WHAT I BELIEVE
THE TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW SERIES
_DÆDALUS, or Science and the Future_
By J. B. S. Haldane
_ICARUS, or The Future of Science_
By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.
_THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST_
By F. G. Crookshank, M.D. _Fully Illustrated_
_WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES_
By Prof. A. M. Low. _With four Diagrams_
_TANTALUS, or The Future of Man_
By F. C. S. Schiller
_NARCISSUS, An Anatomy of Clothes_
By Gerald Heard. _Illustrated_
_CALLINICUS, A Defence of Chemical Warfare_
By J. B. S. Haldane
_THE PASSING OF THE PHANTOMS_
By C. J. Patten, M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.R.A.I.
_QUO VADIMUS? Some Glimpses of the Future_
By E. E. Fournier d’Albe, D.Sc., F.Inst.P.
_THE CONQUEST OF CANCER_
By H. W. S. Wright, M.S., F.R.C.S.
_LYSISTRATA, or Woman and the Future_
By Anthony M. Ludovici
_WHAT I BELIEVE_
By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.
_HYPATIA_
By Dora Russell (The Hon. Mrs. Bertrand Russell)
_In Preparation_
_PERSEUS, of Dragons_
By H. F. Scott Stokes, M.A.
_THE EVOCATION OF GENIUS_
By Alan Porter
_THE FUTURE OF SEX_
By Rebecca West
_AESCULAPIUS, or Disease and The Man_
By F. G. Crookshank, M.D.
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
WHAT I BELIEVE
BY
BERTRAND RUSSELL
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1925
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
First Printing, April, 1925
Second Printing, June, 1925
Third Printing, June, 1925
Fourth Printing, March, 1926
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
In this little book, I have tried to say what I think of man’s place
in the universe, and of his possibilities in the way of achieving the
good life. In _Icarus_ I expressed my fears; in the following pages I
have expressed my hopes. The inconsistency is only apparent. Except
in astronomy, mankind have not achieved the art of predicting the
future; in human affairs, we can see that there are forces making for
happiness, and forces making for misery. We do not know which will
prevail, but to act wisely we must be aware of both.
_January 1st, 1925_ B. R.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I NATURE AND MAN 1
II THE GOOD LIFE 19
III MORAL RULES 35
IV SALVATION: INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL 55
V SCIENCE AND HAPPINESS 65
WHAT I BELIEVE
CHAPTER I
NATURE AND MAN
Man is a part of Nature, not something contrasted with Nature. His
thoughts and his bodily movements follow the same laws that describe
the motions of stars and atoms. The physical world is large compared
with Man――larger than it was thought to be in Dante’s time, but not so
large as it seemed a hundred years ago. Both upward and downward, both
in the large and in the small, science seems to be reaching limits. It
is thought that the universe is of finite extent in space, and that
light could travel round it in a few hundred millions of years. It is
thought that matter consists of electrons and protons, which are of
finite size, and of which there are only a finite number in the world.
Probably their changes are not continuous, as used to be thought, but
proceed by jerks, which are never smaller than a certain minimum jerk.
The laws of these changes can apparently be summed up in a small number
of very general principles, which determine the past and the future of
the world when any small section of its history is known.
Physical science is thus approaching the stage when it will be
complete, and therefore uninteresting. Given the laws governing the
motions of electrons and protons, the rest is merely geography――a
collection of particular facts telling their distribution throughout
some portion of the world’s history. The total number of facts of
geography required to determine the world’s history is probably finite;
theoretically, they could all be written down in a big book to be
kept at Somerset House, with a calculating machine attached, which, by
turning a handle, would enable the inquirer to find out the facts at
other times than those recorded. It is difficult to imagine anything
less interesting, or more different from the passionate delights of
incomplete discovery. It is like climbing a high mountain and finding
nothing at the top except a restaurant where they sell ginger-beer,
surrounded by fog but equipped with wireless. Perhaps in the time of
Ahmes the multiplication-table was exciting.
