A Fresh Look at Empiricism 1927-42

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BERTRAND RUSSELL

A Fresh Look at Empiricism

1927-42

Edited by John G. Slater with the assistance of Peter Kemner

Russell clearing customs in New York City, September 1938. (Associated Press Photo)

London and New York

First published 1996 by Routledge n New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF BERTRAND RUSSELL

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY I0001

Bertrand Russell's unpublished letters and Papers 6, 9, 33-35, 56, and Appendixes VI, XIV© McMaster University 1996. Papers 1-5, 7, 8, 10-32, 36-55, 57-69, and Appendixes I-v, vn-xm © The Bertrand Russell Estate 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942. Editorial matter© John G. Slater 1996. Funds to edit this volume were provided by a major editorial grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by McMaster University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Russell, Bertrand A Fresh Look at Empiricism, 1927-42. (Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell; V. IO)

I. Title II. Slater, John G. III. Kiillner, Peter. N. Series 192

DIRECTOR

Louis Greenspan (McMaster University)

ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD

I. Grattan-Guinness (Middlesex University)

Jock Gunn (Queen's University) Francess G. Halpenny (University of Toronto) Royden Harrison (University of Warwick) Leonard Linsky (University of Chicago) H. C. G. Matthew (St. Hugh's College, Oxford) John Passmore* (Australian National University) D. F. Pears (Christ Church, Oxford) John M. Robson (University of Toronto) Alan Ryan (Princeton University) Katharine Tait

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Russell, Bertrand, 1872-1970. A fresh look at empiricism : 1927-42 I Bertrand Russell ; edited by John G. Slater with the assistance of Peter Ki:\llner. -McMaster University ed. p. cm.-(The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell; v. IO) Includes bibliographical references and index. r. Empiricism. I. Slater, John G. (John Greer) II. Kiillner, Peter. Ill. Title. IV. Series: Russell, Bertrand, 1872-1970. Selections. 1983 ; v. IO. B1649.R91 1983 vol. IO [BC816] I92-dc20 96-u344

Set in IO on 12 point Monotype Plantin (Postscript) by The Bertrand Russell Editorial Project, McMaster University and printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

*General Editor Emeritus

Contents

Abbreviations Introduction Acknowledgements Chronology

XU Xlll

xxvii xxxi

PART I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS 1 Things That Have Moulded Me [I927] 2 How I Came By My Creed [I929] 3 My Religious Reminiscences [I938]

3 IO 20

PART II. HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Events, Matter, and Mind [I927] 5 Had Newton Never Lived [I927] 6 Einstein [I928] 7 The Future of Science [I928] Headnote to Four Reviews of Eddington (8-11) 8 Physics and Theology [I929] 9 Review of Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical Wbrld [I928] 10 Review of Sir Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe [I933] 11 Scientific Certainty and Uncertainty [I935] 12 Review of James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe [I930] 13 Determinism and Physics [I936] 14 Review of Hyman Levy, A Philosophy for a Modern Man [I938] a Philosophy and Common Sense [I938] b Philosophy and Common Sense [I938] 4

29 33 38 43 50 53 55 57 59 63 67 8I 82 84

PART III. LOGIC AND PROBABILITY THEORY 15 Mr. F. P. Ramsey on Logical Paradoxes [I928]

vu

89

Vlll

CONTENTS

16 A Tribute to Morris Raphael Cohen [1927] 17 Probability and Fact [1930] Headnote to Two Reviews of Ramsey (18-19) 18 Review of Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics [1931] 19 Review of Ramsey, The Foundations of Mathematics [1932] 20 Congress of Scientific Philosophy [1936] 21 On Order in Time [1936] 22 On the Importance of Logical Form [1938] 23 Dewey's New Logic [1939]

CONTENTS

92 96 I06

II4 II8 122 138 141

PART IV. EDUCATIONAL THEORY

24 How Behaviourists Teach Behaviour [1928] 25 The Application of Science to Education [1928]

163 168

PART V. WRITINGS CRITICAL OF RELIGION

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Why I Am Not a Christian [1927] Bertrand Russell's Confession of Faith [1927] What Is the Soul? [1929] Why Mr. Wood Is Not a Freethinker [1929] Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? [l 929] Is Religion Desirable? [1929] Morality and Religion [1929] Science and Religion [1935?] Need Morals Have a Religious Basis? [1937?] The Existence and Nature of God [1939]

177 194 202 206

213 229 233 237 246 253

PART VI. EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS

36 37 38 39 40 41

Physics and Metaphysics [1928] On the Value of Scepticism [1928] Bertrand Russell Replies [1929] Analysis of Mind [1932] The Decrease of Knowledge [1935] Three Papers on "Useless" Knowledge [1933-35] a The Social Importance of Culture [1933] b On Curious Learning [1934] c "Useless" Knowledge [I935]

271 279 290 293 297 300 301 303 304

42 43 44 45 46 47

The Limits of Empiricism [1936] Philosophy and Grammar [1936] Philosophy's Ulterior Motives [1937] On Verification [1938] The Relevance of Psychology to Logic [1938] Non-Materialistic Naturalism [1942]

IX

313 329 334 344 360 371

PART VII. ETHICS AND POLITICS

48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

How Will Science Change Morals? [1928] Democracy and Emotion [1929] Is There a New Morality? [1929] How Science Has Changed Society [1932] Headnote to Four Papers on Ethics and Law for the Hearst Newspapers (52-55) On Utilitarianism [1933] Individualist Ethics [1933] Respect for Law [1933] Competitive Ethics [1934] The Philosophy of Communism [1934] The Ancestry of Fascism [1935] Freedom and Government [1940] On Keeping a Wide Horizon [I941]

379 389 392 395 403 405 406 407 409 4II 422 436 450

PART VIII. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

60 Philosophy in the Twentieth Century [1936] 61 Plato in Modern Dress [1937] 62 The Philosophy of Santayana [1940] Headnote to Four Radio Discussions (63-66) 63 Hegel: Philosophy of History [I941] 64 Descartes: A Discourse on Method [I942] 65 Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics [1942] 66 Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wmderland [1942]

46I 467 471 49I 494 503 512 521

PART IX. THE "HOW-TO" SERIES

Headnote to Three "How-To" Papers (67-69) 67 How To Become a Philosopher [1942] 68 How To Become a Logician [1942] 69 How To Become a Mathematician [I942]

533 535 549 564

x

CONTENTS

Illustrations

APPENDIXES

II III IV

v VI VII VIII IX

x XI XII XIII XIV

Syllabus for Lecture Course [1927] "Achilles and the Tortoise" by F. P. Ramsey [1927] "Sweet Treasonableness" by S. D. Schmalhausen [1928] "The Scientific Society" by Bertrand Russell [1933] Report in Fabian News of Paper 57 [1935] [Manuscript 220.0I6640] [1937?] Two Letters by Hyman Levy [1938] "The Relevance of Psychology to Logic" by R. B. Braithwaite [1938] John Dewey's Reply to Paper 23 [1939] Santayana's Reply to Paper 62 [I940] "A Philosophy for You in These Times" [1941] Notes on Descartes for Paper 64 [1942] Notes for Lewis Carroll Broadcast, Paper 66 [1942] Nine Manuscripts Preliminary to Paper 42 [1936]

585 587 592 596 601 604 606

frontispiece Russell clearing customs in New York City, September 1938. (Associated Press Photo) between pages ]I2 and JI]

6IO 627 633 639 645 650 652

ANNOTATION

679

TEXTUAL NOTES

781

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

829

GENERAL INDEX

867

TELEGRAPH HOUSE: "With the house went two hundred and thirty acres of wild downland, partly heather and bracken, but mostly virgin forest-magnificent beach trees, and yews of vast age and unusual size. The woods were full of every kind of wild life, including deer" (Russell r968, 153). THE TOWER ROOM: "There was a tower with large windows on all four sides. Here I made my study, and I have never known one with a more beautiful outlook" (Russell r968, 153).

II

The verso of folio 6 of the parent paper (Appendix Presumably a lesson in logic.

III

The following four plates (including this plate) account for the genesis of "On Order in Time". Page 16 of the parent paper. See 670: 38-671: 13.

IV

Page 17 of the parent paper. See 671: 14-30.

v

Page 18 of the parent paper. See 671: 31-672: 16.

VI

Page 19 of the parent paper. See 672: 17-33.

VII

Verso of folio 18 of "On Order in Time" (135: 14-136: 2).

VIII

Verso of folio 19 of "On Order in Time" (136: 3-23).

XIV,

665: 40-666: 15).

All plates are photographs of documents in the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University. They are shown reduced from their original size, which is given at the head of each set of textual notes.

xi

Abbreviations

Introduction

To PROVIDE THE reader with an uncluttered text, abbreviations and symbols have been kept to a minimum. The few necessary to the referencing system are as follows. The papers printed in the volume are given a boldface number for easy reference. For example, "Why I Am Not a Christian" is Paper 26. Angle brackets in the text distinguish rare editorial insertions from Russell's more common square brackets. Bibliographical references are usually in the form of author, date and page, e.g. "Clark 1975, 471". Consultation of the Bibliographical Index shows that this reference is to page 471 of Ronald W. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (London: Jonathan Cape and Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1975). The location of archival documents cited in the edition is the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University ("RA"), unless a different location is given. File numbers of documents in the Russell Archives are provided only when manuscripts of papers printed here are cited or when files are difficult to identify. "RA REC. ACQ." refers to the files of recent acquisitions in the Russell Archives. Cross-references to annotations are preceded by "A" and followed by page and line numbers (as in "A74: 24").

DURING THE PERIOD covered by this volume Bertrand Russell first retired from, and then resumed, his philosophical career. In 1927 he published two philosophy books, The Analysis of Matter and An Outline of Philosophy (called Philosophy in the United States). The first of these, which for the next several years he regarded as his final contribution to academic philosophy, is a highly technical study of the concept of "matter" required by the "new physics" of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. The second book, written for a much wider audience, was not intended to break new ground, but, in addition to providing the beginner with an excellent introduction to his philosophical position, it does report an important break with Moore's ethical theory due, Russell tells the reader, to criticisms of his own published version of the theory by George Santayana. In its place Russell adopted a subjectivist ethics, a position he held for the rest of his life. His next book in academic philosophy, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, was not published until 1940. For about half of the period covered by this volume, therefore, Russell regarded himself as retired from professional philosophy. But during that period he did not leave off writing for publication, and a significant portion of what he wrote was philosophical in nature. To make money he had turned to his pen. His financial obligations at this time were considerable; he was still involved with his second wife, Dora, in running Beacon Hill School, which required much more money than they had supposed when they established it in September 1927. To finance it, both of them undertook exhausting lecture tours of the United States, and, to add to his labours, he wrote popular books with a wide appeal designed to bring in cash; Marriage and Morals (1929), The Conquest of Happiness (1930), and The Scientific Outlook (1931) all sold well, and the first two very well. Hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers also helped to pay the bills. In the early 1930s his relationship with Dora soured; the reason he cited was that she had given birth to two children fathered by another man. No doubt this was a deciding factor in the break-up, but probably of equal importance was Russell's developing affaire with a young woman, Patricia (Peter) Spence, whom Dora had brought into their home as governess for their two children. Dora sued

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INTRODUCTION

for divorce, and, after a nasty court battle, it was granted early in 1935. As a consequence, Russell's financial obligations increased; he had to pay Dora money in support of his two children, as well as pay for a separate household for Peter, whom he had married on 18 January 1936, himself and their son, Conrad, who was born on 15 April 1937. These fresh demands, added to those he was already carrying, led him to consider a return to academic life as the surest way to ensure a steady income. In 1935, when he was sixty-three years of age, he let it be known in philosophical circles that he was resuming work in professional philosophy and that he would be glad to accept a suitable university post. The first post he was offered was a visiting professorship in philosophy in the University of Chicago for the year 1938-39. Besides its academic attractions, the offer pleased him because it provided an escape from Europe for him, his wife and their infant son just when war seemed imminent. The following year Dora turned the custody of his two older children over to him and they joined him in the United States; his whole family lived there until the spring of 1944. While he was teaching in Chicago he was offered a three-year appointment as Professor of Philosophy in the University of California at Los Angeles, which he was happy to accept, but during his first year there he was offered a similar position in the College of the City of New York. Life in New York City greatly appealed to the Russells, so he wrote to c.c.N.Y. to accept its offer; at the same time, he resigned his appointment at u.C.L.A. effective at the end of the academic year. When his appointment to c.c.N.Y. was announced, it set off a wave 1of angry protest amongst the clergy in New York City. His views on marriage, as expounded in Marriage and Morals, were condemned as completely beyond the pale, but it was probably his views on religion, especially as laid out in his lecture, W'hy I Am Not a Christian (1927), which infuriated the clergy. The daughter of a Brooklyn dentist brought a suit asking the court to annul his appointment. Instead of throwing the case out of court, as he should have done on the ground that she could not possibly have an interest in Russell's appointment, since C.C.N.Y. admitted only male students, the judge took it, and, after a show of a hearing from which Russell was excluded on the ground that he was an alien, he wrote a very intemperate judgment denying Russell the appointment. In his judgment he made the absurd claim that by appointing Russell to teach logic and the foundations of mathematics c.c.N.Y. was "in effect establishing a chair of indecency". But his judgment would have deprived Russell of his job only if C.C.N.Y. had chosen to act upon it, since the court had no power to enforce its decision. C.C.N.Y. stood firm, but its officers were undercut by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who used his lineitem veto to delete Russell's position from the budget of New York City.

Many rallied to Russell's support, but they could not prevail. An eccentric multimillionaire, Albert Barnes, who had amassed an extraordinary collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art at his estate near Philadelphia, and who had started a school to train young people in his conception of art appreciation, offered Russell a position in his school. Over a five year period Russell was to give one lecture a week on the history of philosophy, beginning with the pre-Socratics and ending with his own views; he was to be paid $8,ooo per year, but, according to Barnes later, he was to forswear popular writing and lecturing. Russell took up his new duties in January 1941, having spent the fall semester at Harvard where he delivered the William James lectures, later published as An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. Barnes proved a difficult employer. The first hint of trouble came when he objected to Peter's attendance at the lectures. She replied that, since she helped to prepare them, she needed to hear them delivered in order to advise on their revision before publication. Furthermore, since Russell could not drive and gasoline rationing prohibited two trips, she had to bring him to the lectures and wait to take him home. His lecture room was the only warm place available for waiting. Barnes resumed his attack by objecting to her knitting during the lectures; the noise, he claimed, distracted the audience. Peter retorted that it was her duty to contribute in any way she could to the war effort. In the battle of words with Barnes, Russell supported Peter. Recognizing that he had failed in his attacks on Peter, Barnes assailed Russell himself, objecting to his acceptance of outside speaking engagements as contrary to his contract. Without warning, in December 1942, Barnes fired Russell, giving as his reason that Russell "had broken his contract by popular lecturing and by his upholding of Mrs. Russell's disorderly conduct". Russell sued Barnes for breach of contract and won. Barnes appealed the decision twice and lost both times; he was obliged by court order to pay Russell $20,000, nearly the whole of the amount that Russell would have been paid had he fulfilled the contract. This windfall, plus the royalties from A History of ~stern Philosophy (1945), the published version of his largely undelivered lecture course at the Barnes Foundation, which proved to be his first "best-seller", put an end to his financial worries. For the rest of his life he had enough money to support himself and his many dependents. Russell's activities between 1927 and 1943 that have a philosophical dimension will be briefly discussed under these headings: (1) his return to professional philosophical work; (2) his critique of religion; (3) his political writings; (4) his writings on education; (5) his popular writings on science; (6) his "how-to" pamphlets; (7) his philosophical journalism; and (8) his autobiographical writings.

xiv

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PROFESSIONAL PHILOSOPHICAL WORK

mathematical logic. The logical positivists regarded their position as in part at least a direct descendant of Russell's own work in these areas earlier in the century. Although Russell never identified himself as a member of this movement, since he found much to criticize in particular doctrines of the school, he always made it very clear that he thought that the revolution this movement had sparked in philosophy was headed in the right direction and was bound, therefore, to produce good consequences. His most extended contribution to the debate initiated by the logical positivists is to be found in An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940). In its preface he states: "As will be evident to the reader, I am, as regards method, more in sympathy with the logical positivists than with any other existing school." The work of the logical positivists was just one area of contemporary work in philosophy in which Russell took a critical interest. When Frank Ramsey's writings were collected and published in 1931, Russell wrote two reviews (18, 19) of the book. Like everyone else he lamented Ramsey's early death, but he had more cause for grief than most of the other mourners, for Ramsey had been one of the very few who had taken an interest in Principia Mathematica and had mastered it to the point where he was developing further the ideas contained in it. When Paul Arthur Schilpp conceived of The Library of Living Philosophers and lined up John Dewey and George Santayana as among the first to be honoured by volumes in the series, he secured Russell's commitment to write long articles on important aspects of their thought. "Dewey's New Logic" (23) critically examines one of the central doctrines of Dewey's book, which had only very recently been published, but "The Philosophy of Santayana" (62) ranges over most of Santayana's thought. Their replies to Russell are reprinted here (Appendixes IX and x) for the reader's convenience; an examination of them shows that Dewey was more upset by Russell's critique than was Santayana. Russell's contributions to the Schilpp volume devoted to him will be reprinted in Volume I 1 of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell.

The philosophical community of the 1930s was a small one by today's standards, so when Russell let it be known that he planned to return to full-time work in philosophy, word spread very quickly. One of his first acts was to present a paper to the Aristotelian Society, then and now one of the most important philosophical associations; "The Limits of Empiricism" (42) was read to the Society on 6 April 1936, but he had already presented it to the Moral Science Club at Cambridge on 28 November 1935. Clearly, he wanted his alma mater to know that he was available for a suitable appointment. The following year he was elected President of the Aristotelian Society to serve during 1937-38; it was his third term in this office; he had served two consecutive terms in 1911-13. As his presidential address he delivered "On Verification" (45), dealing with a hotly debated topic lately introduced by the logical positivists. During the annual meeting of the Society in the summer of 1938 he participated in a symposium, whose topic, "The Relevance of Psychology to Logic" (46), derived from The Analysis of Mind (1921). This proved to be his last contribution to the Society's proceedings. In addition to these addresses he delivered two more to learned societies as earnests of his intention to resume full-time philosophical work. "Determinism and Physics" (13) was read to an audience in the University of Durham on 14 January 1936. It derived from the work he had done in The Analysis of Matter and showed that he had continued to keep abreast with developments in the "new physics". "On Order in Time" (21) was read to a meeting of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, which despite its name is a scientific society, on 9 March 1936. This paper, whose delivery must have daunted most of his audience since it is almost wholly in the notation of Principia Mathematica, had been written during the previous year and received by the Society on 30 September 1935. Perhaps the long gap between its submission and its reading allowed for it to be available to members for study before its delivery. This paper shows Russell still fully in command of the language of Principia and with fresh ideas on how that language could be brought to bear on problems of temporal order. His first two papers for the Aristotelian Society engaged him in debate with the emerging school of logical positivists. This movement, which originated with the "Vienna Circle", an unstructured group centred around Moritz Schlick, was popularized in England by A. J. Ayer, then at the beginning of his career. When Ayer's first book, Language, Truth and Logic, appeared in 1936 Russell was asked to review it; in "Philosophy and Grammar" (43) he welcomes the new movement as likely to prove very fruitful since it is the product of the marriage of empiricism and

XVll

CRITIQUE OF RELIGION

In 1927 with the delivery of his lecture, "Why I Am Not a Christian" (26), to a sympathetic audience assembled by the National Secular Society, and published as a pamphlet on both sides of the Atlantic, Russell opened a new line of writing. Very early in his life he had been a believer, but, as an adolescent, he had scrutinized some of the central tenets of Christianity and had arrived at the conclusion that none of them were defensible. From then on he had been a non-believer, but he had not much publicized the fact. During the First World War the belli-

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cose behaviour of most of the clergy greatly increased his contempt for organized religion, or "the church" as he usually referred to it. Still he did not attack it openly, although there are many passages in his writings that left no reader in doubt as to where he stood on the church and on religion more generally. The publicity his lecture generated changed his life dramatically. Overnight he became famous to some, and notorious to others, for having the courage to state the enormous difficulties to be found in Christian doctrine; he argued for a near total rejection of the church and all that it stood for. This stand altered his life in important ways; he was now the subject of printed attacks, a few of them temperate and civilized, but most of them violent, at least in their choice of words. Establishment figures, whether believers or not, felt obliged to treat him at arm's length, lest they be regarded as unduly tolerant of the enemy. There is no evidence that any of this mistreatment and shunning by others fazed him; on the contrary, he seemed to enjoy the controversy he had stirred up. No doubt he thought that the only way to get people to think about these matters is to shock them into doing so. Sugar-coated suggestions would simply be swallowed without having any effect. Throughout the rest of his life, he published occasional anti-religious pieces, one of the most sustained is "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?" (30), which directly attacks the role of the church in history. An invitation from The Home University Library of Modern Knowledge to write a popular book with the title, Religion and Science (1935), gave him the opportunity to discuss at length, and with the introduction of many spicy and even bizarre examples, the ways in which the church had attempted to thwart the rise of modern science, and to condemn its meddling roundly. Before an audience of more than 2,000 people at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1939, he delivered a lecture on "The Existence and Nature of God" (35), which is published here for the first time. On the anti-religious circuit he had become a star attraction.

also been active in political protest, but in the 1930s he took a more historical interest in politics. How had it come about that totalitarianisms of both the right and the left had arisen at the same time? His effort to understand these unwelcome phenomena led him to write Freedom and Organization, 18I4-1914 (1934), from which he extracted the lecture, "The Philosophy of Communism" (56), and to begin work on a companion volume, which he had tentatively entitled, The Revolt Against Reason. The Russell Archives contains sheaves of notes he made in preparation for writing this projected book, but for some reason he abandoned work on it. The most important fruit of all this labour is "The Ancestry of Fascism" (57), which was originally published under the title of the proposed book; in it he traces the philosophical roots of fascism back to the extremely nationalistic writings of the German philosopher, Johann Fichte (1762-1814). But the other research he did was not wasted-such effort seldom was for Russell-for he made use of it in Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), which examines the concept of power and its various manifestations in our lives.

POLITICS

During these years Russell did some of his most sustained work in political philosophy. The rise of fascism and the transformation of Leninism into Stalinism dominated the period, and it seemed, from time to time, that the democracies were losing ground to the new totalitarianisms. His interest in politics was, of course, not new, since it went back to his childhood, and he had written a great deal on various political questions in earlier years. His very first book, German Social Democracy (1896), dealt with the role that Marxian socialism played in the politics of Germany in the late nineteenth century. During the First World War he had

XlX

EDUCATION

In Principles of Social Reconstruction (Why Men Fight in the United States), published in 1916, Russell, for the first time, considered the role of education in society. Appalled by the reception given to the outbreak of the First World War by both politicians and ordinary citizens alike, he concluded that something must be seriously amiss with the educational system if it produced adults who cheered to the echo the impending slaughter. Clearly these people had not been taught to think, and by this he meant in part that they had not been taught to deduce the consequences of proposed courses of action, for if they had developed this ability, they would have been able to predict the horrors that would soon engulf everyone, themselves included. In this book he urged educators to revise their procedures and the curriculum in such a way as to develop each child's ability to think to the fullest extent possible. If this were to happen, he argues, then future populations would be less likely to be taken in by propaganda of the sort that led to war. At the time he wrote this book, he had no children of his own. When he next wrote on education, he was a father, facing the question of how to educate his children. His first wife, Alys, had given him a divorce in 1921, and he immediately married Dora Black, who was then pregnant with their child. John was born in 1921 and Kate in 1923. Russell took a great interest in their development, and he found the writings of the American behaviourist, John Watson, a great stimulus. Watson had made extensive studies of infant behaviour, and had published his results.

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Russell was not always persuaded by Watson's rather radical arguments and bizarre conclusions: see "How Behaviourists Teach Behaviour" (24) for a rather cool appraisal of the methods Watson recommends for the psychological care of infants. Russell found the writings of the behaviourists useful when he turned his attention to formulating an educational philosophy, but he also found them deficient. Watson studied only the behaviour of the infant and child, and did not speculate at all on the inner life of his subjects, because it could not be observed. If a modification of behaviour was desired, then one tried various devices and watched for changes; if the required modification came about, that was the end of the story; if not, then one should try another way. Russell, perhaps because he was more of a philosopher than Watson, opted for the hypothesis that the inner life of a child was controlled by a principle of growth, which, if allowed to develop in a disciplined way, led to good consequences both for the child and for society. Bad or deviant behaviour was accounted for on this theory by attempts on the part of parents and educational authorities to thwart growth. Since the growth was going to continue anyway, all that was achieved was to redirect it in such a way as to lead eventually to undesirable consequences. Pent-up energy will find an out sooner or later. In theory at least Russell believed that human nature was basically good, and that the evil things that people do, including of course going to war, were due to bad educational methods. Russell expounded this theory in two books and many articles. On Education, Especially in Early Childhood (1926) provides the reader with the fullest statement of the theory. To illustrate his points Russell often makes reference to his observations on his own children. Their mother also took an active interest in their education, and when it came time for them to receive formal schooling, both parents were involved in the decision regarding an appropriate school. After looking at all of the "progressive" schools in England, they concluded that none of them were progressive in the right way, so they took the momentous decision to start their own school. Beacon Hill School, whose name derives from the location of its building, opened in the autumn of 1927. Both Russells were listed among the several teachers; the pupils came from both England and the United States. In their enthusiasm for their methods, the Russells had placed some unwise advertisements for pupils. Parents of problem-children read the ads and concluded that this new school provided a ready-made solution for them. The student body therefore included many children whose bad habits were already firmly set. Instead of being a grand and happy experiment in sound educational practice, the running of the school trapped both Russells on a kind of treadmill. His educational theory was supposed to guide all of the teachers, but they-Russell and Dora included-constantly found that it simply did not

work. If the pupils were indeed endowed with a principle of growth, their growth had already been so badly distorted that only strict discipline offered a chance to bring about a semblance of order, but often that too failed, leaving, according to Russell's theory, an even more thwarted individual than before. Harsher discipline was then required, and the downward spiral continued. Then there were the expenses. The Russells had greatly underestimated the cost of running the school, and had accordingly set the fees too low; to make up for the deficit both of them undertook long and arduous lecture tours of the United States, leaving the other to cope with an endless series of problems. This already messy situation was further complicated by the sexual affairs that both Russells had with others, including their fellow teachers. When they were married they had agreed that they would each tolerate extra-marital affairs on the part of the other, but the consequences of this arrangement agreed to in theory became unbearable for Russell in practice after Dora had two children by another man. Their sexual liaisons, whether real or attempted, with their fellow teachers (and therefore their employees) gradually poisoned their working relationship. By the middle of 1932 the tension between them was so great that Russell decided to cut his ties with the school; he turned the school over to Dora, who continued it until its premises were commandeered during World War II. During his last year with the school he wrote Education and the Social Order (1932) in which he distinguishes between the education of a person and the education of a citizen, and argues that most states were only interested in the latter, when they ought to be encouraging the former. Needless to say, he deplores such education, because it leads sooner or later to conflict, and even to war. The authorities who established such educational practices were enemies of thought, because they told pupils (in effect) do not think for yourselves, the state will do all of your thinking for you. For Russell this was the worst sin an educator could commit. POPULAR SCIENCE

His work on The Analysis of Matter had obliged him to gain an understanding of quantum theory and to bring himself up to date on developments in the theory of relativity since he had written his popular book, The ABC of Relativity, two years earlier. When Einstein fell ill in 1928, and it was feared that his illness might prove fatal, The Observer turned to Russell for an obituary piece (6) for their files. Fortunately, Einstein recovered and the obituary found no use; it is printed here for the first time. After the Second World War Russell wrote two more obituary notices for the thinker he called "the man of the half-century"; they will be published in Volume l l of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell.

xxn

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Russell's knowledge of contemporary physics, and his facility for plain and clear writing, made him the ideal reviewer for the books of Arthur Stanley Eddington and Sir James Jeans, both of whom wrote several popular works on physics and astronomy. His reviews (8-12) are, for the most part, critical of the philosophical assumptions made by these authors; in his opinion their work suffered by their lack of training in philosophy. Several of his own popular essays on scientific topics are included in this volume. "Had Newton Never Lived" (5) pays tribute to the way in which Newton's ideas transformed human life; and "The Future of Science" (7) allows Russell to speculate on the way science is likely to transform life, for better and for worse, in the future. This futuristic theme is developed at length in The Scientific Outlook (1931). The last part of that book, "The Scientific Society", describes a society, dominated by science and technology, chillingly similar to the one so brilliantly depicted in Aldous Huxley's Brave New Wbrld, published the following year. Indeed, the parallel is so close that Russell, after reading Huxley's book for review, wrote to Stanley Unwin, his publisher, and asked him to investigate whether there was a prima facie case that Huxley was guilty of plagiarism. In the end the enquiry was dropped, so readers must examine the evidence for themselves in order to decide whether Russell's suspicion is reasonable or not. Russell's review of Brave New Wbrld, which he entitled "A Manipulator's Paradise", but which the editor of The New Leader gave the gloomy title, "We Don't Want to be Happy", argues that Huxley's vision of the future is likely to be realized unless nations agree to institute a strong world government which will disband "the world's armies and navies, forbid the construction of aeroplanes even for commercial purposes, and abolish all tariffs". In short, Huxley's anti-utopia is to be prevented by instituting a Russellian utopia.

promised that these would arrive in a "plain brown wrapper", so that neither the post office nor nosy neighbours could discover the contents. Read today these pamphlets seem as pure as the driven snow, but in their own day they were all that was available and were regarded as daring by those lucky enough to come across them. Income from these sex manuals allowed Haldeman-Julius the luxury of publishing authors like Russell and Will Durant and a host of other liberal writers whose ideas he wished to see more widely known. Russell's first two Little Blue Books were W'hy I Am Not a Christian (26) and Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (30), both of which came out in 1929. After Russell moved to the United States in 1938 he published steadily with Haldeman-Julius. By this time the publisher had introduced a new line, called "Big Blue Books", which are larger in format and, consequently, contain more words than Little Blue Books; they sold for ten cents postpaid. Most of Russell's later Haldeman-Julius publications appeared in the larger format. (When Russell's title essay was not long enough to fill a Big Blue Book, the publisher put in other Russell essays, or, what was more usual, his own or others' writings to achieve the required length.) Three of these essays are reprinted in this volume: "How To Become a Philosopher" (67), "How To Become a Logician" (68), and "How To Become a Mathematician" (69). These essays, which occupy nearly 46 pages in this volume, were all originally published in one Big Blue Book, which at a dime a copy was quite a bargain. Directed as they are to young, intelligent readers trying to decide on their life's work, these pieces are the only ones Russell ever wrote of a purely instructional nature.

THE "HOW-TO" PAMPHLETS

Throughout this period Russell published some of his essays, especially the more controversial ones, under the imprint of E. Haldeman-Julius, who operated his business in Girard, Kansas. This singular publisher conceived of the idea of "The Little Blue Book", measuring three and one-half by five inches and containing 64 pages; single copies sold for five cents postpaid with a considerable discount for bulk purchases. Over the years he published thousands of titles, some of them reprints of older material that was out of copyright in the United States, but many of them contained fresh writing being published for the first time. Amongst his titles were a considerable number of pamphlets that were intended to advise perplexed readers on various sexual matters; his advertisements

xx iii

PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNALISM

As was mentioned earlier, Russell was obliged to turn to his pen to pay his bills during these years. The fact that the Great Depression was on did not seem to affect his ability to sell his writings. According to the Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (1994), compiled by Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja, during the sixteen years covered by this volume he published 550 articles and letters in a very wide variety of periodicals· his high point was the year 1933 when he was published ninety-four ti~es. That was also his peak year of writing for the Hearst newspapers; he produced a short essay every week for Hearst over a period of about four years. These little pieces, a very small sample of which are printed in this volume, were on nearly every topic dreamt of by humans. The Hearst essays included here discuss philosophical ideas: "On Utilitarianism" (~2), "Individualist Ethics" (53), "Respect for Law" (54), and "Competit~ve Et?ics" (55). The reader who wishes to read more of these charming little pieces can find them in Russell's Mortals and Others (1975), edited by Harry Ruja; this book reprints about half of the Hearst essays.

xx iv

xxv

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The Hearst contract was his most extensive during this period, but it was not exclusive; he wrote for many other newspapers, magazines and journals. All of his periodical contributions have been considered for inclusion in this volume, but only those of a philosophical nature were chosen. The essays not chosen will appear in future volumes of his popular papers. It is fitting here to draw the reader's attention to a few of the more interesting of the articles reprinted here. "On the Value of Scepticism" (37) appeared first in a periodical, but it was written as the introduction to Sceptical Essays (I928); its double appearance shows once again Russell's skill for deriving two payments for a single piece of writing. This essay comes as near as any to being Russell's signature piece. The restrained sceptical attitude recommended in it is displayed in many other papers in this volume, most prominently in those on religious topics. Two articles he wrote for The Atlantic Monthly exhibit his ability to expound difficult philosophical topics for the ordinary intelligent reader. "Probability and Fact" (17), which the magazine chose to call "Heads or Tails", is a surprisingly technical discussion of the philosophical foundations of probability theory; and "Philosophy's Ulterior Motives" (44) deals with the intriguing question of what motivated the great philosophers to take the often perplexing metaphysical stands they espoused and defended.

enrichment. So he laid the typescript aside and only returned to it after the Second World War, when he brought it up to date and doubled its length by adding the letters which are printed in it. Even then, however, it could not be published without extensive excisions to protect the living, so he turned it over to his publisher with the request that it be published only after his own death. But in I967, in order to raise money for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, he instructed Unwin, who was very reluctant and tried but failed to dissuade him, to publish the two volumes he had in safe-keeping; after being vetted for libel, they came out in 1967 and 1968. The third volume, published in 1969, was assembled during the period when the first two were going through the press. The autobiographical pieces reprinted in this volume are, once we know this story, to be read as preliminary drafts of the life story of one of the most remarkable men of the last one hundred and fifty years. In 1930 Hayden Church wrote to Russell and invited him to comment upon the following question by Thomas A. Edison: "When you look back on your life from your death bed, by what facts will you determine whether you succeeded or failed?" Church planned to get answers to this question from a number of prominent people and publish them in order to make a bit of money. (As it happened Church published Russell's reply alone in the Sunday Express on 8 March 1931.) Russell took the bait and replied on 3 December:

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS

Autobiographical writings are also high points of this volume. In the first three papers he discusses his own life, telling us a great deal about Russell the person, his family, his education, and, more generally, the society from which he came. Many of the points he makes in them are echoed in other papers in the volume, especially those on religious themes. His confession of faith (27) throws considerable light on his attitude toward religion. But all of these papers go beyond their primary subject, for they have much to say about both Victorian and Edwardian times, and about the fascinating people who populated them, many of whom he knew. In case the reader does not know, it was in the early I930S that Russell drafted what was to become the first two volumes of his Autobiography: at that time he called it "My First Fifty Years". His intention was as usual to make money, but when he (and a few others) read what he had written about his marital and extra-marital affairs, he realized that the book could not be published at that time, because all of the women with whom he had relationships were still living. No publisher would be willing to risk the libel suits his book might engender. He probably also realized that if he was to remove all discussion of his sexual relations, the book would probably not sell very well, therefore defeating his aim of

I have received your letter of November 27th, which I will answer to the best of my ability. I have been trying to imagine what I shall feel on my deathbed, but as I am at the moment in the best of health and spirits, I find this a little difficult. There seem to me to be four different factors by which I should judge the success or failure of my life: (1) work in philosophy and mathematical logic; (2) work on social questions; (3) the success or otherwise of my children; (4) personal influence on people I have known. With regard to (I), I should judge my work a success if it had been a stage in reaching some important development even if it had been not more than a stage and had been completely superseded. With regard to (2), there are major and minor successes possible. Major successes are those of men like Locke and Rousseau, who affected governments and the structure of society. Marx has achieved this kind of success in regard to Russia. Such success would, of course, be very delicious, but I know it is not for me; a minor success, which I should nevertheless consider

XXVl

INTRODUCTION not worthless, would be to influence the outlook of a large number of individuals, thereby perhaps diminishing the ferocity of some voters and improving the education of some children. (3) With regard to my own children, I shall be satisfied if they turn out to be happy, intelligent, and decent individuals. (4) With regard to my influence on personal acquaintances, I shall be satisfied if I can feel that I have turned some of them away from the more brutal and more grasping and destructive pursuits to those which I regard as constructive. I once persuaded a young man to be a philosopher rather than an aeronaut, and he became a first-rate philosopher. I shall think of this with satisfaction on my death-bed.

In his last paragraph Russell refers, of course, to Ludwig Wittgenstein. Given what we know of their relationship after this time, one wonders just how often Russell entertained this sentiment in later years. The letter as a whole exhibits much the same set of qualities as are found in the essays in this volume. Russell was the eternal optimist, but by this time he had learned to temper his hopes. Although he must often have felt discouraged at times when he had expended a lot of energy with little resulting change for the better, he did not allow such moods to interfere with his getting on with the task of trying to improve the world and its inhabitants. Nearly all of his writings, including most of those in this volume, urge his readers, either explicitly or implicitly, to resolve to make the world a better place than it is, and the first step in that process, he often argued, was to get people to think, which to his dismay he found a terribly difficult task. "Most people would die sooner than think-in fact they do so" was his gloomy judgment in The ABC of Relativity (1925, 166), which, if true, surely makes the reformer's task nearly impossible. But in Russell, the reformer's zeal burned very strongly, so he continued to write for the general population, because he hoped, when it came to the stark choice between thinking and death, that enough people would be ready to think, and desirable change might then come about. At any rate, there seemed no better alternative, so he continued right to the end to urge the unthinking to try thinking for a change.

Acknowledgements

THIS VOLUME COULD not have been completed without the generous assistance of the University of Toronto, McMaster University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The Council's award of a Major Editorial Grant, beginning in July 1980, has been of crucial significance for the plan to publish the Collected Papers. Without this grant the Russell Editorial Project could not have been started, since sizeable amounts of money were required to assemble and train a staff and to buy typesetting (and other) equipment. In addition the editor received individual grants from s.s.H.R.C. for 1986-87, 1989-92, and 1992-96. Many people have assisted me with the preparation of this volume for the press. On the research side I must thank Kenneth Blackwell, the archivist of the Bertrand Russell Archives, who has once again helped me in important ways, most notably in determining the contents of the volume. He was always available to answer the many recondite questions that arise when one tries to be as accurate as possible in presenting Russell's writings to the reading public. Several research assistants have assisted me during the years in which this volume was being put together. Michael Dila and Sinclair MacRae have my warmest thanks for their work on the annotations and the seemingly endless proofreading required of the volumes in this edition. Loren King assisted in the early stages of the volume by ferreting out in the Bertrand Russell Archives both the texts of the papers and also much of the correspondence used in preparing the Headnotes and the Annotation. Professors Timothy Barnes and John Rist of the Department of Classics in the University of Toronto provided me with expert advice regarding certain classical authors, and Professor Patricia Vicari of the English Department discovered for me the source of an obscure illusion to Milton's poetry. Several Whitehead scholars failed, as I did, to find where Whitehead attributed to matter the property of "pushiness"; I am very grateful to them for giving of their time and knowledge. I feel sure that there are many others who have contributed bits and pieces to this enormously complicated book, and my thanks go out to them too.

XXVll

xx ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Peter Kemner, whose contribution to the volume is recognized on the title-page, deserves special praise for his work on nearly every aspect of the book. Peter was an undergraduate specialist in philosophy at the University of Toronto when I hired him as my research assistant; he worked for me for two years before graduating and going off to graduate school. Right from the start Peter grasped the overall plan of the volume and set to work in everything he did to make of the volume a book. His careful and methodical scrutiny of all parts of the volume turned up numerous places where additional work was required to make the parts cohere more closely. In addition to his enormous care, he is a very gifted student of logic and philosophy, and he was able to improve greatly the presentation of the most technical paper in the volume, namely, "On Order in Time" (21) and its earlier draft, which is printed in Appendix XIV. His unfailing devotion to the work and his infectious good-humour have made the work of the last two years much more delightful for me than it might otherwise have been. It is a pleasure to thank Louis Greenspan, who for most of the time this volume was in gestation was called the "Managing Editor" of the Collected Papers but is now designated its "Director", for his assistance in scheduling the work of typesetting and running interference for the Project with the administration of McMaster University. His work is absolutely essential to the publication of the Collected Papers. I wish also to express my appreciation to the various persons in administrative positions in the University of Toronto and McMaster University whose careful attention to their duties made my work much easier. Sheila Turcon prepared the Chronology and the General Index; her meticulous products lighten an editor's workload considerably. Albert Lewis went through the entire volume when it was in its final stages and made many excellent suggestions for improvements. Camera-ready copy for this volume was produced by Arlene Duncan. Mere words seem inadequate as thanks for the highly professional work that she turns out day after day. In addition to inserting endless commands into the text in order that it might appear aesthetically pleasing, she has an eagle eye for all those minor matters where a slip-up is both easy and embarrassing. I am very grateful to her for the countless ways in which she has improved this volume. For the permission to quote from material in their copyright, I wish to thank The Atlantic Monthly for a letter by Ellery Sedgwick; The Jewish Daily Forward for a letter by Nathaniel Zalowitz; The Nation for letters by Freda Kirchway; The Observer for letters by that newspaper's editor; Random House for a letter from Manuel Komroff; Moses Rischin for his letter to Russell; Rayner Unwin for a letter by Stanley Unwin.

I am grateful to David Hodgson for permission to reproduce his photograph of Telegraph House. Acknowledgement is made to the following publishers and journals which previously published some of the papers printed here, and to the individuals and institutions who granted permission to quote from material in their possession: Alumni Association, City College of New York (Paper 16); Atlantic Monthly (Papers 17 and 44); Basil Blackwell Ltd. (Papers 45 and 46, and Appendix vm); Cambridge University Press (Papers 10, 19, and 21, and Appendix I); Columbia University (Columbia Broadcasting System transcripts); Europress Ltd. (Paper 11); Fabian Review (Appendix v); the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin (Russell's letters to Lady Ottoline Morrell); Jewish Daily Forward (Papers 12, 27, and 32); Kenyon Review (Paper 47); Mind (Paper 18); The Nation (Papers 8 and 49); New Statesman & Society (Papers 14a, 14b, and 61, and Appendix vn; Northwestern University Press (Papers 23 and 62, and Appendixes IX and x); Political Quarterly (Paper 57); Random House (Papers 63-66); Rationalist Press Association (Papers 3 and 26); The Reader's Digest (Appendix XI); The Saturday Review, S.R. Publications, Ltd. (Paper 36); University of Chicago Press (Papers 22 and 39); and University of Newcastle upon Tyne for Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical Society (Paper 13).

XXVlll

Chronology: Russell's Life and Writings, 1927-42

Writings

Life -------~

1927 I7 Jan.-23 Mar. 1927

-

-----

16 published.

Lectures on "Problems of Philosophy" and "Mind and Matter" for the British Institute of Philosophical Studies, London. 26 delivered in London under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society.

6 Mar. 1927

14 Mar. 1927

23 Mar. 1927 27 Mar. 1927 31 Mar. 1927

Lectures on "Philosophy of Matter" at the Liverpool Centre of British Institute of Philosophical Studies. 5 broadcast on the 4 published. Leaves for Cornwall for the summer. 1 written.

Mar.-Apr. 1927 Apr. 1927 8 Apr. 1927 24 Apr. 1927 July 1927 15 Aug. 1927 Sept. 1927

BBC.

Opens Beacon Hill School with his wife Dora in Telegraph House, Harting, Petersfield; it becomes his principal residence replacing the Sydney Street house in Chelsea, London.

XXXl

26 published. 5 published. 27 published. The Analysis of Matter published. 37 sent to publisher. 1 published.

XXXll

29 Sept. 1927

CHRONOLOGY

Arrives in New York to begin a two-month lecture tour to raise funds for Beacon Hill School.

26 Oct. 1927 Oct.-Nov. 1927 Nov. 1927

12 May 1928 14 May 1928 26 May 1928 17 June 1928 30 June-25 July 1928 27 July 1928 Sept. 1928 Oct. 1928 9 Dec. 1928 23 Jan. 1929 Feb. 1929 IO Feb. 1929 20 Feb. 1929 Mar. 1929 9 May 1929 28 May 1929 June 1929

13 June 1929

16 delivered at a dinner in New York city in honour of Morris Raphael Cohen. 15 written. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell published. An Outline of Philosophy published. 9 probably written.

15 Oct. 1927

1928 16 Jan.19 Mar. 1928 Feb. 1928 Apr. 1928 May 1928

CHRONOLOGY

Lectures on "The Philosophy of Physics" for British Institute of Philosophical Studies, London.

25 Sept. 1929

At Bernard Street, a London fiat acquired because the Chelsea home had been sold. 24 published. Speaks at Rationalist Press Association dinner.

3 Nov. 1929 19 Jan. 1930 4 Feb. 1930 July-Aug. 1930 Aug. 1930 Sept. 1930

F. P. Ramsey dies. 17 sent to publisher. In Cornwall. 17 published. Beacon Hill School academic year begins. The Conquest of Happiness published. 12 sent to publisher. 12 published.

Oct. 1930 36 published. 7 published.

Sceptical Essays published. 6 written; 37 published. 25 published. 49 published. 50 published. 28 published. 8 published. 29, 38 published. 31 published. 2 sent to publisher. 30 published.

28 Nov. 1930 28 Dec. 1930 3 Mar. 1931 26 June 1931 4 July 1931mid-Aug. 1931 Sept. 1931 Oct. 1931 23 Oct. 1931

26 Oct. 1931

2 published.

Marriage and Morals published. 32 published.

Oct. 1929

15 published. 48 published.

Vacations in France with Dora while the children are in Switzerland. Arrives in Cornwall for the remainder of the summer. Beacon Hill School academic year begins.

July 1929 1 -c.25 Aug. 1929 Sept. 1929

Serves, with G. E. Moore, as Wittgenstein's Ph.D. examiner at Cambridge. In Cornwall. Vacations in France; Dora is in the Soviet Union. Beacon Hill School academic year begins. Arrives in New York to begin a two-month lecture tour to raise funds for Beacon Hill School; meets John B. Watson on board ship.

xxxiii

Becomes 3rd Earl Russell upon the death of his brother Frank. 39 sent to publisher. Vacations at Villa Costa Loria in Hendaye, France with Dora, Griffin Barry and Patricia ("Peter") Spence. Beacon Hill School academic year begins. Arrives in New York to begin a two-month lecture tour to raise funds for Beacon Hill School. Lectures at Harvard on "The Relation of Logic to Psychology".

The Scientific Outlook published. 18 published.

XXXIV

CHRONOLOGY

Joint signatory letter to publicize the British Institute of Philosophical Studies is published. 39 published. 19 published. 51 broadcast on BBC. 51 published.

6 Nov. 1931

1932 Jan. 1932 6 Jan. 1932 13 Jan. 1932 3 Apr. 1932

late Apr.-Oct. 1932 Sept. 1932 late Oct. 1932 31 Dec. 1932 3 Mar. 1933 21 Mar. 1933 Apr. 1933 30 Apr.-6 June 1933 17 May 1933 c.5 July 1933

late July-Aug. 1933 6 Sept. 1933 8 Oct. 1933 28 Dec. 1933 1934 19 Mar. 1934 Aug. 1934

27 Sept. 1934

CHRONOLOGY

Writes to Dora who has been absent from Beacon Hill to give birth to Barry's second child: "It is impossible to re-establish a satisfactory common life." In Cornwall with Peter.

u Nov. 1934

25 Jan. 1935

At Emperor's Gate, a newly acquired London flat. Legal separation from Dora agreed upon.

13 Apr. 1935 19 Apr. 1935 l July 1935 15-19 Sept. 1935 Oct. 1935

10 sent to publisher. 52 sent to publisher. 10 published.

6 Oct. 1935

On vacation in Yegen, Spain (home of Gerald Brenan) with Peter. 52 published. Begins living with Peter at the Deudraeth Castle Hotel in Portmeirion, Wales. Vacations in Ireland.

28 Nov. 1935

53 published. 41a published. 54 published. 56 probably written. 55 published. Reacquires Telegraph House from Dora as his principal and now private residence.

4 Dec. 1935

1935-36 1936 14 Jan. 1936

41b published.

lished. 57 delivered to the Fabian Society. 57 delivered at Dartington Hill School.

25 Oct. 1934

1935 Jan. 1935 7 Jan. 1935

Education and the Social Order published.

Freedom and Organization, 1814-1914 pub-

7 Oct. 1934

22 Nov. 1934

xxxv

Divorce (decree nisi) granted. 33 probably written. 57 published. Invites Einstein to visit at Telegraph House. Sails for a six-week vacation in the Canary Islands. 11 published. 40 published. Divorce (decree absolute) granted. At International Congress of Scientific Philosophy in Paris. 41c, In Praise of Idleness, and Religion and Science published. Arrives in Copenhagen to give lectures on "Determination in Physics", "The Advantage of Scepticism" and "Mathematics and Psychology"; then goes on to Sweden and Norway, returning at the end of the month. 42 delivered to Moral Sciences club at Cambridge. Joint signatory letter to publicize the British Institute of Philosophical Studies is published. 42 published. 20 published; 42 published in Swedish. 13 delivered to the University of Durham Philosophical Society.

XXXVI

18 Jan. 1936 Feb.-Mar. 1936

CHRONOLOGY

Marries Peter at Midhurst registry office. Vacations in Churriana, near Malaga, Spain (the new home of Gerald Brenan).

Mar. 1936 9 Mar. 1936

6 Apr. 1936 May 1936 July 1936 14 Oct. 1936 19 Oct. 1936 1937

Feb. 1937 24 Feb. 1937

1937

Nov. 1937 6 Nov. 1937

1938 12 Feb. 1938

5 Mar. 1938 8 July 1938

13, 43 published. 21 delivered to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 42 delivered to the Aristotelian Society. 21 published. 44 written. 60 published. Which !Wiy to Peace? published. 34 probably written; Education for Democracy published. 44 published.

30 Nov. 1938

The Amberley Papers published.

1939 18 Feb. 1939

14b published. Chairs joint session of Aristotelian Society and Mind Association at Oxford.

46 delivered at Aristotelian Society Symposium in Oxford. Power: A New Social Analysis published.

9 July 1938

Sept. 1938 26 Sept. 1938

25 Nov. 1938

Arrives in Chicago to begin a one-year term as Visiting Professor of Philosophy. Speaks on "Determinism and Physics" to a joint meeting of the American Physical Society and Physics Club of Chicago. Speaks on "Physics and Philosophy" at the University of Chicago. 23 published. 35 delivered to the Student Religious Association of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

61 published. Leaves Telegraph House, which is sold; moves to newly-purchased Amberley House, Kidlington, near Oxford, for one year.

22 Mar. 1939

3 published. Apr. 1939

Participates in discussion following G. E. Moore's paper on "What Do We Know with Certainty" at Oxford University Philosophy Society.

45 delivered to Aristotelian Society as Presidential Address. Serves as President of Aristotelian Society.

22, 45, 46 published. 14a published.

c.14-31 Dec. 1939 1940 8 Feb. 1940

xx xvii

Reads paper on "Propositional Attitudes" to Oxford University Philosophy Society.

Birth of son, Conrad Russell.

8 Nov. 1937

1937-38

13 Feb. 1938

Delivers maiden speech in House of Lords.

Mar. 1937 15 Apr. 1937 22 May 1937 c.29 Sept.

CHRONOLOGY

Arrives in Los Angeles to take up a three-year appointment as professor of philosophy at the University of California; spends summer in Santa Barbara. On lecture tour of southern and eastern states discussing the possibility of World War IL In Mexico to obtain a visa to reenter U.S.A.

58, 62 published. Writes to President Sproul of U.C.L.A. that he will resign officially in a few days, once he has a formal offer from another institution.

xxxviii 26 Feb. 1940

30 Mar. 1940

l

Apr. 1940

May 1940

CHRONOLOGY

Appointed Professor of Philosophy at City College of New York to begin in Jan. 1941; a controversy arises. City College of New York appointment condemned by a judge. Mayor LaGuardia submits his budget for the city with the salary allocation for the Russell appointment deleted. Speaks on "A Theory of Non-Emotive Language" to the Philosophy Club at Occidential College, Los Angeles.

7 May 1940

July-Aug. 1940

At Fallen Leaf Lake near Lake Tahoe, Calf.

mid-Sept. 1940 30 Sept.-20 Dec. 1940

At Bell & Clapper Tea Room, Phoenixville, Penn. At Harvard to deliver William James lectures (later published as An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth); stays at the Commander Hotel. Appointed to a five year lectureship in philosophy at the Barnes Foundation near Philadelphia.

15 Oct. 1940

2 Jan. 1941

Oct. 1941 21 Dec. 1941 1942 25 Jan. 1942 26 Apr. 1942 May 1942

Autumn 1942 28 Dec. 1942 A version of 58 delivered to a student group at a California college. Completes writing of An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.

Rents Little Datchet Farm, Malvern, Penn. Delivers first lecture at the Barnes Foundation where he will continue to lecture until the end of 1942; the lectures are later published as A History of \-%stern Philosophy.

xxxix Let the People Think published. Edited version of 59 published. 66 broadcast on CBS. 64 - 69 published. 65 broadcast on CBS. 64 broadcast on CBS.

Feb. 1941

An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth published. 63 published.

Dec. 1940 1941 Jan. 1941

CHRONOLOGY

Speaks at the Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences in New York; honoured at a private dinner afterwards to celebrate his seventieth birthday. 47 published. Dismissed from his lectureship at the Barnes Foundation.

Part

I

Autobiographical Writings

1

Things That Have Moulded Me [1927]

THIS PAPER WAS published first in The Dial, 83 (Sept. 1927): 181-6; a month later it appeared as the introduction to Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell, published by The Modern Library in New York, the book for which it was originally written. In a letter to Stanley Unwin, dated 20 May 1926, Russell drew his attention to this project: There is an American proposal to bring out a selection from my books, and I thought it might perhaps be a good plan to bring it out in England too. I wrote to other publishers concerned to get permission, meaning to ask you if you would care to undertake the book, when I had got the necessary permissions. But my application to Kegan Paul's brought the enclosed. Perhaps you would care to talk it over with Mr. Stallybrass. The idea is a volume of about 100,000 words, including an introduction specially written for it. The remaining details I have given to Mr. Stallybrass. Preliminary correspondence regarding this volume was handled by Bennett Cerf, then the President of Modern Library Publishers, but he later passed it over to Manuel Komroff, an American writer and the editor of the Modern Library between 1921 and 1926, who had originally proposed that the Modern Library include a volume of Russell's writings. Komroffhad also proposed that Russell be asked to write an introduction for it outlining his present philosophical position. Apparently there was some misunderstanding about who was to make the selection of essays to be reprinted and who was to secure the permissions to reprint from the original publishers. Komroff claimed that, in exchange for full royalties on the volume, Russell was to undertake these two tasks, and as we see from the above letter Russell did attempt to get the permissions. Apparently Stallybrass's roadblock put an end to Russell's attempts. It took a long time to sort these misunderstandings out, since everything had to be done by transatlantic post. An additional snag was encountered when Unwin ascertained from Stallybrass that certain of Russell's American publishers would refuse permission to reprint selected chapters from his books. On more than one occasion it seemed that the project would fall through. In a letter to Unwin of 7

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October 1926, Russell said: "I do not in the least mind if the Cerf matter falls through. He does not impress me favourably." Exactly a week later Russell wrote Unwin: "If the Cerf proposition falls through, the introduction I wrote for him would do quite well for a reprint of miscellaneous essays whenever it is ready to be made." Unwin replied on 25 November expressing interest in "the proposed volume of hitherto unpublished essays", for which Russell's introduction would do "excellently". Komroff eventually took over the task of acquiring permissions. On 18 January 1927 he wrote Russell to inform him that enough permissions had been secured to assure the book's publication. He left the question of the publication of Selected Papers in England entirely up to Russell, telling him he had "full rights in the matter". Russell already knew that Unwin was not interested in bringing the book out in England. Unwin had written Russell on 8 October 1926: "Personally I question the expediency of publishing over here a volume merely containing chapters from existing books, all of which are in print and readily obtainable." Apparently, Russell did not try any other British publishers; at any rate, the book was never published in Great Britain. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell was finally published in the United States in October 1927, a month after its introduction appeared in The Dial. Manuel Komroff had written Russell about this arrangement with The Dial in a letter dated 12 April 1927: "I took the liberty to show this introduction to The Dial who are very keen to print it as a special article." Since the introduction had no descriptive title, he asked Russell to provide one for the magazine to use. On 9 May 1927 Mariane Moore of The Dial wrote to Russell: We have much to thank you for, in your granting us for The Dial, your article to be entitled THINGS THAT HAVE MOULDED ME. It is an invigorating thought that it may mould many others. We shall in a few days send a cheque to you for fifty dollars. Thus he earned less than $300 for his work and his aggravation, since the Modern Library had earlier paid him $250 for his introduction in lieu of royalties, ten per cent of which he paid Unwin in accordance with his contract. A photocopy (RA REC. ACQ. 70 [1926]) of the manuscript is in the Russell Archives. There is also a photocopy (RA REC. ACQ. 229 [c]) of the corrected galley, the original of which is in Yale University Library. The manuscript has been selected as copy-text. It has been collated with the proofs and with the two printed versions; the results of the collations are printed in the Textual Notes.

o WRITE AN Introduction to a selection from one's own works is no _easy task. If I might be_ pe~mitted an Irish bull, I should say that it would be much easier 1f I were dead. Until then, it is impossible to see oneself as a whole, or to distinguish between a phase and a permanent change. However, I will do what I can to narrate the causes which have made my present style of writing different from that of earlier years. From the age of eleven, when I began the study of Euclid, I had a passionate interest in mathematics, combined with a belief that science must be the source of all human progress. Youthful ambition made me wish to 10 be a benefactor of mankind, the more so as I lived in an atmosphere in which public spirit was taken for granted. I hoped to pass from mathematics to science, and lived a solitary life amid day-dreams such as may have inspired Galileo or Descartes in adolescence. But it turned out that, while not without aptitude for pure mathematics, I was completely destitute of the concrete kinds of skill which are necessary in science. Moreover, within mathematics it was the most abstract parts which I understood best: I had no difficulty with elliptic functions, but could never succeed in mastering optics. Science was therefore closed to me as a career. 20 At the same time, I found myself increasingly attracted to philosophy, not, as is often the case, by the hope of ethical or theological comfort, but by the wish to discover whether we possess anything that can be called knowledge. At the age of fifteen, I recorded in my diary that no fact seemed indubitable except consciousness. (Now, I no longer make this exception.) Mathematics, I thought, had a better chance of being true than anything else that passed as general knowledge. But when, at the age of eighteen, I read Mill's Logic, I was horrified by his credulity: the arguments which he advanced for believing in arithmetic and geometry were such as to confirm my doubts. I therefore decided that, before 30 doing anything else, I would find out whether any grounds were ascertainable for regarding mathematics as true. This task turned out to be considerable; it occupied me, with a few intervals, until the year 1910. In that year Dr. Whitehead and I completed the MS of Principia Mathematica, which contained all that I could hope to contribute towards the solution of the problem which had begun to ~rouble me more than twenty years earlier. The main question remamed, of course, unanswered; but incidentally we had been led to the invention of a new method in philosophy and a new branch of mathematics. 40 After the completion of Principia Mathematica, I felt that it was no longer necessary to concentrate so narrowly as hitherto upon one kind of work. I cannot remember an age when I was not interested in politics; I

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was taught English constitutional history almost before I could read. My first book, published in 1896, was a study of German Social Democracy. From 1907 onwards, I took an active part in the campaign for women's suffrage. In 1902 I wrote "The Free Man's Worship" and two other essays (one on mathematics and one on history) expressing a similar outlook. But it is probable that I should have remained mainly academic and abstract but for the war. I had watched with growing anxiety the policies of all the European Great Powers in the years before 1914, and was quite unable to accept the superficial melodramatic explanations of IO the catastrophe which were promulgated by all the belligerent governments. The attitude of ordinary men and women during the first months amazed me, particularly the fact that they found a kind of pleasure in the excitement, as well as their readiness to believe all kinds of myths. It became obvious that I had lived in a fool's paradise. Human nature, even among those who had thought themselves civilized, had dark depths that I had not suspected. Civilization, which I had thought secure, showed itself capable of generating destructive forces which threatened a disaster comparable to the fall of Rome. Everything that I had valued was jeopardized, and only an infinitesimal minority seemed to mind. 20 While the war lasted, abstract pursuits were impossible to me. As much as any soldier who enlisted, I felt the necessity of "doing my bit'', but I could not feel that the victory of either side would solve any problem. During 1915, I wrote Principles of Social Reconstruction (or 'Why Men Fight, as it is called in America), in the hope that, as men grew weary of fighting, they would become interested in the problem of building a pacific society. It was obvious that this would require changes in the impulses and unconscious desires of ordinary human beings; but modern psychology shows that such changes can be brought about without great difficulty. It was obvious also that nothing could be achieved by writings 30 addressed exclusively to specialists. Thus throughout the years of the war I was endeavouring, however unsuccessfully, to write so as to be read by the general public. When the war was over, I found it impossible to return to a purely academic life, although the opportunity was open to me. The problems which interest me are no longer those with which I was concerned before 1914, and I find it impossible now to shut the world out of my thoughts when I enter my study. I do not pretend that this is an improvement; I merely record it as a fact. The effect which the war had upon me was intensified by travels after the war was over. Western Europe and America were familiar to me, but 40 I had never come across any non-occidental culture. In 1920 I spent five weeks in Soviet Russia; I had interviews with many leading Bolsheviks, including an hour's conversation with Lenin; I stayed in Leningrad and Moscow, and travelled down the Volga from Nijni-Novgorod to Astra-

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khan, visiting all the towns and many of the villages on the way. The Bolshevik philosophy appeared to me profoundly unsatisfactory, not because of its communism, but because of the elements which it shares with the philosophy of Western financial magnates. While the problems raised by the spectacle of Russia were still unsolved in my mind, I went to China, where I spent nearly a year. In that country I found a way of life less energetically destructive than that of the West, and possessing a beauty which the West can only extirpate. There appeared no hope that the traditional merits of non-industrial civilizations could survive; the problem was to combine industrialism with a humane way of life, more IO especially with art and with individual liberty. No Western nation has yet begun to solve this problem; but one may hope that it will be solved first in those countries which have assimilated industrialism most completely, since it can only be solved by a community which uses machines without being enthusiastic about them. Everything in which the modern world differs from that of the renaissance, whether for good or evil, is traceable ultimately to the influence of science. The scientific nations are the strongest in war, in commerce, and in prestige. Nothing that goes against science has any chance of lasting success in the modern world. Consequently certain things which we 20 inherit from the middle ages are rapidly disappearing. Religion has already been profoundly modified by its reluctant concessions to science, and will doubtless be modified still further. The hereditary principle is rapidly disappearing in politics, and will probably disappear in economics. The ideal of contemplation, which the monks took over from the neo-platonists, and modern men of learning from the monks, is being hustled and bustled out of existence by those who urge that everything should be "dynamic". In Asia, the revolutionary effect of science, and its oftSpring industrialism, is beginning to be even more pronounced than in Europe; for in Europe science grew spontaneously out of the renaissance, 3o whereas in Asia there was nothing indigenous to prepare the way for it. Throughout the world, therefore, science and industrialism must be accepted as irresistible, and our hopes for mankind must all be within this framework. At the same time, when I examine my own conception of human excellence, I find that, doubtless owing to early environment, it contains many elements which have hitherto been associated with aristocracy, such as fearlessness, independence of judgment, emancipation from the herd and leisurely culture. Is it possible to preserve these qualities, and eve~ make them wide-spread, in an industrial community? And is it possible 4o to dissociate them from the typical aristocratic vices: limitation of sympathy, haughtiness, and cruelty to those outside a charmed circle? These bad qualities could not exist in a community in which the aristocratic

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virtues were universal. But that could only be achieved through economic security and leisure, which are the two sources of what is good in aristocracies. It has at last become technically possible, through the progress of machinery and the consequent increased productivity of labour, to create a society in which every man and woman has economic security and sufficient leisure-for complete leisure is neither necessary nor desirable. But although the technical possibility exists, there are formidable political and psychological obstacles. It would be necessary to the creation of such a society to secure three conditions: first, a more even IO distribution of the produce of labour; second, security against large-scale wars; and third, a population which is stationary or very nearly so. Until these conditions are secured, industrialism will continue to be used feverishly, to increase the wealth of the richest individuals, the territory of the greatest empires, and the population of the most populous nations, no one of which is of the slightest benefit to mankind. These three considerations have inspired what I have written and said on political and social questions since the outbreak of the war, and more particularly since my visits to Russia and China. At bottom, the obstacles to a better utilization of our new power over 20 nature are all psychological, for the political obstacles have psychological sources. It is evident that, in a world where there was leisure and economic security for all, the happiness of all would be greater than that of ninety-nine per cent of the present inhabitants of the planet. Why, then, do the ninety-nine per cent not combine to overcome the resistance of the privileged one per cent? Partly from inertia; partly because they can be swayed by appeals to hatred, fear, and envy. Instead of combining to produce collective happiness, men compete to produce collective misery. Since this competition among subject populations is useful to the holders of power, they encourage it, under the name of "patriotism", in the 30 schools and the Press. Consequently the worst elements in human nature are artificially strengthened, and everything possible is done to prevent the realization that cooperation, not competition, is the road to happiness. A radical reform of education is, therefore, an essential preliminary to the creation of a better world. Without this preliminary, a happy world, if it could be created, would speedily make itself miserable, because each nation would find the happiness of other nations intolerable. In schools for the sons of the well-to-do, there is a practical compulsion to acquire military training, while everything possible is done to secure an artificial o 4 ignorance on matters of sex. That is to say, everything concerned with the creation of life is thought to be abominable, while everything concerned with taking life is exalted as noble. This is the morality of suicide. It springs from the fact that we attach value to power, rather than to

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fulness of life: we think a man a fine fellow when he can cause others to be miserable rather than when he can achieve happiness for himself. All that is needed is to give men a just conception of what constitutes their own happiness. Traditional moralists have made a mistake in preaching self-sacrifice, for several reasons. In the first place, very few men will follow such preaching. In the second place, it leads to hypocrisy and selfdeception: persuade yourself that you desire A, when in fact you desire B, and you will think you are practising self-sacrifice in renouncing A. In the third place, the few who do genuinely make sacrifices become selfrighteous and envious, and feel that those who will not sacrifice voluntarily deserve to be forced into unhappiness. Morality, therefore, should not be based upon self-sacrifice, but upon correct psychology. There is less pleasure to be derived from keeping a beggar hungry than from filling your own stomach. This may not sound a very exalted maxim, but if it were acted upon war and oppression would cease throughout the world; for war and oppression, as a rule, diminish the happiness of victors and oppressors, not only of the vanquished and oppressed. Generally they do so by actual impoverishment; but in any case they produce the fear of revenge. But although a rational pursuit of personal happiness, if it were common, would suffice to regenerate the world, it is not probable that so reasonable a motive will alone prove sufficiently powerful. Emotions of expansive affection, generosity, and pleasure in creation also have their part to play. There is no one key: politics, economics, psychology, education, all act and re-act, and no one of them can make any great or stable advance without the help of the others. Narrow specialization, therefore, cannot produce a philosophy which shall be of service to our age. It is necessary to embrace all life and all science-Europe, Asia, and America, physics, biology, and psychology. The task is almost superhuman. All that the present author can hope to do is to make some men conscious of the problem, and of the kind of directions in which solutions are to be sought.

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How I Came By My Creed [1929]

THIS

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PIECE was first published in New York, in The Forum, 82 (Sept. 1929): 129-34, under the title "What I Believe"; it was published, nearly simultaneously, in London, in The Realist, l, no. 6 (Sept. 1929): 14-21, with the title given above. According to a note on a carbon of the typescript, it was "written by request of The Forum, U.S.A."; the title on the type-

script is that used in its British publication. Two further annotations on the typescript are of interest: it was sent on 28 May 1929 to The Forum and on 24 June to The Realist. On 23 November 1930 it was published in The Sunday Express, under the title "Life as I Should Like to Live It". There were two reprints in books: the first in Living Philosophies (see Einstein, et al. 1931) and the second, with a "Postscript'', in I Believe (see Fadiman 1939). The book publication was a joint enterprise with The Forum. In a "Publisher's Note" in the book, it is stated that the contributions were invited, and part of the letter of invitation is printed: Briefly, we should like to secure from you a statement of your personal credo; that is to say, a statement of your convictions and beliefs concerning the nature of the world and of man. In a sense, this would be a spiritual and intellectual last will and testament to our generation-a brief apologia, necessarily subjective, touching intimately on your own hopes and fears, the mainsprings of your faith or the promptings of your despair. Such an article, together with others of like nature from a selected group of the most penetrating minds of our era, would form an invaluable legacy to thoughtful readers everywhere, for they would indicate the valid principles, the personal philosophy, by which the great men and women of our day have guided their own lives and work. As the reader will soon discover, Russell's contribution closely follows the suggested guidelines. The typescript carbon (RA 220.012810) has been selected as copy-text for the main essay. The copy-text for the 1939 "Postscript'', which is printed here for the reader's convenience, is the printed version. The copy-texts have been collated with the printed versions; the results of these collations are reported in the Textual Notes.

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OUTLOOK ON the world is, like other people's, the product partly of circumstance and partly of temperament. In regard to religious belief, those who were concerned with my education did not perhaps adopt the best methods for producing an unques~ioning acceptance of some orthodoxy. My father and mother were free thinkers, but one of them died when I was two years old and the other when I was three, and I did not know their opinions until I grew up. After my father's death I lived with my grandmother, who was a Scotch Presbyterian but at the age of seventy became converted to Unitarianism. I was taken on alternate Sundays to the (Episcopalian) Parish Church and to 10 the Presbyterian Church, while at home I was instructed in the tenets of the Unitarian faith. I liked the Parish Church best because there was a comfortable family pew next to the bell rope, which moved up and down all the time the bell was ringing; also because I liked the royal arms which hung on the wall, and the beadle who walked up the steps to the pulpit after the clergyman to close the door upon him at the beginning of the sermon. Moreover, during the service I could study the tables for finding Easter and speculate upon the meaning of Golden Numbers and Sunday Letters, and enjoy the pleasure of dividing by 19 neglecting fractions. But I was not taught to suppose that everything in the Bible was 20 true or to believe in miracles and eternal perdition. Darwinism was accepted as a matter of course. I remember a Swiss Protestant tutor, whom I had when I was eleven, saying to me, "If you are a Darwinian, I pity you, for it is impossible to be a Darwinian and a Christian at the same time." I did not at that age believe in the incompatibility, but I was already clear that if I had to choose, I should choose to be a Darwinian. I continued, however, to believe devoutly in the Unitarian faith until the age of fourteen, at which period I became exceedingly religious and consequently anxious to know whether there was any good ground for supposing religion to be true. For the next four years a great part of my 30 time was spent in secret meditation upon this subject; I could not speak to anybody about it for fear of giving pain. I suffered acutely both from the gradual loss of faith and from the need of silence. The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all motions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by the human will even in the case of matter forming part of a human body. I had never heard of Cartesianism, or indeed of any of the great philosophies, but my thoughts ran spontaneously on Cartesian lines. The next dogma which I began to doubt was that of immortality, but I cannot clearly remember what were at that 40 time my reasons for disbelieving in it. I continued to believe in God until the age of eighteen, since the First Cause argument appeared to me irrefutable. At eighteen, however, the reading of Mill's autobiography y

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showed me the fallacy in this argument. I therefore definitely abandoned all the dogmas of Christianity, and to my surprise I found myself much happier than while I had been struggling to retain some sort of theological belief. Just after arriving at this stage I went to the University, where for the first time in my life I met people to whom I could speak of matters that interested me. At the University I studied philosophy and under the influence of McTaggart became for a time a Hegelian. This phase lasted about three years and was brought to an end by discussion with G. E. Moore. After leaving Cambridge I spent some years in more or less IO desultory studies. Two winters in Berlin I devoted mainly to economics. In I896 I lectured at the Johns Hopkins University and Bryn Mawr on non-Euclidean geometry: I spent a good deal of time among art connoisseurs in Florence, while I read Pater and Flaubert and the other gods of the cultured nineties. In the end I settled down in the country with a view to writing a magnum opus on the principles of mathematics, which had been my chief ambition ever since the age of eleven. It was at that age that one of the decisive experiences of my life occurred to me. My brother, who was seven years older than I was, undertook to teach me Euclid and I was overjoyed as I had been told that Euclid proved things, so that I hoped at last to acquire some solid knowl20 edge. I shall never forget my disappointment when I found that Euclid started with axioms. When my brother read the first axiom to me, I said that I saw no reason to admit it, to which he replied that in that case we could not go on; as I was anxious to go on, I admitted it provisionally, but my belief that somewhere in the world solid knowledge was obtainable had received a rude shock. The desire to discover some really certain knowledge inspired all my work up to the age of thirty-eight. It seemed clear that mathematics had a better claim to be considered knowledge than anything else; therefore it was to the principles of mathe30 matics that I addressed myself. At the age of thirty-eight I felt that I had done all that it lay in my power to do in this field although I was far from having arrived at any absolute certainty. Indeed the net result of my work was to throw doubts upon arithmetic which had never been thrown before. I was and am persuaded that the method I pursued brings one nearer to knowledge than any other that is available, but the knowledge it brings is only probable and not so precise as it appears to be at first sight. At this point therefore my life was rather sharply cut in two. I did not feel inclined to devote myself any longer to abstractions, where I had done what I could without arriving at the desired goal. My mood was not 40 unlike that of Faust at the moment when Mephistopheles first appears to him, but Mephistopheles appeared to me not in the form of poodle but in the form of the Great War. After Dr. Whitehead and I had finished Principia Mathematica, I remained for about three years uncertain what to

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I was teaching at Cambridge, but I did not feel that I wished to go o. doing so for ever. From sheer inertia I was still occupied mainly with :athematical log~c, but I felt half unconsciously the desire for some holly different kmd of work. w Then came the War, and I knew without the faintest shadow of doubt hat I had to do. I have never been so whole-hearted or so little troubled with hesitation in any work as in the pacifist work that I did during the :ar. For the first time I found something to do which involved my whole ature. My previous abstract work had left my human interests unsat~fied, and I had allowed them an occasional outlet by political speaking IO and writing, more particularly on Free Trade and Votes for Women. The aristocratic political tradition of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which I had imbibed in childhood, had made me feel an instinctive responsibility in regard to public affairs. And a strong parental instinct, at that time not satisfied in a personal way, caused me to feel a great indignation at the spectacle of the young men of Europe being deceived and butchered to gratify the evil passions of their elders. Intellectual integrity made it quite impossible for me to accept the war myths of any of the belligerent nations. Indeed those intellectuals who accepted them were abdicating their functions for the joy of feeling themselves at 20 one with the herd, or in some cases from mere funk. This appeared to me ignoble. If the intellectual has any function in society, it is to preserve a cool and unbiassed judgment in the face of all solicitations to passion. I found, however, that most intellectuals have no belief in the utility of the intellect except in quiet times. Again, popular feeling during the War, especially in the first months, afforded me a keen though very painful scientific interest. I observed that at first most of those who stayed at home enjoyed the War, which showed me how much hatred and how little human affection exists in human nature educated on our present lines. I saw also how the ordinary virtues, such as thrift, industry and 30 public spirit, were used to swell the magnitude of the disaster by producing a greater energy in the work of mutual extermination. I feared that European civilization would perish, as indeed it easily might have done if the War had lasted a year longer. The feeling of security that characterized the nineteenth century perished in the War, but I could not cease to believe in the desirability of the ideals that I previously cherished. Among many of the younger generation despair has produced cynicism, but for my part I have never felt complete despair and have never ceased therefore to believe that the road to a better state of affairs is still open to mankind. 40 All my thinking on political, sociological and ethical questions during the last fifteen years has sprung from the impulse which came to me during the first days of the War. I soon became convinced that the study

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of diplomatic origins, though useful, did not go to the bottom of the matter, since popular passions enthusiastically supported Governments in all the steps leading up to the War. I have found myself also unable to accept the view that the origins of wars are always economic, for it was obvious that most of the people who were enthusiastic in favour of the War were going to lose money by it, and the fact that they themselves did not think so showed that their economic thinking was biassed, and that the passion causing the bias was the real source of their war-like feeling. The supposed economic causes of war, except in the case of IO certain capitalistic enterprises, are in the nature of a rationalization: people wish to fight and they therefore persuade themselves that it is to their interest to do so. The important question therefore is the psychological one: Why do people wish to fight? And this leads on from war to a host of other questions concerning impulses to cruelty and oppression in general. These questions in their turn involve a study of the origins of malevolent passions, and thence of psycho-analysis and the theory of education. Gradually through the investigation of these questions, I have come to a certain philosophy of life guided always by the desire to discover some way in which men, with the congenital characteristics which 20 nature has given them, can live together in societies without devoting themselves to making each other miserable. The keynote of my social philosophy from a scientific point of view is the emphasis upon psychology and the practice of judging social institutions from the standpoint of their effects upon human character. During the War all the recognized virtues of sober citizens were turned to a use which I considered bad. Men abstained from alcohol in order to make shells; they worked long hours in order to destroy the kind of society that makes work worth doing. Venereal disease was thought more regrettable than usual because it interfered with the killing of enemies. All this made me acutely aware 30 of the fact that rules of conduct, whatever they may be, are not sufficient to produce good results unless the ends sought are good. Sobriety, thrift, industry and continence, in so far as they existed during the War, merely increased the orgy of destruction. The money spent on drink, on the other hand, saved men's lives, since it was taken away from the making of high explosives. Being a pacifist forced one into opposition to the whole purpose of the community, and made it very difficult to avoid a completely antinomian attitude of hostility to all recognized moral rules. My attitude, however, is not really one of hostility to moral rules; it is essentially that expressed by Saint Paul in the famous passage on charity. o I do not always find myself in agreement with that apostle, but on this 4 point my feeling is exactly the same as his, namely that no obedience to moral rules can take the place of love, and that where love is genuine, it will, if combined with intelligence, suffice to generate whatever moral

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are necessary. The word "love", however, has become somewhat 1 rues · convey any 1onger th e ng · ht with usage and does not perhaps quite w;r;e of meaning. One might start at the other end from a behaviourist s a sis dividing movements into those of approach and those of with1Y ' ana · · 1 ki ngd om creatures d wal. In some of the humbl est regions o f th e amma r~ be divided, for example, into the phototropic and photophobic, i.e. :ose which approach light and those which fly from it. The same kind of distinction applies throughout the animal kingdom. In the presence of a new stimulus there may be an impulse of approach or an impulse of retreat. Translated into psychological terms this may be expressed by IO saying that there may be an emotion of attraction or an emotion of fear: both are, of course, necessary to survival, but emotions of fear are very much less necessary for survival in civilized life than they were at earlier stages of human development or among our pre-human ancestors. Before men had adequate weapons fierce wild beasts must have made life very dangerous, so that men had reason to be as timorous as rabbits are now, and there was an ever-present danger of death by starvation, which has grown enormously less with the creation of modern means of transport. At the present time the fiercest and most dangerous animal with which human beings have to contend is man, and the dangers due to 20 purely physical causes have been very rapidly reduced. Fear therefore in the present day finds not much scope except in relation to other human beings, and fear itself is one of the main reasons why human beings are formidable to each other. It is a recognized maxim that the best defence is attack; consequently people are continually attacking each other because they expect to be attacked. Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous world and contain therefore a larger proportion of fear than they should; this fear, since it finds little other outlet, directs itself against the social environment, producing distrust and hate, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. If we are to 30 profit fully by our new-won mastery over nature, we must acquire a more lordly psychology: instead of the cringing and resentful terror of the slave, we must learn to feel the calm dignity of the master. Reverting to the impulses of approach and withdrawal, this means that impulses of approach need to be encouraged, and those of withdrawal need to be discouraged. Like everything else, this is a matter of degree. I am not suggesting that people should approach tigers and pythons with friendly feelings; I am saying only that the occasions for fear and withdrawal are less numerous than tradition would lead us to suppose since tradition grew up in a more dangerous world. 40 It is the conquest of nature which has made a more friendly and cooperative attitude between human beings possible, and rational men could now, if they co-operated and used their scientific knowledge to the

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full, secure the economic welfare of all, which was not possible in any earlier period. Life and death competition for the possession of fertile lands was, in the past, reasonable enough, but it has now become a folly. International government, business organization, and birth control should make the world comfortable for everybody. I do not say that everybody could be as rich as Croesus, but everybody could have as much of this world's goods as is necessary for the happiness of sensible people. With the problem of poverty and destitution eliminated, men could devote themselves to the constructive arts of civilization, to the IO progress of science, the diminution of disease, the postponement of death, and the liberation of the impulses that make for joy. Why do such ideas appear Utopian? The reasons lie solely in human psychology-not in the unalterable parts of human nature, but in those which we acquire from tradition, education and the example of our environment. Take first international government: the necessity for this is patent to every person capable of political thought, but nationalistic passions stand in the way. Each nation is proud of its independence, each nation is willing to fight till the last gasp to preserve its freedom. This is, of course, mere anarchism, exactly analogous of the bold bad 20 barons of the feudal ages who were forced in the end to submit to the authority of the king. The attitude we have towards foreign nations is one of withdrawal: the foreigner may be all right in his place, but we become filled with alarm at the thought that he may have any say in our affairs. Each State therefore insists upon the right of private war. Treaties of arbitration, Kellogg Peace Pacts, and the rest are all very well as a gesture, but everybody knows that they will not stand any severe strain. So long as each nation has its own army and navy and air force, it will use them when it gets excited, whatever treaties its Government may have signed. There will be no safety in the world until men have applied 30 to the rules between different States the great principle which has produced internal security, namely that in any dispute force must not be employed by either interested party but only by a neutral authority after due investigation according to recognized principles of law. When all the armed forces of the world are controlled by one world-wide authority, we shall have reached the stage in the relation of States which was reached centuries ago in the relations of individuals, but nothing less than this will suffice. The basis of international anarchy is men's proneness to fear and hatred; this also is the basis of economic disputes, for the love of power, 40 which is at their root, is generally an embodiment of fear. Men desire to be in control because they dread that the control of others will be used unjustly to their detriment. The same thing applies in the sphere of sexual morals: the power of husbands over wives and of wives over hus-

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bands, which is conferred by the law, is derived from fear of loss of posession. This motive is the negative emotion of jealously, not the positive s motion of love. In education the same kind of thing occurs. The posi:ive emotion which should supply the motive in education is curiosity, but the curiosity of the young is severely repressed in many directions, sexual, theological and political. Instead of being encouraged in the practice of free enquiry, they are instructed in an orthodoxy, with the result that unfamiliar ideas inspire them with terror rather than with interest. All these bad results spring from a pursuit of security inspired by irrational fears; the fears have become irrational since in the modern world fearlessness and intelligence, if embodied in social organization, would in themselves suffice to produce security. The road to Utopia is clear; it lies partly through politics and partly through changes in the individual. As regards politics, far the most important thing is the establishment of an International Government, a measure which I expect to be brought about through the world government of the United States. As regards the individual, the problem is to make him less prone to hatred and fear, and this is a matter partly physiological and partly psychological. Much of the hatred in the world is due to bad digestion and inadequate functioning of the glands, which is a result of oppression and thwarting in youth. In a world where the health of the young is adequately cared for and their vital impulses are given the utmost scope compatible with their own health and that of their companions, men and women will grow up more ccurageous and less malevolent than they are at present. Given such human beings and an international government, the world might become stable and yet civilized, whereas with our present psychology and political organization, every increase in scientific knowledge brings the destruction of civilization nearer.

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Nothing that has happened in the world since this essay was written has 30 caused me to alter any of my beliefs, but some events have led to a change of emphasis. In ordinary life we do not have to proclaim vigorously that two and two are four, because we do not find it questioned; but if important governments put people to death for asserting it, we might have to devote time to the multiplication table which otherwise might be better employed. So it is at the present time. It had seemed, to my generation, that certain principles were definitely accepted in politics, e.g. that Jews and Christians should have the same social and political rights; that a man should not be deprived of life or liberty except by due process of law; and that there should be freedom of opinion except in so 40 far as some interference might be necessary in time of actual war.

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These principles, in whole or part, are now rejected by the Governments of Germany, Italy, Russia, India, and Japan, not to mention many smaller countries. Those who disapprove of their rejection in one case very often approve of it in another. Communists are shocked by the tyranny in Fascist countries, but think it quite right that Stalin should be able to execute his colleagues whenever the humour seizes him. Fascists are horrified by the sufferings of Russian kulaks, but think that Jews deserve no mercy. The world grows more and more fierce, and fewer and fewer people object to atrocities committed by their own party. IO In these circumstances, those of us who still believe in tolerance and democracy are told that we are condemning ourselves to futility, since victory must go either to the Fascists or to the Communists. I think this point of view quite unhistorical, but in any case I could not accept it. To begin with the historical argument. For a time, the Western world was divided between the followers of Luther and the followers of Loyola; all governments were on one side or the other, fierce wars were fought, and the few who, like Erasmus, remained neutral might have been thought negligible. But after about a hundred years of slaughter without victory to either side, people got tired of the whole business and just 20 stopped. To us, in retrospect, there seems very little to choose between persecuting Protestants and persecuting Catholics: we should divide the world of the seventeenth century into fanatics and sensible people, putting the opposing fanaticisms together as analogous follies. So, in retrospect, will Communism and Fascism appear. The ultimate victory is never to the fanatic, because he tries to keep men's emotions in a state of tension which the great majority, in the long run, find unbearable. The eighteenth century-the age of reason-was a period of relaxation after the excitements of the wars of religion. So, I doubt not, the modern wars of ideologies will be succeeded by another age of reason, in which, once 30 more, people will not be willing to persecute in the name of beliefs for which there is no evidence. Fascism and Communism, when analyzed psychologically, are seen to be extraordinarily similar. They are both creeds by which ambitious politicians seek to concentrate in their own persons the power that has hitherto been divided between politicians and capitalists. Of course they have their differing ideologies. But an ideology is merely the politician's weapon; it is to him what the rifle is to the soldier. This is still true, psychologically, even if the politician is taken in by his own eloquence. The technique of both parties is the same: first, to persuade a minority by an 40 ideology which appeals to hate; then, by some trick, to confine military power to this minority; and finally, to establish a tyranny. The method, so far as the modern world is concerned, was invented by Cromwell.

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The defects of the method are obvious. Since it appeals to hate, it inlves, internally, cruelty and suppression of every kind of freedom, and vo ternally, a vehement reaction of fear and preparation for war. Owing to ~:S revivalist's technique, its success, like that of analogous religious overnents in the past, cannot be more than temporary; before long, m thusiasm gives place to corruption, and zeal degenerates into the activ~~es of spies and informers. The ruler, terrified of assassination and alace revolutions, is the prisoner of his own secret service; everyone else ~ornes to know that the road to success is to denounce relations and friends for imaginary conspiracies. There is nothing new about all this, it rnay be studied in the pages of Tacitus as well as in recent accounts of Russia. It is a great misfortune that so many radicals should have persuaded themselves that the millennium is to be reached along such a road, and should have closed their eyes to the similarity of different brands of totalitarian states. The mentality produced by the Great War has encouraged an excessive belief in what can be achieved by violence, without the concurrence of the populations concerned; and at the same time impoverishment has stimulated the desire to find an enemy to whom misfortunes may be attributed. The cure for the crisis due to the Great War is thought to be a still greater war; all the disillusionments of idealists at Versailles and after are forgotten. In this there is no wisdom. It is not by violence and cruelty and despotism that the happiness of mankind is to be secured. In 1914 the world started along a wrong road, which it is still traversing, faster and faster the longer the end of the journey remains out of sight. Perhaps the blind alley will have to be followed to the very end, as in the wars of religion, before men discover that it leads nowhere. But in the meantime those who retain the use of reason should not encourage the frantic stampede toward disaster.

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My Religious Reminiscences [1938]

THIS PAPER WAS published first in The Rationalist Annual (1938): 3-8, which appeared in November 1937· The editors of The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell (1961) selected it for inclusion in that volume, and it was reprinted again in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (1986), edited by Al Seckel. Since Russell was not involved in seeing the earlier of these books through the press, its text has no authority. Russell had a long association with the Rationalist Press Association, as did his older brother, Frank, the second Earl Russell. Both lent their names, from 1928 until their deaths, as Honorary Associates, to the Association's masthead, and both contributed a number of articles to the RPA's various publications. In 1922 Bertrand Russell delivered the Conway Memorial Lecture, a highlight of the RPA's year; he chose as his topic, Free Thought and Official Propaganda, and the RPA brought it out as a little book later that year. In 1941 the RPA prevailed upon Russell to allow them to bring out a collection of his essays as a volume in "The Thinker's Library"; this little book was called Let the People Think. In 1954 Russell was elected President of the Rationalist Press Association, a position he held for several years. In addition to the printed versions, the Russell Archives contains the manuscript and an uncorrected galley proof of its first publication. The manuscript (RAl 220.016580) has been selected as copy-text. The results of collating it with the printed version are reported in the Textual Notes.

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PARENTS, LORD and Lady Amberley, were considered shocking in their day on account of their advance~ opi?ions in politics, theology, and morals. When my mother died, m 1874, she was buried, without any religious ceremony, in the grounds of their se in the Wye Valley. My father intended to be buried there also, but h~U he died in 1876 his wishes were disregarded, and both were rew end to the family vault at Chenies. By my father's will, my brother me;; were to have been in the guardianship of two friends of his who :~ared his opinions, but the will was set aside and we were placed by the Court of Chancery in the care of my grandparents. My grandfather, the ro statesman, died in 1878, and it was his widow who decided the manner of my education. She was a Scotch Presbyterian, who gradually became a Unitarian. I was taken on alternate Sundays to the Parish Church and to the Presbyterian Church, while at home I was taught the tenets of Unitarianism. Eternal punishment and the literal truth of the Bible were not inculcated, and there was no Sabbatarianism beyond a suggestion of avoiding cards on Sunday for fear of shocking the servants. But in other respects morals were austere, and it was held to be certain that conscience, which is the voice of God, is an infallible guide in all practical 20 perplexities. My childhood was solitary, as my brother was seven years older than I was, and I was not sent to school. Consequently I had abundant leisure for reflection, and when I was about fourteen my thoughts turned to theology. During the four following years I rejected, successively, free will, immortality, and belief in God, and believed that I suffered much pain in the process, though when it was completed I found myself far happier than I had been while I remained in doubt. I think, in retrospect, that loneliness had much more to do with my unhappiness than theological difficulties; for throughout the whole time I never said a word about religion to any one, with the brief exception of an Agnostic tutor, 30 who was soon sent away, presumably because he did not discourage my unorthodoxy. What kept me silent was mainly the fear of ridicule. At the age of fourteen I became persuaded that the fundamental principle of ethics should be the promotion of human happiness, and at first this appeared to me so self-evident that I supposed it must be the universal opinion. Then I discovered, to my surprise, that it was a view regarded as unorthodox, and called utilitarianism. I announced, no doubt with a certain pleasure in the long word, that I was a utilitarian, but the announcement was received with ridicule. My grandmother, for a long time, missed no op- 40 portunity of ironically submitting ethical conundrums to me, and challenging me to solve them on utilitarian principles. To my surprise, I discovered, in preparing the Amberley Papers, that she had subjected an

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uncle of mine, in his youth, to the same treatment on the same topic. The result in my case was a determination to keep my thoughts to myself; no doubt in his case it was similar. Ridicule, nominally amusing but really an expression of hostility, was the favourite weapon-the worst possible, short of actual cruelty, in. dealing with young people. When I became interested in philosophy-a subject which, for some reason, was anathema-I was told that the whole subject could be summed up in the saying: "What is mind? no matter; What is matter? never mind." At the fifteenth or sixteenth repetition of this remark it ceased to be amusing. Nevertheless, on most topics, the atmosphere was liberal; for instance, Darwinism was accepted as a matter of course. I had at one time, when I was thirteen, a very orthodox Swiss tutor, who, in consequence of something I had said, stated with great earnestness: "If you are a Darwinian, I pity you, for one cannot be a Darwinian and a Christian at the same time." I did not then believe in the incompatibility, but I was already clear that, if I had to choose, I would choose Darwin. Until I went to Cambridge, I was almost wholly unaware of contemporary movements of thought. I was influenced by Darwin, and then by John Stuart Mill, but more than either by the study of dynamics; my outlook, in fact, was more appropriate to a seventeenth or eighteenth century Cartesian than to a post-Darwinian. It seemed to me that all the motions of matter were determined by physical laws, and that, in all likelihood, this was true of the human body as well as of other matter. Being passionately interested in religion, and unable to speak about it, I wrote down my thoughts in Greek letters, in a book which I headed "Greek exercises", in which, to make concealment more complete, I adopted an original system of phonetic spelling. In this book, when I was fifteen, I wrote: Taking free will first to consider, there is no clear dividing line between man and the protozoon. Therefore if we give free will to man, we must give it also to the protozoon. This is rather hard to do. Therefore unless we are willing to give free will to the protozoon, we must not give it to man. This, however, is possible, but it is difficult 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 animals are simply kept going by chemical forces and are nothing more wonderful than a tree (which no one pretends has free will), and if we had a good enough knowledge of the forces acting on any one at any time, the motives pro and con, the constitution of his brain at any time, then we could tell exactly what he would do.

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lJntil the age of eighteen, I continued to believe in a deist's God, because the First-Cause argument seemed to me irrefutable. Then, in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, I found that James Mill had taught him the refutation of that argument, namely that it gives no answer to the question "Who made God?" It is curious that Mill should have had so much influence on me, for he was my father's and mother's close friend, and the source of many of their opinions, but I did not know this until a rnuch later date. Without being aware that I was following in my father's footsteps, I read, before I went to Cambridge, Mill's Logic and Political Economy, and made elaborate notes in which I practised the art of ex- IO pressing the gist of each paragraph in a single sentence. I was already interested in the principles of mathematics, and was profoundly dissatisfied with his assimilation of pure mathematics to empirical science-a view which is now universally abandoned. Throughout adolescence, I read widely, but as I depended mainly on rny grandfather's library, few of the books I read belonged to my own time. They were a curious collection. I remember, as having been important to me, Milman's History of Christianity, Gibbon, Comte, Dante, Machiavelli, Swift, and Carlyle; but above all Shelley-whom, however, though born in the same month as my grandfather, I did not find on his 20 shelves. It was only at Cambridge that I became aware of the modern world-I mean the world that was modern in the early nineties: Ibsen and Shaw, Flaubert and Pater, Walt Whitman, Nietzsche, etc. But I do not think any of these men had much influence on me, with the possible exception of Ibsen. The men who changed my opinions at that time were two: first McTaggart in one direction, and then, after I had become a Fellow, G. E. Moore in the opposite direction. McTaggart made me a Hegelian, and Moore caused me to revert to the opinions I had had before I went to Cambridge. Most of what I learnt at Cambridge had to be painfully 30 unlearnt later; on the whole, what I had learnt for myself from being left alone in an old library had proved more solid. The influence of German idealism in England has never gone much beyond the universities, but in them, when I was young, it was almost completely dominant. Green and Caird converted Oxford, and Bradley and Bosanquet-the leading British philosophers in the nineties-were more in agreement with Hegel than with any one else, though, for some reason unknown to me, they hardly ever mentioned him. In Cambridge, Henry Sidgwick still represented the Benthamite tradition, and James Ward was a Kantian, but the younger men-Stout, Mackenzie, and 40 McTaggart-were, in varying degrees, Hegelians. Very varying attitudes towards Christian dogma were compatible with acceptance of Hegel. In his philosophy, nothing is held to be quite true,

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and nothing quite false; what can be uttered has only a limited truth, and, since men must talk, we cannot blame them for not speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are "not intellectually corrigible" -further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing. Ideas have degrees of truth, greater or less according to the stage at which they come in the dialectic. God has a good deal of truth, since He comes rather late in the dialectic; but He has not complete truth, since He is swallowed up in the Absolute Idea. The right wing among Hegelians emphasized the truth in the concept of God, the left wing the falsehood, and each wing was true to the Master. A German Hegelian, if he was taking orders, remembered how much truer the concept of God is than, e.g., that of gods; if he was becoming a civil servant, he remembered the even greater truth of the Absolute Idea, whose earthly copy was the Prussian State. In England, teachers of philosophy who were Hegelians almost all belonged to the left wing. "Religion", says Bradley, "is practical, and therefore still is dominated by the idea of the Good; and in the essence of this idea is contained an unsolved contradiction. Religion is still forced to maintain unreduced aspects, which, as such, cannot be united; and it exists, in short, by a kind of perpetual oscillation and compromise." Neither Bradley nor Bosanquet believed in personal immortality. Mackenzie, while I was reading philosophy, stated in a paper which I heard that "a personal God is, in a sense, a contradiction in terms"; he was subsequently one of my examiners. The attitude of these men to religion was thus not one of which the orthodox could approve, but it was by no means one of hostility: they held religion to be an essential ingredient in the truth, and only defective when taken as the whole truth. The sort of view that I had previously held, "either there is a God or there is not, and probably the latter", seemed to them very crude; the correct opinion, they would say, was that from one point of view there is a God and from another there is not, but from the highest point of view there neither is nor is not. Being myself naturally "crude", I never succeeded in reaching this pitch of mellowness. McTaggart, who dominated the philosophical outlook of my generation at Cambridge, was peculiar among Hegelians in various ways. He was more faithful than the others to the dialectic method, and would defend even its details. Unlike some of the school, he was definite in asserting certain things and denying others; he called himself an atheist, but firmly believed in personal immortality, of which he believed that he possessed a logical demonstration. He was four years senior to me, and in my first term was president of the Union. He and I were both so shy that

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about a fortnight after I came up, he called on me, he had not the en,ge to come in and I had not the courage to ask him in, so that he coura . ·ned in the doorway about five mmutes. Soon, however, the converrerna l . . d . n got onto philosophy, and his shyness ceased. I found that all I ha sauo · an d 1og1c · an d metaph ys1cs · was cons1'dered to b e reth ght about ethics fu oud by an abstruse technique that completely baffled me; and by this tee technique it was to be proved that I should live for ever. I found ~: the old thought this ~onsense, b~t the young tho~ght it good sense, I determined to study 1t sympathetically, and for a time I more or less ~~lieved it. So, for a ~horte~ time, did G. E. Moore: But he found th.e Hegelian philosophy ma~phcable .to ta~les and c~a1rs, and I fo.und 1t nworkable in mathematics; so with his help I climbed out of it, and ~ack to common sense tempered by mathematical logic. The intellectual temper of the nineties was very different from that of my father's youth: in some ways better, but in many ways worse. There was no longer, among the abler young men, any pre-occupation with the details of the Christian faith; they were almost all Agnostics, and not interested in discussions as to the divinity of Christ, or in the details of Biblical criticism. I remember a feeling of contempt when I learned that Henry Sidgwick as a young man, being desirous of knowing whether God exists, thought it necessary, as a first step, to learn Semitic languages, which seemed to me to show an insufficient sense of logical relevance. But I was willing, as were most of my friends, to listen to a metaphysical argument for or against God or immortality or free will; and it was only after acquiring a new logic that I ceased to think such arguments worth examining. The non-academic heroes of the nineties-Ibsen, Strindberg, Nietzsche, and (for a time) Oscar Wilde-differed very greatly from those of the previous generation. The great men of the sixties were all "good" men: they were patient, painstaking, in favour of change only when a detailed and careful investigation had persuaded them that it was necessary in some particular respect. They advocated reforms, and in general their advocacy was successful, so that the world improved very fast; but their temper was not that of rebels. I do not mean that no great rebels existed; Marx and Dostoievsky, to mention only two, did most of their best work in the sixties. But these men were almost unknown among cultured people in their own day, and their influence belongs to a much later date. The men who commanded respect in England in the sixtiesDarwin, Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Newman, the authors of Essays and Reviews, etc.-were not fundamentally at war with society; they could meet, as they did in the "Metaphysical Society'', to discuss urbanely whether there is a God. At the end they divided; and Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, on being asked afterwards whether there is a God, replied:

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"Yes, we had a very good majority." In those days, democracy ruled even over Heaven. But in the nineties young men desired something more sweeping and passionate, more bold and less bland. The impulse towards destruction and violence which has swept over the world began in the sphere of literature. Ibsen, Strindberg, and Nietzsche were angry men-not primarily angry about this or that, but just angry. And so they each found an outlook on life that justified anger. The young admired their passion, and found in it an outlet for their own feelings of revolt against parental authority. The assertion of freedom seemed sufficiently noble to justify violence; the violence duly ensued, but freedom was lost in the process.

Part n History and Philosophy of Science

4

Events, Matter, and Mind [1927]

TfllS PAPER WAS published in The Referee, London, 27 March 1927, p. 9; it is not the chapter of the same title in An Outline of Philosophy (1927). The copy-text is the printed version.

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4 EVENTS, MATTER, AND MIND

thinks of matter as something very solid, and quite beyond question. He may feel do~bts about all sorts of things, but he feels no doubt about the existence of tables and chairs and rocks and trees. Many philosophers have tried to shake his certainty in this respect. Berkeley said that matter was nothing but ideas, and other philosophers have said similar things, but none of them produced any effect on the plain man. When Dr. Johnson was asked what he thought about this theory, he kicked a stone and said, "I disprove it thus." Oddly enough the physicists, whose business it is to study matter sciIO entifically, have turned traitor, and have begun to be almost as sceptical as the philosophers. This is rather a new development in physics, and has come from two directions, from Einstein's Theory of Relativity and from the study of the atom. The study of the atom is in some ways the more interesting of these two from our present point of view. For a long time it was thought that an atom is, as its name denotes, something indivisible, and that there were ninety-two sorts of atoms corresponding to the ninety-two "elements". Then it appeared from the work of Rutherford and others that an atom, so far from being indivisible, is a sort of solar system, and that all atoms are composed of two sorts of units called 20 electrons and protons. The protons have positive electricity and the electrons have negative electricity. For some years physicists were quite content with this picture of matter, but there were some problems which it could not solve, and it made some assumptions for which no good reason could be given. So the electrons and protons had to be dissolved, just as tables and chairs had been dissolved. But it was impossible to cut them up into smaller bits of matter, so instead of that they became simply systems of radiations. Light comes out of an atom in certain circumstances, and the modern 30 physicist suggests that the atom is the light that comes out of it. Consider for a moment what happens when, as we say, we "see" an electric light or a gas flame. Certain waves travel over the region between the light and the eye, and they then set up processes in the eye and the optic nerve which end in a sensation. There is no reason to suppose that the waves come out of a "thing"; so long as the waves reach the eye we shall have the sensation, quite regardless of whether they come from a "thing" or not. And so matter has become nothing but a system of waves travelling about-not waves "in" a sea, or "in" the air or "in" the ether, but just waves. And the idea that waves must be "in" something is 40 branded as mere superstition. Matter, like the Cheshire cat, has faded away until there is nothing left but the grin. And all this has been the work of physicists, who were quite innocent of any philosophical motive, and were merely trying to give a consistent account of what happens.

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The result is that matter is nothing but sets of events. But you may say, all this may be very true about things that we only b~t what about things that we touch? When you run your head into see~one wall on a dark night it is very difficult to doubt the existence of ~: wall. Of course, it is true that there is something the~e that c~n make u feel pain; nobody would attempt to deny that. But 1f you thmk that y~at is there is a solid wall, and that your head has come in contact with ~ you are allowing yourself to be deceived by appearances. Electrons ~~d protons never touch each other but move round each other in the ort of way that planets and comets move round the sun. They resemble IO ;raceful dancers in a minuet rather than modern performers. What happens when you think that you bump into a stone wall is that some of the electrons and protons in your head get uncomfortably near to the electrons and protons in the wall and develop powerful electrical forces which cause a disturbance in your head of the same sort as would occur in a Bank Holiday crowd if someone were to shout: "Look out, there's a tiger coming!" The pain of the bump is only felt after a message has travelled along your nerves to your brain. If these nerves were cut you would not feel the bump, and so long as the message sent along the nerves is the same the sensation will be the same. So it is quite a mistake 20 to feel sure that your forehead has really hit the wall. Touch is no more direct than sight, although it seems so. And so modern physics regards matter as simply a system of passing events like what we see in the cinema, and what it says of matter psychology is coming also to say of mind. People say they are as sure of something as they are of their own existence, but do you really feel sure of your own existence? You are, of course, sure of the existence of something, but what is this something? You may be sure of the thought you are thinking at the moment; you may be sure of the thirst you are feeling, or the toothache you are suffer- 30 ing, but all these are events, and it would seem that the person to whom these events happen is nothing but the string of events themselves. In a word, a man is the same thing as all the events that happen to him, and the events that make up a human biography are not so very different from the events that make up a piece of matter. When a number of people see a star, all the events that happen to them when they see it are part of the history of the star. When one man sees a number of stars, all the events that happen to him when he sees them are part of the history of him. And so it would seem that matter is one way of classifying events, and mind is another way of classifying 40 those same events. It is just like the London Post Office Directory, which gives you the householders of London twice over, once alphabetically and once geographically, but they are the same householders in each of

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the two arrangements. And so it is the same events that make up matter and that make up mind, only the way of classifying them is different. That, at least, is my view. But whereas what was said about matter at the beginning of this article is generally admitted by physicists, what I have just been saying about mind is only my personal opinion. It is, however, in line with the whole trend of modern science, and more particularly with physics, which is the most advanced of the sciences, and it has the advantage of getting over the dualism of mind and matter without having to say that everything is really mental or that everything is really ro material.

5

Had Newton Never Lived [1927]

published in The Radio Times: the Journal of the British Broadcasting Corporation (Southern Edition), 15, no. 184 (London, 8 April 1927): 49-50, TlIIS PAPER WAS

with the subtitle, "Mr. Bertrand Russell's Tribute to the Founder of Modern Science". It was introduced by this sentence: "We publish this week, in response to many requests from listeners throughout the country, Mr. Bertrand Russell's striking address which was broadcast recently from London and other stations on the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of the great philosopher and scientist Isaac Newton." Sir Isaac Newton was born 4 January 1643 (25 December 1642 old style), and died 31 (20 old style) March 1727. Thus, Russell's tribute was broadcast on the occasion of the bicentenary of Newton's death, not the tercentenary of his birth. The article is illustrated with a line drawing of Russell by Miss H. G. M. Wilson, which, it is stated, was "drawn from life", and it bears this caption: "One of the most eminent of living philosophers and mathematicians. His speculations in the accompanying article on what the world would have been like had Newton never lived are distinguished, as are all his writings, by knowledge, wit and imagination." The copy-text is the printed version.

