The World As I See It

The message I sent to Snowball Publishing: The quality is shameful. The book is riddled with errors, including early line breaks, uneven printing, missing headings, duplicate paragraphs, and typographical errors, like "Hen" versus "Herr" Einstein. I have asked Amazon for a refund based on a defective product. They don't even want me to return the book. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. This is simply a collection of thoughts and writings of Einstein into a binder. The time of each of the different pieces is not clear.

Knowing Einstein's history and how he changed view e. This must be a purely scanned version of Einstein's writings in the public domain with zero proof reading on the publishers part! Where the word should be "in" they use "m", they use odd symbols for the letters "ae" and other oddball things. It is kind of like reading Einstein's work and working a crossword puzzle at the same time as you have to figure out two puzzle per page!

This book, the work of the great man, due to the bad errors is worth maybe two bucks tops A Very satisfying read, as I knew little about this genius's thoughts and words beyond the fact that he was the author of the Theory of Relativity and somewhat responsible for ushering us into the Atomic Age.

It was clearly stated before clicking 'BUY' that all writings regarding hard science had been edited out of this book, so it's not like I wasn't warned. And then there's the atomic bomb. There's a huge gap between Einstein's writings regarding pacifism and the unexplained common-knowledge that it was he who whispered into FDR's ear: But especially satisfying were the paragraphs regarding Einstein's views regarding God, Judaism and organized religion, and world socialism. Apparently much that has been attributed to him probably by the right -- a group to which I admittedly belong regarding the existence of God was lifted out of context and spun.

To say more about that here would become near to being a spoiler alert, so I'll leave it at that. But I will say this: Einstein's views regarding God and a Supreme Being do not clash with those of Deepak Chopra's, which is probably why you'll find Einstein referenced in several of Deepak's writings. All in all, highly recommended for those who are curious about what made Albert Einstein tick. See all reviews.

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The World as I See It

The democratic, parliamentarian regime, which is based on such independence, has in many places been shaken, dictatorships have sprung up and are tolerated, because men's sense of the dignity and the rights of the individual is no longer strong enough. In two weeks the sheep-like masses can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that the men are prepared to put on uniform and kill and be billed, for the sake of the worthless aims of a few interested parties.

Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering to-day. No wonder there is no lack of prophets who prophesy the early eclipse of our civilization. I am not one of these pessimists; I believe that better times are coming.

Let me shortly state my 10 reasons for such confidence. In my opinion, the present symptoms of decadence are explained by the fact that the development of industry and machinery has made the struggle for existence very much more severe, greatly to the detriment of the free development of the individual. But the development of machinery means that less and less work is needed from the individual for the satisfaction of the community's needs.

A planned division of labour is becoming more and more of a crying necessity, and this division will lead to the material security of the individual. This security and the spare time and energy which the individual will have at his command can be made to further his development. In this way the community may regain its health, and we will hope that future historians will explain the morbid symptoms of present-day society as the childhood ailments of an aspiring humanity, due entirely to the excessive speed at which civilization was advancing. Address at the Grave of H.

Lorentz It is as the representative of the German-speaking academic world, and in particular the Prussian Academy of Sciences, but above all as a pupil and affectionate admirer that I stand at the grave of the greatest and noblest man of our times. His genius was the torch which lighted the way from the teachings of Clerk Maxwell to the achievements of contemporary physics, to the fabric of which he contributed valuable materials and methods.

His life was ordered like a work of art down to the smallest detail. His never-failing kindness and magnanimity and his sense of justice, coupled with an intuitive understanding of people and things, made him a leader in any sphere he entered. Everyone followed him gladly, for they felt that he never set out to dominate but always simply to be of use. His work and his example will live on as an inspiration and guide to future generations.

Lorentz's work in the cause of International Co-operation With the extensive specialization of scientific research which the nineteenth century brought about, it has become rare for a man occupying a leading position in one of the sciences to manage at the same time to do valuable service to the community in the sphere of international organization and international, politics.

Such service demands not only energy, insight, and a reputation based on solid achievements, but also a freedom from national prejudice and a devotion to the common ends of all, which have become rare 11 in our times. I have met no one who combined all these qualities in himself so perfectly as H. The marvellous thing about the effect of his personality was this: Independent and headstrong natures, such as are particularly common among men of learning, do not readily bow to another's will and for the most part only accept his leadership grudgingly.

But, when Lorentz is in the presidential chair, an atmosphere of happy co-operation is invariably created, however much those present may differ in their aims and habits of thought. The secret of this success lies not only in his swift comprehension of people and things and his marvellous command of language, but above all in this, that one feels that his whole heart is in the business in hand, and that, when he is at work, he has room for nothing else in his mind.

