classics digests, reflections and reviews
Repartees Dionysius: What was the reason that philosophers go to rich men’s houses, while rich men no longer visit philosophers? Aristippus: The one know what they need while the other do not. Aristippus enjoyed the favours of Lais, a famous courtesan. “I have Lais, not she me; and it is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without ever being worsted.” To one who reproached him […]
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This Dream is Human Life That great general universal dream which not only the sleeping but also the waking dream. This dream in veriest truth is human life. In the visions of sleep, seeing we see not, hearing we hear not, tasting and touching we neither taste nor touch, speaking we speak not, but they are empty creations of the mind, which produces pictures and images of things without any basis […]
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The Politician is a Slave The politician must needs be a man of many sides and many forms. He must be a different man in peace from what he is in war. He resists the few with vigorous action, but uses persuasion in his dealings with the many. When the would-be popular orator mounts the platform, like a slave in the market, he becomes a bond-servant instead of a free […]
Read moreNo evil can come to a good man either in life or after death, and God does not neglect him. –Plato, Apology 41d A friend of mine passed away a week ago, on February 28, 2018. When I received the news, the first thing that came to mind was the above saying of Socrates. It is fitting to remember her on International Women’s Day, for she was one of the […]
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The Federal Constitution The Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government. The two great points of difference between […]
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What is Time Time is merely a device by means of which we gradually see that which is in reality and which is ever the same. In order that the eye may see the entire globe, the latter must turn before the observing eye. Even the world revolves before the eyes of men in time. Time and space is the disintegration of the infinite for the convenience of finite creatures. […]
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When men accept as indubitable truths that which is offered to them as such by others, without stopping to examine it by the exercise of their reason, they fall into superstition. Such is our modern superstition of science, namely recognition as indubitable truths of what is passed as truth by professors, academicians and men calling themselves scientists in general…people who in a given period usurp the right of determining what […]
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