His nursemaid was Philosophy, the love of wisdom personified in a woman whose figure stretched toward the heights of divine thought. Only with her help could Boethius cease his painful mourning and find his way to the comfort of truth.

May we identify with the plight of Boethius? Today a cry rises up, deep out of the grieving throat of all truth-seekers. It is a cry, like Boethius', borne of the pain of exile. Our landscape has been overrun, sacked, and pillaged. Philistines have usurped control, and in their act have locked us away from our world. We are trapped, our surroundings nearly unrecognizable, our fate unfair, our enemies barbaric, clumsy, and ruthless.

The usurpers this time have not exercised their will with locks and chains, but with a more insidious and dangerous coercion. Not only have they seized a local government, but they have seized ideas, hijacked language, polluted literature, invented history.

Even in Boethius' time, Philosophy herself had been long abused by Philistines, Epicureans and Stoics, who ripped at her garments and carried off the fragments. But the Philistines gained little from the mere vestments of philosophy, and the light that shone in her could not be extinguished.

Today, the attempt to conquer her continues, and she is dishonored and banished. Those who have not abandoned her have misappropriated her, cloaking themselves in the mere appearance of reason, the vestments of Philosophy, but not the spirit of truth that once wore them; men sport fragments of Descartes as if he were a license to ignorance, Neitzsche as if he were a blank check of action.

Why might we cry with Boethius? Because today, the Philistines do not achieve isolated victories but nearly rule the world. They have infiltrated schools, governments, even churches. They claim with due self- righteousness the death of God, they assert with clenched jaw the value of tolerance, and they anxiously await the coming of their engineered utopia. The usurpers tell us there is not truth but oppression; they seek not righteousness but pleasure; they believe not in justice but in power.

Power, of course, is both their altar and their atom: all action can be justified with appeal to it, and all situations can be interpreted in terms of it. Under the new regime, all is confusion, and the cherished principles of long ago are dishonored. There can be no principles in the new regime, nor can there be guidance from gods or rituals. No heritage, no hero is worthy of attention. With all authority abandoned, the Philistines are unpredictable and finicky, steady only in their persistent exile of those who will not join in their new rule.

Thus, we are exiled like Boethius. But while today's usurpers are more ambitious than yesterday's, all is not lost. We may still appeal for help to our chief solace in life, she whose piercing vision gave strength to Boethius. She will be more than happy to oblige, for this time she shares in our exile.

Indeed, this time it is her exile, and it is we who share in it, only because we refuse to join those who exile her. The usurpers attempt to torture us for our allegiance; it looks, indeed, like we may face destruction at their hands. But Philosophy will not leave our side, and through her we can find the consolation, even the victory, that is the reward of those who stand by the power of a loving and earnest search for truth.