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Russell and the Greeks Los Russell and the Greeks lOS Certainly, Russell himself was never grieved by his lack of a classical education. He hated the idea of having to learn dead languages, Bertrand Russell and the Russell's grandmother kept him educated at home until age sixteen. l The learning of Latin and Greek played only a small role in his tutelage. Greeks He did have some instruction in Greek from a tutor before he wrote the "Greek Exercises" notebook (1888-89), for besides being written in English using Greek characters, the journal contains a number of by John R. Lenz Greek words and constructions. These are halting attempts at the lan­ guage. One look at their quality is enough to prove that Russell had little interest in learning Greek, and no desire to pursue it! He also had some Latin, since he quotes Horace in the same notebook.4 He later wrote, "I hated Latin and Greek, and thought it merely foolish to learn BERTRAND RUSSELL WAS raised in the Victorian era, but, unlike a language that nobody speaks."s most aristocrats of the time, he was educated at home and avoided the Similarly, Russell had Latin lessons at the "crammer's", the school usual classical education. Yet his works abound in references to the to prepare him for entrance to Cambridge. At this school, he wrote an Greeks and Romans, whether to ideas of their philosophers or to inci­ essay on language at age seventeen in which he contrasted outmoded dents from their history. Indeed, few of his writings lack such refer­ languages, including Latin, unfavourably with modern ones.6 He then ences. The heritage of Greek civilization was always important to believed that language progressed in accordance with the growth of Russell, in several different ways. The breadth of his life and thought ideas. Essentially, he thought that dead languages, such as Latin, were make him a representative figure of one modern view of the importance obsolete, tharrhey had been superseded by others increasingly capable of the Greeks, between the Victorian eral and our own. of expressing more sophisticated ideas and feelings. The youthful Rus­ This paper will consider a few topics concerning Russell's arritude sell wrote of "the utter inability of (Latin] to express modern thought" towards the Greeks, and towards classical learning: First, his education (Collected Papers, I: 33). and his own educational principles; then, the famous "conversion" He did show some youthful interest in the laws of language. A note­ incident of 1901 which included his reaction to Euripides' play, Hip­ book of 1888 contains lists he drew up to check the validity of polytus; third, the implications of Russell's attitude for his study of "Grimm's Law", which governs sound changes within Indo-European Greek mathematics and philosophy, and for his politics; and, finally, languages. Russell compiled fourteen pages of lists of related words in the enduring importance of Greek civilization to him. Greek, Latin, English and German, and came up with an hypothesis of his own. He also cites Grimm's Law in the "Greek Exercises" diary Russell's education and educational principles in the course of arguing for "the reign of law". 7 That is, he was only T.S. Eliot once wrote, "It is a public misfortune that Mr. Bertrand interested in Greek and Latin for the scientific purpose of discovering Russell did not have a classical education."3 We hope to arrive at a different estimate by the end of this paper. , The Collected Papers of Ber/rand Russell, Vol. I: Cambridge Essays, 1888-99, ed. K. Blackwell, A. Brink, N. Griffin, R.A. Rempel and j.G. Slater (London and Boston: I I am grateful to Kenneth Blackwell, Harry Ruja, and John G. Slater for supplying me Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 4,459--61,14. The same notebook contains a briefGreek with essential references. translation exercise from a standard school text, Xenophon's Anabasis (ibid., p. 4). 2 R. Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., , The Autobiography ofBer/rand Russell, 1872-1914 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967), i980), and EM. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven: Yale p. 36. The quote continues: "I liked mathematics best, and next to mathematics I V.P., 1981), both touch on changes in classical studies early in this century, particu­ liked history." larly the First World War and the "Cambridge School". 6 "The Language of a Nation Is a Monument to Which Every Forcible Individual in 3 S.P. Rosenbaum, review of The Life ofBertrand Russell, by Ronald W. Clark, in The the Course of Ages Has Contributed a Stone", Collected Papers, I: 33-5 (1889). The Globe and Mail, Toronto, reprinted in the Newsletter of the Bertrand Russell Society, essay is in a notebook which also contains some Latin translations (ibid., p. 23). no. 12 (Nov. 1976): 19. 