Russell, Bertrand - Escritos.pdf

8/13/2019 Russell, Bertrand - Escritos.pdf

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A Free Man s Worship

Bertrand Russell


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To Dr. Faustus in his study Mephistopheles told the history of the Creation, saying:

"The endless praises of the choirs of angels had begun to grow wearisome; for, after all,did he not deserve their praise? Had he not given them endless joy? Would it not be more

amusing to obtain undeserved praise, to be worshipped by beings whom he tortured? Hesmiled inwardly, and resolved that the great drama should be performed.

"For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space. At length it began totake shape, the central mass threw off planets, the planets cooled, boiling seas and

burning mountains heaved and tossed, from black masses of cloud hot sheets of raindeluged the barely solid crust. And now the first germ of life grew in the depths of the

ocean, and developed rapidly in the fructifying warmth into vast forest trees, huge fernsspringing from the damp mould, sea monsters breeding, fighting, devouring, and passingaway. And from the monsters, as the play unfolded itself, Man was born, with the power

of thought, the knowledge of good and evil, and the cruel thirst for worship. And Mansaw that all is passing in this mad, monstrous world, that all is struggling to snatch, at any

cost, a few brief moments of life before Death's inexorable decree. And Man said: 'Thereis a hidden purpose, could we but fathom it, and the purpose is good; for we mustreverence something, and in the visible world there is nothing worthy of reverence.' And

Man stood aside from the struggle, resolving that God intended harmony to come out ofchaos by human efforts. And when he followed the instincts which God had transmitted

to him from his ancestry of beasts of prey, he called it Sin, and asked God to forgive him.

But he doubted whether he could be justly forgiven, until he invented a divine Plan bywhich God's wrath was to have been appeased. And seeing the present was bad, he made

it yet worse, that thereby the future might be better. And he gave God thanks for thestrength that enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; and

when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent anothersun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun; and all returned again to nebula.

"'Yes,' he murmured, 'it was a good play; I will have it performed again.'"

Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world whichScience presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward

must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the endthey were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his

beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism,no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; thatall the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness

of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and thatthe whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a

universe in ruins -- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain,that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding ofthese truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation

henceforth be safely built.


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How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as Man preservehis aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in

the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth atlast a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and

evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking Mother. In spite ofDeath, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, toexamine, to criticise, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world

with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to theresistless forces that control his outward life.

The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before the powers of

Nature; but having in himself nothing that he respects more than Power, he is willing to

prostrate himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of hisworship. Pathetic and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of

degradation and human sacrifice, endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods:surely, the trembling believer thinks, when what is most precious has been freely given,

their lust for blood must be appeased, and more will not be required. The religion ofMoloch -- as such creeds may be generically called -- is in essence the cringingsubmission of the slave, who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master

deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is not yet acknowledged, Powermay be freely worshipped, and receive an unlimited respect, despite its wanton infliction

of pain.

But gradually, as morality grows bolder, the claim of the ideal world begins to be felt;and worship, if it is not to cease, must be given to gods of another kind than those created

by the savage. Some, though they feel the demands of the ideal, will still consciously

reject them, still urging that naked Power is worthy of worship. Such is the attitudeinculcated in God's answer to Job out of the whirlwind: the divine power and knowledge

are paraded, but of the divine goodness there is no hint. Such also is the attitude of thosewho, in our own day, base their morality upon the struggle for survival, maintaining thatthe survivors are necessarily the fittest. But others, not content with an answer so

repugnant to the moral sense, will adopt the position which we have become accustomedto regard as specially religious, maintaining that, in some hidden manner, the world of

fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals. Thus Man creates God, all-powerful

and all-good, the mystic unity of what is and what should be.

But the world of fact, after all, is not good; and, in submitting our judgment to it, there is

an element of slavishness from which our thoughts must be purged. For in all things it iswell to exalt the dignity of Man, by freeing him as far as possible from the tyranny ofnon-human Power. When we have realised that Power is largely bad, that man, with his

knowledge of good and evil, is but a helpless atom in a world which has no suchknowledge, the choice is again presented to us: Shall we worship Force, or shall we

worship Goodness? Shall our God exist and be evil, or shall he be recognised as thecreation of our own conscience?


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The answer to this question is very momentous, and affects profoundly our wholemorality. The worship of Force, to which Carlyle and Nietzsche and the creed of

Militarism have accustomed us, is the result of failure to maintain our own ideals againsta hostile universe: it is itself a prostrate submission to evil, a sacrifice of our best to

Moloch. If strength indeed is to be respected, let us respect rather the strength of thosewho refuse that false "recognition of facts" which fails to recognise that facts are often

bad. Let us admit that, in the world we know, there are many things that would be better

otherwise, and that the ideals to which we do and must adhere are not realised in therealm of matter. Let us preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of

perfection which life does not permit us to attain, though none of these things meet withthe approval of the unconscious universe. If Power is bad, as it seems to be, let us reject itfrom our hearts. In this lies Man's true freedom: in determination to worship only the God

created by our own love of the good, to respect only the heaven which inspires the insightof our best moments. In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of

outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellow-men, freefrom the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live,from the tyranny of death. Let us learn, then, that energy of faith which enables us to live

constantly in the vision of the good; and let us descend, in action, into the world of fact,with that vision always before us.

When first the opposition of fact and ideal grows fully visible, a spirit of fiery revolt, of

fierce hatred of the gods, seems necessary to the assertion of freedom. To defy withPromethean constancy a hostile universe, to keep its evil always in view, always actively

hated, to refuse no pain that the malice of Power can invent, appears to be the duty of allwho will not bow before the inevitable. But indignation is still a bondage, for it compelsour thoughts to be occupied with an evil world; and in the fierceness of desire from which

rebellion springs there is a kind of self-assertion which it is necessary for the wise toovercome. Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires; the Stoicfreedom in which wisdom consists is found in the submission of our desires, but not of

our thoughts. From the submission of our desires springs the virtue of resignation; fromthe freedom of our thoughts springs the whole world of art and philosophy, and the vision

of beauty by which, at last, we half reconquer the reluctant world. But the vision ofbeauty is possible only to unfettered contemplation, to thoughts not weighted by the loadof eager wishes; and thus Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it

shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of Time.

Although the necessity of renunciation is evidence of the existence of evil, yetChristianity, in preaching it, has shown a wisdom exceeding that of the Promethean

philosophy of rebellion. It must be admitted that, of the things we desire, some, thoughthey prove impossible, are yet real goods; others, however, as ardently longed for, do notform part of a fully purified ideal. The belief that what must be renounced is bad, though

sometimes false, is far less often false than untamed passion supposes; and the creed ofreligion, by providing a reason for proving that it is never false, has been the means of

purifying our hopes by the discovery of many austere truths.


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But there is in resignation a further good element: even real goods, when they areunattainable, ought not to be fretfully desired. To every man comes, sooner or later, the

great renunciation. For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired withthe whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by

death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, thatthe world was not made for us, and that, however beautiful may be the things we crave,Fate may nevertheless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to

bear without repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets.This degree of submission to Power is not only just and right: it is the very gate of

wisdom.

But passive renunciation is not the whole of wisdom; for not by renunciation alone can

we build a temple for the worship of our own ideals. Haunting foreshadowings of thetemple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled

kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines andglows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the

failures and disenchantments of the world of fact. In the contemplation of these things thevision of heaven will shape itself in our hearts, giving at once a touchstone to judge theworld about us, and an inspiration by which to fashion to our needs whatever is not

incapable of serving as a stone in the sacred temple.

