Not even our fashions, our methods, our ways of doing things are quite as novel as we sometimes like to think. Albertus Magnus, though he died in 1280, laid down the principles of our cherished “experimental method,”--and they were already old. Says Fenelon, “If an enlightened man were to gather from the books of St. Augustine the sublime truths which this great man has scattered at random therein, such a composition ... would be far superior to Descartes’ ‘Meditations.’” That takes us back to before the year 430--and wisdom then was far from being a child. There is going on about us all the while a systematic falsification of history so that the present may seem to stand upon an isolated pedestal, or rest like a tumbleweed upon a heap of sand, or like a thistledown to float seemingly upon nothing. Probably this sort of thing, too, is coeval with the dawn of human life. Pyrrho, the Greek philosopher, who attained fame from having made the remark that “nothing is more one thing than it is another,”--in other words that black is no blacker than is white nor white whiter than black--Pyrrho died 270 years before Christ. He voiced the “modern temper” of his day as Watson and Freud voice it in ours. For we have seen that Psycho-Analysis and Behaviorism spring from the same root. It makes little difference to what we are slaves, whether to reflexes or passions. If there be but one stuff, it is the same stuff whether we call it spirit or matter. No man ever yet succeeded in thinking of an abstract triangle, let alone an impersonal God. So, of old time as today, reason was Psyche’s good servant but a sorry master. Then, as now, reason died with the fool who said in his heart, “There is no God.” Then as now Wisdom cried, not in the class-room but in the streets, and had its being in that Love--“_che muove il sole e l’altre stelle_”--which moves the sun in heaven and all the stars. Transcriber’s Notes - Italics represented by _underscores_. - Small caps converted to ALL CAPS. - Footnotes renumbered consecutively and relocated to the end of each chapter. - Obvious typographic and grammatical errors silently corrected. - Variations in hyphenation and spelling kept as in the original.