7 Collected Papers, I: 18, with annotation at I: 4, p. 376. 104 106 Russell winter 1987-88 Russell and the Greeks 107 laws which would embody a more general truth than anyone language is no sign that he concerned himself with the languages before the "Lit­ would. tle-go" was held in the following October, although his diary from this In later life, Russell felt his time spent on Latin and Greek had been period shows that he persevered with mathematical work. II "almost completely wasted". 8 He stated that he had learned the least The Cambridge student handbook itself is somewhat apologetic. It amount of Greek compatible with his going to Cambridge (Collected mentions "easy passages" (above), and even the previous, slightly Papers, I: 4). stricter regulations state, "The Previous Examination ... is necessarily A fair amount of Latin and Greek was required for the "Previous easy. The standard is low, and will be so ..." (4th ed. [1880], p. 21). Examination" which all students matriculating at Cambridge had to In fact, at Cambridge, classics had always played second fiddle to math­ pass before making progress in a degree course. The "Little-go", as it ematics. Trinity had been the first college to institute a Classical Tripos, was known colloquially, was divided into two parts, classical and math­ beginning in 1824. Even then it had been specified that the Classical ematical. In classics, Russell faced the following test in October 1890: Tripos "should not be of such a searching character as to militate against the zealous pursuit of mathematics."12 The Firs~ Part embraces one Gospel in the original Greek, one Latin Clas­ The requirements for Greek and Latin (which reflected emphasis on sic and one Greek (for example, two books of Ovid's Fasti and one book of them in the secondary schools) were now waning. The trend is visible Herodotus). In each of these subjects passages are set for translation, and within Russell's family. The same master who awarded Bertrand his questions on the subject-matter, grammar, &c. There is also a paper of easy mathematical prize (in 1893) had earlier (at Harrow) awarded his father passages of Latin taken from other books, to be translated with the help of a Latin prize. Another generation back, "Lord John Russell [had once] a dictionary, and a paper on Latin and Greek accidence and syntax! passed the time at Geneva in translating a book of the Odyssey."13 And Russell's so-called "godfather", Mill, was heavily steeped in the Russell acquitted himself well, with a "first class" in this part, as classics. well as in the second, mathematical part (Collected Papers, I: 389). The It was an educational system which insisted on the rudiments of amount of Latin and Greek required is equivalent, for each language, Latin and Greek for examination purposes, without integrating them to what is today covered in a modern American university curriculum into the life of the times, that Russell rebelled against, both as a student in one and one-half to two academic years. Russell would easily have and in his later writings. At Cambridge, he met vestiges of a Victorian been prepared for the exam by his eighteen months of cramming at classicism which he found stifling. An anecdote reveals his disgust with B.A. Green's Tutors, from May 1888 until his scholarship exam in a don who once wished a woman a happy birthday with the words, December 1889. 10 It would be reasonable to assume that his "cram­ "Now, my dear, you have lasted just as long as the Peloponnesian War" ming" there included some Greek as well as Latin. Thereafter, there (Auto., I: 66). Russell himself was responsible for changing G.E. Moore from a classicist into a philosopher, by Moore's own admission. 14 The young Russell was a late Victorian, interested in scientific prog­ • Education and the Good Life (New York: Boni & Liveright, (926), p. 28. In a letter of 1955, he reminisced about the Latin textbook "on which I wasted so much fruitless ress. His scientific attitude to the classics is shown by his first exposure labour": Dear Bertrand Russell ... , ed. B. Feinberg and R. Kasrils (Boston: Houghton to them, by way of Euclid. He tells in his Autobiography how at first Mifflin, (969), p. 141. The date he then recalled, "70 years ago", is surely an approx­ he would not agree with his brother's insistence that the axioms must imation, but may suggest tutelage at Pembroke Lodge before entering the crammer's be accepted without proof. He believed that his refusal to take the text in 1888. on its authority was the beginning of his most important work on the 9 The Student's Guide lD the University ofCambridge, 5th ed.
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