OF TRUTH
What is truth?” said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness and count it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking as well as in acting.
It was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that the good things, which belong to prosperity, are to be wished; but the good things, that belong to adversity, are to be admired. Bona rerum secundarum optabilia; adversarum mirabilia.
AMBITION is like choler; which is an humour that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring, if it be not stopped.
My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Globalization is often seen as global Westernization. On this point, there is substantial agreement among many proponents and opponents.
Three divergent theories of education all have their advocates in the present day. Of these the
first considers that the sole purpose of education is to provide opportunities of growth and to
remove hampering influences.
Freedom, in education as in other things, must be a matter of degree. Some freedoms cannot be tolerated.
The liberal story cherishes human liberty as its number one value. It argues that all authority
ultimately stems from the free will of individual humans, as it is expressed in their feelings,
desires and choices.
Why do we become more conservative as we age? Is it because we have found a place in the
existing system, have risen to a larger income, and have invested our savings in an economy,
which any significant revolt might alter to our loss?
In preparing these chapters I have often looked into my 1929 ebullition, The Mansions of Philosophy, to avoid repeating old sallies and arguments.