Saturday, July 21, 2012
Free Kindle Books
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_4?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=free+kindle+books&sprefix=free%2Cdigital-text%2C318#/ref=sr_pg_4?rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Afree+kindle+classics+books&page=4&keywords=free+kindle+classics+books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342539473
Other books as well 0 price Kindle
Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 [Kindle Edition]
Various (Author), William Patten (Editor)
THE BRIGADE COMMANDER
J. W. DEFOREST ...... 335
WHO WAS SHE?
BAYARD TAYLOR ...... 377
MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH ...... 403
BROTHER SEBASTIAN'S FRIENDSHIP
HAROLD FREDERIC ...... 423
A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN ...... 445
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
BRET HARTE ...... 485
CRUTCH, THE PAGE
GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND ("GATH") ...... 501
IN EACH OTHER'S SHOES
GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP ...... 533
THE DENVER EXPRESS
A. A. HAYES ...... 559
JAUNE D'ANTIMOINE
THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER ...... 595
OLE 'STRACTED
THOMAS NELSON PAGE ...... 639
OUR CONSUL AT CARLSRUHE
F. J. STIMSON ("J. S. OF DALE") ...... 661
Kindle Store › "free kindle classics books" "free kindle classics books"
Cancel
Showing 1 - 12 of 21,133 Results Sort by Relevance Popularity Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Avg. Customer Review Publication Date
1. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (Kindle Edition - Mar 30, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(90)
2. Moby Dick: or, the White Whale by Herman Melville (Kindle Edition - Mar 24, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(400)
3. Paradise Lost by John Milton (Kindle Edition - Mar 30, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(54)
4. Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 by Various and William Patten (Kindle Edition - Mar 24, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
5. Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases A Practical Handbook Of Pertinent Expressions, Striking Similes, Literary, Commercial, Conversational, And Oratorical Terms, ... Persons Who Read, Write, And Speak English by Grenville Kleiser (Kindle Edition - Mar 24, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(3)
6. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Kindle Edition - Mar 30, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(136)
7. The Children of Odin The Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum and Willy Pogany (Kindle Edition - Mar 24, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(5)
8. Wuthering Heights (Illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg with Free audiobook link) by Emily Brontë, ICU Publishing and Fritz Eichenberg (Kindle Edition - Jan 5, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $1.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(804)
9. Great Expectations (Illustrated with Free audiobook link) by Charles Dickens, ICU Publishing and F. W. Pailthorpe (Kindle Edition - Jun 1, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(659)
10. Grimms' Fairy Stories (Illustrated with Free audiobook link) by Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, ICU Publishing and John Gruelle (Kindle Edition - Dec 27, 2010) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(65)
11. Grid Detective (A Free Game for Kindle) by Amazon Digital Services (Kindle Edition - Feb 7, 2012) - Kindle Active Content
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
13. The Secret Garden (Illustrated with Free audiobook link) by FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT, ICU PUBLISHING, INGA MOORE and CHARLES ROBINSON (Kindle Edition - Jun 1, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(503)
14. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Uplifting Classics) by Oscar Wilde (Kindle Edition - Jan 1, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(490)
15. The Jungle Book (Illustrated with Free audiobook link) by Rudyard Kipling, ICU Publishing and Edward Julius Detmold (Kindle Edition - Feb 1, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(115)
16. Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome (Illustrated with Free audiobook link) by E.M. Berens and ICU Publishing (Kindle Edition - Jan 11, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(16)
17. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (Kindle Edition - Mar 24, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(29)
18. Northanger Abbey (Illustrated with Free Audiobook link) by Jane Austen, ICU Publishing and Charles E. Brock (Kindle Edition - Jan 11, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(176)
19. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin, Frank Woodworth Pine and E. Boyd (Elmer Boyd) Smith (Kindle Edition - Mar 30, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(234)
20. Persuasion (Illustrated + FREE audiobook link) by Jane Austen and Sam Ngo (Kindle Edition - Feb 4, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(301)
21. Anna Karenina (Illustrated with Free audiobook link) by Leo Tolstoy, ICU Publishing, A. Zaidenberg and Constance Garnett (Kindle Edition - Mar 1, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $1.99
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(233)
22. The Pursuit of God by A. W. (Aiden Wilson) Tozer (Kindle Edition - Mar 24, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Contents
Introduction 5
Preface 7
I Following Hard after God 11
II The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing 21
III Removing the Veil 33
IV Apprehending God 49
V The Universal Presence 61
VI The Speaking Voice 73
VII The Gaze of the Soul 85
VIII Restoring the Creator-creature Relation 99
IX Meekness and Rest 109
X The Sacrament of Living 117
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(187)
23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer's Comrade by Mark Twain (Kindle Edition - Mar 30, 2011) - Kindle eBook
Buy: $0.00
Auto-delivered wirelessly
(647)
Free Kindle Books List
Free Books For Kindle: Linked List Of Over 1,000 Free Fiction Classics From The Most Popular Authors In Kindle Public Domain Collection
Copyright 2012 by Morris Rosenthal - Links Updated 7/17/12
Foner Books
Table of Contents
Alcott, Louisa May
Andersen, Hans Christian
Arnim, Elizabeth von
Austen, Jane
Balzac, Honoré de
Baum, L. Frank
Beaumont, Marie Le Prince de
Benson, E. F.