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5 HAD NEWTON NEVER LIVED

NEWTON HAD never lived, the world would be a very different place from what it is. To begin with the most ob~ious remark in this connection, there would have been no broadcastmg. I do not mean that Newton's discoveries in astronomy led up to the discoveries that made broadcasting possible-the connection is not so direct as that. But a great deal of mathematics was. used in findi~g out abou~ the kind of waves that are used in broadcastmg, and all this mathematics depended upon Newton's methods. Clerk Maxwell showed that there ought to be such waves, and Hertz actually made them. Both these men depended IO upon Newton. Without their work broadcasting could not have been invented. Newton was probably the greatest scientific man that has ever lived. I can only think of three who have a claim to be put on the same level; they are Archimedes, Galileo, and Einstein. Archimedes w~s unfortuna:e in being among the last of the great men of Greece. After him, nobody m the ancient world was able enough to carry on his work, so that it remained sterile for about 1,700 years. Galileo was more fortunate, since he lived in the middle of what Dr. Whitehead rightly calls "the century of genius". Galileo's work was brought to co_mpletion ~y Newton. Newton built upon Galileo, as all subsequent physics has bmlt upon Newton. 20 The kind of difference that Newton has made to the world is more easily appreciated where a Newtonian civilization is b_rought into s~arp contrast with a pre-scientific culture, as, for example, m modern Chma. The ferment in that country is the inevitable outcome of the arrival of Newton upon its shores. When the Spaniards and the Portuguese arrived in China and Japan in the sixteenth century, they produced no such effect as the modern European produces. They did not alter the civilization of those countries to any considerable extent. But when the modern scientific white man arrived he brought with him a civilization so evi30 dently superior in the control over the forces of Nature that the traditional beliefs and habits of thousands of years began to pale. Japan began the adaptation to a Newtonian world sixty years ago: the Chinese are at this moment in the middle of it. In the country districts of China, the peasant cultivates the land as he has done for thousan~s of years;_ whereas in the great mills and great mines a modern mechamcal world is growing up, just as a modern mental world is growing in the minds of Westerneducated Chinese. If Newton had never lived, the civilization of China would have remained undisturbed, and I suggest that we ourselves should be little 40 different from what we were in the middle of the eighteenth century. The whole of modern life rests upon the control of natural forces achieved by science, and all modern science in almost all its branches is to a greater or less degree dependent upon Newton. If Newton had never lived, the

I

F

34

35

d stria! Revolution would not have taken place, and our daily life, our In .ut. cs , our amusements would all have been completely different from po111 hat they are. wIf you ask what would happen if a community of people in the modern ld were to try to behave as if Newton had never existed, I should say ~or would first of all have to eliminate from their lives not only Newe~s discoveries, but also all that mass of scientific knowledge which we tone to the prestige · o f science · · t h e eig · h teen th century. N ewton ' s sucm o~s was a most sensational and astonishing thing. ce In France he had to face at first the hostility of Descartes' followers, but he soon came to be as widely known and as much admired in France s in England. Fashionable ladies discoursed and listened to discourses :bout him. Marchionesses translated his Principia. The whole intellectual life in France down to the Revolution was dominated by him, so that our community of people who are trying to live as if Newton had never existed will have to cut out everything that is due to that vast scientific movement of the eighteenth century. Oddly enough, the particular life that Newton lived-namely the life of a college don-is almost the only one which has been unaffected by his career and which remains the same today as it was two hundred years ago. The port and the jokes are as mellow still as they were in Newton's day. The problem which Newton solved almost completely was the problem of the motion of the planets and their satellites. Kepler had discovered by the observation of the planets how they move round the sun, but had not known any reason for their moving as they do. Newton showed that their motions were consequences of his law of gravitation, and also explained why Kepler's accounts of their motions were not wholly accurate. Copernicus had started by thinking that the planets went round the sun in circles. Then Kepler came along and said, "No, they're not actually circles. They are a little bit flattened out. They are what is called 'ellipses'." Newton came along and said, "No, they are not even ellipses. If there were only the sun and one planet, that planet would move actually in an ellipse, but the other planets also attract it and pull it just a little bit out of the course that it would follow if it were only attracted by the sun." Newton showed that his law of gravitation explains exactly the ways in which the planets are observed to be pulled aside by each other. He also explained the motion of the moon, and he showed how his law of gravitation explains the tides, which had remained quite mysterious until that moment. He showed why the earth is flatter at the Poles than at the Equator. In order to do all this work he had to invent new methods in pure mathematics which were at least as important as his discovery of the law of gravitation.

IO

20

30

40

36

VOL.

10

A FRESH LOOK AT EMPIRICISM,

1927-42

Unlike some great pioneers, Newton never had to fight against the hostility of his contemporaries, with the exception of two or three great men who were jealous, such as Leibniz and Huygens. But, unlike some men who have been considered great in their lifetimes, his greatness has survived. The chief new thing that has happened of profound interest in the world of physics is the growth of the science of electricity, which has been a vital factor also in the development of Einstein's ideas. In that connection, if Newton had never lived, the difference would have been IO that scientific men would not possess the mathematical methods needed for dealing with their facts. The experimental work of Faraday required no mathematics, and so was not dependent upon Newton; but the theoretical interpretation of that work by Maxwell depended entirely upon the mathematical methods that Newton had invented, and it would have been impossible without them. And it was also on purely mathematical grounds that Maxwell proved that electro-magnetism is the same thing as light. The power of mind over matter is a curious thing. Newton made funny symbols on paper, and in direct consequence Alan Cobham flies to 20 Australia. Leonardo da Vinci spent an enormous amount of time trying to invent a flying machine, but failed because he did not possess Newton's knowledge of dynamics. Leonardo had no high opinion of himself as a painter, but he considered himself a wonderful man on Fortification . ' and mtended to go down to posterity as the first man to achieve flying, but he got no farther than charming pictures of himself flying. Newton, so far as I know, took no interest in flying. Nevertheless, his work led at last to flying in our own day. Some portions of the public have a mistaken idea that Einstein has undone the work of Newton. The practical difference between Einstein's 30 theory of gravitation and Newton's is so slight that it can only just be discovered by the most delicate observations. For almost all practical purposes, Newtonian methods will continue to be applied, because they are simpler than Einstein's and lead to results so nearly correct that it is seldom necessary to take account of the slight difference resulting from newer ideas. In theory, it is true, there is a profound difference between the system of Einstein and that of Newton. The system of Einstein is more philosophical, and solves difficulties which have long troubled the philosophical student of physics. Moreover, for the first time it makes gravitation seem no longer mysterious. It is scarcely conceivable that the 40 human race could have arrived at Einstein's theory except by way of Newton. It is fortunate from this point of view that the bodies with which we are acquainted on the surface of the earth do not move with velocities approaching that oflight. For if they did the Newtonian theory

5 HAD NEWTON NEVER LIVED

37

would never have seemed plausible, and men would have had to discover Einstein's theory all at once, or remain content to think the world chaotic; and I do not think that any human being who has yet existed has had sufficient genius to invent such a theory without the stages that have Jed up to it. If Newton could come to life again in our age, he could still be happy at Cambridge, and could derive the most exquisite joy from the Cavendish Laboratory; but outside the Universities I think that he would find the world resulting from his work by no means to his taste. He was a quiet, shy, retiring, academic type of man. He would not like the hustling IO world of modern commerce or our noisy factories of modern machinery. I doubt whether he would be altogether pleased at the spectacle of a tank or a torpedo. He would regret the quiet countryside, overgrown since his day by manufacturing towns and residential suburbs, and would probably refuse to travel in a train and insist upon taking post horses when he had to go from Cambridge to London. The men who through their thoughts produce great effects in the world do not, however wise they may be, produce the effects they intend or desire. Thought is almost as blind a force as the forces of Nature. The French eighteenth century used Newtonian science to advocate Materialism. Newton himself, as everyone knows, was 20 a man of exemplary piety to whom the thought of such an interpretation of his ideas would have been utterly abhorrent. The man of thought, quite as much as the man of action, has to trust that the stream of events will somehow work out to some good result. He cannot foresee any more than the less educated of his contemporaries what kind of results even his own ideas are going to have; and if he could foresee he would be incapable of judging justly whether these results are good or bad. Perhaps it is as well that our knowledge of the future is so limited. Perhaps it is fortunate that no method of Newtonian calculations enables us to foretell the perturbations of human beings. 30 And so, if Newton had never lived, the world at this day would be in many ways more such as Newton would have approved than it is in fact. It would be simpler, quieter, less organized; but also poorer, more ignorant, and less full of hope.

6 EINSTEIN

6

Einstein [1928]

THIS PAPER, WHICH exists in typescript form only, is published here for the first time. On 26 September 1928, the Editor of The Observer, a Sunday paper published in London, wrote to Russell: In view of the serious illness of Dr. Einstein, we should very much like to have an article in type which we could use in the event of his death. I wonder if you would care to write such an appreciation of the man and his work at an early date, up to moo to 1200 words. We should count it a privilege to have such an estimate from your pen. Russell responded on 29 September 1928: I will do the article which you desire on Einstein as soon as possible, but I have another article on hand that I must complete first, and I think therefore it will be impossible for me to let you have the manuscript before October rnth. Perhaps you would be so kind as to let me know whether that will be soon enough, or you wish to secure someone else. I presume that what you desire is an account of his work in generally intelligible terms rather than an account of his life. I have not the books available for the biographical facts about him. The Editor replied on 2 October 1928: Many thanks for your letter. I think there will be no necessity to have the article before next Sunday, so that the date you mention will fit quite well. You understand exactly what we want; any necessary biographical facts we can add from one of the books of reference. Presumably Russell delivered his typescript on time. Since Einstein recovered, it was never published. Einstein had collapsed in early April, 1928, with what was diagnosed as inflammation of the walls of the heart. A salt-free diet and a long period of enforced rest

38

39

was ordered by his doctor. The rest-cure worked, but it was only a year later that Einstein was beginning to recover his health. See Clark 1971, 348-9 and 404; l97J, 334-5 and 382. By an odd coincidence Russell was asked by The Observer in 1953, when Einstein was again in poor health, to prepare an obituary for the paper's files. That paper will be reprinted in Volume l l of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell. The copy-text is the typescript (RA 220.012720).

6 EINSTEIN INSTEIN'S GREAT FAME rests of course upon the Theory of Relativity, although he has done enough important work on other topics to have entitled him to high rank among men of science. The Theory of Relativity constitutes the first great theoretical reconstruction of the principles of physics since the time of Newton, and is comparable in importance with Newton's work. Experimental facts in electrodynamics had produced a conflict between traditional dynamics and the theories derived from Clerk Maxwell. The most notable and difficult experimental result was that of Michelson and Morley, according to ro which the velocity of light is the same relatively to all different bodies, no matter how they may be moving. Although the Michelson-Morley experiment was first performed in 1881, it was not until the year 1905 that a theoretical explanation was provided by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. It is true that the purely mathematical aspect of this theory is contained in what is known as the Lorentz transformation, but this remained a mere ad hoc formula until Einstein gave it a theoretical basis. It is seldom that such minute phenomena as those upon which Einstein's theories are based necessitate such a vast conceptual reconstruction. From Newton's time until near the end of the nineteenth century new 20 facts fitted without much difficulty into the theoretical framework, but as measurement and observation became more exact it became evident that the whole Newtonian system could only be regarded as an approximation, and that all the fundamental concepts of physics had to be remoulded. This remoulding has taken two directions, that of Relativity and that of the Quantum Theory. The former has been mainly Einstein's work; to the latter he has made distinguished contributions, but the most important work has been done by others. The Special Theory of Relativity solved a certain definite problem, but left a larger problem very obviously unsolved; this larger problem was 30 solved by the General Theory of Relativity, which appeared ten years later than the Special Theory. The General Theory has a wider scope and a greater philosophical interest than the Special Theory. The General Theory for the first time gave an explanation of gravitation, which had remained completely mysterious ever since the time of Newton. It showed moreover that the Newtonian law is not completely accurate: it accounted for one known discrepancy and predicted two others which were subsequently verified. Our notions of space and time, of geometry, of mass and energy, have all been profoundly modified by Einstein's work; they are being modified afresh by recent developments of the 40 Quantum Theory, and it cannot be known how soon physics will again achieve a more or less stable formulation of its principles, but it is practically certain that such a formulation when achieved will have to incorporate almost the whole of Einstein's work.

E

40

41

As a result of the General Theory or Relativity, the old separation beeen geometry and physics can no longer be maintained. There are no ~wnger such things as straight lines; there are only the tracks of particles ~d light rays. Non-Euclidean geometry, which remained for nearly a aentury a merely logical exercise, has become essential for the underctanding of gravitation as well as for the speculations as to the possibil:ties that the universe is finite. Mass and energy, which formerly apeared to be quite distinct entities, have been identified, and it appears ~at neither is strictly conserved as was formerly supposed. But although space-time, as it appears in the General T~eory of Relativity, is suffi- 10 ciently different from Newton's space and time to have seemed at first bewildering, yet it is far less different than the kind of structure which is gradually emerging from such work as that of Heisenberg on the Quantum Theory. And it seems as though we had by no means reached the end of the shocks which physicists have been inflicting on our common sense. Up to the present, attempts to link up the Theory of Relativity with atomic structure and quanta have met with little success, although of course many physicists, including Einstein himself, have grappled with the problem. It is, however, by no means impossible that the desired synthesis may be discovered before many years have passed. 20 Apart from the Theory of Relativity Einstein has made important contributions in various other directions. His earliest papers were on the Theory of Fluctuation as applied to the Brownian movement. Measurements of small physical quantities such as the position of a particle are found to vary in an altogether unpredictable fashion. This behaviour apparently depends on the smallness of the magnitudes to be measured. Einstein's first papers on thermodynamics develop a general method for dealing with such phenomena, and his results are of the greatest importance when dealing with very small systems such as are considered in atomic structure. Another important contribution was his explanation of 30 the photoelectric effect in terms of the Quantum Theory, which he gave as early as 1905. This explanation has been generally accepted. Another matter which he helped to clear up was the question of specific heats; there was a formula for the relation of specific heats to atomic weight which was first discovered empirically and then demonstrated theoretically, but this formula was found to be inaccurate at lower temperatures. In a paper published in 1907 Einstein laid the foundation for a treatment of this problem by means of the Quantum Theory, his work being completed by Debye and by Born and Karman five years later. He also was among the first to introduce the conception oflight-quanta, according to 40 which light does not proceed in continuous waves, as in the classical theory, but in little discrete packets. This theory, although in its original form difficulties stood in its way, notably in connection with interference

42

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VOL.

10

A FRESH LOOK AT EMPIRICISM,

1927-42

and diffraction, is the only one so far proposed which accounts for a number of phenomena, and in a modified form has won increasing acceptance among physicists. His law of the photochemical equivalent has become the basis of an immense body of photochemical research. Contemporary estimates are notoriously fallible, but most contemporaries would be inclined to accord to Einstein the highest degree of eminence. Indeed his intellectual calibre would by many be judged as of the same order with that of Galileo or Newton. In an age when physics has produced a large number of great men and a bewildering variety of new facts and theories, Einstein remains supreme in the breadth and depth and comprehensiveness of his constructions.

7

The Future of Science [1928]

THIS PAPER WAS published in The Jewish Daily Forward, 17 June 1928, pp. El2, under the title: "Bertrand Russell on Future of Science: Someday Man Will Travel to Other Planets-Distinction Between Physical and Biological Sciences Will Disappear-Our Grandchildren Will Be Able to Make Food in Laboratories-Most Important Application of Science in Future Will Be to Man Himself Rather Than to His Environment". It was published a second time, under the title used here, in T.P. 's Wiiekly, London, 15 Sept. 1928, pp. 613-14, 634. Probably no correspondence exists relating to the publication of this and other articles written for The Jewish Daily Forward. In 1963 Moses Rischin, who was beginning work on a biography of Abraham Cahan (1860-1951), wrote to Russell concerning his contributions to the Forward, and for copies of any correspondence with the editor, Nathaniel Zalowitz. The letter, dated 16 August 1963 and typed on University of California, Department of History letterhead, is addressed to Sir Bertrand Russell, at Trinity College, Cambridge. The second paragraph reads: The editor of the English section of the Forward in the twenties, Mr. N. Zalowitz, told me that you contributed your articles to that section in longhand but that unfortunately, he had not preserved any of the correspondence of those years. I wonder whether you have correspondence with that newspaper or their correspondence with you? Did you learn anything of interest as a consequence of your writing for the Forward? Were your readers stimulating? Did you select your own themes or were they generally outlined by the editor? Russell's response is succinct: Thank you very much for your letter. I recall little of the content of my articles for the Jewish Daily Forward. They ranged over many subjects all of which were chosen by me without editorial suggestion from the paper. Russell's memory failed him here. The editor of the English section had in fact suggested to Russell several topics. In a letter of 13 May 1926, Nathaniel Zalowitz

43

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VOL.

10

A FRESH LOOK AT EMPIRICISM,

1927-42

replied to a letter from Russell, which is now lost: I hope that by the time this letter reaches you your first article will have reached us. Let me try to answer your questions in the order in which they were put. I. The average length of an article should be between rooo and 1500 words. 2. It is difficult to say whether the kind of articles we have in mind should deal exclusively with politics, philosophy, sociology or science. It is necessary to call your attention to the fact that our English Section is intended for two general classes of readers, a. the Americanized Jew, formerly a native of Russia or Poland or Roumania; b. the Americanborn sons and daughters of the Russian and Polish immigrants. Now the former are very intelligent and keen-witted, though few of them received what passes for an education in the Western countries. That is, they were trained in the Talmud and Old Testament, they can grasp philosophic thoughts (when not clothed in technical language), but of geography and mathematics and the sciences they probably know very little. It is this class of Jewish readers which reads Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Chekhov; attends the performances at the Guild Theatre, crowds Cooper Union nightly, is interested in and understands foreign affairs, etc. Now then, we think that this particular kind ofreader would be interested in articles on Sociological or political subjects provided the style is popular and no technical terms are used. These readers are interested in philosophy-not the philosophy taught in college courses, but the wisdom of life taught by the profound thinkers of all kinds. They would be interested in questions relating to education: What is the true meaning of education? How shall children be educated, etc. Other questions which would interest them are: What is the future of Europe? Has Western civilization a chance to survive? What is the Outlook for Socialism in Europe and in the United States? When Dean Inge visited America sometime ago he made a statement which aroused a great deal of discussion in the ranks of the American Jews. He said that during his stay in this country he had been a guest at many dinner parties, but at none of these gatherings had he met a Jew. This fact puzzled him greatly, for in English society he had met very many Jews. Perhaps you might care to write an article about the status of the aristocratic Jew in Great Britain? Why is it, for instance, that in the best English homes Jews are excepted [sic] as social equals whereas the upper classes in America refuse to accept any Jews whatever? Is it a mere accident that the British aristocracy today is much less antisemitic than the British lower classes and the American upper classes? Or is this

7 THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE

45

fact to be explained by the fact that the Jewish aristocrats in England are descendants of Sephardic families, while our richest and most prominent Jews in this country are of German and Polish descent? I do not know if this subject has any interest for you whatever, but should you find it congenial, we would like to ask you to tackle it. . We have no prejudices-as the word in generally understood. 3 That is, we don't expect anyone to say nice things about the Jews, for example, just because the Forward happens to be a Jewish newspaper. As you know, the Forward is a Socialist organ and holds liberal views on all questions. You can feel free to express any opinion you like on any subject that you write about. 4. The rate of four cents a word suits us. We should like you to write, say, three or four articles along the lines suggested. Later on you will hear from us again. Russell's first article, "Bertrand Russell Tells How General Strike Affected the British People", appeared on 30 May 1926. And succeeding ones show that he followed Zalowitz's suggestions closely: "Bertrand Russell Tells Why England is Friendly to Jews", "Bertrand Russell Explains the Meaning of Education", "Bertrand Russell Thinks America Will Rule the World in the Future", and "What I Think of America". In all, he wrote fifty-three articles for the Forward; the last one, Paper 12 in this volume, appeared on 28 December 1930. Lewis Feuer was one of those who, as a young student, was inspired by Russell's pieces in the Forward. In the 1970s, when he was Professor of Sociology in the University of Toronto, he still possessed yellowed and brittle cuttings of a number of them. The copy-text is the version published in England; it has been collated with the American version; the results of the collation are given in the Textual Notes.

7 THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE MAN WHO undertakes to write about the future of science can be sure of only two things: the one, that the future will be more sensational than his anticipations, and the other, that his anticipations are sure to be wrong. If they were right, the discoveries would have already been made and he would be writing about the present instead of the future. Nevertheless, so long as we confine ourselves to broad generalities, and are careful to avoid all detail, there is some chance of a certain measure of truth in our vision of the future. The sensational triumphs of science hitherto have been in the purely IO physical realm; in astronomy, electricity, the study of atomic structure, and the utilization of natural forces in mechanical and chemical processes. It is in the highest degree probable that there will be further achievements in this direction, even more remarkable than those of the last hundred years. The forces within the atom are so tremendous that if they become practically available they may displace almost every other source of power. It is sometimes suggested that industrialism will find grave difficulties before long through the exhaustion of its raw materials, more especially oil. This may afford a reasonable ground for the apprehensions of individual investors, but not, I think, for the industrial sys20 tern itself, since science is pretty sure to invent other processes as the older processes cease to be profitable or possible. I do not think that the idea of travelling to other planets should be ruled out as an impossibility. It would not be so very difficult to reach Mars. The difficulty would consist in reaching it alive; but this difficulty may prove to be not insuperable, and perhaps after some hundreds or thousands of intrepid explorers have lost their lives in the attempt, one may at last succeed. It is possible that the distinction which has hitherto existed between the physical and the biological sciences will cease to be as absolute as it 30 has been in the past. Already a number of organic compounds can be made synthetically, and perhaps in time we shall be able to make food in laboratories, keeping only a small modicum of natural food to secure the necessary vitamins. If food were made in factories, instead of being grown in the fields, the change in social life would be incalculable. Agriculture hitherto has been the conservative steadying force in human affairs, and if practically the whole population of the world became industrialized it is probable that our institutions and our habits of thought would change with extraordinary rapidity. It is by no means impossible that men of science may learn in time how to manufacture living organ40 isms, though I do not suppose that they will ever be able to make any of more than microscopic dimensions. It seems probable that, during the next hundred years, the primacy in practical importance will pass from the physical sciences to biology and

A

46

47

the sciences which have to do with man. We are gradually getting to J.

p'S"(µ u /J)

Also

A.=µ u (/J- P"/J). --> p' S"/J = µ; hence µ C p' S" ({J- P"/J). -->

-->

-->

-->

p' S" A. = p' S"µ n p' S" (/J- P"/J)

= (µ u /J) n

-->

p'S"(/J- P"/J) -->

=µu {/Jnp'S"(jJ-P"fJ)}.

20

Thus we shall have A. E In if -->

Now

jJ- P"/J = fJ n p'S"(/J- P"/J). --> /J- P"/J c p' S" (/J- P"/J).

Therefore if A. E In we require

y = P"/J- P" (/J- P"/J) d if y is not null, it contains infinite ascending series of events all conand the end of P"/J. ta A few general considerations may help to make these possibilities clear. Let the duration of x be represented by XX'. Then the existence of fJ implies the B X' x A

a~ned in a stretch between the end of P"(/J- P"/J)

existence of a stretch XA such that no event existing at X stops before A, but, given any event which stops in XA, it not only begins in XA, but has predecessors which begin and end in XA, and these have others, and so on ad infinitum. The class fJ consists of events which begin in XA, wherever they may stop. Now suppose that there is a stretch BA such that every event that begins in BA also stops in BA. All such events are included in P"fJ. jJ- P"/J will be events which begin after X and stop at or after A. By hypothesis, none of these begins in BA. Thus all the events that begin in BA are members ofy. The hypothesis concerning X was: No event existing at X stops before A. The hypothesis concerning A is: No event existing at A begins after B. If both hypotheses are verified, the duration XA has no instant at the beginning or at the end. We can, of course, define continually smaller regions, by prolonging the above procedure; but there is no reason to suppose that they approach a point as their limit. From the above it appears that there must be instants if there is a minimum to duration, i.e. if an infinite series of non-overlapping events must ultimately reach any given region; or, conversely, if a P-series consisting entirely of contemporaries of a given event must be finite. This may be expressed as follows:

-->

i.e. i.e.

131

= µ.

Thusµ is too small a class to form an instant, andµ u fJ is too large. For --> if we have a C p' S"a, but the two are not equal, we need to enlarge a --> and therefore diminish (or at least not increase) p' S"a in order to arrive --> --> at a = p' S"a; but if p' S"a Ca and the two are not equal, we need to dim-> inish a and therefore increase (or at least not diminish) p'S"a in order to secure equality. These considerations may be illustrated by considering the class A., where We have

21 ON ORDER IN TIME

p'S"(/J- P"/J) c - P"/J, P"/J c P" (/J- P"/J) u P" (/J- P"/J)' P"/J c P" (/J- P"/J).

!his is a condition exactly analogous (except for the substitution of P for P) to the previous one, viz.

(R, x): R

c

-->

--+

...,

--+

...,

--+

P"S'x c P"(S'x-P"S'x),

and exactly similar considerations apply to it. If we put

30 -->

This hypothesis ensures that every event has a first instant. If, for B'R, we substitute we ensure that every event has a last instant. Thus if, among the contemporaries of x, there are no infinite series of non-overlapping events, x has a first and a last instant. --> --> This matter may be put as follows: If S'x - P" S'x is to be an instant, we require, as we have seen,

B'R,

bSx. xSIPb. :J. (g:a). aSx.

20

-->

P. C'R c S'x. :J. g:!B'R.

~

.....

IO

~

(xSIPa). aPb.

10

VOL.

Put Then

a= S'x nP'b. aE a-P"a. -+ --+ --+ -+ --+ --+ --+ -+ a E S'x n P'b. P'aC - S'xu - P'b. P'a c P'b. P'a c P"S'

A FRESH LOOK AT EMPIRICISM, -+

-+

--+

-+

x.

P'a C - S'x,

and therefore - (xS IPa). Thus ala -P"a gives the desired result Th·18 follows if - (xSIP 2b); and so it does if - (xSIPnb), where n is any. fi . · Th"1s 1ea d s to the same hypothesis as the above for the exist nite mteger. of instants. ence The event x will have a first instant if there is an event a which . h b . . . stops JUSt w en x egms. This happens 1f -+

-+

aSx.P"S'aC P'x,

IO

i.e. if a overlaps x, but nothing that ends sooner does so. In this case -+

For

-

-+

S'x-P"S'xE In. -+ -+ P"S'a C P'x. :J. P'a c P'x. :J. -(xSIPa). -+

-+

-+

Therefore

aE

Again,

-

-+

S'x-P"S'x.

xSIPz. :J. (HY). xSy .yPz. yPz . zSa . :J . yPx.

But by hypothesis Therefore

xSy .yPz. :J. - (zSa).

Again,

- (xSIPa). :J: - (HY). xSy .yPa:

Hence

xSy .yPz. :J. aPz.

:J: xSy .yPz. :J. - (zPa). 20

-

Hence

Z

-+

iSx). . p -+ -,

-

----

(.,o..>C.

~

.;.

r=-.:.C- .:. . . ~,.~~k- ~I~

~ ~Cl- ('...,.,.J,:.....ri-.. ca,ao.., .....,.._ ~ f,. "-.!;?'"

'(),._ S6.-.

e.

••

~ fD ,.Pr ~ ~' ~ "(.....

o• .. Q.

c: . . (-) ~ c: :· /)..;, .;, ,,,_

~...:-s~.-; ~~~~~(ot.c~). (~....-.....:~ ~

c

a.-~~, "A~e··.

--

~

9/- ~, ~. , 71.J /;2,,. • .;,

~)-~x.) ;. f./,A:;,C..

Q·cel:..:

Cf> . )\_ "'I ,.._

.

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THIS PAPER WAS published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 36 (193536): 131-50. The paper was written in 1935, because on 28 November 1935, Russell read it to a meeting of the Moral Science Club in Cambridge. It was not until 6 April 1936 that it was heard by the Aristotelian Society. It was translated into Swedish under the title "Empirismens granser" and published in Lund in Theoria, 2 (1936): 107-27. This is one of the papers that Russell wrote as an earnest of his intention to get back into academic philosophy. Although only a limited number of philosophers, mostly from London, regularly attended meetings of the Aristotelian Society, its published proceedings were widely read, thus providing Russell with the means of re-introducing himself after several years absence from the scene. Amongst Russell's papers this one stands out in that it did not flow fluidly from his pen. He made copious notes, several false starts, and a preliminary draft which also contains the roots of his work on order in time. All of these have been printed in Appendix xrv and should prove helpful in understanding this paper. The manuscript (RA 220.016480-FI) is among his papers in the Russell Archives. It has been collated with the printed version and the results are reported in the Textual Notes.

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42 THE LIMITS OF EMPIRICISM MPIRICISM, SAYS THE Encyclopaedia Britannica, is "the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense experience". Accepting this definition, three questions arise before we can discuss whether empiricism is true or false. We must ask what is meant by "knowledge", what by "derived from", and what by "sense experience". The word "knowledge" is one of which there is no accepted definition, and to all suggested definitions there are grave objections. The words "derived from" may be interpreted either logically or causally. The words "sense experience" are capable of either a wide or a narrow interpretation; for example, when I see a rainbow and notice that the blue and green are more similar than the blue and yellow, is this to be included in "sense experience" or is it "derived from" sense experience? Where so many questions are involved, it is not easy to know where to begin. I think the best starting point is to inquire: What are sense-data, and what is the knowledge most immediately dependent upon them? This leads at once to the question: How is this knowledge dependent upon these data? When these questions have been decided, we can go on to inquire whether there is any other knowledge, and, if so, what reason there is for believing it. Let us start with some every-day example of empirical knowledge. Suppose a number of people are playing cards, and one of them plays the ten of spades. The others see it and know that it has been played. The proposition "the ten of spades has been played" is known through sense, and is not (at least consciously) inferred, although it may be the basis of inferences, such as that the player has not got the nine. There is here a sensible occurrence and there is knowledge; the two are not identical, but there is obviously an intimate relation between them. Let us try to state, as exactly as possible, wherein the seeing and the knowing differ, and what relation makes the one a knowledge of the other. Let us first of all eliminate what is irrelevant. On the side of the datum, we see more than the one card, and we see more of the card than is necessary for knowing it to be the ten of spades. In passing from datum to knowledge, we isolate the card from its visual background, and we ignore everything about it except what marks it as the ten of spades-we pay no attention to its exact size, or to any slight smudges there may be on it. To this extent, when we say "the ten of spades has been played", we state less than we see. But in other respects we say more. I will ignore the fact that we state what we believe to be a public event, not visible to ourselves alone; this is important, but for the present we can leave it aside. The additions to what is purely visual with which I am concerned at the moment are those involved in classification: we say the card is a spade, and we say it is the ten. Something of this sort, it might seem, is

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always involved in the use of language, provided we say more than just "Look!" Words necessarily isolate some feature of the datum, and give it a prominence which it did not have until we passed from sense to knowledge. (As to this, however, further explanations and some modifications will be needed presently.) This use of words to describe the datum depends upon associations or conditioned reflexes. Instead of noticing "that is the ten of spades", we might only notice "that is a ten" or "that is a spade". The particular feature of the sensible fact that we notice and know depends not upon the fact, but upon our interests and past history. .. . . Thus in the transition from sense to the knowledge most immediately derived from it, the knowledge contains less than the datum through isolation of part of the field and part of the character of that part; but it contains more through association, i.e. through the influence of the observer's past history. Knowing is different from seeing; it involves noticing, and it seems to involve something that might be called classifying. At this point, however, we are faced with a logical difficulty. We are in search of the empirical premisses for our knowledge of the world, and we have seemed to find that the most immediate knowledge we can express depends, not only upon the sensible fact, but also upon previous occurrences in our own lives. Obviously we cannot, when we are at the very beginning of empirical knowledge, already know about the effect of the past upon ourselves; this is a late discovery, made by assuming that we could, in the past, know facts then present, and can now remember them. We can never discover that past experience-i.e. that involved in learning to speak-has made us say "that is the ten of spades", unless we have had reason to believe facts of the same kind as that it is the ten of spades. You could not know that you say "cat" when you see a cat, unless you knew that it is a cat independently of your saying so. You must also have a knowledge, not essentially verbal, that you say "cat". Obviously I may notice a feature of the environment without using words about it; and to say that I know the meaning of the word "cat" is to say that I can notice feline features of the environment, and know that these are features to which the word "cat" applies. Thus it cannot be essential to sense-knowledge that it should be verbal. The point may be illustrated by the following fact. I may say: "Cat is the word I apply to cats", and when I say this, I am not uttering a tautology. This is evident if you imagine a Frenchman trying to repeat my statement. He would have to say: "Cat est le mot que M. Russell applique aux chats." This no longer has the remotest appearance of a tautology. Sense-knowledge which is not verbal must be knowledge of that which

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words can express. E.g. when I say "there is a cat" because I see a cat, I must notice the cat, and be aware of its feline character. But when I say "there is a weasel" because I see a stoat, it cannot be maintained that I am knowing nothing: my sense-knowledge may be just as great as if I used the right word. How, then, does sense-knowledge differ from sense? Only, I think, by isolation of certain features. It is this isolation that makes the use of words possible. Sense-knowledge, therefore, is merely a selection from sensible facts. This raises a new logical puzzle: How do I know that there are sensible IO facts that I do not know? I am convinced that my visual field, for example, contains many features that I do not notice. Do I know this? And, if so, how have I discovered it? The natural answer would be: If I keep my eyes still, I can, at will, successively notice a number of different things; I can, for example, attend to things remote from the point on which I am focusing. I believe that these things were there all the time, partly because I have found that moving objects attract attention, and therefore objects which had not attracted my attention were probably not moving; also because I can repeat the process of directing my attention, and again notice successive20 ly the same objects that I noticed before. And, of course, as a commonsense person, not a philosopher, I feel sure that my books do not jump out of the shelves as soon as I take my eyes off them. But all this assumes a great deal that ought not to be assumed in the search for first premisses. I think we must conclude that belief in sensible objects which we are not noticing should be put among inferential beliefs; only what is noticed can be accepted as an empirical premiss in our knowledge of the world. Moreover knowledge, like noticing, is a matter of degree; there is not a sharp line, in sense, between what is known and what is not known. This primitive non-verbal sense-knowledge, though logically necessary 3o as a basis for other empirical knowledge, has not yet the characteristics that make knowledge serviceable. Before a datum can be used as a premiss in philosophy or science, it must be remembered, and expressed in words; until then, it is too vague and fleeting to be important. We must, therefore, examine the transition from the non-verbal sensible fact of which I am aware while it exists, to the verbal fact of which the knowledge can survive, and which I can communicate to others. For our purposes, the process of learning to speak is not what is essential. In its simplest form, it consists in the establishment of certain causal 40 relations: the presence of a cat causes the word "cat" to be spoken, and hearing the word "cat" may cause expectation of a cat. These causal relations are produced by the usual process of learning which is common to men and animals. It is in virtue of their causes and effects that words

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have "meaning". But all this, though important in other connections, has not much bearing upon the problems with which we are concerned. For our purposes, we may assume that all mankind speak one language, and speak it perfectly. What, granting this assumption, is the relation between a piece of non-verbal sense-knowledge and the verbal expression of it? And how do we know the character of this relation? There is here a distinction to be made, which is important if "meaning" is to be understood. In a person who knows a language, there are causal relations between words and what they mean: a cat causes the word "cat", and the word "cat" causes expectation of a cat, or perhaps IO the actual sight of one. But these causal relations which constitute the understanding of a language are themselves caused: they are caused by the experiences which constitute the learning of the language. My contention is that the causal relations (or at least relations connected with them) which exist after the language has been learnt can sometimes be perceived; but I make no such claim as regards the causal processes which constitute the learning of the language. Suppose that I see a cat and say "there is a cat". From what has already been said, we must believe that my words "express" a piece of knowledge which is not essentially verbal, though the word "express" 20 remains to be defined. The verbal proposition "there is a cat" can form part of the official corpus of human knowledge, whereas the non-verbal knowledge, if not "expressed" in words, cannot be a public premiss for anything. Non-verbal knowledge, therefore, is important to science solely as a source of verbal knowledge. I doubt whether any empiricist will deny, in the case supposed, that I know (I) a sensible fact expressed, perhaps inaccurately, by the words "there is a cat"; (2) that I say "there is a cat"; (3) that I say "there is a cat" because a cat (or a sensible appearance resembling that of a cat) is there. If any of these three pieces of knowledge is called in question, it is 30 difficult to see how any verbal knowledge can be known to be "derived from sense experience". We need not waste further time upon (1) and (2), which are of the same sort; (1) must be interpreted as knowledge of a visual fact and of how to classify it; (2) is knowledge of an auditory fact, except in so far as it asserts that I am speaking, which may be interpreted as asserting simultaneous laryngeal and oral sensations. It is (3) that raises difficulties. What do we know when we know that our words "express" something we see? I see a cat and say "there is a cat". Some one else says "why did you say 'there is a cat'?" and I reply "because I saw a cat". I feel just as 40 sure of the second statement as of the first; yet the word "because" seems to take me beyond what an empiricist ought to know. The word "because" must be taken as expressing a relation which is,

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at least partly, that of cause and effect. But when I know that I said "cat" because there was a cat, I am not knowing that, in large numbers of similar instances, similar visual appearances have been followed by similar utterances. This may be true, but it is not what I am asserting. I am. asserting something which I can know without going outside what is now happening. This is essential, since the knowledge in question is required for the connection of sensible occurrences with the verbal assertion of them. At least, what is essential is the connection of the cat with my intention to say "cat"; I may, for various bodily reasons, be unable actualro ly to utter the word even though I try to do so. The connection of will with bodily movements raises problems which need not concern us in this connection; we may confine ourselves to the connection of the sensible appearance with the will to utter the appropriate word or words. If I say: "I said 'cat' because I saw a cat", I am saying more than is warranted. One should say: "I willed to say 'cat' because there was a visual occurrence which I classified as feline." This statement, at any rate, isolates the "because" as much as possible. What I am maintaining is that we can know this statement in the same way in which we know that there was the feline appearance, and that, if we could not, there 20 would be no verbal empirical knowledge. I think that the word "because" in this sentence must be understood as expressing a more or less causal relation, and that this relation must be perceived, not merely inferred from frequent concomitance. "Cause", accordingly, must mean something other than "invariable antecedent", and the relation of causation, or some relation intimately connected with it, must be one which can sometimes be perceived. If this view is accepted, we can say that the verbal premisses of verbal empirical knowledge are sentences perceived to be caused by something perceived. Ifwe refuse to admit "cause" in this sense, it seems impossible 30 to explain the connection between what we perceive and the words in which we describe it. And science, as organized knowledge, requires words. The possibility of empirical science, therefore, if the above argument is correct, depends upon the possibility of perceiving causal or quasi-causal relations. Problems connected with language are absent in some instances in which the same relation can be perceived, e.g. if I am hurt and cry out. We seem, here, to perceive indubitably a connection between the pain and the cry. If I were to say, without qualification, that we must be able to perceive 40 "causal" relations, I should be too definite. What I have a right to say is that, between a sensible appearance and the will to utter words describing it, I can perceive some relation having an intimate connection with that of cause and effect. The relation which I perceive may, however, be

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one which is only present in some instances of causation, not in all. Moreover, it differs from causation as ordinarily understood in science in one important respect, namely that certain conditions must be present if the antecedent is to give rise to the consequent. The sight of a cat will not cause the word "cat" in a Frenchman or in a man not interested in cats. The sensible appearance, therefore, is only part of the cause of the word. We shall have to say that the relation which we perceive is one which may be present between an effect and part of its cause, but is not invariably present where there is causation, and is never present where causation is absent. To distinguish it from causation, we will call it "pro- ro ducing". It can only be perceived when it holds between two parts of a sensible whole, and is then perceived as we perceive (say) that one thing is above another. I come now to another difficulty in thorough-going empiricism, and that is, the difficulty of justifying inferences from facts to facts. The point is best explained by reference to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, where he says: "Atomic facts are independent of one another. From the existence or non-existence of an atomic fact we cannot infer the existence or non-existence of another" (2.06r.062). "The events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is 20 the belief in the causal nexus" (5.I361). The reference to atomic facts (the existence of which is questionable) is not essential to the above doctrine. What Wittgenstein is saying is that all valid inference proceeds according to the laws of deduction: the connection between premiss and conclusion must be tautologous. Suppose, for example, that, within one specious present, we perceive that A precedes B, and within another specious present we perceive that B precedes C, we cannot infer that A precedes C, unless we can show that this is logically implied. It is obvious that this doctrine sweeps away all inferences that have any 30 practical utility. When we smell food, we cannot guess how it will taste; from a railway time-table we cannot tell how the trains will run; when we read a book, we have no reason to suppose that some one composed it; when we talk, we must regard it as a lucky accident if we hear a reply. No one in fact holds these views, and a philosophy which professes them cannot be wholly sincere. Let us, to begin with, concentrate on the inference "A precedes B, and B precedes C; therefore A precedes C". This may be a purely verbal inference. We may say that "A sensibly precedes B" is to mean that A and B are parts of one specious present, and that we perceive a relation 40 of sequence in which A comes before B. We may then say that "A precedes Z" means that there are a series of intermediates B, C, ... Y, such that A sensibly precedes B and so on. In that case, the transitiveness of

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"precedes" is logically necessary. Let us examine this theory. In the first place, it confines temporal order within one experience. We cannot say "Caesar's invasion of Britain preceded William the Conqueror's", because no one experienced both. If we are to extend the timeseries beyond our own lives, we must have some means of knowing when an event in A's life is simultaneous with one in B's. This can be made a matter of definition, adopting the principles of physics. We shall say that if A hears what he believes to be B speaking, A's experience of hearing is almost exactly simultaneous with B's experience of speaking, which A IO hypothetically assumes to exist although, in doing so, he is sinning against the principle of not inferring facts from facts. In this somewhat dubious manner, we can extend the time-series as far as sentient experience extends. But difficulties remain. We certainly know that, if A sensibly precedes B, B does not sensibly precede A. And in order that the above transition from "sensibly preceding" to "preceding" may be feasible, we must know that, if A sensibly precedes B, and B sensibly precedes C, and A and C are in one specious present, then A sensibly precedes C. Perhaps we could construct the time-series with smaller axioms than these, but 20 something of the sort is necessary for temporal order. In any case, it seems undeniable that the relation "sensibly preceding" is transitive and asymmetrical, and that our knowledge of this fact has not the merely probable character of a generalization from a number of instances. It seems that, when we perceive that A precedes B, we can attend to the relation "preceding", and perceive that it has the characters of transitiveness and asymmetry. Wittgenstein and Carnap attempt to explain such propositions as merely grammatical, but I am not satisfied that their attempt is successful. That it is possible to perceive facts about universals appears also in 30 many other ways. In looking at the rainbow, we can perceive that blue and green are more similar than blue and yellow; moreover it is evident that this is not merely a relation between three particular patches of colour, but between their shades, which are universals. We can perceive, again, that a semitone is a smaller interval than a tone, which is also a relation of universals. These things are known empirically in one sense, but not in another. Take the case of blue, green, and yellow. It is only through sense that we know green to be between blue and yellow: when we see all three colours simultaneously, we can also see their resemblances and differences, and 40 we can see that these are properties of the shades, not of the particulars. The sensible fact must be held to include not only particulars, but their predicates and relations, with their predicates and relations. Our knowledge of all this depends upon the occurrence of a suitable sensible fact,

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d is in that sense empirical. But in so far as the knowledge concerns :.iversals, it is knowledge which may be exemplified in .other sensible ts and which gives us hypothetical knowledge concernmg such facts. fac ' . one 'fhat is to say, having carefully observed blue, green, an d ye ll ow m sible fact, we can say: Wherever these shades may occur, green will be ~e~errnediate in colour between blue and yellow. In this way attention to %e facts of sense can give rise to general knowledge. One perceived · stance of three events in a time-order can enable us to know that pretn ding is a trans1t1ve · · re1at10n. · H ence, f rom th e two f acts "A prece d es B" ce d "B precedes C" we can mfer · · contrary to "A preced es C", wh'1ch 1s an th . f acts are what Wittgenstein intends to assert when he says at atomic independent of one another, if, as I believe, the inference is not purely

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I come now to a question closely related to the one we have JUSt been considering, namely that of finitism in mathematics. This involves other issues besides that of empiricism, but there is a connection which makes a strict separation impossible. The doctrine of finitism has been recently set forth by Alice Ambrose in two articles ("Finitism in Mathematics", Mind N.S. Vol. XLIV) which I shall take as my text. She says: 20 "The finitist demands that we should be certain of being able to verify or to prove false a verbal form before we hold it to be either true or false in any clear sense of these two words." "The difficulty is whether statements about all of an infinity of objects, or about the existence of one among an infinity of objects, can by any possible method be verified." "If we do not know what is meant by the statement that p is demonstrated, we do not know what is meant by p." Speaking of n, "it is logically impossible to run through the entire expansion". 30 "The phrase 'after an infinite number of operations' is self-contradictory." On mathematical induction (page 323) she is not very definite. On the definition of a class by a defining property instead of by enumeration, she says: "I should think the injunction against property-definitions would not be extended to finite classes-except in so far as these tempt one to treat the infinite case analogously." I do not know how far finitists in general would accept the doctrine of the above extracts, but at any rate it is an interesting doctrine, and worthy of careful examination. 40 Take first the statement that a verbal form is neither true nor false unless we are certain that we can prove or disprove it. Let us consider some examples.

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(I). "It rained in London on January 1, I066." There may be historical evidence by which this can be proved true or false, but I am not certain that there is, and therefore, by the doctrine, it is neither true nor false. In like manner, the form of words "it will rain in London tomorrow" will become true or false tomorrow (if uttered today), but is neither true nor false when it is uttered. (2). "There is an integer greater than any yet mentioned." Theoretically, I might know that N is the greatest integer yet mentioned, and I might proceed to mention N + 1. I, who am persuaded that every intern ger has a successor greater than itself, may be satisfied with this proof. But the finitist, as I shall try to show, has no right to know this, and therefore cannot be sure that there is an integer greater than any yet mentioned, until it has been actually ascertained that N is the greatest yet mentioned, and that N + 1 is greater than N. However, he knows how to prove or disprove the statement, so that even on his principles it is true or false. (3). "There is an integer greater than any that will have been mentioned by the time I die." Obviously I cannot prove this proposition by setting to work to mention very big numbers; nor can I regard it as dis20 proved by the fact that no one has ever mentioned a number bigger than any yet mentioned. The sole method of proof allowed by Miss Ambrose, namely that of giving an actual instance, is logically impossible for me; yet no one will contend that, therefore, so long as I live there is a greatest integer. I could, of course, take steps to see that my statement should be verified after my death. If I had enough money, I might endow a Chair of historical research to discover the biggest number mentioned up to the time of my death, and a prize to the first person who should proceed to mention a still bigger number. But my investments might lose their value before the necessary research could be carried out. And can any one 30 really believe that arithmetical truth depends upon financial accidents? (4). "The greatest finite integer that will ever have been mentioned is not the greatest finite integer." This, so far as I can see, is, on finitist principles, forever incapable of proof or disproof, and therefore forever neither true nor false. I do not see how the finitist can know that there is not a greatest finite integer. The proof that, if N is any finite integer, N < N + 1, requires us to be able to deal with the whole class of finite integers, which we cannot do (on his principles) unless the class is finite. He has found by experiment that there are numbers to which he can add 1, and he has found no 40 instances to the contrary; but he will hardly rely upon induction by simple enumeration. He must not say: "To every finite integer I can add 1." This is impossible, because life is too short. I agree that, if I suggested N as the greatest number, the finitist could refute me by mention-

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ing N + 1; but how does he know this? If I mention a number, he can rove me wrong; but he cannot know in advance that this will always be ~ossible. If he says he does, he aban~ons finitism. Wittgenstein's symbol for the series of natural numbers, (O,~,~ + 1), seems to me to conceal assumptions which should be made explicit. It seems to mean: "Start with 0, and if you reach ~' go on to ~ + 1." The words "as long as possible" should be added. But what do these words mean? Do they mean "till you die"? If so, there is a maximum finite integer; so there is if the words mean "till the human race dies out". If they mean more, they mean something that finitists have no right to ro mean. I think the practice of taking rather abstract mathematical illustrations has concealed from finitists some of the consequences of their doctrines. Did Bismarck eat beef on January 17, 1861? Does any finitist consider it certain that it can be proved or disproved that he did so? And is any finitist prepared to say that the statement that he did so has no meaning? Miss Ambrose says it is logically impossible to run through the whole expansion of n. I should have said it was medically impossible. She thinks it logically impossible to know that there are not three consecutive 7's in n. But is it logically impossible that there should be an omniscient Deity? 20 And if there is such a Deity, may He not reveal the answer to a mathematical Moses? And would not this be a demonstration? It seems to follow that, if a form of words p is syntactically correct, we always "know what is meant by the statement that p is demonstrated". If revelation is rejected as demonstration, it will be found that we do not know of the existence of Cape Horn unless we have seen it. The opinion that the phrase "after an infinite number of operations" is self-contradictory, seems scarcely correct. Might not a man's skill increase so fast that he performed each operation in half the time required for its predecessor? In that case, the whole infinite series would take only 30 twice as long as the first operation. A question arises as to what is a proper definition of a class. Miss Ambrose, apparently, allows a finite class to be defined by a property common and peculiar to its members, whereas an infinite class must be defined by a rule for constructing its members, such as "start with 0 and go on adding 1 indefinitely; anything you reach is one of the natural numbers". Another finitist writer (Mr. Goodstein), in an as yet unpublished paper, says: "The property 'subclass of a class' does not construct a class; it is not a defining property. A subclass of a class must be defined by a rule for selecting its members." I do not understand this. The class 40 of subclasses of men, for instance, is the class of those classes whose members are men. There is a perfectly satisfactory defining property of this class of classes, though not necessarily of its members. In this it is in

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just the same position as the class of men, which is defined as "rational animals" or "featherless bipeds" or what not, but has members of whose several definitions nothing is known to the logician in the vast majority of instances. Shall we then say that men are not really a class? Certainly the class of men is not so defined as to give us a "rule for selecting its members". I cannot understand how Miss Ambrose can allow property-definitions of finite classes, but not of infinite ones. Outside mathematics, we do not know with any certainty whether classes are finite or infinite, except in a IO few cases. And even when we think we know, it is no great help. Consider such a proposition as "all men are mortal." If this is to be ascertained by examining instances, it requires inspection of everything in the universe. It may be that, in fact, the only men are A, B, C, ... Y and Z; but in order to know this, we must have observed that all the other things in the world are not men. Classes that can be proved to be finite (unless they are defined by enumeration) are hardly to be found outside mathematics. We know that "integers less than 100" is a finite class, but we do not know that "man" is a finite class. And if any one maintains that we do know this, he must believe that we have means of knowing 20 something about all the things in the world, over and above what logic has to say. I believe this to be the case, but the finitist position, if I have not misunderstood it, results from assuming the opposite. Miss Ambrose, if we are to interpret her literally, must hold that the statement "all men are mortal" is neither true nor false, since we are not "certain of being able to verify it or prove it false". To prove it false is obviously impossible, since, however long a man may have lived, we cannot know that he will never die. To prove it true is theoretically possible, but only by one very drastic method: we might murder all the rest of the human race and then commit suicide. But no one can be "certain" 30 of being able to do this, so that, on finitist principles, the form of words "all men are mortal" is outside the scope of the Law of Excluded Middle. For my part, I hold that, as soon as I know what is meant by "men" and what by "mortal", I know what is meant by "all men are mortal", and I know quite certainly that either this statement is true or some man is immortal. I am led to reject finitism because (1) it rests on what seems to me an untenable general principle, that what cannot be proved or disproved is neither true nor false, (2) it cannot enunciate mathematical induction or 40 define the natural numbers, (3) its advocates, if I am not mistaken, only think it feasible because they do not carry it out logically. I come now to another question, namely: In what sense can physics be empirical?

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The practice of physicists is by no means wholly empirical. Thus Dirac, in the preface to his Quantum Mechanics, after describing the aims of classical physics, says: It has become increasingly evident in recent times, however, that nature works on a different plan. Her fundamental laws do not govern the world as it appears in our mental picture in any very direct way, but instead they control a substratum of which we cannot form a mental picture without introducing irrelevancies. The formulation of these laws requires the use of the mathematics of transformations. The important things in the world appear as the invariants (or more generally the nearly invariants, or quantities with simple transformation properties) of these transformations. The things we are immediately aware of are the relations of these nearly invariants to a certain frame of reference, usually one chosen so as to introduce special simplifying features which are unimportant from the point of view of general theory.

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This statement of the position is one with which I am in entire agreement; but it is a statement incompatible with thorough-going empiricism. "The things we are immediately aware of" cannot be proved to be rela- 20 tions of invariants to a frame of reference. This is an interpretation, recommended as the simplest way yet discovered of formulating laws compatible with all that has been observed. A great deal is assumed that cannot be observed, and cannot be inferred from what is observed, unless forms of inference are admitted which pure empiricism must reject. Physics, as ordinarily understood, accepts as factual premisses not only what I observe now, but also what I observed formerly and what others have observed; and it accepts as legitimate inferences, not only unobserved past occurrences, but also future occurrences implied by its laws. 30 Thus we may distinguish the following stages: A. I observe now, and see so-and-so. This may be regarded as mere matter of fact, although, as we saw in the first part of this paper, it involves much complication, and is not intelligible unless relations which are more or less causal can be perceived. Since we have already discussed this matter, no more need be said now. B. I observed formerly, and saw so-and-so. This involves reliance on memory. Now it is obvious that the existence of a memory does not logically prove the existence of the thing remembered; we might have memories of a wholly fictitious past. It is obvious also that, since our 40 memories refer to the past, no future evidence can prove them accurate.

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We may, of course, obtain what looks like confirmation of our memories: we may, for example, remember writing something, and find it written in what is apparently our hand-writing. But this only shows that the present is what it would be if our memories were accurate; there is no way of proving that no other hypothesis will account for its being what it is. The empiricist, therefore, must include among his premisses the trustworthiness of memory (with the limitations demanded by common sense), in spite of the fact that neither now nor hereafter can he find any evidence for the truth of this premiss. C. Others observed, and saw so-and-so. This, primafacie, involves acceptIO ance of testimony; that is to say, it involves the assumption that, when I hear noises or see shapes which I should use to express certain experiences, some one is having or has had similar experiences. We cannot get very far in any science without accepting testimony, yet the assumption involved is considerable. And owing to the existence of different languages, a further complication is necessary; we must know.what we mean by saying that two different statements have the same meaning. Whenever an English physicist uses a French observation, he assumes that when he sees a body which emits French noises, the causes and effects of 20 these noises can be assimilated to those of his own noises by using the dictionary. All this is presupposed in recording what every one would consider to be the data of physics. D. Future observations will show so-and-so. To make statements of this kind possible is the whole practical purpose of science. To say that science has utility is to say that it enables us to foresee future occurrences; if it does not do this, it may still be delightful or elevating, but it cannot help us to conduct matters so as to achieve desired ends. We are all firmly persuaded that the laws of nature will not change, and that scientific apparatus will work in the future as in the past. Nevertheless this 30 assumption that the future will resemble the past is one for which it is logically impossible that we should have evidence deducible by logic alone from past events. We may argue as to the precise form which our axiom is to take, but some axiom we must have if we are to be able to infer anything about the future. And if, in our capacity of professional philosophers, we pretend to complete agnosticism as to the future, we are not sincere, for we shall still avoid arsenic unless we are tired of life. It seems clear, therefore, that we all in fact are unshakeably convinced that we know things which pure empiricism would deny that we can know. We must accordingly seek a theory of knowledge other than pure 40 empiricism. Collecting the results of our argument up to the present, we have found reason to believe: (1) That if any verbal knowledge can be known to be in any sense

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derived from sense experience, we must be able, sometimes, to "see" a relation, analogous to causation, between two parts of one specious present. (2) That facts about universals can sometimes be perceived when the universals are exemplified in sensible occurrences; for example, that "preceding" is transitive, and that blue is more like green than like yellow. (3) That we can understand a form of words, and know that it expresses either a truth or a falsehood, even when we know of no method of deciding the alternative. IO (4) That physics requires the possibility of inferring, at least with probability, occurrences which have not been observed, and, more particularly, future occurrences. Without these principles, what is ordinarily regarded as empirical knowledge becomes impossible. It is not necessary to maintain that we can arrive at knowledge in advance of experience, but rather that experience gives more information than pure empiricism supposes. In perceiving a sensible fact, we can perceive the universals which are qualities or relations of parts of the fact, and we can perceive relations and properties of these universals. When I 20 am hurt and cry out, I can perceive not only the hurt and the cry, but the fact that the one "produces" the other. When I perceive three events in a time-order, I can perceive that preceding is transitive-a general truth of which an instance is contained in the present sense-datum. General propositions, such as "all men are mortal" or "every finite integer is increased by the addition of 1", can be understood as soon as we understand their terms. If we have understood the word "man", and seen something die, we have had all the experience required for understanding the proposition "all men are mortal"; at least, this would be the case if "man" and "mortal" had definite meanings. Sometimes a single sensible 30 occurrence suffices, not only to enable us to understand a general proposition, but even to know that it is true; of this, the relations of yellow, green, and blue in the rainbow have given us an instance. It is obvious, as a matter of logic, that general propositions cannot be deduced from propositions which are not general; therefore, if we know any general propositions, there must be some among premisses. I maintain that "yellow is more like green than like blue" is such a premiss, derivable by attention to one single instance of the sensible compresence of yellow, green, and blue. Knowledge concerning unobserved facts, such as physics requires, 40 becomes possible if we admit such sources of knowledge as we have just been conside.cing. If we can sometimes perceive relations which are analogous to causation, we do not depend wholly upon enumeration of

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instances in the proof of causal laws. If we perceive two events A and B and perceive that A precedes B, we know that whatever follows B follow~ A. When we ~ome to matters which must be at best probable, the apparatus of. ~erce1v~d ~eneral propositions may suffice to give an priori ?robab1hty, which 1s necessary for the satisfactory working of probable inference. I do not profess to know, in detail, how this is to be done but . . ' at any rate 1t is no longer, as in pure empiricism an obvious logical impossibility. '

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THIS REVIEW WAS published in The London Mercury, 33 (March 1936): 541-3. The manuscript is housed in the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-1989), after 1970 Sir Alfred Ayer, had been educated at Oxford where he came under the influence of Gilbert Ryle. At the conclusion of his studies Ryle suggested that he might usefully spend a year in Vienna learning German and attending the meetings of the Vienna Circle. Because of his limited command of German, Ayer was unable to participate in the discussions, but Willard Van Orman Quine was also there that year, and his German was fluent, so Ayer picked up from Quine what he had missed during the meetings. Upon his return to Christ Church, Oxford, as research lecturer, he told everyone who would listen about his Vienna experiences and about the new ideas being discussed there. Isaiah Berlin suggested that he write a book about logical positivism before his enthusiasm for it cooled. Eighteen months later he caused a sensation in the world of English-speaking philosophy with the publication of Language, Truth and Logic (1936). Its avowed aim was to introduce the new philosophy of logical positivism, which had developed out of the ruminations of the Vienna Circle, to British and American audiences. Ayer was more than up to the task, since he had a gift for writing clear (to his critics, only what seemed to be clear) and vigorous prose. Nor did he shrink from attacking the prevailing philosophical views. The opening sentences (not to mention the title) of the first chapter, "The Elimination of Metaphysics", set the tone for the whole book: The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery. (r936, 15) The disrespectful tone of his reference to F. H. Bradley, calling one of his statements "a metaphysical pseudo-proposition" and asserting that it had been

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"taken at random from Appearance and Reality" (21) set many sets of teeth edge and many centres of academic power against him. Russell, of course, d~~ not feel threatened by the book or its views, since he was broadly in sym th 'th b th· pa Y w1 o it and them, although, as the reader will see, he had criticisms to m k At the time this review was written Russell and Ayer had met, but they had~~~ spent very much time together. Only after the Second World War did th b c fr' d I · " · ey eome ten s. t is 1air to say that Ayer always regarded himself as Russell's h · . h'l h . e1r m P 1 osop y, and he paid Russell the compliment of writing two books b hlm. a~ The controversy provoked by the publication of the first edition of Langu Truth and. ~ogic le~ Ayer to write a long, rather defensive, introduction to:~ second ed1t1on, which.was brought out in 1946, and which Russell also reviewed. The text of the book 1s unchanged, but it was reset. Since the second edition is much ~ore widely available than the first, we have provided, for the reader's convemence, page numbers from both editions in all of the annotations. Th~ manuscr.ipt (RA REC. ACQ. l,012) is the copy-text; it has been collated with the prmted version and the results are reported in the Textual Notes.

Language, Truth and Logic. By Alfred 1936. Pp. 254.

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Ayer. London: Victor Gollancz,

rs very different from those of the philosophical school which has dominated Oxford since the time of Bradley. Its outlook, as we are informed in the Preface, is, in the main, that of the Viennese circle, and especially of Carnap. It is a very good thing that this philosophy should be presented in English in a readable and not too difficult form, as it is the youngest and most vigorous offspring of the marriage of empiricism and mathematical logic which took place at the beginning of the present century. Mr. Ayer, in common with 10 the Viennese circle, rejects many of the traditional problems of philosophy as illusory, while he regards the remainder as essentially linguistic. Genuine propositions he divides into tautologies, which are a priori and logical, and empirical hypotheses, which are capable of being rendered probable or improbable by sense-experience. What falls outside these two classes is "metaphysics", which is "neither true nor false, but literally senseless". This point of view, whether true or false, has led, in recent years, to much valuable work, which will remain valid in detail even if the general theory is abandoned. Mr. Ayer writes in a manner which is intelligible to 20 the general educated public, with vigour and clarity; the things that he has to say will be new to most readers who are not professional philosophers, and are, at the lowest estimate, worthy of serious consideration. The condemnation of "metaphysics" leads to some very sweeping conclusions. For example, the proposition "God exists" is condemned as meaningless; from this follows not only a rejection of theism, but also of atheism, which maintains the equally meaningless proposition "God does not exist", and of agnosticism, which asserts "whether God exists is doubtful". This view is maintained on the double ground that there can be no empirical evidence either for or against the theistic hypothesis, and 30 that the hypothesis is neither logically necessary nor logically impossible. Traditional theology has, of course, denied this: the argument from design gives empirical reasons for the orthodox view, and the ontological argument maintains that "God exists" is an analytic proposition, the denial of which is self-contradictory. But the rigorous methods of modern logic have made both these views somewhat difficult to maintain. Mr. Ayer is thus led to a view which is opposed equally to the assertions of the orthodox and to the doubts or denials of the sceptics. The orthodox and the unorthodox alike will feel a certain reluctance to accept the view that the words "God exists" are a mere meaningless 40 noise, like "Abracadabra". Whatever may be the logical definition of deity, the word "God" is one which arouses certain emotions, and the HIS BOOK

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question in people's minds is whether there is an object to which these emotions are appropriate. This question is not disposed of by Mr. Ayer's arguments. Propositions about matters of fact, according to this philosophy, are never completely certain, even when they come as near as is linguistically possible to the mere assertion of a present sensible occurrence. Those which come nearest to this ideal are called "experiential propositions", and others are "verified", or rendered probable, by having consequences which are found to be experiential propositions. The problem of inducro tion is discussed in this connection, and is dismissed as a fictitious problem on the ground that it cannot be solved. "We are entitled", says Mr. Ayer, "to have faith in our procedure just so long as it does the work which it is designed to do-that is, enables us to predict future experience." The trouble is that we never know whether our procedure will predict future experience until it has done so; if we are to know this in advance, we shall need a principle of induction in the sense in which, according to the author, no such principle can be known to be true. The author tells us, however, that it is "rational" to be guided by past experience even though it may mislead us as to the future. This, apparently, is 20 a definition of the word "rational"; at least one must suppose so, since no evidence is offered. While I find myself in broad agreement with Mr. Ayer's outlook, which is that of "logical positivism", I cannot but think that there are difficulties of which he is insufficiently aware. Take, for example, the question of the evidence for the existence of persons and things other than ourselves. "It does not follow", we are told, "from the fact that each man's experiences are private to himself that no one ever has good reason to believe that another man's experiences are qualitatively the same as his own. For we define the qualitative identity and difference of two 30 people's sense-experiences in terms of the similarity and dissimilarity of their reactions to empirical tests." The trouble is that, when you think you are observing another man's reactions, it is only your own that you can really observe. You can separate off a group of your own actual and possible experiences and define it as another person, but this is hardly what we mean when we assert that other persons exist; it is, however, all that Mr. Ayer's principles permit. Another difficulty in logical positivism concerns the relation between a sensible occurrence and an "experiential proposition", which, we are told, "records an actual or possible observation". Mr. Ayer refuses to 40 discuss the problem of meaning, but in the absence of some discussion of this question it is difficult to see how he can know that a form of words "records" an observation. Does he know anything about the occurrence except the form of words? If not, how does he know that the words

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describe the occurrence? If yes, what is the nature of this non-verbal knowledge? And when some empirical proposition is verified by a~ ccurrence, what is the relation between the occurrence and the proposi~ on and how is this relation known? Such questions, of which the above i: o~ly a sample, seem to me to show that, though logical positivism is effective in sweeping away a mass o~ ancient nonse~se, it has. not ~et solved all its problems. A casual readmg of Mr. Ayer s book might give the impression that philosophy is finished, and there are no sol~ble but unsolved problems left. To a philosopher it is comforting to thmk that this is perhaps not the case.

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dd 'Philosophy is a stage in intellectual development and is not compatible with

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~ental maturity' from the essay called 'Philosophy's Ulterior Motives' in CT_npopu-

Philosophy's Ulterior Motives [1937]

lar Essays?" Seldes did not include it. Perhaps his book was already set m type

when he got Russell's letter. Both a manuscript and a typescript carbon (RAl 220.016490) exist; the manuscript has been selected as copy-text. The typescript and the published ve~sions have been collated with it; the results of the collations are to be found m the Textual Notes. THIS PAPER WAS first published in The Atlantic Monthly, 159 (Feb. 1937): 14955. In 1950 Russell selected it for inclusion in Unpopular Essays. In a letter of 4 August 1936, Ellery Sedgwick, the editor of the magazine, wrote: I want to send you a word of special thanks for the paper, "Philosophy's Ulterior Motives". It is the pleasantest bit of scepticism that I have read for months, and does so much to bolster my own prejudices that it does me physical good. A week later Sedgwick wrote again: I have been reading again the little piece you sent me about the philosophers. Again it strikes me as excellent, and as I reread it, it occurs to me that a volume telling the story of philosophy in personal terms and evaluating its content in different epochs would have a very considerable sale. When one remembers the immense success of Durant's smart and pitiful attempt, one can readily see the possibilities of a book written seriously with your knowledge and in your pungent and exhilarating style. What I had in mind is a substantial volume of 70,000 or 80,000 words giving the reader your own estimate of values. Russell showed interest in the proposed project, but raised questions concerning its publication, since he was already committed to certain publishers. Sedgwick assured him that he had no intention of interfering with such arrangements; what he really wanted was to see the book published, and he hoped that some of the chapters might appear in The Atlantic Monthly. It may have happened that Sedgwick's proposal planted in Russell the idea of writing A History of ~stern Phz?osophy (1945). Twenty-three years later, this essay came up for discussion again; this time in a letter which Russell wrote to George Seldes, dated 28 January 1959. Russell's letter is in reply to one from Seldes asking him to approve the quotations he had selected from Russell's writings for inclusion in his volume, The Great Quotations. After giving his approval to Seldes's selections, Russell said: "Would you like to

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F. H. Bradley, "is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct". It is curious to find this pungent dictum at the beginning of a long book of earnest and even unctuous metaphysics, which, through much arduous argumentation, leads up to the final conclusion: "Outside of spirit there is not, and there cannot be, any reality, and, the more that anything is spiritual, so much the more is it veritably real." A rare moment of self-knowledge must have inspired the initial aphorism, which was made bearable to its author by its semi-humourous form; but throughout the rest of his labours, he allowed himself to be claimed by "the instinct to find bad reasons". When he was serious, he was sophistical, and a typical philosopher; when he jested, he had insight and uttered unphilosophical truth. Philosophy has been defined as "an unusually obstinate attempt to think clearly"; I should define it rather as "an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously". The philosopher's temperament is rare, because it has to combine two somewhat conflicting characteristics: on the one hand, a strong desire to believe some general proposition about the universe or human life; on the other hand, an inability to believe contentedly except on what appear to be intellectual grounds. The more profound the philosopher, the more intricate and subtle must his fallacies be in order to produce in him the desired state of intellectual acquiescence. That is why philosophy is obscure. To the completely unintellectual, general doctrines are unimportant; to the man of science, they are hypotheses to be tested by experiment; while, to the philosopher, they are mental habits which must be justified somehow if he is to find life endurable. The typical philosopher finds certain beliefs emotionally indispensable, but intellectually difficult; he therefore goes through long chains of reasoning, in the course of which, sooner or later, a momentary lack of vigilance allows a fallacy to pass undetected. After the one false step, his mental agility quickly takes him far into the quagmire of ancient falsehood. Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, illustrates perfectly this peculiar mental temper. He would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain. Having a passionate desire for certainty, he set to work to think out a new method of achieving it. As a first step, he determined to reject everything that he could bring himself to doubt. Everyday objects-his acquaintance, the streets, the sun and moon and so on-might be illusions, for he saw similar things in dreams, and could not be certain that he was not always dreaming. The demonstrations in

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mathematics might be wrong, since mathematicians sometimes make mistakes. But he could not bring himself to doubt his own existence, since, if he did not exist, he could not doubt. Here at last, therefor~, he had an indubitable premiss for reconstruction of the intellectual edifices which his former scepticism had overthrown. So far, so good. But from this moment his work loses all its critical cumen and he accepts a host of scholastic maxims for which there is ~othing'to be said except the tradition of the schools. He beli~v~s that he exists, he says, because he sees this very clearly and very distmctly~ he On cludes therefore, "that I may take as a general rule that the thmgs IO c hich we 'conceive very clearly and very distmctly · · are all true " . H e th en w . ti Y" , begins to conceive all sorts of things "very clearly and ~ery d'istmc. uch as that an effect cannot have more perfection than its cause. Smee ~e can form an idea of God, i.e. of a being more perfect than himself, this idea must have had a cause other than himself, which can only be God; therefore God exists. Since God is good, He will not perpetually deceive Descartes; therefore the objects which Descartes sees when awake must really exist. And so on. All intellectual caution is thrown to the winds, and it might seem as if the initial scepticism had been m.erely rhetorical, though I do not believe that this would be psychologically 20 true. Descartes' initial doubt was, I believe, as genuine as that of a man who has lost his way, but was equally intended to be replaced by certainty at the earliest possible moment. . In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious arguments are evidence of bias. While Descartes is being sceptical, all that he says is acute and cogent, and even his first constructive step, the proof of his own existence, has much to be said in its favour. But everything that follows is loose and slipshod and hasty, thereby displaying the distorting influence of desire. Something may be attributed to the need of appearing orthodox in order to escape persecution, but a more intimate cause 30 must also have been at work. I do not suppose that he cared passionately about the reality of sensible objects, or even of God, but he did care about the truth of mathematics. And this, in his system, could only be established by first proving the existence and attributes of the Deity. His system, psychologically, was as follows: No God, no Geometry; but Geometry is delicious; therefore God exists. . Leibniz, who invented the phrase that "this is the best of all possible worlds", was a very different kind of man from Descartes. He was comfortable, not passionate; a professional, not an amateur; a sycophant, not a man of independence. He made his living by writing the annals of the 40 House of Hanover, and his reputation by bad philosophy. He also wrote good philosophy, but this he took care not to publish, as it would have cost him the pensions he received from various princes. One of his most

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important popular works, the Theodicee, was written for Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia (daughter of the Electress Sophia), as an antidote to the scepticism of Bayle's Dictionary. In this work, he sets forth, in the authentic style of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, the grounds of optimism. Be holds that there are many logically possible worlds, any one of which God could have created; that some of them contain no sin and no pain; and that in this actual world, the number of the damned is incomparably greater than the number of the saved. But he thinks that worlds without evil contain so much less good than this world which God has chosen to IO create that they have a smaller excess of good over evil than it has. Leibniz and Queen Sophie Charlotte, who did not consider themselves likely to be among the damned, apparently found this type of optimism satisfying. Beneath these superficialities there is a deeper problem, with which Leibniz struggled all his life. He wished to escape from the rigid necessity that characterized the determinist's world, without diminishing the empire of logic. The actual world, he thought, contains free will; moreover God freely chose it in preference to any of the other possible worlds. But since they are less good than the actual world, the choice of one of them 20 would have been incompatible with God's goodness; are we then to conclude that God is not necessarily good? Leibniz can hardly say this, for, like most other philosophers, he believes it possible to find out important things, such as the nature of God, by merely sitting still and thinking; he shrinks, however, from the determinism which this view implies. He therefore takes refuge in obscurity and ambiguity. By great dexterity he avoids a sharp contradiction, but at the expense of a diffused muddle which pervades his whole system. A new method of apologetics was invented by the amiable Bishop Berkeley, who attacked the materialists of his day with the arguments 30 which, in our time, have been revived by Sir James Jeans. His purpose was twofold: first, to prove that there can be no such thing as matter; secondly, to deduce from this negative proposition the necessary existence of God. On the first point, his contentions have never been answered; but I doubt whether he would have cared to advance them if he had not believed that they afforded support for theological orthodoxy. When you think you see a tree, Berkeley points out that what you really know is not an external object, but a modification of yourself, a sensation, or, as he calls it, an "idea". This, which is all that you directly know, ceases, if you shut your eyes. Whatever you can perceive is in your 40 mind, not an external material object. Matter, therefore, is an unnecessary hypothesis. What is real about the tree is the perceptions of those who are supposed to "see" it; the rest is a piece of unnecessary metaphysics.

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Up to this point, Berkeley's argumentation is able and largely valid. But now he suddenly changes his tone, and, after advancing a bold paradox, falls back upon the prejudices of the unphilosophical as the basis of his next thesis. He feels it preposterous to suppose that trees ~nd h~uses, mountains and rivers, the sun and moon and stars, only exist while we re looking at them, which is what his previous contentions suggest. ~here must, he thinks, be some permanence about physical objects, and some independence of human beings. This he secures by supposing that the tree is really an idea in the mind of God, and therefore continues to exist even when no human being is looking at it. The consequences of his own paradox, if he had frankly accepted them, would have seemed to him dreadful; but by a sudden twist he rescues orthodoxy and some parts of common sense. The same timidity in admitting the sceptical consequences of his argument has been shown by all his followers, except Hume; his most modern disciples have, in this respect, made no advance whatever upon him. None can bear to admit that, if I know only "ideas", it is only my "ideas" that I know, and therefore I can have no reason to believe in the existence of anything except my own mental states. Those who have admitted the validity of this very simple argument have not been disciples of Berkeley, since they have found such a conclusion into!erable; they have therefore argued that it is not only "ideas" that we know. 1 Hume, the enfant terrible of philosophy, was peculiar in having no metaphysical ulterior motives. He was a historian and essayist as well as a philosopher, he had a comfortable temperament, and he perhaps derived as much pleasure from annoying the perpetrators of fallacies as he could have derived from inventing fallacies of his own. However, the main outcome of his activities was to stimulate two new sets of fallacies,

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r The two sides of Berkeley's philosophy are illustrated by the following two limericks:

There once was a man who said "God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad." Ronald Knox Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd; I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.

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one in England and the other in Germany. The German set are the more interesting. The first German to take notice of Hume was Immanuel Kant, who had been content, up to the age of about forty-five, with the dogmatic German academic tradition derived from Leibniz. Then, as he says himself, Hume "awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers". After meditating for twelve years, he produced his great work, the Critique of Pure Reason; seven years later, at the age of sixty-four, he produced the Critique of Practical Reason, in which he finally resumed his dogmatic slumro hers after nearly twenty years of uncomfortable wakefulness. His fundamental desires were two: he wanted to be sure of an invariable routine, and he wanted to believe the moral maxims that he had learned in infancy. Hume was upsetting in both respects, for he maintained that we could not trust the law of causality, and he threw doubt on the future life, so that the good could not be sure of a reward in heaven. The first twelve years of Kant's meditations on Hume were devoted to the law of causality, and at the end he produced a remarkable solution. True, he said, we cannot know that there are causes in the real world, but then we cannot know anything about the real world. The world of appearances, 20 which is the only one that we can experience, has all sorts of properties contributed by ourselves, just as a man who has a pair of green spectacles that he cannot take off is sure to see things green. The phenomena that we experience have causes, which are other phenomena; we need not worry as to whether there is causation in the reality behind the phenomena, since we cannot experience it. Kant went for a walk at exactly the same time every day, and his servant followed carrying the umbrella. The twelve years spent in producing the Critique of Pure Reason persuaded the old man that, if it came on to rain, the umbrella would prevent him from feeling wet, whatever Hume might say about the real rain-drops. 30 This was comforting, but the comfort had been purchased at a great price. Space and time, in which phenomena take place, are unreal: Kant's psychical mechanism manufactured them. He did not know much about space, having never been more than ten miles from Konigsberg; perhaps if he had travelled he would have doubted whether his subjective creativeness was equal to inventing the geography of all he saw. It was pleasant, however, to be sure of the truth of geometry, for, having manufactured space himself, he was quite sure he had made it Euclidean, and he was sure of this without looking outside himself. In this way mathematics was got safely under the umbrella. 40 But although mathematics was safe, morality was still in danger. In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant taught that pure reason cannot prove the future life or the existence of God; it cannot therefore assure us that there is justice in the world. Moreover there was a difficulty about free

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will. My actions, in so far as I can observe them, are phenomena, and therefore are determined by causes. As to what my actions are in themselves, pure reason can tell me nothing, so that I do not know whether they are free or not. However, "pure" reason is not the only kind; there is another, not "impure", as might have been expected, but "practical". This starts from the premiss that all the moral rules Kant was taught in childhood are true. (Such a premiss of course needs a disguise; it is introduced to philosophical society under the name of the "categorical imperative".) It follows that the will is free, for it would be absurd to say "you ought to do so-and-so" unless you can do .it. It follows also that ro there is a future life, since otherwise the good might not be adequately rewarded nor the wicked adequately punished. It follows also that there must be a God to arrange these things. Hume may have routed "pure" reason, but the moral law has, in the end, restored the victory t~ the metaphysicians. So Kant died happy, and has been honoured ever smce; his doctrine has even been proclaimed the official philosophy of the Nazi State. Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calcu- 20 !able, at least in its main outlines. The supreme practitioner in this art was Hegel. For him, the course of logic and the course of history were broadly identical. Logic, for him, consisted of a series of self-correcting attempts to describe the world. If your first attempt is too simple, as it is sure to be, you will find that it contradicts itself; you will then try the opposite, or "antithesis", but this also will contradict itself. This leads you to a "synthesis", containing something of the original idea and something of its opposite, but more complex and less self-contradictory than either. This new idea, however, will also prove inadequate, and you will be driven, through its opposite, to a new synthesis. This process goes on 30 until you reach the "Absolute Idea", in which there is no contradiction, and which, therefore, describes the real world. But the real world, in Hegel as in Kant, is not the apparent world. The apparent world goes through developments which are the same as those that the logician goes through ifhe starts from Pure Being and travels on to the Absolute Idea. Pure Being is exemplified by ancient China, of which Hegel knew only that it had existed; the Absolute Idea is exemplified by the Prussian State, which had given Hegel a professorship at Berlin. Why the world should go through this logical evolution is not clear; one is tempted to suppose that the Absolute Idea did not quite 40 understand itself at first, and made mistakes when it tried to embody itself in events. But this, of course, was not what Hegel would have said. Hegel's system satisfied the instincts of philosophers more fully than

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any of its predecessors. It was so obscure that no amateurs could hope to understand it. It was optimistic, since history is a progress in the unfolding of the Absolute Idea. It showed that the philosopher, sitting in his study considering abstract ideas, can know more about the real world than the statesman or the historian or the man of science. As to this, it must be admitted, there was an unfortunate incident. Hegel published his proof that there must be exactly seven planets just a week before the discovery of the eighth. The matter was hushed up, and a new, revised edition was hastily prepared; nevertheless, there were some who scoffed.' IO But in spite of this contretemps, Hegel's system was for a time triumphant in Germany. When it had been almost forgotten in its native country, it began to control the universities of Great Britain and America. Now, however, its adherents are a small and rapidly diminishing band. No subsequent great system has taken its place in the academic mind, and few now dare to say that the philosopher, by mere thinking without observation, can detect the errors of the man of science. Outside the universities, however, one last great system has arisen from Hegel's ashes, and has kept alive in wide circles the happy faith in the power of thought which our professors have lost. This last survivor of an 20 almost extinct species is the doctrine of Karl Marx. Marx took over from Hegel the belief in dialectic, that is to say, in logical development by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, shown in the course of human history and not only in abstract thought. To Hegel, at the head of his profession and revered by his compatriots, it was possible to regard the Prussian State as the goal towards which all previous efforts had been tending; but to Marx, poor, ill, and in exile, it was obvious that the world is not yet perfect. One more turn of the dialectical wheel, that is to say, one more revolution, is necessary before the attainment of the millennium. There can be no doubt that this revolution will take place, for Marx, like Hegel, 30 regards history as a logical process, so that its stages are as indubitable as arithmetic. Faith and hope thus find a place in Marxian doctrine. Most of Marx's theory is independent of Hegel, but the Hegelian element is important, since it contributes the certainty of victory and the feeling of being on the side of irresistible cosmic forces. Emotionally, belief in Hegelian dialectic, when it exists in those whose present circumstances are unfortunate, is analogous to the Christian belief in the Second Coming; but its supposed logical basis gives it a hold on the head as well as the heart. Its hold on the head is endangered, not so much by bourgeois prejudice, as by the empirical scientific temper, which refuses 40 to suppose that we can know as much about the universe as the metaphysicians supposed. Perhaps empirical sobriety is so difficult that men will never preserve it except when they are happy. If so, the various irrational faiths of our time are a natural outcome of our self-imposed

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misfortunes, and a new era of metaphysics may be inspired by new disasters. . . . Philosophy is a stage m mtellectual development, and is not compat'ble with mental maturity. In order that it may flourish, traditional doc1 ·nes must still be believed, but not so unquestioningly that arguments ~:support of them are never sought; there m_ust. also ~e a belief .that important truths can be discove~ed by merely thm~mg, w~thout ~e ai~ of bservation. This belief is true m pure mathematics, which has inspired ~any of the great philosophers. It is true in mathematics because that study is essentially verbal; it is not true elsewhere, becaus: thoug?t al?ne IO nnot establish any non-verbal fact. Savages and barbarians beheve m a ca . h k . agical connection between persons and their names, wh1c ma es 1t :ngerous to let an enemy know what they are called. The distinction between words and what they designate is one which it is difficult always to remember; metaphysicians, like savages, are apt to imagine a magical connection between words and things, or at any rate between syntax and world-structure. Sentences have subjects and predicates, therefore the world consists of substances with attributes-until very recently, this argument was accepted as valid by almost all philosophers, or rather, it controlled their opinions almost without their own knowledge. 20 In addition to confusion between language and what it means, there is another source of the belief that the philosopher can find out facts by mere thinking; this is the conviction that the world must be ethically satisfying. Dr. Pangloss in his study can ascertain what sort of universe would, to his way of thinking, be the best possible; he can also convince himself, so long as he stays in his study, that the universe means to satisfy his ethical demands. Bernard Bosanquet, until his death one of the recognized leaders of British philosophy, maintained in his Logic, ostensibly on logical grounds, that "it would be hard to believe, for example, in the likelihood of a catastrophe which should overwhelm a progressive 30 civilization like that of modern Europe and its colonies". Capacity to believe that the "laws of thought" have comforting political consequences is a mark of the philosophic bias. Philosophy, as opposed to science, springs from a kind of self-assertion: a belief that our purposes have an important relation to the purposes of the universe, and that, in the long run, the course of events is bound to be, on the whole, such as we should wish. Science abandoned this kind of optimism, but is being led towards another: that we, by our intelligence, can make the world such as to satisfy a large proportion of our desires. This is a practical, as opposed to a metaphysical, optimism. I hope it will not seem to future generations as 40 foolish as that of Dr. Pangloss.

45 On Verification 1 [1938]

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On Verification [1938]

THIS PAPER WAS published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. 38 (1937-38): l-20. It is Russell's presidential address to the Society, which he read in London on 8 November 1937· Russell had been president twice before, in l9II-l2 and 1912-13. His interest at this time in securing an academic position led him to resume an active role in the Society and as a consequence he found himself elected President once again. The topic he chose for his address had been popular ever since the appearance of A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic in 1936 and was being widely discussed at the time. Russell had already published a review of the book; see Paper 43. The printed version is the copy-text.

--r-, HE

PROBLEM WITH which I am concerned in the present paper is that of our reasons for believing propositions not belonging to logic or mathematics, i.e. those propositions which are commonly called "empirical". Let us begin with some definitions. I shall not define "word", both because the definition is difficult, and because I have dealt with it elsewhere (e.g. in The Analysis of Mind). By a "sentence" I shall mean a set of words put together according to the laws of syntax, in such a manner as to make a syntactical whole. By a "proposition" I shall mean that ro which remains unchanged when a sentence is translated from one language into another, or from speech into writing or vice versa. I call a proposition "analytic" when it follows from the laws of logic; "contradictory" when its contradictory follows from the laws of logic; and in any other case "synthetic". A synthetic proposition which is believed or thought probable I call "empirical". An occurrence which increases or diminishes our belief in an empirical proposition I call an "experience". By a "basic" proposition 2 I mean one which is completely believed in virtue of a single experience. This, however, is only a preliminary definition. 20 The problem of verification, with which we are concerned, is part of the problem of the relation of empirical propositions to experience. Logical, epistemological, and psychological questions are so intertwined in the question of verification that it is exceedingly difficult to avoid confusions. I want, in the first place, to eliminate all the logical and epistemological elements in the problem. For example, a sentence has a "meaning" derived from that of its separate words; this raises a whole set of questions as to the relations of words to propositions, which are very important in other connections, but not in relation to verification. Again, the proposition "all men are mortal" is empirical, and has a definite 30 logical relation to the propositions "A is mortal", "Bis mortal", etc., in virtue of which it is believed; I am not concerned with this relation, or with any relation between empirical propositions which leads us to accept one in virtue of certain others. But if an inexperienced traveller

Mr. A. J. Ayer's admirable paper on "Verification and Experience'', read before this Society on April 26th of the present year, enables me to deal briefly with certain parts of my subject, since I am in complete agreement with the views that it expresses. 2 I use this word in preference to "protocol-proposition", both because it is used by Mr. Ayer in the above-mentioned paper, and because it seems to me a better word for the purpose, at any rate in English. The above meaning of the word is not, however, exactly 40 Mr. Ayer's.

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has trouble at the customs house in Calais, and arrives at the belief "all Frenchmen are bad-tempered" without lingering on the example before him, then I accept the proposition in which he believes as a basic proposition, although it may be evident to us that his experience does not warrant his generalization. I am concerned, that is to say, with what people actually do believe in virtue of experience, not with what they "ought" to believe. But if the psychological question can be made clear, it may then become possible, without risk of confusion, to re-introduce the logical and epistemological questions which we shall have thrust aside to begin with. The first question is: Are there basic propositions as above defined? Say you hear a door banging, and you say or think "what a bang". You are, in this case, believing a proposition which you did not believe before the bang, and you are believing it for no reason except that you heard the bang. Previous experience was relevant, it is true, if you expressed your belief in words, since it taught you the words, but it was not relevant in the sense of causing any belief which strengthened or weakened your present belief in the occurrence of a bang. Let us take next a slightly more difficult case. Suppose you open your newspaper and see the words "Santander has fallen". You may leap without intermediary to the belief that Santander has fallen; you are then, logically, in the position of the traveller who concludes that all Frenchmen are bad-tempered, but we have agreed to ignore logic, and we shall therefore say that, for you, "Santander has fallen" is a basic proposition. Here the experience which taught you to read is relevant, but again not in the way of producing beliefs which strengthen or weaken your present belief. On the other hand, you may have been following the campaign sufficiently to expect the event; in this case, previous experience was relevant in pre-disposing you to belief, but was not necessary for your present belief. Conversely, you may have been persuaded that the event was not going to happen. In that case, you may say: "This is a prejudiced newspaper, and I shall not believe what it says unless it is confirmed by papers with the opposite prejudice." If you say this, "Santander has fallen" is no longer, for you, a basic proposition; the basic proposition is now that the words "Santander has fallen" occur on the page. Even this you might come to doubt. You might find, when you moved the paper, that shadows had fallen in an odd way, and that what it said was "Santander not fallen". But whatever happened you would continue, so long as you paid attention to the matter, to believe something as a result of what you had seen; and this something would be a basic proposition. Basic propositions, in the purely psychological sense in which we have defined them, are important because all our other empirical beliefs are derived from them. When I say "derived", I do not mean "logically

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deduced"; I mean something more causal. Our other empirical beliefs would not exist if our basic beliefs did not exist, but usually there is no valid argument which justifies this connection. We say "A is going to marry B". "How do you know?" "Because C told me." But it is logically possible for C to utter certain sounds without A and B proceeding to marry each other; the argument, therefore, is a bad one. Yet without the basic proposition, which is that C said certain words, the proposition concerning A and B would not be believed. As a matter of psychology, the situation in clear: certain experiences cause certain basic beliefs, and these in turn cause others in virtue of our mental habits, among which correct and incorrect reasoning are included. But for epistemology this is, as it stands, a fact of no value. What epistemology desires is a reason for believing, not an analysis of the causes of belief. We have seen that basic propositions, as above defined, may be erroneous; and it is also clear that the beliefs which are psychologically derived from them may be erroneous even when the basic beliefs are correct. The latter point is one for logic, and I shall ignore it; but the former concerns the problem of verification. Can anything be done, in the way of modifying the above definition of basic propositions, so as to ensure at least a possibility of their being always correct? And, if not, what becomes of empirical knowledge? Let us add to our definition of a "basic" proposition a clause which will not take us outside psychology: let us add that it is to be one which we cannot be led to doubt either by reasoning or by subsequent experience. I am still taking this in the sense of what this or that individual cannot be made to doubt. Some people, after reading Berkeley, question the reality of matter, but Dr. Johnson did not: for him, but not for them, the existence of the stone that he kicked remained a basic proposition. The Cartesian maxim of questioning whatever one can bring oneself to doubt is subjective, and brings out different results with different people. But let us ignore Dr. Johnson, and apply the definition only to our own highly philosophic selves. If there is anything that I cannot bring myself to doubt, then I do not doubt it, and it is, therefore, for me, a solid basis for my empirical knowledge. But the question arises: Is there anything that I cannot make myself doubt? (I am asking this question in an autobiographical sense.) I find, empirically, that there are a great many such things. When I have toothache, I am sure I feel pain; when I am hot, I am sure I am hot; when I have been thirsty, I am sure I enjoy quenching my thirst; when I read a book, I am sure I see the words I do see, unless the print is bad or the light is dim. It is true that there are possible arguments about all these points. As to toothache: psycho-analysts tell us that people fancy themselves ill because they wish not to be in good health, and Christian

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Scientists say that all pain is illusion. As to feeling hot: I have felt cold in the early stages of fever, when the thermometer said I was hot, so I may feel hot when I am really cold. As for thirst: I may have fancied I wanted something to drink because I was looking for an excuse to stop work. As for the words on a printed page, I know that everybody occasionally makes mistakes in reading aloud, so when I think I see The Times it may be The Morning Post. All these are excellent reasons for doubt in general, but on a particular occasion, if the experience is vivid and definite, they are quite inoperative. I have often doubted whether it was raining or not, IO but I had no doubts on the day when I travelled thirty miles on the roof of a horse-drawn coach from Ulla pool to the railway; and if there exists a sceptic who could have suspended judgment on that occasion, "I desire" him "to be produced". Whatever we may pretend in our philosophic moments, each of us is firmly persuaded of a number of matters of fact, which we believe on the basis of particular experience, and not as the result of an argument. It is true that philosophic education narrows the scope of such beliefs, but it does not destroy them. A tree may cease to be just a tree, and become an idea in the mind of God, a complicated set of quantum processes, or a 20 group of events in my own biography, but it never becomes nothing, and the core of crude experience survives all interpretation. It is only owing to this core of crude experience that we have any beliefs outside logic and mathematics. I say, therefore: For every individual, there are, at every moment, "basic" propositions, i.e. propositions which he believes in virtue of some particular experience, and which, for the time being, he cannot be made to doubt. I say that it is no use to try to persuade a man that his basic propositions are not a proper basis for his empirical knowledge. We may, however, persuade ourselves that other people are mistaken as regards 30 their beliefs in basic propositions; and hence by reflection, so long as we do not think of concrete instances, we can persuade ourselves that we also may be mistaken. Two questions arise at this point: (1) Is there ever reason to believe a basic proposition to be false? (2) Is there ever reason to believe a basic proposition to be true?

40

Let us take the first question first. We may be led to doubt a basic proposition on the ground that it is logically inconsistent with some other, or that it is physically inconsistent with some other, i.e. that, if both are true, some well-attested scientific law must be false. If basic propositions are carefully stated, the case of logical inconsistency can hardly arise. If I see a ghost and you do not, there is inconsistency if I assume that my ghost

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has a public physical existence, but not if I only assert that I see it. It is generally agreed that the public physical world is an inference, and that basic propositions are not directly concerned with it. It is hardly possible for two statements of particular facts to be inconsistent logically. Physical inconsistency, however, may easily arise, provided we suppose the laws of physics known. In practice, even this kind does not often arise except between the basic propositions of different people. If A asserts one thing and B asserts another, and their assertions are physically inconsistent, various courses are open to A. He may say "I heard sounds which I took to be B asserting something, but I am only sure of the sounds, and B IO may not have said what I thought he said". He may say that B is lying. Or he may say that the scientific laws in virtue of which the two statements seem inconsistent are mistaken; this course is by no means uncommon in science. All these three ways of resolving the conflict avoid the rejection of any basic proposition of either A or B. It would seem, therefore, that, if basic propositions are stated carefully, and without too much naive realism, no good reasons can arise for supposing that they are ever false. We now come to our second question: Is there ever any reason to suppose a basic proposition true? This is a much more difficult question, 20 and one as to which confusions are easy. A basic proposition may seem antecedently probable, if it is one which can be deduced from other basic propositions by means of accepted scientific laws. We are not surprised when it grows light in the morning and dark at night. But in such cases our expectation is based upon other basic propositions, and its apparent confirmation by a new basic proposition affords no evidence for the system as a whole. If there is to be such evidence, it must exist in each separate case. If the result is a coherent system, that may strengthen the grounds of belief that exist in single cases, but unless there were such grounds, no amount of coherence 30 would afford a reason for accepting the whole system. But if we leave out consistency with other basic propositions, what ground can exist for accepting one out of the system? The reason is not to be any other proposition; it must, therefore, be an "experience". And this brings us, at last, to the fundamental question: How can an "experience" afford a ground for a verbal proposition? And how can it be known to afford such a ground? There are two ways of approaching this question. In the first, we start from words, attempt to define the "meaning" of a word, and thence the "meaning" of a sentence composed of words already defined. Or we may 40 start from experiences, and treat words as one of our reactions to events. In the latter case, since our verbal reactions are always really sentences, the sentences appear as the unit, and the word (when not an abbreviated

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sentence) as an insubstantial element in the sentence. But in either case it is necessary to compare verbal forms with non-verbal occurrences. I do not wish, in this paper, to attempt a definition either of "meaning" or of "words", but a few points need to be noted concerning them. First: neither can be defined except by an external relation: a certain structure becomes a word, as a man becomes an uncle, in virtue of a connection with something else. You may give rules for manipulating the word "cat", such as that it can be replaced by "felis vulgaris", that examiners will give you full marks if you make the following shapes: "Cats have four legs, and a tail which they wag when angry." But unless the word "cat" is brought into relation with cats, all that you are taught to write containing the word is a drawing lesson, not a lesson in zoology. Second: "meaning" is essentially social, and involves intention. If, when you are hurt, you cry out instinctively, your cry is not language; but if you make a noise in order to let the dentist know, then the noise is a whole sentence. When I say that language is social, I do not, of course, mean to deny that you may talk to yourself, still less that in your diary you may address your future self in writing; the latter is social in the sense in which I mean it, and the former involves either mere habit or an imaginative duplication of one's self. Language, at any rate in its simpler forms, may be defined as: "Behaviour intended to enable others to act with reference to one or more occurrences which the speaker, but not the person addressed, has experienced." It is a mistake to speak of the relation between language and facts; what is meant is the relation between language and other facts. For verbal facts do not differ very greatly from other facts of bodily behaviour, and are known exactly as non-verbal facts are known. Certain philosophers-notably Neurath, Hempel, and (less definitely) Carnap-have been led by the fear of metaphysics to a view very different from that which I have been expressing. 3 They think that language can be treated in isolation, without assuming that it refers in any way to facts outside itself. What they call "Protocol statements" (i.e. the statements asserting empirical premisses) are not accepted because of any agreement with "Reality" (a nasty metaphysical word, to be avoided at all costs), but because they are "actually adopted by mankind, and especially by the scientists of our culture circle".4 Neurath, combating Schlick, says:

3 The following discussion of the Logical Positivists agrees closely with Mr. Ayer's abovementioned paper on "Verification and Experience". 4 Hempel, "On the Logical Positivists' Theory of Truth", Analysis, 2, 4; 1935· In this passage, Hempel is interpreting Neurath with approval.

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All Realsiitze of science, including the protocol-sentences that we use as controls, are selected as a result of decisions [Entschliissen] and can in principle be altered. We call a Realsiitz "false" when we cannot bring it into harmony with the edifice of science as a whole; we can reject even a protocol-sentence, if we do not prefer to alter the edifice of science and so make it a "true" sentence. The control of particular Realsiitze consists in establishing whether they are compatible with particular protocol-sentences, on which account we reject the prescription of comparing a statement with "Reality", the more so as the one Reality must be replaced by a number of systems of sentences not compatible with each other but each internally self-consistent.5 He goes on to say that "radical physicalism does not speak of 'the agreement of knowledge with reality'". And Carnap says: "There is no other description of 'our' science than the historical description that it is the science of our culture circle"; it is "verified by the protocol-sentences of the scientists of our culture circle". 6 When there is a conflict between protocol-sentences, we are to accept the largest system of mutually compatible ones (ib.). This is exactly Leibniz's view, though that philosopher, I regret to say, employs the "material mode of speech". Leibniz says: "Ajo igitur Existens esse Ens quod cum plurimus compatibile est". 7 To identify the two theories, it is only necessary to add the explanation: In a given language, the sentence "A exists" is to be interpreted as meaning: "The name 'A' occurs in a protocol-sentence in the language in question." I find it difficult to believe that these philosophers, who profess to be empiricists, can really mean what they say. For if nothing but convention and majority opinion decides as to matters of fact, the whole basis of empiricism, namely the appeal to experience, is gone. And how does Carnap know what is "The science of our culture circle"? This, as he says, is a historical description, derived from protocol-sentences, chiefly of the form: "The sentence S occurs on such-and-such a page." Are such sentences known in a way in which other facts are not known? If not, we shall have to get a consensus of scientists of our culture-circle to agree to them, and when we read in solitude we cannot know whether what we

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think we see on the page is what the consensus will say is there. Hempel, it is true, says: "The occurrence of certain statements ... in a scientific book is regarded as an empirical fact" (Zoe. cit.). But this makes nonsense of the whole theory. In a general doctrine as to the perception of facts, we cannot make a special exception for printed sentences. Neurath, however, will reply that he is concerned with knowledge as a social phenomenon, not as an individual possession. If the question is: "What recorded observations shall we admit as records of fact?" then what Neurath says becomes far more defensible. There are in history many records which we no longer accept, because they contradict laws of nature which seem to us highly probable. We do not believe, for instance, that in Syria in the fifth century a hen laid an egg on which there was a text, although a whole army bore witness to the miracle. But we have no protocol-sentence asserting the miracle: we have only protocolsentences asserting that the miracle was asserted, and this we do not deny. Neurath attempts to make his protocol-sentences impersonal by putting them into the following form: Otto's protocol at 3.17: [Otto's Word-thought at 3.16 was: (In the room at 3.15 there was a table perceived by Otto)].

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In this form, he seems to think, a protocol-sentence is ready for incorporation in inter-subjective science. He makes a point of the repetitions of the word "Otto", and says that they cannot be replaced by "I". But this does not meet the difficulty. Suppose he has written down the above sentence, and I come along and read it-as has in fact happened. What do I know in the way in which protocol-sentences are known? I know that certain shapes appear on a certain page. That the shapes mean something, and that they are due to Otto, and that they record an experience of his, are all inferences, for me. I cannot make any of them unless I am wearing spectacles. I do not, of course, deny the existence of knowledge as a social phenomenon; I only wish to maintain that social knowledge is a structure built on the knowledge of individuals, and impossible except on this foundation. The element of convention, upon which Neurath insists, is not concerned with my own protocols, but with other people's, or, at most, with my own at some past time. When we find a record of an observation, it is always possible that the man who made the record was lying, or that he put a wrong interpretation upon what he saw, or that he used words in a different way from that in which we use them; it is even theoretically possible that the sentence which we see does not record anything, but was made by Eddington's apes strumming aimlessly on typewriters. The acceptance of what appears to be another man's proto-

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col is therefore always a matter involving inference. Fortunately, science has discovered ways of deciding when to accept a protocol, and in another sphere the law has formulated rules of evidence. All this proceeds rnuch as Neurath says, but its basis is the individual protocol, which, itself, is in no way based upon coherence or convention or anything outside the fact that it records. The treatment of words by the Logical Positivists has in it, to my rnind, an element of superstition. They seem to think that we can know all about words without knowing anything about "facts". The logical tendency of this theory is towards a Platonic idealism: The Real World will be that of words, while the world of sense will be condemned as illusory. (The modern word for "illusory" is "metaphysical".) All this is irnplicit in the insistence upon the formal as opposed to the material mode of speech. We must not say "There was a man called 'Socrates"', but "'Socrates' is a name". The necessary mysticism is not as yet developed: Neurath can still say that a word consists of air-vibrations or heaps of ink. But when vibrations or heaps make up a word, they suddenly become knowable in a way in which, otherwise, they would not be. Why? The only reason that I can see, and that a very bad one, is as follows: Suppose I am looking at the cover of the last number of Mind, and I am asked to state on a typewriter what I see. The answer is: "MIND". That is to say, the answer, from a verbal point of view, is the same as the sensible fact, except for the addition of inverted commas. It seems at first sight, therefore, that we have escaped the difficulty of translating a "fact" into words, which is what strikes Neurath as unduly metaphysical. But have we? There is one shape on the cover of Mind and another on the sheet of typing paper. These two shapes (assuming the inverted commas omitted) are similar, but are no more identical than Socrates and Plato are identical. They may not even be very similar, if one is written and one printed; while if I give an oral answer to the question, the only similarity is a remote and highly abstract similarity of structure. All the difficulties which Neurath wishes to avoid become obvious in comparing written and spoken language; but they are present even in the most favourable case. To arrive at the most favourable case, let us take two different copies of the same number of Mind. We recognize that the same word "MIND" occurs on both covers. But this is just like recognizing that James and John are both men: it is a case of perceiving the similarity between two spatial structures. If we were not able to perceive this similarity, the use of writing and print would be impossible. The process of translating written into spoken words or vice versa-i.e. of reading aloud or writing from dictation-involves, in a more difficult form, the verbal description of a sensible fact. There is very little obvious similarity between the shape "MIND" and the noise which we make in

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reading it aloud-hardly more, in fact, than between a triangle and the word "triangle", or a dog and the word "dog". It is no more difficult, in principle, to see a dog and say "There is a dog" than to see "MIND" and say "That is the word 'Mind'". The only difference is that two instances of the printed word "MIND" are more similar than a St. Bernard and a Pekinese. I shall assume, in consequence of the foregoing arguments, that there is such a process as confirming a verbal statement by confrontation with "fact". The fact, unless it happens to be about words, is not verbal, but IO is verbalizable: it is verbalized by the collection of all the statements that it confirms. In the logical positivists' controversy as to sentences and facts, it was assumed by both sides that, if there were non-verbal facts, they were "unsayable" or "indescribable". On this point, I agree with Neurath when he says that sentences concerned with "unsayable" or "indescribable" things or processes are pseudo-sentences; but I do not think that such sentences are involved in the testing of assertions by facts. The extrusion of such sentences is important, for they have been very common in philosophy; they are essential to every form of mysticism, except the forms that refuse to speak; they occur, to take modern 20 examples, in Bradley's Appearance and Reality, and in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. For my part, I cannot accept such sentences. It is true, as Tarski8 and Carnap9 have proved, that in any given language there are things that cannot be said, but they can be said in a. language of higher order. To say something about what cannot be said at all is not necessarily self-contradictory, but there is no reason known to me for supposing that there is any actual significant statement of this sort. For us, it is not the general question that concerns us, but its application to facts of sense. These are sometimes supposed to have a character which can be recognized, but not expressed in words-continuity, infi30 nite complexity, concreteness, or what not. There is here, I think, a confusion. Obviously, when I see a dog and say "there is a dog'', I see more than I say: I see a Great Dane or a pug, I see a dog wagging his tail or growling, and so on. But it does not follow that I can see more than could be said. It might be argued that if I see (say) a blue patch, I see a patch which is not just blue, but of some particular shade of blue, or, more probably, of different shades in different parts, with gradual transitions. Language is discrete and finite; therefore if it were certain that what I see is continuous and infinitely complex, it would seem to follow that I see more than I can say. But even then the consequence would not

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8 Der Wahrheitsbegrijfin denformalisierten Sprachen, Lvov, 1935· 9 Logical Syntax of Language, Kegan Paul, 1937· (German, 1934.)

