to forget that he will have to cease to exist.
This is the root of the passion for abstract thought. And possibly Hegel
was as infinitely interested as Kierkegaard in his own concrete,
individual existence, although the professional decorum of the
state-philosopher compelled him to conceal the fact.

Faith in immortality is irrational. And, notwithstanding, faith, life,
and reason have mutual need of one another. This vital longing is not
properly a problem, cannot assume a logical status, cannot be formulated
in propositions susceptible of rational discussion; but it announces
itself in us as hunger announces itself. Neither can the wolf that
throws itself with the fury of hunger upon its prey or with the fury of
instinct upon the she-wolf, enunciate its impulse rationally and as a
logical problem. Reason and faith are two enemies, neither of which can
maintain itself without the other. The irrational demands to be
rationalized and reason only can operate on the irrational. They are
compelled to seek mutual support and association. But association in
struggle, for struggle is a mode of association.

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