"One of the great errors of our times is to speak of the 'bankruptcy' of religion or the religions; this is to lay blame on truth for our own refusal to admit it; and by the same token it is to deny man both liberty and intelligence."

Schuon goes to the root of the impasse reached by the modern mind, resulting from the difficulty so many people have in accepting the symbolic expressions of religion in the face of academic rationalism, relativism and the discoveries of science. These essays clear the ground, beginning with the crucial reintegration of intelligence and our need for causal explanations, long left neglected and outside faith. The transcendent and primordial nature of Revelation, intellect, faith, prayer and the human condition are set forth in a framework that reconciles the apparent incompatibility between metaphysics--commonly confused with rational thought--and the love of God, often seen only from the standpoint of sentimentality.

"If there is an 'exact science' embracing all that is, it resides in consciousness of the realities underlying both the traditional symbols and the fundamental virtues, which are the 'splendor of the true.' "