Homo Sapiens, The Only Creature

The Prestige Of The Nobel Prize Is Due To Many Causes, But In Particular To Its Twofold Idealistic And International Character: Idealistic In That It Has Been Designed For Works Of Lofty Inspiration; International In That It Is Awarded After The Production Of Different Countries Has Been Minutely Studied And The Intellectual Balance Sheet Of The Whole World Has Been Drawn Up. Free From All Other Considerations And Ignoring Any But Intellectual Values, The Judges Have Deliberately Taken Their Place In What The Philosophers Have Called A Community Of The Mind.

When It Is Said That An Object Occupies A Large Space In The Soul Or Even That It Fills It Entirely, We Ought To Understand By This Simply That Its Image Has Altered The Shade Of A Thousand Perceptions Or Memories, And That In This Sense It Pervades Them, Although It Does Not Itself Come Into View.

Men Do Not Sufficiently Realize That Their Future Is In Their Own Hands. Theirs Is The Task Of Determining First Of All Whether They Want To Go On Living Or Not. Theirs Is The Responsibility, Then, For Deciding If They Want Merely To Live, Or Intend To Make Just The Extra Effort Required For Fulfilling, Even On This Refractory Planet, The Essential Function Of The Universe, Which Is A Machine For The Making Of Gods.

Knowledge, In So Far As It Is Directed To Practical Matters, Has Only To Enumerate The Principal Possible Attitudes Of The Thing Towards Us, As Well As Our Best Possible Attitude Towards It. Therein Lies The Ordinary Function Of Ready-made Concepts, Those Stations With Which We Mark Out The Path Of Becoming. But To Seek To Penetrate With Them Into The Inmost Nature Of Things, Is To Apply To The Mobility Of The Real A Method Created In Order To Give Stationary Points Of Observation On It.

There Are Manifold Tones Of Mental Life, Or, In Other Words, Our Psychic Life May Be Lived At Different Heights, Now Nearer To Action, Now Further Removed From It, According To The Degree Of Our Attention To Life.