A WORD TO THE READER

IT MAY SEEM strange for a man to write a book about peace of. mind in this age of fierce turmoil and harrowing doubts. It may seem doubly strange for a rabbi, a representative of a people that has known so Uttle peace, to engage in such an enterprise. However, I make no apologies for this attempt to find new answers to the basic problems of human nature: its needs, motives, fears, and dreams. I have written this book in the conviction that social peace can never be permanently achieved so long as individuaIs engage in civil war with them¬selves. I maintain that a co-operative world can never be fash¬ioned by men and women who are corroded by the acids of inner hate, and I believe that our much-heralded “society 01 security” will remain a Utopian vision so long as the indi¬viduaIs composing that society are desperdtely insecure, not only economically but emotionally and spiritually.
In this book I try to present some answers that have proved helpful to me about the universal human dilemmas of con¬science, love, fear, grief, and God-crucial problems that present themselves in every kind of sociÚy, and, I believe, will present themselves as long as man is mano
Now it is undoubtedly true that social circumstances do profoundly modify our human responses, and that unjust economic conditions do create neuroses and maladjustments in countless personalities. Social reformers and revolutiona¬ries are right when they insist that multitudes 0/ human beings can never experience true peace of mind so long as.