christian religious consciousness and from that passed to philosophy. This seems to be supported by Hegel's own statement: "Religion can exist without philosophy...