Chapter 2
My childhood was, on the whole, happy and straightforward, and I felt affection for most of the grown-ups with whom I was brought in contact. I remember a very definite change when I reached what in modern child psychology is called the 'latency period'. At this stage, I began to enjoy using slang, pretending to have no feelings, and being generally 'manly'. I began to despise my people, chiefly because of their extreme horror of slang and their absurd notion that it was dangerous to climb trees. So many things were forbidden me that I acquired the habit of deceit, in which I persisted up to the age of twenty-one. It became second nature to me to think that whatever I was doing had better be kept to myself, and I have never quite overcome the impulse to concealment which was thus generated. I still have an impulse to hide what I am reading when anybody comes into the room, and to hold my tongue generally as to where I have been, and what I have done. It is only by a certain effort of will that I can overcome this impulse, which was generated by the years during which I had to find my way among a set of foolish prohibitions.
The years of adolescence were to me very lonely and very unhappy. Both in the life of the emotions and in the life of the intellect, I was obliged to preserve an impenetrable secrecy towards my people. My interests were divided between sex, religion, and mathematics. I find the recollection of my sexual preoccupation in adolescence unpleasant. I do not like to remember how I felt in those years, but I will do my best to relate things as they were and not as I could wish them to have been. The facts of sex first became known to me when I was twelve years old, through a boy named Ernest Logan 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 of copulation and its part in the generation of children, illustrating his remarks by funny stories. I found what he said extremely interesting, although I had as yet no physical response. It appeared to me at the time self-evident that free love was the only rational system, and that marriage was bound up with Christian superstition. (I am sure this reflection occurred to me only a very short time after I first knew the facts.) When I was fourteen, my tutor mentioned to me that I should shortly undergo an important physical change. By this time I was more or less able to understand what he meant. I had at that time another boy, Jimmie Baillie, staying with me, the same whom I met at Vancouver in 1929, and he and I used to talk things over, not only with each other, but with the pageboy, who was about our own age or perhaps a year older, and rather more knowing than we were. When it was discovered that we 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 bread and water. Strange to say, this treatment did not destroy my interest in sex. We spent a great deal of time in the sort of conversation that is considered improper, and in endeavouring to find out things of which we were ignorant. For this purpose I found the medical dictionary very useful. At fifteen, I began to have sexual passions, of almost intolerable intensity. While I was sitting at work, endeavouring to concentrate, I would be continually distracted 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 age of twenty, when I dropped it suddenly because I was in love.
The same tutor who told me of the approach of puberty mentioned, some months later, that one speaks of a man's breast, but of a woman's breasts. This remark caused me such an intolerable intensity of feeling that I appeared to be shocked, and he rallied me on my prudery. Many hours every day were spent in desiring to see the female body, and I used to try to get glimpses through 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 and knees, and then of a room 6 foot cube. There was a housemaid whom I used to induce to accompany me to this underground house, where I kissed her and hugged her. Once I asked her whether she would like to spend a night with me, and she said she would die rather, which I believed. She also expressed surprise, saying that she had thought I was good. Consequently this affair proceeded no further. I had by this time quite lost the rationalist outlook on sex which I had had before puberty, and accepted entirely the conventional views as quite sound. I became morbid, and regarded myself as very wicked. At the same time, I took a considerable interest in my own psychology, which I studied carefully and not unintelligently, but I was told that all introspection is morbid, so that I regarded this interest in my own thoughts and feelings as another proof of mental aberration. After two or three years of introspection, however, I suddenly realised that, as it is the only method of obtaining a great deal of important knowledge, it ought not to be condemned as morbid. This relieved my feelings on this point.
Concurrently with this physical preoccupation with sex, went a great intensity of idealistic feeling, which I did not at that time recognise as sexual in 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 sentimental kind, owing to the fact that it was an unconscious sublimation of sex, and an attempt to escape from reality. I read poetry widely, beginning with very bad 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, a great deal of Shakespeare, large parts of Tennyson, and finally Shelley. I came upon Shelley by accident. One day I was waiting for my Aunt Maude in her sitting-room at Dover Street. I opened it at Alastor, which seemed to me the most beautiful poem I had ever read. Its unreality was, of course, the great element in my admiration for it. I had got about half-way through when my Aunt arrived, and I had to put the volume back in the shelf. I asked the grown-ups whether Shelley was not considered a great poet, but found that they thought ill of him. This, however, did not deter me, and I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart. Knowing no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should ever meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much in sympathy.
