Chapter 17, The Way of the Modern World Summary and Analysis

Hamilton believes that it has been only in rare and brief moments that the balance of mind and spirit achieved by the fifth century Athenians has occurred in later human history. After the end of the Greek city-state the world moved through various periods of peril and transition. And as always they responded with fear, confusion and insecurity. They turned, she says, away from the visible world - away from the world of the mind - to the world of the spirit and followed various paths they believed offered rescue from the sorrow and misery of life.

Throughout history the focus of human searching for answers has moved from the spirit to the mind and back to the spirit again, like a pendulum. In those brief moments when the...