Without you I can do,
And I think you’ll very soon be out of fashion.
I remember her saying to me once after I was grown-up: ‘I hear you are
writing another book’, in the tone of voice in which one might say: ‘I hear you
have another illegitimate child!’ Mathematics she did not positively object to,
though it was di?cult for her to believe that it could serve any useful pur-
pose. Her hope for me was that I should become a Unitarian minister. I held
my tongue as to my religious opinions until I was twenty-one. Indeed, after
the age of fourteen I found living at home only endurable at the cost of
complete silence about everything that interested me. She practised a form of
humour, which, though nominally amusing, was really full of animus. I did
not at that time know how to reply in kind, and merely felt hurt and miser-
able. My Aunt Agatha was equally bad, and my Uncle Rollo at the time had
withdrawn into himself through sorrow at his ?rst wife’s death. My brother,
who was at Balliol, had become a Buddhist, and used to tell me that the soul
could be contained in the smallest envelope. I remember thinking of all the
smallest envelopes that I had seen, and I imagined the soul beating against
them like a heart, but from what I could tell of esoteric Buddhism from my
brother’s conversation, it did not o?er me anything that I found of service.
After he came of age, I saw very little of him, as the family considered him
the autobiography of bertrand russell 34wicked, and he therefore kept away from home. I was upheld by the
determination to do something of importance in mathematics when I grew
up, but I did not suppose that I should ever meet anybody with whom I could
make friends, or to whom I could express any of my thoughts freely, nor did
I expect that any part of my life would be free from great unhappiness.
Throughout my time at Southgate I was very much concerned with politics
and economics. I read Mill’s Political Economy, which I was inclined to accept
completely; also Herbert Spencer, who seemed to me too doctrinaire in The
Man Versus The State, although I was in broad agreement with his bias.
My Aunt Agatha introduced me to the books of Henry George, which she
greatly admired. I became convinced that land nationalisation would secure
all the bene?ts that Socialists hoped to obtain from Socialism, and continued
to hold this view until the war of 1914–18.
My grandmother Russell and my Aunt Agatha were passionate supporters of
Gladstone’s Home Rule policy, and many Irish M.P.s used to visit Pembroke
Lodge. This was at a time when The Times professed to have documentary
proof that Parnell was an accomplice in murder. Almost the whole upper class,
including the great majority of those who had supported Gladstone till 1886,
accepted this view, until, in 1889, it was dramatically disproved by the forger
Piggot’s inability to spell ‘hesitancy’. My grandmother and aunt always
vehemently rejected the view that Parnell’s followers were in alliance with
terrorists. They admired Parnell, with whom I once shook hands. But when he
became involved in scandal, they agreed with Gladstone in repudiating him.
Twice I went with my Aunt Agatha to Ireland. I used to go for walks with
Michael Davitt, the Irish patriot, and also by myself. The beauty of the scenery
made a profound impression on me. I remember especially a small lake in
County Wicklow, called Lugala. I have associated it ever since, though for no
good reason, with the lines:
Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.
Fifty years later, when visiting my friend Crompton Davies in Dublin, I
induced him to take me to Lugala. But he took me to a wood high above the
lake, not to the ‘pebbled shore’ that I had remembered, and I went away
convinced that one should not attempt to renew old memories.
