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EDITH STEIN
Watercolor by Teresa Buczynska
ICS Publications
2131 Lincoln Road NE
Washington, D.C. 20002-1199
www.icspublications.org

© Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc., 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information, storage or retrieval
system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Book and cover design by Rose Design

Cover illustration of Edith Stein by Teresa Buczynska, © 2011; Published with the kind permission of the artist
and Dom Edyty Stein (The Edith Stein Society), Wrocław, Poland.
www.edytastein.org.pl

Back cover: Edith Stein’s passport photo (1938), taken for her transfer to Echt, the Netherlands; courtesy of
the Cologne Carmel and Archivum Carmelitanum Edith Stein

Produced and printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Haney, Kathleen M., editor.

Title: Listening to Edith Stein : wisdom for a new century : a collection of essays / edited by Kathleen Haney.

Description: First [edition]. | Washington, D.C. : ICS Publications, 2018. | Series: Carmelite studies ; 12
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016040175 | ISBN 9781939272454 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Stein, Edith, Saint, 1891-1942. | Christian philosophers—Germany. | Carmelite Nuns—
Germany. | Christian martyrs—Germany.

Classification: LCC BX4705.S814 L57 2016 | DDC 271.97102 [B]—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040175

eISBN - 978-1-939272-74-4

54321
The Collected Works of Edith Stein in English
Critical editions translated from the original German
Published in English exclusively by ICS Publications

Volume 1
Life in a Jewish Family: An Autobiography, 1891–1916
Volume 2
Essays on Woman (2nd ed., rev.)
Volume 3
On the Problem of Empathy (3rd ed., rev.)
Volume 4
The Hidden Life: Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts
Volume 5
Self-Portrait in Letters, 1916–1942
Volume 6
The Science of the Cross
Volume 7
Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities
Volume 8
Knowledge and Faith
Volume 9
Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of
Being
Volume 10
An Investigation Concerning the State
Volume 11
Potency and Act: Studies Toward a Philosophy of Being
Volume 12
Edith Stein: Letters to Roman Ingarden
(Edith Stein: Self-Portrait in Letters)
Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART I
IN DIALOGUE WITH THE PREMODERNS

1. Carmel in Cologne, Echt, and Auschwitz: Edith Stein’s Last Journeys and the
Meaning of Place in Exile
—ANN ASTELL

2. The Spiritual Life and Its Degrees According to Edith Stein


—ANGELA ALES BELLO

3. The Passion of Edith Stein—Revisited


—PRUDENCE ALLEN, R.S.M.

4. Value, Emotions, and Edith Stein


—SARAH BORDEN SHARKEY

5. Edith Stein’s Metaphysics: Body, Soul, Spirit


—JOHANNA VALIQUETTE

6. Images of the Unseen: Stein’s Semiotics of Mystical Theology


—KATHLEEN HANEY

7. Faith and Phenomenon: Edith Stein on the Paradox of Prayer


—MICHAEL F. ANDREWS

PART II
IN DIALOGUE WITH MODERNS AND POSTMODERNS

8. Edith Stein and Renewal: “The New Spirit Already Exists and Will Prevail”
—JOHN SULLIVAN, O.C.D.

9. A Purely Formal Conclusion: God Exists

—WALTER REDMOND

10. Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger: On the Meaning of Being


—METTE LEBECH

11. Being, Aevum, and Nothingness: Edith Stein on Death and Dying
—ANTONIO CALCAGNO

12. Empathy and the Face: Edith Stein and Emmanuel Levinas
—MICHAEL R. PARADISO-MICHAU

13. Life and the Other World: Edith Stein and Michel Henry
—ISOBEL BOWDITCH

14. Edith Stein: Between Husserl and Thomas Aquinas: Phenomenology and Christian
Philosophy
—ANGELA ALES BELLO

15. Genesis and Beyond: Phenomenological Feminism in St. John Paul II and St. Edith Stein

—KATHLEEN HANEY

Contributors
Published Works of Edith Stein

Index
Foreword

Two words readily come to mind when we consider the writings of


Edith Stein: breadth and depth. Stein conveys a broad range of
scholarly interests and knowledge, as well as a profound desire to
plumb whatever subject matter she was investigating. This can be
seen in a few ways. First of all, not only do her writings demonstrate
her grasp of phenomenology and the work of her contemporary
phenomenologists from Husserl to Heidegger, but Stein’s works also
display her knowledge of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Pseudo-
Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Teresa of Ávila, and John
of the Cross, among others. Stein did not simply bring together the
work of various great philosophers and theologians; rather, she
delved into their work after having first wrestled with given topics
herself. As she writes, some thinkers who are “born
phenomenologists” apply “their efforts to a direct investigation of the
actually-given world of things.” Such thinkers “arrive at an
understanding of other minds and of the products of their
intellectual labor only with the aid of what they have been able to
ascertain by the exertion of their own intellect.”1 Such an approach
accounts for the originality in Stein’s work. She connects her thought
to the work of other scholars and, because of this connection,
anyone engaging in only a cursory reading can easily overlook
Stein’s originality and unique contributions to the world of philosophy
and theology.
Secondly, Stein’s writings also cover a broad range of topics:
empathy, sentient causality, the individual and the community, the
state, women’s issues, commonalities and differences between
Thomistic philosophy and phenomenology, ontology, the Trinity, and
the tripartite structure of the human being, to name a few. Whatever
the subject matter, her study is always in-depth, incorporating
numerous insights and other related themes that she deems
necessary for her investigation of a given topic. Stein is a seeker of
truth, and her writings convey what she has uncovered in her
search. Ultimately, she invites readers to do their own deep seeking;
as she writes, “one cannot learn and teach philosophy, but only
philosophizing.”2
Unlike many other philosophers, Stein never had the opportunity
to gather university students around her who, through direct
interaction, could become familiar with and expound on her
sometimes dense thought. While this was unfortunate, one
advantage of this circumstance is that each generation of Stein
scholars must grapple directly with her thought. In this volume,
Kathleen Haney has brought together the work of numerous Stein
scholars who have done just that and whose essays reflect both the
breadth and depth of Stein’s philosophizing and shed light on Stein’s
originality in approach and thought.
Ann Astell explores the concept of “place” in Stein’s life from the
time of her entrance into Carmel until her death in Auschwitz.
Angela Ales Bello describes Stein’s exposition of the spirit and the
growth of spiritual life. Prudence Allen writes on Stein’s passion
apparent in her love of others, love of truth, and love of God. Sarah
Borden Sharkey examines Stein’s analogy between emotional
perception and other sense perceptions. Johanna Valiquette
highlights Stein’s awareness that in some way, all creation reflects
the Trinity in a threefold manner. Kathleen Haney utilizes a poem
written by Stein to begin an exploration of the influence of Pseudo-
Dionysius on Stein’s work and her semiotics of mystical theology.
Michael Andrews looks into the relationship between prayer and
knowledge that surfaces in Stein’s essay on Pseudo-Dionysius, “Ways
to Know God.” John Sullivan explicates the many ways that the
theme of renewal via the Spirit of God comes up in Stein’s life.
Walter Redmond examines Stein’s approaches to the world above—
absolute being, God—which are rooted in her search for reality.
Based on Stein’s essay “Martin Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy,”
appended to Finite and Eternal Being, Mette Lebech explores Stein’s
interest in contesting Heidegger’s work. Stein’s alternative approach
toward the use of phenomenology and the incorporation of other
philosophical traditions results in a different and fuller understanding
of the meaning of being. Opening up a relatively new avenue of
study, Antonio Calcagno mines Stein’s works for her treatment of
death and dying and wrestles with some of her claims. Michael
Paradiso-Michau explores how the two students of Husserl, Stein and
Levinas, each treat the topic of ethical responsibility to the Other.
Isobel Bowditch looks at the different approaches taken by Stein and
Michel Henry in their rendering of an affirmative understanding of
life. In a second contribution, Angela Ales Bello, noting John Paul II’s
inclusion of Edith Stein among a list of Christian philosophers in his
encyclical Fides et Ratio (On the Relationship between Faith and
Reason), expounds on Stein’s work to bring Thomistic thought into
conversation with secular philosophy while determining both the
limits and connections between them. Finally, Kathleen Haney
contributes a second essay that discusses themes shared by Stein
and John Paul II regarding women and the importance of
personhood.
As can be demonstrated by these essays, the breadth and depth
of Stein’s writings offer a wide terrain for scholarly exploration and
often make it possible to bring her thought into dialogue with others
in the history of philosophy as well as with her post-Kantian
contemporaries. As Kathleen Haney correctly states in her
introduction, Stein’s work does not fit neatly into any single category,
as some might have previously supposed. Stein has added her own
voice to what she considered to be some of the fundamental
questions of philosophy, theology, life, and faith—questions that
have been taken up by great minds over the centuries. Because of
the intricacy of her thought and the many interconnections she
perceives, as well as her respect for other thinkers and for what she
found to be true in their thought, the singularity of her contributions
is not always readily apparent. By focusing on various aspects of
Stein’s multifaceted work, each author of this volume, aptly titled
Listening to Edith Stein: Wisdom for a New Century, contributes to
the important task of identifying Stein’s distinctive voice in the
human search for truth, a voice that beckons us to maintain a vital
contact with the wisdom of the past, to pay close attention to the
many academic and cultural achievements of the human spirit in the
present, and to draw on our individual experience and talents so as
to add our own contributions, no matter how great or small, to the
human quest for truth.

