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PARTISAN REVIEW
condition of human life, except that of childhood, in which con–
versions have not been seen and whatever one may privately think
about the naturalistic determinants of such happenings, one cannot
dismiss conversion itself as an illusion.
But we are interested in this symposium in one set of con–
versions, those of intellectuals and particularly those in English speak–
ing countries. And since the supernaturalistic causes of conversion
by their very nature cannot be explained, we must confine ourselves
to ruminating on the states of mind which might prepare an in–
tellectual for the reception of such influences.
Though it may be true that the early twentieth century was a
period when natural science seemed supreme, yet one must not
forget the influence of natural science itself in stimulating religious
emotions. No scientist who had any feeling of responsibility to vera–
city ever maintained that he and his colleagues had explained the
whole universe as a whole. At most such total explanation was a hope,
a program which some day might be carried out, but which in fact
never had been carried out. There were of course certain writers, like
the Duke of Argyll, who were so enthusiastic about scientific law
that they identified it with the Will of God. But even the toughest
minds were more given to proclaiming that some day this grand
design would be filled in than to announcing its completion in their
writings. But one did not have to await the coming of Christianity into
the Occident to find people who refused to suspend judgment and
wait patiently for the great day to dawn. The early Stoics were in–
dulging in religious lyricism long before the Christian era opened and
the tradition was carried along, as all students of the history of
philosophy know, until in such bits of literature as Seneca's
Nine–
tieth Epistle
one finds passages which might just as well have been
written by a Christian Father. Those of our contemporaries who
insist on total explanations, misusing to be sure the word "explana–
tion," are in precisely the same state of mind as I imagine Cleanthes
and later Seneca were in. Just as the Pagans identified the artist who
had planned and made the cosmos with Zeus, so our contemporaries
of this type identify him with God. Neither the former nor the latter
stop to think that both Zeus and God have had dramatic histories
and that the deity born on Mount Ida and suckled by a goat could
