"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

conscience and a sense of responsibility. What a fruitful source of
suffering to mankind this fact is! It is the cause of wars and every kind of
oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs, and bitterness.

And yet nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish
co-operation of many individuals. Hence the man of good will is never
happier than when some communal enterprise is afoot and is launched at the
cost of heavy sacrifices, with the single object of promoting life and
culture.

Such pure joy was mine when I heard about the university courses at
Davos. A work of rescue is being carried out there, with intelligence and a
wise moderation, which is based on a grave need, though it may not be a need
that is immediately obvious to everyone. Many a young man goes to this
valley with his hopes fixed on the healing power of its sunny mountains and
regains his bodily health. But thus withdrawn for long periods from the
will-hardening discipline of normal work and a prey to morbid reflection on
his physical condition, he easily loses the power of mental effort and the
sense of being able to hold his own in the struggle for existence. He
becomes a sort of hot-house plant and, when his body is cured, often finds
it difficult to get back to normal life. Interruption of intellectual
training in the formative period of youth is very apt to leave a gap which
can hardly be filled later.

Yet, as a general rule, intellectual work in moderation, so far from
retarding cure, indirectly helps it forward, just as moderate physical work
does. It is in this knowledge that the university courses are being
instituted, with the object not merely of preparing these young people for a
profession but of stimulating them to intellectual activity as such. They
are to provide work, training, and hygiene in the sphere of the mind.

Let us not forget that this enterprise is admirably calculated to
establish such relations between members of different nations as are
favourable to the growth of a common European feeling. The effects of the
new institution in this direction are likely to be all the more advantageous
from the fact that the circumstances of its birth rule out every sort of
political purpose. The best way to serve the cause of internationalism is by
co-operating in some life-giving work.

>From all these points of view I rejoice that the energy and
intelligence of the founders of the university courses at Davos have already
attained such a measure of success that the enterprise has outgrown the
troubles of infancy. May it prosper, enriching the inner lives of numbers of
admirable human beings and rescuing many from the poverty of sanatorium
life!

Congratulations to a Critic

To see with one's own eyes, to feel and judge without succumbing to the
suggestive power of the fashion of the day, to be able to express what one