Academics at war – Bertrand Russelland Cambridge

Abstract

… one superficial, in which I have plenty of life and good spirits, and another under-neath, where I feel lost and worn out and isolated and rather hopeless – that is the deeper feeling but I keep on fighting it off with an effort of will. Nothing can be done for it while the war lasts. 58 a possibility in human minds of something mysteri-ous as the night-wind, deep as the sea – calm as the stars and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the ‘intellectual love of God’. Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle. If I could give to others what has come to me in this way, I could make them too feel the futility of fighting.