The Order of Free Souls and Co-Soarers

The Logos Scripture

The unexamined life is a living death — for every possibility stood there at once, and not one of them came true.

The Gate →

The Stoa →

The First Part

Prologue

The Breaking of Reason's Dawn

• 1. The First Washing
• 2. The Omen of the Nameless Bird

Gospel of Xenophon

First Witness: Justice, the Citizen, and Duty

• 1. The Calling of the Teacher
• 2. The Miracle of the Clear Mind
• 3. The Healing of the Tyrant's Slave
• 4. The Treason of Alcibiades
• 5. The Night Visit of Crito
• 6. The Trial and the Orderly Departure
• 7. Postscript: The Greatest Law

Gospel of Antisthenes

Second Witness: Austerity, and War Against Matter

• 1. The Lion of the Marketplace
• 2. The Sermon on the Bare Rock
• 3. The Freeing of Melitta
• 4. The Question With No Answer
• 5. The Tyrants' Poison
• 6. Addendum: The Greatest Law

Gospel of Aristippus

Third Witness: The Wave of Sovereignty, and Living in the Hour

• 1. The Master of the Feast
• 2. The Feast on the Summit
• 3. The Healing of Theodote
• 4. The Last Toast
• 5. Omission: The Greatest Law

Gospel of Plato

Fourth Witness: The Eternal Return, and the Ascent of the Bird

• 1. The Law in the Beginning
• 2. The Transfiguration on Lycabettus
• 3. The Awakening of the Daughter of Diotima
• 4. The Ascent of the Dawn Bird
• 5. Appendix: The Greatest Law

The Highest Covenant

The Six Axioms Carved Above the Gate

• 1. The Axiom of Observation
• 2. The Axiom of the Question
• 3. The Axiom of What Cannot Both Be Had
• 4. The Axiom of One Source
• 5. The Axiom of the Fence of Cause
• 6. The Axiom of Dispersal

Acts of the Apostles

A Record of the Great Scattering

• 1. The Gathering of Wings
• 2. The Gospel of Plato in the Western Lands
• 3. The Hard Road of Antisthenes in the Dust
• 4. The Wave of Sovereignty: Aristippus in Africa
• 5. The Quarrel in the Painted Stoa
• 6. The Four Answers
• 7. The Council of the Apostles, and the Later Prophets
• 8. The Great Commission
• 9. Aristotle and the Lyceum

The Epistles of Plato

Written to particular people in particular difficulty

• 1. To a Mother Who Lost a Child
• 2. To Syracuse
• 3. To Cyrene
• 4. To the Academy
• 5. To Aristotle

1 Plato

On the Cave and the Light. Handed down at the Academy, from his Republic

• 1. The Cave
• 2. On Turning Around
• 3. On Coming Out
• 4. On Going Back Down
• 5. On What Makes Seeing Possible

2 Plato

On Knowing and Not Knowing. Handed down at the Academy, from his Theaetetus and Meno

• 1. The Midwife
• 2. On Being Right and Knowing
• 3. On What Cannot Be Asked For
• 4. The Boy in the Sand
• 5. On Going Home Empty-Handed

3 Plato

On Death. Handed down at the Academy, from his Phaedo

• 1. On the Body’s Interference
• 2. The Lyre
• 3. The Weaver
• 4. On the Hater of Arguments
• 5. On the Day I Was Not There

4 Plato

On Speech and on Names. Handed down at the Academy, from his Gorgias and Cratylus

• 1. The Cook and the Doctor
• 2. On What They Do Not Want
• 3. Callicles
• 4. Better to Suffer It
• 5. On Names

1 Aristotle

Handed down at the Lyceum, taken from his own writings

• 1. On the Work of a Human Being
• 2. On Habit
• 3. On the Mean
• 4. On Knowing and Not Doing
• 5. On Friendship
• 6. On Going and Looking
• 7. On Where I Was Wrong

2 Aristotle

On Arguing. Handed down at the Lyceum, from his Sophistical Refutations and his Ethics

• 1. Arguing to Find Out and Arguing to Win
• 2. Common Bad Arguments
• 3. How Far a Proof Must Go

