mouth. It was there that I ?rst learned the name of Thomas Hardy, whosebook The Trumpet Major, in three volumes, was lying on the drawing-roomtable. I think the only reason I remember it is that I wondered what a trumpetmajor might be, and that it was by the author of Far from the Madding Crowd, andI did not know either what a madding crowd was. While we were there, myGerman governess told me that one got no Christmas presents unless onebelieved in Father Christmas. This caused me to burst into tears, as I could notbelieve in such a personage. My only other recollections of the place are thatthere was an unprecedented snow-storm, and that I learned to skate – anamusement of which I was passionately fond throughout my boyhood. I nevermissed an opportunity of skating, even when the ice was unsafe. Once whenI was staying in Dover Street I went skating in St James’s Park and fell in. I hada feeling of disgrace in having to run through the streets dripping wet, butI nevertheless persisted in the practice of skating on thin ice. Of the followingyear I remember nothing whatever, but my tenth birthday is still as vivid tome as if it were yesterday. The weather was bright and warm, and I sat in ablossoming laburnum tree, but presently a Swiss lady, who had come to beinterviewed, and subsequently became my governess, was sent out to playball with me. She said she had ‘catched’ the ball, and I corrected her. WhenI had to cut my own birthday cake, I was much ashamed because I couldnot get the ?rst slice to come out. But what stays most in my mind is theimpression of sunshine.the autobiography of bertrand russell 24At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This wasone of the great events of my life, as dazzling as ?rst love. I had not imaginedthat there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the ?fthproposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered di?cult, butI had found no di?culty whatever. This was the ?rst time it had dawned uponme that I might have some intelligence. From that moment until Whiteheadand I ?nished Principia Mathematica, when I was thirty-eight, mathematics wasmy chief interest, and my chief source of happiness. Like all happiness, how-ever, it was not unalloyed. I had been told that Euclid proved things, and wasmuch disappointed that he started with axioms. At ?rst I refused to acceptthem unless my brother could o?er me some reason for doing so, but hesaid: ‘If you don’t accept them we cannot go on’, and as I wished to go on,I reluctantly admitted them pro tem. The doubt as to the premisses of math-ematics which I felt at that moment remained with me, and determined thecourse of my subsequent work.The beginnings of Algebra I found far more di?cult, perhaps as a result ofbad teaching. I was made to learn by heart: ‘The square of the sum of twonumbers is equal to the sum of their squares increased by twice their prod-uct.’ I had not the vaguest idea what this meant, and when I could notremember the words, my tutor threw the book at my head, which did notstimulate my intellect in any way. After the ?rst beginnings of Algebra, how-ever, everything else went smoothly. I used to enjoy impressing a new tutorwith my knowledge. Once, at the age of thirteen, when I had a new tutor,I spun a penny, and he said to me: ‘Why does that penny spin?’ and I replied:‘Because I make a couple with my ?ngers.’ ‘What do you know aboutcouples?’ he said. ‘Oh, I know all about couples’, I replied airily. My grand-mother was always afraid that I should overwork, and kept my hours oflessons very short. The result was that I used to work in my bedroom on thesly with one candle, sitting at my desk in a night-shirt on cold evenings, readyto blow out the candle and pop into bed at the slightest sound. I hated Latinand Greek, and thought it merely foolish to learn a language that nobodyspeaks. I liked mathematics best, and next to mathematics I liked history.Having no one with whom to compare myself, I did not know for a long timewhether I was better or worse than other boys, but I remember once hearingmy Uncle Rollo saying goodbye to Jowett, the Master of Balliol, at the frontdoor, and remarking: ‘Yes, he’s getting on very well indeed’, and I knew,though how I cannot tell, that he was speaking of my work. As soon asI realised that I was intelligent, I determined to achieve something of intel-lectual importance if it should be at all possible, and throughout my youth Ilet nothing whatever stand in the way of this ambition.It would be completely misleading to suggest that my childhood was allsolemnity and seriousness. I got just as much fun out of life as I could, somechildhood 25of it I am afraid of a somewhat mischievous kind. The family doctor, an oldScotchman with mutton-chop whiskers, used to come in his broughamwhich waited at the front door while the man of healing spoke his piece. Hiscoachman had an exquisite top-hat, calculated to advertise the excellence ofthe practice. I used to get on the roof above this splendid head-piece and droprotten rosebuds out of the gutter on to its ?at top. They spread all over with adelicious squish and I withdrew my head quickly enough for the coachmanto suppose that they had fallen from heaven. Sometimes I did even worse.I threw snowballs at him when he was driving, thereby endangering thevaluable lives of him and his employer. I had another amusement whichI much enjoyed. On a Sunday, when the Park was crowded, I would climb tothe very