Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Dwelling Virtuously (1930)

Picture by J. F. Horra­bin, through Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bertrand Rus­promote might have lived his lengthy life con­cerned with large prime­ics in log­ic, math­e­mat­ics, pol­i­tics, and soci­ety, however that did­n’t preserve him from assume­ing seri­ous­ly about the way to han­dle his personal day-to-day rela­tion­ships. That tough­ly means he han­dled each such rela­tion­ship with per­fect aplomb: be aware of his three divorces, the primary of which was for­mal­ized in 1921, the 12 months he mar­ried his lover Dora Black. Pos­sessed of sim­i­lar bohemi­an-reformer beliefs — and, earlier than lengthy, two chil­dren — the cou­ple discovered­ed the exper­i­males­tal Bea­con Hill Faculty in 1927, intent on encour­ag­ing their younger pupils’ devel­op­ment as not simply thinkers-in-train­ing however full human beings.

A number of years lat­er, Rus­promote pub­lished his per­son­al “ten com­mand­ments” in a cul­ture magazine­a­zine known as Each­man, and you may learn it in full in this 1978 challenge of the Rus­promote Soci­ety Information. (Go to web page 2.)

“Each­physique, I sup­pose, has his personal checklist of virtues that he tries to prac­tice, and, when he fails to prac­tice them, he feels disgrace fairly inde­pen­dent­ly of the opin­ion of oth­ers, to this point at any charge as con­scious thought is con­cerned,” he writes by means of intro­duc­tion. “I’ve tried to place the virtues that I ought to want to pos­sess into the type of a deca­logue,” which is as fol­lows:

1. Don’t deceive your­self.
2. Don’t deceive oth­er peo­ple until they’re exer­cis­ing tyran­ny.
3. Whenever you assume it’s your responsibility to inflict ache, scru­ti­nize your rea­sons shut­ly.

4. Whenever you want pow­er, examination­ine your­self shut­ly as to why you deserve it.

5. When you’ve gotten pow­er, use it to construct up peo­ple, to not con­strict them.
6. Don’t try and reside with­out van­i­ty, since that is impos­si­ble, however select the fitting audi­ence from which to hunt admi­ra­tion.
7. Don’t consider your­self as a whol­ly self-con­tained unit.

8. Be reli­ready.

9. Be simply.

10. Be good-natured.

Within the full textual content, Rus­promote elab­o­charges on the assume­ing behind every of those virtues.  “Whenever you want to imagine some the­o­log­i­cal or polit­i­cal doc­trine which can improve your revenue, you’ll, if you’re not very care­ful, give way more weight to the argu­ments in favor than to these in opposition to”: therefore the impor­tance of not mendacity to your­self. Relating to mendacity to oth­ers, not solely ought to gov­ern­ments inform the reality to their sub­jects, “par­ents ought to inform the reality to their chil­dren, how­ev­er incon­ve­nient this may increasingly appear.” And fam­i­lies as in states, “those that are intel­li­gent however weak can­not be anticipate­ed to forego using their intel­li­gence of their con­flicts with those that are stu­pid however robust.”

Rus­sel­l’s fifth com­mand­ment additionally applies to rela­tion­ships between the previous and the younger, since “those that cope with the younger inevitably have pow­er, and it’s straightforward to exer­cise this pow­er in methods pleas­ing to the edu­ca­tor moderately than use­ful to the kid.” And by his eighth com­mand­ment, he means “to sug­gest an entire set of hum­drum however nec­es­sary virtues, resembling punc­tu­al­i­ty, preserve­ing promis­es, adher­ing to plans involv­ing oth­er peo­ple, chorus­ing from treach­ery even in its mildest types.” Alas, “mod­ern edu­ca­tion, in much less­en­ing the empha­sis on dis­ci­pline, has, I feel, did not professional­duce reli­ready human beings the place social oblig­a­tions are con­cerned.”

This “pre­scrip­tive empha­sis — notably the stress positioned on the mer­its of some hum­ble virtues — might have been influ­enced then by his prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence of professional­gres­sive edu­ca­tion,” writes The Col­lect­ed Papers of Bertrand Rus­promote edi­tor Andrew Bone. However Rus­promote nonetheless revised his deca­logue lengthy after he left the Bea­con Hill Faculty in 1932, with world occasions of the sub­se­quent many years inspir­ing him to make use of it within the ser­vice of what he regard­ed as a lib­er­al world­view. One ver­sion broad­solid on the BBC in 1951 contains such com­mand­ments as “Don’t really feel absolute­ly cer­tain of any­factor,” “Discover extra plea­positive in intel­li­gent dis­despatched than pas­sive agree­ment,” and “Don’t use pow­er to sup­press opin­ions you assume per­ni­cious, for in case you do the opin­ions will sup­press you” — all of which extra of the previous couple of gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents might have finished effectively to inter­nal­ize.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Wholesome Democ­ra­cy

Bertrand Rus­promote: Creator­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948)