Marian Maskulak, C.P.S., PHD, S.T.D.


Theology and Religious Studies
St. John’s University, Queens, N.Y.

Notes
1. Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, trans. Kurt
Reinhardt, CWES, vol. 9 (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002), xxx.

2. Edith Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, ed. Claudia Marièle Wulf, Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe, vol.
8 (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 6; hereafter abbreviated as ESGA.
Acknowledgments

This collection of essays began as the Fall 2006 issue of Listening:


Journal of Religion and Culture, dedicated to “Edith Stein:
Phenomenologist and Theologian.” My dear friend and splendid
Husserlian Marilyn Nissim-Sabat proposed that I edit the journal and
later suggested expanding it into a book of essays on Stein. Her
inspiration and openness are the reason behind this effort. So the
present volume includes revisions of four of the essays originally
written for Listening: “Edith Stein and Renewal” by Father John
Sullivan, O.C.D.; “Edith Stein: Paradox and Prayer” by Michael F.
Andrews; “The Spiritual Life and Its Degrees According to Edith
Stein” by Angela Ales Bello; and “Edith Stein on the Structure of
Being: Body, Soul, Spirit” by Johanna Valiquette.
Sister Prudence Allen’s essay was posted in an electronic version
in a Festchrift to honor the hundredth birthday of Father Eleutherius
Winance, O.S.B., July 10, 2009. Father Winance taught
phenomenology to many graduate students at Claremont Graduate
University through the years. The posting is available at
http://www.laici.va/content/dam/laici/documenti/donna/filosofia/engl
ish/the-passion-of-edith-stein.pdf. The paper was previously
presented as a lecture at the Edith Stein Project Conference,
University of Notre Dame, February 14, 2009.
An earlier draft of Sarah Borden Sharkey’s essay was presented at
Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture conference on Formation
and Renewal, October 4, 2003. Anthony Calcagno’s “Being, Aevum,
and Nothingness: Edith Stein on Death and Dying” is a revised
version of an article that first appeared in Continental Philosophy
Review 41, 2008, 59–72. We are grateful to Continental Philosophy
Review for permission to include it in this volume.
“Images of the Unseen: Stein’s Semiotics of Mystical Theology”
was previously published in Semiotics 2008: Specialization, Semiosis,
Semiotics, edited by John Deely and Leonard G. Sbrocchi (New York,
Ottawa, Toronto: Legas, 2009); the paper was presented at the
thirty-third Annual Meeting of the Semiotics Society of America, held
October 16–19, 2009, in Houston, Texas. I am very grateful to my
friend Lois Zamora, the originator of the New World Baroque
construct, who helped me so much to clarify my thinking and to
simplify my prose. I think she’s even responsible for the title of the
essay.
The other essays have been written for this volume.
I owe thanks to many people, first to the authors of these fine
essays for allowing me to make a whole out of their many different
studies. Their insights into Edith Stein’s work demonstrate the range
of her thought as well as its remarkable consistency and continuity.
Marian Maskulak, C.P.S., is gratefully to be thanked for her careful
and generous reading of the entire manuscript and her numerous
suggestions for improvement. Father John Sullivan and Professor
Walter Redmond provided encouragement throughout the lengthy
processes of editing and readying the manuscript for publication.
Thanks to Pat and Jim for being with me and helping during the
many years I worked on this project. Virginia Galloway knows how
much she contributed. Lastly, my gratitude to the editorial team at
ICS Publications (the Institute of Carmelite Studies) for bringing their
dedication and professional skills to this book on Edith Stein. Their
commitment to seeing this book through to publication despite many
challenges and delays ensures that Stein’s thought and these
reflections on it will be available to a wide readership.
Abbreviations

CWES Collected Works of Edith Stein (ICS Publications)


EES Endliches und ewiges Sein—Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum
Sinn des Seins (The German version of Finite and Eternal
Being )
EES , HA Mette Lebech’s translation of the Heidegger Appendix
from Endliches und ewiges Sein—Versuch eines Aufstiegs
zum Sinn des Seins
ESGA Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe
ESW Edith Steins Werke
JPPF Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische
Forschung
MHE “Martin Heideggers Existentialphilosophie,” in Welt und
Person , Edith Steins Werke, vol. 6, ed. Lucy Gelber and
Romaeus Leuven (Louvain, Belgium: Nauwelaerts, 1962)
Introduction

Edith Stein, saint and scholar, made remarkable, original


contributions to both philosophy and theology. She reconciled the
subjectivity that modern philosophy emphasizes with the objectivity
that premodern philosophy assumes. In so doing, she reintegrates
the history of the philosophical tradition and examines some of the
bridges between philosophy and theology. The essays in this volume
magnify her vibrant voice so that the reader can hear her words
clearly, whether she speaks about the triune nature of the Christian
God or the impending dangers in the German state, or the
relationship between faith and reason. Stein’s biography is well
known: her birth in Breslau, Poland, in 1891 to Jewish parents; her
father’s death when she was two years old; her loss of faith in her
early adolescence; her phenomenological training with Edmund
Husserl; her conversion to Catholicism in 1922; her entry into the
Discalced Carmelite Order in 1933; and, as Sister Teresa Benedicta
of the Cross, her death in Auschwitz in 1942. Other biographical
details include a short stint as a nurse during World War I and years
of teaching women and lecturing on feminist topics.
Given these extraordinarily varied cultural and intellectual
commitments, the continuity of Stein’s thought is noteworthy. Post-
conversion and pre-conversion Edith Stein differ in authorial
intention but not in interpretative principles, which remain constant
throughout her work, binding it together. Of course, her post-
conversion writings are informed by her acquired Catholic faith, but
when she engages in speculations based on the revealed truths of
Christianity, her speculative philosophy shows her phenomenological
formation. Post-conversion here does not refer to a transformation
or a disruption of her work so much as a subordination or ordering
of her early themes according to the doctrines of the Church, when
her interests are theological as well as philosophical. Unlike Martin
Heidegger’s famous Kehre, Stein makes no turn.
Stein’s way enacts a passionate search for truth. She assures us
that if we seek the truth, we shall find it. That all truths must be
consistent with Christian faith justifies her belief in the harmony of
truth. This sense of truth conjures up the deity’s point of view. Faith,
according to Stein, is a dark Light. Faith, or the contents of the
doctrines of Christian Scriptures, cannot be fathomed. The
relationship between reason and its supplement, the “dark light of
faith,” is dynamic; they mutually engage each other. Although Stein
believed in the truth of the Christian faith, she also recognized that
reason on its own is obliged to admit the possibility that Christian
truth is in fact the truth. Although it may seem unlikely, the idea that
Christian truth is true does not contradict itself. Stein knew that
faith, much less the Christian faith, is not for everyone, so she
suggests that the unbeliever entertain the doctrines of the Catholic
Church as hypotheses. The hypothetical suspends truth claims; as
phenomenal, the hypothetical requires an analysis of the
transcendentally necessary conditions for its possibility. Not all that is
possible exists, but nothing that is impossible exists. Stein’s teacher,
Edmund Husserl, advocated a similar movement in the
phenomenological reduction or suspending of existence claims. One
is free to open toward such thinking. We are always free to take on
thought experiments, and, indeed, Stein maintains that intellectual
honesty obligates the genuine philosopher to do so:
And unbelievers must judge for themselves whether by accepting this additional
knowledge they may perhaps gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding
of that which is. They will at any rate not shrink back from such an attempt if they
are really as unbiased as, according to their own conviction, genuine philosophers
ought to be.1

