"United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a
common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always,
shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of man is a
long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by
weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where
none may tarry long.
One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized
by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in
which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided.
Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by
the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring
affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of
despair.
Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let
us think only of their need, of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps
the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember
that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same
tragedy with ourselves.
And so, when their day is over, when their good or evil have become
eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that where
they have suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause;
but that wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we
were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which
high courage glowed."
-Bertrand Russell
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