mouth. It was there that I ?rst learned the name of Thomas Hardy, whose
book The Trumpet Major, in three volumes, was lying on the drawing-room
table. I think the only reason I remember it is that I wondered what a trumpet
major might be, and that it was by the author of Far from the Madding Crowd, and
I did not know either what a madding crowd was. While we were there, my
German governess told me that one got no Christmas presents unless one
believed in Father Christmas. This caused me to burst into tears, as I could not
believe in such a personage. My only other recollections of the place are that
there was an unprecedented snow-storm, and that I learned to skate – an
amusement of which I was passionately fond throughout my boyhood. I never
missed an opportunity of skating, even when the ice was unsafe. Once when
I was staying in Dover Street I went skating in St James’s Park and fell in. I had
a feeling of disgrace in having to run through the streets dripping wet, but
I nevertheless persisted in the practice of skating on thin ice. Of the following
year I remember nothing whatever, but my tenth birthday is still as vivid to
me as if it were yesterday. The weather was bright and warm, and I sat in a
blossoming laburnum tree, but presently a Swiss lady, who had come to be
interviewed, and subsequently became my governess, was sent out to play
ball with me. She said she had ‘catched’ the ball, and I corrected her. When
I had to cut my own birthday cake, I was much ashamed because I could
not get the ?rst slice to come out. But what stays most in my mind is the
impression of sunshine.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 24At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was
one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as ?rst love. I had not imagined
that there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the ?fth
proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered di?cult, but
I had found no di?culty whatever. This was the ?rst time it had dawned upon
me that I might have some intelligence. From that moment until Whitehead
and I ?nished Principia Mathematica, when I was thirty-eight, mathematics was
my chief interest, and my chief source of happiness. Like all happiness, how-
ever, it was not unalloyed. I had been told that Euclid proved things, and was
much disappointed that he started with axioms. At ?rst I refused to accept
them unless my brother could o?er me some reason for doing so, but he
said: ‘If you don’t accept them we cannot go on’, and as I wished to go on,
I reluctantly admitted them pro tem. The doubt as to the premisses of math-
ematics which I felt at that moment remained with me, and determined the
course of my subsequent work.
The beginnings of Algebra I found far more di?cult, perhaps as a result of
bad teaching. I was made to learn by heart: ‘The square of the sum of two
numbers is equal to the sum of their squares increased by twice their prod-
uct.’ I had not the vaguest idea what this meant, and when I could not
remember the words, my tutor threw the book at my head, which did not
stimulate my intellect in any way. After the ?rst beginnings of Algebra, how-
ever, everything else went smoothly. I used to enjoy impressing a new tutor
with my knowledge. Once, at the age of thirteen, when I had a new tutor,
I spun a penny, and he said to me: ‘Why does that penny spin?’ and I replied:
‘Because I make a couple with my ?ngers.’ ‘What do you know about
couples?’ he said. ‘Oh, I know all about couples’, I replied airily. My grand-
mother was always afraid that I should overwork, and kept my hours of
lessons very short. The result was that I used to work in my bedroom on the
sly with one candle, sitting at my desk in a night-shirt on cold evenings, ready
to blow out the candle and pop into bed at the slightest sound. I hated Latin
and Greek, and thought it merely foolish to learn a language that nobody
speaks. I liked mathematics best, and next to mathematics I liked history.
Having no one with whom to compare myself, I did not know for a long time
whether I was better or worse than other boys, but I remember once hearing
my Uncle Rollo saying goodbye to Jowett, the Master of Balliol, at the front
door, and remarking: ‘Yes, he’s getting on very well indeed’, and I knew,
though how I cannot tell, that he was speaking of my work. As soon as
I realised that I was intelligent, I determined to achieve something of intel-
lectual importance if it should be at all possible, and throughout my youth I
let nothing whatever stand in the way of this ambition.
It would be completely misleading to suggest that my childhood was all
solemnity and seriousness. I got just as much fun out of life as I could, some
childhood 25of it I am afraid of a somewhat mischievous kind. The family doctor, an old
Scotchman with mutton-chop whiskers, used to come in his brougham
which waited at the front door while the man of healing spoke his piece. His
coachman had an exquisite top-hat, calculated to advertise the excellence of
the practice. I used to get on the roof above this splendid head-piece and drop
rotten rosebuds out of the gutter on to its ?at top. They spread all over with a
delicious squish and I withdrew my head quickly enough for the coachman
to suppose that they had fallen from heaven. Sometimes I did even worse.
