Man is trying to reason out now as in the past, the secret of Life--the riddle of Existence. He seeks to know from whence he comes, whither he goes, and what is the object of his existence. He wants to know the _whyness_ of things--what it all means. He is like the squirrel in the cage, which exhausts itself in traveling the long road of the wheel, only to find itself at the end of its journey just where it started. Or worse still, like the newly-caged wild bird, he dashes against the bars of his prison, again and again, in his efforts to regain his freedom, until at last he lies weak and bleeding, a captive still. It has ever been so, from the childhood of the race until the present time. Sages, seers, prophets and philosophers have endeavored to reason out the problem, but their labors have availed nothing, and the riddle remains unanswered. Man has traveled over and over the circular road of thought, only to discover that it has no beginning--no ending. He thinks that he has explained things, but he has merely given them names. All the scientific research, all the theological and metaphysical speculation, has failed even to explain the sprouting of the mustard seed. Life and Death is a mystery to the most brilliant man of this civilization, as it was to the ignorant creature of the stone age. Races, nations, civilizations rise and fall; creeds are born, grow strong, weaken and die, but the secret remains a secret still. The present day seems to have reawakened the latent desire of man to see behind the veil. The pendulum which carried so many thinkers to the materialistic extreme is beginning to swing in the opposite direction, and is causing a strange and wonderful revival of ancient creeds and philosophies. Those who have long since turned their backs upon the accepted creeds now find themselves in the company of those who still claim allegiance to the church, but who feel themselves cramped by the creeds fashioned for them by their fathers. The leader of the New Thought, reaching the top of the mountain, often finds himself face-to-face with a scientific _savant_ who has reached the same place by climbing up the other side of the hill. And the scientist and the New Thought man need not be surprised to find a leader of advanced religious thought claiming a foothold on the top of the same hill. But the trio, after they have congratulated themselves upon reaching the summit and ending their journey look around them, and lo! their mountain is but a foothill, and far above them, towering higher and higher, rise range after range of the real mountains, the highest peaks being hidden among the clouds!