It now appears probable that science may abandon in time its traditional mechanistic conceptions of the cosmos and of life, but there is little likelihood that such a change of outlook will restore man to the place in nature which he once thought he occupied. Nor may we expect it to envisage for him a world more conducive to his wishes than that pictured by the science of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it is possible that he may have to learn to live without even those fictions of security which were features of the older rationalism of science. Now I have tried to state the situation in its bold harshness, for the educated mind today must know all this and must wrestle with it. The knowledge cannot of itself lead to happiness, nor do I think that it necessarily leads to unhappiness. All depends upon what we are able to make of our existence in such a world. Although we possess different and more precise instruments of knowledge, I do not think this is the first time that thoughtful minds have seen through popular fancy and the shows of things. I believe wise men of all times have suspected that existence is different from what people naïvely imagine it to be. And it is precisely because they wrestled with such suspicions, asked, “what then?”, and have sought to give their existence some meaning and worth, that their words are precious. Now that education is general, and vast numbers seek it, it is well to remind ourselves that no one of us can really find wisdom until he has alone struggled for value with destiny and naked fact. The fear that most men cannot do this, and that they will turn aside with some substitute for knowledge or with that “little learning which is a dangerous thing” has led some writers, wrongly I think, to question that any good may come of universal education. This esoteric point of view is dramatically stated by Dostoevsky in “The Brothers Karamazov,” in the person of the Grand Inquisitor who rebukes the Christ on the occasion of his return to Seville to comfort the victims of the Inquisition. The Inquisitor tells the Christ that he has demanded too much of mankind. What the masses need is not freedom of the spirit, but mystery, miracle, and authority; someone to take their bread from their hands, bless it and give it back to them; someone who will permit them to sin, and take the responsibility on his own soul, someone who will _guard the secret_ and deceive mankind every step of the way as he leads it down to death. The old Inquisitor says to the Christ, “If at the last day you condemn me, I will defy you to your face, for I too have eaten bitter roots in the wilderness.”