"In short, conquest is in no sense a necessary sign of higher human development, though conquistadors have always thought otherwise. Any valid concep… - Lewis Mumford

Material artifacts may stubbornly defy time, but what they tell about man's history is a good deal less than the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If the only clue to Shakespeare's achievement as a dramatist were his cradle, an Elizabethan mug, his lower jaw, and a few rotted planks from the Globe Theatre, one could not even dimly imagine the subject matter of his plays, still less guess in one's wildest moments what a poet he was. Though we would still be far from justly appreciating Shakespeare, we should nevertheless have a better notion of his work through examining the known plays of Shaw and Yeats and reading backward.

Galileo's mechanical world was only a partial representation of a finite number of probable worlds, each peculiar to a particular living species; and all these worlds are but a portion of the infinite number of possible worlds that may have once existed or may yet exist. But anything like a single world, common to all species, at all times, under all circumstances, is a purely hypothetical construction, drawn by inference from pathetically insufficient data, prized for the assurance of stability and intelligibility it gives, even though that assurance turns out, under severe examination, to be just another illusion. A butterfly or a beetle, a fish or a fowl, a dog or a dolphin, would have a different report to give even about primary qualities, for each lives in a world conditioned by the needs and environmental opportunities open to his species. In the gray visual world of the dog, smells, near and distant, subtle or violently exciting, probably play the part that colors do in man's world-though in the primal occupation of eating, the dog's world and man's world would approach each other more closely.

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.