Except for those rare spirits that are born without sin, there is a cavern of darkness to betraversed before that temple can be entered. The gate of the cavern is despair, and its

floor is paved with the gravestones of abandoned hopes. There Self must die; there theeagerness, the greed of untamed desire must be slain, for only so can the soul be freedfrom the empire of Fate. But out of the cavern the Gate of Renunciation leads again to the

daylight of wisdom, by whose radiance a new insight, a new joy, a new tenderness, shineforth to gladden the pilgrim's heart.

When, without the bitterness of impotent rebellion, we have learnt both to resign

ourselves to the outward rules of Fate and to recognise that the non-human world isunworthy of our worship, it becomes possible at last so to transform and refashion the

unconscious universe, so to transmute it in the crucible of imagination, that a new imageof shining gold replaces the old idol of clay. In all the multiform facts of the world -- in

the visual shapes of trees and mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, evenin the very omnipotence of Death -- the insight of creative idealism can find the reflectionof a beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its subtle mastery

over the thoughtless forces of Nature. The more evil the material with which it deals, themore thwarting to untrained desire, the greater is its achievement in inducing the reluctantrock to yield up its hidden treasures, the prouder its victory in compelling the opposing

forces to swell the pageant of its triumph. Of all the arts, Tragedy is the proudest, themost triumphant; for it builds its shining citadel in the very centre of the enemy's country,

on the very summit of his highest mountain; from its impregnable watchtowers, hiscamps and arsenals, his columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls the free lifecontinues, while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair, and all the servile captains of

tyrant Fate, afford the burghers of that dauntless city new spectacles of beauty. Happy


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those sacred ramparts, thrice happy the dwellers on that all-seeing eminence. Honour tothose brave warriors who, through countless ages of warfare, have preserved for us the

priceless heritage of liberty, and have kept undefiled by sacrilegious invaders the home ofthe unsubdued.

But the beauty of Tragedy does but make visible a quality which, in more or less obvious

shapes, is present always and everywhere in life. In the spectacle of Death, in theendurance of intolerable pain, and in the irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is asacredness, an overpowering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, the inexhaustible

mystery of existence, in which, as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer is boundto the world by bonds of sorrow. In these moments of insight, we lose all eagerness of

temporary desire, all struggling and striving for petty ends, all care for the little trivial

things that, to a superficial view, make up the common life of day by day; we see,surrounding the narrow raft illumined by the flickering light of human comradeship, the

dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; from the great night without,a chill blast breaks in upon our refuge; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces

is concentrated upon the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courageit can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopesand fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into

the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty ofhuman existence. From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world,

enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To takeinto the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be --

Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man beforethe blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity -- to feel these things and know themis to conquer them.

This is the reason why the Past has such magical power. The beauty of its motionless and

silent pictures is like the enchanted purity of late autumn, when the leaves, though onebreath would make them fall, still glow against the sky in golden glory. The Past does notchange or strive; like Duncan, after life's fitful fever it sleeps well; what was eager and

grasping, what was petty and transitory, has faded away, the things that were beautifuland eternal shine out of it like stars in the night. Its beauty, to a soul not worthy of it, is

unendurable; but to a soul which has conquered Fate it is the key of religion.

The life of Man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison with the forces ofNature. The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are

greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things whichthey devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionlesssplendour, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before

the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves. Toabandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to

burn with passion for eternal things -- this is emancipation, and this is the free man'sworship. And this liberation is effected by a contemplation of Fate; for Fate itself issubdued by the mind which leaves nothing to be purged by the purifying fire of Time.


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United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, thefree man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the

light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisiblefoes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and

where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from oursight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which wecan help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine

on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joyof a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair.

Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only oftheir need -- of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the miseryof their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors

in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good andtheir evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where

they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark ofthe divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy,with brave words in which high courage glowed.

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls

pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rollson its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself

to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, thelofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of

Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire ofchance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life;

proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and

his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his ownideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.


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Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?

A Plea for Tolerance in the Face of New Dogmas

Bertrand Russell


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I speak as one who was intended by my father to be brought up as a Rationalist. He wasquite as much of a Rationalist as I am, but he died when I was three years old, and theCourt of Chancery decided that I was to have the benefits of a Christian education.

I think perhaps the Court of Chancery might have regretted that since. It does not seem tohave done as much good as they hoped. Perhaps you may say that it would be rather a

pity if Christian education were to cease, because you would then get no more

Rationalists.

They arise chiefly out of reaction to a system of education which considers it quite rightthat a father should decree that his son should be brought up as a Muggletonian, we will

say, or brought up on any other kind of nonsense, but he must on no account be broughtup to think rationally. When I was young that was considered to be illegal.

Sin And The Bishops

Since I became a Rationalist I have found that there is still considerable scope in the

world for the practical importance of a rationalist outlook, not only in matters of geology,but in all sorts of practical matters, such as divorce and birth control, and a question

which has come up quite recently, artificial insemination, where bishops tell us thatsomething is gravely sinful, but it is only gravely sinful because there is some text in the

Bible about it. It is not gravely sinful because it does anybody harm, and that is not theargument. As long as you can say, and as long as you can persuade Parliament to go onsaying, that a thing must not be done solely because there is some text in the Bible about

it, so long obviously there is great need of Rationalism in practice.

As you may know, I got into great trouble in the United States solely because, on somepractical issues, I considered that the ethical advice given in the Bible was not conclusive,

and that on some points one should act differently from what the Bible says. On thisground it was decreed by a Law Court that I was not a fit person to teach in anyuniversity in the United States, so that I have some practical ground for preferring

Rationalism to other outlooks.

Don't Be Too Certain!


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The question of how to define Rationalism is not altogether an easy one. I do not thinkthat you could define it by rejection of this or that Christian dogma. It would be perfectly

possible to be a complete and absolute Rationalist in the true sense of the term and yetaccept this or that dogma.

The question is how to arrive at your opinions and not what your opinions are. The thing

in which we believe is the supremacy of reason. If reason should lead you to orthodoxconclusions, well and good; you are still a Rationalist. To my mind the essential thing isthat one should base one's arguments upon the kind of grounds that are accepted in

science, and one should not regard anything that one accepts as quite certain, but only asprobable in a greater or a less degree. Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the

essential things in rationality.

Proof of God

Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me. Whenever I go into aforeign country or a prison or any similar place they always ask me what is my religion.

I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist". It is avery difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a

philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I oughtto describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusiveargument by which one prove that there is not a God.

On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street

I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove thatthere is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the

Homeric gods.

None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist,and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera,Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not

get such proof.

Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, Iwould say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say

in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, Ithink, take exactly the same line.


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Skepticism

There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the

Christian God as there is of the existence of the Homeric God. I cannot prove that eitherthe Christian God or the Homeric gods do not exist, but I do not think that their existenceis an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration. Therefore,

I suppose that that on these documents that they submit to me on these occasions I oughtto say "Atheist", although it has been a very difficult problem, and sometimes I have said

one and sometimes the other without any clear principle by which to go.

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things aremuch more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we areassembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly

there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact,because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would,

of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

Persecution

On must remember that some things are very much more probable than others and maybe so probable that it is not worth while to remember in practice that they are not whollycertain, except when it comes to questions of persecution.

If it comes to burning somebody at the stake for not believing it, then it is worth while toremember that after all he may be right, and it is not worth while to persecute him.

In general, if a man says, for instance, that the earth is flat, I am quite willing that heshould propagate his opinion as hard as he likes. He may, of course, be right but I do notthink he is. In practice you will, I think, do better to assume that the earth is round,

although, of course, you may be mistaken. Therefore, I do not think we should go in forcomplete skepticism, but for a doctrine of degrees of probability.

I think that, on the whole, that is the kind of doctrine that the world needs. The world has

become very full of new dogmas. he old dogmas have perhaps decayed, but new dogmashave arisen and, on the whole, I think that a dogma is harmful in proportion to its novelty.

New dogmas are much worse that old ones.


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Education and DisciplineBertrand Russell

Any serious educational theory must consist of two parts: a conception of the ends of life,and a science of psychological dynamics, i.e. of the laws of mental change. Two menwho differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education. The educationalmachine, throughout Western civilization, is dominated by two ethical theories: that ofChristianity, and that of nationalism. These two, when taken seriously, are incompatible,as is becoming evident in Germany. For my part, I hold that, where they differ,Christianity is preferable, but where they agree, both are mistaken. The conception whichI should substitute as the purpose of education is civilization, a term which, as I mean it,has a definition which is partly individual, partly social. It consists, in the individual, of

both intellectual and moral qualities: intellectually, a certain minimum of generalknowledge, technical skill in one's own profession, and a habit of forming opinions onevidence; morally, of impartiality, kindliness, and a modicum of self-control. I shouldadd a quality which is neither moral nor intellectual, but perhaps physiological: zest and

joy of life. In communities, civilization demands respect for law, justice as between manand man, purposes not involving permanent injury to any section of the human race, and

intelligent adaptation of means to ends. If these are to be the purpose of education, it is aquestion for the science of psychology to consider what can be done towards realizingthem, and, in particular, what degree of freedom is likely to prove most effective.

On the question of freedom in education there are at present three main schools ofthought, deriving partly from differences as to ends and partly from differences in

psychological theory. There are those who say that children should be completely free,however bad they may be; there are those who say they should be completely subject toauthority, however good they may be; and there are those who say they should be free,

but in spite of freedom they should be always good. This last party is larger than it hasany logical right to be; children, like adults, will not all be virtuous if they are all free.

The belief that liberty will ensure moral perfection is a relic of Rousseauism, and wouldnot survive a study of animals and babies. Those who hold this belief think that education


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should have no positive purpose, but should merely offer an environment suitable forspontaneous development. I cannot agree with this school, which seems to me tooindividualistic, and unduly indifferent to the importance of knowledge. We live incommunities which require co-operation, and it would be utopian to expect all thenecessary co-operation to result from spontaneous impulse. The existence of a large

population on a limited area is only possible owing to science and technique; educationmust, therefore, hand on the necessary minimum of these. The educators who allow mostfreedom are men whose success depends upon a degree of benevolence, self-control, andtrained intelligence which can hardly be generated where every impulse is leftunchecked; their merits, therefore, are not likely to be perpetuated if their methods areundiluted. Education, viewed from a social standpoint, must be something more positivethan a mere opportunity for growth. It must, of course, provide this, but it must also

provide a mental and moral equipment which children cannot acquire entirely forthemselves.

The arguments in favour of a great degree of freedom in education are derived not fromman's natural goodness, but from the effects of authority, both on those who suffer it andon those who exercise it. Those who are subject to authority become either submissive orrebellious, and each attitude has its drawbacks.

The submissive lose initiative, both in thought and action; moreover, the anger generatedby the feeling of being thwarted tends to find an outlet in bullying those who are weaker.That is why tyrannical institutions are self-perpetuating: what a man has suffered from

his father he inflicts upon his son, and the humiliations which he remembers havingendured at his public school he passes on to natives" when he becomes an empire-

builder. Thus an unduly authoritative education turns the pupils into timid tyrants,incapable of either claiming or tolerating originality in word or deed. The effect upon theeducators is even worse: they tend to become sadistic disciplinarians, glad to inspireterror, and content to inspire nothing else. As these men represent knowledge, the pupilsacquire a horror of knowledge, which, among the English upper-class, is supposed to be

part of human nature, but is really part of the well-grounded hatred of the authoritarianpedagogue.

Rebels, on the other hand,, though they may be necessary, can hardly be just to whatexists. Moreover, there are many ways of rebelling, and only a small minority of these arewise. Galileo was a rebel and was wise; believers in the flat-earth theory are equallyrebels, but are foolish. There is a great danger in the tendency to suppose that oppositionto authority is essentially meritorious and that unconventional opinions are bound to becorrect: no useful purpose is served by smashing lamp-posts or maintaining Shakespeareto be no poet. Yet this excessive rebelliousness is often the effect that too much authorityhas on spirited pupils. And when rebels become educators, they sometimes encouragedefiance in their pupils, for whom at the same time they are trying to produce a perfectenvironment, although these two aims are scarcely compatible.

What is wanted is neither submissiveness nor rebellion, but good nature, and generalfriendliness both to people and to new ideas. These qualities are due in part to physical


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causes, to which old-fashioned educators paid too little attention; but they are due stillmore to freedom from the feeling of baffled impotence which arises when vital impulsesare thwarted. If the young are to grow into friendly adults, it is necessary, in most cases,that they should feel their environment friendly. This requires that there should be acertain sympathy with the child's important desires, and not merely an attempt to use himfor some abstract end such as the glory of God or the greatness of one's country. And, inteaching, every attempt should be made to cause the pupil to feel that it is worth his whileto know what is being taught-at least when this is true. When the pupil co-operateswillingly, he learns twice as fast and with half the fatigue. All these are valid reasons fora very great degree of freedom.

It is easy, however, to carry the argument too far. It is not desirable that children, in

avoiding the vices of the slave, should acquire those of the aristocrat. Consideration forothers, not only in great matters, but also in little everyday things, is an essential elementin civilization, without which social life would be intolerable. I am not thinking of mereforms of politeness, such as saying "please" and "thank you": formal manners are mostfully developed among barbarians, and diminish with every advance in culture. I amthinking rather of willingness to take a fair share of necessary work, to be obliging insmall ways that save trouble on the balance. Sanity itself is a form of politeness and it isnot desirable to give a child a sense of omnipotence, or a belief that adults exist only tominister to the pleasures of the young. And those who disapprove of the existence of theidle rich are hardly consistent if they bring up their children without any sense that workis necessary, and without the habits that make continuous application possible.

There is another consideration to which some advocates of freedom attach too littleimportance. In a community of children which is left without adult interference there is atyranny of the stronger, which is likely to be far more brutal than most adult tyranny. Iftwo children of two or three years old are left to play together, they will, after a fewfights, discover which is bound to be the victor, and the other will then become a slave.Where the number of children is larger, one or two acquire complete mastery, and theothers have far less liberty than they would have if the adults interfered to protect theweaker and less pugnacious. Consideration for others does not, with most children, arisespontaneously, but has to be taught, and can hardly be taught except by the exercise ofauthority. This is perhaps the most important argument against the abdication of theadults.