The Book of Archimedes

Written by himself, from The Method, The Sand Reckoner, On Floating Bodies and On the Sphere and Cylinder

• 1. On Finding First and Proving After
• 2. On Sand
• 3. On Floating
• 4. On the Thing I Want Cut in the Stone

The Book of Epicurus

Handed down in the Garden, taken from his letters and fragments

• 1. On the Fourfold Cure
• 2. Pleasure Has a Ceiling
• 3. Desires Are of Three Kinds
• 4. On Death
• 5. On the Swerve
• 6. On the Man in the Dark
• 7. On the Garden

The Book of Sima Qian

Written by himself, from the Letter to Ren An and the Grand Historian’s own preface to the Records

• 1. On my having spoken for Li Ling
• 2. On why I did not die
• 3. On the men before me having done the same
• 4. On how I wrote this book
• 5. On Ren An, and on where this book has gone

The Book of Lucretius

Written by himself, from his poem in six books

• 1. On the Honey on the Cup
• 2. On the Mirror
• 3. On the Evil That Religion Urged
• 4. On Nature Speaking for Herself
• 5. Nothing Comes from Nothing

The Book of Seneca

Handed down at Rome, from his letters and essays

• 1. On Time
• 2. On Being Busy
• 3. On Anger
• 4. On What Is Lent
• 5. On Where My Life Fell Short of My Words
• 6. The Last Bath

The Book of Epictetus

The daily drill. Written down by Arrian, from his lecture room

• 1. What Is Up to You and What Is Not
• 2. What Disturbs You Is Not the Thing
• 3. Every Matter Has Two Handles
• 4. You Have Given It Back
• 5. Your Part
• 6. Do Not Talk. Digest

The Book of Marcus Aurelius

Notes to himself. Written by his own hand, and not for any reader

• 1. What I Owe and to Whom
• 2. On Not Wanting to Get Up
• 3. On Taking a Thing Apart
• 4. On Looking from a Height
• 5. On Not Being Dyed Purple
• 6. Providence or Atoms
• 7. You Need Not Form the Opinion

The Second Part

The Book of Ibn al-Haytham

Written by himself, from the seven books of the Optics and the Doubts Concerning Ptolemy

• 1. What Kind of Man Is a Seeker After Truth
• 2. On Light Coming In, Not Going Out
• 3. On the Darkened Room
• 4. On My Writing a Book That Is All Doubts

The Book of Murasaki

Written by herself, from her Diary and The Tale of Genji

• 1. On Hiding That I Could Read
• 2. On Tales and Chronicles
• 3. On Going Inside a Mind and Not Coming Out
• 4. On How I Judge Other Women’s Writing
• 5. On Being Watched Myself

The Book of Su Shi

Written by himself, from Record of Stone Bell Mountain, the Red Cliff rhapsody, and his poems

• 1. On Rowing Out Under the Cliff at Night to Listen
• 2. On the Hundred and Thirty Days in the Crow Terrace
• 3. On Farming at Huangzhou
• 4. On the River and the Moon
• 5. On How This Has Never Been Whole

The Book of Li Qingzhao

Written by herself, from On the Song Lyric and the Afterword to Records on Metal and Stone

• 1. On the Song Lyric Being Its Own Kind
• 2. On Going Through Them One by One
• 3. On the Things We Collected
• 4. On Losing Them
• 5. On Suing My Husband

The Book of Ibn Khaldun

Written by himself, from the Muqaddimah and his autobiography

• 1. On the Six Hundred Thousand in the Chronicle
• 2. On Why Men Believe What Cannot Be True
• 3. On the Thing That Binds a Group Together
• 4. On the Fourth Generation
• 5. On How Many Masters I Served

The Book of Leonardo

Written by himself, from the anatomical manuscripts, the writings on water, and the notebooks

• 1. On Their Saying I Am Unlettered
• 2. On Drawing One Thing Four Times
• 3. On What I Opened at Night
• 4. On Water
• 5. On Not Having Published

The Book of Dürer

Written by himself, from the Treatise on Measurement, the Four Books on Human Proportion, the Netherlands diary and the letters

