NUNC COCNOSCO EX PARTE TRENT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY rfiHHM 4 4 r,rO Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/bertrandrussellpOOOOunse BERTRAND RUSSELL: PHILOSOPHER OF THE CENTURY BY BERTRAND RUSSELL The ABC of Relativity Human Society in Ethics and Politics The Impact of Science on Society The Analysis of Matter New Hopes For a Changing World Authority and the Individual Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits A History of Western Philosophy Logic and Knowledge The Principles of Mathematics Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy The Analysis of Mind Our Knowledge of the External World An Outline of Philosophy The Philosophy of Leibniz An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth The Problems of Philosophy (O.U.P., 1912) Principia Mathematica (3 vols., C.U.P., 1910-13) (with A. N. Whitehead) Philosophical Essays The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1872-1914 War Crimes in Vietnam Portraits from Memory Unpopular Essays Unarmed Victory Power In Praise of Idleness Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare Why I Am Not a Christian The Conquest of Happiness Sceptical Essays Fact and Fiction Mysticism and Logic The Scientific Outlook Marriage and Morals Has Man a Future? Education and the Social Order My Philosophical Development On Education Freedom and Organization, 1814-1914 Political Ideals Principles of Social Reconstruction The Prospects of Industrial Civilization Roads to Freedom The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism The Problem of China German Social Democracy The Amberley Papers Satan in the Suburbs Nightmares of Eminent Persons The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell's Best BERTRAND RUSSELL Philosopher of the Century ESSAYS IN HIS HONOUR EDITED BY RALPH SCHOENMAN A. J. AYER VICTOR PURCELL, CMG WERNER BLOCH HILARY PUTNAM MAX BORN HERBERT READ C. D. BROAD HANS REICHENBACH ERICH FROMM MARIA REICHENBACH ALDOUS HUXLEY DANA SCOTT GEORG KREISEL REV. MICHAEL SCOTT CONSTANCE MALLESON I. F. STONE LINUS PAULING JULIAN TREVELYAN W. V. QUINE London GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD RUSKIN HOUSE MUSEUM STREET h , ft? S / G-f 3 1967 FIRST PUBLISHED IN This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1956, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher © George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1967 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN in 10 point Times Roman type BY UNWIN BROTHERS LTD WOKING AND LONDON PREFACE In preparing this volume I have drawn together essays which sug¬ gest Bertrand Russell’s achievement. In what roles is he to be portrayed? Is it as ironist and puck, impassioned defier of cruel authority, wit, iconoclast, moral reformer, literary stylist, teller of parables and stories, educationalist, benefactor of great talents and causes, teacher, social theorist, philosopher, political activist, liberator of the abandoned, mathematician, logician or natural scientist—what is the formula for intimating his range and rarity ? I am not satisfied that this collection does what is needed. I do not disparage any of the contributions, neither as an editor nor as a critic. The essays achieve an approximation, hopefully overlapping but a little, yet leaving gaps and depending ultimately on the reader to supply a sense of unity for Russell’s diversity of excellence. I should wish to place on one side the editor’s mask and speak personally. Before knowing Russell he already loomed in my mind as legendary—a man of da Vincian accomplishment, a rebel and controversialist whose fierce independence stirred me deeply. I discovered his work during my first year at Princeton University. Professor H. H. Wilson had drawn me to Princeton with his written attacks on the American witch-hunt, that ‘concentration camp for the mind’ then under noisy construction. On arrival in Princeton I cornered Wilson and demanded to know if he were the H. H. Wilson who wrote for the Nation. Wilson asked if I had unpacked my bags. I said I had. ‘Pack them’, he said. He observed my shock and told me quietly: ‘If you stick around: two things: (1) Maintain a sense of humour. (2) If you want to criticize orthodoxy, master it.’ I was ill prepared for Princeton its callow superiority, insularity and throw-back cruelty. I recall how I went into battle. ‘You have’, Wilson cautioned me later, ‘an innate capacity for erecting brick walls and using your head as a battering ram.’ Russell’s Unpopular Essays was just out in paper. It gave me more joy than I can recall receiving from anything in print. There was ‘An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish’ with its instance of the nun who always wore a bathrobe when bathing. Asked why since no man could see her, she replied, ‘Oh, but you forget the good God . ‘Apparently’, wrote Russell, ‘they conceive of the Deity as a Peeping Tom whose omnipotence enables him to see through bathroom walls but who is foiled by bathrobes.’ Every turn of phrase and chosen irony gave me pure delight. I felt liberated. Days after reading the book I would smile and laugh to 1 BERTRAND RUSSELL myself, ferret it out and re-read passages. I did not share the sentences which pleased me to a point of tears. I was determined to acquire the Russell touch—to become deft and light and devastating. At Princeton there was a Chaucer specialist, Roberts, who was a fine scholar, caustic and Catholic. ‘Well, Schoenman,’ he said one afternoon, ‘what does the liberal mind have to say? We want the lowest common denominator.’ ‘I’m an authoritarian, Mr Roberts , was my reply. ‘I was waiting for the word of God.’ I carried Russell’s style in my head as best as my head could carry it. I read all I found and began to proselytize. My friend, Godfrey Winham, and a small group agreed with conscious irony that Russell was our candidate for god. But we did worship him. He offered us that just combination of passionate rebellion and humour which saved us (we were certain) from the priggish and unrelieved simple mindedness required to do battle with America’s cruelty, crassness and the impenetrable, superior manner of the chosen Princetonian. I took up philosophy and planned to go to England for further study. Refused a passport, I lost two years before obtaining one through the courts. It was not long after arriving for post-graduate studies at the lse that I joined in with the ‘new left’ and the cnd. It was 1958. Russell was President of the cnd. I first saw him in the flesh at Easter in Trafalgar Square. His vigour and passion exulted me but it did not occur to me to approach him. I had no justifiable reason for doing so and I had a thing about ‘seeking out’ the great. It seemed to me unbecoming, fetish-making and at war with the very reasons for admiring men like Russell. Years earlier I had declined an invitation to Albert Einstein’s by a friend of my parents who knew him, because it seemed to me wrong to visit a great and admired man for no better reason than the desire to see him. When I heard that Einstein, whom I revered, had made some approving comment on my Princeton activity I was elated but still determined not to see him for the sake of it. I had done some work as an assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study and met him by chance but did not pursue this. This slightly ridiculous determination to avoid the great without legitimate grounds for contact, stayed with me despite my intense sense of loss and failed opportunity when Einstein died in 1955. I placed an anonymous rose at his door on the anniversary of his death for three years running. Although active in the cnd and on its Youth Executive I did not approach Russell until April 1960.1 had definite views on the future of the movement, views long discussed and carefully worked out. 2