May 31, 2019

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE. PART 111

They approached life with belicose and antimiddle class instincts and could refer landladies and police as philistines.They were like hippies popular about a hundred and fifty years ago.We have both Byron a Romantic Poet who provided the age with its idol byronic hero,alien,lonely,rebellious, and then Shelley also poets,both Romanticists of the so called satanic school.Novalis died young because his girlfriend at the age of fourteen was much younger when he died.In 1774 the Sorrows Of Young Werther written by Goethe shot up suicide rate in Germany after its publication.Infact it was banned in Norway and Denmark.Many of them died young and they yearned for nature's mysteries.Rouseau's introduction of back to nature jolted them from doldrums.Hence they gave that slogan bothpopular currency and undiluted frequency.They call Romanticism rebirth of the old cosmic consciousness and then the Romanticists traced back their root to Spinoza and then Plotinus in the antiquity and renaisance scholars like Giordano Bruno.

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of 19th century.While the Enlightenment was begun in Paris, Romanticism took its toll in Germany.The Romanticists saw themselves,given that he established the limit of what man can know of"das Ding an sich".They preached unbriddled ego worship and that led to glorification of artistic genius.Beethoven was a great artist musician and he composed the moonlight sonata and fifth symphony.Unlike Baroque artists like Handel and Bach,expresses feelings and longings himself freely as a free artist.They placed more importance on art and human cognition,philosophy,poetry,drama etc.Sometimes,we are overwhelmed at the history of a great work of art,both the humanists and Renaisance Artists.The importance of art to human cognition and likened artist to a musician making up his own rules and play.He had universe creating imagination and transports artistic rapture to sense the dissolving boundary betwixt dream and reality.It started as urban phenomenon and the typical Romantics were young university students and truants.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 109

Finally,kant was a major influence and inspiration to the scholarship of Romanticism.He succeeded in liberating scholars from the philosophical impasse and intellectual bickerings,divided between rationalism and empiricism.With kant's exit plan,the history of the great philosophy finally came to end.He died in 1804 when romanticism was begun.In its graveyard inscription in konigsberg:"Two things filled my mind with ever increasing wonder and awe the more often and more intensely the reflection dwells on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."kant advocated like Maynard Keynes the establishment of the failed League Of Nation-.He said it in his treatise Perpetual Peace,that all nations should unite in a league of nations for the greater progress of the world.The league of nation was born in 1795 125 years after this publication.It was replaced by United Nation at the end of second world war.Romanticism was Europe's last student uprising and was begun by the end of 18th century to the

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 109

Finally,kant was a major influence and inspiration to the scholarship of Romanticism.He succeeded in liberating scholars from the philosophical impasse and intellectual bickerings,divided between rationalism and empiricism.With kant's exit plan,the history of the great philosophy finally came to end.He died in 1804 when romanticism was begun.In its graveyard inscription in konigsberg:"Two things filled my mind with ever increasing wonder and awe the more often and more intensely the reflection dwells on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."kant advocated like Maynard Keynes the establishment of the failed League Of Nation-.He said it in his treatise Perpetual Peace,that all nations should unite in a league of nations for the greater progress of the world.The league of nation was born in 1795 125 years after this publication.It was replaced by United Nation at the end of second world war.Romanticism was Europe's last student uprising and was begun by the end of 18th century to the

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 108

The difference between wrong and right would be judged by the virtue of human reason.And it has nothing to do with sentiment,concluded in the same way as the rationalists.The form of reason to be used in this context to give the intelligence and discretionary capacity that is practical reason.Our ability to perceive everything that have causal relation must be accessible to the universal moral laws.The moral and physical laws share same absolute validity.He formulates as categorical imperative moral law and being formal precedes human experience.Being 'categorical' means it applies to every situation and 'imperative' means absolutely authorative.Moral law shares similar universality appeal as the law ofcausality.It is unalterable,immortaland cannot be proved.Of course,when kant describes moral law,he is really describinghuman conscience.Yet we cannot prove whatour consciencetell us.He believes everything obeys the law of causality,thatdefy free will.As earthlings,we are at the mercy of this unbreakable law.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 107

cannot perceive and prove natural laws and later likened them to the laws of human cognition.Philosophers before Kant had been puzzled by the big questions tearing literatis apart such as discusion on immortal soul,the existence of God,the finiteness or infiniteness of the universe,the chemical composition of nature,be it by atom or the indivisible particles.He defied certainty and clarity on the knowledge to be mustered in resolving the big questions.Unlike Descartes,Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas,rejected the proofs about the existence of God.The world must have been spiraled from something and something cannot come from nothing.Everything happens through the necessity of natural law.Both reason and experience cannot be used to prove that existence.And where both fall short,the vacuum left behind can be filled with faith.This mensrea was bent due to originality of the initiative and the attempt to preserve the basis of his christian faith.A weighty big question that is left to the discretion of the individual

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 107

cannot perceive and prove natural laws and later likened them to the laws of human cognition.Philosophers before Kant had been puzzled by the big questions tearing literatis apart such as discusion on immortal soul,the existence of God,the finiteness or infiniteness of the universe,the chemical composition of nature,be it by atom or the indivisible particles.He defied certainty and clarity on the knowledge to be mustered in resolving the big questions.Unlike Descartes,Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas,rejected the proofs about the existence of God.The world must have been spiraled from something and something cannot come from nothing.Everything happens through the necessity of natural law.Both reason and experience cannot be used to prove that existence.And where both fall short,the vacuum left behind can be filled with faith.This mensrea was bent due to originality of the initiative and the attempt to preserve the basis of his christian faith.A weighty big question that is left to the discretion of the individual

May 30, 2019

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 106

foremost modes of perception and hardly any physical world attributes.To analyse the Copernican Revolution in solving human knowledge problem he says mind conform to things and things also conform to mind.How Copernicus was able to prove the earth and other planets revolve round the sun startled skeptics,antagonists and apologists alike.Kant has taken or makes into an attribute of human reason the thing that Hume says we cannot prove.It shows vividly if human reason perceives everything as a matter of cause and effect,then it means eternity of the law of causality is supreme.The law of causality lays in us contrary to Hume and they agree man cannot with certainty the true nature of the world itself.We are only given the capacity to know what it is for every man that ventures.When we look at the dividing line that he draws between matters in themselves that is das Ding an sich and the nature of their appearances.He differentiates things in itself and the thing for me"kant was uneasy when he read Hume that we

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE .PART I05

the foundation of christian faith.He had a great mastery of other people's philosophy and then with solid grounding in his own philosophy.We know that the rationalists had unshakable faith in rationalism that the basis of knowledge lay in the mind.This is in contrast to empiricism that all knowledge come from the senses.Kant here submits that both were partly right but thought were partly wrong also.He thought that both sensing and thinking are players in our conception of the world.He questioned their predilection to place too much emphasis on both.He agrees with Hume that all our knowledge come from sensation.He also realised certain conditions that govern mind operations to shape our experience of the real world.Time and space are two forms of intuition and they precede every experience.Such related perception driven by these forms of intuition is innate.So,we can know before we experience things that will be perceived as phenomena in time and space.He classified these forms of intuition as first and

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 104

Marriage laws'changes were ademanded and equal political rights as men and social conditions to be made favourable to women.In this font they failed to achieve that.Olympe de Gouges two after the revolution who demanded same rights for women as well and had published a declaration on the rights of women.She took bold decision to make declaration having noticed that the declaration on the rights of man was silent about women rights.Unfortunately,in 1793 this unruffled amazon was beheaded for daring to defend king Louis XVI,oppose Robespierre and consequently they banned all political activity for women.Not until the findesiecle before feminism was revived once again from France,Europe to America.Immanuel Kant the first philosopher to be professor was born in 1724 in the east prusian town of konigsberg to a master saddler.He barely travelled until the age of eighty.His religious background and family lifestyle was instrumental to the development of his philosophy.Then he wanted to preserve like berkeley the

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 103

to adopt a common position,laying a foundation for arts and culture,religion and ethics,the consequence led to enlightenment movement.Towards the end of the revolution the national constitution was drafted and passed into law.The Principle Of Indivldual's inviolability that reached the peak with the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man And Citizen.It was adopted by the French National Assembly in 1789.Almost all the European,took after french constitution.For instance the human rights' declaration was the basis of Norwegian Constitution.The enlightenment philosophers fought for what they called natural rights.In 1787,they established these rights including feminism were natural outcome of the revolution.In the case of feminism,give it the honor to Condorcet an enlightenment philosopher who in 1787 published a treatise on the rights of women.And so two after the publication,revolution started and women were extremely active.They took active part in the old feudal regime such as forcing the king into exile.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 102

When they visited England they were shocked with the spirit of liberalism they met there.Natural sciences of Isaac Newton and British philosophy specifically the political philosophy of Locke intrigued them.The exposure gained them intellectual freedom and when they returned back they attacked old authority.This later triggered a revolution that lasted almost a decade at the end of which Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor that ruled France and Europe for two decades prior to his hanging at St.Helena.Locke though not consistent with his empiricism believe certain moral norms including faith in God were stamped in human reason.This became the core norm of the enlightenment era that started in Paris and nurtured by Rouseau's book"Spirit Of The Law".Not unlike the humanists of antiquity mainly Socrates and Stoics,most Enlightenment philosophers had robust faith in rationalism.Little wonder historians and historicists and fellow philosophers labelled the epoch the age of reason.When the philosophers came together

