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PARTISAN REVIEW
Hebraic or Christian mythologies, to say nothing of the various
oriental varieties, less well-known but easily discoverable in any
public library. Even had one turned to Christianity in one's distress,
there was still an embarrassment of riches. Should one become a
Gnostic, a Marcionite, a Montanist, an Arian, an Athanasian? Should
one become an Orthodox Catholic, a Nestorian, a Roman Catholic?
Should one become an Anglican, an American Episcopalian, a
Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Baptist, a Unitarian, a Universalist? It is
interesting to observe that most intellectuals are converted to the
dominant religion of their country. Few Frenchmen have been con–
verted to the Church of England; few Americans to Greek Orthodoxy.
One who has not been converted can only surmise what happens
in such a field and runs the risk of making a fool of himself if he
does. But I venture to guess that the soul hungry for grace feels a
certain solitude, a certain detachment from his fellows, which impels
him to seek others of his inclination. A man converted to eighteenth–
century deism would be as lonely after his conversion as before.
But a man converted to Roman Catholicism, if American, would at
once be admitted into the fellowship of twenty-five million people,
which in turn is but a small fraction of the total membership of that
society. Moreover, if he is innocent of history, he will also think that
the Church springs directly from Saint Peter, and that the society with
which he has become identified has a divine lineage and that his
fellows are no upstarts who arose in the sixteenth century or the
nineteenth century, but really include the community of all the saints
and martyrs.
Thus both his intellectual education and his sentiments com–
bine to orient him towards one of the major ecclesiastical organiza–
tions. There is, however, another psychological element which must
not be overlooked. Our intellectual, our leader of culture, is often
a man who wants absolute standards of beauty and goodness as well
as of truth. To him, if one may judge by his writings, a standard
loses force if it is valid in a system of relations, whether those rela–
tions be social, psychological, or material. The variants in human
cultures, in individual needs, in methods of measurement; the im–
possibility of applying a universal standard to actual deeds and
artifacts; the gap between essence and existence; are enough to make
many of us welcome a relativistic system as a precise statement of
