SEARCHLIGHTS ON HEALTH. THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICSBy PROF. B.G. JEFFERIS, M.D., PH. D. KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY. 1. The old maxim, that Knowledge is power, is a true one, but there is still a greater truth: KNOWLEDGE IS SAFETY. Safety amid physical ills that beset mankind, and safety amid the moral pitfalls that surround so many young people, is the great crying demand of the age. 2. CRITICISM.--This work, though plain and to some extent startling, is chaste, practical and to the point, and will be a boon and a blessing to thousands who consult its pages...

The spiritual ethos and the philosophical outlook that the Bhagvad - Gita postulates paves the way for the liberation of man, who, as Rousseau said, ‘being born free, is everywhere in chains’. But equally it is a mirror of human psychology, which enables man to discern his debilities for appropriate redressal. All the same, the boon of an oral tradition that kept it alive for over two millennia became its bane with the proliferation of interpolations therein. Besides muddying its pristine philosophy, these insertions affect the sequential conformity and structural economy of the grand discourse...

An important, controversial, and often cited work on public education. Dewey discusses the role of public education in a democracy and the different methods for achieving quality in education. After its initial publication, this book began a revolution in educational thinking; one that emphasized growth, experience, and activity as key elements in promoting democratic qualities in students and educators alike. (Introduction by timferreira)

Thoughts are Things, authored by Prentice Mulford, is one of the earliest books espousing New Thought teaching. This book contains information on how to better man's spiritual and physical life through the power of thought. Discover timeless spiritual wisdom that, when practiced, will enrich your life and deepen your understanding of Universal Truth

Faith and reason, love and virtue, morality and mortality! In these two short volumes the famous novelist, essayist, and playwright, Upton Sinclair, confided his most prized worldly wisdom for generations to come. His kind and witty personal advice both provokes and enlightens page by page.

The Riddle of the Universe is the philosophical work of Ernst Haeckel, eminent biologist, in which he explores the meaning of life, the nature of reality, and the connection between physiology and thought.

Instructions in how to develop your psychic powers including telepathy, clairvoyance, self-projection, reincarnation, and other topics. Seriously. "It must be distinctly understood … that I believe the vast bulk of the material presented in this book to be sound and helpful; the practical instructions are good, and the reader cannot go far wrong in following them. May he develop his own psychic powers, and gain light and understanding thereby!" (From Author’s Preface)

The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichean view of good...

Physics (Greek: Φυσικὴ ἀκρόασις; Latin: Physica, or Physicae Auscultationes) discusses concepts including: substance, accident, the infinite, causation, motion, time and the Prime Mover.

Character Building is a compilation of speeches, given by Mr. Booker T. Washington, to the students and staff of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University).Booker T. Washington was one of the most prominent leaders in advancing African-American civil rights. Born into slavery and freed as a young boy, he rose through the ranks of education to eventually earn his position as principal of Tuskegee. Under his guidance, the school was built, by students and for students, to give them a deeply meaningful education...

The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a pamphlet, written by a British and American revolutionary Thomas Paine. The Age of Reason challenges institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of Christianity. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, it was a bestseller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. Part 1 was written sometime in 1793, and attacks the concepts of divine revelation and inspiration...

“Being the Familiar Correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh ... [Van Gogh's] art was appreciated during his life only by a very few and it is but within recent years that it has found admirers who in many cases have been most ardently enthusiastic. Of the following letters, some were addressed to his brother and the remainder to his friend E. Bernard.

The book is a series of independent demonstrations, the results of which accumulate to the final conclusion, that the Christian religion is necessarily the only religion possible to meet the spiritual wants of mankind. In arriving at this conclusion, the different arts and processes of revealed religion are examined, and their adaptedness to perform their several functions in elevating, purifying, and actuating the human soul to benevolent effort, is determined, and, finally, the practical operation of the system is shown, as a matter of undeniable experience, to produce the complete and necessary result required...

Lafcadio Hearn, born 1850 in Greece, went to Japan when he was 40 years old and became a Japanese citizen only 6 years later. His writings about Japan from the beginning of the Meiji era, when the country was just opening to the West, remain among the most important explanations of Japanese culture. This book contains in the first part, "Exotics", his observations of and personal insights into Japan. For example, Fuji no Yama tells about him climbing the highest mountain in Japan; and A Question in the Zen Texts, Literature of the Dead, and Of Moon Desire try to explain Buddhist teachings...

