at home teaching and learning from those not under forty, for at that age real wisdom begins, the effects of special training having then faded. A refocalization took place in his mind that involved not only new methods but, yet more, new topics and subject matter. What student, however mature, would care for and what curriculum in any university in the world would include, for example, the theme of this volume. And who but a _Greis_ would ever have found its preparation a fascinating task! No, the old are not childish but, if they are normal, have simply reached a stage of postmaturity that involves much of what Nietzsche called the transvaluation of all values. But if we can no longer see over the crest of the divide that separates age from youth, if the acclivity is shut off, we do see more nearly and clearly each step of the declivity and find the catabasis of life no less zestful than its anabasis was in its time, while we have the great advantage that comes from the power of being able to compare the two and this itself opens rich mines of thought. The age of the sage has bid a final adieu not only to all puerilities but to the callow ardors of the ephebic stage. He is graduated from adulthood and turns, as by an eschatological instinct, to ultimate human problems, of which younger minds, though they may be attracted to them, can have only premonitions. To hear and heed this call is the strength and glory of those who are complete “grown-ups.” The trouble with mankind in general is that it has not yet grown up. Its faults, which we see on every hand, and the blunders that make so large a part of history are those of immaturity. Man has always felt the need of guardianship and because he lacked wisdom invented immortal omniscient gods--tribal, national, or cosmic--to guide him and as embodiments of what he felt lacking in himself. It is just this need of an all-wise providence that the old will come to supply if and as humanity slowly ripens.