Alongside with my interest in poetry, went an intense interest in religion and philosophy. My grandfather was Anglican, my grandmother was a Scotch Presbyterian, but gradually became a Unitarian. I was taken on alternate Sundays to the (Episcopalian) Parish Church at Petersham and to the Presbyterian Church at Richmond, while at home I was taught the doctrines of Unitarianism. It was these last that I believed until about the age of fifteen. At this age I began a systematic investigation of the supposed rational arguments in favour of fundamental Christian beliefs. I spent endless hours in 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. I thought that if I ceased to believe in God, freedom and immortality, I should be very unhappy. I found, however, that the reasons given in favour of these dogmas were very unconvincing. I considered them one at a time with great seriousness. The first to go was free will. At the age of fifteen, I became convinced that the motions of matter, whether living or dead, proceeded entirely in accordance with the laws of dynamics, and therefore the will can have no influence upon the body. I used at this time to write down my reflections in English written in Greek letters in a book headed 'Greek Exercises'.1 I did this for fear lest someone should find out what I was thinking. In this book I recorded my conviction that the human body is a machine. I should have found intellectual satisfaction in becoming a materialist, but on grounds almost identical with those of Descartes (who was unknown to me except as the inventor of Cartesian co-ordinates), I came to the conclusion that consciousness is an undeniable datum, and therefore pure materialism is impossible. This was at the age of fifteen. About two years later, I became convinced that there is no life after death, but I still believed in God, because the 'First Cause' argument appeared to be irrefutable. At the age of eighteen, however, shortly before I went to Cambridge, I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question "Who made God?'. This led me to abandon the 'First Cause' argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject.
1 Some portions of this book are included on pp. 42 to 52.
Throughout this time, I read omnivorously. I taught myself enough Italian to read Dante and Machiavelli. I read Comte, of whom, however, I did not think much. I read Mill's Political Economy and Logic, and made elaborate abstracts of them. I read Carlyle with a good deal of interest, but with a complete repudiation of his purely sentimental arguments in favour of religion. For I took the view then, which I have taken ever since, that a theological proposition should not be accepted unless there is the same kind of evidence for it that would be required for a proposition in science. I read Gibbon, and Milman's History of Christianity, and Gulliver''s Travels unexpurgated. The account of the Yahoos had a profound effect upon me, and I began to see human 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 was shy, childish, awkward, well behaved, and good-natured. I used to watch with envy people who could manage social intercourse without anguished awkwardness. 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 smart young woman with easy familiarity and evidently pleasing her. And I would think that never, never, never should I learn to behave in a manner that could possibly please any woman in whom I might be interested. Until just before my sixteenth birthday, I was sometimes able to speak of some things to my tutors. Until that date I was educated at home, but my tutors seldom stayed more than three months. I did not know why this was, but I think it was because whenever a new tutor arrived, I used to induce him to enter into a conspiracy with me to deceive my people wherever their demands were absurd. One tutor I had was an agnostic, and used to allow me to discuss religion with him. I imagine that he was dismissed because this was discovered. The tutor whom my people liked best and who stayed the longest with me was a man dying of consumption whose breath stank intolerably. It never occurred to them that it was unwise, from a health point of view, to have me perpetually in his neighbourhood.
Just before my sixteenth birthday, I was sent to an Army crammer at Old Southgate, which was then in the country. I was not sent to him in order to cram for the Army, but in order to be prepared for the scholarship examination at Trinity College, Cambridge. Almost all of the other people there, however, were going into the Army, with the exception of one or two reprobates who were going to take Orders. Everybody, except myself, was seventeen or eighteen, or nineteen, so that I was much the youngest. They were all of an age to have just begun frequenting prostitutes, and this was their main topic of conversation. The most admired among them was a young man who asserted that he had had syphilis and got cured, which gave him great kudos. They would sit round telling bawdy stories. Every incident gave them opportunities for improper remarks. Once the crammer sent one of them with a note to a neighbouring house. On returning, he related to the others that he had rung the bell and a maid had appeared to whom he had said: 'I have brought a letter' (meaning a French letter) to which she replied: 'I am glad you have brought a letter.' When one day in church a hymn was sung containing the line: 'Here I'll raise my Ebenezer', they remarked: 'I never heard it called that before!'
In spite of my previous silent preoccupation with sex, contact with it in this 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, and had as little to do with the others as possible. The others, however, found me suitable for teasing. They used to make me sit on a chair on a table and sing the 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.