top of a large beech tree on the edge of our grounds. There I wouldhang upside down and scream and watch the crowd gravely discussing how arescue should be e?ected. When I saw them nearing a decision I would getthe right way up and quietly come down. During the time when JimmieBaillie stayed with me I was led into even more desperate courses. The bathchair in which I remembered my grandfather being wheeled about had beenlodged in a lumber room. We found it there and raced it down whatever hillswe could ?nd. When this was discovered it was considered blasphemy andwe were reproached with melancholy gravity. Some of our doings, however,never came to the ears of the grown-ups. We tied a rope to a branch of a treeand learnt by long practice to swing in a complete circle and return to ourstarting point. It was only by great skill that one could avoid stopping half-way and bumping one’s back painfully into the rough bark of the tree. Whenother boys came to visit us, we used to carry out the correct performanceourselves and when the others attempted to imitate us we maliciously exultedin their painful failure. My Uncle Rollo, with whom for a while we used tospend three months each year, had three cows and a donkey. The donkey wasmore intelligent than the cows and learnt to open the gates between the ?eldswith his nose, but he was said to be unruly and useless. I did not believe thisand, after some unsuccessful attempts, I learnt to ride him without saddle orbridle. He would kick and buck but he never got me o? except when I hadtied a can full of rattling stones to his tail. I used to ride him all round thecountry, even when I went to visit the daughter of Lord Wolseley who livedabout three miles from my uncle’s house.the autobiography of bertrand russell 262ADOLESCENCEMy childhood was, on the whole, happy and straightforward, and I felta?ection for most of the grown-ups with whom I was brought in contact. Iremember a very de?nite change when I reached what in modern childpsychology is called the ‘latency period’. At this stage, I began to enjoy usingslang, pretending to have no feelings, and being generally ‘manly’. I began todespise my people, chie?y because of their extreme horror of slang and theirabsurd notion that it was dangerous to climb trees. So many things wereforbidden me that I acquired the habit of deceit, in which I persisted up tothe age of twenty-one. It became second nature to me to think that whatever Iwas doing had better be kept to myself, and I have never quite overcome theimpulse to concealment which was thus generated. I still have an impulse tohide what I am reading when anybody comes into the room, and to hold mytongue generally as to where I have been, and what I have done. It is only by acertain e?ort of will that I can overcome this impulse, which was generatedby the years during which I had to ?nd my way among a set of foolishprohibitions.The years of adolescence were to me very lonely and very unhappy. Both inthe life of the emotions and in the life of the intellect, I was obliged topreserve an impenetrable secrecy towards my people. My interests were div-ided between sex, religion, and mathematics. I ?nd the recollection of mysexual preoccupation in adolescence unpleasant. I do not like to rememberhow I felt in those years, but I will do my best to relate things as they wereand not as I could wish them to have been. The facts of sex ?rst becameknown to me when I was twelve years old, through a boy named ErnestLogan who had been one of my kindergarten companions at an earlier age.He and I slept in the same room one night, and he explained the nature ofcopulation and its part in the generation of children, illustrating his remarksby funny stories. I found what he said extremely interesting, although I had asyet no physical response. It appeared to me at the time self-evident that freelove was the only rational system, and that marriage was bound up withChristian superstition. (I am sure this re?ection occurred to me only a veryshort time after I ?rst knew the facts.) When I was fourteen, my tutor men-tioned to me that I should shortly undergo an important physical change. Bythis time I was more or less able to understand what he meant. I had at thattime another boy, Jimmie Baillie, staying with me, the same whom I met atVancouver in 1929, and he and I used to talk things over, not only with eachother, but with the page-boy, who was about our own age or perhaps a yearolder, and rather more knowing than we were. When it was discovered thatwe had spent a certain afternoon in doubtful conversation with the page-boy,we were spoken to in tones of deep sorrow, sent to bed, and kept on breadand water. Strange to say, this treatment did not destroy my interest in sex. Wespent a great deal of time in the sort of conversation that is consideredimproper, and in endeavouring to ?nd out things of which we were ignorant.For this purpose I found the medical dictionary very useful. At ?fteen, Ibegan to have sexual passions, of almost intolerable intensity. While I wassitting at work, endeavouring to concentrate, I would be continually dis-tracted by erections, and I fell into the practice of masturbating, in which,however, I always remained moderate. I was much ashamed of this practice,and endeavoured to discontinue it. I persisted in it, nevertheless, until the ageof twenty, when I dropped it suddenly because I was in love.The same tutor who told me of the approach of puberty