In the year 1883 my Uncle Rollo bought a house on the slopes of
Hindhead, where, for a long time, we all visited him for three months in
every year. At that time there were no houses on Hindhead except two dere-
lict coaching inns, the ‘Royal Huts’ and the ‘Seven Thorns’. (They are not
now derelict.) Tyndall’s house, which started the fashion, was being built. I
was frequently taken to see Tyndall, and he gave me one of his books, The
adolescence 35Forms of Water. I admired him as an eminent Man of Science, and strongly
desired to make some impression upon him. Twice I had some success. The
?rst time was while he was talking to my Uncle Rollo, and I balanced on one
?nger two walking sticks with crooks. Tyndall asked me what I was doing,
and I said I was thinking of a practical method of determining the centre of
gravity. The second time, some years later, was when I told him that I had
climbed the Piz Palü. He had been a pioneer Alpinist. I found inexpressible
delight in walks through the heather, over Blackdown, down the Punchbowl,
and as far as the Devil’s Jumps at Churt. I particularly remember exploring a
small road called ‘Mother Bunch’s Lane’ (it is now full of houses, and has
a sign saying ‘Bunch Lane’). It continually diminished, and at last became a
mere path leading to the crest of Hurt Hill. Quite suddenly, when I expected
nothing, I came upon an enormous view, embracing half of Sussex and
almost all of Surrey. Moments of this sort have been important in my life. In
general, I ?nd that things that have happened to me out of doors have made a
deeper impression than things that have happened indoors.
APPENDIX: ‘GREEK EXERCISES’
1888. March 3. I shall write about some subjects which now interest me. I
have in consequence of a variety of circumstances come to look into the very
foundations of the religion in which I have been brought up. On some points
my conclusions have been to con?rm my former creed, while on others I
have been irresistibly led to such conclusions as would not only shock my
people, but have given me much pain. I have arrived at certainty in few
things, but my opinions, even where not convictions, are on some things
nearly such. I have not the courage to tell my people that I scarcely believe in
immortality. I used to speak freely to Mr Ewen on such matters, but now I
cannot let out my thoughts to any one, and this is the only means I have of
letting o? steam. I intend to discuss some of my problems here.
19th. I mean today to put down my grounds for belief in God. I may say to
begin with that I do believe in God and that I should call myself a theist if I
had to give my creed a name. Now in ?nding reasons for believing in God I
shall only take account of scienti?c arguments. This is a vow I have made
which costs me much to keep, and to reject all sentiment. To ?nd then
scienti?c grounds for a belief in God we must go back to the beginning
of all things. We know that the present laws of nature have always been in
force. The exact quantity of matter and energy now in the universe must
always have been in existence, but the nebular hypothesis points to no
distant date for the time when the whole universe was ?lled with undi?eren-
tiated nebulous matter. Hence it is quite possible that the matter and force
the autobiography of bertrand russell 36now in existence may have had a creation, which clearly could be only by
divine power. But even granting that they have always been in existence, yet
whence came the laws which regulate the action of force on matter? I think
they are only attributable to a divine controlling power, which I accordingly
call God.
March 22. Now let us look into the reasonableness of the reasoning. Let us
suppose that the universe we now see has, as some suppose, grown by mere
chance. Should we then expect every atom to act in any given conditions
precisely similarly to another atom? I think if atoms be lifeless there is no
reason to expect them to do anything without a controlling power. If on the
other hand they be endowed with free will we are forced to the conclusion
that all atoms in the universe have combined in the commonwealth and have
made laws which none of them ever break. This is clearly an absurd hypoth-
esis and therefore we are forced to believe in God. But this way of proving his
existence at the same time disproves miracles and other supposed manifes-
tations of divine power. It does not however disprove their possibility, for of
course the maker of laws can also unmake them. We may arrive in another
way at a disbelief in miracles. For if God is the maker of the laws, surely it
would imply an imperfection in the law if it had to be altered occasionally,
and such imperfection we can never impute to the divine nature, as in the
Bible, God repented him of the work.
April 2. I now come to the subject which personally interests us poor
mortals more perhaps than any other. I mean the question of immortality.