I threw snowballs at him when he was driving, thereby endangering the
valuable lives of him and his employer. I had another amusement which
I much enjoyed. On a Sunday, when the Park was crowded, I would climb to
the very top of a large beech tree on the edge of our grounds. There I would
hang upside down and scream and watch the crowd gravely discussing how a
rescue should be e?ected. When I saw them nearing a decision I would get
the right way up and quietly come down. During the time when Jimmie
Baillie stayed with me I was led into even more desperate courses. The bath
chair in which I remembered my grandfather being wheeled about had been
lodged in a lumber room. We found it there and raced it down whatever hills
we could ?nd. When this was discovered it was considered blasphemy and
we were reproached with melancholy gravity. Some of our doings, however,
never came to the ears of the grown-ups. We tied a rope to a branch of a tree
and learnt by long practice to swing in a complete circle and return to our
starting point. It was only by great skill that one could avoid stopping half-
way and bumping one’s back painfully into the rough bark of the tree. When
other boys came to visit us, we used to carry out the correct performance
ourselves and when the others attempted to imitate us we maliciously exulted
in their painful failure. My Uncle Rollo, with whom for a while we used to
spend three months each year, had three cows and a donkey. The donkey was
more intelligent than the cows and learnt to open the gates between the ?elds
with his nose, but he was said to be unruly and useless. I did not believe this
and, after some unsuccessful attempts, I learnt to ride him without saddle or
bridle. He would kick and buck but he never got me o? except when I had
tied a can full of rattling stones to his tail. I used to ride him all round the
country, even when I went to visit the daughter of Lord Wolseley who lived
about three miles from my uncle’s house.
the autobiography of bertrand russell 262
ADOLESCENCE
My childhood was, on the whole, happy and straightforward, and I felt
a?ection for most of the grown-ups with whom I was brought in contact. I
remember a very de?nite change when I reached what in modern child
psychology is called the ‘latency period’. At this stage, I began to enjoy using
slang, pretending to have no feelings, and being generally ‘manly’. I began to
despise my people, chie?y because of their extreme horror of slang and their
absurd notion that it was dangerous to climb trees. So many things were
forbidden me that I acquired the habit of deceit, in which I persisted up to
the age of twenty-one. It became second nature to me to think that whatever I
was doing had better be kept to myself, and I have never quite overcome the
impulse to concealment which was thus generated. I still have an impulse to
hide what I am reading when anybody comes into the room, and to hold my
tongue generally as to where I have been, and what I have done. It is only by a
certain e?ort of will that I can overcome this impulse, which was generated
by the years during which I had to ?nd my way among a set of foolish
prohibitions.
The years of adolescence were to me very lonely and very unhappy. Both in
the life of the emotions and in the life of the intellect, I was obliged to
preserve an impenetrable secrecy towards my people. My interests were div-
ided between sex, religion, and mathematics. I ?nd the recollection of my
sexual preoccupation in adolescence unpleasant. I do not like to remember
how I felt in those years, but I will do my best to relate things as they were
and not as I could wish them to have been. The facts of sex ?rst became
known to me when I was twelve years old, through a boy named Ernest
Logan who had been one of my kindergarten companions at an earlier age.
He and I slept in the same room one night, and he explained the nature ofcopulation and its part in the generation of children, illustrating his remarks
by funny stories. I found what he said extremely interesting, although I had as
yet no physical response. It appeared to me at the time self-evident that free
love was the only rational system, and that marriage was bound up with
Christian superstition. (I am sure this re?ection occurred to me only a very
short time after I ?rst knew the facts.) When I was fourteen, my tutor men-
tioned to me that I should shortly undergo an important physical change. By
this time I was more or less able to understand what he meant. I had at that
time another boy, Jimmie Baillie, staying with me, the same whom I met at
Vancouver in 1929, and he and I used to talk things over, not only with each
other, but with the page-boy, who was about our own age or perhaps a year
older, and rather more knowing than we were. When it was discovered that
we had spent a certain afternoon in doubtful conversation with the page-boy,
we were spoken to in tones of deep sorrow, sent to bed, and kept on bread
and water. Strange to say, this treatment did not destroy my interest in sex. We
spent a great deal of time in the sort of conversation that is considered
improper, and in endeavouring to ?nd out things of which we were ignorant.
For this purpose I found the medical dictionary very useful. At ?fteen, I
began to have sexual passions, of almost intolerable intensity. While I was
sitting at work, endeavouring to concentrate, I would be continually dis-
tracted by erections, and I fell into the practice of masturbating, in which,
however, I always remained moderate. I was much ashamed of this practice,
and endeavoured to discontinue it. I persisted in it, nevertheless, until the age
of twenty, when I dropped it suddenly because I was in love.