Nothing disarms the recalcitrant so much as this. Before the war Lorentz's activities in the cause of international relations were confined to presiding at congresses of physicists. Particularly noteworthy among these were the Solvay Congresses, the first two of which were held at Brussels in and Then came the European war, which was a crushing blow to all who had the improvement of human relations in general at heart.

Even before the war was over, and still more after its end, Lorentz devoted himself to the work of reconciliation. His efforts were especially directed towards the re-establishment of fruitful and friendly co-operation between men of learning and scientific societies. An outsider can hardly conceive what uphill work this is.

The accumulated resentment of the war period has not yet died down, and many influential men persist in the irreconcilable attitude into which they allowed themselves to be driven by the pressure of circumstances. Hence Lorentz's efforts resemble those of a doctor with a recalcitrant patient who refuses to take the medicines carefully prepared for his benefit.

But Lorentz is not to be deterred, once he has recognized a course of action as the right one. The moment the war was over, he joined the governing body of the "Conseil de recherche," which was founded by the savants of the victorious countries, and from which the savants and learned societies of the Central Powers were excluded.

His object in taking this step, which caused great offence to the academic world of the Central Powers, was to influence this institution in such a way that it could be expanded into something truly international. He and other right-minded men succeeded, after repeated efforts, in securing the removal of the offensive exclusion-clause from the statutes of the "Conseil. Now, however, there are good grounds for 12 hoping that the ice will soon be broken, thanks to the tactful efforts of Lorentz, prompted by pure enthusiasm for the good cause. Lorentz has also devoted his energies to the service of international cultural ends in another way, by consenting to serve on the League of Nations Commission for international intellectual co-operation, which was called into existence some five years ago with Bergson as chairman.

For the last year Lorentz has presided over the Commission, which, with the active support of its subordinate, the Paris Institute, is to act as a go-between in the domain of intellectual and artistic work among the various spheres of culture. There too the beneficent influence of this intelligent, humane, and modest personality, whose unspoken but faithfully followed advice is, "Not mastery but service," will lead people in the right way. May his example contribute to the triumph of that spirit!

I should like to take this opportunity of telling my friend Berliner and the readers of this paper why I rate him and his work so highly. It has to be done here because it is one's only chance of getting such things said; since our training in objectivity has led to a taboo on everything personal, which we mortals may transgress only on quite exceptional occasions such as the present one.

And now, after this dash for liberty, back to the objective! The province of scientifically determined fact has been enormously extended, theoretical knowledge has become vastly more profound in every department of science. But the assimilative power of the human intellect is and remains strictly limited. Hence it was inevitable that the activity of the individual investigator should be confined to a smaller and smaller section of human knowledge.

Worse still, as a result of this specialization, it is becoming increasingly difficult for even a rough general grasp of science as a whole, without which the true spirit of research is inevitably handicapped, to keep pace with progress. A situation is developing similar to the one symbolically represented in the Bible by the story of the Tower of Babel.

Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which is threatening to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrade him to the level of a mechanic. But Berliner has come to the rescue, as far as the German-speaking world is concerned, in the most admirable way: He saw that the existing popular periodicals were sufficient to instruct and stimulate the layman; but he also saw that a first-class, well-edited organ was needed for the guidance of the scientific worker who desired to be put sufficiently au courant of developments in scientific problems, methods, and results to be able to form a judgment of his own.

Through many years of hard work he has devoted himself to this object with great intelligence and no less great determination, and done us all, and science, a service for which we cannot be too grateful. It was necessary for him to secure the co-operation of successful scientific writers and induce them to say what they had to say in a form as far as possible intelligible to non-specialists. He has often told me of the fights he had in pursuing this object, the difficulties of which he once described to me in the following riddle: What is a scientific author?

A cross between a mimosa and a porcupine. This feeling also drove him to produce a text-book of physics, the fruit of many years of strenuous work, of which a medical student said to me the other day: The scientific life of our time is simply inconceivable vzthout his paper. It is just as important to make knowledge live and to keep it alive as to solve specific problems. We are all conscious of what we owe to Arnold Berliner. A serious-minded man enjoys a good laugh now and then. Popper-Lynhaus was more than a brilliant engineer and writer. He was one of the few outstanding personalities who embody the conscience of a generation.

