THE best preface to this journal written by a young girl belonging to the upper middle class is a letter by Sigmund Freud dated April 27, 1915,

 a letter wherein the distinguished Viennese psychologist testifies to the permanent value of the document:

"This diary is a gem. Never before, I believe, has anything been written enabling us to see so clearly into the soul of a young girl, belonging to our social and cultural stratum, during the years of puberal development. We are shown how the sentiments pass from the simple egoism of childhood to attain maturity; how the relationships to parents and other members of the family first shape themselves, and how they gradually become more serious and more intimate; how friendships are formed and broken. We are shown the dawn of love, feeling out towards its first objects. Above all, we are shown how the mystery of the sexual life first presses itself vaguely on the attention, and then takes entire possession of the growing intelligence, so that the child suffers under the load of secret knowledge but gradually becomes enabled to shoulder the burden. Of all these things we have a description at once so charming, so serious, and so artless, that it cannot fail to be of supreme interest to educationists and psychologists.

The members of the Center's staff were at all times knowledgeable and helpful; I needed and appreciated both. In particular, Avery Gardiner and Yuki Noguchi, interns at the Center, conducted the essential research into the careers and campaign contribution histories of the former members of Congress who were interviewed for this project. My thanks to them for the thorough and cheerful way they performed a task that is often described as thankless. This manuscript benefited from the tight editing and good judgment of copy editor Bill Hogan, designer Kathy Cashel, and the guidance and perseverance of the Center's publications coordinator, Margaret Engle.

 

Little Blue Book No. 1597
Haldeman-Julius Company

Atheism is accurately defined as the denial of the assumptions of theism. The theist affirms that there is a God running the universe; he declares that the idea of such a God is necessary to an understanding of life; he offers various arguments or, as he rather presumptuously calls them, evidences for his God Idea.

translated by Benjamin Jowett

THE INTRODUCTION

THE Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception
of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them.  There are nearer
approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in the Sophist;
the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form and institutions
of the State are more clearly drawn out in the Laws; as works of art,
the Symposium and the Protagoras are of higher excellence.  But no
other Dialogue of Plato has the same largeness of view and the same
perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world,
or contains more of those thoughts which are new as well as old,
and not of one age only but of all.

 INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The dramatic power of the dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as the
metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the Philebus).
There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the Sophist and
Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical discussions; the
poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no taste for abstruse
metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues to the later ones.
Plato is conscious of the change, and in the Statesman expressly accuses
himself of a tediousness in the two dialogues, which he ascribes to his
desire of developing the dialectical method.