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be valid if there were a finite formula go~e~ning the distribution . of hades; nor is there any good ground for behevmg that what we perceive ~ continuous or infinitely complex. What we can say is that the verbal ~~atements which we actually make concerning something perceived do ot exhaust what we could say if we chose, but that does not mean that ~ere is a residue which is known but inexpressible. As regards the relation of an experience to a basic sentence, there are wo opposite processes to be considered. In the one, the experience tomes first, and the sentence "expresses" it or an aspect of it; in the c ther, the sentence comes first, and the experience . sub sequen tly " con- IO ~rms" it. Only the latter process can strictly be called "verification", but it cannot be considered without relation to the former. When we use a sentence to "express" an experience, we necessarily select and classify; we select what most interests us, and we classify because all words (even proper names) are more or less general. But the classification may consist only in the habit of using a certain word when exposed to a certain kind of stimulus; it need not involve any conscious reference to a genus. We may be mistaken in our classification, and we may eke out observation by unconscious inference, but by training in observing, these sources of error can be made very rare. They are par- 20 ticularly easy to avoid when what is observed is easy to classify and sharply differentiated from its background. Print is designed to have these qualities. An instance of the letter A is very easy to recognize as such, and to distinguish from an instance of the letter B; and unless the type is bad, the letters stand out boldly against a background of a different colour. The result is that a basic sentence such as "There is an 'A'" is peculiarly indubitable-so much so that Neurath and Carnap apparently fail to see that it is an example of the confrontation of a sentence with "Reality". But although this is a peculiarly easy example, it does not differ in principle from any other basic sentence. Letters and words have, 30 it is true, one other pleasant quality, that their names consist of themselves in inverted commas, so that it is not hard to see what their names mean. But even here the difference is only one of degree. So far we have been concerned only with the ostensive use of language. "Verification", in the strict sense, implies that the words come first and the fact to which they apply comes afterwards. In Midsummer Night's Dream, Pyramus says: "'Deceiving me' is Thisbe's cue: she is to enter now, and I am to spy her through the wall. You shall see, it will fail pat as I told you. Yonder she comes." Here we have the prophetic use of language, which is by far its most important aspect. Words have the 40 power to produce expectations, which are either fulfiled or not fulfiled by subsequent facts; when they are fulfiled, we say the words have been "verified". Words are not alone in this; for example, lightning produces

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the expectation of thunder. But words are capable of a precision which other portents lack. We can say: "On March I7 there will be a total eclipse of the sun, visible in Eastern Australia. At Sydney, totality will begin at 3-47 p.m. and end at 3.51." Although this precision is of the essence of the practical utility of language, it does not have fundamental importance as regards our present question; the expected thunder is on a level with the expected eclipse, so far as verification is concerned. And in order to expect thunder it is not necessary to use words. The expectation of any strong sensation produces (or is?) certain present bodily sensaro tions; consider, for instance, your condition when carriages are being coupled to a train and you are waiting for the bump. One might apply the words "true" and "false" to such expectations quite as legitimately as to verbal statements: they are false if they end in surprise, and true if they end in an emotion which might be described as "quite so". I think that words are only a way of associating the state of expectation with fainter and more exactly defined sensations, both during the state of expectation and in the moment of verification. But I do not think that "verification" can be defined so long as we confine ourselves to words; its essence consists, I should say, in the relation of a state of expectation to 20 the fact which produces either surprise or its converse. Surprise proves the expectation to have been false, and its converse proves the expectation to have been true. What language does is to give precision to the expectation and to the description of the subsequent fact. In the relation of words to facts, as we have already seen, there are two opposite processes. In the first, a sensible fact comes first, then there may or may not be a non-verbal memory, and in the end there is a verbal statement which, strictly, must refer to a past time. (When I say "statement" I do not necessarily mean one actually uttered or written down; I include a thought expressed in words.) In the second process, the state30 ment (usually made by someone else) comes first, and refers to the future, then comes a state of expectation, and finally a fact which either verifies or refutes the statement. To illustrate both processes, suppose that you are motoring on a road which, at a certain point, has a hump; after crossing this the first time, you say "what a bump!" But when, next time, you are accompanied by a friend, you say beforehand '\here is going to be a bump"; your friend's body gets into a certain state of tension, and he expects the bump, which, when it comes, "verifies" your statement. Although I do not wish to discuss our knowledge of general laws, it is 40 necessary at this point to say something about their connection with expectations. When the bump comes, you will consider that what has been verified is not merely that particular bump, but the general law "when a motor car crosses this point, there is a bump". It even frequent-

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Jy happens that, in a sense, you actually use Barbara in arriving at your xpectation. Your first experience caused you to make the general law, end belief in the general law caused your expectation of the second exa erience. It is, however, just as possible for the first occasion to produce ; conditioned reflex without the intermediary of words; in that case, the expectation arises on the second occasion for no known reason. We may suppose that this is what happens when animals behave in a way that shows expectations. Thus a statement about the future, of the sort that can be verified, arises either from belief in a general law, or from a bodily habit which is ro the pre-intellectual analogue of belief in a general law. There is not so much difference between these two cases as might be thought. For your belief in the general law is itself a result of habit, namely of habit in the use of words. A child that has suffered pain at the hands of a surgeon will cry when he sees him again. If the child cannot talk, his expectation cannot be formulated in a general law, but if he can talk he will say "that man hurts". The difference is obviously not very great. Belief in general Jaws arises first in the form of expectations on suitable occasions; the only thing added by words is the power of expressing these expectations, both those now existing and those remembered, and combining them in 20 one verbal formula. Verification of a statement about the future, according to what we have said, occurs in two stages. First, the statement (if believed) produces a certain bodily and mental condition which I call expectation; then a certain occurrence or set of occurrences transforms the expectation into surprise or into the feeling expressed by "ah yes!" In the latter case the statement is verified, in the former it is refuted. But how about statements concerning the past? I include, among these, statements made as soon as possible after an experience, such as "there's a fox". These can never themselves be verified, since the past 30 cannot be revived. All that can be done with a statement about the past is to connect it with some statement about the future by means of general laws in which we believe. When you say "there's a fox", you consider your statement confirmed if you continue to see it, and others also see it. But this is only a confirmation if you assume the persistence and publicity of physical objects. Since we all do this, the statement "there's a fox" implicitly contains an element of prophecy, such as that I shall continue to see it until it finds a hiding-place; when this element of prophecy is verified, we consider the original statement also verified if we ever had any doubt about it. 40 It thus appears that, in a certain well-defined sense, there is no such thing as verification apart from general laws. In the case of statements about the past, this is evident, since they can only be tested by means of

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future occurrences, which will only be relevant in virtue of general laws. In the case of statements about the future, it is true that general laws are not involved in their verification, but they are involved in the expectation: no one believes that something is going to happen except as a result of inference from the past by means of some law in which he believes, or as a result of a habit which is the pre-intellectual analogue of belief in a general law. Verification, in so far as the above theory is correct, is emotional rather than intellectual; we prefer what we consider "truth" to what we consider IO "falsehood" partly because we cannot help it, and partly because surprise, which is the mark of falsehood, is usually unpleasant. Every instance of verification is at once a verifying of a particular fact and of a general law; but the general law is, of course, not proved by the verification, which merely shows that the fact is what it would be if the law were true. The above theory, however, is, as it stands, incomplete. The emotion of surprise or confirmation, if it is to be relevant, must be related to the proposition which was to be verified, and must not be due to some quite extraneous occurrence. In the case when expectations are confirmed, 20 there is no great difficulty: the expectant person, if he has verbalized his expectation, has in his mind a form of words which is (apart from tense) that in which he will subsequently express the confirming experience. But in the case of surprise, the matter is more difficult, since it might seem as if either the expectation or the experience must be negative. People who see ghosts and try to touch them are surprised because they do not have an experience of touch. But can not having an experience be an experience? In Jane Austen, when it snowed, "everybody was surprised or not surprised"; but can those who were surprised have expected the purely negative fact "it will not snow"? 30 On the face of it, the answer is easy: People expect something positive, and experience something positive, but these two are incompatible. You expect red, say, and you see green. But the incompatibility of the propositions "this is red" and "this is green" is of a peculiar sort, which seems neither logical nor empirical. Some say that the incompatibility is grammatical, but I find this view hard to accept. I think this kind of incompatibility needs further consideration, and is essential in explaining surprise at the disappointment of an expectation. Another point which needs investigation is the way in which a sentence, composed of known words but never heard before, can produce a 40 definite expectation. Suppose I say: "The Dalai Lama is coming to tea, and he will be wearing spats and a brown bowler." In spite of the novelty of this sentence, it will produce (if believed) a fairly precise expectation. The expectation is a function of the words in the sentence, and therefore

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the fact which would verify the expectation must be a function of the ords. There must, therefore-so it would seem-be a relation between ~e analysis of sentences and the analysis of facts. This is a large problem, upon which, in the present paper, I do not _Propose to embark, Ithough, until it is dealt with, no theory of verification can be complete. a The main conclusion of the above discussion, if I am not mistaken, is that we know a good deal more about facts, as opposed to sentences, than some philosophers are inclined to think. The view that we only knoW sentences avoids, no doubt, many difficulties, but it fails to explain how, since sentences are facts, we can know even them. And in the attempt to avoid metaphysics it absent-mindedly throws over empiricism, and falls into a Platonic mystical belief in The Word. Per contra, if, through language, we can know facts, that implies a relation between the structure of sentences and the structure of facts, which may possibly justify, in some degree, the traditional attempt to use logic as a clue to metaphysics.

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The Relevance of Psychology to Logic [1938]

THIS PAPER WAS published in the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary UJlume: Action, Perception and Measurement, 17 (1938): 42-53. It is the middle contribution to a symposium with the same title: the first paper was presented by R. B. Braithwaite, and the third by Friedrich Waismann. The symposium was held at Oxford on 9 July 1938. Braithwaite's paper is largely devoted to a critical examination of Russell's recent writings which touch upon the relationship of logic to psychology: My excuse for re-opening the subject is that of recent years some of the principal problems of logic, those concerned with meaning, with knowledge and rational belief, where logic overlaps epistemology, have presented such difficulties that many philosophers and more psychologists have attempted to deal with them "naturalistically" by invoking the aid of the causal laws of psychology. In particular, Bertrand Russell, since his welcome return to philosophy (in the academic sense of the word), has treated these questions psychologically in two papers to the Aristotelian Society: "The Limits of Empiricism," ... and the Presidential Address "On Verification" .... My contribution to this Symposium will be mainly devoted to criticism of some of the doctrines of these two papers. (19-20) Waismann's paper does not discuss the points at issue between Braithwaite and Russell, although he does remark that he is "largely in agreement with Mr. Braithwaite's views as to the relation of logic and psychology" ( 54). Russell's paper is such a close examination of Braithwaite's that parts of it are unintelligible without the latter's paper at hand. For this reason Braithwaite's paper to the symposium is reprinted in Appendix VIII. Richard Bevan Braithwaite (1900-1990) was a Cambridge philosopher in the tradition of Russell, from whom, as he writes here, he "learnt so much". Like Russell he applied mathematical and logical techniques to some of the traditional problems of philosophy. In 1953 he was elected Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge; his inaugural lecture which applied the theory of games to problems in moral philosophy, is typical of his approach to philosophical problems.

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Friedrich Waismann (1896-1959) came to England in the 1930s as a refugee froi1l Hitler's Germany. His philosophical position at this time, as he remarks in a footnote to his paper (54), was largely derived from Wittgenstein. But Wittenstein, who was very sensitive to the appropriation of his ideas by others, would ~ave little to do with him once he arrived. Waismann threw himself into philosophical work, neglecting his wife and his son, both of whom killed themselves, the son using the very same gas oven as his mother. Waismann never felt accepted by the British philosophical community, so the rest of his life was lonely and unhappy. This opportunity of participating in an important symposium was probably arranged by Braithwaite, with whom the Waismanns were then living in Cambridge. The printed version is the copy-text.

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R. BRAITHWAITE'S OPENING paper has the great merit of concentrating on the important issues, and making it clear what they are. I need, therefore, waste no time on minor matters. His paper is concerned with three problems: meaning, direct knowledge, and indirect knowledge. I shall deal with the first two. I should like, however, as a preliminary, to say a word or two as to the definition of logic. Mr. Braithwaite professes agreement with the traditional definition, which maintains that logic is "concerned with the nature and formal relations of the objects of thought and with the condiro tions for the validity of inference". I have no objection to make as regards the validity of inference, but the other clause of the definition appears to me misleading. What is meant by an "object" of thought? Is it at all clear that a thought has an "object"? Is a false proposition an object? Logic is certainly concerned with (inter alia) "or" and "not". These are clearly not themselves "objects"; by themselves, they are mere words. We must therefore suppose, if we accept Mr. Braithwaite's definition, that a disjunction -say "today is Tuesday or Wednesday" -is an object of thought. In a sense, of course, this is true. I am thinking about this disjunction at this moment, and therefore it may be called the object of my 20 thought. But when I try to find something other than the phrase, I find myself driven to one or other of two alternatives: I can consider the class of all phrases that "have the same meaning", i.e. can be regarded as translations of the given phrase; or I can consider the state of mind expressed by the phrase. It may be that today is Tuesday, and it may be that today is Wednesday, but there is no third thing, Tuesday-orWednesday, that today can be. If there were no such mental phenomena as doubt or hesitation, the phrase "today is Tuesday or Wednesday" would be devoid of significance. Similar considerations, I should say, apply to "not". The non-mental world can theoretically be completely 30 described without the use of such logical words as "or", "not", "all", and "some"; but certain mental occurrences-e.g. my belief that today is Tuesday or Wednesday-cannot be described without the use of such words. This is one important respect in which, on my view, logic is dependent upon psychology. This, however, is a large subject, which I will pursue no further. I. Meaning. The problem of meaning is one which seems to me to have been unduly neglected by logicians; it was this problem which first led me, about twenty years ago, to abandon the anti-psychological opinions in which I had previously believed. The problem is a difficult one to state 40 rightly, because we are concerned with the relation between words and things that are not words. (When I say "things", I must explain, like Mrs. Wilfer, that "I do not mean the word in any way whatever".) When we say that "cat" means cat, we appear to be uttering a triviality. What

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we are trying to say, however, is by no means trivial: we are trying to say that a certain set of similar noises, all resembling the following noise, "CAT", means a certain set of sensible phenomena, visual, tactile, and auditory. This is not quite right, since it leaves out the unity of a cat, and what distinguishes two appearances of the same cat from appearances of different cats. But for our purposes this complication may be ignored. We can avoid it by taking names of sensible qualities, such as "white", "hard", "sweet". I am taking the simplest possible case. The meaning of "or" or "the" or "procrastination" would raise much greater difficulties. In the simplest case, say "white", the word is a set of similar noises, and its meaning is a set of similar sensible occurrences, in this case visual. One of my complaints about philosophers when they treat of language-and this applies to Mr. Braithwaite as much as to others-is that they always consider it from the point of view of those who are fully equipped linguistically. They seem to think that As Pallas by Jove was begot In armour all brilliantly burnished, So Man with his Liddell and Scott And old Lindley Murray was furnished.

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They consequently imagine that the normal use of language is conventional, while theirs, being above convention, is like that of Humpty Dumpty, who explains that when he uses a word it means what he chooses. But neither of these is the case with a child. The meaning of a word is an objective fact, which he discovers just as he discovers the taste of sugar. Mr. Braithwaite advances what seems, at first sight, a very strong argument against my view of meaning, when he says that, if it were correct, it would make lying impossible. Lying, as every one who has considered Epimenides knows, is a very ticklish subject. Tarski, in his book 30 Der Wahrheitsbegrijf in den Jormalisierten Sprachen, contends-I think truly-that the paradox of the liar can only be solved by assuming an infinite hierarchy of languages, having the property that the words "true" and "false", as applied to propositions in the nth language, are themselves words in the (n + l)th language. It follows that the language of lowest order does not contain the words "true" and "false" at all. I contend that, in the language of lowest order, which I call the "object-language", it is impossible to lie, for reasons which I will explain shortly. The theory of meaning which Mr. Braithwaite criticizes is only strictly applicable to the object-language. I must apologize to him for introduc- 40 ing, at this point, a whole theory which I had not elaborated when I

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wrote the paper that he is criticizing; but at any rate I shall show that I take his criticism seriously. The object-language, as I define it, consists of object-words, and these are such as can each be understood by a person who knows no oth word whatever. This excludes such words as "or" and "not", "true" ane~ "false", for these words require a verbal context. It does not exclude such a word as "triangle", because a person might learn to recognize a triangular Gestalt without knowing the verbal definition. It excludes "mortal", because this word involves "not" or "all". For persons of mere! human powers of perception, it excludes "chiliagon". It excludes afi numbers in their logical purity, but admits small numbers as applied t familiar patterns, e.g. dice. It excludes logical words, and syntactica~ words su~h as "than". Its exclusions, as the above examples show, are ~artly log1cally necessary, and partly due to the accidents of our perceptive apparatus. The hierarchy of languages is so constructed that each contains all its predecessors. Thus the words of the object-language occur in languages of all orders. But their use is more limited in the object-language than in any other, since they can only be employed in ways involving no verbal co~text. This amounts, in effect, to saying that in the object-language an obiect-word can only be employed to assert the sensible presence of the object that it means. It is so employed in teaching children to talk, and in such exclamations as "fire!" or "mad dog!" The distinction between the object-language and the secondary language (which immediately succeeds it in the hierarchy) may be illustrated by a very simple example. Suppose, coming home hungry late at night, you go to the larder to see what there is, you may enumerate each item as you find it; this is the primary language. But suppose you go to look for sifted sugar, and for a moment you think the salt is sugar; you taste it and say "not sugar". This is the secondary language, because the word "sugar", or some other symbol for sugar, was already in your mind, and was not suggested to you by sugar. Negative, narrative, optative, and hypothetical uses of language all first become possible in the secondary la~guage. Before any of these uses of language become possible, the obiect-language must have been learnt. You cannot say significantly "I wish I had a horse" unless you know what "horse" means, and you can only learn what "horse" means by hearing this word pronounced in the presence of a horse. (I ignore the case of the person who, having never seen a horse, learns the definition of the genus equus in studying zoology.) Thus the object-language is logically, psychologically, and biographically prior to those of higher order. There are no denials in the object-language, but only assertions. The word "assertion" has two senses, which must be distinguished. In one

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se it is opposed to denial: this sense is required when a proposition sen . sense, wh'1ch 1s · · first' considered, and then pronounced to be true. This JS • d . th b' th t involved in answering a question, oes not occur m e o iectJa~guage, in which propositions cannot be me~ely considered. To r~vert the illustration of the larder: you see successively a number of obiects, 0 t f which you remark "this is cheese", "this is butter", and so on; these 0 assertions in the object-language. But after mistaking the salt for are sugar, you set to work to look for the sugar, and at 1ast you say: "Th'1s is. sugar". This is an assertion in the secondary. language, .because the word "sugar" (or some equivalent) was already m your mmd. It should be IO noted that, in the object-language, the words "this is" a~e superfluous; they are only required for translation into a language of higher order. With regard to the question whether, when I see a cat and say "cat", I can perceive a quasi-causal relation between what I see a?d w?at I say, I am far from feeling dogmatic. There are, however, certam pomts that I should like to make as against Mr. Braithwaite. First: I must insist that the relation I intend is quasi-causal, not causal. I am inclined to think that the relation of cause and effect, as ordinarily understood, is a smoothly logical relation manufactured from cruder materials, in the same sort of way in which the spatial relations of geom- 20 etry are manufactured from the less regular relations between percepts. The relation with which I am concerned, which I believe to hold between percept and word, is one which holds whenever a percept leads to a bodily movement; as Mr. Braithwaite suggests, I should put under the same head whatever I could accept in the view that volitions can be perceived and are instances of causation. Mr. Braithwaite, having refuse~ to allow that the relation which I think I perceive may be only quas1causal, not causal, proceeds to object, very properly, to the view that we can know a to be part cause of b without knowing the other necessary conditions, and also to the view that we can know a to be a causal ances- 30 tor of b without knowing the intermediate links. I should not maintain either of these propositions, although, in order to avoid them, I am driven into a realm of rash hypothesis. Transitions appear to be more staccato than was formerly thought, and it is quite possible that between sensation and motor impulse there are no intermediate links. By introducing the case of the man suffering from paralysis I meant to make it clear that I was concerned with the motor impulse, not with the actual movement. I am inclined to think that, whenever I notice a horse, I have an impulse to say "horse", though the impulse may be inhibited. To perceive the impulse is not the same thing as to perceive an actual utter- 40 ance of the word "horse"; the latter is analogous to the perception of occurrences which are not acts of mine, while the former belongs to psychology.

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I ~m, however,. prepared to abandon the theory that we perceive such quasi-causal relat10ns as the above if any one will offer me an acceptable account . of how I know the relation between an object-word and its meanmg. Mr. Braithwaite's theory, to my mind, is very difficult to accept. He offers us the following proposition: "Any language which I am now usin . . h g I am usmg m sue a way that to every token-sentence of the type 'Ther . ' e 1s a cat I attach the meaning that there is a cat." He goes on to say:

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How do I know this major premiss? I answer that I sometimes directly know it by introspection. In the cat case, for example, I should say that introspection tells me directly and incorrigibly that I am using language in such a way that any token-sentence of type "There is a cat" is to mean that there is a cat. I am inclined to agree that if Mr. Braithwaite's introspection tells him all this, it must be very incorrigible. He goes on to say:

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the fundamental fact, so I maintain, is that I know directly that I am using language in a certain way. This important proposition is a general proposition about unrealized possibilities.... The problem is that of how I use my language, not of what causes me to utter certain sounds.

I have two objections to this theory: first, that Mr. Braithwaite's introspection is too loquacious; secondly, that he is thinking of a late and highly developed stage of language, which presupposes simpler stages to which his account is not applicable. To begin with the second objection: the sort of case to which his theory seems most suited is that of learning a new technical term. I learn (say) the definition of the word "cycloid", and I resolve that henceforth I will use the word in this sense. We learn in this way the meaning of the 30 word "sphere", but not of the word "ball". The word "ball" is the name of a certain sort of object; we do not decide to use the word in this sense, but find ourselves with an association analogous to that between a dog and his bark. We might, of course, after learning to speak, decide always to say "dog" instead of "cat", but it would not be possible for a child to begin speaking in this way, any more than he could practise acrobatics before having learnt to walk. A child using the word "cat" is not conscious of a general rule about unrealized possibilities, to the effect that if he were seeing numbers of other cats he would call them all "cat"; he uses the word on impulse, in the same sort of way in which he blinks in

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presence of a bright light. As to Mr. Braithwaite's introspection, I wish he had told us more. His language suggests a volition, such as "I will never desert Micawber", which also dealt with unrealized possibilities. So he, apparently, makes a resolution: "I will never (while my present mood lasts) say 'dog' when I rnean 'cat'." But although his language suggests this interpretation, I do not believe he really means this, and I wish he had made clear what he does mean. As he says in relation to my theory, "I can hardly argue against this position. All I can say is that, to the best of my knowledge, I do not perceive such a relationship." This is unsatisfactory, and I should IO have wished to get the discussion on to a plane where argument would have been possible. Before abandoning the subject of meaning, there is one other criticism I have to make of Mr. Braithwaite, and that is that he offers no definition of the term. Perhaps he thinks it indefinable. But I wish he had either asserted this view or offered a definition. II. Direct Knowledge. Part of what Mr. Braithwaite says under this head is due to a misunderstanding, for which, I admit, my language was partly responsible. In giving a psychological theory of "basic propositions", I was not intending to give a theory of direct knowledge; I stated ("Verifi- 20 cation", page 2) that "ifthe psychological question can be made clear, it may then become possible, without risk of confusion, to reintroduce the logical and epistemological questions which we shall have thrust aside to begin with". My purpose may be explained as follows: Any person's empirical beliefs, if examined, are found either to follow, by arguments valid or invalid, demonstrative or probable, from other empirical beliefs, or to have as their antecedent not a belief, but an experience. If you ask a man why he thinks snow is white, he will say "because I see it is". That is to say, at this point he bases his verbal belief upon a non-verbal occurrence. It seemed to me clear that the psychology of this process should 30 be understood before we can hope to explain "direct knowledge". For what is directly known must be a sub-species of what is, in the above sense, directly believed as the result of an experience. I agree with Mr. Braithwaite when he says: "I do not think that to hand over the question to psychology solves the important epistemological question-that concerning incorrigible knowledge". But when he says: "It seems to me quite impossible to defend a definition of basic propositions in terms of psychological indubitability", he is assuming that I meant my basic propositions to be such as would give incorrigible knowledge; the question at this point, in fact, is verbal. 40 There is, however, a question at issue which is not verbal, but it is chiefly a question of method. To avoid the verbal question, let us give the name "primary beliefs" to those beliefs which, as a psychological

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matter of fact, arise directly out of experiences, not out of other beliefs. (I am using a vague term "arise out of", so as to leave open the nature of the connection.) I maintain that direct knowledge, if any, must be a subclass of primary beliefs, and that the study of primary beliefs is likely to throw light on direct knowledge. Mr. Braithwaite, on the contrary, thinks this preliminary psychological inquiry unnecessary. I will try to give some of my reasons for this view. In the first place, the word "knowledge" is, I think, much more ambiguous than most epistemologists realize. There is a sense in which I know an experience IO merely because I have it; there is another sense in which I only know it if I "notice" it, but since noticing is a matter of degree, this sense cannot be made precise. Then again there is the difference between knowing an experience and knowing a proposition. If we want to find a basis for empirical science, we cannot be content with an unverbalized awareness, but must demand sentences in which what we know is asserted. We cannot consider the epistemological problem solved if we stop short of the verbal expression of what we know. We are thus involved in the problem of meaning, and in spite of Mr. Braithwaite's arguments I remain persuaded that this is a psychological problem. 20 There is, however, another reason for starting from the consideration of primary beliefs. Such beliefs, as they exist in the uncritical, are found, on examination, to be subject to various kinds of error. When I think I see a cat, it may be a young lynx, it may be something in a cinema which I mistake for a "real" cat, or it may even be a hallucination due to delirium tremens. On such grounds, by merely common-sense arguments, we are led to the sense-datum as the only thing that is indubitable. The sense-datum, however, is not a proposition, and what we are in search of is an indubitable proposition. To make a proposition out of a sense-datum, we must analyze or classify it. I shall assume that we are 30 not so rash as to say "this is a cat'', which embodies an induction. I shall assume that we assign to the sense-datum some predicate which involves no reference to other actual or possible occurrences, such as "this is white". We cannot find anything safer to say than this. But why is this supposed to be indubitable? Because (a) we have been persuaded throughout that there was something we were sure of, (b) no arguments are possible to prove that we do not perceive a sense-datum when we think we do, nor can the future show that it was not of the sort we believed it to be. But for (a), (b) would be inconclusive. The argument is one of Cartesian doubt, which presupposes the existence of a point at 40 which scepticism becomes impossible. For Mr. Braithwaite, this is inadequate. He means by "incorrigible", he tells us, "something whose correction is logically impossible". I do not believe that any extra-logical proposition expressed in words is incorri-

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gible in this sense, for, if the meaning of the words is fixed in advance, they may not be correctly applicable to the given experience, and if the meaning is not fixed in advance, nothing definite is asserted. We have thus arrived, I think, at the real point at issue between Mr. Braithwaite and me. I hold that, in a critical scrutiny of what passes for knowledge, the ultimate point is one where doubt is psychologically impossible, whereas he holds that it is one where doubt is logically absurd. I agree at once that his view, if defensible, is more satisfactory than mine, for what I cannot doubt may nevertheless be false, whereas his direct knowledge is sure to be true. But his advantage is more apparent than real, for he will, I think, find it impossible to give any concrete example which he knows incorrigibly to be an incorrigible piece of knowledge. He says, for example:

IO

If I use the sentence "There is a cat" to mean something which I directly know at the moment, it is logically impossible that any fact about the future should correct what I am now expressing by the sentence. This, as it stands, is a tautology, since what I know is true by definition, and therefore cannot hereafter be proved false. To give practical importance to the statement, it is necessary to suppose that I can some- 20 times know that the sentence "There is a cat" means something which I am directly knowing at the moment. But if by "cat" I mean something not defined in terms of my present datum, I must compare my datum with this something, which is an operation in which error is possible; while if I define the word "cat" in terms of my present datum, I am not asserting anything. I do not deny that it is possible to define a class of propositions which are sure to be true; what I do deny is that any given empirical proposition can ever be known to belong to this class. Let us take once more an instance in which the possibility of error is as 30 small as possible. Suppose you look at a patch of colour, and think "this is yellow". I should not consider this proposition false if you had a different meaning for the word "yellow" from that which most people have; that would only mean that you were using a language other than correct English. Nor should I consider your judgment wrong ifthe yellow colour was due to jaundice or yellow spectacles. There are, however, possibilities of suggestion: you may have been about to think "this is green" when somebody said it was yellow, or the source of suggestion may have been in yourself. I should say that, if the word "yellow" is caused by the object without verbal or other symbolic intermediary, your judgment 40 must be true, but in a given instance you can never be sure that this is

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the case. To repeat one of Mr. Braithwaite's arguments, how can you be sure that you are not hypnotized? Thus while, on the one hand, I admit that propositions in the object-language, when directly caused, without symbolic intermediary, by an object of perception, and when they assign to that object an intrinsic predicate, are always true, on the other hand I deny that we can ever be sure that a given belief is of this kind. The discussion, on both sides, has been confined to our knowledge of present sensible occurrences. I think, however, that it might, with advantage, be widened so as to include memory. Memory is just as essential as ro perception to empirical knowledge; if all beliefs that depend upon memory were cut out, the remnant would be a very small fragment of what we believe ourselves to know about the world. In regard to memory, the three following propositions, however difficult to reconcile, are, I think all undeniable: (1) Memory is fallible, in a sense in which perception is' not; (2) no memory is verifiable, since nothing in the present or future can make anything in the past logically necessary; (3) it is impossible to doubt that there have been past events. A theory of empirical knowledge may, if it is as contemptuous of indubitability as Mr. Braithwaite, say that, in spite of (3), we do not know 20 that there were past events. Certainly our knowledge of the past is not, in his sense, incorrigible, since it is always logically possible for our memories to be mistaken. If the world had come into existence five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, our memories of earlier times would be what they are, but would all be false. Why do we regard this hypothesis as merely silly? Is it not because of the psychological indubitability of the past? Ignoring this general question, we must still admit that, since particular memories are fallible, all the empirical premisses for our knowledge of the past are more or less doubtful. Why should not our knowledge of the 30 present, in so far as it is expressed in words, be also more or less doubtful? In conclusion, I agree that "problems of logic and theory of knowledge cannot be [wholly] solved by considerations which belong to the science of psychology". I disagree, however, in that I doubt whether the problem of direct knowledge is soluble at all, and that I think the question whether it is soluble is illuminated by psychological considerations, although these alone cannot be decisive.

47

Non-Materialistic Naturalism [1942]

TI-IIS PAPER WAS first published in The Kenyon Review, Gambier, Ohio, 4, no. (Autumn 1942): 361-5. No correspondence regarding it survives. 3 In the same issue (406-7) the editor of the journal, John Crowe Ransom, compared Russell's article with Mark Schorer's "Mythology (for the Study of William Blake)" which immediately (366-80) followed it. Ransom thought Schorer too uncritical of the role of myth in human thought and Russell too critical. Russell does not discuss the role, if any, of myth in his piece, but his insistence that one's beliefs must be based on evidence affords Ransom his opening. The copy-text is the printed version.

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no time been common among professional philosophers, since Plato and Aristotle became authoritative. Before that time, it was dominant: the Epicureans and early Stoics were materialists, and so were many, if not most, of the pre-Socratics. But in modern times materialism has been almost wholly confined to men of science as opposed to philosophers, and to a minority among them. Idealists and empiricists, among philosophers, have alike opposed it: idealists on the ground that there can be no reality apart from consciousness, empiricists on the ground that "substance" is a useless IO concept. (I hold the idealist argument invalid, but the empiricist argument valid.) Locke proved "substance" useless, but rejected his own proof; Berkeley accepted it as regards matter but not mind, Hume pressed home the argument as regards both matter and mind. Since his time it has not been reasonable to regard either "matter" or "mind" as names' of any part of the "stuff" of the world. Some men of science, however continued to believe in atoms as solidly real. Many writers give the im-' pression that in the sixties of last century almost all the physicists were materialists, but this is of course a wild exaggeration. I doubt if the proportion ever rose as high as ten per cent. The majority, like Faraday and 20 Maxwell, were earnest Christians. The philosophic argument against matter might have remained inoperative, if it had not been reinforced by physics. Einstein showed the need of substituting four-dimensional space-time for three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time. This meant, mathematically, substituting a manifold of point-instants for the two manifolds of points and instants; practically, it meant substituting "events" for moving particles. Quantum physics, by different arguments, also shows the need for this substitution. This change is hailed by a certain class of philosophers as the "collapse of materialism", and is supposed to prove the truth of almost everything 30 that materialists denied. My own belief is that the change has no consequences whatever as regards human life or the relation of man to his environment. In regard to such matters, the only important change, in my opinion, is a lessening of certainty; but what is most probable on the evidence now is still what was most probable eighty years ago. Let us first make one point clear. The change does not get rid of metaphysics; the world is still composed of a "stuff", but this stuff consists of brief events, not of persistent "things". From the point of view of the empiricist, there is a gain, because some events are experienced, while there is no such occurrence as experiencing a "substance". But no one is 40 content with events which he himself experiences, and as soon as we go further we are metaphysicians. We no longer take as fundamental the concept of a "thing". We define a "mind" as a certain series of events, interconnected by certain relations,

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ch as memory; if an event A consists, in whole or part, of recollection

. th " . d" (Th. of an event B, we say that A and B are events m e same mm ·. 1s

SU

is a purely verbal statement.) Similarly, if two events are rel.ated m cerin ways specified in physics, we say that they are events m the same . ta iece of "matter". (This again is a purely verbal statement.) An event 1s p"mental" if it is part of a series of the km . d d efi ne d as a " mm . d" ; 1t . 1s . "material" if is part of a series of the kind defined as a piece of "matter". An event may quite well be both material and mental. Many events are neither, for instance light-waves. These, however, are still "physical"; in the sense of being part of the subject-matter of physics. IO How does all this affect questions of emotional human interest? Let us take first the question of immortality. A "mind" or a piece of "matter" is immortal if there are no events later than all the events composing the said "mind" or piece of "matter" -,~~at is to. say,. speaki~g more loosely, if the "mind" or piece of "matter m question 1s a senes extending throughout future time. Whether any such series has this property is a question which cannot be decided by a priori arguments, but only, if at all, by empirical evidence. It used to be thought, not only by materialists, but by all physicists, that every material particle is immortal. At first the particles were atoms, then they were electrons and 20 protons. Now the physicists have abandoned this view. When an atom undergoes a quantum transition, there are electrons before and electrons after, but no one of those after can be identified with any one of those before. Sometimes an electron and a proton meet and explode; they are then transformed into a non-material form of energy. (Not a "non-physical" form, but something more or less analogous to light-waves.) Thus on purely empirical grounds the immortality of matter has been abandoned. As to "mind", it is impossible to be equally definite, because our knowledge is less. The only argument, and that not a very strong one, is 30 that mental events, so far as our experience goes, are associated with a certain kind of material organism which disintegrates at death. This is an argument against mental immortality. So far as I know, the only arguments in its favour are derived from psychical research, and to me these arguments are not very convincing. But it would be rash, at present, to have a dogmatic opinion either way. In any case, the status of the question has not been materially changed by anything discovered during the last eighty years. Next let us consider what may be called cosmic history, the subject matter of the cosmological speculations of astronomers. Everything in 40 this field is very conjectural, because of the enormous extrapolations required. But the general view is still that the universe has evolved from a lifeless condition, and will return to a lifeless condition. It is thought

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that the physical conditions required for the existence of living organisms are very rarely present, and, when they are, are transitory. The second law of thermodynamics is thought to make it probable that, after a time, there will be no life anywhere in the universe. Nothing in recent science has diminished this probability. The question of cosmic history has a bearing on that of cosmic purpose. Ever since Aristotle, men whose preoccupations were biological have thought that they could discern a Purpose in nature. This has always seemed to me a somewhat parochial view. There are living organisms on the earth, but we do not know of any elsewhere, and astronomers assure us that, if there are any elsewhere, they must be extremely rare. If they were the crowning glory of the creation, one would expect them to be more frequent. And one would certainly not expect the whole time of their existence to be a brief interlude between two vastly longer periods of lifelessness. I will not dwell on the argument that a Creator who likes Man as he is must have very odd tastes. The question whether the universe has a purpose can easily be seen to be insoluble. Natural laws have certain consequences, and there may be a Being who desires these consequences. No argument for or against this possibility can be imagined. What we can say is this: If cosmic history is what astronomers think most probable, then a Being who chooses such a history has purposes quite different from ours, and therefore His existence, if He does exist, should afford us no comfort. The purposes of the Creator can only be inferred from the creation; therefore the evolution to be expected is exactly the same whether there be a Creator or not. It seems never to occur to theists that God's purposes may not coincide with their own. We are sometimes told that a view of the universe such as I have been expressing is intolerably depressing, and ought not to be set forth even by those who think it true, because people who accept it are likely to be both wicked and miserable. I do not think that history bears out this view. The Greeks, at the time when they were most happy and most vigorous, thought of a shadowy and unhappy existence in Hades as the lot of all, good and bad alike. Plato objected, saying men ought to be taught that the next life will be happy, not because this is the truth, but because if people believe it they will be more ready to die in battle. His view prevailed, but there was no increase in warlike courage. In the present day, men who accept the Nazi or Communist brand of paganism are just as courageous in war as Christians are. Plato's view on immortality failed equally to make men happy; throughout later antiquity, men grew steadily more religious and more unhappy. Happiness, in fact, depends much more on facts about this world than on beliefs about the next. Few young people in good health would derive as much pleasure from the

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assurance of heaven after death as from a legacy of 100,000 dollars. A community which is growing richer will be happier than one which is rowing poorer, quite independently of their respective religious beliefs. g Speaking of statistical averages, human happiness would seem to be related to human beliefs only in certain indirect ways. Belief in witchcraft caused much suffering; so did the theological beliefs that justified persecution; so did ignorance of medicine, hygiene, and sanitation. In the resent day, ignorance of economics leads to an immense amount of ~reventable misery, by causing different groups to imagine their interest mutually antagonistic. All these indirect effects are much greater than the direct effect of a belief in promoting cheerfulness or the reverse. I hold, therefore, that human happiness is more likely to be increased by a scientific outlook than by the habit of accepting beliefs because they are agreeable, or, indeed, for any reason except that there is a balance of evidence in their favour.

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How Will Science Change Morals? [1928]

TI-IIS PAPER WAS published in The Menorah Journal, New York, 14 (April 192 s): 321-9. The Russell Archives contains a typescript carbon of this article; it shows that his first choice of title was "Will Science Change Our Ethics?" On the cypescript the title has been altered to "Science of Ethics" in Patricia Russell's hand. The title given by the journal seems closer both to Russell's original intention and also to the content of the paper, so it is used here. The typescript carbon (RA 220.013850) is the copy-text; it has been collated

wiili 'h' primed vmion •nd ilio re•u!IB •re reJ'"d in ilio Toowtl No'"· (

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48 HOW WILL SCIENCE CHANGE MORALS? CIENCE HAS ALREADY affected our ethics profoundly, and is likely to affect them still more profoundly before the end of the present century. The effects of science are of three kinds:

S

The direct intellectual effects of scientific knowledge and method; The influence of the changed outlook on life produced by scientific technique; ( 3) The influence of the changes in the pressure of public opinion owing to new opportunities.

(1) (2)

IO

Of these three kinds, the first is more commonly discussed than the other two, but is by no means more important. Nevertheless, as it was historically the first, we will begin with it.

The direct intellectual effects of science upon morals have hitherto been almost wholly negative, though whether they will remain so may be doubted. Science thrust its way with difficulty into a world dominated by authority and tradition; by substituting a little genuine knowledge for a great deal of unfounded belief, it greatly diminished the amount that men thought they knew, while at the same time giving them new hopes of progress. The conception of progress, which seems to us a common20 place, is very modern, and almost wholly a result of the rise of science. The ancients looked back to a golden age; Lao-tze, in the sixth century B.c., deplored the hurry of modern life and the multiplicity of artificial contrivances. The Ages of Faith are full of laments concerning the corruption of morals in these latter days; almost all their ecclesiastical writers look back longingly to a time when the faith was purer and conduct was less depraved. In the renaissance, men looked back to ancient Greece and Rome, and did not suppose it possible to surpass them. This attitude still existed in the eighteenth century. It was only the fructification of science in industrial technique that led men of active disposition 30 to regard the present as better than any previous age, and the future as almost sure to be better than the present. Progress, though it existed as an idea in the eighteenth century, did not become a wide-spread popular creed till the nineteenth, and even then had to combat the romantic movement and the mediaeval revival in art and theology. For this combat, it found a powerful weapon in the philosophy of evolution. The general effect of science in the nineteenth century was to substitute mundane hopes for hopes of heaven, with the result that morals became philanthropic rather than theological. The change is exemplified by the difference between Wesley and Lord Shaftesbury-both profoundly

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religious, but the latter devoting his activity to promoting human happiness here on earth. Although few men agreed explicitly with Bentham, that virtue consists in promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number, yet in practice this idea increa~i_f!giy prevailed. At present, although many men's morality is in fact derived from traditional codes, yet none of their adherents would frankly confess that obedience to these codes does not lead to happiness in this world. This practical Benthamism is an effect of science. It depends upon science in two ways: first, because science has diminished the intensity of men's theological convictions, so that they are less willing to surrender the joys of this life on the IO off chance of compensation in the next; secondly, because science has shown that it is possible to be hopeful about existence on this planet, and has therefore diminished the need of emotional compensation by contemplating the joys of heaven. It is a mistake to suppose, as many do, that there is such a thing as a scientific ethic, though there are such things as unscientific ethics. I mean by this that science alone cannot determine the ends of life, though it can determine means when the ends are given. An ethic is unscientific when it proposes means which will not realize the desired end. When the means which it proposes are in accordance with science, an ethic is as 20 nearly scientific as it can hope to be, whatever end it may endeavour to achieve. An example will make clear what I mean. Let us imagine some modern scientific Caligula, who conceives that the sole purpose of human life is his own glory. He may invent a death-ray by means of which he becomes Emperor of the world; he may devote his power to causing vast monuments to be erected in his honour, and finally, as he dies, exterminate the human race, for fear lest some successor should surpass him. Such a person would be mad, but not unscientific. Science alone cannot prove that we ought to consider the welfare of others. Thus many ethics are compatible with science, and none can be proved true by 30 scientific arguments alone. It is evident that the life of a civilized community is impossible unless men, on the whole, abstain from acts which are very harmful to their neighbours. There are three traditional methods for securing this result. One is the criminal law, which attaches unpleasant consequences to certain forms of anti-social behaviour. Forgery, for example, is contrary to self-interest if it is discovered; given an efficient system of crime-detection, no sensible person, however selfish, will become a forger. The second method is that of theology: it is taught that certain kinds of conduct, whether detected by other human beings or not, have unpleasant conse- 40 quences in a future life, and will therefore be avoided by a prudent egoist. The third method is that of pointing out that anti-social behaviour tends to have unpleasant consequences through the natural resentment

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that it arouses. Science affects these three methods in different ways. It makes the criminal law more effective, by making it harder for criminals to escape and easier to collect evidence against them. Largely for this reason, there is less definite crime in a modern scientific community than in any community of former times, or in the unscientific communities of the present day. The theological method, on the contrary, has been weakened by science. People do not believe in hell fire as firmly as they did formerly, and certainly few people think that they themselves are in imminent danger of it. This has had a considerable effect upon behaviour, more especially in matters of sex. There are various causes for the change in this respect, but certainly one of them is the decay of the belief in eternal damnation. While theologians may deplore this, there is another side to it. The duties inculcated by theologians were largely fantastic, and such as were calculated to diminish human happiness. Take, for example, the view that marriage to a partner who is insane or syphilitic is a sacrament which should be indissoluble, and, moreover, should not be artificially prevented from being fruitful. Such a doctrine demands the belief that the world is governed by a God who rejoices in human suffering, more particularly the suffering of little children, and who closes heaven to those who have adopted the most obvious methods of avoiding the infliction of such suffering. It is clear that, if God is good, He will not punish acts which promote happiness or avert misery. Therefore, whenever theology has to be invoked to prove an act wrong which would otherwise be right, it is implied that God is not good. The decay of the purely theological motive to virtue, accordingly, however it may have promoted conduct contrary to traditional notions of morality, is not in itself a thing to be regretted. The argument that anti-social behaviour causes resentment, and is therefore contrary to self-interest, is one which has a large measure of truth, but is subject to very important limitations. There are certain kinds of anti-social behaviour which are admired; most of the men to whom equestrian statues have been set up were malefactors. And any man who acquires enormous wealth is respected, whatever the methods by which he acquired it. If the desire for admiration is to be a source of conduct calculated to promote human happiness, there will be need of a considerable education of public opinion. The outcome of this is that anti-social conduct, in its grosser forms, can be prevented by an efficient police, provided the law forbids only harmful acts and not (as at present) a number of useful acts also; and that certain types of bad behaviour can be prevented by the cultivation of enlightened self-interest. But there remains an important residue which will only be prevented by genuine good will or affection towards other

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people. For this emotion, no substitute can be found either in theology or in science; without kindly feeling, no genuinely good conduct is possible. Will science promote kindly feeling? It can do so, by applying itself to such qyestions as diet and early education; but there is nothing in a scientific outlook as such to make people kindly. I think, however, that the effect of science in clearing away superstitious ethics tends to make men see more clearly that intelligent kindliness is the essence of morality. The systems of morality which old-fashioned theologians have inherited from the dark ages are impregnated with cruelty and persecution, so that anything which weakens them removes an excuse for the infliction of pain upon our neighbours and dependents. To this extent, science has a good effect: but it may have a very much more potent and direct good effect if applied to the formation of character in the early years of life. Also, by promoting prosperity, it diminishes cruelty; for cruelty is, in the main, an outcome of fear and the struggle for life. This is, I think, the main reason for the very marked diminution of cruelty during the last three centuries, as shown, for example, in the mitigation of the criminal law, and in the lessening severity of the education of children, in which corporal punishment was formerly the chief engine of moral discipline.

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The economic effects of science have had more influence upon morals than the direct intellectual effects, and I think the economic effects have been almost wholly beneficial from an ethical point of view. I have already mentioned the effect of increased prosperity in diminishing fear and ferocity. The effect of education, also, has been no doubt good on the whole, though there is a considerable item on the adverse side in balancing this account, more particularly the increased power of the press to promote savagery in time of war. A considerable moral improvement has come from the diminution of boredom. Winter in the middle ages was appalling from this point of view. Most people could not read, and if they could the light was too bad after sunset. Roads were impassable, so that there was practically no social life. Meat was killed in the autumn and salted; there was no tea or coffee or tobacco. I think boredom accounts for the fact that large populations in the middle ages were subject to fits of collective insanity; also for the prevalence of incest and every kind of brutality in family life. The same kind of thing may still be seen among backward peasant communities; but good roads, automobiles, adequate lighting and heating are rapidly causing it to disappear. Moralists are apt to complain of the love of excitement in modern urban life, and we are perpetually told of the harm done to children by

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the movies. All this is due to our ingrained habit of thinking that what people like must be bad for them, which has as a rule no better basis than sadism. Excitement, up to a point, is one of our needs, and if we cannot get it in any other way we get it by quarrels with our neighbours or relatives. No doubt the movies do not always supply the ideal form of excitement for children; no doubt, also, it is easy to overdo excitement. But a certain minimum is necessary for mental health. And from the introduction of agriculture until modern times, most people had less than their needs required, because tilling the soil is less exciting than hunting. IO In this respect, therefore, I regard the effects of science as on the whole beneficial. But the most important effect of scientific technique upon the average man has been an increase in his sense of power over nature and a consequent diminution of fear as an element in life. Wells in The W&:r of the W&rlds describes admirably the change produced in man when he became a hunted animal living in fear of the Martians as other animals now live in fear of us. Primitive men must have lived in a constant dread of wild animals, whereas to the modern European a man-eating tiger is a pleasant object in a landscape. I remember when I was in Hong Kong a 20 few years ago, all the British in that town were rejoicing in what they regarded as a very pleasant recent incident-a misguided tiger had swum across from the mainland and started to walk about the streets. All the British turned out with guns and found great pleasure in the sport. What applies to tigers, applies also to a large number of other natural phenomena: snow storms in the Alps were formerly a cause of terror, now they create an opportunity for winter sports; earthquakes are still a source of fear-after the Tokyo earthquake the mentality of many Japanese seems to have temporarily reverted to something quite mediaeval, but the time will come when all houses in earthquake districts will be balanced upon 3o air cushions and earthquakes will be regarded merely as pleasant amusements for children. The changes in ethics which are to be expected from science are almost wholly connected with the elimination of fear. Originally, great disasters, like plagues, famines, hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, descended upon communities in ways that were not at all understood, and were attributed to the anger of the gods. As it gradually became to be known that certain kinds of acts were apt to have painful consequences, it was inferred, since the laws of natural causation were unknown, that such acts were displeasing to the gods; consequently they were labelled "sin". Often nowadays science knows of means by which 4o the painful consequences of such acts can be averted, but the religious conscience still insists that these acts are sin and infers that it is impious to attempt any escape from their painful consequences. One striking example of this is the religious attitude towards venereal diseases, which

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is as a rule, that cure is permissible but prevention is not. In this and in v~rious other matters the original utilitarianism of religious morals has been lost sight of. Originally men said "this act is sinful because it produces misfortune"; now the religious conscience says "this act shall produte,inisfortune because it is sinful, and if science shows us ways by which the misfortune can be prevented, we must do our best to prevent such ways from becoming known". Thus, as a result of scientific discoveries, traditional morals have, in various not unimportant respects, become inimical to human happiness. As people come to realize this fact, and as they become increasingly IO aware of the possibilities which science is opening up, they tend more and more to ignore the teachings of traditional dogmatists. There is a grave danger lest this should lead to a shallow and unsatisfactory hedonism. If all those who preach the necessity of moral restraint combine this preaching with what appears to modern-minded men to be superstition and obscurantism, there is a danger lest all those who are neither superstitious nor obscurantists may come to feel that life can be successfully conducted without any kind of moral discipline. This is, of course, not possible, but the source of the discipline must be hope rather than fear. If a man is to "scorn delights and live laborious days", it must be with a 20 view to some positive achievement, not with a view to escaping starvation in this world or hell-fire in the next. Morality, in a word, will have to be positive rather than negative; it will have to occupy itself rather with what is to be done than with what is to be left undone. This transformation is coming about already and is attributable almost wholly to the influence of science. In old days Nature, personified as the gods, was dreaded and worshipped: nowadays, owing to our greater powers of physical manipulation, nature is studied and utilized, but not respected or feared. For the first time in the history of this planet one of the animals to which it has given 30 rise has succeeded, to a certain limited extent, in mastering the environment and, consequently, substituting exploitation for reverence. The moral changes which this is likely to produce are so vast that we can as yet only faintly guess at them. It is to be feared, however, that these moral changes will come about with extreme slowness owing to the fact already mentioned, that mankind remain divided, on the whole, into ascetics and voluptuaries, both equally irrational. Men will make great efforts under the stress of fear, but the majority of mankind are too lazy to make equal efforts from the incentive of hope. Probably wholesale destruction of the lazier races of 40 mankind by the ruthless and energetic may be necessary before a morality not based upon fear can acquire a hold over the average man. The possibilities of science divorced from humanitarianism are somewhat

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terrible to contemplate, yet I fear there will be a time of transition in which very dark and terrible deeds may be done in the name of a scientific civilization. All this, however, is in the highest degree speculative. III

The incidence of the pressure of public opinion has been changed in various ways owing to the development of a scientific civilization, and this change has had a great deal of influence in modifying moral standards, or at any rate in changing their intensity. In some ways people are more subject to the pressure of public opinro ion than they used to be and in other ways less. Very few people in a modern industrial community are as completely under the thumb of their neighbours as people formerly were in villages and small towns. But in former times there was a considerable population that was not strictly confined to one place, and these wanderers were much more able than they are now to escape from the penalties of their crimes. Highwaymen, soldiers of fortune, even ordinary sailors, could indulge in lawless actions in one place and easily escape to another. Nothing could travel faster than a horse, and therefore a man with a good mount could always escape from the police. The prevalence of the highwaymen in the eight20 eenth century was due to this fact, together with the practice of carrying cash on a journey instead of a cheque-book. Crime altogether has become far more difficult than it used to be, and this is mainly attributable to science. On the other hand, the decay of morals among the young, which our older generation are continually deploring, is, I am afraid, due as much to the automobile as to the decay of theological belief. If our moralists were in earnest, they would conduct a campaign to forbid the use of automobiles to all but elderly citizens, whose virtue could be vouched for by at least two ministers of religion. But few of our traditional moralists 3o would carry their principles so far as to inflict damage upon a highly profitable industry. This is part of the wider fact that all except the very poor are not now confined within one small locality as the majority formerly were. In matters which concern the police, escape from a locality is nowadays of little use, but in those branches of morals with which the police do not concern themselves, it is easy to be respectable at home and quite the reverse elsewhere. Any offence against morals which is frequently committed with impunity comes in time to be viewed leniently by the majority; consequently the offences which are visited by severe moral condemnation are not now the same as they were in former times. 40 Certain kinds of offences are viewed with much greater disfavour than they used to be. In one of Smollett's novels the hero, who is an English-

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rnan, t akes service in the . French . Army during a war with England; . when

has had enough of 1t he qmetly returns to Dover, where he 1s deeply he d sincerely shocked by the pro- F rench sentiments . . emment . o f certam :en whom he encounters. The whole of this is utterly remote from modern possibilities. . Our sense of obligation to the community is enormously greater than It ~0 rmerly was; this is due to various causes, all of which have their root in ·ence. The power of the State over the individual is greater than it used SCI . . . to be owing to the closer orgamzauon of society an d th e better mach"mery for the detection of crime. Education is a potent means of propaganda ro for the State, enabling people in later life to read the newspapers and thus become susceptible to any point of view which the holders of power desire to promote. Society is, in a word, more organic than it used to be, and a man's professional activities are consequently less anarchic than they were in former times. For the moment we do not reap the full benefit of this owing to the division of the powerful sections of mankind into mutually suspicious nations, but if, as seems probable, a world government is ultimately achieved, the increased possibilities of direction from the centre will become highly beneficial. I think one must expect that the Government will continue to acquire an increasing control over the lives 20 of individuals as it has done during the past century. The result may possibly be a dwarfing of the individual in comparison with the community. This in itself might be regrettable, but scientific technique undoubtedly makes anarchic conduct more dangerous to the community than it used to be, and therefore makes some diminution of individual liberty inevitable. I have said nothing of the more sensational possibilities with which some writers have concerned themselves, possibilities connected largely with scientific breeding and early education. Given a greater knowledge of heredity than we at present possess, it would, of course, be possible to 30 improve the breed almost indefinitely. The best twenty-five per cent of each generation of women might be set apart for maternity, and the best one per cent of each generation of men; this would require, of course, a complete revolution in all our moral ideas as regards marriage and the family. It does not seem likely that the western nations would adopt any such plan except in some great emergency, but one could imagine it adopted by Japan, with the result that in a century the Japanese race would become physically and intellectually so enormously superior to all others as to be able to acquire world dominion. Fear then might terrify the western nations into imitation. 40 It is sometimes thought that all such schemes would be impossible because they would be contrary to what is called "human nature". This I believe to be a delusion. Human nature is much more plastic than it

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was formerly supposed to be, but it has to be moulded in the early years of life if it is to take on a new shape. As a matter of fact economic motives have always played a larger part in matters of population and the family than is generally recognized. They operate slowly and more or less sub-consciously, but in the long run their power is almost irresistible. The ordinary red-blooded he-man would say that the Tibetan system of polyandry is contrary to human nature; nevertheless the poverty of that country, by promoting female infanticide and by making it difficult for one man to support the expenses of a wife and family, has become strong ro enough to overcome natural jealousy. I do not doubt that if a powerful State were to pay a certain percentage of the population to breed and the remainder to be sterilized, the system would in time come to seem perfectly natural and the only one consonant with human nature. People would wonder how in former ages those who had no reason to believe that their offspring would be healthy and secure as to their economic support could have been induced to undertake the responsibilities of a family. A new morality would grow up, doubtless just as rigid as that of the Catholic Church, based upon the view that not marriage but procreation is a sacrament, and that sexual intercourse not leading to procre20 ation is a purely private affair. I am not saying that all this will come about, I am merely suggesting it as a possibility. Science is a comparatively new and very explosive force in human affairs, and it is not to be supposed that it has as yet done a hundredth part of its work in transforming society: it has had as yet to cope with traditions and beliefs dating in their essence from the beginnings of agriculture. As these traditions and beliefs grow weaker, the influence of science over men's thought and feelings will increase. I do not feel by any means certain that the world produced by science will be better than the world in which we live, for, after all, science will have to be embodied in scientists, in whom 30 love of system may easily lead to repression of much that is good but not easy to organize. But for good or evil the scientific world is pretty sure to come about, and any resistance that we may offer to it is not likely to make it better when it comes.

49

Democracy and Emotion [1929]

THIS PAPER WAS published in The Nation (New York), 128 (23 Jan. 1929): I08; it is a review of J. H. Denison's Emotion as the Basis of Civilization (1928).

Freda Kirchwey, then the literary editor of the magazine, wrote to Russell on 7 November 1928: I have in hand an important and most interesting volume-Emotion as the Basis of Civilization, by J. H. Denison. It has an introduction by Professor George Foot Moore of Harvard University. I am so eager to have you review it that I am sending the book to you, without your permission, in this same mail. If you should not be able to do it, the chance-nonetheless-will have been worth taking. But I hope that the book will interest you: if so I shall want the review as soon as you can do it-since both the book and your criticism of it are important, it ought to be printed promptly. John Hopkins Denison (1870-1936) was a minister who, between 1893 and l9IO, held pastoral positions in both Congregational and Presbyterian churches. During 1917 he served with the International Y.M.C.A. in France. In addition to the title under review he published three other books between 1914 and l93I. The copy-text is the published version.

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Emotion as the Basis of Civilization. By J. H. Denison. New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928. Pp. xii, 555· not deal, as its title might suggest, with the psychoanalytic treatment of political institutio:is; it _is concerned with a different and less modern type of cons1derat1ons, broadly speaking the same as those which inspired Bagehot's English Constit~tion. The main topic with which it is concerned is social coherence, which it says can be achieved in two ways, one of which it calls patriarchal and the other fratriarchal. Roughly speaking, these amount to the same thing IO as monarchy and democracy. Social cohesion, as the author quite rightly points out, is dependent upon emotion and hardly possible except on some emotional basis; mere force, as exercised by conquerors, has never long succeeded in holding an empire together, unless it has co:11e to be replaced by some sentiment of unity on the part of the populations concerned. There is nothing novel in this contention; indeed it was expressed in Napoleon's dictum that one can do anything with bayonets except sit upon them. The essential theses of the book are that democracy is better than monarchy; that it can only be practised successfully by persons living north of latitude 50°; that nevertheless the best example of it 20 is the United States; that there is a still better possible system which he calls anepsiarchy, which means treating people as cousins rather than as brothers; and that this system would put the various groups in the United States in a hierarchy, placing the Nordics at the top and Negroes at the bottom, but with the possibility of rising to a higher group on proving the possession of those qualities of justice and fair play in which Massachusetts for example has shown itself so proficient. So much is made of the prominence of the British and Americans in these qualities of justice and fair play that one is led almost insensibly to regard it as an example of these qualities when men of alien groups are executed for crimes that 30 they have not committed. All the civilizations of the world are reviewed in succession by Mr. Denison; he admires particularly the contributions of Buddha and Z~­ roaster, concerning the latter of whom he knows much more than is known by modern specialists. He admires both, especially because they belong to the Indo-European race, whereas most religious leaders have, alas, been Semites. When emotion is considered in relation to civilization, there are two separate problems which are often confoun~ed; the one_ i~ that of g~n.er­ ating the right kind of emotion, the other 1s that of givmg an ex1stmg 40 emotion the right kind of object. The former of these problems can be dealt with to a certain extent by psychoanalysis, but more radically (by) biochemistry; it is a problem which can only be tackled by essentially

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odern scientific methods, and it does not come into Mr. Denison's X:rview. The problem which he tackles is the second, namely how to ~irect the emotions of reverence, affection, and dislike into those chanels which will produce the most coherent community. This is a problem :f what the behaviourists call conditioning, and it is one to which statesmen and religious teachers have been in the habit of addressing themselves. In spite of the width of Mr. Denison's purview I do not find that he has anything very new to say on this matter. I have learned certain things from Mr. Denison's book, for example: that Francis Bacon had his head cut off; that the war succeeded in mak- IO ing the world safe for democracy; that it was not until recently that other sects than the National Church were tolerated in England, whereas other authorities say that this occurred in the reign of William III; that Nesta Webster, who attributes the French Revolution to demoniac possession in the literal sense, has advanced a valuable hypothesis in the suggestion that all radicalism in the modern world springs from a man called Weisshaupt who organized a group of illuminati in 1776; that the Ku Klux Klan is a useful organization, though we must hope "that it will not degenerate into an organization for political power and plunder"; that the Confucian odes date from the year 1719 B.c., although they contain 20 allusions to events which occurred in 776 B.c.; that nothing was ever nobler than the character of the Samurai; that Buddhism came into Japan about 800 A.D., whereas the usually received date is 552; that the fact that foreigners in America are as law-abiding as they are is "due to the efforts that are being made to train them in American feelings", although there is no other civilized country where educated natives so habitually break the law; and that recently in America the Protestant sects have been in the forefront of the movement for social progress. Much else may be learned from Mr. Denison's pages, but space forbids me to lengthen the list. 30

50

Is There a New Morality? [1929]

'[he New Morality. By Durant Drake. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Pp.

iii, 359· ROFESSOR DURANT DRAKE is in some respects bold for a professor of philosophy. There have been times when philosophy was a radical and revolutionary study, but those times are past; and on the whole philosophy in our day is associated with that type of comprehensiveness which finds an excuse for every abuse in some other abuse, and arrives at the conclusion that those who desire changes are necessarily crude. Professor Drake begins by stating that he is going to judge of the morality of a line of conduct by results, not be mere traditional ro maxims. And he proceeds to examine not only morality in the narrow sense, but the whole field of public and private conduct. On some points he is surprisingly advanced; for example, on the matter of birth control, of which he writes with remarkable good sense. On divorce, also, his attitude is very liberal; indeed, he goes so far as to advocate divorce by mutual consent. This in itself differentiates him from the conventional moralists, who hold that the more disagreeable a marriage has become, the more important it is to preserve it as a discipline and a trial. There are, however, other topics where his attitude, at least to a European, is surprising. Take, for example, prohibition; in his chapter on this subject 20 he states the case for prohibition, and then has a heading called "The case against prohibition", but under this heading he does not put in any of the arguments which naturally occur to anyone who is not American; and indeed the arguments against prohibition which he does permit himself to state are answered so immediately that they have not time to acquire any weight. I do not wish to take sides myself on this issue, but only to say that the discussion by Professor Drake is very inadequate and does not give nearly enough weight to the objections which may be urged-for example, the encouragement oflawlessness, the corruption of the police force, and the increase of drunkenness among the well-to-do. 30 The book is full of the optimism which one is accustomed to associate with official America. It admits with every appearance of candour various defects which might be remedied, but it always suggests that the remedy is easy, requiring only a little good will and enlightenment on the part of the governing classes. As is natural in a professor, Professor Drake writes, perhaps unconsciously, from the point of view of one who considers what may be allowed, and does not doubt that the authorities can be brought to agree with him on this point. There is an absence of feeling for liberty, by which I mean, not gracious concessions from above, but spontaneous self-direction. And there is a failure to realize that economic forces and 40 mechanical inventions have far more effect upon morals than whole libraries of sermons. There can be no doubt that rubber, chiefly in the

P

THIS PAPER WAS published in The Book League Monthly, I (New York, Feb. 1929): 212-13, under the title "Reform Ethics". It is a review of Durant Drake's The New Morality (1928), a volume in a series called "Philosophy for the Layman". A carbon copy of the typescript of this review is in the Russell Archives; it bears the title which appears above. Durant Drake (1878-1933) was, from 1915 until his death, Professor of Philosophy in Vassar College. In epistemology he identified himself as a "critical realist", one of a loosely knit group of thinkers who advanced their position in Essays in Critical Realism, published in 1920. In addition to this book, he wrote several others on a wide variety of topics. The typescript carbon (RA1 220.012750) is the copy-text. It has been collated with the printed version and the results are reported in the Textual Notes.

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form of tyres for automobiles, does much more even than alcohol to prom~te crime a~d what is called immorality in the United States; and if American moralists were honest, they would no doubt prohibit the importation of rubber. But the real objection of puritans to the things that they consider sin is the sensual pleasure obtained by the sinner, not the pain suffered by the sinner or by someone else as a consequence of his sin. Professor Drake is free from this attitude, but I doubt whether he has thought through all the implications of his own position. Undoubtedly the world needs a new morality, and not merely a revolt against the old one. At present in America many of those who have thrown off the old taboos have put nothing whatever in their place, and for this they are hardly to blame, since the moralists, with very few exceptions have made no attempt to think out a new morality, the essence of which must be that it is creative and positive, not restrictive and negative. All morality is an embodiment of our emotions towards our fellow creatures. Traditional morality is an embodiment mainly of jealousy and tyranny. Until we learn to produce human beings in whom these are not the dominant attitudes towards their fellow creatures, we shall not get a widespread improvement in morals, though we may get a change through a new direction of malevolence. It seems probable that Professor Durant Drake's book will do good to the audience to which it is addressed, which is apparently that of college students; but it will only do good if it is taken as a first step and leads on to something less selfsatisfied and rose-coloured and more conscious of human liberties.

51

How Science Has Changed Society [1932]

THIS PAPER WAS read over the BBC on 7 January 1932 and published in The Listener, 7 (13 Jan. 1932), pp. 39-40, 42, as the first contribution to a symposium

on "Science and Civilization". The magazine introduced it in this way: Opening the symposium on Science and Civilization (to which Aldous Huxley, Hugh Fausset, Hilaire Belloc, J. B. S. Haldane and Sir Oliver Lodge will later contribute), Bertrand Russell shows that he is fully aware of the dangers as well as the advantages of a scientifically organized world. In addition, Thomas Holland, Hyman Levy, Julian Huxley, and John R. Baker, contributed talks. The whole set of papers was published in 1933 as a book, with the title Science in the Changing WfJrld, edited by Mary Adams. In the book, Russell's contribution, which is much revised and shortened, is entitled "The Scientific Society". For the reader's convenience the book version is reprinted as Appendix IV. The themes that Russell develops in this essay were to recur in all of his later writings on this topic. The copy-text is the version published in The Listener.

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years science has had a continually increasing influence upon the everyday life of ordinary men and women. There is every reason to suppose that this influence will go on increasing, and it is not unlikely that it will increase even faster in the near future than in the recent past. Science is gradually transforming social life in ways which call for new forms of society, and these new forms of society will demand new qualities in many citizens. Apart from all questions of detail, there are two changes of great importance that are being brought about by science: one of these is the IO increasing importance of experts, and the other is that the different parts of human society are more connected with each other than they used to be. The first of these two, namely the importance of experts, is more obvious than the other, but nevertheless I should like to say something about it, because it is making democratic forms of government more and more difficult. Think of all the everyday apparatus of modern urban life, such as telephones, electric light, electric trains, power stations, and so on; all of this involves scientific knowledge, which is possessed by only a small minority of the population. If a disease were to kill off about one per cent of the population of any modern nation, and were by ill luck to 20 select the one per cent that understand scientific technique, everyday life, as it exists in modern cities could be made impossible. In matters more directly concerned with government, the expert is necessary in an even higher degree. Consider, for instance, the art of war. It is true that the art of war still requires soldiers, but it has come to depend much more upon the scientific inventor than upon the man who risks his life in the face of the enemy. Another example which has been much to the fore recently is currency. The theory of currency and the art of banking are so intricate that even recognized experts go astray, as we have all lately been learning to our cost. In a simple agricultural community most of the questions 30 that the Government has to decide are not very difficult, and therefore democracy can be fairly effective if the level of education is high. But in a highly developed industrial society there are many questions of firstrate political importance which only a few highly-trained experts can understand. On such subjects ordinary men and women are compelled, willy-nilly, to accept the opinions of specialists, and to this extent democracy becomes unreal. It is likely that the part played by science in daily life will grow greater, so that the importance of experts will increase rather than diminish. We have, therefore, to expect that government by experts will largely replace government by the will of the people, and this 40 is likely to happen even if people still vote and Parliaments are still supposed to choose the Government. The second kind of change that is coming over the world as a result of science is that the acts of one individual or set of individuals tend more

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d more to have effects upon other individuals, perhaps in distant parts

a~ he world. The doings of a primitive peasant who lives upon his own 0

tduce are of little importance except to himself and his family. But prho w ere modern industrial methods prevail,. the world has become in many cts a single unit. People in Lancashire may be out of work because respe · · · d'ices o f th e of the political passions of Indians an d Ch'mese; th e pr~Ju rican Middle West determine the character of the cmemas offered ~thee amusement of Europe; the existence of oil in the Near East pro1or · · · [oundly affects international politics, and at one time even caused f nction between America and Great Britain. . . IO Perhaps the greatest single source of our present troubles is that, while we have become dependent on each other more than ever before, we have not organized the world as a whole. In the modern world what hapens to one part has effects upon another part, but the effects of ~e parts upon each other are determined in relatio~ to the welfare of the hole. The difference can be illustrated by the difference between the :uman body in sickness and in health. The human body is at all times one whole, and in health it is also organized so that the parts work together for the good of the whole. But in certain kinds of disease-for example, cancer-one part ceases to contribute to the welfare of the rest. 20 A cancer has effects throughout the body, but these effects are not such as contribute to the welfare of the body as a whole. The body politic is very much more of a unity than it was 200 years ago, an~ is. s~mewhat more organized for the general good. But the extent to which it is organized has not increased nearly as fast as the extent to which it is organic. This means to say that separate parts of the world pursue their separate purposes without regard to the effect that they are havin~ ~p~n the r~st of mankind. If our scientific civilization is to be stable, it is imperative that it should become much more organized than it is at present; there will have to be much more deliberate planning from the point of view of 30 the whole, and there will have to be much less left to the haphazard impulses of individuals or of groups. This applies to all kinds of matters: municipal, national, and international. Consider London, for example. From the point of view of history London is a collection of villages which have gradually coalesced, but in the present day London is for most purposes a unit. One of the most important features of London is the means of transport by which men pass from the circumference to the centre in the morning, and from the centre to the circumference in the evening. If London had been deliberately planned to suit its present needs, the streets would all be straight and all thoroughfares. 40 When London became a unity it acquired a government of its own in addition to the separate governments of its constituent boroughs, but although the world has become a unity, it has not yet acquired a gov~rn-

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ment either in the political or in the economic sphere. There are two main respects in which organization is deficient at present: one of these is that what is called private enterprise is not directed by any central authority, so that people produce too much of some things and too little of others. The other is that each State is free to do as it likes, without regard to the effects of what it does on other States, unless the others are prepared to go to war with it. At the moment the evils due to the economic organization are to the fore; the various parts of the world have become economically interdependent, but there is no international economic organization of production or distribution or banking. Each nation wishes to produce everything itself, with the result that the industrial plant in the world is capable of producing much more than the world is able to consume. The increased productivity of labour resulting from modern technique ought to have brought wealth for employers and full wages, with shorter hours, for wage-earners; instead it has resulted in bankruptcy for many employers, and unemployment for millions of wage-earners. Only one thing is needed in order that the increased productivity of labour should have good effects rather than bad. The one thing that is needed is international organization of the world's economic activities. This applies not only to industry but also to modern agriculture. While vast numbers of human beings are going hungry for lack of sufficient food, others are allowing their crops to rot because they cannot obtain a remunerative price for their produce. A trouble of this sort is clear evidence of lack of intelligence in coping with modern economic problems, and requires for its cure the creation of appropriate international organization. What this should be is a difficult question, which I leave for your consideration. The economic anarchy in the world has proved disastrous in recent years, but the political anarchy is likely to prove even more disastrous. When I speak of political anarchy I am not thinking of anarchy within a single State, such as exists in China: I am thinking of the international anarchy that consists in the absence of a world government. It was easy to combine the London boroughs into a unit governed by the London County Council, because different parts of London had not learnt to regard each other with enmity and fear. But to combine the nations of the world under a single government will be a formidable task owing to the passions of nationalism, which make effective co-operation extraordinarily difficult. Immense scientific skill has been applied to the technique of war, and unfortunately in recent years methods of attack have made much greater progress than methods of defence. This is especially the case as regards warfare in the air. The next war, if it occurs, is therefore likely to prove far more destructive than what we still call the Great War. Scientific civilization cannot survive unless large-scale wars can be pre-

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vented. Large-scale wars cannot be prevented in the long run except by drastic method. This method is the establishment of a world government possessing the only effective armed force in the world. At present nationalism is so powerful that there is little hope of the adoption of such a measure in the near future. Indeed, the indications are, at the moment, that men would rather see civilization perish than adopt such means of preserving it. I do not know whether men will change their minds in time to prevent the next great war, but if they do not, the next war is likely to teach the lesson effectively. If the next great war does not lead to the establishment of a world government, it is to be feared that scientific civilization will disappear. In a scientific society there cannot be as much individual liberty as there was in England in the nineteenth century. If a scientific society is to be stable, it must have more organization than was formerly necessary, and the organization must be, in part, such as to diminish individual liberty. This is regrettable, but apparently unavoidable. There will be, however, very important compensations-so important that, on the balance, we may expect an increase in human happiness. Science has already done a very great deal to lengthen human life and to diminish disease. I am sure it will do more in the near future. It has not yet destroyed poverty and the fear of destitution, but modern machines have made it possible to achieve this result if we had more economic wisdom. In the pre-scientific ages the total produce of human labour yielded very little above a bare subsistence; it followed quite inevitably that only a small minority could enjoy tolerable comfort. Nowadays the productivity of labour is so great that tolerable comfort could be secured for everyone without very long hours of labour, provided the world's production and distribution were wisely directed by an international organization. It is to science that we owe this possibility; it is to stupidity and inertia that we owe the fact that it is not realized. Existing knowledge, if it were wisely utilized, would suffice to abolish some of the greatest evils that still afflict human life. It would be possible within the next hundred years to establish throughout the world a community wholly freed from the dangers of war and poverty, and at the same time healthier and longer-lived than even the best communities now existing. But there is a price to be paid for this achievement, and the price is a considerable surrender of liberty, both economic and political, both individual and national. For to create such a community we shall have to submit to an international government and to international control over production and distribution. No civilization worthy of the name can be merely scientific. Machines and scientific inventions are concerned with the mechanism of life; they can prevent evils, but do not suffice by themselves to create things of

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positive excellence. The things that give positive excellence to human life are in the mind and heart, not in the outward mechanism; they are such things as knowledge, the creation and enjoyment of beauty, the joy of life, and human affection. Science considered as the pursuit of knowledge deserves a high place among the ends of life, but science as the pursuit of knowledge is something different from scientific technique. Scientific technique can provide a framework within which the good life is possible, but more than this it cannot do. It can diminish illness, but cannot tell a man what he shall do with health; it can cure poverty, IO but cannot tell a man how he shall spend his wealth; it can prevent war, but cannot tell a man what form of adventure or heroism he is to put in its place. If a society is to be considered positively excellent, it must promote knowledge and beauty, the joy of life and human affection; if it does not achieve this, its excellence will be merely negative, even if it succeeds in eliminating much of the pain and misery from which mankind has hitherto suffered. The society of the future, assuming that we can escape a cataclysm, will be more and more a thing deliberately planned rather than a spontaneous natural growth. But in this deliberate planning there are dangers which it would not be wise to underestimate. 20 There will be inevitably a tendency to uniformity; the separate patriotisms of the present day will be discouraged, and children in school will be taught an exclusive loyalty to the world government. There may be one language, one newspaper, and one wireless programme. Social uniformity will make travel useless except for the sake of scenery. All the clothes for all the inhabitants of the world will be made in one vast factory. The administrator, if he is indifferent to aesthetic considerations, will aim only at standardization for the sake of economy; in that case all human beings will be dressed exactly alike, except that possibly there may be some slight difference between the clothes of men and women. 30 And what applies to clothes, applies also to tastes and opinions. If the organizers think only of mechanism, they may seek to produce soulless individuals all exactly alike, who will be convenient to the statistician and to the administrator because it will not be necessary to distinguish between one and another. Such a society would be intolerably dull, and might in the long run die of inanition. There is, however, a real danger of something of this kind, because in the scientific society men of the administrative type will necessarily have more power than they have had at any previous stage of the world's history. Many of you will probably feel, as I do, the danger 40 lest men of this type should regard human beings not as separate persons, each with his own individuality, but as raw material for great schemes. When they are regarded in this way, it is convenient to be able to ignore their differences, and therefore the administrator tends to have

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a bias towards uniformity. If this bias is to be avoided, the administrator will have to take account of human values which lie outside the immediate scope of his technique. To ensure that administrators shall do this, their education will have to be carefully directed towards giving them a breadth of outlook which at present is not always to be found among such men. The scientific organization of society will do good if it is combined with a vivid realization of what is good in life, but may do harm if it is regarded as a sufficient end in itself. The problem is therefore at bottom one of education. There are certain things that education should teach, and what is quite as important, there are certain things that educa- IO tion should not teach. It should not teach hatred or contempt for any group of men; it should not teach a ruthless desire to get on; it should not teach that war is the noblest of human pursuits. But it should teach that affection and kindly feeling are desirable, that the beauty of the world is to be enjoyed, and that genuine knowledge is at all times to be preferred to traditional or fashionable error. The scientific society differs from the unscientific society fundamentally through the fact that in the scientific society men know better how to realize their desires. But this applies to destructive desires quite as much as to those that are creative. Science has improved the art of war at least 20 as much as it has the art of agriculture, and it has not improved the art of poetry at all. If the greater power of realizing our desires which we derive from science is to be a boon to mankind, it is necessary that men's desires should, on the whole, be constructive rather than destructive. To secure that this should be the case is a moral problem, but it is one in which certain sciences can be very useful. The matter is one partly of social organization, partly of individual temperament. So far as social organization is concerned, what is needed is to diminish the part played by competition, both individual and national, so that the success of a man or a nation may result from contributions to the success of the 30 whole rather than from the defeat of competitors. So far as individual temperament is concerned, the sciences that are useful are those of physiology, psychology, and education. Many men have violent opinions in politics because their digestion is out of order or their glands work badly; moral reform in such cases must be begun by the physiologist. Others again have deep-seated psychological troubles of envy or unconscious hatred, which may lead them to take pleasure in the thought of war or revolution. To prevent the growth of such psychological troubles is mainly a problem of education, particularly for that unduly neglected part of education which takes place before the age of six, for it is in the 40 early years that the emotional part of character is mainly determined. In the scientific society the men in control will have immense power; power in the hands of men whose passions are opposed to the general good is

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dangerous, and power in the hands of men whose passions are merely administrative may lead to intolerable uniformity. There is, therefore, a considerable risk that we may have to pass through some very painful ordeals before men learn to use scientific power wisely, but I cannot doubt that in the end the lesson will be learnt, and that when it has been learnt (which will involve more science, not less) the human race will find itself emancipated from many of the greatest evils that have afflicted it in all past ages. The immediate outlook is uncertain and full of danger, but the more distant outlook permits hopes which would have seemed ro fantastic in any earlier time. You will hear, in subsequent talks, various points of view, some critical of science, others less so. I have tried to put before you the good that comes by science, owing to our increasing command over natural forces, and also the harm that may come if we forget that science is not the whole of life, or if we allow science to be used for purposes of destruction. My own belief is that it is well to be aware of the dangers that will exist until men have adapted themselves to the new world, but that through science the road lies open to a future happier than any previous age of human history.

52-55

Four Papers on Ethics and Law for the Hearst Newspapers [1933-34]

PAPER 52, "On Utilitarianism", was published in the New Thrk American, 17 May 1933, p. 17, as from London. It was also published on the same day in the Los Angeles Examiner, Sect. l, p. IO, and the San Francisco Examiner, p. 12, in both cases with omissions. On 19 May it appeared in the Washington Herald, p. 10. All of these were Hearst newspapers, and this article was one Russell wrote when he was under contract with Hearst to produce a paper a week. Since Russell's articles were available to all of the Hearst newspapers, it is likely that it appeared in some others as well. A carbon of the typescript is in the Russell Archives; it bears the notation that it was sent to Mr. Towne and Miss Pearn on 21 March 1933· These people were probably employed by the Hearst newspaper chain. In his first paragraph Russell mentions "the original utilitarians"; by this description he is referring, of course, to Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), James Mill (1773-1836) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Bentham was the first to introduce the term, "utilitarian", which he used to describe a normative ethics in which the rightness or wrongness of an act was determined by the goodness or badness of its consequences. He advocated it initially as a guide for legislators who wished to reform the legal system; in that context it became the principle that in enacting legislation one ought to aim at producing the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Utilitarianism takes different forms depending upon the way in which the terms used to express its central doctrine are made more precise. The two Mills generally followed Bentham, but not slavishly, so their positions, especially that of John Stuart, differ in some important respects from his. (See the Annotation for one important difference.) For the general public, however, which tends to gloss over nice distinctions, they were all lumped together as advocates of "utility'', which is the principal point of Russell's first paragraph. The typescript carbon (RAl 220.014660) has been selected as copy-text. The results of collating it with the various printed versions are reported in the Textual Notes. Paper 53, "Individualist Ethics'', was published in the New Thrk American, 6 Sept. 1933, p. 15, under the title "Individualistic Ethics". It also appeared with the same title in three other newspapers on the same day: the Chicago Herald and Examiner, p. n; the Los Angeles Examiner, Sect. 1, p. n, and the San Fran-

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cisco Examiner, p. II. Since it was written for the Hearst papers, it is likely that it was also published in some other newspapers. The manuscript (RAr 220.015340), which is in the Russell Archives, bears the title used here; it has been selected as copy-text and has been collated with the printed versions; the results are reported in the Textual Notes. Paper 54, "Respect for Law", was published in the New York American, 28 Dec. r 933, p. I 5, under the title "The Essence of Law", the only time it appeared with that title. Although written for the Hearst newspapers, no other Hearst paper is known to have published it. In 1958 the manuscript was found in the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley by Roy H. Miller, then the editor of the San Francisco Review. When he wrote Russell about it, Russell replied that he did not remember writing it and did not think it had been published. "It makes the impression of being a fragment but I cannot remember whether I ever wrote the continuation which it obviously calls for. As regards date: I am pretty certain that it was written during the year when I was at UCLA, viz. 1939-40". Miller reprinted it in the San Francisco Review, I, no. r (Winter 1958): 63, 65, with an additional two sentences. This extended paper has been reprinted three times: in Best Articles and Stories, 3, no. 8 (Oct. 1959): 53; in Reading, Writing and Rewriting, edited by William T. Moynihan, et al.; and in Response in Reading, edited by Samuel Weingarten. A photocopy of the manuscript (RAr 220.017290) is the copy-text; it has been collated with the printed versions and the results are reported in the Textual Notes. Paper 55, "Competitive Ethics", was published in the New York American, 19 March 1934, p. 15, under the title "Pioneer Ethics: It's Wrong to Emphasize Competition in Schools". It also appeared with the same title in three other newspapers on the same day: the Chicago Herald and Examiner, p. 13; the Los Angeles Examiner, Sect. r, p. 17, and the San Francisco Examiner, p. 13; it may have been published in other Hearst newspapers around this time, since all of them had the right to print it. The July 1934 issue of The Commentator reprinted it on p. 8. The manuscript (RAr 220.015140) is in the Russell Archives. Russell changed the title on it from "Boasting & Piety" to "Competitive Ethics", which is almost certainly the title under which he sent it to the Hearst newspapers. The manuscript has been selected as copy-text. The results of collating it with the various printed versions are reported in the Textual Notes.

52 On Utilitarianism [1933] ago all the up-to-date superior people were what was called utilitarians. The name was badly chosen, and people made endless fun of them. They were supposed to want everything to be useful, and to be quite indifferent to the mere pleasantness of things. It was said that they thought there was no use in a nightingale except that it could be roasted, or in a rose except that an expensive scent could be made from it. To this day when people speak of a utilitarian age, or a utilitarian point of view, they mean the habit of regarding things not as they are in themselves, but as a means to some ro end, generally money. The original utilitarians did not think quite in this way. They thought that the only thing worth having was happiness, and they judged those things to be useful which tend to produce happiness. They would have said that if there is more pleasure to be got from the nightingale's song than from the taste of the nightingale, the bird is more useful alive than dead. As far as their theories went, these men were no more utilitarian in the bad sense of the word than anybody else, but it is true that in their temperaments they were rather cold and rather prudent. They did not believe in acting upon impulse, but thought that one should weigh the consequences of every possible action with the utmost 20 care, and choose that act, the consequences of which would give the greatest balance of pleasure over pain in the world at large. I am afraid that if we all lived this way, life would become a little laborious. Consider the prudent man discussing with himself whether he should take his umbrella. He will look up what the weather reports say; he will examine the clouds; he will say to himself: "If I do not take my umbrella, I may get wet-this will be unpleasant and to the bad; on the other hand, I may get ill and die-this will be pleasant to my heirs and therefore to the good; if I do take my umbrella, the odds are that I shall lose it, which will be annoying to me, but against that as a benevolent man I must set 30 the pleasure which it will give to the finder, who may be in more need of an umbrella than I am. I must think also of the additional profit to the umbrella-makers, which will result from my buying a new umbrella." By this time he will probably have decided that the question is insoluble, and that the best thing to do is to stay at home. Utilitarianism, in the sense in which it is a reproach, namely, thinking of the uses of things rather than of their intrinsic qualities, must inevitably become commoner as civilization advances. One of the most distinctive things about civilization is the habit of forethought. Animals have no forethought; even those which seem to have-squirrels hoarding nuts, 40 for instance-are really acting from a direct instinct, and not from any prevision of consequences. Savages have some forethought, but not HUNDRED YEARS

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much. Civilized men have far more than savages, and a good deal more now than they had two hundred years ago. This means that the habit of thinking about consequences is continually increasing; it is inevitable that it should be so, and probably, on the whole, it is a good thing. But it certainly renders people less capable of the joy of life and of delight in the moment. There must come a point where the habit of dreading future misfortune causes more unhappiness than it prevents; when people can never enjoy anything for fear of what is coming next. Perhaps we are not far from that point now. As it is reached men begin to find life not worth living, and the only possible cure is the injection of a little recklessness.

53 Individualist Ethics [1933] OR THE LAST four hundred years, the history of the western world has been the history of a series of rebellions ..In ~e sixteenth century there was Luther and the Reformation; m the seventeenth, there were the Puritans, who abolished bishops and cut off the king's head; in the eighteenth, there were the American and French Revolutions, as well as Wesley's revolt in religion. In the nineteenth century there were revolutions everywhere; there was also the romantic 20 movement, which loved pirates, outlawed barons, and men driven to crime by lacerated hearts. As for the twentieth century, so far it has been nothing but one long convulsion. The effect of all these movements, no less religious than political, has been to over-emphasize the individual and his rights. Up to a point, this was a good thing. Public duty was formerly the duty of obedience to kings and ecclesiastics, but often the kings were oppressive and the ecclesiastics bigoted. In such circumstances, the individual did right to assert himself. Hampden refusing to pay ship money, and the people who threw the tea into Boston Harbour, were exhibiting a form of tem3o porary anarchy which was essential to the improvement of government, and could therefore, on a long view, be justified on grounds that were not individualistic. In the later stages of puritanism, however, and also in the later stages of democratic revolt, there was a tendency for self-assertion to go beyond what could be justified on public grounds. Christ had taught that there were two commandments, to love God and to love our neighbour, but the second was often forgotten. It was considered more important to observe the Sabbath and abstain from profane language than to be kind to wife and children or honest in business. Take such a case as John D. 4 o Rockefeller, Senior. I do not believe that he has ever, in the course of his

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long life, done anything that was forbidden in the Baptist Sunday School to which he went as a boy. He has been always strictly virtuous according to the standards which he had learnt in youth. That is why he was so genuinely surprised when nearly the whole American nation grew indignant over the ruthlessness of his methods with competitors. The duty of a Christian, as it had been presented to him, did not involve abstinence from political corruption or from unfair methods of ruining rivals: duty, as he conceived it, was only a matter between himself and his God, not also a matter between himself and the community. Democracy and the romantic movement, in their later phases, showed similar defects, with the appropriate differences. Many rebellious young people feel that to live freely is enough, and that it is not necessary also to live usefully. Under the impulse of nationalism, nations, both great and small, have come to feel that they owe no duty to other nations; and the same spirit easily spreads from nations to individuals. Hence has arisen an ethic which pays too little attention to the effects of our acts upon the community, and too much to the state of the individual soul. The Benthamites, who, at the height of the romantic movement, taught that the purpose of action should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, are thought dull by those who know of them, and are totally unknown to most people. On this matter, however, I hold that they were in the right, and that the world must recover something of their outlook before it can return to sanity.

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54 Respect for Law [1933] of the romantic movement, a process began about a hundred and fifty years ago, which has continued ever since-a process of re-valuing the traditional virtues, placing some higher in the scale than before, and others lower. The tendency has been to exalt impulse at the expense of deliberation. The virtues that spring from the heart have come to be thought superior to those that are based upon reflection: a generous man is preferred to a man who is punctual in paying his debts. Per contra, deliberate sins are thought worse than impulsive sins: a hypocrite is more harshly condemned than a murderer. The upshot is that we tend to estimate virtues, not by their capacity for promoting human happiness, but by their power of inspiring in us a personal liking for their possessors; and we are apt not to include, among the qualities for which we like people, a habit of reflecting before making an important decision. The men who started this movement were, in the main, gentle sentimentalists who imagined that, when the fetters of custom and law were

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removed, the heart would be free to display its natural goodness. Human nature, they thought, is good, but institutions have corrupted it; remove the institutions, and we shall all become angels. Unfortunately the matter is not so simple as they thought. Men who follow their impulses establish governments based on pogroms, clamour for war with foreign countries and murder pacifists and negroes. Human nature unrestrained by law is' violent and cruel. In the London Zoo, the male baboons fought over the females until all the females were torn to pieces; human beings, left to ungoverned impulse, would be no better. In ages that have had recent experience of anarchy, this has been obvious. All the great writers of the middle ages were passionate in their admiration of law; it was the Thirty Years' War that led Grotius to become the first advocate of international law. Law, respected and inflexibly enforced, is in the long run the only alternative to violent and predatory anarchy; and it is just as necessary to realize this now as it was in the times of Dante and Grotius. What is the essence of law? On the one hand, it takes away from private citizens the right of revenge, which it confers upon the community. If a man steals your money, you must not steal it back, or thrash him, or shoot him; you must establish the facts before a neutral tribunal, which inflicts upon him such punishment as has seemed just to the disinterested legislator. On the other hand, when two men have a dispute, the law provides a machinery for settling it, again on principles laid down in advance by neutrals. The advantages of law are many. It diminishes the amount of private violence, and settles disagreements in a manner more nearly just than that which would result if the disputants fought it out by private war. It makes it possible for men to work without being perpetually on the watch against bandits. When a crime has been committed, it provides a skilled machine for discovering the criminal. Without law, the existence of civilized communities is impossible. In international affairs there is as yet no effective law, for lack of an international police force capable of overpowering national armies, and it is daily becoming more evident that this defect must be remedied if civilization is to survive. Within single nations, there is a dangerous tendency to think that moral indignation excuses the extra-legal punishment of criminals. In Germany, an era of private murder (on the loftiest grounds) preceded and followed the victory of the Nazis. In fact, nine tenths of what appeared as just indignation was sheer lust for cruelty; and this is equally true in other countries where mobs rob the law of its functions. In any civilized community, toleration of mob rule is a first step towards barbarism.

55 Competitive Ethics [1934] when the social order was a stable hierarchy, it was considered ~ad manners boast: if you were poor, it was impertinent, and 1f you were nch, you should let facts speak for themselves. The coming of democracy without economic equality altered all this. One of the easiest ways to become rich was to pretend to be rich already. Another was to pretend to be virtuous. And as competition was regarded as the spur to all social progress, a competitive spirit was inculcated in the young. For a whole generation, American schoolboys were taught to recite:

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Oh where's the town, go far and near, That does not find a rival here, Oh where's the boy but three feet high Who's made improvement more than I? These thoughts inspire my youthful mind To be the greatest of mankind; Great, not like Caesar, stained with blood; But, like Washington, great in good. The ethic which inspired these lines was evidently suited to the age, for most of the men who had real power in America in the latter half of the nineteenth century had been "good" boys, Sunday-school pets, models of piety and virtue. But the ethic to which these men conformed was somewhat peculiar. To begin with, the lines just quoted inculcate a reckless disregard for truth. The boys who learnt to repeat them were instructed to boast that their town was the best in the world, that they themselves had made more rapid progress than all other boys, and that, in due course, they would become "the greatest of mankind". It is obvious that these boasts were severally untrue except, respectively, in the case of one town in the whole country and one boy out of the whole population. Hence arose pragmatism, the doctrine that truth is what it pays to assert, with the corollary that truth can be created by propaganda and the criminal law. From this it is only a step to a persecuting dictatorship. Another peculiarity-this time as old as Protestantism-was that virtue was conceived as something individual, not social. The virtue of a schoolboy in the eyes of the teacher consisted in learning his lessons better than other boys; it did not consist in any form of cooperation. This class-room competition was regarded as the key to subsequent virtue, which consisted of getting ahead of other people. It is true that they were taught to be "not like Caesar, stained with blood", but, in fact,

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on the road to success they killed more people than Caesar killed in all his wars. Take, for example, preventible accidents to employees on railways. Annually, one trainman in twelve is injured and one in 310 is killed. The great, high-souled, pious capitalists who controlled the railways did everything in their power to prevent compensation to injured men or to the widows and children of men who had been killed, and at the same time they obstructed all proposals to make the occupations of their employees less dangerous. And as their millions piled up, they continued to feel: "Where's the boy who's made improvement more than I?" But the improvement was in their own fortunes, not in human happiness. Competition, as an ideal, had its part to play in the pioneer days of both industrialism and western agriculture. But its day is past, and a new type of man is needed. The problem of producing goods in sufficient quantities to make general material well-being technically possible was solved by the men of the competitive era. The problem that remains is one of distribution, not of production; it can be solved only by economic justice, not by economic war. For this problem, the mentality of the competitive era is unfitted, since it is only to be solved by co-operation.

56

The Philosophy of Communism [1934]

Tars

PAPER, WHICH exists only in typescript, is printed here for the first time. A large portion of it, as the Textual Notes reveal, appears in Freedom and Organization, 1814-1914 (1934), and it seems likely that Russell prepared this version to read to some group during the time he was working on that book. Despite extended searches by Russell's bibliographers no printed version of it has been

found. The typescript (RAr 220.013830) is the copy-text. It has been collated with the book version; the results are reported in the Textual Notes.

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the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics differs from those of other countries, not only in its economics, but also in the fact that it has a complete official metaphysic. The metaphysical doctrine taught in Russia is called by its adherents "dialectical materialism", and is due, as everyone knows, to Marx and Engels. In what follows I do not propose to discuss the economic doctrines of Communism, but only its philosophy. Let us, in the first place, endeavour to be clear as to what the theory of dialectical materialism is. It is a theory which has various elements. Metaphysically it is materialistic; in method it adopts the form of dialectic suggested by Hegel, but differing from his in many important respects. It takes over from Hegel an outlook which is evolutionary, and in which the stages in evolution can be characterized in clear logical terms. These changes are of the nature of development, not so much in an ethical as in a logical sense-that is to say, they proceed according to a plan which a man of sufficient intellect could, theoretically, foretell, and which Marx himself professes to have foretold, in its main outlines, up to the moment of the universal establishment of communism. The materialism of its metaphysics is translated, where human affairs are concerned, into the doctrine that the prime cause of all social phenomena is the method of production and exchange prevailing at any given period. The clearest statements of the theory are to be found in Engels, in his Anti-Diihring, of which the relevant parts have appeared in England under the title: Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. A few extracts will help to provide us with our text:

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It was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange-in a word, of the economic conditions of their· time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period. The discovery of this principle, according to Marx and Engels, showed that the coming of socialism was inevitable.

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From that time f01ward Socialism was no longer an accidental discovery of this or that ingenious brain, but the necessary outcome of the struggle between two historically developed classes-the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Its task was no

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longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict. But the Socialism of earlier days was as incompatible with this materialistic conception as the conception of Nature of the French materialists was with dialectics and modern natural science. The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitation of the working-class, inevitable under Capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose.

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The same theory which is called Dialectical Materialism, is also called the Materialist Conception of History. Engels says: The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders, is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in man's better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place, with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light, must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented by deduction from fundamental principles, but are to be discovered in the stubborn facts of the existing system of production.

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The conflicts which lead to political upheavals are not primarily mental conflicts in the opinions and passions of human beings.

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This conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working-class. These quotations perhaps suffice to show what the theory is. A number of questions arise as soon as it is examined critically. Before going on to economics one is inclined to ask, first, whether materialism is true in philosophy, and second, whether the elements of Hegelian dialectic which are embedded in the Marxist theory of development can be justified apart from a full-fledged Hegelianism. Then comes the further question whether these metaphysical doctrines have any relevance to the historical thesis as regards economic development, and last of all comes the examination of this historical thesis itself. For my part, to state in advance what I shall be trying to prove, I hold (1) that materialism may be true, though it cannot be known to be so; (2) that the elements of dialectic which Marx took over from Hegel made him regard history as a more rational process than it has in fact been, convincing him that all changes must be in some sense progressive, and giving him a feeling of certainty in regard to the future, for which there is no scientific warrant; (3) that the whole of his theory of economic development may perfectly well be true if his metaphysic is false, and false if his metaphysic is true, and that but for the influence of Hegel it would never have occurred to him that a matter so purely empirical could depend upon abstract metaphysics; (4) with regard to the economic interpretation of history, it seems to me very largely true, and a most important contribution to sociology; I cannot, however, regard it as wholly true, or feel any confidence that all great historical changes can be viewed as developments. Let us take these points one by one. (1) Materialism. The best statement of the Marxist view is contained in Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. This is a work directed, mainly, against the philosophy of Mach and Avenarius, which is, in effect, the same as that of most modern physicists. Lenin begins by proving, what is perfectly true, that these doctrines are revivals of those of Berkeley and Hume, but he does not advance any philosophic arguments against Berkeley or Hume; such arguments as he offers are political, to the effect

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that their philosophies are not useful to the proletariat in the class war. This may or may not be the case, but it does not seem to have much bearing upon the question of the nature of matter. "Matter", says Lenin, "is that which, acting upon our sense organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective reality, given to us in sensation." I do not wish to waste time on purely philosophical questions, but the view that objective reality is given to us in sensation is one which can hardly survive the study of physics and physiology. The intermediate process between the external object and sensation (assuming that there are external objects) is a very long one, and it cannot be expected that the sensation will resemble the external object except at best in certain very abstract respects. There is also a further point involved in materialism, namely, that the external object which causes sensation must be supposed to be non-mental. For my part, I see no reason to suppose that it is mental, but I also see no reason to suppose that it is non-mental. Materialism and mentalism alike profess to have more knowledge as to the causes of sensations than is warranted by correct scientific procedure. I will not raise the question whether sensations have causes at all, since this would be carrying agnosticism too far for practical purposes; I will merely remark that materialism derives its plausibility from na'ive realism, i.e. from the supposition that chairs and tables as external objects are very like what they appear to be in sensation, a view which physics and physiology themselves have made untenable. I said a moment ago that Lenin advances no philosophical arguments against Hume, but only says, in effect, that scepticism is not politically useful to the proletariat. Some communists speak as though there were no truth apart from Party politics, in which case Lenin's argument would be all that is required. Lenin, however, does not take this view. He is a believer in Absolute Truth in the old-fashioned sense. He says: "The denial of objective truth by Bogdanov is agnosticism and subjectivism. The absurdity of this denial is evident when we consider the example of the scientific-historical truth quoted above. Natural science does not leave any room for doubt about the truth of its assertion that the earth existed before the appearance of man." And again: From the standpoint of modern materialism, or Marxism, the relative limits of our approximation to the cognition of the objective, absolute truth are historically conditioned; but the existence of this truth is unconditioned, as well as the fact that we are continually approaching it. The general outlines of a picture are historically conditioned, but it is unconditionally true that this picture reflects an objectively existing model. Historically conditioned are the circumstances under which we made progress in

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our knowledge of the essence of things. For example, the discovery of alizarine in coal tar was historically conditioned, or the discovery of the electronic structure of the atom was historically conditioned; but it is unconditionally true that every such discovery is a step forward to absolute objective knowledge. In a word, every ideology is historically conditioned, but it is unconditionally true that to every scientific theory (as distinct from religion), there corresponds an objective truth, something absolutely so in nature. IO

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He also (page 296n) ridicules pragmatism, which, as he says, recognizes practice as the only criterion of truth. It is not therefore open to Lenin to argue that materialism must be true because it helps to make converts to communism, even supposing that this highly disputable proposition could be established. Per contra, I think Lenin is right in saying that modern physics does not disprove materialism. Since his time, and largely as a reaction against his success, respectable physicists have moved further and further from materialism, and it is naturally supposed, by themselves and by the general public, that it is physics which has caused this movement. I do not think myself that any substantially new argument has emerged since the time of Berkeley, and on this point I find myself in agreement with Lenin. (2) Dialectic in History. The Hegelian dialectic was a full-blooded affair. If you started with any partial concept and meditated on it, it would presently turn into its opposite; it and its opposite would combine into a synthesis, which would, in turn, become the starting point of a similar movement, and so on until you reached the Absolute Idea, on which you could reflect as long as you liked without discovering any new contradictions. The historical development of the world in time was merely an objectification of this process of thought. This view appeared possible to Hegel, because for him mind was the ultimate reality; for Marx, on the contrary, matter is the ultimate reality. Nevertheless he continues to think that the world develops according to a logical formula. In one of the quotations from Engels which I gave earlier, he says: "The means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light, must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves." This "must" betrays a relic of the Hegelian belief that logic rules the world. Why should the outcome of a conflict in politics always be the establishment of some more developed system? This has not, in fact, been the case in innumerable instances. The barbarian invasion of Rome did not give rise to more developed economic forms, not did the expulsion of the Moors from Spain,

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the destruction of the Albigenses in the South of France. Before the of Homer the Mycenaean civilization had been destroyed, and it urne rnany centuries before a developed civilization again emerged in was . 1 Greece. The examples of decay and retrogress10n are at east as numus and as important in history as the examples of development. The ero osite view, which . appears m . the works of Marx an d Engel s, 'is no thopp h .. . g but nineteent -century optimism. tn This is a matter of practical as well (as) theoretical importance. Comunists always assume that conflicts between communism and capital~111 while they may for a time result in partial victories for capitalism, is u~t in the end lead to the establishment of communism. They do not 1:visage another possible result, to my mind quite as probable, namely, : return to barbarism. We all know that modern war is a somewhat serious matter, and that in the next world war it is probable that large populations will be virtually exterminated by poisoned gases and bacteria. Can it be seriously supposed that after a war in which the great centres of population and most important industrial plant had been wiped out, the remaining population would be in a mood to establish scientific communism? Is it not practically certain that the survivors would be in a mood of gibbering and superstitious brutality, fighting all against all for the last turnip or the last mangel-wurzel? Marx used to do his work in the British Museum, but the British Government has placed a tank just outside the museum, presumably to teach the intellectuals their place. Communism is a highly intellectual, highly civilized doctrine, which can, it is true, be established, as it was in Russia, after a slight preliminary skirmish, such as that of 1914-18, but hardly after a really serious war. I am afraid the dogmatic optimism of the communist doctrine must be regarded as a relic of Victorianism. There is another curious point about the communist interpretation of the dialectic. Hegel, as everyone knows, concluded his dialectical account of history with the Prussian State which, according to him, was the perfect embodiment of the Absolute Idea. Marx, who had no affection for the Prussian State, regarded this as a lame and impotent conclusion. He said that the dialectic should be essentially revolutionary, and seemed to suggest that it could not reach any final static resting-place. Nevertheless we hear nothing about the further revolutions that are to happen after the establishment of communism. In the last paragraph of La Misere de la Philosophie he says: "It is only in an order of things in which there will no longer be classes or class-antagonism that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions." What these social evolutions are to be, or how they are to be brought about without the motive power of class conflict, Marx does not say. Indeed, it is hard to see how, on his theory, any further evolution would be possible. Except from the point of view of present-

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day politics, Marx's dialectic is no more revolutionary than that of Hegel, Moreover, since all human development has, according to Marx, been governed by conflicts of classes, and since under communism there is to be only one class, it follows that there can be no further development and that mankind must go on for ever and ever in a state of Byzantin~ immobility. This does not seem plausible, and it suggests that there must be other possible causes of political events besides those of which Marx: has taken account. (3) Irrelevance of Metaphysics. The belief that metaphysics has any IO bearing upon practical affairs is, to my mind, a proof of logical incapacity. One finds physicists with all kinds of opinions: some follow Hume some Berkeley, some are conventional Christians, some are materialists' some are sensationalists, some even are solipsists. This makes no differ-' ence whatever to their physics. They do not take different views as to when eclipses will occur, or what are the conditions of the stability of a bridge. That is because, in physics, there is some genuine knowledge, and whatever metaphysical beliefs a physicist may hold must adapt themselves to this knowledge. In so far as there is any genuine knowledge in the social sciences, the same thing is true. Whenever metaphysics is really 20 useful in reaching a conclusion, that is because the conclusion cannot be reached by scientific means, i.e. because there is no good reason to suppose it true. What can be known, can be known without metaphysics, and whatever needs metaphysics for its proof cannot be proved. In actual fact Marx advances in his books much detailed historical argument, in the main perfectly sound, but none of this in any way depends upon materialism. Take, for example, the fact that free competition tends to end in monopoly. This is an empirical fact, the evidence for which is equally patent whatever one's metaphysic may happen to be. Marx's metaphysic comes in in two ways: on the one hand, by making things 30 more cut and dried and precise than they are in real life; on the other hand, in giving him a certainty about the future which goes beyond what a scientific attitude would warrant. But in so far as his doctrines of historical development can be shown to be true, his metaphysic is irrelevant. The question whether communism is going to become universal, is quite independent of metaphysics. It may be that a metaphysic is helpful in the fight: early Mohammedan conquests were much facilitated by the belief that the faithful who died in battle went straight to Paradise, and similarly the efforts of communists may be stimulated by the belief that there is a God called Dialectical Materialism Who is fighting on their 40 side, and will, in His own good time, give them the victory. On the other hand, there are many people to whom it is repugnant to have to profess belief in propositions for which they see no evidence, and the loss of such people must be reckoned as a disadvantage of the communist meta-

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h sic. I could not, for my part, share in a government which persecuted p ~pie for proclaiming opinions which I believe to be true, and this alone pe uld make me a rebel in a communist State which demanded the ap;:arance of acquiescence in a dogmatic religion. And this feeling is not uncommon. ( ) Economic Causation in History. In the main I agree with Marx, th~t 4 conomic causes are at the bottom of most of the great movements m e· tory, not only political movements, but also those in such departments hlS · · as religion, art, and morals. There are, however, important qua J'fi 1 cations be made. In the first place, Marx does not allow nearly enough for the IO to E . d. time-lag. Christianity, for example, arose in the Roman mp1re, an m many respects bears the stamp of the social system of that time, but Christianity has survived through many changes. Marx treats it as moribund. "When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its deathbattle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie." (Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and F. Engels). Nevertheless, in his own country it remains the most powerful obstacle to the realization of his own ideas, and throughout the Western world its political influence is still enor- 20 mous. I think it may be conceded that new doctrines that have any success must bear some relation to the economic circumstances of their age, but old doctrines can persist for many centuries without any such relation of any vital kind. Another point where I think Marx's theory of history is too definite is that he does not allow for the fact that a small force may tip the balance when two great forces are in approximate equilibrium. Admitting that the great forces are generated by economic causes, it often depends upon quite trivial and fortuitous events which of the great forces gets the victory. In reading Trotsky's account of the Russian Revolution, it is diffi- 30 cult to believe that Lenin made no difference, but it was touch and go whether the German Government allowed him to get to Russia. If the minister concerned had happened to be suffering from dyspepsia on a certain morning, he might have said "No" when in fact he said "Yes", and I do not think it can be rationally maintained that without Lenin the Russian Revolution would have achieved what it did. To take another instance: if the Prussians had happened to have a good General at the battle of Valmy, they might have wiped out the French Revolution. To take an even more fantastic example, it may be maintained quite plausibly that if Henry VIII had not fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the 40 United States would not now exist. For it was owing to this event that England broke with the Papacy, and therefore did not acknowledge the Pope's gift of the Americas to Spain and Portugal. If England had

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remained Catholic, it is probable that what is now the United States would have been part of Spanish America. This brings me to another point in which Marx's philosophy of history was faulty. He regards economic conflicts as always conflicts between classes, whereas the majority of them have been between races or nations. English industrialism of the early nineteenth century was internationalist, because it expected to retain its monopoly of industry. It seemed to Marx, as it did to Cobden, that the world was going to be increasingly cosmopolitan. Bismarck, however, gave a different turn to rn events, and industrialism ever since has grown more and more national. Even the conflict between capitalism and communism takes increasingly the form of a conflict between nations. It is true, of course, that the conflicts between nations are very largely economic, but the grouping of the world by nations is itself determined by causes which are in the main not economic. Another set of causes which have had considerable importance in history are those which may be called medical. The Black Death, for example, was an event of whose importance Marx was well aware, but the causes of the Black Death were only in part economic. Undoubtedly it 20 would not have occurred among populations at a higher economic level, but Europe had been quite as poor for many centuries as it was in I348, so that the proximate cause of the epidemic cannot have been poverty. Take again such a matter as the prevalence of malaria and yellow fever in the tropics, and the fact that these diseases have now become preventable. This is a matter which has very important economic effects, though not itself of an economic nature. Much the most important correction in Marx's theory is as to the causes of changes in methods of production. Methods of production appear in Marx as prime causes, and the reasons for which they change 30 from time to time are left completely unexplained. As a matter of fact, methods of production change, in the main, owing to intellectual causes, owing, that is to say, to scientific discoveries and inventions. Marx thinks that discoveries and inventions are made when the economic situation calls for them. This, however, is a quite unhistorical view. Why was there practically no experimental science from the time of Archimedes to the time of Leonardo? For six centuries after Archimedes the economic conditions were such as should have made scientific work easy. It was the growth of science after the Renaissance that led to modern industry. This intellectual causation of economic processes is not adequately recognized 40 by Marx. History can be viewed in many ways, and many general formulae can be invented which cover enough of the ground to seem adequate if the facts are carefully selected. I suggest, without undue solemnity, the fol-

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wing theory of the causation of the industrial revolution: industrialism due to modern science, modern science is due to Galileo, Galileo is ~ue to Copernicus, Copernicus is due to the Renaissance, the Renaisnce is due to the fall of Constantinople, the fall of Constantinople is ~ue to the migration of the Turks, the migration of the Turks is due to the dessication of Central Asia. Therefore the fundamental study in searching for historical causes is hydrography.

