knowledge in the realms of Thought. But a theory is not absolute truth, of course; it is a harbour where Knowledge rests while Thought is on the high seas, a Columbus, searching for new worlds. From a guess to a theory; this, then, is the architecture of constructive growth that research and revision build with facts; and if we as pontists wish to think clearly and humanely, we must use facts as a means to a worthy end, as architects employ their materials. One by one facts are to us what a few slates and tiles are to a builder, but Thought collects them, and then with care and inspiration she builds with them as she builds with stones and bricks and timber. In her work, moreover, there is nothing little when she does little things admirably; but when her devotees go away from her and parade guesswork as theory and fact as truth, we should ask them whether brick-kilns are houses and stone quarries cathedrals. To-day, unhappily, most people exalt facts into truths, and very often the great word “theory” is a journalistic term for any supposition that is loose or wayward or foolish. Thus, “Mrs. Jones has a mere theory that her husband is hard at work when he remains in town after office hours.” From the life of bridges we may draw a great many conjectures, suppositions, speculations, suggestions, fancies, ideas; and here and there we find some attractive hypotheses, notably those that concern the introduction of pointed arches into French bridges, and of ribbed arches into English bridges. Are there any truths, any useful and necessary things that repeat and confirm themselves age after age? Yes. There are some technical truths that belong for all time to the mechanics of bridge building; the world can employ them for ever, and always with the same good results, if engineers and architects work competently. There is also a great social truth in the life of bridges and roads; namely, that types of society are as old as their systems of circulation, just as women and men are as old as their arteries. So the condition of a body social can be judged accurately if we examine with care its landways and waterways. In Spain, for example, where the genius of modernity is inactive, and where fine bridges represent many dead social states, Roman, Moorish, Mediæval, and Renaissance, the past reigns over the highways, sometimes as an inspiration, as in the great and vast bridge at Ronda, but usually as a mournful historian. Even in those parts of Spain where trade endeavours to be modern, workmen have time enough to be honest craftsmen; their metal bridges are not uncouth, and their stone bridges are charmed with hints taken from classic models. They do not “progress,” for they keep far off from that spirit of trade which regards the lies of advertising as proofs of a pushful honour. From a modern standpoint, then, Spain does not live except as a dim reflexion of her long ago.