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Description Wollaston attempts to determine what rules for the conduct of life (that is, what religion) a conscientious and penetrating observer might derive simply from reasoning about the facts of the world around him, without benefit of divine revelation. He concludes that truth, reason, and morality coincide, and that the key to human happiness and ethical behavior is this: βlet us by no act deny anything to be true which is true; that is: let us act according to reason.β This book was
Description On hearing the title A Voyage to Arcturus, one might picture an astronaut strapping themselves into a rocket and flying into space for a swashbuckling adventure. Nothing could be further from what this book actually is. Voyage is in fact a fascinating, bizarre, bewildering, and thought-provoking sort of acid-fueled Pilgrimβs Progress : a philosophical allegory told through the frame of a psychedelic gender-bending journey to an alien planet. After a terrifying sΓ©ance, the
Description The Suspiria is a collection of prose poems, or what De Quincey called βimpassioned prose,β erratically written and published starting in 1854. Each Suspiria is a short essay written in reflection of the opium dreams De Quincey would experience over the course of his lifetime addiction, and they are considered by some critics to be some of the finest examples of prose poetry in all of English literature. De Quincey originally planned them as a sequel of sorts to his Confessions of
Description The Kingdom of God Is Within You is the most influential work of Christian anarchism. It might be considered the founding work of that tradition if it didnβt itself claim to merely be pointing out Christian anarchism as the plain meaning of the gospels. Tolstoy argues that institutional Christianity with its doctrines, church hierarchies, and ritual practices, is anti-Christian. Christ, he says, explicitly told his followers to reject doctrines, church institutions and hierarchies,
Description His Masterpiece, sometimes translated as βThe Workβ or βThe Masterpiece,β is Zolaβs 14th entry in his Rougon-Macquart series of novels. In it we see Claude Lantier, a painter with obvious talent, struggle to leave a revolutionary mark on the art world of 19th-century Paris. The novel deftly explores the themes of genius, poverty, purity in art, art as a beaurocratic institution, obsession, and madness. The book is notable not just for its accurate portrayal of the art world of the
Description The Moon Pool, in novel form, is a combination and fix-up of two previously-published short stories: βThe Moon Pool,β and βConquest of the Moon Pool.β Initially serialized in All-Story Weekly, Merritt made the interesting choice of framing the novel as a sort of scientific retelling, going so far as to include footnotes from fictional scientists, to give this completely fantastic work an air of authenticity. In it we find the adventuresome botanist William T. Goodwin embarking on a