BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 177 



That contemporaneously we are in the presence 

 of such a reaction is apparent. Let us, in pursuit 

 of our topic, inquire how it came about and why 

 it takes the form that it takes. This considera 

 tion may not only occupy the hour, but may help 

 diagram some future parallelogram of forces. 

 The account calls for some sketching (1) of the 

 historical tendencies which have shaped the situa 

 tion in which a Stoic theory of knowledge claims 

 metaj &quot;rysical monopoly, and (2) of the tendencies 

 that have furnished the despised principle of be 

 lief opportunity and means of reassertion. 



II 



Imagination readily travels to a period when a 

 gospel of intense, and, one may say, deliberate 

 passionate disturbance appeared to be conquering 

 the Stoic ideal of passionless reason ; when the de 

 mand for individual assertion by faith against the 

 established, embodied objective order was seem 

 ingly subduing the idea of the total subordination 

 of the individual to the universal. By what course 

 of events came about the dramatic reversal, in 

 which an ethically conquered Stoicism became the 

 conqueror, epistemologically, of Christianity? 



How are our imaginations haunted by the idea 

 of what might have happened if Christianity had 



