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

intelligent and the most obscurantist - something
which is perhaps hardly to be called religion,
since it is merely a focusing of attention upon wellascertained
facts. I should seek to make young
people vividly aware of the past, vividly realising
that the future of man will in all likelihood be
immeasurably longer than his past, profoundly
conscious of the minuteness of the planet upon
which we live and of the fact that life on this planet
is only a temporary incident; and at the same time
with these facts which tend to emphasise the
insignificance of the individual I should present
quite another set of facts designed to impress upon
the mind of the young the greatness of which the
individual is capable, and the knowledge that
throughout all the depths of stellar space nothing of
equal value is known to us. Spinoza long ago
wrote of human bondage and human freedom; his
form and his language make his thought difficult of
access to all but students of philosophy, but the
essence of what I wish to convey differs little from
what he has said.