Braddon, M. E.
Bronte, Anne
Bronte, Charlotte
Bronte, Emily
Burnett, Frances Hodgson
Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Carroll, Lewis
Cather, Willa
Chesterton, G. K.
Christie, Agatha
Collins, Wilkie
Conrad, Joesph
Cooper, James Fenimore
Defoe, Daniel
Dickens, Charles
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
Dreiser, Theodore
Dumas, Alexandre
Eliot, George
Ewing, Juliana Horatia Gatty
Ferber, Edna
Fielding, Henry
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Flaubert, Gustave
Forster, E. M.
Freeman, Mary Wilkins
Freeman, R. Austin
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Grey, Zane
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm
Haggard, H. Rider
Hardy, Thomas
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Henry, O
Hesse, Hermann
Holmes, Mary Jane Holmes
Irving, Washington
James, Henry
Joyce, James
Kipling, Rudyard
Lang, Andrew
Lawrence, D. H.
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
London, Jack
Lofting, Hugh
Maugham, W. Somerset
Melville, Herman
Meredith, George
Milne, A. A.
Milton, John
Montgomery, L.M. (Lucy Maud)
Norris, Kathleen Thompson
Oemler, Marie Conway
Orczy, Baroness Emmuska
Poe, Edgar Allan
Potter, Beatrix
Pyle, Howard
Rand, Ayn
Rinehart, Mary Roberts
Saunders, Margaret Marshall
Scott, Sir Walter
Shaw, George Bernard
Shelley, Mary
Sinclair, Upton
Stevenson, Robert Lewis
Stoker, Bram
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Stratton-Porter, Gene
Swift, Jonathan
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Tolstoy, Leo
Trollope, Anthony
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich
Twain, Mark
Verne, Jules
Wells, H.G.
Wharton, Elizabeth
Wilde, Oscar
Wodehouse, P. G.
Woolf, Virginia
Wyss, Johann David
Return To Table Of Contents I built this list after my father paid several dollars for a classic that was available free on Kindle. Everybody who loves classic literature knows that it can be confusing to find out-of-copyright copies for free with so many people trying to sell paid versions of the same titles.
This list works best on Kindle 3, Fire, Touch WiFi and iPad. If you click the linked title, it will bring you directly to the product page for the free eBook in the Kindle store. If you are using a Kindle 3, an iPad, or other eBook reader with a decent web browser, you can sign into your Amazon account and download the eBook immediately. Note that Kindle 3G users must have access to a WiFi network when using the list.
If you are reading on an older Kindle 2 or Kindle 1, you can add the book to your Wish List and the next time you use a computer to access Amazon, you can have the Wish List items sent to your Kindle for free. Or, if you want to begin reading the eBook immediately on an older Kindle, you can simply note the title and cover design of the linked eBook in the Kindle store, and then search for the title with your Kindle. If there are multiple copies, pick the one with the cover that matches, confirm that it is free, and then download it to your Kindle.