The same tutor who told me of the approach of puberty mentioned, some
months later, that one speaks of a man’s breast, but of a woman’s breasts. This
remark caused me such an intolerable intensity of feeling that I appeared to
be shocked, and he rallied me on my prudery. Many hours every day were
spent in desiring to see the female body, and I used to try to get glimpses
through windows when the maids were dressing, always unsuccessfully,
however. My friend and I spent a winter making an underground house,
which consisted of a long tunnel, through which one crawled on hands and
knees, and then of a room 6 foot cube. There was a housemaid whom I used
to induce to accompany me to this underground house, where I kissed her
and hugged her. Once I asked her whether she would like to spend a night
with me, and she said she would die rather, which I believed. She also
expressed surprise, saying that she had thought I was good. Consequently this
a?air proceeded no further. I had by this time quite lost the rationalist out-
look on sex which I had had before puberty, and accepted entirely the con-
ventional views as quite sound. I became morbid, and regarded myself as
very wicked. At the same time, I took a considerable interest in my own
psychology, which I studied carefully and not unintelligently, but I was told
the autobiography of bertrand russell 28that all introspection is morbid, so that I regarded this interest in my own
thoughts and feelings as another proof of mental aberration. After two or
three years of introspection, however, I suddenly realised that, as it is the only
method of obtaining a great deal of important knowledge, it ought not to be
condemned as morbid. This relieved my feelings on this point.
Concurrently with this physical preoccupation with sex, went a great
intensity of idealistic feeling, which I did not at that time recognise as sexual
in origin. I became intensely interested in the beauty of sunsets and clouds,
and trees in spring and autumn, but my interest was of a very sentimental
kind, owing to the fact that it was an unconscious sublimation of sex, and
an attempt to escape from reality. I read poetry widely, beginning with very
bad poetry such as In Memoriam. While I was sixteen and seventeen, I read,
as far as I can remember, the whole of Milton’s poetry, most of Byron, a
great deal of Shakespeare, large parts of Tennyson, and ?nally Shelley. I came
upon Shelley by accident. One day I was waiting for my Aunt Maude in
her sitting-room at Dover Street. I opened it at Alastor, which seemed to
me the most beautiful poem I had ever read. Its unreality was, of course, the
great element in my admiration for it. I had got about half-way through
when my Aunt arrived, and I had to put the volume back in the shelf. I
asked the grown-ups whether Shelley was not considered a great poet, but
found that they thought ill of him. This, however, did not deter me, and I
spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart. Knowing no
one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to re?ect how
wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I
should ever meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much in
sympathy.
Alongside with my interest in poetry, went an intense interest in religion
and philosophy. My grandfather was Anglican, my grandmother was a
Scotch Presbyterian, but gradually became a Unitarian. I was taken on alter-
nate Sundays to the (Episcopalian) Parish Church at Petersham and to the
Presbyterian Church at Richmond, while at home I was taught the doctrines
of Unitarianism. It was these last that I believed until about the age of ?fteen.
At this age I began a systematic investigation of the supposed rational argu-
ments in favour of fundamental Christian beliefs. I spent endless hours in
meditation upon this subject; I could not speak to anybody about it for fear of
giving pain. I su?ered acutely both from the gradual loss of faith and from
the need of silence. I thought that if I ceased to believe in God, freedom and
immortality, I should be very unhappy. I found, however, that the reasons
given in favour of these dogmas were very unconvincing. I considered them
one at a time with great seriousness. The ?rst to go was free will. At the age of
?fteen, I became convinced that the motions of matter, whether living
or dead, proceeded entirely in accordance with the laws of dynamics, and
adolescence 29therefore the will can have no in?uence upon the body. I used at this time to
write down my re?ections in English written in Greek letters in a book
headed ‘Greek Exercises’.
1
I did this for fear lest someone should ?nd out
what I was thinking. In this book I recorded my conviction that the human
body is a machine. I should have found intellectual satisfaction in becoming a
materialist, but on grounds almost identical with those of Descartes (who
was unknown to me except as the inventor of Cartesian co-ordinates), I came
to the conclusion that consciousness is an undeniable datum, and therefore
pure materialism is impossible. This was at the age of ?fteen. About two years
later, I became convinced that there is no life after death, but I still believed
in God, because the ‘First Cause’ argument appeared to be irrefutable. At the
age of eighteen, however, shortly before I went to Cambridge, I read Mill’s
Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the e?ect that his father taught him
that the question ‘Who made me?’ cannot be answered, since it immediately
suggests the further question ‘Who made God?’. This led me to abandon the
‘First Cause’ argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the long
period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual
loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise
that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject.
