The central thesis of Mr. Adler's latest book, A Guidebook to Learning: For the Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom, is that our serious learning begins only when we finish our formal schooling. In fact, Mr. Adler stuns the examiner*, Leon Botstein, by saying, "To say 'a wise young person' is equivalent to saying 'a round square.' Wise and young will never go together." (WFB: "Was Robert Hutchins mature when at the age of 27 he was made dean of the Yale Law School?" MA: "No. Nor was he mature when he became president of the University of Chicago at age 30. His immaturity and mine-both immature-caused much of the trouble at the University of Chicago.") This-dare one say wise?-hour includes this diagnosis of our current intellectual woes, unlikely, alas, to become inapplicable as the 20th century gives way to the 21st: "In all preceding centuries-the ancient world, the medieval world, and the modern world up to almost the end of the 19th century-men did not hesitate to arrange knowledge in either an ascending or descending order, some kind of hierarchical [order], so you ... understood the relationship of various parts of life. But in the 20th century that violates neutrality, that violates our detachment. We mustn't evaluate things in any particular way."