This is the one in which I have been most disappointed and pained by
thought. There are two ways of looking at it, ?rst by evolution and compar-
ing men to animals, second, by comparing men with God. The ?rst is the
more scienti?c, for we know all about the animals but not about God. Well, I
hold that, taking free will ?rst, to consider there is no clear dividing line
between man and the protozoan, therefore if we give free will to men we
must give it also the protozoan; this is rather hard to do. Therefore, unless we
are willing to give free will to the protozoan we cannot give it to man. This
however is possible but it is di?cult to imagine, if, as seems to me probable,
protoplasm only came together in the ordinary course of nature without any
special providence from God; then we and all living things are simply kept
going by chemical forces and are nothing more wonderful than a tree, which
no one pretends has free will, and even if we had a good enough knowledge
of the forces acting on anyone at any time, the motives pro and con, the
constitution of his brain at any time, then we could tell exactly what he will
do. Again from the religious point of view free will is a very arrogant thing
for us to claim, for of course it is an interruption of God’s laws, for by his
adolescence 37ordinary laws all our actions would be ?xed as the stars. I think we must
leave to God the primary establishment of laws which are never broken and
determine everybody’s doings. And not having free will we cannot have
immortality.
Monday, April 6. I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me
quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhap-
pily for himself, with consciousness. But no other theory is consistent with
the complete omnipotence of God of which science, I think, gives ample
manifestations. Thus I must either be an atheist or disbelieve in immortality.
Finding the ?rst impossible I adopt the second and let no one know. I think,
however disappointing may be this view of men, it does give us a wonderful
idea of God’s greatness to think that He can in the beginning create laws
which by acting on a mere mass of nebulous matter, perhaps merely ether
di?used through this part of the universe, will produce creatures like our-
selves, conscious not only of our existence but even able to fathom to a
certain extent God’s mysteries. All this with no more intervention on his part.
Now let us think whether this doctrine of want of free will is so absurd. If we
talk about it to anyone they kick their legs or something of that sort. But
perhaps they cannot help it for they have something to prove and therefore
that supplies a motive to them to do it. Thus in anything we do we always
have motives which determine us. Also there is no line of demarcation
between Shakespeare or Herbert Spencer and a Papuan. But between them
and a Papuan there seems as much di?erence as between a Papuan and a
monkey.
April 14th. Yet there are great di?culties in the way of this doctrine that
man has not immortality nor free will nor a soul, in short that he is nothing
more than a species of ingenious machine endowed with consciousness. For
consciousness in itself is a quality quite distinguishing men from dead matter
and if they have one thing di?erent from dead matter why not have another,
free will? By free will I mean that they do not for example obey the ?rst
law of motion, or at least that the direction in which the energy they contain
is employed depends not entirely on external circumstances. Moreover it
seems impossible to imagine that man, the Great Man, with his reason, his
knowledge of the universe, and his ideas of right and wrong, Man with his
emotions, his love and hate and his religion, that this Man should be a mere
perishable chemical compound whose character and his in?uence for good
or for evil depend solely and entirely on the particular motions of the mol-
ecules of his brain and that all the greatest men have been great by reason of
some one molecule hitting up against some other a little oftener than in other
men. Does not this seem utterly incredible and must not any one be mad who
the autobiography of bertrand russell 38believes in such absurdity? But what is the alternative? That, accepting the
evolution theory which is practically proved, apes having gradually increased
in intelligence, God suddenly by a miracle endowed one with that wonderful
reason which it is a mystery how we possess. Then is man, truly called the
most glorious work of God, is man destined to perish utterly after he has
been so many ages evolving? We cannot say, but I prefer that idea to God’s
having needed a miracle to produce man and now leaving him free to do as
he likes.
April 18th. Accepting then the theory that man is mortal and destitute of
free will, which is as much as ever a mere theory, as of course all these kinds
of things are mere speculation, what idea can we form of right and wrong?
Many say if you make any mention of such an absurd doctrine as predestin-
ation, which comes to much the same thing, though parsons don’t think so,
why what becomes of conscience, etc., which they think has been directly
implanted in man by God. Now my idea is that our conscience is in the
?rst place due to evolution, which would of course form instincts of self-
preservation, and in the second place to education and civilisation, which
introduces great re?nements of the idea of self-preservation. Let us take for
example the ten commandments as illustrative of primitive morality. Many of
them are conducive to quiet living of the community which is best for the
preservation of the species. Thus what is always considered the worst possible
crime and the one for which most remorse is felt is murder, which is direct
annihilation of the species. Again, as we know, among the Hebrews it was
thought a mark of God’s favour to have many children, while the childless
were considered as cursed of God. Among the Romans also widows were
hated and I believe forbidden to remain unmarried in Rome more than a year.