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THIS PAPER WAS published in The Political Quarterly, 6 (Jan. 1935): l-19 under the title "The Revolt Against Reason". On 25 October 1934 Russell delivered it as a lecture to the Fabian Society, and there is a report of it in Fabian News, 4S (Nov. 1934): 42; the report is introduced by this note: "On October 25th, the first address of the series 'Socialism, Democracy, Dictatorship' was delivered at Friends Hall, by Bertrand Russell, the subject being 'The Revolt Against Reason.' G. R. Blanco White took the Chair." The report itself is reprinted in Appendix v. This essay also did duty as a lecture on II November 1934 at Dartington Hall School, a private school to which his two older children, John and Kate, were sent at about this time. In America it appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, 155 (Feb. 1935): 222-32. Under the title used in this edition, it was chosen by Russell for inclusion in his book of essays, In Praise of Idleness (1935); it was reprinted in Let the People Think (1941), a book of his essays published in The Thinker's Library. Haldeman-Julius reprinted it in one of his many Russell pamphlets, W'hat Is the Soul? (1947). Finally, William A. Robson selected it for inclusion in The Political Quarterly in the Thirties (1971). The manuscript (RAl 220.016140), the carbon copy of the typescript (RA1 220.016140) which served as the printer's copy, Russell's notes (RA1 220.016150220.016190), and revised tear sheets are all in the Russell Archives. The manuscript serves as copy-text. It has been collated with the typescript, the tear sheets, and the printed versions in The Political Quarterly, The Atlantic Monthly, and In Praise of Idleness, the only printings in whose production Russell is likely to have been involved; the results of the collations are reported in the Textual Notes.

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HEN WE COMPARE our age with that of (say) George I, we are conscious of a profound change of intellectual temper, which has been followed by a corresponding change of the rone of politics. In a certain sense, the outlook of two hundred years ago maY be called "rational", and that which is most characteristic of our time may be called "anti-rational". But I want to use these words without implying a complete acceptance of the one temper or a complete rejection of the other. Moreover, it is important to remember that political events very frequently take their colour from the speculations of an earlier time: there is usually a considerable interval between the promul- ro gation of a theory and its practical efficacy. English politics in 1860 were dominated by the ideas expressed by Adam Smith in 1776; German politics today are a realization of theories set forth by Fichte in 1807; Russian politics since 1917 have embodied the doctrines of the Communist Manifesto, which dates from 1848. To understand the present age, therefore, it is necessary to go back to a considerably earlier time. A widespread political doctrine has, as a rule, two very different kinds of causes. On the one hand, there are intellectual antecedents: men who have advanced theories which have grown, by development or reaction, from previous theories. On the other hand, there are economic and pol- 20 itical circumstances which predispose people to accept views that minister to certain moods. These alone do not give a complete explanation when, as too often happens, intellectual antecedents are neglected. In the particular case that concerns us, various sections of the post-war world have had certain grounds of discontent which have made them sympathetic to a certain general philosophy invented at a much earlier date. I propose first to consider this philosophy, and then to touch on the reasons for its present popularity. The revolt against reason began as a revolt against reasoning. In the first half of the eighteenth century, while Newton ruled men's minds, there 30 was a widespread belief that the road to knowledge consisted in the discovery of simple general laws, from which conclusions could be drawn by deductive ratiocination. Many people forgot that Newton's law of gravitation was based upon a century of careful observation, and imagined that general laws could be discovered by the light of nature. There was natural religion, natural law, natural morality, and so on. These subjects were supposed to consist of demonstrative inferences from selfevident axioms, after the style of Euclid. The political outcome of this point of view was the doctrine of the Rights of Man, as preached during the American and French Revolutions. 40 But at the very moment when the Temple of Reason seemed to be nearing completion, a mine was laid by which, in the end, the whole edifice was blown sky-high. The man who laid the mine was David

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Hume. His Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1739, has as its subtitle "an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects". This represents the whole of his intention, but only half of his performance. His intention was to substitute observation anct induction for deduction from nominally self-evident axioms. In his ternper of mind he was a complete rationalist, though of the Baconian rather than the Aristotelian variety. But his almost unexampled combination of acuteness with intellectual honesty led him to certain devastating conclusions: that induction is a habit without logical justification, and that IO the belief in causation is little better than a superstition. It followed that science, along with theology, should be relegated to the limbo of delusive hopes and irrational convictions. In Hume, rationalism and scepticism existed peacefully side by side. Scepticism was for the study only, and was to be forgotten in the business of practical life. Moreover, practical life was to be governed, as far as possible, by those very methods of science which his scepticisrn impugned. Such a compromise was only possible for a man who was in equal parts a philosopher and a man of the world; there is also a flavour of aristocratic Toryism in the reservation of an esoteric unbelief for the 20 initiated. The world at large refused to accept Hume's doctrines in their entirety. His followers rejected his scepticism, while his German opponents emphasized it as the inevitable outcome of a merely scientific and rational outlook. Thus as the result of his teaching British philosophy became superficial, while German philosophy became anti-rational-in each case from fear of an unbearable agnosticism. European thought has never recovered its previous whole-heartedness; among all the successors of Hume, sanity has meant superficiality, and profundity has meant some degree of madness. In the most recent discussions of the philosophy appropriate to quantum physics, the old debates raised by Hume are still 30 proceeding. The philosophy which has been distinctive of Germany begins with Kant, and begins as a reaction against Hume. Kant was determined to believe in causality, God, immortality, the moral law, and so on, but perceived that Hume's philosophy made all this difficult. He therefore invented a distinction between "pure" reason and "practical" reason. "Pure" reason was concerned with what could be proved, which was not much; "practical" reason was concerned with what was necessary for virtue, which was a great deal. It is of course obvious that "pure" reason was simply reason, while "practical" reason was prejudice. Thus Kant 40 brought back into philosophy the appeal to something recognized as outside the sphere of theoretical rationality, which had been banished from the schools ever since the rise of scholasticism.

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More important even than Kant, from our point of view, was his imediate successor Fichte, who, passing over from philosophy to politics, ~augurated the movement which has developed into National Socialism. ;ut before speaking of him there is more to be said about the conception of "reason". In view of the failure to find an answer to Hume, "reason" can no longer be regarded as something absolute, any departure from which is to be condemned on theoretical grounds. Nevertheless, there is obviously a difference, and an important one, between the frame of mind of (say) the philosophical radicals and such people as the early Mohammedan IO fanatics. If we call the former temper of mind reasonable and the latter unreasonable, it is clear that there has been a growth of unreason in recent times. I think that what we mean in practice by reason can be defined by three characteristics. In the first place, it relies upon persuasion rather than force; in the second place, it seeks to persuade by means of arguments which the man who uses them believes to be completely valid; and in the third place, in forming opinions, it uses observation and induction as much as possible and intuition as little as possible. The first of these rules out the Inquisition; the second rules out such methods as those of 20 British war propaganda, which Hitler praises on the ground that propaganda "must sink its mental elevation deeper in proportion to the numbers of the mass whom it has to grip"; the third forbids the use of such a major premiss as that of President Andrew Jackson apropos of the Mississippi, "the God of the Universe intended this great valley to belong to one nation", which was self-evident to him and his hearers, but not easily demonstrated to one who questioned it. Reliance upon reason, as thus defined, assumes a certain community of interest and outlook between oneself and one's audience. It is true that Mrs. Bond tried it on her ducks, when she cried "come and be 30 killed, for you must be stuffed and my customers filled"; but in general the appeal to reason is thought ineffective with those whom we mean to devour. Those who believe in eating meat do not attempt to find arguments which would seem valid to a sheep, and Nietzsche does not attempt to persuade the mass of the population, whom he calls "the bungled and botched". Nor does Marx try to enlist the support of capitalists. As these instances show, the appeal to reason is easier when power is unquestioningly confined to an oligarchy. In eighteenth-century England, only the opinions of aristocrats and their friends were important, and these could always be presented in a rational form to other aristocrats. As 40 the political constituency grows larger and more heterogeneous, the appeal to reason becomes more difficult, since there are fewer univers-

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ally conceded assumptions from which argument can start. When such assumptions cannot be found, men are driven to rely upon their own intuitions; and since the intuitions of different groups differ, reliance upon them leads to strife and power politics. Revolts against reason, in this sense, are a recurrent phenomenon in history. Early Buddhism was reasonable; its later forms, and the Hinduism which replaced it in India, were not. In ancient Greece, the Orphics were in revolt against Homeric rationality. From Socrates to Marcus Aurelius, the prominent men in the ancient world were, in the main rational; after Marcus Aurelius, even the conservative Neo-Platonists' were filled with superstition. Except in the Mohammedan world, the claims of reason remained in abeyance until the eleventh century; after that, through scholasticism, the renaissance, and science, they became increasingly dominant. A reaction set in with Rousseau and Wesley, but was held in check by the triumphs of science and machinery in the nineteenth century. The belief in reason reached its maximum in the sixties· since then, it has gradually diminished, and it is still diminishing. Ration-' alism and anti-rationalism have existed side by side since the beginning of Greek civilization, and each, when it has seemed likely to become completely dominant, has always led, by reaction, to a new outburst of its opposite. The modern revolt against reason differs in an important respect from most of its predecessors. From the Orphics onwards, the usual aim in the past was salvation-a complex concept involving both goodness and happiness, and achieved, as a rule, by some difficult renunciation. The irrationalists of our time aim, not at salvation, but at power. They thus develop an ethic which is opposed to that of Christianity and of Buddhism; and through their lust of dominion they are of necessity involved in politics. Their genealogy among writers is Fichte, Carlyle, Mazzini, Nietzsche-with supporters such as Treitschke, Rudyard Kipling, Houston Chamberlain, and Bergson. As opposed to this movement, Benthamites and Socialists may be viewed as two wings of one party: both are cosmopolitan, both are democratic, both appeal to economic self-interest. Their differences inter se are as to means, not ends, whereas the new movement, which culminates (as yet) in Hitler, differs from both as to ends, and differs even from the whole tradition of Christian civilization. The end which statesmen should pursue, as conceived by almost all the irrationalists out of whom Fascism has grown, is most clearly stated by Nietzsche. In conscious opposition to Christianity as well as to the utilitarians, he rejects Bentham's doctrines as regards both happiness and the "greatest number". "Mankind", he says, "is much more of a means

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than an end ... mankind is merely the experimental material" (Will to power, n, 18I). The end he proposes is the greatness of exceptional individuals: The object is to attain that enormous energy of greatness which can model the man of the future by means of discipline and also by means of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which can yet avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created thereby, the like of which has never been seen before. (ib., 368) This conception of the end, it should be observed, cannot be regarded as in itself contrary to reason, since questions of ends are not amenable to rational argument. We may dislike it-I do myself-but we cannot disprove it any more than Nietzsche can prove it. There is, none the less, a natural connection with irrationality, since reason demands impartiality, whereas the cult of the great man always has as its minor premiss the assertion: "I am a great man." The founders of the school of thought out of which Fascism has grown all have certain common characteristics. They seek the good in will rather than in feeling or cognition; they value power more than happiness; they prefer force to argument, war to peace, aristocracy to democracy, propaganda to scientific impartiality. They advocate a Spartan form of austerity, as opposed to the Christian form; that is to say, they view austerity as a means of obtaining mastery over others, not as a self-discipline which helps to produce virtue, and happiness only in the next world. The later ones among them are imbued with popular Darwinism, and regard the struggle for existence as the source of a higher species; but it is to be rather a struggle between races than one between individuals, such as the apostles of free competition advocated. Pleasure and knowledge, conceived as ends, appear to them unduly passive. For pleasure they substitute glory, and, for knowledge, the pragmatic assertion that what they desire is true. In Fichte, Carlyle, and Mazzini, these doctrines are still enveloped in a mantle of conventional moralistic cant; in Nietzsche they first step forth naked and unashamed. Fichte has received less than his due share of credit for inaugurating this great movement. He began as an abstract metaphysician, but showed even then a certain arbitrary and self-centred disposition. His whole philosophy develops out of the proposition "I am I", as to which he says: The Ego posits itself and it is in consequence of this bare positing by itself; it is both the agent and the result of the action, the

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active and that which is produced by the activity; I am expresses a deed (Thathandlung). The Ego is, because it has posited itself. ( Wirke, I, 96)

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The Ego, according to this theory, exists because it wills to exist. Presently it appears that the non-Ego also exists because the Ego so wills it· but a non-Ego so generated never becomes really external to the Eg~ which chooses to posit it. Louis XIV said "l'erat, c'est moi"; Fichte said "the universe is myself." As Heine remarked in comparing Kant and Robespierre, "in comparison with us Germans, you French are tame and moderate". Fichte, it is true, explains, after a while, that when he says "I" he means "God"; but the reader is not wholly reassured. When, as a result of the Battle of Jena, Fichte had to fly from Berlin, he began to think that he had been too vigorously positing the non-Ego in the shape of Napoleon. On his return in I807, he delivered his famous Addresses to the German Nation, in which, for the first time, the complete creed of nationalism was set out. These Addresses begin by explaining that the German is superior to all other moderns, because he alone has a pure language. (The Russians, Turks, and Chinese, not to mention the Eskimos and the Hottentots, also have pure languages, but they were not mentioned in Fichte's history books.) The purity of the German language makes the German alone capable of profundity; he concludes that "to have character and to be German undoubtedly mean the same". But if the German character is to be preserved from foreign corrupting influences, and if the German nation is to be capable of acting as a whole, there must be a new kind of education, which will "mould the Germans into a corporate body". The new education, he says, "must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of the will". He adds that will "is the very root of man". There is to be no external commerce, beyond what is absolutely unavoidable. There is to be universal military service: everybody is to be compelled to fight, not for material well-being, not for freedom, not in defence of the constitution, but under the impulsion of "the devouring flame of higher patriotism, which embraces the nation as the vesture of the eternal, for which the noble-minded man joyfully sacrifices himself, and the ignoble man, who only exists for the sake of the other, must likewise sacrifice himself". This doctrine, that the "noble" man is the purpose of humanity, and that the "ignoble" man has no claims on his own account, is of the essence of the modern attack on democracy. Christianity taught that every human being has an immortal soul, and that, in this respect, all men are equal; the "rights of man" was only a development of Christian

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doctrine. Utilitarianism, while it conceded no absolute "rights" to the ·ndividual, gave the same weight to one man's happiness as to another's; ~us it led to democracy just as much as did the doctrine of natural rights. But Fichte, like a sort of political Calvin, picked out certain men as the elect, and rejected all the rest as of no account. The difficulty, of course, is to know who are the elect. In a world in which Fichte's doctrine was universally accepted, every man would think that he was "noble", and would join some party of people sufficiently similar to himself to seem to share some of his nobility. These people might be his nation, as in Fichte's case, or his class, as in that of a proletarian communist, or his family, as with Napoleon. There is no objective criterion of "nobility" except success in war; therefore war is the necessary outcome of this creed. Carlyle's outlook on life was, in the main, derived from Fichte, who was the strongest single influence on his opinions. But Carlyle added something which has been characteristic of the school ever since: a kind of Socialism and solicitude for the proletariat which is really dislike of industrialism and of the nouveau riche. Carlyle did this so well that he deceived even Engels, whose book on the English working class in 1844 mentions him with the highest praise. In view of this, we can scarcely wonder that many people were taken in by the socialistic facade in National Socialism. Carlyle, in fact, still has his dupes. His "hero worship" sounds very exalted; we need, he says, not elected Parliaments, but "Hero-kings, and a whole world not unheroic" (Past and Present, page 44). To understand this, one must study its translation into fact. Carlyle, in Past and Present, holds up the twelfth-century Abbot Samson as a model; but whoever does not take that worthy on trust, but reads the Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond, will find that the Abbot was an unscrupulous ruffian, combining the vices of a tyrannous landlord with those of a pettifogging attorney. Carlyle's other heroes are at least equally objectionable. Cromwell's massacres in Ireland move him to the comment:

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But in Oliver's time, as I say, there was still belief in the Judgments of God; in Oliver's time, there was yet no distracted jargon of "abolishing Capital Punishments'', of Jean-Jacques Philanthropy, and universal rose-water in this world still so full of sin .... Only in late decadent generations ... can such indiscriminate mashing-up of Good and Evil into one universal patenttreacle ... take effect in our earth. Of most of his other heroes, such as Frederick the Great, Dr. Francia, and Governor Eyre, all that need be said is that their one common characteristic was a thirst for blood.

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Those who still think that Carlyle was in some sense more or less Liberal should read his chapter on Democracy in Past and Present. Most of it is occupied with praise of William the Conqueror, and with a description of the pleasant lives enjoyed by serfs in his day. Then comes a definition of liberty: "The true liberty of a man, you would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out the right path, and to walk thereon" (page 263). He passes on to the statement that democracy "means despair of finding any Heroes to govern you, and contented putting-up with the want of them". The chapter ends by stating, in eloquent prophetical language, that, when democracy shall have run its full course, the problem that will remain is "that of finding government by your Real-Superiors". Is there one word in all this to which Hitler would not subscribe? Mazzini was a milder man than Carlyle, from whom he disagreed as regards the cult of heroes. Not the individual great man, but the nation was the object of his adoration; and, while he placed Italy highest, he' allowed a .role to every European nation except the Irish. He believed, however, hke Carlyle, that duty should be placed above happiness, above even collective happiness. He thought that God revealed to each human conscience what was right, and that all that was necessary was that everybody should obey the moral law as felt in his own heart. He never realized that different people may genuinely differ as to what the moral law enjoins, or that what he was really demanding was that others should act according to his revelation. He put morals above democracy, saying: The simple vote of a majority does not constitute sovereignty, if it evidently contradicts the supreme moral precepts .... the will of the people is sacred, when it interprets and applies the moral law; null and impotent, when it dissociates itself from the law, and only represents caprice.

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This is also the opinion of Mussolini. Only one important element has since been added to the doctrines of this school, namely the pseudo-Darwinian belief in "race". (Fichte made German superiority a matter oflanguage, not of biological heredity.) Nietzsche, who, unlike his followers, is not a nationalist or an anti-semite, applies the doctrine only as between different individuals: he wishes the unfit to be prevented from breeding, and he hopes, by the methods of the dog-fancier, to produce a race of super-men, who shall have all power, and for whose benefit alone the rest of mankind shall exist. But subsequent writers with a similar outlook have tried to prove that all excellence has been connected with their own race. Irish professors write books to prove that Homer was an Irishman; French anthropologists give

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archaeological evidence that the Celts, not the Teutons, were the source of civilization in Northern Europe; Houston Chamberlain argues at length that Dante was a German and Christ was not a Jew. Emphasis upon race has been universal among Anglo-Indians, from whom imperialist England caught the infection through the medium of Rudyard :Kipling. But the anti-semitic element has never been prominent in England, although an Englishman, Houston Chamberlain, was mainly responsible for giving it a sham historical basis in Germany, where it had persisted ever since the middle ages. About race, if politics were not involved, it would be enough to say that nothing politically important is known. It may be taken as probable that there are genetic mental differences between races; but it is certain that we do not yet know what these differences are. In an adult man, the effects of environment mask those of heredity. Moreover, the racial differences among different Europeans are less definite than those between white, yellow and black men; there are no well-marked physical characteristics by which members of different modern European nations can be certainly known apart, since all have resulted from a mixture of different stocks. When it comes to mental superiority, every civilized nation can make out a plausible claim, which proves that all the claims are equally invalid. It is possible that the Jews are inferior to the Germans, but it is just as possible that the Germans are inferior to the Jews. The whole business of introducing pseudo-Darwinian jargon in such a question is utterly unscientific. Whatever we may come to know hereafter, we have not at present any good ground for wishing to encourage one race at the expense of another. The whole movement, from Fichte onwards, is a method of bolstering up self-esteem and lust for power by means of beliefs which have nothing in their favour except that they are flattering. Fichte needed a doctrine which would make him feel superior to Napoleon; Carlyle and Nietzsche had infirmities for which they sought compensation in the world of imagination; British imperialism of Rudyard Kipling's epoch was due to shame at having lost industrial supremacy; and the Hitlerite madness of our time is a mantle of myth in which the German ego keeps itself warm against the cold blasts of Versailles. No man thinks sanely when his selfesteem has suffered a mortal wound, and those who deliberately humiliate a nation have only themselves to thank if it becomes a nation of lunatics. This brings me to the reasons which have produced the wide acceptance of the irrational and even anti-rational doctrine that we have been considering. There are at most times all sorts of doctrines being preached by all sorts of prophets, but those which become popular must make some special appeal to the moods produced by the circumstances of the

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time. Now the characteristic doctrines of modern irrationalists, as we have seen, are: emphasis on will as opposed to thought and feeling; glorification of power; belief in intuitional "positing" of propositions as opposed to observational and inductive testing. This state of mind is the natural reaction of those who have the habit of controlling modern mechanisms such as aeroplanes, and also of those who have less power than formerly, but are unable to find any rational ground for the restoration of their former preponderance. Industrialism and the war, while giving the habit of mechanical power, caused a great shift of economic IO and political power, and therefore left large groups in the mood for pragmatic self-assertion. Hence the growth of Fascism. Comparing the world of 1920 with that of 1820, we find that there had been an increase of power on the part of: large industrialists, wageearners, women, heretics, and Jews. (By "heretics" I mean those whose religion was not that of the Government of their country.) Correlatively, there had been a loss of power on the part of: monarchs, aristocracies ecclesiastics, the lower middle classes, and males as opposed to females.' The large industrialists, though stronger than at any previous period, felt themselves insecure owing to the threat of Socialism, and more particu20 larly from fear of Moscow. The war interests-generals, admirals, aviators, and armament firms-were in the like case: strong at the moment, but menaced by a pestilential crew of Bolsheviks and pacifists. The sections already defeated-the kings and nobles, the small shopkeepers, the men who from temperament were opponents of religious toleration, and the men who regretted the days of masculine domination over women seemed to be definitely down and out; economic and cultural developments, it was thought, had left no place for them in the modern world. Naturally they were discontented, and collectively they were numerous. The Nietzschean philosophy was psychologically adapted to their mental 30 needs, and, very cleverly, the industrialists and militarists made use of it to weld the defeated sections into a party which should support a mediaevalist reaction in everything except industry and war. In regard to industry and war, there was to be everything modern in the way of technique, but not the sharing out of power and the effort after peace that made the Socialists dangerous to the existing magnates. Thus the irrational elements in the Nazi philosophy are due, politically speaking, to the need of enlisting the support of sections which have no longer any raison d'etre, while the comparatively sane elements are due to the industrialists and militarists. The former elements are "irrational" 40 because it is scarcely possible that the small shopkeepers, for example, should realize their hopes, and fantastic beliefs are their only refuge from despair; per contra, the hopes of industrialists and militarists might be realized by means of Fascism, but hardly in any other way. The fact that

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their hopes can only be achieved through the ruin of civilization does not rnake them irrational, but only Satanic. These men form intellectually the best, and morally the worst, element in the movement; the rest, dazzled by the vision of glory, heroism, and self-sacrifice, have become blind to their serious interests, and in a blaze of emotion have allowed themselves to be used for purposes not their own. This is the psychopathology ofNazidom. I have spoken of the industrialists and militarists who support Fascism as sane, but their sanity is only comparative. Thyssen believes that, by rneans of the Nazi movement, he can both kill Socialism and immensely IO increase his market. There seems, however, no more reason to think him right than there was to think that his predecessors were right in 1914. It is necessary for him to stir up German self-confidence and nationalist feeling to a dangerous degree, and unsuccessful war is the most probable outcome. Even great initial successes would not bring ultimate victory; now, as twenty years ago, the German Government forgets America. There is one very important element which is on the whole against the Nazis although it might have been expected to support reaction-I mean, organized religion. The philosophy of the movement which culminates in the Nazis is, in a sense, a logical development of Protestantism. 20 The morality of Fichte and Carlyle is Calvinistic, and Mazzini, who was in life-long opposition to Rome, had a thoroughly Lutheran belief in the infallibility of the individual conscience. Nietzsche believed passionately in the worth of the individual, and considered that the hero should not submit to authority; in this he was developing the Protestant spirit of revolt. It might have been expected that the Protestant Churches would welcome the Nazi movement, and to a certain extent they did so. But in all those elements which Protestantism shared with Catholicism, it found itself opposed by the new philosophy. Nietzsche is emphatically antiChristian, and Houston Chamberlain gives an impression that Christian- 30 ity was a degraded superstition which grew up among the mongrel cosmopolitans of the Levant. The rejection of humility, of love of one's neighbour, and of the rights of the meek, is contrary to Gospel teaching; and anti-semitism, when it is theoretical as well as practical, is not easily reconciled with a religion of Jewish origin. For these reasons, Nazidom and Christianity have difficulty in making friends, and it is not impossible that their antagonism may bring about the downfall of the Nazis. There is another reason why the modern cult of unreason, whether in Germany or elsewhere, is incompatible with any traditional form of Christianity. Inspired by Judaism, Christianity adopted the notion of 40 Truth, with the correlative virtue of Faith. The notion and the virtue survived in "honest doubt", as all the Christian virtues remained among Victorian free-thinkers. But gradually the influence of scepticism and

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advertising made it seem hopeless to discover truth, but very profitable to assert falsehood. Intellectual probity was thus destroyed. Hitler, explaining the Nazi programme, says:

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The national State will look upon science as a means for increasing national pride. Not only world-history, but also the history of civilization, must be taught from this point of view. An inventor should appear great, not merely as an inventor, but even more so as a fellow-countryman. Admiration of any great deed must be combined with pride because the fortunate doer of it is a member of our own nation. We must extract the greatest from the mass of great names in German history and place them before the youth in so impressive a fashion that they may become the pillars of an unshakable nationalist sentiment.

The conception of science as a pursuit of truth has so entirely disappeared from Hitler's mind that he does not even argue against it. As we know, the theory of relativity has come to be thought bad because it was invented by a Jew. The Inquisition rejected Galileo's doctrine because it considered it untrue; but Hitler accepts or rejects doctrines on political grounds, without bringing in the notion of truth or falsehood. Poor 20 William James, who invented this point of view, would be horrified at the use which is made of it; but when once the conception of objective truth is abandoned, it is clear that the question "what shall I believe?" is one to be settled, as I wrote in 1907, by "the appeal to force and the arbitrament of the big battalions", not by the methods of either theology or science. States whose policy is based upon the revolt against reason must therefore find themselves in conflict, not only with learning, but also with the Churches wherever any genuine Christianity survives. An important element in the causation of the revolt against reason is that many able and energetic men have no outlet for their love of power, 30 and therefore become subversive. Small States, formerly, gave more men political power, and small businesses gave more men economic power. Consider the huge population that sleeps in suburbs and works in great cities. Coming into London by train, one passes through great regions of small villas, inhabited by families which feel no solidarity with the working class; the man of the family has no part in local affairs, since he is absent all day submitting to the orders of his employers; his only outlet for initiative is the cultivation of his back garden at the week-end. Politically, he is envious of all that is done for the working classes, but, though he feels poor, snobbery prevents him from adopting the methods of 40 Socialism and trade unionism. His suburb may be as populous as many a famous city of antiquity, but its collective life is languid, and he has no

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·me to be interested in it. To such a man, if he has enough spirit for

tt discontent, a Fascist movement may well appear as a del'1verance.

The decay of reason in politics is a product of two factors: on the one hand, there are classes and types of individuals to whom the world as it is offers no scope, but who see no hope in Socialism because they are not wage-earners; on the other hand, there are able and powerful men whose ·nterests are opposed to those of the community at large, and who, there~ore, can best retain their influence by promoting various kinds of hysteria. Anti-Communism, fear of foreign armaments, and hatred of foreign competition, are the most important bogeys. I do not mean that no IO rational man could feel these sentiments; I mean that they are used in a way to preclude intelligent consideration of practical issues. The two things the world needs most are Socialism and peace, but both are contrary to the interest of the most powerful men of our time. It is not difficult to make the steps leading up to them appear contrary to the interests of large sections of the population, and the easiest way of doing this is to generate mass hysteria. The greater the danger of Socialism and peace, the more Governments will debauch the mental life of their subjects; and the greater the economic hardships of the present, the more willing the sufferers will be to be seduced from intellectual sobriety in favour of some 20 delusive will-o'-the-wisp. The fever of nationalism which has been increasing ever since 1848 is one form of the cult of unreason. The idea of one universal truth has been abandoned: there is English truth, French truth, German truth, Montenegran truth, and truth for the principality of Monaco. Similarly there is truth for the wage-earner and truth for the capitalist. Between these different "truths", if rational persuasion is despaired of, the only possible decision is by means of war and rivalry in propagandist insanity. Until the deep conflicts of nations and classes which infect our world have been resolved, it is hardly to be expected that mankind will return 30 to a rational habit of mind. The difficulty is that, so long as unreason prevails, a solution of our troubles can only be reached by chance; for while reason, being impersonal, makes universal cooperation possible, unreason, since it represents private passions, makes strife inevitable. It is for this reason that rationality, in the sense of an appeal to a universal and impersonal standard of truth, is of supreme importance to the wellbeing of the human species, not only in ages in which it easily prevails, but also, and even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree. 40

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ucation: teach thinking, not orthodoxy. Not only one opinion among teachers.

Freedom and Government [1940] International Government:

Tms PAPER WAS published first in Freedom: Its Meaning, which was planned and edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen, and published by Harcourt, Brace and Company, in New York in 1940. In addition to Russell, there were forty-one other contributors, including Dewey, Whitehead, and Einstein. In 1942, George Allen & Unwin published an abridged and rearranged edition of the book, to which two chapters were added, but Russell's essay was not edited in any way. The manuscript has not been found, but there is a manuscript outline in the John G. Slater Bertrand Russell Collection, housed in the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library in the University of Toronto. It consists of one sheet headed with the title above and signed by Russell. Its contents are as follows, with all abbreviations expanded: Anarchy:

Poland and League of Nations. Progressive Schools. Anarchy in international affairs.

Definition of Liberty:

Montesquieu: "The political liberty of the subject is a tranquility of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite that government be so constituted as one man need not be afraid of another." Motor traffic, law.

Matter of Degree:

complete freedom only for omnipotence. Technique makes us more interdependent, therefore need of more regulation.

Organizations:

Trade unions, Fascist and Communist Parties. Toleration of intolerant? Organization of Brutes. Government such as not promote desire for rebellion.

Freedom of Opinion:

Not only no legal penalties, but no ob-

stacle to employment. Importance of allowing heresy. Intellectual progress. Ed-

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Fallacies of Nationalism. Congress of Vienna and Cig(?) Liberalism. Culture, education, enlightenment, freedom, sacrificed to nationalism. Unity of civilization. Dark times now. There will be no progress till international government. Technical grounds.

Russell gave a lecture based upon these notes at a college or university ~n Califor. May 1940 At its conclusion a student member of the audience, Edma on 7 · . round A. Hennessy, asked Russell for his notes, and Russell very graciously signed them and presented them to him. The editor of this volume purchased the notes from the late Mr. Hennessy's son. The American edition of the book is the copy-text: it has been collated with tlie English edition and the results are reported in the Textual Notes.

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government might seem to be antitheses, since compulsion is of the essence of government. Anarchists, of whom Kropotkin is the intellectually most respectable have, on this ground, advocated a complete absence of government~ They have believed that such collective decisions as are necessary can be adopted unanimously, without any need of powers of coercion vested in a majority or aristocracy or monarch. But history is not encouraging to this view. The two most important examples of its embodiment in a constitution-the kingdom of Poland and the League of Nations-both ro came to a bad end. Anarchism, however attractive, is rejected as a method of regulating the internal affairs of a State except by a few idealistic dreamers. Per contra, except by a few idealistic dreamers it is accepted as the only method of regulating international affairs. The same mentality that insists most strongly on the necessity of subjecting the individual to the State insists simultaneously on the complete independence of the sovereign State from all external control. Logically, such a view is untenable. If anarchy is bad nationally, it is bad internationally; if it is good internationally, it must be good nationally. For my part, I cannot believe it to be good in either sphere. 20 Belief in freedom, as a practical force in politics, arose out of two main sources, religion and trade. Religious minorities, wherever they had little chance of becoming majorities, turned against persecution; and traders objected to the curtailment of their profits by grants of monopolies to courtiers. The liberal philosophy that arose from these two motives was, at first, very moderate and restrained. The degree of liberty demanded by such men as Locke and Montesquieu is much less than exists in modern democratic states. Thus Montesquieu, quoting Cicero, says: "Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would be no longer possessed of liberty, because all 30 his fellow-citizens would be possessed of the same power." This may seem an inadequate degree of liberty, if it is not supplemented by some principle as to what the laws are to permit. In France, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the exercise of the Protestant religion was illegal; it cannot therefore be said that the right to do what the laws permitted conferred any effective liberty upon French Protestants. Nevertheless, the right to do whatever the laws permit is a very important part of liberty. It was secured in England by habeas corpus, which was a barrier to kingly tyranny; it did not exist in France under the ancien regime. In our own day, Jews in Germany, kulaks in Russia, and national40 ists in India, have been punished by the executive without appeal to the law courts, and therefore without proof of criminality. This sort of thing is forbidden in the American Constitution by the provision about "due process oflaw". Montesquieu's intention is to maintain that a man should

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unished only by the law courts, and that the law courts should be bedP endent of the executive. The American Constitution, whether dein ep . rely or by inadvertence, has made the law courts also to some exhbera . . . d ·ndependent of the legislature, and m this respect has gone beyon ~~I • . th what Montesquieu advocated m the pdassage quoted abo:'e. Idn fino . ~r pas-f however, he gave a wider an more constructive e 1t1on o sages, · · h'b erty of th e sub'Ject is · a tranqm·11·1ty of 'b rry for instance: "the poht1cal h ind e ' . arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to ~ve this liberty, it is requisite the g~ver~ment b.e. so consti~.ted a.s one need not be afraid of another. This defimtion of poht1cal liberty ro 11 ma Id not be improved upon, and I shall accept it in what follows. cou . . th . Political liberty, however, is only one species of a genus, and ere is reason to regard it as more desirable than other species of liberty. 0 ~olitical action may promote or restri~t other kin?~ of lib~rty as well. as the political kind; we cannot therefore Judge of political action solely with reference to political freedom, even if we consider freedom the sole proper end of politics. Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires. Complete freedom is thus only possible for omnipotence; practicable freedom is a matter of degree, dependent both upon 20 external circumstances and upon the nature of our desires. Stoicism and all kindred philosophies seek to secure freedom by the control of desires and by confining them to what the individual will can secure. Political theorists, on the contrary, for the most part concentrate on the external conditions of freedom. This may be a source of error if the subjective part of the problem is forgotten. If all the men guilty of crimes of violence were transported to an island and left to form a self-governing community, they would need a much more stringent form of government than is required where men are temperamentally law-abiding. Nevertheless, so long as we remember that we are making an abstraction, it is 30 convenient and harmless to treat the objective part of the problem of freedom in isolation. We may give the name "physical freedom" to the mastery over nonhuman obstacles to the realization of our desires. Modern scientific technique has increased physical freedom, but has necessitated new limitations of social freedom. To take an illustration that involves no controversial issues, motor traffic has unavoidably brought about a very much stricter control over the roads by the police than was formerly necessary. Speaking generally, the technical changes that have occurred in the world during the last hundred years have increased the effects, both intended 40 and unintended, that one man's acts are likely to have upon another man's welfare. Montesquieu's "tranquillity of mind arising from the opinion each person has of his safety" would be by no means promoted

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by the removal of traffic regulations, and therefore no one protests against them in the name of liberty. But in other kinds of activity-of which the most important is war-although the same principle is applicable, various interests and passions prevent men from applying it, and lead them still to defend a degree of anarchy which may have promoted total freedom in a former age, but now has the opposite effect. Many of the most vehement advocates of freedom have been led to more or less anarchic conclusions, because their conception of freedorn was aristocratic rather than democratic. Byron's Corsairs and Giaours IO are free to practise murder and pillage and to allow their broken hearts to inspire a hatred of the human race, but their freedom is of a sort that cannot be generalized, since it is based upon terror. Tacitus can look back with nostalgia to the good old days of the Republic, when Roman aristocrats were free to plunder provinces with impunity. American plutocrats can demand, in the name of freedom, the right to obstruct organization among the men whose labour produces their wealth, while demanding the fullest freedom of organization for themselves. Educational reformers, who endeavour to introduce freedom into schools, require much vigilance to avoid unintentionally establishing a tyranny of muscle, 20 under which all but the biggest children are trembling slaves. One of the strongest impulses of energetic individuals is the impulse to control and subject those who are unable to resist them, and if this impulse is left free the result is a great diminution of the total liberty of the community. When freedom is conceived democratically, the control of the impulse to tyranny is seen to be the essential and most difficult problem. The freedom of prominent individuals must be curtailed if any freedom is to be secured for the mass of mankind. The promotion of physical freedom may, even in the most freedomloving communities, in some degree override the desire for political free30 dom. Take, for example, the construction of roads. Even if everybody wants them, everybody would prefer the expense to be borne by someone else. The only device for distributing the burden fairly is taxation, and a man cannot be allowed to escape taxation by professing an indifference to roads. Yet his objection might be genuine: the philosopher Lao-tse held that roads corrupt primitive innocence, and there is no reason why he should not have modern disciples. If, however, a conscience clause were introduced to meet their case, it is to be feared that the number of Llo-tse's disciples would increase with inconvenient rapidity when the financial advantages of the anti-road creed became evi40 dent. In a democracy, just as much as in a tyranny, taxes have to be paid by those who object to the purposes for which they are collected. It is only by a mystical identification of the majority with the community that democracy can be held to involve liberty. It is a means to liberty if the

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ajority are lovers of liberty; if not, not. rn Eighteenth-century advocates of liberty thought always of isolated . dividuals rather than of organizations; many of them, like Rousseau, l!lere even actively hostile to freedom of organization. In the modern world it is organizations that raise the difficult problems. Legislators have : consider two questions: for what purposes may organizations be }ormed? And what may they legally do in pursuance of their purposes? These questions have been fought out in connection with trade unions, which at first were everywhere illegal, then were permitted to exist provided they did nothing to further their objects, then, very gradually, were IO permitted first one activity .and then ano~er. At every stage the legal mind viewed the process with grave susp1c10n, and was only forced to yield by the pressure of democratic opinion. In the case of trade unions, most of those who were most in favour of freedom advocated the removal of legal restrictions, in spite of the fact that these restrictions were defended in the name of freedom by employers who wished to retain their monopoly of economic power. Nevertheless, it has always been clear that the power of trade unions might become a genuine menace to freedom. The rise of fascism brought about, in its early stages, an exactly oppo- 20 site situation. Here it was the reactionaries who favoured freedom of organization and the progressives who opposed it. The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other. This technique is as old as the hills; it was practised in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale. But what I am concerned with is the reaction of modern liberal sentiment to this new attack on liberty. Does the principle of free speech require us to put 30 no obstacle in the way of those who advocate its suppression? Does the principle of toleration require us to tolerate those who advocate intolerance? Public opinion, among those who dislike fascism, is divided on these questions, and has not arrived at any clear theory from which consistent answers could be derived. There is of course one obvious limitation upon the principle of free speech: if an act is illegal, it is logical to make it illegal to advocate it. This principle justifies the authorities in prohibiting incitement to assassination or violent revolution. But in practice this principle does not by any means cover the ground. If there is to be any personal liberty, men 40 must be free to urge a change in the laws. Suppose a man makes a speech in favour of communism, with the implication that it is to be brought about by the ordinary processes of democracy, and suppose that,

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after his speech, a questioner asks whether he really believes that s changes can be secured without violent revolution. Unless he give Uch affirmative answer with far more emphasis than the facts warrant hes ~n . euect, a. . h ave, m promoted revo1uuonary sentiment. Or suppose a' fasWill . . S . . h . th h ma kes an anti- em1t1c speec , urgmg at Jews s ould be subject to 1Cist . b'l' · h'1s arguments must be such as to stimulate · d isa i ltles; hatred ofegaJ th Jews, and the more successful they are the more likely they are to ca e violence. Imagine Mark Antony indicted for his speech in Julius Caesus~ although it is obviously intended to cause violence, it would hardly~· ro possible to obtain legal proof of this intention. To prohibit the advoca e of illegalities is therefore not enough; some further limitation upon ~y principle of free speech is necessary if incitement to violence is to be effectively prevented. e The solution of this problem has two sides: on the one hand, the ordinary citizen, if he is on the whole content with his form of government has a right to prohibit any organized attempt to overthrow it by force and any propaganda obviously likely to promote such an attempt. But on the other hand the government must avoid such flagrant injustice or oppression as is likely to lead to violence in spite of prohibition. The Irish 20 secured their liberties by assassination; women in England won the vote by a long series of inconvenient crimes. Such tactics ought not to have been necessary, since in each case the professed democratic principles of the government justified the aims of the rebels, and therefore seemed to excuse their methods. But when, as in the case of the fascists, the aims of the rebels are fundamentally opposed to a governmental theory accepted by the majority, and when, further, it is obvious that violence is intended to be used at a suitable moment, there is every justification for preventing the growth of organized power in the hands of a rebellious minority. For if this is not done, internal peace is jeopardized, and the kind of 30 community that most men desire can no longer be preserved. Liberal principles will not survive of themselves; like all other principles, they require vigorous assertion when they are challenged. Freedom of opinion is closely connected with free speech, but has a wider scope. The Inquisition made a point of investigating, by means of torture, the secret opinions that men endeavoured to keep to themselves. When men confessed to unorthodox opinions, they were punished even if it could not be proved that they had ever before given utterance to them. This practice has been revived in the dictatorial countries, Germany, Italy, and Russia. The reason, in each case, is that the government 40 feels itself unstable. One of the most important conditions of freedom, in the matter of opinion as in other matters, is governmental security. In England, during the sixty or seventy years preceding the Great War, freedom of speech and opinion, in political matters, was almost com-

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b ecause everyone knew that no subversive opinion had a chance of succe · . . n1 penalty was the Queen's refusal to bestow a knighthood on Gilbert. ~adays, they would be shot in Russia, beheaded in Germany, sent to 0 nal settlement in Italy, accused of violating the Official Secrets Act in ~peland, and investigated by a Senatorial Committee in the United sn!es on suspicion of being in receipt of Moscow gold. The change is dt to increased insecurity, which is caused by war, the fear of war, and ;ee impoverishment due to war. And modern war is mainly due to tionalism. Until this state of affairs is changed, it is hardly to be hoped ro ;at there will be as much freedom of opinion as existed in Western countries fifty years ago. Freedom of opinion is important for many reasons, especially because it is a necessary condition of all progress, intellectual, moral, political, and social. Where it does not exist, the status quo becomes stereotyped, and all originality, even the most necessary, is discouraged. Since freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure, it is important that the government should have the approval of the great majority of the population and should deal with discontented minorities, wherever possible, in a manner calculated to allay their discontent. A 20 government must possess force, but cannot be a satisfactory government unless force is seldom necessary. All the kinds of freedom advocated by liberals disappear when security disappears, and security depends upon a wide diffusion of contentment. This in turn is impossible when the general level of prosperity is falling. Liberalism flourished in the nineteenth century because of economic progress; it is in eclipse now because of economic retrogression. There can be no widespread liberty except under the reign of law, for when men are lawless only the strongest are free, and they only until they are overcome by someone still stronger. The tyrant in a lawless commun- 30 ity is like the King of the Wood, "who slays the slayer and must himself be slain". Whoever, in the name of liberty, impairs respect for the law, incurs a grave responsibility; yet, since the law is often oppressive and incapable of being amended legally, revolution must be allowed to be sometimes necessary. The solution of this problem is not possible in abstract terms. It was solved practically in the American Revolution; but most revolutions have so weakened the respect for law that they have led to dictatorships. Perhaps a revolution can be completely successful only when those who make it are persuaded that they are defending legality against some illegal usurpation. But this requires a rare combination of 40 fortunate circumstances, and is not possible in the case of revolutions that attempt any far-reaching change in the social structure. The most fallacious of all the applications of the principle of liberty has

. Plete, s Gilbert and Sullivan made fun of the navy and army, but the S

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been in international affairs. While it has been generally realized th liberty for the individual depends upon law, it has been thought th at liberty for nations depended upon the absence of law. This is partly at historical accident, connected with the years that followed the Congre a of Vienna. At that time a number of reactionary states, most of whics~ were purely dynastic, established what was in effect an international gover.nment of Europe, a~d de:ote~ their united strength to the suppression of every form of hberahsm m every part of the Continent. Th .. e oppos1tlon to despotic monarchs was bound up, at that time, with the IO principle of nationality; democracy went hand in hand with the desire to make the boundaries of states coincide with national sentiment instead of being determined by the accidents of royal marriages or diplomatic bargains among the victors over Napoleon. It was thought that, when once national boundaries and parliamentary institutions had been established everywhere, the democracies would co-operate freely, and the causes of war would have been eliminated. In this mood of optimism, liberals completely overlooked the need for any international authority to regulate the relations between states. But nationalism triumphant has proved, is proving, and will prove, in20 compatible not only with liberty, but with everything else that intelligent men have considered desirable since the Renaissance. To consider, for a moment, goods other than freedom, especially the eighteenth-century ideals of culture, education, and humanitarian enlightenment: in these matters South-eastern Europe and Latin America have lost much of what they owed to the Hapsburgs; Ireland, from nationalist sentiment, has cut itself off from European culture by Catholic education and censorship; India, from similar motives, is preparing to repudiate everything occidental. I have met Mexican nationalists who wished to obliterate everything that their country had acquired since 1492. The conception of the unity 30 of civilization, born in the Roman Empire, nurtured by the medieval Church, brought to maturity by the Renaissance and modern science, survives now only, and that precariously, in the Western democracies, where, it is to be feared, it will perish during this war. Elsewhere, in the name of some national hero, living or dead, the State devotes its powers to the inculcation of some national theology as crass and stupid as the superstitions of South Sea Islanders or the cannibalistic rites of the Aztecs. If stupidity were the only defect of the modern national religions, the philosopher might shrug his shoulders and remark that the bulk of man40 kind have always been fools. Unfortunately, while the superstitions of savages are harmful only to themselves, those of nations equipped with scientific technique are dangerous to the whole world and, in particular, involve a grave loss of liberty, not only among the devout, but also

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ong whose who wish to remain rational. Vast expenditure on armacompulsory military service, and occasional wars are part of the 111 ~ce that has to be paid by those nations that will not accept foreign ~rimination. The inevitable outcome of the doctrine that each nation ~ould have unrestricted sovereignty is to compel the citizens of each s tion to engage in irksome activities and to incur sacrifices, often of life ~aelf in order to thwart the designs of other nations. Hitler, in a sense, 1ts ' had already subjugated England and France, since a large part of the thoughts and actions of Englishmen and Frenchmen were determined by eference to him; and Hitler himself is a product of the previous subjuga- IO ~ion of Germany by England and France. In a world of international anarchy individual freedom is as impossible as in a country where private violence is not restrained by the law and the police. A complete international government, with legislative, executive, and judiciary, and a monopoly of armed force, is the most essential condition of individual liberty in a technically scientific world. Not, of course, that it will secure complete liberty; that, I repeat, is only possible for omnipotence, and there cannot be two omnipotent individuals in the world. The man whose desire for liberty is wholly self-centred is therefore driven, if he feels strong enough, to seek world dictatorship; but the man 20 whose desire for liberty is social, or who feels too weak to secure more than his fair share, will seek to maximize liberty by means of law and government, and will oppose anarchic power in all its various forms. Every man desires freedom for his own impulses, but men's impulses conflict, and therefore not all can be satisfied. There are two kinds of conflict between men's desires. In the first place, we desire more than our fair share of possessions; this can be met, in theory, by decreeing equality of distribution, as has been done by the institution of monogamy. But there is a more essential and deep-rooted conflict owing to the love of power: most human beings, though in very varying degrees, desire 30 to control not only their own lives but also the lives of others. Most forms of control over the lives of others diminish the freedom of those who are controlled, but some increase it. The man who endows a university has power over the lives of those who profit by his benefaction, but his power is such as to liberate their own impulses. Inventors have great power, and the general tendency of inventions is to increase physical liberty. It is therefore possible for power impulses to find an outlet not incompatible with social freedom. To insure that they shall do so is a problem partly of individual psychology, partly of education, and partly of opportunity. A homicidal maniac cannot be allowed any freedom for 40 his power impulses, but their undesirable character may be the result of bad education and lack of opportunity. Cromwell spent the first half of his career in agitation connected with draining the Fens, and the second al11nts,

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in making himself a military dictator; in other circumstances, his power impulses might have found only the earlier beneficent outlet. If freedorn is to be secure, it is essential both that useful careers shall be open to energetic men, and that harmful careers shall be closed to them. It is important also that education should develop useful forms of technical skill, and that the circumstances of childhood and youth should not be such as to generate ferocity. All these conditions are absent in totalitarian countries, where the principal means to success are sycophancy, treachery, and brutality, and where education is designed to produce a combiro nation of submissiveness and truculence. If freedom were the sole political desideratum, there would still, as we have seen, be need of law and government, which, in the international sphere, remain to be created. But individual freedom, however desirable, is only one among the ends of statesmanship. Among innocuous activities we admire some more than others: we praise a great poet, composer, or man of science more than we praise men who are innocent but undistinguished. Education, both general and technical, is generally conceded to be desirable, even at the cost of the liberties of both parents and children. And if we knew a way to produce a com20 munity of Shakespeares, Beethovens, and Newtons, we should probably think it worth while to do so. Freedom is too negative a conception to determine the ends of human life, or even of politics. Nevertheless, it is only in so far as the majority of men agree that other ends can be pursued in political action without arousing resistances and violences that are likely to prove disastrous. An unpopular Utopia, in so far as a benevolent dictator could realize it, would prove to be quite different from his dreams. Liberty, therefore, must always remain a sine qua non of other political goods. The transition from individual to social ethics is theoretically far from 30 simple. Most philosophers who have written on ethics have been mainly concerned with the individual. When they have been concerned also with society, they have failed to build a bridge from the individual to the community that will bear logical scrutiny. Take, for instance, the two foundations of Bentham's social philosophy: (1) every man pursues his own happiness; (2) every man ought to pursue the general happiness. Perhaps if we could submit Bentham to a viva voce examination, he would expand his second proposition as follows: The general happiness will be increased if every man acts in a manner likely to increase it; therefore, if I am in a governmental position, or in any way owe my own 40 happiness to the fact that I represent the general interest, I shall endeavour to cause others to act in a way that will promote the happiness of mankind, which I can only do by means of institutions that cause the interests of the individual and those of the community to be identical.

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'fhis explanation might pass muster in an ideal democracy, where no olitician or official could continue to enjoy his salary unless he served ~e public faithfully. But it does not give any reason why, where an ideal democracy does not exist, any public man should aim at the public good. I dare say Caligula and Nero got more fun out of life than Marcus j\urelius did. One wonders what arguments Bentham would have used to them, and how long he would have been allowed to go on using them. 'fhe only argument compatible with his psychology would have been that theY would come to a bad end, but they might have replied that they preferred a cheerful beginning and a bad end to drabness throughout. ro Bentham imagines the legislator to be in some unexplained way an incarnation of the public interest. But this is only because, in fantasy, he is the legislator, and he is in fact a benevolent man. Psycho-analysts show most people that they have unconscious vices, but in Bentham's case it was the virtues that were unconscious. In obedience to theory, he conceived of himself as wholly selfish and remained unaware of his spontaneous desire for the general happiness. Public spirit, he says (in the Table of the Springs of Action), is an absurd motive, which never actuated anyone; in fact, it is a synonym for spite. Nevertheless, he hopes to find a legislator who will seek the public good. He was young in the era of benevolent 20 despots, which perhaps accounts for his failure of logic. However that may be, his individual psychology and his social ethics remain disparate and fundamentally inconsistent. Of the great religions, Christianity and Buddhism, in their primitive and most vital forms, are concerned only with personal virtue, and show no interest in social and political questions. On the other hand, Confucianism is fundamentally political, and considers all virtues in relation to the welfare of the State. The result is a certain dullness and aridity, which caused it to be supplemented by Buddhism and Taoism among the more spiritually minded Chinese. Confucianism is a religion for the 30 civil service, and gave rise to the most remarkable civil service the world has ever known. But it had nothing to offer to prophets or poets or mystics: St. Francis or Dante or Pascal would have found it wholly irrelevant to their needs. Karl Marx, as a religious leader, is analogous to both Confucius and Bentham. His ethical doctrine, in a nutshell, is this: that every man pursues the economic interest of his class, and therefore, if there is only one class, every man will pursue the general interest. This doctrine has failed to work out in practice as its adherents expected, both because men do not in fact pursue the interest of their class, and because no civilized 40 community is possible in which there is only one class, since government and executive officials are unavoidable. There is one method of making the public good fundamental in ethics

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which has been favoured by many philosophers and some politician namely to endow the community with a mystical oneness and to regar~ the separate citizens as unreal abstractions. This view may be supported by the analogy of the human body. No man is troubled by the possibility of conflict between the different parts of his body, say the great toe and the little finger. The body has to be considered as a whole, and the interests concerned are those of the whole, not of the several members. A. healthy body is a completely integrated corporative State, governed despotically by the brain. There are, no doubt, possibilities of rebellion, such IO as paralysis and St. Vitus's dance, but these are diseases which are exceptional. Could not the body politic be similarly integrated and similarly devoted, instinctively and harmoniously, to the welfare of the whole? The answer is merely an appeal to the facts. An individual body contains only one mind, whereas the body politic contains many, and there is no psychological mechanism by which many minds can cooperate in the same manner in which muscles controlled by a single mind cooperate. Cooperation among many minds has to be a matter of agreement, even when it is agreement to be dominated by a dictator. A further, but less fundamental, argument against those who regard a human society as an organ20 ism is that they almost invariably take a nation, rather than mankind, as the organism concerned, thus merely substituting the strife of nations for that of individuals, instead of arriving at a genuine public interest which is to be served by the whole human race. Considered practically, not philosophically, the question is: Can the public interest ever be a force in public affairs, or must politics be always and essentially nothing but a tug-of-war between the passions of powerful individuals or groups? There are two ways in which the public interest can become practically operative: first, through the impulse of benevolence, as in Bentham; second, through the consciousness of the common man 30 that he is too weak to stand alone, and that he can only secure that part of his political desires which he shares with other common men. An uncommon man can hope to become a dictator, but a common man can hope, at best, only to become a voter in a democracy. Common men are helpless without a leader, and as a rule follow a leader who deceives them; but there have been occasions when they have accepted the leadership of men inspired by benevolence. When this has happened, the public good has become an effective force in public affairs. To secure that it shall happen as often as possible is the practical problem for the man whose theorizing on politics is guided by a desire for the welfare of man40 kind. The practical solution of this problem is difficult in the extreme, but the theoretical solution is obvious. Common men throughout the world should be made aware of the identity of their interests, wherever it exists;

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. ts of interest which are apparent but not real must be shown to be onfl ic c ry· real conflicts of interest, where they exist, must be removed by a iJluso ' of institutions, of which . the most harmful are nationa · 1 sovere chang · d · 1 d · . and private ownership of land an raw matena s; e ucation an d e1gntY ic circumstances must be made such as not to generate h atre d rn econo d ferocity and a desire for revenge upon the world. When al1th'is h as an achieved co-operation will become possible with a minimum of been .on and '.mdiv1dual · · · be mcreased · freedom will as well as a11 o th er coerci ' olitical desiderata. . .. p To surn up: Government is a necessary but not sufficient condi~ion for th greatest realizable degree of individual liberty; indeed, there is need / rnore government than at present, not less,. since an intern~tional 0 thority is as much required as the present national states. But if govau rnent is not to be tyrannical, it must be democratic, and the democern rnust feel that the common interests of mankm · d are more important · racY . · f th n the conflicting interests of separate groups. To realize this state o a;airs completely would be scarcely possible, but since the problem is uantitative a gradual approach may be hoped for. At present the world ~IB moving away from all that is valued by lovers of freedom, but . this movement will not last for ever. The world has oscillated many times between freedom and slavery, and the dark times in which we live are probably no more permanent than the progressive epoch that rejoiced our grandfathers.

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59 ON KEEPING A WIDE HORIZON

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On Keeping a Wide Horizon [1941]

THIS PAPER WAS published first in this form in Russell: The Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives, 33-34 (spring-summer, 1979): 5-11. Kenneth Blackwell, the editor of Russell and the Bertrand Russell archivist, introduced it in this way: "On Keeping a Wide Horizon" is a fine example of Russell's fundamental normative ethic popularly expressed. Two related concepts, central to that ethic, can be seen at work. One is the thrust away from selfcentredness; the other is the expansion of the scope of one's interests. This summary of what might be called Russell's "impersonal ethic" of generosity in thought and feeling has been previously published as "A Philosophy for You in These Times", in The Reader's Digest, 39 (Oct. 1941), 5-7. Its publication in that form, however, was radically different from the text Russell submitted. In fact, there are three texts: Russell's original typescript, the much altered version prepared by the Reader's Digest editorial staff, and the published version (which is very different again). Mr. Kevin Holland, a good friend of the Russells, kindly sought out the typescript in the Digest's files. The original version is here published with the Digest's permission. In reconstructing Russell's original typescript from the available papers, I have made no alterations except for those in editorial brackets and the correction of the faulty numbering of Russell's suggestions of ways in which individuals can help create a better world-all of which were omitted by the Reader's Digest. The copy-text is Russell's typescript (RA REC. ACQ. 437). The Reader's Digest typescript and the published version are too much at variance with the original to allow for collation. To permit the reader to see the way in which the editors of the magazine treated Russell's text, both of their versions are reproduced in Appendix xr. The published paper is so unRussellian that one New York reader, Alliston Cragg, was moved to write Russell on 24 October 1941 to complain that he had squandered his twenty-five cents on an article hardly worth reading: A Philosophy for You in These Times, by Bertrand Russell! Spotting this on the cover, and having long been a Russell fan, I hastened to procure a copy of the October Reader's Digest. Well, I could hardly

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believe my eyes! Was this Russell? The man must have had tongue in cheek. And the piece was so precisely what Reader's Digest would want for its six hundred dollars or so. Good old Pollyannaish admonition! No radicalism! No implication of social or economic wrongs. No challange to capitalism or what currently passes for democracy. Anyhow, it was too late to get the quarter back. What has happened to my hero of the valiant pen? Has age, or America, softened him up? But this is belied by the chuckling "Bertrand Russell's Own Obit" in Coronet only the previous month, which again I had purchased for that sole reason. No, it must have been with tongue in cheek. I hope it's not that he is becoming discouraged, after some ridiculous experiences, with the citizens of this great democracy. I would assure him that, even here in New York City, there are plenty of us who can take it, and love it, strong and unadulterated as he can dish it out. His letter struck a sore point with Russell's wife, Patricia, who, according to his second letter (26 November) to Russell, informed him "that Reader's Digest censored out everything that would have identified the article as characteristically Russell". Any reader of the original typescript and the published article will have to agree that she was right. Russell's reputation for independent thinking was probably harmed by the publication of this article.

59 ON KEEPING A WIDE HORIZON N TIMES SUCH as that in which we are living, it is difficult to avoid becoming discouraged and hopeless. The world is full of things that are almost unbearably painful-wars, persecuted populations, and vast organized cruelties. The level of moderate happiness and well-being that had been achieved is lost in a welter of destruction. Throughout a great part of the earth's surface, humane and rational ways of thinking are being stamped out to serve the purposes of brutal tyrants. The hopes for mankind that were universal when I was young have come to seem illusory; instead of progress, there has been a revival of ancient savagery. IO And the only way to combat this growth of evil, it seems, is war, prolonged and terrible, and immeasurably destructive even if it ends in victory. Appalling doubts raise their heads: is cruelty the very essence of life? Is violence and strife so deeply ingrained in human nature that nothing better can long endure? Is all hope for human happiness and improvement mere self-deception? I do not think so, but I do not think the answer is easy. Some people are able to avoid despair by living a purely personal life, deriving their happiness entirely from private affections and instincts. They live to keep themselves and their children alive and comfortable, 20 and to enable their children, in their turn, to rear further descendants. But it is not possible to isolate ourselves sufficiently to make even our personal happiness secure; parents are willing to run the risk of their children being killed in the war, and whoever supports the war is committed to the view that there are things of more value than keeping alive, for the sake of which we must be prepared to sacrifice ourselves and our children if necessary. And in any case, mere living, by itself, is not an adequate purpose for any reflective person. What is the use of caring for children if the world is to be such that existence is intolerable for them? If I had no hopes for the world, I could not be satisfied to shut myself up 30 in a little private circle. Sooner or later, the evils without would come crashing in, and in the meantime I could not wish for the insensitiveness that would make a momentary selfish contentment possible in the midst of ruin and destruction. It would seem ignoble to achieve happiness by forgetting, even if it were possible when so much of what has made the very texture of daily existence is being destroyed. If there is to be any way out of despair, it must be by remembering more things, not fewer, by enlarging our horizon, not by narrowing it, by being more aware of what is good, not by shutting our eyes to what is bad. If one is to keep sane and balanced in times of disaster, it is necessary 40 to remember constantly what is good in the world as well as what is bad. Side by side with the evils in the world, there are other things, so different that it is difficult to imagine them parts of the same universe. In the

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non-human world, there are the stars and the sea and the wind in trees, surnrner rain and the song of birds in spring. It is necessary to remember that the human race, with all its tumults, is only a part, and a small part, of the vast universe. To me it is very consoling to sit and look at a mountain range, which took thousands of ages in the building, and to go home reflecting that it is not after all so bad that the human race has achieved 50 little in the paltry six thousand years or so of civilization. We are only at the beginning. In the busyness of everyday life, each minute is important to us, each year is so crowded with events, that our imagination alrnost ceases with our own lifetime. We ought to say to ourselves daily that the largest star measures six hundred million miles across, that the light from the great nebula in Andromeda takes nine hundred thousand years to reach us, and that beyond that, the most distant object visible to the naked eye, as far again and farther, there are other suns and other moons, other worlds, and perhaps other living creatures, superior to us. Everyone agrees that we should not be self-centred, relating everything that happens to ourselves, making ourselves the centre of the universe. But it is also, to a lesser degree, a defect of imagination to make mankind the centre of the universe, or to attempt to measure eternity with a clock. We should not always think in terms of years,

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"Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time". Even in the human world, there is not only cruelty and suffering. There is poetry and music, rising triumphant over pain, not ignoring it, but transmuting it, showing us how splendid man can be at his best, and inspiring us to live up to what is noble in humanity, turning away from what is petty and mean. There is impersonal intellect, which has discovered what we know of the ways of nature, and has enabled us to contemplate the slow procession of time, in which the eddies of the present seem of small account. There is heroism in the service of mankind, and there is endurance and courage in many millions of human 30 beings. I am thinking not only of courage in war, but also of the doctors and nurses who expose themselves to infection in dangerous epidemics, of scientists who sacrifice their health in dangerous experiments to save others from suffering, of firemen and lifeboat crews, of gallant rescues, of facing unpopularity for a cause, and innumerable other forms of bravery. The human race is a strange mixture of the divine and the diabolic, both equally real, making both good and evil inevitable. Complete despair is no more rational than blind optimism. There have been, in history, good periods and bad periods, but neither have been lasting. It is our misfortune to live in a bad period, but it will end, and it will end the sooner for 40

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our keeping hope alive. When the barbarians overran the Roman Empire, the world seemed at least as hopeless; but the dark ages that followed did not last for ever. I cannot tell what methods other people will find most effective for keeping hope alive. For my part, I find courage in things remote from human passions, such as the waves on a rocky coast, or the silence of mountains; also in those human things that approach them most nearlythe music of Bach and the poetry of Milton, for example. Coming a little nearer to what is difficult to bear in the present, I find assuagement in IO the contemplation of long periods of history, and the emergence of long buried human achievements after centuries of darkness. By such means, when they succeed, the sharpness of present pain is changed into the larger emotion of tragedy, which is more bearable because the evil becomes part of a long process, not all of which is futile. For example, if your child dies of meningitis or your wife of cancer, it helps you to bear your grief to think of the long and patient struggle carried on by man against disease, a struggle in which every year is marked by victories. All this may seem too remote and impersonal to be of use in the life of every day, but I have not found it so. There are different ways in which 20 one may attempt to meet the large impersonal evils. One may try to become completely frivolous, or so busy with some business as to have no time to think or feel. But I cannot believe that it is right to forget, and even if it were, forgetfulness can never be complete. Memory will come suddenly, with a sharp stab, perhaps in the middle of the night, perhaps at a busy moment in the work that was intended to be an opiate; and this sudden memory is all the more painful for the previous effort to keep it at bay. The only adequate way of enduring large evils is to find large consolations, which must be as important as what they have to counteract. And the consolations must not end in emotion; they must lead to 30 work that is somehow connected, however indirectly, with the creation of a better world. What is needed is something in the nature of religion, not in any dogmatic sense, but as a source of serious and determined effort towards something better than the present. Fanaticism, fascist and communist, has generated immense dynamic forces tending in directions that we think evil; we cannot combat these forces without something equally dynamic and at least as resolute-something more than the defence of the status quo. There must be the hope of a world with less cruelty and injustice and suffering than men have inflicted and endured hitherto, and 40 a firm will to do whatever is possible towards bringing it into existence. It is necessary to combine consciousness of the good that is possible with the belief that each individual can contribute in some degree to its existence. You may say: "I quite believe that the good things I desire are

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possible, for I know that they have existed: but what can I do to bring them about?" It seems conceited to suppose that one individual can do anything towards so vast a result. But this is a fallacy. A good society is produced by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something towards creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery. The sum of such actions makes the difference between a good and a bad world. If you are an eminent statesman, your environment is large; if you are obscure, it is small. In the one case you can do much; in IO the other, little; but you can always do something. The contemplation of large events is apt to produce a paralysis of the will, from the feeling of the minuteness of the individual and the vastness of the community. People do not feel this where there is organization: a soldier in an army, or a member of a political party, feels that he is doing his bit, and is justified in feeling this. The matter is more difficult when there is no organization, or when we do not know the other people who feel as we do. But even then it is still true. Every parent who brings up a child in such a way that he becomes rational and kindly is achieving part of what must be done to make a happy world. Everyone who resists the 20 temptations to intolerance which beset us all is helping to create a community in which differing groups can live side by side in mutual amity. One man can do little against a vast evil, but vast evils arise from adding together many little evils, and vast goods arise in the same way. You may say: "What can one man do against a world?" But if you were wicked you could do equally little for evil. Good and evil alike, however vast, spring from the efforts of individuals-not only of eminent individuals, but of the ordinary men and women of whom communities are composed. Indeed, as private individuals we have it in our power now to do, each 30 of us, the one thing that the world most needs: to obey the text "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil". The evils that we have to contend with are great mass movements in which millions of people sacrifice their conscience and their intellect and agree to believe what they are told. Never before in the history of the world has the independent thought and conscience of every human being been so necessary and important. The democratic nations have been obliged to unite against a united enemy, but the fight will be useless if we do not also carry on the struggle against nationalism and intolerance in our own lives. It is after all in private life that we can do most. 40 We can set our faces against intolerance, prejudice, falsehood, and cruelty. We can try to combine with the loving kindness of Christianity the respect for fact and evidence that science has taught us. It is not

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enough to go about overflowing with vague benevolence. The world is full of kindly feeling, but a great deal of it is ineffective for lack of other and more difficult virtues. Here are a few suggested ways in which individuals, whoever and wherever they are, can help towards the creation of a better world: Never acquiesce in what you believe to be wrong: protest against it, even though your protest may seem useless. Failure to protest in time has put whole nations of wellmeaning people in the power of a few wicked men. For example, if you are at a party where someone begins to disparage the Jews, or any other race, do not let them get away with it. Remember that it is from such small beginnings that terrible persecutions grow. 2. If you share such a prejudice, struggle against it. It is very easy to become infected by racial prejudice. Hitler has already won a victory in making us all more or less raceconscious. If we meet someone whom we dislike who happens to belong to another nation or race, it is very hard to prevent ourselves saying, or thinking, that he is unpleasant because Jewish or Irish or German, or whatever he is; but if we dislike someone of our own kind we think he is unpleasant although he is English or American, which is obviously unfair. We never condemn the whole of our own group, even though there may be hundreds that we dislike: but we are only too apt to say airily "Oh I don't care for Czechs (or Poles or Jews)", if we are treated badly by only one of them. If you have such a prejudice that you are unable to conquer, at least keep it to yourself. Remember that other people less responsible than yourself may think dislike a reason for persecution. 3. Do not be credulous. It is difficult to avoid believing anything that we hear often enough. The totalitarian countries have introduced advertising methods into politics, where their evil effects are obvious. But in small as well as great affairs we should remember to ask for proofs and arguments before believing anything at all. 4. Don't be lazy and shirk your responsibilities as a citizen. If there is some evil that you know of in your immediate surroundings, such as a corrupt administration in your city, don't think it is a great pity but not your affair. Go round worrying your friends about it until they are willing to join you in a movement against it.

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5. Don't be afraid of making a fuss. There is a foolish idea that it is "in bad taste" to call attention to the existence of something unpleasant, or to express open disagreement with some (one) else's opinions. If by saying what you think you provoke a scene, that will be regrettable, but not nearly so regrettable as allowing error or falsehood to pass unchallenged. Moreover, people who make a habit of speaking out, if they are otherwise kind and jolly, often come to occupy a position of special affection and re~~

6. It is easier to get away with speaking your mind if you can believe that people you disagree with are not wicked but mistaken. At the same time you should do everything you can to convince them of their mistake. (This is perhaps the most difficult rule of all, and one of the most important.) 7. Don't be too easily satisfied. Nothing human is perfect, and particularly when we have to defend our country we should guard against thinking it is faultless. Mere defence cannot prevail against those who think they have something new that is better than what already exists. Democracy, for example, is not like something that can be kept in a safe; it must be a living force, an aspiration as well as something partly possessed. The more ardently we strive to perfect freedom and justice at home, the more effectively we shall be able to resist tyranny and injustice abroad.

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And so, to the man tempted by Despair, and to myself in moments when the world becomes unbearable, I say: Remember the serenity that is not trivial and not based on forgetfulness of evil; when you have filled 30 your mind with the contemplation of what is great, remind yourself that the world is what we make it, and that to the making of it each one of us can contribute something. This thought makes hope possible, and in this hope, though life will still be painful, it will be no longer purposeless.

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VIII

History of Philosophy

60

Philosophy in the Twentieth Century [1936]

John Laird's Recent Philosophy was published in The Listener, t6 (14 Oct. 1936): supp., p. iii. There is also a manuscript, and a collation of it with the printed version shows considerably editing, probably undertaken to fit the review on to one page of the magazine. The excised parts have been restored in this reprint. John Laird was Russell's pupil at Cambridge during the academic year, 1910IL In the examinations for the degree he tied with Karin Costelloe, Russell's niece by marriage, and Russell noted that he was somewhat put out by this. Laird had acquired a great deal of philosophical erudition at the University of Edinburgh, where he took his first degree, but, in Russell's opinion, very little training in thinking for himself. The Cambridge examinations were designed to test ability rather than knowledge, which annoyed Laird. Laird came to visit Russell after he went to St. Andrew's to teach. After an evening of discussing ethical questions, Russell told Lady Ottoline Morrell that

THIS REVIEW OF

he was very muddle-headed, in the way that comes of no longer having any passion for clear thinking; intellectual laziness is coming on him. I told him he was muddled and he was a little vexed. He has been a whole year teaching, instead of learning. (C. D.) Broad will be a good teacher, for people who already have a great enthusiasm for philosophy, but for others he will be deadly. Laird will be deadly for everybody. They were the best people in philosophy in their respective years. (#505, July 1912) Later Russell reported that Broad, who was also teaching at St. Andrew's, had told him that Laird was "longing to revert to Presbyterianism and goes to chapel regularly, so I don't seem to have corrupted him very profoundly!" (#502, 18 July 1912) During that summer Laird accepted a position at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and, before sailing, he visited Russell again: I had a strenuous time with Laird last night-he is off to Canada and I shan't see him again. He was lapsing into stupidity, letting his mind grow sluggish. He said he found Logic too difficult and couldn't understand it. I told him he could if he would take the trouble, and that if he

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wouldn't take the trouble he had no business to teach philosophy. I made him realize all sorts of muddles he had got into, and tried to stir him up to use his faculties to know whether I produced any lasting effect. (#514, 26 July) After this there is no evidence of further meetings, although there must have been at various philosophical conferences. Laird left Dalhousie after one year for a professorship in Queens University, Belfast, where he remained until 1924, with one year off as Visiting Professor in the University of California. In 1924 he was elected Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen, a position he held until his death in 1946. In his eighteen books he expounded and defended a form of realism. The manuscript (RAl 220.016440) is in the Russell Archives. It has been selected as copy-text and collated with the printed version; the results are reported in the Textual Notes.

Recent Philosophy. By John Laird. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1936. pp. 256.

o WRITE a short popular book on recent philosophy in general is no easy task. If all authors of undoubted importance are mentioned, there is hardly room to explain any single one adequately, while to treat some at length and others briefly would be unfair. In writing for the general reader, a scrupulous philosopher will do his best to suppress his personal bias, but without bias it is difficult to be interesting. It is scarcely possible to find a single comprehensive point of view from which to treat all the different schools, yet without this it is difficult ro to give any clear impression of the whole philosophical territory. All these problems must have made Professor Laird's book a very difficult one to write. Perhaps some of them are not quite successfully solved, but it is easier to say this than to see a better solution. The book is careful, comprehensive for its size, and usually very fair in expounding different philosophers. In old days there were two well-defined schools, the a priori and the empirical, the former mainly German, the latter mainly British. The former proved more about the universe and the individual soul than common sense could swallow, while the latter had difficulty in account- 20 ing for the certainty of mathematics. Nowadays things are less clear cut. Those who would like to keep alive the tradition of the great a priori philosophers are sobered by past failures, and venture only modest incursions into the land of metaphysics. Conversely, those whose temperament is empirical are painfully conscious that Hume led empiricism into what appears to be a blind alley. The result is that most modern philosophers make an uneasy compromise between rival tendencies, and thus achieve a diminution of error at the cost of a loss of imaginative force and constructive boldness. Philosophy has two very different functions to perform: on the one hand, to contribute to knowledge; on the other, to 30 stimulate a kind of intellectual epic poetry. Philosophers have at no time been very successful in adding to our stock of definite knowledge, but by expressing and encouraging a certain kind of disciplined imagination they have played an important part in human history. In our own century, they have had, perhaps, rather more success than before in the pursuit of demonstrable truth, but they have lost the courage required for the imaginative creation of great systems. The nearest approaches to the grand manner, in our time, have been in the works of Bergson and Alexander; but even they are hampered by a respect for science which never impeded Hegel's flights of fancy. 40 The most startling innovations in philosophy, as Professor Laird points out, have come from men of science, first the pure mathematicians, and

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then the physicists. At the beginning of the century, the new demonstrative rigour in previously fallacious mathematical proofs, and the new treatment of the ancient problems of infinity and continuity, bore fruit in logic, and, through logic, in other branches of philosophy. The resulting movement is still active, and is producing important work, especially that of the "Vienna Circle", whose members, for political reasons, can no longer live in Vienna. Of this work Professor Laird gives an admirably lucid, though necessarily compressed, account. The work of the physicists has been more startling, and has not yet been assimilated by the IO philosophers. Everything that could be pictured in the physical world is discarded by the modern physicist. Rutherford and Bohr had represented an atom as a miniature solar system, consisting of a nucleus with planetary electrons; but now the electrons are replaced by waves of probability. The probability is that of an occurrence concerning which we know almost nothing except that it is most likely to occur in a certain small region, and that it may be of any one of several sorts, each of which has a known likelihood. There is no longer continuity, there is no longer space or time in the old sense of these words, there are no longer, where atoms are concerned, physical laws which determine what must happen 20 when all the relevant circumstances are known. All this is a challenge to philosophy, but there are few philosophers who have the competence in quantum physics which the new problems demand. Those whose bias is favoured by quantum theory accept the philosophy as well as the physics of the physicists, while those whose systems are threatened tend to reject the physics as well as the philosophy. Professor Laird inclines more to the latter party. He says, for example: "The claim that Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principle' knocks the bottom out of determinism seems to be a simple-minded mistake. Everything in nature is what it is, that is, cannot be vague." I do not think 30 such cavalier treatment is justified. Quantum physicists maintain that, if you repeat an experiment exactly, the result may be different; the past, they maintain, does not determine the future exactly, but only approximately. They may be right or they may be wrong, but they cannot be proved wrong by a mere phrase such as "everything is what it is, that is, cannot be vague". The word "vague" does not apply to any event in itself, but only to what is intended to describe an event; and there is no reason to assume that all events can be described quite exactly. And there are positive grounds for supposing that we cannot observe exactly. In delicate physical experiments, the observing apparatus has an effect 40 upon the phenomenon observed, so that we cannot tell what would have happened if we had not been observing. Moreover what seems to us to happen depends partly upon what happens to our experimental apparatus. These difficulties are the penalty we pay for the extreme minuteness

60 PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

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of the phenomena we are able to investigate. When you turn a telescope onto the sun or moon, it goes on its way just as it would if you were not looking; but when you turn light onto an atom (as you must do to observe it), it does not behave quite as it would do in the dark. The modern physicist is in the position of a schoolmaster whose boys are always good when he is there, so that he cannot find out what they are really like. Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" must, I think, wait some time yet before its philosophical import can be ascertained with certainty; but it must undoubtedly be treated seriously, and not dismissed as "a simple-minded mistake". IO On the whole, the record of philosophy during the twentieth century is less brilliant than that of many other studies. The chief reason for this is that, in the opinion of many competent people, the problems that formerly made metaphysics attractive have turned out to be essentially insoluble, at any rate by philosophical methods. The modern man finds it increasingly difficult to believe that, by merely sitting still and thinking, he can discover important truths about the universe, the future life, or the destiny of man. It is usual, among those who would formerly have been philosophers, to feel that knowledge of the real world is only to be obtained by observation combined with scientific reasoning; metaphysics 20 begins to seem an unreal study, like astrology. Much of philosophy remains, it is true, especially logic and the logical analysis of science; but such work has a purely intellectual interest, and does not, like the older systems, appeal also to religious and imaginative emotions. Those who still look for emotional satisfaction in philosophy are, as a rule, content with one or other of the great men of the past, usually Hegel, or Kant, or Thomas Aquinas, or Plato; they do not, therefore, produce anything radically new. Nor does it seem likely that philosophy will revive in the near future. Throughout the greater part of the Continent, political conditions make 30 this difficult. One system of philosophy is de rigueur in Germany, another in Austria, and yet another in Russia; in each of these countries, a Professor is chosen, not for his abilities, but for his orthodoxy. Germany, hitherto the home of philosophy, has condemned most of the best philosophers to exile. The Corporative State wishes everybody to think alike, and this is only possible if everybody avoids thinking altogether, which many people find only too easy. Philosophy thus suffers in two opposite ways. The impulse to philosophy is dried up by scientific scepticism, and the opportunity is denied by a despotic dogmatism. In these circumstances the countries which still 40 permit intellectual freedom have a new responsibility to the civilization of the future. And so long as great States exist which insist upon the teaching of demonstrably false philosophical systems, the study of philosophy

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must remain an essential ingredient in the defence of mental liberty. Professor Laird's book gives a very impartial account of the differe schools that. have ~een important. in recent years, and does not attem~~ to find a umty which does not exist, or to suggest a development in an one specific direction. Occasionally, perhaps, he keeps himself almost to Y much in the background; but in a work intended for readers with littl~ previous knowledge of philosophy, this is at worst a good fault, and at most times an important merit.

61

Plato in Modern Dress [1937]

TJHS REVIEW WAS published in The New Statesman and Nation, n.s. 13 (22 May 1937): 850. Richard Howard Stafford Crossman (1907-1974) was educated at Oxford and was offered a fellowship in New College, his old college, upon graduation in 1930. Urged by his seniors to spend his first year abroad, he elected to go to Germany. Witnessing the rise of Hitler at first hand led to a lifelong interest in politics. Upon his return to Oxford he taught for the next six years, leaving when he married the divorced wife of one of his common-room colleagues. He became active in the Labour Party, but did not succeed in gaining a seat in Parliament until 1945. Nineteen years later he was appointed to the Cabinet for the first time. With the defeat of the Wilson government in 1970, Crossman left Parliament to become the editor of The New Statesman, a post he held until he was dismissed by the board of the magazine in 1972. In the years remaining to him he edited the diaries he had kept while in Parliament; they were not published until after his death, and then only after the Labour Party attempted to suppress them and lost their battle in the courts. Secrets were revealed in the diaries which blemished the reputations of a number of Labour politicians, but Crossman, harking back to his first experiences with politics, believed that in a democracy the public at large had a right to know how decisions which affected them were made. In addition to this book Crossman wrote two others of a philosophical sort: one on Socrates and the other on government. After 1939 he did no further philosophical writing. The printed version is the copy-text.

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Plato To-Day. By R.H. S. Crossman. London: George Allen and Unwin 1937. Pp. 302. '

of 1914", says Mr. Crossman, "has made Plato intelligible to us." This is quite true. Intellectually, it was a useful war. It and its consequences have enabled us to understand not only Plato, but also Caligula, theocracy, the Spanish Inquisition, and the customs of savages. For the moment, however, it is only Plato that concerns us. It used to be the custom to ignore Plato's politics, and treat him solely as metaphysician and artist. The Republic was not taken seriously, and no one even troubled to think what it would be like to live in. When I say that it was not taken seriously, I do not mean that it was not studied, but that it was read, as traditionally admired works usually are read, without any regard to its real significance. Teachers did not, for instance, point out to their pupils how much of Plato's recommendations has been adopted in the government of the Catholic Church. The various phases of the doctrine of Ideas were carefully studied, expounded and made the subject of controversy, but the Platonic State was treated as a mere fantasy, unconnected with practical life. Mr. Crossman has reversed all this: it is with Plato the politician that he is concerned. He tells what the philosopher thought of affairs in his own day, and what part he and his disciples played in party conflicts; he then brings him into our world, gives us his comments on democracy, Fascism and Communism, and lets us know where he himself disagrees with these imagined comments. It is refreshing to find a competent authority treating the sage with so little reverence. There is all the more force in the final recognition of Plato's greatness: " T H E WORLD WAR

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Even admitting all these criticisms, I still find the Republic the greatest book on political philosophy which I have read. The more I read it, the more I hate it: and yet I cannot help returning to it time after time. For it is philosophy. It tries to reach the truth by rational discussion and is itself a pattern of the disinterested research which it extols. This is, to my mind, a completely just estimate. Plato was not only an exquisite artist and a profound metaphysician; he was also, in his speculations on practical affairs, coherent, comprehensive, and profound. It may be our duty to hate him, as it is to hate Milton's Satan; but it is a difficult duty, which is performed with reluctance. Plato To-Day has interested me all the more because I have experienced in my own mind the coming alive of the Republic since the war.

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I visited Russia in 1920, I remarked, to the indignation of ComWhe? ts and Platonists alike, that the aims of the Soviet State were munis the same as Plato's. Smee · · re-rea d'mg h'1m, 1t · 1s · more t h e t h en, m almos tblances with Fascism · · d Th · to b e no that have 1mpresse me. ere 1s resern f "R 1 B · · " d "Th ··h · except the Greek analogues o u e ntanma an e B nus rnusicadiers". No one must be allowed to question · th at th ose wh o d'1e m · Gren o to heaven, not because this ··th h b b · 1s oug t true, ut ecause 1t probattl e g · courage in war. And so on. The part played by propaganda 1s motes . . . ughly modern, except m one particular: where educat10n was conth oro · 1 fined to the upper classes, it was easier for them to be openly cymca to h other about the lies that they taught to the populace. ea~t is curious that Plato has always been one of t~e chief ~eroes of tho~e who love culture, for he himself hated culture m th~ kind of way m .ch St. Anthony hated courtesans. He was an ascetic, who held that whusic I . I and poetry, truth and beauty, should be sacn'ficed to poI'ltlca :igencies; he resembled certain highly civilized men in our own day who have renounced civilization for Communism. More profoundly, he resembled Pascal. Mr. Crossman, when he makes Plato discourse on modern questions, successfully resists the temptation to which most authors succumb when they introduce distinguished ghosts for such a purpose: he does not use his hero merely as a mouthpiece for his own opinions. His Plato praises British "democracy" for being so much less democratic than Athens in his day, and hopes that the "noble lie" of self-government will not be exploded. He admires Stalin's short way with rivals, and his "sly humour" in promulgating a democratic constitution, but thinks it regrettable to select the ruling class from among manual workers. In Germany he finds much to admire in Hitler, but is shocked to find that he employs the philosophers, and not they him. A final chapter, on "Why Plato Failed", regards it as his chief defect that he believed political wisdom to be confined to aristocrats. I do not think, myself, that this criticism, just as it is, goes to the heart of the matter. The English eighteenth century had an equal belief in aristocracy, but produced a polity which was by no means Platonic. To my mind, the essential defect of Plato is that he believes in a tyranny of the wise, which is to compel the herd to act wisely by means of a mixture of force and cajolery, while encouraging it to think even more foolishly than before. And this, in turn, is connected with a purely intellectual error, namely that absolute truth is ascertainable. Plato was influenced by geometry and by the Pythagorean mysticism about numbers; he thought that the demonstrative certainty which is attainable in pure mathematics is also to be achieved in practical affairs, and by the same method, namely abstract reasoning. Catholic theologians hold the same view; so do those who believe in the verbal

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inspiration of the Koran, Das Kapital, or Mein Kampf. The political 0 come of such a belief is an autocratic persecuting theocracy. Those w~t­ 0 in agreement with most modern men of science, believe that ascerta · ' able truth is piecemeal, partial, uncertain and difficult, hesitate to per:n: cute others for rejecting doctrines which, after all, are probably more ~r less erroneous. Plato's love of dogmatism and autocracy is, of course, intimately connected with the defeat of Athens by Sparta. Athens was democratic tu ' rbulent, and full of notable individuals; Sparta was an aristocratic corm porative State, which never produced a single person of note except i war. Since Sparta won, Sparta was right, and Plato made himself thn sycophant of the victors. The standard of values which led to this line ~ thought and action is one which hardly commands respect; but I fear many of our intellectuals would behave in the same way if we were conquered by the Nazis. Mr. Crossman deserves high praise for making Plato real, in spite of the fact that he teaches about him in a university. He must greatly stimulate his pupils' interest in the Republic. There is in his book no trace of the hieratic stained-glass dignified immobility which is apt to be imposed 20 upon the great men of the past in academic instruction. His Plato was interested in practical questions which still interest us, and made the sort of mistakes to which we are all liable. There were sides of Plato with which he does not deal, but Plato the politician was, I make no doubt . such a man as Mr. Crossman represents him as being. ' Just

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62

The Philosophy of Santayana [r940]

appeared in The Philosophy of George Santayana (1940), edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, and published in Evanston and Chicago by Northwestern University. Russell's contribution occupies pages 453-74. All subsequent editions of the book have reprinted his contribution unchanged. Santayana's reply to Russell appears on pages 582-8. For the reader's convenience it is reprinted as Appendix x. George Santayana (1863-1952) was baptized Jorge Augustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana, but was always known professionally by the Anglicized form of his first name. He was the child of two cultures; his father was Spanish and his mother was American, a member of a prominent Boston family. Until the age of nine, he lived in Spain with his father; then he moved to Boston to attend Boston Latin School and Harvard University, where he earned a PH.D. and was invited to join the faculty. He was a friend of Russell's brother, Frank, whom he met when Frank visited Harvard in the 1890s. Through Frank he met Bertrand Russell, who always maintained a certain emotional distance from him, largely because their temperaments were so diverse. In 1912 he resigned from Harvard and spent the rest of his life in Europe, mostly in Italy, as a gentleman of leisure. His books earned him sufficient income for a comfortable life, and his novel, which came out in 1935, made him wealthy. Russell wrote five reviews of Santayana's books in the 1920s; these reviews have now all been reprinted in his 1988. On 29 October 1925 when asked to review a new Santayana book, he declined and gave as his reason: "I have reviewed so many of his books ... that I can't think of anything new to say about him" (1988, 417). During the late 1930s Santayana agreed to advance Russell large sums of money on a regular basis so that he could resume his philosophical work without having to write and lecture just to make money. This arrangement came to an end when Russell accepted a position at the University of Chicago. (See Clark 1975, 456.) After this essay on Santayana's philosophy, Russell wrote one other piece on him, a "portrait from memory", in 1953· It will be reprinted in Volume rr of The Tf!IS PAPER FIRST

Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell.

The manuscript (RA1 220.017130) for this essay is in the Russell Archives. It has been selected as copy-text and collated with the printed version. The results of the collation are to be found in the Textual Notes.

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62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SANTAYANA

characterize philosophers, no uniform method should be adopted. The method, in each case, should be such as t 0 exhibit what the philosopher himself thinks important, and what 1· the opinion of the critic, makes him worthy of study. There are some_:_ ~ whom Leibniz is the most important example-who stand or fall by ;: correctness of their reasoning and logical analysis; the treatment of sue~ philosophers demands minute dissection and the search for fallacie There are others-e.g. Democritus and Descartes-who invent imagi~~ ative hypotheses of a sweeping kind, which act as a spur to detailed ro scientific investigation; these men owe their importance, not to the adequacy of their own grounds for their hypotheses, but to their subsequent fruitfulness. Another large group of philosophers-of whom the German idealists are the classic examples-derive their merit or demerit, according to the opinions of the critic, from an attempt to humanize the universe; these men are important if their metaphysics are correct, and unimportant if not. Apart from the attempt to understand the world, philosophy has other functions to fulfil. It can enlarge the imagination by the construction of a cosmic epic, or it can suggest a way of life less wayward and accidental 20 than that of the unreflective. A philosopher who attempts either of these tasks must be judged by a standard of values, aesthetic or ethical, rather than by intellectual correctness. Lucretius and Spinoza may be taken as illustrative of these two types; each has a metaphysic, but neither loses his importance when his metaphysic is discredited. Santayana, like Spinoza, is to be read, not so much on account of his theoretical doctrines, as on account of his view as to what constitutes the good life, and of his standard of values in art and morals. I do not mean to suggest that either his opinions or his values resemble Spinoza's. Spinoza, he says, failed to reconstitute the life of reason, because "everything 30 impassioned seemed to him insane, everything human necessarily petty. Man was to be a pious tame animal, with the stars shining above his head." The likeness to Spinoza consists in concern for the life of reason, not in the theory as to what it consists of. When a philosophy is in this sense fundamentally ethical, the question whether, as a whole, it is to be accepted or rejected is not amenable to argument, and reduces, when honestly considered, to the question: "Do I like or dislike it?" This, however, is not the only issue for the critic. There is also the question of internal consistency: has the system in question been so deeply felt and thought as to possess a comprehensive 40 subjective harmony? And there is another matter, less definite, namely what we may call the importance of the point of view. A lunatic's judgments, even if they achieve consistency, remain unimportant; Spinoza's, though not wholly consistent, are important.

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As regards these three problems, I will, to begin with, briefly state my wn view of Santayana's system. To a certain extent, though not wholly, ~ a!11 in agreement with it; it is exceptionally self-consistent; and I have doubt that it is important. 0 n 'fo understand Santayana, it is necessary to bear in mind some general features of his circumstances and temperament. While his environment bas been mainly ~erican; his tas~es and preferences have remained predominantly Spamsh. ThIS clash, it would seem, produced a rare explicitness and self-knowledge as regards values. Those who have always lived in sympathetic surroundings have had no occasion to become aware of the impersonal part of their springs of action, since no one has questioned it. Unsympathetic surroundings, on the contrary, generate, in a reflective mind, an intellectual defensive system. In a world of pragmatism, democracy, mechanism, and Protestant modernism, Santayana remained a Platonizing scholastic, 1 a theoretical believer in aristocracy, unmoved by the triumphs of scientific technique, aesthetically and politically, though not theologically, a Catholic. Perhaps his negative reaction to the modern non-Mediterranean world contains more of passion than appears in his writings, which have a possibly deceptive stylistic calm. His literary taste is incompatible with controversy, and his most incisive criticisms are aphoristic rather than argumentative. Take, for example, his judgment on Kant's ethics: "The 'categorical imperative' was a shadow of the ten commandments; the postulates of practical reason were the minimal tenets of the most abstract Protestantism. These fossils, found unaccountably imbedded in the old man's mind, he regarded as evidences of an inward but supernatural revelation." Most professorial philosophers would develop this sentiment into a volume, but Santayana is content with a polished expression of contemptuous distaste. It may well be doubted whether greater length would have added anything of w~.

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But it is time to leave these generalities and consider Santayana's system in more detail. His views on metaphysics and theory of knowledge are most explicitly set forth in Realms of Being. Essence, matter, and truth are the three realms. (A fourth, The Realm of Spirit, has just been published, since the writing of this essay.) The realm of essence is "the infinite multitude of distinguishable ideal terms". An essence does not exist as such, but may

I

"My position is the orthodox Scholastic one in respect to pure logic, but freed from Platonic cosmology and from any tendency to psychologism." Realm of Essence, 93n. "I might almost say that my theory is a variant of Platonism, designed to render Platonic 40 logic and morals consistent with the facts of nature." Ibid. 155.

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be exemplified in what exists; absolute truth is "merely that segment the realm of essence which happens to be illustrated in existence?,~ "Sometimes", he says, sensation and language, instead of being passed over like the ticking of the telegraph, may become objects in themselves, in all their absolute musical insignificance; and then animals become idealists. The terms in which they describe things, unlike the things they are meant to describe, are purely spacious, arbitrary, and ideal; whether visual, tactile, auditory, or conceptual these terms are essentially words. They possess intrinsically, on their own ontological plane, only logical or aesthetic being; and this contains no indication whatever of the material act of speaking, touching, or looking which causes them to appear. All possible terms in mental discourse are essences existing nowhere; visionary equally, whether the faculty that discovers them be sense or thought or the most fantastic fancy. 2

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Thus essences are not mental; they are objects which may be apprehended by minds, but which are in no way affected by being apprehended, and have the kind of being appropriate to them even if they never become objects to any minds. They constitute a world of Platonic ideas, but purified from all such contact with the world of existence as sullied their purity in Plato's system. The substance of what actually exists Santayana calls "matter". It would be verbally correct, though very misleading, to call him a materialist; it would be misleading, both because he uses the word "matter" in a somewhat peculiar sense, and because he is less interested in the material world than in the realm of essence. Essence, he says, "is a sort of invitation to the dance". "However monistic physics may choose to be, the realm of essence is the home of eternal and irreducible plurality." "Essences are definite and thinkable: existence is indefinite and only endured." This is a sentiment with which, in feeling, I find myself completely in sympathy, though it is of the South rather than of the misty North. If the world is to be conceived in terms of substance and attribute, then everything, or almost everything, that Santayana says about essence commands my assent. Whether the world should be so conceived has been often questioned, but in The Realm of Essence there is no controversial defence of this fundamental assumption. Whatever may be the correct view, any adequate discussion of this question must be very tech-

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. al and must be influenced by modern logic. It is, however, a fixed · S antayana to avo1'd ever yth'mg t h at cannot b e d'iscussed m . with rarary form. This imposes certain limitations upon his writing, and also, ;r~ink, upon his thought. He has, for instance, a chapter on "Pure Being", which would have been different if he had taken account of ical technique. Perhaps, however, the difference would not have been 1 ogto anything that he thinks important. When a previously philosophical a~estion becomes technical, he might say, it is shown to have been not qenuinely philosophical; philosophy conceived as a means to the Life of ~eason must be capable of being set forth in literary as opposed to technical language. The question as to what can and what cannot be expressed in philosophy without the use of a crabbed and difficult vocabulary and syntax is an important one, which has more influence than might be thought upon the actual content of a writer's opinions. Broadly speaking, old conceptions have acquired pleasant literary clothes, whereas new ones still appear uncouth. An aesthetic bias in favour of good literary form is therefore likely to be associated with conservatism. This does not always happen; Hume is an instance to the contrary. But Hume's innovations were only in opinion, not in the concepts applied to the understanding of the world. No one has ever surpassed Plato in the literary expression of new ideas, but even he felt compelled to abandon charm of style as he grew older. As a result of many centuries of Platonism, the language of educated men can now express even the most difficult of Plato's ideas without crabbedness; but this was not the case in his own day. The scholastics were notorious for their barbarous jargon, which caused the renaissance to despise them; yet whatever had value in their systems can be expressed by Santayana in the most smooth and exquisite English. The mathematical concepts of the seventeenth century-function, differential, integral, etc.-though immeasurably useful in understanding the world, have still no means of literary expression, with the result that philosophers still think of causation in the discrete form "A causes B", and finance ministers introducing a graduated income tax cannot say "the tax shall be proportional to the three-halfth power of the income". In such ways those who insist upon elegant literary form are compelled to lag behind-often far behind-the best thought of their time. Per contra, conservatives have a great aesthetic advantage over innovators, for ideas, unlike animals, grow more beautiful as they grow older. Every philosopher has limitations, and Santayana frequently acknowledges his own. What he has to say about the Realm of Matter is less interesting than what he has to say about the Realms of Essence and Truth. His volume on Reason in Science, though full of valuable material, contains very little about science, and almost nothing to console the man n!C ctice

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who has "doubts" about scientific method, in the sense in which Victorians had "doubts" about religion. This is one instance of the bearing of difficult technical discussions upon questions of value. If scientific knowledge is possible, the pursuit of it is part of the Life of Reason; if not, not. Confronted with this issue, Santayana appeals to "animal faith". I think it highly probable that there is nothing better to be done. Santayana sighs as a lover (of knowledge), and obeys as a son (of nature). But a more passionate lover of knowledge will not obey until he has explored every avenue of escape, and some of these lead into the tangled forests of probability and induction; he may even prefer to perish philosophically in the attempt to blaze a trail through these pathless wilds, rather than acquiesce in a renunciation which saps the springs of hope. To attempt the impossible is, no doubt, contrary to reason; but to attempt the possible which looks impossible is the summit of wisdom. Only the issue can decide whether a man is wise or a fanatical madman, and fanatics of certain kinds should therefore be treated with hypothetical respect. All this will be found admitted in various passages of Santayana's books, but it is the admission of an onlooker, not an actor. "We live in this human scene as in a theatre'', 3 he says. But it is not so that the actors and the dramatist live. There is in Santayana's system a very complete dualism between "essence" and "matter". The category of substance-which, unlike most recent philosophers, he sees no reason to reject-applies, in his view, only to "matter'', which includes "the gods". (Does it include God? And is there a God? I am not sure what his answer would be.) All natural knowledge, he says, rests on the assumption that there are things and events prior to the discovery of them and independent of this discovery; these things are "substance". All causal efficacy is ascribed to matter; the causes of mental changes are material. Substance which is not material is only grammatical. He makes fun of Leibniz and Berkeley as "muscular idealists"; in their systems, "God was comfortably pledged never to act otherwise than as if matter were acting for him". Their religiosity was "purely official; their idealism was, and was intended to be, perfectly mundane". Spirits thought of as powers "are simply mythological names for certain operations of matter, poetically apprehended, and turned into dramatic units with reference to the observer's interests or emotions". As criticism, what is said against idealism is admirable, but considered as ground for materialism it suffers from the assumption that there is no third possibility. The divorce of essence from existence, in which I formerly believed as

3 Realm of Truth, 66.

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cornpletely as Santayana does, has come to seem to me questionable. I e-read recently his criticism of me in Winds of Doctrine (I913), and found ~yself, broadly speaking, in agreement with him whenever he thought rne in the wrong, but not when he thought me in the right. My views have changed so much that I could read what he said with almost as rnuch detachment as if it applied to some one else. The only element that has remained constant is a certain method, notably Occam's razor, of which he disapproves as "the weapon of a monstrous self-mutilation with which British philosophy, if consistent, would soon have committed suicide".4 This, however, is by the way; the problem with which we are ro concerned at the moment is the relation of essence to existence. In his discussion of me he says: Nothing can ever exist in nature or for consciousness which has not a prior and independent locus in the realm of essence. When a man lights upon a thought or is interested in tracing a relation, he does not introduce those objects into the realm of essence, but merely selects them from the plenitude of what lies there eternally. 5 Let us consider a particular application of this theory. Suppose-what would be quite possible-that in every spectrum a certain small finite 20 region is dark, and that nowhere in nature is any colour to be found which has its place within this region. Are we to say that the shades of colour which would occupy this region if they existed have a timeless being in the realm of essence? I see no reason why we should say so. Words of which the meaning is universal are used in describing what exists, and if a word cannot serve this purpose I do not see in what sense it has meaning. This question, however, is too vast to be pursued further in the present connection. The Realm of Truth, as Santayana conceives it, involves both matter and essence; it depends upon the essences that happen to be exemplified 30 in the actual world. All truth is contingent, since it describes existence. The view that truth consists in coherence is rejected as arrogant, and as yet involving impotence, since it abandons the hope that truth may really tell us something about the world. In regard to truth, "animal faith" is again very convenient so long as we can trust it, but there seems no good reason, except of a practical kind, in favour of doing so. "The only belief that I myself entertain'', we are told, "because I find it irresistible, is the

4 Realm of Truth, 104. 5 Winds of Doctrine, rr9.

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belief in a realm of matter, the expectation of persistence and order in a natural world; and this i~ a belief which I am confident the reader shares." I have not anythmg better to offer; I am, however, less contented with this solution than Santayana appears to be. For, after all "animal faith" is only a name for a certain kind of blind impulse. Why' then, should we trust it? ' The pragmatic answer is foreign to Santayana's whole outlook, which demands a more or less ascetic submission to a truth supposed independent of our desires and volitions. In Scepticism and Animal Faith, all rational arguments for any kind of belief are dismissed. "Belief in the existence of anything, including myself, is something radically incapable of proof, and resting, like all belief, on some irrational persuasion or prompting of life." "For all an ultimate scepticism can see, there may be no facts at all, and perhaps nothing has ever existed." There are certain motives ... which render ultimate scepticism precious to a spiritual mind, as a sanctuary from grosser illusions. For the wayward sceptic, who regards it as no truer than any other view, it also has some utility: it accustoms him to discard the dogma which an introspective critic might be tempted to think self-evident, namely, that he himself lives and thinks. That he does so is true; but to establish that truth he must appeal to animal faith. If he is too proud for that, and simply stares at the datum, the last thing he will see is himself. 6 It is not quite clear what is intended by these passages. That belief in existence, speaking generally, is incapable of proof, is obvious to all who do not accept the ontological argument, since a conclusion cannot assert existence unless there is an assertion of existence among the premisses. But to call an unproved premiss "irrational" is hardly warranted. All unproved beliefs are, to begin with, mere expressions of animal faith, but the problem of theory of knowledge is to find some way of selecting some of these as more worthy of credence than others. This cannot be done by ultimate scepticism, which rejects them all, nor by animal faith, which accepts them all. If we are going to accept some and reject others, which is what every philosopher does, we need some principle intermediate between animal faith and complete scepticism. Perhaps this principle may be merely the power of resistance to scepticism, which is greater in some cases than in others; but if so, the above argument against Descartes' cogito loses its force. However that may be, there is, I think, a

6 Scepticism and Animal Faith, 35, 40-41.

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problem in regard to the rejection of scepticism which cannot be solved by an appeal to animal faith alone. I come now to Santayana's judgments of value, as set forth in The Life of Reason. Although, having b~gun wit~ his last c?mp~ehensive work, I am going backwards chronologically, this fact has little importance, as he is a remarkably consistent thinker, and has travelled, in his books, from the outworks of his system to the citadel. His judgments as to what parts of human life can be considered rational, which are set forth in The Life of Reason, are based upon a metaphysic which, in that book, is implicit, but becomes explicit in Realms of Being. That is why, in exposition, it has seemed best to reverse the chronological order. Reason is considered by Santayana in five different spheres, Common Sense, Society, Religion, Art, and Science. "The Life of Reason", we are told, "will then be a name for that part of experience which perceives and pursues ideals-all conduct so controlled and all sense so interpreted as to perfect natural happiness." 7 His ideals, like those of all ages and classes before the industrial revolution, are contemplative rather than active. This world of free expression, this drift of sensations, passions, and ideas, perpetually kindled and fading in the light of consciousness, I call the Realm of Spirit. It is only for the sake of this free life that material competence and knowledge of fact are worth attaining. Facts for a living creature are only instruments; his play-life is his true life. 8 This is the kind of ideal which is nowadays called "aristocratic", because it values things which, hitherto, have only been open to aristocrats. For my part, I am in agreement with Santayana on this matter, as against the critics whom I can imagine pointing out the class origin of such an ethic. As a matter of fact, the Marxist ideal of honest toil is one taken over by intellectuals from employers. The genuine proletarian ideal is obviously one of idleness, as expressed in the swan-song of the dying washerwoman: I'm going where anthems for ever are ringing, But as I've no voice I get out of the singing. Christianity has been called a religion for slaves, and its heaven is one of

7 The Life of Reason, Vol. 1, Intro., 3. 8 The Realm of Essence, x-xi.

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contemplation rather than action. It is in hell-according to Paradis Lost-that industrial activity is practised. Those who are, or imagin: themselves, in power have a motive for trying to cause others to accept honest toil as an ideal, but those who have always had a plethora of work will consider rest an essential part of the good life. All this, however, is strictly irrelevant. There is no reason to suppose that the social systems which have prevailed hitherto have permitted what is best to be enjoyed by the many, nor, conversely, to condemn as not really good whatever hitherto, has been the privilege of the few. It may be the temporary duty' of the fortunate to renounce their privileges pending the creation of a better social system, but that is a question of morals, not of ultimate ideals; it is analogous to rationing during a siege. Santayana distinguishes three stages in the development of ideals: prerational morality, rational ethics, and post-rational morality. The first precedes philosophy, the second has existed only in Greece, the third is that of the great religions of India and Christendom. The difference between rational and post-rational morality is, roughly speaking, the same as the difference between the artist and the ascetic. The Life of Reason is the happy marriage of two elementsimpulse and ideation-which if wholly divorced would reduce man to a brute or to a maniac. The rational animal is generated by the union of these two monsters. He is constituted by ideas which have ceased to be visionary and actions which have ceased to be vain. Thus the Life of Reason is another name for what, in the widest sense of the word, might be called Art. 9 I think-though in this I am no longer verbally following Santayanathat the difference between the rational and the post-rational may be regarded as a difference as regards matter. To the artist, matter is raw material for the embodiment of his ideals; to the ascetic, it is the alien power by which his spiritual life is enslaved. The man who is enjoying a good dinner or carving a statue out of marble is not thinking of matter as his enemy, but as his opportunity. The ascetic, on the contrary-who, if he is logical, is a Manichaean-condemns all pleasures that depend on matter, and regards them as due to the material part of himself, from which he strives to be liberated. This condemnation applies not only to the pleasures commonly called sensual, but to the whole realm of art, since art is bound up with sense. Such a morality is an outcome of despair, and arises only when the primitive zest for life is extinct.

