That the success of the formulation of religious ideas depends so largely on the achievement of a careful and often delicate balance between contrasting attitudes or ideas, is quite evident from the history of doctrine. And it is no hazard to claim that religion itself, more so than any other realm of mind, maintains itself by virtue of its ability to harmonise and balance significant contrasts. Paradoxes in themselves are only academic devices; the religious spirit must seek to attain cordial relations between the opposite poles.

Dr. Ropes in his encyclopaedic treatment of “The Text of Acts,” in The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. iii, 1926, omitted treatment of the Ethiopic versions for lack of reliable critical material. In the section calling attention to the Ethiopic texts (pp. cxlvi seq.), along with the expression of opinion that an investigation of that field for Acts “would produce interesting and valuable results,” he notes the Ethiopic manuscripts recorded for Acts in Gregory's list, of which “one (Paris, Bibl. Nat., aeth. 26 [Zotenberg 42]) is of the fifteenth century.” Subsequently to the completion of his volume Dr. Ropes was able to secure a photographic copy of that MS. of Acts; and he did the present writer the honor of asking him to make a critical study of what appeared to be the oldest known witness to Acts in that version.

Veri criterium est id ipsum fecisse.

This is the pivotal formula, the central theme of the speculative system of G. B. Vico.

When the question of the origin of this axiom, fraught with such important results for the destiny of moral sciences, is investigated in detail, it will be necessary to proceed to a thorough examination of the relations connecting Vico's metaphysics with scholastic thought, and especially with the systematization given to it by F. Suarez.