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The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary belief and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge—knowledge...the free intellect will value more the abstract and universal knowledge into which the private accidents of history do not enter, than the knowledge brought by the senses...(which depend on) an exclusive and personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal.

Here again Russell discusses the value of philosophy but he also reveals his metaphysical hierarchy. Universal knowledge is privileged above knowledge of particulars. He implies that we do not have proper knowledge without a process of reason, without an intellect freed by thought. Our senses offer our only direct access to a world of "private accidents" and they distort even that knowledge.

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