I do not think that educators have yet solved the problem of combining the desirableforms of freedom with the necessary minimum of moral training. The right solution, itmust be admitted, is often made impossible by parents before the child is brought to anenlightened school. just as psychoanalysts, from their clinical experience, conclude thatwe are all mad, so the authorities in modern schools, from their contact with pupils whose

parents have made them unmanageable, are disposed to conclude that all children are"difficult" and all parents utterly foolish. Children who have been driven wild by parentaltyranny (which often takes the form of solicitous affection) may require a longer orshorter period of complete liberty before they can view any adult without suspicion. Butchildren who have been sensibly handled at home can bear to be checked in minor ways,


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so long as they feel that they are being helped in the ways that they themselves regard asimportant. Adults who like children, and are not reduced to a condition of nervousexhaustion by their company, can achieve a great deal in the way of discipline withoutceasing to be regarded with friendly feelings by their pupils.

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to thenegative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit ofenjoying their company. If you have the sort of liking for children that many people havefor horses or dogs, they will be apt to respond to your suggestions, and to accept

prohibitions, perhaps with some good-humoured grumbling, but without resentment. It isno use to have the sort of liking that consists in regarding them as a field for valuablesocial endeavour, orwhat amounts to the same thingas an outlet for power-impulses.

No child will be grateful for an interest in him that springs from the thought that he willhave a vote to be secured for your party or a body to be sacrificed to king and country.The desirable sort of interest is that which consists in spontaneous pleasure in the

presence of children, without any ulterior purpose. Teachers who have this quality willseldom need to interfere with children's freedom, but will be able to do so, whennecessary, without causing psychological damage.

Unfortunately, it is utterly impossible for over-worked teachers to preserve an instinctiveliking for children; they are bound to come to feel towards them as the proverbialconfectioner's apprentice does towards macaroons. I do not think that education ought to

be anyone's whole profession: it should be undertaken for at most two hours a day by

people whose remaining hours are spent away from children. The society of the young isfatiguing, especially when strict discipline is avoided. Fatigue, in the end, producesirritation, which is likely to express itself somehow, whatever theories the harassedteacher may have taught himself or herself to believe. The necessary friendliness cannot

be preserved by self-control alone. But where it exists, it should be unnecessary to haverules in advance as to how "naughty" children are to be treated, since impulse is likely tolead to the right decision, and almost any decision will be right if the child feels that youlike him. No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.


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Knowledge and Wisdom

Bertrand Russell

Most people would agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages inknowledge, there has been no correlative increase in wisdom. But agreement ceases as

soon as we attempt to define `wisdom' and consider means of promoting it. I want to askfirst what wisdom is, and then what can be done to teach it.

There are, I think, several factors that contribute to wisdom. Of these I should put first asense of proportion: the capacity to take account of all the important factors in a problemand to attach to each its due weight. This has become more difficult than it used to be

owing to the extent and complexity fo the specialized knowledge required of variouskinds of technicians. Suppose, for example, that you are engaged in research in scientificmedicine. The work is difficult and is likely to absorb the whole of your intellectual

energy. You have not time to consider the effect which your discoveries or inventionsmay have outside the field of medicine. You succeed (let us say), as modern medicine has

succeeded, in enormously lowering the infant death-rate, not only in Europe andAmerica, but also in Asia and Africa. This has the entirely unintended result of makingthe food supply inadequate and lowering the standard of life in the most populous parts of

the world. To take an even more spectacular example, which is in everybody's mind atthe present time: You study the composistion of the atom from a disinterested desire forknowledge, and incidentally place in the hands of powerful lunatics the means of

destroying the human race. In such ways the pursuit of knowledge may becorem harmfulunless it is combined with wisdom; and wisdom in the sense of comprehensive vision is

not necessarily present in specialists in the pursuit of knowledge.

Comprehensiveness alone, however, is not enough to constitute wisdom. There must be,also, a certain awareness of the ends of human life. This may be illustrated by the study

of history. Many eminent historians have done more harm than good because they viewedfacts through the distorting medium of their own passions. Hegel had a philosophy of

history which did not suffer from any lack of comprehensiveness, since it started from theearliest times and continued into an indefinite future. But the chief lesson of history


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which he sought to unculcate was that from the year 400AD down to his own timeGermany had been the most important nation and the standard-bearer of progress in the

world. Perhaps one could stretch the comprehensiveness that contitutes wisdom toinclude not only intellect but also feeling. It is by no means uncommon to find men

whose knowledge is wide but whose feelings are narrow. Such men lack what I callwisdom.

It is not only in public ways, but in private life equally, that wisdom is needed. It isneeded in the choice of ends to be pursued and in emancipation from personal prejudice.

Even an end which it would be noble to pursue if it were attainable may be pursuedunwisely if it is inherently impossible of achievement. Many men in past ages devoted

their lives to a search for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. No doubt, if they

could have found them, they would have conferred great benefits upon mankind, but as itwas their lives were wasted. To descend to less heroic matters, consider the case of two

men, Mr A and Mr B, who hate each other and, through mutual hatred, bring each otherto destruction. Suppose you dgo the Mr A and say, 'Why do you hate Mr B?' He will no

doubt give you an appalling list of Mr B's vices, partly true, partly false. And nowsuppose you go to Mr B. He will give you an exactly similar list of Mr A's vices with anequal admixture of truth and falsehood. Suppose you now come back to Mr A and say,

'You will be surprised too learn that Mr B says the same things about you as you sayabout him', and you go to Mr B and make a similar speech. The first effect, no doubt, will

be to increase their mutual hatred, since each will be so horrified by the other's injustice.But perhaps, if you have sufficient patience and sufficient persuasiveness, you may

succeed in convincing each that the other has only the normal share of humanwickedness, and that their enmity is harmful to both. If you can do this, you will haveinstilled some fragment of wisdom.

I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation, as fat as possible, from the tyranny of the

here and now. We cannot help the egoism of our senses. Sight and sound and touch arebound up with our own bodies and cannot be impersonal. Our emotions start similarlyfrom ourselves. An infant feels hunger or discomfort, and is unaffected except by his own

physical condition. Gradually with the years, his horizon widens, and, in proportion as histhoughts and feelings become less personal and less concerned with his own physical

states, he achieves growing wisdom. This is of course a matter of degree. No one can

view the world with complete impartiality; and if anyone could, he would hardly be ableto remain alive. But it is possible to make a continual approach towards impartiality, on

the one hand, by knowing things somewhat remote in time or space, and on the otherhand, by giving to such things their due weight in our feelings. It is this approach towards

impartiality that constitutes growth in wisdom.

Can wisdom in this sense be taught? And, if it can, should the teaching of it be one of theaims of education? I should answer both these questions in the affirmative. We are told

on Sundays that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. On the other six days of theweek, we are exhorted to hate. But you will remember that the precept was exemplified

by saying that the Samaritan was our neighbour. We no longer have any wish to hate

Samaritans and so we are apt to miss the point of the parable. If you wnat to get its point,


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you should substitute Communist or anti-Communist, as the case may be, for Samaritan.It might be objected that it is right to hate those who do harm. I do not think so. If you

hate them, it is only too likely that you will become equally harmful; and it is veryunlikely that you will induce them to abandon their evil ways. Hatred of evil is itself a

kind of bondage to evil. The way out is through understanding, not through hate. I am notadvocating non-resistance. But I am saying that resistance, if it is to be effective in

preventing the spread of evil, should be combined with the greatest degree of

understanding and the smallest degree of force that is compatible with the survival of thegood things that we wish to preserve.

