Ad oculos, ad perpetuam memoriam, ad meliora, ad mortem, ad lucem.
On the common etymology of library & liberty
library (n.)
place for books, late 14c., from Anglo-Frenchlibrarie, Old Frenchlibrairie, librarie “collection of books; bookseller’s shop” (14c.), from Latin librarium “book-case, chest for books,” and libraria “a bookseller’s shop,” in Medieval Latin “a library,” noun uses of the neuter and fem., respectively, of librarius “concerning books,” from Latin librarium “chest for books,” from liber (genitive libri) “book, paper, parchment.”
liberty (n.)
late 14c., “free choice, freedom to do as one chooses,” also “freedom from the bondage of sin,” from Old Frenchliberte “freedom, liberty, free will” (14c., Modern Frenchliberté), from Latin libertatem (nominative libertas) “civil or political freedom, condition of a free man; absence of restraint; permission,” from liber “free” (see liberal (adj.)). At first of persons; of communities, “state of being free from arbitrary, despotic, or autocratic rule or control” is from late 15c.
The French notion of liberty is political equality; the English notion is personal independence. [William R. Greg, “France in January 1852” in “Miscellaneous Essays”]
ExplicationIn classical Greek mythology (i.e., Homer’s Iliad) myrmidónes were commanded by Achilles during the Trojan War. According to the legend Zeus created them from a colony of ants (myrmex). Cf. Sir Francis Bacon's metaphor on ants, spiders, and bees (Novum Organum Scientiarum, 1620). Per analogiam, ants are scientists who are rule conformist followers who lack the capacity to reflect (i.e., metacognitively/epistemologically) on what they actually do. They work myopically within a given Kuhnian paradigm without asking quintessential overarching questions and, ergo, without any awareness of the bigger picture.Quotation:Even entertainment can be politically of special value, because the moment a person is conscious of propaganda, propaganda becomes ineffective. However, as soon as propaganda as a tendency, as a characteristic, as an attitude, remains in the background and becomes apparent through human beings, the propaganda becomes effective in every respect.
Joseph Goebbels, Facism and the Female Form, 1942, p.170-71