Of this physical world, uninteresting in itself, Man is a part. His
body, like other matter, is composed of electrons and protons, which,
so far as we know, obey the same laws as those not forming part of
animals or plants. There are some who maintain that physiology
can never be reduced to physics, but their arguments are not very
convincing and it seems prudent to suppose that they are mistaken.
What we call our “thoughts” seem to depend upon the organization of
tracks in the brain in the same sort of way in which journeys depend
upon roads and railways. The energy used in thinking seems to have
a chemical origin; for instance, a deficiency of iodine will turn a
clever man into an idiot. Mental phenomena seem to be bound up with
material structure. If this be so, we cannot suppose that a solitary
electron or proton can “think”; we might as well expect a solitary
individual to play a football match. We also cannot suppose that an
individual’s thinking survives bodily death, since that destroys the
organization of the brain, and dissipates the energy which utilized the
brain-tracks.
God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion,
find no support in science. It cannot be said that either doctrine
is essential to religion, since neither is found in Buddhism. (With
regard to immortality, this statement in an unqualified form might be
misleading, but it is correct in the last analysis). But we in the West
have come to think of them as the irreducible minimum of theology. No
doubt people will continue to entertain these beliefs, because they are
pleasant, just as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our
enemies wicked. But for my part I cannot see any ground for either.
I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally
cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so
may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one
of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside
the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason
to consider any of them. I shall not enlarge upon this question, as I
have dealt with it elsewhere.[A]
[A] See my _Philosophy of Leibniz_, Chapter XV.
The question of personal immortality stands on a somewhat different
footing. Here evidence either way is possible. Persons are part of the
everyday world with which science is concerned, and the conditions
which determine their existence are discoverable. A drop of water
is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If,
therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of
aqueousness which would survive its dissolution, we should be inclined
to be sceptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal,
and that the organized energy of a living body becomes, as it were,
demobilized at death, and therefore not available for collective
action. All the evidence goes to show that what we regard as our mental
life is bound up with brain-structure and organized bodily energy.
Therefore it is rational to suppose that mental life ceases when bodily
life ceases. The argument is only one of probability, but it is as
strong as those upon which most scientific conclusions are based.
There are various grounds upon which this conclusion might be
attacked. Psychical research professes to have actual scientific
evidence of survival, and undoubtedly its procedure is, in principle,
scientifically correct. Evidence of this sort might be so overwhelming
that no one with a scientific temper could reject it. The weight to be
attached to the evidence, however, must depend upon the antecedent
probability of the hypothesis of survival. There are always different
ways of accounting for any set of phenomena, and of these we should
prefer the one which is antecedently least improbable. Those who
already think it likely that we survive death will be ready to view
this theory as the best explanation of psychical phenomena. Those,
who, on other grounds, regard this theory as unplausible will seek
for other explanations. For my part, I consider the evidence so far
adduced by psychical research in favour of survival much weaker than
the physiological evidence on the other side. But I fully admit that
it might at any moment become stronger, and in that case it would be
unscientific to disbelieve in survival.
Survival of bodily death is, however, a different matter from
immortality: it may only mean a postponement of psychical death. It
is immortality that men desire to believe in. Believers in immortality
will object to physiological arguments, such as I have been using, on
the ground that soul and body are totally disparate, and that the soul
is something quite other than its empirical manifestations through our
bodily organs. I believe this to be a metaphysical superstition. Mind
and matter alike are for certain purposes convenient terms, but are not
ultimate realities. Electrons and protons, like the soul, are logical
fictions: each is really a history, a series of events, not a single
persistent entity. In the case of the soul, this is obvious from the
facts of growth. Whoever considers conception, gestation, and infancy
cannot seriously believe that the soul is an indivisible something,
perfect and complete throughout this process. It is evident that it
grows like the body, and that it derives both from the spermatozoon
and from the ovum, so that it cannot be indivisible. This is not
materialism: it is merely the recognition that everything interesting
is a matter of organization, not of primal substance.