For the unbeliever, “what if ” or “assuming” take the place of the


“I trust” for the believer; nevertheless, the believer’s theses and the
unbeliever’s hypotheses might be doctrinally equivalent.2
Communication between faith and reason can occur with alacrity, as
we see especially in Stein’s later works. The unbeliever can engage
in this thinking by adopting a scientific spirit of adventure. Stein
envisions “a common effort, [a]dhering to the principle, ‘Examine
everything, and retain the best.’ Christian philosophy is willing to
learn from the Greeks and from the moderns and to appropriate for
itself what can meet the test of its own system of measurement.”3
Stein maintained a phenomenological orientation, even as she
integrated ancient and medieval philosophy into her systematic
metaphysics. The intellectual milieu of her time largely restricted the
scope of philosophy to Descartes and post-Cartesian thinkers, but
Stein also acquainted herself with the great philosophers of the past.
We shall see her rigorous adherence to revealed truth when it was
relevant to her analyses as well as her rejection of both naïve
realism and subjective idealism in favor of acknowledging the
interactions between subjects and objects. Her thought provides a
system to complement the philosophy of substance with a
philosophy of relations and proposes an alternative direction for
phenomenology from that of Martin Heidegger and the postmoderns
who follow him. The result of Stein’s synthesis is a contemporary
philosophy that truly moves beyond modern philosophy, which, after
all, distinguished itself by altogether rejecting the past. Whether one
believes that the Renaissance was a rebirth of knowledge or of
ignorance, modern philosophy’s emphasis on the new must be
supplemented by attention to the philosophy of the past if we seek
to stand on the shoulders of giants as we look for truth. Stein’s
philosophy integrates much of, in Matthew Arnold’s phrase, “the best
that has been known and thought in the world,” according to her
own synthetic genius. This is a source of the freshness and
originality of Stein’s thought.
The following essays contextualize Stein’s work by locating her
thought in relation to the views of early philosophers as well as to
various contemporary perspectives. They invite readers to expand
beyond specialized training into the terrain that Stein makes
available. Her merger of the entire philosophic tradition produces a
system that displays the bounty of influence, rather than any anxiety
about it. Although the authors focus on different facets of Stein’s
work and offer divergent interpretations, they concur in showing
how she challenges the remnants of modern philosophy as well as
its development into postmodernism. Although not all the
contributors are as sympathetic as the editor to reading Stein as a
phenomenologist who provides rich and satisfying extensions of
Husserl’s philosophy, all acknowledge her distinctive contribution that
St. John Paul II recognized as a model for the “feminine genius.”
There can be no question that Stein’s theology is more indebted to
St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and the church fathers than to
Husserl. Readers might also note the influence of John Henry
Newman, Dionysius the Areopagite, Max Scheler, and Hedwig
Conrad-Martius. Philosophically, she bears the stamp of Plato, but
she also studied René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Martin
Heidegger. Her historical perspective provides foundation for an
imaginative synthesis of the various strands that it includes. Even
today, more than seventy years after her death, few philosophers
write with her scope and range.
Stein dialogues with past thinkers; she is a synthesizer on the
order of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. And she, too,
submits the thought of the day to the truths of the Catholic Church.
In her work, classical and medieval philosophy and theology speak
to each other anew; even mysticism has its say. She disciplined her
spirit so that she lacks the impulse to criticize and reject; rather, she
is open to truth wherever it is to be found.
Robert Sokolowski wrote that phenomenology represents “a
restoration of the convictions that animated ancient and medieval
philosophy. Like premodern philosophy, phenomenology understands
reason as ordered to truth.”4 In this matter, Sokolowski coincides
with Stein’s interpretation of phenomenology, neither discarding
modernity nor rebelling against the perennial tradition in philosophy.
For him, too, phenomenology is “a recovery of the true philosophical
life, in a manner appropriate to our philosophical situation.”5 Pre-
Kantian philosophy must face the doctrines of our time if the
contemporary notions of naturalism, materialism, secularism,
skepticism, and nihilism are to be challenged.
The essays that follow show us how Stein interrogates the
presuppositions of modern philosophy. Even in her earliest work, On
the Problem of Empathy, she boldly disregarded the Cartesian
mind/body split that haunted the moderns; her experience as a
person, related to other persons, cannot corroborate such a divide.
Stein wrote on psychology, politics, feminism, feelings, evolution,
physics, angels, prayer, transcendental realism, temporality, and
death; she famously worked out a theology of the cross. This
collection of essays highlights some of these achievements, which
map new dimensions for contemporary philosophy beyond
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the legions of their postmodern cohorts.
As these essays show, Stein’s incorporation of some of the dominant
features of modernity, especially the significance of the knower for
knowing, allows us to redress some modern losses, by opening up a
space for both subjectivity and objectivity.
The theme of the person persists throughout Stein’s work. She
began her studies at Breslau in psychology because, even in her
teens, she was already concerned with the question of the human
person. She moved to the University of Göttingen (Germany) to
study philosophy with Husserl, after she had become convinced that
the field of psychology was too narrow to deal properly with what it
means to be a person. Later, she followed Husserl to Freiburg
(Germany) and eventually became his first assistant. In that
capacity, she edited Ideas II, Husserl’s early treatment of the
personal world, including topics such as bodily nature and psychic
subjectivity. Husserl’s phenomenology provided the methodological
formation to take on the questions that led her to university training;
nevertheless, the late American Stein scholar Mary Catharine
Baseheart noted that “(E)ven in her dissertation, Stein exhibited,
young as she was, a marked independence in appropriating Husserl’s
ideas in her own way and for her own purposes.”6 Stein’s version of
philosophy demanded requisite experiential validation; she
consistently proceeds from close phenomenological analyses based
on intuition of the presence given in experience. Even so, she
remained committed to a position of transcendental realism, loyal to
the epistemological necessity that the subject see for itself when
reflecting on experiences of objects.
Many of the essays in this collection recognize Stein’s formation.
When the aged Husserl was unable to attend the ceremony
surrounding her final vows because of his failing health, he
expressed his regret and his respect for her and her work. She was,
he said, his “best pupil.”7 Note that he did not provide such a
commendation to Heidegger, his disappointing second assistant.
Mette Lebech and Antonio Calcagno in their essays each point out
differences between the two thinkers whom Husserl chose to help
him continue his work. The inevitable suggestion arises: Stein’s work
might serve as an alternative to Heidegger’s and indicate new
directions for phenomenological theory and praxis. With this
prospect in mind, we now turn in detail to the specific topics of the
essays.
The essays in this volume roughly divide according to themes and
influences that Stein shares with the ancients and Scholastics and
those that she shares with the moderns and postmodern
philosophers. That this division is rough speaks to the thesis of the
collection. When Stein speaks to the premoderns, she has already
incorporated traditional philosophy and theology into her
phenomenological approach so that her original contributions have
to do with retrieval and revival in order to enrich and extend this
tradition. She addresses the later thinkers with an infusion of
traditional thought, especially Catholic theology and philosophy. As
an example of how rough these partitions are, Walter Redmond’s
essay on Stein’s proof for the existence of God approaches
apologetics from the perspective of transcendental philosophy. It is
included with the moderns since it is to this audience that Stein
directs her efforts, since, except for Max Scheler, modern philosophy,
until the recent theological turn in phenomenology, discounted the
significance of the question. Her lifelong goal, as Redmond points
out, is a synthesis of Scholastic and phenomenological thought.