John Churton Collins was a literary critic who lived from 1848-1908. In 1904 John Collins became professor of English literature at Birmingham University (United Kingdom). He writes about the lives of English and German authors beginning with William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and ending with Alfred, Lord Tennyson(1809-1892). He wrote the book in response to On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, by Thomas Carlyle (1840). His son, L.C. Collins, collected these essays from various sources after his father's death. Additional proof-listening by Larry Wilson.

Magna Moralia (Ancient Greek: ΗΟΙΚΩΝ ΜΕΓΑΛΩΝ, English: Great Ethics) discusses topics including friendship, virtue, happiness and God. It is disputed whether Aristotle wrote Magna Moralia. This author concludes that it is absurd to suggest that God contemplates only God but does not propose an alternative activity for God.

This book looks at the Followers of the New Thought movement of the early 20th century who believed in the concept of "mind over matter," It introduces us to the mental fascination among animals . the rationale of fascination . experimental fascination . the phenomena of induced imagination . the dangers of psychism . Oriental fascination . and much more. From 1901 to 1905 William Walker Atkinson was the editor of a magazine New Thought and editor of the journal Advanced Thought from 1916 to 1919. Certainly gives you food for thought.

As sceptics dismissed other-worldly phenomena as the stuff of legend, trickery or delusion, nineteenth-century 'occult science' set out to explain them scientifically. Here, C. W. Leadbeater maps out the scenery and inhabitants of the astral plane, accounting along the way for phenomena such as the journey of the soul after death, magic and sorcery, vampires and werewolves, pixies, gnomes and fairies, ghosts and shades, and communication with the departed in the seance room. A leading figure in the...

Tusculan Disputations (Latin: TUSCULANARUM DISPUTATIONUM) is divided into five books which discuss death, pain, grief, perturbations and virtue. At issue is whether wise people can always be happy regardless of the apparent evil that fortune throws in their way. Andrew Peabody says the A. and M. in the text may stand for Auditor, Adolescens, Atticus or Aulus and Marcus or Magister. Written by Marcus Tullius Cicero. Translated by Charles Duke Yonge.

In this work, Schopenhauer explains his fundamental idea that at the root of the reality we see around us is a Will that eternally, insatiably seeks to be satisfied. Each human Subject observes the Objects around her from the perspective of that fundamental Will working within each person. The human observer is distracted by the details of life and individual distinctions that obscure this Will; only by penetrating this “principium individuationis” (which is enslaved by the cause-and-effect tyranny of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) can the observer perceive the essential Thing-In-Itself...

Disproportionately remembered as a hellfire-and-brimstone Puritan preacher on the basis of the excessively-anthologized "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards was a noted philosopher in the field of Aesthetics, or the metaphysics of Beauty. An examination even of his sermons reveals constant references to this philosophical preoccupation, his favorite word in many passages seeming to be "Sweetness," by which term he intended to convey a rich sense of Beauty. In "A Dissertation...

"My Confession" is a brief autobiographical story of Leo Tolstoy's struggle with a mid-life existential crisis of melancholia. It describes his search for answers to the profound questions "What will come of my life?" and "What is the meaning of life?", without answers to which life, for him, had become "impossible." Tolstoy reflects on the arc of his philosophical life until then: his childhood abandonment of his Russian orthodox faith; his mastery of strength, will, power, and reason; and how, after he had achieved tremendous financial success and social status, life to him seemed meaningless...

In this work, Schopenhauer explains his fundamental idea that at the root of the reality we see around us is a Will that eternally, insatiably seeks to be satisfied. Each human Subject observes the Objects around her from the perspective of that fundamental Will working within each person. The human observer is distracted by the details of life and individual distinctions that obscure this Will; only by penetrating this “principium individuationis” (which is enslaved by the cause-and-effect tyranny of the Principle of Sufficient Reason) can the observer perceive the essential Thing-In-Itself...

