Project Gutenberg #55610
Why Men Fight
Bertrand Russell
1916Russell's wartime lectures on the impulses behind war and how the state, property, education, marriage, and religion could be rebuilt; published in Britain as Principles of Social Reconstruction.
Project Gutenberg #55610 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for The Missing Workbook from public-domain source metadata
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The life of the spirit has suffered in recent times by its association with traditional religion, by its apparent hostility to the life of the mind, and by the fact that it has seemed to center in renunciation. The life of the spirit demands readiness for renunciation when the occasion arises, but is in its essence as positive and as capable of enriching individual existence as mind and instinct are. It brings with it the joy of vision, of the mystery and profundity of the world, of the contemplation of life, and above all the joy of universal love. It liberates244 those who have it from the prison-house of insistent personal passion and mundane cares. It gives freedom and breadth and beauty to men’s thoughts and feelings, and to all their relations with others. It brings the solution of doubts, the end of the feeling that all is vanity. It restores harmony between mind and instinct, and leads the separated unit back into his place in the life of mankind. For those who have once entered the world of thought, it is only through spirit that happiness and peace can return.
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