Part One: In Dialogue with the Premoderns


Ann Astell, in her opening essay, “Carmel in Cologne, Echt, and
Auschwitz: Edith Stein’s Last Journeys and the Meaning of Place in
Exile,” turns reflection outward, overcoming mind/body division in
the unity of the nature of the person, in body, soul, and spirit. The
author specifically addresses phenomenological themes of place and
position but from a perspective that is sympathetic with experiences
reported particularly by Carmelite mystics. Their spirituality figures
into her discussion of physical location in the world. Astell disrupts
the notions of place and position so that exteriority and interiority
image each other. In so doing, she enriches our appreciation of
Stein’s lived experiences as well as our understanding of place. Stein
grew up in a Jewish family wherein she located familiar family life.
Later, she left that world for the cloister of Carmel.
When the Nazis forced her to leave Carmel, she “laboriously
contains it within herself,” as Astell writes. This abbreviated
biography of Stein shows hermitage in the interior castle where she
dwells with the truth that she seeks, never forgetting her concern
and love for her family and friends. Astell describes how Sister
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was at home in Carmel with its Jewish
founder and its reformer, as well as the Jewish star in its symbology.
Stein found her place in Carmel, which she identified with the life of
the soul, in its garden and in its desert; thus, Carmel lived in her.
Angela Bello’s essay provides a companion piece to Astell’s
description of the journey to the interior castle. An erudite explicator
of Stein’s phenomenological philosophy and of her theology, Bello
analyzes spirit in the subjective, intentional consciousness that
classical phenomenology takes as its point of departure. She
describes the journey of the spirit ever more deeply into itself in
order to discover the triune God. The core (Kern) of the person, in
the God-given soul of the soul, is the profoundest point of the castle
with its many rooms through which St. Teresa of Jesus leads us. All
growth in the spirit is movement toward the core of a person. It is in
the core that one encounters God directly. Bello’s essay joins
Carmelite mysticism with the existential themes of self-knowledge
and freedom to be found in Stein’s phenomenological theology. We
see here a revival of traditional mysticism within the framework of
the contemporary emphasis on the subject who transcends mere
subjectivity in a space for union with the divine.
Sister Prudence Allen’s contribution familiarizes readers with
details of Stein’s intellectual biography, as well as the milieu in which
Stein wrote. More importantly perhaps, she points out the organic
unity of Stein’s thoughts and actions. Allen illustrates her exposition
of Stein’s theory of the passions with Stein’s unification of her
passion for truth with her love for journeying with her friends to
seek it. She quotes Sister Teresa Benedicta: “The soul cannot live
without receiving. . . . In these experiences the soul appropriates to
itself what it needs in order to become what it is destined to be.”8
Thus, we read in this essay that “the canonization of Edith
Stein/Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross implies that she became .
. . the unique pure form of her own particular identity as that
specific woman philosopher who lived in Germany between 1891
and 1942.” Again in her discussion of Sister Teresa Benedicta’s work
on St. John of the Cross, The Science of the Cross, Allen shows how
Sister Teresa Benedicta’s passion for Christ led to her passion for the
cross, even to her own cross and martyrdom. Allen quotes from a
letter written by Sister Teresa Benedicta to a Dominican friend, Sister
Agnella:
What can we do? Try with all our might to be empty: the senses mortified; the
memory as free as possible from all images of this world and, through hope, directed
toward heaven; the understanding stripped of natural seeking and ruminating,
directed to God in the straightforward gaze of faith; the will (as I have already said)
surrendered to God in love.9