Bertrand Russell wrote 'Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy' while imprisoned for protesting Britain's involvement in World War I. Russell summarizes the significance of the momentous work of mathematicians in the late nineteenth-century. He further describes his own philosophy of mathematics, Logicism (the view that all mathematical truths are logical truths), and his earlier, influential work solving the paradoxes that plagued mathematical foundations, which crystallized after ten years of dogged effort into the co-authored (with Alfred North Whitehead), three-volume 'Principia Mathematica'...

This was one of Lord Acton's essays, that was in response to the publication of the letters between Sir Robert Peel and Lord Macaulay. Lord Acton hoped to refute the common prejudice that the religious practice of sacrificing human victims was not always carried out by unfeeling and uncivilized people, but was in some cases the development of an advanced theology. At the insistence of Lord Stanhope, Acton published the essay in the Home And Foreign Review in 1863.

Schopenhauer used the word "will" as a human's most familiar designation for the concept that can also be signified by other words such as "desire," "striving," "wanting," "effort," and "urging." Schopenhauer's philosophy holds that all nature, including man, is the expression of an insatiable will to life. It is through the will that mankind finds all their suffering. Desire for more is what causes this suffering. He used the word representation (Vorstellung) to signify the mental idea or image of any object that is experienced as being external to the mind...

In 1906, Eben Francis Thompson,scholar and poet, published a limited edition of his translation of the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam. This edition contains 878 quatrains, and represents the most extensive translation of Omar's rubai in any language.In the Introduction, Nathan Haskell Dole writes: Mr Thompson has put into English verse this whole body of Persian poetry. It is a marvel of close translation, accurate and satisfactory. He has succeeded in doing exactly what he set out to do - to add nothing and to take nothing away, but to put into the typical quatrain, as determined by Fitzgerald and others, exactly what Omar and his unknown imitators said.

Vairagya Shatakam is one of the best books that gives the true picture of Renunciation. The book talks on how a common man gets lured by the endless desires which when satisfied fetches him nothing but the desires again. It concludes saying how these unsatiable desires mislead the man from knowing his real nature-omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience!

Written by the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or Theologico-Political Treatise was one of the most controversial texts of the early modern period. It was a preemptive defense of Spinoza's later work, Ethics, published posthumously in 1677, for which he anticipated harsh criticism. In the treatise, Spinoza put forth his most systematic critique of Judaism, and all organized religion in general. Spinoza argued that theology and philosophy must be kept separate, particularly in the reading of scripture...

Prentice Mulford was also instrumental in the founding of the popular philosophy, New Thought, along with other notable writers including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mulford's book, Thoughts are Things, served as a guide to this new belief system and is still popular today.

This collection of articles in early 20th Century American philosophy focuses on the topics of realism, experience, and ideas, with particular attention to the pragmatic naturalism of John Dewey. In tracks 1-5, Dewey responds to critics of his famous article “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism” (available in Short Nonfiction Collection Vol.034). Tracks 6-12 constitute a series of pointed debates between Dewey and E. B. McGilvary on the topics of time, ideas, and reality. Tracks 13-16 include stand-alone articles on related topics, including Dewey’s influential critique of “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology...

The philosophy of Idealism, revived in eighteenth-century Europe by George Berkeley, argued against philosophical materialism by maintaining that Reality is a creation of the Mind. Despite its flourishing under the leadership of Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, and Schelling, Idealism had definitely fallen into decline late in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth. May Sinclair, the writer of many popular but philosophically provocative novels and part-time World War I ambulance corps-person, was an unlikely one to take up the torch of the old school and try to revive it yet again for the twentieth century...

George Bernard Shaw, a playwright with a few bones to pick of his own, undertakes a surgical analysis of the social philosophies underlying the work of Henrik Ibsen. Focusing his analysis on Ibsen's challenge to the conventional "ideals" which both Ibsen and Shaw consider the greatest evils in human society, Shaw summarizes and exposits sixteen of Ibsen's plays, seizing the opportunity to elucidate some of the principles dearest to himself. Some of the most striking passages reveal Shaw's radical feminist perspectives, some of which resonate as if a half-century ahead of their time...

'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism' is a series of lectures by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) that touches on numerous topics, including the nature of propositions, the relations of propositions to facts and of different types of words to the varieties of things, what kinds of facts there are, existence, monism and pluralism, and aspects of philosophical logic and of reference. Guiding the lectures, at least according to Russell's headnote to his lectures, is Russell's intent to fully flesh out ideas he learned from his former pupil, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).

