The Vital Spirit. L'élan Vital

Wherever Anything Lives, There Is, Open Somewhere, A Register In Which Time Is Being Inscribed.

The Universe... Is A Machine For The Making Of Gods.

In Short, Intelligence, Considered In What Seems To Be Its Original Feature, Is The Faculty Of Manufacturing Artificial Objects, Especially Tools To Make Tools, And Of Indefinitely Varying The Manufacture.

However Spontaneous It Seems, Laughter Always Implies A Kind Of Secret Freemasonry, Or Even Complicity, With Other Laughers, Real Or Imaginary.

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.