Imagine the English people for half a thousand years without schools, without education, without universities, without historians, authors, friends and comforters! I am sure it is difficult for you to imagine your country even without Shakespeare, and without Oxford and Cambridge scholarships and the British Museum, not to mention other things. It may be of great interest to a psychologist as well as to a historian to know what kind of mental activity a people shows who are deprived of all that we to-day consider as an indispensable need of daily life. What may such a people be doing? Well, when by such a people are meant the Eskimos, it is clear: they hunt, eat, talk and sleep. But when by such a people is meant a people of the European, Aryan race--what then? The Serbs are a European, Aryan race. What did they do? Three things--they thought, sang and hoped. They _thought_. They thought about heaven and earth, about life and death, and man and animal, and about everything that affects human nature. They made comparisons and asked for the reason and purpose of everything. They drew their conclusions and expressed the results of their long observations. They thought a very, very long time before they uttered a short sentence. These sentences lived in the oral traditions, and have been transferred from one generation to another. These sentences are very like the Proverbs in the Bible, very like La Rochefoucauld or extracts and quotations from famous works. The Serbian sentences are striking. I have read a good deal by the great writers of Europe, but very often a popular Serbian saying strikes me more forcibly than a famous book. Here is just one saying: God is on the height, Satan is in the depth, man is in the middle. If God will, He can be above, below and in the middle. If Satan will, he can be below and in the middle. If man will, he can be like God everywhere, in the middle, or above or below. Another: A bird envied the serpent; thou knowest earth very well. The serpent envied the bird: thou knowest heaven very well. And both envied man: thou knowest heaven and earth. Man replied: "My knowledge and my ignorance make me equally unhappy." Another: Either snow or ice, or steam or fluid, water is always water. Either poor or rich, or ignorant or learned, man is always man. Another: Only a half-good man can be disappointed in this world. But a wholly good man never is disappointed because he never expects a reward for his good actions.