Exhibiting her exceptional scholarship in the history of the question


of woman, Allen’s essay also provides glimpses of Stein’s emotional
life and her integrity. Later on, we shall see that this integrity
prevented her from conflating the sciences of philosophy and
theology.
In her essay, Sarah Borden Sharkey, though a Scholastic rather
than a phenomenologist by training, takes up the theme of
emotions. She sympathetically explains and supports Stein’s analysis
of the emotions as immediate means of experiencing value. In
contrast to Aquinas, Stein includes three reigning capabilities of the
free human being. The human person is capable of freedom and
self-making by irreducible and interdependent forces of the soul:
reason, will, and the emotions. None of these is self-sufficient or
autonomous; each is imbued with the others. This position is not to
be confused with a relativistic one that would homogenize the value
of all values, as a naïve ethics of feeling might. Rather, Borden
Sharkey shows that for Stein, although the values that the emotions
perceive are based in subjective experience, they also move beyond
the personal to a shared intersubjective world that manifests the
values instilled by its Creator.
Johanna Valiquette analyzes the structure of all being as it is to be
found in Stein’s phenomenological and Scholastic synthesis, Finite
and Eternal Being. She introduces us to Stein’s picture of the
structures of similarity in the tripartite image of all created beings.
Stein does not understand Genesis to mean that only men and
women were created in the image of the Creator. The fundamental
structure of all creation, endlessly embodied in body-soul-spirit,
mirrors its Creator. We can recognize spirit in all things as that which
goes out of itself, while remaining within itself. For Stein, the spiritual
is not only known but it is also felt as value. The highest value, love,
can bind us together; each kingdom of ends can unfurl a unique
core that contributes to an epiphany for all humanity. Valiquette
evokes for us Stein’s intuition of the unity of the diversity of all
creation in the love that binds it together.
Not only was Stein’s metaphysics influenced by the philosophers of
the Middle Ages, but also her hermeneutics (theory of interpretation)
owes a great deal to Dionysius the Areopagite in particular. Although
he was only rediscovered in the last century, Stein and others
considered Dionysius to be among the most important theologians of
the sixth through the fifteenth centuries.
“Images of the Unseen: Stein’s Semiotics of Mystical Theology”
applies Stein’s account of the Areopagite’s teachings to the question
that has become so heatedly disputed in our times: can we talk
about God without violating the Holy One’s sacred dignity and
Otherness? Stein, contrary to Heidegger who believes that
philosophy must be atheism, demonstrates how God reveals Himself
to the prophets and to their audience. Phenomenal experience can
motivate allegorical systems that evoke the ineffable. God, the
primary theologian, speaks to some who long to hear. The prophet
conveys that which he has been given. The Word is truly God, who
“gives his theologians the words and images that enable them to
speak of him to others.”10 The symbol need not be restricted to
correspondence of x to y as in Peirce’s semiotics; x might point to a
z beyond the horizon of y. The excess of the given that links Stein’s
thought with Jean-Luc Marion reflects Dionysius’s reverence for the
transcendence of God and the need for revelation.
Michael Andrews leads us along the via negativa to a deeper
understanding of prayer. His essay on faith and phenomenon points
us to the paradox of prayer according to Stein, that prayer
constitutes a dialogical relation between the creature and his
Creator. God authors prayer; God calls to prayer; God manifests
himself to an I in space and time. According to Andrews, Stein’s
thought recognizes that the I’s response to God’s initiative reveals
God in his absence as well as his presence. Stein’s study of
Dionysius the Areopagite led to the Old Testament God of Job, the
God who made the leviathan. God cannot be domesticated by
prayer; God cannot be cognitively grasped. God is present in his
absence, as the Wholly Other who calls to us, as thinkers within the
theological turn in contemporary phenomenology are prone to say.
Part Two turns our attention to Stein’s commentary on the
moderns and her usefulness for a genuine postmodernism.
Part Two: In Dialogue with Moderns and
Postmoderns
In “Edith Stein and Renewal,” Father John Sullivan, O.C.D., chair of
the Institute of Carmelite Studies whose ICS Publications publishes
the official English translations of Stein’s work, shows rare
appreciation for her character and personality as well as for her
thought. He begins with a quotation taken from a letter that Stein
wrote to her sister in the dire and dismal days of the First World War.
“The new spirit already exists and will prevail,” she said. Where
those around her could see only carnage, destruction, sorrow, and
death, Stein experienced hope for a better tomorrow. With her
characteristic consistency of thought, this hope would become her
belief that God works all for good, even in the destruction of the pre-
war world and the pain that Germany experienced and would inflict.
Sullivan shows how this hope moves us closer to social and political
justice in the church and in humankind’s self-realization. Angst does
not lead us to an authentic life, as Heidegger thought, since being
toward death, as we see in later essays, moves us away from truth
about the origin and telos of human life. Hope leads to authenticity
since it energizes acts that embody the subject’s values. Hope can
imagine that the epochs in philosophy can be unified in a history
that includes them all.
Stein’s philosophy can address our contemporaries, regardless of
religious affiliation or lack of one. As we see in other essays also, she
can easily be brought into dialogue with Scholastics and
postmoderns, with anyone who seeks to follow truth to its source.
Walter Redmond’s essay—based primarily on Stein’s Potency and
Act, which he translated—works out her proofs for the existence of
God, emphasizing their sources in St. Augustine and St. Thomas
Aquinas. He shows that Stein imports Aristotelian doctrine without
adapting it wholesale. Important for the theme of this collection of
essays, Redmond also directs our attention to her demonstration of
God’s existence from the necessities of consciousness. Stein refuses
to duplicate earlier thought. Husserl’s absolute consciousness cannot
finally be absolute. The absolute consciousness of self-experience
suggests that the absolute of consciousness depends upon a more
Absolute consciousness. In this brilliant essay, Redmond integrates
Stein’s Greek and Scholastic influences with the Husserlian
phenomenology that provided Stein with her philosophical formation.
“Empathy and the Face: Edith Stein and Emmanuel Levinas,” by
Michael R. Paradiso-Michau, compares Stein’s thought with that of
another thinker who was deeply concerned with the value of the
person, though not himself a philosopher of personalism. Stein and
Levinas both studied Husserl closely. Their dissertations on empathy
and intuition, respectively, expertly discussed major themes in
Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology. Their writings
parted ways on the topic of the genesis of a phenomenology of
ethical responsibility. This chapter shows how Levinas’s
phenomenology can be brought to bear on Stein’s thought so that
we can better envision her radical phenomenological ethics of love,
which trumps duty by subsuming it.
Mette Lebech’s work, “Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger: On the
Meaning of Being,” investigates Stein’s text “Martin Heidegger’s
Existential Philosophy,” an appendix to her magnum opus, Finite and
Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being.
This discussion of Stein’s critique includes significant ontological
(and, by inference perhaps, ideological) differences between Stein
and Heidegger on the question of being and leads us to another,
more faithful rendition of the question of Being and Time than
Heidegger provided.
According to Lebech, Stein wrote about Heidegger because she
was aware of the influence that he had on the phenomenological
movement and recognized that Heidegger’s work subverted Husserl’s
aim for phenomenology. Stein proposed alternatives to Heidegger’s
methodological and ontological revisions. She could not agree that
Dasein exhausted the meaning of being, nor did she share
Heidegger’s penchant for rethinking the tradition at the expense of
the history of thought. Interestingly for the debate concerning a
theological turn for phenomenology, Heidegger’s belief that
philosophy must be atheism was antithetical to Stein. For her,
phenomenology not only continued the great task of philosophy but
also provided the means for recovering the losses that philosophy
had undergone due to its dispersal into empiricism and rationalism
and their twentieth-century developments. Lebech concludes that
the meaning of authenticity requires a responsiveness to value,
justified by a rational eidetics and lived with an existential loyalty.
Being is not nothing. Being comes in various forms: finite and
eternal; personal and nonpersonal. Heidegger’s mistake leads to the
impoverishment of phenomenological philosophy by limiting the
search for truth.
Like Lebech’s essay, Antonio Calcagno’s “Being, Aevum, and
Nothingness: Edith Stein on Death and Dying,” shows Stein’s thought
to be an advance over that of her colleague. Although Stein shared
many concerns with her contemporaries in the continental tradition,
Calcagno urges us to distinguish her solutions to problems from
theirs. How is Stein’s description of death different from
Heidegger’s? Calcagno refuses Heidegger’s conception of Dasein as
being-toward-death in favor of Stein’s vital personalism. In contrast,
Calcagno delivers Stein’s alternative view that death is not simply an
utmost possibility of being but also that it introduces being beyond
being. He shows the stark contrast between Heidegger’s
fundamental ontology and the being toward life in Stein’s tripartite
metaphysics, a phenomenological approach to death and dying that
finds the nature of human temporality to pertain beyond the death
of the body.
“Life and the Other World: Edith Stein and Michel Henry” considers
Stein’s work in light of recent developments in French
phenomenology, with Michel Henry as spokesman. Playing on his
well-known discovery of the Word outside the world, Isobel Bowditch
examines Henry’s auto-affection, arguing that it excludes the
possibility of shared experience or communal life. The profundity of
Henry’s radical subjectivity might lead him to constitute an outside
that is life, albeit not personal life. Stein’s lifelong explorations of
empathy build a case against the possibility of raw individualism as
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When the Kingsbridge manager turned toward the local bench, he
found Henry Cope standing near it.
“Well,” said the grocer, “what did old Riley have t’ say? Tried ter
browbeat ye, didn’t he?”
“Oh,” said Hutchinson, “he reasserted his claim to Hazelton, and
said we’d surely lose this game out of the count if we persisted in
pitching the man. You can see, Cope, that it’s no bluff; the meeting is
called for to-morrow night. I’ve got Ringling, a new pitcher, here, and
he’s clever. Don’t you think we’d better use him?”
“I notified you,” said the grocer irritably, “that Locke would pitch
this game, and he’ll pitch it. Put him in.”
“All right,” growled Hutchinson, in exasperation, “have your own
way.” As he sat down on the bench, he added to himself: “You pig-
headed old fool!”
So it was Locke who went on the slab when the umpire called
“play,” and Bancroft promptly sent Harney jogging forth to the pan
with his pet bat on his shoulder. Tom was given a rousing cheer by
his admirers.
“You know what to do to ’em, Lefty,” yelled a man on the
bleachers. “You’re the boy fer us. We’re backin’ you.”
Harney drove his spikes into the dry ground and squared himself,
his bat held high and ready. His posture was that of a man who
welcomed speed, and rather preferred that the ball should be up
around his shoulders; therefore, Locke opened with one across his
knees on the inside corner. True, Harney hit it promptly, but he only
batted a weak grounder into the diamond, and Labelle, grabbing it
quickly, whipped him out at first by a wide margin.
“Just as easy as ever!” whooped a delighted Kingsbridger. “Pick
off the next one, Tommy, old top.”
Trollop held his bat low, so Locke kept the ball high and close,
causing it to jump, and the Bancroft center fielder slashed at three
without making even a foul.
“Some pitchin’, Lefty, some pitchin’!” was the cry.
Wop Grady, his face knotted and puckered, as usual, slammed at
the first one handed him, and hoisted a high foul, which Oulds
smothered close to the wire netting that protected the people in the
stand; and Kingsbridge gave Locke a cheer that resembled a
cowboy yell more than anything else.
Every eye seemed to be turned on Bancroft’s new pitcher as he
teetered awkwardly out upon the diamond. The ball was thrown to
him, and he whipped three or four scorchers to Harney, at first,
before Labelle was ready to bat; but not until he toed the slab to
pitch to the batter did he put his remarkable delivery on exhibition.
Suddenly he swung far backward, pivoting on his left foot and
shooting his right arm and right leg into the air, while his left hand
carried the ball far, far over until it seemed that he was trying to
touch the ground with it. Up he came and forward on to his right foot,
his pitching hand sweeping through the air to send the ball burning
across a corner of the pan.
“Nom de tonnerre! ” gasped Labelle, his eyes bulging, his bat
hanging poised.
“Strike!” cried the umpire.
CHAPTER XL
PINWHEEL MURTEL

