are losing themselves in the desert they have made.

Meanwhile they have played their part in shaping the destinies of the
world, and it was an ill part, if we may judge from the results that
showed themselves in the events that have been recorded between the year
1800 and the present moment. Just what this influence was in determining
the nature of society, of industrial civilization and of the political
organism I shall try to indicate in some of the following lectures, but
apart from these concrete happenings, this influence was, I am
persuaded, most disastrous in its bearing on human character. Neither
wealth nor power, neither education nor environment, not even the
inherent tendencies of race--the most powerful of all--can avail against
the degenerative force of a life without religion, or, what is worse,
that maintains only a desiccated formula; and the post-Renaissance
philosophies are one and all definitely anti-religious and
self-proclaimed substitutes for religion. As such they were offered and
accepted, and as such they must take their share of the responsibility
for what has happened.

I believe we must and can retrace our steps to that point in time when a
right philosophy was abandoned, and begin again. There is no
impossibility or even difficulty here. History is not a dead thing, a
thing of the past; it is eternally present to man, and this is one of
the sharp differentiations between man and beast. The material monuments
of man crumble and disappear, but the spirit that built the Parthenon or
Reims Cathedral, that inspired St. Paul on Mars' hill or forged Magna
Charta or the Constitution of the United States is, _because of our
quality as men,_ just as present and operative with us today, if we
will, as that which sent the youth of ten nations into a righteous war
five years ago, or spoke yesterday through some noble action that you or
I may have witnessed. It is as easy for us to accept and practice the
philosophy of St. Thomas or the divine humanism of St. Francis as it is
to accept the philosophy of Mr. Wells or the theories of Sir Oliver
Lodge. No spiritual thing dies, or even grows old, nor does it drift
backward in the dwindling perspective of ancient history, and the
foolishest saying of man is that "you cannot turn back the hands of the
clock."

It is simply a question of will, and will is simply a question of desire
and of faith.

Manifestly I cannot be expected to recreate in a few words