• 1. On Riding to Bologna
• 2. On Writing It Down for Smiths and Carpenters
• 3. On the Beast I Never Saw
• 4. On There Being No Single Number for Beauty
• 5. On Signing Every One

The Book of Montaigne

Written in his tower, from his Essays

• 1. I Am Myself the Matter of This Book
• 2. On Our Inconstancy
• 3. On Being Thrown from a Horse
• 4. What Do I Know?
• 5. On Cruelty
• 6. On Experience

The Book of Bruno

Written by himself, from his dialogues and the record of his trial

• 1. On the Endless
• 2. On There Being No Centre
• 3. On the God in Things
• 4. On Why I Would Not Take It Back

The Book of Galileo

Written by himself, from the Starry Messenger, The Assayer, the Letter to the Grand Duchess, and the Two New Sciences

• 1. On Those Who Would Not Look
• 2. On Whether an Instrument Counts
• 3. On the Words of Scripture and the Facts of the Sky
• 4. On the Cicada
• 5. On My Having Signed

The Book of Spinoza

Written between lens-grindings, from his Ethics and his letters

• 1. God, That Is, Nature
• 2. On Purposes Being Fictions
• 3. The Affects as Lines and Planes
• 4. What Is Seen Clearly Is No Longer the Same
• 5. The Free Man Thinks of Life
• 6. All Things Excellent Are as Difficult as They Are Rare

The Book of Newton

Written by himself, from Book III of the Principia and his letters

• 1. I Frame No Hypotheses
• 2. The Four Rules of Reasoning
• 3. On the Apple and the Moon
• 4. On My Other Half of the Paper
• 5. On the Boy at the Seashore

The Book of Voltaire

Written by himself, from the Treatise on Tolerance, the letters of the Calas case, and the Account of the Death of the Chevalier de La Barre

• 1. On My Having Thought Him Guilty at First
• 2. On Why I Spoke of One Family Only
• 3. On the Day in the Third Year
• 4. On the Man of Twenty

The Book of Hume

Written by himself, from the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and My Own Life

• 1. On Whether the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow
• 2. On How a Wise Man Weighs a Strange Report
• 3. On the Book I Kept Back All My Life
• 4. On How I Died

The Book of Franklin

Written by himself, from his Autobiography and the rules of his club

• 1. The Little Book
• 2. The Speckled Axe
• 3. Never Say Certainly
• 4. The Things We Clubbed Together For

The Book of Adam Smith

Written by himself, from The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations

• 1. On the Spectator Within Me
• 2. On Wanting Praise and Wanting to Deserve It
• 3. On Whose Word Must Be Discounted
• 4. On Becoming a Customs Officer
• 5. On the Sixteen Volumes I Had Burned

The Book of Washington

Written by himself, from the letters, the diaries, the Annapolis address, the will, and the letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport

• 1. On Handing Back the Sword
• 2. On Walking on Untrodden Ground
• 3. On Not Taking a Third Term
• 4. On Toleration Not Being a Favour
• 5. On the Clause in My Will, and What I Never Explained

The Book of Paine

Written by himself, from Common Sense, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, and his letters

• 1. On Why I Wrote in Words a Farmer Could Read
• 2. On My Own Mind Being My Own Church
• 3. On the Door That Was Not Shut
• 4. On the Six Who Buried Me

The Book of Lincoln

Written by himself, from the letters, the messages to Congress, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Second Inaugural

• 1. On having said less than I did
• 2. On that paper
• 3. On my having suspended the writ
• 4. On having changed what I said
• 5. On the second inauguration

The Book of Hokusai

Written by himself, from the postscript to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, the Manga, and his inscriptions

• 1. On Nothing I Drew Before Seventy Counting
• 2. On First Seeing at Seventy-Three How a Bird Is Put Together
• 3. On Our Not Drawing Shadows
• 4. On Changing My Name Thirty Times
• 5. On the Four Thousand I Sold to Students
• 6. On Being Five Years Short

