The point I wish you to note is that even among the Greeks and the
Romans there were two types of mind, one of which placed the Golden Age
in the past, and the other of which placed it in the future as the goal
of man's endeavor and growth.

A precisely similar thing we find in the Old Testament, so that these
two types of mind appear among the Hebrews. In one of these we find
again the Golden Age, the perfect condition of things, placed at the
beginning. There was a garden, and man and woman were perfect in it.
There was no labor, no toil, no pain, no sorrow, no fear, no trouble of
any kind. But that was followed by sin, evil, entering the world, by
their being driven out; and so the world has again been going from bad
to worse, as the ages have passed by.

On the other hand, among the Hebrews, as illustrated in the writings of
the great prophets, the master minds of the Hebrew race, there is the
opposite belief manifested. There is no fall of man, no perfect
condition of things, no Golden Age at the beginning, in the prophets.
There is none in the teaching of Jesus. Rather do they look forward
with kindling eye and beating heart to some grander thing that is to
be.

Here is this dual tradition, then, in the world, in different parts of
the world, this dual way of looking at the problem of life.

Now I wish to place before you the two great contrasted theories of the
universe. In presenting that which has been dominant for the last two
or three thousand years, two thousand, perhaps, speaking roughly, I am
quite well aware that I shall have to seem to tell you what you