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

have moulded your habitual feelings, you will
realise that the momentary battle upon which you
are engaged cannot be of such importance as to
risk a backward step towards the darkness out of
which we have been slowly emerging. Nay, more,
if you suffer defeat in your immediate objective,
you will be sustained by the same sense of its
momentariness that made you unwilling to adopt
degrading weapons. You will have, beyond your
immediate activities, purposes that are distant and
slowly unfolding, in which you are not an isolated
individual but one of the great army of those who
have led mankind towards a civilised existence. If
you have attained to this outlook, a certain deep
happiness will never leave you, whatever your
personal fate may be. Life will become a
communion with the great of all ages, and personal
death no more than a negligible incident.
If I had the power to organise higher education as I
should wish it to be, I should seek to substitute for
the old orthodox religions - which appeal to few
among the young, and those as a rule the least