Raimundo de Farias Brito was the philosophic forerunner of Brazilian modernism. A profound sense of crisis underlies the work of Farias Brito. Individual existence is a precarious struggle against despair and death, and social order is threatened by moral disintegration and anarchy. Knowledge of man's role in his world is necessary to confront this crisis. Intellectual pursuit of the truth is the primary ethical obligation. Lacking certainty, man establishes a relative morality through conviction, involving both philosophy and religion. Metaphysics attempts to embrace the truth theoretically through formulation of worldviews; religion embraces the truth practically through acceptance and appropriation of a given worldview. This free acceptance of common convictions creates community, informing and giving thrust to the total culture of which it serves as a focus. The theoretical task is a permanent activity of the human spirit; the practical task...