It cannot be disputed that a general uneasiness disturbs the world of to-day. Although his environment is most favourable to the fulfilment of many of his capacities, man finds himself without orientation when he has to determine the course of his life, or to explain to himself his true relation to such categories of humanity as family, nation, race and human race. This uneasiness reveals itself as discontentment, and it leads to pessimism or to mysticism. Most of the philosophical systems of the nineteenth century were steeped in melancholy, and led straight to a denial of the possibility of happiness and even to an advocacy of extinction. The frequency of suicide has increased greatly among all the civilised peoples. There is no need to tabulate proofs of a notorious fact.[1] A remedy for this malady of the age has been sought in the attempt to restore religious and mystical faith. On all sides have sprung up efforts to found new religions or to amend the old. Many defenders of science have gone the length of admitting its incapacity to solve the problem of the existence of man; they have held that that problem was insoluble for the human mind. Such a depressing conclusion has been formulated in spite of many attempts to reach a rational conception of the universe and of man. It is no new thing to ask if there be nothing but faith to control human conduct and to lead mankind towards universal happiness. Men of science and philosophers, in many ages, have thought that human nature itself could provide all the materials for a rational morality. In the ancient world and, above all, among the Greeks, human nature was held in high esteem. The Oriental races, predecessors of the Greeks in civilisation, generally represented their gods as fantastic or grotesque beings, composites of men and animals. The Greeks made gods in their own image, giving them all the most beautiful qualities of the human race. Such a conception was a dominant factor in ancient Greek life and civilisation. The adoration of Man embraced the human body, and led to the despising of every mode of tampering with the natural body. Thus, for instance, shaving[2] of the face was regarded as a humiliation, for a smooth chin gave an unnatural, womanish cast to the face of a man. The adoration of human nature by the Greeks appeared in Greek plastic art, and was the cause of its excellence. The ideal of art was to copy, in the most faithful way, the most perfect example of the human body, and Greek artists made measurements of the body so accurately that modern science has confirmed their chief results.[3] As sculpture most completely realised the Greek ideal of the human body, it became almost a national art among the Greeks.