Being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy." George Horace Lorimer was an American journalist and author. He is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post.

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".

Before the beginning of World War II, during the time of the Modernist movement in philosophy, George Santayana wrote these five descriptive essays. He examined John Locke’s sensationalism, British Idealism, the “Theory of Relativity”, Freud’s psychology, and Julien Benda’s preachment on the relations between God and the world. [Summary written by Gary Gilberd]

The Life of Reason, subtitled "the Phases of Human Progress", is a book published in five volumes from 1905 to 1906, by Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952). It consists of Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, and Reason in Science. The work is considered to be the most complete expression of Santayana's moral philosophy [...]. Santayana's philosophy is strongly influenced by the materialism of Democritus and the refined ethics of Aristotle, with a special emphasis on the natural development of ideal ends...

Even before the Great War turned the world upside down, Western civilization was being revolutionized at all levels: intellectually, philosophically, artistically. Noted positivist philosopher George Santayana published this volume on the eve of the War, trying to portray the status of philosophy and theology at that moment by analyzing six significant topics: 1. the intellectual "temper" of the age 2. the clash between Modernism and Christianity 3. the new idealism of Henri Bergson 4. the new skepticism of Bertrand Russell 5. Shelley's fusion of philosophy and poetry 6. the so-called "genteel" tradition in American philosophy.

“With the Greek civilisation beauty perished from the world. Never again has it been possible for man to believe that harmony is in fact the truth of all existence.”This elegantly-written work provides a splendid introduction to the Greeks of the classic period: how they thought, wrote, and organised their lives and loves. Although it dates from the 1890s, there is very little about it that has dated. To its author’s credit, the subject of “Greek love” is dealt with in a sane and factual context - despite the judicial assassination of Oscar Wilde going on in the background...

The Monadology (La Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz’s best known works representing his later philosophy. It is a short text which sketches in some 90 paragraphs a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads. What he proposed can be seen as a modification of occasionalism developed by latter-day Cartesians. Leibniz surmised that there are indefinitely many substances individually ‘programmed’ to act in a predetermined way, each program being coordinated with all the others. This is the pre-established harmony which solved the mind body problem at the cost of declaring any interaction between substances a mere appearance, something which Leibniz accepted...

Wells considered this book one of his most important, a natural follow-up to such works as his Man of the Year Million and The Time Machine. His goal was to get people to think and act in new ways. The book starts with a look at how humans get along socially and how they carry out their business ventures. It then discusses how these elements influence others, such as politics, the world of work, and education. H. G. tried to make clear how the current social order was disintegrating without preparing another to take its place. He then traced the roots of democracy, which in its present state he saw as unworkable. Instead, he proposed a new republic. He also critiqued modern warfare.

Helen Ekin Starrett, journalist, mother of two daughters, grandmother of seven granddaughters and teacher to many young girls at the Starrett School for Girls offers lessons in life and religion to girls about to "pass out from the guardianship of home into life with its duties and trials".

An Introduction to Metaphysics (Introduction a la Metaphysique) is a 1903 essay by Henri Bergson that explores the concept of reality. For Bergson, reality occurs not in a series of discrete states but as a process similar to that described by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Reality is fluid and cannot be completely understood through reductionistic analysis, which he said “implies that we go around an object”, gaining knowledge from various perspectives which are relative. Instead, reality can be grasped absolutely only through intuition, which Bergson expressed as “entering into” the object.

Two years, two months and two days! This is what forms the time line of one man's quest for the simple life and a unique social experiment in complete self reliance and independence. Henry David Thoreau published Walden in 1884. Originally drafted as a series of essays describing a most significant episode in his life, it was finally released in book form with each essay taking on the form of a separate chapter. Thoreau's parents were in financial straights, but rich intellectually and culturally...

The spiritual classic The Greatest Thing In the World is a trenchant and tender analysis of Christian love as set forth in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians. The other addresses speak to other aspects of Christian life and thought.

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