[540] who resists your attempt to use him as a tool, as a means. There is no other point of equality. Now from this follows, in different situations, many different forms of equality. The democratic form is one form, the liberal form is another---they are sometimes united, sometimes they contradict each other. There is the hierarchical feudal form. There is the equality before the law, which is the principle of equality in the American Constitution. But WE SHOULD BE VERY CAUTIOUS if we judge former periods of history in the light of OUR concept of equality. And even the Stoic concepts of equality are DETERMINED by their

historical situation much more than by a special abstract formula. There the problem was to give to as many people as possible, Roman citizenship --- this was the equality---and to do this also to women and children who didn't have it before, in the ancient law, neither in the Roman nor in the Greek, and certainly not in the so-called barbarian cultures. Now this was an enlargement. The concept of the slave^a was reduced as somebody who is not equal in ULTIMATE relations, and was finally abolished. But look here at the difficulty of the situation: neither in early Christianity nor in many periods of American history, was Christianity in the position to negate SLAVERY AS SUCH. The equality in the idea of Christianity, in Paul,^b his famous letter about the slave Philemon^c---or what was his name?---Onesimus^d!--- the discussions in THIS country about slavery show one thing clearly, that the Christian idea of equality and the Stoic^e in both cases was not the same. It was not Christianity but Stoicism which, ideologically speaking, worked for the emancipation of the slaves, because from the point of view of Christianity, the equality, as Paul ^fshows very clearly, is in faith and love, in the relationship

to theultimate [sic.] which is faith^g, and in the love^h relationship to the master---but not in the social standing as a slave who can be sold, who can be treated as someone who has to be obedient, etc. Now this shows that the middle axioms remain in comparative relativity. They are of course the most universal applications of the ultimate principle, namely love. But none of them