intellectual e?ort. I remember, for instance, the occasion mentioned earlier
when Maynard Keynes came to spend Saturday to Monday with us at Tilford.
In 1905 things began to improve. Alys and I decided to live near Oxford,
and built ourselves a house in Bagley Wood. (At that time there was no other
house there.) We went to live there in the spring of 1905, and very shortly
after we had moved in I discovered my Theory of Descriptions, which was
the ?rst step towards overcoming the di?culties which had ba?ed me for
so long. Immediately after this came the death of Theodore Davies, of which
I have spoken in an earlier chapter. In 1906 I discovered the Theory of Types.
After this it only remained to write the book out. Whitehead’s teaching work
left him not enough leisure for this mechanical job. I worked at it from ten to
the autobiography of bertrand russell 142twelve hours a day for about eight months in the year, from 1907 to 1910.
The manuscript became more and more vast, and every time that I went out
for a walk I used to be afraid that the house would catch ?re and the manu-
script get burnt up. It was not, of course, the sort of manuscript that could be
typed, or even copied. When we ?nally took it to the University Press, it was
so large that we had to hire an old four-wheeler for the purpose. Even then
our di?culties were not at an end. The University Press estimated that there
would be a loss of ￡600 on the book, and while the syndics were willing to
bear a loss of ￡300, they did not feel that they could go above this ?gure. The
Royal Society very generously contributed ￡200, and the remaining ￡100 we
had to ?nd ourselves. We thus earned minus ￡50 each by ten years’ work.
This beats the record of Paradise Lost.
The strain of unhappiness combined with very severe intellectual work, in
the years from 1902 till 1910, was very great.
3
At the time I often wondered
whether I should ever come out at the other end of the tunnel in which
I seemed to be. I used to stand on the footbridge at Kennington, near Oxford,
watching the trains go by, and determining that tomorrow I would place
myself under one of them. But when the morrow came I always found myself
hoping that perhaps Principia Mathematica would be ?nished some day. More-
over the di?culties appeared to me in the nature of a challenge, which it
would be pusillanimous not to meet and overcome. So I persisted, and in the
end the work was ?nished, but my intellect never quite recovered from the
strain. I have been ever since de?nitely less capable of dealing with di?cult
abstractions than I was before. This is part, though by no means the whole, of
the reason for the change in the nature of my work.
Throughout this period my winters were largely occupied with political
questions. When Joseph Chamberlain began to advocate Protection, I found
myself to be a passionate Free Trader. The in?uence which Hewins had
exerted upon me in the direction of Imperialism and Imperialistic Zollverein
had evaporated during the moments of crisis in 1901 which turned me into a
Paci?st. Nevertheless in 1902 I became a member of a small dining club
called ‘The Coe?cients’, got up by Sidney Webb for the purpose of consider-
ing political questions from a more or less Imperialist point of view. It was in
this club that I ?rst became acquainted with H. G. Wells, of whom I had never
heard until then. His point of view was more sympathetic to me than that of
any other member. Most of the members, in fact, shocked me profoundly.
I remember Amery’s eyes gleaming with blood-lust at the thought of a war
with America, in which, as he said with exultation, we should have to arm
the whole adult male population. One evening Sir Edward Grey (not then in
o?ce) made a speech advocating the policy of the Entente, which had not
yet been adopted by the Government. I stated my objections to the policy
very forcibly, and pointed out the likelihood of its leading to war, but no one
‘principia mathematica’ 143agreed with me, so I resigned from the club. It will be seen that I began my
opposition to the ?rst war at the earliest possible moment. After this I took to
speaking in defence of Free Trade on behalf of the Free Trade Union. I had
never before attempted public speaking, and was shy and nervous to such a
degree as to make me at ?rst wholly ine?ective. Gradually, however, my
nervousness got less. After the Election of 1906, when Protection ceased
for the moment to be a burning question, I took to working for women’s
su?rage. On paci?st grounds I disliked the Militants, and worked always with
the Constitutional party. In 1907 I even stood for Parliament at a by-election,
on behalf of votes for women. The Wimbledon Campaign was short and
arduous. It must be quite impossible for younger people to imagine the
bitterness of the opposition to women’s equality. When, in later years, I
campaigned against the ?rst world war, the popular opposition that
I encountered was not comparable to that which the su?ragists met in 1907.
