# Quote — Olaf Stapledon, Last And First Men

> In their brief primitive phase, the Fifth Men, like so many other races, sought to console themselves by unreasoning faith in a life after death, They conceived, for instance, that at death terrestrial beings embarked upon a career continuous with earthly life, but far more ample, either in some remote planetary system, or in some wholly distinct orb of space-time. But though such theories were never disproved in the primitive era, they gradually began to seem not merely improbable but ignoble.

- Author: [Olaf Stapledon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon.md)
- Book: [Last And First Men](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men.md)
- Page: 176
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon#Last_and_First_Men_(1930)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/in-their-brief

## More from this book

> Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other time within which it can repeat itself.

p. 229 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/yet-though-time.md)

> [T]his is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning.

p. 231 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/t-his-is-the.md)

> Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved the other.
>
> Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable.

p. 17 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/last-and-first-men/socrates-woke-to-the.md)