Philosophical

A book which deals with powerful human passions in no lethargic way. It may horrify by its brutality, and its assault on ordinary morality may well be considered startling: yet it counts for something that M. Artzibashef does not display the common fear of life.

The Apology describes Socrates' state of mind at his trial and execution, and especially his view that it was better to die before senility set in than to escape execution by humbling himself before an unjust persecution.

Nature, indeed, conspires against all such genuine originality, and I have no doubt that God is against it on His heavenly throne, as His vicars and partisans unquestionably are on this earth. The dead hand pushes all of us into intellectual cages; there is in all of us a strange tendency to yield and have done. Thus the impertinent colleague of Aristotle is doubly beset, first by a public opinion that regards his enterprise as subversive and in bad taste, and secondly by an inner weakness that limits his capacity for it, and especially his capacity to throw off the prejudices and superstitions of his race, culture anytime.

A rare writing of the mystic artist William Blake and his visions of America, in Blake's handwriting.

Although I neither was willing, nor able to be wanting to my honoured Friends, yet would not divulge and bring to light the Verity of the Spagirick Art, but by this most precious, and Miraculous Arcanum, which I not only saw with these Eyes, but taking a little of the transmutatory powder, I myself also transmuted an Impure Mass of Lead volatile in the Fire, into fixed Gold, constantly sustaining every Examen of Fire

An interesting story with an ethical moral for all...