T he great Bancroft crowd laughed. They had come to Kingsbridge


to see their new southpaw show the Kinks something about
pitching. Incidentally they had made arrangements to take home with
them various sums of money which the foolish Kingsbridgers had
wagered on their team.
Bangs whipped the ball back, and Craddock again went through
with that remarkable delivery, looking, as one man expressed it, “as
though he was all arms ’n’ legs.” Again the ball bit a corner off the
plate, and Labelle, fascinated by the pitcher’s gyrations, swung too
late.
The only delay was that caused by the movements of Craddock
preliminary to pitching, and he did not waste a single “teaser” on the
Kinks’ first hitter. The third one was high, with a sharp slant on it, and
the little Canadian whiffed out.
“There’s pitchin’ fur ye!” yelled a Bancrofter. “What d’ye think o’
that?”
“Nom de tonnerre! ” said Labelle again, as he retired to the bench.
“Where he come from, de circus?”
Stark, following, fouled three times, but eventually the Bancrofter
twirler outguessed him, and sent him, fanned, to take his place
beside Labelle.
“Whut’s he got?” asked Reddy Crandall, pawing among the bats.
“Curves and speed,” answered Larry, in a low tone. “Don’t get to
watching his delivery and forget to watch the ball. Go to him! He can
be hit.”
But Reddy could not hit him that time, and the Bancroft crowd
howled as their new projector fanned the third man in succession.
There were some who began to prophesy that the Kinks would be
shut out without a hit on their own field. There are always wise heads
who make foolish prophecies early in every game.
The second inning opened with Bancroft’s left-handed hitters
coming up, and Locke, knowing they had been practicing against a
left-handed pitcher, worked with the utmost care and judgment, his
change of speed being most effective, as it caused two of the four
men who faced him to bump weak grounders into the diamond, to
their complete undoing.
With two down, Bernsteine, standing well back from the plate, with
a long bat grasped near the end, stepped into a “roundhouse,” and
lined out a pretty single. It did no good, however, for Lisotte banged
a grasser into the clinging paws of Labelle, and Bernsteine was out
at second on a force.
“You all hit him, boys,” cried a Bancroft man. “You’ll straighten ’em
out by and by, and lose the balls over in the slashings at the foot of
Bald Mountain. He’s due to get his bumps.”
Craddock continued his remarkable work, and, one after the other,
Anastace, Hinkey, and Lace were mowed down, even as their
comrades had fallen in the first round.
The Bullies were urged to fall on Locke, and Bangs led off with a
long drive to center, which Sockamore retrieved on the fly. Craddock
did not seem to be strong with the club, and he made a laughable
exhibition by seeking to hit the low ones on the inside corner, where
Locke kept the ball for a strike-out. Harney got one to his fancy,
through a momentary lapse on the part of Locke, but, by tall hustling
out in the left garden, Reddy Crandall picked the globule out of the
air.
“You’re hittin’ him now,” declared the encouraging Bancroft fan.
“Keep it up; they can’t get ’em all. You’ll put the blanket on him yet.”
The delight of the visitors may be imagined as Craddock finished
Kingsbridge’s list by handing the last three men upon it the same
medicine he had given the first six. Three innings had passed, nine
men had faced him, and not one of them had even hit the ball into
the diamond. It began to seem that the man who had prophesied no
hits and no runs for the Kinks might not be such a fool, after all.
Locke’s manner was almost trancelike as he toed the slab at the
beginning of the fourth. His first ball was wide, but Trollop caught the
second one on the seam and pounded it for two sacks, bringing the
Bancroft rooters up, roaring. They continued to roar, as Grady
bunted and sacrificed Trollop to third, where, with only one out, he
was in position to score on the squeeze play if the Bullies saw fit to
try it.
They did try it, but, knowing what was coming, Locke pitched to
Mace high and close, and Mace bumped a little pop fly straight into
Lefty’s hands. Holding the ball a moment, Locke smiled at Trollop,
who made ludicrous efforts to stop and turn back toward third. The
roaring of the Bancrofters died away in a disappointed groan as they
saw the ball tossed to Fred Lace for the third put-out.
“Oh, this is something of a game!” crowed Stark, capering toward
the bench. “It’s about time we came to life and touched that gangling
port-sider up a few. Stop watching his contortions, Labelle. This is no
vaudeville performance; you’re here to play baseball. Try to hit him,
anyhow.”
“You bet!” growled the Canadian. “I hit de ball dis time; you watch.”
Nevertheless, although he slashed viciously, he did not graze the
first one.
Suddenly Reddy Crandall, who had spent his time on the bench
staring at the long-geared pitcher, struck his thigh a resounding slap.
“I’ve got him!” he declared excitedly. “I’ve spotted that guy! I know
him now! Craddock, hey? No wonder them Bancrofters come up to
this town to-day loaded with bettin’ money. Craddock! Why, that’s
‘Pinwheel’ Murtel, of the National League, as good a man as Matty
himself, only he’s got a rotten disposition, an’ no manager can
handle him. He’s been blacklisted and outlawed time after time, but
he’s such a wonder they always fix it up somehow, an’ take him back
when he wants to come. That’s Murtel, I’ll bet my life on it. Fellers,
we’ll never score to-day with him pitchin’.”
Stark, standing near, had ceased to swing the two bats he had
picked up, listening to the excited words of Crandall. He had never
seen the famous and eccentric Pinwheel Murtel, but he had heard a
great deal about the man, as, doubtless, had every other baseball
player in the country.
“By Jove!” he muttered, having turned to stare at the lengthy
twirler. “I believe you’re right, Reddy.”
“I know I’m right,” said Crandall. “I’ve been trying to figure out who
the man was, and I’ve got him at last. At his best, he can walk any
three of us without a man down and then keep us from scoring. This
game is as good as settled, and a lot of Kingsbridge sports have lost
some good money to-day.”
“Nonsense, Crandall!” said Locke swiftly. “Even if the man is
Pinwheel Murtel, he isn’t invincible.”
“There goes Pete ag’in,” said Reddy, as Labelle fanned out the
second time. “Nobody’s even touched him.”
“What of it? The best pitchers in the business can be hit.”
“But not by batters in our class.”
“Yes, sometimes they can be hit by batters in our class.
Mathewson has been batted and beaten by a scrub country team, at
least once, according to his own confession; and other top-notch
pitchers have met the same treatment, much to their surprise.
“We’re going to fight this game through to the last ditch, I hope,
whether that man is Murtel or not. There’s no knowing what may
happen. At any rate, if I can hold them down, and you fellows keep
on giving me the support you have, they may not get any runs. We’re
not going to quit, are we, just because we’ve found out that
Craddock is Murtel?”
“No,” rasped Jim Sockamore, the Indian, “we won’t quit! You’re
right, Lefty; mebbe well beat that bunch yet, if we support you.”
It was plain, however, that Crandall’s discovery had taken the
courage out of him, and it seemed to fade away entirely as Stark,
also, fanned. Reddy stood up to the plate with his heart in his shoes
and swung apathetically, being sliced down without waste of energy
on the part of the pitcher.
CHAPTER XLI
GONE WRONG

L ocke muttered a single word of disgust as he rose from the bench


and walked toward the pitcher’s slab. On the way he stopped
suddenly, staring for an instant toward some teams and automobiles
down beyond the far end of the third-base bleachers. Then he
walked onward, but some of the flush was gone from his face.
Hutchinson, sitting silent on the bench, had done little toward
directing his players. Should the game go against Kingsbridge, as he
believed it would, he was prepared to answer criticism by saying that
Henry Cope’s interference had made it impossible for him to rely on
his own judgment and generalship.
Long before Crandall named the Bancroft pitcher, Hutch was wise
to the man. He had likewise observed that Locke did not seem as
efficient as usual, although good support had prevented the Bullies
from hammering out runs.
“When the break comes,” thought the rascally manager, “it’s
dollars to doughnuts they’ll get his goat for fair.”
The Kingsbridge pitcher looked ill as he found the slab at the
beginning of the fifth; his face was pale and set, and there was
something like a glare in his eyes. He seemed to be in haste to hand
Pat McGovern a pass, pitching one ball after another without
pausing to steady down, though both Oulds and Stark begged him to
take more time; and not one of the four he threw for Pat even grazed
a corner.
Following this, he bored Bernsteine in the ribs, and two men were
on the sacks, with no one down. Remembering the first game Locke
had pitched on that field, the Kingsbridge crowd declined to be
frightened.
“He’ll steady down in a moment,” they said. “Just watch him.”
But in a moment McGovern and Bernsteine each moved up a sack
on a weirdly wild pitch to Lisotte.
Hutchinson turned quickly to Ringling.
“Shake the kinks out of your arm, Ring,” he directed. “Hurry up
about it.”
Oulds had called Locke, meeting him a few steps in front of the
pan.
“What’s biting you now, son?” he growled, heedless of the howling
Bancrofters, who were demanding that the umpire should keep the
game going. “You’ve got the wabbles; I don’t believe you can see the
rubber.”
He wondered at the look in Tom’s eyes. Locke moistened his dry
lips.
“Yes, yes, Oulds,” he said huskily; “I’m all right now.”
“Well, you don’t look it,” retorted Hunchy. “Be you havin’ a fit, or
what? You’ve got to stop heavin’ the ball as fast as you can git holt of
it. Take your time, now. Don’t let Lisotte bunt; prob’ly he’ll try it. If
they start scorin’, they’re li’ble to win the game right here.”
“I tell you I’m all right now,” declared Locke savagely. “Give me the
ball.”
“He’s havin’ a reg’ler fit,” muttered the catcher, surrendering the
sphere and backing toward his position behind the pan.
Lisotte squared himself again; the coachers talked excitedly, the
Bancroft crowd rooted for runs; Kingsbridge was silent. Bernsteine
took a long lead off second, and McGovern danced back and forth at
third. Locke was taking time at last, apparently trying hard to throw
off the feverish wildness that had put him into “a hole.”
Swift, high, and close came the ball to Lisotte, difficult indeed to
bunt safely. But the little Canuck did not try to bunt; instead, as if he
knew just what was due, he met the sphere with a snappy swing,
driving it humming into the field between center and right.
McGovern danced gayly to the scoring station, Bernsteine
following with a rush. There was a wild riot on the Bancroft
bleachers, men leaping up and down, flinging their hats into the air
and yelling themselves purple in the face; for, with two runs scored,
no one out, Locke apparently all to the bad, and Pinwheel Murtel in
Big League form, it seemed that the game had been clinched for the
Bullies.
Since coming on the field, Tom Locke had been looking for Janet
Harting; somehow he was confident she would attend this game. It is
likely that thoughts of her had disturbed him and prevented him from
concentrating upon the work of pitching, although he had not been
aware of it.
Walking out to take his position at the beginning of the fifth,
however, his searching eyes discovered her blue parasol, and,
beneath it, Janet, sitting at the side of Benton King in the same
carriage in which he had first beheld her. As Locke looked, King
seemed to be returning his gaze. The pitcher saw Bent lean toward
the girl and say something, whereupon both laughed. For the time
being Tom lost his head, greatly to the advantage of the rejoicing
Bancrofters.
He knew it; no one on that field knew it better. And nothing could
have served better to sober him and bring him to his senses than
that wicked, timely line drive by Lisotte. He saw Ringling warming up
and Hutchinson talking to Henry Cope, who plainly was not feeling
right. Of course, the manager was asking permission—or demanding
it—to remove him immediately from the game.
“I’m a fool!” thought Tom. “I have played right into that rascal’s
hand.”
CHAPTER XLII
A SUDDEN SHIFT