Bertrand Russell gave the Lowell Lectures in March and April of 1914; these lectures produced 'Our Knowledge of the External World'. Russell attempts to analyze the relationship of the crude data of our senses to the notions of physics such as space, time, and matter. Russell takes his analysis to illustrate the method of logical analysis used to such wonderful effect by thinkers in the late nineteenth-century to the notions of continuity, infinity, and the infinitesimal. These analyses effected...

John Woolman was born at Northampton, N. J., in 1720, and died at York, England, in 1772. He was the child of Quaker parents, and from his youth was a zealous member of the Society of Friends. His “Journal,” published in 1774, describes his way of life and the spirit in which he did his work; but his humility prevents him from making clear the importance of the part he played in the movement against slaveholding among the Quakers. In 1742, Woolman, then a young clerk in the employment of a storekeeper in New Jersey, was asked to make out a bill of sale for a negro woman; and the scruples which then occurred to him were the beginning of a life-long activity against the traffic...

In this early collection of formative essays, acclaimed American philosopher John Dewey argues that the idealistic, realistic, and analytic schools of philosophy fail to take into account the pragmatic and experimental nature of experience - common to science and practical experience, but alien to the abstract theorizing of coherentist and correspondence theories of logic. Here we find the essential groundwork for the mature naturalistic and process-oriented metaphysics that Dewey would elaborate in his later mature works such as Experience and Nature and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry...

This anthology collects a number of fascinating strands of Bertrand Russell's thought. "Mathematics and the Metaphysicians" details the impact of the 1900 World Congress of Philosophers on Russell's development and the hope that new methods in mathematics could be applied to the solution of ancient philosophical problems. Many of the subsequent essays show the evolution of this hope as Russell worked on the foundations of mathematics and applied the new methods to the reconstruction of physical objects on the basis of sense-data, and the redefinition of matter and cause.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of romantic philosophy. Many consider him to be the last of the great polymaths. After his death in 1859, the scientific world began to divide into separate disciplines, each with its own knowledgeable but narrowly defined experts. Humboldt’s mind encompassed all that was then known of nature in one great whole. He could well be considered the father of modern ecology and earth studies...

Researchers in the United States have performed thousands of human radiation experiments to determine the effects of atomic radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body. Most of these tests were performed, funded, or supervised by the United States military, Atomic Energy Commission, or various other U.S. federal government agencies. The experiments included a wide array of studies, involving things like feeding radioactive food to mentally disabled children, deliberately releasing radioactive chemicals over U...

The idea, so common in the ancient writers, is not all a poetic conceit, that the soul of a man is only a fragment of a larger whole, and goes out in search of other souls in which it will find its true completion. We walk among worlds unrealized, until we have learned the secret of love. We know this, and in our sincerest moments admit this, even though we are seeking to fill up our lives with other ambitions and other hopes. In spite of the vulgar materialism of our day, we do feel that the spiritual side of life is the most important, and brings the only true joy...

Auguste Comte was from France and published this book in French in 1844. He made a very great impact on the sciences and claims to have “discovered the principal laws of Sociology." Comte says Reason has become habituated to revolt but that doesn’t mean it will always retain its revolutionary character. He discusses Science, the trade-unions, Proletariat workers, Communists, Capitalists, Republicans, the role of woman in society, the elevation of Social Feeling over Self-love, and the Catholic Church in this book...

Two short books by the Lebanese-American writer, poet, and mystic. Reflections on existence and life, purpose and meaning. His most famous work is The Prophet .The Madman, Part 1: Introduction; God; My Friend; The Scarecrow; The Sleep-Walkers; The Wise Dog; The Two Hermits; On Giving And Taking; The Seven Selves; War; The Fox; The Wise King; Ambition; The New Pleasure; The Other Language; The Pomegranate; The Two Cages; The Three Ants; The Grave Digger; On The Steps Of The Temple; The Blessed City...

This is the first volume of the 15-volume series of The World’s Story: a history of the World in story, song and art, edited by Eva March Tappan. Each book is a compilation of selections from prose literature, poetry and pictures and offers a comprehensive presentation of the world's history, art and culture, from the early times till the beginning of the 20th century. Topics in Part I include China, Korea, Japan and the Islands of the Pacific. - Summary by Sonia Cast list for The Sorrows of...