I update this list frequently to catch new editions and the odd edition dropped by Amazon, but it isn't a blog subscription, so there's no automatic updates. If you find any missing classics that are free on Amazon or current links that have gone dead, please drop me a line at e_foner@yahoo.com. In the current update, I've had to drop some classics Amazon removed from the free collection, such as "War and Peace", "Kim", and "Anne of Green Gables." I have no idea why these popular books were dropped by Amazon, perhaps formatting complaints.
Human All too Human Friedrich Nietzsche
PREFACE.
HUMAN,
ALL TOO HUMAN
A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER HARVEY
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1908
Copyright 1908
By Charles H. Kerr & Company
1
It is often enough, and always with great surprise, intimated to me that there is something both ordinary and unusual in all my writings, from the "Birth of Tragedy" to the recently published "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future": they all contain, I have been told, snares and nets for short sighted birds, and something that is almost a constant, subtle, incitement to an overturning of habitual opinions and of approved customs. What!? Everything is merely—human—all too human? With this exclamation my writings are gone through, not without a certain dread and mistrust of ethic itself and not without a disposition to ask the exponent of evil things if those things be not simply misrepresented. My writings have been termed a school of distrust, still more of disdain: also, and more happily, of courage, audacity even. And in fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world with a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timely advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy and challenger of God; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequences of such deep distrust, anything of the chills and the agonies of isolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemns him endowed with it, will also understand how often I must have sought relief and self-forgetfulness from any source—through any object of veneration or enmity, of scientific seriousness or wanton lightness; also why I, when I could not find what I was in need of, had to fashion it for myself, counterfeiting it or imagining it (and what poet or writer has ever done anything else, and what other purpose can all the art in the world possibly have?) That which I always stood most in need of in order to effect my cure and self-recovery was faith, faith enough not to be thus isolated, not to look at life from so singular a point of view—a magic apprehension (in eye and mind) of relationship and equality, a calm confidence in friendship, a blindness, free from suspicion and questioning, to two sidedness; a pleasure in externals, superficialities, the near, the accessible, in all things possessed of color, skin and seeming. Perhaps I could be fairly reproached with much "art" in this regard, many fine counterfeitings; for example, that, wisely or wilfully, I had shut my eyes to Schopenhauer's blind will towards ethic, at a time when I was already clear sighted enough on the subject of ethic; likewise that I had deceived myself concerning Richard Wagner's incurable romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an end; likewise concerning the Greeks, likewise concerning the Germans and their future—and there may be, perhaps, a long list of such likewises. Granted, however, that all this were true, and with justice urged against me, what does it signify, what can it signify in regard to how much of the self-sustaining capacity, how much of reason and higher protection are embraced in such self-deception?—and how much more falsity is still necessary to me that I may therewith always reassure myself regarding the luxury of my truth. Enough, I still live; and life is not considered now apart from ethic; it will [have] deception; it thrives (lebt) on deception ... but am I not beginning to do all over again what I have always done, I, the old immoralist, and bird snarer—talk unmorally, ultramorally, "beyond good and evil"?