I soon realised that my only chance of escape from their attentions was to remain imperturbably good-humoured. After a term or two, another leasable boy arrived, who had the added merit of losing his temper. This caused them to let me alone. Gradually, also, I got used to their conversation and ceased to be shocked by it. I remained, however, profoundly unhappy. There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics. My people would, of course, have been horrified if they had known of the sort of conversation that was habitual, but as I was getting on well with mathematics I wished on the whole to stay, and never told them a word as to the sort of place it was. At the end of the year and a half at the crammer's I was examined for scholarships in December 1889, and obtained a minor scholarship. During the ten months that intervened before my going to Cambridge, I lived at home, and coached 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 Edward FitzGerald. His mother was American, and his father Canadian, and he became well known in later years as a great mountain climber, performing many exploits in the New Zealand Alps and the Andes. His people were very rich, and lived in a large house, No. 19 Rutland Gate.1 He had a sister who wrote poetry and was a great friend of Robert Browning whom I frequently met at Rutland Gate.2 She afterwards became first 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 for her, though when I met her later she seemed an unmitigated bore. He had been brought up in America, and was exceedingly sophisticated. He was lazy and lackadaisical, but had remarkable ability in a great many directions, notably in mathematics. He could tell the year of any reputable wine or cigar. He could eat a spoonful of mixed mustard and Cayenne pepper. He was intimate with Continental brothels. His knowledge of literature was extensive, and while an undergraduate at Cambridge, he acquired a fine library of first editions. When he first came to the crammer's, I took to him at once, because he was at any rate a civilised being, which none of the others were. (Robert Browning died while I was there, and none of the others had ever heard of him.) We used both to go home for the weekend, and on the way he would always take me first to lunch with his people and then to a matinee. My people made inquiries about the family, but were reassured by a testimonial from Robert Browning. Having been lonely so long, I devoted a somewhat absurd amount of affection to FitzGerald. To my great delight, I was invited to go abroad with him and his people in August. This was the first time I had been abroad since the age of two, and the prospect of seeing foreign countries excited me greatly. We went first to Paris, where the Exhibition of 1889 was in progress, and we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which was new that year. We then went to Switzerland, where we drove from place to place for about a week, ending up in the Engadine. He and I climbed two mountains, Piz Corvach, and Piz Palü. On both occasions there was a snow-storm. On the first I had mountain sickness, and on the second he did. The second occasion was quite exciting, as one of our guides fell over a precipice, and had to be hauled up by the rope, I was impressed by his sang froid, as he swore as he fell over.
1 It is now pulled down.2 I had met Robert Browning once before at the age of two when he came to lunch at Pembroke Lodge and talked unceasingly although everybody wished to hear the actor Salvini whom he had brought with him. At last I exclaimed in a piercing voice, 'I wish that man would stop talking'. And he did.
Unfortunately, however, FitzGerald and I had a somewhat serious disagreement during this time. He spoke with what I thought unpardonable rudeness to his mother, and being young I reproached him for doing so. He was exceedingly angry, with a cold anger which lasted for months. When we returned to the crammer's, we shared lodgings, and he devoted himself to saying disagreeable things, in which he displayed great skill. I came to hate him with a violence which, in retrospect, I can hardly understand. On one occasion, in an access of fury, I got my hands on his throat and started to strangle him. I intended to kill him, but when he began to grow livid, I relented. I do not think he knew that I had intended murder. After this, we remained 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 sympathy with my people. I continued to agree with them in politics, but in nothing else. At first I sometimes tried to talk to them about things that I was considering, but they always laughed at me, and this caused me to hold my tongue. It appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought otherwise. Belief in happiness, I found, was called Utilitarianism, and was merely one among a number of ethical theories. I adhered to it after this discovery, and was rash enough to tell grandmother that I was a utilitarian. She covered me with ridicule, and ever after submitted ethical conundrums to me, telling me to solve them on utilitarian principles. I perceived that she had no good grounds for rejecting utilitarianism, and that her opposition to it was not intellectually respectable. When she discovered that I was interested in metaphysics, she told me 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 amuse me, but my grandmother's animus against metaphysics continued to the end of her life. Her attitude is expressed in the following verses:
O Science metaphysical
And very very quizzical,
You only make this maze of life the mazier;
For boasting to illuminate
Such riddles dark as Will and Fate
You muddle them to hazier and hazier.
The cause of every action.
You expound with satisfaction;
Through the mind in all its corners and recesses
You say that you have travelled,
And all problems unravelled
And 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 flies 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,
Without you I can do,
And I think you'll very soon be out of fashion.