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 101

And it is he that influences our profusion of ideas and earthly perception and all our life exist within his nucleus.Every mortal perception is an after effect of divine power and we exist only in the mind of God.He interogates both fickleness of the material reality and whether time and space had any independent existence.He questioned that material reality fake us and all we can know that we are spirit.George Berkeley was a philosopher so to say who denied the existence of material universe beyond the human mind.The English Bishop Of Cloyne postulates that our sensory perceptions come from God.He published his main work A Treatise Concerning The Principles Of Human Knowledge in 1710.Now,we move onto the Enlightenment Era.Hume died in 1776 whereas French Revolution Of 1789 thatarose later was linked to the muchearlier revolutionary forces of mordern rationalism.When Voltaire and Rouseau died in 1778 including Monstequieu had all visited England and widely schooled in the philosophy of empiricist John Locke.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE. PART 100

George Berkeley(1685-1753),an Irish Bishop and a philosopher too discovered that current philosophies,science and technology were a threat to his christian faith and religion.Hence later became the most consistent of the empiricists and believed we cannot more of the world than we can perceive through our senses.He claimed worldly things are not things as we perceive them and the only things that exist are those things that we perceive.Matterial things or matters or tangible things cannot be perceived.He interogated them by the logic of empiricism and to assume that we perceive refers to its own underlying terms such as substance rushing to conclusion.There is no claim to base such experience.He believed in the spirit and opined all our ideas and thoughts have a cause beyond human consciousness andnot of material universe.He wasfond of the fact the existence of God much more clearer than the existence of man,not clearly perceived.That divinity is intimately present in our consciousness and physical nature.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE. PART 99

To probe every single idea that went into making of complex idea preocuppied his attention.He opposed every idea and thought that could be traced back to its corresponding sense perception.Not to feel an alterable ego is not a false perception and egocentric perception deals with long chain of simple impressions that you barely experience simultaneously.What succeed and progress one after the other with uncontemplated rapidity is nothing but a repertoire of variegated perceptions.His human mind analytical model and rejection of unaltered ego had been advanced about two thousand five hundred years ago.It was similar to Budha's concept of life as a limitless and endless succesion of mental and material processes and maintains its constant state of change.Miracle is against the law of nature and as agnostic disputed human ability to prove divine existence.Hume a man from Adam Smith's country also made enviable contribution to the study of economics especially mordern macroeconomics such as balance of trade etc.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE . PART 98

Of Human Nature had a different piles of thought construction entirely.Having deposed medieval thoughts and the rationalistic philosophy of mordern times as obscene,proposed a return to the spontaneous experience of the real world.To see an angel,a widespread belief during his time according to him a complex idea.These are different experiences unrelated to fact and a mere fable of imagination.He barely detest to know how a child experiences the real world.He establishes the two types of perception that man has namely ideas and impressions.The latter refers instantaneous sensation of outer reality and ideas means recollections of such impressions.Sensation is original and idea or reflection its imitation and the latter is livelier and more robust than the reflective memory.Impresion is direct consequence of ideas stored and retrieved from the mind.Both can be simple or complex.He agrees with Descartes it is expedient to construct your thought from ground up.Sometimes we form complex ideas that defy reality

May 29, 2019

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 97

Before we move onto David Hume(1711-1776),we round up Lockean tenets of intellectual and political liberty was responsible to the successful despotic subjugation of the glorious revolution of 1688.He not only campaigned for equality of sexes but also extremely influenced John stuart mill that later played greater role in the crusade of gender equality of the successive times.His liberalism came into full display during the french enlightenment of the 18th century and spoke extensively and the first to advocate separation of power.It did not originate from Monstequieu and the idea was to avoid despotism especially of the type that occured during the period of king Louis.HUME who set the great philosopher kant on his feet to discover his philosophical reflection, stands as the most influential empiricist of all time.He came from Edinburgh in Scotland and had insurmountable passion for philosophy.He lived during the enlightenment era,same time with Jean jacques Rouseau and voltaire.In his main work, A Treatise

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 96

This leads to reflection not sensation and he distinguished the two that the mind is not merely a passive receiver.With later trait it shows ability to categorise and processes the mental passage of every sensation.That the only we have capability to perceive are simple sensations.For a whole apple or pawpaw cannot suppled in one single sensation whether it is green,smells well,fresh or juicy.IT is after eating that you have the true experience where reflection says one is satisfied.That is how to form a complex idea of the apple or pawpaw in question.All material of our knowledge comes to us through sensations and anything to the contrary is false conception.He also defines both primary and secondary qualities that guides our sensation and reflection power in the classification of both tangible and intangible realms of nature.He also agreed with Descartes that man has the capability to discern divine existence with the notion that certain ethical principles and the idea of natural right apply to everybody.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 95

The purification of those hollow notions led to the propagation of the empiricism school of thoughts.Such panning for a particle of gold is real experience and the British empiricists were able to examine the predilection of human conceptions to determine the valid rationale of their actual experience.In his main work published in 1690 he explained and clarify two positions where the origin of our ideas and the reliability of human senses.He sees the mind as tabula rasa an empty state before we perceive anything.That all our thoughts and ideas issue in tandem with the earlier excerpts all proceed from what we have taken in through our senses.The mind is an unfinished room or the empty or clean blackboard in the classroom before the teacher arrives.And then the pupils begin to smell,hear,taste hear or sense things or the world around them and it is the same with normal people and their environment or infants.This is sense's simple idea according to him would then be worked upon by thinking,doubting,believing.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 94

An empiricist derive knowledge from the world of senses.The classic tradition was begun by one of the natural philosophers and popularised by Aristotle who said "There is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses."In this context he pointed his frustration and criticism at plato.Locke uses aristotle's words with objectivity that aimed at Descartes' words.That we have no innate ideas world conceptions that we are brought into prior to its conception by perception.If such conception is not related to experienced facts,it defies valid and is a false conception.To utilise words like'substance,God and eternity is to abuse reason or misuse it,given that nobody has experienced God or eternity and what philosophers called substance.Such impressive philosophical system inherited in the 17th and 18th centuries by philosophers was regarded as pure fantansies.When the empiricists came such learned but prejudiced dissertations had to be viewed under a new intellectual microscope or with theenlightened radar.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 93

of the falseness of this supposition,if i should only show....how men barely by the use of their natural faculties may attain to all the knowledge they have without the help of any innate impressions;and may arrive at certainty without any such original notions or principles." Then he goes onto identify the very source of knowledge and reason when he says:"Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?To this i answer in one word from Experience.In that all our knowledge is founded;and from that it ultimately derives itself." This particular excerpt made him a leading philosopher of the empirical school in the 18th century when rationalism was heavily opposed with deep criticism.Empiricism taught that there was absolutely nothing in the mind that was not initially perceived or experienced by the senses.A group of the empiricism comprises John Locke, Berkely and David Hume,then with the addition of Leibniz,there arose a stark competition between the British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism .

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE . PART 92

John Locke(1632-1704)unlike Descartes and Spinoza was an English philosopher of the empirical school.He had tremendous impact with his quentesential writings on the ideals of English political freedom.He wrote extensively on religious tolerance,justice,constitional government.For instance An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was inspired and motivated by a private discussion with friends.His two treatises on governance ordinarily influenced the glorious revolution of 1688 when king james 11 was overthrown.He opened the first paragraph of his essays on human understanding in his attempt to understand the limits of the human mind by criticizing the rationalists of the earlier period.Hear him:"It is an established opinion amongst some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles;some primary notions,characters as it were stamped upon the mind of man;which the soul receives in its very first being,and brings into the world with it.It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE .PART 91

was made up of one indivisible single reality.He was classified therefore as a monist.He believed God or natural laws as the inner cause was responsible to everything that happens.He preaches everything material happens through necessity and had a determinist view of material or natural world.He emphasizes that only one entity is independently of its own cause and only God or nature can act with such complete or nonacidental freedom.There is no such thing as freewill for man even though he can attain freedom without outside resistance.We do not have a free soul incarcerated in a body that functions through a mechanical process.We barely choose our thinking nor control every happening in our body.That it was our ambitions and lust that prevented us from achieving true hapiness and harmony.We can attain an intuitive comprehension of nature,provided we generally realise everything happens by necessity.If we comprehend existence and embrace its universal perception,we shall therefore be opportuned to attain joy.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE .PART 91

was made up of one indivisible single reality.He was classified therefore as a monist.He believed God or natural laws as the inner cause was responsible to everything that happens.He preaches everything material happens through necessity and had a determinist view of material or natural world.He emphasizes that only one entity is independently of its own cause and only God or nature can act with such complete or nonacidental freedom.There is no such thing as freewill for man even though he can attain freedom without outside resistance.We do not have a free soul incarcerated in a body that functions through a mechanical process.We barely choose our thinking nor control every happening in our body.That it was our ambitions and lust that prevented us from achieving true hapiness and harmony.We can attain an intuitive comprehension of nature,provided we generally realise everything happens by necessity.If we comprehend existence and embrace its universal perception,we shall therefore be opportuned to attain joy.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 90

because of heresy.He was the first to use history to criticise the so called holy book which he ridiculed to the last letter.He was deserted and nearly disinherited by his family due to the heresy.No one did champion free speech and religious intolerance like Spinoza and because of the stiff opposition he faced on all sides he was forced to live in obscurity and a quiet life.He earned a living polishing lenses and also devoted himself to private study as a villified hermit.He was a pantheist for saying "God Is All and All Is In God".That God is the world and did not create the world to abode outside it.Quoting a speech by St.Paul speaking on the Areopagus Hill to the athenians,he says: In him we live and move and have our being".He wrote his best book"Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated".In the same way Descartes used mathematical theorems for philosophical reflection,Spinoza adopted the same rationalistic tradition and a very complex art to deal with.Spinoza rejected Descartes' dualism and that every exist is

