William Winwood Reade
William Winwood Reade
William Winwood Reade was a British historian, explorer, and philosopher. His two best-known books, The Martyrdom of Manand The Outcast, were included in the Thinker's Library...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionHistorian
christian dream spiritual
Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees and say they are 'miserable sinners,' and their hearts rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their servility is real and their insolence is real but their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream.
beautiful philosophy buddhism
A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
egypt essence together
The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.
compassion oxen sheep
Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.
mind looks made
If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.
curiosity expansion inquiry
The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
abuse doubt society
What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin?
egypt soldier citizens
It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.
genius monkeys expansion
Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
drama animal two
We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.