This is the second volume of the 15-volume series of The World’s Story: a history of the World in story, song and art, edited by Eva March Tappan. Each book is a compilation of selections from prose literature, poetry and pictures and offers a comprehensive presentation of the world's history, art and culture, from the early times till the beginning of the 20th century. Topics in Part II include India, Siam, Afghanistan, Persia, Mesopotamia and Palestine. - Summary by Sonia Cast list for Sakoontala, or the lost ring: King: Tomas Peter First Attendant: Eva Davis Second Attendant: TJ Burns Child: lorda Sakoontala: Monika M...

This is the third volume of the 15-volume series of The World’s Story: a history of the World in story, song and art, edited by Eva March Tappan. Each book is a compilation of selections from prose literature, poetry and pictures and offers a comprehensive presentation of the world's history, art and culture, from the early times till the beginning of the 20th century. Topics in Part III include Egypt, Northern, Western and Central Africa, South Africa and Arabia. - Summary by Sonia Cast list for The Death of Cleopatra: Dolabella: Tomas Peter Charmian: Monika M...

John Dewey, an early 20th Century American philosopher, psychologist, educational theorist saw Social Psychology as much a physical science as Biology and Chemistry. This project encompasses Part 1 of 4 of his book Human Nature and Conduct. Dewey's uses the word "HABIT" as a specialized catch-all word to describe how a person and his/her objective environment interact. This interaction is the basis for moral judgement. Dewey writes: "All habits are demands for certain kinds of activity; and they constitute the self.” In other places he also asserts that "Habits are Will." - Summary by William Jones, Soloist

Some men write their lives to save themselves from ennui, careless of the amount they inflict on their readers. Others write their personal history, lest some kind friend should survive them, and, in showing off his own talent, unwittingly show them up. Others, again, write their own life from a different motive—from fear that the vampires of literature might make it their prey. I have frequently had applications to write my life, both from my countrymen and from foreigners. Some caterers for the public offered to pay me for it...

John Locke wrote four essays on human understanding. Here are a few quotes from the book: "I see no reason to believe, that the soul thinks before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the most part oddly put together. Can the soul think, and not the man, or a man think, and not be conscious of it? Suppose the soul of Castor separated, during his sleep, from his body, to think apart. Let us suppose too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking the body of another man, v...

This is the fourth volume of the 15-volume series of The World’s Story: a history of the World in story, song and art, edited by Eva March Tappan. Each book is a compilation of selections from prose literature, poetry and pictures and offers a comprehensive presentation of the world's history, art and culture, from the early times till the beginning of the 20th century. Topics in Part IV include Greek mythology, the classical Greek period and the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. - Summary by Sonia Cast list for The sacrifice of Iphigenia: Iphigenia: Devorah Allen / Chorus: alanmapstone / Messenger: Foon / Clytemnestra: Monika M...

Phänomenologie des Geistes is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's most important and widely discussed philosophical work. Hegel's first book, it describes the three-stage dialectical life of Spirit. The title can be translated as either The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind, because the German word Geist has both meanings. Phenomenology was the basis of Hegel's later philosophy and marked a significant development in German idealism after Kant. Focusing on topics in metaphysics,...

We have seen that as mankind rises in the scale of civilization the body becomes increasingly less important. Nevertheless, I wish it to be clearly understood, that I do not maintain that it is preferable to be ill than well, but only that each state has its own peculiar privileges, which are rarely interchangeable. Health and sickness are merely different roads to achievement. The earth requires rain as well as sunshine; we need both tears and laughter; navvies are necessary and so are philosophers...

The History of Philosophy is the exposition of philosophical opinions and of systems and schools of philosophy. It includes the study of the lives of philosophers, the inquiry into the mutual connection of schools and systems of thought, and the attempt to trace the course of philosophical progress. Topics covered include Ancient Philosophy Christian Era Philosophy and Modern Philosophy

This is one of the first comprehensive books about the Sikh religion in the English language. Macauliffe had extensive access to manuscripts of the Sikh sacred writings , as well as support from Sikh scholars and leaders of the time. This volume covers Bhagats of the Granth Sahib.

