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A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. he is not a man. his is not a brute, for brutes kill only in self defense. all that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. his mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul, are in the keeping of his officer. no man can fall lower than a soldier-it is a depth beneath which we cannot go.

-Jack London

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A Good Soldier Is A Blind, Heartless,

Jack London

A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. he is not a man. his is not a brute, for brutes kill only in self defense. all that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. his mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul, are in the keeping of his officer. no man can fall lower than a soldier-it is a depth beneath which we cannot go.

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    <p style="font-size: 1.2rem; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 10px;">"a good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. he is not a man. his is not a brute, for brutes kill only in self defense. all that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. his mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul, are in the keeping of his officer. no man can fall lower than a soldier-it is a depth beneath which we cannot go."</p>
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More From Jack London

Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. the brute has no such thing. it is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute.

Brutes abstract not. -- if it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas, that way, to any degree; this, i think, i may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.

I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. he is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle.

The soldier's heart, the soldier's spirit, the soldier's soul, are everything. unless the soldier's soul sustains him he cannot be relied on and will fail himself and his commander and his country in the end.

It is not a struggle merely of economic theories, or forms of government or of military power. at issue is the true nature of man. either man is the creature whom the psalmist described as a little lower than the angels ... or man is a soulless, animated machine to be enslaved, used and consumed by the state for its own glorification. it is, therefore, a struggle which goes to the roots of the human spirit, and its shadow falls across the long sweep of man's destiny.

How to get rid of the mind? is it the mind that wants to kill itself? the mind cannot kill itself. so your business is to find the real nature of the mind. then you will know that there is no mind. when the self is sought, the mind is nowhere. abiding in the self, one need not worry about the mind.

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