Man's World

Front Cover
Chatto and Windus, 1926 - Science fiction, English - 299 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 125 - ... but according to its own virtues or vices. The artistic imagination is part of the highest morality, because it gets rid of the last selfishness of all — -the Stoic selfishness which is proud of its superiority to external things. The philosophy of art has no other aim than to bring together as far as possible into one view all that there is in the world's memory— to make a history in which the characters shall speak for themselves, become themselves the interpreters of the history. It will...
Page v - ... charming ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall from her sympathetic breast send forth the heaving sigh. Do thou teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, nay, even to feed on future praise. Comfort me by...
Page v - ... forth the heaving sigh. Do thou teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, nay, even to feed on future praise. Comfort me by a solemn assurance, that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
Page 279 - IN the grey beginning of years, in the twilight of things that began, The word of the earth in the ears of the world, was it God ? was it man...
Page 287 - ... knowing subject, as its idea. Yet the aim and ideal of all natural science is at bottom a consistent materialism. The recognition here of the obvious impossibility of such a system establishes another truth which will appear in the course of our exposition, the truth that all science properly so called, by which I understand systematic knowledge under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason, can never reach its final goal, nor give a complete and adequate explanation : for it is not...
Page 183 - ... to antisocial proclivities, in a word so many non-productive, food-consuming and space-occupying parasites that their support absorbs nearly all the energy of the independent members of society. This condition is, of course, responsible for the small amount of free creative activity in many nations. Biology has only one great categorical imperative to offer us and that is : Be neither a parasite nor a host, and try to dissuade others from being parasites or hosts.
Page 7 - The changes that have been brought about have been partly good, partly bad; whether, in the end, science will prove to have been a blessing or a curse to mankind, is to my mind, still a doubtful question. A science may affect human life in two different ways. On the one hand, without altering men's passions or their general outlook, it may increase their power of gratifying their desires. On the other hand, it may operate through an effect upon the imaginative conception of the world, the theology...
Page 24 - Now you're married I wish you joy, First a girl and then a boy; Seven years after, son and daughter, Pray, young couple, come kiss together.
Page 13 - I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity as I can afford.' It is amazing that there are some people in the world today who look upon a man who professes these merciful sentiments as a miscreant doomed to eternal flames because he will not profess to believe in their own particular form of religion. They think they have answered him when they proclaim that...
Page 158 - Here you live in a community of people every one of whom would have been considered a superman two hundred years ago, and a saint a little earlier than that. Superstition has been broken on the rack of sense, the family has almost disappeared in favour of the community, work and play are synonymous. Art flourishes, science rules. War and epidemics have vanished, the attitude towards sickness transforms pain into pleasure ; we can remain young as long as we like, and ageneration lives and dies together...

Bibliographic information