I remember her saying to me once after I was grown-up: 'I hear you are writing another book', in the tone of voice in which one might say: 'I hear you have another illegitimate child!' Mathematics she did not positively object to, though it was difficult for her to believe that it could serve any useful purpose. Her hope for me was that I should become a Unitarian minister. I held my tongue as to my religious opinions until I was twenty-one. Indeed, after the age of fourteen I found living at home only endurable at the cost of complete silence about everything that interested me. She practised a form of humour, which, though nominally amusing, was really full of animus. I did not at that time know-how to reply in kind, and merely felt hurt and miserable. My Aunt Agatha was equally bad, and my Uncle Rollo at the time had withdrawn into himself through sorrow at his first wife's death. My brother, who was at Balliol, had become a Buddhist, and used to tell me that the soul could be contained in the smallest envelope. I remember thinking of all the smallest envelopes that I had seen, and I imagined the soul beating against them like a heart, but from what I could tell of esoteric Buddhism from my brother's conversation, it did not offer me anything that I found of service. After he came of age, I saw very little of him, as the family considered him wicked, and he therefore kept away from home. I was upheld by the determination to do something of importance in mathematics when I grew up, but I did not suppose that I should ever meet anybody with whom I could make friends, or to whom I could express any of my thoughts freely, nor did I expect that any part of my life would be free from great unhappiness.
Throughout my time at Southgate I was very much concerned with politics and economics. I read Mill's Political Economy, which I was inclined to accept completely; also Herbert Spencer, who seemed to me too doctrinaire in The Man Versus The State, although I was in broad agreement with his bias.
My Aunt Agatha introduced me to the books of Henry George, which she greatly admired. I became convinced that land nationalisation would secure all the benefits that Socialists hoped to obtain from Socialism, and continued to hold this view until the war of 1914-18.
My grandmother Russell and my Aunt Agatha were passionate supporters of Gladstone's Home Rule policy, and many Irish M.P.s used to visit Pembroke Lodge. This was at a time when The Times professed to have documentary proof that Parnell was an accomplice in murder. Almost the whole upper class, including the great majority of those who had supported Gladstone till 1886, accepted this view, until, in 1889, it was dramatically disproved by the forger Piggot's inability to spell 'hesitancy'. My grandmother and aunt always vehemently rejected the view that Pamell's followers were in alliance with terrorists. They admired Parnell, with whom I once shook hands. But when he became involved in scandal, they agreed with Gladstone in repudiating him.
Twice I went with my Aunt Agatha to Ireland. I used to go for walks with Michael Davitt, the Irish patriot, and also by myself. The beauty of the scenery made a profound impression on me. I remember especially a small lake in County Wicklow, called Lugala. I have associated it ever since, though for no good reason, with the lines:
Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.
Fifty years later, when visiting my friend Crompton Davies in Dublin, I induced him to take me to Lugala, But he took me to a wood high above the lake, not to the 'pebbled shore' that I had remembered, and I went away convinced that one should not attempt to renew old memories.
In the year 1883 my Uncle Rollo bought a house on the slopes of Hindhead, where, for a long time, we all visited him for three months in every year. At that time there were no houses on Hindhead except two derelict coaching inns, the 'Royal Huts' and the 'Seven Thorns'. (They are not now derelict.) Tyndall's house, which started the fashion, was being built. I was frequently taken to see Tyndall, and he gave me one of his books, The Forms of Water. I admired him as an eminent Man of Science, and strongly desired to make some impression upon him. Twice I had some success. The first time was while he was talking to my Uncle Rollo, and I balanced on one finger two walking sticks with crooks. Tyndall asked me what I was doing, and I said I was thinking of a practical method of determining the centre of gravity. The second time, some years later, was when I told him that I had climbed the Piz Palü. He had been a pioneer Alpinist. I found inexpressible delight in walks through the heather, over Blackdown, down the Punchbowl, and as far as the Devil's Jumps at Churt. I particularly remember exploring a small road called 'Mother Bunch's Lane' (it is now full of houses, and has a sign saying 'Bunch Lane'). It continually diminished, and at last became a mere path leading to the crest of Hurt Hill. Quite suddenly, when I expected nothing, I came upon an enormous view, embracing half of Sussex and almost all of Surrey. Moments of this sort have been important in my life. In general, I find that things that have happened to me out of doors have made a deeper impression than things that have happened indoors.
Appendix: ‘Greek Exercises’
1888. March 3. I shall write about some subjects which now interest me. I have in consequence of a variety of circumstances come to look into the very foundations of the religion in which I have been brought up. On some points my conclusions have been to confirm my former creed, while on others I have been irresistibly led to such conclusions as would not only shock my people, but have given me much pain. I have arrived at certainty in few things, but my opinions, even where not convictions, are on some things nearly such. I have not the courage to tell my people that I scarcely believe in immortality. I used to speak freely to Mr Ewen on such matters, but now I cannot let out my thoughts to any one, and this is the only means I have of letting off steam. I intend to discuss some of my problems here.
