"A
Free Man's Worship"
Bertrand Russell
Published in Independent Review, 1903
(Also reprinted in Mysticism and Logic as Chapter 3, W. W. Norton and
Company, New York, 1929)
Abridged and annotated
1998.08.27; my version italicized.
Science has removed the veil of mystery from the
workings of the universe, forcing Man to accept a view in which all things are
the result of cold, uncaring forces. Man must accept that his existence is an
unforeseen accident of Nature, and our understanding of the blind workings of
these same forces persuades us that Mankind will eventually perish, along with
his proud achievements.
"...
Such ... is the world which Science presents for our belief. ... That man is
the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they 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; ... all the noonday
brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the
solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be
buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins..."
How ironic that blind forces created a creature
that thinks and aspires to understand the forces that created it, with an
understanding denied the creating forces ‑ since they are blind. And more, this
creature has feelings of good and evil, which also are denied the creating
forces. And this new creature uses these insights and feelings to make judgments
about the universe that created it.
"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 at last 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 of being powerless within this
mechanistic universe, as metaphorically emphasized by the fact that we die
after just a few short years of existence, this thinking and feeling creature
is nevertheless "free." He is free to ponder, to understand, to pass
judgment, and imagine things that theoretically could exist. All these things
are denied to the rest of the universe, to the forces that bind the sentient
individual, and this makes the sentient "superior" to the creating
and enslaving forces.
"In
spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free,
during his brief years, to examine, to criticize, 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 the resistless forces that control
his outward life."
Even primitive people understand that they are
subject to forces more powerful than themselves. Those of our ancestors who
acknowledged the power of stronger men and prostrated themselves in their
worship, were more likely to be spared, and therefore tended to survive. The
powers of Nature were dealt with similarly, because of the savages imperfect
understanding of the differences between Nature and Man; hence, our ancestors
prostrated themselves before the imagined Gods who represented Natural forces
and offered sacrifices of valued things as if these would evoke compassion.
"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 his worship. 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 savage relates to Nature the way a slave
relates to his master. A slave dare not complain to his master about the unfair
infliction of pain. Similarly, the savage dare not complain about the
unfairness of his Gods.
"The
religion of Moloch ‑ as such creeds may be generically called ‑ is in essence
the cringing submission 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, Power may be freely worshipped, and receive an
unlimited respect, despite its wanton infliction of pain."
The thinking person bravely acknowledges the
imperfectness of the world. Unlike the savage, for whom survival is paramount
and which constrains his thinking, we thinking people refuse to surrender our
wish for the world to be better. We boldly worship "truth" and
"beauty" and other concepts which are luxuries for the savage. The
savage is enslaved by his excessive concern with the Powers of Nature, which
for him are too complex to challenge. We have become "free" by
refusing to worship fear‑driven Power, like a slave worships his master, and to
worship instead an imagined world of goodness, fairness and perfection. Even
when the world does not bring forth goodness in our lives, we can at least
imagine it, and seek solace from the imagined state. Although we know that we
are mortal, we can at least imagine immortality, and be comforted by the
thought. No matter how buffeted our lives may be by uncaring natural forces, we
can still imagine a tranquil state, and use it's vision to survive the real
world with equanimity (cf. Ch. 19).
"...
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
realized in the realm 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 with the approval of the unconscious universe.
If Power is bad, as it seems to be, let us reject it from 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 insight of
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 fellowmen, free from 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."
Part of growing‑up is surrendering the Mother
Love that bathed our self‑centered baby years. Our wishes cannot always be met
by crying, as they once were. The adult must abandon childhood dreams when Fate
denies them, and we must emotionally accept that this is normal. This
acceptance of limitations is a precondition for further growth.
"...
To every man comes, sooner or later, the great renunciation. For the young,
there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the 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,
that the 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."
<>
After learning that the outer world was not
created for our benefit, but that we are mere unintended products of its blind
forces, it becomes easier to accept the limitations of living within it. We can
forgive it for whatever unintended calamities occur, for the Universe does not
seek out its victims. It is unconscious, and uncaring, so there is no point in
worshiping it for the purpose of avoiding its anger. This frees us to begin to
see beauty within it. Because it is powerful it deserves our respect, but
because it does not take notice of us we are free to think about it any way
that we want. That which once scared us becomes beautiful, and worthy of our
worship. But this is a new worship, for instead of being driven by fear and the
need to propitiate, we are driven by the idealization of beauty, by aesthetics.