It is commonly urged that a point of view such as I have been advocating is incompatible

with vigour in action. I do not think history bears out this view. Queen Elizabeth I in

England and Henry IV in France lived in a world where almost everybody was fanatical,either on the Protestant or on the Catholic side. Both remained free from the errors of

their time and both, by remaining free, were beneficent and certainly not ineffective.Abraham Lincoln conducted a great war without ever departing from what I have called

wisdom.

I have said that in some degree wisdom can be taught. I think that this teaching shouldhave a larger intellectual element than has been customary in what has been thought of as

moral instruction. I think that the disastrous results of hatred and narrow-mindedness tothose who feel them can be pointed out incidentally in the course of giving knowledge. Ido not think that knowledge and morals ought to be too much separated. It is true that the

kind of specialized knowledge which is required for various kinds of skill has very littleto do with wisdom. But it should be supplemented in education by wider surveyscalculated to put it in its place in the total of human activities. Even the best technicians

should also be good citizens; and when I say 'citizens', I mean citizens of the world andnot of this or that sect or nation. With every increase of knowledge and skill, wisdom

becomes more necessary, for every such increase augments our capacity of realizing ourpurposes, and therefore augments our capacity for evil, if our purposes are unwise. Theworld needs wisdom as it has never needed it before; and if knowledge continues to

increase, the world will need wisdom in the future even more than it does now.


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Mysticism

Bertrand Russell


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The warfare between science and theology has been of a peculiar sort. At all times andplaces - except late eighteenth-century France and Soviet Russia - the majority ofscientific men have supported the orthodoxy of their age. Some of the most eminent have

been in the majority. Newton, though an Arian, was in all other respects a supporter ofthe Christian faith. Cuvier was a model of Catholic correctness. Faraday was a

Sandymanian, but the errors of that sect did not seem, even to him, to be demonstrable byscientific arguments, and his views as to the relations of science and religion were such asevery Churchman could applaud. The warfare was between theology andscience,not the

men of science. Even when the men of science held views which were condemned, theygenerally did their best to avoid conflict. Copernicus, as we saw, dedicated his book to

the Pope; Galileo retracted; Descartes, though he thought it prudent to live in Holland,

took great pains to remain on good terms with ecclesiastics, and by a calculated silenceescaped censure for sharing Galielo's opinions. In the nineteenth century, most British

men of science still thought that there was no essential conflict between their science andthose parts of the Christian faith which liberal Christians still regarded as essential - for it

had been found possible to sacrifice the literal truth of the Flood, and even of Adam andEve.

The situation in the present day is not very different from what it has been at all times

since the victory of Copernicanism. Successive scientific discoveries have causedChristians to abandon one after another of the beliefs which the Middle Ages regarded asintegral parts of the faith, and these successive retreats have enabled men of science to

remain Christians, unless their work is on that disputed frontier which the warfare hasreached in our day. Now, as at most times during the last three centuries, it is proclaimedthat science and religion have become reconciled: the scientists modestly admit that there

are realms which lie outside science, and the liberal theologians concede that they wouldnot venture to deny anything capable of scientific proof. There are, it is true, still a few

disturbers of the peace: on the one side, fundamentalists and stubborn Catholictheologians; on the other side, the more radical students of such subjects as biochemistryand animal psychology, who refuse to grant even the comparatively modest demands of

the more enlightened Churchmen. But on the whole the fight is languid as compared withwhat it was. The newer creeds of Communism and Fascism are the inheritors of

theological bigotry; and perhaps, in some deep region of the unconscious, bishops and

professors feel themselves jointly interested in the maintenance of thestatus quo.

The present relations between science and religion, as the State wishes them to appear,

may be ascertained from a very instructive volume, Science and Religion, A Symposium,consisting of twelve talks broadcast from the B.B.C. in the autumn of 1930. Outspokenopponents of religion were, of course, not included, since (to mention no other argument)

they would have pained the more orthodox among the listeners. There was, it is true, anexcellent introductory talk by Professor Julian Huxley, which contained no support for

even the most shadowy orthodoxy; but it also contained little that liberal Churchmenwould now find objectionable. The speakers who permitted themselves to expressdefinite opinions, and to advance arguments in the ir favour, took up a variety of

positions, ranging from Professor Malinowski's pathetic avowal of a balked longing to


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believe in God and immortality to Father O'Hara's bold assertion that the truths ofrevelation are more certain than those of science, and must prevail where there is conflict;

but, although the details varied, the general impression conveyed was that the conflictbetween religion and science is at an end. The result was all that could have been hoped.

Thus Canon Streeter, who spoke late, sa id that "a remarkable thing about the foregoinglectures has been the way in which their general drift has been moving in one and thesame direction. An idea has kept on recurring that science by itself is not enough."

Whether this unanimity is a fact about science and religion, or about the authorities whichcontrol the B.B.C., may be questioned; but it must be admitted that, in spite of many

differences, the authors of the symposium do show something very like agreement on thepoint mentioned by Canon Streeter.

Thus Sir J. Arthur Thomson says: "Science as science never asks the question Why?Thatis to say, it never inquires into the meaning, or significance, or purpose of this manifold

Being, Becoming, and Having Been." And he continues: "Thus science does not pretendto be a bedrock of truth." "Science," he tells us, "cannot apply its methods to the mystical

and spiritual." Professor J. S. Haldane holds that "it is only within ourselves, in our activeideals of truth, right, charity, and beauty, and consequent fellowship with others, that wefind the revelation of God." Dr. Malinowski says that "religious revelation is an

experience which, as a matter of principle, lies beyond the domain of science." I do not,for the moment, quote the theologians, since their concurrence with such opinions is to be

expected.

Before going further, let us try to be clear as to what is asserted, and as to its truth orfalsehood. When Canon Streeter says that "science is not enough," he is, in one sense,uttering a truism. Science does not include art, or friendship, or various other valuable

elements in life. But of course more than this is meant. There is another, rather moreimportant, sense in which "science is not enough," which seems to me also true: science

has nothing to say about values, and cannot prove such propositions as "it is better to lovethan to hate" or "kindness is more desirable than cruelty." Science can tell us much aboutthe meansof realizing our desires, but it cannot say that one desire is preferable to

another. This is a large subject, as to which I shall have more to say in a later chapter.

But the authors I have quoted certainly mean to assert something further, which I believe

to be false. "Science does not pretend to be a bedrock of truth" (my italics) implies thatthere is another, non-scientific method of arriving at truth. "Religious revelation lies

beyond the domain of science" tells us something as to what this non-scientific method is.

It is the method of religious revelation. Dean Inge is more explicit: "The proof ofreligion, then, is experimental." [He has been speaking of the testimony of the mystics.]"It is a progressive knowledge of God under the three attributes by which He has revealed

Himself to mankind - what are sometimes called the absolute or eternal values -Goodness or Love, Truth, and Beauty. If that is all, you will say, there is no reason why

religion should come into conflict with natural science at all. One deals with facts, theother with values. Granting that both are real, they are on different planes. This is notquite true. We have seen science poaching upon ethics, poetry, and what not. Religion

cannot help poaching either." That is to say, religion must make assertions about what is,


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and not only about what ought to be. This opinion, avowed by Dean Inge, is implicit inthe words of Sir J. Arthur Thomson and Dr. Malinowski.

