THE PHILOSOPHY OF
MR. B*RTR*ND R*SS*LL

WITH AN APPENDIX OF LEADING
PASSAGES FROM CERTAIN OTHER WORKS

EDITED BY
PHILIP E. B. JOURDAIN

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE             40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
CHICAGO: THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.

First published in 1918

(All rights reserved)

EDITOR’S NOTE

When Mr. B*rtr*nd R*ss*ll, following the advice of Mr. W*ll**m J*m*s, again “got into touch with reality” and in July 1911 was torn to pieces by Anti-Suffragists, many of whom were political opponents of Mr. R*ss*ll and held strong views on the Necessity of Protection of Trade and person, a manuscript which was almost ready for the press was fortunately saved from the flames on the occasion when a body of eager champions of the Sacredness of Personal Property burnt the late Mr. R*ss*ll’s house. This manuscript, together with some further fragments found in the late Mr. R*ss*ll’s own interleaved copy of his Prayer-Book of Free Man’s Worship, which was fortunately rescued with a few of the great author’s other belongings, was first given to the world in the Monist for October 1911 and January 1916, and has here been arranged and completed by some other hitherto undecipherable manuscripts. The title of the above-mentioned Prayer-Book, it may perhaps be mentioned, was apparently suggested to Mr. R*ss*ll by that of the Essay on “The Free Man’s Worship” in the Philosophical Essays (London, 1910, pp. 59-70[1]) of Mr. R*ss*ll’s distinguished contemporary, Mr. Bertrand Russell, from whom much of Mr. R*ss*ll’s philosophy was derived. And, indeed, the influence of Mr. Russell extended even beyond philosophical views to arrangement and literary style. The method of arrangement of the present work seems to have been borrowed from Mr. Russell’s Philosophy of Leibniz of 1900; in the selection of subjects dealt with, Mr. R*ss*ll seems to have been guided by Mr. Russell’s Principles of Mathematics of 1903; while Mr. R*ss*ll’s literary style fortunately reminds us more of Mr. Russell’s later clear and charming subtleties than his earlier brilliant and no less subtle obscurities. But, on the other hand, some important points of Mr. Russell’s doctrine, which first appeared in books published after Mr. R*ss*ll’s death, were anticipated in Mr. R*ss*ll’s notes, and these anticipations, so interesting for future historians of philosophy, have been provided by the editor with references to the later works of Mr. Russell. All editorial notes are enclosed in square brackets, to indicate that they were not written by the late Mr. R*ss*ll.

At the present time we have come to take a calm view of the question so much debated seven years ago as to the legitimacy of logical arguments in political discussions. No longer, fortunately, can that intense feeling be roused which then found expression in the famous cry, “Justice—right or wrong,” and which played such a large part in the politics of that time. Thus it will not be out of place in this unimpassioned record of some of the truths and errors in the world to refer briefly to Mr. R*ss*ll’s short and stormy career. Before he was torn to pieces, he had been forbidden to lecture on philosophy or mathematics by some well-intentioned advocates of freedom in speech who thought that the cause of freedom might be endangered by allowing Mr. R*ss*ll to speak freely on points of logic, on the grounds, apparently, that logic is both harmful and unnecessary and might be applied to politics unless strong measures were taken for its suppression. On much the same grounds, his liberty was taken from him by those who remarked that, if necessary, they would die in defence of the sacred principle of liberty; and it was in prison that the greater part of the present work was written. Shortly after his liberation, which, like all actions of public bodies, was brought about by the combined honour and interests of those in authority, occurred his lamentable death to which we have referred above.

