SOURCE: "Einstein: The Passion of Pure Reason," in Commentary, Vol. 10, No. 3, September, 1950, pp. 216-24.

Kristol is an American author and editor. In the following essay, he discusses Einstein's religious beliefs—particularly his sometimes conflicted ties to the Jewish faith—and the ways in which they ran in opposition to his devotion to reason.

In Philipp Frank's biography, Einstein: His Life and Times, we read the following anecdote:

"Einstein was once told that a physicist whose intellectual capacities were rather mediocre had been run over by a bus and killed. He remarked sympathetically: 'Too bad about his body!'"

Of course it is probable that Einstein was having his own quiet little joke, making a gesture to the public image of himself as an abstracted, bloodless intellect floating languidly in the stellar spaces. And indeed, according to Einstein's way of thinking, body is body and mind is mind, and...