Dewey's discussion moves too rapidly here to be convincing. He does not take time, for instance, to make a very important distinction between the Greek and Hellenistic philosophies. He does not do justice to the purpose which animated the Greeks in their attempt to put thought on a 'theoretical' basis. His confusion of Platonism with Neo-Platonism is especially annoying. And, most assuredly, his estimate of primitive Christianity needs corroboration. Probably Christianity, in its primitive form, did lay great stress upon individual beliefs and persuasions, but it was expected, nevertheless, that the Holy Spirit working in men would produce uniform results in the way of belief. When the uniformity failed to materialize, Christianity was forced, in the interests of union, to fall back upon some objective standard by which belief could be tested. After this was established, an end was made of individual inspiration. From the earliest times, therefore, it may be said, Christianity sought means for the suppression of free inquiry and belief, a proceeding utterly opposed to the spirit of ancient Greece. "I need not remind you," Dewey continues, "how through Neo-Platonism, St. Augustine, and the Scholastic renaissance, these conceptions became imbedded in Christian philosophy; and what a reversal occurred of the original practical principle of Christianity. Belief is henceforth important because it is the mere antecedent in a finite and fallen world, a temporal and phenomenal world infected with non-being, of true knowledge to be achieved only in a world of completed Being."[239] Through the hundreds of years that intervened before the world's awakening, the 'Stoic dogma,' enforced by authority, held the world in thrall. And still Dewey finds the mediaeval Absolutism in many respects more merciful than the Absolutism of modern philosophy. "For my part, I can but think that mediaeval absolutism, with its provision for authoritative supernatural assistance in this world and assertion of supernatural realization in the next, was more logical, as well as more humane, then the modern absolutism, that, with the same logical premises, bids man find adequate consolation and support in the fact that, after all, his strivings are already eternally fulfilled, his errors already eternally transcended, his partial beliefs already eternally comprehended."[240] Dewey takes no note of the fact that philosophy, as involving really free inquiry, was dead during the whole period of mediaeval predominance.