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Reason, Santayana says, expresses impulses reduced to harmony, and sanction is happiness. IO Nevertheless, he continues, democratic ~:donism is mistaken, because we ~hould n?t value s~lly pleasures. I I I d not quite understand how he arrives at this conclusion. Impulses are osier to harmonize if they are few and simple than if they are many and ~~mplex; therefore reason, by his own definition, should favour paucity of impulses. A man, he says, .

need not limit his efforts to spreading needless comforts and silly pleasures among the million; he need not accept for a goal a child's caprices multiplied by infinity.... A conscience is a living function, expressing a particular nature; it is not a passive medium where heterogeneous values can find their balance by virtue of their dead weight and number. 12 This seems to imply that the harmony of impulses which the rational man will seek is purely personal; he need only take account of his own impulses, and may condemn those of children or of the million as silly. Perhaps he would say that they are silly only because they cannot lead to satisfaction. "Ideals", he says, "are legitimate, and each initially envisages a genuine and innocent good; but they are not realizable together, nor even singly when they have no deep roots in the world." 13 This seems to me a groundless dogma. The pleasure of seeing a football match or a cinema can be provided at less cost per head than that involved in a good performance of Hamlet or the C minor symphony, and I rather think that the pleasure of an uncultivated person at a cinema is greater than that of a cultivated person critically observing a production of Hamlet. Culture, I should say, subtracts more pleasures than it adds; moreover those that it adds are more expensive and less intense than those that it subtracts. If this is the case, no form of hedonism can justify the pursuit of culture. It is natural to look for the solution of this problem in the volume on Reason in Society. But here we find culture frankly accepted as an ideal, regardless of the definition of Reason as a harmonizing of impulses. Thus: "Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble it must remain rare, if common it must become mean. These alternatives can never be eluded until some purified and high-bred race succeeds the

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Reason in Science, 248ff. Ibid., 256-257. Ibid., 257-258. The Life of Reason, Vol. I, Intro., 8.

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promiscuous bipeds that now blacken the planet." 14 "Civilization has hitherto consisted in diffusion and dilution of habits arising in privileged centres .... To abolish aristocracy, in the sense of social privilege and sanctified authority, would be to cut off the source from which all culture has hitherto flowed." 15 All these statements, as history, appear to me undeniable; but if taken as ethics, they imply that culture is to be sought even at the cost of a vast accumulation of human suffering. This view is compatible with one of Santayana's definitions of the Life of Reason, as "practice guided by science and directed toward spiritual goods", 16 IO provided it is understood that goods are "spiritual" when such as are enjoyed by men of culture; but it is not compatible with the definition of Reason as harmonizing impulses, nor with the statement that its sanction is happiness. Santayana's attitude to democracy, as the foregoing would lead us to expect, is somewhat critical. He distinguishes between social democracy on the one hand and democracy as a governmental expedient on the other. The former is the democracy of Arcadia, Switzerland, and the American pioneers; the latter that of modern America or England. Social democracy, if any cultural goods are to survive, demands a limitation of 20 labour and luxuries, and a general return to a simple way of life; for if all have long hours of work, none will have leisure to enjoy the product. "What sort of pleasures, arts, and sciences would those grimy workmen have time and energy for after a day of hot and unremitting exertion?"17 Santayana does not point out, what is nevertheless true, that with modern technique all that reasonable men could want in the way of commodities could be produced by a very moderate amount of work, so that social democracy is more compatible with culture now than at any previous time. The dangers of a democracy which aims at merely material progress 30 are forcibly portrayed. In such a community, with aristocratic influences removed, would any head be lifted above a dead level of infinite dulness and vulgarity? Would mankind be anything but a trivial, sensuous, superstitious, custom-ridden herd? There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny.... A headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon .... The only

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freeman in it would be one whose whole ideal was to be an 18 average man. All this may be true of a bad democracy, but it is at least equally true of bad despotism. I will not adduce recent instances, which are controvera'al But take (say) the government of the Neapolitan Bourbons from SI · 8lS to 1860; is there one word in the above that would not be applicable ~o it? I have taken this example because, since the fall of the dynasty, no human being has had a word to say in their favour; but every reader can think without difficulty of scores of absolute monarchies that were disastrous, not only to happiness, but to culture. Santayana concludes: "If a IO noble and civilised democracy is to subsist, the common citizen must be something of a saint and something of a hero." 19 Very true; but, in view of the corrupting influence of power, this miracle is less improbable than an absolute monarch who is "something of a saint and something of a hero". One of the most interesting of Santayana's volumes is the one on Reason in Religion. It is made interesting by his profound understanding of Catholic Christianity from Constantine to the present day, and by his hostile but penetrating analysis of the spirit and tendency of Protestantism. He points out first that unfortunately Christianity and Islam took 20 over the doctrine, previously peculiar to the Jews, that only one religion is to be regarded as deserving respect. If this had not happened, he says, "the nature of religion would not have been falsified among us and we should not now have so much to apologize for and to retract" .20 In an attempt to recapture the spirit of antiquity, he does not discuss the truth or falsehood of any religious dogma; indeed, he takes it for granted that none is literally true. Religion, to him, is essentially myth, which may be useful or harmful, noble or ignoble, beautiful or ugly, but which it is somewhat Philistine to regard as true or false. Nietzsche and his successors have accustomed us to the view that 30 Christianity was one of the products of decay in the ancient world, and that we ought to throw over Christian ethics in order to recover barbaric vigour. What Santayana admires is not barbaric vigour, but the urbane and disciplined vigour of Socrates and Plato. Early Christianity, like the later Pagan philosophy, is judged by him as inferior to what the great age of Greece produced, because it is founded on despair. Stoicism, Platonism after Plato, and Christianity were all, he says, post-rational, "as

18 Ibid., 127-128. 19 Ibid., 136. 20 Reason in Religion, 77.

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befitted a decadent age". But this post-rational despair was inevitable and Santayana is sympathetic to the way in which the Church dealt With it. He dislikes, in Christianity, every innovation from the eleventh century to the present day, all of which he regards as due to the inability of Northern nations to assimilate the ancient wisdom which inspired the doctrine of Christian resignation. Medieval people were only superficially Christian; they admired valour and honour, which to any true Christian would be vanity. Gothic art, chivalry, and even scholastic philosophy, he says, "barbarised Christianity just as Greek philosophy and worship and Roman habits of administration had paganised it in the beginning". 21 I think this goes too far. It is of course true of chivalry, from which the Church always held aloof with a certain hostility. It may, though with less certainty, be admitted as regards Gothic architecture, which was inspired less by faith than by worldly pride. But to consider scholastic philosophy as part of the revolt of the North against the Mediterranean tradition seems to me an inadmissible paradox. The Church had certainly less vital connection with antiquity in the tenth century than in the thirteenth, and the change was largely due to the schoolmen and their revival of Aristotle. It is true that many of them lived north of the Alps and Pyrenees, but Thomas Aquinas came from the kingdom of Naples, and wrote in conscious opposition to the furor teutonicus of Frederick II. The Mohammedan influence, so far as it was operative, worked in the same direction, for the Arabs and (later) the Moors of Spain preserved much more of the Greek tradition than had survived in any part of Western Christendom. Whatever may be thought of scholasticism, there is no doubt that Santayana is right in speaking of Protestantism as "the natural religion of the Teutons raising its head". 22 Protestantism, for which he feels a contemptuous hatred, inspires some of his most scathing satire. It is convinced of the importance of success and prosperity; it abominates what is disreputable; contemplation seems to it idleness, solitude selfishness, and poverty a sort of dishonourable punishment .... Swayed as it is by public opinion, it is necessarily conventional in its conception of duty and earnestly materialistic; for the meaning of the word vanity never crosses the vulgar heart. In fine, it is the religion of a race young, wistful, and adventurous, . . . vaguely assured of an earthly vocation, and

possessing, like the barbarian and the healthy child, pure but unchastened energies. 23 With the exception of the word "pure", is there anything in this description which would not apply to Mussolini and the Fascisti? Santayana never mentions anything economic; but for my part I believe that "the rneaning of the word vanity" is understood in communities whose average income is diminishing, but not in those whose average income is increasing. Therefore to give a man a "vulgar heart" it is only necessary to make him rich. I have adopted this view, not from Marx, but from the Gospels. There are passages in Reason in Religion which show a praiseworthy desire to do justice to the merits of Protestantism. It is characterized, we are told, by personal integrity, conscience, and human instinct courageously meeting the world.

This is very well said, and its historical truth is undeniable. But perhaps the word "Teutonic" suggests a wrong causation. The outlook of the Cathari who led the rise of financial capitalism in the Lombard cities of the twelfth century was very similar to that of the Calvinist business men of the North in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thinking in national terms, though it may have some justification, is dangerous, and encourages generalizations which look more profound than they are. Fairness to Protestantism quickly gives place to satire in Santayana's discussions. Animals and plants, he says, if they could speak, would be Protestants. This applies especially to aggressive animals: "We may well imagine that lions and porpoises have a more masculine assurance that God is on their side than ever visits the breast of antelope or jellyfish. "25 "Protestants", he continues, "show some respect even for an artist when he has once achieved success." 26 All this, however true, has, I believe, no essential connection with Protestantism, but only with

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economic success. Men and nations come to resemble lions when they prosper and antelopes or jelly-fish when they fail. Respect for artists is, as a social force, derivative from the desire of the great for immortal fame; it is part of the overflow of an income too large to be wholly spent on comforts. In spite of the difference of their religions, Augustus, Julius II, and J. Pierpont Morgan (Senior) patronized the arts in very similar ways, because of the similarity in their economic circumstances. Leaving aside these historical questions, and returning to Santayana's own religious opinions, we find him reaching a conclusion surprisingly reminiscent of Spinoza. The better a man evokes and realises the ideal the more he leads the life that all others, in proportion to their worth, will seek to live after him, and the more he helps them to live in that nobler fashion. His presence in the society of the immortals thus becomes, so to speak, more pervasive. He not only vanquishes time by his own rationality, living now in the eternal, but he continually lives again in all rational beings .... By becoming the spectator and confessor of his own death and of universal mutation, he will have identified himself with what is spiritual in all spirits and masterful in all apprehension; and so conceiving himself, he may truly feel and know that he is eternal. 2 7

I do not know how far this passage is to be taken literally. If so taken, it would seem to imply that (using Santayana's language) a man can, by living wisely, progressively transfer his identity from his substance to his essence, and therefore progressively acquire the eternity of the latter. This seems contrary to what is said in The Realm of Matter, according to which every man's essence is wholly eternal and every man's matter wholly transitory. Nor do I quite understand what is meant by "worth" or by "living in a nobler fashion". It was Santayana's criticism (in Winds 30 of Doctrine) that caused me to abandon the belief in the objectivity of "good", and yet, in the above passage, he uses language which seems to imply that doctrine. It is evident that Santayana considers a life spent in contemplation of the eternal-i.e. of essence-better than one spent in more mundane activities, and he does not seem to mean by this merely that he prefers such a life. There is no doubt an answer to these objections, but I have been unable to think of it, and I look forward to learning what it is. Both The Life of Reason and Realms of Being are important books-

27 Ibid., 272-273.

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more important than they appear on a cursory reading. The extraordinary excellence of the style has a soothing effect, which makes it easy to read on without fully apprehending the purport of what is said. The delightful aphorisms which occur from time to time temporarily dispel the reader's seriousness, and make him happy instead of earnest. But when these pleasant obstacles have been overcome, it appears that a comprehensive view of life and the world has been presented, which is all the more valuable because it is very different from any of those that are prevalent in the present age. It is urbane, historical, free from fanaticism, and the expression of an exceptionally sensitive intellectual perception. IO These merits, however, inevitably entail certain limitations. They could hardly exist in a man with any originality of technique. Like almost everything aesthetically delightful, they depend upon a degree of continuity with the past which is not likely to be found in a man who makes important innovations. The temptation to hate in the present the same sort of thing that we value in the past, and to respect men in proportion to their antiquity, is one which Santayana perhaps does not always resist. He remarks, for instance, that Heraclitus was a "freer and wiser" man than Hegel. This may be true, and for my part I find Heraclitus delightful and Hegel disgusting. But how would it be if we possessed as little of 20 the works of Hegel as of those of Heraclitus? Or, conversely, what should we think if, like Plato in the Theaetetus, we were irritated beyond endurance by glib young men assuring us that all modern-minded people agreed with Heraclitus? Heraclitus favoured aristocracy against democracy in the politics of Ephesus, but this is an ancient issue, and we can allow ourselves to enjoy his invective without sharing his opinions. But Hegel's glorification of the Prussian State made him an ally of the modern governments which are attempting to enslave intelligence, and we, who are participants, can hardly view this struggle with historic detachment. I think that, if we were as remote from present-day politics as from 30 those of ancient Greece, and knew as little of Hegel as of Heraclitus, we might see nothing to choose between the two men. I often think with envy how full of ripe wisdom I should seem if I had lived two thousand years ago, written in a dead language, and remained known only through a few of my more ponderous aphorisms. But these advantages, alas, can only be enjoyed by my "essence". Santayana is fond of myths, and I offer him one to embody what I have been saying. Dr. Johnson said the devil was the first Whig; I suggest that he was the first Tory. When the Lord decided to create Man, He acted as a revolutionary; to Satan, when he got wind of the project, it 40 seemed a wild and foolish innovation, since the angelic universe was well ordered, had an ancient mellow ritual, and was long since purged of all the crudities that had marred its earlier aeons. The only solution that

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occurred to him was to bring death into our world; he did not foresee that death would come too slowly to prevent our first parents from leaving progeny who would perpetuate the legacy of confusion. In all this dislike of rash and chaotic novelty, I feel sure that Santayana would have agreed with Satan; I should have agreed myself if I could have foreseen what Man would make of his planet. Nevertheless, it is possible that we should have been in the wrong. Santayana's discussions of philosophy in America 28 illustrate his attitude towards vigorous contemporary innovation. He speaks of himself as "not an American except by long association", but the association was so long and so intimate that his knowledge is to be trusted, though his feelings about what he knows remain those of a European. He is struck as every foreigner in America must be, by the gulf between academic' values and those of daily life. I have felt it myself to be typified by the preference of universities for Gothic architecture, and have sometimes thought that professors would be more respected if their work were carried on in skyscrapers, and I find that Santayana has expressed a similar idea. 29 Universities in Europe were an important part of the State from the early middle ages to the end of the nineteenth century. Now this has ceased to be the case in Germany and Russia, and, at least temporarily, in France. In America they have never had the same governmental significance, because, in culture though not in science, they were endeavouring to keep alive an ancient tradition of which most people felt no sincere need. This tradition, in philosophy as in religion, was based upon the emotional realization of human impotence in face of natural forces. Men gave thanks to God for their daily bread; now, when not dominated by convention, they give thanks to the government or to a new fertilizer. Other men, not Nature or God, must be propitiated or restrained in order to secure prosperity. For economic reasons, this modern outlook is especially developed in America, although it is kept from explicitness by inherited piety. In philosophy, it shows itself as a revolt against what Santayana calls the "genteel tradition"-a revolt which, as he rightly recognizes, was led by William James. Santayana's essay on William James is as sympathetic as he can make it, and filled with scrupulous fairness. But at moments his feelings are

28 Character and Opinion in the United States, l92I. Also "The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy", in Winds of Doctrine, 1913. 29 "The American Will inhabits the skyscraper; the American Intellect inhabits the colo-

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nial mansion. The one is the sphere of the American man; the other, at least predominantly, of the American woman. The one is all aggressive enterprise; the other is all genteel tradition." Winds of Doctrine, 188.

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roo strong for him. James, he says, tried to help his students to live a good life. But what is a good life? Had William James, had the people about him, had modern philosophers anywhere, any notion of that? I cannot think so. They had much experience of personal goodness, and love of it; they had standards of character and right conduct; but as to what might render human existence good, excellent, beautiful, happy, and worth having as a whole, their notions were utterly thin and barbarous. They had forgotten the Greeks, or never known them. 30 I think the idea that the Greeks knew how to live the good life has very little to support it. Would Harvard have been better than it was if ~ost~n had been engaged in a long and disastrous war with New York, 1f William James had been executed on a charge of atheism, and his disciples had established an abominable tyranny? For my part, I am persuaded that no Athenian, not even Plato, understood the good life as well as William James did. I admit that Plato could have defined the good life with more eloquence and precision; but that is another matter. I admit also that I, as a European, feel at home with the culture inherited from the Greeks as I do not with the nascent pragmatic culture of America. Nevertheless it seems to me probable that, from a historical standpoint, and ignoring the question of relative truth or falsehood, we are seeing the beginnings of a new and vigorous philosophy, which, in the market place as well as in the schools, will replace Hellenism and Christianity, and may, two thousand years hence, have acquired all the beauties of age that now make us reverence those other equally erroneous orthodoxies which have been its predecessors. The world has changed too much to be content with the philosophies of the past, and even those who cannot adapt themselves to what is new must admit that, in time, it may become as delightful as what it is superseding-at any rate to those who will be accustomed to it. I have refrained from speaking of the important section of Santayana's writings which is concerned with aesthetics and literary criticism, not because I undervalue it, but because I think that other contributors can deal with it more competently. Many years ago I derived great pleasure from his Three Philosophical Poets, at any rate from his discussion of the two who were Italians. As for Goethe, I have been told that he is a great poet, "and do in part believe it". But I do not feel it, except as regards a

30 Character and Opinion in the United States, 85-86.

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few lyrics. I think Santayana is in the same case, and would, but fi authority, treat Goethe with less respect than he forces himself to or ex~ press. . Santa~a~a's gen~ral outlook ~s .one. which .is not likely to be widely mfluential m America, because 1t 1s anstocrat1c, not only politically b philosophically. He is himself a sceptic, but believes that manki~d ~t general has need of myths. His social values are thus different from h? intellectual values; the latter are for the esoteric few, the former for ~s multitude. For my part, I prefer this view to that which rejects the bes~ on the ground that only a minority can appreciate it, but I shrinkperhaps irrationally-from the admission that, not only here and now but always and everywhere, what is best worth having can only b' enjoyed by a cultured aristocracy. Those who take this view have th: advantage of avoiding conflict with the mob, but I would rather rouse it hostility in attempting to serve it than secure its tolerance by concealin; a con.tempt~ous alo.ofness. From a personal point of view, aloofness may be wiser philosophically and practically, but the opposite attitude is a heritage of Christianity, and one which is essential to the survival of intelligence as a social force.

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PAPER 63, "Hegel: Philosophy of History", was published in Invitation to Learning c194 1) edited by Huntington Cairns, Allen Tate, and Mark Van Doren by Random House in New York, pages 410-22. For a period these three men had a weekly radio series in which they discussed, usually with a prominent guest, some particular book or topic. The fact that Russell was living near Philadelphia during these years facilitated his appearance on this broadcast and the three to follow. Huntington Cairns (1904-1985) was a lawyer by profession who worked for the Treasury Department of the United States for twenty years. Before joining the Treasury he was a practising lawyer and, for two years, professor of law; he wrote several books on various aspects of the law, mostly of a theoretical or philosophical nature. In later years, his writing branched out into art and literary criticism. John Odey Allen Tate (1899-1979) was an American critic, biographer and poet; he taught English literature at a number of American colleges and universities, and ended his career at the University of Minnesota where he taught from 1951 until 1968. Mark Van Doren (1894-1972) taught English at Columbia University from 1920 until 1959; he wrote extensively on both English and American literature and published more than twenty volumes of poetry. His remaining energy was devoted to compiling and editing books of various kinds, and in organizing and participating in programmes of this sort. Paper 64, "Descartes: A Discourse on Method", was published in The New Invitation to Learning (1942), edited by Mark Van Doren and published by Random House, pages 93-104. Van Doren carried on the programme alone in this new series, but he modified it to include two prominent guests at each session. The other guest was Jacques Barzun, chosen, as the discussion suggests, for his expertise in French literature. Barzun (1907-) is a French-born American educator, historian and author who is perhaps best known for his defence of the position that undergraduates should avoid specialization and instead receive a broad education. His entire career was spent at Columbia University where he was Dean of Faculties and Provost from 1958 until his retirement in 1967. A mimeographed, unedited transcript of this broadcast, with autograph corrections by Russell, is housed in Columbia University Library. Besides correcting grammatical mistakes, Russell's additions to it consist, in the main, of supplying words that the transcriber found unintelligible. There is, however, one part of the broadcast which was omitted in the printed version, and that is the announcer's

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introduction, which is reproduced here for the reader's convenience: Announcer: Invitation to Learning! A weekly program presented by the Columbia network in the public interest to stimulate the reading or rereading of the classics. Today we bring you a discussion of Rene Descartes' Discourse on Method. Descartes, a French mathematician of the seventeenth century, wrote a discourse on method which outlined a scientific approach to the discovery of truth, which was strongly influential for generations after its writing, although some of Descartes' ideas were derided and received with scepticism by his contemporaries. For today's program, Mark Van Doren, "Invitation to Learning" Chairman, is joined by Bertrand Russell, noted philosopher and author, and Jacques Barzun, Professor of History at Columbia University, both frequent guests on this program. To open the discussion of Descartes' Discourse on Method we hear first from Mr. Van Doren.

In preparation for this broadcast Russell prepared three pages of notes which he left behind in the studio; these notes are printed for the first time in Appendix XII.

Paper 65, "Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics", was also published in Van Doren 1942, ro7-I8. Scott Buchanan (I895-I968) was the other participant. Buchanan was an American philosopher who trained at Oxford and taught for forty years at a number of American colleges and universities. A spell of teaching in the University of Chicago under Robert Maynard Hutchins led to a life-long commitment to the Great Books method of teaching undergraduates. For ten years he was the Dean at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, an institution whose entire curriculum was based on the Great Books. His last appointment-from I957 until his death-was as a consultant to the Fund for the Republic. There is also a mimeographed, unedited transcript, with Russell's autograph corrections, of this broadcast in Columbia University Library. Here is the way in which the Announcer introduced it: is once again extended to you by the Columbia Broadcasting System, an invitation to hear three thoughtful men discuss in terms of its meaning today one of the great books of all times. INVITATION TO LEARNING, presented as a public service each week by the Columbia Network now directs our attention to the seventeenth-century philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza, a resident of Amsterdam, who earned his living grinding lenses. Spinoza's outstanding book The Ethics has had profound influence in the development of human thought and conduct. For the discussion of Spinoza's Ethics we welcome Mr. Van Doren, chairman, and his two guests, both well known to INVITATION TO LEARN-

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JNG listeners. They are Scott Buchanan, philosopher and dean of St. John's College at Annapolis, and Bertrand Russell, philosopher, scientist, author and lecturer. Now we hear first from INVITATION TO LEARNING'S chairman, Mr. Mark Van Doren.

Again, Russell's corrections consist, for the most part, of supplying words issed or misinterpreted by the transcriber. rn Paper 66, "Lewis Carroll: Alice in WOnderland", was also published in Van Doren 1 942: 208-20. Katherine Anne Porter joined the d'.scussion. Porter (I89.o1980) had a distinguished career as a writer of short stories and novels for which was awarded numerous literary prizes. Before the broadcast Russell prepared she · d · a page of notes which he left behind in the studio; these notes are reprmte m Appendix xnr. There is also an unedited transcript of this broadcast with Russell's autograph corrections, again of the sort already described. The announcer introduced the discussion with a short speech: Invitation to Learning-presented weekly by Columbia to encourage your reading or rereading of the world's classics. Today our attention is devoted to Alice in WOnderland, the work of a once obscure lecturer in mathematics, Lewis Carroll. In his description of this book in the Invitation to Learning guide, Mark Van Doren has this to say: "Alice in WOnderland could scarcely have been conceived by one who is not at home in logic and mathematics or by one who lacked an understanding of children. It has remained one of the few books capable of delighting the young and the old, the uninitiated and the sophisticated." Before introducing our guests, may we take a moment to tell you that this Listener's Guide to Invitation to Learning, from which we just quoted, outlines the current series of thirty-two books and may be obtained at a nominal sum. In announcing later, on the books to be discussed in the following weeks, we will tell you how you may obtain a copy of the Guide. Now, for a discussion of Alice in WOnderland, Invitation to Learning welcomes again its regular Chairman, Mark Van Doren, and his two guests: Bertrand Russell, the distinguished philosopher and author, and Katharine Anne Porter, short story writer and novelist. Both Mr. Russell and Miss Porter have been on previous Invitation to Learning programs and we are happy to have them with us again. We hear first from Mr. Van Doren. The printed versions are the copy-texts. Russell's corrections to the various transcripts are recorded in the Textual Notes.

63 HEGEL: "PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY"

63 Hegel: Philosophy of History [1941] Mr. ~uss~ll, I have a l~tter ~er.e from you in which You state: Hegel s Philosophy of History 1s important as a source f much evil, but (I think) of no good." Would you like to ampli~ that ~tat~ment? .It was the last sentence in your letter, and it was left hangmg m the air. It whetted my appetite. ~USSELL: I a~ quit~ willing t~ amplify that statement. I think Hegel's Philoso~hy of History 1s a very important book indeed, judged by the effects 1t has had, and a totally unimportant book judged by any truth IO that it may contain. TATE: Mr. Russell, don't you think it may contain a few incidental truths here and there? RUSSELL: It is a long book and it is difficult for a man to avoid sayin something true when he uses so many words. g VAN DOREN: I like your distinction between influential books and true books. Rousseau's Confessions is often said to be an important book because it is influential. I assume it cannot be called important because it is true. RUSSELL: We do not know much about Rousseau's Confessions, wheth20 er they are true or false. CAIRNS: Would you like to be a little more specific about Hegel? RUSSELL: I should be glad to be more specific about Hegel. I think Hegel's Philosophy of History is important, partly because it presented a pattern in history-a scheme, a system-according to which historical events were supposed to have developed, which of course people like. It is a simple formula and they think "now we understand it all"; if it is false, they do not notice it. CAIRNS: That is an objection to all philosophies of history so far devised. The safest course, it has always seemed to me, is to reject the 30 system and ascertain if the philosophical position of the writer contributes anything illuminating to the discussion of particular historical points. Nothing short of omniscience can devise a system that will embrace all the world. TATE: But didn't Hegel, himself, say that he actually understood it all? RUSSELL: He understood it all. Oh, yes, of course, he understood it all. VAN DOREN: As if he knew all history. RUSSELL: He, of course, happened to have read it all; so he knew. TATE: You say his formula is simple. Could it be stated briefly? RUSSELL: Everything proceeds by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and 40 what moves it is the self-development of the Idea, and the Idea is what Hegel happened to believe. The whole course of the universe is making it just such as Hegel thought it was. That is the formula.

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TATE: Don't you think one of the marvellous things in Hegel's system . that it applies both at the top and at the bottom? That is, he has a speis· ously convincing psychological argument, almost like Descartes', that ct nsciousness has two aspects. First, it knows something, then the next c~oblern is what it knows. It knows itself. When Spirit, or Idea, is triumphant, then the condition is reached where we become pure spirituality, pnd everybody will be merged in the state. a CAIRNS: Hegel claims that the great virtue of the system is that it accounts for everything in the universe. It is all-embracing, and it assigns to everything in the universe the place that is absolutely proper for it. IO RUSSELL: It is bound to; he thought the universe as a whole was the only reality, and if it did not account for the universe, it did not account for anything at all, because he thought you could not pick the universe to bits. CAIRNS: Do you object to his primary aims? They are first to write a universal history and secondly to write history in terms of ideas representing periods. RUSSELL: I object to the second point. I do not mind a man writing universal history, if he has time; but I do object to the notion that there is a simple scheme or thread running through it all. 20 TATE: Most of us would probably disagree with a great deal that Gibbon says, but you would not object to that kind of comprehensive history, would you? RUSSELL: No, I don't. CAIRNS: Would you mind elaborating a little your objection to writing history in terms of abstract ideas? RUSSELL: Such a system must be false. Let us say, if you think so, that it is what Hegel calls rational; of course, there are abstract ideas that can be distilled out of the facts, but they must be taken out of the facts and it is not a rational development. 30 TATE: Didn't Hegel try to distil the facts out of the ideas? VAN DOREN: And it was easy for him to do that because any facts that he found he could use. He could choose among the infinite facts there are. CAIRNS: I understand Mr. Russell's point to be that he objects to Hegel's system, or rather Hegel's basic notion that historical sequences follow the order of logical categories. RUSSELL: I object to that. CAIRNS: I have no disagreement with you on that point. Such a notion is bound to lead to absurdities, as in Hegel's deification of Prussia. The 40 order of logical categories, at least in Hegel's system, is finite, but since historical development is not finite, one of the two must yield. In Hegel's hands it was history that yielded. The question now, however, is not

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whether Hegel's system is true, but the nature of the objections which can be brought against historians for writing history in terms of abstract ideas. RUSSELL: Take Hegel's disciple, Marx. You can get Marx out of Hegel by just a few transformations. Where Hegel talks of nations, Marx talks of classes. Where Hegel talks about the Idea, Marx talks about methods of production. With those two changes the two are practically identical CAIRNS: But you are not going to attribute the sins of the disciple ~o the master? IO RUSSELL: I say they are the same sins. I do not say that Hegel is responsible, but I say that the same sin is there in both cases, of thinking there is a simple formula. TATE: Won't you describe the relation of Marx to Hegel, Mr. Russell? RUSSELL: It was just the relation of a Hegelian of the left. Hegel started two movements in philosophy, the one of extreme conservatism and the other of extreme revolution. The one represented by the conservative Hegelians and the other by Marx and his followers. But there is not nearly as much difference between Marx and Hegel as there seems to be. VAN DOREN: Couldn't the same objection be raised against both histor20 ians, insofar as Marx and Hegel were historians? For them, history writes itself. There is an idea, there is a spirit; the idea and the spirit express themselves in the things that have actually happened. The aim, as Hegel somewhere says, is equivalent to the result. In other words, whatever we see has happened in the world must have happened. For my part, I can see no point in either of them calling himself a historian, properly speaking; history is too easy for them to write. Anything that happened had to happen. TATE: It seems to me that Hegel's conception of freedom is a complete paradox and is unreal. If history is the determinism of thesis, antithesis 30 and synthesis, then freedom has no real meaning at all; it is nothing but a fiction. VAN DOREN: History is completely determined. TATE: Yes, an intellectual determinism, a logical determinism of history. RUSSELL: Certainly there is, but Hegel uses freedom in a very peculiar sense. Freedom means the right to obey the police, and it means nothing else at all in the works of Hegel. VAN DOREN: I wonder if you don't want to substitute one word there. This might be fairer to Hegel: Freedom is the desire to obey. Not the 40 right to obey, but the desire. CAIRNS: I think he would say it is a duty to obey because the happy life, as he defined it, was one lived in accordance with duty. VAN DOREN: I do not think so. When he describes a happy people, an

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effective people such as the Athenians, he says that a single Athenian's instinct was to love Athens and to obey its laws; and he represents the :English people of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century as very happy at being Englishmen. There is nothing else they want to be. Their desires coincide, as he says, doubtless in a pretty highfalutin way, with their destiny. There is nonsense in the background of that, but there is something real in the foreground. CAIRNS: I do not think Mr. Russell would make your point a ground of criticism of Hegel, if there is any evidence in support of the position that you just outlined. As I understand it, Mr. Russell, you think that the IO course of history cannot be determined speculatively. RUSSELL: I do. CAIRNS: At the same time, you also think that the course of history is subject to laws; but that they cannot be determined because of their complexity. RUSSELL: I think the course of history is subject to laws and is probably for a sufficiently wise person deterministic; but nobody is wise enough. It is far too complicated and nobody can work it out; and the person who says he has done so is a charlatan. VAN DOREN: Back to the subject of freedom for a while. Freedom prob- 20 ably does not mean freedom to do nothing, does it? Freedom is surely freedom to do something. TATE: I think Hegel bases his most plausible argument on that very point, that there is no such thing as perfect freedom, or pure freedom. CAIRNS: At one end he puts despotism and at the other end anarchy. TATE: Hegel has a real insight there, even if it is a very common one and not at all profound. There is no such thing as unchecked freedom. But the trouble with Hegel is that he proceeds then to take that insight and contradict it with his logical determinism. RUSSELL: There is a different point here that we have not yet raised. 30 That is Hegel's worship of the state, which I think is a far worse thing than any of the points we have mentioned. He says that the state is the perfect embodiment of spirit, that it is the divine idea as it exists on earth. CAIRNS: I do not know what that means; it sounds like nonsense. Would you like to explain it to us? RUSSELL: It seems to me, of course, nonsense; but what Hegel means by it is that the state is the element of unity in the community, and the element of unity in the world is what he calls God; therefore, the state is analogous to God. He has first misused the word "God"; then he mis- 40 uses the word "state", and so he comes to the conclusion that the state is what is divine. TATE: Is he perfectly straightforward when he maintains that this vast

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unity of the state is based fundamentally upon a prior moral unity in th individual? I am not quite convinced by that, because I don't think he i: much interested in unity in the individual. VAN DOREN: He is interesting here. He seems to say that a man who is fortunate enough to be born into a state and not into a tribe such as the Scythians, for instance, or the Thracians-a man who is fortunate enough to be born in Athens is indeed fortunate because he has something to obey, something he is delighted to obey and honour. RUSSELL: But I think it is the community and not the state. Let me ro give an illustration. Hegel says: All spiritual reality that a human being possesses, he possesses through the state. Now let us apply that to St. Paul, who said he was a Roman citizen. Is anybody going to say that all the spiritual reality of St. Paul came from the Roman State? The thing is preposterous. CAIRNS: I am not sure it is as simple as that. Hegel gives this illustration to explain his notion of freedom. He says it is realized by acting within the system and not in opposition to it. He gives a biological analogy, as I recall it; if you want to reaiize your full capacities as a human being, you must do so within the limitations of your human organism. If 20 you oppose it, you do not realize your aspirations and you destroy your organism. RUSSELL: But there are many organisms besides the state. Take the church; or suppose you were a man of science and belonged to a learned body. CAIRNS: That is true; and the political question is: Which institution has the right to demand the greatest degree of loyalty? TATE: What did Socrates do about this very problem when he was condemned? Did he not accept the verdict of Athens and refuse to escape? He rejected the chance to evade the sentence of death. Now, why did he 30 do that? Was it the community or the state that commanded his loyalty even to the point of death? CAIRNS: My recollection is that Socrates said it was the state. RUSSELL: There it was, I think, the state; but then his loyalty was extremely limited. He made it perfectly clear that he would not stop talking, not for all the states in the world. He said there was only one way he could be made to stop talking; that was to make him drink the hemlock. However much they ordered him not to talk, he would talk. He makes that quite clear. VAN DOREN: Of course, he could not have talked in any other country 40 than Greece. Your instance of St. Paul was interesting, but say a contemporary of St. Paul lived in Vladivostok with all St. Paul's qualities, his brains and his heart. Now, you deny that St. Paul's achievement can be attributed to the existence of the Roman state. I think it might be so

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attributed, because a citizen of Vladivostok with those same qualities ould have got nowhere. c RUSSELL: I did not say his achievement; I said his spiritual realitywhich is Hegel's phrase. Now, the spiritual reality of the man in Vladivostok may be the same. CAIRNS: Some sentences have been quoted from Hegel that certainly cannot stand analysis. But have we been entirely fair to Hegel? He says explicitly that he is opposed to despotism; that the monarch or the ruler ust act for the best interests of the people; that the monarch must :courage the utmost liberty among his people so that he will have an ro ·nformed public opinion to guide him in his decisions. The monarch 1 th . must encourage the liberty of the press to the utmost, at 1s to say, to the limit of abuse. This means that the ruler must submit to vilification on the part of the press as the price of greatness. RUSSELL: I think you are really overestimating what he says about the liberty of the press. You are not allowing for the fact that he always uses words in a Pickwickian sense. CAIRNS: He does indeed. RUSSELL: He says there should be liberty of the press but not to the point of making the government ridiculous. It must stop short of that. 20 And he sees a whole lot of limitations about that. CAIRNS: But he also does say that the ruler must endure vilification. RUSSELL: He says this of the despot, for instance: The ruler should not be a despot. A despot is an absolute monarch ruling over a country which is not Prussia. That is the definition of a despot. CAIRNS: Is that fair? Let us apply his own dialectic to that problem. What is the thesis? Despotism-is it not? The antithesis is democracy and aristocracy, and the synthesis is monarchy. He must, therefore, on his own logic reject despotism wherever it is; and he did so, it seems to me, in his Philosophy of History. 30 RUSSELL: Take again, Mr. Cairns, what you said about public opinion. He is very clear that public opinion is not always right and that it must not always be submitted to; there may be a certain expression of it; but the ruler should not think it is right. CAIRNS: He is certainly clear that public opinion should not always be submitted to. I do not think you would insist that a ruler should be bound by public opinion in all cases. RUSSELL: Absolutely bound. I do not know what else there is that is better, because while public opinion is very likely to be wrong, so is the ruler. 40 CAIRNS: That is right. But you must allow for the case where the ruler may have private sources of information not open to public opinion. VAN DOREN: Private wisdom?

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CAIRNS: No, I won't say private wisdom. No ruler's private wisdom is necessarily greater than that of public opinion. But I insist we must provide for the case of greater factual knowledge on the part of the ruler. TATE: May I ask a question about another phase of this same point? In what respect does Hegel's despotism as thesis, aristocracy and democracy as antithesis, and monarchy as the synthesis of the two differ from the kind of compromise that Aristotle contemplated? I think it is the Aristotelian "commonwealth" that is a compromise between oligarchy and raw democracy. Now, doesn't Aristotle have some notion there of the Hegelro ian "synthesis"? CAIRNS: It has always seemed to me that Hegel's theory was quite similar to some of Aristotle's thought. RUSSELL: I agree. I think it is very similar; but I do not think the better of it on that account. CAIRNS: Are you implying that Aristotle is as wicked a man as Hegel? RUSSELL: Yes. ALL TOGETHER: Oh, you are? TATE: Mr. Russell, before we began this conversation you said that Plato was very wicked. You would have neither of them, then? 20 RUSSELL: I think that philosophy has suffered four misfortunes in the world's history: Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel. If they were eliminated, philosophy would have done very well. CAIRNS: Who would be left, Mr. Russell? We will exclude present company. RUSSELL: There would be very many people left. There would be Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Leibniz and Spinoza. TATE: A very bad tradition, Mr. Russell. VAN DOREN: What about this man as a historian? I was interested in a certain conversion of terms that he seemed to make. Here is this sen30 tence: "History in general is, therefore, the development of Spirit in time, as nature is the development of the Idea in space." He makes a distinction between time and space which may remind us of Lessing in his Laocoon. CAIRNS: I think it goes back to a point we were discussing before. In history the Idea unfolds its various phases in time and the dominant phase at any epoch is embodied in a dominant people. The succession of these phases, in Hegel's theory, constitutes world history. VAN DOREN: Perhaps it is a modern-I wonder if it is an especially modern-notion that a philosopher can turn his attention from space 40 relations which are either metaphysical or physical, scientific or rational, to those relations which are in time? Here is a philosopher trying suddenly to develop a new language-altogether a temporal language instead of a spatial one.

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CAIRNS: He devised his own language to a large extent. While he viewed history as a temporal sequence, he did not thereby neglect spatial ele-

rnents.

VAN DOREN: I wonder if you can see things arranged in time as clearly s you can see them arranged in space? a RUSSELL: I think you can, yes. Of course, it did not suit him so well arranged in space because he wanted a dialectic process, so that the onedimensional series was more suitable for his purposes. VAN DOREN: But dialectic originally considered was not anything that wok place in time, was it? ro RUSSELL: No, it was purely logical, but it was a one-dimensional series. VAN DOREN: Something anterior in logic is not necessarily earlier, is it. RUSSELL: Not necessarily, but for Hegel it was. VAN DOREN: Hegel literalized the anterior and posterior relation into before and after. CAIRNS: If he proceeded in space, he would have to exclude America from the development of his system, as he did anyway. VAN DOREN: Exclude what? CAIRNS: America. VAN DOREN: I thought you said a "miracle". 20 TATE: It is the same thing. RUSSELL: He did not exclude America. He said America was some day going to be very important; there would be a great war, he said, between North America and South America; that was when America was going to be important. CAIRNS: He said America at that time, and he was speaking or writing in the 182o's, was not worth discussing because it was an echo of Europe, which may have been true in the 182o's. TATE: Now, this question of time and space: I should like to ask about Spengler's relation to Hegel. It seems to me that Spengler's leading no- 30 tion is the flow of time; it eliminates space altogether; the Faustian or modern culture is the great culture, and space is annihilated. Do you think he derives from Hegel? RUSSELL: A little, I think, yes. TATE: His notion of the destiny, destiny of the world historical figure and of a culture, seems to me to come from Hegel. RUSSELL: Yes, the whole notion of the pattern in history. Of course, there is one spatial element in Hegel's Philosophy of History-he thinks that the absolute idea is always moving westward. TATE: That is a geographical notion. 40 CAIRNS: Do you think it is unreasonable to think of the universe as Hegel did, both of nature and mind, as a process, a development, a history?

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RUSSELL: It is unreasonable to think of it as the development of an idea; because, while possibly it may be, it certainly is not a development of my ideas or your ideas or Hegel's ideas. Hegel assumes that he is as wise as the Creator of the universe when he says it is his ideas that are developing. VAN DOREN: He tells us equally little whether we ask him what the Idea is or whether we ask him how he knows what it is. In either case, he has no answer to give us. If we do not believe this book, he cannot convince us. RUSSELL: I always think a man's inconsistencies are the key to his passions. Hegel thought that unity was the important thing and that the whole was always more real than its part, and so forth. He should, therefore, have emphasized mankind rather than separate nations or separate states. In fact, he makes the state supreme. He says no state has any duty whatever in relation to any other state. War is, therefore, a thing not to be deplored but is good. That is inconsistent with his metaphysic and shows therefore that he had a passion in favour of war. VAN DOREN: The significant events for him have been military events. RUSSELL: He says men are warriors. He says, "War has the higher significance, that through it the moral health of peoples is preserved in their indifference toward the stabilizing of finite determination." He says war is the condition in which we take seriously the vanity of temporal goods and things. TATE: Don't you think probably in the long run he would contemplate a world state, a Pax Germanica? CAIRNS: No, he expressly repudiated the idea of a universal peace. TATE: Would that not logically develop if the Idea is going to be completely realized? RUSSELL: That is just the point. It should have followed from his premisses. VAN DOREN: Is there anything for a philosopher to worry about in the notion some people have-Tacitus had it, William James had it toothat peace can be degenerating and softening? If we could imagine peace stretching ahead of us now for 10,000 years, is it possible to imagine what human beings would then be like? What would they be doing, what would they be interested in? Would they be bored to death? Is this a problem to be solved? The existence of such questions is the reason philosophers have advanced for worrying about the notion of universal peace. RUSSELL: Yes, they have; but I always regard that as a mark of brutality. I think that if you have brutal instincts, you like killing people. War is the only occasion when you can do it without being hanged. That is the sole

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reason why anybody likes war; anybody who praises war praises it from beastliness. TATE: Isn't it possible to admit that while we dislike war, there may be no way to eliminate it from history? RUSSELL: Not from past history, but from future history you could eliminate it by the very method that Hegel so dislikes. Kant had proposed a leagu~ of nations and Hegel says we must not have that, because war is ennoblmg. CAIRNS: That is one aspect of Hegel's general position on the question of the validity of judgments passed on nations. Hegel said that the world's spirit was the final tribunal and judge of the nations (exclusive of Begel) and that no international state or court which passes judgment upon the peoples is possible; that the judgment of the nations is found in the fate which awaits them in the process of world history. TATE: Hegel, as we were saying, is a complex man. Mr. Russell said that his character could be revealed in his contradictions. Here is a minor passage which I find very revealing. It reveals both his vanity and his wit, but I do not know whether he reveals the vanity consciously. We must decide for ourselves. What pedagogue has not demonstrated of Alexander the Great, of Julius Caesar, that they were instigated by such passions and were consequently immoral men, whence the conclusion immediately follows that he, the pedagogue, is a better man than they, because he has not such passions, a proof of which lies in the fact that he does not conquer Asia, vanquish Darius and Porus, but while he enjoys life himself, lets others enjoy it too. These psychologists are particularly fond of contemplating those peculiarities of great historical figures which appertain to them as private persons. Man must eat and drink, he sustains relations to friends and acquaintances. He has passing impulses and ebullitions of temper. "No man is a hero to his valet" is a well-known proverb; I have added-and Goethe repeated it ten years later"but not because the former is no hero, but because the latter is a valet".

64 Descartes: A Discourse on Method [1942]

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The full title of Descartes' essay, you remember, is Discourse on the Method of Righdy Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, but one notices immediately upon

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starting to read the essay that it has narrative form, it is cast, as Descartes himself says, in the guise of a tale. Mr. Russell, does it seem to you that this fact is purely accidental in its interest, or has Descartes been assisted in saying what he wants to say by assuming the posture of a narrator? RUSSELL: I think it assists him very greatly to say what he has to say. It helps the reader to be interested, and it helps the reader to be able to follow the chain of thought. Most philosophers are extraordinarily dry and very dull; Descartes is neither dry nor dull, and that is very largely because he doesn't confine himself to strict logic, but puts in picturesque material of a biographical sort. BARZUN: I should go farther, Mr. Russell, and say that for me the autobiographical element is the only value I find in the essay. It is interesting to note that the present title is a second choice. The essay was first called History of My Mind, and it was the preface to three purely scientific essays. I've often thought that if authors kept to their first titles less dangerous consequences would follow. In the present case we are misled into thinking that here is a discourse on method. I, for one, find no method whatsoever propounded in the essay. VAN DOREN: Doesn't he at least propound a method which, according to him, came to him while he was lying in bed? RUSSELL: I disagree radically with what you say. A great deal of what he has to say about method is extremely good; I have found it valuable myself. BARZUN: But perhaps it's only the putting into somewhat rigid form of rather ordinary and self-evident rules: how to avoid mistakes. Certainly the account he gives of how he arrived at his method is unconvincing to me. I don't believe that he went through this process at all. RUSSELL: Oh, I dare say not! A great deal of that is just picturesque talk. But it's talk of a sort that helps you to understand what he means; therefore it's justifiable. BARZUN: It helps us to understand, but it formed a school of Cartesians who really believed that all this had happened. VAN DOREN: I take the narrative form to be more than accidental. It seems to harmonize with the method itself. The impression finally given by the essay is that there is a truth about things which can be discovered in time. At first there is nothing and then there is something-the discovery of a principle of philosophy becomes in Descartes by implication almost a creation of the world. RUSSELL: You're both very unfair to Descartes. BARZUN: Well, you go ahead. RUSSELL: He says he's going to have nothing except what is clear and distinct. That is not having nothing. BARZUN: Well, he does say that after his education, for which he was

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properly grateful, he found that he had to undo it all. That is a common ough experience, but then he goes on to say that the first step was the enchievement of a tabula rasa. Unlike Locke, who started th em · f ant w1'th a a bula rasa, Descartes achieved his with great effort, and then came the ~ear and distinct ideas. Why are those ideas valid, according to Descartes, Mr. Russell? RUSSELL: Because he was a mathematician. Of course it won't do as a method in empirical matters at all. But it does do in mathematics, and he s primarily a mathematician; all his remarks are those of a mathema':a·an and in mathematics it is, after all, the clear and distinct that the t!Cl ' mathematician trusts to. . BARZUN: That's where my objection comes in, because after settmg side the truths of poetry and literature and art and morals he leaves us ~nly with mathematical truth, which, as I hope you'll admit, is truth bout something conceived and not something existent. Yet at the end of ~e essay he invites us to consider physiology and medicine and the

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practical arts. . . . . . . . RUSSELL: All that historical explanation is also h1stoncal iusuficauon. In his day mathematics was the chief machine for discovering facts about nature, and it did discover the most important facts, as in the case of 20 Galileo who was a mathematician. He discovered things about the world, and mathematics was his instrument for doing it. BARZUN: But isn't there a kind of misleading uniformity in the attempt to make a very successful science in one realm apply to other realms? RUSSELL: It certainly is, and we see that now. Now, I think, his method isn't the right one, because on the whole the mathematical part of the job has been to a great extent done. But in his day it hadn't. BARZUN: But it has taken us three hundred years to get over this little essay of sixty pages. That's where my animus originates. RUSSELL: It goes back further than that. It goes back to Plato. The 30 undue emphasis on mathematics goes back, in fact, further than Plato. It goes back to Pythagoras; Pythagoras is the villain of the piece. BARZUN: You are admitting then that there is a villain in the piece! RUSSELL: Well, he's become a villain. For two thousand years he was a saint. BARZUN: In other words, Descartes must have the credit of repeating a great error-is that your position? RUSSELL: Well, the thing has become an error. It was not an error in his day. BARZUN: I'm afraid I must agree with you there, but there is a further 40 objection in my mind, and that is the tone and temper of the man and the Discourse. He was a singularly unamiable, vain, malicious, timid person whose ideas could appeal only, it seems to me, to the narrowest

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and most sectarian of philosophic minds. VAN DOREN: You say he was both vain and timid. Would there be an difficulty in reconciling those two terms, or do you mean both? y BARZUN: I hadn't thought of it, but I mean both. RUSSELL: They are quite easy to reconcile. Newton was both, obviously. But I don't agree with you. When one reads most philosophers they'r mostly much worse than he is in all these respects. Philosophers ar~ perhaps a narrow-minded sect. BARZUN: Oh, I don't know! I think if you take a man like Berkeley or Locke you find a fuller, richer atmosphere. I suppose we can overdo this point of the atmosphere of a philosopher, but I think it has a great influence historically. VAN DOREN: I find Aristotle to be less vain, if vain at all, than Descartes, and for this reason. He seems to begin with the assumption that a world already exists, a world which is very thick and full about him, a world that he did not create and did not conceive himself. Descartes has the air of being the first, or at any rate the only man. Nothing shall be before him; he wants to clear away all former conceptions and all former ways of talking, so that there will be complete barrenness and emptiness and dryness in the world. RUSSELL: Well, I wish he'd done it more subtly. The trouble was merely that he didn't do it enough. The world was encumbered with rubbish in his day, intellectual rubbish, and the first thing was to be a scavenger, to get it all out of the way. VAN DOREN: When the world is full of rubbish, which it always is, of course, thank God-I much prefer a world full of rubbish to an empty one-isn't the wisest thing to do to order that rubbish? BARZUN: Or a corner of it! VAN DOREN: If you can. RUSSELL: Well, it isn't the custom, if you want to build a fine public building, to leave all the ruins of some previous buildings there; you clear them away. BARZUN: Now we fall back into one of Descartes' metaphorsRUSSELL: We do! BARZUN: -in the introduction, and we come upon one of his major inconsistencies. First he divides the world into thought on the one hand and matter on the other, and that is a cleaning-up process in itself, since his matter is simply extension and his thought is whatever he finds by the test of clarity and distinctness. But then on top of that he brings in the established social order and a curious set of mixed morals-ethicspartly stoical, partly epicurean. At bottom he is profoundly indifferent, it seems to me, to everything except his few leading principles, which can lead in any direction without producing much result.

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VAN DOREN: His morals, incidentally, he explicitly calls provisory. That . to say, they are temporary morals which he will adhere to until the is ornent when he knows everything. In Part Three of the Discourse, you mill remember, he says: pro tern, I shall observe the following rules, not :ecause I think they conduce necessarily to right living but because they re the safe ones to follow; they are the rules that will get me into the ~east trouble. First, I shall obey the laws and customs of my country if only to escape notice and be left free to think. Then I shall be as firm and resolute in my action as possible; that is to say, not knowing yet what is true, nevertheless, when I do see a course of action or a course of thought, I shall take it straight away-here is the metaphor once againas a man lost in a forest should do. A man lost in the middle of a forest should keep going in one direction, because anything is better than remaining in the middle of the forest. Then, third, I shall be something of a stoic. I shall try to conquer myself rather than fortune, I shall not ask for things which I cannot have. He is nowhere more contemptuous of morals than here where he assumes that they are but ways of being safe. RUSSELL: But, look, I must stand up to this. When you come to what he really does feel you learn that he has the most passionate desire to be of use to the human race-to be of use through the discovery of knowledge, which was the way in which he could be most useful. I very much doubt whether any other manner of life that he could have adopted would have made him as useful as he was. BARZUN: But wouldn't you admit that he was perhaps a little bit too adroit and diplomatic, not only in his relations to life but in his writings? For example, many of his contemporary critics said that it is very well to divide thought from matter for purposes of science, but that surely they must unite in the human organism: the mind and the body are connected. There is then a third original idea, which is the union of soul and matter and we feel it or sense it through the senses; but we have to go to his letters to a princess who was interested in philosophy in order to learn that, just as we have to go to other letters and other writings to discover that he believed in the value of the emotions and the passions, that he thought they were all perfectly good, provided that they were used in moderation-which contradicts his stoicism. We have to go again to his letters to discover that he was-oh, almost a Christian Scientist. He said that he had been cured of early tuberculosis by looking on the bright side of things, which simply does not go with the image of Descartes as we see him historically. RUSSELL: I quite agree, of course, but that is so with any man. Any man, if you take him in his letters, where he's discoursing more or less accidentally, doesn't have the same statuesque appearance that he does when he writes his great works; that's just common humanity.

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VAN DOREN: We don't mean to be as savage as we sound. We're e pecting you to annihilate us within the next few minutes. Descan claim that he is doing good in the world interests me a great deal. ~s says, to me if you please, that he is doing me good. Well, that reminde 8 me of my failure ever to believe a scientist when he tells me that he is i the world to do me good. I do not find that he is very much interested i~ me. I am not, you understand, being personal now; I am putting myself in .the place of any human being. I find a curious lack of warmth in his v01ce as he says he wants to do me good. What he really wants me t 0 IO believe is that ifl shall agree with himBARZUN: He will tolerate you! VAN DOREN: He will tolerate me. RUSSELL: Let's take this up. It's perfectly true that the pure man of science, as such, is not actuated by philanthropy directly, but he knows perfectly well that the outcome of what he does is likely to be beneficial. Let's take, say, a man who is doing medical research. He is not interested in patients because he's not dealing with them; he is engaged in discovering a method by which others can deal with patients. VAN DOREN: I wonder how much good a man like Descartes could do 20 in the world of medicine in view of the fact that he distinguished body and mind as sharply as he did? It strikes me as possible that all the good one could do in medical experiment might not balance the harm done by that distinction. BARZUN: And I, for one, am certainly not requiring philanthropy in scientists. They should do things for the ordinary, good enough human reason that they're interesting and ultimately valuable, without any particular love for this or that group of human beings. But the reason I feel so strongly against Descartes-I might as well reveal it-is that his insistence on method has had a bad influence on science and more par30 ticularly on French education. It has led, it seems to me, to an overemphasis on the formal side of all thinking, to organization on a mechanical basis, rather than on the organic unity of thought and the capacity for insight. Now, Descartes was not without insight but he trampled it underfoot. His four rules are simply scaffolding, of very little importance in actual use and of very great harm in the sequel. VAN DOREN: What are those four rules, by the way? Have you found them useful, Mr. Russell? RUSSELL: His four rules may as well be set forth. Never accept anything not known to be true or clear and distinct. Divide difficulties into 40 as many parts as possible. Proceed from the simple to the complex. Make complete enumerations to be sure that nothing is omitted. Now, the second and third especially-divide difficulties into as many parts as possible and proceed from simple to complex-I personally have found

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. always necessary to insist upon with advanced students who were it . ning research. Unless they were very able they tended to take vast

·. beg:ierns far beyond their powers, and I find Descartes' rules exactly P~ t one has to tell them. w ~uN: Of course, simple and complex are terms relative to almost B single subject matter, and it is possible to lose the view of the whole ~:ough looking at detail. I can take. an example. from Desca~tes: ow.n '£ fie wrote his Meditations, of which the full title was Meditations zn I~ich Are Proved the Existence of God and the Immortality of the Soul, and, sual, he sent the manuscript to his friend and critic, Father Mer- IO as une who read it and said: "It's splendid, but there isn't a word in it sen ' . , . bout the immortality of the soul!" So that Descartes enumeration there a as imperfect. I don't blame him for that. Geniuses have often made ;ose silly errors. But it shows that he didn't use his method. RUSSELL: He proved the soul was immaterial and forgot to stick in that what was immaterial is immortal. . VAN DOREN: Possibly, Mr. Russell, the greatest defect of the higher learning today is that students are too much discouraged from considering hard subjects. If I were going to reform graduate schools, for instance, in the United States, I should begin by insisting that students be 20 encouraged to begin in a very large field and then refine it. There is too much suspicion of the capacities of students. This seems to be a direct result of Descartes' own thought, whose scorn of anything except the clear and the distinct, which often became in his mind the small, means that the capacities of students have actually diminished with the failure to occupy them with larger things. RUSSELL: There is a compromise at that point, which I think is important. When one is engaged upon a smaller matter it should always by in its relation to a large one and because of its relations, not in itself. VAN DOREN: That is precisely, it seems to me, where we can see one 30 unfortunate result of Descartes. Take his discussion of God, which might be considered unessential to an explanation of his method, but which I think is very interesting. He pays all sorts of lip service to God, insists that God exists, and indeed spends time proving that He exists; yet what he is really proving is that after one has said all that one can forget God. God started the world, to be sure, and it is now working as He started it going, or as any mathematician might have started it going; Descartes almost says: "I could have done the same thing. I have proved the world to be exactly what it ought to be because it is intelligible to me." That is his test of existence, namely, intelligibility. 40 BARZUN: It is a reduction of experience to something much more abstract and limited. VAN DOREN: I don't want to be fantastic, but why wouldn't it be a

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good thing to expect students to begin with the contemplation of Goct';) We act as if we thought they should begin with a worm. · RUSSELL: Supposing you do begin with the contemplation of God-I should still uphold Descartes, and say that here he sees a large subject that can be divided into heads which can be taken one at a time. BARZUN: I should be perfectly willing to arrive with Descartes at any conclusions that seem to be useful in physics and mathematics, if he would be wholly candid. But, for example, he never tells us except in letters that the main ideas of his philosophy occurred to him when he IO was twenty-three in a dream, in a series of dreams on one single night in the year I619. Instead of that, he gives us the wholly false and "public" view that you can arrive at truth by sitting down in a porcelain stove, as he did, and excogitate truth. VAN DOREN: That's curious behaviour for a scientist, isn't it? RUSSELL: I don't think it is. He confesses once that you may happen to hit upon the truth in dreams, especially, he says, in matters that are purely intellectual, and I think that's as much as you can expect of him. If he had come before the public and said that something was revealed to him in a dream it wouldn't have had the right effect. 20 BARZUN: No, but he wouldn't have had to say that. He would have had to say that upon the basis of glimmerings acquired in a dream, his ideas were thought out and verified. I'm comforted, however, by the fact that history took its revenge upon him. When he died in Stockholm, since he was an infidel in a Protestant country, he was buried first in the cemetery devoted to children who die before attaining the age of reason. VAN DOREN: How did he happen to die, by the way? RUSSELL: He died of getting up early! He never used to get up till twelve o'clock, in the middle of the day. Then he went to teach Queen Christina of Sweden, and she insisted on his getting up at five in the 30 morning in the Arctic winter. The poor man died of it. VAN DOREN: How soon? How many mornings? RUSSELL: Oh, in a little time. He died the first winter. VAN DOREN: Mr. Russell, I wonder if Mr. Barzun and I have not exaggerated the influence of Descartes and rendered too malicious an account of his thought. RUSSELL: I do not think Mr. Barzun has exaggerated his influence in France. I, too, ifl were French, might agree with all he says. But in other countries his influence has been less, and I think one may say of any man, however great and good, that his influence is bad-everybody's 40 influence is bad if it's great. BARZUN: A very philosophical principle! VAN DOREN: Will you go on to elaborate that? RUSSELL: Yes. It produces a set of disciples who repeat what the man

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said instead of thinking. And so Descartes, by the mere fact that he

~a~ a great influence, undoubtedly became harmful in France. So would aybody else who had a great influence, but, if you contrast him with the anholastics who went before, I think he was better. sc sARZUN: And he did start Locke on his path. It was a very different th but Descartes was the necessary stimulus. And the Discourse- I ~~n'~ want to be misunderstood-remains a wonderful piece of autobioraphical writing. Wonderful if only in this: that every sentence has at ast two or three intentions and must be deciphered before one quite eathers where Descartes stands and what he wants his readers to believe. IO g VAN DOREN: What kind of sentence does he write, Mr. Barzun? sARZUN: In France he is considered one of the first modern prose writers. He writes a rather long and tortuous and complex sentence, but one perfect in its fulfilment of hidden meanings. He's a malicious writer. VAN DOREN: But also delicate. BARZUN: A very delicate writer. VAN DOREN: Do the translations manage to convey all that is there? BARZUN: They tend to break it up into smaller units of prose that spoil his rhythm. VAN DOREN: I have not read him in French, although it is clear to me, 20 as I read him in English, that he must have these qualities. However, I suspect them rather than find them. BARZUN: It is interesting that at the end of the autobiography he says that he wants a subsidy. He was thinking ahead to the large foundation, I think, that supports scientists without asking them to produce anything definite. RUSSELL: I'm not sure that he didn't want them to produce anything. He certainly wanted a subsidy. He wanted it solely for the purpose of experiments. VAN DOREN: I think it would be fair, Mr. Russell, to ask you to read 30 something from Descartes. RUSSELL: I'll read the last paragraph of his Discourse on Method, which will give one, perhaps, a better all-around picture of him than what we've been saying. He says:

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In conclusion, I am unwilling here to say anything very specific of the progress which I expect to make for the future in the sciences, or to bind myself to the public by any promise which I am not certain of being able to fulfil; but this of me I will say, that I have resolved to devote what time I may still have to live to no other occupation than that of endeavoring to acquire some knowledge of Nature, which should be of such a type as to enable us therefrom to deduce rules in medicine of greater cer-

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VOL. 10 A FRESH LOOK AT EMPIRICISM, 1927-42 tainty than those at present in use; and that my inclination is so much opposed to all other pursuits, especially to &uch as cannot be useful to some without being hurtful to others, that, if, by any circumstances, I had been constrained to engage in such, I do not believe that I should have been able to succeed. Of this I here make a public declaration, though well aware that it cannot serve to procure for me any consideration in the world, which, however, I do not in the least affect; and I shall always hold myself more obliged to those through whose favour I am permitted to enjoy my retirement without interruption than to any who might offer me the highest earthly preferments.

65 Benedict de Spinoza: Ethics [1942] AN DOREN: We have in the Ethics of Spinoza a book written by a man who, on the evidence both of the book itself and of its author's life, was profoundly religious, or at any rate profoundly moral. And yet the verdict of many persons, in that time and since, has been that he was dangerous. That suggests an interesting question about him; but it suggests even more ironically the question whether for this particular book that he has written he had any license to choose the title 20 Ethics. As everyone knows-certainly every young person who reads Spinoza and becomes intoxicated with him, even as he was intoxicated with God-Spinoza begins by establishing a vast and necessitated world in which nothing seems able to be other than it is, and yet he ends by urging upon us a certain way of life, a way of thinking and being. Does it strike you, Mr. Russell, that there is any real difficulty here? Or does he have license to recommend a course of action to us in a world so necessitated? RUSSELL: Yes, I should say so. I don't think the question, whether the world is governed by necessary laws or not, bears very much upon 30 whether you should have an ethic. Let me take an illustration. We all think electricity is entirely governed by natural laws, and yet we think it is rational to put up lightning conductors. Well, I should say that an ethic is, as it were, a lightning conductor for human passions, to enable them within a deterministic world to work in a way that produces a minimum of disaster. VAN DOREN: Well, that's an analogy which I don't know how to reject. Can you, Mr. Buchanan? BUCHANAN: I might try. Supposing everything is determined throughout, you can say that this is all according to general and universal law; 40 but the individual comes under that and has, in certain metaphysics at

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anY rate, a certain kind of contingency. Spinoza is concerned to deny any tingency whatsoever. co~AN DOREN: For instance, Mr. Buchanan, you would say that the peron had been determined to put up the lightning rod when he did? 8 BUCHANAN: That would be not according to the laws of electricity, but ccording to some other law. It might be a contingency between the law ~at governs his behaviour and the law that governs the lightning. VAN DOREN: There is then a necessity over-arching both electricity and the man who puts up the lightning rod. RUSSELL: Certainly in Spinoza there is. But at the same time the man ro whose necessity leads him to put up that lightning conductor is more fortunate than the man whose necessity leads him not to. Now one of the things that will determine your actions, according to Spinoza, is whether or not you have read his Ethics, and if you have read his Ethics, you will behave like the man who puts up the lightning conductor. BUCHANAN: It seems to me that that is one statement of a general principle he is using throughout here, and that is that any change which takes place-supposing it is a change in human behaviour because one has read his Ethics-would come under his general deterministic rule. In that sense, there isn't anything that escapes it, and therefore anything that is 20 said about it as good or bad comes within it as well. VAN DOREN: One had been determined to read his Ethics, hadn't one, just as one had been determined to read Lucretius' poem On the Nature of Things, and therefore was already in a position, shall we say, to accept Lucretius or to reject Lucretius, whichever decision had been determined? BUCHANAN: Also, according to Spinoza, our natures are so made, so constructed, that we will always want to be better, or, as he would say, want to increase the total amount of being we have. That would be one of his deterministic laws. In other words, there is a law here to change- 30 not one's nature, but one's being in certain respects. RUSSELL: You could certainly, I think, say what Spinoza would say if he were here with us now; he would say that we are all determined, but that those who realize that we are determined will be happier than those who do not. VAN DOREN: That is where I think my question comes in; I ask it as an amateur in philosophy. Is our recognition, then, something that was not determined? RUSSELL: Oh, no, it is determined whether we shall recognize it or not, but one of the determining factors is Spinoza's writing his book. 40 VAN DOREN: Yes, and our having been born at a time when we would be old enough to read that book. I am interested in your use of the word "fortunate". The man who puts up the lightning rod is more fortunate,

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you say, than the other, just as the man who reads this book and Wh lives the life of reason, as Spinoza describes it, is fortunate. That is quito relevant, wouldn't you say, Mr. B1:1chanan, to Spi~oza:s whole feeling~ There was a doctrine of the elect, 1t seems to me, m him. Certain rnen are better than others-certain men are bound to be happier than others, because they are bound to live lives that agree more completely With their nature and with the nature of the universe. And it doesn't seern to occur to him that there's anything to do about that. RUSSELL: Well, Spinoza thought that in man there are temporary elero ments and eternal elements, and in proportion as the eternal elements in your nature preponderate, in that proportion you become a happier rnan and a better man, and he did think that philosophy could enlarge the eternal part of you. BUCHANAN: It seems to me the real difficulty is right there; that is, in some sense he has in view what is often called the mystery of human nature. He knows that man is partly eternal and partly temporal, and wherever trouble arises it will be a temporal and material matter; the problem always is to get those two together. Now I take it, understanding in terms of time and in terms of the modes, as he would call them, 20 the particular things of existence will always be confused. There will never be truth in the sense that he is using the term at all-in any of our observations of time and space, for instance. Modern science would be for him very much a matter of opinion. VAN DOREN: Not knowledge. BUCHANAN: Not knowledge at all. And one would have to jump somehow the ordinary empirical laws of science to get to anything he is talking about. Now how that takes place seems to me the real mystery in what he is talking about-how you get from confused ideas to clear and distinct ideas, in other words. 30 RUSSELL: Really, his conception is that things are clear and distinct when they are like mathematical ideas, and I think he would say that in mathematical physics, when it is properly set up, the whole of the time process is viewed from an eternal standpoint in the sort of way that the Divine Mind may be supposed to view it. I think that is what he would say. BUCHANAN: Yes. An algebraic formula, a differential equation, has these two aspects in it. But it would take some kind of special understanding of the mathematical formula. RUSSELL: You have to understand it by the third kind of knowledge, 40 you see, and if you are a sufficiently good mathematician, you will. BUCHANAN: And that would be the only saving of both science and, if you want to apply it to human affairs, of human affairs in his terms. Something appears to be denied, theologically; he is denying the doctrine

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f riginal sin at the beginning and perhaps all the way through. That is, ~ is essentially rational; his emotions and his imagination are in har:~ny with his reason. Except wh~n they .are ~o:. ~d that will be b cause, in so far as the understanding of thmgs 1s m time, they are out ; whack. In other words, time is the principle of original sin. 0 RUSSELL: Yes, there's a metaphysical doctrine about that-a number f other philosophers have said the same thing. 0 VAN DOREN: Well, sin perhaps is never the word for Spinoza; it is error nfusion or imperfect knowledge-the first type of knowledge rather or Co . than either the second or the third, because both the second and the third are preferable to the first. Rather stubbornly I come back to ask my original question in a slightly different form. I can't quite see, granted this necessitated system, how any unit in it, say, myself or one of you gentlemen, at any given ti~e can err, can be. wrong, can exist or thin~ in terms of time rather than m terms of etermty. It seems to me that m a system so perfectly articulated, a system in which .e~ery t_hought ~nd every piece of body or matter has had causes before 1t m a !me reaching back into infinity, any unit in that universe would be functioning properly at a given moment. I don't quite see where man is free to be confused. Just as I don't quite see where he is free to be clear-any clearer than he already is. RUSSELL: Man can't help being more or less confused, so long as his thinking is in time, but he is in a greater or less degree confused in proportion as time dominates his thought. So I should have thought. BUCHANAN: And there is nothing improper about his being confused.

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should accept that along with the rest of the universe, I should think. VAN DOREN: There is a proposition in which Spinoza says: A decision by the mind is precisely the same thing as a determination of the body. At the same moment that one is making up one's mind to think a certain 30 thing or to do a certain thing, at that very moment the body is determining the result-determining the thought, so far as I can see. RUSSELL: That of course is psychophysical parallelism. He thinks that every event is both a physical and a mental event. It is really the same event essentially. BUCHANAN: Such a parallelism would not make the problem of body and mind very serious; I don't think that is his problem primarily. VAN DOREN: Well, the relations between body and mind in Spinoza are very interesting to me as I read. One of the reasons I was first interested in this book, when I was an undergraduate, was its very startling state- 40 ments about the identity of mind and body. His remark, for instance, that one whose body is apt in many things is in so far a resident of eternity.

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Yes. A profoundly interesting statement; and it underlies the theory of modern education, don't you suppose? He goes on to ask what we are doing with an infant as we educate it. We are trying to make its body do things so that its mind will also be able to do things. RUSSELL: Don't you think that perhaps we're spending a little too much time on his metaphysic, which after all hardly anybody in the present world would accept, whereas in his ethic there is a great deal that is still of permanent value, to my mind. Perhaps we should do well to emro phasize the ethical aspects rather more than the metaphysical. VAN DOREN: Would you grant, before we begin to do that, that his ethic is good or attractive by some sort of accident-that is to say, it doesn't follow necessarily from his metaphysic? RUSSELL: I don't think it follows from his metaphysic in the least. I don't think any ethic can ever follow from any metaphysic. And I think his ethic very good, though not perfect, whereas his metaphysic is completely wrong from beginning to end. VAN DOREN: I sometimes hear that no ethic can be significant unless it is supported by a metaphysic. What is your position on that, Mr. Bu20 chanan? BUCHANAN: Well, I shouldn't like to disconnect them quite as much as Mr. Russell does. What are the bases then of his ethic, if it isn't his metaphysic? RUSSELL: The bases of his ethic, so far as I accept his ethic, is that one can discover by experience that there is a certain kind of way of living which seems to most of those who have tried it to be a good way and which is the way which Spinoza recommends-a way in which you get rid of indignation and fear and irrational hope and a number of the things that produce anxiety and perturbation in life, and acquire a certain 30 kind of calm. The kind of calm which Spinoza recommends is, I think, attainable without adopting his metaphysic. BUCHANAN: You take more or less the position of the psychoanalyst on this, only you prescribe mathematics instead of some of the tricks they play on their patients. RUSSELL: Not necessarily mathematics-that depends upon who you are. You might get it just as well from history, or you might get it from music, or you might get it from poetry. There are a hundred ways of getting the kind of thing which Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. VAN DOREN: As a matter of fact, didn't Spinoza get it in part from the 40 Stoics? I find something that sounds to me like stoicism here. BUCHANAN: It seems to me that if you take Mr. Russell's position you have a rather interesting sort of background for Freud-if, that is, you take merely the empirical side of Spinoza and his ethic. Freud believed in RUSSELL:

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a certain kind of determinism, and the problem of ethic would be largely medical in that case. RUSSELL: I think medical is too narrow a term altogether. BUCHANAN: Psychiatric then. RUSSELL: Not even that, because it isn't to be assumed that a person is diseased because he doesn't live the life of a perfect saint, nor is it to be presumed that it is a medical man who will get him out of it. He may get out of it, as I say, through listening to music or through a hundred different things-whatever it is that appeals to that particular man. BUCHANAN: Or through studying mathematics. IO RUSSELL: Yes, through studying mathematics, if he likes mathematics. If he doesn't like it, it won't be of any use to him. BUCHANAN: Can mathematics be of moral assistance to anyone, would you say? RUSSELL: Undoubtedly, yes-a very great moral assistance to those who feel it in the kind of way that Spinoza talks of. VAN DOREN: Could you say more about that, Mr. Russell? RUSSELL: Well, I think mathematics has the advantage of teaching you the habit of thinking without passion. That seems to me the great merit of mathematics. You learn to use your mind primarily upon material 2o where passion doesn't come in, and having trained it in that way you can then use it passionlessly upon matters about which you feel passionately. Then you're much more likely to come to true conclusions. VAN DOREN: And of course if you're not a person capable of feeling passionately about anything, it doesn't make much difference what you think, does it? BUCHANAN: You're not saying that mathematics is free of emotion, are you? RUSSELL: Of course a mathematician has his emotions, but his emotions are not concerned with what conclusion he arrives at; they are 3o concerned essentially with the process; the pleasure is in the process of proof, which is a different sort of emotion. BUCHANAN: Then it isn't passionless in any cold and rational sensethe way it is so often spoken of. RUSSELL: If a thing were completely passionless, you wouldn't do it-I mean, nothing but your passions lead you to do anything. So that obviously the mathematician is guided by his passions in doing mathematics; but he is not guided by a passion for arriving at a certain proof of a certain proposition, but by the more general passion of arriving at proofs, no matter what. 40 BUCHANAN: Can you find in the third book, where he defines all the emotions, what combination of emotions would go with mathematics? I've tried to do that.

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RUSSELL: No. And you can't do that anyhow, because mathematics doesn't count except to people with certain technical skills. BUCHANAN: Yes, but they have very special emotions, I've noticed Mathematicians have very special emotional lives, and I don't mean no~ their double lives; I mean their emotions in connection with mathematics. There is a unity and an ecstasy about a certain kind of mathematical technique and success which seems to me very characteristic. A lot of people would say that it is the intellectual love of God, wouldn't they? I mean, if you accept the metaphysics here at all. IO RUSSELL: It is essentially the thing which he calls that-yes. That emotion you can experience without taking on Spinoza's metaphysics. BUCHANAN: Yes, but it wouldn't deny Spinoza's metaphysics either, would it? It wouldn't be incompatible with it. It might even be one of its roots. In fact, this would be what he calls the second kind of knowledge, which leads to the third; that is, the kind of knowledge in which you have demonstration and ratiocination; this has a test of truth inside it and is a stepping-stone to the third kind, which is intuitive. Would you say the kind of thing that is sometimes called mathematical intuition is anywhere near what he's talking about? 20 RUSSELL: Yes, but I think it applies in all kinds of knowledge. I'm speaking now psychologically, not metaphysically; but in all kinds of knowledge, when you get a certain familiarity, there comes a moment when the imagination seizes upon the total of some body of knowledge that you possess, and suddenly you realize it; you suddenly see it in a kind of vision; and that, I think, is Spinoza's third kind of knowledge. It is not confined by any means to mathematics. BUCHANAN: You want to leave God out of it at this point? RUSSELL: Yes, entirely. VAN DOREN: Spinoza is very famous for his God. Many persons are 30 pleased to discover God in this book without the bother of having had to get Him through religion. They don't have to believe in anything except a vastly extended and incessantly thinking universe. BUCHANAN: Of course I wouldn't say that this certain kind of knowledge happens only by referring whatever empirical subject you're talking about-individual things, he calls them-to God. That is, you must understand things so as to speak sub specie aeternitatis. RUSSELL: My point about Spinoza is that a great many of the things he says have psychological truth when restated in other language than his, but do not have metaphysical truth so long as you stick to his language. 40 And that, I should say, applies to the third kind of knowledge. I recognize as experience a certain kind of knowledge which he experienced and which he christened the third kind of knowledge; and then he based a lot of metaphysic on that.

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Would you say the metaphysics was false or nonsense? I should say false, not nonsense. BVCHANAN: Then it seems to me that you have shown some incomatibility between the second kind of knowledge and whatever the metaphysic is stating. Do you think they are incompatible? That is, they could ~e true together, couldn't they? RUSSELL: Oh, yes, I don't think that his metaphysic is self-contradictory. I just think there is no empirical evidence for it. VAN DOREN: And neither, I assume, remembering one of your answers to a question I asked, do you see a necessary connection between it and IO his ethic. RUSSELL: No, I think there is no necessary connection, unless you take his ethic as completely satisfactory. Now I don't think his ethic is completely satisfactory; there are ethical problems that can't be dealt with by his method, and that is just where the falsehood of his metaphysic becomes relevant; but a great deal of the moral life, I think, can be dealt with in the way that he suggests. VAN DOREN: If there is any defect in his ethic, it might show up in his analysis of the emotions, for I take it that a person could not be excellent in ethics ifhe were not the master of his emotions-not merely master in 20 the sense of being able to control them, but in the sense of understanding them. Does it strike you, Mr. Buchanan, that his definitions of the emotions are searching, that they hold together and produce evidence of a man who knew man? BUCHANAN: It seems to me they are extraordinarily good in that way. The way he systematizes them makes them very clear and takes you a long way toward what he is recommending to you-that is, to try to understand the effects of the external world upon yourself and so work through it. VAN DOREN: To me one of the most valuable parts of the book is that 30 series of definitions. It is always startling to hear emotions connected with one another so that each one comes to have only a relative meaning. Pity, for instance, is not for Spinoza something that comes along by itself, a stranger whom we take in overnight and whom we have to value; pity is something to be understood in relation to other things. It is for him an emotion not to be entertained, as a matter of fact. RUSSELL: I think that's true. I like his definitions of the emotionsthey are interesting. But where I think his ethic fails is just in the fact that I can't accept his view of a block universe which, if you understood it, would seem to be all good. The universe seems to me partly good and 40 partly bad, and I think you have to have an attitude toward the bad which doesn'[ consist of saying, "I don't understand this, but if I did, I should see it to be good." Because there are things that, however well BVCHANAN: RVSSELL:

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you understand them, will remain bad. Over those I think his ethics fails. BUCHANAN: You want to bring some real sin back into this business ' don't you? RUSSELL: Not necessarily sin-sin is only one of the evils. Physical pain is an evil, and it isn't sin. BUCHANAN: Physical pain, though, to a great extent can be understood and relieved by understanding alone, don't you think? RUSSELL: No, I don't. I haven't found that understanding a toothache saved me from going to the dentist. ro BUCHANAN: Well, I have; it seems to me that there is a very interesting psychological phenomenon there. If you pay attention to a certain kind of toothache, you can stand it. It doesn't relieve the pain at all, but you find it an interesting, good thing. RUSSELL: Well, so they've told me, but I've never found it so when I had a toothache, and I've tried very hard. BUCHANAN: What do you do with such problems? Is there a radical evil there? Is it an effect of Satan? RUSSELL: No, certainly not. I mean it is just the way Nature works. But Nature works not only for good, as Spinoza thinks, but also for evil. 20 BUCHANAN: What do you do about these evils? RUSSELL: Go to the dentist. BUCHANAN: That is simply submitting it to one of your friends, as he would say, who would understand and do something about it. RUSSELL: Quite. But understanding isn't what cures it. VAN DOREN: As I remember, Spinoza has a paragraph which bears on that point. He instructs you how to behave with reference to those things in the universe which you cannot control. Mr. Buchanan, would you like to read it-in the Fourth Book? BUCHANAN: "But human power is considerably limited and infinitely 30 surpassed by the power of external causes, and therefore we have not absolute power of adapting things which are outside us for our usage. But we shall bear with equanimity those things which happen to us contrary to that which a regard for our advantage postulates, if we are conscious that we have performed our duty and cannot extend the power we have to such an extent as to avoid those things, and moreover, that we are a part of Nature as a whole, whose order we follow. Ifwe understand this clearly and distinctly, that part of us which is called our understanding, or, rather intelligence, that is, the best part in us, will acquiesce in this entirely, and will endeavour to persist in that acquiescence. For in so 40 far as we understand we can desire nothing save that which is necessary, nor can we absolutely acquiesce in anything save what is true: and therefore, in so far as we understand this rightly, the endeavour of the best part of us agrees with the order of the whole of Nature."

66 Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland [1942] AN DOREN: Miss Porter, you may wonder why you were asked to come this morning to discuss Alice in lfVnderland. One reason I might give you is this: I was curious to know whether you, like other women of my acquaintance, were horrified by this book rather than made happy by it when you were a little girl. PORTER: I was. It was a horror-story to me; it frightened me so much, and I didn't know then whether it was the pictures or the text. Rereading it, I should think it was the text. VAN DOREN: Even without Tenniel's drawings you would have been scared? PORTER: Oh, yes. It was a terrible mixture of suffering and cruelty and rudeness and false logic and traps for the innocent-in fact, awful. VAN DOREN: This must have been partly because you believed the story. PORTER: I believed it entirely. The difference between it, I think, and the other fairy stories (because we had an appetite for the most grim and grisly horrors; nearly all stories written for children in the old times were horrible and we loved them, because we knew they weren't true; they couldn't happen, they were mere stories) is, that all this takes place in a setting of everyday life. The little glass table with the key on it, and the furniture and the gardens and the flowers, the clock-they were all things we knew, you see, familiar things dreadfully out of place, and they frightened me. VAN DOREN: Well, Mr. Russell, you also might wonder why you are here, and the reason might be another reason altogether. But I'm tempted to ask you whether anything like this was your experience. RUSSELL: No, I never had any feeling of horror about it. I have heard other women say the same thing, that they felt a horror about it. The reason I didn't was that after all it was a girl who had all these troubles, and boys don't mind the troubles of girls. PORTER: I'm afraid that's true. VAN DOREN: You mean that boys don't mind if girls are treated rudely? RUSSELL: They don't mind a bit. No, they think it's what they deserve. VAN DOREN: I wonder if that is because boys themselves are in the habit of being treated rudely by girls with no ability to strike back. Did you read the book at an early age? RUSSELL: Oh, yes. I was brought up on the two books, both Alice in V?&nderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Through the Looking-Glass was published the year I was born, and they were still comparatively recent books when I was young. I was brought up on the first editions, which I had in the nursery. It didn't occur to anybody that they had any value

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and I just had them to wear out. I knew ~em b~ heart from an early age. VAN DOREN: That was true of other children m your generation, I dare say. RUSSELL: Yes, they all knew them by heart. And I don't think that I can remember any of them being horrified. I'm a little surprised by what Miss Porter said. I don't remember any of them thinking of the stories as possibly true. VAN DOREN: I was talking recently to an acquaintance of mine-a man-who said that he now feels a horror in reading the book which he did not feel as a boy. You remember the occasion when Alice is growing in the little house and she has grown so large that she has to have one arm out of the window and one leg up the chimney. Well, little Bill, you know, who comes down the chimney to see ifhe can do something about it, is suddenly kicked by her so that he flies out and is badly hurt, and she hears everyone outside say: "There goes Bill." Now this friend of mine, as a boy, roared with laughter over that. He and his brothers thought it was the funniest thing in the world. But now it doesn't seem funny to him that Bill was hurt. So apparently conversions can take place. RUSSELL: That is true. I think people are more merciful than they used to be, and I think old fun often strikes us now as rather brutal; anyway, it didn't in those days. PORTER: It is curious about cruelty, because Bill didn't seem to worry me much. A thing I accepted, which I know now is extremely unkind, was putting the dormouse in a teapot headfirst. But I remember reasoning to myself even then that the dormouse was asleep anyhow and didn't care. VAN DOREN: No. And the dormouse seems on the whole to want to be some place where it is warm and wet. RUSSELL: It never occurred to me that the dormouse minded. The only thing that occurred to me was that the teapot was too small. VAN DOREN: The dormouse when he was pinched and squealed didn't hurt you, then, vicariously? Does all this mean that the book for you was a perfectly satisfactory children's book? And that it perhaps is still? RUSSELL: It was then. I don't regard it now as a perfectly satisfactory children's book. I've been rereading it with a view to this broadcast, and I think there are many objections to it as a children's book. In fact, I should like to label it "For Adults Only". I don't think it's a suitable book for the young. VAN DOREN: I wonder if the young these days actually do like it as much as children used to like it. RUSSELL: My experience with them is they don't, and I think this is because there are so many more children's books now and because, when I

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as young, it was the only children's book that hadn't got a moral. We

~l got very tired of the morals in books.

a VAN DOREN: This very book makes fun of books that have morals, doesn't it? Remember, the Queen is always going about saying: "The moral of this is-" and then some preposterous statement comes out such as "Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves." PORTER: But don't you think, too, that it is because children really seem to be much more realistic; that is, they do like a graphic, factual kind of story? Even the fantasies written for children now are nearly always something grotesque and not deep, something that doesn't touch their emotions. Like the comic papers, you know. And then their stories all seem to be about quite ordinary living children. Rather extraordinary but not fabulous adventures occur, which might very well occur to any child. VAN DOREN: To me that is highly unfortunate. I am aware of the truth of what you say, that children prefer these days, or at any rate are assumed to prefer, matter-of-fact stories. But every now and then a story which is not matter-of-fact has a great success among children, such as the books about Mary Poppins. Have you read those? PORTER: Yes. Well I would never know whether the children really like that sort of thing or not. Perhaps like grown-ups, they take what is given them because they aren't given anything better. VAN DOREN: Do we really mean that Alice in Wonderland has declined as a children's book because of its cruelty? RUSSELL: Partly, I think, but partly also from competition with other books. Grown-ups always tend to think of children with a certain contempt as dear little things, and when a child feels that element in a book he resents it. If he can get a book that doesn't regard him as a dear little thing he's very pleased. But grown-ups will always buy that sort of book and give it to children unless the children educate them. VAN DOREN: Are you implying, Mr. Russell, that Alice in Wonderland assumes children to be dear little things? Alice is pretty well kicked around, isn't she? And she's rudely treated, she's interrupted, she's rebuffed. RUSSELL: Yes, but she's always treated rather as a figure of fun, and nobody quite likes to be treated that way. VAN DOREN: Yes, she is assumed to be absurd because she has a little habit of talking to herself, reasoning with herself, holding conversations with herself, because she remembers her homework and tries to bring that into this new world she finds herself in. Remember when she meets the mouse. She doesn't know how to address the mouse except by saying "O Mouse", because she had learned the vocative case in Latin. RUSSELL: All that, I think, is a little absurd, because as a matter of fact

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she's an extremely Victorian child and very different from most modern children that I know, and certainly no modern child would think of saying "O Mouse". It wouldn't occur to it. All the lessons that she has had at home are different lessons from those the children have now. VAN DOREN: That is true. And I'm admitting that occasionally, perhaps regularly, she is treated like a little prig, a little girl who has no ability whatever to imagine other experiences than those she has had. But I suppose the interest of the book to lie very largely there, either for children or for adults. It is a rebuke to those who cannot imagine as possible IO other experience than that which they have had. PORTER: You've spoken of the children being fed so much realism today; never being given any experience beyond something that might possibly happen to them. VAN DOREN: Yes. Now, for instance, to me a very salutary answer to the proverbial question of a child's "Why?" is the answer once given to Alice: "Why not?" -without any explanation at all. It seems to me one learns a great deal by that. RUSSELL: May I come back to what I said a moment ago, that this book ought to be labeled "For Adults Only"? What you're recommend20 ing is a very suitable education for adults, but much too difficult for children. The whole book is much too difficult for the young. It raises metaphysical points, very interesting logical points, that are good for the older ponderer, but for the young produce only confusion. VAN DOREN: Of course Alice was always confused. But you imply, Mr. Russell, that adults, these days or perhaps any day, stand in need of metaphysical instruction and logical sanitation. RUSSELL: I'm professionally bound to think so. VAN DOREN: I agree with you heartily, as a matter of fact. Does the book still seem to you of interest on that level? 30 RUSSELL: It provides, of course, the sort of things a philosophical lecturer can bring in when he wants to seem light. It is very useful to a philosophical lecturer who wants to liven up his stuff; it is full of philosophical jokes which are quite good for philosophical students. But I think you oughtn't to read the book before you're fifteen. PORTER: I wonder. Probably that's true. You were talking about the sentimental Victorian attitude toward children as dear little things. I think Lewis Carroll quite definitely made a bow in the direction of the dear-little-creature attitude in his poems of dedication to Alice and the other children. In the story I think he said °What he really believed and 40 what he really meant-and it was pretty grim! VAN DOREN: Neither one of you would agree with me, perhaps, that the best children's book is always a book that should be labeled "For Adults Only". My own experience with children, my own children

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. 1 ded is that they really enjoy most those books which they don't 1nc u ' · · d wholly understand, which leave them perhaps only slightly bewildere , b t nevertheless bewildered. uRUSSELL: Well, I think the young should read some books that adults th" k of as for adults only, but that's because the adults are always wrong a~~ut it. The books the adults think suitable for the young are certainly

not. I'm glad to hear you say that. . I've always believed that children should read adult ht~rature, should read far beyond their years, and perhaps not read anythmg that IO was cold-bloodedly written for them. VAN DOREN: Yes, because it has never been clear enough that adults do know what children are like; they're always merely assuming that they knoW what they're like. I quite agree with you that when they're most re they're most likely to be wrong. Mr. Russell, I want to come back to ~at question of the value of the book, if any, on the metaphysical and mathematical level. I was interested in your saying that philosophers quoted it only when they wanted to introduce a light.touch. Now,_ that after all wouldn't be saying much for the book, would tt? Or would tt? RUSSELL: Yes, I think most of the most instructive things are jokes. 20 Quite a number of important things have originated as jokes because if you can put it in that form it isn't so painful. No~, f~r instance, wh~n they discuss whether they're all parts of the Red King s dream and will cease to exist if the Red King wakesVAN DOREN: This is in Through the Looking-Glass. RUSSELL: Yes, it is. Well, that is a very instructive discussion from a philosophical point of view. But if it were not put humorously, we should find it too painful. VAN DOREN: But you really mean that it is instructive? RUSSELL: I think it is worth considering, yes. 30 VAN DOREN: It is more than just an illustration of a point? It contains a point of its own? RUSSELL: Yes. I think he was very good at inventing puzzles in pure logic. When he was quite an old man, he invented two puzzles which he published in a learned periodical, Mind, to which he didn't provide answers. And the providing of answers was a job, at least so I found it. VAN DOREN: Do you remember either of those puzzles? RUSSELL: I remember one of them very well. A boy is going with his two uncles, and one of the uncles says he's going to be shaved, and he's going to a shop that is kept by Allen, Brown, and Carr. And he says: "I 40 shall get shaved by Allen." And the other uncle says: "How do you know Allen will be in?" and he says: "Oh, I can prove it by logic." "Nonsense", says the man. "How can you do that?" "Well", he says, "you know i;here VAN DOREN: poRTER:

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has to be always one man to mind the shop, so if Allen is out, then, if Brown is out, Carr will be in. But Brown has lately been ill, and so he can't go out alone, and he's quarrelled with Allen, so he only goes out with Carr. So if Brown is out, Carr is out. Now if Allen goes out, if Brown is out, Carr is out, and if Brown is out Carr is in. That's impossible, so Allen can never go out." VAN DOREN: That sound like a syllogism, doesn't it? RUSSELL: Of course it's a fallacy, but showing up the fallacy is difficult. PORTER: A lovely illustration of all this extraordinary, oblique, fallaro cious logic that was a trap for Alice all the way through two books. VAN DOREN: There are many outrageous syllogisms here, such as this in skeleton form: "Alice, you like eggs; serpents like eggs, therefore you are a serpent." And there is another form of logical fun which seems to me important here; I think you would call it a conversion, would you not? That is to say, Lewis Carroll was constantly playing with a subject and predicate converted. Alice is asked why she doesn't say what she means. And she says: "Well, at least I always mean what I say." So she converts the terms cats and rats. Do cats eat rats? Perhaps rats eat cats. Which is true? And she finally forgets which is the important question to 20 ask. She says she has often seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. I'm not at all sure that that doesn't lead us to a conversion which it is possible to make on the title of the book. The title of the book is Alice in Wonderland. Possibly it should be Wonderland in Alice, because Alice is constantly in a state of wonder at something which, in this particular world where she is, she shouldn't wonder at at all. For instance, she eats a piece of cake-after twenty or thirty pages-and she suddenly says to herself: "Isn't it strange that I don't get any bigger from eating this cake?" Lewis Carroll very gravely remarks: "That is what usually happens when you eat cake." She is never able to adjust herself; she is 30 never able to remember the relations which exist in this new life. RUSSELL: That is quite true, but I still think there is a great deal in his books that is meant to be suitable to the young and isn't. Like when they say "threaten a snark with a railway-share". No child has the vaguest idea of what that means. VAN DOREN: But again I wonder if children don't like to read booksif they don't today, that's all there is to it, but my own experience as a child, and my experience of children these days, is that they often dowhich they don't totally understand. They come to a railway-share. Well, they want to know what it is, and find out; or they develop in their mind 40 some grotesque notion of what it is, which is quite charming. Students in colleges like best on the whole those lectures which, as we say, are a little over their heads. RUSSELL: That is perfectly true, but then what puzzles them ought to

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something serious that when they understand it they will see to be be . k rious. It ought not to be a mere JO e. se VAN DOREN: But, if, as you say, these jokes are oftentimes cloaks f~r hilosophical, even metaphysical, points, then the b.ook at bottom . is ~erious. I think I've ~e~n tryi~g t~ say that the ~ook is at botto1? qm~e sen· 0 us and quite edifymg · Alice is always . learnmg-her . experience is less than it might be-she is always learnmg that somethmg that she has osed to be grotesque is not, as a matter of fact, grotesque. She says P supthe ' rea llY caterpillar once, you remember, on th e mus h room: "Its to · one ' s sh ape. " H e says.· "It isn . 't d rea dful d adful always to be changmg a;eall." And we immediately remember that the caterpillar changes his shape at least three times in his life. . . PORTER: And of course she really changes hers too, not mto an entirely different form, not from one thing to another, but she's changing and growing all the time; she's not the same person today that she was yesterday by any means. But she doesn't understand that. . VAN DOREN: As when she is carrying the Duchess' baby. For a while he things the baby is ugly because it has a nose like a pig. Then when :he determines that the baby is a pig, she thinks the nose is quite beautiful.

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PORTER: The nose is very becoming, and she's glad it's a handsome pig. But I was thinking her confusion was due t? the setting aside. of all the logic of experience. Because there is a certam sort of progression of experience that I think we can depend upon a little, and this is all removed, you see, from her when she falls into this Wonderland. There isn't anything that she can refer to as a certainty. And then there's another thing that's very important: Alice's state of mind is a fine example of the terrific sense of uncertainty and insecurity of childhood trying to understand an adult world in which very little provision is made for the young. This was true in those days much more than now. I think now 30 perhaps that the family plans are made a little bit too much around the child. VAN DOREN: I think so myself. PORTER: But Alice was at a terrible disadvantage, struggling with an adult, alien, and apparently hostile world, which had set traps for her, or so it appeared, purposely to trip her up. RUSSELL: Perhaps that is why the book was better liked then than now. That particular kind of bafflement was one to which children were accustomed, and it didn't strike them as it does now. But now, I think, the modern child is simply bewildered by all this and feels: oh, this is horrid! 40 At least some do. VAN DOREN: I wonder which is the better procedure for the human race-to endeavour to make children understand adults or to endeavour to make adults understand children.

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PORTER: Do you know, I think one of the great troubles is that too many persons are going around painfully trying too hard to understand I wish we could relax a little. · RUSSELL: I quite agree. If you could take children more naturally and spontaneously and not bother so much about child psychology, it would be very much better I think. VAN DOREN: Certainly. And likewise children should be relieved of the necessity of understanding adult psychology. PORTER: Well, I think one of the most sinister things I ever heard was a little boy, a small child about four years old, weeping bitterly by himself. His parents found him and tried to discover what had happened to him. He wept for a while and finally he blurted out: "Oh, I do want to be happy." VAN DOREN: Mr. Russell, I should like to ask you, because of your own distinction in the field of logic and mathematics, whether Carroll is thought actually to have any importance in that field today. RUSSELL: His works were just what you would expect: comparatively good at producing puzzles and very ingenious and rather pleasant, but not important. For instance, he produced a book of formal logic which is much pleasanter than most because, instead of saying things like "all men are mortal", which is very dull, it says, things like "most hungry crocodiles are disagreeable", which is amusing, and that makes the subject more agreeable. Then he wrote a book of geometry which is pleasant in a way, but not important. None of his work was important. The best work he ever did in that line was the two puzzles that I spoke of. VAN DOREN: And are those better in that line than anything in either Alice in TXVnderland or Through the Looking-Glass- I mean to say, considered as contributions? RUSSELL: Oh, certainly, because there is nothing in Alice in TXVnderland or Through the Looking-Glass that could conceivably be thought a contribution. They offer only pleasant illustrations for those who don't want to be thought too heavy. VAN DOREN: But for children perhaps? I mean, could one seriously say that a child might learn a little bit to be logical from reading these books? RUSSELL: I shouldn't have thought so. VAN DOREN: That was a very heavy question, and you should have rebuked me for it. But the famous error that is made (I don't know whether this is a logical error or not) when it is said that butter should not have been used in the works of a watch and the answer is "but it was the best butter" -is that amusing to a child? PORTER: That was frightfully amusing. That was funny always. VAN DOREN: Or the demonstration that, since a dog is not mad because when he is happy he wags his tail and when he is unhappy he

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rowls with his throat, therefore a cat which when it is happy moves its

~ail and growls is mad.

I think we understood that all very well, don't you? How about the treacle well? poRTER: Yes, I liked the treacle well. RUSSELL: Do you remember, they drew treacle out of the treacle well? "But I don't understand", said Alice, "they were in the well." "So they were", said the dormouse, "well in." poRTER: That was funny, too. VAN DOREN: They were drawing treacle from the well, and the dormouse explains: "Well, we were just learning to draw; we didn't draw very well." And suddenly they're talking about drawing picturesdrawing pictures of things the names of which begin with the letter M. "Why with the letter M?" "Why not?" PORTER: But do you remember the lessons they had? Was it the eel, or some underseas creature, who had lessons in drawling and stretching and fainting in coils? You know, we were never told how to translate that and we didn't need to. We thought those tricks were funny in themselves. VAN DOREN: And the exercises in reeling and writhing. PORTER: We didn't get on to that for a long time. RUSSELL: I found the only thing that my boy really liked, my small boy, was the poem about Father William. He looked at me with a grave face and said: "Father William was very clever although he was old." VAN DOREN: How old is the boy, by the way? RUSSELL: Four and a half. VAN DOREN: A shrewd remark. Now we have not referred often enough in our conversation to the presence in this book of some very famous poems which are of course parodies. I think the poem about Father William is the most interesting. Would you agree? RUSSELL: I agree-yes. VAN DOREN: Miss Porter, would you like to read that? PORTER: I'll swing along as we used to when we read it as children. poRTER:

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"You are old, Father William", the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your headDo you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth", Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again."

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"You are old", said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back somersault in at the doorPray, what is the reason of that?" "In my youth", said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment-one shilling the box,Allow me to sell you a couple?"

Part IO

"You are old", said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet. Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beakPray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth", said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw Has lasted the rest of my life."

20

"You are old", said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your noseWhat made you so awfully clever?" "I've answered three questions, and that is enough", Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"

IX

The "How-To" Series

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Three "How-To" Papers [1942]

were published in one pamphlet by Haldeman-Julius publications, Girard, Kansas, in 1942; designated "The 'How-To' Series-Nos. 7, 8, 9", it was edited by E. Haldeman-Julius. "How to Become a Philosopher", subtitled, "The Art of Rational Conjecture", occupies pages 5 to 15 and three lines on page 16; "How to Become a Logician", subtitled, "The Art of Drawing Inferences", appears on pages 16 through 27; and "How to Become a Mathematician", subtitled, "The Art of Reckoning", fills pages 28 through 40. On 2 March 1943 Haldeman-Julius sent the manuscripts to the Missouri Academy of Science. In a letter to Caroline G. Nations, the Secretary of the Philosophy Section, he had this to say: TI-IESE THREE PAPERS

I am sending you, as a gift to the Philosophy Section of the Missouri Academy of Science, three manuscripts by Bertrand Russell, in his own handwriting, entitled: The Art of Rational Conjecture; The Art of Drawing Inferences; BECOME A MATHEMATICIAN: The Art of Reckoning.

HOW TO BECOME A PHILOSOPHER: HOW TO BECOME A LOGICIAN: HOW TO

These manuscripts were published last year (1942), in one volume, by Haldeman-Julius Publications, Girard, Kansas, as Numbers 7, 8, and 9 of The "How-To" Series, edited by myself. Since the Philosophy Section has no library of its own, the manuscripts might be deposited, as you suggest, in the Library of the University of Missouri, to remain, however, the property of the Philosophy Section of the Missouri Academy of Science; and to be accessible to such inspection as the Librarian, subject to the consent of the Philosophy Section, shall deem advisable. Of all the Russell manuscripts that passed through his hands, these appear to be the only ones that Haldeman-Julius saved. Although no correspondence exists to prove it, it is almost certain that Russell wrote these pieces at Haldeman-Julius's request and sold him the copyright in

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them. Russell did sometimes include papers he had written for Haldeman-Julius in his own collections of essays, but he did not reprint these essays. In 1968 these essays were published in a new edition by the Philosophical Library in New York, under the title, The Art of Philosophizing and Other Essays, Russell's original titles were dropped and Haldeman-Julius's subtitles substituted. In 1974 Littlefield, Adams & Co. of Totowa, New Jersey, reissued the book in paperback; the third impression (1983) of the paperback edition bears the imprint of Rowman & Allanheld, also of Totowa. Since Russell was not involved in these reprints, their texts have no authority. The Russell Archives's photocopies of the manuscripts (RA REC. ACQ. 244 [ac]) are the copy-texts. They have been collated with the first edition of the pamphlet; the results are reported in the Textual Notes.

