The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

they are not performing gymnastic feats or cracking
nuts, a strange strained sadness. One can almost
imagine that they feel they ought to become men,
but cannot discover the secret of how to do it. On
the road of evolution they have lost their way; their
cousins marched on and they were left behind.
Something of the same strain and anguish seems to
have entered the soul of civilised man. He knows
there is something better than himself almost within
his grasp, yet he does not know where to seek it or
how to find it. In despair he rages against his
fellow man, who is equally lost and equally
unhappy.
We have reached a stage in evolution which is not
the final stage. We must pass through it quickly, for
if we do not, most of us will perish by the way,
and the others will be lost in a forest of doubt and
fear. Envy therefore, evil as it is, and terrible as
are its effects, is not wholly of the devil. It is in
part the expression of an heroic pain, the pain of
those who walk through the night blindly, perhaps
to a better resting-place, perhaps only to death and