罗素自传（全本）-6

July 20th. There are about three di?erent, though converging ways oflooking at this question of free will, ?rst, from the omnipotence of God,second from the reign of law, and third, from the fact that all our actions, iflooked into, show themselves as caused by motives. These three ways we seeat once to be really identical, for God’s omnipotence is the same thing as thereign of law, and the determination of actions by motives is the particularform which the reign of law takes in man. Let us now examine closely each ofthese ways.First, from the omnipotence of God. What do we mean, in the ?rst place,by free will? We mean that, where several courses are open to us, we canchoose any one. But according to this de?nition, we are not ruled by God,and alone of created things, we are independent of him. That appearsunlikely, but is by no means impossible, since his omnipotence is only aninference. Let us then pass on to the second, from the reign of law. Of allthings we know, except perhaps the higher animals, it is obvious that law iscompletely the master. That man is also under its dominion appears from afact such as Grimm’s Law, and again from the fact that it is possible some-times to predict human actions. If man, then, be subject to law, does not thismean, that his actions are predetermined, just as much as the motions of aplanet or the growth of a plant? The Duke of Argyll, indeed, speaks of free-dom within the bounds of law, but to me that’s an unmeaning phrase, forsubjection to law must mean a certain consequence always following in givenconditions. No doubt di?erent people in the same circumstances act di?er-ently, but that is only owing to di?erence of character, just as two comets inthe autobiography of bertrand russell 44the same position move di?erently, because of di?erences in their eccentrici-ties. The third, from the consideration of motives, is about the strongest. Forif we examine any action whatsoever, we ?nd always motives, over which wehave no more control than matter over the forces acting on it, which produceour actions. The Duke of Argyll says we can present motives to ourselves, butis not that an action, determined by our character, and other unavoidablethings? The argument for free will from the fact that we feel it, is worthless,for we do not feel motives which we ?nd really exist, nor that mind dependson brain, etc. But I am not prepared dogmatically to deny free will, for I haveoften found that good arguments don’t present themselves on one side of aquestion till they are told one. My nature may incline me to disbelieve freewill, and there may be very excellent arguments for free will which either Ihave never thought of, or else have not had their full weight with me. . . . It isdi?cult not to become reckless and commit suicide, which I believe I shoulddo but for my people.adolescence 453CAMBRIDGEMy father had been at Cambridge, but my brother was at Oxford. I went toCambridge because of my interest in mathematics. My ?rst experience of theplace was in December 1889 when I was examined for entrance scholarships.I stayed in rooms in the New Court, and I was too shy to enquire the way tothe lavatory, so that I walked every morning to the station before the examin-ation began. I saw the Backs through the gate of the New Court, but did notventure to go into them, feeling that they might be private. I was invited todine with the Master, who had been Headmaster of Harrow in my father’stime. I there, for the ?rst time, met Charles and Bob Trevelyan. Bob character-istically had borrowed Charles’s second best dress suit, and fainted duringdinner because somebody mentioned a surgical operation. I was alarmedby so formidable a social occasion, but less alarmed than I had been a fewmonths earlier when I was left tête-à-tête with Mr Gladstone. He came to stay atPembroke Lodge, and nobody was asked to meet him. As I was the only malein the household, he and I were left alone together at the dinner table afterthe ladies retired. He made only one remark: ‘This is very good port they havegiven me, but why have they given it me in a claret glass?’ I did not know theanswer, and wished the earth would swallow me up. Since then I have neveragain felt the full agony of terror.I was very anxious to do well in the scholarship examination, and ner-vousness somewhat interfered with my work. Nevertheless, I got a minorscholarship, which gave me extreme happiness, as it was the ?rst time I hadbeen able to compare myself with able contemporaries.From the moment that I went up to Cambridge at the beginning ofOctober 1890 everything went well with me. All the people then in residencewho subsequently became my intimate friends called on me during the ?rstweek of term. At the time I did not know why they did so, but I discoveredafterwards that Whitehead, who had examined for scholarships, had toldpeople to look out for Sanger and me. Sanger was a freshman like myself, alsodoing mathematics, and also a minor scholar. He and I both had rooms inWhewell’s Court. Webb, our coach, had a practice of circulating ??? amonghis classes, and it fell to my lot to deliver a ?? to Sanger after I had done withit. I had not seen him before, but I was struck by the books on his shelves. Isaid: ‘I see you have Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe which I think a verygood book.’ He said: ‘You are the ?rst person I have ever met who has heardof it!’ From this point the conversation proceeded, and at the end of halfan hour we were lifelong friends. We compared notes as to how muchmathematics we had done. We agreed upon theology and metaphysics. Wedisagreed upon politics (he was at the time a Conservative, though in later lifehe belonged to the Labour Party). He spoke of Shaw, whose name was untilthen unknown to me. We used to work on mathematics together. He wasincredibly quick, and would be half-way through solving a problem beforeI had understood the question. We both devoted our fourth year to moralscience, but he did economics, and I did philosophy. We got our Fellowshipsat the same moment. He was one of the kindest men that ever lived, and inthe last years of his life my children loved him as much as I have done. I havenever known anyone else with such a perfect combination of penetratingintellect and warm a?ection. He became a Chancery barrister, and wasknown in legal circles for his highly erudite edition of Jarman On Wills. Heused to lament that Jarman’s relatives had forbidden him to mention in thepreface that Jarman died intestate. He was also a very good economist, and hecould read an incredible number of languages, including such out-of-the-way items as Magyar and Finnish. I used to go walking tours with him inItaly, and he always made me do all the conversation with inn-keepers, butwhen I was reading Italian, I found that his knowledge of the language wasvastly greater than mine. His death in the year 1930 was a great sorrow to me.The other friends whom I acquired during my ?rst term I owed chie?yto Whitehead’s recommendation. I learned afterwards that in the scholarshipexamination another man had obtained more marks than I had, butWhitehead had the impression that I was the abler of the two. He thereforeburned the marks before the examiners’ meeting, and recommended me inpreference to the other man. Two of my closest friends were Crompton andTheodore Llewelyn Davies. Their father was vicar of Kirkby Lonsdale, andtranslator of Plato’s Republic in the Golden Treasury edition, a distinguishedscholar and a Broad Churchman whose views were derived from F. D. Maurice.He had a family of six sons and one daughter. It was said, and I believe withtruth, that throughout their education the six sons, of whom Crompton andTheodore were the youngest, managed, by means of scholarships, to gocambridge 47through school and university without expense to their father. Most of themwere also strikingly good-looking, including Crompton, who had very ?neblue eyes, which sometimes sparkled with fun and at other times had a steadygaze that was deeply serious. The ablest and one of the best loved of thefamily was the youngest, Theodore, with whom, when I ?rst knew them,Crompton shared rooms in College. They both in due course became Fellows,but neither of them became resident. Afterwards the two lived together in asmall house near Westminster Abbey, in a quiet out-of-the-way street. Bothof them were able, high-minded and passionate, and shared, on the whole,the same ideals and opinions. Theodore had a somewhat more practicaloutlook on life than Crompton. He became Private Secretary to a series ofConservative Chancellors of the Exchequer, each of whom in turn he con-verted to Free Trade at a time when the rest of the Government wished themto think otherwise. He worked incredibly hard and yet always found time togive presents to the children of all his friends, and the presents were alwaysexactly appropriate. He inspired the deepest a?ection in almost everybodywho knew him. I never knew but one woman who would not have beendelighted to marry him. She, of course, was the only woman he wished tomarry. In the spring of 1905, when he was thirty-four, his dead body wasfound in a pool near Kirkby Lonsdale, where he had evidently bathed on hisway to the station. It was supposed that he must have hit his head on a rockin diving. Crompton, who loved his brother above everyone, su?ered almostunendurably. I spent the weeks after Theodore’s death with him, but it wasdi?cult to ?nd anything to say.1The sight of his unhappiness was agonising.Ever since, the sound of Westminster chimes has