Charles S. Peirce on the meaning of life, the universe, and our ideals:

Thus, whether you accept the opinion or not, you must see that it is a perfectly intelligible opinion that ideas are not all mere creations of this or that mind, but on the contrary have a power of finding or creating their vehicles, and having found them, of conferring upon them the ability to transform the face of the earth. If you ask what mode of being is supposed to belong to an idea that is in no mind, the reply will come that undoubtedly the idea must be embodied (or ensouled; it is all one) in order to attain complete being, and that if, at any moment, it should happen that an idea,--say that of physical decency,--was quite unconcieved by any living being, then its mode of being (supposing that it was not altogether dead) would consist precisely in this, namely, that it was about to receive embodiment (or ensoulment) and to work in the world. This would be a mere potential being, a being in futuro; but it would not be the utter nothingness which would befall matter (or spirit) if it were to be deprived of the governance of ideas, and thus were to have no regularity in its action, so that throughout no fraction of a second could it steadily act in any general way. For matter would thus not only not actually exist; but it would not have even a potential existence; since potentiality is an affair of ideas. It would be just downright Nothing.

It so happens that I myself believe in the eternal life of the ideas Truth and Right. I need not, however, insist upon that for my present purpose, and have only spoken of them in order to make my meaning clear. What I do insist upon is not now the infinite vitality of those particular ideas, but that every idea has in some measure, in the same sense that those are supposed to have it in unlimited measure, the power to work out physical and psychical results. They have life, generative life.