Ought we to admit that there is available, in support of religion, a source of knowledge

which lies outside science and may properly be described as "revelation"? This is adifficult question to argue, because those who believe that truths have been revealed to

them profess the same kind of certainty in regard to them that we have in regard toobjects of sense. We believe the man who has seen things through the telescope that wehave never seen; why then, they ask, should we not believe them when they report things

that are to them equally unquestionable?

It is, perhaps, useless to attempt an argument such as will appeal to the man who has

himself enjoyed mystic illumination. But something can be said as to whether we othersshould accept this testimony. In the first place, it is not subject to the ordinary tests.When a man of science tells us the result of an experiment, he also tells us how the

experiment was performed; others can repeat it, and if the result is not confirmed it is notaccepted as true; but many mean might put themselves into the situation in which themystic's vision occurred without obtaining the same revelation. To this it may be

answered that a man must use the appropriate sense: a telescope is useless to a man whokeeps his eye shut. The argument as to the credibility of the mystic's testimony may be

prolonged almost indefinitely. Science should be neutral, since the argument is ascientific one, to be conducted exactly as an argument would be conducted about anuncertain experiment. Science depends upon perception and inference; its credibility is

due to the fact that the perceptions are such as any observer can test. The mystic himselfmay be certain that he knows,and he has no need of scientific tests; but those who areasked to accept his testimony will subject it to the same kind of scientific tests as those

applied to men who say they have been to the North Pole. Science, as such, should haveno expectation, positive or negative, as to the result.

The chief argument in favour of the mystics is their agreement with each other. "I know

nothing more remarkable," says Dean Inge, "than the unanimity of the mystics, ancient,mediaeval, and modern, Protestant, Catholic, and even Buddhist or Mohammedan,

though the Christian mystics are the most trustworthy." I do not wish to underrate theforce of this argument, which I acknowledged long ago in a book calledMysticism and

Logic.The mystics vary greatly in their capacity for giving verbal expression to theirexperiences, but I think we make take it that those who succeeded best all maintain: (1)that all division and separateness is unreal, and that the universe is a single indivisible

unity; (2) that evil is illusory, and that the illusion arises through falsely regarding a partas self-subsistent; (3) that time is unreal, and that reality is eternal, not in the sense of

being everlasting, but in the sense of being wholly outsid e time. I do not pretend that this

is a complete account of the matters on which all mystics concur, but the threepropositions that I have mentioned may serve as representatives of the whole. Let us now

imagine ourselves a jury in a law-court, whose business it is to decide on the credibilityof the witnesses who make these three somewhat surprising assertions.


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We shall find, in the first place, that, while the witnesses agree up to a point, theydisagree totally when that point is passed, although they are just as certain as when they

agree. Catholics, but not Protestants, may have visions in which the Virgin appears;Christians and Mohammedans, but not Buddhists, may have great truths revealed to them

by the Archangel Gabriel; the Chinese mystics of the Tao tell us, as a direct result of theircentral doctrine, that all government is bad, whereas most European and Mohammedanmystics, with equal confidence, urge submission to constituted authority. As regards the

points where they differ, each group will argue that the other groups are untrustworthy;we might, therefore, if we were content with a mere forensic triumph, point out that most

mystics think most other mystics mistaken on most points. They might, however, makethis only half a triumph by agreeing on the greater importance of the matters about whichthey are at one, as compared with those as to which their opinions differ. We will, in any

case, assume that they have composed their differences, and concentrated the defence atthese three points - namely, the unity of the world, the illusory nature of evil, and the

unreality of time. What test can we, as impartial outsiders, apply to their unanimousevidence?

As men of scientific temper, we shall naturally first ask whether there is any way bywhich we can ourselves obtain the same evidence at first hand. To this we shall receive

various answers. We may be told that we are obviously not in a receptive frame of mind,and that we lack the requisite humility; or that fasting and religious meditation are

necessary; or (if our witness is Indian or Chinese) that the essential prerequisite is acourse of breathing exercises. I think we shall find that the weight of experimental

evidence is in favour of this last view, though fasting also has been frequently foundeffective. As a matter of fact, there is a definite physical discipline, called yoga, which is

practised in order to produce the mystic's certainty, and which is recommended with

much confidence by those who have tried it.[1] Breathing exercises are its most essentialfeature, and for our purposes we may ignore the rest.

In order to see how we could test the assertion that yoga gives insight, let us artificiallysimplify this assertion. Let us suppose that a number of people assure us that if,for a

certain time,we breathe in a certain way, we shall become convinced that time is unreal.Let us go further, and suppose that, having tried their recipe, we have ourselves

experienced a state of mind such as they describe. But now, having returned to our

normal mode of respiration, we are not quite sure whether the vision was to be believed.How shall we investigate this question?

First of all, what can be meant by saying that time is unreal? If we really meant what wesay, we must mean that such statements as "this is before that" are mere empty noise, like"twas brillig." If we suppose anything less than this - as, for example, that there is a

relation between events which puts them in the same order s the relation of earlier andlater, but that it is a different relation - we shall not have made any assertion that makes

any real change in our outlook. It will be merely like supposing that the Iliad was notwritten by Homer, but by another man of the same name. We have to suppose that thereare no "events" at all; there must be only the one vast whole of the universe, embracing

whatever is real in the misleading appearance of a temporal procession. There must be


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nothing in reality corresponding to the apparent distinction between earlier and laterevents. To say that we are born, and then grow, and then die, must be just as false as to

say that we die, then grow small, and finally are born. The truth of what seems anindividual life is merely the illusory isolation of one element in the timeless and

indivisible being of the universe. There is no distinction between improvement anddeterioration, no difference between sorrows that end in happiness and happiness thatends in sorrow. If you find a corpse with a dagger in it, it makes no difference whether

the man died of the wound or the dagger was plunged in after death. Such a view, if true,puts an end, not only to science, but to prudence, hope, and effort; it is incompatible with

worldly wisdom, and - what is more important to religion - with morality.

Most mystics, of course, do not accept these conclusions in their entirety, but they urge

doctrines from which these conclusions inevitably follow. Thus Dean Inge rejects thekind of religion that appeals to evolution, because it lays too much stress upon a temporal

process. "There is no law of progress, and there is no universal progress," he says. Andagain: "The doctrine of automatic and universal progress, the lay religion of many

Victorians, labours under the disadvantage of being almost the only philosophical theorywhich can be definitely disproved." On this matter, which I shall discuss at a later stage, Ifind myself in agreement with the Dean, for whom, on many grounds, I have a very high

respect. But he naturally does not draw from his premisses all the inferences which seemto me to be warranted.

It is important not to caricature the doctrine of mysticism, in which there is, I think, a

core of wisdom. Let us see how it seeks to avoid the extreme consequences which seemto follow from the denial of time.

The philosophy based on mysticism has a great tradition, from Parmenides to Hegel.

