Olaf Stapledon

Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another

Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another.

...which she had achieved once, long ago, with the first species, in certain pre-historic cave-dwelling hunters and artists.

Of the second human species one might say that Nature had at last repeated and far excelled the noble but unfortunate type...

...that strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary, and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad.

But this fervour lacked as yet clear guidance, lacked even the courage of conviction.

Out of the conflict of the tribes arose, at least for a while, a spirit loftier than tribalism.

...of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable.

Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence...

Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship.

The first, and some would say the greatest, achievement of your own "Western" culture was the conceiving of two ideals of conduct...

...opened bewildered eyes, and slept again.

Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep...