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Unit 2: A Free Man’s Worship by Bertrand Russell

lies Man’s true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own love Notes
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 worshipping
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.

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