Historical Reprints
Philosophical
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Why should we fight for freedom? Is it not strange, that it has become necessary to ask and answer this question? We have fought our fight for centuries, and contending parties still continue the struggle, but the real significance of the struggle and its true motive force are hardly at all understood, and there is a curious but logical result. Men technically on the same side are separated by differences wide and deep, both of ideal and plan of action; while, conversely, men technically opposed have perhaps more in common than we realise in a sense deeper than we understand.
Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753) wrote this, his major philosophical work, at the age of 25. The Principles of Human Knowledge is a powerful attack on the Lockean theory of abstraction and presents a bold new metaphysics in which Berkeley claims that objects only exist when they are perceived.
At a party in Chicago, a young man under the influence of LSD seized a live kitten and ate it. Later, in an effort to explain his action, he said he had felt an urgent need to experience everything. The story is revolting, of course, and possibly apocryphal;
Of that golden chain of philosophers, who, having themselves happily penetrated, luminously unfolded to others the profundities of the philosophy of Plato, Proclus is indisputably the largest and most refulgent link.
THE gathering together of the Proverbs of Scotland has occupied the attention of several collectors.
A study of the sexual hangups of the so-called 'reformer'.
A look at the symmetry of beauty in the visual, aural, and form.
Two great essays in one volume. The evolution of psychology is a proof that science has not yet completely emancipated itself from its serfdom to religious beliefs. It was originally a branch of philosophy, and its chief purpose was to serve religion by furnishing convincing proofs that the soul is spiritual and immortal. In proportion as the methods of science were adopted in it, and arguments of a philosophical character were eliminated, the aim of the science was changed. Half a century ago it abandoned the word "soul," and it threw out the question of immortality as a minor irrelevance to be wrangled over by Materialists, Christians, Spiritualists, and Theosophists.
Two Translations of Ptolemy's Treatise on Astrology, Astronomy, Cause and Effect. This is a must read for any student or researcher of Astrology.
Few books have aroused more controversy in recent years than Lobsang Rampa's THE THIRD EYE, and the other works which have come from his pen.
The reason is simple enough. When an Englishman claims that his body has been taken over by the spirit of a Tibetan Lama, he can reasonably expect mockery.
Most of us have been born and bred under the influence of some form of religious superstition, which was imposed upon us, from a very proper sense of duty, by our parents. But parents, though having complete control over the education of their children, cannot commit them, when they arrive at years of discretion, to any particular line of thought or opinion. If this were possible, in what a state of appalling ignorance should we be now! The world progresses, and why? Because knowledge progresses.
In the domain of religion and theology, the present age is witnessing a phenomenon of extraordinary character and significance. It is now being demonstrated that scholarly research in the field of Christian history and exegesis is at last beginning to be motivated by the spirit of truth-seeking. The amazing discovery in recent times of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other documents such as the Gospel of Thomas, has lifted a curtain of secrecy ...
The late 1800s and early 1900s saw a heightened consciousness towards spirituality that included much research and the search for truth. This was evident in the churches through the revival craze, Azusa Street Pentecostalism (which is a form of Spiritualism), Salvation Army, and the great orators and writers within Christianity.
"There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the community; every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occasionally, called on to take an active part in the government, by the personal discharge of some public function, local or general."
I have few heroes. My first was Clarence Darrow. When I was a child, my father proudly showed me a small paperback volume entitled "Resist Not Evil," a broadside against capital punishment written by Darrow in the early part of the century. The volume had been autographed by Darrow to his mother, and by her to my father. It formed the core of my credo and although it disappeared many years ago and I have moved several times, I still cannot open a box of books, or look at the shelves in my mother