67 How To Become a Philosopher [1942]

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us BEGIN with a few words as to what philosophy is. It is not definite knowledge, for that is science. Nor is it groundless credulity, such as that of savages. It is something between these two extremes; perhaps it might be called "the art of rational conjecture". According to this definition, philosophy tells us how to proceed when we want to find out what may be true, or is most likely to be true, where it is impossible to know with certainty what is true. The art of rational conjecture is very useful in two different ways. First: often the most difficult step in the discovery of what is true is thinking of a hypothesis which may 10 be true; when once the hypothesis has been thought of, it can be tested, but it may require a man of genius to think of it. Second: we often have to act in spite of uncertainty, because delay would be dangerous or fatal; in such a case, it is useful to possess an art by which we can judge what is probable. This art, so far as very general hypotheses are concerned, is philosophy. Particular questions, such as "will it rain tomorrow?" do not belong to philosophy; philosophy is concerned with general questions, such as: "Is the world governed by mechanical laws, or has it a cosmic purpose, or has it both characteristics at once?" Philosophy examines whether anything can be said on such general questions. 20 The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man's, so that they cannot both be right. People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people, is a secondary consideration. You, dear reader, have of course no prejudices; but you will admit that in this you are different from most people. I shall suppose that you are a Baptist from Tennessee. It is obvious to you that America is the greatest country in the world, that Tennessee is the most distinguished of the States, and 30 that the Baptists are the sole repositories of theological truth. Let us suppose that I concede all this. What am I to say to a man from another State or another country? How can I persuade a French Canadian Catholic of the truths which are so luminously evident to you? There are still a good many points about which you and he will agree, but how if you have to argue with a Turk or a Hindu or a Confucian? You will find them questioning most of what you have accepted as unquestionable, and if you are to argue profitably with them you will have to find common ground beneath your respective assumptions. You will still find some things about which you can agree with the 40 Turk. Are men descended from monkeys? Perish the thought! Is man the supreme glory of the universe? Of course. On such matters your common T

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humanity makes you see eye to eye. But if one day an intelligent bein were to arrive from Mars, he might turn out to be as superior to men ag men are to monkeys; he might think the difference between men an~ monkeys very slight, and consider it obvious that they had a commo ancestry. He would assert the claims of Mars (unless he were a philo: opher) as confidently as you had asserted the claims of Kansas. Anct what could you do about it? If you wish to become a philosopher, you must try, as far as you can to get rid of beliefs which depend solely upon the place and time of you' IO education, and upon what your parents and schoolmasters told you. N~ one can do this completely, and no one can be a perfect philosopher, but up to a point we can all achieve it if we wish to. "But why should we wish to?" you may ask. There are several reasons. One of them is that irrational opinions have a great deal to do with war and other forms of violent strife. The only way in which a society can live for any length of time without violent strife is by establishing social justice, and social justice appears to each man to be injustice if he is persuaded that he is superior to his neighbours. Justice between classes is difficult where there is a class that believes itself to have a right to more than a proportionate 20 share of power or wealth. Justice between nations is only possible through the power of neutrals, because each nation believes in its own superior excellence. Justice between creeds is even more difficult, since each creed is convinced that it has a monopoly of the truth on the most important of all subjects. It would be immeasurably easier than it is to arrange disputes amicably and justly if the philosophic outlook were more wide-spread. A second reason for wishing to be philosophic is that mistaken beliefs do not, as a rule, enable you to realize your purposes. In the middle ages, when there was an epidemic of plague, people crowded into the churches 30 to pray, thinking that their piety would move God to take pity on them; in fact, the crowds in ill-ventilated buildings provided ideal conditions for the spread of the infection. If your means are to be adequate to your ends, you must have knowledge, not merely superstition or prejudice. A third reason is that truth is better than falsehood. There is something ignominious in going about sustained by comfortable lies. The deceived husband is traditionally ludicrous, and there is something of the same laughable or pitiable quality about all happiness that depends upon being deceived or deluded. If you wish to become a philosopher, you must train both the intellect 40 and the emotions. The two sorts of training are intimately interconnected, but they must be to some extent separated in discussion. I shall begin with the training of the intellect. The training of the intellect has both a positive and a negative aspect:

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u have to learn what to believe, and what not to believe. Let us begin yo .. ith the pos1t1ve aspect. wAlthough, in the last analysis, everything may be more or less doubtful, et some things are so nearly certain that for all practical purposes the y!ernent of doubt may be ignored. The would-be philosopher will ask e himself what k'mds of knowledge seem least open to question, and why. Be rnay, in starting this inquiry, reasonably assume that the most certain kinds of knowledge are those about which there is least dispute. He will soon find that these are not the kinds of knowledge, or supposed knowledge, that are asserted with most vehemence. Every one is agreed about IO the multiplication table, but no one goes about proclaiming that it contains Sacred Truth. If any one were to deny its truth, he would not be burnt at the stake or imprisoned as a fifth columnist. A sensible man, if he fell among arithmetical heretics, and were asked to recant his belief in the multiplication table, would do so, conscious that his recantation could do the multiplication table no harm. These are the characteristics of a belief about which there is no reasonable doubt. Whoever wishes to become a philosopher will do well to acquire a considerable knowledge of mathematics. In the course of this study he will get to know what sorts of truths can be discovered by mere thinking, 20 without the help of observation. He will also acquire familiarity with exact reasoning, and with the sort of mistakes to which even very expert reasoners are prone. For this last purpose, he will do well to study mathematics historically. For example: before Einstein, everybody thought it had been proved mathematically that gravitation is propagated instantaneously, but Einstein's theory required that it should be propagated with the velocity of light. Sure enough, the mathematicians found a mistake in the argument which had satisfied them for generations, and now, unless they are Nazis, they are all agreed that Einstein was right about the velocity of gravitation. This, however, was a very advanced and 30 difficult question; it would be a mistake to be led by this instance into a general scepticism about mathematics. What it is right to infer is that, where questions are concerned that are both more complex and more nearly related to our passions than the questions of mathematics, the chance of errors in reasoning becomes very great. This applies especially to social and religious questions. Logic is useful to the philosopher in its modern form, not in the musty medieval form that the schoolmen produced out of Aristotle. It is useful chiefly as teaching caution in inference. Those who are not trained in logic are prone to inferences that have no validity. For example, if one 40 class or nation is oppressed by another, and you think this oppression ought to cease, they will expect you to regard the oppressed class or nation as possessed of superior virtue, and will be surprised if you do not

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feel a personal liking for each and every one of them. There is here no logical connection, although to an untrained mind there seems to be one The more expert you become in logic, the fewer will be the inference~ that you allow to be valid, and the seldomer will you regard it as inconsistent to hold two opinions at once. This is important practically, since it allows necessary compromise, and prevents acceptance of some rigid block of opinions. Blocks of opinions, such as Catholicism, Communism or Nazism, tend to be persecuting, and are practically certain to be at' least partly false. Practice in logical analysis makes it harder to be satisfied with such ready-made mental clothing. Logic and mathematics, useful as they are, are only intellectual training for the philosopher. They help him to know how to study the world but they give him no actual information about it. They are the alphabet' of the book of nature, not the book itself. The knowledge that is needed above all, if you wish to become a philosopher, is knowledge of science-not in its minute detail, but in its general results, its history, and especially its method. It is science that makes the difference between the modern world and the world before the seventeenth century. It is science that has destroyed the belief in witchcraft, magic, and sorcery. It is science that has made the old creeds and the old superstitions impossible for intelligent men to accept. It is science that has made it laughable to suppose the earth the centre of the universe and man the supreme purpose of the Creation. It is science that is showing the falsehoods of the old dualisms of soul and body, mind and matter, which have their origin in religion. It is science that is beginning to make us understand ourselves, and to enable us, up to a point, to see ourselves from without as curious mechanisms. It is science that has taught us the way to substitute tentative truth for cocksure error. The scientific spirit, the scientific method, the framework of the scientific world, must be absorbed by any one who wishes to have a philosophic outlook belonging to our time, not a literary antiquarian philosophy fetched out of old books. Assuredly Plato was a man of great genius, and Aristotle was comprehensively encyclopedic; but in their modern disciples they can inspire only error. An hour with Galileo or Newton will give you more help towards a sound philosophy than a year with Plato and Aristotle. But if you go to a university, this will not be the opinion of your professors. Science, we said, is important to the philosopher in its results and in its method. Let us say something about each of these in turn. As regards results: the first thing of importance to the philosopher is the history of the universe, past and future. The earlier and later parts are conjectural, but there is a long stretch in the middle about which there is not much doubt. It seems that, a good while ago, there was a

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diffused nebula, something like a very thin mist; some parts were not quite so thin as others, and these gradually became stars. Our star, the sun, either because another star passed near it or for some different reason, gave birth to a number of planets, which, at first, were as hot as their parent, but being smaller they presently cooled. One of them, when it reached a suitable temperature, generated certain chemically complex structures having the property of being able to confer their own composition and structure on suitable neighbouring matter. This property is called life. Living structures became gradually more complex as they evolved through the animal and vegetable kingdoms; one of the most complex is man. The existence of life depends upon a number of conditions, chemical and thermal. For countless ages the weather was too hot for life; perhaps in the end it will be too cold. But some astronomers, for instance Sir James Jeans, tell us that before it grows too cold the sun will burst, which will cause the earth and all the other planets to become gaseous. In one way or in another, it is pretty certain that life on the earth will presently cease. The universe is on a large scale, both in time and space. The sun is about ninety-three million miles from the earth, and its light reaches us in eight minutes. The nearest of the stars are so distant that their light takes several years to reach us. All the stars we see with the naked eye are part of the milky way, which is one of a vast number of star-clusters. In addition to star-clusters there are nebulae-something like a million of them-which are incredibly remote, so remote that their light takes many hundreds of thousands of years to reach us, although it travels at the rate of 180,000 miles a second. As for the time-scale, the earth has existed for millions of years, but its beginning is recent as compared to the beginnings of the sun. When Sir James Jeans speaks of the possibility of the sun bursting, one gets at first an impression that this catastrophe is imminent, but in the end he consolingly suggests that it will not happen for a million million years. The universe, we are told, is steadily tending towards a state in which energy will be uniformly distributed, and therefore useless for all the purposes which it serves at present. When that time comes, and probably long before it, life will be extinct everywhere, and only a miracle could restore it. Even the most religious men of science, unless they are Catholics, agree that these are the most probable conclusions on the present evidence. Let us contrast this picture of the universe with that presented in the Bible and the Fathers, which was generally accepted throughout Christendom until science caused men to question it. According to the Bible and the Fathers, the universe was created in six days by God's fiat; the date of the Creation can be computed from the data in Genesis, and has been estimated at B.c. 4004. The earth is the centre of the universe, and

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the creation of Adam and Eve was the last Act in God's work. God told them not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree, and when they nevertheless did so, ~e was ~ery angry, although He had alwa~s known that they would disobey Him. He was so angry that He decided on an infinite punishment: they and all their progeny deserved to burn eternally in an everlasting fire. But God the Son took upon Himself the punishment due to a certain portion of mankind, by suffering crucifixion and spending three days in hell. In virtue of His sufferings, those who hold correct theological opinions and undergo certain ceremonies will go to heaven IO instead of hell. The visible world will pass away at Christ's second coming, the date of which is uncertain. The first disciples believed it to be imminent; then it was expected in IOOO A.D. Some Protestant sects still think that it will come within a few years. After that there will be only heaven and hell-and purgatory for a while, according to the Catholics. Let us note some of the differences between these two conceptions of the universe. There is first the difference of scale: the Christian universe was small and of brief duration (apart from heaven and hell), while the scientific universe is not known to have a beginning or end in either time 20 or space, and is certainly of unimaginable extent in both. In the Christian universe, everything had a purpose and everything had its place; it was neat and tidy, like a good housewife's kitchen. Another difference is that the Christian universe centred about the earth, while the scientific universe has no centre; in the Christian universe, the earth was fixed, and the celestial spheres revolved about it, while in the scientific universe everything is in motion. The Christian universe was made for man, while the scientific universe, if it is made to serve any end, is made to serve one which we cannot imagine. Indeed the whole conception of purpose, which dominated pseudo-scientific thought during the 2,000 years from 30 Aristotle to the seventeenth century, has disappeared from modern scientific explanations. Why the laws of nature are what they are is a question which science has ceased to ask, because there is no reason to suppose that it has an answer. Moral conceptions, such as sin and punishment, dominated the Christian scheme, while in the scientific scheme they have no place. The Christian universe was such as uninstructed men might expect the universe to be, while the scientific universe blandly ignores our prejudices and our hopes, our loves and our hates. Above all these differences, there is the difference of evidence. The evidence for the Christian scheme of things is the Bible; the evidence for 40 the scientific world is observation and induction. Science asks on what ground the Bible account should be accepted. Were the authors of the Pentateuch present at the Creation? Obviously not. Can we believe that God revealed the truth to them? There are great difficulties in this view.

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'fhe Bible is not the only Sacred Book; other religions have different cosmologies. How is an impartial inquirer to know which to believe? The :Bible sometimes contradicts itself; it gives two quite inconsistent accounts of the creation of Adam and Eve, and in one place it says there were two sheep in the ark while in another it says there were seven. Then there are other difficulties. The Jesuit Acosta, who lived in South America, was puzzled by the animals only to be found there, though all must have come from Mount Ararat. This was especially puzzling in the case of the sloth, which is so dilatory in its motions that it could hardly have reached South America in the time since the flood. Sailors might, of IO course, have brought the various queer beasts from the old world, but the worthy Father thinks this unlikely, especially in the case of the filthy Adas, of which the smell is unendurable. Then there were troubles about fossils, which seemed to prove the world older than it could be if Genesis were true. Gradually belief in the literal truth of Genesis came to be very generally abandoned, and the way was left clear for acceptance of the scientific account. What science has to say about very distant times and places is said with hesitation; it is set forth as what is most probable on the existing evidence, but any day new evidence may lead to new conclusions on this 20 point or that. It is unlikely, however, that the general picture will be very much changed. What theology had to say, before science had weakened its authority, was said with a very different accent: what it pronounced was truth eternal, unalterable, unquestionable. Those who questioned it deserved to be burnt here on earth, as Giordano Bruno was burnt, and they would certainly burn hereafter to the end of time. No theologian would say this now, but that is because even infallible dogmas have had to be surreptitiously modified to meet the onslaught of science. Whoever wishes to become a philosopher will do well to pay attention to the history of science, and particularly to its warfare with theology. 30 With the exception of pure mathematics, every science has had to begin by fighting to establish its right to exist. Astronomy was condemned in the person of Galileo, geology in the person of Buffon. Scientific medicine was, for a long time, made almost impossible by the opposition of the Church to the dissection of dead bodies. Darwin came too late to suffer penalties, but Catholics and the Legislature of Tennessee still regard evolution with abhorrence. Each step has been won with difficulty, and each new step is still opposed, as if nothing were to be learnt from past defeats. In our day, it is the newest science, psychology, that encounters oppo- 40 sition, particularly when it seems in danger of interfering with the doctrine of "sin". In any human community, some people act in ways inimical to the interests of the community; if social life is to continue, it is

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necessary to find ways of preventing such anti-social behaviour. 'fhe conception of "sin" was the Church's way of effecting this object. If the police failed, the sinner could not congratulate himself on his escape, for God would punish him. This method had a certain efficacy in certain kinds of cases. But we now know that much anti-social behaviour has deep psychological causes, and will not cease until those causes are removed by psychological curative treatment. Much of what used to be indiscriminately labelled "sin" turns out to be more of the nature of disease, amenable perhaps to medical treatment, but not to punishment. IO Those who take this attitude are accused by the orthodox of advocating whatever "sins" should, in their opinion, be treated medically rather than penally. This is simply the old opposition to science, taking courage from the fact that psychology, the science in question, is still young and immature. In ethics, equally, the old obscurantism continues. No one is injured when a man marries his deceased wife's sister, and yet the Church is still shocked by such wicked behaviour, since it defines "sin", not as what does harm, but as what the Bible or the Church condemns. It is time to say something about scientific method. Science is concerned to discover general laws, and is interested in particular facts chief20 ly as evidence for or against such laws. Geography and history are interested in particular facts on their own account, but neither is a science except in so far as it is able to discover general laws. It must be realized that we might live in a world without general laws, where bread would be nourishing one day and stones the next, where Niagara would sometimes fall up instead of down, and kettles would occasionally freeze when put on the stove. All this would be awkward, but it would not be logically impossible. Fortunately, our world is different. By the time we begin to think, we have become accustomed to a number of regularities-day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, and so on. With regard 30 to things that seem irregular, like thunderstorms, two hypotheses were initially possible. It might be that there were regularities, though too complex to be easily discovered; or it might be that such phenomena were due to capricious deities. The latter view was universally adopted by primitive men, and survived among the clergymen of Boston until the time of Benjamin Franklin. These worthy men maintained that the lightning conductor was impious, and had led, through God's wrath, to an increase of earthquakes. The world, however, has decided against them. Gradually it has come to be accepted that all natural phenomena are governed by general laws, though these laws, in the case of the minutest 40 quantum transitions, are only statistical. The discovery of general laws is sometimes very difficult; it proved easiest in the study of the solar system. Kepler proved that Mars goes round the sun in an ellipse, and gave grounds, though not conclusive ones, for supposing that the other

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planets do likewise. Then Newton discovered the law of gravitation, which lasted without modification for over 200 years. Tiny discrepancies led Einstein to a change which was in practice very minute, though very revolutionary as regards theory. Newton's law, it is now admitted, was not exactly right, although the errors in its predictions could only be discovered in a few cases, and then only by the utmost precision in measurement. This development may serve as a sample and model of scientific method. Hypothesis and observation alternate; each new hypothesis calls for new observations, and, if it is to be accepted, must fit the facts better than any previous hypothesis. But it always remains IO possible, if not probable, that some further hypothesis may be called for to explain further observations. New hypotheses do not show old ones to have been false, but only to have been approximations which were not quite exact, which is all that a wise man of science would ever claim for them. The philosopher in search of knowledge, when he finds a scientific law generally accepted, may take it as probable that the law is approximately correct. To assume more than this would be rash. So far, I have been considering the positive side of a philosopher's preliminary training; now it is time to consider the negative side. When I 20 was a boy of about fifteen, I decided to look into all my beliefs, and discard them if they seemed to have no foundation except tradition or my own prejudices. Being a good deal of a prig, I intended to face one painful possibility every day; I began with the possibility that it might have been better if the English had lost the battle of Waterloo. After pondering this hypothesis for a long time, I found only one argument on Napoleon's side: that if he had won, England would have had the decimal system. I soon passed on to more important matters, such as the dogmas of the Christian religion, which I tried to examine impartially in spite of my strong desire to retain my faith. I think some such process is 30 very useful to those who wish to become philosophers. It is easier to carry on effectively if you do not have to invent the arguments against your prejudices yourself, but have them presented to you by a person who believes them. It would be an admirable thing if all our schools contained a percentage of Moslems and Buddhists, who should be encouraged to defend their respective religions against the Christian majority among the pupils. This might diminish the strength of irrational conviction on both sides. Another important element in negative training is the history of men's irrational beliefs. Aristotle asserted that women have fewer teeth than 40 men, although he was a married man. Until the beginning of modern times, everybody thought that there is an animal, called the salamander, which lives in fire. Shakespeare repeats the superstition that the toad has

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a jewel in his head. These were not questions that roused people' passions; how much more, then, was error to be expected in matters a: to which men had a strong bias? In the sixteenth century, everybody believed in witchcraft-probably even the poor creatures who were condemned for it. History abounds in well-attested miracles which no modern man would accept. I do not allude, of course, to the miracles Performed by Catholic saints, but to those others, equally vouched for, that were performed by Arian or Nestorian or Monophysite heretics, or even by downright infidels. Nothing marvellous can be accepted on historical evidence, unless the evidence is of quite unusual strength. Men at all times have been prone to believe what subsequent ages proved to be false, and our time is no exception. The training of the emotions is as important, in the making of a philosopher, as the training of the intellect. It is important to be able to view human beings as products of circumstances. Given that certain sorts of people are more desirable than certain other sorts, it is a scientific question to discover how the more desirable sorts are to be made more common. The orthodox view is that this is to be done by preaching, but experience hardly supports this theory. All sorts of causes may lead a man to behave badly: faulty education, wrong diet, economic worries, and so on. It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. The difference is that you can compel your car to go to a garage, but you cannot compel Hitler to go to a psychiatrist. You can, however, do something about the young potential Hitlers who exist everywhere, and who are also potential decent citizens. You will not do anything wise about these young people if you view them as "sinners". It is important to learn not to be angry with opinions different from your own, but to set to work understanding how they come about. If, after you have understood them, they still seem false, you can then combat them much more effectually than if you had continued to be merely horrified. I am not suggesting that the philosopher should have no feelings; the man who has no feelings, if there be such a man, does nothing, and therefore achieves nothing. No man can hope to become a good philosopher unless he has certain feelings which are not very common. He must have an intense desire to understand the world, as far as that is possible; and for the sake of understanding, he must be willing to overcome those narrownesses of outlook that make a correct perception impossible. He must learn to think and feel, not as a member of this or that group, but as just a human being. If he could, he would divest himself of the limitations to which he is subject as a human being. If he could perceive the world as a Martian or an inhabitant of Sirius, if he

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could see it as it seems to a creature that lives for a day and also as it would seem to one that lived for a million years, he would be a better philosopher. But this he_ cannot do; he is tied to a human body with human organs of perception. To what extent can this human subjectivity be overcome? Can we know anything at all about what the world is, as opposed to what it seems? This is what the philosopher wishes to know, and it is to this end that he has to undergo such a long training in impartiality. Hitherto I have been concerned with the pre-philosophic training of the philosopher; it is only now that I come to the questions that are properly philosophical. When you have finished your training in logic and science, what should you do to apply your training to the problems that made you wish to become a philosopher? If you ask an old-fashioned professor, he will tell you to read Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel; also, as lesser luminaries, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; also, as awful warnings, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. If you follow his advice, you will be able to pass examinations in what universities call "philosophy". You will have acquired, with considerable trouble, a lot of knowledge as to what these great men thought on various subjects. But unless you let your intelligence go to sleep while you are reading the "great" philosophers, you will not think that you have discovered what you yourself are to think on philosophical questions. It will be plain to you that a great deal of what these great men said is rubbish, and belongs to a pre-scientific mental atmosphere. Part of what they say is fallacious, part is clever guess-work. Clearly, if you want your problems solved, you must do the work yourself. A man may be led to philosophy by any one of a number of problems. Let us take the problem we mentioned a moment ago: Can we know anything about what the world is, as opposed to what it seems? Let us first see how this problem arises. We see things with our eyes, and we imagine, until we reflect, that that is how things are. But animals see differently; they cannot appreciate pictures, though perhaps, if we knew how, we could make pictures that they would appreciate, though we should not. Flies have very curious eyes, which must make the world look very different to them from what it does to us. Whatever we see or hear-to take another point-seems to us to be happening now, but we know that light and sound take time to travel. The thunder, as a physical phenomenon, happens at the same time as the lightning, although we hear it later. When you see the sun setting, it "really" set eight minutes ago. When a new star appears, as sometimes happens, the event that you are seeing now may have happened thousands of years ago. Again: physicists are agreed that colour, as we experience it, is only in our perceptions; what corresponds, in the outer world, to colour in our perceptions,

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are transverse waves, which are something quite different. The world of the physicist has only certain points in common with the world of the senses. The world of the senses, if supposed to exist outside us, is largely an illusion. What would you say if you wished to meet this difficulty with the smallest possible departure from common sense? You would observe, as the physicist does, that, after all, we all live in a common world. Flies may have queer senses, but they gather round the honey-pot. In some sense, a number of people and animals can perceive the same event, though they perceive it differently. The differences must be subjective; what is common to all the perceivings may belong to the event itself, independently of our perceptive apparatus. This is, roughly, what the physicist supposes, and it seems a reasonable hypothesis. It cannot be regarded as certain, since there are other hypotheses that would account for all the known facts. But it has the merit that it cannot be disproved, and that it cannot lead to demonstrably false consequences, while it approaches as near to our naive beliefs as any hypothesis which is not refutable can do. If you wish to deal with the problem completely, you will not stop at this point. You will try to find a method of formulating all the hypotheses that are compatible with all ascertainable facts. These must all agree in all their verifiable consequences, and therefore, for practical purposes, it makes no difference whatever which of them you adopt. If you can get as far as this, you have done all that is possible, since, though you have not arrived at one theory that must be true, you have shown that this is impossible, and have set out all the theories that may be true. More cannot be asked of a philosopher. Let us take another philosophical problem: the relation of soul and body, or, more generally, of mind and matter. Common sense has come to take this dualism as a matter of course; we all regard it as obvious that we have a body and we have a mind. Philosophers, however, usually dislike dualism; some seek to avoid it by saying that the body is a phantom generated by the mind-these are called "idealists"-while others say that the mind is nothing but a way of behaviour of the body-these are called "materialists". The distinction between mind and body did not always exist, but was made primarily in the interests of religion. It begins in Plato, who argued that the soul is immortal though the body is not. It was taken up and developed, in the last days of antiquity, first by the neo-platonists and then by the Christians. It is fully developed in the writings of St. Augustine. It is remarkable that a theory having such a purely philosophic and theological origin should have penetrated so deeply into the thought of ordinary men and women as to have come to seem almost self-evident. I think, however, that our would-be philos-

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op her may profitably examine the whole distinction afresh, and that, if he does, he will come to think it much less obvious than it is generally supposed to be. At first sight it may seem clear that when I think, that is an event in 111y mind, but when my arm moves, that is an event in my body. But what do I mean by "thinking"? And what do I mean by "my arm moving"? Neither is clear. First as to "thinking". I experience pleasure and pain, I see and hear and touch things, I remember, I feel desire, and I make decisions; all these would be classified as "mental" events, and, in a large sense, might be called "thinking". Certainly such events occur, and therefore we are justified in saying that there is thinking. We are not justified, however, in saying further, as Descartes does, that there is a thing which thinks, and that this thing is my mind. To suppose that thoughts need a thinker is to be misled by grammar (or rather syntax). The thoughts can be perceived, but the thinker cannot; he is a piece of unnecessary metaphysical lumber. And how about the motion of my arm? We all imagine, until we look into the question, that we know what "motion" is, and that we can see our arm moving. But this is a mistake. Motion is a physical phenomenon, and we must go to physics to find out what it is. Physics tells us an incredibly complicated story, according to which, though there is change, there is no such thing as motion, since this implies a "thing" which travels, and in quantum physics "things" have disappeared. We have, in place of them, strings of events related to each other in certain ways; such a string of events is what is mistakenly thought of as a "thing''. About an arm as it appears in physics we know only certain abstract mathematical laws; we know so little that we cannot tell whether the events of which it is composed are like thoughts or unlike them. Thus all we can say is this: there are not two "things", my mind and my body; there is a series of events, called "thoughts'', which are such that the later can remember the earlier; there is also, if physics is not mistaken, a series of events which is what is commonly thought of as my arm; but whether the events in the physical series are like thoughts or unlike them, it is impossible to know. I do not mean that I am sure what I have just said is right; I say only that it seems to me probable. In any case, it is clear that the question of "mind" and "matter" cannot be fruitfully discussed in traditional terms, but only in terms which make it quite a different problem. To argue whether the soul is immortal, while having no idea what we mean by "soul", would obviously be futile. In this way, rather arid questions turn out to be necessary preliminaries to the discussion of matters of great emotional interest. But perhaps you may say: I wished to become a philosopher because I

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thought philosophers knew the purpose of life, and could teach me how I ought to live; and hitherto you have not helped me in this way. Bas philosophy nothing to say about such things? This question deserves an answer, but the answer cannot be quite simple. Philosophy, historically, is intermediate between science anct religion; to the Greeks, it was a "way of life", but it was a way very largely concerned with the pursuit of knowledge. Some philosophers have emphasized the religious aspect of philosophy, others the scientific aspect; but always both have been present in a greater or less degree. A IO complete philosopher will have a conception of the ends to which life should be devoted, and will be in this sense religious; but he will be scientific because he thinks the pursuit of knowledge an essential part of the best life, and because he thinks knowledge necessary for the attainment of most of the things that he values. His moral and his intellectual life are thus closely intertwined. The philosopher must think in general terms, because the problems with which he is concerned are general; and he must think impartially, because he knows that that is the only way to reach truth. Generality and impartiality in thought have their counterparts in purposes: his funda20 mental purposes, if he is a genuine philosopher, will be large and concerned with humanity as a whole. He will not be parochial, either in space or in time; people of other regions and other ages will be present to his imagination. Justice, in practical affairs, is closely allied to generality in intellectual matters. If you acquire the habit of thinking about the human race, you will find it increasingly difficult to confine your benevolence to a section of it. The Stoics carried this principle so far as to condemn all particular affections, but in this they were mistaken. If you love no one in particular, your love of mankind will be cold and abstract. It is through private affection that love of mankind becomes warm and 30 living. If, when you read of cruelties, you imagine them practised on your wife or your child or your friend, you will feel a horror of them which would be impossible to a man who loved all human beings equally. The philosopher should not feel less than other men do for his friends or his country, but he should learn, in imagination, to generalize these feelings, and to allow to the friends and the countries of others the value which he assigns to his own. The contemplation of immense distances and vast stretches of time, to which the philosopher should accustom himself, is capable of having a certain purifying effect upon the emotions. Some of the things about 40 which we are inclined to grow excited seem puny and unimportant when brought into relation to the stellar universe; others, though they may seem less important than we had thought, do not seem unworthy. The doings of man have not that cosmic significance that could be attributed

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to them in the days of the Ptolemaic astronomy, but they are still all that we know of good and evil. To pursue personal greatness, like Ozymandias king of kings, is a trifle ridiculous, for the greatest power or fame attainable by a human being is still so microscopic as to be scarcely worth even a little effort. But impersonal aims-to try to understand as 111uch of the world as possible, to create beauty, or to add to human happiness-do not seem laughable, since they are the best that we can do. And from the very knowledge of our unimportance it is possible to derive a certain kind of peace, which may make it less difficult to bear good fortune without vainglory and evil fortune without despair.

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68 How To Become a Logician [1942] defined as the art of drawing inferences. Everybody draws infere~c~s; in an important sense, even animals do so. But most peoples mferences are rash and hasty; subsequent experience shows them to be wrong. Logic aims at avoiding such unreliable kinds of inference; it is analogous to the rules of evidence in law. Often the inference is incapable of giving certainty, but can give a degree of probability sufficiently high for a reasonable man to act on it. The rules of probable inference are the most difficult part of logic, but also the most useful. 20 Logic was practically invented by Aristotle. For nearly two thousand years, his authority in logic was unquestioned. To this day, teachers in Catholic educational institutions are not allowed to admit that his logic has defects, and any non-Catholic who criticizes it incurs the bitter hostility of the Roman Church. I once ventured to do so on the radio, and the organizers who had invited me were inundated with protests against the broadcasting of such heretical doctrine. Undue respect for Aristotle, however, is not confined to Catholic institutions. In most universities, the beginner in logic is still taught the doctrine of the syllogism, which is useless and complicated, and an obstacle to a sound understanding of 3o logic. If you wish to become a logician, there is one piece of advice which I cannot urge too strongly, and that is: Do NOT learn the traditional formal logic. In Aristotle's day it was a creditable effort, but so was the Ptolemaic astronomy. To teach either in the present day is a ridiculous piece of antiquarianism. There are two sorts of logic, deductive and inductive. A deductive inference, if it is logically correct, gives as much certainty to the conclusion as to the premisses, while an inductive inference, even when it obeys all the ~ules of logic, only makes the conclusion probable even when the premisses are deemed certain. 40

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Deductive logic is useful when general premisses are known, and also when they are assumed to see whether their consequences agree With experience. The great example of deductive logic is pure mathematics. In pure mathematics we start with general principles, and proceed to draw inferences from them. Whenever you do your accounts, you use deduction; the rules of arithmetic are assumed to be unquestionable, and You apply them to the particular figures representing your expenditure. Pure mathematics is a vast body of knowledge; even the greatest mathematicians know only a small fragment of it. Much of it is of the greatest IO practical utility, in navigation, in engineering, in war, and in many branches of modern industry. But when it is used in practical ways, it always has to be combined with other premisses which have been obtained by induction. So long as it remains pure, it is a game, like solving chess problems; it differs from such games by the fact that it has applications. Mathematics is not the only example of deductive logic, though it is the most important. Another example is law. I do not mean legislation, where the question is what the law ought to be. I mean the business of the law-courts, which is concerned with what the law is. The laws, as 20 enacted, lay down general principles, and the courts have to apply them to particular circumstances. Sometimes the logic is simple: murderers are to suffer the death penalty, this man is a murderer, therefore this man is to suffer the death penalty. But in more complicated cases, such as elaborate financial fraud, it may be very difficult to draw the necessary deductive inferences from existing laws; if the swindler is sufficiently ingenious, there may be no laws applicable to his case. Another deductive study is theology. From a logical point of view, this is closely similar to law: what the statutes are to the lawyer, the Scriptures are to the theologian. Sometimes it is astonishing what pure deduc30 tion can achieve. St. Augustine deduced from St. Paul's epistle to the Romans that unbaptized infants go to hell, and that it is not virtue that gets people to heaven. The argument is able, and I think the conclusions are implicit in what St. Paul says, though I doubt whether the Apostle was aware of the implications. Perhaps if he had been he would have guarded himself against them. The arguments of lawyers and theologians, though essentially deductive, are seldom in strict logical form, and usually introduce some empirical considerations over and above their general premisses. Every pure deductive argument, when generalized to the utmost, will be found to 40 belong to pure mathematics. In fact, pure mathematics and deductive logic are indistinguishable. I do not mean that every deductive argument belongs to pure mathematics. This would not be true, because the material to which the argu-

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ment applies may lie outside pure mathematics. Take the time-honoured syllogism: "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal." Here "Socrates", "man", and "mortal" are known through our terrestrial experience; they have not the universality required of logic and mathematics. The corresponding pure logical principle is: "Whatever A and Band C may be, if all A is B, and C is an A, then C is a B." Similarly "2 apples and 2 apples are 4 apples" is not a proposition of arithmetic, since it requires acquaintance with apples. It is deduced from the proposition of arithmetic that 2 and 2 are 4. It is only such entirely general statements that belong to logic or mathematics; and when we con- IO fine ourselves to such general statements, we shall find that there is no difference between mathematics and deductive logic. They are one subject, of which deductive logic, as ordinarily understood, is the earlier part, and pure mathematics, as ordinarily understood, the later part. What can you learn by means of deduction? Perhaps, if you were sufficiently clever, you could learn nothing. Let us take an example from arithmetic. As soon as you know the multiplication table, you have the means of multiplying any two numbers, say 24657 and 35746. You apply the rules, and work it out. But if you were a calculating boy, you would "see" the answer, just as you "see" that 2 and 2 are 4. In fact, however, 20 even calculating boys can't "see" the answer when the sum becomes difficult beyond a point. In practice, whenever the argument is at all complicated, we can only reach the conclusion by means of a process of deduction. It remains true that everything obtained by deduction is, in a sense, already contained in the premisses, but we only find out what is contained in the premisses by means of the process of calculation. The utility of deductive logic is great, but strictly limited. It will not tell you what to believe, but only that, if you believe A, you must believe B. If you believe the law of gravitation, you must believe what astronomers tell you about the movements of the planets. If you believe that all 30 human beings are equal, you must be against slavery and in favour of votes for women. (It took people about a century to make this particular deduction.) If you believe that the whole of the Bible is true, you must believe that the hare chews the cud. Deduction tells you what follows from your premisses, but does not tell you whether your premisses are true. It can, however, enable you to know that your premisses are false. It may happen that the consequences of your premisses can be disproved, and in that case your premisses must be more or less wrong. Bishop Colenso, in his endeavour to convert the Zulus, translated the Bible into 40 their language. They read it with an open mind, but when they came to the statement that the hare chews the cud they informed him that this was not the case. He was a bookish man, unfamiliar with the habits of

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hares, but at the instigation of the Zulus he observed a hare and found they were right. This caused him to have "doubts", which led the authorities to deprive him of his salary. When a scientific theory is suggested, consequences open to observation are deduced from it, and if any of them turn out to be wrong th theory has to be discarded. Sometimes a theory may turn out to be self~ contradictory, in the sense that, assuming the premisses true, a deductive argument will show that they are false; this is reductio ad absurdum. In these ways, deduction is often a useful element in disproof. IO Deduction plays a more positive part as an element in induction where it helps to prove theories probably true. But of this I shall sa; more later. Aristotle and the schoolmen thought of deductive logic as syllogistic. A syllogism is an argument with two premisses, of which at least one must be general, and a conclusion drawn from them. It has to do with the relations of classes: given two classes A and B, A may be part of B, A may lie wholly outside B, A may overlap with B, or part of A may lie outside B. The syllogism deduces a relation between A and C from relations of A and B and of B and C. For instance: If A lies inside B, and B 20 lies outside C, then A lies outside C; if some of A is inside B, and all B is inside C, then some of A is inside C. And so on. A great many deductive arguments are not of this sort; in fact mathematics, which is deductive, seldom contains syllogisms. But the traditional logicians never noticed this. Nor did they notice that there are simpler kinds of deduction than the syllogism-except in the case of what are called "immediate inferences", such as "If John is the father of James, then James is the son of John." The modern theory of deduction only arrives at the relations of classes after going through a good deal that is logically simpler. It should be noted that what is logically simple is by no means the same thing as 30 what strikes a beginner as easiest. I come now to inductive logic, which is more useful than the deductive kind, but raises much greater difficulties. In fact, the philosophy of induction contains unsolved problems, which have been something of a scandal ever since the time of Hume. Nevertheless, if you wish to practise inductive logic in a proficient manner, there is a definite technique to be learnt. No one doubts that the technique works; the difficulties are as to why it works. Induction starts, psychologically, from an animal propensity. An animal which has had experience of things happening in a certain way will 40 behave as if it expected them to happen the same way next time. If you drive your horse by a certain road very often, he will automatically take that road if you let him alone, and it may even be quite difficult to make him take a different road. In this a horse differs from a motor-car, which

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ever gets to know what road you usually take. Domestic animals get to

~ow their feeding time, and expect food from the person who usually feeds them. This sort of thing, of course, is not a formulated belief in the nirnal, but merely a habit of behaviour. However, if the animal could be :aught to talk, it would verbalize its habits, and say "of course so-and-so will feed me; he always does." The unsophisticated savage can and does saY this sort of thing, and so do children. A great many of our every-day beliefs, though science may be able to give some learned ground for them, are in fact merely based upon this law of animal habit. We expect the sun to rise tomorrow, because it IO always has risen. When we are about to eat an apple, we expect it to taste like an apple and not like a beefsteak, because that is the way apples always have tasted. If you see half of a horse which is coming towards you round a corner, you expect the other half to be horse and not cow, because you have never seen an animal of which the front half looked like a horse and the back half like a cow. These expectations are not intellectual; you do not first examine your data and then reach a conclusion. If you are falling and expect a bump, you do not go through an argument about the impact of falling bodies with hard ground; your expectation, though it may be caused by previous bumps, is not, in any 20 logical sense, inferred from them. Experience seems capable of being stored up in the body, and of giving rise to expectations which are physiological rather than mental. In the case mentioned above, where you see half a horse, you probably do not have any conscious expectation as to the other half, but if the other half turned out to be cow, you would experience a violent shock of surprise, showing that expectation had been present, even if below the conscious level. Inductive logic is an attempt to justify this animal propensity, in so far as it can be justified. It cannot be justified completely, for, after all, surprising things do sometimes happen. A chicken may have been fed by a 30 certain man throughout its life, and have come to look to him confidently for food; but one day he wrings its neck instead. It would have been better for the chicken if its inductive inferences had been less crude. Inductive logic aims at telling you what kinds of inductive inferences are least likely to lead you to suffer the tragic disillusionment of the chicken. It appears that, even at the best, you can never be certain that an inductive inference will prove sound, but there are ways by which you can indefinitely diminish the probability of error, until you reach a point where every sensible man will regard the conclusion as sufficiently established for purposes of action. It might be said that the whole theory of 40 induction is negative. The savage makes utterly reckless inductions; civilized people who have not learnt scientific method are still apt to be rash; but the man who has learnt inductive logic allows himself only a

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few of the inductions towards which he feels an animal propensity. Wh he should permit these few, is an obscure question; but his reasons " y . . fr ~ a b stammg om the others are fairly definite. The most elementary form of induction is "simple enumeration". This says: In .all the cases known to me, A has always been followed (or aG compamed) by B; therefo~e probably the next A that I come across will be followed (or accompamed) by B, and, somewhat less probably, A will alwa~s be followed (or accompanied) by B. Our bodies, and the bodies of anu~als, are so made that, unless we exert deliberate restraint, we shall 10 act as if we believed in the validity of induction by simple enumeration but, as we have seen, such action will sometimes lead us astray. Nigh~ has always been followed by day, therefore we naturally expect that ·t always will be; but some astronomers say that, in time, tidal friction wi;l c~use the earth always to turn the same face to the sun, and then night will no longer be followed by day. There was once a Stoic philosopher who was invited to dine with Ptolemy, king of Egypt. The king, for a joke, gave him a pomegranate made of wax, which the philosopher incautiously bit into. He was allowing himself the general inductive belief: "What looks like a pomegranate tastes like one." If you give a savage a 20 box containing a gyrostat, he will think it bewitched, because he cannot turn it. Witchcraft and sorcery are convenient notions for explaining away inductions that go wrong. We cannot ultimately escape from induction by simple enumeration but we can immensely strengthen it by means of general laws. In thi~ way, everything becomes an instance of a much wider generalization than that which originally gave rise to our inductive belief. The wider generalization may enable us to know when the original one will fail, and may show the presence of regularity where at first sight there seemed to be none. Take, for instance, the belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. In 30 primitive man, this belief has no logical grounds, but it has causes; the causes are his own experiences of day following night, and the testimony of his elders that this has always happened so far as memory and tradition extend. Reflection turns these causes into grounds, but science provides new grounds that are much stronger. The sun rises because the earth rotates; the laws governing rotation are the laws of dynamics; and the laws of dynamics are confirmed by all observations of relevant phenomena, whether on earth or in the heavens. Thus these laws, because of their great generality, are confirmed by many more instances than there are of the sun rising. But these laws themselves are still accepted on a 40 basis of simple enumeration. The only essential gain is that the instances enumerated are much more numerous than in the subordinate generalizations from which we started. The process that we have been considering depends upon the discov-

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erY of general laws, and general laws cannot be discovered unless they e,_ist. One could imagine a universe without general laws, or at any rate without any sufficiently simple for us to discover them. Obviously we could not remain alive in such a universe. Animals use the general law "what smells good is good". This has exceptions, which enable us to poison rats and ants. But unless the exceptions were exceptional, animals could not decide what to eat, or, if they did decide, they would be poisoned as often as not. We, by the help of the microscope, have arrived at better general laws, and have learnt to reject milk that smells good but is tubercular. But if there were no general laws, it might happen tomorrow 10 that any milk which is not tubercular would make us ill. If there were no general laws, there would no possible way of knowing w?at to do. . It is true that, for practical purposes, we could make shift to do with general laws that are usually true; our food would sometimes poison us, but so it does at present. In fact, science professes to have found general laws that are always true, and there is no reason to doubt that there are such laws, whether or not they are exactly those in which science at present believes. Scientific method is essentially a method of discovering laws. Assuming that there are general laws, let us consider how to set about discovering them. 20 Our principle of simple enumeration considered the case where some kind of occurrence A is always followed or accompanied by an occurrence of another kind B. This, by itself, is not always a very good ground for an induction. Uneducated people in China believe that an eclipse of the moon is caused by an attempt of the Heavenly Dog to eat the moon. Therefore when an eclipse occurs they come out and beat gongs loudly, to frighten away this dangerous celestial animal. I once saw an eclipse of the moon at Changsha, and heard the deafening din of the gongs. Sure enough, the eclipse presently stopped; and this has been the experience in China from time immemorial. Why, then, should we not believe that 30 the gongs help to dispel the eclipse? We have, of course, the evidence of eclipses not visible in China, but that is mere luck; if the Chinese superstition were universal, this evidence would not exist. The evidence for a general law is better when A and B are both measurable quantities, and it is found that the more there is of A the more there is of B. The hotter the fire, the sooner the kettle boils. This is called the principle of "concomitant variations". Many people who profess to be weather-wise think that the weather changes with the phases of the moon, but careful observation shows that this is not the case. On the other hand, the tides do change with the moon: spring tides occur just 40 after new moon and full moon, neap tides just after first and third quarters. Therefore there clearly is a law connecting the moon with the tides. Or, again, take the law that bodies expand as the temperature rises.

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What does this law really say? We think of temperature, unscientifically, as what makes us feel hot or cold, but this is only roughly true. A calm day with the thermometer at 70 ° will feel hotter than a windy day with the thermometer at 80 °. So we define temperature by the thermometer not by our feelings. We then find that all bodies, except water which i~ near the freezing point, take up more room at a high temperature than at a low one. When many experiments have confirmed this, we cannot regard it as an accidental coincidence, and we allow ourselves to believe that there is a general law to this effect. IO The instance that made the greatest impression upon the scientific world was the law of gravitation. Newton discovered that every planet at every instant has an acceleration towards the sun, which, for all of them, varies as the square of the distance from the sun. A law of this sort collects together, not only actual past data, but an infinite number of future possible data. If these all work out as the law has led us to expect, we soon become convinced that the law must be right, at least within the errors of observation. Induction is connected with probability, not only in the sense that the conclusion of an inductive inference is never more than probable, but 20 also in other ways. For instance: if a hypothesis which fits all the known facts leads you to predict something that seems very improbable, and then your prediction comes true, it makes it seem highly probable that your hypothesis was right. Suppose I wish to acquire credit as a weather prophet. If, in July, I say "tomorrow there will be a thunderstorm", and then there is one, my friends may say it was only a lucky guess. But if, in January, I say "tomorrow there will be a thunderstorm with a heavy fall of snow", and then there is one, they will be more impressed. If I say "tomorrow Hitler will make a bombastic speech", and my prophecy comes true, no one will be much surprised. But ifl say "tomorrow Hitler 30 will give up his position as Fuhrer and become a monk", and then it happens, everybody will be struck with my capacities as a prophet, or think that I am more in the confidence of the Nazis than I ought to be. The more improbable your prophecy, the more your hypothesis is confirmed when what you predict happens. Now in all the advanced sciences the laws are quantitative, and enable exact predictions to be made-as exact, that is to say, as our measuring instruments render it possible to confirm. Now apart from some scientific law, any quantitatively exact prophecy would be infinitely unlikely to be true. Let us take an illustration. Suppose I say "the next man we meet 40 will weigh between 130 and 170 pounds", you will say "very likely; most men do". And if I turn out to have been right you will say "well, you didn't risk much". If I say he will weigh between 149 and 151 pounds, and he does, it will be a little more remarkable. But suppose I say "he

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will weigh 150.0001 pounds", and we find, using the best balance we can find in a physical laboratory, that this is his weight as nearly as it can be ascertained, you will ask me how I could have known. Now scientific predictions are general~y of ~is kind. They foretell th_e_ exact ti~e when an eclipse of the sun will begm and end, the exact pos1t1on of Jupiter at a given moment, and so on. If one could take the word "exact" strictly, this would be so remarkable as to be almost incredible; even allowing for the margin of error in observations, it is astonishing. The discovery of Neptune was a feat of this sort, which gave the general public a great respect for the astronomers. The planet Uranus did IO not behave quite as it ought; two men, Adams and Leverrier, attributed this behaviour to an unknown planet, the position of which they calculated. When it was looked for, it was found in the place where they said it would be. What made this event impressive was that, apart from their calculations, it would have been so very improbable that a planet would be found at any given place. But prediction, however spectacular, is by no means conclusive. It often happens that two quite different hypotheses have the same consequences over a wide field, and in that case, when the consequences are verified, this does not enable us to choose between the two hypotheses. 20 Einstein's law of gravitation is, philosophically and logically, very different from Newton's, but its observable consequences are nearly identical. In such a case, it is necessary to look out for something as to which the observable consequences of the two hypotheses would be different; if the consequences are found to suit one hypothesis and not the other, the one provisionally holds the field. This was what happened in the famous eclipse observations in 1919. Newtonians were prepared to admit that the light rays from the stars that were nearly in line with the sun might be deflected a certain calculated amount by the sun's gravitation, but Einstein said they would be deflected twice as much as this. He turned 30 out to be right, and so his emendation of Newton's law was accepted. But the evidence for Einstein's law is only slightly better than the evidence for Newton's used to be, and at any moment some further modification may prove necessary. This is characteristic of science: dogmatic certainty is neither sought nor achieved. One of the most important and difficult things about inductive method is the discovery of fruitful analogies, and the connected problem of the analysis of a complex phenomenon into elements that can be studied separately. The fruitful analogy is one that discloses a similarity in causation, and the investigator has to begin by guessing at the cause. If earth- 40 quakes are due to the wrath of God, the analogous phenomena are plagues, pestilences, famines, and comets. So the middle ages believed. But to a modern investigator quite different analogies suggest themselves.

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I remember reading of a physicist who was for a time in Tokyo, anct accordingly took an interest in earthquakes. After he had developed mathematical theory concerned with them, he applied it to the vibrationa of the plates of locomotives, which had been annoying railroad com~ panies. To us, to take another illustration, the analogy between lightnin and the electric spark is obvious; but to the middle ages it would see~ that the cause of a man's being struck by lightning was likely to be hi sinful life. Modern men, studying thunderstorms, asked themselves~ "What state of the atmosphere is present during thunderstorms and IO absent at other times?" When a man has made a guess at the answer t such a question, he tries to produce analogous conditions on a sma~ scale in his laboratory, or, if that is impossible, to look for other natural phenomena ':'hich resem?l~ the one he is studying in what he thinks may be the essential charactenstlc. Only the result can show whether his guess was right. The purpose of inductive logic is to infer general laws from particular occurrences. Deductive logic does the opposite; it starts with general premisses, and is therefore faced with the question: How do we come to know these premisses? In pure mathematics, the answer is that we know 20 them because they are purely verbal. The statement "two and two are four" is like the statement "there are three feet to a yard". We don't have to verify this by observation, because it is not a law of nature, but a decision of our own as to how we are going to use words. That is why pure mathematics is able to get on without observation or experiment. But outside logic and pure mathematics the question of general premisses cannot be so easily solved. Take once more the stock syllogism of traditional formal logic: "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal." How do you know that all men are mortal? You know it by induction, and like everything known by induction, you only 30 know it as highly probable, not as certain. "All men are mortal" is itself the conclusion of an argument, in which the premisses are: A died, B died, C died, and so on. Since all the people now living have not died . . ' you will have to frame your premisses so that the existing population shall not be an argument against your conclusion. Assuming that there is no recorded case of a man living as much as 150 years, you can take as your premisses: "A, B, C, ... have not lived 150 years." To this there are no known exceptions. You may go on to argue: "Therefore probably all men die before they are 150 years old", and then you may make your deduction as to Socrates (whom we are supposing still alive). But this is 40 a foolish detour. Your premisses, if they make the general statement probable, make the statement about Socrates considerably more probable; for if there were a few very rare exceptions, it is unlikely that Socrates would happen to be one of them, but your general statement

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would be false. It is better to say: "In all recorded instances, men have died before reaching the age of 150; therefore probably the same thing will happen in this instance." This, however, is an argument by simple enumeration, and, as we saw, such arguments can be strengthened by the discovery of general laws, which make our particular case an instance of a much wider generalization. Instead of confining ourselves to men, we can take account of all multicellular animals and plants. We may be able to go farther, and consider the causes which lead chemical compounds to change their chemical composition. That is why the search for general laws is so IO important. They give increased certainty, not by substituting deduction for induction, but by giving a wider basis to the fundamental enumerations upon which all inductions depend. The most important use of deduction is in inferring the consequences of hypotheses which are to be tested by observation or experiment. If a hypothesis is true, all its deductive consequences are true; if it is false, some of its consequences are still true, but some are false. Therefore if all the consequences that we can test turn out to be true, it seems probable that the hypothesis is true or nearly true. The drawing of consequences often involves very difficult mathematics, and that is the reason for the 20 importance of mathematics in discovering general laws. When the laws are accepted as established, mathematics is important in drawing consequences which are now accepted as true. Often it is essential to have reason to accept the consequences in advance of experiment. For example, if a railway bridge is to be built, we do not wish to have to wait till a train goes over it before knowing that it is stable. In such a case we rely confidently upon the general laws inferred by induction from previous experiments. There is some chance that the induction is mistaken, but it is much less than the other hazards to which practical life is exposed-for example, fraud on the part of the contractor who is to 30 build the bridge. From the time of Pythagoras until the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century, the example of mathematics misled the learned as to the way in which we acquire knowledge, and as to the most useful kind oflogic. It was thought that we know general premisses by intuition, or by divine illumination, or by reminiscence from a previous existence. If this were indeed the case, everything that we have to infer could be inferred by deduction. This was not quite the view of Aristotle, who left a place for induction; but it was, to all intents and purposes, the view of Thomas Aquinas. It followed, of course, that observation plays a very 40 subordinate part in the acquisition of knowledge. Aristotle had announced, apparently on religious grounds, that everything in the heavens, unless it is below the moon, is indestructible. This made it impossible to

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arrive at a correct theory of meteors and new stars. Those who made observations showing that the old theory was wrong were thought wicked, and the facts that they reported were ignored. This overemphasis on deduction, which was bound up with the belief in selfevident general principles, was one of the causes of the scientific sterility of the middle ages. It was, of course, connected with the essentially deductive character of theology, and with the general religious outlook of the times. The reader will have noticed, in what we have been saying, the frequent mention of probability. This is characteristic of modern logic as contrasted with that of antiquity and the middle ages. The modern logician realizes that all our knowledge is only probable in a greater or less degree, not certain and indubitable as philosophers and theologians used to think. He is not greatly troubled by the fact that inductive inferences only give probability to their conclusions, for he does not expect anything better. But he is troubled if he finds reason to doubt whether induction can even make a conclusion probable. There are thus two problems which assume much greater importance in modern logic than in that of former times. The first is as to the nature of probability, and the second is as to the validity of induction. I shall say a few words about each in turn. Probability is of two sorts, which may be called respectively definite and indefinite. The definite sort is what is dealt with in the mathematical theory of probability; it has to do with such matters as throwing dice and tossing coins. It arises wherever there are a number of possibilities, and we have no reason to expect one rather than another. If you toss a coin, it must come either heads or tails, but one seems just as likely as the other. Therefore the chance of each is a half, 1 being taken to represent certainty. Similarly if you throw a die, there are six faces upon which it may fall, and you have no ground for thinking one more likely than another, so the chance of each is one-sixth. The probability used by insurance companies in their business is of this sort. They do not know which buildings will be burnt, but they know what percentage of buildings burns in an average year. They do not know how long any particular person will live, but they know the average expectation of life at any given age. In all such cases, the estimate of probability is not itself merely probable, except in the sense in which all knowledge is merely probable. The estimate of a probability may itself have a high degree of certainty. If this were not the case, insurance companies would go bankrupt. Strenuous efforts have been made to bring the probability of an induction under this head, but there is reason to think that all such attempts have been fallacious. The probability conferred by induction seems to be

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always of the sort that I have called indefinite. This sort must now be explained. . . . .. It is a truism that all human knowledge 1s liable to error. The hab1hty error obviously has degrees. If I say that Buddha lived in the sixth 0 ~enturY B.C., the liability to error is obviously very great. If I say that Caesar was assassinated, the chanc~ of error i~ less. ~f I say tha~ ~ ~reat ar is being fought at the present ume, there 1s so shght a poss1b1hty of w ror that only a philosopher or a logician would admit its existence. ~hese examples have to do with historical events, but there is a similar radation as regards scientific laws. Some are admittedly hypotheses, to ro g hich no one would give serious credence in the absence of further evi~ence, while others seem so certain that no practically important doubt as to their truth is entertained by men of science. (When I say "truth" I mean "approximate truth", for every scientific law is liable to small emendations.) This sort of thing, which distinguishes between what we firmly believe and what we are only more or less inclined to admit, ought not to be called probability, if that word is understood as in the mathematical theory of probability. It would be better to speak of degrees of doubtfulness or degrees of credibility. This is a vaguer conception than what I have called "definite probability", but it is also a more important con- 20 ception. Let us take an illustration. If you are on a jury which is engaged in a murder trial, the judge will tell you that you must bring in a verdict of "guilty" if there can be no reasonable doubt that the accused committed the crime. If you have studied logic, you may ask the judge what degree of doubt is "reasonable'', but unless he has not studied logic, he will be unable to give you a definite answer. He cannot say "there is reasonable doubt if the odds in favour of the man's guilt are less that IOO to 1'', because there is no means of reckoning the odds. You cannot get a series of exactly similar trials, together with data as to whether the verdict was 30 right or wrong. And yet every jury, with few exceptions, arrives at a verdict, usually with a considerable degree of confidence in its own rightness. It is this somewhat vague concept that is involved when it is said that all our knowledge is open to question. The question what degree of doubt is "reasonable" depends upon your purpose. There may be reasonable doubt from the standpoint of a philosopher or a logician when there is none from the standpoint of a juryman. From the point of view of the logician, the important thing is to decide upon the degree of credibility of various statements. As to this, there would be a certain measure 40 of agreement. Most people would give the highest place to such statements as "z and 2 are 4"; to feel them doubtful would be almost patho-

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logical. Statements about what we are experiencing at the moment, such as "I am hot" or "I hear a loud noise", if they are carefully interpreted have a :ery high place_ in the order of comparative certainty. Vivid recen~ memones are less reliable, but become almost certain if they are confirmed by a number of other people. Some things in history and geograph_Y are not questioned by any sensible person-for instance, the past existence of Napoleon and the present existence of Mount Everest. It is only slightly less certain that the earth is round and that the planets go round the sun in orbits which are approximately elliptical. In all this I IO am speaking, not as a philosopher, but as an interpreter of educat~d common sense. Now if, as a logician, you ask yourself what is the nature of your evidence for beliefs which are virtually but not theoretically certain, such as those about Napoleon and Mount Everest, you will find that, in every case, the evidence is only good if the principle of induction, in some form, is admitted. Why do we believe in Napoleon? Because of testimony. Why do we believe in testimony? Because we think it unlikely that a number of people, independently, would all invent the same story. Why? Because experience shows that liars usually disagree unless they are 20 in a conspiracy. Ultimately, we must reach a point where we use experience of what is known as a basis for inferring what is unknown, and this sort of inference is only valid if induction is valid. Laplace thought that the probability involved in an inductive inference was definite probability, and could be measured numerically. He had a principle from which it would follow that, if you came into a Welsh village and asked the first man you met what his name was, and he said "Williams", then the odds were two to one that the next man you met would be called Williams. If he was, the odds for the next man would be three to one, and so on; if the first 100 were all called Williams, the odds 30 for the IOI st would be IOI to I. If this principle were valid, the inductions of science, especially when, by means of laws, many are collected together into one vast induction, would have such enormous odds in their favour that no practical man need bother with the chance of their turning out wrong. Unfortunately, however, Laplace's reasoning involved fallacies, and is now generally rejected. We cannot so easily, if at all, reach a numerical estimate of the probability of inductions. Hume, who allowed himself to be sceptical about everything, threw doubt on the principle of induction. Since his day, logicians have written much on the problem, but without solving it. Broadly speaking, there are 40 three possibilities. First, the principle may be demonstrable. Second, though not demonstrable, it may be accepted as self-evident. Third, it may be rejected as a mere animal habit incapable of rational justification. To all three of these there are objections.

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Attempts to demonstrate the principle, such as that of Laplace, have all broken down. And to any one accustomed to considering what can be deduced from what, it must seem very improbable that a proof could be found, except by assuming some other principle, such as the reign of law, which stands just as much in need of proof. Although we cannot say dogmatically that a proof will never be found, the possibility must be regarded as very slight. Can we say that the principle is "self-evident"? It is not clear, in the first place, what this would mean. One may say that something is selfevident to you when you cannot help believing it; but in this sense what IO is self-evident may be false. It used to be self-evident that there could not be people at the antipodes, because they would fall off. We may strengthen the definition of "self-evidence": we may say that something is "selfevident" when no one can doubt it, however hard he may try. If we adopt this definition, we must say that the principle is not self-evident because Hume succeeded in doubting it. There is an odd circumstance about inductive inferences, that the conclusion presents itself to the unreflective mind as indubitable, although the inference, when formally stated, seems open to question. To revert to an earlier instance: Experience of apples causes you to expect confidently that this apple, which you 20 are about to eat, will taste like an apple and not like a beefsteak. The inductive logician tries to turn this into an argument: "Since former apples tasted like apples, so will this one." But in fact former apples are probably not in your thoughts. You have an expectation about this apple, which has causes in your physiology, but not grounds in your thinking. When the logician tries to find grounds, he also tries to weaken your confidence; he tells you it is only probable that this apple will not taste like a beefsteak. At this point you will probably say: "Away with logicians! They only try to confuse me about things that everybody knows perfectly well." But what everybody knows, or thinks he knows, are the 30 conclusions of inductions, not their connection with the premisses. It is the body rather than the mind that does the connecting of premisses and conclusion in an induction. The attempt to treat the inductive principle itself as self-evident seems, therefore, to break down. Shall we then agree with the sceptic, and say "away with induction! It is a superstition, and I will have none of it"? The sceptic can answer most of the objections that you may feel inclined to bring against him. You may say: "Well, at least you must admit that induction works." "Has worked, you mean'', the sceptic will reply; for it is only induction itself that assures us that what has worked will work. Perhaps tomorrow 40 stones will be nourishing and bread will be poison, the sun will be cold and the moon hot. The cause of our disbelief in such possibilities is our animal habits; but these equally might change, and we might suddenly begin to expect the opposite of everything that we expect at present.

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To this argument Professor Reichenbach, who is a great authority 0 probability, has offered a kind of answer. Roughly speaking, his answe .n . If m · duct1on · · va I'd · th IS: 1s i , science is possible; if it is not, science is ·r is

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possible, since there is no other imaginable principle to take its pl irn. ace. Therefore you will do well to act on the assumption that inductio · · · you can have no reason for doing one thing rath n is va J'd i , smce, o th erwise, than another. This answer is not fallacious, but I cannot say that I find ~r . fy'mg. I h ope, and I more or less believe, that in time a bett It very satis answer will be found. If you, reader, become a logician, it may be er who will find this better answer. You I do not know whether the usefulness of logic has become evident in the course of what has been said, but in case it has not, we may end with a few words on this subject. We are all perpetually making or accepting inferences, and many of these, though persuasive at first sight, are in fact invalid. When we act on an invalid inference, we are likely to fail in achieving our ends. In politics and economics, most of the argumentation is fallacious. Spain, in the sixteenth century, was ruined by accepting an argument professing to show that gold ought to be kept at home. I will not adduce more recent instances, for fea~ of becoming involved in political controversy. I will, however, say this: At the end of the present war, reconstruction will demand much clear thinking, and wide-spread popular fallacies will be a very great obstacle to desirable measures of statesmanship. Science which is, at present, more amenable to logic than politics, has achieved great triumphs; if similar triumphs are to be achieved in other departments of social life, it will be necessary that men shall learn to think more logically, and less as the slaves of prejudice and passion. Perhaps such a hope is Utopian; perhaps, however, the lessons of experience may weaken the hold of the irrational creeds that infest the modern world.

69 How To Become a Mathematician [1942] E LIVE IN ~ technical civilization, of which most of us understand very httle. Why does the electric light go on when you press the switch? Why is it cold in the ice-box? How do airmen take aim at a target from a fast-moving aeroplane? What enables astronomers to predict eclipses? On what principles do insurance companies decide what to charge? These are all very practical questions; unless some one knew the answer, we could not enjoy the comforts upon which we are wont to pride ourselves. But those who know the answers are few. Usually these few invent a rule or a machine which enables other

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people to get on with very little knowledge; a practical electrician does not have to know the theory of electricity, though this was necessary for the inventions which he knows how to manipulate. If you want to be able to answer such every-day questions, you have to learn many things; the most indispensable of these is Mathematics. Some people will always dislike mathematics, however well they may be taught. They ought not to try to become mathematicians, and their teachers ought to let them off after they have proved their inefficiency over the rudiments. But if mathematics were properly taught, there would be very much fewer people who would hate it than there are at IO present. There are various ways of stimulating a love of mathematics. One is the method unintentionally adopted by Galileo's father, who was himself a teacher of mathematics, but found himself unable to make a living by his profession. He determined that his son should do something more lucrative, and with that end in view concealed from the youth the very existence of mathematics. But one day-so the story goes-the boy, now eighteen years old, happened to overhear a lecture on geometry which was being given by a man in the next room. He was fascinated, and within a very short time became one of the leading mathematicians of the 20 age. However, I doubt if this method is quite suitable for adoption by educational authorities. I think perhaps there are other methods that are likely to be more widely successful. In the early stages, all teaching of mathematics should start from practical problems; they should be easy problems, and such as might seem interesting to a child. When I was young (perhaps things have not changed in this respect) the problems were such as no one could possibly wish to solve. For instance: A, B, and C are travelling from X to Y, A on foot, B on a horse, and C on a bicycle. A is always going to sleep at odd moments, B's horse goes lame, and C has a puncture. A takes twice as 30 long as B would have taken if his horse hadn't gone lame, and C gets there half an hour after A would have got there if he hadn't gone to sleep-and so on. Even the most ardent pupil is put off by this sort of thing. The best way, in teaching, is to take a hint from the early history of mathematics. The subject was invented because there were practical problems that people really wished to solve, either from curiosity or for some urgent practical reason. The Greeks told endless stories about such problems and the clever men who found out how to deal with them. No doubt these stories are often untrue, but that does not matter when they 40 are used as illustrations. I shall repeat a few of them, without vouching for their historical accuracy. The founder of Greek mathematics and philosophy was Thales, who

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was a young man in 600 B.C. In the course of his travels he went to Egypt, and the king of Egypt asked him if he could find out the height of the Great Pyramid. Thales, at a given moment, measured the length of its shadow and of his own. It was obvious that the proportion of his height to the length of his shadow was the same as the proportion of the height of the pyramid to the length of its shadow, and so the answer was found by the rule of three. The king then asked him if he could fud out the distance of a ship at sea without leaving the land. This is a more difficult problem, and he can hardly have given a general solution, alrn though tradition says that he did. The principle is to observe the direction of the ship from two points on the coast which are at a known distance apart; the further off the ship is, the less difference there will be in the two directions. The complete answer requires trigonometry, which did not exist until many centuries after the time of Thales. But in particular cases the answer is easy. Suppose, for instance, that the coast runs east and west, that the ship is due north of a certain point A on the coast, and due north-west of a certain other point B. Then the distance from A to the ship will be the same as the distance from A to B, as the reader can easily convince himself by drawing a figure. Supposing the 20 ship part of a hostile navy, and Egyptian troops drawn up on the shore to oppose it, this knowledge might be very useful. Serious mathematics began with the proposition known as the theorem of Pythagoras. The Egyptians had made some slight beginnings in geometry, in order-so it is said-to be able to measure out their fields again when the Nile flood subsided. They had noticed that a triangle whose sides are respectively 3, 4, and 5 units of length has a right angle. Pythagoras (or some one belonging to his school) noticed a curious fact about this triangle. If you make squares on the sides of a triangle of this kind, one square will have 9 square units, another 16, and the third 25; now 9 30 and 16 are 25. Pythagoras (or a disciple) generalized this, and proved that in any right-angled triangle the squares on the two shorter sides are together equal to the square on the longest side. This was a most important discovery, and encouraged the Greeks to construct the science of geometry, which they did with amazing skill. But out of this discovery a worry arose, which troubled both the Greeks and the mathematicians of modern times, and has only been fully solved in our own day. Suppose you have a right-angled triangle in which each of the shorter sides is one inch long; how long will the third side be? The square on each of the shorter sides is one square inch; so the square 40 on the longer side will measure two square inches. So the length of the longer side must be some number of inches such that, when you multiply this number by itself, you get 2. This number is called "the square root of 2". The Greeks soon discovered that there is no such number. You

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an easily per"suade yourself of this. The number can't be a whole num-

~er, because 1 is too small and 2 is too big. But if you multiply a fraction

by itself, you get another fraction, not a whole number; so there cannot be any fraction which, multiplied by itself, gives 2. So the square root of 2 is neither a whole number nor a fraction. What else it could be remained a mystery, but mathematicians continued hopefully to use it and talk about it, in the expectation that some day they would discover what they meant. In the end this expectation proved justified. A similar problem arose as to what is called "the cube root of 2", that is to say, a number x such that x times x times x is 2. A certain city-so rn the story runs-had been dogged by misfortunes, and at last sent to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi as to the cause of the series of disasters. The god replied that the statue of himself in his temple in that city was too small, and he wanted one twice as large. The citizens were eager to comply with the divine commands, and at first they thought of making a statue twice as high as the old one. But then they realized that it would be also twice as broad and twice as thick, so that it would need eight times as much material, and would, in fact, be eight times as large. This would be going beyond what the oracle ordained, and would be a waste of money. How much taller, then, must the new statue be, if, 20 altogether, it was to be twice as large? The citizens sent a deputation to Plato, to ask if any one in his academy could give them the answer. He set the mathematicians to work on the problem, but after some centuries they decided that it was insoluble. It could, of course, be solved approximately, but, as in the case of the square root of 2, there is no fraction that solves it exactly. Though the problem was not solved, much useful work was done in the course of looking for a solution. Leaving the ancients for the present, let us come to the problems of insurance companies. Suppose you wish to insure your life, so that your widow will get $moo when you die. How much ought you to pay every 30 year? Let us suppose your age such that the average man of your age will live another twenty years. If you pay $50 a year, you will, in 20 years, have paid $moo, and at first sight you might think it a fair bargain if the insurance company asked you to pay $50 a year. But in fact this would be too much, because of interest. Assuming you live 20 years, your first $50 will be invested by the insurance company, and will bring interest; the interest will be invested, and so on; so that you have to calculate what your $50 will amount to in 20 years at compound interest. For the next $50, you have to calculate what it will amount to in 19 years at compound interest, and so on. In this way, your payments will have brought 40 the insurance company much more than $moo by the end of the 20 years. In fact, if the insurance company gets four per cent on its investments, your payments of $50 a year will have brought in about $1500 at

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the end of the 20 years. To work out sums of this sort,.you have to know how to add up what are called "geometrical progressions". A "geometrical progression" is a series of numbers in which each, after the first, is a fixed multiple of its predecessor. For instance, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 . . . is a geometrical progression in which each number is double of it~ predecessor; 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, ... is a geometrical progression in which each number is three times its predecessor; 1, 112, 1/4, 118, 1116, ... is one in which each number is half its predecessor, and so on. Now let us return to our dollar invested at four per cent compound interest. At the end of a year, it amounts to $1.04. At the end of the second year, you have $1.04 and a year's interest on it; this is 1.04 times 1.04, i.e. (1.04) 2 . At the end of the third year, it amounts to (1.04) 3, and so on. And so, if you pay a dollar a year for 20 years, at the end of the 20th year what you have paid has become worth (1.04) 20 + (1.04) 19 + ... + (1.04) 2 + 1.04 which is a geometrical progression. The ancients took much interest in geometrical progressions, particularly in those that go on for ever. For instance,

112 + 114 + 118 + 1116 + ... for ever adds up to 1. So does the recurring decimal .9999 .... This led to all sorts of puzzles, which took a long time to solve. Ancient geometry concerned itself not only with straight lines and circles, but also with "conic sections", which are the various sorts of curves that can be made by the intersection of a plane and a cone; or again they can be defined as all the possible shapes of the shadow of a circle on a wall. The Greeks studied them simply for pleasure, without any idea of practical utility, which they despised. But after about 2,000 years, in the seventeenth century, they were suddenly found to be of the greatest practical importance. The development of artillery had shown o 3 people that if you want to hit a distant object, you must not aim straight at it, but a little above it. No one knew exactly how a cannon ball travelled, but military commanders were anxious to know. Galileo, who was employed by the Duke of Tuscany, discovered the answer: they travel in parabolas, which are a particular kind of conic section. At about the same time Kepler discovered that the planets go round the sun in ellipses, which are another kind of conic section. In this way all the work that had been done on conic sections became useful in warfare, navigation, and astronomy. I spoke a moment ago of conic sections as shadows of circles. You can

20

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ake the different kinds of conic sections for yourself if you have a lamp mith a circular lampshade. The shadow of the lampshade on the ceiling ~nless it is crooked) will be another circle, but the shadow on the wall ill be a hyperbola. If you take a piece of paper and hold it above the ~ mpshade, if you hold it not quite horizontal the shadow will be an :i!ipse; as you slope it more, the ellipse will get longer and thinner; the first shadow that is not an ellipse, as you slope the piece of paper more nd more, is a parabola; after that, it becomes a hyperbola. Falling drops ~n a fountain make a parabola; so do stones thrown over a cliff. Mathematically, as any one can see, the subject of shadows is the same IO as perspective. The study of the properties which a figure has in common with all its possible shadows is called "projective" geometry; although it is really simpler than the sort of geometry that the Greeks did, it was discovered much later. One of the pioneers in this subject was Pascal, who, unfortunately, decided that religious meditation was more important than mathematics. I have not hitherto said anything about algebra, which owed its beginnings to the very late Alexandrian Greeks, but was mainly developed, first by the Arabs, and then by the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Algebra, at first, is apt to seem more difficult than geometry, 20 because in geometry there is a concrete figure to look at, whereas the x's and y's of algebra are wholly abstract. Algebra is only generalized arithmetic: when there is some proposition which is true of any number, it is a waste of time to prove it for each separate number, so we say "let x be any number" and proceed with our reasoning. Suppose, for instance, you notice that 1 + 3 is 4, which is twice 2; 1 + 3 + 5 is 9, which is 3 times 3; 1+3 + 5 + 7 is 16, which is 4 times 4. It may occur to you to wonder whether this is a general rule, but you will need algebra to express at all simply the question you are asking yourself, which is: "Is the sum of the first n odd numbers always n 2 ?" When you have come to the point of 30 being able to understand this question, you will easily find a proof that the answer is yes. If you don't use a letter such as n, you have to use very complicated language. You can say: "If any number of odd numbers, starting from 1 and missing none, are added up, the result is the square of the number of odd numbers added." This is much more difficult to understand. And when we reach more complicated questions, it soon becomes quite impossible to understand them without the use of letters instead of the phrase "any number". Even problems that have to do with particular numbers are often much easier to solve if we use the letter x for the number we want. When 40 I was very young I was puzzled by the conundrum: "If a fish weighs 5 pounds and half its own weight, how much does it weigh?" Many people are inclined to say 7 1/2 pounds. If you begin "let x be the weight of the

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fish", and go on "5 pounds added to one-half of x equals x'', it is obvious that 5 pounds is half of x, so that xis 10 pounds. This problem is almost too easy to need "x". Take one just a little more difficult. The police are pursuing a criminal along a certain road; he has 10 minutes start, but the police car can do 70 miles an hour, while the criminal's car can only do 60. How long will it take them to catch up with him? The answer of course is 1 hour. This can be "seen" in one's head; but if I said the criminal had 7 minutes start, his car could do 53 miles an hour, and the police car could do 67, you would find it best to begin: Let t be the number of minutes it will take the police to catch up. Getting used to the algebraic use of letters is difficult for a boy or girl beginning algebra. It should be made easy by first giving a great many instances of a general formula. For instance,

11 times 11 is 10 times 10 plus twice 10 plus 1 12 times 12 is 11 times 11 plus twice 11 plus 1 13 times 13 is 12 times 12 plus twice 12 plus 1, and so on, and in the end it becomes easy to understand that n

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+ 1 times

n

+ 1 is

n times n plus twice n plus

1.

In the early stages of teaching algebra, this process should be repeated with each new formula. One of the odd things about mathematics is that, in spite of its great practical utility, it seems, in much of the detail, like a mere frivolous game. No one is likely to become good at mathematics unless he enjoys the game for its own sake. Skilled work, of no matter what kind, is only done well by those who take a certain pleasure in it, quite apart from its utility, either to themselves in earning a living, or to the world through its outcome. No one can become a good mathematician merery in order to earn a living, or merery in order to be a useful citizen; he must also get the kind of satisfaction from mathematics that people get from solving bridge problems or chess problems. I will therefore give a few examples. If they amuse you, it may be worth your while to devote a good deal of time to mathematics; if not, not. I remember that, as a boy, I discovered for myself, with great delight, the formula for the sum of what is called an "arithmetical progression". An arithmetical progression is a series of numbers in which each term after the first is greater (or less) than its predecessor by a fixed amount. This fixed amount is called the "common difference". The series 1, 3, 5, 7, ... is an arithmetical progression, in which the common difference is 2. The series 2, 5, 8, 11, ... is an arithmetical progression in which the

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0111 mon difference is 3. Suppose now you have an arithmetical procression consisting of a finite number of terms, and you want to know ~hat all the terms together add up to. How will you proceed? Let us take an easy example: the series 4, 8, 12, 16, ... up to 96, that is to say, all numbers less than 100 that divide by 4. If you want to know what all these add up to, you can of course do the sum straightforwardly. But you can save yourself this trouble by a little observation. The first term is 4, the last is 96; these add up to 100. The second term is 8, the last but one is 92; these again add up to 100. So it is obvious that you can take the numbers in pairs, and that each pair adds up to 100. There are 24 numbers, therefore there are 12 pairs, therefore the sum you want is 1200. This suggests the general rule: To find the sum of an arithmetical progression, add together the first and last terms, and then multiply by half the number of terms. You can easily persuade yourself that this is right, not only when the number of terms is even, as in the above example, but also when it is odd. But we may want to get a new form for this formula, if we have not been told what the last term is, but only the first term, the number of terms, and the common difference. Let us take an example. Suppose the first term is 5, the common difference is 3, and the number of terms is 21. Then the last term will be 5 plus 20 times 3, i.e. 65. So the sum of the first and last terms is 70, and the sum of the series is half of this multiplied by the number of terms, i.e. half of 70 times 21. This is 35 times 21, i.e. 735. The rule is: Add twice the first term to the common difference multiplied by one less than the number of terms in the series, and then multiply all this by half the number of terms in the series. This is the same as the earlier rule, but differently expressed. Now let us take another problem. Suppose you had a number of tanks, each a perfect cube, i.e. having length, breadth, and depth all equal. Suppose the first is 1 foot each way, the second 2, the third 3, and so on. You wish to know how many cubic feet of oil you can get them all to hold. The first will hold 1 cubic foot, the second 8, the third 27, the fourth 64, the fifth 125, the sixth 216, and so on. So what you want to find is the sum of the cubes of the first so many numbers. You notice that

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1 and 8 make 9, i.e. 3 times 3, and 3 is half of 2 times 3. 1 and 8 and 27 make 36, i.e. 6 times 6, and 6 is half of 3 times 4. 1 and 8 and 27 and 64 make 100, i.e. 10 times 10, and 10 is half of 4 times 5. 1 and 8 and 27 and 64 and 125 make 225, i.e. 15 times 15, and 15 is 40 half of 5 times 6. 1 and 8 and 27 and 64 and 125 and 216 make 441, i.e. 21 times 21, and 21 is half of 6 times 7.

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This suggests a rule for the sum of the cubes of the first so many whol numbers. The rule is: Multiply the number of whole numbers concerne~ by one more than itself, take half of this product, and then take the square of the number you have now got. You can easily persuade yourself that this formula is always right, by what is called "mathematical induction". This means: assume your formula is right up to a certain number, and prove that in that case it is right for the next number. Notice that your formula is right for 1. Then it follows that it is right for 2, and therefore for 3, and so on. This is a very powerful method, by which a great many of the properties of whole numbers are proved. It often enables you, as in the above case, to turn a guess into a theorem. Let us consider another kind of problem, which is called that of "combinations and permutations". This kind of problem is often of great importance, but we will begin with trivial examples. Suppose a hostess wishes to give a dinner party, and there are 20 people to whom she owes an invitation, but she can only ask 10 at a time. How many possible ways are there of making a selection? Obviously there are 20 ways of choosing the first guest; when he has been chosen, there are 19 ways of choosing the next; and so on. When 9 guests have been chosen, there are 11 possibilities left, so the last guest can be chosen in 11 ways. So the whole number of possible choices is 20 times 19 times 18 times 17 times 16 times 15 times 14 times 13 times 12 times 11. This is quite a large number; it is a miracle that hostesses do not become more bewildered. We can simplify the statement of the answer by using what are called "factorials".

30

Factorial Factorial Factorial Factorial

2 3 4 5

means means means means

the the the the

product of all product of all product of all product of all

the the the the

numbers numbers numbers numbers

up up up up

to to to to

2, 3, 4, 5,

i.e. i.e. i.e. i.e.

2 6 24 120

and so on. Now the number of possible choices we had above is factorial 20 divided by factorial 10. This is a problem in what is called "combinations". The general rule is that the number of ways in which you can choose m things out of n things (n being greater than m) is factorial n divided by factorial m. Now let us consider "permutations", where the question is not what things to choose, but how to arrange them. Our hostess, we will suppose, has chosen her 10 guests, and is now considering how to seat them. She and her husband have fixed places, at the head and foot of the table, and

573

the guests have to be distributed among the 10 other places. So there are 0 possibilities for the first guest, and when his place is fixed there are 9 1 for the next, and so on; thus the total number of possibilities is factorial o, i.e. 3,628,800. Fortunately, social rules, such as alternating men and 1 women and separating husbands and wives, reduce the effective possibilities to 4 or 5. Let us take one more problem in "combinations". Suppose you have a number of objects, and you may choose as many or as few of them as you like, and may even choose all or none. How many choices have you?

If there is one object A, you have 2 choices, A or none.

IO

Jfthere are 2, A and B, you have 4 choices, A and B, or A, or B, or none. If there are 3, A and B and C, you have 8 choices, A and B and C, A and B, A and C, B and C, A,B,C, or none. If there are 4, you have 16, and so on. The general rule is that the number of choices is 2 multiplied by itself as many times as there are objects. This is really obvious, because you have two possibilities in regard to each object, namely to choose it or reject it, and when you have made your choice in regard to one object you still have complete freedom as regards the others. Problems of permutations and combinations have an enormous number of applications. One of them is in the Mendelian theory of heredity. The first biologists who revived Mendel's work knew almost no mathematics, but they found certain numbers constantly turning up. One of them mentioned this to a mathematical friend, who at once pointed out that they are numbers which occur in the theory of combinations, and when this had been noticed the reason was easy to see. Nowadays Mendelism is full of mathematics. Take, for instance, such a problem as this: If a certain recessive characteristic gives you an advantage in the struggle for existence, will it tend to become general in a population in which it sometimes occurs? And, if so, how long will it take to belong to some given percentage of the population, if we know the percentage having this characteristic at present? Such problems are often of great practical importance, for instance, in regard to the spread of feeble-mindedness and other mental defects. The great merit of modern as compared with ancient mathematics is that it can deal with continuous change. The only kind of motion that could be dealt with by ancient or medieval mathematics was uniform motion in a straight line or a circle: Aristotle had said that it was "natural" for earthly bodies to move in straight lines and heavenly bodies in circles, a view which persisted until Kepler and Galileo showed that it had no application to the facts. The technical instrument for dealing with

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continuous change is the differential and integral calculus, invented independently by Newton and Leibniz. We may illustrate the use of the calculus by considering what is meant by "velocity". Suppose you are in a train which has lately started from a station and is still gaining speed, and you want to know how fast it is moving at the present moment. We will suppose that you know how far apart the telegraph poles are, so that you can estimate the distance the train has traversed in a given time. You find, let us suppose, that in the second after the moment at which you wished to know the speed of IO the train it has traversed 44 feet. 44 feet a second is 30 miles an hour, so you say "we were doing 30 miles an hour". But although this was your average speed throughout the second, it was not your speed at the beginning, because the train is accelerating, and was moving faster towards the end of the second than at the beginning. If you were able to measure sufficiently accurately, you might find that in the first quarter of a second the train travelled 10 feet, not 11. So the speed of the train at the beginning of the second was nearer 40 feet than 44. But 40 feet per second will still be too much, since even in a quarter of a second there will have been some acceleration. If you can measure small times and distances 20 accurately, the shorter the time you take for estimating the train's speed the more nearly right you will be. But you will never be quite right. What, then, can be meant by the speed of the train at a given instant? This is the question that is answered by the differential calculus. You make a series of closer and closer approximations to its speed, by taking shorter and shorter times. If you take one second, your estimate is 44 feet per second; if you take a quarter of a second, it is 40. We will suppose that there are men on the edge of the railway with stop-watches; they find that if you take a tenth of a second the speed works out at 39.2 feet per second; if a twentieth of a second, at 39.1, and so on. Imagining 30 an impossible accuracy of measurement and observation, we may suppose that the observers find, as they make the times shorter and shorter, that the speed as estimated is always slightly above 39, but is not always above any number greater than 39. Then 39 is called the "limit" of the series of numbers, and we say that 39 feet per second is the velocity of the train at the given instant. This is the definition of velocity at an instant. The "differential calculus" is the mathematical instrument by which, if you know the position of a body at each instant, you calculate its speed at each instant. The "integral calculus" deals with the opposite problem: 40 given the direction and speed of motion of a body at each instant, to calculate where it will be at each instant, given the place from which it started. The two together are called the "calculus". A simple example of a problem that needs the integral calculus is what

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is called the "curve of pursuit". A farmer and his dog are in a square field, of which the corners are A,B,C,D. At first the dog is at A and the farmer is at B. The farmer begins to walk towards C, and at the same moment whistles to his dog, who runs at a uniform speed always towards where his master is at that moment. What curve will the dog describe? More important examples are derived from the motions of the planets. Kepler proved by observation that they move round the sun in ellipses, and he discovered a relation between the distances of different planets from the sun and the times it takes them to go round the sun. This enabled Newton, by the differential calculus, to infer the velocity of a IO planet at any point of its orbit; the velocity is not constant, but greatest when the planet is nearest to the sun. Then, using the differential calculus once more, he could calculate the planet's acceleration at each instant-i.e. its change of velocity both in magnitude and direction. He found that every planet at every moment has an acceleration towards the sun which is inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the sun. He then took up the inverse problem, which is one for the integral calculus. If a body has, at every moment, an acceleration towards the sun which is inversely proportional to the square of its distance from the sun, 20 how will it move? He proved that it will move in a conic section. Observation shows that, in the case of the planets and certain comets, this conic section is an ellipse; in the case of certain other comets, it may be a hyperbola. With this his proof of the law of gravitation was complete. It must not be supposed that the calculus applies only to change in time. It applies wherever one quantity is a continuous "function" of another. The notion of "function" is an important one, which I shall try to explain. Given a variable quantity, another is said to be a "function" of it if, when the variable quantity is given, the value of the other is determinate. 30 For instance, if you have to transport a quantity of oil by train, the number of tank-cars you will need is a "function" of the quantity of oil; if you have to feed an army, the quantity of food required is a "function" of the number of soldiers. If a body is falling in a vacuum, the distance it has fallen is a "function" of the time during which it has been falling. The number of square feet of carpet required in a square room is a "function" of the length of the sides, and so is the amount of liquid that can be put into a cubic container; in one case the function is the square, in the other the cube-a room whose sides are twice as long as those of another room will need four times as much carpet, and a cask which is 40 twice as high as another will hold eight times as much liquid, if its other dimensions are increased in proportion. Some functions are very complicated. Your income tax is a function of

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your income, but only a few experts know what function. Suppose sorne mathematically minded expert were to propose a simpler function, for instance, that your income tax should be proportional to the square of your income. He might combine this with the proposal that no one's income, after deduction of the tax, should exceed $25,000. How would this work out? The tax would have to be one hundred-thousandth part of the square of your income in dollars. On incomes of less than the square root of $1000 (which is about $32), the tax would be less than a cent and would not be collected; on $1000 the tax would be $10; on $200 0 ' IO $40; on $10,000, $1000; and on $50,000 it would be $25,000. After that' any increase of income would make you poorer. If you had an income of' $100,000, the tax would be exactly equal to your income, and you would be penniless. I do not think it very likely that any one will advocate this plan. Given any function of a variable x, a slight increase in x will be accornpanied by a slight increase or decrease of the function unless the function is discontinuous. For instance, let x be the radius of a circle, and let the function concerned be the area of the circle, which is proportional to the square of the radius. If the radius is slightly increased, the area of the 20 circle is increased; the increase is obtained by multiplying the increase of the radius by the circumference. The differential calculus gives the rate of the increase of the function for a given small increase of the variable. On the other hand, if you know the rate of increase of the function relatively to the variable, the integral calculus tells you what the total increase or decrease of the function will be as the variable passes from one value to another. The simplest of important instances is that of a body falling in a vacuum. Here the acceleration is constant, that is to say, the increase of velocity in any given time is proportional to the time. Therefore the total velocity at any time is proportional to the length of time 30 since the fall began. From this the integral calculus shows that the total distance fallen since the fall began is proportional to the square of the time since the fall began. This can be proved without the integral calculus, and was so proved by Galileo; but in more complicated cases the calculus is essential. Mathematics is, at least professedly, an exact instrument, and when it is applied to the actual world there is always an unjustified assumption of exactness. There are no exact circles or triangles in nature; the planets do not revolve exactly in ellipses, and if they did we could never know it. Our powers of measurement and observation are limited. I do not mean 40 that they have a definite limit; on the contrary, improvement in technique is continually lowering the limit. But it is impossible that any technique should leave no margin of probable error, because, whatever apparatus we may invent, we depend, in the end, upon our senses, which cannot

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distinguish between two things that are very closely similar. It is easy to prove that there are differences which we cannot perceive. Suppose, for instance, there are three closely similar shades of colour, A, B, and C. It ay happen that you cannot see any difference between A and B, or 111 between B and C, but you can see a difference between A and C. This shows that there must be imperceptible differences between A and B and between Band C. The same would be true if A, B, C were three nearly equal lengths. The measurement of lengths, however it may be improved, must always remain only approximate, though the approximation IO 111 ay be very close. for this reason, careful scientific measurements are always given with a "probable error". This means that the result given is as likely as not to be out by the amount of the assigned probable error. It is practically certain to be more or less out, but very unlikely to be out much more than the probable error. I wish men in other fields would admit that their opinions were subject to error; but in fact people are most dogmatic where there is least reason for certainty. The reader who recalls our definition of "velocity" will see that it assumes an impossible minuteness of observation. Empirically, there can be no such thing as the velocity at an instant, because there is a lower 20 limit to the times and distances that we can measure. Suppose we could carry our technique so far that we could measure a hundred-thousandth of a second and a hundred-thousandth of a centimetre. We could then tell how far a very small body had moved in a hundred-thousandth of a centimetre, unless it was moving less than a centimetre a second. But we could not tell what it had been doing during that very short time; it might have been travelling uniformly, it might have been going slower at first and then faster, or vice versa, and it might have done the whole distance in one sudden jump. This last hypothesis, which seems bizarre, is actually suggested by quantum theory as the best explanation of cer- 30 tain phenomena. We are in the habit of taking it for granted that space and time and motion are continuous, but we cannot know this, because very minute discontinuities would be imperceptible. Until lately, the hypothesis of continuity worked; now it begins to be doubtful whether it has this merit where very minute phenomena are concerned. The exactness of mathematics is an abstract logical exactness, which is lost as soon as mathematical reasoning is applied to the actual world. Plato thought-and many followed him in this-that, since mathematics is in some sense true, there must be an ideal world, a sort of mathematician's paradise, where everything happens as it does in the text- 40 books of geometry. The philosopher, when he gets to heaven (where only philosophers go, according to Plato), will be regaled by the sight of everything that he has missed on earth-perfectly straight lines, exact

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circles, completely regular dodecahedra, and whatever else is necessary to perfect his bliss. He will then realize that mathematics, though not applicable to the mundane scene, is a vision, at once reminiscent and prophetic, of that better world from which the wise have come and to which they will return. Harps and crowns had less interest for the Athenian aristocrat than for the humble folk who made up the Christian mythology; nevertheless Christian theologians, as opposed to the general run of Christians, accepted much of Plato's account of heaven. When, in modern times, this sort of thing became incredible, an exactness was attriro buted to Nature, and men of science felt no doubt that the universe works precisely in Newtonian fashion. For Newton's world was one that God could have made; a sloppy, inaccurate, more-or-less-so kind of world, it was felt, would be unworthy of Him. Only in quite recent times has the problem of mathematical exactness, as confronted with the approximate character of sensible knowledge, come to be stated in ways wholly free from all taint of inherited theology. The result of recent investigations of this problem is to bring in approximateness and inexactitude everywhere, even into the most traditionally sacred regions of logic and arithmetic. To the older logicians, 20 matters were simplified by their belief in immutable natural species. There were cats and dogs, horses and cows; two of each kind had been created by God, two of each kind had gone into the ark, two of a kind, breeding together, always produced offspring of the same kind. And as for Man, was he not distinguished from the brutes by his possession of reason, an immortal soul, and a sense of right and wrong? And so the meanings of such words as "dog", "horse", "man" were perfectly definite, and any living thing to which one of these words was applicable was separated by a finite gulf from all the living things of other kinds. To the question "is this a horse?" there was always an unequivocal and indubi30 table answer. But to the believer in evolution all this is changed. He holds that the horse evolved gradually out of animals that were certainly not horses, and that somewhere on the way there were creatures that were not definitely horses and not definitely not horses. The same is true of man. Rationality, so far as it exists, has been gradually acquired. Of geological specimens it is impossible to judge whether they had immortal souls or a moral sense, even granting that we have these advantages. Various bones have been found which clearly belonged to more or less human bipeds, but whether these bipeds should be called "men" is a purely arbitrary question. 40 It thus appears that we do not really know what we mean by ordinary every-day words such as "cat" and "dog", "horse" and "man". There is the same sort of uncertainty about the most accurate terms of science,

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such as "metre" and "second". The metre is defined as the distance between two marks on a certain rod in Paris, when the rod is at a certain temperature. But the marks are not points, and temperature cannot be measured with complete accuracy. Therefore we cannot know exactly how long the metre is. Concerning most lengths, we can be sure that they are longer than a metre, or sure that they are shorter. But there remain some lengths of which we cannot be sure whether they are longer or shorter than a metre, or exactly a metre long. The second is defined as the time of swing of a pendulum of a certain length, or as a certain fraction of the day. But we cannot measure accurately either the length of ro the pendulum or the length of the day. Thus there is just the same trouble about metres and seconds as about horses and dogs, namely that we do not know exactly what the words mean. "But", you may say, "none of this shakes my belief that 2 and 2 are 4." You are quite right, except in marginal cases-and it is only in marginal cases that you are doubtful whether a certain animal is a dog or a certain length is less than a metre. Two must be two of something, and the proposition "2 and 2 are 4" is useless unless it can be applied. Two dogs and two dogs are certainly four dogs, but cases may arise in which you are doubtful whether two of them are dogs. "Well, at an rate there 20 are four animals", you may say. But there are micro-organisms concerning which it is doubtful whether they are animals or plants. "Well then, living organisms", you say. But there are things of which it is doubtful whether they are living organisms or not. You will be driven into saying: "Two entities and two entities are four entities." When you have told me what you mean by "entity", we will resume the argument. Thus concepts, in general, have a certain region to which they are certainly applicable, and another to which they are certainly inapplicable; but concepts which aim at exactness, like "metre" and "second", though they have a large region (within the appropriate field) to which they are 30 certainly inapplicable, have no region at all to which they are certainly applicable. If they are to be made certainly applicable, it must be by sacrificing the claim to exactness. The outcome of this discussion is that mathematics does not have that exactness to which it apparently lays claim, but is approximate like everything else. This, however, is of no practical importance, since in any case all our knowledge of the sensible world is only approximate. I have gone into this question because, to many people, mathematics seems to make a claim to a sort of knowledge superior in kind to that of every day, and this claim, in those who are persuaded that it is not legit- 40 imate, rouses a resistance which interferes with their capacity to assimilate mathematical reasoning. The superior certainty of mathematics is

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only a matter of degree, and is due, in so far as it exists, to the fact that mathe?1atical knowledge is really verbal, although this is concealed by its complicated character. What I have said about exactness so far is not quite the whole of the truth on this question. We cannot know the world exactly, it is true, but we do know that, if we suppose it to be as the mathematicians say, the results are correct as far as we can judge. That is to say, mathematics offers the best working hypotheses for understanding the world. Whenever the current hypotheses seem more or less wrong, it is new mathero matics that supply the necessary corrections. Newton's law of gravitation held the field for two and a half centuries, and was then emended by Einstein; but Einstein's universe was quite as mathematical as Newton's. Quantum theory has developed a physics of the atom which is very different from classical physics, but it still works with mathematical symbols and equations. The apparatus of conceptions and operations invented by the pure mathematicians is indispensable in explaining the multiform occurrences in the world as due to the operation of general laws; the only hypotheses that have a chance of being true, in the more advanced sciences, are such as would not occur to any one but a mathematician. 20 If you wish, therefore, to understand the world theoretically, so far as it can be understood, you must learn a very considerable amount of mathematics. If your interests are practical, and you only wish to manipulate the world, whether for your own profit or for that of mankind, you can, without learning much mathematics, achieve a great deal by building on the work of your predecessors. But a society which confined itself to such work would be, in a sense, parasitic on what had been already discovered. This may be illustrated from the history of radio. Nearly a hundred years ago Faraday made a great many ingenious experiments on electromagnetism, but being no mathematician he could 30 not invent really comprehensive hypotheses to explain his results. Then came Clerk Maxwell, who was not an experimenter but a first-rate mathematician. He inferred from Faraday's experiments that there ought to be electromagnetic waves, and that light must be composed of such electromagnetic waves as had frequencies to which eyes are sensitive. In him this was pure theory. His work belongs to the seventies of the last century. About twenty years after his time, or rather less, a German physicist named Hertz, who was both a mathematician and an experimenter, decided to test Maxwell's theory practically, and invented an apparatus by which he could manufacture electromagnetic waves. It 40 turned out that they travelled with the velocity of light, and had all the properties that Maxwell had said they ought to have. Last came Marconi, who made Hertz's invention such as could be used outside the laboratory, for it is Hertz's waves that are used in the radio. This whole c . . . · ertainly not abstract economists or philosophers who argue that since every det ·1 1 . . m oob ltke an accident there. can be. no group partner. Surely just those very pe ope I who crowd to those meetmgs anxious to undertake experimental political practice. Mr Russell may argue that the level of pattern presented to them in the first inst · · too Iac k"mg m · d etat·1, b ut this · surely has to be refined by that very pr ance ts · . . act1ce. What else ts .expenmental method? Would it have been a valid argument agamst · . . the use of science m the nmeteenth century that it did not predict the quantum theory? Then why is it an argument against Marxism or its modern equival . ~ t h at m the middle of the nineteenth century it did not predict the details of how capitalism would strive to retain its hold as long as possible? I dealt very full in my book with the nature of such sociological prediction. Finally, in a world trembling on the brink of social transformation I cannot believe that anyone who argues for a non possumus attitude to the making of history or for a belief in the immateriality of the world about us can possibly have ideals much the same as mine.

o/f:~. ~&u­

VII.2

H. Levy, to The New Statesman and Nation,

APPENDIX VII TWO LETTERS BY HYMAN LEVY

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12

March 1938.

Srn,-Mr. Russell having exhausted his rage in savaging a corpse, the decayed body of "substance'', throws it over the fence into my back garden affecting to believe that it is mine. I don't know it, and will have nothing to do with it. Nor will he get me to own it by muttering commonplace scientific ideas at me about Relativity and Quantum Theory. Mr. Russell does not appreciate that on these scientific matters we are not disagreeing about facts but about interpretation. I have tried to provide a theory of isolates that would assist us to understand the changing forms of matter and to act as a guide in transforming them. If I use Matter for the totality, and matter (small m) for certain special regularities within the totality, qualities and ideas for others, the notion of substance, that seems to drive Mr. Russell into a frenzy, plays no part. Events and the quantum theory and relativity fit into place. I made no fuss about matter. Mr. Russell has been fulminating over a single page of my book. Our differences on other matters are best seen by his dogmatic assertion that "we can organise the food supply without any particular theory of social dynamics". Replace the words "the food supply"

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cessfully," and the falsity of the statement should become apparent "war, sUc .. Russell. It is because I feel strongly also about the food supply, a poltttcal N{r. that the falsehood is immediately apparent to me. It is not that one is atter, · E very piece · . d by political urgency, but that one 's eyes are opene d b y tt. of 1"'.de anisation towards a particular end involves some kind of theory of social social org ci•111amics. . h" d . I d" . . b · .· r ch the same confusion rests m ts attempt to raw a vita 1stmctton eMu "the making of history" and "the making of a theory of history". Those tween · · the I atter, h owever ho do the former, consciously or otherwise, are also domg w . k · de and m1sta en. cru frain from commenting on his last six lines which are both false and libel! re . . . 11 attack the bona fides of your opponent neither provides the proper at[ous. o . . . . . h h" e in which to conduct a d1scuss1on nor ts consistent wit ts own statemosp h er that one should advocate a doctrine because one sees some reason for ment . · · h" '.thinking it is true. I can see no unity between thi~ theory and his practice m 1s < duct of this discussion. I have no more to say m the matter. con

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Appendix

VIII

"The Relevance of Psychology to Logic" by R. B. Braithwaite [1938]

THIS PAPER WAS published in Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume·· A ct"zon Perception and Measurement, 17 (1938): l9-4r. It was the lead paper in a syrn ' sium of the same name. Russell's reply to Braithwaite is published here as PaPo~ ~

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L srUDENTS OF logic will be acquainted with the discussion which occurs at AL beginning of every treatise on logic as to the differing ways in which logic and tlJe chology deal with thinking. Logic, it is said, is a branch of philosophy conps;ned with the nature and formal relations of the objects of thought and with the ce di'tions for the validity of inference: as Johnson defines it, it is "the analysis con d criticism of thought". Psychology, on the other hand, is concerned, as ana~nic or philosophical psychology, with the nature of acts of thinking, and as a :wral science it aims at establishing causal laws governing such acts. The two ~ubjects treat of related topics, but their aims are entirely different, and the considerations which are relevant to one are irrelevant to the other. For psychology deals with acts of thinking as events in time and the causal relations between them; logic deals with timeless propositions and their timeless logical relations. Such is the orthodox doctrine, which I believe in the main to be correct. My excuse for re-opening the subject is that of recent years some of the principal problems of logic, those concerned with meaning, with knowledge and rational belief, where logic overlaps epistemology, have presented such difficulties that many philosophers and more psychologists have attempted to deal with them "naturalistically" by invoking the aid of the causal laws of psychology. In particular, Bertrand Russell, since his welcome return to philosophy (in the academic sense of the word), has treated these questions psychologically in two papers to the Aristotelian Society: "The Limits of Empiricism", published in the Proceedings, 1935-1936 (which will be referred to as E), and the Presidential Address "On Verification" delivered on November 8th of last year, which will be published in the Proceedings, 1937-1938 (I shall refer to this as V: since it is not yet publicly published I shall give somewhat extensive quotations from it). My contribution to this Symposium will be mainly devoted to criticism of some of the doctrines of these two papers. I am concentrating my attention on them partly because Russell is the only "psychologizing" logician whom I know who appears to be at all aware of the philosophical objections to the psychological method of treatment and who makes heroic attempts to meet them, and partly to express my respect to the Aristotelian Society's President, from whom I, in common with all my contemporaries, have learnt so much. It is notorious that the only way in which a philosopher can show his gratitude to his master is by trying to tear him to pieces. It is only right to mention that these papers of Russell contain various important discussions which are not germane to the subject of this Symposium. The first paper (E) addresses some very pertinent questions to the mathematical finitists. The second paper (V) contains a cogent criticism (with which I am in complete agreement) of the purely formal treatment of language by some Logical Positivists. It also includes a psychological treatment of the verification of statements about the future in terms of "expectation" which is relevant to this Symposium and which I should have criticized if my contribution had not seemed quite long enough without it.

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The topics which I am selecting for discussion are those of the mean1· ,, . ~~ of a sentence which I use to express a fact which I directly know, and rne nature of my direct and indirect knowledge. Although Russell holds that ",of the · ' 1s · essentla · 11y socia · l" (V. 8), h e does not discuss in these papers the ext rneanmg difficult problems concerned with "public" meaning and communicatio re~~ly · · n. •'IOt does he discuss the relation of "public" knowledge to "private" knowled . . ge. Alt h ough h e sometlffies uses "we" mstead of "I" or "he", the problems he tr eats are exclusively those of the meaning of words to the speaker and of the kno 1 ct we ge possessed by one person. Like him, I shall confine myself to these "pr' IVate" problems, and shall usually discuss them in egocentric language. A remark about terminology may be helpful. I shall take Russell to task f. treating what is really the question of direct knowledge under the headin or . f b . . d . g Of b e11e ; ut m quotmg an commenting on him it is convenient to use his 1 anguage; so I shall use "belief" in a sense which permits of a case of belief's bein also a case of knowledge. A "proposition" Russell defines as "that which remain~ unchanged when a sentence is translated from one language into another, or frorn speech into writing or vice versa" (V. l). This is a very bad way of distinguishin . . f: g a proposlt!on rom a sentence (does not the paper on which I write an English sentence "remain unchanged" when I write below its translation into French?)· but Russell's intention is clear: he proposes to use the word "proposition" for th~ common meaning of sentences which have the same meaning. I shall follow Russell in using the word in this wide sense: "proposition" will then in certain cases cover what may also be called a fact, and it will be good sense to speak of knowing a proposition. In my talk of "pronouncing token-sentences of a typesentence" I am using the language of Professor Stebbing's Inaugural Address to the Joint Session of 1935; and I borrow "probabilification" from Professor Price's Inaugural Lecture. A. MEANING

In The Analysis of Mind, Russell advocated a general causal theory of meaning, and his recent articles show that he still holds such a theory of meaning. "It is in virtue of their causes and effects that words have 'meaning' .... In a person who knows a language, there are causal relations between words and what they mean: a cat causes the word 'cat', and the word 'cat' causes expectation of a cat, or perhaps the actual sight of one. These causal relations constitute the understanding of a language" (E. 135). But in neither of the recent papers does he discuss the question in general: in the first of them he discusses the causal theory of meaning in relation to cases of direct or incorrigible sense-knowledge, in which the causal theory is perhaps particularly plausible but which, as he sees, present a peculiar difficulty for such a theory of meaning. So, in discussing the theory, I shall confine myself to such a case. Russell describes such a case in the following language.

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Suppose that I see a cat and say "there is a cat" .... I doubt whether any ernpiricist will deny, in the case supposed, that I know (1) a sensible fact expressed, perhaps inaccurately, by the words "there is a cat"; (2) that I say "there is a cat"; (3) that I say "there is a cat" because a cat (or a sensible appearance resembling that of a cat) is there. (E. 135-136) In his discussion of this case, and elsewhere in similar contexts, Russell speaks of what we know and when we know that our words express something. But the "we" is here the editorial "we": Russell would not wish to maintain that I have direct knowledge of a causal relationship between someone else's sense-experiences, as he wishes to maintain that I have of one between my own; and the problem he is discussing is only that of my direct knowledge. So his "we", "our" in the following quotations should be read "I", "my". Before stating and discussing Russell's analysis, I must comment upon the three facts which he says he knows in his cat case: (l) It is clear from (3) and from Russell's remarks in other places, that he is using the sentence "There is a cat" to express not a fact about a material object cat, but a fact about a "sensible appearance resembling that of a cat" (called in another place "a visual occurrence which I classified as feline": E. 137). He is using the sentence, therefore, to express a proposition about sense-data for whose expression we have no convenient language. Provided that I make clear that I (like Russell) wish only to discuss in this section propositions about sense data, I don't think that confusion should result from my following Russell in using language which is, strictly speaking, incorrect. (2) Russell modifies my saying "cat" into my intending or willing to say "cat'', since whether or not I am in fact able to utter the word is irrelevant. I agree that my being gagged or paralyzed does not affect the question of meaning, for presumably when I with a gag in my mouth am trying to say the word "cat" I am using some symbolism, visual, auditory, kinaesthetic or laryngeal, which is synonymous with the word "cat", even though I cannot specify it in any other way. The general question of whether or not I can think at all without using symbols is not at issue: Russell is only considering meaning when there are symbols used by me; so the question of my being compelled by force of circumstances to use symbols other than spoken words does not seem to me important enough in this discussion to make it worth while to complicate the exposition by allowing for it. So I shall assume that the symbols I use are always spoken words, which I hear when I am pronouncing them. (3) It is (3) that (as Russell says) "raises difficulties'', some of which, I feel, are due to Russell's language: "I say 'there is a cat' because a cat (or a sensible appearance resembling that of a cat) is there." What does Russell mean by "because"? I think that there is no doubt that he is using it to express a relationship of "expressing". For he introduces his discussion with the remark that "we [I] must believe that my words 'express' a piece of knowledge ... though the

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word 'express' remains to be defined" (E. 135). And he follows the statem ""it 1s · ( 3) th at raises · d"ffi · ent that · ·• 1 cu1ties" by the sentences: What do we [I] know when we [I] know that our [my] words "express" something which we [I] see? I see a cat and say "there is a cat." Someone else says "why did you say 'there is a cat'?" and I reply "because I saw a cat". I feel just as sure of the second statement as of the fi rst. (E.136) So I think that I am not doing an injustice to Russell in stating his (3) in such way as not to use the word "because": namely as the conjunction of the th a ·· I "there 1s · a cat ,,; there is a cat; "there is a cat" expresses that ree propo~mons: say there 1s a cat. The first two of these propositions are merely (2) and (1) repeate . the extra proposition, which I will call (3') is the one whose analysis raises th~ relevant difficulties. But my statement of (3') requires qualification. The sentence "there is a cat" does not express that there is a cat to a Frenchman ignorant of English, nor does it express it if I am using the word "cat" to mean dog. What is true is that the particular sentence used by me on a particular occasion expresses for me that there is a cat. If (2) is anal~ed into the conjunction of the two propositions: (2a) I pronounces, and (2b) s 1s a sentence of the type "there is a cat"-where sis a demonstrative symbol (a "logically proper name") used to stand for the particular sentence which I am using on the particular occasion, then (3') can be restated as s expresses for me that there is a cat. Or, in the language of Professors Moore and Stebbing, (2b) =sis a token-sentence of the type "there is a cat", (3') = I attach the meaning that there is a cat to s. We now have the four propositions all of which, on a suitable occasion, I know: (1) (2a) (2b) (3')

There is a cat; I am now pronouncing s; sis a token-sentence of the type "There is a cat"; I attach to s the meaning that there is a cat.