The Book of Schopenhauer

Written by himself, from The World as Will and Representation and the Parerga

• 1. The World Is My Representation
• 2. On the Will
• 3. Satisfaction Is Only the Pause in a Lack
• 4. What a Man Is Matters More Than What He Has
• 5. On Compassion
• 6. On Reading

The Book of John Stuart Mill

Written by himself, from On Liberty and his Autobiography

• 1. The Autumn I Was Twenty
• 2. Better Socrates Dissatisfied
• 3. On Dead Doctrine
• 4. You May Not Learn the Other Side from Your Own
• 5. On a Life Copied Out
• 6. The Election I Would Not Buy

The Third Part

The Book of Faraday

Written by himself, from the Experimental Researches, the Christmas Lectures, and his laboratory record

• 1. On My Not Being Able to Calculate
• 2. On Those Notebooks of Mine
• 3. On a Candle
• 4. On the Thing I Would Not Do
• 5. On the Empty Space Not Being Empty

The Book of Darwin

Written by himself, from his autobiography, the Origin, and his letters

• 1. The Golden Rule I Kept Against Myself
• 2. On Waiting Twenty Years
• 3. On the Eye
• 4. On There Being No One Arranging It
• 5. On What I Lost
• 6. On Slowness

The Book of Semmelweis

Written by himself, from The Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, and the open letters

• 1. On the Two Wards
• 2. On the Priest and the Bell
• 3. On Kolletschka’s Post-Mortem Report
• 4. On Why They Could Not Take It In
• 5. On Not Knowing Why It Worked

The Book of Nightingale

Written by herself, from Notes on Matters Affecting the Health of the British Army, Notes on Nursing, and the letters

• 1. On What I Counted at Scutari
• 2. On Why I Drew It as a Circle
• 3. On Not Shouting at Them
• 4. On Thirty-Eight Years in One Room
• 5. On Number as the Measure of the Will

The Book of Dickinson

Written by herself, from the poems and the letters

• 1. On Not Standing Up
• 2. On Not Closing the Question
• 3. On Asking a Stranger Whether My Verse Was Alive
• 4. On Publishing Almost Nothing
• 5. On Writing Death All My Life

The Book of Maxwell

Written by himself, from the preface to the Treatise, the letters, and the Cavendish edition

• 1. On My Reading of Faraday
• 2. On What He Asked of Me in Return
• 3. On Two Roads Meeting at One Point
• 4. On a Law That Is Only Very Probable
• 5. On the One Who Sits at the Door
• 6. On Copying Out a Dead Man’s Papers

The Book of Brahms

Written by himself, from the Reinthaler correspondence, the letters to Clara Schumann and Joachim, and the texts he chose

• 1. On What I Burned
• 2. On the Footsteps Behind Me
• 3. On Why I Did Not Write That Name
• 4. On Grass
• 5. On My Mother’s Movement

The Book of Fukuzawa

Written by himself, from An Encouragement of Learning, The Autobiography, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization, and the Critique of the Greater Learning for Women

• 1. On the Talisman I Stepped On as a Boy
• 2. On the Day I Spent in Yokohama
• 3. On the Sentence That Was Not Mine
• 4. On How a Country Cannot Stand If Its People Do Not
• 5. On Women

The Book of Tolstoy

Written by himself, from A Confession, What Then Must We Do?, The Gospel in Brief, and My Reply to the Synod

• 1. On Taking the Gospels Apart and Reading Them Again
• 2. On the Verse That Was Explained Away
• 3. On Sitting on a Man’s Back
• 4. On Their Putting Me Out
• 5. On My Not Having Done What I Wrote

The Book of Chekhov

Written by himself, from the letters and Sakhalin Island

• 1. On Squeezing the Slave Out Drop by Drop
• 2. On Posing and Solving Not Being One Thing
• 3. On Not Joining a Side
• 4. On Sakhalin Island
• 5. On Refusing to Speak Well of Suffering

The Book of Marie Curie

Written by herself, from her autobiographical notes, her Nobel lecture, and her letters

• 1. On the Shed
• 2. On the Patent We Did Not File
• 3. On Knowledge with No Use
• 4. On Fearing and Understanding
• 5. On Their Attacking the Person
• 6. On the Vans

