far I have been able to follow with pleasure the development of the idea of progress to the accompaniment of factories, railways, and aeroplanes. Still, it seems to me childish to hope that all these trivialities--I mean the ideas--will become the object of man's serious seeking. If that desperate struggle of man with God and the world were possible, of which legend and history tell--think of Prometheus alone--then it was not for truth and not for the idea. Man desires to be strong and rich and free, the wretched, insignificant creature of dust, whom the first chance shock crushes like a worm before one's eyes,--and if he speaks of ideas it is only because he despairs of success in his proper search. He feels that he is a worm, he fears that he must again return to the dust which he is, and he lies, pretending that his misery is not terrible to him, if only he knew the truth. Forgive him his lie, for he speaks it only with his lips. Let him say what he will, how he will; so long as we hear in his words the familiar note of the call to battle, and the fire of desperate inexorable resolution burns in his eyes, we will understand him. We are used to decipher hieroglyphs. But if he, like the Germans of to-day, accepts truth and the norm as the final goal of human aspiration, we shall also know with whom we have to deal, were he by destiny endowed with the eloquence of Cicero. Better utter loneliness than communion with such a man. Yet such communion does not exclude utter loneliness; perhaps it even assists the hard achievement. XI _I and Thou_