He has drummed it into us that society is responsible for the fate of every individual and shown us a way to translate the consequent obligation of the community into fact. The community or State was no fetish to him; he based its right to demand sacrifices of the individual entirely on its duty to give the individual personality a chance of harmonious development. Katzenstein During the eighteen years I spent in Beriin I had few close friends, and the closest was Professor Katzenstein. For more than ten years I spent my leisure hours during the summer months with him, mostly on his delightful yacht.

There we confided our experiences, ambitions, emotions to each other. We both felt that this friendship was not only a blessing because each understood the other, was enriched by him, and found ins him that responsive echo so essential to anybody who is truly alive; it also helped to make both of us more independent of external experience, to objectivize it more easily. I was a free man, bound neither by many duties nor by harassing responsibilities; my friend, on the contrary, was never free from the grip of urgent duties and anxious fears for the fate of those in peril.

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If, as was invariably the case, he had performed some dangerous operations in the morning, he would ring up on the telephone, immediately before we got into the boat, to enquire after the condition of the patients about whom he was worried; I could see how deeply concerned he was for the lives entrusted to his care. It was marvellous that this shackled outward existence did not clip the wings of his soul; his imagination and his sense of humour were irrepressible.

He never became the typical conscientious North German, whom the Italians in the days of their freedom used to call bestia seriosa. How he found time and energy for them was always a mystery to me; but the passion for scientific enquiry is not to be crushed by any burdens. The man who is possessed with it perishes sooner than it does.

There were two types of problems that engaged his attention. The first forced itself on him out of the necessities of his practice. Thus he was always thinking out new ways of inducing healthy muscles to take the place of lost ones, by ingenious transplantation of tendons. He found this remarkably easy, as he possessed an uncommonly strong spatial imagination and a remarkably sure feeling for mechanism.

How happy he was when he had succeeded in making somebody fit for normal life by putting right the muscular system of his face, foot, or arm! And the same when he avoided an operation, even in cases which had been sent to him by physicians for surgical treatment in cases of gastric ulcer by neutralizing the pepsin. He also set great store by the treatment of peritonitis by an anti-toxic coli-semm which he discovered, and rejoiced in the successes he achieved with it. In talking of it he often lamented 15 the fact that this method of treatment was not endorsed by his colleagues.

The second group of problems had to do with the common conception of an antagonism between different sorts of tissue. He believed that he was here on the track of a general biological principle of widest application, whose implications he followed out with admirable boldness and persistence.

Starting out from this basic notion he discovered that osteomyelon and periosteum prevent each other's growth if they are not separated from each other by bone. In this way he succeeded in explaining hitherto inexplicable cases of wounds ailing to heal, and in bringing about a cure. This general notion of the antagonism of the tissues, especially of epithelium and connective tissue, was the subject to which he devoted his scientific energies, especially in the last ten years of his life.

Experiments on animals and a systematic investigation of the growth of tissues in a nutrient fluid were carried out side by side. How thankful he was, with his hands tied as they were by his duties, to have found such an admirable and infinitely enthusiastic fellow- worker in Fralein Knake! He succeeded in securing wonderful results bearing on the factors which favour the growth of epithelium at the expense of that of connective tissue, results which may well be of decisive importance for the study of cancer. He also had the pleasure of inspiring his own son to become his intelligent and independent fellow- worker, and of exciting the warm interest and co-operation of Sauerbruch just in the last years of his life, so that he was able to die with the consoling thought that his life's work would not perish, but would be vigorously continued on the lines he had laid down.

The World as I See It by Albert Einstein

I for my part am grateful to fate for having given me this man, with his inexhaustible goodness and high creative gifts, for a friend. Solf I am delighted to be able to offer you. Solf, the heartiest congratulations, the congratulations of Lessing College, of which you have become an indispensable pillar, and the congratulations of all who are convinced of the need for close contact between science and art and the public which is hungry for spiritual nourishment.

You have not hesitated to apply your energies to a field where there are no laurels to be won, but quiet, loyal work to be done in the interests of the general standard of intellectual and spiritual life, which is in peculiar danger to-day owing to a variety of circumstances. Exaggerated respect for athletics, an excess of coarse impressions which the complications of life through the technical discoveries of recent years has brought with it, the increased severity 16 of the struggle for existence due to the economic crisis, the brutahzation of political life—all these factors are hostile to the ripening of the character and the desire for real culture, and stamp our age as barbarous, materialistic, and superficial.

Specialization in every sphere of intellectual work is producing an everwidening gulf between the intellectual worker and the non-specialist, which makes it more difficult for the life of the nation to be fertilized and enriched by the achievements of art and science. But contact between the intellectual and the masses must not be lost. It is necessary for the elevation of society and no less so for renewing the strength of the intellectual worker; for the flower of science does not grow in the desert.