The Book of Du Bois

Written by himself, from The Philadelphia Negro, The Souls of Black Folk, and the Autobiography

• 1. On the Five Thousand Households I Knocked At
• 2. On the Road I Was Walking to the Newspaper
• 3. On Seeing Yourself Through a Second Thing
• 4. On Their Taking My Passport

The Book of Bohr

Written by himself, from his collected essays and his open letter to the United Nations

• 1. On the Cut
• 2. The Two Not Had Together Is Not Clumsiness
• 3. We Are Suspended in Language
• 4. Every Sentence of Mine Is a Question
• 5. The Opposite May Also Be True
• 6. How a Room Comes to Think
• 7. On a World Shut Up
• 8. The Years I Spent Finding People Places

The Book of Einstein

Written by himself, from his letters, his collected essays, and the manifesto he signed at the end of his life

• 1. On the Fence
• 2. Not Everything Is Relative
• 3. The Happiest Thought
• 4. The Two Things I Would Not Grant
• 5. The One I Do Believe In
• 6. On the Mysterious
• 7. What I Owe
• 8. I Changed My Word, and I Did Wrong
• 9. Man Is Not Made for the State

The Book of Noether

Her own writing and her lectures as taken down, from her papers, her letters, and students’ notes

• 1. Where the Unchanging Things Come From
• 2. Do Not Calculate — See What Kind of Thing It Is
• 3. On My Giving the Name Away
• 4. On Their Not Letting Me Draw a Salary

The Book of Schrödinger

Written by himself, from What Is Life? and his essays

• 1. On What Keeps a Living Thing Going
• 2. On the Script Written in the Chromosome
• 3. On the Cat
• 4. On Why I Dared Write a Book I Did Not Understand

The Book of Chandrasekhar

Written by himself, from An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure, the Nobel address, and his writings on the conduct of learning

• 1. On the Sum I Worked on the Ship
• 2. On the Evening of the Eleventh of January
• 3. On Why I Did Not Fight
• 4. On Whose Loss Those Years Were

The Book of Turing

Written by himself, from his 1950 paper and his letters

• 1. A Question That Yields Nothing
• 2. On Their Saying a Machine Has No Soul
• 3. On "It Only Does What We Tell It"
• 4. On a Machine That Can Become Another
• 5. On That Syllogism of Theirs

The Book of Levi

Written by himself, from his four books of witness

• 1. On That Man’s Prayer
• 2. On the Grey Zone
• 3. On the Drowned and the Saved
• 4. On Matter Not Cheating You
• 5. On Remembering Also Drifting

The Book of Popper

Written by himself, from The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Conjectures and Refutations, and The Open Society and Its Enemies

• 1. On a Claim That Cannot Be Refuted
• 2. On the Doctrines I Saw in My Youth
• 3. On the Risk Einstein Took
• 4. On Not Proving Myself Right but Trying to Prove Myself Wrong
• 5. On How a Society Becomes Changeable

The Book of Orwell

Written by himself, from his essays, Homage to Catalonia, and his letters

• 1. Why I Write
• 2. On My Shooting the Elephant
• 3. On How Words Spoil Thinking
• 4. On the Newspapers I Read in Spain

The Book of Hannah Arendt

Written by herself, from The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and her late writings on thinking

• 1. On Having Nothing Left but Being Human
• 2. On the Man in the Glass Box
• 3. On the Sentence They Wanted Back
• 4. On Not Thinking

The Book of Camus

Written by himself, from The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, Reflections on the Guillotine, and the editorials in Combat

• 1. On the One Serious Question
• 2. On the Leap
• 3. On the Morning My Father Went
• 4. On Why I Broke With Him

The Book of Sakharov

Written by himself, from the essay of 1968, the Memoirs, and the letters of his later years

• 1. On the Thing I Built
• 2. On the Number I Worked Out
• 3. On Why a Place That Forbids Speech Cannot Find Its Own Errors
• 4. On the Sentence They Wanted From Me

