In the world of living beings the struggle for life establishes an association, and a very close one, not only between those who unite together in combat against a common foe, but between the combatants themselves.  And is there any possible association more intimate than that uniting the animal that eats another and the animal that is eaten, between the devourer and the devoured?  And if this is clearly seen in the struggle between individuals, it is still more evident in the struggle between peoples.  War has always been the most effective factor of progress, even more than commerce.  It is through war that conquerors and conquered learn to know each other and in consequence to love each other.

Christianity, the foolishness of the Cross, the irrational faith that Christ rose from the dead in order to raise us from the dead, was saved by the rationalistic Hellenic culture, and this in its turn was saved by Christianity.  Without Christianity the Renaissance would have been impossible.  Without the Gospel, without St. Paul, the peoples who had traversed the Middle Ages would have understood neither Plato nor Aristotle.  A purely rationalist tradition is as impossible as a tradition purely religious.  It is frequently disputed whether the Reformation was born as the child of the Renaissance or as a protest against it, and both propositions may be said to be true, for the son is always born as a protest against the father.  It is also said that it was the revived Greek classics that led men like Erasmus back to St. Paul and to primitive Christianity, which is the most irrational form of Christianity; but it may be retorted that it was St. Paul, that it was the Christian irrationality underlying his Catholic theology, that led them back to the classics.  “Christianity is what it has come to be,” it has been said, “only through its alliance with antiquity, while with the Copts and Ethiopians it is but a kind of buffoonery.  Islam developed under the influence of Persian and Greek culture, and under that of the Turks it has been transformed into a destructive barbarism."[31]

We have emerged from the Middle Ages, from the medieval faith as ardent as it was at heart despairing, and not without its inward and abysmal incertitudes, and we have entered upon the age of rationalism, likewise not without its incertitudes.  Faith in reason is exposed to the same rational indefensibility as all other faith.  And we may say with Robert Browning,

All we have gained, then, by our unbelief
Is a life of doubt diversified by faith
For one of faith diversified by doubt.

(Bishop Blougram’s Apology.)

And if, as I have said, faith, life, can only sustain itself by leaning upon reason, which renders it transmissible—­and above all transmissible from myself to myself—­that is to say, reflective and conscious—­it is none the less true that reason in its turn can only sustain itself by leaning upon faith, upon life, even if only upon faith in reason, faith in its availability for something more than mere knowing, faith in its availability for living.  Nevertheless, neither is faith transmissible or rational, nor is reason vital.