This is a sort of triumph of the human mind over a once intimidating universe.
"...
When, without the bitterness of impotent rebellion we have learnt both to
resign ourselves to the outward rule of Fate and to recognize that the non‑human
world is unworthy 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 image of shining gold replaces the old idol of clay. In
all the multiform facets of the world ‑ in the visual shapes of trees and
mountains and clouds, in the events of the life of man, even in the very
omnipotence of Death ‑ the insight of creative idealism can find the reflection
of a beauty which its own thoughts first made. In this way mind asserts its
subtle mastery over the thoughtless forces of Nature."
Death represents another challenge to the person
who has shaken off the shackles of savage thinking. There is no denying that it
is inevitable and irrevocable. The vastness of the unlived future, matched by
the vastness of the unlived past, would seem to diminish the significance of
the short span we do live. How ironic that during our brief span there should
be so much travail and pain. Seeing that much of this sorrow is produced by
petty strivings, we are less eager to pursue the endless and trivial struggles
that once constituted our everyday life. Ever more freed from conventional
shackles, and more aloof, it is easier to comprehend the poignancy of the human
predicament: we are all subject to the same brief existence, surrounded by an
immense and uncaring universe, we invent meaning and work together to achieve
imagined goals, but most of these goals are transitory and petty, so in effect
we squander our short tenure. And finally, we die alone, carrying the burden of
knowledge that our struggles were for imagined causes, and that our final
defeat is a passage into an uncaring, inanimate oblivion. However, with our
contemporaries we share the realization of the aloneness of Death, and this
recognition can bond us. Out of this shared dilemma can arise a new empathy for
our fellow Man.
"...
In the spectacle of Death, in the endurance of intolerable pain, and in the
irrevocableness of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an over‑powering
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 bound
to 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
courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares
nothing for its hopes and 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 of human 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."
Whereas the savage continues to view the inanimate
world as animate, and therefore worships false gods (in the manner of a slave),
and whereas the savage continues to be driven by petty strivings with
transitory rewards of personal happiness, thereby squandering a finite life,
and whereas the savage refuses to accept the inevitable victory of an uncaring
universe over his petty struggles, and therefore invents pitiful palliative
realities promising everlasting heavenly happiness, the thoughtful man is free
of all these false worshippings, false strivings, and false hopes. This
emancipating perspective opens the way to the free man's worship.
"...
The life of Man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison with the
forces of Nature. 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 which they devour. But, great as they are, to think of
them greatly, to feel their passionless splendor, 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. To abandon 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's worship."
Thoughtful men, who have freed themselves from
the savage's slave worship mentality, are bound together by an acknowledgement
of their shared fate. Each of us faces the existential dilemma, each confronts
an uncaring physical universe and an evil animate one, each of us endures this
for a brief time, and each of us will die alone. To the extent that I
understand my individual fate, I also understand the fate of my fellow man. Our
shared doom creates a feeling of fellowship. Together we march through the
treacherous fields of life, and one by one we fall down to die. We are fellow‑sufferers,
and it feels right to reach out with a helpful hand to those who we shall later
become. We may see their shortcomings, and know that we have ours; and remembering
their burden of sorrows, we forgive."
...
United with his fellow‑men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common
doom, the free 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 invisible foes, 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 our sight, seized by the silent orders of
omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can 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
joy of a never tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill
faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and
demerits, but let us think only of their need ‑ of the sorrows, the
difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let
us remember that they are fellow‑sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the
same tragedy with ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good
and their 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 of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were
ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage
glowed."
Let our little day in the immense scheme of
things be free of unnecessary pain, and be filled with gratitude. Let us
worship, during our few precious moments, at our self‑built shrine dedicated to
aesthetic beauty. If we cherish these few good things during our journey, then
we will be less buffeted by the uncaring universe that unknowingly created us.
This is the only worship worthy of free men.
"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 rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned today to lose his
dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only
to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty 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 of chance, 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 own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of
unconscious power.