mentioned, somemonths later, that one speaks of a man’s breast, but of a woman’s breasts. Thisremark caused me such an intolerable intensity of feeling that I appeared tobe shocked, and he rallied me on my prudery. Many hours every day werespent in desiring to see the female body, and I used to try to get glimpsesthrough windows when the maids were dressing, always unsuccessfully,however. My friend and I spent a winter making an underground house,which consisted of a long tunnel, through which one crawled on hands andknees, and then of a room 6 foot cube. There was a housemaid whom I usedto induce to accompany me to this underground house, where I kissed herand hugged her. Once I asked her whether she would like to spend a nightwith me, and she said she would die rather, which I believed. She alsoexpressed surprise, saying that she had thought I was good. Consequently thisa?air proceeded no further. I had by this time quite lost the rationalist out-look on sex which I had had before puberty, and accepted entirely the con-ventional views as quite sound. I became morbid, and regarded myself asvery wicked. At the same time, I took a considerable interest in my ownpsychology, which I studied carefully and not unintelligently, but I was toldthe autobiography of bertrand russell 28that all introspection is morbid, so that I regarded this interest in my ownthoughts and feelings as another proof of mental aberration. After two orthree years of introspection, however, I suddenly realised that, as it is the onlymethod of obtaining a great deal of important knowledge, it ought not to becondemned as morbid. This relieved my feelings on this point.Concurrently with this physical preoccupation with sex, went a greatintensity of idealistic feeling, which I did not at that time recognise as sexualin origin. I became intensely interested in the beauty of sunsets and clouds,and trees in spring and autumn, but my interest was of a very sentimentalkind, owing to the fact that it was an unconscious sublimation of sex, andan attempt to escape from reality. I read poetry widely, beginning with verybad poetry such as In Memoriam. While I was sixteen and seventeen, I read,as far as I can remember, the whole of Milton’s poetry, most of Byron, agreat deal of Shakespeare, large parts of Tennyson, and ?nally Shelley. I cameupon Shelley by accident. One day I was waiting for my Aunt Maude inher sitting-room at Dover Street. I opened it at Alastor, which seemed tome the most beautiful poem I had ever read. Its unreality was, of course, thegreat element in my admiration for it. I had got about half-way throughwhen my Aunt arrived, and I had to put the volume back in the shelf. Iasked the grown-ups whether Shelley was not considered a great poet, butfound that they thought ill of him. This, however, did not deter me, and Ispent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart. Knowing noone to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to re?ect howwonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether Ishould ever meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much insympathy.Alongside with my interest in poetry, went an intense interest in religionand philosophy. My grandfather was Anglican, my grandmother was aScotch Presbyterian, but gradually became a Unitarian. I was taken on alter-nate Sundays to the (Episcopalian) Parish Church at Petersham and to thePresbyterian Church at Richmond, while at home I was taught the doctrinesof Unitarianism. It was these last that I believed until about the age of ?fteen.At this age I began a systematic investigation of the supposed rational argu-ments in favour of fundamental Christian beliefs. I spent endless hours inmeditation upon this subject; I could not speak to anybody about it for fear ofgiving pain. I su?ered acutely both from the gradual loss of faith and fromthe need of silence. I thought that if I ceased to believe in God, freedom andimmortality, I should be very unhappy. I found, however, that the reasonsgiven in favour of these dogmas were very unconvincing. I considered themone at a time with great seriousness. The ?rst to go was free will. At the age of?fteen, I became convinced that the motions of matter, whether livingor dead, proceeded entirely in accordance with the laws of dynamics, andadolescence 29therefore the will can have no in?uence upon the body. I used at this time towrite down my re?ections in English written in Greek letters in a bookheaded ‘Greek Exercises’.1I did this for fear lest someone should ?nd outwhat I was thinking. In this book I recorded my conviction that the humanbody is a machine. I should have found intellectual satisfaction in becoming amaterialist, but on grounds almost identical with those of Descartes (whowas unknown to me except as the inventor of Cartesian co-ordinates), I cameto the conclusion that consciousness is an undeniable datum, and thereforepure materialism is impossible. This was at the age of ?fteen. About two yearslater, I became convinced that there is no life after death, but I still believedin God, because the ‘First Cause’ argument appeared to be irrefutable. At theage of eighteen, however, shortly before I went to Cambridge, I read Mill’sAutobiography, where I found a sentence to the e?ect that his father taught himthat the question ‘Who made me?’ cannot be answered, since it immediatelysuggests the further question ‘Who made God?’