First edition. The first edition of this pocket-sized philosophical essay on mankind's place in the universe, the nature of happiness, and the moral principles that should guide our behaviour.

What I Believe followed the success of Russell's popular work on the future of science, Icarus, published the preceding year. It reflects his growing scepticism towards religious dogma, promoting instead a wordview grounded on rational, scientific inquiry, and was one of the works presented at the trial in New York in 1940 which determined that Russell was unfit to teach at City College. These arguments later found completion in Why I Am Not a Christian, published over thirty-years later, which reprints in full the present essay.

First UK edition, first impression; 12mo (16.5 x 12 cm); ads to rear; publisher's maroon paper boards, cream labels to upper cover and spine, typographic dustjacket, priced 2/6 to spine, a little discoloured, slight offsetting to half-title and endpapers, slight spotting to prelims and fore-edge, very good; 95, [1]pp.

Blackwell/Ruja A49.1a.