Brain-washing Starts In The Cradle.

As Modern Physics Started With The Newtonian Revolution, So Modern Philosophy Starts With What One Might Call The Cartesian Catastrophe. The Catastrophe Consisted In The Splitting Up Of The World Into The Realms Of Matter And Mind, And The Identification Of 'mind' With Conscious Thinking. The Result Of This Identification Was The Shallow Rationalism Of L' Esprit Cartesien, And An Impoverishment Of Psychology Which It Took Three Centuries To Remedy Even In Part.

Coincidence May Be Described As The Chance Encounter Of Two Unrelated Causal Chains Which - Miraculously, It Seems - Merge Into A Significant Event.

Our Press And Our Schools Cultivate Chauvinism, Militarism, Dogmatism, Conformism And Ignorance. The Arbitrary Power Of The Government Is Unlimited, And Unexampled In History; Freedom Of The Press, Of Opinion And Of Movement Are As Thoroughly Exterminated As Though The Proclamation Of The Rights Of Man Had Never Been. We Have Built Up The Most Gigantic Police Apparatus, With Informers Made A National Institution, And The Most Refined Scientific System Of Political And Mental Torture. We Whip The Groaning Masses Of The Country Towards A Theoretical Future Happiness, Which Only We Can.

Chemically Induced Hallucinations, Delusions And Raptures May Be Frightening Or Wonderfully Gratifying; In Either Case They Are In The Nature Of Confidence Tricks Played On One's Own Nervous System.

If Time Is Treated In Modern Physics As A Dimension On A Par With The Dimensions Of Space, Why Should We A Priori Exclude The Possibility That We Are Pulled As Well As Pushed Along Its Axis? The Future Has, After All, As Much Or As Little Reality As The Past, And There Is Nothing Logically Inconceivable In Introducing, As A Working Hypothesis, An Element Of Finality, Supplementary To The Element Of Causality, Into Our Equations. It Betrays A Great Lack Of Imagination To Believe That The Concept Of "purpose" Must Necessarily Be Associated With Some Anthropomorphic Deity.