The whole subject was treated, by a great majority of the population, as one
for mere hilarity. The crowd would shout derisive remarks: to women, ‘Go
home and mind the baby’; to men, ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ no
matter what the man’s age. Rotten eggs were aimed at me and hit my wife. At
my ?rst meeting rats were let loose to frighten the ladies, and ladies who
were in the plot screamed in pretended terror with a view to disgracing their
sex. An account of this is given in the following newspaper report:
Election Uproar
Rats let loose to scare women su?ragists
Wimbledon ?ght
The Hon. Bertrand Russell, the suffragist candidate for the Wimbledon
division, opened his campaign on Saturday night, when he addressed a
crowded and rather noisy meeting in Worple Hall. A mixed reception was
given to the chairman, Mr O. H. Beatty, a member of the local Liberal
Association executive council, and the platform party, which included the
candidate, Mrs Russell, Mr St George Lane Fox-Pitt, the unsuccessful Liberal
candidate at the General Election, Mrs Philip Snowden, Miss Alison Garland,
and many others connected with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies.
From the outset it was apparent that a section of the audience – about
2,000 – was hostile to the promoters. The chairman often appealed in vain
for silence. Within ten minutes of the start a free ?ght took place in one
corner of the hall, and ?ve minutes elapsed before peace was restored.
People jumped on to the forms and chairs and encouraged the squabblers.
At another stage two large rats were let loose from a bag, and ran about the
?oor of the hall among a number of ladies sitting in the front seats. For a
the autobiography of bertrand russell 144moment there was great commotion, the ladies jumping on the chairs, whilst
a number of men hunted the rats about the seats, and at last managed to kill
them. After the meeting one of the dead rats was taken to Victoria Crescent
and ?ung into the candidate’s committee room.
The rowdyism of the meeting, however, was con?ned to a large crowd of
irresponsible young men and youths, who ought never to have been admit-
ted, and it would therefore be unfair to blame the general body of Wimbledon
electors for the blackguardly conduct of the political rabble.
Mr Russell was greeted with loud applause and general interruptions, and,
the latter being persisted in, the chairman remarked: ‘Surely this is not the
way that Wimbledon men and women greet a stranger.’ (A Voice: ‘Are we
down-hearted?’ and cries of ‘No’.) A minute or so later the chairman again
made an appeal to the rowdy section, and by asking them not to disgrace the
name of Wimbledon he secured quietness for a time.
Mr Russell declared that he stood ?rst and foremost for the suffrage for
women on the same terms as men, and on the terms on which hereafter it
might be granted to men. (A Voice: ‘Do we want petticoats?’ and cries of
‘No’.)
Proceeding, the candidate said he supported the present Government.
(Cheers and uproar.) The most important of all the questions that divided the
Liberal and Conservative parties was Free Trade, and a question closely
associated with Free Trade was taxation of land values.
Mr Fox-Pitt rose, with a broad smile on his face. He wanted to tell them
something about Mr Chaplin’s history, but the meeting would have none of it,
and he too gave up the task as hopeless.
Mrs Philip Snowden showed greater determination, and although at the
start she was howled and jeered at, she was given a fairly good hearing. Mrs
Arthur Webb, Miss Alison Garland, and Mr Walter MacLaren also spoke, and
a resolution in support of Mr Russell was carried by an overwhelming
majority.
The savagery of the males who were threatened with loss of supremacy was
intelligible. But the determination of large numbers of women to prolong
the contempt of the female sex was odd. I cannot recall any violent agitation
of Negroes or Russian serfs against emancipation. The most prominent
opponent of political rights for women was Queen Victoria.
I had been a passionate advocate of equality for women ever since in
adolescence I read Mill on the subject. This was some years before I became
aware of the fact that my mother used to campaign in favour of women’s
su?rage in the ’sixties. Few things are more surprising than the rapid and
complete victory of this cause throughout the civilised world. I am glad to
have had a part in anything so successful.
‘principia mathematica’ 145Gradually, however, I became convinced that the limited enfranchisement
of women which was being demanded would be more di?cult to obtain
than a wider measure, since the latter would be more advantageous to the
Liberals, who were in power. The professional su?ragists objected to the
wider measure, because, although it would enfranchise more women, it
would not enfranchise them on exactly the same terms as men, and would
therefore not, in their opinion, concede the principle of women’s equality
with men. On this point I ?nally left the orthodox su?ragists, and joined a
body which advocated adult su?rage. This body was got up by Margaret
Davies (the sister of Crompton and Theodore), and had Arthur Henderson as
its chairman. In those days I was still a Liberal, and tried to suppose that
Arthur Henderson was somewhat of a ?re-brand. In this e?ort, however,
I was not very successful.