Now why these peculiar ideas? Were they not simply because these objects of
pity or dislike did not bring forth fresh human beings? We can well under-
stand how such ideas might grow up when men became rather sensible, for if
murder and suicide were common in a tribe that tribe would die out and
hence one which held such acts in abhorrence would have a great advantage.
Of course among more educated societies these ideas are rather modi?ed.
My own I mean to give next time.
April 20th. Thus I think that primitive morality always originates in the
idea of the preservation of the species. But is this a rule which a civilised
community ought to follow? I think not. My rule of life, which I guide my
conduct by, and a departure from which I consider as a sin, is to act in the
manner which I believe to be most likely to produce the greatest happiness,
considering both the intensity of the happiness and the number of people
made happy. I know that Granny considers this an impractical rule of life and
adolescence 39says that since you can never know the thing which will produce the greatest
happiness you do much better in following the inner voice. The conscience,
however, can easily be seen to depend mostly upon education, as for example
common Irishmen do not consider lying wrong, which fact alone seems to
me quite su?cient to disprove the divine value of conscience. And since, as I
believe, conscience is merely the combined product of evolution and educa-
tion, then obviously it is an absurdity to follow that rather than reason. And
my reason tells me that it is better to act so as to produce maximum happiness
than in any other way. For I have tried to see what other object I could set
before me and I have failed. Not my own individual happiness in particular,
but everybody’s equally, making no distinction between myself, relations,
friends, or perfect strangers. In real life it makes very little di?erence to me as
long as others are not of my opinion, for obviously where there is any chance
of being found out it is better to do what one’s people consider right. My
reason for this view: ?rst that I can ?nd no other, having been forced, as
everybody must who seriously thinks about evolution, to give up the old idea
of asking one’s conscience, next that it seems to me that happiness is the great
thing to seek after. As an application of the theory to practical life, I will say
that in a case where nobody but myself was concerned, if indeed such a case
exist, I should of course act entirely sel?shly to please myself. Suppose for
another instance that I had the chance of saving a man who would be better
out of the world. Obviously I should consult my own happiness best by
plunging in after him. For if I lost my life, that would be a very neat way of
managing it, and if I saved him I should have the pleasure of no end of praise.
But if I let him drown I should have lost an opportunity of death and should
have the misery of much blame, but the world would be better for his loss
and, as I have some slight hope, for my life.
April 29th. In all things I have made the vow to follow reason, not the
instincts inherited partly from my ancestors and gained gradually by them,
owing to a process of natural selection, and partly due to my education.
How absurd it would be to follow these in the questions of right and wrong.
For as I observed before, the inherited part can only be principles leading
to the preservation of the species to which I belong, the part due to education
is good or bad according to the individual education. Yet this inner voice,
this God-given conscience which made Bloody Mary burn the Protestants,
this is what we reasonable beings are to follow. I think this idea mad and I
endeavour to go by reason as far as possible. What I take as my ideal is
that which ultimately produces greatest happiness of greatest number. Then
I can apply reason to ?nd out the course most conducive to this end. In
my individual case, however, I can also go more or less by conscience
owing to the excellence of my education. But it is curious how people
the autobiography of bertrand russell 40dislike the abandonment of brutish impulses for reason. I remember poor
Ewen getting a whole dinner of argument, owing to his running down
impulse. Today again at tea Miss Buhler and I had a long discussion because
I said that I followed reason not conscience in matters of right and wrong. I
do hate having such peculiar opinions because either I must keep them
bottled up or else people are horri?ed at my scepticism, which is as bad
with people one cares for as remaining bottled up. I shall be sorry when
Miss Buhler goes because I can open my heart easier to her than to my own
people, strange to say.
