ABSTRACT
This chapter provides both a brief and informal account of human intellectual development and, in so far as the two turn out to be inextricably bound up together, moral development as well. It attempts to serve as a 'guide for the perplexed', explaining just what one must do if one hopes to overcome nihilism and despair and grow in science and wisdom. The path of knowledge is a path of practice as well as of theory. It is possible to find oneself in precisely these circumstances and still make no progress in intellectual development. One may be dealing with the traces of a socialization process which did not prepare one for calculated decision-making or resistance to injustice. Authoritarian child-rearing which represses sensuality, imagination, and/or the child's awakening critical capacities serves precisely this function. As a result of the complex and contradictory character of human social development generally, the process of human spiritual development does not follow any one, single path.