In spite of amusing and pleasant interludes, the years from 1902 to 1910
were very painful to me. They were, it is true, extremely fruitful in the way of
work, but the pleasure to be derived from the writing of Principia Mathematica
was all crammed into the latter months of 1900. After that time the di?culty
and the labour were too great for any pleasure to be possible. The last years
were better than the earlier ones because they were more fruitful, but the
only really vivid delight connected with the whole matter was that which I
felt in handing over the manuscript to the Cambridge University Press.
LETTERS
To and from Gilbert Murray:
Downing College
Cambridge
February 26, 1901
Dear Gilbert
I have now read the Hippolytus, and feel impelled to tell you how much it
has a?ected me. Those of us who love poetry read the great masterpieces
of modern literature before we have any experience of the passions they deal
with. To come across a new masterpiece with a more mature mind is a
wonderful experience, and one which I have found almost overwhelming.
It had not happened to me before, and I could not have believed how much
it would a?ect me. Your tragedy ful?ls perfectly – so it seems to me – the
purpose of bringing out whatever is noble and beautiful in sorrow; and to
those of us who are without a religion, this is the only consolation of which
the spectacle of the world cannot deprive us.
The play itself was entirely new to me, and I have felt its power most
keenly. But I feel that your poetry is completely worthy of its theme, and is to
be placed in the very small list of truly great English poems. I like best of all
the autobiography of bertrand russell 146the lyric with which you ended your reading at Newnham. I learnt it by heart
immediately, and it has been in my head ever since. There is only one word in
it which I do not wholly like, and that is the word bird-droves. Metrically it is
excellent, but a drove seems to me to be something driven, which spoils the
peacefulness of the idea to my mind.
Yours ever
Bertrand Russell
Barford, Churt,
Farnham, Surrey
March 2, 1901
My dear Bertie
I will not say that I feel pleased or delighted by your great enjoyment of my
Hippolytus, because my feelings are quite di?erent from that. It is rather that
your strong praise makes a sort of epoch in my life and in my way of regard-
ing my work. Of course I have felt great emotion in working at the Hippolytus; I
have been entranced by it. And then the thought has always come to me, that
there were dozens of translations of the Greek Tragedians in all the second-
hand shops; and that I could not read any of them with the least interest; and
that probably the authors of nearly all of them had felt exactly as I was feeling
about the extraordinary beauty and power of the matter they were writing
down. A translator, if he takes pains, naturally gets nearer to understanding
his author than an ordinary reader does; and every now and again the poem
means to him something approaching that which it meant to the poet.
Of course all authors – in di?erent degrees, but all enormously – fail to
convey their meaning. And translators, being less good writers and having
a harder task, fail even more deplorably. That is the normal state of the case.
But what seems to have happened in our case is that you have somehow or
other understood and felt the whole of what I meant to convey.
I do not mean that I had anything mysterious or extraordinary to say; but
merely that, even in the case of a bad poet or the Man-in-the-Street when in
certain moods, if you could really understand what was in his mind it would
be something astonishingly beautiful compared with what one ordinarily
gets from reading a very good poem. When I am bored with poetry,
I constantly have the feeling that I am simply not understanding the man or
he is not expressing himself, and that probably something very ?ne indeed is
going on inside him. And in some moment of special insight one might see
inside him and get the ?ne thing.
I see what you mean about ‘Bird-droves’. I will try to change it, but
I cannot think of anything better so far. The ?? arrived all right.
Yours ever
Gilbert Murray
‘principia mathematica’ 147Friday’s Hill
April 3, 1902
Dear Gilbert
In all our discussions on ethical subjects, I observe a di?erence as to
premisses, a real divergence as to moral axioms. As I am very anxious to
be clear on the subject of immediate moral intuitions (upon which, as is
evident, all morality must be based), and as a divergence upon fundamentals
raises doubts, I should like to make an attempt to discover precisely what our
di?erences are, and whether either of us holds at the same time mutually
incompatible axioms.
Our di?erences seem to spring from the fact that you are a utilitarian,
whereas I judge pleasure and pain to be of small importance compared
to knowledge, the appreciation and contemplation of beauty, and a certain
intrinsic excellence of mind which, apart from its practical e?ects, appears to
me to deserve the name of virtue. What I want to discover is, whether you
too do not hold moral principles not deducible from utilitarianism, and
therefore inconsistent with it. (It is important to observe that the method of
Sidgwick’s Ethics, in which a number of commonly received moral axioms are
shown to be roughly such as Utilitarianism would deduce as ‘middle axioms’,
is fallacious if, with Sidgwick, we accept the general basis of Intuitionism –
i.e. the doctrine that immediate intuitions are the only source (for us) of
moral premisses. For, if such axioms are immediate deliverances of moral
consciousness, they are to be accepted even in those exceptional cases in
which they are inconsistent with Utilitarianism; and thus any axiom not
rigidly deducible from Utilitarianism is inconsistent with it.)
