The world as I see it - Albert Einstein (easy books to read .txt) 📗

spirit of
thankfulness to the fact that American patronage of science is not limited
by national frontiers. Scientific enterprises all over the civilized world
rejoice in the liberal support of American institutions and individuals--a
fact which is, I am sure, a source of pride and gratification to all of you.

These tokens of an international way of thinking and feeling are
particularly welcome; for the world is to-day more than ever in need of
international thinking and feeling by its leading nations and personalities,
if it is to progress towards a better and more worthy future. I may be
permitted to express the hope that this internationalism of the American
nation, which proceeds from a high sense of responsibility, will very soon
extend itself to the sphere of politics. For without the active co-operation
of the great country of the United States in the business of regulating
international relations, all efforts directed towards this important end are
bound to remain more or less ineffectual.

I thank you most heartily for this magnificent reception and, in
particular, the men of learning in this country for the cordial and friendly
welcome I have received from them. I shall always look back on these two
months with pleasure and gratitude.

The University Course at Davos

Senalores boni viri, senatus autem bestia. So a friend of mine, a Swiss
professor, once wrote in his irritable way to a university faculty which had
annoyed him. Communities tend to be less guided than individuals by
conscience and a sense of responsibility. What a fruitful source of
suffering to mankind this fact is! It is the cause of wars and every kind of
oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs, and bitterness.

And yet nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish
co-operation of many individuals. Hence the man of good will is never
happier than when some communal enterprise is afoot and is launched at the
cost of heavy sacrifices, with the single object of promoting life and
culture.

Such pure joy was mine when I heard about the university courses at
Davos. A work of rescue is being carried out there, with intelligence and a
wise moderation, which is based on a grave need, though it may not be a need
that is immediately obvious to everyone. Many a young man goes to this
valley with his hopes fixed on the healing power of its sunny mountains and
regains his bodily health. But thus withdrawn for long periods from the
will-hardening discipline of normal work and a prey to morbid reflection on
his physical condition, he easily loses the power of mental effort and the
sense of being able to hold his own in the struggle for existence. He
becomes a sort of hot-house plant and, when his body is cured, often finds
it difficult to get back to normal life. Interruption of intellectual
training in the formative period of youth is very apt to leave a gap which
can hardly be filled later.

Yet, as a general rule, intellectual work in moderation, so far from
retarding cure, indirectly helps it forward, just as moderate physical work
does. It is in this knowledge that the university courses are being
instituted, with the object not merely of preparing these young people for a
profession but of stimulating them to intellectual activity as such. They
are to provide work, training, and hygiene in the sphere of the mind.

Let us not forget that this enterprise is admirably calculated to
establish such relations between members of different nations as are
favourable to the growth of a common European feeling. The effects of the
new institution in this direction are likely to be all the more advantageous
from the fact that the circumstances of its birth rule out every sort of
political purpose. The best way to serve the cause of internationalism is by
co-operating in some life-giving work.

>From all these points of view I rejoice that the energy and
intelligence of the founders of the university courses at Davos have already
attained such a measure of success that the enterprise has outgrown the
troubles of infancy. May it prosper, enriching the inner lives of numbers of
admirable human beings and rescuing many from the poverty of sanatorium
life!

Congratulations to a Critic

To see with one's own eyes, to feel and judge without succumbing to the
suggestive power of the fashion of the day, to be able to express what one
has seen and felt in a snappy sentence or even in a cunningly wrought
word--is that not glorious? Is it not a proper subject for congratulation?

Greeting to G. Bernard Shaw

There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the
weaknesses and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves
untouched by them. And these isolated few usually soon lose their zeal for
putting things to rights when they have come face to face with human
obduracy. Only to a tiny minority is it given to fascinate their generation
by subtle humour and grace and to hold the mirror up to it by the impersonal
agency of art. To-day I salute with sincere emotion the supreme master of
this method, who has delighted--and educated--us all.

Some Notes on my American Impressions

I must redeem my promise to say something about my impressions of this
country. That is not altogether easy for me. For it is not easy to take up
the attitude of an impartial observer when one is received with such
kindness and undeserved respect as I have been in America. First of all let
me say something on this head.

The cult of individual personalities is always, in my view,
unjustified. To be sure, nature distributes her gifts variously among her
children. But there are plenty of the well-endowed ones too, thank God, and
I am firmly convinced that most of them live quiet, unregarded lives. It
strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few of them fur
boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to
them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular estimate
of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque. The
consciousness of this extraordinary state of affairs would be unbearable but
for one great consoling thought: it is a welcome symptom in an age which is
commonly denounced as materialistic, that it makes heroes of men whose
ambitions lie wholly in the intellectual and moral sphere. This proves that
knowledge and justice are ranked above wealth and power by a large section
of the human race. My experience teaches me that this idealistic outlook is
particularly prevalent in America, which is usually decried as a
particularly materialistic country. After this digression I come to my
proper theme, in the hope that no more weight will be attached to my modest
remarks than they deserve.

What first strikes the visitor with amazement is the superiority of
this country in matters of technics and organization. Objects of everyday
use are more solid than in Europe, houses infinitely more convenient in
arrangement. Everything is designed to save human labour. Labour is
expensive, because the country is sparsely inhabited in comparison with its
natural resources. The high price of labour was the stimulus which evoked
the marvellous development of technical devices and methods of work. The
opposite extreme is illustrated by over-populated China or India, where the
low price of labour has stood in the way of the development of machinery.
Europe is half-way between the two. Once the machine is sufficiently highly
developed it becomes cheaper in the end than the cheapest labour. Let the
Fascists in Europe, who desire on narrow-minded political grounds to see
their own particular countries more densely populated, take heed of this.
The anxious care with which the United States keep out foreign goods by
means of prohibitive tariffs certainly contrasts oddly with this
notion.…But an innocent visitor must not be expected to rack his
brains too much, and, when all is said and done, it is not absolutely
certain that every question admits of a rational answer.

The second thing that strikes a visitor is the joyous, positive
attitude to life. The smile on the faces of the people in photographs is
symbolical of one of the American's greatest assets. He is friendly,
confident, optimistic, and--without envy. The European finds intercourse
with Americans easy and agreeable.

Compared with the American, the European is more critical, more
self-conscious, less goodhearted and helpful, more isolated, more fastidious
in his amusements and his reading, generally more or less of a pessimist.

Great importance attaches to the material comforts of life, and peace,
freedom from care, security are all sacrificed to them. The American lives
for ambition, the future, more than the European. Life for him is always
becoming, never being. In this