Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words Read online

  Out of My Later Years

  The Scientist, Philosopher and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

  Albert Einstein

  Contents

  1. Publisher’s Preface

  Convictions and Beliefs

  2. Self-Portrait (1936)

  3. Ten Fateful Years (1939)

  4. Moral Decay (1937)

  5. Message for Posterity (1938)

  6. On Freedom (1940)

  7. Morals and Emotions (1938)

  8. Science and Religion (I-1939; II—1941)

  9. On Education (1936)

  Science

  10. The Theory of Relativity (1949)

  11. E=MC2 (1946)

  12. What is the Theory of Relativity? (1919)

  13. Physics and Reality (1936)

  General Consideration Concerning the Method of Science

  Mechanics and the Attempts to Base all Physics Upon It

  The Field Concept

  The Theory of Relativity

  Quantum Theory and the Fundamentals of Physics

  Relativity Theory and Corpuscles

  Summary

  14. The Fundaments of Theoretical Physics (1940)

  15. The Common Language of Science (1941)

  16. The Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethics (1950)

  17. An Elementary Derivation of the Equivalence of Mass and Energy (1946)

  Public Affairs

  18. Why Socialism? (1949)

  19. The Negro Question (1946)

  20. Science and Society (1935)

  21. Towards a World Government (1946)

  22. The Way Out (1946)

  23. On Receiving the One World Award (1948)

  24. Science and Civilization (1933)

  25. A Message to Intellectuals (1948)

  26. Open Letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations (1947)

  27. Dr. Einstein’s Mistaken Notions—An Open Letter from Sergei Vavilov, A. N. Frumkin, A. F. Joffe, and N. N. Semyonov (1947)

  A Reply to the Soviet Scientists (1948)

  Science and Life

  28. For an Organization of Intellectual Workers (1945)

  29. “Was Europe a Success?” (1934)

  30. At a Gathering for Freedom of Opinion (1936)

  31. Atomic War or Peace (I-1945; II-1947)

  32. The War is Won but Peace is Not (1945)

  33. The Menace of Mass Destruction (1947)

  34. The Schools and the Problem of Peace (1934)

  35. On Military Service (1934)

  36. Military Intrusion in Science (1947)

  The Military Mentality

  37. International Security (1933)

  Personalities

  38. Isaac Newton (1942)

  39. Johannes Kepler (1949)

  40. Marie Curie in Memoriam (1935)

  41. Max Planck in Memoriam (1948)

  42. Paul Langevin in Memoriam (1947)

  43. Walther Nernst in Memoriam (1942)

  44. Paul Ehrenfest in Memoriam (1934)

  45. Mahatma Gandhi (1939)

  46. Carl von Ossietzky (1946)

  My People

  47. Why Do They Hate the Jews? (1938)

  Just What Is a Jew?

  Where Oppression Is a Stimulus

  48. The Dispersal of European Jewry (1948)

  49. Let’s Not Forget (1934)

  50. Unpublished Preface to a Blackbook (1945)

  51. The Goal of Human Existence (1943)

  52. Our Debt to Zionism (1938)

  53. To the Heroes of the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto (1944)

  54. Before the Monument to the Martyred Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto (1948)

  55. The Calling of the Jews (1936)

  56. Moses Maimonides (1935)

  57. Stephen Wise (1949)

  58. To the University of Jerusalem (1949)

  59. The American Council for Judaism (1945)

  60. The Jews of Israel (1949)

  A Biography of Albert Einstein

  Acknowledgments

  1

  Publisher’s Preface

  THIS SECOND VOLUME of collected essays by Albert Einstein covers a period of about fifteen years—1934 to 1950; the first anthology, published under the title The World As I See It, comprising material from 1922 to 1934.

  Albert Einstein does not belong to that group of scholars who live in the “ivory tower” of their research work, oblivious to the world around them. On the contrary, he has always been an astute and critical observer of the trends and needs of his time. Indeed, frequently did he intervene by written as well as spoken appeal, and always, we should like to emphasize, for a humanitarian cause.

  In this sense Out of My Later Years mirrors the philosophical, as well as political and social attitudes of its author. The chapters themselves represent addresses, articles, letters, appeals and miscellaneous papers hitherto unpublished.

