BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 179 



upon their own conditions and consequences. What 

 if Aristotle had only assimilated his idea of theo 

 retical to his notion of practical knowledge ! Be 

 cause practical thinking was so human, Aristotle 

 rejected it in favor of pure, passionless cognition, 

 something superhuman. Thinking desire is ex 

 perimental, is tentative, not absolute. It looks to 

 the future and to the past for help in the future. 

 It is contingent, not necessary. It doubly relates 

 to the individual: to the individual thing as ex 

 perienced by an individual agent; not to the uni 

 versal. Hence desire is a sure sign of defect, of 

 privation, of non-being, and seeks surcease in 

 something which knows it not. Hence desiring 

 reason culminating in beliefs relating to imperfect 

 existence, stands forever in contrast with passion 

 less reason functioning in pure knowledge, logic 

 ally complete, of perfect being. 



I need not remind you how through Neo-Platon- 

 ism, St. Augustine, and the Scholastic renaissance, 

 these conceptions became imbedded in Christian 

 philosophy ; and what a reversal occurred of the 

 original practical principle of Christianity. Be 

 lief is henceforth important because it is the mere 

 antecedent in a finite and fallen world, a temporal 

 and phenomenal world infected with non-being, of 

 true knowledge to be achieved only in a world 

 of completed Being. Desire is but the self-con 

 sciousness of defect striving to its own termination 



