Nature as a Game of Chess

Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn upon the father who allowed his son, or ...

 Proud to be Descendant of Monkeys

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

 Death is Nothing to Us

Equally vain is the suggestion that the spirit is immortal because it is shielded by life-preserving powers: or because it is unassailed by forces hostile to its survival; or because such forces, if they threaten, are somehow repelled before we are conscious of the threat. <Common sense makes it obvious that this cannot be the case:> apart from the spirit's participation in the ailments of the body, it has maladies enough of its own. [80] The prospect of the future torments it with f...

 The Samurai Reject Elaborately Ornate Religious Displays

The leading principle of the Utopian religion is the repudiation of the doctrine of original sin; the Utopians hold that man, on the whole, is good. That is their cardinal belief. Man has pride and conscience, they hold, that you may refine by training as you refine his eye and ear; he has remorse and sorrow in his being, coming on the heels of all inconsequent enjoyments. How can one think of him as bad? He is religious; religion is as natural to him as lust and anger, less intense, indeed, ...