Books published by Indoeuropeanpublishing.com

Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) is a later work by Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana. He intended it to be "merely the introduction to a new system of philosophy," a work that would later be called The Realms of Being, which constitutes the bulk of his philosophy, along with The Life of Reason.Scepticism is Santayana's major treatise on epistemology; after its publication, he wrote no more on the topic. His preface begins humbly, with Santayana saying:" Here is one more system of philosophy. If the reader is tempted to smile, I can assure him that I smile with him...I am merely trying to express for the reader the principles to which he appeals when he smiles. "Moreover, he does not claim philosophical supremacy:" I do not ask anyone to think in my terms if he prefers others. Let him clean better, if he can, the windows of his soul, that the variety and beauty of the prospect may spread more brightly before him. "While Santayana acknowledges the importance of skepticism to philosophy, and begins by doubting almost everything; from here, he seeks to find some kind of epistemological truths. Idealism is correct, claims Santayana, but is of no consequence. He makes this pragmatic claim by asserting that men do not live by the principles of idealism, even if it is true. We have functioned for eons without adhering to such principles, and may continue, pragmatically, as such. He posits the necessity of the eponymous "Animal Faith", which is belief in that which our senses tell us; "Philosophy begins in medias res", he assures us at the beginning of his treatise. (wikipedia.org)

The experience of a little girl, during three days of a hard fought battle, as portrayed in this volume is certainly of rare occurrence, and very likely has never been realized before. ...

Agnes Grey is the debut novel of English author Anne Brontë (writing under the pen name of Acton Bell), first published in December 1847, and republished in a second edition in 1850. The novel follows Agnes Grey, a governess, as she works within families of the English gentry. Scholarship and comments by Anne's sister Charlotte Brontë suggest the novel is largely based on Anne Brontë's own experiences as a governess for five years. Like her sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre, it addresses what the precarious position of governess entailed and how it affected a young woman.The choice of central character allows Anne to deal with issues of oppression and abuse of women and governesses, isolation and ideas of empathy. An additional theme is the fair treatment of animals. Agnes Grey also mimics some of the stylistic approaches of bildungsromans, employing ideas of personal growth and coming to age, but representing a character who in fact does not gain in virtue.The Irish novelist George Moore praised Agnes Grey as "the most perfect prose narrative in English letters," and went so far as to compare Anne's prose to that of Jane Austen. Modern critics have made more subdued claims admiring Agnes Grey with a less overt praise of Brontë's work than Moore. (wikipedia.org)

Rosalind Goforth (6 May 1864 - 31 May 1942) was a Presbyterian missionary, and author.Born Florence Rosalind Bell-Smith near Kensington Gardens, London, England, she moved at three with her parents to Montreal, Canada.Her father, John Bell-Smith, was an artist, and she also intended to go into art. She graduated from the Toronto School of Art in May 1885, and she began preparing to return to London that autumn with the intention of completing her art studies.Instead, however, she married Jonathan Goforth on 25 October 1887 at Knox Presbyterian Church, Toronto, Canada, and they both served God in Manchuria and China.They had eleven children, five of which died as babies or very young children. Rosalind died in Toronto, Canada, and is buried alongside her husband at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto.

Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (29 June 1801 - 24 December 1850) was a French economist and writer who was a prominent member of the French Liberal School.Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportunity cost and introduced the parable of the broken window. He was also a Freemason and member of the French National Assembly.As an advocate of classical economics and the economics of Adam Smith, his views favored a free market and influenced the Austrian School.Bastiat's most famous work is The Law, originally published as a pamphlet in 1850. It defines a just system of laws and then demonstrates how such law facilitates a free society.In The Law, he wrote that everyone has a right to protect "his person, his liberty, and his property". The state should be only a "substitution of a common force for individual forces" to defend this right. "Justice" (defense of one's life, liberty and property) has precise limits, but if government power extends further into philanthropic endeavors, then government becomes so limitless that it can grow endlessly. The resulting statism is "based on this triple hypothesis: the total inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator". The public then becomes socially engineered by the legislator and must bend to the legislators' will "like the clay to the potter":Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain. I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk. But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law - by force - and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.Bastiat posits that the law becomes perverted when it punishes one's right to self-defense (of his life, liberty and property) in favor of another's right to "legalized plunder", which he defines as "if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime," in which he includes the tax support of "protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works." Bastiat was thus against redistribution. (wikipedia.org)