Parmenides says: "What is, is uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable,and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once, a continuousone."[2] He introduced into metaphysics the distinction between reality and appearance,

or the way of truth and the way of opinion, as he calls them. It is clear that whoeverdenies the reality of time must introduce some such distinction, since obviously the world

appearsto be in time. It is also clear that, if everyday experience is not to be whollyillusory, there must be some relation between appearance and the reality behind it. It is at

this point, however, that the greatest difficulties arise: if the relation between appearanceand reality is made too intimate, all the unpleasant features of appearance will have theirunpleasant counterparts in reality, while if the relation is made too remote, we shall be

unable to make inferences from the character of appearance to that of reality, and realitywill be left a vague Unknowable, as with Herbert Spencer. For Christians, there is therelated difficulty of avoiding pantheism: if the world is onlyapparent, God created

nothing, and the reality corresponding to the world is a part of God; but if the world is inany degree real and distinct from God, we abandon the wholeness of everything, which is

an essential doctrine of mysticism, and we are compelled to suppose that, in so far as theworld is real, the evil which it contains is also real. Such difficulties make thorough-going mysticism very difficult for an orthodox Christian. As the Bishop of Birmingham


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says: "All forms of pantheism as it seems to me, must be rejected because, if man isactually a part of God, the evil in man is also in God."

All this time, I have been supposing that we are a jury, listening to the testimony of the

mystics, and trying to decide whether to accept or reject it. If, when they deny the realityof the world of sense, we took them to mean "reality" in the ordinary sense of law-courts,

we should have no hesitation in rejecting what they say, since we would find that it runscounter to all other testimony, and even to their own in their mundane moments. We musttherefore look for some other sense. I believe that, when the mystics contrast "reality"

with "appearance," the word "reality" has not a logical, but an emotional, significance: itmeans what is, in some sense, important. When it is said that time is "unreal," what

should be said is that, in some sense and on some occasions, it is important to conceive

the universe as a whole, as the Creator, if He existed, must have conceived it in decidingto create it. When so conceived, all process is within one completed whole; past, present,

and future, all exist, in some sense, together, and the present does not have that pre-eminent reality which it has to our usual ways of apprehending the world. It this

interpretation is accepted, mysticism expresses an emotion, not a fact; it does not assertanything, and therefore can be neither confirmed nor contradicted by science. The factthat mystics do make assertions is owing to their inability to separate emotional

importance from scientific validity. It is, of course, not to be expected that they willaccept this view, but it is the only one, so far as I can see, which, while admitting

something of their claim, is not repugnant to the scientific intelligence.

The certainty and partial unanimity of mystics is no conclusive reason for accepting theirtestimony on a matter of fact. The man of science, when he wishes others to see what hehas seen, arranges his microscope or telescope; that is to say, he makes changes in the

external world, but demands of the observer only normal eyesight. The mystic, on theother hand, demands changes in the observer, by fasting, by breathing exercises, and by a

careful abstention from external observation. (Some object to such discipline, and thinkthat the mystic illumination cannot be artificially achieved; from a scientific point ofview, this makes their case more difficult to test than that of those who rely on yoga. But

nearly all agree that fasting and an ascetic life are helpful.) We all know that opium,hashish, and alcohol produce certain effects on the observer, but as we do not think these

effects admirable we take no account of them in our theory of the universe. They may

even, sometimes, reveal fragments of truth; but we do not regard them as sources ofgeneral wisdom. The drunkard who sees snakes does not imagine, afterwards, that he has

had a revelation of a reality hidden from others, though some not wholly dissimilar beliefmust have given rise to the worship of Bacchus. In our own day, as William James

related,[3] there have been people who considered that the intoxication produced bylaughing-gas revealed truths which are hidden at normal times. From a scientific point ofview, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and

the man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is in an abnormal physical condition,and therefore has abnormal perceptions. Normal perceptions, since they have to be useful

in the struggle for life, must have some correspondence with fact; but in abnormalperceptions there is no reason to expect such correspondence, and their testimony,therefore, cannot outweigh that of normal perception.


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The mystic emotion, if it is freed from unwarranted beliefs, and not so overwhelming asto remove a man wholly from the ordinary business of life, may give something of very

great value - the same kind of thing, though in a heightened form, that is given bycontemplation. Breadth and calm and profundity may all have their source in this

emotion, in which, for the moment, all self-centred desire is dead, and the mind becomesa mirror for the vastness of the universe. Those who have had this experience, and

believe it to be bound up unavoidably with assertions about the nature of the universe,

naturally cling to these assertions. I believe myself that the assertions are inessential, andthat there is no reason to believe them true. I cannot admit any method of arriving at truth

except that of science, but in the realm of the emotions I do not deny the value of theexperiences which have given rise to religion. Through association with false beliefs,they have led to much evil as well as good; freed from this association, it may be hoped

that the good alone will remain.

Notes

1. As regards yoga in China, see Waley, The Way and its Power,pp. 117-18.2. Quoted from Burnet'sEarly Greek Philosophy, p. 199.3. See his Varieties of Religious Experience.


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On the Value of Scepticism

Bertrand Russell


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I wish to propose a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and

subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a

proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must, of

course, admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform

our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must

weigh against it. I am also aware (what is more serious) that it would tend to

diminish the incomes of clairvoyants, bookmakers, bishops, and others who live on

the irrational hopes of those who have done nothing to deserve good fortune here or

hereafter. In spite of these grave arguments, I maintain that a case can be made out

of my paradox, and I shall try to set it forth.

First of all, I wish to guard myself against being thought to take up an extreme

position. I am a British Whig, with a British love of compromise and moderation. A

story is told of Pyrrho, the founder of Pyrrhonism (which was the old name for

scepticism). He maintained that we never know enough to be sure that one course of

action is wiser than another. In his youth, when he was taking his constitutional one

afternoon, he saw his teacher in philosophy (from whom he had imbibed his

principles) with his head stuck in a ditch, unable to get out. After contemplating himfor some time, he walked on, maintaining that there was no

sufficient ground for thinking he would do any good by pulling the man out. Others,

less sceptical, effected a rescue, and blamed Pyrrho for his heartlessness. But his

teacher, true to his principles, praised him for his consistency. Now I do not advocate

such heroic scepticism as that. I am prepared to admit the ordinary beliefs of

common sense, in practice if not in theory. I am prepared to admit any well-

established result of science, not as certainly true, but as sufficiently probable to

afford a basis for rational action. If it is announced that there is to be an eclipse of

the moon on such-and-such a date, I think it worth while to look and see whether it

is taking place. Pyrrho would have thought otherwise. On this ground, I feel justified

in claiming that I advocate a middle position.

There are matters about which those who have investigated them are agreed; the

dates of eclipses may serve as an illustration. There are other matters about which

experts are not agreed. Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

Einstein's view as to the magnitude of the deflection of light by gravitation would

have been rejected by all experts not many years ago, yet it proved to be right.

Nevertheless the opinion of experts, when it is unanimous, must be accepted by non-

experts as more likely to be right than the opposite opinion. The scepticism that Iadvocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite

opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion

can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no

sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to

suspend his judgment.

These propositions may seem mild, yet, if accepted, they would absolutelyrevolutionize human life.

The opinions for which people are willing to fight and persecute all belong to one of

the three classes which this scepticism condemns. When there are rational grounds

for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In

such cases, people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly,


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and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions that are held with passion are

always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of

the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost

always held passionately. Except in China, a man is thought a poor creature unless

he has strong opinions on such matters; people hate sceptics far more than they

hate the passionate advocates of opinions hostile to their own. It is thought that the

claims of practical life demand opinions on such questions, and that, if we became

more rational, social existence would be impossible. I believe the opposite of this,

and will try to make it clear why I have this belief.

