Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Archives

The Bertrand Russell case by Marshall]. Gauvin [Marshall Gauvin (1881-1978) was a well-known Canadian freethinker and the author of many pamphlets. He remained active until very late in life. The following lecture was delivered to the Winnipeg Humanist Society on 14 April, 1940. It is published here with the permission of Mr. Gauvin's executor.] BERTRAND RUSSELL IS one ofthe clearest headed men living. He ranks among the world's foremost mathematicians and philosophers. His wide-ranging culture places him among the few best informed men of the age. His penetrating analysis of the universe and his contributions to the social sciences place him among the great intellectual leaders ofthe world. His many books, all brilliantly clear and thoroughly sane, give him a high place in the history of education. Beyond question, Russell is one of the most civilized and valuable men living. A little while ago, this great Englishman, who is now a teacher in the University of California, was appointed by the Board of Higher Education of the City of New York, Professor of Philosophy at City College, New York. Some religious interests of New York brought suit in court against the Russell appointment, pleading that the philosopher, on account ofsome ofhis opinions, was not a fit person to teach in a school in the State of New York, and the judge of the court handed down a judgment declaring the 47 48 Russell summer 1982 appointment null and void. The case has aroused a tremendous furore in New York and elsewhere in the United States. It has brought into bold relief the clash between religious reaction and higher education. It has furnished a signal example of the power of tradition to silence the teacher who would impart scientific views oflife. The decision of the court is a denial ofacademic freedom, in the interest ofpopular ignorance and obscurantism. Whether or not an appeal will be made to a higher court, I do not know. Meanwhile, the case stands as a challenge to those who fear the light to the right of men and women to see and understand life as it is. For Bertrand Russell is a thinker whose thoughts represent in greater or less degree an understanding of life, and the question is whether or not people shall be allowed to know and judge of the value of his thinking. Let us look briefly into this thinker's thinking in various fields, including the thinking to which some of the people of New York have taken exception. But first, a word about the man himself. Bertrand Russell is, by right of birth, a member of the British aristocracy. He is the third Earl Russell; but he never uses this title. His real title to distinction is the possession ofan intellect the like of which rarely appears either among the nobility or elsewhere. He was born sixty-seven years ago, of freethinking parents. His mother died when he was two years old; his father when he was three; and it was not until he had grown up that he learned that his parents had been un-believers in the popular religion. He lived with his grandmother, who, at the age of seventy, had become converted from Presbyterianism to Unitarianism. As a child, he was taken on alternate Sundays to the Episcopalian Church and to the Presbyterian Church, while at home he was instructed in the doctrines of the Unitarian belief. He learned early, therefore, that the Bible is not the infallible word ofGod and that Christ was not a divine being. The doctrine of evolution was accepted among instructed people, but Russell remembers that wheI,l he was eleven, his tutor, a Swiss Protestant, said to him: "If you are a Darwinian, I pity you, for it is impossible to be a Darwinian and a Christian at the same time." The boy did not then know what he afterwards learned-that the claim that Christianity is a divine religion is irreconcilable with the doctrine of The Bertrand Russell case 49 evolution. At the age offourteen, he entered upon a course ofstudy, with a view to determining whether there was any ground for supposing religion to be...