Chapter 26

Introduction to this Chapter

The following is an "abridged and annotated version" of a famous Bertrand Russell essay. I include it here because it illustrates how a sentient being who has wrestled with life’s dilemmas in a commendable way achieves a measure of detached compassion for the predicament of existence. When I first read this essay I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I could have written it if only my writing skills were better.

I salute Bertrand Russell for having written the best essay I've ever encountered! It captures my "feelings" about the predicament of being an automaton, the product of an evolution about which I have ambivalent feelings, and it illustrates the humanistic attitudes that I have for my fellow man. This essay is a thing of beauty, it is prose verging on poetry.

To the purist who dislikes abridgements I offer should offer an apology, but others have expressed their confusion over what Bertie was trying to say. I still encourage the reader to consult the source, which is only about twice as long as my abridged version. In the following annotated abridgement I will use un-italicized, bold font to indicate what Bertrand Russell wrote, while my annotations will be italicized.

Since the time of Greek and Roman philosophers, there have been attempts to replace a spirit haunted world view with a mechanistic world view. Lucretius believed that not only was the mechanistic view correct, but it also freed men from humiliating and unnecessary spirit appeasing rituals. Primitive ways of thinking are so entrenched that even today, surrounded by technology and scientific insight, most people still believe in spirits, angels, superstition, life after death and some version of a god. I believe that humans will carry this ancient burden with them into all future centuries that they somehow manage to reach.

The Philosophes of the 18th Century Enlightenment viewed the workings of Nature as mechanistic. They were reductionists, and removed God from the role of dictating everyday events. Whereas some of the Philosophes believed God set things in motion and then stepped back to watch his handiwork, others (like Holbach) gave Him no role whatsoever thereby denying God's existence. In either case, the mechanistic universe viewpoint answered the "how" questions (how things work), while in the process denying the existence of "why" questions (Dreiser, 1932). The mechanistic universe perspective failed to provide guidance on "how one should live" questions. Voltaire spoke for many in Candide when he portrayed the world as filled with misfortunes due to a universe that doesn't care about humans as well as widespread evil that is endemic to human nature.

Nietzsche, in the mid 19th Century, had in mind the "uncaring universe" and its implications for "how to live" when he wrote (approximate words): "When God is at last dead for Man, when the last gleam of light is extinguished, and when he is surrounded by the impenetrable darkness of an uncaring universe that exists for no purpose, then at last Man will know that he is alone and must create his own values to live by."

Near the end of the 19th Century H. G. Wells wrote The Universe Rigid (a manuscript that was lost by his publisher, prompting him to write The Time Machine, 1895). He understood more profoundly than even most contemporary scientists the implications of their mechanistic universe (i.e., a = F/m).

The uncaring nature of the universe was an important part of "the climate of opinion" at the turn of the Century, when Bertrand Russell wrote "A Free Man's Worship" (1903). Russell takes on the challenge of how a Godless person might view the "predicament of existence," and even how he might "worship" existence.

Russell touches base on all these points, but he does it with such powerful, poetic prose, that all other attempts to write what he manages to convey are pale in comparison. That is my humble opinion.

Please feel free to skip over my italicized annotations if you grasp Russell’s meaning. The continuity of his prose might flow better that way. Since I don’t want the other readers to be left out of this greatest of all essays, I have inserted my humble interpretations before Russell’s passage. I hope that by inserting my prosaic prose ahead of Russell’s poetry your reading of him will be more enjoyable.

"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 by Bruce L. Gary, 1998.08.27

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."

Now that I’ve “held your hand” for a reading of Bertie’s essay, I present his version, without annotation. For me this version has a fuller force of poetic flight.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.