It is as well that the world knows only a fine piece of work and not also its origins, the conditions under which it came into being; for knowledge o… - Thomas Mann

What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature!

His yearning for new and faraway places, his desire for freedom, relief and oblivion was as he admitted to himself, an urge to flee-an urge to get away from his work, from the everyday site of a cold, rigid, and passionate servitude.

To become conscious means to acquire conscience, means the knowledge of what is good and what is evil. Nature that is infra-human does not know this difference. It is without guilt. In humanity nature becomes responsible. Man is nature’s fall from grace, only it is not a fall, but just as positively an elevation as conscience is higher than innocence. What Christianity calls “ original sin ” is more than priestly trickery designed to suppress and control humanity — it is the deep feeling of man as a spiritual being for his natural infirmities and limitations, above which he raises himself through spirit. Is that infidelity to nature? By no means. It is according to nature’s deepest intent. Because it is for its own spiritualization that nature produced mankind.