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 89

resolved no longer to seek any other science that the knowledge of myself or of the great book of the world."That".......our senses sometimes deceive us,i was willing to suppose that there existed nothing reallysuch as they presented to us...,.,..i supposed that all the objects that had ever entered into my mind when awake had in themno more truth than the illusions of my dreams.But immediately upon this i observed that whilst i thus wished to think that all wasfalse,it was absolutely necessary that i who thus thought should be somewhat;and as i observed thistruth i think therefore i am,was so certain....".In the principles of human knowledge,he says"That in order to seekthe truth it is necessaryonce in the course of our life to doubt as far as possible of all things....".Now we move onto controversial Baruch Spinoza,a DutchJew(1632-1677),who hailed from jewish community of amsterdam.He denied that the Bible was written by God and heavily christicised the established religion.Consequently,he excommunicated

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 88

interaction between the spirit and matter.Emotions and passions affecting the mind constantly do not relatively bodily needs.If the mind could detach itself from such muses and impulses and explore its freedom,it implies that its main intent is to get reason to subsequently assumes command or control.So we have moral power to act rationaly above the body needs.There is no difference according to him between the mind and the thought.He was a member of prosperous middle class French family as a military engineer also fought during the thirty years war. Rene Descartes was in this capacity in 1619 in Germany when he made the wonderful discovery he described in his discourse on method.Discourse On Method appeared in 1633 some years after the controversy and condemnation of Galileo.A little excerpt from Discourse On Method,truly shows his concept of Cogito,ergo sum.Hear him:"..,...as soon as my age permitted me to pass from under the control of my instructors,i entirely abandoned the study of letters and resolved

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 87

Yet both quite independent,share no contact with each other.To theorise this independence or freedom of the material processes and the intangible made Descartes a diehard dualist that depicts their sharp division.To arrive at a conclusion that only man has a mind and not the animal,the latter been seen as complicated automaton does not too logical of a mature mordern philosophical,given that they posess soul atoms too.Just like St.Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,he also sees man as a dual creature with both a mind and extended body.Our mind is perfect machine that can operate independently of the body.While bodily processes operate different laws,with different freedom,the application of reason barely occurs in the body,but in the mind.How could he accept the possibility that animals could think yet accept only man has a mind or that they were automaton?He did not deny interaction between the mind and body through the neuro logical process where the brain as special organ or the pineal gland maintain constant

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 86

This was his weak spot as pundits later agreed,even though he meant to prove a claim that all mortals posess within this idea of perfect entity.He believed the idea of God is innate emulsified with man or stamped upon every man at birth.And he also believed like Socrates and Plato,that there is a connection between reason and being.The closeness they both share is self evident of their existence.To douse our doubt about the posibilities of outer reality including sun and the moon as mere fantasies,requires our intense understanding of their mathematical properties.Hence,with divine guarrantee,whatever we perceive with our senses of reason corresponds with outer reality.With this axiom of outer reality guarantees differently from the reality and composure of thoughts,he maintains two forms of reality.From the first substance,mind or the thought to extension or matter as second substance he opines both originated from God.The first is purely conscious item divided into smaller parts and matter its extension.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 85

of life,through the first law that makes one doubt everything occupies his aim.The rationalist believes in principle was possible to doubt every and this ordinarily informed his intellectual freedom to think,philosophise and theorise himself out of the scientific lacuna that early mordern age was inflicted.It is by no means certain the mordern age would advance philosophical quest by relying on the outdated philosophical norms of the antiquity and pelucidly began his thought construction.He believed not their deception and instituted mordern rationalistic culture that had lasted till this day. With his popular phrase " Cogito,ergo sum- i think therefore i am"boldly proves himself as a thinking being;an evidence that what wegrasp with our reason is much more real than what we grasp with our senses.He had included with his nature of thinking i his mindhad a clear and distintive idea of perfect entity that his senses.Although it appears debatablehow the idea of perfect entity can originate from imperfect being.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 84

He opines unless we can clearly perceive a thing,that we cannot accept them as being true.This requires breaking down compound problem into compound pieces,broken in diverse single factors as many as possible.This allows us to form logical conclusion.It could have been similar to Galileo's concept of measuring the immeasuring but certainly Descartes believed philosophy should move from simple to complex and consequently,one can construct a new insight.To reach such philosophical conclusion requires constant calculation,enumeration and deep discretion.He was a mathematician,father of analytical geometry and a great contributor to algebra science.He was fond of using mathematical method for philosophical conclusion and often set to prove philosophical truths with mathematical theorems or in comparison.Like Plato and Galileo,he shared such affinity that mathematical and numerical ratio give us concretes and more certainty than the stark evidences that our mortal senses bestow.To reach certainty about the nature

May 28, 2019

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE. PART 83

The basic life principle according to Aristotle present in every matter and organism was the soul.He was able to identify and categorise them as plant soul or animal soul and they could not be conceived as separate from the body.The radical division of soul and body by all ramification was not introduced by philosophers until the dawn of 17th century.And it was nt feasible,given the fact that they were seen as one big indivisible mechanistic entity,that is all material objects'motion,body human or animal and plant involving mechanical processes.To believe that there must be esoteric connection between body and consciousness,clearly influences Descartes' thoughts and theory.Like Plato,he did not jettison his bold conviction of a sharp contrast between spirit and matter.Unlike Plato could not only just interogate but also discover then how the mind influences the body or soul in relation to the body.In solving a philosophical problem,he in his Discourse on Method,raises question on the method to solve them.

May 23, 2019

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 82

He openedthe philosophical floodgate with discourse on method and debated question of importance about the relationship between the mind and body.This dominatedphilosophical argument over the last hundred and fifty years.While his philosophical comtemporaries in the school of skepticism taught that man should accept he knew nothing,he taught otherwise and would not accept skepticism of the sophists like Socrates,the evolution of new methods to support natural sciencesgrew its relevance and environmental impact.This snowball,during his life,provided graphical details about the mechanismof natural processes.He interogated himself about appropriatedescription and exact method of philosophic reflection.Apart from that,the nature ofmatter and the constitution of physical processes of nature.The soul had been commonly considered as a sort of breath of life that permeated every organism until the 17th century.The word 'breath and breathing'in their original meaning sequential refer to soul and spirit respectively.

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was invited in that winter by the Queen Of Sweden Christina.He died of pneumonia and was 54 years.The Renaisance era made concise rediscovery of nature including man but no coherent effort was made to create a complete philosophical system when it presented itself again.And it was this vacuum that he filled and he became the first mordern significant system builder.He was followed by Spinoza,Leibniz,Locke Berkeley,Hume and Kant.A philosophical system is a completely constructed philosophy from the foundation up and answers all fundamental questions concerning philosophy.From the great system constructors of the antiquity such as the likes of Plato and Aristotle down to the bridge builder of the medieval like St.Thomas Aquinas who built bridge betweenAristotle's philosophy and christian theology onward to the first mordern attempt by Descartes.It is not for nothing or for funfare that they called him the father of mordern philosophy and the first practical attempt to assemble new thoughts came in17th century.

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 80

We shall be treating Descartes and Spinoza the two greatest philosophers of the seveetenth century in the disputed context of soul and body.We know there is a direct line of intellectual descent from Socrates,Plato via St. Augustine to Descartes,the first mordern philosopher.Having been convinced that reason was the only part to knowledge,the ideological ethnography did not go extinct until the coming of the Cartesian logic.He came to conclusion like his peers after comprehensive research that the knowledge inherited from the middle age was not reliable and doubted everything.Though he put his pen to work,we can still compare him to the Socrates of the antiquity who went to public squares at athens and criticised everything he saw.Given this dubiety then he began to think.With raptured solitary confinement after globetroting,he began to study the great world book.From Central Europe to Paris,then Holland in 1629 where he hibernated for two decades prior to his death in Sweden in 1650 a year after he was....

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 79

In the latter movement,the most influential advocates was the English Man Thomas Hobbes who believed all phenomena including plants and animals like were made of particles of matter even the mortal soul.He agreed with Democritus about two thousand before him.Both philosophies continued to reecho throughout the life of western history.Like materialism,they were constantly nourished with new intellectual outputs and sciences.Newton a materialist was one of them with his mechanistic worldview.Both philosophers agreed there is relationship between this mechanistic world portrait and belief in God,in contrast to postulations of the materialist philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries.Some have disputed free wills and determinism and some stood in favour of the mechanistic processes,especially German materialists of the findesiecle.Many brain surgeons and astronauts claimed to have operated on human brains and traveled to space,are yet to see a single thought or soul atom to operate upon or see flying angels.