Russell's contention is that the proposition (3') states a causal relationship between the sensible appearance of the cat which I see and the words which I pronounce, and that this relationship is one which, in the cat case, I directly know. "I think that the word 'because' (in sentence (3)) must be understood as expressing a more or less causal relation, and that this relation must be perceived, not merely inferred from frequent concomitance" (E. 137). Elsewhere he speaks of the perceived relation as being "at least partly, that of cause and effect" (E. 136 ), as "the relation of causation, or some relation intimately connected with it"

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) and as a "causal or quasi-causal relation" (E. 137). The reasons Russell

13 7 fl. · m · th'1s mystenous · . d . for' qualifymg manner th e " causa1ness " of h"1s perceive

gives. n are that 1t · " may b e one wh'1ch 1s · on1y present m · some mstances · of causar~latl~ot in all", and that "it differs from causation as ordinarily understood in . con d"1t1ons . · t!On, · . ce in one important respect, name1y th at certain must b e present ·~;i: antecedent is to give rise to the consequent" (E. 138). Neither of these 1 asons seem to me good ones. For the ordinary treatment of causality and causal ~:ws allows for the possibility that the causal law in question only holds between things of a certain sort (e.g., the laws of physics can only refer to physical events), and that the cause may be only a part-cause. It is not necessary to introduce "quasi-causation" to deal with these obvious facts. So I shall ignore Russell's ualifications, and shall take it that he wishes to assert that, in the cat case, I directly perceive that my seeing the cat is a part-cause of my pronouncing the words. I can hardly argue against this position. All I can say is that, to the best of my knowledge, I do not perceive such a relationship. I believe that sometimes in cases like the cat case, such a causal relation holds: I believe that, under certain conditions, my seeing a cat is a part-cause of my saying certain words; but this belief is one to be justified inductively: it may be so strong and so reasonable that it is legitimate to call it (if it is true) knowledge, but it is never direct knowledge. And as in all cases where direct knowledge is alleged, there can be no profitable argument. Russell says that I perceive something which, so far as I know, I do not perceive. Russell's doctrine that, in reference to "meaning", I sometimes directly know a causal relationship is in many ways analogous to the contention of many philosophers that I directly know a causal relationship in cases of volition. According to both views, I can know directly that one thing is a part-cause of another without knowing the other necessary conditions, and I can know directly that one thing is a causal ancestor of another without knowing the intermediate links in the causal chain. These consequences seem to me very difficult to stomach. But there is a particular objection that can be urged in the case discussed by Russell. Russell analyzes (3') into (1) is a part-cause of (2a); and says that I directly know this. But direct knowledge of a relationship between facts entails direct knowledge of both of the facts: I cannot know a complex fact made up of other facts in certain relations without knowing these separate facts. At least this seems to me the case in all other cases of direct knowledge of relationship of facts: I can't speak for direct knowledge of causal relationship because I don't believe in such knowledge. When, for example, I directly know that one fact about my visual field is earlier than another, I must know both the facts separately. And it would seem very strange, to put it mildly, if I could know directly that P was a part-cause of a fact q without knowing directly both p and q. Nevertheless, if Russell's analysis of "expressing" is right, I must be able to know this

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directly in his case. For I can perfectly well know that s expresses fo . . . r me th there 1s a cat when m fact there 1s no cat. That is to say I can use a sent at 'h , h t e ng t type to express something which is false. Of course I should · enceof . . . . .. . m such case be deliberately lymg: there 1s no poss1b1hty of innocent error since (:ti II . a 0 . . .... ' Russell) I am takmg There 1s a cat to be a proposition which 1s directly k ow1ng . ~~~ be true or directly known to be false. But an analysis of meaning must I . eave a place for lymg. A supporter of Russell's theory would doubtless meet this objection by . . . . saying th at h e was only concerned with cases m which I was using language to . express something known to be true: and that my use of language to express somethin ~no:vn t~ b~ false must be .tre~ted. differently. To which I should rejoin: Wha~ Just1ficat1on Is there for treating It differently? and how should it be treated d'ffi 1 erently? I see no satisfactory answers to either of these questions. A reason which tends to confuse the issue is that there is a proposition ab · " of s wh1c · h 1s · only true when there is a cat namely the prop · out t h e " meanmg · . . ' , os1t1on that s IS. vahd for me. For the proposition that s expresses for me that there is a cat entails the proposition that s is valid for me if and only if there is a cat: consequently, assuming (3'), the proposition that s is valid for me is only true und the actual condition of there being a cat. But the proposition (3') itself-thate: expresses for me that there is a cat-is logically independent of the fact (if it be a fact) that there is a cat. It is obvious from Russell's exposition that he is not at all enamoured of his analysis, and that he only puts it forward because he can think of no other way of a:counting satisfactorily for his knowledge of meaning in the cat case, which he nghtly takes to be fundamental. The difficulty arises out of there being a set of three propositions which, taken separately, appear very plausible but which, taken together, are logically incompatible. This "inconsistent triad" consists of the three propositions: (a) The relation of meaning holding between "cat" and the cat presented to me is a causal relation; (b) I know directly that "cat" means the presented cat; (c) I never know directly that a causal relation holds. A holder of the causal or "naturalistic" theory of meaning is committed to (a): he must therefore deny either (b) or (c). Most "naturalists" deny (b) and say that, although in suitable cases I do know that a word means the thing it stands for, this knowledge is always indirect and is based upon other empirical knowledge. That I use the word "cat" for a cat and not for a dog is to be justified inductively by experience of, for example, my vocal reactions to cats. Russell is clear-sighted enough to see that this is a grossly inadequate explanation, and consequently he is compelled to deny (c) and to assert direct knowledge of causal relationships. I am convinced that the right method of dealing with the inconsistent triad is to

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( ) and to produce some other, non-naturalistic, account of the relation of denY . a ' 1 will try to give such an account for the perplexing problem of Rusrnea111ng. ell's cat. . . . .. . s 'fhe clue to the solution hes, I thmk, m a propos1t1on which has ~ot yet b~en 'dered-a general proposition about my use oflanguage at the time at which cons! eaking. Consider the proposition (4): Any language wh'1ch I am now usmg · 1arn sp f th "Th · using in such a way that to every token-sentence o e type ere 1s a cat " 1 arn h the meaning that there is a cat. This proposition (4) is logically related to {attac · p · M' · · mister 1s ( zb) and (3') in the same way in which Any conservative nme (za), b 1 · · C · M · !ly respected is logically related to Mr. Cham er am 1s a onservat1ve, r. genera . . , . Chamberlain is a Prime Minister, Mr. Chamberlain 1s generally respected. (3) 1s 10 gical consequence of the conjunction of (4), (2a) and (2b). a Moreover if I am asked (or ask myself) what is · my reason £or kn owmg · ( 3') I am attaching a certain meaning to the particular sentence s, I should have that . · ,, · I "That is the way in which I was usmg the words at that mmute , 1.e., to~ ,. should give as my reason proposition (4). My kn~"".ledge. o.f (3 ) 1s .o~ course incorrigible, if my knowledge of (za), (zb) and (4) 1s mcorng1ble; but 1t 1s based on my knowledge of these three propositions in the sense that they are the reans which I should give in answer to a demand for my reasons. w How do I know this major premiss (4)? I answer that I sometimes . d'1rectiY know it by introspection. In the cat case, for example, I should say that introspection tells me directly and incorrigibly that I am using language in such a way th~t any token-sentence of type "There is a cat" is to mean that there is a cat. That 1s to say, I know directly and incorrigibly that I am using language in the particular way in which I am using it at that moment, which in the cat case is also using language in its ordinary sense. I may, of course, also use language in a non-ordinary way, "private" sense: I may use a token-sentence of type "There is a dog" to mean that there is a cat. But in this case also I may know directly how I am using language. It is tempting to say that my knowledge of (4) is itself derived from a set of premisses one of which is (3'). For the conjunction (3') together with (2a), (zb) and the new proposition (2c) that no sentence other than sis both pronounced by me and is of type "There is a cat", entails that to all token-symbols of type "There is a cat" pronounced by me now I attach the meaning that there is a cat, since there is only one such token-symbol. Just as the four propositions Mr. Chamberlain is a Conservative, Mr. Chamberlain is a Prime Minister, no one except Mr. Chamberlain is both Conservative and Prime Minister, Mr. Chamberlain is generally respected together entail that all Conservative Prime Ministers are generally respected. But my proposition (4) is wider than the proposition (call it 4') entailed by (3'), (2a), (zb) and (2c). (4') states merely that all the tokensymbols of the right type which I am in fact using have in fact a certain meaning attached to them by me: it is equivalent to the purely negative proposition that there are no token-symbols of the right type used by me which have not a certain

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meaning. Consequently it is true if there are no token-symbols of th · . . e fight used by me; and 1f m fact I am pronouncing one and only one tokentYpe . h · . SYmboJ · t h e ng t type, to which symbol I am attachmg the meaning, it Iogicall fl Of .. ( ) Y ol!ows But my propos1t1on 4 states also something about unrealized possib'J· . · 1 · states that, whether or not I am pronouncing token-sentences of the req · lties·· It . ~~ to which I attach the required meaning, if I pronounced other token-s -,ve . h m . 1act " I am not pronouncing, I should attach to them also the entences w h 1c . requirect meanmg. This proposition is a general proposition of the sort which have c . ausect so much trouble to ph1losophers-general propositions about unrealized .. .. Poss1b11 lt!es. Causal laws are general propositions of this sort, and the problems of nat ure o f " causa I necessity · " are essentia · IIy problems of the analysis of th the .. ese general propositions. I do not propose to discuss what I take to be the correct . analysis; except to say that I think that Ramsey's and Carnap's method of treatme ·· · th nt Of sueh propos1t1ons 1s e correct one. The essential feature of such a propo · · . . s1t1on, accordmg to these authors, 1s that from such a proposition together with a · ·· Parucu.1ar propos1t1~~ another particular proposition logically follows. Proposition (4) 1s the propos1t10~ such that from it and (2a) and (2b), (3') logically follows. And such that from It and propositions similar to (2a) and (2b) in every respect except that they are about some particular symbol other than s, the proposition corresponding to (3') logically follows. When (as in the cat case) I know b . . th y mtrospecuon at I am using symbols in such a way that these "consequencerelations" held, I know (4) directly and base my knowledge of (3') upon it. I should not wish to maintain that whenever I ask myself how I use language on a particular occasion, I can always give an incorrigible answer. To take the famous case of the heap, I don't think I know incorrigibly whether or not I use the word "heap" in such a way that There is a heap of stones entails that there are more than 100 stones here. And I certainly don't know incorrigibly whether or not I use the arithmetical words and symbols in such a way that the primitive propositions of arithmetic entail Fermat's Last Theorem. But in the case where '.11Y use of language in question is that a token-sentence of type "p" means that p, it seems to me that if I consider the matter I always know incorrigibly whether or not I am using language in this way. These general propositions about my use of language at a particular moment are what have been called "rules". This word is not very appropriate for two reasons. In the first place the ordinary use of "rule" is for some Jaw laid down by authority beforehand: to use it in connection with propositions about how I use language makes it appear as if how I use language was somehow settled before I used the language in question, which is not usually the case. It is only so when I deliberately introduce a new word into my language by definition, explicit or implicit: I do settle to use the words "is hygroscopic" as synonymous with "absorbs water from the air", before I in fact use the word "hygroscopic". But

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learnt the use of the word "cat", I did not first of all learn that There is a 1 11en .1 that there is an animal, entails that it is false that there is no cat, etc. I t enta1 s . . . d "cat" first, and subsequently (1f at all) considered h~':" I was us1~~ the word se ,, In the second place it seems wrong to call an empmcal proposmon a rule, cat 1 s are expressed in the imperative and not in the indicative. . ce ·rue nSo 1 should prefer to use the word "rule" not for the whole proposition about y langu age, but for what is expressed by the adverbial part of the sentence ·.!ll · g such a proposition. To take the cat case, the rule would then be exspressin e d by the adverbial phrase "in such a way that any token-sentence of type Presse · a cat' is to have the meanmg · that there 1s · a cat attach ed to it · " . C aII th'is "fbere 1s R Then the proposition (4) can be expressed as "I am now using language rule · · Ianguage R -wise · " . Th e ru Ie-p h rase nce with R" or "I am now usmg in acco rda . ,, . lifies adverbially the sentence "I am now usmg language. Thus a rule 1s not qua · 1tse . If 1s . Iog1ca . IIy .tion at all and the nasty question as to wheth er 1t a prop Osl ' . . ecessary or contingent (a question discussed at the Jomt Sess10n of 1936) does nnot ari'se · To treat rules in this way will clarify other problems. For example, to ke the sentences which occur in Carnap's formal treatment of language as ex-. t:essing rules in my sense rather than propositions will avoid, I think, many of ~e criticisms that can legitimately be urged against Carnap's method. Carnap's " ure syntax" would then treat of rules, not of propositions: propositions about ;e usage of language according to rules would fall under a different classification, corresponding to Tarski's realm of "semantics". But I obviously must not pursue this matter here. To return to the cat case: the fundamental fact, so I maintain, is that I can know directly tl1at I am using language in a certain way. This important proposition is a general proposition about unrealized possibilities. I should not call it a causal proposition: I should prefer to classify it separately as a semantical proposition; but anyone who held that a causal proposition was simply a universal empirical proposition about unrealized possibilities would, of course, call it causal. Such a person might say that I was in agreement with Russell upon his main point, that in the cat case I directly knew a causal proposition. But the causal proposition which Russell says he perceives is quite different from the general proposition (call it causal if you like) which I think I directly know. Russell's proposition entails the presence of a cat: his relation "can only be perceived when it holds between two parts of a sensible whole" (E. 138): in an ordinary sense of the word "about", it states something about the cat's presence and something about the effects of the cat's presence. Neither of these, in my view, enter into the question. Except in a very peculiar sense of "about", my proposition is not about the cat at all: it is about my use of the word "cat". How I use language is logically quite independent of any non-linguistic facts (with the possible exception in the case of my use of demonstrative symbols): I may use the sentence "There is a cat" to mean there is a cat, whether or not there is a cat

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present; and if I choose, I may use the sentence "There is a dog" to mean th ere· a cat, whether or not there is a cat or a dog present. The problem is that f is o how I use my language, not of what causes me to utter certain sounds. B. DIRECT KNOWLEDGE

In his Presidential Address to the Aristotelian Society this year ("On Verifi tion") Bertrand Russell treats, among other topics, of the problem which ~a­ greatly exercised the minds of contemporary philosophers: Is there any direct a as incorrigible knowledge; and, if so, what is the nature of such knowledge:i. Li"ke nd philosophers who are not adherents of the Coherence Theory of Truth (re Presented, to mention two recent books only, by C. R. Morris' Idealistic Logic and Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language), Russell believes that there is direct knowledge; and since I agree with him, I shall not discuss this, the main question, at any length. But the account which he gives in his Address of the peculiar nature of this type of knowledge is based upon psychological considerations which 1 believe to be absolutely irrelevant to the question at issue. And it is these considerations which I wish to discuss. I have said that Russell accepts cases of direct and incorrigible knowledge because that is the simplest way of saying that he disagrees with the coherentists. But Russell does not discuss the question in terms of knowledge (the word in fact does not occur until half way through his discussion): he discusses it in terms of belief in "basic" propositions. And he gives a definition of such propositions in psychological terms. "By a 'basic' proposition I mean one which is completely believed in virtue of a single experience" (V.2). But this is "only a preliminary definition", and Russell qualifies it later: "Let us add to our definition of a 'basic' proposition a clause which will not take us outside psychology: let us add that it is to be one which we cannot be led to doubt either by reasoning or by subsequent experience. I am still taking this in the sense of what this or that individual cannot be made to doubt" (V. 4)-so the "we" of the first clause is to be understood in the singular. Still later he restates the definition in a slightly different way: "For every individual, there are, at every moment, 'basic' propositions, i.e., propositions which he believes in virtue of some particular experience, and which, for the time being, he cannot be made to doubt" (V. 6). My comments on these definitions, and on Russell's exposition of them, are as follows. In the first place, Russell is concerned, as he says, "with what people actually do believe in virtue of experience, not with what they 'ought' to believe" (V.2). The use of the word "ought" here is not clear; but I take it from the context that Russell wishes to exclude a proposition which I should believe in virtue of a single experience if I had that experience, although in fact, not having that experience, I don't believe it. A basic proposition for Russell is then a particular sort of creditum, not a particular sort of credibile. Now a proposition in itself is not

au

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rily believed; it is only necessary that it could be believed: so the dijferentia · th e proposltlon · · sh ou Id m · fact b e ·necessa · proposition is of a double kmd-that .0fa basic . . . . d and that it should be beheved m a particular way. · ·beheve ' dly what is this particular way of be!tef? What does R usse 11 mean b y ""m secon , . . fa single experience"? It is pretty clear that he means by this somethmg virtue o . . . · He takes the mstance of someone readmg or appearmg to read the words causa1· . . r has fallen" in a newspaper; and says that, whatever 1s the basic prop"Santande . . .. . . which you believe-whether 1t 1s a propos1tton about Santander or about os1uon · d on the page or about shadows on the paper-you wou Id "be 1·1eve somethmg wors lt of what you had seen, and this somethmg · wou!dbe a b" · as1c propos1as a re Su •. ·on" (V. 3). "As a result of" is presumably used here to express the causal relat'. which I have discussed in Section A of this paper. non . · · "th Thirdly (and this is the question of particular importance m connection w1 . ct knowledge), what does Russell mean by his phrase "cannot be led (made) dire th ·b·1· f to doubt"? He introduces his qualifications "to ensure at ~east e poss1 11ty o [basic propositions] being always correct" (V. 4); ?~ wh1c~ he must. mean to ensure the possibility in principle of all basic proposltlons bemg true, smce. ~ven ithout any criterion of indubitability it might be the case that all propos1t10ns :elieved as a result of causes of a particular sort were true. This possibility can, according to Russell, be ensured by a consideration "which will not take us outside psychology" (V. 4); and this remark (together with Russell's expressed wish to eliminate in his definition "all the logical and epistemological elements in the problem" (V. 2)) implies that the "cannot" of the definitions is a causal "cannot". Russell must mean that a basic proposition is one which it is psychologically impossible for me to doubt. That is, the causal laws governing my mind are such that there are no facts which together with these laws would entail my doubting a basic proposition. The principal difficulty, however, about Russell's qualifying phrase is that the two statements of it given by Russell are quite obviously inconsistent. On p. 4 he says that a basic proposition "is to be one which we cannot be Jed to doubt either by reasoning or by subsequent experience"; on p. 6 he says that it is one "which, for the time being, he cannot be made to doubt". According to the latter definition a proposition which it is psychologically impossible for me to doubt for the time being (presumably this means at the time when my belief in it is caused by the observed fact in the appropriate way) is a basic proposition, even though later facts would lead me to doubt it; and one of Russell's examples accords with this definition. "I have often doubted whether it was raining or not, but I had no doubts on the day when I travelled thirty miles on the roof of a horse-drawn coach from Ullapool to the railway; and if there exists a sceptic who could have suspended judgment on that occasion, 'I desire' him 'to be produced'" (V. 5). But it is surely the case that if Russell had later become convinced that he had been in a state of hypnosis on that day and that his hypnotist had suggested to him that he would believe completely that it was raining, he would have been led to doubt that it was raining on that occasion.

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It seems to me quite impossible to defend a definition of basic Pro .. terms of psychological indubitability, if the indubitability in questio Po_sittons in:. · d u b.1tab·1· · I completely believe any prop n. .is rnerely.· m 1 1ty at the moment. For 1f os1t1on Wh ever, that complete belief, though it does not exclude the possibility f at-. . . . o doubr1 t h e proposition at another time, does exclude the possibility of doubt" . ng · . mg It at th same time as that at which I am completely believing it. If "doubtin ,, . e . terms o f d"1sb el"1evmg . or of believing with less than certaintyg b IS .to .be d efi ne d m . . ' ehev1n comp 1ete IY an d d ou b tmg are logically incompatible. But even if "d . g . . OUbtmg» means some th mg mdependent of belief, believing completely and d b . . . . . ou tmg w·1 be psychologically mcompat1ble, smce there are psychological laws p . ll . reventing person domg both at the same time. So if I completely believe any p .. a . . . . ropos1ti 0 wh atever, I cannot doubt 1t for the time being: and mdubitability, in thi n . . . h" s sense cannot b e th e d 1stmgms mg feature of basic propositions. ' So I shall assume that Russell's first definition of indubitability holds . .. . good a n dtht a a b as1c proposlt!on 1s one which I cannot be led to doubt sub ' . . . . sequently to my completely behevmg It. Now this account has considerable plaus"b"l· . . 1 1 lty: It appears to settle a difficult problem of epistemology by reference to psych I . "d · o og1cal cons1 erat1ons. Of course Russell would not profess to know exactly h h . . . w at are t ese psychological considerations; he would not profess to know what . . . ~~ laws of his mmd which prevent his doubting: but the philosopher may p· . . . . . . , 11atew1se, reio1ce m nddmg himself of an awkward case by handing it over t th . . Ph"! o e sc1ent1st. 1 osophers have frequently done this in other cases (e th . . . . .g., at of contmmty and mfimty) to the satisfaction of everyone-though it must be confessed that in the case of infinity the mathematicians have unfortunately returned the case to the philosophers.

. But I do not . think that to hand the question over to psychology solves th e important ep1stemological question-that concerned with direct incorrigible knowledge. Russell's criterion for incorrigibility is indubitability. But these · d" are qmte 1fferent: the first is in terms of a logical impossibility, the latter in terms of a caus.al impossibility. It may be the case that the laws governing the workings of my mmd are such as to prevent my ever doubting a proposition but that does not entail that I never ought to doubt it-that I shall never have e~idence which if I were rational, should make me disbelieve it. And it is this that is entailed b; my belief being incorrigible. To take the case of Russell's belief that it rained during the coach journey and the possibility that he might have been hypnotized at the time, if he is irrational enough he may never be prepared to admit that he had been hypnotized, however strong the evidence; so that he would never be led to doubt the proposition. But that does not show that his belief was incorrigible, only that ~ussell was unreasonable in not being prepared to give up the belief. So I thmk that a criterion in terms of psychologically causal impossibility will not work. But I also think that a criterion in terms of belief or doubt is itself grossly unsatisfactory. For the propositions in question are not those which I believe, even "completely", but those which I know: and not those which I can-

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be led to doubt, but those to which no further evidence is relevant. This last can be expressed, as I have expressed it above, in terms of belief, but only ral:~ introducing moral terms such as what I "ought to believe". I can say if I ~y athat my knowledge is incorrigible means that no evidence ought to make me jil. M'1ght not a man 's sk'll 1 so mcrease that he performed each operatiICin half the time required for its predecessor? Then, though each operation ;e~ quires a finite time, they are all finished in twice the time of the first operatio n. Page 323 bottom, on induction, is vague. Obviously induction is not admissable, since it involves an infinite class of properties. Page 337, no objection to property. Definition of finite classes [Why?]

42 667

"Observables" in Physics

"Observables" differ from "observeds" merely by the introduction of a hypothetical element: "If I observe, I shall see so-and-so." voes this say more than: "W'hen I observe, etc."? And if it does, is the more legitimate? Take it in stages:

A.

I observe now, and see so-and-so. Mere matter of fact.

B. I observed formerly and saw so-and-so. Involves memory.

c. Others observed, and saw so-and-so. Involves testimony [see below]. D. Future observation will show so-and-so. Involves uniformity of nature. As to C., I may substitute: "I hear noises or see shapes which I should hear and

see ifl saw so-and-so and recorded the fact." This must be modified to allow for difference of language. As to D., I may substitute: "Therefore it will be worth while to find out whether

Mathematical Induction

a eNCinduct. = :.Oeµ: veµ. :lv. v+ 1 eµ: :>1,. aeµ

Df.

This definition is impossible for a finitist, because of the generalµ. How does the finitist define the natural numbers? By the symbol (0, ~' ~ + 1). This contains unanalyzed ideas. It means: "Start with O, and if, by successively adding l's, you reach ~' you are to go on to ~ + 1." But "successively" is a notion which requires induction to define it. Let us try to make it precise. I doubt, to begin with, whether"+ l" can be defined. Nor can either NC or NCinduct. We can, of course, construct the natural numbers up to any assigned point, and define what is meant by "This collection has n terms" if n precedes this point. But when I say "we can go up to any assigned point", I am saying more than the finitist knows. He knows, if I assign a point, that he can reach that point; I know he could have reached any other; but he doesn't. And (0, ~' ~ + 1) can't mean "go on adding l's for ever", because we can't do so, being mortal. Of course I can "see" that, logically, one could go on for ever, but officially I am not allowed to "see". I demand that the finitist shall enunciate Induction. Finitism won't do.

future observations show so-and so." But only if past observations give a probability; inference to future is still required. As to C., difference of language requires that we should know what we mean by

"two different statements have the same meaning." Thus before we can interpret testimony even solipsistically we need a theory of language. This will consist of rough laws prior to those of physics, to this effect: "When I see a body which emits French noises, the causes and effect of those noises can be assimilated to those of my noises by assuming the dictionary." This is presupposed whenever an English physicist uses a French observation. Independence of atomic facts

Wittgenstein, 2.06r.062: "Atomic facts are independent of one another. From the existence or non-existence of an atomic fact we cannot infer the existence or nonexistence of another." 5. 1361 "The events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus." The mention of "atomic" facts in 2.06r.062 is not essential. The point is the denial of all inference that might be called "synthetic", i.e. that is not warranted by the laws of deduction. As to this, it is insincere; none of us really believes it. "Synthetic" inference must be allowed, though it need only be probable. When once it is allowed, we can know of things we have not seen; otherwise, we can't.

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APPENDIX XIV MANUSCRIPTS PRELIMINARY TO PAPER

There must therefore be a priori knowledge, though it may only be as to . ence. It will be true only in this world, not in any possible world. infer~ Empiricism, taken seriously, proves this by being self-destructive.

Summary so far Three partial empiricisms: finitism, observables in physics, no inference f . c . to fi musm: .. atomic .acts. Ob'iecuon can ' t £ormulate Induction, therefore k ro111 . b . . nows th no mg a out all natural numbers. Obiect10ns to observables: want (a) mem (b) testimony (c) future. Objections to atomics: involves no inference e ory xcept logical deduction therefore no cause, no future. To adopt such views is insincere: we don't really believe them.

Possible escapes A. Parmenides-Hegel-Bergson-Whitehead: We always really know ever_ thing, though vaguely; analysis is falsification. Objections familiar. This also ~ insincere. No one thinks "My name is Russell" means "The Deity is such that if we mistakenly isolate a certain aspect of Him, and consider what He would call this aspect if He didn't know Hegel, we find that He would falsely suppose that it was called Russell; but this supposition would be less false than if He supposed it was called Snooks." Hegelians do not introduce people according to this formula. B. Criticism of datum-and-inference view of knowledge. When I see a friend, I do not "infer" that he exists. Induction only formulates expectation, which is spontaneous. When, in given circumstances, a certain belief spontaneously arises, how distinguish part of this as datum? Examine "datum". C. As to finitism, I maintain that I know (x). rpx. v. Ctr x). - rpx. But here it is very hard to separate out what is definition. What is not definition is that (x). ¢x means something; e.g. "All men are mortal" means something although I don't know the list of men. Datum. A premiss in science must be expressed in words; till so expressed, it is too vague, fleeting, and individual to be important. Empiricism may be defined as the doctrine that all premisses, other than those oflogic, "express" sensible facts. Innumerable questions:

3

I. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

What are sensible facts and how do we know them? How do words "express" them? How can a sensible fact prove or disprove a form of words? What does "logic" include? Is it all linguistic? Is the relation of fact to words causal? Are propositions less dubious when close to sensible facts in some sense? Is there a special kind of knowledge which is direct apprehension of fact and is therefore not subject to error?

42 669

Bow discuss without assuming a great deal? What is the definition of "truth"? 9· What is the definition of "belief"?

s.

Let us start by analyzing a "datum", e.g. "I see black triangle on a white ground, but the black :ontains specks of white." Make as vague as possible: "There is a shape of one colour on a ground of a different colour" or "There is dark surroundC.. ed by light." This statement "expresses" a "fact" which I "experience". Omit "experience" to begin with. Tb.ere need not be any state of "belief" between the fact and the statement. Do I in any sense "know" the fact if I don't say anything about it or stop to have a belief about it? In some sense yes, since I may afterwards remember it. Take a more realistic example: people playing cards. Some one plays (say) the ten of spades: the others see it and know it has been played. The proposition "the ten of spades has been played" is known through sense, not inferred, but itself the basis of inferences (he hasn't the knave, etc.). I want to get the exact difference between knowing and seeing. The relation between them is causal: seeing is part cause of knowing. In knowing, there is more and less than in seeing. There is less because of analysis: we isolate the card from its background, and we isolate what marks it as the ten of spades from other characters-size, dirt, etc. There is more because of associations: we classify the card by suit and number, which is a matter of association. Association and seeing is cause of knowing. I know that I see the ten of spades, and I can know that I know this. How do these two bits of knowledge differ? To know I see it is (as commonly meant) the same as to know it is there. To know I know it is there is to notice other sensible facts, e.g. words. Do I know a relation between seeing and knowing, otherwise than by the usual methods of establishing causal laws? I.e. if I say, the seeing causes the knowing, does cause here have some sense other than invariable correlation? Perhaps. If we suppose that I can see a relation between seeing and knowing, it gives us a basis of datum for theory of knowledge. If not, all causal relations between sensible facts and knowledge of them are difficult inferences. If some causal relations are directly observable, it greatly simplifies matters. I think I can know that the fact caused the words, as immediately as I know the occurrence of the fact and of the words. I see a cat and say "cat". Why did you say "cat"? Because I saw a cat. I am sure this answer is right; it does not depend upon multiplicity of similar instances. Yet when one thinks of the physiological complication of the passage from seeing to

...J3

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saying, this seems impossible. We shall have to suppose a will to say Wh' lows immediately on the seeing, wherever afferent and efferent nerve; lU tch fol, If anyth'mg ana1ogous to a causal relation can be perceived, what is to eet. b posed to happen in the perception? e sup~ It is obvious that we perceive stimulus-response relations when they ar . e Wtth' one sensible whole; we perceive shapes and sequences. ln Perhaps we may assume that a relation between sensibles can only be perc . when it lies within one sensible. "One" sensible can't be defined exactry-th;iv~q . . b etween sense an d.imme d'iate memory is . one of degree; so is the li .d1stmcuon the field of vision. !Utt of · We must say, then, that when a causal relation is perceived, it is within . one spec10us present. Take a simpler phenomenon than talking: you are hurt and cry out. The a· 'th' . pin an d th e cry are w1 m one specious present, and we seem to see a connection between them. We may have a dry throat and not make a noise, but there is an observable phenomenon called the will to cry out; it is this that we see to b ~~~~~ e Speaking is merely a development of this crying out. I assume, henceforth, that, on some occasions on which two events A and B happen successively within one specious present, we can perceive a relation between them which may be expressed by "A causes B". If this is to be useful, we must perceive the relation as holding, not merely between the particulars A and B, but between their characters: "Things like A cause things like B." And I think cause, in this sense, must not involve invariable sequence; it may involve that A is a necessary, not sufficient, antecedent of B. Perhaps this will give a basis for induction, since, in any case of sequence, there may be a finite antecedent probability that the sequence is causal. Certainly it clears up the relation of sense to sense-knowledge. An event A occurs, and then an event B, the latter being a belief or statement; I examine the sequence, and see that A causes B, or, at least, part of A causes part of B. The part of B which is caused is knowledge of the part of A which causes it. Wherever this causal relation exists, the caused knowledge is an empirical premiss, and its cause is a datum. Thus [cf. page 668: 27-669: 3]. Data = Facts which cause belief in themselves Df. A belief (or statement) "expresses" a fact when the whole fact causes the whole belief (or statement) Df. A fact proves a form of words when it causes it, and disproves it when it causes an incompatible form of words. There is a special kind of knowledge, that caused by what it knows. Inference from facts to facts. If we can see, on a particular occasion, that the character of A causes the character of B, then, when something having the character of A recurs, we can infer something with the character of B.

671

:NoW consider perception of relations. Take, as the most obvious case, spatial ·ons The relations we perceive relate shapes as universals. 1

~·o·~

A encloses B, B encloses C, therefore A encloses C.

The relation "enclosing" is given in sense, and its transitiveness, which we see in the particular case, we see to be general. 'fhe same applies to "A before B, B before C, therefore A before C." This is a better instance, since enclosing might be logical (a C p). Here we infer an atomic

fact, "A before C". It seems, therefore, that knowledge is not derived solely from pure logic and pure sense, but also from synthetic knowledge concerning universals. Very Kantian. Suppose P = precedes, and we have aPb. bPc, and a, b are in one specious present, b, c in another. How do we know aPc? This is a crucial question. (If a and c were in one specious present, we could perceive aPc.) It seems to me we know a great deal about R pis to mean "wholly precedes". I.e. if aPb, a stops before b begins. If we assume everything is in time, a is simultaneous with b.

=.a(-'-- P-'--P)b.

Put S =-'-- P-'--P

Df.

Put Instant= ,U {a, beµ. :ia,b. aSb: x ~eµ. :ix. (g:a). a eµ. ~ (aSx)} --+

A

--+

=µ{aeµ. :la.µ C S'a:µ C S'x. :ix.xeµ} =,ll{aeµ. ""a.µ C S'a} =,U{µ = p'S"µ}

m

µTv. = :µ, vElnstant: (g:a, b). aeµ. be v. aPb

i.e.

T = ( €; P) t Instant

Df.

What qualities must P have if Te Ser? ISt

v~einstant, i.e. Caa).S'a~ev, i.e. (g:a,b).~(aSb). :. We need g!P.

2nd Tc::. J requires µ, v Elnstant. a eµ. be v. aPb. :i . µof. v. We have (given the hypothesis)~ (aSb). ~ (bSa). S =

S.

:. a~eS'b :. ~ (µ C S'b) :. b~ eµ.

3rd

T 2 C::. T requires A.,µ, v e Instant. a e A. beµ . c e v . aPb. bPc. :i . aPc,

i.e. P 2 C::. P. [This is sufficient, not necessary]. 4th Te connex, i.e. µ, v Elnstant. :i : µ Tv. v. µ = v. v. vTµ, i.e.µ, veinstant.µ =f- v. :i: (g:a, b).aeµ. be v. a(P t.:JP)b, i.e.µ, vElnstant:aeµ.be v. :ia,b·aSb: :i .µ = v.

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Hypothesis gives aEµ. ::Ja. vC S'a. :. vCp'S"µ Cµ. Similarlyµ C

APPENDIX XIV MANUSCRIPTS PRELIMINARY TO PAPER 42

v.

:. µ = v.

Sp= --'-P--'-P Inp = [l{µ = p' Sp"µ} TP = (E';P)tinP

ary of the time-series

p =wholl~ precedes Df =.!-p--'-P Sp -+ Df -"( µ =p'S"µ) Jnp-µ Df. = cE';P)tinp

Hence g!P. P 2 C P. ::J. TE Ser. Can this be right? Put

surn rn

r:p

Df

Df

'fhen f- : p 2 C P. ::J . TP ESer

Df.

r. TPCJ, i.e. µ,vElnp.aEµ.bEv.aPb.::J.µof.v.

r-.A-Elnp f-: g!P. ::J. V-Elnp

Now aPb. ::J .-(aSb). ::J .b-Eµ. :. µof. v.

f-:P= P. ::J .Inp= A

T/CTP' i.e. A.,µ,vElnp.aEA.bEµ.cEv,aPb.bPc.

f-: µ E Inp.

2.

673

::J. (ax, z). x EA,. z Ev. xPz. P 2 C P is sufficient.

= .- µ =

P"µ u P"µ

f-:µElnp. ::J .Ptµ CJ

f-. Pts'Inp CJ.

3. A.,µ Elnp. A, of.µ. ::J. A.(Tp lJ Tp)µ, i.e. ::J. (ax, y). x d .y Eµ. x(P lJ fi)y, i.e. A.,µElnp:XEA.yEµ. ::Jx,y·xSy: ::J .A=µ which is true.

To prove that, with suitable hypothesis, 3: !Inp, put µ =

~· S'x.

'Then µ EInp if - µ = P"µ u P"µ. ~

~

-+

We have P"µ C P" S'x C - µ

We have A-ElnP" Do we have V-Elnp?

(1)

If VE Inp, p' S"V = V. :. (x). S'x = V :. (x,y). - (xPy) :. P =A.

a Eµ . aPb . ::J . b EP" S'x. ::J . b - E µ

Thus we need g!P to exclude VE Inp. But if P =A, TP =A and TP ESer.

aPb. bEµ. ::J. a-Eµ, i.e. P"µ C- µ

(2)

- µ = - S'x u P" S'x. Thus it remains to prove - S'x u P" S'x C P"µ u P"µ

2

Thus f- : P C P. ::J . TP E Ser. Suppose P = P. Then S = --'- P.

- S'x C P'x u P'x and x Eµ, :. - S'x C P"µ u P"µ .....

2

We have P CP. :. PIPCP :. XEC'P.::J.xPx.::J.-(xSx).

--+

.....

----+ --+

(3)

----+ --+

P" S'x C P"minp' S'x. ::J. minp' S'x EInp.

:. C'P= V. ::J. (x). -(xSx). Thus hypothesis required is: successors of contemporaries of x are successors of initial contemporaries of x.

Also XE C'P. xPy. ::J. P'x = P'y. In that case, Inp = A. tr!InP. ::J :. (aµ).µ= p'S"µ

The hypothesis P" S'x C P"(S'x-P" S'x) can be put more simply.

::J : . (trµ) : . a Eµ . =" : b E µ . ::J b • aSb

This hypothesis is x(SIP)b. ::J 6 • Ctra). xSa. aPb. - x(SIP)a

::J : . (trµ) : . a, b Eµ . ::J a, b • aSb : . b Eµ . ::J b • aSb : ::J a . a Eµ

If xPb, this is obvious (a= x). Therefore add xSb to the hypothesis. [bPx is impossible, since, assuming P 2 C P, it gives x(SIP)x]

::J :. (aµ):. a E µ. a(P lJ P)b. ::J a,b. b- Eµ:.a - Eµ. ::J a. (ab). bE µ . b(P lJ P)a --+

~

--+

~

i.e. a Eµ. ::J. P'a u P'a C- µ:a - Eµ. ::J. tr!µ n (P'a u P'a) Put P t:.JP= Q. Then aEµ. ::J. Q'a C- µ :a-Eµ. ::J. tr!µn Q'a -+

or aEµ.=. Q'aC-µ. :. Qf µCJ, i.e. PfµCJ. Also µ C Q"µ. Thus - µ = Q"µ.

Now put Q = PtS'x. Then x(SIP)b. xSb. =. bE G'Q. Hence the hypothesis becomes bEG'Q. ::J 6 • (aa). aQb. a-E G'Q i.e. bEG'Q.::J 6 .bEQ"B'Q i.e. G'Q C Q" B'Q or G'Q = Q" B'Q

This nearly involves Q Econnex. It requires a group of events such that all others precede or follow some of the group.

[i.e., among the events contemporary with a given event, all that have predecessors follow events that have no predecessors in the group of contemporaries.]

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Or, writing Px for Q, G'Px = i\"B'Px. ::i. S'x-G'Pxelnp. Also

xeS'x-G'Px.

Now

Pts'lnpC:: J, .. Pxc:: J, since xes'Inp.

Thus hypothesis required is only

This hypothesis gives TP E Ser . C 'P = s'In P. PC:: J . P 2 C:: P We do not have Pe connex; this is the reason for constructing TP.

Colours. We perceive facts about universals. Take the series of colours of the rainbow. We "see" that neighbouring colours are more similar than distant ones. This applies not only to the actual patches of colour, but to their shades, i.e. to the universals of which they are instances.

Sounds. The same thing applies to the pitch of a note. We can "see" that a semi-tone is a smaller interval than a tone. These are the things Wittgenstein calls "grammar".

General propositions. To meet the finitist case, we ought to analyze "all men are mortal." The fact that the number of men is finite (if it is) is irrelevant. Suppose the men are A, B, C, ... Z, and we know of each that he is mortal. To get "all men are mortal" we need "Everything is A, B, C, ... Z or not a man." This can't be got by enumeration. Propositions about "all men" involve infinity just as much as propositions about "all numbers". For the moment, I am not concerned with knowing "all men are mortal" but with understanding it. I maintain we can understand it if we know the definition of man and mortal, without instances. To understand (x). i/Jx, it is not necessary to know the list of x's. We can save something of empiricism by enlarging our conception of a datum. Given e.g. three colours side by side in the rainbow, we can analyze out not only the particulars there existing but the universals and their relations, which are in

APPENDIX XIV MANUSCRIPTS PRELIMINARY TO PAPER 42

675

e sensible fact. We can "see" that the particulars are "instances", i.e. that their thlations are due to relations of their universals; and then we directly know a re .. neral propos1tton. ge We see that in the scale of similarities green is between yellow and blue, and then we know that this is true in every instance. We must hold that these relations of universals are part of the sensible fact. '[his saves data, and yet allows inference and general knowledge.

Annotation

1 Things That Have Moulded Me : 8 From the age of eleven, when I began the study of Euclid In the first 5 volume of his Autobiography Russell elaborates: "At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the fifth proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered difficult, but I had found no difficulty whatever. This was the first time it had dawned on me that I might have some intelligence. From that moment until Whitehead and I finished Principia Mathematica, when I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest, and my chief source of happiness" (1967, 36; 1967a, 37-8). 5: 24-5 fifteen ... no fact seemed indubitable except consciousness He actually recorded this sentiment on 31 July 1888 when he was sixteen: "consciousness is undeniable, whatever else may be attacked" (Russell 1983, 19). 5: 28 Mill's Logic John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) published his System of Logic in 1843; his final revisions were included in the edition of 1872. Mill argued that "the foundation of all sciences, even deductive and demonstrative sciences, is Induction", and, consequently, that the claim that mathematical truths are necessary and certain "is an illusion" (Bk. n, Chap. v, §1). 5: 34 Dr. Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was Russell's teacher, friend, and collaborator on Principia Mathematica (1910-13). 6: 4 In 1902 I wrote "The Free Man's Worship" This essay first appeared in The Independent Review for December 1903. 6: 5 essays (one on mathematics and one on history) "The Study of Mathematics" was published in The New Quarterly for November 1907; "On History" in The Independent Review for July 1904. 6: 40-1 In 1920 I spent five weeks in Soviet Russia Russell accompanied a Labour Party delegation as an unofficial member; the trip took most of May and June. Before going, Russell was inclined to sympathize with the Bolsheviks, but after seeing their experiment at first hand, he wrote The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) in which he broke with them decisively. 7: 5-6 I went to China, where I spent nearly a year Russell sailed for China on 22 October 1920 and left for home on 7 July 1921, reaching London on 27

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August. On this trip he was accompanied by Dora Black, who became h' .,. , IS secon d w11e m 1921.

2 How I Came By My Creed 5-7 My father and mother ... until I grew up Russell's father was John Russell (1842-1876), the eldest son of Lord John Russell and his second wife Lady Frances Elliot; after the elevation of his father to the peerage as the firs~ Earl Russell, he was known by the courtesy title, Viscount Amberley. Russell's mother, Kate Stanley (1842-1874), was the seventh child of Lord and Lady Stanley of Alderley. After Amberley's death, the elder Russells had Bertrand and his brother declared wards of Chancery, with themselves as guardians and afterwards they seldom mentioned his parents in his presence except in ~ tone of voice which hinted at scandal. In the 193os Russell and his third wife Patricia, edited The Amberley Papers (1937); these papers make it clear that th; Amberleys held advanced opinions, which is presumably the reason the Russells spoke of them with bated breath. II: 8 I lived with my grandmother This is his paternal grandmother, Lady John Russell, as she was always called. See MacCarthy and Russell l9IO. II: 17-18 I could study the tables for finding Easter Russell is referring to the several tables printed near the beginning of The Book of Common Prayer: "A Table to Find Easter-Day", "Another Table to Find Easter Till the Year 1899 Inclusive", "A Table of the Moveable Feast for Fifty-Two Years", "A Table of the Moveable Feast, According to the Several Days that Easter Can Possibly Fall Upon", "Table to Find Easter, From the Year 1900, to 2199 Inclusive", "General Tables for Finding the Dominica! or Sunday Letter, and the Places of the Golden Numbers in the Calendar", and "The Golden Numbers". 11: 18 Golden Numbers These numbers are important in calculating the date of Easter. A golden number is the number of any year in the Metonic lunar cycle of 19 years. A Metonic lunar cycle, named for its discoverer, Meton, a Greek astronomer, is a cycle of 19 Julian years, closely approximating 235 lunations, in which the moon returns to nearly the same apparent position with regard to the sun, so that the new and full moons occur at the same dates in the corresponding year of each cycle. According to The Book of Common Prayer: "To find the Golden Number, or Prime, add 1 to the Year of our Lord, and then divide by 19; the Remainder, if any, is the Golden Number; but if nothing remaineth, then 19 is the Golden Number." II: 19 Sunday Letters The Book of Common Prayer: "To find the Dominica! or Sunday Letter, according to the Calendar, until the Year 1799 inclusive, add to the Year of our Lord its Fourth Part, omitting Fractions; and also the Number 1: Divide the Sum by 7; and if there is no Remainder, then A is the Sunday Letter: But if any Number remaineth, then the Letter standing against

II:

ANNOTATIONS TO PAPER 2

681

that Number in the small annexed Table is the Sunday Letter." The annexed table provides a one-to-one correspondence between o-6 and AGFEDCB. "For the next Century, that is, from the Year 1800 till the Year 1899 inclusive, add to the current Year only its Fourth Part, and then divide by 7, and proceed as in the last Rule." This last rule seems also to work for the twentieth century. Having determined both the Golden Number and the Sunday Letter for any given year, the date of Easter in that year is easily determined from the tables provided. : a Swiss Protestant tutor It does not now seem possible to identify this 11 22 person. 11 : 43 the reading of Mill's autobiography See Paper 26 (183) for a longer account of this experience. : 12 6-7 under the influence of McTaggart ... a Hegelian John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1866-1925) was one of Russell's teachers at Cambridge. "McTaggart was a philosopher some six years senior to me and throughout his life an ardent disciple of Hegel. He influenced his contemporaries very considerably, and I for a time fell under his sway" (Russell 1956, 22). : 12 9 G. E. Moore George Edward Moore (1873-1958) came up to Cambridge two years after Russell to study classics. His brilliance was quickly noted and he became both a member of the circle to which Russell belonged and Russell's closest associate in philosophy. Russell credits Moore with leading him out of the Hegelian morass into which he had followed McTaggart. Moore "took the lead in rebellion, and I followed, with a sense of emancipation .... With a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist even if no one was aware of them, and also that there is a pluralistic timeless world of Platonic ideas" (Schilpp 1944, 12). 12: 10 Two winters in Berlin I devoted ••. to economics Russell and his first wife, Alys, spent from January to March 1895, and November and December of the same year, in Berlin studying the German social democratic movement; it led to the publication of his first book, German Social Democracy, in 1896. 12: 11 I lectured at the Johns Hopkins University and Bryn Mawr Russell and Alys visited the United States from October to December 1896; at each of these schools he delivered a set of lectures on the foundations of geometry. 12: 12-13 I spent ... time among art connoisseurs in Florence Russell refers here to the time he spent with his brother-in-law, Bernard Berenson, the art critic, at his villa in Florence. Berenson was the second husband of Mary, the older sister of Russell's first wife, Alys. 12: 13 I read Pater From February 1891 to March 1902 Russell kept a list of books read on a prepared form entitled "What Shall I Read?" which has now been published in his 1983. There are six entries for Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894), the English essayist and critic, recording five titles read. 12: 13 and Flaubert "What Shall I Read?" records five titles by the French

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novelist, Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). 18-22 My brother ... Euclid started with axioms See As: 8. 12: 40- l Faust ..• Mephistopheles first appears •.. form of a poodle Goethe r976, 28ff. 12: 42-3 After Dr. Whitehead .•• finished Principia Mathematica Th finished writing the book in l9IO, but the printing of it was not complet ey until shortly before Volume 3 was published in 1913. It is to these years thect Russell is referring. at

ANNOTATIONS TO PAPER 3

length every motion, but only such as were conspicuous for excellence or notorious for infamy. This I regard as history's highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds" (r942, 3.6s).

12:

13: IO-II political speaking ••. Free Trade and Votes for Women For a ful 1 account of his efforts in these causes, see Parts IV and v of his r985. 14: 39 Saint Paul in the famous passage on charity See Corinthians 1 13: 13: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest 0~ these is charity." 16: 2s Kellogg Peace Pacts The Kellogg-Briand Pact, officially known as the Pact of Paris, was signed on 27 August 1928. Its more familiar name honours the two men chiefly responsible for negotiating it, Frank Billings Kellogg (18s6-1937), the United States Secretary of State, and Aristide Briand (l86 2 1932), the French Foreign Minister. This multilateral pact condemned war and committed its signatories to a peaceful settlement of their differences; its singular deficiency was that it provided no means of enforcement against those who violated it. 18: S Stalin Joseph Stalin (1879-19s3), political alias of Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, was the dictator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from about 1926 until his death. 18: lS Loyola St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1ss6) was a Spanish soldier who developed a profound interest in religion; he founded the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits, in lS40; this new religious order was devoted to the conversion of infidels and led the Roman Catholic battle against the Protestant Reformation. 18: 17 Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1s36) was perhaps the Renaissance's greatest scholar; he is best known for In Praise of Folly, which, by satirical argument, makes a plea for a non-theological Christianity. Russell is referring here to his attempts, which were largely successful, to steer a middle course between the competing theological camps of his time. At first he favoured the Protestant Reformation, but he later opposed it and devoted his efforts to an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church. 18: 42 Cromwell Oliver Cromwell (1s99-16s8) led the army of the Puritans to victory over the royalists in the English Civil War. Once in power he abolished the House of Lords and the Church of England, and in l6S3 dissolved the Long Parliament by force. Proclaimed Lord Protector of England in l6S3 by his army officers, he ruled as a dictator until his death. I9: I I Tacitus Cornelius Tacitus (c.ss-c.IIS), wrote a history of Rome covering the years 14-96 A.D., most of which survives. "My purpose is not to relate at

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3 My Religious Reminiscences 8- 9 the guardianship of two friends ••• shared his opinions They were Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922), one of Russell's godfathers (the other being John Stuart Mill), and later the founder of the Doves Press, noted for the superlative quality of its typography and design and production; and Douglas A. Spalding (1840-1877), a scientist who studied instinct in animals, particularly chickens, and who had joined the Amberley household as a tutor for Russell's older brother, Frank. See Russell r967, I7 (r967a, IO-II), for his account of the court proceedings. 21 : 3o an Agnostic tutor This was John F. Ewen, whom Russell described as "an agnostic, and an acquaintance of (Edward) Aveling and Mrs. Aveling (Marx's daughter). It was from him, in that connection, that I first heard of Marx. It was also from him, not in the same connection, that I first heard of non-Euclidean geometry. I liked him very much-more than any of my many tutors. I imagine he left because he was suspected of undermining my faith" (note appended to a letter from Ewen, 3 Jan. 1890). 2 1: 43-22: l she had subjected an uncle of mine ••• same topic Amberley had two brothers, William and Rollo, one of whom is referred to here; Russell did not include their surviving papers in The Amberley Papers (1937). 22: 12 a very orthodox Swiss tutor It does not now seem possible to identify this person. 22: 26 "Greek exercises" Russell included a selection of these in his r959; they have been published in their entirety in his r983. 22: 29-42 Taking free will first ... what he would do Russell r983, 6-7; Russell alters the punctuation considerably here. 23: 9-IO Mill's Logic and Political Economy For his Logic, see As: 28. The Bertrand Russell Archives includes seven sheets of notes on Mill's Logic from Russell's early days, but none on the other book. 23: 18 Milman's History of Christianity Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) was an English poet and historian. Russell is probably referring to The History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire (1840); Milman also wrote History of Latin Christianity (18s4-ss) in six volumes. In "What Shall I Read?" (see A12: 13) he records re-reading Milman's History during October 1892. 23: 18 Gibbon Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) is the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88). Gibbon has nine entries in "What Shall I Read?" (See A12: 13.) During these sessions Russell finished

21

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reading Decline and Fall; the earlier parts were apparently read before h began keeping his list. e 23: 18 Comte Isidore Auguste Marie Fran\:ois Comte (1798-1857) was th founder of positivism. e 23: 18 Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is the author of The Divine Comedy. Durin 1892 Russell read "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso"; presumably "Inferno" w g read before he began keeping "What Shall I Read?" as 23: 19 Machiavelli Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian statesman and political philosopher; he is the author of The Prince. 23: 19 Swift Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was the English satirist who wrote Gulliver's Travels (1726). In "Disgust and Its Antidote" (r957c), one of a series of talks entitled "Books that Influenced Me in Youth" Russell tells of the enormous impact that Swift's satires and science fiction had upon his imagination when he first encountered them at the age of fifteen. See Russell r9 6Ia, 31-2. 23: 19 Carlyle During the period in which he recorded his reading, Russell noted that he had read five books by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). In his 1957d he informs us that earlier, in adolescence, he had read a great deal of Carlyle: "I thought his positive doctrines foolish, but his virulent denunciations delighted me. I enjoyed it when he described the population of England as 'twenty-seven millions, mostly fools'" (Russell 196Ib, 29). And in "My Mental Development" Russell wrote of his adolescence: "I read a great deal of Carlyle, and admired Past and Present, but not Sartor Resartus. 'The Everlasting Yea' seemed to me sentimental nonsense" (Schilpp 1944, 8). 23: 19 Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was obviously a favourite of Russell; during the period of recorded-reading his name appears fourteen times; only Shakespeare (eighteen) and Turgenev (seventeen) score higher. In "The Importance of Shelley" (1957a), his first broadcast talk in "Books that Influenced Me in Youth'', Russell credits Shelley's poetry with emancipating his imagination. "Here, I felt, was a kindred spirit, gifted as I never hoped to be with the power of finding words as beautiful as his thoughts" (Russell 196Ia, 12). 23: 23 Ibsen Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian dramatist. During the period of "What Shall I Read?" Russell read Ibsen on thirteen occasions. In "Revolt in the Abstract" (1957b), another in the series "Books that Influenced Me in Youth", Russell has a difficult time recalling the effect that Ibsen had on him, because he ceased to admire him later, after he came to realize that Ibsen's view of revolt was essentially juvenile. Ibsen assumed a stable society within which his characters revolted against conventional morality: "This is all very fine if it is seen as the rare exception in a stable society. But when it is regarded as a general rule for everybody to follow it leads either to disaster or to the establishment of a tyranny in which only a few people at the top can, in Ibsen's words, live their own life in their own way" (Russell 196Ia, 25).

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Shaw Russell knew George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) for over fifty but they were never close friends. "What Shall I Read?" records Shaw ~~~ . . dings during three months. Russell thought that the Fabian Society, of a re · essence "th e wors h'1p of th e which Shaw was one of the founders, had as its State": it was this that led "Shaw into what I thought an undue to.lerance of Mussolini and Hitler, and ultimately into a rather absurd adulauon of the Soviet Government" (Russell 1967, 78; 1967a, 107). . Walt Whitman Whitman (1819-1894) was an intimate friend of the Z3· 24 . d . h . .. Pearsall Smith family; so Alys introduced Russell to him urmg t eir v1s1t to he United States in 1896. "The first place we visited was Walt Whitman's thouse in Camden, N.J.; she had known him well, and I greatiy a d mire . d h'1m "

23 z3:

(Schilpp 1944, 11). z,3:24 Nietzsche For an account of Russell's opinion of Friedrich Nietzsche (l844-1900), see Paper 57 . . Green Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882) taught at Oxford from 1860 unz3. 35 . . ti! his death; he was elected Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy m 1878. Green was extraordinarily successful in persuading some of his ablest pupils that idealism was the philosophy most worth defending. His major writings were published only after his death. After reading Green's ethical writings, Russell wrote an essay, "On the Foundations of Ethics", for his first wife; it was published for the first time in his 1983. z, 3: 35 Caird Edward Caird (1835-1908) was a tutor at Oxford from 1864 until i866 when he was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow; in 1893 he returned to Oxford as Master of Balliol in succession to Benjamin Jowett, an office he held until his death. Although he was sympathetic to Hegel's philosophy, his idealism was more strongly influenced by Kant, whom he regarded as his master, than by Hegel. : 23 35 Bradley Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) developed his own distinctive version of idealism in a series of important books. His fellowship at Merton College required no teaching, so his influence was largely through his published writings. Russell paid a great deal of attention to Bradley's writings, occasionally replying to them in print. 23: 36 Bosanquet Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923) taught briefly at Oxford, but his influence came mainly through his books, especially his Logic (1888), which was assigned to pupils for some three decades. Russell read it as a student and admired it for a time, but his considered opinion of Bosanquet was not high. See Russell 1988, Papers 14 and 15, for two reviews of books by Bosanquet. 23: 39 Henry Sidgwick Sidgwick (1838-1900) was one of Russell's teachers at Cambridge. Ethics was the subject in which he exerted most influence; his Methods of Ethics (1874) went through seven editions, and was read by nearly every philosophy student in Great Britain between 1874 and 1910. 23: 39-40 James Ward Ward (1843-1925) was also one of Russell's teache~s at

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Cambridge; it was he who suggested to Russell that he write his fellow . dissertation on non-Euclidean geometry, since this topic combined both ship ematics and philosophy, Russell's two areas of study at Cambridge. rnath, 23: 40 Stout George Frederick Stout (1860-1944) was also one of R usseU's teachers at Cambridge. In a letter to John Wright of 5 June 1948 Russell h this to say of Stout: "As for Stout's philosophical views, the most signific act . I remem b er 1s · h'1s saymg, · t h mg a ft er rea d'mg A ppearance and Realit thant 'Bradley has done all that is humanly possible in ontology'. I got the gy, at eneral impression that he was Hegelian to the extent that Bradley was." 23: 40 Mackenzie John Stuart Mackenzie (1860-1935) was at Cambridge du, ing the time Russell was a pupil, but Russell seems never to have had instr r Uction from him, although, as he notes here, he was examined by Mackenzie Mackenzie's interests in philosophy were largely confined to ethics and socia; philosophy. 24: 4 "not intellectually corrigible" Bradley 1893, 545; 1930, 483. "Still the difference drawn between absolute and finite truth must none the less be upheld. For the former, in a word, is not intellectually corrigible." 24: 18-22 "Religion", says Bradley, "is practical, ..• compromise." Bradley 1893, 439-40; 1930, 389. 24: 25 "a personal God is, in a sense, a contradiction in terms" Not found in Mackenzie's early published works. 24: 40 he called himself an atheist In his last book, The Nature of Existence (1921, 1927) McTaggart argued that there is no God, either in the capacity of creator or controller. See his 1927, 185-6. This position is consistent with his earlier writings. 24: 41-2 believed in personal immortality ••• logical demonstration McTaggart offered such a demonstration in his 1927, 187. In earlier writings he had only promised a demonstration. 25: 20-2 Henry Sidgwick .•• to learn Semitic languages Sidgwick himself gives a different reason for the study of these languages: "In 1862 I was powerfully impressed by Renan's Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse, and derived from Renan's eloquent persuasions the conviction that it was impossible really to understand at first hand Christianity as a historical religion without penetrating more deeply the mind of the Hebrews and of the Semitic stock from which they sprang. This led to a very important and engrossing employment of a great part of my spare time in the study of Arabic and Hebrew" (Sidgwick 1906, 36-7). 25: 27 Strindberg August Strindberg (1849-1912) was a Swedish writer, now best known for his plays. 25: 28 Oscar Wilde Wilde (1856-1900) is famous for his wit, for his plays, and for his novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891); he was a prominent member of the "aesthetic movement". 25: 35 Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) wrote and published the first

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volume of Das Kapital (1867) in the 1860s. . Dostoievsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoievsky (1821-1881) wrote both 25 35 ' Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Idiot (1868) during this decade. : Huxley Thomas He~ry Huxle~ (1825-18~5) wa.s a biologist who took up 25 39 Darwin's theory of evolut10n when 1t was published m 1859 and wrote extensively in defense of it. : 39 Newman John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was an Anglican divine who 25 was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845 and made a cardinal in 1379. During the 1860s he was engaged in defending his decision to become a Catholic. : 25 39-40 the authors of Essays and Reviews This famous exposition of liberal Christianity was published in 1860, and according to Evelyn Abbott, in his entry for Jowett in the Dictionary of National Biography, its publication "created a panic in the church". Its authors were: Frederick Temple (18211902), later (1885-96) Bishop of London; Rowland Williams (1817-1870), who was prosecuted and suspended from his clerical duties for one year, but later re-instated; Henry Bristow Wilson, who suffered the same fate as Williams; Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (1817-1878), the only lay contributor; Mark Pattison (1813-1884), an Anglican divine who gradually became a sceptical deist, had a long and successful career as a teacher at Oxford; and Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), then Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford and later Master of Balliol College. 25: 41 "Metaphysical Society" This society was founded on 2 June 1869 and held monthly meetings until it was disbanded on 16 November 1880. Limited to a maximum membership of forty, it counted among its members most of the leading intellectuals and personalities in Great Britain, ranging from T. H. Huxley to Cardinal Manning (like Newman a convert to Catholicism) by way of Gladstone. A week before it met a paper would be circulated and discussion would centre upon it. If Grant Duff is to be taken literally, a proposition was proposed at the end summarizing the discussion and a vote taken. 25: 42-3 Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff (1829-1906) was a leading Liberal member of Parliament from 1857 until he broke with Gladstone in 1881 over Home Rule for Ireland. From 1881 to 1886 he was Governor of Madras. He is perhaps best known for his diaries, which are a rich source of anecdote and social comment on the last decades of Victoria's reign. 26: 1 "Yes, we had a very good majority." No source found.

4 Events, Matter, and Mind 30: 5 Berkeley said that matter was nothing but ideas A central tenet of the son of empiricism George Berkeley (1685-1753) defended is that to be, in the case of material objects, is to be perceived. Material objects, therefore, are

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bundles of sensible qualities; they continue to exist when no finite m· . . . Ind IS perce1vmg them, Berkeley argued, because they are always perceived by G 30: 7-9 Dr. Johnson was asked ... "I disprove it thus." Samuel Joh Od, nson (1709-1784) was a man of letters and a lexicographer. The incident to wh· Russell refers is recorded in James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson: "A~ch we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bish er Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and thop every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed that, though we are at satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall for e the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty fo~c~ against a large stone, till he rebounded from it-'I refute it thus"' (rr 7). 30: 13 Einstein's Theory of Relativity Russell discusses this theory and its consequences for human knowledge in The ABC of Relativity (1925). 30: 18-20 the work of Rutherford •.. a sort of solar system Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), after 1931 Baron Rutherford of Nelson, of Cambridge was a New Zealand physicist who he taught at McGill (1898-1907), Manchester (1907-19), and Cambridge (1919-37). In 1908 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Two years later Rutherford's team bombarded gold foil with alpha particles and observed the resulting scattering patterns; study of these patterns led him in l9II to formulate the model of the atom to which Russell refers. See his 19n.

5 Had Newton Never Lived 34: 8-9 Clerk Maxwell showed that there ought to be such waves James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)was the Scottish physicist who discovered the laws of electro-magnetism. In 1861 he proposed that light consisted of electromagnetic waves; and, falling in with a long tradition, he assumed that the medium through which light was transmitted was the ether. 34: 9 Hertz actually made them Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894), a German physicist, was the first (in 1885) to broadcast and receive radio waves. 34: 14-15 Archimedes ... the last of the great men of Greece Archimedes (2901280-212/zrr B.c.), a mathematician and inventor, is known for many discoveries, including: the relation between the surface and the volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder, the Archimedes screw, and the Archimedes principle of hydrostatics. 34: 18-19 Dr. Whitehead .•. "the century of genius" Whitehead gave this title to Chapter III of Science and the Modern W&rld (1925). 35: ro In France ••• the hostility of Descartes' followers Russell is probably referring to the French scientists who undertook to develop the physics outlined by Descartes; chief among them is Jacques Rohault (1620-1672). 35: 13 Marchionesses translated his Principia Newton's Principia was translated into French by Madame la Marquise du Chastellet in an edition pub-

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Jished in 1756. Kepler had discovered ... how they move round the sun Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was the astronomer who, using the precise astronomical observations ofTycho Brahe (1546-1601), discovered that the planets revolve around the sun in elliptical orbits. : Leibniz Russell alludes here to the dispute between Newton and Gottfried 36 3 Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and their respective followers over priority in the discovery of the differential calculus. It seems clear that the two men discovered the calculus independently, but Leibniz published first, which led a follower of Newton, who had hesitated to publish his own version, to charge Leibniz with plagiarism. Leibniz in turn charged Newton with plagiarism, and the battle was joined. There are many accounts of this controversy: a clear and succinct one is Wolf 1935, 215-7. 6: 3 3 Huygens Christian Huygens (1629-1695) was a Dutch polymath, who, among many important discoveries, developed the theory of light. When he and Newton met in London their discussions led to a disagreement over the theory of gravity. 36: rr The experimental work of Faraday Michael Faraday (1791-1867), an English physicist and chemist, was the first to demonstrate by ingenious experiments that an electric current can be used as a source of power. By introducing "lines of force" and "fields of force", which surround wires carrying electricity, he helped prepare the way for Clerk Maxwell's development of the theory of electro-magnetism. 36: 19-20 Alan Cobham flies to Australia Sir Alan John Cobham (18941973) was the British pilot who flew to Australia and back in 1926. 36: 20 Leonardo da Vinci Da Vinci (1452-1519) was a Florentine artist and inventor whose genius and vision in a broad range of fields is still acknowledged today. Russell is referring to his notebooks, which are filled with sketches for a wide variety of machines, including a flying machine. 37: 7-8 the Cavendish Laboratory This laboratory in Cambridge University, which was endowed by the family of the scientist Henry Cavendish (17311810), was, at the time Russell was writing, under the direction of Sir Ernest Rutherford. Many important scientific discoveries were made during his tenure.

s: _5 3 24

6 Einstein 40: 8 theories derived from Clerk Maxwell See A34: 8-9. 40: 8-rr The most notable ••• Michelson and Morley ... may be moving Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931), a German-born American physicist, and Edward William Morley (1838-1923), an American chemist, conducted their famous experiment in 1881 and repeated it in 1887. Using a special interferometer, they measured the velocity of light in the direction of the earth's motion through the hypothetical ether and at the same time its velocity per-

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pendicular to the earth's direction of motion. The two velocities were found be identical: there was no "ether drag". The theory of the ether did not to . th e1r . fi n d'mgs. survive 40: 12-14 the year 1905 ••• Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity Einst . first published the special theory in his 1905; for an English translation ein "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" in Lorentz et al., 1923 . ' see 40: 15 the Lorentz transformation In 1895 the Dutch physicist, Henrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928), demonstrated that the Michelson-Morley resuJ . . ts could b e reconc11ed with Maxwell's ether hypothesis by supposing that bod' 1es travelling through the ether are foreshortened in the direction of travel as function of their speed. This was later found to be a theoretical-and con~ firmed-consequence of Einstein's theory. The set of equations by which he made his demonstration are called "the Lorentz transformation". 40: 30 the General Theory of Relativity Einstein published this theory in his 1916; for an English translation, see "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" in Lorentz et al., 1923. 40: 35-6 it accounted for one known discrepancy By the end of the nineteenth century astronomers had noted a discrepancy in the perihelion of Mercury which could not be accounted for on Newtonian principles; Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted this anomaly as a relativistic effect. 40: 36-7 and predicted two others which were subsequently verified They are: (1) the deviation of light from a linear path in the presence of a strong gravitational field; and (2) the decreasing frequency of light from rapidly receding bright objects, which is called "spectral red-shift", since the decreasing frequency results in a shift of spectral lines into the lower, red regions of the spectrum. (1) was verified during a solar eclipse on 29 May 1919. Two British expeditions photographed the stars near the sun during a total eclipse on 29 May 1919 and verified Einstein's prediction that the stars' positions would be displaced by the gravitation effect of the sun. (2) was verified observationally by the American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953) in 1929. 41: 13-14 Heisenberg on the Quantum Theory Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976) was a German physicist who made many important contributions to quantum theory; he studied under Max Born in Gottingen, West Germany, and under Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. In 1927 he advanced his indeterminacy principle, which recognized the fundamental and inherent limitations of observation in scientific research. Russell discusses this principle in Paper 13. 41: 22-3 His earliest papers ••• Brownian movement See Einstein 1901 and 1906.

41: 27 Einstein's first papers on thermodynamics See Einstein 1902 and l902a.

41: 30-2 his explanation of the photoelectric effect ••. 1905 Russell is prob-

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ably referring to Einstein 1906a, in which he presents the work for which he was to receive the Nobel prize. : In a paper published in 1907 Russell probably has in mind Einstein 41 37 1907.

8-9 his work being completed by Debye Peter Joseph William Debye 41 3 (r884-1966) was a Dutch physical chemist and Nobel laureate, who spent much of his working life in Germany. Rejecting a Nazi demand that he become a German citizen, he took refuge in the United States. Russell is referring here to his theory of specific heats, which Max Born and Theodore von Karman developed. 41 : 39 and by Born and Karman five years later Max Born (1882-1970) was a Polish-born physicist and Nobel laureate; he reformulated key aspects of quantum theory with more accurate mathematical descriptions. A refugee from the Nazis in England during the war, he lectured at Cambridge and Edinburgh; he returned to Gottingen when the war was over. Theodore von Karman (1881-1963), an Hungarian research engineer, collaborated with Born between 1906 and 1912 on formulating a more general theory of specific heats than that of Debye. 42 : 3 His law of the photochemical equivalent Einstein established this law in his 1912. :

7 The Future of Science 47: 7 "Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em." Despite some changes in the wording, Russell seems to have Augustus De Morgan's version (1872) of this little poem in mind: "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, I And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. I And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; I While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on" (1872, 377). The original version of the poem is by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): "So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea I Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey, I And these have smaller Fleas to bite 'em, I And so proceed ad infinitum: I Thus ev'ry poet in his Kind, I Is bit by him that comes behind." On Poetry. A Rhapsody (1733), lines 341-6. 48: 40-1 Marx had formed his system ••• Origin of Species Even though the first volume of Das Kapital was not published until 1867, Marx had formulated his system by 1844, long before Darwin published his famous work in 1859.

8 Physics and Theology 53: IO-II in his chapter on the definition of reality Russell refers to Chapter XIII: "Reality", 273-92; "The Definition of Reality" occupies pages 282-9. 53: II-12 "Reality" ... peroration See Eddington 1928, 283: "In physics we can give a cold scientific definition of reality which is free from all sentimental

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mystification. But this in not quite fair-play, because the word 'reality' is erally used with the intention of evoking sentiment. It is a grand word for a genation." Peror53: 13-15 "The right honourable speaker ... [loud cheers]." Edd' Ingt on 1928, 283. 53: 20-1 the last quarter .•• to theology Russell is referring to Chapter . "Science and Mysticism", especially from page 209 to the end. xv. 53: 24-6 The last few chapters ••• the advocacy of free will Russell is £ ring to Chapters XI: "World Building"; xrr: "Pointer Readings"; XIII: "~eer­ ity"; XIV: "Causation"; xv: "Science and Mysticism", and "Conclusion". al53: 30 He believes that we have direct self-knowledge See Eddington 1 928 277: "Besides the direct knowledge contained in each self-knowing unit, th ere' is inferential knowledge. The latter includes our knowledge of the physical world." 53: 37-40 Eddington disagrees with neutral monism •.. or stuff See Eddington 1928, 280. 54: u-12 indeterminateness .•. individual atoms ••• free will See Eddington 1928, 3u-13. "I do not think that our decisions are precisely balanced on the conduct of certain key-atoms" (313). 54: 17-20 Eddington holds ... mechanically determined See Eddington 1928, 313-15. 54: 22-5 mind can exercise a selective action .•. deliberately rearrange See Eddington 1928, 63. 54: 33-4 this law makes the distinction between past and future See Eddington 1928, 67-8. 54: 35-7 He seems to accept .•. anything interesting See Eddington 1928, 86. 54: 37-9 He has apparently a God ••• forgotten all about it See Eddington 1928, 84-5 and 327-8.

9 Review of Sir Arthur Eddington 55: 19-20 Eddington divides the laws of Nature .•• laws See Eddington 1928, 244-6. 55: 22 chronotop The typescript clearly has this word, but it is not in Eddington nor in any other reference work consulted. What Eddington does in his book (pp. 230-7) is build up a space-time manifold by introducing certain relations and their relata, which together constitute the "basal structure". The choice of them determines "the identical laws, i.e. the laws obeyed as mathematical identities in virtue of the way in which the quantities obeying them are built" (1928, 244). Russell's "chronotop" is probably a neologism for "space-time", since "chronos" and "topos" are Greek words meaning "time" and "place" respectively.

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: _3 Maxwell and his celebrated equations See A34: 8-9. 6 7 ; : 1o-II Planck found out ••. which we call "h" See A14: 24. 6 : -13 The Quantum theory ••• by Bohr •.. structure of the atom See 56 12 A69: 4r. : 19 -21 the Principle oflndeterminacy-"a particle ••. both" See Heis56 enberg 1927, 177.

10 Review of Sir Arthur Eddington : 8 He does not claim any certainty for this theory See Eddington l933a, v-vi; l933b, vi. : 15-17 The book begins with a frontispiece ••• per second The photo57 graph is of Messier IOI in Ursa Major; the other data Russell reports is contained in the caption. 57 : 23-6 the original Einsteinian law of gravitation ... amended to See Eddington l933a, 21-2; l933b, 30-2. : 57 36-58: I Sir Arthur thinks ••• one part of the universe to any other See Eddington l933a, 73-5; l933b, 104-6. 8: 5 l-2 Sir Arthur, as usual, gives an admirable illustration See Eddington 1933a, 73; l933b, 105. Russell develops Eddington's illustration, which is contained in one sentence: "Light is like a runner on an expanding track with the winning-post receding faster than he can run." 58: 12-16 Shelley says: Worlds on worlds ••• borne away The passage is from Hellas: A Lyrical Drama (1821); see Shelley 1974· 58: 20-4 He maintains that the initial radius .•• is about 10 79 See Eddington l933a, 67-8; l933b, 96-7. 58: 25 Eddington does not ••• definite moment of creation See Eddington 1933a, 56; l933b, 80: "Since I cannot avoid introducing this question of a beginning, it has seemed to me that the most satisfactory theory would be one which made the beginning not too unaesthetically abrupt." Also: "Perhaps it will be objected that, if one looks far enough back, this theory (the one Russell outlines at this point) does not really dispense with an abrupt beginning; the whole universe must come into being at one instant in order that it may start in balance. I do not regard it in that way. To my mind undifferentiated sameness and nothingness cannot be distinguished philosophically" (1933a, 57; l933b, 8157

2).

58: 31-4 Eddington thinks ••• going very long See Eddington l933a, 85; 1933b, 122. 58: 35-7 At the end of the book ..• of hydrogen atoms Russell is referring to Chapter IV: "The Universe and the Atom". 58: 39-40 Sir Arthur maintains •.• is exactly 137 See Eddington l933a, II4; 1933b, 162. 59: 8-ro Herbert Spencer, ifl remember right ••• error at each step In a

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long series of books, Spencer (1820-1903) sought to synthesize all ofh knowledge by use of the concept of evolution. An abridgement of this ~n_ian was published in 1889 entitled An Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy· ~ OJect possessed a copy of this volume. In it Spencer writes: "Indeed, it nee~s b~seu recall the treatises written on fallacies, to be impressed with the fact that t to . 1og1ca . 1 prmc1p . . 1es th emse1ves, error is freque ' apart tirom any poss1"bl e error m made, even by the most careful, in the application of them; and that the ntly ability of error consequently increases as the length of an argument incr~:~b­ §437. Do we not here then discern a rigorous test of the relative validities es. conflicting conclusions? Not only as judged instinctively, but as judged b of fundamental logic, that must be the most certain conclusion which involves ~h: postulate the fewest times" (304-5).

11 Scientific Certainty and Uncertainty 59: 28 in a final chapter See Eddington 1935, Chapter xiv, "Epilogue". 59: 35-7 we learn that the world began ... contract See Eddington 1935, 6 . 7 60: 29-30 Eddington enumerates seven physical constants See Eddington 1935, 230. They are: the charge of an electron, the mass of an electron, the mass of a proton, Planck's constant, the velocity of light, the constant of gravitation, and the cosmical constant. 60: 32 he does not believe that they are all independent See Eddington 1935, 231ff. 60: 34-5 number of electrons ..• is about 1 followed by 79 zeros See Eddington 1935, 221 and 250. 60: 36 reasons for supposing the number 136 or 137 See Eddington 1935, 234-43. 60: 37-9 By various means ..• independent See Eddington 1935, 231-2. 60: 42 666 (the number of the Beast in Revelations) See Revelation 13: 18. 61: 8-rn He states emphatically ... to religion from physics See Headnote for an account of this point. 61: 18-19 The case against determinism is stated ... ever before See Eddington 1935, 72-91 and 295-303. 61: 43-62: 1 "Mind is the first ••• remote inference." Eddington 1935, 5 and 280.

12 Review of James Jeans 64: 5 it is considerably shorter This book has 154 pages; his 1929 has 341 pages. 64: 5-7 the last quarter ... the author does not speak as an expert Russell refers to Chapter 5: "Into Deep Water". 64: 9 the exposition of relativity See Chapter 4: "Relativity and the Ether".

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. II The book begins with a biography of the sun See Chapter 1: "The 64· " Dying Sun . : _ 1 "It seems incredible ... the amount of the product." Jeans 1930, 64 17 2 -6. The original has a semi-colon after "own". 5 : -5 "It is a tragedy ... to obtain a footing." Jeans 1930, 12. 64 23 : -41 To sum up •.. to empty time Jeans 1930, 114. 64 33 : 2 a mathematical Deity See Jeans 1930, 132: "the universe appears to have 65 been designed by a pure mathematician". : i8-22 Sir James Jeans reverts ... Berkeley ••. for quite a long time See 65 Jeans 1930, 137: "It does not matter whether objects 'exist in my mind, or that of any other created spirit' or not; their objectivity arises from their subsisting 'in the mind of some Eternal Spirit'". · 65 : 25-8 "can best be pictured ..• as a mathematical thinker" Jeans 1930, 136. 65: 28-30 A little later •.• not apparently of our dreams See Jeans 1930, 140: "Again we may think of the laws to which phenomena conform in our waking hours, the laws of nature, as the laws of thought of a universal mind".

13 Determinism and Physics Descartes' immediate followers See A35: IO. 68: 15-16 Eddington ••• begun to throw doubt on this principle See Eddington 1928, 294ff. "In rewriting this chapter a year later I have had to mingle with this attitude of indifference an attitude more definitely hostile to determinism which has arisen from the acceptance of the Principle of Indeterminacy.... Meanwhile we may note that science thereby withdraws its moral opposition to free-will" (294-5). 68: 31-4 Laplace's calculator ..• to the lot of men In his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, Pierre Simon, marquis de Laplace, (1749-1827), a French mathematician, wrote: "We ought then to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its anterior state and as the cause of the one which is to follow. Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it-an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis-it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. The human mind offers, in the perfection which it has been able to give to astronomy, a feeble idea of this intelligence" (1902, 4). 69: 41 Heisenberg, in first proposing his atom For an extended account by Russell of Heisenberg's theory of the atom, see his 1927a, 42-6. See A41: 1314 for biographical information on Heisenberg. 69: 41 in place of Bohr's Niels Hendrik David Bohr (1885-1962) was a Dan-

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ish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in applying · structure. F or an account o f B oh r ' s view · tum t h eory to atomic of the quanatoltl ··. see Russell 1927, 24-7 and 42. ' 70: 8-9 Born and Jordan For biographical information on Born, see A . 41 Ernst Pascual Jordan (1902-1980) was a German physicist; he studied · ~ 9 · Max Born, and then became his assistant and collaborator. After the ri With . . d upon his fel!o se of H1'tler, Jordan b ecame an ar d ent N az1. wh o sometimes sp1e scientists for the political authorities. w 70: 13 Born (Volume 35, 1926) The article to which Russell refers is actuau jointly written by Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan. See Bib: liographical Index. 70: 19-21 popular article ..• Heisenberg says "electrons ..• experience" Heisenberg 1926, 989. The original reads: "die Elektronen bzw. die Atome besitzen nicht jenen Grad von unmittelbarer Realitat, wie die Gegenstande der taglichen Erfahrung". 70: 21-5 "It is not possible .•. a series of similar corpuscles." Heisenberg 1926, 991-2. The original reads: "Die Einschrankungen, die wir in Tei! 1 uber die Realitat der Korpuskeln gemacht haben, insbesondere die Aussage, daB es unmoglich sei, einer Korpuskel einen bestimmten Ort als Funktion der Zeit, eine bestimmte Energie usw. zuzuordnen, !assen es schon als moglich erscheinen, daB die Realitat der Materiekorpuskeln eine groBe Ahnlichkeit aufweist mit der Realitat der Lichtquanten, denen ja auch wegen der Interferenz-und Beugungsphanomene der Lichtwellen nicht eine bestimmte Bahn und ein bestimmter Ort zugeschrieben werden kann." 70: 26-31 "The question ••• for atomic systems." Heisenberg l926a, 705. In his 1927 (45) Russell also quotes this passage but at greater length. The original reads: "die Frage nach dem zeitlichen Ablauf eines Ereignisses keinen unmittelbaren Sinn hat und daB der Begriff des friiher oder spater kaum exakt definiert werden kann.... das Auftreten eben solcher Schwierigkeiten nach dem Wesen der fur Atomsysteme giiltigen Raum-Zeitverhaltnisse durchaus zu erwarten war." 71: 1 "the end of mechanistic physics" See Frank 1936. 71: 8-9 Philosophically, it has been out of date since Berkeley Russell refers here to Berkeley's arguments against infinitesimals (see his 1710, §§13031) and against Newtonian absolute space and absolute motion (Ibid. §§no17). 71: 10-12 It has •.. beyond him in one respect, namely as regards time Berkeley exempted Newton's absolute time from his criticisms. See his 1710, §1n. 71: 18 Bohr's original introduction of the quantum into atomic theory A quantum theory of energy emission and absorption for describing perfect absorbers, or "black bodies", was originally advanced by Max Planck in his 1900; it was extended to atomic theory by Bohr in his 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1918-22.

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_ o This fact led Heisenberg ... (or absorbing) energy See Heisen23 3 71: berg . . new th eory more f u 11y. 927. In his 1927 (42-6) Russell discusses this 1

Philipp Frank Philipp G. Frank (1884-1966) was an Austrian-born 71 · hysicist and philosopher of science; he followed Einstein in the chair of ~heoretical physics at the University of Prague and taught there for twenty-six ears until he fled to the United States in 1938. From 1939 until 1954 he ~aught mathematical physics and the philosophy of science at Harvard. In philosophy he was a logical positivist and, later, a logical empiricist. : 1 3 Heisenberg's "principle ofindeterminacy" See Heisenberg 1927, 177. 74 . 24 Planck's constant h Max Karl Ludwig Planck (1858-1947) was a Ger74· man theoretical physicist and Nobe I Iaureate; h'is p1oneermg . . work m . th e d'1scontinuous processes of energy absorption and emission for black bodies (i.e. perfect absorbers of radiation) established the foundations of quantum mechanics. See Planck 1900. See Russell 1927 (30-1) for an account of Planck's constant. : 74 32 -7s: 9 The velocity ... more knowable that way Eddi~gton 1928'. 3078. The ellipsis marks this omission: "Immediately the future is accompltshed, so that it is no longer an anticipation, the velocity becomes knowable. ii" The original has "positions" instead of "position". : 74 34-5 Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen published ... (May 15, 1935) The paper to which Russell refers is Einstein, et al. 1935, entitled "Can QuantumMechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?" Boris Podolsky (1896-1966) was a Russian-born American physicist who, in 193435, was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study; from 1935 to 1961 he taught mathematical physics in the University of Cincinnati. Nathan Rosen (1909-1995) is an American physicist who was Einstein's assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1934 to 1936; after teaching physics at various American universities, he moved to Israel in 1952 to become a professor of physics in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. 74: 37-8 Bohr replied in a manner which seems convincing See Bohr 1935· 74: 38-9 Dr. N. S. Japolsky, in two articles ... October 1935 See Japolsky 1935 and l935a. In this journal he is identified as "formerly lecturer, Technological Institute, Leningrad''. 75: 22-30 When we encounter ... that does not exist The quoted passage ends in the middle of a sentence the rest of which reads: "although curiously enough the description of position or of velocity if it had stood alone might have been allowable". The ellipsis marks this omission: "You will remember that that was how the relativity theory accounted for the apparent concealment of our velocity through the aether. iJWhen the concealment is found to be perfectly systematic, then we must banish the corresponding entity from the physical world. There is really no option. The link with our consciousness is completely broken. When we cannot point to any causal effect on anything that comes into our experience, the entity merely becomes part of the unkno"":'n . 0 4

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undifferentiated from the rest of the vast unknown. From time to tim . . d d .. . e Physi ca1 d JScovenes are ma e; an new enttttes, commg out of the unk . nown, become connected to our experience and are duly named. But to leave a ' 1 unattached labels floating in the as yet undifferentiated unknown in the ~t of that they may come in useful later on, is no particular sign of prescience an~~e not helpful to science." ts 77: 8-14 The finite interaction •.. of physical reality Boh~ 1935, 697 . The original has "finite interaction between object and measunng agencies" . Ill italics. 77: 37-41 Descartes ... the conservation of vis viva ... determinism V:' viva is the mass of a body times the square of its velocity, i.e. twice the ki'n .is . et1c energy; momentum 1s the product of the mass and the velocity Vis vz'v . ' a IS conserved only when the potential energy is constant. Russell discusses thi topic in a number of places; see his 1900, 81ff; 1927a, 156-7; 1945, 568; 1946: 590. 78: 29-30 Eddington gives the example of life insurance See Eddington, 1928, 300.

14a Philosophy and Common Sense 82: 7 the antinomians A Christian sect (regarded as heretical by the majority of Christians) which was united by their belief that, for a person redeemed by Christ, faith alone ensures salvation; such Christians are exempt from obedience to the moral law (especially that of the Old Testament); this doctrine is first attributed to Johann Agricola (1494-1566), who broke his ties with Luther in a dispute over it. 82: 7 the quietists A Christian mystical sect which held that passive contemplation of God and His works is the Christian's highest duty; in order to attain the required inner state the believer must extinguish his will and withdraw from worldly affairs. This doctrine originated with Miguel de Molinos (16281696 ), a Spanish priest. The Roman Catholic Church condemned quietism, and Molinos himself was tried and convicted by the Inquisition in 1687, but he was spared execution. 82: 8 the intellectual precursors of the Nazis Russell discusses these writers in Paper 57. 82: II-15 Kant ... maintains that, if you are kind ... to the moral law See his Critique of Practical Reason, 195-96: "What is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the moral law should directly determine the will. If the determination of the will takes place in conformity indeed to the moral law, but only by means of a feeling, no matter of what kind, which has to be presupposed in order that the law may be sufficient to determine the will, and therefore not for the sake of the law, then the action will possess legality but not morality" (Kant 1889, 164). 82: 27-8 To Sir Thomas More, Luther was merely detestable Thomas

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More (1478-1535) is the author of Utopia and Lord Chancellor under Henry

VIII; he was ordered beheaded by Henry for refusing to accept the Act of supremacy, which placed the King at the head of the Church in England. In 1523 when he was still in the King's favour, More published a pseudonymous work, Responsio ad Lutherum, in reply to Luther's Contra Henricum (1522), in which he defended Henry against Luther; according to all accounts both works are intemperate in tone. : 23- 30 Elizabethan theologians ... Preface to the Authorized Version 82 The Authorized Version of the Bible was published in l6II and its preface does not mention Luther or, indeed, any German translation of the Bible, even though the translators point out that they consulted Spanish, French, Italian and Dutch translations. The controversy between Luther and the supporters of Henry VIII, which raged ninety years earlier, is by silence treated as completely dead. 82 : 30-1 James Mill remarked, "I see ... what poor Kant would be at" James Mill (1773-1836), the father of John Stuart Mill, made this remark in a letter to Francis Place just after he had begun to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Leslie Stephen records the full sentence: "I see clearly enough what poor Kant would be about, but it would require some time to give an account of him" (Stephen 1900, 2: 34). 82: 32 Coleridge made "poor Kant" ... Broad-Church movement Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet and philosopher, who used the Kantian philosophy to expound a unique view of Christianity. The BroadChurch movement, which was widely popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century, was opposed to both High (Anglo-Catholic) and Low (Evangelical) Anglicanism; in those years the movement was dominated by liberals, such as Coleridge, with intellectual and religious, rather than political, interests. 82: 33-4 Hegelianism becomes bland ... Caird and Bosanquet Edward Caird and Bernard Bosanquet were leaders of the neo-Hegelian philosophical movement in Great Britain. Russell's remark is similar to one made by H.J. Paton, to wit, that absolute idealism was "Hegelianism modified by AngloSaxon caution" (Lewis 1956, 341). 82: 37-8 there are speculations about social evolution and its laws Chapter v of Levy 1938 is entitled "What Causes Change in Society"; the previous chapter is called "What Causes Change''. 83: 4-6 "If a philosophy ... may finally be achieved." Levy 1938, 12. 83: 18-19 "Truth ... at any given moment.'' Levy 1938, 28r. 83: 24 Professor Levy obviously desires .. • free from metaphysics See Levy 1938, Chapter r. For instance: "If it is to be a philosophy for a real human being, it cannot wait to question whether the universe exists, but must pass to the study of the nature of that existence" (13). On page 31 he calls it a "meaningless question".

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83: 25-6 "the universe exists", and that "existence •.. being" Le 2I. "We begin then with quite elementary considerations. (i) The : /938> exists; this we state as a truism that we shall not question. If it does not zv~rse · pro bl ems d"1sappear w1'th It. · Th ose w h o question · th'1s need not p exist' tts further with this book. i!To say that the universe exists is to make to:o~eed . 1e a statement, b ecause even as soon as we 1ook at the world aid' too s1mp begin to realize that actual existence is something different from mere b:iwe which implies a sort of permanent, unchanging, static condition." ng, 83: 32-3 The contention that physicists ... "matter" is out of date Fo fuller account of this point, see Paper 13 (69: 34-71: 36). ra 83: 34-6 "The word matter ... scientific discoveries." Levy 1938, 3 r. 84: 7-8 he considers quantum physics later in another connection Levy 1938, 167-73. 84: u-16 We are far from asserting .•• orderly pattern in life Levy 1938 149-50. The ellipsis marks this omission: "If our knowledge of any situation i~ restricted and bounded in the way we have pointed out, there must be man events that occur during the process that must be labelled accidental." y

14b Philosophy and Common Sense 85: 24-6 The Pope, frightened by the Thirty Years' War ... the sun Russell is referring to Urban VIII (1568-1644), who was Pope from 1623 until his death. During his reign (1632), Galileo was tried and convicted by the Inquisition. See A4o8: u-12 for information on the Thirty Years' War. 85: 27 Dr. Johnson's refutation of Berkeley See A3o: 7-9. 85: 36-7 Buchmanites These people were members of the Oxford Group, founded at Oxford University in 1921 by Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman (1878-1961), an American evangelist who preached "world-changing through life-changing". In 1938 Buchman founded the Moral Rearmament movement. 85: 38 non possumus Latin for "we cannot".

701

alternatives, both of which, when used with Euclid's other axioms, yield consistent bodies of geometrical theorems. These new geometries are called "nonEuclidean geometries". The alternative parallel postulates are these: (1) through a point not on a given straight line there are an infinite number of lines parallel to it; and (2) through a point not on a given straight line there are no lines parallel to it. Two straight lines are parallel if and only if they have no points in common. . 1 3-19 nevertheless it can still be safely used by engineers Russell al1 9 .ludes here to the fact that for ordinary human distances the differing results of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries can be ignored. For vast distances, however, such as those common in astronomical measurement, a non-Euclidean geometry must be used. : 3o Mr. Ramsey's contention that "meaning" is ambiguous See Ram91 sey's final paragraph.

16 A Tribute to Morris Raphael Cohen 94

: 38-9 "The category of reality ... to religion." Cohen 1918, 684. Cohen is criticizing those who glorify the category of existence and disparage the categories of possibility and necessity. The next four sentences spell out what he intends by this sentence. "It arises not as an aid to an intellectual analysis of our world, but as a means of escape or deliverance from the perplexities and confusions of deceitful appearances in a disorderly world. At any rate, it is rather easy to show that the prejudice in favor of reality (and the special form of it which glorifies the category of existence) is based on an inadequate analysis of the nature of science. Science would be impossible if we could not study the consequences of materially false hypotheses. In all sciences the consequences of rival hypotheses, such as those concerning the ether, must be deduced irrespective of their material truth, and indeed as a necessary condition before the material truth can be determined."

17 Probability and Fact

15 Mr. F. P. Ramsey on Logical Paradoxes 91: l the Editor of The Forum Henry Goddard Leach (1880-1970) edited this journal from 1923 to 1940. 91: 2 Mr. Ramsey's article For the reader's convenience Ramsey's article is reprinted in Appendix rr. 91: 17 The Theorem of Pythagoras ... proved by Euclid Russell refers here to Euclid's use of his parallel postulate in the proof of the theorem that for every right triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Euclid's parallel postulate states that through a point not on a straight line there is one and only one line which is parallel to the given line. In the nineteenth century this postulate was replaced by two

during which, according to Jeans ... remain habitable In his 1929, Sir James Jeans writes: "The sun is not heading for the precipice, so much as skirting along its edge. Whether it is approaching the edge, and is ultimately destined to fall over, we do not yet know, but it is in any case unlikely to reach the edge within the next million million years" (329). 97: 16-18 Eddington ... examples of such improbabilities See Eddington 1928, 72. loo: 25-6 Bishop Butler said that probability is the guide of life Joseph Butler (1692-1752), the British moral philosopher and theologian, made this remark in §4 of the Introduction to The Analogy of Religion; see, for instance, his 1896.

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IOO: 33 according to Schrodinger Erwin Schrodinger (I887-I96I) w Austrian physicist who helped to develop the wave theory of matter, for ~~-an, he shared the I933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Paul Dirac. !ch IOO: 39 This view of the world certainly outdoes Bishop Berkeley R is referring to Berkeley's view that ordinary physical objects are bundles ~:sel! sible qualities which depend for their existence on being perceived. en. IOO: 4I-2 with Heisenberg that a red flag consists of ••. integers Russell. alluding to Heisenberg's formulation of quantum mechanics, since a matr:s can be described as a rectangle of integers. See Heisenberg r925, Born and dan r925, and Born, Heisenberg and Jordan r926, where this formulation is presented. IOI: 4 Mr. Keynes John Maynard Keynes (I883-I946) is now best known for his economic writings, most of which had not yet appeared at the time Russell was writing. IOI: 6-7 Mr. Keynes holds ... probability ... not further definable "A definition of probability is not possible, unless it contents us to define degrees of the probability-relation by reference to degrees of rational belief. We cannot analyse the probability-relation in terms of simpler ideas" (Keynes r 92 r, 8), For a fuller Russellian discussion of this point, see his review of Keynes's book, which has been reprinted in his r988, esp. I22-3. IOI: 7-8 consisting of a certain relation ... conclusion "probability arises out of the existence of a specific relation between premiss and conclusion" (Keynes r92r, 9). I02: 43-I03: 2 Mr. Keynes maintains ... true than false "The common notion, that each successive verification of a doubtful principle strengthens it, is formally proved, therefore, without any appeal to conceptions of law or of causality. But we have not proved that this probability approaches certainty as a limit, or even that our conclusion becomes more likely than not, as the number of verifications or instances is indefinitely increased" (Keynes r92r, 236). I04: 24-5 as has been shown by Bergson and Dr. Whitehead See Whitehead r925, 6I-3 and Bergson r9II, 2I3-I6. For biographical data on Bergson, see A463: 38; for biographical data on Whitehead, see A5: 34.

0

Jo:

18 Review of Ramsey I07: I3-I4 as the editor points out ••• mathematical economics See Ramsey r93r, ix-x. Russell alludes to two papers, "A Contribution to the Theory of Taxation" (I927) and "A Mathematical Theory of Savings" (I928), the latter of which, Keynes judges to be "one of the most remarkable contributions to mathematical economics ever made, both in respect of the intrinsic importance and difficulty of its subject, the power and elegance of the technical methods employed, and the clear purity of illumination with which the writer's mind is felt by the reader to play about its subject" (x). Both are reprinted in Ramsey r978.

703

roT 19 B.rouwer Luitzen Egbert.us J~~ ~rouw~r (I88I-I966), a Dutch. mathematician, was the first of the mtumomsts with regard to the foundations of mathematics. Following Kant he argued that mathematical constructions are mental and that mathematical existence can only be attributed to actual constructions. As a consequence the realm of mathematical truth is severely curtailed: the law of excluded middle, for instance, is no longer universally valid. roT 19 Weyl Claus Hugo Hermann Wey! (1885-1955) was a German-born mathematician, philosopher and theoretical physicist; he spent the latter part of his career as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The particular criticism of Principia Mathematica that Ramsey is concerned to answer in his first essay is the "heterological-autological" paradox which Wey! argued could be derived within the system. See Ramsey r9p, 27. 107: 19 and Hilbert David Hilbert (1862-1943) was a German mathematician and the founder of formalism, the view that mathematics consists in manipulating and interpreting symbols. 107 : 21-4 "discovered how ... its line of approach" Ramsey r93r, r. 107 : 35 a defect first pointed out by Mr. Wittgenstein Wittgenstein pointed out this defect when he was Russell's student (see Russell r9r9, 204-5, esp. footnote). He argued that Russell's definition of mathematics was too broad and required supplementation. At the time, they agreed that it would suffice to say that the propositions of mathematics were also "tautologous" in some sense of the term. So a precise definition of mathematics awaited the explication of this term. Wittgenstein presented his solution in his r922. See Ramsey r93r, 5-rr for a concise account. 107= 36-7 "those true propositions ... logical concepts occur" Ramsey r93r, 3. The original has "occurred" in place of "occur". 107: 38-9 which I advocated in The Principles of Mathematics See Russell r903, 3. 108: l Wittgenstein's definition of logic See Wittgenstein r922, 6.1: "The propositions of logic are tautologies". 108: 3 says Ramsey See Ramsey r93r, 14. 108: 7-8 Ramsey ... professes to have overcome this difficulty See Ramsey r93r, 14-20. 108: 16-17 The first consists ... finite propositional functions See Ramsey r93r, 22-4. 108: 17-18 The second defect ... among the contradictions See Ramsey r93r, 24-9 and 32-49. In this discussion Ramsey makes his important distinction between what are now called the syntactic and the semantic paradoxes. Russell's paradox is syntactic, because it can be stated purely formally; Weyl's "autological-heterological" paradox and the paradox of the liar are semantic, because they depend, in part if not wholly, on the meaning of the symbols by which they are stated. I08: 20 The third defect is the treatment of identity See Ramsey r93r, 2932 and 59-6r.

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108: 22-3 It enables him to treat ... as a tautology See Ramsey 1931 5 for his discussion of the logical status of the multiplicative axiom. Bis ~- 9, clusion: "Hence the Multiplicative Axiom, interpreted as it is in PrincipiaO~­ 18 not a tautology but logically doubtful. But, as I interpret it, it is an ob . ' tautology, and this can be claimed as an additional advantage in my thevious ory" (59). 108: 23-6 to accept as valid ... Dedekindian section ..• eliminated Se Ramsey l9JI, 29, where he outlines the importance of eliminating the Axio e of Reducibility. For his way of dispensing with it, see pages 32-49. rn 108: 27-8 Wittgenstein eliminates identity ... different objects See w· lttgenstein 1922, 5.53-5.5352. 108: 41-2 Ramsey •.• "propositional functions in extension" See Rarnsey 1931, 49-56. 109: 2-3 "the notion ..• says about b" Ramsey 1931, 52. 109: 32-3 discussion of the theories of Brouwer ••. excluded middle See Ramsey 1931, 65-8. 109: 36 which both Hilbert and Weyl reject See Ramsey l9JI, 68-73. 109: 36-9 Ramsey accepts Wittgenstein's interpretation •.. infinite See Ramsey 1931, 73-7. 109: 39-40 There is, however, .•• the previous paper Russell refers to Ramsey's conclusion that his defence of Principia against its detractors is not "altogether satisfactory" (81). IIO: 7-9 Ramsey's view ... a relation and its terms See Ramsey 1931, 132. IIO: 20-1 This, Ramsey thinks, explains ••• and a predicate See Ramsey 1931, 124. IIO: 30-2 Ramsey states ... to the present reviewer See Ramsey 1931, 155. IIO: 37 a brief mention of the frequency theory See Ramsey 1931, 158-60. IIO: 39-41 Ramsey raises the fundamental objection ••• certain See Ramsey 1931, 16I-3. III: 20-I Ramsey argues that Mr. Keynes .•. perceive this relation See Ramsey 1931, I6I. III: 23-4 Ramsey's view ••• we act on a belief See his 1931, I68. III: 25-3I He gives the following illustration ... my degree of doubt See Ramsey 1931, 174-5. II2: 35-6 "variable hypotheticals" Ramsey 1931, 237. Ramsey gives two examples: "Arsenic is poisonous: All men are mortal." II2: 37 "inferences we are at any time prepared to make" Ramsey l9JI, 238. The original has "inference". II2: 38-II3: I "all men are mortal" means "whenever I •.• mortal" See Ramsey 1931, 240-I: "To believe that all men are mortal-what is it? Partly to say so, partly to believe in regard to any x that turns up that if he is a man he is mortal. The general belief consists in (a) A general enunciation, (b) A habit of singular belief. These are, of course, connected, the habit resulting from the

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enunciation according to a psychological law which makes the meaning of 'all'." : 3-5 Ramsey ... "mystical" elements in Wittgenstein's philosophy 113 3 See Ramsey l9JI, 279. II} 35-7 or share Wittgenstein's heroic ... logical impeccability See Ramsey 1931, 282 and also I7.

19 Review of Ramsey 114 : 2I-2 Professor Moore ... justly praises Ramsey's clarity See Ramsey 19p, vii: "He was an extraordinarily clear thinker: no-one could avoid more easily than he the sort of confusions of thought to which even the best philosophers are liable, and he was capable of apprehending clearly, and observing consistently, the subtlest distinctions." u4: 24-6 articles ... on economic theory ... praised by Dr. J.M. Keynes See A107: I3-I4· us: 4 Frege Gottlob Frege (I848-1925) is regarded as the originator of logicism, the view that mathematics, or at least large parts of it, is a branch of logic, a position he developed in three important books. Russell and Whitehead shared his approach, which they developed in great detail in Principia Mathematica.

u5: IO-II Formalists, he says ... the propositions of mathematics See Ramsey 1931, 2. u5: II-I2 while Principia Mathematica considered only its concepts See Ramsey 1931, 3. u5: I5-23 Wittgenstein makes a distinction ... Ramsey is right See Ramsey 1931, 3-5. u5: 26 "propositional functions in extension" See A108: 4I-2. n6: I7-I8 Mill supposed ..• generalization from instances Mill advanced this view in his Logic (I843). See Mill 1963, 7: I86 (Bk. II, Ch. 3, §3). n6: 32-3 Ramsey maintains •.. between particulars and universals See Ramsey 1931, u7. n7: 13-15 Ramsey concludes ... is a mistake See Ramsey 1931, I32. n7: 20-I Ramsey attempts to identify probability ..• partial belief See AIII: 23-4. n7: 22-3 (See his paper of 1929 ••• pp. 256-7.) This paper opens with the statement: "The defect of my paper on probability was that it took partial belief as a psychological phenomenon to be defined and measured by a psychologist" (Ramsey 1931, 256).

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120: 12-15 Quo facto, quando ... dicere: calculemus Russell published translation of this passage in his 1900: "If controversies were to arise th a would be no more need of disputation between two philosophers th~n ~re tween two accountants. For it would suffice to take their pencils in th ~­ hands, to sit down to their slates, and to say to each other (with a friend eir witness if they liked): let us calculate" (170). as 120: 20-1 At a previous Congress ... and with his work This was the C ongres International de Philosophie held in Paris in August, 1900, to which RUs. sell presented a paper. An English translation of his paper, "The Notion of Order and Absolute Position in Space and Time", has been published as Paper 5 in his 1993· 120: 24-5 The importance of syntax in philosophy ... by Wittgenstein In the Preface to his 1922, Wittgenstein remarks: "The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language" (27). 120: 26 and by the Vienna school The Vienna Circle, formed circa 1920 around Moritz Schlick (1882-1936), was composed of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists, all of whom shared an interest in the language and methodology of the sciences and philosophy. The movement called "logical positivism" originated among members of this group. The group disbanded in the 1930s in the face of increasingly hostile political pressures, and several members, Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) and Kurt Godel (1906-1978) among them, emigrated to the United States. 120: 28 The Polish school of logicians Russell refers to the Warsaw school, composed chiefly of Kazimierz Twardowski's (1866-1938) students, the best known of whom is Alfred Tarski (1902-1983). They emphasized the importance of logic and methodology in philosophical investigations. Members of the group kept in touch with the Vienna Circle, although most of them explicitly criticized the emerging doctrines of logical positivism. 120: 33-4 scientifically philosophical Encyclopaedia ••• Dr. Otto Neurath Neurath's idea was formally initiated in 1938, when he served as the editor of the International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science (1955). For biographical information on Neurath see the Headnote to Paper 22.

21 On Order in Time 124: 14-15 N. Wiener has shown •.. should form a series Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) was a pupil of Russell's at Cambridge just before the First World War. He had completed his Ph.D. at Harvard when he was 18 years old, and came to Russell for advanced study. In the article to which Russell refers,

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Wiener writes: "One instant precedes another when and only when some event belonging to the one entirely precedes some event belonging to the other" (Wiener 1914, 444).

22 On the Importance of Logical Form : -r r The kinetic theory of gases ••• universe Sir James Jeans extended 139 10 this theory to star clusters in his 1913. : -15 British mathematical professor •.• footplates of locomotives 139 12 No source found. 140 : 13 by Carnap Russell is probably referring to Carnap's important paper, "Testability and Meaning" (1936-37), in which he abandoned the claim that scientific hypotheses can be completely verified by observational evidence and introduced in its place the idea that they can be more or less confirmed by such evidence. 140 : 15-16 as Reichenbach insists Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953) was a founder of the Berlin school of logical positivism, which had close ties to the Vienna Circle; he emigrated to the United States in 1938. The following sentence, from his 1949, is rather typical of the way in which Reichenbach linked probability and science: "The indispensability of the probability concept for the natural sciences became even more apparent when a new field of application was opened-the kinetic theory of gases and liquids" (7).