19th. I mean today to put down my grounds for belief in God. I may say to begin with that I do believe in God and that I should call myself a theist if I had to give my creed a name. Now in finding reasons for believing in God I shall only take account of scientific arguments. This is a vow I have made which costs me much to keep, and to reject all sentiment. To find then scientific grounds for a belief in God we must go back to the beginning of all things. We know that the present laws of nature have always been in force. The exact quantity of matter and energy now in the universe must always have been in existence, but the nebular hypothesis points to no distant date for the time when the whole universe was filled with undifferentiated nebulous matter. Hence it is quite possible that the matter and force now in existence may have had a creation, which clearly could be only by divine power. But even granting that they have always been in existence, yet whence came the laws which regulate the action of force on matter? I think they are only attributable to a divine controlling power, which I accordingly call God.
March 22. Now let us look into the reasonableness of the reasoning. Let us suppose that the universe we now see has, as some suppose, grown by mere chance. Should we then expect every atom to act in any given conditions precisely similarly to another atom? I think if atoms be lifeless there is no reason to expect them to do anything without a controlling power. If on the other hand they be endowed with free will we are forced to the conclusion that all atoms in the universe have combined in the commonwealth and have made laws which none of them ever break. This is clearly an absurd hypothesis and therefore we are forced to believe in God. But this way of proving his existence at the same time disproves miracles and other supposed manifestations of divine power. It does not however disprove their possibility, for of course the maker of laws can also unmake them. We may arrive in another way at a disbelief in miracles. For if God is the maker of the laws, surely it would imply an imperfection in the law if it had to be altered occasionally, and such imperfection we can never impute to the divine nature, as in the Bible, God repented him of the work.
April 2. I now come to the subject which personally interests us poor mortals more perhaps than any other. I mean the question of Immortality. This is the one in which I have been most disappointed and pained by thought. There are two ways of looking at it, first by evolution and comparing men to animals, second, by comparing men with God. The first is the more scientific, for we know all about the animals but not about God. Well, I hold that, taking free will first, to consider there is no clear dividing line between man and the protozoan, therefore if we give free will to men we must give it also the protozoan; this is rather hard to do. Therefore, unless we are willing to give free will to the protozoan we cannot give it to man. This however is possible but it is 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 living things are simply kept going by chemical forces and are nothing more wonderful than a tree, which no one pretends has free will, and even if we had a good enough knowledge of the forces acting on anyone at any time, the motives pro and con, the constitution of his brain at any time, then we could tell exactly what he will do. Again from the religious point of view free will is a very arrogant thing for us to claim, for of course it is an interruption of God's laws, for by his ordinary laws all our actions would be fixed as the stars. I think we must leave to God the primary establishment of laws which are never broken and determine everybody's doings. And not having free will we cannot have immortality.
Monday, April 6. I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness. But no other theory is consistent with the complete omnipotence of God of which science, I think, gives ample manifestations. Thus I must either be an atheist or disbelieve in immortality. Finding the first impossible I adopt the second and let no one know. I think, however disappointing may be this view of men, it does give us a wonderful idea of God's greatness to think that He. can in the beginning create laws which by acting on a mere mass of nebulous matter, perhaps merely ether diffused through this part of the universe, will produce creatures like ourselves, conscious not only of our existence but even able to fathom to a certain extent God's mysteries. All this with no more intervention on his part. Now let us think whether this doctrine of want of free will is so absurd. If we talk about it to anyone they kick their legs or something of that sort. But perhaps they cannot help it for they have something to prove and therefore that supplies a motive to them to do it. Thus in anything we do we always have motives which determine us. Also there is no line of demarcation between Shakespeare or Herbert Spencer and a Papuan. But between them and a Papuan there seems as much difference as between a Papuan and a monkey.
April 14th. Yet there are great difficulties in the way of this doctrine that man has not immortality nor free will nor a soul, in short that he is nothing more than a species of ingenious machine endowed with consciousness. For consciousness in itself is a quality quite distinguishing men from dead matter and if they have one thing different from dead matter why not have another, free will? By free will I mean that they do not for example obey the first law of motion, or at least that the direction in which the energy they contain is employed depends not entirely on external circumstances. Moreover it seems impossible to imagine that man, the Great Man, with his reason, his knowledge of the universe, and his ideas of right and wrong, Man with his emotions, his love and hate and his religion, that this Man should be a mere perishable chemical compound whose character and his influence for good or for evil depend solely and entirely on the particular motions of the molecules of his brain and that all the greatest men have been great by reason of some one molecule hitting up against some other a little oftener than in other men. Does not this seem utterly incredible and must not any one be mad who believes in such absurdity? But what is the alternative? That, accepting the evolution theory which is practically proved, apes having gradually increased in intelligence, God suddenly by a miracle endowed one with that wonderful reason which it is a mystery how we possess. Then is man, truly called the most glorious work of God, is man destined to perish utterly after he has been so many ages evolving? We cannot say, but I prefer that idea to God's having needed a miracle to produce man and now leaving him free to do as he likes.
