Our notion of ourselves, of our being and, hence, of freedom has many sources; religious, literary and cultural but to our age the most influential has been the intellectual view, that proffered by and supported in the arguments of the philosophers. Why intellectuals have moved into the place of priests and the significance of this priesthood will form a significant sub-plot of this work. In the last four centuries the intellectuals have taken on at least some of the role of the medieval clergy and our way of thinking about ourselves includes within it a reverence for "reason' a reverence which was formerly reserved for the divine.