I may as well begin by confessing that for many years it seemed to me
perfectly self-evident that pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil.
Now, however, the opposite seems to me self-evident. This change has been
brought about by what I may call moral experience. The ordinary a priori
philosopher will tell you that experience has nothing to do with morals,
since it tells us only what is, not what ought to be. This view seems to me
philosophically and practically erroneous; it depends upon the sensational
theory of knowledge, which, alas, is held in some form by many would be
a priori philosophers. Having recognised that, in perception, our knowledge is
not caused by the object perceived, it is plain that, if perception is experience,
so is any other genesis in time, due to whatever cause, of knowledge not
obtained by inference from other knowledge. Now circumstances are apt to
generate perfectly concrete moral convictions: this or that, now present
to me, is good or bad; and from a defect of imagination, it is often impossible
to judge beforehand what our moral opinion of a fact will be. It seems to me
that the genuine moral intuitions are of this very concrete kind; in fact that
we see goodness or badness in things as we see their colours and shapes. The
the autobiography of bertrand russell 148notion that general maxims are to be found in conscience seems to me to be
a mistake fostered by the Decalogue. I should rather regard the true method
of Ethics as inference from empirically ascertained facts, to be obtained in
that moral laboratory which life o?ers to those whose eyes are open to it.
Thus the principles I should now advocate are all inferences from such
immediate concrete moral experiences.
What ?rst turned me away from utilitarianism was the persuasion that
I myself ought to pursue philosophy, although I had (and have still) no doubt
that by doing economics and the theory of politics I could add more to
human happiness. It appeared to me that the dignity of which human exist-
ence is capable is not attainable by devotion to the mechanism of life, and that
unless the contemplation of eternal things is preserved, mankind will
become no better than well-fed pigs. But I do not believe that such contem-
plation on the whole tends to happiness. It gives moments of delight, but
these are outweighed by years of e?ort and depression. Also I re?ected that
the value of a work of art has no relation whatever to the pleasure it gives;
indeed, the more I have dwelt upon the subject, the more I have come to
prize austerity rather than luxuriance. It seems to me now that mathematics is
capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater;
not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either
in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but
because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of
great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in
fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.
Again, in regard to actual human existence, I have found myself giving hon-
our to those who feel its tragedy, who think truly about Death, who are
oppressed by ignoble things even when they are inevitable; yet these qualities
appear to me to militate against happiness, not only to the possessors, but to
all whom they a?ect. And, generally, the best life seems to me one which
thinks truly and feels greatly about human things, and which, in addition,
contemplates the world of beauty and of abstract truths. This last is, perhaps,
my most anti-utilitarian opinion: I hold all knowledge that is concerned with
things that actually exist – all that is commonly called Science – to be of very
slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and math-
ematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this
miserable world which God has made.
My point, in all this, is to suggest that my opinions would be shared by
most moral people who are not biassed by a theory. Archimedes, I believe,
was despised by contemporary geometers because he used geometry to make
useful inventions. And utilitarians have been strangely anxious to prove that
the life of the pig is not happier than that of the philosopher – a most
dubious proposition, which, if they had considered the matter frankly, could
‘principia mathematica’ 149hardly have been decided in the same way by all of them. In the matter of Art,
too, I certainly have educated common sense on my side: anyone would hold
it a paradox to regard Home Sweet Home as better than Bach. In this connec-
tion, too, it is necessary for the Utilitarian to hold that a beautiful object is not
good per se, but only as a means; thus it becomes di?cult to see why the
contemplation of beauty should be specially good, since it is scarcely deni-
able that the same emotion which a person of taste obtains from a beautiful
object may be obtained by another person from an ugly object. And a person
of taste can only be de?ned as one who gets the emotion in question from
beauty, not from ugliness. Yet all of us judge a person to be the better for the
possession of taste, though only a blind theorist could maintain that taste
increases happiness. Here is a hard nut for the Utilitarian!
All these arguments are at least as old as Plato; but I should like to know,
when you have leisure, what answer a Utilitarian can make to them. The
books contain only sophistries and lies – opinions possible, perhaps, to men
who live only in the study, and have no knowledge of life whatever, but quite
untenable by anyone who faces this ghastly world of ignoble degradation, in
which only virtue is punished and vice lives and dies happy and respected.
