BERTRAND RUSSELL MAKES STRONG PLEA FOR REAL FREEDOM

Education should tear away the enshrouding myths of collective passions and stimulate in their place a just and rational skepticism: that was the theme of Bertrand Russell's lecture before the largest and most enthusiastic audience which has filled the Living Room of the Union in the past year.

There was little that was sensational about Mr. Russell's lecture. It was featured by clarity and profundity of thought and sprinkled with the gently cynical humor for which he is noted. Mr. Russell began by asserting the necessity for some sort of authority in education, and then spoke briefly of he various mediums by which this authority had been and would always, presumably, be exercised. These mediums he classified as the state, the church, the schoolmaster, and the parent. He spoke of the inadequacy of each to exercise the authority which it possessed: for each, he declared, had some selfish aim outside the person educated himself.

Three Aspects of Freedom

Mr. Russell then turned abruptly to a description of his conception of educational freedom. It represented three aspects, he declared,--freedom to learn or not to learn; and freedom of opinion.

It was in commenting on this last phase of educational freedom that Mr. Russell voiced some of his appeals for the subjugation of passion to reason, of intolerance to intelligent skepticism, for which he was so condemned during the war. In demanding that students in truly free education should be allowed to consider the arguments on both sides of every question, he said:

There is no certainty as to what is the truth. Half the world believes a and the other half believes b; and each thinks that the other is wrong."

With this statement, Mr. Russell made his two main suggestions as to the best means of obtaining educational freedom. The first was to teach each student not to believe a thing unless it is so. The second is to choose teachers solely for their abilities to perform their duties.

"Those suggestions do not sound very radical," he said, "and yet they would, I believe, revolutionize society. In its present form."