I am going to try to outline a situation chiefly marked by an unprecedented intellectual confusion arising out of the fact that the astonishingly rapid advance of modern science has caused many beliefs, axioms and assumptions of very long standing to be seriously questioned. The origins and nature of the universe and the situation of man in it have become matters of doubt and of speculation; such indeed are the very questions to which religion and science appear to give different answers. Now these are not questions of interest only to a few philosophers and theologians, they are of immense and immediate practical importance, simply because everyone, even if he hardly ever thinks at all, acts in accordance with some assumption or other concerning the basic realities of his situation. That assumption dictates the tendency, and therefore the ultimate effect, of all that he does, and if it is false his best endeavors are bound to go astray; and this applies with every bit as much force to the collectivity as to the individual. But in these days, in which there is no established traditional order, no unquestioned hierarchy of the intelligence or of anything else, all fundamental decisions are thrown back on to the judgement of the individual, and few indeed are those who are equipped to stand the strain.