  We feel privileged to offer them to the public with hardly any editorial change—a moving document of the workings of a conscientious, profound and deeply humane mind.

  Convictions and Beliefs

  2

  Self-Portrait

  OF WHAT IS SIGNIFICANT in one’s own existence one is hardly aware, and it certainly should not bother the other fellow. What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?

  The bitter and the sweet come from the outside, the hard from within, from one’s own efforts. For the most part I do the thing which my own nature drives me to do. It is embarrassing to earn so much respect and love for it. Arrows of hate have been shot at me too; but they never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world, with which I have no connection whatsoever.

  I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

  3

  Ten Fateful Years

  READING ONCE AGAIN the lines I wrote almost ten years ago,* I receive two strangely contrasting impressions. What I wrote then still seems essentially as true as ever; yet, it all seems curiously remote and strange. How can that be? Has the world changed so profoundly in ten years, or is it merely that I have grown ten years older, and my eyes see everything in a changed, dimmer light? What are ten years in the history of humanity? Must not all those forces that determine the life of man be regarded as constant compared with such a trifling interval? Is my critical reason so susceptible that the physiological change in my body during those ten years has been able to influence my concept of life so deeply? It seems clear to me that such considerations cannot throw light upon a change in the emotional approach to the general problems of life. Nor may the reasons for this curious change be sought in my own external circumstances; for I know that these have always played a subordinate part in my thoughts and emotions.

  No, something quite different is involved. In these ten years confidence in the stability, yes, even the very basis for existence, of human society has largely vanished. One senses not only a threat to man’s cultural heritage, but also that a lower value is placed upon all that one would like to see defended at all costs.

  Conscious man, to be sure, has at all times been keenly aware that life is an adventure, that life must, forever, be wrested from death. In part the dangers were external: one might fall downstairs and break one’s neck, lose one’s livelihood without fault, be condemned though innocent, or ruined by calumny. Life in human society meant dangers of all sorts; but these dangers were chaotic in nature, subject to chance. Human society, as a whole, seemed stable. Mea
sured by the ideals of taste and morals it was decidedly imperfect. But, all in all, one felt at home with it and, apart from the many kinds of accidents, comparatively safe in it One accepted its intrinsic qualities as a matter of course, as the air one breathed. Even standards of virtue, aspiration, and practical truth were taken for granted as an inviolable heritage, common to all civilized humanity.

  To be sure, the first World War had already shaken this feeling of security. The sanctity of life vanished and the individual was no longer able to do as he pleased and to go where he liked. The lie was raised to the dignity of a political instrument. The war was, however, widely regarded as an external event, hardly or not at all as the result of man’s conscious planful action. It was thought of as an interruption of man’s normal life from the outside, universally considered unfortunate and evil. The feeling of security in regard to human aims and values remained, for the main part, unshaken.

  The subsequent development is sharply marked by political events that are not as far-reaching as the less easily grasped socio-psychological background. First a brief, promising step forward characterized by the creation of the League of Nations through the grandiose initiative of Wilson, and the establishment of a system of collective security among the nations. Then the formation of Fascist states, attended by a series of broken pacts and undisguised acts of violence against humanity and against weaker nations. The system of collective security collapsed like a house of cards—a collapse the consequences of which cannot be measured even today. It was a manifestation of weakness of character and lack of responsibility on the part of the leaders in the affected countries, and of shortsighted selfishness in the democracies—those that still remain outwardly intact—which prevented any vigorous counterattack.

  Things grew even worse than a pessimist of the deepest dye would have dared prophesy. In Europe to the east of the Rhine free exercise of the intellect exists no longer, the population is terrorized by gangsters who have seized power, and youth is poisoned by systematic lies. The pseudo-success of political adventurers has dazzled the rest of the world; it becomes apparent everywhere that this generation lacks the strength and force which enabled previous generations to win, in painful struggle and at great sacrifice, the political and individual freedom of man.

  Awareness of this state of affairs overshadows every hour of my present existence, while ten years ago it did not yet occupy my thoughts. It is this that I feel so strongly in rereading the words written in the past.

