CONTENTS PART 1 ARGUMENT 1. In Which the Narrator Positions Himself 5 2. The Theology of Power 10 3. The Rise of Reason 38 4. The Rational Courtesan 77 5. Voltaire's Children 108 6. The Flowering of Armaments 141 PART II SCENES FROM A SYSTEM THAT DOESN'T WORK 7. The Question of Killing 177 8. Learning How to Organize Death 188 9. Persistent Continuity at the Heart of Power 205 10. In the Service of the Greater Self 234 11. Three Short Excursions into the Unreasonable 266 12. The Art of the Secret 280 13. The Secretive Knight 300 14. Of Princes and Heroes 318 15. The Hero and the Politics of Immortality 347 16. The Hijacking of Capitalism 358 17. The Miracle of the Loaves 394 PART III SURVIVING IN FANTASY LAND The Individual in the World of Reason 18. Images of Immortality or The Victory of Idolatry 425 19. Life in a Box - Specialization and the Individual 466 20. The Stars 499 21. The Faithful Witness 536 22. The Virtue of Doubt 577 Notes 587 Acknowledgments 619 Index 621