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EINSTEIN, Albert (1879-1955). Autograph letter signed (“A. Einstein”) to Eric Gutkind, Princeton, 3 January 1954. In German. Two pages, 215 x 280mm, bearing several autograph emendations; with original transmittal envelope. THE GOD LETTER “The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of venerable but still primitive legends.” Einstein’s single most famous letter on God, his Jewish identity, and man’s eternal search for meaning. This remarkably candid, private letter was written a year before Einstein’s death and remains the most fully articulated expression of his religious and philosophical views: “The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change anything about this.” Rather, Einstein invokes “our wonderful” Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish Dutch philosopher with whom he strongly identified from an early age. Spinoza believed not in an anthropomorphic God who intervened in daily lives, but in a God beyond description, one responsible for the sublime beauty and orderliness of the universe. And despite Einstein’s open identification with Judaism, he felt no differently toward it: “For me the unadulterated Jewish religion is, like all other religions, an incarnation of primitive superstition. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong, and in whose mentality I feel profoundly anchored, still for me does not have any different kind of dignity from all other peoples. As far as my experience goes, they are in fact no better than other human groups, even if they are protected from the worst excesses by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot perceive anything 'chosen' about them.” Einstein wrote in response to Eric Gutkind’s 1952 book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt, which he read at the behest of Dutch mathematician and philosopher L.E.J. Brouwer (1881-1966). Though Einstein was unequivocal in his critique of Gutkind's work ("it pains me that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a human being and an internal one as a Jew"), he sought to establish a common ground between them, noting that they still agreed on "the essentials .” Prefacing his frank remarks on God and religion, he observed diplomatically that he and Gutkind both believed in the importance of a strong moral foundation that rose above self-interest and instead sought to benefit humanity ("striving for the improvement and refinement of existence"), while rejecting materialism as an end – a typically “un-American attitude” they shared. Provenance : Eric Gutkind (1877-1965) – Bloomsbury, 15 May 2008, Lot 303. [ With :] Black and white photograph of Eric Gutkind, 90 x 142mm – Gutkind, Eric. Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt , New York: Schuman, 1952. Full Translation: Princeton, 3. 1. 1954 Dear Mr Gutkind, Inspired by Brouwer's repeated suggestion, I have read a great deal in your book in the last few days: thank you very much for sending it to me. What struck me particularly was this. We are largely alike as regards our factual attitude to life and to the human community: an ideal that goes beyond self-interest, with the striving for release from ego-oriented desires, the striving for the improvement and refinement of existence, with an emphasis on the purely human element, by which inanimate things are to be perceived purely as a means, to which no dominant function is to be attributed. (It is especially this attitude that unites us as an authentically "un-American attitude" 1 ). Nevertheless, without Brouwer's encouragement I would never have brought myself to engage at all closely with your book because it is written in a language which is inaccessible to me. The word God is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a