Subject/Objective Reality/Illusion

[Eulenspiegel7646 at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/24/2001 7:51:25 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
fqmorris at hotmail.com writes:


> This Banquet was given in Boston on the closing day of the World's Peace 
> Congress, October 7, 1904
> 
> by William James
> 
> "This is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against. 
> The 
> plain truth is that people want war. They want it anyhow; for itself; and 
> apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the final bouquet of 
> life's fireworks. The born soldiers want it hot and actual. The 
> non-combatants want it in the background, and always as an open 
> possibility, 
> to feed imagination on and keep excitement going. Its clerical and 
> historical defenders fool themselves when they talk as they do about it. 
> What moves them is not the blessings it has won for us, but a vague 
> religious exaltation. War, they feel, is human nature at its uttermost. We 
> are here to do our uttermost. It is a sacrament. Society would rot, they 
> think, without the mystical blood-payment."
> 
> 

Proving that William James was truly a product of his time... I suppose...
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