Mortimer J. Adler, editor in chief, Great Books of the Western World, 1: The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Volume I (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990) (From Chapter 16, "Democracy": "The incompatibility of empire with democracy is on one side of the picture of the democratic state in external affairs. The other side is the tension between democratic institutions and military power or policy--in the form of standing armies and warlike maneuvers. The inefficacy traditionally attributed to democracy under peaceful conditions does not, from all evidences of history, seem to render democracy weak or pusillanimous in the face of aggression." "The deeper peril for democracy seems to lie in the effect of war upon its institutions and on the morality of its people. As Hamilton write in The Federalist: 'The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free." Id. at 238, 246. From Chapter 20, "Education": "Whether these skills as well as other useful arts are part of liberal education in the broader sense depends [] on the end for which they are taught or learned. Even the arts which are traditionally called liberal, such as rhetoric or logic, can be degraded to servility if the sole motive for becoming skilled in them is wealth won by success in the law courts." Id. at 296, 300. From Chapter 34, "History": "[T]he great books of history belong with treatises on morals and politics and in the company of philosophical and theological speculations concerning the nature and destiny of man. Liberal education needs the particular as well as the universal narratives. Apart from their utility, they have the originality of conception, the poetic quality, the imaginative scope which rank them with the great creations of the human mind." Id. at 546, 554.).
Mortimer J. Adler, editor in chief, Great Books of the Western World, 2: The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas, Volume II (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990) (From Chapter 73, "Prudence": "Of the qualities or virtues attributed to the intellect, prudence seems to be least concerned with knowledge and most concerned with action. When we call a man a scientist or an artist, or praise the clarity of his understanding, we imply only that he has a certain kind of knowledge. We admire his mind, but we do not necessarily admire him as a man. We may not even know what kind of man he is or what kind of life he leads. It is significant that our language does not contain a noun like 'sceintit' or 'artist' to describe the man who possesses prudence. We must use the adjective and speak of a prudent man, which seems to suggest that prudence belongs to the whole man, rather than just to his mind." "Prudence seems to be almost as much a moral as an intellectual quality. We would hardly call a man prudent without knowing his manner of life. Whether he behaved temperately would probably be more relevant to our judgment of his prudence than whether he had a cultivated mind. The extent of his education or the depth of his learning might not affect our judgment at all, but we probably would consider whether he was old enough to have learned anything from experience and whether he had actually profited from experience to become wise." Id. at 377, 377.).
