Man has thereby become an educable creature and fallen a victim to the arts of the examiner. Provided the mechanisms of education do not get out of gear, it is hard to set limits to the amounts of knowledge with which he can be crammed; but it is clear that they are far greater than he could ever have acquired in a lifetime for himself. And as education (of sorts) has now become world wide, it might seem that the future of knowledge was now assured, and no longer liable to setbacks such as those due to the famous burning of the library of Alexandria at the command of the Caliph Omar, or the extinction of the only Greek scientists who seriously concerned themselves with the applications of science to life, of Archimedes and his School, in the sack of Syracuse. At any rate, it seemed clear that progress in knowledge could continue indefinitely, even in an otherwise stationary or decadent society. Whoever argued thus would fail to make sufficient allowance for the perversity of human nature. Human institutions, like the human body, are ever tending to get clogged with the waste products of their own working. Hence, so far from performing the functions for which they were intended, they are constantly becoming the most formidable instruments for their frustration. Experience shows how easily Churches become the most effective deadeners of religious zeal, how often Law becomes the negation of justice, how deadly is the School to the inborn craving for knowledge which seemed to Aristotle so characteristic of man’s nature.