The claim frequently made, that we cannot find in Greek experience enough that is analogous with our problems, because Greece had so simple and circumscribed an existence and lived in a world so little complicated by machinery, means no more than to say that in a laboratory generations of guinea-pigs succeed one another with a lower mortality than in Guinean jungles, or that diamonds may be made out of their raw materials without the geological convulsions of which in nature they are admirable but accidental byproducts. That is what laboratories are for, to exhibit simply the behaviour of complex things. And the parallel between laboratories for matter and laboratories for mind has more than a fanciful value. Life in Greece was reduced to the simple facts of the human intelligence, leaning less than anywhere else upon mere tradition, upon mere materials, upon mere superfluities. Much as we have grown in range of knowledge by our study of the physical universe, and little as we can afford to reject any wisdom founded upon it, we need often to remember that in practice the centre of our universe is still the mind of man, that for the most part we have to conduct our affairs as if really the Ptolemaic system were good astronomy, as it is very fair politics and morals. The study of the material universe and all sorts of highly specialized studies tend to draw us away from these central facts, as pedants and casuists are continually being drawn away from fundamental principles. The principles, however, are still fundamental. VI. LONG ROADS THE COSMIC IRONIES The Cosmic Ironies sat on a bright island in the midst of the Galaxy, holding a caucus over the universe’s affairs. Boötes flamed, Orion glowed, Scorpio glittered, Ursa Major sulked, Eridanus sprawled and yawned, Canis Major and Canis Minor eyed each other distrustfully, Centaurus and Pegasus huddled close and whispered at intervals. Boötes, it appeared, had just been speaking, and there were still reverberations of his great voice in the ether, while the glare of difference or assent with which he had been greeted by his fellows played upon him from every quarter and illuminated the enormous scene, now red with fire, now blue with space, now opaline with shifting moods of the Ironies. Into this circle, before one of those present had had time to break the meditative silence, came a brisk invader in burning yellow who walked round the seated group and was obviously chagrined to find that no place had been kept for him. “I say, brothers of the universe,” he began, “it seems to me this committee has been closed long enough. It needs new blood. One of you move over and let me in.” If any heard him, at least there was no sign. The reverberations of Boötes’s words travelled farther away and the light from his listeners gradually ceased playing upon him; but the charmed occasion was not apparently disturbed.