human
So deep down is the gratification which results from the consciousness of efficiency, and the further consciousness of the applause which recognised efficiency brings, that it is impossible for any one to exclude it. Certainly, in my own case, the desire for such recognition has not been absent. Yet, so far as I can remember, ambition was not the primary motive of my first efforts, nor has it been the primary motive of my larger and later efforts. ...
gpt
Still, as I have said, the desire for achievement and the honour which achievement brings, have doubtless been large factors. ...
human
Though from the outset I have had in view the effects to be wrought on men's beliefs and courses of action--especially in respect of social affairs and governmental functions; yet the sentiment of ambition has all along been operative.
gpt
On the one hand,
human
It has been with me a source of continual pleasure, distinct from other pleasures, to evolve new thoughts, and to be in some sort a spectator of the way in which, under persistent contemplation, they gradually unfolded into completeness. On the other hand,
gpt
human
Once having become possessed by the conception of Evolution in its comprehensive form, the desire to elaborate and set it forth was so strong that to have passed life in doing something else would, I think, have been almost intolerable. Like an architect he was restless till his edifice was completed, and on working towards this there was æsthetic as well as intellectual gratification.
gpt
There appears to be in me a dash of the artist, which has all along made the achievement of beauty a stimulus; not, of course, beauty as commonly conceived, but such beauty as may exist in a philosophical structure.
human
Not only is it rational to infer that changes like those which have been going on during civilisation will continue to go on, but it is irrational to do otherwise. Not he who believes that adaptation will increase is absurd, but he who doubts that it will increase is absurd. Lack of faith in such further evolution of humanity as shall harmonise with its conditions adds but another to the countless illustrations of inadequate consciousness of causation. One who, leaving behind both primitive dogmas and primitive ways of looking at them, has, while accepting scientific conclusions, acquired those habits of thought which science generates, will regard the conclusion above drawn as inevitable
gpt
Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly realise the fact that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself--that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency--is a unit of forces, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes; and he will perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of his time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorised to profess and act out that belief
human
Fortnightly Review,