2HUMAN,
ALL TOO HUMAN
A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Book-Free-Spirits-ebook/dp/B006FLJQV2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1343164879&sr=1-1&keywords=HUMAN%2CAll+too+Human#reader_B006FLJQV2
BY
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
TRANSLATED BY ALEXANDER HARVEY
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1908
Copyright 1908
By Charles H. Kerr & Company
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE. 5
OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS. 19
HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS. 67
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 136
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
1
It is often enough, and always with great surprise, intimated to me that there is something both ordinary and unusual in all my writings, from the "Birth of Tragedy" to the recently published "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future": they all contain, I have been told, snares and nets for short sighted birds, and something that is almost a constant, subtle, incitement to an overturning of habitual opinions and of approved customs. What!? Everything is merely—human—all too human? With this exclamation my writings are gone through, not without a certain dread and mistrust of ethic itself and not without a disposition to ask the exponent of evil things if those things be not simply misrepresented. My writings have been termed a school of distrust, still more of disdain: also, and more happily, of courage, audacity even. And in fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world with a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timely advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy and challenger of God; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequences of such deep distrust, anything of the chills and the agonies of isolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemns him endowed with it, will also understand how often I must have sought relief and self-forgetfulness from any source—through any object of veneration or enmity, of scientific seriousness or wanton lightness; also why I, when I could not find what I was in need of, had to fashion it for myself, counterfeiting it or imagining it (and what poet or writer has ever done anything else, and what other purpose can all the art in the world possibly have?) That which I always stood most in need of in order to effect my cure and self-recovery was faith, faith enough not to be thus isolated, not to look at life from so singular a point of view—a magic apprehension (in eye and mind) of relationship and equality, a calm confidence in friendship, a blindness, free from suspicion and questioning, to two sidedness; a pleasure in externals, superficialities, the near, the accessible, in all things possessed of color, skin and seeming. Perhaps I could be fairly reproached with much "art" in this regard, many fine counterfeitings; for example, that, wisely or wilfully, I had shut my eyes to Schopenhauer's blind will towards ethic, at a time when I was already clear sighted enough on the subject of ethic; likewise that I had deceived myself concerning Richard Wagner's incurable romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an end; likewise concerning the Greeks, likewise concerning the Germans and their future—and there may be, perhaps, a long list of such likewises. Granted, however, that all this were true, and with justice urged against me, what does it signify, what can it signify in regard to how much of the self-sustaining capacity, how much of reason and higher protection are embraced in such self-deception?—and how much more falsity is still necessary to me that I may therewith always reassure myself regarding the luxury of my truth. Enough, I still live; and life is not considered now apart from ethic; it will [have] deception; it thrives (lebt) on deception ... but am I not beginning to do all over again what I have always done, I, the old immoralist, and bird snarer—talk unmorally, ultramorally, "beyond good and evil"?
2
Thus, then, have I evolved for myself the "free spirits" to whom this discouraging-encouraging work, under the general title "Human, All Too Human," is dedicated. Such "free spirits" do not really exist and never did exist. But I stood in need of them, as I have pointed out, in order that some good might be mixed with my evils (illness, loneliness, strangeness, acedia, incapacity): to serve as gay spirits and comrades, with whom one may talk and laugh when one is disposed to talk and laugh, and whom one may send to the devil when they grow wearisome. They are some compensation for the lack of friends. That such free spirits can possibly exist, that our Europe will yet number among her sons of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow, such a brilliant and enthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case, fantasms and imaginary shades, I, myself, can by no means doubt. I see them already coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I am doing a little something to expedite their coming when I describe in advance the influences under which I see them evolving and the ways along which they travel?
3
It may be conjectured that a soul in which the type of "free spirit" can attain maturity and completeness had its decisive and deciding event in the form of a great emancipation or unbinding, and that prior to that event it seemed only the more firmly and forever chained to its place and pillar. What binds strongest? What cords seem almost unbreakable? In the case of mortals of a choice and lofty nature they will be those of duty: that reverence, which in youth is most typical, that timidity and tenderness in the presence of the traditionally honored and the worthy, that gratitude to the soil from which we sprung, for the hand that guided us, for the relic before which we were taught to pray—their sublimest moments will themselves bind these souls most strongly. The great liberation comes suddenly to such prisoners, like an earthquake: the young soul is all at once shaken, torn apart, cast forth—it comprehends not itself what is taking