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a scandinavian,marked a transition from Baroque period to the age of enlightenment,with a play Jeppe On The Mountain,mimicking each other,borrowed their theme from old arabian tales A Thousand And One Nights.Like their contemporaries,all compared life to a dream and it reverberated as far away as India and China where the old chinese sage Chuang-tzu Once dreamt himself as a butterfly and probably flies away and never returns,also captures the idiotic brevity of life.Peter Dass (1647 - 1707 ) a baroque poet in Norway,captures the same mood and ascribed eternity to God.When he writes in the hymn about rural life in northern Norway,he captures this mood as typical of baroque poet.The same with platonic distinction of material worldand the eternal world of ideas.Atthe bottom of these diametrically opposed modes of thoughts according to some philosopherlies the spiritual factor and this philosophical viewpoint they called it Idealism.The opposite being materialism was also a striking force in the western history.

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who wrote a play Life Is A Dream,born in 1600,says:" What is life? A madness. what is life? An illusion,a shadow,a story and the greatest good is little"just "enough for all life is a dream......" In the same vein, Shakespeare agreed with him and was not wrong or near accurate when he says in As You Like It that : All the world's a stage, And all men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." He closes it up well with good conclusion when he says in Macbeth that" Life's but a walking shadow a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more ; it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing." So,indeed life is a dream as he captures the brevity of life.What about Hamlet to be or not to be thatone day we are walking around on the earth and next day we are dead and gone."It is clear all Baroque Poets compared life to a dream and barely ignored its brevity.Both Barca and Ludvig Holberg

May 17, 2019

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Proud and pompous palaces,remote monastries and extremely luxurious lifestyles adorned the period characterised by affection and vanity.In a political sense,the period was also an age of conflict,when Europe was ravaged by wars especially the thirty years war that wasted the continent between 1618 to 1648.It extremely affected Germany and France profited immensely and became dominant power on the continent. The wars waged between Roman Catholic and protestant and driven by political power.This period of huge class differences displayed the pompous wealth of French Aristocrazy and the court of versailes standing side by side with poverty stricken populace.So,the political situation of the baroque was like its arts and architecture.The politicalsituation was stricken with betrayal,intrigue,plottingand assasination.The periodgave birth to mordern theater and Shakespeare wrote his best play in 1600,standing one footin the renaisance and other foot in the baroque period.Calderon de la Barca a spanish dramatist

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Now we move onto mordern philosophy beginning from the first edition ofhis works and philosophical essays published in 1617 in which appeared his most famous works"Discourse On Method."Descartes became the first mordern philosopher of the period. Polisher of Lenses Baruch Spinoza Dutch philosopher the duo were extremely influential in the rationalistschool of the mordern time.We shall be talking of the 17th century or what historians generallyregarded as Baroque period.Basically the word Baroque comes from a pearl of irregular shape andthat was typical of the period thatfollowed Renaisance period earlier discussed.The typical Baroque arts,a much opulent form incontrast tomuch plainer and harmonious version of Renaisance Arts.Art and practical life witnessed flamboyant and pompous expression during the period when monastic movement turned the secular away.Various Latin expressions such as 'carpe diem-seize the day'then 'memento mori-remember you must die' are some favourite sayings that boldly seized the day.

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English political institutions.Fox and the Quakers opposed church authority and the educational system and Winstaley and the Diggers took them to the cleaner and threatened social order.Their exagerated ideas frightened the parliamentary stubborn conservative reformers,who later moved humble men with best ideal and optimistic spirit to inspire british democracy.Inspite of contemporary failure,radical zealots made an enduring mark on English ideals of freedom,justice,right and democracy.Though religious controversies raged as well in the 17th century like elsewhere on the continent,England did not bother herself with continental wars of the period.It was due to the mordernisation of government and the settlement of religious challengesbefore the end of the century.Thesolution they achieved in this regardwas to all intents and purpose verydurable.The new Cromwellian model Army was composed of yeoman and chaplains were prophets.The downright religious radicals who becamedischanted with leadership for a change.

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dogmatism.Religious sects such as anabaptists and independents,were influential behind the most notable spiritual types such as Diggers and Quakers acted on divine revelations.Prebysterian program was the most influential in the house of common.The sect type dominated the army independents or congregationalists to which Oliver Cromwell belong.The influential sect Levellers was led by the most eloquent orator John Lilburne who translated Christian doctrine into political terms.He also advocated parliamentary reform and suffrage extension and organised them as a party with mass membership meetings and periodical press coverage.The Society Of Friends or Quaker a looser entity was led by George Fox and they sought God based on personal relationship.He taught that education was not necessary for spiritual well being and contemptuously referred to Cambridge as a place where prentice learn the trade of preaching.That every man could come to understand the bible.The Lillburne and the levellers attacked traditional

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Not all reformers agreed with him and the holistic purgatory.Infact Erasmus opposed about his excessive negative view of mankind,still he claimed that man was totally depraved after fall from grace.We could not be disputed if we say his lifetime contributed immensely to the reformation of later years.Moreover,the political revolution like scientific,social and commercial revolutions of the period also had considerable influence on religious revolution.For instance,the modes of radical thoughts in England prior to and after the glorious revolution of 1689 at the same time absolutism to supremacy of vengeful spite across the channel in France.The abortive aristocractic revolt Fronde took over France,in England there was succesful national revolution. The religious bigotry was impressive with massive impact and infact produced political and social revisionism in religious vocabulary with editorial captions and sobriquets such as"the levellers,Diggers,Ranters and Quakers"in referrence to their drastic religious

May 16, 2019

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ecclesiastical reformer.Luther explained that people did not need church intercession or its priest to receive God's forgiveness.God's forgiveness was not based also on the church sale of indulgences.In the middle of 16th century,the sale of the indulgence was forbidden by Roman Catholic Church.He avoided unpalatable religious dogmas and customs rooted in the priesthood history during medieval and desired return to early christianity of the New testament.He simply reflected the notion or logic of Renaisance humanists or artists that turned to ancient sources of art and culture.He was known to have translated into German the Bible and believed every man should read bible in their local tongues.So,like other Renaisance artists emphasised on individualism of mankind.He taught himself at the age of 35 years and started to translate bible into German language,an arduous task.This allowed people's language to take precedence over latin. Unlike Ficino or Leonardo da vinci or Erasmus,he was not a humanist per say.

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movements;first when the solar system was formed,they had rectilinear movements and now through gravitation revolved round the sun.He abolished the notion that one set of laws was applicable to the heavens and another one on earth and contended both segments of the universe applied the same physical laws.During the same Renaisance era,church or theology and science and philosophy broke apart.There was so much attempt to open up the flagship multiplicand of the great charters of liberty basically intellectual freedom.For instance in the medieval Catholic Church,its liturgy was written in latin and church's ritual prayers been backbone of service.Infact the bible itself too was written in latin.It was during the era that it was translated from Greek and Hebrew,into national languages.This intellectual freedom led to the Reformation.During the period there were many reformers from Martin Luther who broke away from the church,because he resisted indulgence to Erasmus of Rotterdam a Roman Catholic quentessential,

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idea came when he was under the apple tree.He saw apple tree fall from the tree and thus began to ask himself,whether the moon was drawn to the earth with similar force.Perhaps,could be the reason for the moon's continuous orbit of the earth for eternity.To demonstrate few natural laws apply to the universe,he started with laws propounded by contemporaries and for the calculation of planetary orbits,he applied two natural laws that the Italian provided and proposed.First,the law of inertia,in which Cambridge scholar expressed: A body remains in its state of rest or rectilinear motion until it is compelled to change that state by a force impressed on it"then again"when two forces work on a body simultaneously the body will move on an elliptical path."the two laws were to portray how planets go round the sun-heliocentric world machine and the second law was demonstrated by Galileo on an inclined plane.He explain that all planets move and travel in elliptical orbits around the sun being outcome of two inequal

May 15, 2019

PHILOSOPHERS' STONE.PART 68

and the solar system and also provided graphical analysis of how the planets moved round the sun.He partly refers to Galileo's Dynamics and kepler pointed out there has to be a solar force that caused them to be attracted to each other.Newton called the force gravity.kepler noted this force moved more slowly in their orbit farther away travelled in their orbit from the sun.That lunar force was also a critical factor in the rise and fall in sea level.Galileo mocked kepler and rejected this theory that the forces of gravity could work over long distance,let alone be magic forces pulling the heavenly bodies together.The universal law of gravitation states that every object attracts every other objects with proportional growth in force in relation to the size of the objects and also decreases in proportion to distance between these objects.He was also able to prove this attraction is universal including operating in space between heavenly bodies,a view that Italian Galileo brazenly rejected.The idea came while..