  And yet I know that, all in all, man changes but little, even though prevailing notions make him appear in a very different light at different times, and even though current trends like the present bring him unimaginable sorrow. Nothing of all that will remain but a few pitiful pages in the history books, briefly picturing to the youth of future generations the follies of its ancestors.

  * To the volume Living Philosophy.

  4

  Moral Decay

  ALL RELIGIONS, ARTS and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man’s life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual toward freedom. It is no mere chance that our older universities have developed from clerical schools. Both churches and universities—insofar as they live up to their true function—serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force.

  The essential unity of ecclesiastical and secular cultural institutions was lost during the 19th century, to the point of senseless hostility. Yet there never was any doubt as to the striving for culture. No one doubted the sacredness of the goal. It was the approach that was disputed.

  The political and economic conflicts and complexities of the last few decades have brought before our eyes dangers which even the darkest pessimists of the last century did not dream of. The injunctions of the Bible concerning human conduct were then accepted by believer and infidel alike as self-evident demands for individuals and society. No one would have been taken seriously who failed to acknowledge the quest for objective truth and knowledge as man’s highest and eternal aim.

  Yet today we must recognize with horror that these pillars of civilized human existence have lost their firmness. Nations that once ranked high bow down before tyrants who dare openly to assert: Right is that which serves us! The quest for truth for its own sake has no justification and is not to be tolerated. Arbitrary rule, oppression, persecution of individuals, faiths and communities are openly practiced in those countries and accepted as justifiable or inevitable.

  And the rest of the world has slowly grown accustomed to these symptoms of moral decay. One misses the elementary reaction against injustice and for justice—that reaction which in the long run represents man’s only protection against a relapse into barbarism. I am firmly convinced that the passionate will for justice and truth has done more to improve man’s condition than calculating political shrewdness which in the long run only breeds general distrust1. Who can doubt that Moses was a better leader of humanity than Machiavelli?

  During the War someone tried to convince a great Dutch scientist that might went before right in the history of man. “I cannot disprove the accuracy of your assertion,” he replied, “but I do know that I should not care to live in such a world!”

  Let us think, feel and act like this man, refusing to accept fateful compromise. Let us not even shun the fight when it is unavoidable to preserve right and the dignity of man. If we do this we shall soon return to conditions that will allow us to rejoice in humanity.

  5

  Message For Posterity

  OUR TIME IS RICH in inventive minds, the inventions of which could facilitate our lives considerably. We are crossing the seas by power and utilize power also in order to relieve humanity from all tiring muscular work. We have learned to fly and we are able to send messages and news without any difficulty over the entire world through electric waves.

  However, the production and distribution of commodities is entirely unorganized so that everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle, in this way suffering for the want of everything. Furthermore, people living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason any one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror. This is due to the fact that the intelligence and the character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.

  I trust that posterity will read these statements with a feeling of proud and justified superiority.

  6

  On Freedom

  I KNOW THAT IT is a hopeless undertaking to debate about fundamental value judgments. For instance if someone approves, as a goal, the extirpation of the human race from the earth, one cannot refute such a viewpoint on rational grounds. But if there is agreement on certain goals and values, one can argue rationally about the means by which these objectives may be attained. Let us, then, indicate two goals which may well be agreed upon by nearly all who read these lines.

  1. Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labor of all.

  2. The satisfaction of physical needs is indeed the indispensable precondition of a satisfactory existence, but in itself it is not enough. In order to be content men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accord with their personal characteristics and abilities.

  The first of these two goals requires the promotion of all knowledge relating to the laws of nature and the laws of social processes, that is, the promotion of all scientific endeavor. For scientific endeavor is a natural whole the parts of which mutually support one another in a way which, to be sure, no one can anticipate. However, the progress of science presupposes the possibility of unrestricted communication of all resu
lts and judgments—freedom of expression and instruction in all realms of intellectual endeavor. By freedom I understand social conditions of such a kind that the expression of opinions and assertions about general and particular matters of knowledge will not involve dangers or serious disadvantages for him who expresses them. This freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge, a consideration of much practical import. In the first instance it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population. Such an ideal of external liberty can never be fully attained but must be sought unremittingly if scientific thought, and philosophical and creative thinking in general, are to be advanced as far as possible.