Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason, Bertrand Russell has always been concerned together with the basic questions to which religion in addition addresses itself -- questions concerning man's situate in the universe and the nature of the good life, questions this involve life afterwards death, morality, liberty, education, and sexual ethics. He delivers to his treatment of these questions the same courage, scrupulous logic, and lofty wisdom for which his other work as philosopher, writer, and teacher has been famous. These qualities do the essays integrated in this book perhaps the much graceful and moving presentation of the freethinker's position since the days of Hume and Voltaire.
"I am as firmly convinced this religions do harm as I am this they are untrue," Russell declares in his Preface, and his reasoned opposition to any system or dogma which he feels may shackle man's intellect runs throughout all the essays in this book, whether they were written as early as 1899 or as late as 1954.
The book has been edited, together with Lord Russell's full approval and cooperation, by Professor Paul Edwards of the Philosophy Department of New York University. In an Appendix, Professor Edwards contributes a full account of the highly controversial "Bertrand Russell Case" of 1940, in which Russell was judicially declared "unfit" to educate philosophy at the College of the City of New York.
Whether the reader shares or rejects Bertrand Russell's views, he will locate this book an invigorating challenge to set notions, a masterly statement of a philosophical position, and a pure joy to read.