Throughout this time, I read omnivorously. I taught myself enough Italian
to read Dante and Machiavelli. I read Comte, of whom, however, I did not
think much. I read Mill’s Political Economy and Logic, and made elaborate
abstracts of them. I read Carlyle with a good deal of interest, but with a
complete repudiation of his purely sentimental arguments in favour of
religion. For I took the view then, which I have taken ever since, that a
theological proposition should not be accepted unless there is the same kind
of evidence for it that would be required for a proposition in science. I read
Gibbon, and Milman’s History of Christianity, and Gulliver’s Travels unexpurgated.
The account of the Yahoos had a profound e?ect upon me, and I began to see
human beings in that light.
It must be understood that the whole of this mental life was deeply buried;
not a sign of it showed in my intercourse with other people. Socially I was
shy, childish, awkward, well behaved, and good-natured. I used to watch
with envy people who could manage social intercourse without anguished
awkwardness. There was a young man called Cattermole who, I suppose,
must have been a bit of a bounder; but I watched him walking with a smart
young woman with easy familiarity and evidently pleasing her. And I would
think that never, never, never should I learn to behave in a manner that could
possibly please any woman in whom I might be interested. Until just before
my sixteenth birthday, I was sometimes able to speak of some things to my
tutors. Until that date I was educated at home, but my tutors seldom stayed
more than three months. I did not know why this was, but I think it was
the autobiography of bertrand russell 30because whenever a new tutor arrived, I used to induce him to enter into a
conspiracy with me to deceive my people wherever their demands were
absurd. One tutor I had was an agnostic, and used to allow me to discuss
religion with him. I imagine that he was dismissed because this was dis-
covered. The tutor whom my people liked best and who stayed the longest
with me was a man dying of consumption whose breath stank intolerably. It
never occurred to them that it was unwise, from a health point of view, to
have me perpetually in his neighbourhood.
Just before my sixteenth birthday, I was sent to an Army crammer at Old
Southgate, which was then in the country. I was not sent to him in order to
cram for the Army, but in order to be prepared for the scholarship examin-
ation at Trinity College, Cambridge. Almost all of the other people there,
however, were going into the Army, with the exception of one or two repro-
bates who were going to take Orders. Everybody, except myself, was seven-
teen or eighteen, or nineteen, so that I was much the youngest. They were all
of an age to have just begun frequenting prostitutes, and this was their main
topic of conversation. The most admired among them was a young man
who asserted that he had had syphilis and got cured, which gave him great
kudos. They would sit round telling bawdy stories. Every incident gave them
opportunities for improper remarks. Once the crammer sent one of them
with a note to a neighbouring house. On returning, he related to the others
that he had rung the bell and a maid had appeared to whom he had said: ‘I
have brought a letter’ (meaning a French letter) to which she replied: ‘I am
glad you have brought a letter.’ When one day in church a hymn was sung
containing the line: ‘Here I’ll raise my Ebenezer’, they remarked: ‘I never
heard it called that before!’
In spite of my previous silent preoccupation with sex, contact with it in
this brutal form deeply shocked me. I became very Puritanical in my views,
and decided that sex without deep love is beastly. I retired into myself, and
had as little to do with the others as possible. The others, however, found me
suitable for teasing. They used to make me sit on a chair on a table and sing
the only song I knew, which was:
Old Abraham is dead and gone,
We ne’er shall see him more,
He used to wear an old great coat,
All buttoned down before.
He also had another coat,
Which was of a different kind,
Instead of buttoning down before,
It buttoned up behind.
adolescence 31I soon realised that my only chance of escape from their attentions was to
remain imperturbably good-humoured. After a term or two, another teasable
boy arrived, who had the added merit of losing his temper. This caused them
to let me alone. Gradually, also, I got used to their conversation and ceased to
be shocked by it. I remained, however, profoundly unhappy. There was a
footpath leading across ?elds to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone
to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit
suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics. My people would,
of course, have been horri?ed if they had known of the sort of conversation
that was habitual, but as I was getting on well with mathematics I wished on
the whole to stay, and never told them a word as to the sort of place it was. At
the end of the year and a half at the crammer’s I was examined for scholar-
ships in December 1889, and obtained a minor scholarship. During the ten
months that intervened before my going to Cambridge, I lived at home, and
coached with the man whom the crammer had hired to teach me.
For a time at the crammer’s I had one friend – a man named Edward
FitzGerald. His mother was American, and his father Canadian, and he
became well known in later years as a great mountain climber, performing
many exploits in the New Zealand Alps and the Andes. His people were very
rich, and lived in a large house, No. 19 Rutland Gate.
