The Vital Spirit. L'élan Vital

I Believe That The Time Given To Refutation In Philosophy Is Usually Time Lost. Of The Many Attacks Directed By Many Thinkers Against Each Other, What Now Remains? Nothing, Or Assuredly Very Little. That Which Counts And Endures Is The Modicum Of Positive Truth Which Each Contributes. The True Statement Is, Of Itself, Able To Displace The Erroneous Idea, And Becomes, Without Our Having Taken The Trouble Of Refuting Anyone, The Best Of Refutations.

On The Other Hand, The Pleasure Caused By Laughter, Even On The Stage, Is Not An Unadulterated Enjoyment; It Is Not A Pleasure That Is Exclusively Esthetic Or Altogether Disinterested. It Always Implies A Secret Or Unconscious Intent, If Not Of Each One Of Us, At All Events Of Society As A Whole. In Laughter We Always Find An Unavowed Intention To Humiliate, And Consequently To Correct Our Neighbour, If Not In His Will, At Least In His Deed.

In Laughter We Always Find An Unavowed Intention To Humiliate And Consequently To Correct Our Neighbour.

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.

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.