May 3rd. Miss Buhler is gone and I am left again to loneliness and reserve.
Happily, however, it seems all but settled that I am going to Southgate and
probably within the week. That will save me I feel sure from those morose
cogitations during the week, owing to the amount of activity of my life, and
novelty at ?rst. I do not expect that I shall enjoy myself at ?rst, but after a time
I hope I shall. Certainly it will be good for my work, for my games and my
manners, and my future happiness I expect....
May 8th. What a much happier life mine would be but for these wretched
ideas of mine about theology. Tomorrow I go, and tonight Granny prayed a
beautiful prayer for me in my new life, in which among other things she said:
May he especially be taught to know God’s in?nite love for him. Well that is a
prayer to which I can heartily say Amen, and moreover it is one of which I
stand in the greatest need. For according to my ideas of God we have no
particular reason to suppose he loves us. For he only set the machine in
working order to begin with and then left it to work out its own necessary
consequences. Now you may say his laws are such as a?ord the greatest
possible happiness to us mortals, but that is a statement of which there can be
no proof. Hence I see no reason to believe in God’s kindness towards me, and
even the whole prayer was more or less a solemn farce to me, though I was
truly a?ected by the simple beauty of prayer and her earnest way in saying it.
What a thing it is to have such people! What might I be had I been worse
brought up!
By the way, to change to a more cheerful subject: Marshall
4
and I had an
awfully ?ne day of it. We went down to the river, marched into Broom Hall,
5
bagged a boat of Frank’s we found there, and rowed up the river beyond
Kingston Bridge without anybody at Broom Hall having seen us except one old
man who was lame. Who the dickens he was I haven’t the faintest idea. Marshall
was awfully anxious to have some tea and we came to an nth rate inn which
he thought would do. Having however like idiots left our jackets in the
boat-house at Teddington we had to march in without coats and were served
by the cheekiest of maids ever I saw who said she thought we were the
adolescence 41carpenters come to mend the house. Then we rowed back as hard as possible
and got home perspiring fearfully and twenty minutes late which produced a
small row.
May 20th. Here I am home again for the ?rst time from Southgate. It seems
a pleasant place but it is sad really to see the kind of boys that are common
everywhere. No mind, no independent thought, no love of good books nor
of the higher re?nements of morality. It is really sad that the upper classes of
a civilised and (supposed to be) moral country can produce nothing better. I
am glad I didn’t go away from home sooner as I should never have come to
my present state had I done so, but should have been merely like one of them.
(By the way, how terribly pharisaical I am getting.) I think the six months
since Baillie went have made a great alteration in me. I have become of a
calmer, thoughtfuller, poeticaller nature than I was. One little thing I think
illustrates this well. I never before thought much of the views in spring,
whereas this year I was so simply carried away by their beauty that I asked
Granny if they were not more beautiful than usual, but she said not. I like
poetry much better than I did and have read all Shakespeare’s historical plays
with great delight, and long to read In Memoriam.
May 27th. As I said last time, I attempt to work according to my principles
without the smallest expectations of reward, and even without using the light
of conscience blindly as an infallible guide . . . It is very di?cult for anyone to
work aright with no aid from religion, by his own internal guidance merely. I
have tried and I may say failed. But the sad thing is that I have no other
resource. I have no helpful religion. My doctrines, such as they are, help my
daily life no more than a formula in Algebra. But the great inducement to a
good life with me is Granny’s love and the immense pain I know it gives her
when I go wrong. But she must I suppose die some day and where then will
be my stay? I have the very greatest fear that my life hereafter be ruined by my
having lost the support of religion. I desire of all things that my religion should
not spread, for I of all people ought, owing to my education and the care
taken of my moral well-being, to be of all people the most moral. So I believe I
might be were it not for these unhappy ideas of mine, for how easy it is when
one is much tempted to convince oneself that only happiness will be produced
by yielding to temptation, when according to my ideas the course one has
been taught to abhor immediately becomes virtuous. If ever I shall become an
utter wreck of what I hope to be I think I shall bring forward this book as an
explanation. We stand in want of a new Luther to renew faith and invigorate
Christianity and to do what the Unitarians would do if only they had a really
great man such as Luther to lead them. For religions grow old like trees unless
reformed from time to time. Christianity of the existing kinds has had its
the autobiography of bertrand russell 42day. We want a new form in accordance with science and yet helpful to a
good life.
