Bertrand Russell in high praise of philosopher Baruch Spinoza whom he calls ”... one of the wisest of men and who lived consistently in accordance with his own wisdom.”
”Spinoza, who was one of the wisest of men and who lived consistently in accordance with his own wisdom, advised men to view passing events ‘under the aspect of eternity’. Those who can learn to do this will find a painful present much more bearable than it would otherwise be. They can see it as a passing moment—a discord to be resolved, a tunnel to be traversed. The small child who has hurt himself weeps as if the world contained nothing but sorrow, because his mind is confined to the present.
A man who has learned wisdom from Spinoza can see even a lifetime of suffering as a passing moment in the life of humanity. And the human race itself, from its obscure beginning to its unknown end, is only a minute episode in the life of the universe.
What may be happening elsewhere we do not know, but it is improbable that the universe contains nothing better than ourselves. With increase of wisdom our thoughts acquire a wider scope both in space and in time. The child lives in the minute, the boy in the day, the instinctive man in the year. The man imbued with history lives in the epoch. Spinoza would have us live not in the minute, the day, the year or the epoch but in eternity. Those who learn to do this will find that it takes away the frantic quality of misfortune and prevents the trend towards madness that comes with overwhelming disaster.
Spinoza spent the last day of his life telling cheerful anecdotes to his host. He had written: ‘The wise man thinks less about death than about anything else’, and he carried out this precept when it came to his own death.”
Bertrand Russell, The New York Times Magazine, 3 September 1950
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