Although we know that there is no actual beginning, because we are living in the universe without beginning and end, still we mortals must always begin at a certain point. So I have begun one of my retrospects over the history of my subject with Plato, and at another time I have ended with Hegel, although before and after them there has been much philosophical thought. These two names are luminant points which throw their light over everything which is situated between them. The errors of our predecessors are just as useful for the purpose of illustration as their positive achievements. More even: the errors form the steps of a ladder which leads toward a universal world philosophy. We clamber up and down on it, perhaps a little irregularly, but nowadays the crooked roads of an English park are preferred to the straight French avenues. It was an achievement on the part of the Socratic and Platonic schools to seek the good not in good specialties, but in general good, as a "pure" or absolute thing, to search for virtue in general instead of virtues. But it was a mistake which prevented their success, to exaggerate the distinction between the special and the general. According to Plato, the black and white horses canter over terrestrial pavements, but the horse in general, which is neither brown, black, nor white, neither as slender as a race horse nor as clumsy as a draft horse, cantered along in the Platonic "idea," in the ideal mists. Platonic logic lacked what is taught by our present, or if you prefer, future proletarian logic, viz., the general understanding of the interrelation of all things, the truth that in spite of their individual differences all things belong together as individuals of the same genus. The logical relation between individual and genus stuck upside down in the brain of the noble Plato. He lived in a time which is similar to our own time in that the world of the gods of the ancients was in the same state of dissolution in which the Christian religions are today. Plato was as little satisfied with Grecian mythology as a basis for a reasonable explanation of the world, as we are with Christian mythology. He wanted to ascend to the universal truth, not by way of little traditional stories, but by scientific philosophy. His intention was good, but his weak flesh wrestled with a task which required thousands of years for its solution. A while ago I said that it was that topsy-turvy view of religion as to the relation between the special and the general which thwarted Plato. Let me illustrate a little more in detail in what this religious topsy-turvydom consisted.