Although Russell is known for being a logical positivist, and inclined to “throw all metaphysics into the rubbish bin,” (A. J. Ayers and Hume, fellow logical positivists, suggested this), in this essay he shows a profound respect for mysticism, and in “A Free Man’s Worship” he assumes the spirit of the mystic without taking the mystics “insights” as face value. The greatest philosophers, Russell says, have felt the need of both science and mysticism, and the attempt to harmonize the two makes philosophy greater than either science or religion. Mystics achieve their insight by intuition, in an experience so overwhelming that it impresses them as unquestionably true. Since much of this experience is inexpressible, the mystic colors it with his own interpretations, but there are a few things common to all mystic intuition. One, the notion of the unity of all things, so division of good and evil is a delusion. Quoting Heraclitus: “To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.” Time is also a delusion, the insight that lead Parmenides to conclude that motion is impossible. And also, the immutable perfection of God. Elsewhere, Russell describes a moment of insight when, as a young man, he accepted Anselm’s ontological proof of God’s existence: God is the greatest entity of which it is possible to conceive. Since actual existence is greater than existence only in the mind, then God must exist. He points out that the immutability of God implied by this is too static for the scientific temperament. There is a paradox in this definition of God, since an entity capable of growth is superior to one that is not. For the mystic, the physical world we see is a delusion, and there is a “real world,” that only the mystic sees, or at least sometimes catches a glimpse of, by pure intuition. Russell does not, as far as I know, explain what the source of this overwhelming experience of absolute truth might be. Nonetheless, he yet believes that though ultimately false,” there is an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling.”Though appreciating the inspirational role of mystic intuition in philosophic thought, Russell points out that when Plato identified the good with the truly real, he gave a legislative function to the good which produced a divorce between science and philosophy, from which both still suffer. It was this sort of thinking which led some modern thinkers, such as Spencer and Wells, to interpret evolution as teleological, a progress towards the eventual emergence of mankind. It also led such historical philosophers as Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Marx to interpret history teleologically. Such thinkers are mere apologists for the systems that they want to be true rather than genuine seekers after truth. We can readily see that the arrogant dogmatism of these militant “philosophers” has been the source of much that we ordinary people can regard, in our delusional way, as evil.Russell writes, “Ethical considerations can only legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not themselves dictating what the truth is to be.” There is an obvious problem, however, with defining good and evil as merely how we feel about something. All of the historical philosophers mentioned above would probably, and in fact did, insist that they arrived at their systems from self-evident facts with impartial logic. Few people, perhaps no people, not even respected “lovers of wisdom,” can be counted upon to interpret ascertained truth with ethical considerations that are not wildly contradictory. Our sensations, color, texture, taste, smell, and so on, do not reside in the physical world, but exist “only in our minds.” This is just as true of good and evil. However, unless one is color blind, there is universal objective agreement upon what is red. Objective agreement upon what is ethical or non-ethical are not the norm, and, in fact, is typically determined by socialization, that is by both formal and informal education. Nonetheless, most people, even Russell, feel intuitively that there ought to be an objective morality that all but the ethically blind could agree upon just as readily as we agree upon the color red. If this were the case, then it follows that people are taught to be ethically blind by socialization. Since our sense of what is right and wrong is dependent upon socialization, then the best education is one that makes children aware of this fact. Even if there is no objective morality, inculcating within children an awareness of the extent to which their particular beliefs are subjective and even arbitrary would be of inestimable value. In fact, anything else amounts to anti-education. Now the question of whether there might be objective morality will be considered.Many modern religious people complain that science has made thinkers too materialistic. This is certainly true. According to Russell: “To conceive the universe as essentially progressive or essentially deteriorating . . . is to give our hopes and fears a cosmic importance which may, of course, be justified, but which we have as yet no reason to suppose justified.” And in the same vein: “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms . . . that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.” Though I am not well acquainted with current trends in philosophy, I am fairly certain it is in accord with Russell’s assessment. Science certainly is, even psychology. Especially psychology.Yet somehow: “Blind, secular Nature created a child gifted with capacity of judging the works of this unthinking Mother.” Nature created smallpox, tsunamis, and sadists. For many people, certainly me, it seems disingenuous to credit both the existence of these things and a conscious God who supposedly loves us. Being blind, Nature is not evil, but her effects are evil. Distinguishing between good and evil is dependent upon a self-reflective level of consciousness. The mystic experiences a primordial state of consciousness in which this distinction has not yet been achieved. He therefore experiences as a fundamental truth that there is no distinction. How this experience can be explained the in the merely materialist universe of Russell is not clear, but one can at least postulate that this experience relies upon the intrinsic existence of primordial consciousness. Reflection upon the experiences in the physical world leads to judging the quality of those experiences. Since people, for whatever reason, are prone to personify their experiences, religiously inclined people designate the good as God and the evil as Satan. Though there is no good reason to accept the independent existence of God and Satan, there is a plethora of evidence supporting their existence as archetypes in the human psyche. To those who personally experience them, they certainly seem like autonomous entities that could not have not have somehow originated in personal experience. The fact that they exist “only in the mind” does not make them less real. But it helps a great deal if one can understand God and Satan for what they actually are, that they are not two independent entities. Metaphorically, Satan can be understood as God’s self-ignorance.The Christian asks: “If you do not believe in God, who do you think made you?” Darwin’s theory of evolution made it possible for atheists to answer this question. Nobody well acquainted with and capable of understanding the vast evidence for evolution can intelligently doubt that it answers this question. However, there is absolutely no reason to believe that we “are not but the accidental collocations of atoms.” There is no space for it here, but it is very easy to do a few calculations that prove that the degree of complexity necessary to store the information that makes it possible for a single cell capable of developing into a human, or even an amoeba, or a prokaryotic cell, within the lifetime of the universe, by accident, is so highly improbable as to be essentially impossible. Russell was a mathematician, so he had to have known this. Though Dawkins indignantly insists that evolution is not accidental, he acknowledges that the original appearance of life was, without addressing the mathematical fact of its essential impossibility. Those scientists who do acknowledge it invoke the multiverse. This works, but assumes unverifiable qualities about other universes.There is no good reason to assume that life and consciousness are not intrinsic to existence. If this is so, then evolution is teleological. The progress towards a self-reflective level of consciousness (though not necessarily in human form) is natural. This does not mean that it was intentional, any more than the development of a fetus into a human is intentional, but it is not accidental. (So Dawkins is correct, just not in the way he thinks).It is even possible that progress towards greater morality is natural. If consciousness has intrinsic existence, it is at least reasonable to posit the possibility that there is an objective morality that all but the ethically blind could agree upon. As Russell says, “the ideals to which we do and must adhere are not realized in the realm of matter.” They are realized only in the mind, but if the mind has intrinsic existence, then these ideals might also be intrinsic. If this is true, and there is at the very least just as much reason to suppose that it is as not, there is no truth more important.I suspect, if anyone ever reads this, I'll get messages indignantly insisting that their life is accidental and has no meaning.