serves four other purposes, outlined in its preface. The Syntopicon can serve as a reference book, as a book to be read, as an “instrument of liberal education,” and as “an instrument of discovery and research.” Above all, however, the Syntopicon was created to unite the western world's canon. It was created to solve what Adler saw as a fundamental problem, that “different authors say the same thing in different ways, or use the same words to say quite different things.” By cataloging the things the great authors were saying in a more scientific manner, Adler hoped to show the underlying unity that ultimately existed in the collected works. For Hutchins, a chief proponent of classical education, the creation of the Syntopicon held even greater implications. Hutchins felt that the ideas being discussed and cross-listed in the Syntopicon might be "powerful enough to save the world from self-destruction." Content The Syntopicon consists of 102 chapters on the 102 Great Ideas. Each chapter is broken down into five distinct sections: the introduction, an outline of topics, references, cross-references, and additional readings. Adler penned all 102 introductions himself, giving a brief essay on the idea and its connection with the western canon. The outline of topics broke each idea down further, into as many as 15 sub-ideas. For instance, the first idea “Angel” is broken down into “Inferior deities or demi-gods in polytheistic religion,” “the philosophical consideration of pure intelligences, spiritual substances, supra-human persons” and seven other subtopics. After this is the references section (for instance, “inferior deities or demi-gods in polytheistic religion” can be found in Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Locke, Hegel, Goethe and more). Cross-references follow, where similar ideas are listed. Last is the additional readings, in which one could seek out more on the subject of “Angel.” The list of 102 ideas is broken between the two volumes, as follows: Volume I: Angel, Animal, Aristocracy, Art, Astronomy, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Constitution, Courage, Custom and Convention, Definition, Democracy, Desire, Dialectic, Duty, Education, Element, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, Form, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Hypothesis, Idea, Immortality, Induction, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Logic, and Love. Volume II: Man, Mathematics, Matter, Mechanics, Medicine, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Monarchy, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, Oligarchy, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry,