=The Ring-System.=--The teacher said: "In our old schools, the pupils were arranged not in classes, but in rings, and the forms were not placed in rows, but in circles. When I read of the circles of Dante's hell, I thought of my old school. But outside in life, I found this ring-system also. Men seemed linked together in concentric circles, each of which formed a little system of views. Each circle spoke its own language, expressed its meaning in old formulas, revered its gods, created its great men, often out of nothing. In each circle they had found the truth, and worked for development, but in a different way to the others. The first circle was really the lowest, but it considered itself the most important, because it was the first. When I read a paper or a book which comes from other circles than mine, I only see so much--that they are mad or stand on their heads. It stifles me, and has a hostile effect. I surmise that the five great races of the earth feel that, when they meet one another. In their minds they are as foreign to each other as though they came from the five great planets, although they have many human characteristics in common." =Lust, Hate, and Fear, or the Religion of the Heathen.=--The teacher said: "You know one of my tasks in life has been to unmask gyneolatry, the worship of women in history and life. I have called it 'the superstition of the heathen,' because there is something exclusively heathenish about it. Woman-worship is the religion of the heathen, but it is a religion of fear, which has nothing to do with love. Lust, hate, and fear--those are the component parts of it. As soon as a heathen comes in the proximity of a woman, he becomes tame and cowardly; faithless towards his friends, his convictions, and himself. He immediately desires that others should venerate his idol whom he hates and fears. That is a side of his animal self-love. "Gyneolatry is not Christian in its origin, but heathenish. All animals and savage races fear their women. When heathenism in the Græco-Roman and Moorish colonies of southern France and Italy got the upper hand, then began gyneolatry, the worship of mistresses. This worship was dishonestly confounded with chivalrous reverence for the Madonna, which was quite another thing. This religion of the heathen is the religion of fear and concealed hatred. Therefore all tyrants have been punished by having a woman oppress and torment them. Swedenborg explains the reason."