BERTRAND Russell's "Human Society in Ethics and Politics," published when he was eighty-three, ends with these lines: "Those who are to lead the world out of its troubles will need courage, hope, and love. Whether they will prevail, I do not know, but, beyond all reason, I am unconquerably persuaded that they will."

You may dismiss this as the dithering of a sentimental old fool. If you do you will find yourself in the company of a great many Americans, some of them adjudged very shrewd fellows. His Lordship was a man of tremendous intellectual capacity, especially in mathematics, but also in philosophy, which does not rule out the possibility that in other phases of existence he may have spoken on the mental level of a retarded child. The point is arguable but for the purpose of this essay without significance.

What lends this statement vivid interest in this country twenty years later is the fact that an impressive number of Russell's moral judgments that were laughed out of consideration when they were delivered subsequently proved to be based on very solid fact. Some have been absorbed into the corpus of conventional tuition, especially on the upper levels.