H e hoped Cope would not yield. Perhaps the damage was done
already, but he would try to redeem himself if they did not bench
him.
Hutchinson was saying:
“What’s the use to keep him in, man alive? He’s lost the game
already.”
“If he’s lost the game,” returned the obstinate grocer, “what’s the
use to take him out? I don’t see no sense in that. Let him pitch some
more. He braced up t’other time; mebbe he will ag’in.”
Speechless with exasperation, Hutchinson turned back and
reseated himself on the bench. Seeing this, and understanding that
Locke would continue yet a while on the firing line, Stark ran to him,
grasped him with both hands, and spoke in swift, yet steady, tones:
“Pull yourself together, Lefty; you’ve got to do it, and you can.
Bangs is easy, and that man Murtel can’t hit a balloon. Put the ball
over, and take chances with them; we’re behind you. Don’t hurry,
and keep your head.”
Tom gave the disturbed captain a reassuring smile.
“I know I ought to be sent to the stable,” he said; “but I’ll do my
level best now. Watch me.”
Bingo Bangs was not much of a hitter, and the crowd saw Lefty
whip the ball through a single groove three times in succession, and
three times the Bullies’ catcher hammered the air. After the third
strike, the ball having been returned by Oulds, Locke caught a quick
signal from the backstop, and wheeled, to flash the sphere like a
shot into the hands of Labelle, who had dodged past the runner.
Labelle nailed Lisotte, and the two Canadians exchanged
courtesies in choice patois. This second swift putout awoke some of
the saddened Kingsbridgers, their sudden yells of satisfaction
mingling with the groans of the Bancrofters.
“Now we’re all right!” cried Larry Stark. “Take a fall out of old
Pinwheel, Lefty. We’ll make a game of this yet.”
Locke’s nerves were growing steadier. He had forced himself to
dismiss every thought of the girl who had treated him so shabbily,
and the man, her companion, who had flung him an insult and
escaped a thrashing. Until the last inning was over he would
concentrate his energies upon the work in hand.
As before, the Bancroft pitcher’s efforts to connect with Locke’s
slants were laughable; he could not touch the ball, even to foul it.
“Hold them down now, Craddock,” begged Fancy Dyke from the
bleachers. “They shut us out last time we was here; let’s return the
compliment to-day.”
Murtel grinned; thus far he had seen nothing that would lead him
to doubt his ability to hold the Kinks runless. Nor was he ruffled when
Anastace got a scratch hit from him in the last of the fifth; for the
three following batters were like putty in his hands.
On the part of Kingsbridge there was uncertainty and anxiety as
Locke returned to the slab, for now the head of Bancroft’s list, the
best hitters of the team, were coming up to face him, and they were
full of confidence. There were times, it seemed, when Lefty was
sadly erratic, and were he to slump again in this game the faith of his
admirers would be much impaired.
Never had Tom Locke put more brains into his pitching. He had a
speed ball that smoked, and his curves broke as sharply keen as a
razor’s edge; furthermore, he “mixed them up” cleverly, his change of
pace proving most baffling, and his slow ball always seeming to
come loafing over just when the hitter was looking for a whistler.
Harney snarled his annoyance after fanning; Trollop almost broke
his back bumping one of the slow ones into the clutches of Labelle;
Grady lifted a miserable foul back of first for Hinkey to gobble.
Hutchinson had temporarily deserted the bench, and the Kinks
came trotting in. Observing this, Locke grabbed Stark, and
whispered something in his ear, Larry listening and nodding.
“It won’t hurt to try it,” said the captain. “Here, Oulds.”
It was the catcher’s turn to lead off. He listened to Stark’s
repetition of Locke’s suggestion; then he stepped out to the plate,
slipped his hands up on the bat a bit as Murtel pitched, and bunted
the first ball.
The Bullies were taken by surprise. The ball rolled slowly down
just inside the third-base line, and Oulds, leaping away like a streak,
actually turned that bunt into a safe base hit, to the complaints of the
Bancroft spectators and the whooping merriment of the
Kingsbridgers.
Locke was promptly in position, and he followed with a bunt
toward first. Even as the bunt was made the bat seemed to fall from
his hands, and he was off like a shot toward the initial sack, leaping
over the rolling ball as he went. Only by the liveliest kind of hustling
did Murtel get the sphere up and snap it humming past the runner in
time to get an assist on Harney’s put-out.
Oulds was on second. Labelle, grinning, hopped into the batter’s
box, and astonished the spectators of the game, and the Bancroft
players, as well, by contributing the third bunt, which was so wholly
unexpected that he reached first by a narrow margin. And now the
Kingsbridge crowd was making all the noise, the Bancrofters
seeming stricken dumb with apprehension.
Murtel was angry, a fact he could not hide. For the first time he
seemed, with deliberate intent, to keep the first ball pitched beyond
the reach of the batter. Oulds, of course, had anchored temporarily
at third, and Labelle, taking a chance, tried to steal on that pitch.
Bangs made a line throw, but Lisotte, seeing Oulds dash off third,
cut it down, only to discover that the tricky Kingsbridge catcher had
bluffed. The Frenchman failed in an attempt to pin the runner before
he could dive back to the sack.
Locke had taken Crandall’s place on the coaching line back of
third, giving Reddy a chance to get his bat, as he was the hitter who
followed Stark; and it was the play to keep the ball rolling as fast as
possible. Tom was laughing and full of ginger, his words of
instruction to the runners sometimes sounding clear above the
uproar of the excited crowd.
“Keep it up! Keep it up!” he called. “Get off those cushions! Take a
lead, and score! Look out!” Murtel had made an attempt to catch
Labelle by a quick throw, but the little Canadian slid under
McGovern’s arm.
CHAPTER XLIII
A GAME WORTH WINNING

