The great world to which I am native has long ago outgrown the myths, the toys, the bogies of your infant world. There, one lives without the fear of… - Olaf Stapledon

To speak thus of the universal spirit is almost childishly anthropomorphic. For the life of such a spirit, if it exists at all, must be utterly different from human mentality, and utterly inconceivable to man. Nevertheless, since this childish symbolism did force itself upon me, I record it. In spite of its crudity, perhaps it does contain some genuine reflection of the truth, however distorted.

It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is,the spirit that we have achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be.

If ever they are put to the test, they shy away, affirming that nationalism is 'practical', cosmopolitanism but a remote ideal. Though they see it intellectually, their hearts are not capable of responding to it. If ever the nation is in danger, their cosmopolitanism evaporates, and they stand for the nation in the good old style. Yet intellectually they know that in their modem world this way leads to disaster.