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spellbanisher · 03-29-2011, 04:45 PM

Not a book, but a Free Man's Worship, by Bertrand Russell, is a brilliant and beautiful essay. You can get it here at mobileread.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79595

The essay was actually a part of a larger collection called Mysticism and Logic.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24102

He has also written a famous essay called "Why I am Not A Christian," which you can read online.

Here is the second paragraph from the essay:

How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as Man preserve his aspirations untarnished? 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 death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticise, 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.

03-29-2011, 04:45 PM	#12
spellbanisher Guru Posts: 826 Karma: 6566849 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Bay Area Device: kindle keyboard, kindle fire hd, S4, Nook hd+	Not a book, but a Free Man's Worship, by Bertrand Russell, is a brilliant and beautiful essay. You can get it here at mobileread. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79595 The essay was actually a part of a larger collection called Mysticism and Logic. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24102 He has also written a famous essay called "Why I am Not A Christian," which you can read online. Here is the second paragraph from the essay: How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as Man preserve his aspirations untarnished? 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 death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticise, 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.