Father Gerald Vann, o.p., in an article in a 1951 Blackfriars accused the modern world of flight into phantasy and counselled a return to reality. The Editor, in a later number, suggested forming some sort of Blackfriars Group, where questions so raised might be discussed in the light of what many of us are calling the Dominican Way. The Editor of The Life Of The spirit has been suggesting for some time that I should write something on diet, and especially fasting.

Can I, no philosopher, put all these three indications together and write on that one aspect of reality to which I give most of my study, nutrition?

We may phantasise a good deal about many practical matters and get away with it, but the fundamental things of nature pay a quick dividend, in good coin or bad, according to how we deal with their crude reality.