Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.

We are living in a demented world. And we know it. It would not come as a surprise to anyone if tomorrow the madness gave way to afrenzy which would leave our poor Europe in a state of distracted stupor, with engines still turning and flags streaming in the breeze, but with the spirit gone.

Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical or it will cease to be culture.

A new culture can only grow up in the soil of a purged humanity.

Most thoughtful Americans of today seem to have forgotten how strongly their own and immediate predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whitman, were still preoccupied with the essence behind things.

Life is made too easy. Mankind's moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.

Today the average inhabitant of the western hemisphere knows a little of everything. He has the newspaper on his breakfast table and wireless within reach. For the evening there is the film, cards, or a meeting to complete a day spent in the office or factory where nothing that is essential has been learnt. With slight variation this picture of a low cultural average holds good over the entire range from factory-hand of clerk to manager or director. Only the personal will to culture, in whatever field and however pursued raises modern man above this level.