June 3rd. It is extraordinary how few principles or dogmas I have been able
to become convinced of. One after another I ?nd my former undoubted
beliefs slipping from me into the region of doubt. For example, I used never
for a moment to doubt that truth was a good thing to get hold of. But now I
have the very greatest doubt and uncertainty. For the search for truth has led
me to these results I have put in this book, whereas had I been content to
accept the teachings of my youth I should have remained comfortable. The
search for truth has shattered most of my old beliefs and has made me
commit what are probably sins where otherwise I should have kept clear of
them. I do not think it has in any way made me happier. Of course it has given
me a deeper character, a contempt for tri?es or mockery, but at the same time
it has taken away cheerfulness and made it much harder to make bosom
friends, and worst of all it has debarred me from free intercourse with my
people, and thus made them strangers to some of my deepest thoughts,
which, if by any mischance I do let them out, immediately become the
subject for mockery, which is inexpressibly bitter to me though not unkindly
meant. Thus in my individual case I should say the e?ects of a search for truth
have been more bad than good. But the truth which I accept as such may be
said not to be truth and I may be told that if I get at real truth I shall be made
happier by it, but this is a very doubtful proposition. Hence I have great
doubt of the unmixed advantage of truth. Certainly truth in biology lowers
one’s idea of man which must be painful. Moreoever, truth estranges former
friends and prevents the making of new ones, which is also a bad thing. One
ought perhaps to look upon all these things as a martyrdom, since very often
truth attained by one man may lead to the increase in the happiness of many
others though not to his own. On the whole I am inclined to continue to
pursue truth, though truth of the kind in this book, if that indeed be truth, I
have no desire to spread but rather to prevent from spreading.
July 15th. My holidays have begun about a week now and I am getting
used to home and beginning to regard Southgate as an evil dream of the past.
For although I tell people I like it very much, yet really, though better than I
expected, life there has great trials and hardships. I don’t suppose anybody
hates disturbance as I do or can so ill stand mockery, though to outward
appearance I keep my temper all right. Being made to sing, to climb on
chairs, to get up for a sponging in the middle of the night, is to me ?fty times
more detestable than to others. I always have to go through in a moment a
long train of reasoning as to the best thing to say or do, for I have su?cient
self-control to do what I think best, and the excitement, which to others
adolescence 43might seem small, leaves me trembling and exhausted. However, I think it is
an excellent thing for me, as it increases my capacity for enjoyment and
strengthens me morally to a very considerable extent. I shan’t forget in a
hurry their amazement that I had never said a ‘damn’, which with things like
it goes near to making me a fanfaron de crimes. This, however, is a bad thing to
be, when only too many real crimes are committed. . . . I am glad I didn’t go
to school before. I should have wanted strength and have had no time for the
original thought, which though it has caused me much pain, is yet my chief
stay and support in troubles. I am always kept up by a feeling of contempt,
erroneous though it may be, for all who despitefully use me and persecute
me. I don’t think contempt is misplaced when a chap’s habitual language is
about something like ‘who put me on my cold, cold pot whether I would or
not? My mother,’ sung to the tune of ‘Thy will be done’. Had my education,
however, been the least bit less perfect than it is I should probably have been
the same. But I feel I must enjoy myself at home much better than ever before,
which with an imaginary feeling of heroism reconciles me to a great deal of
unhappiness at Southgate.