Take the question of unemployment in the years after 1920. One party held that it

was due to the wickedness of trade unions, another that it was due to the confusion

on the Continent. A third party, while admitting that these causes played a part,

attributed most of the trouble to the policy of the Bank of England in trying to

increase the value of the pound sterling. This third party, I am given to understand,contained most of the experts, but no one else. Politicians do not find any attractions

in a view which does not lend itself to party declamation, and ordinary mortals prefer

views which attribute misfortune to the machinations of their enemies. Consequently

people fight for and against quite irrelevant measures, while the few who have a

rational opinion are not listened to because they do not minister to any one's

passions. To produce converts, it would have been necessary to persuade people

that the Bank of England is wicked. To convert Labour, it would have been necessary

to show that directors of the Bank of England are hostile to trade unionism; to

convert the Bishop of London, it would have been necessary to show that they are"immoral." It would be thought to follow that their views currency are mistaken.

Let us take another illustration. It is often said that socialism is contrary to humannature, and this assertion is denied by socialists with the same heat with which it is

made by their opponents. The late Dr. Rivers, whose death cannot be sufficiently

deplored, discussed this question in a lecture at University College, published in his

posthumous book on Psychology and Politics. This is the only discussion of this topic

known to me that can lay claim to be scientific. It sets forth certain anthropological

data which show that socialism is not contrary to human nature in Melanesia; it then

points out that we do not know whether human nature is the same in Melanesia as in

Europe; and it concludes that the only way of finding out whether socialism is

contrary to European human nature is to try it. It is interesting that on the basis of

this conclusion he was willing to become a Labour candidate. But he would certainly

not have added to the heat and passion in which political controversies are usually

enveloped.

I will now venture on a topic which people find even more difficulty in treating

dispassionately, namely marriage customs. The bulk of the population of every

country is persuaded that all marriage customs other than its own are immoral, and

that those who combat this view do so only in order to justify their awn loose lives.

In India, the remarriage of widows is traditionally regarded as a thing too horrible to

contemplate. In Catholic countries divorce is thought very wicked, but some failure

of conjugal fidelity is tolerated, at least in men. In America divorce is easy, but

extra-conjugal relations are condemned with the utmost severity. Mohammedans

believe in polygamy, which we think degrading. All these differing opinions are held

with extreme vehemence, and very cruel persecutions are inflicted upon those who

contravene them. Yet no one in any of the various countries makes the slightest


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attempt to show that the custom of his own country contributes more to humanhappiness than the custom of others.

When we open any scientific treatise on the subject, such as (for example)

Westermarck's History of Human Marriage, we find an atmosphere extraordinarily

different from that of popular prejudice. We find that every kind of custom has

existed, many of them such as we should have supposed repugnant to human

nature. We think we can understand polygamy, as a custom forced upon women by

male oppressors. But what are we to say of the Tibetan custom, according to which

one woman has several husbands? Yet travellers in Tibet assure us that family life

there is at least as harmonious as in Europe. A little of such reading must soon

reduce any candid person to complete scepticism, since there seem to be no data

enabling us to say that one marriage custom is better or worse than another. Almost

all involve cruelty and intolerance towards offenders against the local code, but

otherwise they have nothing in common. It seems that sin is geographical. From thisconclusion, it is only a small step to the further conclusion that the notion of "sin" is

illusory, and that the cruelty habitually practiced in punishing it is unnecessary. It is

just this conclusion which is so unwelcome to many minds, since the infliction of

cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they inventedHell.

Nationalism is of course an ext reme example of fervent belief concerning doubtful

matters. I think it may be safely said that any scientific historian, writing now a

history of the Great War, is bound to make statements which, if made during the

war, would have exposed him to imprisonment in every one of the belligerent

countries on both sides. Again, with the exception of China, there is no country

where people tolerate the truth about themselves; at ordinary times the truth is onlythought ill-mannered, but in war-time it is thought criminal. Opposing systems of

violent belief are built up, the falsehood of which is evident from the fact that they

are believed only by those who share the same national bias. But the application of

reason to these systems of belief is thought as wicked as the application of reason to

religious dogmas was formerly thought. When people are challenged as to why

scepticism in such matters should be wicked, the only answer is that myths help to

win wars, so that a rational nation would be killed rather than kill. The view that

there is something shameful in saving one's skin by wholesale slander of foreigners

is one which, so far as I know, has hitherto found no supporters among professional

moralists outside the ranks of Quakers. If it is suggested that a rational nation wouldfind ways of keeping out of wars altogether, the answer is usually more abuse.

What would be the effect of a spread of rational scepticism? Human events spring

from passions, which generate systems of attendant myths. Psychoanalysts have

studied the individual manifestations of this process in lunatics, certified and

uncertified. A man who has suffered some humiliation invents a theory that he is

King of England, and develops all kinds of ingenious explanations of the fact that he

is not treated with that respect which his exalted position demands. In this case, his

delusion is one with which his neighbours do not sympathize, so they lock him up.

But if, instead of asserting only his own greatness, he asserts the greatness of his

nation or his class or his creed, he wins hosts of adherents, and becomes a political

or religious leader, even if, to the impartial outsider, his views seem just as absurd

as those found in asylums. In this way a collective insanity grows up, which follows

laws very similar to those of individual insanity. Every one knows that it is dangerousto depute with a lunatic who thinks he is King of England; but as he is isolated, he


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can be overpowered. When a whole nation shares a delusion, its anger is of the same

kind as that of an individual lunatic if its pretensions are disputed, but nothing short

of war can compel it to submit to reason.

The part played by intellectual factors in human behaviour is a matter as to which

there is much disagreement among psychologists. There are two quite distinct

questions: (1) how far are beliefs operative as causes of actions? (2) how far are

beliefs derived from logically adequate evidence, or capable of being so derived? On

both questions, psychologists are agreed in giving a much smaller place to the

intellectual factors than the plain man would give, but within this general agreement

there is room for considerable differences of degree. Let us take the two questions insuccession.

(1) How far are beliefs operative as causes of action? Let us not discuss the question

theoretically, but let us take an ordinary day of an ordinary man's life. He begins by

getting up in the morning, probably from force of habit, without the intervention of

any belief. He eats his breakfast, catches his train, reads his newspaper, and goes to

his office, all from force of habit. There was a time in the past when he formed these

habits, and in the choice of the office, at least, belief played a part. He probably

believed, at the time, that the job offered him there was as good as he was likely to

get. In most men, belief plays a part in the original choice of a career, and therefore,derivatively, in all that is entailed by this choice.

At the office, if he is an underling, he may continue to act merely from habit, without

active volition, and without the explicit intervention of belief. It might be thought

that, if he adds up the columns of figures, he believes the arithmetical rules which he

employs. But that would be an error; these rules are mere habits of his body, like

those of a tennis player. They were acquired in youth, not from an intellectual belief

that they corresponded to the truth, but to please the schoolmaster, just as a dog

learns to sit on its hind legs and beg for food. I do not say that all education is of this

sort, but certainly most learning of the three R's is.

If, however, our friend is a partner or director, he may be called upon during his day

to make difficult decisions of policy. In these decisions it is probable that belief wil l

play a part. He believes that some things will go up and others will go down, that so-

and-so is a sound man, and such-and-such on the verge of bankruptcy. On these

beliefs he acts. It is just because he is called upon to act on beliefs rather than mere

habits that he is considered such a much greater man than a mere clerk, and is able

to get so much more money -- provided his beliefs are true.

In his home-life there will be much the same proportion of occasions when belief is a

cause of actio

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