Yours ever
Bertrand Russell
14 Cheyne Walk
Chelsea, S.W.
November 27, 1902
Dear Gilbert
I have been reading the Bacchae over again, and it seems to me now a much
greater play than the Hippolytus, more marvellous, indeed, than any play I have
ever read, unless perhaps Hamlet and Lear. It has been growing on me gradually
ever since I read it ?rst; like all great things, it is impossible to see the whole
of it, but new points perpetually strike one.
The strange mystic exaltation of the chorus is very haunting, and the way
that their world of frenzy and beauty supports itself till just the end against
the everyday world is extraordinarily powerful. As a whole, I confess, the play
does not strike me as at all puzzling: it is surely intelligible enough how those
to whom such divine intoxication comes are ?lled with fury against the
sceptics who try to drag them back to common life. And it is a commonplace
that the worship of beauty makes for anarchy. It would have been absurd to
make Pentheus a sympathetic character; I suppose he represents the British
Public and Middle Class Respectability, and the respectable, though they
are undoubtedly morally superior to the worshippers of Bacchus, are yet
obviously unlovable in the con?ict which they stir up.
I think your metres, now that I have mastered them, are exceedingly ?ne
the autobiography of bertrand russell 150and wonderfully suited to the emotions they are meant to express: although
there is perhaps no single chorus as good as some in the Hippolytus, I think you
have shown more skill than you showed there; and altogether you are very
much to be congratulated. Do you not think you would do well to make
more translations? The two you have done have both been to me a really great
help in trying times, helping me to support faith in the world of beauty, and
in the ultimate dignity of life, when I was in danger of losing it: without
them I should have often found the day much harder to get through. Surely
there would be many who would feel the same, and as you have the power
you have also the duty, have you not? Each of us is an Atlas to the world of his
own ideals, and the poet, more than anyone else, lightens the burden for
weary shoulders.
I wish I knew how to reconcile the world of beauty and the world of
morals: some virtues, it is true, are beautiful, but many do not seem so.
I have been reading the Republic, and I agree with Plato that tragic poets
ought to make us feel virtue to be beautiful, and ought (on the whole) to
avoid the praises of vice. His austerity in matters of Art pleases me, for it does
not seem to be the easy condemnation that comes from the Philistine.
Yours gratefully
Bertrand Russell
14 Cheyne Walk
Chelsea, S.W.
December 4, 1902
Dear Gilbert
I am glad my appreciation of your work is encouraging to you. Yes, an
‘elegant leisure devoted to translating the classics’ doesn’t sound very nice as
an epitaph! But one must choose more inspiring phrases to describe one’s
activity to oneself.
I have looked up again the chorus beginning ‘O hounds raging and blind’,
and I still fail to ?nd any di?culty in it. It seems very probable that the ‘old
bottles’ is, as a matter of fact, the explanation of the savagery; but it is easy
enough, if one wants such things, to ?nd a psychological explanation. Have
you never, when you were admiring the sunset, suddenly been jarred into
‘Hell and Damnation, there are the so-and-so’s come to call’? A country
neighbour, under such circumstances, may easily be felt as a ‘spy upon God’s
possessed’. And do you not know, when a Philistine breaks in upon a delicate
imaginary world, the oscillation backwards and forwards between the
exquisite mood one is loath to lose and rage against the wretch who is
desecrating one’s Holy of Holies? Do you know Blake’s De?led Sanctuary,
beginning ‘I saw a chapel all of gold’, and ending ‘So I turned into a sty, And
laid me down among the swine’? This is from a worshipper of Bacchus who
‘principia mathematica’ 151had been unable to combat his Pentheus. It was on account of the rapid
alternation that I instanced Levine as a parallel. But I feel no doubt that it is the
work of clari?cation that you have put into your translation that has made the
Bacchae seem plain to me.
Yes, I know who the Storrs are and I can imagine that it is very hard for you
to get away at present; it must make more of a burden on Mary when you are
away. I am sorry you are sleepless and bedevilled. Sometimes sleepless nights
are a time for thoughts that remain with one as a comfort through the day:
I ?nd darkness a help to isolating the essentials of things and ?xing one’s
whole attention upon them. But I gather you do not ?nd that compensation.
Alys is keeping well. The river shines like burnished bronze under the
frosty sun, and the barges ?oat dimly through the brightness like dream-
memories of childhood.
Give my love to Mary, and write again when you can ?nd time. I like to
hear how domestic matters go – how Rosalind is, and so on.
Yours ever
Bertrand Russell
