Bryant takes us through the second book in Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy.

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OPENING QUOTE (P.61) - "Life," says a fine Greek adage, "is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom."

READING (P.64) - The Greek disdain of manual work kept everybody but the listless slave from direct acquaintance with the process of production, from that stimulating contact with machinery which reveals defects and prefigures possibilities; (How does this affect American society?)

READING (P.66) - Aristotle gives us science, technical, abstract, concentrated; if we go to him for entertainment we shall sue for the return of our money. READING (P.67) - The first great distinction of Aristotle is that almost without predecessors, almost entirely by his own hard thinking, he created a new science--logic. READING (P.68) - Logic means, simply, the art and method of correct thinking. it is the logy or method of every science, of every discipline and every art. "Nothing is so dull as logic, and nothing is so important" - Will Durant"If you wish to converse with me," said Voltaire, "define your terms." - Will Durant

READING (P.68,69) - How shall we proceed to define an object or a term? Aristotle answers that every good definition has two parts, stands on two solid feet: first, it assigns the object in question to a class or group whose general characteristics are also its own--so man is, first of all, an animal; and secondly, it indicates wherein the object differs from all the other members in its class--so man, in the Aristotelian system, is a rational animal, his "specific difference" is that unlike all other animals he is rational. Aristotle drops an object into the ocean of its class, then takes it out all dripping with generic meaning, with the marks of its kind and group; while its individuality and difference shine out all the more clearly for this juxtaposition with other objects that resemble it so much and are so different. 

READING (P.70) - We have always goodly stock in us of that which we condemn: as only similars can be profitably contrasted, so only similar people quarrel and the bitterest wars are over the slightest variations of purpose or belief. The knightly Crusaders found in Saladin a gentleman with whom they could quarrel amicably, but when the Christians of Europe broke into hostile camps there was no quarter for even the courtliest foe. Aristotle is so ruthless with Plato because there is so much of Plato in him;

READING (P.76) - Hence the almost "eternal recurrence," in civilization after civilization, of the same inventions and discoveries, the same "dark ages" of slow economic and cultural accumulation, the same rebirths of learning and science and art. No doubt some popular myths are vague traditions surviving from earlier cultures. So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him. 

READING (P.80) - Everything in the world is moved by an inner urge to become something greater than it is.     - Or at the very least "other" than it currently is     - This is where our drive comes from     - And if life has punched us in the mouth too many times, we retreat from this and it kills us

READING (P.80) - The mistakes and futilities of nature are due to the inertia of matter resisting the forming force of purpose--hence the abortions and monsters that mar the panorama of life.     - So as a cruel joke, God commands us to grow and be like him, and then gives us a nature that resists this very growth process. Why? All strength, power, and love come from struggle.

READING (P.83) - The soul is the entire vital principle of any organism, the sum of its powers and processes. In plants the soul is merely

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