. This led me to abandon the‘First Cause’ argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the longperiod of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradualloss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprisethat I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject.Throughout this time, I read omnivorously. I taught myself enough Italianto read Dante and Machiavelli. I read Comte, of whom, however, I did notthink much. I read Mill’s Political Economy and Logic, and made elaborateabstracts of them. I read Carlyle with a good deal of interest, but with acomplete repudiation of his purely sentimental arguments in favour ofreligion. For I took the view then, which I have taken ever since, that atheological proposition should not be accepted unless there is the same kindof evidence for it that would be required for a proposition in science. I readGibbon, and Milman’s History of Christianity, and Gulliver’s Travels unexpurgated.The account of the Yahoos had a profound e?ect upon me, and I began to seehuman beings in that light.It must be understood that the whole of this mental life was deeply buried;not a sign of it showed in my intercourse with other people. Socially I wasshy, childish, awkward, well behaved, and good-natured. I used to watchwith envy people who could manage social intercourse without anguishedawkwardness. There was a young man called Cattermole who, I suppose,must have been a bit of a bounder; but I watched him walking with a smartyoung woman with easy familiarity and evidently pleasing her. And I wouldthink that never, never, never should I learn to behave in a manner that couldpossibly please any woman in whom I might be interested. Until just beforemy sixteenth birthday, I was sometimes able to speak of some things to mytutors. Until that date I was educated at home, but my tutors seldom stayedmore than three months. I did not know why this was, but I think it wasthe autobiography of bertrand russell 30because whenever a new tutor arrived, I used to induce him to enter into aconspiracy with me to deceive my people wherever their demands wereabsurd. One tutor I had was an agnostic, and used to allow me to discussreligion with him. I imagine that he was dismissed because this was dis-covered. The tutor whom my people liked best and who stayed the longestwith me was a man dying of consumption whose breath stank intolerably. Itnever occurred to them that it was unwise, from a health point of view, tohave me perpetually in his neighbourhood.Just before my sixteenth birthday, I was sent to an Army crammer at OldSouthgate, which was then in the country. I was not sent to him in order tocram for the Army, but in order to be prepared for the scholarship examin-ation at Trinity College, Cambridge. Almost all of the other people there,however, were going into the Army, with the exception of one or two repro-bates who were going to take Orders. Everybody, except myself, was seven-teen or eighteen, or nineteen, so that I was much the youngest. They were allof an age to have just begun frequenting prostitutes, and this was their maintopic of conversation. The most admired among them was a young manwho asserted that he had had syphilis and got cured, which gave him greatkudos. They would sit round telling bawdy stories. Every incident gave themopportunities for improper remarks. Once the crammer sent one of themwith a note to a neighbouring house. On returning, he related to the othersthat he had rung the bell and a maid had appeared to whom he had said: ‘Ihave brought a letter’ (meaning a French letter) to which she replied: ‘I amglad you have brought a letter.’ When one day in church a hymn was sungcontaining the line: ‘Here I’ll raise my Ebenezer’, they remarked: ‘I neverheard it called that before!’In spite of my previous silent preoccupation with sex, contact with it inthis brutal form deeply shocked me. I became very Puritanical in my views,and decided that sex without deep love is beastly. I retired into myself, andhad as little to do with the others as possible. The others, however, found mesuitable for teasing. They used to make me sit on a chair on a table and singthe only song I knew, which was:Old Abraham is dead and gone,We ne’er shall see him more,He used to wear an old great coat,All buttoned down before.He also had another coat,Which was of a different kind,Instead of buttoning down before,It buttoned up behind.adolescence 31I soon realised that my only chance of escape from their attentions was toremain imperturbably good-humoured. After a term or two, another teasableboy arrived, who had the added merit of losing his temper. This caused themto let me alone. Gradually, also, I got used to their conversation and ceased tobe shocked by it. I remained, however, profoundly unhappy. There was afootpath leading across ?elds to New Southgate, and I used to go there aloneto watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commitsuicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics. My people would,of course, have been horri?ed if they had known of the sort of conversationthat was habitual, but as I was getting on well with mathematics I wished onthe whole to stay, and never told them a word as to the sort of place it was. Atthe end of the year and a half at the crammer’s I was examined for scholar-ships in December 1889, and obtained a minor scholarship. During the tenmonths that intervened before my going to Cambridge, I lived at home, andcoached with the man whom the crammer had hired