April 18th. Accepting then the theory that man is mortal and destitute of free will, which is as much as ever a mere theory, as of course all these kinds of things are mere speculation, what idea can we form of right and wrong? Many say if you make any mention of such an absurd doctrine as predestination, which comes to much the same thing, though parsons don't think so, why what becomes of conscience, etc., which they think has been directly implanted in man by God. Now my idea is that our conscience is in the first place due to evolution, which would of course form instincts of self-preservation, and in the second place to education and civilisation, which introduces great refinements of the idea of self-preservation. Let us take for example the ten commandments as illustrative of primitive morality. Many of them are conducive to quiet living of the community which is best for the preservation of the species. Thus what is always considered the worst possible crime and the one for which most remorse is felt is murder, which is direct annihilation of the species. Again, as we know, among the Hebrews it was thought a mark of God's favour to have many children, while the childless were considered as cursed of God. Among the Romans also widows were hated and I believe forbidden to remain unmarried in Rome more than a year. Now why these peculiar ideas? Were they not simply because these objects of pity or dislike did not bring forth fresh human beings? We can well understand how such ideas might grow up when men became rather sensible, for if murder and suicide were common in a tribe that tribe would die out and hence one which held such acts in abhorrence would have a great advantage. Of course among more educated societies these ideas are rather modified. My own I mean to give next time.
April 20th. Thus I think that primitive morality always originates In the idea of the preservation of the species. But is this a rule which a civilised community ought to follow? I think not. My rule of life, which I guide my conduct by, and a departure from which I consider as a sin, is to act in the manner which I believe to be most likely to produce the greatest happiness, considering both the intensity of the happiness and the number of people made happy. I know that Granny considers this an impractical rule of life and says that since you can never know the thing which will produce the greatest happiness you do much better in following the inner voice. The conscience, however, can easily be seen to depend mostly upon education, as for example common Irishmen do not consider lying wrong, which fact alone seems to me quite sufficient to disprove the divine value of conscience. And since, as I believe, conscience is merely the combined product of evolution and education, then obviously it is an absurdity to follow that rather than reason. And my reason tells me that it is better to act so as to produce maximum happiness than in any other way. For I have tried to see what other object I could set before me and I have failed. Not my own individual happiness in particular, but everybody's equally, making no distinction between myself, relations, friends, or perfect strangers. In real life it makes very little difference to me as long as others are not of my opinion, for obviously where there is any chance of being found out it is better to do what one's people consider right. My reason for this view: first that I can find no other, having been forced, as everybody must who seriously thinks about evolution, to give up the old idea of asking one's conscience, next that it seems to me that happiness is the great thing to seek after. As an application of the theory to practical life, I will say that in a case where nobody but myself was concerned, if indeed such a case exist, I should of course act entirely selfishly to please myself. Suppose for another instance that I had the chance of saving a man who would be better out of the world. Obviously I should consult my own happiness best by plunging in after him. For if I lost my life, that would be a very neat way of managing it, and if I saved him I should have the pleasure of no end of praise. But if I let him drown I should have lost an opportunity of death and should have the misery of much blame, but the world would be better for his loss and, as I have some slight hope, for my life.
April 29th. In all things I have made the vow to follow reason, not the instincts inherited partly from my ancestors and gained gradually by them, owing to a process of natural selection, and partly due to my education. How absurd it would be to follow these in the questions of right and wrong. For as I observed before, the inherited part can only be principles leading to the preservation of the species to which I belong, the part due to education is good or bad according to the individual education. Yet this inner voice, this God-given conscience which made Bloody Mary burn the Protestants, this is what we reasonable beings are to follow. I think this idea mad and I endeavour to go by reason as far as possible. What I take as my ideal is that which ultimately produces greatest happiness of greatest number. Then I can apply reason to find out the course most conducive to this end. In my individual case, however, I can also go more or less by conscience owing to the excellence of my education. But it is curious how people dislike the abandonment of brutish impulses for reason. I remember poor Ewen getting a whole dinner of argument, owing to his running down impulse. Today again at tea Miss Buhler and I had a long discussion because I said that I followed reason not conscience in matters of right and wrong. I do hate having such peculiar opinions because either I must keep them bottled up or else people are horrified at my scepticism, which is as bad with people one cares for as remaining bottled up. I shall be sorry when Miss Buhler goes because I can open my heart easier to her than to my own people, strange to say.
