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TWENTY MISTAKEN IDEAS: As some modern philosophers have informed us, there are always a large number of universally mistaken ideas to which many people are grudgingly apt to cling, despite their proven fallibility. Here, for the sake of exposing some of them, as well as perhaps following in the hallowed footsteps of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell, I list twenty ideas which strike me as being in this category:-

1. The Universe consists of the solar system and the stars.

2. Space is finite.

3. Man is by nature purely rational.

4. Goodness can exist independently of evil.

5. Man is imperfect because he makes mistakes.

6. Man can live without illusions.

7. The proper sphere of art is truth.

8. The sun revolves around the earth.

9. Population in no way conditions human behaviour.

10. The most spiritual people are of necessity the least sensuous.

11. Violence is unnecessary.

12. Religion is unnecessary.

13. Happiness is the absence of pain.

14. The survival of death is no mere hypothesis.

15. Life is enriched by suffering.

16. There is no moral-world-order.

17. God is nature.

18. The object of progress is to minimize pain.

19. Man is immune to the influence of his external environment.

20. Solitary people are invariably lonely.