Mr. R*ss*ll maintained that the chief use of “implication” in politics is to draw conclusions, which are thought to be true, and which are consequently false, from identical propositions, and we can see these views expressed in Chapters III and XIX of the present work. These chapters were apparently written before the Government, in the spring of 1910, arrived at the famous secret decision that only “certain implications” are permitted in discussion. Naturally the secret decision gave rise to much speculation among logicians as to which kinds of implication were barred, and Mr. R*ss*ll and Mr. Bertrand Russell had many arguments on the subject, which naturally could not be published at the time. However, after Mr. R*ss*ll’s death, successive prosecutions which were made by the Government at last made it quite clear that the opinion held by Mr. R*ss*ll was the correct one. There had been numerous prosecutions of people who, from true but not identical premisses, had deduced true conclusions, so that the possible legitimate forms of “implication” were reduced. Further, the other doubtful cases were cleared up in course of time by the prosecution of (1) members of the Aristotelian Society for deducing true conclusions from false premisses; (2) members of the Mind Association for deducing false conclusions from false premisses; and also by the attempted prosecution of an eminent lady for deducing true conclusions from identities. Fortunately this lady was able to defend herself successfully by pleading that one eminent philosopher believed them to be true—which, of course, means that the conclusions are false. Thus appeared the true nature of legitimate political arguments.

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

CHAPTER I

THE INDEFINABLES OF LOGIC

The view that the fundamental principles of logic consist solely of the law of identity was held by Leibniz,[2] Drobisch, Uberweg,[3] and Tweedledee. Tweedledee, it may be remembered,[4] remarked that certain identities “are” logic. Now, there is some doubt as to whether he, like Jevons,[5] understood “are” to mean what mathematicians mean by “=,” or, like Schröder[6] and most logicians, to have the same meaning as the relation of subsumption. The first alternative alone would justify our contention; and we may, I think, conclude from an opposition to authority that may have been indicated by Tweedledee’s frequent use of the word “contrariwise” that he did not follow the majority of logicians, but held, like Jevons,[7] the mistaken[8] view that the quantification of the predicate is relevant to symbolic logic.

It may be mentioned, by the way, that it is probable that Humpty-Dumpty’s “is” is the “is” of identity. In fact, it is not unlikely that Humpty-Dumpty was a Hegelian; for, although his ability for clear explanation may seem to militate against this, yet his inability to understand mathematics,[9] together with his synthesis of a cravat and a belt, which usually serve different purposes,[10] and his proclivity towards riddles seem to make out a good case for those who hold that he was in fact a Hegelian. Indeed, riddles are very closely allied to puns, and it was upon a pun, consisting of the confusion of the “is” of predication with the “is” of identity—so that, for example, “Socrates” was identified with “mortal” and more generally the particular with the universal—that Hegel’s system of philosophy was founded.[11] But the question of Humpty-Dumpty’s philosophical opinions must be left for final verification to the historians of philosophy: here I am only concerned with an a priori logical construction of what his views might have been if they formed a consistent whole.[12]

If the principle of identity were indeed the sole principle of logic, the principles of logic could hardly be said to be, as in fact they are, a body of propositions whose consistency it is impossible to prove.[13] This characteristic is important and one of the marks of the greatest possible security. For example, while a great achievement of late years has been to prove the consistency of the principles of arithmetic, a science which is unreservedly accepted except by some empiricists,[14] it can be proved formally that one foundation of arithmetic is shattered.[15] It is true that, quite lately, it has been shown that this conclusion may be avoided, and, by a re-moulding of logic, we can draw instead the paradoxical conclusion that the opinions held by common-sense for so many years are, in part, justified. But it is quite certain that, with the principles of logic, no such proof of consistency, and no such paradoxical result of further investigations is to be feared.

Still, this re-moulding has had the result of bringing logic into a fuller agreement with common-sense than might be expected. There were only two alternatives: if we chose principles in accordance with common-sense, we arrived at conclusions which shocked common-sense; by starting with paradoxical principles, we arrived at ordinary conclusions. Like the White Knight, we have dyed our whiskers an unusual colour and then hidden them.[16]

The quaint name of “Laws of Thought,” which is often applied to the principles of Logic, has given rise to confusion in two ways: in the first place, the “Laws,” unlike other laws, cannot be broken, even in thought; and, in the second place, people think that the “Laws” have something to do with holding for the operations of their minds, just as laws of nature hold for events in the world around us.[17] But that the laws are not psychological laws follows from the facts that a thing may be true even if nobody believes it, and something else may be false if everybody believes it. Such, it may be remarked, is usually the case.

