The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax. The highest principles for our aspirations and judgements are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspir ations and valuations. If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind. ... it is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any otherway. The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves. It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything Before God we are equally wise and equally foolish. |