For this reason you, Herr Solf, have devoted a portion of your energies to Lessing College, and we are grateful to you for doing so. And we wish you further success and happiness in your work for this noble cause. Of Wealth I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause.

The example of great and pure characters is the only thing that can produce fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie? Education and Educators A letter. It is clever, well observed, honest, it stands on its own feet up to a point, and yet it is so typically feminine, by which I mean derivative and vitiated by personal rancour.

I suffered exactly the same treatment at the hands of my teachers, who disliked me for my independence and passed me over when they wanted assistants I must admit that I was somewhat less of a model student than you. But it would not have been worth my while to write anything about my school life, still less would I have liked to be responsible for anyone's printing or actually reading it. Besides, one always cuts a poor figure if one 17 complains about others who are stmgghng for their place in the sun too after their own fashion.

Therefore pocket your temperament and keep your manuscript for your sons and daughters, m order that they may derive consolation from it and—not give a damn for what their teachers tell them or think of them. Incidentally I am only coming to Princeton to research, not to teach. There is too much education altogether, especially in American schools. The only rational way of educating is to be an example—of what to avoid, if one can't be the other sort. To the Schoolchildren of Japan In sending this greeting to you Japanese schoolchildren, I can lay claim to a special right to do so.

For I have myself visited your beautiful country, seen its cities and houses, its mountains and woods, and in them Japanese boys who had learnt from them to love their country.

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A big fat book full of coloured drawings by Japanese children lies always on my table. If you get my message of greeting from all this distance, bethink you that ours is the first age in history to bring about friendly and understanding intercourse between people of different countries; in former times nations passed their lives in mutual ignorance, and in fact hated or feared one another.

May the spirit of brotherly understanding gain ground more and more among them. With this in mind I, an old man, greet you Japanese schoolchildren from afar and hope that your generation may some day put mine to shame. Teachers and Pupils An address to children The principal art of the teacher is to awaken the joy in creation and knowledge.

My dear Children, I rejoice to see you before me to-day, happy youth of a sunny and fortunate land. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common. If you always keep that in mind you will find a meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other nations and ages. Paradise Lost As late as the seventeenth century the savants and artists of all Europe were so closely united by the bond of a common ideal that co-operation between them was scarcely affected by political events.

This unity was further strengthened by the general use of the Latin language. To-day we look back at this state of affairs as at a lost paradise. The passions of nationalism have destroyed this community of the intellect, and the Latin language, which once united the whole world, is dead. The men of learning have become the chief mouthpieces of national tradition and lost their sense of an intellectual commonwealth. Nowadays we are faced with the curious fact that the politicians, the practical men of affairs, have become the exponents of international ideas.

It is they who have created the League of Nations. Religion and Science Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and desire are the motive forces behind all human endeavour and human creation, in however exalted a guise the latter may present itself to us.

Now what are the feelings and needs that have led men to religious thought and belief in the widest sense of the words? A little consideration will suffice to show us that the most varying emotions preside over the birth of religious thought and experience. With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions—fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connexions is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates for itself more or less analogous beings on whose wills and actions these fearful 19 happenings depend.

One's object now is to secure the favour of these beings by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down from generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed towards a mortal. I am speaking now of the religion of fear. This, though not created, is in an important degree stabilized by the formation of a special priestly caste which sets up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases the leader or ruler whose position depends on other factors, or a privileged class, combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly caste make common cause in their own interests.

The social feelings are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes, the God who, according to the width of the believer's outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even life as such, the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing, who preserves the souls of the dead.

This is the social or moral conception of God. The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, which is continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions. The development from a religion of fear to moral religion is a great step in a nation's life. That primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard.

The truth is that they are all intermediate types, with this reservation, that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates. Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. Only individuals of exceptional endowments and exceptionally high-minded communities, as a general rule, get in any real sense beyond this level. But there is a third state of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form, and which I will call cosmic religious feeling.

It is very difficult to explain this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it. The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvellous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in 20 the world of thought. He looks upon individual existence as a sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. Buddhism, as we have learnt from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer especially, contains a much stronger element of it.

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no Church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with the highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as Atheists, sometimes also as saints.

Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another. How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it. We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason.

The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events—that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through.

Hence science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the Churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest incitement to scientific research.

Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion which pioneer work in theoretical science demands, can grasp the strength of the emotion 21 out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate reahties of Hfe, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationahty of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labour in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a sceptical world, have shown the way to those like-minded with themselves, scattered through the earth and the centuries.

Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man strength of this sort.

A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people. The Religiousness of Science You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man.

For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe. But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.

The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.

The Plight of Science The German-speaking countries are menaced by a danger to which those in the know are in duty bound to call attention in the most emphatic terms. The economic stress which political events bring in their train does not hit everybody equally hard. Among the hardest hit are the institutions and individuals whose material existence depends directly on the State. To this category belong the scientific institutions and workers on whose work not 22 merely the well-being of science but also the position occupied by Germany and Austria in the scale of culture very largely depends.

To grasp the full gravity of the situation it is necessary to bear in mind the following consideration. In times of crisis people are generally blind to everything outside their immediate necessities. For work which is directly productive of material wealth they will pay. But science, if it is to flourish, must have no practical end in view. As a general rule, the knowledge and the methods which it creates only subserve practical ends indirectly and, in many cases, not till after the lapse of several generations. Neglect of science leads to a subsequent dearth of intellectual workers able, in virtue of their independent outlook and judgment, to blaze new trails for industry or adapt themselves to new situations.

Where scientific enquiry is stunted the intellectual life of the nation dries up, which means the withering of many possibilities of future development. This is what we have to prevent. Now that the State has been weakened as a result of nonpolitical causes, it is up to the economically stronger members of the community to come to the rescue directly, and prevent the decay of scientific life. Far-sighted men with a clear understanding of the situation have set up institutions by which scientific work of every sort is to be kept going in Germany and Austria.

Help to make these efforts a real success. In my teaching work I see with admiration that economic troubles have not yet succeeded in stifling the will and the enthusiasm for scientific research. Indeed, it looks as if our disasters had actually quickened the devotion to non-material goods.

Everywhere people are working with burning enthusiasm in the most difficult circumstances. See to it that the will-power and the talents of the youth of to-day do not perish to the grievous hurt of the community as a whole. My dear Sir, Two of the most eminent and respected men of science in Italy have applied to me in their difficulties of conscience and requested me to write to you with the object of preventing, if possible, a piece of cruel persecution with which men of learning are threatened in Italy.

I refer to a form of oath in which fidelity to the Fascist system is to be promised. The burden of my request is that you should please advise Signor Mussolini to 23 spare the flower of Italy's intellect this humiliation. However much our political convictions may differ, I know that we agree on one point: Those achievements are based on the freedom of thought and of teaching, on the principle that the desire for truth must take precedence of all other desires.

It was this basis alone that enabled our civilization to take its rise in Greece and to celebrate its rebirth in Italy at the Renaissance.

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This supreme good has been paid for by the martyr's blood of pure and great men, for whose sake Italy is still loved and reverenced to-day. Far be it from me to argue with you about what inroads on human liberty may be justified by reasons of State. But the pursuit of scientific truth, detached from the practical interests of everyday life, ought to be treated as sacred by every Government, and it is in the highest interests of all that honest servants of truth should be left in peace.

This is also undoubtedly in the interests of the Italian State and its prestige in the eyes of the world. Hoping that my request will not fall on deaf ears, I am, etc. Interviewers To be called to account publicly for everything one has said, even in jest, an excess of high spirits, or momentary anger, fatal as it must be in the end, is yet up to a point reasonable and natural. But to be called to account publicly for what others have said in one's name, when one cannot defend oneself, is indeed a sad predicament. Well, everyone who is of sufficient interest to the public to be pursued by interviewers.

You smile incredulously, but I have had plenty of direct experience and will tell you about it. Imagine the following situation. One morning a reporter comes to you and asks you in a friendly way to tell him something about your friend N. At first you no doubt feel something approaching indignation at such a proposal. But you soon discover that there is no escape. If you refuse to say anything, the man writes: But he prudently avoided my questions. This in itself enables the reader to draw the 24 inevitable conclusions. He can find a bright side to any situation.

His enterprise and industry know no bounds; his job takes up his entire energies. He is devoted to his family and lays everything he possesses at his wife's feet. He is so completely a slave to his job that he has no time for the considerations of any non-personal subject or for any mental activity outside it. He spoils his wife unbelievably and is utterly under her thumb. He reads this, and some more like it, in the paper next morning, and his rage against you knows no bounds, however cheerful and benevolent his natural disposition may be.

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

The essay was originally published in "Forum and Century," vol. It is also included in Living Philosophies pp.

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For a more recent source, you can also find a copy of it in A. Bonzana Books, pp. Exhibit Info Exhibit Home. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.