Perhaps the most frequent instance of the assumption that the laws of logic are mental is the treatment of an identity as if its validity were an affair of our permission. Some people suggest to others that they should “let bygones be bygones.” Another important piece of evidence that the truth of propositions has nothing to do with mind is given by the phrase “it is morally certain that such-and-such a proposition is true.” Now, in the first place, morality, curiously enough, seems

Fortunately, the principles or laws of Logic are not a matter of philosophical discussion. Idealists like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and even practical idealists like the White Knight, explicitly accept laws like the law of identity and the excluded middle.[18] In fact, throughout all logic and mathematics, the existence of the human or any other mind is totally irrelevant; mental processes are studied by means of logic, but the subject-matter of logic does not presuppose mental processes, and would be equally true if there were no mental processes. It is true that, in that case, we should not know logic; but our knowledge must not be confounded with the truths which we know.[19] An apple is not confused with the eating of it except by savages, idealists, and people who are too hungry to think.

CHAPTER II

OBJECTIVE VALIDITY OF THE “LAWS OF THOUGHT”

I once inquired of a maid-servant whether her mistress was at home. She replied, in a doubtful fashion, that she thought that her mistress was in unless she was out. I concluded that the maid was uncertain as to the objective validity of the law of excluded middle, and remarked that to her mistress. But since I used the phrase “laws of thought,” the mistress perhaps supposed that a “law of thought” has something to do with thinking and seemed to imagine that I wished to impute to the maid some moral defect of an unimportant nature. Thus she remonstrated with me in an amused way, since she probably imagined that I meant to find fault with the maid’s capacity for thinking.

CHAPTER III

IDENTITY

In the first chapter we have noticed the opinion that identities are fundamental to all logic. We will now consider some other views of the value of identities.

Identities are frequently used in common life by people who seem to imagine that they can draw important conclusions respecting conduct or matters of fact from them. I have heard of a man who gained the double reputation of being a philosopher and a fatalist by the repeated enunciation of the identity “Whatever will be, will be”; and the Italian equivalent of this makes up an appreciable part of one of Mr. Robert Hichens’ novels. Further, the identity “Life is Life” has not only been often accepted as an explanation for a particular way of living but has even been considered by an authoress who calls herself “Zack” to be an appropriate title for a novel; while “Business is Business” is frequently thought to provide an excuse for dishonesty in trading, for which purpose it is plainly inadequate.

Another example is given by a poem of Mr. Kipling, where he seems to assert that “East is East” and “West is West” imply that “never the twain shall meet.” The conclusion, now, is false; for, since the world is round—as geography books still maintain by arguments which strike every intelligent child as invalid[20]—what is called the “West” does, in fact, merge into the “East.” Even if we are to take the statement metaphorically, it is still untrue, as the Japanese nation has shown.

The law-courts are often rightly blamed for being strenuous opponents of the spread of modern logic: the frequent misuse of and, or, the, and provided that in them is notorious. But the fault seems partly to lie in the uncomplicated nature of the logical problems which are dealt with in them. Thus it is no uncommon thing for somebody to appear there who is unable to establish his own identity, or for A to assert that B was “not himself” when he made a will leaving his money to C.

The chief use of identities is in implication. Since, in logic, we so understand implication[21] that any true proposition implies and is implied by any other true proposition; if one is convinced of the truth of the proposition Q, it is advisable to choose one or more identities P, whose truth is undoubted, and say that P implies Q. Thus, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, according to The Times of March 27, 1909, professed to deduce the conclusion that it is not right that women should have votes from the premisses that “man is man” and “woman is woman.” This method requires that one should have made up one’s mind about the conclusion before discovering the premisses—by what, no doubt, Jevons would call an “inverse or inductive method.” Thus the method is of use only in speeches and in giving good advice.

Mr. Austen Chamberlain afterwards rather destroyed one’s belief in the truth of his premisses by putting limits to the validity of the principle of identity. In the course of the Debate on the Budget of 1909, he maintained, against Mr. Lloyd George, that a joke was a joke except when it was an untruth: Mr. Lloyd George, apparently, being of the plausible opinion that a joke is a joke under all circumstances.