place. An involuntary onward impulse rules them with the mastery of command; a will, a wish are developed to go forward, anywhere, at any price; a strong, dangerous curiosity regarding an undiscovered world flames and flashes in all their being. "Better to die than live here"—so sounds the tempting voice: and this "here," this "at home" constitutes all they have hitherto loved. A sudden dread and distrust of that which they loved, a flash of contempt for that which is called their "duty," a mutinous, wilful, volcanic-like longing for a far away journey, strange scenes and people, annihilation, petrifaction, a hatred surmounting love, perhaps a sacrilegious impulse and look backwards, to where they so long prayed and loved, perhaps a flush of shame for what they did and at the same time an exultation at having done it, an inner, intoxicating, delightful tremor in which is betrayed the sense of victory—a victory? over what? over whom? a riddle-like victory, fruitful in questioning and well worth questioning, but the first victory, for all—such things of pain and ill belong to the history of the great liberation. And it is at the same time a malady that can destroy a man, this first outbreak of strength and will for self-destination, self-valuation, this will for free will: and how much illness is forced to the surface in the frantic strivings and singularities with which the freedman, the liberated seeks henceforth to attest his mastery over things! He roves fiercely around, with an unsatisfied longing and whatever objects he may encounter must suffer from the perilous expectancy of his pride; he tears to pieces whatever attracts him. With a sardonic laugh he overturns whatever he finds veiled or protected by any reverential awe: he would see what these things look like when they are overturned. It is wilfulness and delight in the wilfulness of it, if he now, perhaps, gives his approval to that which has heretofore been in ill repute—if, in curiosity and experiment, he penetrates stealthily to the most forbidden things. In the background during all his plunging and roaming—for he is as restless and aimless in his course as if lost in a wilderness—is the interrogation mark of a curiosity growing ever more dangerous. "Can we not upset every standard? and is good perhaps evil? and God only an invention and a subtlety of the devil? Is everything, in the last resort, false? And if we are dupes are we not on that very account dupers also? must we not be dupers also?" Such reflections lead and mislead him, ever further on, ever further away. Solitude, that dread goddess and mater saeva cupidinum, encircles and besets him, ever more threatening, more violent, more heart breaking—but who to-day knows what solitude is?
go to 4 and 5 of preface
Thus, then, have I evolved for myself the "free spirits" to whom this discouraging-encouraging work, under the general title "Human, All Too Human," is dedicated. Such "free spirits" do not really exist and never did exist. But I stood in need of them, as I have pointed out, in order that some good might be mixed with my evils (illness, loneliness, strangeness, acedia, incapacity): to serve as gay spirits and comrades, with whom one may talk and laugh when one is disposed to talk and laugh, and whom one may send to the devil when they grow wearisome. They are some compensation for the lack of friends. That such free spirits can possibly exist, that our Europe will yet number among her sons of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow, such a brilliant and enthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case, fantasms and imaginary shades, I, myself, can by no means doubt. I see them already coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I am doing a little something to expedite their coming when I describe in advance the influences under which I see them evolving and the ways along which they travel?
go to 4 and 5 of preface
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Book-Free-Spirits-ebook/dp/B006FLJQV2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1343164879&sr=1-1&keywords=HUMAN%2CAll+too+Human#reader_B006FLJQV2
4
From this morbid solitude, from the deserts of such trial years, the way is yet far to that great, overflowing certainty and healthiness which cannot dispense even with sickness as a means and a grappling hook of knowledge; to that matured freedom of the spirit which is, in an equal degree, self mastery and discipline of the heart, and gives access to the path of much and various reflection—to that inner comprehensiveness and self satisfaction of over-richness which precludes all danger that the spirit has gone astray even in its own path and is sitting intoxicated in some corner or other; to that overplus of plastic, healing, imitative and restorative power which is the very sign of vigorous health, that overplus which confers upon the free spirit the perilous prerogative of spending a life in experiment and of running adventurous risks: the past-master-privilege of the free spirit. In the interval there may be long years of convalescence, years filled with many hued painfully-bewitching transformations, dominated and led to the goal by a tenacious will for health that is often emboldened to assume the guise and the disguise of health. There is a middle ground to this, which a man of such destiny can not subsequently recall without emotion; he basks in a special fine sun of his own, with a feeling of birdlike freedom, birdlike visual power, birdlike irrepressibleness, a something extraneous (Drittes) in which curiosity and delicate disdain have united. A "free spirit"—this refreshing term is grateful in any mood, it almost sets one aglow. One lives—no longer in the bonds of love and hate, without a yes or no, here or there indifferently, best pleased to evade, to avoid, to beat about, neither advancing nor retreating. One is habituated to the bad, like a person who all at once sees a fearful hurly-burly beneath him—and one was the counterpart of him who bothers himself with things that do not concern him. As a matter of fact the free spirit is bothered with mere things—and how many things—which no longer concern him.
