Political Ideals by Earl Bertrand Arthur William 3rd Russell
page 73 of 75 (97%)
page 73 of 75 (97%)
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animals, we shall find that none of them are things in which any one
nation can have exclusive property, but all are things in which the whole world can share. Those who have any care for these things, those who wish to see mankind fruitful in the work which men alone can do, will take little account of national boundaries, and have little care to what state a man happens to owe allegiance. The importance of international coperation outside the sphere of politics has been brought home to me by my own experience. Until lately I was engaged in teaching a new science which few men in the world were able to teach. My own work in this science was based chiefly upon the work of a German and an Italian. My pupils came from all over the civilized world: France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Greece, Japan, China, India, and America. None of us was conscious of any sense of national divisions. We felt ourselves an outpost of civilization, building a new road into the virgin forest of the unknown. All coperated in the common task, and in the interest of such a work the political enmities of nations seemed trivial, temporary, and futile. But it is not only in the somewhat rarefied atmosphere of abstruse science that international coperation is vital to the progress of civilization. All our economic problems, all the questions of securing the rights of labor, all the hopes of freedom at home and humanity abroad, rest upon the creation of international good-will. So long as hatred, suspicion, and fear dominate the feelings of men toward each other, so long we cannot hope to escape from the tyranny of violence and brute force. Men must learn to be conscious of the common interests of mankind in which all are at one, rather than of |
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