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Academy Resources Glossary of Philosophical Terms Timeline of Philosophy A Timeline of American Philosophy Diagram: Development of Philosophic Thought Diagram: Divisions of Philosophy The Philosophy Resource Center The Religion Resource Center Books about Philosophy in The Radical Academy Bookstore Books about Religion in The Radical Academy Bookstore Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click Here for College Education Information & Study Resources Shop Amazon Stores in the Radical Academy Bookstore Magazine Outlet Music Store Classical Music Store Video Store DVD Store Computer Store Camera & Photo Store Computer/Video Games Software Store Musical Instruments Outlet Store Cellular Phones Toys & Games Tools & Hardware Automotive Store Outdoor Living Consumer Electronics Home & Garden Kitchen & Housewares Baby Superstore Apparel & Accessories Gourmet Food Grocery Store Sporting Goods Jewelry & Watches Health & Personal Care Beauty Store		The Power of Thought by Cyril E.M. Joad   I believe in the practical efficacy of the intellect; I believe, that is to say, that what you think affects and may determine what you do. It follows that facts are not "hard," since they can be affected by thinking about them. If you change men's moral and political ideas, you can, I hold, thereby change society; if you change their ideas about what is worth while, you can change their mode of living. It seems to me to be nonsense to suggest that the ideas which lay behind the French Revolution played no part in determining its outbreak or guiding its course, or that the ideas of Christ or Mahomet about how men should live have played no part in changing their modes of living. In no sphere, perhaps, does the student find more impressive verification of the power of the idea not only to persist but in the end to prevail than in victory which the claim to think freely gained over dogmatic religion. To trace the slow history of French free thought from the new springs of Renaissance discovery through Rabelais and Montaigne, thence to the Libertins and Bayle and from them to its full flowering in Holbach and Diderot and Voltaire, is to realize the power over men's minds of ideas that are rooted in objective fact. (Yet the phrase "rooted in objective fact" is, I think, merely a periphrasis for the word "true.") On the one side was all that authority could muster to suppress and destroy with the weapons of exile, imprisonment, torture and death; on the other, there was only the power of the idea. Yet in the last resort the idea prevailed, though only for a time, for the victories of the mind and spirit have to be won afresh in every age. Nor are the changes which thought brings about negligible; on occasion they have profoundly affected man's way of living, and affected it for the better; indeed, it is the hope of bettering man's life and his societies that has inspired almost every system of philosophy, which has concerned itself with human conduct and institutions. Most of us are at some time or other impelled, even if the impulse is brief, to take a hand in solving the problems of our society, and most of us know in our hearts that it is our business to try to leave the world a little better than we found it. "There are no phenomena," says Herbert Spencer, "which a society presents but what have their origins in the phenomena of individual human life." This, I think, is true. To change men's lives is to change society, and to change their minds is to change their lives. Now, it is by ideas that men's minds are changed.   Excerpted from Decadence, by C.E.M. Joad   Guide to Philosophy, by Cyril E.M. Joad Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Book... Enrich Your Life With a Philosophy Magazine... Academy Showcase Specials   Introduction & Directory
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