5
A step further in recovery: and the free spirit draws near to life again, slowly indeed, almost refractorily, almost distrustfully. There is again warmth and mellowness: feeling and fellow feeling acquire depth, lambent airs stir all about him. He almost feels: it seems as if now for the first time his eyes are open to things near. He is in amaze and sits hushed: for where had he been? These near and immediate things: how changed they seem to him! He looks gratefully back—grateful for his wandering, his self exile and severity, his lookings afar and his bird flights in the cold heights. How fortunate that he has not, like a sensitive, dull home body, remained always "in the house" and "at home!" He had been beside himself, beyond a doubt. Now for the first time he really sees himself—and what surprises in the process. What hitherto unfelt tremors! Yet what joy in the exhaustion, the old sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How it delights him, suffering, to sit still, to exercise patience, to lie in the sun! Who so well as he appreciates the fact that there comes balmy weather even in winter, who delights more in the sunshine athwart the wall? They are the most appreciative creatures in the world, and also the most humble, these convalescents and lizards, crawling back towards life: there are some among them who can let no day slip past them without addressing some song of praise to its retreating light. And speaking seriously, it is a fundamental cure for all pessimism (the cankerous vice, as is well known, of all idealists and humbugs), to become ill in the manner of these free spirits, to remain ill quite a while and then bit by bit grow healthy—I mean healthier. It is wisdom, worldly wisdom, to administer even health to oneself for a long time in small doses.
Eugenics and
Other Evils
By
G.K. Chesterton
Cassell and Company, Limited
London, New York, Toronto & Melbourne
1922
TO THE READER
I publish these essays at the present time for a particular reason connected with the present situation; a reason which I should like briefly to emphasise and make clear.
Though most of the conclusions, especially towards the end, are conceived with reference to recent events, the actual bulk of preliminary notes about the science of Eugenics were written before the war. It was a time when this theme was the topic of the hour; when eugenic babies (not visibly very distinguishable from other babies) sprawled all over the illustrated papers; when the evolutionary fancy of Nietzsche was the new cry among the intellectuals; and when Mr. Bernard Shaw and others were considering the idea that to breed a man like a cart-horse was the true way to attain that higher civilisation, of intellectual magnanimity and sympathetic insight, which may be found in cart-horses. It may therefore appear that I took the opinion too controversially, and it seems to me that I sometimes took it too seriously. But the criticism of Eugenics soon expanded of itself into a more general criticism of a modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organisation.
And then the hour came when I felt, not without relief, that I might well fling all my notes into the fire. The fire was a very big one, and was burning up bigger things than such pedantic quackeries. And, anyhow, the issue itself was being settled in a very different style. Scientific officialism and organisation in the State which had specialised in them, had gone to war with the older culture of Christendom. Either Prussianism would win and the protest would be hopeless, or Prussianism would lose and the protest would be needless. As the war advanced from poison gas to piracy against neutrals, it grew more and more plain that the scientifically organised State was not increasing in popularity. Whatever happened, no Englishmen would ever again go nosing round the stinks of that low laboratory. So I thought all I had written irrelevant, and put it out of my mind.
I am greatly grieved to say that it is not irrelevant. It has gradually grown apparent, to my astounded gaze, that the ruling classes in England are still proceeding on the assumption that Prussia is a pattern for the whole world. If parts of my book are nearly nine years old, most of their principles and proceedings are a great deal older. They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. For that reason, three years after the war with Prussia, I collect and publish these papers.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0082XCCNK#reader_B0082XCCNK
G.K.C.
PART I
The False Theory
CHAPTER PAGE
1. What is Eugenics? 3
2. The First Obstacles 12
3. The Anarchy from Above 22
4. The Lunatic and the Law 31
5. The Flying Authority 46
6. The Unanswered Challenge 61
7. The Established Church of Doubt 73
8. A Summary of a False Theory 82
PART II
The Real Aim
1. The Impotence of Impenitence 91
2. True History of a Tramp 101
3. True History of a Eugenist 114
4. The Vengeance of the Flesh 126
5. The Meanness of the Motive 136
6. The Eclipse of Liberty 148
7. The Transformation of Socialism 159
8. The End of the Household Gods 169
9. A Short Chapter 180
Index 185
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment