The Solution To This Problem Lies In

One Should Not Pursue Goals That Are Easily Achieved. One Must Develop An Instinct For What One Can Just Barely Achieve Through One’s Greatest Efforts.

Intelligence Makes Clear To Us The Interrelationship Of Means And Ends. But Mere Thinking Cannot Give Us A Sense Of The Ultimate And Fundamental Ends. To Make Clear These Fundamental Ends And Valuations And To Set Them Fast In The Emotional Life Of The Individual, Seems To Me Precisely The Most Important Function Which Religion Has To Form In The Social Life Of Man.

Desire For Approval And Recognition Is A Healthy Motive, But The Desire To Be Acknowledged As Better, Stronger, Or More Intelligent Than A Fellow Being Or Fellow Scholar Easily Leads To An Excessively Egoistic Psychological Adjustment, Which May Become Injurious For The Individual And For The Community.

The Finest Emotion Of Which We Are Capable Is The Mystic Emotion.

The Religious Geniuses Of All Ages Have Been Distinguished By This Kind Of Religious Feeling, Which Knows No Dogma And No God Conceived In Man's Image; So That There Can Be No Church Whose Central Teachings Are Based On It. Hence It Is Precisely Among The Heretics Of Every Age That We Find Men Who Were Filled With This Highest Kind Of Religious Feeling And Were In Many Cases Regarded By Their Contemporaries As Atheists, Sometimes Also As Saints. Looked At In This Light, Men Like Democritus, Francis Of Assisi, And Spinoza Are Closely Akin To One Another.