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and the solar system and also provided graphical analysis of how the planets moved round the sun.He partly refers to Galileo's Dynamics and kepler pointed out there has to be a solar force that caused them to be attracted to each other.Newton called the force gravity.kepler noted this force moved more slowly in their orbit farther away travelled in their orbit from the sun.That lunar force was also a critical factor in the rise and fall in sea level.Galileo mocked kepler and rejected this theory that the forces of gravity could not work over long distance

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that the earth moves,.."...,.considering the fact that in the past"learned men .....have proved that the earth rests immovable in the middle of the heavens as the center of the universe.For a long time therefore i hesitated whether i should publish my comments."..,.considering the"scorn which i had to fear on account of the newness and absurdity....." " But my friends made me change my course inspite of my long continued hesitation and resistance.First,among them was Nicholas Schonberg,Cardinal of Capua,a man distinguished in all branches of learning."The audacity of hope was responsible in the midst of resistance from irrational flocks that dominated the surface of the earth for this survivalism,an uncommon bravery over doubts thatsaved theearth the squandering of another two thousand years of intellectual wilderness.At the same time religious revolution wasperpetrated the scientific revolution reached its zenith with the emergence of Isaac Newton(1642-1727).He provided final description of planetaryorbits

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ebulient Roger Bacon who was a laboratory scientist at Oxford,studied lenses and mirrors with great care.He was speculated to have probably be the first to deploy telescope for laboratory research including a burning glass,that was later ordered to be destroyed by university authority for students'distraction.We shall not fail to talk about Thomas Aquinas,a speculated translator,taught by his teacher Albert Magnus,also contributed immensely the christianisation of the converted works in mainstream European philosophy.Above all the medieval was an age tormented by double.No wonder a Frenchman Taine described the period as an age tortured by doubt.Infact,Copernicus himself was tormented by doubt for many years and did not himself believed in his works until his polymath friend Nicholas Schonberg, Cardinal Of Capua,was able to convince to publish the little book.Hear him:" For i amnot so pleased by my own works that i do not care what others will say about them....i have had to consider how absurd my conclusion

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compilers including magic stones'collection and lists,medieval herbs and bestiaries,curious learned men like Fredrick 11's anatomical dissections and other later dissectors.The converted works of the antiquity and translations such as the works of Aristotle later debated and disputed and the thoughts of other ancient scholars like Galen,Euclid and Ptolemy,great Arabs such Avicenna,Lycurgus and Hammurabi,were extremely influential.They were handled by western translators that perhaps came from Levant,none of the translations were the works of crusaders or the Italian merchants nor any groups related to them.This influential translation in most cases from aramaic texts converged to kickstart the era we earlier noted.Their low scientific contribution which was discovered earlier were bridged by the same western scholars.They include three original geniuses such St. Albert,Peter Peregrine,a picard that flourished in 1270.Very practically little had survived on his treatise on magnet and compass.Then there is the

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that despite retarded intellectual output,borrowed from the medieval such as rudimental propositions of the prepythagorean geometry;the use of counting frame or abacus and some decimal fractions,so that by the end of 13th century,the mathematicians were tackling problems with advanced pythagorean theorem,approached cubic equations'solution by cones' intersection,extensively discussed spherical trigonometry and approacheddifferential calculus on the verge.Then the absorption of the ptolemaic astronomy of the ancients,the mastery of the maps of the skies,courses of planets and stars,by astrologists during the same period,was instrumental to the success of Copernican Revolution of the period possible.What the middle ages took over from the Greeks or the ancient they did not very much enrich.With this discovery,they were to change the situation with Renaisance as the magical response.Still,the accomplishment of the medieval alchemists,stumbled upon new facts,about gases and metals'properties,medieval lapidaries'

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The same with Johannes Kepler German Astronomer in 1600s both extensively utilised telescope to pointblank observe the heavenly bodies.While Galileo became the first scientist to formulate the law of inertia and noted the moon had mountains and valleys similar to planet earth,extensively studied the moon's craters;kepler presented a comprehensive evidence that planets move in eliptical or in oval orbin with sun at the center,and that each planet move faster when closer to the sun.It was in kepler's time that the earth was a planet like other planets with his laws of planetary motion and that the same physical laws govern the universe.Galileo says:"A body remains in the state which it is in,at rest or in motion as long as no external force compels it to change its state".It is interesting to note that the laws of planetary motion and terrestrial motion propounded each by the two scientists were instrumental when combined to make Newtonian World Machine of the latter age possible.It should also be noted vividly

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The book by Copernicus a small pamphlet entitled On The Revolution Of The Celestial Spheres and died a day after the book was published.In the little book,he ridiculed the notion about the geocentric principles of the universe propounded by Aristotle that dominated the scientific thinking for more than twenty centuries prior to the Copernican critique that gave the world a new direction.He says that the earth was not the center of the universe but rather it was the sun,a view popularly regarded as heliocentric principle.This Heliocentric world picture simply means the sun is the center and everything centers around the sun.That instead the earth and other planets move round the sun.Today,we know that the sun is just one of the infinite population of stars and all stars round mankind comprise of only one of many billions of galaxies created.The planets all of them move in circular orbits around the sun.That is heliocentrism and the mathematical models that came with the emergence of Galileo proved this logics.

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Global Warming: Ecology And The Human Spirit."Growth of the market and population,skyrocketed the increase in overcrowded houses and urban slums,as people flocked to cities and metropolis with the growth of industrial revolution.The treacherous maladjustment to the state of nature altered into the state of material comfort absolutely testified to the escalated burden of technological setback and fury of payback time.With the unprecedented growth in astronomicalrevolutions,man thus began to question age old doctrines andscientific prejudices of the antiquity.In this context,besidesthe reform launched by the anticlericals,beginning by John Wycliffe,a professor of theology at univesity of oxford,and his later disciples includingMartin Luther that led to religious revolution of the 16th century,popularly known as Reformation,the scientific revolutionwas begun in earnest when Nicolaus Corpenicus in 1543,became the first that challenged Aristotellian metaphysics,basically the geocentric principles of the universe.

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They discovered a new method called scientific method in the first phase and made technical revolution possible.This pioneered several inventions.Just like Francis Bacon says"Knowledge is power",they now laid more ephasis on pragmatic value of knowledge through the evolution of knowledge mass production,dominated the forces of nature for the first time that once controlled them.Man began to truly intervene in his own destiny,using selfcontrol and social control system respectively.Although technical revolution that led to wealth enhancement and technological growth of Renaisance like spinning jenny also spiraled unemployment and mass poverty,led to discovery of new medicines and corresponding increase in new diseases,and from growth in the agricultural improvement rose new challenge of environmental problems.From the growth of practical appliances including washing mashine,refrigerator,and other electronics to the problem of pollution and waste as noted in my treatise on global warming entitled;Global Warming

May 12, 2019

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The view that God is present in his creation known as pantheism was developed during the period.Giordano Bruno in Rome's flower market was burned at stake's in 1600.Humanists like the league of anticlericals and other artists put an end to the antihumanism of the church and state.The period also thrived with witches and witchcraft,magic,sorcery and other religious taboos including bloody wars that led to conquest of New World.The Renaisance flourished also with new scientific method,an innovation that began the process of investigating nature with human senses.Beginning from 14th century,the great scientific thinkersthat opposed blind faith in old authority began to emerge.They drew inspiration from religiousdoctrine and natural philosophy of Aristotle.They laid emphasison the empirical method,inwhich knowledge is guided by experience,rather than pigments or parchments of imagination.They even went beyond empirical science that was already known in antiquity,but the evolution of systematic experiencewas new.

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The ancient city sometimes called 'hub of the universe' and 'city of cities later declined during the middle ages.The decline was such deplorable so that by 1417,this old metropolis had a mere seventeen thousand citizens and it was the duty of Renaisance humanists to restore its lost glory.Hence,critical attempt were made with the construction of the great St. Peter's Church built over the grave of apostle peter in a way that defied moderation and restraint.The construction as at the time was the largest in the world and engaged the best of Renaisance artists of the period.The construction started in 1506 and took about a hundred and twenty years to finish.Moreso,as it took another fifty years for the great huge St. Peter Square to be finished.Technology had improved from this primitiveness and it took just a decade to be taught.It is more than 200 meters and about 130meters high and covers area of 16th square meters.So,the era brought a new view about the concept of humanism and high worth of individualism.

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It was simply a rebirth of antiquity's humanism and much more to a greater extent driven by individualism.It is the notion that every man is unique,and unrestricted worship of heroes and genius is allowed,that was the ideal Renaisance Man.There was also so much interest in human anatomy and dissection of the body as in the ancient times especially the dead to gain knowledge about the shape of the internal body structure.A necessity for the growth of medical science and practice.The concept of universal genius later embraced every aspect of life,arts and science.Works of arts also extends to canvass painting of the nude.Man's freedom to explore the posibilities was limitless and exceed all boundaries.There was no more emphasis on the significance of moderation,restraint and tranquility,guarranteed by the humanists of antiquity.There was unrestricted revolution in all spheres ranging from art,architecture,music,literature,philosophy and science.We have heard about Rome once the great cultural center of Europe.

May 11, 2019

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Then came the discovery of telescope that transformed astronomy and other inventions like space research and rockets came later.It led to people going to the moon and such bombing like Hiroshima and then Chernobyl.They started with little changes on cultural and economic framework.There was transition from subsistence economy to monetary economy and towards end of middle ages,cities and foreign commerce escalated.This was faster than the way Greek civilisation flourished more than two thousand years earlier in view of banking,macroeconomics and money that exit barter trade.The Renaisance view was entirely new with its concept of humanism,brought a new aproach in human development and total worth of mankind in striking contrast to medieval primitiveness with emphasis on sinful nature of man.Marsilio Ficino exclaimed:'know thyself o divine lineage in mortal guise'.' Oration On The Dignity Of Man'was written by Pico Della Mirandola which was unthinkable in the dark ages.Man became their center of focus.

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Apart from Cyril of Athanasius,there is Thomas Aquinas who was instrumental in the late medieval and aided conversion of ancien Greek and Aramaic literature into Christian literature and with the help of other conversion in Northern Italy led to Renaisance Era.We mean rich cultural development that was begun in the late 14th century and spread northward in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.Its humanism erupted after the long dark ages.The period made important discoveries that transformed mordern civilisation and they included the discoveries of fire arms,compass and printing press and one of the most popular books published by Guthenberg's Press the incunabulum prior to 1500.Obviously it catapulted Renaisance new ideas and led to religious,political,commercial,cultural,economic and social revolutions at unprecedented feat.Compass made it easier to navigate worldwide.The firearms gave European military superiority.Printing forced the church to abandon its responbility as sole custodian of knowledge.

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Quoting Paul's Epistle to the Romans: O man who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it;why hast thou made me thus?or Hath not the potter power over the clay,of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonour?" So,according Man has no right to criticise God.That God sits above playing games with man's life as soon as he is dissatisfied with his work throws it away.No man deserves his redemption,inspite that he chose some to be saved from damnation.His humanism or theology is completely departed from the humanism of Athens.In a learned work entitled "the City Of God",he expounded the biblical doctrine of salvation and perdition.The black scholar noted for all history there has be struggle between the city of God or kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world.The age saw that chaos He was conscious ofthe fact that divine foresight direct his linear view of history from adam to the end of time,like the story of a child evolving into old age. THOMAS HOBBESThomas Hobbes

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Some have said he christianised plato,and though he believed that there are limits to what reason can go,or ho awa, hardly believed neglecting his philosophical thoughts on becoming christianised.That christianity or a divine mystery was a religion that can be believed by faith and not by reason.Like Kant,he noted there was a limitto how far,a philosophy could go and wanted peace with God When he said' Our heart is not quietuntil it rests in thee".Like Plato,hesaid before God created the world,the ideas were first in divine mind and in that view preservedplatonic view of eternal idea.And then the Greek and Jewish like many church fathers and Augustine brought those thoughts together to influence christianity.Like Plotinus,he also believed evil is the absence of God and linked it to mankind disobedience and not a divine creation."Goodwill is God's Work; the evil will is the falling away from God's work."He emphasised that man was a spiritual being and with material body,that is he has a soul that knows God.

May 10, 2019

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They existed in late antiquity,they believed in the dualistic forces of the universe,operated ecclectic doctrine,with half religion and half philosophy.That mankind could ensure the salvation of his soul,through preparedness with his spirit,and then mankind could rise above material universe.He had no peace of mind with this brutal division between forces of good and evil because he was preocupied with the problem of evil,as called it the origin of evil.He was by the Stoic who disbelieve sharp divion between good and evil.He tried other philosophy of the late antiquity.First, Neoplatonism in which he first said that made him discovered all existence have divine sources and so became a neoplatonic bishop.In other words,his hagiology was largely influenced by platonic ideas. Or you could say halfneoplatonist halfchristianity evenhe claimed otherwise a full christianity.Noticing the similarity between plato's ideas and christian doctrine,he was able to form conclusion that plato must have read the old testament.

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Shall we approach Christian truths or revelation with the help of reason?Many can point out contradiction between Bible and reason,that those who practiced christianity in those days tested the validity of christianity with institutional reason. Belief and knowledge were compatible.Let me go onto to cite two instances of medieval philosophers that dealt with these questions. First St. Augustine of Hippo(354-430)comes greedily to mind.If we take account of his life,we can observe the graphic transition from late antiquity to the early middle ages.He was born in a little town of Tagaste,North Africa.He went to Carthage to study at age sixteen and after hehad traveled to Rome and Milan,eventually settled in the town of Hippo,sittuated some few miles west ofCarthage.He was one of the founding fathers of the church,but was never a christian all his life.But before he became a christian,he tested several religions and philosophies.First,a Manichaen as tagged that is refering to Manichaens who were a religious sect.

May 9, 2019

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Byzanthine in the east and Arabic in the south and the world culture was glided with all the colours of rainbow that time and space could offer and glittered with philosophy.Neoplatonism flowed to the west and Plato and Aristotelian were handed to the east and arabs in the south respectively.At the exit of middle ages then they clustered and collided in Northern Italy to kickstart mordern civilisation.It drew inspiration from arabic influence that erupted from Spain plus Greek influence from Greece and Byzanthine empire.This gave birthto another civilisation epoch known as Renaisance means rebirth ofantique culture,that is the culture that survived dark ages.Now let us move onto medieval philosophy.Did the medieval philosophy not take it for granted thatchristianity was true?But havetested several philosophies were able to subconsciously polished christianity with those prejudices.They had faith and reason in it and exploited relationship it had with the Greek Philosophy.It would be strange today to do that.VOLTAIREVoltaire

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had a latinised Christian culture with Rome at its capital and so we speak Byzanthine Middle Ages in contrast to the Roman Catholic Middieval.Then the North Africa and Middle east also part of the empire formed the third division,a different culture that evolved during medieval into Arabic speaking muslim part.And when Prophet Muhammad died in 632 both north africa and middle east became part of Islam.In the same way Iberian Peninsula including Spain was won over into Islamic Culture,with mecca,medina and jerusalem designated as holy cities.Arabs invaded the ancient city of Alexander with its great library and took it over and that made them inherited much of the ancient old Greek science.This made them predominant in sciences such as mathematics,astronomy,medicine and chemistry and till date we still use arabic figures.To some extent were superior to Christian culture. With that division that was how Graeco Roman civilisation survived through this tripartite cultures.As they say,Roman Catholic in the west,

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To draw into the checkered antecedence of Roman Empire,the world's longest civilisation especially its zeutergeist would be to nail the poser on the beautiful memory of one of the most glorious epochs the world ever had.The supreme head of Roman Catholic Church,was the Bishop of Rome and was given the title"pope"which means in Latin 'Papa'that signifies Christ deputy on earth.This testified to the domineering status of the grandest city as the cultural center of late antiquity and was the christian capital throughout the medieval.Although Plato's Academy was closed down,still Greek Philosophy continued to inspire the world and reenacted new civilisation,especially through the writtings and leftovers of Plato and Aristotle.The old Roman Empire was splitted into three divisions and different cultures with the one in Eastern Europe having Byzantium Greek name as its capital but popularly known as Istanbul today,and formerly called Constantinople,had a Greek christian culture.The second in western Europe had a

May 8, 2019

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Eastern part with Constantinople as capital.In 410, Rome was plundered by the Barbarians and by 476,the entire western part was destroyed.Not untill 1453 when the Turks defeated and conquered Constantinople,the Eastern part continued as a state and name later changed to Istanbul.In 529, Plato's Academy in Athens was closed down and it implies the Christian Church put an end to Greek Philosophy.The middle ages witnessed the largest expansion in the school system,including both convent and cathedral schools,many folk tales,folk music.Prominent names such as Snorri,Saint Olaf,Charlemagne, Romeo and Juliet, Pied Piper of Hamelin,Joan ofArc,Ivanhoe and so many majestickings,queens, Princes,knights,even friars,crusaders,clergies and witches etc.Rome had a population of over a millionpeople,during the antiquity and by 600,fell astronomically tomere 40,000,so that by the end of 4th century,its time was already over.This was a period of high cultures,public baths,sewers andlibraries with big cities,proudarchitecture.

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We can say that the middle ages was begun at the fourth century and by the eleventh,twelfth and thirteenth often regarded as the period of High Gothic and that was the period in which the great Cathedrals of Europe was built.Suddenly by the 14thcentury,the interminable middle ages passed away,choked in the middle and taken over by Renaisance era(1300-1600).Christianity was a strong force during the period and profiteth immensely from its evolution.Around 3 the Christian Church was banned but was accepted in Rome by Emperor Constantine,in A.D.313.Infact the Holy Roman Emperor was baptised on his deathbed and from year 380,it was official religion in Roman Empire,though some sources disputed it.Rome was threatened in the 4th century by barbarians,that pressed from the North,and by A.D.330,Constantine the Great moved capital to constantinople from Rome,the City he founded near black sea and they often call it Second Rome.Roman Empire was divided into two by 395 with western empire and Rome as capital and then

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 45

They called the country ruled by Sons Of God,the Kingdom Of God.When it lost its glorious era,the kingdom,Israel was into both Northern Kingdom(Israel) and Southern Kingdom( Judea).The former in 1722.B.C.was defeated by the Assyrians and its political and religious significance was wiped out.It was in 586 B.C.that the southern kingdom was destroyed and conquered by the Babyloans And temple destroyed and most of its people sent of as slaves.The Babylonian captivity expressively lasted until 539,when they were returned back to their land in Jerusalem.Hence,the great temple was restored.Until the birth of Christ,the Jews lived under the imperialism of external agressors and foreign domination.We shall at this point,do awholehearted analysis of theemergent christian era and the apostles,but it appears that the growth of history was structured completely to favour western religions especially Christianity.The apostle of choice is paul,a Roman Jurist,also stood on same Areopagus Hill in which Socrates also taught.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 44

The belief in the God Of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob later Israel,obviously show Semites had a linear view of history,to be capped by the history of judgemen t day and the rest.This played an important in the history of these western religion.With their strong emphasis that stress the importance of divine intervention,they were preocuppied for thousand of years,writting and rewritting the ever changing pattern and course of history.The most holy city of Jerusalem till date is a religious center for the three religions especially Christianity.The jews reached their peak,when the Jacob was changed to Israel and the twelve tribes.Around the year,1200 B.C.Moses received ten commandments from God on Mount Sinail and that was the time they were slaves in Egypt.They were later freed after a lot of stress.Before the advent of Greek Philoshy and a thousand years before,rose three kings in Israel And they received the title'Messiah'which means anointed one.Sometimes,they call them Sons Of God as a goalgetter between God,BARON DE MONTESQUIEUBaron de Montesquieu

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 43.