L ocke had forgotten the blue parasol and its owner; he had no
fleeting thought for Benton King; he was heart and soul in the
game.
With one out, it seemed an excellent time for Kingsbridge to keep
up the bunting, and attempt to score on it by the “squeeze,” so
Bancroft’s infield drew closer and the outfielders quickly came in.
At the plate, Stark gave a secret signal, changing the style of play,
and then he set the local crowd frantic by meeting Murtel’s high one
on the trade mark. With the outfielders playing in their usual places,
that line drive would have been good for a clean single, but while
they were chasing it down, Larry dug all the way round to third,
Oulds and Labelle romping over the rubber with the runs that tied the
score.
The whole Kingsbridge team was laughing, now, while Murtel,
enraged over being outguessed and deceived, was almost frenzied.
“It’s a great top piece you have, Lefty, old pal,” cried Larry Stark.
“That was the trick to get ’em going. Look at Pinwheel champ the
bit.”
But Hutchinson was back on the bench now, and he directed
Crandall to hit the ball out. Reddy, trying to respond manfully,
boosted an infield fly, and Stark was forced to remain on the sack
while it was caught. Had Anastace, coming next, taken a daring
chance and bunted, it is possible that the Bullies might have been
thrown into confusion again; but he had orders from Hutchinson to
hit, and in trying to do so he succumbed to Murtel’s strategy, expiring
in the box.
“Oh, this is some game, believe me!” shouted a Kingsbridger.
“Hold ’em where they are, Lefty. You’ve got the stuff to do it. We
depend on you.”
The Bancrofters who had wagered money on the tussle were not
as cocksure as they had been, and doubtless more than one,
Manager Riley included, regretted that matters had not been
privately arranged in advance so that it would not be necessary to
rely almost wholly on the prowess their new left-handed pitcher.
Surely their regrets became still more acute when, in the seventh,
Locke showed no let-up in form, and was not even ruffled when
McGovern reached first on an infield error, the other three batters to
face him going the way of all flesh.
“Oh, you Lefty!” was once more the rejoicing cry of the palpitating
Kingsbridgers.
Murtel came back with a shut-out, although Hinkey led off with a
scratch hit.
“Hold ’em, Lefty—hold ’em!” was the beseeching cry.
Bangs and Murtel faded like morning dew before a burning sun,
but Harney got into a speedy one and banged it for two hassocks,
setting the shaking Bancrofters off again in a tremendous uproar.
Nevertheless, the lucky batter remained at second, where Stark and
Labelle kept him dancing back and forth while Locke took Trollop’s
measure and put him away until the next game should be played.
With no one batting ahead of him, Locke advanced to the pan in
the last of the eighth without instructions. The first ball was too close,
but the second came slanting over, and he bunted. Again it was the
unexpected, and never had a prettier bunt been pulled off.
Nevertheless, it was only Tom’s wonderful knack of starting at high
speed with the first jump and covering the ground like a streak that
enabled him to reach the sack a gasping breath ahead of the ball.
“Safe!” cried the umpire.
The Bullies started to kick, nearly every man on the team taking
part in it. The crowd hooted and hissed, but it was only the nerve of
the umpire in pulling his watch which finally sent the Bancroft
players, growling, back to their positions. There was so much money
wagered on the game that they could not afford to lose it through
forfeiture; but henceforth they badgered the umpire on almost every
decision, even scoffing when he declared in their favor.
Labelle sacrificed Locke to second. Stark, thirsting for a hit,
hoisted a fly to center. Then, just as the visitors were breathing
easier, Crandall smashed a drive into right field.
Locke was on the way to third even before bat and ball met.
Sockamore, coaching, seeing Tom coming like the wind, took a
desperate chance, and, with a furious flourish of his arms, signaled
for him to keep on. Out in right field Mace got the sphere and poised
himself for a throw to the pan.
There was a choking hush. Staring, breathless, suffering with
suspense, the watchers waited.
“Slide!” yelled Sockamore, with a shriek like the blast of a
locomotive whistle.
Spikes first, Locke slid. The whistling ball spanked into Bangs’
clutches and he lunged to make the tag. But Tom’s feet had slipped
across the rubber, and the downward motion of the umpire’s open,
outspread hand declared him safe.
Again the Bullies protested, and again the umpire was compelled
to produce his watch. With difficulty the excited crowd was kept off
the field.
Laughing, Stark had helped Locke to rise, and made a show of
brushing some of the dust from him.
“It’s your game that wins to-day, if you can hold them down now,”
declared Larry. “It was bunting when they weren’t expecting it that
did the trick. Oh, say, there’ll be some sore heads in Bancroft to-
night!”
Henry Cope came bursting out of the crowd back of the bench to
shake hands with Locke.
“Sufferin’ Moses, whut a game!” he exclaimed. “If I ain’t under the
doctor’s care ter-morrer it’ll be queer. Keep ’em right where they be,
an’ we’ve won.”
“Lots of good that will do us when the game is counted out of the
series,” sneered Hutchinson.
“Even if they count it out,” returned the grocer, “folks round this
town’re goin’ to have a heap o’ Bancroft’s money t’ spend.”
Reddy Crandall did not score. He had done his part well, and he
uttered no complaint when Anastace failed to hit.
The Bullies had not given up. Savage, sarcastic, insolent, they
fought it out in the first of the ninth, bearing themselves, until the last
man was down, as if they still believed they would win. Locke,
however, had them at his mercy, refusing to prolong the agony by
letting a hitter reach first.
With some difficulty he fought off the delighted Kingsbridgers who
swarmed, cheering, around him, and would have lifted him to their
shoulders. When he finally managed to break clear of the throng he
thought suddenly of Janet, and looked round for her.
Benton King was driving toward the gate by which teams and
autos were admitted to the field. She had lowered her parasol, and,
before disappearing through the gate, she turned to gaze backward,
as if looking for some one in the midst of the still-cheering crowd that
covered the diamond.
CHAPTER XLIV
FACING HIS ACCUSERS

S easonable July weather caused discomfort for the seven


persons assembled in the dingy office of Rufus Kilgore for the
purpose of attending the meeting called to consider Manager Mike
Riley’s claims. Riley himself, in his shirt sleeves, sat with his back
toward one of the wide-open windows, a handkerchief tucked round
his neck inside his collar, grumbling and smoking. Anson Graham,
president of the league, a serious, middle-aged man, with block-
trimmed whiskers, who had the look of one who might be just, but
would rarely temper his justice with mercy, was talking to Kilgore, the
secretary of the organization, who occupied the chair at the desk.
David Farman and William Jones, representing Fryeburg and
Lakeport, respectively, were aimlessly discussing various topics,
such as the weather, crop prospects, and the ardent desire that the
usual number of boarders from the city might be netted by the
blandishments of advertisements which pictured the part of the
country in which they were interested as a summer Eden. Benton
King, appearing restless, talked in low tones to the ever-icy Bob
Hutchinson.
“Confound it!” growled Riley, looking at his watch. “Where’s Hen
Cope ’n’ that man Hazelton? It’s one minute of time fur the meetin’ to
begin, ’n’ they oughter be here.”
“Perhaps they won’t come,” said the lawyer. “Cope is a mule, and
he may try to block proceedings by staying away.”
“But he can’t do that,” rasped Mike. “We can go ahead without
him. It’s time. Hadn’t you better call the meetin’ to order, Mr.
Graham?”
At this moment, footsteps were heard on the stairs, and the door
opened, to admit the puffing Kingsbridge grocer, who paused to
remove his hat, mop his shining, moist dome, and look the
assemblage over.
“Good evenin’, ever’body,” he said pleasantly. “On time, ain’t I?”
“Just about, an’ that’s all,” answered Riley. “Where’s th’ slip’ry guy
that’s caused all this trouble?”
“You mean Locke? Ain’t he here?”
“I mean Hazelton, ’n’ he ain’t here.”
“That’s strange,” said Cope, plainly a trifle disturbed. “He lef’
Kingsbridge on the early train this mornin’, sayin’ that he’d meet me
here to-night. I thought sure I’d find him waitin’.”
“Left town, hey?” cried Riley. “Left town this mornin’! Well, I swear!
So help me, he’s skipped!”
He was not the only one through whose head had passed the
same thought, but Henry Cope immediately raised an agitated
protest against such an idea, asserting his belief that the absent man
would put in an appearance. They were induced to wait a while,
although it was likely that Cope was the only one who was not
satisfied that time was being wasted. In his heart, even the grocer
began to doubt.
As the minutes ticked away, Cope looked anxious, Riley smoked
and growled, Hutchinson remained cool, and Benton King fidgeted.
Finally Anson Graham said:
“Gentlemen, it is now ten minutes past the time set for this
meeting to be called, and I think we had better proceed without
further delay; for it seems that the party accused does not intend to
appear in his own defense. If you will please come to order, the
secretary will read the protest of Manager Riley which led to—”
Breathless and anxious, Henry Cope had been listening to the
sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs, and now, as the door was
thrust open and the tardy one stepped in, he gave an exclamation of
great relief and satisfaction.

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