Some of the specific stimuli of my sober reflections have been the histories of the fiendishly diverse injustices,
cruelties, tyrannies and butcheries
human beings have inflicted on one another — in particular the long, appalling story of Jewish suffering
at the
hands of Christian Europe with its insane climax under the Nazis; Camus's searing reflections on our blood - soaked century; accounts of the horrors of plagues and epidemics
at whose complete mercy
human beings for so long existed; and insights of depth psychology into the character and influence of the unconscious, childhood and repression in our behavior.