For well over two thousand years,after their dispersal from home,the strategic thrust of history was bent for their sake and favour,when the semitic religion and culture reached farthest of the globe,through Christianity and to some extent through Islam.From Judaism to Christianity and then Islam all being western religions also share same semitic background.Both Koran,holy scripture of muslims and Bible,the holly book of the saints were written in the semitic languages'family.Incidentally,one of the Old Testament's words for"
gods"share the same meaning.that is the same semantic root has the same meaning as Allah meaning "god".It doesnt necessarily means that despite the formulation of christian ideology,that was influenced by Greek,Latin and the Philosophy of Hellenistic Period,New Testament was still boldly written in Greek.Indo European believed in many gods,the Semites professed belief in one God,monotheism,distinguished the three religion from pantheism of Indo Europeans.They believed in the Creationism

HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE.PART 5

of Benjamin Graham,basically preserving the principal as well as the returns.Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard who was rich then broke due to plethora of lawsuits that bedevilled his company and domains.He was able improved his products and add high quality serviceslater fought back,came back stronger,to reclaim stardom.Be ready to create a consumable products that people love like Cocacola etc and be a service provider in high growth industry.Invest in trickish oil and gas,and then real estate and grow your portfolio over time.Carl Berg like Dean Graphiosi,became a billionaire in real estate investment,the great Rockefeller with his behemoth oil company,Standard Oil of New Jersey,made criminal and phenomenalwealth from blackgold.Above all rays of activities by world brightest billionaires must begin by positive thinking and backed up by otherlisted attributes.Methinks that even grassroot people who aresuccesful in theirown little way must have deployed more or less,same attributes,but the difference is clear.

HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE.PART 4

Learn how to add value.What they have been able to do consistently over time is to simply add value. From Bill Gates to Warren Buffet,it is the old same logic and formula.The former took software expertise down to Microsoft,from the domain of I B M that pioneered it and made it a household name,first and foremost among techies and technological geeks then around the world through microsoft windows.Buffet bought Berkshire Hathaway,a textile manufacturer that started in 1830s or thereabout,bought it in the 1960s and later turned it into investment company and today made it the world largest investment company,with over fivehundred billion dollars worth of market capitalisation on stock exchange.Peter Peterson and Steve Schwarzman,the founder of Blackstone,both world largest alternative asset manager and world largest private equity firm like the Oracle Of Boston and the rest of hedge fund companies,have been able to consistently add value.Buffet,oracle Of Omaha and the Oracle of B
  • Slide 1 of 52: 'The Post' film premiere, Arrivals, Washington DC, USA - 14 Dec 2017; American Federation of Arts: Gala and Cultural Leadership Awards, The Metropolitan Club, New York, USA - 01 Nov 2016
oston have applied value theory.JEFF BEZOS AT AMAZON ABOVE

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 42

'Video'a typical verb,in Latin means vision,in Roman simply means to see which is also the same as staring at the TV screen.In English words like wise and wisdom in German named wissen meaning to know.Viten is a Norwegian word the same as Indian word Vidya or idea in and the Latin Video.Indo European cultures not just myths are also related and the same with all Oriental religions.Hinduism and Budhism havethe same origin,even with the Greeks.The same philosophical reflections abound between them.The belief in pantheism that deity is present in all things,thedoctrine of immortalityof the soul,the transmigration or rebirth cycle,belief in ascetism as variegated fundamental belief run through many Indo European cultures for well over two thousand fivehundred years.Now let us travel to Israel and discuss Semitism.When we say Semitism,we are refering to the ideology of the Semites or Israelites.They originated from Arabian Peninsula and also migrated from some other parts of theworld.They left their home long ago.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 41

Vaner is a word that is related to the Latin word 'Venus'that is the goddess of fertility and in Sanskrit the related word is Vani which means desired.Indo European myths also shared some affinity.For instance,in Snorri's myths which reflects Nordic environment or stories of the Old Norse gods,several myths there are similar to the Indian myths,handed down from about two to three thousand years earlier.All can be traced to a common source,trading stories of immortal potion and struggles between the gods against the monster of chaos.The modes of thoughts are clearly similar across all Indo European cultures.The Greek culture especially philosophy itself originated from Indo European spheres of culture,with the Nordic,Greek and Indian mythologies adopting speculative mode or ideological worldview.Many words are related from clime to clime because it is so from culture to culture.For instance'insight'is called Vidya in Sanskrit and related to the Greek word 'idea'so important in platonic ideology.Whereas theword

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 41

Vaner is a word that is related to the Latin word 'Venus'that is the goddess of fertility and in Sanskrit the related word is Vani which means desired.Indo European myths also shared some affinity.For instance,in Snorri's myths which reflects Nordic environment or stories of the Old Norse gods,several myths there are similar to the Indian myths,handed down from about two to three thousand years earlier.All can be traced to a common source,trading stories of immortal potion and struggles between the gods against the monster of chaos.The modes of thoughts are clearly similar across all Indo European cultures.The Greek culture especially philosophy itself originated from Indo European spheres of culture,with the Nordic,Greek and Indian mythologies adopting speculative mode or ideological worldview.Many words are related from clime to clime because it is so from culture to culture.For instance'insight'is called Vidya in Sanskrit and related to the Greek word 'idea'so important in platonic ideology.Whereas differs

HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE.PART 3

Long term thinking is ordinarily the basis of a succesful strategy.Jeff Bezos,posted losses for years,before turning profit at Amazon.Sustainable capacity building,mentorship,creative and critical thinking work only for a long term thinker.You must have capability to take a solid action and back up your vision and goal with it.It is a common knowledge,no plan is achievable without solid action,well targeted action,specific and concrete focus,succesful billionaire entrepreneurs,are so easily made.Be a good salesman.All entrepreneurs have ample recourse and foolproofs of their salesmanship drive,including the art of time scheduling,bargaining or the art of negotiation or the art of manipulation of men to get the best of them.Then again,do not forget,add this strategy also,you must be a great brand builder.Invest in your identity that is your brand is your identity,invest in your brand.Do not try to look for short cost,follow the routine and not cut corners. When opportunities come,be the first to notice it.

May 7, 2019

HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE.PART 2

Be a positive thinker.It must be the first strategy on your roadmaps towards making billions.It was Norman Vincent Pearle,that popularised the word"Positive thinking"and it requires a lot of faith and too passionate about its work.Many of us have read,"Think And Grow Rich"by Napoleon Hill and that is best book to gauge the powers of positive thinking at work.The second thing common to all extremely wealthy people is the power of networking.You must be an avid networker and i think it is a pretty influential tactics among them.Neil Pateil used the power of networking with hundred millionaires to certainly become millionaire himself.The third strategy,you must be good in time management.As they say time is money and also carry opportunities with it.Hence,to move with time,they tend to manage with time,delicate opportunities effectively that come their way.In this way,the fourth strategy comes in handy that is be a long term thinker.All of the above requires critical creative long term thinker to be sucessful .

HOW TO BE A BILLIONAIRE.PART ONE

I know that our hands are not equal and we hardly doubt that equal opportunity exist for everyone.To those at the top of the pyramid,i still wonder how they manage to get there trampling over heads of multitudes of lost souls,struggling for pittance.To be frank,here's what i have found lately about them and i will reveal to you their open secrets.Anyway you already know that and this will just be a reminder.Now listen to the secrets of how to be a billionaire.I mean the same secrets that billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg,Francois Pinnault,Bill Gates,Jeff Bezos,Warren Buffet, Jerry Yang,Larry Elison,Oprah Winfrey,John Dejoria,Ralph Lauren, Paul Maccartney and a host of over two thousand billionaires worlwide. Though i disagrees with global population figure of sixteen million millionaires,certainly they use same formular to become wealthy. Before i mention or open up the secret,you know you must have some skills and also have something you must sell.Now let me list these strategies as noted below .

May 6, 2019

ARCADIAN MUSE.PART ONE

The mutts sport and frolics behind,in her haemorrhaging mutes of epic morn,muttering,grouching and grumpyism in the hagridden gallivant.She,not the namby pamby naivety oik,nailbiting and mudslinging,not to pith with the navelgazers'nausea,but the nativity's nimby,nifty,with misfit's pizzaz egalitarian hue and cry.Sometimes,she gustos with speed,haggard behind the gazelles and greyhounds.Sometimes a timbered trod,dipped pinkies halfbaked into placket of overload plaid,adorned with her pintsized delectable frame,pitterpattering exigency,with the pith helmet of homestead gallantry,not pitch blark,piqued piteously to pipedream the pined snapshots,in her lustrous lustre.What a skypie that she was hoodwinked and charmed in her pigsty and hovel! Wither not pestilential meander,her trademark hood enrobed not to be flushed with multitudinous miserabilists to pall a neuter of damp squid,with hex of pie eyed arcadian muse,petered with egregious pertinacity of the drooping placebos.Pent up thy carthasis for the muse!

