Yet no teacher has ever appeared in the world who was wise enough to know how to teach his wisdom to all mankind. In fact, the great teachers have attempted nothing so utopian. They were quite well aware how difficult for most men is wisdom, and they have confessed frankly that the perfect life was for a select few. It is arguable, in fact, that the very idea of teaching the highest wisdom to all men is the recent notion of a humanitarian and romantically democratic age, and that it is quite foreign to the thought of the greatest teachers. Gautama Buddha, for example, abolished caste within the religious order which he founded, and declared that the path to Nirvana was open to the lowest outcast as well as to the proudest Brahman. But it was necessary to enter the order and submit to its stringent discipline. It is obvious that Buddha never believed that very many could or would do that. Jesus, whom we are accustomed to think of as wholly catholic in his sympathies, spoke the bitter words: “Give not what is holy to the dogs and cast not your pearls before swine.” In Mohammedanism that which is mystical is esoteric: “all those emotions are meant only for a small number of chosen ones ... even some of the noblest minds in Islam restrict true religious life to an aristocracy, and accept the ignorance of the multitude as an irremediable evil.” There is an aristocratic principle in all the religions [p200] which have attained wide acceptance. It is significant that Jesus was content to leave the governance of the mass of men to Caesar, and that he created no organization during his lifetime beyond the appointment of the Apostles. It is significant, because it shows how much more he was concerned with the few who could be saved than with arranging the affairs of the mass of mankind. Plato, who was a more systematic teacher than either Jesus or Buddha, did work out an elaborate social order which took account not only of the philosophers, but of all the citizens of the state. But in that very attempt he rested upon the premise that most men will not attain the good life, and that for them it is necessary to institute the laws. “The worthy disciples of philosophy will be but a small remnant,” he said, “... the guardian ... must be required to take the longer circuit, and toil at learning as well as at gymnastics, or he will never reach the highest knowledge of all which is his proper calling.” Perhaps because they looked upon the attempts as hopeless, perhaps because they did not know how to go about it, perhaps because they were so wise, the greatest teachers have never offered their full wisdom to the multitude. Like Mr. Valiant-for-truth in _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ they said: “My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it.” 3. _The Peculiarity of the Modern Situation_