They pointed to their venerable traditions, however meagre they were. “Our forefathers,” says _Plato_, “who were better than we are, and stood nearer to the gods than we, have handed down to us this revelation.”(13) That the testimony of the great sages, to the effect that the most essential elements of their philosophy had their origin in religious traditions, is based upon truth and not on fancy has been proven by _O. Willmann_, whose knowledge of ancient civilization was very extensive, in his monumental “History of Idealism.” Delhi, the home of mysteries, the generations of priests in ancient Egypt, the doctrinal traditions of the Chaldeans, the Magi of Medes and Persians, and the wisdom of the Brahmins of ancient India are witnesses to the fact. “The Ancients were correct,” says _Willmann_, “in tracing their philosophy to earliest traditions ... they knew what they owed to their forefathers better than we do. They direct our astonished eyes to a very ancient reality, to a towering remoteness of living thought.” This fact is very much against the taste of our times.... An inherited wisdom, springing from an original revelation, adapted to the nations, shining with renewed brightness in true philosophy, is quite the opposite to a philosophy that seeks the source of mental life only in isolated thinking; that thinks its success to be conditioned upon unprepossession; that holds the refutation of tradition to be the test of its strength. Unfortunately this latter view is widespread in our time. Research is often directed, not by reverence for the wisdom inherited from many Christian centuries, but by the mania, unwise and fatal alike, of seeking new paths. “Love of truth,” so we are told, “is what urges on the great leaders of humanity, the prophets and reformers, to seek new and untrodden paths of life. ‘Plus ultra’ is the rallying-cry of these pathfinders of the future, who are clearing the way for the mental life of mankind. No authority can restrain them, no prejudice, however holy: they are following the light which has dawned upon their soul” (_Paulsen_).