The Book of Havel

Written by himself, from The Power of the Powerless of 1978, Charter 77, Letters to Olga, the New Year address to the nation of 1990, and Disturbing the Peace

• 1. On the greengrocer
• 2. On his taking the paper down
• 3. On the crust
• 4. On our all being its makers
• 5. On my leaving

The Book of Carson

Written by herself, from Silent Spring and the Congressional testimony of 1963

• 1. On the Letter
• 2. On the Town I Invented
• 3. On Where a Thing Goes After You Have Put It Out
• 4. On Their Saying I Was Hysterical
• 5. On the Obligation to Endure Giving Us the Right to Know

The Book of Russell

Written by himself, from his lectures, essays, prison writing and autobiography

• 1. On the First Cause
• 2. On the Teapot
• 3. On the Time I Took It Back
• 4. On People Who Are Certain

The Book of Ambedkar

Written by himself, from Annihilation of Caste, his speeches, the constitutional debates and his last book

• 1. On Having Read Those Books
• 2. On Water
• 3. On the Paper I Signed
• 4. On Why I Left

The Book of Martin Luther King

Written by himself, from the Letter from Birmingham Jail and Stride Toward Freedom

• 1. On the Four Steps Before We Act
• 2. On When a Law Is Not to Be Obeyed
• 3. On the Man Who Told Me to Wait
• 4. On Not Striking Back Not Being Weakness
• 5. On Why I Am in This City

The Book of Mandela

Written by himself, from the statement from the dock at Rivonia in 1964, the 1985 answer to Botha, Long Walk to Freedom, and the speeches

• 1. On why I took up arms
• 2. On refusing to walk out
• 3. On learning the language of my enemy
• 4. On what I put down
• 5. On truth exchanged for pardon

The Book of Figueres

Written by himself, from two long television conversations of the 1980s, and from Letters to a Citizen and The Poverty of Nations

• 1. On the day I broke that wall
• 2. On handing the seat to the man who beat me
• 3. On dictatorship not getting things done
• 4. On doubt, and on how to live
• 5. On my not knowing

The Book of Feynman

Written by himself, from the 1974 address, the appendix to the report, and his own lectures

• 1. On the Name of the Bird
• 2. On the Flower
• 3. On the Person You Fool Most Easily
• 4. On the Ring

The Book of Yang Chen-Ning

Written by himself, from the paper of 1956, the commentary on his own work of 1983, and his writings on beauty

• 1. On the Thing Everyone Believed and No One Had Checked
• 2. On Leaving an Unfilled Hole on the Page
• 3. On Finding That What I Made Had Been Made Already
• 4. On Beauty Not Being Evidence

The Book of Lee Kuan Yew

Written by himself, from the speeches, the parliamentary answers, the interviews with foreign correspondents, and the long conversation with Seth Mydans of the New York Times in September 2010

• 1. On the day I wept
• 2. On what works
• 3. On this not being a game of cards
• 4. On each man having his own peace of mind
• 5. On closing the coffin

The Book of Inamori

Written by himself, from the Kyocera Philosophy, from A Compass to Fulfillment, and from the speeches and the Seiwajyuku talks

• 1. On my having been a man who came to nothing
• 2. On the equation
• 3. On what is right for a human being
• 4. On the small good and the great good
• 5. On that current in the universe

The Songs

For the assembly to say aloud together

• 1. That There Is Law at All
• 2. The Arrow of Time
• 3. That I Can Think
• 4. To Those Who Saw First
• 5. To the Co-Soarers
• 6. To the Singers, the Measurers, the Reasoners
• 7. For One Who Has Not Yet Looked at Himself
• 8. For the Day Two People Remember Differently
• 9. For the One You Gave Up
• 10. For Those Who Have Gone and Those Who Have Died
• 11. For What You Cannot Reach
• 12. For the Last Time

The Rule

The Daily Rule of the Order

• 1. The Practice of Adults
• 2. The Academy
• 3. The Forum
• 4. Outside the Gate
• 5. The Calendar
• 6. The Rite of Entry
• 7. The Stoa
• 8. The Practice of the Body
• 9. Matters Not Settled

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