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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: A life is manly, stoical, moral, or philosophical, we say, in
proportion as it is less swayed by paltry personal considerations
and more by objective ends that call for energy, even though that
energy bring personal loss and pain. This is the good side of
war, in so far as it calls for "volunteers." And for morality
life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic
patriotism which also calls for volunteers. Even a sick man,
unable to be militant outwardly, can carry on the moral warfare.
He can willfully turn his attention away from his own future,
whether in this world or the next. He can train himself to
indifference to his present drawbacks and immerse himself in
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