Bertrand Russell, 1936. National Gallery. London, United Kingdom-
” … Money is the accepted measure of brains. It is thought a man who makes a lot of money must be a clever fellow; a man who does not, is not.”
”So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.”
— Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928): Freedom and Society, p. 153
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”For my part, the thing that I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals. The social scale in America is indefinite and continually fluctuating. Consequently all the snobbish emotions become more restless than they are where the social order is fixed, and although money in itself may not suffice to make people grand, it is difficult to be grand without money. In America money is the accepted measure of brains. It is thought a man who makes a lot of money must be a clever fellow; a man who does not, is not. Nobody likes to be thought an idiot. Therefore, when the market is in ticklish condition, I have observed Americans behave the way young people do during an examination.”
— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch.III: Competition, p. 49
━━ Bertrand Russell, 1936. National Gallery. London, United Kingdom.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was born into wealth and power, the dead center of British aristocracy. His father was Viscount Amberley and his grandfather was the retired Prime Minister, Lord John Russell. The United Kingdom’s most famous philosopher at that time, John Stuart Mill (1806–73), was his agnostic “Godfather”. Yet by the early 1940s Bertrand Russell was nearly financially destitute form a combination of giving away much of his inherited wealth to friends and family, charities, being divorced twice, but most notably being dismissed by numerous universities for being “morally unfit“ due to his lack of belief in a God, his pacifism, and his support for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Russell based our sexual realities on natural needs and desire, rather than on ancient tribal, religious taboos and “holy books.“
“Homosexuality of adults with mutual consent is a private matter in which society has no legitimate interest.“
— Bertrand Russell (15 May 1934)
However, in 1931 he inherited and kept his families earldom (Russell liked to joke that his title was primarily used for the purpose of securing busy New York City hotel rooms). In late 1943 Russell was invited to lecture on “Postulates of Scientific Inference” at Bryn Mawr College and Princeton University. At Bryn Mawr College’s library Russell did much of the writing for A History of Western Philosophy (1945) which provided him with the needed financial security for the latter part of his life finally settling in Penrhyndeudreath, Gwynedd, United Kingdom.
Russell wrote in is his Autobiography:
“On one occasion I was so poor that I had to take a single ticket to New York and pay the return fare out of my lecture fee. My A History of Western Philosophy was nearly complete, and I wrote to W. W. Norton, who had been my American publisher, to ask if, in view of my difficult financial position, he would make an advance on it.”
In 1943 Russell received an advance of $3000 from the publishers which greatly helped Russell and his family making ends meet. The Russell family finally returned to the UK (stressfully yet statistically safe voyaging across the North Atlantic in German U-boat infested waters during the height of the Second World War) after years of financial and academic struggle during which Russell attempted to teach and find a home for his family in the US. Along with his friend Albert Einstein, Russell had by the late 1940’s reached world wide celebrity status as a public intellectual. In 1949, Russell was awarded the Order of Merit, and the following year he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. At the time of his death in 1970 Russell’s estate was valued at £69,423 (equivalent to £1.1 million in 2021) with most monies derived from the royalties to his bestselling A History of Western Philosophy (1945).