May 3rd. Miss Buhler is gone and I am left again to loneliness and reserve. Happily, however, it seems all but settled that I am going to Southgate and probably within the week. That will save me I feel sure from those morose cogitations during the week, owing to the amount of activity of my life, and novelty at first. I do not expect that I shall enjoy myself at first, but after a time I hope I shall. Certainly it will be good for my work, for my games and my manners, and my future happiness I expect. . . .
May 8th. What a much happier life mine would be but for these wretched ideas of mine about theology. Tomorrow I go, and tonight Granny prayed a beautiful prayer for me in my new life, in which among other things she said: May he especially be taught to know God's infinite love for him. Well that is a prayer to which I can heartily say Amen, and moreover it is one of which I stand in the greatest need. For according to my ideas of God we have no particular reason to suppose he loves us. For he only set the machine in working order to begin with and then left it to work out its own necessary consequences. Now you may say his laws are such as afford the greatest possible happiness to us mortals, but that is a statement of which there can be no proof. Hence I see no reason to believe in God's kindness towards me, and even the whole prayer was more or less a solemn farce to me, though I was truly affected by the simple beauty of prayer and her earnest way in saying it. What a thing it is to have such people! What might I be had I been worse brought up!
By the way, to change to a more cheerful subject: Marshall1 and I had an awfully fine day of it. We went down to the river, marched into Broom Hall,2 bagged a boat of Frank's we found there, and rowed up the river beyond Kingston Bridge without anybody at Broom Hall having seen us except one old man who was lame. Who the dickens he was I haven't the faintest idea. Marshall was awfully anxious to have some tea and we came to an nth rate inn which he thought would do. Having however like idiots left our jackets in the boat-house at Teddington we had to march in without coats and were served by the cheekiest of maids ever I saw who said she thought we were the carpentcrs come to mend the house. Then we rowed back as hard as possible and got home perspiring fearfully and twenty minutes late which produced a small row.
1 A former tutor.2 Where my brother was living.
May 20th. Here I am home again for the first time from Southgate. It seems a pleasant place but it is sad really to see the kind of boys that are common everywhere. No mind, no independent thought, no love of good books nor of the higher refinements of morality. It is really sad that the upper classes of a civilised and (supposed to be) moral country can produce nothing better. I am glad I didn't go away from home sooner as I should never have come to my present state had I done so, but should have been merely like one of them. (By the way, how terribly pharisaical I am getting.) I think the six months since Baillie went have made a great alteration in me. I have become of a calmer, thoughtfuller, poeticaller nature than I was. One little tiling I think illustrates this well. I never before thought much of the views in spring, whereas this year I was so simply carried away by their beauty that I asked Granny if they were not more beautiful than usual, but she said not. I like poetry much better than I did and have read all Shakespeare's historical plays with great delight, and long to read In Memoriam.
May 27th. As I said last time, I attempt to work according to my principles without the smallest expectations of reward, and even without using the light of conscience blindly as an infallible guide . . . It is very difficult for anyone to work aright with no aid from religion, by his own internal guidance merely. I have tried and I may say failed. But the sad thing is that I have no other resource. I have no helpful religion. My doctrines, such as they are, help my daily life no more than a formula in Algebra. But the great inducement to a good life with me is Granny's love and the immense pain I know it gives her when I go wrong. But she must I suppose die some day and where then will be my stay? I have die very greatest fear that my life hereafter be ruined by my having lost the support of religion. I desire of all things that my religion should not spread, for I of all people ought, owing to my education and the care taken of my moral wellbeing, to be of all people the most moral. So I believe I might be were it not for these unhappy ideas of mine, for how easy it is when one is much tempted to convince oneself that only happiness will be produced by yielding to temptation, when according to my ideas the course one has been taught to abhor immediately becomes virtuous. If ever I shall become an utter wreck of what I hope to be I think I shall bring forward this book as an explanation. We stand in want of a new Luther to renew faith and invigorate Christianity and to do what the Unitarians would do if only they had a really great man such as Luther to lead them. For religions grow old like trees unless reformed from time to time. Christianity of the existing kinds has had its day. We want a new form in accordance with science and yet helpful to a good life.
