180 BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 



in perfect possession, through perfect knowledge of 

 perfect being. I need not remind you that the 

 prima facie subordination of reason to authority, 

 of knowledge to faith, in the medieval code, is, after 

 all, but the logical result of the doctrine that man 

 as man (since only reasoning desire) is merely 

 phenomenal; and has his reality in God, who as 

 God is the complete union of rational insight and 

 being the term of man s desire, and the fulfilment 

 of his feeble attempts at knowing. Authority, 

 &quot; faith &quot; as it then had to be conceived, meant just 

 that this Being comes externally to the aid of man, 

 otherwise hopelessly doomed to misery in long 

 drawn out error and non-being, and disciplines 

 him till, in the next world under more favoring 

 auspices, he may have his desires stilled in good, 

 and his faith may yield to knowledge: for we 

 forget that the doctrine of immortality was not an 

 appendage, but an integral part of the theory that 

 since knowledge is the true function of man, happi 

 ness is attained only in knowledge, which itself 

 exists only in achievement of perfect Being or God. 

 For my part, I can but think that medieval 

 absolutism, with its provision for authoritative 

 supernatural assistance in this world and assertion 

 of supernatural realization in the next, was more 

 logical, as well as more humane, than the modern 

 absolutism, that, with the same logical premises, 

 bids man find adequate consolation and support in 



