I should like you to look upon this paper as the basis of a symposium. What I want to do is to put forward certain fundamental principles which lie at the very heart of our Dominican vocation, and to draw from them one or two seminal ideas, ideas which like seeds will grow and fructify in the mind and, so produce fruit in the way we live our day-to-day Dominican life. I want to do this moreover with a special eye on your office as superiors. Superiors hold a key place in community life. They are fathers and mothers of the family, and like good fathers and mothers their chief function is to foster and develop the family spirit, which is the chief educative factor in the religious community, as it is in the secular home.