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yatinparab
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Most people, when asked what spiritual quality is needed to rebuild civilization, will reply ‘Love’. Men must love one another, they say, nations must do likewise.
Respectfully but firmly, I disagree. Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work. It has been tried again and again; by the Christian civilization of the Middle Ages, and also by the French Revolution, a secular movement which reasserted the brotherhood of man. And it has always failed. The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another,or that a ma in Portugal, should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard is absurd, unreal, dangerous. It leads us into perilous and vague sentimentatism. ‘Love is what is needed’, we chant and then sit back and the world goes on as before. The fact is we an only love what we know personally. And we cannot know must. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of our civilization, something much less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely, tolerance. Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things. No one has ever written an ode to tolerance, or raised a statue to her. Yet this is the quality which will be most needed after the wqar. This is the sound-state of mind which we are looking for. This is the only force which will enable different races and classes and interests to settle down together to the work of reconstruction.
The world is very full or people- appallingly full; it has never been so full before, and they are all tumbling over each other. Most of these people one doesn’t know and some of them one doesn’t like; doesn’t like the colour of their skins.