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 40

that stretched from the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea onward wander southeast into Iran and India,then later south west to Greece,Italy and Spain,westward to central Europe to France and Britain.They then moved northwestward to scandinavian and northward to Eastern Europe and Russia.Germanic tribes colonised most of europe.Now we move onto the fact most Indo Europeans' names and words are similar such as in the ancient Indian,that worshipped celestial gods,"Dyaus".In Sankrit text means the sky,day,heaven.Dyaus in Greek the god is called Zeus,"which in latin cali it Jupiter or father heaven or iov-pater. The word Aser the gods of the Vikings is prominent in the region and in Sanskrit,are Called Azura Ahura in Persia.Deva another word for god in Sanskrit is altered as daeva and deus in both Persian and Latin or tivurr in Old Norse.There were many fertility gods believed in Viking times such as Niord, Freyr Freyja and collectively known as Vaner.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 39

Judaism,muhamedanism or Islam and Christianity form Western mysticism and are basically monotheistic religion.Eastern mysticism comprises of hinduism,budhism,shintoism and other Chinese and Asiatic religions.Atheism also forms an exclusive experience and according to britannica encyclopaedia,every religion including atheism professes belief in the supernatural.The Indo Europeans was distinguished by belief in many gods,polytheism.That culture and names of these god recur round the IndoEuropean region.Before we mentioned that let us know the region and what do they mean by the word"Indo European"?It refers to all countries and cultures using indoeuropean languages.This sprawling region stretches to cover a vast swathe ofEuropean region.Infact it covers all European countries excluding the inhabitants of Finno-Ugrian languages such as Lapp,Hungarian,Estonian and Finish or that of the Basque,including even Iranian and most indian languages.Theancient Indo Europeans,about 4,000 years ago once lived in territories

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 38

The first pole refers to divine light governed by One,sometimes calls it God.The second pole refers to darkness which he calls absence of light.That the soul is illuminated with light from God or One,and this darkness has no real existence.He refers to matter as the darkness.While his doctrine is holistically characterisedas wholeness or completely,in contrast to plato's dualism,his metaphor is likened to Plato's myth of the cave.The shadows deep in Plato's cave,also testifiesto the gloriouslight ofthe One.Sometimes he used his life as casestudy,when he experienced a fusionof his soul withthe One,whichthey call mystical experience.Mysticism simply means merging with God,a mystic union or fusion to borrowPlotinus emphasis.Somecall thefusion with greater i or nature or with cosmic spirit or theUniverse.According to an Indian mystic philosopher:"When i was,God was not.WhenGod is,i am no more". Mysticism opens an ideological template for over five thousand world religions and certainly,every saint is a mysticist.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 37

We move onto Neoplatonism.It was the most remarkable philosophical trend in the late Hellenistic period and was inspired by plato's ideology.Plotinus(c.205-270) was the most influential in this school.It was in Alexandria that he studied philosophy and later settled in Rome.For many centuries the city Alexandria,was meeting point between Oriental mysticism and Greek philosophy especially through its gigantic library.When he came with him to settle down in Rome,his doctrine of salvation was ferociously competitive against emerging christianity.Infact,it has considerable influence on christianity.He was familiar with plato's theory of ideas and sensory world and the properly established notion of a clear division between soul and body,making man a dual creature.He believed we had also immortal soul and body composed of earth and dust like sensory world.This platonic knowledge like similar ideas from Asia,influence Plotinus conception of neoplatonism.That the world is made up of two poles or a span between them.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 36

Fear of gods brought a lot of people to Epicurus garden,where they deployed atom theory of Democritus as useful cure for religious taboos.To overcome the fear of death,is then to live a good life and to this purpose Epicurus used this Democritus's theory of soul atoms.Epicurus says"Death does not concern us"that"because as long as we exist,death is not here.And when it does come,we no longer exist."He simply reechoed what Democritus said that there was no life after death and after death disperse in every direction. As intoned in the four medicinal herbs:that 'the gods are not to be feared.Death is nothing to worry about.Good is easy to attain.The fearful is easy to endure'.The four ingredients highlighted here should form philosophical basis,for a medicine chest.Unlike Stoics, Epicureans stayed away from politics and the community.Hence Epicurus says"Live in seclusion". Epicureans emphasised more on selfindulgence with the motto'live for the moment'.Today, the word"Epicurean is related to pleasure .

May 1, 2019

THOUGHTLESSNESS.PART 62

The most compelling interest,for the cascading fortitude of sojourner's intent,basically the incentives available for the nativity of the embittered poised into flight. The hanging exigencies of the intended flight even when not premeditated,will absolutely determines the nature of flight's operation not excluding the pattern of exigency at cascading the sometimes unbudgeted trips that might swoop on providence for lifetime transmutation.In this tentative forays of educated hazardguess by the artist's flight promiscuity and sometimes demoralised hagiological bent,the likelymiscariage of the much implacably vengeful troves of horrors and probably rankles of impending injustices of the new end of the tunnel must be swallowed hook line and sinker. The artist sojourner would be held in painful suspense of the new dreamland probate court of distress.To be sequestered from its beleaguered court of distress,is to be extricated from its horrendous hours,shameful stench and misery vomitting,circumstances'bloodletting,

THOUGHTLESSNESS.PART 61

It is incontrovertible that the ordeals of a personage are fertile soil for the denouement and demotion of distress times.It may well be accelerated where microindustrial action is massively ingrained to demilitarize the apron string of failure.We might need to streamline concerted efforts adopted to demystify the ordeal through monomaniac quandrantic approach.Times and space denigrates which approach,with its balancing bundles to be hurled at the licentious bedlam of this boisterous ordeals to divulge effect from induring impression of the impudent savagery and latent depravity,overflowing the artist's pressence,marred with windmills of brutes,minnows and mules,hibernating in an ecology,precluded by loungelizards,simpletons and fatalists.Visionless psyches and men at arms of never do wells and brothels ofbankrupt dreamy lewds share breathless proximity.This melange of visionary executioners specialised in ferocious abolitionism of forward looking precision.We avert the impending horrors by changing location.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 35

Now,we move onto Epicureanism,another school of thought manned by epicureans who interpreted philosophy in a new way,giving it another direction. Aristippus was a pupil under Socrates who believed the highest possible sensory enjoyment should be general aim of life.He says"The highest good is pleasure"whereas stoics and cynics opposed all material luxuries that man had to free himself from its bondage.Aristippus also said,"The greatest evil is pain"opposing other schools.While the two schools believed in enduring all kinds of pain,he vowed to develop a way of life with aim to avoid pain at all forms.Then around the year 300 B.C., Epicurus keyed into the self imbibed vision of Aristippus,visited and founded a philosophy in Athens and followers were called'Epicureans' or so to say pleasure lovers,voluptuaries and hedonist clubs.He perfected pleasure ethics of Aristippus,combined with atom's theory of Democritus.They live in that garden and sometimes known as garden philosophers.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 34

It was merely incomplete mimicry of perfect natural law.They eliminated the difference between individual and the universe and also denied conflict whatsoever extant between spirit and matter,and saw them as one entity.They therefore accepted monism in contrast to Platonic dualism or two fold reality.They were cosmopolitans like the sophists,drew attention to importance of human fellowship and were involved in the politics of their day and many were active sales like Roman Emperor,Marcus Aurelius( A.D.121-180).The great Cicero(106-43 B.C.)was one of them and one of the most successful orator,philosopher and statesman that helped encouraged the growth of Greek culture and philosophy in Rome.He singlehandedly formed the concept of humanism that later took Renaisance by storm and partly contributed to end the feudal and medieval horrors.They believed nothing happens by accident and all natural processes including ailment and death,follow commandment of natural law and mankind must learn to accept his destiny .

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 33

Little wonder,the word Cynicism refers to sneering belief in human sincerity and insensitivity to other people's suffering.Stoic school was founded by Zeno of Citium,a migrant from Cyprus who joined the Cynics in Athens after being survival in a shipwrecked.He started by gathering his followers under the portico,the same world from which Stoicismcame from,refering to the Greek word for portico meaning stoa.The school later made meaningfulcontribution to Roman culture.Eachperson was like a world in miniature,a microcosmos a reflection of macrocosmos and eachequiped with same common sense or logos. The universal rightness the so called natural law was born from this reflection.Timeless human and universal reasonthat did not alter with time and space,provide template uponwhich natural law was built.In this disputation of logics,the stoicssupported Socrates againstthe Sophists.This type of law governsall mankind even serfs and the stoic regarded various legal statutes of many states merely as its fake version.

PHILOSOPHERS'STONE.PART 32

not on random and fugacious things.It is not found either in external advantages such as wealth,luxury,politics or good health and is often been found to be permanent when attained.Diogenes was the best known of the Cynics,a pupil of Antisthenes,was reported was to have lived in a barrel,owned a cloak,a stick and a bread bag and nothing else and wasnt easy to steal his happiness from him.Hence,the teaching was influential in the way they lived and believed.A story has it that Alexander the Great came to him to press him to demand anything.The emperor stood before him while he was sitting beside his barrel.Was there anything he desired"Yes"he replied " Stand to one side.You're blocking the sun".Indeed,methinks,as the poorest man in the world,he was the most contented man in the world to defy and summon courage to ridicule the most powerful man in the world was truly truly,the 8th wonders of the world.They believed,it did not even matter to worry your own health,suffocation and death dont even bother them.