brought back to me thenights I lay awake in misery at this time. On the Sunday after the accident, Iwas in church when his father, with determined stoicism, took the serviceas usual, and just succeeded in not breaking down. Gradually Cromptonrecovered, but not fully until his marriage. After that, for no reason that Icould understand, I saw nothing of him for many years, until one evening,when I was living in Chelsea, I heard the front door bell, and found Cromptonon the doorstep. He behaved as if we had met the day before, was as charmingas ever, and insisted on seeing my children asleep. I think I had become somuch associated with his su?ering after Theodore’s death, that for a longtime he found my presence painful.One of my earliest memories of Crompton is of meeting him in the darkestpart of a winding College staircase and his suddenly quoting, without anyprevious word, the whole of ‘Tyger, Tyger, burning bright’. I had never, tillthat moment, heard of Blake, and the poem a?ected me so much that Ibecame dizzy and had to lean against the wall. Hardly a day passed withoutmy remembering some incident connected with Crompton – sometimes ajoke, sometimes a grimace of disgust at meanness or hypocrisy, most oftenthe autobiography of bertrand russell 48his warm and generous a?ection. If I were tempted at any time to any fail-ure of honesty, the thought of his disapproval would still restrain me. Hecombined wit, passion, wisdom, scorn, gentleness, and integrity, in a degreethat I have never known equalled. In addition to all these, his intense andunalterable a?ection gave to me and others, in later years, an anchor ofstability in a disintegrating world.His loyalties were usually peculiar to himself. He was incapable of followinga multitude, either for good or evil. He would profess contempt and amuse-ment for all the causes in which his friends excited themselves, laughing toscorn ‘The Society for this’ or ‘The World League for Promoting that’, whileall the time he was a crusade in himself, for Ireland against England, for smallbusiness against big, for the have-nots against the haves, for competitionagainst monopoly. His chief enthusiasm was for the taxation of land values.Henry George is now an almost forgotten prophet, but in 1890, when I?rst knew Crompton, his doctrine that all rent should be paid to the Staterather than to private landowners was still an active competitor with Socialismamong those who were not satis?ed with the economic status quo. Crompton,at this time, was already a fanatical adherent of Henry George. He had, as wasto be expected, a strong dislike of Socialism, and a strong devotion to theprinciple of freedom for private enterprise. He had no dislike of the capitalistwho made his money in industry, but regarded as a mere incubus the manwho is able to levy toll on the industry of others because he owns the landthat they need. I do not think he ever asked himself how the State could fail tobecome immensely powerful if it enjoyed all the revenue to be derived fromlandownership. In his mind, as in Henry George’s, the reform was to be thecompletion of individualistic liberalism, setting free energies now throttled bymonopoly power. In 1909, he believed that Henry George’s principles werebeing carried out by Lloyd George, whose famous budget he helped to perfect.At the beginning of the 1914–18 War he was solicitor to the Post O?ce,but his ardent agreement with the opinions of his wife, who was an IrishNationalist and imprisoned as a Sinn Feiner, made his position untenable. Hewas dismissed at a moment’s notice. In spite of the prejudice of the time hewas almost immediately taken in as a partner by Messrs Coward, Chance &Co, one of the leading ?rms of City solicitors. In 1921, it was he who draftedthe treaty of peace that established Irish self-government, though this wasnever publicly known. His unsel?shness made any important worldly successimpossible, since he never stood in the way of others acquiring credit forhis work; and he did not care for public recognition and honours. But hisability, though it was not this that made him unforgettable, was very great.What made Crompton at the same time so admirable and so delightful,was not his ability, but his strong loves and hates, his fantastic humour, andhis rock-like honesty. He was one of the wittiest men that I have ever known,cambridge 49with a great love of mankind combined with a contemptuous hatred for mostindividual men. He had by no means the ways of a saint. Once, when we wereboth young, I was walking with him in the country, and we trespassed over acorner of a farmer’s land. The farmer came running out after us, shouting andred with fury. Crompton held his hand to his ear, and said with the utmostmildness: ‘Would you mind speaking a little louder? I’m rather hard of hear-ing.’ The farmer was reduced to speechlessness in the endeavour to makemore noise than he was already making. Not long before his death I heardhim tell this story, with great detail and exaggeration, attributing his part init to me, while I interrupted, saying, ‘Don’t believe a word of it. It wasn’t me,it was all Crompton,’ until ?nally he dissolved in a?ectionate chuckles.He was addicted to extreme shabbiness in his clothes, to such a degreethat some of his friends expostulated. This had an unexpected result. WhenWestern Australia attempted by litigation to secede from the Commonwealthof Australia, his law ?rm was employed, and it was decided that the caseshould be heard in the King’s Robing Room. Crompton was overheard ring-ing up the King’s Chamberlain and saying: ‘The unsatisfactory state of mytrousers has lately been brought to my notice. I understand that the case isto be heard in the King’s Robing Room. Perhaps the King has left an old pairof trousers there that might be useful to me.’His distastes – which were numerous and intense – were always expressedin a manner that made one laugh. Once, when he and I were staying with hisfather, a Bishop was also a guest – the mildest and most ino?ensive type ofcleric, the kind of whom it would be natural to say that he would not hurt a?y. Unfortunately his politics were somewhat reactionary. When at last wewere alone, Crompton put on a manner that would have been appropriate toa fellow-captive on a pirate ship, and growled out: ‘Seems a desperate character.’When the Liberal Government came into o?ce at the end of 1905, andLord Haldane, fat, comfortable, and soothing, was put at the War O?ce,Crompton, very gravely, said he had been chosen to prevent the Generalsfrom having apoplexy when Army reforms were suggested.Motor tra?c annoyed him by its imperiousness. He would cross Londonstreets without paying attention to it, and when cars hooted indignantly hewould look round with an air of fastidious vexation, and say, ‘Don’t makethat noise!’ Although he wandered about with an air of dreamy abstraction,wearing his hat on the back of his head, motorists became convinced thathe must be someone of enormous importance, and waited patiently whilehe went his way.He loved London as much as Lamb or Dr Johnson did. Once, when he wasinveighing against Wordsworth for writing about the lesser celandine, I said,‘Do you like him better on Westminster Bridge?’ ‘Ah, yes,’ he answered, ‘ifonly he had treated it on the same scale.’ In his last years we often walkedthe autobiography of bertrand russell 50together in London after dinner, he and my wife and I. Crompton would takeour arms, if he were not holding them already, as we passed Wren’s churchof St Clement Danes, to remind us to look up at one of his favourite sights,the spire standing out dimly against the glowing blue of the evening sky.On these walks he would sometimes get into conversation with people thatwe met. I remember him engaging a park-keeper in an earnest discussion,perhaps of land values. The park-keeper was at ?rst determined to rememberboth his class and his o?cial position, and treated Crompton with respectfuldisapproval. Strangers ought not to be so ready to talk to strangers, gentlemenshould not be so easy with workingmen, and no one should talk to o?cialson duty. But this sti?ness soon melted. Crompton was truly democratic. Healways spoke to his clerks or his servants with the same tone that he wouldhave used to an important person such as one of the Indian Rajahs whosea?airs he handled, and his manner in a two-roomed Irish cabin was exactlythe same as in a party of celebrities. I remember with what grave courtesyhe rose to bow and shake hands with our parlourmaid, on hearing that shecame from the same district as his family.By temperament he was inclined to anarchism; he hated system and organ-isation and uniformity. Once, when I was with him on Westminister Bridge,he pointed with delight to a tiny donkey-cart in the middle of the heavytra?c. ‘That’s what I like,’ he said, ‘freedom for all sorts.’On another occasion, when I was walking with him in Ireland, we wentto a bus station, where I, without thinking, made for the largest and mostcomfortable bus. His expression was quite shocked as he took me by the armand hurried me away to a shabby little ‘jalopie’ of a bus, explaining gravelythat it was pluckily defying the big combines.His opinions were often somewhat wayward, and he had no objection togiving his prejudices free rein. He admired rebels rather more, perhaps, thanwas wholly rational. He had a horror of anything that seemed calculating, andI once shocked him deeply by saying that a war could not be justi?ed unlessthere was a likelihood of victory. To him, heroic and almost hopeless de?anceappeared splendid. Many of