to teach me.For a time at the crammer’s I had one friend – a man named EdwardFitzGerald. His mother was American, and his father Canadian, and hebecame well known in later years as a great mountain climber, performingmany exploits in the New Zealand Alps and the Andes. His people were veryrich, and lived in a large house, No. 19 Rutland Gate.2He had a sister whowrote poetry and was a great friend of Robert Browning whom I frequentlymet at Rutland Gate.3She afterwards became ?rst Lady Edmond Fitzmaurice,and then Signora de Philippi. His sister was considerably older than he was,and an accomplished classical scholar. I conceived a romantic admiration forher, though when I met her later she seemed an unmitigated bore. He hadbeen brought up in America, and was exceedingly sophisticated. He was lazyand lackadaisical, but had remarkable ability in a great many directions, no-tably in mathematics. He could tell the year of any reputable wine or cigar. Hecould eat a spoonful of mixed mustard and Cayenne pepper. He was intimatewith Continental brothels. His knowledge of literature was extensive, andwhile an undergraduate at Cambridge, he acquired a ?ne library of ?rsteditions. When he ?rst came to the crammer’s, I took to him at once, becausehe was at any rate a civilised being, which none of the others were. (RobertBrowning died while I was there, and none of the others had ever heard ofhim.) We used both to go home for the weekend, and on the way he wouldalways take me ?rst to lunch with his people and then to a matinée. Mypeople made inquiries about the family, but were reassured by a testimonialfrom Robert Browning. Having been lonely so long, I devoted a somewhatabsurd amount of a?ection to FitzGerald. To my great delight, I was invited togo abroad with him and his people in August. This was the ?rst time I hadbeen abroad since the age of two, and the prospect of seeing foreign coun-tries excited me greatly. We went ?rst to Paris, where the Exhibition of 1889the autobiography of bertrand russell 32was in progress, and we went to the top of the Ei?el Tower, which was newthat year. We then went to Switzerland, where we drove from place to placefor about a week, ending up in the Engadine. He and I climbed two moun-tains, Piz Corvach, and Piz Palü. On both occasions there was a snow-storm.On the ?rst I had mountain sickness, and on the second he did. The secondoccasion was quite exciting, as one of our guides fell over a precipice, andhad to be hauled up by the rope. I was impressed by his sang froid, as he sworeas he fell over.Unfortunately, however, FitzGerald and I had a somewhat serious dis-agreement during this time. He spoke with what I thought unpardonablerudeness to his mother, and being young I reproached him for doing so. Hewas exceedingly angry, with a cold anger which lasted for months. When wereturned to the crammer’s, we shared lodgings, and he devoted himself tosaying disagreeable things, in which he displayed great skill. I came to hatehim with a violence which, in retrospect, I can hardly understand. On oneoccasion, in an access of fury, I got my hands on his throat and started tostrangle him. I intended to kill him, but when he began to grow livid, Irelented. I do not think he knew that I had intended murder. After this, weremained fairly good friends throughout his time at Cambridge, which,however, ended with his marriage at the end of his second year.Throughout this time, I had been getting more and more out of sympathywith my people. I continued to agree with them in politics, but in nothingelse. At ?rst I sometimes tried to talk to them about things that I was consider-ing, but they always laughed at me, and this caused me to hold my tongue. Itappeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim ofall action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thoughtotherwise. Belief in happiness, I found, was called Utilitarianism, and wasmerely one among a number of ethical theories. I adhered to it after thisdiscovery, and was rash enough to tell grandmother that I was a utilitarian.She covered me with ridicule, and ever after submitted ethical conundrumsto me, telling me to solve them on utilitarian principles. I perceived that shehad no good grounds for rejecting utilitarianism, and that her opposition toit was not intellectually respectable. When she discovered that I was inter-ested in metaphysics, she told me that the whole subject could be summedup in the saying: ‘What is mind? no matter; what is matter? never mind.’ Atthe ?fteenth or sixteenth repetition of this remark, it ceased to amuse me, butmy grandmother’s animus against metaphysics continued to the end of herlife. Her attitude is expressed in the following verses:O Science metaphysicalAnd very very quizzical,You only make this maze of life the mazier;adolescence 33For boasting to illuminateSuch riddles dark as Will and FateYou muddle them to hazier and hazier.The cause of every action,You expound with satisfaction;Through the mind in all its corners and recessesYou say that you have travelled,And all problems unravelledAnd axioms you call your learned guesses.Right and wrong you’ve so dissected,And their fragments so connected,That which we follow doesn’t seem to matter;But the cobwebs you have wrought,And the silly ?ies they have caught,It needs no broom miraculous to shatter.You know no more than I,What is laughter, tear, or sigh,Or love, or hate, or anger, or compassion;Metaphysics, then, adieu,