178 BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 



found ready to its hand intellectual formula 

 tions corresponding to its practical proclama 

 tions ! 



That the ultimate principle of conduct is affec- 

 tional and volitional ; that God is love ; that access 

 to the principle is by faith, a personal attitude; 

 that belief, surpassing logical basis and warrant, 

 works out through its own operation its own ful 

 filling evidence: such was the implied moral meta- 

 physic of Christianity. But this implication needed 

 to become a theory, a theology, a formulation; 

 and in this need, it found no recourse save to 

 philosophies that had identified true existence with 

 the proper object of logical reason. For, in 

 Greek thought, after the valuable meanings, the 

 meanings of industry and art that appealed to sus 

 tained and serious choice, had given birth and 

 status to reflective reason, reason denied its an 

 cestry of organized endeavor, and proclaimed itself 

 in its function of self-conscious logical thought to 

 be the author and warrant of all genuine things. 

 Yet how nearly Christianity had found prepared 

 for it the needed means of its own intellectual 

 statement ! We recall Aristotle s account of moral 

 knowing, and his definition of man. Man as man, 

 he tells us, is a principle that may be termed 

 either desiring thought or thinking desire. Not 

 as pure intelligence does man know, but as an 

 organization of desires effected through reflection 