23 Dewey's New Logic 145: 5-6 He accounts for much in Greek theory ... of that age See Dewey 1938, Chap. v, "The Needed Reform of Logic". 145: 16-17 except that Bentham •.. by his compatriots Bentham (17481832) was made an honourary citizen of France in 1792. 145: 41-2 what General Smuts calls "holism" Jan Christian Smuts (18701950) was a South African philosopher and statesman, who was Prime Minister from 1919-24 and from 1939-48. His principal philosophical work is Holism and Evolution (1926) in which he expounds "holism", the theory that there are "wholes" which cannot be sub-divided or analyzed without qualitative loss. According to this view, evolution produced such wholes out of parts which, once formed into wholes, forever lost their identities. Such wholes were to be contrasted with mere aggregates in which parts do retain their identities. 146: 3-4 Dr. Dewey ..• Contemporary American Philosophy For this book, see Adams 1930 in the Bibliographical Index. Dewey's contribution is in Volume II. 146: 6-19 supplied a demand ••• a special attraction for me The first ellipsis marks this omission: "It is more than difficult, it is impossible, to recover that early mood. But"; the second: "My earlier philosophic study had been an

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intellectual gymnastic" (Adams 1930, 2: 19). 146: 24-5 Data ... Dr. Dewey as the starting point of knowledg S e ee Dewey 1938, 150-I. 146: 30-1 A situation, we are told, is a "qualified ... which is un· Dewey 1938, 122. The original has "qualitative" in place of "qualified". ique" 146: 31-4 "Every situation ... unified qualitative whole." Dewey 1938 122 146: 34-5 "Singular objects .•• a field or situation." Dewey 1938, 123 .' ' 146: 35 We point out rather than point at. "The discriminative or differenti . act an d its . smgu . 1ar ob'JeCt 1s . suggested in ordinaral aspect o f th e demonstrauve speech by the expression 'pointing out'. It is impossible merely to point y something" (Dewey 1938, 124). at 146: 35-7 There is no such thing ..• taken rather than given See Dewey 1938, 124. 14 7: 2-4 "There is, of course ... into life-functions." Dewey 1938, 33. 147: 6-7 "Existence in general ... taking on logical forms." Dewey 1938 389. The original has "logical form" instead of "logical forms". ' l4T 12-13 "temporal continuity of past-present-future" Dewey 1938, 237 . 147: 19-20 Bradley's view ..• Reality as a whole Bradley's fullest discussion of this doctrine is to be found in his terminal essay "On Judgement" in his 1922, 628ff. 147: 26-7 We are told that sense-data ••• existential reference See Dewey 1938, 147· 147: 33-6 we are told that there are three common errors •.. in status See Dewey 1938, 149-50. 148: 2-3 Dr. Dewey denies ..• mediated knowledge See Dewey 1938, 139. 148: 6-20 A certain ambiguity •.• drawn from them The ellipsis marks this omission: "I can understand what the word and idea of a centaur, sea-serpent, transmutation of chemical elements, mean without thereby knowing them in the sense of having grounds for asserting their existence. No intelligent search for a new invention, no controlled inquiry to discover whether a certain conception of, say, the nature of atoms is or is not borne out by the facts, can be conducted without a direct grasp or understanding of the meaning-content of some idea. As the very description of this kind of 'knowledge' shows, it is not knowledge in the sense of justified assertion that a state of existence is thus-andso. It is easy, however, as the history of philosophy illustrates, to carry over the first meaning into the second. Since the first is direct or immediate when it occurs, it is assumed that the second also has the same properties." 149: 40-3 "Inquiry is the controlled ... a unified whole" The correct reference is to pages 104-5. 150: 7-8 "Inquiry is concerned ••• objective subject-matter." Dewey 1938, 287. l 50: 8- IO Propositions are merely tools .•. "true" or "false" "According to the position here taken, propositions are to be differentiated and identified on

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the ground of the function of their contents as means ... But at this point it is pertinent to note that, since means as such are neither true nor false, truthfalsity is not a property of propositions." : 4-15 which Engels never understood Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) is 150 1 best known as the collaborator of Karl Marx. He was born in Germany but spent most of his life in England where he was a very successful businessman. Marx depended upon him for material support, for assistance in his writing, and for advice and information on the practical aspects of economics. 150: 15-24 "The chief defect ••• the real task is to alter it." In quoting himself Russell takes considerable liberties; the passage, to be found on pages 220-1 of his 1934, reads as follows: "The chief defect of all previous materialism-including that of Feuerbach-is that the object (Gegenstand), the reality, sensibility, is only apprehended under the form of the object (Objekt) or of contemplation (Anschauung), but not as human sensible activity or practice, not subjectively. Hence it came about that the active side was developed by idealism in opposition to materialism .... ~The question whether objective truth belongs to human thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical question. The truth, i.e. the reality and power, of thought must be demonstrated in practice. The contest as to the reality or non-reality of a thought which is isolated from practice, is a purely scholastic question .... ~The highest point that can be reached by contemplative materialism, i.e. by materialism which does not regard sensibility as a practical activity, is the contemplation of isolated individuals in 'bourgeois society.' ~The standpoint of the old materialism is 'bourgeois' society; the standpoint of the new is human society or socialized (vergesellschaftete) humanity. ~Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, but the real task is to alter it." Immediately after this Russell wrote: "The philosophy advocated in the earlier part of these theses is that which has since become familiar to the philosophical world through the writings of Dr. Dewey, under the name of pragmatism or instrumentalism. Whether Dr. Dewey is aware of having been anticipated by Marx, I do not know, but undoubtedly their opinions as to the metaphysical status of matter are virtually identical." 151: 5 Charles Sanders Peirce Peirce (1839-1914) is generally regarded as the founder of pragmatism, although he later took pains to distinguish his doctrine from that of James, by calling himself a "pragmaticist". 152: 3 This would enthrone Epimenides as the only sage Russell alludes here to the paradox of the liar. According to now unverifiable legend, Epimenides is supposed to be the Cretan who said that all Cretans are liars, which is true just in case it's false, and vice versa. St. Paul, in his Epistle to Titus (1: 12-13), an early source for this paradox, does not name the Cretan. 153: 23 like the wild boar of Valhalla Valhalla, in Norse mythology, is the palace of the slain warriors, who live there in splendour under the leadership of the god Odin, and feast daily on the flesh of the wild boar, which is made

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whole again each evening, ready for slaughter the next day. 157: 15 Mill's Canons of Induction See Mill 1843, Bk. III, Chap. 8, for the canons of induction. 160: 3-6 "was a reaction against ... I knew to be a weakness" Adams , 1930 2: 17. 24 How Behaviourists Teach Behaviour 164: 5-7 "it is a serious question .•• their own parents" Watson 192 8, _ 5 6 164: 8-rn Dr. Watson ••• confesses somewhat sadly .•• in our day Se~ Watson 1928, 6-7. 164: rr Mothers are not to kiss their children See Watson 1928, 81- 2 . 164: 12 fathers are not to take them on their knee See Watson 1928, ; 175 also, p. 97. 164: 12-13 two children must never sleep in the same rooxn See Watson 1928, 120. 164: 13-14 nor should a child sleep in the same room with an adult See Watson 1928, 120. 164: 18-32 The vocation your child •.• a rowdy, or a thug Watson 1928, 39 _ 4r. This quotation has been edited. The original has "-by you-" between "from without" and "by the kind oflife". The ellipsis marks this omission: "In a few cases where the child is physically defective, certain vocations become impossible, but these are so rarely met with that they need not influence our general conclusions. iJ". Between "doctrine of mystery" and "making behaviourists" the following long passage is silently dropped: ".It teaches that there are hidden springs of activity, hidden possibilities of unfolding with the child which must be waited for until they appear and then be fostered and tended. I think this doctrine has done serious harm. It has made us lose our opportunity to implant and then to encourage a real eagerness for vocations at an early age. Some few thousands of undergraduates have passed through my hands. Only in the rarest of cases have I found a senior college student with his mind made up as to what vocation he will enter when he leaves college. There is no white heat for a certain type of career and no organization developed for seeing that career through. The young graduate today is almost as helpless as the straw tossed by the wind. He will take any kind of job that chance may offer him in the hope that his special bents and aptitudes will show themselves. There is no reason why he shouldn't pick out his career at the age of 12 or earlier. iJThe". In addition certain words are changed: in the second sentence, the original has "reason" in place of "fault"; in the fourth sentence, the original reads "a method" instead of "the method"; in the fifth sentence, "making" has been inserted before "behaviourists"; and in the last sentence, the original has "you start" in place of "started", and "fingers and toes" in place of "fingers, toes". 165: 13 There is an admirable chapter on the "Fears of Children" Chapter 2.

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165 : 14-15 a chapter on the "Dangers of Too Much Mother Love" Chapter 3·

16 6: ro The chapter on sex teaching is excellent Chapter 6. 16 6: rr the experiment quoted from Professor Moss See Watson 1928, 1802. Fred August Moss (1893-1966) was a psychologist who did work in the measurement of emotions. At the time Watson was writing he was a professor at the University of Washington. r66: 12-13 Shaw's contention that ... the male pursues the female In his plays George Bernard Shaw addressed many of the social issues of his day; Russell alludes here to Man and Superman (1903). r66: 33-41 No well trained man or woman ... to obtain them? Watson 1928, 13.

25 The Application of Science to Education 170: 8-12 John B. Watson has pointed out ... human infants See Watson 1928, 13. Russell quotes the passage in the last paragraph of Paper 24. 17 1: 14 "conditioning" in the sense of Pavlov and Watson See Pavlov 1927, 24-6 and Watson 1928, 52-3, 74-5 and 94. 112: 15-19 Dr. Cameron, author of The Nervous Child ... alkalis Hector Charles Cameron (1878-1958) received his M.A. and M.D. degrees from Cambridge, and was a fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society of Medicine. See his 1928 (4) for the benefits of a small daily dose of alkali in reducing nervousness in children. 112: 22-3 the work of Cannon Walter Bradford Cannon (1871-1945), a professor of physiology in Harvard from 1906 to 1942, was a pioneer in physiological studies in the United States. Russell is referring here to his 1915. For a longer discussion of his ideas, see Russell 1921, 281-3. 172: 30-1 as Dr. Watson has shown See Watson 1928, 90. 173: 26 The great work of Pavlov on Conditioned Reflexes Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), a Russian psychologist and Nobel laureate, did pioneering work on conditioned reflexes, using dogs as his subjects. See his 1927 for his own account of his work. Russell has an extensive discussion of Pavlov in The Scientific Outlook (1931), 46-57. 173: 29-30 Dr. Watson ... investigations on infants in hospital In his 1928 he stated: "In our experiments at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, which mark the beginning of such work, we observed more than five hundred infants" (17).

26 Why I Am Not a Christian 181: 14-15 St. Augustine Aurelius Augustinus (354-430) was one of the Latin fathers of the Church, also known as St. Augustine of Hippo; he was converted to Christianity in 386. r81: 15 St. Thomas Aquinas Aquinas (c. 1224-1274), the most important of

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the Roman Catholic theologians and philosophers, is the author of s uni 111 q Theologica (c. 1265-73). 181: 34 Whitaker's Alrnanack An almanac founded in 1868 by Joseph Wh· ker (1820-1895), a British publisher and magazine editor. Ita182: 6 a decision of the Privy Council See Headnote and Russell 1935, for 135 further discussion of this matter. 182: 17-18 the Catholic Church has laid it ... unaided reason At the Third Session of the First General Vatican Council (1870) this dogma was officially ratified: "The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, may be certainly known by the natural light of human reason, by means of created things, 'for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made' (Romans l: 20)" Neuner and Roos 1967, 31-2. 183: 4-6 "My father taught me ... 'Who made God?'" Russell has telescoped Mill's original sentence: "It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, 'Who made God?'" Mill 1873, 42-3 (1963-91, l: 45). 185: 6-7 Voltaire's remark, that obviously the nose ••• to fit spectacles The remark to which Russell refers is in Candide, Chapter l: "Remarquez bien que les nez ont ere faits pour porter des lunettes, aussi avons-nous des lunettes." For biographical data on Voltaire, see A338: 4. 185: 20 Ku Klux Klan A secret United States terrorist organization which has had two periods of influence: one lasting from the end of the Civil War into the 1870s; the other from 1915 to the present. The Klan began as an underground resistance to Reconstruction and between 1868 and 1871 terrorized blacks and helped to restore white supremacy in the South; it was outlawed by Congress in l87r. The present Klan has enlarged the targets of its violence to most minority racial and religious groups within the United States, but it is still mainly concentrated in the South and directed against blacks. 185: 20-1 the Fascisti The Italian Fascist movement founded by Benito Mussolini in 1919; in 1922 he was installed as Prime Minister. 185: 21 Mr. Winston Churchill This is, of course, the famous war-time Prime Minister. At the time this essay was published Russell had a low opinion of him because he thought his politics reactionary. The reprint of this essay in W'hy I Am Not a Christian (1957) drops mention of him. In a letter to Paul Edwards of 22 September 1956 Russell wrote: "The sentence on page II which ends with the words 'and Mr. Winston Churchill' should have these

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words cut out and the word 'or' inserted between 'Ku Klux Klan' and 'the Fascisti'." Throughout most of the period covered by this volume Churchill was included in Russell's lineup of evil men and movements. Churchill's wartime service radically altered Russell's opinion of him. In 1958 Kenneth Harris asked him: "Has Britain produced a great man in your lifetime?" To which Russell replied: "Yes. I regard Churchill as a great man. I had the misfortune to be in America in 1940 but I know the sort of profound gratitude I felt for Churchill. He was saying the things that wanted saying, and I shall never cease to be grateful to him for that." Harris 197J, 123. 186: 9-10 disposed of by •.. Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant (1724-1804), in the Critique of Pure Reason, shows "the impossibility of" an ontological proof, a cosmological proof, and the physico-theological proof of the existence of God. See Kant 178! "Transcendental Dialectic", chap. 3, §§4-6. 186: II he invented a new one In Section 2 of Chapter II of the "Transcendental Doctrine of Method" Kant offers what Russell calls "a moral argument". 186: 36-9 the line that some of the gnostics ••• God was not looking Gnosticism flourished in the Hellenized Near East in the early centuries of the Christian era. As its name suggests its followers claimed a special knowledge which was essential to salvation. The doctrine to which Russell refers concerns the Demiurge who emerges early in the decay of pure transcendence, the uncorrupted beginning of everything, and, motivated by malevolence, creates the world. See Jonas 1963: 42-4, 130-7. 188: 2-3 "Resist not evil ••• turn to him the other also." Matthew 5: 39. 188: 3-4 It was used by Lao-Tse and Buddha •.. before Christ Lao-tse, the founder of Taoism, flourished in the sixth century B.c.; he advocated that evil should be answered with goodness. Buddha is Siddhartha Gautama Buddha (563-493 B.C.), the founder of Buddhism. For an instance of the doctrine which Russell attributes to him, see the Dhammapada, v-vi: "Never by hatred is hatred appeased, Nay! but by kindness: that's the old-time Norm. Others don't grasp this-We men are mortal. Men who grasp this soon end their quarrels" (Woodward 1949, 2-3). 188: 6 the present Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), a Tory, occupied the office three times: 1923-24, 1924-29, and 1935-37. 188: II "Judge not lest ye be judged." Matthew 7: r. The King James version reads: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." 188: 16-17 "Give to him ••• turn not thou away." Matthew 5: 42. 188: 19-20 the last General Election •.• would borrow of thee Russell refers to the General Election of October 1924, in which Ramsay MacDonald's minority Labour Government was defeated, chiefly over the issue of Britain's diplomatic and trade relations with the Soviet Union, which his government had officially recognized and signed trade pacts with. These agreements aroused much controversy and dissension in both the Liberal and Conservative parties,

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the latter of which, led by Stanley Baldwin, won the election and reversed b the official recognition of the Soviet Union and the trade agreements. Oth 188: 27-8 "If thou wilt be perfect •.• give to the poor." Matthew 19 . 21 The original has no "which" before "thou". · · 189: 8-9 "Ye shall not have gone ... the Son of Man be come." Matthew IO: 23. 189: 9-10 "There are some standing here .•. into His kingdom" Matthe 16: 28. The original reads: "There be some standing here, which shall taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." t 189: 14-15 "Take no thought for the morrow" Matthew 6: 24: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 190: 1-2 "Ye serpents ••• the damnation of hell." Matthew 23: 33. 190: 6-7 "Whosoever speaketh against ••• the world to come." Matthew 12: 32. The original reads: "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come" 190: 14-17 "The Son of Man ••• gnashing of teeth" Matthew 13: 41-2. . 190: 21-4 the sheep and the goats •.• "Depart ••• everlasting fire." Matthew 25: 31-46. The quoted passage comes at 25: 4i. 190: 25-8 "If thy hand offend thee .•• the fire is not quenched." Mark 9: 43--4. 190: 34-5 the Gadarene swine See Luke 8: 26-39. 190: 40-191: 2 "He was hungry .•. 'Master, ••• withered away.'" Mark n: 12-23. 191: 14 Samuel Butler's book, ErewhonRevisited Butler (1835-1902) published this book in 1901; it is a sequel to Erewhon: Or Over the Range, which was published anonymously in 1872. "Erewhon" is (almost) the reverse spelling of "nowhere". What appear in quotation marks in Russell's account are really paraphrases.

n:

27 Bertrand Russell's Confession of Faith 195: 36-8 "My father taught me •.. 'Who made God?'" See A183: 4-6. 198: 23-4 refuted by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason See A186: 9-10. 198: 25-7 Kant himself started a new line ... from morals See A186: II. 198: 32 "Categorical Imperative" "So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law" (Kant 1956, 30). 198: 35-6 satirized by Samuel Butler in Erewhon Revisited See A191: 14. 199: 37-8 Voltaire's parody of the argument ••• spectacles See A185: 6-7. 20 I: 8- II I read once a careful study . . • the oysters failed. No source found. 201: 20-I Kant ••• we gaze upon the starry heavens See Kant 1889, 260.

715

Russell is referring to the first sentence of the conclusion of Part Second: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within." This sentence is also engraved upon Kant's tomb. 201 : 31 Robinson Crusoe The principal character in a novel of the same name by Daniel Defoe (c. 1660-1731); the novel recounts the adventures of Crusoe, a sailor, who is shipwrecked on an apparently uninhabited island, although as it happens a man he names "Friday" is already there and becomes Crusoe's faithful follower. Crusoe and Friday are rescued in the end.

28

What Is the Soul?

203 : 24 Dr. Watson For biographical information on John B. Watson, see the Headnote to Paper 24.

29 Why Mr. Wood Is Not a Freethinker 209: 3-4 at the Selly Oak College, Birmingham The name on the title page of Wood's book is "Selby Oak Colleges", but this is a mistake, which Russell silently corrects. See A2II: 30 for additional information on the Selly Oak Colleges. 209: 7-8 "the main reason ... does not know what religion is" Wood 1928, 32. 209: 24 the Book of Mormon According to Joseph Smith (1805-1844), who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (more commonly known as the Mormon Church) in 1830, this book was revealed to him by God and on it he rested his authority to found the new church. The book purports to give the pre-Columbian history of American people of Hebrew origin from the scattering of the Jews until 600 A.D. 209: 27-8 Mr Wood states that I do not know what the arguments are See Wood 1928, 14-17. 209: 34-7 Maupertuis ... in arguments with non-mathematicians PierreLouis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stated the principle of least action in this way: "Whenever any change occurs in Nature, the quantity of action employed for this change is always the least possible" (Wolf 1952, 68). Maupertuis used his principle to restate the cosmological argument for the existence of God, thus giving the argument the appearance of being scientific. 209: 38 had been discovered by Leibniz Present scholarship does not accept this claim. During Maupertuis's lifetime Samuel Konig first advanced the case for Leibniz; this led to a controversy in which Voltaire became involved. There appears to be some ground for Konig's claim, but it is not conclusive. See Vartanian 1967, 219. 209: 41-210: I Mr. Wood gives us to understand •.• to have refuted See

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Wood 1928, Chap. v, "Moral Arguments for Deity". 2ro: 3-4 "Intellectually ... a philosophy of history." Wood 1928, 73 . 2ro: 5-6 "At the base of any Christian philosophy ... moral experience." Wood 1928, 74. The original has "basis" instead of "base". 2ro: 6-7 He goes on to speak about shame and guilt See Wood 1928, _ . 75 6 210: 15-16 like Dr. Johnson in the presence of George III ... presence This allusion is something of a puzzle. Boswell in his 1791 records the meetin between Johnson and George III as taking place in February, 1767, and ther: is nothing in his account to suggest that Johnson was not thinking clearly, Afterwards, Johnson does say to Sir Joshua Reynolds that he made no reply when the King paid him a high compliment: "No, Sir. When the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my Sovereign." This remark may be what Russell had in mind when he wrote this paper. 2ro: 16-17 He accuses me ... read recent Christian apologetics See Wood 1928, 84. 2ro: 26-7 Torquemada Tomas de Torquemada (1420-1498), a Dominican, was appointed Grand Inquisitor of Spain in 1483; he was especially noted for his cruelty. 2ro: 34 the Society of Friends This is the official name of the Quakers; the Society was founded circa 1650 by George Fox in England. 2n: 22-5 when ... the Bill permitting marriage ... was not included The Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act became law on 28 August 1907. Legalizing this form of marriage was required because Great Britain had an established church; the church interpreted the phrase "one flesh", used with regard to a married couple, to mean that each of the partner's relatives were now the other partner's relatives, e.g. a sister-in-law was literally a sister, and since no man may marry his own sister, he could not marry his sister-in-law either, even if his wife was dead. 2n: 25-7 a Bill was introduced ... to be rejected During the 1920s this bill was introduced by private members five times before it passed the Commons and was sent to the House of Lords. The debate in the Lords took place on 23, 30 and 31 July, and l August 1928. Russell's brother participated in all of the debates, so, without a doubt, he is Russell's source. As Russell notes, it was the Archbishop of Canterbury who caused the Lords to reject it on the third and final reading; he admitted that he had no good reasons for opposing it, but nevertheless he did oppose it, calling it "an infinitely rash and most inconsiderate act" (p. 1592); he carried the day by a single vote after a final emotional appeal for members to vote against the bill on the ground that this was his last day as a member of their body. For the debate, see The Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, Vol. LXXl (for full publishing details see the Bibliographical Index). 2n: 30 Woodbrooke Woodbrooke was opened by the Quakers in 1903 "as a

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ermanent Settlement for religious and social study" (Davis 1953, 13). The

~eilY Oak Colleges are centred round Woodbrooke; they are "a group of Colleges, denominational in inception and administration, but united by a central representative organization, which provided instruction in non-denominational subjects needful to all Christian workers, and also administered the jointconcerns of the group as a whole" (169). Only adults may attend these Colleges. 2u: 35-212: 9 quotation from Professor Strowski ... (or experience) Wood

192 8, 75. Wood gives as his source Pascal et son temps (1907) by Fortunat

Strowski, a book which scholars regard as an important study of Pascal's background and views. 212 : 1 9 The objectification of good and evil ... I believed in Russell defended this position, which he took from G. E. Moore, in "The Elements of Ethics" (19ro), now reprinted in his 1992. George Santayana's criticism of Russell's position in his 1913 led Russell to abandon the view.

30 Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? 214 : 1 My own view on religion is that of Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus (c.94-c.53 B.C.) was a Roman poet and philosopher, famous for his De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which expounds an atomistic and materialistic philosophy. Its whole tenor is anti-religious. An example: "Herein I have one fear, lest perchance you think that you are starting on the principles of some unholy reasoning, and setting foot upon the path of sin. Nay, but on the other hand, again and again our foe, religion, has given birth to deeds sinful and unholy." Lucretius 1921, 11. 80-5. 21 4: 4 It helped in early days to fix the calendar Russell is referring to the fact that the Council of Trent in 1545 authorized Pope Paul III to correct the calendar, which was then out by ten days. In 1572 Pope Gregory III asked a Jesuit astronomer, Christopher Clavius, to fix it, and in 1582, ten days in October were omitted and the length of the year set at 365.2422 days. In 1587 the Church adopted an improved dating system based on this Gregorian calendar, which has been in use ever since. 214: 5 it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses Serge Sauneron in The Priests ofAncient Egypt (1960) writes: "For the priest, the knowledge of the sky and its mechanism served essentially, in a practical fashion, to determine the hour of the ceremonies which divided in a rigorous way the various episodes of the cult. In a less daily manner, it played an important role in the determination of the cardinal points by which the religious edifices were laid out: the position of the temple was determined by celestial observations. Furthermore, the encounters of the sun and the moon (eclipses) were known to them. Have we not been told that at the time of the eclipse which terrorized the soldiers of Alexandria fighting the Persians of Darius, to calm the p_anic

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which was overcoming the troops they used the interpretation of an Egy f priest?" (155-6). P 1an 214: 22 you should give your goods to the poor See Matthew 19 : 21 : "J said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and . esus ' give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me ,, 214: 22-3 you should not fight See Matthew 26: 52: "Then said Jesus · him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the unto . . sword shall perish with the sword." 214: 23 you should not go to church For Jesus' attitude toward the tempi . ~~ his day, see Matthew 12: 6, 21: 12-17, 24: l; Luke 19: 45-6; and John 2: 19 214: 23-4 you should not punish adultery See John 8: 3-1r. This passa · contains the famous challenge: "He that is without sin among you, let hi: first cast a stone at her." 214: 26-7 the Pope condemned them The Franciscans, who take a vow of strict poverty, are a preaching and teaching order founded by St. Francis of Assisi (rr81/2-1228). In 1322 Pope John XXII denounced as heretical their opinion that Christ and the Apostles had renounced all corporate and individual property. 214: 28 "Judge not that ye be not judged" Matthew 7: r. 214: 29 Inquisition Russell is probably referring to the Spanish Inquisition, a papal judicial institution authorized by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478, to seek out individuals accused of heresy and put them on trial. The methods used by Torquemada included torture and confiscations. The Inquisition was not suppressed until 1834, since it served as a useful political weapon for Spanish rulers. 215: l-2 The Church opposed Galileo In 1633 the Inquisition in Rome tried Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) for publishing condemned views in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief WDrld Systems (1632); he was found guilty, his book was condemned, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment, first in the house of the Archbishop of Siena and then in his own villa near Florence. 215: 2 and Darwin Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was denounced by the Anglican Church in 1860 when the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, attacked evolution at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Roman Catholic Church only reconciled itself with evolution when Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Humani Generis in 1950; in it he stated that the body of a human being, but not its soul, evolves. 215: 2 in our own day it opposes Freud The New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967) does not support Russell's charge that the Catholic Church officially opposed the teachings of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939); it states: "The Church has not spoken officially for or against either the theory or practice of psychoanalysis, wisely regarding both as natural phenomena to be treated with caution and subject to the same criteria as any other body of scientific research and practice" (rr: 956). 215: 4-6 Pope Gregory the Great ... "A report ... to certain friends."

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Gregory I (c.540-604) was the first Pope who was also a monk. At the beginning of his reign, he was virtually the ruler of Italy, both spiritually and civilly. The letter which Russell quotes was written to Desiderius, Bishop of Gaul. Another translation reads: "But it afterwards came to our ears, what we cannot mention without shame, that thy Fraternity is in the habit of expounding grammar to certain persons. This thing we took so much amiss, and so strongly disapproved it, that we changed what had been said before into groaning and sadness, since the praises of Christ cannot find room in one mouth with the praises of Jupiter. And consider thyself what a grave and heinous offence it is for bishops to sing what is not becoming even for a religious layman." What "had been said before" is presumably to be found in the opening sentence of the letter: "Many good things having been reported to us with regard to your pursuits, such joy arose in our heart that we could not bear to refuse what your Fraternity had requested to have granted to you" (A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Vol. XIII, Epistle LIV, p. 313). 215: 17-18 The Pope has officially condemned Socialism Russell is almost certainly referring to Leo XIII's encyclical letter, Quad Apostolici muneris, issued on 28 December 1878, which condemns socialism, communism and nihilism. See Carlen 1958. 215: 32 "It is better to marry than to burn" See Corinthians r, 7: 8-9: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." 218: 19-20 Matthew Arnold's definition: "A power ... righteousness." Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet, essayist and critic. His social criticism led him to classify society into Barbarians (the aristocracy), Philistines (the middle class), and Populace (the proletariat). The definition comes from Literature and Dogma, where he is discussing the ancient Hebrews' notion of God: "Let us put into their 'Eternal' and 'God' no more science than they did: the enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness" (1903, 58). 218: 31-2 if we are to believe Eddington ... intelligent as men Eddington devotes Chapter VIII, "Man's Place in the Universe" of his 1928 to this question and concludes: "I do not think that the whole purpose of the Creation has been staked on the one planet where we live; and in the long run we cannot deem ourselves the only race that has been or will be gifted with the mystery of consciousness. But I feel inclined to claim that at the present time our race is supreme; and not one of the profusion of stars in their myriad clusters looks down on scenes comparable to those which are passing beneath the rays of the sun" (178). 219: 39-40 saints ..• who wasted ... Turks, like St. Louis Russell is referring to Louis IX (1214-1270), King of France, who fought the Mameluks, slave-

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warriors of Turkish origin, at the battle of Mansourah in 1250, during h" seventh crusade to the Holy Land. is 220: 22-6 He says also .•. (Matthew, x, 35, 37) See Matthew lo· 34 39 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to se~d p - · eace but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father ' 'anct the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her moth in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that love:~ father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son . or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cro ss, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life for m sake shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." See als~ Luke, 12: 49-53. 221: 18 the time of Constantine Constantine I (c.280-337), also known as Constantine the Great, was the first Roman Emperor to openly sympathize with Christianity; he became a Christian on his death-bed. In 313 he and his co-emperor, Licinius, issued the Edict of Milan which allowed the practice of Christianity in the Roman Empire. 221: 24-6 Herodotus ... custommayshockhim Herodotus (c.484-420B.c.) is generally acknowledged as the first historian. An instance of such a custom is to be found in Book r, §199, of his History: "The Babylonians have one most shameful custom. Every woman born in the country must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of venus, and there consort with a stranger." Herodotus I882, r: 264. Herodotus goes on to give the details of the selection of the women by the men, and dwells upon the humiliation experienced by the women, who cannot refuse any man. 221: 38 that the world was created in 4004 B.C. See A238: 30-r. 221: 40-222: 2 My great-great-grandfather ••• ostracized from society In The Collected Stories of Bertrand Russell (1972) Russell recounts some anecdotes about his grandmother, Lady John Russell, in the course of which he mentions this ancestor: "Her mother's father was a certain Mr. Brydon who wrote a book called Travels in Sicily and Malta in which he advanced the terribly rash opinion that the lava on the slopes of Etna was so deep that it must have begun to flow before 4004 B.C. On account of this heresy, I regret to say, he was cut by the County. Nevertheless, one of his daughters married my grandmother's father, and her sisters came to live at Minto" (265). Patrick Brydone (1736-1818) was a traveller and writer, and a Fellow of the Royal Societies of England and Edinburgh. Brydone's book on Malta and Sicily was based upon his travels there in l770-7r. Published in 1773, it became very popular, and was translated into French and German. Brydone returned to England in 1771, where he wrote several papers on scientific topics. Russell's reference to the depth of lava on Mount Etna is found in Brydone I776, r: 140-1: "Now, says he, the eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to reason from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain at least

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years ago" (141). : 38-9 The position of Descartes ... lower animals are automata Des222 cartes argues for this view in his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, Part v. See Descartes I9II-12, r, n5-17. 223 : 8-9 some Christian apologists .•• latest doctrines of the atom Russell refers here to A. S. Eddington and his followers; see Paper 8 (54). 224 : 14-15 a recent prosecution for obscenity in the State of New York No source found. 22 6: 6 "For it seemed good .•. us" (Acts, xv, 28) The entire passage (28-9) reads: "For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well." 227 : 12 Christ tells us to become as little children See Matthew 18: 1-3: "At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

31 Is Religion Desirable? 230: 7 Calvin John Calvin (1509-1564), a Protestant reformer and contemporary of Martin Luther, was born in France, but lived most of his life in Geneva, a city which he transformed into a theocracy and whose citizens were subjected to a harsh discipline, rigidly enforced by ecclesiastical tribunals. Central to his theology was the notion of predestination, the doctrine that God, in an act of will, had predetermined the fate of everyone, believers and non-believers alike. 230: 34 Matthew Arnold's definition See A218: 19-20. 231: 2-4 Eddington •.• as intelligent as men See A218: 31-2.

32 Morality and Religion 234: 27-8 the Government forbade Germans .•. language No source found. 234: 28 Rasputin Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1871-1916) was a debauched Russian monk who secured a very strong, almost hypnotic, hold over the wife of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, a power he then abused. He was assassinated by courtiers whom he had offended. See Joseph T. Fuhrmann's 1990 (41-6) for a summary of his religious views. Rasputin taught that "You carry God with you, within your soul", and that you come to know God by making a voyage

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of discovery within yourself. His own voyage of discovery led to reli . practices of a typically Slavic sort, which is probably Russell's point. gious 234: 39 Dreyfus Captain Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was deported to D . ev11's Island in 1894 after being convicted on a charge of treason. It was alleged th he had supplied Germany with French army secrets, but evidence graduaJ~t surfaced indicating that his trial had been seriously flawed. In 1899 he w y pardoned and later reinstated in the French army. as 234: 41 Zola Emile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist and social reform.er; his pamphlet, J'accuse (1898), was instrumental in leading to a form.al pardon for Dreyfus. His journalistic work on Dreyfus's behalf resulted in imprisonment and a fine for libelling a court martial which had acquitted one of Dreyfus's accusers. Later both accusers confessed that the document used to convict Dreyfus had been forged. 235: 17-20 reverence for the Flag ••• The Nation ... the Cross Russell is referring to a letter from Ephraim Cross of New York to the editor, printed under the title, "Patriotism and Religion": "Sir: The following is extracted from a pamphlet distributed to the public schools. The pamphlet is entitled The Flag of the United States of America. The first page contains this subscription: 'Editing Committee: Gridley Adams, E. S. Martin, Boy Scouts, John J. Riley (since deceased), American Legion'. The quotation I submit reads: 'The Flag ... a symbol sacred second only to The Cross'!!! The exclamation marks are mine" (275).

33 Science and Religion 238: 30-1 Bishop Usher fixed the date at 4004 B.C. See Ussher 1650: I. James Usher, more commonly Ussher, (1581-1656) was Archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland. His Annales veteris testamenti a prima mundi origine deducti (1650) opens with this commentary on Genesis 1: l: "Which beginning of time, according to our Chronologie, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October, in the year of the Julian Calendar, 710 [4004 B.C.]." (1) Ussher's book forms the basis of the chronology to be found in the King James version of the Bible. 238: 31-3 Dr. Lightfoot ... man was created on October 23 at 9 a.m. See Lightfoot 1822, 2: 335. See also White 1896, l: 9. John Lightfoot (1602-1675), a Biblical scholar, was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1655. The passage to which Russell refers is from A Few and New Observations upon the Book of Genesis (1642). The reference also appears in his 1822, 7: 376-7. In Religion and Science (1935) Russell again mentions these dates: "The date of the creation of the world can be inferred from the genealogies in Genesis, which tell how old each patriarch was when his oldest son was born. Some margin of controversy was permissible, owing to certain ambiguities and to differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew text; but in the end Protestant Christendom generally accepted the date 4004 B.C., fixed

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by Archbishop Usher. Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, who accepted this date for the Creation, thought that a careful study of Genesis made even greater precision possible; the creation of man, according to him, took place at 9 a.m. on October 23. This, however, has never been an article of faith; you might believe, without risk of heresy, that Adam and Eve came into existence on October 16 or October 30, provided your reasons were derived from Genesis. The day of the week was, of course, known to have been Friday, since God rested on the Saturday" (51-2). : 4-5 The doctrine of invincible ignorance In Summa Theologica, LXXVI, 2 39 article 2, St. Thomas Aquinas writes: "Now it is evident that whoever neglects to have or do what he ought to have or do, commits a sin of omission. Wherefore through negligence, ignorance of what one is bound to know, is a sin; whereas it is not imputed as a sin to man, if he fails to know what he is unable to know. Consequently ignorance of suchlike things is called invincible, because it cannot be overcome by study. For this reason suchlike ignorance, not being voluntary, since it is not in our power to be rid of it, is not a sin: wherefore it is evident that no invincible ignorance is a sin. On the other hand, vincible ignorance is a sin, if it be about matters one is bound to know; but not, if it be about things one is not bound to know." 239 : u-12 "Do you unfeignedly believe ... Old and New Testaments?" In "The Form and Manner of Making and Consecrating of Archbishops, Bishops, Priests and Deacons" (1549) the ceremony includes "The Oath of the King's Supremacy"; after swearing to it, "Then shall the Bishop examine every one of them, that are to be ordered, in the presence of the people, after this manner following." Amongst the questions asked and answered is this one: "The Bishop. Do ye unfeignedly believe all the Canonical scriptures, of the old and new Testament? Answer. I do believe." 239: 25-6 Certain Greeks (Aristarchus) ... round the sun annually Aristarchus of Samas (c.310-230 B.C.) was a Greek scientist with a profound knowledge of all its branches, including music and astronomy. Sir Thomas Heath in his 1913 traces this attribution to Archimedes who stated "that Aristarchus wrote a book of hypotheses, one of which was that the sun and the fixed stars remain unmoved and that the earth revolves round the sun in the circumference of a circle" (iii). After examining a counter-claim he concludes "that there is still no reason to doubt the unanimous testimony of antiquity that Aristarchus was the real originator of the Copernican hypothesis" (iv). 239: 25 Pythagoras He lived from about 572 to 510 B.C. "Pythagoras believed that everything could be explained in terms of numbers, i.e. finite numbers. A length was to consist of a certain number of points; a period of time, of a certain number of instants. Then he discovered (or thought he discovered) that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the side. Since this contradicted his published opinions, he swore his followers to secrecy on the point" (Russell 1988, 252).

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239: 28 Copernicus Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) was a Polish astrono whose dissatisfaction with Ptolemaic astronomy led him to develop a helio mer tric theory of the solar system in his work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coele c~n­ stiurn (1543). 239: 31 according to his editor's preface Actually the preface was written b the book's publisher, Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), a German Lutheran th':! ologian who helped to introduce the Reformation to Nuremberg. Betweee1540 and 1541 Osiander tried to convince Copernicus to present his work an an hypothesis, an idea which Copernicus rejected. However, after Coperni~ cus's death in 1543, Osiander published the De Revolutionibus with an anon _ mous preface of his own composition, entitled "Ad Lectorem de Hypothesib~s Hvivs Operis", in which he claimed the work was hypothetical and conjectual and stressed that nothing more than this can be expected from the science of astronomy. White r896, I: 123 also describes this incident. 239: 33 Kepler Kepler was strongly moved by the Pythagorean belief in the importance of number in the study of the universe. A confirmed Copernican, he sought to discover the mathematical laws governing the movements of the planets. His discovery of the three laws of planetary motion established once and for all the superiority of the Copernican hypothesis to that inherited from Aristotle. A fortnight after Galileo's trial, Kepler's work, as well as that of Copernicus, was condemned by the Church. 239: 33 and Galileo Russell discusses Galileo's work at length in The Scientific Outlook (1931), 15-35. 239: 37-240: 3 Luther said: People give ear •.. and not the earth White r896, I: 126. The original has "gave" for "give" and "strove" for "strives" in the first sentence. For biographical data on Luther, see A4o6: 15. 240: 4-5 And Calvin said: "Who will venture ... the Holy Spirit?" White 1896, I: 127. 240: 10-17 The Jesuit Inchofer ... that the earth moves White 1896, I: 139. Melchior Inchofer (1584-1648) was a German Jesuit who lived in Rome between 1636 and 1646 and while there served on the Index Congregation; he was a student of the Jesuit professor, Christof Scheiner, with whom Galileo disputed over the primacy of the discovery of sunspots. Inchofer testified against the Copernican heliocentric theory at the trial which condemned Galileo and forced his abjuration of Copernican doctrine. In Religion and Science (1935) Russell quotes Inchofer again (39). 240: 21-2 Newton ... the planets ... hurled by the hand of God In Russell's copy of the 1803 edition of Sir Isaac Newton's 1687, in the "Scholium Generale" which concludes the work, the following sentence is marked by a vertical line in the margin: "but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws" (1803, 2: 310). On the same page Russell has written "more theology" beside

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the following passage: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Newton goes on to describe this being as God "the maker and Lord of all things" (3n). : 2-4 Laplace, who "had no need of the hypothesis" of God ... grew 240 2 Laplace published the nebular hypothesis to account for the origin of the solar system in 1796. In his 1935 Russell, after giving a summary of Laplace's nebular theory, mentions the above quotation: "Living as he did, in the epoch of the French Revolution, he was a complete freethinker, and rejected the Creation altogether. When Napoleon, who conceived that belief in a heavenly Monarch encouraged respect for monarchs on earth, observed that Laplace's great work on Celestial Mechanics contained no mention of God, the astronomer replied: 'Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis'." Eric Bell provides an account of this exchange in his 1937, 18!. 240 : 30 Sir Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was a British geologist whose work profoundly influenced Charles Darwin insofar as it suggested that the Church's claims regarding the age of the earth were not consistent with geological discoveries. 241: l Darwin's book in 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. 2 41: 8-9 Bishop Wilberforce thundered against Darwinism ... in 1860 Samuel Wilberforce (1805-1873) was both Bishop of Oxford (1845-69) and of Winchester (1869-73); he took a leading part in many of the controversies of his day. 241: 14 Pope Pius IX Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti (1792-1878) took the name Pius IX when he was elected Pope in 1845. At the time of his election he was a reformer and he acted upon his convictions in the early years of his papacy, but an insurrection in 1848 forced him to flee Rome and after his restoration by the French in 1850 he emerged as an extreme reactionary. The dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility were both proclaimed by him. His pontificate was the longest in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. 241: 14-15 Lord Odo Russell Odo William Leopold Russell (1829-1884), created first Baron Ampthill in 1881, was a grandson of the 6th Duke of Bedford and thus Bertrand Russell's first cousin once removed; he was a professional diplomat who unofficially represented Great Britain at the Vatican from 1858 to 1870. 241: 15-17 "such an association could not be ... a duty to animals" Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904), a British philanthropist and author of religious books, relates this incident in her 1894, 2: 489. "Pope Pio IX had been addressed by the English in Rome through Lord Ampthill (then Mr. Odo Russell, our representative there) with a request for permission to found a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Rome; where (as all the world knows) it

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was almost as deplorably needed as at Naples. After a considerable delay, the formal reply through the proper office was sent to Mr. Russell refusing th (indispensable) permission. The document conveying this refusal expressle stated that 'a society for such a purpose could not be sanctioned in Rorn y e. Man owed duties to his fellow men; but he owed no duties to the lower animals; therefore, though such societies might exist in Protestant countries the could not be allowed to be established in Rome'. iJThe late Lord Arthur Ru:. sell, coming back from Italy to England just after this event, told me of it With great detail, and assured me that he had seen the Papal document in his brother's possession; and that if I chose to publish the matter in England, he would guarantee the truth of the story at any time. I did very much choose to publish it, thinking it was a thing which ought to be proclaimed on the housetops; and I repeated it in seven or eight different publications, ranging frorn the Quarterly Review to the Echo." 241: 24 as it is in the Gospels Russell is referring to the incident of the Gadarene swine (Luke 8: 26-39) in which Jesus drew devils out of a man and caused them to enter a herd of swine which then drowned themselves. 241: 26-7 Sir Thomas Browne ... two witches hanged Browne (1605-168 2) was an English physician and the author of Religio Medici, which is commonly described as the confessions of a sceptic. In notes filed with this manuscript, Russell gives as his source John M. Robertson's book, A Short History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern (1906): "Yet it is on record that in 1664, on the trial of two women for witchcraft, Browne declared that the fits suffered from by the children said to have been bewitched 'were natural, but heightened by the devil's cooperating with the malice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villainies'. This amazing deliverance is believed to have 'turned the scale' in the minds of the jury against the poor women, and they were sentenced by the sitting judge, Sir Matthew Hale, to be hanged" (2: n2). 241: 27-8 Wesley ... "to give up witchcraft is to give up the Bible" White 1896, I: 363: "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible." For biographical data on Wesley, see A38o: 39. 241: 35-6 the Bible declared ... for the sin of Eve Genesis 3: 16: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." 241: 36-7 Eufame Macalyane See White 1896, 2: 62-3: "As far back as the year 1591, Eufame Macalyane, a lady of rank, being charged with seeking the aid of Agnes Sampson for the relief of pain at the time of the birth of her two sons, was burned alive on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh; and this old theological view persisted even to the middle of the nineteenth century." 241: 38-242: 3 Simpson's use of chloroform ... sufferings of women See White 1896, 2: 63: "From pulpit after pulpit Simpson's use of chloroform was denounced as impious and contrary to Holy Writ; texts were cited abundantly,

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the ordinary declaration being that to use chloroform was 'to avoid one part of the primeval curse on women'. Simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to defend the blessing which he brought into use; but he seemed about to be overcome, when he seized a new weapon, probably the most absurd by which a great cause was ever won: 'My opponents forget,' he said, 'the twenty-first verse of the second chapter of Genesis; it is the record of the first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that the Maker of the universe, before he took the rib of Adam's side for the creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam.' This was a stunning blow, but it did not entirely kill the opposition; they had strength left to maintain that the 'deep sleep of Adam wok place before the introduction of pain into the world-in a state of innocence.'" Sir James Young Simpson (18n-1870), a Scottish physician, was the first to use ether in obstetrics; he also discovered the anaesthetic property of chloroform in 1847 and used it in obstetrics. 1: 24 40 "The principle of natural selection ... the Word of God." This particular line is from White 1896, I: 70, who in turn attributes it to Wilberforce in the Quarterly Review. Wilberforce's actual phrase, from Essays Contributed to the Quarterly Review, 1874, r: 94, reads as follows: "Now, we must say at once, and openly, that such a notion is absolutely incompatible not only with single expressions in the word of God on that subject of natural science with which it is not immediately concerned, but, which in our judgement is of far more importance, with the whole representation of that moral and spiritual condition of man which is its proper subject-matter." 242: 32-4 Calvin was right in saying ... what is called wickedness In his 1961 [1552], Calvin writes: "God, by His eternal goodwill, which has no cause outside itself, destined those whom He pleased to salvation, rejecting the rest; those whom He dignified by gratuitous adoption He illumined by His spirit, so that they receive the life offered in Christ, while others voluntarily disbelieve, so that they remain in darkness destitute of the light of faith" (58). 243: 20-1 It told George III that his Coronation Oath ... Emancipation King George III, who reigned between 1760 and l8n, refused to pass the Catholic Relief Act in 1801, believing that such an act, which would have allowed Roman Catholics to hold seats in Parliament, undermined the status of the Church of England, which in his Coronation Oath he had sworn to lead and protect. 243: 21-2 it told George IV no such thing George IV served as Regent in place of his ailing father from l8n until the latter's death in 1820, after which he served as Monarch until 1830; he signed the Catholic Emancipation Act on IO April 1829, after much debate and dissension with his cabinet, then led by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. 243; 36-9 Eddington ... behaviour of individual atoms See Eddington 1928, 306ff. 244; 12 Einstein ... still believes in strict causality Until the end of his life

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Einstein refused to accept the fundamental indeterminacy of natural s entailed by quantum mechanics. He stated his position succinctly in Ysterni> a 1etter t 0 Max Born, dated 4 December 1926: "Quantum mechanics is certai . . B . . II · · posmg. ut an mner v01ce te s me that it 1s not yet the real thing Th nly tni.· e theo says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old . d th at ne u . . at d'ice" (Born one · I , at any rate, am convince 1s not p Iaymg 1971 . . .•. nature , 9I). 244.. 41-2 Th ere are some ... b'10l ogtsts ... see purpose m R.

r;

sell is almost certainly thinking of Conwy Lloyd Morgan (185 2 _ ) us1936 pounder of the theory of emergent evolution. In his Gifford Lectures M, Pro. coneI us1on . . . th' organ stated h 1s regard'mg evoI utton m 1s way: "There is no disjunct' antithesis of evolutionary progress and Divine purpose· Is there one ive · or the other? has no meaning if there always be one with the other. My chief co . . . ncern 1s to present the pomt of view of one who accepts both" (1926, ix).

34 Need Morals Have a Religious Basis? 248: 35 Kantian rule Russell is referring here to Kant's categorical imperative: "So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law" (Kant 1956, 30). 248: 35-6 won't suit Nietzsche Kant's rule would not suit Nietzsche because, as Russell notes elsewhere in this volume (425), he regards ordinary people as "the bungled and botched", who have a duty to supermen. See also his remark on Nietzsche later in this outline (251). 249: II Benthamism Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and his followers believed in a representative democracy in which the legislators were guided in their work by the greatest happiness principle. 249: 20-1 John Woolman would not make wills leaving slaves Woolman (1720-1772), an American tailor, was ordained by the Quakers in 1743; the rest of his life was spent travelling in both the North and the South, preaching abolition of slavery. For the matter to which Russell refers, see Woolman 1871, 80-r. 249: 21 Isaiah had some novelties Russell is probably referring to the way in which Isaiah rids his morality of appeals to human praise or blame. Characteristics which other humans praise, like power in men and beauty in women, are said by Isaiah to be properties which the Lord will take away, leaving those who had them desolate. About all that is left for people to aspire to is an inner goodness which wants no praise from others. 250: 29 he may (like Kant) infer God from it See A186: II. 251: 9 the Sermon on the Mount See Matthew 5. Russell quotes verse 5; the emphasis is his. 251: 12 Uriah Heep An unsavoury character in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, who is constantly proclaiming his humility while doing dastardly deeds. He is found out in the end.

729

35 The Existence and Nature of God 8: 19-20 "my father told me ... 'who made God?'" See A183: 4-6. 25 8: 31-2 the sort of God ... writings of H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells 25 (1866-1946) expounds his conception of God in God, the Invisible King (1917). 6 : 35-7 Confucius praised very highly the young man ... the state For a 2 1 possible source of this see Confucius 1971, 270: "The duke of Sheh informed Confucius, saying, 'Among us here there are those who may be styled upright in their conduct. If their father have stolen a sheep, they will bear witness to the fact.' ,[Confucius said, 'Among us, in our part of the country, those who are upright are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son, and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this" (Analects, Bk. XIII, Chap. XVIII). 2 62: 16-21 misgovernment and cruelty ... attacked it Leopold II assumed personal sovereignty of the Congo on l August 1885, having been told by the Berlin conference of 1884 that it "belonged" to him. From 1885 until 1908, he controlled the Congo Free State and pillaged its resources, particularly its rubber. Exposes by E. D. Morel, Roger Casement and Joseph Conrad alerted the British to the barbarisms being perpetrated in the Congo, but the Belgians tended to dismiss these protests as motivated by imperial jealousy. Leopold urged Belgian Catholic orders to set up missions in the Congo. Since they were beholden to him, they tended to keep silent about the exploitation; but Protestant missionaries from the United States, Great Britain, and the Scandanavian countries, which were there before Leopold took over, did speak out. The Belgian people therefore lacked unbiased reports from an independent moral authority about the situation. Father Vermeesch was an exception to the general acquiescence of the Belgian Church. His La Question Congolaise (1906) had a greater impact than protests from socialists, because their antimonarchism made their criticisms seem less objective. 262: 26-8 Kant ... I have been guilty of calling in print a misfortune Russell is referring to his discussion of the treatment of induction by post-Renaissance philosophers in An Outline of Philosophy, whose high-point to his mind was reached in the work of Hume but which was then muddled by Kant. He concludes with this sentence: "Kant has the reputation of being the greatest of modern philosophers, but to my mind he was a mere misfortune" (1927a, 83; 1927b, 80) C. D. Broad objected to Russell's judgment of Kant on the ground that "it seems a pity to apply to him an epithet which should obviously be reserved for Hegel" (1930, 10). 262: 28-9 the two most sublime things ... moral sense See A201: 20-r. 263: II Pascal's argument Russell refers to what is usually called "Pascal's wager". See Pascal r932, §233. For biographical information on Pascal, see A447: 33.

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36 Physics and Metaphysics 273: 13-14 "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" Shakespeare, The Tempest, IV. i. 156-7. 273: 33-4 "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. ,, From "To Althea: From Prison" (1649) by Richard Lovelace (1618-16 58). 273: 41-2 Professor Veblen Oswald Veblen (1880-1960), an American mathematician, taught at Princeton University from 1905 until 1932, when he was selected as a founding member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a position from which he retired in 1950. Russell refers here to Veblen's original work in the branch of mathematics now usually called "topology", but which Veblen called "analysis situs". 274: 13-14 the early Buddhists in the time of King Asoka Asoka, who died around 235 B.c., was the last major emperor in the Mauryan dynasty oflndia· he ruled from 265 (or 273) until his death; his realm covered most of norther~ India, Afghanistan and Baluchistan. Circa 261 he converted to Buddhism from Brahmanism, and he became a vigorous patron of Buddhism throughout the remaining years of his reign, adopting it as the state religion. In addition he sent a Buddhist mission to Sri Lanka, where, after this introduction, Buddhism flourished. With regard to Russell's point, see Cross Currents in Early Buddhism by S. N. Dube, §C, for an account of the "controversies reflecting philosophical development and the beginnings of new schools", and especially Chapter rx which discusses "existence and other modes of conditioned reality". 274: 26-7 being discussed by German physicists Russell refers here to Heisenberg and his school, who were at that very time developing quantum mechanics. Russell discusses their discoveries at length in Paper 13. 275: 16 When Dr. Johnson kicked a stone in order to disprove Berkeley See A3o: 7-9. 275: 31 in a Pickwickian sense In Chapter I of The Pickwick Papers by Dickens, at a meeting of the Pickwick Club, a member called Mr. Pickwick a "humbug"; the chairman asked the speaker whether he had used "humbug" in "a common sense", and received the reply that "he had used the word in a Pickwickian sense". The Annotated Dickens (1986) explains: "This satirical reference refers in particular to Lord Brogham's explanation of a famous attack he made in 1823 upon the then foreign minister, George Canning. After his vehement attack met an equally vehement response, Lord Brogham claimed that he had not actually meant what he had said, but had used the words 'in a parliamentary sense'. Such altercations in the House, with violent accusations being ended by this conventional 'apology', became common until they ceased overnight as a result of Dickens' lampoon, according to a parliamentary minister at the time: Frazer's Magazine, reporting this in October 1838, commented that 'this is something for a man to have done, and that by a single dash of the

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pen"' (I: 23). 6: 27 25-6 a certain property which Dr. Whitehead calls "pushiness" No source found. 6: 27 41 Schrodinger's waves Russell discusses this theory briefly in his 1927, 4 6. There he quotes de Broglie, and cites Schrodinger, with respect to "the new wave theory of matter" in which "the material point is conceived as a singularity in a wave". Russell notes that this new theory has been proved to be formally equivalent to Heisenberg's theory of the atom. 277: 38-9 Compare the style of Sir Thomas Browne Browne's style is sententious and elaborate. 2 7T 39 and that of Mr. H. G. Wells Wells is now best known for his science fiction and his novels; his style is terse and sparse. 8: 27 2 Empedocles A Greek philosopher and statesman who flourished in the fifth century B.c.; he was a disciple of Pythagoras and Parmenides. According to tradition he hurled himself into the crater of Mount Etna in order that his sudden disappearance might convince people he was a god. 8: 27 5 Lord Kelvin William Thomson (1824-1907) was first Baron Kelvin, an English mathematician and physicist; he is best known for his formulation of the second law of thermodynamics.

37 On the Value of Scepticism 281: 15 A story is told of Pyrrho Pyrrho (c.360-c.270 B.C.) left no philosophical writings. What we know of his scepticism is gleaned from the fragments of his pupil, Timon of Phlius (320-230 B.C.); what we know of his life we learn from Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius, the source of the story Russell relates. Unfortunately, Diogenes wrote about six centuries after Pyrrho lived. 282: 40-3 The late Dr. Rivers ... Psychology and Politics William Halse Rivers (1864-1922) was an English psychologist and anthropologist; his lecture was entitled, "An Address on Socialism and Human Nature". 283: 26 Westermarck's History of Human Marriage Eduard Alexander Westermarck (1862-1939) was a Finnish social philosopher who emigrated to England in 1907 to take up the position of Professor of Sociology in the University of London; he retired in 1930. 286: 29-30 Freudians have accustomed us to "rationalizing" Freud introduced this concept into his writings in l9II and noted that it was used by Ernest Jones earlier. See Freud 1958, 49. 287: 7-8 If the Germans ... unlimited submarine campaign During the First World War Germany instructed its U-boat fleet to torpedo any ship entering or leaving the ports of its enemies. One casualty of this campaign was the Lusitania, a British passenger liner on its way from New York to Liverpool; it was torpedoed off the coast oflreland on 7 May 1915 and sank within

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twenty minutes. Over n90 lives were lost, very many of whom were Am . cans. This action was instrumental in turning opinion in the United Steriates decisively against Germany. 287: 8-9 If the French ... they did in the Ruhr Russell is referring to th French invasion and occupation of the Ruhr from 1921 to 1923 owing to G e ermany's refusal to pay its war debts. This action incurred the wrath of the Germans and was a contributing cause to World War II. 287: 9-10 If Napoleon ... the Treaty of Amiens The Treaty of Amiens signed on 27 March 1802, provided a brief lull in the Napoleonic wars. Whe~ Napoleon refused to withdraw from Malta, as required by the treaty, Great Britain declared war. 288: 13-16 Leibniz ••• "Fortunately ..• withdrew the offer." This incident is reported by Leibniz's first biographer, Johann Georg Eckhart. See Aiton 19 s . 5 288: 18-19 Shakespeare puts "the lunatic ••• all compact" A Midsummer Night's Dream, v. i. 7. 288: 20-1 In 1919 I saw The Trojan Women acted at the Old Vic The version of Euripides's play which Russell witnessed was translated by his old friend, Gilbert Murray. The role of Astyanax was played by Christopher Casson. An additional interest for Russell was the actress who played Helen: she was Colette O'Niel (Lady Constance Malleson) with whom he had been having an on-again, off-again, love affair since 1916. 288: 27-9 They had lately voted ••• blockade on Russia The election to which Russell refers was held on 14 December 1918 and was won by the Coalition party, led by David Lloyd George.

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39 Analysis of Mind 295 : 16 a Laplacean calculator See A68: 31-4. 295 : 16-17 the talk of Eddington and others about atomic free will See Headnote to Paper 8 and A68: 15-16. 29 6: 23-4 Gestalt psychology A twentieth-century movement in psychology centring upon the work of three men, Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886-1941). Wertheimer states their central doctrine as follows: "The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clear-cut cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole" (1944, 84). In German: "Man konnte das Grundproblem der Gestalttheorie etwa so zu formulieren suchen: Es gibt Zusammenhange, bei denen nicht, was im Ganzen geschieht, sich daraus herleitet, wie die einzelnen Stucke sind und sich zusammensetzen, sondern umgekehrt, wo-im pragnanten Fall-sich das, was an einem Tei? dieses Ganzen geschieht, bestimmt van inneren Strukturgesetzen dieses seines Ganzen" (1925, 43). Gestalt psychologists sharply contrasted their theory, which they used to study perception, with the prevailing view that the character of the whole is determined by the character of its parts, a doctrine central to British empiricism. 296: 36 Pavlov's results See Paper 25 and Pavlov 1927, 24-6.

40 The Decrease of Knowledge 38 Bertrand Russell Replies 292: 23-5 I can •.. plead ..• a close and intimate ... British Labour Party Russell stood as Labour candidate for Chelsea, a conservative stronghold, in two Parliamentary elections, on 15 November 1922 and 6 December 1923; he lost both times to Sir Samuel Hoare, the Unionist incumbent, the voting in the 1922 election being 13'437 votes for Hoare and 4,513 for Russell, and in 1923, I0,461 votes for Hoare, 5,047 for Russell, and 2,846 for H. W. Preston, a Liberal candidate. Sir Samuel Hoare was a cabinet minister in the Tory government prior to its loss to a Labour-led coalition in the 1923 election, after which the Labour Party formed a minority government led by Ramsey Macdonald. Macdonald appointed Russell to the Boxer Indemnity Committee, established to deal with money owed Great Britain by China following the Boxer Revolution of 1900, money which Russell believed should be put towards education. The committee was dissolved after Labour lost the next election, in November 1924. Russell's involvement with the Boxer Indemnity Committee, and with Macdonald and the Labour Party in general, is covered in detail by Clark 1975, 408-10, 414-15.

298: 12-13 the works of Jeans and Eddington For biographical information on these scientists, see the Headnotes to Papers 8 and 12. 298: 16-17 Archbishop Usher ••• the world was created in 4004 B.C. See A238: 30-r. 298: 17-20 Dr. Lightfoot ••• at nine o'clock in the morning See A238: 313. 298: 32 Thomas Prince Prince (1687-1758) was the author of Earthquakes, the Wbrks of God and Tokens of His Just Displeasure (1727, reprinted 1755). 298: 34-6 Benjamin Franklin ... lightning Franklin (1706-1790) was an American author, inventor and diplomat who developed lightning-rods around 1750. 298: 36-9 "In Boston ..• the mighty hand of God." Tilton in her 1940 (87) quotes from Prince 1755 (23): "The more Points of Iron are erected round the Earth, to draw the Electrical Substance out of the Air; the more the Earth must needs be charged with it. And therefore it seems worthy of consideration, Whether any Part of the Earth being fuller of this terrible Substance, may not be more exposed to more shocking Earthquakes. In Boston are more erected than

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anywhere else in New England; and Boston seems to be more dreadful! shaken. O! there is no getting out of the mighty Hand of GOD! If we think t'f 0 avoid it in the Air, we cannot in the Earth: Yea, it may grow more fatal".

41a The Social Importance of Culture 301: rr Sun Yat-Sen Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925) was called "the father of the Revolution"; he led a successful revolution against the Manchus in l 9 rr.

41b On Curious Learning 303: 24 the chapter in Descartes' Treatise on the Passions This is Article cc in The Passions of the Soul. See Descartes l9II-I2, r: 42r. 303: 27 King Louis IX Louis IX (1215-1270) was called Saint Louis; he reigned from 1226 until his death. Russell is referring to the Sixth Crusade ( 124 3_ 54) of which he was a leader. 303: 28 Old Man of the Mou.ntain This is the European name given to the leader of the Nizarf Ismafli, a radical Islamic sect which gained prominence around ro90, and also known to Europeans, via the crusaders, as the "assassins'', a name derived from the disparaging Arabic term hashfshfyah, meaning "users of hashish". The name refers to the alleged use of the drug by members of the sect: it was claimed that the leader of the assassins, the "Old Man of the Mountain", used the drug to delude and manipulate his followers, and to incite them to murder at his command. The sect flourished in Syria and Persia, where it was notorious for the elimination of its enemies (hence the connotations attached to the European term "assassin"). Bernard Lewis's 1967 provides an historical account and analysis of the sect and its significance among Muslim and Christian nations of the period. Regarding Russell's reference: in 1250, when St. Louis of France began his crusade to the Holy Land, he is said to have exchanged gifts and missions with the "Old Man of the Mountain" via the Old Man's messengers (see Lewis 1967, 5: 121). 303: 31-2 the Japanese Jesuit who was martyred in Moscow No source found. 303: 36 Han dynasty This dynasty lasted from 202 B.C. to 220 A.D. 303: 37 King Kaniska Kaniska was a King of India whose dates are very uncertain, although all candidates for his dates fall within the period of the Han dynasty. One thing is known about him, namely, that he adopted Buddhism as his religion. 304: 5-6 "Societies for the diffusion of useful knowledge" The first of these organizations to promote adult education grew out of classes for mechanics, which were started by members of the utilitarian movement. In 1823 the London Mechanics' Institution was founded, and shortly thereafter extended to

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other British cities. Three years later the "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" was founded; its principal aim was to provide cheap reprints of books, usually published in weekly parts. The Society's founders were convinced that this was the best way to reach adults whose educational aspirations had been blocked by the need to go to work at a young age. For a full account of this Society, see Smith 1974· 04: 7 Burton's Anatoniy of Melancholy Robert Burton (1577-1640) was an 3 English clergyman and author; his book, which was published in 1621 under the pseudonym, Democritus Junior, is a curious collection of history, medical knowledge, classical and Renaissance learning, and fantasy. 04: 9-12 "Galen holds ... can white become black?" Burton 1621, Part r, 3 Sec. l, Mem. 3, Subs. 3.

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304: 19-21 Francis Bacon ... "knowledge is power" Bacon (1561-1626) asserts this as a parenthetical remark in the section on heresies in Meditationes Sacrc:e (1597). See Bacon 1861, 253. For the Latin original, "nam et ipsa scientia potestas est", see ibid., 24r. 304: 22 Sir Thomas Browne wished to know what song the sirens sang The passage to which Russell refers is in Urne Burial! (1658), Ch. v: "What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling Questions, are not beyond all conjecture" (Browne 1965, 132). 304: 31 Pope Silvester II His name was Gerbert (940?-1003); he was a distinguished scholar who wrote both textbooks and advanced works in music, science and mathematics; he was elected Pope in 999. See White 1896, r: 386, for a discussion of the prevailing suspicion that he practised magic: "It came to be the accepted idea that, as soon as a man conceived a wish to study the works of God, his first step must be a league with the devil." White cites as his source Gabriel Naude (1600-1653), French bibliographer and historian, who wrote The History of Magick, by Why of Apology, for All the Wise Men W'ho have Unjustly been Reputed Magicians, from the Creation to the Present Age. 304: 32-3 Prospero, who in Shakespeare's time was a mere phantasy Prospero, a purely Shakespearean invention, is the protagonist in The Tempest; he is at once represented as a wise man and one who practices in the occult. In his remark Russell is referring to the tradition of the magus, the philosopher-magician who mixes genuine knowledge with an interest in magic and the occult. Perhaps the best example of a magus is John Dee (1527-1608). A recent study of him by Peter J. French (1972) includes this judgment: "John Dee presents a perfect example of the de casibus pattern that inspired so much Renaissance tragedy: in the eyes of many, he had pursued knowledge too adamantly and too far. But he was Prospero, not Faustus" (19).

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305: IO-II Hobbes's first contact with Euclid This story about Th 0 mas Hobbes (1588-1679) comes to us from John Aubrey (1626-1697), English tiquary and folklorist; Robertson quotes it in his Hobbes (1886): "In the co anurse of the journey from 1629 to 1631 he first began to look into the 'Elements' 0 Euclid: such is his own simple confession. Aubrey is equally nai've and m f ore particular: 'He was forty years old before he looked on geometry, which h pened accidentally: being in a gentleman's library in -----,' Euclid's 'Eleme:~: lay open, and it was the 4 7th Prop. Lib. r. So he reads the proposition. 'B G--,' says he, 'this is impossible!' So he reads the demonstration, which refe: red him back to another, which he also read, et sic deinceps, that at last he Was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry" (1886, 31). 305: 18-19 forged decretals and the donation of Constantine The False Decretals is a ninth-century collection of ecclesiastical legislation, some of which are forgeries, a fact which was suspected as early as the twelfth century, and was established with confidence in the seventeenth century by the theologian, David Blonde!. The chief purpose of the decretals was the liberation of the church from state interference. The documents are also referred to as the Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore, after St. Isidore of Seville, a Spanish historian in whose name the decretals were written. The Donation of Constantine is one of the documents contained in the False Decretals; in it Emperor Constantine the Great grants significant temporal authority to the Pope, as well as declaring Papal supremacy in all matters of faith and worship. By using newly developed methods of textual criticism, the document was shown to be a forgery by Lorenzo Valla (c.1407-1457) in 1440. For Constantine, see A221: 18. 305: 34 Hippocrates Although little is known of his life and work, Hippocrates (c-460-c.477) is famous in the history of medicine for the code of medical ethics, the "Hippocratic oath", which he drew up and imposed upon his disciples. 305: 34 Galen This Greek physician flourished in the second century A.D.; his works were accepted as authoritative for many centuries after his death. 305: 36 Paracelsus Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus, whose real name was Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493?-1541) was an alchemist and a physician who wrote both medical and occult works. Rejecting the humoural theory of diseases, he was the first to teach that diseases were specific entities which demanded specific cures. 306: 20 Alexander in Greece Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), after succeeding his father as King of Macedon in 336 B.C., vastly extended his kingdom by brilliant use of arms. 306: 20 Nero Nero (37-68) was a Roman emperor (54-68) oflegendary cruelty. 306: 28 Basic English, a British invention This reformist language was largely the brainchild of Charles Kay Ogden (1889-1957), who poured an immense amount of energy into developing it and writing about it. There is a long series

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of little books, the "Psyche Minatures", devoted to its theory and use. 309 : 43-310: l Mephistopheles ... young student ... tree oflife is green See Goethe r976, 52. "All theories, dear friend, are gray; the golden tree of life is green" (Part 1: 2038-9). 310 : 2 Goethe's opinion Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is probably Germany's most famous poet. 0: 31 5-7 Professors such as Bergson ... a cavalry charge Bergson makes this comparison in Creative Evolution: "All organized beings, from the humblest to the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which we are, and in all places as in all times, do but evidence a single impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself indivisible. All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and to clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death" (19II, 285-6). 310: 27-8 Descartes' Treatise on the Passions See A303: 24. 310: 31 King Louis IX See A303: 27. 310: 32-3 Old Man of the Mountain See A303: 28. 310: 36-8 Brutus ... to pay the interest Marcus Junius Brutus (85?-42 B.c.), the Roman statesman, is famous as one of Julius Caesar's assassins. The loan to which Russell here refers was made by Brutus to the people of Salamis, a city in Cyprus, and the rate of interest was actually 48 percent. Brutus's agent, Scaptius, tried to persuade Cicero, then governor of Cilicia, to compel the city by force to comply with the agreement. This incident is recounted by Cicero in his correspondence with the Roman scholar Titus Pomponius Atticus; see Cicero r912, 1: 407-13. See Clarke r98I for a detailed account. 310: 42 Han dynasty See A303: 36. 310: 43 King Kaniska See A303: 37. 3II: 7 societies "for the diffusion of useful knowledge" See A304: 5-6. 3n: 9 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy See A304: 7. 3u: 12-15 "Galen holds ... can white become black?" See A304: 9-12.

42 The Limits of Empiricism 314: 1-2 Empiricism, says ... "the theory ... experience" This definition is from the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia, published in 1929. 320: 26-7 Wittgenstein and Carnap attempt ... merely grammatical For Wittgenstein, see his r922, 5.542ff. For Carnap, see his r937, §79· 321: 18 Alice Ambrose Alice Loman Ambrose (1906-) studied with Wittgenstein during the 1930s, after which she returned to the United States, married Morris Lazerowitz (1907-1987) in 1938, and together they taught philosophy at Smith College for over 35 years and co-authored a number of books. Am-

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brose responded to Russell's criticisms of her 1935 in a paper in Mind: see Anibrose 1937· 321 : 21 _6 "The finitist demands ..• any possible method be verified.» Ambrose 1935, 189. 321 : 27 _3 "Ifwe do not know .•• what is meant by p." Ambrose 1935, 319 . 321 : 29 _ 30 "it is logically impossible ••• the entire expansion" Ambrose 1935, 320. 321 : 31-2 "The phrase ••• is self-contradictory." Ambrose 1935, 322. 321 : 35 _ 7 "I should think ••• the infinite case analogously." Ambrose 1935, 337. 323 : 4 -5 Wittgenstein's symbol ••• should be made explicit See Wittgenstein 1922, 6.03. 323 : 13- 20 She thinks it logically impossible ••. consecutive 7's inn "With general forms of infinite range, 'verification by exhibition of instances' is meaningless. And verification of 'There do not exist three 7's in re' is meaningless in the same way" (319). 323: 37 -40 Another finitist ••• "The property ••• its members." Reuben Louis Goodstein (1912-1985) was a British mathematician who specialized in logic. In his 1939, 71, Goodstein writes: "The extent of bewilderment and confusion which results from a vague and uncritical usage of the terms 'class' and 'all' is well exhibited in Mr. Russell's paper, 'The Limits of Empiricism'." However, the passage which Russell cites is not found there, and has not been located in any of Goodstein's publications after 1935· 32 5: 2-17 Dirac, in the preface ••. the point of view of general theory Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac (1902-1984) was a British physicist whose theory of the spinning electron and his work in quantum mechanics led to the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933, which he shared with Erwin Schrodinger. The passage quoted by Russell is from p. v of the preface to Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930), a book which Russell possessed.

43 Philosophy and Grammar 331 : 3 -4 the philosophical school which has dominated Oxford Russell is referring to the neo-Hegelian idealists, a loose grouping of philosophers who took their inspiration from Hegel but developed it in rather disparate ways. Among those with Oxford connections were F. H. Bradley (1846-1924), Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923), Edward Caird (1835-1908), T. H. Green ( 1836-1882), Harold Joachim (1868-1938), H. W. B. Joseph (1867-1943), and J. H. Muirhead (1855-1940). . . the Preface .•• especrn · llyore arnap "The ph1331: 5-6 we are informed in losophers with whom I am in the closest agreement are those who compose the 'Viennese circle,' under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, and are commonly known as the logical positivists. And of these I owe most to Rudolf

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Carnap" (Ayer 1936, 13; 1946, 32). : l0-17 Mr. Ayer, in common ••• "neither .•• but literally senseless" 331 see Ayer 1936, u-13; the quotation is found on page 12; Ayer 1946, 31-2. 331 : 25-9 proposition "God exists" .•• "whether God exists is doubtful" See Ayer 1936, 172-83; 1946, u4-20. 332 : 4-6 Propositions about matters of fact ••• sensible occurrence See Ayer 1936, 126ff; 1946, 91ff. 332 : 7 "experiential propositions" "Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition" (1936, 26; 1946, 38). 332 : 9-II The problem ofinduction ••• cannot be solved See Ayer 1936, 468; 1946, 49-50. 33 2: II - 14 "We are entitled ••• to predict future experience." Ayer 1936, 48; 1946, 50. 33 2: 17-19 The author tells us •.• "rational" ..• to the future "Of course, the fact that a certain form of procedure has always been successful in practice affords no logical guarantee that it will continue to be so. But then it is a mistake to demand a guarantee where it is logically impossible to obtain one. This does not mean that it is irrational to expect future experience to conform to the past. For when we come to define "rationality" we shall find that for us "being rational" entails being guided in a particular fashion by past experience" (1936, 48; 1946, 50). 332: 26-31 "It does not follow ••• to empirical tests." Ayer 1936, 206; 1946, 131-2. 332: 39-40 Mr. Ayer refuses to discuss the problem of meaning See Ayer 1936, 83-5; 1946, 68-9.

44 Philosophy's Ulterior Motives 336: l-3 Metaphysics, ••• "is the .•• an instinct" This aphorism was first published in Appearance and Reality: "Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct" (Bradley 1893, xiv; 1930, xii). 336: 6-8 "Outside of spirit ••• veritably real." Bradley 1893, 552; 1930, 489. 336: 14-15 Philosophy has been defined as "an ••. to think clearly" This (amended) definition comes from William James: "Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly" (1890, r: 145; 1981, I: 148). 336: 33-337: 3 Descartes .•. if he did not exist, he could not doubt Russell here summarizes the first three parts of Descartes's Discourse on Method and the beginning of Part IV. See Descartes l9II-12, I: 81-101. 337: IO-II "that I may take •.. are all true" See Descartes l9II-12, r: 102. 337: 37-8 Leibniz ••• "this is the best of all possible worlds" Leibniz 1985

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[1710 ], wrote: "if there were not the best (optimum) among all possible worlds

God would not have produced any.... there is an infinitude of possible world~ among which God must needs have chosen the best" (128). It is perhaps worth noting here another of Bradley's aphorisms concerning optimism: "The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil" (1893, xiv; 1930, xii). 33 8: 1 the Theodicee The Open Court translation (1985) has been used for these annotations. 338: 1-2 Queen Sophie Charlotte ... (daughter of the Electress Sophia) Queen Sophie Charlotte (1668-1705) was the wife of Prince Frederick of Brandenburg; her mother, the Electress of Hanover (1630-1714), by the Act of Settlement of 1701, was named heir to the British throne, by reason of being the nearest Protestant heir; her son became George I of Great Britain. 338: 3 Bayle's Dictionary Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was a French sceptic who in 1697 published his immensely long Dictionaire historique et critique, a curious amalgam of critical articles, obscure lives, anecdotes, commentaries, etc. It was immediately condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, since it brought much of religious belief and practice into ridicule, while at the same time attributing good moral character to atheists. Despite the condemnation it was very influential during the eighteenth century. 338: 4 Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss Voltaire, the pseudonym of Frarn;ois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), is famous for his witty writings. Dr. Pangloss is a principal character in Candide (1758), a biting satire poking fun at the doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds. Dr. Pangloss, as might be expected from his name, peddles the doctrine to all who will listen, and defends it when events conspire to cast doubt upon it. 338: 4-6 He holds ..• which God could have created See Leibniz 1985, 128. 338: 6 that some of them contain no sin and no pain See Leibniz 1985, 129. 338: 7-8 that in this actual world ... the number of the saved See Leibniz 1985, Pt. I, §19. 338: 8-IO But he thinks that ... good over evil than it has See Leibniz 1985,

134-5. 338: 17 The actual world, he thought, contains free will See Leibniz 1985, Pt. I, §59· 338: 18 God freely chose it ... other possible worlds See Leibniz 1985, l5L 338: 30 revived by Sir James Jeans See Paper 12. ' ' 338: 36-8 When you think you see a tree, B erk e Iey potnts out ,.. "'d 1 e a" See Berkeley l7ro, §4. 338: 38-9 This ... ceases, if you shut your eyes See Berkeley 1710, §45· 338: 39-40 Whatever you can perceive ... external material object See Berkeley l7IO, §3. 338: 40-1 Matter, therefore, is an unnecessary hypothesis See Berkeley 1710, §§19-2r.

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: 7-10 There must, he thinks ... is looking at it See Berkeley l7IO, §48 339 and §91, where he tacitly slips God in without arguing for His existence. In the Second Dialogue of his 1713 he turns this point into an argument for the existence of God. 339 : 14-15 except Hume David Hume (17u-1776), a Scottish philosopher, carried the empiricist philosophy to its logical and sceptical extreme. 339 : 29-43 The two sides of Berkeley's philosophy ... God Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) was a Roman Catholic priest who wrote books on a wide variety of topics; he also made a translation of the Bible. Russell is careful to attribute only the first limerick to Knox, and Knox himself never acknowledged authorship of the second. Knox contributed the first one to The Complete Limerick Book (1924), compiled by Langford Reed, who quotes Knox (43n.) as saying that he wrote it as a companion "on Idealism" to this one: "There was a young man who said, 'Damn! I At last I've found out that I am I A creature that moves I In determinate grooves, I In fact not a bus but a tram.'" After Knox's death, L. E. Byres included the first of the pair in Knox's Jn Three Tongues (page 123), which he edited; Byres gives as his source Reed's book, but he does not mention the reply. If Knox did write the reply, he seems to have covered his tracks very well. No earlier source than this essay by Russell has been found for the reply. Could he have written it? 340: 6 "awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers" Kant (1724-1804) made this remark in the Preface to Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic Which Is to Be a Science (1783). 340: 13-14 Hume ... not trust the law of causality See Hume 1739-40, Bk. I, Pt. 3, §3. 340: 14-15 and he threw doubt on the future life See Hume 1739-40, Bk. 1, Pt. 3, §9. 340: 36-7 the truth of geometry ..• he had made it Euclidean See Kant J781, A24: "The apodeictic certainty of all geometrical propositions, and the possibility of their a priori construction, is grounded in this a priori necessity of space." Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. 341: 8-9 the "categorical imperative" See A198: 32. 341: 16-17 his doctrine ... the official philosophy of the Nazi State According to Hans Sluga, who has made an extensive study of the relationship between Nazism and philosophy, there was no official philosophy in the Nazi state: "Although Nazi authors like Lehmann and Del-Negro deplored such chaotic conditions, no official attempt was ever made to institute a single Nazi philosophy. Even toward the end of the war Hitler himself justified the existing diversity: 'I am not of the opinion that freedom of inquiry should be granted only in the area of the natural sciences. It must really also extend into the humanities. And here philosophy stands entirely in the foreground. For it is in essence only a continuation of natural science'" (Sluga 1993, 13-14). Gerhard Lehmann and Walter Del-Negro both wrote histories of German philosophy during the Nazi era. See also Russell 1997, page 39r.

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341: 23-32 Logic, for him •.. describes the real world For a diagramati representation of this process, see the large folded sheet at the rear of Stace': 1924. 342: 6-8 Hegel published his proof ••. the discovery of the eighth Russell is referring to the standard gloss of an argument Hegel advanced in his doctoral dissertation of 1801 (translated as his 1979) concerning Bode's law. The matter is too complicated to summarize here, but the interested reader is directed to Beaumont 1954, where it is argued that the standard gloss is mistaken. Harris in his 1983 (92-7) also provides an account of this matter. 342: 34-7 Emotionally, beliefin Hegelian dialectic ••• the Second Coming In his History of ~stern Philosophy Russell altered this comparison somewhat: "To understand Marx psychologically, one should use the following dictionary: Yahweh = Dialectical Materialism The Messiah = Marx The Elect = The Proletariat The Church = The Communist Party The Second Coming = The Revolution Hell= Punishment of the Capitalists The Millennium = The Communist Commonwealth

The terms on the left give the emotional content of the terms on the right, and it is this emotional content, familiar to those who have had a Christian or a Jewish unbringing, that makes Marx's eschatology credible" (1945, 364; 1946, 383). 343: 27-31 Bernard Bosanquet ••• "it would be hard ••• colonies" Bosanquet 1888, 2: 218; l9rr, 2: 220.

45 On Verification 345: 8 in The Analysis of Mind Russell refers to Chapter x, "Words and Meaning". 345: 18 a "basic" proposition See Ayer 1938: "A proposition referring to a material thing may entail propositions referring to sense-data but cannot itself be entailed by any finite number of them. iJNow at last we seem to have reached propositions which need not wait upon other propositions for the determination of their truth or falsehood, but are such that they can be directly confronted with the given facts. These propositions I propose to call basic propositions" (138-9). 345: 38 "protocol-proposition" In Runes 1942 Carnap defines "basic sentences/protocol sentences" as follows: "Sentences formulating the result of observations or perceptions or other experiences, furnishing the basis for empirical verification or confirmation. Some philosophers take sentences concerning

ANNOTATIONS TO PAPER 45

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observable properties of physical things as basic sentences, others take sentences concerning sense-data or perceptions. The sentences of the latter kind are regarded by some philosophers as completely verifiable, while others believe that all factual sentences can be confirmed only to some degree" (35). In his 1934 Carnap discusses "Protocol Language" at length. See also his 1937, §82. 6: 20 "Santander has fallen" This paper was written during the Spanish 34 Civil War; Santander, the capital of the province with the same name, is a seaport on the Bay of Biscay. The battle for Santander opened on 9 August 1937; it fell to Franco's forces on 25 August. 47: 3 27 Dr. Johnson did not See A3o: 7-9. 347: 43-348: l Christian Scientists say that all pain is illusion Christian Science is a religious denomination founded by Mary Baker Eddy (18211910) in Boston in 1879. One of its cardinal tenets is that matter is not real, so pain, which is associated with the body, is illusory. 348: II Ullapool A village in northern Scotland. 350: 28 Neurath Otto Neurath (1882-1945) was a sociologist with strong philosophical interests; he was a member of the Vienna Circle from its inception. 350: 28 Hempel Carl Gustav Hempel (1905- ) was born in Germany but spent most of his career in the United States. In the 1920s he was a member of the Berlin group, whose members maintained close ties with the Vienna Circle. 350: 35-6 "actually adopted ••• scientists of our culture circle" Hempel 1935, 57. 351: l-13 All Realsatze ••• but each internally self-consistent The original reads: "r. Aile Realsatze der Wissenschaft, auch jene Protokollsatze, die wir zur Kontrolle verwenden, werden auf Grund von Entschliissen ausgewahlt und konnen grundsatzlich geandert werden. 2. 'Falsch' nennen wir einen Realsatz, den wir mit dem Gesamtgebaude der Wissenschaft nicht in Einklang bringen konnen; auch einen Protokollsatz konnen wir ablehnen, wenn wir nicht vorziehen, das Wissenschaftsgebaude zu andern und ihn so zu einem 'wahren' Satz zu machen. 3. Die Kontrolle bestimmter Realsatze besteht darin, dai3 wir feststellen, ob sie mit bestimmten Protokollsatzen vereinbar sind, weshalb wir die Formulierung man vergleiche eine Aussage mit 'der Wirklichkeit', ablehnen, um so mehr, als bei uns an die Stelle 'der' Wirklichkeit mehrere miteinander nicht vertragliche, in sich widerspruchslose Satzgesamtheiten treten miissen" (348-9). 351: 14-15 "radical physicalism ..• 'the ... knowledge with reality'" The original reads: "Der radikale Physikalismus spricht nicht von der 'Ubereinstimmung der Erkenntnis mit der Wirklichkeit'" (349). 351: 16-19 "There is no other ... of our culture circle" The full passage from which Russell is quoting reads: "Es gibt keine andere Auszeichnung fiir 'unsere' Wissenschaft, als die historische Auszeichnung, dai3 sie die Wissenschaft unseres Kulturkreises ist; genauer: die Wissenschaft, die mit den und

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den hypothetischen Ansetzungen, die dort und dort in der geschichtliche Entwicklung aufgetreten sind, nach den und den wissenschaftlichen Methocte n aufgebaut und an den Protokollslitzen der Wissenschaftler unseres Kultur~ kreises nachgepriift wird." 351: 22 "material mode of speech" A concept introduced by Carnap which is too complicated to explain briefly in a note; its correlative is the "formal mode of speech". For the exact account, see his Logical Syntax of Language ( 1937), 284ff. 35i: 22-3 Leibniz says: "Ajo igitur Existens ... compatibile est" "I affirm therefore as an existent any entity which is compatible with (the existence of) very many (or most) entities." Translated by Thomas M. Robinson. 352: 2-3 "The occurrence ... an empirical fact" Hempel 1935, 54. The full paragraph is this: "Obviously, these general ideas imply a coherence theory of truth. But it must be emphasized that by speaking of statements only, Carnap and Neurath do by no means intend to say: 'There are no facts, there are only propositions'; on the contrary, the occurrence of certain statements in the protocol of an observer or in a scientific book is regarded as an empirical fact, and the propositions occurring as empirical objects. What the authors do intend to say, may be expressed more precisely thanks to Carnap's distinction between the material and the formal mode of speech." 352: 12-13 in Syria in the fifth century a hen laid an egg ... a text No source found. 352: 18-19 Otto's protocol ... [Otto's ... (In ... perceived by Otto)] Neurath 1932-33, 207. The original reads: "'Ottos Protokoll um 3 Uhr 17 Minuten: [Ottos Sprechdenken war um 3 Uhr 16 Minuten: (Im Zimmer war um 3 Uhr 15 Minuten ein van Otto wahrgenommener Tisch)]'." 352: 40 Eddington's apes See Eddington 1928, 72. 353: 16-17 Neurath can still say that a word ... or heaps of ink See Neurath 1983: "'Synonymous statements' are to be defined as stimuli, which, under definite reaction-tests, evoke equal reactions. Strings of 'ink blobs on paper' and strings of 'air perturbations', which can be considered equal under certain circumstances, are called statements" (95). From his 1932-33, 209. 353: 25 which is what strikes Neurath as unduly metaphysical See Neurath 1983, II3. 354: 13-15 I agree with Neurath when he says ... pseudo-sentences See Neurath 1983: "Within radical physicalism statements dealing with 'unsayable', 'unwritable' things and events, prove to be typical pseudo-statements" (102). From his 1934· 354: 19-20 they occur ... in Bradfoy's Appearance and Reality See, for example, his 1893, 482; 1930, 426-7. 354: 20-1 and in Wittgenstein's Tractatus See, for instance, 1922: 6.5-7. 354: 21-2 It is true, as Tarski See Tarski 1956, 247-54. 354: 22 and Carnap See Carnap 1937, §6od.

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355: 37-9 Pyramus says: "'Deceiving me' ... Yonder she comes." A Midsummer Night's Dream, v. i. 185-8. 57: 3 I -2 use Barbara in arriving at your expectation "Barbara" is the name given to the valid categorical syllogism of this exact form: All M is P; All S is M; therefore, All S is P. 58: 3 27-8 In Jane Austen ... "everybody was surprised or not surprised" In Emma, page 126 of Volume rv in Chapman's edition of her novels.

46 The Relevance of Psychology to Logic 362: 8-ro "concerned with the nature ... the validity ofinference" Braithwaite, 6u. All references to Braithwaite are to Appendix VIII. 362: 41-2 like Mrs. Wilfer Mrs. Wilfer is Mrs. Reginald Wilfer in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, who is made to remark, near the end of the chapter entitled "Mrs. Wilfer's Last Word": "'I was about to say,' pursued Mrs. Wilfer, who clearly had not had the faintest idea of saying anything more: 'that when I use the term attractions, I do so with the qualification that I do not mean it in any way whatever.' The excellent lady delivered this luminous elucidation of her views with an air of greatly obliging her hearers, and greatly distinguishing herself." 363: 17-20 As Pallas by Jove was begot ... Lindley Murray was furnished Henry George Liddell (18u-1898), a British lexicographer and clergyman and father of the famous Alice Liddell, and Robert Scott (18u-1887) compiled a Greek-English lexicon in 1843. Lindley Murray (1745-1826) was an American who wrote an English grammar. No source has been found for this little poem. 363: 22-4 Humpty Dumpty, who explains ... means what he chooses Russell is referring to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, Chapter vr: '"When I use a word', Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less'." 363: 27-9 Mr. Braithwaite advances ... make lying impossible See Braithwaite, 616. 363: 30 Epimenides See A152: 3. 363: 30-6 Tarski ... "true" and "false" at all See Tarski 1956, 262. 365: 24-6 as Mr. Braithwaite suggests ... instances of causation See Braithwaite, 614-15. 365: 26-31 Mr. Braithwaite, having refused ... intermediate links See Braithwaite, 615. 365: 35-8 By introducing the case of the man ... actual movement Russell seems to be referring to these sentences in Paper 42: "At least, what is essential is the connection of the cat with my intention to say 'cat'; I may, for various bodily reasons, be unable actually to utter the word even though I try to do so. The connection of will with bodily movements raises problems which

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need not conern us in this connection; we may confine ourselves to the c nection of the sensible appearance with the will to utter the appropriate wonorct or words" (318: 8-13). 366: 6-8 "Any language which I am now ... there is a cat." Braithwaite 617.

'

366: 9-13 How do I know this major premiss? •.. there is a cat Braithwaite 617.

'

366: 17-21 the fundamental fact, so I maintain ••• certain sounds Braithwaite, 619-20. The ellipsis marks the bulk of the paragraph beginning: "To return to the cat case". 367: 3 "I will never desert Micawber" Mrs. Micawber makes the equivalent statement, "I will never desert Mr. Micawber", at least four times in Chapter 12 of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Micawber has just been discharged from debtor's prison and Mrs. Micawber's family is attempting to persuade him to move to Plymouth where they have connections in the Custom House, to be near at hand in case "something turns up". In discussing this matter with David, Mrs. Micawber becomes hysterical for no apparent reason and keeps repeating her vow not to desert her husband. 367: 8-ro "I can hardly argue ..• such a relationship." Braithwaite, 615. 367: 20-1 ("Verification", page 2) Paper 45 (346: 7-ro). 367: 34-6 "I do not think that to hand over ••. incorrigible knowledge" Braithwaite, 622. 367: 37-8 "It seems to me ... psychological indubitability" Braithwaite, 622. 368: 5-6 Mr. Braithwaite, on the contrary ... inquiry unnecessary See Braithwaite, 622-3. 368: 41-2 He means by "incorrigible" .•• "something •.. impossible" Braithwaite, 623-4. 369: 7-8 he holds that it is one where doubt is logically absurd See Braithwaite, 623-4. 369: 14-17 If I use the sentence •.• expressing by the sentence Braithwaite, 624. 370: l-2 To repeat one of Mr. Braithwaite's arguments ••• hypnotized? See Braithwaite, 62r. 370: 32-4 "problems oflogic ••• to the science of psychology" Braithwaite, 625-6.

47 Non-Materialistic Naturalism No annotations. 48

How Will Science Change Morals?

380: 39 Wesley John Wesley (1703-1791) is the founder of the Methodists. Nearly all of his energy was used in preaching his conception of Christianity; for many years he rode 8,ooo miles each year on horseback to keep his preach-

747

ing engagements; his theology has much in common with that of the Church of England, which he was seeking to reform. so: 39 Lord Shaftesbury Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, 3 (r671-1713) was a theist who argued that religion presupposes morality. people, he thought, were naturally virtuous; they have a "moral sense", which, if used reflectively, will guide them truly in moral matters. He attempted, in his discussion of God's nature, to remove fear from religion. 31: 23 Caligula Gaius Caesar Germanicus (12-41) was a cruel and tyrannical 3 Roman emperor (37-41) who may have been mad; he was assassinated. 34: 19-20 when I was in Hong Kong a few years ago Russell visited Hong 3 Kong in October 1920 on his way to Beijing. s4: 27 the Tokyo earthquake Over 140,000 people were killed in the earth3 quake of l September 1923; a third of Tokyo was destroyed and nearly all of Yokohama. s5: 3 20 "scorn delights and live laborious days" John Milton, Lycidas, line 72. 3s6: 41-387: 4 In one of Smollett's novels the hero ... he encounters See The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), Chapters XLIII to XLV, by Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), a Scottish novelist.

49 Democracy and Emotion 390: 6 Bagehot's English Constitution Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) was an English economist and political analyst. He published The English Constitution in 1867; in it he argued that behind the popular image of the British government as consisting of Crown, Lords and Commons, there lay the reality of Cabinet government. 390: 7 The main topic ••• social coherence See Denison 1928, 4. 390: 7-9 which it says .•. fratriarchal See Denison 1928, 8-9. 390: ro-rr Social cohesion, as the author quite rightly points out See Denison 1928, 2r. 390: 12-15 mere force, as exercised by conquerors .•. concerned See Denison 1928, 4. 390: 17-18 democracy is better than monarchy See Denison 1928, vii and 194-5. 390: 18-19 that it can only be practised ... north oflatitude 50° See Denison 1928, 437. 390: 19-20 the best example of it is the United States See Denison 1928, 421-2. 390: 20-1 which he calls anepsiarchy See Denison 1928, 512. 390: 22-6 this system would put .•• so proficient See Denison 1928, 513-15. 390: 32-6 he admires ••• Buddha and Zoroaster ••• been Semites See Denison 1928, 75-80 and 149-50 and 459-60.

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391: IO that Francis Bacon had his head cut off See Denison 192 8, 348 Bacon (1561-1626) died in his bed of bronchitis. · 391: IO-II that the war succeeded ... world safe for democracy See D . en1son 1928, 435. 391: II-13 that it was not until ••• William III King William III (165 0 _ ) 1702 of Great Britain reigned from 1682 until his death in 1702. In 1689 he signed the Toleration Act, which permitted the presence in Great Britain of religious groups other than the Church of England. 391: 13-17 that Nesta Webster .•• illuminati in 1776 See Denison 192 8, 501 . Nesta Helen Webster (1876-1960) was an English historian and historical novelist; her book, The French Revolution: A Study in Democracy, had a second edition in 1919; see pages 23-4 where she makes this point. 391: 17-19 that the Ku Klux Klan ..• "that ... political power and plunder" See Denison 1928, 480-I. 391: 19-21 that the Confucian odes ••• in 776 B.C. See Denison 1928, !Io. In his introduction to the Book of Odes (Shi-King) L. Cranmer-Byng wrote: "The Shi King, or Book of Poetry, from which these poems are rendered ... was compiled by Confucius about 500 B.C. from earlier collections which had been long existent .... The oldest of these odes belong to the Shang dynasty, 176 5II22 B.c.; the latest to the time of King Ting, 605-585 B.c." (Cranmer-Byng 1906, 6). 391: 21-2 that nothing was ever nobler ... Samurai See Denison 1928, 15 9 . 391: 22-3 that Buddhism •.• date is 552 See Denison 1928, 176. 391: 23-5 that the fact that foreigners ••• "due to ••. American feelings" See Denison 1928, 44i. 391: 27-8 that recently in America the Protestant sects .•• social progress See Denison 1928, 4 72.

50 Is There a New Morality? 393: 9-II Professor Drake begins ••• mere traditional maxims See Drake 1928, v: "By 'the new morality I mean the morality which, basing itself solidly upon observation of the results of conduct, consciously aims to secure the maximum of attainable happiness for mankind." 393: 13-14 on the matter ofbirth control ••• good sense See Drake 1928, 135 and also Chap. x, "Irresponsible Parenthood". 393: 14-16 On divorce ••. by mutual consent See Chapter IX, "Marital Failures", especially page II6: "With the enforcement of, say, a year's delay (as the law of Norway, for example, requires), divorce by mutual consent, without statement of reasons except the desire of the two parties, seems reasonable." 393: 20 Take, for example, prohibition Drake calls this chapter "Intoxication and Bootlegging"; "The Case for Prohibition" occupies pages 94-8; "The Case Against Prohibition", pages 98-I05.

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: 22-3 he does not put in any of the arguments ... American Drake's 393 case against prohibition consists of four arguments: (1) Drinking is pleasurable and the "average man has too few sources of enjoyment for us wantonly to cut off a single one" (98); (2) alcohol can be used in moderation (IOI); (3) Alcohol "is a valuable stimulant to artistic and intellectual achievement" (IOI); c4) If alcohol is prohibited "men will turn to more dangerous narcotics" (I03).

51 How Science Has Changed Society No annotations.

52 On Utilitarianism 40 5: 12-13 They thought that the only thing .•• to produce happiness The more usual interpretation holds that Bentham thought pleasure was the only good, whereas John Stuart Mill thought happiness was. See the opening sentences of Chapter I of Bentham's 1789: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do." For Mill see the second paragraph of Chapter IV of Utilitarianism (1861): "The utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end." Russell was aware that Bentham did not distinguish between pleasure and happiness; see his 1934, IIO.

53 Individualist Ethics 406: 15 Luther and the Reformation Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a German priest who taught at the University of Wittenberg; he nailed his ninetyfive theses to the Castle Church door in 1517, which is the date usually taken as the beginning of the Reformation, the spiritual revolution that led to the splitting of the Christian Church into Protestant and Catholic branches. Luther's theses drew attention to certain deficiencies and excesses in the Catholic Church of his day. 406: 16 the Puritans The Puritans were a party of English Protestants who believed that the reforms adopted by the Church in Britain were not sufficiently strict. In 1642 they rebelled against King Charles I, which brought on the Civil Wars. Under Cromwell the Puritans founded the Commonwealth and Protectorate which lasted from 1649 to 1660; they abolished both the monarchy and the Anglican Church. In 1649 King Charles I was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by beheading. 406: 18 Wesley's revolt in religion See A38o: 39. 406: 28 Hampden refusing to pay ship money John Hampden (1594-1643) was a member of Parliament who refused to pay Charles I ship money, on the ground that this tax had not been levied by Parliament. His trial and con-

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viction was a contributing cause of the Civil Wars in which he lost h' . . . ' IS life i battle. Ship money was an ancient English tax levied in time of w n .. .. ar on the ports an d m~rm~e .towns, cmes. and counties, to provide ships for the Kin Charles I revived It m I634 and m I635 extended it to inland count1·es,. it . wg, abolished by statute in I640. as 406: 2S-9 people who threw the tea into Boston Harbour Russell· . 1s referrmg to the Boston Tea Party of I6 December I773 in which American . d d I . colonists, resse as ndrnns, destroyed a tea shipment belonging to the British E . c ast I n d rn ompany, to protest the Tea Act of I773, which levied a tax on t ea. 406: 35-6 Christ had taught .•• to love our neighbour See Matthew 22 . 40: "Jesus sai'd unto h'1m, Th ou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy h. 37. . ean, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighb our as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.,, 406: 39-40 John D. Rockefeller, Senior John Davidson Rockfeller Sr (IS ' . 39I937), the founder of the Standard Oil Company, was a devout Baptist wh gave extensively to charity. Russell is probably referring to Rockefeller's re~ action to the prosecution and conviction of Standard Oil under the Sherman Anti-trust Act of IS92 for monopolistic practices. 407: IS The Benthamites Prominent among these followers of Jeremy Bentham were Jam~s and John Stuart Mill, John Austin, George Grote, Edwin Chadwick and Etienne Dumont. Russell devotes seven chapters to the doctrines of the Benthamites in Freedom and Organization, 1814-1914 (I93 4).

54 Respect for Law II-I2 the Thirty Years' War This war, which lasted from I6IS to I6 4 s, mvolved most of Europe, although it was fought principally in Germany. Its causes varied with its participants: some were driven by religious reasons; others by territorial, dynastic or commercial concerns. The Treaty of Westphalia (I64S), from which the power structure of modern Europe emerged, brought the war to an end, with the exception of the war between France and Spain, which ended only with the Peace of the Pyrenees in I659. France emerged from this long ordeal as the dominant power in Europe. 40S: I2-I3 led Grotius to become the first advocate of international law Hugo Grotius (I5S3-I645) was a Dutch jurist and statesman who in I625 published De Jure Belli ac Pacis, usually translated as On the Law of Wfrr and Peace. Grotius argues that natural law is the ground for international law. 40S: I5 Dante Russell is referring to Dante's De Monarchia, which argues for a sole ruler in temporal affairs on the grounds that this is required to ensure peace, and without peace, men will never realize their potential. Dante further argued that this sole ruler should be the Roman emperor and that he should not be subservient to the Pope except in spiritual matters. 40~:

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408: 34-6 In Germany, an era of private murder ... victory of the Nazis Russell is referring to the widespread political turmoil in Germany after the First World War; it took the form of numerous assassinations as well as violence between the Social Democrats and the Spartacists. From these disturbances arose the National Socialist Party of Hitler.

55 Competitive Ethics 409: II-IS Oh where's the town ... great in good These are the final lines of "Lines Spoken at a School-Exhibition, By a Little Boy Seven Years Old" by David Everett (I770-ISI3), an American poet and lawyer. In the original the last line reads: "But only great, as I am good." See Everett 1983. 409: 3I pragmatism, the doctrine that truth is what it pays to assert For a full Russellian discussion of this doctrine, see his papers on pragmatism, which comprise Part v of his 1992.

56 The Philosophy of Communism 4I2: 26-34 It was seen that all past history ••• period Engels 1908, 90. 4I2: 37-4I3: I5 From that time ... how it arose Engels 1908, 9I-2. 4I3: IS-4I The materialist conception of history .•• system of production Engels 1908, 94-5. 4I4: 3-ro This conflict ••• the working-class Engels 1908, 96. 414: 36-7 Lenin's Materialism .•• the philosophy of Mach and Avenarius Ernst Mach (IS3S-I9I6) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher; Richard Avenarius (IS43-IS96) was a German philosopher who defended an extreme form of empiricism and who influenced both Mach and William James. In his "Conclusion" Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (IS70-I924) states: "Both Mach and Avenarius started with Kant and, leaving him, proceeded not towards materialism, but in the opposite direction, towards Hume and Berkeley. Imagining that he was 'purifying experience' generally, Avenarius was in fact only purifying agnosticism of Kantianism. The whole school of Mach and Avenarius is more and more definitely moving towards idealism, hand in hand with one of the most reactionary of the idealist schools, viz., the so-called immanentists" 1927, 370. 4I5: 3-5 "Matter", says Lenin, "is that ... in sensation." Lenin 1927, I45· 4I5: 29-34 "The denial of objective truth ••• the appearance of man." Lenin 1927, I2I. 4I5: 35-4I6: 9 From the standpoint ..• so in nature Lenin 1927, I34-5. 416: IO-II He also (page 296n) ridicules pragmatism ... truth In his 1927 this note is on page 355. 4I6: 34-7 "The means ... of production themselves." Engels 1908, 95. 4I7: 3S-40 "It is only in an order ... political revolutions." Marx 1913, I90.

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419: 14-17 "When the ancient world ... bourgeoisie." Marx and Engels 1888, 38. 419: 30 Trotsky's account of the Russian Revolution See his 1932. 419: 37-8 the battle ofValmy Valmy is a village in northeastern France where on 20 September 1792 French artillery stopped the advance of the Prussians causing them to retreat across the Rhine. France thus gained the upper han~ in the French Revolutionary Wars. 419: 42-3 the Pope's gift of the Americas to Spain and Portugal The Pope's gift was made after the marriage of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. Pope Alexander VI negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which drew a line from pole to pole 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. All regions to the west of the line were given to Spain, those to the east of it to Portugal. The treaty was given papal sanction by Julius II on 24 January 1506. 420: 8 Cobden Richard Cobden (1804-1865) was an English statesman and economist who was an avid supporter of free trade; he worked with others, including Russell's grandfather, Lord John Russell, to repeal the Corn Laws. 420: 17 The Black Death This epidemic devastated the populations of Europe and Asia in the fourteenth century; it was most likely the bubonic plague. Fleas from infected rats spread bubonic plague to humans. 420: 35-6 the time of Archimedes to the time of Leonardo For Archimedes see A34: 14-15; for Leonardo da Vinci see A36: 2!.

57 The Ancestry of Fascism 423: l George I King George I (1660-1727) was the first Hanoverian sovereign of Great Britain; he succeeded Queen Anne in 1714. 423: u-12 English politics in 1860 ••• expressed by Adam Smith in 1776 Smith (1723-1790) published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the i%alth of Nations in 1776; it is an exposition and a defence of laissez-faire capitalism. In his 1934 Russell makes it clear that what he is referring to here is free trade: "The immense vogue of free trade doctrine in the mid-nineteenth century was due to (Richard) Cobden, but the doctrine itself was first promulgated, so long ago as 1776, by Adam Smith, and was later submerged in the Napoleonic wars" (165). 423: 13 a realization of theories set forth by Fichte in 1807 Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), a German idealist, delivered his Addresses to the German Nation during the winter of 1807-08; they were published in 1808. See Russell's discussion of them below. 423: 14-15 doctrines of the Communist Manifesto ... dates from 1848 See Marx and Engels 1888. 424: 14- l 5 Scepticism was for the study ... business of practical life See Hume 1739-40, Bk. 1, Pt. iv, §8. 425: 21-3 Hitler praises •.. "must sink •.• whom it has to grip" Hitler 1933:

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"All propaganda should be popular and should adapt its intellectual level to the receptive ability of the least intellectual of those whom it is desired to address. Thus it must sink its mental elevation deeper in proportion to the numbers of the mass whom it has to grip" (81). 42 5: 24-6 Andrew Jackson ... "the God of the Universe .•. nation" Jackson (1767-1845) made this remark in a letter dated 12 August 1829, to Martin Van Buren, his Secretary of State, in which he gives instructions regarding negotiations with Mexico concerning the purchase of Texas. Jackson first suggests that Mexico be paid two million dollars, but adds "I would go as far as five millions rather than leave a foreign power in possession of heads of our leading branches of the great mississippi on its west; as it appears, and has always appeared to me, that the whole of the western branches of the M. was necessary for the security of the great emporium of the west, Neworleans, and that the god of the universe had intended this great valley to belong to one nation" (Jackson 1926-35, 4: 57). 425: 30-1 Mrs. Bond tried it on her ducks ... "come ... customers filled" These are lines from the last verse of a nursery rhyme, with this first verse: "Oh, what have you got for dinner Mrs. Bond? There's beef in the larder and ducks in the pond; Dilly, dilly, dilly dilly, come to be killed; for you must be stuffed and my customers filled." Since the ducks took no notice of this invitation, there are five more verses describing the steps taken, including verse five which has as its opening lines: "Mrs. Bond she flew down to the pond in a rage, With plenty of onions and plenty of sage." The poem ends with Mrs. Bond on the shore still ordering the disobedient ducks to "come and be killed". Opie 1951, 91-2. 425: 34-6 Nietzsche ••• "the bungled and botched" Nietzsche 1910, 2: 368. Russell quotes the passage below. 426: 8-9 Marcus Aurelius MarcusAelius Antonius Aurelius (121-180) was an important Stoic philosopher and the Emperor of Rome from 161 until his death. 426: IO-II the conservative Neo-Platonists were filled with superstition The philosophy known as Neo-Platonism was first articulated by Plotinus (205-270) in his Enneads; he influenced many others, including Porphyry (232-305) and Proclus (c.409-c.487). Some of the later writers incorporated the Greek gods into their philosophy, and still later ones transformed the Greek gods into the angels and other spirits mentioned in the Bible. A strong element of mysticism is also to be found in many of the writings. 426: 30 Treitschke Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896) was a German historian who was intensely nationalistic; he despised the English, the French, and the Jews. Russell discusses his views in his 1934, 4rn-14. 426: 42-427: I "Mankind" ••• "is much more ... experimental material" Neitzsche 1910, 2: l8I. The full passage reads: "Mankind is much more of a means than an end. It is a question of type: mankind is merely the experimen-

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ta! material; it is the overflow of the ill-constituted-a field of ruins." In Ge _ man: "Die Menschheit ist vie! eher noch ein Mittel, als ein Ziel. Es hande~ sich um den Typus: die Menschheit ist bloss das Versuchsmaterial, der un e~ heure Ueberschuss des Missrathenen: ein Triimmerfeld" (1926, 19 : 15g ). "Missrathenen" is also translated "bungled and botched"; see next annotati:n. 427: 4-9 The object is to attain ... which has never been seen before Nietzsche 1910, 2: 368. In German: "Jene ungeheure Energie der Grosse zu gewinnen, um, durch Ziichtung und andrerseits durch Vernichtung von Millionen Missrathener, den zukiinftigen Menschen zu gestalten und nicht zu Grunde zu gehn an dem Leid, das man schafft und dessen Gleichen noch nie da war!" (1926, 19: 320). 427: 38-428: 3 The Ego posits itself ..• because it has posited itself Fichte 1845, 1: 96. The German reads: "Das Ich setzt sich selbst, und es ist, vermoge dieses blossen Setzens durch sich selbst; und umgekehrt: das Ich ist, und es setzt sein Seyn, vermoge seines blossen Seyns. - Es ist zugleich das Handelnde, und das Product der Handlung; das Thiitige, und das, was durch die Thiitigheit hervorgebracht wird; Handlung und That sind Eins und ebendasselbe; und daher ist das: !ch bin, Ausdruck einer Thathandlung; aber auch der einzig-moglichen, wie sich aus der ganzen Wissenschaftslehre ergeben muss." 428: 5-7 it appears that the non-Ego also exists ... chooses to posit it See Fichte 1845, 218. "Das Nicht-Ich ist selbst ein Product des sich selbst bestimmenden Ich, und gar nichts absolutes und ausser dem Ich gesetztes." In his notes for this paper Russell translates this sentence: "The not-ego is itself a product of the self-determining ego, and nothing absolute or posited outside the ego." 428: 7 Louis XIV said "l'etat, c'est moi" This remark is commonly attributed to King Louis XIV (1638-1715), who ruled France as an absolute monarch from 1643 until his death. 428: 8-ro Heine ••• "in comparison ••• are tame and moderate" Heinrich Heine was a German poet and essayist. This appears in his 1975-94, 8/1: 8r. The German reads: "Ihr Franzosen, in Vergleichung mit uns Deutschen seyd Ihr zahm und moderant." See Heine 1892-1905, 5: 135, for an English translation very similar to Russell's. 428: rr-12 Fichte, it is true ..• when he says "I" he means "God" Fichte is not very explicit on this point. 428: 13 the Battle of Jena This battle took place on 14 October 1806; Napoleon's army defeated the Prussians, with the consequence that Prussia lost half its territory. Russell discusses its importance in European history in his 1896, 43-5. 428: 23 "to have character ••• mean the same" Fichte 1922, 208. The translators note that the German reads: "Charakter haben und deutsch sein." 428: 26-7 "mould the Germans into a corporate body" Fichte 1922, 15. The German reads: "Wir wollen