Metaphysicians have advanced innumerable arguments to prove that the
soul _must_ be immortal. There is one simple test by which all these
arguments can be demolished. They all prove equally that the soul must
pervade all space. But as we are not so anxious to be fat as to live
long, none of the metaphysicians in question have ever noticed this
application of their reasonings. This is an instance of the amazing
power of desire in blinding even very able men to fallacies which would
otherwise be obvious at once. If we were not afraid of death, I do not
believe that the idea of immortality would ever have arisen.
Fear is the basis of religious dogma, as of so much else in human
life. Fear of human beings, individually or collectively, dominates
much of our social life, but it is fear of nature that gives rise
to religion. The antithesis of mind and matter is, as we have seen,
more or less illusory; but there is another antithesis which is more
important――that, namely, between things that can be affected by our
desires and things that cannot be so affected. The line between the
two is neither sharp nor immutable――as science advances, more and more
things are brought under human control. Nevertheless there remain
things definitely on the other side. Among these are all the _large_
facts of our world, the sort of facts that are dealt with by astronomy.
It is only facts on or near the surface of the earth that we can, to
some extent, mould to suit our desires. And even on the surface of the
earth, our powers are very limited. Above all, we cannot prevent death,
although we can often delay it.
Religion is an attempt to overcome this antithesis. If the world
is controlled by God, and God can be moved by prayer, we acquire a
share in omnipotence. In former days, miracles happened in answer to
prayer; they still do in the Catholic Church, but Protestants have lost
this power. However, it is possible to dispense with miracles, since
Providence has decreed that the operation of natural laws shall produce
the best possible results. Thus belief in God still serves to humanize
the world of nature, and to make men feel that physical forces are
really their allies. In like manner immortality removes the terror from
death. People who believe that when they die they will inherit eternal
bliss may be expected to view death without horror, though, fortunately
for medical men, this does not invariably happen. It does, however,
soothe men’s fears somewhat, even when it cannot allay them wholly.
Religion, since it has its source in terror, has dignified certain
kinds of fear, and made people think them not disgraceful. In this it
has done mankind a great disservice: _all_ fear is bad, and ought to be
overcome not by fairy tales, but by courage and rational reflection.
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will
survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver
with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less
true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love
lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has
borne himself proudly on the scaffold: surely the same pride should
teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the
open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor
warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings
vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
The philosophy of nature is one thing, the philosophy of value is
quite another. Nothing but harm can come of confusing them. What we
think good, what we should like, has no bearing whatever upon what is,
which is the question for the philosophy of nature. On the other hand,
we cannot be forbidden to value this or that on the ground that the
non-human world does not value it, nor can we be compelled to admire
anything because it is a “law of nature.” Undoubtedly we are part
of nature, which has produced our desires, our hopes and fears, in
accordance with laws which the physicist is beginning to discover. In
this sense we are part of nature; in the philosophy of nature, we are
subordinated to nature, the outcome of natural laws, and their victims
in the long run.
The philosophy of nature must not be unduly terrestrial; for it, the
earth is merely one of the smaller planets of one of the smaller stars
of the Milky Way. It would be ridiculous to warp the philosophy of
nature in order to bring out results that are pleasing to the tiny
parasites of this insignificant planet. Vitalism as a philosophy, and
evolutionism, show, in this respect, a lack of sense of proportion and
logical relevance. They regard the facts of life, which are personally
interesting to us, as having a cosmic significance, not a significance
confined to the earth’s surface. Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic
philosophies, show the same naïve humanism: the great world, so far
as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad,
and is not concerned to make us either happy or unhappy. All such
philosophies spring from self-importance, and are best corrected by a
little astronomy.
But in the philosophy of value the situation is reversed. Nature is
only a part of what we can imagine; everything, real or imagined, can
be appraised by us, and there is no outside standard to show that our
valuation is wrong. We are ourselves the ultimate and irrefutable
arbiters of value, and in the world of value Nature is only a part.
Thus in this world we are greater than Nature. In the world of values,
Nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad, deserving of
neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create value, and our
desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase
our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine the
good life, not for Nature――not even for Nature personified as God.