June 3rd. It is extraordinary how few principles or dogmas I have been able to become convinced of. One after another I find my former undoubted beliefs slipping from me into the region of doubt. For example, I used never for a moment to doubt that truth was a good thing to get hold of. But now I have the very greatest doubt and uncertainty. For the search for truth has led me to these results I have put in this book, whereas had I been content to accept the teachings of my youth I should have remained comfortable. The search for truth has shattered most of my old beliefs and has made me commit what are probably sins where otherwise I should have kept clear of them. I do not think it has in any way made me happier. Of course it has given me a deeper character, a contempt for trifles or mockery, but at the same time it has taken away cheerfulness and made it much harder to make bosom friends, and worst of all it has debarred me from free intercourse with my people, and thus made them strangers to some of my deepest thoughts, which, if by any mischance I do let them out, immediately become the subject for mockery, which is inexpressibly bitter to me though not unkindly meant. Thus in my individual case I should say the effects of a search for truth have been more bad than good. But the truth which I accept as such may be said not to be truth and I may be told that if I get at real truth I shall be made happier by it, but this is a very doubtful proposition. Hence I have great doubt of the unmixed advantage of truth. Certainly truth in biology lowers one's idea of man which must be painful. Moreoever, truth estranges former friends and prevents the making of new ones, which is also a bad thing. One ought perhaps to look upon all these things as a martyrdom, since very often truth attained by one man may lead to the increase in the happiness of many others though not to his own. On the whole I am inclined to continue to pursue truth, though truth of the kind in this book, if that indeed be truth, I have no desire to spread but rather to prevent from spreading.
July 15th. My holidays have begun about a week now and I am getting used to home and beginning to regard Southgate as an evil dream of the past. For although I tell people I like it very much, yet really, though better than I expected, life there has great trials and hardships. I don't suppose anybody hates disturbance as I do or can so ill stand mockery, though to outward appearance I keep my temper all right. Being made to sing, to climb on chairs, to get up for a sponging in the middle of the night, is to me fifty times more detestable than to others. I always have to go through in a moment a long train of reasoning as to the best thing to say or do, for I have sufficient self-control to do what I think best, and the excitement, which to others might seem small, leaves me trembling and exhausted. However, I think it is an excellent thing for me, as it increases my capacity for enjoyment and strengthens me morally to a very considerable extent, I shan't forget in a hurry their amazement that I had never said a 'damn', which with things like it goes near to making me a fanfaron de crimes. This, however, is a bad thing to be, when only too many real crimes are committed. . . . I am glad I didn't go to school before. I should have wanted strength and have had no time for the original thought, which though it has caused me much pain, is yet my chief stay and support in troubles. I am always kept up by a feeling of contempt, erroneous though it may be, for all who despitefully use me and persecute me. I don't think contempt is misplaced when a chap's habitual language is about something like "who put me on my cold, cold pot whether I would or not? My mother,' sung to the tune of 'Thy will be done'. Had my education, however, been the least bit less perfect than it is I should probably have been the same. But I feel I must enjoy myself at home much better than ever before, which with an imaginary feeling of heroism reconciles me to a great deal of unhappiness at Southgate.
July 20th. There are about three different, though converging ways of looking at this question of free will, first, from the omnipotence of God, second from the reign of law, and third, from the fact that all our actions, if looked into, show themselves as caused by motives. These three ways we see at once to be really identical, for God's omnipotence is the same thing as the reign of law, and the determination of actions by motives is the particular form which the reign of law takes in man. Let us now examine closely each of these ways.
First, from the omnipotence of God. What do we mean, in the first place, by free will? We mean that, where several courses are open to us, we can choose any one. But according to this definition, we are not ruled by God, and alone of created things, we are independent of him. That appears unlikely, but is by no means impossible, since his omnipotence is only an inference. Let us then pass on to the second, from the reign of law. Of all things we know, except perhaps the higher animals, it is obvious that law is completely the master. That man is also under its dominion appears from a fact such as Grimm's Law, and again from the fact that it is possible sometimes to predict human actions. If man, then, be subject to law, does not this mean, that his actions are predetermined, just as much as the motions of a planet or the growth of a plant? The Duke of Argyll, indeed, speaks of freedom within the bounds of law, but to me that's an unmeaning phrase, for subjection to law must mean a certain consequence always following in given conditions. No doubt different people in the same circumstances act differently, but that is only owing to difference of character, just as two comets in the same position move differently, because of differences in their eccentricities. The third, from the consideration of motives, is about the strongest. For if we examine any action whatsoever, we find always motives, over which we have no more control than matter over the forces acting on it, which produce our actions. The Duke of Argyll says we can present motives to ourselves, but is not that an action, determined by our character, and other unavoidable things? The argument for free will from the fact that we feel it, is worthless, for we do not feel motives which we find really exist, nor that mind depends on brain, etc. But I am not prepared dogmatically to deny free will, for I have often found that good arguments don't present themselves on one side of a question till they are told one. My nature may incline me to disbelieve free will, and there may be very excellent arguments for free will which either I have never thought of, or else have not had their full weight with me. . . . It is difficult not to become reckless and commit suicide, which I believe I should do but for my people.