his prejudices were so consonant to my feelingsthat I never had the heart to argue with them – which in any case wouldhave been a hopeless task.With his temperament and opinions, it was natural that he should hate theSidney Webbs. When they took up Poor Law Reform, he would say that, sinceeveryone else rejected their attempts at regulation, they had at last beendriven to organise the defenceless paupers. He would allege, as one of theirtriumphs of organisation, that they employed a pauper with a peg leg to drillholes for the potatoes.He was my lawyer for many years – a somewhat thankless task which heundertook out of friendship. Most of his practice consisted of a?airs of greatcambridge 51importance, concerning Indian Princes, Dominion Governments, or leadingBanks. He showed, in legal matters, unbending straightforwardness, com-bined with skill and patience – this last truly astonishing, since nature hadmade him one of the most impatient of men. By these methods, whichinspired con?dence even in opponents, he achieved results which ingenioustrickery could never have achieved. I remember the stony expression whichcame over his face during the course of a legal consultation when someonesuggested a course that was not entirely straightforward.With all his underlying seriousness, he was almost invariably gay. At theend of a long day of exhausting and responsible work he would arrive at adinner party as jolly as if he had already enjoyed a good dose of champagne,and would keep everybody laughing. It was in the middle of a dinner partythat he died, quite suddenly, of heart failure. Probably he had known that thiswas liable to happen, but he had kept the knowledge to himself. Afterwards,his friends remembered slight indications that he had not expected to livelong, but they had not been su?cient to cause active anxiety among thosewho valued him.In his last years he spent much of his leisure in writing a book on phil-osophy, which he referred to disparagingly as his ‘pie-dish’ in allusion to anold man in a play who had only one talent, the making of pie-dishes, andonly one ambition, to make a really good pie-dish before he died. After Greekpoetry, philosophy had been, when he was young, his main intellectualpreoccupation; when I ?rst knew him, we spent much time arguing aboutethics and metaphysics. A busy professional life had kept him, throughout hismiddle years, engaged in practical a?airs, but at last he was able to spare sometime for purely theoretical thinking, to which he returned with wholeheartedjoy. When the book was nearly ?nished he lost it, as people do sometimeslose the things they value most. He left it in a train. It was never recovered.Someone must have picked it up in the hope that it had ?nancial value. Hementioned the loss, sadly but brie?y, said that there was nothing for it but tobegin all over again from the few notes he had, and then changed the subject.We saw less of him during the few months that were left before his death,though when we did see him he was as gay and a?ectionate as ever. He wasspending most of his spare energy on trying to make up the work that waslost; but the pie-dish was never ?nished.Another friend of my Cambridge years was McTaggart, the philosopher,who was even shyer than I was. I heard a knock on my door one day – a verygentle knock. I said: ‘Come in’, but nothing happened. I said, ‘Come in’,louder. The door opened, and I saw McTaggart standing on the mat. He wasalready President of The Union, and about to become a Fellow, and inspiredme with awe on account of his metaphysical reputation, but he was too shy tocome in, and I was too shy to ask him to come in. I cannot remember howthe autobiography of bertrand russell 52many minutes this situation lasted, but somehow or other he was at last in theroom. After that I used frequently to go to his breakfasts, which were famousfor their lack of food; in fact, anybody who had been once, brought an eggwith him on every subsequent occasion. McTaggart was a Hegelian, and atthat time still young and enthusiastic. He had a great intellectual in?uenceupon my generation, though in retrospect I do not think it was a very goodone. For two or three years, under his in?uence, I was a Hegelian. I rememberthe exact moment during my fourth year when I became one. I had gone outto buy a tin of tobacco, and was going back with it along Trinity Lane, whensuddenly I threw it up in the air and exclaimed: ‘Great God in boots! – theontological argument is sound!’ Although after 1898 I no longer acceptedMcTaggart’s philosophy, I remained fond of him until an occasion during the?rst war, when he asked me no longer to come and see him because he couldnot bear my opinions. He followed this up by taking a leading part in havingme turned out of my lectureship.Two other friends whom I met in my early days in Cambridge and retainedever since, were Lowes Dickinson and Roger Fry. Dickinson was a man whoinspired a?ection by his gentleness and pathos. When he was a Fellow and Iwas still an undergraduate, I became aware that I was liable to hurt him bymy somewhat brutal statement of unpleasant truths, or what I thought to besuch. States of the world which made me caustic only made him sad, andto the end of his days whenever I met him, I was afraid of increasing hisunhappiness by too stark a realism. But perhaps realism is not quite the rightword. What I really mean is the practice of describing things which one ?ndsalmost unendurable in such a repulsive manner as to cause others to shareone’s fury. He told me once that I resembled Cordelia, but it cannot be saidthat he resembled King Lear.From my ?rst moment at Cambridge, in spite of shyness, I was exceedinglysociable, and I never found that my having been educated at home was anyimpediment. Gradually, under the in?uence of congenial society, I becameless and less solemn. At ?rst the discovery that I could say things that Ithought, and be answered with neither horror nor derision but as if I had saidsomething quite sensible, was intoxicating. For a long time I supposed thatsomewhere in the university there were really clever people whom I had notyet met, and whom I should at once recognise as my intellectual superiors,but during my second year, I discovered that I already knew all the cleverestpeople in the university. This was a disappointment to me, but at the sametime gave me increased self-con?dence. In my third year, however, I metG. E. Moore, who was then a freshman, and for some years he ful?lled myideal of genius. He was in those days beautiful and slim, with a look almost ofinspiration, and with an intellect as deeply passionate as Spinoza’s. He had akind of exquisite purity. I have never but once succeeded in making him tell acambridge 53lie, that was by a subterfuge, ‘Moore,’ I said, ‘do you always speak the truth?’‘No’, he replied. I believe this to be the only lie he had ever told. His peoplelived in Dulwich, where I once went to see them. His father was a retiredmedical man, his mother wore a large china brooch with a picture of theColosseum on it. He had sisters and brothers in large numbers, of whom themost interesting was the poet, Sturge Moore. In the world of intellect, he wasfearless and adventurous, but in the everyday world he was a child. During myfourth year I spent some days walking with him on the coast of Norfolk. Wefell in by accident with a husky fellow, who began talking about Petronius withintense relish for his indecencies. I rather encouraged the man, who amusedme as a type. Moore remained completely silent until the man was gone, andthen turned upon me, saying: ‘That man was horrible.’ I do not believe thathe has ever in all his life derived the faintest pleasure from improper storiesor conversation. Moore, like me, was in?uenced by McTaggart, and was for ashort time a Hegelian. But he emerged more quickly than I did, and it waslargely his conversation that led me to abandon both Kant and Hegel. In spiteof his being two years younger than me, he greatly in?uenced my philo-sophical outlook. One of the pet amusements of all Moore’s friends was towatch him trying to light a pipe. He would light a match, and then begin toargue, and continue until the match burnt his ?ngers. Then he would lightanother, and so on, until the box was ?nished. This was no doubt fortunatefor his health, as it provided moments during which he was not smoking.Then there were the three brothers Trevelyan. Charles, the eldest, wasconsidered the least able of the three by all of us. Bob, the second, was myspecial friend. He became a very scholarly, but not very inspired, poet, butwhen he was young he had a delicious whimsical humour. Once, when wewere on a reading party in the Lakes, Eddie Marsh, having overslept himself,came down in his night-shirt to see if breakfast was ready, looking frozen andmiserable. Bob christened him ‘cold white shape’, and this name stuck to himfor a long time. George Trevelyan was considerably younger than Bob, but Igot to know him well later on. He and Charles were terri?c walkers. Oncewhen I went a walking tour with George in Devonshire, I made him promiseto be content with twenty-?ve miles a day. He kept his promise until the lastday. Then he left me, saying that now he must have a little walking. Onanother occasion, when I was walking alone, I arrived at the Lizard oneevening and asked if they could give me a bed. ‘Is your name Mr Trevelyan?’they answered. ‘No,’ I said, ‘are you expecting him?’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘and hiswife is here already.’ This surprised me, as I knew that it was his wedding