The essays contained in this volume treat of various subjects. With the exception of perhaps one we must consider all these papers as fragments. Written during the early Seventies, and intended mostly as prefaces, they are extremely interesting, since traces of Nietzsche's later tenets — like Slave and Master morality, the Superman — can be found everywhere. But they are also very valuable on account of the young philosopher's daring and able handling of difficult and abstruse subjects. "Truth and Falsity," and "The Greek Woman" are probably the two essays which will prove most attractive to the average reader. - from the Preface.

In this famous early work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he investigates the artistic characteristics of Apollonian and Dionysian characteristics in Greek art, specifically in Greek tragedy as it evolved. Then he applies his conclusions about Greek tragedy to the state of modern art, especially modern German art and specifically to the operas of Richard Wagner.

Col. Ingersoll begins his popular lecture series on famous persons as follows: "It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius. Take from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be empty, all the walls naked—meaning and connection would fall from words of poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all the forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion and become the unmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance." One...

This work is a look at the life and ideas of Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher of the seventeenth century. The most important ideas are found in his famous work Leviathan. Taylor looks at such concepts of Hobbes as the contract, naturalism, sovereignty, natural laws, church and state, absolutism, and political obligation, etc.

What is Secularism? "Secularism espouses the cause of the world versus theology; of the secular and temporal versus the sacred and ecclesiastical. Secularism claims that religion ought never to be anything but a private affair; it denies the right of any kind of church to be associated with the public life of a nation, and proposes to supersede the official influence which religious institutions still exercise in both hemispheres." George Holyoake was an English freethinker and one of the last persons in England to be convicted and jailed for blasphemy. He coined the term "secularism" while being an editor for the secularist newspaper "The Reasoner".

Volume 3 of the complete works contains several short critical introductory essays, five lectures under the heading "On the Future of our Educational Institutions," and finally an essay by the author entitled "Homer and Classical Philology." As always, Nietzsche believes in the importance of classical thought.

It is not without serious reflection that I have collected these thoughts in war time to offer in book form to those who may care to read and ponder them. They were written for the most part on the spur of vital moments, when some of the tendencies of the evil times through which we are living seemed to call for immediate protest. I have felt more strongly than ever in the past two years that we are in danger of accepting as something outside the pale of criticism the judgments of those who lead, and sometimes mislead us...

The Dhammapada collects sayings of the Buddha, offering advice on how to live a full and thoughtful life. The translation used for this recording is by Friedrich Max Müller and was first published in the 19th century. - Summary by Newgatenovelist

M. Schele de Vere was born in Sweden in 1820 and studied language in Germany before eventually becoming a professor of modern language at the University of Virginia in 1844 where he would teach for more than 50 years. During his time as a professor, he would write many books, mostly focusing on language. One of his last works, being first published in 1873, "Modern Magic" instead focuses on the occult. From the preface: "The main purpose of our existence on earth—aside from the sacred and paramount...

I beg to present this my humble work to the English reader. It is the history of the Universe from its birth to its dissolution. I have explained the science of creation, its making and its mechanism. In doing so I have drawn my information from the recorded facts in the Sacred Books of the Root Race of mankind. Some facts and explanations are herein furnished for the first time in any modern language. This book embodies true Hinduism.

In this work from 1921, Carpenter analyzes the origin of Christian beliefs, arguing that they are derived from pre-Christian myths and religions, rather than being new revelations to the human race. He believes that “psychologically man has evolved from simple consciousness to self-consciousness, and is now in process of evolution towards another and more extended kind of consciousness,” anticipating a post-Christian era. In the penultimate chapter, “The Exodus of Christianity,” he sets out his belief that for Christianity “to hold the field of Religion in the Western World is neither probable nor desirable...

An overview of the life of Shri Dnyaneshwar and his devoted family. Dnyaneshwar was a 13th-century Indian poet and yogin. He commentated the Bhagavad Gita in a timeless manner while in his teens, and wrote an original book of verse. He was an inspirational speaker with many followers. - Summary by Czandra

Henry David Thoreau was a fascinating man, contributing vast amounts of information on nature history, leading the way for environmentalism. He also was a philosopher, abolitionist, anarchist, writer, poet, and a bit of a mystery. He is best known for his book 'Walden', and his essay on 'Civil Disobedience'. This early biography by Henry Salt is highly regarded by Thoreau scholars. - Summary by Phyllis Vincelli