ONE:Nor was this the only reason why the spiritualists lost touch of their age. If in some respects they were far in advance of early Greek thought, in other respects they were far behind it. Their systems were pervaded by an unphilosophical dualism which tended to undo much that had been achieved by their less prejudiced predecessors. For this we have partly to blame their environment. The opposition of God and the world, heaven and earth, mind and matter, necessity in Nature and free-will in man, was a concession��though of course an unconscious concession��to the stupid3 bigotry of Athens. Yet at the same time they had failed to solve those psychological problems which had most interest for an Athenian public. Instead of following up the attempt made by the Sophists and Socrates to place morality on a scientific foundation, they busied themselves with the construction of a new machinery for diminishing the efficacy of temptation or for strengthening the efficacy of law. To the question, What is the highest good? Plato gave an answer which nobody could understand, and Aristotle an answer which was almost absolutely useless to anybody but himself. The other great problem, What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? was left in an equally unsatisfactory state. Plato never answered it at all; Aristotle merely pointed out the negative conditions which must be fulfilled by its solution.It may be useless or even wrong to institute invidious comparisons between different callings which are all useful and necessary, and the matter is not introduced here with any view of exalting the engineering profession; it is for some reasons regretted that the subject is alluded to at all, but there is too much to be gained by an apprentice having a pride and love for his calling to pass over the matter of its dignity as a pursuit without calling attention to it. The gauntlet has been thrown down and comparison provoked by the unfair and unreasonable place that the politician, the metaphysician, and the moral philosopher have in the past assigned to the sciences and constructive arts. Poetry, metaphysics, mythology, war, and superstition have in their time engrossed the literature of the world, and formed the subject of what was alone considered education.