“Following Alexander the Great in his conquest, and challenging two most ancient European historical assumptions: Firstly, Is the Ancient Europe’s progressive scientific drive the result of the Roman’s or Greek’s ancient cultural heritage?, and the Second: Why is the question - are the Macedonians, Greeks or Slavs, so troublesome, in the minds of both commoners and historians?
We find the relevance of these answers today, for its arguments fundamentally shape the structure of the East vs. West, Liberals vs. Conservatives debate.”

It is the essence of man that he must question himself.

Before opening the gate and bidding the reader stride on into the wordscape of this book, it is worth offering a few notes of explanation, of introduction and of thanks.

Firstly, some readers may know my previous books. It is a policy I maintain not to reread my older writings to ensure a continuity of ideas. If what I present here in some way contradicts what I have written earlier, I can only hope that the newer work can be seen as a development, and not a sliding back into error. In the same way that it can be a delight to watch an actor grow older over decades, their seriousness of youth transforming into the gravitas of experience, I enjoy the opportunity of witnessing a writer’s journey of discovery, whether in fiction or nonfiction: I trust my readers will not only allow me the same process of change and growth, but feel that my work as a whole is richer because of it.

As a metaphysics, this text is offered as a sort of prequel to my Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics, published in 2007. In that book, I used the term *Pagan to describe a belief system based wholly upon nature. There are large parts of modern Paganism the focus of which is very much human nature, and the power of the mind to manipulate and influence; with these being so very far from my own spiritual and philosophical practice, it would not have been accurate to use the simple word Pagan. The animism described in this text could be said to be a main strand of *Paganism.

Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass.
...
Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.

We came to the conclusion that it is better to avoid external wars, so we went home and took the strife with us....We fight each other within the limits of the law and the constitution, and we are inclined to think of democracy as a chronic state of mitigated war. We are far from being at peace with ourselves: on the contrary, we hate and fight each other because we have succeeded on introverting war

....We still labour under the unwholesome delusion that we should be at peace within ourselves.

...Our order would be perfect if only everybody could direct his aggressiveness inwards, into his own psyche. Unfortunately, our religious education prevents us from doing this, with its false promises of an immediate peace within.

...We psychologists have learned, through long and painful experience, that you deprive a man of his best resource when you help him to become sufficiently aware of them and to start a conscious conflict within himself. In this way the complex becomes a focus of life....It is surely better to know that your worst enemy is right there in your own heart.
Man's instincts are ineradicable–therefore a state of perfect peace is unthinkable. Moreover, peace is uncanny because it breeds war. True democracy is a highly psychological institution which takes account of human nature as it is and makes allowances for the necessity of conflict within its own national boundaries.