2
He had a sister who
wrote poetry and was a great friend of Robert Browning whom I frequently
met at Rutland Gate.
3
She afterwards became ?rst Lady Edmond Fitzmaurice,
and then Signora de Philippi. His sister was considerably older than he was,
and an accomplished classical scholar. I conceived a romantic admiration for
her, though when I met her later she seemed an unmitigated bore. He had
been brought up in America, and was exceedingly sophisticated. He was lazy
and lackadaisical, but had remarkable ability in a great many directions, no-
tably in mathematics. He could tell the year of any reputable wine or cigar. He
could eat a spoonful of mixed mustard and Cayenne pepper. He was intimate
with Continental brothels. His knowledge of literature was extensive, and
while an undergraduate at Cambridge, he acquired a ?ne library of ?rst
editions. When he ?rst came to the crammer’s, I took to him at once, because
he was at any rate a civilised being, which none of the others were. (Robert
Browning died while I was there, and none of the others had ever heard of
him.) We used both to go home for the weekend, and on the way he would
always take me ?rst to lunch with his people and then to a matinée. My
people made inquiries about the family, but were reassured by a testimonial
from Robert Browning. Having been lonely so long, I devoted a somewhat
absurd amount of a?ection to FitzGerald. To my great delight, I was invited to
go abroad with him and his people in August. This was the ?rst time I had
been abroad since the age of two, and the prospect of seeing foreign coun-
tries excited me greatly. We went ?rst to Paris, where the Exhibition of 1889
the autobiography of bertrand russell 32was in progress, and we went to the top of the Ei?el Tower, which was new
that year. We then went to Switzerland, where we drove from place to place
for about a week, ending up in the Engadine. He and I climbed two moun-
tains, Piz Corvach, and Piz Palü. On both occasions there was a snow-storm.
On the ?rst I had mountain sickness, and on the second he did. The second
occasion was quite exciting, as one of our guides fell over a precipice, and
had to be hauled up by the rope. I was impressed by his sang froid, as he swore
as he fell over.
Unfortunately, however, FitzGerald and I had a somewhat serious dis-
agreement during this time. He spoke with what I thought unpardonable
rudeness to his mother, and being young I reproached him for doing so. He
was exceedingly angry, with a cold anger which lasted for months. When we
returned to the crammer’s, we shared lodgings, and he devoted himself to
saying disagreeable things, in which he displayed great skill. I came to hate
him with a violence which, in retrospect, I can hardly understand. On one
occasion, in an access of fury, I got my hands on his throat and started to
strangle him. I intended to kill him, but when he began to grow livid, I
relented. I do not think he knew that I had intended murder. After this, we
remained fairly good friends throughout his time at Cambridge, which,
however, ended with his marriage at the end of his second year.
Throughout this time, I had been getting more and more out of sympathy
with my people. I continued to agree with them in politics, but in nothing
else. At ?rst I sometimes tried to talk to them about things that I was consider-
ing, but they always laughed at me, and this caused me to hold my tongue. It
appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of
all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought
otherwise. Belief in happiness, I found, was called Utilitarianism, and was
merely one among a number of ethical theories. I adhered to it after this
discovery, and was rash enough to tell grandmother that I was a utilitarian.
She covered me with ridicule, and ever after submitted ethical conundrums
to me, telling me to solve them on utilitarian principles. I perceived that she
had no good grounds for rejecting utilitarianism, and that her opposition to
it was not intellectually respectable. When she discovered that I was inter-
ested in metaphysics, she told me that the whole subject could be summed
up in the saying: ‘What is mind? no matter; what is matter? never mind.’ At
the ?fteenth or sixteenth repetition of this remark, it ceased to amuse me, but
my grandmother’s animus against metaphysics continued to the end of her
life. Her attitude is expressed in the following verses:
O Science metaphysical
And very very quizzical,
You only make this maze of life the mazier;
adolescence 33For boasting to illuminate
Such riddles dark as Will and Fate
You muddle them to hazier and hazier.
The cause of every action,
You expound with satisfaction;
Through the mind in all its corners and recesses
You say that you have travelled,
And all problems unravelled
And axioms you call your learned guesses.
Right and wrong you’ve so dissected,
And their fragments so connected,
That which we follow doesn’t seem to matter;
But the cobwebs you have wrought,
And the silly ?ies they have caught,
It needs no broom miraculous to shatter.
You know no more than I,
What is laughter, tear, or sigh,
Or love, or hate, or anger, or compassion;
Metaphysics, then, adieu,
