to separate the truth from the error. How would religion become ever more and more spiritual if men are only to inherit, and never to examine and understand? And since no religion or other form of thought can ever come down through centuries without picking up a large amount of error, if we had not this critical and challenging spirit all religions would grow into superstitions, and that which is most valuable for the race would gradually be covered under a mass of ignorant error. Hence at certain times in the history of the race a great outburst of the Puritan spirit is necessary. That alone will bring about fundamental changes, religious, moral, and social; that alone has the courage to go forward whilst in a minority, and test with the test of reason every belief and every tradition. We must not, then, blind ourselves to the immense value of this spirit in the intellectual development of man. For always, inasmuch as religious and social order has come by some great Teacher enormously beyond his own generation in religious, moral, and social development, inevitably his teachings, handed down generation after generation, will in many respects tend to be covered with superstition. Let us pause for a moment and see what the word “superstition” means. I do not think I can give a better definition than my old one: “superstition is the taking of the non-essential as the essential.” I think that you will find that that covers all the cases which you would call superstitions—a truth originally; but in every truth there are necessary and accessory parts. As the understanding of the truth is clouded, the accessories take on too large a value in the minds of people, until at last the accessory is everything and the essential nothing.